Pilgrimage of Grace

• 1. Introduction

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  The Pilgrimage of Grace took its name only after it began. On the 13th of October, 1536, a rising broke out across the north of England, and only then was the term coined. Within weeks, this movement drew a host of marchers from Yorkshire across Cumberland, Northumberland, Durham, and north Lancashire. Historians would call it the most serious rebellion of the entire Tudor era.

  Participants marched under banners bearing the Five Wounds of Christ. They were farmers, monks, knights, and members of the gentry, united by anger at the dissolution of the monasteries, new taxes, and the direction of Henry VIII's reign. When the royal commanders who faced them could not win a fight, they improvised promises they had no authority to make.

  Who had pushed the north of England to this point? Who was the barrister who led a sworn company into the city of York? And what was the cost when a royal pardon turned out to mean nothing?

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• 2. A North Under Strain

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  Grain riots broke out in Craven in June 1535. By April 1536, grain prices in Somerset had climbed 82% above the levels of 1534. These were not isolated eruptions. The Tudor era had brought a general rise in population across England, concentrated around Yorkshire. Common lands that families had farmed for generations were being enclosed by landlords. With more people competing for fewer resources, goods prices rose and employment fell.

  In Cumberland and Westmorland, a charge called a gressum had grown extortionate. A gressum was the payment required when taking up a tenancy through inheritance, sale, or a new lease. The Statute of Uses, recently passed, threatened to recover further royal fees based on land tenure. Henry VIII had also developed a habit of raising Crown revenue through taxation, confiscation of lands, and the deliberate depreciation of goods.

  Thomas Cromwell, Henry VIII's chief minister, was regarded by the northern gentry as "base born." He was resented for the reach his policies had over church property and local life alike. Henry himself had recently cast off Catherine of Aragon. Anne Boleyn's execution in 1536, on charges of adultery and treason, had done further damage to the monarchy's reputation. For the poorest people in the north, the monasteries being closed provided food and shelter. The royal commissioners at work across the region were seizing not only land but church plate, jewels, gold crosses, and bells. In some parishes, these objects had been donated by local families in thanksgiving or in memory of the dead. Silver chalices were replaced with ones made of tin.

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• 3. The Lincolnshire Spark

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  On the 1st of October, 1536, at St James' Church in Louth, a rebellion began after the evening service of Vespers. It had been building since the day before. On the 30th of September, Dr. John Raynes had addressed the assembled clergy at Bolingbroke. Raynes was Chancellor of the Diocese of Lincoln and one of Cromwell's commissioners. One of his clerks issued a warning about the academic requirements for clergy: "Look to your books, or there will be consequences." Word spread rapidly through Lindsey to Louth and Horncastle.

  Louth Park Abbey had just been closed. Nicholas Melton, a shoemaker who went by the name "Captain Cobbler," emerged as one of the rising's leaders. Together with a monk, he drew an estimated 22,000 people into the rising. Dr. Raynes, who was ill at his residence at Bolingbroke, was dragged from his sick-bed and beaten to death. The commissioners' registers were seized and burned.

  A force estimated at up to 40,000 then marched on Lincoln and occupied the cathedral. Their demands included an end to the October subsidy, a halt to the dissolution of religious houses, and the repeal of the Ten Articles. They also demanded an end to peacetime taxes, a purge of heretics from government, and the repeal of the Statute of Uses. On the 4th of October, 1536, the King sent word that the occupiers must disperse. Charles Brandon, the 1st Duke of Suffolk, had already mobilized forces against them. By the 14th of October, few remained in Lincoln.

  The vicar of Louth and Captain Cobbler were captured and hanged at Tyburn. Thomas Moigne, a lawyer from Willingham and one of the MPs for Lincoln, was hanged, drawn, and quartered. Nine days after Lincoln's occupation ended, a far larger movement took shape across the border in Yorkshire.

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• 4. The March on York

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  Robert Aske had made his career in London as a barrister, practicing at the Inns of Court. He was the youngest son of Sir Robert Aske of Aughton, near Selby. The family seat was Aske Hall in Richmondshire, and the family had long been part of Yorkshire's life. In 1536, he assembled 9,000 followers, each of whom had sworn the Oath of the Honourable Men, and led them into York.

  Aske arranged for the monks and nuns who had been expelled from their houses to return. The King's newly installed tenants were driven out, and Catholic observances resumed across the city. When Henry learned that the monks had returned to Sawley Abbey, he sent an order to Edward Stanley, the 3rd Earl of Derby. Stanley was to "take the said abbot and monks forth with violence and have them hanged without delay in their monks' apparel."

  At Scawsby Leys, near Doncaster, Aske gathered a force the royalist side estimated at between 30,000 and 40,000. Facing them were the King's two commanders: Thomas Howard, the 3rd Duke of Norfolk, and George Talbot, the 4th Earl of Shrewsbury. Norfolk commanded 5,000 troops; Shrewsbury had 7,000. Unable to fight at those odds, Norfolk opened negotiations. Jesse Childs, a biographer of Norfolk's son the Earl of Surrey, later confirmed that Henry VIII had not authorized Norfolk to offer any concessions.

  In early December 1536, the Pilgrimage gathered at Pontefract Castle. The petition that emerged, the 24 Articles to the King, was also called "The Commons' Petition." It covered religion, taxation, and the Statute of Uses. Norfolk accepted it and promised a general pardon, a Parliament to be held at York within a year, and a reprieve for the abbeys. Trusting these assurances, Aske dismissed his followers. Henry VIII had authorized none of it.

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• 5. The Suppression

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  In February 1537, a second rising broke out in Cumberland and Westmorland. Its leader was Sir Francis Bigod, of Settrington in the North Riding of Yorkshire. Bigod had not been authorized by Aske to act. Norfolk, aware that the promises he had improvised on the King's behalf would never be honored, reacted quickly. The King now had his pretext.

  Henry VIII arrested Bigod, Aske, and several other leaders. Among them were Lord Darcy, Sir Thomas Percy, and Sir Robert Constable. John Hussey, the 1st Baron Hussey of Sleaford, was also seized; Hussey was the Chief Butler of England. All were convicted of treason. Bigod was hanged at Tyburn. Lords Darcy and Hussey were beheaded. Sir Robert Constable was hanged in chains at Hull. Robert Aske, who had trusted the royal pardon, was hanged in chains at York.

  The author of Wriothesley's Chronicle recorded the arraignment before the King's Commissioners at Westminster on the 16th of May, 1537. Standing before the court were Sir Robert Constable, Sir Thomas Percy, Sir John Bulmer, and Ralph Bulmer his son and heir. Sir Francis Bigod, Margaret Cheney, George Lumley, and Robert Aske also stood condemned. All were condemned for high treason. Ralph Bulmer alone was reprieved. On the 25th of May, a Friday in Whitsun week, Sir John Bulmer and Sir Stephen Hamerton were hanged and beheaded. John Pickering, a friar, and others were drawn from the Tower of London to Tyburn and there hanged, bowelled, and quartered. Their heads were set on London Bridge and at divers gates in London. Margaret Cheney, described by the chronicler as "a very fair creature, and a beautiful," was drawn from the Tower to Smithfield and burned.

  In total, 216 people were executed: lords and knights, seven abbots, 38 monks, and 16 parish priests. Among the abbots were Adam Sedbar of Jervaulx and John Paslew of Whalley. William Trafford, Abbot of Sawley, was hanged at Lancaster on the 10th of March, 1537. Sir Nicholas Tempest, Bowbearer of the Forest of Bowland, was hanged at Tyburn. Martial law was imposed on the demonstrating regions. In late 1538, even after the main executions, Sir Edward Neville, Keeper of the Sewer, was beheaded.

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• 6. An Incomplete Victory

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  By 1540, the largest monasteries in England had been dissolved, their lands divided between the Crown and its supporters. England was never reconciled to Rome, except during the brief reign of Mary I, from 1553 to 1558. The steps toward Protestantism that Cromwell had set in motion continued their course, with the same brief interruption. In the standard historical view, the Pilgrimage had failed.

  The Bishop's Book of 1537 tells a more complicated story. Four of the seven sacraments omitted from the Ten Articles were restored in it. That restoration marked the end of the official drift of church doctrine toward Protestantism. A new law, the Statute of Wills, partially negated the Statute of Uses. The government also postponed the October subsidy, one of the immediate grievances the Lincolnshire organisations had pressed. In 1538, a royal proclamation promised an onslaught upon heresy.

  M. E. James, C. S. L. Davies, and Andy Wood have each disputed the traditional account of who truly led the Pilgrimage. James and Davies see the rising as a product of genuine common grievances that bound the upper and lower orders together. The northern nobility sheltered behind claims of coercion, presenting themselves as victims of popular force rather than willing participants. The common people used the presence of nobles to give their protest the authority of rank. Andy Wood locates the real driving force among minor gentlemen and well-off farmers, a class largely absent from the standard history. These groups, he argues, had more political agency than either the great lords or the landless poor.

  The Six Articles of 1539 followed the Bishop's Book. They represented the most conservative doctrinal statement Henry VIII had issued since his break with Rome. Whether they reflected the Crown's own instincts, or the continued weight of the north's unresolved demands, remains an open question in the scholarship.

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