The civil war that never was

“Why was there so little opposition to Henry VIII’s break with Rome?” was once a hardy perennial of examination papers in Tudor history. Geoffrey Moorhouse offers us a new, vivid, and colourful account of the rebellion that followed that break which shows up that question for the question-begging humbug it always was.

“The Pilgrimage of Grace for the Common Weal”, as it came to call itself, was the largest armed popular rising ever faced by a Tudor monarch, and reveals the depths of hostility Henry VIII aroused when in his desperation to divorce his first wife – Catherine of Aragon – he separated the Church of England from the papacy and began, in 1534, to alter the religion that had shaped English culture for a millennium.

Stirred up by the dissolution of the first monasteries, which gave rise to rumours that parish churches would go next, waves of popular protest against Henry VIII’s government broke out in October 1536, beginning in Lincolnshire and sweeping throughout northern England.

The risings in Lincolnshire were soon dispersed, but those further north gathered momentum, as the people recruited gentlemen and noblemen to their cause (often by intimidation) to provide leadership. The Duke of Norfolk, dispatched by an irate king to put down these impudent rebels, realised that his few thousand men could do little against the tens of thousands concentrated around Pontefract Castle.

He convinced Henry VIII that diplomacy and dissimulation were preferable to confrontation. This probably saved Henry’s throne. Had the Pilgrims marched south, they would have been unstoppable. But Norfolk dispersed them with fair words and promises of full pardon and redress, shrewdly exploiting the reluctance of the landowners to jeopardise their own position in society by starting a civil war.

The Pilgrims’ leader, Robert Aske, was invited to Court for Christmas, where he was subjected to the full power of Henry’s genial personality (its darker side tactically concealed). But in the New Year of 1537, a few gentlemen, worried that the promises might not be kept, tried to rekindle the embers of revolt, giving Henry the pretext he needed to forget the promises made in his name and exact exemplary justice.

Aske, basking in memories of his reception at Court, actually helped damp down the flames before they took hold. But this didn’t save him from a traitor’s death at York. Dozens of others, arbitrarily selected for reprisals, shared his fate.

Moorhouse’s is a narrative rather than an argumentative book, but it implicitly undermines some modern myths which presents the Pilgrimage as the expression simply of “underlying” social and economic causes. Moorhouse shows that religion provided its driving and co-ordinating force. And against those who would reduce it to a mere gentry conspiracy, he shows that it was indeed a popular movement. In doing both, he shows that narrative is often a better path than argument to historical truth.

This is history, not melodrama, with characters rather than heroes and villains. Moorhouse gives a good sense of Aske’s naivety and Norfolk’s shrewdness, and tells a compelling story of conflicting interests and loyalties, of errors of judgment and messy compromises.

He captures precisely the uncomfortable position of the gentry, who shared popular dissatisfaction with Henry’s policy, yet realised how much they stood to lose by rebellion. It was their reluctance to upset the status quo, and the desperation of a few to preserve their crumbling position, that brought the Pilgrimage to nothing.

G. K. Chesterton wrote of “the people of England, who have not spoken yet”. The Pilgrimage of Grace was one of those few occasions when the English people at least cleared their throats in an attempt to bend the ear of their king. Henry VIII responded, characteristically, by biting their heads off.

Geoffrey Moorhouse has retrieved some of the voices of the Pilgrims from the interrogations and confessions which followed the collapse of their movement. In doing so, he has done us and them a service, showing that the history of the losers can be as fascinating as the history of the winners.

• Richard Rex is Director of Studies in history at Queens’ College, Cambridge.

Phase One, the ‘Lincolnshire Rising’

The Lincolnshire Rising was a brief rebellion of Roman Catholics against the establishment of the Church of England by Henry VIII and the dissolution of the monasteries. It began at St. James Church, Louth, after evensong on October 1, 1536, shortly after the closure of Louth Abbey, and quickly gained support in Horncastle, Caistor and other nearby towns. The people of Louth had recently purchased a new church spire. Angry with the actions of commissioners, the rebels demanded the end of the collection of a subsidy, the end of the Ten Articles, an end to the dissolution, an end to taxes in peacetime, a purge of heretics in government, and the repeal of the Statute of Uses. With support from local gentry, a rebel force, whose size has been estimated at up to 40,000, marched on Lincoln and by October 7 had occupied Lincoln Cathedral, demanding the freedom to continue as practising Catholics and protection for the treasures of Lincolnshire churches.

The rebellion was effectively ended on October 10, 1536, when King Henry sent word for the occupiers to disperse or face the forces of Charles Brandon, 1st Duke of Suffolk, which had already been mobilised. By October 14, few remained in Lincoln. Following the rising, Thomas Kendall, the vicar of Louth and its spiritual leader, was captured and executed, as were most of the other local ringleaders over the next twelve months. However, the Lincolnshire Rising would inspire shortly the more widespread Pilgrimage of Grace.

Phase Two, the ‘Pilgrimage of Grace’

The movement broke out on 13 October 1536, immediately following the failure of the Lincolnshire Rising, and at this point was the term ‘Pilgrimage of Grace’ used. The causes of the rebellion have long been debated by historians, but several key themes can be identified:

• Economic Grievances — The northern gentry had concerns over the new Statute of Uses. There were also popular fears of a new sheep tax. The harvest of 1535 had also led to high food prices, which may have contributed to discontent.
• Political Grievances — Many northerners had disliked the way in which Henry VIII had ‘cast off’ Catherine of Aragon. There was also anger at the rise of Thomas Cromwell.
• Religious Grievances — The local church was, for many in the north, the centre of community life. Many ordinary peasants were worried that their church plate would be confiscated. There were also popular rumours at the time which hinted that baptism might be taxed. The recently released Ten Articles and the new order of prayer issued by the government in 1535 had also made official doctrine more reformed. This went against the conservative beliefs of most northerners.

Robert Aske was chosen to lead the insurgents; a London barrister, the youngest son of Sir Robert Aske of Aughton near Selby, a scion of an old Yorkshire family from Richmondshire (Aske Hall). In 1536 Aske led a band of nine thousand followers and they entered and occupied York. There he arranged for the expelled monks and nuns to return to their houses; the king’s tenants were driven out and Catholic observance resumed. The success of the rising was so great that the royal leaders, Thomas Howard, 3rd Duke of Norfolk and George Talbot, 4th Earl of Shrewsbury, opened negotiations with the insurgents at Doncaster, where Aske had assembled between thirty and forty thousand men.

Henry authorised Norfolk to promise a general pardon and a Parliament to be held at York within a year. Aske then dismissed his followers, trusting in the king’s promises.

Phase Three

These promises were not kept, and in January, 1537, a new rising took place in Cumberland and Westmoreland (which Aske attempted to prevent) under Sir Francis Bigod of Settrington in the East Riding of Yorkshire. Upon this, the king arrested Aske and several of the other leaders, such as Lords Darcy, Constable, and Bigod, who were all convicted of treason and executed. Aske was hung in chains from the walls of York Castle as a warning to other would-be rebels. Sir Robert Constable and the abbots of Fountains and Jervaulx were executed in July 1537. The loss of the leaders enabled the Duke of Norfolk to quell the rising, and martial law was imposed upon the rebellious regions, ending the rebellion.