Katherine the Queen: The Remarkable Life of Katherine Parr

by Linda Porter

  THE REPORTS from Northumberland indicate that a climate of suspicion had settled over much of northern England by the autumn of 1536, but it was in Lincolnshire, thirty-five miles from Katherine Parr’s former home, that opposition first erupted in full force. On Sunday 1 October, Thomas Kendall, vicar of Louth, preached an arousing sermon in his parish church of St James. An Oxford-educated theologian, he had no time for new religious ideas: ‘My desire’, he later said, ‘was never other but for the establishment of our faith and putting down the schismatic english books wherein the unlearned persons taketh many errors.’3 Kendall’s words were not, however, spoken merely to instil in his flock a devotion to the way they had always worshipped. They also put them in mind of the pride they felt in their church, with its high spire, only finished in 1515, and its impressive collection of plate, vestments, books and processional crosses, built up over many years. To the Louth faithful, as to many others, these were visible signs of the glory of God, not gaudy decorations that distracted them from true piety. But a visitation from the king’s commissioners, now systematically assessing the wealth of the Church throughout northern England, was expected the next day. Already there were rumours circulating in other parishes that the commissioners intended to confiscate church silver. One of Cromwell’s officials in Louth had even made ill-advised comments that one of their silver dishes was more appropriate for a king than for ordinary men such as they. Kendall advised his listeners ‘to get together and look well upon such things as should be required of them in the said visitation’. This they certainly did, keeping an overnight vigil at the church to ensure that its contents were safe.

  The determination of the men of Louth to defend their church proved a powerful catalyst. Lincolnshire was ripe with rumours that all parish churches were to be targeted by the king’s agents, and dismay was spreading. The next day, before the commissioners could begin their work, the bells were rung in Louth, an ancient call to rebellion, and crowds began to gather. Their leader was a shoemaker. Other men involved in the disturbances he began to orchestrate were also of humble origin, blacksmiths, weavers, sawyers and labourers. They were typical of those known as ‘the commons’, ordinary working people, viewed with suspicion by the local gentry and despised by the government. While their betters never believed that they could organize themselves or produce coherent demands, they were much feared.

  The disorder soon spread to neighbouring towns. Lord Borough’s experience of the extent of the problem was direct and chilling, as he reported immediately to the king himself. He said he had been at the town of Caistor with a number of other gentlemen summoned by the king’s commissioners when

  suddenly there came a great multitude of people from Louth and was within a mile of us. Thereupon the inhabitants made us direct answer that they would pay no more silver and caused the bells to be rung … There was no remedy but to return to our houses and the people so fast pursued that they have taken Sir Robert Tyrwhit, Sir William Askew [and others] … I hear the commonality increase to them and I fear will do more, because they have taken the gentlemen who have the governance in these parts under your Highness. I have sent to my Lord Steward [the earl of Shrewsbury] the Lord Darcy and others to be in readiness …4

  Lord Borough omitted to mention that he had, in fact, ridden hell for leather to get away from the mob, abandoning his servant, who was so badly beaten up by the angry crowd that he later died of his injuries. Nor did he stay at Gainsborough Old Hall for long. After issuing orders to his tenants that they were not to join the rebels, he escaped across the Trent to join Lord Shrewsbury at Newark.

  On a personal level, Borough was unsympathetic to the rebels’ concerns about religion and his authoritarian nature was too uncompromising to consider any accommodation with them. He was always the king’s man. But his letter is interesting not just for what it reveals (and conceals) about his own part in the events at Caistor but because it touches on a number of common aspects of the rising as it spread beyond Lincolnshire: the determination and anger of the rebels, their resentment of the government’s demands on them and their tactic of taking hostages from among the local gentry and minor aristocracy – many of whom privately shared their misgivings. Some may not even have confronted their consciences until compelled to do so by force. One such man, indeed, eventually became their leader.

  ROBERT ASKE was the third son of Sir Robert Aske, a landowner from south Yorkshire. On his mother’s side he was connected to the Clifford family (his cousin was the first earl of Cumberland) and he was evidently well educated. A fellow of Gray’s Inn, he had probably been working for some years as a lawyer in London, but there are only glimpses of him before the fateful day in early October 1536 when he left the family home at Aughton, near Selby, to cross the river Humber into Lincolnshire. It was the first stage of a long journey that would take him back to London for the start of the Michaelmas law term. If he had heard of the troubles, he was certainly not deterred by them. Perhaps his mind was fixed on his work. There was no reason to suppose that his journey would be interrupted by anything beyond the normal hazards of travel in those days. He took the ferry on 4 October unimpeded. But the next morning, at the little town of Sawcliffe, he was intercepted by a band of commons who gave him the stark choice of taking the oath to their cause, or dying. Thus menaced, Aske swore ‘to be true to god and the king and the commonwealth’. This was a minor variant of an oath used throughout Lincolnshire during the rising there. Others specifically mentioned the ‘holy church’ or ‘Christ’s catholic church’ and some substituted the word ‘commonalty’ for ‘commonwealth’, but their underlying meaning was the same. God, Henry VIII and the common people were spoken of in one breath. It was not a trinity that pleased the king.

  In that one moment, as he sat on his horse surrounded by the angry men of north Lincolnshire, Robert Aske’s life was changed. It could be argued that an oath taken under duress is not binding, but the sixteenth-century mind believed that oaths were a moral force that could not be lightly abandoned, whatever the circumstances in which they had been administered. Not all men thought that way, of course. There were opportunists and timeservers then as now, and it was not, in the context of rebellion, a defence that the government acknowledged. Henry VIII and his supporters had no truck with such knavery, as they saw it. But Aske felt differently.

  We do not know what went through his mind at Sawcliffe or why, instead of trying to fade quietly into the background, he stayed with this group of rebels and began to coordinate communications between them and others who had risen further south in Lincolnshire. Their concerns must have struck a chord in him and perhaps he felt, with his lawyer’s training, that he could give voice to them in an effective way. A younger son without, apparently, any great prospects, he may also have relished the opportunity for leadership that had accidentally come his way. His life was outwardly unremarkable. He was unmarried but close to his family, a good brother and uncle. Perhaps the loss of one of his eyes marked him out as physically different and he had felt the effect of this. But he led an ordered existence, if somewhat lacking in stimulation. Suddenly, here was an opportunity to play a part on a much larger stage, in pursuit of worthy ideals. He had been a counsel on cases in the court of Star Chamber. Now he could speak for the defence of the Church and the commons, for the preservation of a way of life that was deemed to be under attack. Around him, he could see the smaller monasteries suppressed and traditional worship denigrated. His world was out of joint.

  The Lincolnshire revolt subsided in the space of a fortnight. The men of Louth had sent written demands to Henry VIII which he rejected with furious contempt. From the outset of the troubles in the north, the king was uncompromising in tone. He would not be told what to do by the common people: ‘We take it as a great unkindness that our common and inferior subjects rise against us without any ground: for, first, as to the taking away of the goods of parish churches, it was never intended; Yet, if it had been, true subjects would not hav
e treated with Us, their prince, in such violent sort, but would have humbly sued for their purpose.’ He would throw the might of a huge military force at them: ‘100,000 men, horse and foot, in harness, with munitions and artillery, which they cannot resist. We have also appointed another great army to invade their countries as soon as they come out of them, and to burn, spoil, and destroy their goods, wives and children with all extremity, to the fearful example of lewd subjects.’5

  This was sufficient to break the spirit of the men of Lincolnshire. They had no wish to confront the duke of Suffolk and his approaching horde, which was much smaller in reality than the king claimed. But it was not enough to deter Robert Aske. Already he had raised Marshland and adjacent districts of Yorkshire on the other side of the Humber. Clearly Aske was not alone, but the risks he was running were high. When he came to Lincoln to hear the king’s pronouncement, he was warned that he was a marked man. He knew then that there was no point in hesitating. If it was rumoured in London that he was a leader of the commons, then that was what he would become. In Yorkshire, he believed, there would not be such easy capitulation.

  His confidence and powers of organization proved formidable. On 16 October he entered the city of York with 10,000 followers and heard Mass at the Minster. It must have been an emotional occasion. Honourably received and lodged with a local alderman, he spent two days in York, and it was here he composed the ‘Oath of the Honourable Men’ that was sworn by all those who massed under his banner:

  Ye shall not enter into this our Pilgrimage of Grace for the common wealth but only for the love ye bear to God’s faith and church militant and the maintenance thereof, the preservation of the king’s person, his issue, and the purifying of the nobility and to expulse all villein blood and evil counsellors against the common wealth of the same. And that ye shall not enter into our said pilgrimage for no peculiar private profit to yourselves not to do no displeasure to no private person but by counsel of the common wealth nor slay nor murder for no envy but in your hearts to put away all fear for the common wealth. And to take before you the cross of Christ and your heart’s faith to the restitution of the church and to the suppression of heretics’ opinions by the holy contents of this book.6

  The oath spelled out the agenda of Aske and the other leaders of the rebellion very clearly. For them, the commonwealth and religion were inextricably linked. The spread of new religious ideas – ‘heretics’ opinions’ – and the threat to the monastic way of life – required the ‘restitution of the church’. The king was not the pilgrims’ enemy; their real opponents were lowly-born ‘evil counsellors’, men, in other words, like Thomas Cromwell.

  It would be easy to view this as simply a clash between the old and the new, to represent the pilgrims as reactionaries trying in vain to stop the tide of reform, conservatives living in the past who wanted to maintain silly superstitions and the elitism of a Church that kept the faithful at one remove from the word of God. The reformers, among whom Cromwell must surely be counted despite more modern interpretations that he was some sort of sixteenth-century totalitarian who did not really believe in anything other than his own power and advancement, were determined to impose the king’s authority and to dismantle anything that smacked of devotion to Rome. Aske, forced by circumstances to articulate his beliefs, gave voice to the doubts of many ordinary people (not just in northern England) who believed themselves loyal subjects of Henry VIII. Religion was an integral part of their daily lives. It lay at the root of the very order of things. Now all was beset by uncertainty. The depth and extent of that insecurity lies at the heart of the Pilgrimage of Grace.

  During his brief stay in York, Aske, working with other men who shared his views, for he was by no means alone in his determination to be heard, began to coordinate a more widespread rebellion. Large numbers of men had risen throughout Yorkshire and the movement spilled over into Lancashire, Westmoreland, Durham and Cumberland. The next objective was to take and hold a fortress that would be vital to the outcome. Many of the leading figures of the Church and the local nobility, including Archbishop Lee of York and Lord Darcy, had taken refuge in Pontefract Castle. Soon Lord Latimer would join them. But he was already sworn to the rebels.

  THERE WAS UNREST and armed coercion in Richmondshire before Robert Aske arrived in York. By 11 October it was closing in on Snape. On that day a group of several hundred men, probably fired into action by the proclamation at the Ripon horse fair that the king’s army was coming to deliver retribution to the men of Lincolnshire, descended on Jervaulx Abbey. Together with Fountains, Rievaulx and Byland, this was one of the four great Cistercian abbeys of north Yorkshire. Peaceful and prosperous in its idyllic setting by the river Ure, Jervaulx was not one of the monastic houses marked for suppression. Its abbot, Adam Sedbar, apparently had no wish to join those who were disaffected; initially he seems to have regarded them as more interested in stealing the abbey’s horses than doing God’s work. For several nights he hid from them until they threatened to burn his abbey to the ground. When he did appear, he claimed to have been physically attacked and forced to take the oath, though other accounts suggested he soon became an enthusiast for the rebels’ cause. The oath he took was actually administered by a local gentleman, not an enraged member of the commons. At about this time, though we do not know precisely when or in what circumstances, Lord Latimer and his brother-in-law, Sir Christopher Danby, also took the oath.

  Snape lay close to Jervaulx in lower Wensleydale, so it is not surprising that Latimer found himself soon caught up in the wider Richmondshire rising. Lord Darcy told Henry VIII that ‘[t]hey [the commons] have surprised a great many gentlemen in their own homes’, and he specifically mentioned Danby.7 It is likely, from this report, that Lord Latimer was taken in the same way, forced, by circumstances, to leave his wife and children behind at Snape. A number of ladies in the north were broadly sympathetic to the aims of the Pilgrimage. Katherine’s own views at the time may well have been ambiguous: she would have known that her husband was conservative in religious matters, yet she knew, too, that the Parr family were committed to the monarchy and that her brother William was showing an interest in religious reform. No doubt she was nervous for her husband’s safety and his future. She would have been as well aware as anyone that siding with rebels, no matter what the circumstances, was a course fraught with danger.

  Latimer, like many other gentlemen who became embroiled in the Pilgrimage of Grace, was most probably ambivalent. Men who thought like him were worried about the economic and spiritual implications of the dissolution of the monasteries, fearing the inroads of new ideas in the vacuum that closure would create and also the loss of charity given to the poor. Latimer’s position, as the eldest of his branch of the Nevilles, was somewhat unusual. Many of the gentlemen pilgrims were younger sons, who could become involved and take a stand without prejudicing the hereditary rights of their elder brothers. If this sounds surprisingly altruistic, it was an oft-repeated pattern in those days when the survival of the family was so important. The degree of coercion exerted on such men, many of whom were justices of the peace, has recently been questioned. But armed opposition to the king was a highly dangerous path. Latimer and others like him soon took on more prominent roles in the Pilgrimage because they realized, more than Robert Aske, the consequences of failure. It was natural for them to assume leadership of the commons, in any case. Yet they were careful to make sure that it was known that they had not begun this thing, merely sought to bring it to a peaceful and honourable conclusion.

  The north Yorkshire rebels, by now 10,000 strong, massed in Richmond on 14 October. Here they elected Robert Bowes, a local gentleman in his forties, like Latimer, as their leader. It is not known where Latimer himself was at this time. Only on 22 October, when he arrived at Pontefract Castle does he emerge again, in the company of Lord Lumley and young Henry Neville, the twelve-year-old son and heir of the earl of Westmoreland. The lad may have been a hostage for his father, but he was ca
rrying the banner of St Cuthbert, a powerful piece of religious symbolism from Durham Cathedral. Used in battle against the Scots, it represented both the piety and the fierce, independent spirit of the north of England. At its centre was a relic, the cloth in which St Cuthbert’s body was said to have been buried. ‘The banner cloth was a yard broad and five quarters deep … made of red velvet, of both sides most sumptuously embroidered and wrought with flowers of green silk and gold … in the midst of the said banner was the holy relic and Corporax cloth enclosed … covered over with white velvet … having a red cross of red velvet on both sides …’8 This and the banner of the Five Wounds of Christ, under which the pilgrims also gathered when they confronted the royal armies, was precisely the sort of symbol hated by the reformers in London.

  What did Lord Latimer feel as he sat on horseback beside his old friend and Westmoreland’s boy? He had a son himself not many years older, left behind at Snape. Was it elation mixed with apprehension, pride mingled with the cold fear of meeting a traitor’s death? He and Lumley, with much experience between them of defending England’s northern border for the Tudors, now found themselves at the head of an army estimated to be between 30,000 and 50,000 men, destined for London. It was a sober host, convinced of the justice of its cause and confident that the king would give gracious audience to its demands. But it never got anywhere near the capital.

  THE CAPTURE OF Pontefract was a natural goal for Aske and the rebels after their success in the rest of Yorkshire. The Norman motte and bailey castle had been expanded over the centuries and was the greatest fortress in the north. Little of it remains today, but in 1536 it was still the ultimate prize, both for the king who needed to hold it and the rebels who wanted to take it. But the castle had a sinister reputation. Richard II had died there in February 1400, probably starved to death on the orders of Henry IV, the cousin who had usurped his throne. Throughout the Middle Ages Pontefract was used as a prison. It appeared formidable. Yet the sheer size of the castle, covering seven acres, and its commanding position above the town, flattered to deceive. It was not well provided with weapons and was therefore far less easy to defend than might have been supposed.9 The extent of the anxiety of the lords who had taken refuge within the walls of Pontefract is eloquently expressed in a letter of 15 October to the earls of Shrewsbury, Rutland and Huntingdon, commanding the king’s forces at Newark: