Insurrection
Page 26
Some heirs embraced the new order and were loyal again in 1569, whilst others tended towards recusancy and were involved in the 1569 rising. It is illuminating that the gentry, on the whole, remained loyal to the Crown in 1569, whilst many of the traditional northern magnates became embroiled in intrigue. Shrewsbury’s role was absolutely crucial in 1536 and his heir was loyal again in 1569 – but it is surely significant that the Talbots appeared to be atypical in 1536, in that they were materially well rewarded.
The commons had, in reality, nothing to gain materially from the Pilgrimage. Indeed, the dissolutions had removed the chief source of support of the very poorest. At the other end, though, the rising presented opportunities for the northern gentry who chose to use loyalty as a gateway to a share in the ecclesiastical wealth.18 The idea of the Pilgrimage as being for the commonwealth was just using contemporary language to state that all social orders were involved. Sir Thomas More, in ‘Utopia’, hit the nail on the head when he said that in truth, ‘euerye man procureth hys owne pryuate wealthe’.19
The king astutely sought to divide and rule and ‘tried to split rebel support by a judicious mixture of threats and inducements’20 – the threat of retribution and the promise of reward. It was this strategy which yielded the result the Crown desired, the seeds of distrust between the gentry and the commons were planted and the movement’s defeat was then inevitable. We have seen how the commons involved began to distrust the gentlemen: the visits of Ellerker, Bowes and Aske to Court exacerbated their suspicions. They were thus susceptible to Bigod and Hallam’s rhetoric in early 1537.
The link between loyalty and reward in the aftermath of the Pilgrimage is, then, present. Some gentry benefited spectacularly in terms of material gains – see, for instance, Sir Arthur Darcy. Darcy is an example which refutes Bastow’s claims that the Tudors had an outright policy of inflicting financial ruin on all members of a family where one individual had been disloyal or rebellious. Perhaps Henry would have liked to deploy that tactic but realpolitik, expediency and the necessity of effective governance in a problematic and distant region dictated otherwise.21 However, Darcy was not to be as prominent in royal administration as the likes of Ellerker and Bowes. Darcy and Uvedale’s requests to relocate to the South were unsuccessful; the regime sought to foster a loyal and stable gentry class in the region. For others, loyalty in the autumn of 1536 proved rewarding and gained individuals such as William Parr and Ralph Eure (both of whom were created barons) an enhancement in prestige and standing. Fidelity to Henry was undoubtedly a springboard towards advancement and the most meteoric rise, which continued into the next reign, was that of Sir John Dudley.
Pro-Henrician rhetoric and propaganda was another important method by which the Crown sought to achieve an acquiescent populace. Richard Morison was the main polemicist of the time and both Thomas Master and Edward Hall wrote unashamedly biased accounts of the Henrician religious project. Propaganda was an important tool in a three-pronged attack in securing compliance – persuasion, punishment and patronage. The role of preaching and its importance in reaching the illiterate masses, as well as instances of punishment, were also highlighted.
The changes were not popular, not only in the North, but in other parts of the country as well: examples were given from the South – including Oxford – and Ireland. Robert Parkyn’s narrative stands in contrast to that of Thomas Master. Yes, Parkyn was a fairly obscure northern clergyman, but that surely is what makes his recollections interesting. Reginald Pole was undoubtedly a biased source but this is hardly surprising given his deep religious convictions, exile and perhaps even his Plantagenet blood. Pole’s own family were victims of Henry’s vengeance and his 70-year-old mother, the Countess of Salisbury, was beheaded on the flimsiest of charges.
However, Pole shed light on the views of the papacy and orthodox thought. The Pilgrimage was an undoubted missed opportunity for domestic conservatives (the likes of the Duke of Norfolk and the Earl of Shrewsbury) and foreign powers alike. For all his self-righteous indignation and Catholic faith, Charles V did not choose to become involved. England, one must conclude, was way down the list of the emperor’s priorities, even for mischief making.
The impact of the Pilgrimage of Grace in religious terms in the North was examined and samples of wills were studied and analysed in the absence of churchwardens’ accounts. Many wills contained traditional formats and a significant proportion also appeared to err on the side of caution by specifying burial rites in compliance with statute. However, it is worth reiterating the recusant tendencies of the heirs of the rehabilitated Pilgrims, the Babthorpes and the Danbys. The area around the Yorkshire Plain still contained many Catholic gentry in the 1620s, over eighty years after the Pilgrimage of Grace These included the Fairfax, Constable and Stapleton families.22 One cannot, of course, attribute this fact as being directly linked to the Pilgrimage, but it is surely revealing that Catholic sympathies remained within these families despite their forebears having been reprieved.
In addition to the gentry, some of the nobility retained Catholic sympathies, even though they had been steadfastly loyal to the Crown in 1536 and again in 1569. The Talbot Earls of Shrewsbury continued in their Catholic beliefs, despite the fact that the 4th Earl, George, had been instrumental in the defeat of the Pilgrimage. Had he joined the rebellion, the outcome may have been very different. The wife of the 7th Earl, Gilbert (1552–1616), was openly Catholic and the 16th Earl, John (1791–1852) was also Catholic.23
The other notably Catholic noble family were the Howards. Again, this is somewhat ironic, given the 3rd Duke’s pivotal role in the defeat of the Pilgrimage and his subsequent campaign of retribution in the North. It is, of course, difficult to speculate, but one might say that had Talbot and Howard been true to their religious convictions, the Pilgrimage may have succeeded in 1536 and the course of northern history would have been different. As it was, Norfolk’s heir and grandson, the 4th Duke, was implicated in the Ridolfi plot and paid the price for his treason. The Neville Earl of Westmorland and the Percy Earl of Northumberland were involved in the 1569 Rebellion. The 4th Earl of Westmorland did not participate in the Pilgrimage but the 6th Earl was raised as a Catholic and was present in Durham Cathedral when the Mass was restored.
As we know, the 6th Earl of Northumberland (d. 1537) made the king his heir and did not participate in the Pilgrimage. His brothers did, and Thomas Percy was executed. His son became the 7th Earl, as the 6th Earl had died childless. This Percy earl, described as a ‘rank papist’ by Sir Ralph Sadler, was involved in 1569.24 It is worth reiterating the loyalty of and the material benefits accrued by the Earl of Rutland following his stance in the Pilgrimage of Grace. He died a rich man, owing to the acquisition of much monastic property and his dynasty prospered in the following centuries.
Although Geoffrey Elton has decisively rejected the idea that Cromwell used spies, this study has attempted to shed some light on the way in which the Lord Privy Seal operated. Evidence from elsewhere in the realm, as well as the North, supports the contention that Cromwell presided over a spy network: his role as a patron facilitated this. As Andy Wood has argued, accounts of seditious speech enabled the authorities to investigate, codify and crush popular politics.25 It is interesting to note, during the course of this study, that reports of sedition and sycophantic begging letters almost disappear from the State Papers after Cromwell’s fall in 1540 and for the rest of the reign. This leads to a conclusion that he was most probably at the epicentre of an effective, efficient and rewarding spy network.
At the beginning of 1541, the French ambassador, Marillac, wrote to King Francis that some suspected that the people in the North were ready to rebel if they had a leader.26 Sansom acknowledges that the information on the Wakefield Plot is fragmentary and it is not the place here to attempt to delve deeper into it. Suffice it to say that Sir John Neville was involved and subsequently executed at York. Twenty-six people were held in custody, of which five lay people and fou
r priests were executed in May and June.27 The conspirators had been betrayed by an unknown informant before the plot. On 30 June King Henry and most of his Court began his four-month progress to the North. This was over four and half years since he had ‘promised’ to have his queen, Jane Seymour (now deceased), crowned in York and to facilitate a parliament to be held in the city. Instead, when the king finally arrived in the region, after being on the throne for over thirty years, it was with Queen Katherine Howard in tow and he used this opportunity to demonstrate his majesty and demand public submission from those towns implicated in the Pilgrimage. In both Lincoln and York, the men fell on their knees in grovelling submission and the king confirmed the 1537 pardon in person and in public in ‘carefully choreographed ceremonies’.28
Of Henry himself, it is difficult not to concur with Lucy Wooding’s assessment that in the aftermath of the Pilgrimage, ‘he had become more majestic, less plausible but undoubtedly a more terrifying proposition as a king’.29 Henry undoubtedly possessed a cruel and vengeful nature – we have seen examples of this throughout. Henry’s vindictive character and desire for retribution was, for instance, evident when he instructed the Duke of Suffolk to destroy, burn and kill man, woman and child if there was renewed rebellion in Lincolnshire in the autumn of 1536.30 The French ambassador Marillac succinctly summarised King Henry’s three prevalent character traits or ‘vices’ – avarice, suspicious nature and inconstancy.31 An apt appraisal.
The lack of resistance in the period after the Pilgrimage can be attributed to political circumstances: the nobility and gentry were reluctant to become embroiled in further rebellion. This should not be mistaken for a lack of fervour among the commons or lower clergy, or a decisive rejection of the old Catholic order. The Crown purchased support of the Royal Supremacy by creating and guaranteeing a property interest in the former ecclesiastical lands. Resistance was indeed futile when money could be made and power attained. It is also highly revealing, when discussing religiosity, to emphasise the fact that the king himself specified Masses for his soul in his will.32 He also ordered 1,000 Masses to be said for the soul of Queen Jane Seymour.
Cromwell’s spectacular career was to come to an abrupt end when he was executed for treason on 28 July 1540, the day of King Henry’s marriage to Katherine Howard. All of Cromwell’s honours were forfeited and it was publicly proclaimed that he could only be called ‘Thomas Cromwell, cloth carder’. In the end, the son of a blacksmith from Putney had overreached himself and had been a disturbing influence in the static society of orders. It is to be expected that conservatives and Catholics would have regarded this as his just desserts. Hall said of Cromwell’s downfall:
Many lamented but more rejoiced, and specially such as either had been religious men, or favoured religious persons; for they banqueted and triumphed together that night, many wishing that that day had been seven years before; and some fearing lest he should escape, although he were imprisoned, could not be merry. Others who knew nothing but truth by him both lamented him and heartily prayed for him. But this is true that of certain of the clergy he was detestably hated, & specially of such as had borne swynge [beaten hard], and by his means was put from it; for in deed he was a man that in all his doings seemed not to favour any kind of Popery, nor could not abide the snoffyng pride of some prelates, which undoubtedly, whatsoever else was the cause of his death, did shorten his life and procured the end that he was brought unto.33
The Pilgrimage was most definitely a missed opportunity for the conservatives in the realm. The Duke of Norfolk’s expedient and calculating decision to lead the royal army when he could have potentially raised East Anglia was undoubtedly of great benefit to the Crown and detrimental to the Pilgrimage’s chances of success. For Bush and Bownes, the Pilgrimage was an event of outstanding importance – if the rebels had succeeded, ‘the religious, political and social history of early modern England would have undoubtedly have followed a different course’. They go so far as to state, ‘what is certain is that the Anglican Church would have returned to Roman Catholicism’ and that the dissolution of the monasteries would not have occurred. One has to agree entirely with their contention that the ‘Reformation would have had to evolve as a social movement rather than as something imposed upon society by the state’.34
The Pilgrimage of Grace could be interpreted as exhibiting potential strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. The Pilgrimage’s great strength was in its huge numbers and popular support. Thirty-thousand men in the field dwarfed the army Henry Tudor recruited in his successful campaign against Richard III which had allowed him to claim the throne by right of conquest.35 The Pilgrimage had the tacit approval of Catholic Europe and the papacy and its participants were galvanised by the belief that they were undertaking a holy enterprise.
The Pilgrimage’s weakness was the inherent distrust between the social classes – the gentry and the commons. In such a situation, the divide-and-rule approach was bound to pay dividends and the commons inevitably came to believe that they had been sold out by the gentry. The Pilgrimage was undoubtedly an opportunity which could have been grasped, had the strengths been harnessed effectively and the weaknesses addressed. Of course, this would have involved effective and strategic planning, which was manifestly absent.
The Pilgrimage could, perhaps have succeeded if it had availed itself of Reginald Pole’s leadership. The opportunity was there for the taking but senior nobles, such as the Duke of Norfolk, the Earl of Shrewsbury and Lord Dacre, were not willing to become involved, whilst the pope procrastinated and Charles V did not feel the enterprise worth becoming involved in. The threat to the Pilgrims is self-evident: their actions were bound to be viewed as tantamount to treason. They took a risk, carried along by the momentum of mass popular approval, but the threat of social friction within their ranks and the lack of decisive leadership rendered their movement vulnerable. The inherent distrust between the commons and the gentry is critical in understanding why the Pilgrimage was doomed as an enterprise and a missed opportunity.
It is hopefully clear from the evidence that has been presented here that the Reformation was deeply unpopular in the North of England. The Pilgrimage of Grace substantiates this only too well. The Henrician religious innovations – constantly subject to change – were not well received in other parts of the realm either. It would probably be fair to say that opposition was more deeply entrenched in the North and to contend that this was as a result of it being a peripheral region, far removed from the core – the Court. It also explains why it remained fertile ground for another religious rebellion in 1569.
By the time of the Northern Rising, the North was largely ‘unreformed’ but Catholics in the region had managed to survive and prosper in the aftermath of the Pilgrimage due to the expediency of pragmatism. The Catholics, however sincerely, retained overt loyalty to Elizabeth and what could appear as ambiguous or apathetic was, in reality, practical. They had to reconcile the inherent struggle between their hearts and their minds – in the end, the mind, as manifested by acquiescence and conformity, tended to prevail. Many Catholics attended Protestant services and came to be known as ‘Church-papists’.36 After the Northern Rebellion and Elizabeth’s excommunication, large-scale uprisings were replaced by plots.37 It was at this point that religion and national loyalty truly became embedded in the English political identity, but the seeds were firmly sown in Henry’s reign and the Pilgrimage was a reaction to the planting.
In the aftermath of the Pilgrimage acquiescence prevailed (despite individuals’ private and guarded consciences). By the end of the sixteenth-century England, it could be argued, had taken significant steps on its evolution as a nation-state. This aspect of Whig analysis appears to hold true. Centralisation, uniformity, language and now the state religion were features of this. To be a loyal Englishman, one had to adopt English norms and values – language, dress and religion. There is no doubt that the Henrician religious experiment was just that – an experiment, a
nd not a popular one either, particularly in the North. However, the changes were built upon and enhanced in the following reign and resumed in the reign of Elizabeth. Subjects had a duty of obedience and loyalty in all areas of their lives, religion included. The Pilgrimage was a conservative, mass, popular outburst, but the way in which it was handled by the regime, with a dual carrot and stick approach, resulted in its demise. The promise of position, patronage and power was enough to tempt avaricious men to remain loyal to whatever was the order of the day. After the dissolutions, they had a vested interest in maintaining and enhancing their positions.
As Susan Wabuda has stated, the ‘religious landscape of England was far more diverse at the end of the sixteenth century than it had been at the beginning’.38 In the end, Catholic habits and sympathy did not die hard, and from 1536 to 1570, given the state of flux, many in the North must have felt that a return to the ‘old’ religion was not just preferable but also possible.
In the aftermath of the Pilgrimage of Grace the government’s tactics of punishment, patronage and persuasion prevented the recurrence of fresh revolt and there was a relatively peaceful interlude until 1569. The religious experiment undertaken by Henry VIII was unprecedented and largely unpopular. The misgivings of large numbers of his subjects were manifested in the Pilgrimage of Grace. The king’s force of personality, the promise of patronage and the fear of reprisals were enough to keep the dissenters in place for the remainder of his reign. However, Catholic sympathy and a longing for the ‘old’ days lay dormant until the fresh explosion in Elizabeth’s reign in 1569.
The Pilgrimage was arguably a watershed. Henceforth, loyalty, power and religion became inextricably entwined. Edmund Bonner summarised the Henrician period and the dilemma for religious conservatives succinctly. Writing in the reign of Queen Mary, he stated: ‘Fear compelled us to bear with the times, for otherwise there was no way but one.’39