FACTS AND RUMOURS
The great events of the year 1535 were the executions of the
Charterhouse monks and of More and Fisher in June and July, followed by
the visitation of the monasteries by Cromwell’s commissioners in the
autumn. There is no need to retell these stories, for the object of this
chapter is neither to extol the martyrs nor to defend Cromwell’s
visitors, but rather to try to discover the feeling of the nation at
large, manifested by the words of numberless forgotten men and women,
who often paid for their devotion to the religion of their fathers with
their lives[277].
All up and down the land the friaries were storm-centres of revolt, and
the King’s first attack upon them only increased their influence. The
Friars Observant were the most recently reformed branch of the
Franciscan Order. They had been introduced into England by Henry VII,
and had only six houses in the country, Greenwich, Richmond in Surrey,
Cambridge, Southampton, Newark, and Newcastle-on-Tyne[278]. Their house
at Newcastle had formerly belonged to the conventual brothers of the
Order until Henry VII replaced them by the Observants[279]. It was
natural that this Order, newly established in England, should contain
the most uncompromising enemies of Henry VIII’s policy, and they
denounced the divorce so resolutely that their houses were suppressed in
1534[280]. The friars were transferred to the conventual houses of the
Order, but the result of this was that they infected the whole body with
their own discontent. But the other friars, though as yet not directly
attacked, were not ready to accept the new state of affairs quietly. On
the contrary, of all Cromwell’s opponents, they most hated the Act of
Supremacy. This was passed in the autumn of 1534, and throughout the
following year popular indignation grew and grew, as the agitation
against the new laws was secretly carried on. A friar who had embraced
the New Learning[281], hot against all “superstitious and popish
remembrances,” described the methods of his unconverted brethren to
Cromwell. In many church windows was pictured the story of St Thomas of
Canterbury, and he had heard the pardoners relate how the martyr was
slain for resisting the King, in defence not only of the liberties of
the Church, but also of the rights of the poor; for he would not grant
the King that “whosoever set his child to school should pay a tribute,
nor that no poor man should eat certain meats except he paid a
tribute.... These words and divers others remaining in the people’s
heads, which they call the articles of St Thomas.” Then the preacher
would point to the window where the penitent king knelt naked before the
martyr’s shrine, and leave the listeners to draw their own moral. The
friars mendicant “living by the alms of the King’s subjects” were
received everywhere by the poor as friends and teachers, although
Cromwell’s correspondent declared them to be all “unlearned and without
discretion.” They would seek out the “aged and simple” and “drive them
into admiration with such words as—Oh, father or sister, what a world is
this! It was not so in your father’s days. Ye may see it is a parlous
world. They will have no pilgrimage. They will not we should pray to
saints, or fast, or do any good deeds. Our Lord have mercy on us! I will
live as my forefathers have done, and I am sure your fathers and friends
were good.... Therefore I pray you continue as you have done, and
believe as your friends and fathers did; whatsoever the new fellows do,
say and do for yourself while ye be here.” The reformer considered that
these friars “do much hurt and will do, except they be otherwise
provided for, that they may no more so scatter abroad.” He concluded by
asking for a dispensation from his habit that he might “preach God’s
word.”[282] It may be imagined that his sermons would little please his
old brethren, and as a commentary on them or their like may be quoted
the words of a certain White friar, who said “that we should see a new
turn of the Bishop of Rome if we lived; that we were a many wretches of
this realm, without any charity, thus to blaspheme him, seeing that he
does not write against us, but we, malicious wretches, write and rail
against him without any charity; and though some of his predecessors
were evil, he is a good man.”[283] The Pope referred to was Paul III.
The friars were above all wandering preachers, and reports of seditious
sermons by Black, White, or Grey brethren were sent to Cromwell from
Norwich, Canterbury, Bristol, Kingswood in Wiltshire[284], and
Newcastle-on-Tyne, where the prior of the Black friars preached a series
of Lenten sermons in 1536 against the Royal Supremacy and then fled to
Scotland[285]. Some of the friars were simple and ignorant enough, but
no less powerful among the people for all that; others were more like
one of whom Latimer complained,—“wilily witted, Dunsly learned, Morely
affected, bold not a little, zealous more than enough,”[286] i.e.
learned in the lore of Duns Scotus and holding the opinions of Sir
Thomas More.
As an instance of the sort of conversation that went on within the
friaries there is the case of the Grey Friars of Grantham, which was
remarkable as being the northernmost house in which there was a
treacherous brother. Friar John Colsell, in his deposition of 23 August
1535, tried to fasten a charge of treason upon the Warden and other
brethren, though his motive was rather private malice than any love of
the New Learning. The Warden stated in his defence that he had rebuked
two unruly friars, who threatened to complain to the general visitor,
whereupon he said, “Well, this fashion will not last always. I trust we
shall have the correction of our own religion again, for it hath done a
hundred pounds worth of hurt since it was otherwise; for now, if they be
checked for their misorder they will threat a man to complain of him,
and yet in the end, after he know the truth, I trust the same visitor
will take them as they be.” Another of the accused friars had remarked,
concerning the erasure of the Pope’s name from the service books, “If
every Act were as well executed as this, we should have a merry world.”
One of the refractory friars asked, “Be they not so?” “No, for there was
an Act made concerning the Statute of Array, that no man should wear
satin, velvet nor damask unless he were a man of lands or a burgess,
which be now broken.” The aldermen of Grantham and other men of
influence in the town gave evidence in favour of the Warden, among them
Gervase Tyndale, the master of the free school. Tyndale was by no means
inclined to favour friars in general[287], for in November 1535 he wrote
to Cromwell asking for money, as he was employed in the business of
certain friars who were about to practise necromancy. In the same letter
he complained of a “doctor” who had preached in the town on All Souls’
Day about purgatory, saying that earthly fire was to the fire of
purgatory as a picture is compared to a man, and that one penny given to
a priest would release souls from purgatory. Tyndale remonstrated with
him, but the preacher had the support of the congregation. He called
Tyndale a Saxon heretic behind his back, and drove away all the boys
from the free school, lest their master should infect them with his
opinions[288].
The preaching, however, was not all one way, for there were a few
“heretics” wandering up and down the country, friars of a new creed.
These poor men were greatly to be pitied, standing as they did between
two fires. Henry and Cromwell were willing to use them, but regarded
them with the utmost suspicion, and were always ready to pounce upon
them if they transgressed the very narrow limits allowed. The ordinary
clergy and the mass of the people regarded them with hatred and
contempt. Their acts at first seem simply to have stirred up opposition,
though here and there are signs that their teaching was beginning to
produce an effect[289]. Any earnest soul simply and honestly trying to
find a satisfying religion must have been much confused by the laws
provided for his guidance. The parson of Staunton in Gloucester was in
trouble for saying that “if the King our sovereign did not go forth with
his laws as he began, he would call the King Anti-Christ;”[290] while
Wotton-under-Edge in the same county was full of discord “by reason of
divers opinions”; and one John Plummer was accused of saying “there
shall be a new world or Midsummer Day,” by which he meant, as he
explained, that he hoped “the King in his Parliament would make some
order of punishment for those who neither fast nor pray.”[291]
The questing soul would have found that it was just as dangerous to
speak for as against purgatory[292]; and if he dared to call images
idols he was not only likely to be attacked by his indignant neighbours,
but was also within reach of the law[293]. The law indeed permitted the
reading of the Scriptures in English, but public opinion was so much
against it that a layman complained of being set in the stocks for
having an English psalter[294], and the Prior of Haverfordwest appealed
to Cromwell against the Bishop of St David’s, who had forced him to give
up his English testament “as if to have a testament in English were
horrible heresy.”[295] So strong was this feeling that even the Bishop
of Lincoln, Longland, who was accounted a heretic, complained to
Cromwell of “Sir Swinnerton” and other preachers who were bad characters
and encouraged people to read English books; the men of Lincolnshire
“much grudged” against them[296].
But wandering preachers, whether heretic or papist, were only the
skirmishers of the religious fray; the reformers were weak in numbers,
but they poured their books and tracts, like an unceasing fire of heavy
artillery, from their foreign batteries; also they had an immensely
powerful, though suspicious, ally in the King. The romanists, on the
other hand, always hoped for but never received reinforcements from the
Pope. But they had numbers and tradition on their side, and their army
was very efficiently officered by the parish priests. The steady, quiet
opposition of these men was much the most effective defence attempted
against the King’s ecclesiastical policy. They had been ordered to blot
out the name of the Pope in all prayer and service books, and to repeat
a collect for the welfare of the King and Anne Boleyn[297], but
Cromwell’s informers continually reported cases of disobedience[298].
The vicar of Stanton Lacy, Salop, was accused of covering the Pope’s
name by a piece of paper fastened down with balm, instead of erasing the
words[299]. All the religious were very loath to reform their mass
books. They could not believe that the quarrel with Rome was more than a
passing cloud. “When the King is dead all these fashions will be laid
down,” was the general belief[300]. Richard Crowley, curate of
Broughton, Oxford, was accused of calling the Bishop of Rome Pope, and
of comparing him to the sun, the King to the moon and the people to the
stars, with the application that “the moon takes her light from the sun
and as the light of the sun is taken from us, so the world is dark and
the people in blindness.” He offered his parishioners pardon “during the
utas” at the feast of the Name of Jesus (7 August), declared that the
power of the Pope was as great as ever, and professed himself ready to
die for the true faith, like More, Fisher, and the fathers of Zion[301].
Only a few were as bold as he; others, who “would rather be torn with
wild horses than assent or consent to the diminishing of any one iote of
the bishop of Rome his authority, of old time and always holden and kept
in this realm,”[302] were content to speak their minds and then seek
safety overseas[303]; but the greatest number were like the curate of
Rye, who, though he had taken the oath to the King, had “done the
contrary,” and spread tracts against the Royal Supremacy[304].
So few people as yet favoured the New Learning that most of our
knowledge of the discontent is due to local disputes. If a priest
quarrelled with his parishioners, they would bring accusations against
him which, however true in themselves, would never have been laid
against a popular man. An example of this occurred at Harwich, Essex, at
the end of the year 1535, when thirty-two of his flock brought a variety
of charges against the priest, Thomas Corthrop, such as that he had not
erased the Pope’s name from his mass book, that he had called Dr Barnes
“false knave and heretic,”[305] that he had preached Anti-Christ and not
shown who Anti-Christ was, and so forth. He had also said in a sermon at
Bethlehem without Bishopgate, London, that “these new preachers nowadays
that doth preach their three sermons a day have made and brought in such
divisions and seditions among us as never was seen in this realm, for
the devil reigneth over us now.” The root of the complaint, however,
lies in the last two articles:—“That when the young men of the parish
entered the church on December 26 to chose them a Lord of Misrule with
minstrels to solace the parish and bring youths from cards and dicing,
the said priest had taken the pipe out of the minstrel’s hand, and
struck him on the head with it, and did next day preach a sermon that
the Children of Israel came dancing and piping before idols”; and that
he falsely accused his parishioners of hunting and bowling instead of
coming to church[306]. If it had not been for his puritanism in these
respects, most likely nothing would have been heard of his conservatism
in others.
The preachers were chiefly concerned with the relations between England
and the Pope, but the commons looked at the matter from a more personal
point of view. Queen Katherine was universally beloved, while Queen Anne
was detested. It was the divorce and the slaughter of the monks that
roused popular indignation rather than the abstract question of the
supremacy. A woman of “Senklers Bradfield,”[307] Suffolk, was accused of
rejoicing because Anne’s child was still-born (February 1535), and of
calling her “a goggle-eyed whore,” adding, “God save Queen Katherine for
she was righteous queen, and she trusted to see her queen again, and
that she should warrant the same.”[308]
Henry himself fully shared the ill-will showered upon his new wife. A
Buckinghamshire man declared “the King is but a knave and liveth in
adultry, and is an heretic and liveth not after the laws of God,” and
also “I set not by the King’s crown, and if I had it here I would play
at football with it.”[309] A yeoman named Adam Fermour, of Waldron in
Sussex, had just returned from London. His friends asked what the news
was. “What news, man?” said he. “By God’s blood! evil news, for the King
will make such laws that if a man die his wife and his children shall go
a-begging. He fell but lately and brake one of his ribs, and if he make
such laws it were pity but he should break his neck.”[310] The act that
roused his indignation must have been the Statute of Uses[311]. A few
laymen, perhaps, took exception to the Royal Supremacy, but most
contented themselves with abusing the King and Queen[312]. Others again
reviled the King’s favourites, and, of course, Cromwell first of all.
The vicar of Eastbourne said to an unreliable friend, while walking in
the churchyard, “They that rule about the King make him great banquets
and give him sweet wines and make him drunk,” and then “they bring him
bills and he putteth his sign to them, whereby they do what they will
and no man may correct them.” He lamented the execution of the Bishop of
Rochester (Fisher) and of Sir Thomas More, saying that they would be
sorely missed, for they were the most profound men of learning in the
realm[313].
As time went on, disloyalty steadily increased. At Coventry in November
1535 the royal proclamations were torn down from the market cross[314].
At Chichester in April 1536 a seditious bill was posted up[315].
From Crowle in Worcestershire came several reports of treasonable
speeches. In August 1535 Edmund Brocke, an aged husbandman, walking home
from Worcester market in the rain, was heard to say, “It is ’long of the
King that this weather is so troublous and unstable, and I ween we shall
never have better weather whiles the King reigneth, and therefore it
maketh no matter if he were knocked or patted on the head.”[316] A year
later accusations were brought against James Pratt, the vicar of Crowle.
Witnesses deposed that on the Sunday before St Bartholomew’s Day (24
August) he had said in an ale-house “that the church went down and would
be worse until there be a shrappe made, and said that he reckoned there
were 20,000 nigh of flote, and wished there were 20,000 more, so that he
were one, and rather tomorrow than the next day, for there shall never
be good world until there be a schrappe. And they that may escape that
shall live merry enough.” Statistics were very roughly calculated in
those days, but the 20,000 men whom the vicar believed to be “nigh of
flote” appear again and again in the report of the rebels’ forces, and
perhaps he had some grounds for his prophecy, though he was probably
drunk when he made it. If not strictly temperate he was at any rate
brave and loyal to his friends; when examined by torture, he would
confess nothing but that he had heard divers persons, whom he would not
name, say the Church was never so sore handled[317]. Earlier in the same
year (1536) Thomas Sowle, a priest of Penrith in Cumberland, had
wandered south to Tewkesbury, where he said in an ale-house, “We be kept
bare and smit under, yet we shall rise once again, and 40,000 of us will
rise upon a day.”[318] By degrees the mutterings of discontent became
more definite. Thomas Toone, parson of Weeley, Essex, came home from a
visit to the north at the beginning of September 1536 in harvest time.
Two of his parishioners went with him one day into the fields called
“Lambeles Redoon” and “Wardes” to gather tithe sheaves. “There shall be
business shortly in the north,” said the priest, “and I trust to help
strength my countrymen with 10,000 such as I am myself, and that I shall
be one of the worst of them all.” The labourer answered quietly, “Little
said is soon amended.” The priest added hastily, “Remember ye not what I
said unto you right now, care ye not for that, for an Easter come, the
King shall not reign long.” The priest went on up the furrow gathering
the tithe sheaves, and the two countrymen agreed together to say nothing
of the matter for the present[319]. They waited, like hundreds of
others, ready to applaud the priest if he succeeded, or to accuse him if
he failed.
Such was the state of the south on the eve of the rebellion. The general
opinion was that “the new laws might be suffered for a season, but
already they set men together by the ears and in time they would cause
broken heads.”[320] In the north the discontent was all the more
dangerous because less is heard of it[321]. It was by no means less
active than in the south, but there were fewer informers. In 1535,
Layton, one of Cromwell’s hated visitors, wrote to his master on the
religious state of the northern counties, where he was about to begin
his visitation of the monasteries: “There can be no better way to beat
the King’s authority into the heads of the rude people of the north than
to show them that the King intends reformation and correction of
religion.” He described them as “more superstitious than virtuous, long
accustomed to frantic fantasies and ceremonies, which they regard more
than either God or their prince, right far alienate from true
religion.”[322] And there are a few indications of the trend of popular
sympathy.
Edward Lee, the Archbishop of York, though usually entirely subservient
to the King, once or twice protested against the granting of licences to
heretic preachers, who spoke against purgatory, pilgrimages, and so
forth “wherewith the people grudge, which otherwise all the King’s
commandment here obey diligently, as well for the setting forth of his
title of supreme head as also of the abolition of the primate of
Rome.”[323] In spite of this assertion, when the parish priest of
Guisborough, Yorkshire, was reading the articles of the King’s Supremacy
in church on 11 July 1535, John Atkinson, alias Brotton, “came violently
and took the book forth of the priest’s hands, and pulled it in pieces,
and privily conveyed himself forth of the church.” A search was made for
him, but perhaps not a very exhaustive one; at least he was not
found[324].
Very touching are the words of the priest of Winestead, who on Midsummer
Day 1535 begged his people to pray for him, “for he had made his
testament and was boune to such a journey that he trowed never to see
them again. And it is said there is no Pope, but I say there is one
Pope.” He was committed to the Archbishop’s prison at York and his fate
is unknown[325].
The Royal Supremacy was attacked in books as well as by action and
example. On 7 July 1535 Bishop Tunstall wrote to tell Cromwell that a
book called “Hortulus Animae,” but printed in English, had been brought
to him from Newcastle, and that he found in the calendar at the end of
it “a manifest declaration against the effect of the act of parliament
lately made, for the establishment of the King’s succession ... which
declaration is made ... upon the day of the decollation of St John
Baptist, to show the cause why he was beheaded.”[326] It was easy to
draw a sufficiently trenchant parallel between Herod, Herodias, and St
John on the one hand, and Henry, Anne, and the Catholic martyrs on the
other. Later in the same year other books were “taken up,” which treated
of purgatory and magnified the power of the Pope[327].
The depositions against William Thwaites, parson of Londesborough, form
the fullest case remaining against a Yorkshire parish priest, and they
are especially interesting because the circumstances must have come
under the notice of Robert Aske. His brother Christopher had lands in
Londesborough, and John Aske was the magistrate who heard the second set
of depositions on 13 November 1535. John Nesfield, the bailiff of
Londesborough, was the principal witness. He charged the vicar with
saying “about the Invention of Holy Cross last” (3 May 1535) that he was
glad to hear of the subsidy “for now shall ye temporal men be pilled and
polled as well as the spiritual men be.” He also said that England had
now no allies but the Lutherans, and that an interdict on the realm lay
at Calais and other foreign ports. If it were brought into the country,
there would be no more Christian burial for men than for dogs, “howbeit
the King will not obey it.” He had refused to attend when summoned to
appear before Archdeacon Magnus on 29 June 1535 at Warter Priory, when
the other curates of the deanery were given briefs to declare every
Sunday; these must have been the briefs for the Royal Supremacy[328].
Thwaites never published his copy until the Sunday before Holyrood Day
(14 September), when his parishioners began to murmur. There were three
other witnesses who had heard him say that the King would be destroyed
by the most vile people in the world “and that he should be glad to take
a boat for safeguard of his life and flee into the sea, and forsake his
own realm; and, masters, there hangs a cloud over us, what as it means I
know not.” He also spoke much of prophecies about future battles[329].
Thwaites was tried at the York Assizes in March 1536, and was acquitted
on the grounds that the charge was malicious. Nevertheless he was sent
up to London to appear before Cromwell next term[330].
Although all classes were to a certain extent hostile to the religious
changes, a sharp line was drawn between the disaffection of the
gentlemen on account of the new laws, and the unrest of the lower orders
under social conditions. The troubles of the commons may be summed up in
the one word—change. Everything was changing,—the relations of the
landlord to the tenant, of the labourer to the land, of the buyer to the
seller, of the layman to the church,—and in most cases the change bore
heavily on the poor man. It was all this changing that he resented so
profoundly; he disliked to see the abbeys pulled down and the monks
turned out, just as he disliked raised rents and sheep-farming
enclosures, and an English service in the parish church. About an
abstract question like that of the Supremacy he cared little, and if the
King had been content with his new title and spared the monasteries,
there would probably have been no rebellion, but only a series of
isolated disturbances raised by the commons and easily put down by the
gentlemen, such as the Craven riots of June 1535. The rioters tore down
the enclosures made by the Earl of Cumberland, the most ill-beloved of
the northern nobles. Their grievances were the usual ones: fields which
when tilled had supported families were turned into pasturage for the
lord’s profit, and the common lands were shamelessly stolen. The
authorities had no difficulty in finding and punishing a suitable number
of offenders[331]. In December there was rioting in Galtres Forest by
York, but here the sympathy of the gentlemen was with the rioters, for
in spite of the evidence the inquest which the Earl of Northumberland
appointed to deal with the affair refused to “find a riot,” at the
instigation of Thomas Delaryver, one of the jurors[332]; and in April
1536 Sir Arthur Darcy appealed to Cromwell on behalf of the people of
Galtres Forest, who were being troubled by Mr Curwen and Sir Thomas
Wharton about an alleged riot although it was barley-seed time and they
were in great poverty[333].
The people about Snape assembled in April 1536 to attack the
commissioners for the subsidy, but when they reached the place they only
found the spiritual officers holding a court, and so they
dispersed[334]. This assembly must have been promoted by the yeomen
farmers, who, being the poorest class included in the subsidy, naturally
resented it most.
At the end of 1535, commons, yeomen, and gentlemen were as yet far from
forgetting their contending economic grievances in their common
religious ones. Darcy himself was involved in a quarrel with his tenants
at Rothwell about enclosures[335], and parties with interests so
different might never have united, if the dissolution of the lesser
monasteries had not welded them into one.
The Act was passed in March 1536[336], and the suppression began in May.
News travelled so slowly, and the proceedings of the government were so
little understood, that the first intimation of the coming change must
often have been the arrival of the commissioners who were to suppress
the monastery. The effect on the people may be imagined when they saw
the monks turned out, their alms stopped, their lands given to an
absentee landlord, their buildings pulled down, or unroofed and left to
fall to ruin.
When the idea of dissolving the monasteries was throwing the whole
kingdom into a turmoil, it may well be asked how it was received in the
monasteries themselves. There is strangely little information on this
point. As early as February 1536, that is, a month before the act was
passed, Thomas Duke[337], the vicar of Hornchurch, Essex, had been heard
to say that “the King and his council hath made a way by wiles and
crafts to pull down all manner of religious, and thus they go about to
abbots and priors and possessioners and agree with them to deliver up
their rights and promise them a sufficient living, a hundred marks or
more, and when they have given all over, all other must needs give over,
but an they would hold hard for their part, which be their rights, the
King could not pull down none, nor all his council.”[338] From this and
other evidence it is clear that Cromwell had taken steps to ensure the
peaceful surrender of houses[339]. In the majority of cases the monks
must have felt very bitterly against those who forced them from their
chosen life, and numbers of abbots and abbesses spared neither trouble
nor gold in vainly trying to save their houses from the general spoil.
Others again simply could not believe that such an order would really be
carried out; such a one was the Abbot of Woburn, whose ruthful story
Froude has told[340]. In June 1536 the Abbot of Tavistock was heard to
say at table, “Lo, the King sends about to suppress many houses of
religion, which is a piteous case; and so did the Cardinal (Wolsey) in
his time, but what became of him and what end he made for his so doing,
I report me unto you; all men knows.”[341]
It has often been said that if all the religious had borne themselves as
did the Carthusian martyrs, the Reformation would have been impossible.
This is perfectly true, and perhaps, religiously speaking, the monks
ought to have been prepared to die to a man rather than give way,
especially as their training was supposed to be the best possible
preparation for martyrdom. But they were handicapped. The King struck so
suddenly that they had no time, even if they had the necessary
determination, to agree on any common action. There were no positive
orders from the Pope, and the immediate superiors whom the monks were
bound to obey were often either bribed by Cromwell or turned out to make
way for government servants. Then there were discontented monks, and
monks who inclined to the New Learning, in many of the houses.
Nevertheless there was nothing that could have stayed real enthusiasm if
it had swept through the monasteries. The monks of the Charterhouse
could die, and the canons of Hexham could take up arms. Others might
have done as they did, instead of going forth sadly and lamenting their
hard lot. It was not that the religious did not care, but that they did
not care quite enough. And yet it is scarcely fair to blame them for
lack of zeal. It is impossible, humanly speaking, that a large and
scattered class of men and women, united only by the common aim of their
lives and schooled in implicit obedience, should be able to defy in
solid and unbroken ranks the law under which they live. The case of the
romanist priests who suffered during the Elizabethan persecution is not
to the point. They were enthusiasts who were eager for martyrdom, like
the leaders of a forlorn hope. The religious of Henry VIII’s reign were
peaceful votaries, and however well the monastic life may have fitted
them to praise God, feed the poor, and teach the children, it could not
produce men capable of resisting constitutional authority. People
grumbled as much then as now at acts of parliament, and thought of
resisting them as little. The monks were not as a class capable of
refusing to acknowledge Henry’s supremacy, but they were eminently
suited to carry on a long passive resistance, and this was one of the
reasons which moved the King to rid himself of them. Having once
recognised Henry as Head of the Church of England, they were helpless
against the further attack. Morally they had admitted themselves
absolutely at his mercy; actually they might perhaps have made a better
fight than they did, for the people were almost everywhere on their
side; but as the whole aim of their way of living had been to cut them
off completely from the world, the better they were from the
ecclesiastical point of view, the more helpless they were to take any
action in practical life. They were not even convinced that any action
on their part was necessary.
The fall and execution of Anne Boleyn in May 1536 was received with
universal rejoicing, and conservative people expected the longed-for
reaction in ecclesiastical affairs. But in the very month that rid them
of the cause of their troubles the suppression began. Before the end of
July they realised that their hopes were not to be fulfilled, and within
the next month the country was alive with “rumours,” as the royal spies
said, though it was really a secret political agitation. The King was at
great pains to trace out these rumours after the rebellion, because he
wished to represent that such of them as he had no present intention of
carrying out were the only cause of the rising. Consequently, when the
poor, deluded commons discovered how false the tales were, they would at
once return to their allegiance, without making any inconvenient
demands. Nevertheless the rumours were usually based on fact, or
anticipated measures which were afterwards taken, and the outstanding
facts of the Treason Act, the Succession Acts, the subsidy, the Royal
Supremacy and the Dissolution of the Monasteries were undeniable and
gave colour to the rest. When the King was actively engaged in robbing a
church, what hope was there that he would spare his subjects? The
commonest rumours were as follows:
(_a_) All the jewels and vessels of the parish churches were to be taken
away, and such as were necessary were to be replaced by tin or
brass[342]. This report was the natural sequel of the pillaging of the
monasteries and the destruction of the shrines. Though Henry himself did
not make such a confiscation, it occurred in his son’s reign.
(_b_) All gold, coined and uncoined, was to be taken to the mint to be
tested, and every man would be obliged to pay for the testing[343].
(_c_) One of the rumours which had least foundation in fact was that
parish churches were to be at least five miles apart. Where they stood
nearer together, the separate parishes were to be united into one, and
the unneeded churches were to be pulled down[344]. Even now there is
great local rivalry between parish and parish. At that time it often
rose to a positive feud. The idea that the ancient landmarks would be
removed and that men would be compelled to worship with their
neighbouring enemies was enough to make some parishes take up arms.
(_d_) A tax was to be levied on all horned cattle. Those on which it had
been paid would be marked, and any found unmarked would be
confiscated[345]. This rumour probably originated in the legislation
concerning graziers[346].
(_e_) In anticipation of Cromwell’s parish registers, it was said that
all christenings, marriages, and burials were to be taxed[347].
(_f_) No poor man was to be permitted to eat white bread, goose or capon
without paying a tribute to the King[348]. The probable source of this
rumour has already been mentioned[349]. It is a reminder that though the
Tudor sumptuary laws seem very quaint now, they must have been a real
hardship at the time.
(_g_) Finally, it was said that every man would be sworn to give an
account of his property and income. If he falsified the return all his
goods would be forfeited[350]. This was simply a complaint against the
subsidy in rather an exaggerated form.
Such were the more fantastic of the stories which were passing from
mouth to mouth. It is evident that they were no wider of the truth than
many political agitations in our own time, and with them were united the
real grievances which have already been mentioned They passed through
the country from market to market[351], and can be traced as far south
as Devon, where on 5 September a “somner” was accused of spreading
them[352]. They circulated chiefly in the midland and eastern counties.
Aske declared that they were never heard in Yorkshire until after Guy
Kyme brought them with the Lincolnshire articles[353]. Stapleton however
heard at Beverley that several parishes were to be made into one and the
church jewels taken away[354]; and Breyar was told of the tax on horned
cattle and on every “child and chymley” at Sturley and Retford[355]. It
is natural that rumours should spread from the south to the north bank
of the Humber, and Aske first heard them from the ferryman as he was
crossing at Barton[356]. It would be difficult to find a better way of
spreading news than by enlisting ferrymen to repeat it to their fares.
But though the rumours were certainly known in Yorkshire after the
rising began, they do not seem to have spread very far, or to have had
much influence there. The newsbearers who carried them need not be
accused of ill-faith; in all probability they really believed what they
said, and this gave their words all the more weight. Their work may be
compared to that of the Evangelical Brotherhood in Germany, formed in
1524, whose members each contributed a small weekly sum “to defray the
expenses of the bearers of the secret despatches which were to be
distributed far and wide throughout Germany, inciting to amalgamation
and a general rising.”[357] The effect of their propaganda was soon
seen.
Early in August 1536 riots broke out in Cumberland, and the Bishop of
Carlisle was accused of promoting them[358]. In Norfolk there were
stirrings at the beginning of September. An organ-maker “intended to
make an insurrection” at Norwich, but he was arrested by the Duke of
Norfolk, who also took up another “right ill person” who spoke lewd
words[359]. Men from Lincolnshire were reporting in other counties that
“anyone who would go thither at Michaelmas should have honest living,
for diking and fowling,” and there were several who took the hint and
set out for Lincolnshire as soon as the harvest was over[360]. The
commissioners and their servants were by no means careful to allay the
unrest. On St Matthew’s Day (21 September) a tall serving-man in Louth
church declared that the silver almsbowl was “meeter for the King than
for them.” Whereupon one of the congregation “fashioned to draw his
dagger, saying that Louth and Louthesk should make the King and his
master[361] such a breakfast as they never had.”[362] It was said at
Grimsby that the people of Hull had sold their church plate and jewels
and paved the town with the proceeds, in order that the King might not
get them[363]. In the Yorkshire dales the people had taken an oath and
were on the verge of rebellion, openly speaking treason[364].
It was impossible that rumours should circulate and oaths be taken
without some human agency, but the men who were conducting the agitation
are difficult to discover. The King’s pardon to the rebels only covered
the period of the actual rebellion; any treasonable word or action
before that time was to be punished. In consequence very little can be
learned about the time of preparation. The prisoners naturally declared
that they had been taken unawares and knew nothing of the business until
they were compelled to join the insurgents. In such a situation a little
prevarication is pardonable, and it is scarcely wronging Aske,
Stapleton, and others to say that they probably knew more than they
would admit about the origin of the rebellion. Sometimes there is a
glimpse of a friar or a vicar, such as the priest of Penrith and the
vicar of Crowle, and sometimes it is some person indirectly
ecclesiastical, a summoner or an organ-maker, who may be suspected of
knowing the secret; but of the laymen engaged in the agitation only two
can be identified, and very little can be discovered about even these
two.
One of them was Guy Kyme of Louth, who was executed at Lincoln after the
rebellion[365]. On Saturday 30 September and Sunday 1 October 1536 he
was at Grimsby. He said that his business was “about the conveyance of
certain suspected pirates of a ship of Feversham to Lincoln,”[366] but
several people believed he was already in communication with the
disaffected in Yorkshire[367], and during the rising he was sent as a
messenger from the insurgents to Beverley[368]. Anthony Curtis, the
other agent, is a still more problematic character. He lived in
Grimsby[369], and was connected with the Askes[370], though the
relationship cannot now be traced. He was a fellow-lawyer of Robert
Aske’s at Gray’s Inn[371]. Like Kyme he was concerned in carrying news
from Lincolnshire to Yorkshire[372]. Both these men, it is to be noted,
were from the north of Lincolnshire, and several details seem to point
to the fact that this country was the headquarters of the agitation.
In addition to the definite rumours about new taxes and changes, there
was the vaguer but perhaps no less influential mass of wandering
prophecies. As early as 1535 a certain hermit of Bristol, returning home
after a visit to Lincolnshire, called Katherine of Arragon “the Queen of
Fortune,” and declared that when the time came she would make ten men
against the King’s one[373]. During May and June of the same year it
rained continually, and it was murmured that this was God’s vengeance
for the death of monks[374]. In London a prophecy went about that there
would be a month “rainy and full wet, next month death, and the third
month war,”[375] and another that “the floods flowing in Britain shall
cause a great insurrection.”[376] The connection between floods and
rebellion was obvious; when the rain spoiled the harvest the people
starved, and were ready for any mischief. Before the Peasants’ Revolt in
Germany it was prophesied that there would be a second Flood in the
summer of 1524[377]. Prophecies almost as vague and quite as likely to
come true can be found to-day in any newspaper; now, as then, the
weather and politics are the two subjects on which mankind always
listens to the seer, however often misled.
The story of one of the strangest prophecies was told by a Dorsetshire
justice on 20 May 1535. A servant of his was overheard lamenting first
the stormy weather, and then the state of the kingdom, “saying it was a
heavy world and like to be worse shortly, for he heard say that the
priests would rise against the King.” Inquiries were made, and the
servant admitted that one of the tenants had told him some such words,
which he had from an old man living but three miles from Chideock. The
justice set out to see the prophet, who was too aged to come before him.
When questioned he said it was true he had told several neighbours that
“the priests should make a field”; he knew this from his master, a very
wise man, who had been dead fifty years. The rest of the prophecy ran,
“that the parish priests should rule England three days and nights, and
then the White Falcon should come out of the North-West and kill almost
all the priests, and they that should escape should be fain to hide
their crowns with the filth of beasts, because they would not be
known.”[378] The White Falcon was the badge of Anne Boleyn, and these
very adaptable phrases suggest the brief reign of Mary and the Catholic
persecutions under “the White Falcon’s” daughter.
Anne Boleyn’s reign and fall were said to have been foretold by
Merlin[379]. “A.B. and C.” are of frequent occurrence in the prophecies,
even after her death, probably standing for Anne Boleyn and Cromwell.
The monks of Furness had a saying “that A B and C should sit all in one
seat, and should work great marvels,” and that afterwards “the decorate
rose shall be slain in his mother’s belly.” It does not appear how long
this saying had been known in the house, but during the winter of 1536
they interpreted it to mean that Henry should be slain by the hands of
the priests, for the Church he oppressed was his mother[380]. The
prophecies circulated chiefly in the monasteries and among the priests
and friars. The Prior of Malton in Rydale described a picture drawn on
parchment which he had seen fifteen years before (1512) at Rostendale
(Ravenstonedale) in Westmorland; it showed a moon waxing and waning,
each moon with the date of the year beneath. Over the full moon was
drawn a Cardinal, and under the old moon two headless monks; in the
midst was a child “with axes and butchers’ knives and instruments about
him.”[381] This recalls another prophecy of 1512, which made a deep
impression on the mind of Cromwell, “that one with a Red Cap brought up
from low degree to high estate should rule all the land under the
King ... and afterwards procure the King to take another wife, divorce
his lawful wife Queen Katherine, and involve the land in misery ... that
divorce should lead to the utter fall of the said Red Cap ... and after
much misery the land should by another Red Cap be reconciled or else
brought to utter destruction.”[382]
Dr Maydland, a Black friar of London, had discovered by necromancy in
November 1535 that the New Learning should be suppressed, and the Old
restored by the King’s enemies beyond the seas. He was in hopes that the
King would die a violent death, and that he would see the Queen (Anne)
burnt, and the head of every maintainer of the New Learning on a
stake[383].
It was treason to possess copies of such prophecies. On 2 April 1536 the
parson of Wednesborough was accused of possessing one; other accusations
against him were that he was a Scot, and “if well handled” could
“declare a multitude of papists[384].” In June the canons of Tortington
in Sussex were accused of reading prophecies[385], and, as mentioned
above, the vicar of Londesborough repeated them. In spite of the danger,
scrolls of prophecies were often circulated by the owner among his
friends, who took copies or committed the striking parts to memory; some
made regular collections, borrowing or learning all they could find to
add to the rolls, and so, as sayings or writings, the verses spread
through a whole district. One of these collections is preserved among
the Lansdowne MS[386]; it seems to have been compiled about 1531 as a
whole, but contains later entries[387]. In it is a version of the
prophecies of Thomas the Rymer, and it concludes with an account of the
great deeds to be done by “a child with a chaplet,”[388] who shall reign
for fifty-five years, and after restoring peace in England shall recover
the Holy Cross from Jerusalem and bring it back in triumph to Rome,
where his bones will finally be buried in great honour. As long as the
King remained a faithful son of the Church there was no harm in this
ordinary ballad conclusion, but once Henry had quarrelled with the Pope
it wore a very different aspect, and men began to think that the King
who was such a welcome guest at Rome could not be Henry himself, or one
of Henry’s heirs, but his conqueror[389].
The vicar of Mustone was accused before the Council of the North in 1537
of spreading seditious prophecies. This man, John Dobsone by name, was
like nearly all the northern clergy secretly in favour of the Pope.
Doubtless most of his parishioners agreed with him, but three of them,
disliking either his opinions or himself, accused him of relating in the
ale-house and the church porch that the King would be driven out of his
realm, and then return and be content with a third part of it; that the
Eagle “which is the Emperor ... shall rule all the land at his
pleasure”; that the Dun Cow “which is the bishop of Rome ... shall come
into England jingling with her keys and set the church again in the
right faith”; also that “When the Crumme (Cromwell) is brought low Then
shall begin the Christ’s Cross row.” The vicar denied the charge that he
had any such writings in a book, though he admitted he had seen such a
collection. He also denied that he had ever repeated them in public, and
all the witnesses whom his accusers cited bore him out in this, and
declared he was an honest man denounced from private malice. The
Council, though they committed him to gaol and wrote to the King for
instructions, were inclined to take a lenient view of his case. But they
energetically set to work to hunt out the originators of such dangerous
sayings. The result is like an Arabian story, tale following tale in
endless sequence. Dobsone had first heard of the prophecies at the White
Friars at Scarborough in October 1536. The Warden of the Grey Friars,
who was visiting there, spoke of a prophecy that was going about,
whereupon the Prior of the White Friars produced a roll of paper on
which a number were written. It was in fact a collection that he had
been making for some years. He lent it to Dobsone, who justified his
confidence by returning it in a fortnight. Another friend of the prior’s
was not so particular. He borrowed the roll and it was stolen from his
house during the insurrection, but several accounts of the contents
remain. The prophecies were said to be declared by “Merlion,” St Bede,
and Thomas of Ercildoune, but they were copied from many sources[390].
The earliest told how “when the Black fleet of Norway was comed and
gone, after in England war shall be never,” and other things equally
harmless[391]. Others were given the prior in May 1536 by a priest of
Beverley, whom he never saw before or after. They began “France and
Flanders shall arise” and perhaps included the Eagle and the Cow, as
well as some obscure forebodings of battles where “the clergy should
stand in fear and fight as they seculars were,” with which a “long man
in red” would have something to do. The most interesting relate to the
great northern families, which were indicated by their badges, as is
usual in sayings and ballads. The cock was the crest of the Lumleys, and
one prophecy runs “the cock of the north shall be plucked and pulled,
and curse the time that ever he was lord,” but after his misfortunes “he
shall busk him and brush his feathers, and call his chickens togethers
and after that he shall do great adventures.” “The moon shall lose her
light, and after shall take light of the sun again” refers to the
crescent badge of the Percies, and the Tudor crest of a rose surrounded
by the rays of the sun. The scallop shells of the Dacres “shall be
broken and go to wreck.” At the end of the roll “Thomas demandeth of
Merlion and Bede saying when shall these things be? About the year of
Our Lord God 1537.” The Council of the North thought the rhyme about
Cromwell the most serious, and made every effort to find the author.
There were numberless versions, the best lines being:
“Much ill cometh of a small note
As (a) Crumwell set in a man’s throat
That shall put many other to pain, God wote;
But when Crumwell is brought a-low,”[392] etc.
The gentleman who gave it to the prior had learnt it from a priest, who
heard it from a brother priest about Michaelmas 1536 “in the buttery at
Ayton.” The second priest had it from the clerk of a remote parish as
they walked together in a country loaning. The investigators might have
traced its journey from mouth to mouth all round the country without
finding anyone definitely responsible for it; but they gave up the
hopeless quest at this point[393].
There lived at this time at Huntington in Yorkshire one Wilfrid Holme, a
man with poetical leanings and a favourer of the New Learning. After the
rebellion he set to work to write an account of it, or rather he
included an account of it in a poem entitled, “The Fall and Evil Success
of Rebellion from Time to Time.” It is interesting as being the only
contemporary history of the Pilgrimage, but Holme gives few details, and
though many facts are correct he throws little new light on the subject.
His last canto is headed “Of the Mouldwarp,” and concerns a prophecy of
Merlin’s which the rebels applied to the King. Holme never repeats this
prophecy, but it seems to have been that the Mouldwarp, “the sixth
king,” should be coward and caitiff, and have a skin like a goat. Holme
states (without giving a reason) that the reckoning must be made from
Henry III, and accordingly Henry IV was the sixth king and Henry VIII
the twelfth, as he does not reckon Richard III. Therefore the Mouldwarp
could not be Henry VIII,—
“... Except ye skip at pleasure
To take here one and there one your purpose to defend.”
Moreover Henry VIII is neither caitiff, coward, nor hairy. Holme never
says what was to happen to the Mouldwarp. That Henry IV was believed to
be that monster by Owen Glendower and his fellow conspirators is a
tradition preserved in “The Mirror for Magistrates”:
“And for to set us hereon more agog,
A prophet came (a vengeance take them all!)
Affirming Henry to be Gogmagog,
Whom Merline doth a mouldwarp ever call,
Accurst of God, that must be brought in thrall
By a wolf, a dragon and a lion strong,
Who should divide his kingdom them among.”[394]
After such a string of doubtful fables the excellent good sense of
Hotspur is a pleasing change,
“... Sometimes he angers me
With telling me of the moldwarp and the ant,
Of the dreamer Merlin and his prophecies,
And of a dragon and a finless fish,
A clip-wing’d griffin and a moulten raven,
A couching lion and a ramping cat,
And such a deal of skimble-skamble stuff
As puts me from my faith.”[395]
Yet one more must be mentioned—the Pilgrims’ own prophecy, which was
commonly repeated in their host throughout the rising,
“Forth shall come a worm, an aske with one eye,
He shall be chief of the meiny;
He shall gather of chivalry a full fair flock,
Half capon and half cock,
The chicken shall the capon slay,
And after that there shall be no May.”[396]
The interpretations of this must have varied at the time, and now they
can only be guessed. The lines about the capon and the cock seem to
predict disunion among the insurgents themselves such as brought about
the failure of the Lincolnshire rising. It has been suggested[397] that
in the last line, foretelling the end of the rebellion, the “May” means
the badge of Henry VII, the crown of England hanging on a hawthorn tree,
and so anticipates the fall of his dynasty. Reading it after the event,
it has rather the sense of spring without summer and fair promises
unfulfilled.
From amid the prophecies, rumours and travellers’ tales which were
agitating the country during the summer of 1536 one point looms up,—that
great events might be expected at Michaelmas. The government was only
half aware of what was going on. But the army of the discontented, the
starving labourers, the homeless monks, the sincere believers in the old
religion, knew that when Michaelmas Day had come and gone they might
expect news from the north. The King was at Windsor in September, and on
the 27th he bade Ralph Sadler send word to the Lord Privy Seal to summon
the Privy Council and attend the King at once. Sadler suggested there
might be some delay as the command would not reach Cromwell until late
on the following afternoon, and the day after was Michaelmas. “What
then?” quoth his Grace, “Michaelmas Day is not so high a day.”[398] When
so many saints’ days had given way to his pleasure, why should the King
heed Michaelmas Day? Yet that Michaelmas Day came near to mastering the
King.
NOTES TO CHAPTER IV
Note A. Throughout this book the “New Learning” is used in the sense
of protestant or anti-papal opinions, not as another name for the
classical revival.
Note B. One of his parishioners, John Bird, tried to lay information
against him, but Duke had sufficient influence to stop him, and the
accusation was not made until after the rebellion, for Bird mentions
witnesses to whom he spoke “a month before the rising.” There is
another deposition by Bird against a priest in L. and P. XII (1), 301,
too much mutilated to be intelligible. Cf. XI, 1495.
Note C. Other prophecies of about the same period are printed by
Furnivall, op. cit. pp. 316–20, but they are unintelligible.
Note D. The Prophecies of Rymour, Beid and Marleyng[399]:
“When the black fleet of Norway is comen and gone
And drenched in the flood truly
Mickle war hath been beforne
But after shall none be.
Holy Church shall harnes hent
And III years stand on stere,
Meet and fight upon a bent,
Even as they seculars were.”
Note E. A curious illustration of the feelings with which the north
regarded the King’s family arrangements is given by the fragmentary
story of Mary Baynton, a girl of eighteen, the daughter of Thomas
Baynton of Birlington, i.e. Bridlington in Yorkshire. The only
document relating to her adventures is undated, but probably belongs
to the year 1533. She made her appearance at Boston in Lincolnshire,
and represented herself as the Princess Mary fleeing from her father’s
cruelty. Although she must eventually have been arrested, she seems to
have been received with respect and sympathy. Her fate is unknown, and
it is impossible to say whether she was a deliberate impostor or a
self-deluded lunatic. There is nothing to show that she had any
accomplices, but it is interesting to observe that she was connected
with Bridlington and Boston, which were two centres of the rebellion.
Her story was “that the French queen was her aunt and her godmother,
and upon a time the said French queen, being of her pleasure in a
bath, and she with her there, looked upon a book and said to her,
‘Niece Mary, I am right sorry for you, for I see here that your
fortune is very hard; you must go a-begging once in your life, either
in your youth or in your age.’ And therefore I take it upon me now in
my youth, and I intend to go beyond the sea to mine uncle the emperor,
as soon as I may get shipping.”[400]
Note F. In April 1536 there was a disturbance in Somersetshire about
which little is known. On 21 April 1536 John Py informed Cromwell that
he had arrested Thomas Towghtwodde of Bridgewater. The prisoner had
attempted to fly the country because his apprentice “was one of those
who made the business in Somerset.” The apprentice was three days with
“those who made the business ... till my lord Fewaryn sent him
home.”[401]
In May Cromwell noted among his remembrances “the poor men of Somerset
for their pardon,”[402] and on 26 May 140 persons were pardoned for
making unlawful assemblies in Somerset[403]. Others were executed for
the same offence, and £50 were allowed for expenses to “Serjeant Hinde
the King’s Solicitor and others that went for the executing of the
rebels in the west.”[404]
It is probable that this rising was due to social discontent, and not
to religious grievances, as the Act for the Suppression of the
Monasteries was passed only in March and was not enforced until June,
while the rising was early in April.
It is curious that, according to Wriothesley’s Chronicle, there was
also a rising in Somersetshire in April 1537[405]. The only allusion
to this second rising in the Letters and Papers occurs on 13 May 1537,
when Sir John St Lo requested Cromwell to contradict the report that
the King was displeased with John Horner for “his taking the men
imprisoned at Nunney” and causing them to be executed at Taunton[406].
It is probable that there were two risings in Somerset, one in April
1536, the other in April 1537. But it is possible that there was only
one rising, that in April 1536. After that rising some prisoners were
executed and others pardoned, but some may have remained in prison at
Nunney, either because they were condemned to perpetual imprisonment
or because they were never tried. In April 1537, when there were
rumours of a rebellion in Devonshire and Cornwall, the magistrates may
have become alarmed and executed the unfortunate prisoners out of
hand. It is evident that the execution in April 1537 was hasty and
irregular. If this second hypothesis were correct, Wriothesley must
have misdated the entry in his Chronicle, or, hearing of the
executions in Somerset in April 1537, he may have concluded that there
had been a rising. It is simpler and involves less guessing to assume
that there were two risings.