Insurrection Page 19
73 L&P, Vol. XI: 760 (2), 1155 (4).
74 TNA, SP1/114, f.68 (L&P, Vol. XII.I: 66); SP1/115, ff.65–67 (L&P, Vol. XII.I: 234).
75 TNA, SP1/116 f.4 (L&P, Vol. XII.I: 402).
76 L&P, Vol. XII.I: 558 (quotation – spelling modernised).
77 BL, Cotton, Titus, B/I f.447; (L&P, Vol. XII.I:1106).
78 TNA, SP1/120, f.212 (L&P, Vol. XII.I: 1296); SP1/121, f.133 (L&P, Vol. XII.II: 102).
79 TNA, SP1/126, f.173 (L&P, Vol. XII.II: 1151).
80 TNA, SP1/127, f.51 (L&P, Vol. XII.II: 1212).
81 L&P, Vol. XIII.I: 887 (10).
82 Reid, The King’s Council in the North, Part I–II, p.490; L&P, Vol. XII.II: 100.
83 Reid, The King’s Council in the North, Part I–II, p.163.
84 BL, Cotton, Caligula, B/III, f.246; TNA, SP1/122, f.239 (L&P, Vol. XII.II: 249, 250); SP1/125, f.176 (L&P, Vol. XII.II: 914); L&P, Vol. XII.II: 1150 (11); L&P, Vol. XVII: 71 (39).
85 L&P, Vol. XIX.I: 223.
86 L&P, Vol. XX.I: 125 (3).
87 L&P, Vol. XX.I: 311.
88 L&P, Vol. XX.I: 846 (7).
89 J. Clay (ed.), Testamenta Eboracensia: A Selection of Wills from the Registry at York, Vol. VI, Surtees Society, 1902, p.183.
90 Ibid., p.185.
91 L&P, Vol. XII.II: 911.
92 Ibid.
93 TNA, SP1/137, f.89; SP1/17, f.236 (L&P, Vol. XIII.II: 528, 649).
94 L&P, Vol. XIII.I: 1519 (13).
95 L&P, Vol. XIV.II: 780 (12) & (13); L&P, Vol. XVII: 714 (15) & (17); L&P, Vol. XVIII.I: 982 (94b) & (100b).
96 L&P, Vol. XIX.II: 800 (16); L&P, Vol. XXI.I: 1538 (193b); L&P, Vol. XXI.II: 476 (25).
97 Bindoff, History of Parliament, pp.501–2.
98 L&P, Vol. XII.I: 615 (L&P, Vol. XII.II: 100, 102 (5), 250 (2), 914, 917, 918, 1016 & 1076).
99 TNA, SP1/127, ff.51 & 78 (L&P, Vol. XII.II: 1212, 1231).
100 TNA, SP1/127, f.37 (L&P, Vol. XII.II: 1192).
101 TNA, SP1/133, f.210 (L&P, Vol. XIII.I: 1269); L&P, Vol. XIV.II: 663.
102 L&P, Vol. XV: 515; TNA, SP1/160, f.8 (L&P, Vol. XV: 648).
103 L&P, Vol. XX.I: 1081 (21).
104 TNA, SP1/114, ff.173–74 (L&P, Vol. XII.I: 142) (spelling modernised).
105 TNA, SP1/115, f.126 (L&P, Vol. XII.I: 279) (spelling modernised).
106 TNA, SP1/119, f.126 (L&P, Vol. XII.I: 1113). The creation of knights with royal permission was a particularly important means for noblemen to bind followers. See Gunn, Grummitt & Cools, War, State and Society in England and the Netherlands, p.200.
107 L&P, Vol. XIII.I: 1519 (19); L&P, Vol. XV: 1032; L&P, Vol. IV: 100.
108 L&P, Vol. XVII: 1258 (62).
109 Clay, Testamenta Eboracensia, p.152.
110 L&P, Vol. XI: 580, 623.
111 L&P, Vol. XIV.II: 572 (3); L&P, Vol. XVI: 503 (22), 678 (47), 878 (42).
112 L&P, Vol. XVII: 71 (5), 163 & 220 (46); Fritze, Historical Dictionary of Tudor England, p.161.
113 TNA, SPI/174, f.96 (L&P, Vol. XVII: 1048, 1064).
114 L&P, Vol. XVIII.II: 107 (12).
115 L&P, Vol. XIX.I: 610 (8) (L&P, Vol. XX.I: 1081 (5)).
116 D.M. Loades, Mary Tudor: A Life, Oxford, 1989, p.195. TNA, LR 2/118; TNA, E.154/2/39.
117 Fletcher & MacCulloch, Tudor Rebellions, p.102.
118 Ibid., p.111.
119 ‘Bl. Thomas Percy’, The Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. 14 (New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1912) [accessed 21 March 2013, www.newadvent.org/cathen/14697a.htm].
120 Dodds, The Pilgrimage of Grace, p.345.
121 Smith, Land and Politics, p.173.
122 Clay, Testamenta Eboracensia, p.161.
123 TNA, SP1/131, f.116 (L&P, Vol. XIII.I: 790).
124 TNA, SP1/143, f.141 (L&P, Vol. XIV.I: 344).
125 Fletcher & MacCulloch, Tudor Rebellions, pp.107 & 111.
126 Dodds, The Pilgrimage of Grace, p.214; Smith, Land and Politics, pp.170 & 175.
127 L&P, Vol. XI: 634.
128 Dodds, The Pilgrimage of Grace, pp. 214–15.
129 TNA, SP1/108, f.176 (L&P, Vol. XI: 783).
130 TNA, SP1/109, f.224 (L&P, Vol. XI: 894).
131 L&P, Vol. XVII: 1258 (116).
132 TNA, SP1/111, f.47 (L&P, Vol. XI: 1038).
133 L&P, Vol. XIV.I: 551 & 651 (43).
134 L&P, Vol. XIV.II: 572 (3); L&P, Vol. XV: 1027 (22).
135 L&P, Vol. XVI.I:305 (67); L&P, Vol. XVI: 678 (6, 7), 878, 947 (11), 1056 (25).
136 L&P, Vol. XVI.I: 1088.
137 TNA, SP1/171, f.180 (L&P, Vol. XVII: 540); L&P, Vol. XVII: 714 (19); L&P, Vol. XVII: 881 (16).
138 L&P, Vol. XVIII.I: 474 (14).
139 L&P, Vol. XIV.I: 1056 (29).
140 L&P, Vol. XI: 537.
141 L&P, Vol. XI: 675.
142 TNA, SP1/110, f.91 (L&P, Vol. XI: 949).
143 TNA, SP1/114, ff.206–7.
144 TNA, SP1/115, f.49 (L&P, Vol. XII.I: 226).
145 L&P, Vol. XI: 687, 748, 749, 957, 1062.
146 L&P, Vol. XII.II: 1008 (9).
147 TNA, Chancery Close Rolls, C 54/412.
148 Lambeth Palace, London, Talbot Papers, MS A, f.61.
149 L&P, Vol. XII.I: 698 (3).
150 TNA, SP1/114, ff.75–77 (L&P, Vol. XII.I: 71, 72).
151 L&P, Vol. XIII.I: 1309 (2).
152 L&P, Vol. XVII: 283 (11). Clay, Testamenta Eboracensia, p.152.
153 Rex, Henry VIII and the English Reformation, p.69.
154 TNA, SP7.
155 Horrox, Richard III: A Study in Service, p.13; Kettering, Patrons, Brokers and Clients, p.22.
6
Perceptions and the Pilgrimage:
The Crown’s Response
Wherefore I cannot think that the putting down of abbeys, that is to say, the putting away of maintained lechery, buggery and hypocrisy, should be the cause of this rebellious insurrection.1
Richard Morison was unequivocal in his condemnation of the Lincolnshire Uprising in October 1536, and the purpose of this chapter is to examine the varying perceptions of the Henrician religious innovations before, during and after the Pilgrimage of Grace. Of course, Morison’s pro-regime perspective can be challenged by other commentators, and in this and the following chapter, attention is focused on the diametrically opposed perceptions of the Pilgrimage of Grace and, more widely, the Henrician religious experiment.
How were the Henrician religious changes enforced? We will examine the Crown’s responses to the Pilgrimage: an approach which deployed the use of propaganda, preaching, the king’s personal involvement and the use of sanction and punishment. An examination of the rhetoric and language of the official Henrician position, including proponents such as Morison and Thomas Starkey, will be used in conjunction with the other methods the Crown used to seek to defend and justify its position. We will begin by attempting to gauge opinion in the period prior to the outbreak of the trouble in October 1536.
Richard Layton, who became one of the hate figures in the Pilgrimage of Grace, had been appointed as one of the commissioners to investigate the monasteries by Thomas Cromwell. In January 1536, he advised Cromwell that he and his colleagues had found great corruption among the religious persons in Yorkshire – just as they had done in the south.2 In the same month, Archbishop Lee of York confirmed to Cromwell that he had received his instructions to avoid ‘contrariety’ in preaching against the new ‘novelties’ and that he was to repress the temerity of the adherents of the Bishop of Rome.3 In the spring, Lee reiterated the fact that he was ‘on-message’ and confirmed that he had given orders that preachers would not be tolerated who might use ‘novelties’ in order to sow dissension, in accordance with the king’s commandment. He also requested that Cromwell prevent the suppression of the two monasteries of St Oswald’s and Hexham.4
Opinion during these embryonic stages of the Henrician experiment was in a state of flux, and theological conceptions were not clearly demarcated. As Steven Ellis has pointed out, there were ‘rapid shifts and ambi
guities in the government’s religious policy’.5 The king himself had written to Gardiner and Wallop, his diplomats at the French court, in the spring, a few weeks before the fall of Anne Boleyn. Henry stated that he had undertaken nothing lightly regarding the Bishop of Rome, but on the foundations of God, nature, honesty and – tellingly – with the assent of Parliament.6
The Humanist scholar Thomas Starkey expressed concerns about the control of preachers who, under the colour of driving away tradition, he stated, had almost driven away virtue and holiness.7 Starkey’s most famous work, The Dialogue, published in the late 1520s, was a heavy rhetorical work. It provided a description of the ideal commonwealth, identified the general causes of its decay and specified remedies. Drawing on St Paul, this work emphasised the need for a multiplicity of function or parts in society. For Starkey, the diseased body was characterised by a state of imbalance.8 He was licensed as a preacher, and in December 1536, he began a tract against the Pilgrimage of Grace but only completed a few lines. Thomas Mayer has suggested that this reflected his ambivalence.9 Starkey, who had been friends with Reginald Pole in Italy, was in favour of the Royal Supremacy and asserted that More and Fisher had suffered because of their own folly – they died, he said, for a superstition.10 It is revealing that even a pro-Henrician polemicist had highlighted the pitfalls of religious innovation and was concerned with the effect on spiritual virtue.
Similarly, the Bishop of Lincoln, John Longland, much detested in the Lincolnshire Rising was, in reality, doctrinally orthodox. He did not endure qualms about reconciling his conservative position with acceptance of the Royal Supremacy and is an example of the acquiescent clergy, for whom expedience was the primary motivator. In August, 1536, Longland requested authorisation for the king’s writ, so that De Haeretico Comburendo might be applied to heretics in his diocese.11 De Haeretico Comburendo (Latin for ‘of burning a heretic’) was a law passed by Henry IV in 1401, enabling the punishment of heretics by burning at the stake.
After the rising was underway in Lincolnshire in October, the king informed Gardiner and Wallop that ‘injurious rumours have been blown abroad lately that the king intends to confiscate all the ornaments, plate and jewels of all parish churches’. He attributed these rumours to the work of traitors.12 The king evidently wished it to be known abroad that the risings were the result of false rumours which had been exploited by the ringleaders. After the First Appointment and truce at Doncaster on 27 October, Henry was still perplexed by the behaviour of his subjects. He sent instructions to ascertain that the commons had indeed dispersed or whether they remained in their madness. He reiterated the fact that the rumours which had been circulating were false, such as charges for baptisms, and advised that the dissolution of the monasteries did not concern the commonalty. The king urged his subjects to submit and promise their obedience.13 On the same day, one John Williams furnished Cromwell with a derogatory appraisal of the Lincolnshire men – they were, according to him, asses with dull wits.14
Lancaster Herald, as previously noted, had been intercepted by the commons en route to Pontefract in late October – his intended proclamation spoke of the king’s lawful occasion to advance with fire and sword against the rebels.15 Writing to the Earl of Derby on 28 October, Henry described Aske as a villainous traitor.16 It is clear that the king was angry at the disobedience and temerity shown by his subjects and judged them as traitors against his lawful religious changes. At this stage the king’s correspondence was quite frequent, which suggests just how affronted and perhaps anxious he was with regard to the insurrection – this was a monarch who was notoriously inefficient in dealing with his own letters and tended to delegate affairs to his ministers.
Henry then set about providing an answer to the demands of the rebels. On 2 November, he addressed their points with his characteristic perception of the right of his position. The king wondered ‘that ignorant people go about to instruct him what the right faith should be’, and stated that ‘we have done nothing that may not be defended by God’s law and man’s, and to our own Church, whereof we be supreme head, we have not done so much prejudice as many of our predecessors have done upon less grounds’. Henry sought to remind the people of the advantages which had come with his rule, ‘What King has kept you his subjects so long in wealth and peace, ministering indifferent justice, and defending you from outward enemies? What king has been more ready to pardon or loath to punish?’ Henry concluded by reminding them that they were fortunate in obtaining his pardon, ‘to show our pity we are content, if we find you penitent, to grant you all letters of pardon on your delivering to us 10 such ringleaders of this rebellion as we shall assign to you. Now note the benignity of your Prince.’17
Henry himself cultivated the image of a ‘strong’ king and was convinced that his subjects owed him complete loyalty irrespective of any misgivings. Henry did, in fact, issue circulars himself and in one, dated 19 November 1536, he reiterated the ‘obedience due by God’s law to the Sovereign’ and emphasised that his subjects had no right to resist his commandments, even if they perceived them as unjust. The same circular began with Henry pointing out that the king had advanced the bishops and endowed them with ‘great revenues’. They were thus compelled to follow his instructions and plainly read his Articles on pain of deprivation of their bishoprics and further punishment.18
Henry forwarded quite detailed instructions to Norfolk and William Fitzwilliam prior to the Pontefract Appointment of 2–4 December. Discussing the tactics they should deploy, he stated that he thought that the rebels would be very obstinate, ‘stiff’, with regards to the issues of the free pardon and a parliament in the North. Henry was adamant that his honour as sovereign should not be diminished by granting the rebels’ desires; he did not wish Norfolk and Fitzwilliam to enter into talks with the Pilgrims unless they had disbanded their forces. He wanted the message hammered home to the rebels that he was at a loss to understand their ingratitude and their attempts to achieve their objectives by violence instead of humility. Henry went on to state that his commanders must, however, with all dexterity, induce the Pilgrims to consider the ‘infinite mischiefs’ that might ensue as a consequence of the gravity of the situation.19 Henry admitted that he only granted the free pardon at Pontefract reluctantly, upon the advice of his council.20
Henry was by no means alone in perceiving the Pilgrims’ actions as worthy of condemnation. During the meeting at Pontefract, Lord Monteagle advised that he had apprehended a vicar who had spoken out against the king’s acts and in favour of the insurrection.21 Neither was criticism exclusively reserved for the Pilgrims: disobedience to the monarch was denounced by Tunstall and Stokesley in a letter to Reginald Pole. Pole had been created a cardinal by the consistory at Rome22 and was urged to surrender his red hat to the Bishop of Rome. The pope, they argued, had seduced Pole from his duty to his sovereign.23 Meanwhile, Cromwell was busy putting a positive spin on the rebellion to Gardiner and Wallop. He stated that the king had healed the corrupt members instead of cutting them off. Here, we see a continuation of Henry’s physician’s analogy with regard to the body politic24 – hardly surprising, for early modern, organic, political analogy was fixated with illness.25
Henry’s personal involvement was one feature of the Crown response to the Pilgrimage – the control and supervision of sermons and preaching were another important method by which the Crown sought to justify its position. Cromwell was acutely aware of the power of the pulpit in securing support for the Royal Supremacy and exerted his power as patron in order to strengthen the voice of the government. Cromwellian patronage of preachers became a strategy of ecclesiastical reform and the Lord Privy Seal appreciated the importance of those selected to preach. Cromwell granted substantial benefices to those who would further the cause of reform and the Crown.26
Bishop Hugh Latimer delivered a sermon against the Pilgrimage of Grace on 5 November 1536 and another sermon began by attacking the unnatural rebellions of the people, who:
… are so abhominable in the sight of God and so evill of their own nature that no cause canne make them goode and iuste, no not if the people shulde rise against the king for the defense of the gospel, for God woll not have his trowth of holye scripture promoted and set forwards [by treason] and murders, but onlye by such leefull and good meanes [as] he hath prescribed in his holye scripture that is by preaching and hearing the worde of God, by obedience unto princes, by patience, and honest lyving.27
Early in 1537, the king’s council was seeking to portray Pole as having a role in propagating dissent and, by implication, the recent rebellion. They wrote to the cardinal on 18 January stating that his purpose was to slander the king, bring his honour into contempt, set forth untruths and provoke Henry’s subjects.28 Around the same time, in mid-January, Starkey was again admonishing his former friend. Discussing the ‘rumours’ of Pole’s appointment as a cardinal, Starkey implored him not to accept as to do so would draw the king’s displeasure upon him and other members of his family. Prophetic words indeed. Starkey continued, stating that he was sure that Pole’s love of his country and desire to serve his prince would prevent him from accepting that ‘dignity’ without first considering the state of the Church and Henry’s wishes.29 In March, Cromwell called the bishops together to listen to Starkey’s directives on preaching.30
At the outset of this chapter, an example of Richard Morison’s rhetoric against the monasteries was given. It is now time to examine the role of propaganda in shaping perceptions and public opinion in a volatile and fearful climate. Morison was one of a small number of English Humanists active on the Continent in the early 1530s. There, he was in contact with Thomas Starkey and actually stayed in Reginald Pole’s household at Padua, northern Italy, between the spring of 1535 and May 1536. He returned to England at this point, after Starkey had intervened on his behalf, to obtain a post in Thomas Cromwell’s service.31 Here again we see an illustration of clientage and patronage at work. Morison’s career in central government was barely five months old when the Lincolnshire Rising broke out. As he was the most junior member of Cromwell’s staff and had demonstrated a talent for polemic, this presented him with the opportunity for self-aggrandisement. As Berkowitz has pointed out, the battle for men’s minds was as important to Henry as military campaigns.