Insurrection Read online

  Indeed, if a conspiracy had led to effective planning, it seems much more likely that the Pilgrimage would have had a greater chance of ultimate success; either a reversal in policy by the Crown or even, perhaps, the deposition of Henry. Davies has argued that the outcome could have been different if the Duke of Norfolk and the Earl of Northumberland had been involved, and by no stretch of the imagination could Norfolk be regarded as evangelical or pro-reform. Reginald Pole was in Rome at the time of the outbreak of the rebellion and was swiftly made a cardinal and sent to Flanders to muster support for the Pilgrims. The idea was that he might potentially go to England at the head of a military force. Whilst he must have been aware of the opportunity it presented, he was, according to the Dodds, ‘no crusader’ and ‘his heart did not leap up at the call to arms’.60 Pole, however, did not set out on his journey until mid-February 1537, by which time Rome was already aware that the Pilgrimage of Grace was over. In any case, the cardinal had too little money to raise mercenaries.61 Pole and Rome were reacting to events; they clearly had not planned them.

  This reaction to events can also be illustrated in the correspondence of Chapuys’ nephew to Queen Mary of Hungary, sister of Charles V, regarding the ‘rebellion in the bishopric of Lincoln’. The letter, from mid-October 1536, is illuminating in that it highlights the anti-Henrician rhetoric of the time and displays clarity of purpose about what is required to deal effectively with Henry:

  And now Madame, it appears … that considering the said trouble and they fish so well in troubled water, the time is come (and no such opportunity could be looked for in 100 years) to take revenge upon the schismatic … for … the indignities he inflicted upon your aunt and the innumerable iniquities he has committed against the patient Princess, to restore whom to her rightful estate would require but part of the army which was prepared in Zealand, and that it should land in the river which goes up to York with 2,000 arqubusiers and some ammunition which is what they are most in need of.62

  On 21 November the Pilgrims’ council met at York where Robert Bowes gave an account of his visit to the king at Windsor and reassured them as to the king’s mercy. Henry was willing to pardon all but ten ringleaders.63 There were many among the Pilgrims who hated and distrusted Cromwell, and Aske confirmed this in his correspondence to Darcy. He also stated that the south parts of the country longed for the Pilgrims to arrive.64 At this time, it appears that the extent of the insurrection was appreciated and its potential to bring about change was being touted on the Continent. Charles V received letters describing the rebellion as being 40,000 ‘good Christians’ strong who used the crucifix as their principal banner. These letters echo Aske’s view: ‘the other parts of the kingdom wish the men of the north to come on and join them’.65 Charles was also advised that the pope should send money and could ‘easily send Pole’. Count Cifuentes in Rome wrote to the emperor on 24 November and seemed to have additional information. He stated that the pope advised him that he had ‘sent them money to succour them by a secret person whom he had in Picardy, and would not desist from aiding them’.66

  These suggestions are echoed in the correspondence of the Bishop of Faenza: discussing Reginald Pole, he stated that ‘he could do great service to God by going there whenever any insurrection may arise’. Faenza also described how the people of England were ‘mostly alienated’, if not from the king, then at least from all his ministers; chief among these was Thomas Cromwell.

  As we can see, these are reactions to the rebellion and suggestions as to how to grasp the opportunity it had presented. They do not provide any evidence of a pre-planned conspiracy. Indeed, Faenza’s letter to Monsignor Ambrogio of 12 November succinctly summarises the development of the insurrection: ‘these disturbances have been appeased, having been immature and having no head of importance.’67 This is exactly the case. If there had have been an Aragonese faction conspiracy, as has been alleged by Elton,68 Pole would have been involved from the start and the leadership would not have fallen to the elderly Darcy and the somewhat obscure Aske.

  In any event, the Pilgrims’ representatives were summoned to a second appointment to discuss the situation with Norfolk. Prior to this, the king had revealed his feelings to Ellerker and Bowes and his correspondence is characteristic of his righteous indignation and the rhetoric of obedience. He could not understand the ingratitude shown to his royal person in the insurrection, especially by men of nobility. Henry was particularly angry that the rebels ‘presume, with force, to order their prince? God commanded them to obey their prince whatever he be.’ To underpin this rhetoric, Henry deployed the sanction of retribution: he questioned the madness that had seized the rebels that they were prepared to destroy themselves and utterly devastate the areas (of the country) which they inhabited. The king stated his intention to take measures to cut them off as corrupt members.69

  Bush has argued that the Pilgrimage can be viewed as a malfunction in the body politic and Henry’s thinking appeared to be along these lines when he talked about the removal of corrupt members. Henry used a physician’s analogy when writing of the rebels and emphasised the theme of obedience to his ministers, Fitzwilliam and Russell, following the Pontefract meeting.70

  In the lead up to the meeting, the issue of a free and general pardon for the rebels was to the forefront of the debate. The Privy Council advised the Duke of Norfolk on 2 December that it would not be honourable for the king to grant a free pardon: Henry was of the view that his honour would be gravely diminished.71 However, the rebels’ resoluteness and military strength obliged Norfolk to grant the free and general pardon, and it reserved no one for punishment.72 Henry attempted to put a positive spin on this decision by advising the Duke of Suffolk that he had granted the free pardon because he had yielded to the advice of his council.73

  The Pilgrims based their negotiating position on the original five articles given to Norfolk on 27 October and produced the twenty-four Pontefract Articles on 4 December.74 Of these, ten are undoubtedly exclusively religious grievances and these are the ones which will be considered here. Although the articles can be dismissed as reactionary and somewhat ill-informed (for instance in the treatment given to known continental reformers), they are incredibly revealing. We will begin by examining the articles which specifically attacked heresy – items 1, 7 and 8:

  Item 1: The fyrst touchyng our faith to have the heresyes of Luther, Wyclif, Husse, Malangton, Elocampadius, Bucerus, Confessio Germaniae, Apologia Malanctonis, The Works of Tyndall, of Barnys, of Marshall, Raskell, Seynt Germayne and such other heresies of Anibaptist clerely within this realm to be annulled and destroyed.

  It is clear that this list is a mishmash of reformers and continental reform ideas, but its intent is clear: the Pilgrims wanted an end to heresy. Martin Luther was the best-known reformer of the day, having precipitated the Reformation and ensuing social unrest in Germany. Indeed, King Henry himself had denounced Luther’s ideas in his own work, Assertio Septem Sacramentorum (The Defence of the Seven Sacraments), fifteen years prior to the Pilgrimage of Grace. This work went through twenty editions and translations during the century, and Henry was rewarded with the title of ‘Defender of the Faith’ by Pope Leo X in 1521.75 Bishop John Fisher and Sir Thomas More had both been authors of anti-Lutheran polemical tracts in the 1520s,76 but the Defender of the Faith had become the prosecutor of the faith by the mid-1530s and they had paid the price with their lives.

  Fisher had also denounced the Swiss reformer John Oecolampadius (referred to in the articles as ‘Elocampadius’) in 1527.77 Oecolampadius had been an assistant to Zwingli and denied the Real Presence. Tellingly, Oecolampadius, unlike Luther, gave judgement for Henry when the king had canvassed opinions on his divorce from Katherine of Aragon.78

  The ‘Wyclif’ referred to in the Pontefract Articles was John Wycliffe, a fourteenth-century English theologian and university teacher. Wycliffe had translated the Bible into English and his followers were known as Lollards. Wycliffe was declared a h
eretic by the Council of Constance in 1415. ‘Husse’ is a reference to the Czech priest and rector of the University of Prague, Jan Hus. Hus condemned indulgences more than 100 years before Luther and was burned at the stake for heresy, again on the orders of the Council of Constance in 1415.79 ‘Malangton’ was actually Philipp Melanchthon, a German reformer, professor and theologian, and a close collaborator of Luther’s. He was mainly responsible for the Confession of Augsburg.80

  ‘Barnys’, or Robert Barnes, a former Austin friar and doctor of divinity at Cambridge, had been imprisoned after an examination by Wolsey in 1526, before escaping and fleeing to Antwerp in 1528. Barnes returned to England in 1531 and was among Cromwell’s associates.81 ‘Raskell’ is a reference to John Rastell, a member of Lincoln’s Inn and a lawyer and printer who had attacked the practice of paying tithes.82

  ‘Bucerus’ was actually a reference to Martin Bucer, a Strasbourg-based reformer who had originally been a member of the Dominican order. Bucer had met Luther and agreed with him on the doctrine of Sola Fide – justification by faith alone. He rejected the Mass, Purgatory and the pope and emphasised obedience to temporal government. Unsurprisingly, he was excommunicated. His most notable contribution to the theological debate was the notion of adiaphora, or things that were indifferent in order to secure salvation. Bucer’s ideas were reflected in the Henrician Ten Articles. These articles obviously also reflected Lutheran theology and Henry had opened negotiations with the Lutherans and the German princes prior to their formulation.83

  Perhaps the Pilgrims missed an opportunity with regard to Article 1. Instead of denouncing a random list of reformers and ideas, they may have fared better if they had concentrated their attack on the ideas and reformers that Henry found so repugnant. Dickens was correct when he stated that the king detested Anabaptists. Yet there is no mention of Thomas Muntzer, perhaps the most notorious ‘heretic’ of the day. If the Pilgrims had tailored their arguments to suit the king’s sensibilities, the item may have been taken more seriously. Having said that, it was indeed a difficult task ascertaining Henry’s preferences: they fluctuated on a relatively frequent basis. The one factor that remained a constant was Henry’s Caesaropapism (his position as a secular ruler who is also head of the church) and this will be addressed in due course.

  Article 1 criticises reformers whose views could actually be interpreted as underpinning the king’s position with regard to religious change. For instance, although Tyndale had been burned for heresy in 1535, his book, The Obedience of a Christian Man (1528), presented a concept of royal authority over the realm and stated that all people had a duty to submit to the authority of the prince. The work was anti-papal and stressed that the king was the vicar of God: God alone was the judge of kings.84 This was a view shared by Christopher St German, a ‘hard-headed’ anti-clerical lawyer, who sought to claim for the Crown authority over the discernment of God’s will.85 The Pilgrims had referred to him as ‘Seynt Germayne’. His and Tyndale’s views supported the king’s Erastian stance (Henry’s supremacy in ecclesiastical affairs). Tyndale’s main preoccupation had been with the dissemination of the English translation of the Bible. However, Tunstall and the English bishops had ordered its burning as it was riddled with errors and promoted heresy.86 Of course, Tyndale had just been following the ideas of another ‘heretic’, Wycliffe, but it is interesting to note that the concern with the vernacular Bible had changed to positive approval when it was promoted by the Henrician injunctions by the end of the decade. The Second Henrician Injunctions of 1538 made it a requirement that every parish church had a copy of the Bible in English.87

  Item 7: To have the heretiqes, bisshoppis and temporall, and their secte, to have condigne punyshment by fyer or such oder, or els to trye ther quareles with us and our parte takers in batell.

  The desire for the punishment of heretics is evident. Death by burning had been the usual method in such cases under the heresy laws, De Haeretico Comburendo, 1401.88 The reference to the bishops, however, does not explicitly name the heretic prelates. This is in contrast to the Lincoln/York Articles of 14 October. These articles listed six bishops as heretics, including Cranmer of Canterbury, Shaxton of Salisbury and Latimer of Worcester. These articles also inferred that the cause of the trouble was the doctrinally orthodox Bishop Longland of Lincoln.89 It can be suggested that this lends further credence to the view that this was not an orchestrated and premeditated uprising. Sophisticated ‘high’ politicians and nobles would, perhaps, have ‘named and shamed’ the Protestant ones in this item in the articles. The temporal heretics undoubtedly referred to the king’s ‘evil councillors’ and would have included Cromwell, Richard Rich and the Lord Chancellor, Thomas Audley. Cromwell and Rich were singled out for notoriety in the Pilgrims’ Ballad. This is reiterated in Article 8:

  Item 8: To have the lord Crumwell, the Lorde Chancelor, and Sir Ric Riche knight to have condigne ponyshment, as subverters of the good laws of this realme and maynteners of the false sect of those heretiqes and the first inventors and bryngars in of them.

  This is probably the article that sheds most light on the motivation of the Pilgrims. Not only was heresy deeply unpopular in the North, Thomas Cromwell was seen as its principal advocate and the man responsible, in the main, for providing the king with evil counsel. As Merriman has remarked, the people made Cromwell the author of all their troubles. A crusade against him would not, in their minds, be a revolt against royal authority.90 They had no complaint against the king, only the influence of the heretical and evil men who had led Henry astray. After all, this was the same monarch who had denounced Luther so passionately that he was rewarded with an exalted title from the pope. Cromwell was not only responsible for the promotion of heresy, he had acted against the body politic by acting against the good laws of the country. This article reflected the perspective that ‘ungodly counsellors could and should be removed by monarchs and also reiterated the theme in early Tudor rebellions that the criticism was of the policies and not the person of the prince’.91

  One could not expect non-theologians to have a complete grasp of the intricacies of theological debate nor a contemporary knowledge of the development of continental reform. Dickens claims that the rebels should have known that Henry disliked Luther and the Anabaptists, but how were they to know this? To the ordinary rank and file Pilgrim, one heretic was the same as another and they lacked the sophistication or training to differentiate between different strands of continental reform. The Pilgrim profile was conservative and consistent in its dislike and distrust of heresy, unlike the monarch who would not be averse to flirting with Lutheranism if he perceived it to be expedient.

  It is small wonder that conservative and traditional people should be bewildered and inclined to believe rumours, when everything they held to be true had been turned upside down. Their world view and certainties had been shattered and the actions of the monarch encapsulated this epistemological rupture. If anything, the absence of theological awareness and sophistication lends even more credence to the view that the Pilgrimage was popular, commons led and spontaneous, and not the result of a conspiracy.

  Any self-respecting member of an ‘Aragonese’ noble faction involved in preplanning would have taken the time and trouble to present the argument in a more informed and erudite fashion. Dickens’ arguments also fall down when he (rightly) states that there is little evidence of Protestantism in the northern counties until after the Pilgrimage of Grace, but then, paradoxically, argues that ‘recorded protests made against heresy do not derive in any remarkable degree from the north, and it would be hard to prove that feeling there was exceptionally intense’.92 Surely this demonstrates a lack of heretical belief and practice in the North prior to 1536?

  One factor remained constant in Henry’s religious innovations and this was the Royal Supremacy. The following, however, is the only article which specifically attacks it:

  Item 2: the supreme head of the church towching cure animarum to be reserved unt
o the see of Rome as before it was accustomyd to be, and to have the consecracions of the bisshops from hym, with owt any first frutes or pencion to hym to be payd owt of this realme or else a pension reasonable for the owtward defence of our faith.

  Here is the rejection of the Royal Supremacy and the king’s capacity to have cure of souls. Royal input in the enforcement of orthodoxy was not new (for example, the 1401 statute had made the secular authorities responsible for the execution of heretics), but prior to the mid-1530s, responsibility for deciding what was heretical had been the preserve of the clerics. The Royal Supremacy invested the Crown with the power to define doctrine and this was indeed radical. After such lengthy, arduous and troublesome endeavours to secure the Act of Supremacy in 1534, Henry was consistently and fundamentally hostile to the papacy and firmly defended his title.

  Crucial to the new title’s success were the twin foundations of theology and rhetoric. Obedience was emphasised and here the influence of Luther and Tyndale came in useful. It was not just Lutherans who emphasised obedience: even the conservative bishop, Stephen Gardiner of Winchester, wrote a treatise defending the Royal Supremacy, De Vera Obedientia, in 1535.93 However, the Pilgrims were clearly not acquiescent in this regard and probably reflected the views of Reginald Pole, expressed in his Defence of the Unity of the Church. To Pole, it seemed absurd that one claiming to be the Supreme Head of the Church could not minister the sacraments but yet could deem himself as the judge of doctrinal controversies.94 It is worth highlighting that the Pilgrims also took the opportunity to state their preference that first fruits and material wealth would not leave England. Despite clearly expressing a desire for the restoration of communion with Rome, they did not want the first year’s income from a new bishop to be paid directly to the Holy See. Perhaps some among the leading Pilgrims had been influenced by the criticisms that wealth from other realms had been somewhat exploited in order to enhance the prestige, aesthetic beauty and power of the Vatican.