For months the country had seen what was coming; letters from abbots
and priors poured in upon the king and parliament, begging them to
spare the ancient strongholds of religion. The churchmen argued: “If he
plunders the monasteries, will not his next step be to plunder the
churches?” They recalled what Sir Thomas More had said of their
sovereign: “It is true, his majesty is very gracious with me, but if
only my head would give him another castle in France, it would not be
long before it disappeared.” Sympathy for the monks, an inborn
conservatism, a natural love for ancient institutions, a religious
dread of trampling upon that which was held sacred by the church, a
secret antipathy to reform, all these and other forces were against the
suppression. But the report of the visitors was appalling, and the fear
of the king's displeasure was widespread; so the bill was passed amid
mingled feelings of joy, sympathy, hatred, fear, anxiety and
uncertainty. The bishops were sullen; Latimer was disappointed, for he
wanted the church to have the proceeds.
Outside of Parliament there was much discontent among the nobles and
gentry of Roman tendencies. Even the indifferent felt bitter against
the king, because it seemed unjust that the monks, who had been
sheltered, honored and enriched by the people, should be so rudely and
so suddenly turned out of their possessions. A dangerously large
portion of the people felt themselves insulted and outraged. At first,
however, there were few who dared to voice their protests. “As the
royal policy disclosed itself,” says Green, “as the monarchy trampled
under foot the tradition and reverence of ages gone by, as its figure
rose, bare and terrible, out of the wreck of old institutions, England
simply held her breath. It is only through the stray depositions of
royal spies that we catch a glimpse of the wrath and hate which lay
seething under the silence of the people.” That silence was a silence
of terror. To use the figure by which Erasmus describes the time, men
felt “as if a scorpion lay sleeping under every stone.” They stopped
writing, gossiping, going to confession, and sending presents for the
most thoughtless word or deed might be tortured into treason against
the king by the command of Cromwell.
The rebellion which followed the first attack upon the monasteries
was not caused wholly by religious sentiments. The nobles regarded
Cromwell as a base-born usurper and yearned for his fall, while the
clergy felt outraged by his monstrous claims of authority in
ecclesiastical affairs. In a sense the conflict that ensued was but a
continuation of the long-standing struggle between the king, the
barons, and the clergy for the supreme power. From the reign of Edward
I., the people had commenced to assert their rights and the struggle
had become a four-sided one.
These four factions were constantly shifting their allegiance,
according to the varying conditions, and guided by their changing
interests. At this time, the clergy, the nobles and the people in
northern England, particularly, combined against the king, although the
alliance was not formidable enough to overcome the forces supporting
the king.
The secular clergy felt that they were disgraced and coerced into
submission. They felt their revenues, their honors, their powers, their
glory, slipping away from them; they joined their mutterings and
discontent with that of the monks, and then the fires of the rebellion
blazed forth in the north, where the monasteries were more popular than
in any other part of England.
The first outbreak occurred in Lincolnshire, in the autumn of 1536.
It was easily and quickly suppressed. But another uprising in
Yorkshire, in northern England, followed immediately, and for a time
threatened serious consequences. Some of the best families in that part
of the country joined the revolt, although it is noteworthy that these
same families were afterwards Protestant and Puritan; the rebel army
numbered about forty thousand men, well equipped for service. Many
prominent abbots and sixteen hundred monks were in the ranks. The
masses were bound by oath “to stand together for the love which they
bore to Almighty God, His faith, the Holy Church, and the maintenance
thereof; to the preservation of the king's person and his issue; to the
purifying of the nobility, and to expel all villein blood and evil
counsellors from the king's presence; not from any private profit, nor
to do his pleasure to any private person, nor to slay or murder through
envy, but for the restitution of the Church, and the suppression of
heretics and their opinions.” It is clear, from the language of the
oath, that the rebels aimed their blows at Cromwell. The secular clergy
hated him because he had shorn them of their power; the monks hated him
because he had turned them out of their cloisters, and clergy and
people loathed him as a maintainer of heresy, a low-born foe of the
Church. The insurgents carried banners on which was printed a crucifix,
a chalice and host, and the five wounds, hence they called themselves
“Pilgrims of Grace.” The revolt was headed by Robert Aske, a barrister.
Cromwell acted most cautiously; he selected the strongest men to
take the field. Richard Cromwell said of one of them, Sir John Russell,
“for my lord admiral, he is so earnest in the matter that I dare say he
could eat the Pilgrims without salt.” The Duke of Norfolk was entrusted
with the command of the king's forces.
Henry preferred negotiation to battle, in accepting which the rebels
were doomed. To wait was to fail. Their demands reduced to paper were:
1. The religious houses should be restored. 2. England should be
reunited with Rome. 3. The first fruits and tenths should not be paid
to the crown. 4. Heretics, meaning Cranmer, Latimer and others, should
cease to be bishops. 5. Catharine's daughter Mary should be restored as
heiress to the crown. These and other demands, the granting of which
would have meant the death of the Reformation, were firmly refused by
the king, who marveled that ignorant churls, “brutes and inexpert folk"
should talk of theological and political subjects to him and to his
council.
After several ineffectual attempts to meet the royal army in battle,
partly due to storms and lack of subsistence, the rebels were induced
to disperse and a general amnesty was declared. But new insurrections
broke out in various quarters, and the enraged king determined to stamp
out the smoldering fires of sedition. About seventy-five persons were
hanged, and many prominent men were imprisoned and afterwards executed.
This effectually suppressed the rebellion.
The revolt showed the strength of the opponents to the king's will,
but it also proved conclusively that the monarchy was the strongest
power in the realm; that the star of ecclesiastical domination had set
forever in England; that henceforth English kings and not Italian popes
were to govern the English people. True, the king was carrying things
with a high hand, but one reform at a time; the yoke of papal power
must first be lifted, even if at the same time the king becomes
despotic in the exercise of his increased power. Once free from Rome,
constitutional rights may be asserted and the power of an absolute
monarchy judiciously restricted.
Following the Pilgrimage of Grace came the complete overthrow of the
monastic system by the dissolution of the larger monasteries.