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The rising in the East Riding was nothing more than a northwards extension of the Lincolnshire rebellion. This opinion was held by no less than Robert Aske himself. News of events in Lincolnshire was carried into the East Riding by people travelling northwards through Lincolnshire, taking the ferry over the Humber from Barton-upon-Humber to Hessle, and so passing to Hull. News may also have spread coastwise through Boston and Grimsby to Hull. The beacons fired on the Lincolnshire Wolds were readily visible from the north bank. On October 4 Thomas Darcy had a letter from a friend in Lincolnshire alerting him to the rising at Louth; that same evening Sir Ralph Ellerker the younger sent word that the rebels were burning beacons to increase their numbers. News of the Lincolnshire rising spread in an irresistible fashion and spawned a general panic amongst the East Riding gentry.

The risings in the East Riding and Howdenshire were responses to news of the rising in Lincolnshire. There was some interchange of personnel between the two movements. Lincolnshire sent emissaries to Beverley; Robert Aske went to Lincoln to assess the character of the revolt. The Lincolnshire articles were circulated in Yorkshire and persuaded Aske that this was a movement in which he wished to play a role. After the collapse of Lincolnshire, Aske reshaped the ideology of the Yorkshire movement, omitting the commonwealth concerns of the Lincolnshire manifesto from his oath and emphasising the preservation of the church and the need for better councillors about the king. Where Aske's movement adopted the metaphor of the Pilgrimage of Grace, the movement which started in Richmondshire claimed to act in the name of Captain Poverty, was sympathetic to the plight of suppressed monasteries, and had concerns which were overtly ‘agrarian’.

The return of the duke of Norfolk was obviously a considerable relief to the Yorkshire gentry. He arrived at Doncaster, as promised, on February 1, where a number of the gentry and nobility had gathered to meet him, amongst them Sir Thomas and Sir Ingram Percy, the younger brothers of the earl of Northumberland. From Doncaster Norfolk made his way to Pontefract, where he was obliged to arbitrate between Thomas Darcy and Sir George Darcy over the custody of the castle. The king's decision to relieve Darcy of responsibility led Darcy to write to Robert Aske begging the return of munitions which he had taken from the castle during the Pilgrimage, a letter which the Crown was able to exploit after it fell into its hands. The gentry who warmly received the duke were frightened of the commons: they recognised that if the commons were not returned to obedience, then they would lose their property to them.

This chapter outlines the events of the last few months of 1536 and the winter of 1537 in England during the reign of Henry VIII. During the summer, the first alterations in the religious practice of the laity were announced. These disturbances in the body politic and the activism of government in enforcing change form the essential background to the rising which began in Lincolnshire and then spread into Yorkshire and the North of England generally. The rebellions are collectively called the Pilgrimage of Grace. In fact this term was only used in Yorkshire and those areas of the North influenced by the rising led by Robert Aske. The rebellion was overwhelmingly popular and spontaneous. There was no gentry conspiracy, although the gentry were first coerced into offering leadership and then strove hard to establish their grip over the movement. The dynamic heart of the rising, whether in Lincolnshire, Yorkshire, or the fringes of Lancashire and Cumbria, lay with the commons.

This book argues that the rebellions of 1536-1537, the Lincolnshire revolt, the Pilgrimage of Grace, and the Captain Poverty risings in October, and the renewed risings in January and early February 1537 must be understood as risings of the commons which the gentry, ultimately successfully, worked to tame through the re-establishment of their authority. In their attempts to harness the commons, the gentry were hindered, first by one of their number, Robert Aske, who saw political and personal advantage in furthering the revolts and led the commons into a stand-off with a royal force at Doncaster; and second, by the refusal of Henry VIII to make concessions — notably an unconditional pardon — which would allow the gentry and commons to disperse without any fear of reprisals. The revolts of 1536-1537 were actually two contemporaneous but semi-independent uprisings that began in Lincolnshire and east Yorkshire before spreading to other parts of England.

On the night of November 11, 1536, three weeks after the fall of Pontefract Castle and most of a fortnight after the truce at Doncaster, men were seen mustering in woods near Snaith. It was Sir Brian Hastings gathering his neighbours against a rumoured rustling of his cattle. In the subsequent atmosphere of misunderstanding and recrimination, Somerset Herald was sent to Temple Hirst to challenge Thomas Darcy about the Pilgrims' breach of the truce. For Darcy, this was an opportunity to offer his own account of his actions. Repeatedly he declared his loyalty to King Henry VIII. He had tried to take Robert Aske but failed, he had defended Pontefract for as long as possible without hope of relief. Even though he had ultimately been forced to surrender the castle, Darcy and his fellows had done the king ‘as good a service as though we had been in his privy chamber’.

Robert Aske and the other Yorkshire gentry who spoke of Henry VIII's warmth to them, and his acceptance of the Doncaster settlement, would not have been so sanguine if they had been aware of a paper circulated in the court in mid-December. The paper, perhaps written by Richard Cromwell, acknowledged the pardon, accepted that the king would travel into the North, and conceded that there would be a parliament. His paper, though, marked the beginning of the Crown's endeavour to recover ground and advantage. This paper formed the basis of a debate between the king and his council, a debate which was probably concluded by Christmas Eve, when the English ambassadors in France were told that the duke of Norfolk would be returning as the king's lieutenant with a council. The conclusions of this debate show how irreconciled Henry and his council were to the Doncaster settlement and how fearful they were of further disturbances.

The Pilgrimage of Grace that occurred during the reign of Henry VIII was thought to be a northern phenomenon and therefore one which contains few lessons for the history of England as a whole. The North, it is maintained, was backward, conservative, lightly governed (a problem solved by the Council of the North), and prone to violence. Its nobility retained a military demeanour at a time when the nobility of southern England had softened into a court or service nobility. Hence, until it was tamed the North was an ideal breeding ground for opposition to the divorce, the royal supremacy, and the dissolution of the monasteries. The clearest evidence that the North was regarded as a problematic area comes from the special arrangements made for its government by councils under a royal lieutenant. In describing the religious inclinations of the North at the time of the Pilgrimage, too great a weight is probably placed on the preferences of Thomas Darcy and Robert Aske, the most prominent figures of the rebellion.