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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.

The most striking feature of the 1536 Lincolnshire rebellion that eventually led to the Pilgrimage of Grace in England during the reign of Henry VIII was the speed with which it passed from outbreak to collapse. The rebellion began at Louth on the morning of Monday, October 2; by the following Friday, the rebels had dispersed back to their homes and the gentry who had seen service as their leaders travelled to Stamford to submit to the duke of Suffolk. Whilst the county remained disturbed for some weeks longer, the rebellion lasted for less than a fortnight. What is more, at the time of its disbandment it had achieved none of the objectives declared in its manifestos and articles.

The 1536 rising at Louth was founded on the expectation that the plate and other liturgical gold and silver of the parish church would be confiscated on Monday, October 2. The rising at Horncastle was founded on the lie that the confiscation had taken place. As Louth had a considerable investment to protect, it is easy to appreciate why these fears should have had a particular resonance amongst its inhabitants; but there is no sign that Horncastle, as the smaller town, had a similar investment in church goods. In both towns the revolutionary vanguard was drawn from the artisans of the town. This may particularly be seen in Louth. Obviously, much of the rebels' success turns on the twin advantages of surprise and numbers, but the speed with which the rebellion spread outside the towns indicates the receptivity of Lincolnshire rural society to their message.

The reaction of the Lincolnshire gentry, faced with a disturbance which they could not control, was to send word of their difficulties to Henry VIII and await rescue. So, first John Hennage rode southwards, then Sir Edward Maddison. Lord Burgh, who evaded the rebels at Caistor, fled westwards into Nottinghamshire and wrote to the king on Tuesday night from Saundby giving an outline of the day's events. He also sent word to Thomas Darcy and the earl of Shrewsbury in Yorkshire, finding Shrewsbury at his house in Sheffield Park. Shrewsbury immediately sent news of the outrage to the king. Other reports, including one from John, Lord Hussey at Sleaford, were received in the following days. The news was also spread by word of mouth. Yet there were also those who remained in blissful ignorance of the great events taking shape in Lincolnshire and Yorkshire.

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’.

In the first week of October 1536, Henry VIII's policy was one of containment to prevent the movement of the Lincolnshire rebels either southwards towards Stamford, Peterborough, and ultimately London, or westwards, over the Trent and into the east Midlands. Whilst this was being done, the Crown paid little attention to the few reports coming out of Yorkshire. On October 15, the earl of Shrewsbury was ordered to repress the rebels in Yorkshire when he was satisfied that the Lincolnshire rebellion had been squashed; on October 17, he was to advance against them, and Sir Arthur Darcy was told to lead 1,000 men from Pontefract to relieve the city of York. Despite the duke of Norfolk's strategic analysis, the earl of Shrewsbury advanced beyond the Trent to hold the line of the Don and established his camp at Scrooby, 10 miles to the south of Doncaster, on October 22.

This chapter focuses on how John Harrison — the lead character in Dava Sobel's Longitude — was brought up as a child and how this affected his clockmaking in order to better understand the major role that Harrison played in chronometry and other technical achievements as a clockmaker. Also, the chapter is concerned with providing a thorough description of specific settlements in north Lincolnshire. Here, it is pointed out how north Lincolnshire possessed more scientific and technical knowledge about clocks, timing, and clockmaking than Sobel had accounted for. During Harrison's childhood, the ownership of clocks became relatively widespread, thus resulting in improvements in the performances of clocks and their falling prices. Another important point is that Harrison was surrounded by several skilled timekeeping and numerical communities. The final important point is that Harrison possessed connections with other contributors who relevantly affected longitude debates.

This chapter examines the ways that a co-operative creates shared value for the community that it serves and works to define the concept of ‘Co-operative Advantage’ in a context where competitive advantage is more commonly discussed. It uses a case study approach, based on research conducted between 2008 and 2013 with the Lincolnshire Co-operative Society, in the East Midlands of the UK. The chapter details the co-operative’s approach, and contrasts it with that of a standard investor owned firm (IOF) model. It suggests that the co-operative identity and practices are effective in creating shared value, enhancing the co-operative’s competitiveness while simultaneously advancing the economic and social conditions in the wider community.

This chapter describes the early life and work of silk designer Anna Maria Garthwaite. A clergyman's daughter, Garthwaite grew up in a Grantham rectory over a hundred miles north of London. Even as a teenager, she showed artistic promise and a fascination with things botanical. In 1707, she left an early record of her artistic ability in an elaborate paper landscape. Packed into a space little larger than one foot high and one foot wide were (among other things) nearly thirty trees of almost as many species, a manor house, a church, a fountain, deer, sheep, a carriage-and-four, formal gardens, fences, fifteen people, and a windmill. This piece testifies to her early recognition of the aesthetic possibilities of such flowers, botanicals, and the larger landscapes in which they grew. Its use of light and dark is similar to the most distinctive silks she would design as an adult in Spitalfields, and hints at the visual innovation behind her success as a businesswoman.

Working in Lincolnshire in the 1720s, John Harrison (1693–1776) established a unique approach to making accurate pendulum clocks that was born from his experiences in the family business that served country estates in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire. The chapter charts Harrison’s early clock-making practice, inspired by local traditional clocks, and his unique interpretation. He used wood for the frames and most of the wheelwork before key elements of his precision timekeeping crystallised in the making of an estate clock for Brocklesby Park in Lincolnshire. Notably, the elimination of requirement for lubrication formed a solid bedrock for his life’s work in precision in this field. It examines Harrison’s early influences and progression of thinking through documentary evidence and artefacts to introduce the beginnings of his unique approach to precision pendulum clock making.

The purpose of writing this book was to explore aspects of human behaviour that have been, to varying extents, disregarded, overlooked, or ignored in terrestrial-dominated archaeology to date. Recognizing that the sea ‘is good to think’, it was envisaged that an exploration of North Sea archaeologies could launch something of a ‘maritime turn’. This final chapter considers the broad themes of the human past that have been enlightened through this study, and questions if and how these can be reproduced in land-based research. Five interrelated themes are presented here: the essence of nature–society interrelationships, the attribution of forms of agency to inanimate objects, deviant spaces, the essence of travelling long distances—including the skills and knowledge required for this—and finally, how the sea contributes to shaping social identities. The relationship that people had with their environment, or nature–society interrelationships, is fundamental to archaeological research on land and at sea. Explicitly or implicitly, terrestrial archaeology presents us with something of an irreversible progression towards ‘encultured’ landscapes—narratives wherein the land becomes increasingly less natural and more cultural (see chapter 2). In much of Europe, the ‘enculturation’ of the world started back in the Post-glacial. It continued throughout the Mesolithic, with the creation of paths through, and clearances within, otherwise natural landscapes. In the Neolithic, ‘enculturation’ took place through deforestation, and through the apportioning of symbolic significance to natural features and the construction of monuments relating to these. By the late Neolithic and early Bronze Age, large tracts of land were being accommodated to the needs of humans through the creation of field systems and settlements, producing ‘cultural landscapes’. From the middle Bronze Age onwards, according to accepted land-based archaeological thinking, it would appear that nature played at best a minor role, limited to the impact of climate and weather on the crops being cultivated. The study of the North Sea has fundamentally challenged the nature–culture dichotomy. The concept of ‘enculturation’ places Homo sapiens centre stage in a changing world, but underestimates the role played by the sea and rivers, as well as animals, trees, and plants, as important co-constructors of landscape.

The rise of Anne Boleyn and Thomas Cromwell and the break with Rome in the 1530s posed new threats to those of the new men still alive. Some were close to Katherine of Aragon, to Princess Mary, or to the clerical leaders of resistance to the reformation. All were growing old and were unsettled by a religious climate very different to that they knew from the old king’s court, with its attachment to provision for the poor, prayers for the dead and the ministry of the friars. Most faded away, but Hussey was destroyed by his ambivalent reaction to the Lincolnshire rising of 1536. It was left to their descendants to see what could be built on the foundations they had laid.