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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 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 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.

At the first Doncaster meeting the gentry leadership of the Pilgrimage of Grace and the duke of Norfolk devised the means to disband the Pilgrims' army. At the second Doncaster meeting they went a stage further and wound up the Pilgrimage in return for a pardon, a number of ill-defined promises to assuage the commons, and the promise of a parliament. The first few days of December 1536 continued to see differences of opinion between Henry VIII and Norfolk over the Pilgrimage. The king believed that the movement had burnt itself out. Little in the way of concessions would be needed to bring it to a conclusion. Sending Norfolk new instructions on December 2, he argued that Norfolk had over-coloured his account of the rebels' numbers and hostility. He was surprised that the duke accepted that the Pilgrims sought a general pardon and a parliament without having met with them.

In the century that followed the end of the Hussite wars religious warfare found a number of distinctive outlets. In Eastern Europe, the defence of the frontier against the advancing Turks by armies that were composed largely of peasants had a tendency, exemplified in Hungary by György Dózsa's crusading army of 1514, to mutate into social insurrection. In Iberia, the concluding stages of the Reconquest and the initial overseas discoveries and conquests were strongly influenced by prophecy and messianism. The first 20 years of the Reformation gave rise to extremities of religious belief and practice that reached a climax in the Anabaptist seizure of the city of Münster in 1534–5.

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.

This chapter begins by discussing that the difficulties in relations between Henry and James naturally affected their European partners, all of whom were forced to reconsider their position with regard to England following the religious schism. It then explains that this situation left Henry with no choice but a religious understanding between England and Scotland, based on his own reforming principles. It discusses that Henry VIII's interest in securing James V's friendship led to a series of diplomatic overtures in the following years. It then tells that this Henry's diplomatic overtures did not succeed. This chapter also discusses the outbreak of the Pilgrimage of Grace in England. It examines the international and Scottish threat to England and England's responses to that threat. It explains that the Anglo-Scottish negotiations eventually reached an impasse and showed signs of war.

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 revolts that occurred in 1536-1537 in England during the reign of Henry VIII could have been triggered by the concern of a politically informed and devout society about the alleged projected reform of religious observance. The state's involvement in religion, not to preserve orthodoxy but to encourage reform, created a politics of religious diversity which was to endure for three, perhaps four centuries; a politics where every individual had the choice between conventional practice and reformed religion, between differing ways of achieving salvation. To some historians, the revolt of 1536 was a response to reports which were untrue, to unnecessary anxieties: but within twenty years the state had acted in exactly the way men feared it was about to in the autumn of 1536. Henry's inability to compromise, his refusal to concede an unconditional pardon to people who had been unwillingly caught up in the revolt, the uncertainty about the king's motives, and the general lack of trust he engendered extended the Pilgrimage of Grace from October 1536 into February 1537.

This chapter examines the actions and attitudes of superiors during the Dissolution, when the large majority surrendered their monasteries to the Crown. A number of monastic heads took part in the Pilgrimage of Grace, but apparently with some reluctance, and others actively contributed to the rebellion’s suppression. Similarly, when they were called upon to surrender their houses to the Crown in 1537–40, the large majority of abbots and priors gave way with little overt opposition. This response was partly the product of the regime’s strong-arm tactics, but can also be attributed to the active loyalism of abbots and priors, the internal destabilization that Cromwell’s interventionism had promoted, the generous pensions offered by the regime, and the absence of secular support for opposing the surrenders. Their collective compliance eased the Dissolution, as they modelled conformity to their own communities—conditioned to obey their superiors—and to their lay neighbours alike.

This chapter focuses on two of Elyot’s later dialogues: his translation of a sermon of St. Cyprian counselling the faithful in times of persecution and his collection of adagia, The Banquet of Sapience, each of which seems designed to reflect upon the increasing pressures placed upon the regular religious and critics of the royal supremacy and break with Rome in these years.