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- [00:01]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Want to walk the halls of Anne Boleyn's childhood home or explore the castles that made up Henry VIII's English stronghold? With a subscription to History Hit, you can dive into our Tudor past alongside the world's leading historians and archaeologists. You'll also unlock hundreds of hours of original documentaries with a brand new release every single week covering everything from the ancient world to to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com subscribe.
- [00:35]
Raj
Hey, it's Raj and Noah and we're back with a new season of Am I Doing It Wrong? The show that explores the all too human anxieties we have about trying to get our lives right.
- [00:43]
Noah
Because we're still doing a lot of stuff wrong.
- [00:46]
Raj
But who isn't? That's why each week we're talking about the topics that we could all use a little helping hit with. Whether it's making new friends as an adult, managing our emotions, or even dreaming.
- [00:54]
Noah
We'Ll be talking to experts in their fields who are definitely doing things right. So the rest of us can be a bit wiser and a lot better equipped to handle whatever life throws at us.
- [01:03]
Raj
Subscribe now and listen to new episodes of Am I Doing It Wrong? Dropping every Thursday starting January 1st, wherever you get your podcasts.
- [01:11]
Noah
And for the first time ever, we're gonna have full video episodes on YouTube. Because as long as there are things to get wrong, we're gonna be right here to help you do em better.
- [01:19]
Person with stomach issues (possibly a patient or spokesperson for Creon)
Love y'.
- [01:20]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
All.
- [01:21]
Person with stomach issues (possibly a patient or spokesperson for Creon)
Fall is all about cozy comforts, but when you're prioritizing your health, it's easy to feel like you're missing out. With Herobred, you can enjoy all your fall favorite made with herobread, sliced bread, loaves, tortillas, bagels, dinner rolls and more. Try their all new hero noodles with 12 grams of protein and just 80 calories, you won't believe HeroBred's options have 0 to 5 grams net carbs and are high fiber from the taste and texture. They've even got small batch drops of indulgent favorites like the popular Hero croissant. And right now Herobred is offering 10% off your order. Go to Hero Co and use code fall25 at checkout. That's fall25 HeroCo. All figures are per serving of HeroBred contains 2 grams of fat per serving. See the product nutrition panels on Hero Co for more information.
- [02:06]
Raj
Lunch was great, but this traffic is awful.
- [02:09]
Person with stomach issues (possibly a patient or spokesperson for Creon)
Um, can we stop at a bathroom?
- [02:11]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Are you alright?
- [02:11]
Person with stomach issues (possibly a patient or spokesperson for Creon)
I keep having stomach issues after eating like diarrhea, gas and bloating, abdominal pain and sometimes oily stools. Sound familiar? Those stomach issues may actually be a pancreas issue called exocrine pancreatic insufficiency, or epi. Creon pancrelipase may help manage epi. Creon is a prescription medicine used to treat people who can't digest food normally because their pancreas doesn't make enzymes.
- [02:35]
Creon Medication Narrator
Creon may increase your chance of fibrosing colonopathy, a rare bowel disorder. Tell your doctor if you have a history of intestinal blockage or scarring or thickening of your bowel wall, if you are allergic to port or if you have gout, kidney problems or worsening of painful swollen joints. Call your doctor if you have any unusual or severe gastrointestinal symptoms or allergic reactions. Take Creon as directed by your doctor and always with food. Do not chew capsules, as this may cause mouth irritation. Other side effects may include blood sugar changes, gas, dizziness, sore throat and cough. These are not all the side effects of Creon. Call 800-633-9110 or visit creoninfo.com to learn more. That's C-O-Ninfo.com I'm asking my doctor about.
- [03:04]
Person with stomach issues (possibly a patient or spokesperson for Creon)
EPI and if Creon could help.
- [03:12]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Hello, I'm Professor Susannah Lipscomb and welcome to Not Just the Tudors From History Hit the podcast in which we explore everything from Anne Boleyn to the Aztecs, from Holbein to the Huguenots, from Shakespeare to samurais, relieved by regular doses of murder, espionage and witchcraft. Not, in other words, just the Tudors, but most definitely also the Tudors. It began in the autumn of 1536, a season of unrest, when the quiet fields of northern England stirred with the sound of thousands of marching feet beneath banners stitched with the five wounds of Christ. They came from towns and villages, from abbeys and farms, carrying not the flags of rebellion but of faith. They called themselves pilgrims, not traitors, and their cause, they believed, was sacred. The Pilgrimage of Grace was unlike anything England had seen before, tens of thousands united in defiance and devotion, proclaiming loyalty to their king even as they rose against his ministers. They marched to restore what had been lost, their monasteries, their faith, and the familiar order of a world that Henry VIII's reformation was tearing apart. But loyalty and treason in Tudor England were perilously close companions. What began as a pilgrimage for God and the commonwealth ended in betrayal, vengeance and bloodshed. Today we'll trace that extraordinary story, from the first sparks of protest in Lincolnshire to the mass uprising led by Robert Aske and Finally, to the grim reprisals that followed. We'll explore what drove ordinary people to take up this cause and how it became the largest popular rising of Henry VIII's reign. This episode was suggested by two listeners, Louise Whitaker and Penny Bernard. Thank you both for sending in such a powerful topic. And joining me to unravel it is Professor Andy Wood, historian of popular politics and social unrest in early modern England. He's published many books on this topic, including Riot, Rebellion and Popular Politics in Early Modern England, and a book about the 1549 rebellions and the making of early modern England. I'm Susannah Lipscomb and this is not just the Tudors from history hit. Andy, welcome to the show. Great to be here, Susie, great to see you again. Great to have a chat about this. So let's set the scene. Let's understand the Pilgrimage of Grace by thinking about the years preceding it or the months preceding it. And particularly, I suppose, why did the Dissolution of the Lesser Monasteries, which starts in the spring of 1536, hit the north of England harder than it did the south? What impact was this having?
- [06:09]
Professor Andy Wood
Well, the monasteries have got very extensive landholdings in northern England, especially in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire. There are very large Cistercian monasteries, which, in many of the Yorkshire Dales, sort of control the local economy. So there's a sort of working kind of deal, really, between the tenants, the ordinary people of the valleys, and the monastic houses, whereby they guarantee their religious loyalties to the monastic houses in return for low rents and wide common rights. So all of those are threatened by dissolution as tenants realise that they're going to lose these very generous tendencies that they have. That's one reason. The other reason is probably that the religious culture of the north is more conservative than in the south. In the south, there's more of an established tradition of what you might call sort of proto Protestant heresy group known as the Lollards, who were quite prominent in East Anglia in the southeast of England. And in the main provincial towns, the Lollards aren't as strong in the north of England. So the result is that when the Reformation comes along in the 1530s in the south of England, it's got sort of fertile soil that's already in existence from which the Reformation can spring. Whereas in the north, the religious culture is much more conforming to the established teachings of the Church.
- [07:39]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
So there's this culture of conservatism and this deep kind of interlocked relationship between tenants and lords, and the lords in this case are largely the Church. Some of the narrative we have about the dissolution of the monasteries is that it's traumatic for ordinary people. What did ordinary people lose when the monastery is closed? Why did they care?
- [08:03]
Professor Andy Wood
Well, partly, as I've suggested, they lose these very generous tendencies which they have because the land is sold off to, often quite sort of acquisitive, I suppose we call them businessmen, really, who are looking for ways in which to squeeze for tenants for money and to enclose the commons. Which is obviously a major issue in 16th century England is this concern with the loss of the commons.
- [08:29]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
So in some ways there's been a kind of trusting relationship between the monks and the. Their tenants and there's been a sort of established. I don't. Price point and, you know, a set of terms and conditions and all of that certainty is taken away.
- [08:45]
Professor Andy Wood
That's right, yeah. And the other thing, of course, is that with the dissolution and with the changes to parish churches as well, the pilgrimage is partly about the defence of parish churches as well as the monastic houses. It's an attack on people's sense of spirituality, their sense of community, what ordinary people call their commonwealth.
- [09:11]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
And you mentioned there enclosure, which we've talked about before, it's so important to understand what this meant for people at the time. It's probably worth glossing a bit because of course we've got enclosure. That happens in the 18th century, which is a rather different thing. So what does it mean at this time? In the 1530s, in most English villages.
- [09:32]
Professor Andy Wood
Ordinary people, tenants, poor people, landless people as well, have access to common land on which they can collect fuel, they can look for nuts and berries and fruit, they can pasture their cows. It's a crucial source of ordinary people's livelihoods and an important contribution to the household economies of the poor. So with enclosure, which is literally the act of building a fence or digging a ditch or establishing a hedge, which closes off the commons from popular access and effectively privatizes the land as an asset. With enclosure, poorer people are losing a large part of their livelihoods. Sometimes land is enclosed in order to cultivate crops, sometimes by richer farmers, sometimes by the local gentry. Elsewhere, the land is enclosed in order to maintain a sheep economy. So famously Thomas Moore, who's a critic of enclosure in Utopia, he writes that sheep are eating up men as the sheep economy is expanding across England and becoming a key contributor to the English economy because of the textile trade. But the victims of that major economic change in the landscape are the poor.
- [10:57]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
So this sense exists that how things have been, how they've always been, the rights that they have, the conditions in which they live are all being kind of uprooted. Everything is being changed. A key figure in the Lincolnshire Rising is a man who becomes known as Captain Cobbler. How typical was he of northern feelings?
- [11:28]
Professor Andy Wood
Well, his actual name's Nicholas Melton and like the nom de guerre implies, he's a cobbler. Cobblers, like weavers, are often associated with. With bolshiness, basically. They tend to be independent men who aren't sort of bound to the land in the same way. So all rebellions have some kind of leader, some leader figure, and they are very often known as captains. So Robert Aske in the north of England is known as Captain Aske. What happens is that in Louth in Lincolnshire, a rumour goes around the town that the parish church is about to be put down, which people are very upset about. So Captain Cobbler, together with a bunch of other guys, raises up a rebellion and they march on Lincoln. So he's the kind of leader figure of a Lincolnshire rebellion. And interestingly, poor old Captain Cobler ends up being hand drawn and quartered at the end of the Lincolnshire rebellion. But the following year, in 1537, his brother is involved in a strike amongst cobblers in Wispich and Cambridgeshire, which the Privy Council gets very upset about because they realize that he's Captain Cobbler's brother and think that what is actually a trade dispute about the price of goods that the cobblers are selling is actually cover for some. Some wider political conspiracy. So the Melton family have what you might call form.
- [13:02]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Yes. And the rebellion spreads rapidly, doesn't it, to neighbouring towns, but it's drawing in all sorts of people. The real question, I suppose, is how does it manage to get local notables on side?
- [13:21]
Professor Andy Wood
Well, part of a contradiction with the Pilgrimage of Grace is that although the initial leadership of the rebellion comes from the poor, the wealthier men of towns and villages, what are called the honest men, men who run affairs in the village, they're not gentry, they tend to be wealthier farmers and minor merchants. They seize control of the rebellion and they go and capture the local gentry and force them into a leadership role, because the rebels are attempting to articulate a vision of a united, hierarchical England. In that respect, it's quite a kind of conservative ideology. So although the gentry don't actually support the rising, they're forced into a leadership role. And in forcing the gentry into that leadership role, what the rebels are trying to do is to reenact, in the form of a rebellion, a traditional society of orders, a Traditional social hierarchy.
- [14:26]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
And I think that's what we need to keep remembering. They're suggesting it's not they who are doing something that changes the order of things, it is the government that has done that. They're just looking for restoration.
- [14:40]
Professor Andy Wood
Yeah, that's right. Because early modern people, Tudor people, prize continuity. In our society, we're used to constant change, constant technological change, social change, so, you know, new computers, new operating systems, electronic cars. We're used to the idea that change happens and that it has an impact on social systems. In early modern England, change is happening. There's no such thing as a static society, but it's happening in a much less intense way than in our society. And people prize continuity in a way that it's difficult entirely for us today to accept. Particularly important is the idea of custom, which is the system of local laws by which, for example, ordinary people legitimate their right to common land. And custom is something that defines the laws of the village. Who can pasture animals, where. Who can glean for food what rent should be paid, at what level, how households should be ordered. Custom is something that's passed down the generations, so older people on their deathbed, will often rehearse the customs of the village for their younger descendants and neighbors. And so it's this very sort of charged force is what in legal theory is called lex loci, local law, because custom varies from one village and town to another. And it's that world of custom passed down by oral tradition, what contemporaries call time whereof the memory of man is not to the contrary. It's that world of custom and tradition and long usage that the pilgrims are attempting to defend.
- [16:28]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Now, the pilgrims, of course, are also drawn from Yorkshire because the rebellion has leapt further north. I suppose there's been discontent simmering for months. And the leader here is someone you've already mentioned. It finds its leader in Robert Aske. Tell me about him and how much more dangerous for the regime a man is Captain Ask than Captain Cobbler.
- [16:54]
Professor Andy Wood
Well, Ask is a minor gentleman. He's what people in the 17th century were called the middle sort, the middling people. So he's what we might today call middle class, I suppose he's a wealthy landowner, but he's also a lawyer, so he's got a degree of legal training. And he's captured by the rebels, who then forced him to swear an oath to be loyal to the Commonwealth. They then force him into a leadership role which he accepts quite readily, and he becomes the sort of articulate head of the Yorkshire protest.
- [17:33]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
And under him, the Rebels, Rebrand, I suppose, as it were. So it's very much not treason, it's very much not even just a return, but it's a pilgrimage. How does he shape that? How does that legitimize the cause?
- [17:54]
Professor Andy Wood
Well, it's central to what the rebels are standing for. You mentioned the five wounds of Christ. The rebels march under banners depicting the wounds of Christ that were inflicted on Christ on the cross. So wounds in the hands, in the feet, and the fatal wounds given to him by a Roman soldier in his heart. So the five wounds of Christ are depicted as hands, feet and a heart. And it's a very commonly used theme. I came across reference in Gloucester, for example, to an ale house, which is called the Five Wounds of Christ. And in Bath, in the monastic house at Bath, five wounds of Christ are carved into the doorway. So it's an image that would have been familiar to ordinary people, whether they're literate or illiterate. And the five winds of Christ depict the suffering of Christ and thereby the suffering of the commons, because there's an association between Christianity and the ideas of commonweal, of commonwealth. In the Northern Borders, for example, by October 1536, modern day Cumberland and Westmoreland, the rebels there are led by a. A chaplain of Christ, and the Chaplain of Christ, along with a man known as Captain Poverty. And poverty is associated with piety. They administer sermons to the rebels and actually one of the people around Captain Poverty assumes the figure of Christ. So religion and politics are very mixed up in the pilgrimage. We shouldn't conceive of religion as something that's separate from politics any more than it's separate from everyday life. And it's a powerful legitimating force in the pilgrimage.
- [19:53]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
We've got ordinary people, artisans, but also laborers and women, other women playing a part in this movement as well.
- [20:02]
Professor Andy Wood
The role of women in Tudor rebellions is very vague. Women are more associated with riots over enclosure and food prices. There is an interesting instance actually, from February 1537, in the aftermath of the Northern Rising on the Borders, where a number of men, I think 12 men are executed, were hanged in the village in one of the Cumberland villages, and the bodies are left up there to rotate, and the women of the village come and take down the bodies and bury them. And somehow Henry VIII receives word of this and he writes to the Duke of Norfolk, who's the aristocrat who's responsible for the restoration of hoard to the Northern Borders, and he writes to him, and he says, such a thing could not have come out of the head of women alone, he says. So he orders Norfolk to search out men who are responsible for what Henry VIII takes as a rebellious act. So women are caught up in the protest. But the rebels very rapidly form an army which then marches south. And that army's exclusively made up of men because of the institution of militia service. So young men would be used to rallying on a village by village basis under their parish flags in military training that would take place every year. It's a bit like the territorial army, I suppose. It's a kind of citizens militia. In other words, the rebels would have been used to taking part in military activities, and this would have been part of their sort of sense of masculinity that's tied up with that.
- [21:53]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
And as that suggests forming a militia, they demonstrate an unusual degree of discipline. Give me some examples.
- [22:04]
Professor Andy Wood
Well, the rebels find it difficult to criticize the king directly. One instance from Lancashire, the rebels are marching down, marching down the road in Lancashire on their way to seize control of Lancaster. And one of the rebels starts to criticize the king. And the other rebels say, no, you can't criticize the king. He's, you know, he's our liege lord. So the rebels find it possible to criticize Thomas Cromwell, for example, and the people around Cromwell. But this sense of a society of orders is something that underpins a popular royalism and a sense of legalism, a sense of order. And again, this is characteristic of early modern popular protest, that there's a degree of order, of organization that underlies what seems like disorder. So the rebels are very disciplined force. They don't loot places, they don't physically attack people. They capture the gentry and force them into a leadership role. But on the whole, they're surprisingly orderly and respectful of established authority.
- [23:18]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
So we have this army, and it's quite big quite quickly, isn't it? How great a threat do you think the Pilgrimage of Grace represents to Henry?
- [23:32]
Professor Andy Wood
Oh, it's massive. Yeah. The rebel army as it forms by October 1536, by mid October, numbers about 40,000 men, and they're led by the northern gentry, and they march south to Doncaster, where they confront a royal force, a much smaller royal force led by the Duke of Norfolk. Norfolk is instructed by Henry not to negotiate with the rebels, but. But to confront them and to attack them and to drive them off. But Norfolk, who's fought with these men against the Scots in the past, he's fought with the northern rebels as part of a royal army fighting the Scots and the French. He writes to Henry and Says all the flower of the north was there, referring to the military force that the northern rebels have accumulated. He knows that if they come to clash with the rebels, that they're going to lose, because for one thing, his force isn't big enough, and for another, he's not entirely sure about his loyalty to the royal cause. He does actually negotiate and he talks the rebels into a truce. And Henry's furious about this because it goes explicitly against his instructions as to what Norfolk should be doing. But Norfolk doesn't feel that he's in a position where he can do anything else. So it's probably the second largest Tudor rebellion, second to the 1549 rebellions, and it represents a major military threat to the Tudor order.
- [25:12]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
And Henry VIII is basically being a bit delusional here about what Norfolk can do in the circumstances, isn't he?
- [25:20]
Professor Andy Wood
Yeah, that's right. He's kind of detached from reality. He can see that the rebels represent this major threat to his regime, but he's not on the ground at Doncaster. He can't, you know, he can't see these 40,000 angry Northern men across the rivers, presumably waving their swords and shields and stuff in the air. You know, he's back in London and safe in his. In his royal court. It's Norfolk that's got to deal with the situation.
- [25:56]
Raj
Hey, it's Raj and Noah. And we're back with a new season of Am I Doing It Wrong? The show that explores the all too human anxieties we have about trying to get our lives right.
- [26:05]
Noah
Because we're still doing a lot of stuff wrong.
- [26:07]
Raj
But who isn't? That's why each week we're talking about the topics that we could all use a little helping hit with. Whether it's making new friends as an adult, managing our emotions, or even dreaming.
- [26:16]
Noah
We'Ll be talking to experts in their fields who are definitely doing things right. So the rest of us can be a bit wiser and a lot better equipped to handle whatever life throws at us.
- [26:25]
Raj
Subscribe now and listen to new episodes of Am I Doing It Wrong? Dropping every Thursday starting January 1st, wherever you get your podcasts.
- [26:32]
Noah
And for the first time ever, we're going to have full video episodes on YouTube, because as long as there are things to get wrong, we're going to be right here to help you do them better.
- [26:41]
Creon Medication Narrator
Love you.
- [26:42]
Raj
Lunch was great, but this traffic is awful.
- [26:45]
Person with stomach issues (possibly a patient or spokesperson for Creon)
Can we stop at a bathroom?
- [26:47]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Are you all right?
- [26:48]
Person with stomach issues (possibly a patient or spokesperson for Creon)
I keep having stomach issues after eating, like diarrhea, gas and bloating, abdominal pain, and sometimes oily stools. Sound familiar? Those stomach issues may actually be a pancreas issue called exocrine pancreatic insufficiency, or epi. Creon pancrelipase may help manage epi. Creon is a prescription medicine used to treat people who can't digest food normally because their pancreas doesn't make enough enzymes.
- [27:11]
Creon Medication Narrator
Creon may increase your chance of fibrosing colonopathy, a rare bowel disorder. Tell your doctor if you have a history of intestinal blockage or scarring or thickening of your bowel wall, if you are allergic to pork or if you have gout, kidney problems or worsening of painful swollen jo. Call your doctor if you have any unusual or severe gastrointestinal symptoms or allergic reactions. Take Creon as directed by your doctor and always with food. Do not chew capsules, as this may cause mouth irritation. Other side effects may include blood sugar changes, gas, dizziness, sore throat and cough. These are not all the side effects of Creon. Call 800-633-9110 or visit creoninfo.com to learn more. That's creoninfo.com I'm asking my doctor about.
- [27:40]
Person with stomach issues (possibly a patient or spokesperson for Creon)
Epi and if Creon could help. Fall is all about cozy comforts, but when you're prioritizing your health, it's easy to feel like you're missing out with Herobread. You can enjoy all your Fall favorites because they're made with herobread sliced bread loaf, tortillas, bagels, dinner rolls and more. Try their all new Hero Noodles with 12 grams of protein and just 80 calories, you won't believe HeroBred's options have 0 to 5 grams net carbs and are high fiber from the taste and texture. They've even got small batch drops of indulgent favorites like the popular Hero croissant. And right now, Herobred is offering 10% off your order. Go to Hero.co and use code fall25 at checkout. That's fall 25 ERO CO. All figures are per serving of Herobread contains 2 to 18 grams of fat per serving. See the nutrition panels on Hero Co for more information.
- [28:27]
Professor Andy Wood
Olivia loves a challenge. It's why she lifts heavy weights and likes complicated recipes. But for booking her trip to Paris, Olivia chose the easy way. With Expedia, she bundled her flight with a hotel to save more. Of course, she still climbed all 674 steps to the top of the Eiffel Tower. You were made to take the easy route. We were made to easily package your trip. Expedia made to travel flight inclusive packages are atoll protected.
- [29:08]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
The rebels quickly manage to seize control of major strongholds. They take Pontefract Castle, the garrison surrenders without a fight, and they draw up a series of demands which we know collectively as the Articles of the Pilgrimage of Grace. Can we talk through these demands, what they were and whether it's possible to prioritise some over others, or whether we have a sense that some were more important to them than others?
- [29:35]
Professor Andy Wood
Well, the articles are probably drawn up with the assistance of the local clergy. They say that they want the Royal Council to be purged of what they call villain blood, by which they mean early modern people called gentry new come up, men who've made it up into the ranks of a gentry, but have come from a commoner's background. I'm referring specifically to Cromwell, who's from a sort of middling sort background. They don't like the fact that these new middling sort of men, people like Cromwell and Cranmer and Rich, are in positions of power because, again, it's this sense of a kind of conservative social order that they want to reestablish. So they're hostile to the gentry new come up.
- [30:23]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
It's just so noteworthy. We're so familiar with the conservatism of early modern people, but it does seem extraordinary when you think about it. You've got this rebellion by the Commons and one of the things they're complaining about is people like us are in charge. I mean, it seems topsy turvy, doesn't it? You'd expect the opposite.
- [30:45]
Professor Andy Wood
Yeah, that's right. Yeah, yeah. And that's what I mean when I say that the north is more conservative. After the truce has been negotiated, the rebels are free to come and go between the north and the south of England. And one of the northerners rides down south to Colchester in Essex, where he's confronted by the people of Colchester. And Colchester is a very Protestant town. It's a very center of radical religion. And they call him a rebel. They say you're a rebel. He says, I'm not a rebel. If you call me a rebel, I will call you a heretic. So there are these big regional differences between the north and the south. In the south of England, there's a lot of trouble. In the south. In 1536 and 1537, attempted risings against the gentry in Walsingham in north Norfolk, for example, in May 1537, which leads to the execution of 13 men who were hand drawn and quartered in the major towns of Norfolk and Bits of their bodies are then distributed around the county to be stuck on spikes as a warning to others. There's a lot of trouble in the south of England, but a lot of it's sort of mixed up with social conflict. There are still a lot of people in the south of England who are quite opposed to the dissolution, because, again, even in the south of England, where the monastic estates aren't as extensive, the monasteries are important of local economy. So Walsingham, for example, has two major monastic houses, one dedicated to our lady of Walsingham, who's a very significant saint, who's one of medieval England's great saints. And those are dissolved and with them go a market for local produce, a tolerant landlord, a source of employment. So in the south of England as well. I don't want to suggest that trouble is only located in the north, it's just that in the south, the state is able to keep a lid on what's going on in the case of Walsingham, very violently, through the execution of these 13 men.
- [32:59]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
So we have this demand for people who are revealing blood to be taken out of the government. What else are the pilgrims after?
- [33:09]
Professor Andy Wood
They want rents and fines to be fixed at a low level, what are called gressams and greshams. This is about landlordship, because greshams, the system of fines and rents which ordinary people pay to landlords, landlords are increasing the rents and fines which they want the commoners to pay to them, partly because of inflation within the Tudor economy. But this is really hitting the living standards of a poor and middling sort of people in the period. And so there are economic complaints. They want enclosures to be removed, they want rents to be fixed at a low level so that they can't be manipulated by the local landlords. They want the monastic houses to be restored. Importantly, rumor is really significant to the rebellion. There's a rumor that goes around the whole of England, actually, but along with the dissolution of the monastic houses, that Henry intends to suppress every other parish church. Now, he doesn't actually intend this, but it's quite a significant rumor, because the suppression of the parish church entails, once again, an attack on the idea of commonwealth, on the idea that societies consists of mutually supportive social blocks. So you have the church, you have the commons, you have a gentry, you have a crown, and they all have their different roles. And it's perceived that the crown is overstepping the mark, that it's trespassing on the roles assigned to these other orders within local society.
- [34:55]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Now we've established that Henry's grip on reality here isn't very good. The army completely outnumbers his own. Many of the local nobility sympathise with the cause at least, and the Duke of Norfolk advises compromise. That is not Henry's response. What do you make of his response to the demands put forward by the Pilgrims?
- [35:21]
Professor Andy Wood
Well, he just rejects them out of hand. We know quite a lot about the way in which the state responds to 1536 because of Cromwell's correspondence, which is preserved in the National Archives and the State Papers collection. And Cromwell was an obsessive record keeper. He had links all over England. He had a sort of network of informers who would write into him, telling him the kind of state of affairs in their locality. So Cromwell has his finger on the pulse. But Henry's very authoritarian man, to put it mildly, and the idea of negotiating with the rebels is absolute anathema to him. So in Lincolnshire, for example, at the beginning of the pilgrimage, again, the rebels are led by the Lincolnshire gentry, but Henry refuses to negotiate with them. And so the rebellion kind of collapses. It kind of fizzles out. And Captain cobbler Nicholas Melton is captured and his interrogation survives in the state papers. And one of the things he says is, what whoresons were we to have trusted the gentry? Because Melton believes, well, accurately, the Lincolnshire gentry have betrayed the rebel cause. So Henry's attitude to the rebels is one of no negotiation, confrontation, hence his anger at Norfolk getting involved in these negotiations with the rebels.
- [36:59]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
So why then does Henry invite Ask down to London to discuss his grievances at the end of the year, early in 1537?
- [37:10]
Professor Andy Wood
Yeah, it's a really good question, isn't it? We'll never really know. What's clear is that Henry charms him. Henry's a very charismatic man and he charms Ask and persuades Ask that he'll go along with what the rebels are demanding, that they'll be able to negotiate a settlement between the two of them, which, of course is a pack of lies. And Ask ends up hanging from Clifford's Tower in York.
- [37:39]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
I sort of wonder whether Henry believed it at the time he was saying it. You know, he was extraordinarily good at deceiving himself as well as anybody else, but who knows?
- [37:51]
Professor Andy Wood
Yeah, that's right. We'll never know. But it's an interesting encounter, isn't it?
- [37:56]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Really fascinating. One extraordinary thing to do, particularly tyrannical if you think that he has already decided this is what he's going to do, to see the whites of the eyes of the man. He's planning to destroy, if he's already planning to destroy him, is quite something. The thing that kicks it off, though, of course, is big odds rebellion. So what is that and how is it different to the earlier uprisings?
- [38:20]
Professor Andy Wood
Yeah, that's right, yeah. There's been a separate rising after the negotiations are over in the Northern Borders, which is very bloodily suppressed. And actually, in the Northern Borders, In January and February 1537, push comes to shove and there's a military confrontation between the gentry and the northern rebels. And there's a major battle fought outside Carlisle. And this time the rebels circulate a set of bills which are sent around the villages in the Northern Borders, saying, trust no gentlemen. So they've learned the lesson this time that they can't trust the gentry. But bigot again, it's a sort of offshoot of a pilgrimage. It's an attempt to re establish the old order, to confront the Tudor state over its overweening ambitions and this sense that the old order is threatened by the central state. On the subject of written bills, by the way, these are really interesting because I've said that rumor is very important to circulating rebel politics. So early modern people, elites, talk about popular politics as what we call a murmuring or a hubbub, and critics of social order or critics of a royal regime are known as murmurers. So murmuring rumor is really important. But so are these written bills, which help to kind of consolidate the rebel demands that are being made. And Cromwell's representatives pick up some of these bills and send them to Cromwell, and so they survive in the state papers and historians were able to use them to reconstruct something of the political culture of rebellion in 1536 and 1537.
- [40:24]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Yes, that is very interesting. And if we think about these early risings of 1537, how useful are they to Henry?
- [40:37]
Professor Andy Wood
Well, they're very useful because he's able then to crack down on the rebels in a big way. Hence that execution that I was talking about earlier, when the bodies of the rebels are hanging in their village in Cumberland. This time, the gentry are involved on the side of the Crown in running down the rebels and crushing the rebellion. But there's a lot of violence in the Northern Borders in January and February 1537, really the last attempt to prevent the Reformation from going forward until 1549 in the West Country. And it's very useful to Henry because he's now able to deploy military force on a large scale against the rebels, again with the leadership of the Duke of Norfolk, who's responsible for crushing the rebels in the North. AI is transforming customer service.
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Raj
But who isn't? That's why each week we're talking about the topics that we could all use a little helping hit with. Whether it's making new friends as an adult, managing our emotions, or even dreaming.
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- [42:54]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
All. We know that they're interested, as rebels in getting rid of Cromwell. And Cromwell is, of course, the man they hold responsible for many of the changes that are taking place. And they're not attacking the king. And yet they do attack the concept of the royal supremacy that Henry is attached to as it pertains to the care of souls, what's motivating them? And do you think that was particularly painful for Henry?
- [43:35]
Professor Andy Wood
Yeah. Again, I hate to keep repeating myself.
- [43:39]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
But I'm sorry, I'm asking you questions that make you repeat yourself.
- [43:44]
Professor Andy Wood
But we're back to this idea that society is made up of mutually constitutive orders with their own place, their own role, that the king should deal with foreign policy and state affairs. The commons should maintain the economy, produce food for everyone. The gentry should govern local society. The church should have care for People's souls. But what the Royal Supremacy is doing is interfering with that balance of power in not just for polity as a whole, but in local society. So the Crown is interfering with the Church and people don't like that because it's an interference with the way in which they understand English society to be governed.
- [44:35]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
The word that comes to mind is the old version of the Lord's Prayer, trespass. That actually there's a sense that what's happening here is this being trespassing on the rights of the Church, on the rights of the Commons. The big boots of the state are marching and stomping all over other people's lands, their territory, their spaces.
- [45:01]
Professor Andy Wood
Yeah, that's right, yeah, yeah, that's a good way of putting it. So this idea of trespass is really important, I think, and one of the.
- [45:08]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Sort of questions that historians asked, a sort of old fashioned, perhaps, question that historians asked about the Pilgrimage of Grace, was this distinction between whether it was a religious protest or a social rebellion or a political challenge to the King. Why is that not the right question?
- [45:26]
Professor Andy Wood
It's not the right question because it's all of those all at once. And this idea that you can separate religion, politics, society, these are modern categories, these are 19th century categories that we've inherited from modernity. They're not early modern, they're not Tudor concepts for Tudor people. They conceive of religion, politics, society, economy as all mixed up together. An attack on one is an attack on a broader system of values and social norms which make society livable for people within a scarcity economy.
- [46:04]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
So there you go. There's the answer to all those painful essay questions about what the Pilgrimage of Grace really was as a rebellion, if that's what we now call it. Although I'm aware that even in calling it that we're speaking the language of the victorious. The Pilgrimage of Grace failed. What was the legacy, though, of it? What consequences did it have?
- [46:28]
Professor Andy Wood
Well, it's the last throw of the dice for the Northern Commons, really, especially after the second wave of rebellions in January, February 1537. It represents a breaking of a tradition of popular protest, of large scale popular protest that goes back to the late medieval period in the North. It's significant, for instance, that when another wave of rebellions breaks out in 1549, aside from an isolated outbreak of rebellion in Malton and Seymour in North Yorkshire, the rebellions of 1549 are located in the south, in East Anglia, in the Home Counties, along the Thames Valley and in the West Country. The north is quiet And I think that that has a lot to do with the experience of repression that the Northerners have gone through in the aftermath of the pilgrimage, is very bloodily suppressed and is scorched into local memory.
- [47:35]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
And what precautions did later monarchs take to avoid another pilgrimage of grace?
- [47:43]
Professor Andy Wood
Well, it's a good question, isn't it? I suppose a fundamental thing, if we move forwards in time to Elizabeth's reign, is moderate Protestantism. By Elizabeth's reign, from 1558 onwards, we've got a generation who've been brought up with Protestantism as a generational divide between men and women who might be in the middle age or elderly years, who are used to the old Church and young people who are used to the new system of religious practice. And Elizabeth is very successful in linking religious loyalty to the Church of England to secular loyalty to the Crown. There's a great book written by Eamon Duffy called the Voices of Morbath, which is about a West country village called Morbath, which is caught up in the 1549 risings. And it's taken from the writings of its vicar, Sir Christopher Trickey, who manages to negotiate all the twists and turns of Tudor religious and political policy while in his heart remaining a Catholic into the 1570s. Effectively, what Trickey does is he and his parishioners, Duffy argues, is they plant secular allegiance above religious allegiance. So there's a lot of people in Elizabethan England who in their hearts are still Catholics, but in their heads are loyal subjects of the Tudor regime. And a lot of that has to do with print propaganda. One of the most powerful texts up until the 19th century is what's known as the Acts and Monuments, Fox's Book of Martyrs, which depicts, along with sort of cartoon illustrations, the sufferings of loyal Protestants under the Catholic Church and in particular under Queen Mary. And this becomes a foundational text that links people's sense of Englishness to their sense of Protestantism. And the Acts and Monuments are placed in every parish church in England. There's a conscious attempt by the Crown to use the printing press as a means of persuading in particular properties, groups in local society. That social fraction that I mentioned earlier, the so called honest men, or as they start to call themselves, the better sort, or the middle sort of people who run local society. They're the targets of this propaganda. And what the state is trying to do is to win over their allegiance, because it's recognized that real authority doesn't lie only in the hands of gentry on a county level, but on a micro level on the level of the individual town or village, it lies in the hands of this so called middling sort of people, exactly the sort of people that Robert Aske came from or that the Norfolk Rebel In 1549, Robert Kett, came from. And their loyalties, historians have argued, are won over in the course of the later 16th century. And they are a crucial legitimating force for the maintenance of civil authority in later 16th and 17th century England.
- [51:07]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Well, you've spoken, Andy, beautifully about this, so just one last question, and you may already have answered this along the way, but are there myths or misconceptions about the Pilgrimage of Grace that you'd like to take this opportunity to correct?
- [51:24]
Professor Andy Wood
I suppose I've emphasized conservatism a lot, and that's a bit of a misnomer because of course, the word conservatism doesn't exist in English in the 16th century. It's not how the rebels would have thought of themselves. They think of themselves as restoring a proper order. I suppose, although we've got a popular political culture that is vested in custom and tradition, long usage and memory, it's possible for people to use, use those ideas to articulate a radical critique of the ways in which our rulers are behaving. So although I would still argue that there is a conservative quality to popular political culture, especially in the north of England in the 1530s, that doesn't preclude the possibility that ordinary people can assert an agency within the world that they inhabit. And that's what all of these rebellions, 1536, 1549, 1569, the attempted rebellions of the 1580s and 1590s, that's what all of these are about. They're about poorer people asserting themselves within an economy, which is a scarcity economy, where they're living very fragile lives, which can, in the course of enclosure or high food prices, can easily be destabilized. And so the way that they're responding to that in organizing these insurrections is to try to do something about the situation. And in 1536, they turn to the gentry. In 1537, the northern rebels realize their mistake. Hence that rebel bill that is said to have to Cromwell, trust no gentlemen, rise in your harness. Harness being armor. So the rebels learn a lesson about the gentry. And it's a lesson that's imprinted in the hearts of rebels in 1549 when the Gentry are beaten and murdered, humiliated by the rebels of that year.
- [53:41]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Well, thank you so much for taking us through this extraordinary moment in British history. It's been a real pleasure. And listeners should keep their eyes on the bookshop tables in the coming years because Andy is writing a book that I cannot wait to read called I Predict a A History of the world and 12 Rebellions. You can tell how well formulated that's going to be from the nature of the conversation we've had today. Andy, thank you so much for your time.
- [54:11]
Professor Andy Wood
Thanks Izzy. It's been a pleasure.
- [54:15]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
Thank you for listening to this episode of Not Just the Tudors From History Hit. Thanks also to my researcher Max Wintle and my producer Rob Weinberg. We are always eager to hear from you, including receiving your brilliant ideas for subjects we can cover. Cover. So do drop us a line at not just the tutorstory hit.com and I look forward to joining you again for another episode. Next time on Not Just the Tutors From History Hit.
- [54:51]
Raj
Hey, it's Raj and Noah and we're back with a new season of Am I Doing It Wrong? The show that explores the all too human anxieties we have about trying to get our lives right.
- [54:59]
Noah
Because we're still doing a lot of stuff wrong.
- [55:02]
Raj
But who isn't? That's why each week we're talking about the topics that we could all use a little helping hit with. Whether it's making new friends as an adult, managing our emotions, or even dreaming.
- [55:10]
Noah
We'Ll be talking to experts in their fields who are definitely doing things right so the rest of us can be a bit wiser and a lot better equipped to handle whatever life throws at us.
- [55:19]
Raj
Subscribe now and listen to new episodes of Am I Doing It Wrong? Dropping every Thursday starting January 1st, wherever you get your podcasts.
- [55:27]
Noah
And for the first time ever, we're going to have full video episodes on YouTube. Because as long as there are things to get wrong, we're going to be right here to help you do them better.
- [55:35]
Professor Andy Wood
Love y'.
- [55:36]
Professor Susannah Lipscomb
All.
- [55:37]
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