Norfolk met Aske and his colleagues once more. He agreed that the king had been misled by Cromwell and the witch, Boleyn; the ‘pilgrimage’ had shown him the right path after their crooked dealings; but the monarch could not be seen to grant petitions that were exerted by force. If the pilgrims dispersed peacefully, he would consider all their requests sympathetically. On the question of the suppressed monasteries, Norfolk stated that they would be restored until the meeting of the next parliament, where their fate would be decided. This was in fact a lie, but Henry had already made it clear that he could promise anything. The rebels were also offered a free pardon. This was enough. Aske rode to Pontefract and convinced the assembled commons that they had achieved their aims. He tore off the badge of the Five Wounds he was wearing and declared that he was no longer a captain of rebels. The revolt was at an end.
Yet deceit and dissembling were still the customs of the day. On Friday 15 December the king sent a message to Robert Aske by means of one of the gentlemen of the privy chamber. He wrote that he had a great desire to meet Aske, to whom he had just offered a free pardon, and to speak frankly about the cause and course of the rebellion. Aske welcomed the opportunity of exonerating himself. As soon as Aske entered the royal presence the king rose up and threw his arms around him. ‘Be you welcome, my good Aske; it is my wish that here, before my council, you ask what you desire and I will grant it.’
‘Sir, your majesty allows yourself to be governed by a tyrant named Cromwell. Everyone knows that if it had not been for him the 7,000 poor priests I have in my company would not be ruined wanderers as they are now.’
The king then gave the rebel a jacket of crimson satin and asked him to prepare a history of the previous few months. It must have seemed to Aske that the king was in implicit agreement with him on the important matters of religion. But Henry was deceiving him. He had no intention of halting or reversing the suppression of the monasteries; he had no intention of repealing any of the religious statutes in force; and he would never hold a parliament in York. Yet Aske could still prove useful. Rumours of more disturbances in the north had reached the council; the king asked Aske to confirm his newfound loyalty by helping to suppress them. Henry had indeed cause for alarm. Reports of new risings in Northumberland had been received. Bills had been set up on the doors of churches. ‘Commons, keep well your harness. Trust you no gentleman. Rise all at once. God shall be your governor and I shall be your captain.’
One of these captains now rode out. Sir Francis Bigod came from a great northern family, whose castle was 3 miles north of Whitby. But he was also a debt-ridden scholar who protested that he was ‘held in great suspect and jealousy because of his learning’. He had witnessed the events of the ‘pilgrimage’ and did not trust the promises of the king. He is perhaps best considered as an old-fashioned Lollard, and in particular he detested the monastic system; yet he feared for the northern lands and wished to protect them. He may also have had rebellion in his blood; his ancestors had formerly fought Henry I and Edward III.
Bigod addressed a crowd on the grievances of the north, and many of them called back to him: ‘Forward now or else never!’ It was determined that Hull and Scarborough should he held by the rebels until a parliament was assembled at York, but Bigod’s followers were repulsed in both places. Thomas Cromwell sent an observer to the north who wrote back to him: ‘I assure your lordship the people be very fickle, and methinks in a marvellous strange case and perplexity; for they stare and look for things, and fain would have what they cannot tell what.’
So this belated wave of rebellions failed in its purpose. The local gentry, keen to display their loyalty to the king, mustered their troops of followers. The duke of Norfolk raised an army of 4,000 men, most of whom had previously ridden with Robert Aske; they were eager now to atone for their previous faults. The rebels were hunted down, ambushed and slain. A group of them attempted an assault on Carlisle, but they were beaten back and captured. Norfolk also issued a proclamation that commanded all rebels to come to Carlisle where they must submit to the royal mercy. So the ‘poor caitiffs’, as they were called, duly made their pleas. ‘I came out for fear of my life.’ ‘I came forth for fear of loss of all my goods.’ ‘I came forth for fear of burning of my house and destroying of my wife and children.’
Yet there was no way of mitigating the wrath of the king. He ordered the duke of Norfolk to ‘cause such dreadful execution to be done upon a good number of the inhabitants of every town, village and hamlet … as they may be a fearful spectacle to all others hereafter that would practise any like matter; which we require you to do, without any pity or respect’. In a further twist of malign fate it was decreed that certain prisoners should be tried by juries made up of their own relations; the uncle might agree to a sentence of death upon a nephew and then see his head impaled upon a stake. Many of the rebels were hanged in their home villages, from the trees in their own gardens, as a memorial of their treason. Others were hanged in chains. The king had demanded the most severe retribution as a warning to future generations.
The brutality, and the subsequent terror, worked. There were no more rumours and whispers of revolt. There were no more complaints about the suppression of the monasteries. The people had fallen silent. The leaders of the revolt had already been dispatched to London and were lodged in the Tower. Lord Darcy was brought to trial in Westminster Hall for treason, and was beheaded on Tower Hill. Robert Aske, despite the king’s previous hospitality, was tried and found guilty. He was hanged at York.
If the rebels had held together more tightly, and seized the initiative, they might have reached London and the court. They had failed to do so but, in the process, they had revealed a strong current of popular protest against the religious policies of the king and Cromwell. The majority of the people wished to maintain their parish churches in good order and were opposed to any innovation. They argued, for example, that the cura animarum or ‘care of souls’ should be returned to the pope. They denounced Luther and others whom they called heretics. Yet Henry had faced them down; by duplicity and cunning he had defeated their leaders. He had broken the promises made on his behalf by the duke of Norfolk. But he might have said with some justification – what other way to deal with traitors? And he had won. Cranmer wrote that the enemies of reform ‘now look humbled to the ground and oppose us less’. Henry could move forward with impunity.
10
The confiscation
Any monks or abbots complicit in the late rebellion were seized and executed, their houses surrendered to the king. The abbots of Kirkstead and Barlings, of Fountains and Jervaulx and Whalley, were all hanged; they were followed a year later by the abbots of Glastonbury, Colchester and Reading. This was merely the prelude to a more general confiscation. The fact that the king had prevailed over the Pilgrimage of Grace meant that he and Cromwell felt emboldened to continue, and to widen, their policy of suppression. Within three years the monasteries, the friaries, the priories and the nunneries would be gone.