VI CHAP counties under the Earl of Shrewsbury, the lieutenant-general of the northern district; and with A.D. 1536 these, and other troops under the Earl of Derby, the Earls of Huntingdon and Rutland, and the Marquis treats with of Exeter, endeavoured to strengthen the small army which the Duke of Suffolk had already marched into The King Lincolnshire to quell the first rising at Louth. But the rebels the rebel forces were so strong that it was thought expedient to treat with them by Lancaster Herald, who was sent to Aske at Pomfret Castle with a royal proclamation, requiring him and his followers to lay down their arms, and submit themselves to the King's mercy. Aske received the herald in the midst of a kind of court, the Archbishop of York standing on one hand and Lord Darcy on the other; and he at once and boldly refused to obey the proclamation, declaring that he and his people were "all of one accord with the points of our articles, clearly intending to see a reformation, or else to die in those causes. Lancaster Herald (who, poor man! was afterwards put to death at York for parleying with Aske) has left in writing a long account of this interview, and he states what the requirements of Aske and his followers were: Their determina tion "And then I demanded of him what his articles were. And he said one was that he and his company would go to London of pilgrimage to the King's highness, and there to have all vile blood of his Council put from him, and all noble blood set up again; and also the Faith of Christ and His laws to be kept, and full restitution of Christ's Church of all wrongs done unto it; and also the Commonalty to be used as they should be: and bade me trust to this, for it should be done, or he would die for it." State Papers, i. 486. VI These "articles" were then put in writing, and CHAP sent to the King by the hands of the herald, the Duke of Norfolk going up to Court with the pro- A.D. 1536 fessed object of seconding the petition, but the real one of gaining time for the King's forces to be gathered. And now it is well worthy of being remarked that Emptiness of the royal notwithstanding the great spoils of which the King exchequer had possessed himself, he was absolutely without means of paying his soldiers. At first he wished Cromwell to provide money by following up the policy of his whole reign, and bade him "taste the fat priests." But the fat priests were growing very lean, and the danger already in hand through "tasting" them was too great to allow of his savage command being carried out. Then a warrant was actually issued for the sale of the crown plate out of the jewel-house in the Tower, the very last resource to which a poverty-struck monarch could be driven; Cromwell adding at the end of the warrant, "His Majesty appeareth to fear much this matter, especially if he should want money." rebellion It was probably this want of money which made Suppres Henry agree to a general pardon of Aske and his son of companions, and to the holding of a parliament at York. Aske and Lord Darcy were then invited to court, the former by a letter from the King himself, written on December 15, 1536, and Lord Darcy by another epistle on January 6th. Aske accepted the invitation, but Lord Darcy declined to risk such a visit the former endeavouring, but quite ineffectually, to persuade the King to keep the promises which he had made. The people of the north 7 State Papers, i. 523. 7 VI CHAP Country finding themselves duped, again broke out into insurrection, but this time the forces of the A.D. 1537 King were better prepared, and the "Pilgrimage of Grace" was finally extinguished in the summer of 1537. The leaders of the former act of the Pilgrimage were now treated as if no pardon had been issued: Lord Darcy was beheaded on Tower Hill, Lord Hussey at Lincoln, and the brave Aske was hanged Execution at York Castle. A heavy vengeance, of course, fell upon all the clergy and monks who had in any way compromised themselves in the rebellion, and the trees groaned with their ghastly burdens. Twelve abbots were hung, drawn, and quartered, and the Archbishop of York himself only escaped by pleading that he had acted under a compulsion which he was powerless to resist.8 of the leaders This vigorous attempt to resist any further spoliation of the monasteries having thus been so signally defeated, the visitors were able to go on their way 8 Among these was the Abbot of Jervaulx, who was executed at Tyburn in June 1537. He has left his mark in the Beauchamp MOAM SEOBAR once more, stimulated, no doubt, afresh by the CHAP exhausted condition of the royal treasury. VI of large monas They appear to have acted under their former com- A.D. 1537 mission, and it must be remembered that no powers Visitation were added to it by the act which had legalized the suppression of the smaller monasteries. Short as the teries time had been-for it was only about eighteen months since the commissioners had begun to move—all those smaller monasteries were now institutions of the past, and nothing remained to witness to their former condition but a few broken walls and the roofless, unglazed churches on which the moss was already beginning to grow. A few more years and the broken walls had so multiplied, the moss so grown, that men began to persuade themselves picturesque decay was a better condition for churches than one of stability and beauty. But much was to be done yet before irreligion could gain this triumph. So the visitors went forth again, armed with moral and physical powers of destruction; their way being already smoothed by spies, tempters, treacherous hypocrites, and a blood-stricken panic. now, them In their previous visitation of 1535-36, the commissioners had made a show of reforming the religious houses: but in the following years they seem No preto have nearly cast off even this thin veil of reforming tence of intentions, and to have proceeded steadily onwards, reforming taking possession at once of all they could lay their hands on, and where they could not immediately gain the resignation of a monastery or nunnery (for they had no legal power to suppress), setting a train which must be certain to end in the desired explosion at a future day. The monks knew well what must come, and in the treasures CHAP general panic there were many endeavours to meet, VI and, if possible, to ward off the extreme violence of A.D. 1537 the anticipated storm. A few of the heads of the Conceal religious houses concealed their valuables in the hope ment of of better times, but the visitors seldom failed to by monks ferret out the hidden stores. Layton and Legh, for example, wrote to Cromwell respecting the Abbot of Fountains, "six days before our access to his called theft monastery he committed theft and sacrilege, confessing the same. At midnight caused his chaplain to steal the sexton's keys, and took out a jewel, a cross of gold with stones. One Warren, a goldsmith of the Cheap, was with him at that hour, and there they stole out a great emerald with a ruby; the said. Warren made the Abbot believe the ruby to be but a garnet, and so for that he paid nothing, for the emerald but twenty pounds. He sold him also their plate without weight or ounces.' It is evident the abbot was endeavouring to secure the property of the house but he was deprived, and shortly afterwards executed, for complicity in Aske's rebellion, while the visitors recommend as his successor a monk of the house, who offered to give Cromwell six hundred marks directly after his appointment, and a thousand pounds to the King within three years by way of first-fruits. conveyed Property Others, again, made over their lands and houses to laymen to laymen, in the hope of receiving them back from by monks them when the storm had blown over; but the legal 9 Supp. Monast., Camd. Soc., p. 100. From a letter of Thomas Parry to Cromwell [Ellis' Orig. Letters, III. iii. 235] it appears that "one Bestyan, a jeweller, who as I heard say is in London in some family of the Strangers there," went about among the monasteries offering to buy their precious stones. From the above it would appear that this Bestyan was not the ory shrewd diamond merchant who did this. He was probably one of the Rothschilds of his age. |
