The gentleman who gave it to the prior had learnt it from a priest, who heard it from a brother priest about Michaelmas 1536 “in the buttery at Ayton.” The second priest had it from the clerk of a remote parish as they walked together in a country loaning. The investigators might have traced its journey from mouth to mouth all round the country without finding anyone definitely responsible for it; but they gave up the hopeless quest at this point[393].
There lived at this time at Huntington in Yorkshire one Wilfrid Holme, a man with poetical leanings and a favourer of the New Learning. After the rebellion he set to work to write an account of it, or rather he included an account of it in a poem entitled, “The Fall and Evil Success of Rebellion from Time to Time.” It is interesting as being the only contemporary history of the Pilgrimage, but Holme gives few details, and though many facts are correct he throws little new light on the subject. His last canto is headed “Of the Mouldwarp,” and concerns a prophecy of Merlin’s which the rebels applied to the King. Holme never repeats this prophecy, but it seems to have been that the Mouldwarp, “the sixth king,” should be coward and caitiff, and have a skin like a goat. Holme states (without giving a reason) that the reckoning must be made from Henry III, and accordingly Henry IV was the sixth king and Henry VIII the twelfth, as he does not reckon Richard III. Therefore the Mouldwarp could not be Henry VIII,—
Moreover Henry VIII is neither caitiff, coward, nor hairy. Holme never says what was to happen to the Mouldwarp. That Henry IV was believed to be that monster by Owen Glendower and his fellow conspirators is a tradition preserved in “The Mirror for Magistrates”:
After such a string of doubtful fables the excellent good sense of Hotspur is a pleasing change,
Yet one more must be mentioned—the Pilgrims’ own prophecy, which was commonly repeated in their host throughout the rising,
The interpretations of this must have varied at the time, and now they can only be guessed. The lines about the capon and the cock seem to predict disunion among the insurgents themselves such as brought about the failure of the Lincolnshire rising. It has been suggested[397] that in the last line, foretelling the end of the rebellion, the “May” means the badge of Henry VII, the crown of England hanging on a hawthorn tree, and so anticipates the fall of his dynasty. Reading it after the event, it has rather the sense of spring without summer and fair promises unfulfilled.
From amid the prophecies, rumours and travellers’ tales which were agitating the country during the summer of 1536 one point looms up,—that great events might be expected at Michaelmas. The government was only half aware of what was going on. But the army of the discontented, the starving labourers, the homeless monks, the sincere believers in the old religion, knew that when Michaelmas Day had come and gone they might expect news from the north. The King was at Windsor in September, and on the 27th he bade Ralph Sadler send word to the Lord Privy Seal to summon the Privy Council and attend the King at once. Sadler suggested there might be some delay as the command would not reach Cromwell until late on the following afternoon, and the day after was Michaelmas. “What then?” quoth his Grace, “Michaelmas Day is not so high a day.”[398] When so many saints’ days had given way to his pleasure, why should the King heed Michaelmas Day? Yet that Michaelmas Day came near to mastering the King.
NOTES TO CHAPTER IV
Note A. Throughout this book the “New Learning” is used in the sense of protestant or anti-papal opinions, not as another name for the classical revival.
Note B. One of his parishioners, John Bird, tried to lay information against him, but Duke had sufficient influence to stop him, and the accusation was not made until after the rebellion, for Bird mentions witnesses to whom he spoke “a month before the rising.” There is another deposition by Bird against a priest in L. and P. XII (1), 301, too much mutilated to be intelligible. Cf. XI, 1495.
Note C. Other prophecies of about the same period are printed by Furnivall, op. cit. pp. 316–20, but they are unintelligible.
Note D. The Prophecies of Rymour, Beid and Marleyng[399]:
Note E. A curious illustration of the feelings with which the north regarded the King’s family arrangements is given by the fragmentary story of Mary Baynton, a girl of eighteen, the daughter of Thomas Baynton of Birlington, i.e. Bridlington in Yorkshire. The only document relating to her adventures is undated, but probably belongs to the year 1533. She made her appearance at Boston in Lincolnshire, and represented herself as the Princess Mary fleeing from her father’s cruelty. Although she must eventually have been arrested, she seems to have been received with respect and sympathy. Her fate is unknown, and it is impossible to say whether she was a deliberate impostor or a self-deluded lunatic. There is nothing to show that she had any accomplices, but it is interesting to observe that she was connected with Bridlington and Boston, which were two centres of the rebellion. Her story was “that the French queen was her aunt and her godmother, and upon a time the said French queen, being of her pleasure in a bath, and she with her there, looked upon a book and said to her, ‘Niece Mary, I am right sorry for you, for I see here that your fortune is very hard; you must go a-begging once in your life, either in your youth or in your age.’ And therefore I take it upon me now in my youth, and I intend to go beyond the sea to mine uncle the emperor, as soon as I may get shipping.”[400]
Note F. In April 1536 there was a disturbance in Somersetshire about which little is known. On 21 April 1536 John Py informed Cromwell that he had arrested Thomas Towghtwodde of Bridgewater. The prisoner had attempted to fly the country because his apprentice “was one of those who made the business in Somerset.” The apprentice was three days with “those who made the business ... till my lord Fewaryn sent him home.”[401]
In May Cromwell noted among his remembrances “the poor men of Somerset for their pardon,”[402] and on 26 May 140 persons were pardoned for making unlawful assemblies in Somerset[403]. Others were executed for the same offence, and £50 were allowed for expenses to “Serjeant Hinde the King’s Solicitor and others that went for the executing of the rebels in the west.”[404]
It is probable that this rising was due to social discontent, and not to religious grievances, as the Act for the Suppression of the Monasteries was passed only in March and was not enforced until June, while the rising was early in April.
It is curious that, according to Wriothesley’s Chronicle, there was also a rising in Somersetshire in April 1537[405]. The only allusion to this second rising in the Letters and Papers occurs on 13 May 1537, when Sir John St Lo requested Cromwell to contradict the report that the King was displeased with John Horner for “his taking the men imprisoned at Nunney” and causing them to be executed at Taunton[406].
It is probable that there were two risings in Somerset, one in April 1536, the other in April 1537. But it is possible that there was only one rising, that in April 1536. After that rising some prisoners were executed and others pardoned, but some may have remained in prison at Nunney, either because they were condemned to perpetual imprisonment or because they were never tried. In April 1537, when there were rumours of a rebellion in Devonshire and Cornwall, the magistrates may have become alarmed and executed the unfortunate prisoners out of hand. It is evident that the execution in April 1537 was hasty and irregular. If this second hypothesis were correct, Wriothesley must have misdated the entry in his Chronicle, or, hearing of the executions in Somerset in April 1537, he may have concluded that there had been a rising. It is simpler and involves less guessing to assume that there were two risings.