The Pilgrimage of Grace, 1536-1537, and the Exeter Conspiracy, 1538, Volume 1 (of 2)

A more terrible fate awaited his son.

When Lord Darcy resigned his offices as steward of the lordship and constable of the castle of Sheriffhutton, in 1520, they were bestowed on his friend Sir Robert Constable. Darcy bade his servant in charge deliver the castle and all within it to his “brother,” the new constable, and to “do this favourable and lovingly.”^[206] About the same time the hand of Elizabeth, the only child of Darcy’s second marriage, was given to Sir Robert’s eldest son Marmaduke. Darcy told his steward to hasten the payment of her dowry to Sir Robert, on account of his “dangerous” disposition^[207]. He must have meant that his friend was hasty tempered, and there is abundant evidence that Sir Robert was fierce and quarrelsome.

The Earl of Surrey (afterwards Duke of Norfolk), who was sent to the north in 1523 to inspect the administration of justice, described to Wolsey how, while sitting with the justices of York, he “found the greatest dissensions here among the gentlemen, who would have fought together if they had met.” By the advice of the judges he sent for all the parties, and insisted on a promise that they would compose their disputes and keep the peace. Among the rest, Sir Robert Constable and his adherents were almost at war with young Sir Ralph Ellerker and Sir John Constable of Holderness^[208]. The latter may have been Sir Robert’s younger brother, but was more probably a cousin.

In 1533 Sir Robert Constable’s differences with his brother-in-law, Sir William Percy, developed into a Star Chamber case. The feud was a long-standing affair, in spite of the intermarriage, which may have been a fruitless effort to put an end to the ill-will. It was well known in the county of York that the families had been in great displeasure with one another, even before the death of the late Earl of Northumberland. Sir William Percy presented before the Court a list of accusations against Sir Robert, beginning with a string of petty wrongs about pasture and impounding cattle, through which he worked up to the chief quarrel. This began in a quaint manner. A traveller picked up a buckler on the King’s highway, and sold it to one of Percy’s servants, Simon Banister, called Simon Burdythe. Simon wore the buckler at Driffield Assizes, where Christopher Constable, one of Sir Robert’s nephews, claimed it as his own. Banister refused to give it up, though Sir Robert, who had given it to his nephew, offered to identify it. After this the servants of the two houses never met without quarrelling. If Italians were as touchy as Englishmen, the feud of the Montagues and the Capulets is certainly no exaggeration, as this story proves. The affair came to a definite issue in March 1534, when the Justices of Assize were sitting at York and the rival families were both in the city in full strength. After preliminary abuse and violence in a tavern, Banister, who had offered considerable provocation, and a party of his fellowservants were attacked by the Constables in the street. Banister was slain in the fray, and several were wounded on both sides, including Sir Robert Constable’s son Thomas. After some scattered street fighting, the Constables escaped through a friend’s house into the White Friars and there took sanctuary. They were presently removed to the town gaol, where all their kinsmen and allies flocked to visit them. Public sympathy was on their side, but it had been obtained, said Sir William Percy, by bribes to the mayor and citizens. The coroner was so corrupted that a murder could not be found against them, and the high sheriff was no more incorruptible, for when he appointed a jury to inquire into the case, most of the men on it were kinsmen of the Constables and the rest had seen the colour of their money. Unless the King could find a remedy, the murder and mayhems were like to go unpunished: so Sir William Percy concluded his case. The details of Sir Robert’s defence, which has for once been preserved, are too long for repetition here. His accuser himself admitted that Sir Robert took no part in the fray, and it was not proved that he had inspired it^[209]. But the principals were equally to blame for encouraging the quarrels of their kinsmen and servants, instead of putting an end to the dispute at the very beginning.

In 1535 Sir Robert Constable was more respectably engaged in befriending the widowed Lady Rokeby against their common opponent Gervase Cawood^[210]. This dispute probably brought him into displeasure with Robert Aske, as Cawood was Aske’s friend and acted as his secretary during the rebellion^[211].

Among the ghosts of the records—the names without men—Sir Robert Constable stands out as a substantial figure; he was a worthy head of a warlike house, fierce and reckless, versed in the ways of war and of courts, full of the wild, independent spirit of the north, but none the less a true son of the Church (in spite of all lapses), a strong and just ruler, above all a good enemy, and a better friend, true to his motto, “Soyes Ferme.”

Young Sir Ralph Ellerker of Risby, with whom Sir Robert Constable was at feud, was one of the captains of Hull, his father, old Sir Ralph Ellerker, being the other. It was no wonder that the Constables and the Ellerkers quarrelled, for they were the most influential families in the sea-board districts of the East Riding. Old Sir Ralph Ellerker also contended with the Archbishop of York for supremacy in Beverley. In May and June 1535 there was trouble over the appointment of the Twelve Men of Beverley, who were the aldermen of the town. The burgesses themselves had very little to do with the matter, and on this occasion the Archbishop appointed one body of twelve and old Sir Ralph Ellerker another. It is not easy to discover which side had the popular sympathy in the contest which followed, but as the people of Beverley always opposed the Archbishop on principle, they probably supported Sir Ralph’s selection. On 30 November 1535 an order was made in the Court of Star Chamber for the government of Beverley. It was a triumph for the Archbishop. Old Sir Ralph Ellerker and certain of his adherents were prohibited from ever again seeking election to places among the Twelve Men, and an injunction was sent to him never to meddle again in the matter on pain of a fine of five hundred marks^[212].

The Askes of Aughton on the Derwent were friends and allies of the Ellerkers. They had long been settled in the county, but were rather esteemed for piety and quiet respectability than noted for any brilliant qualities. The founder of the family was Richard, a cadet of the Askes of Aske^[213]. He married the heiress of Aughton, and in 1363 built and endowed the chantry at Howden which bore his name. A love of building and beautifying seems to have run in the family. Nothing remains now of the manor house at Aughton but the site surrounded by traces of a moat^[214]; in 1584 the house had stained-glass windows, in which were blazoned twenty-six shields of the arms of the Askes and their relations^[215]. From Richard Aske sprang a flourishing branch of the family tree, which begins to concern us in 1497, when Sir Robert Aske, the eldest son of Sir John Aske and Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Ralph Bigod, succeeded to Aughton on the death of his father^[216]. Sir Robert’s two elder sons, John and Christopher, were born before that date, for their grandfather bequeathed a gold spoon to John and a horse to his brother,—though neither was much more than three years old^[217]. Sir Robert’s wife was Elizabeth, daughter of John Lord Clifford^[218]. Probably they were married after 1485, when her brother, the “shepherd lord,” was restored to his lands and titles. Her children were thus the first cousins of the Earl of Cumberland. Nine of these children survived their parents—three sons and six daughters.

Early in 1507 Sir Robert Aske’s sister Dame Katherine, widow of Sir John Hastings of Fenwick, died at her brother’s house at Aughton and was buried among the Askes in Aughton Church. She was childless and bequeathed most of her worldly possessions to her own kin. To her sisters and nieces she left beads of coral and white jasper, “hooks of silver and gilt,” and other bits of finery; her best gowns of velvet, black damask and tawny chamlet were to become altar cloths in certain churches; but for each of her kinsmen she had made a shirt, and among these fortunate legatees Robert Aske is mentioned for the first time^[219]. Dame Katherine’s brother-in-law, Sir George Hastings, the father of Sir Brian Hastings, who was to be sheriff of Yorkshire in 1536, refused to give up her money to Sir Robert Aske, her executor^[220].

The children of Sir Robert Aske may be treated in some detail, less because his third son Robert was the captain of the Pilgrimage, than because they are good examples of ordinary men and women of their class. Though their share in the rising was nothing compared to their brother’s, their history shows how a great event affected private lives in the days when a change of ministry could only be forced on the government by an effective appeal to arms. Julian, the eldest daughter, married Thomas Portington of Sawcliff, Lincolnshire^[221]; when those of her Yorkshire nephews who were studying the law set out for London after their vacations, they spent the first night of their journey under her roof^[222]. Anne, the second daughter, seems to have married slightly below her station, for her husband, Thomas Monkton, was the constant companion of her brother Robert, and seems to have acted as a kind of superior servant^[223]. At a time when compromising letters might fall into an enemy’s hands, men naturally entrusted the most important parts of their communications verbally to a messenger; consequently it was necessary to have reliable servants, bound by the strongest ties to keep faith with their master; poor relations were often put to this use, with varying degrees of success. This reason for the constant use of credence applied more to noblemen such as Darcy and Cumberland than to private gentlemen, but another motive for it was the fact that many of the Yorkshire gentry could write and read very little^[224]. Private affairs, which seemed to them very difficult to express in writing, could easily be explained by an intelligent servant, and as a servant had to carry every message, he might as well communicate it by word of mouth. The result of this was the habit, so irritating to the historian, of sending the very kernel of the message by credence, with the consequence that it is now lost for ever.

Agnes Aske formed an important alliance by her marriage with William Ellerker, one of old Sir Ralph’s younger sons. The Ellerkers always contrived to maintain an appearance of loyalty, and they rose when the fortunes of the Askes declined. Margaret Aske married Sir Robert Bellingham, a Cumberland knight about whom little is known.

John Aske, Sir Robert Aske’s eldest son, succeeded his father in 1531^[225]. His wife was Eleanor, daughter of Sir Ralph Ryther, and in 1530 he had a family of five sons and three daughters^[226]. His eldest son Robert was a law student in 1536, but he was destined never to be lord of Aughton, and died before his father in 1542^[227]. John Aske suffered from ill-health, which was probably the reason why he was never knighted. Like most country gentlemen he had only two ideas—his lands and his family. He was indifferent to the Reformation, as it did not injure either of these objects, but he strongly disapproved of the rebellion which endangered both. His brother’s sympathy for the monasteries did not affect him; on the contrary he took advantage of their fall to consolidate his Yorkshire estates, and in 1541 exchanged certain manors which he owned in Sussex for the priories of Ellerton and Thicket and other church lands in Yorkshire^[228].

Christopher Aske, Sir Robert’s second son, was only a year or two younger than John^[229]. He was in the household of his cousin, the Earl of Cumberland, with whom he was in high favour. His will, dated 1538, gives a pleasant picture of the easy bachelor life of a cultured gentleman. His room in Skipton Castle was well furnished with books on genealogy, the Scriptures, and the noble art of hunting, as well as French romances; while in his room at the “new lodge,” the building of which he was superintending for the Earl, was his “cloth of the great mappa mundi” and a tapestry embroidered with the history of St Eustace. The chase, like the right to bear arms, was the special privilege and study of the gentry; his horses, his falcons, his “best beagle called Oliver” were worthy of his most honoured friends, his noble cousins the Earl and Countess. He bequeathed keepsakes to all his family, and mentions his black velvet gown, richly furred, and his gold chain and crucifix. Most of the Askes were short-lived, and Christopher died in 1539, willing a priest to pray for his soul for seven years, and also for the souls of all his “benefactors and predecessors,” especially certain of his dead friends^[230]; among these was one of the Hamertons. Sir Stephen Hamerton, his friend and fellow in the Earl’s service, had died a traitor’s death little more than a year before^[231]. Christopher Aske’s sister Dorothy had married Richard Green of Newbury, and Christopher bequeathed “to my brother Greene my falcon in his keeping, and to my sister his wife a silver spoon of the Apostles.”^[232] Green was also in Cumberland’s service, and it must be frankly admitted of his followers that if

The Earl of Cumberland was at feud with John Norton of Norton. The quarrel seems to have begun with some dispute about the manor of Rylston, which Norton held in right of his wife. At some time in 1528 a band of the Earl’s servants broke into the warren at Rylston and hunted Norton’s deer. They beat and shot arrows at two keepers who dared to oppose them, and carried off one of them to Skipton Castle, where he was imprisoned for two months. The other keeper was afraid to stay in that part of the country and fled because his life was threatened in the Earl’s name. As to the deer park, no one dared to go near it but Cumberland’s servants, who hunted there at will; the chief among them was called by John Norton “Richard Grame,” but possibly this is a misspelling of “Richard Green.” Norton took his complaint to the Court of Star Chamber because “the said Erle is a noble man and of great possessions gretly alied with the most parte of the noble men of ȝt Cuntry and your seid subiect (John Norton) a pore man and of small power and not abell to meynteyn his sute nor the tryall of the trouth in the premisses by the common law in the same cuntie for the records of his damage.”^[233] Two years later he was obliged to resort to the Star Chamber again. John Norton had farmed in the most legal manner the lordship of Kirkby Malzeard in Netherdale, where it was agreed that he should hold the manor court. But on the day of the first court (17 April 1531) Christopher Aske and Richard Green, at the head of about sixty armed servants of the Earl’s, appeared at the place where the court was held and declared that the Earl would have all rule within the lordship and that any man who attended a court which the Earl had not appointed would do so at his peril. After breaking up the court, they carried away the court rolls^[234]. Unfortunately it is impossible to discover how this case ended, but the Earl and his servants certainly did not mend their ways.

In 1535 John Proctor, whose offence against the Earl is not known, was carried off and imprisoned in Skipton Castle, while “his goods were spoyled destroyed and lost by brute beasts, and also not so contentyd but they drove away his cattle and beasts.”^[235] In this case the Earl seems to have sent inferior servants; only a really serious piece of lawlessness, such as stealing the court rolls, called for the presence of gentlemen. Thomas Blackborne, who was the chief defendant against Proctor, must have been some relation to William Blackborne, the vicar of Skipton, to whom Christopher Aske left in his will a horse rejoicing in the name of Grey Hodgeson^[236].

Christopher Aske’s friendship with Sir Stephen Hamerton involved him in a very curious affair. Sir Stephen’s mother, Dame Elizabeth Hamerton, after the death of John Hamerton her first husband, married again; her second husband, Edward Stanley brother to Lord Monteagle, had carried his father’s banner at Flodden. He was lame, perhaps from wounds received there, and seems to have expected to provide for a comfortable old age by his marriage, for Dame Elizabeth, as he said, was enfeoffed of Hellifield Peel. Unfortunately his wife did not agree with him. Hellifield had always belonged to the Hamerton family, and it is difficult to see how Dame Elizabeth could have had more than a life interest in it. In September 1536, when Stanley rode home after a visit to his brother, he found the door of the Peel barred against him. His wife, who was watching his approach, ordered stones to be thrown down from the upper windows, and one struck his servant’s horse. Having made it plain that he was not welcome, “she dared him to enter her son Sir Stephen’s house and bade him go to the Earl of Cumberland.” Not knowing what to do he obeyed her, though as he believed her son and Christopher Aske to have counselled his wife to defy him, he had little hope of help there. The Earl refused to interfere. By this time the rebellion had broken out, and Stanley, seeing that resistance was useless, entered into a bond with Hamerton and Aske by which he undertook to leave his wife in undisturbed possession of Hellifield during her life, while she allowed him a share in the rents. After Sir Stephen Hamerton’s execution Stanley petitioned Cromwell that he might have the Peel granted to him, but his petition had no effect^[237]. In 1538 Christopher Aske bequeathed his goods at Hellifield Peel, after the death of Dame Elizabeth, to Roger Hamerton, one of Sir Stephen’s nephews^[238]; Sir Stephen’s only son had died of grief after his father’s execution^[239].

In spite of his lawless exploits, Christopher Aske was a gentleman,—the English gentleman of Henry VIII’s reign. It is he, rather than the timid and colourless John, rather than Robert, who was too ardent and too honest for success, who seems to embody the very spirit of his age. He wrote a dashing account of his fortunes during the rebellion^[240], and in it he is revealed, brave, clever, well-educated, faithful to his cousin, a lover of gallant and daring adventures, and, as became a man when Cromwell ruled England, worldly, unscrupulous, a believer in blowing his own trumpet. He evidently inherited the family love of bricks and mortar. Not only did he supervise the Earl of Cumberland’s new buildings at Skipton, but he added to Aughton Church a tower in Perpendicular style, adorned with shields bearing the Aske quarterings and his own rebus^[241]. One inscription on this tower rouses a curiosity that can never be satisfied. It is in black letter and runs as follows: “Christofer le second fitz de Robart Ask ch’r oblier ne doy Ao Di 1536.”^[242] No one can tell what may be implied by the words. Perhaps they quaintly express the gratitude of the steeple itself to the man who built it, or “oblier ne doy” may be the motto of the Askes, fitly placed above the church where they lie; or are the words a memorial of that Aske who does not lie among his kinsfolk? Whatever they meant so long ago, to those who know the story of the Pilgrimage of Grace they will always speak of Robert Aske and the year in which he triumphed and failed.

Robert Aske, the youngest of the three sons^[243], was born about the beginning of the century. From his father’s will it appears that an estate at Empshot in Hampshire had been settled on him for the term of his life^[244]. This property must have been valuable, as he paid a yearly rent of £8 to his brother John, and was in good circumstances^[245]. Part of his early life was spent in the service of the Earl of Northumberland^[246], which he probably entered through the influence of the Countess of Cumberland, the Earl’s sister. He was with Northumberland in 1527, the year in which he was admitted at Gray’s Inn^[247]. He must have left the Earl some years before the rebellion, as there is no reference during it to the fact that he had been one of the Earl’s followers, while it is quite clear that he was a practising barrister. His enemies called him “a common pedlar in the law,”^[248] and though he had studied to other purposes besides making money, he speaks of his “great businesses” in London. He had the lawyer’s gift of words—the “filed tongue” that wins the heart of lord and commoner alike; even in his answers and manifestos, written in times of stress, on horseback or in prison, and couched in a language now so changed, there are many passages that stir the heart. While the conservative lords were in correspondence with the Emperor’s ambassador, the commons binding themselves by secret oaths, and the most steadfast of the religious dying on the gallows, things must have passed among the young lawyers of the Inns of Court that had much to do with the Pilgrimage of Grace; but Aske, Moigne, Stapleton, even Bowes, kept their counsel, and nothing more of their secrets will ever be known.

The home of Robert Aske was always his brother’s house at Aughton, where he was born and brought up, but he spent much of his vacation visiting his sisters and other friends in Yorkshire. In 1536 he was about five and thirty years of age and unmarried, although even younger sons generally found wives long before that time of life. Marriage in those days had very little to do with favour, otherwise Aske’s confirmed bachelorhood might be attributed to the plainness of his personal appearance. The Court chronicler, Hall, declared in an outburst of loyal indignation that “there lived not a verier wretch as well in person as in conditions and deeds,”^[249] and this hostile testimony is to some degree confirmed by the fact that Aske had only one eye. Sir Francis Brian during the insurrection protested his loyalty to the King in these words, “I know him (Aske) not, nor he me, but I am true and he a false wretch, yet we two have but two yene; a mischief put out his t’other!”^[250] Whatever his personal disadvantages, he was certainly a man of great physical strength, able to spend day after day in the saddle with little time for food or sleep. It is not necessary to describe his character in detail. In the following pages his own words and actions shall speak for themselves.

The attitude of the northern gentlemen to the Church is one of the greatest interest. It was love of the monasteries which caused them so far to forget their fear of the lower classes that they made common cause with their tenants on behalf of the monks. One result of the immense influence of the Church was that priests were continually involved in the quarrels of laymen. In the complicated case of Sir Richard Tempest and the vicar of Halifax, Tempest, a supporter of the old religion, accused his enemy the vicar of treasonable practices, and, when the rebellion broke out, forced him to fly to the King. This is a chapter of digressions, and at the cost of another we will relate the story, which at least gives a picture of the manners of the times.

Sir Richard Tempest was the King’s steward of Wakefield. His feud with a neighbour, Sir Henry Saville, led to an almost endless string of Star Chamber cases, as one or other of them was constantly oppressing the unfortunate inhabitants of that town^[251]. Robert Holdesworth, the wealthy and influential vicar of Halifax, was Sir Henry Saville’s staunch ally. He was in trouble with the government in 1535, but he obtained a free pardon, and boasted that he had “cast such a flower into the Queen’s lap,” that he would be heard as soon as Sir Richard Tempest^[252]. He had scarcely returned to Yorkshire, when the judges of assize were informed that he had found £300 in the wall of an old house which he was rebuilding at Blackley, co. Worcester, another of his benefices^[253]. Meanwhile Sir Richard Tempest was still busy against him. Sir Richard had assisted in arresting the vicar when he was sent to London, and on his triumphant return Holdesworth delivered to Tempest and his supporters injunctions to keep the peace and not to burn his house under penalty of 500 marks. In revenge for these injunctions, which they regarded as an insult, certain of his parishioners who belonged to Tempest’s party drew up a petition accusing the vicar of being a fomenter of quarrels in the parish, and also charging him with neglect of his duties, with false returns about his tenths and firstfruits, and with an attempt to sell his lands, implying that he did this with a view to flight. This petition was presented to Sir Richard Tempest, who caused about a hundred persons to sign it, and sent it to Cromwell with a letter warning him that Holdesworth and others of the spiritualty had “full hollow hearts” towards him^[254]. Tempest enclosed a further accusation, from which it appeared that the vicar had said he had lost 80 marks in mortuaries taken by the King from that one benefice, and that if the King reigned much longer he would take all from the Church. Holdesworth had also repeated a sort of proverb, “A pon Herre all Yngland mey werre” (upon Harry all England may war?)^[255].

Sir Richard Tempest’s letter was written on 28 September 1535. At the York Assizes in March 1536^[256] Holdesworth was accused of shameful and treasonable words, “for which, if true, he deserves imprisonment for life.”^[257] While the vicar was away defending himself against this charge, John Lacy, Sir Richard Tempest’s son-in-law, raided the vicarage and carried off all the cattle and spoil he could find^[258]. The vicar must have been acquitted, for in April he returned to his plundered vicarage, bringing with him over £800 of money. Part of this may have been treasure trove, but some at least was his own savings^[259]. To keep this treasure, all in gold, safe from his enemies, he determined to bury it. He put the money into “a brass pot with little short feet,” in which he also placed a little box containing a strip of parchment with the amount written on it. In the hall of the vicarage, under the stairs, was a patch of naked earth, and here the vicar dug a hole just deep enough to hide the brim of the pot when the earth was put back and stamped down. Then he heaped firewood over the place, and shortly afterwards left for London. He had some cause for anxiety as several people were in the secret, his sister and her son, who had helped him to bury the treasure, his parish priest, Alexander Emett, and his friend Sir Henry Saville^[260]. The fortunes of the brass pot during the rebellion will be afterwards related. The point to be noticed here is that to some of the gentlemen private feuds were of more importance than any question of religion. The vicar of Halifax and Sir Richard Tempest were both opposed to Cromwell’s policy, but no political sympathy could bring them to take the same side.

When the influence of the religious was exercised against the government it produced great results, as in the following case. The Stapletons of Wighill, near Tadcaster, were a family of position, followers of the Earl of Northumberland. Christopher Stapleton, the head of the family, was a chronic invalid, who passed the summer of 1535 at Beverley, for the sake of his health. He stayed in the house of the Grey Friars, and there he met Thomas Johnson, otherwise called Brother Bonaventure, one of the Observant Friars, who had been sent from York to Beverley when the houses of the Order were made conventual. The friar easily acquired influence over the sick man and his childless wife, and when they went home to Wighill he visited them there^[261]. Next summer, 1536, Christopher came to Beverley again, bringing with him Sir Brian Stapleton, his eldest son by his first wife^[262], and his brother William Stapleton. William, Christopher’s brother, was a lawyer of Gray’s Inn, and a friend of Robert Aske; he spent his vacation with his brother, and at the beginning of October, when he was about to return to London for the Michaelmas term, Beverley became the headquarters of the rebellion, and William Stapleton, at Brother Bonaventure’s suggestion, was chosen captain of the commons^[263]. It is beyond doubt that the influence of chaplains and confessors was used to encourage the gentlemen to join the Pilgrimage, though it is not so certain that the whole agitation can be attributed to them.

While the conservative priests were using persuasion the reformers often unwittingly helped them by provoking violence. Religious differences may lie at the bottom of a mysterious affair which took place at Marston. Leonard Constable, the parson of Heyton Wansdale, otherwise called Marston^[264], brought a complaint before the Court of Star Chamber in either 1525, 1531, or 1536. Unfortunately it is impossible to discover which of these dates is correct, as the case is undated. Constable stated that on 25 April Sir Oswald Wolsthrope and Sir Robert Waid, clerk, procured that he should be attacked as he was performing the service in the parish church by Sir Thomas Applegarth, clerk, and eight other armed and riotous persons. They “violently came and took the chalice from the Altar, where your said subject (Constable) was standing, and said, ‘Thou horson polshorne priest, thou shalt not say mass here, and therefore get thee out of the church, or we shall make thee repent it’.” Afterwards the rioters broke into the parsonage and “put in a certain person into the same to the intent to keep your said subject out of the same, and said he should dwell there whether he would or no.” On Sunday 30 April, Sir Oswald came to the parish church himself with sixteen armed men. “And then and there the said Wolsthrope, your said subject being at mass, and had almost celebrated the same, said with a high voice these words following, that is to say, ‘You horson priest, if I had come betime I would have nailed thy coat to thy back with my dagger.’ And after that your said subject had finished his mass, and kneeled down at the Altar, saying his orations and prayers, the said Sir Oswald Wolsthrope ... came riotously to your said subject and plucked him down by the hair backward, and gave him many opprobrious and unfitting words, and put him in fear and jeopardy of his life.” The cause of this behaviour on the part of Sir Oswald is not explained. It cannot have been a dispute over the patronage of the rectory, for Constable had been instituted in 1518, seven years before the earliest date to which the dispute can be assigned^[265]. If Constable had provoked Sir Oswald by innovations and heretical practices, it is surprising that he did not mention Sir Oswald’s disloyalty, unless perhaps his own opinions were not those imposed by the government. But although this riot cannot with certainty be attributed to religious differences, it possibly gives the other side of the picture drawn by an admiring martyrologist of a contemporary Yorkshire gentleman, Sir William Mallory, who “was so zealous and constant a Catholic, than when heresy first came into England, and Catholic service commanded to be put down on such a day, he came to the church, and stood there at the door with his sword drawn, to defend that none should come to abolish religion, saying that he would defend it with his life, and continued for some days keeping out the officers so long as he possibly could.”^[266]

A powerful bond between gentlemen, priests and commons was their intense hatred of Cromwell. He was above all else detested as a heretic, but the gentlemen also shared the contemptuous feelings of the nobles for an upstart of low birth, and the northern gentlemen had a special grievance against him, for which, doubtless, parallel cases could be found in other parts of the kingdom. One of the most onerous duties of the landowners was the administration of justice. Cromwell was anxious to strengthen the hands of the judges against local anarchy, in pursuit of his policy that England should have only one tyrant, but he was by no means scrupulous as to the quality of the justice administered in the royal courts. In March 1536 a case occurred at York Assizes which roused helpless anger throughout the county. A certain William Wicliff was charged by Mrs Carr of Newcastle-upon-Tyne with the murder of her husband, Ralph Carr. The sheriff assured Christopher Jenney, one of the judges, that the jury had been chosen by Carr’s friends, all except one man “who was thought indifferent,” yet even this jury acquitted Wicliff. The names of the jurors were sent up to Cromwell, and they were bound under a recognizance of £100 each to appear before the Court of Star Chamber on 20 May. Wicliff remained in prison, as Mrs Carr sued an appeal for murder against him^[267]. The jury were fined. This excited general indignation in the north; Aske said that “the Lord Cromwell ... for the extreme punishment of the great jury of Yorkshire, and for the extreme assessment of their fines, was and yet is, in such horror and hatred with the people of those parts, that in manner they would eat him, and esteems their griefs only to arise by him and his counsel.”^[268] Another gentleman declared that “the said traitor (Cromwell) constrains men to be perjured by extreme fines as Sir George Conyers, Sir Oswald Wolsthrope and their fellows were if they would have consented and esteemed their goods above the truth and worship.”^[269] Although Wicliff is not mentioned in the latter instance, it is probably a reference to the same case.

The affair of Wicliff is typical of the crimes which were familiar to the King, but almost incomprehensible in the north. A northern gentleman did not hesitate to attack and kill his enemy in the street, but he would not perjure himself and condemn an innocent man to death “for four of the best dukes’ lands in France.” Abundant evidence has been given of the lawlessness which prevailed in the north, but some virtues flourished there also, which were absolutely necessary in the absence of law. A gentleman spoke the truth and held his word sacred. It was unthinkable that the King, the greatest gentleman of all, did not observe the same code.

In the uncivilised north the Church still performed her old functions, and religion was accepted with a childlike faith which, although tending to superstition, was a decided influence for good. The simple moral and religious principles of the northern gentlemen are not altogether unworthy of respect, but they formed a poor preparation for a conflict with Henry VIII.

Note A. The authors of “The History of the House of Howard” say of Lady Bulmer “her character (was) foully, and, as has since been shown, lyingly, attacked by the King’s lawyers,” but we have failed to discover the defence of her character. Her own son did not deny that his sisters were born before his parents’ marriage^[270].

Note B. The document which accused Sir Robert Constable of breaking the liberties of Beverley is undated. Among the Letters and Papers it is placed with the evidence given at his trial. The reference to “Our Holy Father the Pope” shows that it must have been drawn up at least some years earlier.

We have been unable to discover the case of Anne Grysanis, and it is possible that this Sir Robert Constable may not have been the villain. There were so many Constables.

Note C. Possible translations of the inscription on Aughton church tower:—

(1) “I (the tower) ought not to forget Christofer, second son of Robert Aske, knt, A.D. 1536.”

(2) “Christofer, the second son of Robert Aske, knt. I ought not to forget, A.D. 1536.”

Note D. Robert Aske is called Sir Robert’s third son in Tonge’s Visitation of 1530, but in 1507 he had a brother Richard, who seems to have come between Christopher and Robert, but died in childhood^[271].

Note E. Star Chamber Proceedings.

Note F. Christopher Jenney’s letter^[274], dated 27 March but without the year, is placed in 1535 by the editor of the Letters and Papers, but from the reference in it to Thwaites the vicar of Londesborough, who was examined in November 1535, it seems that the letter more probably belongs to 1536.

Note G. J. C. Cox in his transcript of William Stapleton’s Confession^[275] identifies Thomas Johnson, Brother Bonaventure, with Thomas Johnson one of the monks of the London Charterhouse, but this identification is very improbable for the following reasons:—

(a) It rests only on the name, which is too common to be a proof of identity.

(b) William Stapleton evidently knew Brother Bonaventure well and would not be likely to mistake his Order.

(c) It was contrary to the rules of the Charterhouse for any monk to wander about the country alone, but this was the usual practice of the friars.

(d) Dom Thomas Johnson was not one of the four monks who were sent from London to the Hull Charterhouse in May 1536, but was still in London on 18 May 1537. In June that year he died in Newgate^[276]. As the monks of the London Charterhouse had been under close supervision since May 1536, it is incredible that one of them should have escaped to the north in October, remained there for some time, and then returned again to prison.