Chapter 10 Flashcards
General change to position to elites under Henry VIII
The reign of Henry VIlI witnessed a dynamic period in English society in which remnants of the feudal system still existed, but, in contrast, there was the growth of a professional and commercial bourgeoisie. However, the traditional nobles (or peers) and the greater gentry still represented a social elite which wielded considerable political and economic influence.
What happened to the size of the peerage?
The size of the peerage increased during the reign of Henry VIII, though by the end of the reign there were only nine more peers than there had been at the beginning. The creation of new peers had been to a large extent offset both by ‘natural wastage and by the number of attainders during the reign. Most of the new peers had achieved their rank as a result of successful royal service as courtiers or soldiers. In some cases this was enhanced by a close family relationship; for example the king’s brother-in-law Edward Seymour was elevated to the earldom of Hertford.
What happened to dukedoms?
England had only one duke when Henry VIII came to the throne, Edward Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, who never enjoyed royal favour.
Henry VIII only promoted two non-royal ducal titles, Norfolk and Suffolk.
Their holders served the king as soldiers and courtiers. There was a distinction to be made between the two. Norfolk was restored to the title which had been enjoyed by his father. In contrast, Suffolk seems to have been promoted on account of the closeness of his personal relationship with the king in a move which prompted criticism in some quarters, for example by Erasmus.
How did Henry use the nobility to maintain authority?
Henry did sometimes bestow property on nobles to enable them to exert royal authority in particular areas. Thus, Suffolk was endowed with property in Lincolnshire after the rebellion there in 1536 and the king ordered him to move there to ensure that he could exert that authority in person. Similarly, John, Baron Russell, was raised to the peerage and endowed with lands in Devon to bolster royal authority in the south-west following the execution of the Marquess of Exeter.
Other roles of the nobility
Nobles were expected to have great households and offer hospitality to their affinity and neighbours. To do so too openly could make a noble an object of royal suspicion, as was the case with Buckingham. On the other hand, noble households remained critical to the maintenance of local influence and to the recruitment of royal armies. (The Earl of Shrewsbury raised over 4000 men for the invasion of France in 1513.) Bastard feudalism had not died away completely.
Evidence the nobility was being brought more under the control of the monarch
Gradually, the nobility was being brought more under the control of the monarch. This helps to explain the fate of Thomas Fiennes, Baron Dacre of the South. In 1541 not only was he tried for the murder of a neighbour’s servant but he was convicted and hanged like a common criminal.
Many other nobles fell victim to Henry VIlI in more orthodox fashion. The Duke of Buckingham was executed for treason on the vaguest of charges in
521. The king’s relatives, Henry Pole Baron Montague and Henry Courtenay Marquess of Exeter, were accused of treasonable conspiracy and executed in
1538. Montague’s mother, Margaret Pole Countess of Salisbury, having been attainted of treason, was held in the Tower for over two years before eventually being executed, arguably the most vindictive of all of Henry’s punitive actions.
Lords Darcy and Hussey were executed for their roles in the rebellion of 1536, Henry’s actions being perfectly justified according to the legal standards of the day.
What happened to the number and make-up of the gentry
John Guy has suggested that there were about 5000 gentry families in England in 1540. Some aspects of gentry status were specific. Knighthoods were conferred as a sign of royal favour, and it was assumed that a knight would possess an income which reflected his status. Susan Brigden has suggested that there were about 200 knightly families in 1524. A gentleman who was entitled to bear a coat of arms was deemed an esquire. Such status was certified by the royal heralds. By 1530 heralds were unwilling to grant or confirm the title to anyone with lands worth less than £10 per annum or goods worth under £300. The term ‘gentleman’ itself lacked legal precision, and gentility was often acquired as a result of the proceeds of office, profession or business.
Though it is difficult to be precise, the number of gentry increased during the reign of Henry VIII.
What happened to gentry role in administration?
Moreover, the increase in the number of justices of the peace (JPs) increased the numbers of those who participated in local administration. In addition to the ]Ps, many other members of the gentry were drawn into unpaid administration on behalf of the Crown. Members of the gentry were increasingly keen on their sons acquiring the legal training which would make them better able to take on such roles as could offer the basis for local advancement. Moreover, whereas the Crown’s local administrators had formerly been likely to be clergymen, increasingly they were laymen, whose office holding often generated the income which would bring about landownership and gentry status.
How did the position of commoners change?
There was little dramatic change in the standard of living of commoners during the first half of the reign of Henry VIII. However, the rise in the rate of inflation did lead to a drop in real incomes which contributed to the ill feeling felt by many towards the imposition of the Amicable Grant. The social structure remained substantially unchanged, with the vast majority of people having very few possessions and little chance of regular and secure employment. Governments were always fearful of such people, with some justification because, while full-scale rebellion was relatively rare, outbreaks of disorder were much more common - and these were held to upset the good ordering of society.
Situation with Wales before 1536
How was the administration of Wales changed in 1536?
The act:
• divided Wales into shire counties which operated on the same basis as their
English counterparts
• gave the Welsh shires direct representation in the House of Commons at Westminster for the first time
• brought Wales into the same legal framework as England.
In practice this meant that Wales became incorporated into England with little of a separate identity except for the survival of the Welsh language in some parts of the country. Control over Wales continued to be exercised on the Crown’s behalf. However, increasingly this became the responsibility of members of the aristocracy, such as the earls of Pembroke, and by members of an anglicised Welsh gentry who controlled county politics, were elected to Parliament and became increasingly prominent within the legal profession.
What happened to the English palatinates?
Three English counties, Lancashire, Cheshire and Durham, were technically palatinates. In other words, they were separate jurisdictions from the rest of the kingdom. This mattered little in Lancashire and Cheshire, where the exercise of palatinate jurisdiction had long since fallen back into royal hands.
Durham was still technically separate, with palatinate jurisdiction being exercised by the bishop. The Act Resuming Liberties to the Crown of 1536 reduced the level of independence enjoyed by the bishop, but did not destroy it completely. For example, the palatinate court of chancery continued to operate. The change therefore seems to have been as much evolutionary as revolutionary.
What happened to the administration of the Anglo-Welsh border?
The lands which were governed as part of the Principality of Wales, along with the four bordering English counties - Shropshire, Herefordshire, Worcestershire, Gloucestershire - came under the jurisdiction of the Council of Wales and the Marches, which was based at Ludlow in Shropshire. This offered relatively cheap and local access to the law and could therefore be seen as a benefit to the area under its jurisdiction.
List of regional gov and administration changes (5)
Wales
Welsh border
Scottish border
Palatinates
Council in North
Why was the Anglo-Scottish border a problem?
The border with Scotland was difficult to police; much of it was remote and often inhospitable in the winter months. Both sides of the border had a reputation for lawlessness. Cattle and sheep rustling were rife and violence
was common.
Changes to administration of Anglo-Scottish border
In order to deal with such problems the border with Scotland was split into three marches, each under the jurisdiction of a warden. The filling of these posts could be difficult for the king. Appointing from a local noble family ran the risk that the noble would exploit his office to enhance his own power at the king’s expense. In any case Henry had little time for such border magnate families as the Percies and the Dacres. The other option was to appoint local officers who came from the gentry class (e.g.
Thomas Lord Wharton, only recently raised to the peerage and a man of relatively humble origins, was appointed in 1542) or those who were complete outsiders: these two groups were more likely to owe complete loyalty to the king, but they had limited ability to influence the conduct of local people who often saw themselves as owing a primary loyalty to a local magnate.
WHAT DID HE DO?
Changes to The Council in the North
The north of England posed problems of governance to a regime based far away in London, This was demonstrated particularly strongly with the huge number of supporters of the Pilgrimage of Grace in 1536. This led Henry and Cromwell to re-establish the Council as a permanent body based in York with a professional staff. It had both administrative and legal functions. It showed its worth by helping to keep the north quiet during the summer of rebellions in 1549.
Initial Church situation
At the start of Henry VIII’s reign there was little sign that there would be fundamental changes to the English Church. Although complaints were made occasionally about, for example, the worldliness of the clergy, on the whole the Church appears to have fulfilled the requirements of the bulk of the people to whom it ministered. There had even been some improvement in the early sixteenth century in the quality of the clergy and Cardinal Wolsey had dissolved some redundant monasteries, using their endowments for educational purposes.
No one would credibly have predicted the destruction of Catholic England.
Changes to Church in 1530s and impact
However, in the 1530s a major change took place in the English Church when Henry VIII broke with Rome and became head of a new English Church. Though a small minority of people undoubtedly welcomed the religious change this brought, there was no groundswell of popular support for the changes. There were executions of some who denied the royal supremacy, most notably Sir Thomas More.
Monasteries were an important feature of the appeal of the pre-Reformation Church. Cromwell’s dissolution of the monasteries, begun in 1536, and his royal injunctions of 1536, attacked many of the traditional practices of Catholicism, such as holy days, pilgrimages and the veneration of relics. This provoked fears that these reforms might be accompanied by an attack on parish churches. The most important consequence of this was a major rebellion which broke out in the autumn of 1536 in Lincolnshire and parts of the north of England; this became known as the Pilgrimage of Grace.
Long-lasting social consequences of religious upheaval (4)
- A huge amount of land was removed from the Church and taken by the Crown. This theoretically should have made the king more powerful. However, the expense of the warlike foreign policy of Henry’s final years led to the widespread sale of Church and monastic property, often at knock-down prices, thereby increasing both the size and the wealth of the landholding gentry. By 1547 almost two thirds of the monastic land acquired by the Crown had been sold off or granted away.
- Many monasteries had been noted for their educational provision. With their demise, most monastic schools were lost also.
- Many monks and nuns were rendered unemployed at a stroke. Some monks were able to secure employment as secular priests and many others received pensions. The position of nuns was very precarious.
- Some monasteries played a very considerable role in the communities in which they were situated. As well as providing education, they also offered employment and business opportunities. Some major monastic churches, such as Durham, were the cathedrals of their dioceses; many others doubled up as the local parish church. Dissolution was seen as a potential disaster and some communities went to considerable lengths to try to protect their monasteries. At Hexham in Northumberland, for example, royal commissioners were prevented from beginning the process of dissolution by a gathering of armed men.
Opposition to taxes
Just as in Henry VII’s reign, the imposition of taxes to pay for foreign wars brought instability and disorder. There were complaints in Yorkshire, particularly in upland areas, about the subsidy to raise money for Henry’s campaigns in 1513. The taxation demands for some of the areas affected were eventually written off.
Similarly, many refused to pay the Amicable Grant in 1525.
What happened in the resistance to the Amicable Grant?
Opposition was geographically widespread, but the strongest resistance occurred in north Essex and south Suffolk. The Earl of Essex reported that 1000 people had gathered at the Essex-Suffolk border and were determined to resist payment. The dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk also faced about 4000 taxation resisters, in particular, unemployed cloth workers who found it impossible to pay the levy. The dukes handled the matter sensitively and the king backed down. Wolsey publicly begged the king to offer pardon to those whom he saw as his Suffolk countrymen and the leaders of the resistance were treated leniently. The whole business demonstrated very clearly that Henry could not operate in defiance of the taxpaying classes. When next he opted to invade France he supplemented his extraordinary revenue with cash from the sale of monastic lands.
List of Key events in the Lincolnshire Rising and Pilgrimage of Grace
1536
2 Oct
Lincolnshire Rising begins at Louth
4 Oct
Lincolnshire Rising spreads to Horncastle; murder of Dr Rayne, chancellor of the diocese of Lincoln
7 Oct
Lincolnshire rebels converge on Lincoln
Cathedral
8 Oct
Pilgrimage of Grace proper begins in the East Riding of Yorkshire under the leadership of Robert
Aske
10 Oct
Pilgrimage of Grace spreads to the West Riding of Yorkshire
18 Oct
Lincolnshire Rising ends
20 Oct
Pontefract Castle
surrendered to the rebels
25 Oct
Rebellion spreads to high Pennines and Lake District
26 Oct
Rebels meet Duke of
Norfolk near Doncaster
Nov
East and West Riding
rebels gradually disperse
3 Dec
Royal proclamations offering pardon to rebels
1537
16 Jan
Renewed rebellion in the East Riding of Yorkshire led by Sir Francis Bigod
Origin and spread of Lincolnshire Rising and POG
Together, the Lincolnshire Rising and the Pilgrimage of Grace comprised the largest single rebellion in the history of Tudor England. It began as a rising which started in Lincolnshire in early October 1536, spread over the Humber into the East Riding of Yorkshire and continued from there into parts of the West Riding around Wakefield and Pontefract.
A second and more militant rising started in the dales between Ripon and Richmond, spread west into Cumberland, Westmorland and north Lancashire, north into Durham and southwest into the Craven area of the West Riding of Yorkshire. The rebels here were more radicalised and more hostile towards the fontry because of the strength of their grievances against their landlords. Class antagonism was clear from letters sent out in the name of Captain Poverty: in away which contrasted markedly with the Lincolnshire and the East Risings. The recreation of the ‘Captain Poverty’ movement helps to explain the rengs. of rebellion in Cumberland early in 1537.
Overall causes of the rebellion
The causes of the rebellion were complex, and various secular motives played a part. However, it is undoubtedly the case that opposition to the impact of Henry VIIIs religious changes figured among the rebels’ grievances. What sparked off rebellion was the huge resentment felt about a government which was pushing too quickly for fundamental religious change that most ordinary people could neither sympathise with nor even understand.
What were religious motives of the rebellion?
- Dissolution of the monasteries
By the early autumn of 1536 the work of dissolving the smaller monasteries was well under way. It was clear that the dissolution would have a number of effects which many people found undesirable:
• the loss of the charitable and educational functions which some monasteries provided
• the possible loss of parish churches which were monastic properties
• the fear that the north would be impoverished by monastic land falling into the hands of southerners
• the usefulness of the facilities and services which the monasteries offered.
The importance of monasteries to the rebels can be seen in their attempts lo restore some of the houses which had been suppressed. The rebel leader, Robert Aske, was a convinced supporter of the monasteries. - Fear for parish churches and traditional religious practices
The 1536 Injunctions drawn up by Cromwell were seen as attacking traditional religious practices.
* The celebration of locally important saints such as St Wilfrid in parts of Yorkshire had been discouraged.
This was linked to the discouragement of pilgrimage.
• There were rumours that church plate and jewels, which had been bequeathed by parishioners, would be confiscated and that parishes might be amalgamated.
Secular motives of the rebellion (4)
Several secular motives have also been attributed to the rebellion.
1. The ordinary rebels were generally more motivated by economic grievances, including resentment of taxation, than their leaders.
2. The Crown’s attempts to impose the Duke of Suffolk upon Lincolnshire as a great magnate may initially have sparked the rebellion in Lincolnshire.
3. It has been argued, most strongly by Geoffrey Elton, that the rebellions of 1536 were brought about primarily by a courtly conspiracy prompted by councilors who had been supporters of Catherine of Aragon, who had died in January
1536. Their main motive was the restoration of Princess Mary as heir. These courtiers were able to exploit the religious and financial concerns of northerners to put pressure on the king as part of the factional politics of the reign.
4. The extension of the rebellion west of the Pennines into Cumberland and Westmorland has been linked in particular to tenants grievances.
Alis of course, dimas been linked in peacompletely the motives of the red is specily given the huge geographica area covered by the rebellion and the Varied identities of those most prominently involved.
What were the Pontefract Articles?
These give the most comprehensive set of rebel demands and incorporate a range of grievances: some of which were widespread while others were specific to particular areas, and some were highly contentious, while others were very minor. There is no sense of organisation and prioritisation about the Articles. They do express a range of religious grievances, some of which can be linked to the religious experiences of ordinary folk while others reflected the concerns of the clergy. Anger was directed against Cromwell and members of his circle.
The desire for Parliament to meet at York suggested strongly held regional resentment.
Who was Robert Aske?
Robert Aske (c1500-37) led the Pilgrimage of Grace and devised its name which gave it its distinctive religious flavour. A capable leader, he turned the varied movements of the rebels into a cohesive whole. He tried to negotiate a settlement with the king but was executed after the outbreak of renewed rebellion in January 1537.
The historiography of the rebellion
The difficulty in analysing the rebels’
motives is reflected in the work of historians, who have asserted a multiplicity of motives. John Scarisbrick, in his biography of Henry VIII published in 1968, sees the rebellion as a comprehensive attack on the whole range of Henry VIII’s policies, though he does accept the primacy of religion.
One school of thought suggests the rebellion was led by aristocrats and gentry - particularly Lord Darcy (in Yorkshire) and Lord
Hussey (in Lincolnshire) - and was planned and organised from above.
Another emphasises the view that the rebellions were risings of the commons.
How was the rebellion suppressed?
Estimates of the numbers involved vary. However, it is evident that not only were these the most geographically widespread set of rebellions in Tudor England, they were also the most popular in terms of participation. Though the Lincolnshire Rebellion quickly collapsed when faced with the forces of the Duke of Suffolk, the northern rebels occupied York and Hull and captured Pontefract Castle. The rebellions therefore caused great alarm to both the king and many of his ministers.
The king sent an army north under the command of the Duke of Norfolk.
When Norfolk encountered the rebels near Doncaster he was hugely outnumbered. Norfolk therefore sought to defuse the rebellion through the issue of a pardon and the promise that the dissolved monasteries would be restored and a free parliament established. The king almost certainly had not the slightest intention of honouring these promises. They did, however, secure their strategic objectives and most of the rebel forces dispersed.
Henry actions after renewal of rebellion
Henry had the excuse he needed to go back on his word when rebellion was renewed in Cumberland and the East Riding in February 1537. The Duke of Norfolk quickly suppressed the renewed rebellion, declared martial law and hanged 74 rebels, though after that initial harshness he behaved relatively inercifully and with a concern for proper legal process. A number of rebel leaders including Darcy and Hussey, several members of the gentry and heads of monastic houses were brought to London, tried and executed.
POG overall effect on gov
The Pilgrimage of Grace shook Henry VIII. His own record in dealing with Wherebellion was poor; he ignored warnings about the increase in resentment Which he did not wish to hear. Fie was fortunate that the Duke of Norfolk storied common sense and alexibliy,. The Pilgrimage did not, however slow the pace of religious change.
