It was on this day, October 1st, 490 years ago, in 1536 that what came to be known as the Lincolnshire Rising, broke out in the parish church at Louth in Lincolnshire.
Louth Church
Image: A Church Near You
The Rising, whether seen as an autonomous event or as the active precursor to the Pilgrimage of Grace, which with similar aims, began just under a fortnight later north of the Humber in the East Riding of Yorkshire, was a reaction to the religious policies as well as taxation and legislation affecting land tenure the had emerged from Westminster and the Council in recent years.
By the autumn of 1536 the mood in the Lincolnshire Wolds was febrile. The dissolution of the smaller religious houses has commenced, including the Cistercian house at Louth Park on the edge of the town. Lincolnshire was rich in monastic foundations, notably, but by no means exclusively, those of the Cistercians, Premonstratensians, and the Gilbertines.
Louth was in the estates of the Bishop of Lincoln and thus closely linked to the diocesan structures. Civic pride was focussed around the parish church whose commanding spire had only been completed to great celebration in1515. Rumours abounded that church plate beyond the bare essentials was to be confiscated. Meanwhile one of the Royal Commissioners, Dr Raynes, had been addressing the local clergy in a meeting at Bolingbroke the day before about the latest regulations and ecclesiastical taxes, as well as implying some of the clergy should look to their learning, or lack of it in his eyes.
The interior of Louth Church
Image: Tripadvisor
News could and did spread quickly in the rural communities and, following a staunch sermon from the Vicar, at the end of Vespers in Louth Parish church as the three processional crosses lined up for the recessional one of the singing-men called out to the congregation to follow them as this might be the last opportunity. This was the event which convulsed the town, neighbouring villages and towns such as Caistor and Horncastle.
Lincoln Cathedral
A reconstruction showing the Cathedral and the Bishop’s Palace as they were before 1548
Image: Facebook - Historic churches uk - Ben Keating
The ‘commons’ compelled some of the more or less reluctant gentry to join them, and in a few days marched off to Lincoln to formulate their demands. Based for a short period in and around the cathedral tensions seem to have developed between gentry and commons, and the government response was not conciliatory, sending troops north led by the Duke of Suffolk. As a result the Rising stalled and dispersed, leading figures being arrested, and in most cases, ultimately executed.
These victims over coming months were to include the Cistercian Abbot of Kirkstead, the Premonstratensisn Abbot of Barling, who was an assistant bishop in the Lincoln diocese, Thomas Kendal, the vicar of Louth, Thomas Moigne a lawyer and former MP for Lincoln, who had been the spokesman for the assembled group at Lincoln, and, suggesting aristocratic involvement, the elderly Lord Hussey, a courtier of Catholic sympathies and cousin to another executed peer, the Yorkshire Thomas Lord Darcy. Hussey, unlike the others, was from Kesteven rather than Lindsey, where the Rising occurred.
However just as the government may have thought the matter over news travelled south of the Yorkshire rising with its designation as the Pilgrimage of Grace. This had largely identical aims as the Lincolnshire movement and was a greater challenge, requiring a military response leading to a truce to the embarrassment and fury of the King.
With regard to the Lincolnshire Rising the King scolded the inhabitants for presuming to oppose him and as being from “one of the most brute and beastly” shires of the whole realm. When he did visit the county and city in 1541 he was received with grovelling gratitude and sizeable gifts of money. Ironically the modern county has chosen October 1st as Lincolnshire Day.
The west front of Lincoln Cathedral before the removal of the timber and lead spires in 1807.
The spire on the central tower collapsed in 1548.
Although almost certainly not the 584 feet high often quoted it is now estimated to have been about 525 feet and the tallest building in the world until the later nineteenth century.
A painting by A.C.Pugin
Image: Whitworth Art Gallery Manchester
Wikipedia has a not very comprehensive account at Pilgrimage of Grace, which can be supplemented by a timeline on The History Jar, which can be accessed at Lincolnshire Rising Archives
The Lincolnshire Rising, and even the Pilgrimage of Grace are things you either do know about or you do not. The events are well documented, notably in L&P Henry VIII where one can read original letters from those involved in both sides, yet what was never written down at the time that would explain motivation and the hopes and fears of the time means we have to do a lot of interpretation.
Many histories of the period inevitably have a London and Court centred bias, and dismiss these uprisings, and those in the south-west in 1549 and again in the north in 1569, as backward and conservative regions who did not appreciate the ‘benefits’ of government policy - yes, I have read G.R. Elton.
Academic historians have offered a range of interpretations. Commons with ‘agency’ are quite popular as a subject these days, as is speculation on covert gentry leadership. The extent there was a secret conservative aristocratic conspiracy linking Court and country is certainly possible, and the links between Lords Hussey and Darcy would suggest the involvement of peers who felt excluded from a voice in government, as with the participants caught up in the Exeter Conspiracy of 1538. If there was a conspiracy or, more likely, a meeting of minds amongst the discontented county elites then it is possible that the Lincolnshire Rising occurred a fortnight too early, before the Yorkshire movement was ready, and thereby harmed its own chances and alerted the government.
Socio-economic grievances beyond objecting to peace-time taxation were not as evident as in the slightly later Pilgrimage of Grace, nor the sense of under-representation in Parliament. The economic situation in Lincolnshire at the time does not appear to have received as much attention as it has for Yorkshire and the Craven and Westmoreland areas. Lindsey had seen enclosuresaffecting long established villages, and a feature of the area to this day are the not infrequent instances of medieval churches which were much reduced in size in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as the population contracted. That may have been starting in the sixteenth century. Towns like Louth were clearly wealthy, rebuilding the church in the fifteenth century and the tower and spire a spectacular work of the first years of the sixteenth century. If towns like Louth were prospering, other towns may have suffered decline; at Boston the harbour was suffering from silting and its great trading days were in the past. Lincoln was suffering, like many other long-established centres the contraction of trade as it moved elsewhere and the loss of economic dominance. This seems to have generally crept up on cities and towns, suddenly becoming obvious alongside the upheavals of the 1530s in religion and in daily life such as a rising level of under- or unemployment and inflation. The old order was rumbling and new players emerging.
The answer is almost certainly not one, but a blend of the groups and factions. What is clear is that there was widespread dislike of, and opposition to, the religious changes being imposed upon the country.
More popular authors, and often with a northern emphasis or bias, perhaps tend to stress the threat to the regime. For them the figure of the Yorkshire lawyer Robert Aske is central, depicting him as a man who held the future of the realm and dynasty, if only for a few days, in his hands. That, I think, is to exaggerate his chances. It disregards the face that hard power lay in London and the south, and ultimately with the King. A popular movement could be a real threat, as in 1381 and 1450, but without leadership from a great magnate as in 1399, and as at times in the fifteenth century, the chances were against it. What was also lacking was clear support from the continent from the Catholic powers. The death of Queen Katherine of Aragon had possibly diminished her nephew Emperor Charles V’s concern for the immediate moment, and that of Anne Boleyn had removed another tension between the Kibg and his fellow monarchs. Maybe now the King of England, and his advisors would give up their enthusiasm for religious change?
As with the Scottish Jacobites in 1745, moving from home ground was difficult as a concept for significant numbers. The Lincolnshire Rising stayed in Lindsey and Lincoln, and did not move beyond, rather like the Lincolnshire rebellions of 1469 and 1470 along the line of the Great North Road.
One can at least say that faced with an all pervasive challenge to their way of life the people of Lindsay, like those of Yorkshire a fortnight later, did what they could, often at the ultimate in personal costs, to preserve their heritage of faith and practice.
