This is only the religious side. But there were other almost equally valid reasons for the localization of the revolt in the north. The south was thickly populated, and to a certain extent commercial; the north sparsely populated, and for the most part pastoral and agricultural. Cromwell had done everything that he could to facilitate trade, and his efforts in this direction had been rewarded by comparative popularity in the commercial counties. The discontent in the agricultural north, however, was most pronounced. The Statute of Uses had not been in all cases correctly interpreted. It was said that the King made such laws that when a man died his wife and children had to go a-begging[441]. Lastly, the proximity of the Scottish Borders, which were in a continual state of disorder, offered great encouragement for undertaking a rebellion in the north. Cromwell was constantly occupied with the suppression of minor disturbances there[442], owing to the very lax administration of the Courts and Wardens of the three Marches, while across the Tweed an attitude of more or less active hostility to the English government was always maintained. There was every probability that a revolt in the northern counties of the realm would receive substantial aid from Scotland. But though the Pilgrimage of Grace was locally restricted to the northern counties, it embraced all classes, animated by the most varied interests[443]. The objects of the insurgents were secular and religious, their mottoes conservative and progressive. On their banners were borne the emblems of the five wounds of Christ, a chalice and a host, a plough, and a horn. The first of these symbols indicated that the insurrection had been undertaken for the defence of the faith; the second was to remind the commons of the spoils of the Church. The plough was to encourage the husbandmen, and ‘the horn was in token of Horncastle’: for the banner ‘was brought among the rebels by the commons of Horncastle[444].’ The watchwords of the rebels were of the very most diverse nature. Some of them cried out for the restoration of the suppressed monasteries; others for the renewal of guarantees against exorbitant taxation, for remedies for the agrarian discontent, or for legal permission to leave land by will to daughters and younger sons. All of them united in demanding the destruction of Cromwell, whom the people regarded as the cause of all their woes[445]. The leaders and participants in the revolt were not of any one rank or station in life; the popular and aristocratic elements were almost equally mixed. It is no wonder that a rising, supported by men of such various classes, which aimed at the extirpation of abuses of so many different sorts, and which yet was united by the feeling that all these abuses were due to one man alone, was regarded as ‘the daungerest insurrection that haith ben seen[446].’