The new changes, above all the irritation which had been caused by the
outrages with which the dissolution of the monasteries was accompanied,
gave point to the mutinous temper that prevailed throughout the country;
for the revolution in agriculture was still going on, and evictions
furnished embittered outcasts to swell the ranks of any rising. Nor did
it seem as though revolt, if it once broke out, would want leaders to
head it. The nobles, who had writhed under the rule of the Cardinal,
writhed yet more bitterly under the rule of one whom they looked upon
not only as Wolsey's tool, but as a low-born upstart. "The world will
never mend," Lord Hussey had been heard to say, "till we fight for it."
"Knaves rule about the King!" cried Lord Exeter; "I trust some day to
give them a buffet!" At this moment, too, the hopes of political
reaction were stirred by the fate of one whom the friends of the old
order looked upon as the source of all their troubles. In the spring of
1536, while the dissolution of the monasteries was marking the triumph
of the new policy, Anne Boleyn was suddenly charged with adultery and
sent to the Tower. A few days later she was tried, condemned, and
brought to the block. The Queen's ruin was everywhere taken as an omen
of ruin to the cause which had become identified with her own, and the
old nobility mustered courage to face the minister who held them at his
feet.
They found their opportunity in the discontent of the North, where the
monasteries had been popular, and where the rougher mood of the people
turned easily to resistance. In the autumn of 1536 a rising broke out in
Lincolnshire, and this was hardly quelled when all Yorkshire rose in
arms. From every parish the farmers marched with the parish priest at
their head upon York, and the surrender of this city determined the
waverers. In a few days Skipton castle, where the Earl of Cumberland
held out with a handful of men, was the only spot north of the Humber
which remained true to the King. Durham rose at the call of the chiefs
of the house of Neville, Lords Westmoreland and Latimer. Though the Earl
of Northumberland feigned sickness, the Percies joined the revolt. Lord
Dacre, the chief of the Yorkshire nobles, surrendered Pomfret, and was
acknowledged as their chief by the insurgents.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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