In this rising all the north of England was concerned. The great Abbeys of Yorkshire exercised a powerful influence over the minds of the people, and a widespread religious ferment broke out. Lord Darcy, Earl of Holderness, Sir Robert Constable of Flamborough, Sir Thomas Percy, brother of the Earl of Northumberland, and many other northern nobles threw in their lot with the rebellious commoners. Soon forty thousand men were enrolled under the command of Robert Aske, a Westminster lawyer and brother of John Aske, the lord of the manor of Aughton-on-Derwent. The demands of Aske and his followers were:— (1) The restoration of the suppressed monasteries; (2) The expulsion of counsellors of low birth from the King’s court; (3) The holding of Parliament and of a Court of Justice at York as well as at London.[45] Footnote 45: This third demand resulted in the formation of the ‘Council of the North,’ which met at York during the next hundred years. Thus the rebellion had both a religious and a political aspect, but the former was that which was most apparent. The suppression of the smaller monasteries was to be followed by the closing and pulling down of the smaller parish churches, and the church plate was to be confiscated as had been that of the abbeys and priories. That was—so people said—the intention of Thomas Cromwell, the counsellor of low birth against whom their second demand was aimed. So the men of the North were up in arms in defence of their religious liberties; and as they marched behind the processional crosses brought from their parish churches, they wore on their sleeves a roughly-made badge of the ‘five wounds of Christ.’ * * * * * [Illustration: BADGE OF THE PILGRIMAGE OF GRACE. The letters ‘I G’ stand for the Latin words _Itinerarium Gratiae_—the Pilgrimage of Grace. ] Robert Aske had been crossing by the ferry from Brough to Barton at the close of the ‘long vacation’ of 1536 when he was told by the boatmen that the Commons were ‘up’ in Lincolnshire. Another London barrister, William Stapleton, the son of Sir Brian Stapleton of Wighill, similarly heard of the Lincolnshire rising while he was waiting at Hull to cross the river. He had been staying with his eldest brother, ‘a very weake, craysid and ympotent man’, in the Grey Friary at Beverley. This was apparently a much-frequented health resort; for his brother was ‘lying there for chaunge of ayer as he had doon the somer before from Maye till after Mydsommer.’ It was three o’clock on the morning of October 5th when Christopher Stapleton’s servant brought word to William that all Lyncolnshere was up from Barton to Lincoln ... and that Grauntham way was stopped as well as Lincoln, so that no man could passe to london vntaken. So William Stapleton had perforce to remain waiting in Hull.