Chapter 7 - Conclusion: A Medieval and Modern North–South Divide

Summary

The book’s conclusion briefly examines the Northern Rebellion  of 1569, a revolt centered again on the entanglement of centralization and religious reform with the South set against the North. This northern Catholic revolt proves a fitting culmination to the book because, here, we find the same convoluted dynamic of intimacy and revulsion, of derision and desire of the North of England evident in each chapter. The putting down of the revolt, the bloody and destructive retribution that followed by Elizabeth I’s government, recalls the “Harrying of the North” by William I exactly 500 years prior. But the aftermath of 1569 witnesses an emergent British identity form between England and Scotland, an identity afforded by the Northern Rebellion, that would drive England into the age of imperialism and, eventually, toward the Industrial Revolution from which so many critics claim the North–South divide originates. The chapter concludes by briefly pondering modern readings of a still-extant North–South divide in poetry, fiction, and film in order to illustrate just how essential North–South discourse, forged in the Middle Ages, continues to inform the modern rift.