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“A Cold Pye for the Papistes”: Constructing and Containing the Northern Rising of 1569

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 December 2012

K. J. Kesselring
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Journal of British Studies , Volume 43 , Issue 4 , October 2004 , pp. 417 - 443
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Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 2004

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References

1 Public Record Office (PRO), State Papers (SP) 15/15/29.i.

2 Reid, R. R., “The Rebellion of the Earls, 1569,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 2d series, 20 (1906): 171–203CrossRefGoogle Scholar; MacCaffrey, Wallace, The Shaping of the Elizabethan Regime (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1986), p. 337Google Scholar; James, M. E., Family, Lineage, and Civil Society (Oxford: Clarendon, 1974), p. 60Google Scholar; Wood, Andy, Riot, Rebellion and Popular Politics in Early Modern England (New York: Palgrave, 2002), pp. 72–73CrossRefGoogle Scholar. This should not, however, imply a monolithic historiography. Haigh, Christopher, for example, has briefly alluded to the revolt as a notable display of popular religious enthusiasm in his English Reformations: Religion, Politics, and Society under the Tudors (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), p. 260Google Scholar.

3 On the need to study perceptions of events as well as their mechanics, see Sharpe, Kevin, “Representations and Negotiations: Images, Texts, and Authority in Early Modern England,” Historical Journal 42 (1999): 853–81xy9CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 For a good overview, see Jones, Norman L., The Birth of the Elizabethan Age: England in the 1560s (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993)Google Scholar.

5 For this historiography, see, e.g., Wrightson, Keith, “The Politics of the Parish in Early Modern England,” in The Experience of Authority in Early Modern England, ed. Griffiths, Paul et al. (London: Macmillan, 1996), pp. 10–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Braddick, M. J., State Formation in Early Modern England, c. 1550–1700 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cooper, J. P. D., Propaganda and the Tudor State: Political Culture in the West Country (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003)Google Scholar; Wood, Riot, Rebellion and Popular Politics; and the essays in Braddick, M. J. and Walter, John, eds., Negotiating Power in Early Modern Society: Order, Hierarchy and Subordination in Britain and Ireland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, particularly Walter, “Public Transcripts, Popular Agency and the Politics of Subsistence in Early Modern England,” and Braddick, “Administrative Performance: The Representation of Political Authority in Early Modern England,” pp. 123–48, 166–87. Steve Hindle has also contributed to this historiography and offers a salutary warning against mistaking participation and negotiation for consent: The State and Social Change in Early Modern England, c. 1550–1640 (London: Macmillan, 2000), pp. 120, 232Google Scholar.

6 Tim Harris has warned of the dangers of using the term “popular politics” as it may imply a polarized rather than participatory model and a political culture distinct from elite politics. He has suggested instead the “politics of the excluded,” but as his own work ably shows, the people in question were not, in fact, “excluded.” See Harris, , London Crowds in the Reign of Charles II: Propaganda and Politics from the Restoration until the Exclusion Crisis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp. 15–17Google Scholar and his introduction to The Politics of the Excluded, ed. Harris, Tim (New York: Palgrave, 2001), pp. 1–29Google Scholar. “Popular politics” continues to be used as a convenience nonetheless. Ethan Shagan, for example, defends its use to denote “the presence of ordinary, non-elite subjects as the audience for or interlocutors with a political action.” See Shagan, , Popular Politics and the English Reformation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), p. 19CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For the term “political culture,” see the editors' introductions to Tudor Political Culture, ed. Hoak, Dale (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995)Google Scholar and The Tudor Monarchy, ed. Guy, John (London: Arnold, 1997)Google Scholar.

7 For a good recent reconstruction of the marriage plan, see Alford, Stephen, The Early Elizabethan Polity: William Cecil and the Succession Crisis, 1558–1569 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 200–206Google Scholar.

8 PRO, SP 15/14/94; see also 15/15/6, 15/19/75.

9 British Library (BL), Salisbury MS 158, 101 (microfilm).

10 Sharpe, Cuthbert, Memorials of the Rebellion of 1569 (London: J. B. Nichol, 1840), p. 8; PRO, SP 15/96/6Google Scholar.

11 PRO, SP 15/14/94 and 15/14/99.

12 PRO, SP 12/59/20, 25, 36; BL, Salisbury MS 156, 70.

13 Raine, A., ed., York Civic Records, 1558–69, Yorkshire Archaeological Records Series, vol. 112 (Wakefield, printed for the Society, 1948), p. 160Google Scholar.

14 PRO, SP 15/14/100.

15 Calendar of the Patent Rolls, Elizabeth, 1569–72, V, no. 1817.

16 Calendar of the Patent Rolls, Elizabeth, 1572–75, VI, no. 1230.

17 Williams, Neville, “The Risings in Norfolk, 1569 and 1570,” Norfolk Archaeology 32 (1959): 73–75Google Scholar; Calendar of State Papers, Spanish, 1568–79, p. 225.

18 PRO, SP 12/60/48, 49, 54.

19 PRO, Star Chamber 5/K11/18.

20 BL, Lansdowne MS 11, fol. 156.

21 See, e.g., PRO, SP 15/15/64, and Robinson, H., ed., Zurich Letters, 1558–1579, Parker Society, vol. 50 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1842), p. 248Google Scholar.

22 See Richard Cust, “News and Politics in Early Seventeenth-Century England,” Past and Present, no. 112 (1986): 60–90; Fox, Adam, “Rumour, News, and Popular Political Opinion in Elizabethan and Early Stuart England,” Historical Journal 40 (1997): 597–620CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Simon Walker, “Rumour, Sedition, and Popular Protest in the Reign of Henry IV,” Past and Present, no. 166 (2000): 31–65; Ethan Shagan, “Rumours and Popular Politics in the Reign of Henry VIII,” in Harris, ed., The Politics of the Excluded, pp. 30–66; Walter, “Public Transcripts, Popular Agency and the Politics of Subsistence,” pp. 123–48; Cooper, Propaganda and the Tudor State, pp. 93–107. Much of this work addresses to one degree or another Jürgen Habermas's influential but problematic notion of the “public sphere,” as presented in The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, trans. Burger, T. with Lawrence, F. (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1989)Google Scholar. For an older but still valuable treatment of the subject, see Samaha, J., “Gleanings from Local Criminal-Court Records: Sedition amongst the ‘Inarticulate’ in Elizabethan Essex,” Journal of Social History 8 (1975): 61–79CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

23 Cooper, Propaganda and the Tudor State, pp. 96–101.

24 PRO, SP 15/21/56.i.

25 PRO, SP 15/15/29.i; and The Correspondence of Dr. Matthew Hutton, ed. Raine, J., Surtees Society, vol. 17 (London: J. B. Nichols, 1843), pp. 267–68Google Scholar. Numerous copies of these proclamations survive, some with minor variations. In none is Mary, queen of Scots, referred to explicitly. From other documents, including the earl of Northumberland's confession, it is clear that the earls at least intended to secure her freedom, to use her to secure alterations in the religious settlement, and to have her acknowledged as the rightful heir to the throne. (See PRO, SP 15/21/56.i.) To what degree, if any, the bulk of the rebel host knew of these aims is unclear. Official and semiofficial responses to the rebellion would also remain silent about Mary, queen of Scots, partly because of Elizabeth's quandary in how to deal with a legitimate monarch who had been deposed by rebels. Thus, James Phillips errs in saying that “this rebellion had as its stated aim the liberation of Mary [and] her enthronement in England,” but correctly notes that “a contemporary reader whose sole information came from authorized accounts of the Northern Rebellion would probably never have been aware of the Queen of Scots’ implication in the plot.” See Phillips, James E., Images of a Queen: Mary Stuart in Sixteenth-Century Literature (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1964), pp. 57–59Google Scholar.

26 PRO, SP 12/59/38. Estimates varied widely. Sir Thomas Gargrave, one of the Councilors in the North, later gave an estimate of twenty thousand, but this presumably included those who merely sympathized with the rebels. Sir George Bowes noted that the most ever assembled at one point was 5,500 but added that others came and went. See Sharpe, Memorials, pp. 183–85. Lists of those fined and pardoned after the rebellion include some 4,655 names. (PRO, Exchequer [E] 137/133/1; Calendar of the Patent Rolls, Elizabeth, 1569–72, V, nos. 585–1019.)

27 The quotation is from Reid, “The Rebellion of the Earls, 1569,” p. 193.

28 M. E. James, “The Concept of Order and the Northern Rising 1569,” Past and Present, no. 60 (1973): 70–71; Taylor, S. E., “The Crown and the North of England, 1559–70,” (Ph.D. diss., University of Manchester, 1981), pp. 216–19, 251–57Google Scholar. A more accessible summary of Taylor's findings can be found in Wall, Alison, Power and Protest in England, 1525–1640 (London: Arnold, 2000), pp. 174–77Google Scholar.

29 Sharp, Memorials, pp. 61–3; BL, Caligula B.IX, ii, fol. 425. See Davies, C. S. L., “Popular Religion and the Pilgrimage of Grace,” in Order and Disorder in Early Modern England, ed. Fletcher, Anthony and Stevenson, John (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), pp. 66–67Google Scholar, for a discussion of the role of pay, spoil, and coercion in recruitment for the Pilgrimage and how its significance had been exaggerated.

30 PRO, SP 15/15/30. See also 15/15/41.

31 The State Papers and Letters of Sir Ralph Sadler, 2 vols., ed. Clifford, Arthur (Edinburgh: Archibald Constable & Co., 1809), 2:54–56Google Scholar.

32 Norton, Thomas, “A Warning against the dangerous practises of papists, and especially the partners of the late rebellion,” reprinted in All such treatises as have been lately published by Thomas Norton (London, 1570; Short Title Catalog [STC] # 18677), sig. A5vGoogle Scholar; Strype, John, Annals of the Reformation, 4 vols. in 7 (1824; reprint, New York: Burt Franklin, 1968), vol. 1, pt. 2, p. 323Google Scholar; PRO, SP 15/17/72, 15/15/73. They did not, however, march under the traditional banner of St. Cuthbert as Katherine Whittingham, wife of the dean and sister of John Calvin, had recently supervised its public burning. For the use of St. Cuthbert's banner in the Pilgrimage of Grace, see Davies, “Popular Religion and the Pilgrimage of Grace,” p. 87. For its destruction, see Marcombe, D., “‘A Rude and Heady People’: The Local Community and the Rebellion of the Northern Earls,” in The Last Principality: Politics, Religion, and Society in the Bishopric of Durham, 1494–1660, ed. Marcombe, D. (Nottingham: University of Nottingham, 1987), p. 134Google Scholar; and Fowler, A., ed., The Rites of Durham, Surtees Society vol. 15 (London: J. B. Nichols, 1842), pp. 26, 95Google Scholar.

33 H. Robinson, ed., Zurich Letters, pp. 215, 218; PRO, SP 15/17/72, 15/15/73.

34 See Tyerman, Christopher, England and the Crusades, 1095–1588 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), pp. 3, 343–67Google Scholar. Michael Bush and J. C. D. Cooper have explored the imagery and theatrics of earlier protests: Cooper, Propaganda and the Tudor State, pp. 118–19; Bush, , “The Pilgrimage of Grace and the Pilgrim Tradition of Holy War,” in Pilgrimage: The English Experience from Becket to Bunyan, ed. Morris, Colin and Roberts, Peter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 178–98Google Scholar.

35 As Tyerman notes, the story of Constantine had remained readily available, at least until midcentury, in traditional and popular works such as James of Voragine's Golden Legend (England and the Crusades, p. 364). The story and banner may also have had a newer resonance: several Protestant writers had depicted Elizabeth as the new Constantine and compared the conversion of the English to that of the great emperor. See Pucci, Michael S., “Reforming Roman Emperors: John Foxe's Characterization of Constantine in the Acts and Monuments,” in John Foxe: An Historical Perspective, ed. Loades, D. M. (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1999)Google Scholar.

36 Borthwick Institute of Historical Research (BIHR), HC.AB 5; Durham University Library (DUL), DDR/EJ/CCD/1/2, fols. 170–200d; Durham Dean and Chapter Library (DDCL), Raine MS. 124, fols. 109d–111. Most of the relevant Durham material is included in Raine, J., ed., Depositions and other Ecclesiastical Proceedings from the Courts of Durham, Surtees Society, vol. 21 (London: J. B. Nichols, 1845)Google Scholar.

37 DUL, DDR/EJ/CCD/1/2, fol. 200d, 176–77.

38 DUL, DDR/EJ/CCD/1/2, fol. 170, 190d; DDCL, Raine MS. 124, fols. 193b–95.

39 DUL, DDR/EJ/CCD/1/2, fols. 173d, 179.

40 DDCL, Raine MS. 124, fol. 52b.

41 PRO, E 137/133/1.

42 DUL, DDR/EJ/CCD/1/2, fol. 195; DDCL, Raine MS. 124, fols. 180–82d.

43 BIHR, HC.AB 5; DUL DDR/EJ/CCD/1/2 fols. 170–200d; DDCL, Raine MS. 124.

44 DUL, DDR/EJ/CCD/1/2, fols. 183, 193d, 195v-d.

45 See, e.g., BIHR, HC.AB 3, fols. 104, 189–90, HC.AB 4, fols. 24, 59d.

46 See, e.g., DUL, DDR/EJ/CCD/1/2, fols. 172d–173.

47 DUL, DDR/EJ/CCD/1/2, fol. 192b.

48 BL, Add Ms. 40746, fol. 21; DUL, DDR/EJ/CCD/1/2, fols. 179d-180d; Strathmore Estates (Glamis Castle), Bowes MS, vol. 14, no. 36. For earlier examples of parochial financing of rebels, see Duffy, Eamon, The Voices of Morebath: Reformation and Rebellion in an English Village (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2001), pp. 134–41Google Scholar, and Bush, Michael, The Pilgrimage of Grace: A Study of the Rebel Armies of October 1536 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1996), pp. 407–8Google Scholar.

49 See, e.g., PRO, SP 12/60/27. As Adam Fox and others note, surely the best evidence of the importance of plebeian politics and communications networks is the amount of official attention paid to policing them. See Fox, “Rumour, New, and Popular Political Opinion,” p. 599. See also Manning, Roger B., “The Origins of the Doctrine of Sedition,” Albion 12 (1980): 99–121CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

50 Raine, ed., York Civic Records, p. 160.

51 PRO, SP 15/15/30.I, 15/39.I; Raine, ed., York Civic Records, p. 170.

52 PRO, SP 12/59/40. See Keen, Maurice, The Laws of War in the Late Middle Ages (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1965), pp. 54–55, 173–74Google Scholar.

53 Waddington, Raymond B., “Elizabeth I and the Order of the Garter,” Sixteenth Century Journal 24 (1993): 106CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the importance of the Order in Elizabethan politics, see Strong, Roy, The Cult of Elizabeth (London: Thames & Hudson, 1977), pp. 164–85Google Scholar.

54 STC # 12779; Hughes, P. L. and Larkin, J. F., eds., Tudor Royal Proclamations, 3 vols. (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1964–69), vol. 2, no. 567Google Scholar.

55 Haynes, Samuel, ed., Collection of State Papers … from the year 1540 to 1570…left by William Cecil, Lord Burghley (London: Bowyer, 1740), pp. 558–59Google Scholar.

56 Ibid., p. 556.

57 Raine, ed., York Civic Records, p. 175–77, quote on p. 176.

58 Collins, W. E., ed., Queen Elizabeth's Defence of Her Proceedings in Church and State (1899; reprint, London: SPCK, 1958), pp. 37, 39–40Google Scholar. Drafts survive with emendations in the hands of both Elizabeth and Cecil. See PRO, SP 12/66/54 and Haynes, ed., Collection of State Papers, pp. 589–93. A copy is also in the National Library of Scotland, Adv. MS. 34.1.11, fols. 77–80d, a volume of papers collected by Walsingham later in the century to help defend the queen against foreign libels.

59 Collins, ed., Queen Elizabeth's Defence, p. 34. For churchwardens’ accounts, see, e.g., Williams, John Foster, ed., The Early Churchwardens’ Accounts of Hampshire (Winchester: Warren & Sons, 1913), pp. 126, 214Google Scholar; London Guildhall Library MS. 5090, fols. 6–6d; MS 645, fols. 87–87d.

60 Bond, Ronald B., ed., Certain Sermons or Homilies (1547) and A Homily Against Disobedience and Wilful Rebellion (1570): A Critical Edition (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1987), p. 11CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Cooper provides an extended discussion of the use of the earlier Homily on Obedience and the new 1570 homily as propaganda to inculcate the Tudor doctrine of absolute nonresistance; Cooper, Propaganda and the Tudor State, pp. 221–31.

61 Cooper, pp. 209, 214.

62 Ibid., pp. 227, 229, 234.

63 Ibid., pp. 225, 233.

64 Ibid., pp. 234–35.

65 PRO, SP 15/15/139.

66 DUL, MS 534 (Bowes Papers), nos. 2, 6, 7, 18.

67 Sharp, Memorials, pp. 140–42, 151–52, 163, 188. See also McCall, H. B., “The Rising in the North: A New Light upon One Aspect of It,” Yorkshire Archaeological Journal 18 (1905): 74–87Google Scholar, which argues that far fewer men were executed than had been appointed to die. Nevertheless, McCall's final tallies do not accord with Bowes's own recollections. More of the 1549 rebels died for their actions than those of 1569, but the bulk of these deaths occurred in battle rather than on the gallows.

68 Hughes and Larkin, eds., Tudor Royal Proclamations, vol. 2, no. 568. See also the draft in BL, Lansdowne 12, 20, fols. 45d–50, which shows the later insertion of the striking phrase “as the minister of Almighty God.” On the significance of the pardons after this and other risings in constructing authority and restoring obedience, see Kesselring, K. J., Mercy and Authority in the Tudor State (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

69 On this literature, see Lowers, J. K., Mirrors for Rebels: A Study of Polemical Literature Relating to the Northern Rebellion, 1569 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1953)Google Scholar. On Cecil's efforts and ties, see Read, Conyers, “William Cecil and Elizabethan Public Relations,” in Elizabethan Government and Society, ed. Bindoff, S. T. et al. (London: University of London, Athlone Press, 1961), pp. 21–55Google Scholar.

70 Thomas Norton, “A Warning against the dangerous practises of papists,” sigs. G1r-v, G2r, H3r.

71 Phillips, John, A Friendly Larum, or faithful warning to the true hearted subjects of England (London, 1570; STC # 19870), sigs. A4r, C8vGoogle Scholar.

72 STC # 22234; STC # 995.

73 Norton, “To the Queen's Majesty's Poor Deceived Subjects of the North Country,” reprinted in All such treatises, sigs. A3v, B1r, B6v, C8r.

74 Elvidian, Edmund, A New Years Gift to the Rebellious Persons in the North Parts of England (London, 1570; STC # 7625), sig. A3r, C1rGoogle Scholar.

75 Elderton, William, A Ballad Entitled Northumberland News, Wherein you may see what rebels do use (London, 1570; STC # 7554)Google Scholar.

76 Preston, Thomas, A Lamentation from Rome, how the Pope doth bewail that the Rebels in England can not prevail (London, 1570; STC # 1570)Google Scholar

77 See, e.g., Norton, “A Warning Against the dangerous practices of papists,” sig. L1v. Norton was a lawyer, an M.P., a son-in-law of Thomas Cranmer, and a friend of John Foxe. Perhaps best known now for Gordobuc and his translation of Calvin's Institutes, he attained sixteenth-century notoriety as a “rackmaster” of Catholics. For his own providential history of England, see Marten, Anthony, “The End of History: Thomas Norton's ‘v periodes’ and the Pattern of English Protestant Historiography,” in John Foxe and His World, ed. Highley, Christopher and King, John N. (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002), pp. 37–53Google Scholar.

78 Norton, “A Warning Against the dangerous practices of papists,” sigs. A4v, B4r.

79 Ibid., sig. H2v.

80 Ibid., sigs. B5r-v; see also sig. M4r.

81 Drant, Thomas, “A Sermon reached at the Court at Windsor, 8 January 1569,” Three Godly Learned Sermons (London, 1584; STC # 7170), sig. G4vGoogle Scholar.

82 Ballads And Broadsides Chiefly of the Elizabethan Period, ed. Collman, Herbert L. (1912; reprint, New York: B. Franklin, 1971), pp. 209–11Google Scholar.

83 For details on these measures, see Neale, J. E., Elizabeth I and Her Parliaments, 2 vols. (London: Cape, 1953–57), 1:177–240Google Scholar.

84 For this anti-Catholic rhetoric and its uses, see Lake, Peter, “Anti-Popery: The Structure of a Prejudice,” in Conflict in Early Stuart England, ed. Cust, Richard and Hughes, Ann (London: Longman, 1989), pp. 72–106Google Scholar; Carol Weiner, “The Beleaguered Isle: A Study of Elizabethan and Early Jacobean Anti-Catholicism,” Past and Present, no. 51 (1971): 27–62; Robin Clifton, “The Popular Fear of Catholics during the English Revolution,” Past and Present, no. 52 (1972 ): 23–55; Walter, John, Understanding Popular Violence in the English Revolution: The Colchester Plunderers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999)Google Scholar.

85 See the works cited in nn. 5 and 21 above.

86 Fletcher, Anthony and MacCulloch, Diarmaid, Tudor Rebellions, 4th ed. (London: Longman, 1997), p. 109Google Scholar.

87 For an examination of these elite grievances in their local context, see Marcombe, David, “A Rude and Heady People: The Local Community and the Rebellion of the Northern Earls,” in The Last Principality: Politics, Religion and Society in the Bishopric of Durham, 1494–1660, ed. Marcombe, D. (Nottingham: University of Nottingham, 1987), pp. 117–45Google Scholar.