POLITICAL HISTORY 



in the safer custody of the Tower of London, and Elizabeth of York, daughter of Edward IV, whom 

 he later married, thereby uniting the rival roses of Lancaster aAd York. In the spring of i486 

 Henry came in state to York, dispersing on the way a small body of insurgents who were assembling 

 round Ripon and Middleham. The citizens, who had been very urgent in protesting their love to 

 the house of Lancaster, gave Henry an even more elaborately magnificent welcome than they had 

 afforded to the late king.'* Early the next year the Earl of Lincoln and Lord Lovel took up arms 

 on behalf of a boy whom they asserted to be the Earl of Warwick, but who was in fact a son of an 

 Oxford baker, Lambert Symnell by name. With a body of Flemish troops, under Martin Schwartz, 

 they landed first in Ireland, where they were well received and obtained many recruits, and then 

 crossed, on 4 June, to the coast of Lancashire and so came to Masham in the North Riding. From 

 Masham they wrote to the mayor and citizens of York requiring admission to the city. Ever since 

 the rebellion had become known the city authorities had been in communication with the king and 

 the Earl of Northumberland. Having obtained guns from Scarborough, and extra soldiers to make up 

 for the weak state of the castle, they sent a refusal by three of the city chamberlains, who found the 

 rebels at Boroughbridge, and returned on 8 June to say that the Earl of Lincoln was marching 

 southwards, avoiding York. Lord Clifford then brought reinforcements into the city, and afterwards 

 marched out to Tadcaster, where he got the worst of a skirmish. He returned to York, and with 

 the Earl of Northumberland and 6,000 men started southwards to join the king. Hardly had they 

 gone when a force under the Scropes of Bolton and Upsall made an attack on Bootham Bar. They 

 were easily repulsed, but Northumberland turned back and re-entered the city, consequently the 

 Yorkshire forces did not take part in the battle at Stoke, near Newark, on 1 5 June, when the Earl 

 of Lincoln was slain, Lambert Symnell captured, and his adherents scattered.'' To complete his 

 triumph Henry made a progress through the north, visiting York on 30 July, Roger Layton being then 

 beheaded for treason, and the mayor and one of the aldermen knighted for their loyalty.'* However 

 loyal York may have been, the county was not very favourable to Henry, and in 1489 the levying 

 of a heavy subsidy for war in Britanny caused an outbreak in which the Earl of Northumberland 

 was slain at Thirsk, and York itself was stormed and for a while held by the insurgents.'' The 

 king, with the Earls of Surrey and Shrewsbury, came north and suppressed the rising for the time 

 being; but it broke out again in 1 49 1, and necessitated military operations by the Earl of Surrey at 

 Ackworth near Pontefract.*" 



During the early years of the 1 6th century Yorkshire played a small part in history, and there 

 is little to record beyond its connexion with the Princess Margaret, daughter of Henry VII. 

 She had been married by proxy to James IV of Scotland in 1502, and in July 1503 set out to join 

 her royal husband. On 14 July she reached Pontefract, and next day rode on to Tadcaster, where 

 the Sheriffs of York and a deputation met her and escorted her forward, her cavalcade being swollen 

 every few miles by the local nobles and their attendants until at Dringhouses she was met by the 

 great Earl of Northumberland, gorgeous in crimson velvet, gold, and jewels, with a train of three 

 hundred mounted men. The young queen, who so far had ridden pillion behind Sir David Owen, 

 now entered her state litter, and so the procession reached Micklegate Bar, where the mayor, Sir 

 John Gilliot, and the aldermen in their robes added further resplendence to the pageant which 

 wound its way slowly through the narrow streets to the minster and the archbishop's palace. Next 

 day, Sunday, Queen Margaret attended the installation of Archbishop Savage, and on Monday 

 set out for Newburgh. Ten years later, in September 1 5 1 3, the Earl of Surrey, who had brought 

 Margaret to York in this joyful fashion, brought the body of her husband, James IV, to the city 

 from the fatal field of Flodden. On 14 April 15 16 Margaret, who had married the Earl of Angus 

 in haste and was already repenting in leisure, was again a visitor at York and again met with a 

 hearty reception, and a year later, in May 15 17, on her return from her brother's court she once 

 more spent a few days in the city.*^ 



If the century opened thus quietly, the county was destined soon to be the centre of all 

 attention. The religious, social, and political upheaval brought about by the policy of Henry VIII 

 affected all England, but the northern counties in particular. The inclosure of commons and 

 conversion of arable into pasture, with consequent displacement of labour, hit the poor agricultural 

 districts of the north very hard, and this was aggravated by the ever-increasing burden of taxation. 

 The Statute of Uses,*^ which repealed the legal fiction by which the claims of primogeniture were 

 evaded, made the bequest of land impossible, and caused much irritation amongst the landowning 

 class. The divorce of Queen Katherine seemed to many persons invalid, and the declared 

 illegitimacy of Princess Mary unjust, while the proposal that the king should be empowered to 



" Raine, Historic Tottms — Tork, 92-4. 



" Davies, ' Original Doc. relating to Lambert Symnell's Rebellion,' Roy. Arch. Inst. Proc. at Tork. 



" Raine, Hist. Towns — Tork, 95. " Plumpton Correspondence (Camden Soc), 265. 



"Ibid. 95. '''^Yorks. Arch. Joum. vii, 304-29. 



"Stat, 27 Hen. VIII, cap. 10. 



411 



