POLITICAL HISTORY 



the Scottish king did not come outh the royal progress may rather be regarded as the last act 

 in the drama of the Pilgrimage of Grace. On his entry into Yorkshire on 17 August the kmg 

 was met by some four or five thousand of the gentry and yeomen of the county. Those who had 

 been loyal during the late rising were graciously welcomed by Henry, but the remainder had to 

 kneel while Sir Robert Bowes recited on their behalf a more than humble acknowledgement of 

 their past offences and petition for forgiveness. Besides written copies of this humdiating 

 submission the king was presented with a gift of ;^900.*^ After a week spent in hunting at Hatfield 

 the court moved on 23 August to Pontefract ; during the journey, on the high ground of Barnsdale, 

 not far north of the position occupied by the insurgents during the negotiations at Doncaster, the 

 archbishop and three hundred clergy made their humble submission to the king and offered him 

 ;£6oo. At Pontefract the court remained till 3 September, going afterwards to Cawood, Wressell, 

 Leconfield and, on 10 September, to Hull, and two days later to Sir Ralph Ellerker's house at 

 Risby. Henry still seems to have expected King James, as he was fitting up with great splendour 

 a lodging in one of the suppressed religious houses at York, but at last he found that his guest was 

 not coming, and on 1 8 September *' he entered the city, the corporation in penitential garb making 

 a fulsome submission and a gift of a silver gilt cup containing ;^I00, and also giving another cup 

 with £4.0 to the queen, Katherine Howard, who had during the stay at Pontefract been carrying 

 on that illicit connexion with Dereham and Culpeper which was to bring her to the scaffold 

 before the end of the year. On 26 September the king left York, and after visiting Holme, 

 which had formerly belonged to Sir Robert Constable, and Leconfield arrived at Hull on 

 I October, apparently just after John Johnson had been elected mayor. In deference, it would 

 seem, to the royal wishes Johnson discovered good reasons for resigning office in favour of Sir John 

 EUand. Sir John and the king at once drew up plans for the better fortification of the town of 

 Hull, and on 6 October Henry crossed over into Lincolnshire. But although Henry paid no more 

 visits to Yorkshire he left behind him a representative in the person of the president of the Council 

 of the North, a council appointed in 1537 ^°^ *^^ control of the Scottish border and of England 

 generally north of the Humber, whose chief centre was at York. 



Yorkshire, with its independent traditions, continued to contribute its share to most outbreaks 

 against the Government. During the general disturbances of 1549, which centred round the 

 eastern counties, some 3,000 men rose in the neighbourhood of Scarborough under William Dale, 

 parish clerk of Seamer, William Ambler, and John Stevenson. The Lord President of the North, 

 however, took prompt measures ; the assembly dispersed, and the leaders were captured and executed 

 at York.*' The next rising in the county was still more local and inefficient. In April 1557 

 Thomas Stafford, who had been implicated in Wyatt's rebellion and had fled abroad, landed at 

 Scarborough with a small force and seized the castle. Being a son of Lord Stafford he was of royal 

 descent,'^ and on this ground seems to have constituted himself ' protector ' of the English, basing 

 his action on opposition to the Spanish marriage. The Earl of Westmorland at once raised the 

 county levies and captured the castle, apparently without a shot being fired ; Stafford and five of his 

 accomplices were executed in London, and some thirty other persons involved in the attempt 

 suffered death at York and in various towns of the East Riding.'" 



The next rebellion was on a far larger and more dangerous scale.'^ During the time that 

 Mary Queen of Scots was detained at Lord Scrope's castle of Bolton in 1568 a scheme for her 

 marriage to the Duke of Norfolk had been mooted. Shortly after this, however, the duke had been 

 sent for to London and confined in the Tower. In the autumn of 1569 there were rumours that 

 the Earls of Northumberland and Westmorland were preparing to rise. As a matter of fact they 

 had held a meeting at Topcliffe, Northumberland's house, to discuss means for rescuing Mary 

 Stuart from Tutbury where she was now confined, but as they were plotting a message arrived 

 from the Duke of Norfolk begging them not to proceed further in the matter or he would lose his 

 head. The earls, who seem to have entered the conspiracy half-heartedly, wished to give up the 

 scheme, but some of the gentry who were the real movers, especially the Nortons of Norton 

 Conyers, Thomas Markenfeld and John Swinburne, vowed that they would go on, and if they were 

 not to move in the matter of the marriage of Mary and Norfolk then they would rise for religion. 

 The question then arose whether such a course would have the sanction of the Church, and over 

 this point the conference broke up without coming to any decision. Meanwhile the Earl of Sussex, 

 Lord President of the North, had had an interview with the earls in October and had come to the 

 conclusion that they were loyal. But when in November they made various excuses for not obeying 



»« L. and P. Hen. VIII, xvi, 1 130. 



" Ibid. 1 1 83, 1208. Hunter gives the date of entry to York as 15 September, and the same date is 

 given by Raine, Hist. Towns — York, 103. 



^ Whellan, Hist, of York, i, 194. »' Diet. Nat. Biog. 



™ Stowe, Jnnals (ed. 163 1), 630 ; Machyn, Diary (Camd. See), 135-7. 

 ^,,^ " See Sir C. Sharpe, Mem. of the Rebellion of i^6<) ; Cal. S.P. Dom. Add. 1566-79. 



415 



