ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY 



anxiety in this year, 1535, had a basis of religious discontent. They appear 

 to have been purely secular.'" 



But when towards the end of this year the visitation of the monasteries 

 began a very different popular feeling was at once aroused. As far as Lanca- 

 shire is concerned the Pilgrimage of Grace is of importance only as indicative 

 of the discontent at the threatened destruction of the monasteries. At first 

 it was supposed that the forces in Lancashire would be available to put down 

 the rebels in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire, and on 10 October, 1536, the 

 king warned the earl of Derby to get his men together with this object. 

 But almost immediately it was found that the commons in the West Riding 

 and Lancashire were up. On the day named the commons of the north of 

 Lancashire and of the West Riding forcibly reinstated the abbot and twenty- 

 one monks in the Yorkshire abbey of Sawley, four miles from Whalley. 

 Accordingly, on the twentieth of the same month, the king ordered the earl 

 of Derby to go against the Lancashire rebels because of their ' insurrection 

 and assembly lately attempted in the borders of Lancashire specially about 

 the abbey of Sawley.' On the 28th the earl assembled a' force of nearly 

 8,000 men at Preston, with the object of forestalling the rebels and of 

 occupying Whalley Abbey. The commons received an accession of strength 

 from the north. In Cartmel they had against his will reinstated the prior 

 in the priory there ; and another body from Kendal had joined hands 

 with the commons in the neighbourhood of Sawley. Some time between 

 the 28 and 30 October the earl sent the rebels word to disperse to their 

 homes or else to meet him in battle on Bentham Moor, the place where they 

 were accustomed to muster. The rebels, led by John Atkinson, captain of 

 the commoners in Kendal, replied that they had a pilgrimage to do for the 

 commonwealth which they would accomplish or jeopard their lives in that 

 quarrel, and further that they would not fight with him unless he interrupted 

 them of their pilgrimage. Before any further action the earl's hand was 

 stayed by the receipt of word from the earl of Shrewsbury announcing 

 that the Yorkshire rebels had dispersed, and requiring him to disband 

 his men. On their side too the rebel leaders had dispatched word to 

 the commons of Cumberland, Westmorland, Kendal, the side of Lanca- 

 shire and Craven and all others of the north to leave besieging of houses 

 and disperse homewards. 



Evidently this command was not received in Lancashire in time to 

 prevent the rebels making their attack on Whalley Abbey. After appointing 

 a rendezvous at Stoke Green near Hawkshead kirk on the 28th, and another 

 on Clitheroe Moor apparently on the 30th, 



the commons of the borders of Yorkshire near to Sawley with some of the borders of 

 Lancashire near to theym assembled theym together and with force then unknowen to me 

 [the earl of Derby] sodenly toke the said abbey of Whalley. 



Immediately afterwards, however, hearing of the general disbandment, the 

 rebels quietly dispersed. The proclamation of a general pardon for the town 

 of Lancaster and northwards in Lancashire, with the exception of four ring- 

 leaders of Tynedale, Ribblesdale, the borders of Lancashire and Kendal, 

 was issued on 2 November, and the trouble was practically over. For 



'" L. and P. Hen. VIII, viii, 863, 1008, 1030, 1046, 1108. 



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