T
HE
D
ISSOLUTION OF THE
M
ONASTERIES
Before his fall and death in 1530, Cardinal Wolsey had already begun a series of reforms of monasteries, much of which was carried out by his assistant, Cromwell. They had the authority of Parliament to suppress houses with fewer than 12 monks and transfer their assets to royal colleges at Windsor and Cambridge, and to unite others with larger institutions; no houses were suppressed ‘where God was well served’, only those ‘where most vice, mischief and abomination of living was used’. But when Henry failed to receive a satisfactory answer from Pope Clement in regards to the dissolution of his marriage to Katherine, he declared himself Supreme Head of the Church of England, and used his newly created Reformation Parliament to pass a series of laws that fundamentally changed the nature of Parliament and the English government. In 1534, Cromwell was appointed to undertake an inventory of the income of every ecclesiastical estate of England and Wales, including the monasteries, to assess their value. After all, these properties now belonged to the English crown, not to Rome. Henry had ushered in the English Reformation and every monastery must submit to the king’s authority.
T
HE
P
ILGRIMAGE OF
G
RACE
The pace of religious change in the early years of the Reformation was too great for many in various areas of the country and not everyone was ready to embrace the break with Rome. Civic unrest morphed into civic insurrection. The autumn of 1536 saw violent religious riots against the king’s Dissolution of the Monasteries in York and Lincolnshire. Previous rebellions had come to nothing, but this one would quickly become an uprising that almost brought the Tudor dynasty to its knees.
The people of the North had long felt neglected and overlooked by a king who had never once visited its counties. Religious change, coupled with a bad harvest and the ever-impending threat of higher taxes, enraged the common people, who blamed Cromwell for leading the country to ruin. Henry ordered the dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk and George Talbot, the Earl of Shrewsbury, to muster their loyal troops to suppress any possible insurrection. Cromwell wrote a letter to Thomas Boleyn, well respected and honoured in his county of Kent, to muster troops, which he did despite the letter being delayed by almost a week, giving him three days to comply. It speaks volumes that Thomas managed to gather 300 men and march to London.
Suffolk managed to contain the situation in Lincolnshire but in Yorkshire the rebels had rallied around a charismatic leader named Robert Aske, a well-connected lawyer who, like Cromwell, was a member of Gray’s Inn. Aske was able to marshal a rabble into a single united force which swelled as it moved south to York and Pontefract. He was careful in presenting the rebellion as a sacred mission and crafted their demands: Henry was to halt his suppression of the monasteries and restore what had been destroyed; Mary was to be reinstated as heir (without any male progeny Henry had no legal succession – he had disinherited them all); the architects of Henry’s religious programme, namely Cromwell and Audley, were to be executed, or at the very least exiled; and Cranmer and the other evangelical bishops were to be burned as heretics.
In The Mirror and the Light, Jane Seymour, who is often coached by Cromwell and her brothers, startles everyone by publicly beseeching her husband to allow his people to return to the old ways. We know that on numerous occasions Jane did plead the case for the rebels. Henry did not tolerate her interference and she was angrily rebuffed and warned not to meddle in royal affairs; however, in Mantel’s version, Henry indicates that he will listen to her complaints when she bears him a son.
Henry was conciliatory toward Aske, and invited him to Greenwich for Christmas, promising safe conduct. Henry used Jane as a beacon for the rebels, who approved of her conservative piety, and promised that she would be crowned in York. Aske left court satisfied, with a message of peace and a promise from Henry that he would open a parliament in the North to decide any further religious matters. However, within weeks a small revolt sprang up, and although it had nothing to do with Aske, it gave Henry a much-needed excuse to renege on his promises and arrest Aske together with dozens of rebels. In May 1537, eleven people, including Aske, were tried and later executed.
Cromwell had taken the rebellion seriously and understood the ramifications had fortunes been different. Now more than ever he was determined to press on with religious change.
The king’s vicious handling of the Pilgrimage of Grace and its leaders did not sit well with the people, who recalled their king being more benevolent in his youth. Cromwell remained deeply unpopular outside London but his countless duties kept him occupied. Mantel’s Cromwell hears of the rebels’ last days before they are executed, cursing Thomas Cromwell’s name. He warns Mary not to speak in their defence, and notes that Jane has likely been warned by her brother.
Peace became the theme of the new year. The rebellions had encouraged further religious reform, and in February 1537, Cromwell convened a vicegerential synod – a council of the church. His opening speech called for a calm debate of theological issues, a timely plea considering the very first item on the agenda concerned the sacrament, a sore point between Catholics and reformers. All religious changes bore the stamp of Cromwell and his colleagues, Cranmer and Edward Fox, and Henry seemed to approve of his Privy Seal’s reforms, but Cromwell’s political authority had taken a blow following the
