Pilgrimage of Grace

Pilgrimage of Grace is in June 1536-1540 Marriage to Jane Seymour and Rebellions.

Hall's Chronicle 1536. Around Jun 1536.After this book which passed by the King’s authority with the consent of the clergy, was published, the which contained certain articles of religion necessary to be taught unto the people, and among other it specially treated of no more than three sacraments, where always the people had bene taught seven sacraments, and beside this book, certain injunctions were that time given whereby a number of their holy days was abrogated and specially such as fell in the harvest time, the keeping of which was much to the hinderance of the gathering in of corn, hay, fruit, and other such like necessary and profitable commodities.

On 20 Nov 1539 Nicholas Tempest of Holmeside (age 53) was hanged for his part in the Pilgrimage of Grace.

Around 30 May 1537 the Abbots of Fountains Abbey [Map], Marmaduke Bradley, and Gisborough Priory [Map], Robert Pursglove, were hanged, drawn and quartered at Tyburn [Map] for their role in the Pilgrimage of Grace. Their heads were displayed on London Bridge [Map].

On 02 Jun 1537 Abbot Adam Sedbar (age 35) and Prior William Wood were hanged, drawn and quartered at Tyburn [Map] for their role in the Pilgrimage of Grace. Their heads were displayed on London Bridge [Map].

2nd Millennium, 16th Century Events, June 1536-1540 Marriage to Jane Seymour and Rebellions, Pilgrimage of Grace, Lincolnshire Rising

Around Oct 1536 the North rose against religious policies of Henry VIII (age 45). Thomas Audley 1st Baron Audley Walden (age 48) condemned the traitors. John Neville 3rd Baron Latimer (age 42) was implicated. Thomas Howard 3rd Duke of Norfolk (age 63), Henry Howard (age 20) and Edmund Knyvet (age 28) undertook the suppression of the rebels.

On 04 Oct 1536 the Lincolnshire Rising began. Dr Raynes, the chancellor of the Bishop of Lincoln, who was staying nearby at Bolingbroke, after having held a session of the commissionary’s court there, was dragged from his sickbed and taken to Horncastle. Francis Aidan Gasquet writes in his book “Henry VIII and the English Monasteries”: “As the chancellor rode into the field with his captors the passions of the mob were stirred, and there occurred one of the two acts of violence, which alone in this or the subsequent Yorkshire rising, disgraced the movement! “At his coming into the field,” declares Brian Staines, “the rebels, whereof were many parsons and vicars, cried out with a loud voice, ‘Kill him, kill him.’ And upon that one William Hutchinson, of Horncastle, and William Balderstone, by the procurement of the said parsons and vicars, pulled him violently off his horse, kneeling upon his knees, and with their staves they slew him. And being dead, this deponent saith the priests continually crying, ‘Kill him, kill him,’ he also struck the said chancellor upon the arm with a staff.”

The Lincolnshire Rising was sparked off by a sermon at evensong on the 1st October at St James’s Church, Louth, and by a visitation from a registrar on 2nd October. Mary Polito, author of “Governmental Arts in Tudor England” describes how Nicholas Melton, a local shoemaker who came to be known as “Captain Cobbler”, seized the registrar, burned his papers and then forced him and the priests to swear an oath of loyalty to the rebel cause. The rebels then marched to the nunnery at Legbourne where they took the royal commissioners hostage. The nunnery had been formally suppressed a few weeks earlier.

On 07 Mar 1537 Thomas Moigne (age 27) was hanged, drawn and quartered at Lincoln, Lincolnshire [Map].

On 12 May 1537 Abbot Adam Sedbar (age 35) was captured. He was imprisoned in the Beauchamp Tower, Tower of London [Map] where his inscribed name on the wall "ADAM SEDBAR. ABBAS JOREVALL 1537" can still be seen.