Popular uprisings against the Crown

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A is Louth and B is York.

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Source A is very useful for studying the causes of the Pilgrimage of Grace because it shows the demands the rebel leaders agreed at Pontefract, and these reveal several different types of cause. Religious causes are clearest. The demands to destroy the books of Luther and Tyndale, to restore the suppressed abbeys and to reserve the 'cure of souls' to Rome show anger at Henry's break with Rome, the Act of Supremacy of 1534 and the dissolution of the smaller monasteries in 1536. The demand about Rome is especially important because it directly challenged the King's position as Supreme Head of the Church. There are also political causes: the rebels wanted Cromwell, the Lord Chancellor and Rich punished as 'subverters of the good laws', and the Lady Mary made legitimate, which shows worries about the succession. Economic and social grievances appear in the demands to repeal the Statute of Uses and enforce the laws against enclosure.

The provenance affects its usefulness. The articles were drawn up in December 1536 by the leaders, gentry and clergy, two months after the rising began, as a document to negotiate with the Duke of Norfolk. This explains why some demands reflect the interests of the gentry: the Statute of Uses mattered to landowners because it made it harder to avoid feudal dues, not to ordinary farmers. Clergy at Pontefract probably shaped the strongly religious articles. So the source shows what the leaders wanted, presented in a form for bargaining.

The source also leaves out what first brought ordinary people out in October 1536: the subsidy being collected in peacetime, rumours that church treasures would be seized and that baptisms, marriages and burials would be taxed, and the poor harvests of 1535 and 1536. Overall, Source A is very useful for showing the range of grievances and how seriously the rising challenged Henry's authority, but less useful for the motives of the commons who started it.

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The Pilgrimage of Grace was significant for the government of the north because it showed how weak royal control there was, and it led Henry VIII to bring the region more firmly under the Crown. Figure 1 shows that the risings took place across several northern counties, from Lincolnshire to Cumberland, a long way from London; York is about 300 km from the capital. In the 1530s the north was governed largely through great noble families such as the Percys, the Dacres and the Cliffords, and the King relied on them to keep order and guard the border with Scotland. The rising showed the danger of this: nobles and gentry such as Lord Darcy, Sir Robert Constable and Sir Thomas Percy joined the rebels, and Darcy handed Pontefract Castle to the pilgrims. Henry could not easily send an army so far north, which is one reason he had to negotiate.

After the rising Henry changed the way the north was governed. In 1537 he reorganised the Council of the North as a permanent royal council at York, led at first by Bishop Cuthbert Tunstall. It could hear legal cases and keep order in the King's name, and its members were royal officials who depended on Henry rather than great nobles. In the same year the Percy estates came to the Crown, weakening the most powerful northern family. Leaders of the rising were executed in northern towns such as York and Hull as a warning, and the northern monasteries were dissolved. In 1541 Henry travelled to York himself to receive the submission of the northern gentry.

These changes were significant in the long term. The Council of the North governed the region for over a century, until the Long Parliament abolished it in 1641 as one of the King's prerogative courts. The north remained religiously conservative and rose again in 1569, but that rising also failed. The Pilgrimage of Grace therefore marked a step towards stronger central control of the regions.

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Government has usually been the main factor in deciding whether protest succeeded or failed, because the state held the power either to grant change or to crush the protesters. However, the decisions governments made were often shaped by other factors, such as the strength and unity of the protest, war and public opinion.

In many cases a determined government defeated protest through deception and force. In 1381 Richard II met the rebels at Mile End and Smithfield and promised to end serfdom, but once they had gone home the charters were cancelled and rebels such as John Ball were executed. Henry VIII used the same tactics against the Pilgrimage of Grace. With perhaps 30,000 pilgrims facing the Duke of Norfolk's 8,000 men, Henry offered a pardon and a parliament at York, but after Bigod's Rising in January 1537 he executed about 200 people, including Robert Aske, and reorganised the Council of the North. In the nineteenth century the government rejected the Chartist petitions of 1839, 1842 and 1848, sent troops to the north and swore in tens of thousands of special constables in 1848. In 1926 Baldwin's government had prepared for a General Strike, using volunteers and the British Gazette, and the TUC called the strike off after nine days. In 1984-1985 Margaret Thatcher's government built up coal stocks and organised policing on a national scale, and the miners were defeated.

When governments were weak, or chose to concede, protest succeeded. King John was forced to seal Magna Carta in 1215 because most of the barons had turned against him. Charles I's lack of money after the Bishops' Wars forced him to recall Parliament in 1640 and accept the Long Parliament's reforms. Earl Grey's Whig government passed the Great Reform Act in 1832, after the Days of May and the threat to create new peers, and Peel repealed the Corn Laws in 1846. In 1918 Lloyd George's coalition gave the vote to most women over 30.

However, other factors often decided how governments acted. The organisation and unity of protesters mattered: the Anti-Corn Law League's money and organisation helped to win repeal, while divisions between moral and physical force Chartists, and the NUM's failure to hold a national ballot in 1984, weakened those campaigns. War was often decisive. The New Model Army's victory at Naseby in 1645 decided the Civil War, French help after Saratoga allowed the Americans to win independence, and women's work in the First World War made it easier for the government to grant the vote in 1918. Individuals and chance also played a part: the death of Wat Tyler at Smithfield left the rebels leaderless, and Aske's trust in Henry led him to send the pilgrims home. The economy mattered too, as prosperity in the 1850s took away much of Chartism's support.

Overall, government was usually the main factor, because only the state could grant or refuse change, and a strong, united government, such as Henry VIII's in 1537 or Thatcher's in 1985, could defeat even a large protest. But governments were not acting alone: they conceded when war, financial weakness or well-organised pressure made resistance too costly. Government decided the outcome, but other factors decided how strong the government was.