Riots and Rebels

Tudor Turmoil

Rebellion in the Reign of Henry VII

As a king who could plausibly be seen by some as a usurper, Henry Tudor, first of his dynasty, could expect to face rebellion and did so. Less than a year after he had overthrown and killed Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485, he easily quashed an abortive uprising by supporters of the defeated House of York. The following year, a young boy named Lambert Simnel, whom some pretended to believe was the Earl of Warwick, a Yorkist claimant to the throne, became the figurehead in a rebellion that was brought to an end in a battle fought near East Stoke in Nottinghamshire. Most of those Yorkist nobles who had used Simnel were killed in the battle as were thousands of their followers; Simnel was spared and was reportedly given a job as a spit-turner in the royal kitchens.

By contrast, the Yorkshire Rebellion, four years into Henry's reign, was an almost bloodless uprising. Like others to come, it was occasioned by the king's persistent attempts to raise money through additional taxation. Parliament had granted Henry a subsidy of £100,000 to help him organise a military expedition to aid his allies in Brittany who were at war with the French. Many in the north, particularly Yorkshire and Northumberland, were reluctant to contribute to the subsidy and rumours filtered south that a rebellion was brewing. The king sent Henry Percy, 4th Earl of Northumberland to collect the monies to which he felt entitled. Northumberland, together with his small entourage, was confronted by a group of protesters near Thirsk in north Yorkshire and a brawl broke out in which the earl, abandoned by his retinue, was killed on 28 April 1489. (His proved to be the only death during the course of the largely ineffectual revolt, although several of its ringleaders were later executed.) The army of rebels, led initially by a man named Robert Chamber and later by a knight called Sir John Egremont, had become several thousand strong by early May and the king decided that a display of force was needed to quell them. He marched north with a large body of troops and the rebels, unnerved by Henry's swift response, dispersed when an advance guard under the command of the Earl of Surrey arrived in York. The Yorkshire Rebellion was over before it had properly begun.

Eight years later, in the spring of 1497, Henry was concerned about the threat posed by Perkin Warbeck. Warbeck was another pretender to the throne but one who proved far more of a danger than Lambert Simnel. He claimed to be Richard, Duke of York, one of the 'Princes in the Tower', presumed murdered in the previous decade. He was being sheltered at the Scottish court of James IV and Henry was eager to raise money for an army to confront any invading force that might cross the border into England. Many of his subjects were much less eager to provide that cash via their taxes. In Cornwall in particular, resentment was high. Under the leadership of Michael An Gof, a blacksmith from the village of St Keverne, and a Bodmin lawyer and one-time MP named Thomas Flamank, thousands rose in revolt. A rebel army headed into Devon, attracting further recruits as they marched. In Somerset, they gained noble support when James Touchet, Lord Audley threw in his lot with them and, because of his rank and military experience, took over as their commander. Perhaps as many as 15,000 strong, they continued towards the capital.

A skirmish with a detachment of the king's soldiers near Guildford was just about the only time they faced any opposition as they came closer to London. After this, they skirted the city, hoping other rebels would join them, and set up camp at Blackheath. They were finally confronted by a royal army at Deptford on 17 June. The outcome was predictable. The rebel forces had been depleted by desertions on the long march from Cornwall and were heavily outnumbered by Henry VII's troops. Their hopes of a rising of Kentish men to support them, of which Flamank had been confident, had been dashed. They were soundly defeated. About a thousand Cornishmen lost their lives. Flamank and Audley were captured on the battlefield; Michael An Gof, attempting to seek sanctuary in a nearby church, was also taken. On 27 June, An Gof and Flamank were sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered but were spared this peculiarly grisly fate by order of Henry. However, after they were executed by hanging only, they were beheaded. Audley, through his privilege as a peer, was never in danger of the worst kind of death as a traitor but was also beheaded at Tower Hill the following day. The heads of all three men were displayed on London Bridge.

This first Cornish uprising had one almost immediate effect. It became the stimulus for a second rebellion. Perkin Warbeck had noted the discontent in Cornwall and chose Whitesand Bay near Land's End as the place to come ashore with just over 100 supporters on 7 September 1497. Many Cornishmen rallied to his support and he was hailed as 'Richard IV' on Bodmin Moor. With a growing army of perhaps 6,000 men, the pretender besieged Exeter but the king had already responded swiftly to news of Warbeck's advance. Forces under Lord Daubeney arrived in the West Country, ahead of Henry himself, and Warbeck realised that the game was up. He abandoned his followers and fled for the coast but was cornered in Beaulieu Abbey in Hampshire where he surrendered. After two years, during which he withdrew his claim to be the youngest of the Princes in the Tower but continued to plot against Henry, Warbeck was hanged at Tyburn on 23 November 1499.

Evil May Day 1517

The apprentices of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century London were famous for their propensity for rioting. One of the most notorious examples of their fondness for violent disorder has come to be known as Evil May Day. The early part of Henry VIII's reign was marked by economic woes and fears of religious heresy. Although only two per cent of London's population was foreign-born, these 'aliens', as contemporaries often called them, were blamed for problems which were none of their making. In April 1517, in words echoed through centuries of xenophobic prejudice, a preacher at St Paul's Cross stirred up trouble by accusing foreign immigrants of taking English jobs and eating 'the bread from poor fatherless children'. True Englishmen, he claimed, should not only 'cherish and defend themselves' but 'hurt and grieve aliens'. A few weeks later, some Londoners chose to do exactly that. May Day was usually a day of celebration and drunken revelry. This year, it became a day of violence and rioting. More than a thousand apprentices and other young men gathered in Cheapside. Led by a man called John Lincoln, they proceeded to roam through the city's streets, attacking and burning houses and workshops belonging to traders from Flanders, Italy, France and the Baltic. An attempt to placate the mob by Thomas More, then one of two undersheriffs in the city, was unsuccessful. It was only when soldiers were deployed that order was restored and the rioting came to an end in the early hours of the following morning.

Several hundred prisoners were taken. The wheels of what was seen as justice turned more swiftly in the sixteenth century than later. Thirteen rioters were convicted of treason and executed on 4 May. Three days later, John Lincoln was hanged, drawn and quartered.

Other prisoners were brought before the king, Henry VIII, at Westminster Hall where Catherine of Aragon and Thomas Wolsey successfully pleaded for mercy for them. Henry granted them their lives whereupon, according to a contemporary account, they 'took the halters from their necks and danced and sang'.

The Lincolnshire Rising and the Pilgrimage of Grace 1536

Henry VIII's break with Rome, the dissolution of the lesser monasteries and the policies of Thomas Cromwell were by no means universally popular. In certain areas of the country, particularly the north of England and the West Country, they were often deeply resented.

The foundations of people's centuries-old religious beliefs were being slowly undermined; buildings that had been integral parts of the landscape and local life were being demolished. These factors combined with other economic and political grievances to drive rebellion.

Lincolnshire was one of the counties in which feelings against the religious reforms ran highest and it was there that the first stirrings of revolt took place. In Louth, on 1 October 1536, the vicar, Thomas Kendall, gave a sermon in St James Church, attacking the new religion propounded by the king and his ministers. Kendall also poured scorn on Cromwell's commissioners who were in Lincolnshire at the time, assessing its wealth and confiscating the assets of many of its churches and religious foundations. Nicholas Melton, a shoemaker known as 'Captain Cobbler' and a close associate of Kendall, became the leader of the rising which rapidly spread to neighbouring Lincolnshire towns such as Caistor and Market Rasen. A mob of many thousands then marched on Lincoln where they occupied the cathedral and, for a few heady days, controlled the city. It could not last. With Henry threatening dire consequences if it did and troops under the command of the Duke of Suffolk already en route to suppress it, the rebels began to drift away. By the middle of the month, most of them had...