History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. III

March. Seventy-four persons are executed.

The command was obeyed. Before the ordinary course of law was restored, seventy-four persons, laity and clergy, were hanged in various towns in Westmoreland and Cumberland.²³⁵ The severity was not excessive, but it was sufficient to produce the desired result. The rebellion was finished. The flame was trampled out, and a touch of human pathos hangs over the close. I find among the records a brief entry that “the bodies were cut down and buried by certain women.”²³⁶ Hallam and several of his followers were executed at Hull. Bigod, Lumley, and six others were sent to London, to await their trial with the Lincolnshire prisoners who were still in the Tower.

Reginald Pole arrives in France.

Francis refuses to receive him.

The turn of events promised ill for Reginald Pole, and the nature of his mission was by this time known in England. The fame had spread of the consecrated sword; and James had given fresh umbrage and caused additional suspicion by having married in the midst of the late events the Princess Magdalen of France, without consulting his uncle. The disturbances had been checked opportunely; but great as the danger was known to have been, a further peril had been on the rise to increase its volume. Pole had professed a desire for a reconciliation. The reconciliation, as Pole understood the word, was to be accomplished by the success of the rebellion which he was hastening to assist by all methods, natural and supernatural; and his affected surprise could scarcely have been genuine when he found himself proclaimed a traitor. Henry, by his success in England, had meantime recovered the judicious respect of foreign sovereigns. The French ambassador had promised the Pope a favourable reception for his legate at Paris. The legate, on his arrival at Lyons, met his first disappointment in the reports which reached him from his friends at home: approaching the French capital, he received a second and a worse, in an intimation from Francis that he would not be admitted to his presence; that unless he desired to find himself in the custody of his own government he must leave the kingdom immediately. In the treaties between France and England, a mutual promise to give no protection to political offenders was a prominent article. Henry had required Francis to observe his obligations, and they could only be evaded by Pole’s instant disappearance.

He retreats to Cambray,

And is escorted by the regent to Liège.

Arrest of Aske, Lord Darcy, and Sir Robert Constable.

Treason of Sir John and Lady Bulmer.

In the cruel blight of his hopes the legate had only to comply. He hastened to Cambray, and sending a courier with the Pope’s letter to the Regent of the Netherlands, he avenged himself by childish complaints, which he poured out to Cromwell.²³⁷ The King of France had been insulted – the sacred privileges of an ambassador had been violated by the monstrous demand for his surrender. He pretended to be ignorant that treaties are made to be observed – and that foreign courts can confer no sacred privilege on the subjects of other countries, as towards their own governments. He reached Cambray in the beginning of April, but he found in the Netherlands a scarcely more cordial reception than in France. He remained in that town under honourable but uneasy restraint till the end of May, when he was obliged to inform the Pope²³⁸ that the regent was in so great awe and fear of “that adversary,” the King of England, that she no more dared to receive him than Francis; that he lived in daily fear of being taken prisoner and sent to London, and the utmost favour on which she could venture was to send him under an escort to Liège. To Liège, therefore, he was obliged to retire, and there for the present the bishop’s hospitality allowed him to remain. If his journey had been attended with no other consequences but his own mortification it would scarcely have required to be noticed. Unhappily it was followed by, and probably it occasioned, the destruction of more than one brave man for whom we could have desired a better fate. While at Liège, and even from his entry into France, it is evident, from his letters to the Pope,²³⁹ that he maintained an active correspondence with England. Whether intercepted despatches found their way into the hands of Cromwell, or whether his presence in the neighbourhood invited suspicion, and suspicion led to discovery, is uncertain; we find only that simultaneously with Pole’s arrival at Cambray, Robert Aske, Lord Darcy, and Sir Robert Constable were arrested and taken to the Tower. On mid-Lent Sunday Aske had sent out his letters to “the captains” of various districts, and meetings had been held in consequence.²⁴⁰ I am unable to ascertain either the objects or the results of these meetings; but “to summon the king’s lieges” for any object after the restoration of quiet was an act of the highest imprudence. In Easter week there was an obscure insurrection in Cleveland. Sir John and Lady Bulmer (or Margaret Cheyne, as she is termed in her indictment) had been invited to London. Lady Bulmer was proved to have said that she would as soon be torn in pieces as go to London unless the Duke of Norfolk’s and Sir Ralph Ellerkar’s heads were off, and then she might go where she would at the head of the commons. Her chaplain confessed to a plot between the lady, her husband, and other persons, to seize and carry off Norfolk to Wilton Castle;²⁴¹ but in the evidence which I have discovered there is nothing to implicate either Aske or his two friends in this project.

The rule of judgment in the government necessarily harsh.

That after the part which the latter had played they should have been jealously watched, that actions of doubtful bearing should be construed to their disfavour, was no more than they had a right to expect. Narrow interpretations of conduct, if severe, are inevitable with men who in perilous times thrust themselves into revolutionary prominence. To estimate their treatment fairly, we must ascertain, if possible, from the fragments of surviving informations against them, whether they really showed symptoms of fresh treasonable intent, or whether they were the victims of the irritation created by Pole’s mission, and were less punished for their guilt than because they were dangerous and powerful. The government insisted that they had clear proof of treason;²⁴² yet the word “treason” as certainly bore a more general meaning in Cromwell’s estimate than in the estimate of those who continued to regard the first pilgrimage as good service to the state. To the government it was a crime to be expiated by active resistance of all similar attempts, by absolute renunciation of its articles; and if, in contrast to the great body of the northern gentlemen, a few possessed of wide influence continued to maintain that they had done well, if they continued to encourage the people to expect that their petitions would be granted, if they discouraged a renewal of the commotions avowedly because they would injure the cause, it is certain that by a government surrounded by conspiracy, and emerging with difficulty out of an arduous position, yet determined to persevere in the policy which had created the danger, such men would be regarded with grave suspicion, even if compromised by no further overt acts of disloyalty.

To what extent were Aske, Darcy, and Constable compromised?

The offences which were proved against them.

But it can scarcely be said that they were wholly uncompromised. Through the months of February and March a series of evidence shows Aske, Darcy, Sir Robert Constable, a gentleman named Levening, and several others, holding aloof as an isolated group, in close and continued intercourse, yet after Bigod’s capture taking no part in the pacification of the country. These men repeatedly, in public and private, assured the people that the Doncaster articles must be conceded. They were in possession of information respecting the risings in Westmoreland and Cleveland, and yet gave no information to the government. In an intercepted letter to Lord Darcy, Aske spoke of himself as having accomplished a great enterprise, – “as having played his part, and all England should perceive it.”²⁴³ It was proved that Darcy, when commanded in January to furnish Pomfret with stores, had repeated his former neglect, – that he and Aske were still in secret possession of cannon belonging to the government, which they had appropriated in the rebellion, and had not restored, – that Aske had interfered with the authorities at Hull to prevent the punishment of traitors taken in arms,²⁴⁴– that Constable, in a letter to Bigod, told him that he had chosen a wrong time of the year, that he ought to have waited till the spring,²⁴⁵– that Lord Darcy had been heard to say that it was better to rule than be ruled, – “and that where before they had had but two sovereign crowns they would now have four.”²⁴⁶

The lightest of these charges were symptoms of an animus²⁴⁷ which the crown prosecutors would regard as treasonable. The secretion of the artillery and Aske’s conduct at Hull would ensure a condemnation where the judges were so anxious to condemn.

Trials of the Lincolnshire prisoners.

A hundred had been surrendered; nineteen were executed.

The materials for the prosecution were complete. It remained to proceed with the trials. But I must first mention the fate of the prisoners from Lincolnshire, who had been already disposed of. In their case there was not the complication of a pardon. They had been given up hot-handed by their confederates, as the principal instigators of the rebellion. More than a hundred seem to have been sent originally to the Tower. Upwards of half of these were liberated after a short imprisonment. On the 6th of March Sir William Parr, with a special commission, sat at Lincoln, to try the Abbot of Kirkstead, with thirty of the remainder. The Lincoln jury regarded the prisoners favourably; Thomas Moigne, one or the latter, spoke in his defence for three hours so skilfully, according to Sir William Parr’s report, that “but for the diligence of the king’s serjeant,” he and all the rest would have been acquitted. Ultimately the crown secured their verdict: the abbot, Moigne, and another were hanged on the following day at Lincoln, and four others a day or two later at Louth and Horncastle.²⁴⁸ The commission petitioned for the pardon of the rest. After a delay of a few weeks the king consented, and they were dismissed.²⁴⁹

Trial of Lord Hussey.

Twelve more, the Abbot of Barlings, one of his monks, and others who had been concerned in the murder of the chancellor, were then brought to the bar in the Guildhall. They had no claim to mercy; and they found none. They were hung on gibbets, at various towns, in their own county, as signs and warnings. Lord Hussey was tried by the peers. He was guilty obviously of having fled from a post which he was bound to defend. He had obstructed good subjects, who would have done their duty, had he allowed them; and he had held communication with the rebels. His indictment²⁵⁰ charges him with acts of more direct complicity, the evidence of which I have not discovered. But wherever a comparison has been possible, I have found the articles of accusation in so strict accordance with the depositions of witnesses, that the absent link may be presumed to have existed. The construction may be violent; the fact is always true. He, too, was found guilty, and executed.²⁵¹

With Lord Hussey the Lincolnshire list was closed. Out of fifty or sixty thousand persons who had been in armed rebellion, the government was satisfied with the punishment of twenty. The mercy was perhaps in part dictated by prudence.

May. The second trials.

The government find a difficulty in obtaining the verdicts. One of the prisoners is acquitted. A list of the grand jury is sent to London.

The turn of the northern men came next. There were three sections of them: – Sir Francis Bigod, George Lumley, and those who had risen in January in the East Riding; Sir Thomas Percy, the Abbot of Fountains, the Abbot of Jervaulx, Sir John and Lady Bulmer, Sir Ralph Bulmer, and Sir Stephen Hamarton, who had been concerned in the separate commotions since suppressed by the Duke of Norfolk; and, finally, Aske, Constable, and Lord Darcy, with their adherents. In this instance the proceedings were less simple than in the former, and in some respects unusual. The inferior offenders were first tried at York. The indictments were sent in to the grand jury; and in the important case of Levening, the special confederate of Aske and Darcy, whose guilt was identical with theirs, no bill was found. The king, in high displeasure, required Norfolk to take some severe notice of this obstruction of justice. Norfolk remonstrated; and was requested, in sharper language, to send up a list of the jurors,²⁵² and unravel, if possible, the cause of the acquittal. The names were forwarded. The panel was composed of fifty gentlemen, relatives, most of them, of one or other of the accused persons, and many among whom had formed part of the insurgent council at Pomfret.²⁵³ Levening’s escape was explained; and yet it could not be remedied. The crown was forced to continue its prosecutions, apparently with the same difficulty, and under the same uncertainty of the issue. When the trials of the higher offenders were opened in London, true bills had first to be found against them in their own counties; and the foremen of the two grand juries (for the fifty were divided into two bodies of twenty-five each) were Sir James Strangways and Sir Christopher Danby, noted, both of them, on the list which was forwarded to the crown, as relatives of Lord Darcy, Sir Francis Bigod, and Sir John Bulmer.²⁵⁴

May 9. True bills found against Darcy and fifteen others.

On the 9th of May, however, either through intimidation or the force of evidence, the sixteen prisoners who were in the Tower, Lord Darcy, Robert Aske, Sir Robert Constable, and thirteen more, were delivered over for their trials. In the six preceding weeks they had been cross-examined again and again. Of the many strange scenes which must have taken place on these occasions, one picture, but a striking one, is all which I have found. It occurred at the house of the lord chancellor, in the presence of the Privy Council and a crowded audience. Darcy was the subject of examination. Careless of life, and with the prophetic insight of dying men, he turned, when pressed with questions, to the lord privy seal: —

Lord Darcy prophesies the death of Cromwell.

“Cromwell,” he said, “it is thou that art the very special and chief causer of all this rebellion and mischief, and art likewise causer of the apprehension of us that be – ,²⁵⁵ and dost daily earnestly travel to bring us to our ends, and to strike off our heads. I trust that ere thou die, though thou wouldest procure all the noblemen’s heads within the realm to be stricken off, yet shall there one head remain that shall strike off thy head.”²⁵⁶

Aske’s servant dies for sorrow.

Of Aske, too, we catch glimpses which show that he was something more than a remarkable insurgent leader: a short entry tells us that, six or seven days after his arrest, “his servant, Robert Wall (let his name be remembered), did cast himself upon his bed and cried, ‘Oh, my master! Oh, my master! they will draw him, and hang him and quarter him;’ and therewith he did die for sorrow.”²⁵⁷ Aske had lost a friend when friends were needed. In a letter which he wrote to Cromwell, he said that he had been sent up in haste without clothes or money, that no one of his relations would help him, and that unless the king would be his good and gracious lord, he knew not how he would live.²⁵⁸ His confessions during his imprisonment were free and ample. He asked for his life, yet with a dignity which would stoop to no falsehood, and pretend to no repentance beyond a general regret that he should have offended the king. Then, as throughout, he showed himself a brave, simple, noble-minded man.

May 16. Trials and sentences in Westminster Hall.

But it was in vain; and fate was hungry for its victims. The bills being found, Darcy was arraigned before twenty-two peers, and was condemned, Cromwell undertaking to intercede for his life.²⁵⁹ The intercession, if made, was not effectual. The fifteen commoners, on the same day, were tried before a special commission in Westminster Hall. Percy, Hamarton, Sir John and Lady Bulmer pleaded guilty. The prosecution against Sir Ralph Bulmer was dropped: a verdict was given without difficulty against Aske, Constable, Bigod, Lumley, and seven more. Sixteen knights, nobles, and gentlemen, who a few months before were dictating terms to the Duke of Norfolk, and threatening to turn the tide of the Reformation, were condemned criminals waiting for death.

The executions were delayed from a doubt whether London or York should be the scene of the closing tragedy. There remain some fragments written by Darcy and Aske in the interval after their sentence. Darcy must have been nearly eighty years old; but neither the matter nor the broad, large, powerful handwriting of the following words show signs of agitation: —

“After judgment given, the petition of Thomas Lord Darcy to the King’s Grace, by my Lord Privy Seal.

Lord Darcy’s last petition.

“First to have confession; and at a mass to receive my Maker, that I may depart like a Christian man out of this vale of misery.

“Second, that incontinent after my death my whole body may be buried with my late wife, the Lady Neville, in the Freers at Greenwich.

“Third, that the straitness of my judgment may be mitigated after the king’s mercy and pleasure.

“Fourth, that my debts may be paid according to a schedule enclosed.”²⁶⁰

Last petition of Aske.

Aske, in a few lines addressed also to Cromwell, spoke of his debts, and begged that some provision might be made for his family. “They,” he said, “never offended the King’s Grace, nor were with me in council in no act during all this time, but fled into woods and houses. Good my Lord, extend your pity herein. And I most humbly ask the King’s Highness, and all his council and lords, lowly forgiveness for any mine offences or words attempted or said against his Grace or any of them any time of my life; and that his Grace would save my life, if it be his pleasure, to be his bedesman – or else – to let me be full dead or that I be dismembered, that I may piously give my spirit to God without more pain; and that I desire for the honour of God and for charity.”²⁶¹

Provision made for the families of the sufferers.

Properties not forfeited.

The requests relating to the manner of the executions, it is satisfactory to find, were granted; and not only in the case of the two petitioners, but so far as I can learn in that of all the other sufferers. Wherever the scaffold becomes visible, the rope and the axe are the sole discernible implements of death. With respect to the other petition, I find among loose memoranda of Cromwell an entry “for a book to be made of the wives and poor children of such as have suffered, to the intent his Grace may extend his mercy to them for their livings as to his Highness shall be thought convenient, and for payment of their debts.”²⁶² The “mercy” seems to have been liberal. The forfeited properties, on the whole, were allowed to descend without diminution, in their natural order.²⁶³

June 20. Eight gentlemen executed at Tyburn.

Lady Bulmer is burnt, and the world is little disturbed.

The king relinquishes his intention of holding a parliament in Yorkshire.

After some discussion it was settled that Darcy should suffer on Tower Hill; and he was executed on the 20th of June. Sir Thomas Percy, Bigod, the Abbots of Fountains and Jervaulx, Hamarton, Sir John Bulmer, young Lumley, and Nicholas Tempest were hanged at Tyburn; four who had been tried with them and condemned were pardoned. Lady Bulmer died the dreadful death awarded by the English law to female treason.²⁶⁴ “On the Friday in Whitsun week,” wrote a town correspondent of Sir Henry Saville, “the wife of Sir John Bulmer was drawn without Newgate to Smithfield and there burned:” and the world went its light way, thinking no more of Lady Bulmer than if she had been a mere Protestant heretic: the same letter urged Saville to hasten to London for the pleasures of the season, suggesting that he might obtain some share in the confiscated estates, of which the king would be soon disposing.²⁶⁵ Aske and Sir Robert Constable were to be sent down to Yorkshire. The king had been compelled, by the succession of fresh disorders the punishments which had followed, to relinquish his intention of holding a summer parliament there. The renewed disturbances had released him from his promise, and the discussion which would inevitably have been opened, would have been alike irritating and useless. He had thought subsequently of going to York on progress, and of making his presence the occasion of an amnesty; the condition of the Continent, however, the large armies, French and Imperial, which were in the field in the neighbourhood of Calais, the possibility or the alarm that the Pope might succeed in reconciling and directing them upon England, and still more the pregnancy of the queen and the danger of some anxiety which might cause the loss of the child, combined to make so distant a journey undesirable. These at least were the reasons which he alleged to the world. His chief ground, however, as he stated in private, was the increasing infirmity of his own health and the inhibition of his physician.²⁶⁶ He resolved, therefore, that Norfolk, and not himself, should “knit up the tragedy,” by conducting the last executions on the scene of the rebellion, and after they were over, by proclaiming a final and general pardon.

July. Aske and Constable are sent down to Yorkshire.

Constable is executed at Hull.

At the beginning of July the two remaining prisoners were placed in the custody of Sir Thomas Wentworth. They were paraded in formal state through the eastern counties, and at each town a few words of warning were addressed on the occasion to the people. Wentworth brought them thus to Lincoln, where they were delivered over to the Duke of Norfolk. Constable suffered first. He was taken to Hull,²⁶⁷ and there hanged in chains.²⁶⁸ Before his death he said that, although he had declared on his examination that he had revealed everything of importance which he knew, yet he had concealed some matter connected with Lord Darcy for fear of doing him an injury. “He was in doubt whether he had offended God in receiving the sacrament in such manner, concealing the truth upon a good purpose.”²⁶⁹ This secret, whatever it was, he carried with him from the world. His own offences he admitted freely, protesting, however, that he had added nothing to them since the pardon.

A fuller account remains of the end of Aske. He, too, like Constable, had some mystery on his conscience which he would not reveal. In a conversation with his confessor he alluded to Darcy’s connexion with the Spanish ambassador; he spoke of the intention of sending for help to Flanders, and acknowledged his treason, while he shrunk from the name of traitor. He complained that Cromwell had several times promised him his life if he would make a full confession, and once he said he had a token of pardon from the king; but his bearing was quiet and brave, and if he believed himself hardly dealt with, he said so only in private to a single person.

Aske is drawn upon a hurdle through the streets of York,

And is hanged.

York was chosen as his place of execution. He was drawn through the streets upon a hurdle, to be hanged afterwards from the top of a tower. On his way he told the people that he had grievously offended God, the king, and the world. God he had offended in breaking his commandments many ways; the King’s Majesty he had greatly offended in breaking his laws, to which every subject was bound; and the world he had offended, “for so much as he was the occasion that many a one had lost their lives, lands, and goods.” At the scaffold he begged the people to pray for him, “and divers times asking the King’s Highness’ forgiveness, the lord chancellor, the Lord of Norfolk, the lord privy seal, the Lord of Sussex, and all the world, after certain orisons he commended his soul to God.”²⁷⁰

So we take leave of Robert Aske, closing his brief greatness with a felon’s death – an unhappy ending! Yet, as we look back now, at a distance of three centuries, when the noble and the base, the conquerors and the conquered, have been all long dead together, when nothing remains of any of them but the work, worthy or unworthy, which they achieved, and the few years which weak false hearts could purchase by denying their faith and truckling to the time,²⁷¹ appear in the retrospect in their proper insignificance, a man who risked and lost his life for a cause which he believed a just one, though he was mistaken in so believing it, is not among those whose fate deserves the most compassion, or whose career is least to be envied.

The insurrection had sunk down into rest; but it had not been wholly in vain. So far as it was just it had prevailed; and happy were they whose work was sifted for them, who were permitted to accomplish so much only of their intentions as had been wisely formed. If the reins of England had been seized by Aske and Darcy, their signal beacons of insurrection would have become blazing martyr-piles, shining dreadfully through all after-ages; and their names would have come down to posterity swathed in such epithets as cling, and will cling, for ever to the Gardiners and the Alvas.

The noble Catholics, and the ignoble. Reginald Pole at Liège.

He will weave the broken web for a third effort.

He believes that Henry desires to kill him.

And is recalled by the Pope.

While the noble Catholics were braving danger in England, Reginald Pole sate at safe distance on his Liège watch-tower, scenting the air for the expected battle-field; and at length, hungry and disappointed, turning sullenly away and preparing for flight. He had clung to hope till the last moment with desperate tenacity. He had laboured to inspire his friends in Italy with his own confidence. “The leaders of the faithful,” he wrote to the Pope, “had been duped and murdered; but the hate of the people for the government had deepened in intensity. They were subdued for the instant by terror; but their strength was unimpaired. They were furious at the king’s treachery.”²⁷² “Twice,” he wrote to Contarini, “the children of Israel went up against Benjamin, and twice they were put to confusion, God having encouraged them to fight, and God permitting their defeat. The third time they prevailed. In like manner had the children of the Church been twice conquered, once God so willing it in Ireland, and now again in England. A third time they would take up their cause, and then they would triumph gloriously.”²⁷³ He knew what he meant. Already he was digging fresh graves for other victims; secret messengers were passing between Liège and his mother, and his mother’s family, and Lord Montague and Lord Exeter were already contemplating that third effort of which he spoke.²⁷⁴ “I do but desire to wait in this place,” he said, “so long as the farmer waits for his crops. I have sown my seed. It will grow in its allotted time.”²⁷⁵ Contarini advised his return to Italy; and the Pope believed also that the opportunity was passed. Pole himself, alternately buoyed up with hope and plunged in despondency, seemed at times almost delirious. He spread a wild rumour that the king had sent emissaries to murder him.²⁷⁶ The Pope believed him, and became more anxious for the safety of so valuable a life. Letters passed and repassed. He could not resign himself to relinquish his enterprise. On the 21st of August he wrote that “the English government had made itself so detested, and the King of Scotland was so willing to assist, that with the most trifling impulse a revolution would be certain.” Events, however, so far, had not borne out his expectations. He had promised liberally, but there had been no fulfilment; and supposing at length that the chances of success were too slight to justify the risk of his longer stay, Paul put an end to his anxieties by sending him a formal recall.

He has one only consolation.

The disappointment was hard to bear. One only comfort remained to him. Henry had been evidently anxious that his book should not be made known to the world. He might revise, intensify, and then publish it, and taste the pleasure of a safe revenge.

Michael Throgmorton is employed by Cromwell to betray Pole, and betrays his employers.

But I have now to mention a minor drama of treachery winding into the interstices of the larger. When Pole first awoke serious suspicion by being raised to the Cardinalate, Michael, younger brother of Sir George Throgmorton, volunteered to Cromwell to go to Rome, make his way into Pole’s service, and become a spy upon his actions. His offer was accepted. He went, and became Pole’s secretary; but, instead of betraying his master, he betrayed his employers; and to him the “Liber de Unitate Ecclesiæ” was in all probability indebted for the fresh instalment of scandals which were poured into it before publication,²⁷⁷ and which have furnished material for the Catholic biographers of Henry the Eighth. Throgmorton’s ingenious duplicity enabled him to blind the English government through the spring and summer. He supplied them with reports in a high degree laudatory of the cardinal, affirming entire confidence in the innocency of the legatine mission; and if they were not misled as to Pole’s purposes, they believed in the fidelity of the spy. It was not till the day before leaving Liège that he threw off disguise, and wrote to Cromwell in language which was at last transparent.