The Last Abbot of Whalley Abbey: John Paslew

On March 10, 1536, Abbot John Paslew, the last abbot of Whalley Abbey was executed in Lancaster for his part in the Pilgrimage of Grace. According to the British History Online site entry for Whalley Abbey:

Little is known of the state of the abbey on the eve of the Dissolution. John Paslew, the last abbot, was afterwards accused of having sold much of the plate of the house to defray the cost of his assumption of the position of a mitred abbot and of a suit for licence to give 'bennet and collet' in the abbey. (fn. 96) A comparison of its accounts for the years 1478 and 1521 shows a large increase of expenditure in the latter year, especially in the items of meat and drink, though this may possibly have been due, in part at least, to an increase in the number of monks or to some exceptional hospitality. It is noteworthy that the income derived from the appropriated rectories in 1521 exhibits a more than proportionate augmentation. (fn. 97)

Only one of the monks was singled out for immorality by the visitors of 1535. (fn. 98) Cromwell subsequently relaxed in their favour the injunctions laid upon them by the visitors. Some restrictions on their movements were removed and only three divinity lectures a week were insisted on. (fn. 99)

In the autumn of the next year Abbot Paslew became implicated in the Pilgrimage of Grace. The abbey of Sawley, close by, was the centre of the movement in Craven and the adjoining parts of Lancashire. At the end of October, 1536, Nicholas Tempest, one of the Yorkshire leaders of the rising, came to Whalley with 400 men and swore the abbot and his brethren to the cause of the commons. (fn. 100) Paslew is alleged to have lent Tempest a horse and some plate; (fn. 101) Aske, however, said he had no money from the abbot as he had from other abbots and priors, but intended to have. (fn. 102) It may be that Paslew yielded reluctantly to the disaffection by which he was surrounded. A grant by the convent of a rent of £6 13s. 4d. to Cromwell on 1 January, 1537, perhaps marks an attempt to make their peace with the government. (fn. 103) But such offences as theirs were not overlooked. Yet as they were covered by the pardon granted in October there must have been subsequent offences. Shortly after Paslew sent a message to the abbot of Hailes that he was 'sore stopped and acrased.' His letter was intercepted and may have contained something incriminatory. (fn. 104) Doubtless he involved himself in the last phase of the 'Pilgrimage.' (fn. 105) He was tried at Lancaster and executed there on 10 March. (fn. 106) His fellow monk William Haydock shared his fate, but was sent to Whalley for execution. (fn. 107) The Earl of Sussex, royal commissioner with the Earl of Derby, wrote next day to Cromwell the accomplishment of the matter of Whalley was God's ordinance; else seeing my lord of Derby is steward of the house and so many gentlemen the abbot's fee'd men, it would have been hard to find anything against him in these parts. It will be a terror to corrupt minds hereafter. (fn. 108)

The possessions of the house were held to be forfeited by the abbot's attainder, and the king gave orders that as it had been so infected with treason all the monks should be transferred to other monasteries or to secular capacities. He wrote vaguely of a new establishment of the abbey 'as shalbe thought meet for the honour of God, our surety and the benefit of the county,' (fn. 109) but it remained in the hands of the crown until 6 June, 1553, when the site and the manor of Whalley were sold to John Braddyl (to whose custody they had been committed after the forfeiture and who had leased them since 12 April, 1543,) and Richard Assheton. (fn. 110) A partition was at once arranged by which Braddyl took most of the land and Assheton the house.

Abbot Paslew is not among the beatified or canonized martyrs of England. This website argues that Paslew was in some ways representative of the abuses of the monastic orders in England that Henry VIII and Cromwell wanted to eliminate, but the report of only one problem monk and the easing of any restrictions against the house seems to argue against that. His house was well-managed and orderly. The website also notes that Paslew refused the Oath of Supremacy, even if some now judge him as being a reluctant participant in the Pilgrimage of Grace:

Although participating very minimally (and arguably unwillingly) in the Pilgrimage of Grace, one cannot deny the admirable defence of his Catholic faith when it came down to it, as Paslew refused to take the compulsory oath of allegiance to Henry VIII and was executed, with two of his fellow monks, at Lancaster in March 1537. Here, when directly ordered, Paslew finally truly and admirably dissented-he refused to accept Henry as the Supreme Head of Church of England and thus stayed loyal to his faith and the pope. Despite all his faults, he dissented and died faithful to his religion.

If Abbot Paslew refused the Oath of Supremacy, he did more than the three beatified abbots of Glastonbury, Reading, and Colchester. The Reverend C.A. (Charles Alfred) Newdigate, SJ, Vice Postulator of the Cause of the English Martyrs at the time wrote in The Tablet on April 14, 1923, that there was a tradition of Paslew being a martyr for the faith, even in the recusant era, as Father Robert Parsons/Persons listed him as a Henrician martyr:

"For that divers godly, learned, and zealous men could not be content to follow the king's affections, as others did, & namely B. Fisher of Rochester, Syr Thomas More, late Chauncelor of England, . . . and other their like, they were content to give their bloud in defence of Cath. unitie against this schisme, as the Abbots of Glastenburie, of Whaley, of Redding, Doctor Forrest, . . . Doctor Powell, and the like." The Abbot of " Whaley " finds himself in good company, and Persons could scarcely have placed him there if he had not held him for a martyr in the highest sense of the word.

If we would know what Paslew's own Order thought of his death we may turn to his commemoration in Henriquez's "Menologium Cisterciense," 1629 :— "Beati Joannis Paslew, Abbatis Whallensis, qui post diuturnos carceres, variosque pro fide catholica toleratos labores, suspensus et in quatuor partes divisus Lancastriae martyrium consummavit." It may be that the historical facts here are somewhat at fault, but there is no mistaking the significance of the title Beati—a title which, it may be remarked parenthetically, would never have been tolerated had it been used after the decree against undue cultus issued only five years later by Urban VIII.

It's interesting to note that  Blessed Sebastian Newdigate, one of the Carthusian priors martyred in 1535 was a "collateral ancestor" of Father Newdigate, whose father Alfred had been an Anglican vicar before becoming a Catholic (with his family joining him) in 1875.

The grounds of Whalley Abbey are now a Church of England retreat center.

Carthusian Martyrs in York, 1537

On May 11, 1537, two of the Carthusians of the Charterhouse of London began their agonizing and slow death by being hung in chains from the York city battlements: Blessed John Rochester and Blessed James Walworth. They were beatified by Pope Leo XIII on the 29th of December in 1886 (December 29 is the feast of St. Thomas a Becket so the Pope chose an appropriate date).

After the first three Carthusian priors were executed on May 4, 1535, the next three leaders in line, Humphrey Middlemore, William Exmew and Sebastian Newdigate, were executed on June 19 that same year and these two monks were taken from London to the Charterhouse of St. Michael in Hull. In the wake of the Pilgrimage of Grace, Rochester and Walworth were tried in York by Thomas Howard, the Duke of Norfolk and found guilty of treason.

The Catholic Encyclopedia offers this detail about Blessed John Rochester:

Priest and martyr, born probably at Terling, Essex, England, about 1498; died at York, 11 May, 1537. He was the third son of John Rochester, of Terling, and Grisold, daughter of Walter Writtle, of Bobbingworth. He joined the Carthusians, was a choir monk of the Charterhouse in London, and strenuously opposed the new doctrine of the royal supremacy. He was arrested and sent a prisoner to the Carthusian convent at Hull. From there he was removed to York, where he was hung in chains. With him there suffered one James Walworth (?Wannert; Walwerke), Carthusian priest and martyr, concerning whom little or nothing is known. He may have been the "Jacobus Walwerke" who signed the Oath of Succession of 1534.

So if he had taken the Oath of Succession in 1534, Blessed James Walworth must have recanted his oath or refused the Oath of Supremacy in 1535.

It must have been an agonizing death--hanging until death by exposure and dehydration--left like their brother Carthusians in Newgate Prison in London as this site notes:

Ten continued to refuse, and on 1st June 1537 were imprisoned in Newgate. There they were left, and all but one died of starvation and ill-usage. They were: Richard Bere, Thomas Johnson and Thomas Green, priests; John Davy, deacon; and Brothers William Greenwood, Thomas Scryven, Robert Salt, Walter Pierson, Thomas Redyng and William Horn. The last-named lingered in Newgate for nearly three years, and was finally executed on 4th August 1540.

The image above does not depict the Carthusians hanging from the battlements; it is from the Wikipedia entry for Blessed John Rochester. It is by Vicente Carducho and is part of a series of paintings in the Charterhouse of El Paular near Madrid. The article on John Rochester includes these details about their trial and execution:

The two London monks were brought from Hull to York and brought before the Lord President of the North, the Duke of Norfolk, on trumped up treason charges. Condemned to death, they provided the desired menacing spectacle for the city when on 11 May 1537 both were hanged in chains from the city battlements[2] until their bodies fell to pieces.[3]

Blessed martyrs of the Carthusians, pray for us!

The Pilgrimage of Grace Begins

The Pilgrimage of Grace began on October 13, 1536, after the failure of the Lincolnshire uprising earlier that month.

Robert Aske, barrister, led the uprising, which soon gathered a following of up to 40,000. Aske presented the peoples’ desires for an end to the suppression of the monasteries and other religious changes, referencing the protection of the Church promised in the Magna Carta! His pilgrim band/army far outnumbered Thomas Howard’s forces, but he wanted to negotiate a solution. Through Norfolk, Henry promised to convene a Parliament in York to address the issues if the rebels disbanded and returned to their homes. Aske also met with Henry in London. When another uprising broke the truce, Aske was arrested and tried.

David Knowles pays eloquent tribute to him in Bare Ruined Choirs: The Dissolution of the English Monasteries:

". . . he showed himself the most loyal and able contemporary champion and apologist of the Tudor religious, and his death cannot be allowed to pass without a memorial of words. He is indeed one of the few men of his age whom we recognize at once to have been utterly frank and single-minded . . ."

As Knowles continues, he describes how much Aske contributed to the progress of the Pilgrimage of Grace and yet demonstrates how aspects of Aske’s character led to its failure:

"Robert Aske, not Henry, was the true representative of all that was most characteristic and most sincere in England. [Yet] he failed because, when the call to build his tower had come suddenly upon him, he had not fully reckoned the cost."

Aske was not prepared to defy his king, to treat with Henry VIII as Henry VIII would treat with him, with force and deceit, and he was not prepared to defeat his king, to take him down if necessary:

"The leader of a rising should have been prepared, if need arose, to put his cause before his king; else it were better to have remained silent and hidden."

Aske thought he could trust his king to respond to the concerns of his people and to fulfill his promises. He did not want to use the force his army of pilgrims represented, and so, he failed.

Knowles concludes however:

"Of all leaders of revolts that have failed, Aske is one of the noblest. He was deceived and killed by the king whom he would gladly have served and whom he loved and trusted ‘not wisely but too well’."*

As Knowles’ memorial to Robert Aske makes clear, he was the better man in his dealings with Henry VIII because he was honorable and honest. Knowles further comments that only force could have stopped Henry VIII—but how far could that force go? If Aske had been willing to transform that group of pilgrims into an army, pitch battle against Thomas Howard, defeat him, then what? March to London and raise a siege on one of Henry VIII’s castles? Take the castle, capture Henry, and then execute him? Ultimately, this story demonstrates the limits even of military force.

Only Henry could have put the needs of his people above the needs of his power and responded to the Pilgrimage of Grace and Robert Aske as they deserved. In his mind, however, they deserved only punishment. He exacted brutal reprisals against the leaders of the uprising. Aske endured, not just the usual punishment of traitors, to be hung, drawn, and quartered, but the even more agonizing death of being hung from the battlements at York Castle, left to die of exposure and dehydration.

Henry VIII’s third wife, Jane Seymour, tried to speak up in defense of Aske, the Pilgrimage, and the monasteries, but Henry warned her that speaking up and interfering with his will had brought about the fall of her predecessor. Jane heeded his warning and was silent.

*David Knowles, Bare Ruined Choirs: The Dissolution of the English Monasteries. Cambridge: The University of Cambridge Press, 1967, pages 219-220. Another book I'd recommend is by Geoffrey Moorhouse: The Pilgrimage of Grace: The Rebellion that Shook Henry VIII's Throne.

 

I wrote about the Pilgrimage of Grace in its reaction to the Dissolution of the Monasteries for OSV's The Catholic Answer Magazine in the November/December 2011 issue.

One of Henry VIII's Loyal Servants: Thomas Audley

Thomas Audley, lst Baron Audley of Warren died on April 30, 1544--he managed to die safely in his bed with his head intact by serving Henry VIII very well. A lawyer by training, Audley served Cardinal Wolsey and served in Parliament, representing Essex and he continued to rise in office throughout Henry VIII's reign.

Audley participated in the trials and executions of not only Thomas More and John Fisher, but also of Anne Boleyn and Thomas Cromwell, and he sentenced the rebels of the Pilgrimage of Grace to death. For these and other services (the annulment of Henry VIII's marriage to Anne of Cleves, for instance), he was not only knighted but became a member of the Order of the Garter. Audley was Lord Keeper of the Great Seal from 1532, when he succeeded Thomas More, to 1544, when he resigned it on April 21. He also succeeded Thomas More as Speaker of the House of Commons in 1529 and as Lord Chancellor in 1533. According to this parliamentary history website, there has been some controversy about his activity at these trials and about his religious positions:

If his knightly status exempted Audley from the trial of Anne Boleyn in 1536 (it was not he but John, 8th Lord Audley, who took part in this), he was involved in all the other state trials of these years. His conduct in these trials, and especially in More’s, has been much criticized but it deserves to be judged in the light of Audley’s own beliefs concerning the rights of the sovereign and the duties of the subject. No such criticism, despite occasional and clearly prejudiced charges of favouritism and corruption, can be levelled against his conduct as an equity judge, and even in cases of treason his attitude is illustrated by his advice in 1536 that the Duke of Suffolk should be armed against the Lincolnshire rebels with a commission to try cases of treason, showing that he took for granted, even in such circumstances, the necessity of a trial at common law.

Audley’s religious position is difficult to assess. A correspondent of Melanchthon named him with Cromwell and Cranmer as friends to Protestantism but, if he was, the friendship was always qualified by his allegiance to the King whose policies he faithfully carried out, a course which in general gives an impression of conservatism. Thus an anonymous enthusiast for the Act of Six Articles (31 Hen. VIII, c.14) again linked Audley with Cromwell as two men who, this time in contrast to Cranmer and to other bishops, had been ‘as good as we can desire’ in the furtherance of the measure. Audley was equally content to follow Cromwell’s lead and what few clashes there were between them arose largely out of minor questions of patronage.

Audley also benefitted from the Dissolution of the Monasteries, receiving grants of Holy Trinity Priory in Aldgate, London (which had been founded by Queen Matilda or Maud, Henry I's wife) and Walden Abbey, where his grandson, Thomas Howard, 1st Earl of Suffolk built Audley End, which is now part of the English Heritage program. He founded Magdalene College at the University of Cambridge in 1542, after the Benedictine's Buckingham College was closed.

Audley's title as lst Baron Audley of Warren died with him. One of his daughters, Margaret, married Thomas Howard, the 4th Duke of Norfolk (who was executed by Elizabeth I).

Three Generations of Trouble: Henry Percy

Henry Percy, the 9th Earl of Northumberland AKA "The Wizard Earl" was born on April 27, 1564. His father was also named Henry Percy, but he was the 8th Earl of Northumberland, receiving that title when his brother, the Wizard Earl's uncle, Thomas Percy, 7th Earl of Northumbland was executed in 1572 for his leadership of the Northern Rebellion--and Thomas Percy was beatified by Pope Leo XIII as a martyr! The Wizard Earl's father died in the Tower of London, imprisoned there under suspicion of treason. His grandfather had also run afoul of the Tudor monarch of his era, as Sir Thomas Percy was executed by Henry VIII in 1537 for his involvement in the Pilgrimage of Grace (I'm not sure why he hasn't been beatified as a martyr if his son has been). I think we can see a pattern of trouble in this family's relationship to the Tudors--and it held true for the Wizard Earl during the reign of James I of England.

According to this website:

Henry Percy, the 9th or ‘Wizard’ Earl of Northumberland led an extraordinary life of a true Renaissance nobleman, despite his deafness and 15 years as a prisoner. He was a great scholar, became the patron of the English astronomer Thomas Harriot, the first man to map the surface of the moon before Galileo and earned his nickname ‘Wizard’ by experimenting in alchemy. He was a friend of Sir Walter Raleigh and their interest in the New World led them to consume great quantities of tobacco and potatoes. But it was on 4 November 1605, that the Earl’s fortunes declined literally overnight! A distant cousin, Thomas Percy, who was a staunch Roman Catholic, dined with the Earl at Syon before joining Guy Fawkes and his accomplices the next day, in the attempt to blow up the Houses of Parliament. As one of the principal ‘gunpowder plotters’, Thomas was shot trying to make his escape. Although innocent of the charges brought against him, the Earl was implicated through his association with Thomas and the fateful meeting at Syon. He was confined in the Tower of London for the next 15 years on the orders of King James I.

The 9th Earl was known as the Wizard Earl because of his great interest in science--even in alchemy--and his development of a great library. He was eventually released from the Tower and he died on November 5, 1632. Believe it--or not!

 

Alexander Rose's Kings in the North: The House of Percy in British History tells the story of this family and one reviewer summarized the generations of trouble and adventure they exemplify:

 

Over the past eight centuries, two earls and one duke have been killed in battle, most recently in 1940; one has been lynched by a mob; one beheaded for treason, one shot by government assassins, five incarcerated in the Tower for more or less prolonged periods, and one beatified by the Church of Rome. It is a striking record of public service or disservice, depending on your point of view. The Percys are still the owners of Alnwick Castle and Syon House, and are among the largest landowners in Britain. . . .

 

As soon as the Scottish menace faded in the 16th century, the Percys lost their power. The Tudors no longer needed a viceroy in the north. The sixth earl was ruined by Henry VIII, the seventh executed by Elizabeth, the eighth murdered in the Tower and the ninth abandoned politics for chemistry and astronomy. His successors abandoned the north altogether, and went to live on their Sussex and London estates. The modern fortunes of the family are due to Sir Hugh Smithson, who married the last Percy heiress in the 18th century, adopted her name, and re-established the family as a great northern dynasty.

Devotion to the Five Wounds of Christ

During my hour of Adoration before the Blessed Sacrament at Blessed Sacrament Church this Sunday, I prayed from A Prayer Book of Catholic Devotions: Praying the Seasons and Feasts of the Church Year, compiled by William G. Storey, DMS, Professor Emeritus of Liturgy and Church History at the University of Notre Dame and published by Loyola Press.

Among the devotions he includes for Lent is to the Five Wounds of Jesus, beginning with this hymn attributed to Thomas a Kempis and translated by John Mason Neale:

O love, how deep, how broad, how high,
How passing thought and fantasy,
That God, the Son of God should take
Our mortal form for mortals' sake.

For us to evil power betrayed,
Scourged, mocked, in purple robe arrayed,
He bore the shameful cross and death,
For us gave up his dying breath.

For us he rose from death again;
For us he went on high to reign;
For us he sent the Spirit here
To guide, to strengthen, and to cheer.

All glory to our Lord and God
For love so deep, so high, so broad:
The Trinity whom we adore
Forever and forevermore.

Then follows a little office of devotion to the Five Wounds. Dr. Storey also includes another devotion attributed to St. Clare of Assisi with prayers to each of the Five Wounds: one in each hand, one in each foot, and one in Our Savior's side.

As you might recall, devotion to the Five Wounds of Jesus was very popular in England before the Reformation and became a symbol of opposition to the Henrician and Elizabethan religious changes. Both the Pilgrimage of Grace and the North Rebellion used the banner of the Five Wounds.

More on this devotion here, from the aptly named Fish Eaters.

Revolutionary England, Almost

 

Frank McLynn writes about seven times when England could have experienced a complete revolution--somehow passing over the Civil War and the Glorious Revolution of 1688. He includes the Pilgrimage of Grace and the Jacobite uprising (the '45) among the seven. As Nigel Jones comments in this review, the premise is a little weak, and the selection might be questionable:

 

It is axiomatic in British history that this country – unlike many European neighbours – does not ‘do’ revolutions. This assumption is at least arguable. If the Civil War of the 1640s, resulting in the quasi-legal killing of a king, and his replacement by a military dictatorship with millennial overtones, was not a revolution, then the term has no meaning. Ditto the 1688 ‘Glorious Revolution’. Yet according to Frank McLynn, neither of these upheavals constituted a true revolution, which, he argues, Britain has never experienced.

His book focuses on seven moments when he claims Britain came closest to “the possibility for overthrow of a regime and a drastic change of direction politically, economically, socially”: the Peasants’ Revolt, Jack Cade’s 1450 rebellion, the Pilgrimage of Grace in 1536, the Civil War, the 1745/6 Jacobite uprising; the Chartists of the 1840s, and the 1926 General Strike. . . .

The examples McLynn lumps into his revolutionary sack are questionable: if the Pilgrimage, why not the Prayer Book or Kett’s rebellion? And if Chartism, why not the era of Peterloo and the Cato Street conspiracy? This is also very old-fashioned history, with heroes and villains praised – or more frequently damned – featuring Henry VIII, Cromwell and (bizarrely) Stanley Baldwin in a rogues’ gallery of tyranny.

As to why Britain avoided revolution, McLynn discounts such theories as its insular isolation, its small professional army, the popularity of its modern monarchy, or the myth that its people were less violent than their continental counterparts (before the 18th century the reverse was the case). He identifies a few factors as crucial: Britain’s early industrialisation; its acquisition of an empire to export its surplus workforce; and finally the preference for gradualist reformism to revolutionary activism, exemplified by the popularity of Methodism over Marxism.

Whenever I think of book about revolutions, I think of Susan Dunn's Sister Revolutions: French Lightning, American Light, published in 2000:

The American and French revolutions presented the world with two very different visions of democracy. Although both professed similar Enlightenment ideals of freedom, equality, and justice and set similar political agendas, there were also fundamental differences. The French sought a complete break with a thousand years of history; the Americans were content to preserve many aspects of their English heritage. Why did the two revolutions follow such different trajectories? And what lessons do they offer us about democracy today? In lucid narrative style, Dunn captures the personalities and lives of the great figures of both revolutions, and shows how their stories added up to make two very different events.

I completely agree with the assessment of this reviewer: "Everybody should read this book. It offers a lively education in a small package. Then, if there's time, reread Federalist 10 and 51, as well as Simon Schama's book Citizens. What the French took from the Americans, Lord Acton once wrote, "was their theory of revolution not their theory of government — their cutting but not their sewing.""


Martyr of the Northern Rebellion: Blessed Thomas Percy

From the Catholic Encyclopedia:

Earl of Northumberland, martyr, born in 1528; died at York, 22 August, 1572. He was the eldest son of Sir Thomas Percy, brother of the childless Henry Percy, sixth Earl of Northumberland, and Eleanor, daughter of Sir Guiscard Harbottal. When Thomas was eight years old his father was executed at Tyburn (2 June, 1537) for having taken a leading part in the Pilgrimage of Grace, and he also is considered a martyr by many. Thomas and his brother Henry were then removed from their mother's keeping and entrusted to Sir Thomas Tempest.

In 1549, when Thomas Percy came of age, an Act was passed "for the restitution in blood of Mr. Thomas Percy". Shortly afterwards he was knighted, and, three years later, in Queen Mary's reign, he regained his ancestral honours and lands. Declared governor of Prudhoe Castle he besieged and took Scarborough Castle, which was seized by rebels in 1557. In reward the Earldom of Northumberland together with the Baronies of Percy, Poynings, Lucy, Bryan, and Fitzpane were restored to him. He was installed at Whitehall with great pomp, and soon after was named Warden General of the Marches, in which capacity he fought and defeated the Scots. In 1558 he married Anne Somerset, daughter of the Earl of Worcester, a valiant woman who subsequently suffered much for the Faith.

On Elizabeth's accession the earl, whose steadfast loyalty to the Catholic Church was known, was kept in the North while the anti-Catholic measures of Elizabeth's first Parliament were passed. Elizabeth continued to show him favour, and in 1563 gave him the Order of the Garter. He had then resigned the wardenship and was living in the South. But the systematic persecution of the Catholics rendered their position most difficult, and in the autumn of 1569 the Catholic gentry in the North, stirred up by rumours of the approaching excommunication of Elizabeth, were planning to liberate Mary, Queen of Scots, and obtain liberty of worship. Earl Thomas with the Earl of Westmoreland wrote to the pope asking for advice, but before their letter reached Rome circumstances hurried them into action against their better judgment. After a brief success the rising failed, and Thomas fled to Scotland, where he was captured and, after three years, sold to the English Government. He was conducted to York and beheaded, refusing to save his life by abandoning his religion. He was beatified by Leo XIII on 13 May, 1895, and his festival was appointed to be observed in the Dioceses of Hexham and Newcastle on 14 November. His daughter Mary founded the Benedictine convent at Brussels from which nearly all the existing houses of Benedictine nuns in England are descended.

About his widow, Wikipedia reports:

After the [Northern Rebellion] was put down by Baron Hunsdon's troops, Anne and Percy fled to Scotland where they sought refuge with Hector Graham of Harlaw, a Border outlaw. In June 1570, Anne gave birth to her daughter, Mary in Old Aberdeen. When Graham betrayed her husband to James Douglas, 4th Earl of Morton, she and her baby escaped to the Continent, arriving in Bruges on 31 August 1570, where she sought aid from Pope Pius V and King Philip II of Spain to raise money for her husband's ransom; the Pope gave her four thousand crowns and King Philip sent her six thousands marks. It was to no avail. Anne would spend the rest of her life as an exile in Flanders, while in 1572, Earl Morton sold her husband to Queen Elizabeth who had him publicly executed at York for treason.

In Liège while living on a pension provided by King Philip, she wrote and circulated Discours des troubles du Comte du Northumberland. She spent the next decade travelling from place to place in Flanders, maintaining contact with the other English Catholic exiles. In 1573, English agents described Anne as "one of the principal practitioners at Mechlin". In 1576, she was briefly expelled from the territory to placate Queen Elizabeth, but returned shortly afterwards. At one stage she endeavoured to arrange a marriage between Don John of Austria and the captive Mary, Queen of Scots. She left her three oldest daughters behind in England when she escaped after the failed Northern Rebellion. They were raised at Petworth by her late husband's brother, Henry Percy who had succeeded as the 8th Earl of Northumberland. He was married to Katherine Neville, the eldest daughter of her half-sister, Lucy. Her youngest daughter, Mary who had accompanied her to the Continent, became the prioress of the Benedictine convent in Brussels which she had herself founded.

In September 1591, Charles Paget, an exile in Antwerp, informed the Percy's that Anne had died and requested that they send her daughter Joan to Flanders to fetch her belongings. This had been only a ruse designed to enable Anne to see her daughter. In point of fact, Anne died of smallpox five years later on 17 October 1596 at a convent in Namur.

Pope Leo XIII made some interesting choices of English martyrs to beatify. For example, Blessed Thomas Percy's father, Sir Thomas Percy, executed for his part in the Pilgrimage of Grace, has not been beatified or canonized, even though "he also is considered a martyr by many". Often, when the proposed martyr was part of a military or other organized rebellion, his cause is "passed over" because the intention and purpose of his action is mixed with secular matters. Pope Leo also beatified Margaret Pole, and she was a victim for her Faith--her sons were caught up in matters that really mixed the sacred and secular. Reginald Pole in exile had angered Henry VIII with his attack against his marital and ecclesiastical actions, while her other sons were implicated in a plot against the monarch. Her execution was the result of Henry VIII's desire to destroy the Pole family. Pope Leo beatified Blessed John Felton and Blessed Thomas Plumtree, also in connection with the Northern Rebellion. Felton may be accused of inciting rebellion, but Father Plumtree was definitely martyred for his priesthood and the Catholic Faith.

As to Mary Percy's Benedictine convent:  Known as the Monastery of the Glorious Assumption. Founded by Lady Mary Percy in 1597/8; it was the first of the new foundations specifically for English women. The convent quickly attracted members, but a bitter dispute over the choice of confessor that continued many years affected recruitment. Once a resolution was reached the convent began to flourish again remaining in Brussels until forced to withdraw by the effects of the revolutionary wars in 1794. They arrived in Winchester in 1794 and remained there until they transferred to East Bergholt, Suffolk. (Per this site, studying the English religious orders in exile.)

The English Reformation Today: Episode Three

"Henry VIII and the Break from Rome" is our topic today. We will talk briefly about the causes behind Henry VIII's decision to assert ecclesiastical authority in England to get around the Pope not declaring his first marriage null and void so he could marry again and hopefully sire a male heir. Beyond that, however, we will concentrate on the crisis of conscience among Catholics asked to choose the source of spiritual authority: their Monarch or the Vicar of Christ (you know which way I lean!). Therefore we will examine the protomartyrs of the English Reformation: The Carthusians, Observant Franciscans, St. John Fisher and St. Thomas More. Here is an interesting article from the UK's The Catholic Herald, which the columnist/blogger Francis Philips titles "I feel a shiver when I see the parallels between our world and that of St John Fisher":

. . . I read about St John Fisher (who gave his name to the chaplaincy), the magnificent and martyred alumnus of the 16th century. In an article by Dr Richard Rex, I was reminded that Fisher, who refused to renounce the authority of the pope in favour of Henry VIII, accepted execution rather than go against his conscience. “That Fisher would find himself called upon to deny a doctrine that had been taught in England all his life was something he could hardly have imagined in his student days. More surprising still is how few followed him in refusing. The reason was partly fear, but more the spirit of the age…”

Rex continues, drawing a parallel between the challenge faced by Fisher and those facing Christians today: “We shall not be called upon to make that ultimate sacrifice. But look out for the dominant ideology. Today it is just straws in the wind. Rocco Buttiglione disqualified from the European Commission because of his adherence to Catholic teaching on sexual morality. The closure of Catholic adoption agencies in England because of their refusal to place children with same-sex couples. How long will it be before a formal affirmation of so-called ‘liberal’ principles becomes a prerequisite for employment in the public sector?”

This is disquieting but should not be a surprise. . . . 

Read the rest here.

I will also discuss the Dissolution of the Monasteries and the effect of that destruction of religious life in England. I wrote about the Dissolution of the Monasteries for OSV's The Catholic Answer Magazine and you may access that article here, including its discussion of the Pilgrimage of Grace:

In October 1536, an army of commoners and gentry advanced from the north of England under banners marked with the five wounds of Christ.

Led by Robert Aske, a barrister, they were the Pilgrimage of Grace, a popular rising from York making grievances in protest of King Henry VIII, including protesting the dissolution of the monasteries and changes in religious practice since Henry VIII’s Reformation Parliament had proclaimed him “Supreme Head and Governor” of the Church.

There were too many in this group — 30,000 to 40,000 — for Henry’s small mercenary army to handle. Henry’s agent, Thomas Howard, the Duke of Norfolk, pretended to hear their terms to stop the dissolution, get rid of bad advisers such as Thomas Cromwell and restore the freedom of the Church protected in the Magna Carta. Henry promised to call a Parliament in York. In January 1537, another uprising led him to impose martial law and punish the rebels. Aske hung in chains in front of York Castle, dying of exposure, and 215 more rebels, including abbots, monks and parish priests, were executed.

The Pilgrimage of Grace was the greatest domestic threat Henry VIII faced, and the dissolution of the monasteries the most radical aspect of his otherwise rather conservative religious program.

Even after he had usurped the spiritual authority of the pope in England, Henry considered himself a Catholic, treasuring his title as Defender of the Faith and zealousness in protecting the Real Presence in the Eucharist. Henry’s Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer, and his chancellor, Cromwell, might have imbibed Lutheran ideas, but not Henry. . . .

I welcome all listeners of Radio Maria US to my blog, whether you're listening on one of their radio stations or on line or through one of their apps. Next week on The English Reformation Today we'll discuss the Calvinist Reformation ushered in by the minority rule of Henry VIII's young son, King Edward VI. I invite you to call in with questions and comments toll-free at 866-333-MARY(6279).

And here is the crucial question: Are Dr. Richard Rex and Francis Philips correct about the parallels between St. John Fisher's time (and the Carthusians' and St. Thomas More's) and our time, even here in the United States of America? Please let me know what you think, on air or in the comment box.

The Last Carthusian: August 4, 1540

From my research, I don't think anyone knows why Blessed William Horne survived all his Carthusian brothers until August 4, 1540, but for some reason he was kept alive while the others starved to death. Refusing to abandon his religious habit, he was not attainted till 1540, when he was hanged, disembowelled, and quartered at Tyburn on August 4, 1540 along with five other Catholics: the two laymen Robert Bird and Giles Heron, Friar Lawrence Cook, Carmelite Prior of Doncaster, the Benedictine monk, Dom Thomas Epson, and (probably) the secular priest William Bird, Rector of Fittleton and Vicar of Bradford, Wiltshire.

His companions are also interesting: the Carmelite friar represented the last of his order in Henry VIII's England. Thirty-six Carmelite monasteries in England were destroyed or sold to private owners; and a score of others in Scotland and Ireland. In 1539 the famous Carmelite library in London suffered a similar fate. Friar Cook had supported the Pilgrimage of Grace and had been kept in Beauchamp Tower--where Blessed Thomas Abel had also been held in great destitution for seven years before his execution--for two years after his arrest in 1538. The last active friar of the Carmelite order, George Rayner, died "in chains" during Elizabeth I's reign--what must it have been like to be the last? The last Carthusian, having seen his fellows starve and die; the last Carmelite, having seen his order destroyed in his own country?

With Giles Heron, we have a connection to St. Thomas More; he was one of More's wards and married daughter Cecily:

Giles Heron’s father had served both Henry VII and Henry VIII as treasurer of the chamber. He was still a minor at his father’s death and in March 1523 his wardship was granted to Sir Thomas More, then under treasurer of the Exchequer. In July 1525 he obtained livery of an inheritance in south-eastern England, his chief residence being at Hackney: shortly afterwards he and William Dauntesey, the son of another royal official, each married one of More’s daughters.

There are only occasional references to Heron in More’s letters, and he was probably not so close to his father-in-law as was William Roper; when More was chancellor Heron is said to have refused a settlement in a chancery case, hoping for a favourable decision, only to have More finally make a ‘flat decree against him’. Yet there is no reason to regard Heron as unsympathetic to More’s ideals: his fate indeed implies the contrary. It was doubtless More who, as chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster, secured the election of both Heron and Dauntesey for Thetford in 1529, the first Parliament to which that borough is known to have returned, although they must also have enjoyed the support of the 3rd Duke of Norfolk, himself a duchy official and the patron of William Roper at Bramber. Nothing is known of Heron’s role in the Commons. Cromwell did not include him with Dauntesey, Roper and two others of the More circle (all three bracketed as ‘of Chelsea’) on a list compiled in the spring of 1533 and thought to be of Members opposed to the bill in restraint of appeals. On the contrary, what little is known of Heron’s career outside Parliament at this time suggests that he remained in royal favour: in 1532 he sold his messuage of Alderbrook in Wanstead, Essex, to the King and in the same year, as an esquire of the body, he and three of his brothers were pardoned offences against the forest laws. He was presumably returned again to the Parliament of 1536, in accordance with the King’s request for the re-election of the previous Members, and he was on the Middlesex grand jury which found a true bill against Anne Boleyn; for the next three years, however, nothing is known of his activities.

Heron had been involved in a number of disputes over lands and with his tenants, dependants and relatives, including one with his brother Christopher and another with Robert Dormer over lands which had belonged to Heron’s brother-in-law John Dynham. When recording Heron’s sale of Rycote in Oxfordshire to Sir John Williams, Leland was to describe him as ‘wise in words, but foolish in deeds’; the sale was confirmed by a private Act (31 Hen. VIII, c.19). It was a dispute with a tenant, one Lyons, whom Heron had expelled from his farm, which led to his downfall. In 1539 Lyons, seeking revenge, appears to have informed Cromwell of certain treasonable words or deeds attributed to Heron and to have tried to get others to confirm them. In February of that year Heron had to find three recognizances of 500 marks each for his appearance before the Council when called to answer charges: at this time he can hardly have been suspected of treason but in May he was ‘in trouble’ in the Fleet and in July he was sent to the Tower as a suspected traitor. Cromwell’s memoranda include a number of references to Heron and from these it appears that Lyons was the only witness against him. It was perhaps because he could not easily have secured a conviction on this evidence that Cromwell had a bill of attainder introduced into the Lords on 3 May 1540 which passed through all its stages in both Houses in six days (32 Hen. VIII, c.58). The minister’s own fall delayed the execution until Aug. 1540, when Heron was hanged at Tyburn.

Lyons’s malice did not stop there, for it was at his instance that in the month following Heron’s death three of his brothers were examined by the Council with regard to their share in his treason: all were found innocent and were dismissed. Two of them, Christopher and John, were servants of (Sir) Ralph Sadler, a neighbour of the Herons to whom Giles Heron’s schoolboy sons had appealed for help during their father’s imprisonment. In July 1554 Queen Mary restored to Thomas Heron, the elder of these sons, part of his father’s lands.

Blessed William Horne was included with the other Carthusians to be beatified, but the others executed on August 4, 1540 have been passed over for some reason.

The Five Wounds and the Sacred Heart

In 15th century England, the Friday following the Octave of the Feast of Corpus Christi was dedicated to the Five Wounds of Christ. Devotion to the Five Wounds of Christ, as I mentioned to Brian Patrick on the Son Rise Morning Show last week, is kind of a medieval precursor of devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, which the Catholic Church celebrates today as a Solemnity. The Five Wounds are the piercing wounds to the hands, the feet, and side of Jesus on the cross.

As Eamon Duffy demonstrated in The Stripping of the Altars, this was a very popular devotion to the Passion of Christ in England before the Reformation. Through prayers and meditiations, the penitent recalled the suffering of Jesus on the cross and pleaded for the forgiveness of sins.

During the English Reformation, it developed a powerful symbolism beyond the devotion: Pilgrims opposed to the dissolution of the monasteries carried banners depicting the Five Wounds; Blessed Margaret Pole was attainted of treason because an emblem of the Five Wounds was found in her belongings so Thomas Cromwell argued that she favored the Pilgrimage of Grace. During the Northern Rebellion, the banners flew again, an obvious reference to that earlier rebellion--and a statement to Elizabethan regime that, the Act of Uniformity notwithstanding, some in England still wanted the old time religion of Catholicism.

The connection between the devotion to the Sacred Heart and the Five Wounds of Jesus is surely most clearly seen in the piercing of His Heart by the Roman soldier: "But when they came to Jesus and saw that he was already dead, they did not break his legs, but one soldier thrust his lance into his ide, and immediately blood and water flowed out." (John: 19:34). The blood and water were interpreted from early on in the Church's history as symbolic of the Sacraments of Baptism and the Eucharist, and as the life and spirit of the Church, itself a Sacrament of God's Grace. You might notice that the banner of the Five Wounds makes that connection very clearly, with the Heart and the Chalice at the center instead of a pierced heart.

More on the connection between the Solemnities celebrating the Most Holy Body and Blood of Jesus Christ (Corpus Christi) and the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus here.

Book Review: The Man on a Donkey

H.F.M. Prescott's The Man on a Donkey is called a Chronicle; as Prescott tells the stories of the historical and fictional characters, she interweaves their stories into the epic of the Pilgrimage of Grace. Each character's chronicle begins and ends, first with their life's story before the great events of 1535 and 1536, then through the long autumn and winter of that year and into spring of 1537, when each of their chronicles end with either their deaths or their departures. Three characters are historical: Christabel Cowper, the Prioress of Marrick, Thomas, Lord Darcy, and Robert Aske, captain of the Pilgrimage of Grace. Two are Prescott's creation, Julian Savage, fictional sister of Margaret Bulmer, and Gilbert Dawe, a priest who has become an evangelical.

One of my first comments is how Prescott's clerical and religious characters are not at all ideal: Cowper is a mercenary and selfish character; she is dedicated to the survival of Marrick mainly because she enjoys her power and comforts; Gilbert Dawes may believe he has found the truth, but he is as cruel and rapacious as she is, abandoning his lover and their children, mistreating the poor son who survives--when their chronicles end she has (actually at the beginning of the novel) lost her position and he has realized his failure. Dawes knows that he he has the true faith, but that he is not saved; he may be able to preach it, but he will not gain Heaven: he knows only a Gospel of judgment and wrath--there is no love.

With Thomas, Lord Darcy, Prescott has a back story to fill in based on historical data; with Robert Aske, she can create a background of family tension and some rivalry, including the depiction of how Aske's brother Kit wounds him and causes him to lose an eye, and the strange mixture of regret and hatred that produces in Kit. Darcy is a nobleman who speaks against the changes Henry VIII is leading the country into based on his loyality and faithfulness to the Church and the Catholic Faith--he once went to the Holy Land for a crusade.

Julian is a great character--one of the best scenes depicts her feelings when she has to get a tooth pulled: fear and anguish before; joy and relief after (but the narrator reminds us that another tooth will probably have to be pulled someday). Her fortunes are for a long time connected to her sister Margaret's, who is sexy, sensual young woman of desire--she marries and cuckolds her husband. Julian is painted with the same brush of infidelity and loose living, spends some time in the convent at Marrick. Eventually, she gets married to a man who really loves her but has a hard time reconciling his love with his needs for control as the master of the house and his concern about her love for Robert Aske.

There is another important character: Malle, a poor woman who has visions; she sees Christ as the Man on a Donkey. Her visions are dangerous: after all, the Nun of Kent was executed for her statements against Henry VIII. Malle prophesies darkness and pain. She takes care of Dawe's poor, sick son Wat, who otherwise has known only abuse and neglect.

Prescott provides vignettes of life at court, in the convent, in the Aske home, including crucial scenes that depict the progress of Henry VIII's tyranny over his family, the nobility, the church, and his country. There are brief scenes of Thomas More's trial, Katherine of Aragon's death, Anne Boleyn's imprisonment, Mary's signing of the statement rejecting her parents' marriage and accepting her own bastard status, etc. When the Pilgrimage of Grace begins, the double-dealing of the Duke of Norfolk, the Archbishop of York, Aske's own family, and most of all of Henry VIII, makes it a confusing effort. There is no great sweep of power and enthusiasm--the effort just plods on. There is a crucial moment when Darcy proposes seeking the aid of the Holy Roman Emperor to fight against Henry, but then the negotiations and the deceptions go on.

There's no Braveheart moment when victory, moral or military, is won, because that's not what happened. The Pilgrimage failed: Margaret Bulmer, Lord Darcy and Robert Aske are sentenced to death and Aske twists in the wind and rain in chains at York Castle; the dissolution of the monasteries continues; the convent at Marrick closed, and the illuminated pages of the library's Bibles and prayer books scattered, to be made into paper boats by Malle at the end, flowing away down the river of time.

Blessed Margaret Pole

Martyr of England. She was born Margaret Plantagenet, the niece of Edward IV and Rich­ard III. She married Sir Reginald Pole about 1491 and bore five sons, including Reginald Cardinal Pole. Margaret was widowed, named countess of Salisbury, and appointed governess to Princess Mary, daughter of Henry VIII and Queen Catherine of Aragon, Spain. She opposed Henry’s mar­riage to Anne Boleyn, and the king exiled her from court, although he had called her “the holiest woman in England.” When her son, Cardinal Pole, denied Henry’s Act of Supremacy, the king imprisoned Margaret in the Tower of London for two years and then beheaded her on May 28. In 1538, her son Henry Pole, Lord Montague was executed for treason and her other surviving son, Geoffrey was also arrested and found guilty of treason, but was pardoned. She was never given a legal trial, but included in an Act of Attainder that accused many of treason on quite flimsy grounds. Margaret Pole was devoted to the Five Wounds of Jesus; the Pilgrimage of Grace proceeded under banners emblazoned with the Five Wounds of Jesus; therefore, Cromwell and Henry's flawed logic was that her devotion proved her support of  rebellion. Nevermind that devotion to the Five Wounds of Jesus was popular throughout England in the 16th century. Her sons' opposition to Henry's marital and ecclesial efforts was enough. She rightly protested against the lack of due process and there are various reports about how horrible her execution was: certainly the headsman was incompetent.

She was seventy when she was martyred in 1541. Margaret was beatified in 1886 by Pope Leo XIII. She is buried in the Chapel of St. Peter ad Vincula in the Tower of London. Margaret Pole had planned a resting place for herself in what is now Christchurch Priory in what was, before 1539, an Augustinian Priory, in the Salisbury Chantry, where Masses would be said for the repose of her soul. More on her life and times here. Her daughter Ursula had married Henry Stafford, who was the eldest son of Edward Stafford, the Duke of Buckingham executed on May 17, 1521 for treason. Ursula and Edward survived the double blows of two parents beheaded for treason against Henry VIII, and Stafford was named Baron Stafford during the reign of Edward VI. One of their sons, Thomas, would also lose his head after participating in the Wyatt Rebellion against Mary I.

Blessed Margaret Pole's other son, Reginald, returned to England in 1554 to reconcile the English church and nation to the Catholic Church and the Papacy, becoming the last Catholic Archbishop of Canterbury in 1556. He died two years later and is buried in Canterbury Cathedral. You may read my review of her standard biography, Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury 1473-1541: Loyalty, Lineage and Leadership by Hazel Pierce here.

May 17, 1537 Robert Aske Sentenced to Death

Robert Aske, barrister and gentleman leader of the Pilgrimage of Grace was convicted of treason and sentenced to death on this day in 1537. In defense of the monasteries in the north of England, he had led the large gathering of pilgrims, negotiating with Thomas Howard, the Duke of Norfolk. Aske presented the peoples’ desires for an end to the suppression of the monasteries and other religious changes, referencing the protection of the Church promised in the Magna Carta! His pilgrim band/army far outnumbered Thomas Howard’s forces, but he wanted to negotiate a solution. Through Norfolk, Henry promised to convene a Parliament in York to address the issues if the rebels disbanded and returned to their homes. Aske also met with Henry in London. When another uprising broke the truce, Aske was arrested and tried.

David Knowles pays eloquent tribute to him in Bare Ruined Choirs: The Dissolution of the English Monasteries:

". . . he showed himself the most loyal and able contemporary champion and apologist of the Tudor religious, and his death cannot be allowed to pass without a memorial of words. He is indeed one of the few men of his age whom we recognize at once to have been utterly frank and single-minded . . ."

As Knowles continues, he describes how much Aske contributed to the progress of the Pilgrimage of Grace and yet demonstrates how aspects of Aske’s character led to its failure:

"Robert Aske, not Henry, was the true representative of all that was most characteristic and most sincere in England. [Yet] he failed because, when the call to build his tower had come suddenly upon him, he had not fully reckoned the cost."

Aske was not prepared to defy his king, to treat with Henry VIII as Henry VIII would treat with him, with force and deceit, and he was not prepared to defeat his king, to take him down if necessary:

"The leader of a rising should have been prepared, if need arose, to put his cause before his king; else it were better to have remained silent and hidden."

Aske thought he could trust his king to respond to the concerns of his people and to fulfill his promises. He did not want to use the force his army of pilgrims represented, and so, he failed.

Knowles concludes however:

"Of all leaders of revolts that have failed, Aske is one of the noblest. He was deceived and killed by the king whom he would gladly have served and whom he loved and trusted ‘not wisely but too well’."*

As Knowles’ memorial to Robert Aske makes clear, he was the better man in his dealings with Henry VIII because he was honorable and honest. Knowles further comments that only force could have stopped Henry VIII—but how far could that force go? If Aske had been willing to transform that group of pilgrims into an army, pitch battle against Thomas Howard, defeat him, then what? March to London and raise a siege on one of Henry VIII’s castles? Take the castle, capture Henry, and then execute him? Ultimately, this story demonstrates the limits even of military force.

Only Henry could have put the needs of his people above the needs of his power and responded to the Pilgrimage of Grace and Robert Aske as they deserved. In his mind, however, they deserved only punishment. He exacted brutal reprisals against the leaders of the uprising. Aske endured, not just the usual punishment of traitors, to be hung, drawn, and quartered, but the even more agonizing death of being hung from the battlements at York Castle, left to die of exposure and dehydration.

Henry VIII’s third wife, Jane Seymour, tried to speak up in defense of Aske, the Pilgrimage, and the monasteries, but Henry warned her that speaking up and interfering with his will had brought about the fall of her predecessor. Jane heeded his warning and was silent.

As I have noted before, Dom David Knowles is a great writer: style and precision of diction abound in his works. You have to pause sometimes to let the impact gather. For instance, Aske is "one of the few men of his age whom we recognize at once to have been utterly frank and single-minded"--then what do we recognize most men of his age to be? (duplicitous and pragmatic--"syncophants and timeservers"). Aske failed because, "when the call to build his tower had come suddenly upon him, he had not fully reckoned the cost."--note the Biblical imagery (Luke 14: 28-30) As Knowles comments, what we know of Robert Aske comes from only six months or so of his 36 years of life, but we can tell from those months that he "had an intelligence, a capacity for leadership, and a sense of justice and generosity quite out of the common"--a fine epitaph indeed. May he rest in peace.

*David Knowles, Bare Ruined Choirs: The Dissolution of the English Monasteries. Cambridge: The University of Cambridge Press, 1967, pages 219-220

The Lady's Not for Hanging: Margaret Bulmer in Fiction and History

About a month ago I read Nancy Bilueau's debut novel, The Crown. At the beginning of the novel, set in the aftermath of the Pilgrimage of Grace and during the Dissolution of the Monasteries, "Joanna Stafford, a Dominican nun, learns that her favorite cousin has been condemned by Henry VIII to be burned at the stake. Defying the sacred rule of enclosure, Joanna leaves the priory to stand at her cousin’s side. Arrested for interfering with the king’s justice, Joanna, along with her father, is sent to the Tower of London." Joanna Stafford's cousin is none other than Lady Margaret Bulmer, the natural daughter of Edward Stafford, the Third Duke of Buckingham. Buckingham was accused of treason against Henry VIII and beheaded on May 17, 1521. Margaret Bulmer was sentenced to death for her part in the Pilgrimage of Grace and burned alive at Smithfield on May 27, 1537. Now that I am rereading H.F.M. Prescott's The Man on a Donkey as I said I ought to, I have met Margaret Stafford again and her little sister Julian. Prescott is indeed depicting Margaret as impulsive and obstinate. I wonder how or if Prescott will depict Margaret's fate?

Sharon L. Jackson wrote about Margaret (Cheyne) Bulmer in her Dangerous Talk and Strange Behavior: Women and Popular Resistance to the Reforms of Henry VIII. According to this review,

Margaret Cheyne's crime was to encourage her husband, Sir John Bulmer, to take part in the Pilgrimage of Grace against Henry VIII's Reformation and reforms. The rebellion built upon a combination of economic, social, political and religious resentments festering in the North of England. Witnesses attested that Margaret Cheyne had encouraged her husband to join the Pilgrimage of Grace and, fatally, to continue treasonous activities after the rebellion's failure in the autumn of 1536. She, herself, admitted that she incited Bulmer to resist the king. But was this a political decision, or, as Jansen herself suggests, the words of "a woman who wanted desperately to get out of the way of danger, not to plunge her husband or herself into it any further"? (p. 17). Jansen continues to undermine her case for Margaret Cheyne's political motivations. Little evidence survives documenting Margaret Cheyne's activities during the rebellion.[3] Her treason conviction appears to have been based upon the vague assertions of a few individuals. At the same time, other women, such as Lady Rhys, Lady Anne Hussey and Elizabeth Stapleton, took seemingly far more active roles in the rebellion yet escaped unscathed. But according to Jansen, Margaret Cheyne's parentage, combined with hostile relations with her in-laws, arguably left her dangerously vulnerable to the machinations of her enemies and accusers. Nevertheless, Jansen confidently declares that, "I would argue that Margaret Cheyne's presence among the rebels during the Pilgrimage of Grace was deliberate rather than accidental, her participation in the rebellion much more significant than historians have realized" (p. 34).

Henry VIII had pardoned the Bulmers after the Pilgrimage of Grace, but they were accused of treason and executed when another Northern rebellion arose. We usually think of people being burned alive in connection with "Bloody Mary" and her reign's efforts to stamp out heresy; however, being burned alive was the usual form of capital punishment for women found guilty of treason. The usual sentence for men convicted of treason was being drawn, hung and quartered, but since that sentence involved nudity, women were burned at the stake. Anne Boleyn was found guilty of treason and condemned to be burned at the stake. The monarch could commute either sentence to the more merciful beheading, but Henry did not show that mercy to Margaret Bulmer, as he did to Anne Boleyn. Women were also burned at the stake if they murdered their husbands or tampered with currency. Thus, to misquote Christopher Fry, the Lady's Not for Hanging.

H.F.M. Prescott's Novel of the Pilgrimage of Grace

Here a masterful review of H.F.M. Prescott's The Man on a Donkey, which I think I should re-read soon. To quote:

At Aughton church, near Selby in Yorkshire, there is a curious feature on one of the external walls: a carved newt, or ‘asker,’ and near it a text which is usually translated as ‘Christopher, son of Sir Robert, ought not to forget the year AD 1536.’ This obscure brother of Robert Aske, the leader of the Pilgrimage of Grace, was apparently busy rebuilding his parish church at the time of the rebellion. No doubt he never did forget 1536, the year of the greatest of all Tudor uprisings, a popular and widespread rebellion by the gentry and the people of the north against the King’s new-fangled religious reforms.
Hilda Prescott’s magnum opus, The Man on a Donkey (1952), ensures that we may never forget that year either. This is one of the most significant and yet most neglected historical novels of the twentieth century, as Diane Wallace has recently argued. Although it totals over a thousand pages, you can now read it comfortably in bed, in the bath, on the bus, on the beach: Loyola Classics has republished it in two substantial volumes. And it is well worth reading, rewarding your effort with a rich, sad, beautiful tapestry depicting the lives of a range of characters living through the early years of the sixteenth century. It’s War and Peace of the English Protestant Reformation.
The Man on a Donkey was not Prescott’s first foray into Tudor history nor into historical fiction. The daughter of an Anglican clergyman, Hilda Frances Margaret Prescott was born at Latchford in Cheshire in 1896. She studied history at Oxford and Manchester Universities, and taught in private schools and at Oxford before becoming a full-time writer in the early 1920s. A trilogy of historical novels set in medieval France laid the foundations for her reputation, but the book which first brought Prescott to the notice of the reading public was a biography of Mary Tudor, which was published in 1940, winning the James Tait Black Prize in the following year.

The reason that Rosemary Mitchell, the author of this great piece mentions Diana Wallace is that the latter has written a study of The Woman’s Historical Novel: British Women Writers, 1900-2000 which is available at a very nice price from amazon.com! If you don't have The Man on a Donkey in your library, Loyola Classics has it on sale (both volumes).

Something Cromwell and the Court of Augmentations Missed

Furness Abbey was the second richest monastery in 16th century England when Thomas Cromwell, Henry VIII's Vicar in Spiritual Matters, targeted it and the other large monasteries for dissolution. Cromwell and his official Commissioners would be very disappointed to learn that they really missed something: the grave of an earlier abbot containing great treasure. That grave was recently discovered and more investigation is planned to date the abbot and possibly identify him. The UK's Guardian and Daily Mail have both run stories on this recent find, accessed during some repairs to the ruined abbey. From The Daily Mail: :

For something like seven centuries he had lain undisturbed.
He – or at least his remains – survived Henry VIII’s destruction of his abbey in 1537, eluded the grave-robbers that followed, and avoided discovery by Victorian archaeologists.
Even deep excavations and the underpinning of the crumbling building in the 1930s failed to unearth him.

But the abbot who headed Britain’s second richest and most powerful Cistercian monastery may soon be unmasked – along with the identity, perhaps, of one of the site’s ghosts.

Furness Abbey is part of the English Heritage program and it costs you about four pounds to visit it today. It was "voluntarily" surrendered in 1537, ahead of the suppression of most of the major monasteries, because some of its monks had been involved in the Pilgrimage of Grace. Roger Pele was its last abbot.

The treasures buried with this abbot are the elaborate head of his crozier and his ring. From The Guardian:

The crozier is unusual and the first to be excavated in this country for 50 years. It has a central gilded silver plaque which shows the archangel Michael slaying a dragon with his sword.
The ring – quite large, probably for a man with big or chubby fingers – is likely to have been given to the abbot on his consecration. "It is an unusual ring," said Harrison. "The bezel is a pyramid shape and is pointed – it would stick in to your finger. You would have felt it when you wore it and it might have been a reminder of the piety of the office."

Estimates currently date his burial from 1350 to 1500, so he could be one of these men:

* John of Cockerham, elected 1303, died 1347 (fn. 238)

* Alexander of Walton, elected 1347, died 1367 (fn. 239)
John of Cokan', elected 1367 (fn. 240)
* John of Bolton, occurs 1389, 1404 (fn. 241)
William of Dalton, occurs 1407, died 1416-7 (fn. 242)
Robert, elected c. 1417, occurs 1441 (fn. 243)
[Thomas or William Woodward] (fn. 244)
John Turner, occurs 1443-60 (fn. 245)
Lawrence, occurs 1461-91 (fn. 246)
Thomas Chamber, elected 1491, occurs 1496 (fn. 247)

(Image source: wikipedia commons)

Elena Maria Vidal Interviews the Author of "The Crown"

She also promises a review of this historical novel soon on her blog, Tea at Trianon. An excerpt:

An aristocratic young nun must find a legendary crown in order to save her father—and preserve the Catholic faith from Cromwell’s ruthless terror. The year is 1537. . .

EMV: Nancy, welcome to Tea at Trianon! Congratulations on your magnificent novel, The Crown, which I thoroughly enjoyed. I was especially impressed by the research that went into making it one of the most authentic novels of the Tudor era that I have ever read. You bring to life the beauty and peace of the cloister even as it is about to be destroyed. Can you tell us a little about how you began your journey into the past, and where you found the best sources on such a turbulent, controversial epoch?

NB: I’ve been interested in English history since I was 11 years old and saw a re-broadcast of “The Six Wives of Henry VIII” on television with my parents. Ever since that time, the Tudor period was my particular passion, and I read the major books about the time. I pored through the major biographies, from J.J. Scarisbricke’s Henry VIII to Garrett Mattingly’s Catherine of Aragon. Every time a new biography on Anne Boleyn was published, I bought it. I do think I have all of them. When I began the research for The Crown, I dove into all books and sources on the Dissolution of the Monasteries and the Pilgrimage of Grace, which was the 1536-1537 rebellion in the North against the Protestant reforms. I found some of the most helpful books written almost a century ago: F.A. Gasquet’s English Monastic Life (1906) and Cranage’s The Home of the Monk: An Account of English Monastic Life and Buildings in the Middle Ages (1926). On the other end of the spectrum, British History Online is an amazing Internet source of contemporary and secondary source documents. . . .

I look forward to the review and to reading the book myself. I trust Elena Maria's judgment (after all, she liked Supremacy and Survival) and know she is great historical novelist herself (Trianon, Madame Royale, and The Night's Dark Shade) so when speaks so highly of an author's research, you know it will be good reading and good history. I certainly echo Nancy Bilyeau's comment about British History Online: it is a great source for little details about the last days of the monastic houses, etc.

Some Resources on The Dissolution of the Monasteries

If you've heard my interview on the Dissolution of the Monasteries this morning on the Son Rise Morning Show, here are some resources:

Geoffrey Moorhouse wrote this book on the Dissolution, focused on what happened at Durham. He also wrote The Pilgrimage of Grace: The Rebellion that Shook Henry VIII's Throne. More information on that book here.

Dom David Knowles' Bare Ruined Choirs is another great resource, adapted from his three volume study of monasteries in England.

In my article in OSV's The Catholic Answer Magazine, I reference two novels: H.F.M. Prescott's The Man on a Donkey and Robert Hugh Benson's
The King's Achievement. Benson's is particularly evocative as it focuses on a family experiencing division and conflict over the dissolution: one brother suppresses both this sister's convent and his brother's monastery (Lewes Priory).

Of course, I dedicate a section of Supremacy and Survival: How Catholics Endured the English Reformation to the dissolution and uprising against it.

The Pilgrimage of Grace Begins

The Pilgrimage of Grace began on October 13, 1536, after the failure of the Lincolnshire uprising earlier that month.

Robert Aske, barrister, led the uprising, which soon gathered a following of up to 40,000. Aske presented the peoples’ desires for an end to the suppression of the monasteries and other religious changes, referencing the protection of the Church promised in the Magna Carta! His pilgrim band/army far outnumbered Thomas Howard’s forces, but he wanted to negotiate a solution. Through Norfolk, Henry promised to convene a Parliament in York to address the issues if the rebels disbanded and returned to their homes. Aske also met with Henry in London. When another uprising broke the truce, Aske was arrested and tried.

David Knowles pays eloquent tribute to him in Bare Ruined Choirs: The Dissolution of the English Monasteries:

". . . he showed himself the most loyal and able contemporary champion and apologist of the Tudor religious, and his death cannot be allowed to pass without a memorial of words. He is indeed one of the few men of his age whom we recognize at once to have been utterly frank and single-minded . . ."

As Knowles continues, he describes how much Aske contributed to the progress of the Pilgrimage of Grace and yet demonstrates how aspects of Aske’s character led to its failure:

"Robert Aske, not Henry, was the true representative of all that was most characteristic and most sincere in England. [Yet] he failed because, when the call to build his tower had come suddenly upon him, he had not fully reckoned the cost."

Aske was not prepared to defy his king, to treat with Henry VIII as Henry VIII would treat with him, with force and deceit, and he was not prepared to defeat his king, to take him down if necessary:

"The leader of a rising should have been prepared, if need arose, to put his cause before his king; else it were better to have remained silent and hidden."

Aske thought he could trust his king to respond to the concerns of his people and to fulfill his promises. He did not want to use the force his army of pilgrims represented, and so, he failed.

Knowles concludes however:

"Of all leaders of revolts that have failed, Aske is one of the noblest. He was deceived and killed by the king whom he would gladly have served and whom he loved and trusted ‘not wisely but too well’."*

As Knowles’ memorial to Robert Aske makes clear, he was the better man in his dealings with Henry VIII because he was honorable and honest. Knowles further comments that only force could have stopped Henry VIII—but how far could that force go? If Aske had been willing to transform that group of pilgrims into an army, pitch battle against Thomas Howard, defeat him, then what? March to London and raise a siege on one of Henry VIII’s castles? Take the castle, capture Henry, and then execute him? Ultimately, this story demonstrates the limits even of military force.

Only Henry could have put the needs of his people above the needs of his power and responded to the Pilgrimage of Grace and Robert Aske as they deserved. In his mind, however, they deserved only punishment. He exacted brutal reprisals against the leaders of the uprising. Aske endured, not just the usual punishment of traitors, to be hung, drawn, and quartered, but the even more agonizing death of being hung from the battlements at York Castle, left to die of exposure and dehydration.

Henry VIII’s third wife, Jane Seymour, tried to speak up in defense of Aske, the Pilgrimage, and the monasteries, but Henry warned her that speaking up and interfering with his will had brought about the fall of her predecessor. Jane heeded his warning and was silent.

*David Knowles, Bare Ruined Choirs: The Dissolution of the English Monasteries. Cambridge: The University of Cambridge Press, 1967, pages 219-220. Another book I'd recommend is by Geoffrey Moorhouse: The Pilgrimage of Grace: The Rebellion that Shook Henry VIII's Throne.