Pilgrimage of Grace

The Pilgrimage of Grace was an English Catholic popular revolt beginning in Yorkshire in October 1536 before spreading to other parts of Northern England, including Cumberland, Northumberland, Durham and north Lancashire. The protests occurred under the leadership of Robert Aske. The "most serious of all Tudor period rebellions", the Pilgrimage was a revolt against King Henry VIII's break with the Catholic Church, the dissolution of the lesser monasteries, and the policies of the King's chief minister, Thomas Cromwell, as well as other specific political, social, and economic grievances.

Following the suppression of the short-lived Lincolnshire Rising of 1536, the traditional historical view portrays the Pilgrimage as "a spontaneous mass protest of the conservative elements in the North of England angry with the religious upheavals instigated by King Henry VIII". Historians have observed that there were contributing economic factors.

During the Tudor era there was a general rise in the population across England, concentrated in the areas around Yorkshire. This led to a series of enclosures of once common lands. With increased competition for resources, lack of access to once common land, and a greater pool of available labour, led to an increase in the price of goods and a lack of employment, resulting in unrest amongst the population.

In 1535, the year preceding the revolt, bad harvests led to a series of grain riots in Craven in June 1535 and Somerset in April 1536 where grain prices were 82% higher than those in 1534.

The Lincolnshire Rising was a brief rising against the separation of the Church of England from papal authority by Henry VIII and the dissolution of the monasteries set in motion by Thomas Cromwell. Both planned to assert the nation's religious autonomy and the king's supremacy over religious matters. The dissolution of the monasteries resulted in much property being transferred to the Crown.

The royal commissioners seized not only land, but the church plate, jewels, gold crosses, and bells. Silver chalices were replaced by ones made of tin. In some instances these items had been donated by local families in thanksgiving or in memory of a family member. There was also resistance to the recently passed Statute of Uses, which sought to recover royal fees based on land tenure. On 30 September 1536, Dr. John Raynes, Chancellor of the Diocese of Lincoln, and one of Cromwell's commissioners, was addressing the assembled clergy in Bolingbroke, informing them of the new regulations and taxes affecting them. One of his clerks further inflamed matters regarding new requirements for the academic standards of the clergy saying "Look to your books, or there will be consequences", which may have worried some of the less educated attendees. Word of his discourse and rumours of confiscation spread rapidly throughout Lindsey and soon reached Louth and Horncastle.

The rising began on 1 October 1536 at St James' Church, Louth, after Vespers, shortly after the closure of Louth Park Abbey. The stated aim of the uprising was to protest against the suppression of the monasteries, and not against the rule of Henry VIII himself.

Led by a monk and a shoemaker called Nicholas Melton, some 22,000 people are estimated to have joined the rising. The rising quickly gained support in Horncastle, Market Rasen, Caistor, and other nearby towns. Raynes, who was ill at Bolingbroke, was dragged from his sick-bed in the chantry priests' residence and later beaten to death by the mob, and the commissioners' registers were seized and burned.