Page:Cambridge Modern History Volume 2.djvu/476

 by the Church of England. This was done in Ten Articles not greatly at variance with the beliefs hitherto received, though dissuading the use of the term Purgatory, and omitting all notice of four out of the Seven Sacraments. This omission of course attracted some observation. But as to their positive contents Cardinal Pole himself found little fault with these Articles, his main objection being to the authority by which they were set forth. They were printed as "Articles devised by the King's Highness to stablish Christian quietness and unity among us."

The legislation of past years had created much popular discontent, which was now increased by the dissolution of the monasteries. In the north rumours were spread that the King would appropriate all the Church plate; and when the Commissioners for levying a subsidy came to Caistor, in Lincolnshire, just after two small neighbouring monasteries had been suppressed, the people banded together to resist them. The Commissioners made a hasty retreat, but some of them were captured and compelled by the rebels to swear to be true to the King and to take their side. The insurgents likewise sent up two messengers to Windsor to lay their grievances before their sovereign. The answer returned by Henry was rough in the extreme, and he sent a force under the Duke of Suffolk to quell the rising, preparing himself to follow with another, which was to muster at Ampthill. The muster, however, was countermanded on news that the rebels were ready to submit; but Lincolnshire was scarcely quiet when a more formidable rising began in Yorkshire, called the Pilgrimage of Grace. A lawyer named Robert Aske caused a muster on Skipwith Moor, at which the men swore to be faithful to the King and preserve the Church from spoil; for here, as in Lincolnshire, men desired to combine loyalty with religion, which they believed to be in danger from the rule of Cromwell and such Bishops as Cranmer and Latimer. Aske and his friends got possession of York. They took an oath of adhesion from the Mayor and commons at Doncaster. They replaced the expelled monks in their monasteries. Pomfret Castle was delivered up to them by Lord Darcy as too weak to hold out, though the Archbishop of York had taken refuge with him there; and a herald named Lancaster, sent thither by the Earl of Shrewsbury, was forbidden by Aske to read the King's proclamation, though he fell on his knees and begged leave to execute his commission.

The Duke of Norfolk, sent by the King to put down the rising, joined the Earl of Shrewsbury and others in the Midlands, and sent an address to the rebels, offering them the choice of battle or submission. But on reaching Doncaster he found that the movement had assumed such dimensions that a conflict would have been disastrous; and accordingly he made an agreement there with the rebels (October 27) and arranged for a general truce in the north, while Sir Ralph Ellerker and Robert Bowes were sent up to the King to ask for an answer to