cex
Banned
So, what if Howard had either given battle or agreed to join the rebels, and Henry had been killed when the rebels stormed London? Once Henry has been killed and it is evident within the month that the imprisoned Jane is not pregnant, Howard accepts the crown handed to him by the rebels, reasoning along with Aske and Bigod that as the last of the Plantagenets,even a usurper has a superior claim to the throne to a half-Spaniard woman of dubious legitimacy, and the Concubine's Daughter.See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pilgrimage_of_Grace
My POD is suggested by the following passage from Richard Rex, The Tudors, pp. 80-81:
"...With other large rebel groups gathered at Carlisle and elsewhere, almost all England north of the Trent was under the control of the Pilgrims through the autumn of 1536. Their grievances were voiced at a representative assembly, and were consolidated into a list of demands which began with reconciliation with Rome, went on with the reversal of recent religious changes and the restoration of suppressed monasteries, included a number of material demands relating to taxation and land law, and, most threateningly, emphasised the need to eliminate the king's 'low-born' councillors, who were tactfully blamed for everything the Pilgrims hated. Foremost among these villains was of course Thomas Cromwell, but Cranmer and Lattimer were not far behind in the rebel demonology.
"We learn a great deal about Henry from the way he dealt with this broadbased challenge to his entire regime. The idea of resorting to concessions or compromise was inconceivable to him. His young wife, Jane, made her only venture into politics at this moment, begging Henry on bended knee to reverse his policy towards the monasteries. Henry pulled her roughly to her feet and warned her not to meddle in things which were not her concern, reminding her of the fate of her predecessor. Instead of holding out the prospect of concessions, Henry launched against the northern rebels a proclamation still sterner than that issued for Lincolnshire, and his instructions to the Duke of Norfolk were for direct military action and dire vengeance. The Pilgrims actually reopened some of the monasteries suppressed earlier that year, and Henry took this as a particular affront. He ordered Norfolk to hang some of the offending monks from the steeple of their own church. What irritated Henry more than anything was the presumption of the Pilgrims in telling him whom he should or should not have on his Privy Council...
"Had it not been for the tactful diplomacy of the Duke of Norfolk on the ground in Yorkshire, Henry's personal intransigence might have cost him his throne. For if Norfolk had followed early royal instructions and given battle to the rebels with his inferior force, he might have been cut to pieces, in which case the road south would have lain open to a force which had tasted blood, gone too far to consider retreat, and learned that the king would not listen. [my emphasis--DT] In the event, Norfolk persuaded the king that negotiation was the only realistic policy, although even the non-committal concessions which he offered were probably more than Henry would have liked him to make. He guaranteed them a full and free pardon if they dispersed, and promised that the king would listen to their grievances. The fact that they believed him helps us to understand the success of the English Reformation in particular, and of the Tudor regime in general. The Pilgrims were convinced that Henry was essentially one of them, conservative in religion and politics alike; and they were thoroughly indoctrinated with the ideology of monarchy, which had long been ingrained into the English mind by the common law and the church, and which the Tudors, trading heavily on the memory of the Wars of the Roses, had made indispensable to the general sense of the viability of the social order. The fact is that Henry himself was irreversibly committed to the revolutionary policies of the 1530s, and that the only way to reverse them was to remove him from the throne. This solution was simply beyond the mental horizon of the Pilgrims.
"Henry reluctantly accepted Norfolk's fait accompli. But when an unstable northern knight, Sir Francis Bigod (ironically, one of the few northerners sympathetic to religious change and really enthusiastic for the royal supremacy) attempted for reasons of his own to raise the standard of rebellion anew early in 1537, Henry was quick to seize the chance for revenge. The embers of revolt were stamped out in fact by many of the local gentry who had themselves risen the previous autumn. But Henry reckoned this betrayal released him from the promises Norfolk had made in his name. He ordered exemplary executions across the north, and had the ringleaders of the original Pilgrimage brought to London for trial and execution. It was not justice, but it was a brutal display of power. Henry would see no further rebellions in England." https://books.google.com/books?id=oEchnmfzL4MC&pg=PT182
So my main what-if here is what if "Norfolk had followed early royal instructions and given battle to the rebels with his inferior force..."?
Of course another question is what if Norfolk, as a committed Catholic, changes sides and supports the Pilgrims? I don't think this was likely, but it is certainly true that there were a lot of doubts about Norfolk's loyalty, claims (admittedly by his enemies...) that he really sympathized with the rebels, etc. (After all, would not their demand that the King get rid of 'all villeins' blood and evil counsellors'--meaning especially Cromwell of course--work to Norfolk's benefit?) In fact, this may be one reason he was so bloodthirsty in suppressing the Pilgrims in 1537; he had to go to extremes to prove his loyalty:
"Norfolk was well aware that he had exceeded his brief and that the concessions he had granted in the King's name would never be honoured. When, early in 1537, a few trouble spots in Yorkshire and Cumberland flared up, the Duke seized the opportunity to redeem himself and declare Martial Law on the region--'Now shall appear whether for favour of these countrymen I forebore to fight with them at Doncaster.' Having rounded up more than two hundred former rebels, Norfolk had them publicly hanged from the trees and steeples of their villages. When grieving mothers and widows attempted to cut the bodies down for burial, they too were punished." Jessie Childs, Henry VIII's Last Victim: The Life and Times of Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, p. 118 http://books.google.com/books?id=wYz-bwa3tN4C&pg=PA118
And yet, even this did not stifle the rumors:
"Although Henry VIII declared himself thrilled with Norfolk's blood-lust--'you have done unto us such thankful and acceptable service as we shall never put in oblivion'--the rumour mill continued to grind at court. 'Here goeth so many lies and tales,' John Husee reported to Lord Lisle, 'that a man knoweth not whereunto to trust.' As Norfolk had himself observed, few of his soldiers had believed in their mission and most had been reluctant to fight their countrymen. According to a report of 29 November, many of Norfolk's men did in fact defect to the rebel camp. John Fowberry, a servant of Surrey, had taken part in the first insurrection, though he later redeemed himself by informing on the rebels' plan to take Hull. More worrying was a report claiming that Surrey himself had twice listened to a song in support of the Pilgrimage and had refrained from punishing the singer. The Howards also had known links with some of the rebel leaders. Dr Mackeral, the Abbot of Darlings, who was executed for his part in the Lincolnshire uprising, had preached at the Flodden Duke's funeral and Lords Darcy and Hussey, who were implicated in the rebellions in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire respectively, had discussed the possibility of a rising as early as 1534 and had suggested then that Norfolk might be willing to join them." http://books.google.com/books?id=wYz-bwa3tN4C&pg=PA119
As to the validity of the charges that Norfolk had expressed sympathy with the Pilgrimage, Childs writes:
"Even if one takes into account the number of men at Court who would have willingly perjured themselves in order to destroy the Howards, the accumulation of charges against them does imply that something must have been said in favour of the rebels at the time of the first meeting on Doncaster bridge. Considering the delicate nature of the negotiations, this is hardly surprising. Norfolk had had to placate the represenatives of forty thousand angry men. He had to convince them that he, and the King, thought their grievances worthy of consideration. Norfolk had warned as much in his letter to the King of 25 October. But whatever sympathy Norfolk or Surrey may have expressed for the rebels' ends, they had shown by their actions that they abhorred the means. Henry VIII was satisfied and no action was taken against either father or son." http://books.google.com/books?id=wYz-bwa3tN4C&pg=PA121
FWIW, at least one source fantasizes about a successful Piligrimage making Norfolk King!:
"Had the Pilgrimage of Grace succeeded, Norfolk might have sat upon the English throne, and revived the proud traditions of the great Plantagenet monarchs, his ancestors. At the worst, he would have ruled the land far better than did the half-bestial, perhaps half-crazy, despot whom fate had made his master, and whom he served so well. But instead of matching his powers against the monarchs of Europe, Norfolk was compelled to strive with his successive rivals at the British Court; and although the odds were nearly always on the side of the enemy, he succeeded again and again in turning the tables upon them, and died unconquered at the last, the first and greatest noble of the realm." Gerald Brenan and Edward Phillips Statham, The House of Howard, Volume 2 (1907) p. 336. http://books.google.com/books?id=PpogAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA336
Norfolk's loyalty, incidentally, was not unusual among the Catholic nobles. For an argument that on the whole the nobility was loyal to Henry after the break with Rome, see G. W. Bernard, The King's Reformation: Henry VIII and the Remaking of the English Church, pp. 199 et seq. Besides Norfolk, he notes of another great Catholic noble, George Talbot, fourth earl of Shrewsbury, that while he objected to "excessive presure on the queen" in 1531, "like most Tudor noblemen, [he] would not lightly abandon his fundamental loyalty to the crown. There is nothing whatever to suggest that he spoke any further words, much less took any action, against the drift of royal policy: he must have sworn the oaths required in 1534; and in 1536 he would instinctively and immediately set his face against the Pilgrimage of Grace." http://books.google.com/books?id=HOiXAhKkTNEC&pg=PA201
I was thinking of another what-if--what if Bigod had not rebelled? But the answer is too obvious--Henry would have found another excuse for going back on Norfolk's agreement. "The leaders of the Pilgrimage undertook an impossible task when they promised at Doncaster to keep the north quiet until Norfolk's return. When a large region has been in open insurrection for three months, it cannot be restored to order at a word. It is true that the gentlemen did not realise what they were required to do. They expected Norfolk to return within a month, and they expected that the King would make allowance for the difficulties of their position. They were mistaken on both points. Norfolk's return was delayed, and Henry was prepared to exact from the north a state of immaculate order to which few counties in England ever attained, even in times of peace... The rising of Hallam and Bigod gave him a good excuse, but before that excuse was offered he had already found others. The disturbance at Beverley, the deer-stealing at Rylston, the tithe riots in Cumberland, the restoration of the monks at Sawley--anything was a sufficient pretext for declaring that the King was no longer bound by the terms, and for bringing the champions of the old faith to trial and execution..."M. H. & R. Dodds, The Pilgrimage of Grace, 1536-37 and the Exeter Conspiracy, 1538 (Cambridge UP 1915) http://books.google.com/books?id=vDU9AAAAIAAJ&pg=PA55
The authors of this work observe that "As soon as the Pilgrims allowed themselves to be put off by vague promises their cause was lost. Even if they had exacted a definite agreement with proper guarantees in Doncaster, it would probably have made no difference in the end. Nothing but force could have induced Henry to observe such a treaty. Even if the parliament which they desired had met, it is unlikely that it would have achieved anything. Henry was no Charles I. With Cromwell's help he knew how to manage parliaments. The Pilgrims' one chance of success had lain in battle. The two parties were very evenly balanced. Henry had a better general and on the whole better supplies, but the Pilgrims had the advantage in numbers and enthusiasm, and were on their own ground. They did not choose to push the matter to fighting, and they failed.
"It is impossible to regret their failure now. If England had been rent by a religious civil war at the very outset of modern history, as the Reformation has rightly been called, she must have been seriously, perhaps fatally, crippled, and prevented from taking her place among the greater European powers. No country which had undergone the strain of the Hundred Years War, followed by the Wars of the Roses, could have borne in succession a third war more terrible than either of these..." (Ibid.) [When I posted this in soc.history.what-if some years ago, somehow the discussion got sidetracked into arguments that the destruction caused by the Wars of the Roses had been exaggerated and was in no way comparable to that of the Hundred Years War, which is true but hardly relevant to the main argument.--DT]
