The Autobiography of Henry VIII_ With Notes by His Fool, Will Somers - Margaret George [174]
The Percy family had ruined itself in the Pilgrimage. Earlier, Henry Percy (Anne’s erstwhile lover), now the sixth Earl of Northumberland, had bequeathed his familial lands to the Crown upon his death. Whether poor dying Percy did it as a gesture of despair or mockery toward his brothers, I knew not, but it presented an elegant solution to the problem of no Crown holdings in that wild area. Naturally the two younger brothers, Thomas and Ingram Percy, objected, and became traitors and rebels in hopes of reclaiming their ancestral lands. All the while Henry Percy lay on his deathbed, his whole body “as yellow as saffron,” they said.
Some of the rich northern abbeys, thinking to protect themselves and win favour, gave shelter and aid to the rebels. Their actions had exactly the opposite effect: they convinced me that all the monasteries must be closed, for they were no friends to me or my government.
After the New Year, two leftover rebels, Sir Francis Bigod and John Hallam, impatient to have their “demands” met, regathered forces and attempted to capture the cities of Scarborough and Hull. Two abbeys, Watton Priory and Jervaulx, joined in, and the next month rebellion broke out in two other shires, Cumberland and Westmorland.
That was enough. There would be no pardon, no promises on my part carried out. The traitors, one and all, would perish, and in the sight of those they had led. Robert Aske was hanged in chains on market day in the square at York; Sir Robert Constable, in the market at Hull; and Lord Hussey was beheaded in Lincoln.
Lord Darcy (“Old Tom,” who had shouted at Cromwell, “Yet shall there one head remain that shall strike off thy head!”) was beheaded at the Tower, along with Thomas Percy; and Tyburn (where traitors met the prescribed felons’ death) took care of the Abbot of Barking, the Vicar of Louth, and the Lancaster royal herald who had knelt in fealty to the rebels. Seventy-four lesser rebels were likewise executed in Carlisle.
The rebel monks, some two hundred of them, were executed as the stinking traitors they were. At Sawley Abbey, they had actually crept back into their officially closed house in arrogant disregard of the law. So I ordered the Earl of Derby to hang the abbot and a score of his monks from the church steeple, on long pieces of timber, so that all his “flock” could see what befell traitors. The white-clad bodies swung from the silent tower (the bells having already been melted down and carried away). I daresay their silent movements spoke louder to the neighbourhood than any ringing bells ever had.
This prompted the first surrender of a monastery. When my royal commissioners took up their work again in April, the Abbot of Furness Abbey, in Cumbria, found it prudent to meet my representatives with a deed of surrender, giving the Crown “all such interest and title as I have had, have, or may have in the Abbey.” This unforeseen gift made our task simple—although it rattled Cromwell, who had made out a complex schedule for closing the monasteries, based on their resistance.
“Sometimes it is difficult to appreciate an unexpected victory when one has been bracing for a struggle,” I said.
“Yes. This schedule was ingenious,” he replied wistfully, running his hands over it, where it lay spread out on our consulting-table. “Now I shall have to expand the numbers quisitions.”
The Court of Augmentations was the body Cromwell and I had created to process the monastic properties and dispose of them. “I think perhaps a new