by landlords on the renewal of leases. An army of 35,000 was raised by
the insurgents but their leader, Robert Aske, did not wish to fight,
though he was opposed by only 8,000 royal troops. He preferred a
parley and demanded, in addition to a free pardon, the acceptance of
the northern demands, the summons of a free Parliament, the restoration
of the papal supremacy as touching the cure of souls, and the
suppression of the books of Tyndale, Huss, Luther, and Melanchthon.
The king invited Aske to a personal interview, and promised to accede
to the demand for a Parliament if the petitioners would disperse. An
act of violence on a part of a few of the northerners was held to
absolve the government, and Henry, having gathered his forces,
demanded, and secured, a "dreadful execution" of vengeance.

Though the Pilgrimage of Grace had some effect in warning Henry not to
dabble in foreign heresies, the policy he had most at heart, that of
making himself absolute in state and church, went on apace. The
culmination of the growth of the royal power is commonly seen in the
Statute of Proclamations [Sidenote: Statute of Proclamations, 1539]
apparently giving the king's proclamations the same validity as law
save when they touched the lives, liberty, or property of subjects or
were repugnant to existing statutes. Probably, however, the intent of
Parliament was not {305} to confer new powers on the crown but to
regulate the enforcement of already existing prerogatives. As a matter
of fact no proclamations were issued during the last years of Henry's
reign that might not have been issued before.

But the reform of the church by the government, in morals and usages,
not in doctrine, proceeded unchecked. The larger monasteries had been
falling into the king's hands by voluntary surrender ever since 1536; a
new visitation and a new Act for the dissolution [Sidenote: 1539] of
the greater monasteries completed the process.

[Sidenote: War on relics]

An iconoclastic war was now begun not, as in other countries, by the
mob, but by the government. Relics like the Blood of Hailes were
destroyed, and the Rood of Boxley, a crucifix mechanically contrived so
that the priests made it nod and smile or shake its head and frown
according to the liberality of its worshipper, was taken down and the
mechanism exposed in various places. At Walsingham in Norfolk was a
nodding image of the Virgin, a bottle of her milk, still liquid, and a
kn