ion were
stirred by the fate of one whom the friends of the old order looked upon
as the source of all their troubles. In the spring of 1536, while the
dissolution of the monasteries was marking the triumph of the new policy,
Anne Boleyn was suddenly charged with adultery, and sent to the Tower. A
few days later she was tried, condemned, and brought to the block. The
queen's ruin was everywhere taken as an omen of ruin to the cause which
had become identified with her own, and the old nobility mustered courage
to face the minister who held them at his feet.

[Sidenote: Pilgrimage of Grace]

They found their opportunity in the discontent of the north, where the
monasteries had been popular, and where the rougher mood of the people
turned easily to resistance. In the autumn of 1536 a rising broke out in
Lincolnshire, and this was hardly quelled when all Yorkshire rose in arms.
From every parish the farmers marched with the parish priest at their head
upon York, and the surrender of this city determined the waverers. In a
few days Skipton Castle, where the Earl of Cumberland held out with a
handful of men, was the only spot north of the Humber which remained true
to the king. Durham rose at the call of the chiefs of the house of
Neville, Lords Westmoreland and Latimer. Though the Earl of Northumberland
feigned sickness, the Percies joined the revolt. Lord Darcy, the chief of
the Yorkshire nobles, surrendered Pomfret, and was acknowledged as their
chief by the insurgents. The whole nobility of the north were now enlisted
in the "Pilgrimage of Grace," as the rising called itself, and thirty
thousand "tall men and well horsed" moved on the Don demanding the
reversal of the royal policy, a reunion with Rome, the restoration of
Catharine's daughter, Mary, to her rights as heiress of the Crown, redress
for the wrongs done to the Church, and above all the driving away of
base-born councillors, or in other words, the fall of Cromwell. Though
their advance was checked by negotiation, the organization of the revolt
went steadily on throughout the winter, and a Parliament of the North
which gathered at Pomfret formally adopted the demands of the insurgents.
Only six thousand men under Norfolk barred their way southward, and the
Midland counties were known to be disaffected.

[Sidenote: Its Suppression]

But Cromwell remained undaunted by the peril. He suffered indeed Norfolk
to negotiate; and allowed Henry under pressure from