r than I have done already, nor does it belong to the subject
of the present volume. The Pilgrimage of Grace was the outbreak of the
conspiracy encouraged by Chapuys to punish Henry, and to stop the progress
of the Reformation; Chapuys's successors in the time of Elizabeth followed
his example; and with them all the result was the same--the ruin of the
cause which with such weapons they were trying to maintain, and the deaths
on the scaffold of the victims of visionary hopes and promises which were
never to be made good.

All the great persons whom Chapuys names as willing to engage in the
enterprise--the Peers, the Knights, who, with the least help from the
Emperor, would hurl the King from his throne, Lord Darcy and Lord Hussey,
the Bishop of Rochester, as later on, the Marquis of Exeter, Lord
Montague, and his mother--sank one after another into bloody graves. They
mistook their imaginations for facts, their passions for arguments, and
the vain talk of an unscrupulous Ambassador for solid ground on which to
venture into treason. In their dreams they saw the phantom of the Emperor
coming over with an army to help them. Excited as they had been, they
could not part with their hopes. They knew that they were powerful in
numbers. Their preparations had been made, and many thousands of clergy
and gentlemen and yeomen had been kindled into crusading enthusiasm. The
flame burst out sporadically and at intervals, without certain plan or
purpose, at a time when the Emperor could not help them, even if he had
ever seriously intended it, and thus the conflagration, which at first
blazed through all the northern counties, was extinguished before it
turned to civil war. The common people who had been concerned in it
suffered but lightly. But the roots had penetrated deep; the conspiracy
was of long standing; the intention of the leaders was to carry out the
Papal censures, and put down what was called heresy. The rising was really
formidable, for the loyalty of many of the great nobles was not above
suspicion, and, if not promptly dealt with, it might have enveloped the
whole island. Those who rise in arms against Governments must take the
consequences of failure, and the leaders who had been the active spirits
in the sedition were inexorably punished. In my History of the time I have
understated the number of those who were executed. Care was taken to
select only those who had been definitely prominent. Nearly three hundred
were