Rising of the North

Blessed

Thomas Plumtree
Blessed; Thomas Plumtree
Priest, Rector, Chaplain to the Rising of the North
Born	c. 1520; Roman Catholic Church
Beatified	29 December 1886 by Pope Leo XIII
Feast	4 January, 1 December as one of the Martyrs of Oxford University
Attributes	Rosary

Rising of the North
Date	November 9, 1569 – January 21, 1570
Location	Northern England
Result	Elizabethan victory Elizabeth's authority strengthened; Aristocracy of the North weakened;
Belligerents
Partisans of Mary, Queen of Scots; ; Northern English Catholics	Elizabeth I of England; ; English and Welsh Protestants; Scottish Protestants
Commanders and leaders
Countess of Westmorland Countess of Northumberland Aftermath:; Leonard Dacre	Earl of Sussex; Baron Clinton; Earl of Warwick; Aftermath:; Baron Hunsdon
Strength
4,600	7,000

The Rising of the North of 1569, also called the Revolt of the Northern Earls or Northern Rebellion, was an unsuccessful attempt by

Elizabeth I of England and replace her with Mary, Queen of Scots

.

Background

Mary I as queen of England in 1558. Elizabeth's accession was disputed due to the questioned legitimacy of the marriage of her parents (Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn), and Elizabeth's own questioned legitimacy due to the Act of Succession 1536. Under Henry VIII and his advisor Thomas Cromwell, power was gradually shifted from regional institutions to royal control. This course was encouraged by Elizabeth's counsellors such as William Cecil

and a policy of centralization was the approach favoured by Elizabeth herself at least in regards to the northern border region.

Opponents of Elizabeth looked to Mary, Queen of Scots, the descendant of Henry VIII's sister Margaret. The claims were initially put forward by Mary's father-in-law, King Henry II of France, and Mary upheld them after her return to Scotland in 1561.

Many

James, in 1566 but weakened again when she was deposed in July 1567. Following this, she fled to England and at the time of the Rising was in the custody of the Earl of Shrewsbury

, on Elizabeth's orders.

Rebellion under Northumberland and Westmorland

Brancepeth Castle

The rebellion was led by

Bramham Moor, while Elizabeth struggled to raise forces sufficient to confront them. But, hearing of a large force being raised by the Earl of Sussex, the rebels abandoned plans to besiege York, and captured Barnard Castle instead. They proceeded to Clifford Moor, but found little popular support. Sussex marched out from York on 13 December 1569 with 10,000 men against the rebels' 6,000,^[4] and was followed by 12,000 men under Baron Clinton

. The rebel earls retreated northward and finally dispersed their forces, fleeing into Scotland.

Leonard Dacre's resistance

A questionable role in the rebellion was played by Leonard Dacre, an early sympathiser of Mary. At the outbreak of the rebellion, he travelled to Elizabeth's court at Windsor to claim the heritage of his young nephew, the 5th Baron Dacre. After the latter's untimely death in 1569, this had descended to his sisters, all married to sons of Thomas Howard, 4th Duke of Norfolk. Dacre returned to Northern England, ostensibly a faithful partisan of Elizabeth, but his intentions remain unclear.

After the retreat of the rebels, he seized

Gelt River. Though Hunsdon was outnumbered, he charged Dacre's foot with his cavalry, killing 300–400 and capturing 200–300 men. Dacre escaped via Scotland to Brussels, where he died in exile.^[5]

Reprisals

Some of the rebels escaped into Scotland.

Regent Mar wrote that Agnes Gray, Lady Home, had been a busy worker to receive the rebels.^[6] Two of the leaders, the Earls of Northumberland and Westmorland, had fled into Scotland. Northumberland was captured by James Douglas, 4th Earl of Morton, and turned over to Elizabeth in 1572, who had him beheaded at York. After having been hidden at Ferniehirst Castle, Westmorland escaped to Flanders, where he died impoverished. His family lost their ancestral homes and his wife, Jane Howard, also fled to the Continent. She lived the rest of her life under house arrest. Her brother, the Duke of Norfolk, was first imprisoned, then pardoned. He was imprisoned again following the Ridolfi plot in 1571 and finally executed in 1572. Norfolk's treason charges included "comforting and relieving of the English rebels that stirred the Rebellion in the North since they have fled out of the realm."^[7]

Altogether, 600 supporters of Mary were executed, while many others fled into exile.

Queen Elizabeth declared martial law, exacting terrible retribution on the ordinary folk of the Yorkshire Dales, despite the lack of any popular support for the Earls' Rising, with her demand for at least 700 executions. The victims of this purge were, as a contemporary account said "wholly of the meanest sort of people", so that hardly a village escaped the sight of a public hanging.[8]

In 1570, Pope Pius V had tried to aid the rebellion by excommunicating Elizabeth and declaring her deposed in the papal bull Regnans in Excelsis, but the document did not arrive until the rebellion had been suppressed. The bull gave Elizabeth more reason to view Catholics with suspicion. It inspired conspiracies to assassinate her, starting with the Ridolfi plot.

In 1587, Elizabeth brought Mary, Queen of Scots, to trial for treason; she was convicted by the court and executed.

References

^ Evans, Gareth. "Raby Castle and the Rising of the North", Time Travel - Britain
^ Butler's Lives of the Saints, Vol 1, P 17
^ "Lives of the English Martyrs;". archive.org. Retrieved 5 July 2017.
^ "Protest in Tudor and Stuart times", BBC History
^ Davidson, Alan. "DACRE, Leonard (by 1533-73), of Naworth, Cumb. and West Harlsey, Yorks". The History of Parliament. Institute of Historical Research. Archived from the original on 26 August 2017. Retrieved 15 June 2018.
^ William Boyd, Calendar State Papers Scotland, vol. 4 (Edinburgh, 1905), pp. 701-2.
^ Cecil, William; Haynes, Samuel (1759). Murdin, William (ed.). A collection of state papers. Vol. 2. London: William Bowyer. p. 178.
^ "Yorkshire Moors and Dales" Marian Sugden & Ernest Frankl, The Pevensey Press, 1987

External links

[1] Evans, Gareth. "Raby Castle and the Rising of the North", Time Travel - Britain

[2] Butler's Lives of the Saints, Vol 1, P 17

[3] "Lives of the English Martyrs;". archive.org. Retrieved 5 July 2017.

[4] "Protest in Tudor and Stuart times", BBC History

[5] Davidson, Alan. "DACRE, Leonard (by 1533-73), of Naworth, Cumb. and West Harlsey, Yorks". The History of Parliament. Institute of Historical Research. Archived from the original on 26 August 2017. Retrieved 15 June 2018.

[6] William Boyd, Calendar State Papers Scotland, vol. 4 (Edinburgh, 1905), pp. 701-2.

[7] Cecil, William; Haynes, Samuel (1759). Murdin, William (ed.). A collection of state papers. Vol. 2. London: William Bowyer. p. 178.

[8] "Yorkshire Moors and Dales" Marian Sugden & Ernest Frankl, The Pevensey Press, 1987

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