FORWARD

Forward 

In the year 1536 the English people were gathering to protest about the many radical changes in society that were being introduced since King Henry V111 declared himself to be the head of the Christian Church, the Church of England. Protests erupted into insurrection. John Lingard, a prominent Catholic priest and historian, writes about the 1536 insurrection in Lincolnshire:

 

“The first who appeared in arms were the men of Lincolnshire. They complained chiefly of the suppression of the monasteries”. The men of Lincolnshire also complained about the conduct of some bishops; whose chief aim was to subvert the Church of Christ”. Lingard continues; “from the borders of Scotland to the Lune and the Humber, the inhabitants had bound themselves by oath to stand by each other, “for the love which they bore to Almighty God, his faith, the holy church and the maintenance thereof. Their enterprise was quaintly termed the “Pilgrimage of Grace”; on their banner was painted the image of Christ crucified and the chalice and host, the emblems of their belief and wherever the pilgrims appeared the ejected monks were replaced in their monasteries”.1

The Lincolnshire Rising, as that part of the Pilgrimage of Grace that took place in Lincolnshire, came to be called was not only about religion; however, the alterations being made to Christian belief was an essential element of the protest. Prominent in that protest was the ongoing destruction of the monasteries by the agents of the king. In spite of all the protests the monastic institutions, abbeys, priories, convents and friaries were all destroyed; their buildings left in ruins.

Several of the nobles who took part in the Pilgrimage of Grace would benefit from the dissolution by royal endowments with monastic land the king had confiscated. Ironically some of those nobles from Lincolnshire who took part in the Rising would receive monastic property and a number of these remained faithful to the Catholic Church in the years following the dismantling of the mediaeval Catholic Church by the English government. It is interesting to note that families that had refused membership of the reformed Protestant Church of England (recusants) would be prominent, centuries later in the 19th /20th centuries in rebuilding the Catholic Church in North Lincolnshire; the story of the following pages.

1 John Lingard, History of England pp254/255