ABSTRACT
In contrast to the rising in the Dales, the insurrection in Lancashire seems to have been caused chiefly by discontent at the royal supremacy and the suppression of the monasteries. The principal leader was one Atkinson, probably the same John Atkinson alias Brotton who had escaped after preventing the vicar of Gisburn from reading the Act of Supremacy in the parish church on 11 July 1535. The centre of the insurrection was St Mary’s Abbey, Sawley, a monastery which was beloved by the commons, “being the charitable relief of those parts, and standing in a mountain country and amongst three forests.” The leaders of the religious insurrection in England, Robert Aske and Lord Darcy and the friars, seem originally to have had little or nothing to do with the social movement, and though they tried to direct it to their own ends they were rather alarmed by it.
