ABSTRACT
What was remarkable about Henry VIII was his evident personal charm. He had a Tony Blair-like ability to make those who spoke to him feel that he sympathized with them. The most extraordinary example was at Christmastide 1536 when Henry invited Robert Aske, the leader of the Pilgrims of Grace, to spend ten days at court. In October a huge rebellion had arisen in the north of England, with some 30,000 men assembling not just in October but again at the beginning of December, protesting not, I maintain, against taxation or for other economic grievances, but rather against the king’s religious policies, especially the dissolution of the smaller monasteries. Outnumbered, the king’s lieutenants, Thomas Howard, third duke of Norfolk, and George Talbot, fourth earl of Shrewsbury, made a deal on 6 December with those whom he saw as rebels. The insurgents would receive free pardons for the offences they had committed in assembling illegally, a parliament would meet in the north, and until that parliament met, abbeys would stand. At that point the Pilgrims must have thought they had won: why else would a parliament be called except to repeal recent legislation that they detested, especially the act dissolving the smaller monasteries?1 Henry then invited Robert Aske, the one-eyed lawyer who had emerged as the leader of the Pilgrims in Yorkshire, to spend Christmastide at court. In correspondence to his military commanders Henry had fiercely denounced Aske. But now he treated him as his honoured guest. Aske was invited to declare how he had come to be involved in the disturbances.2 More strikingly still, Henry clearly succeeded in giving Aske the impression that he would honour the promise that the duke of Norfolk had made that a parliament would be held in the north. Henry, we know from the instructions he would send the duke
of Norfolk, had not the slightest intention of honouring those concessions.3 But astonishingly Aske returned to the north in January full of confidence that Henry would do so.4 Nor was Aske the only rebel leader to be deceived.5 When some of the northern commons began to suspect that Henry did not mean what he had said, Aske and others who had led the rising now stood firm against the new disturbances.6 By dividing the rebels, Henry was then able to summon Aske and other leaders to London again – but this time to send them to the Tower.7 It was a remarkable achievement by the king. If only we had some description of those Christmastide feasts that Aske enjoyed in Henry’s company.
