THE BULMERS AND

The people looked on with approval, and, unable to perceive the king's basely selfish motives, believed him to be actuated by the sincerest desire solely to reform and purify a corrupted Church. When, therefore, he, in 1534, openly attacked the power of Rome, forbad the introduction of Papal Bulls, Licenses and Dispensations, and, in defiance of the Pontiff, assumed the title of Supreme Head of the English Church, the people in no wise showed any symptoms of alarm or disapproval.

The King proceeded in his course, and, having first destroyed the religious order called the Observant Friars, he obtained an act from a servile parliament whereby 376 religious houses of all orders, were utterly dissolved, and their landed revenues, plate, jewels and universal possessions vested in the Crown.

The people of the Northern Counties, hardy, brave and warlike were, in the main, devoted to the old religion; and the expulsion of the monastics from their establishments, and so many of both sexes wandering through the country, seeking food and shelter, was a sight calculated to move the feelings of the people to their very depths, and which did, as a matter of fact, breed discontent, and prepared them for revolt.

The Nobility and the Upper Classes had founded monasteries and religious houses, and the present generation had naturally a leaning, indeed a deep feeling of affection towards them. The more devout, or superstitious of all ranks, were concerned lest their own souls and those of their forefathers would now lie unnumbered years in purgatory for want of masses to relieve them. The public conscience in those days was not so sensitive, or so easily aroused as in modern times, but there was in the King's proceedings, such a manifest outrage of right and justice, that there resulted in the public mind, a general feeling of discontent. It seemed absolutely wicked that the inmates of institutions established by divine laws should be suddenly turned out of their habitations with little or no care for their future subsistence.

With these were combined the complaints of the secular clergy, which finally brought the minds of the people to a state ready for revolt.

The first rising was in Lincolnshire, where a great gathering of the peasantry took place, headed by Dr. Mackrel, Prior of Barlings.

The King, who had heard that the people in other quarters, and particularly in Yorkshire, were also in a state of ferment, indicating an inclination to take up arms, issued a proclamation promising pardon on submission. The people, relying on the King's word, dispersed. The King however, with his usual cruelty and perfidy, seized Mackrel and others of the leaders, and executed them. The rising in Lincolnshire was, from the first, doomed to failure, partly from its not being part of a general plan, and partly from its absolute want of leaders, and of support from persons of note and influence.

The Movement in Yorkshire, originated among the common people, by whom however it was perceived that it was absolutely necessary that some persons of rank and influence should become leaders of it. The insurgents, therefore, applied to Lord Dacre of Gusland to accept the dangerous post; but he, having been lately tried before the Peers, refused the proffered honour. They, however, found a leader in Robert Aske, a gentleman of ancient family, and large estate in Yorkshire. He had been bred to the law and, though showing great skill in the management of the people with whom he had now associated himself, had no power whatever to direct the military operations of forty or fifty thousand men in an armed insurrection.

The Insurgents styled their Expedition, "The Pilgrimage of Grace."

The Name they had assumed was as fairly representative of their ideas and purposes as such names usually are. They took an oath that they had entered into the Pilgrimage for no other motive than their love to God, their care for the King's person and issue, their desire of purifying the Nobility, of driving base-born persons from about the King, of restoring the Church, and of suppressing Heresy.

Consistently with the avowed religious character of the enterprise, priests in the habits of their order, carrying Crosses in their hands, preceded the march. In the banners was woven a crucifix, with the representation of a chalice, and of the five wounds of Christ. The pilgrims wore on their sleeves an emblem of the five wounds, with the name of Jesus wrought in the middle. These holy emblems, rightly, objects of reverence to all classes and sects of Christians, could neither be ridiculed nor despised, and it was only by delaying an answer to the petitions of the malcontents, that the King hoped to gain time for increasing his army, until he was strong enough to slaughter them in the field. It is obvious that the views of these, so-called, contemptible and ignorant people were largely shared in by numbers of the Nobility and Gentry, seeing that they were early joined by Lord Scroop of Bolton, Lord Latimer, Sir George Lumly, Sir Thomas Percy and Sir John Bulmer.

The movement had the sympathy of all the Catholic families in the North, who only waited, perhaps, for the partial success of the insurgents, to abandon their wavering attitude, and openly and actively to join their standard.

The adhesion of these important personages, the constant flocking to the rebels of the common people, and the zeal and enthusiasm manifested by the whole, inspired at Court the most serious apprehensions.

The King, therefore, gave orders to the Earl of Shrewsbury and other noblemen, to raise forces in all haste, with the avowed intention of taking the field in person: though he ultimately appointed the Duke of Norfolk the general-in-chief.

On moving Southward, the rebels despatched a large force to capture Skipton Castle, where they were repulsed by Henry Clifford, Earl of Cumberland. On their approach, the Earl wrote to the King, informing him that he would defend the castle, though he had been deserted by 500 of his retainers who had gone to join the rebels, a circumstance showing the chivalrous courage of the noble house of Clifford, and manifesting in a remarkable manner, the wide-spread feeling in favour of the enterprise of Aske and his followers.

The insurgents attempted to seize Scarborough, where as at Skipton, they were baffled; they, however, were successful in taking York and Hull. Advancing. Aske and his forces invested the Castle of Pontefract, where the Archbishop of York and Lord Darcy had taken refuge.

Before the insurgents had left Pontefract, part of the royal army had arrived at Doncaster, where it was intended to dispute with the rebels the passage of the river. Being intent upon gaining time and befooling the enemy, the General (the Duke of Norfolk) sent a herald to Pontefract with a message to Aske, in the form of a proclamation, which the herald required to be read to the insurgents. Aske, sitting in state, with the Archbishop of York and my Lord Darcy on either hand, received the herald, and refused to permit the proclamation to be made.

The hostile elements met, a few days later, face to face at Doncaster. Norfolk, with a much smaller force, though incomparably better armed and disciplined than that of the rebels, was on the opposite side of the river, and held the bridge and ford. He was the ablest man of the day. Being immeasurably the superior of Aske, Norfolk thoroughly grasped the position and seeing that the Fabian policy was the true one, he proceeded to amuse and delay the enemy by making suggestions for an arrangement.

The night before the insurgents intended to deliver their attack, the rain fell so heavily that the river became impassable. A deputation, of which Sir John Bulmer was one, met another from the King's side, with a view to an arrangement. This Meeting took place on the bridge. The Duke, with his usual falsity, made promises which he knew would never be fulfilled, and seized the opportunity to obtain a petition from the pilgrims, to be delivered to the King by Sir Ralph Ellerker and Robert Bowes, the defenders of Hull. The Duke's promise to go with the rebels induced the latter to cease hostilities, in the meantime.

The King, however, still treacherous, procrastinated, and in addition detained Ellerker and Bowes under some vague pretext; at which the commons took such umbrage, that they re-assembled their dispersed forces; and the King was constrained to send an answer, which he did by the Duke, together with a safe conduct under the great seal, for 300 persons to meet in the town of Doncaster to bring matters to a conclusion, referring the rest to the Duke who brought the offer of a pardon to all, except six named, and four un-named. This, however, the Commons declined.

Selecting their 300 delegates, including their principal personages, who on the 6th December 1536 met the King's representatives, their main demands were a general Pardon, a Parliament and a Court of Justice, to be held in the Northern parts. To these demands were added others, to which the lords would not agree.

The Commons accordingly assembled in greater numbers, and the Duke, seeing his Army in danger, applied to the King for instructions. The King, thereupon, sent a general pardon for the rebels, and the promise of a Parliament. The Duke perceiving, vividly, the increasing difficulties of his position, proclaimed the King's general pardon, and promise of a parliament, which the Commons gladly accepted, and they then broke up their assemblage and returned home. This document dated December 6^th, at Richmond, and sealed with the great Seal, was to the effect that the King granted them all a general and free pardon of all rebellions, treasons, felonies and trespasses, unto the day of the date thereof.

With this dispersal of the malcontents, the Drama of the "Pilgrimage of Grace" came to an end; but it was to be followed by a dismal tragedy.

The King had not yet had his revenge. He committed the false step of ordering the Duke of Norfolk to remain with the army in the northern counties.

This gave great disquiet to the people, who were profoundly mistrustful of the intentions of the King. The clergy took advantage of the situation to foster in the popular mind those feelings of intense hostility to the King's measures, which they themselves entertained.

The events, which immediately followed this pacification, are thus summarised by Hume: -"Lord Darcy, as well as Aske, was sent for to Court; the former, upon his refusal, or delay to appear, was thrown into prison. Every place was full of jealousy and complaints. A new Insurrection broke out, headed by Musgrave and Tilby, and the rebels besieged Carlisle with eight thousand men.

Being repulsed, by that city, they were encountered in their retreat, by Norfolk, who put them to flight; and having made prisoners of all their officers, except Musgrave, who escaped, he instantly put them to death by martial law, to the number of seventy persons. An attempt made by Sir Francis Bigot and Halam, to surprise Hull, met with no better success; and several other risings were suppressed by the vigilance of Norfolk. The King, enraged by these multiplied revolts, was determined not to adhere to the general pardon which he had granted; and from a movement of his usual violence, he made the innocent suffer for the guilty. Norfolk, by command from his master, spread the royal banner, and wherever he thought proper, executed martial law in the punishment of offenders. Besides Aske, leader of the first insurrection, Sir Robert Constable, Sir John Bulmer, Sir Thomas Percy, and many others were thrown into prison, and most of them were condemned and executed. Lord Hussey was found guilty as an accomplice in the insurrection of Lincolnshire, and was executed at Lincoln. Lord Darcy, though he pleaded compulsion, and appealed for his justification to a long life spent in the service of the Crown, was beheaded on Tower Hill.

Being now satiated with punishing the rebels, he published anew a general pardon to which he faithfully adhered, and he erected, by Patent, a Court of Justice at York, for deciding law-suits in the northern counties; a demand which had been made by the rebels."

In a contest, arising from an attempt to alter by force the ancient religion of the country, in which struggle the King was determined not to abide by the general pardon he had granted, and in which the Duke of Norfolk, by command of his master, had executed martial law, it is not greatly to be wondered at that men of rank should be put to death, and should suffer the additional ignominy of being hanged at Tyburn; but that the wife of one of them "Lady Bulmer" should perish in the flames of Smithfield, seems too cruel an act to be perpetrated by the ruling powers, were not the matter beyond the region of contradiction.

Perhaps the King is only blameworthy in giving power or direction to any man, however exalted in rank, to enact such horrors, without control.

An enquiry, apart from the public questions, which have hitherto been spoken of, may throw some light upon this dreadful business.

Sir John Bulmer married, as his second wife, Margaret, the natural daughter of Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, beheaded by Henry, a few years before the "Pilgrimage of Grace". The Duke of Norfolk had married for his second wife, a legitimate daughter of the same Duke of Buckingham.

Although Lady Bulmer had little for which to thank her father in respect of her birth, it appears that she manifested a great affection for his memory, and. rightly or wrongly, entertained idea, that her half-sister's husband, the Duke of Norfolk, had wilfully refrained from using his great power over the King, to prevent the barbarous execution of the Duke of Buckingham.

Lady Bulmer was a woman of vehement temper, at once impulsive and obstinate; violent in her speech, implacable in her enmities, and. according to Protestant views, unreasonably attached to the Romish Church. Bearing in mind her temperament, and the troublous times in which she lived, all public questions were to her, trifling, compared with the one great object, the destruction of the ancient church; and it may well be believed that her speech became increasingly acrimonious.

The Duke of Norfolk, standing in the anomalous position of being at once in the confidence of the King, and at the same time suspected of favouring the ancient church, which his master was intent upon destroying, felt these loud and virulent denunciations of his illegitimate sister-in-law, to be highly obnoxious, and probably dangerous

What course was the Duke to pursue? According to his practice, there was open to him the familiar procedure of violence, and fraud.

Sir John, like his martial ancestors for many generations, had, in times of peace, a small Command on the Scottish border, to be increased to a larger one in times of war.

Under a mere pretence of a military offence, the Duke took away Sir John's command, along with the small allowance connected with it.

The Duke was a prudent, as well as a bold, unscrupulous man; and apparently, thought that this was as far as he need go, and that the step might have the desired effect. It was, however, a half measure, and, as such, turned out to be worse than none at all.

The pecuniary loss was trifling, but the insult was great, and Sir John became, henceforth, the Duke's active enemy. Sir John did not require much urging by his cousin, Lord Dacre of the north, to be induced to join that ill considered enterprise, stimulated as he was by affection for his church, and by personal hostility to the Duke of Norfolk, now in the command of the Royal troops, despatched to suppress this formidable insurrection. If incitement were necessary, he had sufficient in his wife at home, who was pleased with the prospect of revenge upon the husband of her half-sister, now doubly hateful for the insult to her husband, buoyed up also, as she was, with the hope of over-throwing the oppressors of the true Church. In an evil moment for Sir John, and still more for herself, she resolved to accompany the expedition.

This presented to the Duke an unlooked for opportunity to overwhelm Sir John, and his wife, in one common ruin, in which the enmity of the one, and the denunciations of the other, would disappear forever.

The Duke was a man of courage and ability, though ambitious, mean-spirited and licentious. The Duchess was a passionate and vindictive woman, and in this, resembled her half-sister, without her affection for her father's memory, or devotedness to the ancient Church. The Duke was in constant danger of losing his head, either through the fickleness of his master, or the unceasing efforts of an unscrupulous and hostile faction.

On the granting of the royal pardon, and consequent dispersal of the rebels, Sir John Bulmer and his wife went back to their place Wilton Castle, which they never afterwards left of their own accord.

Two other risings, of trifling importance, took place in the course of the next few months; one at Carlisle, and the other at Hull, before alluded to, in the passage quoted from Hume's history. The King, as has been seen, thereupon ordered Norfolk to exercise, wherever he thought proper, and martial law. The wished for moment had arrived, Norfolk sent a party of Soldiers to Wilton Castle, arrested Sir John and his wife, and sent them on that fateful journey to London, from which there was to be no return.

There was a form of trial, and they were found guilty. They never denied taking part in the Pilgrimage of Grace. But how about the King's pardon? He would not adhere to it, Sir John, amongst others bearing ancient and honourable names, was hanged at Tyburn. His wife less mercifully dealt with was condemned to be burned alive, and this awful sentence was carried out at Smithfield.

After a lapse of so many years, one asks, of what crime was this woman guilty, that she should be subjected to this dreadful torture? It is difficult to give an answer, except upon the supposition previously indicated. Treason was, in those days, a crime, the definition of which was of the most elastic character. As a woman, she was not levying war, nor carrying arms against the King, nor attempting to compass his death, the last of which motives was constantly disavowed by the so-called Pilgrims. All that she did was to accompany her husband on a dangerous enterprise, conduct, which has always been regarded as a lofty example of a wife's devotion to her husband. Her (would be) destroyers, however, were determined not to permit any such sentiment to influence them. It was suggested, and the suggestion has since been repeated, that she was not married to Sir John; that in point of fact, she was his Paramour. In those times, when there were no Registers of Marriages, and when, in addition, the contracting parties were Catholics, the difficulty of proving a marriage was very great, and where the prosecutors were powerful, as in the present case, such proof was impossible, and since this lady had the status of Sir John's wife, and was known as "Lady Bulmer", that a marriage had taken place could not reasonably be questioned. It has been suggested that there may have been a marriage, after the wild fashion of the Borders. This is to treat Sir John as a Moss-trooper, living on the Border, by the plunder of both countries alike, according as one nation was safer than the other; whereas, in reality, he was a Yorkshire Knight, residing at Wilton Castle, belonging to a family who were never seen on the Border, except in the exercise of their duties as Sheriffs of the County, or in command of the Royal Troops. This device, however, had its effect; and the Court, whose duty it was to condemn, and not to acquit, adjudged her to a fate, of which the bare mention is sufficient to fill the mind with horror.

The King's order to the Duke to proclaim Martial Law, was obviously applicable only to the small Outbreaks in 1537, at Carlisle and Hull, which, accordingly, he punished with merciless severity. This enabled the Duke to make a show to the King, of zeal in his service, against the Catholics.

Among the historical evidence adduced in support of the charge that the Duke was singularly mean-spirited and unscrupulous, may be mentioned the attempt made by him to assassinate, or kidnap, Robert Aske, the leader of the so-called rebels. He was at the time, in the house of Lord Darcy, at Templehurst, when the horrible project was broached to that nobleman, whose refusal was made in terms of indignation and disgust.

Except for personal animosity, the Duke need not, and ought not to have arrested Sir John and his wife, as they had taken no part in the paltry Risings so exasperating to the King.

At the worst, Lady Bulmer had only used, in her own house, violent words against the Duke, in respect of which the evidence against her was given by her own family chaplain.

Let us dwell for a moment upon the fate that befell the actors in this dreadful crime.

The Duke of Norfolk had the meanness, or wickedness, to act as the president of the tribunal, which condemned his niece Anne Boleyn to be put to death on Tower Hill.

His son, the Earl of Surrey, the flower of English nobility, was, on the most trifling pretext, sent, in his thirtieth year, to the Block. The King died nine days afterwards.

The Duchess of Richmond, the daughter of the half-sister of Lady Bulmer, voluntarily gave evidence against her brother, the Earl of Surrey, and by her influence, assisted in his judicial murder. The Duke's position was high enough, already, when the King set eyes upon the Duke's niece, Catherine Howard. In spite of the strenuous opposition of Thomas Cromwell, the King's impetuosity swept away all obstacles to a fresh marriage. Events moved rapidly. Anne of Cleves was divorced, and Catherine Howard married, in such rapid succession, that the two events seemed but parts of the same transaction.

The reign of this second Catherine was of short duration; and her Royal Husband soon tired of her. Charges were made against her, and, whether innocent or guilty, it mattered not; she was hurried off to Tower Hill, where all difficulties were settled by the headsman's axe.

If the Duke's niece was put to death, Cromwell, the Duke's archenemy suffered likewise. And then the Duke thought "that full surely, his greatness was a ripening."

But this was not to be. His rivals and enemies redoubled their attacks, and the King was eager to be rid of him, and to seize his property.

He was accordingly arrested and placed upon his trial. The Duchess, his wife, had for many years entertained violent jealousies concerning her husband, the duke, which at length broke out into open rancour, and she wrote letters to the Lord Privy Seal, making various charges against him. Up to this time the Duchess had been separated from her husband for four years.

The Duke, by abject submissions, sought to soften the King's temper, but without avail. He was condemned to death, and was only saved from that fate, by the king dying the day before that appointed for the Duke's execution. As it was, he was detained prisoner in the Tower, during the whole reign of Edward - 6 years - and died soon after his release by Queen Mary.

Thus were avenged Sir John Bulmer and his wife.

"Credimus esse deos."