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Rebellions

Rebellions. Religion & Religious Change in England c.1470-1558. David Parker, University of Leeds.

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Rebellions

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  1. Rebellions Religion & Religious Change in England c.1470-1558

  2. David Parker, University of Leeds • 'For many years I taught a final-year undergraduate course on the uprisings of the peasants and artisans that swept across large parts of 17th-century France. Buildings were attacked, their contents pillaged, crops destroyed and occasionally a perceived oppressor was killed.…..’

  3. David Parker, University of Leeds • ‘…….Had my students explained it all by simply invoking feral criminality they would have failed.'

  4. Why are historians interested in rebellion? • Social historians • Ordinary people in the historical record • Grievances – a guide to what they ‘thought’? • Marxist historians: • Class conflict? • Reductive? • Is ‘class’ a valid concept for the C16th? • Is conflict perennial? • John Guy: 1549 closest things to ‘class war’ in Tudor England. • Gentry attacked • But a particular type of gentry. • Those who had: • Bought up monastic lands • Failed in their obligations to the poor. • Moral, rather than class conflict? .

  5. The State • Rebellion as a part of popular politics • One means by which the lower orders engaged in a dialogue with their rulers. • Politics not happen ‘to’ the people, but they an active part of it. • ‘Rise of the State’/ ‘State Building’ • Passive • Active • Beyond Elton • Tudor Revolution in Government • Infrastructures of the State • ‘State’ = Thomas Cromwell’s filing cabinet. • What do we mean by ‘power’, and where is it located? • Centre > outward • Or de-centralised – localities a part of the state? • Dialogue between centre and periphery • MPs as concerned with local issues as they were national ones • Laws and policies altered/modified whilst being implemented: • Problematises the State as a ‘central’ body. • Dialogue between centre and periphery, not necessarily conflict. • Ethan Shagan – Kett’s rebellion • Why did Somerset negotiate? • A sign of failure? Or part of the realities of politics? • Negotiation? • C20th totalitarian regimes & ‘collaboration’. • Imprecise term. • Violence not for own sake, but as a means of politics.

  6. Major Rebellions • The Pilgrimage of Grace – 1536 • The Western Rising – 1549 • Kett’s Rebellion – 1549 • Wyatt’s Rebellion – 1554 • The Northern Rising – 1569 • NB – English only, things look very different if we include Ireland……..

  7. Food for thought • No rebellions after 1569: so what? • Methodological problems? • Causation: ‘religion’, social and economic hardship, rising population, they were Cornish, ‘class’ tensions, enclosure, taxation, inflation, ‘failing’ local nobility, rumour, court conspiracies, ‘bad’ gentry, xenophobia…………………Nick Clegg (he gets blamed for everything else….) • Are we explaining anything at all?

  8. The western rising Chronology What does this tell us? The end of a long process: Not an immediate/irrational explosion of anger Understood law/tactics: Play to EVI’s minority/ HVIII’s will Form of political engagement/ exchange: Felt compelled to answer articles (Cranmer/ Philip Nichols) • April 1547 – murder of William Body: • Unpopular agent since m1530s • 1548 – hostility to evangelism • 1549 (June) – Prayer Book trigger rebellion • 1549 (June) – Sir Peter Carew (evangelical) return: • United opposition • Began siege of Exeter • June-28th July – hesitant government response: • Kett’s rebellion • Poor communications • Somerset’s desire to appease

  9. The Western Rising Religion: Other: Slow state response (Scottish war/ Kett’s rebellion) Ineffective gentry/nobles (power-vacuum) Sheep tax – novelty; high volume of sheep in the West Country • Suspicious of Crown moves re: religion: • Seizure of goods/ iconoclasm • Rebel articles cited: • New Prayer Book • Service in English • Communion in Both kinds • Common bread rather than wafers • Act of 6 Articles (Mass) • Deep moral sense of injustice.

  10. Inherently conservative: • Rebel AGAINST change – enclosure (common land rights); novel taxation (customary rights of the Crown); religious change (‘newfangled’). • Destructive/violent in a very specific manner. • In a religious sense, rebellions actively AGAINST destruction.

  11. Robert Aske, 1536 • ‘This pilgrimage we have undertaken it for the preservation of Christ’s church of this realm of England, the king our sovereign lord, the nobility and commons the same, and to the intent to make petition to the king’s highness for the reformation of that which is amiss within this realm and for the punishment of heretics and subverters of the laws.’

  12. A way of life • Wealth of community • Sacred space • Monasteries as communal keystones • Compassion and grief • Social and economic impact

  13. ‘Morebath’s curious system of parochial custodianship had regularly involved virtually every farmer and cottager in a very direct expression of support and involvement in the community of the parish….the yearly sheep account, so lovingly itemized and elaborated by their priest, was the parish’s single most extended ritual of belonging, an annual register of who was and who was not pulling their weight…..Religious reform here touched and tampered not only with the parish’s economy, but with its sense of self.’ Eamon Duffy, The Voices of Morebath

  14. Bruegel, The Battle of Carnival and Lent (1559)

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