time, men felt "as if a scorpion
lay sleeping under every stone." They stopped writing, gossiping, going
to confession, and sending presents for the most thoughtless word or
deed might be tortured into treason against the king by the command
of Cromwell.

The rebellion which followed the first attack upon the monasteries was
not caused wholly by religious sentiments. The nobles regarded Cromwell
as a base-born usurper and yearned for his fall, while the clergy felt
outraged by his monstrous claims of authority in ecclesiastical affairs.
In a sense the conflict that ensued was but a continuation of the
long-standing struggle between the king, the barons, and the clergy for
the supreme power. From the reign of Edward I., the people had commenced
to assert their rights and the struggle had become a four-sided one.

These four factions were constantly shifting their allegiance, according
to the varying conditions, and guided by their changing interests. At
this time, the clergy, the nobles and the people in northern England,
particularly, combined against the king, although the alliance was not
formidable enough to overcome the forces supporting the king.

The secular clergy felt that they were disgraced and coerced into
submission. They felt their revenues, their honors, their powers, their
glory, slipping away from them; they joined their mutterings and
discontent with that of the monks, and then the fires of the rebellion
blazed forth in the north, where the monasteries were more popular than
in any other part of England.

The first outbreak occurred in Lincolnshire, in the autumn of 1536. It
was easily and quickly suppressed. But another uprising in Yorkshire, in
northern England, followed immediately, and for a time threatened
serious consequences. Some of the best families in that part of the
country joined the revolt, although it is noteworthy that these same
families were afterwards Protestant and Puritan; the rebel army numbered
about forty thousand men, well equipped for service. Many prominent
abbots and sixteen hundred monks were in the ranks. The masses were
bound by oath "to stand together for the love which they bore to
Almighty God, His faith, the Holy Church, and the maintenance thereof;
to the preservation of the king's person and his issue; to the purifying
of the nobility, and to expel all villein blood and evil counsellors
from the king's presence; not from any private profit, nor to do his
pleasur