der looked upon as the source of all their troubles. In the spring of
1536, while the dissolution of the monasteries was marking the triumph
of the new policy, Anne Boleyn was suddenly charged with adultery and
sent to the Tower. A few days later she was tried, condemned, and
brought to the block. The Queen's ruin was everywhere taken as an omen
of ruin to the cause which had become identified with her own, and the
old nobility mustered courage to face the minister who held them at his
feet.

They found their opportunity in the discontent of the North, where the
monasteries had been popular, and where the rougher mood of the people
turned easily to resistance. In the autumn of 1536 a rising broke out in
Lincolnshire, and this was hardly quelled when all Yorkshire rose in
arms. From every parish the farmers marched with the parish priest at
their head upon York, and the surrender of this city determined the
waverers. In a few days Skipton castle, where the Earl of Cumberland
held out with a handful of men, was the only spot north of the Humber
which remained true to the King. Durham rose at the call of the chiefs
of the house of Neville, Lords Westmoreland and Latimer. Though the Earl
of Northumberland feigned sickness, the Percies joined the revolt. Lord
Dacre, the chief of the Yorkshire nobles, surrendered Pomfret, and was
acknowledged as their chief by the insurgents.

The whole nobility of the North were now enlisted in the "Pilgrimage of
Grace," as the rising called itself, and thirty thousand "tall men and
well horsed" moved on the Don demanding the reversal of the royal
policy, a reunion with Rome, the restoration of Catherine's daughter,
Mary, to her rights as heiress of the crown, redress for the wrongs done
to the Church, and above all the driving away of base-born councillors,
or, in other words, the fall of Cromwell. Though their advance was
checked by negotiation, the organization of the revolt went steadily on
throughout the winter, and a parliament of the North, which gathered at
Pomfret, formally adopted the demands of the insurgents. Only six
thousand men under Norfolk barred their way southward, and the Midland
counties were known to be disaffected.

But Cromwell remained undaunted by the peril. He suffered, indeed,
Norfolk to negotiate; and allowed Henry under pressure from his council
to promise pardon and a free parliament at York, a pledge which Norfolk
and Dacre alike construed into an acceptance