ren were illegitimate, and to grant to Henry himself the right
of appointing his own successor by letters patent or by will. Alas! the
youth in whose immediate interest the injustice was done was fast sinking
to his grave; and on the 22nd July 1536 the Duke of Richmond breathed his
last, to Henry's bitter grief, Mary's prospects again became brighter, and
all those who resented the religious policy and Henry's recalcitrancy now
looked to the girl as their only hope of a return to the old order of
things. Chapuys, too, was ceaseless in his intrigues to bring England once
more into a condition of obedience to the Pope, that should make her a fit
instrument for the imperial policy, and soon the disappointment that
followed on the elevation of Jane Seymour found vent in the outbreak of
rebellion in Lincolnshire and Yorkshire.

The priests and the great mass of the people had bent the neck patiently
to the King's violent innovations in the observances that they had been
taught to hold sacred. They had seen the religious houses, to which they
looked for help and succour in distress, destroyed and alienated. The
abuses of the clergy had doubtless been great, and the first measures
against them had been welcomed; but the complete confiscation of vast
properties, in the main administered for the benefit of the lowly, the
continued enclosure of common lands by the gentry newly enriched by
ecclesiastical plunder, and the rankling sense of the scandalous injustice
that had been suffered by Katharine and Mary, for the sake, as the people
said, of the King's lustful caprice, at last provided the extreme militant
Catholic party with the impetus needed for revolt against the Crown.
Imperious Henry was beside himself with rage; and for a time it looked as
if he and his system might be swept away in favour of his daughter, or one
of the Poles, who were being put forward by the Pope. The Bull of
excommunication against Henry and England, so long held back, was now
launched, making rebellion righteous; and the imperial interest in
England, which was still strong, did its best to aid the rising of Henry's
lieges against him. But the rebels were weakly led: the greater nobles had
for the most part been bought by grants of ecclesiastical lands; and
Norfolk, for all his moral baseness, was an experienced and able soldier.
So the Pilgrimage of Grace, threatening as it looked for a time, flickered
out; and the yoke was riveted tighter than ever up