An introduction to the rebellions that our Tudor monarchs faced.
There were five or six general causes that led to rebellion – these were:
Dynastic – either replacing the Tudors all together (something Henry VII faced) or changing the succession (Mary and Elizabeth both faced these).
Economic – taxation that one part of the country or another thought was unfair, land enclosures, disruption from famines.
Religious turmoil – when Henry VIII broke from Rome, and then when Edward kept the Reformation going, only to be followed by Catholic Mary trying to revert things back.
Book Recommendation:
Tudor Rebellions (Seminar Studies)
[advertisement insert here: if you like this show, and you want to support me and my work, the best thing you can do (and it’s free!) is to leave us a rating on iTunes. It really helps others discover the podcast. Second best is to buy Tudor-themed gifts for all your loved ones at my shop, at TudorFair.com, like leggings with the Anne Boleyn portrait pattern on them, or boots with Elizabeth I portraits. Finally, you can also become a patron of this show for as little as $1/episode at Patreon.com/englandcast … And thank you!]
Very rough transcript of episode 51: Tudor Rebellions
Welcome to the Renaissance English History Podcast. I’m your host, Heather Teysko. And I’m a storyteller who makes history accessible because I believe it’s a pathway to understanding humanity and our place in the universe. Before I get started a few reminders first, please check out the Agora Podcast Network of which this podcast is a proud member. Go to Agorapodcastnetwork.com and check out all of the other fabulous podcasts available in the network. I’m sure you’ll find something that you love. Also a plug for my Patreon page. If you’re listening to this going, “Gee, I wish I could support this podcast, which is so awesome. And I’ve got a spare dollar for an episode.” Go to patreon.com/englandcast and sign up to be my patron.
You get nifty rewards, like members-only feeds, early episodes, chat sessions, and a lot more. And also I want you to know that I’m making it easier for you to get the show notes. I’ve heard from a few of you who listened to the podcast in your car, at the gym, et cetera. In fact, the vast majority of you listen on your phone. So why make you go to a website to get show notes and sign up for the newsletter and things like that? Right? So here’s the deal. I have created a lovely PDF with all of the show notes, links to the book recommendations, and a transcript of the episode to get it. You just need to text the listener feedback line 8016TEYSKO or (801) 683-9756. Send me your email address to that number. So just send me a text that has your email address to 8016TEYSKO. And I’ll email you the PDF and add you to the mailing list, easy peasy, right?
So let’s talk about rebellions, shall we? For this episode, I’m going to focus on the causes of rebellions during the Tudor dynasty, only bringing in specific ones as examples from time to time. But rather I’m going to talk about overall themes, like how the route rebellions were handled by the Mark, what they were rebelling about, just kind of the general themes. And in the next episode, I’ll be going through some of the more famous rebellions talking about the leaders and what they hope to accomplish. The Tudor dynasty began after 30 years of civil Wars, which had called the cousins war at the time in which we now call the Wars of the roses. For those of you who don’t know what the Wars, the roses were about, I would highly suggest that you listen to the history of England podcast by David Crauther.
He is just nearing the end of about eight months of Wars, the roses episodes to give you the short version. This is the really short version Henry the sixth went mad, the Duke of York thought he would be a better King. And so he basically launched a civil war, which lasted for like two more generations. If you count the deaths of the princes in the tower or the generation, and it ended with the death of the majority of the nobility and it left Henry Tudor, a Welshman with a tenuous claim to the throne as King, when Henry the eighth inherited the throne. It was the first time in 50 years that the throne changed hands without bloodshed. There were two periods in the Tudor, rain that saw a great deal of rebellion. First, the early period under Henry the seventh, because he had come to the throne through battle and he was really insecure.
And there were still so many your guests who weren’t ready to give up their fight. Then about 50 years later, during the period of religious turmoil, the crown wasn’t very strong. This was exacerbated by the rule of Edward who was a young boy followed immediately by Mary, who was a woman. So it was really unstable. There were several reasons why there were so many rebellions in Tudor times, and I’m going to go over the general reasons here. And one thing it’s important to keep in mind is that the idea of quality is really, really new, relatively speaking. So for most of history, there were strict classes and the very poorest people were never able to achieve anything, resembling political equality. And they actually didn’t even expect to, we have this idea that rebellions meant something like class warfare, which is untrue simply because the idea of class warfare, it was completely foreign to people before the enlightenment.
It implies classes struggling against each other. And that idea was completely unknown in Europe before the 18th century, the English civil war, as an example in the mid 17th century, which I won’t really ever go into in this podcast, because it’s a little bit late, again, a plug for the history of England, the English civil war actually saw the execution of the King, right? The killing of a King, but society still didn’t have any idea of true political equality. Those who were rebelling against the King to the point where the King was actually executed, still didn’t want, or even conceive of the idea of equality for the very poorest in society. Even the us constitution nearly 150 years later and radical in its ideas of freedoms provided for slavery. Right? So keep this mind as we talk about revolts and rebellions, these we’re not going to end with any kind of equality for the peasants and the lower classes who were rebelling.
The social order was not going to be upended with these rebellions. With that said, the Tudor saw a lot of rebellions beginning just a year after Henry the seventh took the throne. While we can look back at the battle of Bosworth, which ended the Wars, the roses as the definitive and of the Wars for Henry. It wasn’t so clear. One of his predecessors, Edward, the fourth had had a fairly stable rule for nearly 10 years, but it all went to hell in a hand basket when he died suddenly, and two of his sons were killed likely though, not proven by his own brother. Richard Henry tooter saw several rebellions by those who are not satisfied or happy with the new regime. And so we saw one of Richard, the third’s former counselors and other Yorkist raising troops with a plan of killing Henry as he traveled to New York in 1486, just a year after Bosworth, Henry saw lots of rebellions throughout the first 10 years of his reign.
Some of which were actually encouraged by foreign monarchs, as well as the nobility in his own country. These would have fallen under the theme of dynastic succession, which was a major cause of rebellions during the reign of Henry the seventh. It would also be a cause for rebellions under Mary Tudor, lady Jane grey, who was in fact queen for nine days while the early rebellions falling under the dynastic succession theme aim to actually get rid of the Tudors altogether, the later ones were more about changing the succession rather than throwing the dynasty out. Dynastic succession was one of the main reasons behind the pilgrimage of grace. Something that I had actually talked about in a podcast episode, years and years ago, while they were largely rebelling against the break from Rome and the changes in the North, one of the rebels main demands was that Henry’s daughter, Mary should be returned to the succession after she was declared a bastard when Henry divorced Catherine of Aragon. So Henry divorced Catherine of Aragon, married Anne Berlin, and had Mary, his daughter with Catherine declared a bastard. Pilgrimage of Grace rebels wanted her back in succession later.
Jane grey was made queen through a change of Edward VI’s will to ensure that the Protestant religion kept moving forward and progress. Wasn’t reversed by Edward’s older sister, Mary inheriting the throne and switching everything back to them.
Catholic faith. This was reinforced by the Protestant counselors who were also quite afraid of retribution when Edward died young and Mary’s rule began, of course, Mary had a much stronger claim to the throne than Jane and Mary was able to take her throne easily enough. Mary saw another dynastic rebellion over her marriage to Philip of Spain. So Thomas Wyatt, who was a Protestant and had served under both Henry the eighth and Edward, the sixth was worried that if Mary married, Phillip, any of her children would not only prevent Elizabeth from inheriting, but would also kind of guarantee that England would become part of the Spanish ruled empire. The rebels said that they actually did not want Mary removed from the throne, but they just wanted to ensure that Elizabeth inherited after Mary died and Elizabeth inherited the throne, she didn’t experience much threat against her rule until nearly a decade after she became queen this rebellion involved Mary queen of Scots.
Someone else that I talked about in an earlier podcast last year after Mary queen of Scots arrived in England and was placed under house arrest, the Northern Earl’s rebelled to ensure that Mary was officially named Elizabeth heir, if she died without children. And that would guarantee a Catholic succession. That was pretty much it for Elizabeth dynastic rebellions for over 30 years until the Earl of Essex rebelled. In order to force Elizabeth to name James Stewart as her heir, he hoped that this would earn him some brownie points with James, but of course it would have the opposite effect. The next major theme for the Tudor rebellions has to do with money and taxes. This was the most common form of rebellion in the early Tudor period with people rebelling over new taxes, or simply because they couldn’t pay the taxes. Henry Tudor, Henry the seventh needed money to ensure that his position was secure four years into his reign.
Parliament voted for a hundred thousand pounds in new taxes for Henry to make a war in France and then another 60,000 pounds for a war in Scotland in 1497. People in both Yorkshire and Cornwall resented paying for taxes for Wars, which they thought didn’t concern them. Of course, the Yorkshire Lords didn’t want to pay for a war with France when they had the Scottish border to deal with. And the people in Cornwall didn’t want to pay for war with Scotland when it was just so far away from them, Yorkshire, rebels, murdered Henry’s tax collector. So Henry had to clamp down hard and he sent an army up to deal with the rebels
Henry.
I saw a rebellion against taxes in 1525 when he passed the amicable grant, which was a tax that he created without parliament. And this happened after a period that already saw heavy taxation and forced loans for a war with France, there was little territory that was gained and people were broke and they didn’t want to pay the pilgrimage of grace also included demands against for subsidies. Ad-words saw rebellion in 1549 against a subsidy, which came right after the introduction of a new prayer book and taken together. It was enough to spark the great Western rebellion. The third theme for Tudor rebellions. And the one we often think about would be religion. This came about because obviously of Henry the eighth break with Rome and the following reformation before the break religion had been something that unified the country, but between 1530, six and 1569, there were several rebellions designed to turn back the religious changes.
There was one that was the exception cat’s rebellion wanted more change to happen faster by the end of the Tudor dynasty. The last years of Elizabeth’s reign, more people, most people actually accepted the new Elizabeth in church and didn’t rebel any longer. It had been several generations that had gone through and they just accepted the church. As mentioned before the pilgrimage of grace was largely against closing the monasteries, which affected the people of Yorkshire of the North, both socially and economically, since they provided many necessary services in villages and towns like schools and hospitals, the major rebellion under Edward, the Western rebellion was a response to the way the churches were being made over completely Protestant with the destroying of relics and a call for the traditional Catholic practices to be returned. Of course, Jane Grey’s reign of nineties started because of a rebellion about religion, where the leaders wanted to keep the reformation going.
And why it’s rebellion was also kind of about religion and the fear that England would become Catholic. Again, other factors which could be linked to the above major reasons include factions at court, which of course was something that was largely responsible for the Wars of the roses and famines, which could be also related to economic unrest. But one other unique reason is enclosure, which was when common land was fenced off or when land was converted to pasture for the nobility. This was generally something that caused local rebellions against local officials that the Monarch didn’t generally get involved with, but it was a major cause of cat’s rebellion, which was one of the major rebellions and final main cause while not in England, of course, where there were rebellions in Ireland that Elizabeth saw mostly, which were caused by the English, taking more control,
Speaker 3: (14:52)
Ireland
Speaker 2: (14:55)
Are more likely to happen outside London and the immediate surroundings. They were further away from the seat of government and also felt that not only were they geographically separate, but they also had different needs that weren’t really understood by the Monarch in the North. For example, the area around York had been a home base for Richard Richard, the third. And so they were more prone to rebellion early in the Tudor, rain, other areas like Cornwall even spoke a different language and their culture was so different. So they were more apt
Speaker 3: (15:27)
To rebel. Now
Speaker 2: (15:30)
I want to talk about the way government generally handled rebellions government at the time didn’t have a standing army and there were no security forces or police or national guard or anything like that available. And so sometimes the government had to be creative in dealing with the rebels. The best defense was a good offense. So one of the first things a Monarch would do is to take action whenever they heard of any kind of rumors or unrest pressuring any foreign leaders to not support rebels or talking with leaders in the counties where rebellions were threatened to ensure their loyalty was one way to make sure a brewing rebellion never actually took hold a common tactic, they would take would be of course, to threaten the rebels. This didn’t work very often. And in some cases like the pilgrimage of grace, the size of the rebellion forced the monarchs negotiate in order to delay the rebellion while the government had a chance to gather their forces to
Speaker 3: (16:27)
The next time,
Speaker 2: (16:28)
Dick was to explain that the Tudors were rulers who were chosen by God, through his giving Henry the seventh victory on the battlefield and any kind of rebellion was a sin against God. This was of course propaganda. And as we saw in an earlier episode, the Tudors were masterful at propaganda Elizabeth constantly toward England to going on Royal progresses and staying with locals so that her people could see her. She loved pageants at every stop. They would have these big pageants, which would show her as a strong and powerful Monarch who so loved her people and saved the nation. Lot of propaganda next up rulers could offer pardons to anyone who would just go home, but that generally only applied to the common rebels, any leaders, rebel leaders, ringleaders would be exempt from them,
Speaker 3: (17:21)
Pardon? They could also
Speaker 2: (17:24)
Give rewards to the Nobles in order to keep them in order. And this was kind of patronage. They would give away knighthoods or land. And that helped to keep the Gentry local Henry the seventh handed out all kinds of rewards and offices to the people who both supported him and in places where he needed to ensure loyalty. So he would have people, he knew, supported him going up to the North, for example, and having land and having offices in the North of England so that he could kind of guarantee the support up there. So that pretty much goes through the main causes in general of rebellions, the main themes, the next episode that we’re going to do, we’re going to look at specific rebellions. So we’ll look in detail at Katz rebellion at the great Western rebellion at the prayer book rebellion at the pilgrimage of grace and Wyatt and all of these different rebellions.
We’re going to look at them at what the revels hope to gain, how they were dealt with and the impact that they have longterm. If there were any, generally there were, there were a lot of times where the rebels, even if they didn’t get what they wanted, it really impacted society at least locally. So we’re going to talk about that. So now for the book recommendation, which is Tudor rebellions by Anthony Fletcher and Dharma McCulloch, remember you can get the show notes and this transcript as well as sign up for the newsletter by simply sending a text with your email address to the listener support line at it’s a U S number eight Oh one. So +1 801-683-9756 or eight Oh one six Tesco. It’s easy peasy. Do it now, unless you’re driving in that case, pull over and do it. You can also get in touch on Facebook at facebook.com/england cast or via Twitter at Tesco. And I love getting your messages and seeing your comments. So please do feel free to get in touch at any time. Thanks so much for listening everybody. The next episode will be the interview with Tudor times on their person of the month. That’ll be in about two weeks and after this little mini series on rebellions, I’m going to move towards a mini series on literature and books. However, we will be on rebellions for about two more episodes. So thanks for listening and have a great couple of weeks. Bye. Bye
[advertisement insert here: if you like this show, and you want to support me and my work, the best thing you can do (and it’s free!) is to leave a rating or review on iTunes. It really helps others discover the podcast. Second best is to buy Tudor-themed gifts for all your loved ones at my shop, at TudorFair.com, like leggings with the Anne Boleyn portrait pattern on them, or boots with Elizabeth I portraits. Finally, you can also become a patron of this show for as little as $1/episode at Patreon.com/englandcast … And thank you!]
Heather Teysko is the creator, writer, and producer of The Renaissance English History Podcast, the original Tudor history podcast, started in 2009. She's been writing about history online for over 25 years, since her first site on Colonial American history became number one in history on Yahoo in 1998. In 2019 she created Tudorcon, which is now a yearly event, in addition to writing books, and running TudorFair.com - a whimsical Tudor Merch shop.
She has been passionate about Tudor England since she first read Alison Weir's The Six Wives of Henry VIII 30 years ago, and subsequently moved to London after college to spend her time immersed in Tudor history (how exciting when she got to interview Alison for the first time!). In addition to history, she is passionate about travel, and has lived in 3 countries and 4 states (not counting her perpetual state of confusion), and her family (who help her host her YouTube channel occasionally).
