The township of Louth in motion to Castre.
Furious demeanour of the clergy
The gentlemen take the oath.
So passed Monday. The next morning, early, the common bell was again ringing. Other commissioners were reported to be at Castre, a few miles distant; and Melton the shoemaker, and “one great James,” a tailor, with a volunteer army of horse and foot, harnessed and unharnessed, set out to seize them. The alarm had spread; the people from the neighbouring villages joined them as they passed, or had already risen and were in marching order. At Castre they found the commissioners fled; but a thousand horse were waiting for them, and the number every moment increasing. Whole parishes marched in, headed by their clergy. A rendezvous was fixed at Rotherwell; and at Rotherwell, on that day, or the next, besides the commons, “there were priests and monks” (the latter fresh ejected from their monasteries—pensioned, but furious) “to the number of seven or eight hundred.”[100] Some were “bidding their bedes,” and praying for the Pope and cardinals; some were in full harness, or armed with such weapons as they could find: all were urging on the people. They had, as yet, no plans. What would the gentlemen do? was the question. “Kill the gentlemen,” the priests cried; “if they will not join us, they shall all be hanged.”[101] This difficulty was soon settled. They were swept up from their halls, or wherever they could be found. The oath was offered them, with the alternative of instant death; and they swore against their will, as all afterwards pretended, and as some perhaps sincerely felt; but when the oath was once taken, they joined with a hearty unanimity, and brought in with them their own armed retainers, and the stores from their houses.[102] Sir Edward Madyson came in, Sir Thomas Tyrwhit and Sir William Ascue. Lord Borough, who was in Ascue’s company when the insurgents caught him, rode for his life, and escaped. One of his servants was overtaken in the pursuit, was wounded mortally, and shriven on the field.
October 3. Meeting at Horncastle.
So matters went at Louth and Castre. On Tuesday, October 3d, the country rose at Horncastle, in the same manner, only on an even larger scale. On a heath in that neighbourhood there was “a great muster”; the gentlemen of the county came in, in large numbers, with “Mr. Dymmock,” the sheriff, at their head. Dr. Mackarel, the Abbot of Barlings, was present, with his canons, in full armour; from the abbey came a waggon-load of victuals; oxen and sheep were driven in from the neighbourhood and a retainer of the house carried a banner, on which was worked a plough, a chalice and a host, a horn, and the five wounds of Christ.[103] The sheriff, with his brother, rode up and down the heath, giving money among the crowd; and the insurrection now gaining point, another gentleman “wrote on the field, upon his saddlebow,” a series of articles, which were to form the ground of the rising.
Articles of the rebels’ petition.
Six demands should be made upon the crown: 1. The religious houses should be restored. 2. The subsidy should be remitted. 3. The clergy should pay no more tenths and first-fruits to the crown. 4. The Statute of Uses should be repealed. 5. The villein blood should be removed from the privy council. 6. The heretic bishops, Cranmer and Latimer, Hilsey Bishop of Rochester, Brown Archbishop of Dublin, and their own Bishop Longlands the persecuting Erastian, should be deprived and punished.
Messengers are despatched to the king.
The deviser and the sheriff sate on their horses side by side, and read these articles, one by one, aloud, to the people. “Do they please you or not?” they said, when they had done. “Yea, yea, yea!” the people shouted, waving their staves above their heads; and messengers were chosen instantly and despatched upon the spot, to carry to Windsor to the king the demands of the people of Lincolnshire. Nothing was required more but that the rebellion should be cemented by a common crime; and this, too, was speedily accomplished.