Twenty years later the vicar of Louth was hanged with others, at Tyburn, for his part in the Lincolnshire rebellion, when 20,000 men took up arms in defence of the pillaged monasteries. Concerning this rebellion, there is a graphic account of the receipt of Henry VIIIth’s letter in response to the people’s petition, which was read in the chapter-house at Lincoln, on October 10, 1556. Moyne tells how, when they thought to have read the letter secretly among themselves in the chapter-house, a mob burst in and insisted on hearing it: “And therefore,” he goes on to say, “I redd the Kynges letter openly and by cause there was a lyttyl clause therein that we feared wolde styr the Commons I did leave that clause unredd, which was persayved by a Chanon beying the parson of Snelland, and he sayde there openly that the letter was falsely redd be cause whereof I was like to be slayn.” Eventually they got out by the south door to the Chancellor’s house, while the men waited to murder them at the great West door, “And when the Commons persayved that wee were gone from theym another way, they departed to ther lodgings in a gret furye, determynyng to kill us the morowe after onles wee wolde go forwards with theym.”
Bridge Street, Louth.
The “lyttyl clause” referred to as likely to “styr the Commons,” was wisely omitted, for it is that in which the king expresses his amazement at the presumption of the “rude commons of one shire, and that one of the most brute and beastly of the whole realm and of least experience, to take upon them to rule their prince whom they were bound to obey and serve.”
This rebellion, which was called the Pilgrimage of Grace, brought disaster on many Lincolnshire families. Over sixty of all conditions were put to death for it in Louth alone, and others at Alford, Spilsby and Boston, and at all the monasteries, and the vicars of Cockerington, Louth, Croft, Biscathorpe, Donington and Snelland and some others, as well as John Lord Hussey at Sleaford, suffered for their religion and were canonized as martyrs by the Pope. A list of more than one hundred victims is given in “Notes and Queries,” III., 84.
The town has a museum of some interest, and outside of it may be seen a large boulder of some foreign stone, probably brought by an icefloe from Denmark or Norway. This used to stand at a street corner in the town, but was afterwards removed to the inn-yard at the back, and painted blue, and was known for many years as the blue stone. Speaking of stone, we have a record that a good deal of the stone for building the church spire in the sixteenth century was landed at Dogdyke, and drawn thence on wheels or carried on pack horses on flag pavements across the fen. The stone is of good quality and adapted for carving.
There is notably good openwork on the east gable of the church, much resembling that at Grimoldby and Theddlethorpe-in-the-Marsh, a few miles to the east of Louth. Turner’s picture of the horse fair at Louth shows the spire, which was no doubt the motive of the picture, and until one has seen it, both from a distance and from the street of Louth itself, one can have no notion how beautiful a thing a well-proportioned spire can be, one is never tired of looking at it.
An old statue of Edward VI. over a doorway in the Westgate indicates the grammar school where Alfred and Charles Tennyson spent a few uncomfortable years. The school seal shows a boy being birched, with the motto “Qui parcit virgam odit filium,” and date 1552. Among other pupils were Governor Eyre, one of the victims of British sentimentality, and Hobart Pasha. Thomas of Louth gave a clock to Lincoln Minster in 1324, and William de Lindsey, Bishop of Ely, 1290, who has there a beautiful monument, was also a Louth native.