The Insurrection in the North, called the Pilgrimage of Grace, the most dangerous rising in this reign, caused the King to look to the City for assistance. The Mayor sent him 300 men fully armed and equipped.
The Mayor took another step in the interests of the Crown and of order. Although the suppression of the Houses was only begun, the intention of the King was manifest, and the rising in the North showed the temper of some part of the people. It is probable that in the City the popular voice was with the King. But there was a minority consisting of some of the monks and friars ejected, some of the people who had lost their occupation and their service, some partisans of the old order; and these were dangerous. The Court of Aldermen, therefore, deprived every priest, monk, friar, and religious person of every kind, of all weapons except their meat knives. A rising of the Religious, maddened with rage and fear, joined by one knows not how many of lay partisans, hot-heads and ribalds always anxious for a row, might have been a very serious thing indeed. We may be quite sure that there were many within and without the walls who would have desired nothing so much as the sack and pillage of the rich merchants’ houses in the sacred name of the Holy Church. Perhaps one of the reasons of the City’s acquiescence in the destruction of the Religious Houses was the knowledge that such a rebellion would have produced some kind of alliance with the rogues and vagabonds of their lanes and slums.
The execution of Anne Boleyn and the succession of Henry’s queens may be passed over here as belonging to the national history.
In June and July 1536 a Convocation was held at St. Paul’s, presided over by Cromwell, the King’s Vicar-General. A more important assembly was never held in this country. For this Convocation separated the Church of England altogether from Rome: it held that the King, as Supreme Head of the Church, ought to disregard all citations from the Pope. Once before the Pope’s citations had been disregarded and scoffed at, viz. by John; but that was on his own authority, apart from his Clergy and his people. In this case Henry kept up the show of consultation with his Clergy. Not he, but Convocation, decided that he was wholly independent of the Pope.
In the year 1543 the plague appeared and carried off a great many. The City Authorities ordered all infected houses to be marked with a cross; all infected persons who recovered were to remain in quarantine for a month; all straw and rushes from infected houses were to be carried away and burned; and infected clothes were to be carried out of the City. Dogs, except watch-dogs, were to be killed. It proved, happily, to be a short though sharp visitation.
In 1544 the City sent 1000 men to aid Henry in his war with France, in two contingents of 500 each; and in the following year a third contingent of 2000 men was sent to France. In 1545 a tax for two-fifteenths was imposed for the purpose of bringing water from Hackney, Muswell Hill, and Hoxton, into the City. The conclusion of the war with France in 1546 was celebrated by a Procession which was solemn and magnificent. It marched from St. Paul’s to Leadenhall Chapel and back again. First came men carrying the silver crosses of the Parish Churches; then all the Parish Clerks, Choristers and Priests in London; then the Choir of St. Paul’s, in their school caps: they were followed by the City Companies in their liveries. Last of all marched the Lord Mayor and Aldermen in scarlet robes.
Peace, however, brought with it an invasion of disbanded soldiers, riotous, and given to acts of robbery and violence. They were accompanied by their camp-followers, whose character may be guessed. The Mayor gave orders that the old soldiers should be allowed to beg for a certain number of days, but that the vagabond followers should be driven out of the City. So I suppose they got rid of a few while the greater number remained behind—an addition to the rogues and beggars of the City, who had already become a most dangerous element. (See [p. 366].)
EMBARKATION OF HENRY VIII. AT DOVER
In the last year of Henry’s reign (1546) he bestowed an endowment of 500 marks a year on the City Poorhouses on condition that the City itself raised as much. He also gave the City, only a few days before his death, the Hospital of St. Bartholomew, to be called the House of the Poor; the House of the Grey Friars, and the House or Hospital of Bethlehem. Henry died on the 28th of January 1547 at his Palace of Whitehall.