In October 1536, Louth started a rebellion against Henry VIII. Within days, tens of thousands of people from across Lincolnshire had joined it. It failed, its leaders were executed, but it set off the wider Pilgrimage of Grace in the north, and the town still remembers it every year.
Why Louth Rose Up
By 1536, Henry VIII had broken with Rome and made himself head of the Church of England. That spring, Parliament ordered the closure of the smaller monasteries. In September, Louth Park Abbey was dissolved: the abbot was pensioned off, the site granted to Lord Burgh and its valuables taken for the king.
Louth was proud and prosperous, and its church of St James, crowned with its new spire, was richly furnished with chapels, paintings, plate and candles, much of it paid for by the town's guilds. Rumours spread that the king's commissioners were coming to strip the parish churches of their treasures and close them. Many people also resented new taxes, the loss of holy days and the charity the monasteries had given the poor.
Sunday 1 October 1536
On Sunday 1 October, the vicar, Thomas Kendall, preached against the changes and warned of the visit to come. After evening service, a shoemaker named Nicholas Melton, soon known as "Captain Cobbler", seized the keys of the church, and townsmen set a watch so that nothing could be taken.
The next day the town was in uproar. Officials arriving to deal with the closing of Legbourne Priory were seized, and their papers were burned.
The Rising Spreads
The rebellion spread fast, to Horncastle, Caistor, Market Rasen and beyond. At Horncastle, Dr John Raynes, chancellor to the Bishop of Lincoln and one of the king's commissioners, was dragged from his sickbed at Bolingbroke and beaten to death.
Local gentry, some willingly and some under pressure, joined and drew up the rebels' demands. They protested at the closing of the monasteries, the taking of church wealth, and the king's "bad advisers", especially Thomas Cromwell. The rebels insisted they were loyal to the king, and marched behind a banner of the Five Wounds of Christ.
Lincoln and the King's Reply
A rebel army, reckoned at tens of thousands strong, marched to Lincoln and occupied the cathedral. Their petition reached the king, and on 11 October his herald arrived with Henry's furious reply. It described the rebels as "the rude commons of one shire, and that one of the most brute and beastly of the whole realm".
With the Duke of Suffolk, the king's brother-in-law, approaching with an army, the gentry lost their nerve. The rebels were told to go home, and by mid-October the rising had melted away.
Punishment
Suffolk offered a general pardon, but around 140 men were already in prison. Captain Cobbler was handed over by his own men when the duke came to Louth. Thomas Kendall fled as far as Coventry before he was caught and taken to the Tower of London, and he was executed at Tyburn in March 1537. Nicholas Melton was also executed at Tyburn. That same March, batches of men were hanged at Lincoln, Horncastle and Louth, 32 in all, some of them in Louth Market Place.
Days after the Lincolnshire Rising collapsed, a far larger rebellion, the Pilgrimage of Grace, broke out in Yorkshire. The two are closely linked, but they were separate risings.
Remembering the Rising
A plaque opposite St James' Church marks where the Rising began, and Lincolnshire Day, held every year on 1 October, remembers the day Louth rose up.
Sources and Further Reading
- Louth Museum, the Lincolnshire Rising and notes on the Rising
- Louth Town Council, Saxon times to the 20th century
- Lincolnshire Rising on Wikipedia