to go, if a sufficient hostage were sent in exchange; and on this, Henry threw off the mask, and said he knew no gentleman nor other person of so little worth as to be put in pledge for such a villain.
The insurgents, quite aware that the Government was only waiting to seize and crush the leaders, again took the field in the very midst of winter. On the 23rd of January, 1537, bills were stuck on the church-doors by night, calling on the commoners to come forth and to be true to one another, for the gentlemen had deceived them, yet they should not want for captains. There was great distrust lest the gentlemen had been won over by the pardon and by money. The rebels, however, marched out under two leaders of the name of Musgrave and Tilby, and, 8,000 strong, they laid siege to Carlisle, where they were repulsed; and, being encountered in their retreat by Norfolk, they were defeated and put to flight. All their officers, except Musgrave, were taken and put to death, to the number of seventy. Sir Francis Bigot and one Halam attempted to surprise Hull, but failed; and other risings in the north proving equally abortive, the king now bade Norfolk spread his banner, march through the northern counties with martial law, and, regardless of the pardon he had issued, to punish the rebels without mercy. In his usual violence of passion, he was ready to destroy the innocent with the guilty. In his instructions to Norfolk he says:—"Our pleasure is, that before you shall close up our banner, you shall in any wise cause such dreadful execution to be done upon a good number of the inhabitants of every town, village, and hamlet as have offended in this rebellion, as well by the hanging them up in tens as by the quartering of them, and the setting of their heads and quarters in every town, great and small, and in all such other places, as they may be a fearful spectacle to all other hereafter that would practise any like matter; which we require you to do without pity or respect."
As the monks had obviously been greatly at the bottom of this commotion, Henry let loose his vengeance especially upon them. He ordered Norfolk to go to Sawley, Hexham, Newminster, Lannercost, St. Agatha, and all other places that had made resistance, and there seize certain priors and canons and send them up to him, and immediately to hang up "all monks and canons that be in any wise faulty, without further delay or ceremony." He ordered the Earl of Surrey and other officers in the north to charge all the monks there with grievous offences, to try their minds, and see whether they would not submit themselves gladly to his will. Under those sanguinary orders, the whole of England north of the Trent became a scene of horror and butchery, and ghastly heads and mangled bodies, or corpses swinging from the trees. Nor did this admirable reformer of religion neglect to look after the property of his victims. Their lands and goods were all to be forfeited and taken possession of; "for we are informed," he says, "that there were amongst them divers freeholders and rich men, whose lands and goods, well looked unto, will reward others that with their truth have deserved the same."
Besides Aske, Sir Thomas Constable, Sir John Bulmer, Sir Thomas Percy, Sir Stephen Hamilton, Nicholas Tempest, William Lumley, and others, though they had taken the benefit of the pardon, were found guilty. and most of them were executed. Lord Hussey was found guilty of being an accomplice in the Lincolnshire rising, and was executed at Lincoln. Lord Darcy, though he pleaded compulsion, and a long life spent in the service of the Crown, was executed on Tower Hill. Lady Bulmer, the wife of Sir John Bulmer, was burnt in Smithfield; and Robert Aske was hung in chains on one of the towers of York. Having thus satiated his vengeance, and struck a profound terror into all the disaffected, Henry once more published a general pardon, to which he adhered; and even complied with one of the demands which the insurgents had made, that of erecting by patent a court of justice at York for deciding lawsuits in the northern counties.
But though Henry could crush his enemies in England, and command silence there, the world abroad which adhered to the Roman Catholic faith failed not to regard his sanguinary proceedings with horror, and to condemn him in no measured terms. There was one man, above all, whose stinging eloquence reached the ears and the heart of Henry, and made him writhe on his throne. This was Cardinal Pole, his own relative, whom we have seen him endeavouring, by offers of the highest ecclesiastical promotion, to bind to his cause, but in vain. Pole, a decided Romanist, could not bring his conscience to accept wealth and honours in lieu of what he regarded as the most sacred and most momentous truths. Pole had quitted England and taken up his abode in Rome in 1536, and there received the cardinal's hat. He had spread the infamy of the treatment of Queen Catherine, and the murder of the venerable Fisher and the illustrious More, over the whole of the civilised world. He had thrown all his great talents and learning into the composition of his work, "De Unione Ecclesiastica"—the Union of the Church—a work of singular erudition and eloquence, in which he had poured out his sarcasm and contempt on Henry with a terrible force. Henry burned with a deadly spirit of vengeance against this undaunted enemy, but could not reach him; yet Cromwell vowed that he would find means to make Pole eat his own heart with vexation.
Paul III., the great patron of Reginald Pole, though he saw the insurrection of the north thus quelled by Henry, imagined that it had, however, opened up to Henry such a view of the internal discontent of his kingdom with his breach with Rome, that he might now not be indisposed to enter into negotiation for a return to it. For this purpose, the talents and country of Pole seemed to point him out as the proper agent; though the slightest reflection might have shown that he had inflicted such severe wounds on the proud heart of Henry by his writings, that, of all men, he was the most exceptionable. To appoint Cardinal Pole to this office was inevitably to render it abortive. Yet the Pope did appoint him, and Pole was imprudent enough to accept it. Henry watched the proceedings with a sullen scowl of triumph, and Cromwell prepared to verify his promise that he would make the eloquent young English man "eat his own heart with vexation."
Pole was made legate beyond the Alps. He was instructed first to call on Charles and Francis to sheathe their swords, and to employ them no longer against each other, but in union against the Turks. He was
