they been able, found themselves assailed daily with 'piteous complaints' which they had no power to satisfy.[1] The occupation of the council with the larger questions of the Church, had left statesmen too little leisure to attend to these disorders. Cromwell's occasional and abrupt interference had created irritation, but no improvement; and mischiefs of all kinds had grown unheeded till the summer of 1536, when a fresh list of grievances, some real, some imaginary, brought the crisis to a head.
The Convocation of York, composed of rougher materials than the representatives of the southern counties, had acquiesced but tardily in the measures of the late years. Abuses of all kinds instinctively sympathize, and the clergy of the north, who were the most ignorant in England, and the laity whose social irregularities where the greatest, united resolutely in their attachment to the Pope, were most alarmed at the progress of heresy, and were most anxious for a reaction. The deciding Act against Rome and the King's articles of religion struck down the hopes which had been excited there and elsewhere by the disgrace of Queen Anne. Men saw the Papacy finally abandoned, they saw heresy encouraged, and they were proportionately disappointed and enraged.
At this moment three commissions were issued by the Crown, each of which would have tried the patience
- ↑ See a very remarkable letter of Sir William Parr to Cromwell, dated April 8, 1536, a few months only before the outbreak of the rebellion: Miscellaneous MS. State Paper Office, second series, vol. xxxi.
