The Pilgramage of Grace

"The king, intending also the suppression of the greater Monasteries, which he effected in the 31st of his Reign for the preventing of future Dangers and keeping those Northern Counties in Quiet, raised a President and Council at York, and gave them his several Powers and Authorities, under one great Seal of Oyer and Terminer etc...which Court was continued till the Troubles of the King and Nation, in the time of Charles I."

It is in these words quoted from Coke that Drake, the eighteenth century historian of York, described the foundation of the Council of the North in the year 1537, after the suppression of the Pilgrimage of Grace. But Drake was mistaken; the Council in the North was an older expedient to meet the even older problem of the North. In this, as in so many other directions, what were one time thought to be Tudor innovations are now recognised as developments of existing institutions.

This pamphlet covers the Rise and Fall of the Council of the North, and The Pilgramage of Grace uprising against Henry VIII...