role in uniting the different socio-economic groups in the rebellion and offered legitimacy for the rebel’s cause. Religious grievances acted in the short term as a catalyst to spark the commons into motion. However, if it was not for the existence of the economic grievances on the commons of Westmoreland and Cumberland religious grievances would not have been enough to cause the rebellion on their own.
The third chapter will take into account the revisionist school of thought surrounding the Pilgrimage. This will take constitutional grievances into account and discuss how far they influenced the actions of the rebels. The theme of tyranny will be discussed focussing mainly on the role of the King’s chief minister: Thomas Cromwell and explore the idea that the Pilgrimage was a ‘loyal’ rebellion. The articles submitted to King Henry by the rebels will also be described and interpreted before looking at the Council of the North and the attitude that the south had towards the north. I will conclude by arguing that political and constitutional grievances concerned the rebels in Cumberland and Westmoreland far
less as has been described in the work of Geoffrey Elton and Michael Bush.
Much of the analysis will be based on primary evidence found in the online archives of Henry VIII’s Letters and Papers. These give an essential insight into the events involving the key protagonists in the Pilgrimage and shed light on the contemporary interpretation of these events. However consideration must be taken over the author of these sources. As illiteracy was almost universally for the commons in Tudor England it is likely that the primary sources will not be penned by the peasants taking part in the rebellion. Therefore I will use a wide range of secondary sources to supplement my argument. With many authors such as Diarmaid MacCulloch and David Callaghan arguing that religious grievances were the driving force behind the pilgrimage and others like Michael Bush and Geoffrey Elton putting forward the case for political grievances, this dissertation will conclude by putting forward a third argument; that the main motivation of the Cumberland and Westmoreland commons in join the rebellion was their underlying economic and agrarian