Dick O'Brien. ‘The Pilgrimage of Grace’.

The Pilgrimage of Grace was a massive 1536–1537 popular rebellion in Northern England. Starting in Yorkshire and spreading across Cumberland, Northumberland, Durham and Lancashire, roughly 30,000 to 40,000 protestors rose up against King Henry VIII to oppose the Dissolution of the Monasteries and the English Reformation. This talk explores how religious opposition to Henry VIII’s actions fused with economic anxieties, agrarian grievances and the fear of new royal taxes in the Northwest of England, leading to armed confrontation outside Carlisle Castle. It was the most serious of all Tudor rebellions, but much of this episode in our history has been neglected.