Tyburn is identified in the narrative as an execution site in the aftermath of the Pilgrimage of Grace. Sir John Bulmer was hanged and quartered there as the Crown pursued those associated with the northern rising; the account sets his execution alongside the burning of his wife, Margaret Bulmer, at Smithfield.

Tyburn and the Northern Repression

The executions followed the collapse of the pilgrimage and the Crown’s treatment of those who had taken part in, or were suspected of supporting, the movement. Sir John Bulmer had been accused of treason, while his wife was arrested after urging him to flee when she believed the pilgrimage had failed. Her chaplain gave evidence against her, and the narrator renders the disparity in their accusations starkly: Sir John was punished for treason, Margaret for loving her husband.

A Place in the Sequence of Executions

Tyburn is one stop in a wider pattern of punishment described in the same episode. Margaret Bulmer was burned at Smithfield, while Robert Aske—who had received a royal pardon and later urged others to trust the king’s word—was taken from imprisonment to York and hanged at Clifford Tower. These distinct places mark the reach of the reprisals, from executions in the south to a public killing in the north.

Narrative Significance

The brief reference to Tyburn gives a specific location to the narrator’s account of a justice system that treats loyalty and hope as evidence of treason. The Bulmers’ fates sharpen that indictment: the same campaign that punished Sir John’s alleged political offence also made his wife’s attachment to him a capital crime.