Pilgrimage of Grace

The Pilgrimage of Grace is a northern movement of religious resistance and political protest that becomes, in Margaret Pole’s account, both a challenge to Henry VIII’s authority and a warning about the cost of trusting it. Its members present their cause as a pilgrimage rather than a rebellion: they defend the old faith, demand the return of monasteries and trusted royal advisers, and march beneath the Five Wounds of Christ. The movement’s temporary success is vivid; its eventual fate, as the novel’s framing makes clear, is betrayal and repression.

Identity and Aims

The movement rejects the king’s claim to govern the Church and displace the Pope in England. Before the rising, Henry VIII has made himself head of the Church, while Thomas More has resigned as Lord Chancellor and the authority of Rome has been set aside. Margaret sees this not as an isolated religious dispute but as a seizure of the Church’s wealth, laws, and courts. The pilgrims’ appeal therefore joins religious restoration to the restoration of what they regard as lawful government.

The cause is given a sacred and collective vocabulary. Its supporters call their march a pilgrimage, speak of passing through a pilgrimage gate, and wear the Five Wounds of Christ. The white rose of York also marks the cause in Margaret’s understanding: she identifies herself and the old lords with the pilgrims, and carries a badge combining the Five Wounds and the White Rose of York. Religious devotion and dynastic allegiance meet in these emblems, allowing the movement to appear both as a defense of the faith and as a gathering of people alienated by the king’s policies.

Growth and Leadership

The rising gathers force across the North. Its leadership is associated with Robert Aske, whom Margaret regards as an honest Yorkshireman, while the position of Sir Thomas Percy remains uncertain: reports say either that the rebels captured him or that he joined them. In the middle of October, Aske rides into York without an arrow being fired in its defense. The city opens its gates, and the force now known as the pilgrims is reported to number twenty thousand—four times the army that won England at Bosworth Field.

The movement’s advance is accompanied by acts of religious restoration. In York, the pilgrims’ first action is to reopen two Benedictine houses, Holy Trinity and the nunnery of St. Clement. When the bells ring at Holy Trinity, people enter to hear Mass and cry with joy. These scenes give the rising a public devotional dimension: it does not merely oppose royal policy but temporarily restores the practices and institutions that policy has suppressed.

The movement’s following continues to grow. By the confrontation at Doncaster, the pilgrims are reported to number more than thirty thousand, led by the gentlemen and lords of Yorkshire. At Pontefract, Lord Thomas Darcy surrenders his castle to them; its defenders and the town swear the pilgrim oath, and the Archbishop of York is with the movement. Darcy supplies the pilgrims with badges of the Five Wounds, and the sacred banner makes the prospect of attacking them especially fraught for a Christian royal army.

The Crisis of Loyalty

The scale of the rising puts Margaret’s family in a dangerous position. Montague tells her that he and Geoffrey have been ordered to raise forces and march north against the pilgrims. Margaret touches the badge Lord Thomas Darcy gave her and insists that they cannot fire on the movement. Montague instead proposes that she go into the country and lead support in Berkshire if the South rises, while he and Geoffrey march north and wait for the right moment to join the pilgrims. He also plans to send for Reginald, whose return is imagined as a possible source of aid.

The movement’s strength makes the royal response precarious. At Doncaster, the lords, gentry, and common people of the North draw up in battle order against the king’s army. Margaret’s sons are on the opposing side, waiting for a chance to cross over. Thomas Howard’s army is hungry and cold, short of money, and surrounded by a countryside that offers it little goodwill; disease is also reported in the town. The pilgrims agree to parley, and Margaret’s account suggests that without negotiation the royal force would have been destroyed.

The pilgrims’ demands make their political program explicit: restore the faith of their fathers and the law, return noble advisers to the king, and banish Thomas Cromwell, Richard Riche, and the bishops they consider heretical. The demands are presented as broadly supported even within the king’s army. Thomas Howard rides to Henry VIII carrying the request for a general pardon and an agreement to restore the old ways. For Margaret, the movement has become powerful enough to make the king negotiate, and she writes with hope that its demands will be accepted.

Pardon and Apparent Victory

Henry VIII finally consents to the pardon. In freezing weather, Thomas Howard returns north through snow and waits outside Doncaster while a herald offers the king’s pardon to the silent ranks of northerners. Aske kneels before the assembled pilgrims, tells them they have won a great victory, and asks to be released from his command. When they agree, he removes the badge of the Five Wounds and promises that they will wear no badge but the king’s.

Margaret responds to this change by taking Darcy’s badge from her pocket, kissing it, and hiding it at the back of an old chest. She believes that the pilgrimage is over, that its members have won, and that her sons will come home. London’s Christmas celebrations seem to confirm that hope. Church bells ring, and the court’s progress from Westminster to Greenwich becomes, in Margaret’s reading, a public celebration of having saved the country, the Church, and the king from himself.

That apparent settlement also carries a promise of political restoration beyond the movement’s immediate demands. During the procession, the crowd cheers Princess Mary despite her having been reduced to the title of Lady Mary. The people believe that the Church has been restored and expect the princess to be restored as well. The procession does not establish that this hope will be fulfilled; it shows how the movement’s success has allowed religious protest and popular loyalty to the old royal order to reinforce one another.

Reversal and Significance

The pardon does not endure as a reliable settlement. The novel’s retrospective account says that Henry VIII responds to the pilgrims’ appeal by attacking the North and the Roman Catholic faithful, despite having offered a full pardon and undertaken to keep his word. It describes the king as consciously dishonest toward people who believed they could seek justice from him. The movement’s negotiated victory is thus reversed: the same royal authority that accepted its demands becomes the instrument of persecution.

The account also connects the rising’s defeat to the larger consequences of resistance to the closure of religious houses. Margaret later recalls that Robert Aske and hundreds of others died trying to save the monasteries. In this telling, the Pilgrimage of Grace is not simply a military challenge that failed; it is a mass appeal made in the belief that the king could still be persuaded to uphold faith, law, and pardon. Its sacred badges, opened abbey doors, and patient ranks at Doncaster give that appeal a visible form. Their eventual suppression exposes the distance between the king’s public promise and the power he exercises once the pilgrims have laid down their emblems.