NOTES TO CHAPTER X

Note A. The proper “reverence” on receiving a letter from the King was to take off the hat, kneel down, and kiss the seal.

Note B. It is not clear which of two extant proclamations to the rebels Lancaster Herald had with him on this occasion. The one indicated in the “Letters and Papers” does contain an offer of pardon, if the rebels will disperse and give up ten leaders. The other is very similar but contains no promise of pardon, so this was probably the one used^[1116].

Note C. An abstract of Lancaster Herald’s account of his mission is given in L. and P. XI, 826, but the account is printed in full in “State Papers,” I, p. 485; in a Newcastle-upon-Tyne Tract by Longstaff, “A Leaf from the Pilgrimage of Grace”; and in “Archaeologia,” XVI, p. 331; Froude also makes considerable quotations from it. Lancaster Herald represents himself as acting boldly and with dignity, and Aske with considerably more dignity than the Herald thought became a captain of rebels. In marked contrast with this account is Archbishop Lee’s version of the same affair. According to the Archbishop “Robert Aske so blustered and spake so terrible words that the poor man fell down upon his knees for fear and said he was but a messanger.” Lee raised him, saying, “it beseemed not that coat armour to kneel before any man there.” This is hard to reconcile with the earlier account. The Archbishop must have been good-naturedly trying to befriend Miller, who was afterwards accused of shaming the King’s coat by kneeling to a traitor. At the same time Lee’s little perversion enabled him to exhibit himself in a nobly loyal attitude. In Lee’s narrative Aske always appears as a ferocious captain of banditti, but this portrait is not confirmed by the other evidence.

Note D. For a full discussion of this symbol see “The Western Rebellion of 1549” by Frances Rose-Troup, Append. A, and “Notes and Queries,” 11th ser., VIII, 107, 176, 217, 236, 258. A badge, said to be that worn by Sir Robert Constable during the Pilgrimage, is preserved at Everingham, Yorks. An excellent photograph of this badge forms the frontispiece of “The Western Rebellion of 1549”; there is another in “The Yorkshire Archaeological Journal,” pt. LXXXI, and a sketch in “The Transactions of the East Riding Antiquarian Society,” vi, 47.

Antonio Guaras, a Spaniard who lived in England under Edward VI and wrote a chronicle of Henry VIII’s reign, says that the Pilgrims wore as their badge “The Five Plagues of Egypt”! His mistake arose from the similarity between the Spanish phrases “cinco plagas de Egipto,” the five plagues of Egypt, and “cinco llagas de Cristo,” the Five Wounds of Christ^[1117]. But although this is some excuse, he might have known that the Plagues of Egypt were not five but twelve.

241