Cornishrebellion

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The Prayer Book Rebellion 1549
called the Cornish Rebellion

Henry VIII, King of England, died in 1547, and was succeeded by his son by Jane Seymour, Edward VI.

Despite Henry?s strict intention that a council of ministers should administer the realm during Edward?s minority it was his uncle, the ambitiously ruthless Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset who flouted most of Henry?s decrees and made himself Lord Protector.

The new king was 9 years old, reared as a Protestant, was too young to fully appreciate the complexities of the situation that faced him or the delicacy with which he would have to tread in pursuit of his aims. His inheritance was a formidable one. The treasury was empty; prices were soaring owing to Henry's debasement of the currency; trade was in confusion, and the acquisition of monastic lands by the gentry had intensified the Enclosure movement resulting in unemployment and distress of the peasants. His attempts to persuade the Scots to join a voluntary union with England were rejected.

In the 16th Century religion was not as it is in the 21st C. It was a significant and important part of everyone?s daily life, whether Catholic or Protestant. As Lord Protector, Edward Seymour, a staunch Protestant proceeded to undo much of Henry?s work of reformation. The Act for the suppression of the chantries, which Henry had left in abeyance, was put into operation. The statute of the Six Articles was repealed. Chaos ensued and when the Book of Common Prayer was forced upon the populace, shrines were destroyed and images shattered. The spoils shared out between Seymour and his friends

�Henry VIII

The young king Edward was not the feeble sickly young man usually depicted. His was strenuous life of study and exercise� which was highly regulated. He enjoyed outdoor sports and received a rigorous education in politics, history, geography, philosophy rhetoric and poetry, along with religious instruction and art of kingship. This child was beset with dangers and terror and there was no one to trust. Somerset was a powerful figure in his life

In domestic affairs, the Protector proceeded with moderation in consolidating the Protestant Reformation in England. He repealed Henry VIII's heresy laws, which had made it treason to attack the king?s leadership of the Church.

In Cornwall discontent mounted against the imposition of the new religion by a distant London government. The Cornish people regarded themselves as a separate, particularly the purer Cornish speakers of the west and when the King tried to force them into a new religious practice Protestantism, they became fanatically attached to the old Roman Catholic faith.

Edward VI

�The Church in Cornwall had not yet been relieved of all its superfluous wealth. The Monasteries had gone, but chantries, religious gilds and collegiate churches remained. Glasney was the most significant Cornish site; a collegiate church had stood there for three centuries. It was not difficult to find witnesses who were ready to swear that the buildings had been neglected, that the provost and his priests were neglectful of their duties, more given to drinking and the chase than to religion. The church was stripped of its lead, bells and plate; the buildings were sold, in spite of the attempt of the local gentry to retain the place as a fortress. Soon there was little trace of the centuries old college. Crantock and the other collegiate houses were dissolved and their lands seized by the crown, though most of their churches were spared.� St Buryan remained a deanery for another three centuries.

Edward Seymour Duke of Somerset

In 1548, orders were issued that festivals were no longer to be celebrated with Popish paraphernalia as candles, ashes and palms, there was to be no making of holy bread and holy water, and all images were to be removed. William Body, who had leased the archdeaconry of Cornwall from an illegitimate son of Wolsey; was destroying the images in Helston church in April that year. In protest a mob formed, possibly up to three thousand men. They assembled in protest against Body was doing joining a group of parishioners from St Keverne. Martin Geoffrey, their priest and William John Kilter a yeoman of Constantine, led them. Body took refuge in a house, but was dragged into the street and stabbed to death. The western justices could do nothing, but help soon came from the eastern gentry and the incipient revolt was crushed.

King Edward, still a child , struggled with the difficulties that beset the kingdom, his sisters Mary and Elizabeth and all the while Seymour was at his shoulder influencing him and sometimes threatening. Conspiracies within the court abounded. Threaten and desperate, 1551, Somerset woke the King and took him down to the Base Court of the Palace at Hampton Court A great crowd had gathered and Somerset was ready, having primed the king in the previous 12 hours, with a story of conspiracy and threats. In the flickering torchlight the King, Somerset, Cecil and Crammer walked through the archway to show themselves. The King stepped forward and spoke. ?Good People, I pray you be good to us and to our uncle.? The crowd cheered. Then the Protector stepped forward. He said. ?I shall not fall alone. If I am destroyed the King will be destroyed. The Kingdom and commonwealth all will be destroyed together. It is not I that they shoot at, this is the mark they shoot at? and he pointed at the boy King. Then they mounted waiting horses rode into the night, fleeing to Windsor.

Act of Uniformity was passed by Parliament in Jan 1549, enforcing the use of the new Book of Common Prayer. This was a simplified form of service in English, replacing the old Latin Mass, which the people had were accustomed to. The new Prayer Book was first used on Whitsunday. In Stanford Courtney in Devon the congregation made their priest put on his vestments and say Mass. The movement spread, and within days the Cornish parishioners were also demanding their Masses. Bodmin, was a centre for resistance, and there the insurgents gathered under the leadership of the mayor, Henry Bray, and two staunch Catholic landowners, Sir Humphrey Arundell of Helland and John Winslade of Tregarrick.

Many of the gentry with their families sought protection in the old castles. Some shut themselves in St Michael's Mount where the rebels besieged them. However a smoke screen of burning trusses of hay, combined with a shortage of food and the women's distress, forced them to surrender, fortunately without casualties. Sir Richard Grenville found refuge in castle of Trematon. Deserted by many of his followers, the unwieldy old man was enticed outside to parley. He was seized, the castle surprised, the ladies stripped of their finery and the men, including Sir Richard, bundled into Launceston gaol. The insurgents crossed the Tamar into Devonshire.

Edward Seymour finally paid the ultimate price for his arrogance and ambition. He was died on January 22 1552, beheaded on Tower Green.

Meanwhile Somerset has sent Sir Peter Carew and his brother, Sir Gawen Carew, to negotiate with the Devonshire rebels assembled at Crediton until Lord Russell could muster a sufficient force to cope with the rising. However the Carews represented everything the people had protested and risen against, they were the gentry, who had profited from the ruin of the Catholic Church, with everything to gain by forcing through the Protestant Reformation. Their interference served to further inflame the rebels. They were chased out of the neighbourhood, imprisoned when they were caught, and the rebels entrenched themselves behind the little river Clyst, four miles east of Exeter

Exeter was besieged. By the end of June the Cornishmen arrived. The combined forces closed in on Exeter in the hope that the City would join them. Although they had many sympathisers within the walls, the mayor and corporation refused to open the gates and so the city lay under siege for five weeks. During this time the rebels formulated their demands, which they then sent to the government. They wanted the old Latin service restored, with all the ritual to which they were accustomed. The Cornishmen made the statement "and so we Cornishmen, whereof certain of us understand no English, utterly refuse this new English". (Cornish being the main language of the people in Cornwall apart from the Latin they were used to the Mass). Half the monastic lands been acquired by the gentry and they were certainly disinclined to restore the plundered property of the church. Against the closed protestant ranks of the English-speaking gentry, the Catholic peasantry stood no chance.

No refuge

�St Michaels Mount Cornwall

The siege Exeter had lasted nearly a month, and the citizens were on the verge of surrender, When reduced to making bread out of bran they normally fed the pigs, they had lost their resistance.� However, the rebels could not afford to wait until Russell was reinforced, and advanced to within two miles of Honiton, to Fenny Bridges, to attack him. Russell surprised their main body in the marshy meadows, where they were saved only by the arrival of another band of Cornishmen. John Hooker the Exeter historian wrote "The fight for the time was very sharp and cruel"..."For the Cornishmen were very lusty and fresh and fully bent to fight out the matter" They were thrown back, however, Russell did not dare to pursue them very far, with hostile country behind him. A few days later the mercenaries arrived under Lord Grey and Russell was able to take the offensive.

At the beginning of the month of July, Russell and his son Francis, had arrived at Honiton, only fifteen miles east of Exeter, He had to wait until the promised reinforcements of Italian and German troops arrived. A final humiliation for the government, using foreign mercenaries against its own countrymen.

Trematon Castle

For ten days Russell remained in Exeter rejoicing at his victory, dealing out justice to the rebel leaders in his hands, encouraged by the liberated gentry. One victim was the vicar of St Thomas's, on the west bank of the Exe. He was hung on gallows from the top of his church tower, with a holy-water bucket, a sprinkler, a bell and beads about him.

Russell left Honiton on 3 Aug, striking along the ridge that runs southwest to Woodbury. The next day, Russell's troops forced a passage of the river at Clyst St Mary, where after an alarm, he gave the order to kill all the prisoners they had taken. The fifth and final engagement had the rebels outmanoeuvred and surrounded. There was a great slaughter and cruel fight. Such was the valour of these men that the Lord Grey reported that in all the wars that he had been in, he had never known the like. The Devonshire men went north up the valley of the Exe, where they were overtaken and cut to pieces by Sir Gawen Carew, who left the corpses of their leaders, hanging on gibbets from Dunster to Bath.

The news came that the Cornishmen under Arundell has re-formed and taken position at Sampford Courtenay, the little village some fifteen miles north west of Exeter. Russell advanced with his troops, now reinforced with a strong contingent of Welshmen. There was a desperate fight and the village was overwhelmed on the evening of 17 Aug. The rebels were finally broken, escaped in the dusk, including Arundell, who fled to Launceston. There he was to be captured and taken to London with Winslade, who was caught at Bodmin.

Southgate of the ancient city of Exeter

Some men were involved but survived this rebellion.. Sir Thomas Pomeroy was involved, although he is considered a lightweight and his part something of a schoolboy prank. He and his brother Hugh of Tregony bought up the lands of small chantries all over Cornwall through the Court of Augmentations. Ultimately he surrendered to Lord Russell, secretly, the condition of his pardon being that he betrayed Arundell, Underhill and other leaders and renounced his popish ways, which he did, although he died in the Tower of London, imprisoned for his part in the rebellion, his estates sold to the Lord Protector, Edward Seymour, to pay his debts. Winter, Arundell and Winslade with two of their Devonshire comrades were hanged, drawn and quartered at Tyburn.

Sir Richard Carew 1602. No supporter of the rebels was a famous historian and Cornish Gentleman

�Others benefited greatly.�Sir Gawen Carew got all Arundell?s estates, and Sir Peter got all Winslade's, save Tregarrick and other Cornish manors that he had made over to Winslades widow. She married again and her new husband, John Trevanion, made sure that her son William never came into his father's estates. He sold them to the Bullers, Mohuns and Trelawney?s, and William Winslade an impoverished Catholic exile, led a walking life with his harp to gentleman's houses.

�Russell got the Earldom of Bedford and another vast grant of lands, including Boconnoc. He left to Sir Anthony Kingston the task of finally settling the scores with the Cornish A number of priests were hanged, including Richard Bennet, vicar of St Veep.

Even Richard Carew, no sympathiser with the rakehells, had to admit thatAnthony Kingston left his name more memorable than commendable amongst the townsmen (of Bodmin), for causing their mayor to erect a gallows before his own door, upon which (after feasting Sir Anthony) himself was hanged. They trussed up a miller's man who presented himself in the others stead, saying he could never do his master better service.

John Russell

�The townsmen of the far west had no better reason to remember Sir Anthony either for John Payne, Portreeve of St Ives, was strung up by his orders, an event commemorated on a plaque on the wall of the Catholic church four centuries later.

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