‘The Days of Villainy’

Abstract

When leaders of the 1569 Northern Rebellion learned, in a fruitless month of almost no bloodshed, that their cause was doomed, they and a few hundred horsemen (the ‘better sort’) fled to Scotland. At point of flight the leaders gave ‘warninge to the comone people to make shifte for themselves’ (Sharp, 105). They thereby abandoned ‘ther pore rascall fotmen’ (49) - largely lacking armor, weapons, and money (54; see also 103) - to the murderous retribution of Cecilian terror. Mass executions of some 700 commoners stand in stark contrast to minimal blood spilled by what Burghley called ‘their sorry army’ (Sharp, 105n). In brief, although northern earls had little choice but to revolt, their utter failure virtually doomed the possibility of rebellion for the rest of the reign. No wonder Essex could not raise London, and so many smaller revolts and riots were unsuccessful. People long remembered hundreds of northern Catholic corpses, and this negative example was kept alive by a stream of propaganda.

A Cutler is a trade of terrour, for hee makes instruments of death.

Barnabe Rich, ‘Aphorismes,’ in

The Irish hubbub, 1619

How many die at Tyburne in a yeere?

Would make us gallant Soiddiers, were they heere.

Samuel Rowlands, Hell’s Broke

Loose, 1605