Petitioning as popular politics in early sixteenth-century England

Historical Research

Volumn 75, Issue 190, 2002, Pages 365-389

  Hoyle, R W ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF READING   (United Kingdom)

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EID: 33644951743     PISSN: 09503471     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/1468-2281.00156     Document Type: Review

References (44)

1. J. A. Guy, Tudor England (Oxford, 1988), p. 89 summarizes the evidence.
2. R. W. Hoyle, 'Urban decay and civic lobbying: the crisis in York's finances, 1525-36', Northern Hist., XXXIV (1998), 83-108.
3. This statute is included in a list of private acts for 27 Elizabeth, although the text is missing (see Statutes of the Realm (11 vols. in 12, 1810-28), iv. 704)
4. E. Miller, 'Medieval York', in Victoria History of York (1961), pp. 80-4, 499-500.
5. E. Miller, 'Medieval York', in Victoria History of York. Ibid., p. 82.
6. Men served first in minor offices, then as chamberlains and finally as sheriffs. The aldermen were drawn from amongst the Twenty-Four, the mayor from amongst the aldermen (D. M. Palliser, Tudor York (Oxford, 1979), pp. 61-2, 68).
7. For these arrangements, established in 1489, see J. I. Kermode, Medieval Merchants: York, Beverley and Hull in the later Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1998), p. 324.
8. York Civic Records, ed. A. Raine and others (Yorkshire Archaeol. Soc. Record ser., xcviii, ciii, cvi, cx, cxii, cxv, cxix, cxxxviii, 1938-78) (hereafter Y.C.R.), ii. 191-3
9. supplemented by the full account in P.RO., STAC 2/26/232, notably the deposition of James Dobynson, dyer. Palliser suggests a population of about 8,000 in c.1548 (Palliser, Tudor York, pp. 111-12).
10. For York's economic difficulties at this time, see Hoyle, 'Urban decay and civic lobbying'.
11. Palliser found that the title first appeared when Cooke was dismissed from the office by the city council and replaced by their nominee (see D. M. Palliser, 'Some aspects of the social and economic history of York in the 16th century' (unpublished University of Oxford D.Phil. thesis, 1968), pp. 150-4, where an extended treatment of Cooke may be found).
12. In Coventry in 1541 the commons petitioned seeking a further enclosure of the common land (they viewed their rents as a means to support the charges of the city). In general the Coventry Leet Book does not mention petitions, but the Coventry records are very different in character to those of York, so this does not indicate that petitioning was not employed (The Coventry Leet Booh or Major's Register, ed. M. D. Harris (4 vols., Early English Text Soc., orig. ser., cxxxiv, cxxxv, cxxxviii, cxlvi, 1907-13), iii. 760.
13. See too the printed tract 'A supplication of the poor commons' (1546), which takes the form of a petition to Henry VIII (repr, with Simon Fish, A Supplicacyon for the Beggers, ed. J. M. Cowper (Early English Text Soc., extra ser., xiii, 1871)).
14. Short-Title Catalogue of Book Printed 1475-1640 (1926), no. 9980;
15. also printed in Cowper, pp. 93-102, and in Tudor Economic Documents, ed. R. H. Tawney and E. Power (3 vols., 1924), iii. 51-7.
16. printed in Yorkshire Star Chamber Proceedings, ed. W. Brown and H. B. McCall (4 vols., Yorkshire Archaeol. Soc. Record ser., xli, xlv, li, lxx, 1909-27), ii. 73-4
17. E.g., P. J. Bowden, The Wool Trade in Tudor and Stuart England (1962), ch. 4;
18. for textiles in general, see M. L. Zell, 'Parliament, the textile industry and mid-Tudor crisis', in State, Sovereignty and Society in Early Modern England, ed. C. Carlton (Stroud, 1998). The author is grateful to Michael Zell for sending him a copy of his paper.
19. Tudor Royal Proclamations, ed. P. L. Hughes and J. F. Larkin (3 vols., 1964-6), i, nos. 166, 175.
20. G. R. Elton, Reform and Renewal: Thomas Cromwell and the Common Weal (1973), pp. 78-9.
21. For later examples of clothiers' petitions, see Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, 1547-80, pp. 511, 517, 633.
22. L. & P., XI, no. 520, discussed in M. Zell, Industry in the Countryside: Wealden Society in the 16th Century (Cambridge, 1994), p. 154.
23. J. Loach, Parliament and the Crown in the Reign of Mary Tudor (Oxford, 1986), pp. 144-5.
24. E.g., Norwich (The Records oj the City of Norwich, ed. W. Hudson and J. C. Tingey (2 vols., 1906-10), pp. lxix-lxx, 376-9).
25. Henry French, arguing from 17th-century examples, has urged on the author the view that what connected weavers was not a sense of their mutual self interest but their employment by clothiers, and that the weavers' movements may have been sponsored by clothiers. For a possible example, from the trade crisis of 1528, see G. W. Bernard, War, Taxation and Rebellion in Early Tudor England: Henry VIII, Wolsey and the Amicable Grant of 1525 (Brighton, 1986), p. 144: 'The merchants say that they will not buy a cloth without that we can cause the commons [comyne] to arise for to complain to the king and show him how they be not half set a work'. However, the legislation sought in the 1530s, and finally conceded in 1555, was so opposed to the economic interests of the clothiers that it surely suggests that the weavers were capable of acting independently even if, on other occasions, there may have been a degree of collaboration between the two groups to place the government under pressure.
26. C. Moreton, 'The Walsingham conspiracy of 1537', Hist. Research, lxiii (1990), 29-43, at p. 30;
27. A. Fletcher and D. MacCulloch, Tudor Rebellions (4th edn., New York, 1997), p. 96.
28. J. Walter, 'A "rising of the people"? The Oxfordshire rising of 1596', Past & Present, cvii (1985), 90-143.
29. D. MacCulloch, Suffolk and the Tudors: Politics and Religion in an English County, 1500-1600 (Oxford, 1986), pp. 290-8.
30. M. L. Bush, 'Captain Poverty and the Pilgrimage of Grace', Hist. Research, lxv (1992), 17-36;
31. R W. Hoyle, The Pilgrimage of Grace and the Politics of the 1530s (Oxford, 2001), chs. 8, 15;
32. printed in S. M. Harrison, The Pilgrimage of Grace in the Lake Counties, 1536-7 (1981), P 138
33. The new material, discovered by Angus Winchester in a 17th-century source, will appear in A. J. L. Winchester and R. W. Hoyle, 'A new source for the Cumberland rising of 1536' (forthcoming, Eng. Hist. Rev. (2003)).
34. the names of those who subscribed to the petition are given in S. K. Land, Kett's Rebellion: the Norfolk Rising of 1540 (Ipswich, 1977), pp. 55-6. The author is grateful to Diarmaid MacCulloch for his advice on the petition.
35. D. MacCulloch, 'Kett's rebellion in context', Past & Present, lxxxiv (1979), 36-59
36. repr. in Rebellion, Popular Protest and the Social Order in Early Modern England, ed. P. Slack (Cambridge, 1984), 39-76, at p. 41
37. E. H. Shagan, 'Protector Somerset and the 1549 rebellions: new sources and new perspectives', Eng. Hist. Rev., cxiv (1999), 34-63, app. pp. 53-63.
38. E. H. Shagan, 'Protector Somerset and the 1549 rebellions: new sources and new perspectives', Eng. Hist. Rev., cxiv. Ibid., pp. 58-9 (letter 5).
39. A suggestion made in R W. Hoyle, 'Resistance and manipulation in early Tudor taxation: some evidence from the North', Archives, xx (1993), 158-76, at pp. 160-1.
40. printed, with discussion, in R W Hoyle, 'Agrarian agitation in mid 16th-century Norfolk: a petition of 1553', Historical Jour., xliv (2001), 223-38.
41. It has been put to the author that claims to have helped Mary's accession were made for several years, but if this bill may be connected with the privy council's concerns over events in Norfolk in Nov. 1553, then a date in the autumn of that year seems most plausible. The claim to have been instrumental in placing the queen on the throne was also made in 'A certain godly supplication exhibited by certain inhabitants of the county of Norfolk to the commissioners come down to Norfolk and Suffolk, fruitful to be read and marked of all men', dated to 1556 by Foxe and printed in The Acts and Monuments of John Foxe, ed. G. Townsend (8 vols., 1843-9), viii. 121-30, at p. 126. This long Protestant exegesis is not signed: it would be interesting to know something of its author(s).
42. MacCulloch, Suffolk and the Tudors, pp. 309-10.
43. See the comments (or rather the lack of comment) in Sir Thomas Smith, De Republica Anglorum, ed. M. Dewar (Cambridge, 1982), pp. 76-7.
44. See too, in this connection, the late Jennifer Loach's comments about the very limited descriptive vocabulary employed by the author of 'The Vita Mariae Angliae Reginae': 'Robert Wingfield in his account of Mary's success used the terms "populus", "plebs", "vulgus" in a fairly loose sort of way to mean "non-noble": he was not concerned with sociological exactitude' (J. Loach, Edward VI (1999), p. 174).