The Tudor and Stuart Era
Henry VII finally brought an end to the Wars of the Roses in 1497, two years after his accession, with the defeat of the pretender Lambert Simnel at the battle of Stoke.
The Tudor era ushered in a brave new dawn in England after she had been bled dry by the demands of war, both at home and in France, for so long.
Henry was succeeded by perhaps the most famous and notorious of English kings, Henry VIII, in 1509.
The magnificent young king took to war in France once again, seeking unsuccessfully to recreate the glory days of his illustrious forbear Henry V, victor of Agincourt.
As so often when the English forces were busy making war on her old enemy across the channel, provisions had to be made in the event of the allies of France, the Scots, getting up to their “pranks” and causing mayhem in the north of England.
The Franco-Scottish “Auld Alliaunce” has its origins in the agreement between John de Balliol, King of Scotland, and ------- in 1294, which so incensed Edward Longshanks of England, Balliol’s erstwhile patron.
The Scottish army did indeed invade, but was resoundingly defeated at the battle of Flodden Field, Northumberland, in 1514, when the English force under Charles Brandon, Duke of Sussex, defeated an army vastly superior in number.
The Scots’ king, James IV, Henry’s brother-in-law no less, was slain, along with a good many of his compatriots. A ballad of the period commemorates the English victory, and information on the homes of these warriors can be gleaned – Blackburn is one of the Lancashire settlements mentioned:
“From Waddecar to Waddington,
From Ribchester unto Rochdale,
From Bolton to Preston with pikes,
They with the Standleyhowte forth went,
From Pemberton and Pillin Dykes,
For Battell Bilmen bound were bent,
With fellows fearce and fresh for feight
Which Halton fields did turn in foores,
With lustie ladds, liver and light
From BLACKBORNE and Bolton in the Moores.”
In 1535, the market cross was re-edified by the current incumbent of the abbacy of Whalley – John Paslew. Henry Salley, Vicar of Blackburn, would almost certainly have been amongst the ranks of monks under Paslew. It is about this time that Henry started his dissolution of the monasteries in lieu of the schism with Roman Catholicism.
Paslew, along with William Haydock, another monk of Whalley, were executed near Holehouses in the township for treason after their involvement with the “Pilgrimage of Grace” in 1536.
This was an uprising (or, rather, one of a number of risings) in the North of England in protest against Henry’s actions.
Most of the population in Lancashire were Catholic in faith for a long time after the English Reformation, and indeed the county has quite a renown as a bastion of the Roman doctrine.
Henry always considered himself to be a Catholic and had been given the title Defensor fidei, “Defender of the Faith” by the Pope in 1517, having written refutations of the reformer Martin Luther. With Protestant counsel, however, his son, the precocious Edward VI (1547-1553), developed a more reformed way of religion.
Edward’s death at the tender age of 16 was followed by the tragic Lady Jane Grey debacle, with a short interlude involving a reluctant queen, the educated Jane, and a populace demanding a Tudor monarch.
Mary, Henry’s daughter by Catherine of Aragon, was soon placed upon the throne.
Under Mary I (1553-1557), it was the turn of the Protestants to suffer persecution – about 280 met a fiery death later in her reign as she attempted to enforce Roman Catholicism on her subjects. The North, however, was by and large free from these actions, due to high incidence of “recusancy” among the population.
Indeed, Mary even considered moving her court to York at one time.
Mary’s half-sister Elizabeth I (1557-1603) attempted at first a concilliatory religious policy. However, later in her reign, persecutions of Catholics began anew.
In 1581, Sir John Southworth of Samlesbury Hall was committed to the New Fleet prison for entertaining the famed Jesuit priest Edmund Campion at the pile.
