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268 YORK.
at Hull. Aske was drawn through the streets of
York on a hurdle, and suffered at the usual place of
execution without the walls of that city.i
Aske was undoubtedly the best and ablest of
those who took the lead in the bold but fruitless
enterprise which sought to replace the monks and
nuns in the houses from which they had been expelled.
It was a rebellion, unquestionably, against
the chief authority in the realm, yet one cannot
altogether refuse to sympathize with the feeling which
dictated their opposition to what seemed to them an
arbitrary exercise of royal power. They had lived
all their lives in the neighbourhood of religious
houses, whose inmates they had been taught from
their earliest years to respect, if not to venerate.
They knew the kindly charities which were dispensed
by monastic hands. Many of them had received
their education within monastic walls. Their fathers,
in many cases, had endowed those houses, and most
of them must have had kinsmen in the monasteries,
and sisters or female relatives in the convents of the
nuns. They resented, therefore, with most bitter
feeling the forcible ejection of monk and nun from
their quiet and holy homes. They recognised only
the good which they knew to exist, they refused to
listen to the informer's story of discreditable conduct or
corruption of morals.
But their gallant efforts availed
not, and the Pilgrimage of Grace was made in vain.
It will easily be recognised that the foregoing sketch of the
rise, progress, and termination of the Pilgrimage of Grace is
largely indebted to the admir,'d)Ie summary of the incidents
connected with it contained in Mr. Fronde's " liistoiy," vol. iii.