heraldryofyorkmi01custuoft

148 THE HERALDRY OF YORK MINSTER.
seems to have been kindled at Louth on Sunday, October 3rd, 1536, where
Heneage, the commissioner appointed to examine into the condition of the
churches and clergy, found himself on his arrival surrounded by a mob
armed with belts and staves ("the stir and the noise arising hideous"),
and compelled to swear to be true to the Commons.
The prompt measures of Lord Hussey of Sleaford and Lord Shrewsbury
eventually prevailed, and the result of a gathering at Lincoln Cathedral,
on October i3th, was that the country gentlemen persuaded the people to
trust the King, who had said they were misinformed as to the character of
his measures, and to wait and see.
But the smouldering embers were soon to be fanned into a blaze.
John, Robert, and Christopher Aske, three Yorkshire gentlemen, whose
mother was the daughter of John Lord Clifford, the stout old Lancastrian
slain at Towton, having spent a short time cub-hunting with their brotherin-law,
Sir Ralph Ellerkar, of Ellerkar Hall, separated to return to their
duties and homes. Robert, en route to London, where he was a barrister
in good practice, after crossing the Humber at Welton, found himself in
the midst of a party of rebels at Appleby, who forced him to take the
oath and become their leader. Flattered by their attentions, or convinced
by their grievances, he put himself at their head, recrossed the Ouse, and
having satisfied himself by a hasty visit to Lincoln, where he found the
people again excited by the answer which the Duke of Suffolk had brought
from the King, he went back at full speed, persuaded that an opportunity
now presented itself which could never occur again.
That night beacons blazed throughout Yorkshire, and all Yorkshire
was in movement. At Beverley, William Stapleton, a friend of Aske's,
was, in a similar manner, forced by the excited crowd to be their leader ;
while Lord Darcy of Templehurst (an old man, who had won his spurs
under Henry VIII., and fought against the Moors by the side of Ferdinand),
temporised by merely putting out a proclamation and shutting himself up
with twelve followers in Pontefract Castle, and took no further steps to
secure peace and order. The conflagration now spread swiftly, and seemed
likely to extend over the whole north.
Lords Darcy, Lumley, Scrope, Conyers,
Constable of Flamborough, the
Tempests, Bowes, Fairfax, Strangeways, Ellerker, Sir John Bulmer, Mallory,
Lascelles, Norton, Monckton, Gower, Ingleby, responded; only the Cliffords,
Dacres, Musgraves, refused to come in to the confederacy. Scarcely one
blow was struck anywhere. Skipton Castle alone in the West Riding held
out for the Crown, although the whole retinue of the stout Earl of Clifford
abandoned him, leaving him with some eighty people; together with
Christopher and John Aske, who having rescued Lady Eleanor Clifford and
her little children from Bolton Abbey, brought them in safety within the