A major historical analogy, as I hope to show, is one linking the rebellions of Henry IV with the Northern Rebellion of 1569-70 and, more importantly, with the earlier northern rebellion known as the Pilgrimage of Grace (1536). The latter was the first and most dangerous of the Tudor rebellions, 'the archetypal protest movement of the century'.⁵ It acquired its paradoxical name because its leaders wished to emphasize its religious and essentially peaceful nature and their willingness to disband if the King redressed their grievances. Although these grievances were a mixture of the economic, the political, and the religious, recent historians have tended to acknowledge that the major source of discontent was Henry VIII's attack on what was soon to be called 'the old religion'.⁶ The religious motive was famously declared in the rebels' banners and badges, relics from a recent crusade against the Moors on which were painted the Five Wounds of Christ.⁷ The rebels were presenting themselves as crusading defenders of a wounded Christian nation.

The Pilgrims were defeated in a notorious piece of treachery.⁸ Heavily outnumbered by the rebels, Henry's deputy followed his master's advice and temporized with politic promises during his two conferences with their leaders at Doncaster. The rebels disbanded and Henry invited their trusting captain-in-chief, Robert Aske, to London, where he was warmly entertained and honoured with a chain of gold; but within months Henry found a pretext for arresting Aske and the other rebel leaders and executing them on a charge of treason. Among those executed was Sir Thomas Percy, the most warlike member of a family which troubled Henry VIII and Elizabeth I almost as much as it did Henry IV (it was Thomas Percy, seventh Earl of Northumberland, who was to lead the Northern Rebellion of 1569). After the Pilgrimage, there were four more rebellions of substance in the sixteenth century, and the one 'clear theme of national significance' running through them was opposition to the Reformation.⁹ Thus the banner and badges of the Five Wounds were used again in the Western Rebellion of 1549 and the Northern Rebellion of 1569, with the addition in the latter of the crusaders' red cross.¹⁰ Because of this recurrent theme and symbolism, the Pilgrimage of Grace understandably acquired archetypal status both in the popular imagination and in the historical thinking of government propagandists.

It might seem implausible to claim that in 1596-8 Shakespeare could rely on his audience recognizing inexplicit allusions to the rebellion of 1569;¹¹ and much less likely that he could expect anyone to recall the Pilgrimage of Grace. But the facts suggest otherwise. The continuing relevance and essential identity of the major Tudor rebellions was hammered into the consciousness of the Elizabethan citizen; it was intrinsic to the state's self-justifying and self-protective version of history. That most popular of Elizabethan histories, John Foxe's Acts and Monuments, included an indignant account of the Pilgrimage of Grace that strongly influenced later propagandists.¹² In Richard Norton's A Warning against the dangerous practises of Papistes, and specially partners of the late Rebellion (1569), King John's troubles with the papacy, the overthrow of Richard II (allegedly caused by the Archbishop of Canterbury), the Pilgrimage of Grace, the Western Rebellion, and the contemporaneous rebellion in the north, are all linked in immediate sequence as part of the long history of papal incitement to rebellion against lawful rulers in Europe.¹³ So too in the 1570 Homilie agaynste disobedience and wylful rebellion, subsequently to become the last and longest in the Book of Homilies ('to be read in euerie Parish Church'), a sweeping history of papally inspired rebellions passes from France and Germany to England, where an account of John's struggle with pope and cardinal proceeds to 'matters of later memory': the rebellions 'in the North and West countries' against Henry and Edward, in Ireland against Elizabeth (1566-7), and 'yet more latelie' among 'Northen borderers'.¹⁴ Wilfrid Holme's lengthy narrative poem on the Pilgrimage of Grace, The fall and euil successe of rebellion, although written shortly after the event, was not published until 1572, when it had acquired the merit of underlining the repetitive pattern of history. No doubt this aureate composition was gathering dust when Henry IV was first staged. Like the Book of Homilies, however, the popular sermons of the Marian martyr, Bishop Hugh Latimer, were not. They were reprinted four times between 1575 and 1596, and in the last as in the earlier editions the opening sermon was one devoted to the Pilgrimage of Grace.¹⁵

We have good reason to believe that this Henrician sermon, like the last in the Book of Homilies, was felt to have continuing relevance in the late 1590s. The missionary work of the Jesuits and seminary priests was defined by law as treason, seditious and rebellious in intent;¹⁶ thus it was common for trial judges to compare the priests' 'traitorous' activities with those of the northern rebels decades earlier.¹⁷ The mounting sense of political insecurity which afflicted England in the nineties was due almost entirely to a perceived threat from Catholic forces at home and abroad.¹⁸ From 1595 the Irish earls and bishops were in rebellion and receiving help and encouragement from Philip II, who complimented them on their defence of Catholicism; in 1598 they scored a major victory over the English forces, and in 1599 humiliated Essex. There was constant fear of a Spanish invasion, direct from the peninsula, or from Calais (which fell to Spain in 1596), or from Ireland. When Sir Francis Knyvett wrote his Defence of the Realm in 1596, advocating compulsory military training for all men aged between eighteen and fifty, he could not have assumed that the expected Second Armada would, like the first, be scattered by storms (as was the case); and in fact organized defensive measures against invasion were in operation throughout the country until the end of the century. Although inspired by the 1569 rebellion, the final sermon in the Book of Homilies, with its systematic linking of past and present, would not have seemed quaintly out of date in these years; much less would its concluding prayer of 'Thanksgiving for the Suppression of the Last Rebellion'.

It is thoroughly characteristic of Tudor politics that in the great body of propagandist writing denouncing actual and potential rebellion there is an insistent attempt to demystify the religious language and symbolism used by the major rebel movements and to dismiss it as an ideological cloak for political ambition and economic discontent designed to ensnare the ignorant populace. The name of the Pilgrimage of Grace, and the insignia copied from it by the later rebellions, were construed as epitomizing the very nature of papistry. For Foxe, calling insurrection 'a holy pilgrimage' and painting Christ and his wounds on streamers and banners was true to the nature of devilish hypocrisy.¹⁹ For Norton, the rebels' self-presentation was all 'shewes and color'—'plaine counterfeit color'.²⁰ As a translator of Calvin he was especially offended by the claim to 'grace', insisting that papist rebels were instruments of the Pope's political ambitions and adherents of a religion which draws 'the redemption and iustification of man', which is 'God's greatest honor and dignitie', from 'God to man, from grace to workes … denying his graciousness therein'.²¹ Echoing Norton, and playing on the different senses of the word 'colour' (a military ensign, a painting, a fraudulent appearance), the homily Against Disobedience and Wilful Rebellion declaims: [whereas] 'redress of the commonwealth hath of old been the usual pretence of rebels. … religion now of late beginneth to be a colour of rebellion'; 'though some rebels bear the picture of the Five Wounds painted in a clout … by some lewd painter', yet they know not 'what the cross of Christ meaneth' and march 'against those that have the cross of Christ printed in their hearts'. Even a mixture of good and bad motives is never conceded: idealistic claims are all 'feigned pretence'; purported 'reformation' of religion and country is actually 'deformation';²² grace is disgrace.