Rising of the North
Date November 9, 1569 – January 21, 1570 Location Northern England Result Elizabethan victory Elizabeth's authority strengthened Aristocracy of the North weakened
Belligerents
Partisans ofMary, Queen of Scots Northern English Catholics	Elizabeth I of England English and Welsh Protestants Scottish Protestants
Commanders and leaders
Earl of Westmorland Earl of Northumberland  Countess of WestmorlandCountess of Northumberland (1538-1596) Aftermath: Leonard Dacre	Earl of Sussex Baron Clinton Earl of Warwick Aftermath: Baron Hunsdon
Strength
4,600	7,000

TheRising of the North of 1569, also called theRevolt of the Northern Earls orNorthern Rebellion, was an unsuccessful attempt byCatholic nobles fromNorthern England to depose QueenElizabeth I of England and replace her withMary, Queen of Scots.

Elizabeth I succeeded her half-sisterMary I as queen of England in 1558. Elizabeth's accession was disputed due to the questioned legitimacy of the marriage of her parents (Henry VIII andAnne Boleyn), and Elizabeth's own questioned legitimacy due to theAct of Succession 1536. Under Henry VIII and his advisorThomas Cromwell, power was gradually shifted from regional institutions to royal control. This course was encouraged by Elizabeth's counsellors such asWilliam Cecil and a policy of centralization was the approach favoured by Elizabeth herself at least in regards to the northern border region.

Opponents of Elizabeth looked toMary, Queen of Scots, the descendant of Henry VIII's sisterMargaret. The claims were initially put forward by Mary's father-in-law, KingHenry II of France, and Mary upheld them after her return to Scotland in 1561.

ManyEnglish Catholics, then a significant portion of the population, supported Mary's claim as a way to restore Roman Catholicism. This position was especially strong inNorthern England, where several powerful nobles were Roman Catholics; there had been similar risings against Henry VIII; thePilgrimage of Grace of 1536 andBigod's Rebellion of 1537. Supporters of Mary hoped for aid from France (among Scots) and possibly Spain (among English). Mary's position was strengthened by the birth of her son,James, in 1566 but weakened again when she was deposed in July 1567. Following this, she fled to England and at the time of the Rising was in the custody of theEarl of Shrewsbury, on Elizabeth's orders.

The rebellion was led byCharles Neville, 6th Earl of Westmorland, andThomas Percy, 7th Earl of Northumberland. Seven hundred soldiers assembled atBrancepeth Castle.^[1] In November 1569 Westmorland and Northumberland occupiedDurham.Thomas Plumtree (see right) celebratedMass inDurham Cathedral.^[2][3] From Durham, the rebels marched south toBramham Moor, while Elizabeth struggled to raise forces sufficient to confront them. But, hearing of a large force being raised by theEarl of Sussex, the rebels abandoned plans to besiegeYork, and capturedBarnard Castle instead. They proceeded to Clifford Moor, but found little popular support. Sussex marched out from York on 13 December 1569 with 10,000 men against the rebels' 6,000,^[4] and was followed by 12,000 men underBaron Clinton. The rebel earls retreated northward and finally dispersed their forces, fleeing into Scotland.

A questionable role in the rebellion was played byLeonard Dacre, an early sympathiser of Mary. At the outbreak of the rebellion, he travelled to Elizabeth's court at Windsor to claim the heritage of his young nephew, the 5th Baron Dacre. After the latter's untimely death in 1569, this had descended to his sisters, all married to sons ofThomas Howard, 4th Duke of Norfolk. Dacre returned to Northern England, ostensibly a faithful partisan of Elizabeth, but his intentions remain unclear.

After the retreat of the rebels, he seizedGreystoke Castle and fortified his ownNaworth Castle, where he gathered 3,000 Cumbrian troops and tried to keep up the appearance of good relations with the Queen. He held out against a siege of the royal army underBaron Hunsdon but then attacked the retreating army atGelt River. Though Hunsdon was outnumbered, he charged Dacre's foot with his cavalry, killing 300–400 and capturing 200–300 men. Dacre escaped via Scotland toBrussels, where he died in exile.^[5]

Some of the rebels escaped into Scotland.Regent Mar wrote thatAgnes Gray, Lady Home, had been a busy worker to receive the rebels.^[6] Two of the leaders, the Earls of Northumberland and Westmorland, had fled into Scotland. Northumberland was captured byJames Douglas, 4th Earl of Morton, and turned over to Elizabeth in 1572, who had him beheaded at York. After having been hidden atFerniehirst Castle, Westmorland escaped to Flanders, where he died impoverished. His family lost their ancestral homes and his wife,Jane Howard, also fled to the Continent. She lived the rest of her life under house arrest. Her brother, the Duke of Norfolk, was first imprisoned, then pardoned. He was imprisoned again following theRidolfi plot in 1571 and finally executed in 1572. Norfolk's treason charges included "comforting and relieving of the English rebels that stirred the Rebellion in the North since they have fled out of the realm."^[7] Altogether, 600 supporters of Mary were executed, while many others fled into exile.

Queen Elizabeth declared martial law, exacting terrible retribution on the ordinary folk of the Yorkshire Dales, despite the lack of any popular support for the Earls' Rising, with her demand for at least 700 executions. The victims of this purge were, as a contemporary account said "wholly of the meanest sort of people", so that hardly a village escaped the sight of a public hanging.^[8]

In 1570,Pope Pius V had tried to aid the rebellion by excommunicating Elizabeth and declaring her deposed in thepapal bullRegnans in Excelsis, but the document did not arrive until the rebellion had been suppressed. The bull gave Elizabeth more reason to view Catholics with suspicion. It inspired conspiracies to assassinate her, starting with the Ridolfi plot.

In 1587, Elizabeth broughtMary, Queen of Scots, to trial fortreason; she was convicted by the court and executed.

• Desmond Rebellions
• Prayer Book Rebellion
• Pilgrimage of Grace
• Tripartite Indenture

• Fletcher, Anthony, and Diarmaid MacCulloch.Tudor rebellions (Routledge, 2015).
• Kesselring, Krista.The Northern Rebellion of 1569: Faith, Politics and Protest in Elizabethan England (Springer, 2007).
• Lowers, James K.Mirrors for rebels: a study of polemical literature relating to the Northern Rebellion, 1569 (University of California Press, 1953).

• http://www.tudorplace.com.ar/Documents/NorthernRebellion.htm
• http://www.timetravel-britain.com/05/July/raby.shtml

• Tudor rebellions
• Conflicts in 1569
• Conflicts in 1570
• 16th-century rebellions
• 16th-century military history of the Kingdom of England
• 1569 in England
• 1570 in England
• Northern England
• Catholic rebellions
• Elizabeth I
• Mary, Queen of Scots

• Articles with short description
• Short description matches Wikidata
• Use dmy dates from February 2022
• Use British English from January 2013