Lincolnshire Rising

Dr. Raynes seized by the mob and taken from Bolingbroke to Horncastle.

The events at Old Bolingbroke are said to be the spark that ignited the Lincolnshire Rising.

On 30 September 1536, Dr. John Raynes, Chancellor of the Diocese of Lincoln, and one of Cromwell’s commissioners, was addressing the assembled clergy in Bolingbroke, informing them of the new regulations and taxes affecting them. One of his clerks further inflamed matters regarding new requirements for the academic standards of the clergy saying “Look to your books, or there will be consequences”, which may have worried some of the less educated attendees. Word of his discourse and rumours of confiscation spread rapidly throughout Lindsey and soon reached Louth and Horncastle.

The rising began on 1 October 1536 at St. James, Louth, after Vespers. The stated aim of the uprising was to protest against the suppression of the monasteries, and not against the rule of Henry VIII himself.

Led by a monk and a shoemaker called Nicholas Melton, some 22,000 people are estimated to have joined the rising. The rising quickly gained support in Horncastle, Caistor and Market Rasen and other nearby towns. Dr. John Raynes, the Chancellor of the Diocese of Lincoln, who was ill at Bolingbroke, was dragged from his sick-bed in the chantry priests’ residence and later beaten to death by the mob, and the commissioners’ registers were seized and burned.

The Rising was effectively ended by the threat of military action by the Duke of Suffolk and a leetter from King Henry VIII ordering dispersal. Within two weeks the main ringleaders had been seized and executed.