Printed in Percy's Reliques, 1765, 1, 250, "from two Manuscript copies, one of them in the editor's folio collection. They contained considerable variations, out of which such readings were chosen as seemed most poetical and consonant to history." Bearing in mind Percy's express avowal that he "must plead guilty to the charge of concealing his own share in amendments under some such general title as a modern copy, or the like," one would conclude without hesitation that there was but a single authentic text in this case, as in others. Percy notes on the margin of his manuscript: "N.B. To correct this by my other copy, which seems more modern. The other copy in many parts preferable to this." But this note would seem to be a private memorandum. Or are we to suppose that Percy might employ, from habit perhaps, the same formula, not to say artifice, with himself as with the public? In notes in the Folio to 'Northumberland Betrayed by Douglas' (No 176), Percy speaks of a second copy of that ballad also as being in his possession, and describes it as containing much which is omitted in the other, and as beginning like 'The Earl of Westmoreland,' (No 177). Of the beginning of this last he says, in a note in the Folio, "these lines are given in one of my old copies to Lord Northumberland." "Old copies" is staggering; for any one who examines the variations of the texts in the Reliques from the texts in the Folio will find them of the same character and style as Percy's acknowledged improvements of other ballads, and will be compelled to impute them to the editor or his double.[foot-note]
The earls of Northumberland and Westmoreland, having for a time succeeded, by exuberant professions, in allaying very sufficiently grounded suspicions of their loyal dealing, at last, upon receiving the Queen's summons to London, found compliance unsafe, and went into rebellion. They took this step with but half a heart and against their judgment, overcome by the clamor and urgency of a portion of their fellow-conspirators. The intent of the insurgents was, in Northumberland's own words, "the reformation of religion, and the preservation of the Queen of Scots, whom they accounted by God's law and man's law to be right heir, if want should be of issue of the Queen's Majesty's body." These two causes, they were confident, were favored by the larger number of noblemen within the realm.[foot-note] Protestantism had no hold in the north, and the Queen's officers in those parts were, for the moment, not strong enough to make opposition. With leaders of energy and military skill, and a good chest to draw upon,[foot-note] the rising would have been highly dangerous. As things were, it collapsed in five weeks without the shedding of a drop of blood; but hundreds of simple people were subsequently hanged.
The earls, with others, among whom Richard Norton, then sheriff of York, was the most conspicuous, entered Durham in arms on Sunday, the fourteenth of November (1569). They went to the minster, overthrew the communion-table, tore the Bible and service-books, replaced the old altar (which had been thrown into a rubbish-heap), and had mass said. The next day they turned southwards, with nobody to molest or stop them in their rear or in front. The Earl of Sussex was collecting a force at York, but it came in slowly, and it could not be trusted. "To get the more credit among the favorers of the old Romish religion, they had a cross, with a banner of the five wounds, borne after them, sometime by old Norton, sometime by others" (Holinshed). They proceeded to Ripon, Wetherby, and Clifford Moor (Bramham Moor) near Tadcaster. " Their main body was at Wetherby and Tadcaster, their advanced horse were far down across the Ouse." Their numbers, according to Holinshed, never exceeded about two thousand horse and five thousand foot. Tutbury, where Mary Stuart was confined, was but a little more than fifty miles from their advance; they proposed to release the Queen of Scots, and then to move on London, or wait for a rising in the south. Mary Stuart, at the nick of time, was removed to Coventry. On the twenty-fourth we hear that the rebels were drawn back to Knaresborough and Boroughbridge; on the thirtieth, that they are returned into the Bishopric. There they laid siege to Barnard Castle, which Sir George Bowes was obliged to surrender on December twelfth; on the fifteenth the earls were still at Durham. On the thirteenth the earls of Warwick and Clinton, commanders of the Army of the South, met at Wetherby with a combined force of eleven thousand foot and above twelve hundred horse, "eager to encounter the rebels, if they would abide." But on the sixteenth the "lords rebels" warned their footmen to shift for themselves, and fled with such horse as they had left into Northumberland. The twenty-second of December, the Earl of Sussex, qui cunctando restituit rem, Lord Hunsdon, who had been joined with him in command, and Sir Ralph Sadler, who had been deputed to watch him, write to the Queen: "The earls rebels, with their principal confederates and the Countess of Northumberland, did the twentieth of this present in the night, flee into Liddesdale with about a hundred horse; and there remain under the conduction of Black Ormiston, one I, of the murtherers of the Lord Darnley, and John of the Side and the Lord's Jock, two notable thieves of Liddesdale, and the rest of the rebels be utterly scaled."[foot-note]
The ballad, which is the work of a loyal but not unsympathetic minstrel, gives but a cursory and imperfect account of "this geere." Earl Percy has come to the conclusion that he must fight or flee; his lady urges him thrice over to go to the court, and right himself, but he tells her that his treason is known well enough; if he follows her advice she will never see him again. He sends a letter to Master Norton, urging that gentleman to ride with him. Norton asks counsel of his son Christopher, who advises him not to go back from the word he has spoken, and much pleases his father thereby. He asks his nine sons how many of them will take part with him. All but the eldest at once answer that they will stand by him till death: Francis Norton, the eldest, will not advise acting against the crown. Coward Francis, thou never tookest that of me! says the father. Francis will go with his father, but unarmed, and he wishes an ill death to them that strike the first stroke against the crown. There is a muster at Wetherby, and Westmoreland and Northumberland are there with their proper banners,[foot-note] and with another setting forth the Lord on the cross. Sir George Bowes "rising to make a spoil," they besiege him in a castle to which he retires, easily win the outer walls, but cannot win the inner. Word comes to the Queen of the rebels in the north; she sends thirty thousand men against them, under the "false" Earl of Warwick, and they never stop till they reach York. (A gap occurs here, which need not be a large one, considering the leaps taken already.) Northumberland is gone, Westmoreland vanished, and Norton and his eight sons fled.
5-10. The Countess of Northumberland would have been the last person to give such advice as is attributed to her. "His wife, being the stouter of the two, doth encourage him to persevere, and rideth up and down with the army, so as the grey mare is the better horse." Hunsdon to Cecil, November twenty-sixth, Manuscript cited by Froude.
11-27. Richard Norton, miscalled Francis in 40, was a man of seventy-one when he engaged in the rising, and the father of eleven sons and eight daughters. Seven of the sons were involved in the rebellion. Francis, the eldest son, so far from standing out, took a prominent part with his father. But what is said of Francis is true of William, the fourth son. Sir George Bowes says of him: "I neither heard or could perceive William Norton to deal with any office or charge amongst the rebels, but, as I have heard it affirmed, he both refused the taking charge of horsemen when it was offered unto him, and also would wear no armor. Farther, upon my departure from the castle [Barnard Castle], he came to me, and in the way as he rode with me, he entered to declare that he greatly misliked of all their doings and practices, saying that he was there amongst them for his father's sake, and to accompany him, and otherways he never had been with them," etc. Manuscript cited by Sharp, p. 284.
Christopher Norton deserves the distinction accorded him in the ballad. "Christopher had been among the first to enroll himself a knight of Mary Stuart. His religion had taught him to combine subtlety with courage, and through carelessness or treachery, or his own address, he had been admitted into Lord Scrope's guard at Bolton Castle. There he was allowed to assist his lady's escape, should escape prove possible; there he was able to receive messages and carry them; there, to throw the castellan off his guard, he pretended to flirt with her attendants, and twice at least, by his own confession, closely as the prisoner was watched, he contrived to hold private communications with her." (Froude, Reign of Elizabeth, III, 505, where follow lively particulars of these two encounters.) Christopher was the only one of the Nortons who is known to have suffered the death-penalty of treason; it was "after he had beheld the death of his uncle, as well his quartering as otherwise, knowing and being well assured that he himself must follow the same way." (Sharp, p. 286.) Richard Norton, the father, fled to Flanders with his sons Francis and Sampson, and all three seem to have died there.
33 f. Sussex to Cecil: Dec. 6. "The rebels have shot three days together at the wall of the outer ward, but they have done no hurt." Dec. 8. "The rebels have won the first ward." Sir George Bowes' men leaped the walls, one day some eighty at a time, and the next day seven or eight score of the best disposed, who had been appointed to guard the gates, suddenly set them open, and went to the rebels; whereupon Sir George was driven to composition, and there was no need to take the inner walls.[foot-note]
A considerable number of "balletts" were called forth by the northern rebellion, and a few of these have been preserved. See Arber, Stationers' Registers, I, 404-6, 407-9, 413-15; A Collection of Seventy-Nine Blackletter Ballads, etc., 1870, pp. xxv, 1, 56, 231, 239.
The copy in the Reliques is translated by Seckendorf, Musenalmanach, 1807, p. 103; by Doenniges, p. 102.
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