When 50,000 northerners marched under their banners in 1536, England witnessed its largest rebellion since the Peasants' Revolt. The Pilgrimage of Grace wasn't just a protest - it threatened to undo the English Reformation completely and return the kingdom to Rome.

Professor Peter Marshall, the renowned Tudor historian, tells the story of this extraordinary episode where religious devotion, political power, and regional identity collided with explosive results. 

Henry VIII's desperate quest for a male heir led him to break with Rome, setting off changes that  wentfar beyond the royal bedchamber. What began as a "change of the English Church's CEO" rapidly transformed into something more radical - monasteries dissolved, shrines dismantled, and traditions questioned. For northerners especially, these weren't abstract theological matters but direct attacks on community identity.

When the rebels and royal forces faced off across the River Don, England's religious future hung in the balance. A providential rainstorm, false royal promises, and factional divisions among the rebels ultimately preserved Henry's reformation. 

Peter is brilliant in explaining how the English reformation got started and how a rebellion came within a whisker of stopping it in its tracks and tumbling Henry from his throne.

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