The Pilgrims' Complaint ─ A Study of Popular Thought in the Early Tudor North

Bush, formerly in the history department at Manchester University, has written extensively on the 1536-37 Pilgrimage of Grace, a rebellion starting in the North of England in protest of King Henry VIII's religious and political changes. In this book, Bush returns to the documents, including petitions, pamphlets, songs and broadsides that were created by the protesters in order to divine what they say about the attitudes of the ordinary people about religion, social order and politics. Even though religion cannot be taken out of the equation, Bush argues that there were many other complaints involved. He also differentiates between the concerns of the clergy and gentry and those of the peasant class. The belief that this movement was a recidivist protest against the transformation of tradition is also called into question. Examples of many of the sources are reproduced in an appendix. Annotation c2009 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Michael Bush was Reader in the History Department, Manchester University from 1987 to 1994 and Research Professor in the Department of History and Economic History, Manchester Metropolitan University from 1999 to 2003. He has worked on a variety of subjects, including popular politics in early sixteenth-century England; the comparative study of nobility in medieval and modern Europe; and servitude in the modern world. He is now a freelance writer, working full-time on a study of popular radicalism in northern England during the early nineteenth century.