Under Henry VIII and his advisor Thomas Cromwell, power was gradually shifted from regional institutions to royal control.

This position was especially strong in Northern England, where several powerful nobles were Roman Catholics; there had been similar risings against Henry VIII; the Pilgrimage of Grace of 1536 and Bigod's Rebellion of 1537.

[2][3] From Durham, the rebels marched south to Bramham Moor, while Elizabeth struggled to raise forces sufficient to confront them.

But, hearing of a large force being raised by the Earl of Sussex, the rebels abandoned plans to besiege York, and captured Barnard Castle instead.

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.

Dacre returned to Northern England, ostensibly a faithful partisan of Elizabeth, but his intentions remain unclear.

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.

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.