In his book The Western Rising of 1549, Mark Stoyle explores an event that history has largely overlooked, offering a sympathetic remembrance of the rebels who took part in the rising, which came close to dramatically transforming English history.
Stoyle describes the book’s simple aim as “to provide a new history of the Western Rising, and to consider the disturbances afresh” (p. 3, all based on the paperback version of the book).
Stoyle is eminently qualified to write this book. Born and raised in Mid-Devon, he describes himself as “a proud West Country man.” Early in his career, he conducted archaeological work in Exeter, where much of the story is set. He serves as a professor of early modern history at the University of Southampton and is the author of seven books. For Western Rising, he won the Devon History Society Book of the Year Award in 2023.
Stoyle presents his work as a chronological narrative history. He divides the book into three sections: The Background, The Rising, and The Aftermath. The chapters in these sections include clear signposts for the story’s progression, with titles such as Foreshocks, Escalation, and Retribution.
For sources, Stoyle provides an extensive list of manuscripts, court records, and letters. One of the challenges in writing the book was the limited number of eyewitness accounts. Many of the rebel documents were destroyed. John Hooker provided one contemporary source on which Stoyle relied. Hooker was from Exeter and “the most influential historian” and the “chief primary source on which all subsequent histories of the rebellion have been based.” However, as a loyalist, Stoyle recognizes him as a partisan source (p. 83).
After Hooker, there followed a historical silence, with the exception of William Hal’s history in 1680 (p. 126). The history was picked up again in the foundational work of Francis Rose-Troup’s 1913 book, which Stoyle says “has remained the standard history of the rising.” (p. 126) He supports and amplifies her central thesis “that religion lay at the very heart of the Western Rising.” (p. 294) He also acknowledges Aubrey Greenwood’s 1990 PhD dissertation, which challenged the traditional view that the Western Rising was primarily a “priestly plot”. He argued that Devon and Cornwall residents rebelled voluntarily to defend traditional religious practices.[i]
An example of this relative silence appears in the book by Robert Buchholz and Newton Key, Early Modern England 1485 – 1714, where the Western Rising merits only a few sentences. Summed up with, “At about this time, a second royal army put down the Western rebellion at Sampford Courtenay in a similarly brutal fashion.” [1]
In reviewing The Western Rising, one can argue that Stoyle’s goal is to push back against the historical royalists’ view of the rebellion by offering a sympathetic, almost apologetic view of the rebels and by highlighting the contingency of what almost changed the course of English history.
One can find numerous instances of Stoyle’s sympathetic view of the rebels. Indeed, in many places in the book, Stoyle notes that “writers, both at the time of the rising itself and ever since, have been far more scathing both about the protesters and about their aims.” (p. 289) Instead, in his view, he describes the rebels as “the brave men and women who gather there to defend both their faith and their accustomed way of life.” (p. 297)
For example, Stoyle presents a conflicting view of the Crown’s assessment of Body’s murder as a personal attack by his enemies (p. 71) and of the priest, Harper, as an instigator of the conflict (p. 89). He blames the likely first shots, fired by Carew’s followers, which killed ten protesters, for lighting the match that “supercharged” the confrontation and launched the rebellion (p. 103). At the culmination of the fighting, Stoyle recognizes that “the rebels’ desperate courage had proved of little avail against the superior training and equipment of the royal forces” (p. 200). Finally, during the trial of the rebel leaders, Stoyle rejects the widely promoted claims that the rebellion was class warfare, saying, “there is not a shred of evidence to suggest that the West Country insurgents had called for the killing of gentlemen” (p. 279). He insists that their faith was the prime motivator.
In some ways, Stoyle’s sympathetic view of the rebels may have been swimming against the tide of contemporary historical and social opinion. In an interview (starting at minute 26), James Clark describes a prejudice against the Catholic influence in England. He relates that as an undergraduate, he was surprised by the history that portrayed Edward as good, Mary as bad, and Elizabeth as better. He said he was stunned by how this ran through all the historiography and that there were no voices challenging it. He claimed that the contrast reduced the history to an old-fashioned 1950s Western in which the bad guys wear black hats and the good guys wear white hats.[2]
A further theme supporting the rebels and his view of what almost happened is the contingency he sees in the rebellion’s possible outcome. Indeed, the rebel effort “came much closer than generally realized to turning the world upside down.” (p. 7) At the decisive Battle of Fenny Bridges, Stoyle notes that Lord Russell’s army was in an extremely vulnerable position. Hooker notes that a fresh supply of Cornish troops arrived just after the battle. (p.179) If they had arrived just a day or two earlier, Stoyle argues, they might have turned the battle in the rebels’ favor. (p. 293)
For an American audience, the impact of the contingency Stoyle describes is similar to that of the historian James McPherson, who wrote about how the world would have changed if Pickett’s Charge had succeeded at the Battle of Gettysburg.
In the end, there were few, if any, winners in the Western Rising. The rebel leaders were executed, and Somerset’s role was sunset by Dudley. The conflict between Protestants and Catholics would continue. Nevertheless, Mark Stoyle’s retelling and reframing of the faith, suffering, and lives bring them back to life.
[1] Bucholz, Early Modern England 1485-1714.
[2] James Clark: The Dissolution of the Monasteries. YouTube Video.
[i] AI results for Aubrey Greenwood, Western Rising Prayer Book Rebellion.