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The Prayer Book Rebellion or Western Rebellion occurred in the southwest of England in 1549.
In the 1540s the government of Edward VI introduced a range of measures as part of the Reformation to remove certain practices from the church which were perceived as being too Catholic.
In 1548 the Book of Common Prayer in English replaced the four old liturgical books in Latin. The change was widely unpopular amongst religious conservatives ? particularly in areas of traditionally Catholic religious loyalty, for example, in Devon and Cornwall.
The roots of the rebellion in Cornwall can be traced back to the Cornish Rebellion of 1497 and the subsequent destruction of the Cornish monasteries from 1536 through to 1545 which brought an end to the formal scholarship that had sustained the Cornish cultural identity. The smashing and looting of colleges like Glasney and Crantock must have played a significant part in fermenting opposition to forthcoming and cultural reforms. Apart from being sorely missed centres of indigenous cultural excellence, many would have seen these institutions as being a bridge to the Celtic past, a link to a time before the present imperial overlords achieved ascendancy, back even to the Christianised paganism of their forefathers.
When religious processions and pilgrimages were banned, commissioners were sent out to smash all symbols of Cornish Catholicism. Fresh from bloodily suppressing the Catholics of Ireland, Cranmer?s (author of the Book of Common Prayer) henchman William Body relished his task in Cornwall. After desecrating religious shrines at Helston, Body was stabbed by William Kylter on April 05, 1548 and finished off by Pascoe Trevian.
Immediate retribution followed when 28 Cornishmen were rounded-up and taken at gunpoint to Castle Terrible where many were hung, drawn and quartered. One execution of a traitor of Cornwall was carried out on Plymouth Hoe. Town accounts give details of the cost of timber for the gallows and poles to put the head and quarters of the said traitor upon. A chunk of the Cornishman?s torso was taken to Tavistock so that English people might partake of the festivities.
Martin Geoffrey, the priest of nearby St. Keverne, was taken to London. After being hacked to pieces his gored head was impaled on a staff erected upon London Bridge. Intended as a warning to those who might resist English cultural imperialism, such indescriminate barbarity only served to ferment even greater resentment in Cornwall.
Much of Cornwall at this time was not English speaking, provoking a reaction to the introduction of English. Certainly in Cornwall this provided a major reason for the rebellion. The articles of the rebels states: and we the cornyshe men (whereof certen of vs vnderstande no Englysh) vtterly refuse thys new english. However, the Duke of Someresets reply asked why the Cornishmen should be offended for having the service in English rather than Cornish, when they had before had it in Latin and not understood that?
The new prayer book was not uniformly adopted, and in 1549 the Act of Uniformity made it illegal, from Whitsunday 1549, to use the old prayer book. A number of magistrates were tasked with enforcing the change.
Following the enforced change on Whitsunday 1549 on Whitmonday, the parishioners of Sampford Courtenay in Devon convinced the priest to revert to the old ways, likening the English prayer book to a Christmas game. Justices arrived at the next service to enforce the change. An altercation at the service led to a proponent of the change (a William Hellyons) being run through with a pitchfork on the church steps. The movement spread to isolated Cornwall, where the main language was still not English.
In Cornwall, insurgents gathered at Bodmin under the leadership of the mayor, Henry Bray, and two staunch Catholic landowners, Sir Humprey Arundell of Helland and John Winslade of Tregarrick.
Many of the gentry with their families sought protection in the old castles. Some shut themselves in St Michaels Mount where the rebels besieged them, and a bewildering smoke-screen made of burning trusses of hay, combined with a shortage of food and the womens distress, forced them to surrender. Sir Richard Grenville found refuge in ruinous Trematon. Deserted by many of his followers, the unwieldy old man was enticed outside to parley. He was seized, the castle surprised, the ladies stripped of their finery, and the men including Sir Richard bundled into Launceston gaol. The insurgents then crossed the Tamar into Devonshire.
Meanwhile Somerset has sent Sir Peter Carew and his brother, Sir Gawen, to treat with the Devonshire rebels assembled at Crediton.
By June the insurgents were joined by the parishoners of the towns and villages surrounding Sampford Courtenay.
The slogan Kill all the gentleman and we will have the Six Articles up again and ceremonies as they were in King Henry VIIIs time highlights the religious aims of the rebellion. However it also implies a social cause (a view supported by historians such as Guy and Fletcher). That later demands included limiting the size of gentry households ? theoretically beneficial in a time of population growth and unemployment ? suggests a possible attack on the prestige of the gentry. Certainly such contemporaries as Cranmer took this view, condemning the rebels as deliberately inciting class conflict in this demand, to diminish their strength and to take away their friends, that you might command gentlemen at your pleasures.
Marching east to Crediton, they lay siege to Exeter, demanding the withdrawal of all English manuscripts.
In London, king Edward VI (Henry VIIIs son) and his Privy Council became alarmed by this news from the West Country. One of the Privy Councillors, Sir Gawain Carew, was ordered to pacify the rebels. At the same time Lord John Russell was ordered to take an army, composed mainly of German and Italian mercenaries, and impose a military solution.
The rebels were largely farmers armed with little more than pitchforks and the mercenary arquebusiers killed over a thousand rebels at Crediton.
On 5 August, the final engagment came; the rebels were outmanoevred and surrounded. Lord Grey reported himself that he never in all the wars that he had been did he know the like. The Devonshire men went north up the valley of the Exe, where they were overtaken by Sir Gawen Carew, who left the corpses of their leaders hanging on gibbets from Dunster to Bath.
The Cornishmen under Arundell re-formed and took position at Sampford Courtenay, the village some fifteen miles north west of Exeter. Russell advanced with his troups, now reinforced with a strong contingent of Welshmen. After a desperate fight stormed the village on the evening of 17 August, the rebels were broken; many escaped including Arundell, who fled to Launceston. There he was to be captured and taken to London with Winslade, who was caught at Bodmin.
1,300 died at Sampford Courtenay and 300 at Fenny Bridges. Further orders were issued on behalf of the king by the Lord Protector, the Duke of Somerset, and Archbishop Thomas Cranmer for the continuance of the onslaught. Under Sir Anthony Kingston, English and mercenary forces then moved into Cornwall and executed or killed many people before the bloodshed finally ceased (someimes referred to as the Cornish Holocaust). Proposals to translate the Prayer Book into Cornish were also suppressed. In total 4,000 people lost their lives in the rebellion.
The loss of life in the prayerbook rebellion and subsequent reprisals as well as the introduction of the English prayer book is seen as a turning point in the Cornish language, for which ? unlike Welsh ? a complete bible translation was not produced. Research has also suggested that prior to the rebellion the Cornish language had strengthened and more concessions had been made to Cornwall as a nation, and that anti-English sentiment had been growing stronger, providing additional impetus for the rebellion.