Season 3, Episode 2 of The Tudors dramatizes the political turmoil surrounding the Pilgrimage of Grace, portraying figures such as Henry VIII, Jane Seymour, and rebel leader Robert Aske in a tense struggle over religion and royal authority. While the episode captures the emotional stakes of Tudor England, it compresses events, alters timelines, and simplifies key historical roles, including the negotiations led by Charles Brandon and the northern campaign overseen by Sir Thomas Howard. Here’s a breakdown of the major historical inaccuracies and what actually happened during the uprising.

In This Post:

• Mary’s Innocence
• Ending the Lincolnshire Rebellion
• Robert Aske and the Pilgrimage of Grace
• The Real Lord Darcy
• Minor Inaccuracies

Episode 2: The Northern Uprising

Henry faces a religious insurrection and sends his friend Chrales Brandon to negotiate with the leaders of the Pilgrimage of Grace, unaware that Cardinal Reginald Pole is raising foreign support against him on the Pope’s behalf. His new queen, Jane Seymour, brings his daughter, Princess Mary, to court to be reunited with her father.

Mary’s Innocence

Most of this episode is a long back and forth about the Pilgrimage of Grace, so let’s talk about other stuff first. Jane Seymour brings Mary to court in this episode as a lovely “surprise” for her father. Once there, Henry tells Sir Francis Bryon he has heard his daughter is “innocent,” and asks Francis to find out for certain. Francis refers to oral sex as a fun game that the court loves to play, which she doesn’t understand. She asks him with a straight face how it’s played, and he laughs.

First, Jane didn’t bring his daughter to court just to reunite them with their father; it was deemed politically safer for Henry’s daughters to be near him, so no one could snatch them and incite a rebellion. But it helps illustrate the peacemaker role Jane played in his life, which is accurate, so it works well here.

Second, the incident with Francis is well known “lore” about Mary, which may or may not have happened; but it’s substantiated by later reports about how even as an adult, she was so innocent she repeated things she had heard without knowing what they meant or implied (she did not know what a “whore” was). Mary grew up sheltered and highly religious, so it’s unsurprising that she would know “no unclean or foul speech.” The difference between this story and the series is that this incident took place at a court masque, rather than a few minutes after her return to court.

Ending the Lincolnshire Rebellion

As I mentioned in the previous episode, the show has blended together the Lincolnshire Rebellion and the Pilgrimage of Grace, which was a larger and more significant uprising that followed it, led by Robert Aske. A big deal is made of this, with Brandon saying he hasn’t enough horses or cannons or men to fight them off.

The Lincolnshire Rebellion was no serious threat because the Nobility wanted nothing to do with it, and the disorganized forces had no clear leaders or strategy. Charles Brandon handled the Lincolnshire Rebellion, but Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk (Anne Boleyn’s uncle, whom we haven’t seen since season one), and the Earl of Shrewsbury managed the Pilgrimage of Grace.

For Lincolnshire, Brandon showed up with about 3,000 men to deliver a furious letter from Henry VIII denouncing these actions as treasonous and blasphemous, and informed the rebels that a royal army of about 100,000 men were mustering to unleash “hell” on the rebels. That successfully ended the rebellion.

Screen Brandon hears that there are not enough horses for the army; but historically, the Lord Mayor of London requisitioned many of them from the populace, under the excuse they were needed for a large state function (they did not want to create a panic). The show also leaves out that it rained around the same time that they heard about the uprising, which left them wallowing in mud and unable to move cannons up their “roads” (trails). Even on the days they made progress, they ran out of provisions as soon as they reached the northern territories. They were badly paid, since Henry had reduced their wages and frequently did not pay them on time.

Robert Aske and the Pilgrimage of Grace

Robert Aske came from a well-connected and important family, was descended from a baron, and was a cousin to Jane Seymour. He was a barrister (lawyer) from London who, on a return journey to Yorkshire, got involved in the rebellion. He was smart and charismatic, and recruited 5,000 men, which became 30,000 by the time he marched into York. Aske had a plan and knew what he wanted to accomplish; he negotiated their peaceful entrance into cities and agreed to civil terms of occupation. So, he succeeded where his predecessors failed with a lack of leadership.

It was easy to recruit the peasants, who had been watching (in dismay) as their local abbeys and monasteries were seized, broken up, sold off, priests they knew were sent away or killed, and all the religious beliefs they held (relics, Mass, saints, etc.) could no longer be practiced. Most of them could not read, had not wanted the Reformation, did not understand it, and felt adrift because the Church, the once center of their community, was no longer providing charity to the poor. In a poor harvest year, the Church would feed and clothe them; now they had no one and were literally starving, while Henry VIII stuffed his royal coffers full of Church property. Since they could not legally blame Henry for any of this without it being treason, they targeted Thomas Cromwell instead.

Sir Thomas Howard (not Brandon) went north to negotiate with Aske and met with them in Doncaster.

The Real Lord Darcy

In the episode, Henry expects Lord Darcy to hold Pontefract and is furious when he cannot and becomes a rebel. Pontefract is taken, with Aske and the rest walking into the fortress.

Lord Darcy did not live in Pontefract, but in a house nearby. He moved to Pontefract when the threat of the rebels came too near, and wrote a frantic letter to the king requesting support, and stating that there were no powder, arrows, or bows; money and gunners were none, and he had no way to protect anything outside the castle. The castle only had 260 people in it and was large enough to hold thousands in an invasion or insurrection. Pontefract was in disrepair, with portions of its walls crumbling, but as the Pilgrims drew near, over a hundred northern nobles and the Archbishop of York fled there to protect themselves behind its walls.

When Henry VII was king, it was an important northern stronghold. But Pontefract had fallen into disuse since Margaret Tudor married the King of Scotland. After he died in his botched English invasion, she served as partial regent to her young son, who was not old enough to attack England. When the Scottish forces were routed and killed, Scotland lost many of its men of fighting age, leaving a gap in its military forces. As a result, Scotland became no real threat to England, and Henry VIII let his northern fortifications lapse while Cromwell focused on replenishing the treasury by closing all the religious houses (for profit, more than faith).

Thomas Darcy doesn’t put up much of a protest against Aske in the show, but the historical one dragged his feet as long as he could. He was 69 and in poor health. Henry sent him nothing, no men or supplies, but insisted it was his job to defend the castle anyway. Once the rebels arrived, they seized Darcy’s son and held him hostage to gain access to Pontefract. Darcy surrendered because he was severely outnumbered and knew he would be killed if they stormed the castle.

The rebels allowed the Archbishop of York to go free after he took the pilgrim’s oath. Darcy took it as well; the oath declared the rebels were loyal to the king and blamed the closing of the monasteries on Cromwell, Archbishop Cranmer, and others (declaring them “heretics who ought to be burned at the stake”). Darcy refused to lead the Pilgrimage of Grace (Robert Aske invited him to) but offered men in its support and arranged for the flags to be made that showed their religious insignia (depicting the Five Wounds of Christ).

Henry sent Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk, north to deal with it because Howard was well-respected for his brutal handling of the Scottish invasion, a leading Roman Catholic, and a strong opponent of Thomas Cromwell. Henry suspected (accurately) that the rebels would respect and trust him. Seeing the sheer numbers they were up against, Howard, ever a cunning bastard, suggested pardoning the northern rebels and punishing the leaders when the common folk dispersed, which is what they did.

The scene in which two northern rebels appear before the king and get a denouncing is true, but the meeting between them took place in private, since Henry did not want to draw attention to them or give them sympathizers in the court. He got so furious in his tirade, in which he condemned them as traitors, that Howard had to calm him down.

Minor Inaccuracies:

• Henry is already suffering from his leg injuries; historically, there’s no evidence he had a “stinking, rotten leg” yet. (We don’t know for sure when his diabetes set in or when his leg truly refused to heal.)
• Henry shuts down Jane’s appeal for him to restore and keep the abbeys in private; historically, he reprimanded her in public and told her not to meddle in his affairs. Jane took his threat seriously (to remember what happened to Anne) and never again intervened in matters of state.
• Lady Rochford (Jane Boleyn) speaks out against the rebels, when as a devout Catholic, she would have supported their demands to restore the monasteries.
• Henry never had a mistress during his marriage to Jane Seymour.
• John Constable is a made-up character; the real man was Robert Constable, and there’s no evidence he was tortured, much less with a hot poker up his backside (a way to vilify Edward Seymour, I guess?).
• Henry is eating a Carambola, which weren’t available in England.

Curious what personality types feature in The Tudors? Check out my analysis here!

This article is part of my Historical Accuracy in Historical TV Shows & Movies series, where I break down the real history behind popular historical dramas.

About the Author: Charity Bishop writes historical fiction, historical fantasy, and suspense novels that explores the darkness in human hearts, and the light that refuses to be extinguished. Discover her books.