Was the Pilgrimage of Grace 1536 a failure or a success?

In some aspects, the Pilgrimage of Grace was a success. This is due to the fact that it did attract the attention of the King, as it intended to. It can also be inferred that it initially posed a threat to the King, as he felt the need to take the action of deceiving the rebels in order to trick Aske into giving him names of the rebels so that he could eventually control them and eventually sentence them to death despite promising them a pardon. This shows that Henry was unable to physically put down the rebellion so he had to deal with it politically, showing that it was a success in the fact that it posed a threat to the King. In addition, it can be seen to be a success due to the huge amount of support that it garnered. As the rebels marched through Yorkshire, the number of rebels increased to 35,000 as it attracted the attention of people from Durham, Northumberland and Lancashire. This can be seen as a success as it shows that the cause had a lot of public support and therefore shows that the issues raised were spread across the population, which was likely to be the aim of the rebels as they wished to draw attention to their cause. It was also paid attention to politically, as the main leaders of the rebellion met to come up with the 24 Articles which incorporated their religious beliefs. Although this may not have been passed which can evidently be perceived as a failure, it shows that the government were forced to pay attention to the rebels, which would have been an aim of theirs.

However, the Pilgrimage of Grace was generally a failure. The most obvious evidence of this is that the main leaders were deceived by Henry. Aske was tricked into believing that he was providing rebel names to hold them accountable, when in fact it was used as a reference list for Henry to be aware of who to arrest and execute. The rebels were not given a pardon as promised, they were sent to unfair juries in Yorkshire which prosecuted them which led to their execution in London. Evidently,  the Pilgrimage of Grace was not a success, as eventually  the rebels were put down by the monarchy, including the main rebel Aske. Another failure was that they did not have their demands implemented in legislation. They created a list of demands- 24 Articles- and the King said he would look at the articles and the parliament would discuss them but this did not happen. As their demands weren’t met- the main point of the rebellion- then it can be concluded that the Pilgrimage of Grace was not a success, despite there being minor victories within the Pilgrimage itself.