The Revolt of the Northern Earls, 1569–70
In November 1569, two of the most powerful Catholic nobles in England raised their tenants and marched south. Thomas Percy, Earl of Northumberland, and Charles Neville, Earl of Westmorland, restored the Catholic Mass at Durham Cathedral and headed for Tutbury, where Mary, Queen of Scots was being held. Their plan was to free Mary, marry her to the Duke of Norfolk, and force Elizabeth to name her Catholic heir. Within weeks the rising had collapsed without a single battle — but the panic in London was real, and the response shaped Elizabethan politics for the next twenty years.
The Revolt of the Northern Earls (November 1569 — January 1570) was led by the Earls of Northumberland and Westmorland. Their aim was to free Mary, Queen of Scots from Tutbury, marry her to the Duke of Norfolk, and restore Catholicism in England.
Why the Earls Rebelled
The causes of the revolt stack on top of each other and need to be weighed, not just listed. The Earls had lost wealth, status and religious freedom under Elizabeth, and Mary’s presence in England from May 1568 made action feel possible at last.
Loss of noble power sat at the centre. Elizabeth had taken Crown lands back from northern lords, promoted ‘new men’ like William Cecil from the gentry, and reduced the role of the old Catholic Council of the North. Religion gave the grievance a banner. The 1559 settlement made Catholic worship illegal, and the Earls’ tenants were still loyal to the old faith. Mary’s arrival in England in 1568 then handed them a Catholic alternative on English soil. Finally, a court plot to marry Mary to the Duke of Norfolk, England’s only duke, suggested powerful southern Protestants might tolerate a Catholic succession too — until Elizabeth heard of it and arrested Norfolk in October 1569.
Students often write ‘the Northern Earls rebelled because they were Catholic’ and stop there. Top-band Edexcel answers separate the threads. Religion mattered — restoring the Mass at Durham was symbolic and the Pope would soon back them with the 1570 bull. But Northumberland had also lost a copper mine to the Crown and Westmorland had crippling debts; both had been pushed off the Council of the North. The revolt is causation: religious grievance + lost noble power + Mary’s arrival + the Norfolk marriage scheme, with each factor feeding the next.
What Happened, November 1569 — January 1570
On 9 November 1569 the Earls were summoned to court to explain themselves. Fearing a trap, they raised their tenants instead. By mid-November around 4,600 men had mustered at Brancepeth. On 14 November they entered Durham Cathedral, tore up the English Bible and prayer book, and held a Catholic Mass for the first time in a decade. They marched south as far as Bramham Moor, but never reached Tutbury — Elizabeth had already moved Mary to Coventry, well out of reach.
The Earl of Sussex, lord president of the Council of the North, raised a royal army of 14,000 men. The rebels, hopelessly outnumbered and finding little new support, melted away in December. Northumberland fled to Scotland; Westmorland escaped to the Spanish Netherlands. A second flicker of rebellion under Leonard Dacre in February 1570 was crushed at the Battle of Gelt Bridge.
Elizabeth’s Response
The retribution was deliberately savage. Elizabeth ordered around 450 rebels to be executed, mostly poorer tenants chosen by lottery so that every northern village saw a hanging. Lands belonging to the rebel leaders were seized, breaking the wealth of the Percy and Neville families for good. The Council of the North was reorganised under loyal Protestant control, ending the Earls’ old regional dominance. Northumberland was eventually handed back by the Scots and beheaded at York in 1572.
Even though it failed, the revolt mattered: it triggered the 1570 papal bull excommunicating Elizabeth, the 1571 Treasons Act making it illegal to deny Elizabeth was queen, harsher recusancy fines, and the rise of plots centred on Mary — Ridolfi, Throckmorton and Babington all flow from this moment.
Why the Revolt Mattered
In February 1570 Pope Pius V issued the bull Regnans in Excelsis, excommunicating Elizabeth and absolving English Catholics of their loyalty to her. From this moment, Catholicism and treason were officially linked in Elizabethan minds. Parliament responded in 1571 with the Treasons Act, making it a capital offence to deny Elizabeth’s right to rule, and tightened recusancy fines on Catholics who skipped Anglican services. Mary, already a magnet for Catholic hopes, became the unavoidable centre of every later plot. And the old independent power of the northern nobility — the medieval ‘over-mighty subjects’ who had threatened earlier monarchs — was effectively broken.
A lower-band answer says the revolt ‘showed Elizabeth was vulnerable’. A top-band answer connects it forward: the failure of an open military rebellion pushed Catholic resistance underground, which is why every later threat — Ridolfi 1571, Throckmorton 1583, Babington 1586 — took the form of a secret plot, requiring Walsingham’s spy network to expose. The revolt didn’t just fail; it changed the type of threat Elizabeth faced for the next eighteen years.
By the spring of 1570 Elizabeth was, on paper, more secure: the rebels were dead or in exile, the north was loyal, and the nobility had been reminded that defying the Crown ended badly. Yet the Pope had just declared open season on her, the Privy Council under William Cecil and Francis Walsingham was now permanently on alert, and the long shadow of Mary, Queen of Scots stretched ahead for another seventeen years. The Northern Rebellion failed in the field, but it set the agenda for everything that followed.