... this is a substantial work of scholarship which will be valued, not least for Hoyle's admirable determination, throughout, to go behind the calendar entries, correcting and expanding wherever necessary. * Northern History *
A number of small gems and sharp insights pervade the text ... Hoyle has an impressive command of the sources and of northern society ... a treat among academic monographs. This study has been long anticipated by historians of early modern protest, Henrician politics, and the early reformation, and it handsomely repays the wait. * Canadian Journal of History *
Richard Hoyle's thorough, detailed and comprehensive study ... will be required reading for generations of historians of Henrician politics. * Andy Wood, Times Literary Supplement *
Richard Hoyle's book is the first comprehensive treatment of the Pilgrimage of Grace to be published since the Dodds sisters produced their justly famous two-volume work in 1915. Historical debate has not stood still in the intervening years and the nature and causes of the revolts of 1536-37 have been hotly debated. Professor Hoyle thus faces the daunting task of combining a readable narrative of the rebellions with a judicious analysis able to take all these arguments into account. It is a task in which he succeeds to very good effect ... an impressive and thought-provoking book. Richard Hoyle has given us a book on the Pilgrimage which has been worth the wait since 1915. * Annual Journal of Society for Lincolnshire History and Archaeology *
Fascinating and impeccably researched study of the risings that nearly changed English history. * Diarmaid MacCulloch,The Guardian Saturday Review *
This will not so much answer the questions as draw you into the rich and complex world of early Tudor politics and the destruction of the medieval church. * New Directions *
Most interesting is the manner in which he destroys that favourite explanation, 'The north is different'. * New Directions *
Neither patronises its readers nor reduces its subject to the level of glamourised simplification, and all professional Tudor historians who believe the subtleties of their subject can be explored outside universities should be grateful to Richard Hoyle for his contribution. * BBC History Magazine *
A meticulous evaluation ... going behind the printed Calendar to that mine of information which is the State papers themselves, and an unrivalled knowledge of the grass-roots politics of Northern England. There will never be a definitive history of the Pilgirmage of Grace, but this is as close to it as we may hope to get. * Patrick Collinson, London Review of Books *