As more enslaved Africans arrived in American colonies, they continued to rebel. A 1712 slave rebellion in New York City killed at least nine white slave holders, while in 1739, up to 100 black people in colonial South Carolina participated in the Stono Rebellion, the largest slave uprising in British North America. The revolt resulted in some laws intended to discourage uprisings and rein in brutal slaveholders, but fomented fear of black rebellion. The colonies already had strict slave codes designed to govern the behavior of enslaved people. In response to the Stono Rebellion, laws became increasingly draconian.
The 1831 Nat Turner rebellion, organized by an enslaved preacher in Virginia, was the bloodiest to both white and black people. During a day-long rampage, Turner and his followers killed at least 55 white people. During the aftermath, at least 30 men were executed after trials before a panel of judges who were themselves slaveowners. White people attacked, tortured, and killed at least 36 more enslaved people they suspected of rebellion. Martial law was eventually declared and the uprising stoked even more fear and mistrust between white slaveholders and black people in bondage. (Historians are still making new discoveries about the enslaved preacher and his rebels.)
Rebellion In The North
To attract colonists, the Lords Proprietor offered alluring incentives: religious tolerance, political representation by assembly, exemption from fees, and large land grants. These incentives worked, and Carolina grew quickly, attracting not only middling farmers and artisans but also wealthy planters. Colonists who could pay their own way to Carolina were granted 150 acres per family member. The Lords Proprietor allowed for enslaved people to be counted as members of the family. This encouraged the creation of large rice and indigo plantations along the coast of Carolina; these were more stable commodities than deerskins and enslaved Native Americans. Because of the size of Carolina, the authority of the Lords Proprietor was especially weak in the northern reaches on Albemarle Sound. This region had been settled by Virginians in the 1650s and was increasingly resistant to Carolina authority. As a result, the Lords Proprietor founded the separate province of North Carolina in 1691.19
The foundations of the war lay within the rivalry between the Pequot, the Narragansett, and the Mohegan, who battled for control of the fur and wampum trades in the northeast. This rivalry eventually forced the English and Dutch to choose sides. The war remained a conflict of Native interests and initiative, especially as the Mohegan hedged their bets on the English and reaped the rewards that came with displacing the Pequot.
Metacom and his followers eluded colonial forces in the summer of 1675, striking more Plymouth towns as they moved northwest. Some groups joined his forces, while others remained neutral or supported the English. The war badly divided some Indigenous communities. Metacom himself had little control over events as panic and violence spread throughout New England in the autumn of 1675. English mistrust of neutral Native Americans, sometimes accompanied by demands that they surrender their weapons, pushed many into open war. By the end of 1675, most of the Native Americans of present-day western and central Massachusetts had entered the war, laying waste to nearby English towns like Deerfield, Hadley, and Brookfield. Hapless colonial forces, spurning the military assistance of allies such as the Mohegans, proved unable to locate more mobile Native communities or intercept attacks.
450 years ago, the north of England rose in rebellion against the Tudor state. Its leaders were Thomas Percy, Earl of Northumberland and Charles Neville, Earl of Westmoreland, their retainers and sundry gentry, such as Richard Norton. The Northern Rising (or Rising of the Northern Earls) in 1569 was the greatest domestic challenge to the rule of Elizabeth I, but one scarcely known today.
The Percies and Nevilles fomented rebellion. The Rising proper began with the celebration of Catholic Mass at Durham Cathedral on 30 November 1569. The rebels then marched south to Darlington and crossed the Tees into Yorkshire, assembling a force of 6,000 armed men. Carrying the banner of the Five Wounds of Christ, they destroyed signs of Protestantism wherever they found them. The rebels captured the key port of Hartlepool and laid siege to Barnard Castle which was in the hands of the loyalist Sir John Bowes. The defenders capitulated but victory was short-lived. The navy recaptured Hartlepool, while a southern army, under the Earl of Sussex advanced North. The leading rebels including Northumberland and Westmoreland fled in disarray, abandoning their own foot soldiers, and heading for Scotland.
Discontent built up in the north of England during the 1560s as the initial ambiguities of the Elizabethan protestant settlement dissipated. Traditionalists felt increasingly under pressure as the number of arrests and deprivations of office for religious nonconformity grew, and churches were more thoroughly purged of the remnants of Catholic worship. In May 1568 the arrival of the Catholic Mary, queen of Scots, provided hope for an alternative. There had been conspiracies of varying degrees of seriousness almost since Elizabeth's accession ten years earlier, but they became more intense during 1569. A group of northern gentlemen centred upon the earls of Northumberland and Westmorland talked of rising to restore the old faith, most likely by replacing Elizabeth with her cousin Mary, or at least by having Elizabeth recognize Mary as her heir.
Given the reluctance of the earls to commit themselves to open rebellion, it is uncertain whether anything would have come of these complaints and conspiracies had Elizabeth not called the men to court upon suspicions of their intentions, having reacted with alarm and anger upon learning of the plan to wed Thomas Howard, fourth duke of Norfolk, to Queen Mary. The northern earls seem not to have been strong proponents of this plan, devised by protestants, but they feared for their safety and decided to rise. On 14 November 1569 they and their closest followers stormed into Durham Cathedral, celebrating a Catholic mass and proclaiming themselves ready 'to resist force by force'. With the help of God and 'you good people', they declared their intent to set about 'the restoring of all ancient customs and liberties to God's church and this noble realm' (Kesselring, 59).
Supporters quickly appeared. At its peak the rebel army consisted of about 6000 men. Some historians had assumed that the bulk of this force consisted of the earls' tenants and retainers, but Susan Taylor's careful work has shown that fewer than 20 per cent of those in arms had any tenurial links with the rebellion's leaders. The Nevilles did raise some of their tenants, but Northumberland barely bothered to try. Instead of relying on feudal loyalties, the earls adapted the muster system to their purposes, using coercion, promises of pay, and the call of religious conviction to gather their forces. The last of these motivations cannot be overlooked: certainly, the queen's chief lieutenant in the north and others among the loyalists opined that most who joined the earls did so because they 'like so well their cause of religion' (Kesselring, 67). The rebels' behaviour suggests that they had been impelled to act by their religious convictions, as they marched beneath religious banners accompanied by priests, wearing crusader crosses and celebrating masses. They drew upon broadly supportive communities, too. At least one group of parishioners contributed to a common purse to send young men to the rebel army. In other parishes men and women worked together to re-erect altars and to burn protestant service books.
While the rebellion's leaders had little trouble finding supporters, they had less success devising a coherent strategy. In late November they marched through Durham and parts of Yorkshire, besieging Barnard Castle and taking Hartlepool. Some began talking with potential Scottish confederates; Thomas Markenfield went to the continent in hopes of securing foreign aid from that quarter.
Meanwhile the queen's forces gathered. Thomas Radcliffe, third earl of Sussex, had been serving as lord president of the council in the north and now sought to co-ordinate efforts against the rebels. Fearing him to be somewhat compromised by his friendships with some of the rebels, however, the queen also sent north that long-time stalwart of Tudor service, Sir Ralph Sadler, as well as Henry Carey, first Baron Hunsdon, the warden of the east march. Sussex had the support of local gentlemen such as Sir Thomas Gargrave, dispatched to Pontefract Castle, and Sir George Bowes, who sought to hold Barnard Castle, and also, somewhat unexpectedly, that of Sir Henry Percy, Northumberland's brother and his eventual successor as earl. But help from Sir John Forster in the middle march and Lord Scrope to the west proved less forthcoming, with the latter resisting sending forces to Sussex as he thought them necessary to allay danger from the Dacres and the borderers. In the south plans for a force of some 22,500 men proved overly ambitious, but an army of just over 14,000 did assemble under the command of Lord Admiral Edward Clinton and Ambrose Dudley, earl of Warwick.
As this southern force finally arrived to reinforce Sussex's efforts, the rebel earls fled. On 16 December they abandoned the bulk of their army, taking a group of their horsemen and riding north. Four days later they, the countess of Northumberland, and some of their closest supporters arrived in Scotland, where Hector Armstrong of Harlaw, the Scottish borderer to whom the earl of Northumberland turned for shelter, promptly seized and sold the earl to the Scottish regent, James Stewart, earl of Moray. In the following month Leonard Dacre launched a rising of his own against the queen's government, but was defeated by Hunsdon on the River Gelt on 20 February, and himself then took refuge in Scotland along with some of his men. A number of fierce raids across the border were then made by Sussex and others against English fugitives and Marian loyalists, but while civil war in Scotland continued until 1573, by September 1570 Sussex had secured an accord with a number of leading Scots in which they agreed to abandon ties with the English rebels. Those of the latter who could do so then went into exile on the continent, some to continue efforts to undermine England's protestant regime. The earl of Northumberland remained for a time in Scottish captivity, with both Queen Elizabeth and his wife, Anne, bargaining to buy him back. Elizabeth eventually won, and had him executed in York on 22 August 1572. He was beatified by Pope Leo XIII in 1895. 2ff7e9595c
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