536
REIGN OF HENRY THE EIGHTH.
[ch. 13.
watched them, flickering in the darkness from Spurnhead to Scarborough, from Scarborough to Berwick-upon-Tweed. They streamed westward, over the long marshes across Spalding Moor; up the Ouse and the Wharf, to the watershed where the rivers flow into the Irish Sea. The mountains of Westmoreland sent on the message to Kendal, to Cockermouth, to Penrith, to Carlisle; and for days and nights there was one loud storm of bells and blaze of beacons from the Trent to the Cheviot Hills.
All Yorkshire was in movement. October 9.Strangely, too, as Aske assures us, he found himself the object of an unsought distinction. His own name was the watchword which every tongue was crying. In his absence an address had gone out around the towns, had been hung on church doors, and posted on market crosses, which bore his signature, though, as he protested, it was neither written by himself nor with his consent.[1] Ill composed, but with a rugged eloquence, he called upon all good Englishmen to make a, stand for the Church of Christ, which wicked men were destroying, for the commonwealth of the realm, and for their own livings, which were stolen from them by impositions. For those who would join it should be- ↑ 'There was a letter forged in my name to certain towns, which I utterly deny to be my deed or consent.'—Narrative of Robert Aske: Rolls House MS. A 2, 28. This is apparently the letter which is printed in the State Papers, vol. i. p. 467. It was issued on the 7th or 8th of October (see Stapleton's Confession: Rolls House MS. A 2, 28), the days on which, according to Aske's own confession, he seems to have been in the West-Riding.
