And events had decided: whatever his intentions may have been, the choice was no longer open to him.
[Sidenote: October 13. The beacons lighted in Yorkshire.]
As he rode down at midnight to the bank of the Humber, the clash of the alarm-bells came pealing far over the water. From hill to hill, from church-tower to church-tower, the warning lights were shooting. The fishermen on the German Ocean 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.
[Sidenote: October 9. An address bearing Aske's signature invites the commons of Yorkshire to rise.]
All Yorkshire was in movement. 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.[122] Ill composed, but with a rugged eloquence, it 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 well; those who refused to join, or dared to resist, should be under Christ's curse, and be held guilty of all the Christian blood which should be shed.
Whoever wrote the letter, it did its work. One scene out of many will illustrate the effect.
[Sidenote: October 8. Priests, women, and families.]
[Sidenote: William Stapleton made captain of Beverley.]
William Stapleton, a friend of Aske, and a brother barrister, also bound to London for the term, was spending a few days at the Grey Friars at Beverley, with his brother Christopher. The latter had been out of health, and had gone thither for change of air with his wife. The young lawyer was to have set out over the Humber on the 4th of October. At three in the morning his servant woke him, with the news that the Lincolnshire beacons were on fire, and the country was impassable. Beverley itself was in the greatest excitement; the sick brother was afraid to be left alone, and William Stapleton agreed for the present to remain and take care of him. On Sunday morning they were startled by the sound of the alarm-bell. A servant who was sent out to learn what had happened, brought in word that an address had arrived from Robert Aske, and that a proclamation was out, under the town seal, calling on every man to repair to Westwood Green, under the walls of the Grey Friars, and be sworn in to the commons.[123] Christopher Stapleton, a sensible man, made somewhat timid by illness, ordered all doors to be locked and bolted, and gave directions that no one of his household should stir. His wife, a hater of Protestants, an admirer of Queen Catherine, of the Pope, and the old religion, was burning with sympathy for the insurgents. The family confessor appeared on the scene, a certain Father Bonaventure, taking the lady's part, and they two together "went forth out of the door among the crowd."--"God's blessing on ye," William Stapleton heard his sister-in-law cry.--"Speed ye well," the priest cried; "speed ye well in your godly purposes." The people rushed about them. "Where are your husband and his brother?" they shouted to her. "In the Freers," she answered. "Bring them out!" the cry rose. "Pull them out by the head; or we will burn the Freers and them within it." Back flew the lady in haste, and perhaps in scorn, to urge forward her hesitating lord--he wailing, wringing his hands, wishing himself out of the world; she exclaiming it was God's quarrel--let him rise and show himself a man. The dispute lingered; the crowd grew impatient; the doors were dashed in; they rushed into the hall, and thrust the oath down the throat of the reluctant gentleman, and as they surged back they swept the brother out with them upon the green. Five hundred voices were crying, "Captains! captains!" and presently a shout rose above the rest, "Master William Stapleton shall be our captain!" And so it was to be: the priest Bonaventure had willed it so; and Stapleton, seeing worse would follow if he refused, consented.