The Pilgrimage of Grace

Hmm. I didn't finish this book. I got fed up. By Geofferey Moorhouse, this is one of those unfortunate books that suffers from too much detail in a dry, boring manner. I have nothing against detailed books. I quite like them. But this was just irritating. I was intrigued to know more about the only aspect of the English Reformation that I actually knew something about. However, the author seemed to feel it was his personal mission in life to act as though it was a completely ignored part of the English Reformation and that he was the only person who had ever paid it any attention whatsoever. Huh? There was a nice section on it in the Dickens book which I reviewed previously, and as I said, it was virtually the only aspect of the English Reformation I had a bit of knowledge about to start with. We'd covered it in oh, maybe Year 8 or something, briefly. If there was one thing this book did not suffer from, it was brevity. And yet, the actual reasons for the Pilgrimage of Grace were, I felt, inadequately covered. The author basically took it as read that they were fundamentally spiritual in grievance, and that was why it happened, making scant reference to the whole history of protest and the fact that the harvests had been bad which always makes things worse. There was an over reliance on narrative and detail about what exactly happened when and what happened next and what happened next on the other side and... you get the picture. It seemed to just go on and on and on, so I'm afraid I got fed up and took it back to the library without having finished it.

Not recommended, as you can see, unless you have a particular fascination with the Pilgrimage of Grace and are desperate to get to know all those little details that you probably won't find anywhere else. But other than for that purpose, it's not a particularly good book.