ENGLAND'S Break with Rome enriched the crown's coffers with revenue from the sale of church lands, but these lands were purchased at a cost to Henry VIII, for with the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1536 came open rebellion at home and the threat of invasion from abroad. Henry paid a high price in October 1536 for his claims, in the Appeals Act, to be ‘Sup[re]me heede’ of an English empire compact of church and state. As head of the English church, Henry had in May 1536 adopted a policy of dissolving religious houses with an annual income of less than two hundred pounds. A government office – the court of augmentations – was set up to receive the treasures and charters of those monasteries earmarked for closure, and commissioners were dispatched to the shires, with orders to suppress religious houses, and to assess their market value for sale by the crown. It was news of these activities that prompted the people of Lincolnshire to rebel in early October, according to the account of the Imperial ambassador in England, Eustace Chapuys. ‘Five days ago in Lincolnshire’, Chapuys writes in his letter to Charles V of 7 October 1536, ‘a great multitude of people rose against the King's commissioners, who levied the taxes lately imposed by parliament and put down the abbeys’.

In depositions taken after the event, many of the rebels admitted their outrage upon learning that royal commissioners had been ransacking local monasteries, an outrage apparently fuelled by rumours that these same commissioners also intended to steal from parish churches in the nearby area.