This detailed, close analysis of the Northern Rebellion is the first full published account of the events of 1569, which saw Elizabeth i confronted by the only major armed revolt of her reign, led by the earls of Northumberland and Westmorland. As such, the book fills a longstanding gap in the existing literature and in the history of protest as a whole in early modern England, extending renewed interest in the 1536 and 1549 rebellions to the later Tudor period. It provides a synthesis of current research, drawing on recent scholarship surrounding the Reformation, popular politics and popular protest. Kesselring delivers a braided narrative of the rebellion which re-evaluates the established body of evidence for the 1569 revolt, allowing room for a multiplicity of motives amongst a disingenuous rebel host. Whereas 1569 has traditionally been regarded as an aristocratic revolt – the product of power struggles within the Tudor elite – Kesselring rightly draws our attention to the significance of the popular and religious elements in the revolt, which were integral to its causation, course and consequences. Kesselring sets the rebellion firmly in its wider religious, political and socio-economic context in chapter i, before turning to a detailed narrative of events in chapter ii, which investigates the catalysts and justification for the revolt, its social composition, rebel organisation, activity and behaviour, the regime's initial response, and the untimely collapse of the movement. Chapter iii reveals how the leadership revived the rebellion under a new guise in Scotland, with the aid of the borderers and Queen Mary's Scottish supporters, so that what had been essentially a localised revolt threatened to become international in scope. Chapter iv addresses the issue of the regime's extreme response to the rebellion, arguing that Elizabeth's reaction differed markedly from the usual combination of mercy and authority employed by her predecessors in response to earlier rebellions. Kesselring asks why Elizabeth was driven to exact such bloody vengeance, and demonstrates how the suppression of the rebellion actually accelerated the transition of power against which the rebels fought, and increased the capacity of the early modern state to react to future disorder. The book is rounded off with a discussion of how contemporaries and historians have tried to shape interpretations and memories of the 1569 revolt, which examines the competing narratives offered by rumour and popular news networks, the crown, Protestant and Catholic polemicists, ballads, and echoes of support voiced outside the north, but which ultimately fails to convey a true sense of ‘the nation's social memory of the revolt’, albeit due to the inevitable lack of evidence. Kesselring concludes that ‘recognizing the active, willing participation of the rank and file, and the significance of faith for many of them, allows us to refine our own understanding of the rebellion's place in history’. Rather than seeing the 1569 rebellion as a somewhat staid aristocratic revolt, and as an aberration from the established pattern of popular protest in the Tudor period, Kesselring emphasises its similarities with earlier revolts, in terms of its social composition, its legitimising ideologies, and rebel behaviour and activities. The main difference, as she clearly shows, was in the crown's response, and in its far-reaching political, religious, social and legal implications. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of the Reformation, Elizabethan politics, popular politics and popular protest, and to the general reader. It succeeds in casting new light on the personalities, politics and policies of the Elizabethan regime and its subjects, and illustrates the interaction between national, local, elite and popular politics in the Tudor period.