Background
It has been suggested that The Pilgrim's Tale was created as part of a Henrician propaganda campaign, or that it was politically subversive and suppressed as part of Henry VIII's ban on prophecies. (They were deemed felonies without recourse to benefit of clergy. This law was repealed when Edward VI came to power in 1547, but it was reinstated three years later in 1550. The rule was repealed under Mary I and revived in new form by Elizabeth I.) It is interesting that The Pilgrim's Tale both performs and denounces prophesying. After using Isaiah as a prophetic, anticlerical authority, the author of PilgT warns of false prophecies from the devil and rebels such as Nicholas Melton, a leader in the Lincolnshire rebellion of 1536, Perkin Warbeck (1474–1499), a pretender to the crown hanged by Henry VII, and Jack Straw, a leader in the Great Rising of 1381. Later, however, the author exempts Merlin and Bede, since they can be mustered up as anti-Roman Catholic prophets.
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