The rebellion against Queen Elizabeth I that led to 99 men being hanged from trees along Darlington road

Of peasants in their homely gear;

And mixed with these to Brancepeth came

Grave gentry of estate and name

And captains known for worth in arms

And prayed the earls in self defence

To rise and prove their innocence.

EXACTLY 450 years ago this month, County Durham was in revolt. As the poet said, thousands of men were gathering at Brancepeth Castle before marching on the cathedral, ready to burn books and restore the old religion before they headed south to take down the hated new Protestant queen, Elizabeth I.

Their rebellion, though, was not successful, and hundreds of Durham men ended up being hanged from trees on the roads into their towns and villages as the Queen exacted a terrible revenge.

An 1830s etching of Barnard Castle, which was besieged for 11 days during December 1569

Elizabeth inherited the throne in 1558 from her half sister, Mary, who had spent the previous five years re-establishing the Catholic faith and burning anyone who objected at the stake – which explains her nickname, “Bloody Mary”.

Elizabeth was just as brutal, only in the opposite direction, as she re-imposed the Protestant faith.

The leading families of the North-East were not happy. When Henry VIII – Elizabeth’s father – had first forced Protestantism upon them in the 1530s, they had raised an army of 30,000 men and marched around. This Pilgrimage of Grace ended with them realising the error of their ways when Henry executed some of their leaders.

The discontent resurfaced in 1559 as the Rising of the North. Sir Thomas Percy, the Earl of Northumberland, whose father had been beheaded by Henry after the Pilgrimage, was one of the leaders along with Charles Neville, the Earl of Westmoreland, who owned Raby Castle, near Staindrop, and Brancepeth Castle, south-west of Durham City.

They were angry not just about the new religion but at how Elizabeth was giving the top jobs to noblemen from the south, apparently overlooking the north. They plotted to remove her from the throne and give the crown to her cousin, Mary, Queen of Scots, whom Elizabeth was holding hostage.

Darlington in 1760, with St Cuthbert's Church on the left – on November 16, 1569, the townspeople were driven into the church by the rebels

Early in November, Westmoreland began collecting his Teesdale friends to begin an assault on Durham cathedral, but Sir George Bowes, who lived in Barnard Castle and Streatlam Castle (to the east of Barney), remained loyal to the Queen. Through his network of spies, he fed information of the forming rebellion to Elizabeth who, on November 10, summoned the two earls to Windsor Castle.

On November 13, they met in the Barons’ Hall at Raby Castle, and agonised about whether they dared to commit treason by rebelling against the queen, but Lady Westmoreland fired them up. She “bratse owt agaynste them with great curses, as well for their unhappe counseling as now theire cowerd flyghte”.

Stirred, they marched to Brancepeth Castle. William Wordsworth described the scene in his lengthy poem The White Doe of Rylstone as men from all over the county, summoned by the revolutionary sound of church bells ringing backwards, converged to defend the old faith and to bring down the new queen. Indeed, this Wednesday, which is the 450th anniversary of the muster, there will be a re-enactment at Brancepeth Castle but, unfortunately, the tickets sold out weeks ago.

Brancepeth castle, to the south-west of Durham, was where the rebels mustered on November 13, 1569

Many of the great Durham families – Markenfield, Tempest, Swinburne, Norton, Dacre and even Brian Palmes whose name lives on in Morton Palms on the outskirts of Darlington – were represented.

How they must have feasted that night, girding their loins for the fight.

Next day – November 14 – they marched on Durham and, at 3pm, took control of the cathedral. They smashed out all signs of the new religion – Will Cook of Bishop Auckland tore up the new prayerbooks with his hands and his teeth – and burned what was left.

Guided by Thomas Plumtree, they held Catholic mass.

On November 15, they set out to capture the county. Over the next fortnight, Catholic masses were celebrated in the churches of St Nicholas, St Giles, St Oswald and St Margaret in Durham, as well as in Brancepeth, Barnard Castle, St Helen Auckland, Long Newton, Chester-le-Street, Monkwearmouth, Heighington, Whitworth, Lanchester, Staindrop and Sedgefield.

St Mary's Church, in Staindrop, in the 1950s was the centre of the 1569 rising, and may be the last parish church in England to have heard a Catholic mass

On November 16 at Darlington, where many people had secretly harboured their Catholic sympathies, John Swinburn used a staff to drive ordinary folk into St Cuthbert’s Church to hear the rebels’ proclamation and to say mass.

The impetus was now with the rebels. The ordinary folk, desperate to be on the winning side, had joined up, and Sir George Bowes, who had holed himself up in Barnard Castle, was struggling to raise an army to stop them. He wrote to Elizabeth asking for funds, saying that Yorkshiremen “never goeth to war but for wages”.

Certain that the nation would rise up and join them, the rebels continued southwards – they said mass in Richmond, Northallerton and Ripon churches, burning books as they went – until on November 29, they reached Bramham Moor near Wetherby. There they counted their heads: about 4,000 footmen and about 1,700 horsemen.

It was a deeply disappointing number. And then they heard that at York, the Queen’s ruler in the north, the Earl of Sussex, was about to march towards them with an army of 7,000, and the Earl of Warwick was also heading their way with 12,000 men.

They decided to return to Durham, where they were strongest. Northumberland marched off to the safety of Alnwick Castle, and a contingent of soldiers headed east and easily captured Hartlepool, where they expected help to land from the continent.

The biggest contingent ؘ– perhaps 3,000 or more men – marched with Westmoreland into Teesdale to take on Sir George Bowes. After three days, they captured Streatlam Castle and then moved to Barney, which they laid siege to for 11 days.

Conditions inside the castle became desperate. As Sir George’s men defected, he wrote: "In one daye and nyght, 226 men leapyd over the walles, and opened the gaytes, and went to the enemy; off which nomber, 35 broke their necks, legges or arms in the leaping."

Sir Thomas Percy, Earl of Northumberland, in 1566 – three years later, he hatched his rebellious plans at his estate at Topcliffe

Sir George himself was made of sterner stuff. Westmoreland was raining down fire from his superior guns at the castle, and taunting him with a Pythonesque playground rhyme: "A coward, coward of Barney Castle Daren't come out to fight a battle."

By December 14, Sir George could take no more. He surrendered. However, he and Westmoreland had been neighbours and had been quite friendly – that summer, they’d been out hunting and hawking together – so Westmoreland couldn’t bring himself to put Sir George to death. He let him leave, with his 300 or so supporters – no doubt taunting him about his father smelling of elderberries as he went.

Three days later at Croft bridge, Sir George’s band met up with the 7,000-strong army of Sussex, who had marched up from York. Now they had numerical supremacy, and as they marched towards Darlington, the rebels melted back into the countryside. The Rising of the North – the most serious threat to Elizabeth in her entire reign – just faded away.

The Queen was swift to mete out justice. She sentenced about 800 to death, although those who were wealthy enough to give her lots of money were let off, and she seized the property of others.

Every community from Newcastle to Wetherby had at least one person executed, with the heartlands – Durham, Darlington, Staindropshire and Richmondshire – suffering the most. The figures vary wildly from source to source, but North Yorkshire is said to have had 231 of its men despatched, and the diocese of Durham is said to have lost 172 from 120 communities.

In the city itself, 80 were hanged at the top of Framwellgate, near St Cuthbert’s Church. They included Thomas Plumtree, the only priest to die, on January 4, 1570.

In Barnard Castle, 20 men may have been hanged. In Darlington, all 23 of the town’s constables were sentenced to death for failing to keep the townspeople in order, and another story says 99 men were hanged from trees along Coniscliffe Road.

Sir George Bowes was in charge of the hangings, and in his little black book, he reckoned he executed 16 from central Darlington. He makes no mention of swinging them from streetside trees, although he did execute a rebel named Harrison, of Barnard Castle, in his orchard at Streatlam Castle. As he watched the body dangling, he reputedly said "The best fruit a tree can bear is a dead traitor.”

Harrison’s ghost still haunts the remains of the castle – as does that of Sir George himself. He found that the rebels had "utterly defaced" Streatlam, carrying off everything that was portable – including 40 feather beds – and smashing up everything that was nailed down. He could not afford to rebuild it, and died there of a broken heart in 1580.

The last executions seem to have been in Northallerton, where on January 16, 1570, near the mini-roundabout at the north end of the high street, Sir George hanged six – Xpor Hancock, Richard Wynde, Randall Horner, Robert Heckley, Henrye Thompson, Allan Lynsley and William Taylor.

The two ringleading earls fared little better. Westmoreland has his castles at Raby and Brancepeth seized, and he lived the rest of his life in poverty in exile in France.

Northumberland was captured by the Scots who, in 1572, sold him to Elizabeth. He was paraded through Durham, Raby and Topcliffe – where he had an estate – and then hanged at York on August 22, 1572, his head being stuck on a pole over Micklegate Bar. It remained there for two years until someone stole it.