Sir Robert Constable was a member of the English Tudor gentry. He helped Henry VII to defeat the Cornish rebels at the Battle of Blackheath in 1497. In 1536, when the rising known as the Pilgrimage of Grace broke out in the north of England, Constable was one of the insurgent leaders, but towards the close of the year he submitted at Doncaster and was pardoned. He did not share in the renewal of the rising, Bigod's rebellion, which took place in January 1537; but he refused the king's invitation to proceed to London, and was arrested, tried for treason, and hanged at Hull in the following June.
In his youth Constable carried off a ward of Chancery, and tried to marry her to one of his retainers. In the reign of Henry VII he was of signal service to the crown upon the Cornish Rebellion led by Lord Audley, who marched on London and was defeated at the battle of Blackheath in 1497. Constable was one of the knights bannerets that were created at Blackheath by Henry VII after his victory on 17 June 1497. In the following reign he was also at Flodden.
In 1536, on the outbreak of the great Yorkshire rising, known as the Pilgrimage of Grace, caused by the beginning of the destruction of monasteries in 1536, he took the leading part, along with Robert Aske and Lord Darcy. Constable was among those who made their submission, and received their pardon. At the beginning of the next year, January 1537, when Sir Francis Bigod rashly attempted to renew the insurrection, Constable exerted himself to keep the country quiet. When this last commotion was over, he, like the other leaders, was invited by King Henry VIII to proceed to London. This he refused, and at the same time removed for safety from his usual place of abode to a dwelling thirty miles away. Hereupon the powerful minister Thomas Cromwell caused the Duke of Norfolk to send him up with a sergeant-at-arms on 8 March. He with Aske and Darcy was committed to the Tower till they should be tried, and meantime Norfolk was directed to say in the north that they were imprisoned, not for their former offences, but for treasons committed since their pardon. What those treasons were the Duke was conveniently forbidden to say. There was 'no speciality to be touched or spoken of', but all 'conveyed in a mass together'. True bills were returned against them, and after their condemnation it seemed to the King 'not amiss' that some of them should be remitted to their county for execution, 'as well for example as to see who would groan'. Constable and Aske were therefore sent down to Yorkshire, exhibited as traitors in the towns through which they passed, and Constable was executed at Hull on 6 July 1537 being hanged in chains over Beverley gate at Hull, and thereby forfeited Flamborough and 35 other manors in Lincolnshire. The Duke of Norfolk witnessed his execution;
Issue
Sir Robert was married to Jane Ingleby of Ripley in 1492, probably in Yorkshire, England. Jane's parents were Sir William Ingleby of Ripley, son of John Ingleby of Ripley and Margaret Strangeways, Baroness Willoughby, and his wife Catherine Stillington, daughter of Thomas Stillington of Nether Acaster and Agnes Bigod. Sir Robert and Jane had the following issue:
