Fighting spirit

They are a couple reason why the rebellion didn't last too long. The rebel had a fairly simple objective which was to take out Mary Stuart of captivity, though that was taken care of fairly quickly by moving her more south, where her partisan had less support.  While the rebel had number in the thousands, when England had properly gathered up its strenght it could bring a much bigger fighting force (source), but the problem was that it needed to be gather up which took time, luckily for them the Northern rebels had little support.  I'd love to say that our dear baron was behind all this, but really its earl of Sussex (Although apparently Elizabeth wasn't sure he was loyal). The queen had asked him to stay at berwick when thing started to flare up (November 16 entry),.

Though the reason why Hunsdon involvement is important, is essentially because he saw the most fighting in the war and that because he was in a numerical disadvantage (and it was in the last moments of the rebellion). Sir Leonard Dacre was essentially a noble that covertly supporting the Marian partisan while declaring he was a supporter of the crowd, which enable him to gather up his force at his fortress. So it was now up to Henry Carey to smash it up.

Here a pretty good resume of the events.