by C. J. Sansom
Who were they? The importance of deserters from the Scottish wars is, I have suggested, more central than previously suggested. The military-organizational skills of soldiers, particularly officers, were I think to be important especially in Kett’s huge camp. Among the confusing blizzard of proclamations by the government in July, one referred to ‘criminals, deserters and loiterers’ as spreading ‘rumours’ that misled people to gather in unlawful assemblies,1 while in a letter to Philip Hoby talking of the rebels, Somerset wrote ‘the ruffians among them and the soldiers, which be the chief doers, look first for spoil’.2
Meanwhile Thomas Smith, Somerset’s Chief Secretary, was terrified of the spread of the ‘camp-men’, as they were already being called.3 There was an abortive plan for a large Hampshire-Sussex Rebellion, with a conservative religious hue, led by Garnham, a Winchester carpenter, and one Flint of Sussex. However, Flint failed to appear at a crucial meeting and was probably captured.4 This raises another interesting issue, the question of government agents among the rebels; in Kent a man called Latimer (not the Bishop) travelled the county claiming he had Somerset’s approval to take bills of complaint. But he also received money from the government and may have been used by Somerset to try to pacify the rebels with money.5 In other words, he became a double agent. Elsewhere, the authorities sent Edward Loft to the Thetford camp in south Norfolk ‘as a scout watch’, fearing the Cambridge commons were about to join the Norfolk rebels.6 So the presence in the Mousehold camp of a government spy, which I have portrayed in Tombland, was perfectly likely.
MacCulloch, however, has emphasized the importance of substantial yeomen and townsmen in leading the rebellions, arranging meetings under cover of the sporting competitions so popular throughout the year, and refers to the regular paranoia exhibited by the gentry about such gatherings.7 To the sporting competitions may be added plays and religious festivals, such as the Wymondham Game Play where Kett’s Rebellion began. I would suggest that yeomen and ‘runagates’ played complementary roles in instigating the rebellions.
What were the aims of the ‘camp-men’? Both those in the Midlands who opposed the religious changes, and those in the east who supported them, expressed the same hatred of ‘gentlemen’ and government officials, and wanted reform of rural conditions. Although only fragmentary evidence has survived, the camp-men sent numerous petitions to the Protector. I would suggest that part of the motivation for this strategy, especially in the east where religious questions mattered less, was the promise of the arrival of the enclosure commissioners. Indeed Somerset, on 8 July, at last announced the formation of the new commissions, presumably as a gesture of appeasement.8 I suggest that the 1549 camp-men, only too aware of the commissioners’ lack of any enforcement powers, set up the camps partly to provide exactly that muscle, as well as a force to influence their strategy. I have shown the Norfolk rebels initially following this plan in Tombland. It is also true that petitions from the camps were overwhelmingly made to the Protector, not the commissioners, but they had not been named yet. The petitions were not limited to grievances about enclosure. Nicholas Sotherton, our main contemporary source for Kett’s Rebellion, considered that it was the very failure of the Protector to set a date for the commissioners to start work that caused the commons of East Anglia and Kent to decide to take matters into their own hands. I suggest however that setting up the camps was designed rather to force their coming, pre-emption not bypassing, and this ties in with the East Anglian rebels’ emphasis on their loyalty to the King.9
However, as July continued there was no sign of their coming, except in Kent where they arrived at the large camp outside Canterbury on 17 July, after a royal Herald had been received rudely. Conciliatory letters, money and beer were distributed to encourage the rebels to disperse, rather than dealing with their grievances, although this failed and the camp remained in place until mid-August.10 Elsewhere they disappeared from the picture as, from mid-July, the Protector, urged by the Council, moved to a strategy of confrontation.
EAST ANGLIA: BACKGROUND TO REVOLT
Norfolk and Suffolk had a long tradition of rebelliousness. Suffolk especially had been central to popular rejection of Henry VIII’s ‘Amicable Grant’ tax in 1525.1 A decade later, during the Pilgrimage of Grace, copies of the Yorkshire rebels’ petition were found in Norfolk, and some tried to begin an insurrection at Walsingham; Richard Southwell, who played an important part in suppressing the conspiracy, was one of those picked as a target three years later by John Walter, who was hanged for attempting to start another rebellion. Norfolk commoners were also notoriously litigious, well used to clubbing together to go to court where their lords were consistently presented as a network of mutually supportive gentlemen.2
Why was East Anglia so radical? Geographically, much of Norfolk and Suffolk had poor, ‘light soil’, where sheep dung provided the fertility needed to raise corn through the ‘foldcourse’ system, where landlords ran sheep on the fields in winter.3 In the 1530s and 1540s, however, landowners were increasingly keen to get the tenants off their lands. As noted above, their principal tactic was to encroach on common lands, taking the opportunity to abuse the foldcourse system, for example by running very large numbers of sheep on both tenants’ fields and on the commons.
Politically, the fall of the Duke of Norfolk in 1546 had removed the figure at the apex of local government, a religious conservative and a harsh and unpopular landlord, who still had bondmen on some of his estates. Another central authority figure, William Rugge, Bishop of Norwich, equally conservative and unpopular, was by 1549 weak, his diocese in financial trouble (after the death of his predecessor, it appears a good deal of cathedral property was embezzled by Sir Richard Southwell as a Crown official). Under Rugge’s rule ecclesiastical office-holders remained conservative.4 So, very likely, did the priesthood.
Finally, to understand Kett’s Rebellion one must look at the situation in the city of Norwich, England’s second largest and with one of its biggest markets, although the population may have been as little as 8,000. In the mid-sixteenth century it had serious problems, due largely to decline in the long-established worsted cloth trade, which had a knock-on effect on other city trades.5
The governing structure was similar to other English cities, with ‘common’ councillors and above them aldermen, drawn from a few wealthy commercial families, with a mayor at the apex. The gulf between rich and poor was enormous, with the richest concentrated in the central wards of the city; it was widening in the sixteenth century. According to the survey for the 1525 Amicable Grant, twenty-nine men owned more than forty per cent of the taxable wealth, and around a quarter of the population was too poor to be taxed at all. With the inflation of the 1540s more must have fallen into desperate poverty.
There were signs that trouble was feared in early 1549. In May Norwich became the first English city to legislate for compulsory contributions to poor relief.6 At the June Assizes, which feature prominently in Tombland, the judges were welcomed not with the usual feast but only with beer.7 Both imply a fear of popular disturbance. And the poor of Norwich were to be vital participants in Kett’s Rebellion.
WYMONDHAM
As Diarmaid MacCulloch has pointed out, much writing about Kett’s Rebellion is based on one source – the short account, written just after the rebellion, by Nicholas Sotherton, member of a wealthy Norfolk merchant family. It is short, and hostile to the rebels. Nonetheless it contains much useful information. This was supplemented in 1575 by Alexander Neville’s Norfolk Furies.1 Neville was secretary to Archbishop Matthew Parker, and as a younger man had visited the camp. It was written in Latin, in a classical rhetorical style, and was not merely hostile but splenetic. Although he was far from the only one to do so, Neville persistently refers to the rebels as ‘boys’, ‘clowns’, ‘dogs’ and similar epithets – animalizing and infantilizing them. In 1582 the Elizabethan Privy Council ordered it to be used in all schools in the kingdom to teach Latin prose style. It was translate
d into English in 1615.2 However, it too contains useful information. Other contemporary material on the rebellion is fragmentary, though useful work using other contemporary data has been done in recent years.
The rebellion began at the annual Game Play and Fair in Wymondham, the third largest town in Norfolk, held from 6 to 8 July 1549. There were festivities, pageantry and a play.3 From the speed at which rebellion spread from here, it can only have been planned. Meanwhile, other static camps were set up outside King’s Lynn and Downham Market, with two in Suffolk.4 There was also a camp at Thetford in Norfolk.
On 8 July a group from Wymondham went to knock down the fences enclosing sheep runs of John Hobart of Morley, who had enclosed part of the village commons. Next, a group went to Hethersett, where part of Wymondham Common had been enclosed by John Flowerdew.5
Flowerdew embodied everything the commoners hated. A serjeant-at-law like Matthew Shardlake, he was a very senior lawyer who seems to have devoted himself to seeking profit in Norfolk: he had been Cromwell’s agent in the dissolution of Wymondham’s large abbey. As was common in monastic buildings, the parish church was an integral part of the abbey and, opposing Flowerdew, leading townspeople petitioned Henry VIII to be granted those parts of the buildings essential to maintain the church, together with other property. They succeeded. Flowerdew, however, had already pulled down the south aisle of the church and misappropriated lead and stone from the building, for which the parishioners had already paid.6 Neither can have been worth that much to a wealthy man, and Flowerdew seems to have been a petty man who enjoyed conflict.
Some sources have named Flowerdew as feodary in 1548–9. However the Norfolk feodary throughout Edward’s reign was the Lady Mary, and the escheator in 1549 was Henry Mynne. Nonetheless in such a large county it is likely that both delegated their duties, particularly to lawyers; Flowerdew gave evidence regarding Kett’s properties at his inquest and in Tombland I have made him local agent of the escheator, while Southwell is agent for the Lady Mary (he was steward of her properties).
When the group arrived at Flowerdew’s house, he paid them to redirect their attentions to his old enemy Robert Kett, who had himself recently enclosed a piece of common land. Robert Kett and his brother William had been among the leading townspeople who opposed Flowerdew over the fate of the abbey properties. The family had been minor men of property locally for centuries. In 1549 William was sixty-four and Robert fifty-seven – both elderly by Tudor standards, although, as the next two months were to show, Robert certainly still possessed extraordinary political skills, energy and charisma. William was a butcher and mercer owning considerable property, while Robert was a substantial farmer who also owned a tannery. After the Dissolution, like many others, he had purchased ex-abbey land that came on the market. His property at his death was valued at £750.7 Economically this could have placed him on the lower end of gentleman status (though well below Flowerdew). However his personal identification seems to have been with the Wymondham townspeople – as well as being prominent in the town guilds, he was active in the society that organized the annual Game Play. He was thus a very experienced local politician and organizer. Educated by the monks, he had been a friend of Loye, the last abbot of Wymondham.8
Given this history, Robert Kett seems an unlikely candidate to lead a popular rebellion, let alone one with a strongly Commonwealth and Protestant flavour. A possible explanation is that he may have had a late, but profound, conversion to Protestantism. Henry King, vicar of Wymondham from 1539 to 1553, was a noted evangelical reformer and may have influenced Kett.9 This is speculative, but I think the most plausible interpretation and the one I have chosen in Tombland.
When the group arrived at Kett’s property, he not only agreed to his enclosures being pulled down, but assisted in their removal.10 He then accompanied the party back to Wymondham. Next day, 9 July, the rebels began a march to Norwich, pulling down enclosures along the way, including those of Flowerdew who must have run away as he does in Tombland, as he was not heard of again until after the rebellion. Already Kett seems to have been accepted as leader, and he made a speech outside Hethersett where, according to Neville, he promised ‘that they should have him, not only as a companion, but a Captaine: and in the doing so great a worke, not a fellow, but a leader, Author and principall . . .’11 Thus Kett effectively took an oath to the rebels, rather than, as would have been usual for a leader, the other way round. Kett was undoubtedly leader of the Mousehold camp during its existence, but he was no dictator. Unfortunately, we have no direct descriptions of his manner and personality – I have had to invent these, as well as his appearance.
NORWICH TO MOUSEHOLD
Arrived outside Norwich, the rebels were joined by supporters from the city carrying little boughs as a sign of support,1 and together they proceeded to pull down the newly enclosed Town Close. It is likely that by now the rebels had decided on their destination: Mousehold Heath, on the other side of Norwich, a barren area of grassland stretching six miles eastwards.2 This followed the pattern of setting up camps outside towns. The heath rises steeply from the River Wensum, making an ideal defensive position. Mousehold also had a large wooded area, Thorpe Wood, to the south, giving access to a source of timber. The heath, however, suffered the disadvantage of being waterless, rain being quickly absorbed by the light soil.
Mayor Codd and the city council refused a request by the rebels to march through Norwich to Mousehold. Rather than attack the city walls they went the long way round, via Drayton Wood, going up to the heath from there, where it was more accessible. They arrived on 12 July. En route an attempt to get the rebels to disperse, accompanied by an offer of hospitality (a traditional way to check riots), was made by Sir Roger Wodehouse, but it led only to him being stripped (this was to be a common humiliation, removing the fine clothing that represented gentleman status) and cast into a ditch, where he would have been killed but for the intervention of a servant.3 This is the only account of serious violence against gentlemen, as opposed to humiliating them and taking them prisoner.
WHO WERE THE REBELS?
According to Neville, 2,600 rebels were present at the foundation of the camp.1 People now flocked there from all over north and central Norfolk. There are contradictory accounts of how many were there once the camp was fully established, varying from six to twenty thousand. During the seven weeks the camp existed numbers would have varied, probably increasing during July and decreasing in August when the camp, originally part of a huge network, became isolated as other camps went down, and the threat of a very large army being sent against Mousehold grew. It is important to realize that the camp was a dynamic, not static, entity. In August, as the more fearful perhaps left, and the hard-core rebels from other camps that had been put down arrived, Mousehold probably became more radicalized as well as smaller.
The Historical Atlas of Norfolk suggests a county population of 112,000 in the 1520s, one of the densest in England.2 Given national population rise since then, this could have taken Norfolk to around 136,000 by 1549.3 The camp was drawn from twenty-five of the thirty-three regional Norfolk Hundreds, plus one from Suffolk. Men from the other Hundreds may have gone to camps in south Norfolk. This would reduce the population pool for the camp to say 100,000. The adult male population would have been around 36,000 but would include the old and infirm, and those who needed to remain behind to look after farms and businesses. I suggest an average camp population of around eight to nine thousand.
To this of course must be added the number of supporters among the poor of Norwich, perhaps 4,000, who would likely have gone to and fro between camp and city once the rebels annexed Norwich, and who certainly participated in the three military actions.
Were there women in the camp? Large-scale rebellion would not have been considered women’s business, though women were often involved in Tudor riots. However two pieces of evidence suggest some women were present. There is a reference in Neville to an adder falling from a rotten tree onto the
breast of Kett’s wife just before the Battle of Dussindale.4 More significant is a hitherto unnoticed reference in F. W. Russell’s nineteenth-century history of the rebellion, citing a document where, after the rebels’ unsuccessful August attack on Great Yarmouth, city constables were ordered to find out the names of those who had joined the camp and also ‘how many of the rebels wives are in the camp, and how many be at home’.5 I suggest that a minority of wives followed their husbands into the camp – I have portrayed this in Tombland. The majority of rebel wives would, I think, have stayed behind to deal with children, businesses and farms.
As for the class and occupational structure of the rebels, two important studies, by Aubrey Greenwood and Jane Whittle, have contributed to our understanding, although both authors agree this is still limited since where rebels’ names and occupations are traceable, they tend to be the most prominent members.6 Of a sample of 121 leading rebels, three were yeomen, twenty husbandmen, thirty-three poorer peasants and no less than forty-two artisans – though this ranges from butchers, who were usually wealthy, to a shoemaker and a rat-catcher, probably poor village artisans partly dependent on the village commons.7 Whittle has studied manorial records, which show the rebels as a cross-section of the tenant population, but as she points out, manorial documents do not record the very poorest.8
Whittle’s study also looked at the ages of her cross-section: eleven per cent were over fifty, fifty-four per cent between forty and fifty, and thirty-five per cent between twenty-five and forty.9 She concludes that while the impetus for the rebellion came from the poor, the richer farmers took over the leadership; although they, like Robert Kett, were potentially in conflict with the poor rebels, especially over their share of the commons. For the time at least they had common grievances over issues of gentry encroachment on common land – and the corrupt exactions of the escheator and feodary.10