Tombland (The Shardlake series Book 7)

by C. J. Sansom

  The unrecorded majority of the rebels were likely to have been poorer and younger. Twenty to twenty-five per cent of the rural population of Norfolk were landless labourers.11 Those most likely to come to the camp were, I think, those with little to lose; small-scale village artisans, cottagers, labourers and bond men as well as unemployed ‘masterless men’ like Simon and Natty in Tombland.

  ADMINISTRATION OF THE CAMP

  At the top of the escarpment facing Norwich, from which Mousehold Heath stretches away, stood the executed Earl of Surrey’s vast Italianate mansion, Surrey Place, now empty except, probably, for caretakers. It may be symbolic that while the great mansion was used for storage and imprisoning some of the detained Norfolk gentlemen, Kett did not make his headquarters there but at the nearby, much smaller, St Michael’s Chapel, a survival from the old St Leonard’s Priory which was demolished to build Surrey Place.

  Members of the gentleman class played no part in the government of the camp. As the rebels sent parties out into the countryside to requisition goods, more gentry prisoners were brought in. They were stripped, beaten, humiliated, subject to trials – but not killed. The rebels must have been well aware from the start of the revenge they would wish to wreak on their tenants if things went wrong. This made the enterprise an all-or-nothing venture from the start.

  Robert Kett was undisputed leader of the camp, and a highly effective one who knew how to delegate. Two ‘governors’ from each of the thirty-three Norfolk ‘Hundreds’ were elected, although the franchise is not known. Like much else in the camp, the use of the Hundred subdivision mirrored official structures – two high constables had been chosen annually for each Hundred to report local offences to the court. We know the delegates’ names, and several, like Kett, had been involved in previous disputes.1

  This was an effective way of subdividing the huge camp, which I have portrayed as being laid out according to Hundreds. Many groups came in waving village banners, and I have had these kept flying, useful markers for people finding their way around a vast camp composed mostly of strangers.

  Throughout the camp’s history, as even Sotherton and Neville admit, good order was kept and there was a lack of violence. Organization was clearly effective. Public debates, religious services, trials of the gentlemen and offenders against order in the camp all took place at the camp’s focal point, a gigantic, ancient oak tree which they named the Oak of Reformation (the name may have been intended to have a double meaning, reformation in religion and in society). They constructed a roofed wooden stage, the floor of which must have been raised at least six feet (otherwise, when Matthew Parker visited the camp and made an angry speech there, men would not have been able to stand underneath and prick his feet with spears).2 It is likely that supplies brought in by foraging parties were surrendered to the common store here, and perhaps also distributed.3 Speeches were made, and the leadership, according to Neville, used the Oak to criticize the more radical elements in the camp.4 In the early days at least, opponents of the rebellion were given a voice too.

  The trials held at the Oak involved gentleman prisoners being tried for offences committed against the poor. In Tombland I have portrayed these as following the procedures of a court of law, so far as rules of evidence are concerned, which I think was likely given rebel ‘mirroring’ of state institutions. There was no jury of twelve, however, guilt or innocence being decided by acclamation.5 Despite calls from the crowd to kill some of the gentlemen, none are known to have been executed, though certainly there was some severe roughing up, notably of one particularly unpopular lawyer, Robert Wharton.6 There was probably an element of letting off steam in the trials, but also the opportunity to gather detailed evidence against offending landlords and lawyers.

  The immediate issue, for thousands camped on a waterless heath, was food and drink. The communities from which the rebels came supplied this, to begin with at least – it is important to remember this was the hungry season of the year, just before harvest. In an oft-quoted example, the North Elmham churchwardens sent fish, butter, bread and other foodstuffs to their people at Mousehold and also paid two people to brew for the rebels, another to be their cook and a third to be their spit-turner.7 This implies that the camp established its own breweries and other infrastructure early on.

  Food from supporters outside was supplemented by requisitions from the gentlemen. There seems to have been an initial explosion of indulgence – according to Sotherton the rebels took 3,000 cattle and 20,000 sheep, and deer from parks as well as ‘swans, geese, and all other fowl’, setting the price of mutton at a penny a quarter. Neville states that only the best cuts were eaten; heads and entrails were thrown away.8 Rabbits and doves would likely have been taken too.

  Raids on gentlemen’s houses also brought in money and weapons. Horses, carts and fodder would also have been taken. Soon warrants to supply food were issued to the gentry, signed by Kett and the governors in the name of the King.9 It is notable that weapons, including cannon, appear to have been sought from the beginning. Receipts were given, at least in some cases – yet another example of the Mousehold camp claiming loyalty to the King and following ostensibly legal procedures.

  Another early example of remarkable organization – and a huge amount of work – was the building from scratch not merely of the scaffolding around the Oak of Reformation, but an enormous number of makeshift huts to accommodate the population.10 (I have imagined what these might be like in Tombland.) The wood came from Thorpe Wood. The skills of countless labourers as well as many carpenters would have been involved.

  To create all this from scratch was a huge achievement. Meanwhile, though the Kett brothers and most governors were probably literate, if they were to follow legal forms they needed to prepare documents, and would have required a secretariat and people with legal knowledge. Certainly there were scriveners in the camp, but given the hostility to lawyers in general, the skills of sympathetic ones would have been at a premium. One lawyer, Thomas Godsalve, was captured early on and made to assist, but soon escaped. I have given my fictional lawyer Matthew Shardlake the role of an (at first reluctant) legal adviser in Tombland. There is no evidence that he had any real equivalent.

  What was done by the common people on Mousehold, in a short time, was remarkable. I believe, however, that one important element is missing from most discussions of camp organization – the importance of military skills. ‘Captain’ is a military term, and it is interesting that Kett adopted it from the beginning. The title was also adopted by leaders of the requisitioning parties sent out into the countryside.11 And only men with experience of war, from Scotland and from Henry VIII’s French wars, could have had the experience of organizing and victualling such an enormous camp.

  Only one actual soldier is mentioned by the contemporary chroniclers: Miles, Kett’s ‘master gunner’,12 appears to have been one of the nine principal rebel leaders executed at the Oak of Reformation the day after the rebel defeat.13 The role of deserters from the Scottish war in organizing the national ‘camping’ strategy is mentioned above. If Miles was a master gunner, he had been a very senior officer, in charge of a group of cannon, each requiring a team of men to operate it – loading, priming, sighting and firing. If such matters were not handled very precisely, the cannon could explode. Given that cannon of differing calibres, and presumably many different types of shot, were brought to the camp it seems unlikely that Miles would have been able to train the several teams needed to operate them on his own. I suggest that he was assisted by other skilled deserters.

  The rebels fought no fewer than three engagements during their seven weeks on Mousehold, against successively larger forces. During the 1540s, England’s ‘decade of war’, villagers would have been involved in compulsory archery practice. They would also have been reviewed and sometimes sent for military service at the periodic musters. Nonetheless, to obtain the very high degree of skill that they were to demonstrate, the archers must have received constant training,
and this would have been needed even more where ‘pole weapons’ – halberds, pikes and half-pikes, and agricultural implements adapted as weapons – were concerned.14 Training would also need to be given in fighting in large formations. Only men with military experience could have provided this; Robert Kett had no such background. Seven weeks is an extremely short time to turn a relatively unskilled fighting force into what was, by Dussindale, an extremely effective army. Experienced soldiers must, I think, have been there to train them.

  There is another hint at military involvement. Given the rudimentary Tudor knowledge of hygiene, any large camp was likely to suffer from disease, especially dysentery, that great killer in Tudor army camps which often spread with terrifying rapidity, killing thousands. The Mousehold camp presented many features that would have encouraged the spread of disease – it was high summer, there was no ready source of water, and in the early stages at least the camp was probably full of rotting offal. Yet there is no evidence of any outbreaks of disease at Mousehold; one may be sure the hostile chroniclers would have mentioned it had there been. Military men would have had at least some experience and knowledge of the best ways to avoid disease spreading, especially in the construction of latrines and burial of food remains.

  I would argue that a significant military presence was involved in the organization, preservation of hygiene and above all training in the Mousehold camp. Training would likely have been carried out by a parallel organization, subject to control by the civil administration. Otherwise, I find it difficult to see how the largely untrained men of Mousehold could have achieved the military successes that they did, and that is how I have reimagined the camp in Tombland.

  RELATIONS WITH NORWICH

  With the establishment of the camp, equal or possibly even larger in numbers than Norwich itself and going from strength to strength, the city authorities had no alternative but to become involved. The mayor, Thomas Codd, a leading alderman, Thomas Aldrich, and the preacher Robert Watson attended the camp and soon assumed administrative roles themselves, Codd and Aldrich even, we shall see, becoming signatories to the ‘29 Demands’, the surviving petition from Mousehold. They spoke, and Watson preached, at the Oak of Reformation, Codd and Aldrich seeking to moderate rebel behaviour so far as they could.1 This did not prevent them sending a leading citizen, Nicholas Sotherton’s brother Leonard, to the government to make a full report on the situation.2 The Norwich elite and the Mousehold men must both have been well aware that this was a temporary alliance of convenience; the rebels could probably have taken Norwich even at this early stage, but the walls, although not in good condition, were in most places over twenty feet high and with room on the battlements for archers to defend the city.3

  The rebels seem however to have had free access to the city, and some gentleman prisoners were moved to Norwich.4 It is clear the rebels were walking freely round the city in mid-July when Matthew Parker arrived.5

  Meanwhile the radical Norwich preacher Robert Conyers was appointed to preach twice daily at the camp. No opposition was expressed to his evangelical Protestantism or to the religious settlement; as Greenwood suggests, this probably meant that Norfolk people generally accepted the Reformation, without necessarily wanting it.6 This was all of a piece with the Mousehold leaders’ strategy of proclaiming that they were not rebels at all, merely carrying out the King’s wishes with regard to agrarian reform, and with no complaints about the religious settlement. Kett, and others, may well have been evangelicals, but this can hardly have applied to the whole camp, even if they might have been hostile to traditionalism given its association with the Duke of Norfolk.

  FINANCING THE CAMP

  To begin with, the camp supported itself through provisions brought by local villages and requisitions from the local gentry. Later, after occupying Norwich, they took more weapons, and the money of rich city gentlemen. However it must be doubted that these resources alone could support eight to nine thousand people for seven weeks. The rebels cannot have immediately eaten the 20,000 sheep quoted by Southwell; after an initial celebratory gorging, it is likely that the remaining sheep, together with cattle and other animals, would have been penned in for later slaughter. There was no shortage of room on Mousehold Heath. This is how I have portrayed matters in Tombland.

  Diarmaid MacCulloch has noted two possible further sources of finance – Archbishop Rugge and Sir Richard Southwell. Although both were enemies to religious and political reform, each were actively involved in discussions with Kett.1 The content of his talks with Rugge are unknown, but possibly the archbishop offered Kett money in return for leaving diocesan lands and property – and possibly himself – alone. Certainly Rugge was dismissed in disgrace after the rebellion.

  Even more interesting is the conduct of Southwell who, as has been noted, was an alternate member of the Council, a leading and highly unpopular Norwich encloser, and a ruthless man. He had been a key figure in providing evidence against the Duke of Norfolk, his former patron, and the Earl of Surrey, in 1546. He was also, as noted above, steward of the Lady Mary’s estates – a link that would continue after Mary became Queen.

  In each of the rebellions outside the West Country, leading county figures were sent to negotiate with, or put down, rebellions. With the Duke of Norfolk gone, Southwell was the nearest Norfolk had to a senior political figure. After the Rebellion, he was accused of giving £500 (very roughly £250,000 today) to the rebels. This was far more than other camps received in attempts to buy them off. Of course the Mousehold camp did not disband, although they got the money. After the Rebellion Southwell ended up in the Tower and was then fined £500 for writing ‘bills of sedition with his own hand’.2 Such an action would normally have resulted in execution for treason, yet somehow Southwell, as always, survived.

  I suggest in Tombland that he may have done a private deal with Kett to give him the money in return for leaving his own flocks, and the lands of the Lady Mary, alone. In the early days of the Rebellion some fences were pulled down around her Kenninghall estate, but she was then left in peace; remarkably, she sat quietly at Kenninghall, in the middle of rebel territory, throughout the summer. It would be interesting to research what happened to Southwell’s estates during the Rebellion.

  If, as I have argued, the rebels had money, where could they spend it? This leads to another vital question – did Norwich market, the heart of the city’s economy, continue to function during the Rebellion? I think it must have done; without a venue to sell their products, Norwich traders and citizens would have found themselves in desperate straits. There was no reason for the rebels to close the market, and every reason to keep it open – they could use the money they had obtained to purchase necessities such as candles, shoes, warmer clothes when the weather got colder, and above all food and brewery supplies. The occupation of the city, to cut the rebels off from the market, may be the true explanation of the ‘blockade’ that forced the rebels to give battle in late August, of which more below.

  REIMAGINING LIFE IN THE CAMP

  Trying to understand what daily life in the camp might have been like is an exercise in imagination. However, I have tried throughout to base my portrayal on what few indications the sources give, and on the lives and pastimes of the Tudor commons.

  Where one matter, which would have been of vital importance to those camping out, is concerned – the weather – we have clues from Sotherton and Neville. July seems to have been hot and sunny, facilitating the early construction work and camp organization. When Matthew Parker visited, he found the men drunk and exhausted due to the great heat.1 When the Earl of Northampton’s army arrived on 31 July, they had to rest in Norwich for the night due to heat exhaustion.2 The fine weather was interrupted by at least two very violent thunderstorms. The first was probably during the first fortnight of the camp, because gentlemen were still being brought in from the countryside and one, newly captured, was dragged into the camp in the middle of the storm;3 the second on 1 August, which was severe
enough to douse the fires raging in Norwich after the defeat of the Marquess of Northampton.4 The thunderstorm on 1 August seems to have heralded a change in the weather. Afterwards, Sotherton records the rebels taking shelter from rain in the city churches at night.5 The picture, therefore, looks like a hot, dry July punctuated with severe thunderstorms, followed by a cooler, wetter August. This is the picture I have given in Tombland. The sandy soil of Mousehold Heath would have quickly soaked up rain, but intense thunderstorms would be disruptive, while in hot weather the lack of water would have been a risk to health and a serious discomfort.

  I have pictured the camp as setting up its own breweries and bakeries, with barber-surgeons and country craftsmen. There must have been pens for livestock and also – essential in the forthcoming battles – horses, which would themselves have needed training in their new environment.

  There were probably elements of fiesta, especially in the first days of the camp. It would be easy to reproduce the games and pastimes of the villages – storytelling, cockfighting, wrestling – and entertainers from Norwich may have come up to stage larger events – pageants, acrobats, bear-baiting, puppeteers and players. The ‘camping game’, a Tudor sport strong in East Anglia – a violent version of football with far more players and fewer rules – may have been played. The camp would no doubt have attracted peddlers with their trinkets and other easily transportable goods – and news of how the rebellions were going elsewhere.

  Drunkenness was an issue that could have been more disruptive than it was. Again, if it had been a running problem Neville and Sotherton would have mentioned it. There was a great difference between Tudor ‘small beer’, with its low alcohol content and drunk by everybody, since to drink water was known to risk illness, and ‘strong beer’, far more potent. The beer most commonly brewed in the camp would likely have been ‘small beer’, with the camp authorities likely keeping the supply of strong beer to a minimum.