Edward VI, Part Five

The Prayer Book Rebellion's catalyst was a change in religious practice; Kett’s Rebellion – which was all but simultaneous with the Prayer Book Rebellion, lasting two months in the summer of 1549 – was precipitated by agricultural changes that put the poorer classes at a distinct disadvantage. The practice of enclosure by wealthy landowners was spreading; enclosure – whereby landowners fenced off ‘common land’ strictly for their own use – left common peasants with nowhere to graze their animals. Many laborers were forced off their lands and rendered homeless. The enclosure system took off in tandem with the increased demand for wool; wealthy sheep farmers needed more land for their priceless commodities to graze, and to hell with the poor folk who were on it first. As enclosure spread, so, too, did inflation, unemployment, rising rents, and declining wages. It’s not surprising that the commoners, in the words of historian Mark Cornwall, ‘could scarcely doubt that the state had been taken over by a breed of men whose policy was to rob the poor for the benefit of the rich.’

Enclosures in modern England

The conspirators of Kett’s Rebellion (or ‘the commotion time,’ as it was called in Norfolk) believed they were legitimate and lawful in their uprising against enclosing landlords; they believed they had Somerset’s support and that the tyrannical landlords, rather than the rebels, were the real lawbreakers. Somerset had made a number of proclamations that could be interpreted as sympathetic to the rebels’ cause, and he had authorized investigations into grievances about the encroachment of sheep flocks on common land and loss of tillage. These investigations were spearheaded by an evangelical M.P. named John Hales, whose socially liberal rhetoric made the notion of a godly commonwealth integral to Reformation ideology. The rebels believed that the investigations painted the landlords in the wrong, and thus it was only right and religiously proper for the suffering party to rise up against injustice. Edward VI noted these undercurrents in his Chronicle, writing that the uprisings began ‘because certain commissions were sent down to pluck down enclosures.’ 

Kett's Oak

The rebellion began in July 1549 in the small market town Wymondham during an annual (and illegal) celebration of St. Thomas Becket. The Monday after the feast, 8 July, a handful of commoners made their way to the villages of Morley St. Botolph and Hethersett to tear down fences and hedges. A month before, in the town of Attleborough, fences had been similarly dismantled; the conspirators considered themselves ‘in the right’ because Somerset had issued a proclamation against illegal enclosures. The commoners targeted the land of Sir John Flowerdew, a lawyer and landowner at Hethersett; Flowerdew had earned the chagrin of the people when he oversaw the demolition of Wymondham Abbey during the dissolution of the monasteries. When the people gathered at the edge of his land, he bribed them to leave his fences alone and to turn their attention on those of another landowner by the name of Robert Kett. Kett, nearing sixty years old, was one of the wealthiest farmers in Wymondham, and he and Flowerdew were at loggerheads. When the rabble arrived on his land, Kett listened to their grievances, and then did the unthinkable: he threw in with them! He helped them dismantle his fences, and then he led them back to Flowerdew’s land where they tore down his enclosures. The next day the protesters set off for Norwich with Kett as their titular head; as they walked down country roads, they were joined by more disgruntled peasants eager to execute their own sense of justice. Legend has it that the mob met under an oak tree (now known as Kett’s Oak) on the road between Wymondham and Hethersett; when the rebellion was squashed, nine rebel leaders were hanged from its branches. The oak tree has been preserved by the Norfolk City Council. Though an oak tree would become the symbol of the short-lived rebellion, it wasn’t patterned after Kett’s Oak but after an oak tree on Mousehold Heath (called ‘the Oak of Reformation’) where the rebels pitched their camp. This latter tree no longer remains. As the rabble neared Norwich, both the sheriff and mayor approached them, insisting they turn back; the rioters refused. The mob was denied permission to march through Norwich, so they crossed the River Wensum and spent the night at Drayton. On 12 July they reached Mousehold Heath, where they had a vantage point overlooking Norwich, which lay just beyond the Wensum River. Here they pitched a ‘base camp’, and they’d be there for six and a half weeks. Kett made St. Michael’s Chapel (the ruins of which are known as Kett’s Castle) his headquarters. Mount Surrey, a rundown house that had been empty since the Earl of Surrey’s execution in 1547, became the rebel ‘jail’ for Kett’s prisoners. Kett’s leadership council would meet under the Oak of Reformation to administer the camp; the council issued warrants to obtain victuals and arms and to arrest members of the gentry. Workmen and artisans from Norwich, as well as people from nearby villages, joined the camp on Mousehold Heath; in time it became not only larger than Norwich, which it overlooked, but it was also the second-largest ‘city’ in England with a population of twelve thousand. 

The rebels drew up a list of twenty-nine grievances and sent it to Somerset. Historian Andy Wood summarized the grievances as a ‘shopping list’ of demands but which nevertheless had a strong underlying logic articulating ‘a desire to limit the power of the gentry, exclude them from the world of the village, constrain rapid economic change, prevent the overexploitation of communal resources, and remodel the values of the clergy.’ Interestingly, only one of the articles mentioned enclosure. Another grievance demanded that ‘all bondmen may be made free, for God made all free, with his precious blood shedding,’ likely a complaint against the 1547 Act for the Punishment of Vagabonds that made it legal to enslave a discharged servant who failed to find a new master within three days (though it’s possible they were calling for the abolishment of unofficial serfdom). On 21 July a messenger from Edward VI’s council arrived at Norwich, went with city officials to the rebel camp, and proclaimed the gathering a rebellion and offered a pardon. Kett rejected the offer, insisting that he had no need of pardon since he’d committed no treason. Because the king’s man lacked the resources to arrest the rebels, he returned to Norwich. 

The rebel encampment on Mousehold Heath

Because of the royal proclamation, the rioters were now rebels regardless of their opinion on the matter. The city officials barred Norwich’s gates and set about polishing the city’s defenses. Barred from Norwich’s market (without which the twelve thousand rebels would starve), Kett had two options: either disperse the camp or attack Norwich. In the late evening of 21 July, rebel artillery positioned on and beneath Mount Surrey opened fire on Norwich’s walls. Norwich’s cannons responded, and the opposing artillery dueled through the night. At first light the next morning, Kett withdrew his artillery; six royal artillery pieces in the meadow behind Norwich’s hospital had such good aim that he feared losing all his cannon. Kett repositioned his cannon on Mousehold’s slopes and reopened fire on the city. The guns in the meadow couldn’t elevate their fire enough to oppose the rebel cannon, and at this point Kett ordered the main assault. Thousands of rebels poured down Mousehold’s slope and began swimming across the Wensum River that separated the camp from the town. Norwich’s defenders on the city walls fired volleys of arrows at the mass of rebels crossing the river, but they couldn’t dent the attack. The rebels broke into the city and captured the town. 

Edward VI’s council was enraged to hear of the fall of Norwich, and Edward dispatched the Marquess of Northampton to quell the rebellion. Northampton marched with fifteen hundred men, including Italian mercenaries, and as he neared Norwich he sent a herald to demand the rebels’ surrender. Kett, knowing it would be difficult to defend the city, ordered it abandoned, and the rebels returned to their high position on Mousehold Heath. Northampton marched his army into Norwich and began defensive preparations and ordered patrols to scour the city’s maze of cramped streets. Around midnight alarms rang out; hundreds of rebels were using the cover of darkness and their knowledge of the small streets and alleys outside the walls to launch hit-and-run attacks on royal troops. Lord Sheffield suggested that ramparts be built on the eastern side of the city, which was open to attack, and by eight in the morning on 1 August the makeshift ramparts were strengthened. Later in the morning, Northampton received news that the rebels wished to discuss surrender and were gathering around Norwich’s Pockthorpe Gate. Lord Sheffield went to the gate but found no one there; this was apparently a ruse, as thousands of rebels began crossing the Wensum River near Bishopsgate. Northampton’s main force was encamped in the market place, and he siphoned soldiers through the streets to meet the rebels entering the city. Vicious street fighting favored the rebels, who knew the warren of streets. Lord Sheffield dispatched cavalry to charge the rebels; outside the Great Hospital, Sheffield fell from his horse into a ditch. Expecting to be captured and ransomed, he removed his helmet – only to be slain by a blow from a rebel butcher. With the rebels gaining the upper hand in the streets, and with his senior commander slain, Northampton ordered a retreat to Cambridge. 

John Dudley, Earl of Warwick

Northampton’s army had failed, so another was raised. This one was led by the Earl of Warwick and was considerably larger, with fourteen thousand men including mercenaries from Wales, Germany, and Spain. Warwick had military experience, having fought in France. Northampton was made Warwick’s second-in-command. Warwick’s army entered rebel-held Norwich by attacking the St. Stephen’s and Brazen gates. The rebels were pushed out of the city, setting fire to houses as they fled in an attempt to slow Warwick’s advance. Warwick’s baggage train entered the city around three in the afternoon and promptly got lost; rather than halting in the marketplace, the baggage train continued straight through the city towards the rebel army. When the rebels saw the train from Mousehold, they rushed down the slopes and captured it. The royal army, seeing the looming disaster, set about recapturing the baggage train, and they managed to seize some but not all of the royal artillery in a fierce fight around Bishopsgate. At about ten that night, the rebels entered the city and started burning it. Warwick’s men spent the night dousing the flames, and come morning on 24 August, the rebel artillery began battering down the city’s northern walls. The rebels poured into the gaps and seized the northern part of the city, and Warwick launched a counter-attack. Vicious street fighting expelled the rebels, who retreated back to Mousehold Heath and spent the rest of the day and the long night hurling artillery rounds into the city. Warwick received fifteen hundred German mercenaries – composed of handgunners and pikemen – as reinforcements the next day. Kett knew his rabble didn’t stand a chance against Warwick’s numerous force, so that night they abandoned their camp at Mousehold and prepared for a decisive clash-of-arms against Warwick’s men. 

Warwick's infantry advance towards the rebels at Dussindale

On the morning of 27 August the two armies faced each other outside the city. The ensuing Battle of Dussindale was a disaster for the rebels, which comes as no surprise: in the open, against well-armed and well-trained troops, the rebels didn’t stand a chance. Thousands were killed and the rest scattered; Warwick lost only two hundred fifty men. The day after the battle, captured rebels – numbered anywhere between thirty and three hundred – were hanged outside the Oak of Reformation and outside the Magdalen Gate. Kett was captured at the village of Swannington the night after the battle; he and his brother William were taken to the Tower of London to await trial. Later found guilty, they were returned to Norwich at the beginning of December. Kett was hanged from the walls of Norwich Castle on 7 December 1549; the same day his brother was hanged from the west tower of Wymondham Abbey.