Tudors (History of England Vol 2) (33 page)

A story had just come out of Clyst St Mary, a village 3 miles east of Exeter. Walter Raleigh, the father of the famous mariner, was riding towards the town when he observed an old woman on her way to Mass praying with a set of rosary beads in her hand. He stopped to rebuke her, ‘saying further that there was a punishment by the law appointed against her’. The woman hurried on to the church where she denounced the gentleman for his ‘very hard and unseemly speeches concerning religion’. She also told her fellow parishioners that he had made the threat that ‘except she would leave her beads and give over holy bread and water the gentlemen would burn them out of their houses and spoil therein’. This was a general and impolitic menace to the whole community; Raleigh was found and beaten, while a local mill was burned down. The events became part of the rebellion itself.

At the beginning of July 2,000 rebels marched in procession towards Exeter; they were guided by priests, robed and chanting, and at their head was the sacred pyx, or jewelled container, holding the Blessed Sacrament. They had come to besiege the town as an emblem of detestable heresy. The townsmen of Exeter resisted the siege with valour, despite the restrictions of food and water; one of them said that ‘he would eat one arm and fight with the other before he would agree to a surrender’.

The protesters had drawn up a set of articles in which it was stated that ‘we will have the holy decrees of our forefathers observed, kept and performed and the sacrament restored to its ancient honour’. They denounced the Book of Common Prayer itself as ‘a Christmas play’ or ‘a Christmas game’; this observation came from the fact that at the time of receiving communion the
men and women were supposed to form separate groups. This was uncannily similar to the first movement of a festive dance, and so invited ridicule.

The rebellion could not, or would not, be quelled by the local magnates; as a result, Somerset was obliged to call in his own soldiers, most of whom were mercenaries from Germany and Italy. Never before had an English ruler called in foreign troops against his own people. Six battles were fought against the rebels, the most bloody of which was at the village of Clyst St Mary itself, where on 25 July Lord Russell launched an attack on approximately 2,000 of what must now be termed the enemy; 1,000 rebels died in the action, and 900 were taken only to be massacred on Clyst Heath. It was said that all their throats were slit within ten minutes. The village was put to the torch and many of the villagers were murdered. It may be true that no heretics were burned during the regime of Protector Somerset, but this general carnage must count as one of the horrors of religious warfare. When they heard of the killings another force of rebels marched to Clyst Heath, where 2,000 of them were dispatched.

Russell then moved on to relieve Exeter but, by the time he arrived, the rebels had broken off their siege and departed. Yet retribution could still be exacted. A ‘mass priest’ was hanged from the steeple of the church of St Thomas, in the south of the city, wearing his vestments and draped with the bell, beads and holy-water-bucket of the old faith. The mayor of Bodmin was summoned to dinner, after which he was invited to inspect the gallows. ‘Think you,’ he was asked, ‘think you it is strong enough?’

‘Yes, sir, it is.’

‘Well then, get you up, for it is for you.’

The mayor had in fact been forced to participate in the rising by the rebels. But revenge always includes rough justice. A final battle at Sampford Courtenay, where the riots had begun, was enough to dissolve the Prayer Book Rebellion.

Just as one fire was slowly being extinguished another flared up. In the second week of July a group of Norfolk inhabitants threw down the pales and hedges of the enclosed fields and then, under the leadership of Robert Kett, made a camp on Mousehold Heath just outside the walls of Norwich. Other people from the
surrounding countryside flocked to them, to protest against what they considered to be the iniquitous oppressive regime of the gentry, and it was estimated that some 16,000 gathered beyond the city walls. One group of villagers from Heydon marched behind their parish banner, thus testifying to their allegiance to the old faith. Somerset and his councillors purported to believe that the revolt was being spread by ‘some naughtie papist priests’.

Kett and the other leaders of the revolt sent a series of articles to the protector in which they outlined their complaints; they prayed his grace ‘that no lord of no manor shall common upon the commons’ and that ‘copyhold land that is unreasonably rented may go as it did in the first year of King Henry VII’. No lord of the manor should be able to exploit common land. Private jurisdictions should be abolished. Their demands in general are clear evidence of a belief in the ancient and traditional ways of the countryside; the rebels were not innovators but conservators, protesting against the encroachments of a free market, the rapacity of newly rich landlords, and the steady depreciation in the value of money. They wished to return to what can be called feudalism. That is why they also wished to retain the old faith. It is significant that the rebels in Norfolk had first come together at a play concerning the translation of Thomas Becket to the shrine of Canterbury.

A phrase passed around that they would leave as many gentlemen in Norfolk as there were white bulls – none at all, in other words. ‘All power is in the hands of the gentry,’ it was reported in the first history of the rising, ‘and they so use it as to make it unbearable; while nothing is left for us but the extreme of misery . . . What is our food? Herbs and roots. Since we too have souls and bodies, is this all we are to expect from life?’ A verse was left on the carcass of a slain sheep:

The protector had told the imperial ambassador that ‘all hath conceived a wonderful hate against gentlemen and taketh them all as their enemies . . . In Norfolk gentlemen, and all serving men
for their sakes, are as evil-handled as may be.’ As a precaution a bodyguard of 2,000 horse and 4,000 soldiers was established around the young king. The gates of London were strengthened, and a drawbridge placed upon London Bridge. On 18 July martial law was declared, and even to mention rebellion was to draw down death at the end of the rope. It is a measure of how local revolt could threaten the whole harmony of Tudor administration, based as it was upon an informal pact between the centre and the regions. Untune that string, and hark what discord follows.

The rebels on Mousehold Heath declared themselves to be ‘the king’s friends and deputies’, emphasizing once more their role as traditional loyalists, and brought a semblance of order into their confused ranks. Spokesmen for each hundred were appointed, and Kett ordained that justice would be dispensed beneath a great oak that became known as the Tree of Reformation. Certain gentlemen and landowners were paraded beneath the tree, charged with robbing the poor, and then imprisoned within the camp.

Local camps were set up in other neighbourhoods in Suffolk and elsewhere, creating a network of protest in East Anglia. Some 3,000 Yorkshire men had gathered under the proclamation that ‘there should no king reign in England; the noblemen and gentlemen to be destroyed’. This was considerably more radical than any demands made by Kett and his men; but now all were denounced indiscriminately as agents of chaos.

On 31 July the marquis of Northampton brought 1,500 men to the walls of Norwich, where he attempted to break the supply lines between the town and the rebels; his forces made their way through the lanes and alleys of the town, but the decayed and dilapidated walls offered them no protection. The rebels came down from Mousehold Heath, with what one chronicler describes as ‘confused cries and beastly howlings’, and cut them apart; Northampton fled, leaving Norwich to the mercy of the insurgents. Kett set up an armed camp in the grounds of the cathedral and took command. He and his men were now guilty of treason, having assaulted and slaughtered the king’s army.

Somerset and the council met each day for a week, but could come to no decision. The protector first envisaged that he would lead an army against Kett and his men but then, for reasons that
are unclear, changed his mind. Instead he sent out John Dudley, earl of Warwick, at the head of a force of 6,000 foot together with 1,500 horse. On 23 August, 3 miles from Norwich, Dudley sent Kett a final summons to surrender or else face certain defeat at the hands of overwhelming strength. When a royal herald approached the rebels with news of the offer a boy pulled down his breeches and did ‘a filthy act’; in response Dudley’s soldiers shot him.

Uproar now arose in the rebel camp and, when Kett offered to meet Dudley, his followers would not allow him to leave them. Whereupon Dudley now fired Norwich; his forces broke down the portcullis gate and began to roam through the city with their swords in their hands. The knights and gentlemen within the army had drawn their swords and kissed one another’s blades, which was according to Holinshed ‘an ancient custom used among men of war in times of great danger’. Dudley made for the marketplace, where many of the rebels were encamped, and promptly hanged forty-nine of Kett’s men; such was the congestion that the gallows broke apart. The rebels formed themselves into three separate companies and dispersed, launching various sallies and incursions against the army.

With much of the city on fire, and with supplies running low, Kett decided that it was better to evacuate Mousehold Heath and move to the more defensible terrain of Dussindale to the east of Norwich. He took with him the gentlemen, or hostages, who might prove useful in any negotiations. On the following morning Dudley and his army moved onto Dussindale, where a pardon was offered. It was rejected. After a confused preliminary skirmish the guns were trained upon the rebels and, as they wavered, Dudley’s horse rode into them; the prominent rebels in the front line, with Kett among them, fled the scene. The remnant of the rebel force formed a barricade out of the carts and carriages closest to hand; they faced almost certain death, on the field of battle or on the gallows at a later date, but Dudley held out to them once more the promise of pardon. It seems that he came in front of them to pledge his word that, if they submitted and surrendered, they would be spared. Most of them took this last opportunity, crying out ‘God save King Edward! God save King Edward!’ The
fighting was over by mid-afternoon, with 2,000 of the rebels lying dead.

Kett had taken refuge in a barn some 8 miles away, but here he was found and taken prisoner. He was returned under armed guard on the following day to Norwich, where 300 of the recalcitrant rebels were hanged. Kett himself, after a trial in London, was eventually hanged in chains from the wall of Norwich Castle. A plaque was set up by that place in 1949 which read: ‘in reparation and honour to a notable and courageous leader in the long struggle of the common people of England to escape from a servile life into the freedom of just conditions’.

At the time, however, the verdict upon him was more ambiguous. Kett had been Dudley’s tenant, and rumours have survived of an intrigue between the men to bring down the protector. The treasurer of the army, in particular, had been sending money to Kett. It has been rumoured that Lady Mary had also been party to the plot. But the principal participants, if such they were, have successfully covered any tracks they might have made. All is dark and uncertain. We may chronicle the larger movements of the time but the private deeds remain invisible. We may see dark shapes and outlines – the smiler with the knife under the cloak, the intriguer with the open purse – but we can conclude nothing.

The rebellions may have been crushed, but their ubiquity demoralized the government of the protector. He had acted in an inconsistent manner, at one moment trying to ease their discontents while at another relying upon naked force to suppress them; he had attempted both conciliation and violence, so gaining a reputation for both weakness and brutality. But if it was clear that the response of Somerset and his colleagues was confused, it is also evident that the local administrations of both Devon and Norfolk were weak and uncertain. It did not help that the great magnate of East Anglia, the duke of Norfolk, had been confined in the Tower since 1546 on the charge of high treason. It is perhaps significant that Lady Mary, the largest landowner in Norfolk, seems to have done nothing to arrest the disorder.

At this juncture John Dudley, earl of Warwick, stepped forward; he was reputedly a friend and colleague of Somerset but, in
matters of politics, the winner takes all. In the reign of Henry he had fought successfully both in Scotland and in France; his reputation as a military commander was now further attested by his victory over the Norfolk rebels where, unlike Somerset, he had taken to the field. He was circumspect and politic; not domineering, he adopted a conciliatory style.

When he returned to London at the head of the conquering army, he was virtually in control of the city. Power was now the spur to action. It was clear enough that the policies of Somerset were failing. It was claimed that he had gone too far in his early appeasement of the rebels; that, in a sequence of letters he had written in the summer, he had come close to a policy of collaboration with them against the ‘sheep-owners’. This may have been a negotiating tactic, like that which Henry VIII employed at the time of the Pilgrimage of Grace, but it was cause enough to earn the suspicion and dislike of the landed class. His ‘levity’ and ‘softness’ were denounced.

Other evidence of failure could be found. English authority in Scotland, imposed by means of garrisons, was failing. In the summer the resurgent French king, Henry II, declared war against England and began to lay siege to the English colony of Boulogne. He also had in his possession the young queen of Scotland, as his future daughter-in-law, and he seemed likely to claim her country as his own. From rebellion at home to failure abroad, evidence of Somerset’s misgovernment was everywhere to be seen.