Tombland

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 translated 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 .