Tombland

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