Tombland

Many in Norfolk remembered the rebellion with longing, and, like Ralph Claxton in the epigraph to Tombland , were prosecuted for saying so. John Oldman was prosecuted in 1550 for stating ‘he wished that he was still in the rebel camp on Mousehold, eating stolen mutton’. ⁸ John Redhead quoted two men as looking towards Kett’s body hanging from the top of Norfolk Castle, one saying, ‘Oh Kette God have mercye uppon thy soule and ... trust in God but the kings Majestye and his Connsaill shell ... Of their own gentylnes thou shalbe taken downe and by the grace of God and buryed and not hanged uppe for wynter stoore.’ ⁹

There were, however, to be no more large-scale popular rebellions, and the power of the Tudor State against the poor was strengthened. Andy Wood has argued that 1549 was decisive in shifting the loyalties of the yeoman class towards aspiration and gentleman status, valuing literacy for their children and becoming stalwarts of the Elizabethan State. ¹⁰ Meanwhile, the poor got poorer.

And yet. Almost a century later, in 1644, during the English Civil Wars, the New Model Army arose from the Eastern Association, made up of men from the South-East, especially East Anglia. The New Model Army would later produce radical movements such as the Levellers. It is perhaps not too fanciful to imagine that some of the soldiers of the Eastern Association, great-grandchildren of the 1549 rebels, brought with them memories of a past attempt to create a more equal society.

ENDNOTES

Introduction

1 . The full story is told in Holbrooke, R., ‘A Mousehold Abduction, 1548’, in Rawcliffe, C., Virgoe, R. and Wilson, R. (eds), Counties and Communities: Essays on East Anglian History (1996), pp. 115–28.

2 . Jordan, W. K., Edward VI: The Young King (1968), p. 493.

The Background: Class and Status

1 . Hayward, M., Rich Apparel: Clothing and the Law in Henry VIII’s England (2009), chapter 2.

2 . Elyot, T., The Book Named the Governor (1531), quoted in Wood, A., Riot, Rebellion and Popular Politics in Early Modern England (2002), p. 26.

3 . Hayward, p. 42, quoting Elton, G. R., Tudor Constitution (1960), p. 15.

4 . Hayward, p. 43, quoting Hale, J., The Civilization of Europe in the Renaissance (1993), p. 465.

5 . De Republica Anglorum , quoted in Wood (2002), pp. 29–30.

6 . Wood, A., The 1549 Rebellions and the Making of Early Modern England (2007), p. 14.

7 . For an interesting discussion of the virtues and limitations of Marx’s analysis, see Wood (2007), pp. 14–16.

8 . Whittle, J., The Development of Agrarian Capitalism: Land and Labour in Norfolk, 1440–1580 (2000), pp. 97–8.

9 . Wood (2007), p. 181.

10 . Fletcher, A. and MacCulloch, D., Tudor Rebellions (2004), pp. 22–4.

11 . Ibid., chapter 4 and Wood (2002), pp. 49–54.

12 . See particularly Shagan, E., Popular Politics and the English Reformation (2003).

The Rule of Protector Somerset: Inflation and War, Religious and Social Reform

1 . There is an interesting discussion of the circumstances of Somerset’s rise to power in Skidmore, C., Edward VI: The Last King of England (2007), chapters 1–3.

2 . Jordan, W. K., Edward VI: The Young King (1968) expresses the first view; Bush, M. L., The Government Policy of Protector Somerset (1975) the second.

3 . See e.g. Jordan, p. 39, Skidmore, pp. 239-40.

4 . Merriman, M., The Rough Wooings: Mary Queen of Scots 1542–1551 (2000), pp. 218–19.

The Great Inflation

1 . Chalis, C., The Tudor Coinage (1978), pp. 68–95.

2 . Wood (2007), p. 30.

3 . Youings, J., Sixteenth-Century England (1984), p. 135.

4 . See discussion in Bush, pp. 41–2.

The Scottish War

1 . This account is based on Merriman, chapter 10.

2 . Ibid., p. 342.

3 . Hodgkins, A., ‘Reconstructing Rebellion: Digital Terrain Analysis of the Battle of Dussindale (1549)’, Internet Archaeology 38 (2015), p. 20.

4 . Phillips, G., ‘To Cry “Home! Home!”: Neutrality, Morale and Indiscipline in Tudor Armies’, Journal of Military History 65 (April 2001), p. 320.

5 . Fletcher and MacCulloch, chapter 13.

Religious Change

1 . Jordan, chapters 4–5.

2 . Fletcher and MacCulloch, p. 240, fn. 9.

3 . Jordan, pp. 125–6.

The Commonwealth Men