Kett's Rebellion was a revolt in the English county of Norfolk during the reign of Edward VI, largely in response to the enclosure of land. It began at Wymondham on 8 July 1549 with a group of rebels destroying fences that had been put up by wealthy landowners. One of their targets was yeoman Robert Kett who, instead of resisting the rebels, agreed to their demands and offered to lead them. Kett and his forces, joined by recruits from Norwich and the surrounding countryside and numbering some 16,000, set up camp on Mousehold Heath to the north-east of the city on 12 July. The rebels stormed Norwich on 29 July and took the city. On 1 August the rebels defeated a Royal Army led by the Marquess of Northampton who had been sent by the government to suppress the uprising. Kett's rebellion ended on 27 August when the rebels were defeated by an army under the leadership of the Earl of Warwick at the Battle of Dussindale. Kett was captured, held in the Tower of London, tried for treason, and hanged from the walls of Norwich Castle on 7 December 1549.
Background The 1540s saw a crisis in agriculture in England. With the majority of the population depending on the land, this led to outbreaks of unrest across the country. Kett's rebellion in Norfolk was the most serious of these. The main grievance of the rioters was enclosure, the fencing of common land by landlords for their own use. Enclosure left peasants with nowhere to graze their animals. Some landowners were forcing tenants off their farms so that they could engross their holdings and convert arable land into pasture for sheep, which had become more profitable as demand for wool increased. Inflation, unemployment, rising rents, and declining wages added to the hardships faced by the common people. As the historian Julian Cornwall put it, they "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".
Uprising at Wymondham Kett's rebellion, or "the commotion time" as it was also called in Norfolk, began in July 1549 in the small market town of Wymondham, some ten miles south-west of Norwich. The previous month, there had been a minor disturbance at the nearby town of Attleborough where fences, built by the lord of the manor to enclose common lands, were torn down. The rioters thought they were acting legally, since Edward Seymour (1st Duke of Somerset, and Lord Protector during part of Edward VI's minority) had issued a proclamation against illegal enclosures. Wymondham held its annual feast on the weekend of 6 July 1549 and a play in honour of St Thomas Becket, the co-patron of Wymondham Abbey, was performed. This celebration was illegal, as Henry VIII had decreed in 1538 that the name of Thomas Becket should be removed from the church calendar. On the Monday, when the feast was over, a group of people set off to the villages of Morley St. Botolph and Hethersett to tear down hedges and fences. One of their first targets was Sir John Flowerdew, a lawyer and landowner at Hethersett who was unpopular for his role as overseer of the demolition of Wymondham Abbey (part of which was the parish church) during the dissolution of the monasteries and for enclosing land. Flowerdew bribed the rioters to leave his enclosures alone and instead attack those of Robert Kett at Wymondham.
Kett was about 57 years old and was one of the wealthier farmers in Wymondham. The Ketts (also spelt Ket, Cat, Chat, or Knight) had been farming in Norfolk since the twelfth century. Kett was the son of Thomas and Margery Kett and had several brothers; clergyman Francis Kett was his nephew. Two or possibly three of Kett's brothers were dead by 1549, but his eldest brother William joined him in the rebellion. Kett's wife, Alice, and several sons are not recorded as having been involved in the rebellion. Kett had been prominent among the parishioners in saving their parish church when Wymondham Abbey was demolished and this had led to conflict with Flowerdew. Having listened to the rioters' grievances, Kett decided to join their cause and helped them tear down his own fences before taking them back to Hethersett where they destroyed Flowerdew's enclosures. The following day, Tuesday 9 July, the protesters set off for Norwich. By now Kett was their leader and they were being joined by people from nearby towns and villages. A local tradition holds that a meeting point for the rebels was an oak tree on the road between Wymondham and Hethersett, where nine of the rebels were later hanged. Known as Kett's Oak, it has been preserved by Norfolk County Council. The oak became a symbol of the rebellion when an oak tree on Mousehold Heath was made the centre of the rebel camp, but this "Oak of Reformation" no longer stands. According to one source the Oak of Reformation was cut down by Norwich City Council in the 1960s to make way for a car park, although Reg Groves wrote in the 1940s that it had already been destroyed.
Bowthorpe, Eaton, and Drayton Kett and his followers camped for the night of 9 July at Bowthorpe, just west of Norwich. Here they were approached by a local official, either Nicholas L'Estrange, Sheriff of Norfolk and Suffolk, or former sheriff Sir Edmund Wyndham, who ordered them to disperse. The response was negative, and the official retreated to Norwich. Next the rebels were visited by the Mayor of Norwich, Thomas Codd, who met a similar response. The following night the rebels camped at nearby Eaton Wood and then, having been refused permission to march through Norwich to reach Mousehold Heath north-east of the city, crossed the River Wensum at Hellesdon and spent the night at Drayton.
Rebel base on Mousehold Heath
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