Kett's Rebellion (1549): Norfolk Rises Against Enclosure

Kett’s Rebellion was a popular uprising in Norfolk in the summer of 1549, led by the Wymondham landowner Robert Kett. Thousands of rebels, angered by the enclosure of common land and by local misgovernment, camped on Mousehold Heath outside Norwich, seized England’s second city and defeated a royal army. They were finally crushed at the Battle of Dussindale on 27 August 1549, in one of the bloodiest episodes of Tudor England.

Background: a summer of commotion

In 1549 England was governed by Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset, Lord Protector for the young Edward VI. Prices were rising fast, partly because of debased coinage and the cost of war in Scotland, including the campaign of Pinkie.

Many landlords were enclosing common land with hedges and ditches to graze large flocks of sheep, depriving villagers of grazing rights. Somerset sent commissions to investigate illegal enclosure, which encouraged commoners to believe that the government was on their side.

That summer, unrest broke out across southern and eastern England. In the West Country the Prayer Book Rebellion opposed the new English liturgy. In East Anglia the protests were mainly economic and largely accepted the Protestant religious changes.

The rising

In early July 1549 people gathered at Wymondham for a feast honouring Thomas Becket and began pulling down enclosure hedges. A local lawyer, John Flowerdew, reportedly paid them to destroy fences belonging to his rival Robert Kett. Kett instead agreed with the protesters, helped tear down his own hedges and offered to lead them.

The rebels marched to Norwich and by about 12 July had set up camp on Mousehold Heath, a hill overlooking the city. Contemporary accounts put the camp at around 16,000 people. Kett organised it with remarkable order, issuing warrants for supplies and holding courts beneath an oak tree called the Oak of Reformation.

The rebels drew up 29 demands addressed to the king. They asked for limits on enclosure and on landlords’ use of commons, fair rents, better clergy, the end of corrupt officials and, most strikingly, the freeing of all remaining bondmen, since God had made all free.

Norwich and Dussindale

When a royal herald offered a pardon on 21 July, Kett refused, saying they had done nothing that required pardon. The next day the rebels stormed and occupied Norwich.

A royal force under the Marquess of Northampton entered Norwich at the end of July, but on 1 August the rebels drove it out after street fighting in which Lord Sheffield was killed. The government then sent John Dudley, Earl of Warwick, with an army of perhaps 12,000 men, including German and other foreign mercenaries.

Warwick retook Norwich on 24 August. After the rebels left their camp for a new position at Dussindale, his cavalry and hand-gunners attacked on 27 August 1549. The rebel army was destroyed; estimates of the dead range from about 2,000 to 3,500, with around 3,000 the figure most often cited.

Aftermath

Robert Kett was captured near Swannington the next day. He and his brother William were tried for treason in London. Robert was hanged in chains from the walls of Norwich Castle on 7 December 1549; William was hanged from the west tower of Wymondham Abbey. Dozens of other rebels were executed in Norwich after the battle.

The rebellion helped bring down Somerset, who was overthrown by his fellow councillors, led by Warwick, in October 1549. Warwick became the dominant figure of Edward VI’s later reign as Duke of Northumberland.

Memory and legacy

For centuries the rebellion was remembered mainly through hostile accounts. Nicholas Sotherton, a Norwich citizen, wrote an eyewitness narrative, and Alexander Neville published a Latin history in 1575 that portrayed the rebels as dangerous and lawless. For many years Norwich held an annual thanksgiving for the city’s deliverance on 27 August.

Opinion changed in the 19th and 20th centuries, when historians and writers began to see Kett as a champion of the poor against greedy landlords. In 1949, on the 400th anniversary, Norwich placed a plaque at the entrance to the castle honouring him as a courageous leader in the common people’s long struggle for just conditions.

Places linked to the rising are still marked today, including Kett’s Heights, a park on the edge of Mousehold, and a roadside tree near Hethersett known as Kett’s Oak, where the rebels are said to have gathered.

Timeline

• 1549, early July: Riots against enclosures begin at Wymondham.
• 1549, c. 12 July: The rebel camp is established on Mousehold Heath.
• 1549, 21 July: Kett rejects a royal pardon.
• 1549, 22 July: The rebels take Norwich.
• 1549, 1 August: Northampton’s army is driven from Norwich.
• 1549, 24 August: Warwick recaptures Norwich.
• 1549, 27 August: The rebels are defeated at Dussindale.
• 1549, 7 December: Robert Kett is hanged at Norwich Castle.

Why it matters

Kett’s Rebellion was the largest and best-organised of the popular risings of 1549. Its demands offer a rare view of what ordinary Tudor people wanted, echoing the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381 in their call to end serfdom. Its defeat, and the fall of Somerset that followed, showed how dangerous social unrest could be to a weak Tudor regime.