If Kett's Rebellion was a pantomime, Kett and his brother would be the good guys and Hethersett landowner Sir John Flowerdew would be the baddie.
I am currently researching the Flowerdew family, who were major landowners in Hethersett for centuries and one of the most prominent families in the history of our village.
Joe Mason writes a regular blog on East Anglian history and his latest entry is all about the rebellion. Joe has kindly given me permission to reproduce part one of the Kett story here. This is what he has written:
"It is important to remember the political context of Kett's Rebellion. In the year 1549 the boy king Edward VI was on the throne. He was a firm protestant (if he had been otherwise he would have had no claim to be king) and even more importantly he was surrounded by protestant advisers, principally the lord Protector Edward Seymour.
"On a completely different note, across the country wealthy Lords of the Manor were increasingly enclosing local commons to graze their sheep. The Duke of Somerset (the Lord Protector) decreed these enclosures illegal, as indeed they were; when enclosure got underway in earnest in 19th century it required numerous Acts of Parliament to make it all legal. The fencing of common land led to a small protest in the town of Attleborough in the summer of 1549.
"The beginning of the revolt proper, the 6th of July in that year, was the occasion of the annual play in honour of St Thomas Beckett, co-patron of Wymondham Abbey in Roman Catholic times. This performance was illegal, as Henry VIII had removed Beckett from the church calendar some twelve years earlier, and plays of a Catholic nature were in any case of a dubious nature in the newly reformed church.
"Nevertheless the play had continued at Wymondham regardless, perhaps honouring local tradition more than from any deep theological perspective. The monastic part of the Abbey had been destroyed in the few years since Henry's break with Rome, and the stone reused as building material. This drastic reshaping of the town had caused resentment among the people of Wymondham. Sir John Flowerdew had been instrumental in the demolition of Wymondham Abbey, and he had also erected hedges around the common land in Hethersett, so the people had at least two good reasons to attack him. Flowerdew, however, paid the rebels off and got them instead to confront the Lord of the Manor in Wymondham.
"There one Robert Kett was Lord of the Manor. Rising from humble beginnings - he was the younger son of a moderately wealthy couple from the village of Forncett. He had by all account a successful tanning business and by 1549 he had purchased the Lordship of the Manor in Wymondham. In an unexpected and fateful turn of events, Robert Kett agreed with the protestors and even put himself forward as the leader of a much more powerful and effective rising. Thus the Rebellion was born. Under the branches of a young oak tree- see the postcard that heads this post - Kett (a man in his fifties) harangued the rapidly growing crowd of Norfolk peasants. They had been brought together by economic discontent, but it had always had its religious side, and it is hard to say which was more important.
"A strange transformation was taking place in the spiritual side of the protest. Although it was in origin a very conservative affair, harking back to the good old days before the Reformation, the rebels' demands became increasingly a reaction to the slow rate of progress Protestantism was making in eastern England. In spite of modern historians stressing the reformist efforts of the Government, there was a strong feeling among the protestors that the Lord Protector was not acting quickly enough to advance the reformation. The rebels also demanded better educated clergy.
From Wymondham the rebels advanced to the outskirts of Norwich. Camping first at Bowthorpe, then on the 10th July at Eaton. They crossed the river at Hellesdon and after spending Thursday night at Drayton some 16,000 rebels made their way to Mousehold Heath."
We will have part two of Joe's piece in a future blog. His blogs are available at:
https://joemasonspage.wordpress.com/author/joemasonspage/
Joe can be contacted at: [email protected].
Meanwhile my history colleague Lewis Buckingham (another famous Hethersett name) who lives in Australia and writes a regular column for my e-magazine Hethersett Herald will be delving into the Flowerdew family in the next edition. Here's a taster of what he has to say about them:
"The Flowerdews, however, were part of the nouveaux riche. Little is known of them before the mid 1400s, when they were farmers. In the late 15th Century one added skill with a pen to his background in farming. By the mid 1500s, by way of some canny family marriages and having friends in high places, they were sharing the lordship of the Manor of Hethersett.
The Flowerdews weren't a subtle folk."
Read more about this in the June edition of Hethersett Herald which will be available exclusively online by June 1st at www.hethersettherald.weebly.com