page_title: Kett's Rebellion
section_title: Legacy
hierarchical_section_title: Kett's Rebellion / Legacy
caption_attribution_description: English: Kett's Oak Detail on Kett House, Station Road. Kett's Oak in Norfolk is where Robert Kett gathered his followers to capture Norwich castle in 1549 - I don't know whether the House is actually named after Robert Kett, though. Sandstone bas-relief, artist not recorded. ca. 1962.
context_page_description: Kett's Rebellion was a revolt in Norfolk, England 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.
context_section_description: In 1550, the Norwich authorities decreed that in future 27 August should be a holiday to commemorate "the deliverance of the city" from Kett's Rebellion, and paid for lectures in the cathedral and parish churches on the sins of rebellion. This tradition continued for over a century.
  The rising was discussed by Sir John Cheke in The hurt of sedicion howe greueous it is to a commune welth, (1549). The only known surviving eye-witness account of the rebellion, a manuscript by Nicholas Sotherton, son of a Norwich mayor, is hostile towards the rebels. So too is Alexander Neville's 1575 Latin history of the rebellion, De furoribus Norfolciensium. Neville was secretary to Matthew Parker, who had preached to Kett's followers under the Oak of Reformation on Mousehold, unsuccessfully appealing to them to disperse. In 1615 Neville's work was translated into English by Norfolk clergyman Richard Woods under the title Norfolke Furies and was reprinted throughout the following century. Francis Blomefield's detailed account in his History of Norwich (published in parts during 1741 and 1742) was based on Neville but supplemented with material from other sources such as the works of Raphael Holinshed, Peter Heylin and Thomas Fuller, together with various local records. 'Blomefield allowed himself sufficient impartiality to be able to set out, without comment, the grievances of those taking part, but heaped abuse on them for going further than their original intentions'.
  It was only in the 19th century that more sympathetic portrayals of the rebellion appeared in print and started the process that saw Kett transformed from traitor to folk hero. An anonymous work of 1843 was critical of Neville's account of the rebellion, and in 1859 clergyman Frederic Russell, who had unearthed new material in archives for his account of the rebellion, concluded that "though Kett is commonly considered a rebel, yet the cause he advocated is so just, that one cannot but feel he deserved a better name and a better fate".
  In 1948, Alderman Fred Henderson, a former mayor of Norwich who had been imprisoned in the castle for his part in the food riots of 1885, proposed a memorial to Kett. Originally hoping for a statue, he settled for a plaque on the walls of Norwich Castle engraved with his words and unveiled in 1949, 400 years after the rebellion. In the 21st century the death of Kett is still remembered by the people of Norwich. On 7 December 2011, the anniversary of his death, a memorial march by members of Norwich Occupy and Norwich Green Party took place and a wreath was laid by the gates of Norwich Castle.
  After the rebellion the lands of Kett and his brother William were forfeited, although some of them were later restored to one of his sons. In the longer term the Kett family do not seem to have suffered from their association with the rebellion, but to have prospered in various parts of Norfolk. George Kett, a descendant of Kett's younger brother Thomas, moved to Cambridge and co-founded the architectural masonry company of Rattee and Kett. George Kett's son, also George, was mayor of Cambridge on three occasions and compiled a genealogy of the Kett family.
  The rebellion is remembered in the names of schools, streets, pubs and a walking route in the Norwich and Wymondham area, including the Robert Kett Junior School in Wymondham, Dussindale Primary School in Norwich, the Robert Kett pub in Wymondham, Kett House residence at the University of East Anglia, and Kett's Tavern in Norwich, and in a folk band, Lewis Garland and Kett's Rebellion, and a beer, Kett's Rebellion, by Woodforde's Brewery in Norwich.
  Kett's rebellion has featured in novels, including Frederick H. Moore's Mistress Haselwode: A tale of the Reformation Oak (1876), F.C. Tansley's For Kett and Countryside (1910), Jack Lindsay's The Great Oak (1949), Sylvia Haymon's children's story The Loyal Traitor (1965), Margaret Callow's A Rebellious Oak (2012), and C.J. Sansom's Tombland (2018); plays, including George Colman Green's Kett the tanner (1909); and poetry, including Keith Chandler's coll
caption: Kett's Oak or the Oak of Reformation on Kett House, an office block in Station Road, Cambridge; Willi Soukop, sculptor
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