but also of the all-important Protector Somerset. ‘I have heard in deep secret’, the Emperor’s ambassador wrote to his master, ‘that the Protector declared to the Council as his opinion, that the peasants’ demands were fair and just; for the poor people who had no land to graze their cattle ought to retain the commons and the lands that had always been public property, and the noble and the rich ought not to seize and add them to their parks and possessions.’ Moreover, the Tudors, intent on maintaining their despotic rule, were no friends to aristocratic privilege; they allied themselves with the masses against an upstart aristocracy, and were thus inclined to listen to popular complaints.
But stronger reasons made Kett’s defeat inevitable. Complaint was one matter, revolt was another. At Bosworth Field the Tudors had put an end to an age of lawlessness, and they could not allow another to begin. All revolts, for whatever motives, were steps towards anarchy and threats to the centralized power of the monarchy; all were swiftly crushed, whether they were religious uprisings such as the Pilgrimage of Grace in 1536 and the revolt of the northern Earls in 1569, or agricultural uprisings such as Kett’s rebellion. Also, though the peasants were suffering from real injustice, the demands which the rebellion presented were conservative and backward-looking. There was no advantage in going back. The feudal system had decayed beyond repair, and the changes that came about were on the way to increasing the prosperity and well-being of the country. Unhappily, the poor peasants were the victims of this change. A peasant turned off his land was not comforted to know that he was now one of the free and mobile workerson whom the rise and success of the new industries depended. The wandering labourer with neither roof nor employment was not consoled by the thought that he was now a freeman, no longer tied by the bonds of the feudal relationship. But the agricultural changes and the rise of industry ensured that bondage gradually died out; ironically they were the means to bring about the prayer of the Norfolk rebels that ‘all bond men may be made free’.
The main reason, however, for the failure of the rebellion was the opposition of the moneyed and propertied classes. The accumulation of wealth was the chief enthusiasm of the Tudor age, and neither the King, the lords nor the commons could stand against it. Capitalism was the new, magic means to riches, and no device of the capitalists was more effective than enclosure. Those who fought enclosures felt the enmity of the numerous and bold ranks of property. Wolsey and Somerset, the two Tudor statesmen who opposed enclosures, though they were in their days the most powerful men in England, were brought down. And whatever measures the government made, they could not be enforced against the current of the time. ‘We have good statutes made for the commonwealth as touching commoners and enclosers’, Latimer said, ‘but in the end of the matter there cometh nothing forth.’ The enforcement of the law lay in the hands of the justices, and they on the whole were keen enclosers. ‘No man’, Edward VI shrewdly commented, ‘that is in fault himself, can punish another for the same offence.’ Tudor policy could not work without the support of the middle classes.
In general, the Tudors found no means to right the injustice caused by the agrarian changes. For the first time in England, the government faced the problem of unemployment, and this malady puzzled the Tudors as much as it has puzzled all other administrations. The best the Tudors could do was to make some provision for the relief of the poor. Kett’s rebellion, which brought home very clearly the poverty and the desperation of the countryside, helped to encourage this legislation; this one minute success was the only monument to all those peasant corpses in the Norwich field. The ground for the new poor law had
But stronger reasons made Kett’s defeat inevitable. Complaint was one matter, revolt was another. At Bosworth Field the Tudors had put an end to an age of lawlessness, and they could not allow another to begin. All revolts, for whatever motives, were steps towards anarchy and threats to the centralized power of the monarchy; all were swiftly crushed, whether they were religious uprisings such as the Pilgrimage of Grace in 1536 and the revolt of the northern Earls in 1569, or agricultural uprisings such as Kett’s rebellion. Also, though the peasants were suffering from real injustice, the demands which the rebellion presented were conservative and backward-looking. There was no advantage in going back. The feudal system had decayed beyond repair, and the changes that came about were on the way to increasing the prosperity and well-being of the country. Unhappily, the poor peasants were the victims of this change. A peasant turned off his land was not comforted to know that he was now one of the free and mobile workerson whom the rise and success of the new industries depended. The wandering labourer with neither roof nor employment was not consoled by the thought that he was now a freeman, no longer tied by the bonds of the feudal relationship. But the agricultural changes and the rise of industry ensured that bondage gradually died out; ironically they were the means to bring about the prayer of the Norfolk rebels that ‘all bond men may be made free’.
The main reason, however, for the failure of the rebellion was the opposition of the moneyed and propertied classes. The accumulation of wealth was the chief enthusiasm of the Tudor age, and neither the King, the lords nor the commons could stand against it. Capitalism was the new, magic means to riches, and no device of the capitalists was more effective than enclosure. Those who fought enclosures felt the enmity of the numerous and bold ranks of property. Wolsey and Somerset, the two Tudor statesmen who opposed enclosures, though they were in their days the most powerful men in England, were brought down. And whatever measures the government made, they could not be enforced against the current of the time. ‘We have good statutes made for the commonwealth as touching commoners and enclosers’, Latimer said, ‘but in the end of the matter there cometh nothing forth.’ The enforcement of the law lay in the hands of the justices, and they on the whole were keen enclosers. ‘No man’, Edward VI shrewdly commented, ‘that is in fault himself, can punish another for the same offence.’ Tudor policy could not work without the support of the middle classes.
In general, the Tudors found no means to right the injustice caused by the agrarian changes. For the first time in England, the government faced the problem of unemployment, and this malady puzzled the Tudors as much as it has puzzled all other administrations. The best the Tudors could do was to make some provision for the relief of the poor. Kett’s rebellion, which brought home very clearly the poverty and the desperation of the countryside, helped to encourage this legislation; this one minute success was the only monument to all those peasant corpses in the Norwich field. The ground for the new poor law had
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