Tombland

To understand what happened in 1549 we must first look at the social structure. The essential division was between the ‘gentleman’ classes, who did not need to work with their hands to live – perhaps some 2,000 people – and the rest, who did. True, the gentleman classes were divided into a ‘society of orders’ with social divisions between gentlemen, knights and the various levels of aristocracy rigidly enforced by the ‘sumptuary laws’ defining what different social ranks could wear. ¹ It is also true that gentleman status was not just about wealth, but also rules of gentlemanly behaviour – in the words of Thomas Elyot, a gentleman would have ‘more sufferance, more affability, and mildness, than ... a person rural or of a very base lineage’. ² That, at least, was the theory.

According to contemporary belief this division was ordained by God. A 1547 homily stated, ‘Almighty God hath created and appointed all things ... in a most perfect order ... Some are in high degree, some in low; some kings and princes, some inferiors and subjects ... masters and servants ... rich and poor.’ ³

Comparison was often made between social ranks and the human body, with the king as the head, the gentle classes as the arms and hands, and the poor as the feet. ⁴ Sir Thomas Smith spoke of four sorts of people – gentlemen, citizens or burgesses of cities, yeomen, and artificers or labourers. Only the first two could hold office, although yeomen (the more prosperous small farmers) could hold power in their own villages and towns and so ‘must be exempted out of the rascality of the popular’. He admitted however that in villages members of the ‘proletarij’ were commonly made churchwardens and constables, though this was new. ⁵

Economic changes were also taking place. The enclosure of arable land for profit, especially for running sheep for their wool, had been going on since the fifteenth century, bringing a new rural ‘gentry’ class into existence, and in the mid-sixteenth century there was a new, assertive gentry capitalism, not least in Norfolk. ⁶

Enclosure took place at different times in different parts of the country, and indeed the enclosure of common land by landowners would still be a political issue in the eighteenth century. In the reign of Henry VIII, however, the sale of former monastic land by the Crown meant that a whole new land market sprang up.

Marx saw capitalism emerging from transformations in both landownership and the relations of production between around 1450 and 1600. The earlier liberation of serfs from bondage, he argued, resulted in a class of small peasant proprietors who, particularly in the sixteenth century, were then expropriated by capitalistic landowners. Subsequent research confirms there is a good deal in this, though Marx pretty much ignored the development of the smaller landowning class, the yeomen. ⁷ As Jane Whittle has observed, ‘we are left with a lengthy period of time which is neither fully capitalist nor feudal’. ⁸ In the sixteenth century even serfdom – the tying of the bondman to his lord’s land – was not quite extinct in some parts, including Norfolk. ⁹

Thomas Smith’s ‘labourers’ were never, however, completely powerless. In 1525, when Henry VIII imposed massive new taxation, opposition in East Anglia compelled him to withdraw it. ¹⁰ This, however, was a rare success and, like the 1536 Northern uprising, involved the commons and elite classes operating together on issues affecting both – though in 1536 involvement of the gentleman classes was sometimes reluctant. ¹¹ The forces of the State, however, were able to overcome all large-scale peasant rebellions, like the 1381 Peasants’ Revolt and Cade’s Rebellion of 1450.

While, as some historians stress, ¹²

common people had wills of their own and would take whatever advantage they could of changing circumstances, what they could not do, by virtue of their lowly status, was demand a share in the government of the realm. This fact was at the heart of the tragedy of 1549.

THE RULE OF PROTECTOR SOMERSET : INFLATION AND WAR , RELIGIOUS AND SOCIAL REFORM

When Henry VIII died in 1547, his will provided for a Council of sixteen, with alternates (including Sir Richard Southwell) provided in case a member died or left, to rule England until Edward VI, then nine, reached eighteen. Edward was not, as popular culture has often portrayed him, ‘sickly’. He was fit and highly intelligent. There was every reason to believe he would grow to manhood.

Within a matter of weeks the Council had devolved power upon the Duke of Somerset, eldest brother of Edward’s mother Jane Seymour, who became Protector. Substantial bribes were involved. ¹