Agrarian agitation in mid-sixteenth-century norfolk: A petition of 1553

Historical Journal

Volumn 44, Issue 1, 2001, Pages 223-238

  Hoyle, R W ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF READING   (United Kingdom)

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EID: 85016355837     PISSN: 0018246X     EISSN: 14695103     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0018246X01001509     Document Type: Article

References (52)

1. B. M. S. Campbell and Mark Overton, ‘A new perspective on medieval and early modern agriculture: six centuries of Norfolk farming, c.1250-c.1850’, Past and Present, 141 (1993), pp. 38–105
2. the most convenient point of entry. B. M. S. Campbell, ‘The livestock of Chaucer's reeve: fact or fiction’, in E. B. de Windt, ed., The salt of common life: individuality and choice in the medieval town, countryside and church (Kalamazoo, 1995).
3. Most recently S. Wade Martins and T. Williamson, Roots of change: farming in the landscape in East Anglia, c.1700–1870 (Agricultural History Review, supplement ser. 2, 1999).
4. Roots of change: farming in the landscape in East Anglia, pp. 196–202.
5. See, for instance, H. Eiden, ‘Joint action against “bad” lordship: the peasants’ revolt in Essex and Norfolk’, History, 83 (1998), pp. 5–30
6. J. E. Archer, ‘By a flash and a scare’: animal maiming and poaching in East Anglia, 1815–1870 (Oxford, 1990)
7. A. Howkins, Poor labouring men: rural radicalism in Norfolk, 1872–1923 (London, 1985).
8. K. J. Allison, ‘The lost villages of Norfolk’, Norfolk Archaeology, 31 (1957), pp. 135, 136.
9. Diarmaid MacCulloch, influenced by the account in idem, ed., ‘The Vita Mariae Angliae reginae of Robert Wingfield of Brantham’, Chetham Miscellany, 28 (Chetham 4th ser., 29, 1984)
10. wrote of a ‘groundswell of popular support which carried Mary to victory’ and cited the opinion of another contemporary: ‘the noblemen's tenants refused to serve their lords against Queen Mary’ (p. 188).
11. The late Jennifer Loach was unimpressed by these claims: J. Loach, Edward VI (London, 1999), p. 174. If a circular argument may be permitted, the reference here may both date the petition and serve as additional confirmation of MacCulloch's views.
12. For the plots of 1536–7, Diarmaid MacCulloch, Suffolk and the Tudors: politics and religion in an English county, 1500–1600 (Oxford, 1988), pp. 299–300
13. C. E. Moreton, The Townshends and their world: gentry, law and land in Norfolk, c. 1450–1551 (Oxford, 1992), pp. 71–72.
14. The authoritative account of events in 1537 is C. E. Moreton, ‘The Walsingham conspiracy of 1537’, Historical Research, 63 (1990), pp. 29–43.
15. Historical Research, pp. 35, 37.
16. Henry VIII c. 13, sect. x, xi (Statutes of the Realm, III, p. 453).
17. Roger Townshend II of Raynham was certainly concerned about the legislation and sought counsel's opinion on how it might affect him: Moreton, Townshends and their world, pp. 168–169.
18. The best short account of Kett's revolt is now A. Fletcher and D. MacCulloch, Tudor rebellions (4th edn, Harlow, 1997), ch. 6.
19. For other modern accounts, B. L. Beer, Rebellion and riot: popular disorder in England during the reign of Edward VI (Kent, OH, 1982), chs. 4, 5
20. D. MacCulloch, ‘Kett's rebellion in context’, Past and Present, 84 (1979), pp. 36–59
21. J. Cornwall, ‘Kett's rebellion in context: a comment’, and MacCulloch, ‘Kett's rebellion in context: a rejoinder’, both in Past and Present, 93 (1981), pp. 160–173
22. all three reprinted in P. Slack, ed., Rebellion, popular protest and the social order in early modern England (Oxford, 1984).
23. E. H. Shagan has recently published (with commentary) a number of previously unprinted letters on the 1549 rebellion in ‘Protector Somerset and the 1549 rebellions: new sources and new perspectives’, English Historical Review, 114 (1999), pp. 34–63
24. see also the debate between M. L. Bush, G. W. Bernard, and Shagan in English Historical Review, 115 (2000), pp. 103–133.
25. Shagan, ‘Protector Somerset and the 1549 rebellions’, p. 55.
26. Most conveniently printed in Fletcher and MacCulloch, Tudor rebellions, pp. 144–146.
27. For the Pontefract articles, see Tudor rebellions, pp. 135–137
28. for their formation, R. W. Hoyle, The Pilgrimage of Grace and the politics of the 1530s (Oxford, 2001), ch. 12.
29. The names are printed by S. K. Land, Kett's rebellion: the Norfolk rising of 1549 (Ipswich, 1977), pp. 55–6. Land sees the name as evidence of ‘a rudimentary system of democratic representation’ which is to infer too much.
30. MacCulloch, ‘Kett's rebellion in context’, p. 50. This is also seen in the earlier request that all men should only follow one profession.
31. British Library, Royal MS 17B XL, fo. 7r, a reference which I owe to Professor MacCulloch.
32. Moreton, Townshends and their world, pp. 164–167.
33. MacCulloch, ‘Kett's rebellion in context’, pp. 53–54.
34. ‘Kett's rebellion in context’, pp. 58–59
35. Diarmaid MacCulloch, ‘Bondmen under the Tudors’, in C. Cross, D. Loades, and J.J. Scarisbrick, eds., Law and government under the Tudors (Cambridge, 1988), pp. 98–99.
36. The indices used were M. A. Farrar, ed., ‘Index of wills proved in the consistory of Norfolk’, Norfolk Record Society, 21 (1950)
37. P. Palgrave-Moore, ‘Index of wills proved in the Norfolk Archdeaconry court, 1542–1560’
38. idem, ‘Index of wills proved in the Norfolk Archdeaconry court, 1560–1603/4’, Norfolk Genealogy, 5, 10 (1973, 1978).
39. Acts of the Privy Council 1552–4, p. 371.
40. Mary c.12 (Statutes of the Realm, Iv (i) pp. 211–14). This most repressive statute illegalized not only assemblies of people gathered to destroy enclosures or keep open ways through parks, or parties to destroy deer or rabbits, or to commit acts of arson against houses, barns or corn stacks, but also meetings to call for the diminution in rents and the price of grain. The way the statute is structured suggests that this clause was inserted into an existing bill against theological disputations.
41. E. Kerridge, Agrarian problems in the sixteenth century and after (London, 1967), pp. 86–90.
42. I hope to explore this further on another occasion, but amongst other recent writing, see A. Fox, ‘Custom, memory and the authority of writing’, in P. Griffiths, A. Fox, and S. Hindle, eds., The experience of authority in early modern England (London, 1996), pp. 89–116
43. A. Wood, ‘Custom and the social organisation of writing in early modern England’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 6th ser., 9 (1999), pp. 257–269.
44. R. W. Hoyle, ‘Redefining copyhold in the sixteenth century: the case of timber rights’, in P. Hoppenbrouwers and E. Thoen, eds., Access to land and land markets in the North Sea area (Brepols, forthcoming).
45. For the foldcourse, see K.J. Allison, ‘The sheep-corn husbandry of Norfolk in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Agricultural History Review, 5 (1957), pp. 12–30
46. A. Simpson, ‘The East Anglian foldcourse: some queries’, Agricultural History Review, 6 (1958), pp. 87–96
47. M. Bailey, ‘Sand into gold: the evolution of the foldcourse system in West Suffolk, 1200–1600’, Agricultural History Review, 38 (1990), pp. 40–57.
48. Shack is the period after the harvest when there was a right to graze the newly harvested ground. The petition complains (pp. 235–6 below) that the extension of shack until 25 March (Annunciation), when it ought to end on 2 February, was interfering with the sowing of crops.
49. The restrictions on flock numbers laid down in the 1534 act were to be enforced the same way, but very few prosecutions have been found. Moreton, Townshends and their world, pp. 177–183.
50. Townshends and their world, pp. 185–186.
51. A. Davidson, ‘Rural communities after c.1200’, in Sue Margeson, Brian Ayers, and Stephen Heywood, eds., A festival of Norfolk archaeology: in celebration of the 150th anniversary of the Norfolk and Norwich Archaeological Society (Norwich, 1996), p. 130, establishes that engrossing was being carried on at all periods, but is far from systematic. Moreton never looks at the acquisition of copyholds by the Townshends: the 1549 articles imply that this was an important way in which lords established a local hegemony and engrossment took place.
52. I cannot discover a price series for East Anglian barley, but Thorold Rogers gives 32s and 6s 8d a quarter for Norwich barley in 1556 and 1557. Oxford prices move between 5s 4d and 1 Os 8d, but normally lie at the latter end of the range and barley averaged 8s 5 3/4 d 1541–82. The petition therefore seems to be claiming that rents nearing £1 were being demanded for lands previously rented at less than 1s. J. E. Thorold Rogers, A history of agriculture and prices in England (6 vols., Oxford, 1866–1900), III, pp. 104–6, 689, IV, p. 273.