It was not yet too late for the rebels to lay down their poor arms of bows and arrows, scythes, pikes, and bill-hooks, but, fired with the successful bloodshed that had given them possession of the city, they rejected all offers made by the Earl of Warwick, commanding the strong force that now sought entrance. Three days’ fighting, in the city and on the slopes of Mousehold, followed, with varying fortunes, and had it not been for the reinforcements of 1,100 German mercenaries, the rebellion might again have proved successful. As it was, however, their arrival turned the scale. It was at this juncture that, driven from the city, the peasants, remembering the old prophetic verse, moved to the hollow of Dussin’s Dale on Mousehold, where they were to “fill the vale with slaughtered bodies.” Here, they thought, if there was any truth in prophecy, they would achieve the final victory. It never occurred to them that there were two ways of reading that verse, and thus it was here they made their last stand and were cut down in hundreds, grimly fulfilling its words, if not its spirit. Three thousand five hundred of these poor countrymen were slain in this final struggle, and perhaps an equal number had fallen in the almost two months’ fighting and skirmishing of this fatal rising. Thus it ended, but vengeance had yet to take toll of their number. The chiefs of the movement had held their court on Mousehold, under an oak they called the Oak of Reformation, and it was from its branches that nine of them were now hanged. Robert Kett was hanged higher still, three months later, when, after having been sent to London and flung into the Tower, he was brought back and suspended from a gallows on the roof of Norwich Castle. Forty-five minor leaders were hanged, drawn, and quartered in Norwich Market place, and some 250 of the others were plainly hanged, without these fiendish extras. The others, a disheartened mob of 12,000, having learned an unforgettable lesson, were bidden go home, for even the bloodthirsty rage of the victors might well be aghast at the prospect of meting out a like penalty to such a number; and moreover, counsels of prudence and expediency had something to say. “What shall we do, then?” asked the victorious Earl of Warwick, himself a Norfolk landowner, anxious how his lands should be kept tilled if they thus made away with the tillers of them, “What shall we do, then? Hold the plough ourselves, play the carters, and labour the ground with our own hands?” Good Heavens forefend such disaster!
Thus ended the great agrarian uprising of the mid-sixteenth century, and no man can with certainty say that it had any result. It sprang out of the void, and into nothingness it returned. But none the less it behoves us to honour those simple souls who laid down their lives for their immemorial rights in their common and free pasturages, who saw with a manly indignation the preserving of fish in the rivers, and that stopping up of public ways which even in the fierce publicity of our own times requires all the vigilance of a public society to keep in check. Wymondham or Norwich should in public memorial honour the men who by their action said that these things should not be, if they could help, and in laying down their lives for the cause were as truly martyrs as any of those who died for conscience’ sake in religion
XLV
There are modern epitaphs to Ketts in Wymondham churchyard, whose fir-grown space admirably sets off and embellishes the gaunt towers. It is in the narrow lane leading to the church that the most picturesque inn of the town is to be found, in the sign of the “Green Dragon,” a characteristic old English title and a very fine specimen of old English woodwork.
Most of the ancient inns of Wymondham have either disappeared, or have been rebuilt or otherwise modernised, but it was once, in common with most other mediæval towns clustered around great priories, a town of much good cheer and inordinate drinking. Piety and early purl went hand in hand in those days, and often staggered off to bed together in a very muzzy condition, or fell into the gutter, wholly incapable. Those were the days when the ascetic early use of the religious was forgotten, and before the Puritan rule of life had come into existence; and men were not less devout because they were drunken.
WYMONDHAM.
But the Priory guest-houses are all gone, and even the very pretty brew of “Weston’s Nog,” once famous in all this countryside, is no longer proclaimed over the old “Leather Bottle” inn. The sign of the bottle that once dangled over the door, and was inscribed with the name of that potent tipple, has itself disappeared.
The chief secular feature of the town is the Market House, an ancient building of timber frame and plaster filling, raised high above the level of the street, and entered by a lofty wooden stair. It has ceased to serve any market purpose, and now plays the part of a reading-room; and a very much larger room it is found, on inspection, to be than would from a casual glance at its exterior be supposed.
Among the decorative carving that covers the old woodwork of the Market House may be seen rough representations of spoons, skewers, tops, and spindles; allusions to the ancient staple trade of the town in articles of wooden turnery. It is a trade that has long wholly died out, but another old local industry—that of horsehair weaving—is still carried on. This trade was established somewhere about a century ago, and was once a great deal more important than now. One can readily imagine that Wymondham must have been particularly busy in the dreadful era of horsehair upholstery of sofas and chairs. The horsehaired chair or sofa belonged to the period of the cut-glass lustres that used to serve as “chimney ornaments,” and to the era of the “ornaments for yer fire-stoves” once sold in summer-time by itinerant vendors. Horsehair upholstery was very chilly, very sombre and severe, and afforded a particularly slippery and uncomfortable seat. One, happily, rarely sees those tomb-like sofas now, and the chairs are not often met; but when horsehair coverings disappeared from the household they found a lasting favour with railway companies, and still penitentially furnish many a waiting-room.