As Sir Thomas More was not the first of the Catholic martyrs at the Reformation, for he had seen his old friends, the Carthusian monks, carried to Tyburn, so he was not the last. For the next fifty years of Henry and Elizabeth, English men and women were to suffer for the old faith of England, and in Mary’s reign to die as bravely for Protestantism.
In spite of monasteries and priories destroyed, and parish churches stripped and plundered, in spite of penal laws which banned its priesthood and proscribed its worship, the Catholicism More died for has endured in England. All that parliament could do to exterminate the belief in papal supremacy has been done; all that panic and prejudice could accomplish by “popish plots” to the same end has been accomplished. These things have been no more successful than the mad “no popery” riots of Lord George Gordon in crushing the faith of the Roman Catholic minority. The penal laws have gone, Catholic emancipation has been obtained, a Catholic hierarchy has been set up, and to-day in England the freedom of conscience that was refused to Sir Thomas More is the accepted liberty of all.
In 1887 Sir Thomas More, with Bishop Fisher and the Carthusian martyrs, were beatified by Pope Leo XIII. Serving their religion in life and death, they served the cause of human liberty, withstanding Henry as Anselm withstood the Red King, and as Langton withstood John.
Robert Ket and The Norfolk Rising
1549
Authorities: The Commotion in Norfolk, by Nicholas Sotherton, 1576 (Harleian MS.); De Furoribus Norfolciensum, by Nevylle, 1575 (Translated into English by Wood, 1615); Holinshed—Chronicle; Sir John Hayward—Life of Edward VI.; Strype—Memorials; Blomefield—History of Norfolk; F. W. Russell—Kett’s Rebellion; W. Rye; Victoria County History—Norfolk.
ROBERT KET AND THE
NORFOLK RISING. 1549.
The Norfolk Rising of the sixteenth century was a land war, caused directly by the enclosing of the common fields of the peasants, and the break up of the accustomed rural life.
The landowners finding greater profit in breeding sheep and cattle than in the small holdings of peasants, began, about 1470, to seize the fields which from time immemorial had been cultivated by the country people in common, and to evict whole parishes by pulling down all the dwelling places. For eighty years these clearances were going on. Acts of Parliament were passed in 1489 and 1515 to prohibit the “pulling down of towns” and to order the rebuilding of such towns, and the restoration of pasture lands to tillage, but both acts were quite inoperative. In 1517, Cardinal Wolsey’s Royal Commission on Enclosures reported on the defiance of the law in seven Midland counties, where more than 36,000 acres had been enclosed; but legal proceedings against the landowners were stayed on the latter promising to make restitution.