Then Robert Ket went on to commit himself body and soul to the movement, resolved that the peasants should not be left unaided in the struggle they had begun, and willing to take upon himself the burden and responsibility of leadership.
“You shall have me, if you will, not only as a companion, but as a captain; and in the doing of the so great a work before us, not only as a fellow, but for a leader, author and principal.”
If the ambition which clutches at sovereignty and rule is despicable, even more despicable is the weakness which refuses to take command at times of peril.
To Robert Ket and his brother there was no promise of the world’s honour and glory should the rising be successful. At the best would be the satisfaction of a battle fought and won for the deliverance of long-suffering peasants. At the worst the laying down of life in a good cause, as Geoffrey Litster and many a Norfolk man had done in bygone days.
Robert Ket’s leadership was acclaimed with enthusiasm, nor was it ever disputed throughout the rising. In this, the last of the great popular risings in England, the Norfolk men were as loyal to their leader as the men of Kent were to Wat Tyler and Jack Cade. And in each case that loyalty had ample justification.
There were but a thousand men involved when the rising began, but under Ket’s command the movement passed rapidly from the fluid “running hither and thither” condition of the first fortnight, and became the march of an organized army.
On July 10th, two days after Ket took command, this army was on the road to Norwich, and after crossing the river at Cringleford, lay encamped at Eaton Wood.
It is plain from Ket’s speeches to his men, and from “The Rebels’ Complaint,” which he published at this time, that to Robert Ket the rising was not only to put down enclosures, its aim was rather to strike at the root of the evil and to put an end to the ascendancy of the landlord class, and make England a free commonwealth. Either the people must put down landlords, or very soon the landlords would have the whole land in their possession, and the people would be in hopeless and helpless subjection. Had not an act of parliament been actually passed making “slaves” of the landless men, dispossessed by enclosures? When parliament was establishing slavery it was time for honest men to be up and doing, rousing the people to action.
Ket’s speech at Eaton Wood is a fierce attack on the landlords, and a reminder that having ventured so far, the peasants must advance yet further:
Now are ye overtopped and trodden down by gentlemen, and put out of possibility ever to recover foot. Rivers of riches ran into the coffers of your landlords, while you are pair’d to the quick, and fed upon pease and oats like beasts. You are fleeced by these landlords for their private benefit, and as well kept under by the public burdens of State wherein while the richer sort favour themselves, ye are gnawn to the very bones. Your tyrannous masters often implead, arrest, and cast you into prison, so that they may the more terrify and torture you in your minds, and wind your necks more surely under their arms. And then they palliate these pilleries with the fair pretence of law and authority! Fine workmen, I warrant you, are this law and authority, who can do their dealings so closely that men can only discover them for your undoing. Harmless counsels are fit for tame fools; for you who have already stirred there is no hope but in adventuring boldly.