Warwick, Henry VIII.’s high chamberlain, the son of Dudley, Henry VII.’s minister, was a man of war and resolution. Sent down to suppress the rising he did his work, but not till he had tried an appeal to the peasants to disperse without further trouble.
Halting outside the city, Warwick sent a herald to proclaim pardon to all who should now return to their homes, and, as before, the people shouted, “God save King Edward!” Ket himself talked with the herald on the high ground near Bishop’s Gate.
Negotiations ended abruptly. Some ill-mannered boy gave an indecent and offensive salute to the herald, and was shot dead by an arrow from the herald’s escort. At once the cry of “treachery” was raised by the people, and all talk of peace was at an end. While the herald tried to persuade Ket to come to the Earl of Warwick under a flag of truce, the rebels gathered round their leader and besought him not to forsake them. To Ket there could be sure reliance on royal promises of pardon, and no surrender of the charge he had undertaken. His reply to the herald was to retire on Mousehold and prepare for battle.
Warwick at once entered the city, and began the business of pacification by promptly hanging sixty men in the Market Place, by Norwich Castle, “without hearing the cause”; and by issuing a proclamation that all who were out of doors would receive similar treatment. Then came a mishap, for the greater part of Warwick’s artillery fell into Ket’s hands. The drivers of the gun-carriages, entering the city after the soldiers, by St. Bennet’s Gate on the west, and ignorant of the way, actually passed out at Bishop’s Gate on the east on the very road towards Mousehold, and were quickly taken. Ket had now the advantage in ordnance, and there was fighting in the city all Sunday, August 25th. So uncertain was the issue that the burgesses feared Warwick would suffer Northampton’s fate, and prayed him to depart without further loss. But Warwick, waiting for reinforcements, and knowing that 1,400 German mercenaries were close at hand, was not the man to beat an ignominious retreat.
The hireling “lanznechts” arrived next day, and on Tuesday, August 27th, came the fatal battle.
Instead of remaining at Mousehold, where a strong resistance might have been made, the rebels decided to march out boldly from their camp and meet the king’s army in the open country that lay between Mousehold Heath and the city. An old song was recalled, which, it seemed, foretold victory in such a case:
The country gnoffes (churls), Hob, Dick, and Rick,
With clubs and clouted shoon,
Shall fill the vale
Of Dussindale