With slaughtered bodies soon.
But the country churls were to be the slaughtered, and not the slaughterers.
Warwick marched out by the north-east gate of St. Martin-at-the-Oak, and for the last time a herald promised pardon to all who would surrender. But the hangings in the market place had destroyed all confidence in such proclamations, and the answer to the herald was that they “perceived this pardon to be nothing else but a cask full of ropes and halters.”
Ket’s judgment failed him utterly on that last day of the rising. On the strength of an irrelevant old song he allowed his army to go to its doom unchecked, and at the very time when good generalship was wanted above all other things, Robert Ket seems to have lost his nerve, and to have been struck by some paralysis of the will, as though conscious of impending ruin.
The peasants poured down into the valley, and into the meadows beyond Magdalen and Pockthorp Gates, and fought with desperate courage, but they were simply cut to pieces by the professional soldiery. At four o’clock in the afternoon it was all over, the defeat utter and complete, and Robert Ket and his brother were in flight.
The remains of the rebel army laid down their arms, when Warwick himself offered pardon in the king’s name to those who would surrender.
The rising was at an end. The foreign mercenaries of the crown had triumphed over English peasants. Robert Ket was taken the same night at Swannington, eight miles north of Norwich. He had ridden away from the battle when the field was lost, but horse and rider were too tired to proceed further. Taking refuge in a barn, he was recognized by some men unloading a wagon of corn and seized. The farmer’s wife “rated him for his conduct, but he only prayed her to be quiet, and to give him meat.” That same night William Ket was taken, and the two brothers were delivered to the lord lieutenant of the county, and by him carried to London to be tried for their lives.
At Mousehold Warwick proved the worth of the pardons he had given by first having nine of the bravest of the peasants hanged, drawn, and quartered under the Oak of Reformation, and distributing their bodies in the city; and then by hanging 300 prisoners on trees, and then forty-nine more at the Market Cross in Norwich. The country gentlemen of Norfolk, backed by their wealthier citizens, called for more executions, till Warwick turned with disgust from the vindictive clamour of these bloodthirsty civilians, and pointed out in impatient reproof that no one would be left “to plough and harrow over the lands” if all the peasants were massacred.
And now the king’s authority having been re-established, a public service of thanksgiving was held in the church of St. Peter, Mancroft, and August 27th was ordered to be observed henceforth as “Thanksgiving Day” in Norwich. (This was done by prayers and sermon until 1667. In the grammar school, during Elizabeth’s reign, an account of the rising—De Furoribus Norfolciensum, written in Latin by Nevylle, and violently anti-popular in expression—was ordered to be used as a text book in place of the usual classics, and was so used for some years.)
On September 7th Warwick returned to London.[103] In November Robert and William Ket, after lying in the Tower for two months, were brought to trial. They offered no defence for what they had done: for having borne arms without the king’s permission, and for having striven to stop the robbery and oppression of the peasant without the authority of king and parliament.