Please Welcome on Stage: Lewis Garland and the Kett Rebellion

Hearing a Tenpole Tudor track the other day, I did a bit of digging around for other bands with Early Modern connections:

Kicking off, Lewis Garland and the Kett Rebellion, playing rather decent acoustic folk. Band is based in Coventry, although Lewis Garland, like Robert Kett himself who gave his name to an East Anglian uprising in 1549, hails from Norfolk. A racy woodcut decorates their Myspace site.

In 1558, nine years after Kett was hanged over the walls of Norwich Castle, Elizabeth I took the throne of England. Her finest hour occurred another thirty years later with the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588. Indie band The Spanish Armada represent the USA here, and hail from Somerville, Massachusetts. One of the band members goes under the name of "L. Tiburon Pacifico", which must count for something. Not sure about the music, though....

Back to Blighty, Brighton-based folk/punk/rock band The Levellers are slightly more noisy, with a reputation for exciting fiddle-driven live sets including at Glastonbury . They share their name with the group of political radicals known as the Levellers during the English Civil War period. They asked questions such as "why should soldiers fight for Parliament when they are not allowed to vote for it?".

Oliver Cromwell approved of some of the Levellers' policies (eg abolition of the House of Lords), but his relationship with the movement was uneasy. In May 1649, Cromwell executed three soldiers in Burford who belonged to the Levellers, and this event is to be commemorated this year on Levellers Day.

Staying with the English Civil War theme, the Yorkshire band New Model Army name themselves after the full-time professional army set up Parliament to address the problems, found in the early part of the Civil War, of using part-time militias (they were reluctant to stray far from their home area) .

We could also include Shakespeare's Sister, but we absolutely have to mention Rick "Concept Album" Wakeman for his milestone Six Wives of Henry VIII. YouTube comes up trumps again: (how he gets away with a police siren I don't really know...) . If you are under 45 you might want to skip the video as you might not understand what is going on...

This Day in History: Kett's Rebellion (July and August, 1549)

Another popular uprising in England for today's post, this time with a particularly tragic finale.

Robert Kett's Rebellion took place in Norfolk in July and August, 1549, in the reign of the young Edward VI. By the time it was finally crushed over 4,000 lay dead.

It was essentially a protest against the enclosure by "robber barons" of the common land, where landless peasants could graze their animals and gather wood, etc.

Robert Kett (pictured above, seated) led a successful assault on the city of Norwich, which was captured after fierce fighting (twice). John Dudley Earl of Warwick eventually arrived with an army of 8,000-14,000 , but a possible deal involving a pardon for the rebels was scuppered when a boy mooned at Dudley's messenger and is shot dead (whether he uttered the words "kiss my arse!" is unknown) ....see painting above.

Grisly details: 3,000 rebels killed in the subsequent battle on open ground, Kett and several hundred others executed (Kett hung from battlements of Norwich Castle).

The issue of enclosure of common land was to return...

Learnhistory.org has a great Robert Kett site with many useful links if you want to find out more.

More posts on popular uprisings:
The Essex Peasants' Revolt, 1381
Jack Cade's Rebellion, 1451