The 1549 Rebellions and the Making of Early Modern England

Abstract

This is a major study of the 1549 rebellions, the largest and most important risings in Tudor England. Based upon extensive archival evidence, the book sheds fresh light on the causes, course and long-term consequences of the insurrections. Andy Wood focuses on key themes in the social history of politics, concerning the end of medieval popular rebellion; the Reformation and popular politics; popular political language; early modern state formation; speech, silence and social relations; and social memory and the historical representation of the rebellions. He examines the long-term significance of the rebellions for the development of English society, arguing that the rebellions represent an important moment of discontinuity between the late medieval and the early modern periods. This compelling history of Tudor politics from the bottom up will be essential reading for late medieval and early modern historians as well as early modern literary critics.

Metabolic rift or metabolic shift? dialectics, nature, and the world-historical method

“…The timing is significant. At precisely this point, following Kett's Rebellion (1549), the tide of agrarian class struggle shifted decisively in favor of the gentry (Wood 2007). By 1700, England's landlords held two-thirds of arable land (Thompson 1966).…”

Dramatic Networks: Marginalized Economics and Labour in The Norwich Grocers’ Play

“…17 The circumstances the peasantry in Norwich faced became more dire as the sixteenth century progressed due to land enclosure and the dissolution of monastic houses. 18 For wage labourers in both rural and urban Norfolk, wages remained stagnant as prices of goods rose over fifty percent. 19 The price of wheat, for example, quadrupled from four shillings a quarter in 1547 to sixteen shillings in 1549, yet wages were nearly stagnant in comparison with only a modest increase from four pence half-penny to five pence.…”

Coda: History, Time and Social Memory

“…28 The gradual transformation of religious identity and of the forms of worship that it entailed, were perhaps the most obvious manifestation of the extent to which the mid- of all the parish churches should be rung and prayers said, followed by a special sermon against rebellion preached at the Cathedral. 35 In this way, the suppression of popular rebellion was scorched into official remembrance. Similarly, in 1537, the main urban centres of Norfolk -Norwich, King's Lynn and Yarmouth -were chosen as key sites at which rebels from Walsingham (Norfolk) who had plotted to murder the local gentry and to restore the monastic houses were to be hanged, drawn and quartered.…”