POLITICAL HISTORY 



with high treason and tried to get the city sword-bearer to arrest him.^ 

 That he should have done this with impunity, and that during all the time 

 the rebels had had the city in their power there should have been no blood- 

 shed, shows a high state of discipline among them. 



Hostilities between the rebels and the city now seem to have begun 

 with some ineffective cannonading,^ yet on the next day, 22 July, the 

 assailants, being short of provisions, proposed in the most naive way to the 

 mayor that there should be a few days' truce, during which they should 

 procure provisions, and failing this they would break into the city and 

 destroy all things with fire and sword.'* On the mayor refusing this in the 

 most spirited terms* the rebels attacked the city at Bishop's Bridge, being 

 met with flights of arrows which had no effect in stopping them. The attack 

 must have been most gallant, and it is specially recorded that boys who were 

 with the rebels ' came among the thickest of the arrows and gathered them 

 up'; even though some of them stuck fast in their legs and other parts they 

 drew them out and gave them ' all dripping with blood ' to the rebels to 

 shoot back.* Such boldness, it is said, ' so dismayed the archers that it took 

 their heart out of them.' ^ 



On the attack being renewed the city gunner ' feared to shoot as there 

 was so great a multitude about him, so he left his ordnance and fled.'' This 

 left Bishop's Bridge in the hands of the rebels, who opened it up and carried 

 the six cannon up the hill to be mounted there. ^ 



They then entered the city, and though the king's herald again boldly 

 addressed them and commanded them to lay down their arms they did him 

 no harm, but let him return to London out of the St. Stephen's Gates 

 without molestation.* The mayor and some of the aldermen were, however, 

 arrested and taken to Mount Surrey, the rebels' head quarters at St. Leonard's, 

 where they were bound and kept prisoners.^" There does not appear to have 

 been any cruelty or bloodshed, for, though they made jokes on the mayor's 

 name (Codd) and said about the city that next day a Cod's head should 

 be sold for a penny, they did not injure him.^^ Much of this moderation was 

 due to Thomas Aldrich, a man who seems to have kept his head throughout 

 the whole affair, who persuaded the rebels to stop looting and in some cases 

 to return their plunder, and who at last induced Kett to let the mayor return 

 to the city.'^ The royalist account of the riot says that Kett sat daily under 

 an oak, which they called the oak of reformation, and tried the gentlemen 

 who were prisoners, letting those go against whom the mob had no complaint, 

 and whom they called ' A good man. A good man,' and hanging others. ^^ 

 But I am inclined to agree with Russell in doubting the truth of these 

 executions.'* 



As soon as the herald got back, troops, including certain Italian mer- 

 cenaries, in all about 1,200 or 1,300 men,'° were sent from London to put 

 down the rebellion, under the command of the marquis of Northampton, Lord 



' Russell, Kelt's Rebellion in'Norf. 75. ' Ibid. 78. ' Nevylle, op. cit. 69. 



* Ibid. 69, 70. '■' Russell, op. cit. 80. ' Ibid. 



■> Ibid. 81. ' Ibid. ' Ibid. 82. 



'° Nevylle says some of them were killed, but he mentions no individual cases, as he would have done if 

 his story were true (op. cit. 76). 



" Russell, op. cit. 84. '-' Ibid. 84, 85. 



" Nevylle, op. cit. 86, 87. " Russell, op. cit. 86. " Nevylle, op. cit. 84. 



2 • 497 63 



