ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY An Act for the dissolution of chantries, hospitals and free chapels was passed in 1545 ;^ but provision only being made in this Act for the surrender of these foundations to Henry VIII, a new Act^ was passed in 1548, after Henry's death, in much the same terms but omitting hospitals. This Act gave to the crown all colleges, free chapels, and chantries existing within the last five years, with all their lands and rents. All endowments for obits or anniversaries, and the property of all gilds and brotherhoods went in the universal confiscation. The Acts of the Privy Council^ record that the Lower House did not only reason and argue against that article made for the guyldable lands, but also incensed many others to hold with them, amongst the which none were stifFer nor more busyly went about to impugne the said article than the burgesses for the town of Lynne in the county of Norfolk. Though there is little ground for finding in Ket's Rebellion of 1549 any sympathy with the old forms of the church, and though in his petition the only demands of a religious nature made are those for clerical residence and diligence in teaching, the rising was the direct outcome of this series of suppressions and confiscations. A certain religious aspect was given to the assembly on Mousehold Heath, by the presence of a chaplain, the vicar, Thomas Conyers, who daily said prayers ; and Dr. Matthew Parker (later the archbishop), a Norfolk man, preached to the rebels.* Though Robert Ket is described as a tanner, he held the manor of Wymondham from John Dudley, earl of Warwick. The parish church of Wymondham was the nave of the priory church, and after the dissolution, the men of Wymondham bought from the crown the choir and other parts of the monastic building. The immediate cause of the outbreak was the action of the royal grantee, John Flowerdew of Hethersett, who, in spite of this purchase, stripped the lead from the roofs and carried away the bells. The Kets, as the chief people in the place, resented this, as well as the harsh conduct of the new landlords in the enclosure of common lands, and a riot at Wymondham, in which the fences of Flowerdew and Ket were both torn down, started the movement. After the duke of Warwick had finally reduced the insurrection, Robert Ket was executed at Norwich, 7 December, 1549, but his brother William was sent to Wymondham, and hanged from the church tower. The changes in doctrine and ritual were many and violent in the short reign of Edward VI ; and his officials seem to have found it impossible to cope with the amount of church property to be disposed of in Norfolk ; there was probably much embezzlement of church plate and valuables, partly by the churchwardens and partly by other parishioners, who must have felt that they were after all annexing what was their own, and not the king's. The injunctions for the removal of such images as led to superstition seems to have been interpreted in a manner which led to a great loss of beautiful objects, and much destruction of stained glass. The Inventories of Church Goods and Ornaments for Norfolk in 6 Edward VI, at the Public Record Office furnish very sorrowful reading. List after list of valuable embroideries and plate ends with the direction ' to be occupied and used in the administration of Divine Service the sayd ij chales and ij bells,' or even in one case with ' the chales weying xiij onces, & ' Stephens, Hist, of the Engl. Ch. iv, 231. ' Ibid. 250. ' Vol. ii, 193, 6 May, 1548. * Fuller, Ch. Hist, iv, 43. 259
