Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 4.djvu/461

1549.] of power. They must redress their own wrongs with their own hands. The word went out for a rising; Robert Ket, a Wymondham tanner, took the lead; and far and wide round Norwich, out in the country, and over the border in Suffolk, the peasants spread in busy swarms cutting down park palings, driving deer, filling ditches, and levelling banks and hedges. A central camp was formed on Mousehold Hill, on the north of Norwich, where Ket established his head- quarters; and gradually as many as sixteen thousand men collected about him in a camp of turf huts roofed with boughs. In the middle of the common stood a large oak-tree, where Ket sat daily to administer justice; and there, day after day, the offending country gentlemen were brought up for trial, charged with robbing the poor. The tribunal was not a bloody one. Those who were found guilty were imprisoned in the camp. Occasionally some gentleman would be particularly obnoxious, and there would be a cry to hang him; but Ket allowed no murdering. About property he was not so scrupulous. Property acquired by enclosing the people's lands, in the code of these early communists, was theft, and ought to be confiscated. 'We,' their leaders proclaimed, 'the King's friends and deputies, do grant license to all men to provide and bring into the camp at Mousehold all manner of cattle and provision of victuals, in what place soever they may find the same, so that no violence or injury be done to any poor man, commanding all persons, as they tender the King's honour and Royal Majesty and the relief of the commonwealth, to be