Robert Kett was a Norfolk landholder who became leader of the 1549 uprising against enclosure and local abuses. He organised a large rebel camp at Mousehold Heath, helped formulate demands for reform and was executed after royal forces defeated the rebellion at Dussindale.
Kett’s rebels occupied Norwich and set out grievances concerning enclosure, rents and local government, but royal forces under the Earl of Warwick crushed the rising; Kett was convicted of treason and hanged from Norwich Castle.
In Tim Holden’s Spirals of Fate, When Robert Kett becomes involved in a local dispute at Wymondham, resistance spreads beyond the destruction of fences and gathers thousands of labourers, artisans and small farmers. In C. J. Sansom’s Tombland, Robert Kett’s rebels gather on Mousehold Heath and take control of Norwich, drawing Shardlake into a movement whose grievances he increasingly understands even as its position becomes more dangerous.