Ah, the gentry … never did learn to clean their shit up. That's what the poor are for, after all.
Two-hundred-and-sixty-two cartloads of this.
Having occupied the market place for many a week, Warwick's army now marched home, conveniently forgetting to clear up after themselves.
The good folk of Norwich emerged from their burnt-out ruins to find the market place so filled with horse dung, human dung, dog and many other dungs, piles of rotten food and waste, bits of burnt buildings, scattered cannonballs and the odd bit of a corpse that the dogs hadn't got to yet, that it took twenty-four days to clean it up.
Two-hundred-and-forty-eight reeking cartloads were carried away for dumping into the old chalk workings across the river in Thorpe (just behind our office).
The Guildhall having been Warwick's personal headquarters and prison, it took twelve days to clear all of that out, with an additional twenty-four cartloads of filth dumped on Thorpe.
That's not counting the disposal of over three-thousand corpses from the battlefield. Norwich Cathedral's infirmary was overrun with the wounded and dying, an awful lot losing limbs from the cannonade or dying from infected arrow or pike wounds.
Inevitably, famine followed and the cemeteries were overflowing.
Fortunately, the little King Edward the Sixth let the city off land taxes for the next three years on condition that the money was used to repair and rebuild the wrecked buildings, bridges and gates and to set the poor to work doing it.
As if the poor hadn't suffered enough, having been kicked off their land then slaughtered in their thousands for protesting about it and starved to death in the famine that followed, in April 1551 the sweating sickness returned for one of its regular visits, leaving hundreds more Norfolk corpses in its wake.
Happy days …
Could things possibly get any worse for the homeless, pox-ridden poor of our fair city and the long-suffering agricultural workers toiling for the large landowners? Of course they bloody well could … and they did!
Over at the Treasury, the coin of the realm was found to be so clipped and debased that the boy king proclaimed that "every shilling would now be worth sixpence and every groat, tuppence."
This was a double blow to the poor as the shortages and famine had driven prices sky high and now their hard-earned wages were suddenly worth half their face value. No more bread for them … their new menu consisted eating grass, weeds and any animal they managed to catch, be it dog, cat or rat. Steal a loaf of bread and it was the gallows for you. Dig up a turnip or scrump an apple from a landowner's estate and get hanged from the nearest tree.
All in all then, not that much of a golden age for Norwich. But things were about to get even worse when Bloody Mary set up her torture chamber in Norwich Castle and her barbecue in the Lollards' Pit.
We shall learn that happy tale next time.
Sources:
Acts and Monuments: Foxe: Old Dive's 1621 edition.
Francis
Blomefield: An Essay Towards a Topographical History of the County of
Norfolk: Volume 3: The History of the City and County of Norwich:
published 1753 to 1775
Norfolk Museums Service and the Norfolk Archæological Society
East Anglian Archæology Vol. 132: Norwich Castle: Excavations and Historical Survey: 1978-1988: Part II: c.1345 to Modern: Elizabeth Shepherd-Popescu: 2009
Holinshed's Chronicles: 1577: Old Dive's 1808 edition. 5 Vols.
The Paston Letters: 1422-1509 : Old Dive's 1910 edition: 4 vols.
A History of the County of Norfolk, Vol 2: ed. William Page: 1906
The Printed Plans of Norwich 1558-1840, A Carto-Bibliography: Raymond Frostick: 2002
Norwich Cathedral - Church, City and Diocese: 1096 - 1996: Various Eds. 1996
Norwich Cathedral Close: Roberta Gilchrist: 2005
Mediæval Norwich: ed: Carole Rawcliffe & Richard Wilson: 2004
Norwich Since 1550: ed: Carole Rawcliffe & Richard Wilson: 2004
Norwich - The Growth of a City: Barbara Green & Rachel M R Young: Norfolk Museums Service: 1981
Norwich Houses Before 1700: Vernacular Architecture, Vol 14: 1983
Kett - 1549, Rewriting the Rebellion: Leo R. Jary: 2018
Kett's Rebellion in Norfolk: Frederick William Russell: 1859
Tombland: C. J. Sansom: 2018 (fictionalised account with historical essay appended)
5 comments:
Wow the citizens of Norwich have really been battered about for an extraordinarily long time, and Bloody Mary hasn't even made an appearance in the story yet. GoT is seeming less like a fantasy (at least the battle scenes).
Hi, Katie. Have you got to the Battle of the Bastards yet? Truly grim! George Martin certainly did his homework.
I might be the only person on the planet who hasn't watched GoT. I started to watch an episode once and it was so bloody I got grossed out! I might be overly squeamish.
We happened upon Monty Python's Flying Circus on Netflix and watched what I think was the first episode ever. They weren't very slick yet and I laughed all the way through it.
Petrea, it took me three tries to get through the first GoT season. After that I was seriously hooked. Yup, swords and boobs and ghastly people but it does get better and Peter Dinklage is the finest actor of his generation.
Lots of Monty Python was filmed in and around Norwich (we were cheap); any jungle scene was filmed at a holiday camp in Winterton, on one series, John Cleese is sitting atop the castle mound with the Bell Hotel behind him when he introduces the show and Elm Hill appears a lot.
Oh, and they threw bagpipers off the battlements of Norwich Castle.
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