The Reformers’ Commonwealth

This chapter focuses on the story of state and commonwealth during the Kett's Rebellion of 1549. For many writers, the rebellion marked a moment of crisis not only for traditional tenurial arrangements in the countryside, but also for the popular commonwealth policies of Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset, who was governing during Edward VI's minority. The chapter examines the attempt to respond to the desire for distinction and the impulse to reform manners within the context of the commonwealth, a classical ideal of society. It argues that the Kett's Rebellion was not a crisis for the overarching goal of commonwealth, which was shared broadly, but for a specific version of commonwealth as championed by John Hales, Martin Bucer, and Somerset himself, in which it was attempted to give the state a larger role through the active use of magistrates, who were imagined as custodians of the divine law.