The 1549 rebellions

Abstract

In every country the process is different, although the content is the same. And the content is the crisis of the ruling class's hegemony, which occurs either because the ruling class has failed in some major political undertaking for which it has requested, or forcibly extracted, the consent of the broad masses … or because huge masses … have passed suddenly from a state of political passivity to a certain activity, and put forward demands which taken together … add up to a revolution. A ‘crisis of authority’ is spoken of: this is precisely the crisis of hegemony, or general crisis of the State. (Q. Hoare and G. Nowell Smith (eds.), Selections from the prison notebooks of Antonio Gramsci (London, 1971), 210.) Only when members of a society experience structural alterations as critical for continued existence and feel their social identity threatened can we speak of crises … crisis states assume the form of the disintegration of social institutions. (J. Habermas, Legitimation crisis (1973; Eng. trans., London, 1976), 3.) ‘COMMYNS IS BECOME A KING’ : LEGITIMATION CRISIS IN MID-TUDOR ENGLAND On 7 July 1549, as crowds gathered at Wymondham to witness the performance of the Life of St Thomas Beckett , an event that would provide the cover for the start of Kett's rebellion, Sir William Paget wrote a sharply critical letter to the Duke of Somerset. In his brutally perceptive critique of the Protectorate's policies, Paget identified a fourfold crisis of the state.