The Western Rebellion of 1549 took place amidst a summer of civil disorder and armed uprisings during Edward VI’s reign, known as the ‘Commotion Time’. However, while revolts, such as ‘Kett’s Rebellion’ in East Anglia and other disturbances across multiple counties, were primarily motivated by the economic situation of sixteenth-century England, particularly around issues connected with land enclosure, the situation in Devon and Cornwall had different origins. Edward VI’s new Book of Common Prayer, which sought to further erode the liturgical foundations of English Catholicism, was badly received in the religiously conservative western counties and served to inspire violent opposition to its implementation. This religious dimension mingled with existing grievances similar to those found elsewhere in the realm to produce a uniquely intransigent insurgency, which garnered considerable support.  Attempts to estimate the overall size of the revolt, and to assess the number of soldiers it mobilised, are, however, fraught with difficulty, not least because such movements often have little fixed strength and can wax and wane depending on their degree of success. On a related note, not all backing can be measured on the battlefield and many of those who were sympathetic to or supportive of the insurgents may have helped sustain the rebellion without ever taking up arms.

The uprising began on the 10 June at the small village of Sampford Courtenay in Devon, parallelled by a near-simultaneous outbreak of disorder at Bodmin in Cornwall, spreading quickly through the countryside despite the regional gentry’s attempts to contain it. By mid-July, rebel forces had taken Trematon Castle and St Michael’s Mount, imprisoned, driven away, or co-opted local gentry, and had laid siege to Exeter as a precursor to tightening their control of both counties and marching east. Edward VI’s Privy Council, headed by Protector Somerset, was slow to respond given the widespread disorder raging across huge swathes of England. Eventually John Russell, the Lord Privy Seal, was sent westwards with a small force, probably numbering under 1,000 men drawn from his own followers and those of the willing gentry from Dorset and Devon, including Sir Peter and Gawen Carew, a pair of Devonshire landowners who had tried and failed by various heavy-handed methods to quell the revolt in its early stages. Russell’s detachment, which had taken up a position at Honiton to guard the road towards London by mid-July, lacked the strength to confront the insurgents directly, and was instead limited to launching patrols to skirmish with the rebels as and when the opportunity presented itself. This situation had been partly rectified by late July when, thanks to the intervention of group of merchants, the loyalists succeeded in raising funds with which to recruit militia from the surrounding area. By the time of the first battle of the rebellion, when Russell moved to confront the advancing rebels at Fenny Bridges on 28^th July, his force numbered around 1,700 troops

After defeating the insurgents at Fenny Bridges, the loyalist army was again augmented with the arrival of Lord William Grey and his retinue, alongside several further bands of foreign mercenaries, including Albanian and Burgundian horsemen and Italian footmen. This total force of approximately 3,000, which now included substantial numbers of professional soldiers and artillery, moved westwards to end the siege of Exeter in a series of confrontations against the insurgents at Woodbury (3^rd August), Clyst St Mary (4^th August), and Clyst Heath (5^th August). Unable to maintain their investment of Devon’s principal city, and doubtlessly suffering a drop in morale from these repeated defeats at the hands of their loyalist opponents, the Western rebels largely melted away in the following days, further emboldening local forces to openly support Russell’s forces. With Exeter secure, Russell’s army in the West swelled to between 5000 and 8000 strong with the arrival of Sir William Herbert’s Welsh contingent and the recruitment of further militiamen, at least some of whom may have been former insurgents. It was this army which finally crushed the revolt in a battle fought with the last band of rebels, who had regrouped at Sampford Courtenay, on 18^th August.

Against this decidedly Early Modern English army, which mixed the realm’s traditional weapons of the bow and bill with European-style pike and shot in combined-arms formations comprising infantry, cavalry, and artillery, the insurgents were decidedly outclassed. While rebel armies drew upon the existing organisational structure and manpower pool of England’s shire militia system, and were often able to furnish bill and bow-armed infantry supported by artillery, they lacked the tactical flexibility and experience which characterised English armies raised by the Crown, which leavened the militia with mercenary units and better-armed and trained retinues. Strategically, the loyalists may also have benefited from the insurgents’ inability to concentrate their forces, in part due to their ongoing siege of Exeter, which meant that, despite their probable greater overall numbers, they may have fought at unfavourable odds in several of the rising’s battles. Notwithstanding the discrepancy between the two forces, the Western Rebellion demonstrated the extent to which the tactical knowledge available to rebel commanders and their troops, who often made good use of defensive deployments while displaying bravery and initiative, enabled them to offer credible resistance. The generally high morale of these rebel armies also meant that they were able to survive repeated defeats and incur heavy casualties without abandoning their cause, demonstrating a degree of commitment often lacking in revolts such as ‘Kett’s Rebellion’, which dissolved after losing a single field engagement.

This entry has been provided by Alex Hodgkins.