History of the City of Norwich

1297 to 1334. ( A good time for builders). Walls, mainly of flint, were built on the bank encircling the town. Twelve gates gave access to the town (and also facilitated the collection of 'Tolls'). They were King Street, Ber Street, Brazed Gate, St. Stephen's, St. Giles, St. Benedict's, the small postern Heigham Gate, and on the north side of the river, St. Martins, St Augustine's, Magdalen Gate and Pockthorpe Gate. Bishop's Gate controlled the river crossing. These gates were well fortified and supplied with great catapults, mostly paid for by a rich citizen, and they were kept in good repair by wardens. (City within its Walls)

Norwich grew in size and wealth during the Middle Ages with thirty thousand people living within its walls. It was the principal market for one of the most densely populated parts of England and by the late fourteenth century was the chief centre of  worsted cloth manufacture. It remained one of the most important textile manufacturing centres until the nineteenth century.

    The military importance of the castle declined and in 1345 the king gave most of the site to the City of Norwich. The 'Keep' on its mound and the Shire house remained under the control of the Sheriff of Norfolk, for by this date the 'Keep' or castle had become the county goal. The castle started to decay and the  prisoners within, living in appalling conditions started to suffer. The roof had long gone and to give them some light, part of the of the first floor was demolished allowing light to enter 21 metres above their heads. Debtors whose friends or family could afford to pay the gaoler's fees lived in rooms built on the remains of the first floor.

1300. Excavations in the countryside for peat, which had been used for heating was ending. The excavations, which had started in the ninth century, were filling with water and the Norfolk Broads were forming.

1307. King Edward I dies and Edward II was crowned king.

1315. Bad weather causes famine and many thousands starve.

1320. Strangers' Hall was built. Only the original under-croft survives today.

1327. Edward II deposed and Edward III was crowned king.

1342. Mother Julian of Norwich, writer and mystic was born. 
    On the 8th May 1373, when she was thirty years old, Julian suffered a severe illness from which she almost died. During that illness she received a series of visions of the Passion of Christ and the love of God. When she recovered, she became an anchoress in what is now called St Julian's church and wrote down what she had been taught - perhaps having to learn to read and write in order to do so. Julian was the first woman to write a book in English. Her book, The Revelation of Divine Love, took her over twenty years to complete and is today regarded as a spiritual classic throughout the world.
     'Anchoress'?, a person living as a hermit in a small room attached to a church. It was quite usual for people to live like this in Julian's day. Some were monks or nuns, but many were just ordinary men and women who took vows to live a solitary life of prayer and contemplation. Each lived in a room beside a church and many people came to them for comfort and advice.

1349. Arrival of the 'Black Death' or Bubonic plague in England. By 1351 the total death toll in Europe was approximately twenty five million.

The 'Black Death' halves the population and heralds the end of feudalism (the medieval system of land tenure in exchange for services to the overlord or king).

1361. The cathedral spire was blown down. A new spire was built.

1377. Edward III died and Richard II aged 10 years was crowned king; with John of Gaunt and his associates acting on the kings behalf.

1381. Peasants revolt against taxes as the ruling class attempted to reduce wages back to pre-Black Death rates. The peasants also requested that the status of all peoples below the rank of king should be equal. This was all agreed to by the young king, but his associates attacked the peasant army, routed them and then promised even worse conditions than they had at present for even suggesting that they should be equal to their betters.

In 1383, Anne of Bohemia (sister of King Wenceslas of Bohimia, and first wife of King Richard II) visited Norwich. She created a bit of a shock by riding side-saddle through the town: she was the first recorded person to ride side-saddle in England.

1399. Richard II imprisoned, and possibly starved to death. Henry IV crowned king.

1404. Henry IV granted Norwich a charter that gave it the privilege of appointing a mayor, two sheriffs and aldermen to run its affairs ('Seal' is on the left). He also allowed at the front of the annual procession to elect the City council, the carrying of a sword with point erect in the presence of nobles, whether of royal blood or not and he also allowed for the carrying of maces adorned with the Kings arms. These emblems of kingship showed to everyone that the City was acting with authority delegated to it by the King.
    The St. George's Company started life in the 14th century as the Gild of St. George. It was established for charitable purposes and for the welfare of its members. In 1451 it decided that it would be responsible for electing the mayor and that the retiring mayor would become Alderman of the Gild. Its involvement with the corporation enabled it to avoid the dissolution of religious gilds at the Reformation and continue in a more secular guise as the St. George's Company.
    In the Lord Mayor's procession prior to the Reformation, the Gild of  St. George paraded with 'St. George' and a dragon called 'Snap'. After the Reformation, 'St. George' was banned but the dragon was allowed to continue participating. Snap the dragon still survives in the Castle Museum.
    The word 'regalia' means 'things to do with a king'. In the middle Ages the king was the centre of political power, and the great sword and maces of the regalia carried before him were often real weapons. His sergeants-at-arms cleared the road ahead using the maces and the sword protected the king from assassination.

Note: Norwich City Regalia can be viewed in the Castle Museum.

1413. Henry IV dies and Henry V was crowned king.
1422. Henry V dies and Henry VI was crowned king, but deposed in 1461.
War of the Roses.

1472. Construction of the Norwich Cathedral spire was started.

1485. Henry VII was crowned king

1509. Henry VII dies and Henry VIII was crowned king.

1534. Henry VIII's emissaries set out to blacken the morality of the monastic system with the purpose of seizing anything of value e.g. the lead off their roofs, windows, doors, bells, assets, treasures and land, all for the King's coffers. He knew that this would be difficult because the monasteries provided the local people with work, education and help during difficult times. Part of the miss-information given to the people was that they would no longer have to pay taxes. However, the people finally caught on to what they were losing; but too late.

1540. In a large area partly now occupied by the Duke Street Car Park, a splendid house and grounds called the Dukes Palace, was being built as a residency for the Duke of Norfolk 

Fye Bridge, next to the Ribs of Beef Public House, was reputedly the location of a medieval ducking stool used to punish women for nagging their husbands.

1547. Henry VIII died and Edward VI was crowned king.

1549. Robert Kett's Rebellion. Robert Kett a landowner from Wymondham, led an army of 20,000 people against Norwich to protest against the enclosure of common land and the poverty of the peasantry.
    Kett approached the city from the West but found the gates heavily guarded, he therefore skirted round the city via Earlham, Bowthorpe and Sprowston until he arrived at Mousehold Heath. The mayor came out of Norwich to parley with Kett and was subjected to some discourtesy. A young boy reputedly lowered his breeches and exposed his backside to the mayor. The parley was unsuccessful.
    Kett launched an attack on the city from the heights of Mousehold Heath to the east. He had obtained a cannon and the services of a master gunner. The gunner was reasonably successful, not only damaging the gate tower on Bishop Bridge, but also in hitting Cow Tower, setting it on fire. The peasants swam the river, which essentially formed the defences of the city on the eastern side, and attacked the city along Bishopgate. There was skirmishing in the area of the Great Hospital until Lord Sheffield and the militia confronted the peasants. A fierce skirmish broke out, during which 46 members of the militia and Lord Sheffield were killed. The rebels took the city.
    A royal relieving army arrived a few days later consisting of levies and Italian mercenaries, led by the Earl of Warwick. They laid siege to the city from the west and subsequently broke into the city somewhere between St. Benedict’s and St. Giles. They engaged in running battles with the peasants, rapidly routing them. The rebels fled to the east where they were pursued by the royal forces and massacred.
    Kett himself, with his brother, was taken to London for trial, found guilty of treason and brought back to Norfolk for execution. His brother was hung from the steeple of Wymondham church and Robert was hung from the Castle Keep in Norwich.

1553. As the person next in succession Lady Jane Grey was crowned queen but was overthrown by Mary and her followers.

1553 Mary I (Bloody Mary), was crowned queen. Lady Jane Grey aged 17 years, was executed by Mary in 1554.

1557. Twice in 1557, and twice in 1558, heretics were burnt to death in Lollard's Pit, a specially dug pit just above Bishops Bridge in Norwich.

1558. Queen Mary died and Elizabeth I, was crowned queen.

1562. A woman named Agnes Leman was marched through the city of Norwich to be ducked in the River Wensum near Fyebridge, having been found guilty of an offence in the Mayors Court.

1565. Thomas Marsham a mercer, appalled by the falling-off of the Worsted industry,  invited skilled cloth weavers to Norwich from the Netherlands. The idea was that Continental cloth described as russell and sateen which was becoming quite popular could be manufactured here by  these immigrants and at the same time our local weavers could be taught the technique. The first wave of immigrants were thirty families which rose by year1569 to 6,000 out of a population of 16,000. In this year of 1569 the immigration was stopped. Due to the foreignness of the immigrants to the locals they became known as 'The Strangers'. They were initially housed in the building now known as Stranger's Hall. Their speciality was in the making of the two textiles and the use of a special red vegetable dye that was used as a pigment for their cloth called 'madder'. It was made from the liquid obtained from the crushing of yellow flowers and, although there are no remaining records, the area where these flowers where sold, is now thought to be the Maddermarket.
    Some of these workers were Flemish refugees escaping from persecution in Spain. Coming to Norwich they brought and bred their pet canaries. Subsequently the canary became the emblem of the Norwich football club.

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