Nature hath provided for us, as well as for them; hath given us a body and a soul, and hath not envied us other things. While we have the same form, and the same condition of birth together with them, why should they have a life so unlike unto ours, and differ so far from us in calling? We see that things have now come to extremities, and we will prove the extremity. We will rend down hedges, fill up ditches, and make a way for every man into the common pasture. Finally, we will lay all even with the ground, which they, no less wickedly than cruelly and covetously, have enclosed. Neither will we suffer ourselves any more to be pressed with such burdens against our wills, nor endure so great shame, since living out our days under such inconveniences we should leave the commonwealth unto our posterity--mourning, and miserable, and much worse than we received it of our fathers. Wherefore we will try all means; neither will we ever rest until we have brought things to our own liking. We desire liberty and an indifferent (or equal) use of all things. This will we have. Otherwise these tumults and our lives shall only be ended together. Revolutionary as this manifesto is, Robert Ket is seen all through the rising exerting his authority on behalf of law and good order, curbing anarchy and checking ferocity in the rebel camp. Only one day was spent at Eaton Wood. Ket’s plan was to advance to Mousehold, a wide stretch of high, well-wooded ground to the east of Norwich. Here the camp was fixed on July 12th, the river having been crossed at Hailsdon, and a night’s halt called at Drayton--for the mayor of Norwich, Thomas Cod, positively refused to allow the rebels to pass through the city. Ket, anxious to unite citizens and peasants in a common cause, willingly avoided altercation, and Cod, alarmed at the rising, and unable to dissuade the insurgents from their enterprise, was careful to refrain from all hostile demonstrations. Cod’s one purpose was to exclude Ket’s army from the city, and to accomplish this he kept on friendly terms with Ket, even while appealing to the government to send down troops to suppress the rising. Ket’s purpose was to break down landlord rule in Norfolk, extend the area of revolt, and to get the king to attend to the complaints of his subjects. Ket’s company at Mousehold numbered no more than 2,600 on July 12th; but the ringing of bells and the firing of beacons brought in thousands of homeless men. At the end of a week 20,000 men were enrolled under the banner of revolt, and now Ket had all his work to do in maintaining discipline and in arranging for provisions for the camp.