ABSTRACT
During the years of Reformation and Counter-Reformation in Tudor England, high politics revealed the newly competing motives for challenging the regime: a tangle of religious conviction with the simple and traditional aim of grabbing power. The third successful rebellion of the Tudor era, the overthrow of the Duke of Somerset in October 1549, was a perfect example of pure high politics, in essence a quarrel within the Privy Council. Equally in the south-west and the southern Midlands they were members of the government or royal officials like Sir William Herbert or Sir John Williams of Thame and Rycote Park, who was a relative and friend of the lately-deceased Thomas Cromwell. Low politics was far more a world of order than the gentry and nobility were prepared to acknowledge in public. Most rebellions started as riots, and riots were a constant feature of English life, as much controlled by certain conventions as a violent game of rugby.
