The Great Blow or Great Blowe was a pro-royalist riot and resultant explosion that took place on 24 April 1648 in Norwich during the Second English Civil War. 98 barrels of gunpowder were accidentally detonated in Committee House, causing the largest explosion recorded in England during the 17th century.
The riot can be attributed to many complex causes including excise tax, strict policies upon churches, and impressment. The inciting incident was an 18 April 1648 petition which accused the Norwich Mayor John Utting of helping royalists into local power and requested that he should be taken in custody to the House of Commons in London. A counter-petition from Utting encouraged a royalist riot. The riot spread from the city's market and Chapel Field to the houses of the mayor's supporters and the gunpowder stores in Committee House. The subsequent accidental explosion is due to an unknown direct cause.
Contemporary estimates of deaths caused by the explosion varied between 80 and 200. Forty buildings were destroyed, amounting to an estimated £20,000 (equivalent to £2,840,425 in 2023) of damage. The windows of two nearby churches were shattered by the blast. Eight men were executed for their apparent roles in the riot of the 108 who stood trial; 26 of the others were fined £30, seven were imprisoned and two were whipped. The explosion and its context were named a 'mutiny', 'blow' or 'crack' by its contemporaries.
Background
The causes of the Great Blow in the English city of Norwich are considered numerous and complex, such that Fiona Williamson has argued the riot was not royalist. In 1648, Norwich was home to 20,000 people, up to a fifth being Dutch and Walloon immigrants, and was the largest provincial city in England. It had not been besieged in the Civil Wars, unlike other provincial capitals such as York, Bristol and Exeter. In the early 1640s it had seen no fighting. But, it was equally considered a highly political city. While East Anglia as a whole is considered a parliamentarian heartland during the English Civil Wars, being deep within the powerful Eastern Association, Norwich was deeply divided by 1648 and harboured a number of royalist supporters. These had been influenced by the 1643 arrest of William Gostlin, the city's royalist sympathising mayor, as well as the mustering of Parliamentary troops through volunteers and later impressment, stricter policies on the city's churches and cathedral including an order that Christmas Day 1645 should not be observed as a festival, and a pamphlet war between Presbyterians and Independents. There is evidence of a royalist culture based in Norwich's taverns in the 1640s. Royalist Robert Holmes was elected as sheriff by the freemen in September 1646.
Additionally, taxes had been increased to record levels to fund Parliament's war effort, including an excise tax which especially hit the poor, provoking riots by the city's butchers by December 1646, though the tax on meat and domestic salt production was removed in June 1647. A plague epidemic had taken place in November 1646 alongside floods in riverside parishes, heavy snowfall and thunderstorms. The 1549 Kett's Rebellion was still being commemorated in the early 1640s with annual thanksgiving days. Residents of Norwich would have also been aware of the 1643 three-week siege of King's Lynn by the Earl of Manchester, after which the town became an effective military garrison under command of Colonel Valentine Walton.
Prominent individuals involved
Captain Thomas Ashwell, a sheriff and prominent Puritan of the Norwich corporation, was particularly unpopular among the city's royalists due to his radical Independency and position as an ex-New Model Army officer. Ashwell was a ringleader of the faction against the Mayor of Norwich at the time, John Utting. As sheriff and sergeant major, he had the responsibility for the city's armoury. The similarly unpopular alderman Adrian Parmenter was a sub-commissioner for excise, his house being the Excise Office which had previously been involved in the December 1646 anti-excise riots. Thomas Baret was an alderman and a similarly prominent corporation Puritan. His ageing father, ex-mayor Christopher Baret, was also Puritan.
The Mayor of Norwich at the time, John Utting, was a moderate Presbyterian and a conservative politician who tactically favoured balance when tackling religious extremism, and this had alienated Puritans in the corporation. Utting was rumoured to hold royalist sympathies, though there is little evidence of this. On 1 December 1647, a group of apprentices presented Utting with a petition which defended the celebration of Christmas, which had been declared a punishable offence in England by an ordinance of Parliament on 10 June that year. This petition received criticism from Ashwell and Baret. In March 1648, Utting also allowed the election of ineligible royalist Roger Mingay, who was considered a delinquent, to the aldermanic seat in the parish of St Peter Mancroft, an action in contravention of two ordinances from 1620 and 1648. Mingay was Utting's brother-in-law, and would usually have been ineligible as he had not previously been sheriff. Furthermore in February 1648, Utting permitted bonfires and feasts to be prepared that would celebrate the accession of Charles I to the throne.
Petition against Mayor John Utting
Utting's sanction of celebrations prompted Ashwell and Baret to take action. On 18 April, the pair presented a petition to the House of Commons against Norwich mayor John Utting, stating that he had permitted the election of Mingay, allowed the voting of such people in municipal elections, and employed "sequestered and malignant parsons" to preach in Norwich churches, including the cathedral. While its subtext displays dissatisfaction that Utting had ignored the Puritans' pleas to further reform local churches, the petition explicitly requested that the controversial appointment of this alderman and some others be investigated, stating that their appointment was in contravention of a House of Commons ordinance of 14 March 1647. The Commons thus ordered that he be brought up to Westminster by a pursuivant messenger for questioning on 24 April, and assigned Christopher Baret as his temporary replacement as deputy mayor, to which Utting would be told to agree.
Counter-petition
In response, Utting and his friends, including six aldermen, particularly his close associate alderman John Tooley, asked town clerk Thomas Balleston to draft a counter-petition highlighting Utting’s "good government and behaviour", and requesting fair passage to London. This counter-petition spoke highly of Utting's conduct as mayor. The choice to launch a counter-petition was informed by the previous fate of Mayor Goslyn, a royalist-sympathiser who had been arrested and his aldermen supporters pushed out of the corporation by March 1643. Though this cannot be confirmed as the counter-petition has not survived, some historical sources state that it requested that Utting not be removed from Norwich. This counter-petition was made official on 22 April during a meeting of the Court of Aldermen. It needed to be ready to travel to London with the mayor, leaving only one day and night to garner enough supporting signatures.
The messenger arrived in Norwich with Utting's summons on 23 April, and would proceed to spend time discussing this with Utting at the King's Head, a popular inn with overnight rooms, next to the city's market and Market Cross, and also very close to Utting's home in the St Peter Mancroft parish. That day, the counter-petition was read aloud to congregations in Norwich after divine worship at Sunday services to solicit signatures, with signatures being taken on the communion table in St Stephen's Church. Rumours circulated that more than 80 people had signed the counter-petition at St Mary's Church. The counter-petition was also circulated at the busiest inns and taverns in the city, exploiting implicit knowledge that drinking houses were channels of communication. Sites near the marketplace were particularly targeted for this so as to allow them to mobilise those who could best influence the situation, as well as ordinary people.
Utting and the messenger lodged at the King's Head overnight as papers were posted on walls and posts which incited people to arm themselves to protect the mayor. The door to the mayor's house was guarded overnight. Utting's actions on this night are disputed by alleged witnesses; Mary Fordham swore she had seen Utting ask a man to "go and resolve the people" and find some muskets, whereas John Graye stated Utting's only involvement was an attempt to calm his supporters' spirits, sending one of his maids to give his thanks and tell them to go home. This appeal for calm was allegedly issued despite Utting being technically deposed.
On the night of 23 April, papers that incited the city's inhabitants to arm themselves and protect the mayor were put up on walls and posts; those trying to remove them were faced with violent intimidation. Christopher Bransby led a company to Norwich's various city gates during the evening and demanded that the watchmen keep them locked to prevent the mayor being taken away; several of them agreed and gave him their keys. In the White Lion, a notorious inn in the city, barber Richard Haddon heard that "certain gentlemen" had discussed publicly how they "wo[u]ld stand by" Utting and not allow him to leave. The presence of "Comittee men" at this inn, including ex-mayors "Mr Toly and Watts" and James Sheringham who "had collected funds" for Utting's cause, was confirmed by one Nicholas Dawes. Thomas Palgrave, a merchant who lived at White Lion Lane and friend of Norfolk landowner Sir John Potts, was seen buying drinks to encourage people to pledge themselves to Utting. This was encouraged by the White Lion's tapster William Blackamoore, who was said to have used "any motive or speech to stirr up the people against the Tro[o]pe that wer[e] come into Norwich to stand upon the[i]r g[u]ard & shew them selves men". Night watchman John Wilson visited the Angel Inn located between the King's Head and White Lion, and found that 20 people were still drinking at midnight, contrary to statute. These individuals said they had been given their ale by a gentleman "who hoped they were for the King, and that they would not let Mr Mayor go out of the city".
Initial riot
Under the influence of alcohol, groups of men exited the drinking houses into the Back of the Inns area, behind the inns from the market, firing shots and shouting abuse at passers-by. Groups of people began to gather to shout abuse at Baret and threatened to hang Ashwell and the pursuivant on the Castle Mound. A large crowd had gathered by the late evening and some of them armed themselves; a phrase by which they could identify each other, "for God and King Charles", was given out.
Two gunshots were let off as a signal in the early hours of Monday 24 April 1648. This incited a large crowd, estimated by those present as up to 1,000, to gather at and around the city's Market Cross. By the morning, around 2,000 of Utting's supporters were waiting outside the King's Head at the market. Further crowds mustered in the open space of the Chapel Field, and others came from poorer outlying parishes in the south and west. The rioters were royalist, and consisted of butchers, lower-level tradesmen, labourers and apprentices from the Mancroft and Conesford areas of Norwich. The crowd attempted to get inside the King's Head inn, attempting to prevent Utting's departure, but were prevented from doing so by a narrow, guarded gateway to the inn's yard. Around 10 am, sheriff Felix Forby who was "much loved by the commons" called for the crowd to leave, but was unable to disperse them. The trained army bands were also not mobilised as their colonel would not send out the warrants for them to do so. The messenger left soon after 10 am, being hustled out of the city by the rioters, and escorted out of St Stephen's gate. The sheriff could not disperse the crowd, and the trained bands were not mobilized as their colonel refused to send out warrants. Thomas Palgrave was later accused of discharging his pistol three times and rallying the rioters to violence.
Though the immediate aim of the riot had ended, the riot itself continued. After breaking off from the marketplace crowd, one group ran riot through the streets, looting the houses of Parliamentarian aldermen as they went. These houses were large and were prominently placed on the prime streets of the city. Crowds converged on the house of Ashwell, which stood next to the Church of St Michael-at-Plea. Ashwell was subject to rumours of stockpiling arms; upon looting his house, rioters found weapons which were later used to capture the Committee House. The house of alderman Adrian Parmenter along Ber Street on Hogg Hill, which also operated as the excise office, was targeted.