Animal activist Rose Patterson is upset. She is dismayed at being found guilty of stealing three lambs from King Charles after climbing into a field on his Sandringham estate in Norfolk back in 2023.

‘I thought I had a 50-50 chance but it still came as a surprise,’ she says of the recent court verdict following her three-day trial, but what did she expect? A damehood? The Order of the Baaaaa-th?

Rose was feeling sheepish because she did not believe she had broken the law in the first place. ‘It was a sheep open rescue, not a sheep crime. I voluntarily gave myself up to the police afterwards,’ she says.

After bonding with the royal lambs – whom she christened Sunny, Sammy and Sooty – Rose and her two accomplices piled the animals into the back of a van, whereupon they were driven to an undisclosed animal sanctuary. Here they were given the chance of ‘a long and happy life’ instead of their predestined fate of being taken to slaughter at about five months old.

‘I saved their lives. They are in a secret place now, safe from slaughter, free to live until they grow old. I have no regrets. And I think King Charles would approve of what I did because he is an environmentalist, too.’

Can that possibly be true? The King is also a committed sheep farmer, one who perhaps does not take too kindly to intruders and livestock rustlers messing about with his 3,000-strong flock of highly prized, organic Aberfield sheep just to make a point about animal rights. At Norwich Crown Court last month, the jury took the same robust view. After nearly four hours of deliberation, the five men and seven women returned a unanimous guilty verdict. Rose and her two accomplices were given fines totalling just over £1,000 and each ordered to do 150 hours of unpaid community work.

‘I was disappointed, I felt sad,’ says Rose, director of Animal Rising (formerly Animal Rebellion), a non-violent activist movement that campaigns for a sustainable, plant-based, meat-free food system for humans, and more rights for animals, particularly the right not to be eaten by said humans.

‘The verdict made me realise there is so much work to do. It is depressing thinking about how far we’ve got to go to get animals out of this dire situation that they’re in.’

Animal rights activist Rose Patterson at home in London with one of her dogs, James 

Rose Patterson, 37, along with Rosa Sharkey and Sarah Foy, both 26, took three lambs during an early morning visit to Appleton Farm in Norfolk

One senses she is more than prepared for the fight. Rose is a very modern, very dedicated vegan animal activist whose east London lifestyle is thrillingly textbook.

Her rented, two-bedroom riverside home overlooks Leyton Marshes, her mid-century furniture is bought second-hand on Vinted and eBay.

She takes yoga and pilates classes, wears winged eyeliner, avoids leather and feathers, uses only cruelty-free cleaning products and has a fridge full of kale, oat milk, dairy-free mozzarella and pouches of her favourite Squeaky Bean vegan chicken-alike savoury bites.

‘I like the Cajun one best,’ she says, putting on the kettle to make some green tea and showing me the word ‘ahimsa’ tattooed on her right wrist. ‘It’s Sanskrit – it means compassion and non-violence to all living beings.’

Rose, who is 37, lives here with her husband Wayne and their two rescue dogs, a Korean Jindo called Oliver and James the beagle. Need I add that everyone in this household is vegan, including the dogs? I thought not.

Wayne is an animal rights lawyer from San Francisco who personally rescued Oliver from a Chinese dog meat factory, while Rose rescued James from a testing lab. Rose earns £39,000 as the director of Animal Rising, the charity she joined in 2019 as a volunteer.

Since then, her life of protest and activism has seen her arrested more than 20 times, once for putting red dye in a Trafalgar Square fountain to ‘draw attention to the fact that animal agriculture is causing climate change’.

The judge threw the case out on the grounds the dye was not permanent and caused no damage.

Patterson is dismayed at being found guilty of stealing three lambs from King Charles after climbing into a field on his Sandringham estate in Norfolk back in 2023

What? I like Rose, I admire her commitment to her beliefs, but dyeing a fountain? What an utter waste of court time, police time, everybody’s time, including hers.

However, in this curious world of provocative activism, practitioners feel they have the moral warrant to do as they please in the name of the cause.

In addition to the lamb heist, Rose has three more criminal convictions – one for aggravated trespass at a beagle breeding facility in Huntington, one for criminal damage during a protest and blockade outside a McDonald’s burger factory in Scunthorpe, and one for disrupting a horserace at a track in Ayr.

Rose, I cry, what are you really? An animal activist or just a public nuisance? ‘Well, I’ve never been convicted of causing a public nuisance, so I don’t think I am one,’ she says mildly.

Her worst moment came when Animal Rising were still called Animal Rebellion and they were going through a phase of using ‘lock-on’ equipment to make their point – chaining themselves to the gates of Smithfield meat market in London, blockading the streets of Westminster to demand that financial institutions stop backing animal agriculture, and so on. At the 2021 McDonald’s factory protest, Rose chained herself to a van using a pair of thumb cuffs.

‘That was a mistake. The police removed me by pulling my thumbs out and I was screaming in pain. I kicked out and accidentally kicked the tail-light of a police van. I’m not proud of that. I did apologise.’

Rose appears not to be one of those militant activist fanatics who is going to firebomb your garden shed because you like eating sausages, but she is determined to achieve Animal Rising’s stated aims of ending factory farming and turning the entire country vegetarian.

How realistic can that be, given that human beings are carnivores?

‘No, we are not, we are omnivores,’ she corrects. ‘And we can all survive and thrive on a plant-based diet.’

Rose Patterson at the Animal rebellion Westminster Bridge protest in February 2023

She is so focused that she doesn’t even mind that her activism has resulted in a criminal record that has a negative impact on her life.

It is unlikely, for example, that she will ever be able to travel to America, where her husband’s family are based. And should she ever want to adopt children, that would prove extremely difficult, too.

‘Well, I don’t have plans to have children – I’ve never really had the urge,’ she says. ‘And I can’t imagine loving human children more than I love James and Oliver. I love them so much! Just because I didn’t give birth to them and we’re from a different species, that’s not important.

‘I’m their mum and Wayne is their dad, and in future we only want to adopt non-human children. I honestly want to dedicate as much of my life as possible to helping animals.’

Which brings us back to Sandringham. ‘I mean, look at Sammy, Sunny and Sooty,’ she says. ‘In rescuing them, we literally saved three lives. We completely changed their world for them and I think that is worth it all. Yes, it has meant some disruption to my life, but that is OK.’

Yet what does this kind of performative, Instagram-friendly activism achieve and can Rose and Animal Rising really change the planet, one lamb at a time?

In any given spring there are 16 million to 20 million lambs in the UK, which puts Rose’s token gesture, smoked into the headlines and on to news bulletins by the royal connection, into clear perspective. ‘I’d love to rescue every single animal in the land but I can’t, it’s not practical,’ says Rose.

‘We try our best to raise awareness, which is of course why we chose King Charles’ lambs.’

On that spring day three years ago, just a few weeks after the King’s coronation, Rose – along with her Animal Rising colleagues Sarah Foy and Rosa Sharkey (both now 26) – climbed over an electric fence and into a field on the Sandringham estate.

An unknown driver in a getaway van waited on the roadside. At the time, the King was 400 miles away on an official visit to Northern Ireland, oblivious to what was going down in deepest Norfolk.

Wearing matching pink Animal Rising T-shirts, armed only with buckets of sheep nuts and the righteous zeal of revolutionaries, Rose & co believed themselves to be emancipators rather than common thieves.

The trio stood outside Windsor Castle with signs admitting what they had done before handing themselves in to police

The activists said they target the King because he said he was ‘an environmentalist and an animal lover’

They had previously made several recces to the site and now sat in the field for hours, building trust with the flock, bonding with the three friendliest lambs, enjoying the kumbaya vibe.

‘Sarah is the sheep whisperer, she was amazing,’ says Rose. When they eventually picked up their chosen trio of animals, the women were surprised at how scratchy the lambs’ wool was and how much each lamb weighed. ‘So heavy! We could only carry away one each.’

Did the babies bleat for their mothers as they were loaded into the van? Apparently not. The silence of the lambs proved to be their golden ticket on the Animal Rising freedom express.

Sheep are sentient beings and, whatever you may think about their methods, Animal Rising’s campaigns to improve animal welfare are not without merit.

Rose, who grew up in Harrogate, has an MSc in Animal Welfare Science, Ethics and Law from the University of Winchester.

This means she has a scientific understanding of sheep behaviour and must know that there is a strong bond between ewes and their lambs – one that is particularly marked in the Aberfield breed.

When the activists removed the lambs from the field they were still running with their mothers – one wonders where the peaceful Sanskrit ahimsa was to be found in this enforced separation.

‘The lambs were going to be taken away from their mothers soon enough, we knew that they were going to be sent to slaughter,’ says Rose.

‘It was literally a life-or-death situation. It was either be killed or be taken away to live a long and happy life.’

That is not strictly true. Within UK sheep production systems not all lambs are destined to be slaughtered, with about 4 million retained each year to become adult sheep. Yet on this point, as on so many others, Animal Rising are convinced the moral high ground is theirs, even when it comes to inconvenient facts or the iniquity of theft.

Charles, who was then the Prince of Wales, admires sheep being judged at The Great Yorkshire Show in July 2021

For if you take something that does not belong to you, even if you believe you are taking it to make a principled stance, surely that is still stealing?

‘No,’ says Rose. ‘Not if it is for honest reasons.’

So if you were taking King Charles’ Crown Jewels instead of King Charles’ lambs, would the same determinant still apply?

‘It depends on the context. Maybe someone had a very good reason for stealing the Crown Jewels,’ she says.

During the trial, the prosecuting barrister asked Rose – who defended herself – that if, for example, someone took her bicycle, would she consider that stealing?

It would depend on the context, she countered, using her ‘honest reasons’ argument again.

‘Are they stealing my bike because it’s an emergency and they need to get to hospital to see their dying grandmother?’ she wondered. If that were the case, one presumes the bike would be returned – but the authorities have never located Charles’ missing sheep, despite what Rose calls ‘a lot of pressure from the police’.

She still claims ignorance of the location of the refuge where the sheep now live, although she seems very cognisant of their progress and thinks that she may visit them soon, now that the trial is over.

She says: ‘Sheep have their own inner world and a preference to live and to love and have babies, and to nurture their young and to grow old and avoid suffering and death. Sammy, Sunny and Sooty have made friends with goats in the sanctuary.’

That’s nice.

‘They seem happy.’

How do you know when a sheep is happy?

‘I can’t say for definite what makes a sheep happy, but I want to give them the opportunity for happiness.’

While preparing this article, I spoke to three different animal welfare and animal behaviourist experts at leading UK universities. All have had skirmishes with animal activists in the past and all understandably declined to be named – but each had their own misgivings about these events.

‘There is a question of how well they could care for the lambs – my feeling is not as well as the lambs were being cared for already,’ said one. ‘Why ensure that the lambs live a long life if the activists are concerned about the impact of sheep on the environment? It does seem illogical,’ said another.

A third felt that the dignity of the sheep had been violated.

Patterson and her two accomplices were given fines totalling just over £1,000 and each ordered to do 150 hours of unpaid community work

‘Sheep have given so much to mankind – milk, cheese, yogurt, wool, sheepskins.

‘They are one of the most important and useful domesticated species, and from the ram which Abraham sacrificed instead of his son Isaac to Dolly the sheep, the first cloned mammal, they have their place in human history.

‘I felt the activists, apart from anything else, indulged in questionable anthropomorphism by giving the lambs the names Sammy, Sunny and Sooty.’

I asked Rose why they had done so. ‘We called him Sooty because he looked like he had put his face in a bucket of coal. And then Sonny and Sammy because they began with an S,’ she says.

She fondly remembers holding them in her arms for ten minutes before they began their journey from the heritage crops and organic fields of Sandringham to pastures new and unknown.

‘I wanted to make sure they were calm. Then they went off and I felt relief because this was so clearly the right thing to do.’

In Rose Patterson’s crazy world of Squeaky Bean dinners, sheep nuts and thumb cuffs, being found guilty of stealing the King’s lambs was a blow, but she is not going to let it halt her progress.

When the verdict was read out in court, Sarah the amazing sheep whisperer felt like she had been ‘punched in the gut’, but Rose was more philosophical.

‘It was a risk but I genuinely thought I was doing the right thing and I’d do it all again tomorrow,’ she says.

In the meantime, Rose must get on with her self-appointed task of persuading British farmers and the British people to transition to plant-based systems and vegetarian diets.

‘Yeah, it’s super complex but I think it’s possible,’ she says. ‘I have my hopes. I mean, there is no point in doing this work if you think it’s impossible, right?’

Right.