Chapter 20

The figures for 1592The figures for 1592–3 and 1593–4 have been combined, as the latter are too small to be given separately.

Such “occasional conformity" was, however, too muchthe rule in all economic matters that were the object of authoritative regulation—and few were not—to be by itself any cause for abandoning it. The real reason for the cessation of interference in the land question which we notice after 1640 is to be found, not in the fact that intervention had invariably proved too ineffective to be worth continuing, but in the change of policy caused by the unchecked domination of Parliament in domestic affairs. The victory of the Parliamentary forces over the Crown meant the triumph of the landed gentry over the only power which was strong enough to enforce the administration of unpopular Statutes in the teeth of their opposition. It prepared the way for the reign of the great landlord who regards himself as charged with a peculiar responsibility for promoting the needs of agriculture, which he alone is presumed to understand—and in fact, to do him justice, does sometimes understand very thoroughly—a weary Titan who pushes forward enclosure from a sheer sense of public duty. On the one hand there is a change in the standpoint from which agrarian policy is regarded. The aim of maintaining a prosperous peasantry becomes subordinate to that of obtaining the maximum output from the soil. This change materially affects the attitude adopted towards enclosure. The Tudor Governments had endeavoured to protect the rights of commoners, because commons were an indispensable adjunct to small-scale subsistence farming. The new view is that commons are waste lands which had much better be improved, and which are most likely to be improved if they pass into the control of men who have capital to spend upon them. Even under the Stuarts this doctrine begins to gather weight, and naturally so, for it both flattered their ambitious conception of the monarchy as a cornucopia whence all economic improvements should flow, and was in line with their general policy of trying to secure cheap food by regulating the supplies of grain. In 1623 Commissioners are busy improving Tiptree Heath, which squatters have occupied without any legal title.[728]In 1637 the King is approached by an influential syndicate which asks for a concession permitting it to reclaim the heaths and barrencommons belonging to the Crown, and which displays a glowing prospectus of the advantages which will accrue in the shape of increased supplies of food-stuffs.[729]In 1629 the Commission of Sewers had engaged Vermuyden on his celebrated task of draining the great Level, and, in spite of the fierce opposition of the fenmen, the work was in 1637 adjudged to be completed.[730]All this is quite in the vein of the eighteenth century. It is quite in that vein also for a strong line to be taken against the wastefulness of those who impede good farming, even though the farmer be a grazier, by sowing a few acres here and a few acres there, instead of cultivating a compact holding; in short, by the immemorial system of strip cultivation. The last but one of the Statutes against depopulation[731]was itself the first expressly to authorise that exchanging of holdings for the purposes of more business-like husbandry, which, as we have seen, had been going on informally from an early date. In 1606 we get what may be called the first Enclosure Act of the modern pattern, under which certain Herefordshire parishes are allowed to separate and enclose one-third of the land lying in common in each parish.[732]In 1627 a case arising out of a dispute about fold-courses comes before the courts, and sound agricultural doctrine is laid down with a confidence of which Arthur Young himself might have approved. “This Court,” say the judges, “was now of opinion that the plowing and sowing of small quantities of land dispersedlye or disorderlye within ye shacks and winter feedinge of ye said ffouldcourses, and the refusal of a few wilfull persons to lett ye owners of ffouldcourses have their quillets of land (Llying intermixt in the places where ye sheep pasture is layd) upon indifferent exchange or other recompense for the same, are things very mischievous and will tend to ye overthrow of very many fould courses.”[733]Their opinion isenforced with a judgment decreeing an exchange of lands.

When the whole question comes up again towards the close of the Commonwealth, the old attitude is maintained by the opponents of enclosure, who protest, with all the fervour of Latimer, against the greed of landlords and the pauperising of commoners. But its defenders have overhauled their arguments, and the lines on which the controversy will be fought out for the next century and a half are already obvious. In the eyes of the austere moralists of the Restoration commoners are lewd people, who would be much better employed if at work for wages. All beneath the “nobility and gentry" are “the poor,” and the poor themselves (it is well known) are of two kinds, “the industrious poor," who make a living by working for their betters, and “the idle poor,” who make a living by working for themselves. Christianity and patriotism require that the latter should enter some “productive employment,” and this can best be secured by excluding them from the commons on which their distressingly irregular livelihood depends. Even so Europeans to-day teach habits of industry to the African savage, by taxing him until he can no longer live upon the lands which Europeans desire to exploit. Moreover, the commercial spirit of the later seventeenth century is impatient of antiquated restrictions, and is already groping blindly after some formula which may prove them to be superfluous. Enclosures will increase the output of wool and grain. Each man knows best what his land is best suited to produce, and the general interest will be best served by leaving him a free hand to produce it. “It is an undeniable maxim,” writes a pamphleteer, “that every one by the light of nature and reason will do that which makes for his greatest advantage. Whensoever corn bear a considerable rate, viz., wheat four or five shillings, and barley two shillings and sixpence, men may make more profit by ploughing their pasture, and consequently will plough for their own advantage.”[734]Hales had said something like this a hundred years before. He had said it to show the need of special measures to divert agricultural enterprise intobeneficial channels. Now an identity between the interests of landowners and those of the public is assumed as part of a pre-established harmony, which human intervention may disturb, but which it is neither needed nor competent to secure. Authoritative statecraft fades out in the dawn of reason and the light of nature. With such a wind of doctrine in their sails men are steering for uncharted waters.

While opinion on the subject of enclosing was beginning to change even before the Civil War, the final blow at the maintenance of the old policy was struck by the destruction of the Court of Requests and Court of Star Chamber. The abandonment by Governments of all attempts to protect the peasantry against oppression was an indirect consequence of the victory of the Common Law over the prerogative jurisdiction of the Crown. The interference in agrarian matters of the administrative courts of the Tudor monarchy had always been detested by the landed gentry for the very reasons which made it popular with the peasantry. They were the last resort of men who could not get what they considered justice elsewhere. One finds a defendant in whose favour the Common Law Courts have given three decisions being sued again before the Court of Requests.[735]They were the only authority which could prevent a landlord from asserting his claims to a common or to a copyhold by means which the poorer classes found it impossible to resist. Complaints from aggrieved landowners that they are undermining the right of the lord of the manor to exercise jurisdiction over his own copyholders, by trying cases which ought to be heard in manorial courts, that they are interfering with the course of Common Law, that they make it impossible for a lord to “rule his lands" by the countenance which they lend to discontent, are not infrequent[736]in the sixteenth century, and both Wolsey and Somerset were in turn attacked by the upper classes for the favour which they showed to such unconstitutional interference with therights of property. Such protests are the best proof that the Court of Requests and the Court of Star Chamber had exercised functions which were in some respects beneficial. The strictest constitutionalist will have some sympathy to spare for the address in which Lord Coventry in 1635 charges the Judges of Assize to “beware of the corruptions of sheriffs and their deputies, partiality of jurors, the bearing and siding with men of power and countenance in their country,” and to set on foot “strict inquiry after depopulation and enclosures, an oppression of a high nature and commonly done by the greatest persons that keep the juries under their awe, which was the cause there are no more presented and brought in question.”[737]Such words paint the ideal of Government by prerogative,parcere subjectis et debellare superbos, which may have floated before the minds of a Bacon or a Strafford, and which had been partially realised under the Government of Elizabeth. When set side by side with the actual practice of the Council under Charles I. they are its final and self-recorded condemnation. For we look for them to be made good in action, and we look, save during a few years, in vain. If much may be forgiven those who boldly do wrong believing it to be right, there is no mercy for “the unlit lamp and the ungirt loin" of a body which, believing a certain system of government to be right, entangles its execution with sloth, and makes a sordid financial instrument out of the very prerogative which itself has declared to be the gift of God for the protection of thepoor. The defence which the Council and its courts had offered to the peasantry against economic evils, though real, was too irregular to do more than slightly mitigate the verdict which history has passed upon their employment in the hands of Charles I. Whether the peasants regretted their disappearance we do not know. To those contemporaries whose opinion counted, the occasional onslaughts made by the Council and Star Chamber upon enclosing landlords were an aggravation, not an extenuation, of the indictment brought against them. Though the Grand Remonstrance, in which the Long Parliament sought to unite all classes with a recital of grievance accumulated upon grievance, taunted the Government with its failure to check the conversion of arable land to pasture,[738]the authors of that tremendous indictment had no substitute to suggest for the interference by the Council with “freeholds, estates, suits, and actions,” which they denounced; and Laud, who, according to even a friendly critic, “did a little too much countenance the Commission for Depopulation,”[739]lived to be reminded in the day of his ruin of the sharp words with which he had barbed the fine imposed by that body upon an enclosing landlord.[740]The Court of Requests was never formally abolished, but from the closing decade of the sixteenth century it had been gradually stripped of its powers by prohibitions issued by the Common Law Judges, and forbidding plaintiffs to proceed with their cases before it, and after 1642 it quietly disappeared. With the destruction in 1641 of the Court of Star Chamber and the Councils of Wales and of the North, an end was put to the last administrative organs which could bridle the great landed proprietors. Clarendon, himself a relic of an age before the deluge, would seem to have added to his other offences by trying to revive the old policy in a world which would have none ofit.[741]But the royalist squirearchy who in 1660 streamed back to their plundered manors, were, when their property was at stake, as sound constitutionalists as Hampden himself, and after 1688 that absorption of the “State” by “Society” which Gneist, a worshipper of the eighteenth century régime, dates with curious perversity from 1832, was, in his sense of the words, complete. Henceforward there was to be no obstacle to enclosure, to evictions, to rack-renting, other than the shadowy protection of the Common Law; and for men who were very poor or easily intimidated, or in enjoyment of rights for which no clear legal title could be shown, the Common Law, with its expense, its packed juries, its strict rules of procedure, had little help. Thus the good side of the Absolute Monarchy was swept away with the bad. Its epitaph was written by Locke:[742]—“The supreme power cannot take from any man any part of his property without his own consent.” But it was forgotten as soon as it was written. For to the upper classes in the eighteenth century the possession of landed property by a poor man seemed in itself a surprising impertinence which it was the duty of Parliament to correct, and Parliament responded to the call of its relatives outside the House with the pious zeal of family affection.[Next Chapter]

[548]Strype,Ecclesiastical Memorials. Sir William Paget to the Lord Protector, July 7, 1549.

[549]4 Henry VII., c. 19.

[550]Journal of House of Commons, December 19, 1656. See Leonard,Trans. Royal Hist. Society, vol. xix.

[551]e.g.Price,Observations on Reversionary Payments, 1773. See Levy,Large and Small Holdings, p. 41.

[552]The general adoption of the “Test Workhouse" for the able-bodied, which dates from the Poor Law Reform Act of 1884, was the direct result of a one-sided reaction against the disastrous Speenhamland policy.

[553]Camden Society,Clarke Papers, vol. ii. p. 217.

[554]For Captain Pouch see Gay,Trans. Royal Hist. Soc., New Series, vol. xviii. For the other names Cooper,Annals of Cambridge, vol. ii. p. 40.

[555]Gairdner,Letters and Papers of Henry VIII., vol. xii., Part I., 70, 1537. Examination of R. Leedes: “The rebels ... were half inclined to go home. But Ralph Green ... encouraged them to go forward, saying, 'God’s blood, sirs, what will ye now do? Shall we go home and keep sheep? Nay, by God's body, yet had I rather be hanged,'" andibid.: “The said Trotter says the meaning of the plough borne in the banner was the encouraging of the husbandman.”

[556]Ibid., vol. xii., Part I., 687, 1537. Confession of Barnarde Townleye, Clerk: “The beginners of the insurrection in Cumberland were the 4 captains of Penrith; Faith, Poverty, Pity and Charity, as the Vicar of Burgh proclaimed them at each meeting.... Conjectures that the intent was to destroy the gentlemen, that none should pay ingressums to his landlord, and little or no rent or tithe"; alsoibid., Examination of Sir Robert Thompson, Vicar of Burgh: “On the Wednesday and Thursday the 4 captains followed examinand in procession with their swords drawn, and examinand said mass, which they called the Captains' mass.”

[557]Gairdner,L. and P. Henry VIII., vol. xii., Part I., 687: “They of Kirkby Stephen plucked down the new intacks of enclosures, and sent to other Parishes to do the like, which was done at Burgh, 28th January.” For the Doncaster programme see below, p. 334. Aske said (L. and P., vol. xii., Part I., p. 901) that the new farmers of monastic estates “let and tavern out the farms of the same houses to other farmers for lucre.”

[558]These particulars are taken from Strype,Ecclesiastical Memorials.

[559]Gay,Trans. Royal Hist. Soc., New Series, vol. xviii., which also gives an account of the Midland riot of 1607.

[560]MSS. in possession of Charles E. Bradshaw Bowles, Esq., of Wirksworth, for a transcript of which I am indebted to Mr. Kolthammer. See below, pp.327–329.

[561]Hist. MSS. Com., MSS. of Marquis of Salisbury, Part VI., pp. 49–50.

[562]The Humble Petition of thousands well affected persons inhabiting the city of London, Westminster, the Borough of Southwark, Hamlets, and places adjacent. In Bodleian Pamphlets,The Leveller’s Petition, c. 15, 3 Linc. See also Gooch,English Democratic Ideas in the Seventeenth Century, pp. 139–226.

[563]Camden Society,Clarke Papers, vol. ii. pp. 215–217. Winstanley’s letter to Lord Fairfax and the Council of War begins: “That whereas we have begun to dig upon the Commons for livelihood, and have declared unto your excellency and the whole world our reasons, which are four. First, from the righteous law of creation that gives the earth freely to one as well as another, without respect of persons"; also Gooch,op. cit.The Owenite note may be more than a mere chance. Owen himself stated ("New View of Society"): “Any merit due for the discovery calculated to effect more substantial and permanent benefit to mankind than any ever yet contemplated by the human mind belongs exclusively to John Bellers.” Bellers published hisCollege of Industryin 1696, and may easily have been acquainted with the story of the Diggers' agitation.

[564]Russell,Ket’s Rebellion in Norfolk, p. 8.

[565]Gairdner,L. and P. Henry VIII., vol. xii., Part I., 201, Examination of John Halom of Calkehill, yeoman.

[566]Ibid., vol. xi., 1080.

[567]Gairdner,L. and P. Henry VIII., vol. xi., 975.

[568]Ibid., vol. xii., Part I., 163.

[569]Gairdner,L. and P. Henry VIII., vol. xii., Part I., 163. The Proclamation of the Commons; see alsoibid., 138, the manifesto which says, “Ye shall have captains just and true, and not be stayed by the gentry in no wise.”

[570]Russell,Ket’s Rebellion in Norfolk, Introduction, p. 8. The advice of John Walker of Griston.

[571]Selden Society,Select Cases in the Court of Star Chamber, and Leadam,E. H. R., vol. viii. pp. 684–696.

[572]Coventry Leet Book, edited by M.D. Harris, vol. ii. 510 andpassim.

[573]Gairdner,L. and P. Henry VIII., vol. xii., Part I., 380, The Examination of the Monk late of Louth Park: “Plummer and one James, a tailor, were the most quick and chiefest rulers of the company.... Melton, whom they named 'Captain Cobbles,' was the most chief and busy man among these commoners.... John Tailor, of Louth, webster, brought out of the house a great brand of fire, and the commons carried the books into the market-place.”

[574]Hist. MSS. Com., Cd. 2319, p. 75, Copy of Letters Patent (28 May, 4 Ed. VI.) granting to Thomas Audeley ... all that manor called Gunvyles Manor in Norfolk, parcel of the possessions of the said ... Robert Ket, in consideration “boni, veri, fidelis, et magnanimi servitii in conflictu versus innaturales subditos nostros proditores ac nobis rebelles in Com. nostro Norf.... quorum ... quidam Bobertus Kett existit capitanus et conductor.”

[575]Sheep-driving in the sixteenth century was like cattle-driving in Ireland to-day; see Gairdner,L. and P. Henry VIII., vol. xii., Part I., 201: “When they first went to York, they drove one Coppyndale’s sheep because he fled away, and sold them again to his deputy for £10,” and the behaviour of the Norfolk rebels in 1549.

[576]Gairdner,L. and P., xi., II., 186, andRutland MSS., p. 36, quoted by Leadam: “There is a great number of the commons up about Salisbury in Wiltshire, and they have plucked down Sir William Herbert’s Park that is about his new house ... they say they will not have their common grounds to be enclosed and taken from them.”

[577]Gairdner,L. and P., xii., I., 362: “Your rents and others cannot yet be collected.”

[578]I take this story from a transcript kindly supplied me by Mr. Kolthammer of MSS. in the possession of Charles E. Bradshaw Bowles of Wirksworth.

[579]Lodge,Illustrations, ii. p. 218.

[580]Synge,The Playboy of the Western World.

[581]Selden Society,Select Cases in the Court of Requests(Leadam). Customary tenants of Bradfordv.Francis: “The said stuard called ... the ... tenants of the manor to be sworn to enquire as they ought to doo, the which to do ... the said tenants ... obstinately and sturdily then and there refused, and said that unless the said defendent ... wold grante them forthwith and immediatelye that they should have and enjoy the commodity of the said three matters ... that they, nor any of them, wolde be sworn at that Court, but wolde depart.”

[582]Leadam,E. H. R., pp. 684–696. The tenants at Thingden, in their proceedings against Mulsho, “calle commen Councelles ... and make a commen purse among them, promising all of them to take parte with other, saying that xx. of them would spend xx. score pounds ayenet the said John Mulsho.” The tenants of Abbot’s Ripton “procured one common purse to be ordeyned together one common stock to thentent obstinately to defend their perverse and ffrowned appetitez.” As to Rents, seeL. and P. Henry VIII., xii., I., 154: “In many counties little or no ferms will they pay" (Darcy to Shrewsbury).

[583]Gairdner,L. and P. Henry VIII., xii., I., 392.

[584]Proclamation of July 22, 1549. Strype,Ecclesiastical Memorials, who remarks that these village officers, “in the places where these risings were, had been the very ringleaders and procurers by their example and exhortation.”

[585]Commonweal of this Realm of England(Lamond), Appendix to Introduction, lviii.: “In dyvers places wher we were, and wher the people had just cause of Gryef, and have complayned a great many yeares without remedy, there have they byn very quiet, shewed themselves most humble and obedient subiectes taryenge the Kynges Maiesties Reformation.”

[586]Original Papers of the Norfolk and Norwich Archæological Society, 1905, p. 2.

[587]Original Papers of the Norfolk and Norwich Archæological Society, 1905, p. 22.

[588]Ket refused the pardon offered on July 31st on the ground that the insurgents had committed no offence requiring to be pardoned, and fighting followed. On August 23rd a pardon was again offered. While it was being read by a herald, a boy standing by insulted him “with words as unseemly as his gesture was filthy" (Holinshed), and was shot by one of the herald’s retinue. Ket tried to pacify the anger of his followers at what they took to be treachery, but without effect.

[589]Original Papers of the Norfolk and Norwich Archæological Society, 1905, p. 20.

[590]Printed by Cooper,Annals of Cambridge, vol. ii. p. 40.

[591]Gairdner,L. and P. of Henry VIII., xi. 1246.

[592]Russell,Ket’s Rebellion in Norfolk, p. 48.

[593]Some doubt has been expressed as to the interpretation of these words. They should probably be read in the light of what was said above (Part I. chap. iv.) as to enclosures made by the tenants themselves. The rebels point out that a considerable number of people have spent capital on hedging and ditching their lands for the better cultivation of saffron, and therefore ask that, while other enclosures may be pulled down, a special exception may be made in favour of this particular kind of enclosure.

[594]Contrast the feeling in Protestant Norfolk with that of Cornwall and Devon in 1549, and of the North in 1536.

[595]The grammar is bad, but the sense is clear enough. Lords must stop shifting on to tenants burdens which lords ought to bear.

[596]Camden Society,Clarke Papers, vol. ii. p. 217. Letter addressed by the Diggers, December 8, 1649: “To my lord generall and his Councell of War.” The allusion to the usurping Normans occurs also (ibid., p. 215) in another letter in a statement of the reasons of the agitation: “Secondly by vertue of yours and our victory over the king, whereby the enslaved people of England have recovered themselves from under the Norman Conquest; though wee do not yet enjoy the benefit of our victories, nor cannot soe long as the use of the Common land is held from the younger brethren by the Lords of Mannours that yet sit in the Norman chair and uphold that tyranny as if the kingly power were in force still.”

[597]Winstanley: “The curse and blessing that is in mankind,” quoted Gooch,English Democratic Ideas in the Seventeenth Century.

[598]A reference to the Levellers occurs in connection with the Midland Revolt of 1607, Lodge,Illustrations, iii. 320: “You cannot but have hearde what courses have been taken in Leicestershire and Warwickshire by the two Lord Lieutenants there, and by the gentlemen ... and lastlie howe Sir Anth. Mildmay and Sir Edward Montacute repaired to Newton ... where one thousand of these fellowes who term themselves levellers were busily digging, but weare furnished with many half-pikes, pyked staves, long bills, and bowes and arrows and stones ... there were slaine some 40 or 50 of them and a verie great number hurt" (January 11, 1607, the Earl of Shrewsbury to Sir John Manners, Sir Francis Leake, and Sir John Harper). The name Diggers seems to have cropped up about the same time, v.Wit and Wisdom, edited by Halliwell for New Shakespeare Society, pp. 140–141, for a petition from “the Diggers of Warwickshire to all other diggers,” and signed “poore Delvers and Day Labourers for ye good of ye commonwealth till death" (quoted by Gay,Trans. Royal Hist. Soc., New Series, vol. xviii.)

[599]See below, pp.367–368.

[600]Somers' Tracts, vol. i., pp. 164–168: “For their tenantries, this conceit I have thought upon ... that your Majesty, in every shire, should give instruction to some that are indeed trusty and religious gentlemen, that, whereas your Majesty is given to understand that divers popish landlords do hardly use some of your people and subjects, ... you do constitute and appoint them to deal both with entreaty and authority, that such tenants, paying as others do, be not thrust out of their living, nor otherwise molested. This would greatly bind the commons' hearts unto you, on whom indeed consisteth the power and strength of your realm, and it will make them less, or nothing at all, depend upon their landlords.”

[601]For the manner in which the British army is recruited by starvation, see Mr. Cyril Jackson’s Report on Boy Labour to the Royal Commission on the Poor Laws and Relief of Distress, Cd. 4632, pp. 166–168.

[602]Smith,De Republica Anglorum, Lib. I., chap. xxiv.

[603]4Henry VII., c. 19.

[604]Gairdner,L. and P. Hen. VIII., xii., I. p. 595.

[605]D'Ewes' Journal, p. 674: “Mr. Secretary Cecil said, '... I think that whosoever doth not maintain the plough destroys this kingdom.... I am sure when warrants go from the Council for levying of men in the counties, and the certificates be returned unto us again, we find the greatest part of them to be ploughmen.'" See also on this point Appendix I., Nos. iv., v., vi., and viii.

[606]Original Papers of the Norfolk and Norwich Archæological Society(1909), p. 144.

[607]Pauli,Drei volkswirthshaftliche Denkscriften, How to Reform the Realm in Setting Men to Work to restore Tillage: “The kynge and his lordes have nede to mynyster right ordre of common wele; or els they must needs destroy their own wealth by the very ordenaince of God, for they are upholden and borne upon the body. Yf they will be riche, they must first see all common people have riches.”

[608]1 Eliz. cap. xxi. Prothero Statutes and Constitutional Documents, 1558–1625. Two subsidies of 1s. 8d. and 1s. were imposed on “every pound, as well in coin, ... as also plate, stock of merchandises, all manner of corn and blades, household stuff, and of all other goods moveable,” and two subsidies of 2s. 8d. and 1s. 4d. on the “yearly profits" of land.

[609]D'Ewes' Journal, p. 633. “Sir Walter Raleigh said ... 'Call you this par iugum when a poor man pays as much as a rich, and peradventure his estate is no better than he is set at, or little better; when our estates, that be thirty or forty pounds in the queen’s books, are not the hundredth part of our wealth?'”

[610]Fortescue,On the Governance of England, chap. xii.: “The reaume off Ffraunce givith never ffrely off thair owne good will any subsidie to thair prince, because the commons thereoff be so pouere.... But owre commons be riche, and therefore thai give to thair kynge as somme tymes quinsimes and dessimes, and ofte tymes other grete subsidies.”

[611]Bacon,History of King Henry VII.(Pitt Press Series), pp. 70–71: “The more gentlemen, ever the lower book of subsidies.”

[612]Fuller,The Holy and Profane State.

[613]The Standard of Equality in Subsidiary Taxes and Payments, London, 1647.

[614]S. P. D. Ed. VI., Addenda IV., p. 26: “Subsidies and duties must be levied on that border for your service, and they are loosed by oppression of your officers.”

[615]Original Papers of the Norfolk and Norwich Archæological Society, 1907, pp. 139–140.

[616]Gairdner,L. and P. Henry VIII., xi. 1244. See the remarks about Cromwell: “Item, the false flatterer says he will make the king the richest prince in Christendom.... I think he goes about to make him the poorest.”

[617]SeeAppendix I., iv.

[618]Letter to Mr. Cecill from Sir Anthony Auchar, quoted by Russell,Ket’s Rebellion, in Norfolk, p. 202.

[619]Miss Leonard (Trans. Royal Hist. Soc., New Series vol. xix.) quotes Coke,Institutes, Book III., p. 105 (1644 ed.), andS. P. D. Chas. I., clxxxvii., No. 95: “The decay of tillage and houses of husbandry are the undoubted causes and grounds of depopulation, and a crime against the Common Laws of this Realm, and every continuance thereof is a new crime.” But the words “against the Common Laws" are hardly to be interpreted strictly.

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