Chapter 21

[620]S. P. D. Eliz., vol. cclxxxvi., Nos. 19 and 20: “He is a great taker of advantages. He granted a lease to his brother, who dying a year past, he sued his brother’s wife to overthrow the lease to the undoing of her and her children." For a strong expression of these views seeHist. MSS. Com., MSS. of Marquis of Salisbury, Part II., 1575, Nov. 20. Lord North to the Bishop of Ely: “My lord, it wilbe no pleasure for you to have hir Majestye and the Councell knowe howe wretchedly yowe live within and without your house, howe extremely covetous, how great a grazier, how marvellous a dayrye man, howe ritche a farmer, how grete an owner. It will not lyke yowe that the world knowe of your decayed houses, ... of the leases you pull violently from many, of the copyeholdes that yowe lawlesslye enter into, of the fre land that yowe wrongfully posese.... Yowe suffer no man to live longer under yowe than yowe lyke him.”

[621]Norden,The Surveyor’s Dialogue, p. 1: “Farmer, I have heard much evill of the profession, and to tell you my conceit plainly I think the same both evill and unprofitable ... and oftentime you are the cause that men lose their land and sometimes they are abridged of such liberties as they have long used in mannors.”

[622]Topographer and Genealogist, vol. i.

[623]Norden,op. cit.: “And is not every mannor a little commonwealth, whereof the tenants are the members, the land the body, and the lord the head?”

[624]Gairdner,L. and P. Henry VIII., xii., I., 98, Instructions to the Duke of Norfolk.

[625]Acts of the Privy Council, New Series, vol. xxvii. p. 129. Letter from the Council to William Harman, Esq.

[626]A useful list of these Acts, with a summary of their provisions, is given by Slater,The English Peasantry and the Enclosure of Common Fields, Appendix D.

[627]4 Henry VII., c. 19. All occupiers of twenty acres and more which have been in tillage during three years preceding the Act to maintain tillage.

[628]6 Henry VIII., c. 5, and 7 Henry VIII., c. 1. In parishes “whereof the more part was or were used and occupied to tillage and husbandry,” any person who “shall decay a town, a hamlet, a house of husbandry, or convert tillage into pasture,” and has not “within one yeere next after such wylfull decaye reedifyed and made ageyn mete and convenyent for people to dwell and inhabyte the same ... and therein to exercyse husbandry and tillage,” forfeits one half of his land to the lord of the manor. Land converted to pasture must be tilled “after the maner and usage of the countrey where the seyd land lyeth.”

[629]25 Henry VIII., c. 13.

[630]5 and 6 Edward VI., c. 5.

[631]2 and 3 Philip and Mary, c. 2.

[632]5 Elizabeth, c. 2.

[633]31 Elizabeth, c. 7.

[634]35 Elizabeth, c. 7.

[635]39 Elizabeth, c. 1 and c. 2.

[636]Hall’sChronicle of Henry VIII., p. 585 (Edition 1809), quoted by Leadam, introduction toSelect Cases in the Court of Requests(Selden Society).

[637]Smith,De Republica Anglorum, Lib. III., chap. iv.

[638]Acts of the Privy Council, New Series, vol. xiii. pp. 91–92.

[639]Acts of the Privy Council, New Series, vol. xxx. pp. 36–37. A letter to the Council in the Marches of Wales, concerning the tenants of Aston in Montgomeryshire: “And if it be true, as they do inform us by their petitions, that examinations in a case concerning one of that Counsell should be taken by a kinsman of his owne and a clerk underneathe him, wee wyshe ... that you would have taken a more indifferent course, especially in a matter of commons, which, concerning many persons, doth easily give occasion of offence and scandal.”

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

[641]Leadam,E. H. R., vol. viii. pp. 684–696.

[642]Ibid.

[643]Merriman,Life and Letters of Thomas Cromwell, vol. i. p. 273.

[644]Ibid., vol. i. p. 413.

[645]Gairdner,L. and P. Henry VIII., xii., I., 98 and 595.

[646]Gairdner,L. and P. Henry VIII., xiii., I., 334 (see also 66, where an appeal is made January 11, 1536, to Cromwell to protect some tenants in Denbighshire.)

[647]Proceedings and Ordinances of the Privy Council, vol. vii. p. 42: “The King’s pleasure was signified to John Dawney, Knight, that whereas he had turned certain persons in the Isle of Wight out of their farms, whereof they pretended to have leases, and had demised the same to others that minded not to dwell upon the same, he should take order that the old tenants might enjoy their leases until Michaelmas, come a twelve month, and that in the mean season the King's Highness would see a direction taken in the matter.”

[648]Ibid., vol. vii. pp. 225–226. July 30 and August 1, 1541.

[649]Ibid., vol. vii. pp. 123–125. January 25, 1541.

[650]Acts of the Privy Council, New Series, vol. i. pp. 5 and 9.

[651]Leadam,E. H. R., vol. viii. pp. 684–696.

[652]Appendix to Miss Lamond’s edition ofThe Commonweal of this Realm of England, Hale’s defence, p. lviii.: “Whas ther not, longe before this Commyssyon was sent forthe, an insurrection in Hertfordshire for the comens at Northall and Cheshunt?”

[653]Acts of the Privy Council, New Series, vol. ii. pp. 190–193, May 5, 1548: a complaint from “many poor men of the Parishes of Walton, Weybridge, East Molson, West Molson, Caverham, Esher, Byfiete, Temsditton ... in the name of the whole parishes before rehearsed, that by reason of the making of the late chase of Hampton Court, forsomyche as their commons, pastures, and meadows be taken in, and that all the said parishes are overlaid with the deer now increasing daily upon them, very many households of the same parishes be let fall down, the families decayed, and the king’s liege people much diminished, the country thereabout in manner made desolate.”

[654]See p. 294.

[655]Published by the E. E. T. S.

[656]The first sermon preached before King Edward the Sixth, March 8, 1549: “You landlords, you rent-raisers, I may say you step-lords, you unnatural lords, you have for your possession yearly too much. For that herebefore went for twenty or forty pounds by year ... now is let for fifty or an hundred pound by year.” See also Latimer,The Sermon of the Plough, January 18, 1548.

[657]Strype,Ecclesiastical Memorials.

[658]The proclamation appointing the Commission is printed by Strype,op. cit., vol. ii., Book I., chap. ii. The operative part of it runs: “And therefore, He ... hath appointed, according to the said acts and proclamations, a view and inquiry to be made of all such as contrary to the said acts and godly ordinances have made enclosures and pasture of that which was arable ground, or let any house, tenement, or mease decay or fall down, or done anything contrary of the good and wholesome articles contained in the said acts.” In my account of the situation under Somerset I have followed the documents printed by Strype, and the appendix to Miss Lamond's introduction toThe Commonweal of this Realm of England.

[659]Strype,Ecclesiastical Memorials.

[660]For the pardon, see appendix to Miss Lamond's introduction toThe Commonweal, &c., p. lxi.; for the ploughing up of a park and division of farms,ibid., pp. xli. and lxi.-lxii.; for the Bills introduced by Hales,ibid., xl., xlv.-lii., lxii.-lxv. Strype’s account appears to be based on that of Hales.

[661]For these facts, see Strype,Ecclesiastical Memorials.

[662]Strype,Ecclesiastical Memorials. Sir William Paget to the Lord Protector, July 7, 1549: “The king’s subjects are out of all discipline, out of all obedience, caring neither for Protector nor King. And what is the cause? Your own lenity ... the foot taketh upon him the part of the head, and commons is become king, a king appointing conditions and laws to the governors, saying, 'Grant this and that and we will go home.' ... What then is the matter, troweth your grace?... By my faith, Sir, even that which I said to your grace.... Liberty, Liberty.... In Germany, when the very like tumult to this began first, it might have been appeased with the loss of 20 men, and after with the loss of 100 or 200. But it was thought nothing and might easily be appeased, and also some spiced consciences taking pity of the poor ... thought it a sore matter to lose so many of their country folk, saying they were simple folk.... It cost, ere it was appeased, they say, 1000 or 2000 men.”

[663]Appendix to Miss Lamond’s introduction toThe Commonweal, &c., pp. xli. and lii. But of course there was no such thing as collective responsibility for policy in the sixteenth century.

[664]Russel,Ket’s Rebellion in Norfolk, p. 202.

[665]See p.355.

[666]Acts of the Privy Council, New Series, vol. ii. pp. 294–296.

[667]Strype,Ecclesiastical Memorials.

[668]Somerset’s execution took place on January 22, 1552, more than two years after he had been deposed from the Protectorate, for supposed complicity in a plot to overthrow the Government. The evidence for the existence of a conspiracy appears to be feeble. See Pollard,The Political History of England, 1547–1603, pp. 61–65.

[669]Acts of the Privy Council, New Series, vol. iii. pp. 181–182 and 247 and 252. “Mr. Grenewaie was this day before the Counsaill and rebuked sore for his attemptate in causeng Raf Lees hedges to be broaken up; nevertheless considering his long service [as gentleman usher] he was borne withall, and for this tyme without further punishment he was commaunded to make up those hedges again.”

[670]3 and 4 Edward VI. c. 3.

[671]Acts of the Privy Council, New Series, vol. xi. pp. 191–192. A letter to the Lord President of Wales that whereas upon complaints exhibited to their lordships by the tenants of the Forest of Fakenham against Sir John Throgmorton, and one Mr. William Bell his stuarde, concerning an inclosure by him made of certen commons ... encroachment upon their copieholds ... it was by them ordered that the suite against the tenants commenced at the Common Lawe in respect of their commons and copieholds should surcease and the matters in controversy abyde triall before their lordships ... and untill the matter should be heard and determined they enjoyned to proceed no further in the inclosure of the said Common ... forasmuch as the tenants do now again complaine that since their lordships' said order Sir John and the said William Bell have inclosed more of the said common ... but hath also caused Bell to proceed against the tenants byejectione firmæat the Common Lawe, he is therefore required ... to will and command the said Sir John and William Bell to forbear their inclosures of the said Common ... untill the same shall be ... determined by their lordships according to their lordships' form and order.”

[672]Acts of the Privy Council, New Series, vol. xiii. pp. 91–92. A letter to the Justices of the County of Lincoln: “If they thinke it agreeable with equitie and justice that the poore man should be put in possession of the said Landes, that they give commandment unto the said Lacy to admit him thereunto.”

[673]Ibid., vol. xiv. pp. 201–202.

[674]Ibid., vol. xv. pp. 394–395.

[675]See p. 373, n. 1, andActs of the Privy Council, New Series, vol. xvii. p. 76. For a similar letter to the Council of the North,ibid., vol. xxvii. pp. 228–229.

[676]Ibid., vol. xxii. p. 379.

[677]Ibid., vol. xxii. pp. 360 and 370. Letters to the Master of the Rolls ordering retrial of case concerning enclosure of commons at Bath.

[678]Ibid., vol. xvi. pp. 366–367. A letter to the Solicitor: “Whereas divers poor men, tenants of the manor of Chilton, have exhibited very grievous complaints unto their lordships against William Darrell, Esq., of divers and sundry misdemeanors committed by him in breach of her majestie's peace" ... the solicitor is to “cause a byll to be drawn into the Court of Star Chamber against Darrel,” and Camden Society 1886,Cases in the Court of Star Chamber and High Commission, pp. 44–45.

[679]Holkham MSS., Sparham, Bdle. No. 5, 14th June, 34 Eliz: “In the matter in variance brought before the Queenes Majestie in her Majtie'shonbleCourt of Requests at the suit of John Byrd against Christopher Saye and other defendants upon the motion of Mr. Edward Coke recorder of the City of London being of Councel with the said defendant.... For that it appeareth that the said Defendant hath had three verdicts and judgments at the Common Law, one of them against the said complainant himself."... The defendant is awarded costs, “and the said complainant shall from henceforth forbear to put any sheepe upon the said ground, and suffer his sheepe to feede there.”

[680]Prothero,Statutes and Constitutional Documents, 1558–1625, pp. 370–371.

[681]Prothero,Statutes and Constitutional Documents, 1558–1625, pp. 470–472, and Gay,Trans. Royal Hist. Soc., New Series, vol. xviii.

[682]Atkinson,North Riding Quarter Sessions, vol. i. pp. 106, 108, 111, 122. The last presentment runs: “Will Marwood of Busby, gentn, for decaying of xxx acres of arable land or thereabouts, and converting of xxx acres of arable land or thereabouts, the same, from tillage into pasture or meadow, and tilled nothing in the same parish in lieu thereof, contrary, etc.”

[683]Leonard,Trans. Royal Hist. Soc., vol. xix.

[684]Leonard,Trans. Royal Hist. Soc., vol. xix.

[685]Ingleby,Shakespeare and the Welcombe Enclosures.

[686]S. P. D.J., I., vol. cxxiv., December 20, 1621, andS. P. D., Ch. i. cliii., October 2, 1623.

[687]Leonard,Trans. Royal Hist. Society, vol. xix.

[688]Ibid.

[689]For the ploughing up of pasture,S. P. D., Ch. I. vol. cccciv. 142, and vol. cccclxxv. 72; for Lord Saye and Sele, vol. ccclxii. 60, 1637; order of Council that the Attorney-General should forthwith proceed by information in the Star Chamber against Viscount Saye and Sele for depopulation and conversion of houses and lands.

[690]J. Moore,A Target for Tillage: “My purpose is not here to plead for ... any other idle drones and wretched atheists.... All these I acknowledge to be the greatest wasters and spoylers of our country, worse by many degrees than any depopulators, oppressors, and decayors of villages.... All these I know abhorre the plough, and are enemies to the State; who yet (I confesse) in their high talke do justify tillage and will be ready no doubt to reforme the decay thereof with spade and pickaxe." (The copy of this pamphlet which I have seen is dated 1611. I have ventured to assume that this is a misprint, and that it should be placed with John Moore’s other pamphlets on enclosure, 1653–1656.)

[691]Leonard,Trans. Royal Hist. Soc., vol. xix.

[692]Hale’s defence in appendix to Miss Lamond's introduction toThe Commonweal of this Realm of England.

[693]D'EwesJournal, p. 674 (1601). Mr. Johnson said: “In the time of dearth, when we made this Statute, it was not considered that the hand of God was upon us; and now corn is cheap. If too cheap, the husbandman is undone.” See also Raleigh’s speech in the same debate.

[694]e.g.in 1593 the clause in the Act of 1563 forbidding conversion of arable to pasture was repealed. In 1595 and 1596 bad harvests produced loud complaints of high prices, and in 1597 conversion to pasture was again prohibited.

[695]Original Papers of the Norfolk and Norwich Archæological Society, 1907, pp. 131 ff.

[696]Moore’sReports, p. 117, plea 262, Claypole's case: “Le conseil de Reigne argue que ... l'entent de Estatute fuit que le user sera accompt equivalent en tort al convcon." Judgment was apparently given for the Queen. The decision was quoted as an authority in the debate in Parliament on the Bills introduced in 1597.Hist. MSS. Com., MSS. of Marquis of Salisbury, Part VII., pp. 541–543: “And 26 Eliz. in the Exchequer, in Claypole’s case, an information was exhibited upon the Statute of 4 Hen. VII. against a purchaser for converting of tillage into pasture, and adjudged good, though the purchaser were not the converter, but only a continuer of the first conversion. So as this new law tends but for an instruction and explanation of the old.”

[697]Leadam,Trans. Royal Hist. Soc., New Series, vol. vi.

[698]For Warwick, Herbert, and the St. Johns, see pp. 326, 368, and 362. For Darcy and disturbances in Westmoreland, Gairdner,L. and P. Henry VIII., xii. II., xii. I., 319, xi. 1080. For Paget and Rich, Strype,Ecclesiastical Memorials.

[699]Strype,Ecclesiastical Memorials.

[700]Fisher,The Political History of England, 1485–1547, Appendix II.

[701]Selden Society,Select Cases in the Court of Requests(Leadam).

[702]Hibbert,The Dissolution of the Monasteries, pp. 209–210.

[703]Ibid., p. 210.

[704]Hist. MSS. Com., C.D. 3218, pp. 322–323 (MSS. of Earl of Leicester at Holkham Hall).

[705]For Whitby and Washerne, see pp. 285 and 194. In 1545 the tenants of the manor of Egglesdon, formerly the property of the monastery of Sion, proceed against Palmer, the grantee, in the Court of Star Chamber for evicting tenants and other oppressions (Leadam,E. H. R., vol. viii. pp. 684–696).

[706]More,Utopia, p. 31 (Pitt Press edition): “Noblemen and gentlemen, yea, and certain abbotts, holy men no doubt ... leave no ground for tillage, they enclose all to pasture.” For a case of claiming a bondman, see Selden Society,Select Cases in the Court of Star Chamber, Carterv.The Abbot of Malmesbury. For conversion of copyholds to tenancies at will, Selden Society,Select Cases in the Court of Requests, Kent and other inhabitants of Abbot’s Riptonv.St. John. The change was alleged to have been made in 1471.

[707]The opposite view is expressed by Gasquet,Henry the Eighth and the English Monasteries, chap. xxii. For a criticism of it see Savine,Oxford Studies in Social and Legal History, vol. i. pp. 263–267, and pp. 245–260 for facts as to lay administrators. Hibbert,op. cit., pp. 210–211, who writes of Staffordshire, supports Savine rather than Gasquet. The evidence of Aske cannot be quoted as though what was true of the northern houses were true of all. As a matter of fact, lay estates preserved the old conditions in the north long after the dissolution (see pp. 189–191). The hatred of the new landlords is proof that they were specially detestable, rather than that the monasteries had been above all ordinary economic considerations.

[708]Quoted by Gasquet,op. cit., p. 464, from a document written about 1591.

[709]e.g.Paget’s letter to Somerset, July 7, 1549 (Strype,Ecclesiastical Memorials). Neville, De furoribus Norfolcensium Ketto Duce, 1575. The words put into the mouths of the landed gentry by Crowley inThe Way to Wealth(E. E. T. S.) no doubt represent their attitude fairly: “Nowe if I should demand of the gredie cormoraunts what they thinke should be the cause of sedition, they would saie, 'The paisent knaves be too welthy, provender pricketh them. They knowe no obedience, they regard no lawes, they would have no gentlemen, they would have all men like themselves, they would have all things commune. They would not have us master of that which is our owne. They will appoint us what rent we shall take for our grounds.... They will caste down our parkes and lay our pastures open.... They wyll compel the Kyng to graunt theyr requests.... We wyll tech them to know theyr betters, and because they would have all in common we will leave them nothing.'”

[710]Appendix to Introduction toThe Commonweal of this Realm of England(Lamond), p. lix.

[711]Ibid., p. lxv.: “This was it that byt the mare by the thombe.”

[712]For Norfolk and the West of England, Leonard,Trans. Royal Hist. Soc., vol. xix. For Nottinghamshire, Lincolnshire and Derbyshire,S. P. D., Ch. I. vol. clxxxv. No. 86, and vol. ccvi. No. 71 (quoted in Appendix I.), and vol. clxxxv. No. 41. For Leicestershire, Privy Council Register, vi. 385, and Gonner,Common Land and Enclosure, p. 165. For Yorkshire, see pp. 374–375. Professor Gonner (op. cit., p. 167) estimates that about six hundred persons were fined, the sums obtained from thirteen counties amounting to about £46,800.

[713]Hearnshaw,Southampton Court Leet Records, 1550. Presentment of “the names of the Commoners which require redress of the Commons inclosed, as they saye, contrary to the King’s Majesty’s statutes, and that they may be laid abroad according to the said statutes.”

[714]Original Papers of the Norfolk and Norwich Archæological Society, 1907, p. 185.

[715]Bateson,Records of the Borough of Leicester, 1509–1603, pp. 300–301.

[716]Gay,Quarterly Journal of Economics, vol. xvii.

[717]For the debates of 1597 and 1601 seeD'Ewes' Journal, pp. 551 and 674 ff.: a special exemption from the operations of the Act was allowed to a landlord who had got letters patent authorising him to enclose 340 acres “too moist and soft and altogether unfit for tillage.”

[718]Hist. MSS. Com., MSS. of Marquis of Salisbury, Part. VII., pp. 541–543.

[719]Pseudonismus,A Vindication of the Considerations concerning Common Fields and Enclosures, 1656: “The Statute of Tillage hath excited some and affrighted others that the land in each field is not and cannot be husbanded as it ought.” The “Statute” alluded to is the Bill introduced in this year which did not become law.

[720]Harrington’s Works (1700 edition), pp. 388–389.

[721]Kalm’s Account of his Visit to England on his Way to America in 1748, translated by Joseph Lucas, p. 282. I am indebted for this reference to Dr. Gilbert Slater. The exact words are: “Nor had they any turnip land to feed sheep upon. Therefore they were deprived of the advantage of getting to sell any fat sheep or other cattle. The reason they gave for all this was that their arable was common field, and thus came to lie every other year fallow, when one commoner always had to accommodate his crops to the others; but the principal reason of all was said to be that,” and so on as in text. I am not sure that I have interpreted the passage rightly in assuming that it alludes to theillegalityof enclosure without Act of Parliament. It may merely mean that, without an Act of Parliament, the necessary agreement could not be obtained among all those interested. I follow Dr. Slater’s interpretation.

[722]Trans. Royal Hist. Soc., vol. xix.

[723]For the St. Johns, see pp. 362 and 380. For Sir John Yorke, pp. 285 and 381, and Selden Society,Court of Requests, Inhabitants of Whitbyv.Yorke, 1553: “Be yt remembred that the cause brought before the Queen’s Counsaill in her Majestie’s Court of Requests.... Ys now ordered by the saide Councill by thagreement of the saide Syr John who hathe promised that the saide parties aforenamed, and every one of them, shall have and quietly eujoye theyr tenements and holdings during the yeres and termes in theyr leases and copies yet enduring, paying theyr Rentes and ffermes accustomed.” For Lloyd and the tenants of Hewlington in Denbighshire, see pp. 302–303.

[724]S. P. D., Ch. I., cccxlii., No. 47.

[725]Ibid., cccxiv., No. 29, and Appendix I., No. VIII.

[726]Ibid., cccclxxv., No. 72.

[727]Ibid., cccciv., No. 142.

[728]S. P. D., Ch. I., cl., No. 7.

[729]S. P. D., ccclxi., No. 15: “There are many thousand acres of heath and barren commons in England and Wales, not annually worth 6d. an acre, to which your Majesty has right of soil but no benefit thereby, which may be improved to a great value, cause plenty of provision, enrich many thousands, supply the poor.”

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