IV. The commons. tempted to repose trust in the maxim which now obtained currency: "matters be ended as they be friended" 1. 1. IV. The Commons.-Attention has already been drawn to the vital importance of the common waste in primitive economy. It was an integral element in the fabric of rural society and the indispensable basis of the mediaeval system of husbandry. As Latimer 2 pointed out, the ploughman needed cattle and therefore pasture," and pasture they cannot have, if the land be taken in and enclosed from them". Not only was it impossible for the villager to till his fields unless he could feed his cattle, but the loss of common rights was also a hardship for the small cottars who derived a precarious livelihood as best they could-some as squatters upon the waste-and to them the deprivation of the commons meant literally destitution. "There be many a thousand cottagers in England", wrote Hales 3, "which have no lands to live of their own but their hand-labour, some refreshing upon the commons". But the waste offered a perpetual temptation to the lord to extend the size of his demesne by increasing the area of land under cultivation. This temptation became irresistible when the development of sheepfarming created an inordinate land-hunger. The Statute of Merton offered no adequate protection for reasons already assigned, and the enclosure of the commons by the lords became an outstanding feature of the agrarian revolution 5. The greatest grief", observed Lever, "that hath been unto the people of this realm, hath been the enclosing of commons". In some cases an agreement was drawn up between the landlord and his tenants providing for a fair and equitable division of the waste. On the Norfolk estates of King's College, Cambridge, the waste was enclosed by agreement between the tenants and the lords of the manor 7. But 1 Starkey, Dialogue, 86. 2 Latimer, Sermons (Parker Soc. Pub.), i. 249. 4 Supra, p. 73. 5 Mr. Johnson (Disappearance of the Small Landowner, 40) holds that "the enclosing of the sixteenth century was for the most part. . . the enclosing of the common open field, not of the waste or commons ", but cf. the evidence cited in the text. • Sermons, 39. 7 W. J. Corbett, "Elizabethan Village Surveys ", in Trans. Royal Hist. Soc. N.S. xi. 83. The date is 1599. there is every reason to believe that high-handed and oppressive proceedings were the order of the day. The words of Bernard Gilpin, "Never were there so many gentlemen and so little gentleness", come home with special force in the light of an incident which occurred at Wootton Basset, a town in Wiltshire. The lord of the manor seized into his hands no less than nineteen hundred acres of common land, and left the townsmen to content themselves with a bare hundred. His successor wrested from them even the few acres which they had been allowed to retain, and involved them in lawsuits which ruined one tenant and impoverished many others 1. There is little doubt that the enclosure of commons was a widespread evil. We have already cited the evidence of Lever, and Philip Stubs declares in his Anatomy of Abuses that landlords "take in and inclose commons, moors, heaths and other common pastures, whereon the poor commonalty were wont to have all their forage and feeding for their cattle, and (which is more) corn for themselves to live upon "2. In addition we have the evidence of Becon3 that the poor people were not able to keep a cow "for the comfort of them and of their poor family", as well as the testimony of Hales 4 and Edward VI. himself 5. The agrarian revolution was the most important event Contemin the social history of the sixteenth century. It attracted pray opinion: the attention of contemporaries for more than two generations and awakened a storm that swept over the land like a hurricane. How deeply the transformation of rural life affected the imaginations of men can best be gauged from a study of the popular literature, and it is only by abundant illustrations from the writers of the day that we may learn to appreciate the intensity of passion which stirred the nation. (1) Foremost among the social effects produced by the 1 Tawney, Agrarian Problem, 251 (n. 2). Ballads from MSS. i. 31. 3 Works, 432. 4 Discourse, 49 et passim. G. Burnet, History of the Reformation (ed. N. Pocock, 1865), v. 100, 101, 339. Thus the Council of the North was instructed to inquire into the wrongful taking in and enclosing of commons". See also Trigge's Petition" (1604) in Ballads from MSS. i. 35; Crowley, Works, 144; Strype, ii. 439; Select Cases in the Court of Requests, 63. The enclosure of commons was the cause of Kett's revolt. 46 " Lp (1) De growth of sheep-farming was depopulation, which might population. result in one of three ways: eviction, curtailment of agricultural employment, or usurpation of the commons. This made a deep impression upon the popular mind, and was regarded as the fundamental evil to be apprehended from the spread of grazing. The enormous quantity of sheep called forth on every side indignant protests. "God gave the earth to men to inhabit", said Tyndale 1, "and not unto sheep and wild deer". Bastard wrote 2: Sheep have eaten up our meadows and our downs, It attracted the marked attention of foreigners. "They have become devourers of men. . . they unpeople villages and towns". We get occasional glimpses of actual depopulation. At Newnham there were expelled "seventeen score men, women and children, all upon one day". A letter addressed by the vicar of Quinton to the president of Magdalen College about the end of the fifteenth century 1 W. Tyndale, Doctrinal Treatises (Parker Soc. Pub.), 202. 2 T. Bastard, Chrestoleros (Spenser Soc. Pub.), 90. 3 Italian Relation of England (Camd. Soc. Pub.), 10. Polydore Vergil, English History (Camd. Soc. Pub.), i. 5. Stubs in Ballads from MSS. i. 32. E. F. Gay, "The Midland Revolt", in Trans. Royal Hist. Soc. N.S. xviii. 223 (n. 1). For Stretton Baskerville see W. Dugdale, Antiquities of Warwickshire (ed. 1730), i. 51. Cf. also" John Bayker's Letter to Henry VIII." in F. Aydelotte, Elizabethan Rogues and Vagabonds (1913), p. 145. prayed him to "remember the welfare of our Church of Quinton, and the support of our poor town which falls fast in decay and near to the point of destruction, except ye stand good lord and turn more favourable to your tenants, for your housing goes down; twenty marks will not set up again [all] that is fallen within these four years " 1. These passages afford concrete illustrations which bring Engrossing of farms. home more forcibly to our minds the conditions depicted in the words of Thomas Starkey (c. 1538). There is no man," he observed, "but he seeth the great enclosing in every part of arable land; and whereas was corn and fruitful tillage, now nothing is but pastures and plains, by the reason whereof many villages and towns are in few days ruined and decayed "2. Preachers quoted the words of Isaiah: "Woe unto them that join house to house, that lay field to field . . . that they may be placed alone in the midst of the earth". Becon tells how when men "have gotten many houses and tenements into their hands, yea whole townships, they suffer the houses to fall into utter ruin and decay; so that by this means whole townships are become desolate and like unto a wilderness, no man dwelling there, except it be the shepherd and his dog"3. The engrossing of farms was indeed one of the great evils against which the government vainly legislated. A petition addressed to Henry VIII. in 1514 alleged that farmers had "obtained and encroached into their hands ten, twelve, fourteen, or sixteen farms "4. This is confirmed by another writer: "The rich worldlings join farm to farm and heave other men out of their livings "5. A popular proverb crystallized popular experience in one short and pregnant sentence: "Enclosures make fat beasts and lean poor people". "I have heard", said a writer, "of an old prophecy, that 'Horn and thorn shall make England forlorn'. Enclosers verify this by their sheep and hedges at this day. They kill poor men's hearts by taking from them their ancient 1 Denton, England in the Fifteenth Century, 318. 2 Dialogue, 96. commons, to make sheep pasture of "1. A ballad of the "The towns go down, the land decays a sheep-cote in the church. Poor folk for bread cry and weep; Towns pulled down to pasture sheep; this is the new guise ! " 2 (2) Another result of the agrarian changes was the rise in rents, and where the tenant was not actually evicted from his holding he was rendered liable to rack-rents. Crowley asserts that rents were raised some double, some triple, and some fourfold to that they were within these twelve years last past "3. Nor was the charge mere rhetoric; according to a statement made in the Court of Requests, a merchant of London, who had obtained lands in Whitby after the dissolution, more than doubled the rents of his new tenants. When the land was enclosed for purposes of cultivation the lord might fairly expect to benefit by the improvements. Moreover, where the tenant was a grazier the lord could advance a more legitimate claim to a share in the profits. But a great outcry arose when the landlords, while refraining from actual participation in sheep-farming, took advantage of the great demand for land to extort from the tenants higher rents and heavy fines for the renewal of their tenancies, or turned them adrift in favour of those who were more willing or able to comply with their exactions. This pressed hardly upon the poorer tenant, who “dare not say nay, nor yet complain "5, and who "two or three years ere his lease end must bow to his lord for a new lease, and must pinch it out many years before to heap money together"". "At the vacation of his copy or indenture", says Crowley, the tenant "must pay welmost as much as 1 Trigge's" Petition" (1604) in Ballads from MSS. i. 35. Select Cases in the Court of Requests, 200. • G. Owen, Description of Pembrokeshire, cit. Cheyney, Social Changes, 45. |
