Chapter XXVIII: Part I: , 70, 1537. Examination of R. Leedes: "The rebels (3)

With the Protectorate of Somerset we enter upon a period of more violent agitation and more drastic expedients. There was a large difference between using the jurisdiction of the Council to redress individual cases of hardship and a deliberate attempt to effect a general settlement of the land question upon lines which would do substantial justice to the peasants. The former course involved no perilous assertion of principles, and could be pursued under the guise of a purely conservative policy, merely by referring disputes between landlords and tenants to the Courts of Star Chamber and Requests, which, though in fact administrative and governmental bodies, were none the less protected to some extent against criticism by wearing the appearance of mere legal tribunals. The latter might, perhaps, have been attempted with some faint hope of success, if statesmen had been much more careful than they were to discriminate between the different aspects of the problem with which they were confronted. To us, who look back on the situation from a distance of three and a half centuries, it seems that the one guiding thread, which might have led some way through the welter of confusion, was offered by the sharp distinction drawn by Hales between those enclosures which were made by the exchange and consolidation of strips, with a view to better husbandry, and those which had as their effect the conversion of arable land to pasture, the monopolising of commons, and the eviction of tenants. The arguments in favour of the first type of enclosure were too cogent for any policy which condemned enclosing in general to have the smallest prospect of success. The only possibility of averting the ruin to the peasantry which accompanied depopulation lay in encouraging them generally to follow the example of their brothers in Kent, Essex, Devonshire, and Cornwall, who had for centuries been substituting a more progressive husbandry for the "mingle mangle" of the open fields, without the disastrous consequences entailed by the spread of capitalist agriculture in other parts of the South and Midlands. But such a frank encouragement of certain kinds of enclosure for the sake of repressing others implied an appreciation of the economics of the problem to which comparatively few persons in our period had attained, and was quite beyond the grasp of Governments, which, at their worst, as under Warwick, were quite indifferent to the sufferings of the poorer classes, and, at their best, conceived public interests to be served best by a strict maintenance of customary conditions. Somerset's policy of deliberately restoring ancient relationships with a strong hand could hardly even be begun without those who pursued it taking sides in a bitter economic agitation, and essaying openly to reverse the whole agrarian movement with which, in the course of the past half century, the wealth of the middle and upper classes, at any rate south of the Trent, had become inextricably identified. It involved in fact a return to the policy of Wolsey, and a return to it under conditions which made Wolsey's policy doubly hard to carry out, inasmuch as, on the one hand, the position of Somerset as temporary head of a jealous aristocracy was far weaker than that of the omnipotent Cardinal, and, on the other hand, the lapse of twenty years had seen the growth of a generation to which enclosures were a vested interest.

Yet it would be a mistake to think of the whole agrarian episode between the death of Henry VIII. and the fall of Somerset as the mere freak of a misguided doctrinaire. If we can see difficulties which he did not, if we can smile at the thought of any Government at once so incompetent, and but for Somerset himself, so entirely selfish, carrying out a great conservative revolution in the teeth of the new wealth and power of the country, we must also remember that he was not alone in thinking the spoliation of the weaker rural classes not only, as it certainly was, illegal, but also so patently unjust as to amount to a national crime, and that in that age men overestimated the ability of a Government fiat to modify economic habits almost as much as they underestimated it two and a half centuries later. Somerset can hardly have been ignorant of the tremendous risks involved in his policy. But he may well have thought inaction not only baser than, but almost as dangerous as, action. It was certain that, unless the Government interfered to protect tenants, there would be a series of peasants' revolts. The best answer to the charge of stirring up class hatred, which was made against Somerset, as against all who call attention to its causes, was that agrarian rioting had begun in Hertfordshire[652] before the Commission on Enclosures was sent out, that in those counties where it took its work seriously order was maintained till the end of 1548, and that grave disturbances did not take place until the following year, when it became evident that, both in Parliament and on the Council, the Protector's policy had been beaten by the opposition of the great landowners. Nor is there any reason to doubt the sincerity of Somerset himself (though he, like every one else, had speculated in monastic estates), however much there may be to regret that his policy did not come into stronger hands, or fall upon times which were, from a political point of view, less hopelessly impracticable. An attempt was made to set a good example on the Crown Estates. In 1548, in response to complaints from the tenants at Walton, Weybridge, Esher, and Shepperton, that the making of the royal deer park at Hampton Court was ruining them through the loss of common rights which it entailed, an order[653] was issued dechasing the Park, and throwing open the enclosed lands to the commoners. In the following year Somerset secured the passage through Parliament of a Private Act[654] conferring a good title on those copyholders on his own manors to whom demesne lands had been let, and who, as occupiers of other than customary tenancies, could not claim the protection of manorial custom. It is plain from the comparatively few complaints which came in the sixteenth century from freeholders that, if such a course had been generally pursued, the chief objection to the changes grouped together under the name of enclosure would have been removed, because the harsh disturbance of vested interests which they involved would have been avoided. But that, of course, was quite outside the bounds of political possibility.

[652] Appendix to Miss Lamond's edition of _The 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.

The story of Somerset's attempt to deal with the land question is soon told. In 1548 agrarian discontent was at its height. Some time in that year there must have come to the hands of the Government the small tract on the effect of sheep-farming in Oxfordshire, Northamptonshire, Buckinghamshire, and Berkshire, which was printed in 1551 under the name of "Certayne causes of the Present Discontent."[655] In spring and summer Latimer was thundering against the "Step-lords"[656] at Paul's Cross. In autumn Crowley published his "Information and Petition against the Oppressors of the Poor Commons."[657] Above all, the poor commons had earlier in the year shown unmistakable signs of fending for themselves. The result of Somerset's own sympathy with the prevalent discontent was the formation of something like a party, under the name of the "Commonwealth men," with Latimer as its prophet and Hales as its man of action, which had a programme sufficiently definite to put heart into the peasantry and to terrify the great landed proprietors. On June 1st a Royal Commission[658] was appointed to inquire into offences committed against the Acts forbidding conversion of arable to pasture and depopulation. The Commission divided itself into several committees to deal with different parts of the country. Only one of them, however, consisting of John Hales and five of his colleagues, got seriously to work. It had a large area to cover--the counties of Oxfordshire, Berkshire, Warwickshire, Leicestershire, Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire, and Northamptonshire--and one which was the centre of the agitation against enclosure. It seems to have interrupted its labours during autumn and winter, but it was busy in June, July, and August 1548, and again in the summer of 1549, by which time, however, the anger of the landed gentry against its proceedings, and of the peasants against the inactivity of the Commission as a whole, had reached a point which made it hardly possible for it to do more than collect information. Considering the difficulties of its task, and the wide tract of country to be covered, its behaviour appears to have been thorough and business-like. The usual procedure was to empanel a jury of twelve in each place visited, to whom Hales delivered an address explaining the objects and methods of the inquiry, as set out in the instructions issued by the Government to the Commissioners. These stated the Commission to have been formed in particular "for the maintenance and keeping up of houses of husbandry, for avoiding destruction and pulling down of houses for enclosures and converting of arable land into pasture, for limiting what number of sheep men should have and keep in their possession at one time, against plurality and keeping together of farms, and for maintenance of housekeeping, hospitality, and tillage on the sites ... of such monasteries, priories, and religious houses as were dissolved."[659] Offenders were then presented by the jury, and though, on Hales' advice, a pardon was granted them for their past illegalities, their enclosures seem to have been thrown down, arable which had been turned into pasture to have been ploughed up, and farms which had been united to have been separated.[660]

[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 to
_The Commonweal of this Realm of England_.

[659] Strype, _Ecclesiastical Memorials_.

[660] For the pardon, see appendix to Miss Lamond's introduction
to _The 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.

In the meantime Somerset kept the general policy of agrarian reform alive on the Council. In the autumn of 1548 Hales had returned to London, and, as member for Preston, had prepared three Bills, dealing partly with enclosures and partly with the high prices. The first, requiring re-edification of decayed houses and the maintenance of tillage, and the second, forbidding speculation in food-stuffs, were introduced into the House of Lords. The third, which aimed at encouraging cattle breeding as distinct from sheep grazing, was read first in the House of Commons. Neither Bill came to anything, for Parliament was as angry as the Council with Somerset's policy. But in May 1549 the Protector issued another proclamation against the decay of houses and enclosure; in June he infuriated the upper classes by a proclamation pardoning persons who had taken the law into their own hands by pulling down hedges; and throughout the whole period of his power he used the Court of Requests as an instrument for protecting tenants against landlords.[661] The Secretary[662] to the Council, who was quite ready for a reign of terror provided that the gentry began it, prophesied gloomily that the German peasants' revolt was to be re-enacted in England, and Warwick attacked Hales fiercely for venturing to discharge the duties laid upon him by the Government, of which Warwick was a member.[663] "Sir," wrote a plaintive Norfolk gentleman to Cecil about the time of Ket's rebellion, "Be plain with my Lord's Grace, that under the pretence of simplicity and poverty there may not rest much mischief. So do I fear there doth in these men called Commonwealths and their adherents. To declare unto you the state of the gentlemen (I mean as well the greatest as the lowest) I assure you they are in such doubt that almost they dare touch none of them, but for that some of them have been sent up and come away without punishment, and that Commonwealth called Latimer hath gotten the pardon of others.... I may well gather some of them to be in jealousy of my Lord's friendship, yea and to be plain, think my Lord's grace rather to will the decay of the gentlemen than otherwise."[664] Poor gentlemen! A Government which holds that laws do not exist only to preserve the rich in their possessions! Truly the mountains are removed.

[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 to _The
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.

Somerset's Government had too short a life for us to judge how far, in happier political circumstances, he might have succeeded, not in checking agrarian changes, which would in any case have been impossible, but in securing that reasonable consideration should be given to the vested interests of the poorer classes. As Elizabethan statesmen discovered[665] at the end of the century, there was room for a policy which would prevent the wholesale displacement of tenants, and nevertheless offer an encouragement to the formation of the compact holdings out of the scattered strips and common pastures, which the agricultural experts were unanimous in condemning. There are faint indications of an understanding that a fair middle course was possible in a remarkable case which comes from the little Huntingdonshire town of Godmanchester.[666] At Godmanchester there had been the usual changes of the preceding half century. Rents had been raised, cottages pulled down, woods destroyed and turned to pasture, while the meadows, which under the Act of 1547 had been confiscated from the local gild, offered a tempting prey to some enterprising speculator. On complaints coming before the Council in the summer of 1549 a comprehensive scheme of reorganisation was drawn up. All persons with more than one house were to let at the customary rent that which they did not use themselves. All persons who had pulled down houses or converted them to other purposes than the accommodation of tenants were either to rebuild them or to build new ones, and to let them to any one offering the customary rent before Michaelmas 1549. The groves of wood converted to pasture were to be enclosed, so as to prevent the depredations made upon them by straying beasts, and, if necessary, the land was to be sown with acorns. With the gild lands a course was taken which, in the scramble for land which was going on in the middle of the sixteenth century, was unfortunately highly unusual. According to the Council's directions they were to "be divided among the inhabitants thereof in this manner; that is to say to every ploughland five acres, and to every cottager and artificer there dwelling, or which hereafter upon the houses to be now builded shall dwell, one acre, and, if the number do not extend, then for every ploughland four, and so for lack of the rate every ploughland three, and the residue of the said acres falling after that rate to be divided among the cottagers, paying for every of the said acres 3/4." This case is the high water mark of administrative interference on behalf of the tenants. The action taken embraces nearly all the expedients of re-edifying decayed cottages, fixing fair rents, preventing common land from passing into the control of a single individual, and making equal allotment among the inhabitants, which had been demanded by the peasants and suggested by their friends. It shows that the enclosing of land hitherto used in common was not resented, provided that the division was made in such a way as to give a fair share to all the parties interested. It may perhaps be taken as a specimen of the kind of policy which lay behind Somerset's expressions of sympathy with the peasantry, and which he would have pursued if his colleagues on the Council had permitted. As it was, he was not strong enough to carry out his programme. While the failure of the Commission resulted in the revolts of 1549, his reluctance to crush their authors, whom he believed to be men goaded into rebellion by intolerable grievances, united the whole weight of the greater property against him as a traitor to his order. In the attack made upon him as by his colleagues, the actions which evoked their special denunciation were those which embodied his agrarian policy, the use of the Court of Requests to protect tenants, the appointment of the Royal Commission to enforce the Acts against enclosures, the pardon granted in June 1549 to the riotous peasants, and the statements attributed to him that "the covetousness of the gentlemen gave cause to the common people to rise," and that "people had good cause to reform the things themselves," because "the lords of Parliament were loathe to incline themselves to reformation of enclosures and other things."[667] To the last a popular hero, the "good Duke" could expect no help from those whom he had befriended, and no mercy from the sordid counter-revolution which he had provoked. His epitaph was given by the sad cries of "Too true," with which the crowd about the scaffold greeted his dying declaration that he had "ever been glad of the furtherance ... of the commonwealth."[668]

[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.

With the fall of Somerset in October 1549 the landowning classes had their revenge, and, under the guidance of Warwick, the policy of the Government swung violently in the opposite direction. The intervention of the Council to protect tenants of course stopped at once; in the two cases which are reported as having come before it in the year 1550 and 1551 the line taken was that the presumption was against the tenants who had broken open enclosures.[669] While, in the absence of John Hales, who appears to have found it convenient to leave the country, the Reports of the Royal Commission were allowed to slumber, the Government, by way of reducing opportunities for undesirable meetings, instructed the Bishop of London to prevent unseasonable preaching in his diocese, and set itself to establish the new agrarian régime by law. The ways in which men seek liberty are infinite in number, but the methods of tyranny are everywhere the same; and the nearest parallel to the behaviour of Somerset's successors is the attitude of the panic-stricken aristocracy of the early nineteenth century towards trade unions. Under an Act of 1550 all meetings of the peasantry were treated as a sort of "illegal conspiracy." Any forty of them who assembled to break down an enclosure might be condemned as traitors. Any twelve who assembled for the same purpose were guilty of felony, as also were those who summoned such a meeting, or who combined to reduce rents or the price of corn. Even the rusty legislation of the thirteenth century was revived by the re-enactment of the Statute of Merton of 1235,[670] which permitted lords to enclose as much as they pleased, provided that "sufficient" remained over for the tenants, with the significant improvement that the latter qualification was swept away by a clause declaring that enclosures might be made "notwithstanding their gainsaying and contradiction." The tyranny of the oligarchy which ruled from 1549 to 1553 has been obscured by the more dramatic events which preceded and succeeded it. But it marks the bottom point in the condition of the sixteenth century peasantry. It indicates how the new agrarian régime will develop when the political forces impeding it are removed. More had asked, What is Government? and had answered that it is "a certein conspiracy of riche men procuringe theire owne commodities under the name and title of a Common Wealth." His immortal definition does less than justice to the cynicism of the generation which succeeded his own. Mary executed Protestants for reasons of religion, as Elizabeth executed Catholics for reasons of State. But Warwick, a hypocrite in religion, was at least guiltless of the hypocrisy of sheltering his land policy "under the name and title of the Common Wealth." It was exactly what it seemed to be, a straightforward attempt to prevent the poor from protesting when their possessions were taken from them by the rich.

[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.

The general policy of the Government during the reign of Elizabeth and the first half of the seventeenth century shows neither the desire of Somerset to undo the agrarian revelation, nor the complete indifference to the interests of the poorer classes of the party which succeeded him. During the reign of Elizabeth there was little agrarian agitation. It is possible that the limits of profitable pasture-farming had been reached. It is possible that the policy of encouraging the export of corn, which had been suggested by Hales, and which was adopted in 1563 and extended in 1571, reacted favourably on arable farming. It is possible, again, that Warwick's measures had had their effect, and that the peasantry had been cowed into silence. Though, on the whole, the Government maintained the traditional attitude, it did not interfere except in circumstances of special hardship, or when there was danger of serious disturbance. Cases of this nature came before it fairly frequently in the reigns of Elizabeth, Charles, and James. One finds it intervening on the ground that the poverty of tenants makes it impossible for them to go to law, or that the offenders concerned are so powerful as to be able to disregard inferior authorities, or that the local authorities themselves have been unfairly biassed, or to prevent disturbances by hearing tenants' grievances, or to compel a great noble, like the Earl of Shrewsbury, to reinstate tenants whom it thinks to have been wrongfully evicted, or to stop action being taken by a landlord pending a decision by the courts in his favour. In 1579 the Council writes to the Lord President of Wales ordering him to take proceedings against two persons who have been enclosing part of the Forest of Fakenham, and have disturbed the copyholders; he is to prevent any further enclosures being made until the whole matter has been considered by the Government.[671] In 1581 it interferes to protect a copyholder who has been kept out of his holding by the Dean and Chapter of Peterborough.[672] In 1586 it directs the Cambridgeshire justices to inquire into the complaint of some tenants who claim that a piece of common pasture has been let over their heads, and to see that both parties to the dispute come before the Justices of Assize.[673] The Justices of Assize in Norfolk are to take action in the matter of a common at Kettlestone which two of the tenants allege to have been overstocked with sheep.[674] Several letters are addressed to the Council of the Marches of Wales ordering them to prevent the eviction of copyholders.[675] A landlord is requested to attend the Council and prove that his tenants' fines are uncertain, and not, as they allege, fixed.[676] The Court of Chancery has dismissed a case arising out of the enclosure of commons at Bath, and the Council orders a retrial.[677] Occasionally it cites offenders into the Court of Star Chamber,[678] and in 1592, just when the Court of Requests was beginning to be attacked by the common lawyers, we find a case as to fold-courses coming before the Court of Requests.[679] More often it appoints special Commissioners to act as arbitrators, or refers petitioners to the Justices of Assize in their county, with a request to take local evidence and inform the Council what they advise. Throughout the reigns of James and Charles we get glimpses of administrative activity which show that the traditional policy was, perhaps fitfully, maintained. In 1603 the Council of the North[680] were instructed to make "from time to time diligent and effectual inquisition of the wrongful taking in of commons and other grounds, and the decay of tillage and of towns or houses of husbandry," and to correct offenders with "some notable punishment." The rebellion in the Midlands in 1607 produced special measures, the chief offenders being summoned before the Council and bound over to rebuild houses which had fallen into decay, while in the following years two Commissions were appointed to compound with enclosers.[681] In Yorkshire the justices are evidently fairly active in 1607 and 1608. A Richmond freeholder who owns two-thirds of the manor is presented "for decaying five husbandries, and also for converting 30 acres of tillage ground to meadow and pasture," and similar presentments are made at Malton, Thirsk, and Helmsley.[682] A Justice of Assize writes about the same time from the western counties to the effect that twenty-six houses of husbandry have been rebuilt and the offenders punished.[683] In 1614 the justices of Norfolk inform the Council that in accordance with its directions they have examined the enclosures made in the last two years, and have ordered the hedging and ditching of lands to be stopped till further notice.[684] In the following year one William Combe was negotiating with the corporation of Stratford for their consent to the enclosure and conversion to pasture of his freehold lands lying in the common fields at Welcombe; in 1615 an order made at Warwick Assizes was confirmed by the Chief Justice restraining him from doing so on the ground that it was "against the laws of the realm," and in the following year a peremptory letter was addressed to him by the Council directing his compliance.[685] In 1619 there was a temporary reaction owing to the low price of grain, which led to the appointment of a Commission to grant pardons for breaches of the Acts forbidding enclosure, and in 1624 all the Statutes except the two passed in 1597 were repealed, But this did not stop administrative interference. In 1621 the Justices of Assize for Bedfordshire are directed to check encroachments on a common, and in 1623 a Commission is appointed to remove grievances arising in connection with enclosures at Cheshunt.[686] The rise in corn prices which occurred from 1629 to 1631 produced another burst of activity, which is to be attributed partly to a genuine desire to protect the poorer classes, and partly to the hope that the fines imposed upon enclosers might squeeze a few drops into the Government's ever thirsty Exchequer. In 1630 directions were issued by the Council to the justices of five Midland counties to remove all enclosures made in the last two years on the ground that they led to depopulation and were particularly harmful in time of dearth.[687] In 1632, 1635, and 1636, three Commissions were appointed, and special instructions to enforce the Statutes against enclosure were issued to the Justices of Assize.[688] That the inquiry was not a mere formality is proved by the State Papers of the period. In part of the country, at any rate, land which had been pasture was ploughed[689] up in obedience to the Government's orders, and a list of offenders, including--the Government must have seen his name with grim satisfaction--Lord Saye and Sele, was returned to the Council, some of whom were still being prosecuted in the Court of Star Chamber as late as 1639. This is the last occasion on which we can trace the administration of this part of the Tudor State policy. The agitation against enclosures was carried on under the Commonwealth. The diggers under Winstanley came into prominence for a moment, only to be disclaimed by the respectable[690] opponents of enclosure and to be instantly suppressed by the Government, and there was a crop of pamphlets in the years between 1650 and 1660 which dealt with the evils of depopulation in quite the old manner. But the traditional doctrine as to the importance of the peasantry had decayed, and the central machinery for forcing the justices to take action had been destroyed in 1641. The last Bill to regulate enclosures was introduced into the House of Commons in 1656, and was rejected on the second reading.[691]

[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 by
_ejectione firmæ_ at 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, and _Acts 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 Maj{tie's} hon{ble} Court 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, gent{n}, 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. So.c_, 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, and _S.
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.

(c) _The Success and Failure of State Intervention_

It remains to ask how far the policy of trying to check the agrarian changes, which was pursued by Governments for nearly a century and a half, had any effect on economic practice. Statesmen were certainly biassed in favour of protecting the weaker landholding classes. But was their intervention simply the expression of a pious opinion? Was it so entirely futile as--to give a modern parallel--the Small Holdings Act of 1892? Or did it to any extent modify or retard the course of economic events? The view usually taken, that legislation was so ineffective as to be almost negligible, is in accordance with what we know of the character of local administration in the sixteenth century, and is supported by much contemporary evidence. The constant introduction of fresh proposals suggests that the previous laws were disappointing. The failure of existing Acts was the reason given in Somerset's proclamation for the appointment of the Commission of 1548. Hales, who is certainly the most reliable authority on the situation between 1540 and 1550, speaks of them as being notoriously a dead letter.[692] If one looks at the Statutes passed against depopulation in the sixteenth century, with a view to discovering how far they really met the situation, one will be inclined to say that they quite failed to go to the root of the matter. The special evil which they were intended to combat was depopulation caused by evictions. But evictions could be checked only by giving tenants security, which would have meant turning customary into legal titles, and fixing judicial rents for leaseholders and immovable fines for copyholders; in short, the sort of interference which the peasants and their champions demanded, but on which no Government depending on the support of the landed gentry would venture, except upon an extraordinary emergency. In the absence of such an attempt to grapple directly with the fundamental fact that the peasants' insecurity made them liable to suffer whenever there was a change in the methods of agriculture, legislation designed merely to prevent those changes was almost certain to be evaded. Even with the best intentions the Statutes could never have been easy to administer. There was the difficulty inherent in the whole Tudor and Stuart policy of authoritative interference with trade and industry, the difficulty of making State action keep pace with economic changes. The Government is often like a man pursuing a tram from one stopping-place to another, and just missing it at each. It insists that land which has hitherto been in tillage shall remain in tillage. But there are a few years of bumper harvests, and the farmers complain that they cannot pay their way.[693] The Government tries to get over the difficulty by allowing them to convert arable to pasture, when a providence unversed in statecraft sends a wet summer, and it scrambles hastily back to the position which it has just abandoned.[694] By excepting from the operation of the Statutes certain districts which are specially suitable for grazing, it encourages a rough local division of labour, one part of a county confining itself to pasture-farming and another to tillage. But then, in pursuit of its traditional and quite reasonable policy of securing that food is cheap, it insists that all farmers are to supply the markets with grain, with the result that those who have specialised in corn-growing are threatened with ruin by the fall in prices which ensues, and that it is even questionable whether they will not convert arable to pasture to evade the obligation imposed upon them.[695] Old enclosures were tolerated and new forbidden. But how distinguish between old and new? Land turned to pasture simply to restore it to a condition in which it would be fit for tillage escaped the condemnation passed on other kinds of "conversion," and one can imagine that nice arguments must have arisen as to a farmer's motives. Again, suppose a man converted to pasture land which should have remained under the plough, and then leased it to some one else, who retained it as pasture, was the lessee guilty of an offence? In a case which came before the Court of Exchequer in 1582, the defendant pleaded that he merely "used" the land as pasture, and had not converted it, while the Crown argued that use was equivalent to conversion, that he was in the position of a man profiting by the continuance of a nuisance, and that a fine of 10s. an acre for each year since the original conversion ought to be imposed.[696] Points like this give colour to Coke's complaint against the whole body of Acts against enclosure that "they were labyrinthes, with such intricate windings or turnings as little or no fruit proceeded from them."

[692] Hale's defence in appendix to Miss Lamond's introduction
to _The Commonweal of this Realm of England_.

[693] D'Ewes _Journal_, 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's _Reports_, 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."

But, of course, the obscurity of the Statutes was the least part of the difficulty with which Governments who wished to protect the peasantry were confronted. Much more serious was the fact that the traditional policy could be carried out only by disregarding the financial interests of the wealthier classes, who could most easily influence Parliament and the Council, and who were locally omnipotent. In the first half of the sixteenth century the high position of many of those who were most deeply implicated in cutting land free from communal restrictions made them almost unassailable. The Royal Commission of 1517 returned among enclosers the names of the Duke of Norfolk, the Earl of Shrewsbury, the Duke of Buckingham, Lord Danbury, Sir William Bolen, Sir R. Sheffield, the Speaker of the House of Commons, Sir J. Witte, the Under-Treasurers of State, and Sir J. Cotton, who was himself one of the Commissioners.[697] The angry unanimity with which Somerset's colleague turned against his land policy was not wonderful, for they were nearly all directly interested in the maintenance of the _status quo_. Warwick, who led the _coup d'état_, had enclosed on a large scale. Sir William Herbert had made extensive enclosures on the lands which he had acquired from the Abbey of Wilton. The St. John family, the Darcy family, the Earl of Westmoreland, had all local troubles with their tenants; and there are some indications that Sir William Paget and the detested and detestable Lord Rich were in the same position.[698]

[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_.

It is not, however, material to trace the records of individual members of the Council, because their interest in checking the interference of the State with the free disposal of land is evident from the fact that many of them enormously increased their estates through the share which they obtained in the property confiscated from the religious houses and the gilds. A comparison of the lists of Privy Councillors for 1548 and 1552, published by Strype,[699] with Dr. Savine's[700] valuable analysis of the grantees of the monastic estates, show that out of thirty-one persons who got grants of land of £200 a year or more fourteen were members of the Privy Council in one or other of those years, exclusive of the Earl of Warwick and Sir William Herbert. This fact is by itself almost sufficient to explain the impossibility of enforcing the laws forbidding depopulation during the years which followed the death of Henry VIII., and the despair of legal protection which seems to have settled upon the classes affected by the movement. The view sometimes expressed that the religious houses had been easier landlords than the lay owners into whose hands their estates passed, though it can occasionally be corroborated from the complaints made by tenants to the Government, scarcely seems, as yet, to be satisfactorily proved. But the distribution among the wealthier classes of land producing a net income of not less than £110,000 gave them an enormous vested interest in preventing and evading legislation to check the most profitable use of the new possessions which were to endow the aristocracy of the future. The supposition of peculiar harshness in the owners to whom the land passed, though probably correct, is really not needed to explain the part which the transference of these vast quantities of land had in augmenting the distress of the rural classes. The worst side of all such great and sudden redistributions of property is that the individual is more or less at the mercy of the market, and can hardly help taking his pound of flesh. A buyer must sell at a profit, or he had much better not have bought. During the decade between 1540 and 1550 there was a furor of land speculation. To the Abbey lands, which came into the market after 1536, were added those of the gilds and chantries in 1547. It is quite clear that some of the grantees of estates did not acquire them with the intention of retaining them, but simply "bought for the rise." The lands of the Abbey of Whitby, for example, pass first to the Crown, and are then sold by it to the Duke of Northumberland, who in turn sells them to Sir John Yorke.[701] A small official in the Royal household buys the Cistercian nunnery at Brewood, and at once puts it up to sale "for suche a price that no man will gladly by hit at hys hand."[702] Trentham is surrendered to the Crown in 1536; in 1540 the Duke of Suffolk obtains a grant of the rents and reversions reserved upon the Crown leases there, and in the same year sells it to one Leveson, who has already acquired lands belonging to Horlton Abbey, and already sold them again to Biddulph.[703] One finds even the champion of the tenants, Somerset himself, getting a grant of land from the Crown on July 1st, leasing part of it for eighty years on July 2nd, and transferring it back to the Crown, subject to the lease, on July 9th.[704] When property changed hands three times in the course of ten days, it could hardly fail to be rack-rented, or the transaction would not pay. What happened to the tenants? Here and there, as at Whitby and Washerne,[705] a bitter outburst against their new masters shows that the result has been what we should expect. But for the rest, a cloud descends and we cannot say. It is only in such occasional glimpses that we catch the solid earth shifting beneath the feet of those who till it. It was such a glimpse which led the last great English peasant, in a time of even more widespread misery, to say that the wretchedness of the landless labourer was the work of the Reformation. Cobbett, and those who follow Cobbett in representing the economic evils of the sixteenth century as the fruit of the religious changes, err in linking as parent and child movements which were rather brother and sister, twin aspects of the individualism which seems inseparable from any swift increase in riches. Their vision of a time when mild ecclesiastics administered their estates as a popular trust lays a spell upon the imagination. In the religious houses of Lancashire and Yorkshire and Northumberland there may, here and there, even on the eve of the dissolution, have been a reality corresponding to it. But we need hardly go further than Sir Thomas More[706] to learn that for parts, at least, of England it is only a vision; and More does not speak without book. Holy men enclose land, convert arable to pasture, claim villeins, turn copyholds into tenancies at will. If prominent ecclesiastics had really wanted to champion the cause of the peasantry, they had an excellent opportunity when Wolsey sent out the first great Commission into enclosures in 1517. But, in fact, there is no reason to suppose that any protest was made at all comparable to that which came thirty-two years later from Latimer. How could there be? The estates of the larger houses were often scattered over several different counties, and before the dissolution they were quite frequently managed by laymen. In such cases the monks were simply rentiers,[707] who needed to know no more about their tenants than the fellows of an Oxford college know about theirs at the present day.

[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_, Carter _v._ 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 Ripton _v._ 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.