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   The passing of the Middle Ages: enclosures in the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries compared; the commercial impulse and its results; conversion of tillage to pasture: enclosures and depopulation: legislation against enclosures; literary attack on enclosures; the practical defence of enclosures: larger farms in separate occupation: loss of employment; enclosures equitably arranged, or enforced by tyranny; legal powers of landowners; open-field farmers not the chief sufferers by enclosures; scarcity of employment and rise in prices; the new problem of poverty the ranks of vagrants; the Elizabethan fraternity of vagabonds.

OUT of wars at home and abroad, and pestilences destructive both to man and beast, emerged one great agricultural change which by 1485 was practically completed. Feudal landowners, instead of pursuing the patriarchal system of farming their own demesnes by the labour services of their dependents, had become receivers of rent. Home-farms and "assart" or reclaimed lands were cultivated, not by lords of the manor through bailiffs and labour-rents, but by freeholders, leaseholders, copyholders, and hired labourers. Further changes were close at hand. With the dawn of the Tudor period began the general movement which gradually transformed England into a mercantile country. The amount of money in actual use was increasing; men possessed more capital, could borrow it more easily, and lay it out to greater advantage. Commerce permeated national life. Feudalism was dead or dying, and trade was climbing to its throne. The Middle Ages were passing into modern times.

   On the agricultural side, the spirit of trading competition gave fresh impulse to an old movement which, in spite of a storm of protest, continued in activity throughout the Tudor period, and, after a century and a half of silent progress, became once more the centre of literary controversy before it triumphed at the close of the reign of George III. That movement is described as enclosure, and it is generally treated as necessarily destructive to the old village farms. But the word includes various processes, some of which rather strengthened than weakened the open-field system. Some enclosures, such as closes for stock-feeding, intakes from the common for arable purposes, even the not uncommon practice of fencing portions of the open-fields for several occupation, whether temporarily or permanently, were really efforts to adapt village farms to changing needs. Another form of enclosure was the cultivation of new land obtained by clearing forests, approving portions of wastes, or draining fens. Here also village farms were not directly affected. Indirectly, indeed, these new enclosures produced a considerable effect. Much of the reclaimed land was tilled for corn; thus the ancient arable soil was relieved from the former necessity of bearing grain crops, and might not improbably be put to the use for which it was best adapted. A third process was the direct enclosure of open-fields and pasture commons. This form generally appeared in the neighbourhood of towns, where the demand for animal food and dairy produce was greatest and labour found a ready market, or in counties where some manufacturing industry prevailed and small grass holdings made a less exacting claim on the time of the handicraftsmen than tillage. But whatever form the enclosure took, the general drift of the movement was towards individual occupation of land. It was therefore always, and particularly in the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, directly opposed to the open-field system of farming in common.

   At both periods that special form of enclosure was prominent which meant the break-up of the mediaeval agrarian partnerships and the substitution of private enterprise for the collective efforts of village associations. But in details the earlier and the later movements were strongly contrasted. In the sixteenth century, the change was opposed and partially arrested by legislation; in the eighteenth century, it received from Parliament encouragement and support. Under Henry VIII., it was mainly inspired by commercial advantage; under George III., it was alleged to be enforced by necessity. In the sixteenth century some of the grass-land was undoubtedly used for grazing beasts. But it was mainly to supply the growing wool trade that Tudor husbandmen substituted pasture for tillage, sheep for corn. They took their seats on the woolsack, and maidens of all degrees were spinsters. Hanoverian farmers reversed the process; they valued sheep for their mutton instead of their fleeces, and concentrated their energies on the production of bread and meat for the teeming populations of manufacturing cities. Dearth of bread was in Tudor times the most effective cry against enclosures; under George III. it was the unanswerable plea for their extension. At the opening of the sixteenth century, enclosure did not always mean improved farming; the conversion of arable land into inferior sheep-walk was rather retrogression than progress. At the close of the eighteenth century, it at least meant the opportunity for advance and for the introduction of better practices. To some extent, indeed, the different developments of the two movements measure the improvements in the methods and the increase in the resources of Hanoverian farmers. The Tudor husbandman might devote himself exclusively to the one or the other of the two branches of farming; but he had not mastered the secret of their union. If he changed from tillage to pasture, he did so completely. He could not, like his successor, combine the two, and by the introduction of new crops, at once grow more corn and, carry more stock.

   Agriculturally, the period which opens with the Battle of Bosworth and ends with the early years of Elizabeth is one of transition towards the modern spirit and forms of land cultivation. Like all transition periods, it is full of suffering for those who were least able to adapt themselves to altered conditions. The ruin of noble families by the Wars of the Roses, the lavish expenditure which Henry VIII. made fashionable, the rise in prices, and the difficulty of raising rents, compelled many "unthrifty gentlemen" to sell their estates. The break-up of landed properties and their passage into new hands favoured the introduction of the commercial impulse. The landholders whose "unreasonable covetousness" is most loudly condemned were mainly speculators in land, men who had made money in business, had capital to invest, could afford the expense of enclosures, and were determined to make their estates pay. Such were "the Merchant Adventurers, Clothmakers, Goldsmiths, Butchers, Tanners, and other Artificers,"*--"the merchants of London" who "bie fermes out of the handes of worshypfull gentlemen, honeste yeomen, and pore laborynge husbandes."**

* Petition to Henry VIII. (1514), quoted by F. J. Furnivall in Ballads from MSS., p. 101 (Publications of the Ballad Society, vol. i.). ** Thomas Lever's Sermons (1680) ; Arber's Reprints, p. 29.

  Translated into the language of to-day, the old landlords had been satisfied to draw from their estates certain advantages and a low percentage of profit; the new men required at the least a four per cent. return in money on their investments. Feudal barons had partly valued their land for the number of men-at-arms it furnished to their banners; Tudor landowners appraised its worth by the amount of rent it paid into their coffers. Mediaeval husbandmen had been content to extract from the soil the food which they needed for themselves and their families. Tudor farmers despised self-sufficing agriculture; they aspired to be sellers and not consumers only, to raise from their land profits as well as food. As trade expanded, and towns grew, and English wool made its way into continental cities, or was woven into cloth by English weavers, new markets were created for agricultural produce. Fresh incentives stimulated individual enterprise, and both landlords and tenants learned to look on the land they respectively owned or cultivated as a commercial asset.

   Among the results of this conquest of agriculture by the new spirit of commercial competition three may be noticed--firstly, the clearer recognition of the advantages of farms held in individual occupation, large enough to make the employment of capital remunerative; secondly, the substitution of pasture for tillage, of sheep for corn, of wool for meat; thirdly, the attack upon the old agrarian partnerships in which lords of the manor, parsons, freeholders, leaseholding farmers, copyholders, and cottagers had hitherto associated to supply the wants of each village. Legislation failed to prevent a movement which harmonised and synchronised with the progressive development of the nation on commercial lines. But in its earlier stages, the consequences to the rural population were serious. Many tenants lost their holdings, many wage-earning labourers their employment, when landlords "turned graziers," and farmers cut down their labour-bills by converting tillage into pasture. It is impossible to doubt the reality of the distress. From 1487 onwards, literature, pamphlets, doggerel ballads, sermons, liturgies, petitions, preambles to statutes, Commissions of Enquiry, Acts of Parliament, bear witness to a considerable depopulation of country districts. In the numerous insurrections, which marked the sixteenth century and the early Years of the reign of James I., rural distress undoubtedly contributed its share. But zealous advocates of Roman Catholicism found it useful to ally agrarian discontent with religious reaction, and men like Protector Somerset thought it politic to attribute anti-Protestant risings entirely to agricultural causes.

   There was no novelty in the withdrawal of demesne lands from the open-field farm and their partition into individual occupations; or in fencing off portions of the home-farm and of the reclaimed "assart" lands as separate plots; or in the appropriation of parts of the commonable waste for private use; or in the encouragement given to partners in the village association to throw their scattered strips together into one compact holding. Each of these processes had been for many years in progress; each had necessitated enclosures; none had required the decay of farm-houses and cottages, loss of employment, eviction of tenants, or rural depopulation. But from the Tudor enclosing movement these consequences did necessarily result, because its objects were the promotion of sheep-farming, the conversion of tillage into pasture, the consolidation and enlargement of grass holdings. If farmers had not yet at their disposal the means of realising the full truth of the maxim that "the foot of the sheep turns sand into gold," the new commercial aristocracy were quick to see that money was to be made, or at least to be saved, by the growth of wool. It is true that down to 1540 the prices of wool remained low; but some at least of the grass was taken up by the graziers, and the saving in labour effected by pasture farming was great. Sheep could not be herded with success on open commons, still less on the arable lands of village farms, and small holdings were incompatible with large flocks. It was these new elements which upset the calculations of agriculturists like Fitzherbert (1523), or Cardinal Pole in Starkey's Dialogue (1536), or Tusser (1557), or Standish (1611), who hoped that the economic advantages of enclosure might be secured without the social loss which the conversion of large tracts of arable land into wide pasture farms inflicted on the rural population.

   If evidence which is rarely impartial may be implicitly trusted, considerable tracts of cultivated land were converted into wildernesses, traversed only by shepherds and their dogs; roofless granges and half-ruined churches alone marked the sites of former hamlets; the "deserted village" was a reality of the sixteenth century. Already anxious for the maintenance of the national supply of corn, men began to be alarmed at another result of the movement which became increasingly prominent. John Rous (1411-91), chantry priest of Guy's Cliffe and Warwickshire antiquary, was the first to protest against the decay of population caused in the midland counties by enclosures for pasture farming. To this rural exodus the attention of Parliament had been called by the Lord Chancellor in the first year of Richard III. (1484). Francis Bacon, writing of the opening years of the reign of Henry VII., says: "Inclosures at that time began to be more frequent, whereby arable land, which could not be manured without people and families, was turned into pasture which was easily rid by a few herdsmen; and tenances for years, lives, and at will, whereupon much of the yeomanry lived, were turned into demesnes. This bred a decay of people." So formidable did the danger begin to appear, that in 1489 two Acts of Parliament were passed for its prevention. The first Act was local, dealing with the effects of enclosures in the Isle of Wight from the point of view of national defence; the second is general, directed "against the pulling down of tounes" (i.e. townships or villages). These Acts were the precursors of many others throughout the sixteenth century, forbidding the conversion of arable land into pasture, ordering newly laid pasture to be restored to tillage, directing enclosures to be thrown down, requiring decayed houses to be rebuilt, limiting the number of sheep and of farms which could legally be held by one man, and imposing severe penalties for disobedience to the new provisions.

   No favour was shown by Parliament to enclosers, except perhaps in the case of deer-parks: On the contrary, strenuous efforts were repeatedly made to stop the process of enclosure. Nor was the Government satisfied with passing laws and imposing penalties. Wolsey personally interested himself in enforcing obedience to the laws against the decay of houses and farm-buildings and against the conversion of arable land to pasture. Active steps were taken to see that buildings were restored and enclosures and ditches levelled. In default, heavy penalties were exacted. A Commission was appointed in 1517, which enquired into all cases where farm-houses had been destroyed since 1485, or where ploughs had been put down by the increase of pasture farming. Similar enquiries were held in 1548, 1566, and 1607. No doubt these strenuous efforts checked the movement. But they failed to stop it altogether. In this respect they succeeded no better in encouraging tillage than the quaint pedantry of the law, which gave arable land precedence over other land, or conferred on beasts of the plough privileges that were denied to other animals. The new legislation seems to have been satisfied, or evaded, without serious difficulty; partly, because compositions for breaches of its provisions might be paid or exemptions purchased; partly, no doubt, because the administration of the law was often entrusted to those who were interested in making it a dead letter. The destruction of farm buildings was forbidden; but it was easy to keep within the statute by retaining a single room for the shepherd or the milkmaid; a solitary furrow driven across newly laid pasture satisfied the law that it should be restored to tillage; the number of sheep to be owned by one man was limited, but the ownership of flocks might be fathered on sons or servants. Down to the middle of the reign of Elizabeth the enclosing and grazing movement continued. At subsequent intervals it renewed its special activity throughout the seventeenth century, when dairying began to claim a larger share of the attention of farmers. It was restrained or encouraged rather by natural causes than by legislation. Fluctuations in the prices of wool or corn, the increased profits of improved methods of arable farming, and the restoration of the fertility of the ancient tilled land, which was brought back to the plough after an enforced rest from excessive cropping, gradually restored the preponderance of tillage over pasture.

   The grievances of the rural population are to be gathered not only from legislation, proclamations, petitions, articles of complaint, the Returns of Commissioners, or the records of the law courts. They are also written large in More's Utopia, and in much of the ephemeral literature of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The cry of the people is heard, often in exaggerated tones, in the sermons of popular preachers like Tyndale, Becon, and Latimer, in the pamphlets of such writers as Simon Fish, Henry Brinklow, or Philip Stubbes, or in the rhymes of versifiers like "Sir" William Forrest, Robert Crowley, and Thomas Bastard, or in such anonymous ballads as "Nowe-a-dayes":

"The townes go down, the land decayes;
Off cornefeyldes playne layes (grass-land);
Gret men makithe now a dayes
A shepecott in the church.

Commons to close and kepe;
Poor folk for bred to cry and wepe;
Towns pulled downe to pastur shepe;
This ys the new gyse!"

   Throughout the burden is the same--enclosure of commons, conversion of plough-land into pasture, sheep-farming, excessive rents, exorbitant fines, consolidation of small holdings into large farms, decay of houses and farm-buildings, formation of deer-parks, and, more rarely, enclosure of open-field arable farms. Here are to be found fierce denunciations of the "caterpillars of the commonweal," who "join lordship to lordship, manor to manor, farm to farm, land to land, pasture to pasture," and gather many thousands of acres of ground "together within one pale or hedge"; or of the unchristian landlords, who "rack and stretch out the rents of their lands," taking "unreasonable fines," "setting their pore tenants so straitely uppon the tenter hookes as no man can lyve on them"; or of the insatiable "cormorants" who "let two or three tenantries unto one man," "take in their commons" till not so much as a garden ground is safe, and make "parks or pastures of whole parishes"; or of the " unreasonable covitous persones whiche doth encroche daily many ffermes more than they can be able to occupye or mainteyne with tilth for come as hath been used in tymes past, forasmoche as divers of them hath obteyned and encroched into their handes, X, XII, XIV, or XVI fermes in oon mannes hand attons"; or of the "ambicious suttletie" of those who make "one fearme of two or three," and even sometimes "bringe VI to one"; or of the greed of "step-lords," like the "rich franklings," who

"Occupyinge a dosen men's lyvyngis
Take all in their owne hondes alone."

Nor do the innocent causes of much of the trouble escape attack; sheep "that were wont to be so myke and tame, and so smal eaters, now, as I heare saie, be become so greate devowerers, and so wylde, that they eate up and swallow down the very men themselfes," drive "husbandry" out of the country, and thrust "Christian labourers" off the land.

" Sheepe have eate up our medows and our downes,
Our corne, our wood, whole villages and townes;
Yea they have eate up many wealthy men,
Besides widowes and orphane children;
Besides our statutes and our Iron Lawes,
Which they have swallowed down into their maws:
Till now I thought the proverbe did but jest,
Which said a blacke sheepe was a biting beast."

   Enclosers were condemned by preachers as "guilty before God of the sin in the text--'they have sold the righteous for silver and the poor for a pair of shoes.'" A playwright like Massinger did not draw entirely on his imagination, but expressed the feeling of the day when he painted his portrait of a Sir Giles Overreach, insensible to pity for his victims and justly called

"Extortioner, Tyrant, Cormorant, or Intruder
On my poor neighbour's right, or grand Incloser
Of what was common to my private use."

   In the passion for sheep and hedges, which changed "merrie England" into "sighing or sorrowful England," men saw the fulfilment of the prophecy "Home and Thorne shall make England forlorne." Superstitions enforced the popular judgment, and legend doomed "emparkers," like Sir John Townley, to haunt the solitudes they had created, uttering bitter cries of unavailing remorse.

   It was easy for popular preachers and pamphleteers to excite popular passion against the "greedy gulls" and "insatiable cormorants," who advocated and practised enclosures, and to denounce the agricultural tendencies of Tudor times as solely guided by selfish greed. But there are practical and broader sides to the question. When once land was regarded as an important asset in the wealth of the nation, national interests demanded that it should be utilised to the greatest possible advantage. Without enclosures, the soil could not be used for the purposes to which it was best adapted, or its resources fully developed. If money was to be made out of land, or if its full productive power was to be realised, it was individual enterprise alone that could make or realise either. Under the open-field system one man's idleness might cripple the industry of twenty: only on enclosed farms, separately occupied, could men secure the full fruit of their enterprise. This fact had slowly revealed itself during the last two centuries. To exchange intermixed lands, to consolidate compact holdings, and fence them off in separate occupation, had long been the aim both of landlords and tenant-farmers. Few practical men would have disputed the truth of Fuller's statement: "The poor man who is monarch of but one enclosed acre will receive more profit from it than from his share of many acres in common with others."

   Tudor agriculturists went further in their zeal for farming progress. They saw that a small enclosed plot of 15 acres could be used with less advantage than a large enclosure of 150 acres which enabled the tenant to invest money in the land, carry more stock, provide his cattle with more winter food, and, if the climate permitted, adopt convertible husbandry. This was recognised both by landowners and farmers of the progressive school, and the increased size even of arable farms continues to be a feature in sixteenth century changes. For successful sheep-farming, a large stretch of land, held in individual occupation, was still more essential. From this point of view the untilled common wastes were unprofitable. Whether land was enclosed for tillage or as sheep runs, its productiveness was increased by enclosure. Finally, the natural fertility of arable land on open unenclosed farms was becoming exhausted. The system was one of taking much from the land and putting little back. The soil, lightly ploughed, seldom manured, often foul, was in some districts worn-out. From 1349 to 1485, that is, from the Black Death to the Battle of Bosworth, its yield had declined; its farming had deteriorated. Fitzherbert, writing in the first quarter of the sixteenth century, notes that useful agricultural practices had in many parts become obsolete, that crops were smaller, and methods of husbandry more slovenly. The fall in rentals had been general. But it was on demesne lands, or on enclosed farms, that the fall in rents had been least. These were the lands which were in the best condition, because on them most manure had been expended. Open-field farmers commanded little or no manure for their arable land, and were practically dependent on sheep for fertilising the soil. Yet in winter, animals, reduced to the lowest possible number, barely survived on straw and tree-loppings. The miserable condition of live-stock on open-field farms and commons exposed the sheep to the scab and the rot, and the cattle to the murrain. It was no uncommon spectacle to see the head of an ox impaled on a stake by the highway, as a warning that the township was infected.

   Agriculturists might with good reason plead that the changes which they advocated were justified, if not necessitated, by the progress of farming. They hoped that even open-field farmers might themselves recognise the advantages of enclosure, and would agree to consolidate their intermixed holdings and extinguish their reciprocal rights of common. Fitzherbert in his Book of Husbandry argues strongly in favour of enclosures, and especially insists on their advantages in keeping live-stock, which, he says, thrive best and cost least on enclosed land. If a farmer has only a twenty years' lease of his land, it will pay him to go to the expense of fencing off his land in separate parcels with hedges and ditches. Common-field farmers have to pay 2d. a quarter for each head of cattle, and 1d. a quarter for each head of swine, under the care of the common herdsman and swineherd. If they wish to thrive, each must keep a shepherd of his own. The hire of the herdsman and the swineherd, together with the wages and board of the shepherd, and the cost of hurdles and stakes put together, double the rent. If a farmer encloses, he may have to pay three times this annual cost in one year; but he has no further expense. "Than hathe he euery fyelde in seueraltie: and by the assente of the lordes and the tenauntes euery neyghbour may exchaunge landes with other. And than shall his farme be twyse so good in proffite to the tenaunte as it was before, and as muche lande kepte in tyllage, and than shall not the ryche man ouer-eate the poore man with his cattell, and the fourth parte of haye and strawe shall serue his cattell better in a pasture than foure tymes so muche will dooe in a house, and less attendaunce, and better the cattell shall lyke, and it is the chiefest sauegarde for corne bothe daye and nyght that may be." To the same effect wrote Tusser in the comparison between "champion" (or open-field) "and severall" (or enclosed) in his Five Hundreth Good Pointes of Good Husbandrie (1573).

"More profit is quieter found,
(Where pastures in severall bee);
Of one seelie aker of ground
Than champion maketh of three.

The t'one is commended for 'grain,
Yet bread made of beanes they doo eats;
The t'other for one loafe have twaine
Of mastlin, of rie, or of wheate."

   But the agriculturists did not anticipate that one shepherd, with his dog, his crook, shears, and tar-box, might take the place of many ploughmen. They had not reckoned on the strength of the new commercial spirit, and of the impulse which it gave to large grazing farms. The area of land actually returned as enclosed and converted to pasture was relatively small. It has been calculated that, during a period of nearly two centuries,--that is, from 1455 to 1637, the total acreage enclosed and converted did not exceed 750,000 acres, and that the total number of persons thrown out of work was not greater than 35,000. At the present day, four million acres of arable land may in fifteen years be converted into pasture without calling the serious attention of a single statesman to the consequent loss of employment and rural depopulation. But small though the acreage may have been, it was considerable in proportion to the cultivated area, and the suffering was undeniably great. The distress was aggravated by the disbanding of the great retinues which had been maintained in feudal households, and by the consequent disturbance of the labour market. It was still more intensified by the suppression of the monasteries (1536-42). Not only were a very large number of dependents deprived of their livelihood, but enclosures on the old ecclesiastical estates were carried out with peculiar harshness. The new owners among whom the monastic lands were distributed, bound by no sentimental tie to the existing tenants, claimed that the royal grant annulled all titles derived from the previous owners, entered on their possessions as though they were vacant of leaseholders or copyholders, and enclosed the land for sheep-runs. The doggerel ballad, "Vox Populi, Vox Dei" (1549), laments the consequences of the change of ownership:

"We have shut away all cloisters,
But still we keep extortioners
We have taken their lands for their abuse,
But we have converted them to a worse use."

   Voluntary agreements for the valuation and commutation of rights of common were often entered into between tenants and landowners, and bargains were struck on equitable terms. Instances like that given in the following extract from Kennet's Parochial Antiquities might be indefinitely multiplied: "The said Edmund Rede, Esquire granted and confirmed to Thomas Billyngdon one close in Adyngrave, in consideration whereof the said Thomas Billyngdon quitted and resigned his right to the free pasturage of four oxen to feed with the cattle of the said Edmund Rede and all right to any common in the said pasture or inlandys of the said Edmund." Here in 1437 was the principle of commutation of rights of common accepted and enforced by private contract. In other cases a semblance of agreement may have been secured by threats. But justice was not always perverted in the interests of landlords. Attempted acts of oppression were frequently checked by the courts of law. As an instance may be quoted the proposed enclosure of the commonfields at Welcombe, near Stratford-on- Avon. The example is the more interesting because it reveals one of the rare appearances of William Shakespeare in public life. In 1614 William Combe, of Stratford-on-Avon, the Crown tenant of the "College," wished to withdraw his arable land from the open-field farm of Welcombe, enclose it, and lay it down to pasture. He also wished to enclose so much of the ancient greensward or pasture as his rights of pasturage represented. To his scheme he had obtained the consent of Lord Chancellor Ellesmere, as representative of the Crown, and the active co-operation of the Chancellor's steward. Shakespeare, however, was in a position to be a formidable opponent, for he not only owned land adjoining, but also held the unexpired term of a lease of half the tithes of the open-fields. But a deed, dated October 28 1614, secured him from any loss of tithe through the conversion of tillage into pasture, and his consent to the enclosure was obtained. Combe had now only to deal with the Corporation of Stratford, who offered a strenuous resistance. Strong language did not move them; in the Corporation MS. the witnesses are duly noted who heard him call them "Purtan knaves," "doggs and curres." Tempting offers were refused, though Combe proposed to compensate them in more than the value of the tithe, to undertake the perpetual repair of the highways passing over the land, and to increase the value of the rights of freeholders and tenants by waiving part of his claim to turn out sheep and cattle on the commons. Then Combe took matters into his own hands, and prepared to enclose his land by surrounding it with a ditch. This brought the dispute to a crisis. Not apparently without the knowledge of the Town Clerk, the townspeople filled in the ditch. A breach of the peace seemed imminent. The matter was, therefore, referred to the law-courts, and at Warwick Assizes, on March 27, 1615, Lord Chief Justice Coke made an order that "noe inclosure shalbe made within the parish of Stratforde." The Dingles, which formed part of the common-fields of Welcombe, remain uninclosed to this day.

   Instances of the tyrannical use of power could also be quoted. The Tudor age was rough, and might was sometimes right. Sir Thomas More in his Utopia (1516) paints this side to the picture, when he speaks of "husbandmen . . . thrust owte of their owne, or els by coveyne and fraude or by vyolent oppression they be put besydes it, or by wronges and injuries they be so weried that they be compelled to sell all." If a small freeholder or copyholder proved obstinate, the proceedings of Sir Giles Overreach, in A New Way to Pay Old Debts (Act ii. Sc. 1), may illustrate the methods by which a Naboth's vineyard, even when it belonged to a manorial lord, might be appropriated by a wealthy capitalist

   "I'll therefore buy some cottage near his manor,
Which done, I'll make my men break ope his fences,
Ride o'er his standing corn, and in the night
Set fire on his barns, or break his cattle's legs,
These trespasses draw on suits, and suits expenses
Which I can spare, but will soon beggar him.
When I have harried him thus two or three year,
Though he sue in formá pauperis, in spite
Of all his thrift and care he'll grow behindhand.

Then, with the favour of my man at law,
I will pretend some title: want will force him
To put it to arbitrement. Then if he sell
For half the value he shall have ready money,
And I possess his land."

Considerations of mutual advantage, equitable bargains, fair purchase, superior force, legal chicanery, threats and bullying, were all at work to hasten the change to the individual occupation of land, and the consolidation of separate holdings. If copyholders or commoners appealed to the law-courts, matters, no doubt, sometimes ended as they were friended. "Handy-dandy" was in the Middle Ages a proverbial expression for the covert bribe offered by a suitor, and the occasional perversion of justice is enshrined in the Latin jingle: Jus sine jure datur, si nummus in aure loquatur.

   Illegal evictions are not included among the grievances alleged by the leaders in any of the risings of the peasantry which marked the Tudor period. Their absence from these lists justify the conclusion that open illegality was at least rare. But the law itself gave landowners abundant opportunities of regaining possession of the land. Leaseholders for a term of years or for lives had no legal claim to a renewal of their leases, when the term of years had expired or the last life had dropped. Rents might then be raised to an exorbitant sum or extravagant fines exacted, and, unless the tenant was prepared to pay the increased charge, he must surrender his holding. Cottagers or squatters on the waste could rarely show any legal claim to the occupation of land, and the tenancy of a cottage to which rights of common attached could be practically determined by enhancing the rent. Copyholders were, in all probability, almost equally insecure in their holdings. So long as they were in possession, the court roll was evidence of the incidents of their tenure. But the law was still vague as to rights of succession to copyholds. It may be doubted whether copyholds of inheritance were yet known, and it is reasonably certain that the normal copyhold was for a term of years or for lives. At the expiration of the term of years or of the last life, normal copyholders were at the mercy of the lord. Even if copyholds of inheritance were recognised by lawyers in the sixteenth century, they were still insecure. Their titles must often have been incapable of legal proof ; they might be forfeited by some real or technical breach of custom; their renewal was subject to the payment of fines on admittance, which might, where no manorial custom fixed the sum, be arbitrary in amount. It was not till the close of the eighteenth century that the law fixed the limits of a reasonable fine, and, if the fines were arbitrary, the landlord had a weapon with which even copyholds of inheritance, as understood by modern lawyers, might be determined. It is impossible to doubt that exorbitant rents and excessive fines, of which the peasant leaders, preachers, and pamphleteers so bitterly complain, were sometimes used to dispossess leaseholders and copyholders. The powers were legal; but their exercise often worked injustice. Yet it should be remembered, on the other side, that the raising of rents or the enhancing of fines, whenever the opportunity occurred, were the only means of adjusting the landlord's income to the great rise in the prices of agricultural produce. In the Compendious or Briefe Examination the Knight puts the landlord's case. "In all my life time," he says, "I looke not that the thirde part of my lande shall come to my dispocition that I may enhaunce the rent of the same, but it shalbe in mens holdinges either by lease or by copie graunted before my time . . . . We cannot rayse all our wares as youe maye yours." Rents, based on the commutation of labour services at a fixed annual sum in the fourteenth century did not represent the annual value of the land in 1550. Nor were fines for renewal or on admittance always excessive. Roger Wilbraham, of Delamere in Cheshire, about the middle of the seventeenth century, left behind him instructions for his heir: "It will be expected of my heir that he deale no worse with tenants than I have done. And for his directions I have set down ye yearly values according to which I deale and wold have him to deale with the tenants. My rule in leasing is to take for a fine from ancient tenants: 8 years' value for 3 lives, 5 years' value to add 2 lives to 1, 2 years' value to add 1 life to 2, 1 year's value to change a life, or more if there is any great disparity in years betwixt the lives." When, therefore, rents were raised or fines enhanced, the landlord was not always trying to dispossess his tenant. As often as not, he was claiming his proper share of the tenant's "unearned increment."

   Against these weapons of the law the cultivators of the old home-farms and of the assart lands were practically defenceless. It is therefore natural to suppose that they were the principal sufferers by the enclosing movement. In their case enclosures did not of necessity involve any breach of the old or new law. Even the provisions of the Tudor legislation were not infringed, unless the land, thus cleared of its cultivators, was so used as to throw any number of holdings together into the hands of one man, to "decay" farm-buildings or houses, to convert tillage into pasture, and so put down ploughs, or to carry an illegal number of sheep. But open-field farmers were in a stronger position. The common rights, which each partner in the association enjoyed over the whole cultivated area of the village-farm, could only be extinguished by agreement, real or enforced, among the commoners. Nor was this consent the only obstacle to enclosure which the system presented. The intermixture of the strips is recognised as a protection against enclosure by the ablest of the sixteenth century writers on the subject. In the Compendious or Briefe Examination both the Doctor and the Husbandman agree as to the difficulties which these two features of the open-field system threw in the way of any general enclosure. The same points are insisted upon by eighteenth century writers. It is not, of course, asserted that the difficulties of enclosing open-field farms were insuperable. Ever since the thirteenth century, village farms had been broken up, both by large landowners and comparatively small freeholders But, before the enclosure acts of the eighteenth century, it was a slow and piecemeal process, by which the principal landlord, or some freeholder who was a partner in the farm, gradually consolidated in his own hands the whole or a part of the commonable cultivated land, enclosed it, and freed it from common rights. No doubt the enclosure of uncultivated wastes injured the tenants of village farms, because it restricted the area of rough pasture grazed by their live-stock. Enclosures of this kind, carried out without leaving a sufficiency of common pasture, were the chief grievance of the peasantry in Kett's rebellion in Norfolk. In this connection the re-enactment by Edward VI. of the statutes of Merton and Westminster, is significant. But the meaning is obscure. It may have been intended to increase the amount of tillage by bringing new land under the plough in exchange for that which had been laid down to grass. Except through the attack upon their pasture commons, it is reasonable to conclude that open-field farmers escaped the storm of sixteenth century enclosures more lightly than the less protected cultivators of demesnes and "assart" lands. This seems to have been the case. Bitter complaints were made against the enclosure of open-fields. But the outcry was practically confined to the corn-growing counties of the Midlands, which throughout the whole period were seething with discontent and insurrection. Yet even here, with the exception of Leicestershire, the enclosing movement cannot have, to any great extent, succeeded, since these are the very counties which, in the eighteenth century, still contained the largest proportion of "champion" or open land.

   Advanced free-traders might agree with Raleigh that England, like Holland, could be wholly supplied with grain from abroad without troubling the people with tillage. Others of a less theoretical turn of mind looked no further than the immediate distress which the abandonment of tillage produced. If the enclosing movement had been accompanied by a large extension of arable farming, the market for agricultural labour might have been so enlarged as substantially to relieve agrarian distress. But the extension of pasture and the substitution of a shepherd and his dog for the ploughmen and their teams only increased the scarcity of employment. Tenant-farmers lost their leaseholds; copyholders were dispossessed of their holdings; squatters and cottagers, who had eked out their harvest earnings by the produce of the live-stock which they maintained on the commons, were ruined; servants in husbandry and labourers for weekly wages were thrown out of work. The high prices of necessaries, combined with the loss of commons, the ravages of the murrain, and a succession of dry summers, had driven many small cultivators over the narrow border-line which separated them from starvation. Rents rose exorbitantly till, for farmers at rack-rent, existence became a misery. There was an ominous growth of middlemen, "leasemongers, who take groundes by lease to the entente to lette them againe for double and tripple the rente," and battened on the land-hunger of the people. Legislators were bewildered by currency questions, and violent changes in the standard purity of the gold and silver coinage aggravated the distress by raising or lowering prices. As gold and silver poured into the Old World from America, prices rose throughout Europe. The rise was in England attributed to every cause other than the cheapening of the precious metals. While from one or the other of these causes the purchasing power of wages rapidly diminished, their nominal value remained stationary, and labourers were forced to accept the statutory rates.

   It was on those agriculturists who were unwilling or unable to adapt themselves to the times that the blow fell with the greatest severity. The Husbandman in the Compendious Examination knew several of his neighbours who had "turned ether part or all theire arable grounde into pasture, and therby have wexed verie Rich men." These were the men of whom Harrison and Sir Thomas Smith speak as "coming to such wealth that they are able and do daily buy lands of unthrifty gentlemen and make . . . their sons gentlemen." But the Husbandman himself, having "enclosed litle or nothinge of my grownd, could never be able to make up my lorde's rent, weare it not for a litle brede of neate, shepe, swine, gese and hens." Hence it is that, while Latimer laments the degradation of small yeomen who, like his father, had farms of "three to four pounds a year at the uttermost," Harrison describes the rise of substantial farmers and of the middle classes, and their improved standard of living. The distribution of wealth was becoming more and more unequal; the problem of poverty was acquiring a new significance. In the growing struggle for existence it was possible for men, who were neither infirm nor idle, to lose their footing. Voluntary almsgiving was tried and proved inadequate. Gradually and cautiously the legislators of the reign of Elizabeth were forced to apply the principle of compulsory provision for the relief of the necessitous. Previous legislation, in dealing with the impotent poor, had outlined the systems of local liability and of settlement which were adopted in the later poor-laws; but it had been mainly concerned with the suppression of those persons who were styled idle rogues and vagabonds. The object explains, though to modern ideas it cannot justify, the harshness of the law. Able-bodied men and women, who were willing to work but had lost their livelihood, were unknown to the legislators who had sketched the first poor-laws for the relief of the impotent poor and the punishment of sturdy beggars (validi mendicantes ). Our ancestors did not discriminate closely between the different sources of poverty. To them, as is stated in the preamble to the statute of Henry VIII., "ydlenes" was the "mother and rote of all vyces." The "great and excessive nombres" of idle rogues and vagabonds were a crying evil. To this class belonged the men who committed "contynuall theftes, murders, and other haynous offences, which displeased God, damaged the King's subjects, and disturbed the common weal of the realm." Apart from the committal of serious crime, the mass of idle vagrants was in country districts a nuisance and a danger. The kidnapping of children was not uncommon. Housewives were robbed of their linen, and their pots and pans, or terrified by threats of violence into parting with their money. Horses were stolen from their paddocks, or, still more easily, from the openfield balks on which they were tethered; pigs were taken from their styes, chickens and eggs from the henroosts. Men and women, as they returned from markets, were waylaid by sturdy ruffians. Shops, booths, and stalls were pilfered of their contents. Tippling-houses were converted into receivers' dens for stolen goods. The comparative leniency of the laws of Henry VII. had failed; therefore the evil must be stamped out with a severity which was not only unsentimental but ferocious.

   Here the interesting point is whether the ranks of idle rogues were to any large extent swollen by agriculturists, driven to want and desperation by the loss of their holdings. The sturdy beggars, against whom Richard II. had legislated, had not the excuse of want of employment. They consisted, partly of disbanded soldiers who had so long followed the trade of war that they knew no other; partly of men who had suffered that general moral deterioration which often resulted from great catastrophes like the successive visitations of the "Black Death." In the fifteenth century, the close of the French war and of the Wars of the Roses again recruited the ranks of idle poverty and crime. To them were added, at a later date, the disbanded retinues of great nobles, "the great flock or train," to quote More's Utopia, "of idle and loitering serving-men, which never learned any craft whereby to get their living." Finally, the suppression of the monasteries displaced and threw upon the world a large number of dependents, many of whom, from inclination or necessity, joined the army of sturdy beggars. Disbanded soldiers, discharged serving-men, and dismissed dependents of monastic institutions account for a formidable total of unemployed labour, without the addition of clothiers out of work or displaced agriculturists. But the evidence of More's Utopia cannot be ignored. The passage is familiar in which he speaks of the husbandmen "thrust owte of their owne" by enclosures; compelled to "trudge out of their knouen and accustomed howses"; driven to a forced sale of their "housholde stuffe" and "constrayned to sell it for a thyng of nought." "And when they have, wanderynge about, sone spent that, what can they els do but steale, and then justelye, God wote, be hanged, or els go about a beggyng? And yet then also they be cast in prison as vagaboundes, because they go about and worke not; whom no man will set a worke, though they never so willingly offer them selfes therto." More's eloquent appeal may have produced effect. In the year after the publication of Utopia, the first and most important Commission was issued (1517-19) to enquire into the progress and results of enclosures in the twenty-four counties principally affected. The Returns of the Commissioners in Chancery are admittedly imperfect. But they justify the conclusion that More's picture, though true in particular instances, is as a general description of rural conditions too highly coloured. Dispossessed agriculturists undoubtedly contributed some proportion of the class which the Government grouped under the heading of idle rogues. Contemporary writers imply that the proportion was large: modern research, based on contemporary enquiries and returns, suggests that it was relatively small. The evidence seems insufficient for a decision. In coping with a real evil, the Government attempted no classification. The innocent suffered with the guilty, and men and women, whether many or few, who had lost their means of livelihood and were willing to work, were the victims of severe punishment designed for the class of professional vagabonds.

   Something is known of the degrees, practices, and jargon of the Elizabethan fraternity of vagabonds. Awdelay and Harman describe the "Abraham man," or "poor Tom," bare-legged and bare-armed, pretending madness; the "Upright man" with his staff, and the "Ruffler" with his weapon; the "Fraters," Pedlars, and Tinkards; the "priggars of Prauncers," or horse-stealers, in their leather jerkins; the "Counterfet Cranke," feigning the falling sickness, with a piece of white soap in his mouth which made him foam like a boar: the "Palliards," with their patched cloaks, and self-inflicted sores or wounds; and many others of the twenty-three varieties, male and female, of the professional beggar. But even Harman seldom enquired into their previous life. Some, like the "Ruffler," had either "serued in the warres or bene a seruinge man"; others, like the "Uprights," have been "serueing men, artificers, and laboryng men traded up to husbandry." The "wild Roge" was a "begger by enheritance--his Grandfather was a begger, his father was one, and he must nedes be one by good reason." Few allusions can be gleaned from Shakespeare's writings to the agricultural changes which were taking place around him. But when we pass from the movement itself to some of the results which it helped to produce, his references are many and clear. The mass of "vagrom men" was a real social danger which exercised the wits of wiser men than Dogberry.