which had roused the indignation of Arthur Young about eighty years before.

When we speak of commons now, we generally mean common pastures, heaths, and moors; we seldom mean common arable land, held by a number of tenants, no part of it assigned to any one of them for any term longer than the time between seed-time and harvest, and the whole of it as open and undivided as Runnymede, Port-meadow, or the Prairies.* The fields at Stamford used to be held by a tenure of ancient custom among the farmers, resembling the rundale of Ireland; the tenants divided and ploughed the commons, and then laid them down to become common again, and shifted the portions from hand to hand in such a manner that no man had the same land two years together.† Whipland was land not divided by meres, but measured out, when ploughed, by the whip's length. Catch-lands were pieces of common arable land of equal sizes; the property not being determined, he that ploughed the land first had the first choice of a portion.‡

There may have been some excitement in the game of "Catchland," but it rather interfered with good husbandry. The reports addressed to the Board of Agriculture, towards the end of the last century, give us woful pictures of the state of husbandry wherever common-fields abounded; they describe bare, dreary plains, ploughed up into high ridges-. often made very crooked and irregular-the tops of the ridges constantly dry, the hollows always wet and miry. In 1794 there were 91,000 acres of common-field in Buckinghamshire, and at one time the system of common-field was universal:

In ages past

They let their fields lye all so widely waste,
That nothing was in pale or hedge ypent

Within some province, or whole shire's extent.

* If there be eighty acres, etc. (Co. Litt. 4, a.)

Custome or prescription-that one shall have the land to plow and sow, and when the corn is carryed, another may have the land as his several -is good: time of Ed. II. (Kitchin, 205.)

† Lincolnshire Report, 24.

† Wiltshire Report, 259.

B2

As Nature made the earth, so did it lie,
Save for the furrows of their husbandry;
When as the neighbour lands so couched layne
That all bore show of one fair champain :
Some headlesse crosse they digged on their lea,
Or roll'd some markëd meare-stone in the way. (Hall.)

Champain, in Bishop Hall's time, was a term not confined to poetry; it was used in prose and in common speech to denote an open tract under cultivation. We dare say that the system of common-field worked very well as long as the old manorial organization endured-while the farmers were under the superintendence of the reeve and the beadle; but it would become a bad system after the relaxation of the ancient discipline, and we may presume that the enclosures of the fifteenth century were in some measure occasioned by the want of rustic overseers. The process of enclosure began at the end of the fourteenth or the beginning of the fifteenth century, and had wrought a considerable change, in certain counties, as early as the reign of Henry V. John Ross, the chronicler, is very severe upon the destroyers of churches and villages, who had driven rational men out of their habitations to make room for irrational beasts. He mentions a number of villages which had been destroyed by enclosure within twelve or fifteen miles of Warwick. Church-Charwelton had been a resting-place between Warwick and London; travellers were afterwards obliged to deviate by Lower Charwelton, and that was in danger of destruction. He compares the population of some of these places in the seventh or eighth year of Edward I. with the population of his own time. Charlcote had fiftyseven tenements at the one time, and but six or seven at the other. At Compton Murdak there was nothing but a manorhouse and a church, formerly twenty-seven free and bond tenements had been there, with a good rectory. At Compton Scorfen, where there had been sixty-three tenements, there were none the chapel had been destroyed and spoiled. Couston-upon-Dunsmore, once upon a time a town, had become a mere grange of the Abbey of Pipewell, and a den of thieves and homicides. Ross goes on to say that travellers along well-known thoroughfares were often stopped by newly made fences and enclosures-that the number of poor increased daily-that thieves and beggars multiplied enormously. Still, it would appear that the evils denounced by John Ross were local and partial, for they are not prominent among the grievances alleged by Jack Cade and his followers. Under the Tudors depopulation became a serious evil, and many laws were enacted against it. A statute of Henry VIII. attributes the dearth of everything, and the general misery, to the prevalence of sheep-farming: the preamble of this statute deserves to be quoted at length :

"Forasmuch as divers and sundry Persons of the King's Subjects of this Realme, to whom God of his Goodness hath disposed great Plenty and abundance of moveable Substance, now of late within few years have daily studied, practised, and invented Ways and Means how they might accumulate and gather together into few Hands, as well great Multitude of Farms as great Plenty of Cattle, and in especial Sheep, putting such Lands as they can get to Pasture, and not to Tillage, whereby they have not only pulled down Churches and Towns, and inhanced the old Rates of the Rents of the Possessions of this Realm, or else brought it to such excessive Fines that no poor man is able to meddle with it; but also have raised and inhanced the Prices of all manner of Corn, Cattle, Wool, Pigs, Geese, Hens, Chickens, Eggs, and such other, almost double above the prices which have been accustomed; by reason whereof a marvellous multitude and number of the people of this realm be not able to provide meat, drink, and clothes necessary for themselves, their wives, and children; but be so discouraged with Misery and Poverty, that they fall daily to Theft, Robbery, and other Inconveniences, or pitifully die for Hunger and Cold; and so it is thought by the King's most humble and loving Subjects that one of the greatest Occasions that moveth and provoketh those greedy and covetous People so to accumulate and keep in their hands such great portions and parts of the grounds and lands of this realm from the occupying of the poor Husbandmen, and so to use it in Pasture, and not in Tillage, is only the great Profit that cometh of Sheep, which now be come to a few Persons' Hands of this Realm, in respect of the whole number of the King's Subjects, that some have four-and-twenty thousand, some twenty thousand, some ten thousand, some six thousand, some five thousand, and some more and some less; by the which a good Sheep for Victual, that was accustomed to be sold for Two Shillings Four Pence, or three Shillings at the most is now sold for six shillings, or five shillings, or four shillings at the least, and a stone of clothing Wool, that in some Shires of this Realm was accustomed to be sold for Eighteen Pence or Twenty pence, is now sold for Four shillings, or Three Shillings Four pence at the least; and in some countries where it hath been sold for Two Shillings Four pence, or Two Shillings Eight pence, or three shillings at the most, it is now sold for five shillings or four shillings eight pence at the least, and so are prices raised in every part of this Realm; which things, thus used be principally to the high Displeasure of Almighty God, to the Decay of the Hospitality of this Realm, to the diminishing of the King's People, and to the Let of the Cloth-making, whereby many poor people have been accustomed to be set on work; and in conclusion, if Remedy be not found, it may turn to the utter Destruction and Desolation of this Realm which God defend.

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It was the constant opinion of the sixteenth century that sheep were eating England up. Bishop Latimer seldom agreed with Sir Thomas More, and Lord Bacon did not always agree with Sir Edward Coke, but all their minds met upon this one point. We continually meet with the subject of depopulation in documents of the sixteenth century; we meet with it even in songs and dramas

In houses where pleasure did once abound
Nought but a dog and a shepherd is found;
Places where Christmas revells did keep,
Are now become habitations for sheep.

(Roxburgh Ballads.)

I can compare our rich misers to nothing so fitly as to a whale; he plays and tumbles, driving the poor fry before him, and at last devours them all at a mouthful. Such whales have I heard of on the land, who never leave gaping till they've swallowed the whole parish, church, steeple, bells, and all. (Pericles.)

In Harleian MS. 787, there is the draft of a manifesto which purports to be addressed by "The Diggers of Warwickshire to all other Diggers." It is dated "from Hampton field, in hast," and the subscribers protest that they

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“. doe feele the smart of these incroaching Tirants, which would grinde our flesh upon the whetstone of poverty, and make our loyall hearts to faint with breaking, so that they may dwell by themselves in the midst of theyr Heards of fatt weathers. onely for theyr owne private gaine, for there is none of them but doe taste the sweetness of our wantes. They have depopulated and overthrown whole Townes, and made thereof Sheep pastures nothing profitable for our Commonwealth; for the common fields being layd open would yeeld us much commodity, besides the increase of Corne, on which standes our life. Much more we could give you to understand, but wee are perswaded that you your selues feele a part of our greiuances, and therfore need not open the matter any plainer. But if you happen to shew your force and might against us, wee for our partes neither respect life nor lyuinge; for better it were in such case wee manfully dye, then hereafter to be pined to death for want of that which these deuouring encroachers doe serue theyr fatt Hogges and Sheep withall.

"*

The poor Diggers occasionally carried their threats into execution. The Pilgrimage of Grace, the Western Rebellion, and Ket's Insurrection were more or less connected with agrarian oppression.

"Mary for these inclosures do undo us all; for they make us to pay dearer for our lande that we occupy, and causes that we can have no lande in manner for our money to put to tyllage: all is taken up for pasture; for pasture either for sheep, or for grasinge of cattell; in so much that I have knowe of late a dozen ploughes, within lesse compasse then sixe myles about mee, layd downe within this seven yeares; and where three score persons or upward had their livings, now one man with his catell hath all; which thinge is not the least cause of former uprores. this I thinke in my minde, that if that kinde of inclosing doe as much increase in xxx yeares to come, as it hath done in xxx yeares past, it may come to the great desolation and weaking of the strengthe of this realme, which is more to be feared than dearth; and I thinke it to bee the most occasion of any hinge yee spoke yet, of these wild and unhappy uprores.

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."t

Townsmen and tradesmen were as much aggrieved as

Something might be said on the other side. In Cotton MS., Faustina, C. II., there is "A defence of inclosure, and of converting arable in the inland shires to pasture. 1608."

† Stafford's Brief Conceipt of English Pollicy. 1581. (9 Harl. Misc. 147, 160.)