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London:

EMILY FAITHFULL, PRINTER AND PUBLISHER IN ORDINARY TO HER MAJESTY, VICTORIA PRESS, PRINCES STREET, HANOVER SQUARE, W., AND 9, GREAT CORAM STREET, W.C.

THE

Law Magazine and Law Review :

OR,

QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF JURISPRUDENCE.

No. XXXI.

ART. I.-THE RIGHTS, DISABILITIES, AND USAGES OF THE ANCIENT ENGLISH PEASANTRY.

PART VIII.- The Age of Enclosures.

WHAT will become of the landlords? A king with many slaves and no money is better off than a lord with broad lands and no labourers. The landlords have paid the wages demanded by their ploughmen, and have been fined for exceeding the rates allowed by Parliament; they have dressed their ploughmen in silver lace to make them pass for footmen, and have been checked again by the Legislature. A landlord in the thirteenth century might command two hundred ploughmen or reapers; if a landlord in the fifteenth century could collect so many, he could not find superintendence for them; the reeve and the beadle used to be overseers of the lord's ploughmen and reapers, but a tenant in the fifteenth century would not take a reeveship or a beadlery. The lords were thenceforth obliged either to let their demesnes, or to work them with the least possible labour, and they soon found it convenient to turn their corn-fields into pastures-to raise cattle instead of corn.

VOL XVI.-NO. XXXI:

B

In those days the woollen trade and manufacture were increasing, and the lords, having found that they grew rich by becoming graziers, were tempted to abridge the commonable rights of the tenants by enclosing the fallows and pastures which had theretofore been open; the cattle of the peasantry had been mainly supported by these commons, and could hardly live without them. Of course, their owners suffered and murmured. Many of the copyholds were not hereditary, but were held for lives, or for terms of years; the landlords took advantage of expiring terms, refused to renew leases, and sent the tenants adrift, pulling down their cottages, and enclosing the lands attached to them. This process was carried on until whole neighbourhoods were nearly depopulated.

Old England was in the main an open country. England is now so thoroughly fenced that in some parts it is only by shutting our eyes, and exerting our imaginative powers, that we can form the vision of a land without hedgerows:

On either side the river lie
Long fields of barley and of rye,

That clothe the wold and meet the sky.

Nevertheless, open-field culture is not altogether extinct. There were recently parishes unenclosed in Berkshire, Buck-inghamshire, Oxfordshire, Northamptonshire, and other Midland Counties. Cheddington, near Aylesbury, was not enclosed until 1853; Wittenham, near Abingdon, was enclosed about 1856. In the summer of 1859 there was a trial at Northampton concerning the occupation of Naseby common-field; among the witnesses was a person who lives upon the battlefield, and his great-grandfather fought in the battle. When Mr. Caird made his tour, twelve years ago, he found commonfields at Ilsley, between Oxford and Newbury; the Vicar's glebe of fifty acres was in detached unfenced fragments, mixed up with other lands, all lying "here awa' there awa," like the Laird of Hotchpot's estate. Mr. Caird afterwards found the open fields near Stamford in the very condition

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