Volume 1 — DISTRESS CAUSED BY HIGH PRICES (1772). Source.—Calendar of Home Office Papers, 1770-1772. P. 479.

Forestalling and Engrossing.

11 April.—A paper signed “near Dorchester,” addressed to the King (the newspapers taking notice of His Majesty’s desire to see the price of provisions lowered), to lay before him the evils of forestalling and engrossing. As examples of engrossing in the neighbourhood of Dorchester, the writer instances the manors of Came, Whitcomb, Muncton, and Bockhampton. The first, he says, about thirty years before, had many inhabitants, many holding leasehold estates under the lord of the manor for three lives. Some of these had estates of 15l., 20l., and 30l. a year, being for the most part careful, industrious people, obliged to be careful to keep a little cash in order to keep the estate in the family if a life should drop. Their corn was brought to market, and they were content with the market price. Their cattle were sold in the same manner. Their children when of proper age were married, and children begotten, without fear of poverty. But the lord had since turned out all the people, and the whole place was in his own hands, while not half the quantity of corn was sown that formerly had been. The writer also gives an account how one Wm. Taunton, though only a tenant of the Dean and Chapter of Exon, was gradually getting the whole parish into his own hands. He says, comparing his own with past times, that formerly a farmer that occupied 100l. a year was thought a tolerable one, and he that occupied four or five hundred pounds a very great one indeed; but now they had farmers that occupied from one thousand to two thousand per annum, who did not want money to pay their rent, as did the little farmers, who were obliged to sell their corn, &c. The writer gives it as the general opinion that the kingdom had become greatly depopulated, some averring the population to have decreased by a fourth within the preceding hundred years. He further says: “Your Majesty must put a stop to inclosures, or oblige yᵉ lord of yᵉ manor to keep up yᵉ antient custom of it, and not suffer him to buy his tenant’s interest; to have all the houses pulled down, and yᵉ whole parish turn’d into a farm: this is a fashionable practice, and by none more yⁿ Jnᵒ Damer, Esq., yᵉ owner of Came, and his brother Lord Milton.”