Note 278 — Chapter IV · THE PEASANTRY (continued)

For the popular attitude towards enclosures see below, pp. 313–340, and Leland (quoted Hone, The Manor and Manorial Records, p. 117): “The Duke of Buckingham made a fair park by the Castle of Thornbury, Gloucestershire, and took very much fair land in, very fruitful of corn, now fair lands for coursing. The inhabitants cursed the Duke for those lands so enclosed.” I cannot refrain from quoting the following passage (Topographer and Genealogist, vol. iii): “To the Right Honble. House of Parliament now assembled, the Humble Petition of the Mayor and Free Tenants of the Borough of Wootton Basset in the Countie of Wilts, Humble sheweth to this Honourable House" [that their common has been seized and enclosed by the lord of the manor, who] “did divers times attempt to gaine the possession thereof by putting in of divers sorts of cattle, in so much that at length, when his servants did put in cowes by force into the said common, many times and present upon the putting of them in, the Lord in his mercy did send thunder and lightning from heaven, which did make the cattle of the said Francis Englefield [the lord of the Manor] to run so violent out of the said ground, that at one time one of the beasts was killed therewith; and it was so often that people that were not there in presence to see it, when it thundered would say, Sir Francis Englefield’s men were putting in their cattle into the land, and so it was, and as soon as those cattle were gone forth, it would presently be very calm and fair, and the cattle of the towne would never stir, but follow their feeding as at other times, and never offer to move out of the way.” For the allusion to invoking the devil, see Moore, The Crying Sin of England, &c. It was said that the grantees of monastic estates died out in three generations (Erdeswick, Survey of Stafford, ed. Harwood, p. 55). The same was said of enclosers (Moore, op. cit.).