Note 440 — Chapter II · THE REACTION OF THE AGRARIAN CHANGES ON THE PEASANTRY

Topographer and Genealogist, vol. iii. These are the people whom Heaven protected in the way described on p. 148 note. Observe what this little community endured. (i.) Sir Francis Englefield, senior, seizes 1900 out of 2000 acres of their common. (ii.) Sir Francis Englefield, junior, seizes “the charter of our town ... and the deed of the said common." (iii.) He tries to seize the remaining 100 acres, and ruins them by lawsuits “for the space of seven or eight years at the least, and never suffers any one to come to triall in all that space ... that the said Free tenants were not able to wage law any longer, for one John Rous ... was thereby enforced to sell all his land (to the value of £500) with following the suits in law, and many were thereby impoverished." (iv.) He turns them out of their shops in the market-place, and introduces instead “a stranger that liveth not in the town." (v.) He appoints his own nominee as mayor, in defiance of the custom which requires him to appoint one of two men submitted to him by the jury. (vi.) He prevents his victims from signing this petition by threats of eviction. ("They are fearful that they shall be put forth of their bargaines, and then they shall not tell how to live, otherwise they would have set to their hands.")