78 HULL SCIENTIFIC AND FIELD NATURALISTS' CLUB. 



awkwardly in money — William Woolfe was amerced in 2d. 

 for unjustly filling two gates, " over 4s. 2d. of grass." 



For the benefit of the present inhabitants I have given 

 some idea of the intolerable complexity of the system of 

 common fields. 



The name of Sir Philip Constable, of Everingham, whose 

 estates were forfeited for treason against the Commonwealth, 

 is of melancholy interest in connection with Southcoates as 

 in Stoneferry, he being lord of a third of this manor also. In 

 March, 1652, the survey shewed that his total annual income 

 there was £19 19s. 6d., but the surveyors thought the value to 

 be ^"3 1 6s. more. Among other tenants, Thomas Harrison 

 had a cottage, and a two-acre meadow called Ember Garth, 

 with one Noble in the East Field, and one in Humberfield. 

 He had also "ten pence," or the eighth of a Noble in the 

 Wood, and 160 sheep-gates in Sommergaines. I suppose 

 Constable's property was sold, but he was- allowed to 

 compound for his chief estates, by paying a fine of one- 

 third of their value. The family is now represented at Ever- 

 ingham by Lord Herries. 



John Dalton, of Swine, who had inherited a share in the 

 manor, was a fellow-sufferer. In 1653 he complains to the 

 Committee for Compounding that, although two-tnirds of his 

 estate is sequestered for his recusancy, his third has not been 

 set apart for him, so that he cannot comply with the demands 

 of his creditors. This was granted "if sequestered for 

 recusancy only." In 1654 he begs to contract for the two- 

 thirds under the Recusants Act of 1653. He owned the 

 Hastings berewic, married the Lady Mary Viscountess 

 Dowager Dunbar, and lived at Nuttles. In 1685 he died. 



The eighteenth century was the period when the great 

 bulk of the open fields in England was enclosed, and allotted 

 to private owners, their value being enormously increased. 

 But very considerable enclosures had before been effected. 

 A large piece containing nine fields in the north-east corner 

 of the parish was treated as old enclosure in 1764. 

 About 1590, the East Field seems to have extended to the 

 Oxlands in Sutton, for the Court ordered the ditch between 

 those lands to be cleansed.* 



The moving spirit in the enclosures carried out in South- 

 coates was Charles Pool, the younger, through whose 

 influence Sutton parish was enclosed, in 1767. He was 

 a prominent man in Hull, a nephew of the Rev. William 



* There was somewhere a little Oxland, which may be that here 

 referred to. If so, Ewelands was an ancient meadow. 



