A HISTORY OF NOTTINGHAMSHIRE 



The same influences were at work throughout the i6th century. The 

 inclosures continued despite all attempts to prevent them by legislation. 

 In 1593 Sir Francis Leake was said to have 'dispeopled' Langford, putting 

 down twelve ploughs. 118 The Act of 39 Elizabeth, cap. 2, by which all 

 future conversion of tillage to pasture was forbidden, may have checked 

 inclosures for the time. The attempted resumption of the crown land in 

 Sherwood Forest showed how much had been inclosed even there. A fresh 

 series of inquiries into inclosures took place about 1631, when it was 

 ascertained that during the last three years 741 acres had been inclosed 

 in Bingham and Rushcliffe by about thirty-two persons ; 394 in Thurgarton 

 by about thirteen persons ; and 536 in Bassetlaw by about twenty-one 

 persons. 119 These inclosures did not necessarily mean a conversion from 

 arable to pasture. Occasionally arable itself seems to have been inclosed 

 with a view to better tillage : and the Nottinghamshire justices gave it 

 as their opinion that small inclosures below 5 acres tended to the 

 improvement of agriculture, 120 and did not depopulate the country. The 

 great majority of inclosures were small, though not so small as this. The 

 usual course seems to have been that one landholder on a manor inclosed 

 a large parcel of ground, a hundred acres or thereabouts ; and half a dozen 

 others inclosed small portions, usually varying from five acres to forty. 181 

 These inclosures are alleged, in 1631, as one cause of the poverty in 

 Nottinghamshire : the evicted people took refuge in the towns, which were 

 thereby overburdened, or else erected cottages on the wastes, where they had 

 no means of support, and thus vagabondage was much increased. 122 Despite 

 these allegations, however, the inclosures seem to have continued without 

 much regard to the rights of the public. In 1637 there was a proposal 

 to inclose about five hundred acres of waste near Radford, part of which 

 was common to the town, and to rent it of the king for 6 i 3^. 4*/. 123 



Long before this period an enormous change had been effected in the 

 value of land. Both the Dissolution of the Monasteries and the inclosures must 

 have tended to break down the force of custom in ruling the price of land. 

 The rent of inclosures seems to have been sometimes decidedly heavy ; thus 

 from 1500 to 1544 the average rent as calculated on fourteen estates seems 

 to have been 6^d. an acre for arable, and is. $\d. for meadow ; but in 1541, 

 the rent of certain inclosures in Lenton seems to have been 3^. ^d. for arable. 

 In some of the Lenton inclosures the same sum was charged for meadow 

 and pasture also ; whilst in others the inclosed meadow land rises to 4^. d. 

 and the pasture to 3^. 8</. 124 Apparently when land, by inclosure, was 

 removed from the influence of the old manor customs, the landlord was 

 at liberty to exact the highest price he could ; and the substitution of strangers 

 and men of business for the old ecclesiastical lords probably created a class 

 of landholders who would have no scruple in taking the utmost advantage 

 of the new state of things. 



Indeed, the change in the value of money during the i6th century made 

 higher rents inevitable. The influx of the precious metals, coupled with the 

 debasement of the coinage, caused an enormous permanent increase in prices. 



"' 



E. G. Wake, Hist, of Cottingham, 117-18. '" S.P. Dom. Chas. I, dxxxiii, 29 ; dxxxi, 82. 



Cal. S.P. Dom. 1625-49, p. 411. ' S.P. Dom. Chas. I, dxxxiii, 29. 



Ibid, clxxxv, 86. '" Ibid, ccclxix, 82, 82 I. " Pat. 32 Hen. VIII, pt. 7, m. 2. 



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