A HISTORY OF NOTTINGHAMSHIRE 



on the husbandman, who had perforce to find cash, for rents were now 

 rarely paid in labour. 169 In 1623, the Nottinghamshire justices complained 

 that the law confining the sale of corn to market towns was a serious injury 

 to the small husbandman, who often had not horses wherewith to convey his 

 corn to the distant market. Further, the regulations which these magistrates 

 made for the due sale and distribution of corn could not extend to all market 

 towns, of which circumstance townspeople took advantage to the loss of the 

 husbandman : 17 whereas, had the latter been free to choose, he might have 

 sold his corn to better advantage nearer home. It was absolutely essential to 

 him, declared the complainants (mostly landlords) to sell his corn in the best 

 market, in order that his rents might be paid. Nor was the high money 

 rent the only disadvantage which the change of custom brought to the 

 tenant. His very tenure was often rendered insecure. At Wheatley in 

 1629 the tenants (numbering about 800 men) sent up a piteous protest 

 against the action of their new landlords, to whom the land had been sold by 

 the City of London, to which the king had granted it. Time out of mind, 

 the tenants declared, they and their fathers had been copyholders in North 

 Wheatley, paying 1 6s. %d. for every oxgang of land, with a fine of i zd. on 

 every alienation. Many of them held their land on a twenty or twenty-one 

 years lease, paying zs. on each 'copy' (i.e. on each renewal). Further, they 

 had from the time of Edward IV held the demesne of the manor at 

 /g 6s. $d. a year (of late by a similar lease). The woods too, had been 

 common to the town at the rent of 6j. %d. ; all which rights and customs 

 appeared duly in the Court Rolls of the manor. These had been kept 

 securely locked up with two keys, one in the custody of the lord's steward, 

 the other in that of the tenants of the manor. But now not only were fines 

 and rents alike enormously raised, but the steward had taken possession of 

 both keys, and removed the Court Rolls from place to place, so that the 

 tenants, fearing to lose the sole evidence of their right, petitioned for the 

 intervention of the Council. 171 



Again, privileges granted to new lessees often injured the old tenants. 

 Thus in the famous quarrel over the draining of Hatfield Chase, the Notting- 

 hamshire tenants of Misterton and Gringley, Everton, Button and Scrooby, 

 had really serious cause of complaint, inasmuch as Sir Cornelius Vermuyden 

 (the patentee), in the course of his operations, dammed up the Idle, whereby 

 their meadows were flooded for the past five years, involving a total loss of 

 1,550 a year. 173 Further, at Misterton, Vermuyden had inclosed 1,000 acres, 

 and excluded 200 families of the township from the common. These people 

 employed forty-six ploughs and kept a thousand cattle besides sheep and swine; 

 but now they were ' barred forth of North Carr, and drowned forth of Thack 

 Carr, and bereft of all means of livelihood.' They were promised redress, but 

 it was apparently delayed, as the complaints extended over several years. 173 

 These cases were no doubt exceptional, but the new conditions obviously 

 bore hardly on the small tenants. 



169 Traces, however, both of servile tenure and of the labour rent are to be found as late as, or later than, 

 this period. At Farndon, one of the queen's manors, the rents of the natlvi and the value of their work are 

 mentioned in 1633. (S.P. Dom. Chas. I, ccxxxv, 3.) At Collingham, the sum of 9 arising from boon-days 

 for ploughing, threshing and so forth was mentioned among the dues owing in 1649. (Wake, Hist, of 

 Collingham, 109.) 17 S.P. Dom. Jas. I, cxl, 10. 



171 S.P. Dom. Chas. I, cli, 38. '" Cal. S.P. Dom. 1633-4, P- *86. m Ibid. 1634-5, P- 4- 



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