Ill TO SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES 41 



one means, therefore, or another, either by hook or crook, 

 they must needs depart away, poor, silly, wretched souls, 

 men, women, husbands, wives, fatherless children, widows, 

 woeful mothers with their young babes, and their whole 

 household, small in substance and much in number, as 

 husbandry requireth many hands . . . and when they have 

 wandered about till that (the little they have got by sale 

 of their goods) be spent, what can they then else do but 

 steal, and then, justly, pardy, be hanged or go about 

 begging/ 1 yy 



We all know the lament of Latimer. ' Whgre__ihere_ 

 were once_a_g[reat many householders and inhabitanta-there_ 

 is now but a shepherd and his dog/ W. S. says, ' Those 

 shepe is the cause of all those mischiefs, for they have 

 driven husbandrie out of the country by the which was 

 increased all kind of foode. But now only sheepe, sheepe, 

 sheepe!' and Trigge (1604, Humble Petition), ' England 

 hath been famous throughout all Christendom by the 

 name of merrie England, but covetous enclosers have taken 

 this joy and mirth away ; so that it be now called sighing 

 or sorrowful England. I have hearde of an old prophesee 

 that Home and Thorne shall make England forlorne ' ; 

 while John Moore in his Scripture Word against 

 Enclosures, 1653, says, ' England, and especially Leicester 

 and the counties round about, stands now as guilty in the 

 sight of God of the sinnes in the text. They sold the 

 righteous for silver and the poor for a pair of shoes/ 3 



The denunciations of the preacher were adopted by the 

 people; the spirits of departed enclosers, more especially 

 the emparkers, were believed to haunt the scene of their 

 self-made desolation with cries of guilty remorse, and the 

 lands of these madded, cruel, irreligious depopulators to 



1 Utopia, Robinson's translation, p. 41. 



J Latimer, Sermon vii, p. 101. 3 Moore, p 1. 



