Ill TO SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES 57 



holdings VIP wnnlt^ pull down the houses on som,e_of 

 them, and the landless labourer, tht> smaller tenants, cottagers 

 and bondsmen who remained found less or no demand for^ 

 their labour. In places where these unfortunates could take 

 to other industries the evil was not indeed so great. This 

 is especially pointed out by Moore in his Scripture against 

 Enclosures, ' I complaine not/ he says, ' of .enclosures in Kent 

 and Essex, where they have other callings and trades . . . 

 or of places near the sea or city, but of inclosure of inland 

 countries which take away tillage,, fjift only 



to^live on/. 1 When this was the case, that is to say, when 

 they had no other industry to fall back on, the condition of 

 thenaan who lived chiefly or entirely by hirer} Iflfyonr 

 was dark indeed. Stubbes says, ' These inclosures be the 

 /causes why rich men do eat up poore men, as beasts dqo 

 / eat ^rasse. These are the caterpillars and devouring. 

 locustes that massacre the poor and eat up the whole 

 realm/ 2 The Commonweal of England especially men- 

 tions the cottagers ' which having no lands to live of their 

 own but their handie labour and some refreshing upon 

 the said commons ' do suffer, and says that owing to 

 gentlemen taking farms and to the general substitution 

 of pasture for arable ' wheare 40 persons had their livings^ 

 no we one man and a sEeppard _ hath_all '. 3 The supplica- 

 tion, probably addressed to the Protector Somerset in 1548, 

 declares that in Oxfordshire alone 40 ploughs had been 

 decayed since the reign of Henry VII, that in other 

 counties the average was 80, and that some 18 or 20 

 thousand had been thrown out of employment. 4 



1 Quoted, Transactions Royal Hist. Soc., xix, p. 139 ; cf. also W. S., 

 The Common Weal, ed. Lamond, where the case for and against en- 

 closure is well treated in a dialogue. 



2 Anatomie of Abuses, 1583, pt. i, cvii. 



* Commonweal of England, ed. Lamond. 



Four Supplications, Early English Text Soc., p. 101, speaks of 50,000 



