46 Beginning of Modern Farming 



Acts of Parliament ; there was legislation against the decay of 

 tillage, and active rebellion against enclosure under Ket and 

 others in Norfolk, Suffolk, and in the Midland counties. 



* Your shepe ', says Sir Thomas More, ' that were wont to be 

 so meke and tame, and so smal eaters, now, as I heare saye, be 

 become so great devowerers and so wylde, that they eat up and 

 swallowe downe the very men them selfes. They consume, 

 distroye, and devoure whole fieldes, howses, and cities. For 

 look in what partes of the realme doth growe the fynest, and 

 therefore dearest woll, these noblemen and gentlemen : yea and 

 certayn Abbottes, holy men no doubt, not contenting them 

 selfes with the yearely revenues and profytes, that were wont to 

 grow to their forefathers and predecessours of their landes, nor 

 beynge content that they live in rest and pleasure nothinge 

 profiting, yea much noyinge the weale publique : leave no 

 grounde for tillage, thei inclose al into pastures : thei throw 

 downe houses : they plucke downe townes, and leave nothing 

 standynge, but only the churche to be made a shepe-howse.' 



Latimer was even bolder and sharper than More. In his first 

 sermon preached before Edward VI on 8 March, 1549, he said : 

 6 My father was a yeoman, and had no lands of his own, only he 

 had a farm of three or four pound by year at the uttermost, and 

 hereupon he tilled so much as kept half a dozen men. He had 

 walk for a hundred sheep ; and my mother milked thirty kine. 

 He was able, and did find the king a harness, with himself and 

 his horse, while he came to the place that he should receive the 

 king's wages. ... He kept me to school, or else I had not been 

 able to have preached before the king's majesty now. He 

 married my sisters with five pound, or twenty nobles apiece ; so 

 that he brought them up in godliness and fear of God. He kept 

 hospitality for his poor neighbours, and some alms he gave to the 

 poor. And all this he did of the said farm, where he that now 

 hath it payeth sixteen pound by the year, or more, and is not 



