THE XVTH AND XVlTH CENTURIES 83 



land. A ballad of the day tells us of the new ' gyse ' 

 or method : 



"Commons to close and kepe, 

 Poor folk for bred to cry and wepe, 

 Towns pulled down to pasture shepe, 

 This is the new gyse." l 



The victims of the new gyse wandered about the 

 country or settled as squatters in the woods and wastes 

 of unenclosed manors. 



During the latter years of the XVth, the greater 

 part of the XVIth and the first half of the XVIIth 

 centuries, the Council of State, which acted 

 'ariiament as the governing authority, was seriously 

 farming. concerned to prevent these appropriations, 

 and, at their instigation, Parliament made 

 many efforts to deal with them. A statute of 1514* 

 recounts the evils, referring especially to the throwing 

 of numbers of farms together, sometimes called 

 * engrossing,' and orders that houses are to be rebuilt, 

 land put again under tillage, whilst defaulters were 

 to forfeit one half of their land to their feudal lord. 

 Again, a statute, passed in 1534,3 tells how "divers 

 persons to whom God of his goodness has disposed 

 great plenty," had been pulling down the towns and 

 churches and devastating much of the country-side for 

 the purpose of sheep farming ; accordingly, "a marvellous 

 number of the people of this realm be not able to 

 provide for themselves, their wives and children, but 

 be so discouraged with misery and poverty that they 



1 'Town,' derived from the Anglo-Saxon 'tun,' was at that 

 time the word commonly used to describe what is now called 

 the village : see Appendix, p. 163. 



2 See Appendix, p. 169. 3 ibid. p. 170. 



