LIFE IN THE TIME OF THE STUARTS 101 



defend their rights to their commons. After the king's 

 defeat, commoners are found laying their case before their 

 new rulers. "By virtue of this conquest over the king," 

 obtained by joint effort, they claim " freedom in the 

 common lands," otherwise "we are," they say, "in a 

 worse case than we were in the king's day." It does 

 not seem that the Parliamentarians paid much attention 

 to the claims of the commoners. Indeed, in the latter 

 half of the century such bills as were introduced into 

 Parliament on the subject favoured enclosures : opinion 

 was not at that time so far altered as to secure 

 the passing of these bills, but the view of the men in 

 power was changing; and, from the middle of the 

 century onwards, the government of the country, being 

 largely influenced by commercial ideas and by the 

 arguments of the large landholders, threw its influence 

 on the side of the enclosers and appropriators of land. 

 As a result the peasantry were left for nearly two hundred 

 years to stand almost alone in their struggle for land 

 and for the independence that went with it. Accord- 

 ingly, enclosures went on apace, j A new method was 

 at that time invented by the lawyers whereby, the 

 approval of many of the principal people in the manor 

 having been obtained by persuasion or pressure, a suit 

 in Chancery was commenced asking for enclosure, and 

 an order for division of the estate made, without, it 

 seems probable, consulting the wishes or convenience of 

 the little people, whose only effective remedy was a 

 subsequent costly appeal to the courts. In addition, the 

 lords of the manor continued their enclosure of surplus 

 waste land. By the time of the Reformation perhaps a 

 quarter of England had been divided up into fenced 

 fields. 1 



1 See Appendix, pp. 164, 165. 



