PEASANT REVOLTS 147 



war against the whole of the feudal aristocracy. It 

 was a determined attack on their settled policy and 

 dearest interests. He appointed an Extraordinary 

 Commission to inquire into the whole subject. The 

 reference to that Commission is a lengthy document 

 drafted in precise, thorough, and even aggressive 

 terms. ^ The recital of a few of the heads of it may be 

 interesting to those who have not studied the domestic 

 history of the English cultivating classes, that is, of 

 the English people as apart from the history of the 

 higher orders. 



The Commissioners were instructed to inquire into 

 the questions of decayed towns ; of houses of husbandry 

 pulled down through inclosures ; of pasture turned 

 into tillage ; of the excessive fines and raising of rents 

 whereby the holders were driven from the soil (" which 

 must abate "), etc. etc. 



"Ye shall put away all fear," the Reference ran, 

 " for you will be defended against the Devil, the 

 world and private profit, so you may be sure they will 

 suffer no person to do you injury. . . . Do as be- 

 cometh honest men, declare the truth and nothing but 

 the truth. ... In what ye go about have no favour 

 or leave unpresented those that ye know to have 

 offended." 



^ "Memorials Ecclesiastical and Civil of the Reign of Edward VI," 

 by John vStrype, M.A. Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1823. 



Strype, who began to write towards the end of the seventeenth 

 century, was a painstaking and an industrious collector of original State 

 papers, charters, etc. The above work contains copies of these. Books 

 I and II give in full, documents relating to the Duke of Somerset ; his 

 policy with regard to inclosures ; his intense sympathy with the peasantry ; 

 his reluctance to punish them for revolts which he regarded as almost 

 justifiable; and the warnings he received from friends as to the dangers 

 he ran in pursuing his policy. Full copies are also given of his Procla- 

 mation ; of the Reference to the Commission ; of the Report of the 

 Commissioners, etc. 



