ENCLOSURE 95 



' The towns go down, the land decays, 

 Of corn-fields plain lays, 

 Great men maketh nowadays 

 A sheepcot of the church ', 



said a contemporary ballad. 



Latimer wrote, 'where there were a great many house- 

 holders and inhabitants there is now but a shepherd and his 

 dog.' ' I am sorie to report it,' says Harrison, 1 ' but most 

 sorrowful of all to understand that men of great port and 

 countenance are so far from suffering their farmers to have 

 anie gaine at all that they themselves become graziers, 

 butchers, tanners, sheepmasters, and woodmen, thereby to 

 enrich themselves.' The Act against pulling down farm- 

 houses was evaded by repairing one room for the use of 

 a shepherd ; a single furrow was driven across a field to prove 

 it was still under the plough ; to avoid holding illegal numbers 

 of sheep flocks were held in the names of sons and servants. 2 

 The country swarmed with heaps of miserable paupers, 

 'sturdy and valiant ' beggars, and thieves who, though hanged 

 twenty at a time on a single gallows, still infested all the 

 countryside, their numbers being swollen by the dissolution 

 of the monasteries and the breaking up of the bands of 

 retainers kept by the great nobles. 



Rents also were rising rapidly. Latimer's account of his 

 father's farm is too well known to be again quoted ; his 

 opinions were shared by all the writers of the day. Sir 

 William Forrest, about 1540, says that landlords now demand 

 fourfold rents, so that the farmer has to raise his prices in 

 proportion, and beef and mutton were so dear that a poor 

 man could not ' bye a morsell '. ' Howe joyne they lordshyp 

 to lordshyppe, manner to manner, ferme to ferme. How do 

 the rych men, and especially such as be shepemongers, oppresse 

 the king's people by devourynge their common pastures with 



1 Description of Britain (ed. Furnivall), ii. 243. 

 7 Froude, History of England t v. ill. 



