POLITICAL HISTORY 



treating the bailiwick as forest, the county complaining that it was 

 treated even as a purlieu. The general sixteenth century grievance of 

 enclosures, other than parks, no doubt affected Surrey. Materials do not 

 seem to exist in our county to help us to decide the vexed question of 

 what the unpopular enclosures were. They were partly without any 

 doubt the enclosure of waste, with the eviction of squatters and with 

 the curtailing of the rights of commoners. Besides this, they were 

 either the conversion of private estates from arable into pasture, or the 

 enclosing of the common arable fields for private use. It is certain that 

 very considerable common arable fields existed in a great part of Surrey 

 in the eighteenth century, and were enclosed by Acts of Parliament at 

 known dates since then, and that over another considerable part of the 

 country, the Weald, there are no traces of common arable fields nor of 

 any enclosures of such. 1 But there were common woods in the Weald 

 of sufficient extent to become the care of the law. The Act of 35 

 Henry VIII. 17, which forbade the cutting of wood of a certain size for 

 conversion into charcoal, exempted the woods of private owners in the 

 Weald of Kent, Sussex and Surrey, but applied to the common woods. 

 These common woods were no doubt encroached upon by private 

 owners. They were a valuable property. The encroachment has now 

 triumphed everywhere beyond the chance of successful reclamation. 

 We seem to catch a glimpse of popular resistance when in Elizabeth's 

 reign Lord Montague writes to Mr. More 2 begging him to redress certain 

 disorders which have arisen from certain women ' set a-worke ' by their 

 husbands to resist the clerk of the works, who superintended Lord 

 Montague's iron works, in the use of ' his owne wodes.' The clerk has 

 been ' disorderly and daungerously abusyd.' This was either at Pophole 

 beyond Haslemere, near the Sussex and Hampshire boundaries of Surrey, 

 or in Chiddingbold parish, where Lord Montague had iron works at 

 Imbhams. He also claimed an iron mine at Hambledon. Perhaps the 

 woods in question were Hambledon Hurst. The women's husbands of 

 course considered that they were not my lord's ' owne wodes.' The 

 same nobleman's interests were looked after in another case, when the 

 Earl of Lincoln wrote to 'Master Moore' begging him to use his 

 interest with the magistrates to stop a private person from enclosing the 

 waste at East Horsley, as it would injure the writer, ' lord Mountygewe 

 and divers tenants.' The last were lucky in having the two noblemen on 

 their side. 



At any rate the grievances of the poor against the upper classes, 

 in whatever way they were caused, were felt in Surrey enough to make 

 the county share in the general unrest which broke out into insurrection 

 in several English counties under Edward VI. in 1549. The Earl of 

 Arundel wrote from Guildford on June 29 to Sir William Petre, another 



1 The great region of common arable fields recently existing is along the northern slope of the 

 chalk hills from Croydon to Guildford. They also existed in the Thames valley and at a few inter- 

 mediate places. There are few on record south of the chalk, and none apparently on the Wealden clay. 



* Loseley MSS. February 20, 1570, x. 28. 8 Ibid. January 5, 1572, viii. 67. 



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