A HISTORY OF MIDDLESEX 



are of small amounts. Altogether, leaving out these 100 acres, 174 acres 

 of arable land were inclosed in twenty-five separate inclosures. The object 

 of the inclosures is not stated, but it seems likely that they were for 

 building. 



The inclosure of the commons and waste lands, of which, as we 

 have seen, there was a considerable amount in the county, provoked, as 

 usual, much opposition and in consequence made little progress, though 

 the great stretches of waste land so near the City harboured very 

 many undesirable rogues and vagabonds ; indeed, the neighbourhood of 

 London was far from safe, and the county sessions rolls contain a large 

 number of indictments for highway robberies in Tudor and Stuart 

 times. In February, 1591, a true bill was found against a band of 

 seven highwaymen for robberies at Islington, and in November, 1 594, a 

 band of four was apprehended at Hayes. In 1693 highwaymen were 

 indicted for robberies on the road between Bow and Mile End. 113 Small 

 bands of robbers preyed upon the roads in the suburbs ; there are robberies 

 at Netting Hill, at Tottenham, and at Knightsbridge, and the fields 

 between Gray's Inn and Paddington were infested with footpads. In 

 1690 complaints were made that the watches in the county were set too 

 late and discharged too early, so a double watch was ordered to be kept 

 from 9 p.m. till 5 a.m. and ward in the daytime from 5 a.m. to 9 p.m. 

 There having been robberies in the Strand before the watch was set, it 

 was ordered, in 1691, that four 'able and sufficient' men were to be 

 placed at convenient stands in the High Street till the watch was set 

 at i o o'clock by the constables. The same year 11S the inhabitants of 

 St. Giles in the Fields and St. Clement Danes obtained leave to set an 

 extra watch, at their own expense, and the next year Chelsea made a similar 

 appeal. 114 Norden in his Speculum warns his readers against 'walking too 

 late ' in the neighbourhood of the old church at Pancras, which stands all 

 alone and utterly forsaken, the buildings which used to surround it ' all 

 removed and fled,' and is the haunt of very undesirable company. Even 

 in the further parts of the county robberies were not infrequent on the 

 roads ; there are indictments for robberies at Enfield, Edmonton and 

 Hayes, sometimes three or four in a day, and many of course at Houns- 

 low. 115 Even in the early years of the nineteenth century, George IV and 

 the duke of York are said to have been stopped in a hackney coach and 

 robbed on Hay Hill, Berkeley Square. And it was the custom, on 

 Sunday evenings at Kensington, to ring a bell to muster people returning 

 to town. 



Henry VIII, in an Act which ' in spirit anticipated the private 

 inclosure Acts of the eighteenth century,' 116 made an attempt in 1545 to 

 encourage the inclosure of Hounslow Heath, 117 which had come into his 

 possession with the estates of Syon Abbey at the dissolution of the 



'" Jeaffreson, MM. Sess. Rolls (Midd. Rec. Soc.) ; Hardy, Midd. Sess. Rolls, 96. 

 " Hardy, MM. Sess. Rolls (Midd. Rec. Soc.), 12, 27, 30, 31. 

 14 Ibid. 87. s Jeaffreson, Sess. Rolls. 



116 Scrutton, Commons and Common Fields. 



117 Act for the Partition of Hounslow Heath, 37 Hen. VIII, cap. 2, Statutes of the Realm, 986. 



90 



