SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC HISTORY 



1449 : and in the western extremity of the county Beaminster and Broad- 

 winsor were apparently immune, while Stoke Abbott was excused i8j. id. 

 on the first assessment and los. on the second. About this time the commons 

 of Dorset complained to the king that they, with the inhabitants of 

 other sea-coast counties, had sustained many ' injuries oppressions and extor- 

 tions ' from soldiers who had come amongst them, and they prayed that the 

 said soldiers might be ' put under restraint for such offences that the said 

 counties may not be desolated or otherwise destroyed.' "' 



Whether the decaying prosperity of the county had anything to do with 

 the diminishing number of foreigners settled within its borders it is impossible 

 to say, but between the years 1440 and 1468 the number of aliens — house- 

 holders and others — fell from several hundreds to five, the greatest fall occur- 

 ring between 1440 and 1450, at which date there were only five householders 

 and eleven other foreigners."' 



It seems probable that the existing distress was not enhanced by 

 any great movement towards the inclosure of common fields or the con- 

 version of arable into pasture land in the sixteenth century. Though there 

 were undoubtedly some few common fields in the county at this period,"* 

 they were probably not of very great extent, and Dr. Slater considers it likely 

 that the land passed, at least in the south and west, directly from the condition 

 of forest or moor into separate cultivation, though the cultivated patches were 

 not as yet inclosed, and that where arable common fields existed they were 

 small in area and surrounded by severally cultivated assart."" There seems to 

 be absolutely no evidence of rioting caused by inclosures, but in the reign 

 of Henry VIII two separate suits in the Court of Star Chamber were 

 brought against Sir William Fyloll, kt., lord of Winterborne Belet and 

 Winterborne Herringstone, by the tenants of Bincombe and Winterborne 

 Came respectively. These were obviously not ordinary cases of inclosure, 

 but an attempt on the part of a great landowner to convert the arable 

 fields of a neighbouring township into pasture for his own sheep, to pasture 

 his sheep upon a common where he had no legal right, and to hinder those 

 who had rights of common from availing themselves of them."* 



In other cases inclosure seems to have been effected by a peaceable agree- 

 ment with the tenants of the manor, as in the case of Long Bredy, where the 

 lessee of the site of the manor some time before February, 1597, by agree- 

 ment with the lord and the tenants, inclosed ' not only the land demised to 

 him but also a good part of the commons and waste grounds of the manor 

 which were assigned to him by such assent as aforesaid, in lieu of all the said 

 sheep leaze common and common of pasture to him demised.'"^ A yet more 

 interesting case is recorded at Shroton (in Iwerne Courtney), which lay open 

 till 1548, when many of the tenants whose holdings were so small that they 

 could not pay their rents, ' departed the town and surrendered their copies to 

 the lord.' The rest requested that they might continue to hold their lands, 

 provided they paid their rents to the lord, ' and they his tenants to maintain 



"' Rol. Pari. (Rec. Com.), v, 6i*. 



'" Lay Subsidy R. Dorset, bdle. 103, Noj. 83, 92, 96, 105. 



'" cf. Hutchins, Hist, of Dcrstt, iii, 569 ; iv, 41, 501. 



"" Engl. Peasantry and the Enclosure of Common Fields, 238, 240. 



'" Star Chamber Proc. Hen. VIII, lix, 35, 369. 



"• Chan. Enr. Dec. R. 97-6. 



247 



