SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC HISTORY 



I've heard our fine refined clergy teach, 



Of the commandment it is a breach 



To play at any Game, for gayne or coyne ; 



One silly beast another to pursue 



'Gainst nature is, and fearefull to the view ; 



Mix'd dancing is a horrid wicked sin, 



And by the same much naughtinesse hath bin. 



In consequence of these clerical teachings, he complains 



The pipe and pot are now the onely Prise 

 Which all our sprightfull youth doe exercise. 



Yet I was bold, for better recreation, 



T* invent these sports to countercheck that fashion. 



I never thought that anyone of you 



In written poems would the same allow. 



One cannot but applaud the honest old gentleman's simple lines and cry 

 * Amen ' when he concludes 



And let Content and Mirth all those attend 

 That doe all harmlesse honest sports defend, 



and wish with his friend, John Trussell, that 



While that sheepe have woole or sheepheards sheepe 

 Fame shall his actions in remembrance keepe. 1 



But there was a darker side to the agrarian revolution. Hastened as it 

 was by commercial needs, it brought a new commercial spirit into the dealings 

 of the legislature with the land. It was probably West Indian traders who 

 killed the tobacco-planting industry which had arisen in the time of the 

 Commonwealth about Cheltenham and Winchcombe. Successive Acts (from 

 1652 onwards) at last brought about its suppression, though in 1667 the 

 military had to be called in to support the sheriff, who found the local 

 magistrates far too sympathetic with the unfortunate tobacco-growers.* 



Enclosures, too, could not be made without evictions, or at any rate 

 without a loss to the labourer of rights of common and pasture which he 

 had continued to enjoy long after he had ceased to be a landholder. In 1733 

 a bill for enclosing the commons and wastes of Bisley was thrown out in 

 response to a vehement petition from some of the inhabitants, the copy- 

 holders, labourers, and small freeholders. This document is interesting, as 

 giving information as to the woollen industry, and as expressing what was 

 probably a not uncommon view of enclosures. The common lands and 

 wastes amount now, it recites, to only 1,000 acres, which have always been 

 used for pasture by the people of Bisley, and have been freely built over 

 by the ' Carders, Spinners, Weavers, and numberless Artificers ' employed in 

 the woollen manufacture. 



' At present there are at least 800 such dwellings.' ' The small Pieces of Land that 

 will be allotted them ' (by the Bill of Enclosure) ' will bear no Proportion to the Benefit 

 of the Commons, in which they were used to keep their cattle till their first grass is cut, 

 and their latter grass fit to receive them. ' This Bill,' they declared, ' will entirely destroy 

 several hundred industrious families, which are now settled upon these Commons .... 

 and consequently must prejudice the Woollen Manufacture by removing the hands absolutely 

 necessary for their business.' * 



1 Annalia Dubrentia. 



' Hiit. MSS. Com. Rtp. xii, App. vii and ix. See also Bit. Clone. Ill, cxxiv-vii. and S.P. Dora. 

 1654, Ixxii, 27-29 and 65. In 1661 tobacco was I/, a bundle in Gloucester (Record Books). 



1 'Petition against Inclosing divers Parcels of Common and Waste Ground within the manor of Bislcigh," 

 bound up in a miscellaneous volume in Bodleian ; Gough Glouc. 32. 



167 



