164 OLD ENGLISH VILLAGE LIFE. 



The reference will be noticed in this and other old documents 

 to sheep and sheep's wool. Sheep-farming from the Tudor 

 period onward was the special feature in agriculture. It led to 

 the breaking up of the lesser holdings, the enclosure of moors 

 and waste lands, and the gradual absorption of small property 

 by large landowners. There must have been an appropriation 

 at this period of much that was waste and wild upon Sinfin, and 

 no doubt there was a tendency to encroach upon the boundaries, 

 and possibly to eject the small farmer. The name " Sinfinfold," 

 with its abbreviation, " Sinfold," is in use from 1662 onwards, 

 according to the testimony of the Parish Register, and it points 

 possibly to an ancient enclosure. There must, indeed, have been 

 many such " folds " or " intakes," as we say in the north, during 

 the Tudor and Stuart rule. It is from the reign of Henry VIII. 

 that the Harpur family — settled at Swarkestone, afterwards known 

 as the Harpur Crewes at Calke — came into prominence, laying 

 firm hold upon the lands around Swarkestone, Tickenhall, Little- 

 over, Findern and Twyford. Undoubtedly, they felt the benefit 

 of sheep-farming, and saw the advantage and necessity of exten- 

 sive enclosures. As time went on, sheep-farming seems to have 

 somewhat declined, and in the days of Charles II., for a few 

 years at least, an artificial stimulus was given to it by an Act 

 of Parliament which stipulated that people should be buried 

 in sheep's wool. Our Register says : " Memorandum that in 

 the 30th year of King Charles II, there was an order for 

 burying in sheep's wool from Aug. 1, 1678, for seven years, 

 and so on until annulled by King and Parliament." Observe, 

 in passing, the expression, " the 30th year of King Charles." The 

 writer need not have been a man of royalist proclivities. In the 

 ordinary reckoning of that period Cromwell's Protectorate is 

 merged in the reign of his successor. This short-lived measure was, 

 at best, an artificial expedient. We find it revived again in the 

 reign of George II., and carried out by the overseers and church- 

 wardens, we cannot help thinking with a certain amount of luke- 

 warmness, between 1736 and 1740. In a few instances, among 

 the poorer people the Act was not observed. The following 



