SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC HISTORY 



meads and pastures in copyhold to surrender them in return for compensation 

 and inclosed the lands as a deer park. He had also inclosed half of 

 Tyttenhanger Heath and converted the other half into a fertile pasture.*^ 

 Before 1448 Sir Robert Whittingham, aiming at increasing not his arable 

 only, had shut out the tenants from common in 80 acres which he held.** 



In 1 576 some of the copyholders of Aldenham complained that the lord 

 meant to inclose half of the 2,000 acres of common land. The lord 

 contended that the plaintiffs indeed had pasture on the waste, but the tenants 

 had never had rights of common there. He wished to use 50 acres for his 

 house and had made an offer to the tenants. The lord was awarded the 

 right to put 1 50 sheep on the common land.** A few years after, at Rushden, 

 the freeholder inclosed 14 acres on which the inhabitants had had pasture 

 with all their cattle.*^ 



The Countess of Bedford, farmer of the demesne meadows of the manor 

 of Rickmansworth, withheld from the queen's poor copyhold tenants their 

 parcels of land lying among the demesnes. The great Park and the little 

 Park were presumably demesnes.*^ 



At Clothall in 155 1 the lord had had 452 acres of several meadows and 

 pasture, but his arable still lay partly in the open field.*^ At Croxley, too, 

 the demesne pasture was all several.*^ At Northaw 140 acres of pasture 

 had been inclosed as early as 1521.*^ But the tenants had common in the 

 wood for all beasts. In the little estate at Stanstead Abbots in 1556, 65 acres 

 of the pasture were apparently common and 3 inclosed, but of the 8 acres of 

 meadow 5 were several.^" At King's Langley the lord had 5 1 acres several 

 meadow in 1556, and he disparked the rest of the park, above 600 acres 

 of waste, for which the tenants offered i2d. an acre, its market value." 



In the manor of Wallington the custom was either falsely alleged or 

 unusually favourable to the lord. No copyholders had common for sheep 

 or cattle in the lord's demesnes or in the common fields, except in harvest 

 time on their own ground. Nor might any copyholder have a fold ; the 

 common of feeding in the fields and the general foldage belonged to the 

 lord. But in 1598 one copyholder led an attempt to take commons. He 

 claimed for the copyholder the right to have a fold on his arable for the 

 bettering of his land and common for sheep up to 120, and for great cattle 

 in the commonable times both in the demesnes of this manor and the 

 common fields.^' Tenants might be guarded by the customs as at Hexton,'' 

 Bishop's Hatfield ^* and Tring." But their weakness was that these customs 

 were only enforced by the manor court. The men of Hemel Hempstead 

 vested the commons in trustees in 1596.^° 



According to John Hales, the insurrection against the inclosures, which 

 spread over all southern England, began by riots at Northaw and Cheshunt 

 in 1548." The tenants of these manors had risen against the inclosure of 



*^ Amundesham, Ann. (Rolls Ser.), i, 261. *' Ct. R. (Gen. Ser.), portf. 176, no. 121. 



** Chan. Dec. R. 66, no. 18. « Sess. R. (Herts. Co. Rec), i, 13. 



« Aug. Off. Misc. Bks. cccxci, fol. i et seq. *' Add. MS. 33582, fol. 4. 



*8 Aug. Off. Misc. Bks. cccxci, fol. I et seq. *5 Ibid. fol. i U. 



60 Ibid. fol. 93^. M Ibid. fol. 40-54. 



52 Chan. Proc. Eliz. bdles. 6, no. 6 ; 14, no. 7. ^^ Ibid. (Ser. 2), bdle. 225, no. 102. 



^ Ld. Rev. Misc. Bks. ccxvi, fol. l et seq. ^^ Aug. Off. Misc. Bks. cccxci, fol. 55. 



'* F.C.H. Herts, ii, 215-16. ^^ Hales, Discourse of the Common Weal (ed. Lamond), p. Iviii. 



215 



