By the Rev. J. Wilkinson. 



31 



our's. The burden of complaint is, "scarcity of victual by reason 

 of great and covetous misusages of the farnls.' , The petitioners 

 say :— 



" Gentlemen, merchant adventurers, cloth -makers, goldsmiths, butchers, tan- 

 ners, and other artificers and unreasonable covetous persons, do encroach 

 daily many more farms than they can occupy in tilth of corn ; ten, twelve, four- 

 teen, sixteen farms in one man's hands at once, when in time past there hath 

 been in every farm of them a good house kept, and in some of them three, four, 

 five, or six ploughs kept and daily occupied, to the great comfort and relief of 

 your subjects, poor and rich. For when every man was contented with one 

 farm, and occupied that well, there was plenty and reasonable price of every 

 thing that belonged to man's sustenance by reason of tillage. Forasmuch as 

 every acre of land tilled and ploughed, bore the straw and chaff beside the 

 corn, able and sufficient with the help of the shakke in the stubbe to succour 

 and feed as many great beastes (as horses, oxen, and kine) as the land would 

 keep. And further by reason of the hinderflight of crops and seeds tried out in 

 cleansing, winnowing, and sifting the coin, there was brought up at every barn 

 door, hens, capons, geese, ducks, swine, and other poultry [sic], to the great 

 comfort of your people. And now, by reason of so many farms engrossed in one 

 man's hands, which cannot till them, the ploughs be decayed, and the farm 

 houses and other dwelling houses ; so that where there was in a town twenty or 

 thirty dwelling houses, they be now decayed, ploughs, and all the people clean 

 gone, and the churches down, and no more parishioners in many parishes, but 

 a neat herd and a shepherd instead of threescore or fourscore persons." 



Well might Sir Thomas More say, in his Utopia, that an English 

 sheep was a more ravenous animal than a lion or wolf, and devoured 

 whole villages. Another turn in the trade is noted by Aubrey : 

 but this complaint comes from the landlord class, while the 

 labourer is well off. "The falling of rentes," he says, "is a con- 

 sequence of the decay of the Turkey trade, which is the principal 

 cause of the Jailing of the price of wooll. Another reason which con- 

 duces to the falling of the prices of wooll is our women wearing so> 

 much silk and India ware as they doe. By these means my farme 

 at Chalke is worse by £60 per annum than it was before the civill 

 warres. Sir William Petty told me, that when he was a boy, a 

 seedsman had £5 a year wages, and a countrey servant maid be- 

 tween 30 and 40 shillings. But now wages are deare in the coun- 

 trey, from the gentry living in London, and the dayly concourse 

 of servants out of the countrey to London." 



Our commons are Broughton common (the common), Norrington 

 common, Challeymead, and Amblecroft. The law for the use of 



