Enclosures Flashcards
What did Item 13 of the POG articles call for?
‘statutes for enclosures and intakes and enclosures since 1489 to be pulled down except in mountains, forests and parks’
What was there much in 1535 and give examples?
Rioting over illegal enclosures
300 people at Giggleswick in Yorkshire pulled down hedges and there were riots at Fressington in Cumberland
What did Giggleswick and Fressington do?
Sent rebels to attack the lands of the Earl of Cumberland who had enclosed his tenants’ lands and denied them grazing rights
What were husbandmen at Horncastle in Lincolnshire concerned about but what was the reality?
The encroachment of tenants’ rights
Minor grievance among the commons
What did Articles 1 and 3 of ‘Kett’s Demands Being in Rebellion’ declare?
‘we pray your grace that no lord of the manor encloses common land’
‘that it not be hurtful to such as have enclosed saffron grounds … and that from henceforth no man shall enclose any more’
Who was John Flowerdew?
Norfolk’s feodary who had enclosed his lands and wasn’t popular in Wymondham and Attleborough
How was Kett involved?
Dismantled his lands fences and became the spokesman for the rebels
What had sparked Kett’s rebellion?
Allegations that landlords had been deliberately obstructing a government commission that was investigating illegal enclosures
What did Kett’s rebels believe?
That they would have the backing of the government if they were to take the law into their own hands
Where were similar riots in 1549?
Sussex, Kent, Cambridgeshire, the Midlands, and south-west counties
What was Norfolk?
A densely populated county where fertile land was scarce
What did many tenant farmers favour during Kett’s rebellion?
Their enclosure because it denied their landlords the right of folding their sheep and cattle on the tenants’ fields
What was Kett keen to maintain?
Enclosures where saffron was grown (it produced a yellow dye used in the local cloth industry)
What was there concern at in 1549?
Landowners who had extensive private estates, pasturing their flocks on common land
What did Article 49 of Kett’s demands state?
‘we pray that no lord, knight, esquire nor gentleman do graze nor feed and bullocks or sheep if he may spend £40 a year by his lands only for the provisions of his house’
What was a common complaint in 1549?
The overstocking of common land
What did Kett’s rebels feel?
That the legal system had let them down
What happened in the 1540s?
Norfolk peasants had prosecuted their landlords for grazing animals on common land, but without success as Magistrates were usually landlords
How many disturbances occurred in 1549?
27
What happened in Somerset and Wilton in Wiltshire in 1549?
Disturbance occurred when open fields were converted into deer parks
Peasants removed Lord Herbert’s hedges that he had put up on common land
What happened in Sussex?
Riots were only prevented when the Earl of Arundel forced ‘certain gentleman, and chiefly for enclosures’ to dismantle their hedges
Where might enclosure become a disturbance?
In low-lying sheep-corn areas in much of the Midlands, East Anglia, southern, and south-east England
What areas consistently experienced disturbances in 1549?
Northamptonshire, Oxfordshire, and Buckinghamshire
How much land was enclosed in Leicestershire?
30%
How much land was enclosed under the Tudors in the most seriously affected counties
3%
When were enclosures likely to be accomplished?
If enclosures were achieved by mutual consent
If enclosures posed no threat to livelihoods
What happened in the second half of the sixteenth century?
Population levels started to rise and pressure on land for food and work increased
Enclosure on common land was seen as the cause of grief
What happened for much of the period?
Grain prices rose ahead of wool prices
Enclosures attracted less critical attention
By the 1590s what happened?
Private profit was replacing communal cooperation
What lay behind the food riots in 1595 and the Oxfordshire rebellion?
Allegations that common lands had been fenced off, villagers denied rights of pasturage, and land converted from arable to pasture
What did the government feel in 1593?
Reasonably confident that restrictions on enclosing open fields could be lifted
What happened in the 1590s and what did it see?
A run of good harvests and pressure from landowners to bring more marginal and wasteland under cultivation
New enclosures at Hampton Gay and Hampton Pole
What happened in 1596?
Four men gathered at Enslow Hill with the intention of seizing arms and artillery from the home of the Lord Lieutenant of Oxford and marching to London
What did the Privy Council fear about the Oxfordshire rebellion but what was the case?
Similar plans existed to seize food supplies and attack the gentry and their farms
No further disturbances occurred
What was the Oxfordshire rebellion?
Untypical of the second half of the sixteenth century
