13 Elizabeth (1571), c. 25.
This makes the preceding Act perpetual.
DEPOPULATION ACTS.
The preamble of the first of this series of Acts, though well known, is here quoted in part.
4 Henry VII. (1489), c. 19.
“Our King and Sovereign Lord ... remembreth that ... great inconveniences do daily increase by desolation and pulling downe, and wilfull waste of houses and townes within this realme and laying to Pasture Lands, which customably have been used in tillage, whereby idlenesse, which is the ground and beginning of all mischiefes, daily doth encrease. For where in some townes two hundred persons were occupied and lived by their lawfull labours, now there are occupied two or three heardmen, and the residue fall into idlenesse, the husbandrie, which is one of the greatest commodities of this Realme is greatly decayed, Churches destroyed, the service of God withdrawn, the bodies there buried, not prayed for....”
To check these evils all occupiers of 20 acres and upwards of land that had been tilled in the previous three years, are required to maintain tillage, under pain of forfeiting to the lord of the manor one half of the profits of such land.
6 Henry VIII. (1515), c. 5.
This was a temporary Act, in principle identical with the one passed in the following session.