[622] Topographer and Genealogist, vol. i.
[623] Norden, op. cit.: “And is not every mannor a little commonwealth, whereof the tenants are the members, the land the body, and the lord the head?”
[624] Gairdner, L. and P. Henry VIII., xii., I., 98, Instructions to the Duke of Norfolk.
[625] Acts of the Privy Council, New Series, vol. xxvii. p. 129. Letter from the Council to William Harman, Esq.
[626] A useful list of these Acts, with a summary of their provisions, is given by Slater, The English Peasantry and the Enclosure of Common Fields, Appendix D.
[627] 4 Henry VII., c. 19. All occupiers of twenty acres and more which have been in tillage during three years preceding the Act to maintain tillage.
[628] 6 Henry VIII., c. 5, and 7 Henry VIII., c. 1. In parishes “whereof the more part was or were used and occupied to tillage and husbandry,” any person who “shall decay a town, a hamlet, a house of husbandry, or convert tillage into pasture,” and has not “within one yeere next after such wylfull decaye reedifyed and made ageyn mete and convenyent for people to dwell and inhabyte the same ... and therein to exercyse husbandry and tillage,” forfeits one half of his land to the lord of the manor. Land converted to pasture must be tilled “after the maner and usage of the countrey where the seyd land lyeth.”
[629] 25 Henry VIII., c. 13.
[630] 5 and 6 Edward VI., c. 5.
[631] 2 and 3 Philip and Mary, c. 2.