FOOTNOTES:
[416] The Shepe Book of Tittleshall Manor (Holkham MSS., Tittleshall Books, No. 19), shows flocks of 500 to 1000 sheep being managed by a single shepherd, 1543–1549.
[417] e.g. Holkham MSS., Fulmordeston, Bdle. 6: “To the Right Honourable Sir Edward Cooke, Knight, Attorney General unto the King’s Matie. Humblie sheweth unto your lordship yor poore and dayley orators ... yor worshippes tenants of the Manor of Fulmordeston cum Croxton in the Duchie of Lancaster, and the moste parte of the tenants of the same manor that whereas your said orators in the Hillary Terme last commenced suite in the Duchie Courte against Thomas Odbert and Roger Salisbury, gent., who have enclosed their grounds contrary to the custom of the manor, wherby your wor. loseth your shack due out of the grounds, common lane or way for passengers is stopped up, and your worshipps' poore orators lose their accustomed shack in those grounds, and the said Roger Salisbury taketh also the whole benefit of theire common from them, keepinge there his sheepe in grazinge, and debarring them of their libertie there which for comon right belongeth unto them.” For the rest of this document see Appendix I., and compare the following defence to a charge of breaking open an enclosure: “The owners of the said tenements, from time whereof there is no memory to the contrary, have had a common of pasture for themselves and their tenants in one close commonly called 'the new leasue,' in the lordship of Weston in the manner following; that is to say, when the field where the said 'leasue' doth lie, called Radnor field, lieth fallow, then through the whole year; and when the said field is sown with corn, then from the reaping and carrying away of the corn until the same be sown again ... and the said Thomas Dodd further said that he did break open the said close ... being fenced in such time as he ought to have common in the same, to the end that his cattle might take their pasture therein" (William Salt Collection, New Series, vol. ix., Chancery Proceedings, Bdle. 8, No. 9).
[418] For complaints of tenants against the exactions, of farmers as early as 1413, see Victoria County History, Essex, vol. ii. p. 318. For a stipulation in the farmer's covenant, see the following: “Item a covenant conteyned in this lease that the said Thomas shall permit and suffer the customary Tenants peaceably to have and enjoy their estates, rights, grants, interests, and premises, without any lette, interruption, or contradiction of the said Thomas" (Roxburghe Club, Pembroke Surveys, Knyghton); and Northumberland County History, vol. v. p. 208, Buston: “The tenants of this town at the beginning of summer have their oxen allway grazed in Shilbottel wood, or else they were not able to maintain their tenements. It is therefore requisite that his lordship or his heire should have respect unto the want of pasture, that in any lease made by his lordship or his heire to any person of the pasture, the said Shilbottel wood, there might be a proviso in the said lease that the said tenants should have their oxen ground there, as they have been accustomed.” Instances of the harrying of the peasants by the large farmers are to be found, ibid., vol. i. p. 350 (Tughall), and p. 274 (Newham).
[419] All Souls' Archives, vol. i. p. 203, No. 356.
[420] Topographer and Genealogist, vol. i., Survey of Mudford and Hinton. In this case the aggressor was not the farmer of the demesne, but a freeholder owning a third of the manor. To escape his depredations the tenants proposed “to enclose their common fieldes and to assign to Master Lyte and his tenants his third parte in every field by itself, and to extinguish his right of common in the rest.”
[421] Victoria County History, Suffolk, “Social and Economic History.”
[422] For an amusing example see Conway, The Alps from End to End, pp. 190–192.
[423] The Commonweal of this Realm of England, p. 57.
[424] Ten acres of “turf” to forty acres of arable was the estimate of his requirements made to me by an Oxfordshire small holder.