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country labour-precluded the towns, and prevented from deriving a subsistence by any species of manufactures-a great part of the people were

ipsos, agros, domos, oppida vastent ac depopulentur. Nempe quibuscunque regni partibus nascitur lana tenuior, atque ideo pretiosior, ibi nobiles et generosi, atque adeo abbates aliquot sancti viri, non his contenti reditibus fructibusque annuis, qui majoribus suis solebant ex prædiis crescere, nec habentes satis, quod otiose ac laute viventes, nihil in publicum prosint, nisi etiam obsint, arvo nihil relinquunt, omnia claudunt pascuis, demoliuntur domos, diruunt oppida, templo duntaxat stabulandis ovibus relicto, et tanquam parum soli perderent apud vos, ferarum saltus ac vivaria, illi boni viri habitationes omnes, et quicquid usquam est culti, vertunt in solitudinem. Ergo, ut unus helluo inexplebilis ac dira pestis patriæ, continuatis agris, alliquot millia jugerum uno circumdet septo, ejiciuntur coloni quidam suis, etiam aut circumscripti fraude, aut vi oppressi exuuntur, aut fatigati injuriis, adiguntur ad venditionem."-So Sir Giles Overreach was, then, no ideal monster. It was not the right of ownership alone that was exercised; small proprietors were either circumvented, oppressed with actual force, or wearied out of their possessions by injuries." Itaque quoquo pacto emigrant miseri, viri, mulieres, mariti, uxores, orbi, viduæ, parentes cum parvis liberis, et numerosa magis quam divite familia, ut multis opus habet manibus res rustica: emigrant, inquam, e notis atque assuetis laribus, nec inveniunt quo se recipiant, supellectilem omnem haud magno vendibilem, etiam si manere possit emptorem, quum extrudi necesse est, minimo venundant: id quum brevi errando insumpserint, quid restat aliud denique, quam uti furentur et pendeant juste scilicet, aut vagentur atque mendicent, quamquam tum quoque velut errones conjiciuntur in carcerem, quod otiosi obambulent, quorum opera nemo est qui conducat, quum illi cupidissime offerant. Nam rusticæ rei, cui assueverunt, nihil est quod agatur, ubi nihil seritur. Siquidem unus opilio atque bubulcus sufficit ei terræ depascendæ pecoribus, in cujus cultum, ut sementi faciendæ sufficeret, multae poscebantur manus. Atque hac ratione fit, ut multis in locis annona multo sit carior. Quin lanarum quoque adeo increvit pretium, ut a tenuoribus, qui pannos inde solent apud vos conficere, prorsus emi non possint, atque ea ratione plures ab opere ablegantur in otium." Mor. Utop. L. 1.

Lord Bacon, in his History of Henry VII., says, that " enclosures at that time" (1489, when the law of Henry VII. about farm-houses

reduced to the last resort-of begging, theft, and robbery, and daily perished of hunger, or suffered for the irregularities into which they were driven. The evil might not be altogether instantaneous: vanity, shame, fear, compassion, might restrain many landlords from at once dismissing dependents, when they ceased to be necessary for pomp or power, and clogged their own views of a silly ambition; the difficulty of procuring tenants with capital, must have operated to a certain extent on others; but the Revolution, when it had reached a certain point, daily advanced with increasing celerity. Residence in town naturally weakened the sympathy between land owner and tenant: Each succeeding generation, educated in a new school, were imbued with different feelings; and, besides that the opportunity afforded by leases of large tracts, to accumulate capital, encreased the number of tenants who were in a condition to embark in extensive undertakings †, proprietors

was passed)" began to be more frequent, whereby arable land, which could not be manured without people and families, was turned into pasture, which was easily rid by a few herdsmen; and tenancies for years, lives, and at will, whereupon much of the yeomanry lived, were turned into demesnes." P. 596.

* We learn from J. Rous, that, even in his time, the son always improved upon the father in this respect. "Avari patres cupidiores generant filios: ubi forte, pater pro cupiditate unam destruxit villam, ejus moribus avarus filius destruit plures villas." Hist. Rer. Ang. P. 89. It appears from a proclamation quoted by Stow, in 1521-a proclamation founded upon statute—that the evil had been proceeding rapidly for fifty years previously. Stow, p. 512.

+ Leases to tenants were common at a very early period. In the award between Henry III. and the Commons, in the 51st of his reign

themselves, induced by the facility of managing immense flocks by herdsmen, and by means of enclosures, fell into the practice of retaining the natural possession of the soil. Entails, too, being now rendered nugatory, great transferences of property took place; and the purchasers, feeling none of the sympathies that might be supposed to exist between their predecessors and their dependents on the soil, would not conceive themselves under any obligation to retain or support them.

Of the unrelenting barbarity with which this new system was pursued, we have unhappily the amplest testimony. "Now, the robberies, extortions, and open oppressions," said an indignant preacher before Edward VI. " of covetous cor, morants, have no end, nor limits, no banks to keep in their vileness. As for turning poor men out of

-after some arrangement about the ransoms of proprietors who had been robbers-a proof of the barbarity of the times-it is provided, § 24, that "Fermors that were against the king, shall leise their termes, -saving the right of their lords to whom they pay their yearly rent; and they that shall have the farms after the terms expired, shall render them to the true lord." St. Marlb. c. 16-23, provides, that "all fermors, during their terms, shall not make any waste, sale, nor exile of house, woods, men, nor of any thing belonging to the tenements that they have to farm, without special licence had by writing or covenant, making mention that they may do it; which thing if they do, and thereof be convict, they shall yield full damage, and shall be punished by amercement grievously."

* This is established by the passages already quoted from More and Bacon: but, from St. 25, Henry VIII. c. 13. to limit a flock to 2000, the practice appears to have reached an astonishing height. I is said in the preamble that some had 24,000.

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their holds, they take it for no offence; but say, the land is their own, and so they turn them out of their shrowds like mice. Thousands in England, through such, beg now from door to door, who have kept honest houses*." It would be vain

* Bernard Gilpin, Strype's Ecclesiastical Memorials, vol. ii. p. 441. The language of these great and mighty men, says Gilpin, is, " that the commonalty lived too well at ease. They grew every day to be gentlemen, and knew not themselves. Their horns must be cut shorter, by raising their rents, and by fines, and by plucking away their pastures." Ib. The style of these preachers is so extraordinary, especially when we consider the chief auditor, that another sentence may not be unacceptable. "Oh Lord, what a number of such oppressors, worse than Ahab, are in England, which sell the poor for a pair of shoes, Amos ii. of whom, if God should serve but three or four of them as he did Ahab, to make the dogs lap the blood of them, their wives and posterity, I think it would cause a great number to beware of extortion. And yet escaping temporal punishments, they are sure, by God's word, their blood is reserved for hell hounds. England hath had alate some terrible examples of God's wrath, in sudden and strange deaths of such as join field to field, and house to house. Great pity they were not chronicled to the terror of others."

The famous Latimer also inveighed so bitterly before the king on the same subject, that the higher classes, as he himself observes, charged him with sedition. He says, p. 32, that where there had been "a great many householders and inhabitantes, there is now but a sheapheard and his dog"-he charges the aristocracy with intending "to make the yeomandry slauery, and the clergy slauery." He gives likewise a curious picture of his father's family, to prove the change of times.

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"My father," says he, "was a yeoman, and had no lands of his own, onely he had a farme of 3 or 4 pound by year at the uttermost, and hereupon he tilled so much as kept halfe a dozen men. He had walke for an hundred sheepe; and my mother milked thirty kine. He was able, and did find the king a harnes, with himselfe and his horse, while he came to the place that he should receiue the king's wages. I can remember, that I buckled his harnes, when he went to Blackheath fielde. He kept me to schoole, or else I had not been able to

to attempt a description of the misery of those, who, no longer necessary for pomp or power, were mercilessly banished their homes, and debarred

haue preached before the King's majesty now. He maryed my sisters with fiue pound, or 20 nobles a piece, so that he brought them up in godlines, and feare of God. He kept hospitality for his poore neighbours; and some almes he gaue to the poore, and al this did hee of the said farme. Where he that now hath it, payeth 16 pound by the yeare, or more, and is not able to doe any thing for his prince, for himselfe, nor for his children, or giue a cup of drink to the poore." First Sermon before King Edward, p. 32. The preacher predicts the decay of learning and the gospel from this, as almost all divines were sons of yeomen. "Is this realme," says he, " taught by. rich men's sons? No, no, Read the chronicles, ye shall find some time noblemen's sonnes, which haue beene unpreaching byshops and prelates, but yee shall finde none of them learned men. But verily, they that should looke to the redresse of these thinges bee the greatest against them."

See in Strype's Memorials, vol. i. p. 392, et seq. vol. ii. p. 141, et seq. passages quoted from different authors, which present the most direful picture-whole towns became desolate, no man dwelling there except a shepherd with his dog, people starving and unjustly and illegally thrust out of their possessions.

In a proclamation by King Edward, in 1548, the misery arising from enclosures is described in strong colours. In some places, where there used to be 100 or 200 inhabitants, there was then scarcely one poor shepherd." So that the realm thereby was brought to a marvellous desolation. Houses decayed, parishes di minished, the force of the realm weakened, and Christian people, by the greedy covetousness of some men, eaten up and devoured of brute beasts, and driven from their houses by sheep and bullocks." Strype's Ecclesiastical Memorials, vol. ii. p. 92, &c. The land owners maintained that they acted by their right of property; but it is a little odd that no such plea was admitted for money lenders, whom they would not permit to take interest. The aristocracy, however, were the legislators, and they were likewise borrowers, They pursued the same principle in regard to labourers, whose wages they attempted to regulate. The statutes on this subject, from 23 E. III. downwards, are full of complaints against labourers for exacting so much.

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