That the Puritans early made common cause with the suffering tenantry is not a matter of conjecture. Philip Stubbes, in 1583, in the Anatomie of Abuses, pp. 126, 127, writes: "They take in and inclose commons, moores, heathes, and other common pastures, where out the poore commonaltie, were wont to haue all their forrage and feedyng for their cattell, and (whiche is more) corne for themselves to liue vpon; all which are now in most places taken from them, by these greedie puttockes to the great impouerishyng and vtter beggeryng of many whole townes and parishes.... For these inclosures bee the causes why riche men eate vpp poore men, as beastes dooe eate grasse." One might cite recent economic writers on the effect of inclosures, but the conservative laments of the antiquary Aubrey, in his Introduction to the Survey of Wiltshire, written about 1663, give us a nearer and more picturesque, if less philosophical, view. He says: "Destroying of Manours began Temp. Hen. VIII., but now common; whereby the mean People live lawless, no body to govern them, they care for no body, having no Dependance on any Body. By this Method, and by the Selling of the Church-Lands, is the Ballance of the Government quite alter'd and put into the Hands of the common People." Writing from what he had heard from his grandfather, he says: "Anciently the Leghs i. e. Pastures were noble large Grounds.... So likewise in his Remembrance was all between Kington St. Michael and Dracot-Ferne common Fields. Then were a world of labouring People maintained by the Plough.... There were no Rates for the Poor in my Grandfather's Days ... the Church-ale at Whitsuntide did the Business.... Since the Reformation and Inclosures aforesaid these Parts have swarm'd with poor People. The Parish of Caln pays to the Poor 500£ _per annum_.... Inclosures are for the private, not for the publick Good. For a Shepherd and his Dog, or a Milk-Maid, can manage Meadow-Land, that upon arable, employ'd the Hands of several Scores of Labourers." Miscellanies on Several Curious Subjects, now first published, etc., 1723, pp. 30-33. It will fall within the province of another volume of this series to treat of the systems of landholding brought from England, and I shall not go further into the subject of inclosures here. A portion of the agricultural population seemed superfluous in consequence of inclosures, and colonization was promoted as a means of ridding the country of the excess of its population. [Sidenote: Note 6, page 112.]