The English Peasantry and the Enclosure of Common FieldsSlater, Gilbert
History
The English Peasantry and the Enclosure of Common Fields
Slater, Gilbert
Agriculture -- England; Inclosures; Peasants -- England; Village communities -- Great Britain
X. Be it also further enacted by the authority aforesaid, That no
manner of Person or Persons, of what Degree soever he or they be, being
Lord or Lords, Owner or Owners, Farmer or Farmers, of or in any Liberty
of Fold Courses within any Town, Tything, Village or Hamlet within any
of the Counties of Norfolk or Suffolk, from and after the Feast of the
Nativity of our Lord God next coming, shall take in farm, for term of
years or otherwise, any Quillets of Lands or Pastures, that is to say,
any number of Acres of Land or Pasture appertaining to any other Person
or Persons, lying and being within the limit Extent or Precinct of
the said Liberty of the said Fold Courses; but that they shall permit
and suffer the said Persons, having or being, for the time, Owner or
Owners, Lessee or Lessees of the said Quillets, to manure and pasture
the said Quillets; and also to suffer sheep of the said Owner or
Owners, Farmer or Farmers of the said Quillets, after the Rate of the
said Quillets, to go with the Flock of the Owner, Farmer or Occupier
of the said Liberty or Liberties of the said Fold Courses, paying the
customary charge for the same, after the Rate and Use of the Country,
there commonly used, without any interruption therein to be made by
the said Owner or Owners, Farmer or Farmers, or Occupiers of the said
Liberties, upon pain of forfeiture for 3_s._ 4_d._ for each offence.
“XI. Provided ... it shall not ... be available to any tenant Owner
or Occupier of any such Quillet or Quillets to claim, have or use
hereafter any such pasture, or Feeding of his sheep, in or with any
such Fold Courses, but only where the tenants, Owners and Occupiers of
any such Quillets have had, or might have had heretofore of Right and
Duty, or used to have Pasture and Feeding in the said Fold Courses,
by reason of their tenures, and Occupations of the said Quillet and
Quillets, and none otherwise; and where they have not used, nor ought
to have any Sheep fed or kept within such Fold Courses, by reason of
the said tenures, that the Owners or Occupiers of such Fold Courses may
take such Quillets, lying within their Fold Courses, in Farm, agreeing
with the Owners or Occupiers of the said Quillets for the same.”
It would appear from these clauses that there had been in still earlier
times generally throughout Norfolk and Suffolk a right pertaining
to the Lord of the Manor of feeding flocks of sheep over the whole
manor, that this right, in the reign of Henry VIII. was frequently
sold or leased under the denomination “A Liberty of Fold Courses”;
secondly that the exercise of this right was apt to interfere with
the cultivation of peasants’ holdings in the common fields; thirdly
that it was customary for the sheep belonging to the peasants to be
pastured and folded with the flock of the Lord of the Manor for a fixed
customary fee.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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