insist on treating the question of Disestablishment apart from that of Disendowment. Questions of property are entirely apart from the claim of Nonconformist Churches to equality. If there are any arguments which can justify the assumption of the State to pronounce on the merits of different Church systems, and to grant political ascendency to those who recognise the Divine right of bishops to subscribe the three Creeds and Thirty-nine Articles, let them be adduced, and they shall have our consideration. But it is sheer mockery to tell us that we must submit to this injustice because the Church holds a large property, which, as certain Dissenters tell us, cannot safely be left under its own control, and which, as Church defenders, cannot justly be taken away because it is private property. The former plea is the more hollow and contemptible of the two, and it is matter of surprise how the Church can be content to accept the service of the allies who advance it. But neither the one nor the other can avail against the justice of our demand. The property belongs to the Church or the State. If to the State, the Church has no right to complain of a new application of it; if to the Church, the State has no right to control it. In either case there is no reason why Nonconformists should suffer because of their religious opinions.

J. GUINNESS ROGERS.

RURAL ENCLOSURES AND ALLOTMENTS.

WHETHER, according to the views of one school of historians, English economic history began with the freedom of the masses of the people, which gradually degenerated into the serfdom of the Middle Ages, or whether, according to the views of another school, the change was in an exactly opposite direction, and it began with the serfdom of the masses of the rural population under Saxon rule, with only a change of masters at the time of the Norman Conquest,'-in either case there is a tolerable certainty that by the time of James the First servile tenures were become a matter of historical interest only, and that rural England was occupied at that date partly by tenants in fee-simple and partly by a large body of free customary tenants of various kinds holding under the lords of different manors.2 It is also clear that at that time a very large portion of the country was still cultivated on what is known as the common-field system; and a still larger portion was covered by the wastes of the manor, the soil of which was technically the property of the lord, the tenants exercising rights of common over it.

From an early period the waste of the manor had been regarded from different points of view by the parties interested in it. The tenants of the common fields holding otherwise than by servile tenure, whether in the earliest times a numerous class or notand their number and condition would appear to have varied in different parts of the country-probably represented in the historical order of succession the free or privileged classes of the old village communities of the earliest German settlers. The constant tendency was for the servile tenures to harden into the superior or customary tenure, and thereby to increase the number and power of the class belonging to the latter. But the customary tenant, whatever the laws might say to the contrary, never accepted the doctrine of the feudal jurisprudence that the waste was, in anything except a technical sense, the property of the lord of the manor; and the early statutes relating to enclosure are the monuments of the long struggle on this question, which runs through whole centuries

1 Seebohm, The English Village Community, Preface, ix.

2 Gneist, History of the English Constitution, vol. ii. p. 329.

of English history, varying in its result from place to place and from period to period. The almost inevitable result of this condition of affairs was that a constant struggle continued between the two sets of ideas out of which the land tenure of the country had grown up; the customary tenants regarding the wastes as in reality their own. beneficial property, and the lord of the manor desiring to amplify his own legal ownership into an absolute possession, qualified by the easements of the customary tenants, which with time he hoped to extinguish.

The Statute of Merton gave the lord of the manor the right of enclosing for common of pasture against the tenants of his own manor under certain conditions, and the Statute of Westminster the Second made the same right clear against the tenants of neighbouring manors. The great changes in the economic position of the country which followed the Black Death increased the temptation to enclose, in order to feed large herds of cattle and flocks of sheep. A further movement consequently arose, having for its object not merely the enclosure of the wastes, but also the absorption of the common arable fields under which so much of the country was cultivated upon a system which, it must be acknowledged, was wasteful and unprogressive in the extreme. As in later times, two schools arose one which asserted that enclosure everywhere meant improvement and an increase in the total amount of the wealth produced; the other which claimed that in many cases it meant nothing of the kind, and pointed to the displacement of the population and the misery which often ensued, and frequently led to civil commotion-nay, even to actual rebellion.

The vigorous though hard generation of reformers which had no pity on nuns and monks, and having satisfied itself that Malmesbury Abbey would be more productive of wealth if turned into a cloth factory than if devoted to ecclesiastical uses, proceeded at once to appropriate the revenues in accordance with that order of ideas, naturally viewed with disapproval the wasteful processes and careless ways of the old husbandry, and would have made short work of it, regardless on the whole of what suffering might be entailed during the transition period. There was, however, this difference between the two cases. Against the monasteries the whole reforming party was unanimous; against the old system of land tenure they were not. The yeomanry had no idea of being driven out like their cowled and hooded neighbours. The voice of Latimer was heard protesting in the famous 'Sermon on the Plough' against the greed of those who, in the words of Scripture, were for ever adding field to field; and the dramatist, coming to the assistance of the preacher, held up 'Sir Giles Overreach,' the encloser, to the hatred and ridicule of his own and succeeding generations.

The contest between the lord of the manor and the customary VOL. XX.-No. 118.

3 N

tenants is to be seen in full swing in the struggle relating to the common lands of Wootton Bassett known as Vastern,' in Wiltshire, which, complicated as it was by the religious and political feelings of the time-the lord of the manor having been a Roman Catholic and a cavalier, and the copyholders adherents of the Parliament-presents several features of exceptional interest. After much litigation, and some personal encounters, a petition to Parliament was drawn up by the mayor of the town and the free tenants of the manor to express their grievances.

It sets forth that the mayor and free tenants of this borough had enjoyed from time immemorial free common of pasture for the feeding of all manner of ruther beasts-as cowes, &c.-in Vasterne Great Park, which contained, by estimation, 2,000 acres of ground or upwards, and

that soon after the manor came into the possession of Sir Francis Englefield, Knight, that gentleman did inclose the park, leaving out to the said free tenants of the borough that part of it which was called Wootton-Lawnd, and contained only 100

acres.

The petition then proceeds to state

that notwithstanding this infringement of their ancient rights, the inhabitants submitted to it without resistance, and established new regulations of common in conformity to the contracted extent of their lands, giving to the mayor of the town for the time being two cowes feeding, and to the constable one cowes feeding, and to every inhabitant of the said borough one cowes feeding, and no more, as well the poor as the rich, and every one to make and maintaine a certain parallel of bound, set forth to every person; and ever after that enclosure, for the space of fifty-six years, or neere thereabouts, any messuage, burgage, or tenant, that was bought or sold within the said borough, did always buy and sell the said cowes leaze, together with the said messuage or burgage, as part and member of the same, as doth and may appeare by divers deeds, which are yet to be seen; and about which time, as we have been informed, and do verily believe, that Sir Francis Englefield, heire of the aforesaid Sir Francis Englefield, did, by some means, gain the charter of our towne into his hands, and as lately we have heard that his successors now keepeth it; and do believe that at the same time he did likewise gaine the deed of the said common; and he thereby knowing that the towne had nothing to shew for the right of common, but by perscription, did begin suits in law with the said free tenants for their common, and did vex them with so many suits in law, for the space of seven or eight years at the least, and never suffered anyone to come to tryal in all that space; but did divers times attempt to gain the possession thereof, by putting in of divers sorts of cattell, insomuch that at length when his servants did put in cowes by force into the said common, many times and present, upon putting of them in, the Lord, in his mercy, did send thunder and lightning from heaven, which did make the cattle of the said Sir Francis Englefield to run so violent out of the said ground, that at one time one of the beasts were killed therewith, and it was so often, that people who were not there in presence to see it, when it did thunder, would say that Sir Francis Englefield's men were putting in their cattell into the Lawnd, and so it was; and as soone as those cattle were gone forth, it would presently be very calme and faire, and the cattell of the towne would never stir, but follow their feeding as at other times, and never offer to move out of the way, but follow their feeding; and this did continue so

long, he being too powerfull for them, that the said free tenants were not able to wage law any longer; for one John Rosier, one of the free tenants, was thereby enforced to sell all his land (to the value of 5007.) with following the suits in law, and many others were thereby impoverished, and were thereby enforced to yield up their right, and take a lease of the said common of the said Sir Francis Englefield for terme of his life; and the said mayor and free tenants hath now lost their right of common in the Lawnd neare about twenty years, which this, now Sir Francis Englefield, his heirs and his trustees, now detaineth from them.

Likewise the said Sir Francis Englefield hath taken away their shops or shambles standing in the middle of the street, in the market-place, from the towne, and hath given them to a stranger that lived not in the towne, and he detaineth them from the town; and likewise he hath taken certaine garden grounds, which are taken out by a bye street, and detaineth them from the town; and he hath altered, and doth seek wayes and meanes to take the election of the mayor of our town to himselfe; for whereas the mayor is chosen at the Law-day, and the Jury did ever make choice of two men of the town; and the lord of the Manor was to appoint one of them to serve, which the lord of the manor have refused, and caused one to stay two years together divers times, which is a breach of our custome.

And as for our common, we do verily believe that no corporation in England is so much wronged as we are; for we are put out of all common that ever we had, and hath not so much as one foot of common left unto us, nor never shall have any; we are thereby grown so in poverty, unless it please God to move the hearts of this Honourable House to commiserate our cause, and to enact something for us, that we may enjoy our right again.

And we your Orators shall be ever bound to pray for your healths and prosperity in the Lord."

Following this instance of apparently successful encroachment on the part of the lord of the manor on the rights of the commoners, an instance of an opposite order of events and the destruction of a petty manor may be given from the records of the parish of Shrewton, situated on Salisbury Plain. In that place it would appear that in consequence of the dismembering of the manor in 1596 and the discontinuance of the courts baron wherein orders were taken in former times for the better government and quiet estate of the parish,' great disorder arose, which persisted till 1599, when on the earnest persuasion of Nicholas Barlowe, the vicar, a written set of 'orders' were drawn up and subscribed by all the parties interested. These orders embodied in the shape of a voluntary agreement what had been the customs of the manor from time immemorial, and the lord having abolished himself three years previously, the primitive and self-governing village community was thereby practically restored.'

Aubrey, the Wiltshire historian, speaking of the period of the Reformation, gives a curious account of what the face of the country was like in those days:

This county (he says) was then a lovely campania, as that about Sherston and Coteswold. Very few enclosures, unlesse near howses. My Grandfather Lyte did

• Britton, History of Wiltshire, Edin., 1814, pp. 642–44.

♦ Wiltshire Archæological Magazine, vol. xxiii. No. lxvii., articlle by the Rev. Canon Bennett.