Major General John Pepper

THE STORY OF ENFIELD CHASE

By David Pam

Foreword by Dave Cockle Chairman of the Enfield Society

Cover picture: Extract from John Norden’s Map of Middlesex within his ‘Speculum Britannae’ (1593).

About The Enfield Society

The society was founded in 1936 as the Enfield Preservation Society (EPS). It was renamed The Enfield Society (TES) in 2007 and has about 2000 members. The Enfield Society has a record of vigorous action in defence of the local environment by practical conservation and campaigning. There is also a strong social section. The Society is a registered charity in England and Wales (276451) and is registered in England as a limited company (312134).

The mission of the Society is the conservation and enhancement of the civic and natural environments of the London Borough of Enfield and its immediate surrounding area for the public benefit. To further this mission the Society seeks to:

. Conserve and enhance buildings and groups of buildings of architectural quality or historic interest; . Defend the integrity of the Green Belt; . Protect and improve open spaces and views; . Ensure that new developments are environmentally sound, well designed and take account of the relevant interests of all sections of the community; . Publish papers, books, reports and literature; . Make surveys and prepare maps and plans and collect information in relation to any place or building of historic or architectural interest; . Assist in the preservation and maintenance of footpaths, commons and rights of way; . Promote and pay the expenses of meetings, conferences, lectures and exhibitions, whether public or private, and (subject to Clause 7 of its Memorandum of Association) to remunerate and pay the expenses of persons attending on the invitation of the Society to give expert advice or assistance.

The logo of the Enfield Society is the Enfield Beast. A purely fanciful animal, it is a compilation of the animals said to have once roamed Enfield Chase. It has the head of a fox, chest of a greyhound, talons of an eagle, body of a lion, and hind legs and tail of a wolf.

How to join the Society

Annual membership costs from as little as £5 per person and includes print copies of the Society’s quarterly newsletter. For more information, visit the Society’s website at www.enfieldsociety.org.uk/join

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Contents About The Enfield Society ...... 2 List of Figures ...... 4 Foreword by Dave Cockle ...... 5 Introduction by David Pam, 1986 ...... 6 Chapter One: Origins and Early History...... 8 Chapter Two: The Late Middle Ages ...... 19 Chapter Three: In the Time of Queen Elizabeth ...... 31 Chapter Four: John Banks the Bailiff ...... 45 Chapter Five: Civil War and Interregnum ...... 63 Chapter Six: The Return of King Charles ...... 78 Chapter Seven: Sir Basil Firebrace ...... 90 Chapter Eight: Major General John Pepper ...... 103 Chapter Nine: Three Dukes of Chandos ...... 117 Chapter Ten: Nuthall and the Crews ...... 130 Chapter Eleven: The End of the Chase ...... 144 Appendix 1: Pigs fattened on Enfield Chase and Old Park ...... 159 Appendix 2: Wood Sales, Enfield Chase and Old Park ...... 160 Appendix 3: Officers of Enfield Chase ...... 161 Glossary ...... 163 Index ...... 165

List of Figures

Figure 1: Sir Thomas Lovall ...... 24 Figure 2: Old Park Lodge ...... 67 Figure 3: West Lodge……………………………………………………………………………………………….68 Figure 4: East Lodge ...... 69 Figure 5: South Lodge ...... 69 Figure 6: Clarke’s Academy ...... 81 Figure 7: The Rummer in the 1860s ...... 93 Figure 8: The George Inn, Enfield ...... 94 Figure 9: Hugh Westlake's Survey of Enfield Chase, 1701 ...... 97 Figure 10: The Crown at Southgate ...... 111 Figure 11: Bush Hill Park, 1770...... 120 Figure 12: James Brydges, first duke of Chandos ...... 122 Figure 13: Thomas Nuthall ...... 133 Figure 14: Encroachments at Southgate, 1769 ...... 137 Figure 15: Encroachments at Whitewebbs, 1769 ...... 137 Figure 16: Encroachments at Enfield Town, 1769 ...... 138 Figure 17: Encroachments at Monken Hadley, 1769 ...... 140 Figure 18: Francis Russell ...... 148 Figure 19: Beech Hill Park ...... 149 Figure 20: Russell’s Map of Enfield Chase, 1776 ...... 150

4

Foreword by Dave Cockle

Enfield Chase has long been the scene of conflict between the authorities and the local inhabitants living around the periphery.

In the early centuries of the Chase, the authorities were content for the royal hunting ground to co-exist with common grazing and foraging rights under the Charter of the Forest of 1217, a sister document to the Magna Carta. When Oliver Cromwell’s Parliamentary soldiers infringed these rights in 1659 the inhabitants sent the ‘Intruders’ packing off to Newgate prison (see Chapter 5).

Later, the authorities used legislation to roll back these ancient rights. The Black Act of 1723 (see Chapter 7) resulted from collusion between the landed Rangers of Enfield Chase and the Whig Government to outlaw the use of camouflage by poachers. An Act of Parliament in 1777 led to the division of Enfield Chase into privately-owned plots, including the creation of a miniature deer park (now Trent Park) for Dr Jebb, one of the king’s favourites.

Division and privatisation was only arrested when Middlesex County Council acquired a large tract of former Chase lands with the explicit aim of managing the countryside in the public interest. Green Belt was introduced just in time to retain the core lands of the Chase before they were swallowed up by development. The miniature deer park was turned into a country park for the enjoyment of the public. The tide had turned, permanently. Or so it seemed.

Unfortunately, Enfield Council’s new draft Local Plan, citing various Town Planning Acts and government planning policy, proposes extensive development of the Chase. The Council is proposing to invite a government-appointed Planning Inspector to rule on whether he or she agrees with the Council that parts of the Chase should be developed for housing, warehousing, and industry.

This would be a tragedy for Enfield and all its inhabitants. The legacy of the Chase is captured in many local place names, such as ‘Chase Side’ at ‘South Gate’ and Enfield Town, and Chace Avenue in Potters Bar. Many local people were born at Chase Farm Hospital, or educated at Chase Side Primary School. ‘Old Park’, mentioned in the Domesday Book, references a deer park (now two golf courses and Town Park) that was used to stock the Chase. Traces of the keepers’ lodges remain. It is no exaggeration to say that much of the history of Enfield is the history of Enfield Chase.

Many books and articles have drawn on the history of the Chase, but the book that historians repeatedly return to is local historian (and former employee of Enfield Council) David Pam’s The Story of Enfield Chase. The value of Pam’s book lies in its contribution to 700 years of social history, based on formidable archival research. First published by the Enfield Society in 1986, 35 years on we are reissuing this work in electronic format as a call to action for everybody who cares about the history and environment of Enfield Chase.

Dave Cockle, July 2021

Introduction by David Pam, 1986

When I retired, in May 1982, from my former employment as Local History and Museums Officer to the London Borough of Enfield, it was with the intention of writing local history. Over the years I have perused vast numbers of documents whereon are recorded the words spoken by, or spoken about, those who once lived on this small area of earth which we now call the London Borough of Enfield.

Unfold these documents and the ghosts of men and women long dead emerge into the late twentieth century. They have intruded and disturbed the academic peace around my kitchen table, striding in, or sidling through the door, to demand a place in my story.

I could never have denied the belligerent Davy Southe, from the fifteenth century, and all the way from Ponsbourne Park, nor could I leave out the brothers Wraye bearing stolen venison back to the Hyde at Edmonton, nor resist the claims of John Banks, the Enfield bailiff, though he has already secured his immortality by appearing in at least two Jacobean dramas. Old Howe the pound-keeper has somehow found his way in, and young Howe, his son, who still cannot resist this opportunity to tell the world of his exploits in deer stealing. In must come Sir Basil Firebrace who, by very dubious means, once accumulated a vast fortune, yet died a bankrupt. Major General John Pepper peremptorily demands his place. He tried to run Enfield like a military province and aroused the whole countryside in hatred against him. Behind him come those whom he prosecuted; Thomas James the Enfield labourer whose body was left for years, forgotten, hanging in chains far away in Kent; Mark Saxby, John Wright and Thomas Harradine who were sentenced by Pepper to be whipped in Enfield Market Place; and Vulcan Gates, the Edmonton blacksmith, hanged without trial at Tyburn. Rank alone would demand a place for the first Duke of Chandos, greedy but gullible, who speculated with his ill-gotten gains in every improbable venture that was placed before him, but who also built a magnificent mansion where he maintained a full-time orchestra, and employed Handel to write music for it.

Best of all is William Crew who lived to be a hundred and four, became a legend in his own time, and was remembered long after — and who, of course, gave his name to Crews Hill.

Now that they, with many others, are gathered in, and the writing is finished, I introduce them to you, the good people who at this time occupy the towns of Enfield, Edmonton, South Mimms, Potters Bar, Monken Hadley and Barnet.

6

Sources

The material for this book has been gathered together from the following libraries and repositories; the British Library (BM), the City of London Guildhall Library, the Greater London Record Office (GLRO), Hatfield House (CP) and I am grateful to the Marquess of Salisbury for permission to use the Library there, Cambridge University Library (CUL) and the Local History Collection of the London Borough of Enfield (Enfield). All other documents used are in the Public Record Office and the references indicate the classes consulted there. I have to thank all those librarians and archivists who have given me their kind attention and help.

The illustrations of South Lodge, West Lodge and East Lodge are from the Guildhall Library; the six maps of encroachments on Enfield Chase and the 1658 map were traced from originals in the Public Record Office. All the other illustrations and maps are from the London Borough of Enfield Local History Section.

The Story of Enfield Chase – David Pam

Chapter One: Origins and Early History

The history of woodland in this country effectively begins at the end of the last Ice Age, about 10,000BC. All the earlier forests had been destroyed by successive glaciations over the preceding million years. As the ice receded, a warmer climate allowed trees to recolonize the countryside from Europe, for until about 5,000BC, the English Channel did not exist to create a barrier. In time the forest covered the whole of Britain and it remained undisturbed for ten thousand years. The destruction of these woods began with the farmers of the Iron Age, not many generations before the Roman Conquest, and the Romans continued the process. In the lowland zone of England, at a rough estimate, half the land area became farmland within seven hundred years. The countryside was dotted with Roman villas each comparable to a large modern farm of a thousand acres. It became no longer possible to farm only the most fertile and workable soils. The evidence suggests that the Anglo-Saxons did not create their own agricultural landscape, but added to one which they had taken over from their predecessors.

Thus there is a strong probability that the area of Enfield and Edmonton was extensively farmed in Roman times. Archaeologists have provided considerable evidence of a settlement at Bush Hill Park near the Roman Ermine Street. Cremation burials from a first century cemetery were uncovered when gardens in Private Road were being landscaped in 1893, canister burials and a lead coffin were dug up in Burleigh Road in 1902 and, at the same time, a wide variety of Roman objects were discovered in Landseer Road, (a description and photograph of them appeared in the Illustrated London News). A stone coffin was found in 1908 in what is now the Raglan School playing field, another was reported nearby in Wellington Road. Since these early finds much more evidence of Roman occupation, from the first to the end of the fourth century, has been revealed in the same area. It included ovens, probably used to dry grain, and the skeletal remains of cattle, sheep, pig and horse. As London grew throughout Roman times, its population must have become increasingly dependent for food on the countryside nearby, moreover much grain was exported through the port of London.1 Enfield and Edmonton were only seven to nine miles distant, there was a direct road and barges on the River Lea may well have been used. It is therefore unlikely that the excellent corn growing soil of this area would have been allowed to remain under forest throughout this time.

It is now considered probable that the incursion of the Saxons was a gradual process and not the sudden catastrophe so often imagined. It is possible that the invaders settled on lands which, with the collapse of the Roman Empire, were no longer needed for growing crops for export. The Saxon word ‘feld’, as used in Enfield, is usually considered to signify farm land taken over by the Anglo- Saxons from their predecessors. Moreover cooperative agriculture, that is open field agriculture such as persisted in Edmonton and Enfield until the beginning of the nineteenth century, is thought to have usually developed on land which had been cleared before the Saxons came. Where each individual had to carve out a field for himself from the woodland, the fields tended to be small and individually owned. The areas of South Mimms and Monken Hadley would appear to have remained under forest much longer than Enfield and Edmonton. This is suggested by the fact that

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Chapter One: Origins and Early History

South Mimms had only one moderately sized common field, also by the name Hadley in which the Anglo-Saxon ‘Leah’, suggests a clearing or glade in a wood.2

Enfield and Edmonton have no written records before the Domesday entry of 1086, but a study of that document strongly suggests that by that time the two villages were old-established communities. The survey indicates that all the land suitable for arable had long since been cultivated out to the parish boundaries. Further, an examination of many thirteenth and fourteenth century charters brings forth no evidence that any wasteland remained to be converted to agricultural uses in the two parishes during this period.3

The parish of Enfield was in the shape of an oblong measuring some three to four miles south to north and eight miles east to west; it contained 15,206 acres. The shorter side in the east is bounded by the River Lea from where the valley slopes westward, gently at first, for some three miles, and then more rapidly, rising from a hundred feet at Chase Side Enfield to four hundred feet at Coopers Lane. Along the river lies a belt of alluvial deposits, at some time drained and transformed from marsh into rich meadowland. Much of this is now covered by the string of reservoirs which lie across the course of the old River Lea. To the west of the marshland is a wide area of brick-earth which provides a warm and easily worked soil, but one which lacks potash and humus so that when used to grow corn it has constantly to be manured. Here and there the brick-earth had been washed away to leave strips of uncovered gravel. It is likely that the earliest settlers would have chosen this gravel on which to build their dwellings, for it was well drained and water could be procured easily by digging shallow wells. The higher land in the western half of the parish is London clay, with here and there cappings of glacial gravel and pebble gravel. London clay is the most intractable of soils, wet and unworkable in winter and baked hard by the summer sun. It resisted the plough until the tractor overcame its intransigence in the twentieth century.

Enfield Town, formerly called Enfield Green, occasionally Church Green, was probably the spot chosen by the first Saxon settlers in Enfield. The Roman road which the Saxons called Ermine Street passed half a mile away to the east. The site was watered by a small brook later to be known as Saddlers Mill stream, and it lay on the western edge of the great area of brick-earth. The site of Enfield Green, when the first settlers arrived, may have been a natural glade, or the newcomers may have had to fell the trees laboriously by axe. This clearing became the village green. Its triangular shape is still, in 1983, recognizable in the outlines of Enfield Town. The settlers naturally built their dwellings around the edge of this small clearing rather than at random all over it, and retained the central area as an open space which could be used for grazing small animals and geese. The church and the manor house stood on either side of the green, which suggests that they must have originated about the same time as the settlement there. Behind the manor house stretching away to the west and south lay Old Park. Westward and northward lay the forest.

This great area of woodland, close by the village centre, was large enough in those far-off days to meet many needs of the people, both in Enfield and in the surrounding villages. The forest belonged to no one, it was common property. Men took freely of the wild game, gathered wood for fuel, cut timber for building and to

The Story of Enfield Chase – David Pam

make their ploughs, took bushes to hedge their fields, brought their cows, oxen and sheep to pasture there, fed their swine on the acorns and beech mast and collected the wild honey from which they brewed mead to enliven their festive gatherings. Since there were no restrictions, it is inappropriate to talk of common rights. All common land, however, became private property some time in the ninth century, when manorial organisation was imposed upon the Old English community. Yet even though the forest had been appropriated by some lord, Saxon or Norman, he was forced to recognize the needs of those who toiled to gain a living from the soil, for his own prosperity was maintained on the bowed shoulders of the peasants, and the whole peasant economy would have collapsed in ruin if the use of the forest and waste had been denied to them.

The woodland is described in the Domesday entry of 1086 as large enough to supply pannage for four thousand pigs, two thousand from the manor or Edmonton and two thousand from the manor of Enfield. No other forest in Middlesex could feed so many. Pannage was the practice of fattening pigs in autumn on acorns and beech mast. Once fattened they were slaughtered and salted down for the winter. This method of giving the size of a wood by the pannage provided cannot be used with any accuracy to estimate its area, for the crop from oak and beech varied widely from year to year. Some historians have translated the figure as one to one and a half pigs to an acre, but in Enfield it must be nearer two pigs to an acre. Such a high figure would only be possible if the trees were neither pollarded nor coppiced. The survey also records the park in Enfield, undoubtedly that later known as Old Park. Such parks, enclosed out of a great area of woodland, were too small to be used for hunting, but were stocked with deer to provide a ready supply of venison near at hand when the lord with his great household visited the manor. To provide for hunting, the deer would be released out of the park into the forest. It is also likely that there was a fish pond in the Park, for the survey mentions one worth 8s a year. The unanswerable question arises, how old is Old Park? Few parks are mentioned in the Domesday book, but the Roman writer, Columella described the making of parks in Italy and Gaul as early as the first century AD, and the practice could possibly have spread to this country in Roman times.

The evidence of Domesday, combined with what is known from later history, suggests that the manor of Edmonton (which included South Mimms) and the manor of Enfield, which probably included Hadley, were, at that time, and before the Conquest, managed as a single estate. In the time of Edward the Confessor the estate had been in the hands of Ansgar, ‘staller’ to the King; later it had been granted by the Conqueror, together with all the properties formerly belonging to Ansgar, to Geoffrey de Mandeville. Throughout all the centuries up to the deforestation of Enfield Chase in 1777, it was only the inhabitants of this pre-Conquest estate who claimed the right to common there. None of the other villages bordering on, or near the Chase ever made such a claim.4

During the period from about 1100 into the early fourteenth century the population of England grew rapidly. More mouths to feed meant that more corn had to be sown, waste lands were ploughed, forests uprooted, and there was a severe contraction of the area of common land throughout the country. In Enfield the common largely survived because it was enclosed by Geoffrey de Mandeville (the grandson of the Geoffrey mentioned above) as a chase. Until the early thirteenth

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Chapter One: Origins and Early History

century such parks and chases were used to supply a great lord’s household as it moved from one of his manors to another, but this system died out about 1250 and subsequently their importance lay more in the pleasure of hunting the deer and other game, and the prestige that could be secured by gifts of venison, and grants of honorific offices.

The date when Geoffrey de Mandeville converted Enfield Wood into a chase cannot be stated with certainty, 1136 is commonly accepted. This is the year when according to the chronicles, Geoffrey de Mandeville, Earl of Essex, granted to Walden Abbey, at Saffron Walden, a number of churches including those of Edmonton, Enfield and South Mimms previously held by the Priory of Hurley in Berkshire.5 Geoffrey, however, did not become an earl until cl 139-40 so a more probable date would lie between 1140 and the year of his death in 1144. This same grant to the Abbey of Walden also included the Hermitage at Hadley and it is in the wording of this particular part of the charter that there lies evidence to suggest that the Chase was in existence by the date of the grant. I will quote it in Latin lest my translation may leave more doubts than necessary in the reader’s mind: concedo autem eis et confirmo hermitagium de Hadleya cum omnibus ad eundem locum pertinentibus, introitum et exitum et communem pasturam pecoribus eorum in parco meo in quo hermitagium illud situm est.6 That is, he grants to the Abbey ‘The Hermitage of Hadley with everything that belongs to it, entry into the Hermitage and the profits derived therefrom, and common of pasture for their sheep in his park in which the Hermitage is situated’. Since the Hermitage was at or near Hadley and no other parks are recorded in that area, this must mean that Enfield Chase was in existence between 1140 and 1144. Many parks were established at this time and were not recorded because royal sanction was not required. Some forests too are first heard of, Epping Forest in the 1130s and Sherwood Forest in 1154. The boundaries of the new parks and forests had to be defined, officers appointed and deer brought in. Such parks were stocked almost exclusively with fallow deer which had been deliberately introduced into this country by the Normans in the early twelfth century from the Levant and the Near East via Sicily; though, more mundanely, Enfield Chase would probably have been stocked from Old Park.

The original lodge may have been at Camlet moat. The name ‘Camelot Manor’, was used in Enfield a generation before Malory wrote his Morte D’Arthur. Its site lies near to the centre of the Chase along the ridgewav which crosses between Enfield and Hadley. Evidence suggests that the wide moat which yet survives in Trent Park was constructed to protect an existing house. The island site in the centre is some two hundred feet across. Very badly carried out investigations there in 1923 revealed glazed floor tiles bearing the design of a knight on horseback. Alas, these have since been lost. A wooden frame, found in the bed of the moat and dating from the fourteenth century, seems to have supported braced posts carrying a planked carriageway in three sections. The island end of the frame was widened and strengthened, probably to allow the raising of the central span of the bridge in times of trouble.

The existence of the Chase is again proved in a charter of William de Mandeville (third Earl of Essex 1166-89) by which he granted to Ernald de Rohinges the right to pasture forty pigs in his park of Enfield.7 The Chase was referred to either as the park of Enfield (parcus de Enefeld) or Enfield Wood (boscura de Enefeld). Thus, in

The Story of Enfield Chase – David Pam

1271, an extent of the manor of Edmonton claims for the lord, William de Say, the right to housebote (timber for the repair of his houses), heybote (timber for the repair of his fences), ferbote (wood for fuel) and common of pasture for all his cattle An parco de EnefencT. That the Chase had long been used for hunting is suggested by an ancient annual rent of one barbed arrow and one dog leash.8 The first use I have come across of the word ‘chase’ is in the ministerial account for the manor of Enfield for the year 1322.

An impression of this woodland to the north of London in the twelfth century is given in the writings of William Fitz Stephen. He describes it as ‘A great forest with wooded glades and lairs of wild beasts, deer both red and fallow, wild boars and bulls’. Through this heavily wooded country ran the county boundary, across which the woods stretched nine miles into Hertfordshire, as far as Hatfield. South of Enfield, trees covered the whole of the western side of Edmonton (the part later to be called Southgate) and the western half of the ancient parish of Tottenham, now called Wood Green. Tottenham Wood remained a common, but it had largely disappeared by the early seventeenth century.10 The woods in Edmonton had been divided up and enclosed with hedges and ditches, to be intensively exploited as coppice wood. Possibly this may have happened long before the Conquest, for coppicing was an ancient practice, in use as far back as 3,000BC when the Neolithic trackways were constructed using wood produced in coppices.

Coppicing was the practice of growing trees as a crop, for anything between five years and twenty years, until they had reached a length and thickness suitable for their proposed use. They were then cut just above ground level and from the stools new shoots were allowed to grow until they were ready to be cropped in their turn. Thus coppices renewed themselves and provided the sort of wood most suited for mediaeval building, which was of post and wattle work and demanded a constant supply of underwood in straight lengths and of the right size to avoid the labour of sawing and cleaving. In the mid-thirteenth century mature coppice wood in Edmonton was fetching, for each acre, prices equal to the best meadow, the most expensive land in the parish.11 Among these coppices, the cottages of the woodcutters, woodchoppers and bark-peelers arose to give birth to the hamlets of Winchmore Hill and South Street (the area around what is now Southgate Green). At the south gate into Enfield Chase another settlement was early established on the present site of Southgate Circus. It was named in a charter of 1166-1189 which confirms a grant of several pieces of land in Edmonton to Wolwyno le Syme and which includes land next to the woodatSouthgate.12Two charters of 1370 speak of the road from Dukettes to Southgate.11

Though Enfield contained over fifteen thousand acres, the whole of the western part, over eight thousand acres, was enclosed into the Chase. It extended from the village centre westward as far as the present church at Monken Hadley, from which point the boundary ran north to Potters Bar. On the north side it is likely that its original limits were marked by the county boundary dividing Enfield from Northaw and Cheshunt in Hertfordshire. Here the priory of Cathale was established just north of the county boundary and was granted lands which had probably been part of Enfield Wood. A Walden Abbey charter dated 1220 provides evidence that the lord of the manor of Enfield could not have precluded the possiblity of granting away

12

Chapter One: Origins and Early History

land on the northern edge of the Chase. This particular charter is concerned with the tithe of an assart (a piece of land enclosed from the waste) in South Mimms, but it goes on to state that if Cathale Priory should acquire any land in Enfield Park, which at some time might be converted to plough land, then the tithe of such land should be paid to the church of Enfield.14

Cathale Priory was closed before 1240, for in that year Humphrey de Bohun granted the lands of Cathale to Isabel, Prioress of Cheshunt. These were described as lying between the nunnery at Cheshunt and the park pale; that is to say says the charter, from the boundary of Northaw to the watercourse which descends from the nunnery. The Prioress was also given the right to pasture on the Chase (here called the Park) fifteen horses, sixty oxen, bullocks or cows, and a hundred sheep, with the right to pannage there for all her pigs and permission to make a gateway into the Chase. In return she was to find a priest to pray for the souls of William de Mandeville, Humphrey de Mandeville, Matilda, his wife, and all their heirs, in the chapel at Cathale.ls

It was the responsibility of those whose land had a common boundary with the Chase to hedge or fence and ditch their land to prevent the deer from escaping. Holy Trinity Priory, which had land in Yarildesfield (between Wades Hill and Church Hill) found this obligation to maintain its fences so onerous, that they let half an acre bordering on the Chase (about 1250) to William de Forde at fourpence a year instead of twelvepence, provided he maintained the hedge and ditch to keep the deer out of the priory land.16 Tenants were allowed to take wood and bushes from the Chase for their fences. Where the Chase bordered upon wasteland, the lord of the manor in which it lay had to provide both wood and labour to secure the perimeter. The pale had to be strong enough to prevent the deer from getting out. Usually it was a palisade of cleft oak pales, set into the ground and fastened to a rail so that the decay of one pale did not leave a gap. Since the pale, to be effective, had to be eight or nine feet high, it was very expensive in both timber and labour. Deer leaps too might be provided, which allowed the game to enter but not to leave the park.

The Chase was to remain unpeopled for nearly seven hundred years. The only habitations were the lodges, the only inhabitants the keepers. The ways through the woods were lonely and fraught with peril for travellers. A statue of 128517 recognized the danger and required that all underwood be destroyed within two hundred feet of any highway passing through woodland, but there were few, if any, prosecutions under this act. The eyre court rolls of 1293, for the County of Middlesex, tells of Roger de Meolys waylaid and robbed while driving his cart across the’Chase; for this robbery Robert Pegaud and Henry Kane, both of South Mimms, were taken. Pegaud escaped after being delivered into the custody of the tenants of the Abbot of St Albans at South Mimms and, because he could not then be found to answer for the crime, he was outlawed. Henry Kane chose to be tried before the jury of Edmonton Hundred, was found not guilty and freed.18 Soon afterwards three merchants from Bedfordshire were robbed of goods to the value of £10 while crossing the Chase. The thief was one Simon de Mepereschale. The jury found him guilty, but he escaped the rope by pleading benefit of clergy and was branded upon the hand; his worldly goods which should have been forfeit, were valued at nothing.14 Poor John Frere was murdered on the Chase by five men who robbed him of goods to the value of 40s.

The Story of Enfield Chase – David Pam

They were arrested at Tottenham, four of them were hanged, and the other, being able to read, claimed benefit of clergy and was branded.20 Clarice de Burton, with her servant Richard, was waylaid on the Chase by thieves who took from her a cloak valued at 4s., also a veil, belt and purse worth together 12d.21 During the widespread famine of 1318, one Henry Bullock was robbed on Enfield Chase of 4s. For this four men were hanged; so impoverished were they that three of them had no goods or money that could be claimed by the Crown.22 Three men were murdered on the Chase in 1330. The murderers were arrested and brought to justice by Thomas atte Marsh, the high constable for Edmonton Hundred, and Richard Pounz, the sheriff, who also held the offices of keeper and forester of Enfield Chase. An Enfield jury sat in judgement and proclaimed them guilty; again one escaped by pleading benefit of clergy.23 Enfield church was close at hand and those who had committed robberies on the Chase, might enter there and find sanctuary. In evidence before the manor court in 1353, to establish the age of a young lady by the name of Maud, daughter and heir of Thomas Durant, a witness recalled that he remembered the day when she had been baptized (4 March 1338) for he had been in the church that day and seen John Simon enter there, after he had robbed John de Daddington on the Chase. Subsequently the thief remained there forforty days, said the witness, and all this time the villagers were bound to feed him and at the same time to guard against his escape until at last the coroner came to release him and to send him with safe conduct to the nearest port.24

On the Chase were pastured the cattle and sheep of the commoners. There was no limit to the number they could feed there. The pigs of the commoners were fattened on the Chase in the autumn, on acorns and beech mast. Many of them were then slaughtered. Those that remained were fed through the winter on the roots of fern and in spring on the fresh grasses. The peasants were allowed, for a small annual sum, to put up pig cotes, small enclosures where they could shelter their swine. The pigs must have been of the long haired, long-legged, razor- backed variety that were to survive in Britain until the sixteenth century.

A high proportion of the thirteenth century court records concerning this area, which have survived, deal with cases where cattle and pigs were stolen off the Chase. Such offences were punishable under common law and not under forest jurisdiction. In the 1270s John Russell was arrested for stealing three pigs belonging to John Saleman and one belonging to John Mandevile, both from South Mimms. Tried by a jury made up of tenants of the manors of Edmonton, Enfield and South Mimms, Russell was declared guilty and hanged.25 Another pig stealer was John de Lanfar, son of a chaplain. He was taken with five pigs valued at 5s. which he had stolen off the Chase.26 The widespread famine, due to a series of bad harvests in the years after 1315, brought about an increase in the number of thefts of food and animals. In the four years 1315-18, thirty-nine cases which occurred in Enfield and Edmonton were dealt with at the Newgate gaol releases; twenty-five men were hanged, twelve acquitted and two, who were found guilty, successfully pleaded benefit of clergy. Such was the prevalent poverty that of the twenty-seven adjudged guilty, eighteen had no possessions at all and the others were so poor that their combined property was valued at less than one pound.27

Many of these trials concerned the stealing of animals from Enfield Chase. William de Thele and John de Mymmes were hanged for the theft of four cows stolen

14

Chapter One: Origins and Early History

there in 1318.28 That same year Thomas le Brewere, a respectable tradesman of Wood Street in London, was, to his consternation, arrested for having in his possession seven pigs lately stolen from Gilbert de Barnett on the Chase. He told the court that he had bought the pigs from Roger Pycarcl for 20s, openly, in the High Street, within the ward of Cripplegate and in the presence of his neighbours and other honest citizens of that ward. Pycard denied that it was he who had sold the pigs, but the evidence against him was too strong, he was found guilty and hanged. The court affirmed that Brewere could not have known that the pigs had been stolen, and that he had paid a fair market price for them. Gilbert de Barnett was therefore fined for making false accusation against him. Though the jury took such pains to exonerate Thomas le Brewere, the rolls do not record that his 20s was returned to him.29 This case concerned stolen pigs, but the evidence suggests that more honest peasants would have sold their pigs off the Chase in much the same way as the thief sold other people’s.

It is noticeable that juries were more ready to condemn strangers than local men when conviction carried the death penalty. William Herward, an Enfield man, was tried in 1322 before the hundred court following the theft from the Chase of three young bullocks, a mare and a foal, worth altogether 10s; he was acquitted by the jury.30 That same year John Meyheu, another local man, was arrested for killing a deer calf on the Chase; he too was found not guilty and acquitted.31 The jury also released Adam Tyleman, arrested for stealing pigs on the Chase.32

The large numbers of cattle pasturing there attracted thieves from much further afield. Over the two years 1350 and 1351 raids were made by men from villages in Hertfordshire, from Tewin, Knebworth and Hatfield, including the keeper of Lodewick Park (north-east of Hatfield) and the keeper of Sandon Park near Royston, and a total of ninety-five bullocks were stolen. The course of events shows that there was a similar reluctance in such places to prosecute local men as is seen in cases tried before the jury of Edmonton Hundred. Nicholas le Turnour, one of the ‘rustlers’, was seized by Hugh de Braybrok and handed over to the constables at Tewin, but they allowed him to escape. Another of the thieves was at the same time delivered into the custody of the constable at Hatfield; he also went free without being brought to justice.33 It is not surprising therefore that when, the following year, William Newbold from Worcestershire was taken for stealing from on the Chase six bullocks worth £4, and a horse worth 6s 8d, he found himself on trial before John Wroth of Enfield, one of the sheriffs of London, who had himself lost twenty-one bullocks during the raids of the previous year.34

There is little reference to sheep farming in the area, until the end of the thirteenth century. The source is once again a case brought before the itinerant justices by Alan de Costello of Edmonton in 1282. He told the court that he had sold two hundred sheep to three men from Banstead in Surrey. They had driven the animals to London where they were kept for two days and then they had taken them on to Banstead, where some were sold for £10. After a month the remainder were returned to Alan de Costello but by this time the sheep were so weak and worn, he said, that many of them died. He claimed he had suffered damage amounting to £20.35 The scale of wool production in the area can be seen by the tax on wool in the year 1341. The hundred (that is Enfield, Edmonton, Tottenham, South Mimms and Monken Hadley) contributed over twenty-four sacks out of a county total of two

The Story of Enfield Chase – David Pam

hundred and thirty-six sacks. Indeed the contribution of Enfield (8 sacks, 2 stone, 7‘/4lb) was among the highest in the county and only exceeded by four other parishes. Edmonton was taxed on seven sacks. Each sack contained 3641b of wool and represented the produce of some two hundred and sixty sheep. The return would therefore represent about twenty-one hundred sheep in Enfield and eighteen hundred in Edmonton.36 A large proportion of these must have been pastured on Enfield Chase.

The deer, which belonged to the lord of the manor of Enfield, had to find food in competition with the livestock of the commoners. It was an unequal struggle, for sheep are voracious feeders and the cattle partook of the browsewood cut to feed the deer in the winter and would not allow the deer to come near. Yet no attempt was made to impose restrictions on the commoners until the sixteenth century. In summer the open glades in the wood must have provided grazing enough for all the animals. The deer had human enemies too, men like the brothers John and Richard Emmesone who, in 1306, broke into the Chase and stole venison. When indicted they found it safer to flee and were sought from county to county and at last were declared outlaws.37 The game was protected by keepers. Richard Pounz was keeper in 1330 and was also a sheriff.38 Edmund Fauconer of Cheshunt was appointed keeper in 1373; he was granted money to pay the wages of five yeomen, four to protect the wood and game on the Chase and another to guard Old Park.39

It was common practice that the manorial bailiff should each year render an account showing what moneys he had received and how it had been expended. Unfortunately only one such account has survived40 from the period before the manor and Chase of Enfield came into the hands of the Duchy of Lancaster in 1421. It covers the months from 24 March to 29 September 1322. In that year Humphrey de Bohun (the eighth of that precise name) was killed at the Battle of Boroughbridge while in rebellion against King Edward II. His manors, including Enfield, were seized by the King and it was thus that this single account has found its way into the public records. It shows us how the demesne (that part of the parish farmed directly by the lord of the manor) was managed; it tells us of the crops raised and reaped, the corn sold, the meadows mown and the hay gathered in. Payment was made for repairing the walls of the manorial grange and for thatching the roof against the onset of autumn. Goats were pastured (probably in Old Park) for which the lord received 7s. Nine thousand five hundred faggots were made at a cost of 5s the thousand in wages. They were sold for £10 6s. A man was employed to make palings and to gather brushwood to fence the Chase; he earned 2s 4d. A man to guard the Chase was paid 12s lOd. Richard Pounz received in fees as keeper, 30s, and as forester eight quarters of mixtil (a mixture of wheat and rye).

Whenever the lord of a manor or the owner of an estate died, an inquisition would be set up and the leading landowners of the area would be called upon to make a valuation of the dead man’s property and to certify who was his rightful heir. Such an inquisition was set up following the death of John de Bohun, Earl of Hereford, in 1336.41 It explains that no wood was sold from off the Chase, nor any pasture there rented, because the commoners had the sole benefit of the pasture and the wood. The lord had received 50s for the pannage of pigs there. Some woodland in Old Park (called by the Saxon name le Fryth) was being coppiced, twenty acres of coppice wood had been sold that year at 3s an acre. It was the

16

Chapter One: Origins and Early History

practice every seven years to drain the fish pond in Old Park, leaving the fish floundering in the mud where they were easily picked up. The ‘catch’ that year had been sold for fifteen marks (£10). Afterwards they would restock the pond and the new fish would then be left to breed and grow for another seven years, or until needed.

In the years following the Black Death, the local manors were in a state of serious crisis. The pestilence hit Enfield in 1349; by December the population had been decimated. So many tenants had died that in the manor of Worcesters sixty acres of land was left unoccupied and no one could be found willing or able to pay the rent. The value of the demesne arable had fallen to little over twopence an acre, a year. There had also been a serious deterioration in the condition of the soil in Enfield. It had become so exhausted that, in the little manor of Gartons, forty acres of arable had to be turned over to rough pasture. Another forty acres had been sown, but the crop was so poor that the land was valued at only one penny an acre annually. A second pestilence hit the parish in the year 1361. In the years 1362, 1363 and 1364, famine prices prevailed throughout the country. Despite the need for bread, the arable land on Humphrey de Bohun’s manor had been entirely converted to rough sheep pasture and was valued at only fourpence an acre. A further outbreak of pestilence hit the country in 1368. The year 1370 was a year of famine nation-wide yet, in spite of famine and the high price of bread, much former arable land was still being used as rough pasture.42 Yet this was a golden age for those labourers who had survived the plague, for there was now a shortage of labour and wages were high.

John de Bohun was succeeded by his brother, Humphrey de Bohun, as lord of the manor of Enfield; he died in 1361. His nephew and successor, another Humphrey, came of age in 1363 and when he died ten years later the manor was taken into the hands of Edward III fora time and later assigned to Humphrey’s widow Joan. After her death on 29 September 1419, the manor passed into the hands of Henry V, whose father, King Henry IV, when he had been Earl of Derby, had married Mary, the younger daughter and co-heir of the late Humphrey de Bohun, Earl of Hereford. The final partition of Earl Humphrey's estates in 1421 allocated Enfield manor and Chase to the King, as part of the Duchy of Lancaster.

Footnotes: Origins and Early History

1 Geoffrey Gillam, Prehistoric and Roman Enfield. 1973. 2 Oliver Rackham, Ancient Woodland. 1980. I am dependent for much of the first chapter on this book. 3 D. O. Pam, The Hungry Years. 1980. 4 Unpublished paper by Dr David Avery David Pam, The Hungry Years, pi2. 5 Westminster Abbey 2182 Geoffrey de Mandeville first Earl of Essex gave a rent of 100s to the monks of Hurley in exchange for the tithes of Enfield and Edmonton, both of which he granted to the Abbey of Walden (Dugdales Monasticon I, 364, 365,459,462,462). The monks of Hurley retained the tithes of the Chase which had been given to them by William de Mandeville (Madox, Formula re) and confirmed to them by William de S. Maria, Bishop of London in 1219. Godfrey Prior of Hurley exchanged these tithes with the

The Story of Enfield Chase – David Pam

Abbot of Walden for the church of Streatley Berks in 1258 (Dugdale 1 365). 6 Frederick C. Cass, Monken Hadley. p7. 7 E40.2199 8 C32.42.6 9 SC6/1146/20 10 Dorset Survey 1617 11 eg E40.2153, 2318, 2319 12 CP291.826 13 E326.1478,1480 14 BM Harl. 3697 15 DL25.20 16 E40.1738 17 Oliver Rackham, Ancient Woodland, 155. 18 JUST 1.544.63 19 JUST 3.40.1 20 JUST 3.41.1 f 14 21 JUST 3.42.1 f28, JUST 3.43.2. f28 22 JUST 3.41.1 f 12. 23 JUST 3.44. fl2v. 24 D. O. Pam, Hungry Years, pi2. 25 JUST 3.35B f31 26 JUST 1.544.1 f68v. 27 D. O. Pam, Hungry Years, pi8. 28 JUST 3.41.1 f 12. 29 JUST 3.41.1 f 13. 30 JUST 3.42.1 113. 31 JUST 3.43.3 flO, JUST 3.43.2 f40. 32 JUST 1.1339.2 33 KB9.66.30 34 C258.11.5B 35 JUST 1.544.68V. 36 D. O. Pam, The Hungry Years, p23 37 C260.16.22 38 JUST 3.44. fl2v. SC6.1146.20 39 Cal Pat Rolls. 40 SC6.1146.20 41 C135.48.2 42 D. O. Pam, Hungry Years, p20

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Chapter Two: The Late Middle Ages

Common field farming required that each man farmed in cooperation with his neighbours. A meeting of the tenants had to rule that certain fields must be allocated to spring grown crops, others to winter grown crops, others to lie fallow throughout the whole year. Any transgression of the rules undermined the whole organisation. Essential to the system was the right to pasture cattle and sheep upon the common fields after the crop had been taken and during the fallow year, both to feed the animals and to manure the land. An area of wasteland had also to be available on which the animals could pasture during the time when the common arable was ploughed and sown. The waste must also provide wood for fuel, and timber for building and repairs. Enfield Chase was thus an essential part of a complex system of communal farming, which had constantly to be protected against those who sought a private advantage against the interests of the community.

The land farmed by the peasants lay in strips in the open fields, with scarcely more than an imaginary line to mark the boundaries between one man’s piece of earth and his neighbour’s. There were over twenty open fields in Edmonton, over fifty in Enfield, yet a three-year crop rotation was rigorously enforced, not by the lord of the manor but, in conformity with ancient custom, by the tenants themselves. The complexity of these arrangements was increased by the fact that the field systems in the parishes had to be coordinated, since Enfield tenants had rights to common in many fields in Edmonton, and Edmonton tenants had common rights in many fields in Enfield, as also in Enfield Chase.1

The plague deaths had caused a shortage of labour; there was now an abundance of land on the market but few takers. In consequence wages remained high despite attempts to control them by legislation; about 1350 three carpenters and twenty- three labourers in South Mimms and Monken Hadley were prosecuted for demanding threepence or fourpence a day above the statutory wage.2 Lords of the manors found it difficult to attract enough men to work on their demesnes and, because of this, many demesnes were broken up and leased to the more wealthy of the peasants, or leased as a whole, as happened both in Edmonton and in Enfield. The kind of substantial peasant who took over the manorial demesne had every incentive to convert the land from arable to animal husbandry. Labour costs could in this way be reduced and profits increased, for wool prices were high and the voracious London market ensured a good price for meat. To carry out this change, however, it was necessary to withdraw the land from the common field system by enclosing it to prevent the commoners’ cattle pasturing there. Yet every acre enclosed was at the expense of the rights of the other commoners. They sought to defend these rights both in the common fields and on Enfield Chase, against all transgressions and by all the means that they were able to devise.

Throughout the fifteenth century there was mounting pressure to enclose the common fields, particularly in Edmonton where the manors came into the hands of

1 2 Chapter Two: The Late Middle Ages men who were seeking a commercial profit. The age-old arrangements for sharing common between the inhabitants of the two parishes resulted, as this pressure increased, in incessant disputes. They began at the very beginning of the century when Adam Fraunceys, a London merchant, became lord of the manor of Edmonton. He fenced in with posts and rails a pasture called Sayesmarsh and proclaimed that common rights there were at an end. The tenants of Enfield at once complained to the Countess of Hereford, who was lady of the manor of Enfield. She commanded her tenants to tear down the new fences. They did so, and restored their common rights. Ralph, Lord Cromwell, came into possession of the manor of Deephams in Edmonton about 1438. He leased it to two local men, John Drayton and John Danyell, who thereupon enclosed certain fields called John atte Marsh fields. Lord Cromwell was at once confronted by an assembly of all the leading gentlemen, yeomen and tenants of Edmonton and Enfield, who demanded the restoration of their common rights. Faced with such powerful opposition, Lord Cromwell retreated and dismissed Drayton and Danyell from his service.

Soon after these events the manor of Edmonton came into the hands of Sir Thomas Charleton, grandson of Sir Adam Fraunceys who, after the death of Lord Cromwell, became also lord of the manor of Deephams; thus he controlled most of the parish of Edmonton. He was succeeded, in 1468, by his son Richard Charleton and it was he who made a second attempt, in 1475, to enclose John atte Marsh fields. It was said he had ‘blind charters’ drawn up, that is charters in which the details were left blank. These he forced his tenants to seal, and using them as a threat, imposed enclosure upon them. The Enfield tenants, who had thereby lost their common rights to these fields, sought the help of the Duchy of Lancaster and were advised to break open the new enclosures. In response there gathered together two or three hundred commoners from Enfield, Edmonton, Hadley and Mimms, who threw down the hedges, filled up the ditches and destroyed the gates and thus restored the common. Charleton was a supporter of Richard III and following the Battle of Bosworth was attainted for treason and executed.

The Edmonton manors passed to Sir Thomas Bouchier who leased the demesne to one Nicholas Boone (you can see his brass on the west wall of All Saints Church in Edmonton). Boone was also appointed bailiff of the manor for life. He was a local man and ruthless to secure a profit on his investment. At once he began an onslaught against the rights of common in many of the fields where such rights belonged to both parishes. The Enfield tenants again appealed to the Duchy of Lancaster and, in 1493 Sir Reginald Bray, the chancellor, called Sir Thomas Bouchier and all the leading tenants of the two parishes before him at a house called Coldharborowe in Baker Street, Enfield. At this meeting it was agreed that six Enfield tenants and six from Edmonton should meet to negotiate the restoration of common rights in those fields which had been enclosed by Boone. They met, but the Edmonton tenants would come to no agreement for fear of reprisals by Sir Thomas and his bailiff. Thus the new enclosures remained and within two years Boone had enclosed more land, granting leases to new tenants on condition that they enclosed.

Between 1485 and 1515, rights of common were lost in over three hundred acres. After the death of Sir Thomas, Nicholas Boone remained lessee and bailiff until his death in 1523. His policy of enclosure was then continued by his successor, John Grymstone. Through all these years the Enfield commoners refused to accept the

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The Story of Enfield Chase – David Pam

enclosures and from time to time had put their animals into the enclosed fields. The dispute again came to a head in 1531 after Grymstone had impounded twenty animals belonging to Enfield tenants. A complaint was laid before the court of the Duchy of Lancaster and a commission of dignitories was appointed, headed by Sir William Fitzwilliam, chancellor of the Duchy, to enquire into the state of the wood and game on Enfield Chase, to formulate new rules for the government of the Chase, and to investigate the rights of the Enfield commoners in those fields which had been enclosed. These gentlemen rode through the fields, marshes, meadows, and pastures in Edmonton, questioning the people dwelling thereabouts and noting the gaps, paths and ancient ways leading from Enfield. On the basis of their findings they issued an injunction that the common should be restored, but the order was never obeyed. It was impossible to return to a situation which had existed forty years earlier, for almost all this enclosure had been followed by conversion of the land from arable to pasture.3

The Duchy of Lancaster was a most conservative landlord and no attempt was made to enclose any part of the demesne of the manor of Enfield throughout the fifteenth century. The loss of common rights in the parish was first complained of in 1490 when John Wroth successfully enclosed two fields of about thirty acres. Twenty-three years later he enclosed a further forty acres. The Wroth family had been powerful landowners in the area for centuries; they managed to sustain their enclosures but were forced to compensate the parish in money.

Certain ambitious yeomen and husbandmen unsuccessfully attempted to emulate the Wroths’ success in 1528 when they enclosed some twenty acres out of the common fields. These new enclosures were countered by a plan of action concerted by the commoners at a meeting of the Manor court held on the Wednesday in Easter week. At this court the ‘common’ voice’, as they called it, declared that the common fields which had been enclosed should be laid open and ‘every man’, it was said, ‘was very willing’. Thereupon on Tuesday 14 May there assembled a party of some sixty villagers, including all the parish constables, under the leadership of John Westbury, constable for the Ponders End quarter. In a peaceable manner, as they described it, bearing only little staves or white rods in their hands, they proceeded in a party to enter various common fields and closes belonging to the town of Enfield. First they went to Thomas Butt’s house and claimed common in a close behind the house. John Westbury and others spoke to Thomas Butt and told him that they proposed to break open the gaps into the close; Thomas Butt replied that they should not need to do that, for he would open it himself. From there the party made its way to Cerlys field where Richard Marche had enclosed three acres, and John Lee five acres; again both men assisted the villagers to lay open the gaps. The party then went on to Forty field where John Asheley had enclosed an acre and here they opened up a gap in the hedge, but they put no cattle into any of these fields, they said, nor offered violence to any man.

At this time an enclosure in a close lying under Oldbury, part of the demesne of the manor of Enfield, was challenged. John Taylor, who now held the lease of the manor house and demesne, had proclaimed that it was his intention to sow eight acres of oats in the close. The commoners warned John Taylor that this was the year that the land should lie fallow, and that they therefore had the right to pasture their cattle there, as they had done every third year from time before the memory of

Chapter Two: The Late Middle Ages man. Taylor, who held office and influence under the Duchy of Lancaster, merely reaffirmed his intention to sow with oats and ‘to abide the jeopardy thereof.4 In this he succeeded, but his enclosure was never accepted by the commoners, and their resentment continued to smoulder.

Apart from Enfield Chase there was but little waste land (that is land which could be freely used by all the inhabitants in common) in Enfield, Edmonton or in Monken Hadley. There were considerable tracts of waste in South Mimms where most of the area south of Dancers Hill was common land, as was Bentley Heath, later incorporated into Wrotham Park. Further south and west, there was the waste known, in 1479, as Kitts End Heath and Kitts End Green. To the dwellers in all four villages, however, it was their rights on Enfield Chase that were of supreme importance. Without these the whole peasant economy would have collapsed. The Chase provided them with additional pasture, enabling them to maintain enough animals to manure their ploughed fields; it ensured that the poorest cottager could keep a cow. It provided acorns and beech mast to fatten the pigs so that even a labourer might have a side of bacon hanging among the rafters to see him through the winter. Above all it gave them fuel with which to cook and keep warm.

There is nothing to suggest that the Chase was divided into three walks before the beginning of the fifteenth century. In 1322, when Richard Pounz was the keeper, wages were paid to only one man to assist him in guarding the Chase.6 When Edward Fauconer was keeper in 1373, wages were paid to five yeomen (one was to take care of Old Park) as underkeepers.7 It is not until 1419 that evidence suggests that the Chase was divided into three walks. Thus it is probable that the three lodges, East Lodge, South Lodge and West Lodge would have originated about this time; Camlet Lodge would then have fallen into disuse. In May 1439 instructions were issued that the ‘manor of Camelof should be taken down, the materials sold, and the money employed towards the repair of Hertford Castle.8

The numbers of pigs fattened on the Chase varied from year to year according to the size of the acorn and beech mast crop. Figures are given in the manorial accounts, in which can also be found the names of many of the keepers and other officers.9 It was the practice, in the fifteenth century, to grant the offices on Enfield Chase as a reward for services rendered elsewhere. William Stallworth a surgeon was appointed, in 1439, as keeper of the Chase and of the three walks, ranger, keeper of Old Park and keeper of‘Camelot Lodge’. He installed underkeepers in each of the lodges and deputies in the offices. Sir John Wenlock had been granted the offices by 1445. He played a prominent role in government and in the battles between the Lancastrians and Yorkists. He fought for the Lancastrians at St Albans (1455) but then transferred his allegiance to the Yorkists and was subsequently appointed speaker of the House of Commons. Attainted in 1459, he sought refuge in France from where he returned to the Lancastrian side in 1461. Though Wenlock’s name does not appear in our local records later than 1459, it was not until after his death, at the battle of Tewkesbury in 1471, that Sir John Elryngton’s name appears as holding office in Enfield.

On Sunday 14 April that same year, one of the great battles of the Wars of the Roses was fought on the edge of the Chase by Monken Hadley near Barnet. Over two hundred years afterwards, Mr Joshua Galliard, engaged by the Duchy of Lancaster to

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The Story of Enfield Chase – David Pam

consult its records in the Tower of London, recorded the traditional belief that the Chase had once been enclosed by a pale on all sides, but that the pale on the west against Bentley Heath had been pulled down at the battle between Edward IV and Henry VI so that the armies might better join battle. It had never been made up again and in time the entire fence decayed from Bentley Heath Corner to Potters Bar. When Galliard wrote in 1693, the bank whereon the pale had stood, with its ditch, were plain to be seen and were followed by the parishioners in their yearly perambulation of the parish boundaries.10

Sir John Elryngton was treasurer of the Household in 1474 and played a major role in raising and financing the armies which Edward IV led into France. Despite the expenditure on war, his administration managed to clear most of the royal debts. Yet the remuneration of his office was poor, indeed it had not been raised since the early fourteenth century; he was rewarded however with other offices which required less work and responsibility, such as constable of Windsor Castle and the offices on Enfield Chase. Elryngton died in 1483. Richard III was crowned on 23 June that year and, in the following March he appointed Walter Devereux, Lord Ferrers, as master forester, keeper of the three lodges and keeper of Old Park. Devereux was killed at the battle of Bosworth and, on 24 September 1485, the new king, Henry VII, gave all the offices formerly held by Devereux and Elryngton, as well as the lease of the manor and manor house of Enfield, to Sir John Fortescue.

The surviving manorial accounts provide what amounts to a random sample of the sales of wood and charcoal off the Chase in the fifteenth century.11 The Duchy was not an efficient landlord and the sales brought no appreciable income to the Crown. At this same time however vast quantities of wood and timber were being cut and sold but the money went into the pockets of the deputy officers.12 The matter came to light when an investigation was made in 1495, during the reign of Henry VII; it revealed the full extent of the depredations of the keepers, Thomas Sanky and William Bevyn.13 Those they had employed to cut the wood, themselves under threat of prosecution, were examined. William Burser had worked for Sanky for two years. During that time, he had felled eighty loads of wood including ash and hornbeam, over and above the ten loads legitimately cut for browsewood. Thomas Couper of Edmonton, under questioning, told that at the time when Sanky had first come to the Chase, he had been employed to fell twenty loads for him, and that since mid-summer last he had cut down a number of dead trees for him and pollarded many beeches. He had done more work however in William Bevyn’s walk, where he had cut not less than three hundred and eighty loads of wood, all of which had been sold by the keeper in the neighbourhood. John Hertwell of South Mimms had pollarded many hornbeams for the keepers since March and this, with windfall wood, had amounted to twelve loads; all had been sold in Barnet and elsewhere. Thomas Nobyll of Barnet had cut fifty-four loads for Sanky. This too had been carried to Barnet and sold, and there was also an oak sold in Monken Hadley. He had been paid 20s, he said, for cutting all this wood. Henry Forster of Barnet testified that he had been paid 7s 4d by Bevyn for wood cutting, at the rate of 4d a day.

John Lane of Enfield, servant to William Bevyn, admitted that even after he had been examined by the officers of the Duchy, he had cut sixteen loads for fuel and two oaks for timber which, he said, were now lying at Combes’ house at Winchmore Hill. Thomas Fraunceys of Edmonton had also been employed as a servant by Bevyn

Chapter Two: The Late Middle Ages

and, during the summer, he had cut six or seven loads. He had also driven Bevyn’s cart in which he had carried twelve loads of wood tor him to various houses in Edmonton. John Martin of Hadley had cut forty loads in Sanky’s walk, all of which was sold in Barnet and Hadley. John Cordell had cut sixty-five loads for various officers on the Chase and most of this too had been sold in Barnet. Thus, while the Duchy was reaping negligible profits from the Chase, a vast private trade in wood was carried on by the keepers.

The offices on Enfield Chase passed to Sir Thomas Lovell in 1501.14 As chancellor of the Exchequer he was much preoccupied with affairs of state before he retired from public life in 1516. He lived at Enfield House, occasionally called Elsyng. This great mansion lay by Maidens brook, near Maidens bridge. It is said to have been

Figure 1: Sir Thomas Lovall, from a bronze medallion by Torrigiani in Henry VII’s chapel in Westminster Abbey.

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The Story of Enfield Chase – David Pam

rebuilt by John Tiptoft, Earl of Worcester, whose father, Sir John Tiptoft, had acquired the house and other Wroth property in Enfield, as well as elsewhere, in 1413 through his mother Agnes, daughter of Sir John Wroth of Enfield. It had come into the hands of Sir Thomas Lovell in 1508 through his wife Isabel. Lovell’s vast household there was almost a self- contained community. He employed no less than six chaplains, John Foxhole was his brewer, John Bonyard his slaughterman, John Skynner and Nicholas Bemont his gardeners. There was a hunter, a warrener, a shepherd. John Topias was the miller at a water mill by Maidens bridge. John Hill and Joan his wife looked after the dairy, Agnes Ratcliffe tended the poultry. Guillaume was the cook. Richard Tuppyn was clerk to the kitchen and an important personage. There was a caterer, an usher, an organ player. Gilbert Watson made the headgear. I am even tempted to assume that the names of John Carpetmaker and John Glover, like the above named Guillaume Cooke, were indicative of their functions. Wages for the household servants amounted to £150 a year. The schoolmaster there was John Smith, who had nine or ten young gentlemen scholars in his charge. These young gentlemen were sumptuously dressed and educated at the charge of Sir Thomas.15

Among the servants of the household named in the 1524 subsidy roll for Enfield16 was a man who had once approached supreme greatness. His name was Lambert Simnell. Forty years earlier he had been crowned King Edward VI in the cathedral at Dublin, with a diadem borrowed for the occasion off the head of a statue of the Virgin Mary. The Yorkists had rallied to his cause and it had appeared that the Wars of the Roses was about to break out all over again, but the rebellion collapsed and Henry VII, with a touch of humour, gave young Lambert a job in the kitchens. Thence he came to serve Sir Thomas at Enfield. His name does not appear among the many servants listed to receive gifts under the will of Sir Thomas when he died in 1524, so perhaps he remained even then forgotten but unforgiven. Thomas, Earl of Rutland, inherited Enfield House, and fifteen years later, in March 1539, King Henry VIII took the mansion, giving Rutland in exchange various properties including the late monasteries at Croxton in Leicestershire and Rievaulx in Yorkshire. Thomas Seymour, the brother of Henry’s third wife, was appointed keeper of the house and of New Park in April 1545.17 The Princess Elizabeth was then twelve years old.

All Lovell’s offices on the Chase passed into the hands of the one-eyed Sir Francis Bryan.18 He wascousin to Anne Boleyn and a boon companion of Henry VIII; he was described as ‘all French in eating, drinking and apparel, yea and in French vices and brags’. Bryan held the offices until 1526 when he surrendered them to the Earl of Rutland.|g

By the middle of the sixteenth century the population in Edmonton and Enfield was at last beginning to rise again after nearly two hundred years of stagnation, though it probably still had not reached the level at which it had stood before the Black Death.20 With this growth of population the resources of Enfield Chase were put progressively under pressure and in need of protection. The under-officers, as always, were seeking to secure what advantage they could from their offices. Lovell’s servants on the Chase, Baldwin Shurley the deputy ranger and the three deputy keepers, John Bassett, Robert Whyte and Simon Budder, seem to have suffered scant supervision and appear to have been in league with the Enfield bailiff Eustace Sulyard. Their thefts caused much anger among the headboroughs and

Chapter Two: The Late Middle Ages inhabitants of Enfield who accused the keepers of having cut vast quantities of browsewood — no less than 1,080 loads in the year 1522 — which they had sold to strangers before it had been offered to the commoners at customary prices. They accused the bailiff, who held the King’s sealing axe, of marking trees to be felled when no headboroughs were present to maintain a check. Much of this wood, they said, had been taken for his own use and for the deputy ranger, who, they alleged, had had fifty loads each year, far more than he was entitled to; moreover this included great beeches and oaks which should have been left to provide pannage.

The keepers countered the charges of the headboroughs and commoners by accusing them of bringing accusations out of mere malice, engendered by the fact that the keepers had always carried out their duties without fear or favour and, in particular, because they had driven the commoners’ hogs out of the Chase, as they had been ordered to do by Sir Thomas Lovell and by the King himself. They had also prevented the cattle belonging to the commoners from feeding on the browsewood which was cut for the deer. They alleged that the headboroughs had conspired to take more wood from the Chase than they had paid for; they had demanded always to take their wood from one hill or place, so that they could load on their carts two loads in the place of each one.

Turning to the charges brought against them, the keepers explained the great quantity of wood they had cut by saying that it had been necessary to burn much of it in the lodges when King Henry had been hunting on the Chase in the winter time. A great many noblemen and gentlemen had then remained in the lodges awaiting the King’s return from his sport and good fires had been commanded at these times. Also, on several occasions when King Henry and Queen Catherine had stayed for a week at Hadley with their household, within these past three years, their officers had commanded many loads of wood to be cut and carried there out of the Chase.

Great numbers of trees had had to be felled for the repair of the pale. Despite all this, they said, the headboroughs’ estimate was grossly exaggerated, for in making their investigations, no less than twenty-four headboroughs had been appointed to view the Chase. They had divided themselves into twelve pairs and had insisted on carrying out their inspection without the guidance of the officers. This, said the keepers, had resulted in many of the tree stumps being counted more than once. The keepers admitted that they had sold much of the wood to foreigners but only because the Enfield inhabitants had, in the previous years, delayed carrying it away until winter was almost upon them. The keepers were concerned lest it should have laid there until the ground was so wet that it would have been impossible to move it and the income would have been lost. They were even more concerned, they claimed, because the King had, on occasions, shown great displeasure when he had found the wood stacks in the way of his horses.21 Nevertheless Shurley and the three keepers were called before the Duchy court where the dispute dragged on inconclusively for a number of years.

Some of the gentry loved hunting and venison as well as the King, and the more daring among them were not to be denied. William Bonde of Hadley had been warned by the keepers on many occasions, but he, his servants and associates, continued to hunt the King’s deer. Relations between his household and the keepers deteriorated into violence, particularly between keeper Edmund Ilderton and Mr Bonde’s servant

26

The Story of Enfield Chase – David Pam

Hugh Ball. Ilderton had been uttering threats against Ball through the other servants, warning him to wear his weapon upon him for, if they met, he said, he would put him in danger of his life. One evening Ilderton, with William Hore, both armed alike with pikestaffs and wood knives, and with daggers at their girdles, lay in wait for Hugh and fell upon him outside his master’s house. There was a struggle in which Ilderton was wounded; Hugh managed to escape and ran to his own house nearby. Ilderton, though later he claimed that he had lost a gallon of blood, was back within an hour, accompanied by six persons heavily armed with swords, bucklers, bills, bows and arrows and other weapons. Failing to break down the door, they smashed the window and called for fire to burn the house down. Hugh Ball did not wait for it to arrive, but broke out and fled to the safety of his master’s house.22

Another case occurred in the following year (1528) which shows the contempt and hostility with which the gentry could treat any attempt by Duchy officers to interfere with their pleasures. On 23 October, John Hamlyn, servant to the keeper at East Bailey Walk, was patrolling on the Chase when his dog was caught in a trap and injured. Perceiving that the trap had been recently set, he released the dog and followed the trail of the poachers all the way to Ponsborowe Park (Ponsbourne Park, Newgate Street in the County of Hertford) to the house of one Davy Southe Esq. He knocked and demanded ‘a reward’ (compensation) for the injury to his hound. Southe was in bed and most displeased with this so untimely and uninvited visit and sent word back by his servant that Hamlyn should get him hence, for if he (Southe) should come to him, he would give him for his reward as many stripes as he could bear. Thereupon Hamlyn wisely departed and came back to East Lodge where he laid a complaint before the keeper. The keeper reported the matter to the Earl of Rutland. Called before the Earl, Southe of course denied that he or any of his servants had ever hunted on the Chase, whereupon the Earl, nonplussed, respited the matter until further evidence could be brought and Davy Southe went away well pleased.

On 28 December he was back, hunting openly in East Bailey Walk with three of his servants and a brace of greyhounds. More truculent than ever he made no attempt to slip away but awaited the arrival of the keeper who eventually appeared and demanded to know by what authority he hunted the King’s deer. Southe replied to this very reasonable request with the words ‘I will not show such a knave as thou art what authority I have, but will hunt here in spite of thy head, and, by God’s blood knave, I will cut off thine ears’. With that he jumped from his horse as though to put the threat into immediate execution, but the keeper, having with him his bow, inserted an arrow, and bade Southe to come no nearer. At this moment one of the keeper’s servants appeared, also armed with a bow, and Southe, perceiving that the time was not propitious, mounted his horse and rode away threatening ‘1 will surely onse be even with thee’. Davy Southe was summoned to appear before the court of the Duchy of Lancaster.23

The lower classes too, despite the proclamations against hunting and hawking which were repeatedly read out in the local churches, continued to hunt the game. John Mundy was an habitual offender. He entered the Chase on 5 September 1535 in company with John Spurryer, Simon Whyte and two others. They carried bows and arrows and had with them two greyhounds with which they killed a doe. The men carried it off but they were subsequently arrested.24 Naturally we know nothing of

Chapter Two: The Late Middle Ages those cases where the poachers were not arrested. A dispute two years later involved Richard Wilson, the keeper at West Lodge, and some men and lads who worked for Thomas Bowman. They had been caught, with the beagles belonging to their master, in a place called Gannick wood on the west of the Chase. They had with them a hare which they said they had taken three quarters of a mile away outside the Chase and that, immediately afterwards, they had started another hare which had headed off towards the Chase. When the two lads were caught by the keeper, they were on the King’s highway (presumably the road from Barnet to Potters Bar) having gone on in front to ‘rebuke’ (bring back) the dogs. The keeper, armed with a bow, demanded to know by what right they hunted there. Philip Miller, one of the lads answered, by his own account most courteously though somewhat long- windedly, ‘I trust we hunt not here to hurt any man, nor to the disturbance of the King’s game’. Upon this most unprovocative reply, the keeper, ‘like a man beside his wit’, struck the lad in the face with his bow, knocking him into a dyke and closing one of his eyes so that he could not see out of it for three days. He then seized the hare from the other lad, Thomas Sybley, also a bill belonging to Philip, and made off. The youngsters called to one of the men, Robert Burr, and together they set out in pursuit and came up with the keeper at Rotherfeld in the Chase. Burr demanded the return of the hare and the bill, and being refused, seized them. The keeper subsequently alleged that they had assaulted him, ‘in such wise’ he said, ‘that blood by the quantity of two gallons flowed from his veins’. He further declared dramatically, that they would have slain him ‘but that one that dwelt thereby came out and bade them take heed’. He also accused them of taking his wood knife and his bow. Afterwards he told his story to Edmund Crestall who, at midnight on the following Sunday, supported by two of the knight marshall’s servants, came to Thomas Bowman’s house and arrested all those concerned. They were taken to the Marshalsea where they lay tor three days; one of the men caught the gaol fever and died of it four days after his release.25

Throughout the country the conversion of woodland for agricultural purposes to feed the growing population had begun to create a shortage of wood. From 1483 onwards, attempts were made to control woodland management by legislation. The most important statute was ‘An Act for the preservation of woods’, which required that coppice woods must contain a minimum of twelve standards (that is trees allowed to grow to provide large timber) in each acre. These were not to be felled until they were ten inches squared at three feet from the ground. The act was probably not very effective, at least it led to few prosecutions.

By the beginning of the sixteenth century practically every common in lowland England was subject to the rationing of its resources. As the years passed the ration had to be reduced. The interest of Henry VIII and the Duchy, in conserving the deer in Enfield Chase, inevitably conflicted with the needs of the commoners as well as the self-interest of the officers and their deputies. As we have seen, the incessant bickering which arose from the confiict between the commoners of Enfield and Edmonton led the Duchy to set up an enquiry. The chancellor, the Earl of Southampton,26 with other members of the council and those appointed by commission came to Enfield to look into the dispute and into the state of the wood and game.27 As a result rules governing the Chase were put into writing.28 They embodied ancient custom and the changes which had been made throughout the

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The Story of Enfield Chase – David Pam

centuries to 1531. Fines were set for the contravention of these rules.

Tenants were forbidden to put their swine on the Chase until Michaelmas (29 September) and they must remove them by Martinmas (11 November). Those whose lands bordered on the Chase could put their pigs in at all times but only within a quarter of a mile from their fences. All pigs had to be pegged or ringed (that is a ring put through the animal’s snout to prevent it wroughting up the young saplings). No man was to put pigs into the Chase when the deer were breeding. Every pig was to be marked both with the owner’s mark and the King’s mark to prevent commoners fattening swine belonging to those who had no rights on the Chase, but who were prepared to pay well for the privilege. The King’s mark should be held by the woodward; this rule was to be the source of many disputes over the centuries. The Enfield commoners complained of hog cotes belonging to men from East Barnet which remained on the Chase, though Enfield tenants had been ordered to cast theirs down some years before. The council of the Duchy of Lancaster promised to look into this anomaly. All horned cattle were to be marked on the horn with the King’s mark.

The woodward was to designate the wood for the keepers to cut for browse, to feed the deer through the winter. The keepers were to show to the King’s tenants of Enfield all the wood that had been cut and the tenants were to assess the number of loads and report this to the steward at the next court. In the spring, after the deer had fed on it, the browsewood was to be sold by the woodward. First to the tenants of the manor of Enfield, for their own use only, as fuel, and at an old accustomed price; next to the borderers (ie commoners from Edmonton, South Mimms and Monken Hadley) ‘at such convenient prices as shall seem good to the woodward and keepers’ whereby, says the decree hopefully, ‘they may have more cause to bear favour towards the game and wood there’; and the rest to ‘foreigners’ (those who had no right to common) for the highest price it would fetch. It was the duty of the woodward, at audit time, to render an account of all the wood sold and to pay the money to the King’s receiver. If any man who bought wood out of the Chase at a privileged price, should sell for profit wood from his own land, he must pay for the Chase wood as much as a foreigner would pay. Any man that should sell, in London or elsewhere, Chase wood bought at a privileged price, should be charged for it at the market price. No man should cut any wood on the Chase for fuel unless it had been allocated to him by the woodward. Anyone caught cutting wood without the sanction of the woodward, his hewing tool should be confiscated and he should be condemned to sit openly in the stocks for one day and one night.

The woodward and the three keepers were to be paid fourpence a day, the pay of the ranger was to be raised to sixpence a day. They were explicitly forbidden to make any personal profit on the sale of browsewood or other wood. The right of these officers to have their fuel out of the Chase was confirmed.

The Earl of Rutland surrendered all his offices on Enfield Chase in 1538.29 They were granted to Thomas Seymour, brother of Jane the third wife of Henry VIII. Thomas had been in the service of Sir Francis Bryan in 1530. He was an ambitious man and jealous of his brother the Duke of Somerset, who became Protector under Edward VI. He sought rather too strenuously to marry the Princess Elizabeth and was executed in 1549 for his ambition. His offices on the Chase were granted briefly to

Chapter Two: The Late Middle Ages

Sir William Paget, chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, and a few months later to John Earl of Warwick.

Footnotes: The Late Middle Ages

1 D. 0. Pam, The Hungry Years 2 KB9.66.4l.62 3 D. O. Pam, The fight for common rights in Edmonton and Enfield, 1400-1600. pp3-6. 4 D. 0. Pam, The fight for common rights, pp8-10. 5 See below pOO. 6 SC 6.1146.20 7 Cal. Pat. Rolls 9 Feb 1373 8 DL42.18 9 See Appendices 1 and 3 10 DL41.3.17 11 Appendix 2 12 References to the manor accounts given in Appendix 1 13 DL41.3.17 14 DL42.21.179 15 RM Add 12462 and will of Sir Thomas Lovell PCC 27 Jenkyn 16 E179.141.111 17 L + P Henry VIII 14.1.651.43 18 L + P Henry VIII 20.1.1336 19 DL42.22.92v. 20 D. O. Pam, The Hungry Years, p20. 21 DL41.3.17.2 22 DLL 17.12 23 DL1.4.B10 24 DL1.9.B6 25 DLL 10.W6 26 See above pOO Sir William Fitzwilliam created Earl of Southampton, 1537. 27 See above pOO. 28 DL5.5.479 29 DL42.22.167

30

Chapter Three: In the Time of Queen Elizabeth

The offices on Enfield Chase were but one gift among innumerable honours, lands and emoluments granted to John Dudley, the Earl of Warwick, later Duke of Northumberland and Protector. There were never enough offices available to satisfy all those whose services to the Crown demanded reward. The practice inevitably grew up of granting offices in reversion, that is to be taken up when relinquished, or upon the death of the incumbent. In this way the offices on the Chase were at this time granted to Sir Thomas Wroth of Durants in Enfield, a local landowner in high favour at the court of the boy king. Wroth was at the same time appointed woodward, and steward of the manor of Enfield. Thus it was provided that Sir Thomas would assume all the offices in Enfield on the death of the Duke. Northumberland was executed for treason by Queen Mary in 1553, but Sir Thomas, being closely allied to the Duke, was forced to flee with his family to the continent, where he waited through the long years of exile for the accession of the protestant Princess. Elizabeth, however, when she came to the throne in 1558, took a scarcely more favourable view of the Marian exiles than her sister had done.1 SirThomas was obliged to surrender his offices in Enfield to the Queen’s cousin John Astley.2

Elizabeth enjoyed hunting and the splendour of ceremony as her father had done. Among the many stories told by Nichols, in his ‘Progress of Queen Elizabeth’, he records that, in 1557, she was escorted from Hatfield to Enfield Chase by a retinue of twelve ladies in white satin, on ambling palfreys, and a hundred and twenty yeomen in green, on horse back, so that she might hunt the hart. On entering the Chase she was met by fifty archers in scarlet boots and yellow caps, armed with gilded bows, each of whom presented her with a silverheaded arrow, winged with peacocks’ feathers. When the buck was taken, the Princess was pleased to be allowed the privilege of cutting his throat.

By the middle of the sixteenth century wood was becoming a scarce commodity. The price of underwood had risen threefold, in real terms, between the years 1540 and 1555 and was to more than double again by 1630. The age saw a rapid improvement in the standard of domestic comfort for all but the labouring classes. Everywhere chimneys were being built to replace the open hearth of the middle ages, which had been nothing more than a bonfire in the middle of the floor. Chimneys did not improve efficiency in the use of fuel, but they were much more pleasant to sit by, so that householders were tempted to have bigger fires and to light them more often. Despite the increasing competition from coal, especially in London,3 these changes of fashion, and the growth in the population, added to the demand for wood.

Many people were moving into newly built tenements in the towns around Enfield Chase. Twenty-seven new houses in Enfield alone are listed in a survey probably taken in the 1570s. More families were finding accommodation through the partition of existing houses; twenty-six divided tenements are recorded in Enfield in the same inquisition.4 A similar growth was in progress in Edmonton, and in South Mimms and Monken Hadley, as also in Barnet. It was becoming ever more difficult to provide fodder for the Queen’s deer and to satisfy the demands of the expanding population The Story of Enfield Chase – David Pam for pasture and wood. As prices rose, and the selling of wood became more profitable, the continual purloining by the officers, whose wages never kept pace with inflation, added to the shortage.

The rules promulgated in 1531 to preserve the Queen’s deer and wood were no longer adequate by 1560. In a new decree it was ordered that a list should be made of the towns, villages and hamlets, and the names of the inhabitants there who were entitled to claim common, showing the number of each man’s cattle. Commoners were to be allowed to feed only as many animals on the Chase in summer as they could maintain on their own land in winter. To impose this rule more rigorously, all cattle were now to be marked, not only with the forest mark, but also with a town mark. Relations between commoners and keepers became increasingly hostile. The Manor court jury complained that the officers had destroyed the wood for their own profit. They had cut enough browsewood in one year to feed the deer for three, wastefully cropping forty foot boughs, fit for use as timber, from the great oaks, and branches from beech trees each one of which was enough to provide two or three loads of fuel.5 Now it was ordered that the keepers should henceforth cut only such browse as had been marked as suitable for that purpose by the woodward and bailiff. The poor had always claimed the right to gather dead wood off the ground, but now they were accused of taking advantage of this privilege by cutting the growing wood. In consequence they were forbidden to carry with them any bill hook, hatchet or axe while they were in the Chase. A goodly trade was being carried on by those who gathered green boughs to sell in London. The keepers had been turning a blind eye to this, probably because they profited by it. The trade was now forbidden.6

With the increased demand for wood, every acre of woodland that could be enclosed offered a profit. It could either be coppiced, if means of transport could be found to carry out the wood, or the trees could be grubbed up and sold and the land turned over to pasture. Keeper John Holte had his eye on twelve acres, part of the Acre Bred, a narrow strip of woodland between the Chase and the county boundary to the north. It had probably been taken out of the Chase hundreds of years earlier, in the time of the de Mandevilles. Holte now applied to the Duchy for a twenty-one year lease and, in February 1565, this was granted to him at an annual rent of 8s. Considering that he was to have the underwood growing there which had been valued at 26s 8d, he obviously had a very good bargain. Trees fit for timber were to be left standing. As soon as Holte began to put up fences around his land however, he was presented at the Manor court and fined £60. Whereupon he complained to the Duchy court demanding an injunction against the leading members of the Manor court jury. The tradition that this land was part of Enfield Chase persisted from far off days. The jury claimed that it had never before been enclosed but that, of old time, Enfield men had fed their swine there at those times of the year when they had to keep them off the Chase because the deer were fawning. They accused Holte of felling and selling four hundred oaks and hornbeams growing there.7

Too many animals were feeding on the Chase and from time to time the Duchy attempted to limit the numbers. The 1560 decrees had not solved the problem and in 1567 the tenants of Enfield, Hadley, Edmonton and South Mimms; the forester, ranger and keepers on the Chase and of the two parks; with John Taylor, were called to advise on further measures.8 Great damage was being done by those whom they

32

Chapter Three: In the Time of Queen Elizabeth termed foreigners, men from High Barnet and East Barnet who commoned illegally with great numbers of animals. There were many dwelling at Cockfosters who held, by copy of court roll, pieces of land which had once been part of the Chase, most of which were so small that the tenants could not maintain a single calf or sheep on them. Yet because these holdings were in Enfield, though all their houses lay within the parish of East Barnet, they claimed common, and pastured great numbers of animals on the Chase. There were also those who lived in new houses and cottages within the four parishes and the many tenements which had been broken up for multiple occupation. All the occupants of these were pasturing animals on the Chase, though none had any right to common.

There were complaints too that certain tenants of Enfield and Edmonton were now keeping greatly increased flocks of sheep and that in the summer, when corn was growing in the common arable fields, they put them all into the Chase where they devoured the grass, so that little was left for the deer. Their cattle too caused problems by feeding on the browse that had been cut to maintain the deer during the lean months from the end of November until the beginning of April. They were warned that they must not put cattle to the browse until after ten o’clock in the morning. Only those cattle which a commoner could winter on his own land or which he had purchased in the four villages, already branded, were to be allowed common, though an exception was to be made for those who were so poor that they had not land enough to winter a cow; if such men were able to purchase a cow in the spring they were to be allowed to have it marked and put on the Chase.

Pigs belonging to commoners were to be permitted on the Chase to fatten on the mast between 29 September and 2 February; they must be pegged or ringed and no owner was to beat or shake the trees, nor were the acorns to be gathered and carried away. The keepers themselves put in a plea that they should again be allowed to keep hogs at the lodges. The old custom was re-stated that the tenants of Enfield should meet with the woodward and keepers on the Posterne Plain on St George’s Day (23 April) to inspect the wood which had been cut for the deer. After that date they were entitled to purchase wood enough for their own use in their own houses at eight pence a cartload. The poor should be permitted to gather the dead wood and the twigs cut from the browse during the month following St George’s Day but were forbidden to come into the Chase during the fawning season from May to September; after 14 September they could again gather in their fuel until 30 November. New measures were proposed to protect the game. It was forbidden for any man to carry a long-bow, crossbow or hand gun on any part of the Chase or within one hundred yards of its boudaries. Any person who was caught hunting within the Chase, their dogs and their bows might be confiscated and they were liable to a fine of 6s 8d.9

Such measures were more easily proposed than enforced. The only sound method of protection was the employment of enough honest, conscientious officers at adequate wages. The Duchy had to rely to a great extent on the use of informers who were rewarded with half the fine imposed, but these means failed to give the protection required and within ten years the Queen again had cause to complain of the disorders of her commoners. They had been taking the browsewood, bushes and mast without leave of the keepers, and they had not spared to kill the deer whenever they had strayed outside the Chase. A new decree, warning all those concerned, was

The Story of Enfield Chase – David Pam signed by the whole Privy Council at Hampton Court and was read out from the pulpits in all the parish churches of the neighbourhood. It ordered that no person dwelling in any of the townships bordering on the Chase was to be allowed to keep or use a cross-bow except those who were permitted by statute and so rated in the subsidy books.10

In 1576 John Astley proposed a deal to Lord Burghley in which he offered him the high stewardship of the manor of Enfield, the office of master of the game in Old Park and on the Chase, with the use of the great pond on the Chase, and the right to all windfall and dead wood there, also the office of master of the game in New Park and the offices of bailiff and steward of the manor of Worcesters, together with the keeping of the Queen’s house of Enfield and of the orchards, ponds, gardens and park there, which would entitle him to sixty loads of wood each year out of the Chase to air the house. In return Astley wanted Burghley to secure for him the possession of Alington Castle at a reasonable rent, and to lend his assistance in some suit which he had laid before the Queen. With the fulfilment of these two conditions Burghley could have the offices for a mere £240, though Astley claimed that he had already been offered £460. Free from conditions, he asked Burghley for £400,“ which appears to have been what the lord treasurer paid. The deal suited him well, for he was at this time building his great mansion nearby at Theobalds.

Burghley’s first measure on becoming master forester was to order the Manor court jury to make a survey of the wood and timber growing within the parish of Enfield. In Old Park they counted 2,338 oaks and six thousand hornbeams and other trees; in the Chase there were six thousand oaks and over thirty thousand others, an average of only four and a half trees to the acre. Obviously by this time the grazing of the sheep, cattle and deer had created extensive glades throughout the Chase. The incessant struggle to secure a share of the wood continued to sour relations between the tenants and the Duchy officers. The Manor court jury took the appointment of the new steward and keeper as an opportunity to pursue their grievances. It was presented that Robert Beastney, the deputy ranger, had purchased twenty-nine timber oaks from the woodward at 5s each, but the jury strongly suspected that he had not paid the full price. They sent a deputation to see the stumps and concluded that the trees must have been worth 20s each. John Taylor had taken seven oaks for the repair of the demesne fences against the Chase. Austin Sprage had felled sixteen old trees (dotards) within his walk and had valued them himself at only £3 10s. Norris the third keeper, refused to reply when asked what trees had been cut down in his walk and the jury proposed that he be called before the court for interrogation.

Because of the shortage of wood, the tenants had not been able to get their fuel at the old accustomed prices. Though a restraint had been imposed forbidding the cutting of wood without special licence, a great number of warrants had been granted by the officers for wood and timber; usually it was for sale to the more 'wealthy tenants such as Mr Leeke of Weir Hall in Edmonton. The entitlements of the officers for fee wood had taken precedence over the needs of the commoners, and the Manor court jury felt that many of these privileges had no legal foundation. They cited John Taylor who claimed by warrant each year thirty loads for firing at the Manor House, but the jury alleged that there was no justification for his claim. Robert Beastney the ranger, and Robert Wroth the woodward, had every year thirty

34

Chapter Three: In the Time of Queen Elizabeth loads each, which they sold, whereas, as the jury declared, they were entitled only to their ‘reasonable fuel’. Robert Wroth, for his office of bailiff, took another thirty loads, also out of the browsewood, although his wood should have been allocated only from the dead trees, and should always have been designated by tenants acting as verderers.12

Each enquiry made into the condition of the lodges or of the pale gives the impression that every dilapidation was exaggerated and every repair or replacement turned to the advantage of whoever was involved. The division of control as between the Duchy of Lancaster and those who held office on the Chase led to many disputes over the distribution of the spoils. The method used by the Duchy to estimate the cost of repairs was to set up a commission of leading local landowners (some of whom held office under the Duchy). Thus when Old Park was considered in need of attention in February 1580, Robert Wroth, bailiff and woodward in the manor of Enfield, Robert Hayes the auditor for the southern parts of the Duchy who lived on Enfield Green, with Vincent Skynner, were commissioned to undertake the matter.13 Taking with them expert carpenters, bricklayers and tilers, they made a survey of the lodge and other buildings and declared them to be in such great ruin that it would require ten loads of timber to do the repairs. The felling of trees would amount to3s4d, the hewing of the wood to 15s, the sawing of sixteen hundred ‘of slitting work’ (at 22d the hundred) to 29s 4d, and the sawing of twenty-five hundred boards (at 22d the hundred) to 45s lOd. The laying of two hundred feet of groundsel I at 2 /:d a foot would cost 41s 8d. There were nails to be purchased, iron bars for the windows, and the wages of carpenters at £4 10s. Ten thousand tiles were to be purchased at 10s the thousand, seventeen hundred lathes, two loads of lime, a thousand bricks and six loads of loam. The wages of bricklayers, tilers and labourers would amount to £8, making a total of £31 13s lOd.

An even more costly operation would be the renewal of 1,052 pole (5,786 yards) of the Park pale; for this they reckoned that a hundred and eighty trees would hardly suffice. The felling, clearing and the labour required to put up the new fence, without the carriage of the timber, would cost £58 5s 4d.14 The old pale of course became available for disposal. The Duchy had appointed that the commissioners should sell the old timber, but Richard Peacock, the under-keeper, felt that this was a contravention of his rights, and asserted that he was commanded to take charge of the old pale by Lord Burghley. Burghley quickly intervened, writing to Wroth to order that the timber should be delivered to him to be laid up for safety within the Park, but Wroth, undeterred, replied suggesting that there was some doubt as to who ought by right to have the old pale, the under-keeper or the commissioners. He proposed that he should store it in a place where Peacock could not interfere with it, until Lord Burghley came down himself to settle the matter.15

Peacock had purchsed his offices from John Astley and, ostensibly, all he received were the very modest fees due as wages. What he really gained is to some extent revealed by Enfield’s belligerent vicar, Leonard Chambers, who sought to extract tithes on Peacock’s true profits. Peacock admitted that in the wintertime each year, he had cut down or lopped ‘such base wood as hornbeam’ and also many oak trees and other great trees to feed the deer, and he had converted what was left, after the deer had fed, to his own use; also he had taken all the windfall trees. But now the vicar, as Peacock complained, ‘not contenting himself with the duties

The Story of Enfield Chase – David Pam belonging to his vicarage’ had brought an action in the ecclesiastical courts demanding of the under-keeper, the tithe of one hundred bushels of crab apples, four bushels of apples, three bushels of plums, two bushels of damsons, ten rabbits, the pasturage of twenty geldings and a hundred swine, fifteen loads of hornbeam coppice-wood of under twenty years growth, and of a hundred loads of loppings and croppings of oaks.16 Thus his office in Old Park does not appear to have been unprofitable to Richard Peacock.

The three lodges were once again in 1583 in a serious state of disrepair. At West Lodge, (called Norris lodge) two thousand bricks were required for the repair of the kitchen sink and the hearth in the hall, three thousand tiles were needed for the roof, and six hundred boards for weather-boarding. These with lime, sand, nails and wages together with the thatching of the barn and hay house cost £10. At East Lodge it was necessary to take down a chimney that was ruinous and to set it up again and five thousand bricks were required at a cost of £5 1 Is. The end of the house where the chimney had stood had to be repaired, and four thousand bricks were needed for the foundations. Timber, lathes and hair were required for the wall, and the kitchen floor had to be replanked. These repairs were made at a cost of £33. The state of South Lodge was even worse. The hall floor had to be replaced with new joists and two hundred and twenty feet of planks, two inches thick. The kitchen chimney was in a ruinous condition and its position made the kitchen very dark. It was decided to demolish it and re-erect it elsewhere in order to improve the light. In the middle chamber two hundred boards were needed for a new floor, and in the garrets 688 feet of boards were required to cover an area 18 foot by 16 foot. Eight hundred feet of feather-edge board was needed to weather-board the front of the house. The barns had to be rethatched and under-pinned with brick, ten pollards were cut down to replace the pale and the dog kennels were lengthened to fifteen feet; all this at a cost of £18 12s 6d.

Despite the multiplicity of orders and warnings, the bolder of the yeomen took pleasure and profit in hunting the Queen’s deer. Two families from Edmonton were particularly involved; the Wrayes and the Wildes, Mrs Wraye’s house was in the Hyde. The expeditions were not always successful as on an occasion described under examination by John Rice, servant to Thomas Wilde. Beside himself and his master there had been John Warren, with a cross-bow, and Thomas Wraye and his servant Thomas Jones. They met together at Harry Wood’s house at Chase Side, Southgate, and set out from there taking with them a white dog and a white bitch. But that time they found no game either in the Chase or in Old Park.

Another occasion was described by John Humphry a labourer, working for Wilde and living in with his master. He told how Thomas Wraye had come to Wilde’s house on a Sunday, to see to his dog, which he always kept there and, bSing met together, they arranged to go hunting that night. That evening Josias Calton turned up and brought his dog. They all went to Wraye’s house and from there up to Old Park, but misfortune struck, for they lost the dogs and they were aware that, if these were taken, the keepers would certainly know to whom they belonged. The hunters returned to Wraye’s house and Thomas Wraye warned Humphry to keep his mouth shut. The keepers did take Calton’s dog that night and he was arrested the following day and put in prison.

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Chapter Three: In the Time of Queen Elizabeth

This should have been a warning to the others but, on the contrary, they appear to have been deluded into a belief that Peacock (the keeper at Old Park) would be so lulled into a false sense of security that he would believe that no man would now be so foolhardy as to hunt in the Park. The story of their next venture is again told by John Rice. On the Monday night, he says, he was just about to go to bed at Osborne’s house (who was Mr Wilde’s son-in-law) when a boy from Mrs Wraye’s was sent over for him. Obedient, certainly not reluctant, for the summons, he walked across to the Wraye’s where he found Thomas Wraye and his brother Jasper with a Londoner, Humphrey Gunston, whose name he did not then know, with them were four of the Wrayes’ servants; Thomas Read, Mark Luntlow,Thomas Jones and Richard Moore.

It was about eleven o’clock at night when they set out from Edmonton going up along what is now Green Dragon Lane and into the Chase by Hammonds Hook Gate (roughly at the junction with Hadley Way) where the fence divided the Chase from Old Park. The servants were told to make their way along the Chase side of the tence as far as the great tree by the Park corner (where the gates of Highlands Hospital now stand). They took with them Wraye’s dog, the white one with black ears. Meanwhile the others climbed the pale and so entered Old Park. The servants had a long wait at the Park corner, but about three o’clock in the morning they heard a bay and at once headed in that direction into Old Park, where they found Jasper Wraye standing over the carcase of a deer. The master, with Richard Moore, carried it back to the Hyde on a staff, and from there it was taken to London. The others returned to Thomas Wraye’s house where they got to bed. About an hour and a half later. Rice was roughly awoken by Thomas Wraye who told him that he must get up and shift for himself, for they were being followed. He dressed, slipped out, and went back to Osborne’s house, and so to bed again, where he slept until noon the following day. Getting up, he made his way back to Wraye’s house, to find out what was happening, and was told that one of Peacock’s men had been so badly hurt the night before that he had to be carried home on a cart. He went back to Wilde’s house and, the following day, set off for the safety of Thaxted where his mother lived.

The Wrayes were now at last in serious trouble. On the Tuesday morning Thomas could not settle to his work in the fields among his weeders. He was uneasy and returned home, and with Jasper and Gunston, the Londoner, went up to Bellingham’s ale house at Winchmore Hill, arriving there about ten o’clock in the morning. Austin Sprage, a keeper on the Chase, was drinking in the bar. They had a pot of beer and, leaving Jasper asleep there, Thomas and Gunston left to enquire around to see what had been found out about last night’s enterprise. They returned to Bellingham’s about three o’clock. Austin Sprage was there again and spoke to them. After about an hour, Thomas and Gunston set off towards Enfield where they met Goodwife Bellingham, the landlord’s wife, and Goodwife Chusloe on the Posterne Plain (by Slades Hill) going down towards Hog hill brook (Salmons brook). That was between four and five o’clock in the afternoon. On the Wednesday, Austin Sprage was still around making enquiries. That morning he stopped John Warren, another of Wraye’s servants, on his way from Southgate, and questioned him whither he went. Warren replied that he was ordered to get a horse to go to London to see his master.

Justice finally caught up with Thomas Wraye and, on 28 July 1578, he was forced

The Story of Enfield Chase – David Pam to admit that he had been on the Chase that Monday night with a greyhound and had killed a young deer at Hartshorn Hill, but he denied knowing anything about the assault on the keeper’s man. They did not believe him however, and he was thrown into the Marshalsea where he lay until the end of March the following year. On that 30 March he sent a petition to Lord Burghley asking for his release, not so much for his own sake, he said, but because his poor mother, in his absence, was to be spoiled of her goods. He admitted that he had stolen the Queen’s deer, but still denied that he had taken any part in the attack on the keeper’s man. He was released the following day on a bond for £100 to forbear hunting in the Chase or in Old Park.17

Equally audacious were the Pennyfathers of Cheshunt, who supported themselves by stealing the Queen’s partridges and selling them to the Queen. John Pennyfather was stopped at Balstockes in Enfield, in October 1595, carrying a closed basket in which were found seven partridges, some alive, some dead. He was on his way to sell them to Mr Stapleford, the Queen’s purveyor, who would pay for them at ten pence each. He claimed to be working for the purveyor, which in a way he was, butasSir Henry Cocke of Ponsbourne pointed out, this man’s father had been stealing partridges for years by catching them in nets and had frequently been punished for it. Moreover the son was a lewd fellow who, a couple of years before, had run away with another man’s wife.18

Robert Cordell of Cheshunt was another persistent offender, arrested about the same time. He had recently been arraigned before a jury after confessing to Sir Henry Cocke that he had stolen an ox; it could have been a hanging matter, but the jury acquitted him. Thereupon Sir Henry had him re-arrested and examined about the killing of a white buck in Theobalds Park. This he earnestly denied, but afterwards confessed that he had killed two or three deer with a greyhound on the Chase. That time two of the keeper’s men had caught him red handed but, ‘upon his earnest entreaty’, they had let him go and allowed him both to keep his greyhound and take the venison. Sir Henry decided that this man should stay in prison.1'1

The question of the right to common on Enfield Chase of the inhabitants of South Mimms was revived in 1583 when a number of commoners belonging to that parish were presented by Robert Wroth, as woodward, before the court baron at Enfield and fined for exercising their right to common pasture.20 This signalled the beginning of a long drawn out dispute between the tenants of Enfield, on the one side, the tenants and inhabitants of Edmonton, South Mimms and Hadley on the second, and the Chase officers on the third, each group fighting to increase its share of the wood and pasture now becoming inadequate to meet all their demands. It was on the intervention of Lord Windsor, lord of' the Manor of South Mimms, that a commission was set up to investigate-2' Evidence before the commissioners showed that the population had continued to grow and that this had resulted in increased pressure on the resources of the common. The jury recorded that, in Enfield alone, forty-one new tenements and cottages had been built and twenty-four cottages and houses had been divided to accommodate more than one family. All these additional inmates took advantage of the common, though they had no right to do so. The jury further complained of the tenants of East Barnet who pastured their cattle on the Chase, cut wood and gathered acorns and crab apples there, a state of affairs which they blamed on a lack of vigilance on the part of the keepers and the bailiff Because

38

Chapter Three: In the Time of Queen Elizabeth of these conditions all commoners were now threatened with the imposition of a stint which would limit the number of cattle which they could pasture. It was pleaded that this would reduce many of them to beggary.

The position was aggravated because some of the more wealthy yeomen and gentry, they said were overcharging the common with great numbers of sheep. Ralph Warter of Old Fold was said to surcharge the Chase with eight hundred sheep, which he fed there until they were fat, William Clerke, John Hellam of Edmonton, Alderman William Kympton.a London merchant, who had taken a lease of the Manor of Hadley in 1573, were all said to pasture great numbers of sheep At one time, they alleged, Kympton kept two hundred on the Chase for the space of a month or six weeks, until at last complaint was made by the keeper. He then sold a hundred and twenty to a Mr Peacock of Finchley and the remainder he kept on the Chase until they had been used up in his household. At the same time he bought in a dozen bullocks which he fattened on the Chase and then sold them to a butcher. He was accused that he let his own land and kept all his animals, even his four draught oxen, on the Chase. Others accused of overburdening the common with sheep were Roger Graves, Henry Hunsden, John Moddam and John Garret of Enfield, and, at South Mimms, Mr Waller and Hunt of Edwines stile. People from other areas were eager to take advantage of the free pasture, such a one was John Chapman, a maltster of Hitchin, who bought a house at Enfield and, upon this flimsy pretext, kept two hundred sheep on the Chase for three months.22

At the previous meeting of the Enfield Manor court, it had been ordered by the high steward with the consent of the grand jury that eleven hundred sheep from that parish should be withdrawn from the Chase. It was proposed that every farmer in the four parishes should reduce the number of his sheep to the number he had pastured there thirty years before, and that each should be allowed only so many sheep per acre. Moreover, since the true purpose of the Chase was to provide pasture in the spring and summer time, when the common fields lay enclosed it was proposed that no sheep be allowed to go on the Chase from Hallowti'de (1 November) until May Day. The jury complained also of the many unprofitable animals left on the Chase, such as horses that were below the size allowed by statute. Probably they were used as pack horses in the flourishing malt trade operated by the Enfield maltmen.

The woods were presented as being much decayed. Eight hundred and fifty oaks had recently been cut down in the Chase, Acrebred and Old Park. Each year nine hundred to a thousand and more loads of browsewood were cut so that the deer might feed on the foliage through the winter. Afterwards this should have provided adequate fuel for all the commoners but, through the dishonesty of the keepers, and particularly of Humphry Reynold, who was deputy woodward and bailiff under Robert Wroth, not one half of this was left by St George’s day to sell to the tenants. Reynold had been disposing of the wood and timber without any supervision by the jury and by devious means had made a great deal of money out of it. To those who had warrants for ten loads of timber, the jury said, he gave fifteen, and was well rewarded by the recipients. Sometimes he delivered timber when the warrant specified firewood, cutting good timber trees under the pretence that they were dotards, sometimes cutting and cleaving great oaks for firewood though he subsequently sold them as timber. Many great oaks had been so lopped that they no

The Story of Enfield Chase – David Pam longer provided acorns to feed the commoners’ swine or the Queen’s deer.

The jury pleaded that the poor of Enfield be allowed to stock up and carry away the dead roots of trees long since felled which, they alleged, were dangerous to those that came hunting on the Chase. The poor, they said, had formerly been permitted to gather up the shreddings cut from the browsewood before it could be loaded on to carts. This was now made up into faggots and sold to those that could pay the price, so that the poor, in their necessity ‘wax insolent and great strife is like to grow, for that the poor were of late so increased in numbers’.24

The keepers were now imposing a fee of sixpence, instead of the former twopence, on top of the price of every load of browsewood purchased by the commoners, though the commoners were left to trim and load the wood for themselves. From the money they received the keepers should have paid the workmen who cut the browsewood, but now they forced them to take payment in wood, thus again profiting themselves and diminishing the quantity available to the tenants. The keepers were also accused that they kept sheep and swine at the lodges which was against the orders. The jury earnestly proposed that Reynold be removed from office and a more honest man be appointed in his place.

Reynold was not alone in cheating the Duchy and the commoners. Each year fee wood was granted for particular purposes but the bulk of it was sold. John Taylor at the Manor House was once again criticised by the Manor court, for that he was allowed forty loads which should have rendered it unnecessary for him to cut any wood on the demesne, but instead he sold all his fee wood. Lord Burghley, as keeper of the Queen’s house (Elsyng), had sixty loads which should have been used for airing the old mansion, but he sold most of it, or used it elsewhere, and the old house deteriorated from year to year. The keepers, who should have taken only sufficient fuel to burn in the lodges, accumulated great woodstacks which they then sold to their profit.

In an attempt to prevent further misuse of the resources of the common, and to guarantee the rights of the commoners, it was proposed that the ancient wood court, known as the Court of Roundhedge, should be revived, and should resume to itself its rightful jurisdiction over Enfield Chase which had for many years been usurped by the court baron of the Manor of Enfield. The wood court should meet, as it had formerly done, twice a year at May day and Martinmas (11 November) at the place called the Roundhedge25 on the Posterne Plain. The high steward, the master of the game and the woodward, should act as judges, calling before them the Enfield homage (that is the jury of the court baron) together with four or six men from each of the towns of Edmonton, South Mimms and Monken Hadley, chosen from among those whose dwellings lay nearest to the Chase,26 who would be best able to watch over the boundaries in those parts which lay at a distance from the town of Enfield. Indeed, the need for the participation of commoners from the other villages had been recognised for some years past by the Enfield Manor court, and two men from each had been invited to attend to provide information about law breaking on the Chase in their neighbourhoods.

It was proposed that the court of Roundhedge should enquire closely into those that hunted on the Chase, or kept greyhounds or mastiffs, or fished the ponds on

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Chapter Three: In the Time of Queen Elizabeth the Chase, or whether the keepers or the ranger hunted unlawfully. It was to enquire stringently into each man’s right to claim common, and the number of his beasts, and to enquire of those allowed to pasture pigs there and to fatten their pigs at mast time. In February 1582, a petition from the inhabitants of the parishes of Edmonton and South Mimms had supported the reestablishment of the court of Roundhedge. The plea was upheld by Robert Grymsdich, the under-steward of the Manor of Enfield, who had consulted no less an authority than William Fleetwood, recorder of the City of London.27 Grymsdich stated that the court had been discontinued more than twenty years before he had been appointed to his office. ‘Sundry court records, or rather diverse notes’ yet remained among the court rolls of the Manor of Enfield. Roundhedge had probably ceased to function at the time when the Earl of Southampton, then chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, had come to Enfield, about 1540, to enquire into a dispute between the parishes of Edmonton and Enfield concerning the rights of Enfield commoners in certain common fields in Edmonton. He had then appointed a jury made up only of Enfield tenants to investigate the matter and that jury had proposed to exclude the commoners of South Mimms, Edmonton and Hadley from exercising their rights on the Chase as a reprisal for the recent exclusion of Enfield tenants from common in certain common fields in Edmonton.28

The court of Roundhedge was re-established the following year on 29 August 1583, when the attorney general of the Duchy, Brograve, with Fleetwood, Robert Hayes, Robert Wroth, Vincent Skynner and Robert Grymsdich, called before them at the place called the Roundhedge, many of the inhabitants of the four parishes. There, in open court, Fleetwood gave his opinion that the Manor court of Enfield had no jurisdiction over Enfield Chase. Lord Windsor, lord of the Manor of South Mimms, declared and maintained for his tenants in South Mimms, the full range of common rights on the Chase29 which had been denied to them two years earlier in the Manor court of Enfield. The South Mimms commoners brought their own complaints particularly aimed at the woodward and officers who, they accused, had neglected the branding of cattle and had thereby allowed all manner of foreigners’ cattle to pasture. There had formerly been a rule, they said, that beech trees must never be lopped (because this destroyed the beech mast required for fattening the pigs) but the woodward had allowed the lopping of both beech and oak so that, ‘whereas of late time there had been great store of goodly oaks and beeches, the which, when God sent maste, did bring forth great increase, to the relief and maintenance of Her Majesty’s game and the feeding of many borderers swine’, now many had been felled and carried away, and the rest ‘so cropped, lopped and shred as thereby the pannage is utterly gone’.3n

The reconstitution of the court of Roundhedge solved nothing. It could not, for the real problem was that there were too many hands held out for the wood, and too many sheep and cattle for the available pasture. The hostility between the parishes and against the woodward and keepers grew. The Duchy decree of 1540 had ordered that, on and after St George’s day each year, the ranger, woodward and keepers were first to have their reasonable fuel out of the browsewood, then from the residue the woodward should sell, first to the tenants of the lordship of Enfield at eightpence a load, the old accustomed price, then to such of the borderers, as the keepers should name, at such price as should seem good to the woodward, which was customarily held to be twelvepence a load. The remainder was to be sold to

The Story of Enfield Chase – David Pam foreigners at the highest price that could be obtained. It was now ordered that this decree should be read in the parish churches of Edmonton, Monken Hadley and South Mimms, on the Sunday before St George’s day (23 April) and it should be accompanied by an order that no commoners from those parishes should take wood from the Chase until the tenants and inhabitants of Enfield had first been served. Yet, on the day following St George’s day, William Lea of South Mimms sent his servants with two carts and carried wood out of the Chase throughout the whole day, also Robert Holloway of South Mimms, gentleman, came with his servants and a cart and, despite being warned by the woodward, proceeded to carry away wood. More of the gentry joined them; Mr Goodyear, Mr Jhonn, Mr Belamie, Mr Hearne, Mr Ball and Mr Norton.31 Seeing that the gentlemen had not been repulsed some twenty yeomen from South Mimms and Hadley ventured with carts and carried away the wood. Others followed from Edmonton and, finding that the browsewood had all gone, they lopped branches from oak, beech and hornbeam.33

Perhaps the worst offender was William Kympton. He insisted on his right to buy the browsewood on St George’s day, at the accustomed price of twelve pence a load. He had had only three loads, he said, at the previous view day, and all of it had been burned in his Manor House at Hadley. He claimed he had never taken more than four loads and the remainder of the wood which he needed, between twenty and thirty loads a year, he had had to buy from the ranger or from Reynolds, the under-woodward, at the full price; in his opinion the officers should not have had any wood to sell, for they should have taken only wood enough for their own use. The officers counter-accused Kympton, alleging that he took two loads of wood for every one that he paid for. W itnesses described the method he was alleged to have used. They said that he collected the wood with two carts; his great lugge cart, pulled by six oxen and two horses, and a lesser cart pulled by four oxen and one horse. He would leave the great lugge cart at the top of Beacon Hill and go down into the woods with the smaller cart, drawn by the whole ten oxen and three horses. In this he brought up two separate loads and at the top of the hill transferred both loads to the great lugge cart and carried it home, claiming it all as one load. For the last two years, because keeper Robert Norris had been watching, he had taken only the customary load, but now he refused to pay the ranger more than twelvepence. He also carried away great quantities of bushes which he used for hedges within his own grounds and not for his boundaries against the Chase. He had cut stakes for his fences from oak trees on the Ridgeway, and had taken twelve loads of furze to make into faggots for his brewing, though this too was prohibited. Whenever Robert Norris had intervened he had threatened and insulted him.

Kympton was further accused that in the sixteen years since he had come to Hadley he had built nine new cottages, four of them on the edge of the Chase and five within shooting distance of the pale, as well as housing one poor man, called Matthew, by making a chimney at the end of a barn hard by Hadley Church Never a day passed but one or other of these cottagers was seen carrying wood on his back out of the Chase, from where they took all their fuel, except that when they were working in other men’s grounds, they sometimes carried sticks in their hands or upon their necks, but they were scarcely ever known to buy any wood Nevertheless, it was said, some of them had managed to accumlate woodstacks in their backyards amounting to three or four loads of wood They also pastured on the Chase with their cows, horses, hogs and geese, and so were able at least to keep destitution at bay.

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Chapter Three: In the Time of Queen Elizabeth

Indeed some of the cottagers did quite well' Barnard, who was a carrier, increased his stock to two or three beasts and a mare; another, Thomas Garret, acquired several cows and a team of four horses.33 The hard winters of the 1590s, the ‘little ice-age , wrought havoc with the wood on Enfield Chase. In March 1599, John Stileman wrote to Sir Robert Cecil who had taken over his father’s offices in April 1588, that so much wood had been taken that it was no longer possible to meet the yearly commitment to supply a hundred and sixty loads of fee wood and at the same time to meet the needs of the commoners, who were seething with discontent. For the last five years their demands for fuel had not been met. The commoners accused the new under-woodward, Thomas Cordell, of not only taking wood for himself but of allowing others to cart wood away before the view day, for which privilege he must undoubtedly have been well paid.34 One particular grievance that rankled more than any other remained the sixty loads of wood allowed for Enfield House The old royal mansion was dying of damp and decay, for the wood which should have kept it dry was now used by Cecil at Theobalds, beyond the boundaries of the parish.

It was proposed in the Duchy court that Cecil should relinquish fifty loads from this entitlement, that Sir Robert Wroth should take only thirty loads instead of sixty, and that Vincent Skynner should take none out of the Chase for fuel in the Manor House but should be allowed to cut the wood on the demesne. Whether this advice was accepted, I do not know, but certainly discontent in the parish intensified and broke out into open defiance in April 1602, when a large number of Enfield commoners felled and carried away, according to Cordell, no less than twenty loads of wood apiece, without payment, though they claimed that they had offered the woodward eightpence for every load and had acted in the presence of the keepers. This was no riot of the poor, for the names include many of the leading members of the community and the action must have originated in the vestry or at the Manor court. There was William Wilford, gentleman Robert Hayes gentleman, Edward Lyttlebury gentleman, Mr Hall the minister William Prentice, members of the well- to-do maltmen families of Curtis Curie, Lofte and Wyberd; there was Widow Ridlington who held a large messuage in Parsonage Street (Silver Street) also John Banks, the high constable and Robert Howe, two characters who were to play a notable role in the story of the Chase during the reign of King James. Sixty-five names are listed from Enfield, twelve from South Mimms and two from Hadley. Not to be restrained to the sober protest of their more respectable neighbours, some of the wilder spirits; Nicholas Parker, Nicholas Goddard, Edward Rudd, Robert Howe, Richard Saltmarsh, with others whose names were not known, broke into the Chase, armed and determined to carry away the browsewood and, in doing so, beat and wounded the under-woodward and other servants of Robert Wroth posted there to protect the wood.35 As we shall see these protests were to continue into the reign of King James, when they were to be taken up much more effectively by the women of the town.

Footnotes: In the time of Queen Elizabeth

1 D. O. Pam, Protestant Gentlemen: the Wroths of Durants Arbor. 2 DL42.23 3 Shipments from Newcastle rose from 35,300 tons in 1549/50 to 409,300 tons by 1633/4.

The Story of Enfield Chase – David Pam

4 C.P. Genl 67.14 5 Branches fit for browse were defined as those small enough to be turned over by the deer with their antlers. 6 Harl. 368.1 7 DL44.100, DL42.33.500, DL1.H5, H5A, BM Lans 105.7 8 C.P. Legal 11.18 9 C.P. Genl 67.14 10 BM Lans. 105.12, 105.11 11 C.P. Genl 67.10 12 C.P. Genl 38.8 13 DL5.17.98 14 DL44.290 15 BM Lans 29.69 16 DLL 139.P6 17 C.P. Genl 67.24 18 Cal Sal MS 11 Oct 1595 19 Cal Sal MS 12 Mar 1595/6 20 DL1.213.W20 21 C.P. Legal 33.14 22 DLL 148.S29 23 D. O. Pam, Tudor Enfield: the maltmcn and the River Lea. J. G. L. Burnby and M. Parker, The Navigation of the River Lea (1190-1790) 24 BM Lans. 34.42, C.P. Legal 33.14 25 Roundhill is now Holt whites Hill, it is shown on the Gunton and Rolfe map of 1656 26 DL1.121.E5 31 C.P. 118.8 27 DL1.213.W20 32 DLL 131.S24, C.P. 118.8 28 See above pOO 33 DL1.148.S32, DL4.30.31 29 C.P. Legal 33.21 34 DL1.200.A42 30 DL1.213.W20 35 DL1.200.A42, DL9.2, DL 1.206.A6

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Chapter Four: John Banks the Bailiff

Enter Old Banks

Old Banks: Out, out upon thee witch! Mother Sawyer: Dost call me witch? Old Banks: I do, witch, I do; and worse I would I knew a name more hateful. What makes thou upon my ground? Mother Sawyer: Gather a few rotten sticks to warm me. Old Banks: Down with them when I bid thee quickly; I’ll make thy bones rattle in thy skin else. Mother Sawyer: You won’t, churl, cut-throat, miser! — there they be; (Throws them down) would they stuck cross thy throat, thy bowels, thy maw, thy midriff! Old Banks: Sayest thou me — so hag? Out of my ground Mother Sawyer: Dost thou strike me, slave, curmudgeon! Now thy bones ache, thy joints cramp, and convulsions stretch and crack thy sinews! Old Banks: Cursing thou hag, take that and that (Beats her and exit)

Thomas Dekker, The Witch of Edmonton (1621)

The fifteen-nineties were years of bad harvests and high prices, of near famine conditions that ushered in half a century of exceptional hardship for the wage earning classes. A tide of people, driven by poverty, flowed constantly towards London and, here and there, families were left behind in and around the villages on the roads through Middlesex. To accommodate the expanding population, local landlords and tenants put up cottages on every corner of waste ground. They converted barns, outhouses and kitchens into dwellings, substantial old tenements were subdivided, new cottages were erected in backyards and orchards. Poverty forced people to share accommodation; married sons made their homes with parents.

Very few of the cottages, new-built or converted, complied with the Elizabethan statute of 1597 which required each to be allotted four acres of land. Such a requirement in the already crowded village streets was idyllic; there was no land to spare. Without land the newcomers could only survive by working for wages which they might supplement with the produce of a cow or two, perhaps a few pigs. Their animals would overcharge the commons where they had no legitimate right to pasture. Even more damaging to the Chase would be their need to cook and to keep warm. Necessity would drive them to take fuel even at the risk of a fine or corporal punishment, and there were many who would defy authority and live by selling wood stolen off the Chase. The depredations of the poor would thus be added to the depredations of the Duchy officers, to the utter ruin of the Chase, and the diminution of the King’s deer.

The twenty years from 1590 to 1610 saw this infilling taking place along the streets of the village of Edmonton, in Fore Street, at Palmers Green and Bowes, at South Street (the area around Southgate Green), at Southgate, near the present The Story of Enfield Chase – David Pam

Southgate Circus, at Bettestyle (New Southgate), Winchmore Hill, Bury Street and around the parish church of All Saints. Eight barns and eighteen outhouses were converted to dwelling places, thirty-five new cottages were built and seven old ones subdivided, twenty families or individuals moved in as lodgers.

In South Mimms twenty-six new cottages were put up and four old tenements were subdivided. Mrs Muffett, an enterprising widow, had converted her house into four dwellings, all of which she had managed to let. William Anstey had converted his house into three dwellings. Six new families had come to stay as lodgers and two more had moved into converted barns. Hadley parish had found room for twelve new cottages, and five houses had taken in lodgers.

In the parish of Enfield, seven barns, a cowhouse, three outhouses and eight kitchens had been converted into dwelling places. In addition twenty-eight new cottages had been put up, fifteen tenants had taken in lodgers and two houses had been divided. Two hundred and twenty-three new dwelling places had thus been created in four villages.1 Many of those who provided such accommodation were prosecuted and fined by the justices of the peace, but this failed to stem the flood. Pressure on the resources of the common inevitably followed, and led the Duchy to seek to redefine and limit the rights of commoners.

While the Queen lived these limitations were not harsh. Under injunctions of 1594 the order was reiterated that pigs were to be allowed on the Chase to fatten on acorns and crab apples only during the ‘mast’ season, between 29 September and 11 November. Owners were required to insert a ring in the pig’s nose to prevent it grubbing up roots and young trees; without a ring the pigs had to be tethered on pegs driven into the ground. Orders were reinforced against the fattening of pigs belonging to non-commoners. It was further forbidden to put pigs on the Chase during the ‘fence’ month, a month around Midsummer Day, when the fawns were being dropped. Any pig found on the Chase which did not belong to a commoner was to be driven to the pound, and would be released only on payment of a fine of sixpence (a shilling for a second offence and one shilling and eight pence for a third). By some strange omission certain men from East Barnet were still allowed to keep hogsties on the Chase at a nominal rent of sixpence a year, a right which the commoners had lost in the time of Henry VIII.

The Duchy now withdrew this privilege. Fines were increased on commoners pasturing other men’s cattle on the Chase; a horse or ox would now cost 6s 8d, a cow or bullock 3s 4d and a sheep seven pence.

Commoners were forbidden to resell the wood allowed to them at concessionary prices, nor were they to sell the wood from their own land within a mile of their dwellings. No wood was to be cut on the Chase unless it had been sanctioned by the woodward. Wood .thieves were to be confined in the stocks for a day and a night, their axes and bill hooks confiscated. However, despite these increased penalties, the Elizabethan injunctions were little more than the reiteration of existing but neglected rules.2

Queen Elizabeth died at Richmond on 24 March 1603. On Sunday 3 April, James took a solemn farewell of the Scottish people in St Giles, Edinburgh and, two days

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The Story of Enfield Chase – David Pam later, set out for London. By 3 May the King reached Theobalds, the magnificent mansion of Sir Robert Cecil. As he rode down the long avenue of elm and ash, through the ornamental archway to his welcome in the forecourt, he must have been overwhelmed by the size and the grandeur of the place. The impoverished Scottish monarch was to be lavishly entertained there for four days. He had never seen such wealth displayed. So dazzled and captivated was James that in 1607 he was to secure the estate from Cecil as a gift, granting him in compensation the old royal palace at Hatfield and seventeen manors with which to finance the rebuilding required there.

The preamble to the Act of Parliament which governed the exchange states that ‘Theobalds is a place [most] convenient for His Majesty’s princely sports and recreations, from its nearness to London and to His Majesty’s forests of Waltham Chase and the parks of Enfield’. The King certainly found it so. He was greatly to extend the house and to enlarge the park. Among the lands taken in around 1611, were 150 acres out of Cheshunt common, 270 acres out of Northaw common, and 337 acres out of Enfield Chase.3 In a message which he handed down to' inform the Enfield commoners of his intentions, he offered his reassurance on the word of a king, that he had no plans to enclose more than a hundred and twenty or a hundred and forty acres out of the Chase.4 Privately owned land was also taken and considerable compensation had to be paid to the owners; Sir Thomas Dacre, for St Giles farm, received £3,840, William Thomas received £600, William Wilford £70, Dr Atkins £700, and Sir Robert Wroth, for Brakenock farm in Cheshunt, £5,600. Sir Robert Wroth and Sir John Brett were also granted £200 to distribute among the Enfield commoners; the parish prudently purchased property with the money. By October 1611, a hundred men were working to construct a pale around the new park, but within five years the King had ordered that this should be replaced by a brick wall, nine feet high and some nine or ten miles in length. Work on the wall was in progress by 1620. The pale, put up at so much expense, was taken down and much of the timber was stolen.5 They had finished the wall by 1623 except that three miles of it still required coping and no money was available. Six main gates gave access to the park and, adjacent to the gates, substantial lodges were built of brick and timber with tiled roofs.6

The reign of King James had begun in an atmosphere of euphoria which reached a somewhat early climax when he paused at Theobalds on his journey down from Scotland. Noblemen, gentlemen and lesser mortals poured out from London in their thousands along the old north road through Edmonton arm Enfield, crowding the highway and filling the air with great clouds of dust. Master John Savile and two friends took an upstairs room at the Bell in Edmonton where they placed an hour glass in the window and settled down to count the travellers on the road below. Within half an hour they had counted three hundred and nine persons on horse back and a hundred and thirty seven on foot. The landlord at the Bell told them that it had been like this since four o’clock that morning and throughout the whole of the previous day.7

Sir Robert Cecil was largely responsible for the smooth transition from Tudor to Stuart. King James wisely retained his services as principle secretary of state. Within a few weeks he was created Lord Cecil, then, in 1604, Viscount Cranborne and, in 1605, Earl of Salisbury. Immensely rich and powerful, nevertheless he carefully retained his many minor offices and the remunerations that went with them. Thus

The Story of Enfield Chase – David Pam he held the offices of master forester and master of the game on Enfield Chase and keeper of the King’s house at Enfield by which he was entitled to receive sixty loads of fuel yearly. Cecil’s preparations to entertain his royal guest at Theobalds were elaborate and painstaking. Around the middle of April his servants had been sent to collect the fuel from the Chase, but they had returned empty handed. They had been confronted and denied by a large gathering of Enfield women who proclaimed that they were there to prevent any Chase wood being taken out of the town of Enfield.

The trouble had been some years brewing. It began perhaps in 1560 when Sir Thomas Wroth, a local magnate, had been forced by Queen Elizabeth to surrender the office of master forester to John Astley. The office was now held by Cecil, but the resentment lingered on. The main cause of discontent, however, was the shortage of wood. The commoners of recent years had not been able to obtain their customary fuel at concessionary prices and little had been left for the poor. It had never been accepted that wood should be taken to Theobalds instead of being used, as originally intended, to prevent damp and decay bringing to ruin the King’s old house in Enfield. Memories of its former splendour lingered on, of the time when Sir Thomas Lovell maintained there an establishment of over a hundred servants, when purchases for the household had brought prosperity to the parish.

Now as Cecil and the nation waited to welcome the new monarch came this untimely disturbance. He immediately sent orders to Sir Vincent Skynner and Sir Robert Wroth that they should deal with the matter at once. Thus it was, that early on Thursday morning the two knights rode out to Whitewebbs on the northern boundary of the Chase. There they found that most of the women who had been there, had returned home to sleep and so they rode on to Cattlegate where many had been standing guard since Monday. About a dozen were still there and Sir Vincent Skynner called them before him and questioned them, demanding to know why they had thus assembled, and why they had denied Sir Robert Cecil’s servants. They replied stoutly that they were there to maintain the ancient rule that no Chase wood should be taken out of the town of Enfield, but that it should be used only in the King’s house in Enfield which, they said, now stood neglected and likely to fall into ruin for lack of firing.

With some impatience, Sir Vincent Skynner pointed out that the Cecils had, for these last twenty years, taken fuel from the Chase to Theobalds; to this the women stolidly replied that this ‘patent’ was now ended by the death of the Queen. Skynner, aware that somebody must have been putting such words into the mouths of these women, demanded of them what they meant by ‘patent’, none of them could offer an explanation. Pursuing his question he asked, did they mean the sixty loads of wood granted to Sir Robert Cecil. The women affirmed at once that this was their meaning. How was it possible that they knew this was so? Who had told them this was so? The women, thrown on the defensive, would give no direct answer but claimed that it was so reported among them one to another. Sir Vincent Skynner well knew that the women would not have dared to have offered such offence to Cecil without powerful support and that it could be none other than Sir Robert Wroth, the wealthy landownerat his side, who had encouraged, perhaps instigated their action. It was indeed alleged later that one of the women had been to London to see Sir Robert Wroth on the Monday when the trouble had started, and had told

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The Story of Enfield Chase – David Pam him what they had planned. According to this report, which Skynner now related to Cecil, Wroth had given them every encouragement and had ‘bade them go forward as they had begun’. The women stoutly denied that they had been to see Wroth, thus assuring, as Skynner informed Cecil, with elaborate innuendo, that the allegation was ‘false and slanderous, so it apparently was proved’.

Sir Robert Wroth was most adept in dealing with situations such as that in which he now found himself. There are records of earlier occasions when he had made impassioned speeches to fulfill the letter of his obligation to authority but which left his real meaning apparent to all his listeners. He now delivered such a speech to the women for the benefit of Sir Vincent Skynner. He declared that by their riotous conduct they had done much prejudice to themselves and their posterities and to him and his posterity. The brushwood, he said, had been allowed to the commoners merely through the grace of the King’s most noble progenitors, and the King would be justified now to demand of them by what right they made such claims. They had most badly requited the support he (Wroth) had given them in opposing the Act in Parliament to make the River Lea navigable, and he reminded them of how much the people of Enfield stood to lose by allowing barges to use the river. He then added that if the women would now depart, and submit themselves to the just displeasure of Sir Robert Cecil, that displeasure might in some way be mitigated. The women, comprehending, replied that they were sorry that they had given offence, and at once reiterated their original demand, that the wood should not be taken to Theobalds but should be used in the King’s house at Enfield. It was obviously necessary for Sir Vincent Skynner to seek a compromise. He told them, quite falsely, that the King intended to remain at Theobalds for only eight or ten days, while Enfield House was being prepared, and the intention had always been to take part of the wood there and the remainder to Theobalds. To this compromise the gentlemen added a little bribery in that the women were allowed to carry away forty or fifty faggots made up of the shrammell wood which, they claimed, should in any case, by custom, have been left for the poor. And so they were to some extent satisfied and followed the two knights as they rode around the Chase to declare, at every gate and every lodge, to all keepers and other officers present, that no shrammell wood should hereafter be made up into faggots but should be left to be picked up and taken by the poor of Enfield.

Their mission accomplished the two gentlemen called before them Curie, the high constable, who was ordered to give notice in Enfield church on Sunday that the parish should furnish twenty carts, including four to be provided by Sir Vincent Skynner and four by Sir Robert Wroth, to carry twenty loads of wood to Enfield House. Forty more carts were to be provided in Cheshunt and Edmonton, to be ready the following Tuesday to take wood to Theobalds/ The King loved the noble sport of hunting, but it was to him ot supreme importance that it should be conducted according to the rules. Among a King s Christian duties, he wrote, he ‘could not omit hunting, namely with running hounds, which is the most honourable and noblest thereof, for it is a thievish sort of hunting to shoot with guns or bows, and greyhound hunting is not so martial a game’. In pursuit of his Christian duty, affairs of state were neglected while he passed day after day in the saddle, retiring at dusk, elated or despondent, according to the success of the sport. When the King stayed at Theobalds, as he so often did even before he acquired the estate in the summer of 1607, he found the Chase, only a mile distant from the house conveniently situated

The Story of Enfield Chase – David Pam for his pleasure. Within weeks of his first arrival in London he was dining at West Lodge (Padis Lodge) which, they said, had been very prettily trimmed up by John West, the keeper. Henceforth it became a matter of political importance to ensure that the King’s sport was not marred by a shortage of game. The country folk had destroyed many of the deer9 and the browsewood on which they fed was in short supply.

It was the ingratiating Sir Vincent Skynner who wrote to Cecil describing conditions on the Chase as almost unbelievable, far worse than anything he had seen before that time. He warned that if the offenders were not punished things would become worse. It was not merely the hacking and hewing of bushes and the lopping and topping of trees; now the wood thieves were felling great oaks and destroying much fine timber.10 In May 1605 John Cook,Thomas Langley and John Michell were imprisoned in the Fleet for taking the browsewood before it had been allocated to them. Many others were fined, including Edward Littlebury of South Mimms, and nine of his servants were arrested.11 The following year Henry Tapper and John Aylward were committed to the Fleet for cutting wood on the Chase,12 and fines were imposed on eight others with the alternative of corporal punishment for those too poor to pay. Informers were employed to keep watch on the activities of the countrymen. One of them, Coel of Shoreditch, described by one local as ‘a lewd and evil disposed person’,’boasted that he had ‘been appointed and commanded by my Lord of Salisbury to touch the town of Enfield’, and he promised, with his new found authority, ‘to plague the people worse than ever he had done’.n

It was more often the well-to-do than the poor who engaged in killing the King’s deer. Useful opportunities existed for those who held land adjoining the Chase. Perhaps the method incurring the least danger was the setting of snares in the pale which could be surreptitiously watched until venison was found hanging there. John Ashe of East Barnet, accused of taking a deer in this manner, denied that he had set the snare and claimed that he had known nothing of the matter until a servant of an Edmonton brewer had knocked at his door to tell him that he had found a pricket (a two year old buck) hanged in a set in his pale. On receiving this news Ashe went down with one of his servants and brought the carcase back. But John Rice the keeper somehow heard of his good fortune and came to the house to demand the venison. The assertion by Ashe of his absolute innocence was not believed for he had been in trouble the previous year and then hacf been obliged to spin an equally unlikely story. At that time his servant John Kitley had shot a deer in Coles Grove bordering on the Chase. Under questioning Ashe told the court that he had merely gone to the grove to attend to some colts which he kept there. He heard the shot and being curious to know what was happening, rode to find out. It was then that he found Kitley with a gun slung around his neck. Despite the probabilities of the evidence, he totally denied that he had taken Kitley there to show him the deer.

Yet another incident, about three years earlier, was now brought up against him when John Pratt had killed a deer on the Chase and this same Kitley had brought it home for John Ashe, in a sack. The court was told that his fences against the Chase were all down so that the deer were not restrained from straying on to his land. He had taken bushes from the Chase for their repair, but now pleaded that, because someone had commenced an action against him for possession of this land, he had delayed the work on the fence.14 It was not Ashe but Kitley who had to spend several

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The Story of Enfield Chase – David Pam months in the Fleet to meet the requirements of justice. He was finally released when John Ashe entered into a bond for £40 for his servants’ future good behaviour towards the game.15

Many of the deer were lost, said the ranger, Sir Ralph Conningsbye, because the Chase was so overcharged with sheep that they forced the deer out into the countryside in search of food. The keepers had to spend a great part of their time in the pursuit of strays, to prevent them being hunted down and killed by the country-folk. The sheep and their herdsmen, he said, were ravaging the Chase. Conningsbye demanded some limitation on their numbers. The King himself, he said, had complained of them when he was last in Enfield.16 Cecil attributed much of the blame to the officers of the Manor and Chase for their failure to control the flood of immigrants into the area. He warned that ‘the King will show himself sensible to these gross negligences.’17

The Duchy decided upon strong measures to protect the wood and game. The chancellor called a meeting of the council on 13 November 1605 to be attended by Sir Robert Cecil, Sir Robert Wroth, Sir Ralph Conningsbye, with the more important tenants of the Manor of Enfield. Economies were required from everyone. The keepers were accused of having cut as much browsewood each year as would suffice for two. For the ensuing three years it was ordered that no more than forty loads should be cut and, to meet the resulting shortage, the keepers were granted £20 a year (£30 at West Bailey Walk) to buy hay and given permission to enclose ten acres out of the Chase to each lodge to be used solely to grow hay for the deer.

The fuel granted to the officers was to be reduced. The master of the game and the keeper of the King’s house at Enfield were to have thirty loads instead of sixty, the woodward and bailiff twenty instead of thirty and the tenant of the manor house of Enfield thirty instead of forty. It was ordered that all wood to be cut was to be inspected each year by the keeper of the walk where it grew, together with four tenants traditionally known as verderers, selected by the steward at the Manor court. Only as much fuel was to be taken by the keepers as they would normally burn in their lodges. They were forbidden, as they had always been, to sell any of it. The remainder of the browsewood, after the deer had fed on it and the officers had taken their allocations, was to be offered at the traditional price, first to the tenants of the Manor of Enfield, then to the other commoners. ‘To the end’, once again it was hopefully propounded, ‘that they might better demean themselves toward the game and the wood.’ The remainder, if any, was to be sold at market price. The very repetition of these rules indicates the difficulty of enforcement.

The better to protect the Chase the keepers were now to be sworn as deputy woodwards, each within his own walk, and were granted warrants authorising them to arrest any person caught stealing wood and to convey them before the nearest justice for punishment. Further to encourage vigilance, they were to have a third part of any fine imposed. Persons of quality, such as were not punishable by a justice, should forfeit 20s for each offence. Corporal punishment should be inflicted, by the parish constables, on offenders too poor to pay fines.18 The poor, obstinate in the belief that the wood was theirs by right, resented such treatment and occasionally rebelled against it. In Hadley when whippings were to take place in 1607, a great crowd assembled outside the constable’s house and threatened to kill

The Story of Enfield Chase – David Pam his horse and cut his cart to pieces. The constable, terrified, barred his doors and would not come out.19

The right to common pasture was now to be more severely restricted and controlled. An order was imposed which attempted to limit sheep pasture to an area within eight hundred yards of each commoner’s dwelling house. As it stood it was an absurdity, for many of them lived more than that distance from the Chase. When amended it proved a new and severe limitation to the rights of the commoners, for it restricted common pasture to an area within eight hundred yards of the ring ditch. Added to this a stint was now introduced limited to one sheep for every acre of arable belonging to a tenement. A tenant ol an ancient house with less than one acre was allowed to pasture three sheep, if he had one to three acres, four sheep.20

Commoners were now forbidden to take timber for the repair of houses, fences and ploughs if there was sufficient wood growing on their own land. An exception was made for tenants who had to maintain fences against the Chase where gaps might allow the escape of the deer.21

The decree ordered that all hogs sheep and cattle going upon the Chase must now be marked with the owner’s brand and the forest, or King’s brand (in the form of a rose) which was to replace the former parish marks. This caused particular resentment among the commoners, the more so because it was to be kept in the hands of John Banks, deputy bailiff and woodward. He was to be paid 40s a year for branding, moreover the tenants were put to the expense and trouble of bringing their cattle at a time and place of Banks’ choosing. Even the fire to heat the irons and the labour required to hold the cattle had to be supplied by the tenants. Further the bailiff was empowered to impound all animals found on the Chase unmarked and to collect the fines.22

There was considerable resistance to this injunction and many commoners stubornly refused to have their cattle marked. On the day appointed by Banks, a number of tenants in South Mimms, led by William Crowle(called a gentleman) proceeded to the house of Robert Howe, Banks servant, and the pound-keeper there, where they read the decree and defiantly refused to have their cattle branded with the King’s mark. A further thirty-six tenants in South Mimms, including a number of the minor gentlemen, refused to bring in their animals to be marked. The jury at the Enfield Manor court proved uncooperative. Banks commented angrily ‘It is better known to some of the jury than to myself which of them had their cattle going upon the Chase’. In Enfield, Edmonton and Hadley some commoners refused and others failed to bring in their cattle and sheep and, once again, the jury stubbornly refused to cooperate with the bailiff.23

Fines ranging from 2s 6d to 10s were imposed on many Enfield men whose unbranded cattle were seized. The money was to be paid to John Banks, the bailiff. Those too poor to pay were brought before Sir John Brett, justice of peace, for corporal punishment.24 These orders led continually to friction. When thirty sheep belonging to Thomas Curtis and forty belonging to Robert Curtis were impounded in 1609 by Banks, the pound was broken and the sheep taken. At the same time three great beasts belonging to Edward Sumner (Sompner) and two belonging to Robert Manistye were impounded. These two brought an action at common law against

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Banks and as a result an order was made directed to William Sare, the high constable of Edmonton Hundred, that he should seize the animals out of the pound. But when he arrived the pound-keeper refused to surrender the key, whereupon the high constable broke off the lock and took away the cattle. This involved the yeomen in conflict with the Duchy Court and they were ordered to withdraw their suits and to pay Banks substantially towards his charges. Other Enfield tenants took action outside the law; John Foster, William Hinde and George Fish broke open the pound and took out their animals. They were fined by the Duchy Court.25

Women, always, it seems, formidable hereabouts in the defence of what they held to be their rights, fiercely resisted the impounding of their animals. Ten women from Enfield broke open the pound on 22 April 1608, and John Sheppard, for abetting them was sent to the Fleet. Four days later Richard Smyth appeared before the Duchy court accused of instigating great numbers of poor women, whose names were not known, to break open the pound at Enfield. At South Mimms, on 7 June 1609, the pound was broken open in a riotous manner by the wife of Richard Hynde, John Foster’s maid, the wife of John Mascall, the wife of John Birde, Elizabeth Withered, the maid of Thomas Hill, the maid of William Robinson, the wife of Jervice, the maid of Peter Griggs and other unnamed women. Sheep belonging to Edmonton farmers had been impounded in 1607, the pound had been attacked and broken by many women, and it had been impossible to discover their names.26

The confrontation concerning the King’s brand eventually resulted in a short lived victory for the commoners. In May 1610 a commission to examine the dispute was awarded to Sir Robert Wroth (son of the Sir Robert previously met), Sir Ralph Conningsbye, Robert Middlemore now at the manor house in Enfield, John West the keeper at West Lodge, and others. As a result it was decreed that the towns of Enfield, Edmonton, Mimms and Hadley were each to have a distinct common brand and three substantial inhabitants from each town were to be appointed to keep a record of all the cattle branded. It was ordered that the decree be entered in the Manor rolls of the Manor of Enfield and it was to be read in the four parish churches on the following Sunday immediately after morning prayer. Thus the control over who should be allowed common pasture on the Chase, and the number of animals each tenant should be allowed to pasture was taken out of the hands of the bailiff. This, no doubt, diminished the effect of the stint imposed by the Duchy court.27

This John Banks, deputy bailiff of the Manor and Chase of Enfield, was the officer responsible for the enforcement of the new regulations. He was described as a gentleman. He dwelt in a substantial house on the Woodside (ie Chase Side Enfield) where he had an orchard, garden, yard and croft. His other house was in Parsonage Street (what we now call Silver Street). This he had let to his widowed sister. He also held considerable land distributed in the fields of the Parish of Enfield.28 John Banks and his son and those whom they employed had made many enemies in the villages around Enfield Chase and seem to have achieved more than a local notoriety. The author of the contemporary play The Merry Devil of Edmonton and Thomas Dekker in his Witch of Edmonton, both introduce them on the stage, and, though neither dramatist draws the characters precisely to life, there is considerable resemblance to the real John Banks.

During these few years considerable sums of money had been taken in fines from

The Story of Enfield Chase – David Pam local farmers for animals impounded or strays sold by the bailiff. Some of this money may have found its way into the coffers of the Duchy, much more of it certainly found its way into the pockets of John Banks the elder, John Banks the younger and Robert Howe, their pound-keeper. At least £87 in fines was declared on oath to have been paid into their hands and the money had not been accounted for by the Duchy auditor.

They were further accused of selling cattle and horses taken as strays before the owners could lay claim or recover them. William Fyllpot, the butcher, bought ten fat sheep for £4 from Banks who told him that they were strays. Banks was said to have sold a mare and a colt to Richard Hipkys as soon as they had been taken up and, shortly afterwards, Hipkys sold them out of town for 14s. On another occasion he had taken seven hogs but, instead of impounding them, he had kept them for a while in Old Park and subsequently disposed of them. Banks had seventeen sheep sheered while he held them as strays, but the fleeces were never accounted for. On occasions, when they had impounded a number of sheep, one or two would be taken for Banks’ own use before the remainder were restored to the owners.29 It was sworn by innumerable witnesses that there had been taken in fines and by the sale of strays and wood (none of which had been passed on to the Duchy) a total of £140.

The Duchy, at length, got round to investigating the conduct of the two Banks, father and son, and Robert Howe. On 21 June 1609 a commission was set up which included the leading local landowners, Sir Robert Wroth, Sir Ralph Conningsbye, Robert Middlemore, John Dackombe, the keeper John West and William Purevey, the Duchy auditor. They were given power to empanel a jury to enquire what timber and bushes had been sold out of the Chase since Banks had been woodward and bailiff there, how many deer and fawns had been taken and sold, what fines had been imposed for animals impounded and what cattle and horses had been sold as strays. They were asked to investigate whether the money received had been accounted for to the Duchy and in what ways Banks and his associates had deceived the King and abused the commoners.30

Even when allowance is made for the hostility of the witnesses, Robert Howe seems to have acted with utter disregard for the law. He openly sold firewood to the villagers at their doors at 3s 4d a load. The blatant effrontery of the man can be gauged from an incident when he caught John Daye cutting a bough in the Chase and confiscated his axe as prescribed by law, but Daye followed him and offered him eighteen pence for its return. Howe at once pocketed the money, returned the axe and, with jovial generosity, bade Daye take the whole tree. He showed a similar generosity in an alehouse to William Asplyn, the landlord, on whom he bestowed two beech trees; Asplyn undoubtedly treated him with an equal kindness. Howe, with his son Robert, who was always the joker in the pack, kept kilns at their house for the making of oatmeal, their fires generously provided with wood from the Chase. Their front door was open at all times to those who wanted to buy the King’s wood.

Young Howe was proud of his exploits as a deer hunter. He boasted that his father had carried a buck to London and sold it for £3. He himself, he said with some relish, ‘had killed the fattest doe you ever did see’. Joane, their servant, no less indiscreet, did declare that in their house ‘they had better meat than beef or mutton’. One

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The Story of Enfield Chase – David Pam time she recalled (you can almost hear her licking her lips) ‘they had three fawns in one week’. Young Howe could enjoy a joke; one day when he and his father were out on the Chase, his father busy beating down hawes, he stuck himself all over with ferns and, while his father was working a little way off, there came a company of does to eat the hawes. Young Howe, choosing the best of them as she passed by, shot her with his cross-bow. The doe gave a great leap upward which made old Howe, as he sat there, to fall down backward. He enjoyed the venison as much as the joke. On another occasion, young Howe, continuing the story of his exploits, told how he had gone into the Chase to kill a piece of venison, but the deer being somewhat shuffe (shy) he broke ashen boughs and strewed them along a little glade, then stepped aside to wait. The choice foliage soon attracted the deer and as they came by to feed on it, he selected the finest buck and shot him. It was his weakness (and our gain) that young Howe was unable to restrain himself from telling people of his exploits. He was out on the Chase with young Guy Nicholls, looking for a horse, and as they passed Plumridge Hill (marked on the modern OS map south of the Ridgeway) the scene recalled to him another of his triumphs. ‘I think ofa thing I once did hereabouts’, says he, ‘I found a fawn asleep and, creeping up, took it upon the pate with my staff and killed it. And when 1 had done, I slit its hind leg and thrust one leg into the other and hanged it at my back upon my staff, and the head hung down so low that it hit my legs.’

The enquiries made by the commission revealed that men from all ranks of society had purchased wood from the bailiff and his servants; Mr Prowde, the vicar of St Andrews, Sir Vincent Skynner, formerly at the Manor House in Enfield, Edward Heath, the well-to-do brewer at the George, Thomas Parnell of the Kings Head, indeed half the households of Enfield were among his clients. He, with his son and servants, had sold timber for building, wood for firing and bark for tanning. More than £41 had gone into their pockets from the sale. Over these same three years they had imposed fines on others whom they had caught stealing wood or pasturing cattle on the Chase unmarked. They sold as strays those animals whose owners were too poor to redeem them from the pound. The longer the animals were held, the higher mounted the cost, for the owners were charged with the feeding and watering. In this way Banks and his son detained a horse belonging to John Moore, said to be a very poor man from Hadley. It was his only animal. After holding it in the pound for some weeks, they sold it for 5s.

Thomas Broxup of Edmonton gave evidence that Banks had impounded a grey stoned horse and then sold it for £5. According to the owner, Banks had valued it at only 18s when it had come into his hands.

Fines for pasturing on the Chase imposed on those whom Banks held to have no right to common could be very high. Robert Pilgrim on one occasion paid old Banks £5 to get his cattle out of the pound. At other times Pilgrim paid the pound keepers sums of 30s, 6s 8d, 5s and 8s 6d. Banks had declared Pilgrim’s house to be a new erection, which rendered him ineligible for common rights.

Henry Johnson, who had once worked as a servant for Banks, told the story of Thomas Penryd, the blacksmith, who had come to Banks to inform him of certain old moneys which had been found in the thatch of a house in Enfield. Banks, he said, had returned with the blacksmith, seized the coins and carried them home in a dish.

The Story of Enfield Chase – David Pam

Johnson had heard Penryd and his wife tell the bailiff that the coins weighed 31b of leaden weight. What happened to them remained unrecorded by the Duchy auditor.

The younger Banks rivalled young Howe in deer stealing, but he boasted less of his exploits. Hugh Tylstone, a keeper at Old Park, told of the night he had seen two footmen come out of Kerby’s house at Chase Side Enfield between twelve and one o’clock in the morning. Riding behind them came young Banks, with two or three others, heading for the Chase. Tylstone followed as far as Mark Plain (the area of Trent Park south of Hadley Road) but there lost sight of them. Tylstone also gave evidence that he had once seized two greyhounds, a dog and a bitch, which during the night had killed a doe in Old Park. In the morning he found another doe which had been killed. Later he had been told that the dogs belonged to young Banks and his friends.

William Durrant said that in December he had gone with young Banks to see a tree near the pale by Barvyn Gate which he was to buy for his master, Sir Vincent Skynner. Banks carried with him a loaded gun. On the way back they spotted two does in the woods. Banks at once took aim and fired; one of the does was killed, the other was hit but fled. Durrant left Banks attending to the carcase. Afterwards he learned that the other doe had been found dead two days later.

One winter night, when William Graves, servant to the keeper, was watching with his dog in South Bailey Walk, he heard the sound of horses. Making his way in the direction whence it came he saw John Banks the younger in company with three horsemen whom he thought were Londoners. Following behind was a footman with a brace of greyhounds. Upon Graves ordering them to stand, one of the Londoners produced a pistol, but Banks intervened, assuring Graves that they intended no harm to his master, Mr Rice, and the party rode on. Graves followed them at a distance into Robert Norris’31 walk (Norris was deputy to John West, keeper of West Bailey Walk) and came up with them again near New Pond. They had shot a deer which they then lifted on to a horse and carried away.32

Despite all these accusations presented against John Banks, father and son, and Robert Howe in a mass of evidence collected by the commissioners, four years later no charges had been brought. Indeed the results of the inquisition set up in 1609 had been lost.33 A new inquisition had been taken, but the court could not proceed until the first one had been found. A search was instituted and it was brought into court in July 1614. However this solved nothing for the two inquisitions did not agree and once again the case was adjourned. It was never resuscitated.34 Young Banks nevertheless became a little more careful in taking venison; despite this he was arrested in May 1614. The story, as it unfolded before the court, was that he was going across Mark Plain in South Bailey Walk (now part of Trent Park) when he saw a deer lying in a bush near to the brook. It had an old hurt in the shoulder and had been bitten and torn by dogs. Scenting a possible advantage, he went to Mount Pleasant, the house of Sir Philip Howard at Cock Fosters, to inform him of the find. Sir Philip ordered one of his servants to go back with Banks to collect the animal. Robert Nicholls volunteered, saddled a horse and, taking a sack to carry the carcase and a cloak to conceal it, set off with Banks. Though the animal was still alive when they found it again, Nicholls pushed it hurriedly into the sack and threw it onto the horse. Banks then left and went off towards Enfield while Nicholls made his way

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The Story of Enfield Chase – David Pam back to Sir Philip’s house where the deer was broken up, and a few days later Sir Philip sent Banks a piece of the venison. Unfortunately all was discovered and Banks and Nicholls were arrested.35

Matters concerning Enfield Chase had, in recent years, been dealt with in the Enfield court baron. Thus in 1611 Oliver Kiddermister, keeper of South Bailey Walk, was presented there for selling two hundred faggots cut on the Chase. Thomas Westwood was fined 20s for fattening twenty Welsh ewes and William Norris, keeper of East Bailey Walk and Oliver Kiddermister were presented for keeping hogs on the Chase contrary to the decree. Those caught cutting and carrying away wood on foot were fined 3s 4d or 5s. Those who used a horse with hooks to drag the wood away were fined 13s 4d, and those caught carrying stolen wood in a cart were fined 10s for each load. The thief who happened to be a foreigner, was charged double. The charge for bushes clandestinely taken was 5s a load. Many cases show that while the man of the house worked in the fields, he would send his son, daughter, wife or servant into the Chase to gather wood. Those who bought from wood thieves were themselves fined 6s 8d. Thus Jeffery Byssetur was fined 3s 4d because his daughter was ‘a great spoiler of the wood and seller thereof; John Newman of Forty Hill, for buying wood from her, was fined 6s 8d.36 Misdemeanours on the Chase had reached such a level that a remedy was sought in the re-establishment of the former Roundhedge court.37

An order by the chancellor and council of the Duchy of Lancaster38 to revive the old court in June 1613, was read out in the parish churches of the four townships.39 The court was to be opened, with due ceremony, by the steward, the old procedure was to be observed. The bailiff should call three oyez, to command silence, while the King’s commission was read. Then with a further three oyez, the bailiff pronounced as follows ‘All manner of persons which had warning to appear here this day, or do owe suite and service to serve the King’s Majesty at this, His Highness court of Roundhedge, houlden heare this day for his Chase of Enfield, draw neere and give your attendance, and everyone answere to his name thereon’. Two juries were empannelled, one made up of the tenants of Enfield and the borderers, the other of Enfield tenants only. The foreman of the jury (old Banks had taken the precaution of securing his own appointment as foreman40) then laid his hand upon the book and swore that he would diligently enquire and make true presentment of all things given him in charge. That he would not conceal any matter for favour or fear, promise or reward, or present any matter for hatred or other sinister respect, but that he would present the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, and thereupon he kissed the book. The jurymen were then sworn, three or four at a time laying hands upon the book. After the charge given and another oyez proclaimed, the bailiff called before the steward of the court all those that had business to transact or claims to prefer, each man had to bring his deeds and writings.41

The court of Roundhedge survived for only a few years. The end came unexpectedly. It had assembled on Wednesday, 1 July (probably 1620) when a letter was delivered from Sir Fulke Greville. It stated that the King’s pleasure was that the court should be adjourned, it argued that Roundhedge was a new devised court and prejudicial to His Majesty and, though arguments were submitted denying these allegations, the Roundhedge court thereafter ceased to exist. Its business was returned to the court baron of the Manor of Enfield.42

The Story of Enfield Chase – David Pam

Until the end of his life old Banks remained a pillar of society, becoming in 1615a member of the select vestry when it was set up in Enfield to remedy, as its advocates pompously pronounced, ‘the great disorder and confusion brought about by the ignorance and weakness of judgement of great numbers of the meaner sort’ who had attended the open vestries and used their votes to the annoyance of their more wealthy and respectable neighbours.43 As the years passed, although he became aged and unfit, he obstinately clung on to his position as foreman of jury in the court of Roundhedge. At last the Duchy, complaining of his waywardness and weakness, demanded his discharge in November 1619.44 A year later the court was wound up and within two years he was dead.45 With his death, the remunerative connection with Enfield Chase of his son, and of the Howes, father and son, had alas to be severed. In the years that followed, the records of each court baron were extended by the many prosecutions of those who stole wood from the Chase.46 The most accomplished thief however was the new woodward, Francis Greene. He and his servants, John Taylor of Hadley, Richard Bostocke of Enfield, Thomas Dickson, John Grove of Hadley and Arthur Harding ravaged the western reaches of the Chase beyond the watching eyes of the Enfield verderers. Reports of this wholesale destruction at last penetrated even to the ears of the Duchy. Two local magistrates, Nicholas Rainton and Edward Nowell were commissioned to investigate. Among a number of witnesses summoned for questioning in July 1625 was Daniel Evans, a plasterer from Hadley who had been employed as under-keeper in West Bailey Walk. Details were given of nearly sixty instances of wood stealing, mostly by Greene and his men. Francis Greene, for example, was alleged to have sold many oaks and beech trees to John Browne of Potters Bar, Thomas Harriott of South Mimms, Goodman Fletcher of Hadley, Thomas Layton of Potters Bar and Mr Butcher of Hadley. The one sold to Butcher was a beech which grew on Long Hills and was one of the tallest trees that stood thereabouts. Evans found that one of the finest beeches on Cocksute Hill (Long Hills and Cocksute Hill are marked on modern OS maps north and south of Wagon Road) had been cut down at night time on the 11 January. Hoping to discover the thief, Evans had it watched night and day for a week, but he might well have saved himself the trouble, for it was only the woodward who carried it off at last and sold it to Mr Gale of Hadley. When these accusations were brought against him, Greene threw the blame onto his servants, particularly Taylor and Bostocke; they in turn retaliated by casting the responsibility entirely on Greene.

The contempt for the keeper’s authority shown by Greene and his men made life particularly difficult for Daniel Evans. He had tried to prevent Thomas Dickson from cutting down a beech, only to be told that it was done on the order of Francis Greene for Goodwife Belch of South Mimms. A few days later he found Dickson with Goodman Grome of Potters Bar. They had felled another beech in his walk and were sawing it up. Dickson brushed aside his protests, telling him that he could justify himself and, in front of the keeper’s man sold the tree to Grome for 2s lid. Richard Lawton, an ale-house keeper said that he had given Dickson sixpence and two pots of beer for a beech tree, a sale certainly not recorded by the Duchy auditor. William Clee of South Mimms recalled the time when Francis Greene with Taylor and the rest of the guardians of the Chase wood, lay a whole day and night in Johnson’s ale-house at Kitts End, ‘drinking and swaggering’ then, to meet the expense of their entertainment, they had sold a great beech tree to Robert Gibbs of Kitts End which

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The Story of Enfield Chase – David Pam had amounted to four loads of wood.

The contempt with which the keeper’s servants were treated by Greene and his crew induced in others a similar lack of respect. Daniel Evans caught William Bamford, with his brother and another man, cutting wood in the Chase at night time. When he challenged them they blatantly told him that they would be there the next night but that they would be better provided for him. Bamford was probably acting in collusion with the woodward, for Greene had been seen in his yard at a time when four or five loads of Chase wood were lying there. Evans further complained that he had found John Bunch of Mimms felling a twenty- five foot hornbeam. When he was ordered to stop, Bunch demanded to see Evans’ authority, which he then ignored and carried off the tree. Greene’s men themselves were treated no better. On one occasion John Taylor and John Gore had found Thomas Browne cutting wood in the Chase. In answer to their reprimand he informed them that he would not stop even ‘if the Lord of Salisbury did look on him’.

Young Robert Howe was still about, and had become no more discreet. He and his father were described by John Taylor as great hackers and cutters of wood. A witness told how young Howe had helped himelf to a beech tree which he afterwards sold to Goodman Winch for 10s; he then proclaimed with generous bonhommie to his more cautious neighbours; Goodman Warner, Goodman Marshall and Goodman Harriott, that trees were appointed for each of them, they had but to go and fetch them. Many of the inhabitants of South Mimms, especially from the hamlet of Kitts End, made their livings by selling Chase wood to their neighbours or in Barnet. Great damage was done by those who so severely lopped the young trees that they were caused to die.

There were others who sought to profit from the spreading chaos; one such was the messenger’s man who came down from the Duchy to join with the woodward, aiming, with his help, to squeeze money from the more vulnerable of the offenders, to fill the pockets of them both. They warned Goodman Butterfield to appear in the Duchy court on 4 March and, when he asked to know in what he had offended, the messenger’s man told him that he was accused of felling wood on the Chase and demanded 10s for his fees; ‘Then’ said he ‘you will see how well I will prosecute you.’ Goodman Butterfield, perplexed and alarmed, borrowed 5s from John Sarle and a shilling from Goodwife Huckell, and gave it to the messenger’s man. As soon as he had pocketed the money he told Butterfield that he could come to the court if he wanted to, ‘But’, he added with a crafty wink, ‘do not, for I will discharge you.’ ‘What’ cried Butterfield, ‘you will cozen me out of my money, and shall I not come to answer, to know what 1 have offended in.’

The messenger’s man next warned William Allinson who had unwarily got mixed up in a deal with one of Greene’s men, John Grove. He had stolen wood off the Chase which together they sold for sixteen pence and shared the money between them. The messenger kept Allinson a prisoner until he had been paid 6s 8d and then simply discharged him. Thomas Wager had sold three loads of wood in Barnet. The messenger’s man warned him to appear and was about to carry him off to gaol when Francis Greene, in a well-rehearsed intervention, came in and told the prisoner that he should get the messenger’s man some money. Scraping together all his resources,

The Story of Enfield Chase – David Pam he raised the 9s 2d demanded of him and, when they had his money, they discharged him. By similar devices they got 9s 2d off John Madding of Kitts End who had bought trees off the Chase from Greene himself. Madding went up to the Duchy court to answer an indictment, but his case was not called, then the messenger’s man squeezed another 14s out of him. He had a further 9s 2d off Richard Griffin and then warned Goodman Comes to appear at the Duchy court on 4 March for lending his cart to fetch two loads of wood off the Chase that were sold at Mimms Side, but after the messenger had taken 3s from him, Comes was discharged.47

A new survey of the manor and Chase of Enfield, taken in 1637,48 shows that William, Earl of Salisbury, held the offices of master of the game, chief ranger, bailiff and woodward, Sir John Ferrers was deputy ranger and Jasper Horsey deputy woodward. John West was keeper of West Bailey Walk though Charles Crosby his servant occupied the lodge. John Potter was keeper of East Bailey Walk and William Dighton keeper of South Bailey Walk. Since about 1627, it had been forbidden to pasture any sheep on the Chase,49 a ruling much resented by the commoners who complained that it was essential to keep sheep in order to manure their arable lands. They pleaded that they should be allowed to revert to the former ruling whereby they could feed their sheep on the edge of the Chase, within a quarter of a mile of the boundary fence.

The survey shows that the village was still expanding. Forty-six new cottages had been built since 1615, a number of which were encroachments on theChase. William Pavy had once gained a livelihood by begging in a hole near Hadley windmill. He had built himself a cottage over the hole where he now sold ale without a licence. The pest house which had been put up by the parish on the edge of the Chase near Enfield (Chase Green) during the previous great visitation of the plague in 1625, being of three rooms, now housed three families.

These cottages were presented at the Duchy court as being illegally built and the King’s pleasure was signified, by the steward of the manor, that the cottagers should have ‘a convenient time to remove themselves and to dispose themselves otherwhere, and that their cottages should be pulled down and razed to the ground’. Two years later it was found that the injunction had not been complied with. Thereupon it was ordered that the inmates should have until the end of September (about seven months) to pull down their own cottages (being allowed as a concession to sell the building materials), but they were warned that if they failed to obey, their cottages would be demolished.50 Despite all these elaborate orders it was necessary for the Commissioners for Newly Erected Cottages to visit the area. They sat at the Bull in Tottenham from where they sent for the Enfield cottagers, a journey of five to six miles each way. Thomas Mousedale was a labourer living on the edge of the Chase by the New River. He had built his cottage for himself twelve years earlier and had lived there ever since. He told the commissioners that it was in such a bad state that it could fall down at any time. They informed him that, for 3s 6d, he could compound, and this would give him the right to build it up again. Thereupon nine cottagers each handed over 3s 6d; twelve pence for the making of a bond binding them to pay 20s on 22 May and 2s 6d for the Barons of the Exchequer. After taking the cottagers’ money the Commissioners informed them that they had only compounded for the past, whereupon Thomas Mousedale replied that he was sorry

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The Story of Enfield Chase – David Pam he had paid them anything.51 Such treatment may account for the unpopularity of King Charles among the poor in the parish of Enfield.

Footnotes: John Banks the Bailiff

1 DL.41.13.17 2 Enfield DG179 3 P. D. Glennie. The Development of Theobalds Park ... 1560-1670. Thesis 1979. 4 SP14.66.77, SP14.66.63 P. D. Glennie. The Development of Theobalds Park... 1560- 1670. Thesis 1979,p24. 5 CP130.42 6 The Kings Works V.4, Pt 2. Glennie op cit 24 7 Quoted in G. P. V. Akrigg. Jacobean pageant. pl9. 8 SP14.25 9 CP102.165 10 CPI 10.158 11 DL5.23.955, 959 12 DL5.24.255 13 Cal Sal MS. Vol 17, pll. 14 DL4.53.73 15 DL5.24.388 16 CP.l 11.118 17 CP191.63 18 DL41.16.12 19 DL4.53.74 20 DL5.24.255 21 DL41.16.12 22 DL41.16.12, DL41.3.17 23 DL41.3.17 24 DL5.24.174 26 DL5.24.622, 630 27 DL5.26.38 28 DL43.7.7 29 DL41.3.17 30 DL5.24.832, 879 31 Deputy to John West at West Bailey Walk 32 DL4I.3.17 33 DL5.27.63, 98, 115 34 DL5.27.131 35 DL.4.63.58 36 CP Gen. 67.21 37 DL41.3.17 38 DL5.25.777 39 Cal Sal MS. 11 Sep 1613 40 DL5.28.218 41 CP Gen.118.4 42 CP Gen. 67.9 43 BM Harl. 2176 44 DL5.28.218

The Story of Enfield Chase – David Pam

45 Guildhall 9171.24.73 46 eg SC2.188.56 47 DL41.3.17 48 DL43.7.8 49 The date from later evidence DL5.38.18 50 DL5.32.273b 51 SP16.392.3

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Chapter Five: Civil War and Interregnum

There is no doubt that in 1640 the sympathy of the yeomen and minor gentlemen in Enfield lay with the Parliament against the King. It is shown in their reluctance to pay Coat and Conduct money by which King Charles hoped to finance a new offensive aainst the Covenanters in Scotland. In Enfield only £14 was paid of the £44 demanded.

The assertion made by many of the taxpayers that they had no money cannot be taken seriously. Robert Baldwyn for instance asked to pay only 8s refused, yet in 1643 he was assessed to be worth £2,000 and paid £26 to the county treasurer to meet in full and in cash the demands of Parliament. Robert Franklyn asked for 8s also declared that he had no money, yet he was assessed in 1643 to be worth £1,500 and paid the treasurer £25. John Loft who could not find 4s for the King’s cause had no difficulty two years later in finding that amount for the 'poor distressed Protestants in Ireland’. He also paid £4 to the county treasurer that same year. The replies of many others were less direct and more legalistic, but still they did not pay. The wealthy John Wilford sent word by the headborough 'that he doth not deny payment (15s) so it may appear lawful’, but no money was forthcoming from him. Twenty-nine others in the parish met the tax collector with the same words and all refused to pay. Even the holders of offices under the Crown, Charles Crosby keeper of Old Park and West Bailey Walk, John Smith keeper of Little Park, Dighton at South Lodge and Potter at East Lodge, as well as the woodward, all denied payment on the grounds that their offices exempted them. Yet within twenty years there were many in the parish calling for the restoration of Charles Stuart.

The civil war broke out in August 1642. By November the King’s army had approached as near as Brentford, and Parliamentary troops were billeted in the parishes around Enfield Chase.1 The overturning of long established authority made men believe that the law might now be broken. Many deer were killed in parks which belonged to the King; in Theobalds Park, Old Park, Little Park and Enfield Chase. The House of Commons, anxious to protect the properties, ordered the keepers to apply for help from the commander of a troop of horse stationed at Tottenham. A number of the deer stealers were arrested and sent to the Fleet.2 . . The turbulence of the time gave rise to new notions of right in men like Robert Pitchley of Winchmore Hill who, when he was caught cutting down a beech tree in the middle of the night, asserted that he had as much power to fell the woods in the Chase as the woodward himself. So seriously did Parliament take the wood stealing that in the autumn of 1643, four local men; Richard Flowood, George Clipson, Thomas Porter and Richard Clarke, were arrested and brought to the bar of the House of Lords, where they were committed to the Fleet and held there for a week. Determined to put a stop to the mass thieving of fuel, the House ordered the local constables to give every assistance to John Butcher, the woodward, to make a thorough search in order to recover the stolen wood. On 13 November, taking with him John White, the high constable and Robert Waters, a petty constable in Edmonton, he set out with three of his servants, a horse and a cart, determined to Chapter Six: The Return of King Charles search the houses and yards at Winchmore Hill. This remote hamlet lay on the edge of the Chase in the western half of the parish of Edmonton. The inhabitants were mostly poor. The men found employment for part of the year as wood-cutters, wood- choppers, peelers-of-bark and sawyers, in the coppice woods among which they lived; their women earned money making brooms, hurdles and in other woodcraft trades. The arrival in this little hamlet of the woodward and the constables, met with hostility. The villagers gathered from the woods and cottages until there had assembled a crowd of forty or fifty men, armed with bills, axes and staves, and resolved that no search should be made. The constables first ordered then pleaded with them to disperse, but with no effect, and as the woodward and his servants moved to carry out their investigations, they were assaulted and beaten, their horse was injured and the harness cut. Named as the leaders and instigators were Robert Pitch ley (the man with strange notions of his rights), Francis Warley, Robert Warley, Richard Abell, John Darbvshire, John Morewood and a man named Babbs. On the order of the Upper House, Robert Pitchley was sentenced to Bridewell, where he lay for more than a month. According to the woodward and his men, there had been trouble with Pitchley over many years, he had always lived by stealing wood from the Chase, and they had never known him to work for a living.1

There was trouble in Old Park the following March, when a number of Edmonton men broke in, armed with bills and long clubs and openly, in front of the keeper Charles Crosby, cut down and carried away the trees. When Crosby’s servants attempted to intervene, they threatened to knock down the park pales and to pull the keeper out of his lodge by his ears. Crosby and his servants could name but five of the wood stealers; Thomas and Edward Garrett, Peter Hawkins, Moses Beasely and William Smith. The Upper House ordered the gentleman usher to arrest the miscreants and to bring them to the bar of the House.4 About the same time Enfield men of a somewhat higher social status; Thomas Cope gentleman, with Thomas Bailey, William Edmondes and Geoffrey Assell all yeomen, broke into Theobalds Park armed with bows and arrows and other apparatus and killed and carried away two stags worth £5.5

Murmurings were beginning to be heard among the poor against the Parliament. In June 1644, Richard Mason of South Mimms was accused of speaking ‘very approbrious words’ against His Excellency the Earl of Essex.6 The following year, Mark Istleberry, also of South Mimms, was indicted at quarter sessions for having declared before many people ‘That the Parliament do maintain none but a company of rogues’. Although there were a number of witnesses to affirm that these were his very words, the jury found him not guilty; notwithstanding their verdict he was held in prison until he could produce good sureties for his future behaviour.7 Thomas Fellow had to answer before quarter sessions for calling Henry Hoare ‘a round headed rogue’, after which he declared defiantly, but somewhat obscurely, to the bystanders, ‘I would the roundheads would rise, we should Find as many partakers as they shall. I will spend the dearest bloud I have against the roundheads’.8 But he must have been drunk.

The stealing of wood continued unabated, as is shown in the surviving Manor rolls The roll for May 1645, for instance, shows thirty Enfield men fined forthis offence as well as five from Edmonton and eight from East Barnet.9 The court baron for the year 1646 is again full of the names of men prosecuted for stealing wood on the

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The Story of Enfield Chase – David Pam

Chase; twenty-one from Enfield, twelve from Edmonton, four from East Barnet and seven from Hadley.10 Because of the size and open nature of the Chase the deer there were particularly vulnerable in troubled times. There had been 3 473 deer there in 1633,11 there now remained only 1,548. Old Park, being much smaller was more easily protected, and the stock there remained at about two hundred. In Theobalds Park too, encompassed by its high brick wall, the numbers had diminished less, from 1,424 to 1,229.12

The civil war put firearms into the hands of the lower classes and taught them how to use them. By the year 1649, the deer stealers on Enfield Chase carried guns powder and bullets. That year, which saw the execution of the King in January was particularly disturbed; those involved in the disturbances came mostly from among the very poor. Bread was dear and many suffered. In January the Thames was frozen; the intense heat of June bred violence. On the sixteenth of that month fifteen local men broke into West Bailey Walk in search of venison Ralph Potter, now keeper there, in an attempt to arrest them, was beaten and badly injured. Some of his assailants had been members of the gang which a few years earlier, had raided Old Park. Those named were Anthony Brown a husbandman, Henry Farrier a cordwainer, Thomas Soales a cooper, Peter Hawkins a butcher, John le Weaver a weaver, and John Edwards a tailor. The others were all labourers, Robert Warley, Robert Abell, Robert Beasley, Edward Deane, Thomas Brown, Moses Beasley, Richard Wharton, Richard Studham and another Robert Beasley, commonly known as Long Robert. The Earl of Salisbury complained to the government but the only advice given to him was to proceed against the offenders himself, at the next quarter sessions. Soon afterwards four other Enfield labourers, Ralph Cason, Zachariah Coleman, John Bull Nicholas Wheeler and two yeomen, Robert Norris and George Burrell were taken for killing deer on Enfield Chase. All of them carried firearm's. Two other Enfield men broke into Theobalds Park in September and killed a stag and a doe. Early in December ten poor men, mostly labourers but including a wagoner and a shoemaker, from Hadley and South Minims, were brought before quarter sessions for stealing deer. Again the unfortunate Ralph Potter had been injured as he attempted to intervene. The man named as ringleader was Benjamin Buckingham, a wheelwright from Hadley.13

There is reason to believe that at this time the Diggers had spread their activities into the area. The evidence comes to light through a note attached to a declaration issued in May 1650 by poor squatters on the commons at Iver. It proclaims

Why we, the poor inhabitants of the parish of Iver in Buckinghamshire have begun to dig and manure the common waste land.

In the margin of this broadside it is stated in contemporary handwriting:

They (the Diggers) are at work at Barnet and at Enfield and there they are resolved (that) if they will not let them plant and build, they will leave them (presumably the churchwardens and overseers) in Barnet, seven children, and at Enfield, nine children. They were better leave them than starve them, and themselves too ... we hear that they are going to build in many counties and are resolved to pay no more rent, things are so dear they cannot.14

Chapter Six: The Return of King Charles

Soon after the execution of Charles I in January 1649, a committee had been set up by the House of Commons to bring in an act to empower commissioners to take over and survey the parks, forests, chases and manors belonging to the Crown and the Duchy of Lancaster, and subsequently to dispose of them. A speedy sale was needed in order to provide funds to meet serious arrears in army pay. The act was passed on 16 July. The commissioners now set up a court of survey for the Manor and Chase of Enfield and empanelled a jury to hear all claims. To the very serious annoyance of the commoners of Edmonton, South Mimms and Hadley it was made up entirely of tenants of the Manor of Enfield. The claims of the commoners were fully set out and allowed on 29 August 1650. The surveyors then listed ninteen cottages and tenements built upon the Chase without licence from the Lord of the Manor. Six stood between Enfield gate (Church Street) and Parsons gate (Parsonage Lane) while there were others at Hadley, Potters Bar, Coopers Lane and Whitewebbs. A windmill and a bowling green are recorded near Hadley, and there was a brick kiln on the Chase in the possession of Thomas Cordell. The Enfield pest house, standing in its little garden, was not brought to account because it was said to be still kept against a recurrence of plague in the village.15 It remained standing on Chase Green until it was demolished in 1910.

The Chase was stated to contain 7,922 acres, excluding the lodges but including other encroachments. The timber trees other than those marked for the use of the Navy, numbered 2,500 and were worth on average £1 each. In addition the hornbeam and other wood was valued at £12,500. There now remained only a hundred and fifty deer.16 No decision however was taken in 1650 to sell Enfield Chase and the survey lay in abeyance. Old Park, Theobalds Park and the three lodges on the Chase were to be sold at once.

The lodge at Old Park was occupied by Charles Crosby, the underkeeper. The survey described it as constructed of timber and Flemish wall and roofed with tile. It consisted of two small courts, east and west of an entrance with a hall, parlour, closet, cellar, pantry, kitchen and brewhouse. On the first floor, above the hall, parlour and kitchen, was a wainscotted dining room, seven small chambers and four closets. On the far side of the courtyards lay the buttery, kitchen, cheese-house and milk-house and over them were three small chambers open to the roof. Below the house was a cellar. Two barns, two stables, a coachhouse, cart-house and a cow- house were all thatched. There were two gardens and a small orchard. The park contained 553 acres, 478 in Enfield and 74 in Edmonton.17 Charles Crosby held the office of underkeeper for life by a patent of 15 September 1636; he had paid £400 for the office. The park contained over seven thousand fine old trees of oak and hornbeam, some of great size, together with an unspecified number of smaller trees, hornbeam, whitethorn and maple. They were valued in all at £1,762 excluding the 397 trees marked for use by the Navy. Coneys (rabbits) were valued at £15 and there were some fifty deer, worth £45 said to be as often in the Chase as in the Park. The annual value was calculated to be £343 10s 6d. The estate was sold for £7,519 19s 6d. to Griffith I loyd formerly Captain Lloyd, who had commanded a troop of horse in the regiment of Colonel Charles Fleetwood. The purchase money was paid by means of a hundred and sixteen debentures on the pay of soldiers in that regiment, but none were in his own name.11'

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The Story of Enfield Chase – David Pam

Figure 2: Old Park Lodge

Theobalds Park was valued at £1,549 a year, and the price, calculated at sixteen years purchase, was £24,784. In addition the deer and the materials of the house were said to be worth £2,596, and the timber, excluding 6,211 trees marked and reserved for the Navy, was valued at £8,489; thus the price arrived at was £35 873.19 The transaction to sell the three lodges on the Chase took less than twelve months. Potters Lodge, or West Lodge, was a brick and tile structure of three storeys with out-buildings and a small garden plot. Enclosed to the lodge were 85 acres valued at £86 5s a year; there were 662 trees growing there valued at £131. It was purchased by John Nelthrop, the adjutant general, for £1,494. Payment was made in debentures, more than half of which represented his own back pay, the remainder he had purchased from officers in Colonel Twistleton’s regiment of horse.20 Charles Whitehead purchased Dighton’s or South Lodge for £904, also paying in debentures, some £300 representing his own pay as cornet and quartermaster, the remainder mostly made up by other debentures which he had purchased from troopers in Colonel Harrison’s regiment of horse. The lodge was described as constructed of brick, timber and Flemish wall, with an orchard and garden ‘meanly planted’. It had 58 acres enclosed on which there grew seven hundred and thirty-five trees.21 Norris Lodge or East Lodge was of timber and Flemish wall roofed with tile, of one storey and a garret high. It had the usual outbuildings and a garden planted with fruit trees. Thirty-eight acres were enclosed and there were only seventy-three trees standing. It was sold to Arthur Evelyn for £712, over £300 represented his own back pay as adjutant general of horse, the remainder was in debentures on the pay of a certain Captain Gerald Barbourne.22

Through the takeover of the King’s properties, William, the second Earl of Salisbury had sustained considerable losses. He had lost the right as lord of the Manor

Chapter Six: The Return of King Charles of South Mimms, to claim for himself and his tenants, common on the lands sold out of Enfield Chase. He had lost the profits of all his offices on the Chase and his interests in Theobalds House and Park, and in Cheshunt Park. Compensation was considered by a committee of the House of Commons and the Earl was awarded £5,360 18s 4d.21

In November 1652 another proposal was put before the House for the sale of Hyde Park, Enfield Chase, Hampton Court, Bushey Park, the houses and lands at Greenwich, Windsor Castle and Somerset House, but it was defeated by thirty-four votes to nineteen and the matter was referred to a committee.24 Meanwhile in Enfield the destruction of the wood went on apace. In an attempt to put a stop to it forty people were arrested between 27 January and 5 February 1653.2i A year later it was reported to the Council of State that wood to the value of at least £2,000 had been destroyed.26

Figure 3: West Lodge

An order in Council was made 30 August 16 5 4 27 that a third part of Enfield Chase should be sold for ready money towards meeting the arrears of army pay, but it was two years before commissioners were appointed to survey the Chase and to hear and determine the rights of the commoners and others who held priviledges there.

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Figure 4: East Lodge

Figure 5: South Lodge

Local opposition to the enclosure remained strong and army officers in the area were instructed to provide support to the commissioners upon demand. Pressure was put upon the commoners to induce them to agree to terms which would serve the interests of the prospective purchasers and thus the expedition of the sale. The inhabitants complained that they were forced to make their claims within forty

Chapter Six: The Return of King Charles days,28 but the proceedings were then dragged out over many months during which time they were faced with the considerable expense, and the trouble, of repeated attendances at hearings. Because they persisted in their opposition, it was further alleged, military officers took away the goods of some of the commoners and beat and wounded others and their servants.29

Before the commission could complete its work however, a Parliament was called. Many of the members elected (especially in the south-east of the country) were hostile to the military, and in consequence they were disqualified from sitting. This Parliament set up a committee to consider the deforestation of the forests of Needwood, Kingswood, Ashdown and Enfield Chase (still pursuant to the ordinance of 30 August 1654). The prosecutors of enclosure realising that they would not automatically get the consent of even this hand-sieved Parliament, made the false assertion to this committee that they already had the consent of the Enfield commoners to their proposals. Thus orders were agreed upon in Parliament in September 1656 for the survey of the forests named, and detailed instructions were printed the following year.10 The former commissioners on behalf of the prosecutors of enclosure were reappointed and Sir Richard Lucy, John Barns, Paul Nichol, Henry Marsh and Mr Wilford of Hadley were named on behalf of the commoners. Sir Richard Lucy and Henry Marsh refused to act, a like reluctance among the others was overcome by threats. All of them were convinced, it was said, that the commoners would not be treated with justice. Matters concerning the deforestation of Enfield Chase which could not be agreed among the commissioners were to be referred to a jury to be chosen from sixty persons selected out of the freeholders book for Middlesex; no juror was to have a direct interest in the Chase. Where the commissioners were unable to assent to the judgement of this jury, the issue was to be submitted to a committee of appeal appointed by Parliament. The commissioners were to ascertain the yearly value of the land and the value of the wood and timber growing there. They were to employ a clerk at 5s a day and a messenger at 3s, they were to hire labourers to carry the chains and other instruments, and were not to pay them more than Is 6d a day.

The survey of the Chase, begun in September 1656, was not completed until November 1658, and by this time Oliver Cromwell was dead. The surveyors, John Boynton, Hugh Webb, Edmund Rolfe and Nicholas Gunton had spared no pains. Their survey begins with an outline of the history, which recalls that the Manor and Chase of Enfield were anciently in the possession of Geoffrey de Mandeville in the reign of William the Conqueror, whose ‘seat and habitation, at that time called Camelot, was situated on the Chase near unto Potters Lodge, the ruins whereof are yet remaining, and being moated, is this day called Camelot Moat’. Thus they repeated an ancient local legend which persists even into the late twentieth century, and has yet to be adequately explained. They traced the descent of the Manor and Chase to Henry IV and thence to its annexation to the Duchy of Lancaster. The history is followed by a detailed perambulation beginning at the ‘Park gate by the pound’, which would have been at the west end of what is now Church Street, and returning to the same point along the Woodside (now Chase Side Enfield).

The area was calculated at 7,900 acres, excluding 186 acres enclosed to the three lodges already sold, and nine acres made up of small encroachments

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around the perimeter of the Chase. There remained 1,390 old decaying oaks and 96,000 beeches, hornbeams and other trees. The surveyors measured and valued all the small encroachments and the cottages and barns put up upon them. By a somewhat abstract calculation, they worked out the claim to be made on behalf of the state. As proprietors of the soil, they would be entitled to a quarter of the total

Chapter Six: The Return of King Charles area, which would amount to 1,975 acres. Deducted from the whole (7,900 acres) this would leave 5,925 acres. They held then that the King, and consequently the Commonwealth, ought to have at least a half interest in the 5,925 acres, which would leave 2,962‘/2 acres to be shared among the commoners. ‘Yet, so that the state might enjoy their proportion without reluctancy’ on the part of the commoners, said the commissioners optimistically, they would offer them a greater allowance. They offered in fact one hundred acres more.

The four parishes, in evidence before the court of survey, claimed all the rights that they had held in the time of the Tudors as though no restrictions had ever been imposed by King James and King Charles. The commissioners however were not easily deceived. They pointed out for instance that stakes and bushes for fencing had been free only to those whose fences bordered on the Chase, and even this now had no further justification since all the deer had been destroyed. Nor did they accept that the commoners had the right to pasture sheep without restriction. They referred to the records to show that many sheep had been impounded and their owners imprisoned in the time of King James.

In general however they accepted that occupiers of ancient houses in Enfield, Edmonton and Hadley had rights for which they should receive compensation, but they took learned and misconceived exception to the claims of the commoners from South Mimms, quoting in Latin from ancient manuscripts to show that the claims made by that parish were without foundation. The matter was therefore taken before the jury at Hicks Hall where the erudite arguments of the commissioners made no impression whatever. The tenants of Enfield were offered 1,260 acres of Chase land in lieu of their common rights, Edmonton tenants 824‘/2 acres, Hadley 220 acres; to each of these proposals Barns, Nichol and Wilford declined to agree. As for South Mimms, the commissioners merely stated the facts on which compensation should be assessed and reiterated their view that the tenants of that parish were entitled to none. Notwithstanding the Council offered 820 acres.30

The proposals not having been accepted by the commissioners representing the commoners, the matter was submitted to arbitration and the areas awarded to each parish were marginally increased.31

Acres Roods Enfield Parish and Old Park 1,329 2 Edmonton Parish 917 0 Hadley Parish 240 0 South Mimms and Old Fold 913 0 Total to the commoners 3,339 2 Total to the state 4,500 2 7,900

The boundaries of the new allotments were drawn upon a map and marked out upon the ground.32 None of the wood growing upon the parish commons was to be left for the benefit of the inhabitants. It was valued by the surveyors and one third was assigned for immediate sale; the purchasers were to cut and carry it away before 2 November 1659. Only the bushes were to be left upon the commons.33

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Other houses and estates made separate claims. Old Fold was allowed 65 acres, and 33 acres was to be added to Old Park. William Hall and Stephen Venables made a claim for Whitewebbs which was disallowed, though their grant of a conduit house and watercourse on the Chase, originally made by Queen Elizabeth to Doctor Huick, was confirmed, as was Edmund Kiddermister’s claim to retain his two bush fairs on the Chase near Southgate.34

Thus a third of the land assigned to the state, amounting to 1,500 acres, and a third of all the wood growing on Enfield Chase, came at once on to the market for disposal. The arrival of the new owners was met by protests and complaints which grew ever more acrimonious. It was alleged that the wood was being sold at such low rates that even those that bought it had admitted that they had been able to buy for £ 15 what was worth £100. It was said that while out on the Chase, the workmen employed by the new owners had dug up and carried away great quantities of turf and soil particularly from those areas which had been reserved as commons. It was a particular cause of concern, especially to the poor, that the new commons would not be able now to maintain a tenth part of the cattle which had formerly been kept on the Chase.

Most of the purchasers of the land were high ranking officers of the army, like John Nelthrop the adjutant general, Colonel Joyce, Colonel Eyre, Captain Kempe and Colonel William Webb the surveyor general. The others were a Mr Ramsbotham, Mr Lowry a Scotsman, one Rice a button maker, Justinian Paggit a justice of the peace, Humphrey Yerbury a soldier and Edward Randall a smith.35 This Randall, the only local man among them, was much mistrusted and disliked for, when he had held the office of parish constable a couple of years earlier, he had been prosecuted and fined at quarter sessions for accepting a large bribe from Edward Storey, a suspected delinquent. But it was not this that brought upon him the hatred of the villagers, it was the fact that he had been subsequently pardoned and the fine restored to him by Barkstead, the major general in charge of Middlesex.36 It was a great cause of scandal that these army officers had paid for the land in debentures (promises to pay at some future date which the state had issued to all ranks in lieu of cash) which they had bought from poor soldiers, in need of ready money, at as little as Is 6d to 2s 6d in the pound.

Resentment escalated into violence around mid-summer 1659 when the commoners destroyed the ditches and hedges around the new enclosures and put their cattle in upon the growing corn. The new proprietors were forced to send for troops of horse and men to protect their property. When the troops arrived, according to witnesses from Enfield, they were regaled with wine and strong beer and provided with money; thus primed they fell upon the inhabitants, knocking down innocent men and bystanders and slashing them with their swords. It was reported that they had even attacked a party of poor labourers coming home from their work at night. Subsequently the new owners had complained to a justice against the very people that they had caused to be assaulted. Some of those accused were sent for, and threatened that they would be transported to dig tobacco in the Barbadoes if they refused to give evidence about the disturbances. Under this threat a few of them broke down and made statements against their neighbours who were summoned to Hicks Hall and indicted by Kempe and Randall. The jury, on the grounds

Chapter Six: The Return of King Charles that the evidence was unreliable and insufficient, refused at first to find them guilty, whereupon Mr Justice Hobart, sitting on the bench, forced the jury to go back and ordered them to find the bill of indictment. The jury, under this pressure, found against some of the accused.

The commoners retaliated by bringing an indictment for riot against Captain Kempe, Yerbury and one Laurence Hogg. Though the indictment was found against them and warrants for their apprehension were issued by Justices Powell and Bradshaw, Justice Hobert called to see the warrants and tore them to pieces. On 1 June the president of the Council wrote to three local justices, Justinian Pagitt, John Huxley and Edwin Rich, informing them of the concern of the Council on hearing that ‘a rude multitude’ from Enfield Town had broken down the hedges and ditches of the new enclosures and were threatening to throw down the houses. He ordered them to suppress the tumult and to use all means to protect the owners. He further stated that the Council had assigned two troops of horse to be stationed in the neighbourhood to be at the disposal of the justices for the preservation of peace. Within a week however, because the Council had received fresh complaints of outrages, the president wrote to ask why no proceedings against the offenders were being undertaken; this he said, encouraged more riots. He demanded action to suppress all unlawful violence and to punish the offenders.17

Times were out of joint, there were widespread rumours of rebellion and indeed Booth’s abortive attempt to overthrow the government took place a few weeks later. The commoners, said one witness, were making wild and dangerous assertions in a way that might well instigate an insurrection. Absurd claims were made that they could call upon ten thousand out of Essex and ten thousand out of Hertfordshire to come to their assistance, and that they would burn down the houses of the purchasers.18 The stubborn anger spreading throughout the community was matched by the frustration of the owners. Following the end of the sessions of peace, Lt Colonel Allen hired more foot soldiers who came down, without warrant from their commanders, and shot and killed a number of sheep belonging to the commoners, some of which they had the audacity to carry back to their quarters, where they were cooked and eaten. They also shot valuable cows and horses with muskets charged with stones and bullets. The commoners declared that they dared not go into the Chase to seek their cattle for fear of Yerbury and others of his confederates, who went armed with swords and pistols and threatened them with violence.

In a further endeavour to intimidate the commoners, the hired soldiers came right into the Town of Enfield, where they challenged the inhabitants to come out and fight. Calling them rogues and cowards, they threatened to burn their houses over their heads. On 10 July the proprietors sent for redcoats and greycoats from Barnet. Some of them, it was said, were so drunk after spending the morning (throughout sermon time) in the public houses there, that as they came a little way out of Hadley, two of them, in a reckless manner, discharged their muskets towards the village to the great peril of people walking upon the common.

So says the story of the events of that day related in a pamphlet entitled ‘A relation of the cruelties and barbarous murders committed by some foot soldiers upon the inhabitants of Enfield’. Its author continues that the troopers, being hired for sixpence

74

The Story of Enfield Chase – David Pam a day more than their ordinary pay, and under the command of a sergeant, were billeted at Lt Colonel Allen’s house. From there they proceeded to Ramsbotham’s house, half a mile away, where they were met by Randall and Rice. One of these two suggested that the soldiers should shoot three or four of the townsmen. Then, he promised, they would hear no more of the commoners’ rights and claims. These soldiers now marched on Enfield Town where they were met by twenty-five of the inhabitants bearing cudgels, mattaxes, axes and two forks. The military put themselves in rank and order, armed as they were with muskets loaded with chawed bullets and stones, and swords and pistols. The sergeant refused an offer to parley and gave the order to fire. One Enfield man was killed and many others were wounded, but the commoners were not put to flight. They attacked, rounded the soldiers, and took ten of them prisoner. These were taken under guard to Enfield Town and brought before Mr Justice Rich who consigned the captives to Newgate. The remainder of the soldiers fled. Many Enfield people, it was said, were so badly wounded that they were expected to die.

The report of the incidents of this 11 July issued on behalf of the proprietors, is so much at variance with the story as told by the commoners, that I feel it would be better to give both versions, not only to avoid possible accusations of bias which might be made against the author, but to allow the reader to seek the truth according to his own particular predilections. Thirty private soldiers, said the proprietors, had been selected out of Colonel Sydenham’s regiment, three from each company under a sergeant of that regiment. They marched out to Enfield Chase to protect the corn growing on the new enclosures from further damage by the ‘rude people of Enfield and places adjacent’ and to drive off the commoners’ cattle. When they reached the Chase they divided into two parties of fifteen and were proceeding in an orderly manner about their business when a great horde of countryfolk, one version states a hundred and sixty, another two hundred and fifty (the Enfield version twenty-five) came upon them armed with pitchforks, axes and long scythes, and bearing poles which they pitched into the ground, with colours flying from the top, ‘making great shouts and declaring for Charles Stewart’.

Two soldiers sent by the sergeant to parley were beaten to the ground. In the fight which followed the countrymen fought with such inveterate fury and violence that some of the troops were forced to retreat. Many were wounded, including the sergeant who was ‘run through the thigh with a half pike, cut in the head and wounded in the body’. Only after an hour’s fighting, with their powder and bullets spent, wounded and exhausted, did the troops surrender. The dead were borne from the battlefield, two Enfield men and one woman. Nine soldiers and the sergeant, their wounds still bleeding, were dragged off to Enfield Town where they were beaten about the face and treated ‘as barbarously as ever the Irish rebels treated any Englishman’, and there, by Mr Justice Rich, they were committed to Newgate. Yet Mr Rich took no course whatever to suppress or punish those taking part in the insurrection. These, enraged by their casulaties and encouraged by their success, that same day fell upon the enclosures, set fire to the hedges, burnt up stacked wood, cut down a barn, demolished houses and in their fury tore down and burnt whatever they could find belonging to the new owners. And now said the purchasers (24 July) they have had the confidence to come with a petition to Parliament and boast of their reception in the Commons, declaring that they have more friends in Parliament than the army officers. Neither Parliament nor the Council of State had

Chapter Six: The Return of King Charles yet made any special order to suppress these insurrections. The commoners were gloating that the House would take no action to help the purchasers, and would refuse to confirm the sale of Chase land. The commoners had issued a notice of this in writing, and it was triumphantly read out on the Sunday in St Andrew’s Church in Enfield and in the other local churches.39

The incident was investigated by a court martial held on 15 July,40 where it was ordered that a number of high ranking officers should attend the commander-in- chief and desire him to intercede with the Council and Parliament so that measures could be taken to set at liberty the soldiers committed to Newgate. In the meantime the House heard the two petitions, one from the commoners and inhabitants of Enfield, Edmonton and Hadley and another from the purchasers of part of Enfield Chase. The latter was full of anger and frustration, ending with something between a plea and a threat. They required to know why the soldiers remained incarcerated in Newgate while not one of the rioters had been punished, and they demanded that Mr Rich and Mr Huxley should be removed from the commission of peace for their favour shown to the rioters. Both petitions were discreetly referred to a committee concerned with the Forest of Dean, but a few days later the soldiers were released from Newgate into the custody of the marshall general, and the House ordered that all lorce and disturbance of the peace be forborn until the matter was decided in Parliament. Though this order was read out in the parish church of Enfield and in the neighbouring parish churches on the following Sunday, the strife did not cease, and that same afternoon Yerbury and others of his confederates, beat and wounded some Edmonton men and killed a mare belonging to them. The insolencies of the soldiers and purchasers, declared the commoners, have shocked the country. ‘If these bloody deeds against their paymasters be suffered to go unpunished, who shall live safe? Who shall know what is their own? and who can be encouraged to maintain soldiers any longer?’

Finally the House required the sheriff and the justices for the county of Middlesex to take strong action to prevent further riots on Enfield Chase. They were to report to Parliament what measures they had taken. Military officers in the area were ordered to provide help when asked. On 21 July the House was informed by the speaker that the sheriff and justices of the peace for the county of Middlesex were at the door of the chamber. With due ceremony they were ushered in and came forward to the bar of the House to be heard and to deliver a written account of their investigations. The House ordered that they proceed in the preservation of peace and the punishment of offenders about Enfield.40 In October troops under Lambert blockaded the House of Commons, turned back the Speaker from the door, and dissolved the Rump. The country was thrown into chaos out of which order was finally restored by an army under General George Monk who brought about the restoration of Charles II.

Footnotes: Civil War and Interregnum

1 D. O. Pam. The Rude multitude: Enfield and the Civil War. 2 HLJ 5.597a, 5.609A 3 HLJ 6.244b, 306b, 328a, 328b, 364. 4 HLJ 6.470b 5 Cal Middlesex Sessions Rolls 4Aug 1643

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6 ibid 3 June 1643 7 ibid 30 March 1644 8 ibid 24 July 1644 9 SC2.188.62 10 SC2.188.63 11 CP Gen. 1.22 12 CP Gen.1.39 13 Cal Middx Sess Rolls, 25 May 1649, 15 July 1649, 18 July 1649 Sessions Rolls 1034.214, 221 SP25.I94.248 14 Past and Present 1949.42.64-5. 15 E3I7 Middlesex 17, 17A 16 ibid 17 E317 Middx 18, 18 E121.3.4.9, 19 E121.5.7.14 20 E121.3.4.87, E320L.42 21 E121.3.4.71, E317 Middx 20, E320L32 22 E121.3.4.70, E320.L29 23 Cal Sal MS. p420^123 24 HCJ 7.222 25 HCJ 19 Feb 1652/3 26 SP 18.71.63, SP 25.75.295 27 Acts and Ordinances of the Interregnum 2.997 28 SP18.128.53, 54 29 BM. A Relation of the cruelties and barbarous murders... committed by some foot soldiers . . . upon . . . inhabitants of Enfield . . . 1659 30 CUL Dd IX.27 31 DL41.96.4f.] 32 ibid f2. 33 CUL Dd IX.27 34 ibid 35 A Relation of the cruelties and barbarous murders . . . 1659, p4 36 CSPD Commonwealth 10.384,SP25.78.44-5 37 SP25.98.10 38 BM. A relation of the riotous insurrection of divers inhabitants of Enfield. 39 BM. Bloody news from Enfield BM. The Relation of the riotous insurrection of divers inhabitants of Enfield 1659 40 HCJ 7.721, 722, 726.

Chapter Six: The Return of King Charles

The return of King Charles to London at the end of May 1660 was greeted with rejoicing throughout England. Within each county and each parish however, many matters remained to be settled. Confusion on Enfield Chase was augmented by the unconcerned generosity of the monarch who had granted away the offices to a profusion of applicants. Now former office holders re- emerged to demand re- establishment, each ardently asserting his former loyalty to Charles I and his long- standing hatred of the usurpers.

In recognition of his great service in seating King Charles on the throne of his late father, General George Monk was created Duke of Albermarle and offered properties and offices to the value of £7,000 a year. They included the manors of Theobalds, Crossbrooks, Periors and Beaumonts, all in Cheshunt; the Park and Palace of Theobalds, Cheshunt Park, Enfield Old Park and Enfield Chase. It is fortunate that he was able to forego acceptance of this latter for there were other claimants.1

The offices of ranger and keeper were claimed by William, Earl of Salisbury,2 who had held them from 1622 until dispossessed in the last years of the Interregnum, but he was out of favour at the new court, for his conduct during the civil war had been less than entirely loyal to Charles 1.1 he offices had been offered by the King, while he was abroad, to Charles, Lord Gerard, Baron Brandon, but the King in exile had also granted, with little thought of future complications, the keepership of West Bailey Walk and the offices of bailiff and woodward of the Chase, to Captain Thomas and Henry Batt. This he should not have done, for these offices were already encompassed in the grant to Gerard.

By the time Albermarie had relinquished his option, and a grant for thirty-one years had been made in April 1661 to Lord Gerard, the Batt brothers had purchased their patent and were established in West Lodge. It was the only house on the Chase, complained Gerard, suitable for the residence of a chief keeper. Former monarchs had been accustomed to stay there and had always been entertained there by the ranger himself in the evenings, when the huntsmen had returned from their sport. Since the Batt brothers refused to relinquish the house, the matter was passed for arbitration to the lord chanceller. He must have been relieved to find a technicality by which he was able to settle the matter in favour of Lord Gerard, for the grant to the Batts had been made under the great seal, whereas it should have been passed under the seal of the Duchy of Lancaster.’

Samuel Norris claimed re-instatement as keeper of East Bailey Walk, which he had held before the civil war until he had been dispossessed when the lodges and the land enclosed around them had been sold in 1650. The Crown had restored him to his office, but had also granted the same place to Robert Hall who was now doing everything in his power to secure possession. Like almost everybody else, Norris claimed to have been a great sufferer because of his loyalty to Charles I. He pleaded that his appointment as yeoman of the bows had been recently taken from him and that he would face utter ruin if now evicted from his keepership. For a few years at least he held on.4 Captain William Barker was also petitioning for the office of keeper The Story of Enfield Chase – David Pam of South Bailey Walk (Dighton being dead) but his grant, like that of the brothers Batt, had been passed under the wrong seal and the offices fell to Captain William Oaks.5

The new farms set up during the Interregnum had been under attack from the day they had been established In November 1660 they were still being operated by John Nelthrop, Lt Col Allen, Captain Kempe or their under-tenants, and a campaign of hedge breaking and damage to property continued to be waged against them. It was alleged that the law-breakers were countenanced by people of quality in the area. The new government, requiring peace and the rule of law, commanded local justices, constables and other officers of the county to afford protection, and an order to this effect was read out in the parish churches of the neighbouring villages after divine service. Those causing the disturbances were warned that they would be arrested and would be committed to appear at quarter sessions.6

There were no deer left on the Chase. A vast amount of the wood had been cut down and many trees remained lying upon the ground where they had been felled. The pale on the northern boundary, put up at great expense during the time of King James, had been entirely destroyed. Old Park was now a park no longer, the deer had been slaughtered and the wood cut down. Much of the land had been ploughed and worn out of heart by continuous cropping.7 The renewal of the Chase, after the destruction of so much of the wood, seems to have been entirely by natural process. Nothing is heard of any planting. Steps were taken to restock with deer commandeered from the parks of the Earl of Essex and others; they came in, slowly at first in 1661/2 and 1662/3, then more rapidly. Large paddocks were built to receive them, enclosed within frames, the sections of which were filled in with bushes cut on the Chase. One paddock was built at West Lodge and a more elaborate one at South Lodge which was encompassed by a ditch nearly five hundred yards in length.“

Two or three hundred families of poor people, it was claimed in a petition of 1660, had settled in newly erected cottages built upon the Chase and in other corners and waste places in Enfield. This assertion is in some way borne out by a comparison of the number of houses listed in the 1572 survey9 and the hearth tax returns of 1665.10 In 1572 there had been 322 houses but by 1665 there were 560. By far the greatest increase however had been in that part of the parish nearest to the Chase, where the number of houses had increased from 180 in 1572 to 393. This area included much of the poverty stricken Bulls Cross quarter, where forty-nine per cent of households were too poor to pay hearth tax, compared for instance to twenty-eight per cent in the old established settlement around Enfield Town.

A similar striking increase in the population around Enfield Chase had occurred also in Edmonton, mainly in the north and west of the parish bordering on Enfield Chase. A map of Edmonton drawn in the 1570s shows only forty-one houses in that area. The hearth tax returns of 1665 indicate that there were by that time 247 inhabited houses. It was in the Bury Street ward moreover, which included the woodland hamlet of Winchmore Hill on the edge of the Chase, where poverty was at its worst. In this area fifty-four per cent of households were too poor to pay hearth tax, while the percentage for Edmonton as a whole was thirty-four.

Chapter Six: The Return of King Charles

The poor had increased in South Mimms too, where many cottages had been put up on the waste at Kitts End. This hamlet had grown up through the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and by 1658 it had developed into a large settlement along the old St Albans Road (Kitts End Lane) extending east across the boundaries of the Chase. Mostly it consisted of small cottages each occupied by two or more families.11

The poor had survived in those last difficult years of the Interregnum mainly by cutting and selling the wood off the Chase. With the re-imposition of law and order after 1660 their activities had been restricted and many, according at least to the Enfield petition, had fallen a burden on the poor rate. The leading Enfield tenants asked for permission to enclose their common fields; in return they proposed to raise a fund to set the paupers to work. The money so raised would also be used to transport those of the able-bodied poor who were willing, to live in Ireland, or in any other of the King’s plantations abroad.12

It was not so easy however to get rid of the poor, and they persisted in living much as they had done before. They paid scant regard to the authority of the keepers and were treated most circumspectly by the Duchy officials. Many of them earned a living by chipping trees and carrying away the chips in baskets borne on horseback. Examples of their activities abound. Tutcher Chapman, under-keeper in South Bailey Walk, had several times warned William Fairweather and his son, Thomas, and had confiscated their chipping tools, but within a short time they were back again at their old trade. John Clerke, an Edmonton locksmith, caused even more damage by cutting young trees and stocking up the roots. When challenged he totally disregarded an order to stop, completed his work and carried off the trees. Early in the year 1669, Tutcher Chapman discovered Richard Garrett, Nicholas Thompson and Robert James, all from Edmonton, lopping trees on the Chase. When he warned them to stop, they threatened then struck him, before carrying away the wood they had already cut. Mark Curtoys, the deputy woodward in January 1673, caught five men cutting and chipping the trees and taking bushes off the Chase; the Duchy messenger was ordered to take them into custody. William Archer the younger was stopped by the under-keeper, Thomas Turpin, in West Bailey Walk, carrying off five young oaks. The keeper demanded that he hand them over. He refused, and when Turpin endeavoured to take them by force, he was struck a great blow with a stick and then attacked by William Archer the father, with an axe. He claimed that he was lucky to have escaped with his life. It is true that the Archers were arrested, but upon their submission of a ‘humble petition’ declaring that they were sorry that they had offended, with a promise of ‘reformation and dutiful deportment’, they were discharged.13

The wealthy treated the officers with even less respect. Tutcher Chapman was powerless to prevent the depredations of John Galliard, a leading landowner in Edmonton. He had caught John Jordan, a labourer employed by Galliard, on a number of occasions, in the act of cutting bushes and young trees, Jordan had defiantly justified himself by declaring that he was working for Mr Galliard. Toby Kilhogg and John White, husbandmen, frequently and openly, carried wood for Galliard off the Chase in their carts.14

The constant rebuilding in the towns around the Chase and the making of the bricks, could involve the stealing of materials off the Chase. Edward Helder, who

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The Story of Enfield Chase – David Pam was a master bricklayer and sometimes worked for Christopher Wren, had purchased from Nicholas Rainton nearly five acres out of a field called Brickhillfield, had enclosed it, and was building himself a fine house on the spot now occupied by the Enfield Town Railway Station.

Figure 6: The house built by Edward Helder. It ended its life as Enfield Town Railway Station and was demolished in 1872.

The brick-earth he had dug on the site, and had taken out of the Chase several hundred cartloads of boughs, bushes and stakes, and had cut down many old oaks, young oaks, ashes, hornbeams, beeches and hawthorns, mostly to be used as fuel for his brickmaking. Ele had also carted out of the Chase, at night time, a great many loads of sand. Now he found himself in trouble, first because it was common land which he had enclosed in Brickhillfield and second for the materials stolen. Nevertheless the building of the house was well advanced by 3 February 1675. On that day, while Helder was working there with two bricklayers, Thomas Briggs of Coleman Street in the City and Francis Wright of Finsbury, and a nineteen year old apprentice William Scavington, the site was visited by Mr Edward Dobson, deputy steward and bailiff of the Manor of Enfield and keeper of East Bailey Walk. This self- important official came to proclaim that the work should proceed no further, for, he said, ‘I will pull down to the ground what you have now built. You, ‘said Dobson, directing a finger towards Helder, ‘strive to be rich, but I will make you poor enough before I have done with you, for I can have my law for nothing, but it will cost you dear enough’.15 The magnificent house survived to see John Keats a student there in the Cowden Clarke academy, but it fell from grace and ended its days as a railway station. It was pulled down in 1872. Fortunately Helder’s beautiful facade can yet

Chapter Six: The Return of King Charles be seen in the Victoria and Albert Museum.

In the last months of the Interregnum the government had appointed John Hawkins of the Middle Temple, with others living locally, to take charge of the vast amount of wood that had been cut down and still remained lying on the Chase, also to protect the trees yet standing. With the Restoration however, these commissioners had been replaced by local gentlemen of greater importance, Sir John Potts, Sir Thomas Dacres, Sir Henry Wroth, John Huxley and John Wilford. They were instructed to sell the wood upon the ground and to call all those who had formerly sold the King’s wood and timber to render an account. Among those named particularly were Edward Randall and Captain Kempe.

The five gentlemen appointed by Parliament now embarked upon their task. Most of the work seems to have been left to one of their number, Mr John Wilford of Hadley, whose rigour in carrying out his duties may not have been entirely altruistic and was much resented by Lord Gerard and his officers on the Chase. Their mutual recriminations and accusations resulted in the setting up of a commission in 1664 to enquire into the conduct of affairs. John Hawkins, who had been replaced by Wilford, alleged in evidence that he had heard Wilford say that all the wood had been valued at £800. Hawkins claimed that this was far less than it was really worth. He further complained that Wilford had taken wood for himself and had sold to his friends at low rates. Gadsby of Whetstone, a wheelwright, had bought a great parcel of trees at much below market price. He had heard that the money from these sales should have been employed on the replacement and repair of the fences around the Chase, but work on this had not even been begun.16 Wilford, in retaliation, made accusations against William Cotton, the new deputy woodward under Lord Gerard. Inevitably the jealousy caused by the duplication of control over the Chase wood developed into open hostility between Lord Gerard and Mr John Wilford. Robert Pidgeon, Gerard’s servant, told how, on one occasion, he had been sent by his lordship to take goods from West Lodge to Oxford. Just as he was setting out, he met John Gray, his cart loaded with wood and roots which he was carrying off to sell in Barnet. This was probably wood sold to him by Wilford. Pidgeon had forced Gray to unload and Gray had complained to Wilford who, as a justice of peace, issued a warrant for Pidgeon’s arrest and would have clapped him in gaol had he not quickly absented himself.17

It took some time before Lord Gerard was able to take steps to assert his authority against John Wilford, but in November 1665 his woodward, William Cotton, produced an affidavit in which it was alleged that Wilford kept a flock of eighty to a hundred sheep on the Chase, contrary to Duchy decrees. An injunction was issued ordering him to take the sheep off within three days and to appear in person before the Duchy court to answer a charge against him for this offence.18 Mr Wilford was much offended. On the first day on which the court was sitting, Thomas Desborough, the usher and messenger, meeting with him in Westminster Hall, politely informed him that the court was then sitting and desired him to go up at once to make his appearance. Mr Wilford refused to go, upon which the Duchy could devise no other course but to issue a warrant to take Mr Wilford into custody. Thus armed, Desborough and the deputy bailiff set out for Hadley .where they arrived at Mr Wilford’s door and showed him the warrant. It required that he should either yield himself prisoner, or give bail for his appearance in court. Mr Wilford, much enraged

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The Story of Enfield Chase – David Pam at being treated like any common law-breaker, refused to do either, declaring with all the dignity he could muster that he was a justice of peace and one of the quorum, and that he would neither attend the court nor would he give bail. The usher, somewhat disconcerted, offered to accept Mr Wilford’s own bond for his appearance, but Mr Wilford, waxing ever more indignant, replied that he would get no bond at all and that if the usher and the bailiff did not immediately get off his property, he would send for men to drive them off.19

This dispute broadened out in 1667 to involve all the common rights on the Chase considered in a case brought by the attorney general of the Duchy against the leading yeomen and gentlemen of the four towns; Edward Wilford, Henry Dixon, Orlege Cordell and William Parnell of Enfield, John Bathurst and Felix Clerke of Edmonton, John Wilford and Robert Peake of Hadley and Edward Nichols, Radulf Clerke and John Robinson of South Mimms. A recital was made of all the restrictions imposed upon the commoners’ rights since the time of Henry VIII, the orders and decrees of Queen Elizabeth, the stint imposed in 1605 and particularly the order of 1627 which prohibited commoners’ sheep from pasturing on the Chase. None of these restrictions had ever been accepted by the commoners, but this last was their greatest grievance (and the author’s too for he has not been able to find the original decree). The juries at the Enfield Manor court had always claimed the right to pasture all manner of animals, excepting only goats, and recognised no limit on the numbers they pastured. Seeking compromise, the Duchy now proposed mediation and ‘friendly composure by persons of quality’, naming Sir Thomas Allen, Sir John Heath the attorney general of the Duchy, Sir Thomas Dacres father and son and, from the locality, Sir Henry Wroth, Alderman John Bathurst (one of those against whom the case had been brought), Thomas Stringer, who acted as counsel for the commoners, and Richard Baldwyn.2"

Two years later the commissioners had still not put forward any proposal for settling the difficulties. In truth it was impossible to find any compromise which would satisfy both parties, and in November 1669 an injunction had to be sought against Alderman John Bathurst and Edward Nichols, two of the defendants in the original case, with a number of other commoners, for pasturing large numbers of sheep and other cattle on the Chase unbranded.21

The wood on the Chase had not recovered by 1673 from the ravages of the late fifties and the Duchy was concerned that there might not be sufficient browse and covert for the deer. Henry Coventry spent two days in August that year, in company with his woodward, examining the state of the wood. He observed that there were considerable numbers of young, thriving oak, beech and ash, but as yet these were of very small growth; they required careful conservation so that in time they would be fit for timber. At this time however there were no timber trees on the Chase ready to cut. Much of the beech and hornbeam had been lopped, but was now fully grown again. He proposed that no trees should henceforth be lopped except so many as would be sufficient as browse to feed the deer, otherwise, he said, ‘the beauty of the Chase would be impaired and the covert destroyed’.22

In consequence an order was issued in January 1675 that no wood should be cut except for browse and that very sparingly, and the granting of fee wood to officers was suspended.23 This restraint lasted for seven years, until in March 1682 the

Chapter Six: The Return of King Charles keepers: Sir John Parsons at East Lodge, Joshua Galliard keeper of South Bailey Walk and the chief ranger, now Henry Coventry, petitioned the chancellor of the Duchy, requesting that they should again be permitted to take their yearly allocation for fuel. They pointed out that many young trees had been reared up since the Restoration and, though these were still not large enough to provide browsewood or firewood, there were some old decayed hornbeams out of which fee wood for the keepers could be assigned. Their petition was granted.24

The Right Honourable Henry Coventry had been sworn principal secretary of state in July 1672. The following year he was provided with a convenient country residence near to London by his appointment as keeper of West Bailey Walk in Enfield Chase. All the offices on the Chase were granted to him in July 1675. John Evelyn, the diarist, visited him at West Lodge the following summer. He described it as ‘a very pretty place, the house commodious, the gardens handsome, and our entertainment very free, there being none there but my lord and myself. That which I most wondered at’, he went on, ‘was that, in the compass of twenty-five miles, yet within fourteen of London, there is not a house, barn, church or building besides the three lodges’. Henry Coventry resigned as secretary of state in 1680 and retired, his health in ruins, to West Lodge.

Joshua Galliard had purchased the remainder of Oaks’ term (twenty-seven years) as keeper of South Bailey Walk, in May 1674, for £460.25 He proved most vigilant in the protection of the King’s deer, though he did occasionally take a brace or two for himself. On Tuesday, 12 August 1684, while walking in the Chase, he observed with concern the behaviour of John Richardson, a gentleman of East Barnet who, with one of his brothers, emerged precipitously out of a thicket called Rolphs Thick on Sheepcot Plain (now the grounds of Highlands Hospital). They had with them a greyhound and a spaniel, both much out of wind and spattered with blood, which also besmirched the hands, coat, stockings and shoes of their master. Mr Justice Galliard, strongly suspecting that they had killed the King’s game, called to him his underkeeper, William Walker, and ordered that a watch be kept that night to take the poachers red- handed when they came back to retrieve the venison.

About ten o’clock, Walker with two of his assistants, Henry Waller and John Austin, on duty as commanded, saw Mr John Richardson riding by himself on a grey horse, wearing a sword, a long peruke, a laced cravat and other fine apparel, as though out to pay a social call. He rode on and all remained quiet until, at nearly half past eleven, John Richardson returned. This time he wore no sword, cravat or peruke and had with him his two brothers and his father’s clerk, all four mounted on two horses, each carrying a long staff. At this moment the buckhound bitch, which the watchers had with them, barked. Mr Richardson looked round in alarm, swore, and cried out that they were betrayed, and Galliard’s servants at once rode out towards them. Waller and Austin seized Mr John’s bridle, while Walker galloped off in pursuit of the clerk and the third brother. The two that were captured delivered up their staffs, offering no resistance, and Mr . Richardson, promising to wait upon Mr Galliard the following day, was allowed to leave.

Despite what had happened, the watchers, implicitly obeying their master’s instructions, remained on guard. About half or three quarters of an hour later, the Richardsons and their clerk returned. As they passed the spot where they had been

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The Story of Enfield Chase – David Pam taken earlier, Mr Richardson called out, ‘Who is there’, but the watchers making no answer, they went on into Rolphs Thick. Walker and his assistants, now sensing success, waited impatiently to seize the poachers as they returned carrying home the venison. They were still there when the distant church clock struck five, but no- one had come back. It was then that they began to think that they had perhaps been duped. Hurriedly they made their way towards Rolphs Thick, but too late. They found only the horns, head and paunch of a fat buck. They set off at once to follow the tracks of the horses. These led out of the Chase and into Mr Hadley’s ground (Osidge) and this lay conveniently next to the house of Mr Richardson’s father.26

Henry Coventry obtained a great concession in 1685 when he was granted permission to cut glades or ridings through the Chase,27 a measure ostensibly for the convenience of King James II when he came hunting. In reality, the very large amount of wood which would have to be cut would provide opportunities for considerable profit.28 There was however no time for Henry Coventry to reap the benefit for he died in 1686 and in June 1687 his executor conveyed all the offices to Adam Viscount Lisburne.29 Among the many bequests contained in Henry Coventry’s will was that of £100 to Henry Baron, son of a former servant. The response of the Baron family was little short of sycophantic. The Hadley parish register records the baptisms of two sons, Henry and Coventry and two daughters, Secretary and Ranger.

The opportunity to cut ridings was too good to miss and by 1691 a vast number of trees had been cut down and many of them had been totally destroyed by digging out the roots. The Duchy made a belated intervention in May 1691 and sent down two officials who were conducted by Robert Eusden, a member of the Enfield Manor court jury, to see for themselves what wood had been lost. In Colonel Cornwall’s yard (he had taken over East Lodge in 1675) there was a heap of tallwood containing twenty loads, as well as ten loads of logwood and fifteen hundred faggots.

They saw thirty-six stacks of wood ready cut in West Bailey Walk, now in the hands of Sir Rowland Gwin. John Jennings the new woodward appointed in 1688, it was alleged, had recently sold fifteen stacks of wood to the brewhouse in Coopers Lane and’five stacks to Mr Crawley at Northaw. He had also sold twenty loads of bushes in South Mimms for only £3 and many loads of wood at Potters Bar. John Mitchell of Potters Bar stated in evidence before the Duchy court, that he had been employed by John Jennings in West Bailey Walk to cut down a great oak called the ‘round top oak’ and had sold six stacks of wood from it to a gentleman that lived in Theobalds Park. Also in the last twelve months, twenty more great oaks had not only been cut down in West Bailey Walk, but had been grubbed up and destroyed root and branch, as well as a great quantity of young trees. Robert Ward the Enfield carpenter, when employed in the service of Sir Rowland Gwin, had assisted in cutting down twenty young ashes and several young oaks, having about eight foot of timber in each, all of which were subsequently sold by Jennings. William Karadine and John Paine, both Enfield yeomen, told how they had been employed by William Maylin, one of Sir Rowland’s keepers, in lopping hornbeam and beech to make five hundred faggots. Ele had also cut about fifty young hornbeams in East Bailey Walk. Thus affidavits bearing accusations against John Jennings and his underlings poured one after another into the Duchy court.

The worst destruction however was in South Bailey Walk where the keeper was

Chapter Six: The Return of King Charles

Mr Justice Joshua Galliard, the scourge of deer thieves, wood thieves and Quakers. There Eusden showed the men from the Duchy two thousand young trees which had been headed, and twenty-two hornbeams which had been stocked up by the root. A piece of ground for a riding three quarters of a mile long and seventy-seven yards wide had lately been cleared root and branch and only a few young trees remained. A case against Galliard was prepared in the Duchy court.30

An affidavit made by Henry Waller31 who had, until a short time before, been employed for thirteen years by Joshua Galliard, claimed that he had cut for his master every year, eight to ten thousand faggots which were sold about the countryside for 12sa hundred; also fifty or sixty loads of roundwood ortallwood each year, which were sold at 15s a stack, besides many hundred loads of bushes which were priced according to the number of horses employed after the rate of 8d a horse (that is a person coming with five horses in his cart paid 3s 4d). He (urther alleged that he and other servants had frequently been ordered to kill deer for Mr Galliard and that his master generally had two brace at a time hanging in the backhouse. Richard Knott, an Enfield yeoman, told how he had been employed by various gentlefolk to fetch the stack wood and faggots out of the Chase which they had bought of Mr Galliard; these included two loads of young trees and greenwood taken to Doctor Uvedale, the great horticulturalist (now conducting his school at the Manor House) for stakes in his vineyard.

Joshua Galliard, to counter such accusations, called to witness Mark Curtoys, formerly the woodward for more than twenty-three years, and John Jennings, the new woodward. Curtoys drew a picture of Galliard as honest and careful in the preservation of the wood and game, moreover, he said Mr Galliard was the only justice of peace who had punished deer stealers and wood stealers when other justices had refused or neglected. The second witness for the defence was John Jennings, now well embarked upon his long and very profitable career as woodward, who also spoke of honest and careful custody in the walk belonging to Joshua Galliard. On the basis of their evidence the case was dismissed.32

Joshua Galliard, justice of peace, was indeed the hammer of the wood stealer. His faithful clerk Walter Pratt, proudly boasted of the great number of persons his master had convicted and fined for stealing wood. Nor were these his only triumphs, for those who could not pay, he either committed them to the House of Correction or had them whipped. All this may not have been unprofitable to Mr Galliard, for he received the fines and though he claimed that the money had been distributed to the poor of Enfield and in reward to the informers, there was little check upon this. A few of those prosecuted by him made affidavits presenting their grievances against him. William Archer of South Mimms pleaded that for cutting only one bundle of wood he had been taken before Mr Galliard and fined 12s. With him, charged for the like offence, were Luke Saire, who paid 1 Is 6d, and Richard Rush, who paid 8s 6d, desperately finding the money to save themselves from prison. Lawrence Bess, an Enfield yeoman, also complained of the injustice of Justice Galliard; he had thrown two faggots up into his cart while he was carrying a load of straw to West Lodge, he said, and for this he had been fined 2s 6d. Perhaps in retaliation, he swore an affidavit that over the past few years, many hundreds of young trees had been cut up out of the Chase by the keepers. Thomas Wetherall of Potters Bar, who could not pay a fine, had been held in prison for eight days by Mr Galliard, for taking one

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The Story of Enfield Chase – David Pam bundle of wood out of the Chase.33

The Enfield vestry met in November 1689 to take account of the diminished rights of the parish on Enfield Chase and passed a solemn resolution in these words; 'We, whose names are hereby subscribed, inhabitants of the parish of Enfield, do hereby promise and agree to stand by each other, in the behalf of ourselves and the rest of the parishioners, in endeavouring to restore our rights and privileges on Enfield Chase. And that the charge that we, or any of us, shall be at, about the recovery and settling of the same, shall be defrayed out of the parish stocks’. Twenty-one Enfield men subscribed their names.34

This resolution encouraged many Enfield tenants openly to defy authority in the winter of the year 1690/1. As part of a campaign to assert the right of the parishioners to fuel at the customary price, Henry Hedger and Richard Hewitt, on 29 December 1690, though witnessed by Robert Dallyson, Jennings’ servant, carried off a cart load of heads and lops of trees which they openly admitted they had cut on the Chase. When Dallyson attempted to intervene, ordering Hedger to take the cart to the house of the chief ranger, Hedger refused to obey and declared that he would be ready to spend a hundred pounds rather than he should surrender the wood.35

John Jennings himself, on 10 January, watched Robert Chillman and Matthew Head carry away several cartloads of green wood out of East Bailey Walk and three days later saw Robert Eusdenand Rowland Jones carry off three loads of green wood in the cart of John Basil!. The next day he saw John Saunders, Robert Eusden, John Keepe and Jacob Pickett carry away four cart loads of green wood towards Enfield. Jennings warned them all that he would make a complaint to the Duchy court, but notwithstanding this threat they carried off the wood and declared that they were ready to justify their actions.36 The Duchy issued warrants for the arrest of these tenants, but they were prepared to contest the matter and were represented by counsel. The Duchy therefore proposed that the dispute be laid before Sir Rowland Gwin for arbitration, but the matter remained unresolved.

St George’s day, 23 April 1691, the day when the tenants, the keepers and the woodward should by tradition 'go arm and arm into the Chase’ to view together the wood cut throughout the year, and then should consummate their cooperation by a happy distribution of the browsewood among the Enfield tenants (at eighteenpence a load) passed that year with no such cordiality nor any settlement. John Jennings, with his servants Robert Malin and William Turpin, faced an incursion into the Chase by over forty of the more well-to-do Enfield tenants who openly and defiantly carried away more than seventy cartloads of wood, despite the protests and warnings of the woodward.37

The jury in the Enfield Manor court in 1692 continued to complain of the behaviour of the woodward and keepers who, they alleged, took what wood they pleased and, year after year, felled great quantities of stackwood and faggots which they sold in London and for which they rendered no account to the Duchy. They further accused that the keepers and woodward had cut down thousands of young timber trees, including oak, beech and ash. Now, out of ill- will and prejudice, they had prosecuted the poor merely for gathering the shreddings of the wood from off the ground.38

Chapter Six: The Return of King Charles

A new attempt was made at this time to settle the dispute by a sweeping investigation of all common rights on the Chase. In preparation for this, the Duchy engaged Joshua Galliard to consult the relevant documents in the Tower of London. His investigations confirmed, and the Duchy court accepted, that the tenants of the Manor of Enfield and the inhabitants of Enfield had a right to common,but he went on to deny those rights to the inhabitants ofSouth Mimms (except Old Fold) and to the inhabitants of Edmonton. These parishes could justify their claim, he said, solely in respect to their service at the court of Roundhedge, and that court, he asserted, was ‘a mere imaginary thing’, dissolved by King James in 1616. As for Monken Hadley, only the inhabitants of that part extending from Hadley church to the windmill, and from Alderman Backhouse’s house to Mr William Kympton’s, which had originally been a hamlet within the parish of Enfield and now paid its taxes with the parish of Enfield, could justly claim common on the Chase.39 As might be expected, Mr Justice Galliard’s learned research was consigned to oblivion and in April 1694 all the offices on Enfield Chase were purchased by Sir Basil Firebrace.

Footnotes: The Return of King Charles

1 SP29.143.68 2 SP44.13.29 3 SP29.31.88, SP29.37.68, DL9.11 (affidavits of Thomas Batt, Edward Dobson, J. Seymour), SP29.143.68. 4 SP29.13.15, SP29.29.98 5 SP29.19.81, SP29.445.82, SP29.31.88 6 CREST 6.2.123 7 HLJ 11.64b, 75b, CREST 6.2.106-7, CREST 6.1.237. 8SP29.143.68,DL44.1217 9 DL43.7.5 10 GLRO 11 VCH Middlesex. 5.276-7. 12SP29.22.153 13 DL5.37.401, DL9.13, DL9.14, DL5.39.24v„ 29v. 14 DL5.37.401, DL9.13. 15 DL1.428, DL9.14 (affidavit of Tho Briggs) DL5.39.156-7, Enfield Vestry minutes 4 August 1689. 16 DL44.1216.HLJ 11.64v. 17 DL9.12, DL5.37.21. 18 DL9.12, DL5.37 19 DL9.12 20 DL9.13, DL5.37:334, 341, 416, 449, DL5.38.2, 18, 71, DL17.76, DL4.111.28 21 DL5.38.168V., 182. 22 DL41.95.12 23 DL41.3.17 24 ibid 25 DL41.96.24 26 DL9.16 27 Enfield DG180 28 DL17.88

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The Story of Enfield Chase – David Pam

29 SP44.71.340, DL39.5.17. 30 DL30.99. Box 1,39, DL9.18. 31 DL9.18, DL5.41.220r. 32 DL9.18, 9Je 1692 33 DL9.18, 18 May 1691, 9 Je 1692 34 Enfield vestry minutes Enfield local collection 35 DL9.18, 7 Jan 1690/1 36 DL9.18, 3 Feb 1690/1 37 DL9.18, 30 Ap 1691 38 DL9.18 affidavit of Henry Waller. Easter 1692. 39 DL41.3.17

Chapter Seven: Sir Basil Firebrace

The fact that all the offices on Enfield Chase were now held by one and the same person led to an administration as honest and effective as that of Poo-Bah in Titipu. That this person had paid hard cash for his right to hold those offices, induced in him the belief that he should be free to exploit them to ensure a reasonable return on his capital. In this he was inevitably to be disappointed. The potential yield on the investment looked promising enough, but each successive owner throughout the eighteenth century was to gain nothing but disappointment. Obstacles not at once apparent precluded a profit: the inherent dishonesty of the officers he had to employ and the difficulty of controlling their activities, the constant interference of Duchy officials and, above all, the failure of all efforts to prevent those who lived around the Chase from stealing the wood, timber and game.

Sir Basil Firebrace, on 19 April 1694, received confirmation of the grant to him of the offices of master of the game, master forester, keeper of the Chase and of the three walks and lodges, ranger, steward and bailiff of the Manor of Enfield.1 Sir Basil had become a wealthy man, but had been none too particular in the methods through which he had acquired that wealth. Born in 1653, he was the second son of Sir Henry Firebrace. His father, with his eyes ever open to secure the young man’s future prosperity, had chosen for him the trade of vintner. Sir Henry had a close association with the sergeant of the royal wine cellar. This connection held out the prospect that it might be possible to acquire for his son the lucrative court concession to provide wine for the royal cellar. His father’s expectations were fulfilled and in 1673 at the age of twenty-one, Basil was appointed yeoman purveyor of French wines to His Majesty’s household.

The new office proved rewarding enough, but the young man was not one to miss any chance to improve the profits. Such an opportunity arose when the import of French wines was prohibited during the war with Louis XIV. In one year he is said to have made £14,000 by conveying illicit wine down the Thames by barge to the Palace of Whitehall, where it was stored in his own cellar. He had the barge manned and guarded by a file of musketeers to give the impression that he carried provisions for the royal household. Though his scheme was discovered, he was granted a free pardon through the good offices of the Duchess of Cleveland, Charles II’s mistress.

Having thus re-established his respectability, he began to take an active part in City affairs. He became a member of the Court of Common Council, was knighted, and elected sheriff on 2 August 1687. Immediately afterwards he was appointed alderman for the Billingsgate ward and three weeks later became one of the lord lieutenants for the City of London. He next aspired to be a member of Parliament and stood for Chippenham in December 1690 where he won by a single vote; unfortunately the election was declared void and a new writ had to be issued He’was again elected but this time he was disqualified for bribery. His attempts to win a seat ended when he was defeated in the election of 1694.2 Membership of the House of Commons might have been an advantage to him in the difficulties which beset him two years later.

The Story of Enfield Chase – David Pam

He had been much involved in the affairs of the Hast India Company in their fight against the encroachments of the New East India Company which had been set up in 1691 Sir Basil acted as agent for the Old Company in their campaign to secure the new charter, finally granted in 1693. Nevertheless the struggle between the two companies continued and in 1695 rumours were widespread which alleged wholesale corruption by the directors of the Old Company and the matter was brought before the House of Lords. A committee of both Houses was set up to investigate the actions of the governor. Sir Thomas Cooke, MP, Sir Basil Firebrace and others. In his evidence before the committee, Cooke alleged that Firebrace had received £10,000 in November 1693 which he had kept lor himself. The Company had further given him an option on £60,000 stock at £150, to be exercised when the charter was granted. He did so at a time when the stock had fallen to £100, thereby making a clear profit of £30,000. It was also apparent that he had been paid other sums of money by the Company which he was to use to subvert those whose opposition was thought to stand in the way of procuring the new charter. Thus Lord Nottingham was offered ten thousand guineas and the Earl of Portland was offered £5,000; apparently they did not accept. The matter of the new charter was finely balanced, and the decision rested largely on the President of the Council, the Duke of Leeds. Sir Thomas Cooke felt that some way must be found to influence the Duke, and Sir Basil, knowing the ways of the world, applied himself to a certain Mr Bates who told him that he ‘would not pretend to talk to the Duke without knowing what the Company would do’. Sir Basil thought a present could be made of £2,000 or £3 000 but Bates, after confering with his master, made it apparent that his lordship had been offered more by the other side (in fact £5,000). It was therefore agreed that the Company should offer five thousand guineas. Bates replied that though this might do, he could see nothing in it for himself, whereupon Sir Basil was obliged to go back to Sir Thomas for a further five hundred guineas.

After an exhaustive examination of witnesses, a bill for the imprisonment of Cooke, Firebrace, Bates and the others involved was passed through both Houses and in May 1696 they were committed to the 1 ower. It could have been worse for Sir Basil was not required by the Act to give up his dubiously acquired gains,’he was merely restrained, for the time being, from alienating his estate. Even this restraint was modified to allow him to give a dowry of £20,000 to his daughter Hester; with this great sum he bought for her the fourth Earl of Denbigh He was released from the Tower early in the following year and took up residence ‘in the ancient lodge belonging to the ranger’ (West Lodge) where he added a number of offices and outhouses and settled down to enjoy his property in Enfield Chase.3 But even here a cloud loomed on the horizon, for in April that same year Thomas Grey, second Earl of Stamford, became chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. He was to come into bitter conflict with Sir Basil Firebrace.

Sir Basil had already taken preliminary measures to improve his position on Enfield Chase before he became involved with the enquiry in Parliament on the affairs of the East India Company. A month after he had first taken up his offices in Enfield, he had engineered a decision in the court baron empowering him to enclose an additional area at West Lodge. His opponents said it amounted to two hundred acres though he claimed that it was only 97 acres.4 His position as both steward and bailiff of this court gave him sufficient influence to impose this measure, but certain gentlemen representing the commoners now

Chapter Seven: Sir Basil Firebrace alleged that the court had been packed with Sir Basil’s friends and creatures. They asserted that the land and boundaries had never been inspected by the homage (the jury at the court baron) and that the whole thing had been manoeuvred secretly, without being read aloud in court, so that neither the deputy officers nor the majority of the commoners had even been aware of what was going on. The details had only been revealed, they said, three years later when Sir Basil’s servants were already engaged in marking out the boundaries of the new enclosure. Contradicting Firebrace’s claim that this land was barren, rough and scrubby, they described it as the best land on the Chase, bearing many young timber trees which, they alleged, Sir Basil was planning to cut down, grub up and sell for his own profit. The gentlemen, John Walker and John Walton of Hadley, Trice Hammond of Edmonton, Robert Fish of Enfield and Nathaniel Rosse of Mimms, petitioned the chancellor in May 1697 for an injunction to restrain Sir Basil.5 The Earl of Stamford, as chancellor, felt that he ought not to be excluded from partaking of the benefits from the Chase, and readily accepted the petition and proceeded to set up an investigation.

In November the chancellor’s secretary, by his Lordship’s order, wrote a letter to Sir Basil Firebrace, in offensively disdainful terms, requiring him to bring, by a certain date, an account of what warrants he had served for deer in the previous season, with the names of those who had signed the warrants. Sir Basil was both embarrassed and annoyed. On the day appointed for the hearing, he stayed away and did not even send his excuses. Three days later however, thinking better of it, he walked into the Duchy offices, apparently in a genial mood and, as though to deliver his account, made a great show of pulling it out of his pocket and then declared with mock surprise that he had left it at home. His Lordship, ‘as a friend’, he insisted, with more familiarity than was acceptable, ‘should have it in a few days’. But a week elapsed without His Lordship either hearing from or seeing Sir Basil. The secretary wrote another letter to remind him of his promise. This letter likewise received no answer, whereupon the chancellor ordered that a warrant be issued requiring Sir Basil to bring in the account by the beginning of November. The warrant was duly served at West Lodge by Mr Gellibrand, messenger to the Duchy court. On his next visit, Sir Basil was much less amiable and pointed out forcibly to the Earl of Stamford that the chancellor had no right to demand any account. He insisted therefore that his counsel should be heard before the Duchy court. The chancellor acceded to his demand, but on the day of the hearing Sir Basil again evaded the issue by declaring that he had assigned the office of master of the game, and thus the responsibility for granting venison, to the Earl of Denbigh (his son-in- law) though Denbigh’s appointment had never been enrolled in the Duchy court as it should have been.

Finally a compromise settlement was agreed wherein it was established that only the King could order Sir Basil to account.6 It proved however to be merely a face- saving formula and a royal warrant was at once issued noting, in general terms, the great destruction of the deer in His Majesty’s forests and chases within the Duchy and commanding all rangers and other officers in charge ol such forests, chases and parks to give a true account to the Earl of Stamford upon demand. The Earl thereupon required Sir Basil Firebrace to present such an account within two weeks, which was by noon on 8 January. On the morning of this day of reckoning, the chancellor waited hopefully for two hours for Sir Basil. He came at last after mid- day (at a time when the Earl of Stamford would normally have gone out) and,

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The Story of Enfield Chase – David Pam disconcerted to find his lordship still there, had to request a further seven days. Though his lordship somewhat irritably pointed out to Sir Basil that he felt grossly ill-used by him, he granted him time until the following Friday to produce his answer. On the Friday, Sir Basil did not come but sent to excuse his absence, pleading that he had a hearing belore Chancery that day and asking the Earl of Stamford to appoint yet another day. His Lordship looked upon this as merely an attempt to delay proceedings. Yet so that Sir Basil might have no further excuse, he peremptorily appointed that the account be submitted on Tuesday morning without fail. On that Tuesday, the chancellor stayed within until noon, but Sir Basil neither came nor sent his excuses. He claimed later that he had gone to the Duchy offices about twelve o’clock on the Saturday, a time well chosen since he knew that Stamford was always out of town for the weekend.

The chancellor now proceeded to the next phase of his offensive and issued a warrant to Sir Basil Firebrace, Sir Henry Bellasyse (keeper of South Bailey Walk) and Christopher Lister (keeper of East Bailey Walk) commanding them that henceforth no wood should be felled without the permission of Hugh Westlake, surveyor of the southern parts of the Duchy of Lancaster. On 12 June 1698 Sir Basil Firebrace was granted the rank and dignity of a baronet; he paid £1,095 for the honour. About the same time the chancellor, by decree, set up a commission toenquire into the state of Enfield Chase. Those nominated were Sir John Wolstenholme, Sir John Bucknall, Richard Wollaston, Colonel James Boddington of Enfield, George Dodson and Leonard Hancock of Cheshunt, Peter Houblon, Robert Peters, Edward Harris and Thomas Jackson, all ol Southgate, George Richards of Edmonton, John Walker of Hadley, two gentlemen of Highgate and Hugh Westlake.7

The commission met at the George on Enfield Green on 11 July and called in for examination the three woodwards, John Jennings, Robert Maylin and Richard Whitlock who each denied everything that could not be proved against him. Before adjourning, the commission required that Sir Basil bring in his lease and other particulars on 29 August. When the commission met that day, again at the George, Sir Basil refused to show his lease and was presented in writing with a number of questions to which he replied that, being ranger, he was in no way accountable, and therefore would answer no questions.

The commissioners met again, on 5 September, this time at the Rummer on the other side of Enfield Green where they decided to hear witnesses. The old men of the neighbourhood were called in, whose memories reached back to the time of Charles I. Robert Barnes was eighty-four, he claimed, John Jarvis seventy-three, Edward Cleberne seventy-two. They remembered the lodges in the days before the civil war, when there were only 15 or 20 acres around each lodge, enclosed by a single rail so that the yearling calves and sheep, and the deer, were able to go under to feed. Mr West and Mr Crosby lived at West Lodge, Mr Norris at East Lodge and Mr Dighton at South Lodge. They recalled the period of the Commonwealth when the lodges were in the hands of William Lenthall (speaker in the Long Parliament) and various army officers; Captain Kemp, Colonel Allen, Captain Nelthrop, Captain Dougs and Captain Noaks. It was in their time they said that the present enclosures had been made.

Figure 7: The Rummer in the 1860s, at that time called the Railway/ Inn. Beyond the

Chapter Seven: Sir Basil Firebrace

Vestry house is the Greyhound.

Figure 8: The George Inn, Enfield

Mr Lister made a statement of the number of bucks and does killed in his walk over the last three months; while thirty-four had been taken for Sir Basil Firebrace,

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The Story of Enfield Chase – David Pam the Earl of Stamford had had only four. In the same period Sir Basil had a further eighteen deer from Joshua Galliard’s walk. Witnesses accused Sir Basil and his head keeper, Mr Charles Wilford, of taking vast quantities of wood. They had cut a new riding through Mr Lister’s walk in the course of which they had destroyed more than a hundred young trees, some of which when squared were at least ten inches deep. The Wilford family had done well out of all this, many loads were carried to Mr Edward Wilford of Forty Hill, more to Mr Wilford the Enfield apothecary, all carted by William Flexmore. Sir Basil had recently secured this potentially damaging witness by taking him into his own employment.

Edward Chandler, Mr Lister’s underkeeper, said that Sir Basil’s servants all carried guns and made great slaughter of the deer. Nor was their shooting of the best, for he had found many bucks and does which they had wounded; many had subsequently died of their wounds. He told how Sir Basil’s men had taken a whipmaker’s man in Barnet for stealing deer and had allowed him to compound for £10. John Jennings counter-accused that Edward Chandler had taken ten loads of browsewood which he, as woodward, had never set out, nor had it been seen by the verderers, and that Joshua Galliard, since April 1695,' had cut down forty-two hornbeams as well as beeches, oaks and ash.

Sir Basil still refused to give his testimony in writing and remained as evasive as ever. He denied any waste, could give no idea of the number of deer left on the Chase, declared that much of the old wood had been destroyed during the rebellion, but asserted that there was an abundance of young timber of thirty or forty years’ growth. He insisted that he had killed no deer but by warrant, and that there were plenty for the King’s diversion, though he suggested that there had been heavy mortality both from natural causes and from the activities of deer stealers. He again stated that he had been advised that he was not required by the terms of his grant to give particulars ot the number of deer belore the commission.8

Through all this the commoners strove to maintain their rights on the Chase, repeatedly propounding them in the court baron of the Enfield Manor. Each year the common rights which they claimed were laboriously written out in full in the court rolls, and four verderers were appointed to look after their interests. At the court for the year 1699 transgressions against those rights were presented.9 It had been the custom that all offences on the Chase should be dealt with at the court baron held each year on the Wednesday in Whitsun week, that fines should be imposed there by the steward and collected by the bailiff, yet for many years past this procedure had been neglected. It was the custom that markers should be appointed to brand all commonable cattle with the town mark, yet this was not done because the pound-keeper kept the mark and now branded the cattle. Moreover he constantly kept the pound shut, when by ancient custom it should have remained open. The court fined the pound-keeper £5. It was also the custom that any stray taken up should be immediately brought to the pound and shown to two or three of the tenants and then placed in the hands of one of those tenants, who was to answer for the value of the animal at the year’s end if it had not been claimed. All these measures to guard against the malpractices of the officers had fallen into disuse.

The case against Sir Basil was set out by the attorney-general of the Duchy in November 1699. He was accused of secretly combining and confederating with

Chapter Seven: Sir Basil Firebrace

Charles Wilford, John Jennings and others, to destroy the wood and timber by cutting ridings through the Chase. He had not kept the Manor courts nor collected the rents and profits arising there, he had retained for his own use the fines taken from wood stealers and deer stealers. He had killed great numbers of deer, pheasant, woodcock and partridge. The Duchy again demanded an account of the number of deer destroyed, how disposed of, and by what warrant.10 Sir Basil responded as usual by prevaricating, declaring that he had not been able to answer these charges because his writings and papers had been in the hands of his trustees and that he had but lately had them returned. He prayed time to prepare his answer.11

During that time he petitioned the King, pleading that because he had paid a high price for the right to hold his offices, he should also have the right to recover his outlay through the exploitation of those offices. He again denied his accountability to the court of the Duchy of Lancaster. He further accused Stamford of having issued licences to hunt on the Chase to ‘ordinary and unknown persons’ and alleged that the chancellor had granted new leases to Sir Basil’s tenants at South Lodge and East Lodge. The Earl, he claimed, was now ordering a survey of the Chase with the sole object of cutting and disposing of vast quantities of wood there.

The Duke’s reply was expressed with lofty disdain. He pointed out that the high price paid by Firebrace for his offices could in no sort justify the great strip and waste by him committed in the King’s woods and his destruction of the game. He went on to explain that though it had not formerly been the practice of chancellors to excercise such rigid authority over officers, circumstances were now altered for, until lately, only ‘noblemen and persons of the best quality’ had been appointed, and never such as were ‘addicted to merchandise’. The former more elevated persons had been so far from abusing or taking undue advantage of their offices, that they had regarded themselves as privileged to have the honour to improve and preserve their Majestys’ game, and were contented with the pleasurable residue and command given to them.

Perhaps inadvertently detracting from this high-minded attitude, he went on to reveal the true origin of his hostility towards Firebrace. Sir Basil, you will recall, had sought to make a new enclosure at West Lodge, but the chancellor would in no way assist him in his schemes. Thus it was that when Stamford sent his warrant to Firebrace for two or three brace of bucks, the warrant was ignored and sat ‘slighted and rejected, or the worst deer in the Chase were picked out for him’, in order to affront the Duke. He went on to deny that he had given licences ‘to ordinary and unknown persons’ to hunt. They were eminent merchants and citizens of the City of London such, he said ‘as were known for their loyalty and readiness to assist the King with considerable sums of money’. He submitted that it was very much in the King’s interest to gratify such persons with so small a matter as the liberty (o hunt the hare with a small pack of beagles. He absolutely denied any motive of self- interest in ordering Westlake to make a new survey of the Chase.12

This survey, taken in May 1700, certified that Enfield Chase contained 631,520 trees whereof the most part were thirty feet high. A great number were oaks from six to twelve inches in diameter which would in time make good timber. He went on to assert that it was essential that many thousands of trees should now be cut down

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The Story of Enfield Chase – David Pam to ensure the stronger growth of the remainder, and that this could be done without prejudice to the Chase.13 Thus the chancellor sought, and was granted, a pretext for a wholesale plunder of the woods. In July he ordered the surveyor to ‘cut, fell, sell and dispose of all the trees necessary for the thinning out of the woods on Sir Basil Firebrace’s Chase at Enfield.14 Westlake thereupon drew up a plan which showed a great square lawn which was to be cleared of trees in the middle of the Chase and a number of proposed ridings. One led from Cockfosters to the centre, another from the centre to Coopers Lane gate, there was a riding from Cockfosters to Barvinhedge, another from the Three Partings (below the house at Trent Park) to the Tayle pond (now in Hadley Wood) from Cockfosters to Hadley, and from Cockfosters to South Lodge. In all, according to Westlake, the ridings amounted to 61 acres. The square at the centre, he claimed, measured 200 acres.

Figure 9: Hugh Westlake's Survey of Enfield Chase, 1701

Though the felling was begun by Westlake at once, it did not proceed fast enough, for there remained the danger of intervention. In December therefore he signed a contract with one John Shelley, a vintner of London, by which he sold to him all the wood already felled, as well as that marked to be felled on Enfield Chase. By the terms of this contract all the trees in the ridings were to be cut down, except certain young oaks and ashes which were to be left standing at a reasonable distance from one another. John Shelley was to pay the woodward and labourers who had been employed by Westlake, and was thereafter to employ all his own labour to finish the job. All the roots were to be stocked up and the holes filled. Moreover he

Chapter Seven: Sir Basil Firebrace was to stand the loss of wood stolen during the operation. For all the wood and bark he was to pay £1,044.15

The contract was an open invitation to wholesale pillage and Sir Basil saw at once that here was an opportunity to strike back at the Earl of Stamford. It was with less reluctance this time that he entered the painted chamber of the Duchy of Lancaster. Now it was his turn to protest to the Chancellor about the destruction of the Chase, and to demand that it be stopped. The Earl responded haughtily that he had the King’s order and would proceed until the King forbade him. He brought the interview to an end by loftily informing Firebrace that, if he had any further complaints, he must put them in writing and bring them to his lordship’s lodgings. Deciding otherwise Sir Basil took his complaints to the House of Commons.

The matter was brought before the House by Sir Robert Davers at five o’clock in the evening of 12 May and the Commons at once ordered that a humble address be presented to His Majesty to give immediate directions to stop the felling of any more trees in Enfield Chase. It was moved that a committee be appointed to enquire into the waste and destruction. This committee included Sir Henry Bellasyse of South Lodge, Mr Lake of Firs Hall, in Firs Lane Edmonton, Mr Stringer of Durants Arbour at Ponders End, and the members of Parliament for the County of Middlesex. Sir Basil Firebrace was called to present evidence. He admitted that the creation of some new ridings was necessary, an admission forced upon him by the fact that he had himself drawn up a plan to make new ridings, and was in the process of making them until overtaken by events. He declared however that Westlake had made an entirely new plan which had never been approved by the officers and verderers on the Chase, he complained that Westlake had underhandedly given the contract to John Shelley, a man who he described as ‘of little substance’. Shelley had employed two or three hundred workmen in his hurry to get the work done. The only selection he used in felling the trees was to cut the best and leave the worst. His workmen had not even confined their destruction to the new ridings, but had gone into all parts of the Chase to seek the best and most profitable trees. They had not taken the trouble to grub up the roots, but ‘as if their masters were ashamed of what they had done’, the workmen had covered the stools with moss to hide them. The brushwood alone from the fallen trees, he said, was worth as much as Shelley had paid for the entire contract. He accused the Earl of Stamford and his surveyor of having totally neglected procedures long established in felling wood. The functions of the woodward, the bailiff and the ranger (all offices held by Sir Basil) and the master of the game (Sir Basil’s son- in-law) had been improperly superseded. The homage at the Manor court should have valued the wood, through its verderers, and the keepers should have been involved in the sale.

He had met Mr Westlake on the Chase, he said, who had admitted to him that he never would have engaged in this business unless he had been able to keep a third of the proceeds for himself. Sir Basil claimed that Westlake had offered him the chance to come in for a share, but he had of course refused, and Mr Westlake had asked him not to mention the matter to anyone, and said that if he did so he would only forswear it.

Even allowing for a little bias in Sir Basil’s evidence, the transaction had begun to look like a wholesale swindle. For example Firebrace produced to the committee

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The Story of Enfield Chase – David Pam a valuation of the wood cut down in the Cockfosters riding amounting to £155 2s with all charges deducted. It had been sold, he said, for £44. Even more damagingly he pointed out that no public notice had ever been given of the sale in order to ensure that the wood was sold to the highest bidder.

The Enfield verderers told the committee that they had made a thorough inspection during which they had counted 3,981 young and thriving oaks, felled and left lying on the ground in the new ridings, many others had been carried away before Parliament had ordered a stop; 2,791 more oaks had been marked for destruction in the ridings, but this had been prevented. None but the worst oaks had been left as standards. In the square at the centre of the Chase, the surveyor had marked 2,709 oaks to be cut down, but this too had been stopped. The area in the ridings and in the square, according to the verderers, was far greater than had been stated by the Earl of Stamford (261 acres) and amounted in all to 580 acres. There were no less than 73'/2 loads of valuable bark now lying upon the Chase awaiting collection.

Charles Wilford eagerly joining his master in the attack on the chancellor, told the committee that about nine o’clock on the morning after the House had given the order to stop the felling, he had sought out the workmen to tell them and, taking some of them with him, went to notify Shelley and John Boson (Westlake’s kinsman who had been left there in charge). He must report, he said, even at the risk of offending the dignity of the House of Commons, that he had been told by Boson that the vote of the House signified nothing. Even though the order of the House was presented to them in writing an hour later, he said, the workmen continued felling until about six o’clock that night.

Hugh Westlake, called to produce his plan before the committee, admitted that his ridings differed from those set out by Sir Basil Firebrace and the verderers. He acknowledged that the verderers had not signed his plan but claimed that it had been shown to them and they had given their approval. This the verderers strongly denied. He further admitted that the contract with Shelley was for only 261 acres, but that it was intended to cut down 400 acres. He said that Shelley had agreed to pay at the rate of £4 an acre, but this had been only a verbal agreement and had nowhere appeared in the contract. He confessed too that no public notice of the sale had been given, but claimed, somewhat unconvincingly, that he had sold to the best advantage. Joel Gascoyne, who had been employed by Westlake to survey the Chase, also alleged that the plan had been approved by Sir Basil and the verderers. He asserted too, that the Earl of Stamford had also shown it to King William who had given his approval.

Taking all this evidence into consideration, a motion was put before the House accusing Thomas Earl of Stamford of neglect of duty and breach of trust. The motion was approved by 136 votes to 102.16 Stamford in a reply, printed that same year, endeavoured to throw the whole blame upon Westlake.17 However this did not save him and he was dismissed from the office of chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. Hugh Westlake was declared unfit for the office of surveyor and discharged.18 Thus it was that Sir Basil won a great victory and emerged, incongruously, as the defender of the Chase against the evil intentions of others. Nobody could believe so much good of him, for his reputation in the City was unsavoury, even given the very low

Chapter Seven: Sir Basil Firebrace requirements of early eighteenth century society. It had been said of him that he had set up many young men in business as vintners, and afterwards, when they defaulted, had taken harsh execution against them. There is a cumbersome and thinly veiled allusion to his behaviour in The London Spy of November 1699.

’Pray’ says my friend, ‘take notice of yonder tavern at the sign of the Green Monster, that tavern’ says he ‘has ruined almost as many vintners as Sir Base- ill-fiery-face’.

Thomas Hearne too, in his diary (1707) described him as a ‘noted old sinner of London’. However Sir Basil’s days of prosperity were passing away. In 1702 he was forced to borrow £6,000 from the Earl of Portland on the security, among other things, of his offices on Enfield Chase and his lordship of the Manor of Edmonton.19

The long standing opposition to his proposed enclosure at West Lodge was maintained as adamantly as ever by the local gentlemen and commoners. Their case against him in the court of the Duchy of Lancaster had continued intermittently since 1697. In June 1706, Sir Basil alleged that they were still obstructing his enclosure, that they had in a most violent and riotous manner thrown down, laid waste and demolished the greater part of his fences, and that each time he put them up again they had razed them to the ground. He complained that the number and multiplicity of the suits which they had brought against him made remedy at law costly and ineffectual.20 Sir Basil’s fortunes began to sink fast. In 1707 he was forced to mortgage property, including his manor of Edmonton, to his brother Dr Henry Firebrace for £8,000 and made an assignment to him of his offices on Enfield Chase. That same year he was declared bankrupt; he is said to have attempted suicide, but he recovered from the wound and for the remainder of his life lived at Westminster discredited and poor.21 West Lodge was left in the hands of Sir Basil’s servants, Thomas Barnett and John Shelley,22 that same John Shelley who had been responsible for the vast destruction of wood which had resulted in the dismissal of the Earl of Stamford and Hugh Westlake seven years before. It must have been necessary for two such men to have paid Firebrace a considerable sum for the right to exploit the West Bailey Walk; they certainly showed every intention of making a quick turnover on their outlay. They had slaughtered many of the deer, and cut down hundreds of trees and were now planning a further large fall of wood that year.23

In August 1707 another commission was set up to investigate, particularly the behaviour of Barnett and Shelley. Among those appointed were Sir John Wolstenholm, Richard Wollaston, the new surveyor, George Hadley and David Heckstetter. They met first at the house of John Wood on Enfield Green and later at the Woolpaqk in Southgate. Charles Firebrace attended on behalf of Sir Basil, evidence was also taken from Charles Wilford, as under-keeper and deputy bailiff and John Jennings, who had been deputy woodward for twenty years. A sorry story of malpractices emerged as officer gave evidence against officer. Jennings told how Sir Basil had sold a hundred loads of wood to Wilford at 10s a load, ‘he had’, he said, ‘told Sir Basil that he thought it was not right’. Other witnesses told of wood carried to customers in Hackney, Old Street and elsewhere. Thomas Grace, a brickmaker of Potters Bar, two years earlier had had twenty-five loads of wood and a thousand faggots from Sir Basil in exchange for bricks used in the repair of West Lodge. John

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The Story of Enfield Chase – David Pam

Thomas of Barnet reported that he ‘had heard wonderful shooting in the Chase by Sir Basil’s servants’, meaning Barnett and Shelley. He said that many deer had been killed and sold and that few were now left in the West Bailey Walk.-4

Faced by this situation the Duchy issued an order prohibiting the slaughter of any deer unless by warrant, and ordered that no wood be cut except that cut for browsewood. The keepers of East Bailey and South Bailey Walks were alerted to use their utmost endeavours to prevent any further offences, Barnett and Shelley were specifically warned against cutting any wood until further orders. The court authorised David Heckstetter who lived at Minchenden in Southgate, to see that these orders were strictly observed in the West Bailey Walk during the absence of Sir Basil Firebrace from attendance to the duties of his offices.25

Charles Firebrace, Sir Basil’s son, a young man of fashion but much encumbered with debt, now took over as ranger and woodward. In March 1709 the Duchy again intervened, ordering the surveyor, Wollaston, to seize and sell all the woods which were then cut down in the Chase, though Charles Firebrace claimed that he had incurred all the expense of felling. Wollaston now took the further step of warning all those to whom the officers had sold fee wood, that they must pay the money to him and not to local officers.26 Charles Wilford responded by threatening prosecution against anyone who paid the money to the surveyor.27 This was yet another encroachment on the Firebrace property in their offices on the Chase, and Sir Basil chose to contest it in the Duchy court. The case opened with affidavits from John Jennings the woodward, Charles Wilford, and the Enfield verderers, all dutifully deposing that the browsewood had been cut in a most husbandly manner. No timber trees had been lopped or felled, they said, except ten small saplings used to shore up the garden wall at West Lodge. On the other side an affidavit from Robert Maylin accused Charles Wilford of having cut a hundred and fifty loads for sale, and that only an order from Mr Wollaston had prevented him cutting down a further hundred and fifty loads, all on the orders of Sir Basil Firebrace.2

Thus the depredations went on, there was little local control, and the situation was reduced almost to chaos. A strong hand was needed to re-impose order. In 1716 Major General John Pepper purchased the offices on the Chase, and thus Sir Basil severed his connections with Enfield. In June 1720 he was committed to the Gatehouse Prison for stabbing a certain Captain Wilson who had come to his lodgings demanding money. Fortunately the captain survived and Sir Basil was discharged from custody. He died on 7 May 1724 and was buried in St Margarets Westminster.29

Footnotes: Sir Basil Firebrace

1 DL 13.41. Ptl 2 C. W. Firebrace. Honest Harry, being the biography of Henry Firebrase Knt. 1936. 3 HCJ 1 1.327, 329, HLJ 15.566, 567, 569, 572, 573^ 577 4 DL30.99.46 5 DL1.456 6 DL41.3.17 7 ibid, DL39.2.3.1, DL5.41,395v„ 398, 406v., 460. Cal S. P. Dorn 1698

Chapter Seven: Sir Basil Firebrace

8 DL44.1259, DL41.3.17 9 DL30.99 10 DL1.458 11 DL5.41.467 12 DL39.2.3.6. 13 HCJ 13.13 Dec. 1700 14 DL41.16.12 15 DL30.99.60, HCJ 13. 26 May 1701. 16 HCJ 13. 26 May 1701 17 Case of the Earl of Stamford relating to woods lately cut in Enfield Chase. 18 R. Somerville. Office-holders in the Duchy of Lancaster. pp4, 82 19 C. W. Firebrace. Honest Harry., BM Eg 104. 20 DL 1.465 21 C. W. Firebrace. Honest Harry 22 DL9.20 23 DL5.42.226 24 DL44.1266A 25 DL5.42.226 26 DL5.42.262-3. 27 DL5.42.278 28 DL5.42.262 29 C. W. Firebrace. Honest Harry

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Chapter Eight: Major General John Pepper

According to one account, the issue of victory or defeat in the War of the Spanish Succession hinged upon the bravery and enterprise of one man, Major General John Pepper. This account was, of course, the one given to the House of Commons by the General himself. He had been left behind in Portugal, he told Parliament, when his regiment was ordered into Spain, but wishing to rejoin them in action, he obtained leave to accompany the fleet then setting out for the relief of Barcelona. John Pepper volunteered to go alone through enemy occupied territory to investigate for Major General Stanhope the true state of affairs around Barcelona. He was able, he said, to prevent the King of Spain leaving the town whereby he would inevitably have been killed or taken prisoner. Pepper returned with the information that the French fleet consisted of only twenty-four sail. The British admiral was thus encouraged to proceed to the relief of Barcelona. In the opinion of John Pepper therefore, to him was due the credit of saving both the King and the Kingdom of Spain.1

John Pepper served at least thirty years in the army during which time he rose from the rank of captain to major general; he finally sold his commission in 1719. He had to struggle for his promotion. In 1689 he was serving in the Earl of Roscommon’s Regiment of Foot, a regiment whose poor reputation could do nothing for his prospects. Pepper obtained a transfer to Colonel Thomas Erie’s Regiment in 1690 and fought under this command throughout the campaign in Ireland. He was promoted to the rank of major in the Dragoons in 1695 and served with them in Portugal and Spain, was lieutenant colonel by 1707 and brigadier general that same year. He commanded a cavalry brigade at the Battle of Almanara and gained further honours at Saragossa. He was promoted to major general in 1710.2 That same year he had the misfortune to be captured at Brihuega when Stanhope’s entire army of eight battalions of foot, four regiments of horse and thirty-three pieces of artillery were taken. He spent Christmas day in honourable captivity, composing a long despatch to the Duke of Ormonde in which he threw the entire responsibility for the disaster on to his commander-in- chief and completely exonerated General Pepper.3 Pepper’s regiment of dragoons returned to England in January 1712.4 During the Fifteen he was in charge of operations around the ardently Jacobite city of Oxford. He handled a dangerous situation with circumspection. First he sent in a cornet, disguised as a countryman, to spy out the strategic points and then, after a forced march, moved his troops in through the city gates when they were opened at dawn. Established in the city, he proceeded to arrest the Jacobite leaders.5 Thus Major General John Pepper considered that the Hanoverians owed him at least a debt of gratitude.

Pepper purchased the remaining twenty-four years of a lease of the offices on Enfield Chase in August 1716 for somewhat less than £3,000.6 In doing so, he outbid a most formidable rival in James Brydges, the Duke of Chandos.7 Brydges seldom forgave anyone who bested him in competing for profit, and this property was potentially profitable, at least it was said to be by Sir Basil Firebrace, the vendor. Incorporated in the grant there were the three keeperships and all that went with them. To West Bailey Walk belonged West Lodge, a large house with barns and Chapter Eight: Major General John Pepper stables for more than thirty horses. It had been allowed to fall into a ruinous condition and Pepper was to claim that he had to spend £2,000 in repairs.8 The garden of eight acres was well planted with fruit trees and vegetables (F'irebrace said it had cost £6,000 in the making) and there were eighty acres of meadow. East Lodge was built of brick, but it was very old and on the point of falling down; Pepper was in fact to pull much of the building down a few years later. It had a well planted garden, thirty-five acres of meadow and a rabbit warren. South Lodge, held on lease by Sir Henry Bellasyse, was described as a good house with four rooms on each floor, large barns, stables and coach houses. It had a garden and an extensive orchard together with seventy-five acres of meadow and pasture ground, and a rabbit warren. There was an allowance of £6 a year to each walk for keepers’ wages, and £30 a year to buy hay for the King’s deer; each keeper could take a hundred loads of firewood free from the Chase and two bucks and two does annually. The keepers also had liberty to pasture an unlimited number of cattle on the Chase.

Pepper, as master of the game, was to have the sole right to control the killing of the deer except that fifteen brace of bucks and does were due each year to the Crown and to the Duchy of Lancaster. The office gave him authority over the taking of all other game and liberty to exploit the fish ponds on the Chase. It also entitled him to fifteen loads of firewood which he was free to sell. His salary, as master of the game, was £9 a year. Pepper, as ranger, had the right to hunt and kill any deer which had strayed beyond the boundaries of the Chase, and an entitlement to a further buck and a doe out of each walk. In this capacity also, he could claim thirty loads of firewood. Pepper, as woodward, had a salary of £6 a year and another thirty loads of firewood, with all the trees blown down and the dead trees. Pepper, as bailiff of the Manor of Enfield, had a salary of £3 6s 8d, and a further £2 for marking commonable cattle, twenty loads of firewood and all the profits from the pound. Pepper, as steward, was allowed £6 a year for presiding over the Manor court with a further £4 to pay a deputy steward. He could derive a profit from the Manor court of around £10 a year. All these offices, purchased by General Pepper, were thus valued by Sir Basil Firebrace (who was offering them for sale) at £964 a year.9

Pepper would be free to sell each office to the highest bidder; each purchaser, in turn, would expect to make a profit on his own outlay. The purchasers would employ deputies to carry out the duties of each office and, while they held power the deputies would squeeze whatever advantage they could from the King’s Chase of Enfield. All these profits were inevitably limited by the poverty, or the cupidity, of those who lived around the Chase, who could find ready purchasers for stolen wood and timber among local innkeepers, tradesmen and gentry, and those daring enough to engage in the very profitable business of stealing the King’s deer. Major General Pepper would have to battle hard to secure a profit from his purchase of Enfield Chase. Over the next nine years, he was to find himself under attack from all sides; harassed by officials from the Duchy of Lancaster, deceived by his own keepers and under-keepers, embarrassed by wood stealers, whose carts crossed and re-crossed his lines with apparent impunity, and thrown on the defensive by marauding gangs of deer stealers. Little enough was left for the General and his expectant relatives from the fat pickings dangled before his eager eyes by his predecessor.

John Pepper took up command on the Chase in 1716 and immediately dismissed

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John Jenr.ings, the deputy woodward, who had held office for fifteen years.10 He then ordered under-keeper William Whitlock to move out of East Lodge to his own house in Southgate. Suspicious of the under-keepers, he retained them only by annual contract" and immediately organised a search of their homes. Under-keepers had always taken advantage of their tenure of office, as the job was inadequately paid; inevitably the General found incriminating evidence. At Whitlock’s he discovered a ‘bullet gun’ concealed in a secret place and, at under-keeper Smith’s, the skins of several deer. The military regime had taken over. Both keepers were discharged at the end of the year. Pepper alleged that Whitlock had, over the years, sold great quantities of timber and wood, and killed and disposed of many deer.12 The man was in serious trouble over a great oak that had been cut down by his order near the Dog Kennel (probably the one attached to East Lodge). Whitlock had set out to bring the tree back to his house at Southgate in a cart driven by young John Mason. Fearful of the General, he is described as riding nervously behind the cart, complaining to the driver of the very obvious tracks that they were leaving; every now and again he would jump from his horse and anxiously tread down the turf with his feet. The tree was hurriedly set down in his yard and covered with bushes, boughs and brambles. He at once sent for Draper, the sawyer, to disguise the evidence by cutting it into planks. Some of these found their way to the house of John Mason, the third of the under-keepers; like the other two, he was dismissed at the end of the year.13

The General, exploiting his position as a justice of peace, went over to the offensive by ordering a widespread search of premises around the Chase. The search was carried out systematically by one of the new keepers, Matthew Colgan, with a warrant under the hand and seal of John Pepper. At Enfield on 2 January, he found beech trees and young oaks at the premises of a man named Goodfellow; at each of the houses of Thomas Muskett, John Dodson and John Peacock, he found a load of large wood, as also in the house of Thomas Minshull in Clay Hill. He searched John Baldock’s yard at Chase Side Enfield on the following day to find loppings of oak and beech. On 6 January at Potters Bar, he discovered several trees of oak and beech in the possession of the carpenter William Stone, and some large wood at Widow Wright’s. The next day he was at Chase Side Southgate (known as Bush Fair) to discover large timber at the homes of Charles Cole (later to be in trouble for deer stealing) and John Cutler, and loppings of oak and beech at the Crown, where the landlord was Thomas Simons. He went on to South Street (Southgate Green) to discover loppings of oak and beech at the houses of Thomas Taylor, George Turner, Sarah Wilkinson and Thomas Smith.

On 13 January he found more loppings in the premises of Charles Henn at Winchmore Hill, and went from there right across the Chase to search the home of Thomas Etridge in Coopers Lane. Soon afterwards, the General ordered more searches to be carried out and stolen wood was found with Thomas Combes of Enfield Town, John Peseley of Chase Side Enfield, Thomas Chandler of Hadley and John Jennings of Potters Bar, the former woodward. William Waller was caught on the Chase with a bundle of loppings on his back and when Colgan searched his house at Winchmore Hill, he discovered three loads of oak and beech. On 21 May 1720 notices were served on thirty-two people in the villages around the Chase summoning them to appear before the Duchy court charged with stealing wood.14 These strong measures taken by the military regime aroused in Daniel Defoe a hope that the Chase

Chapter Eight: Major General John Pepper could be restored to its former glories. ‘But now we hear’, he wrote, ‘that, by the vigilance of General Pepper, the Chase is much recovered and likely to be a place fit for the diversion of a prince, as it has been before’.

At this climax of the campaign, the General paused to dispatch his report to the chancellor of the Duchy; there had been progress but many difficulties lay ahead. Before he had taken over, the country people had made vast depredations on the Chase. ‘They had been allowed’, he said indignantly, ‘to cut down and dispose of timber and wood as if it had been their own’. The former officers had been the worst offenders, and had made their fortunes. He attributed much to the negligence of the Duchy surveyor. Many people who held lands adjoining, had opened gates onto the Chase, whereby they could carry stolen wood onto their own premises with little fear of detection.

With uncharacteristic naivete he had asked, in November 1716, that the chancellor should issue a commission requiring the leading local gentlemen to assist him to put a stop to the stealing of wood and the taking of deer. Not one local gentleman would consent to serve on his commission. He had offended landowners in Edmonton, Mimmsand Hadley by his enclosure of thirty acres on the Chase. They and their tenants had broken his fences and driven in their cattle; these had been impounded by Pepper’s order. The landowners proposed an action at law to retrieve their animals and to restore their common rights. They drew up an agreement to appoint attorneys to prepare a case against the General with an arrangement to share the costs in proportion as they were rated for land tax.15 As a consequence of their hostility, Major General Pepper was forced to engage the wood stealers and poachers without support. As we have seen, he discharged all the officers and appointed new ones, but a perimeter of twenty-seven miles could not be secured by any three men. His under-keepers, on many occasions, were beaten and insulted by the country people. They were paid a paltry £6 a year and the General was well aware that honest men would not do such work for so little.

He had been forced to engage four extra keepers at his own expense as well as to employ his personal servants to accompany the keepers about the Chase. As we have seen, a number of offenders had been brought to justice but the pillage continued. There were many, he said, who lived entirely on the proceeds of stolen wood, such people were filled with so violent a hatred towards him that they had threatened to burn down his house and even to murder him. It was his stated opinion that many of these ‘meane people’ could be eradicated by turning them out of their cottages, which were encroachments, and therefore illegal. The cottages could then be used to house new keepers, if he could persuade the Duchy to pay their wages.

The general was highly suspicious of the claims of the country people to common pasture. ‘They put in as many cattle as they think fit’, he complained, ‘and it is under the pretence of looking after them that they come into the Chase and once there, they are free to cut and steal the timber and wood’. He had tried to control their activities by having the cattle marked and numbered, but this method had not proved effective.

Pepper pointed out almost plaintively that it would be in the interest of the Crown to preserve the timber. Much of it, if they allowed it to grow, could in a few

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The Story of Enfield Chase – David Pam years be taken for shipbuilding. His task would be made much easier, he pointed out, if the Duchy would only provide for the repair of the perimeter fence and order the closure of all but the ancient gates.16

Pepper had relinquished an appointment as Governor of Kinsale in Ireland in order to secure election as member for Steyning, but his sacrifice had not been well rewarded. He had enemies in Parliament more powerful than the people around Enfield Chase. He had petitioned for a reward of £5,000 for his former services in Spain. He claimed it had been promised to him by the late Lord Stanhope, who had been the general in command. It was due, he said, in compensation for the hazards and expenses he had undergone in the relief of Barcelona. The House of Commons had once got so far as to vote a clause to empower the Commissioner for Accounts to make the payment, but Mr Walpole and the late Mr Secretary Craggs had ‘persuaded’ the General to drop the matter, cynically assuring him that he would receive a reward from the King. He had pursued this prospect, writing in his best French to request of His Majesty the office of ‘garde magasin de la Tour Etoit’, but he had received neither this office or any other, and in his petition he went on to remind the King that he had fought two elections in the interest of the Crown, which had cost him £5,000. Now he asked that, since his health had been restored, he might be allowed to purchase a regiment, or that he should be granted a pension.17 He received neither.

As the ambitions of the General were thwarted in the world of political intrigue, so he became more ruthless towards his local enemies. Acting as keeper, he prosecuted Charles Garrett, an Enfield baker, for stealing a deer off Enfield Chase, then in his role as magistrate, he both found him guilty and imposed on him a fine of £20. His servants were ever more ready to shoot on sight. In June 1720 a would- be poacher was found dead on the Chase having been shot through the head by a keeper. His three companions had fled empty-handed. Their disappointment led to their downfall, for seeing a flock of sheep on their way back through Edmonton, they decided that they would compensate themselves for the loss of venison by taking mutton. Thereupon they chose out twelve of the fattest from the flock which they drove before them back to town. Unfortunately for them they were recognised on the road. The owner was informed and he, obtaining a warrant and the assistance of the constables, proceeded to a house in Drury Lane. There were two of the miscreants at home, one of whom they disturbed in bed with a woman. Under threat of prosecution she led them to another house where they took the third of the party. In desperation he turned evidence against his former friends who, at the Old Bailey, were found guilty and condemned to transportation. Eight survivors from the flock were discovered in the attic.18

The intensity of local feeling against the General’s high-handed measures became an embarrassment to him. William Gates, an Edmonton blacksmith, commonly known as Vulcan Gates (later to be hanged), Charles Cole, one of those whose premises Pepper had recently searched at Chase Side Southgate, and George Ebbs, who had for years supported his family at Winchmore Hill by stealing wood off the Chase, were indicted in 1721 for deer stealing. Under the act of 1691, this offence was punishable by a fine of £30, the magistrate had power to distrain, or for those with insufficient money or goods, to impose imprisonment for one year, and then one hour in the pillory. Thus the three men were confined in Newgate for

Chapter Eight: Major General John Pepper twelve months, but at the end of their term it was rumoured abroad that the General had ordered that they should not be released. The area was thrown into a tumult. Ebbs, Gates and Cole had to be escorted from Newgate to the Market Square in Enfield under a guard of horse grenadiers. So great was the hostility of the crowd that the guard was forced to remain under arms throughout the whole time that the three men stood in the pillory.19 Immediately afterwards they were taken back, under heavy guard, to Newgate, to face further charges for the same offence.

Then there was another embarrassment for the General. The 5 November had always been the occasion for celebration, ever since the Glorious Revolution of 1688. A great bonfire was burned in the Market Place at Enfield each year, and for as long as men could remember they had been allowed to gather wood on Enfield Chase. But this year, three of the wood collectors had been arrested on the order of General Pepper and confined by him (acting with two other justices) in the Middlesex House of Correction for a term of three months with hard labour. Further to exacerbate local feeling, on one market day each month, the three, Mark Saxby, John Wright and Thomas Harradine, were to be brought to Enfield and there publicly whipped in the Market Place. There was an outcry, a petition was raised, and Pepper’s sentence was countermanded by Charles Viscount Townshend, who ordered that the three men be forthwith discharged.20

Pepper’s treatment of poor wood stealers was becoming so vindictive that even the overseers and churchwardens at Enfield were roused to protest. Richard Combs, William Lightasell and Thomas Pepper (the latter presumably having no family connection) were thrown into the Clerkenwell Bridewell for lopping a beech tree; there they lay ‘in a most miserable condition, their wives and families in the country perishing for what is sufficient to support life’. The parish officers objected that William Lightasell ‘had always endeavoured to get an honest livelihood and to maintain his wife and children without being a charge to the parish’, and what more could be asked of ‘poor ignorant labourers’.21

All this time the General himself had been assiduously taking vast quantities of the timber and wood in an effort to ensure an adequate return on his capital outlay, but his efforts were thwarted by interference from the Duchy of Lancaster. William Thompson, the surveyor of the southern parts of the Duchy, had received so many reports of destruction of the wood that he came to Enfield to investigate on 1 June 1722. At the old East Lodge he found thirteen hundred feet of paling, all of oak, which must have required eighty to a hundred trees to have been felled since the previous September. He returned on 17 November and saw evidence that a great many more oaks had been cut down and many frames made out of the timber. William Sams, the Enfield carpenter, was summoned before the attorney-general of the Duchy for questioning on 23 May the following year. He admitted that, by the order of John Pepper, he had employed workmen to fell eighty oak trees and that more had been marked out to be felled.22

Throughout the year 1723 the preparation of a case in the Duchy court against Major General John Pepper moved inexorably forward. The charges were preceded by a recitation of the duties of each of his offices, as though Pepper had not paid good money for the privilege of holding them. He was to repair and maintain the lodges, gates, posts and rails at no expense to the Crown; he was to make a rental

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The Story of Enfield Chase – David Pam of the Manor every third year, and pay all revenues to the auditor of the Duchy. He had no power to cut any wood unless this had been allowed by the Duchy court and had been set out by the Duchy surveyor. He should keep good record of the proceedings of the Manor court and make up the court rolls, and should account in the Manor court for all woodcut. He was charged with the destruction of timber, deer, pheasant and partridge. There was not, said the indictment, one thousand deer left of the four thousand on the Chase when he had assumed office. He had permitted great numbers of his own cattle to be fed on the Chase and had allowed others to feed cattle there who had no right to common. He had totally neglected the marking of commonable cattle.

He was further charged with the construction of brick kilns and had not only made great quantities of brick and lime, but had sold the brick-earth on a large scale. He had pulled down much of East Lodge and had converted the materials to his own use, made an enclosure there, and put up houses which he had leased at great rents for his own profit.23

John Pepper countered these accusations on 25 June 1724, but his objections were overruled and an injunction was ordered against him. The anxiety caused by the suit was undermining his health and he was by this time a sick man. He petitioned Townshend on 26 October for a stay of proceedings in the Duchy court and pleaded that an enquiry should be substitued, ‘by which means’, he said, ‘I shall have liberty to try what the Bath waters will do, it being the only probable means prescribed by my physicians for the recovery of my health’. The petition was considered and rejected. He sought immunity from prosecution as a member of Parliament but the Duchy demanded an order to sequester his personal estate to force him to attend court.''1

It seems certain that one of the General’s enemies was encouraging the officers of the Duchy to press on with the proceedings. James Brydges, the Duke of Chandos, certainly had both a motive and a grievance. Undoubtedly the case could have been halted by the intervention of Walpole. Brydges had always made a point of assiduously cultivating the great man; Pepper, on the other hand, had allied himself first to Ormonde and, after the disaffection of the Duke, to Cadogan and the King. Ruin faced him if the prosecution succeeded. The trial was held at Westminster Hall before Lord Leichmore who infuriated the General by his offensive behaviour. On one occasion Pepper was heard to declare in a loud voice, as he left the court room, that if Lord Leichmore did not mend his manners he would send Lord Cadogan to him.25 None of this tended to increase his favour with those who held real power in the country.

Isaac Wilson and Thomas Smith, both under-keepers lately discharged, proved to be the most damaging witnesses for the prosecution. Giving evidence on 2 December 1724 Wilson told how Pepper had filled the lodges with his own relations. Mr Parke Pepper became keeper of West Bailey Walk and moved into West Lodge where the General also lived. Mr George Pepper, the General’s nephew became keeper of East Bailey Walk and moved into the old East Lodge, which had stood empty for over two years. South Lodge was leased to Mr Cravenburgh at £100 a year, and Mr Whittle was keeper there.

Chapter Eight: Major General John Pepper

According to the evidence of Wilson and Smith (not entirely unbiased) the Peppers (perhaps forseeing the end of the General’s regime) had endeavoured to take what they could from the Chase while there was still time. The principal allegation against John Pepper concerned the building of the new East Lodge in the summer of 1723. Brick-earth had been dug from the Chase and sixty thousand bricks made by a brickmaker from Barnet by the name of Crew. The General had employed Thomas Birch of Kitts End, John Penney of South Mimms and ‘old Allick’ to cut a riding forty feet wide and half a mile long to the new lodge. Much of this wood was used in the building of the house. Only a fortnight since, according to Wilson, twenty-five trees had been cut down and carried to Mr Sullen’s barn at the White Lion at Kitts End.

The General, it was alleged, had helped himself freely to venison. Isaac Wilson reported that when he had been under-keeper in 1723, he had killed five does for the General and the following year another six, then in November, a barren doe which Mr George Pepper (‘who pretends to East Lodge’) carried away for his own use. Mr Parke Pepper (‘who pretends to West Lodge’) about the same time, killed a soaken doe which was cut up for him by Thomas Wilson the new underkeeper (commonly known as Grenadier Wilson). General Pepper several times swore, according to this witness, ‘Damn me I care not if there is not a deer in the Chase’. Statistics of the number of deer varied widely. According to Thomas Smith, there had been a thousand head two years before, now there were only two or three hundred, and not above four bucks. William Sherrard claimed that there had been two thousand head of deer when Mr Secretary Coventry had been the ranger, now, he said, ‘there were little above six hundred and many of them rascally’ (ie without antlers).

Thomas Simons, landlord of the Crown in Southgate, had told Thomas Smith that mould and turf had been taken from the Chase; Lady Heckstetter’s servants at Minchenden had had several loads, Madame Guy of Southgate had had a hundred loads, Mr Coltman of Southgate and Mr Colebrook who had just built his new house called Arnos Grove (later Northmet House on Cannon Hill) and Madam Gascoign of Enfield had each of them had great quantities of mould and turf, more was taken by Mr Topkin and payment for all this had gone to Mr Parke Pepper.26

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Figure 10: The Crown at Southgate

The persecution of the Peppers continued. Around the end of April and the beginning of May 1725 attachments were ordered against those to whom the Peppers had issued permits to take wood. An order was also issued against George Pepper, but when John Clayton, clerk to the attorney of the Duchy, came to deliver it at East Lodge, he found the house empty. Neither could he find Parke Pepper at West Lodge and had to leave the injunction in the hands of Elizabeth Saxon, a servant. The particular charge against George Pepper concerned a deer which he was alleged to have killed and carried off to East Lodge.29 His explanation was that in early November 1724 he had gone out in a chaise with his sister-in-law, Mrs Evelyn Pepper, to take the air, and as they were driving between East Lodge and West Lodge they saw two dogs feeding on a deer and the lady suggested that, since it appeared to be freshly killed, they should take it in the chaise to West Lodge. But there they found that the General was in London, so naturally they took it back to East Lodge, where they were living up until April 1725. George Pepper claimed that he did not know who had killed the animal, but denied that he had killed it himself.30

From time to time the national press reported another sort of deer stealing on Enfield Chase. The London Journal of 17 August 1723 carried the story that Thomas Duncombe had been set in the pillory in Enfield Market Place after having spent a year in Newgate for this offence. On 14 September there was a report that two deer stealers had been apprehended on the Chase and one of them had been committed to Newgate. On 7 December the same paper had an account of deer stealers who had broken into the Chase, had fired on keepers who pursued them and in doing so had killed one of their own number.

Chapter Eight: Major General John Pepper

Deer stealing was becoming so common, said Mr Townshend, the coachman at South Lodge, that on one occasion he had seen six people, each of them carrying a deer on his back. Thomas Simons of the Crown declared that he had frequently seen venison roasted on the highway side and passers-by were invited to partake.31 Though the publican and the coachman may have been guilty of a little exaggeration, their words are in some way confirmed by Parkers London News of 5 October 1724, which reported that the deer stealers had become so daring and insolent, that a party of them had flayed a deer which they had shot, made a fire there, dressed and roasted the venison and feasted in the middle of the Chase in defiance of the keepers who dared not approach. General Pepper complained bitterly of this state of affairs. The Duchy of Lancaster had totally failed to prosecute offenders against whom he had laid information. They had left it entirely to him and he had incurred both the expense and the hatred of the countryside. Despite all his brave endeavours, more and more people were coming into the Chase, stealing the wood and hunting the deer, there was an air of violent hostility towards him and the keepers. An attempt had been made to murder him in his own house, and he had been badly wounded. He had been fired at on the Chase, his servants had been killed and wounded and their horses shot from under them. The General’s campaign was in serious trouble.32

The deer stealers became more violent as the law increased in severity. The Black Act came into force in June 1723. On 11 December the same year the Daily Journal reported that the bench of justices at Hicks Hall had issued a warrant for the apprehension of John Berrisford and Thomas James, indicted for the murder of an under-keeper on Enfield Chase. It all arose from an incident on 10 October when the under-keepers, William (Grenadier) Wilson, Thomas White, Thomas Smith and Edward Fitzpatrick had intercepted a party of deer stealers on the Chase. They were old offenders. There was John Berrisford the wheelwright from Edmonton and Richard Minshull the baker of Winchmore Hill, both of whom had recently spent three months in Newgate for stealing eighty fish from a local fish pond.33 Thomas James, a hard man who was finally to meet his death on the gallows for horse stealing, and Robert Dewksberry a labourer from London. There had been a fierce skirmish during which Berrisford had killed Thomas White’s horse from under him and a shot from James had badly shattered Fitzpatrick’s leg. The wounded keeper was carried back to West Lodge and a surgeon, one William Hill of Watford, was summoned to dress the wound. A week later gangrene set in and it was found necessary to amputate. Fitzpatrick lingered on for a week after the operation, during which time he laid information before the magistrates, and then he died.34 The report in the Daily Journal went on to announce that notice had been issued that James and Berrisford must surrender within forty days or automatically face execution for felony. They failed to surrender and were proclaimed under the Black Act in March 1724.35

On 8 July three members of this same gang, including Richard Gibbs of Enfield and William Gates the Edmonton blacksmith, commonly known as Vulcan Gates (one of those whose return to Newgate had caused such a commotion in Enfield in the previous year), broke into the Chase and shot and carried off a buck within half a mile of West Lodge. The very next day they had the audacity to return to the same spot, within sight of the lodge itself. The keepers and servants, eleven men in all, alerted by the previous raid, emerged armed to secure them and to prevent them carrying away the two fallow deer which they had killed. The situation of the intruders looked desperate, but they made no attempt to escape and stood their

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The Story of Enfield Chase – David Pam ground, firing on the keepers to drive them back so that they would not lose the venison. It happened that Henry Best, an under-keeper, came up behind one of the deer stealers as he bent to reload, and shot him in the back; he was badly wounded and died the following Sunday. His two companions rode off.36 The dead man was described as a wheelwright upon Tower Hill.

Perhaps fearing reprisals, Best and another keeper named Humphrey Buckle, a Barnet man, laid evidence on the following day against Vulcan Gates and Richard Gibbs. The information was published in the London Gazette 20-24 July 1724 and an order proclaimed under the Black Act in the Market Place at Enfield, at ten in the morning and two in the afternoon on market day, that William (Vulcan) Gates and Richard Gibbs must surrender within forty days or face death for felony without trial. On 20 July, Thomas James, Aaron Maddocks (commonly known to be Jonathan Wild’s man), William (Vulcan) Gates and a fourth man known by the name of John Coster, armed and mounted, rode up to the hedge of the meadow near West Lodge looking for Henry Best. They told Thomas Gray, General Pepper’s steward, who with Joshua Smith was haymaking there, that they would shoot all those involved in the killing on 9 July. With that they rode off. Smith and Gray heard the sound of their guns as they openly hunted the deer through Enfield Chase.37

These were violent men. Unlike the ‘Blacks’ of East Hampshire or Windsor Forest they seem to have had no social or political motivation. Vulcan Gates did have a genuine grievance against General Pepper, and he was obviously popular in the country around Enfield Chase. That Aaron Maddocks had served Jonathan Wild, proves him to have been a criminal, and the evidence of an anonymous informer fully confirms the existence of a criminal organisation. He tells that he was returning from London when he met a neighbour at a public house in Hatfield Broad Oak. This chance meeting caused him to stay longer than he might have done. There were seven or eight men drinking in the bar and by their discourse, fuddled with spirits, he discovered that they were members of a gang. They were lamenting the death of the wheelwright from Tower Hill shot by one of the keepers on Enfield Chase the previous week. The informer picked up more details; they spoke of an apothecary named Ambrose Sturgeis and of their surgeon who had served their organisation over many years and dwelled near Shadwell Church in Ratcliffe Highway.38 Such men were hardly likely to leave a comrade unavenged.

Between seven and eight in the morning, on Friday 30 July, as Henry Best was riding along the Ridgeway with Thomas Gray, he had the misfortune to come face to face with James, Maddocks, Gates and Coster. ‘Damn ye’, cried James, ‘I have met you’. He attacked Best, striking him on the arm and the head and breaking his leg with his gun. Turning to Gray, he warned him to clear off or he would be served the same. Gray fled. A report in the London Journal elaborates a little saying that Best was thrown into a fishpond from which he was pulled out but died soon afterwards.39 This was not true, but he was badly injured and lost the use of his leg and arm.40

The General was now a sick man. Ossory Medlicott, his son-in-law, had taken over his duties on the Chase. The Privy Council was informed by Medlicott of the disturbances in a letter to Charles Delafaye. An order was at once published warning unwary persons against sheltering or entertaining Thomas James. Professor E P Thompson has shown how this order was particularly directed against John

Chapter Eight: Major General John Pepper

Huntridge, an innkeeper near Windsor Great Park, in the prosecution of whom the whole apparatus of the state was manipulated by Walpole in pursuit of some personal vendetta. Medlicott pleaded that it would be impossible to maintain the rule of law on the Chase without the assistance of troops; in consequence an order was issued on 5 August to the Secretary of War instructing him to station a company of foot soldiers at Barnet to assist the civil magistrates. Rewards of £40 were offered in the London Gazette for information leading to the capture and conviction of Thomas James, Aaron Maddocks, William Gates and John Coster.41

A price of £40 made retribution inevitable. Gates the Edmonton blacksmith was taken on 28 November 1725. Carried before Charles Floyer, a justice, he was committed to Newgate and brought before the court for identification on 2 March. Facing death for felony by his failure to surrender, he could only deny his identity. Thereupon a jury was empanelled and Henry Best and Humphry Buckle were called upon to witness that this was the very man against whom the information had been laid. Thomas Archer confirmed the identification. ‘One day when I came to shave him’, he informed the court, ‘he told me he was a dead man if he was taken, for his name was in the news and therefore he always carried pistols about him. He told me he intended to leave the country and showed me the newspaper in which William Gates, alias Vulcan, was required to surrender’. Thus, under the Black Act, with no trial, Vulcan Gates was condemned to be hanged by the neck until he was dead.42 Vulcan Gates resented the injustice of the proceedings. ‘When the proclamation was given out’ he told the Ordinary of Newgate, ‘I was out of town at fairs; and being ignorant and not understanding to read, I did not consider the dangerous consequence of disobedience’. On the day of the execution he and some fellows ‘took it into their heads that they would not be hanged’. They obtained a crowbar and while some drowned the noise with singing psalms, the others prised up the flagstones and erected a prodigious barrier against the door of the condemned cell. At last Sir Jeremiah Morden was sent for ‘who spoke seriously to them’ through a little hole in the ceiling and who even deigned to dangle his gold chain through the hole as a proof of his office. At length Gates gave himself up and was hanged at Tyburn.41 Henry Best, for his help and for his injuries, was granted £50 reward.

Thomas James soon followed to the gallows, sadly it was not for shooting the King’s deer but for the theft of two mares at Hatfield. He was arrested by the owners while trying to sell one of the animals at Bromley Fair on 3 February 1726. Thomas Gray, less afraid now to face the Enfield labourer, went down to Rochester to identify his old enemy and to claim his third portion of the reward.44 James was convicted and condemned to death at the Kent assizes. For years afterwards his body hung in chains, a grisly warning, among strangers, far from his native Enfield.45

Richard Gibbs, taken in February 1727, was also indicted for his failure to surrender under the Black Act. It was hopeless to deny his identity for both Humphry Buckle and Henry Best were in the Old Bailey to testify against him. Gibbs protested that while he was in Newgate, Best had confessed to him that he knew nothing of his being guilty, and had declared that he would not appear as an evidence at his prosecution. At this Best laughed. ‘It is true I said so in Newgate’, he replied, ‘for finding myself among a pack of rogues who had just before picked my pocket, I know not what they would have done had I told them I would swear against one of their comrades’.

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The law took its course and Gibbs was hanged.46

Aaron Maddocks remained longer at liberty. He was taken in July 1729 by William Crew, a tough abrasive character employed as an under-keeper, one who was to give those in authority as much trouble as Aaron Maddocks himself. William Crew was patrolling Enfield Chase by himself, about eight o’clock in the evening on 9 July, when he discovered several deer stealers armed with guns around a fallow deer which had been killed. Crew selected carefully the man with £40 upon his head and shot him. The gang fled leaving Maddocks badly wounded upon the ground. Crew dragged his captive before Henry Coltman, a justice at Southgate, who committed him to Newgate where he died of his wounds two weeks later. There were some that argued that the reward should not be paid because Maddocks had never been brought to justice, some that the offer had been annulled by the late King’s death. Nevertheless, it was recommended that William Crew be granted the full £40 for the great hazards he had run in apprehending so dangerous a person.47

General Pepper died, after arriving at Dover on his way to Montpelier, on 26 October 1725. His body was brought back to be buried at Chelsea. The Daily Journal was of the opinion that his death would be much regretted in the neighbourhood of Enfield Chase;48 this would seem improbable. John Pepper’s estate was left to John Pepper Medlicott his grandson, an infant, the son of the Revd Ossory Medlicott. There were debts amounting to £7,568 19s 4d.49 Nevertheless Ossory Medlicott, his executor, believed that there was sufficient to meet all obligations.50 There were leaseholds in Westminster, in County Meath in Ireland, and elsewhere. By the terms of John Pepper’s will the income from these was to pay for the education of his grandson until he reached the age of twenty-five. The General’s wife Johannah was to receive only £40 a year under the terms of the will; there must surely have been other provision made for her, for even to Margaret Oulton, a servant, he left an annuity worth £20 a year.51 The General at the time of his death had nine and a half years remaining of his grant of the offices and enclosures on Enfield Chase. He had been in the process of negotiating an agreement with William Pulteney for the sale of his interests for £4,500, but his executor immediately entered into a contract with James Brydges, the Duke of Chandos (who already held the reversionary interest) to sell to him for £3,800.52

Without the shelter provided by the General, his impecunious relatives found themselves unprotected. The Revd Ossory Medlicott was reduced to petitioning for an Irish deanery recently refused by somebody else,53 while Parke Pepper, ensign on half-pay, pleaded for some advancement in the army;54 perhaps by these at least his death was regretted.

Footnotes: Major General John Pepper

1 HCJ. 11 May 1720 2 C. Dalton. English Army lists and Commission Registers, 1661-1714. 1960. 3 HMC Ormonde MS. New Series 8. 4 T 1.192.44. 5 Sir Chas. Petrie. The Jacobite movement. 1959. p227. 6 Enfield DG233, DL5.43 7 Enfield DG426

Chapter Eight: Major General John Pepper

8 DL41.16.12.17 9 Enfield DG428 10 DL5.43 11 DL9.21 12 DL9.21 13 DL9.21 14 DL9.21 15 GLRO Acc 349.123 16 DL41.16.12.17 17 SP41.5 18 KB33.13.6, Weekly Journal or Saturday Rost, 11 June 1720 19 SP35.30.47, SP35.47.74, SP35.77.204, Daily Journal, 7 March 1722/3. 20 SP44.361.156 21 SP35.48.40, SP35.48.41 22 DL9.22, DL4.136.5 23 DL1.481 24DL5.43.327, CHI.177, SP35.67.120, SP35.76.12, DL5.43.357 25 HMC Report . . . Various Collections 8,393 26 DL9.22, DL5.43.358 27 DL9.22 28 DL41.96.6 29 DL9.22 30 DL9.22 31 DL9.22 32 C(H)366a Cambridge Univ Lib. 33 GLRO MJ/SR 2402 Ap 1723 34 GLRO MSP 1726 Oct 22 35 London Gazette No 6249 7 March 1723/4 36 Brices Weekly Journal 23 July 1725 p3. Mists Weekly Journal 17 July 1725, Weekly Journal or British Gazetteer 17 July 1725 37 SP35.57.43 38 SP35.57.42 39 Weekly Journal or British Gazetteer 7 August 1725 SP35.57.59, London Journal 28 August 1725, Mists Weekly Journal 7 August 1725 40 GLRO MPS 1726 July 36 41 E. P. Thompson, Whigs and Hunters. 1975. SP35.57.60, SP35.55.125, SP44.292.74, SP43.74. 42 Tl/255/33, Old Bailey Sessions Papers 1726 43 E. P. Thompson. Whigs and Hunters. 1975, GLRO MSP 1726 July 36 43 Tl/257/32 44 Mists Weekly Journal 14 January 1727 45 Guildhall, Old Bailey Sessions Papers 22-25 February 1727 46 T53/36/35 47 Daily Journal 27 October 1725 48 Enfield DG438 49 PROB 3 1.44.542- 50 PROB 11,605.217 51 PROB 31.44.542 52 SP35.67.131 53 SP35.67.86

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Chapter Nine: Three Dukes of Chandos

James Brydges, first Duke of Chandos, was a tycoon amongst the aristocracy, a greedy but gullible tycoon. He made a fortune as paymaster general, that most lucrative of government offices which he held from 1707 to 1712duringthetime of Marlborough’s wars. He invested his riches in ill-chosen ventures. He set up oyster fisheries which produced no pearls and scarcely any oysters, he put money into unprofitable pipe-clay excavations, coal mines, copper mines and silver mines, most of which had long since been worked out; he entered into fruitless and surreptitious efforts to find gold; he purchased sixty thousand acres in New York State only to involve himself in unending and expensive litigation, he invested in Mrs Coppin’s patent method of extracting silver from mundic1 from which last he had high hopes of a profit of £8,000 a year; not unnaturally it failed to materialise.

Chandos built himself a small but magnificent house called Canons, in Stanmore, and sent agents to purchase every conceivable rarity to adorn it, from the acorns of the evergreen oak, to Muscovy ducks and flamingos. He maintained a full-time orchestra there of twenty-seven players which cost him a thousand pounds a year in wages alone; Pepusch conducted it and Handel was commissioned to write a set of anthems for the concerts. Though he managed to emerge from the bursting of the South Sea Bubble with a profit of £200,000, his pleasure was marred by the realisation that he might well have cleared £900,000.

In 1714 Chandos purchased a reversion of the offices on Enfield Chase for £1,245.2 This meant that his lease would ensue after the expiration of Pepper’s term or, what is more relevant, upon any forfeiture of Pepper’s lease for alleged misdemeanours. Thus it would seem likely that his was the unseen power that persuaded the Duchy court so relentlessly to pursue Pepper into his grave. During the time that this action against Pepper was proceeding so happily (for Chandos) he sought to sell his interests, first to Walpole and then to Pulteney, but his valuation of the Chase as worth £884 a year, excluding any advantage that might be taken outside the law, was so high that the Pulteneys were suspicious. ‘Can this possibly be imagined’, wrote Daniel Pulteney, ‘when General Pepper made his purchase for less than £3,000, and yet in this outbid the Duke of Chandos’.3 As has been seen, the negotiations with the Pulteneys, both those carried on by Pepper’s executor and those by the Duke, fell through and, in 1727, Chandos purchased the remainder of Pepper’s lease for a mere £3,800.4 He had also secured the lease of South Lodge, where Mr Cravenburgh was now his tenant, and East Lodge, held by Christopher Lister. Thus, secure in his bargain, he negotiated to sell the property to the York Buildings Company (a company particularly interested in coal mining) of which he was a major shareholder; he asked £16,000. By the end of the year 1727, these negotiations too had been called off,5 and Chandos was left with the uneasy prospect of securing a profit from Enfield Chase, an endeavour in which his predecessors had so signally failed.

Yet, as we have said, the Chase was potentially a valuable property, if interference from the officers of the Duchy of Lancaster could be contained and wood stealing could be controlled, for labour was cheap and the price of wood was Chapter Nine: Three Dukes of Chandos high. Accounts produced in May 1728, for instance, show that it cost only £28 1 Is to fell 217 loads of wood, which was all sold locally for £544 1 Os. Equally profitable was the sale of bark to local tanners; the cost of barking 11 >/2 loads was £16, the bark sold for £267 12s. There were also faggots made up for £42 which sold for £72. Thus given the freedom to exploit it, the Chase might yet prove an excellent investment.6

With fussy attention to detail, Chandos began his tenure by investigating the rights he had purchased. Would he be within the law to cut down and grub up the trees on the enclosure at West Lodge? He was advised that he would have to obtain a grant from the Crown. What right had he to turn cattle on to the Chase? He was told he must establish that it had been customary for his predecessors so to do. He questioned the rights of people in Enfield, Edmonton, Minims and Hadley, to common on the Chase. How could they be compelled to produce title to such rights, and what limits could be imposed upon them? He was advised that the records would have to be searched and common rights challenged in the Duchy court.7 The following year, 1728, he sought and was granted a new lease of the ninety-eight acres adjoining West Lodge. He was to pay £5 a year and was granted power to cut down and grub up the trees and underwood.8 His enquiry concerning his right to pasture cattle must have been answered to his satisfaction, for he proceeded to re-stock the Chase with Scotch cattle at £37 a score.9

Things had thus begun well for him. Elated, his optimism rose and he petitioned the Crown for permission to build a new lodge near Old Pond with two hundred acres enclosed, also ten small lodges around the Chase, with live acres enclosed to each, for the under-keepers and their assistants to live in. He further requested the right to clear and enclose a hundred acres at East Lodge and a hundred at the New East Lodge. Thus he petitioned to be granted, in all, four hundred and fifty acres out of the Chase.10 His petition was rejected. Nevertheless the house near Old Pond was built (later it was known as North Lodge, now Nicholas House). The under-keeper, William Crew, also iroceeded to build himself a house on the Chase of which more anon.

Wood stealing continued. The west side of the Chase was particularly vulnerable; it lay open along the Great North Road for nearly two miles. Along the boundary lay a wasteland of gravel pits ‘hills and dales’ with no trees or bushes, ‘where loose, idle persons, who lived in other parishes (ie parishes where they had no right to common) ‘infest the Chase, going on dark nights with axes, saws, bills, carts and horses and, in going and coming, rob honest people of their lambs, sheep and poultry’. Travellers too were at risk for highwaymen and footpads infested the road and could make their escape into the woods and thickets. All this was pointed out by John Hale, the clerk to the Manor court at Enfield. Hale was a man of some enterprise with his eye fixed firmly on the main chance. He now petitioned to enclose the west side of the Chase with a deep entrenchment to be set back fifteen perches from the road. He offered to provide fences, quickset hedges and gates, but considered that he should be rewarded by a grant of the wasteland between the new fences and the road. The Duchy did not respond.

The Enfield Manor rolls had recently been retrieved from hrance and many copyholders, who during the time they had been missing had passed themselves off

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The Story of Enfield Chase – David Pam as freeholders, were now obliged to seek admittance in the Manor court at a cost of 6s 8d. With information now available from the Manor rolls, Patrick Garden, the steward, (who had been to France to find them) had made up a new rent roll and many of the rents had now been collected; distresses, promised Hale, would speedily be made on those who had refused to pay. Hale, again by the use of the new-found Manor rolls, had detected some hundred houses, each with a piece of ground enclosed, and long since built upon the Chase without licence. The owners of these, ‘rich and able persons , as he described them, had been presented at the Manor court that their tenancies might be legalised. They would have to pay a fee of 6s 8d and henceforth a rent to the Duchy, also land tax to the Crown."

During the long hot summer of 1733 there was continual trouble from deer stealers. Twelve or fourteen of them were daily abroad on the Chase with firearms. They slaughtered and carried off great numbers of fallow deer and threatened to kill the keepers and anyone else who opposed them; they threatened to fire Enfield Chase. June was hot and dry, the Thames was so low that barges from Reading and Oxford were unable to reach London, barges from Ware took more than two weeks to come down the River Lea." On 1 uesday 12 June seven of the deer stealers, pursued by the keepers and their servants were forced to flee, abandoning a horse. It was seized and taken to Barnet Wells to the house of James Cadwallader, the bailiff of the Chase. The following Tuesday the deer stealers returned in greater numbers, armed with guns, pistols and swords. At South Lodge, the house of Colonel Robinson, they sought the under-keeper, William Wood, proposing to blow out his brains and set fire to the house. Fortunately the gates were locked and, not being able to force them open, they climbed on to a brick wall, at some distance, and fired into the courtyard and garden, to the terror of Colonel Robinson’s servants. From there they made their way to the house of Turpin Mason who was the under- keeper of West Bailey Walk. Meeting his son on the way, a young man of about seventeen years of age, they fired at him, but he escaped on horseback. Mason’s house was locked and the family had fled; in frustration the deer stealers shot his bloodhounds and beat up a labourer working nearby. After searching the stables with many threats and imprecations, they headed off to the bailiff’s house at Barnet Wells. There they seized their horse out of the bailiffs stable, and rode it off in triumph. It was an open challenge to authority. Chandos demanded that a reward be offered; such rewards had proved most effective against the gangs some years earlier.13 . Action was badly needed for the whole area was troubled with lawlessness. On that same Tuesday, 19 June, an encounter had taken place in Epping Forest between keepers and deer stealers. ‘Three of the rogues’ says the London Journal ‘known to live at Hackney, were taken with their horse and venison about midnight and brought to the Green Man at Leytonstone. From there they were committed to Chelmsford gaol. One of the two rogues who escaped, swam over the River Lea’. Subsequently the purlew ranger of Epping Forest, John Goodyer, received an anonymous letter threatening to shoot him and to destroy all the game in the High Sheriffs park. Eleven deer had been stolen out of Epping Forest in one week.14

The private parks did not escape. Bush Hill Park nearby, newly stocked with deer by Sir Jeremiah Sambrook only four years earlier, had been raided in the preceding week. The story survives in some detail and shows the confidence, perhaps the

Chapter Nine: Three Dukes of Chandos recklessness, of the thieves. It is told by Joseph Burgess who had been employed at Winchmore Hill. He turned evidence against Robert Hill and William Johnson who probably lived in the village, for that’s where Burgess met them, in the Two Brewers. He had just finished his half a pint of tu’penny when in they walked with two greyhounds and a bob-tailed dog. Says Burgess ‘Those dogs look as if they would run well’. Straight upon his so saying they both drank to him and then they had three pots together to seal the friendship; they paid for two and Burgess for one. Johnson, who had a horse in the yard, now mounted and rode off, but Hill, reluctant to break up the party, told Burgess that if he had a mind to see the dogs run, he might do so, and very shortly, and not far off either. So they went out together and soon came up with Johnson. Passing another ale-house, says Burgess ‘Let’s have a pot here’. ‘No’ says Johnson ‘that’s a house the keepers use’. From this Burgess first deduced, as he claimed at the trial, the real purpose of the expedition. This must have become even more apparent to him when they came to the great white gate that guarded the coachway into Bush Hill Park and a few yards further on reached the fence. Giving Burgess the dogs to hold, they broke down a couple of pales and got into the park, and the dogs followed. The night proved most rewarding. Within two hours they had brought out a white fallow deer and a red. Hill went in again leaving Johnson to cut off the heads, then Burgess helped him to thrust the carcases into sacks, which they tied onto the horse. In all this Johnson dawdled and took his time to the great agitation of the reluctant (as he claimed afterwards) Burgess. At length Hill returned with a live fawn in his arms, then they left, and Burgess asking his way back to Edmonton, the party broke up.

Burgess was taken first and turned evidence. Johnson was arrested a few days later at Bucklersbury, near Cheapside in London, by the constable and his assistants. While they were disarming him of two pistols, the constables were attacked by his mate, Tom Turner. Johnson took the opportunity and ran, but the mob, mistaking him for a highwayman, pursued him and in trying to evade them, he shot one of the crowd. Turner was also overpowered by the constables. At the trial Johnson was found guilty, both on the count of deer stealing under the Black Act, and for the killing. He was hanged. The attempted rescue should likewise have been a hanging matter but, despite the overwhelming evidence against Tom Turner, he was acquitted by the jury.I<’

Figure 11: Bush Hill Park, 1770. The mansion stood on the south-east of Bush Hill,

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south of the New River.

The Duke’s affairs were not going well by the 1730s; his debts increased, his creditors pressed, his business ventures failed. He was reduced to petty domestic economies, yet seemed still to be unable to resist further unsound speculation in stocks, or the creation of companies whose prospects were inflated by nothing more substantial than his own ill-founded hopes, and which burst like balloons at the first prick of reality. He became less useful to Walpole and his influence waned. In 1730 he had sought, through Walpole, a lucrative court appointment, but his request received no response. ‘When I took my leave of a certain person’, he wrote to Colonel Bladen, ‘he said not one word of it to me, I could not think it proper to tease him with any further solicitation.’ That ‘certain person’ was undoubtedly Sir Robert Walpole.16

Since Chandos no longer seemed to have the protection of those with power, the Duchy of Lancaster once more began to take an interest in the honest administration of Enfield Chase. Thus Chandos found himself plagued by the same difficulties which had formerly beset General Pepper. Robert Sherard, surveyor of the southern parts, having heard rumours of great abuses, though it is unlikely that these had not occurred previously, came down to Enfield in April 1734 to investigate. The Chase presented a scene of busy destruction. At Scoots (now part of Trent Park on the Cockfosters Road) he found John and William Stockwell, Turpin Mason the keeper’s son, and William and John Webb the sawyers, cutting up beech trees newly felled; nearby a cart was waiting to carry off the wood. At a place beyond West Lodge he found Stephen Dell, Thomas Phillips, Thomas Mowbray and William Sale cutting beech trees and laying them in heaps. Much wood had already been cut for Robert Moore, the tenant at West Lodge. There were heaps of brushwood and faggots nearby. Beyond the Old Pond and at the Three Partings (where Trent Park College now stands) he came upon a similar busy scene.

Chapter Nine: Three Dukes of Chandos

Figure 12: Monument to James Brydges, first duke of Chandos, by Grinling Gibbons in the church of St Lawrence, Whitchurch.

The Duke of Chandos and all his officers were implicated. John Talbot, newly appointed woodward and gamekeeper, with Turpin Mason, had sold six loads to Mr Charles Egerton of Hadley. Talbot and William Crew had sold twenty loads to Mr Hutchings of Northaw and twenty more loads to Brown’s brick kilns on the Northaw Common. Twelve loads had been sold to Mr Justice Smith of Hadley and twelve more

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The Story of Enfield Chase – David Pam to Adam Tinsley shopkeeper, with six loads to the landlord at the Chequers, both at Kitts End. Perry, Sherard’s informant, counted in all seventy-eight loads of wood sold off the Chase.

Affidavits descended on the Duchy court in quick succession each proclaiming in similar terms that this year’s fall of browsewood had been made as fairly as ever it had been. Sherard, unimpressed, observed drily ‘This may be true, for great destruction has formerly been made, and will still if not prevented’. Despite the officers’ claims of fair dealing, allegations of waste continued. The denigration of those officers, whose appointment had not been registered in the Duchy court, by the use of the term ‘pretended’ was again introduced as it had formerly been in speaking of Pepper’s officers.

Moore, ‘pretended’ keeper of West Bailey Walk was reported to have caused thirty oaks, valued at £32 10s, to be cut down in the autumn of 1734, for the repair of his ponds which had been damaged by floods. He had also ordered thirty-three old decayed trees to be cut for firing in West Lodge. Turpin Mason, William Crew and William Woods, the ‘pretended’ under-keepers were each accused of felling timber.

Robert Sherard employed two local informers, Thomas Perry, a victualler and William Lee a labourer, both from Enfield. Every effort was naturally made to discredit them as witnesses. They were alleged to be notorious wood stealers with past convictions. Perry was currently facing prosecution and had been convicted earlier in 1734. William Brock, an Edmonton labourer, told how he had once been sent to search Perry’s house and yard, and had found there eight butts of oak each ten feet in length; at Lee’s house he had discovered an oak tree hidden in a ditch, Lee had then begged him not to report the matter because he had been convicted before, and would inevitably be committed to Newgate. Since Lee had been employed by Mr Sherard, said Brock, he was so little concerned about Newgate that he had made a cart out of that same oak tree to carry the wood which he had stolen from the Chase. Robert Chilman and Edward Bradley, two Enfield labourers recalled the night when they had been drinking at Simon Farsey’s public house by the Chase and Perry and Lee had come in to warn the landlord to hide the wood which he had in the yard, telling him that they would be shortly coming that way with their master Mr Sherard. The three brothers John, Charles and Henry Crew described Perry as a ‘great destroyer of game and deer’.17 During the time of General Pepper, said Henry Crew, Lee had cut and sold bushes off the Chase, and with no authority; he had called himself the ‘Bush-cutter’, and some people who knew no better, he said, would pay him for bushes and stakes.

The case against the Duke of Chandos with the Earl of Huntingdon, who had now moved into South Lodge, Robert Moore of West Lodge, Thomas Watts of the New East Lodge, John Talbot the woodward and gamekeeper and the three under- keepers, William Crew, William Wood and Turpin Mason was settled at last in February 1741, but it had by then cost the Duke over £700. It was decreed that thenceforth no officer or keeper was to build upon, or enclose, any part of the Chase. Rigid restrictions were placed upon the cutting of timber. The Duchy of Lancaster was to pay the Duke £60 a year in lieu of his right to firewood. The keepers should still be allowed fuel for the lodges, but only out of the browsewood after the

Chapter Nine: Three Dukes of Chandos deer had fed upon it; no under-keeper was to be entitled to any firewood. Finally it was decreed that no under-keeper was to keep an inn, alehouse or public house of entertainment, or to sell any kind of liquor.18 James Brydges, the First Duke of Chandos, died on 9 August 1744. His health had been deteriorating for some years. He was afflicted with frequent and severe attack's of nose-bleeding for which his physicians could find no adequate remedy. He had tried the wearing of a blood-stone necklace, but he had little faith in this; the application of plidgets was carried out by his doctors but it seemed not to improve his health. By 1742, either as a result of the treatment or the illness, he had become a confirmed invalid and passed most of his time at Canons where he died. Grinling Gibbons’ splendid monument in St Lawrence Whitchurch stood ready to receive his body and there he was buried.

Henry Brydges now became the second Duke and inherited his father’s offices and property on Enfield Chase. He had the reputation of being an idler and a waster. Born in 1708, the second of two sons, he was sent to Cambridge in February 1724, where he learnt nothing and ran into debt, for both which reasons his father withdrew him from the university. In September his father sent him to the continent for improvement; Leiden, Angers and Poitiers all failed to improve him. His elder brother died in 1727 and he became heir to the Dukedom. Through the persistent efforts of his ambitious father he secured a position in the household of Prince Frederick, but while this substantially increased his expenditure, it signally failed to enhance his prospects.19 He was married in 1728 to Miss Mary Bruce; the couple were described, somewhat unkindly, by Mrs Delany as ‘the ugliest couple this day in England’.20 The end of the year 1731 saw the birth of his son James who was to marry the heiress of John Nicoll at Minchenden in Southgate.

Henry found his authority as ranger circumscribed beyond reason. It was the only forest in England, he said, where the ranger had no power to appoint or displace the keepers, each of whom considered his office as a piece of real estate, his rights beyond question. They continued to cut and take the wood in great quantities under the pretence that it had been cut as browsewood. They refused to hold themselves accountable to the Duke, though the Duke was accountable to the Duchy of Lancaster for the preservation of the wood. The under-keepers were engaged, paid and clothed in their green livery by the keepers and therefore considered themselves to be responsible only to them. Duke Henry claimed the right to demand any deer which had strayed beyond the boundaries of the Chase, but when he ordered the under-keepers to deliver such venison to his deputy ranger in August 1751, Sir Henry Parker the keeper at East Lodge countermanded the order. At West Bailey Walk, Turpin Mason the under-keeper complied with the order, whereupon Israel Jalabert, the new keeper there, was so much aggrieved that he forthwith dismissed him and appointed William Kent one of his own servants. A situation of open hostility ensued, for Mason, who lived near the Chase, refused to relinquish his office, and according to Kent, continued his operations after dark. Kent complained that night after night he had been woken by the sound of axes. On each occasion he had risen from his bed at West Lodge and hurried forth into the darkness in an endeavour to seize Mason and his servants. But Mason’s hounds were so well trained that they gave warning of his approach long before his rival could get near and quietly followed their master to safety.21 In August 1752 when Jalabert, after dutifully waiting the prescribed time, ordered his servants to bring in the browsewood, Mason, somehow forewarned, hired carts and carried it off, some said to the public house near the

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Chase where he lived.

Duke Henry, perhaps seeing a potential advantage in the situation, told Mason, as under-keeper, that he expected him to kill some game for his table, upon which Jalabert was so incensed that he threatened to destroy all the game in West Bailey Walk and actually sent his servants out on the Chase for that purpose, but then changed his mind and commenced a long drawn out suit in the Duchy court against Duke Henry and Turpin Mason.22 The Duke held that the under-keepers should be solely under the control of the ranger; such was the case in every other forest or chase in England.

Sir Henry Parker constantly disregarded his obligation to the Duke, who was responsible to the Duchy for the repair of the ponds on the Chase. Sir Henry had let all the water out of Old Pond which had been well stocked with fish. He had invited great numbers of people to gather up the fish as they floundered in the mud, both for their own use and for himself. Afterwards he had failed to let down the sluice, and torrential rains had so damaged the pond head that the pond could not be filled and replenished. The deer and cattle could find no water in East Bailey Walk.23

The Duke was also troubled that the local gentry treated him without the respect to which he felt entitled. He had sent notice by an under-keeper (probably Mason) to two gentlemen who had lately set up hounds and constantly hunted with them on the Chase without his permission, to inform them that he was determined to preserve the hare and could therefore not permit them to hunt, but they paid no regard at all to the Duke’s orders. There were now four packs of hounds, he complained, hunting regularly on the Chase and the game was insufficient to furnish them all.24

Fifteen years after the burial of the first Duke of Chandos most of the pecuniary legacies required by his will had still not been paid. Legal charges on the estate now amounted to £1,200, and honour and common sense demanded that the matter be brought to a conclusion. Among the late Duke’s investments was his farm of the Hanaper, an office into which fees were paid by peers upon creation and by ecclesiastics upon preferment. It was now proposed to use the income from this source to meet the outstanding legacies and annuities. To achieve this end, and to induce James Brydges, Marquis of Carnarvon (Duke Henry’s son) to forgo his legacies under his grandfather’s will, a scheme was evolved whereby the Marquis should in compensation acquire all his father’s offices on Enfield Chase and in the Manor of Enfield and all the fees and rents arising.25 The arrangement of this matter was as devious as might be expected, involving a fictitious bidder in order to avoid unwanted competiton. The Chase was then offered for sale and purchased by the Marquis. Thus James Brydges, Marquis of Carnarvon, became master forester of Enfield Chase and steward of the Manor of Enfield.26

About 1740 the Duchy turned its attention to those whom it termed wood stealers. The Duchy based its view of common rights on the decree of 1605, which stated that no commoner who had sufficient wood growing on his own land had any right to take from the Chase fuel, timber for the repair of his house or plough, or stakes or bushes for the repair of his fences, unless those fences formed part of the ring fence around the Chase.

Chapter Nine: Three Dukes of Chandos

Information was laid against some fifty men. Many were from Enfield; the labourers John Wattes, John Welles, James Boon, Thomas Eades, William Heydon, Joseph Emms, John Pepper, Thomas Richardson; six carpenters, William Keen, Francis Reed, Thomas Hewlett, Thomas Kidney, John Parnell and John Preston; James Hodges a victualler, John Banford an innkeeper, and Joseph Atkins and Stephen Hall both poulterers. From Clay Hill, among the accused were Philip Ginn and Thomas Sears who were farmers, Thomas Tindall a butcher and Joseph Cordwell a victualler. From Edmonton were listed William Jones, Samuel Chapman and Henry Grey all farmers, Edward Price a victualler, Edward Roakes a carpenter, Richard Smith a shopkeeper, Richard Satchwell a labourer. From Southgate came John Bliss a gardener and from South Mimms, Thomas Richford a victualler of Galley Corner and three labourers, William Barrett, William Field and Ben Nicholls. Another labourer, Peter Hickling came from Potters Bar.27 Many of these would have termed themselves commoners rather than thieves. Focal justices of peace proved unwilling to commit such men for trial. They claimed that they went in fear of reprisals and said that they ‘would neither meddle nor make with them’, lest their houses should be burned down about their ears. The Duke of Chandos (the first duke) suggested that their reluctance to prosecute might result rather from the fact that they themselves were benefiting by the purchase of stolen wood. He had asked Ford Hardwicke to strengthen the bench of magistrates by the appointment of more substantial men. He suggested Eliab Breton of Forty Hall who had an estate of upward of £1,700 a year, Sir Henry Parker of East Lodge whose income amounted to £1,500, Mr Paulin of Enfield (possibly at Archway House) and Mr James Gould of Fords Grove Winchmore Hill who had about £800 a year.28

Despite the reluctance of the local justices, the wood stealers were brought before the court of the Duchy of Lancaster. There it was declared that no person could be entitled to firewood ‘by virtue of any pretended usage or right’. New injunctions were issued and threats of punishment made but all were ignored and the poor continued to gather the wood. In the 1750s, twenty labourers and four tradesmen from Enfield, eleven Edmonton labourers and a bricklayer, and four labourers from South Mimms, were accused of‘combining and confederating together with persons unknown, under a groundless pretence and unjust claim of right’; they had taken wood from the Chase to the value of several hundred pounds.29 They appeared before the Duchy court in December 1760.30 That many suffered whipping is revealed by a petition from Sarah Lee who made a claim on the estate of Henry Wellbank, formerly governor of the House of Correction at Clerkenwell. Sarah asked for reimbursement of £24 13s which Wellbank had paid out in fees for whipping men convicted of cutting wood on Enfield Chase.31 The thefts continued; in November 1762, John Batt of Potters Bar was committed to Bridewell for three months and each month he was to be brought to Enfield and publicly whipped in the market place for cutting young beech trees on the Chase and carrying them away in a cart.32

A hundred and thirty-four local men were accused of taking wood to the value of several hundred pounds in the years 1764 and 1765 and were bound over on pain of £100 not to repeat the offence.33 The tenacity with which the poor held to a belief that their rights could never be reduced is mirrored from time to time in their pleas before the court. James Lawrence and Charles Byrne pleaded that they had been

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The Story of Enfield Chase – David Pam informed by old inhabitants, and it was their own belief, that the poor people of Enfield, from time immemorial, had been entitled to pick up and gather small sticks from off the Chase and to cut hornbeam bushes and to lop hornbeam pollards for fuel. Lawrence had been taken for gathering pea sticks; he unashamedly admitted that the sticks were holding up the peas in his garden.34 Many who defied the injunctions were sent to Newgate where some were broken by starvation and disease. Thomas Tatman ot South Mimms, a blacksmith nearly eighty years old, confessed that he had, in common with many other poor people, cut and gathered hornbeam pollards. He was carried off to Newgate in June 1765 where he lay, despite his plea of old age and poverty, crippled with swollen legs, until October.35 Stephen Warner the younger, a labourer of Potters Bar, with a wife and three children, was sent to Newgate in August that year. There he caught gaol fever (typhus) and lay near unto death throughout November, because he could not find the £4 15s 5d that had been awarded in costs against him. His father pleaded that his son was ‘not worth one shilling in the world’ apart from his clothes and household goods which were worth less than 40s; the old man had had to beg on the streets of London for money to feed his son in prison without which he would have perished. The costs were remitted in December and he was discharged. Thomas Dawson, a poor day labourer, was confined in Newgate for four months before he was released upon recognizance of £50.36 The two Robert Bookers, father and son both in Newgate, caught gaol fever. An apothecary had to submit an affidavit that they were near unto death; they were then discharged.37 The Public Ledger in 1764 reported that a woman, who they described as an old offender, was conveyed in a cart from Bridewell to Enfield and there she was publicly whipped at the cart’s tail by the common hangman for cutting down wood on Enfield Chase, the same punishment was to be inflicted upon her three times.

Although the right to common pasture remained important to the more well- to- do among the commoners, it was a matter of life and death to the poor. In the year 1727, for example, there had been 2,074 cattle branded and set to graze on the Chase; of these 842 belonged to Enfield people, 703 to Edmonton owners 475 to South Mimms and 54 to Hadley. They belonged in all to 382 commoners; only two of them owned more than fifty of the cattle, both were Enfield men. Ninety- four of the commoners had only a single beast.38

It was the ancient custom to drive and brand the cattle once a year, a week before or a week after Whitsunday; the deputy bailiff gave notice in the four parish churches on the previous Sunday. All cattle then found on the Chase, and other cattle belonging to commoners, were brought to the pound to be branded with the Chase brand (a rose) at a charge of twopence a head. All cattle found on the Chase and not claimed by their owners were impounded and branded with the mark of an estray (a wreath). The owners thereafter had to pay twelve pence upon reclaiming them, plus the charge for branding, and three pence a day for hay and water fed to them as long as they were held in the pound. A fine of 6s 8d per head was imposed for every animal which did not belong to a commoner.

Many people still maintained the belief that they had the right to pasture their pigs on the Chase. The Duchy claimed that all pigs were prohibited apart from forty allowed to the tenants in Old Fold at South Mimms, by a concession confirmed in 1624. In November 1763, George Wale, William Tuckfield, William Dickenson, Turpin

Chapter Nine: Three Dukes of Chandos

Bastick, John Lomax, Nathaniel Nixon, Daniel Macdonald, James Macdonald, John Brown, William Rippin, Francis Wells and Thomas Williams were accused of turning out great numbers of hogs. Only Geofge Wale claimed his rights as holding land in Old Fold, but he pastured more than a hundred pigs. None of the accused had made any attempt to ring the pigs or even to have them branded, and though Nuthall, the Duchy surveyor, had personally given them notice to remove their animals they still persisted in keeping them on the Chase. An injunction was issued against them.39

Not only the poor, but commoners of all classes, refused to relinquish a belief that rights which had once existed could never be taken away. A yeoman from Enfield Wash named Christopher Woodham, whose family had held land in the parish for several hundred years, stolidly reasserted a claim to pasture for all cattle at all times of the year without restriction.40 Two Enfield yeomen Robert Piggott (of another ancient Enfield family) and Samuel Platt brought an action against the Duchy in 1765. They demanded rights equal to those which their ancestors had asserted in the sixteenth century; pasture for all manner of beasts at all times of the year, including pigs and sheep (goats only to be excepted), the right to take timber, clay, gravel and sand for the repair of copyhold messuages, to cut bushes and stakes for the repair of fences against the Chase, the right to cut furze heath and fern, and the right to pick up and carry away old rotten wood, acorns and crab-apples. They went on to assert that Enfield parish ought to have timber for the repair of common cart and foot bridges, for whelms in the highways, and for studs, posts and rails for the causeways and that no licence should be required.

In reply, Thomas Nuthall on behalf of the Duchy reasserted all the restrictions on the rights of commoners which had been imposed over the centuries. Ele claimed that the number of horses and cattle must be limited to those which parishioners were able to maintain on their own ground in winter, and alleged that some of the commoners had of late taken in the cattle of outsiders by which means the Chase had been over-charged.

He went on to deny Piggott’s claim to timber, clay and sand for the repair of tenements and to assert that tenants with fences bordering on the Chase should pay for stakes and bushes at 2s a load and 6d for cutting. He further denied that commoners had any right to crab-apples and acorns which he said must be left to feed the King’s deer.41 In truth the case brought by the two yeomen stood little chance in the Duchy court. First they were required to amend their case, which cost them 20s, then when Nuthall’s reply was allowed they were ordered to pay his costs amounting to £3 6s 8d. Discouraged, Piggott and Platt did not proceed, and four years later the case was dismissed.42

Footnotes: Three Dukes of Chandos

1 Iron pyrites 2 C. H. Collins Baker. The Life and circumstances of James Brydges, first Duke of Chandos. Oxford. 1949. Ch 6 passim and p211. Lysons. Environs of London. 188n 3 DG233 Enfield DG233 4 PROB 31.44.542 5 C. H. Collins Baker. The life of James Brydges.p387. 6 Enfield DG490

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7 Enfield Dl 170 8 DL41.96.6 9 C. H. Collins Baker. The life . . . of James Brydges. p387. 10 DL41.96.14 11 DL41.96.6 12 London Journal. 14 July 1733 13 SP36.29.281, SP36.30.4. 14 London Journal. 7 July 1733, 23 June 1733 15 Guildhall OBSP 5-8 Oct 1733 p40. 16 C. H. Collins and M. Baker. The life . . . of James Brydges. p344 17 DL41.96.6 18 DL41.96.6 19 C. H. Collins Baker. The life . . . of James Brydges. Chi 1. 20 Autobiography and correspondence 1,182 (1861/2) 21 DL9.24, Enfield DG370 22 DL5.44.227, 242, 244, 276 23 DL41.16.12 24 Enfield DG370 25 Enfield DG206 26 Enfield DG98(1) 27 DL41.96.6 28 BM Add 35601 f307. Hardwick Papers 14 Dec 1743 29 DL41.96.6 30 DL9.24 31 DL9.24, DL41.96.20. 32 Newspaper cutting Enfield 33 DL9.24 34 DL9.24 35 DL9.24 36 DL5.45.322, DL9.24 37 DL5.45.424, 407. 38 Enfield D222 39 DL5.45.145 40 DL9.23 6 June 1738 41 DL41.96.6 42 DL5.45.321, 495, 497

Chapter Ten: Nuthall and the Crews

There were those who stole wood and made no claim to justification by common right. Notorious among these were the brothers John and Charles Crew from Barnet. In 1738 John Crew was aged thirty-six, he was married with four children; Charles, with two children was twenty-seven. They had worked on the Chase for many years, sometimes for one of the under-keepers, sometimes for the woodward, more often on their own behalves.1 The attorney-general of the Duchy spoke of them as notorious offenders. During the summer time, it was said, they did a little work at brickmaking, but for the rest of the year they could earn more by selling the wood which they cut and stole from off the Chase.2 In November 1737 a prosecution was taken out against John Crew in the Duchy court for stealing a cart-load of wood and a cart-load of furze.3 Soon afterwards Turpin Mason had caught Charles Crew cutting down an oak.

Crew told the story of this encounter in his evidence to the court. He recalled that he was passing through the Chase when he met four or five strangers; he had never seen them before, he said. They had just cut down a number of oaks, and had cleaved them and carried them off, leaving only one stump behind; this, Crew said, was about four feet long. He decided that since it was left, he might as well take it for himself he would carry it home to Barnet on his shoulder, but just then along came Turpin Mason and said that he must put it down. He had replied that taking the stump could not possibly do damage to the Chase; Mason, according to Crew, had answered civilly that then he might have it — or words to that effect. Crew in return, behaving like any honest citizen, indicated the exact direction taken by the five wood stealers and urged Mason to hurry off in pursuit of them. That was his story, but it was not quite how Mason remembered the incident. He had certain doubts concerning the existence of the five strangers. In his version the tree was twenty feet tall and the conversation less friendly, for Crew had told him ‘Damn ye, I found it almost cut and will take it in spite of anybody’. Which he did.4

The reputation of the Crew brothers as hard men was such that those in authority appeared reluctant to take effective action. No less than eleven attachments were issued against them from 1741 to 1747 and during this time they were seen almost daily by various officers cutting and carrying away wood from the Chase. Instead of having them arrested, the attorney-general apparently compiled a sort of ledger of information against them:

Easter term 1741 stealing timberand wood. june stealing timberandwood September served with aninjunction ordering them to cease stealing timber and wood ‘but still pursue old trade’. 3 February order made out against John Crew to show why an attachment should not be awarded against him. 12 February this order made absolute.

Nevertheless, the brothers Crew were so far from being impressed, let alone The Story of Enfield Chase – David Pam intimidated, that on 15 March John Crew was seen cutting down a young oak on the Chase. Following this, on 30 March, Nathaniel Poulton servant to the keeper, with an assistant, both armed with gun and hangar and being on watch about ten o’clock at night, heard the sound of tree felling; making their way cautiously to the spot they found John Crew, resting from his exertions, having just cut down a large oak. Crew was so displeased at this late visit that he threatened to cut off their heads with his axe, but they, being both armed and resolute, stood their ground and John Crew departed, declaring with a grin that this was the First time he’d come into the Chase for a tree and gone home without one. From 15 March 1742 to December 1743 nine further attachments were taken out against the brothers Crew, but ‘through fear as was imagined, they being accounted desperate villains’, the attachments were never executed, though the brothers were still seen almost every day by the keepers, destroying wood in some part of the Chase.

The Duchy was at last induced to take action by the arrival of the new deputy surveyor, Thomas Nuthall. The arrest of John Crew resulted from an incident in September 1747. Luke Budsworth, the deputy woodward, had found him cutting down a hornbeam; Budsworth had warned him to stop, whereupon Crew stepped up to him, axe in hand, and swore at him and grossly insulted him, his precise words are unfortunately not recorded. On 19 October Mr Nuthall, accompanied by the sheriffs officer with a strong party of men, came down and arrested John Crew on the Chase, his cart loaded with acorns and wood.

Thus John Crew was imprisoned in Newgate. Once there he began pressing to secure his release. In December he petitioned Lord Edgecumbe (chancellor of the Duchy) who the following July (1748), with a rare gesture of clemency, gave directions for his discharge upon payment of three guineas costs and an undertaking to cut no more timber. Prisoners committed for breach of an injunction were seldom released without paying full costs and this would have amounted to about £20. Crew, however, so far from showing gratitude for this indulgence, refused it and at once entered a plea that, at the next sessions at Flicks Hall, he might be discharged under the recent Act of Free Pardon. His plea was rejected. Undeterred, on 5 September, he submitted an application to be released at sessions under the Insolvent Debtors Act, but the court would not acquiesce in this further attempt to secure a free pardon. His claim of poverty was not allowed; it was alleged that he had put himself to great expense to pay for counsel and solicitors merely to avoid an obligation to the Duchy court for his discharge and that, soon after he had been committed to Newgate, he had conveyed a house and land at Barnet to his son, to prevent their seizure. The Crew brothers suffered for their defiance, John lay in Newgate from October 1747 to January 1749. Charles Crew, arrested in November 1748 was not discharged until August 1749.5

Thomas Nuthall, who had finally secured the arrest of John Crew, became deputy to William Luke the south surveyor in 1747, and the Duchy at once became more effective in the prosecution of wood stealers; he was promoted to the position of surveyor in 1750. Nuthall was a solicitor and was closely associated with William Pitt (Lord Chatham) who, about the time of Nuthall’s appointment, came to live at South Lodge. He spent a great deal of money on improving both the house and the garden, but he found it too damp and in 1756 moved out, it is said, after finding a frog in the library.6 The new surveyor was determined to bring the Chase under his own firm

Chapter Ten: Nuthall and the Crews control even if he had, now and then, to employ methods beyond the law. On one occasion he produced an affidavit bearing the mark of William Heydon the younger of Enfield; in it Heydon was alleged to have sworn before Nuthall that his own father had been stealing wood. Four days later the young labourer claimed that he had signed under duress, deposing that he had been forcibly seized while he was working for Mr Pitt, by at least fourteen men; ‘Fighting men of London’ he called them ‘armed with great sticks, cutlasses and pistols’ who dragged him away to the house at Southgate belonging to Charles Woods, the under-keeper of South Bailey Walk. His captors demanded that he should tell them where his father had cut wood and to whom he had sold it. They threatened that they would send for an officer to take him into the army, or that he would be sold in the colonies beyond the seas. Terrified, he had made his mark on a paper written by one or other of them, but declared that he had no knowledge of its contents, and this he had only discovered on the following Monday when it had been read over to him. He at once swore a new affidavit and managed to sign this one with his own hand spelling his name ‘Haden’. In this he made the allegation of duress, and completely denied the truth of his former affidavit. Nuthall rallied his officers to provide depositions which, each in turn, declared that William Heydon was a thief and his son a liar.7

Conflict between so officious and efficient a surveyor as Thomas Nuthall on the one side, and the Marquis of Carnarvon and his officers on the other, was inevitable. Indeed, when they were not combining to prosecute others for taking Chase wood they were contending with each other over the spoils. There is justice perhaps in the fact that Nuthall used no less dubious methods to secure a conviction against Charles Wood the under-keeper, than those which they had both used against William Heydon. The case against him was based on the evidence of Thomas and Daniel Satchwell of Southgate. Daniel in an affidavit, related that he was returning home over the Chase when he heard wood cutters at work He concealed himself behind a bush from where he saw Edward Bailey, an Enfield labourer, cutting down a beech tree, while his own brother Thomas Satchwell and Charles Woods, stood by. Hidden, he watched the three men as they cleaved the tree and carried the pieces to a place about forty yards away where some tree roots lay ready made up for firing. There they cut the wood into shorter lengths and loaded it on to a cart. Daniel followed the cart at a distance and saw it disappear into the yard of a public house at Southgate kept by Woods’ sister-in-law, where Woods himself lodged.

Daniel Satchwell’s evidence was confirmed by his brother Thomas, and Nuthall took Daniel into his employment as a deputy. Nuthall next came into conflict with Charles Woods concerning a beech tree which had been blown down near South Lodge. Satchwell was about to carry it off for Nuthall to sell ‘for His Majesty’s use’, as he claimed, when Woods seized it from under his nose and carted it away, as he said, ‘to prevent it being stolen’.

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Figure 13: Thomas Nuthall from a portrait by Thomas Gainsborough.

One dispute led to another; Woods, armed with a gun, intervened when Satchwell with a number of workmen were stocking up the roots of trees which they had felled. These were seized and carried off by Luke Budsworth, on the orders, he claimed, of John Philpot, the deputy ranger. Witnesses were produced to provide incriminating evidence against Nuthall; Edward Prosser of Southgate testifed that he had carried cartloads of wood to Nuthall’s house in Crosby Square. Henry Smith, a Southgate carpenter, bore witness that Nuthall had granted him sixty feet of oak growing on the Chase in settlement for money which Nuthall owed him for carpenter’s work, and for the carriage of hay.

Nevertheless, it was Nuthall who had the ear of the Duchy court and the evidence against Woods, especially that of Thomas Satchwell, threatened him with conviction. Worried by the case being built up against him, Woods had sought out Thomas Satchwell and questioned him as to what he had sworn to, to which Satchwell had answered ‘nothing that will hurt either you or me’. A day or so later Woods found Thomas Satchwell working with other labourers peeling bark in Lords

Chapter Ten: Nuthall and the Crews

Grove (the present area of Grovelands Park). Woods advanced on him, to within ten or fifteen yards, raised a gun to his shoulder and pointed it straight at him. In this menacing attitude he remained for a few moments, then gave the bark-peelers sixpence between them for a drink, and went on his way. Woods denied the threat and the bark-peelers naturally supported his denial.

Woods was arrested on 16 December 1756 in a manner calculated to be offensive to fhe Marquis. Upon Nuthall’s nomination, a warrant had been issued by the sheriff of Middlesex to Nuthall’s hirelings, John Lomax, William Whitehead and Daniel Satchwell, appointing them as special bailiffs. By virtue of this office they arrested Woods on 16 December while he was on horseback with a deer behind him, which he had killed by the Marquis’ orders and was going to break up for his lordship. They carried him to Newgate where he was confined for over five weeks and caught the smallpox. Finally he was allowed bail and humbly petitioned the Duchy court to drop proceedings against him.8 His petition was granted only upon payment of a fine of £20.

The arrest of Woods was a humiliation to the Marquis of Carnarvon. Woods had been appointed under-keeper by Henry the second Duke of Chandos and had been continued in that office by the Marquis, who also employed him as his gamekeeper in his Manor of Holwicke. Carnarvon at first alleged a breach of his privilege as a member of the House of Commons against Nuthall, Satchwell and the others, but after the matter had been referred to a committee of the House, Carnarvon asked that the charge be dropped.9 Discouraged perhaps by these setbacks, in January 1757 he delegated the duties of all his offices on Enfield Chase to Pierce Galliard as deputy. Galliard was a wealthy lawyer living at Bury Hall in Edmonton. Through the agency of Thomas Nuthall the Duchy continued to press hard against the privileges of the Marquis and his officers. Nuthall was granted power in May 1757, to mark, cut down and sell oak and beech timber to the value of £4,000. The numbers of deer had been gravely diminished by the summer of 1760, both young and old had failed to survive the severity of the recent winters. More had been slaughtered by the country-folk when they strayed outside the Chase. There was such a scarcity of bucks that many of the does remained fallow that season. The Marquis demanded a restraint on the killing of deer10 but in December 1763 the Duchy appointed Nuthall to be gamekeeper on the Chase and the following year he resurrected an old writ of privy seal, and demanded free venison from the keepers, three bucks in summer and three does in winter. Though no gamekeeper had ever before made such a demand, the keepers now tamely complied. It was another humiliation for the Marquis of Carnarvon.11

Pressure was maintained. Israel Jalabert who had taken over the remainder of Robert Moore’s lease of West Lodge, for which he paid an annual rent of £ 173 to Carnarvon, now found himself threatened with prosecution by the Duchy because he had taken fish from the ponds there; this privilege had not been challenged before and was one which had been exercised by all the keepers. To take the fish was a major operation. The ponds were emptied by cutting down the heads or drawing up the sluices and then dragged with nets so that all the fish could be taken at once; afterwards the ponds had to be restocked. The Duchy now claimed the right freely to issue licences both to hunt and to fish on the Chase.12

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Over the centuries householders had progressively encroached on the boundaries of the Chase on all sides; at Gannick Corner, Coopers Lane, Whitewebbs, Clay Hill, Winchmore Hill, Bohun Gate (the present Cat Hill), Cockfosters and Hadley. There were said to be thirty encroachments out of the Chase at Potters Bar in 1767. All the properties which lay between Chase Side, Southgate and Crown Lane, including the Crown Inn, were built upon encroachments. At Chase Side, Enfield the whole of the east side of what we now call Brigadier Hill and all the premises on the east side of Chase Side, from and including the Holly Bush and as far as and including the Crown and Horseshoes, were built upon the Chase.13 At Hadley the Mount House (Mount Pleasant) stood upon an enclosure as did the Windmill alehouse and the Two Brewers. In all, these enclosures around the edge of the Chase amounted to a hundred and twenty acres.

Other encroachments had been made from time to time by the rangers. Major General John Pepper had extended the enclosures around the lodges, the first Duke of Chandos had added 75 acres, in 1742, to the 87 acres already enclosed to West Lodge. All this had caused resentment among local landowners and when opportunity arose those who were sufficiently powerful made their feelings apparent. An enclosure at East Bailey Walk had been established over twenty years when Sir Henry Parker the keeper was peremptorily informed by Eliab Breton of Forty Hall that he, with James Gould of Fords Grove, Winchmore Hill, Pierce Galliard of Bury Hall in Edmonton, David Heckstetter of Minchenden, Mr Vincent of South Mimms, all leading landowners in the area, together with a number of the lesser gentry, proposed to pull down the pales and throw open his enclosure called the Paddock, of eleven acres, at East Lodge. They also declared a plan to pull down enclosures at South Lodge and at West Lodge and had signed an agreement to defray the expenses of any law suit which might arise from their action.14

In April 1752 the Duchy had issued an order that all houses built upon the Chase since 26 March 1730, with certain exceptions, should be demolished.15 On the instigation of Thomas Nuthall, in November 1763, proceedings were begun against five tenants with holdings on the Chase. It was required that their houses should be vacated and pulled down and the land restored to the Chase. Those concerned were Samuel Chapman, Robert Vass, John Shackle, Thomas Hunt and William Crew. Chapman held a cottage at the south gate of the Chase (near the present site of the tube station at Southgate). It had been put up some twenty years earlier for the convenience of gentlemen living on the Chase so that somebody could be at hand to open the gate for horses, coaches and carriages. A small piece of land was enclosed there on which Chapman had built a hovel which he used for milking his cows in rainy weather.

Vass had erected a blacksmith’s shop at the junction of Coopers Lane and the present Coopers Lane Road with which he had enclosed about five acres; a smithy still existed on the site at the end of the last century. Shackle’s enclosure, which he had bought from John Corrall for £28, consisted of a cottage and two hovels, a few square yards in all. Thomas Hunt had purchased the lease of a small public house called the Chequers built upon Chase land in Coopers Lane.

Chapter Ten: Nuthall and the Crews

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Figure 14: Encroachments at Southgate, 1769 (a tracing made from PRO MR 709). The map shows that all the property on the south-west side of Chase Side was built uponm Enfield Chase. I lot number 9 was the former Crown Inn, plot number 8 included the ‘schoolroom'.

Figure 15: Encroachments at Whitewebbs, 1769 (a tracing made from PRO MR 707). It may come as a disappointment to those who love local legends, that the King and Tinker was known as the Bull in 1769.

Chapter Ten: Nuthall and the Crews

Figure 16: Encroachments at Enfield Town and Windmill Hill, 1769 (a tracing made from PRO MR 709). The Crown and Horseshoes, called the Three Crowns in 1769, was built upon the Chase, as were two public houses shown here which have since disappeared, the Crown an

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Chapter Ten: Nuthall and the Crews

Figure 17: Encroachments at Monken Hadley, 1769 (a tracing made from PRO MR 708). Mount House is here called Mount Pleasant and was owned by Henry Newdick. Plot 25 is the Windmill alehouse, plot 32 the Two Brewers. Note the workhouse beside Hadley Common.

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William Crew, the last of the five, was the keeper who had shot Aaron Maddocks, a particularly vicious member of a gang of deer stealers in 1729.16 That same year he had taken advantage of the reputation he had thus gained to enclose four acres out of the Chase. The following year he had used the reward money to build himself a house and barn on the enclosure. He had been admitted tenant to the property at an Enfield Manor court on 5 June 1734. His holding lay on the south side of Cattlegate Road; Crews Hill Railway Station now stands opposite the site. William Crew had been an under-keeper on the Chase for twenty-two years until he was dismissed in 1740. This followed evidence laid against him in the Duchy court accusing him of stealing wood and killing deer ‘in an extravagant and outrageous manner’. Robert Moore alleged that in one season William Crew had sent forty deerskins to the tanners.17 After his dismissal he continued to live in his house on Enfield Chase, which he opened as an alehouse called The Chequer. Though the first Duke of Chandos issued specific orders through his deputy ranger, both by letter and by word of mouth, that Crew was never again to be allowed to carry a gun on the Chase, he continued to be employed by Sir Henry Parker at East Lodge to shoot deer, and was many times seen on the Chase in the company of Sir Henry himself.

The case against the five encroachers was heard before the Duchy court on 3 March 1764; as was inevitable the verdict went against them, they were to yield up their properties which were to be pulled down. Crew and Chapman refused to obey. Warrants were issued against them and Samuel Chapman was arrested in August and confined in Newgate. A few months of prison subdued his defiance and by November he had agreed to surrender his cottage at Southgate to secure his release.

William Crew remained at liberty. He was informed that, though he had put the Crown to great expense, yet if he would now quietly vacate the house, the court would allow him to sell the building materials. This generosity did nothing to placate the old man (he was then seventy-seven). He swore that he intended to keep possession in spite of all the world and that, it Mr Nuthall came to seize his house, he would knock Mr Nuthall’s brains out. The surveyor expostulated very reasonably with him, pointing out that he could be sent to prison for his contempt of the Duchy court and that the sheriff would then seize the premises; to which Crew replied ‘Damn the Duchy court’ and as to their seizing the house, ‘He wanted to be at that sport’.18 He certainly had a claim to retain possession. The Manor of Enfield had taken his rent and he could show his receipts; in May 1749 he had paid 15s for fifteen years rent, due that year, and in May 1754 a further 4s.19

Meantime the Duchy officers were finding some difficulty in securing the old man, for he went constantly armed and declared that he would murder the first man who came to arrest him. On two occasions Samuel Howet Clendon, the sheriffs officer for Middlesex, knocked at his door with a warrant. Both times he was told that Crew was out, though he felt sure that he was there somewhere. On the second occasion Samuel Roberts, coming away from the house, had told him that Crew was indoors, but he dared not force an entry. A coachman who worked for Pierce Galliard at Bury Hall in Edmonton, an intimate acquaintance of the old man, had warned Clendon that Crew was going around armed with pistols and a pitchfork, and had declared that he would murder the first sheriffs officer who attempted to arrest him. On another occasion Clendon’s two assistants had gained entry, but had been impeded from searching the house by Mrs Crew who had taken down a large carving knife and

Chapter Ten: Nuthall and the Crews threatened to cut them to pieces unless they immediately cleared out of her house. By reason of all this, the attachment was returned endorsed ‘Cannot be found’. Then on Monday 26 November, John Barraclough went down to serve a writ whereby the defendant was solemnly commanded and enjoined, under a penalty of £5,000, to yield up the house. Barraclough related afterwards how he had met William Crew outside and had immediately thrust the writ into his hand, whereupon Crew furiously stormed into the house, bolted and locked the doors and sticking his head out of the window, swore with horrid imprecations that he had a great mind to shoot him, declaring that he cared nothing for the honourable court of the Duchy of Lancaster; and thus he continued cursing and swearing at Barraclough for near half an hour.

William Crew was'surprised and arrested six months later, in May 1765, by Thomas Nuthall, who came to the house about six o’clock in the morning accompanied by William Norden and Miles Smith, two of the sheriff’s officers supported by a number of assistants. Ihey found the front door open and entered. Upstairs, the old man, woken by their entry, was sitting up in bed holding a loaded gun which he turned upon the intruders as they came into the room, but the foremost assistant grabbed the muzzle and turned it aside as he fired. The bullet went through the mantle- piece over the fireplace. William Crew was arrested and brought downstairs still cursing Nuthall. Even in Newgate he continued loudly to proclaim his intention to kill the surveyor the moment he found himself again at liberty. Thomas Nuthall pleaded for security of peace against William Crew, ‘through fear of death or of receiving bodily harm’ if he should be released. Six months later the old man was still in Newgate and petitioning to be let out. Nuthall had pulled down his house and sold the materials, he said, he was now seventy-eight years old, in a bad state of health and in extreme poverty,20 being maintained in the prison by John Crew (a paviour at the Barbican). He was finally discharged on 5 December 1765. William Crew long survived this ordeal. Soon after his discharge from prison he took over the Fallow Buck at Clay Hill where he presided as landlord for nearly ten years.21 In his old age he was treated generously by the parish being granted £10 a year from one of the Enfield charities. When he died on 20 February 1785 he was a hundred and four years of age and already the hill whereon his house had stood was known by the name of Crews Hill. His memory long remained alive. The parish clerk at Enfield, registering the burial of James Crew, who died in the workhouse in November 1822, recorded for posterity that this man’s father had been William Crew who had been keeper on Enfield Chase. Perhaps he had become something of a local folk hero.22

His old enemy Thomas Nuthall, as if to celebrate his triumph, had an imposing mansion built called New Lodge at Kitts End, with spacious grounds and a paddock of thirteen acres all enclosed out of common land. But he fell out of favour with Pitt in 1772, and died three years later. It happened that he was returning from Bath by way of Hounslow Heath when his carriage was fired on by a highwayman. No one was injured and when Nuthall returned the fire, the highwayman fled. The coach stopped at an inn in Hounslow where Nuthall, calling for pen and paper, sat down and wrote a detailed description of his assailant and, carefully directing it to Sir John Fielding, died at once, on 7 March 1775.23

Footnotes: Nuthall and the Crews

1 DL9.23

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2 DI.41.96.6 27 November 1748 3 DL.41.96.6 February 1737/8 4 DL.41.96.6 27 November 1748, DL9.23, DL5.44.180, 189 5 James Beattie’s London Diary. p78-9 6 Dl.9.23 March 1748 7 DL41.96.6, DL9.24, Enfield DG419 8 ELCJ 20 December 1736, 14 January 1757, Enfield DG419. 9 DL41.16.12 10 Enfield DG444 11 Enfield DG405 12 DL Office L.ease Book 1767, fl4v-17v, MR.709, MPC 144 13 DL9.23, MPC 107 14 DL5.44.225 15 See above pOO 16 Baker, op. cit. p391/2 17 GLROMR LV.7.6, W030.49, GLRO MR LV8.1 etc. (My thanks to Brian Roberts) 18 DL9.24 19 DI.41.96.4 20 DL4I.96.4 21 GLRO MR LV8.51, 56, 62, 79, 87, 89, MR LV9.1 (My thanks to Brian Roberts) 22 Enfield Parish Register 23 DNB

Chapter Eleven: The End of the Chase

‘The Chase, in its present state, yields very little profit either to the King’s Majesty, or to the freeholders or copyholders, or their tenants, in comparison with what it might do if it was divided and improved ’

Thus began the Act for Dividing Enfield Chase 1777. It was an age of agricultural improvement. The reports to the Board of Agriculture in the 1790s were unanimous in their condemnation of common land and common lield cultivation. They were expressing the view of the landlords and big farmers. England was becoming urbanised. The mode of life of the cottager was regarded with contempt; such people would be better employed working for wages on bigger farms, or in factories and workshops. Few of the cottagers shared this view.1

As early as 1770 Arthur Young, who farmed at North Mimms, wrote critically of the uneconomic use of Enfield Chase; ‘so large a tract of waste land, so near to the capital, within reach of London as a market and as a dung-hill, [it] is a real nuisance to the public. ... If this tract of useless land was enclosed, with farm houses and proper offices built, it would let at once at 15s an acre’. Proposals for de-forestation were first made at a Duchy court on 5 July 1775. The Crown stood to benefit, as did the ratepayers of the parishes, though both would have to negotiate hard to secure the largest possible share. The small farmers and the poor might suffer, but their voices were less strident now than they once had been. In the event the whole process slipped quietly through Duchy court, vestry committees, House of Commons and into the statute book without much contention, indeed there were only three dissentients out of fifty proprietors in Enfield and, in terms of annual value of their property, less than £50 against £2,260.2 It was all summed up in three lines by a local versifier:

But the Crown wanting money the Chase would enclose And gave us for common the portion we chose And all quietly too without coming to blows3

The Duchy resurrected Oliver Cromwell’s settlement of 1656. The seventeenth century surveyors had drawn their divisions on a map and marked them upon the ground with banks and ditches which were yet clearly to be seen on Enfield Chase a hundred and twenty years later. The Duchy court ordered an engraving of the 1656 map to be made and copies were published. It showed the divisions thus:

Acres Roods Enfield Parish and Old Park 1,329 2 Edmonton Parish 917 0 Hadley Parish 240 0 South Mimms and Old Fold 913 0 Total to the commoners 3,339 2 Total to the state 4,500 2 7,900

The Story of Enfield Chase – David Pam

This was the basis of the proposals now submitted to the parishes. The Crown undertook to build the ring fences around the allotments, using timber from the Chase, and claimed the right to sell all encroachments, though giving preference to the sitting tenants. The aim was to use the money so raised to pay the expenses of the Act and to make the ring fences.

The gentlemen of Mimms and Hadley, called together to consider the proposals, expressed their general acquiescence, but politely offered to defer their answers until the gentlemen of Enfield had stated their opinion. The gentlemen of Edmonton, it was thought, would be unlikely to disagree with the gentlemen of Enfield, since many of them had estates in both parishes. General acceptance appeared to be within reach, everyone waited upon the decision of the Enfield vestry. On 4 September 1775 Enfield vestry appointed a committee, under the chairmanship of George Prescott of Theobalds. Within a few days Prescott’s committee had met at the Greyhound Inn, at the corner of Enfield Market Place and had rejected the Duchy proposals. The clerk was ordered to make searches among the records of the Duchy of Lancaster (even in the Domesday Book) to establish the extent of common rights belonging to the parish. He must have had a busy week for by the next meeting he had seen Twynhoe’s survey of 1572, as well as Duchy decrees of 1603, 1635, 1636, 1685, 1686 and 1735. Upon this evidence he was required to prepare a case to show whether the allotment offered by the Crown was or was not an equivalent to the rights and privileges which would be lost by the parish. For the benefit of the rest of the inhabitants, the pronouncements of George Prescott and his committee were at once transmuted into verse.

With him equivalent and compensation Stretch forth their gentle arms and soothe all fright, Not like some modern stratagems commutation That picks our pockets and puts out our light.

On 26 October the committee proceeded to vote six resolutions demanding terms far more generous than those which had been offered by the Duchy. They claimed that two thousand acres should be allotted to Enfield parish. They demanded that no timber should be cut on their allotment from that day forward, and proposed that the whole of the Chase should remain within the parish of Enfield, including all encroachments and any allotments proposed for the three other parishes. Clearly such conditions could not be acceptable, either to the Crown or to the other parishes but, by raising its claims high, the Enfield vestry forced the Duchy to reduce its own claims and to concede many of theirs.

The Crown remeasured the land long ago demarcated as the Enfield allotment by Cromwell’s surveyors. They marked out the old boundaries with stakes and swathes cut through the coverts and finally concluded that the Commonwealth commissioners had understated the area they had allotted to Enfield, and that in reality it amounted to 1,532 acres. The Crown allowed the parish a considerably increased proportion of the timber on the Enfield allotment and relinquished the right, formerly claimed, to sell encroachments to pay for enclosure.

Chapter Eleven: The End of the Chase

The Duchy was adamant, however, that the land allotted as compensation, together with the encroachments bordering on each parish, should be included within the new boundaries of that parish. With so much gained the Enfield vestry accepted these conditions and turned its attention next to tithes. Many of the freeholders, they said, had expressed an earnest desire that the Chase should be exempt from the payment of tithe in kind. Eager to reach a settlement, the Duchy offered the tithe holder one acre in ten out of the King’s allotment (which was to remain part of Enfield parish) in lieu of the payment of tithe on that part of the Chase. This generous proposal was accepted by the rector, Trinity College Cambridge, and by their lessee, Lord Lisburne; the vicar of Enfield, Mr Newbon, added his consent.4

Thus matters concerning the parishes moved towards an agreement. In compensation for the loss of the right to gather rates and taxes on the land allotted to other parishes, Enfield was granted an additional two hundred acres which lay between Northaw and East Lodge. This area was to be merged with the parish common, while the two hundred acres nearest to the Town were to be divided from the remainder of the Enfield allotment by a line drawn on the map from a point on Slades Hill where it is joined by the footpath to Worlds End Lane, to the Strayfield Gate at Clay Hill (near the Fallow Buck). It was to be enclosed, made free from tithe and vested in the parish,5 long-term leases of ninety-nine years were to be offered, and the rents were to be employed in equal portions toward the payment of land tax and poor rate. The rights of the Enfield commoners over the whole Chase were thus transferred to 1,532 acres of parish common land. The poor were excluded, for these rights were now reserved to the owners of houses and land assessed to the land tax in the preceding year at £10 or more, that is, to a mere hundred and fifty- six proprietors.6 Nevertheless the Enfield allotment being increased in total from 1,329 to 1,732 acres, victory could be celebrated;

Applauding crowds with hats bedecked with holly Hail the glad sound nor tremble at enclosure

Thus wrote one sceptical versifier not himself willing to join in the general applause.

Already those sufficiently powerful and enterprising were making claims upon the two hundred acres. Sir Thomas Halifax, Lord Mayor of London in 1777, demanded twenty acres for a conduit from his spring on the Chase to his mansion in Chase Side, at a maximum rent of 35s an acre. This was granted in the Act with a convenant that he should continue to pipe the water from his conduit for the benefit of the people of Enfield. (The tap behind the Six Bells in Chase Side remained in use into the late nineteenth century.) Humphry Bache was given licence to enclose twenty acres around Chase Lodge, already standing upon the two hundred acres in what we now call Holtwhites Hill; here too the rent was limited to 35s an acre. Again a local versifier was impelled to express disapproval, first of Sir Thomas Halifax;

A poor mayor of London whose knighted came down Who distrusting the vestry had faith in the Crown To fill his own pocket and injure the town. A banker he was and here picked up a fortune

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Yet the pitiful wretch did the parish importune His rent to abate and his lease for to shorten, and then of Humphry Bache:

Another fine fellow of mushroom extraction Incroaching had built to his own satisfaction And made the poor vestry consent to his action.

Hadley parish accepted 240 acres of which 24 acres were to be allotted to tithe owners at Enfield for the redemption of the tithe. A pound was to be put up at the expense of the parish (it is still there) and the parish clerk was to act as pound- keeper.7 The Hadley allotment was managed after 1777 by curators appointed at the vestry; they were determined to preserve the woodland.8 Trees were planted, and new gates provided in 1824, and commoners continued to pasture their animals throughout the nineteenth century.9 It is now managed by trustees and remains to this day a stinted common for geldings, mares, foals, cows and calves. Edmonton vestry caused the Duchy no trouble whatever and acceptance on behalf of the parish was signed by Samuel Draper, the clerk, on 18 November. They were to receive 1,231 acres with all the timber on the land except such as had already been marked as assigned to the Crown. The rights of Edmonton commoners were transferred from the whole Chase to this new allotment.

The land granted to Monken Hadley, Edmonton and Enfield (except the two hundred acres) was thus to remain in use as common, and the income trom the sale of the wood was to be paid to the overseers for the relief of the poor. The principal landowners of South Mimms, however, had power enough and influence to eliminate at once all right to common; they enclosed and distributed their allotment, mostly among themselves. The parish had already 87 acres of common waste at Bentley Heath. This was added to the Chase allotment of 1,026 acres, and the whole was enclosed and divided according to the land tax assessments. Those exempted or assessed at less than 40s received one and a quarter acres. Those assessed at between 40s and £5 were given one and a half acres, from £5 to £10, two acres. Thus some fifty-six smallholders found themselves entitled to two acres or less, obviously too little to repay the expense of building fences and cultivating the virgin soil. Many of them took the easy way out and sold the freehold of their common rights before the land was distributed.

The great landowners were the beneficiaries. George Byng received 83 acres from the commissioners for enclosure, much of it lying on Bentley Heath to the north of his estate, he then purchased a further 121 acres abutting on Wrotham Park. Edward Vincent of Bridge Foot House obtained by purchase and exchange 85 acres of the allotment land, James Ashton acquired by purchase 43 acres, Thomas Allen of Old Fold received 35 acres. The Earl of Salisbury, in compensation for his loss of common rights, manorial rights and rectorial tithe, was granted 108 acres near Potters Bar which he sold to the owners of Oakmere. Francis Barreneau, who rented New Lodge from Byng, purchased 17 acres including the Hermitage and other cottages around Kitts End Green, all which were laid into his grounds. He closed the road through the hamlet of Kitts End in 1786 because it ran between the south front

Chapter Eleven: The End of the Chase of his house and his paddock. The hamlet thereafter decayed. New Lodge was demolished in 1860 and the grounds were incorporated into Wrotham Park; Kitts End then finally disappeared.10

The Earl of Clarendon and the Duchy council had also to consider an appropriate compensation for the Duke of Chandos and his officers. These negotiations proved a diplomatic battle of wits with the advantage definitely to the Duchy. James Coulthard the lawyer (of Coulthard, Wildman and Graham), acted as agent for the Duke, the wily Francis Russell negotiated on behalf of Clarendon.

Figure 18: Francis Russell

The business was begun behind a facade of gentility. Clarendon, after having cut the ground from under the Duke’s feet by observing that no compensation could possibly be due to him on account of the three lodges, since they were let at high rents, on leases almost as long as the Duke’s own grants, then requested the Duke

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The Story of Enfield Chase – David Pam to submit a detailed claim. He expressed a delicacy, even to guess at the value which His Grace, in his own mind, might put on his offices of ranger and keeper. Coulthard had hoped to have avoided such a request, because of the embarrassment his Grace might feel in setting a pecuniary value on matters that were merely honorary. He felt that Clarendon should have been generous in his offer beyond what His Grace would have chosen to ask. However, the request was made and negotiations thereafter took a less courteous tone. Suggestions presented by Chandos were met by proposals from the Duchy court which Mr Coulthard held were far short of what he had hoped would have been offered. Relations between Russell and Coulthard deteriorated. Meanwhile the bill had passed most of its stages through Parliament, and the consents of interested parties were urgently required to facilitate its further progress. The Duke was an interested party both as an office holder and as a principal freeholder in the parish of Edmonton. Francis Russell therefore had no option but to request an appointment in order to secure the Duke’s assent to the bill. Mr Coulthard advised delay. Whereupon Clarendon himself entered into the negotiations, writing a lengthy epistle to the Duke in which he hinted that Coulthard was obstructing the bill in order to maximise his fees. He went on to put subtle pressure on the Duke by deprecating his claim to additional venison (which had been made through Coulthard). He had been under the impression, he wrote, that the Duke had relinquished this request, as one not having sufficient dignity or weight to be urged in a transaction between the King and a nobleman of the first rank and one who held the most generous principles. The subtle insinuations of the Earl of Clarendon proved unanswerable. The Duke assumed an attitude of offended dignity. The Earl replied with abject apology, buttered with some additional flattery, and the Duke signed.11

Figure 19: Beech Hill Park

Chapter Eleven: The End of the Chase

He received very little; a lease of the Manor of Enfield for thirty-one years (the rents still reserved to the Crown), a renewal of his lease of the three lodges for thirty-one years and the payment for sixteen years of the perquisites due to his offices on the Chase. This amounted to a mere £94 a year. The Crown provided the under-keepers and the woodward with a pension of £40 a year each, for life, and also undertook to compensate the tenants at the lodges.12

Having reached these agreements a new survey of the Chase was made in August and September 1776 by Francis Russell, Nuthall’s successor as His Majesty’s surveyor in the south parts of the Duchy of Lancaster. Russell was rewarded with a hundred and fifty-two acres of land bordering on Beech Hill and the Cockfosters Road (most of it is now the Hadley Wood Golf Course). He added a further hundred and two acres by purchase. He built himself a house which he called Russell Mansion and lived there until his death in 1795. This house, later known as Beech Hill Park, is now the Golf Club house.

The Crown was then left with 3,218 acres, far less than the 4,500 acres originally claimed. It was not prime agricultural land, and much of it was covered with wood. A long and costly operation would be required to render it fit for cultivation. The trees would have to be grubbed up, buildings and fences erected and drains laid. Discussing the potential use of the land in January 1777, Francis Russell related that he had ploughed and sown 186 acres at West Lodge Farm for several years and, though he had obtained the best advice available, the experiment had proved an expensive failure. The soil consisted of stiff clay and cold gravel, even when well drained it could never retain any improvement made by dung or manure beyond a single crop. He had come round to the view that the only possible use for such soil was meadow or pasture, even though oats, beans and wheat straw were in great demand locally.13

Much of the King’s allotment was advertised for leasehold sale in twenty-four lots ranging from forty to a hundred and fifty acres each, in November 1777; the leases were to run for ninety-nine years.14 The advertisement added that the timber and wood growing upon the lots would be the absolute property of the lessees, and full encouragement would be given them to protect its future growth. Those who took the leases were, in general, either professional men, retired tradesmen or speculators in wood. Foot described them as ‘ignorant both of experimental and of practical agriculture, being, in general, gentlemen retired from trade into the country’.15 Such a one was Mr Bulkeley, formerly a grocer at Chester, afterwards a sugar baker in London, who purchased lots 16, 17 and 18. Another purchaser was Thomas Plumer Byde of Ware Park in Hertfordshire who secured 321 acres. Byde was out to make a quick turnover on his investment, and was not too scrupulous about the means he used to achieve this end. A number of the neighbouring plots at that time remained unsold, being the subject of long drawn out negotiations with a banker who had gone abroad (finally they were purchased by Joseph Kaye a surgeon).

Over three months, Byde’s labourers systematically stripped the timber from these neighbouring plots. One witness reported to Francis Russell that he had seen five hundred stacks of firewood made up there and many more loads not yet set up into stacks. Many beech trees had been felled, he had found a number of sawyers at work and many hearths burning there to make charcoal. Byde had also dug great

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The Story of Enfield Chase – David Pam quantities of brick-earth near Slopers Pond and had even ploughed acres of rich lawn on the Great Lawn near West Lodge. His servants had been out on the Chase killing the King’s deer.16

Figure 20: Enfield Chase, showing the allotments set out to the several parishes and estates and the proposed roads. Francis Russell, 1776

One piece of the King’s allotment was destined to revert to its former use as a deer park. Lots 20, 21 and 22 were leased to Dr Richard Jebb, physician to the royal household, a man described as ‘tactless to the point of insanity, urging remedies as drastic as they were hazardous’. His reputation at that time stood supreme, following his emergency expedition to Trento in the Austrian Tyrol early in 1777, to treat the King’s younger brother, the Duke of Gloucester, who was probably suffering from what present day physicians would term a psychosomatic disorder. He recovered under the impact of the doctor’s ranting hit-and-miss methods, and thus, as Stephen Doree put it, ‘the royal Lazarus was restored to the King’s tearful embrace’. Six months later the doctor, created a baronet, took the title of Sir Richard Jebb of Trent Place and began building the villa on Noddingswell Hill which still survives somewhere behind Philip Sassoon’s glorious red brick facade.17 When

Chapter Eleven: The End of the Chase the estate was sold by auction in 1787, after the death of Sir Richard, the house was described as a small elegant villa standing near the centre of a beautiful park of four hundred acres, wherein were exhibited ‘the most interesting, rich and noble scenes’.18

The clearing and sale of great numbers of trees in the years following the enclosure, depressed prices; only oak found a ready sale. The oak and beech timber was sold by auction. One advertisement, stating that the trees had already been felled, described them as mostly not exceeding twenty-five feet. Also offered for sale were Five hundred black beeches, ranging from fifteen to eighty feet high, standing between Cockfosters and East Lodge. It was offered, as an inducement, that the colliers who had a number of hearths in the vicinity burning charcoal, had now almost exhausted the wood available, so that branches cut off for any prospective purchaser would find a ready market on the site.19 The vast quantity of stackwood and bavins produced so far exceeded demand however, that the price at one time was said to have fallen far below the cost of the woodman’s labour and though this may have been an exaggeration, the Enfield woodward’s account, from June 1780 to June 1781, shows that he had received £714 for wood sold, but it had cost the parish £695 to make it ready for sale, which left a profit of only £19.20 Less money was therefore available for capital development than might have been expected. In the course of digging up the tree roots much of the thin layer of top soil had been buried or mixed with the useless subsoil; as a result seed sown scarcely returned its own weight in grain. For these reasons, much of the King’s allotment remained in its original uncultivated state until the price of wood rose late in the century to give a new impetus to the clearing of the trees. Seventeen years after enclosure Peter Foot observed that ‘the land had not profited much by management or exertion’.

The eventual move towards improvement was begun by George Byng, Francis Russell and Abraham Wilkinson, men who had the money and expertise necessary. Abraham Wilkinson of White Webbs, reporting to the Board of Agriculture in 1796 on three years’ cultivation, stated that he had laid on twelve loads of chalk and a hundred and sixty bushels of lime to each acre, all of which had to be brought from Cheshunt Common, about three miles distant. The improvement made by these means, he said, was very apparent in a wet winter by ‘the superior vigour and the more florid appearance of the wheat’. He was following a four year rotation: wheat, beans, wheat and fallow.

Mr Wigston (who bought Trent Park after the death of Doctor Jebb) had on the other hand found it necessary to lay out as much as the freehold of the land was worth in order to render it capable of bearing a decent crop of corn. He felt that such land should best be used for the feeding and rearing of young stock.21

Edmonton allotment, twenty years after enclosure, looked like a waste land, three quarters of it covered with bushes, with ‘one solitary, unthrifty, unsightly tree to an acre’. These had been so stripped of their branches that they appeared ‘like may-poles encumbered with ivy’.22 This devastation had occurred in the early eighteen-eighties. It resulted from the short-sighted policy of the Edmonton vestry and the shrewd policy of the Edmonton surveyor, John Erwood. Erwood was a builder and a leading member of the vestry, frequently elected as a churchwarden. He was

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The Story of Enfield Chase – David Pam the man who had been responsible for the drastic restoration of All Saints Church in 1772, when the ancient stone windows were replaced by wooden sashes and the exterior of the church encased in a skin of yellow stock brick. The view generally held, that this was a piece of illegal jobbery, is supported by the total absence of any reference to the work in the diocesan records.23

Erwood’s account in 1783 reveals that he had sold, by auction, stackwood to the value of £993, bark to the value of £81 and twelve hundred oaks to the value of £245, a total of £1,240. Erwood received four per cent on all sales by auction. The following year he claimed his four per cent on sales to the value of £1,476 (labour costs that year were £296) but the vestry refused to settle his account when it was discovered that he had deducted £125 as his salary for the previous five years. A compromise was reached which provided a salary of £25 a year to the surveyor thenceforth. This made the job a lucrative one while the wood lasted, but the vestry began to lose faith in John Erwood, and the following year ordered the churchwardens to supervise the wood cutting and, in August, appointed a new surveyor.24 One attempt was made to lease part of the allotment but this was rejected by a great majority at a well attended vestry, where it was declared that the churchwardens had no power under the Act of 1777 to lease any land other than the encroachments.2S

Cattle and sheep pastured on the commons would have been an easy prey to thieves, and must have required the employment of someone to watch over them. Only this can account for the presence on Edmonton common, on the night of 18 to 19 October 1784, of ‘one black man, the property of John Jauncey’. The black man himself was stolen that night. Jauncey found him in the possession of Mr Caleb Holloway of North Mimms, who had purchased him of Mr Charles Chaddock of South Mimms, who himself had bought him from a person, he said, who called himself Richard Smith of London.26

Over the years, since the division of the Chase, the Edmonton vestry had been much concerned by the continued depredations of the wood stealers and those who took away turf, loam and gravel. In 1794 the vestry ordered the printing of a thousand handbills warning offenders. The Enfield surveyors were kept equally busy. The greed of men like Aaron Patrick, the landlord at the Kings Arms in Green Street, was ruining the common. He came with a cart drawn by four horses, to cut down and carry away thriving young oaks at Crews Hill and, when his house was searched, twenty-nine trees were found on the premises.27 Others however were driven to steal wood merely to survive. Warrants were issued against twenty-two wood thieves in the first six months of the year 1 783. At last the Enfield vestry hit upon a solution. It was announced that, in order to remove all cause for the continuance of those depredations on the Chase, which for years prevailed amongst the poor of this parish, for supplying themselves with fuel; a custom which tends to promote idleness and depravity, thereby laying the foundation to a future vicious course of life; it is recommended that a subscription be entered into for the purpose of supplying coals to such persons as those above described ..., whom the subscribers may deem proper objects for their bounty, at the price of one shilling a bushel during the severe season of winter. And it is strongly recommended by the subscribers . . . that earnest caution be given to the receivers of their tickets for supply of coals, that in case they be detected in a continuance of the like

Chapter Eleven: The End of the Chase vicious practices . . . every such indulgence will for the future be withdrawn.28 To this were the poor now reduced.

The greater landowners in Enfield were not slow in attempting to emulate those in South Mimms and by December 1780, there was a scheme afoot to seek powers through Parliament for the enclosure and division of the Enfield allotment. It was proposed that the land be leased for long terms at fixed yearly rents, an advantageous arrangement in times of inflation. The intention was to invest the fifteen hundred acres in the hands of a few principal land-owners, acting as trustees. The churchwardens and parish officers were to be expressly excluded, the cottagers would be given monetary compensation.

‘Who would benefit?’ ' asked ‘A Disinterested Friend’, writing in December 1780, ‘the cottagers, farmers or inhabitants at large, or a few rich land-holders’. The freeholders and copyholders, he went on, were being repeatedly told in vestry that enclosure would at one time or another take place both in Enfield and in Edmonton. He warned that the present abuse of the common would hasten the execution of this design. He complained that the common was overcharged with cattle, and demanded to know why no stint had been imposed by the vestry. Why, he asked, were the commoners stealing more wood now, when the common was the absolute property of the parish, than they had done before the late division? Why, he demanded, was it that Enfield parish, with all this newly acquired revenue from wood and rents, still contrived to remain in debt?

The same warning was issued by William Nixon in May 1784. He accused the churchwardens of gross mismanagement and the misapplication of the income arising from the allotment. Though the Act had stipulated that all the profits should be used to lighten the burden of poor rate, which had become ‘very high and grievous’, (according to Foot £1,380 a year) the overseers had received nothing from the rents and profits of the Chase allotment; it had been entirely spent on roads, to the benefit of a small minority, managed, he said, by ‘the procurement of a few India duckets’. In the year 1780-81, for instance, wood had been sold to the value of £1,084 and though the felling and cutting had cost £502, this still left a profit to the parish of £562. During this same year however, £945 had been expended on new roads across the Chase.

Men had always found ways across the Chase. The 1754 map29 shows a number of grass tracks which had probably existed from earliest times. The Gunton and Rolfe map of 165630 names Merryhill way, from Enfield Town to Bohun gate (the Cockfosters roundabout) the Ridgeway, Bournegate way which has not survived, Camlet way, Lossick way which was a continuation westward of Winsmore Hill Way (now Worlds End Lane) towards Cockfosters, Cockfosters way (now Chase Side and the Cockfosters Road) and Cattlegate way, which ran from Camlet way crossing the Cockfosters Road to the junction of the present Cattlegate Road and Coopers Lane Road, another track which has not survived. Two more tracks or private roads were indicated on Russell’s map of 1776. One joined Wagon Road to East Lodge Lane (part of this has recently been opened as a footpath off the Cockfosters Road) and Russell Riding from Cockfosters eastward to the Ridgeway.

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The Act required that a number of roads should be constructed. Using their present names these were Green Dragon Lane and Worlds End Lane, Chase Side Southgate and the Cockfosters Road, Camlet Road, Beech Road and Hadley Road, Coopers Lane Road, Wagon Road, the Ridgeway and East Lodge Lane. Where these roads crossed the Crown allotment and the tithe allotment, they were to be made at the expense of the Crown. Where the new roads crossed the parish allotments however, the cost of building and maintenance fell heavily on the parishes.

Tenders were submitted. The roads were to be forty feet wide, with a rounded surface and covered with gravel. Mr Paul Jollage submitted his estimate for the Ridgeway, from the bridge over the New River (at the western end of Church Street) to'the northern edge of the Enfield allotment. He would use a great plough drawn by six horses which would throw up the sides of the roads towards the centre to give a camber. Near Enfield Town, thorn bushes would be laid for a foundation. His estimate amounted to £422. He proposed to employ twenty labourers at eighteen pence a day, and a foreman at fifteen shillings a week. Anxious to secure a modest profit, he pointed out to the vestry that it would be necessary to get the most out of his labourers. Working with bad tools, he said, made at least one third difference, therefore he recommended to the gentlemen concerned that new and strong tools ‘such as iron shovels, spades and heavy pickaxes’ should be procured and, if the labourers are not already possessed of such tools, sixpence a week must be stopped out of their pay in order to make the tools their property, which ‘will make them careful not to mislay or loose them’, he said.31

Despite the expense, Enfield parish embarked on the building of another new road which had not been specified in the Act. It ran from the gate at Whitewebbs (by the King and Tinker) and extended westward to the junction with Coopers Lane Road. It brought down upon the heads of the vestrymen more critical observations from a ‘Disinterested Friend’. He demanded to know why money was spent on such an out-of-the-way road while the busy highway from the Town to Bohun gate (Enfield Road and Bramley Road) remained impassable, and the wretched bridge over Salmons brook remained unsafe.

All this time the mismanagement of the commons continued, and was exploited by those anxious to secure the enclosure of all common land in the parishes. Their ambitions were promoted by the reports to the Board of Agriculture. J. Middleton, writing in 1798, complained that sixteen hundred and fourteen head of cattle were put each year on the Enfield allotment, by which means the common was destructively over-charged. He continually asserted how much more valuable the land would be (to those lucky enough to own it) if it were divided up and fenced and the common rights abolished. Nevertheless the defenders of the common stood firm for twenty years, but the forces against them were too powerful. Inevitably they were swept aside at last in the deluge of enclosure acts flooding through Parliament which engulfed the common fields and common waste of Edmonton in 1801, and those in Enfield in 1803.

The wealthy profited by the change, the poor were deprived of their independence. For thousands of years the resources of the forest had protected each generation from the extremes of poverty, provided them with fuel to cook and keep warm, timber to repair their cottages, allowed those without land to keep a goose

Chapter Eleven: The End of the Chase and a pig, enabled them to feed perhaps a lean cow to provide milk for the children. Now there remained only the workhouse or parish relief and charity as a last defence against destitution. An age-old way of life had come to an end. The rich grew in wealth, the poor, for many years at least, became more dependent. It is fitting that my story should close with one last act on the Chase in defiance of the important personages controlling the vestry, and happily, it was commemorated for us in verse.

In the summer of 1783 New Pond, on the Enfield allotment, was teeming with fish. The Enfield vestry men were determined that it should be protected for the good of the parish; to the vestry men, they were the parish.

New Pond: a new song

Come all ye gay lads that love fishing and dancing And foot it away with one fiddle or two, I’ll tell you a tale that needs not much enhancing For nothing is now too absurd to be true. The Captain,' as generous in treating his friends As in helping the parish to pay off their debt, With his profit in wood did to treat them intend With all the choice fish he could catch in his net. As the devil would have it, the pond, full of stakes, Forbade the net working its way at high water, But Pleasure inventive still new measures takes, If we have but the fish, how we catch them no matter.

Old Nuttall had cast up so solid a bank And fixed wooden aprons and sluices so stout, Bengal nor Orixon had not such a tank So guarded, so headed, so fenced about. Churchwarden, surveyor and four hired men,* By twelve hours labour engaged firmly stood To let all the water clear out of the pen And snap up the fish as they floundered in mud.

With axes and hammers the carved work they brake, The torrent now threatened to deluge the town, When the [constable/tipstaff3] his little weapon did take And mounted the bank to throw all others down. The weapon tho’ lodged in the [constable’s/tipstaffs3] pocket Has magical virtue that few people know, Bond, Jealous and Prothero4 with such a docket For this little staff would all others forego. And order the land tax commissioners granted, For general warrants are long out of date5;

The pond head was quickly with constables planted,

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But well for the poachers the guards came too late. The cattle stand panting in mud to their necks, The jacks, perch and eels make their fortune in London, Committees and vestries contuse and perplex And still this poor parish is doomed to be undone. Leave meeting and prating, contriving, debating Ye orators all who the vestry infest For while ye your talents are far over-rating One spirited measure is worth all the rest.

THE END

1 Captain later Major William Cooke of Chase Side, Enfield. 2 Parish accounts 27 July 1783 ‘paid Scales and Thorne for six days and six nights watching New Pond £1 Os 6d etc.’ Enfield Local Collection 3 Left blank in the original manuscript 4 John Bond, Charles Jealous, David Prothero mentioned frequently in Old Bailey Sessions Papers (GLRO). Probably Bow Street runners. 5 John Wilkes was arrested in 1763 on a general warrant in which he was not named. Wilkes fought back and in a series of cases defeated the government and established the illegality of general warrants. He became the idol of the London populace.

Chapter Eleven: The End of the Chase

Footnotes: The End of the Chase

1 W. G. Hoskins and L. Dudley Stamp. The Common Lands of England and Wales. 2 Enfield D1178 3 All the verse quoted is in Enfield Local History Collection 4 DL41.96.4, Enfield D1042 Minutes of the Enfield committee. Enfield D1042, GLRO. DR04.2.10.37 5 Enfield committee 26 October 1776 6 Act for dividing Enfield Chase 1777. DRO4.5.30.11 7 DL41.96.4 8 Vestry minute book 1789 9 Thorne. Environs. 1.266 10 For much of this information I am indebted to Mrs Helen Baker 11 Enfield DG199, 200, 191, 212, 195, 209, 192 12 1777 Act, DL15.69 13 DL41.96.4 14 GLRO. Acc 262.1.123 15 Foot View of the agriculture of Middlesex 16 DL41.96.6 17 Stephen Doree. Trent Park. 1974 18 Enfield cuttings 1787, Enfield D1183 19 Enfield cuttings 1777 20 Enfield D1183 21 Printed in J. Middleton. View of the agriculture of Middlesex. p525-7, 533 22 Middleton, op cit pi23 23 Martin Speight. All Saints Church, Edmonton 24 E. Hoare. The Work of the Edmonton Vestry. 25 Edmonton Vestry Minute Book 18 April 1785 26 GLRO. OB SP 1784 Dec 91 27 GLRO. OB SP 1783.35 28 Bodl. Top Mdx Bl p 141 29 Trinity College Cambridge 30 Copy Enfield Local History Collection (original PRO) 31 Enfield D1127

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Appendix 1: Pigs fattened on Enfield Chase and Old Park

1419-20 None SC6.915.26 1438-39 None DL29.42.825 1439/40 297 pigs 352 young pigs DL29.53.1003 1440/41 225 pigs 410 young pigs DL29.53.1004 1442/43 245 pigs 36 youngs pigs DL29.53.1006 1458/59 total pannage £4 13s DL29.53.1007 1464/65 340 pigs 125 young pigs DL29.53.1010 *1465/66 160 pigs 300 young pigs CP. Court rolls 14.26 1466/67 143 pigs 188 young pigs DL29.53.1011 1472/73 total pannage £8 9s 6d DL29.53.1016 1473/74 total pannage £3 9s 6d DL29.53.1017 1475/76 169 pigs 135 young pigs DL29.53.1019 1477/78 370 pigs 206 young pigs DL29.53.1020 1478/79 44 pigs 138 young pigs DL29.53.1021 1488/89 total pannage £2 5s 2d DL29.54.1022

*excludes Old Park from 1465/66

Appendix 2: Wood Sales, Enfield Chase and Old Park

1438/39 charcoal sold for £14 12s4d. (Licences were issued to dig on the Chase to make bricks,the earliest noted 1419/20 to Richard Penne.)

1439/40 Old palings sold for 2s, seven hundred faggots for 28s and 4s for the branches trimmed from oak felled for a new pale.

1440/41 39 dozen sacks and 4 quarters of charcoal sold for 48s lOd and six hundred faggots from Old Park sold lor 24s.

1442/43 8 dozen sacks of charcoal 13s4dand 1,900 faggots for 76s.

1444 Eighty oaks for the building of Eton College, thirty from the Chase and fifty from Old Park 1445/46. Sixty dozen sacks of charcoal sold for 100s.

1447/48 Charcoal sold for £20

1464/65 None sold

1466/67 None sold

1472/73 None sold

1473/74 None sold

1475/76 lop and crop of trees felled for the repair of the pale sold for 32s 2d, the old pale for 13s 8d.

1477/78 £7 0s 1d received for the lop and crop from hornbeams felled on the Chase.

1478/79 None sold

1488/89 None sold

References as in Appendix 1

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Appendix 3: Officers of Enfield Chase

1419/20 Keepers on the Chase Thomas Chaldron, Robert Hegge, William Forster. Keeper Old Park John West. John Kentyng bailiff, John Bernard

1438/39 John Bristowe bailiff replacing John Mordemore. Thomas Gale steward. Thomas Godeman keeper South Bailey Walk Robert Sheryngton ranger, keeper Old Park and keeper East Bailey and West Bailey walks.

1439/40 John Bristowe bailiff, Thomas Gale under-steward. William Stallworth keeper West Bailey Walk, East Bailey Walk, ranger, keeper of Old Park, keeper of Camelot Lodge. Thomas Godeman keeper South Bailey Walk.

1440/41 John Bristowe bailiff

1442/43 William Stallworth keeper East Bailey (William Grene under-keeper) West Bailey (Thomas Hassalte under-keeper) ranger, keeper Old Park and Camelot Lodge. Thomas Godeman keeper South Bailey

1445/46 Peter Preston bailiff. Sir John Wenlock East Bailey (Alan Grenehall deputy) West Bailey (Thomas Hassalt deputy) woodman (Henry Whitemore deputy)

1458/59 Peter Preston bailiff, Sir John Wenlock (Alan Grenehall deputy) East Bailey, West Bailey (John Bifeld) woodman (Henry Whitemore)

1464/65 John Reyner bailiff. Alan Grenehall EastBailey. Richard Alman South Bailey, Edward Thicnesse Old Park JohnByfeld West Bailey

1466/67 John Reyner bailiff, Alan Grenehall East Bailey John Byfeld West Bailey, Richard Almayn South Bailey

1468/69 John Reyner bailiff, Alan Grenehall East Bailey Simon White West Bailey, Richard Almayne South Bailey

1472/73 John Elryngton bailiff, John Wynne South Bailey, John Saunders East Bailey, Richard Almayn West Bailey

1473/74 John Elryngton bailiff, John Wyn South Bailey, John Saunders East Bailey, Richard Almaync West Bailey

1475/76 John Elryngton bailiff, John Wyn South Bailey, Richard Almayn East Bailey, John Loder West Bailey

1477/78 John Elryngton bailiff, John Chappell South Bailey, Richard Almayn East Bailey, John Loder West Bailey

1478/79 Sir John Elryngton bailiff, Simon White South Bailey, Richard Almayne East Bailey, Richard Grene West Bailey

1484 Walter Devereux Lord Ferrers master forester, keeper of the Chase, East Bailey, South Bailey and West Bailey Walks and of Old Park (BM Harl 433.42)

1485 John Fortescue master forester, keeper of Chase and keeper East Bailey West Bailey and South Bailey Walks, ranger, keeper of Old Park. William Drake bailiff.

1486 John Selby bailiff (DL42.21.178)

References as in Appendix 1 except where stated.

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Glossary

Attachment, the action of apprehending a person to put him under the control of a court of law attainted, a sentence of death, with the loss of property and rights, usually for treason bavin, a faggot benefit of clergy, those accused of a felony (which carried the death penalty) could demand the Bible and read a passage. Thereupon they were handed over to the ecclesiastical authorities, and so escaped hanging. browsewood: the foliage of pollarded trees used to feed livestock copyhold messuages: houses and land held by copy of court roll court baron: the manorial court which dealt with property and administration court of roundhedge: an ancient wood court in Enfield debenture: a voucher certifying that a sum of money is owing to the person named thereon delinquent: any person who assisted Charles I or Charles II to wage war during the Interregnum desmesne: land retained by thelord of the manor for his own use eyre court: courts held byjudges whomoved fromcounty to county, though cases concerning London and Middlesex were tried in London fallow: arable land on which no crop is growing during the current year Fifteen: rebellion in 1715 to restore James, the‘Old Pretender’ to the throne forester: see woodward Fleet: a notorious debtors prison on what is now Farringdon Street groundsel: a large timber, usually used for the foundation of a timber building hangar: a sword headborough: petty constable Hicks Hall: sessions house St Johns Street built by Sir Baptist Hicks Marshalsea: prison formerly in Southwark mast:acorns or beech-nuts fed to animals, particularly pigs pannage:the fattening of domestic pigs on acorns and beech-nuts on the ground under the trees perch:5'/2yards plidget: a small compress, or flattened mass of lint, or other soft absorbent material pollard: a tree cut eight to twelve feet from the ground and allowed to grow again from the boiling to produce successive crops of branches ranger: official title of the keeper of a chase or park roundwood: logs of less than four foot length set:a noose or trap set for game shrammell:twigs removed from browse wood before loading it onto carts soaken: barren stackwood: firewood stacked ready for the cart stint: a limit to the number of cattle which are allowed to be pastured on common land subsidy: a tax, or aid, to meet some special need of the King tallwood or talwood: logs cut in four foot lengths underwood: either coppice poles, cut just above ground level, or poles from

pollarded trees. The term can be used for wood standing or cut. verderer: a manorial official sworn to report all transgressions in a chase or park to the manor court whelm: half a hollow tree laid at the side of the road or at gateways as a drain woodward: person responsible for managing a wood. The day to day work on the Chase was done by a deputy.

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Index

Act for Dividing Enfield Chase of 1777, encroachments, 110 156 Enfield Beast, 2 Ansgar, the Staller, 15 Enfield Green, 14, 42, 101, 109 Beech Hill, 4, 163 Enfield manor, 23 Beech Hill Park, 163 Fallow Buck, the, 154 Black Act, 121, 122, 123, 124, famine, 19, 20, 22, 53 130 footpads. See Highwaymen, See Black Death, 22, 32 Highwaymen Bohun Gate, 146 Francis Russell, 4, 160, 161, Bush Hill Park, 4, 13, 130, 131 162, 163, 164, 166 Camlet moat, 16 Great Lawn, 165 Cat Hill. See Bohun Gate Gunton and Rolfe map of 1656, 168 Chase Side, 14, 43, 61, 64, highwaymen, 128 78, 114, 117, 146, 149, Hog hill brook. See Salmon's 158, 168, 170 Brook, See Salmon's Brook Clarke's Academy. See Enfield Hugh Westlake, 4, 101, 106, Town Railway Station 107, 108, 109 common rights, 15, 25, 26, 27, Humphrey de Bohun, 18, 22, 23 37, 49, 64, 80, 91, 96, hunting, 15, 16, 17, 33, 34, 104, 115, 128, 136, 157, 38, 40, 43, 44, 45, 47, 57, 159, 160, 169 93, 121, 135 coppicing, 17 Jebb, Dr Richard, 165 cottagers, 28, 156 John Keats, 90 Court of Roundhedge, 48, 49, 65, King Edward VI. See Lambert 66, 96 Simnell Crew, William, 11, 124, 128, Lambert Simnell, 32 133, 146, 153, 154 le Fryth. See Old Park Deer leaps, 18 Mandeville, Geoffrey de, 15, 16, demesne, 22 23, 78 Diggers, 73 Minchenden, 110, 119, 134, Domesday Book, 14, 15, 157 146 Duchy of Lancaster, 21, 23, 26, Monken Hadley, 4, 11, 13, 18, 27, 28, 29, 34, 36, 37, 42, 21, 23, 25, 28, 29, 30, 36, 48, 74, 78, 86, 99, 101, 38, 48, 49, 96, 152, 159 104, 106, 108, 109, 113, New Lodge, 154, 160 117, 121, 127, 131, 134, New Pond, 64, 169, 170 136, 154, 157, 163 Northaw, 18, 55, 93, 133, 158 , 12, 28, 34, 43, East Lodge Old Park, 4, 14, 15, 16, 21, 71, 75, 77, 92, 93, 101, 22, 28, 29, 41, 42, 43, 44, 104, 113, 114, 117, 118, 45, 47, 62, 64, 71, 72, 73, 119, 120, 127, 128, 133, 74, 75, 80, 81, 86, 87, 134, 136, 146, 153, 158, 156, 173, 174, 175 165, 168 Old Pond, 128, 131, 135 Edmonton Hundred, 19, 21, 61 pale, the, 18, 29, 33, 42, 43, Elsyng Palace, 31 44, 50, 55, 58, 64, 87, 174

pannage, 15, 18, 22, 33, 49, 105, 107, 162 173, 176 Survey of the Chase, 1637, peasant economy, 15, 28 68 pig cotes, 19 Survey of the Chase, 1656, 78 poacher, 116 Tayle pond, 105 Posterne Plain, 40, 45, 48 The Court of Roundhedge, 48 Pounz, Richard, 19, 21, 22, 28 The George Inn, 4, 103 Quakers, 94 The Witch of Edmonton, 53 Richard III, 26, 29 Three Partings, 105, 131 Ridings, 93, 104, 105, 106, Three Walks, 28, 98 107, 108 Trent Park, 17, 64, 65, 105, Riots of 1659, 81 131, 166, 172 Roads, 168 Trinity College, Cambridge, 158 Russell’s map of 1776, 168 Wars of the Roses, 29, 32 Saddlers Mill stream, 14 waste, 15, 16, 18, 25, 28, Salmons brook, 45, 169 53, 73, 87, 88, 103, 105, Sassoon, Sir Philip, 165 107, 109, 133, 156, 159, Slades Hill, 45, 158 166, 169 south gate, 17, 146 West Lodge, 4, 12, 28, 35, 43, South Lodge, 12, 28, 43, 71, 58, 61, 75, 77, 86, 87, 90, 75, 77, 87, 101, 104, 105, 92, 95, 99, 100, 101, 105, 107, 113, 119, 121, 127, 109, 110, 112, 119, 120, 129, 133, 142, 143, 146 121, 122, 128, 131, 133, 135, 145, 146, 163, 165 South Mimms, 11, 13, 15, 16, 18, 19, 20, 21, 25, 28, 30, Whitewebbs, 4, 56, 74, 81, 36, 38, 39, 46, 48, 49, 51, 146, 149, 169 54, 58, 60, 61, 66, 67, 72, Winchmore Hill, 17, 30, 44, 54, 74, 76, 80, 81, 88, 91, 93, 71, 72, 88, 114, 117, 121, 95, 119, 136, 137, 138, 130, 136, 146 146, 156, 159, 167 Windmill Hill, 4, 150 Strayfield Gate, 158 Worlds End Lane, 158, 168 Survey of the Chase, 78, 104, Wroth family, 27

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