Prosecutions for Depopulation in following the Inquisition of 1607

Preamble: The Midland Rising of 16071

In early June 1607 a crowd of about one thousand gathered at Newton, near Geddington, to destroy hedges and fences recently erected by Thomas Tresham. The protesters, ‘fellows who term themselves levellers’ were, allegedly, armed not only with stones but also with bows and arrows, pikes and long bills. Despite the fact that disorder had been brewing for several weeks since the Mayday festivities, and that early warning of exactly such troubles as these had already been flagged up by the Oxfordshire anti- rising of 15962, the county militia under Lord Lieutenant Thomas Cecil, Earl of Exeter, was surprisingly ill-prepared; local gentry were therefore obliged to assemble a makeshift defence force from their own household servants and clients. This private army was commanded by Sir Edward Montagu of Boughton, deputy lieutenant of the county, and Sir Anthony Mildmay of Apethorpe, a grizzled veteran of the campaign against the Northern Rising back in 1569. By 8th June, Montagu had hanged two of the rebel leaders.

The rioting at Newton was the culmination of almost six weeks of disorder across Leicestershire, Northamptonshire and Warwickshire, now collectively termed the Midland Rising. The long-term context of this rebellion was high population growth, consequent land scarcity, and inflation driven by poor harvests. The growing problem of poverty created by these pressures was compounded in 1593 when the Tudor regime relaxed its restrictive laws against enclosure of the open fields and common lands on which the livelihood of the landless poor depended. Although the laws were restored in 1597, the gentry of the heavy clay-lands of the midlands had already seized the opportunity to convert their estates from growing grain to sheep pasture. Many open-field communities saw rapid and sometimes complete enclosure in the decade or so before 1607, including Cotesbach (Leics); Ladbroke, Hillmorton and Chilvers Coton (Warks); and , Rushton and Pytchley (Northants). Each of these places saw the gathering of large crowds of ‘levellers’ and ‘diggers’ in May and early June 1607, sometimes as many as five thousand, protesting against enclosure. The rising culminated at Newton, the site of one of the most notorious episodes of oppressive enclosure in the Midlands. Thomas Tresham of Newton had flouted laws and proclamations against enclosure for decades. As early as 1564, long before the tillage laws were suspended, 650 sheep were grazing in the parish. In 1597/8, Tresham was prosecuted in Star Chamber for depopulation and sheep farming. By 1607, the whole parish was under grass and had been leased out to graziers, probably having been completely enclosed in the mid-1590s. In about 1599, Tresham also purchased the estate at Pilton from his cousin, the equally notorious enclosing landlord Sir Thomas Tresham of Rushton, and destroyed five farms in the process of converting 135 acres of arable to sheep pasture.

Following the battle at Newton, Sir Edward Montagu recorded the names of 143 men who sued for pardon under the terms of a royal proclamation of 24 July 1607. Sixty- two (43%) of those who sought pardons were labourers and a further fifty-five (28%) were craftsmen. The vast majority, then, were landless, and they mainly came from forest communities. Seventy-eight (55%) came from larger villages such as Weldon (36 rebels), Corby (29 rebels), and Benefield (9), but there was a

1 Details in this section are summarised from the article ‘The Battle of Newton-field and the Midland Rising of 1607’: by Professor Steve Hindle, University of Warwick, 2006 2 ‘A Rising of the People? The Oxfordshire Rising of 1596’, John Walter, Past and Present, No. 107. (1985), pp. 90-143. significant minority from the town of (27 rebels), a distribution similar to that found in the Leicestershire part of the Rising where the townsmen had a major role to play in fermenting discontent in the countryside. Enclosure, they insisted’ was carried out not ‘for the benefit of the Commonalty’ but only for the ‘private gain’ of those who had ‘depopulated and overthrown whole towns and made thereof sheep pastures, nothing profitable for our commonwealth’.

The response of the authorities to the rising was entirely characteristic of its attitude to popular protest in Tudor and Stuart .

The first priority was repression. The trial of the rebels at Northampton saw three categories of defendants arraigned before the presiding judge Sir Edward Coke: the first group was indicted for high treason in levying war against the crown; the second for felony in refusing to obey the royal proclamation, read twice to them at Newton, ordering them to disperse; and the third for the misdemeanour of ‘unlawful assembly and throwing down hedges and ditches’.

The crown’s second priority was the redress of the grievances that had provoked the Rising. The privy council had debated whether or not to wait before initiating proceedings against enclosing landlords, but by August 1607 royal commissioners were appointed to gather evidence concerning the scale of illegal enclosure and depopulation across the midlands. Although the returns of the commissions are incomplete, they demonstrate how severely Northamptonshire had been affected by the behaviour of self-interested landlords: over 27,000 acres3 had been enclosed since 1578 (almost a third of all the land identified by a commission which had extended through seven counties), resulting in the destruction of over 350 farms and the eviction of almost 1500 people across eighteen villages.

The findings of the commissions were used as the basis for prosecutions in the court of Star Chamber of those landlords who had enclosed their lands illegally. Several leading Northamptonshire gentlemen were convicted – among them Thomas Tresham of Newton, convicted of enclosing four hundred acres and destroying nine farms in Newton. Although the scale of his fine is uncertain, survivors of the battle of Newton-field would doubtless have felt vindicated by his humiliation, even if they did not benefit from the re-conversion of his estates from pasture to arable. By the early seventeenth century the crown’s enclosure policy had become tarnished by the needs of finance, and the fines of 1607 were effectively a tax on enclosure.

Analysis of the subsequent prosecutions for depopulation

Sixteen Northamptonshire vills were identified as wholly or partially depopulated in 16074. In the light of the preceding section, it is plain that these prosecutions were the actions, not of a diligent and vigilant government determined to stamp out enclosure, but of a parliament and monarchy badly rattled by the widespread use of civilian force in the Midland revolt of June 1607 (and with the serious anti-enclosure rioting of the Oxfordshire Rising in 1596 also still very fresh in their memories), and urgently needing to redress the balance of grievances against the poor.

3 In Northamptonshire’s total area of approximately 583000 acres, this amounts to roughly 4.6% of the land in the county. It is certainly a significant proportion of the total land area – and all the more so when it is recalled that the Inquisition concentrated on identifying recently enclosed former ploughland, and the figures in their returns ignored enclosure of pasture and wasteland – though it is relatively small when compared with the more substantial Parliamentary of the late 1700s. 4 The records are contained in two contemporary documents held at the National Archive, reference E163-17-8, transcribed by the author. The vills named in the documents are , Farthinghoe, Gayton, Great Houghton, Hanging Houghton, , , Newton*, Onley and Barby, Paston, Pilton, Pytchley*, Rushton*, Stoke Doyle and Titchmarsh. (* As stated earlier in this article, Newton, Pytchley and Rushton were all the scenes of anti-enclosure rioting in May/June 1607). The following analysis was based on comparisons of parish-register details over the period 1570-1625 for the group of 16 communities singled out in the prosecutions following the 1607 Inquisition. In addition, as a crosscheck, parish registers were also examined for several vills adjacent to those where depopulation had been prosecuted, in which no recent depopulation was recorded by the 1607 Inquisition.

Villages where prosecutions for depopulation were brought

There are no surviving 1570-1625 registers for the vills of Barby, Kelmarsh, Maidwell, Newton, Onley, Paston, Pytchley, or Titchmarsh cited in the 1607 prosecutions. For Hanging Houghton the registers are combined with those for Lamport, so that for this village also analysis is impossible. However, for the other 7 vills an analysis of population growth can be made from the parish registers.

Almost all vills in the group where depopulation was alleged exhibit (as expected) a significant long-term increase of population during the period 1570-1625, as measured by the relatively crude metric, calculated from parish registers: average population growth rate = S [(annual total baptisms) - (annual total burials)] / (no. of years)

Average rates of increase over the period 1570-1625 vary between about 2.5 persons/year and 4 persons/year for East Haddon, Farthinghoe, Gayton, Great Houghton, Pilton and Stoke Doyle. Therefore in all these cases, enclosures could not have been simply due to prior depopulation, since the communities were all growing.

The two exceptions to this are at Onley (which was entirely depopulated by 1610) and Rushton (which had a low rate of population growth, of 1.00 person/year).

Onley: Other research5 has shown that this hamlet of about 80-100 souls was probably depopulated gradually over the period 1550-1610 – its population initially reduced by the epidemics of the late 1550s, then encroached upon by Lord Zouch's early enclosures in the south-east of the hamlet in the 1560s-1570s and further enclosures when he had part of Barby Wood felled around 1585-95; reaching an unfeasibly low population by the 1590s, accelerated by the poor harvests of the 1590s (and probably also touched by plague around 1600-1605), so that the few remaining inhabitants cut their losses and moved to nearby vills, leaving Onley's remaining tillage to be enclosed for pasture like the rest. The whole process was clearly motivated by the Zouches’ need to raise rents in Onley (due to the drop in real value of their copyhold rents, caused by the inflation of the 1540s/50s following devaluation of the coinage), by converting low-rent copyhold arable to high-rent leasehold enclosed pasture (which they eventually sold on the open market). They neatly managed the first two stages of these enclosures without contravening the prevailing laws against converting arable to pasture, by creating the first new enclosure (Rawdykes, 45 acres) on low-lying wet land unsuitable for the plough, then later by felling and clearing the west half of Barby Wood to create further large enclosed pastures (Burnthill, 76 acres) on the former woodland.

Rushton: The crude rate of increase of population for Rushton is low – only 1.0 person/year over the 27-year period 1588-1612 for which all the relevant registers have survived. The explanation appears in the details of the Rushton burial register. Rushton seems to have been hit hard by the harvest failures of the mid-1590s and the floods of 1598 – and dramatic peaks in the burial registers also indicate severe epidemics in the village in 1592 and from 1596-1598. This suggests that the enclosures here were made opportunistically on land left vacant by the epidemic in the late 1590s; and in the wake of the repeated harvest failures in the mid-1590s, this conversion of tillage probably attracted little initial comment – especially since the law against converting arable to pasture was briefly repealed in 1593 then re-enacted in 15976.

5 ‘The Medieval Settlement at Onley, Northamptonshire: An evaluation of the process of formation and desertion of the medieval settlement, with special reference to its significance within the larger community during the 16th and 17th centuries’, G.W. Hatton 2005. Paper initially presented to CRASSH conference, Cambridge University Nov 2005. 6 'Tudor Economic Problems', P.Ramsey, Gollancz 1965, pp38-39 East Haddon, Gt Houghton, Stoke Doyle Peaks in the burial registers suggest that these three vills suffered in exactly the same way as Rushton, with significant epidemics in the early 1590s and again in the late 1590s, linked by the severe harvest-failures of the mid-1590s and widespread flooding in 1598 (which, as mentioned earlier, was also a period of sharp inflation). Conversion of ploughland to pasture here probably took place opportunistically between 1593 and 1597 on land lying idle in the wake of disease and famine, with the convenient opportunity offered by the temporary relaxation of the law against converting arable to pasture. These factors were apparently sufficient to outweigh the fact that population in these vills was steadily increasing over the period as a whole – indeed, this very increase in population may paradoxically have helped the enclosers, by fostering a social situation in which land-holdings were becoming fragmented, leading in turn to the engrossing of small uneconomic parcels of land.

Gayton The pattern in Gayton is very similar, though not identical; here, there were serious short-term epidemics in 1582 and 1588, continued high death rates throughout the mid-1590s, and another epidemic in 1597-98. The cumulative result of these difficulties was exactly the same as at Rushton, East Haddon, Great Houghton and Stoke Doyle.

Pilton, Farthinghoe Although burial-peaks indicate that each of these two vills saw disease and starvation in the wake of the mid-1590s harvest failures, there were no corresponding epidemics in the early 1590s or late 1580s to pre-weaken and decimate their inhabitants. Nevertheless, it would appear that the problems of the mid/late 1590s were sufficient to provide the opening for unscrupulous enclosers.

Villages where no prosecution was made for depopulation

To test the validity of deducing average population growth in the period 1570-1625 from parish-register calculations, the calculations were repeated for a total of 12 vills where no prosecution for depopulation was made in 1607-1610. The 12 vills selected for comparison purposes – , , Broughton, Bugbrooke, Chancombe, Clopston, Crick, , Lamport, , Middleton Cheney and – were all chosen specifically because they lie adjacent to vills where depopulating enclosures were prosecuted by the crown.

Specific examples of non-prosecuted vills: Ashby St Ledgers and Crick Ashby St Ledgers experienced two peak-burial years in the 1580s, and two more in the 1610s – but crucially, the village does not seem to have been hit by any life-threatening scenarios during the 1590s, when social and legal conditions combined as explained above to encourage would-be enclosers. The village was a single undivided lordship, which would at first seem promising for a would-be enclosing lord – but the lord was in deep water during the 1590s and early 1600s, for this was a lordship of the catholic Catesby family, and was confiscated by the Crown in 1605 after the failure of the Powder Treason. Ashby St Ledgers seems thus to have escaped enclosure at this time by a mixture of national religious politics and its own good fortune in avoiding disease. Crick, by contrast, saw peaks of burials in 1587, 1591-2, 1597-9, 1604-5 and 1619. In particular, the pattern of burials during the 1590s – with an epidemic just prior to the four bad harvests and another burial-peak immediately after the famine years – is very like that in Rushton, East Haddon, Great Houghton and Stoke Doyle which were all victims of depopulating enclosures at this time. However, Crick saw no such depopulating attempts in the 1590s or early 1600s. Manor court rolls show7 that Sir Ralph Waren persuaded his tenants to create pasture enclosures in the late 1540s and early 1550s (this evidence is also confirmed by the returns of the 1549 Sheep Census8, which show a handful of Crick’s senior yeomen owning above-average flocks totalling 800 sheep); the same court-rolls imply that Richard Andrews of (a cadet of the Andrews, he inherited one-third of Crick manor in 1537 from his Feylding mother) also enclosed part of his land at Crick in the 1540s. The next attempt at enclosure in Crick was when the Bucknell family tried to enclose Crick's commons in the late 1610s – their attempt was strongly opposed, the case was tried in Chancery, and the Bucknells were obliged to re-open the commons and make reparation to the villagers. It seems likely that Crick escaped any further enclosure during the late Tudor and early Stuart period due partly to the divided nature of its lordship, but mainly because land had already been enclosed there in the 1540s and 1550s (the Inquisition of 1607 only prosecuted enclosures made after 1578).

7 Unpublished transcription and analysis by G.W. Hatton, 2006-7, of Crick manorial court rolls and rentals, from original documents held in the archive of the College of St. John the Baptist, Oxford, reference Muniment VII. 8 Unpublished transcription and analysis of the 1549 returns for the Relief of Sheep and Relief of Cloth for Northamptonshire, G.W. Hatton 2007, from rolls at the National Archive, reference E179/156/257. Summary

For seven of the prosecuted vills, parish registers exist for the period 1570-1625. Parish register data for this period is available for all twelve of the vills where no prosecutions were made. Long-term population growth rate, 1570-1625 Average for prosecuted vills 2.94 persons/year Average for non-prosecuted vills 3.98 persons/year

A significant difference is evident – average long-term population growth rates in the prosecuted vills are 26% lower than for adjacent non-prosecuted vills over the same period. Thus, whilst epidemic disease combined with a series of poor harvests was the prime enabling factor for depopulating enclosure, aided by the temporary change in legislation permitting enclosure of former arable, low long-term population growth seems to have been a major secondary factor – and where both factors were present, opportunistic enclosure was virtually inevitable. The use of adjacent non- prosecuted vills as the basis for comparison suggests that local soil conditions were not the primary cause for the enclosures – however, poor arable conditions may have been a minor secondary factor, since there is topological continuity in the location of some of the prosecuted vills, as seen in the following map.

These 8 vills are all on low lying alluvial land – producing good pasture, but relatively wet and heavy ploughland

The 16 instances of depopulation in Northamptonshire prosecuted following the Inquisition of 1607 were all opportunistic in one way or another, trading chiefly upon the timely coincidences of national politics, climate and harvest, and localised outbreaks of disease. The fact that they were prosecuted at this time is the direct consequence of the civil unrest that had existed since the crisis years of the mid- 1590s, which spilled over in the Midland Rising of June 1607.