Enclosure in North Buckinghamshire, 1500-1750

Enclosure in North Buckinghamshire, 15OO-1750 By MICHAEL REED T IS BECOMINGincreasingly apparent that We can, however, look at these figures the Parliamentary enclosure, even at its most other way round, and say that in Cottesloe I intensive, as in such counties as Oxford- Hundred 42.3 per cent was enclosed without shire, Leicestershire and Northampton- an Act of Parliament, 51.6 per cent of shire, was, for many individual parishes and Aylesbury Hundred and 73 per cent of villages, but the last phase of a very Ashendon Hundred, and much of this protracted process, a process which had been enclosure had already taken place before the going on at least since the twelfth century. 1 opening decades of the eighteenth century This is as true for north Buckinghamshire as and the beginnings of the Parliamentary it is for any other part of the country. To enclosure movement. It is this, clearly very study only halfofa county may perhaps call extensive, enclosure which is marked on for a word of explanation. The topography Fig I (see page 144) and which forms the of Buckinghamshire south of the Chiltern subject of this paper. scarp differs so markedly from that of the north of the county that it has imposed its own terms upon the evolution of agricul- I tural practices. Enclosure of open fields in Enclosure from common arable, meadow, the Chilterns and the Thames valley is at pasture and woodland and from royal Forest once more piecemeal, more protracted and can be documented from the end of the far less well-documented than it is in the twelfth century, but it is only at the end of the north of the county.-" fifteenth century that the social and econ- Recent research has shown that only 35 per omic problems which enclosure could create cent of Buckinghamshire as a whole depopulation and desertion of villages, remained to be enclosed by private Act of decay of tillage, unemployment, poverty Parliament in the eighteenth century. This and vagabondage -- compelled some figure conceals wide differences between half-hearted attempts to halt it. An Act of one part of the county and the next, ranging Parliament of 1489 (4 Henry VII, c. 19) from 57.7 per cent of Cottesloe Hundred and 'against pullyng doun ofTounes' was largely the 48.8 per cent of Aylesbury Hundred, ineffective. It was followed by a royal through the 27 per cent of Ashendon proclamation in 1514 against the engrossing Hundred to the 9. I per cent of Desborough of farms, and a further Act of Parliament in Hundred and the 7 per cent of Burnham the following year. This Act would also have Hundred. 3 remained without effect had not Wolsey in 1517 obtained a royal commission to enquire 'P, A Butlin, 'The enclosure of open-fields and extinction of what houses had been demolished, what common rights in England, c. 16oo-175 O', in H S A Fox and P, A land had been converted from arable to Butlin, eds, Chan~e in the Colultryside: Essa),s on Rural Enl~land, 15o°-'19oo 0979), pp 65-82. pasture and what parks had been enclosed :On die differences, topographical and otherwise, between north since Michaelmas I488. and south Buckinghamshire, see my The Buckingha,l:'hire Landscape (I979). Buckinghamshire is one of the counties 3M E Turner, Eniflish Parliamentar), Enclosure (198o), pp 39-42. covered by this commission, the returns to I33 I34 THE AGRICULTURAL HISTORY REVIEW which have long been in print: These converted from tillage to pasture. At Milton -i returns show that over the county as a whole Keynes 240 acres were converted and seven enclosure amounted to 89851/2 acres, or 1.93 houses of husbandry decayed. The smallest per cent of its total area. This figure covers enclosure recorded was at Twyford, where wide variations between the north and the three acres were said to have been converted south of the county, from the. o9 per cent of from arable to pasture. Enclosures which Desborough Hundred to the 4.46 per cent of slipped through the net include lO0 acres of Ashendon Hundred. The largest recorded Abbess Park in Burnham before 1565, the enclosure was that of 96o acres at Dodder- New Park in Boarstall in about 1553, a close shall in Quainton, the smallest the four acres of land at Cheddington enclosed in the time recorded in Hillesden. These returns are very of Henry VIII, enclosures at Barton interesting in themselves, but they are Hartshorne made before 1558, and an certainly not a reliable guide, either to the enclosure made at Hartwell in about 155o. 7 extent or to the distribution of enclosure up Once again this cannot be an exhaustive list, to that date, even if only because the and further additions to it depend entirely commissioners were not empowered to look upon the survival, and the discovery, of further back than 1488. At least three casual documentary references. enclosures, known to have taken place A further commission of enquiry into before 1517, find no place in these returns, at enclosure and depopulation was issued in Creslow, at Snelshall in Tattenhoe, and at August 16o7, provoked by the widespread Tetchwick in Ludgershall.S Knowledge of outbreaks of violenceand unrest earlier in the them depends upon the chance recovery of year, especially in Northamptonshire, casual notes in documents. The full extent of Leicestershire, Warwickshire and Bedford- enclosure before I517 must remain un- shire, outbreaks which appear to have been known and unknowable. directed almost exclusively at enclosures. The discrepancies between the returns for The articles of enquiry looked at enclosure Buckinghamshireto the 1566 commission of and conversion from 1578 onwards, but did enquiry and the other surviving documen- not take account of enclosure of pasture and tary evidence for enclosure are even more waste. In any case the commission was noticeable, although it must not be forgotten declared 'against law'. The returns for that no Buckinghamshire returns to the 1545 Buckinghamshire record 7o77 acres, 1.52 commission survive. On this occasion, per cent of the area of the county, as having 1566, 4o65V2 acres of enclosed or converted been enclosed, converted or severed, 8o land are recorded, representing some o.87 houses of husbandry decayed and 86 persons per cent of the total area of the county. 6 The displaced. The returns themselves contain largest recorded enclosure was at Thornton, much interesting detail: Great Pollicott was where 560 acres were said to have been described as a whole hamlet turned to enclosed, twelve houses of husbandry and pasture; three small plots of land in Oving, of the parsonage house decayed. At Caldecote 11/2, 2 and 3 acres, were converted to pasture in Newport Pagnell 49o acres had been for the maintenance of milch kine for housekeeping; at Broughton in Bierton 8o 41 S Leadam, ed, The Donlesdal, of Enclosures, 1517-1518 (1897, 1971 acres of arable were converted into ley reprint). ~Creslow, VCH Bucks, III, p 365, Snelshall in Tattenhoe, British ground; at Bril1240 acres were enclosed and Library, Add MS, 37o69, fII3, Tetchwick, in Ludgershall, A H Thompson, ed, 'Visitations in the diocese of Lincoln, 15 XT-153 l', vPRO E 134 7-8 Eliz Mich I. PRO E 134 25-26 Eliz Mich 7. PRO Vol x, Lincoln Record Society, 33 (194o), p 8o. STAC/2/6. Nos If and 12. PRO STAC/4/5/8. Buckinghamshire e'E F Gay, 'Inclosures in England in the Sixteenth Century', Archaeological Society, Hartwell 402/39. Quarterly Journal of Economics, I7 09o3), pp 576-97. The originals NE F Gay, 'The Midland Revolt and the Inquisitions of Depopu- PRO E 178/424, have deteriorated considerably since Gay's time lation of x6o7', Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, New and his figures cannot now be checked. Series, i8 (I9O4), pp 195-244. ENCLOSURE IN NORTH BUCKINGHAMSHIRE, 1500-1750 I35 converted to pasture, causing a hundred both for their carcasses and for their fur, but cottages to be in great want and decay; and they also cause great damage to grain and there is substantial confirmation of the pasture and in a number of agreements of this activities ofJohn Temple at Stowe described period an undertaking not to keep a rabbit below. 9 Nevertheless, as with the preceding warren forms part of the conditions for returns, a great deal of enclosure went enclosure. This occurred at Great Billing in unrecorded, as much of the evidence Northamptonshire, for example, in I629, analysed below makes clear. and in I6II Dame Mary Digby, lord of the All of the returns made by these successive manor of Gayhurst, gave up her rights to bodies of commissioners from 1517 tO 1607 common of pasture over an enclosure of contain much very interesting detail about forty acres in Lathbury in return for an individual enclosures, but it is apparent that a undertaking not to build a rabbit warren. ~ great deal escaped them, so that the seeming The next enclosure by agreement so far air of precision about the acreages they discovered is that made in about I584 for record affords no basis whatsoever for any Loughton.~3 Here it was stated that for the quantitative study of enclosure during this general good of all the inhabitants it was period. Indeed, from the Buckinghamshire agreed that, the price of hay and grass having evidence at any rate, it may not seem become excessive in recent years, each implausible to suggest that by and large the inhabitant should enclose for himselfa piece commissioners learnt only of enclosure of ground to be taken either at the outside of which for some reason proved to be the field or else adjoining the town, contentious, since they failed to record according to how he can agree with his almost all of the enclosure by agreement neighbours.

Load more