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THE GENTRY, THE COMMONS, AND THE POLITICS OF COMMON RIGHT IN ENFIELD, c. 1558 – c. 1603*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 July 2011

MATTHEW CLARK
MATTHEW CLARK*
Affiliation:
Pembroke College, University of Cambridge
*
Pembroke College, Cambridge CB2 1RFmjc76@cam.ac.uk
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Abstract

This article explores the uses made of common land in late sixteenth-century England by members of the landowning elite, focusing in particular on those who held manorial lordship. Other studies have focused on landlords’ efforts to enclose the commons, a process identified by some as a key element in the transition to capitalist farming. By contrast, this study shows that landlords made commercial use of common land, using it, for example, as a site on which to build new cottages or by putting large number of animals out to graze. As such, it suggests that the development of commercial farming and the exercise of common right were not mutually exclusive. Based on the evidence of equity court material relating to the Middlesex parish of Enfield, the article sheds light on the nature of relations between landlords and tenants and the strategies both groups adopted in their efforts to exploit and defend communal resources. When the two groups came into conflict, landlords had significant resources at their disposal with which to overcome opposition. Relations were, however, more complicated than this might imply. The politics of common right produced complex alliances based on shifting alignments of interest, and could unite or divide local society along both vertical and horizontal lines.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 54 , Issue 3 , September 2011 , pp. 609 - 629
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

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Footnotes

*

The initial research for this article was undertaken as part of my doctoral studies at the University of Cambridge. I am pleased to acknowledge the financial support of the University, and the Arts and Humanities Research Council. Versions of this article have been read in Cambridge, Exeter, and Reading: I am grateful to all those who provided comments. I am also grateful to Steve Hindle for his comments on an earlier draft of this article; and to the two referees (one of whom generously identified himself as Andy Wood) for their suggestions.

References

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14 Pam, Story of Enfield Chase, pp. 54–5. Banks's activities were so well known that he featured as a character on the London stage: William Shakespeare, The merry devill of Edmonton (STC no. 7493; 1608), sigs. C1r–C2r, D4v–E1r, E3r; William Rowley, Thomas Dekker, and John Ford, The witch of Edmonton (Wing R2097; 1658 (performed before 1632)), sigs. C3r–v.

15 Richard Hoyle, ‘“Shearing the hog”: the reform of the estates, c. 1598–1640’, in Richard Hoyle, ed., The estates of the English crown, 1558–1640 (Cambridge, 1992), pp. 204–62; Brian Short, ‘Forests and wood-pasture in lowland England’, in Joan Thirsk, ed., The English rural landscape (Oxford, 2000), pp. 140–1; Pam, David, The rude multitude: Enfield and the Civil War (Enfield, 1977)Google Scholar; Max, Patrick J., ‘William Covell and the troubles in Enfield in 1659: a sequel to the Digger movement’, University of Toronto Quarterly, 14 (1944–5), pp. 45–57Google Scholar; Hill, Christopher, The world turned upside-down: radical ideas during the English Revolution (London, 1972), pp. 99Google Scholar, 101, 279. The seventeenth-century history of Enfield is a subject to which I hope to return in the future.

16 TNA DL1/45/F18, DL1/54/F7, DL1/115/A27, DL1/118/S19, DL1/119/A30, DL1/118/S19.

17 Pam, Tudor Enfield, p. 12.

18 TNA DL1/131/T8a, DL4/27/86. The value of common land within the subsistence economy of the poor is discussed in Hindle, Steve, On the parish? The micro-politics of poor relief in rural England, c. 1550–1750 (Oxford, 2004), pp. 27–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19 Somerville, R., ‘The Duchy of Lancaster records’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 4th ser., 29 (1947), pp. 1–17CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

20 Walker, Garthine, Crime, gender and social order in early modern England (Cambridge, 2003), p. 7CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

21 The ways in which paternalistic ideology and the rhetoric of deference could be exploited have been explored in Andy Wood, ‘“Poore men woll speke one daye”: plebeian languages of deference and defiance in England, c. 1520–1640’, in Tim Harris, ed., The politics of the excluded, c. 1500–1850 (Basingstoke, 2001), pp. 73–7; Steve Hindle, ‘Exhortation and entitlement: negotiating inequality in English rural communities, 1550–1650’, and John Walter, ‘Public transcripts, popular agency and the politics of subsistence in early modern England’, both in Michael J. Braddick and John Walter, eds., Negotiating power in early modern society: order, hierarchy and subordination in Britain and Ireland (Cambridge, 2001), pp. 117, 133–6.

22 TNA DL1/27/W2, DL1/132/A39, DL1/200/A42, DL3/18/E2. An important discussion of elite representations of the ‘riotous’ poor is provided in Walter, John, Understanding popular violence in the English Revolution: the Colchester plunderers (Cambridge, 1999), pp. 238–9Google Scholar, 265.

23 TNA DL1/46/M7, DL1/72/H5. While accusations of vexatious litigation seem to have been common, Christopher Brooks argues that vexatious litigation itself was unusual; see his ‘Litigants and attorneys in the King's Bench and Common Pleas, 1560–1640’, in Christopher Brooks, ed., Lawyers, litigation and English society since 1450 (London, 1998), p. 19.

24 Guy, John, The court of Star Chamber and its records to the reign of Elizabeth I (Public Record Office Handbooks, 21, HMSO, 1985), p. 26Google Scholar, for example, recommends evaluating plaintiffs’ bills next to defendants’ answers in the hope that something ‘resembling the truth’ might be revealed.

25 Stretton, Tim, Women waging law in Elizabethan England (Cambridge, 1998), pp. 14CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 19.

26 Hipkin, ‘“Sitting on his penny rent”’, pp. 25–6, makes a similar point when he writes that it is important not to underestimate ‘the role cynicism might play in framing elite and popular perceptions of the uses of the law’. This view contrasts with much of the literature on early modern litigation, which has stressed the importance of values of reconciliation, legality and order: John Brewer and John Styles, ‘Introduction’, in John Brewer and John Styles, eds., An ungovernable people: the English and their law in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (London, 1980), p. 11–20; J. A. Sharpe, ‘“Such disagreement betwyx neighbours”: litigation and human relations in early modern England’, in John Bossy, ed., Disputes and settlements: law and human relations in the west (Cambridge, 1983), pp. 167–87; J. A. Sharpe, ‘The people and the law’, in Barry Reay, ed., Popular culture in seventeenth-century England (London, 1985), pp. 244–70; Muldrew, Craig, ‘The culture of reconciliation: community and the settlement of economic disputes in early modern England’, Historical Journal, 39 (1996), pp. 915–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

27 Gowing, Laura, Domestic dangers: women, words and sex in early modern London (Oxford, 1996), p. 43Google Scholar.

28 For Waller, see: TNA DL1/45/F18; DL1/54/F7, DL4/6/26, DL5/14, fos. 132v–136v; and for Kympton: TNA DL1/115/A27, DL1/118/S19, DL1/119/A30, DL4/30/31, DL4/31/43.

29 TNA DL4/30/31, fo. 4r.

30 This aspect of early modern customary culture is most fully explored in Wood, Andy, ‘The place of custom in plebeian political culture: England, 1500–1800’, Social History, 22 (1997), pp. 46–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wood, Andy, The politics of social conflict: the Peak Country, 1520–1770 (Cambridge, 1999)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; although see also the earlier work of Tawney, R. H., The agrarian problem in the sixteenth century (London, 1912)Google Scholar. The enduring power of custom within plebeian political culture is an important theme running through studies of eighteenth-century society and popular politics: Bushaway, R. W., By rite: custom, ceremony and community in England, 1700–1880 (London, 1982)Google Scholar; Searle, C. E., ‘Custom, class conflict and agrarian capitalism: the Cumbrian customary economy in the eighteenth century’, Past and Present, 110 (1986), pp. 106–33CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Randall, Adrian, Before the Luddites: custom, community and machinery in the English woollen industry, 1776–1819 (Cambridge, 1991)Google Scholar; Thompson, Customs in common, esp. introduction and ch. 3; John Rule, ‘Against innovation? Custom and resistance in the workplace’, in Tim Harris, ed., Popular culture in England, c. 1500–1850 (Basingstoke, 1995), pp. 168–88.

31 A point also made in Whyte, Inhabiting the landscape, p. 96.

32 Tim Stretton, ‘Women, custom and equity in the Court of Requests’, in Jennifer Kermode and Garthine Walker, eds., Women, crime and the courts in early modern England (London, 1994), pp. 170–90; Fox, Adam, Oral and literate culture in England, 1500–1700 (Oxford, 2001)Google Scholar, ch. 5.

33 TNA DL1/54/F7a.

34 TNA DL1/119/A30a.

35 TNA DL1/118/S19a.

36 TNA DL1/119/A30a.

37 The court's order book details the establishment of a commission to investigate the matter, but the case afterwards falls from view; see: TNA DL5/17, fos. 429r, 528r, 533r, 598r, 607r, 618r, and 634r.

38 TNA DL5/14, fo. 136r.

39 TNA DL5/29, fo. 243r.

40 TNA DL5/29, fos. 84r, 241r–243r.

41 TNA DL41/190, ix, fos. 5r, 8r; Birtles, Sara, ‘Common land, poor relief and enclosure: the use of manorial resources in fulfilling parish obligations, 1601–1834’, Past and Present, 165 (1999), pp. 74–106CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

42 TNA DL1/127/W15, DL1/131/W6, DL4/30/31, DL41/190, ix, fos. 1r–11r.

43 TNA DL1/131/W6. In 1589 an act of parliament declared that all newly built cottages had to have at least four acres of land attached: 31 Eliz., c. 8.

44 TNA DL1/118/S19, DL4/30/31, DL4/31/43.

45 TNA DL4/31/43 (fos. 2r–4r, 7r).

46 TNA DL41/190, ix, fo. 8r, DL4/30/31.

47 TNA DL4/31/43 (fo. 9r).

48 TNA DL1/131/W6.

49 TNA DL41/190, vi, fo. 5r, vii, fo. 8r.

50 TNA DL41/190, ix, fo. 35r; Steve Hindle, ‘A sense of place? Becoming and belonging in the rural parish, 1550–1650’, in Alexandra Shepard and Phil Withington, eds., Communities in early modern England: networks, place, rhetoric (Manchester, 2000), pp. 96–114.

51 Pam, Fight for common rights, p. 8; TNA DL43/715.

52 TNA DL1/1/E5 and E5A, DL3/21/E1.

53 Pam, Fight for common rights, pp. 4–5.

54 A. C. Jones, ‘“Commotion time”: the English risings of 1549’ (Ph.D. thesis, Warwick, 2003), pp. 37–72, 255–63; and see also Wood, The 1549 rebellions, pp. 41–2, 44, 116.

55 TNA DL1/72/H5, DL4/27/86.

56 TNA DL1/72/H5, DL1/74/T2.

57 TNA DL4/27/86 (fo. 14r), DL1/132/A39.

58 TNA DL4/27/86 (fo. 24r).

59 TNA DL1/72/H5.

60 TNA DL1/72/H5a, DL1/74/T2a.

61 M. W. Beresford, ‘Habitation versus improvement: the debate on enclosure by agreement’, in F. J. Fisher, ed., Essays in the economic and social history of Tudor and Stuart England in honour of R. H. Tawney (Cambridge, 1961), pp. 40–69; Kerridge, Eric, Agrarian problems of the sixteenth century and after (London, 1969), pp. 99–113Google Scholar, 129–30.

62 TNA DL5/8, fo. 113r. On ‘fictitious’ suits in the equity courts, see Zell, M., ‘Fixing the custom of the manor: Slindon, West Sussex, 1568’, Sussex Archaeological Collections, 122 (1984), pp. 101–6Google Scholar; Wood, Politics of social conflict, p. 137.

63 Manning, Village revolts, p. 130; and see also Hindle, ‘Persuasion and protest’, p. 78.

64 M. Dalton, The countrey justice (STC no. 6207; 1622), sig. Q5r.

65 TNA DL1/132/A39. And see the similar accusations levelled against anti-enclosure protestors in TNA DL1/27/W2, DL1/131/T8, DL1/131/W6, DL3/18/E2.

66 TNA DL4/27/86 (fos. 13r, 14r). A very similar defence was made by tenants of South Mimms in 1584: TNA DL1/131/T8a.

67 TNA DL5/18, fo. 141r.

68 TNA DL1/131/W6.

69 TNA DL1/127/W15.

70 Clark, Matthew, ‘Resistance, collaboration and the early modern “public transcript”: the River Lea disputes and popular politics in England, 1571–1603’, Cultural and Social History, 8 (2011), pp. 297–313CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

71 TNA Dl1/131/T8, DL1/132/A39a.

72 Wood, ‘“Poore men woll speke one daye”’; Wood, Andy, ‘Fear, hatred and the hidden injuries of class in early modern England’, Journal of Social History, 39 (2006), pp. 803–26CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

73 TNA DL1/127/W15.

74 Walter, Understanding popular violence, p. 279.

75 Middlesex county records, volume I, ed. J. C. Jeaffreson (Middlesex County Records Society, 1886), pp. 187–8.

76 Davis, Natalie Z., Society and culture in early modern France (Stanford, CA, 1987), p. 146Google Scholar; Manning, Village revolts, pp. 96–8. And see the comments by the contemporary legal commentator, William Lambarde, Eirenarcha: or, of the office of the justice of the peace (STC no. 15164; 1582), sig. Niir.

77 British Library, London (BL) Lansdowne 59, fo. 59r.

78 BL Lansdowne 59, fo. 61r.

79 The interconnectedness of political and social power is a major theme in recent literature on the early modern state, as discussed in Braddick, Michael J., State formation in early modern England, c. 1550–1700 (Cambridge, 2000)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, chs. 1 and 2; Hindle, Steve, The state and social change in early modern England, 1550–1640 (Basingstoke, 2000), pp. 15–34Google Scholar; Matthew J. Clark, ‘The gentry as governors in early modern England, with special reference to Middlesex and Essex, 1558–1625’ (Ph.D. thesis, Cambridge, 2008).

80 BL Lansdowne 105, fo. 25r.

81 TNA DL1/121/E5, DL1/213/W20.

82 TNA DL1/131/W15. The reference to ‘Camelot’ in Wroth's statement appears to have been to a section of earthworks, the remains of an early moated manor house. The site still had significance in the eighteenth century, when the antiquarian Richard Gough recorded various local stories connected to it: Bodleian Library, Oxford, MSS Gough Middlesex. On the importance of archaeological remains within the early modern mental landscape more generally, see Whyte, Inhabiting the landscape, pp. 146–54.

83 The nature of horizontal conflict over issues such as intercommoning is also explored in Whyte, Nicola, ‘Landscape, memory and custom: parish identities, c.1550–1700’, Social History, 32 (2007), pp. 166–86CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

84 Pettit, Royal forests, pp. 152–8; Hart, Commoners, pp. 15–21; Hindle, ‘“Not by bread only”’, pp. 47–8.

85 Appleby, A. B., ‘Agrarian capitalism or seigneurial reaction? The northwest of England, 1500–1700’, American Historical Review, 80 (1975), pp. 574–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Manning, Village revolts, pp. 4, 36–8, 132–3.

86 On manorial courts, see Peter Large, ‘Rural society and agricultural change: Ombersley, 1580–1700’, in John Chartres and David Hey, eds., English rural society, 1590–1700: essays in honour of Joan Thirsk (Cambridge, 1990), pp. 105–37; Chrisopher Harrison, ‘Manor courts and the governance of Tudor England’, in C. W. Brooks and M. Lobban, eds., Communities and courts in Britain, 1150–1900 (London, 1997), pp. 43–60; and on courts of survey, Kerridge, Agrarian problems, pp. 26–31; Steve Hindle, ‘Sir Richard Newdigate and the ‘Great Survey’ of Chilvers Coton: fiscal seigneurialism in late seventeenth-century Warwickshire’, in Christopher Dyer and Catherine Richardson, eds., William Dugdale, historian: his life, his writings and his county (Woodbridge, 2009), pp. 164–86.

87 Hindle, ‘Persuasion and protest’, p. 75.