Page:Landholding in England.djvu/149

a year each, and the women £4" (Letter in the Gentleman's Magazine for 1797). The writer hopes this may be an example to lords of manors on future enclosures, "that the poor may not be wholly shut out, where the rich are increasing their property."

Note.—Tusser's views on "Champion" and "Severall" are set forth in a "Comparison," from which it is plain that his preference for "enclosed country," is not because he thinks small holdings unprofitable, but because he objects to the practice of throwing the open fields into common pasture at certain seasons of the year (whence they were called "Lammas Land"), and so went unfilled for that time, and produced no winter crops. There is no mistaking his meaning. If you tie your horse to a balk, he "is ready with thief for to walk." What is gotten by summer is eaten clean in winter. There is greater plenty of mutton "and beef, corn, butter and cheese of the best," more people, and handsomer, "there, where enclosure is most"; more work for the labouring man, fewer poor "begging from door unto door."

""In Norfolk behold the despair
 Of tillage, too much to be borne.
By drovers, from fair unto fair.
 And others destroying the corn.
By custom and covetous pates.
By gaps, and by opening of gates."

The corn is so "noyed" as it lies, that half your labour is lost. Even the larger owners do not respect the champion.

"The flocks of the lords of the soil,
 Do yearly the winter corn wrong;
The same in a manner they spoil,
 By feeding so low and so long."

In Cambridge, "a town I do know, where many good husbands do dwell," the losels rob the champion by night, and prowl and filch by day. No orchard or hen-roost escapes, and the lord of the manor knows it all, and does nothing. Horses and cattle are driven through every man's corn, and when they drive their sheep to be washed, "How careless such sheep they do drive!" Then what hunting and hawking, when the corn is waiting for the sickle. How much better it is where pasture is in severall. With champion, men eat bread and beans, and go barefoot and ragged; with severall, they have two loaves instead of one, and "of meslin, of rye, or of wheat." In woodland, poor men that have "scarce fully two acres of land" live more merrily than in champion with twenty. But the last verse explains why the poor do not like enclosure—

"The poor at enclosures do grutch.
 Because of abuses that fall;
Lest some men should have but too much.
 And some again nothing at all."