do anything. Every obstacle was placed in the way of the Commission by the gentlemen, who were highly offended when the enclosures were examined, "whereby men's commons and livings were taken away."[1] They said that Hales was "stirring the Commonalty against the nobility," and accused him of sedition. When they could not stop the Commission, they hindered it; when they could not entirely hinder it, they made its decisions of no effect. They put their servants on the juries who were to try their cases—and in some parts the dependents and retainers of great men (the chief enclosers) were so numerous that juries could not be procured without them. Witnesses were threatened with eviction if they told the truth—i.e. if they said that enclosures were recent, or that land had till then been common. So many "shameful slights were used " that Hales was ashamed to tell of them all.
The cheats Hales was ashamed to tell were of this sort—ploughing up one furrow of land enclosed for pasture, and then returning the whole as land in tillage; keeping one or two oxen among hundreds of sheep, and passing off the whole plot as devoted to the "fatting of beasts."
Such Acts as were passed either fell through after Somerset's disgrace, or were futile. How could it be otherwise, when the party of the enclosures was supreme, and when even Latimer seemed to think the Council could do no wrong? All Hales' own three Bills were rejected, and he says indignantly that whoever had seen "all this" would have said that "the lamb had been committed to the custody of the wolf." He meant that the robbers sat in both Houses of Parliament, and were deciding their own cause. Thinking to lessen the opposition of the great men, he advised the Protector to issue a general pardon to enclosers for what was past. But, as soon as they had got their pardons, they restored the enclosures, "and were more greedy than ever they were before." Among the parks which had been ploughed up were Warwick's and Herbert's.
Early in 1549 an insurrection began in Somerset, spread
- ↑ In one of his sermons Latimer says of this Inquiry "I remember my own self a certain giant, and great man who sat in Commission about such matters ; and when the townsmen would bring in what had been enclosed, he frowned and chafed, and so near looked and threatened the poor men that they durst not ask their right."
