Amy Louise Smith | Lancaster University
In 1607, the midland counties of Northamptonshire, Leicestershire, and Warwickshire were subject to the gathering of large crowds, to the horror of landowners and a nervous parliament. Numbers at these ‘riots’ were reportedly as high as five thousand and were comprised of men, women, and children. Yet, the riots remained remarkably bloodless. The crowds did no harm to man or beast – their target was the hedges.
Over the course of the sixteenth century, much of England had been ‘hedged’ – common land, once open for the free use of the people, had been converted into private pasture. People’s rights to tillage, to graze their livestock, and to move freely were eroded as the land was parceled up and enclosed.
The Midland Rising led to months of disorder, a result of pressures facing local communities who keenly felt the effects of enclosures. In the most extreme cases, enclosure ruined villages as – unable to sustain themselves – the poor left to find work in larger towns. It also drove up the price of grain and other goods. Those in power were aware of the consequences of enclosure, both in terms of human suffering and its potential to incite rioting. Yet, they were also aware of the profits. They prevaricated on legislation.
The typical narrative of enclosure riots is one of the struggling poor rising in vain against the landholding elite. Despite his efforts to keep the de-hedging non-violent, John Reynolds, one of the leaders of the Midland Rising, was hanged in Northampton later in 1607. Legend has it that, when apprehended, all he had in his pouch was a piece of green cheese.
Yet, a more holistic approach to enclosure disputes reveals that its supporters and opponents could be drawn from a surprising range of social statuses. At the same time as the Rising, smaller enclosure disputes were breaking out across the country, many of which offer a more complicated picture of land and community politics. In the little village of Ladbroke, Warwickshire, for instance, we see interesting lines of allegiance drawn amongst the inhabitants. As we will see, these suggest that opposition to enclosure was born not just from economic strife, but from an attempt to defend a rural way of life.
Between 1605 and 1608, Ladbroke was consumed by disagreements over the enclosure of land in and around the village. It would begin with some mild hedge-breaking, and would culminate in a series of defamation suits before the High Court of Star Chamber.
The dramatis personae included gentleman Francis Harrold, freeholders William, Thomas, and George Chevsey, and several other meagre landowners. Gentleman Richard Goodryche, described as a man of ‘meane estate and qualitie needy’, was one of the more litigious. Various inhabitants of the nearby village of Napton also made appearances, as did the constable of nearby Harbury, John Meacock. At the heart of the disputes was a wealthy yeoman named William Burton.
Burton owned around sixty acres of land and rented a further two hundred acres in the area. His land bordered the land of other landholders, including gentleman Francis Harrold, and other lands belonging to inhabitants of the village of Napton. Burton came into possession of the land circa 1598, and in 1600 he began to enclose the land with ‘quicksett hedges, ditches pales railes and moundes’, which he reinforced with ‘several gates and postes, styles and plankes of ole and other timber’. He was, as reported a Bill of Complaint against him from 1608, ‘a principall instrument of the decaye’ of the village of Ladbroke. He had thus become ‘odious to the country and the people’.
In response to his enclosing, various people began cutting holes in his hedges to regain access to the land and to the paths they had long used to move between villages. Burton commenced suits in Common Law courts against the inhabitants of Napton who had been quietly removing hedges and trespassing onto his land in Ladbroke, and ‘whoe pretended to have comon’ there. The Naptonians returned fire by procuring an indictment against him for ‘the stopping of highe waies’ – a charge he firmly refuted, arguing they had no right to use the land in the first place. Indignantly, he claimed that the people felt that ‘they maie still have theire passage everie were at their pleasure’ regardless of the enclosures he had constructed, in contravention to the law.
Custom was key to the conflict. Those customs which had been practised or enjoyed since time immemorial formed the backbone of the rural norms. Indeed, custom constituted local law, and so the right to common was, for many, considered inalienable. Burton, however, felt that what the people were accustomed to was irrelevant.
Burton also had pre-existing conflicts with several of his gentlemen neighbours. Francis Harrold was not so fastidious in the upkeep of his hedges. He was content to allow his cows and swine to roam across his land and onto Burton’s. For Harrold, freely grazing his livestock was part of the freedoms to which he was entitled. His status did not preclude him from enjoying the same rights to common, even though he had land of his own.
Burton, however, insisted that this was trespass. An argument broke out between the two men, with many ‘ill words and threatening speeches’. They did not reach a compromise.
Harrold was incensed. On the second of June, 1607, he entered Burton’s land, mounted on horseback, armed with a sword and dagger. He rode at the head of a group of at least thirty people, maybe more, whom he directed as their leader. Equally aggrieved by Burton’s enclosing, the people cut down or ripped up the hedges, and destroyed the fences and gates. Burton later described to the court, in great detail, how the people hacked down his careful hedgerows with spades, axes, hatchets, and mattocks.
This went on for three days. On the third of June, local constable John Meacock arrived. He came not to aid Burton, but to assist those pulling down the hedges. As Burton reported to the court – horrified – Meacock arrived with victuals for the hedge-breakers and a cartload of people from nearby Harbury eager to join in. As evening came, another forty people arrived, led by another gentleman, Thomas Harris. Harris, like Harrold, rode before them as a ‘captyne and guide’. He had also brought with him a tabor and pipe, which he played to entertain the industrious crowd.
Burton’s fury – like his unpopularity – increased. He brought two Star Chamber cases against his foes. Neither seem to have gained much traction – the law was still indecisive on matters of enclosure.
By August, Burton had given up attempting redress via the courts. He next appeared in Star Chamber as a defendant. Burton crafted an elaborate libel, in rhyme, which listed many of those he identified as his chief enemies. He described Harrold, for example, as ‘Ruffe Spaniell faced’ and as ‘a filthie hedgehogge, [that] doth creepe and runne about’. He then spread the libel around the area, pinning it to the market cross in the town of Southam, and encouraging others to sing it aloud. It travelled around the fairs and markets long into the autumn of 1607.
However, the libel was not a simple attack on those who had wronged him – Burton included his own name within the libel, and signed it ‘Your lovinge friende, Thomas Unhedg all’.
His intentions were two-fold: firstly, to insult the prominent inhabitants of Ladbroke who had led the destruction of his hedges, and secondly to blame the libel on the ‘comon sorte’ who had participated in anti-enclosure riots. By doing so, and by creating a fake nom de guerre, he perhaps also hoped to associate the destruction of his own hedges with the nearby Midland Rising. He even accused a man named Henry Calloway, who had been present at the Rising, in hopes of drawing some connection with the action occurring in neighbouring counties. He was not successful. Burton’s opponents sniffed out the rouse, and two separate cases were brought to Star Chamber against him.
Burton was not finished. He sent out messages telling any persons who had had their enclosures damaged to come to the blacksmith’s shop in Ladbroke. Word spread. Over a hundred people showed up – most of the inhabitants of the village. Those seeking compensation were instead met with ‘scornfull jestes’ and Burton reading his libel aloud.
One bill, brought by aggrieved gentleman Richard Goodryche, describes an afternoon of chaotic to-ing and fro-ing as individuals with differing grievances (enclosures, the destruction of enclosures) met in and outside of the blacksmith’s shop. Goodryche was personally offended at having been named in the libel despite having no part in the hedge-breaking. Yet, as his bill suggests, he didn’t much appreciate being presented as an encloser either. He vehemently refuted claims that he had any fellowship with Burton whatsoever.
By 1608, five separate suits featuring Burton (in various roles) had been brought to Star Chamber. The court offered little clarity. While rioting was universally illegal (and the principal fear of a government that prioritised order over all else), complexities around the rights to common interfered with Burton’s attempts to be rid of his opponents by law. Given that the Jacobean authorities did, for the most part, rule in favour of enclosers in the interest of peace and profit, it is interesting that one bill – brought by the attorney general – alleged that Burton’s enclosing was ‘an incouragement’ of the recent ‘wicked and unlawfull rebellion’ (meaning the Midland Rising). The law did not offer either Burton or his attackers any satisfactory solution. Burton’s subsequent attempt to bring his enemies into disrepute was, however, condemned as defamatory.
Varying perceptions of property, and of the authority of enclosures over local space, led to considerable differences in people’s treatment of the land and their approaches to the law. The chaos in Ladbroke typifies the uncomfortable transition period between open-field farming and more modern agricultural practice.
The problems with enclosure were more than agrarian; enclosure represented a reconfiguring of the landscape. It transformed the once-free movement of individuals across the land into a political act. For the people of Napton to travel via their ancient routes to Ladbroke was now surveilled, commented on, and brought to court. Hedges, as historian Nicholas Blomley put it, became ‘organic barbed wire’.
Even for members of the gentry, like Harrold, or wealthy freeholders like the Chevseys, enclosure was an obstacle. It interfered with their rights and their way of life. Even though they had the land and means to endure and survive the enclosing of Warwickshire, they had cause to object on the grounds that Burton and his ilk were dramatically reshaping the world in which they lived.
Yet, we see grievance on both sides of the proverbial fence. For those who had taken the time and money to enclose the land, the attack on hedges was clearly destruction of property. Burton’s hedges were a significant undertaking – he claimed that the loss of those enclosures cost him in the region of four hundred pounds, an astonishing amount in the early seventeenth century (and perhaps an exaggeration). It may even be possible to see Burton himself as a victim of land-use politics. He was paying rent in order to use the lands that other townspeople argued were common land. We might wonder what assurances enterprising Burton had from his own landlord that the land could be enclosed.
We may also detect a strain of status-related ill-will. Burton was not the only one enclosing near Ladbroke. Initial enclosures in the region had been undertaken by Sir Robert Dudley around the turn of the century. Perhaps the people did not wish to go head-to-head with so notable a statesman. Perhaps they judged the activity of a mere yeoman to simply be more offensive. Perhaps they just hated Burton.
Burton, the local gentlemen, and the commons of Warwickshire were all subject to the greater socio-political shifts taking place across England at this time. As the century continued, enclosers like Burton would prove the victors. Custom was superseded by clearer laws that favoured the landed elite, and more efficient agricultural practices paved the way for large-scale economic and social change. Enclosure became the norm, and the geography of rural England changed forever. Today, common land is reduced to tiny greens or small woodlands, barely of use. Hedges dissect the landscape, but are regarded as a core part of the English idyll.
Further Reading:
E.P. Thompson, Customs in Common (Penguin, 1993).
Guy Shrubsole, Who Owns England? How We Lost Our Land and How to Take it Back (HarperCollins, 2020).
Nick Hayes, The Book of Trespass, Crossing the Lines that Divide Us (Bloomsbury, 2020).
Amy Louise Smith is a final-year AHRC-funded PhD student in History. Her research explores the role of defamation in rural English politics in the early seventeenth century. She is also a founding editor of EPOCH.
Twitter: @AmyLouHistory