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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 July 2014
Enclosure riots were a prominent manifestation of social tension in England in the 1530's and 1540's. Although enclosures of land for pasturage and tillage had been undertaken since the beginning of English agriculture and did not usually cause social conflict, the rapid increase in population of the sixteenth century pressed hard on the available supply of land. The necessity of increasing the food supply speeded up the process of enclosure. The supplies of corn and meat could not be increased significantly without the year-round use of enclosed and consolidated plots of land, which was inconsistent with communal access to common and waste land and the stubble remaining after the harvest on arable lands. Other causes of friction in agrarian society included the greater fluidity in the land market resulting from the dissolution of the monasteries together with revolutionary methods of exploiting the land. The social relationships existing among great landlords, small holders and tenants could not remain unaffected.
The main purpose of this essay is to analyze the early Tudor enclosure riot as a primitive or pre-political form of social protest. This will necessitate: (1) describing the forms and extent of violence employed; (2) distinguishing between those riots that accompany the Pilgrimage of Grace and the rebellions of 1548-49 and those riots that occur outside of the years of rebellion; and (3) modifying the assumption that the typical enclosure riot was perpetrated by an exasperated peasantry venting their rage upon the hedges and ditches of a commercially-minded, grasping gentry.
An earlier version of this article was read at the Midwest Conference on British Studies. October 20-21, 1973. The research was facilitated by a National Endowment for the Humanities summer stipend, for which I am most grateful.
1 Thirsk, Joan, Tudor Enclosures (Historical Association, general series. No. 41), pp. 4–10Google Scholar; Thirsk, Joan, ed., The Agrarian History of England and Wales, vol. IV: 1500–1640, (Cambridge, 1967). pp. 200-205Google Scholar; Tawney, R. H., The Agrarian Problem of the Sixteenth Century (New York, 1967 reprint ed.), pp. 200–205.Google Scholar
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4 George Rudé argues that insofar as the preindustrial crowd employed violence against persons, it was due to the corrupt example of the governing classes (Paris and London in the Eighteenth Century: Studies in Popular Protest (New York, 1971 reprint ed.), pp. 26–28Google Scholar. For discussions of other aspects of the use of violence by Tudor peers and gentry, cf. Smith, R. B., Land and Politics in the England of Henry VIII: The West Riding of Yorkshire, 1539-46 (Oxford, 1970), pp. 144–51Google Scholar; Stone, Lawrence, The Crisis of the Aristocracy, 1558–1641 (New York, 1967), pp. 107–13Google Scholar; James, M. E., A Tudor Magnate and the Tudor State: Henry, Fifth Earl of Northumberland (York; Borthwick Papers, no. 30. 1966), pp. 10–11Google Scholar; Bradford, G., ed., Proceedings of the Court of Star Chamber in the Reigns of Henry VII and Henry VIII (Somerset Record Society, XXVII, 1911), pp. 21–22Google Scholar; Lehmbrrg, Stanford E.. “Star Chamber; 1485-1509,” The Huntington Library Quarterly, XXIV (1961), 189–214.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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8 PRO, STAC 2/29/100, John Rogers, husbandman vs. Henry Dengayn, gentleman, 1545.
9 Ibid., STAC 2/29/134 and 2/29/65, Jan. [1544].
10 Ibid., STAC 2/34/33, John Sharp, gentleman vs. George Vernon, esquire, Michaelmas [1542]; 2/29/18, John Sharp vs. William Bone, yeoman, 20 Nov. [1542]; 2/31/65, Robert Wolsencrafte, yeoman vs. John Sharp, 20 March [1545].
11 Ibid., STAC 2/32/119, John Raunce, yeoman vs. George Petyfere, Mayor of Chipping Wycombe et al [1542-43].
12 Boyd, W.K., ed., “Staffordshire Suits in the Court of Star Chamber, Temp. Henry VII and Henry VIII,” William Salt Archaeological Society, N.S., XI (1970), 115–119.Google Scholar
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15 Ibid., p. 47.
16 Ibid., pp. 63, 66.
17 For example, see PRO, STAC 2/15/fos. 37-38, Tenants of Fenny Drayton, Cambridgeshire vs. Tenants of Fenny Stanton, 1533.
18 Brown, William, ed., Yorkshire Star Chamber Proceedings, vol. III, (Yorkshire Archaeological Society, Record Series, LI, 1913), p. 161.Google Scholar
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28 Boyd, W.K., ed., “[Staffordshire] Star Chamber Proceedings. Henry VIII and Edward VI,” William Salt Archaeological Society (1912), pp. 197–201Google Scholar. The wood and pasture were enclosed by agreement between Grymes and the tenants of Welton shortly after the former acquired the manor in order to keep out the beasts belonging to inhabitants of other villages. Subsequently, according to the defendants, Grymes forcibly excluded them from the enclosed area.
29 Also known as Kirkby Overcarr, situated near Pickering.
30 Lister, John, ed., Yorkshire Star Chamber Proceedings, Vol. IV (Yorkshire Archaeological Society, Record Series, LXX, 1927), pp. 47–58.Google Scholar
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32 Ibid., STAC 3/3/48.
33 Yorkshire Star Chamber Proceedings, IV: 103–105.Google Scholar
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