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‘Before the breaking of the day, in a riotous manner and with great shouts and outcries’: Disputes over Common Land in Shropshire in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2015

JAMES P. BOWEN
JAMES P. BOWEN*
Affiliation:
Department of Geography and Planning, University of Liverpool, Roxby Building, 74 Bedford Street South, Liverpool, L69 7ZT, UK [email protected]
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Abstract:

Enclosure disputes have long attracted attention given their perceived political motivations, the importance of custom and customary practices in legitimising action and various forms of protest. Based on research undertaken at local and national record offices and the study of both written records and maps, this paper explores a series of disputes over common land in the wood-pasture countryside of Shropshire, placing them within the wider historiography concerning enclosure riots and popular protest. It complements the existing body of local and regional studies which have provided insight into the national historical context of the enclosure process. Historians need to examine economic and social developments at a local level to ascertain the causation of enclosure protest and the motivation of those involved. This evidence suggests that disputes arose between lords and tenants over the loss of customary rights and also neighbouring manorial lords as a result of ownership or boundary disputes.

Type
Research Article
Information
Rural History , Volume 26 , Issue 2 , October 2015 , pp. 133 - 159
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

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References

Notes

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128. SRO D593/E/5/1–5.

129. Whyte, Inhabiting, pp. 91–2, 109, 116–18.

130. For example, Eyton referred to a series of royal charters which granted the right of free warren in Prees. The first is dated 1259 when Henry II granted to Roger, Bishop of Lichfield and Coventry ‘the privilege of free warren in Prees’. Secondly, a charter of 28th January 1307 granted the right ‘to exercise free warren’ in the manor. At Myddle, Lord Egerton acquired a charter for a free warren on ‘Haremeare Heath, Holloway Hills, and the rocky grounds, (where the plow cannot goe) in those pieces called the Hill Leasows, which lye between Holloway Hills, and Myddle Hill’. When, on 19th October 1699, Sir Robert Corbett wanted to enclose part of Stoke Heath, near Market Drayton an agreement was reached with the freeholders of Stoke upon Tern and Wistanswick that he should ‘keep down’ or ‘destroy the rabbits’ in exchange for the enclosed parcel. This was presumably a result of the pressure which rabbits put upon the common, reducing the availability of pasture for livestock. An ancient warren and warrener's lodge are depicted on an early seventeenth-century map of Rudge Heath, a large area of unproductive common waste. Warrens were located in other upland parts of the county, namely the Long Mynd, Brown Clee and Morfe and Longnor and Frodesley Parks. Eyton, R. W., Antiquities of Shropshire, 9 (London, 1859), pp. 245–6Google Scholar; Gough, Myddle, pp. 60–1; SA 327/5/9/1/1; SA 327/5/9/1/2; SA 330/13; Plymley, General View, p. 268; Sheail, J., Rabbits and their History (Newton Abbot, 1971)Google Scholar; Sheail, J., ‘Rabbits and Agriculture in Post-Medieval England’, Journal of Historical Geography, 4:4 (1978), 343–55CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For studies of the exploitation of rabbits see: Bailey, M., ‘The Rabbit and the Medieval East Anglian Economy’, Agricultural History Review, 36:1 (1988), 1–20 Google Scholar; Bailey, Marginal Economy?, pp. 128–35, 251–6; Linehan, C., ‘Deserted Sites and Rabbit Warrens on Dartmoor’, Medieval Archaeology, 10 (1966), 113–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Harris, A. and Spratt, D., ‘The Rabbit Warrens of the Tabular Hills, North Yorkshire’, Yorkshire Archaeological Journal, 63 (1991), 177–206.Google Scholar

131. For example, in his seventeenth-century description of the commons and wastes of the manor of Whitchurch the agent of the Duke of Bridgewater wrote, ‘Seeing that Prees Heath and Whitchurch Heath be large common it seems that the game of rabbits might be easily increased and the warren much enlarged to the value of £50 per annum’: SA 212/60.

132. TNA E 178/3077.

133. Salt, T., ‘A Concise Account of Ancient Documents Relating to the Honor Forest and Borough of Clun in Shropshire’, Transactions of the Shropshire Archaeological Society, 11 (Shrewsbury, 1858), 18. Winchester, Harvest, pp. 78–9, 95, 116–17, 148Google Scholar. Kerry (Montgomeryshire) Inclosure (37 Geo. 3, c. 115). Powys Archives, Llandrindod Wells (hereafter PA) M/QS/RA/14/R; PA M/QS/RA/9/R.

134. SA 322/12/165 (14th October 1697).

135. SA D3651/B/6/5/36/5 (24th June 1764); Hey, English Rural Community, p. 37; Staffordshire Record Office, Stafford (hereafter SRO): D641/2/D/2/3 (1674).

136. Osborne, B. S., ‘Common Lands, Mineral Rights and Industry: Changing Evaluations in an Industrializing Society’, Journal of Historical Geography, 4:3 (1978), 231–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Martin, J. O., ‘Private Enterprise v Manorial Rights – Mineral Property Disputes in Eighteenth Century Glamorgan’, Welsh History Review, 9 (1979), 155–75Google Scholar; Wood, Riot, Rebellion and Popular Politics.

137. TNA STAC 8/86/18; TNA STAC 8/195/8. Victoria County History: Shropshire, Volume 10, pp. 257–93.

138. Wanklyn, ‘Rural Riots’, pp. 11–13; Nef, J. U., The Rise of the British Coal Industry (London, 1966), p. 208 Google Scholar.

139. Hatcher, J., The History of the British Coal Industry, Volume I Before 1700 (Oxford, 1993), pp. 147–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar; For the parish of Broseley: in 1670, 180 were exempt; in 1671–2, 188 were exempt; in 1672–3, 179 were exempt; and in 1673–4, 179 were exempt. TNA E179/342. I am grateful to Dr S. Watts who made the hearth tax data available.

140. Trinder, Industrial Revolution, pp. 186–201. It is important to note that the statute regulating cottage building did not apply to labourers in any mineral works, coal mines and quarries. Act against the erecting and maintaining of cottages, 31 Elizabeth I (1589). In the case of Myddle, Gough noted that despite the waves of immigration and the felling of much woodland, there was ‘sufficient left for timber and fire bot for most tenements’. Gough, Myddle, p. 175.

141. SA 665/256; TNA STAC 8/135/7.

142. Thirsk, J., ed., Agrarian History of England and Wales, Volume 5: 1640–1750 Google Scholar. Part 1. Regional Farming Systems (Cambridge, 1984), p. 131.

143. W. Shannon, ‘Approvement and Improvement in Early-Modern England: Enclosure in the Lowland Wastes of Lancashire c. 1500–11700’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, Lancaster University, 2010); Brooks, C. W., Law, Politics and Society in Early Modern England (Cambridge, 2010), p. 275 Google Scholar; Hindle, S., The State and Social Change in Early Modern England, 1550–1640 (Basingstoke, 2002), pp. 80–81 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

144. SA 665/256.

145. SA 665/256.

146. Trinder, Industrial Revolution, pp. 30–3.

147. Wanklyn ‘Rural Riots’, p. 10.

148. McDonagh, ‘Subverting’, 200.

149. SA 665/256.

150. SA 665/256.

151. McDonagh, ‘Subverting’, 206.

152. Shannon, ‘Approvement’, p. 194.

153. Whyte, Inhabiting, p. 87.

154. Shannon, ‘Approvement’, p. 192.

155. Healey, ‘Political Culture’, 266–87.