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THOMAS CROMWELL, EARL OF ESSEX (1485(?)-1540)

The enclosure of common lands has always been a temptation to those who live in the neighbourhood and a grievance to those who are thus robbed of their common property. Both in the north and south of London there stretched wide common lands in which the people possessed rights of pasture, cutting wood, and other things. Many of these common lands still remain, though greatly shorn of their former proportions. On the north Hampstead Heath is all that is left of land which began at Moorfields and stretched northwards as far as Muswell Hill and Highgate and eastward to include the Forests of Epping and Hainault. In a map of London of the sixteenth century these common lands must be laid down as a special and very fortunate possession of the City, where people could in a few minutes find themselves in pure country air. Early in the century, however, there were murmurings on account of the enclosure of the fields north of London. “Before this time,” says Grafton, “the townes about London, as Islington, Hoxton, Shordyche, and other, had enclosed the common fields with hedges and ditches that neyther the yonge men of the City might shoote, nor the auncient persons might walk for their pleasure in the fields, except eyther their bowes and arrows were broken or taken away, or the honest and substantiall persons arrested or indicted, saiving that no Londoner should goe oute of the City but in the high wayes.” It is not stated how long this grievance lasted; probably it grew gradually: field after field was cut off; one enclosure after another was made; until the Londoners rubbed their eyes and asked each other what had become of their ancient grounds—especially the delightful fields called the Moor, on whose shallow ponds they skated and slid in winter, and where they practised the long bow, while the elders looked on, in the summer. They were gone: in their place were fields hedged and ditched, with narrow lanes in which two people might walk abreast. How long they looked on considering this phenomenon we know not. At length, however, the pent-up waters overflowed. “Suddenly this yere” (1514) a great number of people assembled in the City, and a “Turner” attired in a fool’s coat ran about among them crying, “Shovels and Spades.” Everybody knew what was meant. In an incredibly short time the whole population of the City were outside the walls, armed with shovels and spades. Then the ditches were filled in, and hedges cut down, and the fields laid open again. The King’s Council, hearing of the tumult, came to the Grey Friars and sent for the Mayor to ascertain the meaning, for a tumult in the City might become a very serious thing indeed. When, however, they heard the cause and meaning of it they “dissimuled” the matter with a reasonable admonition to attempt no more violence, and went home again. But the fields were not hedged in or ditched round any more.