Page:Landholding in England.djvu/113

 Some of them were indicted of high treason for levying war on the King and opposing the King's forces. Pouch was "made exemplary." Others for felony in continuing together by the space of one hour after proclamation to depart, "according to the Statute." The rest for riot, unlawful assembly, and throwing down hedges and filling ditches. But the insurgents were neither traitors nor felons. They were, as they said, enforcing the law of enclosures, and not a single crime is laid to their charge.

James has been given credit for his "anxiety" on behalf of the poor in this affair. He showed his anxiety by desiring the Commission to "take care" that the poor received no injury from the encroachments of the rich, and we may perhaps assume that these new enclosures were not replaced; but "the poor" had been hanged freely for pulling them down. At this time James was alternating the new delight of hunting in a safety saddle and padded garments with lying in bed and desiring his Council to take "the charge and burden of affairs, and not let him be interrupted nor troubled with too much business," for he would sooner go back to Scotland than be for ever chained to the Council table.

During the reign of James I., as during that of his son. Parliament was too much taken up with fighting the royal prerogative to have time for thinking of the condition of the poor. One great struggle was over the intolerable grievance of Purveyance (the taking of provisions for the royal household at the price the purveyors chose to give); another was to get rid of the Court of Wards. The Commons offered £100,000 a year if purveyance might be abolished and all the Crown tenures turned into free common soccage—which meant that the Crown lands would be let at money-rents, and that fines, wardships, custody of lands, primer seizin, and all the other "incidents" of tenure in capite, would be done away. James demanded £300,000—then came down to £200,000. It was, " Take it or be dissolved." The Commons hesitated—they distrusted the King's promises, they were appalled at his monstrous extravagance, and they did not know how they were to raise the £200,000 a year. So they were dissolved; the "Great Contract" fell through and the old oppressive feudal charges remained, to be swept away in a fiercer struggle.