Page:The English Peasant.djvu/47

 upon the labourer as the weakest member of the body politic all its ills have fallen.

The Game laws had their origin in that period so disastrous for England when the ruling classes managed, by means of the pretty lies of a young prince, to deceive and crush the People. From the preamble to the 7 Ric. II., c. iii. & iv., it would seem that the labourers were not disposed to accept their defeat as final, but that on Sundays and holidays, they collected in parks and warrens, under pretext of hunting; but really to confer and conspire with a view to a new rising. It was accordingly enacted that no artificer, labourer, etc., should keep any dog to hunt, nor use any means for taking deer, hares, conies or other "gentleman's game" on pain of a year's imprisonment. Thus the protection up to that time limited to the game in the King's forests was now extended to that of all the great landowners.

We have seen how the destruction of the old nobility, and the stepping into their shoes of the successful among the middle classes made no real difference in the burdens laid on the people, but rather increased them. So in this question of the protection of their game, the landlord parliaments, which sat from the reign of Henry VII. to that of William and Mary, kept adding new provisions to the laws, until they related not only to deer, hares, and rabbits, but to pigs, pheasants, partridges, to heath, moor, and fen-fowl, and to various kinds of fish. Quite a network of prohibitions was constructed with reference to the possession of dogs, ferrets, guns, bows, snares, and every means used for taking wild animals. The popular notion of every Englishman's house being his castle was conspicuously demonstrated to be a fallacy, by 22 and 23 Car., 2, 15, which authorised a lord of the manor to license his gamekeeper not only to seize all prohibited means of taking game, but to search dwelling-houses and seize setting dogs, nets, etc., found in them. By the 4 and 5 William and Mary, c. 23, the private search was made more certain and odious by the promise of half the booty to the informer, and the detected poacher was subjected to the whip.

Nothing but fear of these penalties ever prevented our fore-