[276] Stubbs, _Constl. Hist._, vol. ii. p. 479, n. 5.
[277] The word "usury" denoted in the Middle Ages and in the sixteenth century not merely exorbitant interest on a loan, but any oppressive bargain, including the raising of prices, the beating down of wages, and the rack-renting of land (see _e.g. A Discourse on Usurie_, by Thomas Wilson, 1584). The phrase "a great taker of advantages" comes from a complaint by the people of Hereford against an unpopular divine who lent money at interest and rack-rented land (_S. P. D. Eliz._, cclxxxvi. Nos. 19 and 20), and the phrase "weapon bodeth peace" from an account of an agrarian dispute in Lancashire--it is the sort of grim joke that stubborn and humorous people would appreciate--in _L. and P. Henry VIII._, vol. xiii., Pt. II., p. 535. "On Sunday night Wheateley sent his daughter to bid him to come to Parson's Close to mow Mr. Tempest's meadow there. Had heard that whoever should mow the meadow should be beaten off the ground, and sent to ask if he should bring a weapon. Wheateley sent word again 'howe weapon boded peace, therefore bring his weapon with him.' Brought his bow and shafts."
(g) _The Progress of Enclosure among the Peasantry_
While competitive conditions are creeping forward on those parts of the village lands which have been most recently taken in, even more momentous changes are occurring on the customary holdings themselves. By the end of the fifteenth century we are walking through fields that are being cut up with the hedges which give the dullest English landscape the trim beauty of a garden. For a century and a half, while in the great world the new state rises on the ruins of the Middle Ages, while Tudors give way to Stuarts, and Stuarts browbeat and are browbeaten by ever more impatient Parliaments, in courts customary and sometimes in noisier assemblies not without arms, we shall be discussing whether those hedges are to stand or fall. The great enclosing movement has begun.
Like most great economic changes it has begun quietly and for a long time men are doubtful whether it is a great change at all, and, if it is mischievous, in what exactly the mischief consists. Nor indeed does the mass of the population, who feel the new conditions most, ever become quite clear on this point. Events are too various and move too swiftly for them. They see that great men enclose with little regard to the interests of their poorer neighbours. They curse them for their enclosures,[278] and believe with the faith of an age which has re-discovered the Bible, that they, like greedy Ahab, the father of enclosers, will be cursed. When the encloser should call on God to witness his deed the devil's name starts to his lips. His cattle are struck by lightning, and his children do not live to reap the fruits of his iniquity. But the peasants enclose themselves, and though they feel the difference between one sort of enclosing and another, they are simple men who cannot make the matter plain to lawyers and commissioners, and when things reach a certain point they will fight it out.