Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from A Discourse of the Common Weal of This Realm of England: First Printed in 1581 and Commonly Attributed to W. S
We have not to go far in the perusal of the Dialogue before we find a clue to the date to which the conversation must be referred. The first sentence (p. 13, l. 3) contains an allusion to the King's Highness' Commission touching enclosures. The great commis sion on this burning question, previous to 1565, had been in 1548. In the June of that year six commissioners were appointed1 to hold inquests in several of the midland counties where the practice of enclosing the commons to pasture sheep was carried to the greatest extent. The commission had been issued in the hope of allaying the popular discontent which had already taken shape in the Cornish insurrection. It did not have the desired effect, however, for in some counties the proceedings of the Commissioners appear to have given an excuse for outbreaks2, and in the following summer the people brake out partly for enclosures, and partly for religion, into an open and formidable insurrection in most counties in England There are several allusions to social disturbances in the Dialogue, and they are said by one speaker to be due to enclosing (p. 48, l. And by another to disputes on matters of religion (p. 21, l. The conversation, if it was an actual occurrence, must have taken place after the issue of the Enclosure Commission of 1548.
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