Tovalidate property swaps and tithe abolition.
While it was customary to include provisions in parliamentary acts to abolish tithes and replace them with allocations of land or annual payments, these were usually the subsidiary aims of a process whose principal object was to divide the common fields and make closes. Occasionally the main motive for enclosure acts seems to have been to make lawful schemes involving the swapping of lands and the abolition of the tithe. In Alkborough in 1765 Christopher Goulton had to obtain a general consensus for enclosure, but his son Thomas should not have needed to worry about such things in neighbouring Whitton and a parliamentary act should not have been necessary at all, as such a large proportion of the parish was owned by the Goultons.98 The reason for the Whitton act seems to be that Thomas Goulton wished to rid himself of the need to pay tithes and to pay off both the vicar and the Bishop of Lincoln completely. It seems also that he had made a complex agreement with the main tithe owner, the Bishop of Lincoln, which involved the building of a farmhouse on land in the parish that would be awarded in exchange for existing land and buildings, and he was making sure that the agreement would be
watertight.99 The act goes into the matter in some detail. The Commissioners were ordered to award to the Bishop of Lincoln and the Vicar:
... such Parcel or Parcels of the Remainder of the ... Open Fields, Common, Ings, Carr, and Ness ... as …shall in the judgement of the ... Commissioners, contain or be equal in Value to one full Seventh Part thereof ...
This, together with land equal in value to one-eighth of the old enclosed lands, was to replace the payment future tithes, and the act continues:
... to be in lieu of, and as a full Recompence and Satisfaction for all and great and small Tythes, Dues, Duties and Payments whatsoever, arising, renewing, increasing, or happening, or which should or might at any Time or Times ... arise, renew, increase, or happen within the said Open Fields, Commons, Ings, Carr, and Ness ... or within the antient enclosed Grounds in Whitton ... 100
Thomas Goulton’s descendant, James Goulton Constable, noted in 1889 that: It was under the sanction of these Commissioners that the Bishop of Lincoln gave Thomas Goulton the old homestead belonging to the Rectory with the decayed dwelling house, barns and stables situated in the village, on the south side of the Church yard, in exchange for two acres of land in the Ings, on condition that Thomas Goulton built a new dwelling house, barns and stable on some part of the land allotted to the Bishop of Lincoln in the Ings. Thomas Goulton, therefore, in fulfilment of this condition built the homestead known to this day as Bishopthorpe.101
The appropriately named farm can be seen on the 1824 Ordnance Survey map surrounded by the 150 acres of land allotted to it at the enclosure. This arrangement does seem munificent, because together with the 54 acres awarded to the vicar in lieu of tithes and rights of common, the amount of
ecclesiastical land amounted to something approaching a fifth of all the newly enclosed land in the parish.102
To mitigate the cost to the parish of the poor
The poor were not always overlooked when enclosure was being contemplated. Some communities saw it as an opportunity to deal with the poor rate, in the same way that they would later see the tithe. If the poor rate liability could not be extinguished entirely, enclosing some land and vesting it in trustees, whose remit was to produce as much rent as possible to offset the rate, might be an attractive plan. In Waddingham, when a Chancery Decree was being sought in 1700 to confirm an agreement to enclose, explicit provision was made for them with twenty acres set aside and,
fenced at the said freeholders charge and be lett to depasture by the then present Overseers and Church wardens, for the yeare being, and the money ariseing distributed amongst the poor of the said Towne by the Ministers, Church wardens and Overseers, yearly for ever.103
From 1757 the inhabitants of Messingham enclosed about 75 acres of the East Common Field, divided it into nine closes, from six to fifteen acres, and then rented the grazing, each Old Lady Day (5 April), to the highest bidder. The motive in this case was not directly to offset the poor rate, but to try to correct a previous attempt at benevolence. These particular closes had come about in an unusual way; twelve years earlier, in May 1745 the Messingham vestry book reveals that it had decided to build a ‘Workhouse and House of Maintenance’ and the cost of this was estimated at sixty pounds. This money was to ’be raised by the Poor Tax Bill, by an equal lay in 7 years.’104 It was found, after a
few years however, that the workhouse was a financial burden to the community and on 11 April 1757 the vestry met again with a proposed solution to their problem.105
We whose names are underwritten, Minister, Churchwardens, Inhabitants and owners of the Town of Messingham in Publick Vestry having taken into our consideration the present state and condition of our said town…do find it encumbered with a Heavy Debt contracted many years ago by building the workhouse & likely to be opprest with a numerous poor: in order therefore to discharge the said Debt & to relieve this our Town from the like oppression hereafter have come to these resolutions following:
First to make application to our worthy Lord of the Manor for leave to take in and inclose part of our East Common for the good and benefit of our said Town. And
Secondly having obtained his Consent, to take in and inclose sixty or seventy acres more or less in that part of the Common which lies on the north side of the way leading from Whirlamore Gate to Holme Gate according to the direction of the Trustees hereafter to be named for that purpose. And Thirdly the rents or profits of the said inclos’d Ground to be paid into the hands of the Trustees & by them to be appropriated to the uses & purposes following…
It seems clear that, although there was no parliamentary enclosure in the study area at the time, the inhabitants of Messingham already appreciated that the making of closes was likely to be a profitable enterprise. The vestry book goes on to detail that first the expenses of the enclosure were to be repaid, and then the ‘overplus’ at a rate of ten pounds per year was to go to pay off the town debt, and after that had been done, the profits were to be used for the maintenance of the poor.106 The Lord of the Manor was Francis Bristow, and he signed, in a spidery hand, a note in the vestry book that he ‘heartily gave his assent and concurrence to the undertaking.’107 Within a couple of days
work was in hand to make the enclosures and, from April to June 1757, the vestry book has two pages of expenses associated with their setting up. Cartloads of timber were brought from nearby Broughton Woods at 4s 6d per load, banks were dug at 9d per rood, hundreds of ‘furrs’ were made (presumably fir posts) and money was frequently spent on ale for the labourers.
In the 1 June 1757 the vestry met again to devise some rules and to let the new closes for the first time:
Mett according to notice to let the closes & came to these following regulations, 1st to let the said closes until Lady Day next; 2ndly To let the said closes to the best Bidder; 3dly That all the Tenants enter to the Fences as they find them; 4thly That every Tenant that takes a close to pay 5s down & to have it allow’d in the first half year Rent; 5thly That
every person shall have Chase and Rechase from one close to another according as the gates as sett.108
Nine closes totalling a little over seventy-five acres were let for £39-4s-0d with the warning that they are ‘not to be plowed this year’. The original arrangement for the carving out of closes from the east common with Mr Bristow was for a period of six years, but subsequently it was renewed annually with closes being let to the highest bidder, with the repeated stipulation that they were not to be ploughed or dug up. Because the closes were let to the highest bidder and demand for grazing might vary with the economic climate, there was a difference between the price bid per acre, from year to year. This is shown in a comparison between 1798 and 1799; £64 being raised in 1798 at an average price of 85p per acre and only £52 the following year, at an average of 69p per acre (see Table 7, below). Yields of wheat in the 1790s are
well documented, but information about cattle and sheep is less well recorded, so it is not clear what led to the variation. 109
Table 7 : To show acreages of closes and prices bid per acre in 1798 and 1799
Acres 1798 £ 1798 1799 £ 1799
Closes Acres Rods Perch Dec Equiv Rent £ per acre Rent £ per acre
1 8 0 0 8.000 12.05 1.51 9.45 1.18 2 6 2 30 6.688 5.80 0.87 4.50 0.67 3 6 2 0 6.500 4.30 0.66 3.20 0.49 4 8 3 20 8.875 3.40 0.38 2.50 0.28 5 14 3 30 14.938 7.60 0.51 5.90 0.39 6 5 3 15 5.844 7.50 1.28 5.25 0.90 7 7 0 34 7.213 9.00 1.25 8.00 1.11 8 7 0 0 7.000 6.00 0.86 4.85 0.69 9 10 1 10 10.313 8.40 0.81 8.40 0.81 Totals 75.369 64.05 0.85 52.05 0.69
The meetings, to let the closes, continued annually until 1799 when, with the Enclosure Commissioners beginning their work, there was a final entry in the vestry book110:
20 March 1799, Memorandum it was agreed…at a publick vestry to lett the intacks …to the best bidder to occupy until Old Lammas Day next 1799, or longer if the Commissioners think proper…111
By this time parliamentary enclosure was underway, and so it would seem that the commissioners deemed the lettings of the new closes to be no longer appropriate. The geographical position of the nine closes made in 1757 is not completely clear, because the only ones in the East Common, shown in Anthony Bower’s 1804 plan, form a compact group, close to the parish boundary with Twigmore township.
Plate 12: Eastern half of the Messingham Enclosure Award map of 1804 showing old