400 60
1560. 2 messuages in Warwickshire 600 660
1567. a Norfolk estate 200 400
1569. " manor 60 60

'Our sheepe are very excellent for sweetness of flesh, and our woolles
are preferred before those of Milesia and other places.'[223] So
thought Harrison and many English landowners and farmers too, so that
legislation was powerless to stop the spread of sheep farming. In 1517
a commission of inquiry instigated by Wolsey held inquisition on
enclosures and the decay of tillage, and it seems to have been the
only honest effort to stop the evil. It was to inquire what decays,
conversions, and park enclosures had been made since 1489, but the
result even of this attempt was small. In 1535 a fresh statute, 27
Hen. VIII, c. 22, stated that the Act limiting the number of sheep to
be kept had only been observed on lands held of the king, whereon many
houses had been rebuilt and much pasture reconverted to tillage; but
on lands holden of other lords this was not the case, therefore the
king was to have the moiety of the profits of such lands as had been
converted from tillage to pasture since 4 Hen. VII until a proper
house was built and the land returned to tillage; but the Act only
applied to fourteen counties therein enumerated. The enclosing for
sheep-runs still went on, however, often with ruthless selfishness;
houses and townships were levelled, says Sir Thomas More, and nothing
left standing except the church, which was turned into a sheep-house:

'The towns go down, the land decays,
Of corn-fields plain lays,
Great men maketh nowadays
A sheepcot of the church',

said a contemporary ballad.

Latimer wrote, 'where there were a great many householders and
inhabitants there is now but a shepherd and his dog.' 'I am sorie to
report it,' says Harrison,[224] 'but most sorrowful of all to
understand that men of great port and countenance are so far from
suffering their farmers to have anie gaine at all that they themselves
become graziers, butchers, tanners, sheepmasters, and woodmen, thereby
to enrich themselves.' The Act against pulling down farmhouses was
evaded by repairing one room for the use of a shepherd; a single
furrow was driven across a field to prove it was still under the
plough; to avoid holding illegal numbers of sheep flocks were held in
the names of sons and servants.[225] The country swarmed with