=Source.=--_Calendar of Home Office Papers, 1770-1772._ P. 479.
_Forestalling and Engrossing._
_11 April._--A paper signed “near Dorchester,” addressed to the King
(the newspapers taking notice of His Majesty’s desire to see the price
of provisions lowered), to lay before him the evils of forestalling
and engrossing. As examples of engrossing in the neighbourhood of
Dorchester, the writer instances the manors of Came, Whitcomb, Muncton,
and Bockhampton. The first, he says, about thirty years before, had
many inhabitants, many holding leasehold estates under the lord of the
manor for three lives. Some of these had estates of 15_l._, 20_l._, and
30_l._ a year, being for the most part careful, industrious people,
obliged to be careful to keep a little cash in order to keep the estate
in the family if a life should drop. Their corn was brought to market,
and they were content with the market price. Their cattle were sold
in the same manner. Their children when of proper age were married,
and children begotten, without fear of poverty. But the lord had since
turned out all the people, and the whole place was in his own hands,
while not half the quantity of corn was sown that formerly had been.
The writer also gives an account how one Wm. Taunton, though only a
tenant of the Dean and Chapter of Exon, was gradually getting the
whole parish into his own hands. He says, comparing his own with past
times, that formerly a farmer that occupied 100_l._ a year was thought
a tolerable one, and he that occupied four or five hundred pounds a
very great one indeed; but now they had farmers that occupied from
one thousand to two thousand per annum, who did not want money to pay
their rent, as did the little farmers, who were obliged to sell their
corn, &c. The writer gives it as the general opinion that the kingdom
had become greatly depopulated, some averring the population to have
decreased by a fourth within the preceding hundred years. He further
says: “Your Majesty must put a stop to inclosures, or oblige yᵉ lord of
yᵉ manor to keep up yᵉ antient custom of it, and not suffer him to buy
his tenant’s interest; to have all the houses pulled down, and yᵉ whole
parish turn’d into a farm: this is a fashionable practice, and by none
more yⁿ Jnᵒ Damer, Esq., yᵉ owner of Came, and his brother Lord Milton.”