causes affected three-fourths of the land ; now the fourth part came under the same conditions, in an intensified degree, because this fourth part was now held by new owners, suddenly come into a possession which they regarded as their own, to do as they would with it. Enclosure came in as with a flood. Vagabondage now became a hanging matter.
There is a frightful tradition that Henry VIII. hanged in all 72,000 persons. The tradition is mentioned by Harrison, Canon of Windsor, who wrote in the reign of Elizabeth, and he quotes from Jerome Cardan, the Italian physician who was called in to Edward. Cardan says that the Bishop of Lisieux told him in 1552 that Henry hanged the 72,000 in the last two years of his reign. Harrison perhaps thought this incredible, and so only says that Henry hanged this number of "great thieves, petty thieves, and rogues, in his time."[1] But the first statute, ordering the hanging of "a valiant beggar," or "sturdy vagabond." is the twenty-seventh of the reign, when Henry had only twelve years more to live, so that at this rate he must have hanged on an average 6000 a year. That the number of executions was very large is certain, and such a tradition does not arise unless public opinion has been impressed. In the Welsh MSS. of Lord Mostyn, there is a statement, that in one district of North Wales, "over 5000 men were hanged within the space of six years." If to the hanging of vagrants at ordinary times we add the executions after the six rebellions, the number would no doubt be very great, though the tradition is probably an exaggeration. Making every allowance for exaggeration, great numbers must have been put to death before such a tradition could arise, so near the time, and when the governing classes of England would have every motive for not spreading it. Another story says that when "Bluff King Hal" was told of the misdeeds of common folk, he used to cry: "Hang them up! Hang them up! "The statutes, by the way, show that the disorderly portion of the vagrants was recruited chiefly by discharged soldiers, returned from Henry's wars in France.
We shall now see how the nobility and gentry, enriched
- ↑ Alfred Marks, "Tyburn Tree," pp. 142, 143.
