‘By the Evidence of This City’: Enclosing Land and Memory in Fifteenth-century Coventry

Abstract

Enclosures of common lands were a contentious issue in fifteenth-century England receiving much opposition throughout society. Yet ultimately enclosing succeeded. In Coventry during the fifteenth century the disputes over enclosures were wedded to the process of cementing authority by the oligarchy over memory and record-keeping, as well as over the land. Once authority passed from custom to law as declared by the city council, control over the commons passed from the hands of the common craftsmen. The series of disputes over commons enclosures in Coventry between William Bristowe and the city leadership provide a detailed example of the process of enclosing authority over land and memory.