‘Some barbarous and unmerciful soldier
shall lay open your hedges, reap your fields,
rifle your coffers and level your houses to the ground. ... Necessity hath no law.’
shall lay open your hedges, reap your fields,
rifle your coffers and level your houses to the ground. ... Necessity hath no law.’
– Anon. to Norwich Magistrates, 1595
These images were made in and around Yarnton and Begbroke which at that time would mostly have been owned by Sir William Spencer, although parts of Begbroke were owned by Humfrey Fitzherbert whose tenants complained in the early 1590s that Fitzherbert had ‘most pittiefullie defaced the said village and undone his poor Tenants by heddginge and ditchinge and inclosing’ (Walter 1985: 116).