ENCLOSURE AND THE POOR.
“The Poor at Enclosure do Grutch
Because of abuses that fall.”
TUSSER, “Champion and Several.”
During the nineteenth century the controversy with regard to enclosure
did not turn upon the question whether it did or did not injure
the mass of the rural poor of the locality, in their capacity of
agricultural labourers, by depriving them of employment; but whether
it injured them by depriving them without compensation of rights which
they had enjoyed before enclosure, but which could not be legally
established; and whether poor owners of common rights have received
compensation: the question, in fact, whether the poor are justified
in “Grutching at Enclosure,” because of real abuses in the method of
carrying it out. On this question no distinction need be drawn between
the two classes of Enclosure Acts.
I do not think that much complaint can be made with regard to the
administration of the Enclosure Acts since 1876 by the Board of
Agriculture. By the provision of adequate allotment grounds and
recreation grounds compensation is made to those villagers who can
claim no specific rights of common; and though no doubt many of the
owners of single common rights are dissatisfied with the plots of land
assigned to them, there seems to be no reason for doubting that the
Commissioners appointed have endeavoured to deal with rich and poor
with equal fairness. Further, a great deal of the work of the Board
in its capacity of Enclosure Commissioners has been the regulation of
commons; and to a certain degree they have become a body for preserving
instead of destroying commons. They may even be described as the most
potent force for the preservation of existing common-fields, simply by
insisting on a certain method in the division and allotment, which may
be too expensive.
But this verdict of “Not guilty” only applies to the enclosure
authority since it was chastened and corrected by the movement for
the preservation of commons. All the early reports of the Enclosure
Commissioners, or the Enclosure, Tithe and Copyhold Commissioners
give abundant evidence of the hard, legal spirit in which the
claims of cottagers were considered, and the slight reasons which
were considered good enough for refusing recreation grounds and
allotments. The twenty-seventh annual report--the _apologia_ of the
Commissioners--pleads, as we have seen above, that 8,000,000 acres of
commons, and 1,000,000 acres of commonable arable fields or meadows
still existed, which was absurdly inaccurate, and that “of all modes
of tenure in a fully peopled country there is none more prejudicial
to improved culture than that of holding in common.” Again, the
thirty-second report makes a great deal of the fact that the 590,000
acres of common and commonable land dealt with since the Act of 1845
had been distributed among 26,000 separate owners; which, however,
only proved that the number of people who owned rights over unenclosed
land had been greater than the number of owners of a corresponding
area of enclosed land--but whether that was because commons and common
fields favoured the creation or preservation of small properties (as
it certainly does in many cases), or whether because a multiplicity of
owners favours the preservation of commons and common fields (which is
always the case), no credit was due to the General Enclosure Act, or to
the body administering it.
We find that between 1845 and 1875, out of a total area of 590,000
acres divided and allotted, just 1758 acres were set aside for
recreation grounds, and 2195 acres for field gardens and allotments.
The administration of the Act since 1877 is, therefore, a very severe
condemnation of its administration in the earlier period.
We have seen in the case of Ewelme and the neighbouring parishes, how
the cottagers were injured on enclosure, by losing their source of
fuel, without getting any compensation. I am indebted to Mr. John Swain
for the following description of the effects of enclosure of a Welsh
mountain.
“The parish of ----, in the county of Montgomeryshire, is about five
miles long by two miles broad. It consists for the most part of a hill,
lying between a river and one of its tributaries. The hill rises to
about 900 feet above sea level, and contains no unenclosed land. We
have, therefore, in this parish, two strips of low-lying meadow land,
land of a moderate quality on the hill slopes, and rough pasture land
near the summit. On this hill most of the cottage holdings are to be
found, usually in some sheltered hollow near a spring or a running
stream....
“Previous to the Enclosure Act, passed early in the nineteenth century,
the greater part of the hill was open. The farms occupied the bottom
lands, and the foot of the hill, up which they crept, their boundary
fences forming an irregular line on the hillside, being higher or lower
as the nature and quality of the land tempted enclosure. The unenclosed
portion of the hill was used as a common pasture by all the farmers
whose land adjoined it, and the amount of stock each one was allowed to
feed on it was roughly regulated by the size of his holding.
“About 120 years ago a number of the poorer peasantry began settling on
this common land. There was a general understanding that if a house was
raised during the night so that the builders were able to cause smoke
to issue from the chimney by sunrise, they thereby established a right
of possession which none could gainsay. Timber in the neighbouring
woods was abundant and cheap, so an intending squatter had little
difficulty in procuring the material for building his cottage. With the
help of his friends he procured sufficient wood for the framework, and
then selected a convenient site in a sheltered spot with a southern
aspect, and marked down the foundations of his future dwelling. When
all preparations were made he gathered together all the help he could,
and in the dusk of the evening had all his materials conveyed to the
selected spot. Rough stonework was laid to form the foundations and
chimney end of the cottage, and then the framework was quickly set
up. The panels were interwoven with stout laths, and covered with
clay, over which was smeared a coating of lime-plaster, while a roof of
thatch completed the edifice. Windows were not for a time considered
necessary, but the entrance was carefully secured by a stout door. Then
just as the dawn was breaking, a fire was kindled on the hearth, and
the curl of smoke above the rude chimney told the workers that they
could now relax their efforts....
“A dwelling-house having been erected, the next step was to appropriate
a few acres of land surrounding it.... The difficulty of obtaining
sufficient land for the keep of a cow was no more than the labour of
enclosing and reclaiming it.
“In this way some thirty or forty families were settled in cottages
built by themselves, around which were three or four fields, where for
many years they lived in undisturbed possession. By patient labour the
gorse and fern were got rid of, trees were planted round the cottage,
or allowed to grow where they sprang up in suitable places in the
hedgerows; by cultivation and manuring the herbage was improved.
“With the Enclosure Act there came a disturbance of this state of
affairs. The partition of the unappropriated land seems to have been
carried out fairly, by adding to each farm a quantity of land in
proportion to the amount of pasturage the occupier enjoyed on the
common.... When, however, we come to consider the case of the cottager,
his treatment was by no means fair. Enclosures of over twenty-one
years’ standing were not interfered with, and their owners were left
in undisturbed possession, but such as had been enclosed for a shorter
period were claimed by the Lord of the Manor, who lived some twelve
miles away, and possessed little or no land in the parish. He advanced
his claim cautiously, asking only a nominal rent, and as unlettered
peasants felt the inequality of a contest in the matter, this rent
was paid. Consequently more than half the cottage holdings fell into
his hands, and the poor occupiers were deprived of the ownership of
the dwellings they had erected, and of all the improvements they had
put into the land they had enclosed. None of them had to leave their
holdings, and the rent at first charged was trifling; but except in
cases where life-leases were granted, the cottagers had lost all their
rights, and they and their holdings were left entirely in the hands of
a large landowner.”
The Enclosure Act, of course, prevented the creation of any more
cottage holdings. The fertility of the soil in these small holdings,
Mr. Swain says, is enormously greater than that of the land, naturally
similar, on the other side of the hedge. Usually the cottager gets a
neighbouring farmer to plough half an acre of his holding for him,
paying for this service in labour at harvest time; and keeps the rest,
except the garden plot, under grass. The average size of the holding
is about six acres; which is found sufficient for two cows, a heifer,
a calf, several pigs, thirty fowls, and a dozen ducks. The produce
supplies all the vegetables, fruit, milk, butter, eggs and bacon
consumed by the family, and brings in the following money returns, on
Mr. Swain’s calculations:--
£ s. d.
One cow and one calf sold per annum (the
other calf being reared to replace the
cow sold) 14 0 0
Six pounds of butter per week, at 1_s._ per lb. 15 12 0
1 pig, sold at a net profit of 2 10 0
20 fowls 2 5 0
400 eggs (allowing 600 for home consumption) 1 8 0
────────
£35 15 0
════════
As Mr. Swain writes from an intimate personal knowledge, I have no
hesitation in accepting his statement as approximately accurate.
The injury to the cottagers does not end with the prevention of the
creation of fresh holdings, and the transfer of the ownership of most
of those already existing to the lord of the manor. For the landlord,
managing his estate in the ordinary way, through the intermediaries of
steward and agent, is almost invariably led into merging such small
holdings into larger farms, in spite of the high rents which would
often be gladly paid.
It will be seen that these two cases are in the nature of things
typical. Similar hardships may be regarded as the almost inevitable
effect of any enclosure which included any considerable quantity of
waste land; and if the enclosure is necessary or highly desirable,
some compensating advantages ought to be provided for the inhabitants
as such. The smallness of such provision between 1845 and 1875 is very
significant. And it makes one seriously doubt whether in their zeal for
furthering improved culture, the Commissioners were as considerate as
was desirable to the cottager who had a legal common right. But on that
point we can apply no statistical test.
If we turn from enclosures since 1845 to enclosures before, we have
a verdict from the old Board of Agriculture in its General Report
on Enclosures published in 1808, which, so far as it is biassed, is
biassed entirely in favour of enclosure. It says: “The benefit (of
enclosure) in this case (to the poor) is by no means unmixed.”
The loss of fuel is declared to be the chief injury; and besides, “In
some cases many cows had been kept without a legal right, and nothing
had been given for the practice.”
“In other cases, where allotments were assigned, the cottagers could
not pay the expense of the measure, and were forced to sell their
allotments.”
“In others they kept cows by right of hiring their cottages, or common
rights, and the land going, of course, to their proprietor, was added
to the farms, and the poor sold their cows. This is a very common
case.”[63]
[63] “General Report on Enclosures,” pp. 12, 13.
The results are given of an investigation into the results of
sixty-eight Enclosure Acts, chiefly in the Eastern Counties; testimony
having been obtained from the clergy and others considered to be
impartial witnesses. In fifteen cases it is asserted that the poor were
not injured by the enclosure; in fifty-three cases that they were. The
general tenour of the statement in these cases is to the effect that
the condition of the poor has become very much worse, that they have
lost all their cows,[64] and they no longer are able to buy milk for
their children. Here are a few of the more striking descriptions:--
[64] This is specifically asserted in 17 cases.
Ackworth, Yorkshire. The parish belonged to near 200 owners; nearly the
whole of whom have come to the parish since the enclosure, or changed
the quantity of their lands.
Todenham, Gloucester. Nothing increased but the poor. Eight farmhouses
filled with them.
Tingewick, Bucks. Milk to be had at 1_d._ a quart before; not to be had
now at any rate.
Passenham, Northamptonshire. (The poor) deprived of their cows, and
great sufferers by the loss of their hogs.
Tulvy, Bedfordshire. Cows lessened from 110 to 40.
Letcomb, Berkshire. The poor can no longer keep a cow, and they are
therefore now maintained by the parish.[65]
[65] “General Report on Enclosures,” pp. 150–152.
Alconbury, Huntingdon. (1791, c. 70.) Several who kept cows before
were, upon enclosure, forced to part with them, and have kept none
since. The cottage allotments going to the landlords were thrown
together, and the inhabitants left without cows or land. Those who had
allotments given in lieu of their rights, not being able to enclose
them,[66] were forced to sell, and became as the rest in this respect.
Before enclosure milk could readily be bought, poor people could lay
out a half-penny or a penny every day, but nothing of the sort could be
got since.[67]
[66] Because of the expense.
[67] “General Report,” p. 154.
With regard to Buckingham in general, we have the following statement
from a later survey for the Board of the County:--
“The poor and persons with little capital (such as butchers, common
shepherds, etc.) derive benefit from open fields and commons, by being
enabled to keep horses, cows, and sheep.... It will be difficult to
prove that in any case the poor have been benefited (by enclosure).
No instances of benefit on this score have been stated to me. On the
contrary, an increase of poor (_i.e._, of paupers) has been the general
complaint.”
Similar evidence is given by two professional Enclosure Commissioners.
Mr. Forster, of Norwich, “lamented that he had been accessory to
injuring 2000 poor people, at the rate of twenty families per parish.
Numbers in the practice of feeding the commons cannot prove their
right; and many, indeed most who have allotments, have not more than
one acre, which being insufficient for the man’s cow, both the cow
and land are usually sold to opulent farmers. The right sold before
the allotment produced much less than the allotment after it, but the
money is dissipated, doing them no good when they cannot vest it in
stock.”[68]
[68] “General Report,” p. 157.
Mr. Ewen, another Commissioner, “observed that in most of the
enclosures he has known the poor man’s allotment and cow are sold
five times in six before the award is signed.” A third Commissioner,
Mr. Algar, declared that he made it a practice to give an allotment
whenever a cottager could merely prove that he had been in the practice
of cutting turf. But one wonders whether Mr. Algar did not find this
custom of his prejudicial to the demand for his professional services.
In estimating the weight of this evidence, both as to depopulation
and as to injury to the poor, it must be borne in mind that it is
taken almost entirely from the mouths of advocates, and mostly very
enthusiastic advocates, of enclosure. They are admissions of men
who feel that the general case in favour of enclosure is so strong
that they may well candidly admit the existence of some drawbacks.
Of course, some advocates of enclosure are not disposed to make any
admissions at all. Many urge the moral evils engendered by waste
lands, as: “Where wastes and commons are most extensive, there I have
perceived the Cottagers are the most wretched and worthless; accustomed
to relie on a precarious and vagabond subsistence from land in a
state of nature, when that fails they recur to pilfering, and thereby
become a nuisance to their honest and industrious neighbours; and if
the father of a family of this sort is withdrawn from society for his
crimes, his children become burthensome to the parish. It may truly be
said that for cottagers of this description the game is preserved, and
by them destroyed; they are mostly beneath the law and out of reach
of detection; and while they can earn four or five shillings, and
sometimes more, in a night, by poaching, they will not be satisfied
with 10_d._ or 1_s._ a day for honest labour.”[69] A not unusual style
of argument is the following:--
[69] D. Walker, “Hertfordshire” (1794), p. 53.
“To deprive the poor of that benefit, which, in their present state,
they derive from the waste lands, must no doubt, at first view, sound
harsh. But it ought to be remembered that in this wealthy county, where
there is so much work to be done, and so few hands comparatively to
do it, there are few poor that do not deserve to be so. Those persons
who are disqualified to provide for the calls of human nature by the
feebleness of infancy, the crushing hand of disease, or the infirmities
of old age, cannot be said to be poor, because _all_ the landed
property, situate within their respective parishes, is always liable to
be charged with their maintenance.”[70]
[70] John Clark, “Hereford” (1794), p. 27.
After reading of the good fortune of these Herefordshire labourers,
so much in demand in a wealthy county that the benefits derived from
wastes and commons are of little concern to them, one naturally
inquires, what were their wages? Day labourers earned in summer, “6_s._
a week and a gallon of drink to each man”;[71] in winter, 5_s._ a week
and three quarts; in harvest, 14_d._ a day and meat and drink: the
hours of labour being in harvest time and in winter as early and as
late as they could see; in summer, not harvest, from 6 to 6. Leaving
out the cider, this works out at a penny an hour, and a penny in 1794
would not buy very much more of the ultimate necessaries of life in
Herefordshire than it will to-day.
[71] _Ibid._, p. 29. “Drink” of course means cider.
There seems, underlying John Clark’s words, a notion that if any injury
is done to the poor by enclosure, proper and sufficient compensation
will be made in the ordinary course to the persons injured out of the
poor-rates. The logical deduction is that the profits of enclosure
should contribute to the poor-rates, and I have noted thirteen
enclosures of wastes and commons in which this was done. Another
logical deduction was that the poor rate in parishes in which waste was
enclosed was, in part at least, a species of common property belonging
to the poor; and to deprive them of this property was robbery, unless
the commons were restored. This view was vigorously expressed by
Cobbett in his “Political Register,” at the time of the introduction of
the Poor Law of 1834, and from him became part of the traditional stock
of political ideas handed down through the Chartists to the Labour
movement of recent times.
Arthur Young, in a pamphlet published in 1801,[72] not only insists
upon the injury to the poor from Enclosure Acts as ordinarily drawn and
put into execution, but pleads for enclosure on methods which would
tend to the social elevation of the labourer. His proposals, which
strike one as, for the time, wise and statesmanlike, though they ignore
some considerations which would be of great importance to-day, were:
(1) That in the case of small commons in the midst of an enclosed
country, labourers should be allowed to absorb the whole by gradual
encroachments, thus building up small properties for themselves.
(2) In the case of extensive wastes, procedure must be by Act of
Parliament, but all Acts should secure enough land for every cottager
to keep a cow both summer and winter, such land to be _inalienable from
the cottage, and the ownership to be vested in the parish_.
[72] “Enquiry into the propriety of applying wastes to the better
support and nourishment of the poor.”
I have found one Act which realises Arthur Young’s ideal of an
Enclosure Act. It was passed in 1824 for Pottern in Wiltshire, and
though it was an Act for the enclosure of a common only, no commonable
meadow or common field being included, I give its provisions here on
account of its intrinsic interest.
The ownership of the whole common was vested in the Bishop of
Salisbury, who was lord of the manor, the vicar and churchwardens,
in trust for the parish. The trustees were required to lease it in
small holdings, with or without rent, to poor, honest, and industrious
persons, who had not, except in cases of accident or illness, availed
themselves of Poor Law relief.
The following Acts, all (except that for Earsham) for “extinguishing
village communities,” _i.e._, for enclosing all the commonable lands
of the parishes or townships, which in each case include commonable
arable fields, have special provisions to safeguard the interests of
the poor:--
1757, c. 53. Wimeswould, Leicestershire. Cottagers who have no land are
to have a share together within one fence, which they may afterwards
separately enclose if they like. This is specially interesting as
anticipating the modern practice of providing allotments for such
cottagers.
1767, c. 49. Carlton in Lindrick, Nottingham. Three acres (out of a
total of 2492 acres) are to be set aside for building cottages for the
benefit of the poor.
1779, c. 89. Evenley or Bury Manor, Northampton. Lands to the value of
£10 per annum (out of £1200) are to be set aside for the most deserving
poor not receiving poor-relief.
1785, c. 56. Eight parishes in Wiltshire enclosed by one Act. Not more
than ten acres in each parish is to be set aside, free of taxes, for
fuel for the poor.
1805, c. 19. Palling, Norfolk. One-twentieth of the whole area is to be
vested in the lord of the manor, vicar, and overseers, in trust for the
poor, for common of pasture and fuel.
1807, c. 18. Herringswell, Suffolk. An allotment is to be made for fuel
for the poor.
1809, c. 7. Barton Turf, Norfolk. Thirty acres is to be reserved for
common for the poor.
1810, c. 55. Great Sheepey, Leicestershire. _Every cottage to have not
less than 3 acres allotted to it._
1812, c. 3. Little Brandon, Norfolk. Ten acres to be set aside for the
benefit of the poor, partly to be used as common for fuel, or to be
leased to pay for fuel; another part to provide a common pasture for
the poor inhabitants; while the _remainder_ (how much? one wonders)
was to be leased in aid of the poor-rates.
1812, c. 17. Earsham, Norfolk. Five acres to be set aside to be leased
to buy fuel for the poor.
Also in the Acts for Northwold, Norfolk (1796, c. 14), Lower Wilbraham,
Cambridge (1797, c. 89), and Barnady, Suffolk, allotments were made
inalienable from the cottages for which they were assigned. At
Northwold land capable of supplying annually 12,000 turves per annum
was reserved as a common turbary for the poorer owners of common
rights.[73]
[73] I must here refer to the extraordinary Act by which Pickering
Moor (Yorkshire, West Riding) was enclosed in 1785 and divided equally
among all owners of common rights, the poorest cottager owning an
ancient cottage getting as much as the largest landowner. Before
enclosure the yeomen of Pickering had pastured such animals on the
moor as they could provide with winter keep. The great tithes were
rented by an enterprising lessee, who conceived the idea of parcelling
the moor into small farms which would grow corn and yield tithes. In
spite of the disinclination of the yeomen to any change, he procured
the passing of an Enclosure Act, in which it was declared that the
moor was equally the property of all ancient cottages and messuages,
and was required to be divided equally among the owners of all of
these. A peculiar clause in the Act enacted that no part of the moor
should be “deemed barren in respect of tithes.” The larger yeomen
felt themselves to be cheated, and were very indignant, but through
inertness and lack of co-operation they failed to take steps to
prevent the Act being executed. This they presumably might have done
by an appeal to Quarter Sessions.
This list of Acts containing special provisions for the benefit of the
poor is not a complete one, but if it were it would not, I believe,
include more than one per cent. of the Enclosure Acts passed prior
to 1845. Arthur Young did not over-state the case when he wrote: “By
nineteen Enclosure Acts out of twenty, the poor are injured, in some
grossly injured.... The poor in these parishes may say, and with truth,
_Parliament may be tender of property, all I know is, I had a cow, and
an Act of Parliament has taken it from me_.”[74]
[74] “Enquiry into the propriety of applying wastes to the better
support and maintenance of the poor,” 1801, p. 42.