ENCLOSURE OF COMMON FIELDS WITHOUT PARLIAMENTARY SANCTION.
On the map of England, in Chapter VII., enclosures of common field
parishes by Act of Parliament before the General Enclosure Act of 1801
are shaded vertically, such enclosures from 1802 to 1845 are dotted,
and subsequent enclosures under the General Enclosure Act of 1845 are
black. In other words, all the shaded area represents the area of
parishes which had arable common fields up to the year 1700, all the
dotted and black area represents the area of parishes which had arable
common fields up to 1801, and all the black area represents the area of
parishes which had arable common fields up to 1845.
What about the area which is not shaded at all?
An inspection of the map yields certain striking results.
In the first place, we see that the shaded districts lie in a broad
band across England from north-east to south-west, from the East Riding
of Yorkshire to Dorset and the east part of Somerset.
Secondly, we see that there is a perfectly sharp line of demarcation
between the shaded and the non-shaded area, running through Suffolk,
Essex, passing through London, and along the border between Surrey
and Kent. This line becomes indefinite as it passes through the Weald
of Surrey and Sussex, but its termination can be traced in the part
of Sussex which lies on the southern slope of the South Downs. In the
white area to the south-east of this line there are but two shaded
patches--the parishes of Iken and Orford, in Suffolk, situated close
together, in the peninsula formed by the estuaries of the rivers Alde
and Deben.
Thirdly, we can trace an equally sharp line of demarcation between the
shaded and the non-shaded area in the south-west, running from the
Bristol to the English Channel, across Somerset and Dorset. South-west
of this line there is no shaded patch--_i.e._, there is no case of
common field enclosed by Act of Parliament.
Fourthly, on the north-west side of the shaded belt, towards Wales and
Scotland, there is no sharp line of demarcation between the shaded and
the non-shaded area, but as one travels further and further from the
central axis of the shaded area to the north-west, the shaded patches
become sparser and sparser; but still some shaded patches are to be
found in every English county on this side of the shaded belt, except
Lancashire.
Fifthly, it is to be noticed that along the central axis of the shaded
belt the vertical shading--indicating enclosure by Act of Parliament
in the eighteenth century--greatly predominates, and most of all the
shading is overwhelmingly vertical in the very centre of the shaded
area. Dotted and black patches, indicating Parliamentary enclosure
in the nineteenth century, and particularly black, indicating the
latest group of Parliamentary enclosures, show more prominently in the
edges or fringes of the coloured area. In other words, when the great
movement of Parliamentary Enclosure began in the eighteenth century,
its chief field was the very centre of the district over which it
ultimately spread.
It is obvious that there must be certain broad historical reasons for
these striking facts. The map, in fact, presents to us a series of
definite puzzles for solution.
1. How and when was the south-eastern corner of England enclosed?
2. How and when was the south-western corner enclosed?
3. How and when was the great district in the north-west, in which
Parliamentary enclosure is the exception, enclosed?
4. How and when were the numerous parishes within what we may call the
Parliamentary Enclosure belt, which escaped Parliamentary enclosure,
enclosed?
And lastly, there is the question which sums these up, and presents the
problem on the other side--
5. Why were special Acts of Parliament necessary for the enclosure
of some three thousand of the English parishes, in the geographical
position indicated by the map?
And it is important that it should be clearly understood that this is
the more natural way of putting the question, because the surprising
fact is not that the common field system should gradually and quietly
disappear in parish A, but that it should persist in parish B, until
ended by the very expensive and troublesome measure of a special Act of
Parliament.
In order to proceed as far as possible from the known to the unknown,
we will first consider the various methods of common field enclosure
operating within the belt of Parliamentary Enclosure of common fields.
But before beginning this enquiry, attention may be drawn to a ray
of light which the map throws upon the social history of England in
the Tudor period. The reader of the history of that period is tempted
to suppose that the districts from which the greatest complaints,
and still more riots and insurrections, arose against enclosures,
were those in which enclosure was proceeding most rapidly. Now, the
most formidable of these popular agitations began in the reign of
Edward VI. in Somersetshire, and spread northwards and eastwards,
growing in intensity, till it reached its climax in Ket’s rebellion
in Norfolk.[78] The earlier complaints also come from counties within
the Parliamentary Enclosure belt--Oxford, Buckingham, Wiltshire and
others. The map suggests that a possible interpretation of these
popular movements is, that an industrial and economic change involving
normally the enclosure of common fields was in the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries gradually spreading over the southern and midland
counties; that in some parts it met with little or no resistance; but
that in other parts popular resistance was roused to some features
of this change, including the enclosure of arable fields, and that
popular resistance was in a very great degree successful in causing
the postponement of such enclosure. Briefly, a special outcry against
enclosure in a particular locality shows, not necessarily that
enclosure was proceeding with special rapidity there, but possibly that
there it was specially obnoxious; and being there specially obnoxious,
proceeded more slowly than elsewhere.
[78] “Can it be denied that the fyrst rysynge this yeare was in
Somersetshire, ffrom Somersetshire it entred into Gloucettershire,
Wylshire, hampshire, Sussex, Surrey, Worcestershire, Essex,
hertfordshire, and dyuers other places?” (John Hale’s Defence,
“The Commonweal of this Realm of England,” Miss Lamond’s edition,
p. lviii.) This is to prove that the rising was not caused by the
Enclosure Commission of 1549. The Commissioners were sent to Oxford,
Berkshire, Warwick, Leicester, Buckingham, and Northampton.
ENCLOSURE BY PRINCIPAL LANDLORD.
But to return to our own subject. We have shown that enclosure by
Act of Parliament was greatly to the landlord’s interest; but it is
perfectly obvious that the landlord’s interest was much more served by
an enclosure without all the expense, loss of time, labour and anxiety
involved in Parliamentary proceedings. Obviously, therefore, if one
landlord could acquire all the open and commonable land in the parish,
he would enclose without an Act of Parliament. The only difficulty
in his way would be in arranging leases so that they should all fall
in simultaneously, or, failing this, in overcoming the resistance of
any tenant whose lease gave him the power of resisting, if he were
unwilling to agree. We have noticed that even in recent years the
common fields of Yelden in Bedfordshire have disappeared in this way;
that the Duchy of Cornwall in 1876 bought out all the copyholders
holding lands in Fordington Field; that Earl Manvers is similarly
acquiring by degrees all the common rights in the common fields of
Laxton, and the Ecclesiastical Commissioners are endeavouring in this
way to procure the enclosure of Elmstone Hardwicke; that Stratton and
Grimstone were thus enclosed since 1900, and that the common fields
of several Berkshire parishes have thus disappeared within the last
half-century. The same process can be watched on a much larger scale
with regard to common rights over commons proper. The buying up of
the rights of commoners over Dartmoor by the Duchy of Cornwall is
one striking example; similar purchases of common rights over the
Wiltshire downs on a very large scale have come into notice through the
approach to Stonehenge being affected.
The enclosure of common fields in this way is proceeding slowly merely
because the remains of common fields are now so small.
And it is obvious that through the last two hundred years the
restraints of law and public opinion upon the freedom of the country
squire or great landowner, in doing as he likes with the villages
under his control, have been gradually and continuously strengthened.
In looking back over the nineteenth and eighteenth centuries, we are
looking back at a greater and greater proportion of local autocratic
power accompanying any given degree of local pre-eminence in wealth and
landed property.
If we look back to the beginning of the eighteenth century we find the
principles generally accepted by the landowning class with regard to
the general management of their estates, and particularly with regard
to common fields, thus clearly laid down by Edward Lawrence in “The
duty of a Steward to his Lord”:--
Article XIV. “A Steward should not forget to make the best Enquiry
into the Disposition of any of the Freeholders within or near any
of his Lord’s Manors to sell their Lands, that he may use his best
Endeavours to purchase them at as reasonable a price as may be for his
lord’s Advantage and Convenience ... especially in such Manors where
Improvements are to be made by inclosing Commons and Common fields....
If the Freeholders cannot _all_ be persuaded to sell yet at least an
Agreement for Inclosing should be pushed forward by the Steward” (p. 9).
“The Steward should not suffer any of the Lord’s lands to be let to
Freehold Tenants within or near his Lord’s Manor” (p. 34).
“The Steward should endeavour to lay all the small Farms, let to poor
indigent People, to the great ones” ... but “It is unwise to unite
farms all at once, because of the odium and increase of Poor-rates. It
is much more reasonable and popular to stay till such farms fall into
Hand by Death” (p. 35).
And to facilitate this process, “Noblemen and Gentlemen should
endeavour to convert copyhold for lives to Leasehold for lives” (p. 60).
The significance of this last recommendation may be illustrated
by the passage in William Marshall’s account, in “Agriculture of
Gloucestershire,” published about sixty years afterwards, of the
Cotswold Hills:--
“Thirty years ago this district lay almost entirely in an open state;
namely in arable common field, sheep-walk, and cowdown. At present it
may be said to be in a state of inclosure, though some few townships
yet remain open.
“The difficulties of Inclosure were not, in this case, numerous or
great. The sheep-walks and cowdowns were all of them stinted by
‘yardlands’ in the arable fields: there was not, perhaps, one unstinted
common on these hills. They were, formerly, many of them, or all of
them, occupied by leasehold tenants for three lives renewable. A
species of tenancy I have not met before. Many of these leaseholds had
fallen in. The removal of those which remained, was” (_sic_: he means,
of course, “removed”) “the main obstacle of inclosure.”
Because the number of Acts for Enclosure gradually increases through
the eighteenth century, and reaches its maximum at the opening of
the nineteenth century, it has been hastily assumed by some that the
process of enclosure was similarly accelerated. But it is on _a priori_
grounds at least as probable that there was no acceleration in the rate
of extinction of common fields, only a gradual change in the prevailing
method of procedure.
Thus very few Acts of Enclosure are extant previous to 1727, the
year in which Edward Lawrence recommends to Stewards and Landlords a
vigorous enclosure campaign. That that campaign was being carried on
at the time can be shown by two contemporary extracts from writers
on opposite sides. The Rev. John Laurence of Yelvertoft, in the “New
System of Agriculture,” 1726, writes:--
“The great quantities of ground that have been of late and are daily
inclosing, and the increase of Rent that is everywhere made by those
who do inclose, sufficiently demonstrate the benefit and use of
Inclosures. In the Bishopric of Durham nine parts in ten are already
inclosed”[79] (p. 45).
[79] This statement is confirmed by the Board of Agriculture reporter:
“In this county the lands, or common fields of townships, were for
the most part inclosed soon after the Restoration.” (Joseph Granger,
“Agriculture of Durham,” 1794.)
John Cowper, in “Inclosing Commons and Common fields is contrary to the
interest of the Nation” says:--“I myself within these 30 years past”
(_i.e._, 1702–1732), “have seen above twenty Lordships or Parishes
inclosed ... I have been informed by an eminent Surveyor that one third
of all the land of England has been inclosed within these 80 years.”
Perhaps what the eminent Surveyor said to John Cowper is not very
convincing evidence. But in considering the estimate of the amount
of enclosure in the “last 80 years,” _i.e._, from 1652, the first
year of peace after the Civil War, to 1732, the time when John Cowper
wrote, we have to bear in mind, firstly, that there was an important
enclosure movement going on in the Commonwealth period; and secondly,
that in 1660, with the Restoration, the country gentry came by their
own again. The King’s ministers during the reigns of Charles II., James
II., William III. and Anne would scarcely have dared, even if they had
desired, to check any proceedings on the part of landowners, with the
object of raising rents. The whole policy of Parliament was, in fact,
in sympathy with this object, as may be seen from all the legislature
affecting agriculture.
For the first part of this period there is further evidence of
the progress of enclosure in John Houghton’s “Collection for the
Improvement of Husbandry and Trade.” In repeated issues he strongly
advocates Enclosure; in that for September 8, 1681, he says: “Oh that I
had sufficient influence to put it” (_i.e._, a General Enclosure Act)
“to the trial, if it did not succeed I’d be content not to be drunk
this seven years” ... “Witness the many enclosures that have of late
been made, and that people are daily on gog on making” (pp. 15, 16). It
will be remembered that a General Enclosure Act for Scotland was passed
in 1695.
To sum up, it is clear that the Parliamentary enclosure of a given
parish indicates that the lord of the manor, or principal landlord, had
not secured such a complete or preponderating influence over the parish
as to enable him to effect an enclosure without an Act of Parliament.
ENCLOSURE BY YEOMEN.
And yet, on the other hand, it does not appear that the absence of
any lord of the manor, or of any single landowner superior in wealth
to the others in the parish was favourable, through the seventeenth,
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, to the continuance of common
fields, except where many of the properties were extremely small.
We have seen that the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, in Elmstone
Hardwicke, while desiring themselves to enclose the parish, discourage
enclosure by the tenants on their own account, by raising the rents
to a prohibitive extent. Similarly Edward Lawrence in 1727, while
urging, as we have seen, the steward to procure a general enclosure
of his lord’s manor, declares that it is the duty of the steward,
particularly if his lord is the owner of the Great Tithe, to prevent
gradual enclosure by yeomen--“He should be ever on his watch to prevent
(if possible) the Freeholders inclosing any part of their land in the
common fields (Article xxiv.).” “Partial enclosure should never be
permitted without a general agreement to do the whole.”
The objection of the Tithe Owner to enclosures in the common fields
was that by increasing the pasture, and decreasing the arable area,
they diminished the produce of grain and so diminished the tithe. John
Houghton (September 16, 1681, p. 16) also refers to the objection of
the tithe owning clergy to enclosure. And this objection was probably
one of the strongest forces against enclosure at that time.
Again, going back a century and a quarter, John Norden’s “Book of
Surveying,” published about 1600, in one place recommends general
enclosure, on the ground that “one acre enclosed is woorth one and a
half in Common, if the ground be fitting thereto” (Book III., p. 97),
in another declares “Also enclosures of common fields, or meddowes
in part, by such as are most powerful and mighty, without the Lord’s
licence, and the Tenants’ assents, is more than may be permitted”
(_ibid._, p. 96).
The reason of course is, firstly, that the holder of lands in common
fields or common meadows, who fenced his holding, or parts of it,
thereby prevented the other holders from exercising their rights of
pasturing their cattle upon the fenced portions, without giving up his
recognised right to pasture cattle on his neighbours’ holdings, very
likely indeed turning out all the more cattle in the summer and autumn,
because better supplied with winter feed; and, secondly, because the
shade of his hedges, if he set quickset hedges, injured his neighbours’
crops. In “Select pleas in the Manorial Courts” we find numerous cases
of complaints against manorial tenants for attempting to make hedges,
banks, or such barriers.
At Bledlow, in Northamptonshire, “it is presented that John Le Pee
has unlawfully thrown up a bank” in 1275 (p. 23). In Hemingford
(Huntingdon) that “William Thomas Son has planted willows in the bank
unlawfully” in 1278 (p. 90), and in the same manor “Elias Carpenter
has wrongfully planted trees on a boundary” (p. 92). In Weedon Beck
(Northamptonshire) in 1296 “Walter Mill complains of John Brockhole and
says that he has raised a wall and hedge between their tenements to his
damage.”
One is tempted to associate the early and complete enclosure of Kent,
without Acts of Parliament, with the proverbial wealth and importance
of the Kentish yeomen, and the custom of Gavelkind (_i.e._, the equal
inheritance of landed property by all sons), which necessarily tended
to multiply small properties.
William Marshall’s description of the enclosure of the Vale of
Pickering, the most fertile part of the North Riding of Yorkshire,
occupying the southern slopes of the Yorkshire Wolds, shows a similar
association. In “Rural Economy of Yorkshire,” published in 1788, we
read:--“A century ago the marginal townships lay perhaps entirely open,
and there are vestiges of common fields in the area of the vale. The
West Marshes, church property, have been longer under inclosure; and
the central townships were probably inclosed long before those of the
margin; the soils of that part being adapted to grass; and while the
surrounding country lay open, grass land was of singular value. At
present the entire vale may be said to be in a state of inclosures (p.
17).
“Lands are much in the hands of small owners, in general, in the
occupation of yeomanry; a circumstance, this, which it would be
difficult to equal in so large a district” (p. 19).
He notices (p. 20) that it was the custom to divide lands among all the
children, and (p. 24) that the custom of sale of tenant right existed.
“In the present century, more especially in the last fifty years,
enclosure has made a rapid progress.... In my own remembrance more than
half the vale lay open” (p. 50).
The township of Pickering itself lay open at the beginning of the
century. It then had 2376 acres of common field arable, stinted
pastures, and 3700 acres of common. “The common fields and common
meadows have been gradually contracting by amicable changes and
transfers, and are now, in a manner, wholly inclosed. The stinted
pastures have, at different times, been inclosed ‘by commission,’
namely, by the unanimous reference to arbitrators.”[80]
[80] An older description of piecemeal enclosure is given by John
Houghton: “Would they who plough in champain grounds but change their
little parcels; would they who have 6 or 8 acres together make a
ditch of 6 or 7 foot wide and deep, and fill it if they would with
water, and carry away the bank that it might not be thrown in again,
hedges might chance to thrive, and in 2 years (tho’ they to please the
people might at certain times lay it open) they would raise more money
than they use to do in six.” (Collections, September 16th, 1681, p.
16.) This gives me a pretty fair idea both of the profit and of the
unpopularity of such enclosure at the time.
In general, it may be said, that the Parliamentary enclosure of a given
parish indicates that the manorial authority was exercised during a
long period antecedent to the enclosure, to prevent gradual enclosure
by individual tenants; and that the existence of important rights
and properties belonging to the lord of the manor prevented a common
agreement to enclose by the actual cultivators of the soil from being
reached and put into execution.
It may also be noticed that in a parish or township where there is no
one principal landlord, but a number of landowners owning moderate
properties, there is comparatively little likelihood of the net profit
of an Enclosure Act seeming to any one owner worth the trouble of
initiating a movement to promote one; and a comparatively greater
likelihood of some owner or owners being found disposed, from private
grudges or on public grounds, to oppose the proceedings.
This distribution of property in a common field parish increases the
probability that enclosure will proceed in a piecemeal fashion, instead
of by an Act.
ENCLOSURE UNDER THE GENERAL ACTS OF 1886 AND 1840.
In 1836 a general Act (c. 115) was passed “to facilitate the Inclosure
of Open and Arable Fields in England and Wales.” By this Act two-thirds
in number and value of the proprietors of lands and common rights
in Arable Common Fields could appoint Commissioners for Enclosure,
provided such fields were not within ten miles of the centre of
London, or three miles from the centre of some town of over 100,000
inhabitants, or within certain smaller distances of smaller towns.
Enclosure so effected was only recorded locally. Awards had to be
deposited in the parish churches; but no confirming Act was needed. If
seven-eighths in number and value of the proprietors were agreed upon
enclosure, it was not necessary for them even to appoint Commissioners,
if they could come to an agreement as to the redistribution of
properties.
In 1840 an amending Act (c. 31) was passed, providing that persons who
took possession of the allotments awarded them in enclosures under the
Act of 1836 must be deemed to have waived the right of appeal from the
award. The scope of the Act of 1836 was also extended to Lammas meadows.
As these Acts were in operation from 1836 to 1845, the enclosures
effected by special Acts of Parliament during this period must have
been greatly outnumbered by those effected during that period without
being recorded by the central Government. Between 1845 and 1852 the
enclosure of lands which were neither commonable all the year round
nor subject to any common rights not regulated by a stint, could be
effected by the Enclosure Commissioners without being reported to
Parliament; but after 1852 the Enclosure Commissioners had to report
all their proceedings.
ENCLOSURE IN CORN-GROWING AND PASTORAL DISTRICTS.
The arable common fields, and in consequence the commonable meadows
with intermixed ownership, which were situated in districts
predominantly pastoral, tended, other things being equal, to be divided
and enclosed earlier than the common fields in the predominantly
corn-growing districts. For this there are various reasons:--
Firstly, as may be seen from the maps of Castor and Ailesworth, of
Laxton, of Braunton (p. 250), or of any maps of any common-field
parishes, piecemeal enclosure tends to begin in the arable fields (_a_)
close to the village, and (_b_) on the outermost margin of the fields.
The greater the extent of the fields, the longer, _ceteris paribus_,
will it be before piecemeal enclosure completely obliterates them.
Secondly, enclosure in a pastoral district does not arouse the same
resentment and popular resistance that it does in a corn-growing
district. This is easily seen from all the controversial writings
of the whole period during which enclosure has been a matter of
controversy, up to about the middle of the nineteenth century. It was
not enclosure as enclosure that offended, but enclosure as causing,
or as being intended to result in, the laying down of arable land in
grass; as being, in the words of Joseph Bentham of Kettering, “the
inhuman practices of madded and irreligious depopulators”[81] which
robbed the king of subjects and the country of corn and cattle. Those
who enclosed were “monsters of men, dispeoplers of towns, ruiners of
the commonwealth as far as in them lyeth, occasioners of beggars and
beggery, cruell inclosiers, whose Adamantine hearts no whit regard
the cries of so many distressed ones.”[82] Such denunciation would be
out of place, and the passions which gave rise to it would never have
arisen, in a predominantly pastoral district, because there would be
in such a district comparatively few persons thrown out of employment
even if the enclosure were of the arable fields only; and because it is
scarcely possible that while enclosure of the arable fields was going
on, there would not be simultaneous enclosure of waste land, which
would have to be repeatedly ploughed and tilled even if the intention
were to ultimately convert it into permanent pasture. In other words,
while enclosure in a predominantly corn-growing district is associated
with “depopulation,” in a pastoral district it is associated with
increased employment, increased local population, a larger production
of food, and on the whole increased local prosperity. Thus, though
there was a rebellion in Devon and Cornwall in 1549, the same year
as Ket’s rebellion, enclosure was not one of the complaints of the
rebels. And this was not because enclosure had not begun in Devon and
Cornwall, because, as a matter of fact, enclosure had advanced further
in Devon and Cornwall than in most other counties. The attitude of
the Cornishmen is thus expressed by Carew:--“They fal everywhere from
Commons to Inclosure, and partake not of some Eastern Tenants envious
dispositions, who will sooner prejudice their owne present thrift,
by continuing this mingle-mangle, than advance the Lords expectant
benefit, after their terme expired.”[83]
[81] “The Society of the Saints,” p. 67.
[82] “The Society of the Saints,” p. 98.
[83] Carew, “Cornwall” (1600), p. 30.
Thirdly, there was, during one period in the sixteenth century, a law
specially guarding the corn-growing districts from enclosure, from
which other districts were exempt.
The Statute 7 Henry VIII., c. 1, was the Depopulation Act in force
for the 20 years 1516–1536. It derives special importance from the
Inquisition into Enclosures which followed its enactment, in 1517. It
applies only to parishes “Whereof the more part was or were used and
occupied to tillage and husbandrie”; and it required the land to be
tilled “after the maner and usage of the countrey where the seyd land
lyeth.” This restriction drops out of the next Depopulation Act, 27
Henry VIII., c. 22, passed in the year 1536.
[Illustration: LELAND’S ITINERARY
Map of England and Wales showing Leyland’s route, with:
Moor, Fen, Marsh, Forest or Heath.
Enclosed.
Champion.
Cultivated and probably open.
Scale 1:5,000,000 or 1 inch = 79 Stat. miles.]
In the year 1536 Leland, the King’s Antiquary, began his Itinerary,
which lasted till 1542. Whether in consequence of special instructions
or not, he almost everywhere notes the condition of the country he
traverses with regard to enclosure. A summary of his observations
is shown in the form of a map; Devon, Cornwall, West Somerset,
South Wales, Hereford, Worcester, the north-west of Warwick, South
Lancashire, the country round Southampton, and near Hampton Court, with
parts of Yorkshire, are shown to be the most enclosed districts which
are described; and the districts described by Leland as champaign are
those which were later largely enclosed by Act of Parliament.
The general movement of agricultural progress, it may safely be
assumed, up to Leland’s time, was from the south-east of England
northwards and westwards. The extreme south-east corner was certainly
very early enclosed, as one would naturally expect, but we also find
remote western districts, where one would naturally expect to find old
customs linger comparatively late, precede the central districts in the
abandonment of the “village community,” by many years.[84]
[84] How long the enclosure of certain western counties preceded
the enclosure of the east midlands, is shown by comparing the two
following extracts. Of the former, Joseph Lee, in “A Plea for
Regulated Inclosure,” published 1656, asks, “Are not many places in
England, Essex, Hereford, Devonshire, Shropshire, Worcester, wholly
enclosed?” (p. 31). Of the latter the “General Report on Enclosures,”
published 152 years later, “A village of farmers and labourers
surrounding a church and environed by three or four and in a few cases
by five open fields, form the spectacle of Cambridge, Huntingdon,
and Northampton shires, as much as on the Loire and on the plains of
Moscow” (p. 25).
Whether much of the enclosure which Leland saw in 1536 had been the
work of the previous twenty years, it is of course impossible to
say; but making any reasonable allowance for progress in hedging
and ditching in the western counties where agriculture was mainly
pastoral during those twenty years, and assuming that the Act of 1516
had effectually stopped enclosure in that period in the corn-growing
districts, one can hardly resist coming to the conclusion that if
Leland had made his journey in 1516 he would then also have found
enclosure most advanced in those districts which were most enclosed in
1536.
What we have, then, to ask is whether the priority of enclosure in the
western counties is to be attributed entirely to the fact of their
being devoted more to grass and less to tillage, or whether there
was some difference in the primitive village community of the west
which caused cultivated land to pass more easily into the condition
of exclusive ownership and separate use. Obviously we must look for
the answer to this question beyond the boundaries of England. To
understand the differences between the village life of those parts of
England which were once the Danelagh, Mercia and Wessex, from those
which were then West Wales and Strathclyde, which may be regarded as at
least semi-Celtic, we must examine the purely Celtic type of village
community.
But it must also be noticed that there is one characteristic feature of
the typical English village community, namely the importance attached
to the right of common pasturage on the fallow field, and in the
other arable fields after harvest, which would probably never have
developed in any part of the country where only a small proportion of
the land was ploughed. There would be too little profit and too much
inconvenience attached to the exercise of the right for it to have a
chance of being established, or if established, of persisting.
Lastly, it seems to me impossible to account for the perfect definition
of the two boundaries between parishes early enclosed, without special
Acts, and parishes enclosed late by special Acts, the one in the
south-east, passing through Suffolk, Essex, and between Surrey and
Kent, and the other in the south-west, passing through Somerset and
Dorset, except on the assumption that the enclosure movement beginning
in these two corners of England, was suddenly checked when it had
reached the limits indicated, by the Tudor series of Depopulation
Acts, and by the Inquisitions and other measures taken to enforce them.
These Acts specially stipulated for the continuance of the ancient
customary methods of tillage. A summary of their provisions which
affect enclosure will be found in Appendix D.