SECTION 2.. Map of Norfolk, Suffolk and Part of Essex Showing Land Enclosed:

Map of Norfolk, Suffolk and part of Essex showing land enclosed: before the General Enclosure Act of 1801. between 1802 and 1845. under General Enclosure Act of 1845. Scale 1:1,000,000 or 1 inch = 15.78 Stat. miles.]

The story of the enclosure of Essex and Suffolk is almost completely told by the map. Each is sharply divided into a larger part very anciently enclosed, without Acts of Parliament, and a smaller part close to the boundaries of Hertford, Cambridge, and Norfolk, which was enclosed at a late date by Acts of Parliament. Essex has but one Act belonging to the eighteenth century, and that is dated as late as 1795. Suffolk has nine Acts belonging to the eighteenth, and forty-four belonging to the nineteenth century.

The additional information available only serves to bring out more clearly the very striking contrast between the regions of ancient and recent enclosure.

On the one hand we find that the Parliamentary enclosure of the extreme west and north-west portion of Essex is only part of the recent enclosure of that part.

The Enclosure Acts cover twenty-nine parishes, and an area of 22,000 acres, about 760 acres per parish. Vancouver, who reported on Essex, as well as Cambridge, tells us, “The arable land in about forty parishes lies very much in open common fields, and which in point of quantity is found to average 1,200 acres per parish.” He gives a list of open field parishes; Thraxted and Streethall, which have not since been enclosed by Act, are included; and each of those had some common field at the time of tithe commutation.

“Agriculture of Essex,” p. 185.

On the other hand, he tells us that the neighbourhood of Great Dunmow, which is quite close to the region of nineteenth century enclosure, had been enclosed from time immemorial.

Ibid., p. 195.

The well-known passage in the “Discourse of the Commonweal,” “Countries wheare most Inclosures be, are most wealthie, as essex, kent, devenshire, and such,” sufficiently establishes the ancient enclosure of the greater part of Essex. And though the evidence is not very full, it is, I think, sufficient to show that the enclosure of the corresponding part of Suffolk had a similar history. Celia Fiennes says that the journey from Ipswich to Woodbridge is “7 miles mostly Lanes, Enclosed countrys”; and from Woodbridge to Saxmundham “The wayes are pretty deep, mostly Lanes, very little Commons” (p. 107).

John Norden (1602) also makes mention of Suffolk methods of hedging.

The question then arises with regard to this region of ancient enclosure in Essex and Suffolk, whether it ever passed through the typical English common field system. To this question we are able to give an unhesitating answer.

In Suffolk, far away from any other Parliamentary enclosure, in the south-east corner of the county are the parishes of Orford and Iken. The enclosure at Orford was in 1881. There were but forty-six acres to enclose, and these lay in strips alternately belonging to the lord of the manor and to the Corporation of Orford. The existence of corporate property in this small spot of land preserved it from enclosure to such a late date.

The case of Iken appears to have been somewhat similar. It was enclosed in 1804. There was only the small area of 100 acres to enclose, comprising “certain open and common fields, meadows, commonable lands, and waste grounds.” The Marquis of Hertford was lord of the manor, and six individuals by name, and “divers others” are said to be the other proprietors of land. There is a special clause authorising the parish authorities, if they will, to accept rents from the Marquis of Hertford in lieu of allotments, so there must have been corporate property in the commonable lands, and this no doubt accounted for the survival of this small area of common field.

But the clearest evidence is from the town of Colchester. The borough is of great extent, and includes the four agricultural parishes of Greenstead, Bere Church, or West Donyland, Lexden and Mile End. In these four parishes, says Vancouver, “one-third of the arable land lies in half-yearly common fields” (p. 40). The Corporation of Colchester is to this day a very large owner of arable land; how it was enclosed, and how the Corporation, as distinct from the free-men, secured the property after the passing of the Municipal Corporations Act of 1835, I do not know. The important point is conveyed in the word “half-yearly.” The arable fields of Colchester were genuine common fields, subject to rights of common of pasture after harvest.

I think there can be little doubt that though much of Essex and Suffolk might have been ancient woodland, and have been enclosed directly from that condition, the primitive village community of Essex was approximately of the same type as that of central England.

NORFOLK.

Adequate material does not exist for a statistical survey of the enclosure of Norfolk, because of the disappointing habit which the promoters of Enclosure Acts for this county fell into about the year 1793, and persisted in later, of not making any statement with regard to the area covered by the Act. The best statement that we can make is that 297 parishes out of 682 were enclosed by Act of Parliament.

Before 1793 thirty-one parishes were enclosed by twenty-two Acts, the area covered by nineteen of which is stated, amounting altogether to 50,187 acres. The total area so enclosed was probably not less than 54,000 acres.

There were also eighty Enclosure Acts for the enclosure of common waste or pasture merely. In these also the area is stated for a small minority only.

We have already dealt with some peculiar features of Norfolk agriculture revealed by preambles of Enclosure Acts. The chief other fact which is striking in its enclosure history is that the county is divided by the chalk ridge, which passes through the centre of the county, from north to south, and which reaches the coast at Cromer, into two parts of approximately equal area. The patches of colour which indicate enclosure by Act of Parliament are scattered indifferently over the whole map of the county; but the significance of the colour varies. East Norfolk has all the aspect of a country of very early enclosure. The fields are small, the hedges are big and high, like Devonshire hedges, the roads are narrow and winding. The aspect recalls Kent’s previously quoted words. “There is a considerable deal of common field land in Norfolk, though a much smaller proportion than in many other counties; for notwithstanding common rights for great cattle exist in all of them, and even sheepwalk privileges in many, yet the natural industry of the people is such, that whenever a person can get 5 or 6 acres together, he plants a white-thorn edge round it, and sets an oak at every rod distance, which is consented to by a kind of general courtesy from one neighbour to another” (“Agriculture of Norfolk,” 1st Edition, p. 22). The Parliamentary enclosure which took place in a parish where the neighbours had been showing this courtesy to one another consisted mainly in the extinction of common rights over enclosed land.

The making of hedges had proceeded to such an extent in East Norfolk by the end of the seventeenth century, that an anonymous author who brought out an annotated edition of Tusser’s “Five hundred points of Husbandry,” and “Champion and Severall,” under the title “Tusser Redivivus,” in the year 1710, explains the term “woodland” (a term which Tusser really used as a synonym for “several” or enclosed land) to mean East Norfolk, saying that this district was so much enclosed in small fields with fine trees in the hedges, that it was known as “the Woodlands.”

At this time the western half of the county was still almost entirely open. Arthur Young wrote in 1771, “From forty to sixty years ago, all the Northern and Western and a part of the Eastern tracts of the county were sheepwalks, let so low as from 6d. to 1s. 6d. and 2s. an acre. Much of it was in this condition only thirty years ago. The great improvements have been made by reason of the following circumstances:

(1) By enclosing without the assistance of Parliament.

(2) By a spirited use of marle and clay.

(3) By the introduction of an excellent course of crops.

(4) The cultivation of hand hoed turnips.

(5) Clover and ray grass.

(6) Long leases.

(7) By the county being divided chiefly into large farms.

“Parliamentary inclosures are scarcely ever so complete and general as” (non-Parliamentary enclosure) “in Norfolk” (“Eastern Tour,” Vol. II., p. 150).

William Marshall supplies a confirmatory note. “Norfolk, it is probable (speaking generally of the county), has not borne grain, in abundance, much above a century. During the passed century” (the eighteenth) “a principal part of it was fresh land, a newly discovered country in regard to grain crops” (“Review of the Reports to the Board of Agriculture for the Eastern Department,” p. 314).

Enclosure in the western half of Norfolk and along the central chalk ridge in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, whether common field arable were included or not, meant the reverse of what it had meant in the first half of the sixteenth century--the conversion of land from sheeprun to arable land and to highly cultivated land. Kent, in a second edition of his report of Norfolk, published in 1796, estimated that two-thirds of the whole area of the county was then arable; and of the arable land three-quarters was enclosed, one-quarter in common field. In other words, one-half of the area of the county was enclosed arable, one-sixth common field arable. The remainder he describes as follows:

Meadows, parks, and upland pasture 126,692 acres. Unimproved commons 80,000 ″ Marsh lands 63,346 ″ Warrens and sheepwalks 63,346 ″

with small areas for woods, plantations, roads, lakes, rivers, and swamps. Whatever ancient common field arable had been enclosed before the beginning of the eighteenth century and converted into pasture, was apparently re-converted into arable before the end.

THE SOUTHERN MIDLANDS.

MIDDLESEX.

I have found very little information with regard to the enclosure of Middlesex beyond that obtained from the Enclosure Acts. It is remarkable that these should cover so large a part (19·7 per cent.) of the area of the county.

Of twenty-six Acts, covering 35,757 acres, twenty-three, covering 30,000 acres, belong to the period after 1793. The Board of Agriculture reporters, Thomas Baird and Peter Foot, tell us respectively (1) that there were about 50,000 acres under tillage in 1793 (“Agriculture of Middlesex,” p. 7), and (2) “The Common Fields in the county of Middlesex, which are at present in a good course of husbandry, form a large proportion as to the number of acres when compared to the cultivated enclosures” (Ibid. p. 72).

That the common fields were “in a good course of husbandry” very probably means that the exercise of common rights had been largely restricted, and it is not improbable that while some of the ancient common fields of Middlesex became converted into small dairy farms, others became market gardens by means of a very moderate amount of interchanging of properties and holdings.

HERTFORDSHIRE.

The county of Hertford is rather remarkable for the extent of open field land (common rights have so far decayed that one can hardly call it common field) persisting to the present day. Notes have already been given on Hitchin, Bygrave, Clothall, and Wallington. There were further no less than seventeen enclosures under the Act of 1845, a number only surpassed by Oxfordshire, and in a number of other parishes small remnants of common fields are indicated by the tithe maps.

But on the whole Hertfordshire was a county of early enclosure. When the Board of Agriculture survey was made only four parishes and a part of Hitchin had undergone Parliamentary enclosure; but the reporter says, “There are several small common fields in this county, but these are mostly by agreement among the owners and occupiers cultivated nearly in the same way as in the enclosed state” (D. Walker, “Agriculture of Hertfordshire,” p. 49).

Walter Blyth in 1649 included “Hartford” with “Essex, Kent, Surrey, Sussex,” etc., as enclosed counties (“The English Improver,” p. 49).

“An insurrection in hertfordshire for the comens at Northall and Cheshunt,” was, according to Hales, the first beginning of the enclosure riots and rebellions in the reign of Edward VI.

It is somewhat remarkable that Hertford was in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries so much more enclosed than the surrounding counties, than Middlesex as well as than Bedford and Cambridge, and even more enclosed than the part of Essex immediately adjoining.

Leland gives no account of the condition of the county with regard to enclosure; but as no earlier author than Blyth speaks of Hertford as an enclosed county, I am inclined to believe that its enclosure mainly took place in the sixteenth and in the first half of the seventeenth century. It is to be noticed that Hertford was excluded from the operation of the last (39 Elizabeth, c. 2) of the Depopulation Acts, requiring that all old arable land should continue under tillage and be cultivated according to the local custom.

BUCKINGHAM.

Buckingham is, on the whole, a county of late enclosure. A large proportion (34·2 per cent.) of the area was enclosed by Acts of Parliament; two-thirds of this enclosure belonging to the eighteenth and one-third to the nineteenth century.

The reporters to the Board of Agriculture, William James and Jacob Malcolm, supply a list of the parishes containing common fields in 1794, with an approximate statement of the area. The majority of these parishes have, of course, undergone Parliamentary enclosure since. By comparing their list with that of the Enclosure Acts and with the summary of the tithe documents, we find that the following seventeen parishes were enclosed without Acts between 1794 and the date of tithe commutation:--

Astwood Buckland Dinton Drayton Beauchamp Halton Great Hampden Little Hampden Hedgerley Horsendon Great Horwood Ickford Marsh Gibbon Medmenham Great Missenden Little Missenden Newton Longueville Quainton

The following five still had remains of common field at the time of tithe commutation, though the area was considerably reduced in each case:--

┌────────────────────────────┬─────────────────────────────┐ │ │ Common Field Acreage. │ │ ---- ├──────────────┬──────────────┤ │ │ In 1794. │ According to │ │ │ │ Tithe Map. │ ├────────────────────────────┼──────────────┼──────────────┤ │ │ Acres. │ Acres. │ │ Burnham and Lower Boveney │ 1000 │ 525 │ │ Chesham │ 300 │ 66 │ │ Dorney │ 600 │ 277 │ │ Eton │ 300 │ 181 │ │ Chipping Wycombe │ 200 │ 100 │ └────────────────────────────┴──────────────┴──────────────┘

As so much gradual non-Parliamentary enclosure took place during the nineteenth century, it is to be supposed that the same process was also going on right through the eighteenth century.

Buckingham is traversed by the Chiltern Hills, and so is divided into two distinct regions. About half the county lies north-west of the Chilterns, on a sub-cretaceous formation, like Bedfordshire, with fertile soil, and villages thickly scattered. The remainder consists of the chalky downs and the later formations, like most of Hertfordshire and Middlesex.

The enclosure of the south-east portion was earlier than that of the north-west part. Arthur Young in 1771 was much struck by the extent of the open fields in the latter part. The vale of Aylesbury, he says, was good clay, and open field (“Eastern Tour,” p. 18). From Aylesbury to Buckingham “nearly the whole country is open field, the soil among the richest I ever saw, black putrid clay” (p. 19). “As for the landlords, what in the name of wonder is the reason of their not enclosing! All this vale would make as fine meadows as any in the world” (p. 23). However, about Hockston (Hoggeston) he saw many new enclosures (p. 24). Hoggeston itself was never enclosed by Act, but several neighbouring villages had been enclosed by Acts passed previously to 1771.

An Act for the enclosure of the common field land of Aylesbury itself was passed in the same year.

Celia Fiennes passed through the same part of Buckinghamshire about eighty years before. From Stony Stratford to Great Horwood, she says, “this country is fruitfull, full of woods, Enclosures, and rich Ground. The little towns stand pretty thicke. You have many in view” (p. 97). This does not imply anything more than very partial enclosure; for Celia Fiennes, accustomed to the complete absence of hedges of her own part of Wiltshire, always notices enclosure rather than the absence of enclosure. That many little towns should be in sight of one passing through a flat country implies that it is open, except close to the villages.

Leland, in 1536, came from Bedfordshire along the boundary between Herts and Bucks and into the extreme south of Buckinghamshire, and found that enclosures had already begun. He describes the whole county in one luminous sentence, “Looke as the countrye of the Vale of Alesbury for the most part is clean barren of wood, and is champaine, soe is all the Chilterne well woodid and full of Enclosures” (fol. 192 a).

It seems quite clear, then, that the enclosure movement of the south-east of Berkshire was ancient; that it moved up the long slope of the Chilterns from the Thames and Middlesex, but stopped at the open chalk downs which marked the summit of the range; and that the movement which affected the enclosure of the Vale of Aylesbury and all north-western Buckinghamshire was part of the general enclosure movement of the Midlands, spreading southwards from Leicester and Northampton, as we have seen it spread eastwards.

OXFORD.

Oxfordshire may be termed a sister county to Buckinghamshire; but by far the greater part of the county lies north-west of the Chiltern Hills, which occupy the south east extremity. We find, as we should expect, that the history of the enclosure of Oxfordshire resembles that of Bedfordshire and of North-West Buckinghamshire; 45·6 per cent. of the area of Oxfordshire underwent Parliamentary enclosure compared with 46·0 per cent. of Bedfordshire and 34·2 per cent. of Bucks; in Oxford about 62 per cent. of the total Parliamentary enclosure belonged to the eighteenth century, in Bedford 54 per cent., in Buckinghamshire 66 per cent. Oxford, however, is remarkable for the extent of the enclosure (eighteen Acts enclosing 23,578 acres) under the General Enclosure Act of 1845.

Richard Davis, the Board of Agriculture reporter, while he gives a very full statement of the methods of cultivating the common fields of the county, makes no statement with regard to their extent.

As in Buckinghamshire, partial enclosure, particularly in the immediate neighbourhood of the villages, had taken place before the eighteenth century. Celia Fiennes found “Oxford Environ’d round with woods and Enclosure, yet not so neare as to annoy the town which stands pleasant and Compact,” and from the Malvern Hills she says “Oxford, Gloucestershire, &c. appears in plaines, enclosures, woods and rivers and many great hills” (p. 33). By “plaines” stretches of common fields are to be understood.

Leland found no enclosure in Oxfordshire in any part he visited.

THE NORTH OF ENGLAND.

LINCOLN.

Lincoln and the East Riding of Yorkshire have a similar enclosure history. Each was largely enclosed by Acts of Parliament; in each nearly four-fifths of the Parliamentary enclosure was effected in the eighteenth century; in each enclosure was not marked either by a general conversion of arable into pasture, as in Leicestershire, or by a general conversion of pasture into arable, as in Norfolk; in both a considerable proportion of the common-field land before enclosure was worked on the two-field system. As much as 40·1 per cent. of the East Riding of Yorkshire is covered by the Acts for enclosing common-field parishes, and 29·3 per cent. of Lincolnshire; but for the latter county there are also Acts for enclosing great extents of commonable marshes; and including these and other Acts for enclosing commons and wastes, about 35 per cent. of Lincolnshire has undergone Parliamentary enclosure.

A good deal of non-Parliamentary enclosure took place during the nineteenth century. Thomas Stone, the Board of Agriculture reporter, estimates that there were in 1793, 200,000 acres of commons, wastes, and unimbanked salt marshes, and 268,000 acres of common fields. He over-estimates the total area of the county so much, that to rectify his figures we have to deduct 10 per cent.--this leaves 421,000 acres of common fields and other commonable lands. There have been enclosed by Parliamentary action since 207,659 acres by Acts for enclosing common-field parishes, and about 74,000 acres by Acts for enclosing other commonable lands; if we suppose there are 12,000 acres of common fields and commons surviving, this accounts for 293,659 acres, and leaves about 127,000 acres unaccounted for--i.e., enclosed by non-Parliamentary process during the nineteenth century.

If the same proportion between the scope of the two methods be supposed to have held good during the earlier part of the period of Parliamentary enclosure, it would follow that at the beginning of that period (1730) Lincolnshire was about half enclosed and half open.

From the references to Lincolnshire by our tourists, one would expect to find a less degree of enclosure. Arthur Young, in 1768, that is, after fifty-three Enclosure Acts for Lincolnshire had been passed, found the country from Stamford to Grimsthorpe mostly open (“Northern Tour,” p. 77), from Grimsthorpe to Colsterworth chiefly open, Colsterworth to Grantham, enclosed on the right hand, open on the left (p. 84), and from Grantham to Newark all open (p. 94). Celia Fiennes, about 1695, following the same road, found no enclosures but a “fine champion country.” Leland gives the same testimony.

By comparing Celia Fiennes with Arthur Young, we have evidence of enclosure proceeding in the south-west of Lincolnshire between 1695 and 1768, which is partly, but not entirely, accounted for by Parliamentary enclosure. The three descriptions give the impression that up to the beginning of Parliamentary enclosure Lincolnshire was much less than half enclosed. It is, however, not difficult to reconcile this with the conclusion inferred from Thomas Stone’s statement and the Enclosure Acts; for none of the three travellers touched more than the western part of the county. No doubt the eastern part was earlier enclosed. This is, indeed, indicated by the distribution of Parliamentary enclosure, as shown by the map.

THE EAST RIDING OF YORKSHIRE.

We have no estimate of the extent of common-field land in the East Riding from the Board of Agriculture reporter; but Arthur Young, in his “Northern Tour,” describes the part betwene Sheffield and Goole and the East Riding as about half open and half enclosed (pp. 172–210). He further says (p. 178) that in the East Riding “Inclosures and turnpikes were carried on with great spirit during the late war” (i.e., “The Seven Years’ War”). Nine Acts were passed for the enclosure of eleven parishes during that war; but this can only have been a part of the spirited proceedings.

As in the case of Bedfordshire, when we allow for marshes along the Humber, and hill country on the Wolds, which never passed through the common-field system, for the indubitable non-Parliamentary enclosure proceeding side by side with Parliamentary enclosure, and particularly for the active enclosure spoken of by Arthur Young in the middle of the eighteenth century, there remains but little enclosure of common fields to be attributed to earlier centuries. Some such enclosure must be assigned to the sixteenth century. The Commission of 1517 inquired into nearly the whole riding and found 1560 acres of arable land enclosed, 1545 acres of which were laid down to grass (W. S. Leadam, “The Domesday of Inclosure”).

Leland also found some enclosure in the East Riding, which he traversed pretty completely. (See Appendix C.)

We have mention of a park and of enclosed land in four different places, though in each of the four only for about a mile of the route.

THE NORTH AND WEST RIDINGS.

The North and West Ridings of Yorkshire were much earlier enclosed than the East Riding. This is the natural consequence of the fact that in early times they possessed a much smaller proportion of arable land, and, as I have shown in a previous chapter, the more pasture predominates, the less the common-field arable is able to resist the tendency to enclosure. The difference between the proportions of the three ridings covered by Enclosure Acts, by which common fields were enclosed is striking: East Riding 40·1 per cent., West Riding 11·6, North Riding 6·3. But this understates the case, for I include all Acts whereby any arable common field at all is enclosed, and in the North and West Ridings many of these Acts are for the enclosure of a great stretch of moor and a mere remnant of common field, and these unduly swell the total. Examples are an Act in 1791 for the enclosure of 6000 acres of common, and 30 acres of “mesne inclosures,” i.e., of intermixed tilled land which is separated from the surrounding common pasture by a hedge; an Act in 1801 for the enclosure of 150 acres of common field and common meadow, and 4000 acres of common pasture at Kettlewell and Conistree; an Act in 1815 for the enclosure of a wretched remnant of nine acres of common field arable, and 6330 acres of common. The existence of such remnants of common field arable bears witness to the gradual enclosure which would have entirely extinguished them a little later, if the opportunity of the enclosure of the commons had not been seized to bring them also within the scope of the Acts.

William Marshall’s account of the enclosure of the Vale of Pickering has already been given. Arthur Young in 1768 describes the view from the road from Kirby Moorside to Cleveland as one of “extensive valleys cut into innumerable inclosures” (“Northern Tour,” Vol. II., p. 93). Enclosure was the rule all the way from Driffield northwards.

Celia Fiennes kept more to the West Riding. From Darlington to Richmond, “I went through Lanes and Woods, an Enclosed country” (p. 183). Richmond to Boroughbridge was for 3 or 4 miles through narrow lanes, then for 5 or 6 through common (p. 184). From Knaresborough to Leeds “it was much in Lanes and uphills and Downhills, some little part was open common” (p. 184). From Leeds to Eland “much in enclosures” (p. 185). About Eland “all the hills full of inclosures” (ibid.). From Eland to Blackstone Edge, “these parts have some resemblance to Darbyshire, only here are more woody places and inclosures” (p. 186).

The earlier history of the enclosure of most of the West Riding and North Riding is summed up in the passage from Walter Blyth:--“Woodlands wont before inclosure to be relieved by the Champion, and now become gallant corn countries.... West of Warwick, North of Worcester, Staffordshire, Shropshire, Derbyshire, Yorkshire, and all the Countries thereabouts” (“English Improver,” p. 40). For while Celia Fiennes found so much enclosure, Leland found chiefly moor and forest, yet more enclosure than “Chaumpaine.”

The great contrast between the description given by Celia Fiennes and that given by Leland sufficiently confirms the statement of Walter Blyth, which we may amplify as follows:--Enclosure made little progress in Yorkshire before the middle of the sixteenth century, but thenceforward it was pushed steadily on mainly by the tilling and enclosing of common wastes and pastures, and the clearing and cultivation of forests in the North and West Riding, and the common-field arable also underwent division and gradual enclosure. That the Vale of Pickering in the North Riding and the district between Sheffield and Goole in the West Riding, being the parts where arable common fields most predominated, were the last of the cultivated districts to be enclosed; the Vale of Pickering being mainly enclosed by non-Parliamentary means in the first half of the eighteenth century; the South Yorkshire district being largely enclosed by Acts of Parliament in the second half of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century.

Lastly attention must be drawn to the great number of Acts of Enclosure for Yorkshire enclosing common pasture or waste only.

NOTTINGHAMSHIRE.

Nottinghamshire may be said to consist of an ancient “champain” district, which has an enclosure history exactly similar to that of the neighbouring districts of Northamptonshire and Lincolnshire, and an ancient forest district.

The county as a whole has a percentage of Parliamentary enclosure, 32·5, which must be considered high when allowance is made for the fact that so much land must have been enclosed directly from the forest state without passing through the common-field system. The two surviving examples of common-field parishes, Laxton and Eakring, have been before described; Bole also was till recently unenclosed.

The Board of Agriculture reporter, Robert Lowe, attempted to give an account of the state of enclosure of the different parishes in 1793, but evidently found it beyond his powers to make the lists at all complete. But his list of unenclosed parishes enables us to give the following nine parishes as enclosed without Parliamentary intervention since 1793:--

Askham Kirklington Rampton Saundby Treswell North Wheatley South Wheatley Kneesall Widnerpool

together with the hamlets of Ompton and Clipston.

And his list of recently-enclosed parishes enables us to give the following nine parishes as enclosed without Parliamentary sanction shortly before 1793:--

Bingham Carcolston Selston Shelton Cotham Kneeton Orston Sibthorpe Thoroton

together with the hamlets of Aslacton, Newton, Oldwork, and Cropwell Butler.

All these had been enclosed, he says, within the previous twenty years.

The fact that the extent of non-Parliamentary enclosure in Notts., in the period from 1773 to 1793 is just equal, according to this, to that of the non-Parliamentary enclosure after 1793, is a slight clue to the probable extent of non-Parliamentary enclosure in the eighteenth century in other counties similarly circumstanced.

We should expect, then, to find the part of the county which was anciently tilled, practically entirely open, at the beginning of the eighteenth century. This is confirmed by the evidence, so far as it goes. Celia Fiennes says: “From Nottingham Castle I saw a prospect more than 20 mile about. The land is very rich and fruitfull, so the Green meadows with the fine corn ffields which seemes to bring forth in handfulls. They soe most of Barley and have great encrease, there is all sorts of Graine besides, and plaines and Rivers and Great woods and Little Towns all in view” (p. 56).

Leland was similarly struck with South Nottingham. Coming south from Rotherham he found “very woody Grounde,” then “hethy,” then “Corny and Paster,” then “Ground very fruteful of Corne” (Vol. V., fol. 91, 92). But when he got past Nottingham the view made him burst into Latin. “After that I cam a little beyond Trent I saw all Champaine Grounde undecunque within sight, and very little wood but infinita frugum copia.”

DERBY.

The enclosure history of Derbyshire closely resembles that of the West Riding of Yorkshire. A somewhat larger part (16·5 per cent.) of it underwent enclosure by Acts for the enclosure of common-field arable in conjunction with other commonable land, and about 5 per cent. more by Acts for the enclosure of common pasture and waste. The common-field arable is frequently called “mesne inclosures” (sometimes “mesne field”), showing that the idea of a hedge was that it surrounded the corn crops to keep out beasts, not the pasture to keep them in. Celia Fiennes gives a general description of the county: “You see neither hedge nor tree but only low drye stone walls round some ground, Else its only hills and dales as thick as you Can Imagine” (p. 77). “All Darbyshire is but a world of peaked hills.”

It will be remembered that it had by 1649, according to Blyth, become a gallant corn country through enclosure. Leland passed it by.

DURHAM.

The history of the enclosure of Durham is told by the Board of Agriculture reporter in a sentence: “In this county the lands, or common fields of townships, were for the most part inclosed soon after the Restoration.... The common fields are few in number and of small extent” (Joseph Granger, “Agriculture of Durham,” p. 43).

All other evidence simply confirms this statement. The Enclosure Acts for enclosing common fields are but five in number, and the most extensive of them covers only 800 acres, of which part only is common field. (The Enclosure Acts of the other type are numerous in comparison and extensive in scope, one covering 10,000, one 20,000, one 25,000 and one 28,000 acres).

The statement, too, is confirmed by two contemporary authors, previously quoted, and by the records of Leland and Celia Fiennes. Celia Fiennes says that from Newcastle to Durham “the whole county looks like a fruitful woody place” (p. 178), and she compares it to the neighbourhood of Blackheath (p. 179), from which we must infer some open common, but all the cultivated land in a state of enclosure.

Leland traversed the whole county but found no enclosure. Nor does he describe any part of the county as “champaine” but merely as good corn, or grass, or moor, or mountain. It is, I think, safe to conclude that there were no extensive stretches of common-field arable within view; but also, one is inclined to infer that enclosure had not yet begun.

Further, there is an illuminating note from Arthur Young (1768): “Farms become large on entering Northumberland, after the small ones of Yorkshire and Durham” (“Northern Tour,” Vol. III., p. 61).

It has to be borne in mind that the disorder on the Border checked the development of agriculture till the accession of James I., probably at least as far south as the North Riding of Yorkshire. With the gradual increase of population, and improvement of roads, cultivation spread over the wastes; first in Yorkshire, then in Durham, then in Northumberland. At first the agent was a peasant, carving a small farm for his own maintenance, later a landlord or farmer able to employ labourers and work a large farm.

That the enclosure of Northumberland took place later than that of Durham, and was the work of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, is on a priori grounds probable, and is further indicated by the fact that Celia Fiennes makes no mention of enclosure in her account of her ride from the Scottish border into Durham. A further reference to the enclosure of Northumberland will be made when we come to Cumberland.

THE SOUTH-EAST OF ENGLAND.

KENT.

Kent is certainly a county of very ancient enclosure. This is clearly indicated by the fact that not a single Act for the enclosure of common field has been passed by the whole county. It is also witnessed by a whole series of writers, from Boys, the Board of Agriculture reporter, who says, “There are no Common Fields in Kent,” to the author of the “Discourse of the Commonweal,” “those counties which be most enclosed, as essex, kent, devenshire.”

“Agriculture of Kent” (1796), p. 44.

But in Kent it would appear that if some investigator as careful as Vancouver had at a somewhat earlier date reported on the agriculture of Kent, he would have found some remains of arable common fields in the far eastern corner of the county. William Lambarde, in the “Perambulation of Kent,” 1570, says: “The soile is for the most part bountifull, consisting indifferently of arable, pasture, meadow and woodland. Howbeit of these wood occupieth the greatest portion even to this day except it be towards the east, which coast is more champaigne than the residue” (p. 3).

More than a hundred years later, Celia Fiennes says: “Canterbury to Dover was a good road and a sort of Champion Country” (p. 103). It was open, it was mainly arable land, but it differed in some respect from the Champain of the Midlands; and again, a hundred years later, William Marshall writes in 1798 of the Isle of Thanet: “The whole country lies open, excepting in the immediate environs of villages.... The present productions, if we cut off the marsh lands, may be said to be arable crops” (“Southern District,” Vol. II., p. 6).

This was written, it will be noticed, just after Boys had written his statement that there were no common fields in Kent. We can reconcile the two statements if we suppose that by the disuse of rights of common, and by the consolidation of scattered properties and holdings by mutual exchanges, the characteristics of common field had been abolished, while in consequence of there never having arisen any tendency to convert the arable land into pasture, no necessity for the expensive labour of making hedges arose. But I have no evidence to show at what date the open arable land ceased to be common field.

The question arises whether the common-field system of the ordinary English type ever existed in this part of Kent; and here again there is no decisive evidence that I know of by which to answer the question. The fact that the similar question for Essex is answered in the affirmative by the Colchester common fields perhaps counts for something; and that the Surrey common fields come at Croydon close to the county boundary, for a little more. At Eltham there is an old charity called the Fifteen Penny Lands; only a few acres remain in the form of land, the rest having been sold and the proceeds invested; but there still remains an acre described as “Land in East Field, Dockland’s Shot.” In 1578 a member of the Roper family, perhaps Margaret Roper, the daughter of Sir Thomas More, or her husband, bequeathed to Eltham “a parcel of ground containing by estimation four acres, in the common field, called East Field.” Eltham was a royal manor, hence likely to preserve old customs to a later date than other manors, and the arrangement of ancient common fields, particularly towards Eltham Common, seems clearly traceable. In Addington, an ecclesiastical manor, it seems easy to trace the signs of ancient common, commonable meadow, and common fields.

Geo. Rathbone, “History of the Eltham Charities,” p. 5.

THE WEALD.

Map of Hampshire, Surrey and Sussex showing land enclosed: before the General Enclosure Act of 1801. between 1802 and 1845. under General Enclosure Act of 1845. Scale 1:1,000,000 or 1 inch = 15.78 Stat. miles.]

The whole of the Weald of Kent, Surrey, and Sussex appears never to have passed through the common-field system. This is indicated in the first place by the fact that there have been no Enclosure Acts for enclosing common fields. Secondly, we have what may be termed the expert evidence of William Marshall, the shrewdest of all the eighteenth-century agricultural writers, and the only one really interested in the origin and early history of the common-field system. He says of the Maidstone district, “the entire district appears to have been inclosed from the forest or pasture state. I observed not a trace of common-field lands” (“Southern District,” Vol. I., p. 21). Of the Weald of Kent, “The whole is in a state of inclosure, and mostly divided by wide woodland belts, into well sized fields” (Ibid., p. 345). Of the Weald of Sussex, “... there being, I believe, no trace at present, of common fields having ever gained an establishment” (Vol. II., p. 100). “The whole of the district (between Pulborough and Midhurst) under view is in a state of Inclosure; except a few small heathlets and commons; and except a small remnant of common field in the Maam soil.” The Maam soil, he says, is a vein of land of peculiar nature at the foot of the chalk hills, to be identified, presumably, with the Gault formation.

In 1649, seeing that a considerable amount of common field survived in the part of Surrey north of the North Downs, until the time of Parliamentary enclosure, and some in Sussex south of the South Downs, and in spite of this, Blith speaks of Surrey and Sussex as enclosed counties, enclosure must at least have predominated in the Weald.

Celia Fiennes adds a confirmation. Sussex, she says, is “much in blind, dark lanes” (p. 32). This implies narrow roads, with well-grown hedges, that is, ancient enclosure. For roads are everywhere broad in proportion as the industrial state at which enclosure takes place is advanced. Again, from Calvery to Branklye, “the way is thro’ lanes, being an Enclosed Country for the most part, as is much of Sussex which joyns to Kent” (p. 112). And the view from Boxhill was that of “a fruitfull vale, full of inclosures and woods” (p. 32).

NORTH SURREY.

The part of Surrey which lies on the north slope of the North Downs, from the Kent boundary to the Bagshot sands, contained up till the time of Parliamentary enclosure a considerable proportion of common-field land, as may be seen by the appendix and the map.

James and Malcom, the reporters for Surrey, give a list of the chief common fields remaining in 1793 (“Agriculture of Surrey,” p. 43), from which we find that besides Merrow, enclosed about 1870, East and West Clandon, Ashtead and Thorpe have been enclosed without Acts since. In each of these four cases enclosure took place before the date of tithe commutation.

But even this part of Surrey must be considered as on the whole an early enclosed district; as much so, in fact, as the corresponding slope of the Chiltern Hills, and the Hertfordshire Hills on the other side of the Thames.

THE SEA COAST OF SUSSEX.

The western part of the south slope of the Sussex Downs has a few examples of common fields surviving to a late date, but they are fewer in number and smaller in area than on the north slope of the Surrey Downs. William Marshall says: “In the Isle of Selsey I observed some common field land; also about Chichester, in the year 1791” (Southern District, Vol. II., p. 230.) The accompanying map shows the parishes enclosed by Acts.

WESSEX.

Under the heading of Wessex I include the counties of Hampshire, Wiltshire, Berkshire and Dorset. There is a close resemblance between the enclosure history of each of these; while Gloucester is a connecting link between them and the Midland counties on the one hand, and the south-western on the other. It may be described as at present a country of very large farms, with a very large proportion of open down, the cultivated land itself remaining remarkably open, being divided in general into large rectangular fields by hedges which are frequently full of gaps. Rights of common here more than elsewhere have decayed, irrespective of actual enclosure; and using the word enclosure in its broad sense, it may be said that in Wessex the process of enclosure has least of all taken visible shape, either in the growing of hedges, or building of walls, or in the conversion of arable to pasture, or pasture to arable, or in the scattering of the habitations of the inhabitants over the whole parish; but that it has most profoundly affected the social life of the villages. The case of Grimstone, in which the nine “livings” for generations held by about a dozen different copyholders, was converted into a single farm, and by no means an exceptionally large one, is typical of the whole district. This aspect has been previously treated. What here has to be noticed is that these characteristics of Wessex enclosure make it more difficult to trace the progress, at least so far as the higher lands are concerned. If Celia Fiennes could revisit the neighbourhood of Amesbury and Stonehenge, she would probably again describe it as “all on the downs, a fine champion country.” It is fortunate that we have the accounts of two such expert observers as Thomas Davis and William Marshall. They wrote practically at the same date, Marshall apparently in 1792, Davis in 1793; but as Marshall confines himself to the actual condition, while Davis deals with the past, he must here take precedence.

“THE WESTERN CHALK HILLS.

“Basingstoke to Salisbury.--The state of inclosure varies. To the eastward the country is mostly inclosed, much of it in large, square, regular inclosures. More westward, it is entirely open; as are the tops of the higher hills throughout. Extensive views, with no other break, than what is given by corn or flocks, fallows or the sheep fold.

“Environs of Salisbury.--To the southward of the town there are some well-sized, square fields, with good live hedges (at least on three sides) apparently of forty or fifty years’ growth; yet, extraordinary as it is, many of these fields lie open to the roads; the fences on the sides next the lanes lying in a state of neglect. And, to the north of the Avon, the country for many miles every way, lies open, unless about villages and hamlets, and along the narrow bottoms of the watered valleys. To the eastward of Salisbury an attempt has been made at inclosure; the ruins of the hedges are still evident; broken banks, with here and there a hawthorn. And similar instances are observable in other parts of the Downs.

“Are we to infer from hence, that chalk down lands are not proper to be kept in a state of inclosure? Or that where sheep are kept in flocks, and few cattle are kept, fences are not requisite? Or is the foliage of shrubs a natural and favourite food of sheep, and hence, in a country chiefly stocked with sheep, it is difficult to preserve a live hedge from destruction?

“Ludgershall to Basingstoke.--The country is wholly inclosed: excepting a few plots to the right; mostly in large square fields, doubtless from a state of open down; the hedges in general of a Middle Age; some instances of vacant inclosure.

“With respect to the present state of appropriation of this tract of country, the mere traveller is liable to be deceived. From the more public roads, the whole appears to be in a state of divided property. But on a closer examination, much of it is found to be in a state of commonage. In the immediate environs of Salisbury, there are evident remains of a common field, lying in narrow strips, intermixed, in the south of England manner; and not far from it, a common cow pasture and a common meadow. About Mere” (on the Somerset border of Wiltshire) “I observed the same appearances. In the Valley of Amesbury much of the land remains, I understand, under similar circumstances, though they do not so evidently appear in the arable lands, which by the aggregation of estates, or of farms, or by exchanges among landlords and their tenants, lie mostly in well-sized pieces. But the after-eatage, whether of the stubbs or the meadows, is enjoyed in common. And the grass downs of the common field townships are in a state of common pasture the year round; being stinted by the arable lands” (“Southern District,” p. 308, etc.).

I.e., the whole of the district he calls “the Western Chalk hills.”

“After-eatage.” This is Marshall’s variant of “average,” showing his theory of the etymology of the word, a theory which might have been suggested to him by the quaint phrase common in Enclosure Acts: “The averages whereof are eaten and enjoyed by the proprietors according to a recognised stint.”

One fact to be noticed is that Hampshire was earlier enclosed than Wiltshire; which is in accordance with what one would have expected. Enclosure spread westwards into Hampshire from Surrey and Sussex.

Davis I have previously quoted. “The greater part of this county (Wiltshire) was formerly, and at no very remote period, in the hands of great proprietors. Almost every manor had its resident lord, who held part of the lands in demesne, and granted out the rest by copy or lease to under tenants, usually for three lives renewable. A state of commonage, and particularly of open common fields, was peculiarly favourable to this tenure. Inclosures naturally tend to its extinction.

“The North-West of Wiltshire being much better adapted to inclosures and to sub-division of property than the South, was inclosed first; while the South-East or Down district, has undergone few inclosures and still fewer sub-divisions” (“Agriculture of Wiltshire,” p. 8).

We have previously seen that Cobbett, traversing that same South-East district of Wiltshire, found in 1825 the common field or “tenantry” system completely superseded by that of great farms. Parliamentary enclosure only partly effected the change, which appears to have been so complete in the space of a single generation, 1793–1825. The violent fluctuations in the price of grain during the great war, the wholesale ruin of farmers in 1815 and 1816, the abuse of the Poor Law peculiarly rampant in Wiltshire, by which the peasants who held such little holdings as we have observed in Fordington and Stratton and Grimstone, by lease or copy, were compelled to pay in their rates the wages of the labourers employed by the great farmers who were superseding them, and the decay of home industries to which Cobbett bears witness, all these were complementary parts of the social transition, each assisting all the others, and all together converting the tiller of the soil from the peasant with a medieval status, a responsible member of a self-governing village community, into a pauperised, half-starved labourer.

Though North-West Wiltshire was enclosed earlier than the South-East, Berkshire was enclosed later than Wiltshire as a whole. This is indicated by the scope and distribution of Enclosure Acts. Parliamentary enclosure covers 26·0 per cent. of Berkshire, 24·1 per cent. of Wiltshire. Of the total 120,002 acres enclosed by Act in Berkshire, 42,631 acres was enclosed in the eighteenth century; 77,371 acres in the nineteenth. In Wiltshire the proportions are reversed; 126,060 acres were enclosed in the eighteenth century, 86,073 acres in the nineteenth.

The non-Parliamentary enclosure in the nineteenth century was peculiarly active in Berkshire. William Pearce, the Board of Agriculture surveyor, computed that in 1794 the common fields and downs occupied 220,000 acres; forests, wastes, and commons, 40,000; and the enclosed lands, including parks and woods, only 170,000 acres (“Agriculture of Berkshire,” p. 13). He further assures us that at least half of the arable land was in common fields (p. 49). As rather less than 20 per cent. of the total area of the county was enclosed by Acts at a later date, it would follow that about 30 per cent. of its area was enclosed without Acts after 1793; and from my own inquiries I can quite believe this conclusion is accurate. Enclosure under the general Acts of 1836 and 1840 may have been specially extensive in Berkshire.

Dorset underwent enclosure at an earlier period. The percentage of Parliamentary enclosure is only 8·7, which is similar to that of Hampshire, 6.0; and there is no evidence of very extensive non-Parliamentary enclosure in the nineteenth century. Stevenson in 1812 reported, “There are but few uninclosed fields remaining” (“Agriculture of Dorset,” p. 194); and the earlier reporter, Claridge, in 1794, said, “Very few parishes in this county have of late years been enclosed” (“Agriculture of Dorset,” p. 46). In the intervening period only fourteen Acts enclosing sixteen parishes were passed; Dorset must therefore have been mainly enclosed before the time of the American War; enclosure having no doubt spread eastwards from Devonshire, which was a very old enclosed county.

Celia Fiennes adds little to our information, except that she says the Vale of the White Horse, in Berkshire, “extends a vast way, a rich jnclosed country” (p. 19), that there were “Good lands, meadows, woods and jnclosures” in the Isle of Purbeck, (p. 6), and that the country round “Stonidge,” like that round Newtontony, was “most champion and open, husbandry mostly corn and sheep” (p. 10). But there is a significant passage in John Norden, which shows that the characteristic Wiltshire and Dorsetshire common-field management in 1600 prevailed over all four counties. “In Dorset, Wiltshire, Hamshire, Barkeshire, and other places champion, the farmers do much inrich their land indeed with the sheepfold” (Book V., p. 232).

Leland, however, is full of information. He came into Berkshire at Wallingford, and rode thence to Abingdon and to Oxford. The first touch of description is “About this Sinodune beginneth the fruteful Vale of White Horse--this Vale is not plentifulle of woodde” (Vol. II., fol. 14). This must be compared with Celia Fiennes’ description of the same Vale, “a rich jnclosed country.” He next proceeded westwards along the southern side of the Thames. “From this place” (Hinxey hill, one mile from Oxford) the hilly ground was “meately woody for the space of a mile, and thens 10 miles al by Chaumpain, and sum Corne, but most pasture, to Farington.” He crossed the river and entered Gloucestershire, but turning south entered Wiltshire, and found the eight miles from Cirencester to Malmesbury “about a Mile on Furse then al by Champayne Ground, fruteful of corne and Grasse, but very little wood” (fol. 26). To Chippenham “al the Ground on that side of the Ryver was Chaumpayne” (fol. 28) but towards Bradford “the countre beginneth to wax woddy” (fol. 30); and then he went west into Somerset, Devon and Cornwall. He came back into Dorset from Axmouth, and in the extreme western part of Dorset gives no distinct description of the state of enclosure--it is “meately good ground” or “corne, pasture and wood;” but from Melbury to Frome was “vj miles stille by Champaine ground on an high rigge” (Vol. III., fol. 47). He came through Weymouth and Poole, and specified neither enclosure nor champain, till he reaches the north-west corner of the county; but from Hoston to Cranbourne is “al by Champain Ground having nother Closure nor Wood,” and all the way to Salisbury continues “al by Champayne” (fol. 56). Again, “all the way from Salisbury to Winchester is Champayne,” but from Winchester to Southampton, while there is “mouch drye feren Ground,” “the most part of the Ground betwixt is enclosid and reasonably woddyd” (fol. 74).

To Portsmouth enclosure predominated in the cultivated land. There is “much enclosid and Hethy Ground myxt with Ferne” (fol. 79), and “the Ground within the Isle of Portsmouth is partely enclosid” (fol. 82). Turning north there was some “playn Ground” before entering Bere forest, afterwards “enclosid Ground” to Bishops Waltham, and for three miles beyond; the remaining four to Winchester being “Champain” (fol. 83).

But particularly in Dorset, instead of describing the land as enclosed, or “Champain,” he frequently uses such expressions as “meately well woddid” or “good Corne and sum Grasse,” which it is difficult to interpret in terms of enclosure. The choice of such expressions probably implies (1) that there is not much actual enclosure by hedges, and (2) that there are no extensive arable common fields. Such descriptions would suit land passing directly from the condition of forest or moor into separate cultivation, but in which the cultivated patches were not as yet enclosed with hedges; or a district in which small arable common fields were surrounded by such later extensions of cultivation. But leaving Dorset in doubt, it is clear from Leland’s notes that enclosure was well begun in the south of Hampshire, while the country to the north was all open.

In the above journey Leland skirted the central chalk district; later he passed directly through it, going from Oxford through Abingdon, Lambourn, Marlborough and Devizes to Trowbridge. He passed the forests of Savernake and Blake, but all the cultivated land is described as “champayne” (Vol. VII., Part 2, fol. 63–7).

To sum up, we find that in the south of Hampshire, the cultivated land was early enclosed, and also probably in the south and west of Dorset, that enclosure gradually spread from the middle of the sixteenth century into the rest of the four counties, the movement attacking the “champain” district on three sides, on the east from Surrey, on the south from the early enclosed district between Winchester and Southampton and Portsmouth, and in the west from Devon and Somerset; the progress of enclosure appears to have been practically confined to Dorset and Hampshire in the seventeenth century; to have had the north-west of Wiltshire for its chief scene in the greater part of the eighteenth century, and finally to have attacked south-east Wiltshire and Berkshire, the former in the first quarter, the latter throughout the first half, of the nineteenth century.

GLOUCESTER AND WORCESTER.

The whole of Gloucester, with the exception of the Forest of Dean and its neighbourhood in the west, has scattered over it parishes enclosed by Acts of Parliament; and the enclosure so effected amounted to nearly a quarter (22·5 per cent.) of the whole area of the county. The rich land in the Severn Valley was the latest enclosed district. William Marshall tells us that in 1789 “perhaps half the vale is undivided property.” (“Rural Economy of Gloucestershire,” Vol. I., p. 16.) As enclosure by Act of Parliament, and doubtless also without Acts, had been proceeding vigorously since 1726, it is probable that at the earlier date nearly the whole was in “a state of commonage.” Of the Cotswold Hills, Marshall says: “Thirty years ago (i.e., in 1759) this district lay almost entirely in an open state, namely, in arable common fields, sheep-walk, and cow-down. At present it may be said to be in a state of Inclosure, though some few townships yet remain open.” (Ibid., Vol. II., p. 9.)

I have already pointed out that in Gloucestershire enclosure without Acts was specially easy, in consequence of the custom of holding land. The ancient custom of “copyhold by three lives renewable” had very generally been converted into “leasehold by three lives renewable,” the difference being that the lord of the manor’s option of accepting a new life became real instead of nominal. It was easy for a landlord who wished to enclose to convert each such lease as it fell in to one for a short period of years; and it was in this way, Marshall says, the enclosure of the Cotswold Hills was mainly effected.

The south-west of Gloucestershire, towards Somerset, to a considerable extent shared in the early enclosure of that county; though for Somerset we have also to say that while the western half was, like Devonshire, very early enclosed, the eastern half to a certain extent shared in the comparatively late enclosure Gloucestershire and the north-west of Wiltshire, as the map shows.

Worcester similarly shows the transition between South Warwickshire, the enclosure history of which has been dealt with, and the counties on the Welsh border. Pomeroy reported in 1794 to the Board of Agriculture: “The lands are in general inclosed; there are, however, some considerable tracts in open fields.” About 45,000 acres have since been enclosed by Acts for enclosing common fields inter alia; which is perhaps as large an area as the phrase “considerable tracts” is intended to describe. Just one-sixth of the total area of the county is covered by the whole series of such Acts, mainly in the eastern half of the county. Leland tells us “most part of all Somersetshire is yn hegge rowys enclosid” with elms, and from his other notes we find that the north-west half of Worcestershire was enclosed by about 1540, and the southern extremity of Gloucestershire about half enclosed by that date. We further find, from evidence quoted above, that the rest of Worcestershire shared the enclosure experience of Warwick and Leicester, though probably at a somewhat earlier date, that is, undergoing enclosure mainly in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, though in the end the process dragged on and was only completed after the Act of 1845 was passed. We find the Cotswold Hills enclosed mainly between 1750 and 1790, the Severn Valley undergoing enclosure during this period, but only about half enclosed at the end of it, and enclosure continuing steadily to the very end of the nineteenth century, with Elmstone Hardwicke still remaining uninclosed, waiting for leases for lives to expire.

THE CELTIC FRINGE.

The part of the country which remains to be considered is that in which the problem is complicated by the question whether the primitive village community was of an English or Celtic type. The remaining counties may be grouped under the titles West Wales, Strathclyde and the Welsh border.

We have previously seen that fluidity in the tenure of the soil, which is one characteristic of the Celtic run-rig as compared with the Anglo-Saxon common field system, favours the separation of properties and holdings at the time when co-aration ceases to be practised; and, in consequence, to early enclosure without any special efforts of the type of an Act of Parliament. But we have also seen that a prevailingly pastoral country tends to have its arable lands more easily and earlier enclosed than a prevailingly arable country. There are therefore two explanations available for the early enclosure of the whole western half of England and Wales.

First, however, the broad facts with regard to the history of enclosure must be made clear.

There are no Acts specifically for enclosing common arable fields in Wales, nor any in which the phraseology of the preamble clearly indicates the existence in Wales of land possessing all three of the essential characteristics of English common field: (1) intermixed ownership or occupation, (2) absence of adequate hedges or other obstacles to the passage of men and animals from one holding to another, (3) common rights exercisable over the tilled land.

But there were in Wales open tilled fields in which properties and holdings were intermixed--that is, land possessing the first two characteristics. Several Welsh Acts for enclosing commonable waste also enclose “intermixed lands,” and one (1843, c. 14) is for the enclosure in Llandudno and three neighbouring villages, of “Divers Commons, commonable lands and waste grounds, Heaths, open and Common and other Fields and Waste lands, and other Common lands and Waste grounds, which lie intermixed in small parcels, and are inconveniently situated for the use and enjoyment of the several proprietors.”

Many townships in North Wales still contain “quilleted” areas, i.e., enclosed fields containing unenclosed strips of land belonging to a different owner or owners from that of the rest of the field. Such scattered “quillets” are, as in Berkshire, frequently glebe land.

The following are the reports on the subject by the Board of Agriculture reporters in 1793 and 1794:--

“Open or Common Fields are rarely met with in South Wales. It is a mode of cultivation only practised in a few instances, where ecclesiastical and private property are blended.” (John Fox, “Agriculture of Glamorgan,” p. 41.)

“The only tract like a common field is an extent of very productive barley land, reaching on the coast from Aberavon to Llanrhysted. This quarter is much intermixed, and chiefly in small holdings.” (Thomas Lloyd, “Agriculture of Cardigan,” p. 29.)

Carmarthen. “I do not know of any considerable extent of open common field in the county.” (Charles Hassell, “Agriculture of Carmarthen,” p. 21.)

Pembroke. “In the neighbourhood of St. David’s considerable tracts of open field lands are still remaining which is chiefly owing to the possessions of the church being intermixed with private property.” (Charles Hassell, “Agriculture of Pembroke,” p. 20.)

Radnor. “Here are no Common Fields.” (John Clark, “Agriculture of Radnor,” p. 21.)

Flint. “There are no common fields, or fields in run-rig, in this county, except between Flint and St. Asaph, and it is in intention to divide and inclose them.” (George Kay, “Agriculture of Flint,” p. 4.)

Cærnarvon. “Run-rig. There are no lands of this description that I could hear of, but there is a good deal of mixed property that might be exchanged.” (George Kay, “Agriculture of Cærnarvon.”)

There was in existence a mere remnant of open intermixed, arable land, which one reporter evidently thinks ought to be described as run-rig, and not as common field. Though in many respects agricultural methods were of the most primitive type, yet enclosure was practically complete; in two out of the four counties in which open fields are stated to be surviving, the explanation of such an exceptional circumstance is given in the intermixture of church and lay property. This well corroborates the a priori argument that the Celtic type of village community easily yields to enclosure; and that a predominance of pasture over arable also facilitates early enclosure of what arable there is. Mr. A. N. Palmer shows that the varying operation of the custom of gavelkind (equal inheritance by all sons) is also closely connected with the recent phenomena of the distribution of holdings. Everywhere the land which was ancient open arable fields is now, and has been for an unknown period dating at least as far back as 1620, divided by hedges into small enclosures, as in Devonshire; but in some districts these contain, or are known to have contained in comparatively recent times, intermixed quillets of other ownership. In these districts Mr. Palmer supposes the ancient “gafæl” or “gwely” (which may be roughly defined as a patriarchal family holding), was at the time when co-aration ceased, very much sub-divided. In other districts where the “gafæl” or “gwely” was little sub-divided, so that each occupier could support his own plough team, when co-aration ceased, holdings became entirely separated from one another. (“History of Ancient Tenures of Land in North Wales,” pp. 35–37.)

We have now to fix with what accuracy we may the time of the enclosure of the western counties, and then to search for evidence in those counties of variations from the typical English village community.

DEVON, CORNWALL AND WEST SOMERSET.

These counties were very early enclosed. There is so much earlier evidence that it seems superfluous to quote Celia Fiennes, but there are some suggestive touches in her description.

“I entered into Devonshire 5 miles off from Wellington, just on a high ridge of hills which discovers a vast prospect on Each side full of Inclosures and lesser hills which is the description of most part of the West. You could see large tracts of grounds full of Enclosures, good grass and corn beset with quicksetts and hedgerows” (p. 206). In very similar words she describes the views on the roads from Exeter to Chudleigh, and from Chudleigh to Ashburton.

“Devonshire is Much like Somersetshire, fruitfull countrys for corn, graseing, much for inclosures that makes the wayes very narrow, so as in some places a coach and waggons cannot pass. They are forced to carry their corn and carriagis on horses backes with frames of woods like pannyers on either side of the horse, so load it high and tye it with cords. This they do altogether the further westward they goe, for the wayes grow narrower and narrower up to the land’s end” (p. 9). As Celia Fiennes rode into the far west of Cornwall, hers is the evidence of an eye-witness. She points to the explanation of the extreme narrowness for which Devonshire lanes are still noted--enclosure took place before the introduction of carts.

Devonshire is spoken of in the previously quoted passage in the “Discourse of the Commonweal,” about 1550, as, with Essex and Kent, one of the most enclosed counties. Leland, about the year 1537 passed through North Devon into Cornwall, as far as Wadebridge and Bodmin, and back through South Devon. His statement that Somerset was much enclosed with hedgerows of elms, has already been quoted. In Devon and Cornwall he found no “champaine,” but frequently “meately good corne and grasse;” on the other hand, he frequently found enclosure.

After recording his arrival at Dunster, he says: “From Combane to the Sterte most part of the Shore is Hilly Ground, and nere the Shore is no Store of wood; that that is ys al in Hegge rowes of Enclosures” (Vol. II., fol. 63). There was enclosed ground between Bideford and Torrington (fol. 68); from Torrington to Launceston was either “hilly and much enclosid,” or “hilly and much morisch” (fol. 69), and also from Launceston to Boscastle (fol. 72).

Entering South Devon, he remarks simply on the fertility of the soil, but remarks: “The hole Ground bytwixt Torrebay and Exmouth booth sumwhat to the shore and especially inward is wel inclosed” (Vol. III., fol. 31).

In the year of Leland’s visit, probably either 1537 or 1538, the cultivated lands of Devon and Cornwall and Somerset were largely, but not entirely, enclosed. In East Somerset alone did Leland find any land which he could describe as “champaine”; we may infer therefore that though no doubt there was a good deal of open field arable, probably still cultivated by co-aration, it existed in the form of comparatively small areas round villages and hamlets; nowhere, in Leland’s route, extending over a considerable tract of country.

Carew, in his book on Cornwall, dated 1600, gives an account of the enclosure of that county. Of the manorial tenants, he says: “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 Lordes expectant benefit, after their terme expired” (p. 30).

This pregnant passage tells us--

(1) That the Enclosure of tilled land in Cornwall had been proceeding rapidly up to 1600 and was then nearly complete;

(2) That previous to enclosure the system of cultivation, whether it most resembled the English common field system or Scotch run-rig, had for one of its features the intermixture of holdings; and for another some elements of collective ownership or management entitling it to the name “Commons”;

(3) That Carew’s conception of a manorial tenant is not that of a freeholder, nor of a copyholder, but that of a leaseholder, whose term expires, the lord of the manor reaping the fruit, on the expiration of the lease, of any improvements the tenant may have made. He further on explains that the system of leases for three lives was practically universal in Cornwall, not in the modern form in which any three lives may be named in the lease, but depending for its continuance on the lives of the lessee, his widow and his son. It is obvious that this condition of land tenure would be more favourable to early enclosure than copyhold.

Another passage in Carew bears witness to the practical completion of enclosure. Writing of the legal conditions under which the miners pursued their enterprise, he says: “Their workes, both streame and Load, lie either in severall or in waistrell,” that is, either in enclosed land under separate exclusive ownership and occupation, or in waste. One cannot draw the inference that there was absolutely no open field land; but merely that its extent was in comparison so small as to appear negligible in this connection to Carew.

Though it is not improbable that the enclosure of Cornwall took place at an earlier stage of agricultural evolution than that of Devonshire, it is somewhat improbable that it took place at an earlier date. It is a reasonable inference from the evidence that by the end of the sixteenth century the enclosure of Devon and Cornwall was practically complete. When it began is a different question.

The charter of John by which all Devonshire except Dartmoor and Exmoor was deforested, expressly forbids the making of hedges on those two forests. This is itself some evidence that enclosure of some sort, probably enclosure of waste, for the purpose of cultivation, was going on actively in the beginning of the thirteenth century.

Attention must here be drawn to an ancient custom in Devon and Cornwall surviving to the end of the eighteenth century. William Marshall gives an account of it, and shows its probable importance in determining the character of enclosure and of all the attendant circumstances in Devon and Cornwall.

“West Devonshire. This district has no traces of common fields. The cultivated lands are all enclosed, mostly in well sized enclosures; generally large in proportion to the sizes of farms. They have every appearance of having been formed from a state of common pasture; in which state, some considerable part of the District still remains; and what is observable, the better parts of these open commons have evidently been heretofore in a state of aration; lying in obvious ridges and furrows; with generally the remains of hedgebanks, corresponding with the ridges, and with faint traces of buildings.

“From these circumstances it is understood by some men of observation, that these lands have formerly been in a state of permanent inclosure, and have been thrown up again, to a state of commonage, through a decrease in the population of the country.

“But from observations made in different parts of Devonshire, these appearances, which are common, perhaps, to every part of the county, would rather seem to have arisen out of a custom, peculiar perhaps to this part of the island, and which still remains in use, of lords of manors having the privileges of letting portions of the common lands, lying within their respective precincts, to tenants, for the purpose of taking one or more crops of corn, and then suffering the land to revert to a state of grass and commonage.

“In the infancy of society, and while the country remained in the forest state, this was a most rational and eligible way of proceeding. The rough sides of the dells and dingles with which it abounds were most fit for the production of wood; the flatter, better parts of the surface of the country were required for corn and pasturage; and how could a more ready way of procuring both have been fallen upon than that of giving due portions of it to the industrious part of the inhabitants, to clear away the wood and adjust the surface, and after having reaped a few crops of corn to pay the expense of cultivation, to throw it up to grass, before it had become too much exhausted to prevent its becoming, in a few years, profitable sward? In this manner the county would be supplied progressively as population increased, with corn and pasturage, and the forests be converted, by degrees, into common pasture.

“The wild or unreclaimed lands being at length gone over in this way, some other source of arable crops would be requisite. Indeed, before this could take place, the pasture grounds would be disproportionate to the corn lands; and out of these circumstances, it is highly probable, arose the present Inclosures.” (“Rural Economy of the West of England,” 1795, p. 31.)

The same custom was observed in Cornwall by G. B. Morgan, the Board of Agriculture Reporter. (“Agriculture of Cornwall,” p. 46.)

I believe this custom is the explanation of the huge size of the hedges which is frequently observable in Devonshire. A mound about eight feet high, and six or seven feet through, surmounted by a quickset hedge, is not uncommon. When a plot of land which had once been enclosed from the waste for cultivation, and then thrown into common pasture, with its hedges cast down, had recovered its fertility, it would naturally again be selected for enclosure and cultivation; the cast down rough stone wall, now overgrown with vegetation, would be made the foundation for a new hedge; and the same process might be repeated several times before final enclosure.

BRAUNTON GREAT FIELD.

I have said above that it is reasonable to infer from the evidence that enclosure was practically complete in Devon and Cornwall by the end of the sixteenth century. It is not, however, absolutely complete to the present day; for Braunton Great Field remains uninclosed. Braunton is a little town of about two thousand inhabitants, situated between Ilfracombe and Barnstaple, near the sea coast. Braunton Field is said to have “as many acres as there are days in the year,” each nominal acre being a strip of land of about an acre in area. Properties and holdings are very much intermixed, many of the holdings are very small and cultivated by their owners. Each “acre” is separated from the rest on each side by a balk of untilled land, growing grass, yarrow, hawkweed, etc., just a foot wide. They are locally known as “launchers,” which one associates with the Dorset name “lawns” for the strips of ploughed land, and the name “landshare,” in the Stratton Court rolls for the unploughed balks.

There is also always a path, or a broader balk, called an “edge,” separating the different sets of acres, which elsewhere would be called “Shots” or “Furlongs,” from one another.

No common rights exist at present, or have existed in living memory over either the unploughed balks, or the tillage lands themselves. But old villagers remember that long ago one half of the field was kept for wheat, and the other half for potatoes, clover, etc., in other words, that there use to be a common rule for the cultivation of the field and this common rule was similar to that prevailing in the Gloucestershire every year lands. At present each occupant cultivates his strips just as he pleases. It is of course possible that this obsolete common rule is itself a survival from an older one, and that originally this field was cultivated on the two-field system so prevalent in Lincolnshire; half under wheat, half fallow, the fallow being commonable all the year, and the wheat after harvest. But on the other hand, the custom of getting a crop every year may have been the original one, and Braunton Great Field may be ancient “Every Year land” or “Infield.”

Scale 1/3000

The dotted lines represent bulks separating adjacent strips in the open field; the continuous lines represent hedges. It is easy to see how the enclosures on the edge of the field were made out of two or three strips thrown together.]

Braunton Field is noteworthy in that it shows that however the primitive village community of West Wales may have differed from that of Wessex, it must have had certain characteristics in common with it, by which open arable fields of intermixed occupation were created in the neighbourhood of villages. Braunton cannot have been from the beginning an isolated example. The process of enclosure by the method Marshall describes went on around and outside these ancient tilled open fields.

Another interesting fact is revealed by the study of the twenty-five inch Ordnance map for Braunton. Braunton Field has been much reduced in area; one can easily see that the adjoining lands were once part of the open field, for the hedges in the lands are so placed as to form a continuation of the spider-web lines of the “launchers” within the field. The average size of the enclosed fields outside the Great Field is indeed a little greater than of the separate lands within it, but there is an imperceptible gradation, beginning with the smallest “lands” in the Great Field which are nearest the village, on through those more remote, the nearer enclosed fields, and then the more remote of them. Enclosure has been effected by simply enclosing the strips of arable land in the open field as they are. The fact that no common rights existed over the Field, supposing this always to have been the case, would have made such enclosure almost a matter of indifference to the other occupiers; and the motive, no doubt, would be the desire to lay the strip down in pasture. The whole field is known to the villagers as “the tillage land.”

THE WELSH BORDER.

The enclosure history of the counties along the Welsh border is somewhat similar to that of Devonshire. It took place early, partly in consequence of the predominance of pasture over arable, and partly under the influence of a custom of temporarily enclosing the waste and common pasture, similar to that in Devon and Cornwall.

The percentages of area of these counties enclosed by Acts for enclosure of common field arable are respectively:

Per cent.

Cheshire 0·5 Hereford 3·6 Monmouth 0·4 Shropshire 0·3 Staffordshire 2·8

The Board of Agriculture reporter’s statements on the common fields surviving in 1793 are that in Cheshire there was not so much as 1,000 acres (Wedge, “Agriculture of Cheshire,” p. 9); in Staffordshire little more than 1,000 acres (Pitt, “Agriculture of Staffordshire,” p. 85); that Shropshire “does not contain much common field land” (J. Bishton, “Agriculture of Shropshire,” p. 8); but that in Hereford some of the best lands of the county are common fields (Clark, “Agriculture of Hereford,” p. 69). Of Hereford, William Marshall gives a fuller account. “Herefordshire is an inclosed county. Some few remnants of common fields are seen in what is called the upper part of the county; but in general it appears to have been inclosed from the forest state; crooked fences and winding narrow lanes” (p. 224).

Celia Fiennes found from Nantwich to Chester “much Enclosures” (p. 147), but from Salford to Northwich, “I went a very pleasant roade, much in the downs, mostly campion ground, some few Enclosures”; Herefordshire, “a country of Gardens and Orchards, with apple and pear trees thick in the hedgerows” (p. 33); Staffordshire, “well wooded and full of Enclosures, Good Rich Ground, extremely differing from Derbyshire” (p. 89). This was her first impression, confirmed later. “Harteshill is so high that from the top of it you see near 20 miles round, and shows all the county which in this part of Staffordshire is full of woods and jnclosures and good lands, except the Knackwood” (p. 137). From “Nedwoodforest” ... “you have a fine prospect of the country, enclosed good lands” (p. 139). Also beyond Stafford towards Cheshire was mostly enclosures (p. 144), and from Stafford to Wolverhampton the journey was through lanes (p. 194).

Walter Blyth includes Staffordshire and Shropshire as part of “the Woodlands, who before Enclosure, were wont to be relieved by the Fieldon, with corn of all sorts. And now grown as gallant Corne countries as be in England” (“The English Improver,” 1649, p. 40).

Evidence of early enclosure is supplied by Leland. About White Castle, which I take to be Bishop’s Castle, in south-west Shropshire, “the Countrys is Champion” (Vol. IV. fol. 176 b), but from Hereford to Leominster was enclosed ground (176 b and 177 a), thence towards Ludlow “by goodly corne Ground, part by enclosed” (178 b), Bridgenorth to Kidderminster “most by enclosed Ground” (182 b), to Bewdly was by “a fayre downe,” but all the way thence to Milton (4 miles), Hertlebury (2 miles), Salopbrook (5 miles), Worcester (3 miles), Wick (6 miles) and Bromsgrove (4 miles), each stage is said to be by enclosed ground (fols. 183 b–186 a).

As for Monmouthshire, “The soyle of al Venteland” (Gwent, the country between the Wye and Usk) “is of dark reddish Yerth ful of slaty stones, and other greater of the same colour. The country is also sumwhat mountaynous and well replenished with Woodes, also fertile of Corne; but men there study more to Pastures, the which be wel inclosed” (Vol. V., fol. 5), and “Erchenfeld is full of Enclosures very (fruteful) of Corne and Wood” (fol. 9). Round Shrewsbury there is “ground plentiful of Corne, wood and pasture” (Vol. V., fol. 80), at Whitchurch “meately fruteful sandy ground” (fol. 81), and sandy ground on to Northwich (ibid.).

Nowhere else in these counties is either “enclosure” or “champaine” specified.

The evidence as to the existence of a custom of temporary enclosure of the waste, is supplied by Robert Plot’s book on “Staffordshire,” published in 1686: “For the heathy land of this County, it is seldom enclosed; but when they intend it for tillage, which is never for above five years neither, and then it is throwne open to the Commons again” (p. 343). “Their gouty, moorisch, peaty, cold black land, they husbande also much after the same manner as they doe the heathy lands in the Moore Lands” (p. 345).

Another passage brings into juxtaposition the more recent enclosures from forest or moor for the sake of tillage, and the ancient arable common fields. “Others again have placed the origin of mildewing in making small inclosures, corn not being so lyable to this evil in the common open fields” (p. 351).

It is reasonable to suppose that the custom found in Staffordshire and in Devon and Cornwall also prevailed in other counties, particularly in those along the Welsh border. It is some confirmation that Eden about a hundred years later found a similar custom still surviving in Sutton Coldfield, in Warwickshire, but near the Staffordshire boundary.

“The poor here, besides the right of commonage, have this peculiar privilege, that every house-keeper may take in one acre of common, and plough it four years: and the fifth year he must sow it with clover and lay it to the common again; after which he may take another acre, and work it in the like manner. By this method, about 400 acres of common are kept constantly in tillage” (“State of the Poor,” Vol. III., p. 749, written probably in 1795).

The enclosure history of these five counties may be summed up in the statement that it probably proceeded very similarly to enclosure in Devonshire, but at a somewhat later date; and that enclosure was later towards the north. Monmouth, we see, was “full of enclosures” before 1540; Shropshire “partly enclosed” with some “champion”; but though Leland passed through Cheshire, he does not mention enclosures, and Celia Fiennes found the North of Cheshire mostly open as late as about 1697. In Hereford and Staffordshire there was a large proportion of ancient arable land, and complete enclosure was consequently longer delayed, leaving an appreciable area to be enclosed by Acts of Parliament.

STRATHCLYDE.

Lancashire had no common field enclosed by Act of Parliament. It is possible that its partial autonomy as a Palatine County may account for this; but it must be noticed that the Acts of enclosure for Lancashire for enclosing commonable waste, are numerous right through the period of Enclosure Acts. Nor, though Lancashire was an early enclosed county, can we explain the absence of Enclosure Acts by the assumption that the enclosure of tilled land was completed by the beginning of the eighteenth century, for some common field persisted to the end of that century.

John Holt, the Board of Agriculture reporter, tells us: “There are but few open, or common fields, at this time remaining; the inconvenience attending which, while they were in that state, have caused great exertions to accomplish a division, in order that every individual might cultivate his own lands, according to his own method; and that the lots of a few acres, in many places divided into small portions, and again separated at different distances, might be brought together into one point” (“Agriculture of Lancashire,” p. 49). It would appear from this that the open fields of Lancashire, like Braunton Great Field, though unenclosed, and intermixed, and subject to some common rule for cultivation, were not subject to common rights. Any owner, therefore, who by exchanges or by buying and selling, could get his lands together in a convenient plot, might enclose without trespassing on his neighbours’ rights.

From Holt’s statement we find that enclosure was nearly, but not quite, complete by 1793. It was certainly far advanced a hundred years earlier. Celia Fiennes rode from Prescot to Wigan, “seven long miles mostly through lanes” (p. 153); from Gascoyne to Lancaster, “mostly all along lanes being an enclosed country” (p. 157). From Blackstone Edge the view was of “a fruitfull valley full of jnclosures” (p. 186). From Rochdale to Manchester, “the grounds were all enclosed with quicksetts” (p. 187).

Similarly Leland: “Manchester to Morle I passid by enclosid Grounde partely pasturable, partely fruteful of corn” (Vol. V., fol. 83). “The Ground bytwixt Morle and Preston enclosid for Pasture and Cornes.... Likewyse is the soile bytwixt Preston and Garstan; but alway the moste parte of Enclosures be for Pasturages” (fol. 84).

Cumberland and Westmoreland were later enclosed than Lancashire; and some few remnants of open arable field were dealt with by Acts. At Bolton, in Westmoreland, “certain open or common fields called Broad Ing Bartle and Star Ing” of 22 acres, at Soulby 90 acres of open field, and at Barton 130 acres, were enclosed by Acts mainly passed for the sake of enclosing waste; and at Kirkby, in Kendal, “a common open field” of 105 acres was enclosed. There were five Acts in Cumberland enclosing open fields; but only two say precisely how much. At Torpenton, 20 acres of field and 700 acres of waste was enclosed; at Greystoke, 240 acres of field and 3260 acres of waste.

But the enclosure of open-field arable was proceeding very steadily through the eighteenth century; and a clear account of the process is furnished us by two keen observers.

Eden gives an account of the condition of the arable land in seven Cumberland parishes, written either in December, 1794, or January, 1795.

“Gilcrux. About 400 acres of common field have been enclosed within the last fifty years” (“State of the Poor,” Vol. II., p. 76).

“Hesket. No more than 200 acres have been enclosed within the last fifty years. A large part appears to have had its hedges planted a little before that period” (Ibid., p. 81).

“Ainstable. Area 5,120 acres of which 3,480 are common. About 400 acres have been enclosed in the common fields within the last fifty years.... The average rent of land is about 18s. per acre; but it is observable that here and in most parts of Cumberland, an extensive common right is attached to most arable land” (p. 46).

I.e., common pasture or waste.

I.e., over the neighbouring common pasture.

“Croglin. The average rent of open fields is 9s. 6d. the acre, of inclosures, 15s. or 16s. About 100 acres of common-field land have been enclosed within the last fifty years; but a great part of the arable land still remains in narrow, crooked dales, or ranes, as they are called” (p. 67).

“Castle Carrock. The greatest part of this parish remains in dales, or doles as they are called; which are strips of cultivated land belonging to different proprietors, separated from each other by ridges of grass land; about 100 acres may have been enclosed in the last fifty years” (p. 65).

“Cumrew. The land is cultivated in the old Cumberland manner; the grass ridges in the fields are from twenty to thirty feet wide; and some of them are 1000 feet in length. Grazing cattle often injure the crops” (p. 68).

“Warwick. Almost the whole of the cultivated land (1126 acres) has been enclosed within the last fifty years. It formerly, although divided, lay in long strips, or narrow dales, separated from each other by ranes, or narrow ridges of land, which are left unploughed. In this manner a great deal, and perhaps the whole, of the cultivated lands in Cumberland, was anciently disposed” (p. 92).

The other observer is the poet Wordsworth. In his book on the scenery of the lake district, he quotes from West’s “Antiquities of Furness” to show that in the troubled times between the union of the Crowns of England and Scotland, holdings were let to groups of four tenants, each group dividing its tenement into four equal parts. “These divisions were not properly distinguished; the land remained mixed; each tenant had a share through all the arable and meadow land, and common of pasture over all the wastes.... The land being mixed and the several tenants united in equipping the plough, the absence of the fourth man” (who was called out for military service) “was no prejudice to the cultivation of his land, which was committed to the care of three.” In High Furness, “The Abbots of Furness enfranchised these pastoral vassals, and permitted them to enclose quillets to their houses, for which they paid encroachment rent.”

Wordsworth then proceeds with the tale of enclosure: “The enclosures, formed by the tenantry, are for a long time confined to the homesteads, and the arable and meadow land of the fields is possessed in common fields; the several portions being marked out by stones, bushes, or trees; while portions, where the custom has survived, to this day are called dales, from the word deylen, to distribute; but while the valley was thus lying open, enclosures seem to have taken place upon the sides of the mountains; because the land there was not intermixed, and was of little comparative value; and therefore small opposition would be made to its being appropriated by those to whose habitations it was contiguous. Hence the singular appearance which the sides of many of these mountains exhibit, intersected, as they are, almost to the summit with stone walls.... There” (in the meadows and lower grounds), “where the increasing value of land, and the inconvenience suffered from intermixed plots of ground in common field, had induced each inhabitant to enclose his own, they were compelled to make fences of alders, willows, and other trees ... but these last partitions do not seem to have been general till long past the pacification of the Borders, by the union of the two crowns” (Fourth Edition, p. 23).

The date of the enclosure of the intermixed arable and meadow land is thus fixed within certain broad limits. It did not begin till “long past the pacification of the Borders, by the union of the two crowns.” It took some time to effect the pacification of the Borders, even after the accession of James I. made it possible; “long past” that event is a vague date, but may very well bring us at least as late as the date when the enclosure of the common fields of Durham is supposed to have begun, “soon after the Restoration.” It is certain, further, from Eden’s information, that enclosure was going on steadily right through the second half of the eighteenth century, but by no means complete in 1795. The high prices of the war period would have greatly stimulated the movement, for it is obvious that if rents were thereby doubled both for open and enclosed land, the gross profit of enclosing would also be doubled; the net gain probably more than doubled. When Wordsworth wrote, the open fields were apparently still fairly numerous, but they had become a mere survival.

The date of the enclosure of this district is, however, the least interesting of the inferences to be drawn.

We find that up to the union of the Crowns, cultivation was carried on by a system very closely resembling the “run-rig” of the Hebrides. Groups of four tenants combined together, and yoked their horses to a common plough, and equally divided the holding between them, each tenant having his equal share in all parts of the holding. We next find that on the decay of this co-aration, for a long period, varying in duration in different parishes, holdings remained intermixed, but it seems clear that as in the one surviving Devonshire open field, and probably as in Lancashire, common rights were not exercised over the arable fields; though it might happen that besides the “ranes,” the grassy balks between the strips of arable land, there might be considerable stretches of grass amidst the arable field which was used for a common pasture. Lastly, we find that open, intermixed arable land and meadows, having this history, passes into a state of enclosure where increase of population, agricultural progress, and the increasing value of land make enclosure sufficiently profitable, by a gradual, piecemeal process, without the need for Act of Parliament, or reference to a Commission, or any combined resolution on the part of the lord and tenants of a manor.

It is because the process was late in Cumberland and Westmoreland and because it happened to interest three authors, West, Wordsworth, and Eden, who were not agriculturists, that the record of it for these two counties is available. All the indications suggest that Northumberland and Durham underwent a similar evolution; and all the preceding information with regard to the enclosure of Wales and much of the land immediately on the Welsh border, and of West Somerset, Devon and Cornwall, harmonises with the hypothesis that in those districts also the process was fundamentally the same, though with local differences, due to a very much earlier pacification.