another thing, the spread of commutation, the increasing mobility of land, the unwonted opportunities of acquiring and utilizing capital, produced a more vigorous and enterprising peasantry. It made innovation and change familiar to the daily thoughts and habits of the villagers. A new generation of tenants emerged, who questioned the lord's claims to exact the services of bondmen, who appealed to an older tradition of freedom 1, and who raised the standard of revolt, formed unions, and for almost a century kept up an agrarian warfare. These men were less likely to submit with indifference to the cramping restrictions of the old communal methods. the earlier changes. How far the changes in the open field system had pro- Extent of ceeded on the eve of the agricultural revolution we cannot even dimly conjecture; we can determine their direction, we can hardly hope to know their extent. It would be easy, however, to exaggerate their influence; the vitality of open field husbandry was incalculable, and even after the sixteenth century had run its turbulent course, England was still a land of open fields and common waste 2. One fact alone emerges clearly, and this we must be content to set in the strongest light; the individualist movement of the Tudor period, the commercializing of agriculture and the growth of compact farms, was already asserting itself in earlier times, and as a result the system of intermixed ownership was already undergoing a profound modification on many fifteenth-century manors. The defects of the open field system, with its scattered I. Enclosure for ownership, its joint labour and compulsory rotation of crops, arable:" have already been described. Tusser, an agricultural writer (i.) Testiof the sixteenth century, drew a comparison in his Five mony of Hundred Points of Good Husbandrie' 3 between land which was 'several' or enclosed, and land which was 'champion' or unenclosed. He strongly favoured the former: "The country enclosed I praise, the other delighteth not me ". 1 Viz. the evidence of Domesday Book: supra, p. 108. 2 And much later: J. L. and B. Hammond, The Village Labourer (1911), 26. 3 English Dialect Soc. 140 seq. Tusser. (ii.) Fitzherbert. When land was enclosed for purposes of tillage the farmer acquired a compact holding, and was free to abandon the customary course of cultivation and introduce improved methods of husbandry. Tusser claims that: More profit is quieter [more easily] found Of one silly [simple] acre of ground than champion maketh of three. Again what a joy is it known when men may be bold of their own ". The advocates of enclosure for purposes of arable farming did not anticipate depopulation; an equal number of farmers would be supported and more work would be found for agricultural labourers. Tusser was not alone in his insistence upon the importance of enclosing arable land. Fitzherbert, in his book on Surveyinge1, endeavours to show "how to make a township that is worth twenty marks a year worth twenty pounds a year". He proposed that every tenant should surrender his bundle of scattered strips, and receive in exchange a compact holding proportioned in size to his original allotment. This was done, among other places, at Shroton in Dorsetshire 2 where the enclosure of land was carried out by agreement. It was arranged that six tenants "chosen and sworn should tread out the lands of the manor and allot how much each tenant should have, and so every one enclosed his land and so held it till to-day". Fitzherbert enumerates the advantages which he believed to attend a redistribution of the soil. The husbandman would be able to keep twice as many cattle as before and his corn would be better protected. The value of land would also be increased; for example, an acre of meadow would be "worth half as much again". This statement is borne out by the fact that enclosed land was sometimes rated more heavily than unenclosed, and on the Somersetshire manor 1 Ed. 1539, c. 41. of Porlock1 enclosed arable was twice the value of unenclosed. With Tusser, Fitzherbert urged that there was no danger of depopulation. He confesses indeed that herdsmen, shepherds and swineherds would be thrown out of employment, but he was careful to add : "To that it may be answered, though those occupations be not used, there be as many new occupations that were not used before-as getting of quicksets, ditching, hedging, and plashing, the which the same men may use and occupy" 2. Discourse Weal. The author of A Discourse of the Common Weal of this (iii.) The Realm of England bore similar testimony to the superiority of the of enclosed over unenclosed land. "Tenants in common Common be not so good husbands [farmers] as when every man hath his part in several ". He added: "If land were severally enclosed to the intent to continue husbandry thereon, I think no harm but rather good should come thereof". But there was a danger that after enclosing their land men might proceed to convert it into a sheep-run, " as we see they do now too fast, the more is the pity". There was also the possibility that enclosure, even when for purposes of arable farming, might be carried out unfairly and to the detriment of the poorer tenants. This was often the case in the eighteenth century, and was admitted even by Tusser : "The poor at enclosing do grutch [grumble] because of abuses that fall, Lest some man should have but too mutch, enclosure for arable. It is difficult to determine the extent to which agricultural Extent of land was enclosed for purposes of improved farming in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. A survey of England was made in 1517, and the returns of the Commission covering a period of thirty years have been preserved, but their evidence is not easily interpreted. Sometimes the decay 1 Vict. County Hist. Somersetshire, ii. 304. 2 Surveyinge, c. 41. Ed. E. Lamond (1893), P. 49. The probable date is 1549. The author should be added to the " only four writers of note [Carew, Tusser, Fitzherbert and Standish], who have anything to say in favour" of enclosures at this period: A. H. Johnson, Disappearance of the Small Landowner (1909), 39. ▲ The Domesday of Inclosures, 1517-1518, ed. I. S. Leadam (1897). of households is definitely attributed to the conversion of arable into pasture. At other times, however, we are merely told that houses of husbandry, that is, farm-houses, have decayed without any reason assigned. It has been assumed that in the latter case the land was enclosed for purposes of tillage1. If this hypothesis is correct the results are certainly striking. It implies that in Berkshire no less than threefifths of the enclosures were made for arable cultivation, and only two-fifths for grazing; in Lincolnshire two-fifths for arable, in Bedfordshire one-third, in Oxfordshire onefourth; and in some parts the whole district 2. The conclusion would follow that "the agricultural revolution was not simply a movement of inclosure to pasture", but that "the inclosure of arable was a movement contemporary with that of conversion to pasture "3. A further conclusion would be that the enclosure of arable was accompanied by the consolidation (engrossing) of small farms into large ones, and by the eviction of tenants from their holdings, as in the case of sheep-farming. "The new methods of arable cultivation involved . . . a reduction in the number of persons employed ". But these conclusions seem hardly tenable. It is unlikely that the enclosure of land for the sake of improved husbandry was carried to any very large extent in the sixteenth century. The fact that the returns do not in each case mention the conversion of arable to pasture does not prove that no conversion took place, for repeated repetition of the clause would be wearisome 5. As to depopulation Tusser and Fitzherbert distinctly claim, as we have seen, that improved cultivation did not involve depopulation. Above all, it is difficult to understand why those who so bitterly condemned the evictions of tenants should have confined their denunciations to sheep-farmers, if those who enclosed for purposes of tillage were equally incriminated. Tudor measures of social reform were expressly aimed against the conversion of arable into pasture and the 2 Ibid. i. 92, 245, 321; ii. 456: 1 Domesday of Inclosures, i. 37. 3 Ibid. i. 35, 92. Similarly, Nasse, Agricultural Community, 81. 4 Domesday of Inclosures, i. 36. Cf. E. F. Gay, "The Inquisitions of Depopulation in 1517”, in Trans. Royal Hist. Soc. N.S. xiv. 252 et passim. 6 Supra, pp. 122-123. 1 consequent eviction of the peasantry; they were not intended to prevent the consolidation of strips for purposes of arable farming, “for that had been", as Bacon 1 recognized, “to forbid the improvement of the patrimony of the kingdom". Of course we have no reason to doubt that enclosures were sometimes carried out with a view to a more progressive husbandry. The enclosing movement of the fifteenth century must have been largely directed towards this end; indeed, whenever enclosures were made on a small scale, it is unlikely that the plough was displaced or tillage abandoned. But in any case the consequences were far different from those entailed by the spread of sheep-farming, and to all appearance there were neither depopulation nor evictions. The absence of definite evidence on this aspect of the enclosing movement only proves that the more striking phenomena which attended the conversion of arable to pasture, the depopulation of villages and the turning adrift of tenants, seized upon the imagination of contemporaries and obscured the more silent, because harmless, changes which were in progress at the same moment 2. pasture. The fundamental feature of the agrarian revolution was II. Enclosure for the enclosure of land for purposes of sheep-farming. “Always the most part of enclosures", says Leland3, " be for pasturages". This was the theme of countless sermons, pamphlets, ballads and acts of parliament, and filled the minds of statesmen, preachers and writers to an extent which only finds an adequate parallel in the religious changes contemporaneous with it. According to John Hales, "the chief destruction 1 Works, ed. J. Spedding (1858), vi. 94. Speaking of the early years of Henry VII.'s reign Bacon says, Inclosures began to be more frequent, whereby arable land. . . was turned into pasture": ibid. 93. Contemporaries well understood the difference between enclosures, (a) for improved tillage, and (b) for pasture farming. The word Enclosure "is not taken where a man doth enclose and hedge in his own proper ground, where no man hath commons. For such enclosure is very beneficial to the Commonwealth it is a cause of great increase of wood. But it is meant thereby when any man hath taken away and enclosed any other man's commons, or hath pulled down houses of husbandry, and converted the land from tillage to pasture": Hales's Charge" to the Commissioners, in J. Strype, Ecclesiastical Memorials (ed. 1721), ii. App. Q, p. 56. 3 Itinerary, (ed. L. T. Smith), iv. 10 (speaking of Lancashire). • Discourse, Introd. Ixiii. Mr. Tawney (p. 166) would regard Hales's statement as a curt summary of the impression produced by a century " |
