34 Journal of Agriculture, Victoria. [10 Jan., 1918. 



com and food were produced, and the demand for labour in hedging 

 and ditching increased. 



It was not until Tudor times that we heard general complaints that 

 ■enclosure involved depopulation. The dissolution of the monasteries 

 threw almost one-third of the land of this country into the hands of 

 "new" men, and they were determined to work their new estates 

 for a profit. The most lucrative kind of farming at the time waa 

 sheep-breeding. The result was a cry through the land that " sheep 

 were the devourers of men." The distress caused by the conversions 

 of arable to pasture reached its height in the reign of Edward VI., but 

 the trouble did not end until, with the growing prosperity enjoyed 

 during the reign of his sister Elizabeth, the population increased, 

 and it paid to grow corn, and was no longer good management to 

 graze only and not to till. 



Capitalist sheep-farming led to the rise of a new phenomenon, 

 namely, competitive rents. Mediaeval rents were, as we see, practically 

 fixed ; they were quit rents, and corresponded to the value of the 

 labour services of which the lord was deprived by commutation. But 

 rent under the new conditions became a payment for the use of the 

 soil, and tlie landlord came to expect a sum that represented the value 

 of the land when used in the most remunerative way. 



Although the greater part of English arable land was 'worked on 

 the open field system until the middle of the eighteenth century, there 

 were districts where the method had been abandoned long before, 

 and some which were probably taken into enclosed cultivation from the 

 start. Salop, Herefordshire, Worcestershire, Somerset, Devon, Wilt- 

 shire, Berkshire, Hertfordshire, Essex, Kent, Surrey, and Sussex had 

 all been enclosed before the seventeenth century, and the same is 

 probably true of Cornwall. Indications of very early enclosure are 

 to be found in the very irregular form of fields, also in the smallness of 

 their area, and in the thickness of the hedges and the high banks 

 which surround them. Enclosed fields are to be expected in the dis- 

 tricts which were occupied by the Saxon invaders in the later periods 

 of their conquest; where the area was enlarged and cleared of forest, 

 or drained after the original settlement had taken place; and also 

 where new demands arose from the arrangements for providing for 

 the wants of the adjacent town, and the town, moreover, would tend 

 to dra-.v off people from the country-side, and those left would be 

 driven to pasturage, because that made the least call on their reduced 

 numbers. Nor muat we forget that the proximity of a flourishing 

 town was subversive to custom and encouraged men to farm for 

 profit instead of for mere subsistence. We hear that Devon- 

 shire was so full of cloth-making by the middle of the seventeenth 

 century that food and wool had to be imported to sU|ppIy the needs 

 *of the inhabitants. Next we must notice that hilly, forest or moor- 

 land would soon prove unsuitable for an arable system. Further the 

 demand for wool would encourage the formation of enclosures, the 

 advantages of which were obvious as far as pasturage was concerned. 

 Then new land turned out of the wild and held in severalty would show 

 up all the disadvantages of the open field system and cry out for a 

 change. 



There is no documentary evidence of these early enclosures, for 

 where tenants had no rights, or had ceased to have rights, the process 

 would go on without leaving any evidence as to date, for there would 



