SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC HISTORY 



wheat in Nottinghamshire is estimated to have decreased by 1,823 acres. 225 

 Altogether from 1759 to 1800, 1 12,880 acres are said to have been inclosed, 

 and the inclosures continued during the igth century ; 18,596 acres were 

 inclosed between 1802 and 1826 ; and 3,269 acres by the general Inclosure 

 Act of 1845. 22S These inclosures were of necessity more favourable to the 

 great landowner than to the small one. The apportionment of the land 

 inclosed was according to the interest which each freeholder possessed in the 

 common : and the common rights, above all the rights of pasture, were 

 naturally of the greatest importance to the poor man with few beasts and but 

 little capital. Hence it might well happen that his fractional share of the 

 inclosed land did not compensate him ; nor would the inclosure by Parliament 

 be likely to be enacted at the wish, or on the initiative, of the small freeholders, 

 whose powers of influencing legislation were small. 



In the i yth century, as has been pointed out, the small illegal inclosures 

 were often for the benefit of the small farmer ; and may have taken place 

 in defiance of the lord of the manor. 237 The latter's opposition at least 

 tended to equalize the chances of the small and the great freeholders. But in 

 the inclosures by enactment during the i8th century, the interests of the 

 great freeholders were chiefly considered. Thus at the end of the i8th cen- 

 tury 1,100 acres of waste and common were inclosed at Normanton on Soar ; 

 of these about 240 acres went to the rector of the parish, and 520 to another 

 local magnate ; while the remainder (except such as was needed for laying out 

 new roads) was divided among eleven other persons, in portions varying from 

 i acre to 88 acres. 228 



Hence the whole trend of the time was towards the elimination of the 

 small tenant and the small freeholder, while the agricultural labourer probably 

 suffered from the diminution in the number of his employers, and of the 

 necessity for his services. 



Wages, indeed, appear to have been low from the beginning of the i8th 

 century. In 1724 at a magistrates' meeting at Rufford the wages were 

 settled as follows : For farm servants (presumably living in the house) from 

 5 for the head man to 3 for a youth between sixteen and twenty ; while 

 maidservants were to be paid 2 and jTi. Day labourers were to receive 

 8*/. a day in summer and 6V. in winter without food ; or half these sums with 

 food. These wages were, if anything, a trifle lower than they had been a 

 hundred years before. Drivers of hay carts got 6d. with food, or is. without ; 

 so did haymakers, or half that sum if they were women. Mowers received 

 8d. with food, or is. without ; women helpers at corn harvest got ^d. with 

 food, or 8*/. without. A summer day's work lasted from six in the morning 

 to six at night with two hours allowed for meals ; every additional hour of rest 

 meant the abatement of \d. from the wages. In winter (from September to 

 March) the work lasted from dawn to dusk. That these terms were not 

 altogether acceptable appears from the regulations for enforcing them in the 

 same document. A workman who left his work unfinished for any reason 

 but that of not receiving his wages was to be imprisoned for a month. All 

 hiring of servants was to take place at the ' statutes,' which the constables 



m G. Slater, The Engl. Peasantry and the Inclosure of the Common fields, 108. *" Ibid. 227-8. 



117 Dr. Slater suggests that where no inclosures occur in the 1 8th century, it is probably because the lord 

 of the manor had opposed them. lf8 Add. MSS. 35228. 



