Ill 



THE ENCLOSURES OF THE FIFTEENTH, 

 SIXTEENTH, AND SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES 



THEIR EXTENT AND THEIR RESULTS 



. IF we are to trust the contemporary literature and the 

 legislation of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries 

 weshould beforced to admit that the social dislocation and 



by the enclosures o te iiEteentF 

 and early sixteenth centuries were very serious. 



From the appearance of Sir Thos. More's Utopia in 

 1515 or 1516, to the publication of Robert Powell's 

 'Depopulation arraigned' in 1636, there are only four 

 writers of note who have anything to say in their favour. 

 Of these Carew, 1 who contemptuously calls the system 

 of common cultivation ' mingle-mangle ', speaks only of 

 Cornwall, where, as we shall see, the conditions were 

 peculiar. Thomas Tusser, the author of Five Points of 

 Husbandry, published in 1573, was, like A. Young in the 

 eighteenth century, unsuccessful as a practical man. A 

 choir boy well whipped at school, a musician, a grazier, he 

 failed in all, till he betook himself to the writing of doggerel 

 verses. Moreover, he was an Essex-born man, and lived 

 chiefly in Suffolk. He is thinking, therefore, of districts 

 which had been early enclosed and which were probably 

 still being used for arable purposes. Fitzherbert, in his 

 book on surveying, 2 confines himself to suggesting methods 



1 Carew, 1600. 



2 As to the authorship of the Book on Surveying, cf. Quarterly 

 Journal of Economics, vol. xviii. 588. 



