44 ENCLOSURES OF THE FIFTEENTH III 



per cent. Inasmuch as those presentments are manifestly 

 incomplete, at all events for the years 1548 to 1607, and 

 as we have no returns for the period anterior to 1455, 

 Mr. Gay has constructed a hypothetical table based on 

 a calculation which, though reasonable, is too long to 

 enter into here, 1 according to which the total amount of 

 acres enclosed from 1455 to 1607 comes to 516,673 (some- 

 thing over half a million of acres) or 2-76 per cent, of the 

 total area of England. 



If we could be sure that this is tlte maximum amount 

 of enclosure in the twenty-four counties above enumerated, 

 there does seem good grounds for Mr. Gay's assertion 

 that the writers of the period were guilty of gross 

 exaggeration, and that it was only the feeble beginning 

 of an agrarian revolution which took two and a half more 

 centuries to complete. But there are good reasons for 

 believing that even the returns we have are not complete. 

 Some of the commissioners themselves were interested in 

 baulking inquiry. 2 Hales, one of the few commissioners 

 of 1607 who was in earnest, tells us that they met with 

 dogged resistance, and had the greatest difficulty in 

 obtaining full returns. 'Somme found means to have 

 their seruantes sworne on the Juryes to thyntent to haue 

 them hazarde ther soules to save thir gredynes; and as 

 I have lernyd syns it is not possible, in any of the Shires 

 wher we wer, to make a Jurye without them, such is the 

 multitude of Reteynours and hangers on ... Somme 

 poore men were threatened to be put from their holdes if 

 they presented ... as it pleaseth any landlord so shall it 

 be/ 3 Some were indicted because they spoke the truth, 



1 Cf. Quarterly Journal of Economics, xvii, pp. 585, 586. The 

 earliest definite complaint as to enclosing is found in the Chancellor's 

 Speech to first parliament of Ric. Ill, Camden Soc., 1854, lii. 



2 Latimer, Sermons, quoted Pollard, Somerset. 



3 Hales's Defence, quoted Pollard, p. 230. 



