SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES 47 



against offenders in Huntingdon, Derby, Notts., Leicester- 

 shire and Northampton, on the ground that depopulation 

 was an offence against the common law, while between the 

 years 1635-8 47,000 odd was paid by offenders who 

 had compounded for having depopulated, 1 chiefly in the 

 midland counties. Finally, although under the Common- 

 wealth the question of enclosures was still a burning one, 

 it is noticeable that the Bill which was brought forward 

 in 1656 did not condemn the practice altogether but only 

 proposed to regulate commons and commonable lands so as 

 to prevent depopulation and to improve waste grounds, and 

 that even that Bill did not pass. Meanwhile the number 

 of writers in favour of regulated enclosure increases. Thus 

 Standish in his New Directions, 1613, answers the Commons' 

 Complaint, and in 1653 Lee in his vindication of regulated 

 enclosures answers Moore's attack in his Crying Sin. 2 The 

 explanation of this change of view and this hesitation on 

 the part of Government and Parliament is probably to be 

 found in the fact that more common field was now being 

 enclosed for arable purposes than before, and that the culti- 

 vation of the wastes was attracting attention, while at the 

 same time the land-owning interest was strengthening in 

 the Parliament itself. In a word the coming century was 

 casting its shadow before it. 



The whole question as to the extent of the enclosures 

 from the middle of the fifteenth to the end of the seven- 

 teenth century is obviously not yet settled. It is a ques- 

 tion between contemporary evidence and statistics, neither 

 of them, unfortunately, very satisfactory. Nevertheless, it 

 would seem that Mr. Gay, with all his care, has under- 

 estimated the extent of the enclosures in the twenty-five 



1 Transactions Royal Hist. Soc. xix. 127 ff. ; English Hist. Review, 

 xxiii. 487; Slater, Enclosures, p. 328. 



2 English Hist. Review, xxiii. 



