Ill TO SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES 51 



the purpose of gradually reclaiming the waste; and this 

 again would facilitate enclosure. Carew expressly says 

 that they ' fal everywhere from commons to enclosure, and 

 partake not of some eastern tenants' envious disposition, 

 who will sooner prejudice their own present thrift by con- 

 tinuing this mingle-mangle than advance the Lordes expec- 

 tant benefit after their time expired.' l Lastly, we should 

 remember that the greater proportion of these earlier 

 enclosed districts were pastoral, and not used for arable 

 purposes, and that it was the conversion of arable to pasture 

 that caused the chief grievances in the fifteenth, sixteenth, 

 and early seventeenth centuries. 2 



It must not, however, be supposed that in the so-called 

 old enclosed districts the enclosure was complete, even as 

 late as the middle of the seventeenth century. 3 Though 

 the rebellions under Protector Somerset were partly due to 

 religious causes, especially in the West, those in Somerset- 

 shire,* Worcestershire, and Dorsetshire, as well as in Surrey, 

 Hertfordshire, Norfolk, and Suffolk seem to have been 

 mainly social, while the Enclosure Acts passed in the 

 eighteenth century for many of these counties prove that 

 the open commonable field still continued to some extent, s 



Passing to the group of counties of the fourth group, 



1 Carew, Cornwall, p. 30. 



* For evidence as to these old enclosed districts see Leland, 

 Itinerary, 1536-42 ; Trigge, Humble Petition, 1607 ; Fitzherbert, 

 Surveying, ed. 1539, c. 41 ; Hales, W. S., Discourse, ed. Lamond, 

 p. 49; Tusser, ed. Dialect Soc., p. 141; Carew, Cornwall, 1600; Lee, 

 Plea for regulated Enclosure, 1656, p. 31 ; Slater, Enclosures, pp. 148, 

 176, 192 ff. ; Victoria County Hist. : Essex, p. 322 ; Tusser, Five Points 

 of Husbandry, p. 205 ; Victoria County Hist. : Sussex, p. 190 ; Ashley, 

 Economic Hist., bk. ii, c. iv, p. 299 ff. 



3 Devon and Cornwall appear to have been completely enclosed by 

 1700. 



4 Cf. Somerset : a letter of the time says, ' Some crieth plucke 

 downe inclosures and parkes; some for their commons, others pre- 

 tend relygione.' Quoted Cheyney, Social Changes, p. 98. 



D a 





