Ill TO SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES 55 



nor consolidating were in themselves illegal, unless they 

 were accompanied by the destruction of houses, or the put- 

 ting down of ploughs and the keeping of a large flock of 

 sheep. Further, that rearrangement or exchange of hold- 

 ings were actually allowed by the statute 32 Elizabeth. 1 

 It was also quite possible to enclose the common field with- 

 out causing any displacement of the population, especially 

 if arable cultivation was still continued. This was advocated 



bjjiome writers, such a.s Fi'f.ahprbpH-. and jSTnrdpr^ 2 and here 

 the advantages of enclosure were as great as were the 

 absurdities of the old system. These will be grasped at 

 once if we keep in mind what the system of the common 

 field meant. 



In one manor we are told that a tenant owned 19 acres 

 in 36 different strips and that a common field of 1,074 

 acres was divided among 23 owners with 1,238 separate 

 parcels. 3 This is ' mingle-mangle' indeed. How in Heaven's 

 name could that intensive cultivation which alone has 

 enabled England to compete with other lands have been 

 carried on under such a system to say nothing of the 

 numerous quarrels, some of them humorous enough, which 

 did and must inevitably arise under such a system? 4 No 

 wonder Fitzherbert 5 declared that the respective values of an 

 arable acre unenclosed and enclosed was as 3 to 4, and one 

 reason for the fairly stable prices of both of corn and of 



1 Cf. Bacon, Henry VII, ed. Lumley, p. 71, 'Enclosures they would 

 not forbid for that had been to forbid the improvement of the patri- 

 mony of the kingdom, nor tillage they would not compel for that was 

 to strive with nature and utility ' ; Transactions Royal Hist. Soc., xiv. 

 296 ; Ashley, Economic Hist., 268. 



8 Fitzherbert, Surveying, c. 40, p. 96 ; Norden, Surveyors' dialogue, 

 quoted Harrison's England, ed. Furnival, p. 179 ; Lee, Vindication of 

 regulated enclosures, p. 5. 



8 Leonard, Transactions Royal Hist. Soc., xix. 



4 See Slater, Enclosures, pp. 47, 48, 75. 



5 Fitzberbert, Surveying, c. 96, p. 40. 



