92* *' ENCLOSURES OF THE EIGHTEENTH 



. y 



deal of enclosure by agreement, both before and after the 

 General Enclosure Acts of 1836 and 1845. Mr. Slater 

 has made an attempt to discover what that amount was 

 after 1845, and estimates it at something between half and 

 five-sevenths of the area enclosed by Private Acts during 

 the same period. But there is no reliable evidence for the 

 previous periods. All we can say is, that the application for 

 Private Acts does not prove that enclosure was going on 

 more rapidly, but only that it was more difficult to obtain 

 the consent which was necessary for it to be done by 

 agreement. 



)(In spite of these difficulties and doubts, we may at least 

 feel certain that the enclosing movement of the eighteenth 

 and nineteenth centuries was infinitely more extensive than 

 that of the earlier period, and that it was accompanied by 

 far more important results. 



You will find by referring to the maps II A and B, counties 

 classified according to the percentage of common field and 

 of waste enclosed. Now, in comparing the map II A, of the 

 eighteenth century, dealing with commonable field, with that 

 of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries it is noticeable 

 that, with few exceptions, the resemblance is very close. 

 It is exactly in those countries where there was most trouble 

 in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that the enclosure 

 is most extensive in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, 

 namely, in counties coloured black in map II A ; that is, 

 in a band of counties running from NE. to SW. across the 

 middle of England. Thus, all the eleven counties where the 

 percentage is highest in the sixteenth and seventeenth centu- 

 ries stand among the first fourteen in the eighteenth century, 

 except Middlesex; and of the fourteen where the average 

 is highest in the eighteenth century, Yorkshire alone is 

 little troubled in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. 



1 Slater, Enclosures, pp. 151, 192. 



