136 EVIDENCES AS TO DATE OF VII 



IV. 



Lastly, in one Northumberland manor, the names 

 remained unchanged till 1755 and then disappear. 1 



I may also add, as is seen by Table V, that it is during 

 the period 1720-85 that three of my great landowners, 

 A, 1), F, made their largest acquisitions. 



How far enclosure during this period is followed at once 

 by consolidation it is difficult to say. Few of the Land 

 Tax returns are to be found much before 1780, and, of those 

 that exist, fewer distinguish between those who own only 

 and those who occupy as well as own. Nevertheless, the 

 8 Oxford parishes given in Table IV, and in which there is 

 certainly a considerable shrinking in owners, were all 

 enclosed between 1760 and 1785. 



These conclusions are supported by a very general con- 

 sensus of opinion among contemporaries that the closing 

 years of the seventeenth century and the first fifty 

 years of the eighteenth century were fatal to the small 

 owner. Thus, Roger North, in his Life of Lord Keeper 

 Gu ildford (1676), says that 'most manors are more than* 

 half lost', and urges repopulation. 2 Thoroton (1677) declares 

 that ' this prevailing mischief (enclosure) in some parts of 

 this shire (Nottingham) hath taken away and destroyed 

 more private families of good account than time itself 

 within the compass of my observations', and that only 

 a few have escaped. 3 John Cowper (1732) asserts that 

 within his knowledge ' twenty parishes have been enclosed 

 and in a manner depopulated ', and that in some parishes 

 .' 120 families of farmers and cottagers have, in a few years, 

 been reduced to 4, 2, aye sometimes 1 family ', and predicts 



1 Hist, of Northumberland, iv. 266. 



2 Roger North, Life of Lord Guildford, ed. 1742, p. 23. 

 8 Thoroton, Nottingham, Preface. 



