AGRARIAN REVOLUTIONS OF THE PAST 27 



merchants and professional men came from the 

 towns to the country in large numbers and pur- 

 chased land. These men united their efforts with 

 the more enterprising lords of the manors in devel- 

 oping profitable sheep farms. "The old-fashioned 

 farmer/' says Montague Fordham, "with his strips 

 in the open arable fields, his common rights and the 

 manorial customs for which he stood, under which 

 the lord and great landholders were limited in the 

 number of sheep that they could turn onto the 

 common, must have seemed an intolerable obstacle 

 to progress." 10 



The effect of enclosures changed completely rural 

 organization, and produced social and economic 

 consequences of great significance. Sir Thomas 

 Moore described the situation in 1515 as follows: 

 "The farmers were got rid of by force or fraud, or 

 tired out with repeated wrongs in departing with 

 their property." Again he says: "Your sheep may 

 be said now to devour men and unpeople not only 

 villages, but towns." But individual protest was 

 unavailing and the system of enclosures continued 

 through the fifteenth, sixteenth, and the first half 

 of the seventeenth centuries. Probably no other 

 policy in rural life in any country ever produced 

 such grave consequences or resulted in so great a 

 number of social and economic problems as this one. 

 Parliament passed numerous statutes dealing with 

 various aspects of the situation. Some were tempo- 



10 A Short History of English Rural Life, Chap. VI, p. 82. 



