INCLOSURES IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY 181 



not by any means the magnitude often ascribed to it ; that it was, 

 in other words, little more than the feeble beginning of an "agra- 

 rian revolution"; that, limited in amount, it was also circum- 

 scribed in area, being largely confined to the central districts of 

 England, and even here was of a piecemeal character, so that, 

 after more than two and a half centuries, inclosures were only 

 lyinLj " dispersedly up and down." 



But this sketch of the specific inclosing movement of the period 

 does not touch all the features of the agrarian change. Besides 

 the engrossing and consolidation of farms and the increase in 

 rents and copyhold fines, which could and did take place without 

 inclosure, there was still another type of inclosure, that of the 

 common waste, which should be mentioned. Brinklow associated 

 the two forms when he wrote that the " lordes flocks eate vp the 

 corne, medows, heathes, and all together," l and that this was not 

 all exaggeration is plain from Fitzherbert's more sober statement. 2 

 While playing a minor r61e in the literature and legislation of the 

 period, it seems, if number of lawsuits are any criterion, that in- 

 closures of common (as distinguished from common fields) caused 

 more bickering and strife than the better known and more dra- 

 matic attack on the open fields. Of the cases of oppn 

 closure complained of to the Privy Council during the sixteenth 

 century, almost all relate to the inclosure of common pasture or 

 ; and the records of the law courts show constant disputes 

 ommon rights in all parts of the country, bearing witih 

 once to the tendency to landlord encroachment and to the often 

 successful force of popular resistance. These eonu-sts are, of 

 course, not peculiar to the^ open-field districts, but were found in 

 all parts of England; nor were they especially characteristic of 

 this particular period. They form, rather, one phase of the long 

 y of the approvement of th< which Bt back 



beyond the statute of Mcrton (1236), and, like the later ino\< 

 for inclosure of the common fields, finds its culmination 

 1760. This gradual and steady nibbling from the common wastes, 

 going on for a longer time and over a wider area, was, however, 



1 II Brii :>laynt (ca. i -. B.R.T.S I \II. p.jS. 



-urvcying, edition of 1539, c. 8. 



