48 Beginning of Modern Farming 



its favour. * If we debar tillage,' he said, c we give scope to the 

 depopulator ; and then if the poor being thrust out of their 

 homes go to dwell with others, straight we catch them with the 

 Statute of Inmates ; if they wander abroad they are within 

 danger of the Statute of the Poor to be whipped.' The Statute 

 of Inmates, passed in 1589, forbade more than one family to 

 live in a house. The Statute of the Poor, passed in 1572, laid it 

 down that for a first offence a vagabond was to be whipped and 

 bored through the ear, unless some one would go surety for him 

 and take him into service for a year. 



Between 1455 and 1607 the area of land enclosed amounted to 

 516,673 acres. The greatest proportion of it was in Leicester, 

 Northampton, Rutland, and South-east Warwick. Next to these 

 counties came Bedford, Berkshire, Buckingham, Oxford, and 

 Middlesex. 1 The young industry of cloth manufacture, in spite 

 of the progress it had made, could not take in and give employ- 

 ment to all the people thrown out of agriculture. If the wool 

 and cloth trade was interrupted as it was by the brief war with 

 the Netherlands in 1528 and the closing of the Spanish ports to 

 English cloth in 1622, the greatest misery accompanied the 

 unemployment which followed. Poor Law Acts were passed, 

 and parish and municipal authorities were called upon to provide 

 work for the able-bodied. The Government also tried to over- 

 come the difficulty by forcing the employers to find work for the 

 men, although they could find no market for their produce. 

 There have been few periods in the history of the country when 

 the contrast between the fortunes of the rich and poor were so 

 wide. The new landlords, the larger farmers, the manufacturers 

 and merchants were growing wealthy, while the evicted small- 

 holders and the labourers discharged from the old, arable holdings, 

 losing the certainty of employment and of a share in the produce 

 of the soil which they cultivated, were seeking to enter new 

 1 A. H. Johnson, Disappearance of the Small Landowner. 



