68 ENGLISH RURAL LIFE 



results ; but whatever the process employed, the rights 

 of future generations have been, with rare exceptions, 

 ignored. In old days, children born into a village com- 

 munity had prospective rights in the arable and the 

 commons, and were in that sense property owners : but 

 after enclosure, such children had lost such prospects, 

 they started life lower on the social ladder. 



Whilst enclosures impoverished a class in one direc- 

 tion, they appear to have enriched England in another. 



Especially was this so in the XVIIIth 

 -and the century, when the * new agriculture ' ac- 

 cuttun? ri companied the enclosures. With it came 



improved cattle, sheep and other live stock, 

 greatly increased crops of corn, widespread use of 

 turnips and other roots and of clover and similar grasses, 

 the development of labour-saving machinery and, as 

 a result, a remarkable increase in the productivity of 

 the land. The outcome was not, as in some other 

 countries, market gardening and small holding by little 

 men, but farming by big farmers holding from hundreds 

 to thousands of acres of land. 



The position of the Church and its relation to 

 country life also altered in these centuries. In the 



XVth century many prelates and parsons 

 The Church, were carried away by the new commercial 



spirit, and some even took an active part 

 in commerce. There was much extravagance and 

 some arrogance and neglect of spiritual duties. The 

 estrangement between the Church and the people thus 

 created made it possible for Henry VIII and 

 Edward VI to appropriate, without a national protest, 

 much of its wealth. The Church then ceased to be the 



