76 ENGLISH RURAL LIFE 



How, then, were these rights destroyed and the 

 estates enclosed ? ^Enclosures were carried out in this 

 period (i) by definite agreement, (2) by gradual 

 adjustment and (3) by appropriation.) 

 t Enclosures by agreement occurred occasionally, when 

 the tenants and the lord of a manor came to a definite 

 arrangement for redividing and fencing in the land. 

 Under such an arrangement, the peasant owners of the 

 scattered strips gave up their holdings in order to obtain 

 a block of arable land, the open arable fields being, for 

 this purpose, rearranged and each man's strips thrown 

 together. The blocks of land so created were fenced in 

 and became the holding of the tenant, replacing his 

 many scattered strips. Such a process is going on 

 to-day at Laxton. Some portion of the commons, 

 woods and wastes might also be divided up, allotted to 

 the tenants of the arable and by them formed into fields 

 for pasture or even ploughed up for corn : whilst the 

 lord of the manor might obtain similar holdings on a 

 larger scale. Thus, perhaps in a single year, the open 

 arable fields with their many strips, the meadows and a 

 large part of the commons, woods and wastes might 

 disappear, to be replaced by fenced-in fields. 



Enclosure by adjustment a more gradual process- 

 was probably more usual than enclosure by definite 

 agreement. The tenants of the manor would in this 

 case exchange a strip here and a strip there, until by 

 degrees, in perhaps a couple of generations, the greater 

 part of the open arable fields and meadows would have 

 been rearranged into blocks, which the tenants would, 

 from time to time, fence in. In the same way, portions 

 of the commons might be enclosed, or colonized by the 

 tenants, without perhaps any formal agreement ; one 

 tenant taking a piece here, perhaps only a site for a 



