78 ENGLISH RURAL LIFE 



might still have ample common land for the feeding of 

 the peasants' stock. But if these encroachments and 

 enclosures went on year by year, and the commons, 

 woods and wastes were greatly reduced, it might mean 

 ruin for the small peasant holder, whose system of 

 farming was such that, without his stock and his pasture 

 for stock, he would be beaten in his struggle for exist- 

 ence. He was even in worse plight when, as sometimes 

 occurred, a lord of the manor proceeded with one of the 

 great enclosures that swept away the whole of the 

 peasants' property, destroying even the villages, and 

 turning a large part, and sometimes the whole, of the 

 manorial estate into one great sheep farm. Such great 

 enclosures had begun in the XVth century, before the 

 reign of Henry VII, but it was not until the XVIth 

 century that they became so widespread as to threaten 

 a national disaster.^ 



Enclosure of the second type, by gradual adjust- 

 ment, was the characteristic method of the XVth 

 century. 



(Following enclosure by agreement or adjustment, a 

 system of cultivation called 'convertible farming' was 

 adopted in some counties. Under this 

 method, the farmer's holding was divided 

 into six fields. Of these, three were set 

 aside for corn and farmed on the three-course system- 

 winter corn, spring corn and fallow ; of the other three, 

 one each year was allotted to the cows, another to 

 sheep and perhaps other stock, and the third set aside 

 for hay. After a certain number of years, there was an 

 interchange, and the arable fields were allowed to go 

 down to grass and the grass fields were ploughed up. 

 This method of cultivation, which has features in common 



