THE SOCIAL REVOLUTION 125 



Tuesday evening a great number of farmers were 

 observed going along Pall Mall with cockades in their 

 hats. On inquiring the reason, it appeared that they 

 all lived in or near the parish of Stanwell in the county 

 of Middlesex, and they were returning to their wives 

 and families to carry them the agreeable news of a 

 bill being rejected for enclosing the said common, 

 which, if carried into execution, might have been the 

 ruin of a great number of families." The belief of these 

 Middlesex farmers that enclosures brought ruin to a 

 great number of families appears to have been founded 

 on a somewhat bitter experience, for undoubtedly 

 these statutory enclosures, whilst ultimately improving 

 the conditions under which agriculture was carried 

 on, too often reduced the small peasant farmers to 

 the position of labourers without land or common 

 rights. If the procedure employed in the passing of 

 the acts gave no opportunity to the peasantry to 

 express their views on a matter on which their whole 

 lives depended, the procedure on the actual division 

 of the land by the commissioners was a still greater 

 grievance. The small holders of land and common 

 rights, farmers or labourers, had, in the first instance, 

 to put their claims into a legal form. The law had 

 long since (in Gateward's case in 1603), decided that 

 common rights did not belong to persons merely 

 because they inhabited a village, or manor, but that the 

 rights went with special plots of land. These rights 

 had to be proved strictly, and this was, to many, 

 an impossible task. But even if the peasants proved 

 their rights and secured a piece of land in compensation 

 for their losses, the plot was, in general, subjected to 

 the payment of a share of the expenses of the Act 

 of Parliament and of the commissioners and surveyors : 



