The Making of the Land. 223 



would have to agree before a Bill was submitted to Parlia- 

 ment, for otherwise the capital of the district would have 

 been all absorbed in defraying the costs of litigation involved 

 in contesting the measure. 



When we turn to the proposed enclosure of the open arable 

 fields, we find that lords of manors were not inclined to cede the 

 rights of enfranchisement without what they considered their 

 proper due. The yearly value of the various customs, fines, 

 etc., had to be capitalised, and some proprietors estimated this 

 latter process at forty years' purchase. At Brampton, Lord 

 Carlisle seems to have accepted one-twelfth of the entire 

 common field as his remuneration for enfranchising the allot- 

 ments. Many other lords were content with one-sixteenth, as 

 in most cases " these dregs of the vassalage " (so one writer 

 terms such commoners) were wholly unable to provide any 

 money " equivalent whatsoever for the conversion of their 

 copyhold property into freehold." It was therefore suggested 

 to the Board by the Cumberland correspondent, " that it would 

 be a humane act of the legislature to relieve these bondagers 

 by law." This proposal, we know now, bore fruit later on; 

 but even already the legislature had offered some facilities in 

 this direction. 



That these had not been as yet generally used was partly 

 owing to the reluctance of the landlords evidenced above, 

 partly to that of the copyholders, which brings us to our third 

 heading. 



The open arable lands were much more universally disliked 

 by the farmers than the open wastes. " In the commons," 

 writes the Essex correspondent of the Board, "no grasses, or 

 green crops, or turnips, or tares can be sown, and consequently 

 no stock kept (at least in very few instances, and these in 

 small degrees), except by the occupiers of the manor farms, 

 they claiming and exercising everywhere over them, to the 

 exclusion of all others, their rights of sheepwalk, over-running 

 everything, doing thereby much injury to their neighbours 

 (particularly with their dry flocks, which are driven about by 

 a boy all summer long, to shift as they can), and little propor- 

 tionate good to themselves ; the small occupiers being thereby 



