AGRICULTURAL ADVANTAGES OF ENCLOSURES 97 



of the inferiority of the open-field system. Experience was in 

 favour of enclosures. Fitzherbert points to the prosperity of Essex 

 as an example of the advantage of enclosures. The author of the 

 Compendious or Brief e Examination says that " the countries where 

 most enclosures be are most wealthie, as Essex, Kent, Deven- 

 shire." So also Tusser compares " champion " (open) counties, 

 like Norfolk and Cambridgeshire, with " enclosed " counties, hke 

 Essex and Suffolk and says that the latter have 



" More plenty of mutton and biefe. 



Come, butter, and cheese of the best, 

 More wealth anywhere, to be briefe. 



More people, more handsome and prest. ..." 



The proverbial expression " Suffolk stiles " seems to point to the 

 early extinction of open-fields. Norden in his Essex Described ^ 

 (1594) calls the county the " Englishe Goshen, the fattest of the 

 Lande ; comparable to Palestina, that flowed with milke and 

 hunnye." So " manie and sweete " were the " commodeties " of 

 Essex, that they compensated for the "moste cruell quarterne fever " 

 which he caught among its low-lying lands. Every practical argu- 

 ment that could be pleaded against open-field farms in the days 

 of Henry VIII. or EUzabeth might be urged against the system 

 with treble force from the end of the eighteenth century onwards, 

 when farming had grown more scientific, when new crops had been 

 introduced, when drainage had been reduced to a science, and when, 

 under the pressure of a rapidly increasing population, farms were 

 becoming factories of bread and meat. 



Enclosures undoubtedly assisted farming progress. Before the 

 end of the reign the effect of the movement, combined with increased 

 facihties of communication, is distinctly visible. Under the spur 

 which individual occupation and better markets gave to enter- 

 prise, " the soil," as Harrison says, " had growne to be more 

 fruitful, and the countryman more painful, more careful, and more 

 skiKul for recompense of gain." Increased attention was paid to 

 manuring. In Cornwall, farmers rode many miles for sand and 

 brought it home on horseback ; sea-weed was extensively used in 

 South Wales ; in Sussex, hme was fetched from a distance at heavy 

 expense ; in Hertfordshire, the sweepings of the streets were bought 

 up for use on the land. The yield of corn per acre was rising. On 

 the well-tilled and dressed acre, we are told that wheat now averaged 



1 Camden Society (1840), p. 7. 

 G 



