IO 



AN AGRICULTURAL FAGGOT. 



shepherds. This, of course, was not done without 

 strenuous opposition, and the common-field farmers 

 were in a strong position to resist, and frequently did 

 so successfully. Innumerable laws were passed to restrain 

 the movement and mitigate its evils. But the statute- 

 book is a very imperfect history of actual events. There 

 is even in these days a difference between the law and 

 its administration, and we may be quite sure that in the 

 fifteenth or sixteenth centuries law-breakers and law- 

 evaders had even greater immunity than in the twentieth. 

 Of the progress of inclosure since 1700 we have an 

 imperfect record in the Inclosure Acts passed since that 

 date. The area dealt with in them can only be estimated, 

 but, according to the calculations of a recent writer, the 

 extent of common-field i.e., arable land inclosed under 

 them was nearly 4,500,000 acres. 1 From a still more 

 recent writer 2 I take the following figures, showing the 

 percentage of the total area of each county inclosed by 

 Act of Parliament up to 1870. (Both common field and 

 waste are included in these figures.) 



Bedford 



Berkshire 



Bucks 



Cambridge 



Cheshire 



Cornwall 



Cumberlanc I 



Derby 



Devon 



Dorset 



Durham 



Essex 



Gloucester 



Hants 



Hereford 



Herts 



Hunts 



Kent. 



Lancashire 



Leicester 



Lincoln 



1 Slater, 

 Fields," pp 



2 Conner 



' The English Peasantry and the Inclosure of Common 

 140 et seq. 

 " Common Land and Inclosure," p. 279. 



