LEGISLATION AGAINST SHEEP-WALKS 61 



the conversion of arable land to pasture. Active steps were taken 

 to see that buildings were restored and enclosures and ditches 

 levelled. In default, heavy penalties were exacted. A Com- 

 mission was appointed in 1517, 1 which enquired into all cases where 

 farm-houses had been destroyed since 1485, or where ploughs had 

 been put down by the increase of pasture farming. Similar 

 enquiries were held in 1548, 1566, and 1607. No doubt these 

 strenuous efforts checked the movement. But they failed to stop 

 it altogether. In this respect they succeeded no better in encourag- 

 ing tillage than the quaint pedantry of the law, which gave arable 

 land precedence over other land, or conferred on beasts of the 

 plough privileges that were denied to other animals. The new 

 legislation seems to have been satisfied, or evaded, without serious 

 difficulty ; partly, because compositions for breaches of its provisions 

 might be paid or exemptions purchased ; partly, no doubt, because 

 the administration of the law was often entrusted to those who 

 were interested in making it a dead letter. The destruction of 

 farm buildings was forbidden ; but it was easy to keep within the 

 statute by retaining a single room for the shepherd or the milk- 

 maid ; a solitary furrow driven across newly laid pasture satisfied 

 the law that it should be restored to tillage ; the number of sheep 

 to be owned by one man was limited, but the ownership of flocks 

 might be fathered on sons or servants. Down to the middle of 

 the reign of Elizabeth the enclosing and grazing movement con- 

 tinued. At subsequent intervals it renewed its special activity 

 throughout the seventeenth century, when dairying began to claim 

 a larger share of the attention of farmers. It was restrained or 

 encouraged rather by natural causes than by legislation. Fluctua- 

 tions in the prices of wool or corn, the increased profits of improved 

 methods of arable farming, and the restoration of the fertility of 

 the ancient tilled land, which was brought back to the plough 

 after an enforced rest from excessive cropping, gradually restored 

 the preponderance of tillage over pasture. 



The grievances of the rural population are to be gathered not only 

 from legislation, proclamations, petitions, articles of complaint, the 

 Returns of Commissioners, or the records of the law courts. They 

 are also written large in More's Utopia, and in much of the ephemeral 

 literature of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The cry of 

 the people is heard, often in exaggerated tones, in the sermons of 



1 The Domesday of Inclosures (1517-8), by I. S. Leadam, 2 vols. 1897. 



