"THREE ACRES AND A COW" 123 



Sentiments like these became the commonplaces of Stewart and 

 Commonwealth writers. The demand for " three acres and a 

 cow " can show an origin of respectable antiquity. Gabriel Plattes 

 (1639) x pleads that all parties would gain by enclosures, landowners 

 by increased rents, clergymen by improved tithes, the poor by 

 increased employment. " I could wish," he adds, " that in every 

 Parish where Commons are inclosed, a corner might be laid to the 

 poore mens houses, that every one might keep a Cow or for the 

 maintenance of his familie two." The wish of the Stewart writer 

 had been expressed by a Tudor predecessor a century earlier. 

 Thomas Becon 2 in 1540 had suggested that landlords should 

 attach to every cottage enough " land to keep a cow or two." Walter 

 Blith 3 argues vigorously in favour of enclosures, and quotes with 

 approval the whole of Tusser's poem comparing " champion " 

 (open) and " severall " land. Of open-field farmers he says " live 

 they do indeed, very many in a mean, low condition, with hunger 

 and care. Better do those in Bridewell. And for the best of 

 them, they live as uncomfortably, moyling and toyling and drudg- 

 ing. What they get they spend." But in all enclosures he expressly 

 makes the condition that all interests should be provided for not 

 only those of the landlord, but those also of the " Minister to the 

 People," the " Freeholder Farmer or Tenant," and the " Poor 

 Labourer or Cottier." All these, he says, would gain by the process. 

 He takes the last first : " Look what right or Interest he hath in 

 Common, I'll first allot out his proportion into severall with the 

 better rather than with the worse, a Proportion out of everyman's 

 inheritance." At the same time he condemns " depopulating 

 Inclosure . . . such as former oppressive times by the will and 

 power of some cruell Lord either through his greatness or purchased 

 favour at Court, or in the Common Courts of England, by his purse 

 and power could do anything, inclose, depopulate, destroy, mine all 

 Tillage, and convert all to pasture without any other Improvement 

 at all ... which hath brought men to conceive, that because men 

 did depopulate by Enclosure, therefore it is now impossible to 

 enclose without Depopulation." 



To the same effect as Blith writes Robert Child in the " Large 



1 A Discovery of Infinite Treasure, Hidden since the World's Beginning, by 



G(abriel) P(lattcs), 1639. 



* The Jewel of Joy, 1540. 



1 English Improver Improved, ed. 1653. 



