THE CASE AGAINST ENCLOSURES 125 



Preface. The tract is an appeal against enclosures, mainly based 

 on past history. It probably belongs to a group of pamphlets 

 dealing with the Midland counties, where the enclosing movement 

 seems to have been active. Halhead describes how would-be 

 enclosers begin by upsetting the field customs by which the cultiva- 

 tion of the land was regulated ; how they tell the people that they 

 will be three times as well off, that enclosure stops strife and con- 

 tention, " nourisheth Wood in hedges," and keeps sheep from 

 rotting. If they cannot prevail by these promises, they begin a 

 suit at law, and make the resistors dance attendance at the law- 

 courts for months and even years. Then they pull out their purses, 

 and offer to buy them out. If this fails, on goes the suit till a decree 

 against the open-field partners is granted in Chancery. The 

 description bears the stamp of accuracy. But, logically, neither 

 the old methods of enclosing nor the results of the conversion of 

 tillage into pasture really met the case put forward by the new 

 advocates of enclosure as an instrument both of social and 

 agricultural progress. 



The case for enclosures of open-field farms and commons is 

 vigorously stated in three tracts ; one by S. Taylor (1652) ; 1 another 

 by Adam Moore (1653) ; 2 the third by Joseph Lee (1656). 3 Their 

 arguments are mainly based on the wretched conditions of the 

 commons, the poor farming of open-field land, and the social and 

 agricultural gain which, as Lee's practical experience had shown, 

 resulted from individual occupation. None of the three authors 

 alludes to the recent discoveries of roots, clover, and grasses, or to 

 the improved methods of drainage, on which Blith and others so 

 strongly relied. Of Taylor nothing is known, except that his tract 

 shows him to have been a vehement assailant of ale-houses. Moore 

 tells us that he was a Somersetshire man. The Rev. Joseph Lee 

 was a Leicestershire " Minister of the Gospel " at Cotesbach, who 

 had been violently attacked by his professional brethren for the 



1 Common Good : or the Improvement of Commons, Forests, and Chases by 

 Inclosure, by S. T(aylor), 1652. 



2 Bread for the Poor . . . Promised by Enclosure of the Wastes and Common 

 Grounds of England, by Adam Moore, Gent. 1653. 



8 Ei/rafa rev 'Aypov ; or a Vindication of a Regulated Enclosure, etc., by 

 Joseph Lee, Minister of the Gospel, 1656. 



The contrary view to that taken by Lee was stated by John Moore, Minister 

 of Knaptoft in Leicestershire, whose tract The Crying Sin of England of not 

 Caring for the Poor, etc., was published in 1653. Moore's Scripture Word 

 against Inclosure (1656) was an answer to Lee, 



