164 JETHRO TULL AND LORD TOWNSHEND 



northern counties of Cheshire, Lancashire, Westmoreland, Cum- 

 berland, Northumberland, and Durham. No generalisation will 

 explain why these districts should have been enclosed sooner or 

 more easily than elsewhere. 1 The facts remain that no Parlia- 

 mentary enclosures took place in Kent, Devonshire, Cornwall, or 

 Lancashire ; that as early as the middle of the sixteenth century 

 Kent, Essex, and Devonshire were stated by a Tudor writer 

 to be the most enclosed and wealthiest counties ; 2 that in 1602 

 Carew, the historian of Cornwall, recorded that his countrymen " fal 

 everywhere from Commons to Inclosure, and partake not of some 

 Eastern Tenants' envious dispositions, who will sooner prejudice 

 their owne present thrift, by continuing this mingle-mangle, than 

 advance the Lords expectant benefit, after their terme expired " ; 8 

 that in 1656 Joseph Lee 4 mentions Essex, Hereford, Devonshire, 

 Shropshire, Worcester as " wholly enclosed " ; that in 1727 the 

 Rev. John Laurence says that " as to the Bishoprick of Durham, 

 which is by much the richest Part of the North, Nine Parts in Ten 

 are already inclosed." 5 



Since the last half of the fifteenth century the enclosing move- 

 ment had been continuously in operation. Why, in the eighteenth 

 and nineteenth centuries, was more land enclosed by Act of Parlia- 

 ment in some districts than in others ? The answer depends on 



1 The question may be stated in figures, which are collected from Dr. 

 Slater's The English Peasantry and the Enclosure of Common Fields (1907), 

 Appendix B. 



During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, enclosures by Act of Par- 

 liament were made of the following areas of open-fields (arable and meadow) 

 and commons, in the South-East and South- West, in the West, the North- 

 West, and North : Suffolk, 22,206 acres ; Essex, 17,393 acres ; Kent, none ; 

 Sussex, 15,185 acres ; Somerset, 30,848 acres ; Devon, none ; Cornwall, none ; 

 Hereford, 8,168 acres; Monmouth, l,293acres; Shropshire, 2,310acres ; Stafford, 

 16,926 acres ; Cheshire, 3,326 acres ; Lancashire, none ; Westmoreland, 3,237 

 acres ; Cumberland, 8,700 acres ; Northumberland, 22,348 acres ; Durham, 4,637 

 acres. 



During the same period the following areas of open-fields and commons 

 were enclosed by Act of Parliament in the Midlands, the East, and the North- 

 East : Bedfordshire, 91,589 acres ; Buckinghamshire, 111,427 acres; Oxford- 

 shire, 142,238 acres ; Northamptonshire, 308,722 acres ; Warwickshire, 131,104 

 acres; Rutland, 43,901 acres ; Leicestershire, 185,176 acres ; East Riding of 

 Yorkshire, 274,479 acres ; West Riding, 172,944 acres; Lincolnshire, 445,777 

 acres ; Norfolk, 106,043 acres ; Cambridgeshire, 87,413 acres ; Huntingdonshire, 

 93,366 acres. 



* Compendious Examination, etc., by W. S. (1549). 



Cornwall (1602). 



4 Vindication of a Regulated Enclosure (1G56). 



6 A New System of Agriculture (1727). 



