DISTRICTS ENCLOSED BY ACT OF PARLIAMENT 167 



If the price of corn was low, it was cheaper, and more profitable for 

 the time, to lay it down to grass. If prices were high, the increased 

 margin of profits from arable farming under separate management 

 might cover the heavy cost of legislation and adaptation. Through- 

 out the eighteenth century the number of Enclosure Acts fluctuated 

 considerably with the advance or decline in the price of wheat. 

 Thus the serious scarcity of corn from 1765 to 1774 produced a 

 great crop of legislation. During the next fifteen years, the number 

 of Acts was kept in check by the comparative abundance of the 

 harvests. Once more, during the famine years of the Napoleonic 

 war, the Acts rapidly multiplied under the pressure of necessity 

 and with the progress of agricultural skill. The need was too 

 urgent to admit of those private arrangements for the break-up of 

 open-field farms which could often only be carried out after years 

 of preparation. Private Acts of Parliament were more speedy in 

 their operation. Still the quality of the soil to a great extent con- 

 trolled the course of legislation. Open-fields continued longest in 

 the districts where the soil was chalk, or where the village farm 

 occupied rich corn-growing land, or where the soil was so unsuited 

 for grass that the prospects of increased profits from arable farming, 

 even in separate occupation, were doubtful. A geological map of 

 the country would, it is believed, supply the key to many difficulties 

 in the history of enclosure. 



The parts of England which were most affected by the Enclosure 

 Acts of the Hanoverian era were the corn-growing districts of the 

 East, North-east, and East Midlands. Within this area are four- 

 teen out of the fifteen counties which, in proportion to their size, 

 contained the largest acreage enclosed by Act of Parliament. The 

 ease with which in other districts individual occupation was sub- 

 stituted for common cultivation renders it difficult to answer the 

 question, why in these particular groups of counties the cheaper 

 process of private arrangement was not adopted ? No completely 

 satisfactory answer can be given. It was from these districts that 

 the greatest opposition to the enclosing movement of the Tudor 

 and Stewart periods had come. It was also in these districts that, 

 in the closing years of Elizabeth, enclosures were proceeding so 

 rapidly as to be restricted by a special Act of Parliament. 1 The 

 effect of popular outcry and consequent legislation may have been 

 to confine the enclosing movement to Northamptonshire, Leicester- 

 1 39 Eliz. c. 2 (1597). 



