BEDFORDSHIRE 241 



than the keeping a few geese ; as to cows there are very few. 

 The common is so overstocked with sheep that cows would be 

 starved on it ; and these sheep are mostly in the hands of jobbers, 

 who hire small spots contiguous [to the common] for no other 

 purpose. These men monopolise almost the whole." 



Bedfordshire in 1794 x was famous for its backward farming. 

 It still disputed with Cambridgeshire the reputation of being the 

 Boeotia of agriculture. It contained 217,000 acres of open or 

 common fields, common meadows, common pastures, and waste 

 lands, to 68,000 acres of enclosure and 22,000 acres of woodlands. 

 As a rule, the enclosed land was as badly farmed as the open-fields. 

 Hence the practice of enclosing had fallen into disrepute. The 

 Reporter seems to suggest another reason for the reluctance of 

 landlords to enclose. " It has," he says, " frequently occurred to 

 me in practice, that some of the occupiers of a common field are 

 pursuing the best possible mode of management the situations 

 are capable of, whilst others are reducing land intermixed there- 

 with to the lowest state of poverty, beggary and rubbish. . . . 

 Upon the inclosure of common fields it frequently occurs that 

 commissioners are obliged to consider such worn-out land of con- 

 siderably less value than such parts as have been well-farmed ; 

 of course, the proprietors, whose misfortune it has been to have 

 their land badly occupied, have had a smaller share, upon the 

 general division of the property, than they otherwise would have 

 had, in case their land had been better farmed." In one respect 

 enclosed land had the advantage. Sheep in Bedfordshire were 

 practically only used as manure-carriers. They were " generally 

 of a very unprofitable quality, but more especially those bred in 

 the common fields, where the provision intended for their main- 

 tenance is generally unwholesome and scanty. . . . From the 

 undrained state of the commons and common fields, the stock of 

 sheep depastured upon them is but too frequently swept away by 

 the rot ; and, it being absolutely necessary, according to the present 

 system of farming, that their places should be constantly supplied 

 with others for the folding of the land, under such circumstances 

 of casualty and necessity, the healthiness of the animal when 

 purchased is the first and almost the only object of consideration 

 with the farmers." Sheep, from any county, of any breed, and of 

 any description, were therefore bought indiscriminately. Nine- 



1 Stone's Bedfordshire (1794) pp. 11, 61, 31. 

 Q 



