lO ENGLISH FIELD SYSTEMS 



easily escapes the chronicles but which is no less significant in 

 the annals of progress than are dramatic transformations. Since 

 this phase of the subject has been little studied by modern stu- 

 dents, considerable attention will be devoted to it in the following 

 chapters. 



The other form of agricultural advance, the enclosure of the 

 township's open arable fields and unimproved common, has 

 attracted much notice even from the end of the fifteenth century. 

 Because it then excited popular discontent and appeared to be 

 conducive to depopulation, it straightway fell under the censure 

 of the Tudor government, which, like the other rising mercantilis- 

 tic powers, was extremely sensitive on the latter point. Parlia- 

 mentary enactment was followed by royal inquisition, both 

 concerned primarily with depopulation. Complaint, legislation, 

 investigation, Utigation, and revolt continued throughout the 

 sixteenth century and into the seventeenth. Opposition then 

 became somewhat less vocal and less violent, although the process 

 none the less went on. Precisely how much was accomplished 

 during these two centuries in the way of enclosure and conversion 

 of common lands it is difficult to determine. The area seems not 

 to have been great in the sixteenth century, but to have been 

 considerable in a few localities during the seventeenth.^ What 

 is clear is the persistence throughout midland England, in the 

 middle of the eighteenth century, of great areas of common 

 arable field. During the one hundred and twenty-five years 

 that followed, however, most of this was enclosed by act of 

 parliament, and at the end of the nineteenth century an open- 

 field township in England had become a curiosity. 



To this long-continued and much-distrusted process consider- 

 able attention has been given by modern students. Scrutton 

 formulated the problem, especially with reference to the enclosure 

 of unimproved commons.^ Gay has described critically the 

 contemporary literature.^ He has further examined the findings 

 of the inquisitions of Tudor and Jacobean times, so far as they 



1 Cf. below, pp. II, n. i, loi, 107, 149-152, 207, 307-312. 



^ T. E. Scrutton, Commons atid Common Fields, or the History and Policy of the 

 Laws relating to Commons and Enclosures in England, Cambridge, 1887. 

 ^ E. F. Gay, Zur Geschichte der Einhegungen in England, Berlin, 1902. 



