INTRODUCTION 1 1 



are preserved, and on the basis of these has estimated the extent 

 to which enclosure proceeded during the century in question.^ 

 Relative to the period after 1607 no such comprehensive and 

 scholarly investigation has been undertaken. Miss Leonard's 

 paper on seventeenth-century enclosures is useful for its evidence 

 about Durham; - but, since what happened in that county was 

 not representative of the usual course of events, it can form 

 no basis for a generalization.^ Other testimony concerning 

 seventeenth-century enclosures, as it occurs in the records of the 

 privy council, has been collected by Conner; and the paper which 

 embodies his results has been expanded into a stout volume by 

 the restatement of much that had already been said on the 

 subject.* Touching the enclosures of the eighteenth and nine- 

 teenth centuries no better account than Slater's has appeared; 

 but this is hardly satisfactory, for it is based, not upon the most 

 detailed and accurate documents available, but upon more sum- 

 mary ones.^ Nevertheless, it serves to give a general idea of 

 the extent and location of such arable fields as were enclosed by 

 act of parliament. 



In view of the inadequate treatment of the enclosure movement 

 after the days of James I, an attempt will be made in one of the 

 following chapters to outline a more satisfactory method of study- 

 ing it." The later enclosure history of two EngHsh counties will 



^ " Inclosures in England in the Sixteenth Century," Quarterly Journal of 

 Economics, 1903, xvii. 576-597; "The Inquisitions of Depopulation in 1517 and 

 the Domesday of Inclosures," Royal Hist. Soc, Trans., new series, 1900, xiv. 

 231-303; "The Midland Revolt and the Inquisitions of Depopulation of 1607," 

 ibid., 1904, xviii. 195-244. He concludes, " The specific inclosure movement . . . 

 reveals itself as one of comparatively small beginnings, gradually gaining force 

 through the sixteenth century and continuing with probably little check through- 

 out the seventeenth century, until it was absorbed in the wider inclosure activity of 

 the eighteenth century " (" Inclosures in England," p. 590). 



2 E. M. Leonard, " The Inclosure of Common Fields in the Seventeenth Cen- 

 tury," Royal Hist. Soc, Trans., new series, 1905, xix. 101-146. 



' Cf. below, pp. 107, no, 138. 



* E. C. K. Conner, " The Progress of Inclosure during the Seventeenth Cen- 

 tury," English Historical Review, 1908, xxiii. 477-501; expanded into Common 

 Land and Inclosure, London, 191 2. 



^ Gilbert Slater, The English Peasantry and the Enclosure of Common Fields 

 London, 1907. Cf. below, p. in, n. 2. 



* Chapter IV, below. 



