Il6 ENGLISH FIELD SYSTEMS 



this came about.' Formal act and formal enclosure might be 

 altogether obviated if the proprietors of the common fields could 

 agree to keep to their own parcels and renounce the exercise of 

 common rights. This is said to have happened at Ewelm, which 

 has never had an independent enclosure award;- but to make 

 such an understanding possible the open-field parcels must have 

 been to a large extent consolidated. Another method is reported 

 by Arthur Young, who tells of an enclosure devised by a single 

 proprietor. " The parish of Clifton," he wrote in 1809, " thirty- 

 nine years ago was allotted by Mr. Hucks, being a private ar- 

 rangement of his own. Each farm was enclosed by an outline 

 fence but was not subdivided." ^ It was usual, however, to secure 

 for voluntary agreements some formal sanction; and an interest- 

 ing illustration of this practice, joined with an explanation of how 

 the agreement was brought about, comes from the years when 

 enclosures were authorized by parHament. In 1783 a petition 

 was presented to that body asking its sanction for an enclosure 

 which had been accompHshed at Hanwell fifteen years before. 

 The method there employed had been the purchase by the lord 

 of the manor, Sir Charles Cope, of all interests in the open fields 

 except the glebe land and the tithes. Enclosure had then pro- 

 ceeded apace.^ Since Hanwell is the site of a castle and a park, 



^ I have, for example, found no record of how the parish of Cuxham came to be 

 enclosed. A map of 1767, which shows much of it still open, has been published 

 by J. L. G. Mowat, Sixteen Old Maps oj Properties in Oxfordshire, Oxford, 

 i888. 



2 Leonard, " Inclosure of Common Fields," p. loi, n. 3. The award for Ben- 

 sington is concerned with certain lands in Ewelm. 



' Agriculture of Oxfordshire, p. 91. 



* See JoKrnal of the House of Commons, petition of 5 February, 1783, "Setting 

 forth, That about the Year 1768 . . . the said Sir Charles Cope being then Lord 

 of the Manor of Hanwell, and seised of the perpetual Advowson ... to the Rec- 

 tory and Parish Church of Hanwell aforesaid, and likewise being seised for Life, 

 or in Fee, or some other Estate of Inheritance, of the greatest Part of the Lands of 

 the said Manor, did purchase to him and his Heirs, the Estates and Interests of the 

 several Copyholders, Life, and Leaseholders, and other Proprietors of the Remain- 

 der of the said Open and Common Fields, and other Lands, within the said Parish, 

 in order to the inclosing the same; and the Open and Common Fields, Common- 

 able Lands, Cow Pasture, Heath, and Waste Grounds, within the said Manor and 

 Parish of Hanwell, were thereupon inclosed, and have ever since been held in 

 Severalty." 



