l6 THE ENCLOSURES IN ENGLAND [172 



change, and no protest was made to call the attention of the 

 historian to what was being done. References to the pro- 

 cess are numerous enough only to prove that reconversion 

 of land formerly laid to grass took place during the fifteenth, 

 sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries — to an extent of which 

 not even an approximate estimate can be made. 



Imperfect as the evidence is from some points of view, it 

 is nevertheless complete for the purposes of this monograph. 

 It would be impossible, with the material at hand, to re- 

 construct the progress of the enclosure movement, decade by 

 decade, and county by county, throughout England. My 

 intention, howeve r, it not so much to describe the mo vement 

 in detail as it is to give a consistent account of its nature an d 

 causes . Even a few sixteenth-century instances of the 

 plowing up of pasture land should be enough to arrest the 

 attention of historians who believe that the conversion of 

 arable land to pasture during this period is sufficiently ex- 



\ plained by an assertion that the price of wool was high. 

 What especial circumstances made it advantageous to culti- 

 vate land which had been under grass, while other land was 

 being withdrawn from cultivation ? Contemporary writers 

 speak of the need of worn land for rest for a long period 

 of years, and remark that it will bear well again at the end 

 of the period. Evidence such as this is significant without 

 the further information which would enable us to estimate 

 the amount of land affected. For our purposes, also, the 

 notice of enclosure of arable land for pasture on one group 

 of manors in the early thirteenth century is important as an 

 indication that the fundamental cause of the enclosure move- 

 ment was at work long before the Black Death, which is 



J usually taken as the event in which the movement had its 

 beginning. Low rents, pauperism, and abandonment of 

 land are facts which indicate declining productivity of the 

 soil, and statistical records of the harvests reaped are not 



