CHAPTER I 

 The Price of Wool 



The generally accepted version of the enclosure movement 

 turns upon supposed changes in the relative prices of wool 

 and grain. The conversion of arable land to pasture in the 

 fifteenth and sixteenth centuries is accounted for by the 

 hypothesis that the price of wool was rising more rapidly 

 than that of grain. The beginning of the enclosure move^ 

 ment, according to this theory, dates from the time when a 

 rise in the price of wool became marked, and the movement 

 ended when there was a relative rise in the price of agricul- 

 tural products. Before the price of wool began to rise, it is 

 supposed that tillage was profitable enough, and that noth- 

 ing but the higher profits to be made from grazing induced 

 landholders to abandon agriculture. The agrarian readjust- 

 ments of the fourteenth century are regarded as due simply 

 to the temporary shortage of labor caused by the Black 

 Death. High wages at this time caused the conversion of 

 some land to pasture, according to the orthodox theory, and 

 from time to time during the next two centuries high 

 wages were a contributing factor influencing the withdrawal 

 of land from tillage ; but the great and effective cause of the 

 enclosure movement, the one fundamental fact which is 

 insisted upon, is that constant advances in the price of wool 

 made grazing relatively profitable. It is usually accepted 

 without debate that the withdrawal of arable land from till- 

 age did not begin until after the Black Death, that the en- 

 closures of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were caused 

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