183] THE PRICE OF WOOL 27 



lower than the average for the preceding half-century. A 

 comparatively slight depression in the price of wheat in the 

 same period is shown in the tables. The average for 1401- 

 146 1 is only three per cent lower than that for 1265- 1400 

 (seven per cent lower than the average for 1 351 -1400). 

 ^Before 1460, then, there was nothing in market conditions 

 to favor the extension of sheep farming, but there is reason 

 to believe that the withdrawal of land from tillage had al- 

 ready begun?/ Leaving aside the enclosure and conversion 

 of common-field land by the Berkeleys in the thirteenth cen- 

 tury, we may yet note that *An early complaint of illegal 

 enclosure occurs in 141 4 where the inhabitants of Parleton 

 and Ragenell in Notts petition against Richard Stanhope, 

 who had inclosed the lands there by force of arms." Miss 

 Leonard, who is authority for this statement, also refers 

 to the statute of 1402 in which " depopulatores agrorum " 

 are mentioned.^ In a grant of Exiward V the complaint is 

 made that " this body falleth daily to decay by closures and 

 emparking, by driving away of tenants and letting down of 

 tenantries." ^ It is strange, if these enclosures are to be ex- 

 plained by increasing demand for wool, that this heightened 

 demand was not already reflected in rising prices. 



But, it may be urged, the true enclosure movement did not \ 

 begin until after 1460. If a marked rise in the price of ' 

 wool occurred after 1460, it might be argued that enclosures 

 spread and the price of wool rose together, and that the 

 latter was the cause of the former. Turning again to the 

 record of prices, we see that although the low level of the 

 decade 145 1- 1460 marks the end of the period of faUing 

 prices, no rise took place for several decades after 1460. 

 Rous gives a list of 54 places " which, within a circuit of 



^ Royal Historical Soc. Trans., N. S. (1905), vol. ix, p. loi, note 2. 

 2 Denton, England in the Fifteenth Century, p. 159. 



