28 THE ENCLOSURES IN ENGLAND [184 



thirteen miles about Warwick had been wholly or partially 

 depopulated before about i486." ^ Two or three years 

 later acts were passed against depopulation in whose pre- 

 ambles the agrarian situation is described: The Isle of 

 Wight " is late decayed of people, by reason that many 

 townes and vilages been lete downe and the feldes dyked 

 and made pastures for bestis and cattalles." In other parts 

 of England there is " desolacion and pulling downe and 

 wylf ull wast of houses and towns . . . and leying to pasture 

 londes whiche custumably haue ben used in tylthe, wherby 

 ydlenesse is growde and begynnyng of all myschevous dayly 

 doth encrease. For where in some townes ii hundred per- 

 sones were occupied and lived by their law full labours, now 

 ben there occupied ii or iii herdemen, and the residue falle 

 in ydlenes." ^ It may be remarked that while the price 

 records show conclusively that no rise in the profits of wool- 

 growing caused these enclosures, the language of the statutes 

 shows also that scarcity of labor was not their cause, since 

 one of the chief objections to the increase of pasture is the 

 unemployment caused. 



It would seem hardly necessary to push the comparison 

 of the prices of wool and wheat beyond 1490. In order to 

 establish the contention that the enclosure movement was 

 caused by an advance in the price of wool, it would be neces- 

 sary to show that this advance took place before the date at 

 which the enclosure problem had become so serious as to be 

 the subject of legislation. By 1490 statesmen were already 

 alarmed at the progress made by enclosure. The movement 

 was well under way. Yet it has been shown that the price 

 of wool had been falling for over a century, instead of rising, 

 and that the price of wheat held its own. Even if it could 



1 Gay, Quarterly Journal of Economics (1902-1903), vol. xvii, p. 587. 



2 Pollard, Reign of Henry VH (London, 1913), vol. ii, pp. 235-237. 



