IQl] THE PRICE OF WOOL 35 



looked: the withdrawal from agriculture of common-field 

 land did not cease. The protests against depopulating en- 

 closure continue, and government reports and surveys show 

 that enclosure for pasture was proceeding at as rapid a rate 

 as in the sixteenth century. Miss Leonard's article on 

 " Inclosure of Common Fields in the Seventeenth Cen- 

 tury " ^ contains a mass of evidence which is conclusive. A 

 few quotations will indicate its character : 



" In Leicestershire the enclosures of Cottesbach in 1602, 

 of Enderby about 1605, of Thornby about 161 6, were all 

 accomplished by a lessening of the land under the plough. 

 Moore, writing in 1656, says: * Surely they may make men 

 as soon believe there is no sun in the firmament as that usu- 

 ally depopulation and decay of tillage will not follow in- 

 closure in our inland countyes.' " (p. 117). Letters from 

 the Council were written in 1630 complaining of " * en- 

 closures and convercons tending as they generallie doe unto 

 depopulation. . . . There appeares many great inclosures 

 ... all wch are or are lyke to turne to the conversion of 

 much ground from errable to pasture and be very hurtf ull to 

 the commonwealth. . . . We well know w^h all what y^ 

 consequence will be, and in conclusion all turne to depopula- 

 tion!'" (p. 128). Forster, writing in 1664, says, "there 

 hath been of late years divers whole lordships and towns en- 

 closed and their earable land converted into pasture!" 

 (p. 142). 



Frequently the same proprietor in the same year plowed up 

 pasture land for corn and laid arable to pasture. Tawney 

 cites a case in which ninety-five acres of ancient pasture were 

 brought under cultivation while thirty-five acres of arable 



1 Leonard, Royal Hist. Soc. Trans., 1905. Conner in Common Lathi 

 and Inclosure covers much the same ground, but does not bring out 

 as clearly the extent to which the seventeenth century enclosures were 

 accompanied by conversion of tilled land to pasture. 



