INTRODUCTION 



The enclosure movement — ^the process by which the com- 

 mon-field system was broken down and replaced by a system 

 of unrestricted private use — involved economic and social 

 changes which make it one of the important subjects in Eng- 

 lish economic history. When it began, the arable fields of a 

 community lay divided in a multitude of strips separated 

 from each other only by borders of unplowed turf. Each 

 landholder was in possession of a number of these strips, j 

 widely separated from each other, and scattered all over the 1 

 open fields, so that he had a share in each of the various I 

 grades of land.^ But his private use of the land was re- 

 stricted to the period when it was being prepared for crop or 

 was under crop. After harvest the land was grazed in com- 

 mon by the village flocks ; and each year a half or a third of 

 the land was not plowed at all, but lay fallow and formed i 

 part of the common pasture. Under this system there was i 

 no opportunity for individual initiative in varying the rota- | 

 tion of crops or the dates of plowing and seed time; the 

 use of the land in common for a part of the time restricted 

 its use even during the time when it was not in common. 

 The process by which this system was replaced by modem 

 private ownership with unrestricted individual use is called 

 the enclosure movement, because it involved the rearrange- < 

 ment of holdings into separate, compact plots, divided from 

 each other by enclosing hedges and ditches. The most not- 

 able feature of this process is the conversion of the open 



^ V. G. iSimkovitch, Political Science Quarterly, vol. xxvii, p. 398, 

 167] II 



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