243] ENCLOSURE FOR SHEEP PASTURE 8/ . 



the readjustment. In most villages, however, holdings of \ 

 all sizes were the rule. Some tenants had almost no land - 

 imder cultivation, but picked up a living by working for 

 others, and by keeping a few sheep on the commons and on / 

 the fallow lands of the town. There was thus always a ; 

 fringe of peasant families on the verge of destitution. \ 

 They were being gradually eliminated, but the process was i 

 extremely slow. A few of them in each generation, feeling 

 as a realized fact the increasing misery which has been pre- 

 dicted for the modern industrial laborer, were forced to \ 

 give up the struggle. Their land passed into the hands of j 

 the more prosperous men, who were thus gradually ac- : 

 cumulating most of the land. In some cases, no doubt, all ' 

 of the poorer tenantr>- were drained off in this fashion, 

 making it possible for those who remained to consolidate 

 their holdings and enclose them in the fashion advocated 

 by Fitzherbert, keeping a part under tillage until it needed 

 a rest, and pasturing sheep and cattle in the closes which 

 were under grass. 



It is impossible to estimate the number of these cases. 

 What we do know is that in the sixteenth and seventeenth 

 centuries no such stage had been reached in hundreds of \^ 

 English townships. The enclosures which had been made 

 by the tenants were of a few acres here and there. The 

 fields for the most part were still open and subject to com- y 

 mon, and consisted in part of poor pasture land. We doJ^/ / 

 know also that many landlords took matters into their own J 

 hands, dispossessed the tenants, and enclosed a part or all / 

 of the land for sheep pastures. The date at which this step 

 was made, and the thoroughness with w^hich it was carried 

 out, depended very much upon the character and needs of 

 the landlord, as well as upon local circumstances affecting 

 the condition of the soil and the degree of poverty suffered 

 by the tenants. The tendency for landlords to lose patience 



