83 THE ENCLOSURES IN ENGLAND [244 



with the process which was gradually eliminating the poorer 

 men and concentrating their land in the hands of the more 

 prosperous is not characteristic of any one century. It be- 

 gan as early as the middle of the fourteenth century, and it 

 extended well into the seventeenth. By 1402 clergy were 

 being indicted as depopulatores agrorum} In the fifteenth 

 century statutes against enclosure and depopulation were 

 beginning to be passed, and Rous gives a list of fifty-four 

 places near Warwick which had been wholly or partially 

 depopulated before about 1486.^ For the sixteenth century, 

 we have the evidence of numerous statutes, the returns of 

 the commissions, doggerel verse, popular insurrections, ser- 

 mons, etc. Miss Leonard's study of the seventeenth-cent- 

 ury enclosures is confirmed by additional evidence presented 

 by Conner that the movement was unchecked in this period. 

 In 1692, for instance, Houghton was attacking the " com- 

 mon notion that enclosure always leads to grass," by point- 

 ing out a few exceptions.^ In 1695 Gibson spoke of the 

 change from tillage to pasture, which had been largely within 

 living memory.* 



There is no reason to believe that the landowners who 

 carried out this process were unsually mercenary and heart- 

 less. The need for putting their land tO' some remunerative 

 use was imperative, and it is surprising that the enclosure 

 movement was of such a piecemeal character and extended 

 over so many years, rather than that it took place at all. 



There was little rent to be had from land which lay for 



14 H. 4, c. 2. Miss Leonard calls attention to this statute. "In- 

 closure of Common Land in the Seventeenth Century." Royal Hist. Soc. 

 Trans., New Series, vol. xix, p. loi, note 2. 



2 Cf. supra, p. 27. 



* Conner, Common Land and Inclosure, p. 162. 



* Leonard, op. cit., p. 140, note 2. 



