245] ENCLOSURE FOR SHEEP PASTURE 89 



the most part in open fields, tilled by men who had no capital 

 at their command for improving the condition of the soil, 

 or for utilizing profitably the portion of the land which was 

 so impoverished that it could not be cultivated. 



Poor tenants are unprofitable tenants; it is difficult to 

 collect rent from them and impossible to raise their rent, 

 and they attempt to save by exploiting the land, leaving it in 

 worse condition than when they received it. Contemporary 

 references to the poverty of these open-field tenants all con- 

 firm the impression given by Hales : 



They that be husbandmen now haue but a scant lyvinge therby.^ 

 I that haue enclosed litle or nothinge of my grond could (never 

 be able) to make vp my lordes rent weare it not for a little 

 brede of neate, shepe, swine, gese and hens that I doe rere 

 vpon my ground : whereof, because the price is sumwhat round, 

 I make more cleare proffitt than I doe of all my come and yet 

 I haue but a bare liuinge.^ 



Harrison, at the end of the century, writes of the open-field 

 tenants : 



They were scarce able to Hue and paie their rents at their daies 

 without selling of a cow or an horsse, or more, although they 

 paid but foure poundes at the vttermost by the yeare.* 



The tenant who could not pay this rent without selling 

 stock was, of course, one of those who would soon have to 

 give up his land altogether, if the landlord continued to 

 demand rent. If he sold his horses and oxen to raise the 

 rent one year, he was less able to work his land properly the 

 next year, and the crop, too small in the first place to enable 



1 Lamond, op. cit., p. 90. 



2/Hd., pp. 56-57. 



^Description of Britain {Holinshed Chronicks, London, 1586), p. 189. 



