go THE ENCLOSURES IN ENGLAND [246 



him to cover expenses, diminished still more. When the 

 current income was ordinarily too small to cover current 

 expenses, no relief was to be found by reducing the capital. 

 A time came when these men must be either turned away, 

 and their land leased to others, or else allowed to stay and 

 make what poor living they could from the soil, without 

 paying even the nominal rent which was to be expected of 

 them. 



Lord North's comment on the enclosure movement as he 

 saw it in the seventeenth century is suggestive of the state 

 of affairs which led to the eviction of these husbandmen : 



Gentlemen of late years have taken up an humor of destroying 

 their tenements and cottages, whereby they make it impos- 

 sible that mankind should inhabit their estates. This is done 

 sometimes barefaced because they harbour poor that are a 

 charge to the parish, and sometimes because the charge of 

 repairing is great, and if an house be ruinous they will not be 

 at the cost of rebuilding and repairing it, and cast their lands 

 into very great farms which are managed with less housing: 

 and oftimes for improvement as it is called which is done by 

 buying in all freeholds, copyholds, and tenements that have 

 common and which harboured very many husbandry and 

 labouring families and then enclosing the commons and fields, 

 turning the managry from tillage to grasing.^ 



Not only were these men able to pay little rent for the 

 land they held, but, as has been suggested, they were unable 

 to maintain the land in proper condition by the use of 

 manure and marl. These expenses were beyond the means 

 of the farmer who was falling behind; they neglected the 

 soil because they were poor, and they were poor because 

 the yield of the land was so low; but their neglect caused 



^ Leonard, op. cit., vol. xix, p. 120. 



