^55] ENCLOSURE FOR SHEEP PASTURE 99 



A speaker in the House of Commons commends these 

 provisions : 



For it fareth with the earth as with other creatures that 

 through continual labour grow faint and feeble-hearted, and 

 therefore, if it be so far driven as to be out of breath, we may 

 now by this law resort to a more lusty and proud piece of 

 ground while the first gathers strength, which will be a means 

 that the earth yearly shall be surcharged with burden of her 

 own excess. And this did the former lawmakers overslip, 

 tyeing the land once tilled to a perpetual bondage and servi- 

 tude of being ever tilled.^ 



Several years before the passage of this statute, Bacon 

 had remarked that men were breaking up pasture land and 

 planting it voluntarily.^ In 1619, a commission was ap- 

 pointed to consider the granting of licenses " for arable 

 lands converted from tillage to pasture." The proclamation 

 creating this commission, after referring to the laws form- 

 erly made against such conversions, continues: 



As there is much arable land of that nature become pasture, 

 so is there by reason thereof, much more other lands of old 

 pasture and waste, and wood lands where the plough neuer 

 entred, as well as of the same pasture lands so heretofore 

 conuerted, become errable, and by husbandrie made fruitfuU 

 with corne ... the quantitie and qualitie of errable and Corne 

 lands at this day doth much exceed the quantitie that was at 

 the making of the saide Lawe. ... As the want thereof [of 

 corn] shall appeare, or the price thereof increase, all or a 

 great part of those lands which were heretofore converted 

 from errable to pasture and have sithence gotten heart, strength 

 and fruitfulness, will be reduced to Corne lands againe, to the 



* Bland, Brown & Tawney: Select Documents, p. 272. 

 2 Cunningham, Growth of English Industry and Commerce, Modern 

 Times, part ii, p. 99. 



