lOO THE ENCLOSURES IN ENGLAND [256 



great increase of graine to the Commonwealth and profite to 

 each man in his private.^ 



John Hales had protested against depopulating enclosures, 

 in 1549, by appealing to the public spirit of landowners- 

 They increased their profits by converting arable land to past- 

 ure, but, he argued. 



It may not be liefull for euery man to vse his owne as hym 

 lysteth, but eueyre man must vse that he hath to the most 

 benefyte of his countrie. Ther must be somethynge deuysed 

 to quenche this insatiable thirst of greedynes of men.^ 



But now it was no longer necessary to persuade the 

 owners of this same land to forgo their own interests for 

 the sake of the public good. Those whose land had been 

 used as pasture for a great number of years were finding^ 

 it valuable arable, because of its long period of rest and 

 regeneration. Land which had been converted to pasture 

 was being put under the plow because of the greater profit 

 of tillage. 



So great was the profit of cultivating these pastures that 

 landlords who were opposed to having pastures broken up 

 by leaseholders had difficulty in preventing it. Towards 

 the end of the sixteenth century at Hawsted, and in the be- 

 ginning of the seventeenth, a number of leases contained 

 the express provision that no pastures were to be broken 

 up. In 1620 and the years following, some of the leases 

 permitted cultivation of pasture, on the condition that the 

 land was to be laid to grass again five years before the ex- 

 piration of the lease. ^ 



There is no doubt of the fact that much land was being 



^Ibid., p. 99. 



2 Lamond, op. cit., p. Ixiii. 



'Cullum, Hawsted, pp. 2315-243. 



