257] 



ENCLOSURE FOR SHEEP PASTURE loi 



<x>nverted from pasture to arable in this period. Evidence 

 of this tendency multiplies as the century advances. In 

 1656 Joseph Lee gave a list of fifteen towns where arable 

 land hitherto converted to pasture had been plowed up again 

 within thirty years/ 



Barren and insufficiently manured land did not produce 

 good crops merely because other land had been given an 

 opportunity to recover its strength, ^he conversion of 

 open-field arable to pasture went on unchecked in the seven- 

 teenth century because it had not yet had the benefit of the 

 prolonged rest which made agriculture profitable, and with- 

 out which it had become impossible to make a living from 

 the soily The lands which have been " heretofore converted 

 from errable to pasture .... have sithence gotten heart, 

 strength and f ruitfulnesse,** and are therefore being plowed 

 again; but the land which has escaped conversion, and has 

 been tied to the " perpetual bondage and servitude of being 

 ever tilled," is " faint and feeble-hearted,** and is being laid 

 to grass, for pasture is the only use for which it is suited. 

 The cause of the conversion of arable fields to pasture is 

 the same as that which caused the same change on other 

 lands at an earlier date — so low a level of productivity that 

 the land was not worth cultivating. Lands whose fertility 

 had been restored were put under cultivation and plowed 

 until they were again in need of rest. 



Thus the final result was about the same whether an en- 

 closing landlord cut across the gradual process of readjust- 

 ment of landholding among the tenants, and converted the 

 whole into pasture, or whether the process was allowed toi • 

 go on until none but large holders remained in the village, 

 ^n both cases the tendency was towards a system of hus- 

 bandry in which the fertility of the soil was maintained by 



* Leonard, " Inclosure of Common Fields in the Seventeenth Cen- 

 tury," Royal Hist. Soc. Trans., N. S., vol xix, p. 141, note. 



