I06 T^HE ENCLOSURES IN ENGLAND [262 



ments was made, the poverty and destitution of the land- 

 holders were conspicuous. That this poverty was due to 

 declining fertility of the soil cannot be doubted. Land in 

 demesne as well as virgate land was showing the effects of 

 centuries of cultivation with insufficient manure, and re- 

 turned so scant a crop that much of it was withdrawn from 

 cultivation, even when serf labor with which to cultivate! 

 it was available. \iExhaustion of the soil was the cause of ( 

 the pauperism of the fourteenth century, as it was also of 

 the enclosure and conversion to pasture of arable land in 

 the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. System- 

 atic enclosure for the purpose of sheep-farming on a large | 

 scale was but the final step in a process of progressively 1 

 less intense cultivation which had been going on for centu— 1 

 ries. The attention of some historians has been devoted 

 too exclusively to the covetous sheep-master, against whom 

 contemporary invective was directed, and the process which 

 was going on in fields where no encloser was at work has 

 escaped their notice. The three-field system was breaking 

 down as it became necessary to withdraw this or that ex- 

 hausted plot from cultivation entirely for a number of 

 years. The periodic fallow had proved incapable of keep- 

 ing the land in proper condition for bearing crops even two 

 years out of three, and everywhere strips of uncultivated 

 land began to appear in the common fields. This lea land 

 — waste land in the midst of the arable — was a common 

 feature of sixteenth and seventeenth century husbandry. 

 The strips kept under cultivation gave a bare return for 

 seed, and the profit of sheep-raising need not have been 

 extraordinarily high to induce land-owners to abandon 

 cultivation entirely under these conditions. A great part 

 of the arable fields lay waste, and could be put to no profit- 

 able use unless the whole was enclosed and stocked with, 

 sheep. The high profit made from sheep-raising cannot be 



