CHAPTER VII 



ENCLOSURE 



WE have now reached a time when the enclosure question 

 was becoming of paramount importance, 1 and began to cause 

 constant anxiety to legislators, while the writers of the day are 

 full of it. Enclosure was of four kinds : 



1. Enclosing the common arable fields for grazing, generally 



in large tracts. 



2. Enclosing the same by dividing them into smaller fields, 



generally of arable. 



3. Enclosing the common pasture, for grazing or tillage. 



4. Enclosing the common meadows or mowing grounds. 



It is the first mainly, and to a less degree the third of these, 

 which were so frequent a source of complaint in the fifteenth 

 and sixteenth centuries ; for the first, besides displacing the 

 small holder, threw out of employment a large number of'j 

 people who had hitherto gained their livelihood by the various 

 work connected with tillage, and the third deprived a large 

 number of their common rights. 



The first Enclosure Act was the Statute of Merton, passed in 

 1235, 20 Henry III, c. 4, which permitted lords of manors to 

 add to their demesnes such parts of the waste pasture and 

 woods as were beyond the needs of the tenants. There is 

 evidence, however, that enclosure, probably of waste land, was 

 going on before this statute, as the charter of John, by 

 which all Devonshire except Dartmoor and Exmoor was 

 deforested, expressly forbids the making of hedges, a proof of 

 enclosure, in those two forests. 2 We may be sure that the 



1 Much the same tendencies were at work in other countries, especially 

 in Germany. 

 * Slater, English Peasantry and Enclosure, 248. 



