78 HISTORY OF AGRICULTURE 



such ruin that it was of no other use than for the shelter of 

 cattle. A sad picture, and true of many districts, but much 

 of the depopulation ascribed to enclosures was due to the 

 devastation of the Civil Wars. 



In spite of these enclosures, which began to change the 

 England of open fields into the country we know of hedgerows 

 and winding roads, great part of the land was in a wild and 

 uncultivated state of fen, heath, and wood, the latter sometimes 

 growing right up to the walls of the towns. 1 An unbroken 

 series of woods and fens stretched right across England from 

 Lincoln to the Mersey, and northwards from the Mersey to the 

 Solway and the Tweed ; Warwickshire, Northamptonshire, and 

 Leicestershire were largely covered by forests, and Sherwood 

 Forest extended over nearly the whole of Notts. Cannock 

 Chase was covered with oaks, and in the forest of Needwood 

 in Camden's time the neighbouring gentry eagerly pursued the 

 cheerful sport of hunting. The great forest of Andredesweald, 

 though much diminished, still covered a large part of Sussex, 

 and the Chiltern district in Bucks and Oxfordshire was 

 thick with woods which hid many a robber. The great fen 

 in the east covered 300,000 acres of land in six counties, 

 in spite of various efforts to reclaim the land, and was to 

 remain in a state of marsh and shallow water till the seven- 

 teenth century. 



North and west of the great fen was Hatfield Chase, 180,000 

 acres mostly swamp and bog, with here and there a strip of 

 cultivated land, much of which had been tilled and neglected ; 

 a great part' too of Yorkshire was swamp, heath, and forest, 

 and of Lancashire marshes and mosses, some of which were 

 not drained till recent times. The best corn-growing counties 

 were those lying immediately to the north of London, stretch- 

 ing from Suffolk to Gloucestershire, and including the southern 

 portions of Staffordshire and Leicestershire ; Essex was a 



1 Denton, England in the Fifteenth Century, p. 135. 



