ENCLOSURE 255 



from them and added it to his own. The peasant's losses 

 engaged the serious attention of many landlords; near 

 Tewkesbury, in 1773, the lord of the manor on enclosure, 

 besides reserving 25 acres for the use of the poor, allowed land 

 to each cottage sufficient to keep a horse or a cow, often 

 added a small building, and gave stocks for raising orchards. 

 Even some of the idlest were thereby made industrious, 

 poor rates sank to ^d. in the , though the population 

 increased, and the labourer always had for sale some poultry, 

 or the produce of his cow, or some fruit. 1 



In 1800 the Board of Agriculture, composed almost entirely 

 of landowners, noticing that the poor of Rutland and Lincoln- 

 shire, who had land for one or two cows and some potatoes, 

 had not applied for poor relief, offered a gold medal for the 

 most satisfactory account of the best means of supporting 

 cows on poor land, in a method applicable to cottagers. 2 

 Young recommended that in the case of extensive wastes 

 every cottage on enclosure should be secured sufficient land 

 on which to keep a cow, the land to be inalienable from 

 the cottage and the ownership vested in the parish. 



Lord Winchelsea 3 urged that a good garden should always 

 go with a cottage, and set the example himself, one which 

 has been generally followed in England by the greater land- 

 lords with much success. As may be imagined, these schemes 

 or others similar to them were put into effect by the con- 

 scientious and energetic, but not by the apathetic and careless. 

 Further, an Act was passed in the fifty-ninth year of 

 George III, which enabled parishes to lease or buy ao acres 

 of land for the employment of their poor. 



1 Report of Committee on Waste Lands (1795), p. 204. Ground was 

 frequently left by the Acts for the erection of cottages for the poor, and 

 special allotments were made to Guardians for the use of the poor, in 

 addition to the land allotted to all according to their respective claims. 

 Can any one doubt that if there had been a systematic robbery of the 

 smaller holders on enclosure they would not have risen ' en masse ' ? 



2 Slater, op. at. p. 133. 



3 Agricultural State of the Kingdom (1816), p. 8. 



