258 HISTORY OF AGRICULTURE 



With the abandonment of the handicaps and restrictions of 

 the common-field system the efficient came more speedily 

 to the front. It was they who had amassed capital, and \ 

 capital was now needed more than ever, so they added field 

 to field, and consolidated holdings. 



The Act of 1845 did away with the necessity for private 

 Enclosure Acts, still further reducing the expense ; and since 

 that date there have been 80,000 or 90,000 acres of common; 

 arable fields and meadows enclosed without parliamentary 

 sanction, and 139,517 acres of the same have been enclosed 

 with it, 1 besides many acres of commons and waste. 



In the Report of the Committee of Enclosures of 1844,2 

 there is a curious description of the way in which common 

 fields were sometimes allotted. There were in some open fields, 

 lands called ' panes ', containing forty or sixty different lands, 

 and on a certain day the best man of the parish appeared to 

 take possession of any lot he thought fit. If his right was 

 called in question there was a fight for it, and the survivor 

 took the first lot, and so they went on through the parish. 

 There was also the old ' lot meadow ' in which the owners 

 drew lots for choice of portions. On some of the grazing 

 lands the right of grazing sheep belonged to a man called 

 a ' flockmaster ', who during certain months of the year had 

 the exclusive right of turning his sheep on all the lands of 

 the parish. 



Closely connected with the subject of enclosure is that of 

 the partial disappearance of the small owner, both the 

 yeoman who farmed his own little estate and the peasant 

 proprietor. We have noticed above 3 Gregory King's state- 

 ment as to the number of small freeholders in England in 

 1688, no less than 160,000, or with their families about one- 

 seventh of the population of the country. This date, that 



1 Slater, op. cit. p. 191. 



3 Report, p. 27. 



8 See p. 156. Another estimate puts them at 180,000. 



