INCLOSURES IN ENGLAND IN THE SIXTEENTH 



CENTURY 



By Edwin F. Gay 

 (From the Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol. XVII, p. 576, November, 1 902) 



TEN years ago Professor Ashley gave us with his valuable 

 chapter on the Agrarian Revolution the first map of the in- 

 closures of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. This pioneer 

 attempt at a graphical representation of one of the most interest- 

 ing and important movements in English social history was based 

 on the scanty local references in contemporary literature and on 

 the agricultural surveys of the eighteenth century. From the 

 inadequate evidence then at hand this map necessarily left much 

 to be desired. In the interval, however, new and fuller sources 

 have been opened and in part made accessible by publication. 

 And, though this fresh evidence can scarcely be termed ade- 

 quate, nevertheless, with its more precise data, it permits of a 

 new attack upon the problem of the extent of the inclosure move- 

 ment in England during this period. A new map, in some 

 respects materially correcting the former and suggesting a some- 

 what different estimate as to the magnitude of the agrarian 

 change, may now be constructed with the materials furnished 

 by contemporary official investigations. 



The material herewith presented bases itself solely, therefore, 

 upon the information gathered by government commissioners sent 

 out under the influence mainly of successive waves of popular 

 discontent. They collected the presentments of local juries as to 

 the depopulation and decline of tillage caused by the inclosure of 

 the open fields of the old agricultural system and by the con- 

 version from arable to pasture of the land thus hedged in. These 

 investigations or inquisitions were made in the years 15 17-15 19, 



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