INCLOSURES IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY 169 



the conclusions or impressions which have seemed to justify the 

 method adopted. ^ 



Regarding the impeccabiUty of the inclosure commissioners, it 

 may be granted at once that, despite Wolsey's undoubted zeal 

 stimulating their efforts, they likely enough failed to gather in 

 their net all the offenders of the preceding thirty years. We 

 know too well the character of the local juries of the time, the 

 nature of the pressure which the great landholders could exert, to 

 have implicit faith in the full reliability of their presentments. 

 Such pressure, especially in opposition to a Tudor royal commis- 

 sion, would sedulously avoid publicity ; direct evidence of tamper- 

 ing with juries would in any specific instance not now be easy to 

 obtain. But some slight evidence has come down to us concerning 

 these very inquisitions, and we are not left to mere suspicion. 

 Furthermore, it is often noticeable that pains were seemingly 

 taken to remove the sting from the entries which pointed to the 

 commissioners as themselves transgressing. But that such entries 

 were made at all, that they were only rendered legally harmless 

 instead of being suppressed outright, has a certain significance. 

 On the whole, it may, I think, fairly be doubted that any con- 

 siderable suppression or perversion of fact was attempted. The 

 allowance for this element of error need not be far-reaching. 

 There exists, however, in any case no sufficient basis for a 

 numerical estimate of this factor in the problem. 



The same holds true to some extent of the second doubtful 

 element, the possibility that counties not represented in our list 

 may have contributed some noteworthy quota to the sum total of 

 inclosures, though here we are on somewhat firmer ground. It is 

 probable that in some of .these sixteen counties a certain amount 

 of inclosure was going on, but there is little outside evidence of it. 

 The dean of Durham was doubtless indulging in the usual exag- 

 geration of the time when he wrote, in 1 597, that in the bishopric 

 of Durham " 500 plows have decayed in a few years" and "of 



1 A fuller discussion of the points here raised will be found in a forthcoming 

 issue of Schmollei's Forschungen, where I deal at length with the question of the 

 extent of the inclosure movement. 



