I/O READINGS IN RURAL ECONOMICS 



8000 acres lately in tillage now not eightscore are tilled," ^ but it 

 is evident that at least towards the close of the century the move- 

 ment, or something very like it, was spreading northward to a 

 region untouched by the official investigations. Closer examina- 

 tion, however, shows that most of these sixteen counties really 

 lay outside the sphere of the inclosure movement of this period. 

 They belonged in large measure to the old inclosed country, 

 where the agricultural system was radically different from that of 

 the open-field districts, a country where inclosures had prevailed 

 from a time long anterior to this . movement of the fifteenth and 

 sixteenth centuries. To these old inclosures we must later briefly 

 revert. For the present we have simply to note that they do not 

 enter as a disturbing factor in our estimate with a weight of which 

 we need or can take account. 



The third question as to the rate of progress remains. Pro- 

 fessor Ashley limits the " precipitate change " for this period to 

 the sixty years between 1470 and 1530. "After about 1530," he 

 says, "the movement somewhat slackened." ^ Dr. Cunningham, 

 on the other hand, speaks of the " rapid progress of enclosures " 

 towards the middle of the century, and gives a modified adhe- 

 sion to the view widely held that the change of ownership 

 at the dissolution of the monasteries gave a new impetus to the 

 movement.^ The former of these opinions rests largely upon a 

 misapprehension as to the nature of the old inclosed districts, 

 the latter has little substantial evidence to support it. Such evi- 

 dence as there is, however, points to the conclusion that there was 

 no perceptible slackening throughout the century. Not only do we 

 witness an undiminished volume of contemporary complaint, a 



1 Cal. S. P. Dom. Eliz., 1 595-1 597, p. 347. In -a later letter (p. 348) the "few 

 years " become fifty years. " In Northumberland," he adds, " great villages are 

 dispeopled," and these decays (p. 542) " are not, as supposed, by the enemy, 

 but private men have dispeopled whole villages." About the same time, Tobie 

 Matthew, bishop of Durham, is urging on Lord Burghley the revival of the 

 statutes for tillage (Hist. MSS. Com., MSS. of the Marquis of SaUsbury, 

 Vol. VII, p. 453). The Agricultural Survey of 1810 dates the first inclosures in 

 Durham from 1658 (p. 86). 



2 Ashley, Introduction to English Economic History, Vol. I, Pt. II, p. 286. 

 * Cunningham, Growth of English Industry, etc., 3d ed.. Vol. I, p. 531. 



