176 READINGS IN RURAL ECONOMICS 



only after 1 760. And the conversion of arable to pasture with the 

 accompanying displacement of population if in this lay the 

 essence of the "revolution" was for England, as a whole, in 

 the sixteenth century scarcely comparable with the analogous 

 change of the last thirty years. The statement that the sixteenth- 

 century inclosure movement swept devastatingly over the English 

 peasantry like the Black Death can only be termed a gross 

 exaggeration. 1 



In the second place the statistical results from the inquisitions 

 of depopulation, illustrated by the map, indicate that anything like 

 activity in inclosing was limited to the Midland counties. This 

 inference from our figures is confirmed by a study, in so far as the 

 summary Record Office catalogues will permit, of the inclosure 

 cases which during the first half of the sixteenth century were 

 brought before the so-called Poor Men's Courts the Courts of 

 Star Chamber and of Requests. It is borne out by the long list of 

 prosecutions under Elizabeth's first Tillage Act (5 Eliz. c. 2), which 

 are entered on the Exchequer Memoranda Rolls of the King's 

 Remembrancer. From this latter source I have noted cases of 

 inclosure during the period from 1558 to 1603, and of the 221 

 places here mentioned, the Midland counties alone furnish 51 

 per cent. The acreages in these suits do not seem trustworthy, 

 given as they usually are by the informers in round and probably 

 exaggerated figures ; but here, again, of the total acreage the 

 Midlands furnish 73 per cent. Within this central area it is, as 

 in the previous results, the group b made up of the counties 

 Warwickshire, Leicestershire, and, above all, Northamptonshire, 

 which was preeminently the field of the incloser's enterprise.^ 



The contemporary literature in its vague denunciation too 

 rarely condescends to facts and places ; but here also as far 

 as it can be localized it refers to the Midlands. Rous and the 

 Vicar of Quinton, at the close of the fifteenth century, brought 

 from southern Warwickshire and the neighboring northeastern 

 part of Gloucestershire the first clear and unmistakable reports as 

 to the character of the change.^ Armstrong specified " the Mydell 

 parts of the body of the realme " ^ ; the tract Certayne Causes, the 

 counties of Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire, and Northamptonshire.^ 



