INCLOSURES IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY 179 



Somersetshire, might be mentioned, ^ while large portions of the 

 west and north of England seem likewise to have known little or 

 nothing of the open fields. Within the Midland open-field district 

 itself there seem to have been areas of wooded, thick-hedged 

 country with at most but sparse, outlying open-field villages. 

 Such, for instance, in Buckinghamshire is the Chiltern region, 

 contrasted by Leland with the " champaine " Vale of Aylesbury, 

 or, in northwestern Warwickshire, the "Arden," on the right 

 hand of the Avon, noted by the same observer.^ We may in 

 passing mention East and West Gloucestershire as illustrating on 

 the modem map the contrast between the two distinctive forms of 

 settlement. The old-inclosed woodland countries may safely be 

 neglected in a consideration of the inclosures of the fifteenth 

 and sixteenth centuries. 



A third general conclusion to be drawn from a study of the 

 official inquisitions is that even in the Midland counties, in the 

 region where the set of the current towards agrarian innovation 

 was at its strongest, it had only succeeded in cutting numerous 

 but narrow and scattered channels through the sand-bars of custom 

 and prejudice. It would be indeed somewhat surprising, were we 

 not already guarded against contemporary asseveration, to discover 

 in the midst of such wholesale complaint so comparatively few 

 wholesale clearances. Armstrong, in the second quarter of the 

 sixteenth century, talks of the destruction of 400 or 500 Midland 

 villages within sixty years, but a tenth of his estimate would un- 

 doubtedly be nearer the mark. Search through the two official 

 inquiries for the Midlands, covering together over sixty years, 



1 See Fitzherbert, Surveying (1523), edition of 1539, chap, xli, for Essex; 

 Hales' Discourse (1549), edited by Lamond, p. 49, for " Essex, Kent, Devonshire, 

 and such"; Tusser, edition of Dialect Soc, p. 141, for Suffolk and Essex; the 

 Considerations of 1607 (printed in Cunningham, Growth of English Industry, 

 Vol. II, pp. 702-703), for "Essex, Somerset, Devon, etc."; Blith, The English 

 Improver, edition of 1640, p. 40, for Hertfordshire, Essex, Kent, Surrey, and 

 Sussex; while in the edition of 1563 (p. 83) he adds Berkshire, Hampshire, 

 Wiltshire, Somersetshire, and mentions among the " Woodlands " the " West- 

 erne parts of Warwickshire and the Northerne parts of Worcestershire, Staf- 

 fordshire, Shropshire, Derbyshire, Yorkshire, and all the countries thereabouts." 



' Leland, Itinerary, edited by Hearne, iv ff. 192 a, 166 a; viii f. 74 b. 



