INCLOSURES IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY i8l 



not by any means the magnitude often ascribed to it ; that it was, 

 in other words, little more than the feeble beginning of an "' agra- 

 rian revolution"; that, limited in amount, it was also circum- 

 scribed in area, being largely confined to the central districts of 

 England, and even here was of a piecemeal character, so that, 

 after more than two and a half centuries, inclosures were only 

 lying " dispersedly up and down." 



But this sketch of the specific inclosing movement of the period 

 does not touch all the features of the agrarian change. Besides 

 the engrossing and consolidation of farms and the increase in 

 rents and copyhold fines, which could and did take place without 

 inclosure, there was still another type of inclosure, that of the 

 common waste, which should be mentioned. Brinklow associated 

 the two forms when he wrote that the " lordes flocks eate vp the 

 corne, medows, heathes, and all together," ^ and that this was not 

 all exaggeration is plain from Fitzherbert's more sober statement.^ 

 While playing a minor r61e in the literature and legislation of the 

 period, it seems, if number of lawsuits are any criterion, that in- 

 closures of common (as distinguished from common fields) caused 

 more bickering and strife than the better known and more dra- 

 matic attack on the open fields. Of the cases of oppressive in- 

 closure complained of to the Privy Council during the sixteenth 

 century, almost all relate to the inclosure of common pasture or 

 waste ; and the records of the law courts show constant disputes 

 over common rights in all parts of the country, bearing witness at 

 once to the tendency to landlord encroachment and to the often 

 successful force of popular resistance. These contests are, of 

 course, not peculiar to the open-field districts, but were found in 

 all parts of England ; nor were they especially characteristic of 

 this particular period. They form, rather, one phase of the long 

 history of the approvement of the wastes which stretches back 

 beyond the statute of Merton (1236), and, like the later movement 

 for inclosure of ,the common fields, finds its culmination after 

 1 760. This gradual and steady nibbling from the common wastes, 

 going on for a longer time and over a wider area, was, however, 



1 H. Brinklow, Complaynt (ca. 1542), E.E.T.S.: E. S. Vol. XXII, p. 38. 

 * Fitzherbert, Surveying, edition of 1539, c. 8. 



