200 READINGS IN RURAL ECONOMICS 



enclosed parishes show respectively more than one-half of their 

 areas held by three owners. 



Just as in these two groups engrossing in certain parishes has 

 been conducive to enclosure, so in Group D the lack of it has 

 caused delay. The continued existence of open fields in thirty- 

 five townships of this group can scarcely be attributed to the 

 independent farmer, since he owned on the average only 2I per 

 cent of the soil. The failure to enclose is to be charged rather 

 to a multiplicity of landlords. For in the land tax reports, the 

 twenty-seven townships which were enclosed after 1785 have, 

 except in two or three instances, many non-occupying owners. 

 The evidence of the three groups thus seems to show that en- 

 grossing rather than the absence of occupying owners was the 

 normal preliminary to enclosure before 1755. 



Group E indicates whether enclosure always followed speedily 

 upon engrossing. Here there are no small farmers and engrossing 

 had gone far. In each of the ninety townships from one to three 

 men own three-fourths of the land, yet nineteen are unenclosed 

 in 1755 and twelve in 1785. Enclosure of five of the twelve is 

 delayed even to the middle of the nineteenth century. Nor is this 

 because in them there are many landlords. In no parish are there 

 more than five or six of any importance, aside from the glebe and 

 tithe interest. Instances like these have at least two counterparts 

 in Group D. Taken together they make clear thit enclosure 

 was sometimes delayed, not so much because there were many 

 interests to harmonize as because landlords were indifferent. 

 With their holdings probably not badly scattered, owners were 

 not troubled by inconveniences to their tenants (which perhaps 

 the latter did not feel) and did not care to incur the expense of 

 parliamentary act and award. Such a situation exists today in the 

 parish of Westcote, Gloucestershire, just on the western border 

 of Oxfordshire. 



If the foregoing interpretation of later evidence be correct for 

 the period before 1755, there seems ground for believing that 

 the existence of small independent farmers did not always hinder 

 enclosure and that their disappearance did not always facilitate it. 

 Engrossing of small properties was the essential antecedent. If 



