122 FROM JAMES I. TO THE RESTORATION 



land, though some live-stock was maintained by means of commons, 

 the energies of farmers were almost exclusively concentrated on 

 corn. On enclosed land, corn might be comparatively relegated 

 to the background, and the farmer's mainstays were meat, dairy 

 produce, and, if a flock-master, wool. So long as this rigid dis- 

 tinction was maintained, enclosures often meant depopulation and 

 a dwindling wheat-area. Experience was crystallised into the 

 proverb " No balks, no corn." It is true that, towards the end 

 of Elizabeth's reign, the advantages which enclosures gave to the 

 enterprise of the arable farmer were realised, and land began to be 

 fenced off, not for pasture only, but also for tillage. But the 

 economic case for enclosures was enormously strengthened, when the 

 real pivots of mixed husbandry were discovered, and when Stewart 

 agriculturists found that neither turnips, nor clover, nor artificial 

 grasses, nor potatoes, nor drainage, were possible on open-fields 

 which were held in common for half the year. Yet the experience 

 of the previous two hundred years had created a mass of well- 

 founded prejudice, which fought stubbornly against any extension 

 of the practice of enclosing land. It is for this reason, probably, 

 that the best writers of the Stewart and Commonwealth period 

 labour hard to prove that enclosures of open-fields and commons, 

 whatever their past history had been, necessitated neither depopula- 

 tion nor decay of tillage, and might even promote not only economic 

 but social gain. 



In his Book of Surveying (1523) Fitzherbert had written on the 

 way " to make a township that is worth 20 marks a year worth 

 20 a 3^ear." His plan was to discover, first, how many acres of 

 arable land each man occupied in the open-fields, how much meadow, 

 and what proportion of common pasture were attached to his hold- 

 ing ; and secondly, by means of exchange, to consolidate these 

 lands, lay them together, and enclose them in several occupation. 

 Every man should have " one little croft or close next to his house.'* 

 In the Brief e Examination (1549) the Doctor, who represents the 

 author's views, only condemns those enclosures of land which were 

 made for the conversion of tillage into pasture, or " without 

 recompence of them that have right to comen therein." It was 

 on this principle that in 1545 the Royal wastes of Hounslow Heath 

 were enclosed under the award of Commissioners, who set out a 

 portion of the heath to each inhabitant ; either as copyholds, or 

 on leases for terms of years. 



