PASTURE RIGHTS 297 



follows that it is employed in the strict sense of occupiers who owned 

 the land which they cultivated themselves. More probably it bears 

 the looser meaning of " open-field farmers," with all their picturesque 

 varieties of land tenure. Be this as it may, the evidence of the 

 Reports is strong as to the general conditions of the country. In 

 the period which they cover, and for a few years before, no great 

 inroad had been made on the numbers of small owners. No neces- 

 sary connection can, therefore, be established between the break-up 

 of open-field farms and the alleged disappearance of farmer-owners. 

 The passage quoted from the Warwickshire Report indicates the 

 lines on which the conflicting assertions of advocates and opponents 

 of enclosures may be reconciled. The consequences, and often the 

 objects, of the extinction of the system of intermixed arable strips 

 on the open-fields, and of the partition of the pasture-commons were, 

 generally speaking, the consolidation of larger holdings in the 

 separate occupation of individuals. The village farm, as has been 

 previously stated, consisted of two parts. There was the arable 

 land, cultivated in intermixed strips ; there were the grazing rights 

 exercised over the pasture commons. Both in legal theory and as 

 a historical fact, only the partners in the cultivation of the tillage 

 land were entitled to the pasture rights, which were limited to each 

 individual by the size of his arable holding. Outside this close 

 corporation any persons who turned in stock were trespassers ; they 

 encroached, not only on the rights of the owner of the soil, but on 

 the rights of those arable farmers to whom the herbage belonged. 

 Strangers might be able to establish their rights ; but the burden 

 of proof lay upon them. Similarly, it was only by long usage that \ 

 occupiers who rented ancient cottages could exercise pasture rights, 

 unless they also occupied arable land with their houses. The 

 statute of Elizabeth (31 Eliz. c. 7, 1589) which ordered that four 

 acres of land should be attached to each cottage let to agricultural 

 labourers, evidently refers to four acres of tillage. If no arable land 

 was attached to the cottage, the occupier might enjoy the right of 

 providing himself with fuel, but he could not turn out stock. It 

 was on these strict lines that enclosure proceeded, and one of its 

 promised advantages was the power of dealing with compact blocks 

 of land. In pursuance of this policy, Edward Laurence, in 1727, 

 instructs his steward to purchase " all the Freeholders out as soon as 

 possible " ; to " convert copyholds for lives into leaseholds for 

 lives " ; to " get rid of Farms of 8 or 10 per annum, always suppos- 



