298 THE RURAL POPULATION, 1780-1813 



ing that some care be taken of the families " ; to " lay all the small 

 Farms, let to poor indigent People, to the great ones," not forgetting 

 that " it is much more reasonable and popular to stay till such Farms 

 fall into Hand by Death." L This policy of substituting one large 

 tenant for several small occupiers was generally pursued. Beyond 

 possibility of dispute the Reports to the Board of Agriculture prove 

 the tendency towards that " engrossment " of farms which Tudor 

 writers denounced. 2 



The consolidation of holdings affected the old occupiers in very 

 different ways. Where land was held by freeholders, copyholders of 

 inheritance, or leaseholders for lives with outstanding terms, the 

 process of collecting large areas in the hands of one owner could 

 only be effected by purchase. On the enclosure of an open-field 

 farm with a common attached, each proprietor had received a 

 compact block, representing his intermixed arable strips, and an 

 allotment corresponding in value to his pasture rights. Sometimes 

 the area was so small as not to pay the cost of fencing ; it was sold 

 at once, often before the award was published. In some cases, the 

 rising standard of living, the loss of their domestic industries, the 

 attractions of the rapid fortunes realised in trade, the temptation of 

 the high prices which land commanded during the war, induced small 

 owners to sell their estates. Others who for a time clung to their 

 property found themselves, at a later stage, compelled to part with 

 it by the increase in taxation, by the enormous rise in the poor rates, 

 by the pressure of mortgages contracted for additional purchases, 

 jointures, and portions, or by the fluctuations of agricultural prices, 

 or by the failure of banks. The period at which farmer-owners 

 diminished most rapidly in numbers was between the years 1813 

 and 1835. 



Beyond the classes whose occupation of land or rights of com- 

 mon were of an independent or a permanent nature, no claim was, 

 as a rule, recognised by enclosure commissioners. If any compensa- 

 tion was made, it was on voluntary and charitable lines. The 

 strict letter of the law was generally followed. Occupiers of arable 



1 Duty of a Steward to his Lord, pp. 37, 60, 55, 35. 



* Thomas Wright, in The Monopoly of Small Farms a great cause of the 

 present Scarcity (1795), p. 9, urges the formation of societies to purchase large 

 estates, divide them into small farms, and let or sell them to small farmers. 

 " It is computed," writes the author of A Plan for Relieving the Rates by Cottage 

 Acres, etc. (1817), " that since the year 1760 there have been upwards of forty 

 thousand small farms monopolised and consolidated into large ones and as 

 many cottages annihilated." 



