178 READINGS IN RURAL ECONOMICS 



To this view that the characteristic inclosures of the fifteenth 

 to the seventeenth centuries were largely confined to the Midlands, 

 there is the apparent objection that a number of early authorities 

 may be cited as mentioning inclosed countries lying outside the 

 central region. Professor Ashley on this evidence has marked 

 upon his maps, as wholly or mainly inclosed in the fifteenth and 

 sixteenth centuries, Suffolk, Kent, most of Essex and Hertford- 

 shire in the east, and most of Worcestershire with the northwest- 

 ern part of Warwickshire in the west of England. But if, when 

 the chapter on the Agrarian Revolution was written, he could 

 have had the benefit of Professor Meitzen's suggestions, 1 he would 

 have hesitated, we may suspect, before classing these old inclosed 

 districts among the inclosures of this period. Though the ques- 

 tions raised by Meitzen's researches demand in their application 

 to England further and careful investigation, it seems clear that a 

 distinction must be made between two quite differing forms of set- 

 tlement and agricultural practice, one with the " nucleated village " 

 and the open fields, the other with its scattered farms and inclosed 

 fields. In some sections the " old inclosures " may go back to an 

 original settlement long before the Conquest, in others both set- 

 tlement and inclosures may belong to a later period of reclamation 

 from the forest and of inner colonization, a chapter of English 

 economic history still to be written. In any case, associated as 

 they are with their own distinctive agricultural methods, they are 

 not to be confused with the depopulating inclosures of open-field 

 land characteristic of the later movement we are here dealing with. 

 A contemporary writer excepts from his condemnation of inclo- 

 sures " Essex, Hertfordshire, Devonshire, and such like Wood- 

 land Countries," where " euerie lordship is charitably diuided 

 amongst the Tenants, and tillage also in most of their Closes is 

 maintained, and Townes nothing dispeopled." 2 We may name 

 from early evidence others of these at any rate in part old-inclosed 

 " Woodland Countries." Suffolk, Kent, Sussex, Dorsetshire, 



1 A. Meitzen, Siedelung und Agrarvvesen, 1S95. Vol. II, p. 11S, and Anlage, 

 66 a, in the accompanying Atlas. 



2 Francis Trigge, The Humble Fetition, 1607, in Dedication. 



