202 READINGS IN RURAL ECONOMICS 



out. This is perhaps the closest approach which seventeenth- and 

 eighteenth-century enclosure makes to becoming a cause of the 

 disappearance of the occupying owner. Such cases existed, without 

 doubt. We have found them between 1755 and 1832, but in 

 small numbers, and then due largely to the activity of the Duke 

 of Marlborough between 1760 and 1785. Most of the evidence, 

 on the other hand, seems to indicate that enclosure was the 

 registering of a fait accompli and was dependent upon the en- 

 grossing of estates and the breakdown of old field systems. 



To determine what underlay these last two phenomena and 

 what was their relation to the disappearance of the yeoman farmer, 

 there ^s need of further investigation. Toynbee and Johnson 

 have given suggestions. Permanent conclusions must probably 

 rest on the rentals, the surveys, the rolls of manorial and central 

 courts during the period in question. The present paper has 

 merely attempted to show for one county what the facts are. 

 For this limited area they seem scarcely to be what most current 

 writing has maintained. There was in Oxfordshire no decline in 

 the area of yeoman farms between 18 14 and 1832, as Rae and 

 Taylor would lead us to think, and scarcely any falling off in the 

 number of yeoman farmers from 1785 to 1832. The temporary 

 increase in the ranks of the latter during the period of the French 

 war does not well accord with Levy's contention that misfortune 

 came to them with the advancing price of grain. Enclosure after 

 1785 did not fatally affect yeomen with holdings of from two 

 acres to three hundred acres, and did not to any great extent 

 during the preceding thirty years. In this respect, the views of 

 Miss Leonard, Hasbach, Mantoux, and Slater do not receive con- 

 firmation. Toynbee, in saying that the disappearance of small 

 freeholders has been continuous was better advised than when he 

 added, " it was not until about 1760 that the process of extinction 

 became rapid." Mr. Johnson, alone, reasoning from the Land 

 Tax returns and other data, reaches conclusions about the period 

 when the yeomanry disappeared more in accord with those which 

 seem to hold for Oxfordshire. Summarily stated, these are that 

 the marked decline in yeoman farming took place between the 



