I ENCLOSURE 79 



eat cheese county ; Hants, Cambridgeshire, Northampton- 

 shire, and Bedfordshire were famous for malt, and Leicestershire 

 for peas and beans. The population of England in 1485 was 

 probably from two to two and a half millions. At the time 

 of Domesday it was under two millions, and from that date 

 increased perhaps to nearly four millions at the time of the 

 Black Death in 1348-9, which swept away from one-third to 

 one-half of the people, and repeated wars and pestilences seem 

 to have kept it from increasing until Tudor times. Of the 

 whole population no fewer than eleven-twelfths were employed 

 in agriculture.^ 



It was sought to remedy enclosure and depopulation by legis- 

 lation, and the statute of 4 Hen. VH, c. 19, was passed, which 

 stated in its preamble that where in some towns (meaning 

 townships or villages) 300 persons used to be occupied and 

 lived by their lawful labours, now there are occupied only two 

 or three herdsmen, so that the residue fall into idleness, and 

 husbandry is greatly decayed, churches destroyed, the bodies 

 there buried not prayed for, the parsons and curates wronged, 

 and the defence of this land enfeebled and impaired ; the latter 

 point being wisely deemed one of the most serious defects in 

 the new system of farming. Indeed, the encouragement of 

 tillage was largely prompted by the desire to see the people 

 fed on good home-grown corn and made strong and healthy 

 by rural labour for the defence of England. It therefore 

 enacted that houses which within three years before had 

 been let for farms with 30 acres of tillage land should be 

 kept in that condition, under a penalty of forfeiting half the 

 profits to the king or the lord of the fee. Soon after Henry VIII 

 ascended the throne came another statute, 6 Hen. VIII, c. 5, 

 that all townships, villages, &c., decayed and turned from hus- 

 bandry and tillage into pasture, shall by the owner be rebuilt 

 and the land made mete for tillage within one year ; and this 



^ See Cunningham, Industry and Commerce, '• 331 5 Denton, England 

 in the Fifteenth Century, p. 127. 



