94 HISTORY OF AGRICULTURE 



between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries, Eden gives 

 several examples,^ of which the following are significant : — 



* Our sheepe are very excellent for sweetness of flesh, and 

 our woolles are preferred before those of Milesia and other 

 places.'^ So thought Harrison and many English land- 

 owners and farmers too, so that legislation was powerless to 

 stop the spread of sheep farming. In 15 17 a commission of 

 inquiry instigated by Wolsey held inquisition on enclosures 

 and the decay of tillage, and it seems to have been the only 

 honest effort to stop the evil. It was to inquire what decays, 

 conversions, and park enclosures had been made since 1489, 

 but the result even of this attempt was small. In 1535 a fresh 

 statute, 27 Hen. VIII, c. 22, stated that the Act limiting the 

 number of sheep to be kept had only been observed on lands 

 held of the king, whereon many houses had been rebuilt and 

 much pasture reconverted to tillage; but on lands holden 

 of other lords this was not the case, therefore the king was to 

 have the moiety of the profits of such lands as had been 

 converted from tillage to pasture since 4 Hen. VII until 

 a proper house was built and the land returned to tillage ; but 

 the Act only applied to fourteen counties therein enumerated. 

 The enclosing for sheep-runs still went on, however, often with 

 ruthless selfishness ; houses and townships were levelled, says 

 Sir Thomas More, and nothing left standing except the church, 

 which was turned into a sheep-house : 



^ State of the Poor, i. 48-9. Blomefield's Norfolk, iv. 569, i. 51, i. 649. 

 Dugdale, Warwickshire, p. 557. 

 * Description of Britain, iii. 5. 



