MORE ENCLOSURE 119 



common pasture, a park, and a small wood. There were 

 forty-one freeholders and many leasehold tenants, the average 

 freehold being 34 acres, the average leasehold only half an 

 acre, small holdings being the usual feature of the unenclosed 

 township. 



In the seventeenth century the price of wool ceased to 

 operate as a cause of enclosure, but in many parts the 

 change to pasture continued, owing to the rise in price 

 of cattle and of wages. The same reason, too, for laying 

 down land to grass that had been so powerful in the pre- 

 ceding centuries still existed, the common arable fields 

 needed rest from continual cropping and poor manuring, 

 while good crops of corn could be grown frdm the virgin soil 

 of the newly enclosed waste. The preamble of the Durham 

 decrees clearly states this: 'the land is wasted and worn 

 with continual ploweing, and thereby made bare, barren, and 

 very unfruitfull.' ^ We may, therefore, take Coke's words as 

 inapplicable to many districts. In the seyenteepth century 

 there were several methods of enclosiHgT Sometimes thejord. 



^f the mangr enclosed a nd left the land of the tenants stilH n, 

 ^conimbn ; or a tenant enclosed piece by piece ; or enclosures^ 

 we re^~Tnade-by"^?t ct ot ra rliament."the earl i est of wh ic h for 

 commo n fields w aslpa'^sH in the <^imp of James T, 3 mpthf)H^ 

 at this period ve ry seldom used ; or there was an ag reement 

 between lorH^and tenant s often authorized by the_ Cf>urts of 

 Chancery-or^xchequen 



Besi3es~5nciostH:e7-arnJEKer process was going on, the con- 

 solidation of farms by the amalgamation of small holdings into 

 larger ones. Farm-houses, as we see them to-day, began to 

 appear on the holdings thus consolidated, instead of being 

 grouped together in villages. A writer in 1604 says, 'we may 

 see many of their houses built alone like raven's nests, no birds 

 building neere them,' so unwonted was the sight of isolated 

 dwellings in most places at the time. 



^ Transactions of the Royal Historical Society (New Series), xix. 116. 



