PREFACE 175 



The Tudor enclosures seem to have affected Cambridgeshire but 

 little. Wholesale depopulation does not appear to have occurred 

 to any great extent, though there had been complaint on this 

 score against Barnwell Abbey in 1414, on the ground that ' great 

 waste of housing ' had been made at Chesterton, and that no housing 

 was left standing on the manor " but if it were a Shepe Cote or a 

 berne or a swynsty and a few houses by side to putt in bestes. " ! 

 Sir John Cutts' depopulation at Childerley is a later instance of a 

 similar kind, though he may have aimed at creating a park for 

 deer, rather than a sheep-walk ; but throughout the high lands of 

 Cambridge generally, there was little temptation to enclose the 

 common fields. The colleges at Cambridge offered a convenient 

 market for food stuffs, both corn and dairy produce 2 ; and as 

 landowners they were interested in having plentiful supplies. 

 The corn rent act which a passed the houses before they were 

 sensible of the good consequences of it," 3 was apparently intended 

 to enable the colleges to obtain supplies on reasonable terms, 

 though it also served to maintain their revenues, as the value of 

 money fell. There was less motive in this district than in other 

 places to engage in sheep farming in the sixteenth century ; and 

 agricultural improvement went on in the seventeenth and eigh- 

 teenth centuries without the breaking up of the common fields. In 

 the southern part of Cambridge the enclosure of common fields 

 was delayed ; and we have, as a consequence, unusually full records 

 of the actual changes which ensued when it at length took place. 4 



In the Isle of Ely, the conditions were entirely different : 

 whereas in the high land every part of a parish was fit for use as 

 arable land and in the case of some parishes, e.g. Hildersham 

 was actually so used, the land in the Isle of Ely, which was fit 



1 Rot Part. IV. 60. b. 



2 Vancouver. General View, pp. 193-198. W. Gooch. General View of the 

 County of Cambridge (1813), pp. 56-94. 



8 18 El. c. 6. Compare Kennett, Parochial Antiquities, II 295. 

 4 Vancouver. General View of the Agriculture in the County of Cambridge, 

 (1794), p. 87. 



