STORY OF THE ENGLISH LAND 29 



which in the present times is so much wanted, 

 would be thereby considerably secured." 

 Because the cottagers and squatters preferred 

 to work for themselves rather than others 

 they were described as " incorrigibly idle ; " 

 their dwellings were held to be " instead of 

 schools for virtue, most fruitful seminaries 

 of vice." 



The economic results of the Enclosure 

 Acts pressed with pitiless severity upon the 

 poor. Whole villages disappeared ; the 

 cottager's fuel had gone ; in the absence of 

 his small corn crop he was compelled to buy 

 bread ; with the loss of his common rights he 

 lost the cow's milk for his children. The 

 despoiled cottagers struggled fitfully against 

 the encroachments, and the new fences were 

 in many parts of England torn down again 

 and again. But despite a certain amount of 

 sympathy from the middle classes and even 

 from the troops employed against them, 1 

 the rioters poor, badly organized, voteless 

 could offer no effective resistance to the 

 legalised robbery of their rights and property. 

 Until 1801, there was no appeal from the 



1 I find a curious story in an old book on the Otmoor 

 enclosures that the yeomanry who were employed to keep 

 order, put smock frocks over their tunics at night and 

 actually helped the rioters to demolish the fences ! 



