Agricultural Revolution 25 



as a rule the landlord, and the allotment went to enlarge the holding 

 of the large farmer 1 . 



But though the cottier class was the first to go, the ruin of the 

 small holders proper, whether owners or tenants, went forward 

 equally surely, if more slowly. The commons had been quite as 

 fundamental a condition of their existence as of that of the cot- 

 tiers. Everywhere, on the conclusion of an enclosure, they fell 

 into distress. Many "starved with their families, till necessity 

 forced them to quit their farms 2 " : and it was the general opinion 

 that "strip the small farms of the benefit of the commons, and 

 they are all at one stroke levelled with the ground 3 ." The small 

 farmers were not in a position to compensate the landlord for the 

 expenses of enclosure by paying a higher rent. On the contrary, 

 they found it difficult to continue to pay the old amount; for they had 

 no longer free pasture for their stock, and besides, the land allotted 

 to them was not enough to enable them to keep as many beasts as 

 formerly 4 . Meantime the landlord had every motive for forming 

 large arable holdings. While he could not hope to get a high rent 

 from his smaller tenants he knew that their land, if let to a few 

 large farmers, would bring in ever-increasing profits. In some cases 

 a large farmer, on replacing several small ones, would not only offer 

 ten times the rent they had paid, but would also take on himself the 

 cost of the enclosure 5 . 



and sold their allotments. Left without cows or land." Of Parndon, in Essex: "Their 

 little allotments all sold ; could not enclose " : and so of many others. Arthur Young 

 mentions in the Annals, Vol. xxxvi (1801) innumerable cases in which the poor had lost 

 their cows after enclosure. 



1 The writer of the General Report on Enclosures says (pp. 12 f.) : "In many cases the 

 poor had unquestionably been injured. In some cases... where allotments were assigned, the 

 cottagers could not pay the expense of the measure, and were forced to sell their allotments. 

 In others, they kept cows by right of hiring their cottages, or common rights, and the land 

 going of course to the proprietor, was added to the farms, and the poor sold their cows." 

 Cp. the Letter of the Earl of Winchilsea in Communications, op. cit. Vol. I, p. 80 : " I am 

 sorry to say, that I am afraid most of those cottages were taken away at the time of the 

 several enclosures, and the land thrown to the farms"; and p. 84: "Whoever travels 

 through the midland counties, and will take the trouble of enquiring, will generally receive 

 for answer, that formerly there were a great many cottagers who kept cows, but that the land 

 is now thrown to the farmers." Cp. also J . Farey, A General View of the Agriculture of 

 Derbyshire, 1815, p. 76. 



2 The Advantages and Disadvantages of enclosing Waste Lands, 1772, p. 36. 



3 An Enquiry into the Advantages and Disadvantages resulting from Bills of Enclosure, 

 1780, p. 14. 



4 Hasbach, op. cit. p. 109. 



3 J. Monk, A General View of the Agriculture of Leicestershire, p. 45, says for example that 

 the parish of Queniborough had been let before enclosure for 2s. 6d. an acre ; but a gentleman 



