122 The Nineteenth Century 



farmers"' were very much in favour of "the laying of the intermixed 

 property together in the open fields".^ And Vancouver was emphatic in 

 demonstrating the improvement in crop yields that resulted from enclosure. 



Want of enclosure was also felt in the Highland Common which "in 

 severalty" ^vould have been doubled in value; while the Half Yearly 

 Meadow Land, "dispersed through the hollows of the open fields", 

 would even more than double in value "by proper draining and being put 

 into severalty ".3 



The report of 1813 by W. Gooch showed that "most of the arable 

 husbandry of this county*^ was still foreign "to present practice in the best 

 cultivated countries".'' Many people stiU beheved that the older methods 

 were the best, and "this bigotry" was widely spread. But something had 

 certaiioly been done to redeem the County "from the imputation it has so 

 long lain under, of being the worst cultivated in England ".5 By 1807, the 

 open-field arable was "much lessened", and a great part of "the waste 

 and unimproved fen, half-yearly meadow, highland common, fen or 

 moor common, sheep-walk heath", had become enclosed arable and 

 pasture. In the case of open-field conversion, the total rental had more 

 than doubled: on other lands it had trebled at least.^ 



But more still remained to be done. In 1822, when Wilham Cobbett 

 travelled along the Old North Road from Royston to Huntingdon, much 

 of the country was stiU treeless and hedgeless, fuU of "those very ugly 

 things, common-fields", and looking "bleak and comfordess" to the eye.7 

 StiU later, in 1830, between Cambridge and St Ives, Cobbett again saw 

 "open unfenced fields".*^ But Cambridgeshire was coming into hne with 

 the rest of the Enghsh plain. By 1847, all its open common-fields, "with 

 the exception of five or six parishes ",9 had been enclosed. 



THE CURVE OF PROSPERITY 



The fluctuations of agricultural fortune in Cambridgeshire during the 

 nineteenth century reflected, very largely, variations in the prosperity of 



' C. Vancouver, p. 53. ^ Ibid. p. 147. 3 lyj^ p. 204. 



1 W. Gooch, p. viii. 5 Jbid. p. 56. * Ibid. p. 2. 



7 W. Cobbett, Rural Rides (Everyman's edition), i, 80-2: "Immediately upon 

 quitting Royston, you come along, for a considerable distance, with enclosed fields 



on the left and open common-fields on the right The fields on the left seem to have 



been enclosed by act of parUament; and they certainly are the most beautiful tract of 

 fields that I ever saw. Their extent may be from ten to thirty acres each. Divided by 

 quick-set hedges, exceedingly well planted and raised" (p. 80). 



^ Ibid, ii, 236. 



9 S. Jonas, "On the Farming of Cambridgeshire", Jowr. Roy. Agric. Soc. (1847), 

 p. 38. G. Slater gives nine parishes enclosed after 1847 {The English Peasantry and 

 the Enclosure of the Common Fields (1907), p. 273). But for at least ten, see E. M. 

 Hampson, "Cambridge County Records", Proc. Camb. Antiq. Soc. xxxi, 143 (1931). 



