1921.] The Enclosire of Oi'en-Fielj) Farms. 907 



under the plough. The fear was crystallised in the Elizabethan 

 prophecy: " No balks, no corn " — in other words, that no grain 

 would be grown on enclosed land. But alarm on this score 

 soon proved to be a bugbear. The supply was greater than 

 before. The area under corn rather increased than diminished. 

 The yield of wheat per acre also rose on the new land brought 

 into cultivation, and on the older arable when it was recon- 

 verted to tillage, until it is said to have reached 20 bushels. 

 These results were recognised in 1619 in the appointment of 

 a Commission to grant licences for the conversion of arable 

 land to pasture. After referring to the old legislation on the 

 subject, the Proclamation states that " the quantitie and 

 qualitie of errable and corne lands at this day doth much exceed 

 the quantitie that w^as at the making of the saide Lawe." It 

 goes on to say that, as the want of corn " shall appeare or 

 the price thereof increase, all or a great part of those lands 

 which were heretofore converted from errable to pasture and 

 have sithence gotten heart, strength and fruitfulness, will be 

 reduced to Corne lands againe, to the greate increase of graine 

 to the Commonwealth and profite to each man in his private." 

 With occasional rises in price, due mainly to bad seasons, civil 

 war, or currency disturbances, the supply of corn for the 

 next 180 years was abundant, steady and relatively cheap, in 

 spite of the growing population and the considerable export of 

 grain which continued up to the beginning of the long war 

 with France. 



With ocular demonstration that corn-growing could and 

 would flourish on enclosed land, the discussion of the open- 

 field system enters on a new phase. Attention begins to be 

 increasingly concentrated on the obstacles which village farms 

 presented to the introduction of improved farming, and on 

 the economic loss that they inflicted on the community by their 

 waste of land. Agriculturally, the interest of the Elizabethan 

 and Stewart periods lies in the numerous improvements in 

 methods and in the increased resources w^hich were suggested 

 to farmers. This progress may even be said to date from Fitz- 

 herbert. Both he and Tusser (1557) were enthusiastic 

 advocates of enclosures on practical grounds. Their writings 

 show in detail many of the ways in which, even in the existing 

 state of agriculture, open-field farmers were handicapped. But 

 as a general rule they suggest no improved methods of farming. 

 In only tw^o points can Fitzherbert claim to belong to the new 

 .school, but both are important. He pleads for attention to 



