840 



The Enclositee of Open-Field Fabms. 



[Dec, 



continued unchecked, it threatened to become fatal to many of 

 the open-field farms. The weaker men would go to the wall. 

 The men of substance would meet the decline by exchanging" 

 their intermixed strips, and consolidating their holdings. This 

 change was in progress. But, with the agricultural resources 

 then available, the most efficient remedy was the conversion, 

 on a large scale, of arable into pasture, and of pasture into 

 arable. It was only with the greatest difficulty that this change 

 could be effected without destroying the framework of the old 

 agrarian partnerships. 



At the end of the fifteenth century the enclosing movement, 

 which had been in progress for many years in a piecemeal form, 

 began to reach its height on a more comprehensive scale. It 

 assumed a more drastic form, which was subversive of the 

 village farm and led to depopulation, because it enclosed the 

 open-fields and converted them to pasture. Its effect on the 

 rural population seized on the popular imagination. A consider- 

 able literature of protest and denunciation sprang into 

 existence. Commissions were appointed to inquire into and 

 report on the movement: numerous Acts of Parliament were 

 passed to prevent or regulate its progress. The period 1485- 

 1560 is the first of the two great periods of enclosure which 

 form the special subjects of inquiry. The second is roughly 

 covered by the reign of George III, 1760-1820. Both in the 

 sixteenth and in the eighteenth century writers neglected the 

 agricultural side of the movement. Public attention was 

 fastened on its social effects. Popular passion was excited by 

 the preachers, pamphleteers and ballad writers, who denounced, 

 in the racy language of Tudor times, the " greedy gulls," 



idle cormorants " and caterpillars of the commonwealth 

 who eat up the patrimony of the poor. The same appeals were 

 repeated in the eighteenth century — and since. To a certain 

 extent they were well-founded. Both periods were epochs of 

 great industrial changes, and in both the rural population 

 suffered. If criticism were concentrated on the omission to 

 take every possible step, which was compatible with the 

 national interest, to retain the peasant's hold on the land, the 

 precise form that enclosures generally took could not be 

 justified. On the other hand, changes were necessary. The 

 smaller open-field farmers were sinking into destitution through 

 the decline in the fertility of the soil, combined, as it was at 

 the later period, with the loss of the domestic industries. 

 Admitting that commercial motives came into play to accelerate 



