LandmarTis in British Farming. 
17 
invaded by another process. Not only among landlords, but 
also among freeholders and copyholders, the tendency set in the 
direction of individual, instead of common, occupation. Bundles 
of scattered strips in open-field farms were exchanged for 
compact blocks. Where the agrarian associations continued, 
their farming deteriorated, because the landlord’s officers ceased 
to direct the common farm. Large freeholders benefited by the 
change, while substantial tenants derived advantages from the 
consolidation of their holdings. It was upon the smaller yeo- 
men and tenantry, and upon the hired labourers, that the effect 
of enclosures, combined as it was with the conversion of arable 
land into pasture, told with most severity. Their holdings, or 
their wages, proved too small for their support when their 
common rights were extinguished. 
The process of enclosures received fresh impulse from the 
growing wool trade. Money was to be made by wool. But 
sheep could not be herded with success upon commons, and 
small holdings were incompatible with large flocks. The new 
commercial aristocracy turned flockmasters, enci’oached upon, 
or enclosed, the commons, and evicted small tenants from their 
holdings, that they might increase the size of their pasture farms. 
One shepherd was employed where half a dozen labourers had 
worked on arable land. The demand for labour dwindled. In vain 
the Legislature endeavoured to check the progress of the change, 
which the dissolution of the monasteries powerfully accelerated. 
The sufferings of the rural population found expression in the 
numerous agrarian insurrections of the sixteenth century. W^age- 
eaming labourers out of employment, tenant farmers evicted 
from their holdings, small freeholders ruined by the loss of 
the commons, swelled the cry of the people. In a quaint dia- 
logue between the husbandman, the knight, the capper, the 
merchant, and the doctor, the husbandman thus gives voice to 
their complaint : — 
Inclosures do ruin us all ; all is taken up for pasture — for pasture either 
for sheep or for grazing of cattle ; in so much that I have known of late a 
dozen ploughs, within less compass than six miles about me, laid down 
within this seven years ; and where three score persons or upwards had their 
livings, now one man with his cattle hath all. Sheep have driven husbandry 
out of the country, by the which was increased before all manner of victual, 
and now altogether sheep, sheep, sheep.” ‘ 
The immediate results of enclosures, and the conversion of 
arable land into pasture, W'ere disastrous to the lower ranks of 
the rural population. Yet it cannot be denied that the change 
‘ A Compendioug or Brief Examination of Certain Ordinary Complaints 
of Divers of our Countrymen in these our Bays. By W. S., Gentleman (Wm. 
Stafiord). 1581. 
VQL. in. T. s. — 9 g 
