The Enclosures in England Part 6

FOOTNOTES:

[87] Levett and Ballard, _op. cit._, p. 49, note.

[88] A speech on enclosures commending bills proposed in 1597 contrasts the constructive character of that legislation with the earlier laws: "Where the gentleman that framed this bill hath dealt like a most skilful chirugien, not clapping on a plaster to cover the sore that it spread no further, but searching into the very depths of the wound that the life and strength which hath so long been in decay by the wasting of towns and countries may at length again be quickened and repaired." Bland, Brown & Tawney, _Eng. Econ. History--Select Doc.u.ments_, pp. 271-272.

[89] 4 H. 7, c. 16, as quoted by Pollard, _Reign of Henry VII_, p. 237.

[90] Leadam, _Domesday of Inclosures_ (London, 1897), p. 7

[91] 25 H. 8, c. 13.

[92] Gray, _English Field Systems_ (Cambridge, 1915), pp. 95-96.

[93] "Midland Revolt," _R. H. S. Trans._, New Series, vol. xviii, p. 230.

[94] Tawney, _Agrarian Problem_, pp. 164-165.

[95] Levett and Ballard, _op. cit._, pp. 52-53.

[96] _Husbandry_ (ed. English Dialect Society, 1882), p. 77.

[97] 39 El., c. i, vi.

[98] _Surveying_ (2nd ed., 1567), ch. 24.

[99] Corbett, "Elizabethan Village Surveys," _Royal Hist. Soc.

Trans._, New Series, vol. ii, pp. 67-87.

[100] _Surveyinge_, ch. 41.

[101] _Five Hundred Points_ (London, 1812).

[102] Gray, _op. cit._, pp. 106-107.

[103] Gray, _op. cit._, pp. 35, 106-107.

[104] Lennard, _Rural Northamptonshire_, pp. 100-101.

[105] Fitzherbert, _Surveyinge_, chs. 27 and 28.

[106] See p. 79. Another reference to this process is made in October's _Husbandry_, vol. 22, ch. 17.

[107] Tusser, January's _Husbandry_, vol. 47, ch. 32.

[108] _A Discourse of the Common Weal of this Realm of England_, ed.

by Elizabeth Lamond, Cambridge, 1893.

[109] Smyth, _Lives of the Berkeleys_, vol. ii, pp. 159-160.

[110] Davenport, _Norfolk Manor_, pp. 80-81.

[111] Leadam, _op. cit._, pp. 641-644.

CHAPTER IV

ENCLOSURE FOR SHEEP PASTURE

Enclosure made by the tenants themselves by common agreement aroused no opposition or apprehension. No diminution of the area under tillage beyond that which had already of necessity taken place occurred, and the gra.s.s land already present in the fields was made available for more profitable use. The Doctor in Hales' dialogue carefully excepts this sort of enclosure from condemnation:

I meane not all Inclosures, nor yet all commons, but only of such Inclosures as turneth commonly arable feildes into pastures; and violent Inclosures, without Recompense of them that haue the right to comen therein: for if the land weare seuerallie inclosed to the intent to continue husbandrie theron, and euerie man, that had Right to commen, had for his portion a pece of the same to him selfe Inclosed, I thincke no harm but rather good should come therof, yf euerie man did agre theirto.[112]

In this pa.s.sage Hales recognizes the theoretical possibility of a beneficial sort of enclosure, but the conditional form in which his remarks are thrown indicates that, so far as he knew, there was little systematic division of the land among the tenants by common consent.

Orderly rearrangement of holdings into compact plots suitable for enclosure was difficult unless the small holders had all disappeared, leaving in the community only men of some means, who were able to undertake the expenses of the readjustment. In most villages, however, holdings of all sizes were the rule. Some tenants had almost no land under cultivation, but picked up a living by working for others, and by keeping a few sheep on the commons and on the fallow lands of the town. There was thus always a fringe of peasant families on the verge of dest.i.tution. They were being gradually eliminated, but the process was extremely slow. A few of them in each generation, feeling as a realized fact the increasing misery which has been predicted for the modern industrial laborer, were forced to give up the struggle. Their land pa.s.sed into the hands of the more prosperous men, who were thus gradually acc.u.mulating most of the land. In some cases, no doubt, all of the poorer tenantry were drained off in this fashion, making it possible for those who remained to consolidate their holdings and enclose them in the fashion advocated by Fitzherbert, keeping a part under tillage until it needed a rest, and pasturing sheep and cattle in the closes which were under gra.s.s.

It is impossible to estimate the number of these cases. What we do know is that in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries no such stage had been reached in hundreds of English townships. The enclosures which had been made by the tenants were of a few acres here and there.

The fields for the most part were still open and subject to common, and consisted in part of poor pasture land. We do know also that many landlords took matters into their own hands, dispossessed the tenants, and enclosed a part or all of the land for sheep pastures. The date at which this step was made, and the thoroughness with which it was carried out, depended very much upon the character and needs of the landlord, as well as upon local circ.u.mstances affecting the condition of the soil and the degree of poverty suffered by the tenants. The tendency for landlords to lose patience with the process which was gradually eliminating the poorer men and concentrating their land in the hands of the more prosperous is not characteristic of any one century. It began as early as the middle of the fourteenth century, and it extended well into the seventeenth. By 1402 clergy were being indicted as _depopulatores agrorum_.[113] In the fifteenth century statutes against enclosure and depopulation were beginning to be pa.s.sed, and Rous gives a list of fifty-four places near Warwick which had been wholly or partially depopulated before about 1486.[114] For the sixteenth century, we have the evidence of numerous statutes, the returns of the commissions, doggerel verse, popular insurrections, sermons, _etc._ Miss Leonard's study of the seventeenth-century enclosures is confirmed by additional evidence presented by Gonner that the movement was unchecked in this period. In 1692, for instance, Houghton was attacking the "common notion that enclosure always leads to gra.s.s," by pointing out a few exceptions.[115] In 1695 Gibson spoke of the change from tillage to pasture, which had been largely within living memory.[116]

There is no reason to believe that the landowners who carried out this process were unusually mercenary and heartless. The need for putting their land to some remunerative use was imperative, and it is surprising that the enclosure movement was of such a piece-meal character and extended over so many years, rather than that it took place at all.

There was little rent to be had from land which lay for the most part in open fields, tilled by men who had no capital at their command for improving the condition of the soil, or for utilizing profitably the portion of the land which was so impoverished that it could not be cultivated.

Poor tenants are unprofitable tenants; it is difficult to collect rent from them and impossible to raise their rent, and they attempt to save by exploiting the land, leaving it in worse condition than when they received it. Contemporary references to the poverty of these open-field tenants all confirm the impression given by Hales:

They that be husbandmen now haue but a scant lyvinge therby.[117]

I that haue enclosed litle or nothinge of my grond could (never be able) to make vp my lordes rent weare it not for a little brede of neate, shepe, swine, gese and hens that I doe rere vpon my ground: whereof, because the price is sumwhat round, I make more cleare proffitt than I doe of all my corne and yet I haue but a bare liuinge.[118]

Harrison, at the end of the century, writes of the open-field tenants:

They were scarce able to liue and paie their rents at their daies without selling of a cow or an horsse, or more, although they paid but foure poundes at the vttermost by the yeare.[119]

The tenant who could not pay this rent without selling stock was, of course, one of those who would soon have to give up his land altogether, if the landlord continued to demand rent. If he sold his horses and oxen to raise the rent one year, he was less able to work his land properly the next year, and the crop, too small in the first place to enable him to cover expenses, diminished still more. When the current income was ordinarily too small to cover current expenses, no relief was to be found by reducing the capital. A time came when these men must be either turned away, and their land leased to others, or else allowed to stay and make what poor living they could from the soil, without paying even the nominal rent which was to be expected of them.

Lord North's comment on the enclosure movement as he saw it in the seventeenth century is suggestive of the state of affairs which led to the eviction of these husbandmen:

Gentlemen of late years have taken up an humor of destroying their tenements and cottages, whereby they make it impossible that mankind should inhabit their estates. This is done sometimes barefaced because they harbour poor that are a charge to the parish, and sometimes because the charge of repairing is great, and if an house be ruinous they will not be at the cost of rebuilding and repairing it, and cast their lands into very great farms which are managed with less housing: and oftimes for improvement as it is called which is done by buying in all freeholds, copyholds, and tenements that have common and which harboured very many husbandry and labouring families and then enclosing the commons and fields, turning the managry from tillage to grasing.[120]

Not only were these men able to pay little rent for the land they held, but, as has been suggested, they were unable to maintain the land in proper condition by the use of manure and marl. These expenses were beyond the means of the farmer who was falling behind; they neglected the soil because they were poor, and they were poor because the yield of the land was so low; but their neglect caused it to decline even more. Fitzherbert, who deplores the fact that marl is no longer used in his time, points out that not only the leaseholder, who is averse to making improvements on account of the insecurity of his tenure, but the freeholder, also, is neglecting his land; although

He knoweth well, he shall take the profits while he liueth, & his heyres after him, a corrage to improw his owne, the which is as good as and he purchased as much as the improwment cometh to.[121]