“Environs of Salisbury.—To the southward of the town there are some well-sized, square fields, with good live hedges (at least on three sides) apparently of forty or fifty years’ growth; yet, extraordinary as it is, many of these fields lie open to the roads; the fences on the sides next the lanes lying in a state of neglect. And, to the north of the Avon, the country for many miles every way, lies open, unless about villages and hamlets, and along the narrow bottoms of the watered valleys. To the eastward of Salisbury an attempt has been made at inclosure; the ruins of the hedges are still evident; broken banks, with here and there a hawthorn. And similar instances are observable in other parts of the Downs.
“Are we to infer from hence, that chalk down lands are not proper to be kept in a state of inclosure? Or that where sheep are kept in flocks, and few cattle are kept, fences are not requisite? Or is the foliage of shrubs a natural and favourite food of sheep, and hence, in a country chiefly stocked with sheep, it is difficult to preserve a live hedge from destruction?
“Ludgershall to Basingstoke.—The country is wholly inclosed: excepting a few plots to the right; mostly in large square fields, doubtless from a state of open down; the hedges in general of a Middle Age; some instances of vacant inclosure.
“With respect to the present state of appropriation of this tract of country,[103] the mere traveller is liable to be deceived. From the more public roads, the whole appears to be in a state of divided property. But on a closer examination, much of it is found to be in a state of commonage. In the immediate environs of Salisbury, there are evident remains of a common field, lying in narrow strips, intermixed, in the south of England manner; and not far from it, a common cow pasture and a common meadow. About Mere” (on the Somerset border of Wiltshire) “I observed the same appearances. In the Valley of Amesbury much of the land remains, I understand, under similar circumstances, though they do not so evidently appear in the arable lands, which by the aggregation of estates, or of farms, or by exchanges among landlords and their tenants, lie mostly in well-sized pieces. But the after-eatage,[104] whether of the stubbs or the meadows, is enjoyed in common. And the grass downs of the common field townships are in a state of common pasture the year round; being stinted by the arable lands” (“Southern District,” p. 308, etc.).
- [103] I.e., the whole of the district he calls “the Western Chalk hills.”
- [104] “After-eatage.” This is Marshall’s variant of “average,” showing his theory of the etymology of the word, a theory which might have been suggested to him by the quaint phrase common in Enclosure Acts: “The averages whereof are eaten and enjoyed by the proprietors according to a recognised stint.”
One fact to be noticed is that Hampshire was earlier enclosed than Wiltshire; which is in accordance with what one would have expected. Enclosure spread westwards into Hampshire from Surrey and Sussex.
Davis I have previously quoted. “The greater part of this county (Wiltshire) was formerly, and at no very remote period, in the hands of great proprietors. Almost every manor had its resident lord, who held part of the lands in demesne, and granted out the rest by copy or lease to under tenants, usually for three lives renewable. A state of commonage, and particularly of open common fields, was peculiarly favourable to this tenure. Inclosures naturally tend to its extinction.
“The North-West of Wiltshire being much better adapted to inclosures and to sub-division of property than the South, was inclosed first; while the South-East or Down district, has undergone few inclosures and still fewer sub-divisions” (“Agriculture of Wiltshire,” p. 8).
We have previously seen that Cobbett, traversing that same South-East district of Wiltshire, found in 1825 the common field or “tenantry” system completely superseded by that of great farms. Parliamentary enclosure only partly effected the change, which appears to have been so complete in the space of a single generation, 1793–1825. The violent fluctuations in the price of grain during the great war, the wholesale ruin of farmers in 1815 and 1816, the abuse of the Poor Law peculiarly rampant in Wiltshire, by which the peasants who held such little holdings as we have observed in Fordington and Stratton and Grimstone, by lease or copy, were compelled to pay in their rates the wages of the labourers employed by the great farmers who were superseding them, and the decay of home industries to which Cobbett bears witness, all these were complementary parts of the social transition, each assisting all the others, and all together converting the tiller of the soil from the peasant with a medieval status, a responsible member of a self-governing village community, into a pauperised, half-starved labourer.