The effect of the Act was to enable the common-field system to be adjusted to the new agriculture of the eighteenth century, which was marked by the introduction of turnips, artificial grasses, and the abandonment of frequent fallowing. A precise account of the adoption of a scheme under the Act is given us by the prime mover.
In the township of Hunmanby, in the East Riding of Yorkshire, the cultivators had fallen into one of the besetting temptations to which “champion” farmers were liable. They had gradually extended the arable fields at the expense of the common pasture, till the manure produced by the latter was insufficient for the needs of the former, and the land was losing its fertility. Isaac Leatham got his brother farmers to agree to abandon the old (three-year) course of husbandry, and to substitute the following six-year course:—
- 1. Turnips, hoed, and fed off with sheep.
- 2. Barley with grass seed.
- 3. Grass.
- 4. Grass.
- 5. Wheat.
- 6. Oats or peas.
The grass seed sown with the barley was bought in common, and paid for proportionately. From the time the barley was carried until it was time to plough for the wheat crop, one gathers that the grass, which had been sown with the barley, was being fed with sheep; therefore, at any particular time after the course was established, half the common field area was feeding sheep, or growing turnips for sheep, and half was growing grain or pulse. The sheep flock was managed in common; each occupier was allowed to contribute sheep to it in proportion to his holding; the whole was under the care of two shepherds, who folded the sheep nightly upon different strips of land in succession, so that all occupiers received equal benefit. Field reeves were appointed.
“Thus,” says Isaac Leatham, “an open field is enjoyed in as beneficial a manner as if it were enclosed ... two persons are fully sufficient to attend the sheep-stock, instead of many ... the precarious rearing of fences is avoided, and the immense expense of continually repairing them saved.”[35]
- [35] Isaac Leatham, “East Riding,” p. 46.
I take it that Isaac Leatham, who, by the way, was a strong advocate of enclosure in general, meant that the open field was, on the whole, enjoyed in as beneficial a manner as if it were enclosed, because there still remained the great disadvantage that each occupier had his lands in widely scattered strips, and had to waste much time and labour in cultivating them; cross-ploughing, which might, or might not have been desirable, was any way impossible; the village lands had to be treated as one whole, so no enterprising and original man was able to experiment with new ideas, nor could any further improvement be adopted without the consent of a three-fourths majority; and, perhaps, the keeping of sheep in a common flock put obstacles in the way of improving the breed.
I may add that an Act for the enclosure of Hunmanby was passed in the year 1800, so that Isaac Leatham’s course was abandoned just seven years after he wrote about it so triumphantly.
The Act of 1773, therefore, was, perhaps, not a brilliant success in Hunmanby; perhaps, on the other hand, improved agriculture excited an appetite for further improvement, and one novelty having been accepted, the stiff conservatism which might have postponed enclosure, was broken down. But, as a glance at the map for the East Riding will show, the whole countryside was subject to a rage for enclosure, and the famine prices for grain of 1796, doomed to recur again in 1800–1, in 1812, and 1817, were acting as a powerful solvent to all old agricultural customs.
It is quite obvious that the Act of 1773 was an endeavour to select out of the customs and traditions prevailing in different villages those which were most in harmony with advanced agriculture, to further amend these, and to make them universal.