It only remains to be added that the former movement, if it was on at all as great a scale as Arthur Young gives us to understand (and I don’t see why one should doubt this) must have proceeded largely, if not mainly, without the intervention of Parliament. This is in the first place antecedently probable. Secondly, whereas between 1727 and 1774 there were 273 common field parishes enclosed by Acts of Parliament in the five counties of Northamptonshire, Leicestershire, Warwick, Huntingdonshire and Buckinghamshire, the commons, fens, moors, etc., attached to only 109 parishes in Norfolk, Suffolk, Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire, Lincolnshire, Yorkshire, Durham and Northumberland were so enclosed. Unless the area of about 100,000 acres thus enclosed in these 109 parishes was merely a fraction of the total area of waste enclosed by all sorts of methods in this latter group of counties, Arthur Young was misleading his readers, for he certainly intends to give the impression that the enclosure of arable fields in the Midlands was on a much smaller scale than the reclamation of heaths, moors and fens in the northern and eastern counties. Thirdly, with regard to Norfolk, Arthur Young specifies enclosure without Acts of Parliament as one of the causes of the great agricultural improvement in parts of Norfolk (“Eastern Tour,” 1771, Vol. II., p. 150):—“From forty to sixty years ago, all the Northern and Western and a great part of the Eastern tracts of the country were sheep-walks, let so low as from 6d. to 1s. 6d. and 2s. an acre. Much of it was in this condition only thirty years ago. The great improvements have been made by reason of the following circumstances:—(1) By inclosing without assistance of Parliament.”
Six other reasons follow, then the remark: “Parliamentary enclosures are scarcely ever so complete and general as in Norfolk,” i.e., as the enclosures without the assistance of Parliament in Norfolk. I have only been able to find eleven Acts of Enclosure for Norfolk before 1771; seven of these were for the enclosure of common field parishes, and four for the enclosure of waste. In other words, the Parliamentary enclosure of these sheep-walks at the time when Arthur Young wrote had proceeded to a merely trifling extent.
We have, then, by Arthur Young’s confession, in the five counties of Northampton, Leicester, Warwick, Huntingdon, and Buckingham enclosure admittedly accompanied by decay of tillage and rural depopulation. From “A Country Gentleman’s” list we can add Oxfordshire and parts of Lincolnshire. That the same prevailing economic motive operated in Bedfordshire can be shown from Arthur Young’s “Tour through the North of England.” The country in June, 1768, from St. Neots to Kimbolton was in general open—“the open fields let at 7s. and 7s. 6d. per acre, and the inclosed pastures about 17s. Hence we find a profit of 10s. an acre by inclosing and laying to grass.” He might here ask, as he does with regard to the district in Buckinghamshire between Aylesbury and Buckingham, which he found in 1771 in the condition of open field arable, under a course of fallow, wheat, beans, fallow, barley, beans. “As to the landlords, what in the name of wonder can be the reason of their not inclosing! All this vale would make as fine meadows as any in the world.”
As for Gloucestershire, William Marshall (“Rural Economy of Gloucestershire,” 1789, p. 21), estimates the rents in the Vale of Evesham at 10s. to 15s. per acre for common field arable, 10s. to 20s. per acre for enclosed arable, and 20s. to 50s. per acre for enclosed pasture. Here again there can be no doubt that enclosure implied laying down at least all the good land in grass.
A Select Committee of the House of Commons appointed to consider the high prices of food in December, 1800 (1800 and 1801 being famine years), made enquiry, by the help of the parish clergy, into the increase or decrease of land under different crops, and of cattle, sheep, and pigs in the districts which had been enclosed in the previous 45 years by private Acts (i.e., since 1755). The total result showed a net gain in area under wheat in 1,767,651 acres enclosed of 10,625 acres; the area under wheat being before enclosure 155,572 acres; after, 165,837 acres. But these figures included all sorts of enclosure. The Board of Agriculture (“Gen. Report,” pp. 39 and 232), by leaving out cases where waste only was enclosed, obtained the following result for cases of enclosure of all commonable lands, under Acts passed between 1761 and 1799, in parishes where commonable arable was included. Taking the counties in groups we have:—
In estimating the significance of these figures it must be borne in mind that the figures for acreage in wheat after enclosure were collected at a time of famine prices for wheat. Probably many thousands of acres of old arable common field, which had been enclosed and laid down in grass, in each of these counties, were again ploughed under the stimulus of wheat prices exceeding 100s. per quarter.
So much with regard to the connexion between depopulation and enclosure in the second half of the eighteenth century. With regard to the first half, the following account is supplied by a certain John Cowper, “Inclosing Commons and Common field lands is contrary to the interest of the Nation” (1732):—
“When these commons come to be inclosed and converted into pasture, the Ruin of the Poor is a natural consequence; they being bought out by the lord of the Manor, or some other person of substance.