When Cobbett wrote, the process of Enclosure for this corner of Wiltshire was practically complete. Thomas Davis, whose account of the agriculture of Wiltshire is the most interesting of the whole series of county surveys, wrote when the process was in its early stage, and wrote predicting depopulation. He says, “The greater part of this country 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 particularly favourable to this tenure.... The north-west of Wiltshire being much better adapted to inclosures and to sub-division of property, than the rest, was inclosed first; while the south-east, or Down district, has undergone few inclosures and still fewer sub-divisions.”[54]
- [54] Thos. Davis, Wiltshire, p. 8.
The common field system was called “tenantry.”[55] The tenants ordinarily were occupiers of single “yardlands,” rented at about £20 a year each. A typical yardland consisted,[56] besides the homestead, of 2 acres of meadow, 18 acres in the arable fields, usually in 18 to 20 pieces, a right on the common meadows, common fields, and downs for forty sheep, and as many cattle as the tenant could winter with the fodder he grew.[57] His forty sheep were kept with those of his neighbours, in the common flock of the manor, in charge of the common shepherd. They were taken every day to the downs, and brought back every night to be folded on the arable fields, the usual rule being to fold one thousand sheep on a “tenantry” acre (but ¾ of a statute acre) per night. In breeding sheep regard was had to what may be termed folding quality (i.e., the propensity to drop manure only after being folded at night) as much as to quality or quantity of wool or meat.[58]
- [55] [Ibid.], p. 14.
- [56] Contrast with such farms those described by Cobbett 30 years later: “At one farm 27 ricks, at another 400 acres of wheat stubble in one piece, at a third a sheepfold about 4,000 sheep and lambs, at a fourth 300 hogs in one stubble, a fifth farm at Milton had 600 qrs. of wheat, 1,200 qrs. of barley of the year’s crop, and kept on an average 1,400 sheep” (pp. 363, 4, 5). “The farms are all large” (p. 361).
- [57] [Ibid.], p. 15.
- [58] [Ibid.], p. 61.
On the enclosure of such a manor the common flock was broken up, and the position of the small farmer became untenable. It is true, says our author, that he has the convenience of having his arable land in fewer pieces; but if he has his 18 acres all in one piece instead of in 20, he cannot plough them with fewer than the three horses he previously ploughed with. Then he has no enclosure to put his horses in; he no longer has the common to turn them on. His right on the down would entitle him to an allotment of sheepdown of about 20 acres, perhaps two miles from home. This is too small for him to be able to take it up, so he accepts instead an increase of arable land. But now he has no down on which to feed his sheep, no common shepherd to take charge of his sheep, which are too few to enable him individually to employ a shepherd. He, therefore, must part with his flock and then has no sheep to manure his land; further, having no cow-common, and very little pasture land, he cannot keep cows to make dung with his straw. Lastly, the arable land being in general entirely unsuited to turn to grass, he is prevented from enclosing his allotment, and laying it down in pasture.[59] Obviously in such circumstances the small farmer, after for a few years raising diminishing crops from his impoverished arable land, must succumb, and in some cases help as a labourer to till his fields for another man, in other cases drift to the towns or enlist.
The contemporaneous decay of rural manufacturing industry,[60] of course, greatly aggravated the depopulating effects of enclosure. It may even have precipitated enclosure by weakening the position of the small farmer during the period of the French wars: during a time, that is, in which a combination of causes, apart from enclosure, was favouring the extension of large farms at the expense of small farms.[61]
- [60] “The villages down this Valley of Avon, and indeed, it was the same in almost every part of this county, and in the North and West of Hampshire also, used to have great employment for the women and children in the carding and spinning of wool for the making of broadcloth. This was a very general employment for the women and girls, but it is now wholly gone.” (Cobbett, “Rural Rides,” p. 385, 1830 edition, written August, 1826.)
- [61] These causes were (a) the great fluctuations in prices of agricultural produce; (b) the custom of using poor relief as a supplement to agricultural wages. The way in which these operated is ably dealt with by Dr. Cunningham.
In the south-east of Wiltshire, then, enclosure was followed by no increase of pasture farming, but it was followed by local depopulation. Whether the depopulation was merely local, or national as well, would depend upon whether, after enclosure, the total production of food of the parish were increased or diminished. Thomas Davis tells us that in many cases it was diminished, the reason, no doubt, being that there was a lack of farmers with sufficient enterprise and control of capital to absorb the small farms, as their occupiers began to drift towards bankruptcy. That such a result as this was felt to be an impending danger is shown by his statement:—“In some late inclosures allotments of arable land to small farmers have been set out adjoining to each other, directing the same to remain in an uninclosed state with a common right of sheep-feed over the whole, and a common allotment of down land and another of water-meadows, and some inclosed pasture to each if necessary.”