It is obvious that there must be certain broad historical reasons for these striking facts. The map, in fact, presents to us a series of definite puzzles for solution.
1. How and when was the south-eastern corner of England enclosed?
2. How and when was the south-western corner enclosed?
3. How and when was the great district in the north-west, in which Parliamentary enclosure is the exception, enclosed?
4. How and when were the numerous parishes within what we may call the Parliamentary Enclosure belt, which escaped Parliamentary enclosure, enclosed?
And lastly, there is the question which sums these up, and presents the problem on the other side—
5. Why were special Acts of Parliament necessary for the enclosure of some three thousand of the English parishes, in the geographical position indicated by the map?
And it is important that it should be clearly understood that this is the more natural way of putting the question, because the surprising fact is not that the common field system should gradually and quietly disappear in parish A, but that it should persist in parish B, until ended by the very expensive and troublesome measure of a special Act of Parliament.
In order to proceed as far as possible from the known to the unknown, we will first consider the various methods of common field enclosure operating within the belt of Parliamentary Enclosure of common fields. But before beginning this enquiry, attention may be drawn to a ray of light which the map throws upon the social history of England in the Tudor period. The reader of the history of that period is tempted to suppose that the districts from which the greatest complaints, and still more riots and insurrections, arose against enclosures, were those in which enclosure was proceeding most rapidly. Now, the most formidable of these popular agitations began in the reign of Edward VI. in Somersetshire, and spread northwards and eastwards, growing in intensity, till it reached its climax in Ket’s rebellion in Norfolk.[78] The earlier complaints also come from counties within the Parliamentary Enclosure belt—Oxford, Buckingham, Wiltshire and others. The map suggests that a possible interpretation of these popular movements is, that an industrial and economic change involving normally the enclosure of common fields was in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries gradually spreading over the southern and midland counties; that in some parts it met with little or no resistance; but that in other parts popular resistance was roused to some features of this change, including the enclosure of arable fields, and that popular resistance was in a very great degree successful in causing the postponement of such enclosure. Briefly, a special outcry against enclosure in a particular locality shows, not necessarily that enclosure was proceeding with special rapidity there, but possibly that there it was specially obnoxious; and being there specially obnoxious, proceeded more slowly than elsewhere.
- [78] “Can it be denied that the fyrst rysynge this yeare was in Somersetshire, ffrom Somersetshire it entred into Gloucettershire, Wylshire, hampshire, Sussex, Surrey, Worcestershire, Essex, hertfordshire, and dyuers other places?” (John Hale’s Defence, “The Commonweal of this Realm of England,” Miss Lamond’s edition, p. lviii.) This is to prove that the rising was not caused by the Enclosure Commission of 1549. The Commissioners were sent to Oxford, Berkshire, Warwick, Leicester, Buckingham, and Northampton.