Enclosure by Principal Landlord.
But to return to our own subject. We have shown that enclosure by Act of Parliament was greatly to the landlord’s interest; but it is perfectly obvious that the landlord’s interest was much more served by an enclosure without all the expense, loss of time, labour and anxiety involved in Parliamentary proceedings. Obviously, therefore, if one landlord could acquire all the open and commonable land in the parish, he would enclose without an Act of Parliament. The only difficulty in his way would be in arranging leases so that they should all fall in simultaneously, or, failing this, in overcoming the resistance of any tenant whose lease gave him the power of resisting, if he were unwilling to agree. We have noticed that even in recent years the common fields of Yelden in Bedfordshire have disappeared in this way; that the Duchy of Cornwall in 1876 bought out all the copyholders holding lands in Fordington Field; that Earl Manvers is similarly acquiring by degrees all the common rights in the common fields of Laxton, and the Ecclesiastical Commissioners are endeavouring in this way to procure the enclosure of Elmstone Hardwicke; that Stratton and Grimstone were thus enclosed since 1900, and that the common fields of several Berkshire parishes have thus disappeared within the last half-century. The same process can be watched on a much larger scale with regard to common rights over commons proper. The buying up of the rights of commoners over Dartmoor by the Duchy of Cornwall is one striking example; similar purchases of common rights over the Wiltshire downs on a very large scale have come into notice through the approach to Stonehenge being affected.
The enclosure of common fields in this way is proceeding slowly merely because the remains of common fields are now so small.
And it is obvious that through the last two hundred years the restraints of law and public opinion upon the freedom of the country squire or great landowner, in doing as he likes with the villages under his control, have been gradually and continuously strengthened. In looking back over the nineteenth and eighteenth centuries, we are looking back at a greater and greater proportion of local autocratic power accompanying any given degree of local pre-eminence in wealth and landed property.
If we look back to the beginning of the eighteenth century we find the principles generally accepted by the landowning class with regard to the general management of their estates, and particularly with regard to common fields, thus clearly laid down by Edward Lawrence in “The duty of a Steward to his Lord”:—
Article XIV. “A Steward should not forget to make the best Enquiry into the Disposition of any of the Freeholders within or near any of his Lord’s Manors to sell their Lands, that he may use his best Endeavours to purchase them at as reasonable a price as may be for his lord’s Advantage and Convenience ... especially in such Manors where Improvements are to be made by inclosing Commons and Common fields.... If the Freeholders cannot all be persuaded to sell yet at least an Agreement for Inclosing should be pushed forward by the Steward” (p. 9).
“The Steward should not suffer any of the Lord’s lands to be let to Freehold Tenants within or near his Lord’s Manor” (p. 34).
“The Steward should endeavour to lay all the small Farms, let to poor indigent People, to the great ones” ... but “It is unwise to unite farms all at once, because of the odium and increase of Poor-rates. It is much more reasonable and popular to stay till such farms fall into Hand by Death” (p. 35).
And to facilitate this process, “Noblemen and Gentlemen should endeavour to convert copyhold for lives to Leasehold for lives” (p. 60).