The significance of this last recommendation may be illustrated by the passage in William Marshall’s account, in “Agriculture of Gloucestershire,” published about sixty years afterwards, of the Cotswold Hills:—

“Thirty years ago this district lay almost entirely in an open state; namely in arable common field, sheep-walk, and cowdown. At present it may be said to be in a state of inclosure, though some few townships yet remain open.

“The difficulties of Inclosure were not, in this case, numerous or great. The sheep-walks and cowdowns were all of them stinted by ‘yardlands’ in the arable fields: there was not, perhaps, one unstinted common on these hills. They were, formerly, many of them, or all of them, occupied by leasehold tenants for three lives renewable. A species of tenancy I have not met before. Many of these leaseholds had fallen in. The removal of those which remained, was” (sic: he means, of course, “removed”) “the main obstacle of inclosure.”

Because the number of Acts for Enclosure gradually increases through the eighteenth century, and reaches its maximum at the opening of the nineteenth century, it has been hastily assumed by some that the process of enclosure was similarly accelerated. But it is on a priori grounds at least as probable that there was no acceleration in the rate of extinction of common fields, only a gradual change in the prevailing method of procedure.

Thus very few Acts of Enclosure are extant previous to 1727, the year in which Edward Lawrence recommends to Stewards and Landlords a vigorous enclosure campaign. That that campaign was being carried on at the time can be shown by two contemporary extracts from writers on opposite sides. The Rev. John Laurence of Yelvertoft, in the “New System of Agriculture,” 1726, writes:—

“The great quantities of ground that have been of late and are daily inclosing, and the increase of Rent that is everywhere made by those who do inclose, sufficiently demonstrate the benefit and use of Inclosures. In the Bishopric of Durham nine parts in ten are already inclosed”[79] (p. 45).

John Cowper, in “Inclosing Commons and Common fields is contrary to the interest of the Nation” says:—“I myself within these 30 years past” (i.e., 1702–1732), “have seen above twenty Lordships or Parishes inclosed ... I have been informed by an eminent Surveyor that one third of all the land of England has been inclosed within these 80 years.”

Perhaps what the eminent Surveyor said to John Cowper is not very convincing evidence. But in considering the estimate of the amount of enclosure in the “last 80 years,” i.e., from 1652, the first year of peace after the Civil War, to 1732, the time when John Cowper wrote, we have to bear in mind, firstly, that there was an important enclosure movement going on in the Commonwealth period; and secondly, that in 1660, with the Restoration, the country gentry came by their own again. The King’s ministers during the reigns of Charles II., James II., William III. and Anne would scarcely have dared, even if they had desired, to check any proceedings on the part of landowners, with the object of raising rents. The whole policy of Parliament was, in fact, in sympathy with this object, as may be seen from all the legislature affecting agriculture.