One is tempted to associate the early and complete enclosure of Kent, without Acts of Parliament, with the proverbial wealth and importance of the Kentish yeomen, and the custom of Gavelkind (i.e., the equal inheritance of landed property by all sons), which necessarily tended to multiply small properties.
William Marshall’s description of the enclosure of the Vale of Pickering, the most fertile part of the North Riding of Yorkshire, occupying the southern slopes of the Yorkshire Wolds, shows a similar association. In “Rural Economy of Yorkshire,” published in 1788, we read:—“A century ago the marginal townships lay perhaps entirely open, and there are vestiges of common fields in the area of the vale. The West Marshes, church property, have been longer under inclosure; and the central townships were probably inclosed long before those of the margin; the soils of that part being adapted to grass; and while the surrounding country lay open, grass land was of singular value. At present the entire vale may be said to be in a state of inclosures (p. 17).
“Lands are much in the hands of small owners, in general, in the occupation of yeomanry; a circumstance, this, which it would be difficult to equal in so large a district” (p. 19).
He notices (p. 20) that it was the custom to divide lands among all the children, and (p. 24) that the custom of sale of tenant right existed.
“In the present century, more especially in the last fifty years, enclosure has made a rapid progress.... In my own remembrance more than half the vale lay open” (p. 50).
The township of Pickering itself lay open at the beginning of the century. It then had 2376 acres of common field arable, stinted pastures, and 3700 acres of common. “The common fields and common meadows have been gradually contracting by amicable changes and transfers, and are now, in a manner, wholly inclosed. The stinted pastures have, at different times, been inclosed ‘by commission,’ namely, by the unanimous reference to arbitrators.”[80]
- [80] An older description of piecemeal enclosure is given by John Houghton: “Would they who plough in champain grounds but change their little parcels; would they who have 6 or 8 acres together make a ditch of 6 or 7 foot wide and deep, and fill it if they would with water, and carry away the bank that it might not be thrown in again, hedges might chance to thrive, and in 2 years (tho’ they to please the people might at certain times lay it open) they would raise more money than they use to do in six.” (Collections, September 16th, 1681, p. 16.) This gives me a pretty fair idea both of the profit and of the unpopularity of such enclosure at the time.
In general, it may be said, that the Parliamentary enclosure of a given parish indicates that the manorial authority was exercised during a long period antecedent to the enclosure, to prevent gradual enclosure by individual tenants; and that the existence of important rights and properties belonging to the lord of the manor prevented a common agreement to enclose by the actual cultivators of the soil from being reached and put into execution.
It may also be noticed that in a parish or township where there is no one principal landlord, but a number of landowners owning moderate properties, there is comparatively little likelihood of the net profit of an Enclosure Act seeming to any one owner worth the trouble of initiating a movement to promote one; and a comparatively greater likelihood of some owner or owners being found disposed, from private grudges or on public grounds, to oppose the proceedings.
This distribution of property in a common field parish increases the probability that enclosure will proceed in a piecemeal fashion, instead of by an Act.