But in the autumn of the same year, the Act was passed:—“Whereas it is found by experience that there hath bene much trouble and difference in severall townes about the Manner of planting, sowing, & feeding of common corne ffeilds & that upon serious consideration wee find no general order can provide for the best improvement of every such common feild, by reason that some consists onely of plowing ground, some haveing a great part fit onely for planting, some of meadowe and feeding ground; also so that such an order as may be very wholesome & good for one feild may bee exceeding preiudiciall & inconvenient for another, it is therefore ordered, that where the commoners cannot agree about the manner of improvement of their feild, either concerning the kind of graine that shalbee sowen or set therein, or concerning the time and manner of feeding the herbage thereof, that then such persons in the severall townes that are deputed to order the prudenciall affaires thereof, shall order the same, or in case where no such are, then the maior portion of the freemen, who are hereby enioyned wᵗʰ what convenient speed they may to determine any such difference as may arise upon any information given them by the said commoners; & so much of any former order as concerns the improvement of common feilds & that is hearby provided for, is hearby repealed.” (“Village Communities of Cape Ann and Salem.”)
CHAPTER XVII.
THE PROGRESS OF ENCLOSURE WITHOUT PARLIAMENTARY SANCTION.
A. FROM 1845 ONWARDS.
Any statistical account of enclosure without Parliamentary sanction must necessarily be vague in comparison with the statements which it is possible to make of enclosure by Act of Parliament, and must consist of inferences from evidence of varying value. And, naturally, the evidence in general becomes scantier in proportion as the period investigated is more remote.
The Tithe Commutation maps and awards afford the richest mine of information for the period since 1836. We have seen that according to the analysis of them published by the Copyhold, Enclosure and Tithe Commission in 1873, they indicated the existence at that date of 264,307 acres of common fields. We have already seen how untrustworthy this estimate is if taken for a basis for calculating the area of existing common fields, how inaccurate it was even at the date at which it was published. But one great source of inaccuracy in it, as we have seen, is the assumption that no enclosure, other than by Act of Parliament, took place after the date of Tithe Commutation. If we could eliminate all other errors, and also get a perfectly accurate statement of the area of existing common fields, we should then know how much enclosure of common fields has taken place without Parliamentary intervention since the date of Tithe Commutation. This date, of course, is different in different parishes, but the average date is about 1845.
To eliminate all other errors it would be necessary to go over all the work again, a task which would take a single investigator several years of continual labour, and would not then be accomplished unless the investigator were himself infallible. We must therefore be content with an approximate correction.[92]
- [92] There are no less than 11,783 separate sets of awards and apportionments, each with its map. The maps vary in size from about six or seven to over a hundred square feet each. The apportionments are bulky rolls of parchment.
The tithe maps and awards deposited with the Tithe Commission cover about three-quarters of the area of England and Wales. The amount of common field in the other quarter is estimated on the assumption that in each county the part for which there are no tithe awards in the custody of the Tithe Commission contained the same proportion of common field as the part for which title awards existed. The common fields thus estimated amount to about two-fifths of the total estimate. If the particulars given in the return for the different counties were added up, we should get the statement:—