The arable common fields, and in consequence the commonable meadows with intermixed ownership, which were situated in districts predominantly pastoral, tended, other things being equal, to be divided and enclosed earlier than the common fields in the predominantly corn-growing districts. For this there are various reasons:—
Firstly, as may be seen from the maps of Castor and Ailesworth, of Laxton, of Braunton (p. 250), or of any maps of any common-field parishes, piecemeal enclosure tends to begin in the arable fields (a) close to the village, and (b) on the outermost margin of the fields. The greater the extent of the fields, the longer, ceteris paribus, will it be before piecemeal enclosure completely obliterates them.
Secondly, enclosure in a pastoral district does not arouse the same resentment and popular resistance that it does in a corn-growing district. This is easily seen from all the controversial writings of the whole period during which enclosure has been a matter of controversy, up to about the middle of the nineteenth century. It was not enclosure as enclosure that offended, but enclosure as causing, or as being intended to result in, the laying down of arable land in grass; as being, in the words of Joseph Bentham of Kettering, “the inhuman practices of madded and irreligious depopulators”[81] which robbed the king of subjects and the country of corn and cattle. Those who enclosed were “monsters of men, dispeoplers of towns, ruiners of the commonwealth as far as in them lyeth, occasioners of beggars and beggery, cruell inclosiers, whose Adamantine hearts no whit regard the cries of so many distressed ones.”[82] Such denunciation would be out of place, and the passions which gave rise to it would never have arisen, in a predominantly pastoral district, because there would be in such a district comparatively few persons thrown out of employment even if the enclosure were of the arable fields only; and because it is scarcely possible that while enclosure of the arable fields was going on, there would not be simultaneous enclosure of waste land, which would have to be repeatedly ploughed and tilled even if the intention were to ultimately convert it into permanent pasture. In other words, while enclosure in a predominantly corn-growing district is associated with “depopulation,” in a pastoral district it is associated with increased employment, increased local population, a larger production of food, and on the whole increased local prosperity. Thus, though there was a rebellion in Devon and Cornwall in 1549, the same year as Ket’s rebellion, enclosure was not one of the complaints of the rebels. And this was not because enclosure had not begun in Devon and Cornwall, because, as a matter of fact, enclosure had advanced further in Devon and Cornwall than in most other counties. The attitude of the Cornishmen is thus expressed by Carew:—“They fal everywhere from Commons to Inclosure, and partake not of some Eastern Tenants envious dispositions, who will sooner prejudice their owne present thrift, by continuing this mingle-mangle, than advance the Lords expectant benefit, after their terme expired.”[83]
Thirdly, there was, during one period in the sixteenth century, a law specially guarding the corn-growing districts from enclosure, from which other districts were exempt.
The Statute 7 Henry VIII., c. 1, was the Depopulation Act in force for the 20 years 1516–1536. It derives special importance from the Inquisition into Enclosures which followed its enactment, in 1517. It applies only to parishes “Whereof the more part was or were used and occupied to tillage and husbandrie”; and it required the land to be tilled “after the maner and usage of the countrey where the seyd land lyeth.” This restriction drops out of the next Depopulation Act, 27 Henry VIII., c. 22, passed in the year 1536.
In the year 1536 Leland, the King’s Antiquary, began his Itinerary, which lasted till 1542. Whether in consequence of special instructions or not, he almost everywhere notes the condition of the country he traverses with regard to enclosure. A summary of his observations is shown in the form of a map; Devon, Cornwall, West Somerset, South Wales, Hereford, Worcester, the north-west of Warwick, South Lancashire, the country round Southampton, and near Hampton Court, with parts of Yorkshire, are shown to be the most enclosed districts which are described; and the districts described by Leland as champaign are those which were later largely enclosed by Act of Parliament.
The general movement of agricultural progress, it may safely be assumed, up to Leland’s time, was from the south-east of England northwards and westwards. The extreme south-east corner was certainly very early enclosed, as one would naturally expect, but we also find remote western districts, where one would naturally expect to find old customs linger comparatively late, precede the central districts in the abandonment of the “village community,” by many years.[84]
Whether much of the enclosure which Leland saw in 1536 had been the work of the previous twenty years, it is of course impossible to say; but making any reasonable allowance for progress in hedging and ditching in the western counties where agriculture was mainly pastoral during those twenty years, and assuming that the Act of 1516 had effectually stopped enclosure in that period in the corn-growing districts, one can hardly resist coming to the conclusion that if Leland had made his journey in 1516 he would then also have found enclosure most advanced in those districts which were most enclosed in 1536.
What we have, then, to ask is whether the priority of enclosure in the western counties is to be attributed entirely to the fact of their being devoted more to grass and less to tillage, or whether there was some difference in the primitive village community of the west which caused cultivated land to pass more easily into the condition of exclusive ownership and separate use. Obviously we must look for the answer to this question beyond the boundaries of England. To understand the differences between the village life of those parts of England which were once the Danelagh, Mercia and Wessex, from those which were then West Wales and Strathclyde, which may be regarded as at least semi-Celtic, we must examine the purely Celtic type of village community.
But it must also be noticed that there is one characteristic feature of the typical English village community, namely the importance attached to the right of common pasturage on the fallow field, and in the other arable fields after harvest, which would probably never have developed in any part of the country where only a small proportion of the land was ploughed. There would be too little profit and too much inconvenience attached to the exercise of the right for it to have a chance of being established, or if established, of persisting.
Lastly, it seems to me impossible to account for the perfect definition of the two boundaries between parishes early enclosed, without special Acts, and parishes enclosed late by special Acts, the one in the south-east, passing through Suffolk, Essex, and between Surrey and Kent, and the other in the south-west, passing through Somerset and Dorset, except on the assumption that the enclosure movement beginning in these two corners of England, was suddenly checked when it had reached the limits indicated, by the Tudor series of Depopulation Acts, and by the Inquisitions and other measures taken to enforce them. These Acts specially stipulated for the continuance of the ancient customary methods of tillage. A summary of their provisions which affect enclosure will be found in Appendix D.