The story of the enclosure of Essex and Suffolk is almost completely told by the map. Each is sharply divided into a larger part very anciently enclosed, without Acts of Parliament, and a smaller part close to the boundaries of Hertford, Cambridge, and Norfolk, which was enclosed at a late date by Acts of Parliament. Essex has but one Act belonging to the eighteenth century, and that is dated as late as 1795. Suffolk has nine Acts belonging to the eighteenth, and forty-four belonging to the nineteenth century.
The additional information available only serves to bring out more clearly the very striking contrast between the regions of ancient and recent enclosure.
On the one hand we find that the Parliamentary enclosure of the extreme west and north-west portion of Essex is only part of the recent enclosure of that part.
The Enclosure Acts cover twenty-nine parishes, and an area of 22,000 acres, about 760 acres per parish. Vancouver, who reported on Essex, as well as Cambridge, tells us, “The arable land in about forty parishes lies very much in open common fields, and which in point of quantity is found to average 1,200 acres per parish.”[96] He gives a list of open field parishes; Thraxted and Streethall, which have not since been enclosed by Act, are included; and each of those had some common field at the time of tithe commutation.
On the other hand, he tells us that the neighbourhood of Great Dunmow, which is quite close to the region of nineteenth century enclosure, had been enclosed from time immemorial.[97]
The well-known passage in the “Discourse of the Commonweal,” “Countries wheare most Inclosures be, are most wealthie, as essex, kent, devenshire, and such,” sufficiently establishes the ancient enclosure of the greater part of Essex. And though the evidence is not very full, it is, I think, sufficient to show that the enclosure of the corresponding part of Suffolk had a similar history. Celia Fiennes says that the journey from Ipswich to Woodbridge is “7 miles mostly Lanes, Enclosed countrys”; and from Woodbridge to Saxmundham “The wayes are pretty deep, mostly Lanes, very little Commons” (p. 107).
John Norden (1602) also makes mention of Suffolk methods of hedging.
The question then arises with regard to this region of ancient enclosure in Essex and Suffolk, whether it ever passed through the typical English common field system. To this question we are able to give an unhesitating answer.
In Suffolk, far away from any other Parliamentary enclosure, in the south-east corner of the county are the parishes of Orford and Iken. The enclosure at Orford was in 1881. There were but forty-six acres to enclose, and these lay in strips alternately belonging to the lord of the manor and to the Corporation of Orford. The existence of corporate property in this small spot of land preserved it from enclosure to such a late date.
The case of Iken appears to have been somewhat similar. It was enclosed in 1804. There was only the small area of 100 acres to enclose, comprising “certain open and common fields, meadows, commonable lands, and waste grounds.” The Marquis of Hertford was lord of the manor, and six individuals by name, and “divers others” are said to be the other proprietors of land. There is a special clause authorising the parish authorities, if they will, to accept rents from the Marquis of Hertford in lieu of allotments, so there must have been corporate property in the commonable lands, and this no doubt accounted for the survival of this small area of common field.
But the clearest evidence is from the town of Colchester. The borough is of great extent, and includes the four agricultural parishes of Greenstead, Bere Church, or West Donyland, Lexden and Mile End. In these four parishes, says Vancouver, “one-third of the arable land lies in half-yearly common fields” (p. 40). The Corporation of Colchester is to this day a very large owner of arable land; how it was enclosed, and how the Corporation, as distinct from the free-men, secured the property after the passing of the Municipal Corporations Act of 1835, I do not know. The important point is conveyed in the word “half-yearly.” The arable fields of Colchester were genuine common fields, subject to rights of common of pasture after harvest.
I think there can be little doubt that though much of Essex and Suffolk might have been ancient woodland, and have been enclosed directly from that condition, the primitive village community of Essex was approximately of the same type as that of central England.
Adequate material does not exist for a statistical survey of the enclosure of Norfolk, because of the disappointing habit which the promoters of Enclosure Acts for this county fell into about the year 1793,[98] and persisted in later, of not making any statement with regard to the area covered by the Act. The best statement that we can make is that 297 parishes out of 682 were enclosed by Act of Parliament.[99]
We have already dealt with some peculiar features of Norfolk agriculture revealed by preambles of Enclosure Acts. The chief other fact which is striking in its enclosure history is that the county is divided by the chalk ridge, which passes through the centre of the county, from north to south, and which reaches the coast at Cromer, into two parts of approximately equal area. The patches of colour which indicate enclosure by Act of Parliament are scattered indifferently over the whole map of the county; but the significance of the colour varies. East Norfolk has all the aspect of a country of very early enclosure. The fields are small, the hedges are big and high, like Devonshire hedges, the roads are narrow and winding. The aspect recalls Kent’s previously quoted words. “There is a considerable deal of common field land in Norfolk, though a much smaller proportion than in many other counties; for notwithstanding common rights for great cattle exist in all of them, and even sheepwalk privileges in many, yet the natural industry of the people is such, that whenever a person can get 5 or 6 acres together, he plants a white-thorn edge round it, and sets an oak at every rod distance, which is consented to by a kind of general courtesy from one neighbour to another” (“Agriculture of Norfolk,” 1st Edition, p. 22). The Parliamentary enclosure which took place in a parish where the neighbours had been showing this courtesy to one another consisted mainly in the extinction of common rights over enclosed land.
The making of hedges had proceeded to such an extent in East Norfolk by the end of the seventeenth century, that an anonymous author who brought out an annotated edition of Tusser’s “Five hundred points of Husbandry,” and “Champion and Severall,” under the title “Tusser Redivivus,” in the year 1710, explains the term “woodland” (a term which Tusser really used as a synonym for “several” or enclosed land) to mean East Norfolk, saying that this district was so much enclosed in small fields with fine trees in the hedges, that it was known as “the Woodlands.”
At this time the western half of the county was still almost entirely open. Arthur Young wrote in 1771, “From forty to sixty years ago, all the Northern and Western and a part of the Eastern tracts of the county were sheepwalks, let so low as from 6d. to 1s. 6d. and 2s. an acre. Much of it was in this condition only thirty years ago. The great improvements have been made by reason of the following circumstances:
(1) By enclosing without the assistance of Parliament.
(2) By a spirited use of marle and clay.
(3) By the introduction of an excellent course of crops.
(4) The cultivation of hand hoed turnips.
(5) Clover and ray grass.
(6) Long leases.
(7) By the county being divided chiefly into large farms.
“Parliamentary inclosures are scarcely ever so complete and general as” (non-Parliamentary enclosure) “in Norfolk” (“Eastern Tour,” Vol. II., p. 150).
William Marshall supplies a confirmatory note. “Norfolk, it is probable (speaking generally of the county), has not borne grain, in abundance, much above a century. During the passed century” (the eighteenth) “a principal part of it was fresh land, a newly discovered country in regard to grain crops” (“Review of the Reports to the Board of Agriculture for the Eastern Department,” p. 314).
Enclosure in the western half of Norfolk and along the central chalk ridge in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, whether common field arable were included or not, meant the reverse of what it had meant in the first half of the sixteenth century—the conversion of land from sheeprun to arable land and to highly cultivated land. Kent, in a second edition of his report of Norfolk, published in 1796, estimated that two-thirds of the whole area of the county was then arable; and of the arable land three-quarters was enclosed, one-quarter in common field. In other words, one-half of the area of the county was enclosed arable, one-sixth common field arable. The remainder he describes as follows:
| Meadows, parks, and upland pasture | 126,692 | acres. |
| Unimproved commons | 80,000 | ″ |
| Marsh lands | 63,346 | ″ |
| Warrens and sheepwalks | 63,346 | ″ |
with small areas for woods, plantations, roads, lakes, rivers, and swamps. Whatever ancient common field arable had been enclosed before the beginning of the eighteenth century and converted into pasture, was apparently re-converted into arable before the end.
I have found very little information with regard to the enclosure of Middlesex beyond that obtained from the Enclosure Acts. It is remarkable that these should cover so large a part (19·7 per cent.) of the area of the county.
Of twenty-six Acts, covering 35,757 acres, twenty-three, covering 30,000 acres, belong to the period after 1793. The Board of Agriculture reporters, Thomas Baird and Peter Foot, tell us respectively (1) that there were about 50,000 acres under tillage in 1793 (“Agriculture of Middlesex,” p. 7), and (2) “The Common Fields in the county of Middlesex, which are at present in a good course of husbandry, form a large proportion as to the number of acres when compared to the cultivated enclosures” (Ibid. p. 72).
That the common fields were “in a good course of husbandry” very probably means that the exercise of common rights had been largely restricted, and it is not improbable that while some of the ancient common fields of Middlesex became converted into small dairy farms, others became market gardens by means of a very moderate amount of interchanging of properties and holdings.
The county of Hertford is rather remarkable for the extent of open field land (common rights have so far decayed that one can hardly call it common field) persisting to the present day. Notes have already been given on Hitchin, Bygrave, Clothall, and Wallington. There were further no less than seventeen enclosures under the Act of 1845, a number only surpassed by Oxfordshire, and in a number of other parishes small remnants of common fields are indicated by the tithe maps.
But on the whole Hertfordshire was a county of early enclosure. When the Board of Agriculture survey was made only four parishes and a part of Hitchin had undergone Parliamentary enclosure; but the reporter says, “There are several small common fields in this county, but these are mostly by agreement among the owners and occupiers cultivated nearly in the same way as in the enclosed state” (D. Walker, “Agriculture of Hertfordshire,” p. 49).
Walter Blyth in 1649 included “Hartford” with “Essex, Kent, Surrey, Sussex,” etc., as enclosed counties (“The English Improver,” p. 49).
“An insurrection in hertfordshire for the comens at Northall and Cheshunt,” was, according to Hales, the first beginning of the enclosure riots and rebellions in the reign of Edward VI.
It is somewhat remarkable that Hertford was in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries so much more enclosed than the surrounding counties, than Middlesex as well as than Bedford and Cambridge, and even more enclosed than the part of Essex immediately adjoining.
Leland gives no account of the condition of the county with regard to enclosure; but as no earlier author than Blyth speaks of Hertford as an enclosed county, I am inclined to believe that its enclosure mainly took place in the sixteenth and in the first half of the seventeenth century. It is to be noticed that Hertford was excluded from the operation of the last (39 Elizabeth, c. 2) of the Depopulation Acts, requiring that all old arable land should continue under tillage and be cultivated according to the local custom.
Buckingham is, on the whole, a county of late enclosure. A large proportion (34·2 per cent.) of the area was enclosed by Acts of Parliament; two-thirds of this enclosure belonging to the eighteenth and one-third to the nineteenth century.
The reporters to the Board of Agriculture, William James and Jacob Malcolm, supply a list of the parishes containing common fields in 1794, with an approximate statement of the area. The majority of these parishes have, of course, undergone Parliamentary enclosure since. By comparing their list with that of the Enclosure Acts and with the summary of the tithe documents, we find that the following seventeen parishes were enclosed without Acts between 1794 and the date of tithe commutation:—
The following five still had remains of common field at the time of tithe commutation, though the area was considerably reduced in each case:—
| —— | Common Field Acreage. | |
|---|---|---|
| In 1794. | According to Tithe Map. |
|
| Acres. | Acres. | |
| Burnham and Lower Boveney | 1000 | 525 |
| Chesham | 300 | 66 |
| Dorney | 600 | 277 |
| Eton | 300 | 181 |
| Chipping Wycombe | 200 | 100 |
As so much gradual non-Parliamentary enclosure took place during the nineteenth century, it is to be supposed that the same process was also going on right through the eighteenth century.
Buckingham is traversed by the Chiltern Hills, and so is divided into two distinct regions. About half the county lies north-west of the Chilterns, on a sub-cretaceous formation, like Bedfordshire, with fertile soil, and villages thickly scattered. The remainder consists of the chalky downs and the later formations, like most of Hertfordshire and Middlesex.
The enclosure of the south-east portion was earlier than that of the north-west part. Arthur Young in 1771 was much struck by the extent of the open fields in the latter part. The vale of Aylesbury,[100] he says, was good clay, and open field (“Eastern Tour,” p. 18). From Aylesbury to Buckingham “nearly the whole country is open field, the soil among the richest I ever saw, black putrid clay” (p. 19). “As for the landlords, what in the name of wonder is the reason of their not enclosing! All this vale would make as fine meadows as any in the world” (p. 23). However, about Hockston (Hoggeston) he saw many new enclosures (p. 24). Hoggeston itself was never enclosed by Act, but several neighbouring villages had been enclosed by Acts passed previously to 1771.
Celia Fiennes passed through the same part of Buckinghamshire about eighty years before. From Stony Stratford to Great Horwood, she says, “this country is fruitfull, full of woods, Enclosures, and rich Ground. The little towns stand pretty thicke. You have many in view” (p. 97). This does not imply anything more than very partial enclosure; for Celia Fiennes, accustomed to the complete absence of hedges of her own part of Wiltshire, always notices enclosure rather than the absence of enclosure. That many little towns should be in sight of one passing through a flat country implies that it is open, except close to the villages.
Leland, in 1536, came from Bedfordshire along the boundary between Herts and Bucks and into the extreme south of Buckinghamshire, and found that enclosures had already begun. He describes the whole county in one luminous sentence, “Looke as the countrye of the Vale of Alesbury for the most part is clean barren of wood, and is champaine, soe is all the Chilterne well woodid and full of Enclosures” (fol. 192 a).
It seems quite clear, then, that the enclosure movement of the south-east of Berkshire was ancient; that it moved up the long slope of the Chilterns from the Thames and Middlesex, but stopped at the open chalk downs which marked the summit of the range; and that the movement which affected the enclosure of the Vale of Aylesbury and all north-western Buckinghamshire was part of the general enclosure movement of the Midlands, spreading southwards from Leicester and Northampton, as we have seen it spread eastwards.
Oxfordshire may be termed a sister county to Buckinghamshire; but by far the greater part of the county lies north-west of the Chiltern Hills, which occupy the south east extremity. We find, as we should expect, that the history of the enclosure of Oxfordshire resembles that of Bedfordshire and of North-West Buckinghamshire; 45·6 per cent. of the area of Oxfordshire underwent Parliamentary enclosure compared with 46·0 per cent. of Bedfordshire and 34·2 per cent. of Bucks; in Oxford about 62 per cent. of the total Parliamentary enclosure belonged to the eighteenth century, in Bedford 54 per cent., in Buckinghamshire 66 per cent. Oxford, however, is remarkable for the extent of the enclosure (eighteen Acts enclosing 23,578 acres) under the General Enclosure Act of 1845.
Richard Davis, the Board of Agriculture reporter, while he gives a very full statement of the methods of cultivating the common fields of the county, makes no statement with regard to their extent.
As in Buckinghamshire, partial enclosure, particularly in the immediate neighbourhood of the villages, had taken place before the eighteenth century. Celia Fiennes found “Oxford Environ’d round with woods and Enclosure, yet not so neare as to annoy the town which stands pleasant and Compact,” and from the Malvern Hills she says “Oxford, Gloucestershire, &c. appears in plaines, enclosures, woods and rivers and many great hills” (p. 33). By “plaines” stretches of common fields are to be understood.
Leland found no enclosure in Oxfordshire in any part he visited.
Lincoln and the East Riding of Yorkshire have a similar enclosure history. Each was largely enclosed by Acts of Parliament; in each nearly four-fifths of the Parliamentary enclosure was effected in the eighteenth century; in each enclosure was not marked either by a general conversion of arable into pasture, as in Leicestershire, or by a general conversion of pasture into arable, as in Norfolk; in both a considerable proportion of the common-field land before enclosure was worked on the two-field system. As much as 40·1 per cent. of the East Riding of Yorkshire is covered by the Acts for enclosing common-field parishes, and 29·3 per cent. of Lincolnshire; but for the latter county there are also Acts for enclosing great extents of commonable marshes; and including these and other Acts for enclosing commons and wastes, about 35 per cent. of Lincolnshire has undergone Parliamentary enclosure.
A good deal of non-Parliamentary enclosure took place during the nineteenth century. Thomas Stone, the Board of Agriculture reporter, estimates that there were in 1793, 200,000 acres of commons, wastes, and unimbanked salt marshes, and 268,000 acres of common fields. He over-estimates the total area of the county so much, that to rectify his figures we have to deduct 10 per cent.—this leaves 421,000 acres of common fields and other commonable lands. There have been enclosed by Parliamentary action since 207,659 acres by Acts for enclosing common-field parishes, and about 74,000 acres by Acts for enclosing other commonable lands; if we suppose there are 12,000 acres of common fields and commons surviving, this accounts for 293,659 acres, and leaves about 127,000 acres unaccounted for—i.e., enclosed by non-Parliamentary process during the nineteenth century.
If the same proportion between the scope of the two methods be supposed to have held good during the earlier part of the period of Parliamentary enclosure, it would follow that at the beginning of that period (1730) Lincolnshire was about half enclosed and half open.
From the references to Lincolnshire by our tourists, one would expect to find a less degree of enclosure. Arthur Young, in 1768, that is, after fifty-three Enclosure Acts for Lincolnshire had been passed, found the country from Stamford to Grimsthorpe mostly open (“Northern Tour,” p. 77), from Grimsthorpe to Colsterworth chiefly open, Colsterworth to Grantham, enclosed on the right hand, open on the left (p. 84), and from Grantham to Newark all open (p. 94). Celia Fiennes, about 1695, following the same road, found no enclosures but a “fine champion country.” Leland gives the same testimony.
By comparing Celia Fiennes with Arthur Young, we have evidence of enclosure proceeding in the south-west of Lincolnshire between 1695 and 1768, which is partly, but not entirely, accounted for by Parliamentary enclosure. The three descriptions give the impression that up to the beginning of Parliamentary enclosure Lincolnshire was much less than half enclosed. It is, however, not difficult to reconcile this with the conclusion inferred from Thomas Stone’s statement and the Enclosure Acts; for none of the three travellers touched more than the western part of the county. No doubt the eastern part was earlier enclosed. This is, indeed, indicated by the distribution of Parliamentary enclosure, as shown by the map.
We have no estimate of the extent of common-field land in the East Riding from the Board of Agriculture reporter; but Arthur Young, in his “Northern Tour,” describes the part betwene Sheffield and Goole and the East Riding as about half open and half enclosed (pp. 172–210). He further says (p. 178) that in the East Riding “Inclosures and turnpikes were carried on with great spirit during the late war” (i.e., “The Seven Years’ War”). Nine Acts were passed for the enclosure of eleven parishes during that war; but this can only have been a part of the spirited proceedings.
As in the case of Bedfordshire, when we allow for marshes along the Humber, and hill country on the Wolds, which never passed through the common-field system, for the indubitable non-Parliamentary enclosure proceeding side by side with Parliamentary enclosure, and particularly for the active enclosure spoken of by Arthur Young in the middle of the eighteenth century, there remains but little enclosure of common fields to be attributed to earlier centuries. Some such enclosure must be assigned to the sixteenth century. The Commission of 1517 inquired into nearly the whole riding and found 1560 acres of arable land enclosed, 1545 acres of which were laid down to grass (W. S. Leadam, “The Domesday of Inclosure”).
Leland also found some enclosure in the East Riding, which he traversed pretty completely. (See Appendix C.)
We have mention of a park and of enclosed land in four different places, though in each of the four only for about a mile of the route.
The North and West Ridings of Yorkshire were much earlier enclosed than the East Riding. This is the natural consequence of the fact that in early times they possessed a much smaller proportion of arable land, and, as I have shown in a previous chapter, the more pasture predominates, the less the common-field arable is able to resist the tendency to enclosure. The difference between the proportions of the three ridings covered by Enclosure Acts, by which common fields were enclosed is striking: East Riding 40·1 per cent., West Riding 11·6, North Riding 6·3. But this understates the case, for I include all Acts whereby any arable common field at all is enclosed, and in the North and West Ridings many of these Acts are for the enclosure of a great stretch of moor and a mere remnant of common field, and these unduly swell the total. Examples are an Act in 1791 for the enclosure of 6000 acres of common, and 30 acres of “mesne inclosures,” i.e., of intermixed tilled land which is separated from the surrounding common pasture by a hedge; an Act in 1801 for the enclosure of 150 acres of common field and common meadow, and 4000 acres of common pasture at Kettlewell and Conistree; an Act in 1815 for the enclosure of a wretched remnant of nine acres of common field arable, and 6330 acres of common. The existence of such remnants of common field arable bears witness to the gradual enclosure which would have entirely extinguished them a little later, if the opportunity of the enclosure of the commons had not been seized to bring them also within the scope of the Acts.
William Marshall’s account of the enclosure of the Vale of Pickering has already been given. Arthur Young in 1768 describes the view from the road from Kirby Moorside to Cleveland as one of “extensive valleys cut into innumerable inclosures” (“Northern Tour,” Vol. II., p. 93). Enclosure was the rule all the way from Driffield northwards.
Celia Fiennes kept more to the West Riding. From Darlington to Richmond, “I went through Lanes and Woods, an Enclosed country” (p. 183). Richmond to Boroughbridge was for 3 or 4 miles through narrow lanes, then for 5 or 6 through common (p. 184). From Knaresborough to Leeds “it was much in Lanes and uphills and Downhills, some little part was open common” (p. 184). From Leeds to Eland “much in enclosures” (p. 185). About Eland “all the hills full of inclosures” (ibid.). From Eland to Blackstone Edge, “these parts have some resemblance to Darbyshire, only here are more woody places and inclosures” (p. 186).
The earlier history of the enclosure of most of the West Riding and North Riding is summed up in the passage from Walter Blyth:—“Woodlands wont before inclosure to be relieved by the Champion, and now become gallant corn countries.... West of Warwick, North of Worcester, Staffordshire, Shropshire, Derbyshire, Yorkshire, and all the Countries thereabouts” (“English Improver,” p. 40). For while Celia Fiennes found so much enclosure, Leland found chiefly moor and forest, yet more enclosure than “Chaumpaine.”
The great contrast between the description given by Celia Fiennes and that given by Leland sufficiently confirms the statement of Walter Blyth, which we may amplify as follows:—Enclosure made little progress in Yorkshire before the middle of the sixteenth century, but thenceforward it was pushed steadily on mainly by the tilling and enclosing of common wastes and pastures, and the clearing and cultivation of forests in the North and West Riding, and the common-field arable also underwent division and gradual enclosure. That the Vale of Pickering in the North Riding and the district between Sheffield and Goole in the West Riding, being the parts where arable common fields most predominated, were the last of the cultivated districts to be enclosed; the Vale of Pickering being mainly enclosed by non-Parliamentary means in the first half of the eighteenth century; the South Yorkshire district being largely enclosed by Acts of Parliament in the second half of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century.
Lastly attention must be drawn to the great number of Acts of Enclosure for Yorkshire enclosing common pasture or waste only.
Nottinghamshire may be said to consist of an ancient “champain” district, which has an enclosure history exactly similar to that of the neighbouring districts of Northamptonshire and Lincolnshire, and an ancient forest district.
The county as a whole has a percentage of Parliamentary enclosure, 32·5, which must be considered high when allowance is made for the fact that so much land must have been enclosed directly from the forest state without passing through the common-field system. The two surviving examples of common-field parishes, Laxton and Eakring, have been before described; Bole also was till recently unenclosed.
The Board of Agriculture reporter, Robert Lowe, attempted to give an account of the state of enclosure of the different parishes in 1793, but evidently found it beyond his powers to make the lists at all complete. But his list of unenclosed parishes enables us to give the following nine parishes as enclosed without Parliamentary intervention since 1793:—
together with the hamlets of Ompton and Clipston.
And his list of recently-enclosed parishes enables us to give the following nine parishes as enclosed without Parliamentary sanction shortly before 1793:—
together with the hamlets of Aslacton, Newton, Oldwork, and Cropwell Butler.
All these had been enclosed, he says, within the previous twenty years.
The fact that the extent of non-Parliamentary enclosure in Notts., in the period from 1773 to 1793 is just equal, according to this, to that of the non-Parliamentary enclosure after 1793, is a slight clue to the probable extent of non-Parliamentary enclosure in the eighteenth century in other counties similarly circumstanced.
We should expect, then, to find the part of the county which was anciently tilled, practically entirely open, at the beginning of the eighteenth century. This is confirmed by the evidence, so far as it goes. Celia Fiennes says: “From Nottingham Castle I saw a prospect more than 20 mile about. The land is very rich and fruitfull, so the Green meadows with the fine corn ffields which seemes to bring forth in handfulls. They soe most of Barley and have great encrease, there is all sorts of Graine besides, and plaines and Rivers and Great woods and Little Towns all in view” (p. 56).
Leland was similarly struck with South Nottingham. Coming south from Rotherham he found “very woody Grounde,” then “hethy,” then “Corny and Paster,” then “Ground very fruteful of Corne” (Vol. V., fol. 91, 92). But when he got past Nottingham the view made him burst into Latin. “After that I cam a little beyond Trent I saw all Champaine Grounde undecunque within sight, and very little wood but infinita frugum copia.”
The enclosure history of Derbyshire closely resembles that of the West Riding of Yorkshire. A somewhat larger part (16·5 per cent.) of it underwent enclosure by Acts for the enclosure of common-field arable in conjunction with other commonable land, and about 5 per cent. more by Acts for the enclosure of common pasture and waste. The common-field arable is frequently called “mesne inclosures” (sometimes “mesne field”), showing that the idea of a hedge was that it surrounded the corn crops to keep out beasts, not the pasture to keep them in. Celia Fiennes gives a general description of the county: “You see neither hedge nor tree but only low drye stone walls round some ground, Else its only hills and dales as thick as you Can Imagine” (p. 77). “All Darbyshire is but a world of peaked hills.”
It will be remembered that it had by 1649, according to Blyth, become a gallant corn country through enclosure. Leland passed it by.
The history of the enclosure of Durham is told by the Board of Agriculture reporter in a sentence: “In this county the lands, or common fields of townships, were for the most part inclosed soon after the Restoration.... The common fields are few in number and of small extent” (Joseph Granger, “Agriculture of Durham,” p. 43).
All other evidence simply confirms this statement. The Enclosure Acts for enclosing common fields are but five in number, and the most extensive of them covers only 800 acres, of which part only is common field. (The Enclosure Acts of the other type are numerous in comparison and extensive in scope, one covering 10,000, one 20,000, one 25,000 and one 28,000 acres).
The statement, too, is confirmed by two contemporary authors, previously quoted, and by the records of Leland and Celia Fiennes. Celia Fiennes says that from Newcastle to Durham “the whole county looks like a fruitful woody place” (p. 178), and she compares it to the neighbourhood of Blackheath (p. 179), from which we must infer some open common, but all the cultivated land in a state of enclosure.
Leland traversed the whole county but found no enclosure. Nor does he describe any part of the county as “champaine” but merely as good corn, or grass, or moor, or mountain. It is, I think, safe to conclude that there were no extensive stretches of common-field arable within view; but also, one is inclined to infer that enclosure had not yet begun.
Further, there is an illuminating note from Arthur Young (1768): “Farms become large on entering Northumberland, after the small ones of Yorkshire and Durham” (“Northern Tour,” Vol. III., p. 61).
It has to be borne in mind that the disorder on the Border checked the development of agriculture till the accession of James I., probably at least as far south as the North Riding of Yorkshire. With the gradual increase of population, and improvement of roads, cultivation spread over the wastes; first in Yorkshire, then in Durham, then in Northumberland. At first the agent was a peasant, carving a small farm for his own maintenance, later a landlord or farmer able to employ labourers and work a large farm.
That the enclosure of Northumberland took place later than that of Durham, and was the work of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, is on a priori grounds probable, and is further indicated by the fact that Celia Fiennes makes no mention of enclosure in her account of her ride from the Scottish border into Durham. A further reference to the enclosure of Northumberland will be made when we come to Cumberland.
Kent is certainly a county of very ancient enclosure. This is clearly indicated by the fact that not a single Act for the enclosure of common field has been passed by the whole county. It is also witnessed by a whole series of writers, from Boys, the Board of Agriculture reporter, who says, “There are no Common Fields in Kent,”[101] to the author of the “Discourse of the Commonweal,” “those counties which be most enclosed, as essex, kent, devenshire.”
But in Kent it would appear that if some investigator as careful as Vancouver had at a somewhat earlier date reported on the agriculture of Kent, he would have found some remains of arable common fields in the far eastern corner of the county. William Lambarde, in the “Perambulation of Kent,” 1570, says: “The soile is for the most part bountifull, consisting indifferently of arable, pasture, meadow and woodland. Howbeit of these wood occupieth the greatest portion even to this day except it be towards the east, which coast is more champaigne than the residue” (p. 3).
More than a hundred years later, Celia Fiennes says: “Canterbury to Dover was a good road and a sort of Champion Country” (p. 103). It was open, it was mainly arable land, but it differed in some respect from the Champain of the Midlands; and again, a hundred years later, William Marshall writes in 1798 of the Isle of Thanet: “The whole country lies open, excepting in the immediate environs of villages.... The present productions, if we cut off the marsh lands, may be said to be arable crops” (“Southern District,” Vol. II., p. 6).
This was written, it will be noticed, just after Boys had written his statement that there were no common fields in Kent. We can reconcile the two statements if we suppose that by the disuse of rights of common, and by the consolidation of scattered properties and holdings by mutual exchanges, the characteristics of common field had been abolished, while in consequence of there never having arisen any tendency to convert the arable land into pasture, no necessity for the expensive labour of making hedges arose. But I have no evidence to show at what date the open arable land ceased to be common field.
The question arises whether the common-field system of the ordinary English type ever existed in this part of Kent; and here again there is no decisive evidence that I know of by which to answer the question. The fact that the similar question for Essex is answered in the affirmative by the Colchester common fields perhaps counts for something; and that the Surrey common fields come at Croydon close to the county boundary, for a little more. At Eltham there is an old charity called the Fifteen Penny Lands; only a few acres remain in the form of land, the rest having been sold and the proceeds invested; but there still remains an acre described as “Land in East Field, Dockland’s Shot.” In 1578 a member of the Roper family, perhaps Margaret Roper, the daughter of Sir Thomas More, or her husband, bequeathed to Eltham “a parcel of ground containing by estimation four acres, in the common field, called East Field.”[102] Eltham was a royal manor, hence likely to preserve old customs to a later date than other manors, and the arrangement of ancient common fields, particularly towards Eltham Common, seems clearly traceable. In Addington, an ecclesiastical manor, it seems easy to trace the signs of ancient common, commonable meadow, and common fields.