(Previous to the General Enclosure Act of 1845.)
Enabled lords of manors, on leaving sufficient pasture for their tenants on the waste, to enclose the residue; but the lord must prove that the tenants have sufficient pasture, and means of ingress and egress.
Enabled lords of manors in which the waste was used as a common pasture by other manors, to enclose against their neighbours, when no specific grant of a right of common pasture had been made. It also provided against the creation of new common rights. “ By occasion of a Windmill, Sheepcote, Dairy, enlarging of a court necessary, or Courtelage, from henceforth no man shall be grieved by Assize of Novel Disseisin for Common of Pasture.” If after enclosure under this act the hedges are pulled down, the neighbouring townships may be distrained upon for damages.
In a forest subject to common rights after a wood has been felled the land may be enclosed for seven years to protect the young timber.
Where woods are subject to common rights, lords of manors may enclose one fourth of the wood for seven years, and fell the timber, leaving 12 young trees per acre standing. Meanwhile the lord of the manor surrenders his common rights upon the remaining three fourths. Kent, Surrey and Sussex were excluded from the operation of the act.
This makes the preceding Act perpetual.
The preamble of the first of this series of Acts, though well known, is here quoted in part.
“Our King and Sovereign Lord ... remembreth that ... great inconveniences do daily increase by desolation and pulling downe, and wilfull waste of houses and townes within this realme and laying to Pasture Lands, which customably have been used in tillage, whereby idlenesse, which is the ground and beginning of all mischiefes, daily doth encrease. For where in some townes two hundred persons were occupied and lived by their lawfull labours, now there are occupied two or three heardmen, and the residue fall into idlenesse, the husbandrie, which is one of the greatest commodities of this Realme is greatly decayed, Churches destroyed, the service of God withdrawn, the bodies there buried, not prayed for....”
To check these evils all occupiers of 20 acres and upwards of land that had been tilled in the previous three years, are required to maintain tillage, under pain of forfeiting to the lord of the manor one half of the profits of such land.
This was a temporary Act, in principle identical with the one passed in the following session.
This Act applied only to parishes “whereof the more part was or were used and occupied to tillage and husbandry.” In such places “If any person shall decay a Town, a Hamlet, or House of Husbandry, or convert tillage into Pasture” and have not “within j. yeere next after such wylfull decaye reedefyed and made ageyn mete and convenyent for people to dwell and inhabyte the same, and have use, and therein to exercyse husbandry and tyllage” he forfeits one half of his land to the lord of the manor, until the offence is reformed. Land converted to pasture must again be tilled “after the maner and usage of the countrey where the seyd land lyeth.”
This Act was followed by the Inquisition of 1517.
This is an Act to deal with the economic cause of depopulating enclosures.
“Sundry persons have of late daily studied how to gather into few hands great multitude of Farms and great Plenty of Cattle, and in especial Sheep, putting such land as they can get to Pasture, and not to tillage, whereby they have not only pulled down Churches and Towns and inhanced the old Rates ... so that poor men are not able to meddle with it ... it is thought that the great occasions that moveth and provoketh those greedy and covetous people ... is only the great Profit that cometh of Sheep.”
It is said that “some have 24,000, some 20,000, some 10,000, some 6,000, some 5,000 and some more, some less.”
It is enacted that with certain exceptions no one may keep more than 2,000 sheep under a penalty of 3s. 4d. per sheep per annum, half of the fine going to the crown, half to the informer. No man, further, may take more than two farms, and these must not be in the same parish.
This Act recites 4 Henry VII., c. 19, the first of the Depopulation Acts; and states that it had been enforced only in lands held immediately of the King. Now “the King shall have the Moiety of the Profits of those lands already converted for Tillage to Pasture sithence three years before Ann. 4 H. 7 until the Owner hath builded up a convenient House to inhabit, and converted the same Pasture to Tillage again; and also take the Moiety of the issues of those lands hereafter to be converted, if the immediate Lord do it not within one year,” until the owners have built a Tenement for every 50, 40 or 30 acres, and have reconverted the pasture to tillage. Again it is stipulated that the land shall be tilled “according to the nature of the soil and the course of Husbandry used in the country where any such lands do lie.”
Persons to whom monastic lands had been granted by Henry VIII. are required to maintain yearly as much of the land in tillage and husbandry as had commonly been so used within the preceding 20 years, under a penalty of 6l. 13s. 4d. per month.
This Act cites and confirms the Statutes of Merton and Westminster and facilitates the recovery of damages for breaking down the hedges erected to enclose wastes.
This Act requires that so much land be tilled yearly in any parish as had been tilled at any time since the accession of Henry VIII., under a penalty of 5s. per acre per annum.
Four Commissioners were to be appointed to enquire into the conversion of arable into pasture.
The Act did not apply to—
This cites and confirms the original Depopulation Act of 4 Henry VII. and makes it apply to all houses with 20 acres of land, whether the land is in tillage or not.
Commissioners to be appointed to enquire into all grounds converted into pasture since St. George’s Day, in the 20th year of Henry VIII. to see to the re-edifying of houses, and the reconversion of pasture into tillage. The exceptions permitted are where lands have been enclosed by the King’s licence, and by discretion of the Commissioners in cases where no public benefit, but individual hardship would ensue by the execution of the Act.
Rents increased on the conversion of tillage into pasture were to be abated; re-edified houses were to be let with 20 acres of land or 10 acres if the owner has no more.
The penalty of laying land down into pasture was again fixed at 5s. per acre per annum, half to be paid to the Crown, half to the informer.
By this Act the more recent Depopulation Acts, 27 Henry VIII. c. 28, 5 & 6 Edward VI. c. 5, and 2 & 3 Philip and Mary, c. 2, were repealed as ineffectual; but the earlier ones, 4 Henry VII. c. 19, 7 Henry VIII. c. 22 and 27 Henry VIII. c. 22, ordered to be put into execution.
It was also enacted that “such lands or so much in quantity in any place as hath been put in Tillage and eared in any one year and so kept four years sithence the feast of St. George the Martyr, anno 20 Henry VIII. shall be eared and kept in Tillage, according to the Nature of the Soil and Custom of the Country by the Occupier thereof.”
The penalty was raised to 10s. per acre per annum, and it could be recovered by the next heir in reversion if he sued for it within a year, if not, by the Remainderman, or in default by the lord of the manor, and if not so recovered, by the Crown.
This Act remained in force for thirty years, but was discontinued by 35 Elizabeth (1593), c. 5.
This Act prohibited the letting of cottages to agricultural labourers with less than four acres of land under a penalty of 40s. per cottage per month, or the occupation of one cottage by more than one family, under a penalty of 10s. per cottage per month. The amount of land attached to cottages let to countrymen following other occupations was also regulated. These holdings were evidently intended to be acres in the arable fields, carrying with them the proportional common rights of pasturage, &c. This Act was repealed in 1775.
In the preamble of this Act it is stated that in late years more than in times past, sundry towns, parishes and houses of husbandry have been destroyed and become desolate. All previous Acts for the re-edification of houses are repealed, and it is enacted that when houses of husbandry have been decayed for more than seven years, half the number must be rebuilt, and 40 acres of land allotted to them; unless the property had been sold meanwhile; in that case the purchaser need only rebuild one quarter of the decayed houses.
Where houses had decayed within the previous seven years, they are to be rebuilt; and if previously they had less than 40 acres of land, they must now at least have 20 acres; if previously they had 40 acres or more, they must now have at least 40 acres.
The penalty for not rebuilding the farmhouse, was £10 per house per annum; for not assigning the prescribed quantity of land, 10s. per acre per annum. One third of the penalty went to the Queen, one third to the parish, one third to the informer.
It is also enacted that it shall be lawful for any lord of the manor to make exchanges of lands, whether arable, pasture or meadow, with his tenants, and for the tenants, with the consent of the lord, to make exchanges with one another, for the sake of more convenient occupation and husbandry. In other words the re-arrangement of the intermixed holdings in common arable fields and common meadows is expressly sanctioned.
The preamble states that from the 7th year of Henry VII.’s reign to the 35th year of the current reign there had always been in force some Act for the maintenance of tillage, but in the latter year all such laws were discontinued; and that in consequence in the period 1593–1597 “there have growen many more Depopulacions by turning Tillage into Pasture than at any time for the like number of years heretofore.”
It is enacted that lands converted from tillage to pasture shall be re-converted within three years, and that lands now in tillage shall remain so, under a penalty of 20s. per acre per annum. The Act applies to the counties of Bedford, Berkshire, Buckingham, Cambridge, Derby, Dorset, Durham, Gloucester, Hampshire, Hereford, Huntingdon, Leicester, Lincoln, Northampton, Northumberland, Nottingham, Oxford, Rutland, Somerset, Warwick, Wiltshire, Worcester, Yorkshire, with the Isle of Wight, and Pembroke in South Wales.
It did not apply to Cheshire, Cornwall, Cumberland, Devon, Essex, Hertford, Kent, Lancashire, Middlesex, Monmouth, Norfolk, Shropshire, Stafford, Suffolk, Surrey, Sussex and Westmoreland.
This Act remained on the Statute Book for 266 years. The earlier Depopulation Acts were repealed by 21 James I., c. 28, but this Act remained theoretically part of the law of the land until repealed by the Statute Law Revision Act of 1863. This was the last of the Depopulation Acts.
This is really a local Enclosure Act. The people of the parishes of Merden, Bodenham, Wellington, Sutton St. Michael, Sutton St. Nicholas, Murton-upon-Lug, and Pipe in Hereford, had all their lands, whether meadow, pasture or arable, open and intermixed, and commonable “after Sickle and Sithe.” They themselves were accustomed to house their sheep and cattle throughout the year, and the people of neighbouring villages took advantage of this custom to turn in cattle after harvest. The enclosure of one third of the land in each parish is authorised by the Act.
This Act has been considered in the text.
This was a temporary Act to encourage the cultivation of potatoes in common arable fields. The famine prices of 1800–1 caused a good deal of curious special legislation. Any occupier of land in common fields is authorised to plant potatoes, and to guard them from cattle grazing in the fields, on giving compensation for the loss of the common right to the other occupiers.
This is the General Enclosure Act promoted by the Board of Agriculture of 1793–1819. It is entitled “An Act for consolidating in one Act certain provisions usually inserted in Acts of inclosure, and for facilitating the mode of proving the several facts usually required in the passing of such Acts.”
This amends the previous Act, so as to better regulate the cultivation of parishes during the progress of enclosure by Act.
By this the churchwardens and overseers of a parish may enclose, up to 50 acres of waste, with the consent of the lord of the manor and the majority of the owners of common rights, for the relief of the poor rates, or let the land so enclosed to poor and industrious persons. By another Act in the same session (c. 57) the principle is applied to Crown lands.
An Act to facilitate the exchange of intermixed lands in common fields, by removing difficulties caused by some owners being minors, insane, &c.
This is an important Act “for facilitating the enclosure of open and arable fields in England and Wales.” Two-thirds in number and value of common arable fields may appoint commissioners for carrying out enclosure, as if enclosure had been authorised by a special Act. The awards were to be deposited in the parish churches.
If seven-eighths of the proprietors were agreed, enclosure could be carried out without the appointment of commissioners.
This Act is not to authorise the enclosure of common fields within 10 miles of the centre of London, within 1 mile from the centre of a town of 5,000 inhabitants, 1½ miles from one of 15,000 inhabitants, 2 miles from one of 30,000 inhabitants, 2½ miles from one of 70,000 inhabitants, or 3 miles from one of 100,000 inhabitants.
This was an Act amending the last, by extending its scope to lammas meadows; and providing that persons who were dissatisfied with awards under the preceding Act forfeited their right of appeal if they took possession of the lands allotted to them.