Enclosure
Encyclopedia
Enclosure or inclosure is the process which ends traditional rights such as mowing meadow
s for hay
, or grazing
livestock
on common land
. Once enclosed, these uses of the land become restricted to the owner, and it ceases to be common land. In England and Wales
the term is also used for the process that ended the ancient system of arable farming
in open field
s. Under enclosure, such land is fenced (enclosed) and deeded or entitled to one or more owners. By the 19th century, unenclosed commons had become largely restricted to rough pasture in mountainous areas and to relatively small parts of the lowlands.
"Enclosure" is the modern spelling, while "inclosure" is an older spelling still used in the United Kingdom
in legal documents and place names.
The process of enclosure has sometimes been accompanied by force, resistance, and bloodshed, and remains among the most controversial areas of agricultural and economic
history
in England. Marxist and neo-Marxist historians
argue that rich landowners used their control of state processes to appropriate public land for their private benefit. This created a landless working class
that provided the labour required in the new industries developing in the north of England. For example: "In agriculture the years between 1760 and 1820 are the years of wholesale enclosure in which, in village after village, common rights are lost". "Enclosure (when all the sophistications are allowed for) was a plain enough case of class robbery".
W. A. Armstrong argued that this is perhaps an oversimplification, that the better-off members of the European peasant
ry encouraged and participated actively in enclosure, seeking to end the perpetual poverty of subsistence farming. "We should be careful not to ascribe to (enclosure) developments that were the consequence of a much broader and more complex process of historical change". "...[T]he impact of eighteenth and nineteenth century enclosure has been grossly exaggerated[...]". A wide variety of opinions are quoted, with references, in the online Oxford University Press article
http://www.oxfordreference.com/views/ENTRY.html?entry=t266.e4-s2&srn=2&ssid=998626063#FIRSTHIT
(1235) and the Statute of Westminster
(1285).
Throughout the medieval and modern periods, piecemeal enclosure took place in which adjacent strips were fenced off from the common field. This was sometimes undertaken by small landowners, but more often by large landowners and lords of the manor. Significant enclosures (or emparkments) took place to establish deer park
s. Some (but not all) of these enclosures took place with local agreement.
. These enclosures largely resulted in conversion of land use from arable
to pasture
– usually sheep farming. These enclosures were often undertaken unilaterally by the landowner. Enclosures during the Tudor period were often accompanied by a loss of common rights and could result in the destruction of whole villages.
Open farmland in England had been commonly enclosed as pastureland for sheep from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century as populations declined. Foreign demand for English wool also helped encourage increased production, and the wool industry was often thought to be more profitable for landowners who had large decaying farmlands. Some manorial
lands lay in disrepair from a lack of tenants, which made them undesirable to both prospective tenants and landowners who could be fined and ordered to make repairs. Enclosure and sheep herding (which required very few labourers) were a solution to the problem, but of course this created other problems: unemployment, the displacement of impoverished rural labourers, and decreased domestic grain production which made England more susceptible to famine and higher prices for domestic and foreign grain. From as early as the 12th century, some open fields in Britain were being enclosed into individually owned fields. In Great Britain
, the process sped up during the 15th and 16th centuries as sheep farming grew more profitable. In the 16th and early 17th centuries, the practice of enclosure was denounced by the Church
and the government, particularly depopulating enclosure, and legislation was drawn up against it. But elite opinion began to turn towards support for enclosure, and rate of enclosure increased in the seventeenth century. This led to a series of government acts
addressing individual regions, which were given a common framework in the Inclosure Consolidation Act of 1801.
Sir Thomas More
, in his 1516 work Utopia
suggests that the practice of enclosure is responsible for some of the social problems affecting England at the time, specifically theft.
The loss of agricultural labour also hurt others like millers whose livelihood relied on agricultural produce. Fynes Moryson
reported on these problems in An Itinerary (1617):
By some accounts, 3/4ths to 9/10ths of the tenant farmers on some estates were evicted in the late medieval period. Other economic historians argue that forced evictions were probably rare. Landlords would turn to enclosure as an option when lands went unused.
; and vagrants were regarded (and treated) as criminals. The authorities saw many people becoming what they regarded as vagabond
s and thieves as a result of enclosure and depopulation of villages. From the time of Henry VII onwards, Parliament began passing Acts to stop enclosure, to limit its effects, or at least to fine those responsible. The first such law was in 1489. Over the next 150 years, there were 11 more Acts of Parliament and eight commissions of enquiry on the subject.
Initially, enclosure was not itself an offence, but where it was accompanied by the destruction of houses, half the profits would go to the Crown until the lost houses were rebuilt. (The 1489 Act gave half the profits to the superior landlord, who might not be the Crown, but an Act of 1536 allowed the Crown to receive this half share if the superior landlord had not taken action.) In 1515, conversion from arable to pasture became an offence. Once again, half the profits from conversion would go to the Crown until the arable land was restored. Neither the 1515 Act nor the previous laws were effective in stopping enclosure, so in 1517 Cardinal Wolsey established a commission of enquiry to determine where offences had taken place – and to ensure the Crown received its half of the profits.
was a major reason for enclosure. When Henry VIII
became King in 1509, the royal finances were in good shape thanks to the prudence of his father Henry VII
. But this soon changed as Henry VIII doubled household expenditure and started costly wars against both France and Scotland. With his wealth rapidly decreasing, Henry VIII imposed a series of taxes devised by his finance minister, Thomas Wolsey. Soon the people began to resent Wolsey's taxes and a new source of finance had to be found: in 1544, Henry reduced the silver content of new coins by about 50%; this was repeated to a lesser extent the following year. This, combined with injection of bullion from the New World
, increased the money supply in England; which led to continuing price inflation. This threatened landowners' wealth, which encouraged the landowners to become more efficient, and enclosure was seen as a way of doing this.
The debasement of the coinage was not seen as a cause of inflation (and therefore enclosures) until the Duke of Somerset
was Protector of Edward VI
. Until then enclosures were seen as the cause of inflation, not the outcome. When Thomas Smith advised Somerset that enclosure was a resulit of inflation, he was only ignored. It was not until John Dudley, 1st Duke of Northumberland
was Protector that his finance minister William Cecil
took action on debasement to try to stop enclosure.
appearing in popular literature, such as the works of Robert Crowley
. There were popular efforts to remove old enclosures, and much legislation of the 1530s and 1540s concerns this shift. Angry tenants impatient to reclaim pastures for tillage were illegally destroying enclosures. Beginning with Kett's Rebellion
in 1549, agrarian revolts swept all over the nation, and other revolts occurred periodically throughout the century. Clearly the popular rural mentality was rather medieval, the goal being to try to restore the security, stability, and functionality of the old order. However, in looking to the past, early modern commoners believed they were asserting ancient traditional and constitutional rights granted to the free and sturdy English yeoman as opposed to the enslaved and effeminate French — a contrast often drawn by 16th century writers, such as [First Name Omitted] Hutchins. This emphasis on rights was to have a pivotal role in the modern era unfolding from the Enlightenment. D. C. Coleman writes that the English commons were disturbed by the loss of common rights under enclosure which might involve the right "to cut underwood, to run pigs" (40).
, it drew considerable support and was led by John Reynolds, otherwise known as "Captain Pouch", a tinker said to be from Desborough, Northamptonshire. He told the protestors he had authority from the King and the Lord of Heaven to destroy enclosures and promised to protect protesters by the contents of his pouch, carried by his side, which he said would keep them from all harm. (After he was captured, his pouch was opened - all that was in it was a piece of green cheese.) Thousands of people were recorded at Hillmorton, Warwickshire and at Cotesbach, Leicestershire. A curfew was imposed in the city of Leicester, as it was feared citizens would stream out of the city to join the riots. A gibbet
was erected in Leicester as a warning, and was pulled down by the citizens of the world.
, near Kettering, pulling down hedges and filling ditches, to protest against the enclosures of Thomas Tresham.
The Treshams were unpopular for their voracious enclosing of land - both the family at Newton and their more well-known Roman Catholic cousins at nearby Rushton
, the family of Francis Tresham
, who had been involved two years earlier in the Gunpowder Plot
and had apparently died in The Tower. Sir Thomas Tresham of Rushton was known as "the most odious man in the county". The old Roman Catholic gentry family of the Treshams had long argued with the emerging Puritan gentry family, the Montagus of Boughton
, about territory. Now Tresham of Newton was enclosing common land - The Brand - that had been part of Rockingham Forest.
Edward Montagu, one of the Deputy Lieutenants, had stood up against enclosure in Parliament some years earlier, but was now placed by the King in the position effectively of defending the Treshams. The local armed bands and militia refused the call-up, so the landowners were forced to use their own servants to suppress the rioters on 8 June 1607. The Royal Proclamation was read twice. The rioters continued in their actions, although at the second reading some ran away. The gentry and their forces charged. A pitched battle ensued. 40-50 were killed and the ringleaders were hanged and quartered.
A memorial stone to those killed now stands at the former church of St Faith, Newton, Northamptonshire.
The Tresham family declined soon after 1607. The Montagu family went on through marriage to become the Dukes of Buccleuch, one of the largest landowners in Britain.
s. These "parliamentary" enclosures consolidated strips in the open fields into more compact units, and enclosed much of the remaining pasture commons or wastes. Parliamentary enclosures usually provided commoners with some other land in compensation for the loss of common rights, although often of poor quality and limited extent.
Parliamentary enclosure was also used for the division and privatisation of common wastes (in the original sense of "uninhabited places"), such as fens, marshes, heathland, downland
, moors
.
Marxist historians have focussed on enclosure as a part of the class conflict that eventually eliminated the English peasantry and saw the emergence of the bourgeoisie. From this viewpoint, the English Civil War
provided the basis for a major acceleration of enclosures. The parliamentary leaders supported the rights of landlords vis-a-vis the King, whose Star Chamber
court, abolished in 1641, had provided the primary legal brake on the enclosure process. By dealing an ultimately crippling blow to the monarchy (which, even after the Restoration
, no longer posed a significant challenge to enclosures) the Civil War paved the way for the eventual rise to power in the 18th century of what has been called a "committee of Landlords", a prelude to the UK's parliamentary system. The economics of enclosures also changed. Whereas earlier land had been enclosed in order to make it available for sheep farming, by 1650 the steep rise in wool prices had come to an end. Thereafter, the focus shifted to implementation of new agricultural techniques, including fertilizer, new crops, and crop rotation, all of which greatly increased the profitability of large-scale farms. The enclosure movement probably peaked from 1760 to 1832; by the latter date it had essentially completed the destruction of the medieval peasant community.
Before enclosure, much of the arable land in the central region of England was organised into an open field system
. Enclosure was not simply the fencing of existing holdings, but led to fundamental changes in agricultural practice. Scattered holdings of strips in the common field were consolidated to create individual farms that could be managed independently of other holdings. Prior to enclosure, rights to use the land were shared between land owners and villagers (commoners). For example, commoners would have the right (common right) to graze their livestock when crops or hay were not being grown, and on common pasture land. The land in a manor under this system would consist of
Note that at this time "field" meant only the unenclosed and open arable land – most of what would now be called "fields" would then have been called "closes". The only boundaries would be those separating the various types of land, and around the closes.
In each of the two waves of enclosure, two different processes were used. One was the division of the large open fields and meadows into privately controlled plots of land, usually hedged and known at the time as severals. In the course of enclosure, the large fields and meadows were divided and common access restricted. Most open-field manors in England were enclosed in this manner, with the notable exception of Laxton
, Nottinghamshire
and parts of the Isle of Axholme
in North Lincolnshire
.
The history of enclosure in England is different from region to region. Not all areas of England had open-field farming in the medieval period. Parts of south-east England (notably parts of Essex
and Kent
) retained a pre-Roman
system of farming in small enclosed fields. Similarly in much of west and north-west England, fields were either never open, or were enclosed early. The primary area of open field management was in the lowland areas of England in a broad band from Yorkshire
and Lincolnshire
diagonally across England to the south, taking in parts of Norfolk and Suffolk, Cambridgeshire, large areas of the Midlands, and most of south central England. These areas were most affected by the first type of enclosure, particularly in the more densely-settled areas where grazing was scarce and farmers relied on open field grazing after the harvest and on the fallow to support their animals.
The second form of enclosure affected those areas, such as the north, the far south-west, and some other regions such as the East Anglian Fens, and the Weald
, where grazing had been plentiful on otherwise marginal lands, such as marshes and moors. Access to these common resources had been an essential part of the economic life in these strongly pastoral regions, and in the Fens, large riots broke out in the seventeenth century, when attempts to drain the peat and silt marshes were combined with proposals to partially enclose them.
Both economic and social factors drove the enclosure movement. In particular, the demand for land in the seventeenth century, increasing regional specialisation, engrossment in landholding and a shift in beliefs regarding the importance of "common wealth" (usually implying common livelihoods) as opposed to the "public good" (the wealth of the nation or the GDP) all laid the groundwork for a shift of support among elites to favour enclosure. Enclosures were conducted by agreement among the landholders (not necessarily the tenants) throughout the seventeenth century; enclosure by Parliamentary Act began in the eighteenth century. Enclosed lands normally could demand higher rents than unenclosed, and thus landlords had an economic stake in enclosure, even if they did not intend to farm the land directly.
While many villagers received plots in the newly enclosed manor, for small landholders this compensation was not always enough to offset the costs of enclosure and fencing. Many historians believe that enclosure was an important factor in the reduction of small landholders in England, as compared to the Continent, though others believe that this process had already begun from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Enclosure faced a great deal of popular resistance because of its effects on the household economies of smallholders and landless labourers. Common rights had included not just the right of cattle or sheep grazing, but also the grazing of geese, foraging for pigs, gleaning, berrying, and fuel gathering. During the period of parliamentary enclosure, employment in agriculture did not fall, but failed to keep pace with the growing population. Consequently large numbers of people left rural areas to move into the cities where they became labourers in the Industrial Revolution
.
By the end of the 19th century the process of enclosure was largely complete, in most areas just leaving a few pasture commons and village green
s.
Many landowners became rich through the enclosure of the commons, while many ordinary folk had a centuries-old right taken away. Land enclosure has been condemned as a gigantic swindle on the part of large landowners, and Oliver Goldsmith
wrote "The Deserted Village" in 1770 deploring rural depopulation. An anonymous protest poem from the 17th century summed up the anti-enclosure feeling:
11 April.(1772) — A paper signed "near Dorchester," addressed to the King (the newspapers taking notice of His Majesty's desire to see the price of provisions lowered), to lay before him the evils of forestalling and engrossing. As examples of engrossing in the neighbourhood of Dorchester, the writer instances the manors of Came, Whitcomb, Muncton, and Bockhampton. The first, he says, about thirty years before, had many inhabitants, many holding leasehold estates under the lord of the manor for three lives. Some of these had estates of 15l., 20l., and 30l. a year, being for the most part careful, industrious people, obliged to be careful to keep a little cash in order to keep the estate in the family if a life should drop. Their corn was brought to market, and they were content with the market price. Their cattle were sold in the same manner.
Their children when of proper age were married, and children begotten, without fear of poverty. But the lord had since turned out all the people, and the whole place was in his own hands, while not half the quantity of corn was sown that formerly had been. The writer also gives an account how one Wm. Taunton, though only a tenant of the Dean and Chapter of Exon, was gradually getting the whole parish into his own hands. He says, comparing his own with past times, that formerly a farmer that occupied 100l. a year was thought a tolerable one, and he that occupied four or five hundred pounds a very great one indeed ; but now they had farmers that occupied from one thousand to two thousand per annum, who did not want money to pay their rent, as did the little farmers, who were obliged to sell their corn, &c. The writer gives it as the general opinion that the kingdom had become greatly depopulated, some averring the population to have decreased by a fourth within the preceding hundred years. He further says : " Your Majesty must put a stop to inclosures, or oblige ye lord of ye manor to keep up ye antient custom of it, and not suffer him to buy his tenant's interest ; to have all the houses pulled down, and ye whole parish turn'd into a farm : this is a fashionable practice, and by none more yn Jn° Damer, Esq., ye owner of Came, and his brother Lord Milton."
Meadow
A meadow is a field vegetated primarily by grass and other non-woody plants . The term is from Old English mædwe. In agriculture a meadow is grassland which is not grazed by domestic livestock but rather allowed to grow unchecked in order to make hay...
s for hay
Hay
Hay is grass, legumes or other herbaceous plants that have been cut, dried, and stored for use as animal fodder, particularly for grazing livestock such as cattle, horses, goats, and sheep. Hay is also fed to pets such as rabbits and guinea pigs...
, or grazing
Grazing
Grazing generally describes a type of feeding, in which a herbivore feeds on plants , and also on other multicellular autotrophs...
livestock
Livestock
Livestock refers to one or more domesticated animals raised in an agricultural setting to produce commodities such as food, fiber and labor. The term "livestock" as used in this article does not include poultry or farmed fish; however the inclusion of these, especially poultry, within the meaning...
on common land
Common land
Common land is land owned collectively or by one person, but over which other people have certain traditional rights, such as to allow their livestock to graze upon it, to collect firewood, or to cut turf for fuel...
. Once enclosed, these uses of the land become restricted to the owner, and it ceases to be common land. In England and Wales
England and Wales
England and Wales is a jurisdiction within the United Kingdom. It consists of England and Wales, two of the four countries of the United Kingdom...
the term is also used for the process that ended the ancient system of arable farming
Tillage
Tillage is the agricultural preparation of the soil by mechanical agitation of various types, such as digging, stirring, and overturning. Examples of human-powered tilling methods using hand tools include shovelling, picking, mattock work, hoeing, and raking...
in open field
Open field system
The open field system was the prevalent agricultural system in much of Europe from the Middle Ages to as recently as the 20th century in some places, particularly Russia and Iran. Under this system, each manor or village had several very large fields, farmed in strips by individual families...
s. Under enclosure, such land is fenced (enclosed) and deeded or entitled to one or more owners. By the 19th century, unenclosed commons had become largely restricted to rough pasture in mountainous areas and to relatively small parts of the lowlands.
"Enclosure" is the modern spelling, while "inclosure" is an older spelling still used in the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
in legal documents and place names.
The process of enclosure has sometimes been accompanied by force, resistance, and bloodshed, and remains among the most controversial areas of agricultural and economic
Economics
Economics is the social science that analyzes the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. The term economics comes from the Ancient Greek from + , hence "rules of the house"...
history
History
History is the discovery, collection, organization, and presentation of information about past events. History can also mean the period of time after writing was invented. Scholars who write about history are called historians...
in England. Marxist and neo-Marxist historians
Marxist historiography
Marxist or historical materialist historiography is a school of historiography influenced by Marxism. The chief tenets of Marxist historiography are the centrality of social class and economic constraints in determining historical outcomes....
argue that rich landowners used their control of state processes to appropriate public land for their private benefit. This created a landless working class
Working class
Working class is a term used in the social sciences and in ordinary conversation to describe those employed in lower tier jobs , often extending to those in unemployment or otherwise possessing below-average incomes...
that provided the labour required in the new industries developing in the north of England. For example: "In agriculture the years between 1760 and 1820 are the years of wholesale enclosure in which, in village after village, common rights are lost". "Enclosure (when all the sophistications are allowed for) was a plain enough case of class robbery".
W. A. Armstrong argued that this is perhaps an oversimplification, that the better-off members of the European peasant
Peasant
A peasant is an agricultural worker who generally tend to be poor and homeless-Etymology:The word is derived from 15th century French païsant meaning one from the pays, or countryside, ultimately from the Latin pagus, or outlying administrative district.- Position in society :Peasants typically...
ry encouraged and participated actively in enclosure, seeking to end the perpetual poverty of subsistence farming. "We should be careful not to ascribe to (enclosure) developments that were the consequence of a much broader and more complex process of historical change". "...[T]he impact of eighteenth and nineteenth century enclosure has been grossly exaggerated[...]". A wide variety of opinions are quoted, with references, in the online Oxford University Press article
http://www.oxfordreference.com/views/ENTRY.html?entry=t266.e4-s2&srn=2&ssid=998626063#FIRSTHIT
Early history
Enclosure of manorial waste was authorised by the Statute of MertonStatute of Merton
The Statute of Merton or Provisions of Merton , sometimes also known as the Ancient Statute of Merton, is considered to be the first English statute, and is printed as the first statute in The Statutes of the Realm.The statute's terms were agreed at Merton between Henry III and the barons of...
(1235) and the Statute of Westminster
Statute of Westminster 1285
The Statute of Westminster of 1285, like the Statute of Westminster 1275, is a code in itself, and contains the famous clause De donis conditionalibus , one of the fundamental institutes of the medieval land law of England...
(1285).
Throughout the medieval and modern periods, piecemeal enclosure took place in which adjacent strips were fenced off from the common field. This was sometimes undertaken by small landowners, but more often by large landowners and lords of the manor. Significant enclosures (or emparkments) took place to establish deer park
Medieval deer park
A medieval deer park was an enclosed area containing deer. It was bounded by a ditch and bank with a wooden park pale on top of the bank. The ditch was typically on the inside, thus allowing deer to enter the park but preventing them from leaving.-History:...
s. Some (but not all) of these enclosures took place with local agreement.
Tudor enclosures
There was a significant rise in enclosure during the Tudor periodTudor period
The Tudor period usually refers to the period between 1485 and 1603, specifically in relation to the history of England. This coincides with the rule of the Tudor dynasty in England whose first monarch was Henry VII...
. These enclosures largely resulted in conversion of land use from arable
Arable land
In geography and agriculture, arable land is land that can be used for growing crops. It includes all land under temporary crops , temporary meadows for mowing or pasture, land under market and kitchen gardens and land temporarily fallow...
to pasture
Pasture
Pasture is land used for grazing. Pasture lands in the narrow sense are enclosed tracts of farmland, grazed by domesticated livestock, such as horses, cattle, sheep or swine. The vegetation of tended pasture, forage, consists mainly of grasses, with an interspersion of legumes and other forbs...
– usually sheep farming. These enclosures were often undertaken unilaterally by the landowner. Enclosures during the Tudor period were often accompanied by a loss of common rights and could result in the destruction of whole villages.
Open farmland in England had been commonly enclosed as pastureland for sheep from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century as populations declined. Foreign demand for English wool also helped encourage increased production, and the wool industry was often thought to be more profitable for landowners who had large decaying farmlands. Some manorial
Manorialism
Manorialism, an essential element of feudal society, was the organizing principle of rural economy that originated in the villa system of the Late Roman Empire, was widely practiced in medieval western and parts of central Europe, and was slowly replaced by the advent of a money-based market...
lands lay in disrepair from a lack of tenants, which made them undesirable to both prospective tenants and landowners who could be fined and ordered to make repairs. Enclosure and sheep herding (which required very few labourers) were a solution to the problem, but of course this created other problems: unemployment, the displacement of impoverished rural labourers, and decreased domestic grain production which made England more susceptible to famine and higher prices for domestic and foreign grain. From as early as the 12th century, some open fields in Britain were being enclosed into individually owned fields. In Great Britain
Great Britain
Great Britain or Britain is an island situated to the northwest of Continental Europe. It is the ninth largest island in the world, and the largest European island, as well as the largest of the British Isles...
, the process sped up during the 15th and 16th centuries as sheep farming grew more profitable. In the 16th and early 17th centuries, the practice of enclosure was denounced by the Church
Church of England
The Church of England is the officially established Christian church in England and the Mother Church of the worldwide Anglican Communion. The church considers itself within the tradition of Western Christianity and dates its formal establishment principally to the mission to England by St...
and the government, particularly depopulating enclosure, and legislation was drawn up against it. But elite opinion began to turn towards support for enclosure, and rate of enclosure increased in the seventeenth century. This led to a series of government acts
Inclosure Act
The Inclosure or Enclosure Acts were a series of United Kingdom Acts of Parliament which enclosed open fields and common land in the country. They removed previously existing rights of local people to carry out activities in these areas, such as cultivation, cutting hay, grazing animals or using...
addressing individual regions, which were given a common framework in the Inclosure Consolidation Act of 1801.
Sir Thomas More
Thomas More
Sir Thomas More , also known by Catholics as Saint Thomas More, was an English lawyer, social philosopher, author, statesman and noted Renaissance humanist. He was an important councillor to Henry VIII of England and, for three years toward the end of his life, Lord Chancellor...
, in his 1516 work Utopia
Utopia (book)
Utopia is a work of fiction by Thomas More published in 1516...
suggests that the practice of enclosure is responsible for some of the social problems affecting England at the time, specifically theft.
But I do not think that this necessity of stealing arises only from hence; there is another cause of it, more peculiar to England.' 'What is that?' said the Cardinal: 'The increase of pasture,' said I, 'by which your sheep, which are naturally mild, and easily kept in order, may be said now to devour men and unpeople, not only villages, but towns; for wherever it is found that the sheep of any soil yield a softer and richer wool than ordinary, there the nobility and gentry, and even those holy men, the abbots not contented with the old rents which their farms yielded, nor thinking it enough that they, living at their ease, do no good to the public, resolve to do it hurt instead of good. They stop the course of agriculture, destroying houses and towns, reserving only the churches, and enclose grounds that they may lodge their sheep in them.
The loss of agricultural labour also hurt others like millers whose livelihood relied on agricultural produce. Fynes Moryson
Fynes Moryson
Fynes Moryson spent most of the decade of the 1590s travelling on the European continent and the eastern Mediterranean lands...
reported on these problems in An Itinerary (1617):
England abounds with corn [wheat and other grains], which they may transport, when a quarter (in some places containing six, in others eight bushels) is sold for twenty shillings, or under; and this corn not only serves England, but also served the English army in the civil wars of Ireland, at which time they also exported great quantity thereof into foreign parts, and by God's mercy England scarce once in ten years needs a supply of foreign corn, which want commonly proceeds of the covetousness of private men, exporting or hiding it. Yet I must confess, that daily this plenty of corn decreaseth, by reason that private men, finding greater commodity in feeding of sheep and cattle than in the plow, requiring the hands of many servants, can by no law be restrained from turning cornfields into enclosed pastures, especially since great men are the first to break these laws.
By some accounts, 3/4ths to 9/10ths of the tenant farmers on some estates were evicted in the late medieval period. Other economic historians argue that forced evictions were probably rare. Landlords would turn to enclosure as an option when lands went unused.
Anti-enclosure legislation
The enclosure of common land for sheep farming and the consequent eviction of villagers from their homes and their livelihoods became an important political issue for the Tudors. Reflecting royal opposition to this practice, the anti-enclosure acts of 1489 and 1516 were aimed at stopping the waste of structures and farmland, which would lead to lower tax revenues, fewer potential military conscripts for the crown, and more potential underclass rebels. The Tudor authorities were extremely nervous about how the villagers who had lost their homes would react. In the sixteenth century, lack of income made one a pauper. If one lost one's home as well, one became a vagrantVagrancy (people)
A vagrant is a person in poverty, who wanders from place to place without a home or regular employment or income.-Definition:A vagrant is "a person without a settled home or regular work who wanders from place to place and lives by begging;" vagrancy is the condition of such persons.-History:In...
; and vagrants were regarded (and treated) as criminals. The authorities saw many people becoming what they regarded as vagabond
Vagabond (person)
A vagabond is a drifter and an itinerant wanderer who roams wherever they please, following the whim of the moment. Vagabonds may lack residence, a job, and even citizenship....
s and thieves as a result of enclosure and depopulation of villages. From the time of Henry VII onwards, Parliament began passing Acts to stop enclosure, to limit its effects, or at least to fine those responsible. The first such law was in 1489. Over the next 150 years, there were 11 more Acts of Parliament and eight commissions of enquiry on the subject.
Initially, enclosure was not itself an offence, but where it was accompanied by the destruction of houses, half the profits would go to the Crown until the lost houses were rebuilt. (The 1489 Act gave half the profits to the superior landlord, who might not be the Crown, but an Act of 1536 allowed the Crown to receive this half share if the superior landlord had not taken action.) In 1515, conversion from arable to pasture became an offence. Once again, half the profits from conversion would go to the Crown until the arable land was restored. Neither the 1515 Act nor the previous laws were effective in stopping enclosure, so in 1517 Cardinal Wolsey established a commission of enquiry to determine where offences had taken place – and to ensure the Crown received its half of the profits.
Inflation and enclosure
Alongside population growth, inflationInflation
In economics, inflation is a rise in the general level of prices of goods and services in an economy over a period of time.When the general price level rises, each unit of currency buys fewer goods and services. Consequently, inflation also reflects an erosion in the purchasing power of money – a...
was a major reason for enclosure. When Henry VIII
Henry VIII of England
Henry VIII was King of England from 21 April 1509 until his death. He was Lord, and later King, of Ireland, as well as continuing the nominal claim by the English monarchs to the Kingdom of France...
became King in 1509, the royal finances were in good shape thanks to the prudence of his father Henry VII
Henry VII of England
Henry VII was King of England and Lord of Ireland from his seizing the crown on 22 August 1485 until his death on 21 April 1509, as the first monarch of the House of Tudor....
. But this soon changed as Henry VIII doubled household expenditure and started costly wars against both France and Scotland. With his wealth rapidly decreasing, Henry VIII imposed a series of taxes devised by his finance minister, Thomas Wolsey. Soon the people began to resent Wolsey's taxes and a new source of finance had to be found: in 1544, Henry reduced the silver content of new coins by about 50%; this was repeated to a lesser extent the following year. This, combined with injection of bullion from the New World
New World
The New World is one of the names used for the Western Hemisphere, specifically America and sometimes Oceania . The term originated in the late 15th century, when America had been recently discovered by European explorers, expanding the geographical horizon of the people of the European middle...
, increased the money supply in England; which led to continuing price inflation. This threatened landowners' wealth, which encouraged the landowners to become more efficient, and enclosure was seen as a way of doing this.
The debasement of the coinage was not seen as a cause of inflation (and therefore enclosures) until the Duke of Somerset
Edward Seymour, 1st Duke of Somerset
Edward Seymour, 1st Duke of Somerset, 1st Earl of Hertford, 1st Viscount Beauchamp of Hache, KG, Earl Marshal was Lord Protector of England in the period between the death of Henry VIII in 1547 and his own indictment in 1549....
was Protector of Edward VI
Edward VI of England
Edward VI was the King of England and Ireland from 28 January 1547 until his death. He was crowned on 20 February at the age of nine. The son of Henry VIII and Jane Seymour, Edward was the third monarch of the Tudor dynasty and England's first monarch who was raised as a Protestant...
. Until then enclosures were seen as the cause of inflation, not the outcome. When Thomas Smith advised Somerset that enclosure was a resulit of inflation, he was only ignored. It was not until John Dudley, 1st Duke of Northumberland
John Dudley, 1st Duke of Northumberland
John Dudley, 1st Duke of Northumberland, KG was an English general, admiral, and politician, who led the government of the young King Edward VI from 1550 until 1553, and unsuccessfully tried to install Lady Jane Grey on the English throne after the King's death...
was Protector that his finance minister William Cecil
William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley
William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley , KG was an English statesman, the chief advisor of Queen Elizabeth I for most of her reign, twice Secretary of State and Lord High Treasurer from 1572...
took action on debasement to try to stop enclosure.
Enclosure riots
After 1529 or so, the problem of untended farmland disappeared with the rising population. There was a desire for more arable land along with much antagonism toward the tenant-graziers with their flocks and herds. Increased demand along with a scarcity of tillable land caused rents to rise dramatically in the 1520s to mid-century. The 1520s appear to have been the point at which the rent increases became extreme, with complaints of rack-rentRack-rent
Rack-rent denotes two different concepts:# an excessive or extortionate rent, or# the full rent of a property, including both land and improvements if it were subject to an immediate open-market rental review...
appearing in popular literature, such as the works of Robert Crowley
Robert Crowley (printer)
Robert Crowley also Robertus Croleus, Roberto Croleo, Robart Crowleye, Robarte Crole, and Crule , was a stationer, poet, polemicist and Protestant clergyman who was among the Marian exiles at Frankfurt...
. There were popular efforts to remove old enclosures, and much legislation of the 1530s and 1540s concerns this shift. Angry tenants impatient to reclaim pastures for tillage were illegally destroying enclosures. Beginning with Kett's Rebellion
Kett's Rebellion
Kett's Rebellion was a revolt in Norfolk, England during the reign of Edward VI. The rebellion was in response to the enclosure of land. It began in July 1549 but was eventually crushed by forces loyal to the English crown....
in 1549, agrarian revolts swept all over the nation, and other revolts occurred periodically throughout the century. Clearly the popular rural mentality was rather medieval, the goal being to try to restore the security, stability, and functionality of the old order. However, in looking to the past, early modern commoners believed they were asserting ancient traditional and constitutional rights granted to the free and sturdy English yeoman as opposed to the enslaved and effeminate French — a contrast often drawn by 16th century writers, such as [First Name Omitted] Hutchins. This emphasis on rights was to have a pivotal role in the modern era unfolding from the Enlightenment. D. C. Coleman writes that the English commons were disturbed by the loss of common rights under enclosure which might involve the right "to cut underwood, to run pigs" (40).
The Midland Revolt
In 1607, beginning on May Eve in Haselbech, Northamptonshire and spreading to Warwickshire and Leicestershire throughout May, riots took place as a protest against the enclosure of common land. Known as The Midland RevoltMidland Revolt
The Midland Revolt was a popular uprising which took place in the Midlands of England in 1607. Beginning in late April in Haselbech, Pytchley and Rushton in Northamptonshire, and spreading to Warwickshire and Leicestershire throughout May, riots took place as a protest against the enclosure of...
, it drew considerable support and was led by John Reynolds, otherwise known as "Captain Pouch", a tinker said to be from Desborough, Northamptonshire. He told the protestors he had authority from the King and the Lord of Heaven to destroy enclosures and promised to protect protesters by the contents of his pouch, carried by his side, which he said would keep them from all harm. (After he was captured, his pouch was opened - all that was in it was a piece of green cheese.) Thousands of people were recorded at Hillmorton, Warwickshire and at Cotesbach, Leicestershire. A curfew was imposed in the city of Leicester, as it was feared citizens would stream out of the city to join the riots. A gibbet
Gibbet
A gibbet is a gallows-type structure from which the dead bodies of executed criminals were hung on public display to deter other existing or potential criminals. In earlier times, up to the late 17th century, live gibbeting also took place, in which the criminal was placed alive in a metal cage...
was erected in Leicester as a warning, and was pulled down by the citizens of the world.
Newton Rebellion: 8 June 1607
The Newton Rebellion was one of the last times that the peasantry of England and the gentry were in open armed conflict. Things had come to a head in early June. James I issued a Proclamation and ordered his Deputy Lieutenants in Northamptonshire to put down the riots. It is recorded that women and children were part of the protest. Over a thousand had gathered at NewtonNewton, Northamptonshire
Newton, sometimes called Newton in the Willows, is a small village in the Ise valley, Kettering, Northamptonshire. The village is in the civil parish of Newton and Little Oakley which had a population at the 2001 census of 147...
, near Kettering, pulling down hedges and filling ditches, to protest against the enclosures of Thomas Tresham.
The Treshams were unpopular for their voracious enclosing of land - both the family at Newton and their more well-known Roman Catholic cousins at nearby Rushton
Rushton, Northamptonshire
Rushton is a small village and civil parish in Northamptonshire. It is north-east of Rothwell. At the time of the 2001 census, the parish's population was 452 people. The village has a primary school and a pub opposite the village cricket pitch. The village is home to Rushton Triangular Lodge.-...
, the family of Francis Tresham
Francis Tresham
Francis Tresham , eldest son of Sir Thomas Tresham and Merial Throckmorton, was a member of the group of English provincial catholics who planned the failed Gunpowder Plot of 1605, a conspiracy to assassinate King James I of England...
, who had been involved two years earlier in the Gunpowder Plot
Gunpowder Plot
The Gunpowder Plot of 1605, in earlier centuries often called the Gunpowder Treason Plot or the Jesuit Treason, was a failed assassination attempt against King James I of England and VI of Scotland by a group of provincial English Catholics led by Robert Catesby.The plan was to blow up the House of...
and had apparently died in The Tower. Sir Thomas Tresham of Rushton was known as "the most odious man in the county". The old Roman Catholic gentry family of the Treshams had long argued with the emerging Puritan gentry family, the Montagus of Boughton
Boughton House
Boughton House is a country house about north-east of Kettering off the A43 road near Geddington in Northamptonshire, England, which belongs to the Duke of Buccleuch.-History:...
, about territory. Now Tresham of Newton was enclosing common land - The Brand - that had been part of Rockingham Forest.
Edward Montagu, one of the Deputy Lieutenants, had stood up against enclosure in Parliament some years earlier, but was now placed by the King in the position effectively of defending the Treshams. The local armed bands and militia refused the call-up, so the landowners were forced to use their own servants to suppress the rioters on 8 June 1607. The Royal Proclamation was read twice. The rioters continued in their actions, although at the second reading some ran away. The gentry and their forces charged. A pitched battle ensued. 40-50 were killed and the ringleaders were hanged and quartered.
A memorial stone to those killed now stands at the former church of St Faith, Newton, Northamptonshire.
The Tresham family declined soon after 1607. The Montagu family went on through marriage to become the Dukes of Buccleuch, one of the largest landowners in Britain.
Parliamentary Enclosure and open fields
During the 18th and 19th centuries, enclosures were by means of local acts of Parliament, called the Inclosure ActInclosure Act
The Inclosure or Enclosure Acts were a series of United Kingdom Acts of Parliament which enclosed open fields and common land in the country. They removed previously existing rights of local people to carry out activities in these areas, such as cultivation, cutting hay, grazing animals or using...
s. These "parliamentary" enclosures consolidated strips in the open fields into more compact units, and enclosed much of the remaining pasture commons or wastes. Parliamentary enclosures usually provided commoners with some other land in compensation for the loss of common rights, although often of poor quality and limited extent.
Parliamentary enclosure was also used for the division and privatisation of common wastes (in the original sense of "uninhabited places"), such as fens, marshes, heathland, downland
Downland
A downland is an area of open chalk hills. This term is especially used to describe the chalk countryside in southern England. Areas of downland are often referred to as Downs....
, moors
Moorland
Moorland or moor is a type of habitat, in the temperate grasslands, savannas, and shrublands biome, found in upland areas, characterised by low-growing vegetation on acidic soils and heavy fog...
.
Marxist historians have focussed on enclosure as a part of the class conflict that eventually eliminated the English peasantry and saw the emergence of the bourgeoisie. From this viewpoint, the English Civil War
English Civil War
The English Civil War was a series of armed conflicts and political machinations between Parliamentarians and Royalists...
provided the basis for a major acceleration of enclosures. The parliamentary leaders supported the rights of landlords vis-a-vis the King, whose Star Chamber
Star Chamber
The Star Chamber was an English court of law that sat at the royal Palace of Westminster until 1641. It was made up of Privy Counsellors, as well as common-law judges and supplemented the activities of the common-law and equity courts in both civil and criminal matters...
court, abolished in 1641, had provided the primary legal brake on the enclosure process. By dealing an ultimately crippling blow to the monarchy (which, even after the Restoration
English Restoration
The Restoration of the English monarchy began in 1660 when the English, Scottish and Irish monarchies were all restored under Charles II after the Interregnum that followed the Wars of the Three Kingdoms...
, no longer posed a significant challenge to enclosures) the Civil War paved the way for the eventual rise to power in the 18th century of what has been called a "committee of Landlords", a prelude to the UK's parliamentary system. The economics of enclosures also changed. Whereas earlier land had been enclosed in order to make it available for sheep farming, by 1650 the steep rise in wool prices had come to an end. Thereafter, the focus shifted to implementation of new agricultural techniques, including fertilizer, new crops, and crop rotation, all of which greatly increased the profitability of large-scale farms. The enclosure movement probably peaked from 1760 to 1832; by the latter date it had essentially completed the destruction of the medieval peasant community.
Before enclosure, much of the arable land in the central region of England was organised into an open field system
Open field system
The open field system was the prevalent agricultural system in much of Europe from the Middle Ages to as recently as the 20th century in some places, particularly Russia and Iran. Under this system, each manor or village had several very large fields, farmed in strips by individual families...
. Enclosure was not simply the fencing of existing holdings, but led to fundamental changes in agricultural practice. Scattered holdings of strips in the common field were consolidated to create individual farms that could be managed independently of other holdings. Prior to enclosure, rights to use the land were shared between land owners and villagers (commoners). For example, commoners would have the right (common right) to graze their livestock when crops or hay were not being grown, and on common pasture land. The land in a manor under this system would consist of
- Two or three very large common arable fields
- Several very large common haymeadows
- Closes, small areas of enclosed private land such as paddocks, orchards or gardens, mostly near houses
- In some cases, a parkParkA park is a protected area, in its natural or semi-natural state, or planted, and set aside for human recreation and enjoyment, or for the protection of wildlife or natural habitats. It may consist of rocks, soil, water, flora and fauna and grass areas. Many parks are legally protected by...
around the principal house, the manor houseManor houseA manor house is a country house that historically formed the administrative centre of a manor, the lowest unit of territorial organisation in the feudal system in Europe. The term is applied to country houses that belonged to the gentry and other grand stately homes... - Common waste – rough pasture land (effectively everything not in the previous categories)
Note that at this time "field" meant only the unenclosed and open arable land – most of what would now be called "fields" would then have been called "closes". The only boundaries would be those separating the various types of land, and around the closes.
In each of the two waves of enclosure, two different processes were used. One was the division of the large open fields and meadows into privately controlled plots of land, usually hedged and known at the time as severals. In the course of enclosure, the large fields and meadows were divided and common access restricted. Most open-field manors in England were enclosed in this manner, with the notable exception of Laxton
Laxton, Nottinghamshire
Laxton is a small village in the civil parish of Laxton and Moorhouse in the English county of Nottinghamshire, situated about 25 miles northeast of Nottingham city centre....
, Nottinghamshire
Nottinghamshire
Nottinghamshire is a county in the East Midlands of England, bordering South Yorkshire to the north-west, Lincolnshire to the east, Leicestershire to the south, and Derbyshire to the west...
and parts of the Isle of Axholme
Isle of Axholme
The Isle of Axholme is part of North Lincolnshire, England. It is the only part of Lincolnshire west of the River Trent. It is between the three towns of Doncaster, Scunthorpe and Gainsborough.- Description:...
in North Lincolnshire
North Lincolnshire
North Lincolnshire is a unitary authority area in the region of Yorkshire and the Humber in England. For ceremonial purposes it is part of Lincolnshire....
.
The history of enclosure in England is different from region to region. Not all areas of England had open-field farming in the medieval period. Parts of south-east England (notably parts of Essex
Essex
Essex is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in the East region of England, and one of the home counties. It is located to the northeast of Greater London. It borders with Cambridgeshire and Suffolk to the north, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent to the South and London to the south west...
and Kent
Kent
Kent is a county in southeast England, and is one of the home counties. It borders East Sussex, Surrey and Greater London and has a defined boundary with Essex in the middle of the Thames Estuary. The ceremonial county boundaries of Kent include the shire county of Kent and the unitary borough of...
) retained a pre-Roman
Ancient Rome
Ancient Rome was a thriving civilization that grew on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 8th century BC. Located along the Mediterranean Sea and centered on the city of Rome, it expanded to one of the largest empires in the ancient world....
system of farming in small enclosed fields. Similarly in much of west and north-west England, fields were either never open, or were enclosed early. The primary area of open field management was in the lowland areas of England in a broad band from Yorkshire
Yorkshire
Yorkshire is a historic county of northern England and the largest in the United Kingdom. Because of its great size in comparison to other English counties, functions have been increasingly undertaken over time by its subdivisions, which have also been subject to periodic reform...
and Lincolnshire
Lincolnshire
Lincolnshire is a county in the east of England. It borders Norfolk to the south east, Cambridgeshire to the south, Rutland to the south west, Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire to the west, South Yorkshire to the north west, and the East Riding of Yorkshire to the north. It also borders...
diagonally across England to the south, taking in parts of Norfolk and Suffolk, Cambridgeshire, large areas of the Midlands, and most of south central England. These areas were most affected by the first type of enclosure, particularly in the more densely-settled areas where grazing was scarce and farmers relied on open field grazing after the harvest and on the fallow to support their animals.
The second form of enclosure affected those areas, such as the north, the far south-west, and some other regions such as the East Anglian Fens, and the Weald
Weald
The Weald is the name given to an area in South East England situated between the parallel chalk escarpments of the North and the South Downs. It should be regarded as three separate parts: the sandstone "High Weald" in the centre; the clay "Low Weald" periphery; and the Greensand Ridge which...
, where grazing had been plentiful on otherwise marginal lands, such as marshes and moors. Access to these common resources had been an essential part of the economic life in these strongly pastoral regions, and in the Fens, large riots broke out in the seventeenth century, when attempts to drain the peat and silt marshes were combined with proposals to partially enclose them.
Both economic and social factors drove the enclosure movement. In particular, the demand for land in the seventeenth century, increasing regional specialisation, engrossment in landholding and a shift in beliefs regarding the importance of "common wealth" (usually implying common livelihoods) as opposed to the "public good" (the wealth of the nation or the GDP) all laid the groundwork for a shift of support among elites to favour enclosure. Enclosures were conducted by agreement among the landholders (not necessarily the tenants) throughout the seventeenth century; enclosure by Parliamentary Act began in the eighteenth century. Enclosed lands normally could demand higher rents than unenclosed, and thus landlords had an economic stake in enclosure, even if they did not intend to farm the land directly.
While many villagers received plots in the newly enclosed manor, for small landholders this compensation was not always enough to offset the costs of enclosure and fencing. Many historians believe that enclosure was an important factor in the reduction of small landholders in England, as compared to the Continent, though others believe that this process had already begun from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Enclosure faced a great deal of popular resistance because of its effects on the household economies of smallholders and landless labourers. Common rights had included not just the right of cattle or sheep grazing, but also the grazing of geese, foraging for pigs, gleaning, berrying, and fuel gathering. During the period of parliamentary enclosure, employment in agriculture did not fall, but failed to keep pace with the growing population. Consequently large numbers of people left rural areas to move into the cities where they became labourers in the Industrial Revolution
Industrial Revolution
The Industrial Revolution was a period from the 18th to the 19th century where major changes in agriculture, manufacturing, mining, transportation, and technology had a profound effect on the social, economic and cultural conditions of the times...
.
By the end of the 19th century the process of enclosure was largely complete, in most areas just leaving a few pasture commons and village green
Village green
A village green is a common open area which is a part of a settlement. Traditionally, such an area was often common grass land at the centre of a small agricultural settlement, used for grazing and sometimes for community events...
s.
Many landowners became rich through the enclosure of the commons, while many ordinary folk had a centuries-old right taken away. Land enclosure has been condemned as a gigantic swindle on the part of large landowners, and Oliver Goldsmith
Oliver Goldsmith
Oliver Goldsmith was an Irish writer, poet and physician known for his novel The Vicar of Wakefield , his pastoral poem The Deserted Village , and his plays The Good-Natur'd Man and She Stoops to Conquer...
wrote "The Deserted Village" in 1770 deploring rural depopulation. An anonymous protest poem from the 17th century summed up the anti-enclosure feeling:
They hang the man, and flog the woman,
That steals the goose from off the common;
But let the greater villain loose,
That steals the common from the goose.
"Stop to consider how the so-called owners of the land got hold of it. They simply seized it by force, afterwards hiring lawyers to provide them with title-deeds. In the case of the enclosure of the common lands, which was going on from about 1600 to 1850, the land-grabbers did not even have the excuse of being foreign conquerors; they were quite frankly taking the heritage of their own countrymen, upon no sort of pretext except that they had the power to do so.
– George Orwell."
11 April.(1772) — A paper signed "near Dorchester," addressed to the King (the newspapers taking notice of His Majesty's desire to see the price of provisions lowered), to lay before him the evils of forestalling and engrossing. As examples of engrossing in the neighbourhood of Dorchester, the writer instances the manors of Came, Whitcomb, Muncton, and Bockhampton. The first, he says, about thirty years before, had many inhabitants, many holding leasehold estates under the lord of the manor for three lives. Some of these had estates of 15l., 20l., and 30l. a year, being for the most part careful, industrious people, obliged to be careful to keep a little cash in order to keep the estate in the family if a life should drop. Their corn was brought to market, and they were content with the market price. Their cattle were sold in the same manner.
Their children when of proper age were married, and children begotten, without fear of poverty. But the lord had since turned out all the people, and the whole place was in his own hands, while not half the quantity of corn was sown that formerly had been. The writer also gives an account how one Wm. Taunton, though only a tenant of the Dean and Chapter of Exon, was gradually getting the whole parish into his own hands. He says, comparing his own with past times, that formerly a farmer that occupied 100l. a year was thought a tolerable one, and he that occupied four or five hundred pounds a very great one indeed ; but now they had farmers that occupied from one thousand to two thousand per annum, who did not want money to pay their rent, as did the little farmers, who were obliged to sell their corn, &c. The writer gives it as the general opinion that the kingdom had become greatly depopulated, some averring the population to have decreased by a fourth within the preceding hundred years. He further says : " Your Majesty must put a stop to inclosures, or oblige ye lord of ye manor to keep up ye antient custom of it, and not suffer him to buy his tenant's interest ; to have all the houses pulled down, and ye whole parish turn'd into a farm : this is a fashionable practice, and by none more yn Jn° Damer, Esq., ye owner of Came, and his brother Lord Milton."
Contemporary movements against enclosure
- Abahlali baseMjondoloAbahlali baseMjondoloAbahlali baseMjondolo , also known as AbM or the red shirts is a shack-dwellers' movement in South Africa which is well known for its campaigning for public housing. The movement grew out of a road blockade organized from the Kennedy Road shack settlement in the city of Durban in early 2005 and now...
in South AfricaSouth AfricaThe Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans... - The Bhumi Uchhed Pratirodh CommitteeBhumi Uchhed Pratirodh CommitteeBhumi Uchhed Pratirodh Committee is an organisation in West Bengal, India, formed to oppose the set-up of a Special Economic Zone in the rural area of Nandigram. It formed an important role in resisting land-acquisitions in the following Nandigram violence...
in IndiaIndiaIndia , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world... - The EZLN in MexicoMexicoThe United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...
- Fanmi LavalasFanmi LavalasFanmi Lavalas is a leftist political party in Haiti. Its leader is former Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. It has been a powerful force in Haitian politics since 1991. Fanmi Lavalas governments supported a policy of "growth with equity" based on Caribbean and Western European social...
in Haiti - The Homeless Workers' MovementHomeless Workers' MovementThe Homeless Workers Movement is a shack-dwellers' movement in Brazil. It originated from the Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra in 1997...
in BrazilBrazilBrazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people... - The Landless Peoples MovementLandless Peoples MovementThe Landless People's Movement is an independent social movement in South Africa. It represents rural people and people living in shack settlements in cities. The LPM boycotts parliamentary elections and has a history of conflict with the African National Congress...
in South Africa - The Landless Workers' MovementLandless Workers' MovementLandless Workers' Movement is a social movement in Brazil; it is the second largest social movement in Latin America with an estimated 1.5 million landless members in 23 out of Brazil's 26 states. The MST states it carries out land reform in a country it sees as mired by unjust land distribution...
in Brazil - Movement for Justice en el BarrioMovement for Justice en el BarrioMovement for Justice in El Barrio/Movimiento por Justicia del Barrio is a community organization based in East Harlem, New York.-Organisational profile:The Movement defines itself as follows:-Background:...
in the United States of America - Narmada Bachao AndolanNarmada Bachao AndolanNarmada Bachao Andolan is social movement consisting of tribal people, adivasis, farmers, environmentalists and human rights activists against the Sardar Sarovar Dam being built across the Narmada river, Gujarat, India....
in IndiaIndiaIndia , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world... - The Western Cape Anti-Eviction CampaignWestern Cape Anti-Eviction CampaignThe Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign is a non-racial popular movement made up of poor and oppressed communities in Cape Town, South Africa...
in South Africa
Further reading
- Beckett, J. V. "The Disappearance of the Cottager and the Squatter from the English Countryside: The Hammonds Revisited." Land, Labour and Agriculture, 1700-1920. Ed. B. A. Holderness and Michael Turner. London: Hambledon Press, 1991.
- Dahlman, Carl J. The Open Field System and Beyond: A Property Rights Analysis of an Economic Institution. New York: Cambridge UP, 1980.
- Everitt, Alan. "Common Land." The English Rural Landscape. Ed. Joan Thirsk. New York: Oxford UP, 2000.
- Gonner, E. C. K. Common Land and Inclosure. New York: A. M. Kelley, 1966.
- Humphries, J. "Enclosures, commons rights, and women." Journal of Economic History, Vol. 50, Issue 1 (1990): 17-42.
- Thirsk, Joan. "The Common Fields." Past and Present. 29 (Dec. 1964): 3-25.
Literary references
- The Deserted Village by Oliver GoldsmithOliver GoldsmithOliver Goldsmith was an Irish writer, poet and physician known for his novel The Vicar of Wakefield , his pastoral poem The Deserted Village , and his plays The Good-Natur'd Man and She Stoops to Conquer...
, abridged as Sweet Auburn in New Oxford Book of English Verse, Oxford University Press, 1972 - Ill Fares the Land by Tony JudtTony JudtTony Robert Judt FBA was a British historian, essayist, and university professor who specialized in European history. Judt moved to New York and served as the Erich Maria Remarque Professor in European Studies at New York University, and Director of NYU's Erich Maria Remarque Institute...
(title taken from The Deserted Village), The Penguin Press, New York, 2010 - Das KapitalDas KapitalDas Kapital, Kritik der politischen Ökonomie , by Karl Marx, is a critical analysis of capitalism as political economy, meant to reveal the economic laws of the capitalist mode of production, and how it was the precursor of the socialist mode of production.- Themes :In Capital: Critique of...
(Capital) by Karl MarxKarl MarxKarl Heinrich Marx was a German philosopher, economist, sociologist, historian, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. His ideas played a significant role in the development of social science and the socialist political movement... - Das Kapital (Capital), Vol. 1, Ch. 27 - 'Expropriation Of The Agricultural Population From The Land'
- Utopia (book)Utopia (book)Utopia is a work of fiction by Thomas More published in 1516...
by Thomas MoreThomas MoreSir Thomas More , also known by Catholics as Saint Thomas More, was an English lawyer, social philosopher, author, statesman and noted Renaissance humanist. He was an important councillor to Henry VIII of England and, for three years toward the end of his life, Lord Chancellor... - The Yellow AdmiralThe Yellow AdmiralThe Yellow Admiral is a novel by English author Patrick O'Brian, the eighteenth in the Aubrey-Maturin series of historical fiction set in the era of the Napoleonic Wars.-Plot summary:...
by Patrick O'BrianPatrick O'BrianPatrick O'Brian, CBE , born Richard Patrick Russ, was an English novelist and translator, best known for his Aubrey–Maturin series of novels set in the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic Wars and centred on the friendship of English Naval Captain Jack Aubrey and the Irish–Catalan physician Stephen... - As You Like ItAs You Like ItAs You Like It is a pastoral comedy by William Shakespeare believed to have been written in 1599 or early 1600 and first published in the folio of 1623. The play's first performance is uncertain, though a performance at Wilton House in 1603 has been suggested as a possibility...
by William ShakespeareWilliam ShakespeareWilliam Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...
External links
- Laxton Open Field Village
- Enclosure as it affected an English Midlands village in the nineteenth century
See also
- Common-pool resourceCommon-pool resourceIn economics, a common-pool resource , also called a common property resource, is a type of good consisting of a natural or human-made resource system , whose size or characteristics makes it costly, but not impossible, to exclude potential beneficiaries from obtaining benefits from its use...
- Das KapitalDas KapitalDas Kapital, Kritik der politischen Ökonomie , by Karl Marx, is a critical analysis of capitalism as political economy, meant to reveal the economic laws of the capitalist mode of production, and how it was the precursor of the socialist mode of production.- Themes :In Capital: Critique of...
(Capital), Vol. 1, Ch. 27 - Deserted medieval villageDeserted medieval villageIn the United Kingdom, a deserted medieval village is a former settlement which was abandoned during the Middle Ages, typically leaving no trace apart from earthworks or cropmarks. If there are fewer than three inhabited houses the convention is to regard the site as deserted; if there are more...
- Enclave
- Highland ClearancesHighland ClearancesThe Highland Clearances were forced displacements of the population of the Scottish Highlands during the 18th and 19th centuries. They led to mass emigration to the sea coast, the Scottish Lowlands, and the North American colonies...
- IntakeIntake (land)An intake is a parcel of land, of the order of , which has been "taken in" from a moor and brought under cultivation. The term is used almost exclusively in the north of England applying to land on the fringes of the Pennines and other moors...
- OverexploitationOverexploitationOverexploitation, also called overharvesting, refers to harvesting a renewable resource to the point of diminishing returns. Sustained overexploitation can lead to the destruction of the resource...
- Political economyPolitical economyPolitical economy originally was the term for studying production, buying, and selling, and their relations with law, custom, and government, as well as with the distribution of national income and wealth, including through the budget process. Political economy originated in moral philosophy...
- PrecinctPrecinctA precinct is a space enclosed by the walls or other boundaries of a particular place or building, or by an arbitrary and imaginary line drawn around it. The term has several different uses...
- Primitive accumulation of capitalPrimitive accumulation of capitalIn Marxist economics and preceding theories, the problem of primitive accumulation of capital concerns the origin of capital, and therefore of how class distinctions between possessors and non-possessors came to be.Adam Smith's account of primitive-original accumulation depicted a peaceful...
- Tragedy of the commonsTragedy of the commonsThe tragedy of the commons is a dilemma arising from the situation in which multiple individuals, acting independently and rationally consulting their own self-interest, will ultimately deplete a shared limited resource, even when it is clear that it is not in anyone's long-term interest for this...
- Utopia (book)Utopia (book)Utopia is a work of fiction by Thomas More published in 1516...
Britain
- British Agricultural RevolutionBritish Agricultural RevolutionBritish Agricultural Revolution describes a period of development in Britain between the 17th century and the end of the 19th century, which saw an epoch-making increase in agricultural productivity and net output. This in turn supported unprecedented population growth, freeing up a significant...
- Diggers
- Highland ClearancesHighland ClearancesThe Highland Clearances were forced displacements of the population of the Scottish Highlands during the 18th and 19th centuries. They led to mass emigration to the sea coast, the Scottish Lowlands, and the North American colonies...
- Lowland ClearancesLowland ClearancesThe Lowland Clearances in Scotland were one of the results of the British Agricultural Revolution, which changed the traditional system of agriculture which had existed in Lowland Scotland in the seventeenth century...
- Swing RiotsSwing RiotsThe Swing Riots were a widespread uprising by agricultural workers; it began with the destruction of threshing machines in the Elham Valley area of East Kent in the summer of 1830, and by early December had spread throughout the whole of southern England and East Anglia.As well as the attacks on...