in
common. In fact, the history of enclosures is part of the history of
the great revolution in agriculture by which the manorial system was
converted into the modern system as we know it to-day of several
ownership and the triumvirate of landlord, tenant farmer, and
labourer. No one could have objected to the enclosure of waste; it was
that of the common arable fields and of the common pasture that
excited the indignation of contemporaries. They saw many of the small
holders displaced and the countryside depopulated; many of the
labourers were also thrown out of employment, for there was no need in
enclosed fields of the swineherd and shepherd and oxherd who had
tended the common flocks of the villagers in the old unfenced fields.
But much of the opposition was founded on ignorance and hatred of
change; England had been for ages mainly a corn-growing land, and,
many thought, ought to remain so. As a matter of fact, what much of
the arable land wanted was laying down to grass; it was worn out and
needed a rest. The common field system was wasteful; the land, for
instance, could never be properly ploughed, for the long narrow strips
could not be cross-ploughed, and much of it must have suffered
grievously from want of manure at a time when hardly any stock was
kept in the winter to make manure. The beneficial effect of the rest
is shown by the fact that at the end of the sixteenth century, when
some of the land came to be broken up, the produce per acre of wheat
had gone up largely.[195] Marling and liming the land, too, which had
been the salvation of much of it for centuries, had gone out partly
because of insecurity of tenure, partly because in the unsettled state
of England men knew not if they could reap any benefit therefrom; and
partly because, says Fitzherbert, men were lazier than their fathers.
There can be no doubt that enclosures were often accompanied with
great hardships and injustice. Dugdale, speaking of Stretton in
Warwickshire,[196] says that in Henry VII's time Thomas Twyford,
having begun the depopulation thereof, decaying four messuages and
three cottages whereunto 160 acres of 'errable' land belonged, sold it
to Henry Smith; which Henry, following that example, enclosed 640
acres of land more, whereby twelve messuages and four cottages fell to
ruins and eighty persons there inhabiting, being employed about
tillage and husbandry, were constrained to depart thence and live
miserably. By means whereof