the church grew to such ruin that it was
of no other use than for the shelter of cattle. A sad picture, and
true of many districts, but much of the depopulation ascribed to
enclosures was due to the devastation of the Civil Wars.

In spite of these enclosures, which began to change the England of
open fields into the country we know of hedgerows and winding roads,
great part of the land was in a wild and uncultivated state of fen,
heath, and wood, the latter sometimes growing right up to the walls of
the towns.[197] An unbroken series of woods and fens stretched right
across England from Lincoln to the Mersey, and northwards from the
Mersey to the Solway and the Tweed; Warwickshire, Northamptonshire,
and Leicestershire were largely covered by forests, and Sherwood
Forest extended over nearly the whole of Notts. Cannock Chase was
covered with oaks, and in the forest of Needwood in Camden's time the
neighbouring gentry eagerly pursued the cheerful sport of hunting. The
great forest of Andredesweald, though much diminished, still covered a
large part of Sussex, and the Chiltern district in Bucks and
Oxfordshire was thick with woods which hid many a robber. The great
fen in the east covered 300,000 acres of land in six counties, in
spite of various efforts to reclaim the land, and was to remain in a
state of marsh and shallow water till the seventeenth century.

North and west of the great fen was Hatfield Chase, 180,000 acres
mostly swamp and bog, with here and there a strip of cultivated land,
much of which had been tilled and neglected; a great part too of
Yorkshire was swamp, heath, and forest, and of Lancashire marshes and
mosses, some of which were not drained till recent times. The best
corn-growing counties were those lying immediately to the north of
London, stretching from Suffolk to Gloucestershire, and including the
southern portions of Staffordshire and Leicestershire; Essex was a
great cheese county; Hants, Cambridgeshire, Northamptonshire, and
Bedfordshire were famous for malt, and Leicestershire for peas and
beans. The population of England in 1485 was probably from two to two
and a half millions. At the time of Domesday it was under two
millions, and from that date increased perhaps to nearly four millions
at the time of the Black Death in 1348-9, which swept away from
one-third to one-half of the people, and repeated wars and pestilences
seem to have kept it from increasing until Tudor times. Of the whol