re are no such fundamental
changes in social organization to chronicle as during the preceding
century and a half. During the first hundred years of the period the
whole energy of the nation seems to have been thrown into political
and religious contests. Later there was development and increase of
production, but they were in the main an extension or expansion of the
familiar forms, not such a change of form as would cause any
alteration in the position of the mass of the people.

The practice of enclosing open land had almost ceased before the death
of Elizabeth. There was some enclosing under James I, but it seems to
have been quite exceptional. In the main, those common pastures and
open fields which had not been enclosed by the beginning of this
period, probably one-half of all England, remained unenclosed till the
recommencement of the process long afterward. Sheep farming gradually
ceased to be so exclusively practised, and mixed agriculture became
general, though few if any of those fields which had been surrounded
with hedges, and come into the possession of individual farmers, were
thrown open or distributed again into scattered holdings. Much new
land came into cultivation or into use for pasture through the
draining of marshes and fens, and the clearing of forests. This work
had been begun for the extensive swampy tracts in the east of England
in the latter years of Elizabeth's reign by private purchasers,
assisted by an act of Parliament passed in 1601, intended to remove
legal difficulties. It proceeded slowly, partly because of the expense
and difficulty of putting up lasting embarkments, and partly because
of the opposition of the fenmen, or dwellers in the marshy districts,
whose livelihood was obtained by catching the fish and water fowl that
the improvements would drive away. With the seventeenth and early
eighteenth centuries, however, largely through the skill of Dutch
engineers and laborers, many thousands of acres of fertile land were
reclaimed and devoted to grazing, and even grain raising. Great
stretches of old forest and waste land covered with rough underbrush
were also reduced to cultivation.

There was much writing on agricultural subjects, and methods of
farming were undoubtedly improved, especially in the eighteenth
century. Turnips, which could be grown during the remainder of the
season after a grain crop had been harvested, and which would provide
fresh food for the cattle during the