s abundant. When, however, the process was
reversed, and the land again brought under cultivation, there was
involved no interference with the rights of common holders. It was to
the interest of no one to oppose this change, and no protest was made
to call the attention of the historian to what was being done.
References to the process are numerous enough only to prove that
reconversion of land formerly laid to grass took place during the
fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries--to an extent of which
not even an approximate estimate can be made.

Imperfect as the evidence is from some points of view, it is
nevertheless complete for the purposes of this monograph. It would be
impossible, with the material at hand, to reconstruct the progress of
the enclosure movement, decade by decade, and county by county,
throughout England. My intention, however, is not so much to describe
the movement in detail as it is to give a consistent account of its
nature and causes. Even a few sixteenth-century instances of the
plowing up of pasture land should be enough to arrest the attention of
historians who believe that the conversion of arable land to pasture
during this period is sufficiently explained by an assertion that the
price of wool was high. What especial circumstances made it
advantageous to cultivate land which had been under grass, while other
land was being withdrawn from cultivation? Contemporary writers speak
of the need of worn land for rest for a long period of years, and
remark that it will bear well again at the end of the period. Evidence
such as this is significant without the further information which
would enable us to estimate the amount of land affected. For our
purposes, also, the notice of enclosure of arable land for pasture on
one group of manors in the early thirteenth century is important as an
indication that the fundamental cause of the enclosure movement was at
work long before the Black Death, which is usually taken as the event
in which the movement had its beginning. Low rents, pauperism, and
abandonment of land are facts which indicate declining productivity of
the soil, and statistical records of the harvests reaped are not
needed when statutes, proclamations, and books of husbandry describe
the exhausted condition of the common fields. The fact that the
enclosure movement continued vigorously in the seventeenth century is
conclusively established, and when this fact is known the
impossib