sure from above was usually
necessary in order to overcome the difficulties of the situation. The
Lord of Berkeley (1281-1321)

drewe much profitt to his Tenants and increase of fines to
himselfe ... by makeing and procuringe to bee made exchanges of
land mutually one with an other, thereby casting convenient
Parcells togeather, fitting it for an inclosure and conversion.
And by freeinge such inclosures from all comonage of others.[109]

A landlord of this sort would do much to override the opposition of
those who, through conservatism, fear of personal loss, or insistence
upon more than their share of the benefits of the readjustment, made
it impossible for tenants to carry out these changes unassisted.

Where tenants with or without the assistance of the lord had managed
to enclose some of their land and free it from right of common, they
were in a position to devote it to sheep-farming if they chose to do
so. Ordinarily they did not do this. If, as has been claimed, the
large-scale enclosures which shall be considered later were made
because of an increasing demand for wool, it is surprising that these
husbandmen were willing to keep enclosed land under cultivation, and
even to plow up enclosed pasture. The land had to be kept under grass
for a part of the time, whether it was open or enclosed, because if
kept continuously under the plow it became unproductive; and it was
better to have this land enclosed so that it could be used
advantageously as pasture during the period when it was recovering its
strength. But the profits of pasturage were not high enough to prevent
men from plowing up the land when it was again in fit condition.

At Forncett, the tenants had begun sheep-farming by the end of the
fourteenth century, and had also begun to enclose land in the
open-fields; the situation was one, therefore, in which agriculture
was likely to be permanently displaced by grazing, according to the
commonly accepted theory of the enclosure movement. This change failed
to take place; not because enclosures ceased to be made--nearly half
of the acreage of the fields was in enclosures by 1565--but because
the tenants preferred to cultivate this enclosed land.[110] If the
enclosures had been pasture when they were first made, they did not
remain permanently under grass. Like the land still in the open
fields, and like the small enclosures in Cheshire reported by the
commission of 1517, they were s