even where no
enclosures had been made. Enclosures had been forbidden in the fields
of royal manors in Northamptonshire, but this did not protect the
peasantry from destitution. The manor of Grafton, for instance, was
surveyed in 1526 and a note was made at the end of the survey that the
revenue drawn from the lordship had lately been increased, but "there
can no ferther enprovemente there be made and to kepe the tenantries
standyng. Item the tenauntriez there be in sore decaye." The surveyor
of Hartwell also notes that the "tenements there be in decay."[130]

The economic basis of the unfortunate social changes which were
associated with the process of enclosure came gradually to be
recognized. It was evidently futile to enact laws requiring the
cultivation of land "wasted and worn with continual plowing and
thereby made bare, barren and very unfruitfull."[131] Merely
restrictive and prohibitory legislation was followed by the suggestion
of constructive measures. Until the middle of the sixteenth century,
laws were made in the attempt to put a stop to the conversion of
arable land to pasture under any conditions, and required that land
which had been under cultivation should be plowed in the future. In
the act of 1552, however, an attitude somewhat more reasonable is to
be seen. It was provided that land which had been under cultivation
within a certain number of years preceding the act should be tilled,
"_or so much in quantity_."[132] Public men were also urging that less
time be devoted to the futile attempt to force men to cultivate land
unfit for tillage, and that encouragement be given instead to measures
for improving the waste, and bringing fresh land under the plow.[133]

After a time, moreover, another fact became apparent: there was a
marked tendency to break up and again cultivate the land which in
former generations had been converted to pasture. The statute of 1597
not only contained a proviso permitting the conversion of arable
fields to pasture on condition that other land be tilled instead,[134]
thus tacitly admitting that the reason for withdrawing land from
cultivation was not the low price of grain, but the barrenness of the
land, but also explicitly referred to this fact in another proviso
permitting the conversion of arable land to pasture temporarily, _for
the purpose of recovering its strength_:

Provided, nevertheless, That if anie _P_son or Body Pollitique or
Corporate hath ... la