ide or hereafter shall lay anie grownde to
graze, or hathe used or shall use the same grownde with shepe or
anie other cattell, which Grownde hath bene or shall be dryven or
worne owte with Tillage, onely upon good Husbandrie, and with
intente bona fide withowt Fraude or Covyne the same Grownde shall
recover Harte and Strengthe, an not with intent to continue the
same otherwise in shepe Pasture or for fattinge or grazinge of
Cattell, that no such _P_son or Body Politike or Corporate shall
be intended for that Grownde a Converter within the meaning of
this Lawe.[135]

A speaker in the House of Commons commends these provisions:

For it fareth with the earth as with other creatures that through
continual labour grow faint and feeble-hearted, and therefore, if
it be so far driven as to be out of breath, we may now by this
law resort to a more lusty and proud piece of ground while the
first gathers strength, which will be a means that the earth
yearly shall be surcharged with burden of her own excess. And
this did the former lawmakers overslip, tyeing the land once
tilled to a perpetual bondage and servitude of being ever
tilled.[136]

Several years before the passage of this statute, Bacon had remarked
that men were breaking up pasture land and planting it voluntarily.[137]
In 1619, a commission was appointed to consider the granting of licenses
"for arable lands converted from tillage to pasture." The proclamation
creating this commission, after referring to the laws formerly made
against such conversions, continues:

As there is much arable land of that nature become pasture, so is
there by reason thereof, much more other lands of old pasture and
waste, and wood lands where the plough neuer entred, as well as
of the same pasture lands so heretofore conuerted, become
errable, and by husbandrie made fruitfull with corne ... the
quantitie and qualitie of errable and Corne lands at this day
doth much exceed the quantitie that was at the making of the
saide Lawe.... As the want thereof [of corn] shall appeare, or
the price thereof increase, all or a great part of those lands
which were heretofore converted from errable to pasture and have
sithence gotten heart, strength and fruitfulness, will be reduced
to Corne lands againe, to the great increase of graine to the