vantage in grazing
should finally come to an end when a new balance between tillage and
grazing was established. It is not even surprising that the conversion
of arable to pasture should have continued beyond the proper point,
and that a contrary movement should set in. Bacon, in 1592, remarked
that men had of late been enticed by the good yield of corn and the
increased freedom of export to "break up more ground and convert it to
tillage than all the penal laws for that purpose made and enacted
could ever by compulsion effect."[27] In 1650 Lord Monson plowed up
100 acres of Grafton Park, which had formerly been pasture, and there
are many other records showing a tendency to convert pasture to arable
in the seventeenth century.[28] It is true that men were able to make
a profit from agriculture by the end of the sixteenth century. But
there is one difficulty which has been overlooked: the withdrawal
from agriculture of common-field land did _not_ cease. The protests
against depopulating enclosure continue, and government reports and
surveys show that enclosure for pasture was proceeding at as rapid a
rate as in the sixteenth century. Miss Leonard's article on "Inclosure
of Common Fields in the Seventeenth Century"[29] contains a mass of
evidence which is conclusive. A few quotations will indicate its
character:

"In Leicestershire the enclosures of Cottesbach in 1602, of Enderby
about 1605, of Thornby about 1616, were all accomplished by a
lessening of the land under the plough. Moore, writing in 1656,
says: 'Surely they may make men as soon believe there is no sun in
the firmament as that usually depopulation and decay of tillage will
not follow inclosure in our inland countyes.'" (p. 117). Letters
from the Council were written in 1630 complaining of "'enclosures
and convercons tending as they generallie doe unto depopulation....
There appeares many great inclosures ... all wch are or are lyke to
turne to the conversion of much ground from errable to pasture and
be very hurtfull to the commonwealth.... We well know wth all what
ye consequence will be, and in conclusion all turne to
depopulation!'" (p. 128). Forster, writing in 1664, says, "there
hath been of late years divers whole lordships and towns enclosed
and their earable land converted into pasture!" (p. 142).

Frequently the same proprietor in the same year plowed up pasture land
for corn and laid