ops or the dates of
plowing and seed time; the use of the land in common for a part of the
time restricted its use even during the time when it was not in
common. The process by which this system was replaced by modern
private ownership with unrestricted individual use is called the
enclosure movement, because it involved the rearrangement of holdings
into separate, compact plots, divided from each other by enclosing
hedges and ditches. The most notable feature of this process is the
conversion of the open fields into sheep pasture. This involved the
eviction of the tenants who had been engaged in cultivating these
fields and the amalgamation of many holdings of arable to form a few
large enclosures for sheep. The enclosure movement was not merely the
displacement of one system of tillage by another system of tillage; it
involved the temporary displacement of tillage itself in favor of
grazing.

In this monograph two things are undertaken: first, an analysis of the
usually accepted version of the enclosure movement in the light of
contemporary evidence; and, secondly, the presentation of another
account of the nature and causes of the movement, consistent with
itself and with the available evidence. The popular account of the
enclosure movement turns upon a supposed advance in the price of wool,
due to the expansion of the woollen industry in the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries. Landlords at this period (we are told) were
increasingly eager for pecuniary gain and, because of the greater
profit to be made from grazing, were willing to evict the tenants on
their land and convert the arable fields to sheep pasture. About the
end of the sixteenth century, it is said, this first enclosure
movement came to an end, for there are evidences of the reconversion
of pastures formerly laid to grass. An inquiry into the evidence shows
that the price of wool fell during the fifteenth century and failed to
rise as rapidly as that of wheat during the sixteenth century.
Moreover, the conversion of arable land to pasture did not cease when
the contrary process set in, but continued throughout the seventeenth
century with apparently unabated vigor. These facts make it impossible
to accept the current theory of the enclosure movement. There is, on
the other hand, abundant evidence that the fertility of much of the
common-field land had been exhausted by centuries of cultivation. Some
of it was allowed to run to waste; some was laid to gr