W E. Tate, ‘Records of Open-Field Agriculture. Enclosure’, in The Parish Chest: A Study of the Records of Parochial Administration in England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1946), pp.249-69

V. RECORDS OF OPEN-FIELD AGRICULTURE. ENCLOSURE

ENCLOSURE ACTS AND AWARDS

THE OPEN-FIELDVILLAGE. Mediaeval open fields. Subsistence agriculture. Two- and three-course rotation of crops. The common meadow and pasture. THE OPEN ARABLE FIELDS. The operation of the three-field system. The management of open-field agriculture. Shifting severalties. The origin of open-field agriculture. The development of the one-field system through the two-field system into the three-field system. THE REGULATION OF OPEN-FIELD AGRICULTURE. THE COURT BARON’S PART IN SUPERVISING AGRICULTURE. A typical series of manorial by-laws from Oxfordshire. A comparable series from Nottinghamshire. A Yorkshire set of manorial rules for the re-allotment of meadows. THE TRANSFER OF POWERS FROM THE COURT BARON TO THE VESTRY. A CAMBRJDGESHIRE EXAMPLE OF INHERITANCE OF FUNCTIONS BY THE VESTRY FROM THE COURT BARON. VESTRY REGULATION OF OPEN-FIELD AGRICULTURE. Some Hertfordshire vestry by-laws. An Oxfordshire series of vestry by-laws. The Laxton {Nottinghamshire) instance of the re-transfer of powers from the vestry back to the manorial authorities. THE VESTRY AND THE MODERNISATION OF OPEN-FIELD STRUCTURE AND TECHNIQUE. A Nottinghamshire example of the complete re-casting of open-field structure by vestry agreement. The adaptability of the open-field organisation. THE DISADVANTAGES OF THE OPEN-FIELD SYSTEM. ENCLOSURE. Early references to enclosure. Governmental attempts to check enclosure. Early controversy as to the causes and effects of enclosures. Agricultural progress. ENCLOSURE BY THE COURT BARON. ENCLOSURE BY AUTHORITY OF THE VESTRY. PARLIAMENTARY ENCLOSURES. The development of the Enclosure Act. Enclosure Acts. The General Enclosure Acts. Controversies concerning the Enclosure Movement. Enclosure Commissioners. Enclosure and depopulation. THE ENCLOSURE RECORDS OF THE PARISH CHEST AS SOURCES OF EVIDENCE UPON DISPUTED TOPICS. ENCLOSURE AWARDS. The primary purpose of enclosure awards. Other data given. The evidential value of enclosure awards. Sources of information supplementing that given in enclosure awards.

THE OPEN-FIELD VILLAGE. No English village community has survived in entirety into modern times, but there are several in which there have persisted different features of the open-field system of land utilisation which formed the economic basis of the village of former times. It will not be difficult to abstract from three or four villages their characteristic survivals, and then to form these into a sort of composite picture of an imaginary ‘typical’ village of centuries ago.

It is difficult for a modern, even if he is a countryman, accustomed as he must be to an agriculture carried on by farmers whose main concern is ‘what crop will sell’, to carry himself in imagination into an organisation of agriculture in which the individual’s primary concern was ‘what crop must I (and my stock) have to eat’ .Yet only two or three centuries ago this, or something very like it, was the farmer’s first consideration. It needs no profound knowledge of agricultural technique for one to grasp the elements of the old tripartite division of ground used in agriculture into arable, meadow and pasture. The farmer needed arable land to produce wheat and rye for his bread, and barley for his livestock, [end p.249]

his bread and his beer; he must have pasture for his stock in the summer months. He must have meadow so that in summer he could lay on one side a stock of hay for the keep of his cattle during the winter, in an age long before the introduction of roots, and still longer before the use of cake and similar winter feeds. Otherwise the whole of his stock, instead of merely the major part, must be butchered at Martinmas.

Yet the part played by each of these three classes of ground in the agrarian economy of the Middle Ages was very different from the role of its modern counterpart. Instead of the host of crops, grown by a modern arable farmer there was little cultivation save that of wheat and rye as bread corn, with barley (beer corn) and the pulses. Instead of modern artificial manuring, the usual manner of allowing the soil to recover its fertility was the ancient method of fallowing. In some areas the ‘rotation of crops’ was simply wheat or barley, fallow: wheat or barley, fallow (the two-course rotation, and the two-field system); in others, wheat, barley, fallow: wheat, barley, fallow (the three-course rotation, and the three-field system).

No artificial meadow was available before the introduction of phosphatic manures, so that the only mowing at the farmer’s disposal was the natural water meadow by the river side. (1) The pasture consisted of the arable fields in their fallow year, of the meadow land after haysel, of a great many odd scraps here and there, which were of little use for anything else, of one or two pasture closes set on one side for rearing stock, and of the unredeemed waste not yet taken into cultivation. This might be open to all the occupiers of houses or land in the village, for as much stock as they pleased (unstinted pasture), or its use might be regulated according to the number of acres, yardlands, or oxgangs in each proprietor’s hands, or the number of common rights attached to his cottage or messuage (stinted pasture).

THE OPEN ARABLE FIELDS. There were other complications too. In a village where the open-field system was in operation, virtually the whole of the arable land of the place was in two or three enormous ‘open’ fields, properly so called (modern ‘ fields’ are in reality not fields at all, but ‘closes’). These again were made up of roughly rectangular blocks (furlongs, shots, flats, wongs, ‘quarentenae’), and these composed of long, narrow strips (acres, selions or lands). Probably originally these had been something approaching a furlong (furrow-long) in length, by four poles in width, and [end p.250]

hence contained something in the region of an acre (a day’s work) of land. (Some land in Staffordshire was sold by the day’s work rather than the acre not much more than a century ago ). In between the selions in some districts only there were boundary strips (balks) of rough grass land, and in between the fields were larger strips styled meers. These formed no inconsiderable proportion of the rough pasture referred to above. And for some reason, which is difficult now to ascertain definitely, every proprietor’s land was mixed up with that of every other proprietor. Every farmer had land in every field (probably roughly equal amounts in each one), and at first probably the average holder had strips in every furlong. In short, the plan of the arable fields was very much after the pattern of an enormous patchwork quilt, it two or three main divisions, each roughly equal to the other(s), and each made up of smaller, roughly rectangular subdivisions. Each of these subdivisions in turn was made up of long, narrow strips, roughly ten times (say from five to twenty times) as long as they were broad.

It may be that the origin of the system was, as often alleged, a desire to give each proprietor a fair share of both good and bad land, over-wet land and over-dry, so that whatever the season might be, each cultivator could at any rate count upon a subsistence. It seems likelier that the division originated as the land was gradually taken into cultivation, the strips being shared among those undertaking the enterprise in much the same fashion as children will share a parcel of sweets or a bag of nuts: ‘one for me, one for you, one for Johnny, one for me, one for you, one for Johnny’ and so on. At first apparently the incumbent’s glebe and the lord of the manor’s demesne were composed of scattered strips interspersed among those of the other cultivators. Although the proprietors of these, as a relatively small, enlightened and influential class, early endeavoured to withdraw their strips from the general arrangement, and to secure compact blocks of land ‘in severalty’ in lieu thereof, there are villages where this interspersal continued until within the time of living memory.

Since, after the crop had been lifted, the land was a common pasture, either for a month or two (when winter wheat was followed by spring barley), or more than a year (when spring barley was followed by a year’s fallow, and then winter wheat), common regulation and government were necessary .Every proprietor must grow the same crop as his neighbours: he could not sow before his [end p.251]

fellows (for the stock remained on the land until the generally accepted sowing time): he must harvest his crop at the same time as they removed theirs (since after the generally agreed on harvest time, the stock were turned on to the stubble). In short the system was admirably designed to maintain a stable agriculture, but it discouraged experiment, and persons having a taste for pioneering would quickly abandon agriculture in despair, since the only way in which they could secure liberty to try out new crops and new methods was to convince a hundred per cent of their more conservatively minded neighbours that such experiments were worth trial by the community en bloc.

In some ways the management of the meadow was even more primitive than that of the arable land. It seems likely that originally the ownership of the scattered plots of arable changed from year to year, so that no proprietor had the same plot from one year to another. The obvious inconvenience of such an arrangement, and the impassable obstacle which it presented to any sort of permanent improvement, early caused the abandonment of the shifting of severalties so far as arable land was concerned. But for some reason which is not apparent, shifting severalties often still persisted in the management of the meadows. A great part of the meadows over whole counties seem to have been allocated each year afresh amongst the proprietors of arable land in proportion to their arable holdings, the allocation being carried out by the most complicated methods in order to secure absolute fairness in distribution.

The common pastures which form the most primitive and archaic of the three types are those which have persisted most, so that many corporate towns and not a few villages still possess their greens, town moors and commons; the lot or rotation meadows which seem to represent the next stage of evolution are much rarer, but are still to be found; while the open arable fields, with interspersed lands but ownership in severalty , which mark the stage next before the modern state have almost entirely disappeared.

Scotland, Ireland and Wales had open-field systems of their own, but there are the most marked and essential divergencies between these systems and that formerly prevalent in the great central plain of England. In the west country and in such border regions as that along the boundaries of Wales and Scotland it is not difficult to find traces of transitional types of cultivation. The true open-field system spoken of here is that characteristic of the fertile plains of the English midlands. [end p.252]

Historically no doubt a one-field system came first. This was cultivated by an early ‘pasture-grass husbandry’, naturally evolving in a community where there was still a fairly considerable reserve of unoccupied land. When the fertility of the ground was exhausted, the community at large moved elsewhere, leaving the soil to recover by a natural fallowing until it was again taken into use by a fresh body of occupiers.

With the growth of population and the absorption of a great part of this reserve, it seems natural that a community having determined its boundaries should divide its available land roughly out into halves, and should cultivate the two halves in alternate years. Then, when further pressure of population developed, there would be a tendency to cultivate two-thirds or three-quarters of the land each year, leaving the remaining third or quarter to its fallow. Partly perhaps because the land was so exhausted that a rest of one year in three was almost the minimum required to maintain anything of its fertility, partly because of the tripartite division marched closely with a tripartite division of the three main necessaries of life, bread, beer and plough-oxen-and-beef, the two-field system early evolved into a three-field system over the greater part of England. This was only exceptionally ready for the next stage of evolution into a four-field system before the time of the Norfolk four-course rotation, which was not generally adopted until well into the eighteenth century. And then the thoughts of reformers were concerned with abolishing open-field agriculture rather than with modernising it.

Before dealing with the disappearance of the open-field system, and the records of this disappearance which may be found in parish chests in the form of enclosure agreements, acts and awards, it may be well to refer briefly to the records which survive dealing with the administration of open-field agriculture and the manner in which the village community organised its rules for open-held cultivation in administering the territory of its petty republic.

THE REGULATION OF OPEN-FIELD AGRICULTURE. Above 2 we have referred to glebe terriers as sources of information as to open-field management, and below 3 we refer to enclosure acts surviving in parish chests. Such rights as the vestry had in directing the use of the open fields and the management of the common, it inherited, like many more of its functions, from the court baron.

THE COURT BARON’S PART IN SUPERVISING AGRICULTURE. Many [end p.253]

entries in the court rolls of the manor of Digby,4 Lincs., 8 May 1707, relate solely to agricultural matters of the type:

and a great many more entries for :

‘neglecting to do Common work ith fenn and for diging up the ground about his turfs at the hed of his dale whe the folks should cart to and fro’ (£0. 1s. 0d.) ‘making a highway up and down our fenn & Cowpaster’ (£0. 1s. 0d.) ‘neglecting to dress his cow dike’ (£0. 0s. 4d.) ‘making a highway over the leays ‘ (£0. 0s. 6d. ) and ‘ breaking the Westfield with his horses before the town consented’.

The classical instance of manorial regulation of agriculture is to be found in the by-laws of the manor of Great Tew, Oxon, a study of which was printed by the late Professor Vinogradoff,5 while the laws themselves were printed by Mr and Mrs Sidney Webb.6

A similar document for the manor of Chipping Norton,7 Oxon, in 1764 deals largely with the use of the common:

Orders made in the Court Baron as follows :

1. That the Great Common below the Town be heyned from all manner of Cattle on the 13th day of February next, every offender for every offence contrary to this order to incur a penalty of Ten shillings to the Lords of this Manor and one shilling to the Drivers or Person that shall impound the cattle or present the offender.

2. That the said Common shall be broke on the 2nd next and not before, and then not till after sunrising (Penalty 2s. 6d. to Lords and 1s. to Drivers etc.)

3. That every person who shall put any mare gelding or cow kine on the said common or on any commonable place within this manor shall first bring it to the Drivers and declare whose beast it is and on whose common it is to be pastured and have it branded before it is turned on any commonable place within this manor for which branding shall be paid ½ d. per head to the Drivers and 3d. to the Inspectors towards moulding Southcombe. (Penalty 3s. per head to Lords, and 2s. per head to Drivers etc. )

[and twenty-three more articles down to]:

27. That the owners or occupiers of the land lying next to the Churchill Field side from the Meads to Burford Road, do make their respective mounds good by opentide and continue them in sufficient repair until Stow Fair or they shall be prosecuted as the law directs.

And that the Mounds from the bottom of Haywards Plot to the bottom of Hatwards Plot to the lower end of the Meads be made a sufficient mound before the Meads are rid by the respective owners or occupiers of the Meads or Grass ground abutting upon the Corn Fields or they shall be prosecuted in like manner. [end p.254]

The reader may be interested to compare this set of by-laws drawn up for a semi-urban body by the corporation of the borough, who were lords of the manor, with the following series, drafted for a purely rural community where the lordship of the manor was in the hands of the local squire. They relate to East Leake, (8) Notts.:

Pains, Amercements, and by Laws made at the Court Leet and Court Baron of Sir Thomas Parkyns, Bart., for his Mannors of Great Leake, alias East Leake, there held the 21st day of Aprill 1730 [omitting ‘Item’ and ‘We make a Pain that’ which occur before each decree].

If anyone Teather in the Barley Field any Mare that has a Fole above a month old, whereby any Man’s Corne or Meadow may be damaged, Or, in the Peas field after midsummer, to destroy the corne or pease, except the Fole be under a month old, they shall pay for every such defalt £0. 5. 0.

If anyone shall put a horse, mare, or cow, to pasture or comone without pasture or Comon they shall pay for that offence £0. 10. 0.

If anyone keep any close Tupps or Riggles, in the Fields betwixt Goose Fair and Martlemas they shall pay for that offence £0. 2. 6.

[and nineteen more articles down to]:

That Lambs take sheep places at Lady Day. If any persons take them not of then they shall pay for such Defalt five shillings for a score for one month (or till the first of May) and if they take them not of by the First of May for every such Defalt every sheep to pay £0. 1. 0.

Concerning the communal regulation of the meadows, and the arrangements for their annual re-allotment, one of the most interesting records is a series of rules found by Dr J. A. Venn in the chest of Brotherton, Yorks., and reprinted here by his permission. It runs :

A True and perfect copy of the Terrier of the meadow land within the Townships of Brotherton (Yorks) called Brotherton Ings, divided by lots and possessed in the year of our Lord 1773 [from an original drawn up in 1701].

BROTHERTON INGS

I. The By Law men and others are to meet on Vicar’s Hill to draw lots after this manner. Three small sticks marked with one, two, and three nicks are put into a Bunn. The stick marked with one nick is for the Lord; with two nicks for the Bishop; and with three for Peter Liberty. The Bunns are laid upon a long stick, and the first stranger that passeth by may be stopt to take them up. According to the order they are taken up, so they begin to measure that year, viz if the stick with three nicks be taken the first, then Peter Liberty begins at the Tythe Piece, and so the rest go on as they be taken up’.

II. The shorter rod is just sixteen feet long, and the long rod is two inches more. [end p.255]

III. The placing of the rods in measuring from the Tythe piece is as followeth.

(1) The short rod at the upper end, or river side, from the Tythe Piece to Curty’s Acre.

(2) The long rod at the upper end in measuring long of the upper Lowance, and short of the upper Lowance.

(3) The short rod at the upper end in Bradmire’s, short and long of the Ings’ end.

(4) The long rod is next the hedge in the short Lowance, and they begin from Bradmire’s backwards.

IV. At the far and long Doles allow on measuring each rod only half a foot breadth. At the long of the upper Lowance to the end of the Ings allow a foot breadth every rod. At the short Lowance, at the end of each rod allow a whole foot length.

V. In the end of each Doal allow as followeth. Three foot at the end of Peter Dole, one foot and a half at the end of Bishop Hold, and only the common allowance at the end of the Lord’s Dole.

Note. That lest the lower end of the Ings should be overrun by those who might get their hay very forward at the upper end and Tythe Piece, they begin at first to measure from the Long acres to the Ings’ end, and sometime after they measure out the far Doals, and long Doals. ...

Besides these acres there is also the Bull piece and St. Maries pieces, one of which lies at the end of the Ings and the other at the end of the Nether or Short Lowance belonging to the By law men for their care and trouble.

Each person’s quantity of land in the Ings and

number of their pasture gates.

….                 Pasture

M. Hallilay T. Wilkes and T.      a. r. p.        gates

Gilson have among them      0 1 0       6 Overgates to repair

the pasture dykes

A contemporaneous note adds the information that ‘5 ½ rods of meadow go to an oxgang in the Ings, and also 5 ½ yards of fencing to an oxgang’.

THE TRANSFER OF POWERS FROM THE COURT BARON TO THE VESTRY. It appears that the control of open fields and commons was never formally transferred from the court leet to the vestry .The only act having the slightest reference to the matter is that of 1773, (9) noted below, and this entrusts the management of common fields not to a true vestry but to a meeting of proprietors, in which a three-fourths’ majority in number and value should have the final determination of the matter .

But, as the court baron gradually lapsed, the vestry stepped into its place. [end p.256]

A CAMBRIDGESHlRE EXAMPLE OF INHERITANCE OF FUNCTIONS BY THE VESTRY FROM THE COURT BARON. At Stretham, Cambs., the documents are interesting in that a series of

Orders and Bylawes and Paynes made and agreed upon by the Court Leet and alsoe the Court Baron holden at Stretham within the Ile of Elie the 29th of April in the 12th yeer of the Reigne of our Soueraygne Lord James by the Grace of God King of England &c and of Scotland the 47th Ao Doj 1614:

is followed only eight years later by:

Certayne Orders and Bylawes made by the consent of the Most Part and the Greatest Number of the Inhabytants of Stretham both Coppie-howllders and Freehoullders and other Communers there according to the Decree and Order unto them prescribed and sett downe out of the Honourable Cort of His Majesty’s Excheckure as followeth the fowre and twenty Daye of February 1622.

VESTRY. REGULATION OF OPEN-FIELD AGRICULTURE. The parish register of SS. Peter and Paul, Mitcham, Surrey, has on its fly-leaf this entry under 1637:

It is this day agreed upon by the Inhabitants above named in the behalfe of the rest of the Inhabitants that the common fields shall be layd open so soone as all the corne of the said fields shall be carried out. And then and not before it shall be lawfull for the said Inhabitants that have been accustomed and to have benefitt of the common of the said field to put in their cattle untill St. Luke Day following, and not after any sheepe or other cattle to be suffered there, but if any be taken they are to be put in the pound or to be trespassers upon paine for every horse sixpence etc. ...

At Clayworth, Notts., such agreements were entered in the rector’s commonplace book, e.g.

ye 28th of May this pesent year 1700.

Law. That none let any Gates save to those yt are Inhabitants. If no Inhabitants take those Gates 2s others wd let, yn ye By-law Men (after 40 days notice) to pay to ye owners 2s à Gate à An & so be reimbursd by an assessmt at one Peny à Gate on ye said Comons. All Cattle to be taken off ye Comons ye 25th of March & not to be put on ye Carr again till ye 1st of May nor upon ye Cow-Pasture until ye 16th of May & ye By-Lawmen to impound all Cattle as shall be put on otherwise or yt more in number than is here stinted & limited & ye same to detain till reasonable satisfaction be made to ye sd By-Law men to ye use of ye Town. (10)

Among the most interesting vestry orders are these concerned with the management of open fields and commons. At Cobham, Surrey, e.g. in 1739 the vestry made an order as to the cutting of peat in the common turbary .A happy mixture of sporting and [end p.257]

business instincts is revealed in the register of St Nicholas, Durham, April 1683, when Simon Lackenby was ordered by the vestry to

keep in lieu of his Intercommon ground one sufficient Bull for the use of the City and Borough Kyne, for three years next ensuing; and to give ten shillings towards a Silver plate for a Course.

Agreements and contracts for catching moles are often found. Bedfordshire has several, now removed from the parish chests to the County Record Office, including early ones at Maulden, 1710 and Oakley, 1720. At Sutton Bonington, Notts., referred to above as the place where in 1757 the parishioners agreed to stint their common, it seems that in this year there was a wave of agricultural fervour, for they also at the same time entered into an agreement with George Carver for catching moles throughout the parish at a salary of 30s. the first year (when he had the arrears of neglect to make up!) and 25s. each year thereafter for the rest of his life. Thirty years before they had entered into an agreement concerning vermin even more noxious than moles, in a resolution of 1728 which still stands in the parish book:

to pay for everre Fox that is caht in sutton parish for Ever

a Greed on at a meeting             2s. 6d.

At Barton-in-Fabis, Notts., are articles of agreement of 1718, 1729 and 1766(?) for the improvement of the (common) sheep pasture. A similar agreement for stinting the common, levying a fine on commoners who exceeded their stint, and using the proceeds to compensate those who turned on less cattle than they were entitled to, was drawn up in the neighbouring parish of Sutton Bonington in 1757.

At Cottenham; Cambs., where there were disputes as to the extent of the manorial pasture rights, an agreement, apparently a very one-sided affair, was made in 1580 by the lord and the

greatest number of welthiest and substancyalist inhabitants and tenants of Cottenham in the behalfe of themselves and of all the rest of the inhabitants of the said town.

This was set aside and a new agreement was drawn up in 1596, and confirmed by a Chancery decree. This seems to have been a genuine agreement with the inhabitants at large, and it gave a written democratic constitution to the village community—a constitution which lasted until the general enclosure of the place in 1842. (11) [end p.258]

A century or a century and a half later in many parishes the making of such rules was an undoubted function of the vestry. At Ardeley,(12) Herts., e.g.

2nd Aug. 1713. Whereas there has been a Complaint made, by ye Inhabitants of this Parish, that ye said Parish does sustain great damage by those persons which come in by a certificate by over-burthening ye common, which they have no right to; and likewise hinder ye poor Inhabitants, by taking ye benefit of gleaning in the several and respective fields belonging to ye said Parish: therefore, it is now ordered at this Convention, held on Sunday ye 2nd day of August 1713, by ye major part of ye parishioners here present, that ye hayward doe give notice to them, and every of them, to take their Cattle off of ye Common, or else they will be impound….

This order is to be set upon the Church door ye next Sunday.

At Steeple Aston, (13) Oxon; in 1762, the vestry drew up a whole series of by-laws very closely resembling those printed above, which were issued by manorial courts:

Articles agreed upon by the Inhabitants of

Steeple Aston Jany. Sth, 1762

1st We agree to lay down Saintfoin in the Furlong called Slater-Lot to Pudding edge to be mounded by the Yard Land. No horse or sheep to be turnd in under the Penalty of twenty shillings for every head of cattle for each offence. No person to turn his Plow to damage his Neighbour, if detected to pay five shillings.

2. We agree to sow one hundred of Clover-seed in Barley Field, to be bought by the Constable, every Person to pay according to the Yard Land.

3. No pigs to be turn’d into the Field without being ring’d, under the Penalty of five shillings for each offence.

[and eight more articles down to]:

12. We agree that these Articles shall continue in force for the space of twenty years commencing from the fifth day of January 1762. We whose names are hereunto subscribed do promise and agree to conform to the above written Articles under the several Penalties annexed.

In witness whereof we have hereunto set our hands this fifth day of January 1762…

again:

Agreed by the Vestrey that Thos. Dean is Hired to look after the field ; to look after the Crowes and Cach the moulds if he can: and to look after the mounds at Headon way, Dean headge and Slaterfoot that is now laid down Sandfine. And it [is] further agreed that the field men now apointed shall be all agreed to lett Thos. Dean the field keeper know when the field shall be stocked.. Thos. Dean agrees to keep the field at the Yearly [sic] of foure pounds and ten shillings and ye sd Thos. Dean is to find his own powder and shot all the time he keep [end p.259]

the sd field, and if the sd Thos. Dean neglects or refuses to do His Duty he shall forfitt to the fieldmen now apointed the sume of twenty shillings to be reducted out of the sume above menchoned and if the said fieldsmen should neglect to pay the sd Thos. Dean when he has proformed his above contract they agree to pay him the sd Thos Dean the sume of Twenty shillings over & above the agreed wages as Wittness I have set our hand this 7 day of Novr 1763.

In later years such vestry resolutions as we have been discussing were sometimes ordered to be printed in the local newspapers. The notice below, relating to Beeston, (14) Notts., appears in the county paper:

BEESTON April 15, 1795

The Inhabitants and Occupiers of Beast-gates upon the Common Pasture, at a Vestry Meeting held at Beeston aforesaid, having agreed to HALF STINT in said Pasture, the Inhabitants at said Vestry Meeting will give this public Notice, that, in future, no Gates upon such Pasture as usual be let. ROBERT NUTT, Constable, ROBERT LACY, Churchwarden.

An interesting and probably almost unique example of the reversal of the process noted above, the transfer to the court baron of the rights formerly exercised by the vestry , occurs in the celebrated Nottinghamshire open-field parish of Laxton. (15) Here some sort of communal regulation survived side by side with the common fields to which it was applied, but as the lord of the manor, Earl Manvers, has gradually been buying up toftsteads in order to secure more complete control of the place, so regulation of agriculture by a committee of proprietors has now been replaced by government according to a series of rules drawn up by the lord’s agent.

The two last sets of rules, those drafted in 1871 and in 1908 respectively, are well worth comparison:

[after a long series of rules as to open fields and common]:

[end p.260]

THE VESTRY AND THE MODERNISATION OF OPEN-FIELD STRUCTURE AND TECHNIQUE. One of the strongest objections to the open-field system was the scattering of land in minute parcels throughout the area of the common fields. Before general enclosure, private agreements for the exchange of lands between neighbours were often the means of rearranging the open-field estates into more manageable parcels. Such an agreement, this time for six years only, appears in the vestry book of Steeple Aston, (16) Oxon:

March 2 1765

It [is] agreed to change land in the Dean by Willm. Wing Richd. Prentice and Richd. Fox for Willm. Wing to have Richd. Fox peice above the stile for his peice below and for Richd. Prentice to have three lands of Richd. Fox next to his land under the Dean hedge shooting into Short Clay Furlong for his two lands in the Dean and for six years at Saint Micahill next. By we

W.Wing.

Richd. Fox.

Richd: Prentice.

A much more general and substantial reorganisation of the open- field structure of their village was undertaken by the parishioners of Sutton-cum-Lound, Notts., about the same time:

AGREEMENT OF THE INHABITANTS OF SUTTON AND LOUND FOR TAKING IN TURNIP FIELDS.

Dated the 28th February, 1766…

AND FIRST, each and every of the parties aforesaid for himself and herself severally, and for his and her respective Heirs, Executors and Administrators, DOTH Covenant, Promise, and Agree, with each [end p.261]

and every other of the said parties jointly and severally, and with each and every of their joint and several Heirs, Executors, Administrators and Assigns, in manner and form as followeth (that is to say):

[in a different hand]

the Fields after Harvest shall be gotten shall be open for all Beasts.

[in the first hand]

THAT, from and after the twenty-fifth day of March next, for and during and unto the full end of Twenty Years, the Comon pasture called the West Comon, shall be used and kept for young Beast and Sheep, according to the former custom of the Parish aforesaid.

[in the socond hand]

And that the Fields after Harvest shall be gotten in shall be Common for all Cattle as heretofore used and accustomed.

[and seven more articles, all in the first hand, down to]:

And likewise it is hereby AGREED. That there shall be separate Turnip Fields, taken in and formed in each of the Comon Fields at Sutton and Lound, in every Year during the said Term, at each Gate’s expense, to be paid by the Owner of each Gate. And the Turnip seed shall be sown before the eighteenth day of July in every year during the said Term. And that every Cottager who hath a right of Comon and hath Cattle to shack (withall ?) during the whole Summer, shall have a Gate on the said Turnip Fields (that is to say, a Cow or three Calves, or Six Sheep, or eight Hogsheep, or a Gelding, or Mare against a Cow).

[and eight more articles down to]:

AND for the due performance of all and every the Covenants and agreements, each and every of the parties hereunto signed and sealed do hereby bind himself or herself and their heirs, executors, and Admins., unto the other in the (full)? sum of twenty shilling sterling, well and duly to be recovered by virtue of these presents.

[82 names.]

There are endless points of interest arising from the consideration of this document. Here we can but indicate one or two of them. Perhaps the most important is this, that during the eighteenth century, when, according to current views, the ancient agricultural village community was in the last stages of decay, crying out for its final extinction at the hands of the enclosure commissioners, this particular community was capable of very active and vigorous life. Through its vestry meeting it regulated the usage of its open fields, common meadows, and pastures, with the same vigilance and minuteness of detail which had formerly been applied through the manorial rule of the court baron. Another Nottinghamshire Sutton, Sutton (Bonington) StAnne’s, undertook a similar modification of open-field structure, about the same date and probably for the same purpose. [end p.262]

THE DISADVANTAGES OF THE OPEN-FIELD SYSTEM. ENCLOSURE. Despite some evident social advantages in cultivation by village communities, clearly there were many inconveniences and extravagances of time and labour involved in such a system of husbandry as that outlined above. These early led to attempts to modify it. In 1235 and 1285 the Statutes of Merton and Westminster II (17) gave powers to the lords of manors to approve (enclose) portions of the still unredeemed waste which were not needed by their tenants. And a whole host of mediaeval records shows that this power was very often exercised, though apparently rarely with respect to any considerable acreage. As a rule, action under these statutes seems to have been generally acquiesced in, and there are few records of forcible protests against their operation.

Towards the end of the fifteenth century, however, enclosure began to be alleged as a grievance. From the protest of John Ross, (18) a chantry priest of Warwick c. 1480, until the end of the Tudor period there is a long stream of propaganda, setting forth that enclosure for emparking involved the conversion of arable to pasture, the rearing of sheep rather than man, the depopulation of the countryside and the decay of the commonwealth.

In 1516 More’s Utopia contained a celebrated passage in which he brought to the eye of authority his complaints as to the neglect of the interests of the small proprietors by lords, abbots and bishops, and pressed for a remedy to be put in force against these ills. Even before this time anti-depopulation measures had been placed upon the statute book, (19) and now there followed a long stream of statutes, proclamations, and commissions, all designed to check the process which was felt to be utterly destructive of the common weal. In 1517 a commission, 20 whose returns are still extant, inquired into the whole problem; in 1518 Wolsey as Chancellor ordered that those claiming the royal pardon for enclosure should destroy the hedges and ditches made since 1488. A proclamation of 1526 made a similar order. In 1533-4 (21) an act forbade the engrossing of farms. Evidently the act was little observed, and in 1548 the Protector Somerset issued yet another proclamation.

Wholesale enclosure was one of the principal grievances alleged by the rebels who revolted under Ket in 1549, as it was half a century later when the midland counties of Northampton, Warwick, Leicester and Bedford rose to redress agrarian grievances. In Charles I’s reign steps were taken to check the growth of enclosure in 1630, 1632, 1635 and 1636, and Star Chamber dealt [end p.263]

very effectively with offenders. Cromwell and his major-generals had the same problem to deal with when Everard, Winstanley and the ‘Diggers’ kept the midlands in a ferment from 1649 to 1654 with their Christian-Socialist agrarian programme. But after this there were no attempts by the national government to stem the tide of enclosure and the weight of propaganda began gradually to turn the scale in favour of agricultural improvement at all costs. Even so, throughout the seventeenth century and for a great part of the eighteenth, a war of pamphleteers went merrily on, and as late as 1792 a propagandist alleged enclosure as among the principal causes of rural poverty and misery.

At the numerous inquiries resulting from all this controversy it was rarely alleged that men enclosed lands not properly belonging to them. The grievance was rather that land was put out of cultivation, involving lessened labour, and resulting in rural depopulation, and, therefore, that the movement was against public policy.

After 1631, enclosure for such purposes slackened. Enclosures in the midlands between 1640 and 1740 were for the most part small in area and scattered in occurrence.

In the first half of the eighteenth century came great changes to agriculture, which, in the course of a couple of generations, altered the whole attitude to land enclosure. Husbandry began to be studied scientifically and experimentally, and two new factors of undoubted advantage could not be made use of under the system of open-field arable agriculture. These were the introduction of roots as a field crop and the results attainable by subsoil drainage.

But how grow roots on open ground, when it was a crop that ripened only after the corn was all carried, and the neighbours turned their cattle loose over the wide stubbles? And how put in subsoil drains when one’s land lay in narrow scattered strips and patches, cheek by jowl with the narrow selions of others, and with no control of the outfalls?

Occasional attempts were made to graft a root-growing husbandry on to the open-field system, and a most interesting example of this occurred at Sutton-cum-Lound, Notts., an agreement for which is printed above. In 1772-3 provision was made by act for introducing improvements in open-field agriculture without enclosure. The act was rarely adopted, though hardly so rarely as some historians have asserted, and it seems to have had little effect upon agricultural technique.

ENCLOSURE BY THE COURT BARON. When the general current of [end p.264]

agricultural progress made enclosure of commons and open fields almost a national necessity , it is not surprising to find that often the local vestry was closely concerned in the process. Probably in this, as in so many of the other functions discharged by the vestry, it was acting as the legitimate successor of the court baron, in the rolls of which many early enclosure agreements had been registered, e.g. at Edwinstowe, (22) Notts., the court rolls of 1640 have :

WHEREAS…

nowe at this tyme John Goslinge gent. hath inclosed in the East feild of his owne lands eight acres or thereabouts, whereof part of the same he is to have in exchange by surrender from John Snoden of the same towne for other land lyinge in the West feild, Wee the Inhabitants of the towne of Edwinstowe aforesayd have thereunto assented and are contented with the same inclosure that it may soe continue inclosed & stand, without Molestacon of any of us our heires or assignes…

ENCLOSURE BY AUTHORITY OF THE VESTRY. Mr Toulmin Smith, as one would expect, regardec enclosure of common by the vestry as the only proper mode of carrying out the process:

precisely analogous to the steps taken as to the Folkland by the General Assembly of the Nation.

An example of authorisation by the vestry to enclose part of the civil records of the common occurs at Ham, Surrey, where the civil record of the parish include a copy of an instrument dated 16 December 1730, purporting to sanction the enclosure by the Duke of Argyle of waste near Sudbrook Park. A monetary acknowledgement was exacted and the same records include a declaration of trust of 1762 respecting the use of the money paid. The vestry of Keston, Kent, on 6 July 1790 authorised Pitt, who had purchased Holwood, the local great house, some half-dozen years previously, to enclose thirty acres of the common known as the Bulwarks, upon payment of a perpetual annuity of £10 to the poor of the parish.

The vestry minutes of Tooting and Mitcham, Surrey, contain several agreements for the enclosure of scraps of common, 1795 and 1797. Even where agreements for enclosure were drawn up by the proprietors as such, rather than by the parishioners qua parishioners, the records of such agreements, when they have survived at all, have generally been preserved in parish chests. Nottinghamshire has two sets of articles of agreement for enclosing Torworth, 1792 and 1797, in the parish chest of the mother church at Blyth. Shropshire has at least three sets, those for Lee Brock- burst, 1800, Fitz, 1822, and Pontesford, 1826. [end p.265]

PARLIAMENTARY ENCLOSURES. Enclosure by private agreement was, however, a long and painful process, far too slow for the enthusiastic agricultural pioneers of the eighteenth century, so, from about 1760, the normal method of carrying out enclosure was by private act of Parliament. Usually the act appointed a number of commissioners, who had the duty of visiting the parish, having it properly surveyed, hearing all the claims of those having either open land or common right, and allotting all proprietors an equivalent in land, or occasionally in cash, for the rights they had enjoyed. And such land was allotted in severalty, after the modern fashion, and in general was entirely discharged from ancient incidents of almost every kind. The commissioners’ final determination was expressed in an award, which, after proclamation in the parish church, became final and legally binding upon all the parties concerned.

Not, of course, that the English enclosure act sprang suddenly into existence in 1760 or thereabouts. As we have already indicated, enclosure by agreement had been quite usual for centuries before. Then, in the seventeenth century , a custom developed of securing confirmation of such private agreements in the courts of Chancery or Exchequer. Often, it appears, a collusive suit was undertaken in order to obtain a decree which would bind a recalcitrant minority .Various bills dealing with the matter, some of them giving general powers to confirm such decrees, were introduced into Parliament in 1656, 1661, 1664, and 1666, but none of them passed. The same end Was ultimately achieved by a whole series of private acts, most of which, at first, merely confirmed arrangements already come to by agreement. From this it was but a short step to acts of the more usual type appointing com- missioners to make the enclosure, and confirming in advance the decision they should make.

Altogether after 1760 there were some 5000 enclosure acts and enclosures under general acts, affecting, it is estimated, well over six million acres of English land. Before 1760 there were but 255 in all, and more than half of these are accounted for by the three midland counties of Warwick, Northampton and Gloucester, and by the vast waste spaces of the North and West Ridings of Yorkshire. The enormous expense attaching to enclosure by parliamentary means early caused a demand for a general act to simplify procedure and to cheapen proceedings. After 140 years of more or less continuous agitation the first general enclosure act was passed in 1801. This, however, was a ‘clauses act’ only. The next im-[end p.266]

portant general act was one of 1836. This permitted enclosure by the consent of a majority of the proprietors (generally at least two-thirds), without the requirement of any special application to Parliament. The next major enactment as to enclosure was the General Act of 1845. This set up a body of standing Enclosure Commissioners who had authority to sanction the enclosure of land by provisional order and enclosure award.

There are, of course, a great many hotly controverted points in the history of these Parliamentary enclosures. For information upon these matters generally historians have had to rely upon contemporary pamphleteers, quite regardless of the fact that these were almost invariably bitter and unscrupulous partisans, anxious to prove either that the great wave of enclosure which swept over the country was the greatest social and moral improvement which had occurred for centuries, or that it was a colossal legalised robbery—an unscrupulous confiscation of the scanty effects of Lazarus in order to cram them into the overflowing coffers of Dives—a gigantic and heartless swindle, equally hateful to God and man.

It is commonly suggested e.g. that private land ownership in England is really a result of the enclosure movement. It will be clear from what has been said above that while the land of England was largely cultivated in common until comparatively recent years there is very little evidence of common land-ownership in historic times.

Since the actual operation of the enclosure act was left so largely in the hands of the commissioners it is clearly of some importance to determine who exactly these commissioners were, and with what zeal and efficiency they carried out the well-remunerated duties with which they were entrusted. Those writers who have approached the enclosure question rather from the standpoint of that of modern politics than from that of historical fact have alleged that these same commissioners were commonly members of the landed class, and that in the performance of their duties they were often deliberately furthering class interests. Upon all such points a good deal of information is to be obtained from the awards themselves by anyone who will take the trouble to consult them.

With regard to the effect of these enclosures, it has commonly that they caused depopulation of the rural parishes. That this was often the consequence of the Tudor and Stuart enclosures is certain; there is a general weight of evidence to the effect that the enclosures in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries—that is, the period covered by the Parliamentary enclosure acts [end p.267]

—derived from quite different causes and were carried out for entirely different reasons,

THE ENCLOSURE RECORDS OF THE PARISH CHEST AS SOURCES OF EVIDENCE UPON DISPUTED TOPICS. For really reliable evidence upon such points of controversy the enclosure records of the parish chest are invaluable. Here and there such agreements as those instanced above have survived. Copies of local enclosure acts occasionally turn up. As to the relation between enclosure and depopulation the official census returns mentioned below are the best source of information after 1801, and various unofficial estimates of population are found in some chests, covering earlier periods. Old rate books and land-tax assessments enable one to judge as to the connection (if any) between enclosure and the growth of land monopoly. Any or all of these may be found in the parish chest, and apart from the land-tax records they rarely survive anywhere else. Even enclosure commissioners’ minute books, which are among the rarest of records (neither the British Museum, the London School of Economics, the Public Record Office, nor the Bodleian has any), are to be found in parish chests. East Dray ton, Notts., has a most interesting one, 1819-25, Pontesford, Salop, has one, 1826~8, and the parish chests of Bedfordshire, whose contents have now been collected in the Bedford County Record Office, include no less than seven.

ENCLOSURE AWARDS. Most important of all the enclosure records are, of course, the enclosure awards. These acts almost invariably provided that the original award after execution and proclamation should be deposited in the parish chest, and when the General Enclosure Acts were passed this provision was incorporated in them.

Enclosure awards to be found in parish chests fall into four main classes: (1) early agreements and awards (including a great many made in the famine years at the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth) under private agreements of the parties affected, (2) awards made by enclosure commissioners acting under private acts, (3) awards made without any application to Parliament under the General Act of 1836, (4) awards made by , assistant commissioners’ to the national enclosure commissioners under the general acts of 1845 et seq. There are few records, if any, to rival in interest and importance the awards. These enclosure awards of Georgian times are in their evidential value infinitely more weighty than all other enclosure records taken together.

Their primary purpose was to achieve and to register the [end p.268]

change from open-field ownership and cultivation to the modern system of land ownership and cultivation in ‘severalty’, but the awards have much more than historical or agrotechnical importance. They form the best—in many cases the only—source of accurate information as to the distribution of land ownership in the villages of a century and a half ago; they are full of useful information as to the prevalent types of tenure; in half the villages of the midlands they serve as ultimate title-deeds to the greater part of the land; they record the lands forming the endowments of ancient village charities and schools; and they are the final authority for information as to the course and breadth of the highways, the existence of footpaths and rights of way, and the courses, breadths and liability for cleansing of most of the surface drains. The awards, and the plans which are appended to them, register the ownership of hedges and fences; they distinguish between titheable and non-titheable lands—in many instances enclosure awards are better sources of information about tithe than are the tithe awards; and they specify allotments of land for public purposes, which are the origins of the greater part of what land still remains vested in such minor local governing bodies as parish meetings and parish councils.

Accordingly, the enclosure awards are invaluable sources of information, not only to the historian or the antiquary—and to him whether his interest be mainly ecclesiastical or civil, economic or social—but also to the present-day administrator. For the 4747 acts passed since 1709 there must have been about 6000 awards, many of them existing in one copy only, and of these a very considerable proportion have entirely disappeared.

It is clear then that when the parish chest contains an enclosure award the local historian is fortunate, and that when there should be one, but it is now missing, time and trouble spent in securing its return will be by no means wasted.

For further details as to the history of enclosure in England the reader is referred to a detailed bibliography in Tate: The English Village Community and Enclosure Movements. Meanwhile we may note that the most detailed county study is our own Parliamentary Enclosure in Nottinghamshire, (23) containing in its fifty odd pages of introduction and preface a fuller account of the many controversial topics bound up with the enclosure question, and a guide to the House of Commons Journals showing how the information in the Journals may be used to supplement and elucidate that to be obtained from the printed acts and the manuscript awards. [end p.269]

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