ENCLOSURE—THE SMALL OWNER


The war period was one of great activity in enclosure; from 1798 to 1810 there were
956 Bills; from 1811-20, 771.
[562]

It must be remembered, however, that the number of Acts is not a conclusive test of
the amount of enclosure, as there was a large amount that was non-parliamentary: by
the principal landlord, and by freeholders who agreed to amicable changes and
transfer, as at Pickering, in Yorkshire.
[563]
Roughly speaking, about one-third of the
Acts were for enclosing commonable waste, the rest for enclosing open and
commonable fields and lands.
[564]
Owing to the expense an Act was only obtained in
the last resource. It was also because of the expense
[565]
that many landlords desirous
to enclose were unable to do so, and therefore devoted their attention to the
improvement of the common fields. That agriculture benefited by enclosure there is
no possible doubt, but it was attended with great hardships. The landowner generally
gained, for his rents increased largely. In twenty-three parishes of Lincolnshire, for
instance, his rents doubled on enclosure. But the expenses were so heavy that his gain
was often very small, and sometimes he was a loser by the process. As for the farmers,
the poorer ones suffered, for more capital was needed for enclosed lands, and the
process generally was so slow, taking from two to six years before the final award was
given, that many farmers were thrown out in the management of their farms, for they
did not know where their future lands would be allotted. That the poor suffered greatly
is indubitable: 'By nineteen Enclosure Acts out of twenty the poor are injured, in some

cases grossly injured,' wrote Young in 1801.
[566]
In the Acts it was endeavoured to
treat them fairly,
[567]
and allotments were made to them, or money paid on enclosure
in lieu of their rights of common, or small plots of land; but the expense of enclosing
small allotments was proportionately very great, generally too great, and they had to
be sold, while the sums of money were often spent in the alehouse. The results of
sixty-eight Acts were investigated in the eastern counties, with the result that in all but
fifteen the poor were injured. It was generally found that they had lost their cows.
Its effect on the smallholder is well described by Davis in his Report on
Wilts.
[568]
There, before enclosure, the tenants usually occupied yard-lands consisting
of a homestead, 2 acres of meadow, 18 acres of arable, generally in eighteen or twenty
strips, with a right on the common meadows, common fields and downs for 40 sheep,
and as many cattle as the tenant could winter with the fodder he grew. The 40 sheep
were kept by a common shepherd with the common herd, were taken every day to the
downs and brought back every night to be folded on the arable fields, the rule being to
fold 1,000 sheep on a 'tenantry' acre (three-quarters of a statute acre) every
night.
[569]
In breeding sheep regard was had to 'foldingquality,' i.e. the propensity to
drop manure only after being folded at night, as much as to quality and quantity of
wool and meat. On enclosure the common flock was broken up. The small farmer had
no longer any common to turn his horses on. The down on which he fed his sheep was
largely curtailed, the common shepherd was abolished, and the farmer had too few
sheep to enable him individually to employ a shepherd. Therefore he had to part with
his flock. Having no cow common and very little pasture land he could not keep cows.

In such circumstances the small farmer, after a few years, succumbed and became a
labourer, or emigrated, or went to the towns.
In a pamphlet called The Case of Labourers in Husbandry, 1795, the Rev. David
Davies said, 'by enclosure an amazing number of people have been reduced from a
comfortable state of partial independence to the precarious condition of mere
hirelings, who when out of work immediately come on the parish.' It has often been
said that the poor were robbed of their share in the land by the landowners; but as a
matter of fact it was the expense of securing the compensation allowed them, much
greater in proportion on small holdings than on large, which went into the pockets of
surveyors and lawyers, that did this. It was also often through the farmer that the
labourer was deprived of his land when he had retained an acre or two after enclosure.
Wishing to make the labourer dependent on him, he persuaded the agent to let the
cottages with the farm, and the agent in order to avoid collecting a number of small
rents consented. As soon as the farmer had the cottages he took the land from them
and added it to his own. The peasant's losses engaged the serious attention of many
landlords; near Tewkesbury, in 1773, the lord of the manor on enclosure, besides
reserving 25 acres for the use of the poor, allowed land to each cottage sufficient to
keep a horse or a cow, often added a small building, and gave stocks for raising
orchards. Even some of the idlest were thereby made industrious, poor rates sank to
4d. in the £, though the population increased, and the labourer always had for sale
some poultry, or the produce of his cow, or some fruit.
[570]

In 1800 the Board of Agriculture, composed almost entirely of landowners, noticing
that the poor of Rutland and Lincolnshire, who had land for one or two cows and
some potatoes, had not applied for poor relief, offered a gold medal for the most
satisfactory account of the best means of supporting cows on poor land, in a method
applicable to cottagers.
[571]
Young recommended that in the case of extensive wastes

every cottage on enclosure should be secured sufficient land on which to keep a cow,
the land to be inalienable from the cottage and the ownership vested in the parish.
Lord Winchelsea
[572]
urged that a good garden should always go with a cottage, and
set the example himself, one which has been generally followed in England by the
greater landlords with much success. As may be imagined, these schemes or others
similar to them were put into effect by the conscientious and energetic, but not by the
apathetic and careless. Further, an Act was passed in the fifty-ninth year of George III,
which enabled parishes to lease or buy 20 acres of land for the employment of their
poor.
In many cases, it must be allowed, the grazing of the commons was often worth very
little. Let one man, it was said in 1795, put a cow on a common in spring for nothing,
and let another pay a farmer 1s. 6d. a week to keep a cow of equal value on enclosed
land. When both are driven to market at Michaelmas the extra weight of the latter will
more than repay the cost of the keep, while her flow of milk meanwhile has been
much superior.
The Committee on Waste Lands of 1795 attributed the great increase in the weight of
cattle not only to the improved methods of breeding, but to their being fed on good
enclosed lands instead of wastes and commons.
[573]
Even when commons were stinted
they were in general overstocked, while disease was always being spread with
enormous loss to the commoners. The larger holders, too, who had common rights,
often crowded out the smaller.
There were often, as we have seen, a large number of 'squatters' on commons who had
seized and occupied land without any legal title. As a rule, if these people had been in
possession twenty-one years their title was respected; if not, no regard was very justly
paid to them on enclosure, and they were deprived of what they had seized.
Eden wrote when enclosure was at its height; he was a competent and accurate

observer, and this is his picture of the 'commoner':
[574]
'The advantages which
cottagers and poor people derive from commons and wastes are rather apparent than
real; instead of sticking regularly to labour they waste their time in picking up a few
dry sticks or in grubbing on some bleak moor. Their starved pig or two, together with
a few wandering goslings, besides involving them in perpetual altercations with their
neighbours, are dearly paid for in care, time, and bought food. There are thousands
and thousands of acres in the kingdom, now the sorry pastures of geese, hogs, asses,
half-grown horses, and half-starved cattle, which want but to be enclosed to be as rich
as any land now in tillage.'
Enclosure worked an important social revolution. Before it the entirely landless
labourer was rare: he nearly always had some holding in the common field or a right
on the common pasture. With enclosure his holding or right had generally
disappeared, and he deteriorated socially. It was very unfortunate, too, that when
enclosure was most active domestic industries, such as weaving, decayed, and
deprived the labourer and his family of a badly needed addition to his scanty income.
In its physical and moral effects the system of domestic manufactures was immensely
preferable to that of the crowded factory, while economically it enabled the tillers of
the soil to exist on farms which could not support them by agriculture alone.
This uprooting of a great part of the agricultural population from the soil by
irresistible economic causes brought with it grave moral evils, and created divisions
and antagonisms of interest from which we are suffering to-day.
[575]
If some such
scheme as that of Arthur Young or Lord Winchelsea had been universally adopted,
this blot on an inevitable movement might have been removed, and a healthy rural
population planted on English soil. Another result followed, the labourer no longer
boarded as a rule in his employer's house, where the farmer worked and lived with his
men; the tie of mutual interest was loosened, and he worked for this or that master

indifferently. One advantage, however, arose, in that, having to find a home of his
own, he married early, but this was vitiated by his knowledge that the parish would
support his children, on which knowledge he was induced to rely.
On the other hand, the farmer often rose in the social scale. With the abandonment of
the handicaps and restrictions of the common-field system the efficient came more
speedily to the front. It was they who had amassed capital, and capital was now
needed more than ever, so they added field to field, and consolidated holdings.
The Act of 1845 did away with the necessity for private Enclosure Acts, still further
reducing the expense; and since that date there have been 80,000 or 90,000 acres of
common arable fields and meadows enclosed without parliamentary sanction, and
139,517 acres of the same have been enclosed with it,
[576]
besides many acres of
commons and waste.
In the Report of the Committee of Enclosures of 1844,
[577]
there is a curious
description of the way in which common fields were sometimes allotted. There were
in some open fields, lands called 'panes', containing forty or sixty different lands, and
on a certain day the best man of the parish appeared to take possession of any lot he
thought fit. If his right was called in question there was a fight for it, and the survivor
took the first lot, and so they went on through the parish. There was also the old 'lot
meadow' in which the owners drew lots for choice of portions. On some of the grazing
lands the right of grazing sheep belonged to a man called a 'flockmaster', who during
certain months of the year had the exclusive right of turning his sheep on all the lands
of the parish.
Closely connected with the subject of enclosure is that of the partial disappearance of
the small owner, both the yeoman who farmed his own little estate and the peasant
proprietor. We have noticed above
[578]

Gregory King's statement as to the number of
small freeholders in England in 1688, no less than 160,000, or with their families
about one-seventh of the population of the country. This date, that of the Revolution,
marks an epoch in their history, for from that time they began to diminish in
proportion to the population. Their number in 1688 is a sufficient answer to the
exaggerated statement of contemporaries in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as
to the depopulation caused by enclosures. Chamberlayne, in his State of Great Britain,
published at about the same time as Gregory King's figures, says there were more
freeholders in England than in any country of like extent in Europe: '£40 or £50 a year
is very ordinary, £100 or £200 in some counties is not rare, sometimes in Kent and in
the Weald of Sussex £500 or £600 per annum, and £3,000 or £4,000 of stock.' In the
first quarter of the eighteenth century he was a prominent figure. Defoe
[579]
describes
the number and prosperity of the Greycoats of Kent (as they were called from their
homespun garments), 'whose interest is so considerable that whoever they vote for is
always sure to carry it.'
Why has this sturdy class so dwindled in numbers, and left England infinitely the
weaker for their decrease? The causes are several; social, economic, and political. The
chief, perhaps, is the peculiar form of Government which came in with the
Revolution. The landed gentry by that event became supreme, the national and local
administration was entirely in their hands, and land being the foundation of social and
political influence was eagerly sought by them where it was not already in their
hands.
[580]
At the same time the successful business men, whose numbers now
increased rapidly from the development of trade, bought land to 'make themselves
gentlemen'. Both these classes bought out the yeomen, who do not seem to have been
very loath to part with their land. The recently devised system of strict family
settlements enabled the old and the newgentlemen to keep this land in their families.

The complicated title to land made its transfer difficult and costly, so that there was
little breaking up of estates to correspond with the constant buying up of small
owners. To the smaller freeholder, as has been noticed, the enclosure of waste land did
much harm, for it was necessary to his holding. Again, smaller arable farms did not
pay as well as large ones, so they tended to disappear. The decay of home industries
was also a heavy blow to the smaller yeoman and the peasant proprietor.
Under this combination of circumstances many of the yeomen left the land. Yet
though Young, less than a century after King and Davenant, said that the small
freeholder had practically disappeared, there were at the end of the eighteenth century
many left all over England, who however largely disappeared during the war and in
the bad times after the war.
[581]
But a contrary tendency was at work which helped to
replenish the class. The desire of the Englishman for land is not confined to the
wealthy classes. At the end of the eighteenth century men who had made small
fortunes in trade were buying small properties and taking the place of the
yeomen.
[582]
In the great French War of 1793-1815, many yeomen, attracted by the
high prices of land, sold their properties, but at the same time many farmers, attracted
by the high prices of produce, which had often enriched them, bought land.
[583]
During
the 'good times' of 1853-75 many small holders, like those of Axholme, noticed in
the Report of the Agricultural Commission of 1893, bought land.
A new class of small owners also has sprung up, who, dwelling in or near towns and
railway stations, have bought small freeholds. The return of the owners of land of
1872-6 gave the following numbers of those owning land in England and Wales
[584]
:

Total number of owners of:

Number.

Acreage.

less than one acre 703,289

151,171

1

acre and under 10 121,983

478,679

10

" 50 72,640

1,750,079

50

" 100

25,839

1,791,605


100

" 500

32,317

6,827,346

The great majority of the first class here enumerated, those owning less than one acre,
do not concern us, as they were evidently merely houses and gardens not of an
agricultural character, but a large number of the second class and most of the other
three must have been agricultural, though unfortunately no distinction is made. It will
be seen, therefore, that there were a considerable number of small owners in England
in 1872, and their numbers have probably increased since. Many of them, however,
are of the new class mentioned above, and there appears to be no doubt that the
number of the peasant proprietors and of the yeomen of the old sort has much
diminished, especially in proportion to the growth of population.
FOOTNOTES:
[562]Cf. supra, p. 163.
[563]R. Marshall, Rural Economy of Yorkshire, p. 17 et seq.
[564]Slater, English Peasantry and Enclosure, p. 7.
[565]It was stated in the Report of the Committee on Enclosures(1844), p. 31, that the
ordinary expense of obtaining an Enclosure Act was from £1,000 to £1,500. In 1814
the enclosure of three farms, amounting to 570 acres, including subdivision fences and
money paid to a tenant for relinquishing his agreement, cost the landlord
nearly £4,000.—Agricultural State of the Kingdom (1816), p. 116.
[566]Enquiry into the Propriety of Supplying Wastes to the better Support of the Poor,
p. 42.
[567]The usual clause in Enclosure Acts stated that the land should be 'allotted
according to the several and respective rights of allwho had rights and interests' in the

enclosed property, and expenses were to be borne 'in proportion to the respective
shares of the people interested'.
[568]pp. 8 et seq. Slater, op. cit. p. 113.
[569]Cf. Marshall's account of the common-field townships in Hampshire at the end
of the eighteenth century. Each occupier of land in the common fields contributed to
the town flock a number of sheep in proportion to his holding, which were placed
under a shepherd who fed them and folded them on all parts of the township. A
similar practice was observed with the common herd of cows, which were placed
under one cowherd who tended them by day and brought them back at night to be
milked, distributing them among their respective owners, and in the morning they
were collected by the sound of the horn.—Rural Economy of Southern Counties, ii.
351.
[570]Report of Committee on Waste Lands (1795), p. 204. Ground was frequently left
by the Acts for the erection of cottages for the poor, and special allotments were made
to Guardians for the use of the poor, in addition to the land allotted to all according to
their respective claims. Can any one doubt that if there had been a systematic robbery
of the smaller holders on enclosure they would not have risen 'en masse'?
[571]Slater, op. cit. p. 133.
[572]Agricultural State of the Kingdom (1816), p. 8.
[573]Report, p. 204.
[574]State of the Poor, pp. i, xviii.
[575]Lecky, England in the Eighteenth Century, vi. 191.
[576]Slater, op. cit. p. 191.
[577]Report, p. 27.
[578]See above. Another estimate puts them at 180,000.
[579]Tour, i. (2), 37, 38.
[580]Toynbee, Industrial Revolution, p. 62.
[581]Hasbach, op. cit. p. 71.
[582]Marshall, Review of Agriculture, Reports Western Department, p. 18.
[583]Parliamentary Reports, Commissioners (1897), xv. 32.

[584]Parliamentary Accounts and Papers, lxxx. 21. The number of those owning over
500 acres does not concern the small owner or the yeoman class, but they were: from
500 acres to 1,000, 4,799; from 1,000 to 2,000, 2,719; from 2,000 to 5,000, 1,815;
from 5,000 to 10,000, 581; from 10,000 to 20,000, 223; from 20,000 to 50,000, 66;
from 50,000 to 100,000, 3; over 100,000, 1. For the numbers of the 'holdings' of
various sizes in 1875 and 1907 see below, p. 334. The term 'holdings', however,
includes freeholds and leaseholds.