Aids For Teachers Series, No.7, Enclosure In The Eighteenth Century by R.A.C. Parker, M.A., D.Phil., Fellow of The Queen’s College, Oxford. First published by the Historical Association 1960, reprinted 1965.
Enclosures In The Eighteenth Century
Why was enclosure undertaken in the eighteen century? Who took the initiative? How was it done? How much land was enclosed? What were the social and economic consequences? Such are the principal points of interest in the history of enclosure.
Why enclose? Before attempting to answer, it is necessary to explain the word “enclosure”. Broadly speaking, enclosure meant two processes: one was the rationalization of the open field system with its sometimes complicated rights of pasturage, the second was the bringing into cultivation or into more intensive cultivation of land hitherto uncultivated or lightly cultivated.
The purpose of eighteenth century enclosure was to enable land to be put to more productive use. In particular, in the eighteenth century, enclosure was undertaken in order to make more efficient use of arable land, or to bring under arable cultivation land hitherto employed, if at all, for grazing. It is true, of course, that in the eighteenth century there took place notable improvements in the breeding and management of livestock; sometimes enclosures took place to make them easier. Newly enclosed arable open field land was sometimes converted to pasture, as for example, in parts of the West Midlands; rough grazing, common or waste often remained pasture land after enclosure, especially in counties like Lancashire or Cumberland. But the eighteenth century agricultural revolution was primarily an arable revolution and eighteenth century enclosures were characteristically designed with arable farming in mind.
Open field organization varied considerably from one part of England to another. But it is safe to say that the areas in which eighteenth century enclosure was most extensive were areas in which small strips of arable land were held as properties intermingled with others. The inconveniences this alone could cause were added to by the rights of pasturage generally possessed by some or all of the owners of strips over the entire arable lands of the village. These pasturage rights involved the further inconvenience of restrictions of freedom of cropping.
Precisely when new crops came into widespread use remains far from clear, but there is no doubt that rational eighteenth century agriculturalists wished to exploit a larger number of crops, in more complicated rotations, than their predecessors had done.
They had clover and other sown grasses, and most important of all, they had the turnip. Sown grass leys introduced into an arable rotation restored nitrogen to the soil. They enabled a larger number of cattle or sheep to be kept in summer, whose manurings contributed further to the improvement of the land. Turnips could keep more stock going in winter. Properly hoed, they cleared the land of weeds; fed to sheep on the fields in which they grew, they made possible further direct manurings. Sown grass and clover made an excellent preparation for wheat or oats; duly hoed turnips a splendid preliminary to barley. Following, at any rate of land suitable for turnip culture, became unnecessary and wasteful.
The open field system tended to compel the retention of types of rotation that had become grossly unproductive by the best eighteenth century standards: two corn crops and a fallow, for example. The best eighteenth century farmers employed improved rotations, which, though less intensive than the four course of the nineteenth century, would get much more from the land in cash crops and in feed for livestock.
The other aspect of enclosure for arable purposes was the breaking up of uncultivated commons or wastes or of land hitherto little cultivated and normally used for rough grazing. This was made more practicable by the new crops and new methods: soil of lower quality than before could be successfully cultivated because of rotations involving fodder crops (to maintain stock for manuring the land) alternating with corn crops.
Thus in districts where particular benefit could be had from the use of new crops and new rotations, motives for enclosure were especially strong: for instance, on the light soils of north-western Norfolk. In the latter half of the eighteenth century a further motive appeared: rising prices for agricultural produce. It became worth while to enclose lands which would produce smaller increases in production from new types of cultivation, even by the expensive means of enclosure by parliamentary act. Prices both of corn and of livestock show a definite upward trend in the 1760’s and again in the 1780’s, and a still more pronounced upward movement in the 1790’s.
It has been argued that movements in the rate of interest affected the chronology of enclosure, that its tendency to fall in the eighteenth century encouraged enclosure. It is, of course, certainly true that reduced interest rates normally left more of a landowner’s income available for current spending – landowners had frequently some debts on which to pay interest – on such things as enclosure. Again, it is certainly true that reduced interest rates led to higher prices for land and therefore provided extra incentive to a landowner to invest in developing existing properties rather than in extending them. There is no evidence, however, of landowners borrowing to enclose; and high interest rates certainly did not always check expensive enclosures (notably during the wars against revolutionary and Napoleonic France). Much more work is needed on the economic circumstances and attitudes of enclosers.
It must not be supposed that open fields and common rights always prevented any agricultural progress. Arrangements were sometimes made to limit the exercise of common rights in the winter in order to make it possible for occupiers of unenclosed lands to grow turnips. Mr. Kerridge gives examples from Wiltshire of clover and sown grasses being used in the early eighteenth century in open fields. However, a contemporary writer, quoted by Professor Gonner, declared of common fields: “They are not capable of producing half what they would otherwise do, unless indeed the whole belongs to some very few, who are sensible enough to agree among themselves on a good mode of culture; but this is rarely the case.”
Who took the initiatives? There can be no doubt that it was relatively prosperous agriculturalists who urged enclosures. Rich farmers, men with capital, looked for good-sized, well laid-out, enclosed farms which they could exploit free from outmoded restrictions. Landlords were anxious to attract such men in order to receive the higher rents that efficient farming would produce. Substantial occupying owners were generally anxious to consolidate their properties into manageable units. Small men expected less benefit from enclosure.
How was it done? The simplest way to enclose was for man to order it: if an individual owned all the relevant land and all the rights of common he could do as he pleased and enclose at will. In parishes where there existed one dominant landowner, he would have a strong incentive to buy out freeholders and copyholders and owners of rights of common. It was well worth while for him to offer a very high price to such men, and sometimes possible for him to bully them if they refused his offers. On the whole, therefore, enclosures tended to take place sooner in parishes which were largely in the hands of a single owner than in parishes where ownership was dispersed.
Where there was more than one owner, it was sometimes possible to arrange exchanges of land or common rights as preliminaries to enclosure “by agreement”. These agreements might be the result of considerable pressure on some of the parties; the threat of bringing vexatious suits at law sometimes persuaded a proprietor to accept an exchange. The resulting treaties were frequently enrolled in Chancery to strengthen their validity.
Those were the processes under which most enclosures were carried out until the second half of the eighteenth century. Some enclosures were put through before 1750 by act of parliament, but very few compared with the large number of such enclosures after 1750. The greater incentive to enclose led to vastly increased resort to this use of the powers of the state to override the opposition of proprietors to the exchange of their lands for new parcels or their common rights for new allotments.
Great attention has been given to enclosure by act of parliament. This is because the sources, especially the acts and awards themselves, are relatively accessible and easy to use, while the other types of enclosure must be studied mainly in the records preserved by landowners – far less limpid documents, in general, than enclosure awards. Fortunately, parliamentary enclosure possesses great interest, precisely because it involved state action to coerce reluctant landowners into accepting agrarian change.
The first step in the process of enclosure by act was for a petition to be drawn up to the House of Commons requesting leave to bring in a bill to enclose lands in a particular parish or group of parishes. Leave to bring in a bill was then given and one or two members ordered to prepare it. Sometimes a petition was referred to a committee before a bill was ordered. The petition was usually presented by a local member and the bill generally committed to the relevant county members and other local representatives. The bill followed the normal procedure: it was presented and read once and ordered to be read a second time. After the second reading it went to a committee for amendment. It was at that point that any counter-petition generally appeared. This was either sent to the committee, or considered by the house at the next stage when the bill with proposed amendments was reported to the house. At the report stage the committee explained whether or not petitioners against the bill had been heard in person or by counsel and informed the house of the degree of consent given by the proprietors whose lands were affected. This was a very important matter; no bill would succeed unless it was supported by the larger part of the owners of land. This did not mean that the opposition of a substantial number of proprietors would necessarily prevent a bill; the question Parliament considered was whether or not owners of the preponderating area of land had consented: an individual person’s voice counted according to the amount of property that he owned in the area to come under the enclosure act. There was no fixed amount required for the passage of a bill; Mr. Tate says that the general understanding was that a majority of three-fourths to four-fifths of the proprietors in value, not in number, was necessary. The next stage was usually for the bill to be engrossed. The King’s consent to anything affecting his interest was then signified and third reading was given to the bill as amended. The Lords seldom amended a bill and it normally went smoothly through the upper house to the stage of royal assent.
The enclosure itself was carried out by commissioners appointed by the act. Some controversy has arisen over the degree of impartiality shown by these men. It has been argued that they were men selected by, and acting entirely in the interests of, the larger owners. On the other hand, it has been urged that they were usually skilled professional men, surveyors and other experts who worked on one enclosure after another and acquired great expertise and, it is said, these men were uncorrupt and unbiased, too high-minded to grind the faces of the poor. The truth is in between. The commissioners were certainly chosen largely by the lord of the manor, tithe owner and large proprietors. The two or three men usually formed a commission were far from immune to the influence of rich landowners. It is true that they were usually professional men, but in their profession they were almost entirely dependent on the custom of the larger landowners. On the other hand, there is little to show that the smaller proprietors or holders of common right were habitually treated in an oppressive way by the enclosure commissioners; it must be remembered, though, that humble men leave few records.
Professor Beresford has written that of fifty-three enclosures he studied, half took more than four years to complete, eight of which took more than eight years.
Commissioners normally received three guineas for each meeting plus travel and subsistence allowances. In Cambridgeshire, thirty-four early nineteenth century enclosures were the result of a number of meetings, varying from four to forty-eight, with an average of about twenty. It is not surprising that enclosure by act was very expensive.
The costs of enclosure were made up, in addition to the fees and expenses of commissioners and their assistants, by the legal and parliamentary expenses involved in the passage of the private act, by the costs of the actual enclosing, the making of fences, etc., and the construction of new roads and new drainage schemes. Total enclosure costs seem to have varied between four shillings and five pounds an acre. The best average figure available (Mr. Tate’s) is about £1 5s. per acre, with costs tending to rise towards the end of the eighteenth century.
How much was enclosed?
It is impossible to say how much land was enclosed by private agreement, without resort to act of parliament: only rather tentative assertions can be made. There can be no doubt that such enclosures were widespread in the eighteenth century. It has been noted that such enclosures were particularly frequent in villages dominated by a single owner or by few owners. It is probable that enclosure by agreement was frequent in areas, such as north-west Norfolk, in which more intensive cultivation of lightly cultivated or uncultivated land became possible through the use of new crops and new rotations. Enclosure by agreement was more likely to affect commons and wastes than open-field arable, for resistance, from proprietors to such enclosures was less likely than to enclosure of open fields.
There is no reason to suppose that an area in which many parliamentary enclosures occurred was an area in which there was little enclosure by agreement either in the first half of the eighteenth century or in the period of enclosure by act of parliament. Nor must the existence of an enclosure act for a particular village lead one to conclude that no enclosure by private agreement had taken place there in the years immediately before the act. The motives for enclosure by act were equally motives for enclosure by agreement.
Figures exist which appear to show precisely how much was enclosed by act of parliament. They are not completely satisfactory, but they indicate very roughly which English counties probably contained the largest area of open-field arable enclosed by act in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Dr. Slater, followed by Professor Gonner, drew up one set of figures from those enclosure acts which include provisions affecting some area, however small, of arable open field; leaving out of account acts affecting only meadow, common pasture or waste. Professor Gonner sometimes checked the total area stated in the acts by examing awards and used “good estimates or statements” from other sources when both acts and awards are silent. Having worked out totals for all acts that included some open-field arable in their scope, he stated these figures as percentages of the area of each county.
The results were that two counties emerged with more than 50 per cent of their total area affected by acts touching open-field arable: Hunts and Northants. Between 50 and 40 per cent are Rutland, Beds, Oxon and Leics. Between 40 and 30 per cent are Yorks (E.R.), Cambs, Bucks and Berks. Between 30 and 20 per cent are Lincs, Warwicks, Wilts and Notts. Between 20 and 10 per cent are Middlesex, Worcs, Derby, Herts, Norfolk, Glos and Yorks (W.R.). Between 10 and 5 per cent are Dorset, Hants, Surrey and Yorks (N.R.). Small areas were affected in Hereford, Suffolk, Somerset, Essex, Sussex, Northumberland, Cumberland, Durham, Westmorland, Cheshire and Shropshire. No acts at all were found for enclosure of open fields in Lancs, Kent, Devon and Cornwall.
These figures have serious defects. They are usually based on estimates in the acts, not on the more reliable figures in the awards. They omit some acts and they often involve assumptions about the amount of land affected, when the act makes no estimate (in these respects they can often be substantially corrected by Mr. Tate’s county hand-lists, where one exists). Professor Gonner’s figures for areas affected by enclosures affecting some open field do not distinguish within those areas between open-field arable and common so that they include more or less substantial areas of common or waste. They do not distinguish between enclosure provisions which legalized or ratified previous agrarian changes on the one hand, and genuinely new arrangements on the other. Professor Gonner’s percentages of the area of whole counties clearly underestimate the proportionate impact of enclosure acts on cultivated regions in counties where substantial areas were wholly uncultivated. On the other hand, they may mislead and suggest an unduly large figure for newly enclosed open fields in counties where substantial commons or wastes were normally enclosed at the same time as open fields.
One county where numerous parliamentary enclosures took place, none of which affected open-field arable, is Lancashire. There some sixty acts dealt with about 32,000 acres of common or waste. In some other counties, there took place enclosures by act on a substantial scale which affected commons or wastes alone (in addition to their affecting some open-field arable). As one would expect, these enclosures were most extensive in counties in which there were large areas of hill country or heath. More than 10 per cent of the areas of Yorkshire (n.R.), Yorkshire (W.R.), Westmorland, Somerset, Northumberland, Durham and Cumberland were concerned in such acts.
It must not be thought that enclosure by act of parliament went forward only in the eighteenth century: in fact, the central period of parliamentary enclosure is rather from 1760-1820. Before 1760, there were about 200 acts; from 1761 to 1801 about 2,000 (with one-quarter or so dealing with common pasture, meadow or waste alone); from 1802-1844 about 1,900 acts (nearly one-half concerning no open-field arable); after 1845 there were about 670 enclosures by statute, only about one-quarter affecting open-field arable. The counties in which the largest amount of enclosure by act took place were, in general, those with the largest number of their acts before 1800.
The effects of enclosure have been the subject of great controversy. One point is hardly disputed: that enclosure led to greater productivity. In 1749, a tenant in Castleacre, Norfolk, paid 5s. an acre for his unenclosed land and 7s. 6d. for his enclosed land. Arthur Young, in 1770, when producing examples of the possible unprofitability of enclosure referred to increased rents of five or six shillings an acre and “in some . . . no more than eighteen pence and two shillings an acre”, but admitted that these figures were, as he thought them, small, because of faulty management.
Controversy has turned on the questions of who gained and who lost. What might be called the classical picture was of suffering and unemployment resulting from enclosures for all but the rich. Landlords, it was declared, were able to raise their rents and substantial owner occupiers to increase their profit in consequence of the creation of more easily workable holdings. It was argued, on the other hand, that these changes took place at the expense of everyone else. Small tenants were compelled to give up their farms, small proprietors to sell out in a hurry, commoners exchanged their rights for inadequate compensation or lost their use of common without any compensation at all. Those people were reduced to the condition of day labourers or driven to the horrors of Manchester and Oldham. Even the labourers found their condition made worse, for employment was reduced after enclosure; many of them were obliged to depart or live miserably on relief. A happy England of simple peasants and contented swains was replaced by a relentless, competitive, capitalistic society.
All this must be sharply modified. The most striking difficulty concerns the alleged disappearance of the small landowner. What reliable figures have been worked out by using Land Tax returns tend to show that the number of small proprietors increased after enclosure. This in itself need not cause much surprise since an enclosure did not directly eliminate small owners and might add to their number by creating holdings in compensation for extinguished rights of common. What is more remarkable is that small proprietors did not retreat soon after enclosure. For it can plausibly be argued that enclosures ought seriously to have weakened small owners. They were vulnerable to the large capital costs of enclosure; they could not find the useful economies of scale which rewarded those with larger exploitations; they could not compete with larger farmers once the latter were freed from the restrictions of open fields. A small owner might not be able to divide his holding into a sufficient number of fields to run an effective rotation on adequately stocked land divided into conveniently sized fields. A large sheep flock switched from one part of an arable holding to another is a much more efficient ferilizing instrument than the small flock which is all that a small owner could maintain. On the other hand, one would not expect enclosure which led to conversion to pasture to weaken smaller tenants and owners; small pasture exploitations were more likely to be viable than small arable holdings.
It has been suggested that the effect of enclosure in weakening the competitive position of the small landowner showed itself only when the agricultural prosperity of the late eighteenth century and the Napoleonic War was interrupted by the depression of the 1820’s. Dr. Hoskins has shown that the number of small landowners in Wigston Magna, Leicestershire (enclosure act in 1764), declined in the early nineteenth century. He suggests that this was a result of these landowners being unable any longer to pay the interest on debts incurred to meet the expense of the enclosure, but he provides no evidence to support this hypothesis. It does not fit Dr. Thirsk’s figures for Leicestershire in general which show “few signs of a decline in the number of small owners in the years up to 1832”. Mr. Davies shows for Cheshire, Derbyshire, Leicestershire, Lindsey, Northamptonshire, Nottinghamshire and Warwickshire that there were about as many, or more, small landownersin 1832 compared with 1780 in the numerous parishes he studied. Mr. Chambers has confirmed Mr. Davies’ findings with further evidence from Lindsey, Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire. It may be that the situation might prove to be different in light soil arable areas, such as those in East Anglia. Indeed, in Northamptonshire, Mr. Davies’ figures show a decline between 1780 and 1832 of owners paying from 4s. to £4 in land tax – owners, that is, of very approximately five to eighty acres or so. In arable areas with light soil, the competitive advantage of large holdings was certainly greater than on heavier soils.
Less is known about the fate of tenant farmers. Certainly enclosure led to increased rent, but also to increased production. But the sort of tenant who could pay the highest rent in the long run was generally a tenant with substantial capital anxious to hold a relatively large enclosed farm, who could have been disinclined to invest in a scattered pre-enclosure farm. It may be that enclosure was often followed by the consolidation by landlords of relatively small farms into larger holdings and consequently by the forcing out of smaller tenants. Mr. Chambers’ figures for sixty-five villages in the Bassetlaw division of Nottinghamshire provide some confirmation. They show a decline of 19.5 per cent between 1790 and 1832 in tenants holding farms paying between £1 and £5 in land tax, very roughly of 15 to 100 acres or so. These were tenant farmers with more than a cottage attached to a small parcel of land but with less than a substantial farm. In seven Derbyshire villages, Mr. Chambers found a decline in tenants in the same category within the first five years after an enclosure. Mr. Kerridge provides further evidence from an area of Wiltshire of relatively poor soil. It is probable that on the light arable lands of East Anglia the decline was more marked.
It is generally agreed that one class of villagers suffered: those cottagers who had acquired the use of common land without having any legal title to it. Their shadowy claims were often wholly disregarded; they then received no compensation at all and must have been reduced to the status of pure labourers. On the other hand, cottagers with valid legal rights to use of common were allotted land in compensation after enclosure. Sometimes, it is true, allotments were made for common use by the poor, but this was not the rule. Many of the poorer villagers suffered as a result of losing access to the fuel which could formerly be collected on commons and wastes.
The question of the effect on labourers of enclosure turns on the question of how far enclosure affected demand for their work. There is no reason to suppose that enclosure for arable purposes led to less labour being required on the land enclosed and, of course, enclosure from common or waste for arable greatly increased the demand for labour. On the other hand, enclosures of arable lands for conversion to pasture – frequent in the Midlands – must have led to some falling off in the need for hired workmen. Though, on the other hand, where convertible husbandry was adopted this need not be so. There is no evidence at all that enclosure led to depopulation of the countryside. On the contrary, the population of agricultural villages in general increased. For Nottinghamshire, Mr. Chambers has said that the population of agricultural villages that had been enclosed before 1800 rose faster than many other agricultural villages. The factor dominating the situation of the agricultural labourer at the end of the eighteenth century was the rise in population of that time. This created unemployment and underemployment and a substantial rise in poor rates – these cannot be attributed to enclosure. These effects of overpopulation were made worse by post-war depression, to which rather than to enclosure, many of the sufferings of smallholders and labourers in the early nineteenth century must be attributed.
Conclusion. It is clear that much more work must be done on the consequences of enclosure as well as on its causes. For the moment, it can be accepted that the chief motive for enclosure was a desire to increase the productivity of land stimulated largely by rising prices. There is no doubt that enclosure made the rich richer. It is not quite so clear that it necessarily made the poor poorer, even in the short run. In the long run higher agricultural production was good for everyone.
Select bibliography
The study of eighteenth century enclosures was firmly established at the beginning of the century. G. Slater: English peasantry and the enclosure of common fields (1907); A.H. Johnson: Disappearance of the small landowner (1909); E.C.K. Gonner: Common Land and Enclosure 1912); W.H. Curtler: The enclosure and redistribution of our land (1920) are important. Professor Gonner’s book may still be regarded as the standard work. It is a work of high scholarship but remarkably dull. Indeed, none of these works had anything like the effect of J.L. and B. Hammond: The village labourer (1911). This is a brilliant piece of propaganda. It was written at a time when a group of scholars existed who were anxious to show that at some time there existed a happy, socially coherent England which was disrupted by selfish capitalists. These capitalists may have carried out their devastations after the Reformation, or, as the Hammonds movingly argued, in the eighteenth century. The elegance of the eighteenth century landlord was built on the ruin of a sturdy peasantry and the starvation of helpless labourers. The village labourer is an explosive book which must be handled with great care.
The work of W.E. Tate is not, by contrast, likely to arouse emotion; but its extent and thoroughness give it the right to be named first among later contributions. In particular his Parliamentary land enclosures in the county of Nottingham (Thoroton Society, Record Series V, 1935) and his articles on Oxfordshire enclosure commissioners in the Journal of Modern History, 1951, and on The cost of parliamentary enclosure in England, in the Economic History Review for 1952 are important. Some of Mr. Tate’s other writings, which include hand-lists of enclosure acts for many counties are listed in W.H. Chaloner: Recent work on enclosure, the open fields and related topics in the Agricultural History Review for 1954. This contains a valuable list of references.
On the causes of enclosure. T.S. Ashton has emphasized the importance of interest rates; his Economic history of England, the 18th century (1955) should be consulted.
M.W. Beresford has a useful article on Commissioners of enclosure in the Economic History Review for 1946.
Recent work has had most effect on ideas about the consequences of enclosure. E. Davies: The small landowner, 1780-1832 in the Economic History Review for 1927, and three studies by J.D. Chambers: Enclosure and the small landowner; Economic History Review 1940; Enclosure and labour supply in the industrial revolution in the Economic History Review for 1953; and The Vale Of Trent 1670-1800 (Economic History Review Supplements 3) are all important. His Nottinghamshire in the Eighteenth Century (1932) contains two valuable chapters on enclosure.
W.G. Hoskins’ book called The Midland Peasant concerns Wigston Magna in Leicestershire and includes an interesting account of the enclosure there.
Two excellent contributions to the Victoria County History should be mentioned: Joan Thirsk on Agrarian History, 1540-1950 in V.C.H. Leicestershire, Vol. II (1954), and E. Kerridge on Agriculture, 1500-1793 in V.C.H. Wiltshire, Vol. IV (1959).
More precise and very helpful statistics on the consequences of enclosure in Leicestershire are provided by H.G. Hunt in an article entitled Aspects de la revolution agraire en Angleterre au XVIIIe siecle in Annales (1956).
