[177] See _England in the Fifteenth Century_, p. 105: 'The undrained neglected soil, the shallow stagnant waters which lay on the surface of the ground, the unhealthy homes of all classes, insufficient and unwholesome food, the abundance of stale fish eaten, and the scanty supply of vegetables predisposed rural and town population to disease.' [178] Cunningham, _Industry and Commerce_, i. 448. [179] McCulloch, _Commercial Dictionary_ (1852), p. 412. In 1449 Parliament had decided that all foreign merchants importing corn should spend the money so obtained on English goods to prevent it leaving the country.--McPherson, _Annals of Commerce_, i. 655. [180] Cunningham, _Industry and Commerce_, i. 191. [181] Much of the weaving, however, was done in rural districts. [182] See 3 Edw. IV, c. 5; _Rot. Parl._ v. 105; 22 Edw. IV, c. 1. [183] Cunningham, _op. cit._ i. 456. CHAPTER VII ENCLOSURE We have now reached a time when the enclosure question was becoming of paramount importance,[184] and began to cause constant anxiety to legislators, while the writers of the day are full of it. Enclosure was of four kinds: 1. Enclosing the common arable fields for grazing, generally in large tracts. 2. Enclosing the same by dividing them into smaller fields, generally of arable. 3. Enclosing the common pasture, for grazing or tillage. 4. Enclosing the common meadows or mowing grounds. It is the first mainly, and to a less degree the third of these, which were so frequent a source of complaint in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries; for the first, besides displacing the small holder, threw out of employment a large number of people who had hitherto gained their livelihood by the various work connected with tillage, and the third deprived a large number of their common rights.