On the other hand, the fact that he can give seventeenth-century dates for the enclosure of three parishes suggests that probably a very large proportion of his “old enclosure parishes” and a fair proportion of his enclosed parishes were enclosed in the seventeenth century.[93] [93] William Pitt, who made a second survey of the agriculture of Leicestershire for the Board, published in 1809, gives an interesting account of the enclosure of the vale of Belvoir. This, the north-eastern corner of Leicestershire, was enclosed between 1760 and 1800; and as a result a complete change in the cultivation took place; the rich land in the valleys, which had been arable common fields, was laid down in grass, and the tenants forbidden under heavy penalties to plough it; while the summits of the hills and edges of the vales, which had been sheep-runs, were converted into arable land. Pursuing the inquiry backwards, we find our next source of information in Celia Fiennes, a lady of Newtontony, who made a series of rides in the last few years of the seventeenth century. Newtontony is three miles east of Amesbury, amid the open chalk hills, or, as she describes it, in the midst of “a fine open champion country”, and she usually describes the aspect of the country she passes through. She travelled westwards to Land’s End, eastwards to Kent, northwards to the Border, and she gives some information with regard to the state of enclosure of most of the English counties. She went through both Bedfordshire and Northamptonshire, but with regard to those two counties gives no information as to their condition of enclosure. As she is more apt to notice the presence than the absence of hedges, this, so far as it goes, confirms our conclusions with regard to Bedfordshire; and, with regard to Northamptonshire, this small piece of negative evidence tends to the conclusion that that county also was almost entirely open in the beginning of the eighteenth century. “Leicestershire,” she says, “is a very Rich Country--Red land, good corn of all sorts and grass, _both fields and inclosures_. You see a great way upon their hills the bottoms full of Enclosures, woods, and different sorts of manureing and herbage” (p. 133). It is evident that enclosure had considerably advanced; but it must be noted that “fields” with Celia Fiennes means common fields. It is further to be noted that her description of the enclosures creeping up the hills implies a process of gradual enclosure. Of the neighbourhood of Bosworth (in the west of Leicestershire) she says, “this is a great flatt full of good Enclosures.” The western side of Leicestershire was therefore mainly enclosed before 1700, while the north-east was all open till 1760.