“A Steward should not forget to make the best Enquiry into the disposition of any of the Freeholders within or near any of his Lord’s Manors, to sell their Lands, that he may use his best Endeavours to purchase them at as reasonable a price as may be for his Lord’s Advantage and Convenience ... especially in such Manors where improvements are to be made by inclosing Commons and Common Fields; which (as every one, who is acquainted with the late Improvements in Agriculture must know) is not a little advantageous to the Nation in general, as well as highly profitable to the Undertaker. If the Freeholders cannot _all_ be perswaded to sell, yet at least an Agreement for Inclosing should be pushed forward, by the Steward, and a scheme laid, wherein it may appear that an exact and proportional share will be allotted to every proprietor; perswading them first, if possible, to sign a Form of Agreement, and then to chuse Commissioners on both sides.... If the Steward be a Man of good sense, he will find a necessity of making use of it all, in rooting out _superstition_ from amongst them, as what is so great a hindrance to all _noble_ Improvements.” The superstition referred to, is that enclosed land is cursed, and doomed in three generations to pass out of the hands of the descendants of the proprietor who enclosed it. That in the early seventeenth century much of the enclosure was carried out by the power of the lord of the manor is plain from the scraps of information given by John Moore. Thus he tells us that Ashby Magna was enclosed in 1606, and that the lord gave most of his tenants leases for three lives and twenty-one years after (“Scripture Word Against Inclosures,” p. 9), that being the reason why depopulation had not resulted up to 1656; that in both Misterton and Poultney no house at all was left except the minister’s, so that these two manors must have been the property of absentee landlords. But Catthorpe had no lord of the manor, it consisted of 580 acres divided among eight freeholders and five or six holders of “ancient cottages” who were also Freeholders (Joseph Lee, p. 5). The enclosure was carried out by the agreement of all the owners, except one who objected on conscientious grounds. The way in which these agreements to enclose were effected in parishes where property was divided is thus described by Moore:--“In common fields they live like loving neighbours together for the most part, till the _Spirit of Inclosure_ enter into some rich Churles heart, who doe not only pry out but feign occasions to goe to law with their neighbours, and no reconcilement be made till they consent to Inclosure. So this Inclosure makes thieves, and then they cry out of thieves. Because they sold the righteous for silver, and the poor for a pair of shoes. If it had not been for two or three righteous in many Townes of these Inland Counties, what desolation had there been made ere this time?” (Scripture Word, p. 12). CAMBRIDGE AND HUNTINGDON.