The English Peasantry and the Enclosure of Common FieldsSlater, Gilbert
History
The English Peasantry and the Enclosure of Common Fields
Slater, Gilbert
Agriculture -- England; Inclosures; Peasants -- England; Village communities -- Great Britain
Oxfordshire may be termed a sister county to Buckinghamshire; but by
far the greater part of the county lies north-west of the Chiltern
Hills, which occupy the south east extremity. We find, as we should
expect, that the history of the enclosure of Oxfordshire resembles that
of Bedfordshire and of North-West Buckinghamshire; 45·6 per cent. of
the area of Oxfordshire underwent Parliamentary enclosure compared with
46·0 per cent. of Bedfordshire and 34·2 per cent. of Bucks; in Oxford
about 62 per cent. of the total Parliamentary enclosure belonged to the
eighteenth century, in Bedford 54 per cent., in Buckinghamshire 66 per
cent. Oxford, however, is remarkable for the extent of the enclosure
(eighteen Acts enclosing 23,578 acres) under the General Enclosure Act
of 1845.
Richard Davis, the Board of Agriculture reporter, while he gives a very
full statement of the methods of cultivating the common fields of the
county, makes no statement with regard to their extent.
As in Buckinghamshire, partial enclosure, particularly in the immediate
neighbourhood of the villages, had taken place before the eighteenth
century. Celia Fiennes found “Oxford Environ’d round with woods
and Enclosure, yet not so neare as to annoy the town which stands
pleasant and Compact,” and from the Malvern Hills she says “Oxford,
Gloucestershire, &c. appears in plaines, enclosures, woods and rivers
and many great hills” (p. 33). By “plaines” stretches of common fields
are to be understood.
Leland found no enclosure in Oxfordshire in any part he visited.
THE NORTH OF ENGLAND.
LINCOLN.
Lincoln and the East Riding of Yorkshire have a similar enclosure
history. Each was largely enclosed by Acts of Parliament; in each
nearly four-fifths of the Parliamentary enclosure was effected in
the eighteenth century; in each enclosure was not marked either by a
general conversion of arable into pasture, as in Leicestershire, or by
a general conversion of pasture into arable, as in Norfolk; in both a
considerable proportion of the common-field land before enclosure was
worked on the two-field system. As much as 40·1 per cent. of the East
Riding of Yorkshire is covered by the Acts for enclosing common-field
parishes, and 29·3 per cent. of Lincolnshire; but for the latter
county there are also Acts for enclosing great extents of commonable
marshes; and including these and other Acts for enclosing commons and
wastes, about 35 per cent. of Lincolnshire has undergone Parliamentary
enclosure.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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