The history of the enclosure of Durham is told by the Board of Agriculture reporter in a sentence: “In this county the lands, or common fields of townships, were for the most part inclosed soon after the Restoration.... The common fields are few in number and of small extent” (Joseph Granger, “Agriculture of Durham,” p. 43). All other evidence simply confirms this statement. The Enclosure Acts for enclosing common fields are but five in number, and the most extensive of them covers only 800 acres, of which part only is common field. (The Enclosure Acts of the other type are numerous in comparison and extensive in scope, one covering 10,000, one 20,000, one 25,000 and one 28,000 acres). The statement, too, is confirmed by two contemporary authors, previously quoted, and by the records of Leland and Celia Fiennes. Celia Fiennes says that from Newcastle to Durham “the whole county looks like a fruitful woody place” (p. 178), and she compares it to the neighbourhood of Blackheath (p. 179), from which we must infer some open common, but all the cultivated land in a state of enclosure. Leland traversed the whole county but found no enclosure. Nor does he describe any part of the county as “champaine” but merely as good corn, or grass, or moor, or mountain. It is, I think, safe to conclude that there were no extensive stretches of common-field arable within view; but also, one is inclined to infer that enclosure had not yet begun. Further, there is an illuminating note from Arthur Young (1768): “Farms become large on entering Northumberland, after the small ones of Yorkshire and Durham” (“Northern Tour,” Vol. III., p. 61). It has to be borne in mind that the disorder on the Border checked the development of agriculture till the accession of James I., probably at least as far south as the North Riding of Yorkshire. With the gradual increase of population, and improvement of roads, cultivation spread over the wastes; first in Yorkshire, then in Durham, then in Northumberland. At first the agent was a peasant, carving a small farm for his own maintenance, later a landlord or farmer able to employ labourers and work a large farm. That the enclosure of Northumberland took place later than that of Durham, and was the work of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, is on _a priori_ grounds probable, and is further indicated by the fact that Celia Fiennes makes no mention of enclosure in her account of her ride from the Scottish border into Durham. A further reference to the enclosure of Northumberland will be made when we come to Cumberland. THE SOUTH-EAST OF ENGLAND. KENT.