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
(1) That the Enclosure of tilled land in Cornwall had been proceeding
rapidly up to 1600 and was then nearly complete;
(2) That previous to enclosure the system of cultivation, whether it
most resembled the English common field system or Scotch run-rig, had
for one of its features the intermixture of holdings; and for another
some elements of collective ownership or management entitling it to the
name “Commons”;
(3) That Carew’s conception of a manorial tenant is not that of a
freeholder, nor of a copyholder, but that of a leaseholder, whose term
expires, the lord of the manor reaping the fruit, on the expiration of
the lease, of any improvements the tenant may have made. He further
on explains that the system of leases for three lives was practically
universal in Cornwall, not in the modern form in which any three lives
may be named in the lease, but depending for its continuance on the
lives of the lessee, his widow and his son. It is obvious that this
condition of land tenure would be more favourable to early enclosure
than copyhold.
Another passage in Carew bears witness to the practical completion
of enclosure. Writing of the legal conditions under which the miners
pursued their enterprise, he says: “Their workes, both streame and
Load, lie either in severall or in waistrell,” that is, either in
enclosed land under separate exclusive ownership and occupation, or in
waste. One cannot draw the inference that there was absolutely no open
field land; but merely that its extent was in comparison so small as
to appear negligible in this connection to Carew.
Though it is not improbable that the enclosure of Cornwall took place
at an earlier stage of agricultural evolution than that of Devonshire,
it is somewhat improbable that it took place at an earlier date. It
is a reasonable inference from the evidence that by the end of the
sixteenth century the enclosure of Devon and Cornwall was practically
complete. When it began is a different question.
The charter of John by which all Devonshire except Dartmoor and Exmoor
was deforested, expressly forbids the making of hedges on those two
forests. This is itself some evidence that enclosure of some sort,
probably enclosure of waste, for the purpose of cultivation, was going
on actively in the beginning of the thirteenth century.
Attention must here be drawn to an ancient custom in Devon and Cornwall
surviving to the end of the eighteenth century. William Marshall gives
an account of it, and shows its probable importance in determining the
character of enclosure and of all the attendant circumstances in Devon
and Cornwall.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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