In 1795 the chief landowners took steps to obtain an Act for enclosing all four parishes. There were stronger reasons for enclosing than in the majority of the East Yorkshire and Lincolnshire parishes all around, in which Parliamentary enclosure was being pushed furiously on, for the fens were capable of enormous improvement. But in the Isle of Axholme it was not possible for the chief landowners to overbear the opposition of the villagers. One peculiar feature of the locality was that every cottage had a common right, and there were no rights attached to land apart from cottages. This fact, and the peculiarly wide distribution of property, caused the decision to rest with the peasantry. They raised no objection to the division and drainage of the marshes, perceiving that their allotments would be far more valuable after drainage than their common rights before; so this part of the scheme was generally agreed to. But on the question of the enclosure of the arable fields they were not complacent. They saw that the expense of hedging a small allotment would be heavy, and the injury done by the hedge to a small plot, of say 1 or 2 acres, by shading the land and sheltering it from the wind would more than counterbalance the advantage of having that holding in one piece instead of in two or three, to say nothing of the loss of the space given up to hedges. They also probably feared that the arable land, if enclosed, would largely be laid down to grass, and so the benefit of an increased demand for labour and higher wages promised by the enclosure of the marshes would be lost, at least in some degree, through the enclosure of the fields. Accordingly the necessary consent of a “three-fourths majority in number and value” of the owners was not obtained, and the proposal to enclose was defeated. It would appear that all the educated, intelligent, and influential people did their best to overcome this “ignorant prejudice.” But on the other hand there were the votes of all those cottagers who did not as yet possess strips in the common fields, but who hoped to be able to purchase them. They saw that while thousands of acres of land lay immediately round the villages in acre, half-acre, and rood strips, there was a chance of buying one, and so taking the first upward step from the rank of the landless labourer. On enclosure those strips would give place to closes of at least several acres each, and the closes would be quite out of their reach. Blind, obstinate, wilful, and prejudiced as the villagers seemed to their betters, the event shows that they were entirely accurate in their view of the situation.