“Thus,” says Isaac Leatham, “an open field is enjoyed in as beneficial a manner as if it were enclosed ... two persons are fully sufficient to attend the sheep-stock, instead of many ... the precarious rearing of fences is avoided, and the immense expense of continually repairing them saved.”[35] [35] Isaac Leatham, “East Riding,” p. 46. I take it that Isaac Leatham, who, by the way, was a strong advocate of enclosure in general, meant that the open field was, _on the whole_, enjoyed in as beneficial a manner as if it were enclosed, because there still remained the great disadvantage that each occupier had his lands in widely scattered strips, and had to waste much time and labour in cultivating them; cross-ploughing, which might, or might not have been desirable, was any way impossible; the village lands had to be treated as one whole, so no enterprising and original man was able to experiment with new ideas, nor could any further improvement be adopted without the consent of a three-fourths majority; and, perhaps, the keeping of sheep in a common flock put obstacles in the way of improving the breed. I may add that an Act for the enclosure of Hunmanby was passed in the year 1800, so that Isaac Leatham’s course was abandoned just seven years after he wrote about it so triumphantly. The Act of 1773, therefore, was, perhaps, not a brilliant success in Hunmanby; perhaps, on the other hand, improved agriculture excited an appetite for further improvement, and one novelty having been accepted, the stiff conservatism which might have postponed enclosure, was broken down. But, as a glance at the map for the East Riding will show, the whole countryside was subject to a rage for enclosure, and the famine prices for grain of 1796, doomed to recur again in 1800–1, in 1812, and 1817, were acting as a powerful solvent to all old agricultural customs. It is quite obvious that the Act of 1773 was an endeavour to select out of the customs and traditions prevailing in different villages those which were most in harmony with advanced agriculture, to further amend these, and to make them universal. So far as I know, Hunmanby is the only place where it has been recorded as having been put into execution, and it has been doubted whether it was not practically a dead letter. My own impression is that the distribution of the “sicks” at Laxton was consciously arranged in accordance with the provisions of the Act, that originally the method of choosing the fallow crops in Castor and Ailesworth was an application of it, and also the six years’ course used for part of the fields of Barrowden and Luffenham, but I can bring no evidence to support this view. If, however, it is correct, the Act may have been of considerable use to many other parishes also by clearly defining methods of procedure which otherwise would be determined by custom only. CHAPTER X. ENCLOSURE AND DEPOPULATION.