ENCLOSURE—THE SMALL OWNER ppsx

ENCLOSURE—THE SMALL OWNER The war period was one of great activity in enclosure; from 1798 to 1810 there were 956 Bills; from 1811-20, 771.[562] It must be remembered, however, that the

ENCLOSURE—THE SMALL OWNER

The war period was one of great activity in enclosure; from 1798 to 1810 there were

956 Bills; from 1811-20, 771.[562]

It must be remembered, however, that the number of Acts is not a conclusive test of

the amount of enclosure, as there was a large amount that was non-parliamentary: by

the principal landlord, and by freeholders who agreed to amicable changes and

transfer, as at Pickering, in Yorkshire.[563] Roughly speaking, about one-third of the

Acts were for enclosing commonable waste, the rest for enclosing open and

commonable fields and lands.[564] Owing to the expense an Act was only obtained in

the last resource It was also because of the expense[565] that many landlords desirous

to enclose were unable to do so, and therefore devoted their attention to the

improvement of the common fields That agriculture benefited by enclosure there is

no possible doubt, but it was attended with great hardships The landowner generally

gained, for his rents increased largely In twenty-three parishes of Lincolnshire, for

instance, his rents doubled on enclosure But the expenses were so heavy that his gain

was often very small, and sometimes he was a loser by the process As for the farmers,

the poorer ones suffered, for more capital was needed for enclosed lands, and the

process generally was so slow, taking from two to six years before the final award was

given, that many farmers were thrown out in the management of their farms, for they

did not know where their future lands would be allotted That the poor suffered greatly

is indubitable: 'By nineteen Enclosure Acts out of twenty the poor are injured, in some

cases grossly injured,' wrote Young in 1801.[566] In the Acts it was endeavoured to

treat them fairly,[567] and allotments were made to them, or money paid on enclosure

in lieu of their rights of common, or small plots of land; but the expense of enclosing

small allotments was proportionately very great, generally too great, and they had to

be sold, while the sums of money were often spent in the alehouse The results of

sixty-eight Acts were investigated in the eastern counties, with the result that in all but

fifteen the poor were injured It was generally found that they had lost their cows

Its effect on the smallholder is well described by Davis in his Report on

Wilts.[568] There, before enclosure, the tenants usually occupied yard-lands consisting

of a homestead, 2 acres of meadow, 18 acres of arable, generally in eighteen or twenty

strips, with a right on the common meadows, common fields and downs for 40 sheep,

and as many cattle as the tenant could winter with the fodder he grew The 40 sheep

were kept by a common shepherd with the common herd, were taken every day to the

downs and brought back every night to be folded on the arable fields, the rule being to

fold 1,000 sheep on a 'tenantry' acre (three-quarters of a statute acre) every

night.[569] In breeding sheep regard was had to 'foldingquality,' i.e the propensity to

drop manure only after being folded at night, as much as to quality and quantity of

wool and meat On enclosure the common flock was broken up The small farmer had

no longer any common to turn his horses on The down on which he fed his sheep was

largely curtailed, the common shepherd was abolished, and the farmer had too few

sheep to enable him individually to employ a shepherd Therefore he had to part with

his flock Having no cow common and very little pasture land he could not keep cows

In such circumstances the small farmer, after a few years, succumbed and became a

labourer, or emigrated, or went to the towns

In a pamphlet called The Case of Labourers in Husbandry, 1795, the Rev David

Davies said, 'by enclosure an amazing number of people have been reduced from a

comfortable state of partial independence to the precarious condition of mere

hirelings, who when out of work immediately come on the parish.' It has often been

said that the poor were robbed of their share in the land by the landowners; but as a

matter of fact it was the expense of securing the compensation allowed them, much

greater in proportion on small holdings than on large, which went into the pockets of

surveyors and lawyers, that did this It was also often through the farmer that the

labourer was deprived of his land when he had retained an acre or two after enclosure

Wishing to make the labourer dependent on him, he persuaded the agent to let the

cottages with the farm, and the agent in order to avoid collecting a number of small

rents consented As soon as the farmer had the cottages he took the land from them

and added it to his own The peasant's losses engaged the serious attention of many

landlords; near Tewkesbury, in 1773, the lord of the manor on enclosure, besides

reserving 25 acres for the use of the poor, allowed land to each cottage sufficient to

keep a horse or a cow, often added a small building, and gave stocks for raising

orchards Even some of the idlest were thereby made industrious, poor rates sank to

4d in the £, though the population increased, and the labourer always had for sale

some poultry, or the produce of his cow, or some fruit.[570]

In 1800 the Board of Agriculture, composed almost entirely of landowners, noticing

that the poor of Rutland and Lincolnshire, who had land for one or two cows and

some potatoes, had not applied for poor relief, offered a gold medal for the most

satisfactory account of the best means of supporting cows on poor land, in a method

applicable to cottagers.[571] Young recommended that in the case of extensive wastes

every cottage on enclosure should be secured sufficient land on which to keep a cow,

the land to be inalienable from the cottage and the ownership vested in the parish

Lord Winchelsea[572] urged that a good garden should always go with a cottage, and

set the example himself, one which has been generally followed in England by the

greater landlords with much success As may be imagined, these schemes or others

similar to them were put into effect by the conscientious and energetic, but not by the

apathetic and careless Further, an Act was passed in the fifty-ninth year of George III,

which enabled parishes to lease or buy 20 acres of land for the employment of their

poor

In many cases, it must be allowed, the grazing of the commons was often worth very

little Let one man, it was said in 1795, put a cow on a common in spring for nothing,

and let another pay a farmer 1s 6d a week to keep a cow of equal value on enclosed

land When both are driven to market at Michaelmas the extra weight of the latter will

more than repay the cost of the keep, while her flow of milk meanwhile has been

much superior

The Committee on Waste Lands of 1795 attributed the great increase in the weight of

cattle not only to the improved methods of breeding, but to their being fed on good

enclosed lands instead of wastes and commons.[573] Even when commons were stinted

they were in general overstocked, while disease was always being spread with

enormous loss to the commoners The larger holders, too, who had common rights,

often crowded out the smaller

There were often, as we have seen, a large number of 'squatters' on commons who had

seized and occupied land without any legal title As a rule, if these people had been in

possession twenty-one years their title was respected; if not, no regard was very justly

paid to them on enclosure, and they were deprived of what they had seized

Eden wrote when enclosure was at its height; he was a competent and accurate

observer, and this is his picture of the 'commoner':[574] 'The advantages which

cottagers and poor people derive from commons and wastes are rather apparent than

real; instead of sticking regularly to labour they waste their time in picking up a few

dry sticks or in grubbing on some bleak moor Their starved pig or two, together with

a few wandering goslings, besides involving them in perpetual altercations with their

neighbours, are dearly paid for in care, time, and bought food There are thousands

and thousands of acres in the kingdom, now the sorry pastures of geese, hogs, asses,

half-grown horses, and half-starved cattle, which want but to be enclosed to be as rich

as any land now in tillage.'

Enclosure worked an important social revolution Before it the entirely landless

labourer was rare: he nearly always had some holding in the common field or a right

on the common pasture With enclosure his holding or right had generally

disappeared, and he deteriorated socially It was very unfortunate, too, that when

enclosure was most active domestic industries, such as weaving, decayed, and

deprived the labourer and his family of a badly needed addition to his scanty income

In its physical and moral effects the system of domestic manufactures was immensely

preferable to that of the crowded factory, while economically it enabled the tillers of

the soil to exist on farms which could not support them by agriculture alone

This uprooting of a great part of the agricultural population from the soil by

irresistible economic causes brought with it grave moral evils, and created divisions

and antagonisms of interest from which we are suffering to-day.[575] If some such

scheme as that of Arthur Young or Lord Winchelsea had been universally adopted,

this blot on an inevitable movement might have been removed, and a healthy rural

population planted on English soil Another result followed, the labourer no longer

boarded as a rule in his employer's house, where the farmer worked and lived with his

men; the tie of mutual interest was loosened, and he worked for this or that master

indifferently One advantage, however, arose, in that, having to find a home of his

own, he married early, but this was vitiated by his knowledge that the parish would

support his children, on which knowledge he was induced to rely

On the other hand, the farmer often rose in the social scale With the abandonment of

the handicaps and restrictions of the common-field system the efficient came more

speedily to the front It was they who had amassed capital, and capital was now

needed more than ever, so they added field to field, and consolidated holdings

The Act of 1845 did away with the necessity for private Enclosure Acts, still further

reducing the expense; and since that date there have been 80,000 or 90,000 acres of

common arable fields and meadows enclosed without parliamentary sanction, and

139,517 acres of the same have been enclosed with it,[576] besides many acres of

commons and waste

In the Report of the Committee of Enclosures of 1844,[577] there is a curious

description of the way in which common fields were sometimes allotted There were

in some open fields, lands called 'panes', containing forty or sixty different lands, and

on a certain day the best man of the parish appeared to take possession of any lot he

thought fit If his right was called in question there was a fight for it, and the survivor

took the first lot, and so they went on through the parish There was also the old 'lot

meadow' in which the owners drew lots for choice of portions On some of the grazing

lands the right of grazing sheep belonged to a man called a 'flockmaster', who during

certain months of the year had the exclusive right of turning his sheep on all the lands

of the parish

Closely connected with the subject of enclosure is that of the partial disappearance of

the small owner, both the yeoman who farmed his own little estate and the peasant

proprietor We have noticed above[578]Gregory King's statement as to the number of

small freeholders in England in 1688, no less than 160,000, or with their families

about one-seventh of the population of the country This date, that of the Revolution,

marks an epoch in their history, for from that time they began to diminish in

proportion to the population Their number in 1688 is a sufficient answer to the

exaggerated statement of contemporaries in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as

to the depopulation caused by enclosures Chamberlayne, in his State of Great Britain,

published at about the same time as Gregory King's figures, says there were more

freeholders in England than in any country of like extent in Europe: '£40 or £50 a year

is very ordinary, £100 or £200 in some counties is not rare, sometimes in Kent and in

the Weald of Sussex £500 or £600 per annum, and £3,000 or £4,000 of stock.' In the

first quarter of the eighteenth century he was a prominent figure Defoe[579] describes

the number and prosperity of the Greycoats of Kent (as they were called from their

homespun garments), 'whose interest is so considerable that whoever they vote for is

always sure to carry it.'

Why has this sturdy class so dwindled in numbers, and left England infinitely the

weaker for their decrease? The causes are several; social, economic, and political The

chief, perhaps, is the peculiar form of Government which came in with the

Revolution The landed gentry by that event became supreme, the national and local

administration was entirely in their hands, and land being the foundation of social and

political influence was eagerly sought by them where it was not already in their

hands.[580]At the same time the successful business men, whose numbers now

increased rapidly from the development of trade, bought land to 'make themselves

gentlemen' Both these classes bought out the yeomen, who do not seem to have been

very loath to part with their land The recently devised system of strict family

settlements enabled the old and the newgentlemen to keep this land in their families

The complicated title to land made its transfer difficult and costly, so that there was

little breaking up of estates to correspond with the constant buying up of small

owners To the smaller freeholder, as has been noticed, the enclosure of waste land did

much harm, for it was necessary to his holding Again, smaller arable farms did not

pay as well as large ones, so they tended to disappear The decay of home industries

was also a heavy blow to the smaller yeoman and the peasant proprietor

Under this combination of circumstances many of the yeomen left the land Yet

though Young, less than a century after King and Davenant, said that the small

freeholder had practically disappeared, there were at the end of the eighteenth century

many left all over England, who however largely disappeared during the war and in

the bad times after the war.[581] But a contrary tendency was at work which helped to

replenish the class The desire of the Englishman for land is not confined to the

wealthy classes At the end of the eighteenth century men who had made small

fortunes in trade were buying small properties and taking the place of the

yeomen.[582] In the great French War of 1793-1815, many yeomen, attracted by the

high prices of land, sold their properties, but at the same time many farmers, attracted

by the high prices of produce, which had often enriched them, bought land.[583] During

the 'good times' of 1853-75 many small holders, like those of Axholme, noticed in

the Report of the Agricultural Commission of 1893, bought land

A new class of small owners also has sprung up, who, dwelling in or near towns and

railway stations, have bought small freeholds The return of the owners of land of

1872-6 gave the following numbers of those owning land in England and Wales[584]:

Total number of owners of: Number Acreage

less than one acre 703,289 151,171

1 acre and under 10 121,983 478,679

10 " 50 72,640 1,750,079

50 " 100 25,839 1,791,605

100 " 500 32,317 6,827,346

The great majority of the first class here enumerated, those owning less than one acre,

do not concern us, as they were evidently merely houses and gardens not of an

agricultural character, but a large number of the second class and most of the other

three must have been agricultural, though unfortunately no distinction is made It will

be seen, therefore, that there were a considerable number of small owners in England

in 1872, and their numbers have probably increased since Many of them, however,

are of the new class mentioned above, and there appears to be no doubt that the

number of the peasant proprietors and of the yeomen of the old sort has much

diminished, especially in proportion to the growth of population

FOOTNOTES: