For centuries land has been the most profitable asset for humankind.
It would bring wealth, cause wars, encourage progress and establish titles and statuses.
Millions throughout history have died trying to protect or capture lands and it was in
the center of many significant societal conflicts.
The usage and division of lands within a country would often cause such societal conflicts
and political upheavals.
Enclosure in England was such a process and in today’s video, we are going to talk about
how Enclosure transformed land ownership in England, caused hardships on the poor and
conflict among various societal groups.
As a result, currently, nearly half of England’s lands are owned by 0.06% of the population,
the most wealthy landowners.
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So, what is Enclosure?
The enclosure was a process of enclosing or establishing private ownership over communal
lands in England, which went on for some 6 centuries between the 13th and 19th centuries.
The enclosures had been carried out by force or agreement, based on the decisions of the
government and the parliament or in spite of the crown’s opposition against this process.
But in essence, it was a process of lords of manors, big landlords, gentry, and other
powerful actors taking communal lands, which had been used for centuries by the English
peasantry for free, into their private ownership.
We should first look at how the lands were divided in England prior to the start of Enclosure.
The so-called open field system was used, diving the land among the population of the
manor, county, town, or village.
Each landholder was in possession of a number of such land strips.
Most often the land strips held by a single person would be miles apart from each other
as landholders would each get their shares of land of various quality.
Land strips were divided by narrow strips of unused lands between the peasants.
The private use of the land was restricted for the periods of cropping and gathering
harvest, which would be used by the person or family, who had worked on this land.
In other periods it was common grazing land for the village flocks.
There was also common land, which was not used for agriculture, but rather as a common
pasture.
The largest landowner in any given land unit would be the Lord of the Manor, who in one
sense of the word owned an estate and land adjacent to it as its primary benefactor,
but peasants could still use this land to grow crops or graze cattle.
The open-field system of farming described above dominated the flatter more arable central
counties of England throughout the later medieval and into the modern period.
It is a classic common property system that existed in many countries of the world deep
into the 20th century.
It had its own advantage for the peasants, as no matter how small the land used by the
peasants would be, the harvest and profits from it allowed them to survive.
But since the land was in common usage, it was very difficult for individuals to change
their style of farming and to apply new techniques to improve the quality of crops and increase
harvest, since a compromise between a large group of stakeholders on what probably looked
like a risky affair would be difficult to achieve.
A peasant might have decided to grow a different crop and start tillage at a different time,
but then they would risk the crop being destroyed by grazing cattle and lose any income.
It is necessary to note that the communal lands had different types of management.
Some had been shrewdly managed by the community and different techniques were applied to increase
income, while other common lands were so badly managed that they turned into waste.
So how did the Enclosure movement start?
What were the underlying political and economic reasons?
The Statute of Merton passed by the English parliament in 1235 was the first document
touching upon this issue.
It allowed large landowners and manorial lords to enclose lands adjacent to their manors
and fence them for their exclusive use.
It was done in a piece-meal fashion and was not a widespread phenomenon at the time.
It is necessary to view the Statute’s legitimization of enclosures from the perspective of the
struggle between the monarch and the lords, as the Statute increased the authority of
the nobility vis-a-vis the crown.
The most widely accepted explanation behind Enclosure is the price of wool.
The enclosure process had become more widespread by the 15th-16th century in England, because
in this period the price of wool was higher than that of grain and was rising more rapidly.
Large and powerful landowners started enclosing more lands and making it their private property
and then turning the arable lands to pasture for sheep in search of higher profits.
Historian Harriett Bradley has opposed this explanation by stating that the underlying
reasons for enclosure had been in place as early as the 13th century, when the process
actually started.
Moreover, the figures of the 15th-16th century demonstrate that the price of wool fell during
the 15th century and its increase rate in the 16th century had been lower than that
of wheat.
The average price for the decade 1451–1460 was just about one-half of the average price
for the period 1261–1400.
According to Bradley, the process of transformation of arable lands into pastures started earlier
due to the lack of labour force caused by the Black Death, since tillage required more
labour.
The loss of labour force was also linked to the process of peasants vacating the lands
they worked on due to a constantly decreasing productivity of the land connected to the
pressure on the soil as a result of uninterrupted tillage.
Peasants lacked fertilizers to ensure nutrition necessary for continuous tillage of lands.
Hence, the harvest gradually decreased to the level, which made it impossible for peasants
to sustain themselves and their families.
Bradley argues that the process of substituting cultivated lands with pasture had not been
specific to any particular era, as it had been just a necessary step to take for farmers
to allow the soil to recover.
Pastures attracted cattle, which provided manure for faster recovery of the soil.
Thus, the enclosure was not dictated by market preference to sheep farming in comparison
with cultivation, but by gradual loss of productivity of common field land as a result of uninterrupted
cultivation, along with the desire of large landowners to own more land.
As the Enclosure movement was broadening in England, the parliament started paying more
attention to the situation.
Often Enclosure would be accompanied by the eviction of peasants from their homes situated
on enclosed lands.
Moreover, peasants would sometimes abandon their homes and villages due to decreased
productivity of lands they cultivated, and the homelessness issue was creating significant
problems for Tudor England.
The crown was concerned that more homeless people would lead to crime and an increase
of rebellious sentiments.
Thus, in 1489 the parliament adopted a statute aiming to limit the problems caused by Enclosure.
The statute prohibited the occupation of more than one farm by the same person.
Moreover, the destruction of homes in the enclosed lands would cause a penalty of half
of the profits from those lands being confiscated by the Crown, until houses would be rebuilt.
In 1514 conversion of arable lands to pasture became an offence, as half of the profits
from them would be confiscated by the state.
In 1517 a commission was ordered to inquire into the destruction of houses since 1488
and the conversion of arable lands to pasture.
In 1533 a law proclaiming possession of more than two farms by the same person an offence
was adopted.
It is evident that the Crown wanted to deal with the problem and limit Enclosure, but
it did not want to exacerbate its relations with the landowners and these half-hearted
attempts could not prevent it from spreading.
As if recognizing the futility of struggle against the enclosing landowners, in 1597
the parliament allowed conversion of arable lands to pasture on condition that another
strip of land would be cultivated.
The adoption of anti-enclosure legislation was going simultaneously with the process
of prominent English intellectuals speaking up against it.
Thomas More complained of the enclosure, conversion of cultivated lands to pasture, destruction
of houses in his Utopia: “The increase of pasture by which your sheep, which are naturally
mild, and easily kept in order, may be said now to devour men and unpeople, not only villages,
but towns; for wherever it is found that the sheep of any soil yield a softer and richer
wool than ordinary, there the nobility and gentry, and even those holy men, the abbots!
not contented with the old rents which their farms yielded, nor thinking it enough that
they, living at their ease, do no good to the public, resolve to do it hurt instead
of good.
They stop the course of agriculture, destroying houses and towns, reserving only the churches,
and enclose grounds that they may lodge their sheep in them” .
Other influential Englishmen of their time like lord chancellors Francis Bacon and Thomas
Wolsey, scholar William Tyndale had spoken out against Enclosure.
The process, which caused so much opposition from the Crown to the English peasantry was
inevitably going to cause revolts.
The first notable rebellion against Enclosure took place in Norfolk.
In July 1549, a group of rebels started destroying fences of enclosed lands in Norfolk.
One of their targets was a large landowner Robert Kett, but in an interesting turn of
events, he joined and became the leader of the rebels after hearing out their grievances.
On August 1, some 16 thousand men led by Kett captured Norwich, but less than a month later
the royal army was able to defeat the rebels and end the uprising, which would be called
the Kett’s Rebellion.
The Midland Riot started in April 1607 in Northamptonshire and soon spread to Warwickshire
and Leicestershire.
John Reynolds, known as Captain Pouch for carrying a pouch, the contents of which were
supposedly going to protect the rebels, was the leader of the rebellion.
He led thousands of people in destroying enclosed lands and protesting Enclosure, after promising
the people that he was acting under the authority of the King.
Edward Montagu, who had earlier spoken against enclosure in the Parliament, was ordered by
the King to suppress the riot, but local armed groups refused to act against the people.
Only after the attack of the local gentry and forces loyal to it, the Midland Riot was
suppressed.
While, the anti-Enclosure rebellions were not directed against the crown and might have
implicitly hoped for royal support, since the anti-Enclosure acts adopted by the Parliament
might have been an indication of the royal opposition against Enclosure, in the end the
Crown and its government sided with the landlords against the people and played the key role
in their suppression.
Not all anti-Enclosure protests were violent.
In 1649 the movement of diggers emerged under the leadership of Gerrard Winstanley, when
they started to cultivate land on St. George’s Hill in Surrey and declared it a free Commonwealth.
Their manifesto stated: "Take note that England is not a Free people, till the Poor that have
no Land, have a free allowance to dig and labour the Commons, and so live as Comfortably
as the Landlords that live in their Inclosures."
Diggers did not aim to stop Enclosures, they did not destroy fences and even acknowledged
the economic advantages of enclosing, while wishing for its benefits to be extended to
the poor as well.
It is ironic that they enclosed land themselves, albeit for the common use of the poor.
The final wave of enclosures in England took place between 1750 and 1850 and is called
the Parliamentary Enclosure.
It ordered enclosure of much of the remaining common lands and with it strips of lands in
the common usage were consolidated into larger and more cohesive land units.
Unlike the previous enclosures, this time other strips of land were offered to commoners
as their private holdings in compensation, but most of the time they were of poorer quality
and smaller in size.
The parliament also legalized the enclosure of common wastes - mostly unused lands, which
were not fit for cultivation or grazing.
Between 1760 and 1870 approximately 4000 enclosure acts were adopted by the parliament causing
enclosure of about 7 million acres - one-sixth of the area of England.
This process clearly benefited the rich, as by the end of the 19th century 0.6% of Englishmen
owned 98.5% of the agricultural lands.
Towards the end of the 19th century, the Enclosure process was virtually complete.
The 1876 Commons Act ruled that enclosure would only be allowed, if it had some public
benefit.
The historians still argue about the impact of Enclosure and focus on different consequences
of the process depending on their ideological stance.
Some argue that the Enclosure was a necessary evil and ultimately benefited agricultural
productivity in England.
Enclosure enabled large strips of lands to be consolidated paving the way for experimentation
with the cultivation of non-traditional crops ultimately leading to increased agricultural
productivity and the so-called agricultural revolution.
Large landowners had the luxury to experiment with new techniques and sow new crops, since
even in case of failure the rest of the available lands would compensate for profit losses.
While even opposers of Enclosure agree that it led to progress in English agriculture,
there is evidence that similar innovative techniques had been used in unenclosed lands
too.
Introduction of rotation of cultivation and grazing of open fields to allow the soil to
recover and sowing of new crops based on communal decision had not been such a rare occurrence
in England.
Several historians have argued that agricultural innovation had been continuous throughout
centuries and was not exclusive to the period of the enclosure.
The critics of the Enclosure state that it left the English peasantry landless, homeless,
even more impoverished, while disproportionately benefitting rich landowners.
Whereas depopulation and poverty caused by Enclosure are acknowledged, Harriet Bradley
argues that even in Northamptonshire, where enclosure had been prohibited in the fields
of royal manors, peasants were suffering from the same problems.
Thus, the overall destitution of the English peasantry and rural depopulation should not
be solely linked to Enclosure.
Other historians like Neeson bring the example of the disappearance of smallholders in Northants
directly linking it to the Enclosure.
Whatever the reason, the rural population in England and Wales dwindled from 65 percent
in 1851 to 23 percent in 1901.
This process was considerably slower in continental Europe.
The increased urban population was among the factors behind the rapid industrialization
of England, one of the key events of modern history.
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