Inclosure act

 ( Lists Of Legislation By Short Title And Collective Title ) 

The inclosure acts created legal property rights to land previously held in common in England and Wales, particularly open fields and common land. Between 1604 and 1914 over 5,200 individual acts enclosure public land were passed, affecting 28,000 km².

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History Before the enclosures in England, a portion of the land was categorized as "common" or "waste". "Common" land was under the control of the lord of the manor, but certain rights on the land such as pasture, pannage, or estovers were held variously by certain nearby properties, or (occasionally) in gross by all manorial tenants. "Waste" was land without value as a farm strip – often very narrow areas (typically less than a yard wide) in awkward locations (such as cliff edges, or inconveniently shaped manorial borders), but also bare rock, and similar. "Waste" was not officially used by anyone, and so was often farmed by landless peasants.

The remaining land was organised into a large number of narrow strips, each tenant possessing a number of disparate strips throughout the manor, as would the manorial lord. Called the open-field system, it was administered by court baron, which exercised some collective control. What might now be termed a single field would have been divided under this system among the lord and his tenants; poorer peasants (serfdom or copyhold, depending on the era) were allowed to live on the strips owned by the lord in return for cultivating his land. The system facilitated common grazing and crop rotation.

Any individual might possess several strips of land within the manor, often at some distance from one another. Seeking better financial returns, landowners looked for more efficient farming techniques. Enclosure acts for small areas had been passed sporadically since the 12th century, but advances in agricultural knowledge and technology in the 18th century made them more commonplace. Because tenants, or even copyholders, had legally enforceable rights on the land, substantial compensation was provided to extinguish them; thus many tenants were active supporters of enclosure, though it enabled landlords to force reluctant tenants to comply with the process.

With legal control of the land, landlords introduced innovations in methods of crop production, increasing profits and supporting the Agricultural Revolution; higher productivity also enabled landowners to justify higher rents for the people working the land.

p. 36.

The tenants displaced by the process often left the countryside to work in the towns. This contributed to the Industrial Revolution – at the very moment new technological advances required large numbers of workers, a concentration of large numbers of people in need of work had emerged; the former country tenants and their descendants became workers in industrial factories within cities.

The Inclosure (Consolidation) Act 1801 (41 Geo. 3. (U.K.) c. 109) was passed to tidy up previous acts. The Inclosure Act 1845 (8 & 9 Vict. c. 118) instituted the appointment of Inclosure Commissioners, who could enclose land without submitting a request to Parliament.

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List of acts

• The Inclosure Act 1773 (13 Geo. 3. c. 81)

The Inclosure Acts 1845 to 1882 mean:The Short Titles Act 1896, section 2(1) and second schedule

• The Inclosure Act 1845 (8 & 9 Vict. c. 118)
• The Inclosure Act 1846 (9 & 10 Vict. c. 70)
• The Inclosure Act 1847 (10 & 11 Vict. c. 111)
• The Inclosure Act 1848 (11 & 12 Vict. c. 99)
• The Inclosure Act 1849 (12 & 13 Vict. c. 83)
• The Inclosure Commissioners Act 1851 (14 & 15 Vict. c. 53)
• The Inclosure Act 1852 (15 & 16 Vict. c. 79)
• The Inclosure Act 1854 (17 & 18 Vict. c. 97)
• The Inclosure Act 1857 (20 & 21 Vict. c. 31)
• The Inclosure Act 1859 (22 & 23 Vict. c. 43)
• The Inclosure, etc. Expenses Act 1868 (31 & 32 Vict. c. 89)
• The Commons Act 1876 (39 & 40 Vict. c. 56)
• The Commons (Expenses) Act 1878 (41 & 42 Vict. c. 56)
• The Commons Act 1879 (42 & 43 Vict. c. 37)
• The Commonable Rights Compensation Act 1882 (45 & 46 Vict. c. 15)

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See also

• English land law
• List of short titles
• Primitive accumulation of capital

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Notes

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Citations

• The Parliamentary Debates, Volume 80. By Great Britain. Parliament. p. 483
• Parliamentary Papers, House of Commons and Command, Volume 12. By Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons 104 p. 380
• Edinburgh Review, Or, Critical Journal, Volume 62. p. 327
• The Pictorial History of England, Volume 6. By George Lillie Craik, Charles Knight p. 781
• The English Peasantry and the Enclosure of Common Fields. By Gilbert Slater
• An Analytical Digest of the Reports of Cases Decided in the Courts of Common Law, and Equity, of Appeal, and Nisi Prius. By Henry Jeremy. p. 40
• The Fence. By Washburn & Moen Manufacturing Company p. 21
• The Contemporary Review, Volume 67. p. 703
• Alienated tithes in appropriated and impropriated parishes. p. 38

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Further reading

• Chambers, Jonathan D. "Enclosure and labour supply in the industrial revolution", Economic History Review 5.3 (1953): 319–343 in JSTOR
• Linebaugh, Peter. The Magna Carta Manifesto: Liberties and Commons for All. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008.

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External links

• Thesaurus of Acts
• Parliamentary enclosure – Surrey County Council
• Archive details and description
• The Enclosures of the 18th Century, BBC Radio 4 discussion with Rosemary Sweet, Murray Pittock & Mark Overton ( In Our Time, 1 May 2008)

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