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Enclosure or inclosure is a term, used in English landownership, that refers to the appropriation of "waste" or "common land", enclosing it, and by doing so depriving commoners of their traditional rights of access and usage. Agreements to enclose land could be either through a formal or informal process. The process could normally be accomplished in three ways. First there was the creation of "closes", taken out of larger common fields by their owners. Secondly, there was enclosure by proprietors, owners who acted together, usually small farmers or squires, leading to the enclosure of whole parishes. Finally there were inclosure act.
The stated justification for enclosure was to improve the efficiency of agriculture. However, there were other motives too, one example being that the value of the land enclosed would be substantially increased. There were social consequences to the policy, with many protests at the removal of rights from the common people. Enclosure riots are seen by historians as 'the pre-eminent form' of social protest from the 1530s to 1640s.
Following the introduction of the feudal system, there was an increase in the economic growth and urban expansion of the country. In the 13th century, successful Lords did very well financially, while the peasants faced with ever increasing costs did not, and their landholding dwindled. After outbreaks of the Black Death in the middle of the 14th century however, there was a major decline in population and crop yields. The decline in population left the surviving farm workers in great demand. Landowners faced the choice of raising wages to compete for workers or letting their lands go unused. Wages for labourers rose and translated into inflation across the economy. The ensuing difficulties in hiring labour has been seen as causing the abandonment of land and the demise of the feudal system, although some historians have suggested that the effects of the Black Death may have only sped up an already on-going process.
From as early as the 12th century agricultural land had been enclosed. However, the history of enclosure in England is different from region to region. Parts of south-east England (notably sections of Essex and Kent) retained the pre-Roman Celtic field system of farming in small enclosed fields. Similarly in much of west and north-west England, fields were either never open, or were enclosed early. The primary area of field management, known as the "open field system," was in the lowland areas of England in a broad band from Yorkshire and Lincolnshire diagonally across England to the south, taking in parts of Norfolk and Suffolk, Cambridgeshire, large areas of the Midlands, and most of south central England.
With informal agreements there was either minimal or no written record other than occasionally a map of the agreement. The most straightforward informal enclosure was through 'unity of possession'. Under this, if an individual managed to acquire all the disparate strips of land in an area and consolidate them in one whole piece, for example a manor, then any communal rights would cease to exist, since there was no one to exercise them.
The remaining land was organised into a large number of narrow strips, each tenant possessing several disparate strips throughout the manor, as would the manorial lord. The open-field system was administered by court baron, which exercised some collective control. The land in a Manorial system under this system would consist of:
The very nature of the three field rotation system imposed a discipline on lord and tenants in their management of the arable land. Every one had the freedom to do what they liked with their own land but had to follow the rhythms of the rotation system. The land-holding tenants had livestock, including sheep, pigs, cattle, horses, oxen, and poultry, and after harvest, the fields became 'common' so they could graze animals on that land. There are still examples of villages that use the open-field system, one example being Laxton, Nottinghamshire.
From as early as the 12th century, some open fields in Britain were being enclosed into individually owned fields. After the Statute of Merton in 1235 manorial lords were able to reorganize strips of land such that they were brought together in one contiguous block.
Copyholders had a "customary tenancy" on their piece of land that was legally enforceable. The problem was that a "copyhold tenancy" was only valid for the holder's life. The heir would not have the right to inheritance although usually by custom, in exchange for a fee (known as a fine), the heir could have the copyhold transferred. To remove their customary rights, the landlords converted the copyhold into a leasehold tenancy. Leasehold removed the customary rights but the advantage to the tenant was that the land could be inherited.
There was a significant rise in enclosure during the Tudor period. Enclosure was quite often undertaken unilaterally by the landowner, sometimes illegally. The widespread eviction of people from their lands resulted in the collapse of the open field system in those areas. The deprivations of the displaced workers has been seen by historians as a cause of subsequent social unrest.
From the time of Henry VII, Parliament began passing acts either to stop enclosure, to limit its effects, or at least to fine those responsible. The so-called 'tillage acts', were passed between 1489 and 1597.
The people who were responsible for the enforcement of the acts were the same people who were actually opposed to them. Consequently, the acts were not strictly enforced. Ultimately with rising popular opposition to sheep farming, the Tillage Act 1533 (25 Hen. 8. c. 13) restricted the size of flocks of sheep to no more than 2,400. Then the Taxation Act 1549 (3 & 4 Edw. 6. c. 23) was introduced that imposed a poll tax on sheep that was coupled with a levy on home produced cloth. The result made sheep farming less profitable. However, in the end it was market forces that were responsible for stopping the conversion of arable into pasture. An increase in corn prices during the second half of the 16th century made arable farming more attractive, so although enclosures continued the emphasis was more on efficient use of the arable land.
The Inclosure Act 1773 (13 Geo. 3. c. 81) created a law that enabled "enclosure" of land, at the same time removing the right of Common land' access. Although there was usually compensation, it was often in the form of a smaller and poorer quality plot of land. Between 1604 and 1914 there were more than 5,200 inclosure bills which amounted to of land that equated to approximately one fifth of the total area of England.
Parliamentary inclosure was also used for the division and privatisation of common "wastes" such as , marshes, heathland, downland and moorland.
After the (8 & 9 Vict. c. 118) permanent Inclosure Commissioners were appointed who could approve enclosures without having to submit to Parliament.
The Rev. William Homer was a commissioner and he provided a job description in 1766:
After 1899, the Board of Agriculture, which later became the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, inherited the powers of the Inclosure Commissioners.
One of the objectives of enclosure was to improve local roads. Commissioners were given authorisation to replace old roads and country lanes with new roads that were wider and straighter than those they replaced.
An anonymous poem, known as "The Goose and the Common" has come to represent the opposition to the enclosure movement in the 18th century:
According to one academic:
In 1770 Oliver Goldsmith wrote the poem The Deserted Village, in it condemns rural depopulation, the enclosure of common land, the creation of landscape gardens and the pursuit of excessive wealth.
During the 19th and early 20th century historians generally had sympathy for the cottagers who rented their dwellings from the manorial lord and also the landless labourers. John and Barbara Hammond said that "enclosure was fatal to three classes: the small farmer, the cottager and the squatter." "Before enclosure the cottager was a labourer with land; after enclosure was a labourer without land."
Marxist historians, such as Barrington Moore Jr., focused on enclosure as a part of the class conflict that eventually eliminated the English peasantry and saw the emergence of the bourgeoisie. From this viewpoint, the English Civil War provided the basis for a major acceleration of enclosures. The parliamentary leaders supported the rights of landlords vis-à-vis the King, whose Star Chamber court, abolished in 1641, had provided the primary legal brake on the enclosure process. By dealing an ultimately crippling blow to the monarchy (which, even after the Restoration, no longer posed a significant challenge to enclosures) the Civil War paved the way for the eventual rise to power in the 18th century of what has been called a "committee of Landlords", a prelude to the UK's parliamentary system. After 1650 with the increase in corn prices and the drop in wool prices the focus shifted to implementation of new agricultural techniques, including fertilizer, new crops, and crop rotation, all of which greatly increased the profitability of large-scale farms. The enclosure movement probably peaked from 1760 to 1832; by the latter date it had essentially completed the destruction of the medieval peasant community. Surplus peasant labour moved into the towns to become industrial workers. The enclosure movement is considered by some scholars to be the beginnings of the emergence of capitalism; for many Marxists, the enclosures constituted "primitive accumulation," establishing the structural conditions necessary for a capitalist political economy.
In contrast to the Hammonds' 1911 analysis of the events, critically J. D. Chambers and G. E. Mingay, suggested that the Hammonds exaggerated the costs of change when in reality enclosure meant more food for the growing population, more land under cultivation and on balance, more employment in the countryside. The ability to enclose land and raise rents certainly made the enterprise more profitable.
| +Rises in rents immediately after enclosure 1765-1805 | |||
| "trebled" | |||
| 83% | |||
| Doubled | |||
| 92% | |||
| 90%-157% | |||
| 88% | |||
| 92%-130% | |||
| 113% | |||
| 33% | |||
| 140%-167% | |||
| Source:
D. McCloskey. "The openfields of England: rent, risk and the rate of interest, 1300-1815" | |||
Arnold Toynbee considered that the main feature distinguishing English agriculture was the massive reduction in common land between the middle of the 18th to the middle of the 19th century.
The major advantages of the enclosures were:
Since the late 20th century, those contentions have been challenged by a new class of historians. The Enclosure movement has been seen by some as causing the destruction of the traditional peasant way of life, however miserable. Landless peasants could no longer maintain an economic independence so had to become labourers. Historians and economists such as M.E.Turner and D. McCloskey have examined the available contemporary data and concluded that the difference in efficiency between the open field system and enclosure is not so plain and obvious.
| +Differences in crop yields open versus enclosed parishes 1801 | ||||||
| Source:
M.E.Turners paper "English Open Field and Enclosures:Retardation or Productivity Improvements". Based on figures extracted from Home Office returns.
Notes: | ||||||
D. C. Coleman writes that "many troubles arose over the loss of common rights" with resentment and hardship coming from various channels including the "loss of ancient rights in the woodlands to cut underwood, to run pigs".
The protests against enclosure were not just confined to the countryside. Enclosure riots also occurred in towns and cities across England in the late 15th and early 16th century. The urban unrest was distributed across the whole of the country from York in the north, to Southampton in the south and Gloucester in the west, to Colchester in the east. The urban rioters were not necessarily agricultural workers but consisted of artisanal workers such as butchers, shoemakers, plumbers, clothmakers, millers, weavers, glovers, shearmen, barbers, cappers, tanners and glaziers.
The Treshams were unpopular for their voracious enclosing of land – the family at Newton and their better-known Roman Catholic cousins at nearby Rushton, the family of Francis Tresham, who had been involved two years earlier in the Gunpowder Plot and had by announcement died in London's Tower. Sir Thomas Tresham of Rushton was vilified as 'the most odious man' in Northamptonshire. The old Roman Catholic gentry family of the Treshams had long argued with the emerging Puritan gentry family, the Montagus of Boughton House, about territory. Now Tresham of Newton was enclosing common land – The Brand Common – that had been part of Rockingham Forest.
Edward Montagu, one of the deputy lieutenants, had stood up against enclosure in Parliament some years earlier, but was now placed by the king in the position effectively of defending the Treshams. The local armed bands and militia refused the call-up, so the landowners were forced to use their own servants to suppress the rioters on 8 June 1607. The royal proclamation of King James was read twice. The rioters continued in their actions, although at the second reading some ran away. The gentry and their forces charged. A pitched battle ensued in which 40–50 people were killed; the ringleaders were hanged and quartered. A much-later memorial stone to those killed stands at the former church of St Faith, Newton, Northamptonshire.
The Tresham family declined soon after 1607. The Montagu family went on through marriage to become the Dukes of Buccleuch, enlarging the wealth of the senior branch substantially.
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