operated simultaneously. The one first stated was the first, however, to operate on an extensive scale, and the reader's attention is therefore asked to it first.*

Some centuries ago the greater part of England was still uninclosed, and to a large extent subject to common use; the lord of the manor being himself a co-partner, as it were, both in the system of husbandry followed on the arable land and in the pastoral and wood rights enjoyed in common. Round each village, as a general rule, lay in the first instance a little territory of tillage land, divided into individual shares, but cultivated on a common system, and subject also to' commonable' rights on the part of the individual holders-rights, that is to say, to pasture in common on the stubble after harvest and on the fallow grass. Beyond this arable territory, thus partly enjoyed in common, lay another territory, used entirely in common; the pasture rights, however, on the portion nearest the tillage land being usually stinted,' or

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* Professor Nasse begins his treatise, already referred to ('Ueber die mittelalterliche Feldgemeinschaft und die Einhegungen des sechszehnten Jahrhunderts in England'), with the following words:-‘In the agrarian history of the nations of Central Europe, there is no event of more importance, or vaster in its consequences, than the dissolution of the ancient co-partnership in the use of the soil for husbandry, and the establishment in its stead of separate and independent farms. But this revolution has a special importance in the case of England, contributing largely, as it has done, to the extrusion of small landholders, and to the foundation of that preponderance of large property which in turn has had so great an effect on the constitutional history of that country.' The author is indebted to Herr Nasse both for this most instructive treatise, and for oral information on the subject of inclosures. Herr Nasse, it may not be amiss to state, is far from being unfriendly to large estates or large farms, either in his own country or in England.

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strictly limited in respect of the number and kinds of animals allowed to feed on it, while on the remoter portion each of the commoners might graze, in summer at least, as many animals as he could feed in winter from the produce of his separate fields. These rights are expressly recognised by the early statutes as legally belonging to the commoners, and are said to have often been sufficient to enable each of them to graze not less than forty sheep, besides as many cows as he had winter food for. Taken together, the common and commonable' rights constituted no small part of the villagers' means of living, and it will appear hereafter how the loss of them entailed on many of them the further loss of their separate holdings, and contributed to thin the ranks even of the wealthier class among them-the yeomanry. The first encroachment was made by the Statute of Merton (20 Hen. III. c. 1), which stated that many great men of England complained that, after affording to the freeholders of the manor the requisite pasture appertaining to their holdings, there was a residue of waste, wood, and pasture, which was unprofitable. The statute granted, therefore, to the lords of the manor the right to inclose such residue, the remedy of a suit for insufficiency of pasture before the judges of assize being reserved to commoners alleging it. This statute was confirmed in the next reign, and extended from the freeholders of the manor to neighbouring commoners; and the recitals of the second enactment show how unpopular the new inclosures were, the ditches and hedges being destroyed by night. Our legal records show, moreover, that

many suits were actually brought by commoners for insufficiency of common. But we may judge what were the ordinary chances of success on the part of villagers against 'great men' in those days of judicial corruption, and how far it was prudent for tenants and poor neighbours, especially when already impoverished by stint of pasture and of fuel, to wage war against the lord of the manor. They must often have been made to feel that a half is more than the whole. The island, too, especially after the great plague, was wide compared with the people; and it was not until the inclosing movement, beginning with the rise in wool at the close of the fifteenth century, that extensive hardship was inflicted on the rural population. In the sixteenth century it spread vagrancy and pauperism throughout the country, and gave the peasantry of England a Poor-law in exchange for their ancient patrimony. Mr. Morier pertinently remarks that the inclosures of the sixteenth century are usually spoken of as though denoting merely the conversion of arable into pasturage, and the consolidation of farms, 'without reference to the primary fact which governs the two, namely, the inclosure, not of arable land as such, but of commonable arable land.' Mr. Morier refers to losses of their separate holdings on the part of the villagers, to which we must presently refer; but it is important to bear in mind that, along with the 'commonable' arable land inclosed, an immense extent of common pasturage and woodland was withdrawn from the peasant and added to the domain of the great landholders. During the minority of Edward VI., the

Protector Somerset appointed a Royal Commission' for redress of inclosures,' to inquire into the grievances and usurpations with which the country rang; and Hales, the most active member of this Commission, while denouncing in the strongest terms the wrongs of which the great proprietors were guilty, expressly limited his invectives to such inclosures as encroached on the common rights of others, observing that inclosures of private property were more beneficial than otherwise. The miserable and unsatisfactory result of this Commission,' says Professor Nasse, originally hailed with intense delight by the rural population, is sufficiently well known. The power of the nobility in the country was so great, and the hand of the executive so weak, that in some cases the witnesses summoned did not dare to appear, and in others, those who had given truthful evidence were subjected to ill-treatment by the landlords. If the Protector's extraordinary Royal Commission could not effectually resist the power of the ruling class, it may naturally be inferred that the protection of the ordinary courts could not much avail the sufferers. Their rights rested on the customs of each estate, to be proved by the rolls in the hands of the lord of the soil, and they were liable to forfeiture by an indefinite number of acts on the part of the copyholders. The small copyholders were doubtless unable to substantiate their rights in courts of law, opposed by expert lawyers. the judges with injustice and receipt of bribes, and says that money was almighty, even in courts of justice. A period of such tremendous revolution in Church and

Latimer, in fact, charges

State as the reign of Henry VIII. could certainly not have been favourable to the protection of customary rights. Such a sudden change as the secularisation of the Church lands must have shaken the whole traditional order of property. Thus, a pamphlet published in 1546 complains that the new owners of Church property generally declared the ancient rights of the copyholders forfeited. They were compelled either to relinquish their holdings, or accept leases for a short period.'

The inclosures of the sixteenth century, violent, unjust, and sweeping as they were, form, as the last sentence from Herr Nasse indicates, no more than one great chapter in the history of the confiscation of the patrimony of the English peasantry. It did not fall within the scope of his essay to pursue the history of the whole movement beyond that period, but he says of it: Powerful as it was, it then reached its aim but to a limited extent. The small landowners did not all disappear in the sixteenth century. The majority of the freeholders doubtless held their ground, and even the copyholders were not all driven out or converted into tenants for terms of years. Lord Coke could declare in the seventeenth century that one-third of England was copyhold. The revolution thus inaugurated has lasted down to our own days. Sometimes the progress has been slower, sometimes faster, until by degrees the close connection in which the two phenomena, inclosure and expulsion of the peasantry, originally stood, has ceased.'