The causes of this deficient tillage were three in number:The same course of crops was necessary.No proper rotation was feasible;the only possible alternation being to vary the proportions of different white-straw crops.-There were no turnips or artificial grasses,and consequently no sheep-farming on a large scale.Such sheep as there were were miserably small;the whole carcase weighed only 28lbs.,and the fleeces 31/2lbs.each,as against 9lbs.on sheep in enclosed fields.Much time was lost by labourers and cattle 'in travelling to many dispersed pieces of land from one end of a parish to another.'
Perpetual quarrels arose about rights of pasture in the meadows and stubbles,and respecting boundaries;in some fields there were no 'baulks'to divide the plots,and men would plough by night to steal a furrow from their neighbours.
For these reasons the connections between the practice of enclosing and improved agriculture was very close.The early enclosures,made under the Statutes of Merton (1235),and Westminster (1285),were taken by the lords of the manor from the waste.But in these uses the lord had first to prove that sufficient pasturage had been left for the commoners;and if rights of common existed independent of the possession of land,no enclosure was permitted.These early enclosures went on steadily,but the enclosures which first attract notice towards the end of the fifteenth century were of a different kind.They were often made on cultivated land,and,if Nasse is correct,they took the form not only of permanent conversions from arable into pasture,but of temporary conversions of arable into pasture,followed by reconversion from pasture into arable.The result was a great increase of produce.The lord having separated his plots from those of his neighbours,and having consolidated them,could pursue any system of tillage which seemed good to him.The alternate and convertible husbandry,mentioned above,was introduced;the manure of the cattle enriched the arable land,and 'the grass crops on the land ploughed up and manured were much stronger and of a better quality than those on the constant pasture.'Under the old system the manure was spread on the ground pasture,while in the enclosures it was used for the benefit of land broken up for tillage.The great enclosures of the sixteenth century took place in Suffolk,Essex,Kent,and Northamptonshire,which were in consequence the most wealthy counties.They were frequent also in Oxford,Berks,Warwickshire,Bedfordshire,Bucks,and Leicestershire,and with similar results.In Arthur Young's time Norfolk,Suffolk,Essex,and Kent were the best cultivated parts of England.
Taking a general view of the state of agriculture in 1760,we find that improvements were confined to a few parts of the country.The first enclosure Bill (1710)was to legalise the enclosure of a parish in Hampshire.I have looked through twelve of these Bills of the reign of George I,and I find that they applied to parishes in Derbyshire,Lancashire,Yorkshire,Staffordshire,Somersetshire,Gloucestershire,Wilts,Warwickshire,and Norfolk.But though enclosures were thus widely distributed,certain counties continued to bear a much higher reputation than others,and in some improvements were confined to one or two parishes,and not spread over a wide district.The best cultivated counties were those which had long been enclosed.
Kent,which was spoken of by William Stafford in 1581 as a county where much of the land was enclosed,is described by Arthur Young as having 'long been reckoned the best cultivated in England.'...
'It must astonish strangers,'he says,'to East Kent and Thanet,to find such numbers of common farmers that have more drilled crops than broadcast ones,and to see them so familiar with drill-ploughs and horse-hoes.The drill culture carried on in so complete a manner is the great peculiarity of this country....
Hops are extremely well cultivated.'Is in,another passage he says that Kent and Hertfordshire 'have the reputation of a very accurate cultivation.'The Marquis of Rockingham brought a Hertfordshire farmer to teach his tenants in the West Riding to hoe turnips.The husbandry both of that district and of the East Riding was very backward.The courses of crops,and the general management of the arable land were very faulty;very few of the farmers hoed turnips,and those who did executed the work in so slovenly a way that neither the crop nor the land was the least the better for it;beans were never hoed at all.The husbandry of Northumberland,on the other hand,was much superior to that of Durham and Yorkshire.Turnips were hoed,manure was better managed,and potatoes were cultivated on a large scale.Essex,held up by Tusser in the reign of Elizabeth as an example of the advantages of enclosures,and described by Young in 1807as having 'for ages been an enclosed country,'is mentioned as early as 1694 as a county where 'some have their fallow after turnips,which feed their sheep in winter,'-the first mention of turnips as a field crop.
