Editing Enclosure (section)

==Social and economic factors==

The social and economic consequences of enclosure has been much discussed by historians.{{sfn|Blum|1981|pages=477–504}} In the Tudor period Sir [[Thomas More]] in his ''[[Utopia (More book)|Utopia]]'' said:
{{blockquote|The increase of pasture,' said I, '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. As if forests and parks had swallowed up too little of the land, those worthy countrymen turn the best inhabited places into solitudes; for when an insatiable wretch, who is a plague to his country, resolves to enclose many thousand acres of ground, the owners, as well as tenants, are turned out of their possessions by trick or by main force, or, being wearied out by ill usage, they are forced to sell them; by which means those miserable people, both men and women, married and unmarried, old and young, with their poor but numerous families...<br/><small>''(From Thomas Mores Utopia. 1518)''</small> |source={{harvnb|More|1901}}}}

An anonymous poem, known as "[[The Goose and the Common]]" has come to represent the opposition to the enclosure movement in the 18th century:

{{poemquote|"The law locks up the man or woman
Who steals the goose from off the common,
But lets the greater felon loose
Who steals the common from the goose."<br/><small>''(Part of 18th century poem by Anon.)''</small>|source={{harvnb|Boyle|2003|pages=33–74}}}}

According to one academic: {{blockquote|"This poem is one of the pithiest condemnations of the English enclosure movement—the process of fencing off common land and turning it into private property. In a few lines, the poem manages to criticize double standards, expose the artificial and controversial nature of property rights, and take a slap at the legitimacy of state power. And it does it all with {{sic|humor|hide=y}}, without jargon, and in rhyming couplets."|source={{harvnb|Boyle|2003|pages=33–74}}}}

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.{{sfn|Bell|1944|pp=747–772}}

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.{{sfn|Blum|1981|pages=477–504}} [[John Lawrence Hammond|John]] and [[Barbara Hammond]] said that "enclosure was fatal to three classes: the small farmer, the cottager and the squatter."{{sfn|Hammond|Hammond|1912|page=100}} "Before enclosure the cottager{{efn|The legal definition of a cottage, in England, is a small house for habitation without land. During the reign of Elizabeth I a [[Erection of Cottages Act 1588|statute]] mandated that a cottage had to be built with at least {{convert|4|acre|m2}} of land. Thus the cottager was someone who lived in a cottage with a [[smallholding]] of land, the statute was later repealed.{{sfn|Elmes|1827|pp=178–179}}}} was a labourer with land; after enclosure was a labourer without land."{{sfn|Hammond|Hammond|1912|page=100}}

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 [[English Restoration|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",{{sfn|Moore|1966|pp=17, 19–29}} 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.{{sfn|Moore|1966|p=23}} The enclosure movement probably peaked from 1760 to 1832; by the latter date it had essentially completed the destruction of the medieval peasant community.{{sfn|Moore|1966|pp=25–29}} Surplus peasant labour moved into the towns to become industrial workers.{{sfn|Moore|1966|pp=29–30}} The enclosure movement is considered by some scholars to be the beginnings of the [[History of capitalism|emergence of capitalism]];{{sfn|Brantlinger|2018|pp=ix–xi}}{{sfn|Hickel|2018|pp=76–82}} for many Marxists, the enclosures constituted "primitive accumulation,"{{sfn|Marx|1990|loc=Part III}} establishing the structural conditions necessary for a capitalist political economy.{{sfn|Polyani|2001|page=35}}{{sfn|Federici|2004|pages=69–73}}{{sfn|Lefebvre|1984|pages=122–127}}{{sfn|Wood| 1999|pages=83–84}}

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.{{sfn|Chambers|Mingay|1982|page=104}} The ability to enclose land and raise rents certainly made the enterprise more profitable.{{sfn|Mingay|2014|page=87}} 
						
{| class="wikitable" align="center" cellpadding="1" cellspacing="1" align="left" style="margin:0 0 1em 1em"
|+Rises in rents immediately after enclosure 1765-1805
|-
|-
! colspan=1 align="left"|Village
! colspan=1 align="left"|County
! colspan=1 align="left"|Date of<br/>enclosure
! colspan=1 align="left"|Rise in rent
|-
|Elford||[[Staffordshire]]||1765||"trebled"
|-
|Lidlington||[[Bedfordshire]]||1775||83% 
|-
|Coney Weston||[[Suffolk]]||1777||Doubled
|-
|23 villages||[[Lincolnshire]]||before 1799||92% 
|-
|Riseley||Bedfordshire||1793||90%-157%
|-
|Milton Bryant||Bedfordshire||1793||88%
|-
|Queensborough||[[Leicestershire]]|| 1793||92%-130%
|-
|Dunton||Bedfordshire||1797||113%
|-
|Enfield||[[Middlesex]]||1803||33%
|-
|Wendelbury||[[Oxfordshire]]||[[wiktionary:circa|c.]]1805||140%-167%
|-
|-
|-
| colspan="4" style="font-size: small"|''Source'':
D. McCloskey. "The openfields of England: rent, risk and the rate of interest, 1300-1815"<br/>
{{sfn|McCloskey|1989|p=17}}
|-
|}
{{clear}}
[[Arnold Toynbee (historian, born 1852)|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:
*Effective crop rotation;
*Saving of time in travelling between dispersed fields; and
*The ending of constant quarrels over boundaries and rights of pasture in the meadows and stubbles. 
He writes: "The result was a great increase in agricultural produce. The landowners having separated their plots from those of their neighbours and having consolidated them could pursue any method of tillage they preferred. Alternate and convertible husbandry … came in. The manure of the cattle enriched the arable land and grass crops on the ploughed-up and manured land were much better than were those on the constant pasture."{{sfn|Toynbee|2020|pages=13–15}}

Since the late 20th century, those contentions have been challenged by a new class of historians.{{sfn|Neeson|1993|page=223}}{{sfn|Humphries|1990}} 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.{{sfn|Hobsbawm|Rudé|1973|p=16|ref=hobs}} Historians and economists such as M.E.Turner and [[Deirdre McCloskey|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.{{sfn|Turner|1986|pages=669–692}}
{| class="wikitable" align="center" cellpadding="1" cellspacing="1" align="center" style="margin:0 0 1em 1em"
|+Differences in crop yields open versus enclosed parishes 1801
|-
|-
! colspan=1 | &nbsp;
! colspan=3 align="center"|Open Field
! colspan=3 align="center"|Enclosed
|-
!||Wheat||Barley||Oats||Wheat||Barley||Oats
|-
!Mean acres per parish
|309.4||216.0||181.3||218.9||158.2||137.3
|-
!Mean produce per parish (bushels)
|5,711.5||5,587.0||6,033.1||4,987.1||5,032.2||5,058.2
|-
!Mean yield per acre (bushels)
|18.5||25.9||33.3||22.8||31.8||36.8
|-
|-
|-
| colspan="7" style="font-size: small"|''Source'':
M.E.Turners paper "English Open Field and Enclosures:Retardation or Productivity Improvements".<br/>
Based on figures extracted from Home Office returns.{{sfn|Turner|1986|pages=669–692}}

''Notes:''<br/>
A [[bushel]] is a measurement of volume = {{convert|8|impgal}}; 1 acre = 0.4 ha
|-
|}