Note 84 — Chapter XIV · ENCLOSURE OF COMMON FIELDS WITHOUT PARLIAMENTARY SANCTION.

How long the enclosure of certain western counties preceded the enclosure of the east midlands, is shown by comparing the two following extracts. Of the former, Joseph Lee, in “A Plea for Regulated Inclosure,” published 1656, asks, “Are not many places in England, Essex, Hereford, Devonshire, Shropshire, Worcester, wholly enclosed?” (p. 31). Of the latter the “General Report on Enclosures,” published 152 years later, “A village of farmers and labourers surrounding a church and environed by three or four and in a few cases by five open fields, form the spectacle of Cambridge, Huntingdon, and Northampton shires, as much as on the Loire and on the plains of Moscow” (p. 25).