tailieunhanh - ENCLOSURE

We have now reached a time when the enclosure question was becoming of paramount importance,[184] and began to cause constant anxiety to legislators, while the writers of the day are full of it. Enclosure was of four kinds: 1. Enclosing the common arable fields for grazing, generally in large tracts. 2. Enclosing the same by dividing them into smaller fields, generally of arable. 3. Enclosing the common pasture, for grazing or tillage. 4. Enclosing the common meadows or mowing grounds. It is the first mainly, and to a less degree the third of these, which were so frequent a. | ENCLOSURE We have now reached a time when the enclosure question was becoming of paramount importance 1184 and began to cause constant anxiety to legislators while the writers of the day are full of it. Enclosure was of four kinds 1. Enclosing the common arable fields for grazing generally in large tracts. 2. Enclosing the same by dividing them into smaller fields generally of arable. 3. Enclosing the common pasture for grazing or tillage. 4. Enclosing the common meadows or mowing grounds. It is the first mainly and to a less degree the third of these which were so frequent a source of complaint in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries for the first besides displacing the small holder threw out of employment a large number of people who had hitherto gained their livelihood by the various work connected with tillage and the third deprived a large number of their common rights. The first Enclosure Act was the Statute of Merton passed in 1235 20 Henry III c. 4 which permitted lords of manors to add to their demesnes such parts of the waste pasture and woods as were beyond the needs of the tenants. There is evidence however that enclosure probably of waste land was going on before this statute as the charter of John by which all Devonshire except Dartmoor and Exmoor was deforested expressly forbids the making of hedges a proof of enclosure in those two forests. 185 We may be sure that the needs of the tenants were by an arbitrary lord estimated at a very low figure. At the same time many proceeded in due legal form. Thomas Lord Berkeley about the period of the Act reduced great quantities of ground into enclosures by procuring many releases of common land from His successor Lord Maurice was not so observant of legality. He had a wood wherein many of his tenants and freeholders had right of pasture. He wished to make this into a park and treated with them for that purpose but things not going smoothly he made the wood into a park without their leave and