The inclosure acts created legal property rights to land previously held in common in

England and Wales England and Wales () is one of the Law of the United Kingdom#Legal jurisdictions, three legal jurisdictions of the United Kingdom. It covers the constituent countries England and Wales and was formed by the Laws in Wales Acts 1535 and 1542. Th ...

, particularly open fields and

common land Common land is collective land (sometimes only open to those whose nation governs the land) in which all persons have certain common rights, such as to allow their livestock to graze upon it, to collect wood, or to cut turf for fuel. A person ...

. Between 1604 and 1914 over 5,200 individual acts enclosing public land were passed, affecting 28,000 km².

History

Before the enclosures in England, a portion of the land was categorized as "common" or "waste". "Common" land was under the control of the lord of the manor, but certain rights on the land such as

pasture Pasture (from the Latin ''pastus'', past participle of ''pascere'', "to feed") is land used for grazing. Types of pasture Pasture lands in the narrow sense are enclosed tracts of farmland, grazed by domesticated livestock, such as horses, c ...

, pannage, or estovers were held variously by certain nearby properties, or (occasionally) ''in gross'' by all manorial tenants. "Waste" was land without value as a farm strip – often very narrow areas (typically less than a yard wide) in awkward locations (such as cliff edges, or inconveniently shaped manorial borders), but also bare rock, and similar. "Waste" was not officially used by anyone, and so was often farmed by landless peasants. The remaining land was organised into a large number of narrow strips, each tenant possessing a number of disparate strips throughout the manor, as would the manorial lord. Called the

open-field system The open-field system was the prevalent Agriculture in the Middle Ages, agricultural system in much of Europe during the Middle Ages and lasted into the 20th century in Russia, Iran, and Turkey. Each Manorialism, manor or village had two or thre ...

, it was administered by manorial courts, which exercised some collective control. What might now be termed a single field would have been divided under this system among the lord and his tenants; poorer peasants (

serfs Serfdom was the status of many peasants under feudalism, specifically relating to manorialism and similar systems. It was a condition of debt bondage and indentured servitude with similarities to and differences from slavery. It developed dur ...

or copyholders, depending on the era) were allowed to live on the strips owned by the lord in return for cultivating his land. The system facilitated common grazing and

crop rotation Crop rotation is the practice of growing a series of different types of crops in the same area across a sequence of growing seasons. This practice reduces the reliance of crops on one set of nutrients, pest and weed pressure, along with the pro ...

. Any individual might possess several strips of land within the manor, often at some distance from one another. Seeking better financial returns, landowners looked for more efficient farming techniques. Enclosure acts for small areas had been passed sporadically since the 12th century, but advances in agricultural knowledge and technology in the 18th century made them more commonplace. Because tenants, or even copyholders, had legally enforceable rights on the land, substantial compensation was provided to extinguish them; thus many tenants were active supporters of enclosure, though it enabled landlords to force reluctant tenants to comply with the process. With legal control of the land, landlords introduced innovations in methods of crop production, increasing profits and supporting the Agricultural Revolution; higher productivity also enabled landowners to justify higher rents for the people working the land. The powers granted in the Inclosure Act 1773 ( 13 Geo. 3. c. 81) of the

Parliament of Great Britain The Parliament of Great Britain was formed in May 1707 following the ratification of the Acts of Union 1707, Acts of Union by both the Parliament of England and the Parliament of Scotland. The Acts ratified the treaty of Union which created a ...

were often abused by landowners: the preliminary meetings where enclosure was discussed, intended to be held in public, often took place in the presence of only the local landowners, who regularly chose their own solicitors, surveyors and commissioners to decide on each case. In 1786 there were still 250,000 independent landowners, but in the course of only thirty years their number was reduced to 32,000. The tenants displaced by the process often left the countryside to work in the towns. This contributed to the

Industrial Revolution The Industrial Revolution, sometimes divided into the First Industrial Revolution and Second Industrial Revolution, was a transitional period of the global economy toward more widespread, efficient and stable manufacturing processes, succee ...

– at the very moment new technological advances required large numbers of workers, a concentration of large numbers of people in need of work had emerged; the former country tenants and their descendants became workers in industrial factories within cities. The Inclosure (Consolidation) Act 1801 ( 41 Geo. 3. (U.K.) c. 109) was passed to tidy up previous acts. The Inclosure Act 1845 ( 8 & 9 Vict. c. 118) instituted the appointment of Inclosure Commissioners, who could enclose land without submitting a request to Parliament.

List of acts

*The Inclosure Act 1773 ( 13 Geo. 3. c. 81) The Inclosure Acts 1845 to 1882 mean:The

Short Titles Act 1896 The Short Titles Act 1896 (59 & 60 Vict. c. 14) is an Acts of Parliament in the United Kingdom, act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It replaces the Short Titles Act 1892 (55 & 56 Vict. c. 10). This act was retained for the Republic of I ...

Notes

Citations

References

* * * * * *The Parliamentary Debates, Volume 80. By Great Britain. Parliamen
p. 483
*Parliamentary Papers, House of Commons and Command, Volume 12. By Great Britain. Parliament. House of Common
104p. 380
*Edinburgh Review, Or, Critical Journal, Volume 62
p. 327
*The Pictorial History of England, Volume 6. By George Lillie Craik, Charles Knightbr>p. 781The English Peasantry and the Enclosure of Common Fields
By Gilbert Slater *An Analytical Digest of the Reports of Cases Decided in the Courts of Common Law, and Equity, of Appeal, and Nisi Prius. By Henry Jeremy
p. 40The Fence
By Washburn & Moen Manufacturing Compan
p. 21
*The Contemporary Review, Volume 67
p. 703
*Alienated tithes in appropriated and impropriated parishes
p. 38

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