Towards the end of the 19th century there was a resurgence of interest in the loss of the common fields. Books appeared on English Field Systems, The English Peasantry, The Commons, Common Land and Inclosure and so on, but almost all were concerned with the history and organisation of the open field system. They knew how the open fields had been inclosed, they thought they knew why they had disappeared and sometimes they even considered the effects on the poor, but, until the publication in 1911 of ‘The Village Labourer’ by J. L & Barbara Hammond[1] none attempted to tackle the thorny question of politics and social attitudes behind their disappearance.
It was, and is, a seminal work, difficult to read without getting angry at the past, which is of course a fruitless exercise. The essence of the Hammonds’s argument was that during the 18th and early 19th centuries the landed classes actively sought to dis-empower the poorer members of the village community. Their intention was to produce a class of agricultural labourers whose needs would become subordinate to those of the landowners. A class which would become utterly dependent on them for work, their wages and, as often as not, for the poor relief that was usually distributed by one of their number, and which was paid for by a rate raised from all the inhabitant and not just the landowners.
The tool by which this change was to be effected was by parliamentary inclosure [2], the only legal way, before 1836, of inclosing land and extinguishing rights of common over that land. Inclosure, was not of itself, the problem, the Hammonds never sought to deny the potential advantages of it in improving agriculture: the problem was that the processes by which an inclosure was conducted were not only open to abuse but were intrinsically unfair. In support of this the Hammonds accumulated a mass of evidence[3] which is too extensive to review here. There are so many quotations that illustrate their point that it is difficult to chose just one but this from a Mr Bishton, reporting to the Board of Agriculture on the condition of agriculture in Shropshire, is typical of the general attitude to the poor; “”The use of common land by labourers operates upon the mind as a sort of independence.” When the commons are enclosed “the labourers will work everyday in the year, their children will be put out to labour early,” and, ‘that [4]subordination of the lower ranks[5] of society which in the present times is so much wanted, would be thereby considerably secured.””
As Bishton and the other inclosers realised the key to the success of this policy was not the inclosure of the arable lands as such but the loss of the waste and their rights of common over it. It was the oft quoted ability of the labourer to keep his single cow on the waste that allowed him to retain his independence when times were bad. With that right abolished his or her subordination could be assured.
There is little doubt that the Hammonds’ book acted as the stimulus for much scholarly research and lively debate about the pros and cons of inclosure. Despite the fact that the Hammonds did not dispute the economic rationale of inclosure, only the way that it was done, few subsequent authors addressed the Hammonds core argument. Theirs was an avowedly political[6] point about the motives of the landowners but most subsequent authors have concentrated on the economic and legal aspects of inclosure. Many have taken the view that the open field system was inefficient; that its abolition was important for the greater good of the country; that the economic value of common rights was minimal so the poor, de facto, lost nothing and that, in any case, many of those exercising those rights had no legal claim to do so, in consequence of which they had no legitimate cause for complaint.
This last series of posts looks at these arguments.
[1] THE VILLAGE LABOURER: Barbara’s husband was John Lawrence but it seems he was always known simply as J. L Hammond. The full title is The Village Labourer, 1760 – 1832 A Study of the Government of England Before the Reform Bill.
[2] PARLIAMENTARY INCLOSURE: If all the tenants of the manor surrendered their tenancies and the attached rights inclosure could proceed without by ‘approvement’ without an act of parliament. This was rare.
Otherwise common law rights could only be extinguished by statutory law i.e an act of parliament. In the 18th and early 19th century each manor or parish had to petition parliament to produce a bill which would then be voted on to become and Inclosure Act. A time consuming and expensive business for those in a hurry. In 1801 the Inclosure Consolidation Act laid down general principles to be adhered to. Private acts were still needed but were much cheaper to obtain. In 1836 another act allowed Inclosure Commissioners to inclose and extinguish rights without recourse to a private act so long as they adhered to the principles of the 1801. In 1845 a further Act empowered a National Enclosure Commission to oversee and approve enclosures.
[3] MASS OF EVIDENCE: As with almost all the books mentioned in these posts it is available from archive.org.
[4] SUBORDINATION OF THE LOWER RANKS: Well you can see his point; it was written in 1794 at the height of the Reign of Terror in France. The last thing you wanted was independent poor people.
[5] SUBORDINATION OF THE LOWER RANKS: Well you can see his point; it was written in 1794 at the height of the Reign of Terror in France. The last thing you wanted was independent poor people.
[6] POLITICAL POINT: Although today we might think they were socialists there is no evidence of this at all. They were in fact Liberals and are claimed as such by the modern Liberal Democrat party.
Categories: In Depth
John Martin of Evershot 