The agent through whom enclosing was carried out was usually the large farmer. When the farmer leased only the demesne lands, and the demesne lands lay in large compact blocks, not in scattered strips, he could naturally practise the new economy of enclosure upon them without colliding with any other interest, except in the cases where they were divided into several tenancies; while if steps were taken to get rid of the interests which the customary tenants had either in the open fields, in the meadows, or in the common, the land lost by them was normally added to the area which the farmer leased, and enclosed by him. In the surveys of the period one finds manors in every stage of the transition from open field cultivation to enclosure, and though such individual instances tell us nothing of the extent of the movement, they offer a vivid picture of what enclosing meant, and give the impression that enclosure had usually proceeded further on those manors where the farmer held the largest proportion of the land. The slowness of the movement towards enclosure on the holdings of the customary tenants has already been described. As a contrast to it one may look at the following table, which sets out the condition of things on some demesne farms:--
+-----------+------------+-------------+-----------+ | | | | 5 | | Number of | No signs | Under | per Cent. | | Demesne | of | 5 per Cent. | to 24 | | Farms | Enclosure. | Enclosed. | per Cent. | | Examined. | | | Enclosed. | +-----------+------------+-------------+-----------+ | 47 | 12 | 9 | 7 | +-----------+------------+-------------+-----------+
+-----------+------------+-------------+-----------+ | 25 | 50 | 75 | | | per Cent. | per Cent. | per Cent. | 100 | | to 49 | to 74 | to 99 | per Cent. | | per Cent. | per Cent. | per Cent. | Enclosed. | | Enclosed. | Enclosed. | Enclosed. | | +-----------+------------+-------------+-----------+ | 7 | ... | 4 | 8 | +-----------+------------+-------------+-----------+
These figures are not offered as any evidence of the absolute area enclosed in the counties represented. They may, however, perhaps be taken as an indication that the demesne farm was usually that part of the manor on which enclosure was carried out most thoroughly. Thirty-one of the manors included in the table are in Wiltshire and Norfolk, and where the conditions of things on the tenants' holdings can be compared with that obtaining on the demesne, it is almost always the case that the new economy has spread furthest on the latter. Neither in Wiltshire nor in Norfolk had enclosure by the peasants themselves proceeded very far in the latter half of the sixteenth century.