Its effect on the smallholder is well described by Davis in his _Report on Wilts_.[568] There, before enclosure, the tenants usually occupied yard-lands consisting of a homestead, 2 acres of meadow, 18 acres of arable, generally in eighteen or twenty strips, with a right on the common meadows, common fields and downs for 40 sheep, and as many cattle as the tenant could winter with the fodder he grew. The 40 sheep were kept by a common shepherd with the common herd, were taken every day to the downs and brought back every night to be folded on the arable fields, the rule being to fold 1,000 sheep on a 'tenantry' acre (three-quarters of a statute acre) every night.[569] In breeding sheep regard was had to 'folding quality,' i.e. the propensity to drop manure only after being folded at night, as much as to quality and quantity of wool and meat. On enclosure the common flock was broken up. The small farmer had no longer any common to turn his horses on. The down on which he fed his sheep was largely curtailed, the common shepherd was abolished, and the farmer had too few sheep to enable him individually to employ a shepherd. Therefore he had to part with his flock. Having no cow common and very little pasture land he could not keep cows. In such circumstances the small farmer, after a few years, succumbed and became a labourer, or emigrated, or went to the towns.
In a pamphlet called _The Case of Labourers in Husbandry_, 1795, the Rev. David Davies said, 'by enclosure an amazing number of people have been reduced from a comfortable state of partial independence to the precarious condition of mere hirelings, who when out of work immediately come on the parish.' It has often been said that the poor were robbed of their share in the land by the landowners; but as a matter of fact it was the expense of securing the compensation allowed them, much greater in proportion on small holdings than on large, which went into the pockets of surveyors and lawyers, that did this. It was also often through the farmer that the labourer was deprived of his land when he had retained an acre or two after enclosure. Wishing to make the labourer dependent on him, he persuaded the agent to let the cottages with the farm, and the agent in order to avoid collecting a number of small rents consented. As soon as the farmer had the cottages he took the land from them and added it to his own. The peasant's losses engaged the serious attention of many landlords; near Tewkesbury, in 1773, the lord of the manor on enclosure, besides reserving 25 acres for the use of the poor, allowed land to each cottage sufficient to keep a horse or a cow, often added a small building, and gave stocks for raising orchards. Even some of the idlest were thereby made industrious, poor rates sank to 4d. in the £, though the population increased, and the labourer always had for sale some poultry, or the produce of his cow, or some fruit.[570]