We have now to fix with what accuracy we may the time of the enclosure of the western counties, and then to search for evidence in those counties of variations from the typical English village community.
These counties were very early enclosed. There is so much earlier evidence that it seems superfluous to quote Celia Fiennes, but there are some suggestive touches in her description.
“I entered into Devonshire 5 miles off from Wellington, just on a high ridge of hills which discovers a vast prospect on Each side full of Inclosures and lesser hills which is the description of most part of the West. You could see large tracts of grounds full of Enclosures, good grass and corn beset with quicksetts and hedgerows” (p. 206). In very similar words she describes the views on the roads from Exeter to Chudleigh, and from Chudleigh to Ashburton.
“Devonshire is Much like Somersetshire, fruitfull countrys for corn, graseing, much for inclosures that makes the wayes very narrow, so as in some places a coach and waggons cannot pass. They are forced to carry their corn and carriagis on horses backes with frames of woods like pannyers on either side of the horse, so load it high and tye it with cords. This they do altogether the further westward they goe, for the wayes grow narrower and narrower up to the land’s end” (p. 9). As Celia Fiennes rode into the far west of Cornwall, hers is the evidence of an eye-witness. She points to the explanation of the extreme narrowness for which Devonshire lanes are still noted--enclosure took place before the introduction of carts.
Devonshire is spoken of in the previously quoted passage in the “Discourse of the Commonweal,” about 1550, as, with Essex and Kent, one of the most enclosed counties. Leland, about the year 1537 passed through North Devon into Cornwall, as far as Wadebridge and Bodmin, and back through South Devon. His statement that Somerset was much enclosed with hedgerows of elms, has already been quoted. In Devon and Cornwall he found no “champaine,” but frequently “meately good corne and grasse;” on the other hand, he frequently found enclosure.
After recording his arrival at Dunster, he says: “From Combane to the Sterte most part of the Shore is Hilly Ground, and nere the Shore is no Store of wood; that that is ys al in Hegge rowes of Enclosures” (Vol. II., fol. 63). There was enclosed ground between Bideford and Torrington (fol. 68); from Torrington to Launceston was either “hilly and much enclosid,” or “hilly and much morisch” (fol. 69), and also from Launceston to Boscastle (fol. 72).