One further point may be noticed. In Bedfordshire the percentage of the total area enclosed by Act of Parliament is exceptionally high--46·0 per cent. We find that when we make allowances for (1) contemporary voluntary enclosure, (2) for ancient woodland and for some land passing directly from the forest state into that of separate ownership and occupation, (3) for some ancient enclosing of land in the immediate vicinity of villages, there is little or no other enclosure remaining to be referred to the period before Parliamentary enclosure began--in this case the year 1742.
NORTHAMPTON, RUTLAND, S.E. WARWICK AND LEICESTER.
These four counties may be said to form a definite group, so far as their enclosure history is concerned. The main facts of their Parliamentary enclosure are shown in the following table:--
┌─────────────┬───────────────────────────────────┬───────────────┐ │ │ Acreage Enclosed │ │ │ ---- ├─────────────────┬─────────────────┤ Percentage of │ │ │ By 18th Century │ By 19th Century │ Total Area. │ │ │ Acts. │ Acts. │ │ ├─────────────┼─────────────────┼─────────────────┼───────────────┤ │ Warwick │ 124,828 │ 24,731 │ 25·0 │ │ Leicester │ 187,717 │ 12,660 │ 38·2 │ │ Rutland │ 37,180 │ 10,044 │ 46·5 │ │ Northampton │ 247,517 │ 85,251 │ 51·8 │ └─────────────┴─────────────────┴─────────────────┴───────────────┘
Like Bedford, they are all counties with a high proportion of enclosure by Act of Parliament; but they differ from Bedford in that their enclosure was much more preponderatingly effected in the eighteenth century. The proportion of eighteenth-century Acts is particularly high in Leicester, but the proportion of Acts earlier than 1760 is higher in Warwick than in any other county--twenty-nine out of 114. These counties comprise the district in which the greatest amount of agitation arose against enclosure in the seventeenth century, and that in which the effect of enclosure in causing depopulation through decay of tillage was most marked in the eighteenth century.
Map of Rutland, Northamptonshire, Huntingtonshire, Cambridgeshire, Buckinghamshire, Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire and part of Essex showing land enclosed: before the General Enclosure Act of 1801. between 1802 and 1845. under General Enclosure Act of 1845. Scale 1:1,000,000 or 1 inch = 15.78 Stat. miles.]