4 THE ESSEX NATURALIST.
It requires little imagination to realise that the difficulties
attendant upon land enclosure in the three field-system are
formidable. The buying out of individuals' holdings was of
little use, and force, the only practical method, was not always
advisable.
Slater3 noticed the similarity between the west of Britain
and the eastern Home Counties in respect of the early date of
enslosure, for very few enclosures had taken place in either of
these districts during the Parliamentary Enclosures of the
nineteenth century, and he suggests that in the former, or
Celtic, area early enclosures obtained favoured by the compact
holdings of the run-rig and other British field systems. It is
obvious that the open field system with its scattered areas,
associated with the areas of Saxon settlement, would involve
difficulties in the re-allocation of owners' strips during enclosure.
In the Celtic field systems, where each cultivator was allowed to
have a compact area for some time, there would be every in-
ducement to fence the holding for its improvement.
Slater's reasons for the early date of the enclosures in eastern
England are ingenious but unconvincing. It was, of course, a
desirable action on the part of the manorial lord to enclose land
for arable or pastoral farming—a procedure usually causing
some outcry on the part of the tenants who lost grazing and
other rights. Slater therefore suggests that the English en-
closures began in the more highly cultivated land in the east
of the country—where new agricultural ideas would easily take
root—and advanced westward. As the advancing wave of
enclosures reached London the agitation of the ejected and
suffering tenants caused parliamentary action against this "pull-
ing down of towns." This theory, put forward to explain the
early enclosures in eastern England, seems untenable. The zone
of enclosures could hardly be expected to show such an even line
of advance, or such a definitely marked boundary at the time
when new enclosures were made illegal. Furthermore, it is
known that the men who formulated the parliamentary acts
were those who were most interested in enclosures, and these
men left many ways by which they could evade the letter of the
law—and, indeed, enclosures did not cease in spite of parlia-
mentary action.
3 Geographical Journal, 1907. Slater.