PARLIAMENTARY ENCLOSURE AND THE EMERGENCE OF AN ENGLISH AGRICULTURAL PROLETARIAT

It has often been argued that parliamentary enclosure decisively increased the wage dependence of English agricultural laborers, primarily by extinguishing their rights to keep cows on common land. Yet the extent to which laborers had in fact enjoyed common pasture rights has never been demonstrated. This article fills that gap, by documenting the extent of laborers' common rights for ten settlements in the south and east Midlands. It finds that most laborers in these villages did not have common rights prior to enclosure and cannot, therefore, have been proletarianized by their loss.

[1]  G. Clark.  Commons Sense: Common Property Rights, Efficiency, and Institutional Change , 1998, The Journal of Economic History.

[2]  J. Chambers.  ENCLOSURE AND LABOUR SUPPLY IN THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION , 1953 .

[3]  Donald N. McCloskey,et al.  Commoners: common right, enclosure and social change in England, 1700–1820: Introduction , 1993 .

[4]  E. A. Wrigley,et al.  The population history of England, 1541-1871 , 1969 .

[5]  J. Clapham,et al.  An Economic History of Modern Britain: The Early Railway Age, 1820-1850 , 1927 .

[6]  R. Allen.  Enclosure and the Yeoman: The Agricultural Development of the South Midlands 1450-1850 , 1995 .

[7]  Oliver Rackham,et al.  The History Of The Countryside , 1986 .

[8]  Arthur H. Johnson,et al.  The Disappearance of the Small Landowner , 1977 .

[9]  L. Shaw-Taylor.  LABOURERS, COWS, COMMON RIGHTS AND PARLIMENTARY ENCLOSURE: THE EVIDENCE OF CONTEMPORARY COMMENT c.1760–1810 , 2001 .

[10]  P. King.  GLEANERS, FARMERS AND THE FAILURE OF LEGAL SANCTIONS IN ENGLAND 1750–1850 , 1989 .

[11]  E. A. Smith.  Earl Fitzwilliam and Malton: a Proprietary Borough in the Early Nineteenth Century , 1965 .

[12]  John Chapman,et al.  The Chronology of English Enclosure , 1984 .

[13]  G. Slater.  The English Peasantry and the Enclosure of Common Fields. , 1907 .

[14]  G. Mingay,et al.  Agricultural Revolution 1750-1880 , 1966 .

[15]  J. Chambers.  ENCLOSURE AND THE SMALL LANDOWNER. , 1940 .

[16]  R. Allen.  Enclosure and the yeoman , 1992 .

[17]  P. King.  Customary rights and women's earnings: the importance of gleaning to the rural labouring poor, 1750-1850 , 1991 .

[18]  E. A. Smith.  The Yorkshire Elections of 1806 and 1807: a study in electoral management , 1967 .

[19]  J. Western.  The English militia in the eighteenth century : the story of a political issue, 1660-1802 , 1965 .

[20]  J. L. Hammond,et al.  The Village Labourer, 1760-1832 , 1966 .

[21]  Jane Humphries,et al.  Enclosures, Common Rights, and Women: The Proletarianization of Families in the Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries , 1990, The Journal of Economic History.

[22]  J. Clapham,et al.  An Economic History of Modern Britain. The Early Railway Age, 1820-1850. , 1928 .

[23]  L. Shaw-Taylor.  Proletarianisation, Parliamentary Enclosure and the Household Economy of the Labouring Poor: 1750–1850 , 2000, Journal Economic History.

[24]  M. Turner.  Parliamentary Enclosure and Landownership Change in Buckinghamshire , 1975 .

[25]  A. Young.  General view of the agriculture of the county of Sussex : drawn up for the Board of Agriculture, and Internal Improvement , 1808 .

[26]  K. Snell,et al.  Annals of the Labouring Poor: Social Change and Agrarian England, 1660-1900 , 1987 .

[27]  J. R. Wordie,et al.  The Chronology of English Enclosure, 1500‐1914 , 1983 .

[28]  J. L. Hammond,et al.  The Village Labourer , 1978 .

[29]  Frederick Morton Sir Eden.  The state of the poor , 1966 .

[30]  Donald E. Ginter.  A Measure of Wealth: The English Land Tax in Historical Analysis , 1993 .

[31]  E. Davies.  THE SMALL LANDOWNER, 1780–1832, IN THE LIGHT OF THE LAND TAX ASSESSMENTS , 1927 .