factor influencing the withdrawal of land from tillage; but the great and effective cause of the enclosure movement, the one fundamental fact which is insisted upon, is that constant advances in the price of wool made grazing relatively profitable. It is usually accepted without debate that the withdrawal of arable land from tillage did not begin until after the Black Death, that the enclosures of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were caused[Pg 19/175] by a rise in the price of wool, and that the conversion of arable land to pasture ceased when this cause ceased to operate.

Against this general explanation of the enclosure movement, it is urged, first, that the withdrawal of land from cultivation began long before the date at which the enclosure movement, caused by an alleged rise in the price of wool, is ordinarily said to have begun. The fourteenth century was marked by agrarian readjustments which have a direct relation to the enclosure movement, and which cannot be explained by the Black Death or the price of wool. Even in the thirteenth century the causes leading to the enclosure movement were well marked. Secondly, the cause of the substitution of sheep-farming for agriculture in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries cannot have been a rise in the price of wool relatively to that of grain, because statistics show that the price of wool fell during the fifteenth century, and failed to rise as rapidly as that of wheat in the sixteenth century. Thirdly, a mere comparison of the relative prices of grazing and agricultural products cannot explain the fact that conversion of open-field land to pasture continued throughout the seventeenth century in spite of prices which made it profitable for landowners at the same time to convert a large amount of grass-land to tillage, including enclosures which had formerly been taken from the common fields. If these facts are accepted the explanation of the enclosure movement which is based upon a comparison of the prices of wheat and wool must be rejected, and the story must be told from a different point of view.

Taking up these points in order, we shall inquire first into the causes of the agrarian readjustments of the fourteenth century. A generation after the Black Death, the commutation of villain services and the introduction of the leasehold system had made notable progress. The leasing of the[Pg 20/176] demesne has been attributed to the direct influence of the pestilence, which by reducing the serf population made it impossible to secure enough villain labor to cultivate the lord's land. The substitution of money rents in place of the labor services owed by the villains has been explained on the supposition that the serfs who had survived the pestilence took advantage of the opportunity afforded by their reduction in numbers to free themselves from servile labor and thus improve their social status. The connection between the Black Death and the changes in manorial management which are usually attributed to it could be more convincingly established had not several decades elapsed after the Black Death before these changes became marked. A recent intensive study of the manors of the Bishopric of Winchester during this period confirms the view of those who have protested against assigning to the Black Death the revolutionary importance which is given it by many historians. On these estates the Black Death "produced severe evanescent effects and temporary changes, with a rapid return to the status quo of 1348."[12] The great changes which are usually attributed to the plague of 1348-1350 were under way before 1348, and were not greatly accelerated until 1360, possibly not before 1370, and cannot, therefore, have been due to the Black Death.

Levett and Ballard devote especial attention to the effect of the Black Death upon the substitution of money payments for labor services and rents in kind, but their study also brings out the fact that the difficulty in persuading tenants to take up land on the old terms (usually ascribed to the Black Death) began before the pestilence, and continued long after its effects had ceased to exert any influence. Before the Black Death landowners were unable to secure [Pg 21/177]holders for bond land without the use of force. A generation after the Black Death they were still contending with this problem, and it had become more serious than at any previous time. Whatever the significance of the Black Death, it must not be advanced as the explanation of a condition which arose before its occurrence, nor of events which took place long after its effects were forgotten. One result of the pestilence was, indeed, to place villains in a stronger position than before, but the changes which took place on this account must not be allowed to obscure the fact that landowners were already facing serious difficulties before 1348. Holders of land were already deserting, and the tenements of those who died or deserted could frequently be filled only by compulsion. Villains were refusing to perform their services on account of poverty, and they were already securing reductions in their rents and services. The temporary reduction of the population by the Black Death has been advanced as the reason for the ability of the villains of the decade 1350-1360 to enforce their demands; but without the help of any such cause, villains of an earlier period were obtaining concessions from their lords, and after the natural growth of the population had had ample time to replace those who had died of the pestilence, the villains were in a stronger position than ever before, if we are to estimate their strength by their success in lightening their economic burdens. The Black Death at the most did no more than accelerate changes in the tenure of land which were already under way. Villain services were being reduced, and the size of villain holdings increased. The strength of the position of the serfs lay not so much in the absence of competition due to a temporary reduction in their numbers as in their poverty. Tenants could not be held at the accustomed rents and services because it was impossible to make a living from their holdings. The absence of com[Pg 22/178]petition for holdings was no temporary thing, due to the high mortality of the years 1348-1350, but was chronic, and was based upon the worthlessness of the land. The vacant tenements of the fourteenth century, the reduction in the area of demesne land planted, the complaints that no profit could be made from tillage, the reduction of rents on account of the poverty of whole villages, all point in the same direction. These matters will be taken up more fully in a later chapter. Here it need only be pointed out that the withdrawal of land from cultivation was under way because tillage was unprofitable.

If tillage was unprofitable in the fourteenth century, so unprofitable that heirs were anxious to buy themselves free of the obligation to enter upon their inheritance, while established landholders deserted their tenements, the enclosure of arable land for pasture in the fifteenth century is seen in a new light. When there was no question of desiring the land for sheep pasture, it was voluntarily abandoned by cultivators. Displacement of tillage due to an internal cause precedes displacement of tillage for sheep pasture. The process of withdrawing land from cultivation began independently of the scarcity of labor caused by the Black Death and independently of any change in the price of wool; the continuation of this process in the fifteenth century is not likely to depend entirely upon a rise in the price of wool. That the enclosures of the fifteenth century were in reality merely a further step in the readjustments under way in the