Q: Was enclosure sometimes accompanied by force? ¶
A: Yes, and resistance, and bloodshed, and remains among the most controversial areas of agricultural and economic history in England.
Q: Were enclosures largely an exchange and consolidation of land? ¶
A: Yes, and exchange not otherwise possible under the legal system.
Q: Was enclosure seen as the most cost-effective method of creating a legally binding settlement? ¶
A: Yes.
Q: Was enclosure an important factor in the reduction of small landholders in England? ¶
A: Yes, as compared to the Continent, though others believe that this process had already begun from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Q: Were enclosures conducted by agreement among the landholders throughout the seventeenth century? ¶
A: Yes, enclosure by Parliamentary Act began in the eighteenth century.
Q: Was enclosure not itself an offense, but where it was accompanied by the destruction of houses, half the profits would go to the Crown until the lost houses were rebuilt? ¶
A: Yes, In 1515, conversion from arable to pasture became an offense.
Q: Was enclosure frequent at that time? ¶
A: Yes.
Q: Were enclosures seen as the cause of inflation? ¶
A: Yes, and not the outcome.
Q: Is enclosure considered one of the causes of the British Agricultural Revolution? ¶
A: Yes.
Q: Were enclosures by means of local acts of Parliament? ¶
A: Yes, and called the Inclosure Acts.
Q: Was enclosure largely complete? ¶
A: Yes, and in most areas just leaving a few pasture commons and village greens, and the foreshore below the high-tide mark.
Q: Were enclosures often undertaken unilaterally by the landowner? ¶
A: Yes.
Q: Was enclosure not simply the fencing of existing holdings? ¶
A: Yes, but led to fundamental changes in agricultural practice.
Q: Was enclosure also frequent at that time? ¶
A: Yes.
Q: Was enclosure also used for the division and privatisation of common "wastes"? ¶
A: Yes, such as fens, marshes, heathland, downland, moors.