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³ Turner, M. E., “Agricultural Productivity in England in the Eighteenth Century: Evidence from Crop Yields,” Economic History Review, 2nd ser., 35 (1982), pp. 489–510.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁴ McCloskey, “Enclosure of Open Fields,” p. 17.Google Scholar

⁵ See for example Kerridge, E., The Agricultural Revolution (London, 1967), pp. 94–95;Google ScholarYelling, J.A., Common Field and Enclosure in England, 1450–1850 (London, 1977), p. 164.Google Scholar

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⁸ See also Yelling, J. A., “Changes in Crop Production in East Worcestershire, 1540–1867,” Agricultural History Review, 21 (1973), especially pp. 24–28 for evidence of progressive open-field farming in East Worcestershire, especially of improving the arable as distinct from adapting the open fields to introduce more livestock husbandry. In his summary of the Champion district of the county, however, Yelling was inclined to suggest that in comparing open with enclosed parishes “during its last stages common field practice had in some respects become anachronistic,” which we can take to mean staid and conservative, and not progressive (p. 33).Google Scholar

⁹ Turner, M. E., English Parliamentary Enclosure (Folkestone, 1980), chap. 6.Google Scholar

¹⁰ On the general theory of rigidity in the open fields see, for example, McCloskey, D. N.. “The Economics of Enclosure: A Market Analysis,” in Parker and Jones, European Peasants, pp. 151–52.Google Scholar

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¹² Russell, E. and R. C., Making New Landscapes in Lincolnshire: The Enclosures of Thirty-Four Parishes in Mid-Lindsey (Lincoln, 1983), p. 33.Google Scholar

¹³ Buckinghamshire Record Office D/X/31, AR. 37/51, “A survey and terrier of an estate in Turweston, 1801.”Google Scholar

¹⁴ Buckinghamshire Record Office, Earl of Buckinghamshire's Archive, D/MH, Bundle 39, Letter of Dec. 28, 1777, relating to the Act for Wendover of 1777 confirming exchanges in the common fields.Google Scholar

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¹⁶ Yet on this point see Yelling, Common Field and Enclosure, pp. 163–70.Google Scholar

¹⁷ As explained in Turner, English Parliamentary Enclosure, chap. 6.Google Scholar

¹⁸ Even in Durham, a non-Midland county and not usually associated with this trend, there was a wave of early enclosure before 1750 related to the development or extension of the pastoral economy; see Hodgson, R. I., “The Progress of Enclosure in County Durham, 1550–1870,” in Fox, H. S. A. and Butlin, R. A., eds., Change in the Countryside: Essays on Rural England, 1500–1900 (London, 1979), p. 93.Google Scholar

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²¹ My emphasis; taken from Turner, M. E., ed., Home Office Acreage Returns (H067), Public Record Office, List and Index Society, vol. 190 (1982), p. 80.Google Scholar

²² Walton, J. R., “Aspects of Agrarian Change in Oxfordshire, 1750–1880” (unpublished D. Phil., University of Oxford, 1976), p. 479;Google ScholarTurner, “Agricultural Productivity in England,” pp. 497–500; Yelling, Common Field and Enclosure, pp. 171–72, 203–4. For a contrary view see Allen, “The Efficiency of Enclosures,” p. 949.Google Scholar

²³ These last two paragraphs based on Turner, , Home Office Acreage Returns, vol. 190 (1982), p. 102; vol. 189 (1982), pp. 193, 225; vol. 195 (1983), pp. 85, 68, 104; vol. 190 (1982), p. 107.Google Scholar

²⁴ Havinden, “Agricultural Progress,” pp. 72–73.Google Scholar

²⁵ E. and Russell, R. C., Landscape Changes in South Humberside: The Enclosure of Thirty-Seven Parishes (Hull, 1982)Google Scholar, passim, and Making New Landscapes in Lincoinshire, passim;Google ScholarHarris, A., The Open Fields of East Yorkshire (East Yorkshire Local History Society, 1959; reprinted 1981), pp. 6–7.Google Scholar

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²⁹ Turner, , Home Office Acreage Returns, vol. 190 (1982), pp. 153–54.Google Scholar

³⁰ Soil differences, even in adjacent counties, may account for this.Google Scholar

³¹ Havinden, “Agricultural Progress,” p. 72.Google Scholar

³² Turner, M. E., “The 1801 Crop Returns for Buckinghamshire,” Records of Buckinghamshire, 19 (1974), p. 477; unfortunately for neighboring and apparently more progressive Oxford shire there are surviving 1801 crop returns for only ten parishes. It is one of the least represented counties in the returns.Google Scholar

³³ Harris, A., The Rural Landscape of the East Riding of Yorkshire, 1700–1850 (London, 1961), p. 61 (and in general for more detail and a greater appreciation of East Yorkshire regional differentiation)Google Scholar, and The Open Fields, p. 10.Google Scholar

³⁴ Turner, M. E., “The 1801 Crop Returns for Buckinghamshire,” Records of Buckinghamshire, 19 (1974), p. 477, The Rural Landscape, p. 100.Google Scholar

³⁵ In texts like Chambers, J. D. and Mingay, G. E., The Agricultural Revolution, 1750–1880 (London, 1966), p. 84;Google Scholar and in the journal literature see Purdum, J. L., “Profitability and the Timing of Parliamentary Land Enclosures,” Explorations in Economic History, 15 (1978), pp. 313–26.Google Scholar

³⁶ Turner, “Agricultural Productivity in England,” p. 498.Google Scholar

³⁷ In Bedfordshire, the average acres per parish for wheat, potatoes, and rye was the same for open and enclosed parishes. There were fewer acres of oats and pulses per unit in enclosed parishes and more acres of barley and turnips. Calculated from Table 1. See also Mark Overton's recent and interesting analysis of the introduction and diffusion of turnips in Norfolk and Suffolk in the period 1580–1740, in particular where he says that “There is scant evidence of turnips being grown on ‘open fields,’” He suggests that turnips were likely to be introduced where private property rights predominated, that is, in enclosed places. Overton, M., “The diffusion of agricultural innovations in early modern England: Turnips and clover in Norfolk and Suffolk, 1580–1740,” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, n.s., 10 (1985), pp. 205–21, especially pp. 215–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

³⁸ In many places 1793 was taken to represent this notion of a “common average year.” An alternative method I employed in earlier published findings was to take regional yields as the mean of individual parish yields. whether at the county or national level, although the precise measurements from the two methods differed, the broad trends remained unaltered. See also the note attached to Appendix Table 7.Google Scholar

³⁹ Only the yield ratios are reported in the appendix; the full table giving acres and bushels is available on request.Google Scholar

⁴⁰ Though the parishes in this England study are self-selected by the documents themselves, there is in fact a marked bias in their distribution vis-à-vis the date of enclosure. But I think this bias works for rather than against the thesis being propounded. Of the 116 parishes involved, 42 were enclosed in the 1760s and 1770s; and in 1801, 47 were embarking on their last two “open” decades. The England summary is essentially a comparison between parishes with a generation of experience of farming in severalty and those in their last generation of the open fields.Google Scholar

⁴¹ Hodgson, “The Progress of Enclosure in County Durham,” especially pp. 96–98.Google Scholar

⁴² Davis, T., General View of the Agriculture of Wiltshire (London, 1811), p. 46.Google Scholar

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