[370] _The Commonweal of this Realm of England_ (Lamond), especially p. 81: "Knight: What sorte is that which youe said had greater loss thereby then those men had profitte? Doctor: It is all noblemen, and gentlemen, and all other that live by a fixed rent, or stipend, or doe not maner the grounde, or do occupie no byinge or sellinge.... He that maie spend £300 a yeare by such revennewes and fees, may kepe no better porte then his father, or anie before him, that could spend but £200. And so ye maie perceave, it is a great abatement of a man's countenance to take awaie the third part of his livinge. And therefore gentlemen doe so much studie the Increase of theire landes, enhauncing of their rentes, and so take farmes and pastures into theire owne hands."
[371] _A Treatise of the Canker of England's Commonwealth_ (1601).
[372] _The Commonweal of this Realm of England_ (Lamond), p. 100.
(b) _The Growth of the Large Leasehold Farm_
The changed situation created by these causes had the effect of producing a new policy on the part of landlords, which took different forms according to the circumstances of different localities, but which in the counties most deeply affected resulted in an increase in pasture-farming and in an upward movement in the payments made by tenants. The new régime seems to have affected first, as was natural, that part of their estates which was most entirely under their own control, and the disposal of which was least involved in other interests, namely, the manorial demesne. It is not altogether easy to construct a picture of the policy pursued by a typical enclosing landlord from the accounts of contemporaries, who were more interested in results than in the steps by which they were reached. According to some of them, lords in the sixteenth century were resuming into their own hands those parts of the demesne which had been let out, in order to supply their establishments with produce without having to rely on the markets when prices were rapidly rising. On some manors again, when the demesne was "in the hand of the lord," considerations which were not purely economic came into play; for example, one finds part of it being turned into a park, which was at once profitable as a means of grazing sheep, and prized for those motives of social amenity and ostentation which have done so much to make the English countryside the admiration of travellers, and so much to ruin the English peasantry. It was not seldom that the confiscated estates of monastic houses were converted into a pleasaunce or a deer-park by their new proprietors.