[31] Johnson, _The Disappearance of the Small Landowner_, p. 40.
[33] Nasse, _The Land Community of the Middle Ages_ (translated for the Cobden Club by Colonel Ouvry, 1871), pp. 81-91: "With regard to the proper agricultural character of these movements they are represented commonly as having been caused by an exclusively pure pasture husbandry, which expelled the tillage husbandman. Different circumstances, however, and witnesses show us closely that this, for the most part, was not the case." The discussion between Mr. Leadam and Professor Gay is contained in the _Trans. Royal Hist. Soc._, New Series, vol. xiv. See also Miss Davenport, _Quarterly Journal of Economics_, vol. xi., and below, pp. 223-228.
Moreover, who gained and who suffered by the enclosures, and to what extent? If the movement deserves to be called an agrarian revolution, it was certainly one which left a great many holders of small landed property intact, and perhaps even improved their position. Otherwise we can hardly account for the optimistic description of them, or of some of them, which is given in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries by writers like Harrison,[34] Norden,[35] and Fuller,[36] or for the part which this class played in the Civil War. Nor can we say with confidence how the statistical evidence derived by Mr. Leadam and Professor Gay from the reports of Royal Commissions should be interpreted. The comparative smallness of the percentage of land which the Commissioners returned as enclosed has led to the view[37] that the importance of the whole movement was grossly exaggerated by the writers of the period, who created a storm in a tea-cup over changes which really affected only an inconsiderable proportion of the whole country. If this is so, it is not easy to explain either the continuous attention which was paid to the question by the Government, or the revolts of the peasantry, or the strong views of reasonable and fair-minded men with first-hand knowledge, such as John Hales.
[34] _Elizabethan England_, edited by Lothrop Withington, with introduction by F.J. Furnivall, p. 119.
[35] J. Norden, _The Surveyor's Dialogue_.
[36] Thomas Fuller, _Holy and Profane State_.