As an example of the unenclosed fields, at the end of the sixteenth century, we may take the common fields at Daventry, which were three in number, containing respectively 368, 383, and 524 acres, divided into furlongs, a term which had now a very wide signification, each of which was subdivided into lands nearly always half an acre in extent, several of these lands when adjoining being often held now by the same owner.  One furlong may be taken as an example.  It was 37 acres 1 rood in extent, and contained ninety-six lands, owned by seventeen people.  The meadows were divided still more minutely, some of the smaller portions being only a quarter of an acre each.  The largest meadow contained 50 acres, divided among fifty-three people.  In the manor, besides the arable and meadow, there were 300 acres of common pasture, a park, and a small wood.  There were forty-one freeholders and many leasehold tenants, the average freehold being 34 acres, the average leasehold only half an acre, small holdings being the usual feature of the unenclosed township.

In the seventeenth century the price of wool ceased to operate as a cause of enclosure, but in many parts the change to pasture continued, owing to the rise in price of cattle and of wages.  The same reason, too, for laying down land to grass that had been so powerful in the preceding centuries still existed, the common arable fields needed rest from continual cropping and poor manuring, while good crops of corn could be grown from the virgin soil of the newly enclosed waste.  The preamble of the Durham decrees clearly states this:  ’the land is wasted and worn with continual ploweing, and thereby made bare, barren, and very unfruitful.’[272] We may, therefore, take Coke’s words as inapplicable to many districts.  In the seventeenth century there were several methods of enclosing.  Sometimes the lord of the manor enclosed and left the land of the tenants still in common; or a tenant enclosed piece by piece; or enclosures were made by Act of Parliament, the earliest of which for common fields was passed in the time of James I, a method at this period very seldom used; or there was an agreement between lord and tenants often authorized by the Courts of Chancery or Exchequer.

Besides enclosure, another process was going on, the consolidation of farms by the amalgamation of small holdings into larger ones.  Farmhouses, as we see them to-day, began to appear on the holdings thus consolidated, instead of being grouped together in villages.  A writer in 1604 says, ’we may see many of their houses built alone like raven’s nests, no birds building neere them’ so unwonted was the sight of isolated dwellings in most places at the time.

However, in 1630 Charles I went back to the policy of his forefathers and issued letters to certain of the Midland counties ordering all enclosures of the last two years to be removed, and Commissions were issued to inquire into the matter in 1632, 1635, and 1636,[273] the chief evil feared from enclosures being depopulation, and enclosers were prosecuted in the Court of Star Chamber.