252 Agricultural Revolutions and Change
times enclosure was as much about the clarification of those property rights as it
was about productivity strategies.
Enclosure, whether for extending the grassland or for improving the arable,
represented the end of the old order. It brought with it the self-contained, ring-
fenced farm, which in turn posed a new threat to sustainability. While the com-
munity with its local courts controlled farming practice, it also held back the
enterprise of the individual. Through the enclosure process itself local legal restric-
tions operated by the enclosure commissioners ensured that all farmers were fairly
treated (Beckett et al, 1998), but after enclosure those same farmers came directly
under the control of landlords. At that juncture between community control and
landlord control there was in some places and at some times a breathing space in
which the accumulated sustainable work of decades or even centuries was put
severely at risk. This was no better summed up than by Thomas Davis, a noted
contemporary observer of the interface between communal open-field farming
and farming in severalty. He said that enclosures made a good farmer better, but a
bad farmer worse (Davis, 1811, p46). He meant that the good farmers were already
resource managers but within a communal straitjacket, in contrast to the poten-
tially indolent or inefficient farmers who were protected from doing great damage
by the collective action embodied in communal management. Left to their own
devices, once collective action was removed at enclosure, these farmers lost the plot
and their part of the farming environment suffered. Therefore for future agricul-
tural sustainability it was vital that the responsibilities undertaken by the local
courts were transferred to the landlord, or more pertinently to his land agent. It is
probably not coincidental that the late 18th and early 19th centuries witnessed
growing professionalization of estate management. This was symbolized by the
emergence of the land agent who replaced the old manorial steward, who had
often been a lawyer employed mainly to oversee the operation of the manorial
court (Beckett, 1986, p144). All the while there is also the age-old debate over the
damage done to a landless sector of society when access to common resources was
taken away by this enclosure process (Pretty, 2002, pp29–32).
Summary and Conclusion – Transitions in English
Agrarian History
If Brundtland is the key definition of sustainability then open-field farming
appeared to meet the needs of succeeding generations without compromising those
of future generations. It was ecologically balanced, the economic benefits main-
tained the rural community, and it provided a degree of equitable access to
resources. At the same time it was susceptible to adjustment, allowing communi-
ties to alter the balance between arable and pasture to reflect the wider economic
world. Changing demand conditions constantly impinged on the three-attribute
model of ecology, economy and equity, but inbuilt elasticity allowed temporary