ABSTRACT
While the years 1750-1850 saw the greatest recourse to parliamentary enclosure, it was not spread uniformly over the century. In particular, two peaks stand out; the 1760s and 1770s, and the war years 1793-1815. These were roughly two comparable periods of about twenty years, in each of which about 40 per cent of all parliamentary enclosure took place, so that about 80 per cent of all parliamentary enclosure took place in those forty years. While in both periods it was mainly open-field arable land which was being enclosed, a certain proportion was of commons and waste, and this became somewhat more important during the war years; before 1793, 1.85 million acres of open-field and 0.71 million acres of commons and wastes were enclosed, whereas from 1793 to 1815 the figures were 1.99 and 0.91 million acres respectively.
