ABSTRACT
The magic word enclosure, the talisman for all ambitious or impoverished squires, wrorked its spell in the uplands of Lincolnshire. Yet apart from the changes thus introduced into the traditional routine of husbandry, there is little sign in the uplands of any other, even modest, improvements in technique in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Examples of cropping in the seventeenth-century uplands are meagre and do not constitute a generous sample. Several classes of documents dealing variously with enclosure, economic fluctuations, and valuations of personal property have emphasised the predominant importance of wool as the chief marketable commodity of the uplands. By the beginning of the eighteenth century a regular system of cattle fattening began to emerge, the upland farmers sending their stock into the fat pastures of the fen and marsh, which found these upland grasses lush compared with the pastures they had left behind.
