ABSTRACT
Nearly 300 years later, Charles Elton, in his magisterial Treatise on … the law of approvement stated that while for centuries aer Merton approvement by the lord of the manor had been ‘the most usual method of extinguishing rights of common’, nevertheless ‘there was at one period great popular opposition to this method of enclosure’, namely at the beginning of the reign of Edward VI.13 Elton did not make it clear whether he thought that the 1549 Act actually allowed approvements to continue for a little while – or that the Act had led to their immediate demise. One way or another, though, so far as Elton was concerned:
Perhaps in consequence, little attention has been paid to approvement in the literature of enclosure, although Gonner was an exception when he listed approvement as one of the means by which enclosure might be brought about.15 At the same time, though, he noted that:
is conclusion was echoed by Butlin, who said that ‘evidence for enclosure by approvement in the seventeenth century is relatively scarce’; while Eric Kerridge, although recognizing approvement as important, perhaps muddied the waters by claiming that ‘it became usual for approvement to be conducted under a formal agreement. In the long run it was the easiest way of going about the business.’17
