ABSTRACT
In estimating the social effects of the parliamentary enclosure movement of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the cost of the process is a major consideration. In Warwickshire, whatever the reasons, there is evidence that, very commonly, the social consequences of enclosure in the eighteenth century were both considerable and painful. The Warwickshire awards are unusually informative about the cost of parliamentary enclosure. The total cost of the public transaction which enclosure involved could vary considerably between one award and another. One important point revealed both in the Leicestershire and Warwickshire awards is that costs changed little before the later 1780s. There has been a tendency for some time, reacting to the general condemnation of an earlier generation of historians, to minimize the social injustice which enclosure brought. In one large Warwickshire parish, at least, the memory of the eighteenth-century enclosure left a bitterness which remained for generations.
