In Defense of “Commons Sense”: Reply to Chapman

Charity land, argues John Chapman, cannot tell us much about enclosure in general because charity land was unlike land in general. It was concentrated in parishes with little common waste. It was unlikely to be enclosed privately because it was uncertain if charity trustees could legally exchange or sell land. Nor will the procedures in "Commons Sense" even tell us about the true enclosure gains on charity land, because these procedures underestimate the gains from enclosing common pasture and waste. These are interesting and important points Chapman raises. Those who know Chapman know that Chapman knows enclosure. But after due and careful deliberation I believe that I make a case that should assuage most of Chapman's doubts. The charity land, though it over-samples small plots and densely populated parishes, can be reweighted to provide a good picture of the average enclosure experience of land in England all the way from 1600 to 1840. Let me first address the question of incorrect procedure, because here there is no real disagreement between us. We agree on the correct way to measure rent gains. "Commons Sense" applies this agreed method. Chapman has simply misunderstood the procedures I carried out. Chapman conceives that I measure the area of a plot before enclosure as only the area ofthe delineated arable and meadow portion of common holdings, the classic open fields, ignoring the stinted pasture and waste land which would not have a measured area before enclosure. He thinks that I then compare the rent per acre on this part of the pre-enclosure holding with rent per acre on the whole of the post-enclosure holding. If I had done this it would create two problems. The rent gains from increasing the land area on enclosure would not be included, and rents per acre would rise little in my measurements because of the inherent infertility of the waste land now included in the comparison. Chapman shows how an enclosure of 941 acres of open field land at Scalby in Yorkshire that resulted in a gain of 1,051 acres of stinted pasture and common waste would be measured as having a 45 percent rent gain by such a procedure, while the total increase in the estate rental was 184 percent. He concludes that because the average enclosure involves large accretions of stinted pasture and unstinted waste I must in general greatly underestimate the rent gains from enclosure. But in "Commons Sense" no such error is committed. The area attributed to plots before enclosure always includes the amount of any stinted pasture or common waste later allotted to the land on enclosure. ' For example, one of the land holdings in my data set is that of Buttermere's Charity in Dent township, Sedbergh parish, in the West Riding of Yorkshire. When purchased in 1765 this land was described as a house, barn, and 2.75 acres of closes, with no mention of any common rights. It was still being rented under this description in 1824.2 But in 1859 the waste land of the township was enclosed and the charity received a waste allotment of 16.02 acres. In the data set the area of the land holding in 1765 and 1824 is listed throughout as 18.83 acres. From 1824 to 1875 the rental per acre of the holding increased following enclosure from ? 0.33 to ? 0.90. That is what is recorded in the data set. If I had followed the procedure Chapman imputes to me then the rent per acre would instead have declined from ? 2.29 to ? 0.90. The low average rent increases I find are not the result of a mistaken procedure. Because I did include an area in pre-enclosure holdings for common waste later added to plots, I can statistically estimate the contribution of this waste land to the value of plots