what were the difference in the enclosed of the 16th century from 18th century in England
Answers
Elizabeth I reigned from 1558-1603
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When Elizabeth died, one of the great epochs of English history ended. Her 45-year rule decisively shaped the future of England as a stable Protestant monarchy governed through the cooperation of crown and local elites.
The defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588 established the glory of the English navy and inspired merchants and explorers toward colonization of a wider world. It was the time of Shakespeare and xx and xx. It was the time of the great English pirates and adventurersDrake, Hawkins and Frobisher.
England had defined itself as an island nation separate from the European continent—English kings no longer laid claim to French lands across the English Channel. Englishmen were united as a nation and proud to be English. England had a powerful navy and no standing army. Mercenaries were widely used for cannon fodder.
Despite the success of her reign, the country was plagued with continual economic problems. During the 16th century the population of England and Wales roughly doubled. By the time of Elizabeth’s death the population stood at 5 million. Prices for food and clothing skyrocketed in what became known as the Great Inflation.
The 1590s were the worst years of the century, marked by starvation, epidemic disease, and roving bands of vagrants looking for work. The situation was aggravated by the dissolution of the monasteries carried out by Elizabeth’s father, Henry VIII, 50 years earlier, which eliminated one of the great social nets of medieval times.
As a result of these problems Elizabeth’s government enacted legislation known as the Poor Laws, which made every local parish responsible for its own poor, and severely punished homeless beggars. “Poor laws” continued to be tightened during the next two hundred years. The combination of Poor Laws, together with draconian Penal Laws, were at their very worst (for the poor) between1780 and 1820—just when our ancestors were fleeing England and Wales. It was these Penal Laws which filled England’s jails in the next century. Budget constraints on jail building led to the extradition of convicts to the Americas and, after 1776, to Australia.
The enclosures of earlier times had been made to turn arable lands into sheep pastures. The enclosures of the 18th century were different. They transformed the communally cultivated open fields into large farms on which the new and more scientific mixed farming could be profitably carried out. In addition, much common land on which the villagers had certain customary rights of pasturage or wood or turf cutting, as well as other land that had previously been waste, was now enclosed.
Those of the smaller farmers who were tenants were gradually ruined by rents that became several times as high as had been customary. Land farmed on the new methods could be made to pay these increased rents but this was no help to men whose farms and capital were too small to adopt them successfully.
Many of the small freeholders were also forced to sell out by the impossibility to compete with the up-to-date methods of their wealthier neighbours. Heavy land taxes introduced after 1688 made landlords rent their estates to tenants farming from 200 acres upwards and doing their own repairs, and this led to general consolidation of holdings and the squeezing out of small tenant farmers.
The eighteenth century saw a marked decrease of farms under 100 acres and increase of those over 300 acres. It has been calculated that between 1740 and 1788 the number of separate farms declined by over 40,000. The process went on at an increased speed. The number of Enclosure Acts passed through Parliament indicates roughly how the movement developed. From 1717 to 1727 there were 15 such Acts, from 1728 to 1760, 226, from 1761 to 1796, 1,482 while from 1797 to 1820 there were 1,727. In general, more than four million acres were enclosed under these Acts.