dlenesse than maintaine
them;' and he also asks how it is that there are fewest poor where
there are fewest commons.

In the common fields, too, there was continual strife and contention
caused by the infinite number of trespasses that they were subject
to.[339] The absence of hedges, too, in these great open fields was
bad for the crops, for there was nothing to mitigate drying and
scorching winds, while in the open waste and meadows the live stock
must have sadly needed shelter and shade, 'losing more flesh in one
hot day than they gained in three cool days.' Worlidge, a Hampshire
man, joins in the chorus of praise of enclosures, for they brought
employment to the poor, and maintained treble 'the number of
inhabitants' that the open fields did; and he gives further proof of
the enclosure of land in the seventeenth century, when he mentions
'the great quantities of land that have within our memories lain open,
and in common of little value, yet when enclosed have proved excellent
good land.' Why then was this most obvious improvement not more
generally effected? Because there was a great impediment to it in the
numerous interests and diversity of titles and claims to almost every
common field and piece of waste land in England, whereby one or more
envious or ignorant persons could thwart the will of the
majority.[340] Another hindrance, he says, was that many roads passed
over the commons and wastes, which a statute was needed to stop.

In the seventeenth century hop growing was not nearly so common in
England as in the preceding, when Harrison had said, in his
_Description of Britain_, 'there are few farmers or occupiers in the
country which have not gardens and hops growing of their own, and
those far better than do come from Flanders.' There seems, indeed, to
have been a prejudice against the hop; Worlidge[341] says it was
esteemed an unwholesome herb for the use it was usually put to, 'which
may also be supplied with several other wholesome and better herbs.'
John Evelyn was very much against them, probably because he was such
an advocate of cider: 'It is little more than an age,' he says, 'since
hopps transmuted our wholesome ale into beer, which doubtless much
altered our constitutions. That one ingredient, by some not unworthily
suspected, preserving drink indeed, and so by custom made agreeable,
yet repaying the pleasure with tormenting diseases, and a shorter
life, may deservedly abate our fondness for it, e