ol
was rising more rapidly than that of grain. The beginning of the
enclosure movement, according to this theory, dates from the time when
a rise in the price of wool became marked, and the movement ended when
there was a relative rise in the price of agricultural products.
Before the price of wool began to rise, it is supposed that tillage
was profitable enough, and that nothing but the higher profits to be
made from grazing induced landholders to abandon agriculture. The
agrarian readjustments of the fourteenth century are regarded as due
simply to the temporary shortage of labor caused by the Black Death.
High wages at this time caused the conversion of some land to pasture,
according to the orthodox theory, and from time to time during the
next two centuries high wages were a contributing factor influencing
the withdrawal of land from tillage; but the great and effective cause
of the enclosure movement, the one fundamental fact which is insisted
upon, is that constant advances in the price of wool made grazing
relatively profitable. It is usually accepted without debate that the
withdrawal of arable land from tillage did not begin until after the
Black Death, that the enclosures of the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries were caused by a rise in the price of wool, and that the
conversion of arable land to pasture ceased when this cause ceased to
operate.

Against this general explanation of the enclosure movement, it is
urged, first, that the withdrawal of land from cultivation began long
before the date at which the enclosure movement, caused by an alleged
rise in the price of wool, is ordinarily said to have begun. The
fourteenth century was marked by agrarian readjustments which have a
direct relation to the enclosure movement, and which cannot be
explained by the Black Death or the price of wool. Even in the
thirteenth century the causes leading to the enclosure movement were
well marked. Secondly, the cause of the substitution of sheep-farming
for agriculture in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries cannot have
been a rise in the price of wool relatively to that of grain, because
statistics show that the price of wool fell during the fifteenth
century, and failed to rise as rapidly as that of wheat in the
sixteenth century. Thirdly, a mere comparison of the relative prices
of grazing and agricultural products cannot explain the fact that
conversion of open-field land to pasture continued throughout the
seventee