arable to pasture. Tawney cites a case in which
ninety-five acres of ancient pasture were brought under cultivation
while thirty-five acres of arable were laid to grass.[30] In 1630 the
Countess of Westmoreland enclosed and converted arable, but tilled
other land instead.[31] The enclosure movement, then, did not end at
the time when it is usually thought to have ended. Since it is
difficult to suppose that the price of wool could have been advancing
constantly throughout two centuries, without causing such a
readjustment in the use of land that no further withdrawal of land
from tillage for pasture would be necessary, the continuance of the
conversion of arable to pasture in the seventeenth century throws
suspicion upon the whole explanation of the enclosure movement as due
to the increased demand for wool.

Miss Leonard, indeed, advances the hypothesis that the price of wool
ceased to be the cause of enclosure during the seventeenth century,
but that other price changes had the same effect:

The increase in pasture in the sixteenth century was rendered
profitable by the rapid increase in the price of wool, but, in
the seventeenth century, this cause ceases to operate. The change
to pasture, however, continued, partly owing to a great rise in
the price of cattle, and partly because the increase in wages
made it less profitable to employ the greater number of men
necessary for tilling the fields.[32]

The assumption that wages and the price of cattle advanced
sufficiently in the seventeenth century to account for the change to
pasture are no better justified than the assumption of the rapid rise
in the price of wool in the sixteenth century. If the price of meat
and dairy products rose in the seventeenth century, so did the price
of grain and other foods. The relative rate of increase is the only
point significant for the present discussion. No statistics are
available to show whether the price of cattle rose more rapidly than
that of grain, and the evidence afforded by the reduction of arable
land to pasture is counterbalanced by the equally well-established
fact that much pasture land was plowed and planted in this period. It
is equally probable on the basis of this evidence that the prices of
wheat and barley advanced more rapidly than those of meat and butter
and cheese. The same difficulty is met in the suggestion that the
increase in pasturage was due partly to higher wages fo