the later
period, and have explained a difference between the two periods which
did not exist by a change in the ratio between the prices of wool and
grain for which no proof is given.

It has been shown in this chapter that the conversion of arable to
pasture in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries cannot have been
caused by increased demand for wool, since the price of wool
relatively to that of grain fell, and the extension of tillage rather
than of pasture would have taken place had price movements been the
chief factor influencing the conversion of land from one use to the
other. It has also been shown that the conversion of arable to
pasture did not cease at the beginning of the seventeenth century. If
the principal cause of the enclosure movement had been the increasing
demand for wool, this cause would have ceased to operate when time had
elapsed for the shifting of enough land from tillage to pasture to
increase the supply of wool. That the conversion of arable to pasture
did not cease after a reasonable time had passed is an indication that
its cause was not the demand for wool. When it is found that pasture
was being converted to arable at the same time that other land was
withdrawn from cultivation and laid to grass, the insufficiency of the
accepted explanation of the enclosure movement is made even more
apparent. A change in the price of wool could at best explain the
conversion in one direction only. The theory that the cause of the
enclosure movement was the high price of wool must be rejected, and a
more critical study must be made of the readjustments in the use of
land which became conspicuous in the fourteenth century, but which are
overlooked in the orthodox account of the enclosure movement.

Footnotes:

[12] Levett and Ballard, _The Black Death on the Estates of the See of
Winchester_ (Oxford, 1916), p. 142.

[13] Smyth, _Lives of the Berkeleys_ (Gloucester, 1883), vol. i, pp.
113-160.

[14] (Oxford, 1866-1902), vols. i, iv.

[15] Increase in manufacture of woollen cloth constituted no increase
in the demand for wool in so far as exports of raw wool were reduced.

[16] _Royal Historical Soc. Trans._, N. S. (1905), vol. ix, p. 101, note 2.

[17] Denton, _England in the Fifteenth Century_, p. 159.

[18] Gay, _Quarterly Journal of Economics_ (1902-1903), vol. xvii, p. 587.

[19] Pollard, _Reign of Henry VII_ (London, 1913), vol. ii, pp. 235-237.

[20] More, _Utopia_ (Everyman edition)