[9][10] After William I invaded and conquered England in 1066, he distributed its land amongst 180 barons, who held it as his tenants in chief, establishing a feudal system.

The ensuing difficulties in hiring labour has been seen as causing the abandonment of land and the demise of the feudal system, although some historians have suggested that the effects of the Black Death may have only sped up an already on-going process.

Under this, if an individual managed to acquire all the disparate strips of land in an area and consolidate them in one whole piece, for example a manor, then any communal rights would cease to exist, since there was no one to exercise them.

"Waste"[b] land was often very narrow areas, typically less than 1 yard (0.91 m) wide, in awkward locations (such as cliff edges, or inconveniently shaped manorial borders), but also could be bare rock, it was not officially used by anyone, and so was often "farmed" by landless peasants.

[35] The land-holding tenants had livestock, including sheep, pigs, cattle, horses, oxen, and poultry, and after harvest, the fields became 'common' so they could graze animals on that land.

[38] They saw enclosure as a way to improve efficiency,[l] however it was not simply the fencing of existing holdings; there was also a fundamental change in agricultural practice.

[40] One of the most important innovations was the development of the Norfolk four-course system, which greatly increased crop and livestock yields by improving soil fertility and reducing fallow periods.

[41] The practice of growing a series of dissimilar types of crops in the same area in sequential seasons helped to restore plant nutrients and reduce the build-up of pathogens and pests.

The attraction of large profits to be made from wool encouraged manorial lords to enclose common land and convert it from arable to (mainly) sheep pasture.

[46] From the time of Henry VII, Parliament began passing acts either to stop enclosure, to limit its effects, or at least to fine those responsible.

[46] Historically, the initiative to enclose land came either from a landowner hoping to maximise rental from their estate, or a tenant farmer wanting to improve their farm.

Tithe-owners (usually the Anglican clergy) could voluntarily commutate tithe payments to a rental charge, this would have the effect of reducing their income, so many refused to allow it.

The method of ascertainment is left to the major part of the Commission ... and this without any fetter or check upon them beside their own honour confidence (and late indeed) awed by the solemnity of an oath.

This is perhaps one of the greatest trusts ever reposed in one set of men; and merits all the return of caution attention and integrity which can result from an honest impartial and ingenuous mind.

[58] In the Tudor period Sir Thomas More in his Utopia said: The increase of pasture,' said I, 'by which your sheep, which are naturally mild, and easily kept in order, may be said now to devour men and unpeople, not only villages, but towns; for wherever it is found that the sheep of any soil yield a softer and richer wool than ordinary, there the nobility and gentry, and even those holy men, the abbots!

As if forests and parks had swallowed up too little of the land, those worthy countrymen turn the best inhabited places into solitudes; for when an insatiable wretch, who is a plague to his country, resolves to enclose many thousand acres of ground, the owners, as well as tenants, are turned out of their possessions by trick or by main force, or, being wearied out by ill usage, they are forced to sell them; by which means those miserable people, both men and women, married and unmarried, old and young, with their poor but numerous families...(From Thomas Mores Utopia.

According to one academic: "This poem is one of the pithiest condemnations of the English enclosure movement—the process of fencing off common land and turning it into private property.

In a few lines, the poem manages to criticize double standards, expose the artificial and controversial nature of property rights, and take a slap at the legitimacy of state power.

"In 1770 Oliver Goldsmith wrote the poem The Deserted Village, in it condemns rural depopulation, the enclosure of common land, the creation of landscape gardens and the pursuit of excessive wealth.

[59] During the 19th and early 20th century historians generally had sympathy for the cottagers who rented their dwellings from the manorial lord and also the landless labourers.

"[60] Marxist historians, such as Barrington Moore Jr., focused on enclosure as a part of the class conflict that eventually eliminated the English peasantry and saw the emergence of the bourgeoisie.

The parliamentary leaders supported the rights of landlords vis-à-vis the King, whose Star Chamber court, abolished in 1641, had provided the primary legal brake on the enclosure process.

By dealing an ultimately crippling blow to the monarchy (which, even after the Restoration, no longer posed a significant challenge to enclosures) the Civil War paved the way for the eventual rise to power in the 18th century of what has been called a "committee of Landlords",[62] a prelude to the UK's parliamentary system.

[79] Historians and economists such as M.E.Turner and D. McCloskey have examined the available contemporary data and concluded that the difference in efficiency between the open field system and enclosure is not so plain and obvious.

[39] Notes: A bushel is a measurement of volume = 8 imperial gallons (36 L; 9.6 US gal); 1 acre = 0.4 ha After the Black Death, during the 14th to 17th centuries, landowners started to convert arable land over to sheep, with legal support from the Statute of Merton of 1235.

[10] In May and June 1607 the villages of Cotesbach (Leicestershire); Ladbroke, Hillmorton and Chilvers Coton (Warwickshire); and Haselbech, Rushton and Pytchley (Northamptonshire) saw protests against enclosures and depopulation.

Over a thousand had gathered at Newton, near Kettering, pulling down hedges and filling ditches, to protest against the enclosures of Thomas Tresham.

[11] Edward Montagu, one of the deputy lieutenants, had stood up against enclosure in Parliament some years earlier, but was now placed by the king in the position effectively of defending the Treshams.

The local armed bands and militia refused the call-up, so the landowners were forced to use their own servants to suppress the rioters on 8 June 1607.

By the 1600s, when Stuart kings examined their estates to find new revenues, it had become necessary to offer compensation to at least some of those using the lands as commons when the forests were divided and enclosed.