Commoners: Common Right, Enclosure and Social Change in England, 1700–1820

Summary

Commoners: Common Right, Enclosure and Social Change in England, 1700–1820 is a book by J. M. Neeson, Associate Professor of History at York University, Toronto, published by Cambridge University Press in 1993 (ISBN 0-521-44054-8 hardback, 0-521-56774-2 paperback) as part of the Past and Present Publications series. The book is ~382 pages with extensive appendices on Land Tax methodology.

Neeson's thesis is that England possessed a significant peasantry — small landholders, cottagers, and landless labourers — whose independence was sustained by common right (the shared use of common fields, pastures, and wastes) until parliamentary enclosure destroyed this system in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The book challenges the view that England had no peasantry or that it had disappeared before industrialization, arguing instead that parliamentary enclosure actively shaped social relations, sharpened antagonisms, and imprinted on popular culture "a pervasive sense of loss" (Neeson 1993, p. 1, dust jacket).

The study focuses primarily on Northamptonshire, using Land Tax returns, enclosure awards, manorial records, and parish archives to reconstruct who held common rights, how they used them, and what happened to them when commons were enclosed. Neeson was a student of E. P. Thompson at the Centre for the Study of Social History, University of Warwick.

Core Findings

The Nature of Common Right (Ch. 1–2, pp. 1–80)

Neeson documents that common right was not a marginal practice but a central economic institution. The legal definition of common right was "to eat the grass with the mouths of his cattle, or to take such other produce of the soil as he may be entitled to" — a profit a prendre giving use-rights without ownership of the soil itself (Neeson 1993, Introduction, p. 1). Common rights included pasture (the most important), estovers (cutting wood, gathering fuel), turbary (cutting turf), and pannage (grazing pigs in woodland). In forest and fen manors, even the landless found pasture and collected fuel, food, and materials from uncultivated commons (Neeson 1993, Introduction, p. 1).

Neeson identifies several categories of commoners: small freeholders, copyholders, leaseholders, tenants-at-will, and cottagers. The proportion of the population with common rights was substantial — in some Northamptonshire parishes, over half of households had common rights of some kind (Neeson 1993, Ch. 2, pp. 55–80).

Ordering the Commons (Ch. 4–5, pp. 110–157)

Common fields were not unregulated "free-for-alls" but were governed by elaborate self-regulatory systems. Fieldsmen, pinders, and haywards enforced field orders; juries ratified orders twice yearly; the whole parish walked the bounds annually to mark field boundaries. Orders were "cried round the village" and nailed to the church door — a public, participatory system of governance (Neeson 1993, Ch. 4, pp. 110–133, Introduction, p. 2).

Neeson's description of Laxton, Nottinghamshire (the last surviving open-field village) provides a vivid portrait of how the system worked in practice: men sowing seed broadcast together, talking across the furrows, managing the fields collectively (Neeson 1993, Introduction, pp. 1–2).

The Uses of Waste (Ch. 6, pp. 158–184)

Uncultivated common waste was a vital resource: pasture for livestock, fuel (turf, furze, wood), building materials, wild foods, and fibres. Neeson argues that waste was not "waste" in the modern sense but a productive commons supporting the poorest members of the community (Neeson 1993, Ch. 6).

Parliamentary Enclosure and Dispossession (Ch. 7–8, pp. 187–260)

Neeson documents the process and consequences of parliamentary enclosure using detailed case studies of two Northamptonshire villages — West Haddon and Burton Latimer. At West Haddon, enclosure was contested, with significant opposition from small landholders (Tables 7.1–7.3, pp. 201–205). At Burton Latimer, publicly used land was significantly reduced after enclosure (Table 7.4, p. 212), and owner-occupier holdings declined sharply (Tables 7.5–7.7, pp. 217–219).

Neeson's Land Tax analysis (Ch. 8, Tables 8.1–8.18) documents the "disappearance" of small landholders after enclosure. In seventeen enclosing parishes (1774–1814), small landholders disappeared at higher rates than in six open parishes (1786–1814). Landowners with less than 5 acres disappeared at the highest rate, while large landowners' holdings grew (Neeson 1993, Ch. 8, Tables 8.2–8.5, pp. 228–231).

Resistance to Enclosure (Ch. 9, pp. 259–294)

Neeson documents vigorous opposition to enclosure, including legal challenges, petitions, rioting, and the destruction of enclosure fences. Resistance was not uniform but came disproportionately from small landholders and cottagers whose livelihoods depended on common right (Neeson 1993, Ch. 9).

'Making freeman of the slave' (Ch. 10, pp. 297–329)

Neeson concludes that enclosure did not merely redistribute land but fundamentally transformed social relations. The loss of common right made small producers dependent on wages, converting a relatively independent peasantry into wage labourers — a process contemporaries described as "making freeman of the slave" (the chapter title, drawn from pro-enclosure rhetoric) (Neeson 1993, Ch. 10).

Policy Recommendations

Neeson does not offer explicit policy recommendations; the book is a work of historical analysis. However, its implications for land policy include:

• The historical record of parliamentary enclosure suggests that the destruction of common property regimes can have severe, long-lasting social consequences.
• The book implicitly supports the view that access to land — not just ownership — is a critical determinant of social welfare.

Nuances and Limits

• Neeson's evidence is drawn primarily from Northamptonshire; the representativeness of this region for England as a whole is debated among historians.
• The Land Tax returns used as the primary quantitative source have known biases — they record owners and occupiers, not all commoners, and their accuracy varies by parish. Neeson devotes four appendices (pp. 331–345) to methodological corrections.
• The book's focus on common-field villages means it does not address regions where common right was already weak or absent before parliamentary enclosure.
• Some historians (e.g., Donald McCloskey, Robert Allen) have argued that enclosure increased agricultural productivity; Neeson engages with but does not fully resolve this debate.

Key Quotes

"The interest which a commoner has in a common is, in the legal phrase, to eat the grass with the mouths of his cattle, or to take such other produce of the soil as he may be entitled to. The soil itself, the land, was not the commoner's, but the use of it was." — Halsbury's Laws of England, quoted by J.M. Neeson, Introduction

"Enclosure—rightly named—meant the closing of the countryside." — J.M. Neeson, Introduction

"These paths are stopt—the rude philistines thrall / Is laid upon them and destroyed them all / Each little tyrant with his little sign / Shows where man claims earth glows no more divine / But paths to freedom and to childhood dear / A board sticks up to notice 'no road here.'" — John Clare, 'The Mores', quoted by J.M. Neeson, Introduction

"Common right was defended at the centre of government in sermons, pamphlets, judgements and speeches for three hundred years. Eighteenth-century defenders wrote in the tradition of Thomas More, Hugh Latimer, Thomas Lever, Robert Crowley, John Hales, Sir Francis Bacon, the Levellers at Putney, Gerrard Winstanley and John Moore." — J.M. Neeson, Ch. 1, The Question of Value

"The true interest of a nation, the authority of government, and the liberties and property of the subject, are all best established and promoted, by keeping things in a state in which the bulk of the people may support themselves and their families." — An Enquiry into the Reasons for and against Inclosing the Open Fields (Coventry, 1767), quoted by J.M. Neeson, Ch. 1

"Modern policy is, indeed, more favourable to the higher classes of people, and the consequences may in time prove that the whole kingdom will consist of only gentry and beggars, or grandees and slaves." — Dr. Richard Price, Observations on Reversionary Payments, quoted by J.M. Neeson, Ch. 1

"When, despite their best efforts, enclosure acts extinguished common right from most of lowland England in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, its loss played a large part in turning the last of the English peasantry into a rural working class." — J.M. Neeson, Introduction

"Strip the small farms of the benefit of the commons, and they are all at one stroke levelled to the ground." — Stephen Addington, Inquiry into the Advantages and Disadvantages Resulting from Bills of Enclosure (1780), quoted by J.M. Neeson, Ch. 1

Bears On

• Land Speculation — enclosure as a form of land monopolisation and dispossession
• Land Value Tax — the history of land tenure and the relationship between land access and welfare
• Georgism — the Georgist concern with land access and the effects of land monopolisation
• Ecological Rent — common right as a form of resource rent sharing
• Land Speculation Causes Cycles — the longer historical context of land ownership concentration

See Also

• J.M. Neeson — author page
• Land Speculation
• Land Value Tax
• Georgism
• Henry George
• Ecological Rent

Sources

1. J. M. Neeson, Commoners: Common Right, Enclosure and Social Change in England, 1700–1820 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993). ISBN 0-521-56774-2. Past and Present Publications. — primary source for all claims on this page; verified against primary text 2026-07-07 (Scan Depth: Moderate).
2. E. P. Thompson, Customs in Common (London: Merlin Press, 1991) — related work on common right by Neeson's doctoral supervisor (B-claim; secondary).
3. Donald N. McCloskey, "The Enclosure of Open Fields: Preface to a Study of Its Impact on the Efficiency of English Agriculture in the Eighteenth Century," Journal of Economic History 32 (1972) — the productivity counter-argument (B-claim; empirical).