First private parliamentary enclosure act

Historical Context Note

Litencyc Editors (Independent Scholar - Europe)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.2.1.05: English Writing and Culture from the Glorious Revolution to the French Revolution, 1689-1789.
Vol. editors: Paul Baines (University of Liverpool), Daniel Cook (University of Dundee), Pat Rogers (University of South Florida), Nicholas Seager (University of Keele)

Domains

Real Estate and Land Law

Dates

Date of occurrence 1710-02-25-1710-03-17

Places

United Kingdom (Location)

Resources

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The first ever private bill to enclose common land was brought to the House of Lords on 25 February 1710 and passed on 17th March. It concerned Ropley Commons, near Farnham, in the bishopric of Winchester, Hampshire. It was protested in the House of Commons on 23rd March 1710 on behalf of the freeholders, copyholders and leaseholders, and an appeal lodged against it on 3 February 1711. The Act, however, stood. This act was the first of the many thousands of such acts which would be brought across the next two centuries, converting common land into the private holdings of wealthy landowners, a process which signalled the conversion of the countryside into private property, and the slow abolition of customary rights which had been evolved since the time of Anglo-Saxon settlements, one…

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173 words

Citation: Editors, Litencyc. "First private parliamentary enclosure act". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 10 January 2010 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/stopics.php?rec=true&UID=7220, accessed 18 April 2024.]

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