# The Fencing Of The Commons  ## Episode metadata - Episode title: The Fencing Of The Commons - Show: Stuff You Should Know - Owner / Host: iHeartPodcasts - Episode publish date: 2025-06-17 - Episode AI description: Explore the fascinating history of how England privatized its commons, transforming communal lands and upending traditional livelihoods. Discover the impact of the enclosure movement on wealth inequality and the struggles faced by commoners. Dive into the agricultural advancements during the industrial revolution and the forced migration of displaced individuals seeking work in urban areas. The discussion also touches on the tension between shared resources and individual interests, raising questions about sustainability and community welfare. - Mentioned books: [Utopia](https://share.snipd.com/book/1195b8f7-2a2f-4844-8ea2-229237da6e10) by [Sir Thomas More](https://share.snipd.com/person/4964e0ff-a094-44cb-89a6-b86fd2ac3f65), [An Essay on the Principle of Population](https://share.snipd.com/book/ebb01d81-6bd9-445c-a6ef-b180465fa700) by [Thomas Robert Malthus](https://share.snipd.com/person/36b5ba9c-0257-4bdb-9bd0-a5fb82e03446) - Duration: 43:00 - Episode URL: [Open in Snipd](https://share.snipd.com/episode/be80d824-822c-4bae-b610-83b3af2bad84) - Show URL: [Open in Snipd](https://share.snipd.com/show/145ea529-ce54-40de-ab9d-10dd8b65f7e4) - Export date: 2026-02-17T23:34:03 ## Snips ### [Medieval Commons System](https://share.snipd.com/snip/b6a719f0-1c42-45d2-8a19-796f2152a334) 🎧 02:04 - 07:44 (05:39) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/38d61fef-465d-412e-9f72-405efa5ecccd" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Commons were shared lands for peasants to use but not own, allowing subsistence farming and resource gathering. - This system included crop rotation and collective farming decisions that sustained communities for centuries. #### 💬 Quote > This land was not the commoner's land. This is not peasants' land. This is the medieval era. > — Josh Clark Josh Clark explains the medieval commons system #### 📚 Transcript **Josh Clark:** Just go listen to our tragedy of the commons episode. I won't give a rundown of it. But fencing the commons, some people point to, is this process of separating and extracting land from people to whom it had formerly belonged. Everyday people, literally commoners. **Chuck Bryant:** Yeah. Or maybe not belong, but at least, you know, made use of to survive. **Josh Clark:** OK, well, it depends on who you ask. Oh, yeah. Good point. It is possible, say some historians, that this is where wealth inequality came from. Yeah. That this is where wage labor came from. That this is where a lot of the really not great features of the modern world were rooted. Yeah. And when you dig into it, you're like, wow, this is a decision by a really self-interested group of powerful people to pull off a really big land grab in jolly old England. Boy, **Chuck Bryant:** I love that self-edit there. Thanks. **Josh Clark:** That's between you, me, Jerry, and the lamppost. **Chuck Bryant:** That's right. Shall we get on with it then? **Josh Clark:** Yes. I feel like that was a good setup, if I do say so myself. **Chuck Bryant:** I agree. Just like the old days. Not that your setups now are no good, but. In **Josh Clark:** the old days, I have been like, Chuck, have you ever eaten grass off of a commons? Yeah, **Chuck Bryant:** I think in that last commons episode, I mentioned that the commons was the area of our high school in just the big middle open area inside where everyone would hang out because that was a common area, and that's what the commons are in this case too. And Livia did a bang-up job with this one, I think. Yes, she did. Knocked it out of the park, **Josh Clark:** as we say. **Chuck Bryant:** Yeah, out of the commons. And we're going to start, as Livia suggests, with William the Conqueror, because that makes sense in this case. The Normans, when they conquered England in 1066, they said, all right, here's what we're going to do. All the wealthy noble people of our land are going to get all the land. And so let's just divide it all up. They're going to live there on manors. And if you have a manor house, you are the lord of that manor. You have allegiance to the king, obviously. But on that land of yours, besides your manor house, there's also going to be a peasant village. There's going be some great farmland that they're going to work for you so they can give you lots of food. And then there's also the commons, which all of the peasant people or commoners can share. They can divide it up and share it and live off that stuff. Yeah. **Josh Clark:** And this land was not the commoner's land. This is not peasants' land. This is the medieval era. I guess it kicked off the medieval era. And just to be clear, this was that lord's land, like you were saying. But the commoners had what are called usufructory rights, which is basically like they don't own the land, but they have like actual legal right to use and to work that land and to take the products of their work from that land to sustain themselves. So this is the arrangement. And it worked pretty well for several centuries, it turns out. Yeah, **Chuck Bryant:** it did. They divided that land into basically straight strips, and we'll get into that in a second, for each household. And there was also the waste, which will come into play. It sounds like a terrible word to name basically the forest, but it's where they couldn't farm. But it was, you know, it's where the rivers were. That's where the trees were. So that's where they hunted and fished and gathered peat and wood and stuff like that. So it's still a very valuable area as far as use goes, but they called it waste. It **Josh Clark:** was just not a good term. Yeah, **Chuck Bryant:** agreed. But **Josh Clark:** so with the farmland themselves, like you said, they cut them up into strips. And just imagine like a series of fields. One field is just grass. We'll call that like the meadow. It's where all the sheep and the cows are grazing. Now there's another field, and that's where a bunch of cropland is growing. There's another field. There's more cropland. And if you look very closely, the cropland is divided up into very long, thin strips. And each of those strips belongs to a different person who farms that common land in both fields. And that's how things were divided up. And you didn't have two strips next to each other because they didn't want anybody to get like all the good dirt. And then you would have strips in both fields because there were different things growing in different fields. And the whole thing rotated every few years. And a different field would become the new meadow because the sheep and the cows would poop on it and fertilize it for next time around when it became cropland again. Yeah. **Chuck Bryant:** Yeah. So was just basic crop rotation. It made a lot of sense. They would let it rewild. They, you know, they were straight because they had these very tough to use plows that did not turn very well. So they just made these long straight strips. They would take care and share the oxen that it took to pull these plows for everyone. Yeah, **Josh Clark:** it was a big one. And it was, you know, it was sort of like a **Chuck Bryant:** it wasn't like like communism or anything or socialism. It was just like how it was. It was like, hey, we're all going to care for this land. We're going to rotate the crops of the land stays good for all of us. And we're going to all help take care of the ox and we'll help each other out. And we're not going to put up fences because the animals have to graze around. And we all just have to agree on how to do this. --- ### [Black Death & Sheep Grazing Trigger Enclosure](https://share.snipd.com/snip/a0db6fdd-0ae4-4c7a-ac10-f728b79025e5) 🎧 12:05 - 14:26 (02:20) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/e7df085d-11d4-4f2f-9385-6d0d65667055" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - After the Black Death halved England's population, landowners turned commons into sheep grazing to capitalize on profitable wool trade. - This shift displaced peasants and initiated the first wave of enclosure, reshaping rural landscapes. #### 💬 Quote > People were moved out for sheep because they could make more money off of wool than they could off of crops because there weren't that many people who needed the crops in the first place. > — Josh Clark Josh Clark describes the economic motivation for enclosure after the Black Death #### 📚 Transcript **Josh Clark:** And that was the Black Death, when as much as half, half of the people in England died off from this one plague in just a couple of years. **Chuck Bryant:** So this, it's interesting to see how things like this in history can just change the course of history. Right. **Josh Clark:** Because **Chuck Bryant:** had the Black Death not happened, obviously a lot of people would have still been alive. But aside from that, like this may have never gone down that way because it was just a radical shift in the way the country looked and how they had to operate moving forward. Because obviously when half the people go away and leave the planet, is that how I'm saying this now? They **Josh Clark:** get sniffed off the case forever. **Chuck Bryant:** Like it was the snap or something. There's going to be a labor shortage. Just the nuts and bolts of it is there's going to be far less people to do that kind of work, which was kind of good for the peasants at the time because all of a sudden they had some bargaining power. Right. And they said, hey, maybe we should get paid a little more. We also don't need as much food because there's only half the people. And so that all of a sudden paved the way for more sheep grazing because England started realizing, hey, there's a lot more money and a lot easier money to be made in textiles and shearing these sheep and selling wool in the wool trade than there is this farming. Like, that's for the birds. **Josh Clark:** Right. So because sheep are much less labor intensive, require way fewer farmers, but more land, the people who are wealthy started going after enclosure more and more. started following that statute of Merton Hanks and saying like, oh, yeah, I want to enclose this. I'm going to enclose this and turn it into grazing land for sheep. Yeah. And people were actually displaced. Some people were, some entire villages were displaced. And it was as simple as that. It was, you don't live here anymore, get out. And don't forget, I'm the Lord of the manor, so what are you going to do about it? Sometimes there were armed people who would show up and tell them to leave. It was just as illegal and indefensible as that. that's exactly what happened. People were moved out for sheep because they could make more money off of wool than they could off of crops because there weren't that many people who needed the crops in the first place. --- ### [Agricultural Revolution Fuels Industrial Growth](https://share.snipd.com/snip/ddc69c12-38ab-4126-aead-d68c33573c1a) 🎧 20:10 - 23:14 (03:04) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/d70a0aab-171a-4cd4-ab0f-e9600b196bfe" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - The agricultural revolution introduced efficient crop rotations like the Norfolk four-course system and new technologies like the seed drill. - These innovations increased productivity to support the growing urban workforce during the Industrial Revolution. #### 💬 Quote > It's not like you can support a growing workforce... you need to figure out how to take the people off the land and put them in the factories. > — Josh Clark Josh Clark explains the link between agricultural efficiency and industrial labor needs #### 📚 Transcript **Chuck Bryant:** of England said, all right, this is how we're going to do things now. Because in the last couple of hundred years, textile making has really become the thing. Although we're getting most of our wool and cotton and stuff from our various colonies all over the world, it's not like we need all this for sheep. We think this is just the way to go because we really need to make our whole agricultural operation much more efficient. And it was not efficient when people were just doing their own thing with these little strips of land. Like one person or one entity needs to kind of be in charge of all of this so it'll be more efficient and smooth. **Josh Clark:** Right. Ideally and in practice, a peasant could support himself and his family and, you know, maybe have enough left over to sell or something like that. But you can't really support a growing workforce, a labor force, that you're creating basically out of whole cloth with the Industrial Revolution, which started in England. Thanks these wool factories, converting them into textiles, you need a bunch of people for that. So you need to figure out how to take the people off the land and put them in the factories. And then you have to figure out how to feed those people from the land that you just moved the people from. And you can pay them so that they actually have to buy the food from the land that you just forced them off of. You can start to see like what a bad deal it was. But because there was so much money to be made, because there was such a huge leap forward just waiting to be taken through the Industrial Revolution, the powers that be guided, steered, railroaded England and the English into the cities and the factories in the cities. Yeah. **Chuck Bryant:** And one of the biggest sort of pillars of this new system was the Norfolk four-course system. and a guy named Lord Townsend, nicknamed Turnip, I believe he brought this over from the Netherlands. His nickname was Turnip, and wouldn't you guess, turnips are part of this four-course system. It involved crop rotation, in this case, wheat, turnips, barley, and clover. You might be wondering, like clover, what good is that? Clover was good for the grazing. It's good for the bees, too, so honey. Yeah, it's good for the bees. It's good for the soil. And it also meant that they didn't need to let those fields go down for a season and rewild. They could just kind of keep rotating things. Right. And you could use those turnips to feed the livestock that are grazing on the clover. And previous to that, they might slaughter livestock at the end of the season in the early winter. Another big change was that the seed drill came along, which has allowed them to plant in these very long, straight rows, just, you know, endless, endless straight rows. And they planted grain. And guess who introduced that, Josh and audience? I know who it is. Yep. Survivor. Oh, man. **Josh Clark:** Jethro Tull, baby. Oh, yeah. Jethro Tull. That's **Chuck Bryant:** right. I --- ### [Parliamentary Enclosure and Land Grab](https://share.snipd.com/snip/1d009bd2-363a-46e4-a1b3-eb56447c8954) 🎧 24:50 - 26:36 (01:45) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/d9439a29-980b-48ec-8bef-de2044c698e6" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Enclosure required parliamentary approval but was dominated by wealthy landowners connected to government. - This led to massive land consolidation, displacement of peasants, and tens of thousands of parliamentary enclosure acts. #### 💬 Quote > They passed about 4,000 of these between 750 and 1860... almost 11,000 square miles of England... was now enclosed. > — Chuck Bryan Chuck Bryan details the scale and politics behind parliamentary enclosures #### 📚 Transcript **Josh Clark:** the peasants who were just removed from that land that they used to farm, it just gets me, Chuck. You have to do that through act of parliament. You have to petition parliament and say, I want to enclose this land. And not only that, you have to have a super majority of the local area to agree to it. And there were two things that helped people with this. One, the same people who were trying to enclose the land were in parliament, or at least friends with them. And the people who provided the super majority to say, yes, you can enclose the land, were their friends and neighbors and people in the same class. So it's not like these were huge obstacles that the people enclosing Great Britain had to overcome at the time. **Chuck Bryant:** Now, and if you're thinking like, well, guys, are you telling me they passed like thousands and thousands of acts of parliament? They did exactly that. They passed about 4,000 of these between 750 and 1860, so just a little over 100 years. And almost 11,000 square miles of England, beginning at the start of the 20th century, was now enclosed. That's about a fifth of the entire area of the country. If you're wondering about the waste, we mentioned the waste. We don't want to let the waste go to waste. They were enclosed as well. It wasn't like they fenced all of that off, but a lot of it was. And they said, hey, I know you used to hunt and fish here, but now we're going to take our ritzy hunting parties out here and you're not going to be allowed to hunt. Or we may just raise it and have our own gardens. It might be like agricultural that, you know, we get some of our food from, but it will probably be just like, you know, the English gardens that we love to gaze upon with our riches. --- ### [Violent Resistance to Enclosure](https://share.snipd.com/snip/dbfae7e1-514d-434b-982e-705b9561fd71) 🎧 26:40 - 27:49 (01:09) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/c51d1528-ca95-49e3-9e4c-b84392cfe29e" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Enclosure incited violent resistance such as fence-breaking by groups like the Diggers who believed land was a birthright. - These uprisings highlighted the deep social conflict but ultimately failed to stop enclosure. #### 💬 Quote > If you were born British, you had a birthright to British soil... enclosure... was a violation of the birthright of those British people. > — Josh Clark Josh Clark explains the Diggers’ ideology and resistance to enclosure #### 📚 Transcript **Josh Clark:** So people just didn't necessarily take this lying down. There were huge, huge waves and spasms of violence throughout the centuries from the beginning of enclosure up until the 19th century. This is a really, really big deal. You can trace it all the way back to the 1381 Peasants' Revolt. That wasn't entirely about enclosure, but it was a factor in it. And trace it up to the English Civil War, where the diggers came along. The diggers were a radical faction of a radical group called the Levelers, and their whole thing was enclosure is a mess, and it's terrible, and we're not going to put up with it. The diggers, I think, kind of capture what the issue was to the peasants. And that was to them, if you were born British, you had a birthright to British soil. Like the country belonged to you as much as it belonged to anybody else who was born in Britain. And your right was to work that soil and make a living for yourself however you wanted to. And coming in and enclosing this area and forcing people from that land was a violation of the birthright of those British people. --- ### [Criminalizing Traditional Commons Use](https://share.snipd.com/snip/4793ef3d-9284-4c14-a9e5-9563d0485ccc) 🎧 28:20 - 29:52 (01:32) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/8027ed34-f594-4e57-b681-8ac1fdc81fbc" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - The government criminalized common hunting and resource use on enclosed land with harsh penalties like the death penalty. - This made traditional peasant ways of life illegal and criminalized their survival strategies. #### 💬 Quote > If you get caught poaching a deer on land that you've hunted all your life, we're going to kill you. > — Chuck Bryan Chuck Bryan describes the Black Act punishing commons poachers with death #### 📚 Transcript **Chuck Bryant:** of closed off as well, so they couldn't use them. obviously there's going to be some like saboteur action going on there. Saboteur action. these were commoners known as the blacks, and they would poach deer in the waste. They would destroy trees because trees, I mean, they were always a bit of a commodity, but they became an increasing commodity because of the shipbuilding prowess, the growing shipbuilding prowess of England at the time, and the British Royal Navy fleet that was just growing and growing, British sea power, great band. So they were doing this, and so the government passed the Black Act, which basically said, all right, if you get caught poaching a deer on land that you've hunted all your life, we're going to kill you. And it was the death penalty. And so hundreds of people were hanged for poaching those deer that they had always been hunting. **Josh Clark:** Yeah. So the way of life that these people lived was outlawed. And so to engage in that way of life, you were now a criminal. And the crimes you committed, e.g. killing a rabbit on enclosed land, maybe even chasing after a rabbit through someone's enclosed land could get you killed by the government. Like that's what happened with that. This is how serious things got. And the back to the I'm going to take a waste one if you don't mind. **Chuck Bryant:** Well, the sub waste, which is the fence. Okay, **Josh Clark:** fine. It's not the greatest waste, but it's important because the Fens were a, and I think still are in some places, a big, vast, marshy area of England. --- ### [Enclosure Forced Urban Migration](https://share.snipd.com/snip/398a93ae-3d76-47c8-b2d6-2fc340445d00) 🎧 36:50 - 38:00 (01:10) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/9cafcce2-1e9d-4b1f-a416-7d72dbba3a1e" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Post-enclosure, displaced villagers became vagrants and criminals, forcing migration to cities and factory labor. - This systemic displacement fueled Britain's industrial and imperial rise by transforming rural populations. #### 💬 Quote > You would have your village stolen out from under you... now you were homeless. So legally, you were considered a vagrant. > — Chuck Bryan Chuck Bryan discusses the forced migration of peasants due to enclosure #### 📚 Transcript **Josh Clark:** Okay, so we're back and enclosure has become this orgy of land grabbing and displacement. One other thing we should have said is that parliament kind of enforced movement to the city. So you would have your village stolen out from under you and turned into sheep grazing land or cropland or something like that. And now you were homeless. So legally, you were considered a vagrant. Vagrancy was a crime. You were a criminal if you didn't have a place to live. So where are you going to go? I need to make some money fast. I'm going to move to the city and start working in the factory. So like just choice after choice was shut down for everybody. And the effects of this huge sweeping change in Britain just rippled across the world because one thing would feed into another thing, would feed into another thing. And then the whole thing would cycle back again. And every time it cycled back, it would just grow and grow and grow and grow. And the British Empire in the 19th century rose based on the agricultural revolution that fed the industrial revolution. And it just exploded. It just started to grow exponentially. Yeah, --- ### [Economic Growth Amid Hardships](https://share.snipd.com/snip/c5af07e7-3362-443f-bea6-648f31340236) 🎧 39:57 - 40:55 (00:58) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/e8a2d01b-a4e5-487b-b714-1c9bf26b7f7a" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Agricultural and industrial revolutions boosted England's productivity and supported population growth. - Although living conditions were hard, wages rose and a wealthy urban middle class emerged. #### 💬 Quote > Wages for labor did rise. But it was really hard, hard work. > — Chuck Bryan Chuck Bryan on the rise of wages despite difficult factory labor #### 📚 Transcript **Chuck Bryant:** for sure so now you have a lot of people living in cities far fewer people living in the rural farmland that where they used to live the population is actually rising a lot between 1750 and 1850 over 100 years it may have doubled of course this is you know after being halved with the Black Death it may have been, you know, just sort of the way things went. Yeah, 20 more **Josh Clark:** people. Yeah, **Chuck Bryant:** exactly. But, you know, there's there was a definite increase in efficiency of agriculture. Like no one can deny that. Like what they set out to do, they did pretty successfully because you had to support this larger population and free up those workers to work in the city. So that all worked well, if that was, if that was your aim, if you're on that side of the argument, you could point to all those things and saying like, hey, our Navy strong, we got a great urban labor force now. And everyone's, you know, everyone's happy. **Josh Clark:** Right. I mean, you could say quality of life in England rose. --- ### [Global Spread of Enclosure Impact](https://share.snipd.com/snip/bc7157ec-bfbc-4b98-904b-8a509b69057c) 🎧 42:06 - 43:46 (01:40) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/d24b04d6-39f0-4f69-b9e2-eefb48fb5b9d" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Britain's enclosure practice inspired similar land clearances globally, including in Russia and Scotland. - These repeated enclosures often worsened social injustice and dispossession worldwide. #### 💬 Quote > It certainly inspired probably what happened in Russia in 1861... landlords get the best farming land and you should move to the city. > — Chuck Bryan Chuck Bryan connects British enclosure to global diaspora and revolutions #### 📚 Transcript **Chuck Bryant:** for sure. And this inspired the rest of the world to go out and do likewise as everything was becoming more modern. It certainly inspired probably what happened in Russia in 1861 when Alexander II said, you know what? No more serfdom in Russia. The landlords are going to just basically what they did in England. The landlords are going to get the best farming land. You can buy that land back, but you've got to take out these big heavy loans from maybe even your landlord or maybe the state, and you should move to the city. We've got a rising growth in industry because it's the Industrial Revolution, just like in England, and we're going to exploit you just like we did in England. And that led eventually to, in part, to the Russian Revolution. It did. **Josh Clark:** I mean, that's like a legitimate response to having your land stolen from you, uprising of peasants. It's just it happened to work in Russia where it kept getting tamped down by the government century after century in England. And so the government and the interested, the wealthy interested parties won out. Enclosure was so successful that Britain exported it to its colonies and basically said, we're doing the same thing here so that you guys can become more and more efficient and provide more and more raw materials for export back. And it just didn't happen just in the colonies. Scotland famously had its highlands cleared of thousands of highlanders. They just came in just like they did to the peasant villages and said, get out. And if you don't, we've got swords and you don't want these swords. Actually, by that time, they probably had muskets and such. But that was just that they just kept doing it over and over and over again. --- ### [Enclosure Ends; Commons Protected](https://share.snipd.com/snip/0baf3e90-596e-4d3a-aafe-215f83307dc5) 🎧 44:42 - 45:49 (01:06) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/58ed79cb-3d4c-41bb-ba67-4796197bb062" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Enclosure ended in Britain by the late 19th century due to growing middle-class desires for preserved public space. - The National Trust now conserves the very hedges that once symbolized enclosure and land privatization. #### 💬 Quote > They created the National Trust, which now protects the very same hedges that created enclosure in the first place. > — Josh Clark Josh Clark explains how the Commons Preservation Society changed enclosure laws #### 📚 Transcript **Josh Clark:** It's been done since the 1860s. And the reason it came to an end was because those the middle class, the merchant class who became wealthy in the cities said, hey, we want parkland. We want places to be able to go and like have picnics and stuff. And this enclosure is eating up that land. So we need to stop enclosure. And so they did. They created something called the Commons Preservation Society. They gained influence in parliament. They gained support in parliament. There was an 1876 act called the Commons Act that said you can only enclose a piece of Great Britain if there's a public benefit of it. And that group, the Commons Preservation Society, eventually created the National Trust, which now, Chuck, here's the great twist of irony, protects the very same hedges that created enclosure in the first place and prevent farmers who want to tear up those hedges from tearing them up because they're protected by old enclosure acts. Wow. Amazing stuff, huh? --- Created with [Snipd](https://www.snipd.com) | Highlight & Take Notes from Podcasts