Abstract：Many factors, including the economic, social and cultural traditions, contributed to the Enclosure Movement in England. However, it is impossible to discuss about the land reform without considering the land itself because the ‘enclosure' only happened on the land. The enclosure in England firstly attracted widespread attention from the issue of land rent. The land rent rose sharply around the 16th century, which was accordingly criticized by the public widely. Until the present, there is no convincing criticism and interpretation concerning the causes and effects of the change of the land rent and its internal logical connection with the enclosure. Many researchers used to focus on the land rent and they believed that the process of the feudal land rent moving to the capitalist land rent was the evolution of land rent. This paper intends to investigate the potential negative factors from the interior of the medieval rural life. The land rent during this period was in the feudal form and also possessed certain conditions for the development of the market, which provides a new interpretation model to understand the evolution of the economic form at this time. Some contractual factors of the feudal system in England supported the prosperity of the peasant economy in the Middle Ages, while the development of the latter challenged the whole feudal economic form in the end. Accordingly, this can further explain both the internal relation between the early modern times and the Middle Ages, and the internal relation between the soaring rent and the Enclosure Movement. Although the factors, including the expansion of international trade, the development of sheep farming, the price revolution, etc., were functioning, the changing of land itself was still necessary. The marketization of land and land rent is the most direct preparation for the subversion of the field system in the Middle Ages.

Published on World History, Issue 4, 2019.