The monarchy had initially sought to limit enclosure, worried about the social crises it was creating. But those limits were abolished after the Civil War of the 1640s and the so-called Glorious Revolution of 1688, when the bourgeoisie assumed control of Parliament and obtained the power to do more or less whatever they pleased. Wielding the full force of the state, they introduced a series of laws – the Parliamentary Enclosures – that set off a wave of dispossession faster and more far-reaching than anything that had come before. Between 1760 and 1870, some 7 million acres were enclosed by
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