This final chapter will focus on improvement in a number of guises and at varying scales, from the individual estate to the landscape of western East Anglia. Beginning with an examination of how the benefits discussed in the previous chapter were employed in the improvement of foldcourse husbandry at the estate level, it goes on to explore the impact of engrossing and enclosure on the foldcourse regime, and opposition to and accommodation with the foldcourse, before examining the impact of foldcourse husbandry on the wider landscape – the degree to which an open landscape was preserved and for how long, and the impact of enclosure legally, physically and ecologically.

Improvement has been described as an “invention” of the sixteenth century, but is better seen as a significant acceleration in the pace of change; rather than 1500 being a turning point, many aspects of both economic and moral improvement can be traced back to earlier centuries. Over time improvement percolated into almost every aspect of society and material culture, and by the end of the seventeenth century there were few areas of life that could not be ‘improved’, given that the word had become freighted with a “mass of material aspirations and moral assumptions”. Improvement as a concept originated with developments in agriculture ascribed to an active land market and the rising prices of agricultural products. As important, if not more so, was the growth of an elite who, by 1700, owned approximately 70 per cent of the land in England, thus occupying a position of considerable influence, and who were able to adopt innovation as a good thing in itself. This development can also be seen as the product of a more entrepreneurial approach to agriculture and an increasing confidence in the growth of a more stable market. Initially, improvement was a means to increase the profit arising from agriculture, and a 1613 dictionary reckoned it “simply meant to raise rents”, a view that places the role of agricultural improvement firmly in the economy. Those who disliked the focus on profit saw improvement as turning gentlemen into “good husbandmen”, and also wanted a return to a more communal, hierarchical society and one already heard in relation to Kett's Rebellion (see p. 113).