The merits or otherwise of the movement to inclose open fields and common land by private act of parliament, which began in the eighteenth century, is still the subject of controversy. The most extreme writers of the anti-inclosure school, notably the Hammonds, based much of their comment on evidence given before parliamentary committees in the nineteenth century, a source which must always be used with caution. They all ignored, or perhaps refused to see, the extent to which the procedure of both Houses, in the eighteenth century, did offer protection to parties affected by proposed inclosures and the attempts made to improve that procedure. Both critics and advocates of inclosure have been inclined to exaggerate the parliamentary costs of inclosing by act.

The Lords, in 1706, promulgated the standing order that private bills were to have a preliminary hearing before the judges, which, as we have seen, had an important effect on estate bills and seems both to have made it certain that the interests of all parties were consulted and also to have avoided charging applicants with parliamentary fees in doubtful cases. But in 1706 inclosure bills had been almost unknown, and although the wording of the order appears to apply to all private bills, it was never in fact applied except to estate bills. At first, all inclosure bills began in the House of Lords, the parties no doubt thinking of them as a sort of extension of estate bills, and leave was granted by the House immediately upon the reading of the petition.