s was to buy up the freeholds. In 1717-18 he paid £331 in two stages to acquire Stocking Close and other premises, which had been the Snoxall family's freehold, (fn. 257) and £1,300 for the farm at Mount Mill, which had once belonged to John Seaman (or Simmons), the other freeholder mentioned in the 1630s. (fn. 258) Hosier also bought 3 a. of arable for £25 in 1718; (fn. 259) two cottages with half a yardland of arable for £200 the following year; (fn. 260) and in 1726 purchased a cottage newly erected on a pightle of land that had once belonged to the Seaman family for £28. (fn. 261) In 1735 and 1741 Hosier bought (in two moieties) 4½ a. in Dagnall Fields for £17, (fn. 262) and appears to have made other small purchases of which the details do not survive. (fn. 263)
Twenty years after Hosier's purchase of Wicken there were still nine farm tenancies on the estate, as well as the woods and a considerable acreage of farmland in hand. There were also 58 cottage tenants, far more than fifty years before, which must reflect either an increase in population or, more likely, a reduction in the status of houses which had once belonged to the smaller farms whose land had been merged into larger holdings by 1717. (fn. 264)
It was left to Hosier's successor, Thomas Prowse, to make the most important purchase for the estate, that of the two farms, a cottage and three yardlands (just over 100 a.) at Dagnall, for which he paid Charles Gibbs of Towcester £3,050 in 1753. (fn. 265) From that date practically the whole of the parish of Wicken, together with about 200 a. of woods in Leckhampstead, belonged to the estate. As Prowse's daughter-in-law Elizabeth later observed, only the parsonage and glebe (including two houses), plus five cottages in the village (one of them the White Lion) were not owned by her family. (fn. 266)
The way was thus open for Prowse to inclose the remaining common arable and meadow in the parish by agreement with the rector and bishop, which he proceeded to do in 1757. The glebe in the open fields was con