Don't think anybody was ever stating that rural life was "idyllic". The subject under discussion was when "breakfast" was eaten.

Massive difference between the labour required to work the farm and the additional labour hired on to plant or to harvest. The latter were taken on at "Hiring Fairs". It was also common in those times that if you were drawing a wage you were fully expected to work for it - nobody was prepared to pay for idle hands, there was no intended cruelty in this, that was the work ethic of the day universally applied. Hiring was a means of obtaining a permanent position on a farm, those wishing to impress worked the hardest.

The landed gentry were not the ones to take over "common land" and enclose it - the section of rural society who were most guilty of that were the tenant farmers, who wanted land of their own so as not to be dependent on the good will of the land owner for their living.

"Forced to sea by hunger" - The choice was simple. You went where the work was otherwise you starved - fact of life back in those days in every country in the world, still is a fact of life in many countries today. Millions did precisely that and survived and prospered - had they not then the vast majority of us would not be here today.