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it e Disappearance of the
) Small Landowner

FORD LECTURES, 1909

By ARTHUR H. JOHNSON

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OXFORD
AT THE CLARENDON PRESS
1909

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PREFACE

Amone many who have given me valuable
assistance in preparing these lectures, I wish to
express my especial thanks to the following.
To Mr. Gray of Harvard College, who most
generously placed at my disposal the results of
his inquiries into Surveys of the Tudor and
Stuart periods, and into the earlier Land Tax
Assessments for Oxfordshire and Gloucester-
shire; to Mr. Leadam for allowing me to use
much of his unpublished work on the Tudor
inquisitions ; to Mr. Cra’ster for help with regard
to Northumberland ; to Mr. Fisher for information

with regard to the monastic lands; to Professor

Firth for suggestions and references for the
seventeenth century; to Mr. Slater who gave me
some unpublished statistics as to enclosure of the

* waste; and to Mr. Prothero for information with

regard to the eighteenth century.

I also wish to thank the Clerks of the Peace
throughout England, and notably Mr. Davenport
of Oxford and Mr. Merriman of Marlborough,
for help given with regard to the Land Tax

Assessments.

Oxrorp, June, 1909.

A 2

CONTENTS

I

ENGLAND AND FRANCE COMPARED, INFLUENCE OF

LAND LAWS
: PAGE
Remarkable contrast between the number of landowners in

England and France. The influence of English Law of Primo-
geniture and Entails much exaggerated. Direct and indirect
effects of these Laws discussed. Custom more potent than
Legislation ; : “ ; : : } : ; , aa

II
THE GREAT PLAGUE AND ITS RESULTS ~—

Its effects often exaggerated. Discussion as to its temporary
and permanent effects. The final solvent of the Manorial
Economy to be found in the agricultural and industrial
changes of the fifteenth century. Character and results of
these changes discussed. Their influence on the small free-
holder, the villein or copyholder. Evidence of manorial rolls. 17

III

THE ENCLOSURES OF THE FIFTEENTH, SIXTEENTH,
AND SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES =

(1) Their extent. (2) The grievances of enclosure discussed.
How far exaggerated by contemporaries. Their influence on
the landowning classes, large and small, freeholders, copy-
holders, and others. How far the copyholder had legal
protection in his holding. How far Eviction was resorted to.
The struggle over copyholds of inheritance, copyholds for
lives and leases for lives, and the question of fines. Final
conclusion as to the effect, direct and indirect, of enclosures.

CONTENTS 5

IV

OTHER CAUSES AFFECTING THE POSITION OF THE

LANDOWNING CLASSES
PAGE
The political, social, agricultural and industrial changes;

The suppression of the monasteries. The Rebellion. Final
conclusion as to the position of the landowning classes in
the middle of the seventeenth century . : od earn: . 75

V

THE ENCLOSURES OF THE EIGHTEENTH AND NINE-
TEENTH CENTURIES AND THEIR RESULTS

(1) The social and political characteristics of the eighteenth
century. (2) Attitude of ruling classes towards Enclosure.
The Enclosures of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries
contrasted with those of the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries.
The reasons for enclosure. The methods. Enclosure Acts.
Enclosure by agreement. Extent of enclosure (i) of the
Common Field, (ii) of the Waste. The arguments for and
against enclosure. The effect of enclosure on the ownership

and farming ofland. Foes 5 Sete ; . 83

VI

ECONOMICAL AND OTHER CAUSES OF DECLINE OF ,
THE SMALL LANDOWNER IN THE EIGHTEENTH
AND NINETEENTH CENTURIES

(1) Enclosure only part of a wider economical movement.
The agricultural changes of the eighteenth century. The
progress of scientific cultivation and its results. (2) The
industrial revolution and its effects on agriculture and on the
ownership of land. Close connexion between the agricultural
and industrial movements. The capitalist landlord and
farmer. Effect on the small owner and farmer. (3) The
social and political conditions. (4) Position of the small
owner and farmer at the close of the eighteenth century.
Their future history. The history of copyholds and lease-
holds for lives : ; j ; ; . 107

6 CONTENTS

vil

EVIDENCES AS TO EXACT DATES WHEN THE SMALL
LANDOWNER DECLINED
PAGE
The periods since the seventeenth century which were
most fatal to the small owner and farmer. Evidences and
statistics. The Elizabethan and Stuart surveys and terriers.
The assessments to the Land Tax. Conclusions to be drawn

from them. : r ; : : : . : . 128
: Vu
COMPARISON BETWEEN ENGLAND AND OTHER
COUNTRIES
The position of the small owner in France, Belgium, and
Germany . ; : : ; : ‘ : i O35 QRem
a 4
= MAPS

I, Map of England, showing Enclosures 1455-1607.

II A. Map of England, showing Enclosure of Common Field and
Waste in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries.

IIB. Map of England, showing Enclosure of Waste only, in the
Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries.

I

ENGLAND AND FRANCE COMPARED.
INFLUENCE OF LAND LAWS

THE peculiar character of our rural economy lies, as
every one knows, in the accumulation of our land in a few
) hands, and the comparatively small number of our popula-
tion who own any land at all. The grossly exaggerated
| statements which used to be made, that the number of
those holding land did not exceed 30,000 has been indeed
disproved by later inquiries. These have shown that there
are at least 260,000 who hold land from one acre upwards,
‘ as well as some 700,000, mostly householders, who hold
ow one acre in England, exclusive of the Metropolis.
Nevertheless when compared with other countries, notably
with France, these numbers are few indeed. This will at once
_ become apparent if we remember that, with a population

only one-third larger, France has some 5,600,000 landed
proprietors. Here, however, it should be noted that the
difference between France and England does not lie so much

1 The actual numbers, as compiled by the New Domesday Book,

are :—

; Below 1 acre 703,289 exclusive of the Metropolis.
o Between - land 10 121,983 ‘5
Between 10and 100 98,479 ae
Between 100 and 1,000 37,016 es
Between 1,000 and 5,000 4,534 ar
Between 5,000 and 50,000 870 Fe
Over 50,000 4 ,

?
The exact accuracy of these figures has, however, been disputed, cf.
Prothero, Pioneers of English Farming, p. 155; Caird, Landed
Interest, pp. 44, 57; Times, Feb. 7, April 7, 1876 ; Spectator, Feb. 12,
Feb. 19, March 4, 1876 ; cf. Board of Agriculture, Agricultural Returns,
1895, C. 8243, Tables XI-XVIII, 1896, p. xiv, C, 8502.

8 ENGLAND AND FRANCE COMPARED I

in the number of moderate sized properties, that is, of those
holding from 100 to 500 acres, which are relatively to the
population very much on an equality in the two countries,?
as in the number of those whose holdings are under 100
and above 500 acres.

Thus, whereas in England only some 10,000 own above
500 acres, in France there are some 50,000; and whereas in
England there are only some 920,000 who own less than
100 acres, in France the number approaches 5,500,000 ;
and that whereas in France one-half of~the population is
engaged in agriculture, i in England the proportion is barely
one-fifth ; while in Belgium it is computed that in 1871
there were as many as 1,000,000 landed proprietors out of
a population of 7,000,000.

It is the aim of these lectures to attempt to explain how
and when this remarkable divergence occurred,

It is often asserted that the disappearance of the small
landowner in England is primarily due to our land laws;
that is to say to the law of primogeniture and the law of
entails. In my opinion their influence has been enormously
exaggerated. By the first, it is true that all lands of those
who die intestate pass to the male issue before the female,
and that, when there are two or more males in equal
degree, the eldest son inherits to the exclusion of his
brothers. Itshould, however, be noted that the law does not
apply to females, who, if es succeed at all, share equally
with their sisters.

1 Cf. Prothero : Léonce Lavergne, J mie Rurale de la France et
d’ Angleterre,
Approximate Numbers.
Acreage. France. England.
Above 500. : : 50,000, : 10,000
100 to 500.—. : : 50,000. . 32,000
Less than 100 : ‘ 5,500,000 , ; 920,000

Total 5,600,000 962,000

|

I INFLUENCE OF LAND LAWS 9

I need not remind my historical friends how often the
estates of the great men fell to heiresses or coheiresses and
of the many political complications which were thereby
caused, Nevertheless it isa matter of interest to know how
often this occurred. Among those of noble estate alone
there has, since the Norman Conquest, been a failure of male
heirs in 467 cases, and in 205 of these cases the estates
passed to coheiresses. In 123 cases to 2 coheiresses, in 51
to 3, in 22 to 4, in 7 to 5, in 2 to 6 coheiresses. It is true
that where the estate passed to one daughter, this would
by her marriage often lead to a consolidation of estates.
But when it passed to coheiresses the estate would, for the
time at least be split up, and in any case the law of primo-
geniture was not responsible for the result. As to how
often this same fate has befallen the families of those below
the rank of peers I have unfortunately no evidence. But
I know no reason why they should have been more
fortunate, and, if this be so, we have here one reason
for doubting the overwhelming influence of this law of

intestacy. ~

But a stronger argument remains. Our law of inheri-
tance deals exclusively with the succession to land of those
who die intestate. Now the full right to dispose of lands
by will was possible through the agency of the Court of
Chancery, at least as early as the fifteenth century, that is
to say at a date anterior to any serious diminution inthe
numbers of moderate siged landowners ; and was possible at
the common law parti after the statute 27 Henry VIII,
ce. 10, and completely by the statute 12 Car. IT, c. 24.1 We
have unfortunately no adequate means of proving how often

27 Henry VIII, c. 10, all fee simple lands held in soccage
two-thirds of those held. by knights service could be
r. II, c, 24, turned all tenures by knights service into
llowed all estates in fee simple to be devised.

ae

10 INFLUENCE OF LAND LAWS I

landowners have in the course of ages died intestate. But
there is every reason to believe that this has rarely occurred
except through ‘negligence or misadventure’, and that
therefore the law of primogeniture, dealing as it has only
with the intestate, cannot have had the profound influence
which is often ascribed to it.

To pass to the second of our land laws—that of entail.
This I need hardly remind my hearers was the result of
the statute De donis conditionalibus passed in the reign of
Edward I. Under that statute it was possible for any
owner of lands in fee simple absolute, by a grant to
a person and the heirs of his body, to tie up such
lands in one family according to the principles of primo-
geniture. Each successor would then only enjoy a life
estate, and in the event of the direct issue of the original
grantee dying out at any time, the lands would revert to
the grantor or his heirs. Although it should be remembered
that this statute was only an enabling one and left land-
owners to dispose of their lands otherwise if they so wished,
it is true that for some 160 years it was very generally taken
advantage of and that in this way, when once the entail had
been created, it could not be broken.

The evil, however, of such a system was soon felt. In
the words of Blackstone ‘children grew disobedient when
they knew they could not be set aside, farmers were ousted
of their leases made by tenants in tail (because the leases
became void on the death of the tenant in tail), creditors
were defrauded of their debts (because the lands of
a tenant in tail were not chargeable for his debts after
his death), innumerable latent entails were produced to
deprive purchasers of lands they had fairly bought, and
treasons were encouraged, as estates tail were not liable to
forfeiture to the Crown longer than for the tenant’s life,
although they did escheat to the lord. Accordingly it soon

I INFLUENCE OF LAND LAWS 11

became the practice to evade the statute by the means of a

collusive action termed a common recovery, which was
confirmed by the decision of the judges in the case of
Taltarum, 12 Edward IV, while in the reigns of Henry VII
and Henry VIII a still more simple process termed levy-
ing a fine was invented. Finally in the year 18383 any
tenant in tail was allowed to break the entail by a simple
deed enrolled in the Court of Chancery.!

From the middle of the fifteenth century, therefore, it

| became impossible for any person to tie up lands for ever
in any family. Each successive tenant in tail could, by
suffering a common recovery, or later by levying a fine,
convert his estate into a fee simple absolute and dispose of
it at discretion. Henceforth the law_of England_has
always opposed such grants in perpetuity by forbidding
any person to create more.than.one..contingent..remainder ;
that is to say, he may grant as many estates for life in
remainder as he likes, but only one remainder to an unborn
person. Thus an estate can be given to an unborn person

- for life or in tail, but a further remainder granted to that
unborn person’s unborn son is void in law. It should,
however, be mentioned that estates tail granted by the
Crown for public services, such as Blenheim Park, cannot
be barred so long as the reversion remains in the Crown,
nor any entails which have been specially created by Act
of Parliament.?

It appears then, that with these exceptions, which are
not numerous, the law of England so far from facilitating
the perpetual tying up of estates in one family distinctly
forbids it, and that, though the law of primogeniture is
the rule of intestate succession, the law can easily be

1 For a description of these “aptyiods ef, Williams, Law of Real
Property, pp. 42 ff.
? Williams, Real Property, pp. 264, 305.

12 INFLUENCE OF LAND LAWS I

evaded. Surely, this being the case, it cannot be held that
the accumulation of lands in a few hands is the direct |
result of our land laws. Besides, if for argument’s sake
this were admitted, the question would at once arise why
these same laws did not affect the small owner, and
prevent his property from coming into the market to be
absorbed by the neighbouring magnate.

Thus we seem to be led to the conclusion that we must
look elsewhere for the causes of this peculiarly English _
phenomenon. The answer,-I believe, to the question is to ;
be found in the habits and prejudices of the class of larger
landowners, who, as it has been said, look upon the law ;
(or rather custom) of primogeniture as ‘a fundamental
law of nature as applied to their own class’,! and in the
economical and social forces of the country and its inhabi-
tants. ‘Let me have control of the ballads of a people.
I care not who makes the laws.’ I would amend this
saying by substituting customs for songs. Nil leges sine
mores. | For reasons which I shall hereafter inquire into,
the accumulation of landed property has been the passion
of the rich, while it has been comparatively little desired
by the poor. It has been this prejudice on the part of the
rich which has led them to follow the rule of the law of
primogeniture in their wills. No doubt it would have
been more difficult to satisfy this prejudice if the law of
England had forbidden all wills and enforced the system
of equal division among the children. But the experience
of other countries, notably of France, since the publication
of the Code Napoléon, which limits the parental power of
testamentary disposition to a part equal to one child’s
share and divides the remainder among the children
equally, goes to show that evasion of such a law is not
only possible but probable if such evasion is desired.

1 Wren Hoskyns, Systems of Land Tenure, Cobden Club, p, 375.

I INFLUENCE OF LAND LAWS 13

The English wealthy man then followed the rule of
primogeniture because he approved of it. But the law
against perpetuities was not to his taste; he therefore
eluded it by the means of strict family settlements. Let
me explain. Even after the introduction of common
recoveries no tenant for life or in tail could bar the entail,
unless he were actually in possession, without the consent
of any tenant for life who was in possession,’ such posses-
sion being generally vested in the father, who held the
first life interest, and although by levying a fine he could
bar his own issue, he could not bar any remainders or
reversions. This restraint was shortly after increased by
the plan of introducing into all settlements ‘trustees to
preserve contingent remainders’, whose consent had to
be obtained, a custom which was finally devised by
Sir Orlando Bridgeman and Sir Geoffrey Palmer, two
notable conveyancers during the civil wars; while by
the Act of William IV, 3-4, c. 74, the office of pro-
tector of the settlement was introduced for the same
purpose, an office generally given to the owners of
the estates for life, previous to the estate tail, although
other protectors are often added. These expedients, re-
sorted to in the first instance to protect the tenants in tail
from wrongful acts of preceding tenants, were soon used
for the purpose of perpetuating the family settlement.
Thus, suppose that an estate has been granted to A for
life, remainder to his unborn son X in tail. The estate is
thereby tied up until that son is born and has attained the
legal age of twenty-one. Without the consent of his
father the son can indeed bar his own issue, but cannot
bar any remainders, nor the reversion to the heirs of the
original grantor. That is to say, he can only grant away

1 Chudleigh case.

14 INFLUENCE OF LAND LAWS I

his future interest for as long as he has children or
descendants living.

Taking advantage of this restriction, it soon became the
usual custom for the father who held the life estate
previous to the estate tail to prevail upon his son, the
tenant in tail, as soon as he came of legal age, to cut off
the entail, which would then be resettled on his father 4
for life, remainder to himself X for life, remainder to his
own son Z as yet- unborn in tail. The estate would thus
be safely tied up until that unborn son Z was born and
had attained legal age, and then the process would be
repeated. It will be observed that the tenant in tail in
thus complying would give up much. He would have
surrendered his remainder in tail on which he might have
raised money at once, though this might be at an exorbi-
tant interest, and his eventual right to cut off the entail
and sell the property as soon as his father was dead and he
had come into possession. In lieu of these rights he would
only have received a tenancy for life after his father’s
death. If, however, he were recalcitrant, he would not
only meet with the disapprobation of his family, anxious
to preserve the family estate intact, but would be probably ~
threatened by a refusal on the part of his father to give
him any pecuniary assistance meanwhile, a threat all the
more serious if he thought of marriage and a marriage
settlement had to be drawn up, at which uncomfortable
crises these family arrangements are usually made.

Thus by a succession of such settlements, which are
periodically broken and resettled, the practical results of
a strict legal system of entails are obtained—not be it
observed by the law, but rather against the spirit of the
law. So rooted is this prejudice among the larger landed
gentry, and so universal is this tendency, that it is said
that two-thirds of the land of England are to-day under

I INFLUENCE OF LAND LAWS 15

settlements of this kind. Finally, it should be noted that
estates tail were made forfeitable for treason, though not
for murder, by an Act of Henry VIII; that such estates
are also now liable in the hands of the tenant in tail, being
the heir of the debtor, for judgement debts, and in the case
of bankruptey can be sold for the benefit of the creditors
so far as he can cut off the entail without the consent of
any. Moreover, the Court of Chancery has always had
power to direct sales with consent of the parties interested,
while, by Lord Cairns’s Settled Land Act, 1882, all the
land in the hands of the life tenants may be sold except
the mansion, the pleasure grounds, and park, so long as
the proceeds are invested in the hands of trustees to carry
out the provisions of the settlement. It is therefore clear
that, with the exception of properties specially entailed, no
family estate is absolutely wasaleable, although owing to
the wishes of its owners it seldom comes into the market,
except as a consequence of serious extravagance on the

_ part of successive holders.
' I do not, indeed, deny that the leaning of the law in

favour of primogeniture in the case of intestacy may have
had an indirect influence in strengthening the custom of
leaving all to the eldest son. But at least in the case
of entails it is the other way. Family estates have been
kept together not by the influence of the law, but against
its spirit. But why, it may be asked, have not the custom
of primogeniture and the system of strict settlements kept
the property of the small owner from extinction? Those
who are most open-mouthed against our land laws admit
that they have not. The answer is the same in both
eases. The poorer landowners have not the same pre-
vdices, they are not so completely in the hands of
seicitors and lawyers, who from their legal training are
ivelined to lean towards the custom of primogeniture, and,

16 INFLUENCE OF LAND LAWS I

from a natural desire for employment and fees, to advise
the periodical resettlement of family estates. Thus, while
they have evaded the law of primogeniture by their wills,
they have rarely created an entail, or resorted to the
family settlement. Moreover, by the nature of the case,
the small landowner is more likely to fall into such
financial straits as must necessitate his disposing of his
land willingly, by cutting off the entail and selling, or
involuntarily, by the law of bankruptcy.

In one respect, however, the indirect influence of the
law, it must be admitted, has been considerable. Owing
to the technicalities of our legal system, and the absence
of any simple method as to registration of title, the
expenses involved by inquiries into title and the like have
been a serious obstacle in the way of bringing land into
the market, and inasmuch as the percentage of expense is
far greater in the case of small properties than in that of
larger, the intending purchaser, if he be poor, is de-
barred from competing with his richer rival.

I am not, you will observe, either defending or attacking
our system of land tenure. Like all systems which have
grown with the growth of the nation, there is a good deal
to be said in favour of it, more perhaps against it, for
certainly it is accompanied with serious evils, more
especially in respect to family settlements. This, how-
ever, I leave to other hands. My aim has been to inquire
how far our land laws are really responsible for the
accumulation of estates in a few hands, and in this
respect I cannot but think their influence is commonly
exaggerated.

1 See Cobden Club, Systems of Land Tenure, England, p, 121,
ed. 1876. On purchase of land worth £100 the expenses, irrespective of
duty, are 23 per cent., of land worth £1,000 about 44 per cent., of land
worth £2,000 about 32 per cent.

II

THE GREAT PLAGUE AND ITS RESULTS

To many writers the Great Plague, which visited England
in 1348 and of which there was more than one outbreak,
serves as the turning-point in the social and economic con-
dition of England, as a sort of cataclysm the effects of
which were never undone. That this should be so is not
to be wondered at. For although the East has suffered such
catastrophes both before and after, Western Europe, it may
be safely said, has never before or after undergone such
an awiul experience, The way in which it struck con-
temporaries may be gathered from the following account,
written probably by a monk shortly after.!

‘In the year of the Lord 1348 and in the month of
August there began the deadly pestilence in England,
which three years previously had commenced in India and
then had spread through all Asia and Africa, and coming
into Europe had depopulated Greece, Italy, Provence,
Burgundy, Spain, Aquitaine, Ireland, France with its
subject provinces (he omits Germany and Scandinavia),
and at length England and Wales, so far at least as to the
general mass of citizens and rustic folk and poor—but not
princes and nobles.*, So much so that very many country
‘owns and innumerable cities are left altogether without
nhabitants. The churches or cemeteries, before consecrated,

1 Cf. Gasquet, The Black Death, p. 187.

2 The good monk is certainly wrong here, though it is true that
‘he lower classes suffered most. For instance, Joan, the wife of the
Black Prince, the Duke of Lancaster, and two archbishops of Canter-
bury were among w3 victims.

4 JOHNSON ' B

18 THE GREAT PLAGUE AND ITS RESULTS II

did not suffice for the dead, but new places outside the cities
and towns were at that time dedicated to that use. And
the said mortality was so infectious in England that hardly
“one remained alive in any house it entered. Hence flight
was regarded as the hope of safety by most, although such
fugitives for the most part did not escape death, though
they obtained some delay in the sentence. Rectors and
priests and friars also, in confessing the sick, by the hear-
ing of the confessions were so infected by ‘the contagious
disease that they died more quickly even ‘than their penitents,
and parents in many places refused intercourse with their
children, and husband with wife.’ 2

The actual loss of the population has generally been
estimated at from one-third to one-half, and the latest
investigations seem to confirm the higher estimate, though
children appear to have been spared,! and such a sudden
decline in the population of a country, at that time not
over-populated, must, there can be no dispute, have been
accompanied by serious consequences.? Nevertheless it
would appear that the results were rather of a temporary
than a permanent nature, and may be compared rather
to those of a deluge, whereby the landmarks are for
a time obliterated, to reappear as soon as the flood has
subsided.

To appreciate the real significance of the plague in
altering the tenure of land in England we must try and
reconstruct for ourselves the condition of the rural economy
just before the dreadful visitation. This, however, is no
easy matter, in spite of much evidence which has been of late
collected, and in spite of—or, as some cynic has put it, partly

1 Transactions Royal Hist. Soc. xiv. 126,

2 The population at Domesday was probably about two millions. It
had by 1348 probably increased to about four or five millions, In the
Great Plague two and a half millions probably died. The population
in 1377, as we learn from the Subsidy Rolls, was some 2,350,000, and
did not recover till the end of Elizabeth’s reign.

Il THE GREAT PLAGUE AND ITS RESULTS 19

because of—the critical acumen which has been displayed
in sifting it, Professor Maitland himself declared that
generalities on the early history of the English Manor
are not yet safe, and this because of their infinite variety,
and yet one must present some general view even at the risk
of being condemned for ‘rushing in where angels fear to
tread ’,

A typical manor then, in the middle of the thirteenth
century, was a complete social and juridical unit. The
arable land is still cultivated in common, generally on the
three-field system, each field being left fallow every third
year. On these open fields the freeholders and the villeins,
who enormously preponderate, except in .a few North-
Eastern counties such as Norfolk and in Kent, hold their
strips, and in return pay rents or owe labour service to their
lord. The lord’s demesne itself either lies in strips on the
open fields, or has become consolidated, and is cultivated by
all those who owe him service, such as ploughing, carting,
herding cows and dairy work, sometimes partly by hired
labour. |

If the lord is a small man he lives on the manor and
manages it himself. If he is the king or some great lord,
ecclesiastical or lay, with many manors, his demesne is
managed or let out in farm to his bailiff. Outside the
arable land lies the waste, This, according to the Statute
of Merton of the reign of Henry III, the lord could enclose
or dispose of at will, provided that he left sufficient whereon
the freeholders might pasture their cattle, cut turf, timber,
and so forth, privileges which by custom were usually
shared by the villeins, and for which a small annual pay-
ment was made.

By law there is a great difference between the villein or

! English Hist. Review, Ix. 417.
B 2

20 THE GREAT PLAGUE AND ITS RESULTS II

bondsman by blood and the freeman, and also between the
villeinage by tenure and the freehold! The freeman,
whether he holds some land on villein tenure or not, is free
to come and go; he cannot be forced to act as reeve; he
ean sell all the lands he holds in freehold, and above all,
if his tenure is free, he can sue for a writ of right in
the King’s Courts against his lord who dispossesses him.
The villein by blood or status is bound to the land: he cannot
leave it without the lord’s licence ; he is liable to pay merchet
for leave to marry his daughter and~leyrwite for her
incontinency, and fines for leave to send his boy to school,
or to have him ordained; he can be tallaged at the lord’s
will. The lord can seize his lands and his chattels, except
perhaps his waynage or implements of industry,’ although
land or goods which he has himself acquired do not lapse
unless the lord has actually taken them in hand.? The
lord can move him from one holding to another and increase
his labour services. He can sell his labour, or even his
person and his family, away from the manor altogether.
The bondsman by blood is indeed protected in life and limb
against his lord, and as against all others he is free and can
enforce any engagements made with them, but he must
first get his lord’s leave and pay a fine (gersumma).

So again the difference between villeinage and free tenure
is considerable. If it is free, the services—other than the
military service, which was forty ‘days whenever called
upon—and the dues are fixed and immutable, whereas the
characteristic feature. of villein tenure lies in the uncertainty
of the services. ‘He knoweth not to-night what he may

1 But N.B.: There is no difference between villeins in gross and
regardant. The terms apply to the same person from different points
of view. In gross=villein without further qualification. Regard-
ant =in reference to the manor. Vengeeents Villeinage, p. 55.

2 Ibid., p. 75. 3 Ibid., p. 67.

Il THE GREAT PLAGUE AND ITS RESULTS 21

have to do to-morrow.’ He must grind his corn at the
lord’s mill and pay dues; he must pen his sheep on the
lord’s fold to manure it; he must keep his buildings in
repair and his ditches clean ; he pays numerous little dues
in kind or money. Lastly villein tenure, unless it was on
ancient demesne (a manor which had been in the king’s
hand ‘ when Edward the Confessor was alive and dead ’, that
is in the first year of Will. I), is not protected by the king’s
eourt, while on his death his lord can admit whom he likes,
and if his son is admitted he must pay a heriot.

Such was the legal position of the villein whether by
status (blood) or by tenure. Yet we must remember that
the manor was a juridical unit and had its court. Here
no doubt the lord or his steward presided. We might
therefore expect that in and by this court the chains of
villeinage would be all the more strongly riveted. The fact
was otherwise. Just as the existence of a good system of
justice acts as a control on the arbitrariness of a despot, so
it was in the case of the manor. In this court all tenants,
free and villein, were suitors, and though villeins alone
could be forced to serve on the juries, freemen also did. It
was under the protection of the court that those customs
grew, which served as an effective check on the will of the
lord. Custom is the very life of the manor, the court is the
protector of that custom, and the suitors were the inter-
preters of that custom. ‘To fix,’ says Professor Maitland,
‘in precise terms the degree of binding force that the lords
in their thoughts and deeds ascribed to manorial custom
would be impossible. Generalizations about the moral senti-
ments of a great and heterogeneous class of men are apt to
be fallacious, and when a lord pays respect to a custom that
cannot be enforced against him by any compulsory legal

1 N.B. Only one court. The distinction between Court Baron and
Court Customary came later.

22 THE GREAT PLAGUE AND ITS RESULTS II

process, it will be hard to choose between the many possible
motives by which he may have been urged ; provident self-
interest, a desire for a quiet life, human fellow feeling for
his dependants, besides his respect for the custom as a
custom, may all have pulled one way.’ But whatever
were their motives, custom grew, and the position of the
villein no longer ‘ depended on the caprice of the lord
though it depended theoretically on his will’,? and if the
villein forfeited his land for non-performance of his
duties, the question whether he had so failed was decided
by the court where the villeins, and not the lord, were
the judges.
Thus although all that the villeins by blood possessed
belonged by law to the lord, in practice we find them enjoy-
ing property, and buying and selling at will. Further,
the distinction between villein status and villein tenure,
though it still existed, was becoming obscured, because
many villeins by status held lands on free tenure and
many free men held lands on villein tenure. The free-
holder often worked by the side of the bondsman on the
lord’s demesne. They often served on the juries of the
‘court, and in some cases paid the merchet which was
considered the especial mark of bondage by blood.4
Meanwhile uncertainty, which is the especial mark of
service by villein tenure, was passing away. First the
amount of labour which each villein by tenure owed became
fixed, and then the system of commutation of labour services
on the demesne for money payments followed. This may
have been caused by the fact that with the increase of
the number of villeins, more labour was due than the lord
required, or, in the case of the boon, or occasional services,

1 Pollock and Maitland, i. 359. 2 Vinogradoff, Villeinage, p. 176.
8 Page, End of Villeinage, p. 15.
* Vinogradoff, Villeinage, p. 154,

nd

II THE GREAT PLAGUE AND ITS RESULTS 23

because the dues paid in kind to the lord in return became
with the rise in price of commodities more valuable than
the boon service itself‘ However this may be, as early
as the thirteenth century at least we find villeins on some
manors ‘buying’ their works.” Mr. Thorold Rogers no doubt
exaggerated the extent to which commutation had advanced
by the middle of the fourteenth century,’ but Mr. Page 4
has shown that in the period 1325-50, out of 81
manors selected at hazard, in 6 manors services had
been entirely commuted ; in 9, most; in 22, half; in 44
the team work had been commuted but none of the hand
work. Moreover there were many cottagers who held no
land, and eked out a living by labour at wage, while in
many manors the ploughing was done not by the villeins,
but by men, perhaps cottagers, specially employed for the
purpose.

Thus at the date of the Plague there were three classes
of villeins :—

1. Those who had commuted all their services for a fixed

money payment.
2. Those who had commuted some but not all their
labour services. |

8. Those who still owed services at the will of the lord.
Finally the system of leasing lands, often to the bailiff or
reeve himself, had already begun.

Under these circumstances the effect of the Great
Plague was different on different manors. In all, the
sudden reduction of the numbers of the villeins by one-

1 Vinogradoff, Villeinage, p. 175.

2 Maitland, Hist. Review, ix, p. 419; Cheyne, English Hist.
| aview, xv. 33; Transactions Royal Hist. Soc. xiv. 125,

8 Th. Rogers, Hist. Agriculture and Prices, i. 81.

* Page, Villeinage, p. 45 Cunningham, English Industry, i. 513,
+ 6.

24 THE GREAT PLAGUE AND ITS RESULTS II

half caused great dislocation. Labour became much more
valuable and learnt its power. Yet the effects were much
more serious on the last two classes than on the first.
Those villeins who had commuted their services were
comparatively little concerned. But those who still owed
services were unwilling or unable to do them. In some
cases they were all dead; in some, children or widows
alone remained; in others, they refused to serve, and
deserting their holdings, sometimes with leave on paying
a fine, sometimes without. leave, joined~the class of free
labourers, who were demanding higher ’pay,! to be met by
the Statute of Labourers with which we are not here con-
cerned, but which tried to fix wages by law.

In all such cases, that is where the villein died or fled,
the land fell to the lord, and as he could not find others
who would perform the due labour services, or force the
surviving villeins to take up more land on villein tenure,
or increase the labour services, as he could by law, he was
forced either to take the land into his hands,? or to let it. out
to others on lease. Thus in this way there can be no
doubt many villeins by their own act severed their con-
nexion with the land and joined the class of free labourers
divorced from the land, while the lords increased the
amount of land in their own hands. The lords too, no
doubt, would decline to advance further in the direction of
commutation since labour was now more valuable than any
commutation which their villeins would be likely to agree
to. Mr. Page suggests, indeed, that the lords would be
the more willing to commute, since by the halving of the
population the lord would have relatively more money.

1 Maitland, A Cambridgeshire Manor, Eng. Hist. Review, ix. 423;
Norfolk manor, Transactions Royal Hist. Soc. xiv. 127.

* In one Norfolk manor, Forncett, 60 to 70 tenements were in the
lord’s hands, Transactions Royal Hist. Soe. xiv. 127.

‘
‘

Ii THE GREAT PLAGUE AND ITS RESULTS 25

But Vinogradoff reminds us that this would be neutralized
by the financial panic and dislocation of trade which
necessarily ensued! That in any case there’ was any
general attempt on the part of the lords to redemand
services from those villeins who had already commuted
them, as Mr. Thorold Rogers asserted,? is an assumption
for which there is no proof, while as to eviction, that is
still less likely. For why should the lord wish to evict
those villeins who remained, when he had already more
vacant holdings than he could dispose of ?

Nor is there any reason to believe that the lords rejoiced

_ in the disappearance of the villein. We must remember

that at that date England was only thinly populated, and
that labour was of much more value to the lords than land
which they had difficulty in cultivating, especially when
the price of labour was rising and the labourers had just
learnt the value of their labour, and were resisting the
fixing of the price by labour statutes. Nay, we have
evidence to the contrary. In the Court rolls of the time,
shortly after the plague, we often find a notice that certain
lands have been temporarily granted for a definite rent,
until some one shall be found who is willing to pay the -
old labour services, or until the heirs of the villeins who
are dead or have fled may be found,’ or until the children
have grown to man’s estate. There was, in short, no
remedy open to the lord, except either to allow his
demesne lands to lie waste, or to let them to farmers on
lease, or to turn them into pasture whereby he would
escape the necessity of demanding much labour.*

1 Page, Villeinage, p.57; English Hist. Review, ix. 280.

* Thorold Rogers, Six Centuries of Wages, pp. 218, 219, 254; Page,
End of Villeinage, p. 38.

$ Page, Villeinage, pp. 55, 85; Maitland, English Hist. Review, ix.
429; Scrope, Castlecombe, p. 161; Oxford Hist. Soc., Cartulary of
Eynsham, ii. xxvi.

* In the manor of Forncett, however, half the manor was leased by

26 THE GREAT PLAGUE AND ITS RESULTS II

It was, however, impossible for the lords speedily to
betake themselves to these remedies. The financial shock
and general dislocation of society and of credit would
render it difficult for them either to find farmers who had
the necessary capital to take the land on lease, or them-
selves to find the capital for tending the stock, or to
purchase the necessary sheep wherewith to feed down the
lands that were in hand. These changes in the economical
arrangements of the demesne belong rather to a later date,
when the direct influences of the great visitation had
passed away.

Nor did the rebellion of the peasants have much perma-
nent effect. Thorold Rogers’s statement that it was due
to the attempt on the part of the lords to recall villeins
who had commuted their labour to their service again
has been disproved. Many peasants joined the rebellion
from manors where almost complete commutation had
taken place, and some manors where there was little
commutation were undisturbed.!. Indeed, judging from
a statute of Richard II, only four years before the revolt,
it would appear that villeins were refusing to pay their
services, ‘declaring that they were quit and utterly dis-
charged of all manner of serfdom, under colour of certain
“ exemplifications ” made from Domesday.’? No doubt the
lords would be more strict with regard to the services that
remained, and Langland complains of heavy fines. ‘ When
ye impose a fine let mercy fix the amount,’ and Wyclif
makes the same complaint, though the records of manors
do not bear this out. The rebellion began in Kent, where

1378 (Transactions Royal Hist. Soc. xiv. 129), and all the demesne
lands of Merton College by 1360 (Oman, The Great Revolt, p. 6), and
so also all the villein lands of the manor of Rustinton, Trinity College,
Cambridge (0. 1. 25).

1 Page, Villeinage, p. 69. 2 Statutes of Realm, ii. 2. 3.

II THE GREAT PLAGUE AND ITS RESULTS 27

there was little or no villeinage,! as well as in Essex, where
there was much, No doubt some of the rebels desired to
escape from villein status, and desired that the services
due from villein tenure should be commuted for a fixed
sum. But the rebellion was largely joined by free
labourers and townsmen, and was probably caused far
more by the Statute of Labourers, by the poll tax, and by

.the general political discontent? than by any special griev-

ances of the villeins by tenure. Moreover, the rebellion
failed.

Thus, then, so far as we are concerned, the direct and
permanent results of the plague were not as great as many
have asserted. Economic history, as Maitland reminded
us, is not catastrophic. Many of the changes which have
been attributed to it had begun before ; some of these it
checked, others it accelerated slightly, and that is all. A
few years after the visitation and the peasants’ revolt the
manors assumed their old aspect. A few more services
had been commuted, and a little more land was let on

lease. But villeinage by status and the services of the

villein by tenure still survived.? The only serious results
were that the number of the villeins, either by status or by
tenure, was reduced partly by death of the tenants or
because they had run away; that in this way the peasant
was divorced from the soil and went to swell the class of
landless but free labourers; that more land without any
inhabitants had fallen to the lords of the manor, of which
they could at first make little use; and that labour had for
the first time learnt its value.

Nevertheless, the disintegrating influences of the plague

? Vinogradoff, Villeinage, pp. 205, 218.

* Ashley, Economie Hist. i, pt. i, p. 31.

8 Page, Villeinage, p. 92; Cunningham, i. 515; Cheyne, English
Hist. Review, xv. 35; Maitland, English Hist. Review, ix. 423;
Reville, Soulévement des Paysans, ¢. xxix.

28 THE GREAT PLAGUE AND ITS RESULTS II

and of the Statute of Labourers were great. ‘By them
the old manorial system based on custom was weakened,
and the relation of employer to employee took the place
of lord and villein. The Statute of Labourers introduced
the agents of the king, and the law entered into the
sacred precincts of the manor.’ A vagrant villein could
be forced to work by statute, and his lord could not
reclaim him till the end of his labour contract, and infinite
collisions of rights based on the manorial customs and those
given by statute arose.? 5

Yet even these effects, both direct and indirect, would not
probably have been permanent had the economic conditions
of the country remained the same. In all probability the
lords would in that case again have found labourers who
would pay labour services for their lands, although the
amount of service might have been reduced, and villeinage
itself could not be. exactly re-established.2 The economic
arrangements of the manor might have been restored, and
the poor man might not have severed his connexion with
the land. That this is not a wild supposition is surely
shown by the fact that in other countries like France and
Germany, which suffered from the plague apparently as
heavily as did England, the manorial system was not
broken up, that villeinage continued till much later, and
that the poor man, however miserable his condition may
have been, was not at least divorced from the soil.
. hat in this respect England differed is due primarily

to that industrial revolution caused by the transition from
an agricultural to a trading and manufacturing country
which had already begun and was in the future to have
such a profound effect upon her social fabric.

1 Cf. Transactions Royal Hist. Soc. xvii. 252. Quoting from Pre-
trushevsky, Wat Tyler’s Rebellion.

2 A villein tenure when it had once lapsed to the lord could not be
revived, according to the strict legal theory.

ay =

Il THE GREAT PLAGUE AND ITS RESULTS 29

Mr. Ashley! has pointed out the importance of the
wool trade with Flanders. We know that the wars of
Edward III were largely commercial. But England was
also becoming a manufacturing country, witness the
advance of the cloth industry. In the.century.and_a_half
which followed the Great Plague this development.was far
moré-Tapid,.and there were few countries, if we except
Italy and Flanders, where industries were so flourishing or
trade so prosperous. Thus the author of the ‘Commodities
of England’? speaks of the woollen cloth ready made at

‘all times to serve the merchants of any two kingdoms,

Christian or heathen, and of the store of gold and silver
ore, whereof Englishmen had ‘the worthiest payment
passing any land, Christian or heathen’. And the number
of the churches built in the perpendicular style, more
especially in the woollen districts, like that of Norfolk and
the Cotswold, from the middle of the fourteenth to the
close of the fifteenth century, tell the same tale.

All this is, however, quite compatible with the opposite
view, that the fifteenth 1 century \ was one of great distress,’
for th & e_breaking down of
the customary and self-sufficing methods on which industry,
both in town and country, had hitherto been _ based,
methods by which — private enterprise had been checked.
Compe ition was begis vée-treer-play. Domestic
industry, especially that of weaving of cloth in the rural
districts, was taking the place of the old guild system and
causing dislocation of manufactures in many towns. Out
of the wreck of the mediaeval system the capitalist was
arising, who found in this new world a field for enterprise

1 Ashley, Economic Hist. ; Cunningham, i. 389.

2 Written somewhere about 1450, possibly by Fortescue. Cf.
Plummer, Fortescue, Gov. of England, p. 81.

* Cf, Cunningham, English Industry, i. 398.

30 THE GREAT PLAGUE AND ITS RESULTS II

and business capacity. In a word the merchant prince
was appearing, men like the later Jack of Newbury, and
William Canynges with his argosy of ships.1 With the
growth of individual enterprise, money and capital in th
modern sense of the word became accumulated in priva
hands, the more so because the expulsion of the Jews b
Edward I, and the failure of the Bardi and other Italia
bankers in the reign of Edward III, had opened the wa
for Englishmen to engage in the profitable business. of
money-lending. Under these circumstances money be-
came the chief xexus between man and man, and a system
of ‘ Geldwirthschaft’, to use Hildebrand’s and Schmiller’s
phrase, took the place of the old economy, in which money
had little part, much earlier than elsewhere except in Italy
and in Flanders.

It was this revolution which was the real solvent of the
manorial system, and .which prevented its reconstruction
after the shock of the Great Plague. More villeins, tempted
by the new opportunities and the rise of wages which the

development of trade—especially of the cloth trade—fur- ~

nished, ran away, sometimes with leave and paying a small
fine, sometimes without.2 Those who stayed pressed for
further commutation of their labour services, and though the
manorial lords appear at first to have resisted these demands,
since the commutation they received was fixed by custom at a
much lower rate per day’s work than hired labour cost at the
time, they were forced finally to comply, and soon began to see

1 Cf. Pryce, The Canynges family; Law, Nouveaux riches of the
fourteenth century, Transactions Royal Hist. Soc. ix, 49.

2 Miss Davenport says: Judging from evidence of Forncett Manor,
Norfolk, it would seem that sufficient importance has not been given
to the golaniaey withdrawal of villeins. Combating Cheyne’s view
that it was only a few of the restless spirits who would do that. The
fugitives from Forncett Manor became weavers, tailors, shoemakers,
smiths, carpenters, hired labourers. _

|

-_~

i i can |

Il THE GREAT PLAGUE AND ITS RESULTS 31

that it was to their own advantage soto do. They realized
that the old method of cultivating the demesne with com-
pulsory labour was clumsy and ineffective, and as they now
leased a large part of the demesne they no longer required |
the labour, and preferred the money commutation. Thus
commutation went on apace,!

From statistics furnished by Mr. Page in his pam-
phlet on ‘The End of Villeinage in England’,? based
on Ministers’ (manorial officials) Accounts and Court
Rolls, which are unfortunately not as complete as one
could wish, I have drawn the following results,
Taking 28 manors in different parts of England, most
of them in the hands of ecclesiastics who appear to have
been slower to change than was the case with lay lords, and
as to which there is a fairly consecutive account from 1325
to 1440, I find that, whereas in the thirty years following
the Black Death (1350-80) commutation had only been
introduced into 9 manors (in 4 with regard to half, in 3
with regard to most, and in 2 with regard to all), and
that whereas in the ten years following the revolt of the
peasants, 1380-90, it had been introduced into one more
only, while in one commutation had advanced from half to
nearly all the services and in 2 to complete commutation,
in the following thirty years (1890-1420), when the im-
mediate effects of the Plague had passed away, commuta-
tion had begun in 9 more manors, was nearly complete in 7,
and complete in 2, while in only 2 of the 28 did services
still remain intact, and by 1440 half the services had been
commuted in 4 more and nearly all in another 4.

' Transactions Royal Hist. Soc. xiv. 140; English Hist. Review,
Joa. 1900, p. 29.
Page, Villeinage, American Economic Assoc., Series iii, vol. i. 2,
». 45, 60, 78. :

32 THE GREAT PLAGUE AND ITS RESULTS It

|

28 Manors 1325-50 | 1350-80 | 1890 | 1400 | 1410 1420 | 1440

No Commutation,
except team work . 21 12 11 9 6 2 2

Half the praedial
services. . 2. © . 6 10 8 it 7 8 4
Nearly all . 1 4 5 7 9 12 | 16
Ys iaeanoage 0 2 4 5 6 6 6

The rapidity with which commutation advanced between
1390-1440 will perhaps be more apparent if we take the
larger number of 59, though we cannot unfortunately trace
their history during the thirty years preceding.

Thus whereas in 1390 there were, out of 59, 14 manors
where there was no commutation, except the team work, in
1440 some commutation had extended to all, and whereas
in 1390 there were only 17 in which most of the labour
services were commuted, in 1440 there were 25, and 23 in
which total commutation had taken place, against 16 in
1390.

1380-90 - 1440
No commutation except team work . ay Se . 0
Half commuted . A : : , . ce ae
Nearly all . 4 ‘ ‘ ‘ : cy Tate «ews
All. : . ; : ‘ : oe. . 23

Or again, out of 182 manors, in the year 1440, 101 had
commuted all services, 52 almost all, 19 half, and in 8 only
was none of the labour, except the team work, commuted.

After 1440, we have unfortunately not enough statistics
to help us, yet it is pretty certain that by the middle of the
century there were few manors on which praedial services
were exacted. Some of the old incidents of villein tenure,
such as fines on alienation, inability of the tenant to cut
ancient timber and even the payment of heriot by the
successor survived, but the uncertainty of the services which
had been the essential characteristic of the tenure in villein-
age disappeared. Meanwhile the villeins who remained

4

Il THE GREAT PLAGUE AND ITS RESULTS 33

increased their holdings either of old villein land or soiled
land (i.e. land originally free), but now held by them on
villein tenure, and were in comfortable cireumstances.!

With the practical disappearance of villeinage by tenure
the raison d’étre of villeinage by blood status was gone, It
has often been observed that slavery, or something like it,
is the accompaniment. of farming-or.of .tillage.on.a large
scale from the days of the Roman Jatifundia to those of the
plantations of America and the West Indian Islands. But
in consequence of the industrial revolution of the fourteenth
and fifteenth centuries, the manorial lords either gave up
the old system of farming on a large scale through their
bailiffs or betook themselves to sheep-farming which did not
require so many hands, The farmers who took the land on
lease, though sometimes they were given the right of using
the labour due from bondsmen, would find difficulty in
enforcing these rights, especially as the lords of the manor
would no longer have a direct interest in insisting upon
them,

Moreover the bondsman, having no claim on the land, had
lessaeason for staying than the villeins by tenure, They ran
away to seek a better livelihood elsewhere, or to the wars, or
to wear the livery of some great noble, or to become clerks
or lay brethren in the monasteries. The manorial records
still kept the names of those who fled and insisted on the
right to seize their goods at discretion. But action rarely
followed.

Meanwhile the courts, both manorial and royal, favoured
liberty. They would not allow any one to be claimed as a
serf who was not Jorn in serfdom. The tests of serfdom,
the merchet, the leyrwite, the gersumma, were often paid
by those who were villeins by tenure only, and thus became
indistinet and confused. The king’s courts threw - the

* Transactions Royal Hist. Soc. xiv. 141, 131.
JOHNSON Cc

BA THE GREAT PLAGUE AND ITS RESULTS II

‘f

! burden of proof on the lord, and the gradual decay of the
judicial power of the manorial courts and its transference
~ to the justices of the poner deprived the lords of their power
of retaining control.
' In spite of the assertion of Harrison_in his Common-
wealth of England (1580), that ‘of bondsmen we have none’,
and that of Sir Thos. Smith, who writing about 1583,
says that he never knew of any in the realm in his time,
it is certain that villeage by blood still survived, especially
in the west, as manorial records and. contemporary authorities
prove. Fitzherbert in his book on Surveying (1523) says
that, ‘it continueth as yet in some places and is the greatest
inconvenience that is now suffered by the Law.’ Norden
in his Surveyors’ Dialogue says the same. The abolition
of serfdom was one of the demands 1 in Ket’s Rebellion (1549),
and as late as 1575 “cominissioners. were appointed to carry
out manumis anors.: Nevertheless for all
practical purposes villeinage by tenure and villeinage by
btood-hadtisappeared by the close of the fifteenth century,
and thus England, just at the time when she was becoming
influenced by tae aan of Geldwirthschajt, also gained
iy reiziigigheil, Or freedom of movement, That is to say a
society which had originally béen organized on the basis of
status and of custom was now attaining greater fluidity
and becoming subject to the influence of competition, of fre
contract, and of modern monetary arrangements, far earlier
than the rest of Europe.
The result of all this is to be seen in two changes which
materially concern us. In the first place, to the words in

1 Cf. Cheyne, English Hist. Review, xv. 24; Savine, Transactions
Royal Hist. Soc. xvii. 25, gives evidence of existence of bondsmen in
26 counties and in 80 manors at least, 500 families, perhaps 2,000
persons, in Tudor times, Fitzherbert, Surveying, ed. 1539, p. 31;
Scrope, Castle Combe, p. 284, for manumission of a serf who was rich
in 1488,

el le ae ee ee

If THE GREAT PLAGUE AND ITS RESULTS 35

the earlier grants where the villein was said to hold iz
villenagio ad voluntatem domini secundum consuetudinem
manerii, we find the words per copiam rotuli.curiae, ‘by copy
_ of court roll’ added, and whereas in early days the will of
the lord was only limited and restrained by the unwritten
custom of the manor, that custom was now more definitely
defined by the terms entered on the manorial roll, and thus
tenure in villeinage became, gradually called ‘copyhold ?*—
The question how far this copy was legally binding on the
lord is a vexed question of much importance which we must
deal with in a subsequent lecture. In any case it was
something that the custom should be more strictly defined.

The second innovation, that of the increase of leases, was
not so much to the interest of thesmall owner. The system,
first applied to the demesne, was subsequently extended to
the lands on the common field. These leases were usually
those known by the name of ‘stock land and lease’, asystem
under which the landlord supplied the implements and the
stock as well as the land, the tenant paying a certain share
of the produce in return. They were sometimes granted
_ for years, sometimes for life, sometimes for a number of |
lives, sometimes at the will of the lord. Under the grant
for a fixed term of years, the tenant was secure till the end
of the term, but when it was at the will of the lord there
was no such security. There seems also to have been some
confusion between copyholds and leaseholds. In some
cases, apparently, the new grants were made in copyhold
for life or lives, in others, the copyholders surrendered their
lands and took them on lease for life or lives at the will of
the lord.

There is therefore some reason to believe that the security
of the small owner was in this way impaired. As long as
the difficulty of the landlords was to find tenants at all,
this was of no moment, but when, with the advance of

C2

36 THE GREAT PLAGUE AND ITS RESULTS II

the fifteenth century, the.great_ men had taken to sheep-
farming, when the class of tenant farmers, eager for
land, grew, and the ‘system. of enclosures began, the tables
were turned. The large owners now desired to increase
their landed property and their rents, and also to get rid
of the copyholders, whose dues could not easily be raised
beyond the terms of the manorial roll. Now would be
the time when the landlords might take advantage of the
insecurity of the small tenants, who had taken leases for
life or lives, and evict. ‘There is, however, no proof that
this did occur to any extent until the closing decades of
the fifteenth century at least, and the question how far it
occurred subsequently belongs to my next lecture.

Thus then, in spite of the important changes in the
economical structure of England during the later fourteenth
and fifteenth centuries, it does not | appear that, apart from

itself'and the voluntary departure of some of the survivors
themselves, there was during that period any serious
diminution in their number. Their position was indeed
altered in some cases for the better, in others for the worse.
But the m numbers remain much the same. Meanwhile it
seems probable that the number of the -frecholders increased.
A good deal of land, it would appear, came into the market
and was sold outright, and the new purchasers, especially of
land on the demesne, would hold their land neither in
villeinage, nor in copyhold, nor by lease, but in freehold.
Such a process was facilitated by the economical and
political conditions of the time, Owing to the dearness of
labour it was not very easy to cultivate land profitably,
otherwise than as a sheep farm at least, and land was there-
fore cheap. This was just the moment when the man with
a little capital might purchase lands on easy terms. We
know that the fifteenth century was marked by a serious

rw A

“Te eee

ey ee

Il THE GREAT PLAGUE AND ITS RESULTS 37

reduction in the number of the noble families, and that their
losses, as well as of those of inferior estate, were serious during
the Wars of the Roses, and if in some cases this led to the
consolidation of estates by intermarriage, in others the land
would come into the market.

It should also be remembered that it was in the reign of
Edward IV that the system of strict entails was. broken
down, while the family settlements of later times had not
yet been invented. Hence owners of land were freer to sell
than they had been before or were to be again. Nor was
there any law, as in parts of Germany, which forbade the
burgher or the peasant from buying the lands of nobles.
In every way the close of the fifteenth century gave oppor-
tunity°to the small capitalist to acquire land, and that they
did so seems probable from the number of the sturdy yeomen
of whom we hear during the Tudor times. Here, however,
I must warn my hearers that the term yeomen included
those who were tenant farmers and not owners. Thus
T. Smith, who wrote in the reign of Elizabeth, tells us
‘that yeomen are for the most part farmers for the gentry ’.*
Bacon says many yeomen held tenancies for life or years.
Latimer’s yeoman father had no lands of his own but rented
a farm,” and we even hear of yeomen who were bondsmen.

In short, I suspect that it was not so much the small
husbandman who bought land as the nouveaux riches of the
merchant class. The man of small capitalwo da
greater prospect of i ing that capital profitably in manu-
facture or i It would be rather the successful
merchant or the woolstapler men of the type of Judge Paston

1 Sir T. Smith, Commonwealth of England, ed. 1589, Bk. iii, ¢. 10.
He, however, adds ‘that by this means they come to such wealth
that they are able and do daily buy lands of unthrifty gentlemen and

. make their sons gentlemen’.

2 Latimer, Sermons, vii; cf. Dict. Pol. Ee., article Yeomanry ;

Bacon, Henry VII, ed. 1819, vol. v. 61.

~~.
——

88 THE GREAT PLAGUE AND ITS RESULTS II

‘and Sir John Fastolf who, having made a substantial
fortune, would find in the low-priced land a safe and an
improving investment as well as that social and political
position which land was beginning to give.

Thus, to sum up our conclusions, the chief changes during
the fifteenth century so far as we are concerned were—

1. The rapid though not complete extinction of villeinage
by blood,

2. The reduction in the number of villeins by tenure.

3. The advance of the: process of commutation of labour
services and the change of villein tenure into copyhold.

4, The substitution in many cases of copyholds for lives,
and leases for lives, for copyholds of inheritance.

5. The increase in the number of freeholders, for the
most part successful men of business who purchased lands
thrown into the market by the political and other cireum-
stances of the times, and therefore the dispersion of some
of the larger estates.

| bk hm my

Il

THE ENCLOSURES OF THE FIFTEENTH,
SIXTEENTH, AND SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES

THEIR EXTENT AND THEIR RESULTS

. Ir we are to trust the contemporary literature and the
legislation of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries
a te Sree to admit that the social dislocation and
the_distress caused by the enclosures of the fifteenth
and early sixteenth centuries were very serious.

From the appearance of Sir Thos. More’s Utopia in
1515 or 1516, to the publication of Robert Powell’s
‘Depopulation arraigned’ in 1636, there are only four
writers of note who have anything to say in their favour.
Of these Carew,! who contemptuously calls the system
of common cultivation ‘mingle-mangle’, speaks only of
Cornwall, where, as we shall see, the conditions were
peculiar. Thomas Tusser, the author of Five Points of

Husbandry, published in 1573, was, like A. Young in the

eighteenth century, unsuccessful as a practical man. A
choir boy well whipped at school, a musician, a grazier, he
failed in all, till he betook himself to the writing of doggerel
verses. Moreover, he was an Essex-born man, and lived
chiefly in Suffolk. He is thinking, therefore, of districts
which had been early enclosed and which were probably
still being used for arable purposes. Fitzherbert, in his
book on surveying,” confines himself to suggesting methods
1 Carew, 1600.

2 As to the authorship of the Book on Surveying, cf. Quarterly
Journal of Economies, vol, xviii, 588.

40 ENCLOSURES OF THE FIFTEENTH UL

by which enclosure may be effected by agreement without
depopulation ; to which he adds, that if so done, and if the
land enclosed were used for arable purposes, it would not
only increase the produce but be to the interests of the
poor! And the last, Standish, New Directions to Commons’
Complaint, is also chiefly concerned with enclosure for
arable purposes, which was not so disastrous as when the
land was used for pasture.?

We must, however, remember that the enclosing of the
sixteenth century was for the most part, at all events" in
the ¢ districts where it caused most ‘complaint, the. enclosing
of the common open field, not of the waste or commons,? »
and that the land so enclosed was used chiefly not for
arable purposes ‘but for pasture, mainly of sheep. “This is,
the change - which is so ‘violently denounced by most
writers. A few quotations will serve to show the nature
of the alleged grievance, ‘Surely,’ says M in his
Seripture Word against Enclosure, p. 6, ‘they may
make men as soon believe that there is no sun in the
firmament as that... decay of tillage will not follow
enclosure in our. satu “Counties.” ‘Therefore,’ says
Sir Thomas. More, ‘that one covetbus and insatiable cor-
morant may compass about and enclose many thousand
acres of ground together within one pale or hedge, the
husbandmen be thrust out of their own, or by violent
oppression they be put beside it, or by covin and fraud
they be so wearied that they be compelled to sell all; by

1 Fitzherbert, Surveying, p. 96, ch. 40.

? Standish, New Directions to Commons’ Complaint, 1613.

The enclosure of the waste, however, caused some discontent,
more especially in the North, e.g. Pilgrimage of Grace and revolt
under Somerset. Transactions Royal Hist. Soc. xviii. 196 ff.

* As to proportion of enclosed lands being used for arable and
pasture, cf. Leadam, Domesday, 41, 42; Gay, Transactions Royal Hist.
Soc. xiv. 243; English Hist, Review, July, 1908, 268.

——

Ill TO SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES 41

one means, therefore, or another, either by hook or crook,
they must needs depart away, poor, silly, wretched souls,
men, women, husbands, wives, fatherless children, widows,
woeful mothers with their young babes, and their whole
household, small in substance and much in number, as
husbandry requireth many hands... and when they have
wandered about till that (the little they have got by sale
of their goods) be spent, what can they then else do but
steal, and then, justly, pardy, be hanged or go about
begging.’! uy»
' We all know the lament of Latimer. ‘Where there.
were once a gr rs and inhabitants there_
ig now but a shepherd and his dog.’ W. S. says, ‘ Those
shepe is the cause of all those mischiefs, for they have
driven husbandrie out of the country by the which was
increased all kind of foode. But now only sheepe, sheepe,
sheepe!’ and Trigge (1604, Humble Petition), ‘England
hath been famous throughout all Christendom by the
name of merrie England, but covetous enclosers have taken
this joy and mirth away; so that it be now called sighing
or sorrowful England. I have hearde of an old prophesee
that Horne and Thorne shall make England forlorne’ ;
while John Moore in his Scripture Word against
Enclosures, 16538, says, ‘England, and especially Leicester
and the counties round about, stands now as guilty in the
sight of God of the sinnes in the text. They sold the
righteous for silver and the poor for a pair of shoes.’ ®

The denunciations of the preacher were adopted by the
people; the spirits of departed enclosers, more especially
the emparkers, were believed to haunt the scene of their
self-made desolation with cries of guilty remorse, and the
lands of these madded, cruel,. irreligious depopulators to

! Utopia, Robinson’s translation, p. 41.
2 Latimer, Sermon vii, p. 101. ® Moore, p 1.

42 ENCLOSURES OF THE FIFTEENTH Ill

pass away from their families! The testimony of

these writers is supported by a host of others. In short,

there is an almost universal consensus of opinion on the
subject—writers of doggerel ballads, pamphleteers, and
preachers.”

Nor should we forget that the preambles to the
numerous statutes*® passed, and the royal proclamations
issued during the period tell the same tale. We hear of
, houses and townships wilfully decayed, of churches decayed
for want of parishioners, of population being inestimably
| diminished, of ‘ marvellous multitudés’ reduced to beggary

and crime, of England being in ‘marvellous desolation’.

Unfortunately _ this evidence is not of itself conclusive.

Nothing is more delusive than popular estimates of this

sort. Not only is the writer who caters for the public ear

‘likely to exaggerate, but a witness who sees trouble and
distress around him is apt to conclude that the evil is
universal, while the preambles to the Tudor statutes are
always ex parte statements; they were penned to vindi-
cate the aim of the statute and they reflect the views of
authors of those statutes just as the speeches of an advocate

_of a measure do to-day.

_ When, on the other hand, we turn to actual evidence
as to the extent of the enclosures of the period we
are astonished to find that the number of counties
affected _ are... comparatively few, and the area incon-
siderable. Accordingly, Mr. Gay, who has devoted much
time and labour to this question, declares that the
literature of the period is marked by ‘hysterical and
rhetorical complaint, and is condemned by its very

nese ewer Eyer et

} Scruton, Commons, p. 84; Slater, Enclosures, p. 91.

2 See Cheyney, Social Changes, for a useful bibliography of con-
temporary writers, p. 108.

* There were twelve statutes passed during reigns of Henry VIII to
Elizabeth ; ef. for a short summary, Slater, Enclosures, p. 328.

Opwewntross

amg Gory -
s@rrey

i ee a

Ta oe

Ill TO SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES 43

xageeration’.! To prove his assertion he refers us to the
statistics of the period. Unfortunately these, as he him-
self fully allows, are by no means complete. They are
based on returns made in Chancery by the Commissioners
of 1517-19, in 1548 and 1566, and again in 1607,
appointed to inquire into the violations of the various acts.
The presentments for 1517-19 are preserved either in
abstract or in full, and deal with twenty-four counties.
Those for 1548-66 give very meagre information for
four, while those for 1607 only deal with six counties, all
of them among the previous twenty-four, except Hunting-
don. Lastly, there are some judicial proceedings before
the Courts of Exchequer, the Court of Chancery, the Star
Chamber, and the Court of Requests.”

Now the total area declared to have been enclosed in
these presentments is only 171,051 acres out of a total
acreage of 18,947,958 (roughly nineteen millions) or 0-90

? Quarterly Journal of Economics, xvii, p. 587.
2 Cf. Transactions Royal Hist. Soc. xiv. 238, No. 2; Quarterly
Journal of Economics, xyii. 577. The counties are as follows :—

‘7 1. Beds. 13. Middlesex.
2. Berks. 14. Norfolk.
3. Bucks. 15. Northampton.
4, Cambridge. 16. Nottingham.
5. Cheshire. 17. Oxford.
Visitations, 1517-19. 6. Derbyshire. 18. Rutland.
ot 7. Essex. 19. Salop.
. 8. Gloucestershire. 20. Somerset.
9. Hants. 21. Stafford.
10. Hereford. 22. Warwick.
\11. Leicester. 23. Wilts.
2. Lincoln. 24, York.
. 1. Warwickshire. 3. Leicester.
1548-66. 2, Cambridge. 4, Buckingham.

Visitation, 1607, caused >»

lee 1. Beds, 4, Leicester.
by the-
a 2. Bucks, 5. Northampton.
—_— 3, Huntingdon. 6. Warwick,

Royal Hist. Soc. xviii.

44 ENCLOSURES OF THE FIFTEENTH Ill

per cent. Inasmuch as those presentments are manifestly
incomplete, at all events for the years 1548 to 1607, and
as we have. no returns for the period anterior to 1455,
Mr. Gay has constructed a hypothetical table based on
a calculation which, though reasonable, is too long to
enter into here,! according to which the total amount of ~
acres enclosed from 1455 to 1607 comes to 516,673 (some-
thing over half a million of acres) or 2-76 per cent. of the
total area of England.

If we could be sure that this is the maximum amount
of enclosure in the twenty-four counties above enumerated,
there does seem good grounds for Mr. Gay’s assertion
that the writers of the period were guilty of gross
exaggeration, and that it was only the feeble beginning
_ of an agrarian revolution which took two and a half more
centuries to complete. But there are good reasons for
believing that even the returns we have are not complete. —
Some of the commissioners themselves were interested in —
baulking inquiry.” Hales, one of the few commissioners
of 1607 who was in earnest, tells us that they met with
dogged resistance, and had the greatest difficulty in
obtaining full returns. ‘Somme found means to have
their seruantes sworne on the Juryes to thyntent to haue
them hazarde ther soules to save thir gredynes; and as
I have lernyd syns it is not possible, in any of the Shires
wher we wer, to make a Jurye without them, such is the
multitude of Reteynours and hangers on... Somme
poore men were threatened to be put from their holdes if
they presented . . . as it pleaseth any landlord so shall it
be.’ Some were indicted because they spoke the truth,

1 Cf. Quarterly Journal of Economics, xvii, pp. 585, 586. The
earliest definite complaint as to enclosing is found in the Chancellor’s
Speech to first parliament of Ric. III, Camden Soe., 1854, lii. i

2 Latimer, Sermons, quoted Pollard, Somerset.
* Hales’s Defence, quoted Pollard, p, 280.

ey esi

III TO SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES 45

and the commissioners were cheated. The opposition which
this commission met is not likely to have been wholly
exceptional; indeed we have evidence of the same kind
with regard to the inquisitions of Henry’s time.?

Our difficulties do not end here. Mr. Gay assumes that
the movement was arrested in 1607, and in doing so puts
the date later than Mr. Ashley, who chooses 1530 as the
period when it began to slacken.2 Yet Miss Leonard
points out that many of the most bitter complaints are
from writers after 1607,° notably Powell, who in his
Depopulation Arraigned (1636) says the evil was never
so monstrous, never so great, and Moore in his sermons,
and Taylor, who wrote as late as 1653-7.

Miss Leonard has also brought good evidence to show
that the practice continued at least to the rebellion,
especially in the Midlands, In Leicestershire itself 10,000 /
acres were enclosed in two years, 1630-1, double that
given in the return of 1567-9, and five-sixths of that

- given in the return of 1607. The counties of Northamp-

ton and Huntingdon experienced much the same fate,
while we know that in Durham the enclosures began after

the opening of the seventeenth century, and were then
oxtonstval MIegtal "WE WHY EKO Vetiind ourselves that”
in the case of the attempted enclosure of Welcombe, in
Warwickshire, in 1614 or 1615, Shakespeare himself played
a somewhat selfish part,* and that in the same county a
serious agitation arose in the reign of James I, called that of
the Diggers, which spread to Bedfordshire, Leicester,
and Northampton.’ Enclosure once more was one of

1 Transactions Royal Hist. Soc. xviii, p. 224.

2 Ashley, Introd. to English Economic Hist. i (ii). 286.

* Transactions Royal Hist. Soc. xix; Slater, Enclosures, p. 201;
English Hist. Review, xxiii. 477.

* Lee, Stratford-on-Avon, p. 295.

5 Victoria County Hist. : Warwickshire, ii. 162.

46 ENCLOSURES OF THE FIFTEENTH TITII

the grievances mentioned in the Grand Remonstrance. This

4

7

document may have referred to enclosure of the waste, or —

fens, since we know that this caused great discontent from
the scheme started by the Dutchman Vermuyden in the
reign of Charles I,' down to the period of the Common-

wealth itself, discontent which had much to do with the ~

rise of the Levellers.2_ And this kind of enclosure, although
it interfered with the rights, or supposed rights, of the
fenmen, stands.on an altogether different footing from the
enclosure of the common field. ’

Yet that there was much enclosing of the common field
in the seventeenth century is rendered the more probable
because evidently a change was coming in the view of the
legislature and in the writers of the period. In the year
1619 the price of corn was low, and accordingly a procla-
mation was issued stating that the tillage laws had become
the opportunity of informers rather than useful restrictions,
and a commission was appointed to grant pardons to offen-
ders, while in. 1629 the tillage laws of the Tudor times
were repealed, with the exception of 25 Henry VIII, e. 138,
which limited the number of sheep which a man might
keep, and the Act 39 Elizabeth, c. 2, 1597, which referred

to the twenty-four counties where the previous agitation

had been greatest. It is true, however, that when in
1629-31 the price of corn again rose the Privy Council
ordered that all enclosures of the last two years should be
removed, and the Star Chamber instituted proceedings

1In 1630. The Duke of Bedford with thirteen gentlemen ad-
venturers undertook to drain the southern fens,

2 Scrutton, Commons, ¢. iii. By the statutes of Merton, 1236, and of
Westminster, 1285; by the second the lord was entitled to enclose or
‘approve’ part of the waste so long as he left sufficient pasture for
the freehold tenants of the manor, and by custom the rights of copy-
holders were subsequently reserved. In the enclosure of the fens
the commoners’ rights were considered, but not sufficiently, in the
opinion of the fenmen.

— ade

mit > SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES 47

against offenders in Huntingdon, Derby, Notts., Leicester-

_ shire and Northampton, on the ground that depopulation

was an offence against the common law, while between the
years 1635-8 £47,000 odd was paid by offenders who
had compounded for having depopulated,’ chiefly in the
midland counties. Finally, although under the Common-:
wealth the question of enclosures was still a burning one,

_ it is noticeable that the Bill which was brought forward

in 1656 did not condemn the practice altogether but only
proposed to regulate commons and commonable lands so as
to prevent depopulation and to improve waste grounds, and
that even that Bill did not pass. Meanwhile the number
of writers in favour of regulated enclosure increases. Thus
Standish in his New Directions, 16138, answers the Commons’
Complaint, and in 1653 Lee in his vindication of regulated
enclosures answers Moore’s attack in his Crying Sin.? The
explanation of this change of view and this hesitation on
the part of Government and Parliament is probably to be
found in the fact that more common field was now being
enclosed for arable purposes than before, and that the culti-
vation of the wastes was attracting attention, while at the
same time the land-owning interest was strengthening in
the Parliament itself. In a word the coming century was
casting its shadow before it.

The whole question as to the extent of the enclosures

- from the middle of the fifteenth to the end of the seven-
_ teenth century is obviously n not yet settled. It is a ques-

tion between contemporary evidence and statistics, neither
of them, unfortunately, very satisfactory. Nevertheless, it

_ would seem that Mr. Gay, with all his care, has under-
estimated the extent of the enclosures in the twenty-five

} Transactions Royal Hist. Soc. xix. 127 ff. ; English Hist. Review,

_ xiii, 487; Slater, Enclosures, p. 328.

? English Hist. Review, xxiii.

48 ENCLOSURES OF THE FIFTEENTH — III

counties enumerated above, and that at the very least some
127,000 more acres were enclosed between 1607-37.! This
would then raise the total to 744,000 acres, or 3°6 per cent.
of the area of the counties affected and 2-1 per cent. of the
total area of England. Even so, when we compare this

with the enclosures of the eighteenth century, it must, be ~

confessed that the extent is compere lve small,
The accompanying map,” prepared according to Mr.
Gay’s tables, if it does not tell us with a certain voice

the actual amount of. enclosure, will at least show the —

relative amount of enclosure complained of in various
parts of England, You will observe that the counties
fall into seven groups :—

In the first, coloured black, the percentage of enclosure is 8-94
per cent.

In the second, the percentage is 8.45 per cent.

In the third, the percentage is 5.25 per cent.

In the fourth, the percentage is 2 to 1 per cent.

In the fifth, wnder 1 per cent.

In the sixth and the seventh, there is no mention of enclosure
except of one in Wiltshire.

The first two groups, where the percentage is - ., .est,

lie exactly in the centre of England include nine
counties :—
Leicester beds.
Northampton E wks.
Rutland Berks.
East Warwickshire Oxon.
Middlesex

The third group, consisting of Huntingdon and Cam-

bridge, where the percentage is 5-25 per cent., lies imme- —

1 This is if we assume that the amount of enclosure between
1607-87 was equal to that of the previous thirty years.
2 Of. Map I at end of book.

4
|
KG oh, 10H

E Ail TO SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES 49

diately to the east. The fourth group, where the per-
_ centage is only 2 per cent. to 1 per cent., consists of

: Gloucester Derbyshire

f Hereford Nottingham
Shropshire East Lincolnshire
Staffordshire West Norfolk

most of Essex,

_ and forms a kind of crescent moon round the earlier-
- mentioned groups, broken only by Herts. and part of -
_ Warwickshire, Worcestershire and Gloucestershire. Out-

side that again there lies the fifth group, composed
_ of Yorkshire and Cheshire in the north and Hampshire
and part of Somerset in the south, where the percentage
falls below one per cent. Finally, we come to counties
_ of the sixth and seventh groups, where there is no mention
_ of enclosure at all, except of one in Wilts.
At first sight we are tempted to compare the disturbance
caused by these enclosures to that caused by a stone thrown
into the water. It is violent at the point of original
impact and becomes less so as the wave circles spread,

unti u ey finallv ° ie away, either because of some obstacle
on the surface “le water or because the original source
of energy has exhausted itself. And yet this parallel,
; though it may be’a useful aid to memory is really a very
pew ieading one, ‘thasmuch as it suggests a movement in
_ many ways the exact opposite of that which really occurred.
_ This, instead of being one from the centre to the cireum-
_ ference, was rather one from the circumference on the
_ centre, or, to be x more correct, one originating i in the south,

south-west and east, Trice moving as a half crescent,
much as the moon waxes, and then, when the ball was
~ completed, _ rolling forward-to the north.
_ This way of looking at the matter will naturally draw

_ our attention to those counties of the sixth group. These, it
«JOHNSON 2 D

Ty sf

uiliae

50 ENCLOSURES OF THE FIFTEENTH — Ill

would appear, had either never been under the system of
common cultivation, or had early escaped from it. Some were
old woodland districts, which were enclosed directly from the
woodland condition, Under this category we may place
Kent, the weald of Surrey, and Sussex, part of Suffolk, and

ae —

East Essex, Herts, NW. Warwickshire and East Wor- —
cestershire. In others, such as East Norfolk and East —
Suffolk, we find a survival of the one-field system, which —
is characteristic of many parts of North Germany and —

Denmark. Here crops’ had been grown continuously year
by year, fertility being maintained by manuring, a system
which would naturally lead to enclosing.!

When we pass to the South-Western counties in this ©

group, namely South and West Dorset, West Somerset,

Devon, and Cornwall, another explanation may be found.? —

Here many of the settlements had from the very first been
those of detached homesteads according to the Celtie type
rather than of the nucleated Anglo-Saxon village,® and in
all probability the Celtic system of run-rig had existed, as
we know it did in Wales, which with its method of annual
redistribution would, by a natural process, lead the way to
permanent occupation and consequent enclosure,* while in
Kent the open commonable field was the exception.®

|

Further, in Cornwall, as Carew (1600) explains, a system —
of leases for three lives, the lessees being, after the tenant /
himself, the widow and the son, was also very common, a —
method still existing in Devonshire under the names of |

landboote and newtake, which was sometimes adopted for

1 The one-field system is also found in parts of Lincolnshire.
? Possibly the same would be to some extent true of Hereford,
Shropshire, Staffordshire, Lancashire, and part of Gloucestershire.
: io . Meitzen, Siedelung und Agrarwesen, esp. ii. 185,
the Run-rig system ef, Slater, Enclosures, p. 165.

2 en aNe Enclosures, p, 230; Gay, Transactions ioe Hist. Soce.,
xvii. 593.

4

:

Ill TO SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES 51

the purpose of gradually reclaiming the waste; and this
again would facilitate enclosure. Carew expressly says
that they ‘fal everywhere from commons to enclosure, and
partake not of some eastern tenants’ envious disposition,
who will sooner prejudice their own present thrift by con-
tinuing this mingle-mangle than advance the Lordes expec-
tant benefit after their time expired.’! Lastly, we should
remember that the greater proportion of these earlier
enclosed districts were pastoral, and not used for arable
‘purposes, and that it was the conversion of arable to pasture
that caused the chief grievances in the fifteenth, sixteenth,
and early seventeenth centuries.”

- It must not, however, be supposed that in the so-called
old enclosed districts the enclosure was complete, even as
late as the middle of the seventeenth century.* Though
the rebellions under Protector Somerset were partly due to

_ religious causes, especially in the West, those in Somerset-

_ shire,* Worcestershire, and Dorsetshire, as well as in Surrey,

_ Hertfordshire, Norfolk, and Suffolk seem to have been -

mainly social, while the Enclosure Acts passed in the

eighteenth century for many of these counties prove that

_ the open commonable field still continued to some extent. /

Passing to the group of counties of the fourth group,

1 Carew, Cornwall, p. 30.

2 For evidence as to these old enclosed districts see Leland,

_ Itinerary, 1536-42; Trigge, Humble Petition, 1607; Fitzherbert,

_ Surveying, ed. 1539, c. 41; Hales, W. 8., Discourse, ed. Lamond,

_ p. 49; Tusser, ed, Dialect Soc., p. 141; Carew, Cornwall, 1600; Lee,

_ Plea for regulated Enclosure, 1656, p. 31; Slater, Enclosures, pp. 148,

_ 176, 192 ff.; Victoria County Hist.: Essex, p, 322; Tusser, Five Points

_ of Husbandry, p. 205; Victoria County Hist. : Sussex, p. 190; Ashley,

_ Economic Hist., bk. ii, c. iv, p. 299 ff.

* Devon and Cornwall appear to have been completely enclosed by
1700.
4 Cf, Somerset: a letter of the time says, ‘Some crieth Blucke
downe inclosures and parkes; some for their commons, others pre-
. tend relygione.’ Quoted Cheyney, Social Changes, p. 98.
; D2

i
A
*
a

7

52 ENCLOSURES OF THE FIFTEENTH Il

— ); 7

namely, NW. Essex, West Norfolk, E. Lincoln, Notts.,
Derby, Stafford, Shropshire, Hereford, Gloucester, that is —
where the percentage of enclosure is only from 2 per cent,
to 1 per cent., it would appear, in spite of some evidences of
early enclosure, that the movement had only just begun,
and this is certainly the case with the next the fifth group, —
namely, Hampshire, East Somerset, Cheshire and Yorkshire,
as well as those left white—

Wiltshire Cumberland
2 Lancashire | Northumberland
Westmoreland ~ Durham

_ and parts of other counties.
This is to be attributed partly to the character of these
districts, which, being ill suited to arable cultivation, were —
always pastured, and also in the case of the Northern
Counties to their disturbed condition as lying on the
Border. Thus in Cumberland, Northumberland, and Dur- ©
- ham there appears to have been comparatively little open-
field cultivation, and we know that enclosure of such common
fields as existed was not general till after the accession of
James I had put an end to the border raids, when in Durham
at least it proceeded with some rapidity. Moreover, the

1 In Notts. there was a larger area imparked for sport than else-
where. This looks as if there were more wealthy men in that county
or that the soil was poor, also the enclosures were of small areas,
because there were many small owners. There is also very little —
complaint of engrossing but only of enclosing. Leadam, Thoroton —
Soc. Record, Series ii.

* The date of the enclosure of Lancashire is uncertain. There are
no acts in the eighteenth century for enclosure of the Common Field
though many for the enclosure of the Waste. It was certainly nearly ©
complete by 1793. It seems that though the open field existed there ©
were no common rights. Hence enclosure was easier. Slater, En-—
closures, p. 255.

5 Cf. Hist. of Northumberland ; Victoria County Hist. : Durham,
238; Transactions Royal Hist. Soc., xix. 101; Slater, Enclosures, pp. 16.
255, 257; Aubrey, Nat. Hist. of Wilts., 1685 ; Transactions Royal Hist.
Soc., xviii. Durham appears to have been completely enclosed by 17

ote armmlis

Ill TO SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES 53

discontent in the North at the time of the Pilgrimage of
_ Grace and the rebellion under Somerset seems, so far as
it was due to enclosures at all, to be caused rather by
enclosing the waste.
The general conclusion to which we have arrived is that_

the work of enclosure commenced in the South and_in-the
est and perhaps in some Eastern and North-Midland
counties, where it was effected at various dates without
arousing much discontent; that at the close of the fifteenth
it began to touch wh:
growing district in the Midlands (and yet counties many of
which, as later history shows, are peculiarly fitted for pasture)
and thence moved gradually northwards. It was in the
corn-growing counties of the Midlands that it caused_most
disturbance. ‘The complaints are mostly from natives of.
those districts and the great majority of leases brought
_ before the courts deal with the same counties.' And this
is only what we should expect, since the enclosures of those
_ days were mainly, though not exclusively, for the purpose of
using the common open field for pasture,? and were more
_ severely felt in the corn-growing districts, especially as the

_ number of small holders seems to have been larger there, and _
" because in_ many of them_there—was—littlemanufacturing
_ industry to employ those who were driven out.

stly it_was in these very—Midland-eounties that the
movement of enclosure was temporarily arrested, not so
F “much perhaps by the legislative enactments—which, as
Latimer and W. S. both complain, were inoperative—as
_ by the agitation and discontent which they aroused. Of
_ this the rebellion under the Protector furnishes some proof

! Gay, Transactions Royal Hist. Soc., xvii. 590.

2 As to the proportion of enclosure for pasture and for agriculture,
_ ef. Leadam, Domesday of Enclosures, pp. 41, 42; Pollard, Protector
_ Somerset, p. 209; Transactions Royal Hist. Soc., xiv. 241.

eat

i ey

54 ENCLOSURES OF THE FIFTEENTH HT

It began in the county of Somerset, where the number of
enclosures complained of in 1517-19 were few, it only s
to 6 of the counties mentioned in that inquisition at all
(Berks., Bucks., Oxford, Gloucester, Hampshire, and —
Norfolk), and to 3 only of the 5 counties where the —
complaints had been the loudest (Berks., Bucks., Oxon.). -
But a better proof remains. It was exactly these ‘Midland
counties..where the enclosures of the sixteenth century
had caused the bitterest complaints which were the least
enclosed at the opening of the eighteenth century, witness %
the far larger percentage of area enclosed under Acts of
Parliament in those counties than elsewhere. 8
To appreciate the nature of the grievances caused by this

process of enclosure we must clearly grasp the character of
the offences complained of. And here let it once more be
noted that we are dealing chiefly with the commonable or
open field, not with the enclosure of the waste or common.

The offences then were ( engrossing or acquiring different —
pegs not necessarily contiguous or in the same manor; —

fay consolidating, that is joining, two or more holdings or
strips on the common field ; @) decaying houses, which
would be natural result of conpbltitatiaes and also might be
done with regard to cottagers’ houses who had no land on
the open field, and only a small plot if any on the demesne
and some rjghts of pasture on the waste; (4) putting down _
ploughs ; ® converting arable land_to pasture ; (6) em-
parking for purposes of keeping deer or warrens of conies,
and such *vaine commodities ’.!

In dealing with these grievances it should be remembered

that a man could legally enclose his own land, or feed any
number of sheep even under the statute 25 Henry VIII,

where no man had common, and that neither engrossing

1 Harrison, England, ed. New Shakespere Soc., p. 303. For abstract
of Statutes, Slater, Enclosures, 323,

| OVA GR
III TO SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES 55

nor consolidating were in themselves illegal, unless they
_ Were accompanied by the destruction of houses, or the put-
_ ting down of ploughs and the keeping of a large flock of
_ sheep, Further, that rearrangement or exchange of hold-
were actually allowed by the statute 32 Elizabeth.?
It was also quite possible to enclose the common field with-
out causing any displacement of the population, especially
if arable cultivation was still continued. This was advocated
by some writers, such as Fitzherbert and Norden,? and here
the advantages of enclosure were as great as were the
absurdities of the old system. These will be grasped at
once if we keep in mind’ what the system of the common
field meant,
In one manor we are told that a tenant owned 19 acres
in 86 different strips and that a common field of 1,074
actes was divided among 23 owners with 1,238 separate
parcels. This is ‘ mingle-mangle’ indeed. How in Heaven’s
name eould that intensive cultivation which alone has
enabled England to compete with other lands have been
carried on under such a system—to say nothing of the
numerous quarrels, some of them humorous enough, which
did and must inevitably arise under such a system?* No
wonder Fitzherbert® declared that the respective values of an
arable acre unenclosed and enclosed was as 3 to 4, and one
reason for the fairly stable prices of both of corn and of

eS

/
;
=
A
’
:

;
a
:
i

1 Cf. Bacon, Henry VII, ed. Lumley, p. 71, ‘Enclosures they would
not forbid for that had been to forbid the improvement of the patri-
mony of the kingdom, nor tillage they would not compel for that was
' tostrive with nature and utility’; Transactions Royal Hist. Soc., xiv.
296; Ashley, Economic Hist., 268.

2 Fitzherbert, Surveying, c. 40, p. 96; Norden, Surveyors’ dialogue,
quoted Harrison’s England, ed. Furnival, p. 179; Lee, Vindication of
regulated enclosures, p. 5.

§ Leonard, Transactions Royal Hist. Soe., xix.

* See Slater, Enclosures, pp. 47, 48, 75.

5 Fitzberbert, Surveying, c. 96, p. 40.

56 ENCLOSURES OF THE FIFTEENTH TIT

wool during the period from 1451-1540 (nearly a century),
in spite of the rise of wages, was in all probability the
more effective production which enclosure facilitated.

The truth of the matter is that a change of this sort was
inevitable if England was ever to advance out of the most
primitive condition and methods of cultivation. Nor is it -
easy to answer the advocates of the change to pasture
at least from the point of view of free competition.
Mr. Leadam! has come to the conclusion that the increase
in the value of arable open land which was turned to pasture
was as much as 23 per cent., and this, not because the gross
value of the produce was thereby increased, but because the
net value was higher ; in other words, because thesaving of _
labour on a pasture farm, especially at a time when wages _
were rising’, reduced expenses.”

Here, however, we are not concerned to discuss the in-
evitable character of the revolution but to estimate its
results, and these were doubtless grave. It is not my aim
to deal at length with this subject except as it affected the
ownership of Jgnd, and therefore a few words must suffice.

First, then/ the substitution of pasture for arable farming —
and the enclosing of the strips on the common field finally
broke up the manorial economy which was already becoming “
out of date. The grazier wanted fewer men to tend his
sheep than had been needed as long as the land lay under
the plough. Whether therefore he was the lord on his —
demesne or tenant on the manor, when he consolidated

a

1 Domesday of Enclosures, vol. i. 66.

2 The rise in the price of wool is also given as a cause of the change
of arable into pasture, but the price of wool stood at about 4s, to 6s,
a tod from 1451-1540, and only rose to 20s. subsequently. This,
therefore, was not the primary cause. Hasbach, Die englischen
Landarbeiter, p. 28. For an interesting example of a dispute whether —
enclosure should be adopted, ef. Victoria County Hist.: Durham, vol. ii.
238 ; also Hist. of Northumberland, vol. iii. 264,

f 2 yw as

,

e

=
x
:

{ .

Ji TO SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES 57

several holdings he would pull down the houses on some of

them, and the landless labourer, the smaller tenants, cottagers
and bondsmen who remained found less or no demand for

their labour, In places where these unfortunates could take
to other industries the evil was not indeed so great. This
is especially pointed out by Moore in his Scripture against
Enclosures, ‘ I complaine not,’ he says, ‘ of enclosures in Kent

and Essex, where they have other callings and trades...

or of places near the sea or city, but of inclosure of inland
countries which take away tillage, the only trade they have
to live on”? When this was the case, that is to say, when
_ they had no other industry to fall back on, the condition of
the man who lived chiefly or entirely by hired labour
was dark indeed. Stubbes says, ‘ These inclosures be the
causes why rich men do eat up poore men, as beasts doo
W at came. 7 These are the caterpillars and devouring.
locustes that massacre the poor and eat up the whole
realm.’? The Commonweal of England especially men-
tions the cottagers ‘which having no lands to live of their
own but their handie labour and some refreshing upon
the said commons’ do suffer, and says that owing to
gentlemen taking farms and to the general substitution
of pasture for arable ‘ wheare 40 persons had their livings,
nowe one man and a sheppard hath all’.® The supplica-
tion, probably addressed to the Protector Somerset in 1548,
declares that in Oxfordshire alone 40 ploughs had been
decayed since the reign of Henry VII, that in other
counties the average was 80, and that some 18 or 20
thousand had been thrown out of employment.‘

1 Quoted, Transactions Royal Hist. Soc., xix, p. 139; cf. also W.S.,
The Common Weal, ed. Lamond, where the case for and against en-
closure is well treated in a dialogue.

2 Anatomie of Abuses, 1583, pt. i, evii.

’ Commonweal of England, ed. Lamond.

* Four Supplications, Early English Text Soc., p. 101, speaks of 50,000

58 ENCLOSURES OF THE FIFTEENTH III

This estimate is: supported by Mr. Gay’s hypothetical
tables. According to these the number of houses decayed
during the same period comes to some 4,900, and if we
assume that for every house decayed a plough was put
down, and every plough or ploughland would support five
men,! the number thrown out of employment would come
to over 24,000 (exactly 24,705), or for the whole period
from 1455 to 1637, some 34,000.?

When we remember that we are dealing with about half
of England only, and that at the same time and for the
same reason wages were falling, while the value of money

was also decreasing, owing to the debasement.o es
nd the influx of silver from the new world, we_have no

S: difficulty in_accounting for the discontent nor for the
fact that _it_i is just_at this time that the existence of the

poor—both sturdy and valiant, and impotent—is becoming

a serious question for the statesman.

“The problem, however, with which I am mainly con-

cerned has yet to be dealt with. How far did these

enclosures_diminish_the—number_of the landowners in
England. In approaching this question we are reminded

ploughs decayed, and says every plough supported six persons. But
that would come to a total of 300,000, one-tenth of supposed population
of England.

1 On this question cf. Domesday of Enclosures, vol. i, p. 54; Four
Supplications, Early English Text Soc., p. 101, puts it at five men and
the wife.

2 Hyporueticat TABLE OF PERSONS DISPLACED, ACCORDING TO

Gay’s CALCULATIONS,

1455-85 | 1485-1517 | 1518-78 | 1578-1607 | 1607-37 |
30 years | 30 years | 60 years| 30 years | 30 years

3,465 | 6,981 | 18,862 | 5,002 |* 5,002

Total 34,262 or
about 5, 000-6, 000
every ’30 years.

Mr. Leadam puts the number higher and makes a distinction between
displacement and eviction, a distinction which Mr, Gay thinks un-
tenable, Transactions Royal Hist. Soc., xiv. 258,

ed

Le chee

aero = QE EE Ce

Pore PON Rp oh eee tay eee

Ill TO SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES __ 59

of a truth which applies to all social and economic history.
We often find that the same forces will act in contrary
ways, according to the different circumstances of different
localities. ;

Thus, in the older enclosed _ districts, where the enclosure
took place early and gradually—or where, as in Devon or
Cornwall and some of the northern counties, the enclosure
of the common field was accompanied by a partial and
satisfactory reclamation of the waste, whereby each tenant
on the manor received a share of the waste, and yet found
some remaining on which to turn out his cattle—the
movement seems to have been accompanied by a positive
increase in the number of small holders. Hence the large —
number of small holders! in Kent and Devonshire, and the
statesmen of Cumberland and Westmoreland.

Elsewhere, especially in the Midland group, the results
were otherwise. According to Mr. Gay’s hypothetical table,
the number of people displaced was some 34,000. What we
have to decide is how far these evictions were of lease-

holders, or people who had no right to their holdings ; how

far of freeholders or copyholders.? And here it is important
to distinguish between the lord’s demesne, the waste or
common, and the commonable fields.

On the demesne the tenants would be leaseholders, hold-
ing either at the will of the lord, or by indenture either for
years or for lives. The leases for lives would be renewable

1 Cf. evidence quoted by Cheyney, Social Changes, p. 44; Slater,
Enclosures, p. 261.

2 It is noticeable that the operation of the Act, 27 Henry VIII, c. 22,
‘That on every thirty acres of land a house shall be built,’ is limited
to fourteen counties, Lincoln, Leicester, Rutland, Beds., Berks., Wor-
eester, Cambridge, Notts. Warwick, Northampton, Bucks., Oxon.,
Herts., Isle of Wight, showing that evils of enclosure were worst
there.

* The tenure on the demesne was very various, We find all these
terms—ad firmam, ad voluntatem, per indenturam, per literas patentes, dimissae

60 ENCLOSURES OF THE FIFTEENTH III |

at the end of the life or lives on a payment of a fine,
although the lord might decline to renew; those for years
would terminate at the end of the term, and until the —
statute 21 Henry VIII, c. 25 could be revoked by the heir
_\)of the lessor as soon as he came into possession. Now it is
reasonable to suppose that a lord, tempted by the increased ~
rent to be obtained from a large grazier, or anxious to take
to the profitable business of sheep-farming himself, would
evict the cottagers and others who had no legal rights, and
decline to renew the leases for years or for lives, except in
the first case at exorbitant rents, and in the second of
exorbitant fines on renewal.! q
This would not be surprising in any age, but we have

reason to believe that in the Tudor period Englishmen were _
peculiarly grasping and avaricious Luxury was increasing,
the merchant class was growing, pushing upwards and buy-
ing land, and the sort of men who acquired or purchased
the monastic lands were full of this commercial spirit.
Whether the ecclesiastical lords of manors were easier than
the old lay lords is doubtful. It would appear that some
were so and some were not ; for instance, we find a distine-
tion made between the Bishop and the Prior of Durham.*

per literas patentes, pro ovilus (stinted), per copiam ; and in one case—that
of Duntesborne Abbots, Gloucester—we hear of Custumarii per indentu-
ram, who are apparently tenants on the demesne. But in all proba-
bility all these various terms mean nothing but leases.

! The levying of heavy fines is a common complaint, though it is
difficult sometimes to say whether they were for renewing copyholds
or leases for lives, Crowley, Early English Text Soe., pp. 47, 144;
Latimer, Sermons, p. 101, complains of raising rents. The taking of
farms by worshipful men was one cause of the N. Rebellion, State Papers
Dom., Hen. VIII, xii. 8392; Select cases, Court of Requests, 12. 56, Sir
John York a good instance, 58. Bacon, Henry VII, ed. 1819, vol. v,
p-. 61, speaks of tenancies for years and for lives at will, ne
stitch of the yeomanry lived, being turned into demesne.

2 Victoria County Hist. : Dochasts 228 ff.; Leadam, Domesday, vol.i,
48, 65, 94, 96, 392; Gay, Transactions Royal Hist. Soc., xiv, p. 264.

» UI TO SU VENTEENTH CENTURIES 61

_ But at least they were all more merciful and less active than
_ many of the newcomers who obtained their lands. Again,
some of the tenants would be cottagers holding only very
small plots, and depending chiefly on their labour,’ while on
the waste there might be a few squatters who had no legal
right to their hovels.? There appear also to have been in
some cases copyholders on the waste, but these being new —
had not the real protection of copyholders and could be
legally ousted.* Again in cases where the lord’s demesne
lay in strips in the common fields, the tenants would not be
copyholders in a legal sense, but really tenants at will
(because on the demesne). These, too, could be legally
evicted, though such eviction would no doubt be resented.*
These evictions on the demesne, however, except in the
case of the cottagers, who can scarcely be called landowners
at all, though causing much distress and taking away
employment from many, would not affect the ownership of
land. It is therefore with the tenants_on the Sao
fields. that we must deal.
_ Now it has been already shown that by the close of the _
_ fifteenth century nearly all the villeins had either become
copyholders of inheritance or had exchanged their copies
_ for copyholds for lives or for leases for lives. In those
cases where the exchange had taken place the copyholder
_ or leaseholder for lives could no longer be called landowners
in the legal sense, and they would be legally liable to evic-
tion. Yet such eviction would often be a breach of. custom
or be considered very unjust, since many of them would

1 Domesday of Enclosures, vol. i. 51.

_ 7 In Gamlingay, Cambridge, the manorial court decided that no
cottager should keep a horse or cow on the common except he be an

artificer or go from market to market. Merton Coll. Bursars’ Book,

512-66.

* Savine, Quarterly Journal of Economics, xix. 57.

* Corbett, Transactions Royal Hist. Soc., xi. 75.

62 ENCLOSURES OF THE FIFTEENTH IIT ©

look upon themselves as the successor of the copyholders,
and therefore as enjoying a right of property in the land.

This finally brings us to the copyholders of inheritance.

Mr. Ashley, in his Economic History, asserted not only
that the customary sitting tenants were actually ousted, —
which indeed, might happen, but ventures an opinion that
copyholders had at that time no legal security. In support
of his first assertion he refers to Sir Thomas More’s words
in the Utopia, ‘that husbandmen be thrust out of their
own,’ to Bacon’s Henry VII, and to Crowley, and points
out that in the majority of cases the lands enclosed were
thirty acres, or multiples or fractions of this area ; which,
as thirty acres was the ordinary holding of a copyheiiee
looks as if those evicted were copyholders. In support of
his second contention he quotes Lyttelton who, writing in
1475, says ‘that copyholders though protected by the
custom of the manor, yet according to the Common Law
have but an estate at will.’ It is true that copyholders
originally could not bring an action against their lords for
a recovery of their property in the King’s courts, but in a
later edition of Lyttelton the oft-quoted opinion of two —
judges, Bryan and Danby, in the reign of Edward IV, is
inserted to the effect that they had by that time the right
of bringing an action of trespass when ousted by the lord.
This interpolation, Mr. Ashley thinks, was probably taken
from the Year Book by the editor, who shared the general
indignation which evictions were at that time exciting,’ —
and he further throws some discredit on the opinion of
these judges as being Yorkist partisans, and therefore
favourable to the cause of the poorer sort.

This view, ingenious though it is, must however be,
I think, abandoned. Even Mr. Ashley allows that during

1 Ashley, Economic Hist., bk. ii, ¢. iv, p. 273.

.

ii TO SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES 63
‘he period under review the legal theory was becoming

©» olete, and custom was on its way to become law till, by
ie time of Coke, the copyholder had obtained full legal
= ction of his custom at the common law.' But the case
ayainst Mr. Ashley is stronger than this; Whatever we may
think as to the value of the opinions of judges Bryan and
Danby,” in the later fifteenth century, the Year Books
from Henry VII to Elizabeth give unmistakable evidence that
copyhold leases were then: comm
Nor is this all, Mr. Savine has brought evidence re
show that already in the fifteenth century the Court of
Chancery had begun to protect the copyholder. He has
discovered one case as early as the fourteenth century, and
as many as twenty-four in the fifteenth. Mr. Leadam
also adduces many cases in the Court of Star Chamber and
the Court of Requests, in which the copyholders were either
plaintiffs o or defendants. It is true that they were not
always successful, yet the elaborate pleadings prove, says
Mr. Leadam, ‘ that copyholders had a legal dae else
pee pleadings would be idle--¢+-———_——_—_——

1 Coke, The Complete Copyholder, ed. 1763, § ix.

2 Savine, Quarterly Journal of Economics, xix, 64; Maitland, Law
Quarterly, vii. 174.

8 Savine, English Hist. Review, xviii. 303; Quarterly Journal of
Economics, xix. 66; Star Chamber Proceedings, vol. vi, no. 161,
_ communicated to me by Mr. Leadam. Here Palmer, who was lord of
_the manor and defendant, pleads that the case against his copyholders
«ght to be tried in the Common Law Courts. English Hist. Review,
|» i. 686. Here the copyhold tenants of Sir J. Seynt John complain
» the Court of Requests that Sir J. is too powerful for them to try for
2ir remedy by due course of Common Law.

* For the whole question see Ashley, Economie Hist., bk. ii, c. iv.

4; Leadam, Transactions Royal Hist. Soc., vol. vi. 164; Ashley,
_/ aglish Hist. Review, April, 1893; Leadam, English Hist. Review,
ot., 1893; Leadam, Transactions Royal Hist. Soc., vol. vii. 127;
»-yine, English Hist. Review, xviii. 296; Quarterly Journal of
) sonomics, xix. 33; Leadam, Selden Soc., Select cases, Court of
-equests ; Hist. of Northumberland, viii. 289.

64 ENCLOSURES OF THE FIFTEENTH Il

It is, however, to be noted that these decisions are by no ~
means always favourable to the copyholders, who often —
appear to be claiming rights which were not based on —
custom, and that in_interfering in the question at all the ©
aim of these courts was, not to introduce innovations in —
favour of the copyholder, but to enforce the custom of the —
particular manor: to restore and give legal sanction to the —
custom, and not to mend it. Now custom varied in every
manor, and thus the influence of the law courts was to —
stereotype and to perpetuate that variety—a variety which —
is still an essential though perplexing characteristic of our —
local life! But although it seems pretty certain that any |
eviction of a copyholder of inheritance, whose title was —
clear, was illegal and would be resisted by the Courts, it —
does not follow that there was no z/egal eviction, as we i
Know happened Tn Hie exes even of the feeholiars OF tie |

uke of Buckingham. On this point all we can say is
that there is no evidence of this bei an extensive —
scale, and it is noticeable that in most of the cases cited
Before the law courts the lords of the manor always pleaded —
some justification, which was generally upheld. Thus, in
one case we find the lord of the manor justifying the ousting
of his copyhold tenants for failure of contract or breach of
custom; in another the lord declares that those he ousted
had wrongly pretended to be copyholders; in another, the
grantee of monastic lands-stated that the prior had, just
before the Dissolution, fraudulently granted copies, while in
the manor of Gamlingay a copyhold tenant forfeited for
demising to another without the lord’s consent, and after
his death, on petition of his widow, his lands were granted

1 Savine, Quarterly Journal of Economics, xix. 67 ff.; Law Quarterly,
ix, p. 855, note ; cf. especially the everlasting disputes between Mulsho, |
lord of manor of Thingden, and his tenants, Leadam, Transactions, |
vol. vi.

HHT TO SEV’) iLwiH CENTURIES 65
‘> sis son on lease for twenty-one years.'| That_actual

vogful eviction was not extensively practised is further
-» >orted by the fact that it is not mentioned among the -
_- vances of the rebels under Edward VI, and that_it

“> not appear in a Prayer set out for landlords by order

of the king.?
There were, however, other means by which the
copyholder could be got rid of. Sir Thomas More, in

continuation of the passage above cited, says: ‘or else by
coueyne and fraude or by violent oppression they be put
besydes it, or by wrongs and injuries they be so weried
that they be compelled to sell all.’ This is a much more
difficult question to settle. -At all times there have been
cases of illegal oppression by the rich, and the standard of
conduct in that respect does not appear to have been high
in Tudor days. The looseness of Sir T. More’s previous
sentence with regard to ‘husbandmen being thrust out of
their own’, would tempt one to doubt the accuracy of the
one before us, if it were not supported by other evidence.
Thus, Fitzherbert’s protestation in the Prologue to his
Book on Surveying evidently shows that in his opinion
such things were done. ‘I declare,’ he says, ‘and_take

‘God to my recorde, that I make thi only to the
entent that the lordes, the freeholders shulde not be disheryt
~~ have their landes loste nor imberseld nor encroched by
from another.’ And Harrison, in his Description of Eng-
* also speaks of the daily oppression of copyholders,‘their

els devising new means to cut them shorter; doubling,

- Cf. Hasbach, p. 33; Transactions Royal Hist. Soc., vi; Selden
i , Court of Requests, 12; English Hist. Review, viii. 687°5 Dugdale,
»rwickshire, p. 36 ; Victoria County Hist. : Sussex, ii. 190; Savine,
varterly Journal of Feowomics, xix, especially p. 58 ; Seaton ‘Delaval :
‘aval MSS. in possession of Newcastle Soc. of Antiquaries ; Merton
rsar’s Book, 81, 512.
, * CE Clisyney, Social England, pp. 82,-99.

JOHNSON z E

f
66 ENCLOSURES O} THE FIFTEENTH III:

trebling, and now and then seven times increasing thei -
fines, driving them for every trifle to lose and forfeit thei —
tenures,’ !

This remark of Harrison seems to guide us to a trv
conclusion. It would appear that in a great majority
cases the real struggle was over the attempt of the lords i

prove that the copyhold tenures were for life or lives, a
not of inheritance, or to turn these copyholds into lea/
for years, In short, no sooner has the copyholder gain
legal recognition of his holding than the struggle beg).
on the question whether their tentres are true copyhold
inheritance or not,

The primary motive here was not, perhaps, the des
to evict, “ ringing mM
money from the tenant, In the case of copyholds |»
rents had, in most cases, become fixed at a very low re >
and so had the heriot or fine on admission of an heir t» +
copyhold of inheritance, Consequently the depreciation »|
the value of money at the time gave to such copyholders, a}
Prof. Maitland has said, ‘a regular unearned incremel —
The only way in which the lords could hope to incre ~
their revenue was by proving that the copyholds were +
life or lives, and not of inheritance ; or by substituting lea

“for lives, or leases for years at_rack rent, for copyholds, |)
the first change the lords were able to increase the fines cm
renewal, and on many manors the fines were the ch ~
source of revenue; while by the second they could ra
their rents as well,

It is noticeable that, as before mentioned, the statules
do not speak of direct eviction, that the majority of t)-
reported cases deal with these questions, more especially \
fines, and that this is evidently the burning question in

‘ Description of England, p. 318,

“An, of

| Ill TO SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES 67

literature of this time. We have already quoted Harrison.
His view is supported, among many others, by Fitzherbert,
who, in the Prologue to his Surveying, adjures ‘ lordes not
to heighten their rents or cause tenants to pay a greater
fine than they have been accustomed to in the past’. The
rebels in the Pilgrimage of Grace complain of increase of
‘eressons’ (fines), while the Prayer for landlords, men-
tioned above, runs, ‘O Lord, we heartily pray that the
landlords, remembering themselves to be Thy tenants,
may not rack and stretch out the rents of their ] r
yet take unreasonable fines after the manner of covetous
wor 3?! We hear, too, of a class of speculating Tease-
“mongers who, not able to be landlords, yet, after a sort,
eounterfeit landlords by obtaining leases, and so raise
fines and rents, and by such pillage pyke out a poison to
“maintayn a proud post.’’? Now the peculiarity of this
system of fines for the renewal of copyholds or leaseholds
for lives lay in their inequality and capriciousness. No
doubt the Law Courts gradually insisted that fines should
be reasonable. But not till 1781 was it decided that a
reasonable fine should not exceed two years’ value.®
As to the substitution of leases for copyholds we find
Fitzherbert actually advising lords to do this and not for
longer than three lives, at the same time urging them to
grant them on good terms, ‘remembering what profytes

? Transactions Royal Hist. Soc., xviii. 196, note.

* Latimer’s Sermon ; Early English Text Soc., Crowley, pp. 79, 166 ;
Scrope, Castle Combe, p. 320; Cheyney, Social Changes, p. 81; Savine,
Quarterly Journal of Economics, pp. 55, 66; Transactions Royal Hist.
Soc., vii. 131; 1892, 249; Ashley, Economic Hist., bk. ii, c. iv, p. 283 ;
‘Selden Soc. 12, Court of Requests, p. 64; Hist. of Northumberland,
i, 314; ii. 382, 384, 427, 482; viii. 236, 238, 264; Victoria County
‘Hist.: Durham, ii. 228,where note difference between the Priory Lands
and those held of the Bishop; T. Quayle, View of Agriculture of the
Isle of Man, 1812, p, 17.

® Case of Grant v. Aske, 722-23.

68 ENCLOSURES OF THE FIFTEENTH III

they may have at the end of their termes. There are even
instances of lords browbeating their copyholders to do so.!
‘In some cases it would even appear that copyholders
preferred tie lease if they could get thereby easier terms.
Indeed, except on the question of the rent, the difference
between a copyhold for lives and a lease for lives was not
very great, except that in a copyhold the questions as to”
rent and right of renewal would be settled in many cases
by the custom of the manor, while in the case of a lease
these matters would be settled by covenant.

Of course it may be argued that the ultimate object of
thus changing copyholds of inheritance into copyholds or
leaseholds for life was to absorb the holding by refusing to
renew at the termination of the lives, especially when the
owner had lately acquired part of the monastic lands, or was
a speculating capitalist who bought land or reversions as an
investment, of whom there were evidently many, or again,
in counties where the coalfields were beginning to be of
importance. Besides, the lord might, by demanding exorbi-

fant Hes, soma the ha ee
But though this was probably in many cases the eventual

result, yet the prospect of thus securing the tenement would
be too remote to appeal to many, and men are wont to prefer
immediate to. future advantage. In any case we should

remember that in the majority of cases the encloser does

not appear t

tenant on the manor who would have no power whatsoever,

to evict.”
That the object of landlords was chiefly financial, that is

1 Cf. Fitzherbert, Surveying, and cases quoted Ashley, Economic
Hist., p. 285.

2 Mr. Leadam, Domesday Enclosures, vol. ii. 508 ff., caletul. —
that according to the returns to the inquisition of 1517 the propor.)
was in Berks. 109 tenants, 16 lords of manors; in Bucks, 80 tenants)
28 lords of manors. : 1

| a
4

Ill (OQ SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES _ 69

to increase their revenues rather than to evict, is rendered
all the more probable because we find James I, who we
; know was ever in financial straits, pursuing the same course
on the royal manors. Owing to the consequent complaints
_astatute was passed in 1609! declaring. that where any
_ tenement on a royal manor has been established by decree
- of the Lord Treasurer and Chancellor of the Exchequer or
_ duchy (of Lancaster) as a copyhold of inheritance, it shall
F thenceforth be so holden, and we find in the following year
a decision in favour of the tenants in the case of OF aa
mouth, Northumberland.?
In the North the controversy was complicated by the
question of border service, and on this point, notably in
_ Cumberland and Westmoreland, a very curious controversy
arose. In those counties King James attempted to prove
; that; as military service on the border had ceased since the
. Union, the so-called tenant-right of the customary tenants.
had ceased, an
erere tenants for years or at will. He further encouraged
"other lords of manors to adopt the same view with regard to
their tenants. In the case of the royal barony of Kendal
_the case came into the Court of Chancery and was com-
_ promised by Sir Francis Bacon. ‘The tenants paid a lump
sum down and gained a confirmation of their copyholds.
‘ In the case of other manorial lords the matter did not
‘ top there, and a Jong struggle ensued which threatened the
_ peace, and in which the King by his Proclamation took the
pide of the lords. Eventually, however, the Star Chamber,*
fore which the matter was brought, decided in favour
f the tenants, declaring that their tenures had not in the
“past been based solely or especially on border service, and

+ 7 Jac. I, ¢. xxi. 2 Hist. of Northumberland, viii. 239.
_ # Nicholson and Burn, Hist. of Westmoreland and Cumberland,
Vol, i, 51 ff.

70 ENCLOSURES OF THE FIFTEENTH _ Iil

that the abolition of this service in no way affected their
tenures. Thus for a time the position of those copyholders
was secured. Elsewhere, however, the struggle continued,
notably on the manors of the Earl of Northumberland,
where on the whole the earl appears to have had the best
of it.!

The question was evidently a burning one in the North
for some time. On December 16, 1642, we find the Long
Parliament, sitting at Westminster, declaring the report
that. they intend to take away the tenant-right of the in-
habitants of Westmoreland, Cumberland, Durham, New-
castle, Northumberland, to be entirely false, ‘they never
intended to weaken or infringe any of the said tenants’
rights, or prejudice the inhabitants in their customs in the |
least particular.’? As late as 1676 Roger North tells us
that the struggle was still going on in Cumberland. ‘The.
people,’ he says, ‘had formed a sort of confederacy to
undermine the estates of the gentry by pretending a tenant-
right, which there is a customary estate not unlike our
copyholds, and the verdict was sure for the tenant’s right,
whatever the case was. The gentlemen finding that all
was going, resolved to put a stop to it by serving on the
common juries.’ ‘I could not but wonder to see pantaloons
and shoulder knots crowding among the common clowns’, ©
remarks the Tory writer with satisfaction.’

Professor Vinogradoff,t in a note given in the History |

' Hodgson, Hist. of Northumberland, pt. iii, vol. ii, 245-6; Hist.
of Northumberland, viii. 231, 234, 238. In July, 1606, the Earl
issued commissions to ‘Sir Wilfrid Lawson, Robert Delaval, and
others, to compound with the copyhold tenants in Cumberland for
fines, and so also for Northumberland and Tynemouth ; Northumber-
land MSS., communicated by Mr. Cra’ster.

2 Rushworth, Collections, pt. iii, vol. ii, 86.

5 North, Life of Lord Guildford, p. 140.

* Hist. of Northumberland, viii, p, 238.

ie

III TO SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES 71

of Northumberland, expresses an opinien that the fate of the

_ Northumbrian customary tenants was much worse than

elsewhere where their tenure had developed into copyhold,

and attributes the difference to the exceptional favour

shown to the lords’ interests in the marches. I venture,
however, to dispute this statement. The quarrel was going
on all over England and on the whole the landlords gained
the advantage. The real difference is one of date, for
whereas the earlier centuries had witnessed the strengthen-
ing of the customary rights into a copyhold of inheritance,
in the seventeenth century the tendency was the other way.
Besides, later history shows us that there were quite as many
eopyholders of inheritance in the northern counties as else-
where.

And now to sum up the results of this discussion. It.does

_ not appear that the enclosing movement of the sixteenth

and seventeenth centuries was accompanied _by very much

direct eviction, either of freeholders or of bona fide copy-

holders of inheritance. Nevertheless the small owner suffered

in many ways. Thus in n all cases where the lords succeeded

| ‘in disproving the hereditary character _of the copyhold

| ne Gag Ere

tenements or in changing them into copyholds for lives or
leases for lives or years, he or_his successors could with
greater eas }
end of the eaiiation of the years or lives, except on the

payment of practically prohibitory fines. Many of these
copyholders, without having any legal title to their holdings,

which could be supported in a court of law, had yet Tong
held them and possessed a certain prescriptive sort of
tenant-right, a right which under the protection of the old
customary law of the manor and its court might have
acquired substance, and which even the Crown courts
attempted (though not very successfully, owing to the
greater precision of their ruling) to legalize.

72 ENCLOSURES OF THE FIFTEENTH Ill |

In a word, though there was not much violation of legal
right yet there was_a good deal of injustice, mjustice
which the Tudor legislation tri inimize, and with poor

success, not by interfering with the legal rights, but by

demanding that in enforcing these rights they should not

put down ploughs, destroy houses, or otherwise take away 4

employment and cause depopulation.

That the enclosures of the sixteenth and early seven-
teenth centuries tended to the disappearance of the small

landowner is pretty clear; but.as to how far this change
took place at once we have unfortunately very little
evidence at present. As we shall subsequently see, it is
very certain that a great change had taken place by 1785.
For the intervening gap we are, however, much in the
dark. We have no lists of the 40s. freeholders who enjoyed

the parliamentary franchise or were liable to serve on juries, —

while the Subsidy Rolls, which might give us a rough

, estimate, have not yet been digested, and they only —
- include men of substance. Moreover, it must be remem- —

bered that it was by no

freeholders_or even copyholders to till their_own land.
We have abundant evidence that they often let out their
lands to others. A comparison of the condition of many
“manors traced from the Middle Ages through the Eliza-
bethan and Stuart Surveys, Field Books, and Terriers would
help us. But this has not yet been done and I have had
no time to do it myself; all the time at my disposal has
been devoted to the eighteenth century. In any case, the
Surveys abandon us at the critical time, and the Terriers
are not very helpful, being chiefly mere rentals of private
estates, The evidence that I have collected from published
authorities is very scanty. In some manors there was
certainly little change, as for instance in the case of
Castle Combe, Wilts., and in Seaton Delaval, Earsdon,

bn: TO SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES 73

and Cowpen, in Northumberland. In others there was a
good deal. Harrison, in his Description of England, says
that ‘the ground of the Parish is gotten up into a few
hands, yea, sometimes in the tenure of one or two’, though
it is not quite clear whether he refers to ownership or no.
In Hutchinson’s Dorset we are told that some small copy-
holders surrendered their copies. Their holdings were
_ taken up by those who remained and enclosure followed.
Tuckett, in his History of the Past and Present State of the
~ Labouring Poor, says that in the manor of Holt, in Sussex,
_ where in the fifteenth century there were many owners, in
_ 1520 there were only 6, in James I’s reign only 2, while in
_ Charles II’s reign the manor had become the sole property
of one. The manor of Linton-on-Ouse, where in the reign
of Elizabeth there were a large number of tenants, had also
_by the beginning of the eighteenth century become the _
"property of one man, who gave it to University College.
Whatever_may have been the i Its__of
enclosure there is no doubt that there was a very general

st)

and widespread substitution-of leaseholds for lives or years

_ for copyholds of inheritance,’ and that as time went on the

indirect effects of re at least_tended_to th :
tion of the small proprietor, more especially in those mid-
land counties—such as Northamptonshire, Leicestershire,
and Oxfordshire—which at that time were chiefly corn-
growing districts i j ted for
their grazing lands.

1 Cf. Scrope, Castle Combe, 320; Seaton Delaval, Northumberland
MSS.; Harrison, ed. New Shakspere Soe, p. 260; Hutchinson,
Dorset, iv. 89; Victoria County Hist. : Warwickshire, 155; Hist. of
Northumberland, vol. ix, 4; Hist. of Northumberland, Cowpen ;
University College Bursar’s Book.

2 Thus out of fifty-nine surveys of manors in twenty-one counties
_ from Henry VIII to Edward VI, I find twelve manors in which lease-
holds largely predominate.

74 ENCLOSURES Ill

Granted, however, that this change was facilitated by
the enclosures, we have yet to convince ourselves that the —
permanent disappearance of the small owner was not due
to deeper causes, of which enclosing’ was but a tom. —
Other countries, like France and Germany, and the Channel
Islands, have, in a great measure, abandoned the open-field —
system ; yet the small proprietor survives. - This question —
will be more fully discussed in a later lecture, but the fact
should be kept in mind. Some will tell us that the final ©
explanation of the divergence between England and some
parts of the continent is to be looked for in the social,
political, and economical peculiarities of England, which
had already appeared and were to attain greater mome
in the future, and which “meant for the peasant holder

‘economic death’.! “It was the incapacity of the great
mass of the people to conform to conditions rapidly and
fundamentally changing that made this’ time of transition
so hard for thé lower classes.”? But that those conditions 7
should change was inevitable, if England was to take her |
new position in the world. |

1 Savine, Quarterly Journal of Economics, xix.
2 Cheyne, Social Changes, p. 21.

IV

OTHER CAUSES AFFECTING THE POSITION
OF THE LANDOWNING CLASSES

Bur if the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries were
disastrous to the smaller owners and tenants it_does not
_ appear that the class of moderate-sized_proprietors was
seriously affected. We know that many of the larger
_ freeholders and copyholders on the manors were enclosers
_ themselves,’ and there are many evidences to show that
_ moderate-sized properties increased at the expense of the
very large and very small.

England during this period was, as we well know,

passing through a crisis of political, social, and economic

economy of England, based on custom, was fast breaking
down. _ Competitive rents, competitive prices, competitive

change. The old self-sufficine agricultural and industr =

Wages, were coming in, and the modern capitalist had |
already appeared ; men who tr eated land as an investment
and agriculture : as a source of profit. . The English squire

had taken the place of the mediaeval baron. The successful

_ manufacturer, merchant, and the lawyer were forcing their

_ way into the land market and fast rising into the position
_ of the squire. Hence an intense land hunger was a

characteristic feature of the Tudor and early Stuart times.

_ A petition of the reign of Henry VIII complains of

merchant adventurers, clothmakers, goldsmiths, butchers,
_ tanners, ... unreasonable and covetous persons, who

> Cf. Leadam, Domesday of Enclosures.

¢

\
76 OTHER TENDENCIES OF SIXTEENTH IV

encroach daily many farms more than they can occupy with
tilth for corn. In 1535, Cromwell. contemplated an Act
against merchants purchasing land to a greater r value thar than
£40 by the year;! and the contemporary literature is loud
in the denunciation of this class of buyers. ‘ Look, says
Lever (1550), ‘at the merchants of London, and ye shall ©
see, when by their honest vocation God hath endowed them
with great riches, then can they not be content but their
riches must be abrode in the country, to bie fermes out
the hands of worshipful gentlemen, honeste yeomen, and
poor laborynge husbands.’?? And this sermon denounces
those called of God to be merchants, lawyers, and courtiers,
who are ready at the beck of their father, the devil, to
prowl for, seek, and purchase farms.? In the presence of
such harpies, the poor landowner, if he were not ousted from
or cheated out of his property, was always tempted to sell,
and many no doubt did so.

But it was not only the poor that sold. Dr. Stubbs has
given it as his opinion that “when personal extravagance
is the rule at court, the noble class and the gentry in its
wake _gradually lose their hold on the land, great: estates
are broken up, , the Tich “merchant takes the place of the

} State Papers Dom., Hone ‘VIII, ix, 725, 11.
2? Sermons, Arber’s aprile: p. 29.
8 Cf. also Crowley, Last Trumpet, 1550 : ’
‘So soon as they (merchants) have aught to yn
To purchase land is all their care
And all the study of their brain.
There can be none unthrifty here
Whom they will not smell out anon
And handle him with words full fayre
Till all his lands be from him gone.’
Early English Text Soe.
W. S., The Commonweal, ed, Lamond, p. 39; Brynkelow, Complaint,
Early English Text Soc., p. 9; Supplication, Early English Text Soc.,
pp. 26, 30, 40, 48; Cheyne, Social Changes, pp. 54, 102, For specula-
tion in land, Transactions Royal Hist. Soe., xix. 114; Victoria vr

Hist. : Lincolnshire, p. 326,

Z AND SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES 77

old noble, the city tradesman buys the manor of the
impoverished squire, and in the next generation the mer-
chant has become a squire, the tradesman has become a
freeholder. But when greed for territorial acquisition is
strong in the higher class the yeoman has little chance.!
In the Tudor and early Stuart age both these tendencies
were strong, and before them both smaller proprietor and
ancient family fell.

Mr. Shirley has reminded us that only 830 of our nobles
and landed gentry can trace their descent back to a period
before the dissolution of the monasteries.? Moryson, in
the reign of James I, remarks that ‘gentlemen disdaining
traffic and living in idleness doe in this course daily
sell their patrimonies, and that the buyers are for the
most part lawyers, or citizens and vulgar men’ ;®
while Harrison, writing in 1506, reminds us ‘that some
yeomen also do come to great wealth insomuch that many
of them buy land of unthrifty gentlemen and leave so
much to their sons that ‘hey become gentlemen’. Simon
Degge, writing of Staffordshire in 1669, says that in the
_ previous sixty years half the lands had changed owners,
not so much as of old they were wont by marriage, but by
_ purchase, and attributes the decline of the old families
partly to Divine wrath at their having robbed the mona-
steries, partly to their living and taking pleasure to spend
their estates in London, and notices how many traders and
_ lawyers have risen on their ruin.® In Lincolnshire, we
are told, hardly a county family maintained its position

1 Stubbs, Constitutional Hist., c. xxi, § 802.
_ ® Evelyn Shirley, The noble and gentle-men of England.
8 Moryson, Itinerary, pt. iii, bk. iii, ¢, 11.
_ * Harrison, Description of England, ed. Furniss, p. 133; cf. the
plays of the time such as The Enforced Marriage; Trevelyan, The
Stuarts, p. 6.
® Erdeswick, Survey of Stafford, ed. Harwood, p. 55. Degge names

7 cS

5 q
78 OTHER TENDENCIES OF SIXTEENTH IV.

beyond the middle of the seventeenth century unless it
added to its income by marriage or trade.? }

Thus, there was during the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries, a great shifting of ownership and a considerable
social revolution, which however, was probably accompanied
by an increase _rather_than_a decrease of landowners of —
middle estate. We should remember also that during the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries two events occurred
which tended to the same result, The dissolution of the
monasteries and the Civil War. By-the first, land to the
annual value of money, at that date, of £140,000, or,
estimated at twenty years’ purchase, of the capital value
of £2,80

The land so confiscated was thus distributed ;— _

Annual vali Capital. valug.

Given to bishoprics and other

corporations. £21,000 £420,000
Leased by Crown. £50,000 £1,000,000
Sold, or given to courtiers and

officials, and others, £69,000 £1,380,000

This should probably be multiplied by at least twelve to —
bring it up to the value to-day. Thus, it appears that land
to the annual value of some £820,000, or capital value of
£16,500,000, according to our money, was distributed among
some one thousand persons at once; and of the remaining
land, which was at first leased, most had been alienated by
the end of the Tudor period, In all probability the actual —
number of landowners was not much increased by the
_ original grants. Among the grantees we recognize many
6 aldermen or aldermen’s sons, 2 hoziers, 1 scrivener, 1 serving-man,
1 lawyer, among the novi homines. Cheshire, he says, ‘fared better,
because they frequent London not so much.’

1 Victoria County Hist.: Lincoln, pp. 324, 326,

2 Of, Fisher, Political Hist. of England, App.ii. Based on informa-
tion given by Dr. Savine, who has been lately at work on the Valor
Ecclesiasticus. :

IV AND SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES 79

well-known peers and courtiers; indeed, Burnet surmises
- that Cromwell advised the king, by so doing, to bind the
_ nobles to the break with Rome, and there are very few
_ apparently among the original grantees who did not hold
land before. But at least many of the smaller landlords
were enriched, and much of that which originally passed
into the hands of the great men was certainly subsequently
sold, since many obtained licences to do this.
_ Again, if it be true, as was popularly supposed, that the
families of these sacrilegious persons soon died out, this
_ would again, in many cases, bring more land into the
_ market.2 Harrington, in his Oceana, seems to imply this _
_ when he says that the dissolving of the abbeys brought
_ with the declining state of the nobility so vast a prey to
_ the industry of the people that the balance of the common-
wealth was too apparently in the popular party to be unseen
by the wise council of Queen Parthenia.*
It should also be remembered that the right to leave
two-thirds of land held by knight’s service, and all held in
_ free soccage by will, at the common law was first allowed
_ by the statute 32 Henry VIII, and that the custom of
_ tying up land by family settlements had not yet become
common. In all these ways much land came into the
market to be bought by novi homines, and the number of
landowners increased.
The results of this strengthening of the landed interest

? See Mr, Fisher’s table. He gives 8 clerks, 86 industrials. These
may not have held land. But probably all the rest did, except
perhaps the physicians, who number eleven.

2 This legend, however, has been dispelled. Cf. Galton and Schuster.
Out of 245 estates—half of which were Church property given to lay-
men, half lay property—the first had in 100 years 464 owners, of
whom 240 were eldest sons, the second had 459 owners, of whom
_ 241 were eldest sons.

_ * Harrington, Morley’s edition, 1887,

|
80 OTHER TENDENCIES OF SIXTEENTH IV )

in Parliament and in the country is seen in the opposition — |
made to the Protector Somerset’s desire to check enclosures —
and alleviate the condition of the poor.' In the Long
Parliament. the strength of the landed interest was great.
The estates held by-members. of the House of Commons
a have been computed to have been three times as Jarge as
those held by members of ‘the House of Lords.2 The
distribution of landed property was again increased by the
confiscations, the compositions, and the Decimation Tax,
enies by the victorious Parliament on the royalists after
the Civil War. The number of estates actually confiscated
was not less than 700. Besides these, many estates were
forfeited for refusal or neglect to compound, and more had
to be sold to meet the compositions and the Decimation
Tax.’ It is notorious that members of the Committee for
compounding and other M.P.’s were accused of doing a
goodly traffic in this business. Nor was it confined to
them. Wildman, the famous agitator and friend of John
Lilburne, was a great speculator. His purchases, we are —
told, were scattered over at least twenty counties, and
when he was arrested, in 1655, ‘ certain well affected to

1 Cf. Pollard, Protector Somerset.

2 Gneist, Englische Verfassungsgeschichte, Eng. Trans., ii, 320,

8 March, 1643. An Ordinance sequestered estates of all who had
assisted the King, one-fifth being set aside for wife and children.
Oct. 1645. By the General Composition Act, all who should submit
by Dec. 1 were to be admitted to composition, the time limit
being subsequently extended. Delinquents were arranged in classes
(Gardiner, Civil War, iii. 7-21, 311-19; Calendar of Committee for
Compounding, 1643-60, Introd., p. xxx and pp. 33, 98). In 1653, 617
estates were declared forfeited for refusal to compound, most of which
were sold, much of it in small parcels. In July, 1651, 70 estates were
confiscated and ordered to be sold, most of these being large estates—
among them those of Newcastle, Buckingham, and Hopton. In
Nov., 1652, 618 estates were confiscated and ordered to be sold,
many fielipizinig to small men (Gardiner, Commonwealth, i. 417,
ii. 141).

‘IV AND SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES 81

the Protector,’ probably London merchants for whom he
had dealings, succeeded in obtaining his release’! —
That the influence of small freeholders was considerable
under the Protectorate is illustrated by the action of Par-
liament in 1654. They altered the qualification for the
franchise from that of £200 personal or real, as it had
_ been under the Instrument of Government, and restored it
to the old 40s. freeholders, refusing at the same time to
extend it to copyholders.? —
No doubt at the Restoration the Oharch repataed Be}
Tands, often accepting those who had acquired them as
tenants, and those whose estates had been directly con-
fiscated were again reinstated, But it was impossible to
| deal with those who, under pressure of the compositions,
had been forced to sell; and that these lands were never
regained is evident from the discontent of the Tory squires
_ of the Restoration,
_ One more piece of evidence still remains, In many
parts of England are to be found the houses of these small
squires or large yeomen, testifying, by the style of their
hitecture, that they were built in Tudor or in early
Stuart times, houses evidently belonging to men not of
zreat but of middle estate, but which, in many cases, to-
day have passed into the ownership of the rich, often to be
occupied by tenant farmers.
_ The conclusion to which we are driven is that, if the
Pudor and early Stuart period did see a good many of the
oorest and some of the middle class driven from the soil
hether rightly or wrongly, and much land changed hands,
he numbers of the moderate-sized owners of land were
all probability increased, Under these circumstances

_ +4 Cf. Dictionary of National Biography : Wildman; and authorities
juoted there.

3 Gardiner, The Commonwealth, iii, 78.

JOHNSON : F

oy. * a Fs
ae

82 OTHER TENDENCIES. EPC. Vv

there seems no reason to doubt the well- imate of |

ing that the num re oun
to 180,000, with an average income of £60-£70.' If this
estimate is'at all correct the Restoration and the Revolution —

are the real turning-points in the history of our agricultural
—

1 King says, 40,000 large, 140,000 small freeholders, and 150,000
farmers. Probably under small freeholders he would include copy-—
holders. It must, however, be noted that already both freeholders
and copyholders were ceasing to till their lands and were leasing
them out to others. This phenomenon increases as time goes On
and makes the whole problem increasingly difficult.

A

~ 1 Se Oh id a

ph

THE ENCLOSURES OF THE EIGHTEENTH
AND NINETEENTH CENTURIES AND THEIR.
. RESULTS

‘In dealing with the ‘sixteenth and early seventeenth
centuries we noticed that the Crown, by legislation or
erwise, was attempting, and with poor success, to check
2 movement which, seater good or not, was certainly in
favour with the more active and pushing spirits of the age,
and trying, by paternal interference, to stand between. the
rich and the poor or and maintain or establish an equitable
distribution of wealth. When we pass to the eighteenth
he position has entirely changed. The legislature is now
ound on the side of those who urge the necessity of
departing from the old paths, of adopting measures more
"suitable to economic conditions, and of stimulating by State
ac tion the advance of national wealth and power.
_ The reason for this is well known to most of my hearers,
and may, therefore, be very briefly given.. By the time of
1e Restoration, and still more at the date of the Revolu-
tion of 1688, the upper and middle landowning classes had
Jattained to a ion which they certainly never enjoyed
efore, and per never held again. At the head of this
‘powerful, and to a great extent homogeneous aristocracy,
‘stood the peers, closely connected with the largest of the
ires by social, if not by blood, ties—a class into which
veir younger children were ever descending and from
hich they were ever being recruited ; while the body of
1e county gentry, who formed the great bulk of this
F2

84. ENCLOSURES OF THE EIGHTEENTH vo
curious aristocracy, was ever being added to from below!
by the admission into their ranks of the successful lawyer, _
the banker, merchant, or other prosperous man of business
and affairs.?

This aristocracy not only practically controlled the county
elections where the franchise was in the hands of the 40s,
freeholders, and monopolized the seats in Parliament, and
the central executive, but also were real masters of local
government and justice, forming as J.P.’s and members
of Quarter Sessions a’ great, perhaps the greatest, unpaid
set of local officials which the world has ever seen,—an
aristocracy based on an enfranchised middle class, which
paid for its privileges by personal services and claimed a
precedence in public duties which the lower classes perhaps
did not wish, and certainly were not able, to challenge.?

Under these circumstances it was inevitable not only
that this Parliament—formed of the gentry ‘the knights
errant’ of the Revolution of 1688—would represent the
prejudices, the convictions, and the aspirations of the land
owners, but that the views of the legislature would be
seconded and enforced by the local authorities. Many o
the Tudor and early Stuart writers had despaired of the
success of legislation that ran counter to the interests of
this powerful class*; and we know that the Protector

1 Lecky, History, i. 193. Cf, De Foe, The Complete Tradeeaant
p. 74; Tour, i. 17; Voltaire, Lettres philosophiques, Letter x.

~ Cavist, Risiisahe Verfassungsgeschichte, Eng, trans., ¢. 47, 49,
The number of electors was some 200,000, The qualification for
a Knight of the Shire was £600, for a burgess £300.a year in land,
That of a J.P. £100. Three-fourths of the House of Commons we
* PAR ’

8 Godwin, Political Tracts, 1731, p. 30,

* Latimer, i. 93, ‘We have good statutes, but in the end nothing
cometh forth.’ Thoroton, Nottinghamshire, Preface, 1676, ‘The Lord
and such gentlemen as are usually members of the House of Common

‘ay AND NINETEENTH CENTURIES 85

_ Somerset’s desire to check enclosure was resisted by Par-
liament itself, But now there is no further conflict. The
_ Houses of Parliament, the Central Executive, and the local
bodies of administration are all working together towards
~a common end—the advancement of the interests of a great
commercial and land-owning aristocracy, who were all the
_ more contemptuous of any opposition with which their
_ views might meet, and disregardful of any distress their
conduct might cause, because the astounding advance which
the nation made under their guidance seemed to prove

beyond dispute the correctness of their policy.
~X One of the most characteristic illustrations of this new
departure is to be seen in the attitude now adopted towards
~ enclosures. We have previously noticed that even before
_the middle of the seventeenth century both publie opinion
and Parliament itself were wavering as to the policy to be
adopted. But after the Restoration, and still more after
the Revolution of 1688, the change in favour of enclosures
_ is decisive. The note is clearly struck by Houghton, who,

in his collections (1693), says, ‘he cannot but admire that
people should be so backward to enclose, which would be

of Spain.’? And from that time forward this opinion is
reiterated, with variations and elaborations, until it cul-
minates in the earlier works of Arthur Young.? In 1710,
he ‘Old Almanack with a Postscript’ advocates the enclo-
e of wastes, and sarcastically asks whocan object. ‘ Will

have been the chief and almost only authors of and gainers by
nelosures, Law which hinders profit of a powerful man is not
ffectually executed.’

_} Quoted, English Hist. Review, xxiii. 483.

2 Of. more especially Woolidge, Systema Agriculturac, 1681; Nourse,
Campania Felix, 1700; J. Mortimer, The whole Art of Husbandry,
1707; John Laurence, A New System of Agriculture, 1726; Ed,
uaurence, Duty of a Steward, 1727.

86 ENCLOSURES OF THu #IGHTEENTH V_

~yethe cottagers complain for their want of commonage ? This
they cannot do, for few of them have any cattle, and
whether they have or not, there is recompense out of the
enclosures, which will more than treble their loss. Will
the engrossers of commons complain who eat up their own
share and others’ too? They dare not. Will those honest
men complain who live on the theft of the commons? Not
at least with the least reason, for then there will be work
for them (in making hedges and ditches and then in the
tillage and pasture, which will be increased).’! In 1744,a
naive method of promoting conselidation, which was one
of the results of enclosure, was humbly proposed to the
consideration of hon. members of both Houses by an English
woollen manufacturer, to this effect, that all who bought
two lots of land should receive the title of esquire, that of

knight if he bought four, and that of baronet if he bought”

eight.2_ It is true, no doubt, that some were found to take
the other side, but their warning voices were drowned in
the general enthusiasm.?
\ It will be noted that we are here dealing with two kinda
of enclosures, asin the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,
one of the old commonable field, and the other of the waste.
But the movement of the eighteenth differed in two respects.
Firstly, whereas in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
the enclosures chiefly dealt with the commonable field, those
of the eighteenth were largely, though by no means exclu-
sively, concerned with the wastes.* Secondly, the enclosures
of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were often only

1 Scruton, Commons, p. 134.

2 Quoted, Mantoux, La Révolution industrielle, p. 155, note.

5 Cf. especially J. Cowper, Essay proving enclosing contrary t¢
interests of the nation, 1732; Addington, Enquiry into reasons foi
and against enclosures, 1772; Cursory remarks on enclosures, 1786.

4 The proportion is two-thirds to one-third.

a EE ear

¥ AND NINETEENTH CENTURIES. 87

_ the partial enclosure of a man’s own lands, whereas in the —
= eighteenth century t the enclosure affected all the land in the ~
¢ parish or manor.
=. Hasbach ! insists that the primary motive for enclosure
in the eighteenth century was not, as is often supposed,
_ the necessity of producing more corn to meet the needs of
_ @ growing population, but, as it had been in the sixteenth
; century, the financial interests of the landlords, and that the
_ largest proportion of the land enclosed was at first used for
: pasture. By enclosing either the common field or the
_ waste they would increase their rents, by consolidating
Fy their farms after enclosure they would find it less expensive
_and easier to collect the rent from a few big farmers than
from many small ones. He further points out that at
first in most parts of England, especially in the Midlands,
2 it was the net produce rather than the gross which was
_ inereased by enclosing the common field, whether it was used
for pasture or for Gags, although he omits to remind us
_ that if, as is probably true, more corn was grown under the
open-field system, many more hands were employed, and —
that it was therefore an uneconomical method.
i The average price of corn he shows was lower from
os

1715 to 1765 than it had been in the previous twenty-one
years.” Indeed, it was the very lowness of price which
influenced the landlords to find some method by which the
cost of production might be lessened, and their rents in
consequence enhanced, and also to enclose the waste which
had, hitherto, paid no rent. This, at least, was the case in

the Midlands, although in Norfolk, Suffolk, and some few

* Hasbach, Die englischen Landarbeiter, 39 ff., now translated ;
_ J. Massie, Plea for establishment of Charity Houses, 1758, says
expressly, ‘that of late years those getting lands together put such
lands . . . to pasture and not to tillage.’

? From 1693-1714, 45s. 8d. ; from 1715-65, 34s, 11d.

88 ENCLOSURES OF THE EIGHTEENTH A
other counties the higher rents were met by the adoption —
of more scientific methods and by increased production.
XThe less gross production, he continues to argue, which ;
was the general result of enclosure, coupled with the
increase of population—especially the growth of London,
as tlie century wore on, caused prices to rise. This led to
further ‘enclosures, more especially of the waste. Then
came the industrial revolution, during the last half of the
eighteenth century. The. population rapidly increased ;
England ceased to export corn, the prices at home roses»
This demanded further enclosure of the waste, and the
more intensive and scientific cultivation of arable land, |
which now began to be adopted at the expense of pasture,
and the movement culminated in the times of the Great
War and the years that followed.

% The desire for enclosure was not, however, confined to
the large landowners who looked for higher rent. The
clergyman would benefit by an enclosure of the waste, for
arable purposes at least, for that wduld increase his tithe,
and the capitalist farmer, whether he tilled his own land >
or not, wished for a haxcien farm. This he obtained from |
his share of the waste if he were an owner, and if not, by
renting more land. In either case he was anxious to get
rid of the common field and waste. The waste, because his
rights thereon were of little value when shared with many
others ; the common field, because the commonable rights
interfered with his desire to consolidate and to introduce
more skilful methods of cultivation. Lastly, the statesman
approved of the raising of rents, since the amount to be
derived from taxation of the landed classes might in this

' Cf. especially the work of ‘Turnip’ Townshend, who, on retiring
from ‘politics in 1730, devoted himself to the better cultivation of
his land, more especially the introduction of a better system of
rotation by means of the turnip.

a

BY AND NINETEENTH CENTURIES 89

way be increased, and, if enclosure was followed by some
depopulation, the existence of a standing army removed
/ one of the most serious objections raised against the enclo-
sures’ of the sixteenth century, that by such depopulation
the number of those fitted to serve in time of war was
_ dangerously diminished.
It is, no doubt, true that all these classes—the landlord,
the large farmer, the tithe-owner—were personally interested
‘in the change, and that their interests blinded them to
some of the Jess beneficial results. Yet in justice we must
allow that the landowning classes were also actuated by
a real belief that the movement would benefit the whole
_nation—a belief in which they were supported by many of
_ the best heads of the day. Thus Bentham speaks of enclo-
sures, of the waste at least, as happy conquests of peaceful
‘industry, noble aggrandizements which inspire no alarm
and provoke no enemies.!. We shall return to this point
later. Suffice it here to say that for these reasons enclosure,
—which, as Mr. Gonner has shown ina late number of the
Historical Review,? had been going on continuously, though
not at a uniform rate, from the Restoration onwards—now

proceeded at an accelerated pace.

_ To meet this desire a more expeditious method is sticker
_ Hitherto enclosures had been effected by agreements
ratified by the Court of Chancery, or by Royal Licence
if Crown interests were involved. Now Parliament itself
comes to the aid of enclosure by allowing it to be done by
Private Acts of Parliament. As early as 1545 an Act had
been passed for the partition of Hounslow Heath because
*barrenness is the mother of dearth’, and 3 and 4 Edward VI
Tepealed the Statute of Merton and affirmed the lords’

1 Bentham, Works, i. 342, viii. 449.
? English Hist, Review, vol. xxiii. 477.

a F

90 ENCLOSURES OF THE EIGHTEENTH ve
3

;

Private Acts had been passed ; but it is not till the begin-
ning of the eighteenth century that this method becomes
the usual one.

The rate of enclosure from that date may be gathered
from the following table :—

| Common Frenp anp

WASTE ONLY.
| SOME WASTE.

|
|

Acts. Acreage. | Acts. Acreage.

| 1700-60 | 152 237,845 > 56 74,518
| 1761-1801 1,479 2,498,721 521 | 752,150,
1802-44 1,075 1,610,302 808 939,043

1845 and after 164 awards | 187,321 508 awards | 334,906

Total | 2,870 | 4,464,189, 1,893 2,100,617

| ’

The importance of the movement will be best appreciated
by comparing the acreage affected by these Acts ' with that
of the hypothetical table which we gave of the extent of
the enclosures from the fifteenth to the seventeenth century. —
Thus, while in the earlier period the maximum percentage |
of acreage in any one county was 8-94 per cent., and
that was only touched by four counties, in the later period
in fourteen counties the percentage of acres enclosed by
Acts enclosing common field and some waste rises as high
as 25 per cent. to 50 per cent., and only falls below 5 per
cent. in sixteen counties ; and, whereas only twenty-five
counties were affected at all in the earlier period, in the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries Acts were passed for
thirty-six counties ; and whereas the total acreage enclosed
from the fifteenth to the seventeenth century was only
744,000 acres, or 2:1 per cent. of the total area of England,

* Cp. maps II 4, B at end of book. These estimates are based on
Slater’s Statistical Tables, p. 140. But it should be noted that in
some cases the acreage is based on probability, since the Act is some-
times silent on this point.

-V -—s AND NINETEENTH CENTURIES _91

in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the acreage
enclosed was .at least 4,464,189. To this, which only
includes those enclosures and awards in which some common
_ field was enclosed, we must add the Acts and awards refer-
ring to waste only. Of these there were as many as 1,385
passed before the general Enclosure Act of 1845 dealing
_ with 1,765,711 acres, and 508 subsequent awards dealing
_ with 334,906 acres. Thus, the total number of acres
enclosed in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries will
be found to be some six and a half million, that is, nearly
_ 20 per cent. of the total acreage of England.
_ I must warn my hearers that these estimates are some-
what hypothetical. The tables prepared by Mr. Gay
dealing with the earlier period are, as I have shown, based
on much assumption. Those of Mr. Slater are equally so.”
Nor is this all. On the one hand we know that the
inquisitions of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries only
dealt with twenty-five counties, and that enclosure had
certainly being going on in many other counties. Indeed,
there is good reason to believe that the amount of enclosure
was much less exactly in those counties where it caused
most discontent, as is proved by the fact that we have
more Private Acts dealing with those counties in the
_ eighteenth century, that is in those counties where there
was from the first most common field. Nor again have
we any means of estimating the amount enclosed from
1607 to 1700.
On the other hand, when dealing with the eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries, we know that there was a great
power of approvement. In the reign of Charles II two

- 1Slater, Appendix A, and further information supplied by Mr. Slater,
and returns sent me by the Board of Agriculture.

_ 2 Cf. Slater, p. 140, note; Prothero, Pioneers, p. 257, puts the
sreage as high as eight and a quarter millions; Hunter, Statistical
Soc., no. 60.

og ENCLOSURES OF THE EIGHTEENTH 7"

. deal. of chsleouie by ngrenieust: both before and after the |
General Enclosure Acts of 1836 and 1845. Mr. Slater
has made an attempt to discover what that amount was —

after 1845, and estimates it at something between half and
five-sevenths of the area enclosed by Private Acts during

the same period. But there is no reliable evidence for the —

previous periods, All we can say is, that the application for

Private Acts does not prove that enclosure was going on —

more rapidly, but only that it was more difficult to obtain
the consent which was ROR for it to be done by
agreement.

yin spite of these difficulties and Aouibia. we may at least
feel certain that the enclosing movement of the eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries was infinitely more extensive than

that of the earlier period, and that it. was sie snc cp by.

far more important results.
You will find by referring to the maps II 4 and B, counties
classified according to the percentage of common field and

of waste enclosed. Now, in comparing the map II 4, of the

eighteenth century, dealing with commonable field, with that
of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries it is noticeable
that, with few exceptions, the resemblance is very close.
It is exactly in those countries where there was most trouble
in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that the enclosure
is most extensive in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,

namely, in counties coloured black in map II 4; that is,
in a band of counties running from NE. to SW. across the —
middle of England. Thus, all the eleven counties where the -

percentage is highest in the sixteenth and seventeenth centu-
ries stand among the first fourteen in the eighteenth century,

except Middlesex; and of the fourteen where'the average —
is highest in the eighteenth century, Yorkshire alone is

little troubled in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
1 Slater, Enclosures, pp. 151, 192.

i

4
;

1

ev AND NINETEENTH CENTURIES ~ © ‘93

This resemblance is, no doubt, to be accounted for by
the fact that it was exactly in those counties that the till-
age in the commonable open field was most extensive, and
the exceptions to this similarity are, most of them, to be
explained. Again, all the four counties — Lancashire,
_ Devon, Cornwall, Kent—where there is no enclosure in the
eighteenth century are among those where there was no
complaint in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. e—
When, however, we come ta deal with enclosure of the
waste only,’ no such comparison is to be made, because the
enclosures of the earlier period did not seriously affect the
waste at all, and because it is just in those counties where
there is most waste that there is usually less land in
cultivation, either in the common field or otherwise. A
reference to the table given at p. 90 will show that it is
with the year 1761 that the enclosing movement becomes
_ very active. This is partly due to the influence of A.
Young and others of his school, partly to the necessity for
a protectionist country, engaged during a greater part of
the period in war, to feed its population—a population
which was increasing with extraordinary rapidity ; and, as
we should naturally expect, it is accompanied by increased
attention being paid to the agricultural question, both by
writers and practical agriculturists, and by additional facili-
ties granted by Parliament for the work of enclosure.”

1 Cf. Map II B at end of book.
_ # In 1793 the Board of Agriculture was started, and it reported in
1795. In 1801 the first general Act was passed for consolidating
into one Act provisions hitherto usually inserted in Private Acts, and
for facilitating enclosure. Expenses were thereby reduced, though
a Private Act was still in each case necessary. In 1834 an Act was
passed for facilitating exchanges of land lying intermixed. In 1836 an
Act for facilitating enclosure of open fields, but not of wastes, allowed
Jommissioners to be appointed, without reference to Parliament, with
sent of possessors of common-rights to amount of two-thirds value.
‘In 1845, by the General Enclosure Acts Enclosure Commissioners were

94 ENCLOSURES OF THE EIGHTEENTH VY

The next point to notice is that the relative amount
of common field and of waste enclosed varies. XThus, while
the enclosure of the common field is going on most rapidly —
in the forty years between 1761 and 1801, and is nearly
finished by the year 1845, the great period for the enclosing
of the waste belongs to the forty years following (1802 to —
1844), and is by no means over in 1845. This difference
is easily explained. It was natural that attention should,
be first paid to the common field, but. as that became enclosed —
the waste was resorted to in the desire of thereby adding to —
the land under cultivation at a time when the price of corn
and all foodstuffs was ‘so high,

By the year 1876 the enclosing movement was practi-—
cally over. The common open field still survived in several
counties, notably in Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Berk-
shire, Buckinghamshire, Lincolnshire, in the Vale of |
Pickering, and in Northamptonshire. These soon were
for the most part enclosed, though some lasted on into —
the twentieth century, an interesting memorial of a past
system of cultivation. With regard to the wastes or
commons, however, public opinion began to change, and
a new gospel began to be preached. The enormous growth
of population led philanthropists to value open spaces as

-

conducing both to the physical and mental welfare of
.

the masses, and social reformers began to complain that
the poor man had been divorced from the soil, largely —

appointed by Parliament to approve of suggested enclosures, These it
was hoped would look better after interests of the poor. In 1852, by
15 & 16 Vict., all such schemes were to be submitted to Parliament —
in a general Act. Cf. Scruton, Commons, p. 155.

1 Prothero, Pioneers, p. 50. According to the return of 1874 —
264,000 acres still lay in the common field, 883,000 acres were waste ©
but capable of cultivation, 1,500,000 acres were unfit for cultivation, —
cf. Board of Agriculture Report, 1912, p. 10.

AND NINETEENTH CENTURIES 95

_ owing to enclosures, and to raise the ery, ‘ Back to the land,’
The common field was doomed. But some wastes still
remained, and these it was hoped might be saved.
Accordingly we now meet with Acts of Parliament to
regulate and sometimes to prevent enclosure.

Thus, between 1876 and 1889 there were only seventy-
_ three applications, and of these two-thirds were rejected.
~ Between 1889-1902 there were only six, of which one
was rejected; and during the whole period (1876-1902),
‘nearly twenty-six years, the total enclosed only amounted
to some 29,000 acres, .By.the Act of 1893 no lord was to
‘approve’ the waste, and no waste was to ke enclosed
without the consent of the Board of Agriculture.' Thus,
in the closing years of the nineteenth century agricultural
England finally, for better or for worse, assumed her
_ modern aspect. |

% In dealing with the results of enclosure, we must keep
in mind the distinction between enclosure of the common
fields and enclosure of the waste, and with regard to both
beware of too readily accepting the exaggerated statements
of advocates and of opponents.”

1 Cf. Hunter, Statistical Soc., no. 60.

2 For the whole controversy, see especially —

In favour of enclosure: Kent, Hints to gentlemen; Howlett,
Enclosures a cause of improved agriculture, 1787; Horner, Essay
on enclosures, 1766; Arbuthnot, Enquiry into connection between
present prices and size of farms, 1773; A. Young, Political
Arithmetic ; Bentham, Works, i. 342, viii. 449.

. Against enclosures: J. Cowper, Essay proving enclosure contrary

to interests of the Nation, 1732; Stephen Addington, An enquiry

into the reasons for and against enclosures, Coventry, 1767.

_ The following anonymous pamphlets in the British Museum: T, 1494,

1950, An inquiry into advantages and disadvantages resulting from

Bills of Enclosure, 1780; Anon., A political enquiry into the ad-

tages, &c., 1785 ; Cursory remarks on Enclosures, 1786. A. Young,

vho is generally in favour of enclosures, has some criticisms especially

_ in Farmers’ Letters, pp. 94, 181; Annals, vol. 36, 1801, p. 515; vol.

-

96 ENCLOSURES OF THE EIGHTEENTH YV

Thus, on the one side, we find attempts to describe the
condition of things before enclosure as idyllic. This they
certainly were not. The excessive subdivision of the
common fields caused waste of time and of land in
cultivating the narrow strips, and led to constant, some-
times ridiculous, quarrels which entirely prevented any
system of improved tillage. The land was dirty, the
balks grew thistles and couch grass which spread. By
undue extension of the arable field there was a dearth —
of the necessary manure, The right enjoyed by the
commoners to turn out beasts on the common field after
the hay and corn harvest, and on the waste, was often
abused by the richer commoners, who would buy stock for
that purpose. In other manors the right was of little use,
because the cattle and sheep of the poorer commoners were _
often victims of infectious diseases; in others, if all had
exercised their rights, there would not have been a fort-
night's feed.

Nor were the cottagers who lived on the waste, with
some notable exceptions,’ very desirable folk. Many of
these were probably descendants of those who in earlier
days had been driven from their tenancies at will on the
demesne and elsewhere; the unfortunate victims of the
economical changes of the preceding centuries; but they were
recruited from the lowest classes, and if they did in some

——— ee

41, 1809, p. 231, The whole subject is well treated in Board of
Fas iculture General Report, 1808; Parl. Commission on Enclosures,
1844; and by Hasbach, Die spatiachon Landarbeiter, p. 60; Mantoux,
La Bévolution industrielle, pp. 146, 515; Slater, English Peasantry
and Enclosures, especially c. xviii.

1 Report on Enclosures, 1844, Qs. 1543, 3996, 4190-2, 4270, 4276,
4391, 4393, 4766, &c. Sir J. Sinclair declared that the difference
between weight of beasts fed on the commons and on enclosed lands
was 370 Ib. as against 800, calves 50 as against 148, sheep 28 as against
80: Address to Board of “Asgvichltecess 1795.

2 A, Young, Annals, vol. xxxvi, 1801, p. 497.

* AND NiNeTEENTH CENTURIES 97

eases provide the extra labour which was from time to
time required they were often idle and thievish, and some-
imes dangerous.‘ ‘Where wastes are most extensive,’
s ys a writer of 1794, ‘there cottagers are most wretched
and worthless. Accustomed to rely on a precarious or
vagabond existence from the land in a state of nature,
when that fails they take to pilfering and poaching,’ while
another, speaking of Epping, says, ‘the undergraduates in
iniquity commence their career with deer stealing, and here
the more finished and hardened robber retires from justice.’ *
Indeed, when we read of the condition of those parishes
which at the beginning of the eighteenth century were
~ still unenclosed, we are astonished, not that enclosure came
when it did, but that it had been delayed so long, and are
forced to agree with A. Young that ‘the goths and vandals
of open-field farmers must die out before any improvement
ould take place’.
The question, how far the enclosures of the eighteenth
century affected the landless classes, only concerns us
indirectly. It may be, therefore, briefly summarized. The
results in this respect, as in the sixteenth and seventeenth
_ centuries, depend upon two factors, First, whether it was
the waste or the common arable field which was enclosed,
nd second, whether the land so enclosed was used for
wable purposes or for pasture. Of course, if the waste
were enclosed and used for arable purposes there would
more employment, but not so if it still continued
nploughed, and even if the open field when enclosed was
still ploughed there would be fewer hands employed.’
1 Report 1844, Qs. 71, 1811, 1816, 3091, 8095, 4122, 4204, 5068,
071, &c.
4 eae, Essex, p. 110.
§ 1,000 acres rich arable land supported 20 families before enclosure,

} after; poor arable land 20 before, 163 after. Board of Agriculture
reneral Report, 1808, p. 1.

JOHNSON -! G

98 ENCLOSURES OF Tlin EIGHTEENTH V-

We have no means of knowing the proportion of waste
to common field enclosed by private agreement, but, as we _
have shown, the larger number of Private Acts passed
between 1702 and 1802 were for the enclosing of common-_
able open fields, although in some cases some waste was
enclosed by the same Act. }

Further, it appears that the larger proportion of the land
enclosed was, during the first sixty years of the century at
least, used for pasture. Mr. Cunningham? argues that
this could not be; because the prohibition of the export of
wool kept prices down, and the bounty on exportation of
corn encouraged tillage. Mr. Cunningham, however,
forgets that the price of corn was still low (from 1700
to 1765 it only reached an average price of 30s. a quarter |
(or from 26s. to 48s., whereas just before 1700 it had
touched 68s.), and that the price of meat was high. It
should also be remembered that the small farmer did no
grow corn for the market but for his own consumption
the products for sale being cattle, sheep, pigs, poultry,
fruit, vegetables, and eggs. Moreover, the net product of
pasture-farming was greater.2. Mr. Slater has come to
the probable conclusion that in the Midlands and West the
best land was used for pasture, especially in Sorte aa
Leicester, Lincoln, Oxon., Bucks., Warwick, Huntingdo
Gloucester, and reminds us of the evidence to be seen
this day in the ridge and furrow on grass lands, the remains
of the open field running through hedges. Now,’ as hed

dew

i

1 Cunningham, English Industry, ii. 384,

2 Slater, p. 108; Eden, State of Poor, ii. 30, says, that in Berks,
arable land was laid down in pasture as late as 1797; ef. also Hasbae’
p. 89 ff.; Thoroton, Notts., Preface, says, however, that in i
‘Pasture. already begins 1 exceed the vent for the commoditi
which it yields’. :

8 A. Smith, ed. M’GaHeck, p- 69; A. Young, Farmers’ ones
p. 95.

a a oy

AND NINETEENTH CENTURIES -— 99

‘come after enclosure, this proves that before enclosure the
: a had been under the plough. :
As the century wore on, no doubt, the area under tillage
dncreased, which did a good deal to restore the balance,
A Select Ligaittittes of the House of Commons estimated
that as a result of all the Acts for enclosure of waste and
common field, passed between 1755 and 1800, there had been

a net gain of area under wheat to the amount of 10,625
acres, but this Report included Acts for enclosure of the
waste. In the General Report of the Board of Agriculture
of 1808, which leaves out all cases where waste alone was
enclosed, we find that in the Midland Counties there was,
under Enclosure Acts passed between 1761 and 1799 a net
decrease of land applied to arable purposes of 19,003 acres.
In the other parts of England, however, especially in the
astern Counties, there was a gain, which altogether comes
to 2,988 acres, so that the total decrease of land under the
_ plough for the whole of England, as a result of enclosure of
_ the open commonable field, amounted during that period to
16,015 acres,‘ not, it must be confessed, a serious matter.
When we come to the nineteenth century, the very high
price of corn told at last, and from that date until about
- 1830 the acreage under tillage enormously increased.?

_ Whatever may be the truth as to the effect of enclosure
on the landless folk, there can be little doubt, in spite of
attempts to prove the contrary,’ that the enclosure, whether
the common field or of the waste, was, in the way at

? Slater, p. 108; Report of Board of Agriculture on Enclosures,
(802, pp. 229-32.

? Cf. on the whole question, Cunningham, English Industry, ii. 38 ;

Slater, p. 108; Select Committee of House of Commons, Dec., 1800;
eneral Report on Enclosures, 1808, pp. 99, 232; Mantoux, 165;

lasbach, p. 39 ff.; Scruton, Commons, p. 146; Horner, Essay on

inclosure, 1766, p. 15; Victoria County Hist.: Durham, ii. 240,

* Cf. Bentham, who declared that the enclosure of the waste was

favourable to the interests of rich and poor alike.

G2

' and that of gleaning on the stubbles. The waste once

100 ENCLOSURES OF THE EIGHTEENTH :
least in which it was in most cases carried out% serious —
disadvantage to the small landowner. By the enclosure of ;

the common field the small freeholder or copyholder lost his”
rights of turning out his cattle after hay and corn harvests,

enclosed, hé had no longer anywhere to go for his firing,
and no place where he could turn out his cattle in the
summer while he cultivated his little plot.t He received,
indeed, an allotment from the waste, but, until the later
Acts more carefully protected him, he often did not receive
even his equitable share, and even when he did, that share
would of necessity be small,? and, as he soon discovered,
no adequate compensation for his ald rights on the
waste, without which it was difficult to work his holdin
profitably. ’
A contemporary somewhat exaggerated when he said,
‘strip the small farms of the benefit of the commons andl
they are all levelled at one stroke to the ground.’ Yet hi
opinion is confirmed by many others.® Later experience

‘ Of. Scruton, Commons, for these various rights and their technical

terms.

2 One acre for the right of turning out two cows and three shood
appears a usual allotment. A. Young, Annals, xxxvi. 513.

8 Enquiry into advantages and disadvantages resulting from Bills
of Enclosure quoted authorities, Hasbach, p. 108; cf. Mantou
La Révolution industrielle, p. 172; Evidence from Board of Agri:
culture Report on Enclosure, 1808; Report 1844, Qs. 175, 311, 1643,
1662, 4292, &c.; ef. Lord G. Somerset’s opinion that they had not had
sufficient evidence from those likely to be most hurt, and his amend-
ment to the Report, ‘that the utmost care was needed in legislating to
provide against the infringement of the rights or privileges of any
parties without compensation ’—(though the amendment was lost).
Of course there are some instances to the contrary. Cf. Report 18
Q. 8990, where we learn that an enclosure of waste in a Cambrid
shire parish was so unpopular that it had to be enforced by soldiery.
and yet that the opponents subsequently laughed at their own folly,
for the common had been divided into gardens, and cottages worth only

|

“4

slit an

a

p 4

Vv AND NINETEENTH CENTURIES 101

“hae shown that the small owner thrives best where, as in
‘the New Forest, a waste remains,! and“ am convinced
that the peasant proprietor was more seriously injured by .
the enclosure of the waste than of the common field. |
Then again, the expenses attending enclosure were heavy,
especially when it had to be effected by a Private Act of
- Parliament.x It cost much to get an Act passed. The
_ lawyers, the surveyors, and lastly the commissioners had to
be paid.? Sometimes, indeed, the lord of the manor or
some of the richer owners would bear the burden, obtaining
an extra allotment in return ; but in that case the allotment
_ of the poor man would probably be smaller. Finally, when
~ all was settled, the holding had to be hedged. To meet
_ the expenses money had often to be raised, and this meant
debt and, perhaps, a mortgage. Under these circumstances
_ the small man was ever tempted, and sometimes forced by
financial distress, to sell his holding to his richer neighbour,
or to some capitalist who was seeking for land, and whom
Cobbett calls contemptuously ‘the fundholder’. Thus, the
indirect result of enclosure was consolidation. The poorer
sold and the rich bought.’
_ In answer to all this the promoters of enclosure pointed
to the fact that many enclosures were done by agreement,
and that even for a Private Act of Parliament substantial
agreement of a majority was necessary. The argument
“though specious is fallacious. It was not the consent of

£40 before were now worth £100; cf. again, Qs. 1341, 1357, 1647, 1841,
8045; for The Isle of Axholme, the paradise of small proprietors,
Slater, p. 53.

1 Cf. those villages in Germany where peasant proprietors have
tights on communal land and flourish : German Examples of Public
_ Ownership, Land Nationalisation Soc., Tract no. 91.
? Hasbach, p. 110, and authorities there quoted.
_ * General Report on Enclosures, 1888, p. 158.

‘ Of. Mantoux, La Révolution industrielle, p. 157, and authorities

|

102 ENCLOSURES OF THE EIGHTEENTH vO
- |

the majority of owners which was necessary, but of the
owners, who held four-fifths of the land. Those holding ~
the remaining one-fifth might be in a majority and yet
be overruled.1. Moreover, those who opposed enclosure were
often coaxed or bribed,? or induced to sell,® or, if they were
copyholders or leaseholders for lives, the lord might refuse —
to renew, so that their lands might come into his hand.
The Act once passed, commissioners were appointed to
carry it out. _The commissioners were named in the Act,
they were generally suggested by the petitioners, and
therefore were in the interests of the bigger men. Their
powers were despotic, and there was no appeal from their
award, until the Act of 1801, which instituted an appeal
to Quarter Sessions, and also disqualified persons who were
not likely to be impartial. A. Young himself, although a
strong advocate of enclosures, complained of all this. ‘The |
proprietors of large estates generally agree upon the measure,
adjust the principal points among themselves, and fix upon
their attorney before they appoint any general meeting of
all the proprietors. The small proprietor . . . has little or
no weight in regulating the clauses of the Act. The
property of the proprietors, especially of the poor ones, is
entirely at the mercy of the commissioners, for they are
vested with a despotic power known in no other branch of

|
|

quoted there, especially Addington, An inquiry into reasons for and_
against enclosing, pp. 24-5.

1 Cf. Mantoux, p. 157. He quotes instance of Quainton, Bucks.,
where out of thirty-four owners eight proprietors holding more than
four-fifths were for enclosure against twenty-two who opposed it.

2 Cf. Victoria County Hi.t.: Oxford, p. 200, where it was alleged
that a commoner bartered his right for a pot of beer.

8 So Laurence suggests in his Duty of a Steward, p. 87; ef. also
Report of Board of Agriculture, 1795, Gloucester Reporter, ‘The
step would be to pass a general Act ascertaining proportions accordin
to each freeholder’s separate property. Speculative men would then
soon buy up the smaller shares,’

AND NINETEENTH CENTURIES 103

business in this free country.’ Even Lord Thurlow, under
one of those pious impulses to which we know he was some-
times subject, denounced the injustice inflicted on small
proprietors.”
The fate of the cottagers was much worse. These, it
should be remembered, had no legal rights on the waste * or
on the common field. The advocates for enclosure argued
that they were mere squatters, with no rights at all, and
tried, moreover, to prove that, not only would the parish
itself gain by their removal, but that they themselves would
benefit materially, because the use of the waste was of little
advantage to them, and morally, because they would give
up idleness and take to labour, the demand for which would
‘be more continuous because of enclosure. The first state-
ment forgets that little is better than nothing; the second
might be true until the hedging, consequent on enclosure,
was finished ; but that done, the question of employment
would depend on whether arable cultivation or pasture
followed. X In any case, they generally lost their privilege
of turning out a donkey, a few sheep, or some poultry on
e common.®
~ 1 A, Young, Six Months’ Tour through North of England, 1771,
i, 222; Annals, xxxvi, pp. 529, 566; cf. also Board of Agriculture
General Report on Enclosures, 1808.
? Parl. Hist., xxii. 59.
* The object of Act of Settlement of 1662 had been to restrain
people from going from parish to parish and ‘settling where there
is the largest common or waste to build cottages and the most woods
for them to destroy, and when they have consumed it then to another
parish.’ In some parts of Wales and England there was an idea that
if a squatter could build a cottage in one night he could not be
removed, But a cottage did not carry with it any right to turn
out cattle unless it had land attached. Report 1844, Qs, 3255, 3260,
4898, 4900. |

* Report on Enclosures, 1844, Qs, 175, 311, 1278, 1414, 1643, 1662,
1841-7, 3084, 4292, 5064, &.
_ * There are some instances to the contrary; Scruton, p. 150;
‘Victoria County Hist.: Lincolnshire, p, 342.

104 ENCLOSURES OF THE EIGHTEENTH V |

It does not appear, indeed, that they had any legal right
- to these privileges. Some had obtained them by grant of
_ the, lard, which was revocable, others had usurped them,
+ mor® especially on manors belonging to the Crown. Yet
: they were just the sort of inchoate rights which, in the
‘Middle Age, might have gradually gained strength under
the protection of the manorial courts into rights, ‘ according .
to the custom of the manor’; customary rights which, in —
time, the royal courts might themselves have enforced, but
which were not yet strong enough to stand the test of
the King’s Law.
X Then again, there’ were many little village officials, the
viewers of fields, the letters of cattle, the common shepherd,
the hayward, the chimney sweepers, or peepers, as they
were called,! who lost their employment and with it theg
plots of land they had held in payment of their services.
A commissioner of enclosure lamented that he had besill
accessory to injuring the poor at the rate of twenty families
per parish,”

Even A. Young admits that out of thirty-seven parishes -
in the Eastern Counties there were only twelve in which |
the labourers had not been injured, and says that by nine-
teen out of twenty Enclosure Bills the poor are injured,
and some grossly injured. ‘The poor in these parishes
may say Parliament may be tender of property; all I know
is, I had a cow and an Act of Parliament has taken it from
me.’? He therefore urged that allotments sufficient to
keep a cow or two should be granted to them.

Something, indeed, was done by the Act of 1797, and

» by the later General Enclosure Acts a certain allotment
My of land was to be given to the guardians. Sixty years’

1 Slater, p. 128.
2 Board of Agriculture Report, 1808, p. 156.
5 A, Young, Annals, xxxvi. 516.

ncn anes. teebciniametianaaiacittanai

_ usage was to establish a right. In some cases a piece of
common was reserved for the cottagers, in a few they
received a separate allotment, but so small as to be value-
less, except that they had something to sell.1 With the
General Enclosure Act of 1845, however, a change for the
better was inaugurated. Much more attention was paid
to the interests of the public and to those of the poor, and
the Commissioners, in their Report of 1876, boasted that
by their 946 awards between 1845 and 1876, ‘ they not only
redeemed an area from common and waste equal to that of
a whole county, but that they had divided this acreage
among a far larger and more varied body of landowners
than that of any county in England.’ 2
\{ Even so, enclosure facilitated consolidation, As long as
the common field existed, with its endless divisions and
irksome restrictions, there was little inducement for the
larger landholder to buy; but that once gone, with its
eommonable rights, consolidation became not only possible
__ but profitable.*

_xIn every way then, both directly and indirectly, enclo-
‘sures tended to divorce the poor man from the soil. It
would, however, be a great mistake —to- _imagine—that
enclosure Was. the ‘sole, or even the chief, cause _for this

eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Te OPS Ed. Lawrence,
“when suggesting how a preparation for enclosure might be
_ made, shows that the same result might have been slowly
attained by the buying up of all the interests, and, as we
shall subsequently show, it does not appear that enclosure

_ }? Mantoux, p. 162, and authorities quoted ; Scruton, p. 159.
_ * Board of Agriculture, Annual Report, 1903, pp. 11, 30; the acreage
was about 618,000,
* General Report on Enclosures, 1808, p. 32.
‘A vigilant steward should be zealous for his lord’s sake, in
purchasing all the freeholders out as soon as possible, especially

AND NINETEENTH CENTURIES 105°

106 ENCLOSURES vi

was immediately or necessarily followed by consolidation,
unless the circumstances of time and place were favourable.

Enclosure removed the obstacles, and thus facilitated con- 3

solidation, but did not do much more.
Enclosure was, moreover, unavoidable, and the worst

that can be said of the enclosing movement, whether of
the common field or of the waste is, not that it was in |
itself. undesirable, but that sufficient care was not taken to
secure better compensation for the small commoner and, ~
perhaps, for the cottager, though in.any case their allot-—

ments must have been small. There seems, indeed, some
injustice in the Christian statement that to him that hath
shall be given. But then, some of us have found it hard

to realize the strict justice of the multiplication table. —

Why should twice one be only two and twice fifty 100?
Nay, why should a million times nothing still be nothing ?
¥ The larger yeoman at_least. er_ than

injured by enclosure... The allotment he received out of the

waste was considerable, while he had everything to gain
by the disappearance of the common field... Above him stood —
the small squire or lord of the manor, who gained much

more, and was, indeed, often the } prime mover, _

Enclosures then, should be looked upon rather as a

symptom of a desire to consolidate; as a necessary pre-
liminary, rather than as the true cause of consolidation.
It is when we have decided what these causes were, that
we shall be able to explain why in England the small

owner has to a great extent disappeared, while he “al

survives on the continent.

in such manors where improvements are to be made by enclosing;
E. Laurence, The Duty of a Steward, p. 37.

4

VI

ECONOMICAL AND OTHER CAUSES OF THE
DECLINE OF THE SMALL LANDOWNER
IN THE EIGHTEENTH AND NINETEENTH
CENTURIES

Tue real solvent of the old English agricultural com-
munity would seem to have been the extension of the
commercial spirit to the field of agricultural industry.
‘This, as we have already shown, first commenced at the
close of the fifteenth century, but it was in the eighteenth
century that it reached its final consummation. And it is
the working of this commercial spirit which I now propose
_ to deal with.

We have already quoted Hasbach’s opinion that it was
the desire of the landlord to increase his rents which first
led to consolidation of farms, and this, because expenses
were thereby reduced, and therefore the net gain was higher,
and because it was easier to collect rent from one big than
many small farmers.

Yet, apart from this somewhat sordid, though not
_ unnatural motive, there was from the beginning of the
eighteenth century a growing conviction as to the desir-
ability of more scientific farming. This belief, again, first
definitely appears in Tudor times in the works of Tusser
_ 1 A. Young, Northern Tour, ii. 84, advises the raising of rents to urge
fenants to greater effort, and says, ‘if you would have vigorous culture
hrow fifteen or twenty (small) farms into one as soon as the present

secupiers die off’; Levy, Entstehung und Riickgang des landwirth-
schaftlichen Grossbetriebes in England.

lh

108 CAUSES OF THE DECLINE VI

(Five Hundred Points of Husbandry) and of Fitzherbert.

From that time forward we can trace a steady development —
of theory. In the seventeenth century, Leonard Mascall —

(1605) treats of the more scientific ‘ government of cattel’,
John Norden writes his Surveyor’s Dialogue, 1607. In

1610, Rowland Vaughan first draws attention to the value

of irrigation. In 1649, Walter Blith, in his English
Improver, points out the advantages of drainage. In 1650,
Sir R. Weston, formerly ambassador in the Palatinate, in

his ‘Discourse of Husbandrie used in Brabant and Flanders’, —

advocates the use of clover and of turnips; in the same
year Samuel Hartlib, the friend of Milton, advises the

folding of sheep after the Flanders manner. In 1669, —

John Forster suggests the plantation of potatoes as a
remedy against all succeeding dear years.
It is, however, when we pass to the eighteenth century

that the writers increase in number and in importance. Of —
’ this school Jethro Tull, 1731, may be considered the father. —

A native of Berkshire, though as so often the case a failure

as a practical farmer, he was a man of scientific attainments —

and great originality. He not only taught the importance
of more extensive cultivation, but invented a variety of
agricultural implements, and from that time forward pam-
phlets and treatises too numerous to mention appear, until
they culminate in the works of A. Young.

For a long time, however, the English farmer refused

‘to listen. The earlier writers sometimes suggested absurd ©
remedies. ‘Take,’ says Hartlib or his editor, ‘serpents or, —
which is best, vipers ; cut their heads and tayles off and dry —
the rest to powder. Mingle this powder with salt, and give —

a few grains to sheep who have the flukes.” Many of the
reforms urged upon the farmer were on foreign models, and

' Cf. Prothero, Pioneers and progress of English Farming, pp. 29,

248,

{

VI OF THE SMALL LANDOWNER 109

his insular prejudices led him to despise them. He was
slow, and he was cautious and hide-bound in his antiquated
‘traditions. They seem, says one authority, speaking of the
statesmen of Cumberland, to inherit with the estates of
their ancestors their notions of cultivating them.t. As Tull
himself remarked, the farmers said of his clover, that
gentlemen might sow it if they pleased, but ¢hey had to
pay their rent. Besides, few of these writers had practical
experience, and failed when they put their theories to the
test. ‘ Tusser teaching thrift never throve. Gabriel Plattes,
the counsellor, who boasted that he could raise thirty bushels
of wheat to the acre, died in the srteets for want of bread.
Jethro Tull, instead of gaining an estate, lost two by his
horse-hoeing husbandry. Even Arthur Young failed twice
in farm management before he began his invaluable tours.’ 2
) Even if prejudice had not stood in the way the small
armer had not the necessary capital to adopt scientific
‘farming. ‘Where,’ asks A. Young, ‘is the little farmer to
be found who will cover his whole farm with marl at the
_ rate of 100 or 150 tons an acre? who will drain his land at
the expense of £2 or £3 an acre? who will pay a heavy
price for the manure of towns and convey it thirty miles
by land carriage? . . . who to improve the breed of his
sheep will give 1,000 guineas for the use of a single ram
for a single season? who will send across the kingdom to
distant provinces for new implements and for men to use
them ?*® ‘Deduct from agriculture all the practices that
have made it flourishing in this island and you have
precisely the management of small farms.’

? Benley and Colley, Cumberland, quoted Rae, Contemp. Review,
Oct., 1883.

2 Prothero, Pioneers, p. 59; cf, also The Pleasant Land of France,
jp. 45, for other unsuccessful theorists abroad.

8 A. Young, Tour in France, quoted in Prothero, Pioneers, p. 74;
-Mantoux, p. 148.

110 CAUSES OF THE DECLINE VI

‘ Fortunately for England, the great landowners answered
the call and conferred a lasting benefit on the country. —
From the beginning of the eighteenth century the land-
owning gentry and peers devoted themselves to more scien-
tific farming. The successful statesman, Walpole, read
his letters from his steward before his State letters: The
disappointed politician, Townshend, found in the pursuit of —
agriculture arefuge from ennui. A rector, on being rebuked ©
by his archdeacon for growing turnips in his churchyard,
promised that it should be barley next year. ‘ Bolingbroke
caused his house at Dawley to be painted with ricks, spades,
and prongs,’ says Mr. Prothero, ‘and read Swift’s letters
between two haycocks, with his eyes to heaven, not in admi-
ration of the Dean but in fear of rain.’ Before long,
Bakewell, of Dishley, 1725-94, Coke, of Holkham, 1776,
the Duke of Bedford, and many others, were to make
England famous for her scientific methods of cultivation,
and for her fine breeds of cattle and of sheep. In short, it
became the fashion to be an agriculturist, especially when
George III adopted the réle of the Farmer King.
Meanwhile, the industrial revolution of the eighteenth
century had commenced. The chief features of this revo-—
lution may, so far as we are concerned, be briefly summed ©
up. The Scottish union had widened our internal market ;
the Treaty of Utrecht had given us final entry into the
Mediterranean, and the Seven Years’ War left us masters of
India, of the greater part of North America, and of most.
of the West Indian Islands, as well as giving us the comes
mand of the sea. Thereby the area of our commerce was_
vastly extended, and English shipping, encouraged by the
Navigation Laws, was ready to carry our goods to these
new markets. At once the desire to produce as largely.

]

1 Cf. Prothero, p. 78 ff.

VI OF THE SMALL LANDOWNER 111

_and_as cheaply as possible, so as to occupy these markets,
became intensified, and England responded to the call.

_ The cotton industry, which hitherto had depended on
the East for its raw material, of which it only sent us
its superfluity, now received additional supplies. from the
West Indies. The English temperature was admirably
suited for spinning and weaving, and cotton for a time
played the part which wool had in the earlier ages. ‘There
was at first great opposition to cotton goods. In 1719 the
London woollen weavers tore the new “calico”’, or “calicut”
gowns off the ladies’ backs. Acts were passed against
wearing cottons. Not till 1774 were pure cotton goods a
awful import, But these prejudices, based largely on
the self-interest of the wool makers, passed away, and by
1815 our export of cotton goods was seventeen million
pounds sterling, as against seven millions woollen.

It was just at this moment that the great age of inven-
tions opened. Kay’s fly shuttle (1730), the weaving machine
of Wyatt and Lewis Paul (1738), the spinning-jenny of
Hargreaves (1765), the water frame and spinning roller of .

Arkwright(1767),Crompton’s mule (1777), and Cartwright’s
weaving machine (1785), followed in rapid succession, and
aided the development of all textile industries. At the
- same time the discovery of thé blast furnace enabled iron
io be smelted with coal, and solved the difficulty which had
isen from the dearth of charcoal as fuel.? Finally, the
se of steam as a new motive power to drive these machines
yas discovered by James Watt, 1769-82.°
If, however, England was to profit from these new

1 Fletcher, History of England.
? Mantoux, La Révolution industrielle, p. 189 ff., and authorities
noted there.

* Mantoux, p. 316 ff., and authorities quoted.

112 CAUSES OF THE DECLINE VI

inventions. sherequired.workers-and-capital. Workers, }
because although all these inventions added enormously to —
the productiveness of labour, yet more was ever demanded.
Capital, because without it all this machinery could not be
set going. Both were found. It is impossible, indeed, to
say with accuracy what the population of England had
been or was at that moment. No census was taken till |
1801, and all estates were founded on calculations of
a very loose character. Davenant, writing in 1688, who
based his conclusions. on the number of houses, put the
population of England at some five and a half millions.t

It is interesting to note that the general impression till |
quite late in the eighteenth century was that population
was decreasing, a view first definitely combated by A. Young |
on apriori grounds, based on the industrial prosperity of the |
country, and finally scouted by Malthus, who in 1798 |
developed his famous theory that population, unless con- |
trolled by positive or negative checks, which were being |
abandoned in England, tended to outrun the means of
subsistence.” \.

The estimate of Rickman (1831) * that by the middle of!
the eighteenth century it had reached six and a half millions, ©
an increase of a million since 1688, does not appear improb-) |
able ; but all we can say with certainty is, that by the it |

of 1801 the population of England and Wales was found
be nearly nine millions (8,873,000, exclusive of Scotland ~
and Ireland, total nearly fifteen millions), while by 1901 i
had nearly quadrupled itself. Meanwhile, the population |

;

1 Political and Commercial works of C. Davenant, revised by)
Sir C. Whitworth, 1761, vol. ii. 184. i

2 Richard Price, Essay on Population, 1780; A. Young, Political)
Arithmetic, i. 90; North of England, i. 177, iv. 411; Malthus, Essay |
on Population.

8 J. Rickman, Abstract of Answers and return to Pop. Act
11 Geo. IV, Preface.

VI OF THE SMALL LANDOWNER 118

began to shift from the south and the east, which had
hitherto been the industrial parts of England, to the north
and west, the homes of the new industries.
_ Yet, had there been no capitalists to set these machines
going there would have been no demand for extra labour.
It is noticeable that, with few exceptions, the earlier
generation of inventors did not themselves profit much
from their discoveries. Neither Hargreaves, Crompton, nor
Vartwright succeeded in founding successful manufactories.
Cort, who discovered the secret of turning cast iron into
wrought by puddling, failed. And, if Arkwright and Watt
made fortunes, the first was an exploiter of the inventions
of others rather than originator, while Watt would prob-
ably never have brought his invention to perfection, or at
Teast made it a financial success, had he not gained the
financial assistance of Roebuck, and later of Matthew
Boulton, men of business, the sons of manufacturers, and
already rich.!' In short, the inventor needed capital and
vas often deficient in those powers of organization and
discipline which a great master of labour needs, and the
business habits and knowledge which a competitive market

_ Again, the circumstances of the times were favour-
able. Since the establishment of the Bank of England, in
| 1696, the whole system of credit had received a great
“impulse—an impulse which was increased rather than
weakened by the wild speculation attending the ill-starred
South Sea Bubble. Here then, was a new and a better
pportunity for the capitalist, great or small, which he
vas not slow to seize.
With the rise of the capitalist organizer of industry the
“industrial classes began to be more sharply divided. The
mall master-craftsman who had worked with his journey-

' 1 Mantoux, pp. 329, 380.
JOHNSON H

114 CAUSES OF THE DECLINE 7

men and apprentices, and united in his own person the —
functions of artisan, capitalist, and organizer on a small —
scale, could no longer compete. He had neither capital
enough nor the necessary gifts or knowledge; nor did
industry on a small scale allow of the division of labour
which is possible in a large manufactory. He therefore
fell into the class of paid artisans, the servants of these
new masters, to be followed by many of those who, whether
in town or country, had supplemented their wage by small
domestic industries—industries which were being destroyed
by the factory system. In his place arose the capitalist
entrepreneur—sometimes an inventor himself. More often
an organizer of labour and man of commercial knowledge,
he stood altogether apart from the labouring classes, and
took his position beside the great merchant and the
financier.

There is, indeed, nothing absolutely new in all this.
Capitalism is not the product of the industrial revolution
of the eighteenth century ; it had existed before. Nay,
capital ere this had been applied to industry, witness th
great drapers of the sixteenth century and the iron-masters
of Sussex,! while already the position of the master workmat
had been assailed. It is always impossible to fix an e
date for the commencement of an economical change, no
was the revolution by any means complete by the close
the eighteenth century. _ Nevertheless, it is very clear
from the middle ofthe eighteenth century the capitalist
who had hitherto chiefly devoted his attention to finance,
the buying and_selling of goods, now definitely turned hi
attention to the making of them. In a word, the mere
prince of the past becomes, in many cases, the gr
manufacturer of the future, and. the great army-of
depending entirely on _its.daily wage is_

1 Cf. Mantoux, pp. 10, 272, 877,

; :
43
a

OF THE SMALL LANDOWNER 115

_ From this time forward the two movements, the in-
‘dustrial and the agricultural, which are indeed only two
manifestations of the same scientific and commercial spirit,
o hand in hand, and supplement and support one another.
“Commerce and industrial enterprise are grafted on the stock
of agriculture, and the rural districts become the depen-
dents of manufacturing and trading centres.’ The growth
of great industries and of commerce demanded a greater
number of labourers. Population answered the call, and
increased with rapidity. The increase of population
demanded greater food supplies. England ceased to be
self-supporting, and the price of corn rose,! as well as that
of meal.

Under these circumstances one would have expected that
more land would have been put under the plough. This,
; however, we have shown was not the case.

_ This rise in the price of articles of food naturally caused
rise of rents, while the advance of more scientific farming
aught landlords the advantages to be gained from con-
solidating their farms. Hence the increasing desire to
close both the common field and the waste. Hence the
rowing preference for farming on a large scale, which
emanded a capitalist landlord and capitalist farmer.

Thus, the class of capitalist farmers grew, men
hom one contemporary says were considered ‘ Squires,’
nd another that they no longer entertained their friends
vith a hog of their own breeding and ale of their own

1 During 1700-55, the price had run between 26s. and 48s.the quarter.
1757, owing to the high price, 60s., free import was temporarily
lowed.’ England ceases to export, in 1773 the Bounty was abolished
id import prohibited when wheat was below 48s., and an import
uty of 6d. a quarter imposed when wheat was at or over 48s. The
‘ice was then 51s. Between 1773-93, the price varied from 38s. to
, partly owing to bad seasons ; during the Great War it ran between
. and 126s. Cf. Prothero, Pioneers, p. 244,

H 2

116 CAUSES OF THE DECLINE

brewing, but must have delicate food, whose da
play the clavecin and dress like the daughters of a d.
Just as the small craftsman was unable to compete
the great masters of industry, so the small farmer \ ..@
beaten by the larger. He had neither the capital? nor
the knowledge requisite for more intensive cultivation.
He could not watch the markets nor hold back his goods.
when prices were low,? and this inability to wait, increased”
by the absence of good roads or communications, was
peculiarly disastrous amidst the violent fluctuations to
which the price of corn was subject. At the same time
the domestic industries by which his family had helped |
him were being crushed out by the factory system, while
the increasing poor rate—caused more especially by the
policy of granting allowances in support of wages— |
threatened to beggar him. In despair he abandoned his |
tenancy, if he had saved a little capital, to seek a new life
in town or abroad, where he had prospects of a bette
return than from his small farm; if not, to fall back into!
the class of landless labourers whose numbers had alread
been recruited from the cottagers. And if the engrossin
of farms and the enclosures alone enabled England to tak
the lead in industrial supremacy, it was the growth
industry which, by giving employment to those drive
from the country, alone saved England from serious rio
The effect on the small owner, whether freeholder
copyholder, as distinguished from the small tenant-farm
varied in different parts of England, and it is this whie
no doubt partly accounts for the contradictory oi )

_ + Burton, 1751; Country Farmer, Cursory remarks on Enclosures,)
1786, p. 21.

x £5 an acre was held necessary to work a farm properly.

8 Marshall, South. Dep., 383: ‘The farmers of Surrey have so little

of the impartial system of commerce that they prefer to sell theit

grain to an old customer at a lower price rather than desert him.’

OF THE SMALL LANDOWNER 117

expressed by contemporaries. In some districts they were
‘still protected by the existence of the commonable field,
which made their prorerties not very saleable; in some the
high prices induced them not only to retain their properties
but to buy. Elsewhere they found themselves in the same
‘straits as the small farmer, and realized the truth of
A. Young’s statement that to farm a small property as
owner instead of renting a larger one from another person
was unprofitable.t But a good price could be got for the
nd, and with the purchase-money they could rent a large
m and join the ranks of the capitalist farmers who gave
themselves such airs.2?, Others, with the capital thus raised,
sould start a new career in the colonial or industrial world.
Many of the bolder and more able of them did this.
Witness the names of the Peels, the Fieldens, the
Arkwrights, and many others® who, starting from the
position of yeomen, became famous manufacturers, and
having made a fortune once more returned to the land no
longer as yeomen but as large landowners.

This tendency on the part of the small owner to sell for
he purpose of using his capital to greater profit elsewhere
3 well illustrated in Canada of to-day. I am informed
hat it is a common thing for an owner of a farm in the
1 Quoted, Levy, p. 41. Cf. Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, bk. iii,
4; *A young man who instead of applying to trade or some profes-
on his capital of two or three thousand pounds in purchase and
ultivation of a small piece of land... must bid adieu for ever to all
ope of... a great fortune.’

* Report Royal Commission, 1882, one witness said he much
eferred being a tenant than an owner. In Cheshire I am told °
hat it is not uncommon to-day for yeomen to let their own farms,
0 doubt at a high rent, and lease a farm themselves from a rich and
eprefore more generous landlord.

* Mantoux has collected the names of at least seventeen, p. 381;
Holt, Lancashire, who says yeomen had greatly diminished of late

md gone into trade; Holland says the same of Cheshire, though he
dds that their places had been taken by other small proprietors,

118 CAUSES OF THE DECLINE a

older and more settled parts to sell and go north-west,
where land is cheap and greater profits are to be made,
In a word, the opening up of the new corn district there is"
acting in the same way as the development of manufacture
did in England in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

True the small owner might, and sometimes did, cling
to his little property, and meet the difficulty of want of

money by mortgaging his estate. But he was on slippery
‘ground. Nothing is so demoralizing as debt, and, if the
first man who mortgaged did it to improve his farm, some
one of his successors would be sure to do it for more selfish
reasons—to keep up his position, and that of his daughters,
*€ not to spend the money in reckless extravagance. In
any case, the mortgage once raised, it was much more
likely to be increased than to be paid off. Hence the
result was the same in the end; the property was sold.
And this is the real answer to the question whether the
small landowner went because he wished to go or because he
was obliged. Sometimes it was one, sometimes the other.!

Even the squire above him, that is, the owner of estat
of £500 to £600 a year, was in much the same position.
‘There are not,’ says a writer in 1731, ‘ poorer men in the
world than these gentlemen of small estates and larg
families. They are obliged to serve expensive and unprofi
able offices, to be high sheriffs and justices of the peace, t
their very great burthen and grievance. They have n
way to raise or improve their fortunes; nor industry, nor
ability can be of use to them while they continue countr:
gentlemen. They can only preserve their estates with
much difficulty, but cannot acquire new fortunes. Theil
properties are often entailed, and, what is worse, encum
bered. If they mortgage their lands their mortgages a

1 Froude, Short Studies, Uses of a landed Gentry ; Rae, Why hav
Yeomen gone, Contemp. Review, 1883 ; Hasbach, pp. 103, 105.

VI OF THE SMALL LANDOWNER 119

likely to outlive them, whereas merchants and men in any
way of commerce have often outlived their misfortunes.’ !

_ On the other hand, the constant rise in the price of
agricultural produce made the large farmers willing to
pay high rents. Ricardo, interpreting the facts of the day,
wrote his theory of Rent, and prophesied its indefinite rise.?
Land therefore was looked upon as a good prospective
investment, and was eagerly sought after by the wealthy
landowner, and still more so by the successful lawyer, or
manufacturer or trader. Thus, more and more, the owner-
ship and the farming of land became divorced from one
another, and the smaller owner was bought out.

_ The similarity between the evolution of the industrial
and agricultural movements is close. As in the town the
small master-workman is superseded by the capitalist manu-
facturer, so in the country the small farmer disappears
before the capitalist farmer, while the landlord, who no
longer tills his land, but looks upon it as an investment,
finds his counterpart in the department of industry in the
monied man who invests his money in the new enterprises.
Many landowners, no doubt still continued to farm them-
selves, others still exercised a general control over their
estates, but much of this work was done by agents, who
may be compared to the paid officials of the industrial com-
panies which had already appeared.

| To these purely economical reasons we must add the social
and political. In the shifting and rapidly changing society
of England the ownership of land had long been considered
the only stable and certain proof of position. In the

1 Letter to a Freeholder on the Land Tax, Godwin, Political Tracts,
1731-2. Cf. A. Smith’s statement, that no man can grow rich out of
a small property in land, quoted p. 117, note 1.

2 Rent doubled in the closing years of the eighteenth century. As
much as forty-five years’ purchase was given for land.

120 CAUSES OF THE DECLINE VI

eighteenth century this prejudice increased. Asin the Tudor
times, as indeed at all times, the nouveau riche pressed
into the land market and bought. Once possessed of a
landed estate, he could, if he were a gentleman, at once
take his place in county society; or, if his own manners
and speech proclaimed a more humble birth, he could at.
least look forward to seeing his children do so.

Finally, the possession of land was the easiest way of
acquiring political influence. As Justice of the Peace he
‘would meet the old gentry on equal terms in Petty and
Quarter Sessions, and take part in all measures of local
interest and development, where his business habits made
him in request.1. Nay, the dignified office of high sheriff _
was no longer out of his reach, and if he could not at once
represent his county in Parliament, his vote was at least
becoming increasingly valuable by the shrinking of the list
of the freeholders ; while, if he chose, he could increase his
influence by adding to the number of the leases for lives
among his tenantry. That attempts were made to increase —
the numbers of those qualified to vote is proved on all sides. a
Porrit says that the system of creating fagot votes first i"
appears in 1628, and thence goes on increasingly. Votes ©
in the eighteenth century were claimed not only by pur- ~
chasers of Land Tax, for judicial posts for life, by Clerks |
of the Peace, and for annuities, but also by holders of lecture- _
ships, schoolmasters, choristers, and even, in 1818, by the |
brewer, butler, bellringer, gardener, cook, organ-blower of |
Westminster Abbey—though these last were, indeed, sub- —
sequently disallowed by a Parliamentary Committee; for
freehold pews and even freehold graves. Under allthese
circumstances land had a value above its agricultural, ©

and if the small landowners ‘consulted their pecuniary |
all

. Mantoux, p. 410.
_ ® Porrit, Unreformed House of Commons, i. 22.

Rigen ee

og OF THE SMALL LANDOWNER 121

advantage and sdld, capitalists gratified both their tastes
and their speculative instincts and ambition by buying’, !
and all evidence goes to prove that it was the desire of the
‘moneyed man to become a landowner, rather than the -
craving of the already large landowner to lay field to field,
‘that led to the destruction of the small landowner.

_ Meanwhile, a large property once accumulated, family
pride forbade its subdivision. The leaning of the law in
‘favour of primogeniture was therefore gladly followed by
wills, and strengthened a thousandfold by family settle-
“ments, a practice which apparently was not much resorted
to by the yeomen, or small owners.

How far this change had progressed before the close of
the nineteenth century, and the question as to the dates
when the change was most rapid, we shall subsequently
discuss; but it is at least certain that the small owners
died hard. A great many, more than is usually sup-
posed, survived the Napoleonic Wars; nor had the num-
bers of the smaller squires been as yet seriously diminished.
‘The character was evidently well known to the novelist
and playwright of the time. There: were still many
parishes where the common field was unenclosed and where
a waste remained; nor had domestic by-industries been
entirely destroyed, The famine prices during the war had
kept the yeomen going, while the continued rise in rents
nd in the price of land had influenced all who could to
stick to the land, and even to speculate, often with borrowed
money, in a commodity which seemed to promise such an
unlimited unearned increment.

The bad times then followed. The wars had caused
inflated prices. In 1813, the price of corn had reached
26s. 6d. the quarter. In 1815, it had fallen to 65s. 7d.,

1 Prothero, Pioneers, p. 83.

122 CAUSES OF THE DECLINE VI

and an attempt was made to check the fall by prohibiting
importation when the price was less than 80s. The attempt
failed. The commercial crisis, which had accompanied the
later years of the war and which followed it, aggravated
the distress. Europe, exhausted by the long war, could not
buy our manufactures, and the -poverty at home reduced.
the demand there. War prices were gone, war taxes
remained. The credit of Pitt’s paper currency declined,
and the return to cash payments produced the same result
as a drain on gold. Thus, prices-continued to fall, and
were subject to violent flucttations, partly owing to bad
seasons. In 1821, the price of wheat went down as lowas
36s.1 In 1849, the Corn Laws were repealed. In 1851, the
average price was 38s. 7d., the lowest point reached till
1884, when it fell to 35s. 87.2

By this time foreign competition had begun to tell.
The opening up of new lands and communications, the
phenomenal cheapening of methods of cultivation and of
transit falsified the prophecies of Ricardo and of Malthus.
Rents fell rapidly. The increased introduction of machinery
finally ruined the home industries.

Before these successive blows all those, whether yeomeny
or squires, who had speculated with borrowed money in
land, or raised mortgages on their property to improve it
or for other reasons, or who in the good times had learnt
_ expensive habits, could no longer hold out, and had to sell. It
was with difficulty, then, that any landholder could survive
who had not either a very large rental or some other form
of income whereby to keep his estate together. Here was

1 In 1819, the price of wheat varied from 58s. to 84s. ; 1820, from
54s. to 81s: ; 1821, from 86s. to 66s.; beef and mutton suffered a like
fate ; Prothero, Pioneers, p. 93.

2 Prothero, p. 256.

3 In some counties, e.g. Devon, yeomen who had done well in

VI, OF THE SMALL LANDOWNER 128

_ the final opportunity of the wealthy,-who-could now. buy. in
a falling market—a market. in which the poor_man_was
_no longer a competitor! ‘I bought,’ said Lord Penrhyn,
before the Agricultural Commission of 1881, ‘as many as
twenty-five to thirty small farms. People said they were in
the hands of solicitors who had advanced them money, and
begged me to relieve them of their holdings. I did so, but
under pressure.’ Some of those who sold became his tenants.
_ The disastrous years of 1879-80 led to much the same
results. Speaking of the Isle of Axholme, the paradise of
small owners, Mr. Druce, the assistant commissioner, stated
that the freeholders only managed to survive because
solicitors advanced money to pay interest on mortgages
lest the mortgagees who had by their advice advanced
money on the lands should suffer, since, if mortgagees sued
the owners, they could not pay, and, if they foreclosed, the
land would not at the existing prices pay for the money
lent.? p

Moreover, the tendency of late has been for pasturage
once more to predominate over arable farming. In 1880,
Caird estimated that the-amount of corn growing had
declined ten per cent. in the previous ten years, and that of
the some fifty million acres under cultivation in England
the proportions were these: 25 millions permanent pasture ;
64 millions grass under rotation; 64 millions green crops ;
12% millions corn. This substitution of pasture for arable
farming has not certainly abated since, and it is well
known that the feeding of cattle requires much more

good times often ceased to farm, and let their lands, and either took
to some other business or lived quietly on their income.

1 Of, Report of Committee of 1833, especially Qs. 1262, 1691, 3103,
4862, 9196, 9269, 6056, 6156, 6957, 12216; Report on Agriculture,
House of Lords, 1836, Q. 505; Lord Penrhyn’s evidence before
Committee of 1881, p. 250.

2 Duke of Richmond’s Commission.

124 CAUSES OF THE DECLINE VI

capital than arable farming. In a word, as Caird himself
put it, England is becoming less of an arable farm, more
of meadow and a market garden, while the towns are
extended into the country.!

To what extent the small occupying owner still survives
we shall consider in our next lecture. But if the causes to
which we have attributed their decline are the true ones,
it is difficult to believe that they can have much of a
future. As .market gardeners, the small owners may |
succeed, but will they:be able to compete in the growing
of cereals and the raising and feeding of cattle ??

But although the disappearance of the small landowner
is chiefly to be attributed to natural economic and social |
causes, there is, it appears to me, one way in which some
manorial lords have of late artificially, and of set purpose, |
extinguished small tenancies, I allude to their treatment
of copyholds for lives and years contingent on lives, and
leases for years contingent on lives, in all cases renew-
able. i
It will be remembered that in the sixteenth and seven- |
teenth centuries there were many instances of attempts on the ©
part of lords of the manor to turn copyholds of inheritance —
into copyholds or leases for lives, attempts which in most |
cases succeeded, while in the eighteenth century leases for |
lives were probably created to increase the number of the
voters. In the nineteenth century the copyholder of |
inheritance was too well protected by the Law Courts to —
be thus dealt with, but it is otherwise with the other _
tenancies.

Between copyholds for lives and leases for lives there is
now little difference. They are commonly granted for
three lives, with a right of renewal, that is, of putting in —

! Caird, The Landed Interest.
? Caird, High Farming the best substitute for Protection.

VI OF THE SMALL LANDOWNER 125

a new life or lives before the expiration of the existing
lives, on payment of a fine. With regard to this right
of renewal, however, the Law Courts have decided that
a copyholder can only claim so to do, if he can prove a
‘constant usage of renewal upon payment of a fixed fine
(a reasonable fine will not suffice), while a leaseholder for
life must, if he wishes to renew, have given notice at the
proper time and prove that the lord has covenanted in
express terms so to do.}

So again, with regard to copyholds and leases for
years, these were generally for twenty-one years, renew-
able every seven years on payment of a fine. The copy-
holder held this right by usage of the manor, while the
leaseholder was not so protected.

Now, many lords of the manor, and among them more
especially our Colleges and other corporate bodies, have of
late persistently refused to renew either copyholds for lives,
leases for lives, or copyholds for years and leases for years.
In the case of the leaseholds, whether for lives or years, the
lords were apparently exercising their legal right, although
at other times and in other countries like Ireland, the
custom of renewal long exercised in the past by the lease-
holders for lives or years, might have ripened into a tenant-
right.

In the case of the copyholds my point seems to me
a stronger one. The copyholder, whether for lives or for
years, was protected by constant usage. But this was
difficult to prove. In some cases, indeed, the tenants
themselves were unwilling to renew.? A fine had to be
paid, and as this was often a heavy one—generally seven
times the annual value of the land—the sitting tenant, who

1 Cf. Elton and Mackay, Copyholds.
2 Cf. case of Stratton and Grindstone in Dorset, ae oh Enclosures,
uy 19,

126 CAUSES OF THE DECLINE VI

as a copyholder or as leaseholder would be only paying
a nominal rent,! was tempted to barter away his right and
thus escape the fine. He might beggar his descendants,
but he would benefit himself.

Moreover, as it was usually the custom to insure the
lives, the sitting tenant would directly benefit by non-
renewal, If he allowed the copyhold or lease for lives to
run out he would only have to pay a small rent, and, as
the lives died out, he would obtain a substantial sum
from the insurance office. No doubt he might sometimes
be hoist with his own petard. Of this I have been given ~
an amusing illustration. A copyholder for lives, being
allowed to renew, put in a young life, a most respectable ©
person, and insured his life to the value of the property, to —
protect himself in case the young man should die. Shortly
after the young man took to drink and disappeared. The
copyholder was now in sad straits. The office would not
pay the insurance till his death was proved, yet premiums
had to be paid lest he should reappear. No new life could _
be put in, and the lord could at any time demand produc-
tion of the fresh life, and forfeiture would ensue, forfeiture ©
which in any case would follow on the death of the sittmg ~
tenant.

This story, which is a true one, will show that the
advantages to the copyholder of renewal were sometimes
doubtful. Nevertheless, in most cases the refusal has come —
from the side of the lord. I am told that, although now |
and then these copyholders and leaseholders for lives have |
grumbled, there has not been one case in which they have |
thought it worth while to appeal to law. In this way ©
such tenures, as well as beneficiary leases, are fast |
disappearing.

' If he were a holder of a beneficiary lease the rent would generally i
be a very low one.

OF THE SMALL LANDOWNER 127

_ It seems very clear to me that in all these cases some
injury has been done to the tenants. In the case of the
copyholders at least, they would I believe in earlier days
have been protected by the custom of the manor, a custom
vhich, it should be remembered, would have been inter-
preted by their fellows who were suitors to the court, and
probably interpreted in their favour.!

1 ‘They were very common in Wiltshire where they are called
Bastard copyholds. But of late landlords have refused to renew.’
In the manor of Gamlingay, Merton College turned a copyhold for
lives into a lease for years in 1756, in 1832 the College refused to
enew; in the manor of Cuxham the College has lately refused to
enew two out of five copyholds for lives; in the three other manors
the College in 1889 refused to renew fourteen copyholds for years,
f. Merton College Index to Register Copyholds.
Magdalen and Corpus Christi Colleges have pursued a like policy.
We find cases of copyholds for lives being turned into leaseholds for
lives on the priory lands in Durham, and in the seventeenth century

refusal of the Dean and Chapter to renew; ef. Victoria County
Hist. : Durham, vol. ii, pp. 228, 230.

Lawrence in his Duty of a Steward (1727) advises lords to substitute
leaseholds for lives for copyholds for lives, no doubt with the object
of subsequently refusing to renew, p. 59.

VII

EVIDENCES AS TO EXACT DATES WHEN THE
SMALL LANDOWNER DECLINED

Wz have stated that the consolidation of landed property
and the disappearance of the small landowner progressed
with rapid strides from the close of the seventeenth century
onwards, and have dealt with theories as to the causes of
that momentous phenomenon, We have now to attempt
an inquiry as to the exact dates during shee period when
the movement was most pronounced,

The evidence on this point is twofold: the statements
of contemporary authorities and such statistics as we may
have. That afforded by contemporary authorities must be,
accepted with caution. Few contemporary writers possess
that calm judgement which is nécessary for an impartial
estimate. They are under the influence of prejudice and often
see what they wish to see. Fewer have a complete know-
ledge of the whole country, and these are prone to imagine
that the local circumstances of their own district are those
of others, and thus to generalize too hastily. Thus it
behoves us to test their statements by reference to statistics.
But here again we must beware. Anything, it has been
said, may be proved by statistics even when they are com-
plete, which unfortunately is not always the case. ~~

I have already said that from early Stuart times to the
middle of the eighteenth century we have at present little
data, and even after that date I at first despaired of much
success. I began by approaching the great landowners of

a
y

Ai
‘

VII DECLINE OF SMALL LANDOWNER = 129

to-day. But although my inquiries were answered with
the greatest courtesy, and I did obtain some interesting
information, I was more often met either with a naive
issertion from each individual that neither he nor his
ancestors had been guilty of the sin of Ahab, or by a frank
acknowledgement of total ignorance on the subject. Their
title-deeds, they said, were lying either at their solicitors’ or
stowed away in their ancestral mansions. I was at liberty
0 consult them, but they had not the time themselves to
pursue the inquiry, nor in these evil days of heavy taxation
and death duties the wherewithal to meet the expense of
having the search made for them. Clearly, with the limited
time at my disposal, a personal search was out of the question.
Suddenly the idea occurred to me that the Land Tax
ssessments might help me. Finding that these assess-
ments were in the hands of the Clerks of the Peace, or the
erks to the County Councils, up to 1832, and then in the
hands of Clerks to the Commissioners of the Land Tax, I
~ sent a circular-letter to all the English counties. I once more
met with the greatest cordiality, except from the county of
issex, whence I was informed that the county records were
not open to inspection, and, in spite of my applying to the
ord Lieutenant, and then, by his direction, to the Chair-
nan of the County Council, I have not as yet obtained the
ecessary leave.
Elsewhere, however, I discovered that I had hit upon a
erfect mine of evidence, evidence which as far as I know
as never been made use of.! It is true that these returns

:

1 The origin of the Land Tax is to be found in the monthly assess-
“ments raised by the Long Parliament during the Civil War. These
“Assessments were continued after the Restoration in the Property
ax, a tax of 4s. in the pound on the annual value of land, personal
operty, and on official salaries. Until 1692, periodical assessments
ere made, then, owing to the difficulty of such assessments, the Acts
+10 and 10-11 William and Mary declared that a tax of ls. in the
JOHNSON : I

130 EVIDENCES AS TO DATE OF VIL

present considerable difficulties. In some counties they are —
to be found as eatly as 1746, in some not till much later, in |
some there are serious gaps. Some, and especially many
of the earlier ones, do not distinguish between owners and
occupiers, Nor are the returns always uniform, In some
the annual value, in some the actual amount of the tax
paid, is taken as the basis of the return. Sometimes both

pound should be taken to represent a fixed sum—£1,484,015 1s, 113d.,
and that the quota to be paid by each district coal be the same as
it had been in 1692, the date of the last assessment. The quotas thus
apportioned were very unequal, because the basis of assessment was
that fixed by the Long Parliament when the burden of the tax fell on
those counties which supported the parliamentary cause; thus the
quotas of London and Middlesex are the highest, those of the Northern
counties and the West the lowest.

From that date till 1798 the tax was granted annually at varying
rates from 1s. to 4s.in the pound. Then Pitt made it perpetual at 4s,
while he allowed it to be redeemed at fifteen years’ purchase. Mean-
while, by Will. & Mary 9-10, 10-11, the tax on personal property,
which had fallen into disuse, had been made a separate tax annually
granted, but it. produced so little owing to the difficulty of assessment
that it was repealed in 1733, while that on offices lasted till i |
Cf. Bourdon, Land Tax.

The Land Tax assessments exist for the following counties :—

{

Berks, late. Kent, since 1744 (a few as early
Bucks., late. ; as 1682). |
Cambridge ... ... since 1829 Lancaster... ... sinee 1781
Chester fe PF y, 1780 - Leicester... one 5 ee
Cornwall _... ae »» 1770 Lincoln ‘x. ie 97 - d7 OR
Cumberland Sa » 1852 Norfolk mY Rae Sy, ae
Derby be ie », 1778 Northampton - » 1746
Devon ae hs », 1780 Oxon, 5 as ee
Dorset 3 » Somerset... aie 99)
Durham, not till late, Stafford ss ia 9 10S
Essex >A ... since 1773 Suffolk F: ae 5 ee
Gloucester ... Swe », 1775 Surrey a oy yv> AS
Hants, very late, earlier ones Sussex abe aan > =
destroyed, Warwick .... cae pee |
Hereford, since 1802 (a few as Westmoreland Fe! », 179!

early as 1777). Wilts. sia + » 178

From the other counties I have received no information.

VII DECLINE OF SMALL LANDOWNER 131

e given. Sometimes apparently an idle assessor would
mly assess holdings sufficient to provide for the quota.
Moreover, as we know, the tax varied between 1s. and
4s.in the £ until the year 1798, when William Pitt made
perpetual at 4s., allowing landowners henceforth to
redeem the tax at fifteen years’ purchase, and from that
date sometimes the lands exonerated are omitted from the
eturns, There are therefore numerous traps spread for
he unwary or careless statistician.
Nevertheless, of the importance of these assessments there
ean be no question, not only as evidence on the question
before us but on many questions dealing with land. They
vive us the surnames and Christian names of every one
whing or occupying land and even cottages, and the
mount of each person’s assessments or of the annual value
of his holding. We can therefore by their help trace the
ontinuous life of a parish up to this very year of grace,
e can learn from them whether farms were being con-
olidated or whether they were being broken up into smaller
nes, whether the numbers of owners wax or wane. We can
“trace the building up of large estates and their dispersion.
iven the family historian can obtain great assistance. We
an see how long the same family continued either as land-
wners or as farmers, and whether they shifted from the
osition of owner to that of tenant, and vice versa, Nay, we
an often fix the date of a man’s death and whether he left
widow or children in possession, or whether his lands fell
ato the hands of trustees.
T have said enough I trust to draw attention to the value
these documents, and I intend to urge local authorities
) jealously preserve them in the future, and all antiquarian
nd historical societies to have them published if possible.
ere at least is a new field for the future researcher which
is, as far as I know, quite untrodden ground.
12

a

132 EVIDENCES AS TO DATE OF VII

My own researches have unfortunately been very limited,
of the 15,000 odd parishes in England I have only been
able to analyse, or to have analysed for me, some 500,
distributed as follows!: 801 parishes from Oxfordshire ;
50 from Wiltshire; 40 from Norfolk ; 10 from Gloucester-
shire; 3 from Hants, 4 from Sussex ; 40 from Kent; 27
from Hereford ; 24 from Lancashire, as well as evidence
from half a dozen landowners in Yorkshire, Wiltshire, and
a Midland county.

From these I have drawn the following conclusions;
First, that there was a very remarkable consolidation of
estates and a shrinking in the number of the smaller
owners somewhere between the beginning of the seven-
teenth century and the year 1785, more especially in the
Midland counties. Thus, in comparing the Tudor or early
Stuart surveys of twenty-four Oxfordshire parishes with
the Land Tax assessments of 1785 given in the table below
we find that, while in the earlier period there were 482 free-
holders or copyholders, or tenants for lives, who poss
of land less than 100 acres—and who therefore, in all prob-|
ability, for the most. part cultivated it themselves—and
who together held a total acreage of 13,674 acres, or ai
average of 28 acres each, these had by 1785 shrunk t
212 owners and occupiers with a total acreage of 4,494 acres,
or an average of 21 acres each. That is to say, they had
diminished by more than half in number, and the |
by more than two-thirds. 7

Again, out of ten Gloucestershire parishes, the respective
positions in the seventeenth century and in 1782 or 1785
were: seventeenth century, 229 owning and occupyi ng
6,458 acres ; 1782-5, 80 owning and occupying 1,104 acres)
3 .
.} Many of these were for many reasons useless—and the actua .
number which I have been able to tabulate is much less.

accent

el

I DECLINE OF SMALL LANDOWNER 1838

Here the number has decreased to nearly one-third, and ,
the acreage to less than one-fifth.
I.

SuRVEYs—SIXTEENTH, SEVENTEENTH
Baaiteriscin. AssEssMENT 1782-5,
No. of oon Total ane | Tota
Parishes. 100 acres, acreage. occupying. acreage.
Oxford 24 482 13,674 212 4,494
Gloucester 10 229 6,458 80 1,104

Note. In analysing these surveys, the Demesne has been excluded
because this was leased, Also all outside the Demesne who held more
han 100 acres, because they would probably not be farming their
own land. Of course the occupying owner of the seventeenth century
has notin all cases lost the land in the eighteenth century, but he has
pased to farm it.
Passing to the next table (II), dealing with fifteen parishes —
aken from various counties, we find that, according to the
surveys from Henry VIII’s reign to the year 1704, there
"were 472 freeholders or copyholders, and 59 cottagers,
whereas before or by 1786 the number of owners occupying
ad fallen to 92 and 35 cottagers, and the number of owners
io 225, besides 41 who owned cottages, and 13 who might
‘be either owners only or occupiers as well. This would
‘make a grand total of 8380—or, including Lord Leicester,
who possessed most of eight parishes, of 831 owners above
ix acres, and 76 owning cottages.
And now to come to Table III. Here you will see that
n 1785, there were in Oxfordshire alone, out of some 301
arishes, no less than 96 in which there were no owners
ing at all; and 75 in which the number was less

In Wiltshire, in 1780, out of 50 ‘parishes, 4 with no
wners who occupied their lands, and 17 in which the
umber was under 6,

EVIDENCES AS TO DATE OF

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138

In Kent, in 1753, out of 40 parishes, 10 with no owners
occupying, and 13 in which the number was under 6.

In Hants, in 1772, out of 3 parishes, 2 in which the
number was under 6.

In Norfolk and in Lancashire the percentage of these
denuded or partially denuded parishes is smaller. In Nor-
folk, in 1712, out of 25 parishes, 2 in which there were
‘no owners occupying, 7 in which the number was under 6..

In Lancashire, in 1781, out of 24 parishes, none where
there were no owners occupying’; five in which the number
was under 6.

VII DECLINE OF SMALL LANDOWNER

TIT.
Number in Number in
hich there | which there are
Date of Out of bs
Assessment. | Parishes. eerie not more than
Owners who | 5 Owners who
occupy. occupy.
Oxford 1785 301 96 75
Wilts. ee 1780 50 4 we
BLOW Geos, fae: é 1753 40 10 " 13
atts... 1772 3 0 : ee
Norfolk . 1772 25 2 7
Lancashire , . 1781 24 0 5

But further, there is some evidence, not indeed so con-
elusive as I should wish, that the really critical period was
somewhere after 1688. Thus, you will see that in the case
of Queensborough, Table II, there has been a decrease of at
least 6 in 30 years (19 to 13), and several of the owners of
1772, who do not occupy, may well have purchased lands
on the demesne; whereas the demesne is not included in
the survey of 1704.

This opinion is further confirmed by refering to Table IV.
Here, in 8 Oxford parishes, the number of landowners
has, between 1760 and 1785, been reduced from 69 to 41,
or 8 per parish in 25 years.

|
136 EVIDENCES AS TO DATE OF Vil
. IV.

.Oxford . . ..| 1760 | Parishes 8 | 69 Landowners
om ¢ thon eaten eee 53 8 | 41 sh

Lastly, in one Northumberland manor, the names
remained unchanged till 1755 and then disappear.!

I may also add, as is seen by Table V, that it is during
the period 1720-85 that three of my great landowners, |
A, D, F, made their largest acquisitions.

How far enclosure during this period is followed at once
by consolidation it is difficult to say. Few of the Land
Tax returns are to be found much before 1780, and, of those
that exist, fewer distinguish between those who own only
and those who occupy as well as own. Nevertheless, the
8 Oxford parishes given in Table IV, and in which there is
certainly a considerable shrinking in owners, were all
enclosed between 1760 and 1785. an

These conclusions are supported by a very general con-
sensus of opinion among contemporaries that the closing
years of the seventeenth century and the first fifty.
years of the eighteenth century were fatal to the small
owner. Thus, Roger North, in his Life of Lord Keeper
Guildford (1676), says that ‘most manors are more than?
half lost’, and urges repopulation.? Thoroton (1677) declares.
that ‘ this prevailing mischief (enclosure) in some parts of
this shire (Nottingham) hath taken away and destroyed

more private families of good account than time itself
within the compass of my observations’, and that only
a few have escaped.? John Cowper (1782) asserts that
within his knowledge ‘ twenty parishes have been enclosed
and in a manner depopulated’, and that in some parishes
£120 families of farmers and cottagers have, in a few years,
been reduced to 4, 2, aye sometimes 1 family’, and prolia

. + Hist. of Northumberland, iv. 266.
? Roger North, Life of Lied Guildford, ed. 1742, p. 23,
8 Thoroton, Nottingham, Preface.

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138 EVIDENCES AS TO DATE OF VIL

that if enclosing continues we may expect to see all great
estates engrossed in a few hands.1_ Massie, writing in 1758,
speaks of the monopoly of farms of one to 600 acres in 14
counties: Lincoln, Notts., Leicester, Rutland, Warwick,
Worcester, Northampton, Bedford, Bucks., Oxon., Berks.,
Isle of Wight, Herts., Cambridge—the counties especially |
mentioned in the statute 27 Henry VIII with regard to
enclosures.2, Roger North, in his Discourse of the Poor,
1758, tells us of the ‘ vast number of small parchments,
deeds, being feoffment and releases to houses, cottages,
tenements, and small scattered pieces of land (which one
may find among the archives of the chief landowners), |
where now perhaps only lives one shepherd or farmer under
a single proprietor ’.° Addington, writing in 1767, says it
is not uncommon to find 5 or 6 farmers where once there |
were 30 or 40, though this refers to consolidation of farms
rather than to-ownership.*

So again, Howlett, though an apologist for enclosure,
admits that between 1740 and 1788, 4 or 5 on an average
were absorbed in each parish, which, if it were true of all
England, would amount to some 40,000 to 50,000,° while
A. Young (1778) deplores their disappearance: their lands
are now in the hands of big men,® and it is surely signi-
ficant that Goldsmith’s Deserted Village was written in
1770. Finally, Sir T. Bunbury says that the yeomanry,
once the pride of the nation, were, by influx of riches and
change of manners, nearly annihilated in 1750.’

1 J. Cowper, Enclosing contrary to interest of Nation, quoted by
Slater, Enclosures, p. 110.

2 J. Massie, Plea for Charity Houses, p. 83.

3 Quoted, Transactions Royal Hist. Soc., xix. 120.

4 §. Addington, Enquiry into reasons, p. 88; Lévy, Entstehung des
landwirthschaftl. Grossbetriebes, p. 37, and authorities quoted.

5 T. Howlett, Insufficiency of causes to which increase of poor rates

has been attributed, p. 42, ® Quoted, Mantoux, p. 126.
7 Cf. Dict. of Pol. Econ., Article Yeomanry.

~VII DECLINE OF SMALL LANDOWNER 1389

_ Indeed, only three authorities that I have come across
tell a different tale. Defoe, writing in 1724, speaks in the
well-known passage of ‘1,400 or 1,500 freeholders about
Canterbury alone, who, for the plainness of their appearance,
are called the grey coats of Kent, but are so considerable
that whoever they vote for is sure to carry the election ’.!
An anonymous writer in 1733 says that the number of
freeholders must be much less than 400,000.2 Horner, on
Enclosures, 1766, declares there is scarce any county in
which the numbers of the freeholders do not turn out upon an
election more considerable than formerly.’ All these, how-
ever, are loose statements, and besides, freeholders might be
increased by enfranchising copyholds, or by substituting
leases for lives, or by the numerous methods for creating
fancy franchises already mentioned.*
. When, however, we pass to the a aaatk that is from
1785 to 1802, the returns from the assessments do not, as
far as they go, give the expected answer. If we are to
believe the statement of many authorities that consolidation
always followed rapidly on enclosure, and that it also
accompanied the industrial revolution, this period should
be marked by a great decline in the number both of owners
and occupiers. This was the opinion of A. Toynbee in his
Industrial Revolution, an opinion repeated by Mantoux,
who calls the close of the eighteenth century the period of
‘the agony of the yeomanry’, not only in those counties
where great industries arose, but in purely agricultural
counties as well.5

1 Defoe, Tour, vol. i, Letter ii, 38.

2 Godwin, Pol. Tracts, Bod]. Lib. 1154, p. 28.

8’ Horner, Essay on Enclosures, p. 15,

* Porrit, Unreformed Parliament, p. 22.

° Mantoux, La Révolution industrielle, p. 129. He gives references
to authorities for Warwickshire, Hertford, and Lancashire; see also
Lévy, Entstehung des landwirthschaftl. Grossbetriebes, p. 62.

140 EVIDENCES AS TO DATE OF Vil

Such, however, is by no means universally the case, nay, —
it is rather the other way. Indeed, as I began the task of —
summarizing the results of my returns I was forcibly re- —
minded of Sheridan’s remark to Fox, ‘these d——d facts —
are knocking the bottom out of my motion.’ Thus, in —
Table VI, for 21 Oxfordshire parishes, though there —
is, between the years 1772-1802, a decline in the total —
number of owners holding over 6 acres (219 to 203, —
ie. 16), and of those owning and occupying under —
6 acres (38-36, i.e. 2), there is a rise in the number of ©
those who own and occupy above 6 acres, from 68 to 76
(i.e. an increase of 8), as well as in the number of those
who own below 6 acres (4 to 38).

Again, if you will look at Table VIII you will see that |
in the 295 Oxfordshire parishes the number of owners
and occupiers increases from 1133 to 1179, as well as the |
acreage they occupy. '

Now, turning to Wilts. (Table VII), we find during the |
same period in 46 parishes a decrease in the number of
those who own both above and below 6 acres—593 to 574
and 259 to 241; but a slight increase, 172 to 178, of those
who own and occupy above 6 acres. )

In Kent (Table X) in 37 parishes a decrease in number |
of owners between 1753-98, but a very striking increase
in the number of occupying owners (137 to 459) of those
owning over 6 acres, and of 87-123 in those owning less.

In these three counties, Oxfordshire, Wilts., and Kent,
therefore, the tendency is for owners who do not farm their
own lands to decrease, but for owners farming their lands
to increase, and this conclusion is supported by Tables XV,
XVI, and XVII, which deal with owners only, and here it
is noticeable that the large owners appear to add to their
, properties at the expense of smaller owners who do not
occupy, rather than of those who do.

“VII DECLINE OF SMALL LANDOWNER 141

_ Lancashire, however, does show an instructive variation.
There, as shown in Table XI, there is a very considerable
decrease in the numbers of both classes of owners. The
explanation of this is no doubt to be looked for in the
geographical position of the county. Including some of
the great manufacturing towns, it felt the influence of the
industrial revolution far earlier than the three counties
above mentioned. Unfortunately, the early assessments for
the West Riding of Yorkshire have not been preserved.
It would have been most interesting to learn whether, as
we should expect, they told the same tale.

This evidence again receives most satisfactory confirma-
tion from contemporary authorities. Thus Holt, in his
general view of the agriculture of the county of Lancaster,
1795, says that ‘ while property has become more minutely
divided since the introduction of manufactures, yet the
yeomanry, formerly numerous, have greatly diminished of
late . . . the greater wealth which has in many instances
been acquired by some of their neighbours, and probably
heretofore their dependants, has offered sufficient tempta-
tion to venture their property in trade, in order that they
might keep pace with these fortunate adventurers’, and
that the farmers who have mostly sprung from the in-
dustrious labourers place their children in the manufac-
turing line. This is also supplemented by the account of
Cheshire, where Aikin, 1795, tells us that the old yeomen
have disappeared, a number of small farms having been
bought by manufacturers of cotton, though apparently
this meant a change of personnel, not a consolidation of
holdings.” |

_ } Holt, Lancaster, c. 11, p. 18.

? Aikin, Manchester, pp. 43, 44; Holland, Cheshire, 1808, quoted
Contemporary Review, pp. 145-55,

142 EVIDENCES AS TO DATE OF ~~ —VII

On the other hand Gooch, in his Agriculture of Oxford,
mentions many small proprietors, particularly in the open —
fields,! and Mayor, writing in 1808, says one-third of the —
county of Berks. is occupied by proprietors. Boys, speaking —
of Kent in 1803, declares that the number of yeomanry —
seems annually on the increase, by the estates which are _
divided and sold by the occupiers, and adds that, of ten —
farms which were in the hands of tenants in 1771 nine ©
were by 1803 owned by their occupiers, two of whom —
were old tenants, He’further declares that no description |
of persons can afford to give so much money for land as
those who buy it for their own occupation,? a statement ©
which is, I daresay, correct enough if he means that an |
owner who tills his own land can get a greater return |
from it than one who lets it,

Marshall, 1790, also draws attention to this characteristic |
of the Kentish yeoman, who bought land when farming
was profitable. But when he goes on to contrast the con-
duct of the Norfolk yeoman and to declare ‘ that many,
seeing men whom they lately held their inferiors raised by |
an excessive profit which had been recently made by farm-
ing, became dissatisfied with the homeliness of their
situation and sold their comparatively small patrimonies |
in order that they might—agreeably with the fashion or
frenzy of the day—become great farmers’, I regret to say |
that my evidence, so far as it goes, does not support him. |
For in Table XII you will see that between 1792-1814 —
the numbers of the yeomen are nearly doubled, though there _
is a decrease in the number of owners who are letting their —
farms. However, these Norfolk statistics are not very
complete. They come only from thirteen parishes—there ©
are 736 in Norfolk; and besides, you see that the period

~ 1? Rae, Contemporary Review, 1883, p. 551; ef. also Tuke, N. Riding —
electors, p. 28.
2 Boys, Kent, p, 27, quoted Contemporary Review, 44, p. 549.

VII DECLINE OF SMALL LANDOWNER 148

from which my returns are drawn does not begin till 1792,
nd runs on to 1814,

I have not obtained any contemporary confirmation of my
statistics from Wilts.,! but W. Rae,? in an article in the
Contemporary Review some years ago, pointed out that if
we can trust contemporary authorities there is very good
reason to believe that the small owner still survived in very
considerable numbers in the Midland counties and in parts of
orkshire, as is attested by Marshall, a very competent and
carefulauthority. Marshall, also speaking of the Midlands
in 1790, mentions ‘a species of frenzy, terramania, forty
years’ purchase being often given by small owners’, whereas
elsewhere, where the farmers were tenants, the price was
not nearly so high, and he says much the same of the vale of
Pickering in Yorkshire. To these counties mentioned by
Marshall, which lie for the most part removed from the great
industrial centres and were therefore not likely to feel the
influence of the development of manufacture so early or so
acutely, we should add Essex, of which A. Young says in 1802
as Boys said of Kent, ‘ Never was therea greater proportion
of small and moderate-sized farms, the property of mere
farmers, than at present. Such has been the prosperous
state of agriculture for twenty or thirty years past, that
scarce an estate is sold, if divided into lots of £40 or £50 to

1 Marshall says of N. Wilts, that the yeomen are inconsiderable,
and that the tenancies are mostly at will or on twenty-one years’
ease: Rural Economy.

2 Cf. Rae, Why have Yeomen perished, Contemporary, Oct. 1883.

* The counties mentioned by Marshall are—Cumberland, West-
moreland, Yorks, (parts of), Staffordshire, Shropshire, Gloucester,
orthampton, Notts., Oxford, Berks,, Devon, Kent, Surrey, Lincoln.
See Marshall: N. Dep., 172, 182, 218, 231, 269, 355; Mid, Dep., 33,
58, 339, 451; E. Dep., 102; S. Dep., 79, 395, 417, 483, 553; W. Dep.,
38. For Berks. and Shropshire cf. also Mayor, Berks., 113; Plymly,
Shropshire (1803), 91; for Lincoln, Slater, p. 52; for Cumberland,
Bailey and Culley, Report, 1787,

144. + EVIDENCES AS TO DATE OF VIL

£200 a year but is purchased by farmers, who can certainly !
give more for them than almost any other person, as they |
turn them to the highest advantage by their own cultiva-
tion.’ |

Of Westmoreland I am informed that it was a common
practice for younger sons who had returned with fortunes
made in trade (in India or the colonies) to invest their
savings in land, which was then handed over to the head of
the family. .He then by agreement proceeded to execute
an ordinary family settlement, by which the newly acquired
property was settled on himself and his heirs in tail, charges,
on the estate being by the same deed made for the benefit
of these Jacobs. By this means the nominal holding of the’
family was increased, while a large part of the proceeds”
was settled on the younger sons.” .

Thus the conclusion to which all evidence that we have’
points is that; during the period 1785 to 1802, there was
an increase rather than a decrease of the yeomen proper in
all parts of England, except those like Lancashire which
were more directly and rapidly affected by the industrial
revolution, and that, if there was consolidation of property
among owners who did not farm their lands, this was
rather at the expense of other owners or squires than of
yeomen,® The reasons for this increase of yeomen I have
already suggested. The years were good, and the small
occupying owners were tempted to hold on and even to
increase the size of their properties, although such a policy
often involved them in debt. 3

When we pass to the next period, that is from 1802 to

1 Young, Essex, p. 23, quoted Contemporary, 44, p. 548.

2 Wordsworth attributes the later decline of Westmoreland to the
destruction of the smaller domestic industries: Description of the
Lakes, ed. 1822, pp. 63, 100.

* H. Beeke, Observations on Income Tax, p 21, says there were, in.
1800, 200,000 proprietors in England.

If DECLINE OF SMALL LANDOWNER = 145

1832, there is a different tale to tell, In the 21 Oxford-
shire parishes (Table VI) there is decrease all round : of
owners holding over 6 acres, 203 to 191 (i.e. 12), and of
those holding under 6 acres, 33 to 31 (i.e. 2); of occupy-
ing owners over 6 acres, 76 to 59 (i.e. 17); and of those
occupying under 6 acres, 36 to 27 (or 9); and in other
1 295 parishes (Table VIII) a decrease of 177 (1,179 to
) 1,002) in the numbers of owners occupying, although the
) acreage held by them is increased.
» In the 46 Wiltshire parishes (Table VII) there is a
) notable decrease of owners holding over 6 acres, 574 to 490;
and a small one of owners occupying over 6 acres, 178 to
1169 ; although there is a large increase of owners holding
) under 6 acres: 241 to 290.
In the Kent parishes (Table X) the returns are very
) similar.
In Lancashire (Table XI) a decrease all round.
' In Hereford (Table XVII), for which we now have
returns for 27 parishes, again a decrease both in numbers
of owners not occuping and in owners occupying above
6 acres, although a slight increase in the number of those
who hold less than 6 acres.
| During the ensuing thirty years—1832 to 1862—the fall
/still continues in Oxfordshire, Wiltshire, Lancashire,
) Herefordshire, Kent, and Norfolk, so far as yeomen are
oncerned, although there is an increase in the numbers of
owners, but this is probably to be accounted for by the
growth of populous villages. It will also be observed that
of my 5 large proprietors, 3 made considerable acquisi-
Htions during this period.!
Between 1862 and 1892, we note in Oxfordshire an

+ Tables: Oxon., VI, VIII, IX; Wilts, VII; Hereford, XVII;
Xent, X; Norfolk, XIII. Cf, p. 150 ff.
Table V, p. 187,

JOHNSON K

146 EVIDENCES AS TO DATE OF Vil

increase in the number of owners, but a decrease in the:
number of yeomen, in Kent, in Herefordshire, and in.
Lancashire a fall in the number of owners and a rise in.
the number of those who occupy; in Wiltshire a rise, and
in Norfolk a slight fall in both.?

The story of the sixty years from 1832 to 1892 would
lead us to the conclusion that as a general rule the small
occupying owner is more affected by hard times than by
good. It is often said that he eagerly sold his land in the
good times and took. to trade or manufacture. No doubt
this did to an extent occur. But, as a rule, the small cul-
tivator in England, as in France, is not a man of much
enterprise or ambition. He clings to his old home and to
his ancestral occupation, and if he is prosperous he will
probably prefer to put his savings into more land or adop
a higher style of living. Unfortunately, he is not often
adverse to borrowing, and the mortgage has ever been th
curse of the small owner; more sold in the bad times be-
cause they were obliged, and though they sold at a loss,
than in the good times when they could have sold at
profit.

One more remark I should like to make. From .
somewhat careful inquiry into the relation of enclosur
to consolidation, while I do not deny that enclosure, bot
of common field and of waste, did facilitate consolidation
and was sometimes advocated for that very purpose, I hay
come to the conclusion that it was not necessarily followe
by an absorption of small holdings. Whether it was so ¢1
not depended on whether the moment of enclosure was on

1 Tables: Oxon., VI, IX; Kent, X; Herefordshire, XVII; Lane:
shire, XI; Wilts., VII; Norfolk, XII.

2 Miss Leonard, Transactions Royal Hist. Soc., xix. 121, says, th:
at the opening of the nineteenth century we find fewer properti
and larger farms in enclosed than in unenclosed parishes, and -_
Marshall, Midlands, pp. 206, 250, 848.

VII_ DECLINE OF SMALL LANDOWNER 147

of consolidation or the local circumstances favourable.
Thus, during the period up to about 1785 enclosures were
often followed by that result, but in the ensuing period,
1) 1785-1804, it certainly was not generally the case.

It is also worth noting that Kent, where there were
ertainly no common fields in 1803, and where there
probably were never many, is one of the favonrite haunts
of the small owner.

After the year 1892, the worst seems to have been
assed, and between this year and 1907 the returns seem
to indicate a general improvement in the condition and
numbers of the small landowner, though that improvement
s neither universal nor great.
But, after all, I have been forced to two conclusions,
First, that by far the most serious period for the small
owner was at the close of the seventeenth and during the first
half of the eighteenth century ; in short, the period of the
final transition from mediaeval to modern agricultural con-
ditions; and secondly, that the changes since the middle
of the eighteenth century have not been nearly so radical
as they have been generally supposed to be. -

To this opinion I have been brought by the evidence of
the Land Tax assessments, which, I confess, has very
much surprised me. It is true that most of my returns
come from counties which were not very closely influenced
by the industrial revolution, and that Lancashire, the
me county of this kind of which I have returns, does
ppear to have been more seriously affected than others.
There may have been some mistakes made in the returns,
specially in failing to carefully note where one owner is
eparately assessed for separate properties, and thus count-
Ming him twice or even three times over, but these mistakes

aannot, I think, have been frequent.. I may have been
unfortunate in the counties I- selected, and a wider survey
K 2

148 EVIDENCES AS TO DATE OF VIL

might lead to different results, but certainly the limited
evidence which I have collected is somewhat startling, as
you will see by consulting Table X VIII, the last.1

You will there note that in Lancashire and Kent ther
has been since 1781 a decided and general decrease in all
classes of landowners ; but that in the three counties grouped
together—Oxon., Wilts., and Hereford—of owners of over
6 acres the decrease has been not very serious, and that
there is a positive increase in the number of owners and
of occupiers under that acreage, while in Norfolk there has
in the 13 parishes been an increase of both classes by about
1 in every parish.

Finally, these returns warn us not to exaggerate th
monopoly of land in England to-day. If you will make th
additions for yourselves you will find that in 151 parishes
in Oxfordshire, Wiltshire, Kent, Lancashire, and Herefor
there were, in 1892, 2,486 owners—that is, an average o
16 owners per parish—and that in 119 parishes in th
same counties, with the exception of Kent, there were 532
owners farming their own land—that is, an average of
44 per parish.? If we were to apply these numbers to th
15,000 parishes in England, that would come to some
240,000. owners in England who do not farm their o
land, and some 67,500 who do. '

These results correspond very closely to.the Ney
Domesday Book of 1876, and to the return of the Boar
of Agriculture of 1896. The New Domesday Book
estimates the number of owners in England who hold frox
1 acre and upwards at 260,000, and the return of 189!
puts the number of those owners who occupy their ow
land from 1 acre upwards at 66,700, It is true that m
_ returns, both for owners and occupiers, in Norfolk and foi
occupying owners in Kent exceed those given in these tw

+P, 154, . * Cf. Tables VI, VII, X, XI, XVII,

vII DECLINE OF SMALL LANDOWNER 149

stimates. Norfolk, I confess, has caused me much trouble ;
he returns to the Land Tax are sometimes on the amount
f the actual tax paid, sometimes on the rateable value,
nd I regret to say that they are not very reliable. As
0 Kent, the explanation is to be found in the fact that
he Land Tax assessments include a good many who hold
ess than one acre.

If, then, we turn to the Report of the Board of Agri-
ulture, 1896,1 we are told that there were some 66,700
yeomen farming their own land, with an acreage of nearly
3 million acres, that is about 14 per cent. of the land
Vunder cultivation in England. From the tables which
ollow we learn that there is not a single county where
they do not hold 10 per cent., and that in 11 they hold
20 per cent. of the area in saienion:

The important feature to notice is the variety in the
percentage of each county, and it is this variety which
points to the conclusion of the whole.matter. The small
owner has survived where the circumstances were favour-
ble.2 His disappearance has been due not so much to
rtificial as to natural circumstances, but the circum-
stances, political, social, and economical, have since the
seventeenth century been against him ‘The political, and
9 some extent the social, have altered, but the economical
emain the same. The geographical position of our island,
ts climate, its soil, the character of its people, and the
Ppart we have played and do play in the history of the
Pworld, still lean in the same direction, and I agree with

1 Board of Agriculture, 1896, ¢. 8502, table viii and onoRine
ables.
? The counties in which the peasant proprietor thrives best are:
ineolnshire, the Isle of Axholme, cf. Slater, p. 52; Norfolk, Kent,
issex, especially in the fruit-farms ; Cumberland and Westmoreland,
though they are there declining; the Vale of Evesham Gloucester-
Wshire, and Worcestershire, chiefly in the orchard district; the New
) Forest, Hants ; Devonshire.

150

Mr. Prothero! when he says, ‘ Reduce population. by one-
half, revive ‘domestic industries, return commons and
wastes to their former barrenness, make the farmer inde-
pendent of manufacture, in a word, restore the conditions
of self-sufficing agriculture, and the peasant proprietor

EVIDENCES AS TO DATE OF

may thrive,’ and then I would add Protection.

vil

VI. Oxon, : 21 PartsHEs.
Owners’ Acreage Owners occupying Acreage
Date. *~ Above Above
a Under > =e —. Under
1000 200 40 6 | 1000 200 40 6 6
1772| 5 | 82 | 88 | 99]. 4 1s | 50 | 38]
Total | 219 Total | 68
1802] 6 29 80. | 88] 383 1 21 54 86
Total | 208 Total | 76 ,
18382| 6 80 76 79} 31 2 15 42 | 27
Total | 191 Total | 59
1862} 7 | 82 56 78 36 1 9 36 20
Total} 173 _ | Total] 46
1892| 7 81 60 92} 42 12 42 13 |
Total | 190 Total | 54 |
1907} 8 | 27 | 61 | 115| 78 8 | 28 | 28)
Total | 211 Total | 26 Y
Vit. Witrs. : 46 ParisHes.
1780 44 164 | 385 | 259 11 50 111 }278
Total | 593 Total | 172
1802} 8 48 164 | 359 | 241 3 53 122 | 173
Total | 574 Total | 178
1831] 38 52 152 | 283 | 290 9 56 104 | 1738
Total | 490 Total | 169 }
1862] 7 52 130 | 252 | 328 1 10 82 45 | 164 |
Total | 441 Total | 88 '
1892} 7 44 124 | 310 | 295 11 42 68 | 118
Total | 485 Total} 121
1907| 6 | 88 | 115 | 322| 335 4 | 67 | 88 }118
Total | 481 Total | 159

1 Prothero, Pioneers of English Farming, p. 140.

VIL DECLINE OF SMALL LANDOWNER

151

VIII. Oxon, : 295 ParisHEs. OWNERS AND OCCUPIERS,
ener gi ——
wners
Date. Acres, occupying.
1785 25,540 1,133
1804 87,720 1,179
18382 47,850 1,002

Here the number of Owners occupying steadily increases up to 1804,
then falls, though total acreage increases.

Out of 295 Parishes, 70 had none in 1785 and none reappear.

In 18 of these there were none in 1785, but in 1804 there were
19 holding 570 acres, and in 1832 17 holding 930 acres,

Those holding less than 2 acres have been omitted as probably
owning cottages only.

IX. Oxon. : 30 PARISHES INCLUDED IN THE 295, oF WHICH
THERE ARE Returns To 1907.
Date. Owner of Acres.
occupying. :
1785 172 4,060 Pi ae
1804 190 8,480
1832 171 5,780
1862 161 4,610
1891 158 3,750
1907 212 3,160

7 of these Parishes have no owners occupying at all throughout the
period.

152 EVIDENCES AS TO DATE OF
x, Kent: 37 PARIsHEs.
Date. Owners Owners occupying
above 6 acres. | under 6 acres. | above 6 acres. | under 6 acres.

1753 770 295 | 137 87
1798 685 175 459 123
1831 624 191 445 123
1862 633 249 _ 246 121
1892 603 248 321 161
XI. LANCASHIRE: 25 PARISHES.
1781. 239 536 93 355
1802 227 512 62 309
1881 197 465 47 276
1862 321 373 32 461
1892. 187 161 53 611
XII. Norro : 13 PaRIsHES.

Baie geet ace. | aaa eee

1792 191 37

1814 149 69

1872 242 61

1892 206 56

1907 205 49

1 Assessments under 8 acres neglected.

VII DECLINE OF SMALL LANDOWNER 158

GROWTH OF LARGE ESTATES AS SHOWN BY ASSESSMENT

OF LARGEST OWNER.
XIII. Oxrorp.

1785 | 1804 1832 | 1863 | 1893 | 1907

Acres held by
largest Owners in | 13,190 | 16,370 | 18,010
26 Parishes.

Acres held by
largest Owner in 6,870 | 7,260 | 7,270
24 Parishes,

Number of Owners

in 39 Parishes. 426 869 | - 287

Average in each
Parish. 18 a0

It is noticeable that they increase rather at the expense of Owners
than of occupying Owners.

XIV. Wrrsxrre.

“Acres held by
largest Owners in | 14,800 | 19,840 | 25,990 | 26,460 | 25,080
47 Parishes.

XV. HEREFORD.

Acres held by |
largest Owners in 7,410} 7,600} 7,440} 7,830
27 Parishes. |

XVI NoRTHUMBERLAND.

Number of Owners

in 1 Parish. 38 88 29 28 21

Here again the statistics would seem to support the general theory
that the 60 years between 1804-62 were disastrous to the small land-
owner, whether he was occupying his lands or not,

154 DECLINE OF SMALL LANDOWNER VII

“t

XVII. HEREFORD: 27 PARISHES.
Owners’ Acreage Owners occupying Acreage
Date Above Above ae
: —— —_ Under a Under
1000 200 40 6 1c00 200 840 6 6
1802, 1 11 48 | 109 | 123 5 | 20 | 68 | 140
Total | 164 Total | 98
18382| 1 12 89 92 | 126 5 21 538 168
Total | 144 Total | 84
1862| 1 14. | 30 | 54] 117 2 8 | 29 | 92
Total | 99 ' Fe Total | 39
1892; 1 16 27 87 | 149 # 3 10 42 58
Total | 81 Total | 54
1907; 1 14 82 73 1 127 1 83 94. | 126
Total | 120 Total | 128 ‘
N.B. Many of those owning or owning and occupying less than —

6 acres, only own houses or cottages, and are scarcely to be considered
agriculturists at all, especially when villages have become populous.

XVIII. Torat DrorEAsE oR INCREASE BETWEEN 1772-1892.

No. of Owners Owners occupying
| Parishes.) over 6 acres. | under 6 acres. || over 6 acres. | under 6 acres.
Lancashire 25 Decrease 52 | Decrease 375|| Decrease 40 | Decrease |
doubtful,
probably |
not less |
; than 200
Oxon.
Wilts. 124 Decrease 210] Increase 100 || Decrease 123) Increase 1
Hereford |
Kent 37 Decrease 167| Decrease 52 || Increase 184] Increase 74
Owners over 1 acre. Owners occupying over 1 acre,
Norfolk 18 Increase 14 Increase 12

Vill

COMPARISON BETWEEN ENGLAND AND
| OTHER COUNTRIES

THosE who would dispute the conclusions to which
I have arrived are constantly appealing to other countries
where a peasant proprietary is still to be found, and more
especially to France and to Belgium. It would therefore
seem appropriate that I should devote a few words to
these countries, and more particularly to France.

It is sometimes said that the existence of peasant
proprietorship in that country is due to the Great Revolu-
tion and to the direct and indirect influence of the rule
of intestate succession laid down by the Code Napoléon,
which insists, with some limitations, on equal succession.
Whether such laws are of much avail unless they agree
with the habits and interests of the people, is a question
which has been already discussed in my first lecture, but
whatever may be the true answer, the statement forgets
that the peasant proprietor was well known in France
before the Revolution itself, and held about one quarter
of the area of the country,” and that at a time when the
law of intestate succession was the same as in England.
M. Loutchisky, the latest authority on the subject, holds
the opinion that there were 5,000,000 landed proprietors
in France before the Revolution, and that the increase
since that date, relatively to the population, has been rather

1 Cf. Doniol, Hist. des classes rurales.
2 A. Young puts it as high as one-third.

156 COMPARISON BETWEEN ENGLAND VIII |

in the size of their properties than in the number of pro-
prietors.' They still hold about one quarter of the land,
and are 5,500,000 in number.?

Again, it is often assumed that the small owner
flourishes in every part of France. This is by no means
the case. He is rarely found in those parts which are the |
great granaries of the country, that is, in the Beauce,
in the departments of Indre, Cher, Cher-et-Loir, and
Loiret, nor again in the departments of the SSW.
and SE, :

He survives and flourishes chiefly in those districts in
which the circumstances are favourable; that is to say,
where ‘la petite culture’ is profitable, In the neighbour-
hood of towns, such as the department of La Seine,
because of the demand for vegetables; in the lands of the
vine, where much minute hand labour is required, or where
labour is very dear, or where domestic industries still
survive, or where the peasant can find extra work often
away from home—for instance, in the department of the
Tarn-et-Garonne, whence the men go elsewhere to work
in harvest time, or in Auvergne, whence the men migrate
in the season to the towns and even to Paris, in search of
work as porters and water-carriers, while the rest of the
family look after the land®’—or again in the Morvan,
whence, I was told, the wives go off to Paris to earn
a little money as wet-nurses.

‘There is,’ says Mr. Lavergne, ‘a radical difference
between France and England. In the latter is to be found

1 The book is in Russian, but a full account of it is to be found in
the Revue d’histoire moderne, iii. 156, 171; cf. also Khovalesky,
Revue internationale de Sociologie, ix. 489, 514; Political Science
Quarterly, The Manorial System; Dec., 1908.

? Dumas, Econ. Journal, March, 1909, Land-system in France.

8 Prothero, Pioneers, pp. 18, 20, 141; The pleasant land of France,
Edinburgh Review, vol. 166.

VIII AND OTHER COUNTRIES 157

_ the extreme simplicity, in the other the extreme variety
of the (agricultural) problem,’ and this, ‘owing to the
immense variety of soils, character, crops, races, origins,
and social and economic conditions, which make an in-
finitely multiplied world of our apparent unity,! and it is
this variety which gives an opportunity to the peasant
proprietor.’

A. Young once said that ownership will turn a desert
into gold. The worst of such phrases is that they are
often made an excuse for not thinking, or for abandoning
further inquiry. There is truth in the remark when the
conditions exist which are essential to success, but where
they do not exist the Frenchman is too shrewd to put the
saying to the test. At the same time it is certain that
the Frenchman has, in a pre-eminent degree, those habits
of careful and parsimonious cultivation which fit ‘la petite
culture’, and it is interesting here to be reminded of
the habits of the French Canadian, whose farm rarely
exceeds 50 acres, while the smallest English farm is rarely
less than 100.

But, apart from these fundamental reasons, there are
historical explanations to be found. The manorial system
broke up much later in France than in England. In
England the villein commuted his services and gained the
practical, if not the legal power to leave his land much
earlier than in France, where there were not many free
rural landless labourers working for wages. It is true that
before the Revolution the peasant had in most of France
commuted his services for money payments, but he was
still bound by numerous and vexatious dues, and his actions
were restrained at every turn by the seignorial rights
of the lord, These seignorial rights were not all abolished

1 Lavergne, L’Economie rurale de la France, p. 8.

158 COMPARISON BETWEEN ENGLAND VIII

at the Revolution, but transferred to the Department or
Commune, who continued to impose them with that love
for order and public control which 1 is an essential charac-
teristic of Frenchmen.

The Napoleonic legislation indeed allowed the strips in
the open field to be sold, exchanged, or enclosed. But if
that were not done, the owner still remained subject to the
‘usages locaux,’ which are published every year by the
Department or the Commune, and are perpetuated by
the sanction of immemorial custom. To this day, there-
fore, in many places, the open field remains with commun- _
able rights after the harvest, known by the ee of
‘le droit de vaine piture’, and ‘le droit de parcours’.)

The political conditions of the two countries ce also
be taken into account. In England, as we have shown,
the loeal government was in the hands of the landowners
of the county. But in France the administration was in
the hands of the intendant and his delegate—representatives _
of the central authority, and generally strangers. These —
had no interest which bade them become landowners, while —
the French noble, who wished to make a name, knew that
this could only be done in the capital itself. A. Young,
in his Travels in France, is constantly reminding us that
the French noble, with rare exceptions, did little for the
improvement of his land, and contrasts him most un- |
favourably in this respect with the landowner in England,
Either he neglected it altogether and used it merely for
purposes of sport, while he lived on the dues owed him by —
his tenants, or he sold and spent his time in the pleasures
of the capital, or, if he were ambitious, in attempting to —
gain political influence at the centre.

Thus, while in England it was the rich man who bought

1 Seebohm, Econ. Journal, i. 58 ; Prothero, Pioneers;

. VIII AND OTHER COUNTRIES _ 159

and thereby sought to make a name for himself in his
county, in France it was the peasant who competed in
the market. In France the poor man hoarded and bought
land. To him the land was everything, and had been
from time immemorial. Hence that strong attachment
to his home, which is a peculiarity of the Celtic character,
was intensified, an attachment which certainly is not to
be found in England to the same extent. Once more,
France did not share to the same extent that commercial
spirit which in England so deeply affected her rural
economy. And while in England ‘the labour of the
town supported the luxury of the county, in France it
was the labour of the county which supported the luxury
of the noble at the court’. The development of industry in
England was also accompanied by a remarkable increase
in population, and it was the increase of population which,
by increasing the demand for food, was one of the reasons
for consolidation of farms and therefore of estates. In
France, on the contrary, population was stationary, if it
did not decrease.

Finally, the idea that the life of a French proprietor is |
a very happy one is an idle dream. Mr. Prothero, who
knows France well, says ‘that he is worse housed and
worse fed than the English labourer. His cottage is
generally a single room with a mud floor, in which he and ~
his family and his live stock live, eat, sleep, and die. . .
From morning till night his toil is excessive and prolonged ;
female labour is the rule; children are continuously em-
ployed, while his little property is often mortgaged.’
A. Young talks of the magic of property; but there is
such a thing as the demon of property. The French

1 Prothero, Pioneers, p. 135 ; J. Howard, M.P., Continental Farming
and Peasantry ; Lady Verney, How Peasant Proprietors live in France
and other Countries. ;

160 COMPARISON BETWEEN ENGLAND VIII

peasant in his desire to add to the little property hoards
and then mortgages his property to buy more, and is often
thus prévented from cultivating what he has to the best
advantage.! Speak to a French peasant proprietor, and —
I have spoken to many of them, and he will at once tell
you of the hardness of his lot, of the pinching and |
scraping, which is necessary to keep the little land together, ©
and of the constant anxiety of his life.’

It also appears that at the present moment the peasant
proprietor is declining in numbers in France. M. Meline,
the leader of the agricultural party, who was Minister of
Agriculture from 1883 to 1885, and for a brief moment
Prime Minister in 1896, has lately pointed out this fact |
in his book the Return to the Land*?; and M. Bled says
that in thousands of parishes the population has been —
reduced by one half since 1850, and that moderate-sized ©
properties are. increasing at the expense of the small.?
‘They have quitted the land,’ says M. Meline, ‘not
because of its failure to provide them with the means of
existence, but because their life was too laborious and —
imposed on them too many privations, while the factory —
gave them higher wages with less tiring work and more
regular hours’; because of the dreariness of the country
and the fascination of the town, a fascination acquired,
it is said, often by the young conscript; and many of you
will remember that this is the burden of M. René Bazin’s
novel, ‘La Terre qui meurt.’

M. Jacques Dumas, the procureur of Réthel, in the
department of the Ardennes, has attempted in an article in
the March number of the Econ. Journal to dispute this fact. —

1 Garnier, Hist. of the English Landed Interest, p. 152, quoting ~
from Leconteux, Journal d’agriculture.

2 Meline, Return to the Land, translated, pp. 85, 90.
Revue des Deux Mondes, Dec. 1904.

VIII AND OTHER COUNTRIES — 161

} He tells us that the number of proprietors, large and small,
| has increased since 1851.1 But this includes owners of
houses in towns, which, as he shows elsewhere, have grown
enormously ;? and this fact altogether destroys the value
of his statistics, Moreover, he himself acknowledges that
the price of land is low to-day, that capital is no longer
looking to land as an investment, but is turning to others,
good or bad; that many of the peasants and other pro-
prietors are in serious debt* because of the money they
raised in the good years, some wherewith to increase their
holding, some for less good reasons, and that in the bad
years, 1877-1900, compulsory sales of land increased from
7-75 per cent. in 1880 to 27-78 per cent. in 1889, although

) they have been going down since. He does not, however,

_ tell us how far this applies to the peasant proprietor alone.
| The close resemblance between the economical position
} of the French landowner of to-day with that of the English

| in the later eighteenth and the nineteenth and twentieth

- centuries seems to teach the same lesson—how difficult
it is for the small landowner to survive amidst modern
economical conditions. And if we look to the agricultural
labourers we hear the same tale. Their distaste for the
_ country life, the effect of the notable rise in wages in

} the manufacturing industries which tempts them to prefer

the regular industrial wage to the risks of tillage, and the
| development and cheapening of communication which
} enables them to move more easily, and the consequent

1 Econ. Journal, March, 1909. In 1851, 7,845,724 proprietors ;
1882, 8,500,000 proprietors ; 1900, 8,090,000 proprietors; he says one-
fourth of the land is still held by peasant proprietors.

2 In 1872, 69 towns with population over 20,000; 1891, 104 towns
with population over 20,000 ; to-day, 120 at least.

* Mortgages in 1820 amounted to 8 million francs; 1897, 19 million
frances.

JOHNSON Bs

4
162 COMPARISON BETWEEN ENGLAND VIII

serious decrease in the rural population.1 In a word, all |
evidence tends to prove that France is in a measure
experiencing the influence of that industrial revolution
which England underwent a century and a half ago, and
if France were to adopt free trade the difficulty of retain-
ing the peasant on the soil would soon be as great as it is
in England.

The conditions in Belgium are not unlike those of
France. It is true that industries were early developed
in the Netherlands, as Belgium was then called; witness
the history of its great towns. This, however, occurred
at a period when industries. were still in their more |
primitive form, and before the rise of the great capitalist
of later times; and though to-day the number of peasant
proprietors is very numerous, they are chiefly found in |
districts where market-gardening is profitable, and even
then in many cases the cultivators are tenants of the —
tradesmen who own the lands. The peasant proprietor is
also found on the poorest soils, such as the Campine, but.
they generally eke out a livelihood by some side industry,
many as pedlars in human hair, or in the local industries’
which still exist. On the other hand the largest propor-
tion of the land, and certainly the most productive in
cereals and in stock, is cultivated by tenant farmers.”
Even in Denmark a great many of the so-called peasant
proprietors are really tenants holding their lands on half-
yearly agreements.®

1 In 1851, 75 per cent. of the total population; in 1886, 64 per
cent. The decrease has continued since then, Dumas, Econ. Journal,
March, 1909; see Statistical Soc. Journal, 65, 1902, p. 607. The rural
population is decreasing actually in Germany and France, and —
relatively to the urban population in America, Canada, and Australia.

2 Prothero, Pioneers, p. 142; Cobden Club, Systems of Land
Tenure, Belgium ; Lavelaye, Economie rurale de la Belgique.

* Econ. Journal, xiii. 645; Hasbach, Appendix.

Vill AND OTHER COUNTRIES 163

As for Germany, and still more Russia, the peasant pro-
prietor of to-day is of too young a growth to furnish any
valuable evidence. It should, however, be remembered
that in all these countries serfdom existed till comparatively
late: in Prussia till the reforms of Stein and Hardenberg
in 1807-11, which were not finally completed till 1850 ;*
in other parts of Germany, and in Austria between 1817-
48; while in Russia the emancipation of the serfs was
not completed till 1861, and the whole question is com-
plicated by the influence of that strange survival, the
Russian Mir.

It is true that in parts of Germany there are a good

1 Cf. Cobden Club Essays :—Germany : By the legislation of 1807
(1) villeinage was abolished. (2) The old distinctions between noble,
burgher, and peasant land was abolished, and all such lands could be
acquired by any person, whatever his estate. (Some restrictions on
this right were abolished in 1811.)—By the legislation of 1811 the
dual ownership of land between lord and peasant was done away
with. (1) Peasants holding by hereditary right were to own their
lands free of all dues or services, but to surrender one-third of their
land to the lord if the holding was above fifty morgen (morgen = two-
thirds of an acre), if less, to pay acorn rent. For his rights on the
waste and for his house and farm-buildings he was still to pay services,
which are fixed, at harvest and other exceptional times. (2) Peasants
holding at will for life or term of years were to surrender one half of
their holding, and enjoy the rest free of all services and dues. (In
1816-36 this legislation was confined to estates of twenty-five morgen or
more.) (3) One-third of the commonable fields was freed of common
rights of pasturage.—In 1850, all services and dues which had not
been commuted were to be redeemed by payment of a capital sum, or
by a rent-charge for a fixed number of years.

In Russia :—By law of 1861 (1) the proprietor was to hand over
to the Mir a certain proportion of the land (the amount depending on
local circumstances or agreement). (2) For land thus handed over
services or rent were to be paid, (8) At the end of nine years, these
services or rents could be escaped by peasants surrendering part of
their land to the proprietor, or, before expiration of the nine years, by
purchase of part. (4) Any peasant to be allowed to buy his share in
the village land and free himself from the Mir at a price fixed by law.
Cf. Cobden Club Essays: Russia. Khovaleski, Customs and Laws of
Russia, p. 209.

- aE
164 ENGLAND AND OTHER COUNTRIES VIIL-

many districts where communal land survives, and where |
the peasant proprietor flourishes in consequence," but else-—
where, even in Russia, the small peasant proprietor is
declining.’

In short, on the continent the fabiic of rural society. j is
undergoing the same process of disintegration which.
England first underwent at the close of the fifteenth
century, and our agricultural problem is hegtnniaee
‘to arise there,

1 Cf. Adolf Damaschke, Aufgaben der -Gemeinde- Politik. | ’ Part of
this has been translated by Miss Gur se for the Land Nationalisation

Society, May, 1907.
* Savine, Quarterly Journal of Economics, xix. p. 35.

Oxford: Printed at the Clarendon Press by Horace Hart, M.A.

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HD Johnson, Arthur Henry
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