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Given by 

Title Insurance 

and 
Trust Company 

Foundation 



A, 

J": 

u. 


HISTORY 


OF THB 


ENGLISH LANDED INTEREST 


Some Opinions of tbe press* 

" Mr. Gamier is fortunate in his subject. Mr. Kenelm Digby has 
dealt with its legal aspects ; the late Professor Rogers, Mr. Ashley, 
Mr. Seebohm, Mr. Cunningham, and a host of writers have written 
of it as economists ; and the literature of the subject in all its many 
sides is prodigious. It was a happy thought on the part of Mr. Garnier 
to focus some of the scattered rays of light. He writes, it is important 
to note, with a living knowledge of the rural England of to-day. He 
has read much and widely ; he has mastered most of the authorities 
on the subject. The book grows in value and interest when he 
touches the realities of rural England, and especially when he endeavours 
to portray the work-a-day life of a manor or farm in various ages." — 
Times. 

" The author is a rare and precious combination of practical experi- 
ence together with scholarship. In the essential importance of full 
references to authorities Mr. Gamier leaves nothing to be desired. 
He has cleverly incorporated most things he desired to say in his 
text ; he gives a sufficient glossary and an excellent index which goes 
far towards making his work a professional text -book. With con- 
siderable success Mr. Gamier has achieved the difficult task of clothing 
the dry bones of technical history with the flesh and blood of vivid 
pictorial descriptions of rural and domestic life." — Journal of Royal 
Agricultural Society. 

" He aims at throwing light upon and creating interest in English 
country customs and social features of several kinds. We do not 
think that any one has before made a similar attempt on the same 
scale. His book is one strongly to be recommended to every agri- 
cultural college and every local authority dealing with agricultural 
education throughout Great Britain." — Field. 

*' Mr. Gamier writes as a land agent who has obtained a competent 
grasp of the controversies which have been waged in recent years 
roimd the knotty problems of the history of early land tenure in this 
coimtry. The book is undoubtedly an important one, not only because 
Mr. Gamier is a twofold specialist, but because he re-discusses with 
great acuteness many points which, had perhaps too readily been 
generally assumed to be practically settled." — Glasgow Herald. 

*• It meets a want that has long been felt by all classes of agriculturists 
by providing information on the historical incidents connected with 
the land in our country, which has never before been so exhaustively 
placed before the public." — Kentish Post. 


HISTOEY 


OP THE 


ENGLISH LANDED INTEREST 

5t9 Cu0tom0 %me mb agriculture 


VOLUME I. 


BT 


RUSSELL M. ^RNIER, B.A., Oxon. 

Author of " Armali of Uu BritUh Peatantry," Ac, Ou. 



Eontion 

SWAN SONNENSCHEIN & CO. LTD 

KEW YORK: TEE MACMILLAN CO. 

1908 


First EDinoir, August, 1892 ; Second Edition, February, 1008. 


PBEFACE. 


' Si Ton veut lire Padmirable ouvrage de Tacite snr les moeurs 
des Germains, on verra que c'est d'eux que les Anglois ont tir6 
ridee de leur gouvernement politique. Ce beau syst^me a ^te 
trouv6 dans les bois." Thus wrote Montesquieu more than 
a century ago, and though the position assumed by him in the 
first sentence has been both strenuously attacked and defended 
in these latter days, there are few who will deny that our 
English Constitution originated in the forests. Whether they 
were those of the Gemeindes Anger of Germany, the Ager 
Publicus of Rome, or the wastes of Britain, remains to be 
seen ; but that our laws owed their beginning to the agricul- 
tural polity of nomadic nationalities, when at length they 
finally settled on ground hitherto left to nature's cultivation, 
admits of no doubt whatever. The soil of a country was at 
first connected with its inhabitants as a nation, and centuries 
elapsed before it came to be transferred to individuals. As 
long as the military spirit predominated, a contempt for every- 
thing connected with labour prevailed, as a natural conse- 
quence, and the land was regarded solely as a means of furnish- 
ing warlike materials. Thus we shall find that the originators 
of the manorial system assumed an attitude in which property 
in people predominated over that in land, and the tenure by 
which the land was held was of less importance than the juris- 
diction possessed over it« inhabitants. Montesquieu has also 
shown that the laws and ethics of a nation take their character 
from the nature of its soil. It was the barrenness of the Attic 
soil, he asserts, which established there a popular government, 
the fruitfulness of that of Lacedaemon which gave rise to an 
aristocratic form of government. Fertile countries are always 


vi Preface. 

plains where the peaceful inhabitants are left without any 
natural means of defence against a stronger body. Barren dis- 
tricts, on the contrary, breed a race of men industrious, steady, 
courageous, and warlike ; whilst islanders, confined as they are 
to a comparatively small area, are not so liable to oppression 
either from without or within as the greater empires, from 
which the sea cuts them oflf. 

It is for these reasons that a History of the English Landed 
Interest cannot but be useful to the statesman as well as the 
husbandman. All the great modern writers on Constitutional 
Q-ovemment have recognised the importance of the subject by 
treating largely of early English land tenure and agriculture. 
Though it would appear unlikely that the statecraft of to-day 
should repeat the mistakes of some former administration^ 
none the less as we progress we shall discover many instances 
where this has occurred. Even while the ink of this last sen- 
tence is still wet, the statesmen of to-day are engaged in re- 
enacting one of those Small Holdings Acts which the lawgivers 
of the Tudor period repeatedly failed in perpetuating. The 
political catch-phrase " Three acres and a cow," which had so 
strong an influence on the rural labourer at the polling booths 
a few years back, is merely an altered form of that enactment 
which sought to establish " Four acres and a cottage " in Eliza- 
beth's reign. The ensuing pages, if they teach no other lesson, 
should prove to those, who would hurry forward or alter 
Nature's laws regarding the land, that their task is impractic- 
able. It is true that there are cases where the action of the 
foreigner in some such direction has forced us in self-defence to 
make exceptions ; but the artificial enhancement of any nation's 
agricultural profits cannot be permanently beneficial, and car- 
ries with it the germs of ultimate failure. 

Now although I neither pretend to expect that the perusal 
of this History of English Land Tenure and Agriculture will 
result in any discovery of bygone customs that might with ad- 
vantage be resuscitated for the improvement of present sys- 
tems, nor wish to see the reinstitution, for example, of pannage 
and other popular rights amidst the game preserves of our 
modern landlords, yet I am confident that our present land 


Preface. vii 

reformers will learn moderation if they give more attention to 
the historical side of the question. Popular rights have no 
doubt from time to time been encroached upon by seignorial 
agencies, but the repeated expenditure of individual capital 
has long since -rendered the past irrevocable, and even the 
Gracchi recognised that the squatters on the Ager Publicus 
were entitled to compensation for unexhausted improvements 
when they promulgated a scheme for their eviction. 

There is another section of the public for which this book has 
been more especially undertaken. I aU ude to the Casual Reader ; 
and it has astonished me to find, by personal experience, how 
many may be included under this heading. In my intercourse 
with the various classes engaged in some form of industry on 
large estates, I have frequently heard a want expressed for in- 
formation on the historical side of their employment. Short, 
simple histories of our Land Laws, our Agriculture, our 
Gardening, etc., would find many readers amongst that por- 
tion of the community which frequents our Free Libraries ; and 
some day, if I meet with any encouragement in my present 
undertaking, and when I have carried it down to the latest 
date, I hope to attempt such a work oh Agriculture alone. 

Frequently, when engaged in my business, but more especi- 
ally two years ago, whilst writing my book on Land Agency, 
I had been prompted to undertake some such work as this 
by the discovery of much in our landed system that was in- 
congruous and inexplicable, except when opened to the under- 
standing by the key of history. No doubt what I have felt 
must have been also experienced by many others engaged in 
Land Agency, and I therefore venture to hope that interested 
readers may be found in the ranks of my profession, as well as 
amidst those of other practical men associated with the soU. 

It remains for me, whose excuse for entering on so wide and 
deep a subject is based principally on qualifications attained by 
many years of practical experience, to offer some apology to 
those more fitted by scholarship and research for such an 
enterprise. 

Lord Cathcart, in his admirable monograph on the life of 
Jethro Tull in the Eoyal Agricultural Society's Journal of last 


viii Preface. 

year, has indirectly cast what savours of reproach on such as 
me. Of the forty-nine authors who had up to Tull's time suc- 
ceeded in retaining the attention of the British public on agri- 
cultural subjects (the chief topic of discussion in the following 
pages), he states that seven were judges or lawyers, four bishops 
and clergymen, eleven scholars, college dons, or "Fellows of the 
Royal Society, five soldiers, five land agents, four farmers, three 
tradesmen or citizens, two farriers, two country gentlemen, one 
ambassador, one dissenting minister, ten surveyors, one gar- 
dener and seedsman, and one medical man. " Truly," he adds, 
'' it has been well said that in other things, as well as in 
politics, important reforms usually come from without." 

In conclusion, let me acknowledge a debt of gratitude to 
some of those more modern authorities from whom I have 
obtained the chief of my information. The researches of a 
lifetime by Professor Eogers have rendered his works invalu- 
able and perpetual for the historian of the future. The views 
of a Russian on mediaeval land tenure must be of large interest 
to all connected with England's soil; and when such a learned 
writer as Mr. Vinogradoff makes public his ideas in book form, 
it goes without saying how valuable I have found him for the 
purpose in hand. Every line of Messrs. R. E. Prothero's & E. 
Ashley's short writings teems with food for thought, while the 
reproduction of MSS., otherwise inaccessible to the ordinary 
writer, by such learned societies as the Royal Historical and 
Selden cannot be over-estimated by men in my circumstances. 
Some day I shall hope to see the results of Professor Maitland's 
deep enquiry produced in a connected form for the use and 
pleasure of his countrymen. 

Nor must I neglect to render my sincere thanks to my 
friends Mr. Howard St. Q-eorge and Mr, Basil Cornish for 
their careful revision of a work that I still cannot expect to 
be free from fault or in any way complete. 

Russell M. Q-abnieb. 


SYNOPSIS OP CHAPTEES. 


XTbe IRoman ^ccupatfom 

CHAPTER I. 

THB PREHISTORIC ERA. 


PAGB 


Allusions by Greek and Eoman authors to the Tin Islands — The 
condition of their husbandry — The homes of the aborigines — 
Their habits, food, and religion — ^Their marketable products — 
Knowledge of agriculture as compared with that of other 
nations 7 

CHAPTER n. 

THE BIRTH OF THB ENGLISH LAND SYSTEM. 

Ethnical characteristics of the three nationalities who helped to 
form the English Landed Interest — Tribal peoples and a com- 
munal form of Land Tenure —Tendency of all races to fit them- 
selves to the circumstances of their environment — The economy 
of the primitive Roman — ^History of the Ager Publicus — ^The 
Roman polity with regard to conquered lands— That nation's 
fiscal arrangements in Britain — The evidence of coins in favour 
of the Scriptura system — Similarities in the Roman and English 
landed economies — ^The intimacy between the Romans and 
British — Possibility of the origin of over-lordship in Britain 
emanating from Roman sources — Caution to be observed in 
dogmatizing about the parallels discovered between Roman and 
English landed economies 23 

CHAPTER m. 

THE SYSTEM OP AGRICULTURE. 

Comparison of the system at its beginning and end — The climate 
then and now — The native material upon which the Roman 
husbandman had to work — His difficulties in adapting his own 
methods of farming to the circumstances of a northern climate 
and soil— The native temperament an obstacle to his progress — 
Roman engineering skill a helpful accessory — The advanced con- 
dition of the conquerors' agriculture as illustrated by the writ- 
ings of Virgil and Pliny — ^Characteristics of all early agricul- 
tural authors, piety and scepticism — The Roman works on 
husbandry analysed 84 


Synopsis of Chapters. 
CHAJPTEB IV. 

THB MARK SYSTIIM. 


PAOX 


Ethnic peculiarities of the Teuton more akin to those of Briton 
than of Roman — Evidences of Teutonic origin — The allusions 
to Germanic hahits hy Caesar and Tacitus analysed and com- 
pared—The latter's passage in chap. xxvi. of the Germania 
examined — ^The theorist's description of the Mark system de- 
scribed, criticised, and compared with the Roman writings and 
later Oermanic Land Tenure 45 

Xi:be HndlOi-Saxon petioO« 

CHAPTER V. 

THB CONNECTION OF ROHAN, BRITISH AND TEUTONIC STSTBMS 
WITH ANGLO-SAXON LAND TENURE. 

Contention that the Teutonic land system was not peculiar to our 
race— The theories of modern research examined and compared 
— The evolution of a manorial system worked out through the 
same progressive stages in several European nationalities, and 
the stAte of civilization in this country at the time of the 
Anglo-Saxon invasion demonstrated therefrom— The peculiari- 
ties of the invasion 68 

CHAPTER VI. 

SEIQNORDLL POWERS. 

The results of the invasion on the national constitution— Seignorial 
jurisdiction and its effects on Land Tenure — Puhlic and private 
courts of justice — Popular rights of land ownership reconciled 
with those of the over-lord — Evidences of a survival of village 
oommunal economy demonstrated and contrasted with those of 
manorial economy — Origin of the Shire, Hundred, Court Leet, 
Halmote and Frankpledge— The advanced stage of Anglo-Saxon 
land legislation demonstrated .74 

CHAPTER Vn. 

LAND TENURE AND AORICULTURB. 

The division of England's soil into private, semi-private, and puhlic 
lands — Seignorial and popular rights descrihed, and the history 
of the ahsorption of the latter into the former sketched out — 
The chief features of the country at the heginning of Anglo- 
Saxon Land Tenure — The distinctions between Folcland and 
Bocland, and the relationship of king, lord, and people to both 
— ^The effects of the growing seignorial powers contrasted with 
what remains of popular rights at the present day — ^The inter- 
nal economy of the manor, and the duties, services, and agri- 
culture of its lord and people — An historical sketch summarising 
the vicissitudes of the common field system from its inception 
to its abolition — The Anglo-Saxon Land Tenure contrasted with 
the Continental and Norman feudal systems, and a brief suul- 
mary of land taxation given 98 


Synapsis of Chapters. xi 

CHAPTEE Vm. 

ITS CUSTOMS. p^Qg 

Famines, pestilences, and bad seasons commented on^Freqnency of 
astronomical portents — ^A bird's-eye view of the country at- 
tempted — Description of the lord's house; its furniture and 
inmates— The village and its church— -The life of the Anglo- 
Saxon country gentleman ; his sports, food, manners, dress and 
tastes — The social and official distinctions of the classes com- 
posing the landed interest— The obstacles to successful hus- 
bandry — Prices of farm produce, and the pursuits of the various 
husbandmen 105 

CHAPTER IX. 

THB LAND IN ITS CONNBCTION WITH CHURCH AND 8TATB. 

The Land in its relation to the Church— The British Church — Close 
connection between Church and State — Early institution of 
Tithe payments — Evidence of canons, charters, and statutes— 
Their various terms distinguished — The nature of King Ethel- 
wulf s gift — ^Varieties of tithe — The question whether quadri- 
partite or tripartite distribution was ever adopted in this 
country — ^Lord Selbome's conclusions— The introduction of the 
parish — The results to the Landed Interest of the tithe charges 
Other church dues discussed— Kirk Schot, Cyriesceat, Plow 
Alms, Leoh Schot, Soul Schot, and Peter's Pence— Secular 
charges on the land — The tendency for all fiscal systems to 
look to the land solely as the source of revenue — The results of 
this a system of land surveyance — Its strange accuracy and the 
possible influence of the Roman agrimensor on the Norman 
Domesday survey 122 

Xtbe Vlotman perfoD. 

CHAPTER X. 

DISTINCTIONS BBTWBEN CONQUBROB AND COKQUBBBD. 

The change of nomenclature — ^Race enmity and race identity con- 
trasted — Contact of Teutonic influences with Roman — ^Leetic 
Land Tenure — ^The Emphyteutic system and feudalism — The 
common religion of both Nationalities — ^Its failure to reconcile 
race-hatred— The relationship between the Crown and aris- 
tocracy—Life on the barony, and the habits of the Norman lord 
— The military exigencies of the period, and their effects on Land 
Tenure and husbandry — The pastimes of the Normans and 
Anglo-Saxons, and ethnic distinctions in their domestic habits 
— ^The causes why a race-hatred became a class- hatred, and then 
died out 132 

CHAPTER XL 

FEUDALISM. 

Relationship of the Crown to the soil — Royal grants of seignorial 
rights and the economy of the manorial system — Private. and 
royal jurisdictory rights— The Court Baron and the Court Leet 
—Public and private justice contrasted — A 13th century town 
during the assizes— The services of the sulject an exchange for 
royal grants of seignorial rights — Land Tenure converted into 


xii Synapsis of Chapters. 

PAOl 

a reservoir for warlike requirements — The origin of English 
Feadalism, and its incidents of grand and i)etit sergeantry, 
castle-gard, escuage, primogeniture, wardship, primer seisin, 
relief, marriage, fine, aid, escheat, forfeiture, homage, frankal- 
moigne, and burgage— Parallels drawn between Anglo-Saxon 
and Norman land customs — Certain feudal incidents traced 
home to a communal polity— Gradual change into a peaceful 
significance of all the chief feudal incidents — Sketch of the 
ceremony observed by a tenant in grand sergeantry at a Coro- 
nation — Striking instances of ancient customs of Land Tenure — 
Tenures by Latimer, cornage J^lenchholding, etc. — ^Manorial cus- 
toms at Kings* Hill and JDunmow in Essex — Scenes in the 
Honour of Tutbury and in the towns of Scarborough and Derby 
on certain days in the year — ^Brief allusion to the effects of 
feudalism on the national character ••••.• X51 

CH!APTER XTT, 

DOMESDAY BOOK. 

Its character— Rapidity with which it was compiled — Its accuracy 
with regard to personalty contrasted with ito slipshod methods 
of land measurement — ^A careful examination of the principal 
land measurements, such as the hide, carucate, virgate, bovate, 
and other terms used in the survey — Walter of Henley's, See- 
bohm's and VinogradofiTs conclusions — Brief examination of 
other terms denoting measures — The social distinctions of the 
age demonstrated from the various appellations used in the book 
— Tenants in capite, barones, liberi homines, milites, subfeudarii, 
vavasours, para vails, villeins, coliberti, servi, drenches radmanni, 
and chenistres, etc., etc. — The views of mediseval legal experts 
on the villeinage class — Influence of the Norman Conquest on 
agriculture — Richard de Rulos, the Monks and husbandry — A 
picture of this rural industry at the age now under discussion . 171 

Ube /Dbt^Me Hges. 

CHAPTER Xm. 

THB filBTH OF THE LAND LAWS. 

Influence of the Crusades on English husbandry — Non-residence of 
landed gentry and disturbed state of the country — Improve- 
ments in agriculture create a necessity for new laws — The ad- 
vance in men's minds towards modern ideas on landownership 
and fixity of tenure — The heavy taxation on landed property — 
Magna Charta and its eflects on landed interests — The abuses of 
the feudal system begin to be remedied by the national legis- 
lature— Subinfeudation checked by Quia emptores, which in its 
turn produces danger to entailed interests and necessitates De 
donis — Revival of feudal ideas concerning succession to Realty 
— Primogeniture never observed with the strictness of a legis- 
lative enactment, and often arbitrarily evaded where the causes 
for it were not present — Progress in the conveyance of land — 
The dominium directum and the dominium utile in their bear- 
ing on the ceremony of homage — Description of the abbrevia- 
tions used in an early charter— The first evidences of a national 
feeling for growing commercial interests 181 


Synopsis of Chapters. xiii 


CHAPTER XIV. 

BSTATB MANAOEMRMT. 


PAGI 


The ISth century parish — ItA manor house and people — Estate 
management — ^Labour regulations — ^Picture of the manor on 
Lammas Day — The harvest — ^Hawking — ^Pastarage and servile 
crops — A north country scene on church lands — The seneschal, 
bailiff, provost, hay ward, cowman, shepherd, waggoner, scribe, 
auditor, and their several duties as manorial ministeriales. . 196 

CHAPTER XV. 

LIFE AND WORK ON THE BARONT. 

Internal economy of the castle — ^The mid-day meal — ^A baronial lord's 
life on his estate — The agricultural economy on the land in 
villeinage — ^The life of the peasantry — ^The Manor of Cuxham 
taken as an example — The system of cropping — Prices of hus- 
bandry operations — Crude ideas of the period on scientific farm- 
ing — ^The management of the live stock — ^A scene out of the 
Vision of Piers Plowman 209 

CHAPTER XVI. 

THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE LANDLORD INTO LANDOWNER. 

Cessation of a national predilection for warfare, and the new views 
regarding landed proprietorship — The ownership of minerals, 
and the extent to which mining operations had now attained — 
The coal, iron, and tin industries — Rights of the Stannary 
Courts illustrated by reference to ancient charters — Wise views 
of Norman landlords with regard to popular claims — Inter- 
seignorial contest qyer the lord's waste — The Statutes of Quo 
Warranto, Merton and II. Westminster — Their results on the 
people's waste — The views of the Norman lawyers, and their 
erroneous theories exposed — The seignorial class ignore legal 
theories and adopt a compromise with the manorial communi- 
ties — Revolution in the agricultural system caused by money 
commutation of predial service — The growth of free-holding 
husbandry — The various grades of the peasantry illustrated by 
a reference to an early inquisition — ^Brief sketch of the various 
weekly and boon services— The change from service to rent de- 
monstrated by an examination of the fresh nomenclature in 
later mediseval records of manorial customs — ^The severance of 
the interests known as capital and labour — Its efiects on the 
national statute book — Protectionist legislation against free 
barter and labour — Severe measures adopted against all classes 
of the national labour ' , . 224 

CHAPTER XVII. 

THE DISPOSAL OF FARM PRODUCE IN MARKETS AND FAIRS. 

The independence of the manor during the period of predial service 
contrasted with the growing wants for outside assistance 
brought about by a money commutation — The severe fiscal de- 
mands of markets and fairs — Pontage, passage, piccage, lastage 
and stallage due^ — The origin of tlie fair and market, and their 
distinctions — Legislation regulating both examined — The sub- 
stitutes for public commercial resorts — The common carrier and 


xiv Synopsis of Chapters. 

PAOB 

pedlar— The wheat-growing area of the period contrasted with 
the demands of the population — Koyal rights illustrated by re- 
ference to the fair at Westminster in Henry III.'s reign — 
The staple and its effects on the wool trade — ^The importance of 
English wool and its large export trade — A short sketch of 
mediseval town economy—Its close connection with the Landed 
Interests— The great centres of commerce — Seignorial rights 
over fairs illustrated by a picture of the annual gathering at 
Winchester — The Court of Piepoudre — The markets policed by 
legislative enactments — Forestalling and regrating — ^Foreign 
trade — ^The steel yard of the Hanse merchants — Its resemblance 
to the feudal system, and a short history of its existence in 
London 237 

CHAPTER XVni 

THB LAND BURDENS OF TUB BRA. 

Effects of the sovereign's character on the rural populations— The 
Rebellion of Wat the Tyler — Its causes, history, and termina- 
tion — Preponderance of national taxation on land and labour 
— ^Hidage and Danegeld replaced by scutage and carucage — 
Political representation not necessarily a result of liability to 
taxation— The tithe dues — The maintenance of the poor— The 
various grades of poverty — ^Monastic poor relief funds — The 
monks mere agents for the national relief funds, and conse- 
quent national control over monastic endowments — Penal mea- 
sures against culpable poverty— The land twice charged for 
the mamtenance of the nation's pauper class — The effects of 
the scarcity of rural labour on the letting of farms • . . 248 

CHAPTER XIX. 

FURTHER LAND LEGISLATION BXAMINED. 

The Wars'of the Roses and the apatliy of the lower classes — The at- 
tractions of town life draw off rural labour — Seignorial mea- 
sures to tie up landed proi)erty — The fiction of a common 
recovery —Royal antagonism to a system of strict entail — The 
Statute of Fines— Legislative measures against the protecting 
effects of Uses — Results of the struggle leave the succession to 
the land in much the same condition as before the Statute of } 

De Donis — ^A more detailed description of the various measurevS— f 

A history of Fiction of Common Recovery — The three parties 
to the collusion — ^A writ of formedon — The recovery deed— 
The tenant to the preecipe— Ecclesiastical measures against the 
Statutes of Mortmain — A Use — ^Details of — The Statutes of Fines 
and Uses — Their causes and results — The Statute of Wills — The 
reasons for the King's opposition to and the Lords* defence of 
strict entails— A short history of the relationship between 
sovereign, lord and people throughout this period — The politi- 
cal results of the struggle on the national constitution fore- , 
shadowed, and the growth of popular independence demonstrated 
— The agricultural changes affect the character of the lower 
classes 260 


Synopsis of Chapters. xv 

CHAPTEB XX. 

THB OONNBCnON BBTWBEN LAND AND TRADB. 

PAOX 

The growth of a middle class — ^Immense importance of the com- 
mercial Interest -Universal attraction of ail capital into trading 
enterprises — ^Decline of feudalism — The system of liveries — 
Seignorial magnificence — ^Lord Warwick's splendid equipments 
— ^The meals of the period — ^The machinery whereby a great 
Seignorial householder was enabled to cater for the wants of his 
guests —Heraldry and castellated dwellings — ^Their interference 
with peaceful pursuits — Boyal alarm at the system of livery — 
Hestrictive legislation — Maintenance of suits — The population 
of England at this period — Class distinctions — The professions 
— ^Landed gentry and middle grades in town ana village — 
Knights and varlets— Social distinctions in rural and commer- 
cial circles— Opposition of the burgess to any intrusion of 
countrymen into his environment — ^Eagerness of the peasantry 
to migrate into the towns — Political importance of the landed 
gentry as compared with that of the merchant class— Money 
determines the latter's social standing, pedigree that of the 
former 271 

CHAPTER XXL 

IKFLUBNCB OF THB CHURCH AND BFFBCTS OF THB FALL OF THB BCGLB- 
SIASTICAL LANDLORDS ON THB BNGLISH LANDED INTERESTS. 

The large numbers of the Clergy and their grades of distinction— 
The enormous influence of the Church in rural matters demon- 
strated — Saints' days used to mark the dates for all important 
agricultural matters — Bogation-tide — ^Ecclesiastical literature 
on the subject of farming — Native and foreign ecclesiastical 
i^rming knowledge compared — The products of monastic gardens 
—A brief sketch of the national kitchen garden at this period — 
The fall of the monastic clergy, and its apparently small re- 
sults to the national husbandry — The mission of monasticism 
accomplished — The king's neglect to apply, according to the 
legislative provisions, the confiscated endowments to national 
wants — ^The consequent deprivation of the poor by the appro- 
priation of their relief funds — The gradual growth of the Poor 
Laws — The evasion by the commercial interest of any real par- 
ticipation in the new relief legislation — ^The Elizabethan sta- 
tutes compared with more modern legislation, and the changes in 
the nation's views shown to be injurious to the Landed Interest 2SG 

CHAPTER XXn. 

aSNEBAL ASPBCT OF THB COUNTRY, WITH ITS HOUSBS, GARDENS, 
AND ORCHARDS. 

The country roads — ^The groat national highways — The king's 
peace and the highway — ^Road repairs — State of the national 
thoroughfares — ^Liability of the Landed Interest for highway 
maintenance— An imaginary journey through Tudor England — 
The scones along the great Fosse Way, from its beginning in 
Cornwall to its termination at Lincoln — Watling Street, and 
the objects of interest visible along its route from the cherry 
orchards of Kent to the western limits of Wales — ^A bird's-eye 


xvi Synopsis of Chapters. 

PAOl 

view of Lancashire and other northern counties — ^The industrial 
districts — ^The fen country and the East Anglian sheep-walks 
— The architecture of country mansions — The Renaissance and 
Gothic styles contrasted — Celebrated Tudor architects and their 
chief works — The manor gardens — Their fruits, flowers, and 
vegetables— Grerarde's Herbal— nSanitary arrangements in the 
homes of the Tudor yeomanry — Disgraceful state of floors and 
streets — ^A Tudor village — A copyholder's home and a Tudor 
surveyor's plan — ^The foreig[ner's impression of English domes- 
tic life . . . . . . . 299 

CHAPTER XXin. 

BSTATB BCONOMY. 

Sixteenth century agricultural authors, Bamaby Googe, and Sir A. 
Fitzherbert— The supervisor or land steward and the butler or 
house steward of the manorial establishment — The increased 
importance of the better classes of manorial husbandmen — The 
businesslike and prosaic habits of the new seignorial blood im- 
ported from the towns — Its want of touch with feudal traditions 
— Its ideas, having a commercial bent, rebel against the incon- 
gruity of pepper-corn rents, widows' free bench, etc. — The firmer 
hold of the farmer on the land, and the fresh owner's commercial 
instinct together cause increased litigation — The qualifications 
necessary for a Tudor land agent — A flood of fresh agricultural 
knowledge infused into the Landed Interest by the fresh 
seignorial blood — The Flemings and their advanced science — 
Comparison of the Tudor villeinage with the mediesval — The 
agricaltural economy of this new period — Its communal polity 
still apparent— The first attempts to introduce the enclosure 
system — Ket's rebellion and the German insurrection — The 
agricultural pioneers of the period discuss the subject in the^'r 
writings — Fitzherbert argues in favour, and Spriggs against the 
system — Legislative restrictions on a free system of husbandry 
—The laying down of land to pasture stopped by the State — A 
scarcity of com is avoided, and the restrictions on its exporta- 
tion gradually reduced to a minimum — The average prices of 
16th century wheat — The condition of farm rents, and agricul- 
tural depression illustrated from a sermon of Latimer's — W. S. 
Gentleman's treatise on farming in 1681 proves the success of 
the enclosure system — A sixteenth century Small Holdings Act 
—The poverty of the rural labourer — ^The average yield of com 
crops during this period — The Tudor farmer's food — Irregular 
rustic industries — The discouragement by the State of rural 
cloth manufacture, and its encouragement of a native linen 
industry • • . S12 

CHAPTER XXIV. 

A SIXTEENTH- CENTURY FARM. 

Lancashire farming — A Norfolk farmer's daily life — The Gregorian 
Calendar, not having been as yet intr6duced, the dates refer to 
the Julian Calendar — Time of entry on a Norfolk farm — The 
tenant right — List of farm implements — Autumn operations 6f 
husbandry — The cultivation of winter wheat — The fruit harvest 
— Shake time — The winter life — Fodder supply for the live 
stock — The hardships of existence increase as winter becomes 


Synopsis of Chapters. xvii 

PAGl 

spring — ^The Lenten operations on the farm — The work in 
sammer — Harvest customs — Holidays on the farm— The frolic- 
ing at Christmas, Shrovetide, etc.— The whole farming commu- 
nity dependent upon each individual's industry and skill — 
Tiandlord's supervision hy no means unnecessary • • . 827 

Ube Stuart perio^t 

CHAPTER XXV. 

ATTITUOB OF THB LANDED INTBREST IN THB BNBUINa 
CONlSTITUTIONAL STRUOOLB. 

Characteristics of the Stuart kings — James's meanness — Immodera- 
tion of the democracy — Loyalty of the Church — ^The purveyance 
grievance — Agricultural prosperity — The king's determination 
to oppose the agitation against feudal incidents estranges the 
Landed Interest — Charles I. succeeds at a time when the coun- 
try gentlemen are in a condition of determined opposition — The 
folly of the new king in persevering with the struggle regard- 
ing feudal dues — ^The division of the landed classes into the 
two hostile camps of Royalist and Roundhead — Effects of the 
civil war on the Landed Interest — The infusion of Flemish 
and villein hlood into the class of landed proprietorship — 
Cromwell the champion of agricultural interests — The science 
of the Fleming makes its mark on the national husbandry — 
The birth of a new factor in European farming caused by the 
advancement of chemical knowledge — Irish and Scotch agricul- 
ture contrasted with the English and Continental systems . 837 

CHAPTER XXVI. 

STUART AORICULTURB. 

The standing and influence of the new ag^^icultural authors : Norden, 
Hartlib, Plattes, Worledge, and Blith — Their attitude as re- 
gards landlordism, the enclosure question, etc. — Reclamation of 
the fen country — Other agricultural improvements advocated 
— ^The state of cultivation in various counties and districts— 
Arboriculture of the period— Stuart orchards and gardens — 
Hartlib's advanced views with regard to a national school of 
husbandry — Difficulties in the way of disseminating knowledge 
— Scarcity of newspapers, and other agencies whereby agricul- 
tural improvements could be introduced amongst the farmers 
of England — Consequent slow progress in adopting the hus- 
bandry of green crops . 347 

CHAPTER XXVII. 

FROM RESTORATION TO REVOLUTION. 

The return of the Landed Interests to their traditional loyalty — 
Poverty of the restored landlords— Abolition of feudalism — 
Bacon's description of the abuses practised by royal purveyors 
— ^The splendour of court favourites contrasted with the 
shabby appearance of the Stuart country gentleman — Macau- 
lay's description of his life, habits, surroundings, and tastes — 
James U. adopts the only course available for him to weaken 
their fervid loyalty — The religious differences between king and 
gentry — Sketch of the struggle which culminated in the Revolu- 
tion 866 


xviii Synopsis of Chapters. 


C3HAPTER XXVni. 

THE DOIIBSTIO AOQUIRBMENTS OF THE LANDED INTEREST. 


PASS 


State of England as regards civilisation and education— John 
Houghton and Gregory King — The later Stuart writers on agri- 
culture—Moore and Meager — Progress of turnip and potato 
culture^Further agricultural inventions forshadowed from the 
writings of various authors — Political animosity shown to be 
the cause of the slow progress made in the national agriculture 
— Statistics of the acreage, population, condition of cultivation, 
and average incomes ot the various classes— Comparison be- 
tween the condition of the Landed Interest in Tudor and Stuart 
times — Prevalence of crime — ^Inroad of gipsies — Revolution in 
the administration of justice caused by the severance of landed 
proprietorship from seignorial jurisdiction — King's Judges, Jas- 
tices of the Peace, Courts Leet and Baron— Distinction between 
the two last named as regards their business, ceremonies, and 
administration of justice 868 

CHAPTER XXIX. 

Triia BUSINESS OP THE COURT LBBT. 

The Law of Torts — ^Distress, fixtures, repairs, rights to light and air, 
etc. — A further attempt to explain the confusion apparent be- 
tween Courts Leet and Baron during Mediasval times — A brief 
historical summary of the courts— Professor Rogers' favourable 
view with regard to the old system of seignorial jurisdiction — 
Highway repairs, and a short history of highway legislation — 
Their defects illustrated by a reference to the Stuart thorough- 
fares — Water rights — Riparian ownership— The direction in 
which future legislation would tend foreshadowed by an exam- 
ination of the Leet's jurisdiction over illegal distress — The 
r^oUified views of the legislature regarding Illegal sporting — 
Poaching offences and trespass in pursuit of game — The Ver- 
derers Court — The advantages of the Court Leet over the 
modern County Court 379 

CHAPTER XXX. 

THE BUSINESS OP THE COURT BABON. 

A sitting of the Court pictured— The effects of 12 Charles U. c. 24 on 
the Dusiness of the Court Baron — Feudal inc^'dents not entirely 
obliterated by this Act — Instances where feudal customs had 
been modified rather than abolished — A separation of the Court 
Baron into the distinctions of Court of Ancient Demesnes, Court 
of the Copyholders, Court of the Baron, and Court of the Free- 
holders — ^The business of each carefully described— Effects of 
the system— The steward's relationship with the manorial com- 
munity—Analysis of the business during the 17th century of 
certain manorial courts in Lancashire — A brief retrospect of the 
whole history of the Landed Interest from its beginning to the 
period now reached • • • • 890 


HISTOEY 


OF THB 


ENGLISH LANDED INTEEEST 
3t0 Cu0tom9, %&W9, anb agriculture. 


CHAPTER I. 

THB EBA BEFORB THE ROMAN 0C0X7PATI0N. 

Op that portion of British rural life which, for all practical 
purposes, may be termed pre-historic, our information is pro- 
Yokingly scant. We, the descendants of the ancient Britons, 
would fain thrust aside the barrier of ignorance which shuts 
us out from those interesting Druidical days. The Greek and 
the Boman historians do but whet our appetites by the 
scanty food for reflection which the sum of all their allusions 
to ancient Britain afiFords us. The vaguest of vague allusions 
in Herodotus, Aristotle, and Polybius, tell us of the existence 
of those ten tin islands ^ up in the North Seas ; and this litera- 
ture contains the sole reUable links with the past. The traders 
of Tyre and Sidon, who had carried the Phoanician flag into 
many an out-of-the-way sea, had no doubt visited these shores 
in order to barter their wares for our tin, used when amal- 
gamated with copper for their bronze implements. 

^ Arist, De Mundo o. ill. (quoted Mon. Hist, Brit), p. 1. Herodot., 
Hist, Hb. ill. § 115. Polyb., Hist., Hb. iii. c 67. 

^ B 


± History of tite English Landed Interest. 

But Strabo merely creates in his English readers a longing 
for more facts when he describes^ the people of the littoral as 
clad in black cloaks, with sticks in their hands, and bearded 
like goats, who led a pastoral and nomad life, and bartered 
skins and tin for earthenware and salt. "Whence came these 
black-coated islanders, who in their mining propensities and 
dress resembled the Spanish Iberians, and in their long beards 
and pastoral habits the patriarchs of Scripture ? — these priest- 
ridden monotheists, with their tall slim figures * and peaceful 
mien ; these half-hearted sailors, who paddled about their fore- 
shores in fragile skin-made coracles ; * these importers of brass 
ornaments* and salt, though the metals that composed the 
former lay hidden beneath their feet, and the latter impreg- 
nated the waters around them ? Behind these seaside tribes 
stretched a baffling forest, amid the shadows of which were 
concealed peoples with whom the casual Phoenician or Cartha- 
ginian trader had no dealings, and who, for all they knew to 
the contrary, might be cannibals like the neighbou ring lemi, 
or as fierce and untamed as some vague tradition had repre- 
sented the northern tribes * to be. What might not Himilco 
of Carthage have told us,* who is supposed to have penetrated 
British seas as far back as one thousand years before our era 
began, if only he had been as ready a writer as he was bold 
navigator ? And what did we not lose in the destruction of 
those portions of the history written by Diodorus, giving us 
the views and facts about our forefathers, which this shrewd 
writer had picked up from the officers and men of CsBsar's 
expeditionary force?' But we must be content with the 
account which CsBsar himself has afforded, though information 
from such a source must for some reasons be regarded with 
suspicion as liable to exaggeration. The pen which wrote 

* Strabo, A.c. 80, Gtogr,^ lib. iii., ed. Falcon., p. 239. _ 
« Id. i&iU, lib. iv. p. 27a 

* Craig and Macfarlane, Hist o/Eng,, bk. 1, cb. iv. p. 102. 

* Strabo, Geogr,, lib. iii. p. 239. 

* Diodonis Siculus, lib. v. cb. 32. 
' Festus Avienus, lib. xxxi. 22. 

' Tbat Britain was known to tbe earlier Greek and Boman writers, is 
evident See note, Craig and Macfarlane, Hist o/Eng.^ bk. 1, p. 94. 


The Era before the Roman Occupation, 3 

" Veni, vidi, vici," was no doubt fully capable of augmenting 
the triumphs won by its holder's sword. Yet, on the other 
hand, when we read his writings on the subject of his enemies* 
domestic life and ethics, there would be less temptation to 
romance than when he was dilating upon the terrible scythe- 
armed chariots, or the combined cavalry and infantry for- 
mation through which he and his men hacked their way to 
victory. Now and then, too, we are able to corroborate, some- 
times even to supplement, such information by the remarks 
of his contemporaries. 

When we grumble at the small allowance of agricultural 
information that has filtered through to our times, we must 
bear in mind that this was an age especially devoted to war 
and the chase, than which no greater antagonists to the milder 
pursuit of husbandry can possibly be imagined. Successful 
generals were not likely to spend much time in describing 
on their tablets the habits of bucolic life, the peculiarities 
of cultivation, the varieties of live-stock, and the methods of 
their management, noticeable in a subjugated country. The 
Britain of two thousand years ago was in many respects like 
the New Zealand known to its earliest European explorers. 
Those lands near the sea-shore and their inhabitants' minds 
could both boast of some slight cultivation, but the back- 
woods were occupied by men whose intelligence was as 
stunted as that of Stanley's famous dwarfs. 

Com was the prominent product of husbandry; and the 
evidence of a few dilapidated monuments, as well as a not 
long obsolete West Highland custom,^ corroborates Diodorus ^ 
in his description of the subterranean chambers for housing 
the com in ear, and the beating out, drying, bruising, and 
roasting the daily portion, which Martin in more modern times 
relates with the graphic accuracy of an eye-witness as so 
skilfully performed by the Highlander's womankind. Dio- 
dorus,' too, speaks disparagingly of their wretched thatch- 

* Martin, Btscr, of Western Isles ofScotl, p. 204. 
' Diodorus Siculus, lib. v. ch. 21, 22. 

• Id. Ibid, C»sar, BeU. GaU., lib. v. ch. 1-23, and Strabo, Geogr., lib. 
iv. p. 278. 


4 History of the English Landed Interest. 

covered huts of wood, probably not unlike those Teutonic 
habitations to which Strabo has introduced his readers. 

But CsBsar, who actually penetrated the interior, compares 
their dwellings to those of G-aul, so that with the additional 
help of Strabo,^ we can picture the tract of wooded country 
and the occasional clearing surrounded by a high bank of 
earth and fallen trees, with its protecting ditch, from which 
the soil for the bank had been dug ; and, within, the com- 
munity of people with their flocks and herds. Frail and 
ephemeral these wretched structures must necessarily have 
been, required as they were only to keep together for that 
brief period before their restless inhabitants, like the South 
African Boer, " trekked " to pastures new, and for another short 
spell set up a fresh " kraal." 

We can then well believe Cassar when he states that these 
primitive persons never sowed their lands, but were merely 
half hunters, half herdsmen, subsisting partly on the spoils of 
the chase, partly on the products of their live-stock. Nor have 
we reason to doubt Strabo ^ when he mentions their ignorance 
of gardening and inability to make cheese ; nor even Xephi- 
lenus,' when he asserts that they, like the Greeks of the Iliad, 
never tasted fish ; nor should we long hesitate to credit that 
crowning improbability of all, when CaBsar* relates that their 
religion forbade them to eat either hare, common fowl, or 
goose, though they kept these creatures as pets. The Druids * 
were stem disciplinarians, and fully appreciated the powers 
afforded by such agencies as mystery and superstition. We 
can picture, amidst the stunted growth of uncared-for beech 
and pine woods the taller groups of oaks which marked the 
groves where they performed their mystic ceremonies. How 
scared must many a truant urchin have felt as he scudded 
past their. dread vicinity, or some belated hunter, as he spurred 
his jaded horse in order to get quickly out of the sombre 
depths of their shade ! Peoples who reverenced the Druidical 


* C»8ar, BtU. GaU., Hb. v. ch. 1-23. 

« Strabo, Geogr.^ lib. iv. p. 278. • Xephilenus, lib. Ixxvi. § 12. 

* Ceesar, Beil. GaU., lib. v. ch. 1-23. » Id. Ibid., Hb, vi. pp. lS-20. 


The Era before the Roman Occupation. 5 

cult, like the Gauls, Strabo tells ns, were not easy about their 
harvest prospects unless they could collect together a goodly 
number of its priests, and we may conclude that the crops of 
Britain were considered equally benefited by their presence. 

Though we read of the good qualities of the small wiry 
British horses, and the advantages for venery and warfare of 
British dogs,* as well as of the abundance and fecundity of 
British flocks and herds, history is silent on the subject of pigs. 
"We may be certain they ran wild in the woods, but we find no 
traces of any prototype of that swine-herd, Q-urth, whom, even 
when engaged in his uninteresting occupation, the glamour 
of Scott's pen has rendered actually picturesque. When CsBsar 
left these woad-stained barbarians, whose ideal of commerce 
did not extend beyond the exchange of tin, not exactly perhaps 
for the glass and tinsel which attracts modem savages, but 
for something not far remote from those trifles,* such as ivory 
bracelets, brass mirrors, and amber cups, darkness once more 
settles over their history, and for nearly one hundred years 
we are left in ignorance of their progress. 

One may be permitted to pause here and give rein to fancy 
and wonder as to the effects on our modem land system and 
agriculture, supposing some other than the Eoman nation had 
conquered and taken us in hand. When we come to compare 
the Romans of those days with the peoples of other countries, 
we find that, however greatly they may be esteemed for their 
engineering or military genius, they cannot be considered in the 
first rank as regards their husbandry. It is true that some 
Minister or Committee of Agriculture had originated a senatorial 
decree for the translation of the famous twenty-eight books 
which the Carthaginian Mago had written on the subject, and 
that Pliny was about to write a work of lasting importance on 
the same science ; but, for all that, Italian husbandry was far 
behind that of such countries as Japan, China, and Egypt.* 
The use of the drill was common amongst the Chinese ; the 
Japanese were adepts in coUecting and preserving manures ; 

* Strabo, Gtogr., lib. iv. p. 278, • Id. Ibid, 

* Bees, Cydo.f sub voc, Ag^riculture. 


6 History of the English Landed Interest. 

and the Egyptian farming system was not dissimilar to ours of 
the present da/, so that our agricultural progenitors would 
have undoubtedly. fallen into more skilled hands as regards 
their particular industry had any of these nations possessed 
the will and the power to invade our shores. When Rome ^ was 
annually importing 20,000,000 bushels of Egyptian wheat to 
supply the deficiency of her home growth, and other nations 
were but just realising the digestive superiority of flour over 
acorns, the inhabitants of the Delta were paying attention to 
the rotation of crops, the making of hay, and the artificial 
hatching of poultry. Their ancient paintings and inscriptions 
afford reliable evidence of their skill in erecting farm build- 
ings, making fish-ponds, and preserving game. No wonder 
they deified their chief product, com, and worshipped the 
very animals used in its cultivation. But at this period the 
activity of European husbandmen seemed to ebb and flow like 
the tides. In the prehistoric age of Greece, Hesiod* was 
writing his Weeks and Days, and then Greek agriculture 
went to sleep almost until the days of Constantino IV., who 
revived it by collecting into his Geoponics all that had been 
written on the subject. 

But of the various nationalities who came in contact with 
these islands we may assign to the Phoenicians the foremost 
place. Unfortunately the type of Tyrian, or Sidonian, who 
rubbed shoulders with our seaside tin miners, was not agri- 
cultural, but seafaring, and no more qualified to understand 
the tillage of soils than a British tar of the present century. 

But, agriculture excepted, what nation of those times could 
have done us better or more permanent service than the 
Roman, which laid the foundation-stone of that splendid power 
which now rules so large a share of the world ? It was their 
road engineering* which welded together politically as well as 
geographically the petty little tribes that existed prior to 

* Encylo, Brit, sub voc. Agriculture. 

* Eees, Eyclo.y sub voc. Agriculture. 

* Camden gives a graphic account of the Boman road-making, for 
which fens were drained, embankments raised over low valleys, and 
width allowed for two waggons abreast. Vide Britannia, part 1, 


The Era before the Roman Occupation, 7 

their occupation into the principalities which ultimately 
formed our monarchy. It was their militarism and discipline 
which first taught us how to rule and be ruled ; and it was on 
us alone of their conquered tributaries that they seem to have 
cast the famed parple mantle of their imperialism. An 
Egyptian occupation might have introduced the apotheosis 
of Agriculture, and a Greek occupation that of Art, but wlio, 
if not Eome, could have endowed us with the majestic and 
awful gift of Empire ? ^ 

The Boman found the Briton a primitive savage, his food 
partly what he overtook in the chase, partly what he rooted 
up from an untilled soil ; his home, the forest or cave ; his 
ideas of art, feathers and dyes. We shall find, as we pursue 
this history, that he left him with all the incipient evidence 
of a vigorous nationality, if not powerfiil government. Nor 
is it an argument against this that we have exaggerated the 
primitiveness of his state before the Boman Conquest, because 
there is historical evidence of a fringe of civilised foreigners ' 
dwelling around his backwoods. Even less is it an argument 
that we have exaggerated the good done him by the long 
Boman occupation, because he fell an easy prey to the Picts 
and Scots on the one side and the Saxon pirates on the other 
as soon as his patrons left him. He may be compared to the 
Israelite as we read of him in Exodus. The long Egyptian 
bondage had quenched his natural fires, and for forty years 
he was unfit for warfare, but the old martial feeling of the 
race eventually triumphed. It was the misfortune of the 
Briton that he was allowed no such peaceful interval in which 
he might realise and recover that spirit of enterprise and 
independence with which he was by nature so largely gifted. 

» Virgil, Mn.. vL 861 seq. 

* Ceesar, Bdh Gall., lib. v. ch. 1-23. 


pcrtoD of tbe 1?oman ©ccupatton. 

B.a 68— A.D. 426. 


CHAPTER n. 

TBE BIBTH OF THE BNaLISH LAND SYSTEM. 

Thbee Nationalities, viz., the Briton, the Soman, and the 
Teuton, helped to determine the character of our great English 
Landed Interest. As we come to deal with the various classes 
connected with this soil of England, we shall discover customs 
peculiar to their tenure, their husbandry, their commerce, their 
tribunals, and even their games, whose origin is closely inter- 
mixed with ethnical characteristics. This, indeed, endows our 
folk-lore societies and antiquarian publications with motives 
a great deal more practical than those of mere curiosity about 
a dead past. 

Could we but trace each of these nationalities to some dis- 
tinctly separate stem, there would be far less difficulty in 
tracking back to its proper origin each peculiarity of our 
Constitution. But this is in no single instance possible. 
Modem theorists have produced a mass of inductive evidence 
of sufficient weight to attract a large school of disciples, who 
would derive the three peoples just named from some common 
Indo- Aryan source. That this idea has its opponents goes 
without saying, but even they limit their objections, to but a 
moiety of the British race ; though possibly were Mr. Gomme,^ 
their champion, to extend his researches, he might produce 
sufficient evidence to shake the orthodox theories with regard 

^ O. L. Gomme, Village Community^ ch. iv. 

8 


as9 


The Birth of the English Land System. 9 

to Boman and Teuton origins, as he has already shaken them 
with regard to British. 

From the earliest times there was a principle common to 
most nations, namely, that the land of the State,^ when not 
reserved for public usage, should be divided in parts amongst 
its families. Take, for example, one of the oldest Land systems 
about which we have any evidence, and examine the Israelitish 
laws. To ea>ch head of a family was assigned a certain portion 
of the land which became his inalienable property, so that at 
the recurrence of the jubilee year all his debts, sales, alienations 
and mortgages lapsed, and the land reverted to its original 
owners. 

A communal form of Land Tenure was especially character- 
istic of tribal nationalities, and certainly the three ' races about 
which we are now interested, existed some time or other in a 
tribal condition. " They held their lands in common," is a 
phrase appropriate to any one of them, so long as it be applied 
in each separate case to the proper era of their national exist- 
ence. 

Had Bepublican Eome conquered this island, we might have 
jumped at the conclusion that the Anglo-Saxon Folcland was 
but a continuation of the earlier Roman polity connected with 
the Ager Publicus. Had Mr. Seebohm ' and Sir Henry Maine 
been silent, we should have naturally concluded that the open 
field system of agriculture, with its peculiarities of land tenure 
and seignorial jurisdiction, was but a development of the Teu- 
tonic Mark. Had we never become intimate with Lidian* 
village communities, and studied the incipient growth of their 
overlords, we should have traced the manorial system to the 
Anglo-Saxon war chiefs or the Norman feudal dignitaries. 

The whole difficulty lies in the fact that nationalities at similar 
periods of their existence or under similar circumstances adopt 

"* Fustel de Coulanges, Origin of Property in Land (Ashley's trans.) 
p. 89. 

* Mommsen, Hist of Rome, vol. L pp. 88, 72, and ch. xiii. Seebohm, 
English Village Community, ch. vi Stubbs, Const Hist, p. 63. 

> Seebohm, English Village Community, p. 410. 

^ Maine, Ancient Law. 


10 History of the English Landed Interest. 

very much the same systems of land tenure and agriculture. 
Speaking generally, they fit themselves to their environment, 
often assimilating into their own constitutional system what- 
ever strikes them as familiar and applicable in the customs of 
the fresh peoples amidst which their nomadic or rapacious in- 
stincts have led them to settle. 

This is strikingly illustrated in the history of the Hebrews. 
Nomadic and pastoral by instinct, they were compelled to 
revolutionise their habits in a land like Egypt, where the 
business of the flock-master was an " abomination." At the 
exodus, once again free to follow their own bent, they became 
nomadic, until their occupation of Palestine, a country fitted 
rather for agriculture than a pastoral life, a second time entirely 
altered their land system. 

Compare, too, the procedure of a commercial and civilised 
nationality, such as the English, when colonising large tracts 
of uncultivated territories in America, Australia, and the Cape. 
The tendency is to revert to one of those stages through which 
our nation has already passed. In the earlier portion of the 
seventeenth century there still survived minute traces of the 
old communal polity. For this cause the Pilgrim Fathers in- 
troduced into New England the old system of common field 
tenure. Later on, however, the marked individualism of the 
overlord eclipses all the earlier tribal instincts. The modern 
backwoodsman isolates himself from his fellows, and makes a 
hut, and clears ground for his own individual wants. Uncon- 
sciously, perhaps, he adapts the policy of the pastoral aboriginal 
to his own system. Like that primitive nomad, he exhausts 
the soil with his crops, as the latter once upon a time exhausted 
its herbage with his herds ; then, like him, untrammelled by 
the laws and customs of a community, he passes forward to 
fresh sources of pristine fertility and starts afresh. 

Nations, then, which, like Imperial Eome, had long lost touch 
with their primitive tribal polity, would instinctively revert to 
it when brought into contact with semi-civilised peoples. It 
is then evident, in the first place, that any information which 
we can scrape together bearing on Rome's earliest system of 
land tenure, will be valuable to the subject in hand. We 


The Birth of the English Land System. 1 1 

shall therefore endeavour to summarise as briefly as possible 
those features of Boman land management which will enable 
us when we have proceeded further in our subject to point out 
as they occur parallels in the systems of other nations. 

It is immaterial whether the evidence leading us to derive 
the Italian from a portion ^ of that Indo-Q-ermanic horde which 
came into Europe somewhere out of the western centre of 
Asia is or is not conclusive. It is more to the point that the 
Imperial Boman of the British era was accustomed to trace a 
descent back to tribal existence. No student of classical history 
needs reminding of the Gens, or is ignorant of the patria potes- 
taa which armed the father of a family with absolute powers, 
and left his wife equally destitute of rights with his slave or 
ox.' The Gens was the unit of the community, and the 
original Boman territory comprehended the united lands of 
the Gentes. The accretions of territory derived from conquered 
enemies, on the other hand, were divided into equal lots of two 
jugera each, and apportioned among the citizens. 

The whole district was not thus assigned, but portions were 
reserved for the service of the gods, the royal domains, and 
the pasturage of the people's cattle. Each Boman burgess had 
thus about one acre and a half of hereditary arable land, and 
the common pasturage afforded him facilities for keeping his 
live-stock. The pasture-ground in pre-historic times was the 
untilled waste of the community. It was in many respects on 
all fours with the Folcland of the Anglo-Saxon period ; and, as 
we have already said, the most natural cpnclusion would jje 
that the latter system was the direct continuation of the former. 
Both wastes were used for the same purposes by the two 
peoples. Both were equally liable to appropriation by the over- 
lord, though the Ager Publicus of the Boman was carefully 
protected by a code of agrarian legislation, for want of which 
the Folcland of the Anglo-Saxon was left at the mercy of the 
allodialist. 

When we come to examine the origin of our English Com- 
mons, we shall endeavour to prove that the same influences 

' Mommsen, Hist. ofRome^ voL L ch. L 
« Id. Ibid., pp. 72, 73. 


1 2 History of the English Landed Interest. 

were at work in England, which in Eome were checked by 
statecraft.^ The famous agrarian laws only applied to the 
Ager Pablicus, and were never intended, as all early historians 
have erroneously stated, to uphold in perpetuity the equal 
division of the two jugera amongst the community. The An- 
archical opinions prevalent during the times of the great French 
Revolution threw a glaring light on the subject, and Niebuhr's 
researches have fully shown that these laws referred solely to 
the Ager Publicus in contradistinction to private possessions. 
Nor do they seem to have been extended in practice to that 
form of the Ager Publicus which was established in later times 
outside the Italian peninsula. 

The ^Ager Publicus of republican Rome consisted principally 
of a third portion set apart from the lands of conquered nations. 
No doubt Rome originally possessed, as we know other Italian 
communities did, an area of waste surrounding her territory 
over which the citizens had common rights of pasturage. But 
in historic times this has disappeared, and all that need con- 
cern us is the economical methods resorted to over that division 
of the Ager Publicus wrung from the foes of Rome. Over a 
part of this the State had resigned ownership, but the rest was 
thrown open for the settlement of the citizens ; and it is this 
latter portion which should especially engross our attention. 

Land in those times was superabundant and capital scarce, 
so that the State regarded the settler on the public lands as a 
national benefactor. * It therefore allowed men to take up, free 
of charge, not only all that they could actually cultivate, but 
as much as they might have expectation of cultivating. In 
later times, when it was necessary to obtain some return from 
the public lands, a charge was levied, in the form of tithes or 
decumae, on the agricultural portion, paid generally in kind, 
and scriptura, or an agistment tax for cattle fed on the pasture. 
The collection of these charges was leased to the publicani (i.e. 
contractors) for definite sums, and the commission which they 

* Encydo, Brit, sub voc. Agrarian Laws. 

Smith's Diet, of Antiqu., ed. 1891, sub voc. Ager Pablicua Willems, 
La Droit Piiblique Roniaine, 

* Bruns, FoiUes Jur. Bom», p. 418, Hyginus § 115. 


The Birth of the English Land System. 13 

might charge to recoup themselves was fixed by the censors, 
who constittited the chief fiscal authority of the State. 

Thus, then, land being plentiful, any man belonging to the 
governing class who liked to undertake the task of reclamation 
was readily allowed to do so. The Ager Publicus at first was 
entirely monopolised by the Patricians. It was a stage of 
society when trade did not exist, and when, therefore, rich and 
poor were synonymous terms with landed and landless. Gradu- 
ally the richer " possessores " succeeded in elbowing out their 
poorer neighbours. Everything tended towards a monopoly of 
the Ager Publicus by the capitalist. Large areas of waste, caused 
either by the devastation of conquest or the natural defects of 
soil, were continually being added to the State. They could 
not be pastured or rendered fertile except by expensive oper- 
ations. They therefore fell into the hands of a limited class 
who could afford to sink capital either in restoring their pris- 
tine good qualities or in stocking them with flocks and herds. 
None but the moneyed Eoman could afford to meet the State 
charges of one-fifth and one-tenth respectively on the lands 
they had rendered fit for corn and fruit ; and the huge flocks 
and herds of a wealthy patrician would have bared the unstinted 
herbage of the waste for the poor man's cow. Up to a certain 
point this process of reclaiming and thus rendering profitable 
the waste lands of the State had been beneficial to the bulk of 
the nation. Then the poise between supply and demand was 
disturbed from an opposite direction. 

The struggles between the Patricians and Plebeians, which 
occupy the earlier pages of Roman history, had centred round 
the rights to enjoy the Ager Publicus.* When the slave-culti- 
vated properties of the large landowners threatened to swallow 
up the territory available for cultivation, when the yeoman 
farmers of the days of Cincinnatus had wellnigh disappeared, 
-when the Boman citizen army had steadily diminished from 
328,000 to 319,000 in less than thirty years, and its ranks had 
been refilled with slaves, who were not liable to be called from 
their work to serve their country, the position of the possessores 

^ Momnisen, Rist. of Borne, voL ill. ch. 11. and liL Plutarch, Lives of 
Gracchi, 


14 History of the English Landed Interest. 

was seriously attacked. It was against them that the Agrarian 
legislation was aimed, and they were peculiarly vulnerable, 
since their tenure did not include the " dominium " of the land. 
They had become occupiers of the district when even its best 
soil was of no value as compared with the animals that stocked 
it or the implements that helped to till it. They had spent 
their capital in reclaiming useless wildernesses. Now that 
they were gardens the State began to search back for its 
title. 

Their position in many respects resembles that of the Scotch 
crofters; but as the Roman law allowed no right of prescription 
against the State, they were, as tenants at will, worse off than 
the latter. No matter how long their tenure had lasted, or 
how much capital they had sunk in improving the holding, 
they were liable to a moment's notice of dismissal. They had 
no doubt abused their powers.^ The manipulation of the 
public revenues was in their hands, and fraudulent returns in 
tax schedules were quite as easily effected by them as surrep- 
titious alterations in their boundary marks. Deficiencies had 
occurred in the public purse, fresh taxation became necessary, 
and this fell heavily on the poorer citizens. Thus came about 
those unfortunate class contests between rich and poor, of 
which every schoolboy knows the story. The system of the 
" occupatio '' was altered to suit the popular outcry. One con- 
cession led to another, for the people would not rest content at 
half measures. They were well aware of their rights, and 
frequently turned out the obnoxious squatters, till Tiberius 
Grracchus finally abolished this form of the capitalist landlord 
altogether. A measure was passed by him which wrested the 
bulk of their lands from the unfortunate possessores and dis- 
tributed them in thirty jugera lots amongst the Italian pro- 
letariat as inalienable freeholds. But even thus early the 
claim for unexhausted improvements obtained State support, 
and the capital sunk in the old "occupatio" was not altogether 
lost. 

Before, however, the fall of the Republic this form of ^e 

* JEYicycto. Brit.^ siib, voc. Agrarian Laws. 


The Birth of the English Land System. 1 5 

public land had ceased to exist. Private holdings had in- 
creased in size and quality, the farming class had declined, and 
slave labour had spread. 

Imperial Eome, however, carried forward the idea of the 
public field under the same name, but with a different policy. 
Land was continually being added to the Ager Publicus by 
conquest ; only, instead of being subject to the Leges Agrarise, 
it wa^, in the greater part of the Empire, administered by the 
procurators under imperial instructions. 

Military frontiers had to be formed, whereby men received 
grants of land on threatened and exposed boundaries which 
they were called upon to defend in times of danger. 

But in the ^ majority of cases (Britain among others) the 
soil of the provincial communities was ^' ager publicus extra 
commercium," that is to say, it was never allowed to pass out 
of the hands of the State, and was always chargeable with a 
land tax, even when held by the Eoman citizens. This State 
charge took the shape of a tribute payable by the inhabitants 
of the conquered countries. It may be divided into two heads : 
the "tributum soli," a tax on real property (of which the 
scriptura, decumse, etc., would be classed by the Roman as 
vectigales), and the " tributum capitis," which was not so 
much a poll tax as a charge on the earnings of the individuals 
composing the industrial community. In the wilder districts 
of the Boman provinces the tribute was obtained from personal 
property. It was, no doubt, levied in the half-civilised districts 
of Britain, as we know it to have been levied in half-civilised 
Spain. Thus, probably, each tribe would be made responsible 
for a certain amount, which was payable in such commodities 
as ox-hides and the like. As the principal portion of Britain 
was waste, and as the majority of its industrial classes were 
cattle farmers, it is more than probable that wherever the 
British soil came directly under the Boman fiscal officer's 
jurisdiction it did so as pasturage under the scriptura system. 
But it would be an error to imagine that all parts of Britain 
were treated alike, or that any one part was taxed on exactly 

* Willems, Droit Publ. Rom, 


1 6 History of the English Landed Interest. 

the same principles throughout the long domination of the 
Bomans. 

It is probable that in Britain, as in other half-civilised com- 
munities, there was no very elaborate fiscal organisation. The 
country indeed did not become a Roman province until a.d. 61 ; 
and it was the attempt to enforce the taxation consequent on 
this operation that precipitated a rebellion that had been long 
brewing. 

The tribute,^ whatever form it existed, would be roughly 
assessed according to the expenses of administration, under' the 
same principles as the Frumentum or com for the army of 
occupation was determined by the needs of the troops. ^ An 
attempt was probably made to collect such taxes direct fix)m 
the individual native ; but it seems to have failed, and the task 
would then be relegated to the hands of local chiefs. What- 
ever taxation was found most suitable to the locality, such as 
the portoria and indirect charges for the commercially inclined 
Belg88, and the scriptura for the pastoral communities of the 
interior, would have been assessed according to the census of 
the imperial representative ; but some form of tax on personal 
property would have been roughly estimated at an approximate 
total for the fierce hill tribes of the West. 

All such dues would then be levied by the procurator fisci 
and his clerks, the servi and liberti, but collected by the native 
magistrates. However, as we have already said, the bulk of 
the British soil was waste taxable by the scriptura system; 
and wherever that system prevailed there would be a resusci- 
tation of the old Ager Publicus much as it existed in the early 
days when Eome was but a hill fort on the Tiber. Moreover, 
when the imperial domination of Britain had ceased, and the 
last of the Civil Service officers of the Empire had turned his 
back on these shores, the Ager Publicus, without even its 
agistment charges, was for practical purposes absolutely iden- 
tical with the people's waste of the tribal Bomans, as well as 
with the Folcland of the Anglo-Saxons. 

It is so important for our purpose to establish a point like 
this, which, be it remembered, advances the idea of a Folcland 
^ Tacitus, Agricolaf 19. 


The Birth of the English Land System. 1 7 

in Britain long before the immigration of the Anglo-Saxons, 
that it is necessary to examine briefly any evidence which 
would connect what we know to have been the general Eoman 
policy over conquered and barbarous nations with that in this 
particular case. Happily for our purpose most forms of Boman 
taxation aroused native opposition, and such serious occurrences 
did not escape mention by the Boman historians. 

The great revolt of Boadicea ^ seems to have been brought 
about principally owing to the nefarious exactions of the Boman 
officials. Prasutagus, king of the Iceni, had died, bequeathing 
to the emperor his kingdom and daughters. This, however, 
proved no safeguard to either. The late king's subjects were 
plundered by the military officials on the pretext of purveyance 
for the army ; his home was ruined through the instrumen- 
tality of the civil officials by an abusive manipulation of the 
imperial fiscal system ; and lastly, his kingdom was reduced 
to the form of a Boman province. But the stirring words of 
their maddened queen are significant of far longer outstanding 
discontent. It was not only the frumentum for the troops, but 
the forced labour on the roads, the exactions and violence of 
military and fiscal officers wluch aroused to arms the tribes 
under her command. 

The British of the interior were for a long period too ignorant 
of agriculture to avail themselves to any large extent of the de- 
oumal system of land tenure. They continued to carry on the 
pastoral semi-nomadic life they had hitherto led, acknowledg- 
ing the Boman Emperor's sovereignty over their Folcland by 
the payment of scriptura. Half-ruined already by their pro- 
longed resistance, they were forced to borrow money at usury 
from their Boman masters. In this way Seneca alone is said 
to have lent £322,000, and this was another grievance which 
swelled the ranks of the rebels under Boadicea. 

But evidence afforded by ancient British coins also points to 
the peculiar forms of taxation adopted one time or another by the 
Bomans. Camden alludes to the fact that the Britons used brass 
money, rings, or plates of iron, and proceeds to describe in nu- 
merical order the coins of gold, silver, and " brasse of sundrie 

* Tacitus, Hwf ., xiv. 31 ; Agric,, 16. 

Q 


1 8 History of the English Landed Interest 

fashions, all for the most part of the one side hollow." There is, 
for example, the coin of Otinobelius,* with a horse, the word 
Camo, and a " corne ear.'' There was another impressed with a 
swine, another with a ^' bull boaking with his homes," another 
with a " horse ill favouredly portraied," some with trees and 
some with people's heads. He conjectures that these various 
coins represented either the agistment or tribute dues ; but he 
shall be heard in his own language. ^^ Considering that Gsesar 
had appointed what customs or imports the Britons should 
pay yearly, and whereas under Augustus they endured those 
payments for portage or toll, as well in carrying forth as bring- 
ing in commodities, by little and little other tributes also were 
imposed upon them, to wit for come grounds, plant plots, 
groves or parks, pasturage of greater and smaller beastes, as 
being subdued now to obey as subjects, and not to serve as 
slaves, I have been of opinion that these pieces of money were 
stamped at first for that use, namely, for greater beasts with 
an horse ; for smaller, with a swine ; for woods, with a tree ; 
for corne fields, with an eare of come, as in that piece of the 
Verolamians which carried the inscription Vero. As for those 
with the head of a man or woman, they may seem stamped for 
the tribute Capitatio, which was personal, and imposed upon 
the poll or person of every one, of women from the twelfth, of 
men from the fourteenth, yeere of their age, which imposition 
Bunduica, or Bodicia, a queen of the Britans, complaineth of 
in these words : ' Yee doe both grase and also plough for the 
Roman. Yea, yee pay an yearlie tribute in respect of your 
verie bodies.' " 

Camden reminds us that Dio has described the Britons as 
very much less hampered by the !Eoman yoke than the Jews 
of the same period.' Both nations were tributaries of Bome 
from the time of Julius CsBsar to that of Claudius. The 
Britons, however, made their own laws, elected their own 
rulers, and very likely stamped their pol silver with images 
and superscriptions of their own kings, whereas the K^tro^ of 
Judfisa invariably bore Caesar's image and superscription. 

' Camden Britannia Conjectures as touching the firitish Coines. 
3 Compare also Mommsen, Roman Provinces (chap, on Judeea). 


The Bifih of the English Land System, 19 

Ere we dismiss the subject of coins we must mention one 
Roman coin of interest stamped with the inscription of Claudius 
CaBsar, and on the reverse a husbandman with a cow and bull 
is imprinted. " The Eomans " (saith Servius), " when they were 
about to found and build cities, being girt and clad after the 
Sabine fashion, . . . yoked on the right hand a bull, and 
within forth a cow, and held the crooked plough taile bending 
inward, so as all the clods of the earth might fall inward ; and 
that having made a furrow, they did set out the places for 
walls, holding up the plough for the ground where the gates 
should be." 

This coin, so graphically described by Camden, not only 
represents the founding of the Colonia Camolodunum, but is 
probably the earliest pictorial evidence of the use of the plough 
in Britain that has descended to our days. 

But to return to the main subject of this chapter. How far 
may we use the parallels between Eoman and Anglo-Saxon 
land tenure, so as to weld connecting links in the chain of our 
History? 

There are writers like Coote * who would have us see the 
agency of Borne in almost every charsrcteristic of our English 
constitution. On the other hand there are writers like Kemble, 
who would Teutonise our Institutions so effectually as to exclude 
all influences anterior to the Anglo-Saxon invasion. It is be- 
tween such a Scylla and Charybdis that we must now attempt 
to steer our undertaking. 

We shall have to be careful lest we catch too carelessly at 
any chance similarity between the Eoman and later English 
landed economies. We might for instance point to the already 
existing Boman practice of devoting a portion of the Ager 
Publicus to the service of the gods as the germ of the later tithe 
system of the Western Church; whereas the dedication of a 
portion of Man's worldly goods to the Deity was as old as Abra- 
ham and as familiar to every Christian as the Bible. We might 
again draw erroneous conclusions from the similarity of the 
common-field system of agriculture practised by the primitive 
inhabitants of Italy with that practised by the Anglo-Saxons 
^ Coote, Bomaius in Britain, 


20 History of the English Landed Interest. 

in England, unless we waited to see if a like system were not 
common to other peoples of the human race. 

On the other hand, it would be unreasonable to ignore the 
influences of Soman land tenure altogether. In spite of 
Bishop Stubbs, we believe that the ^ Eoman legal code has 
formed the model for many of the laws in our EngUsh statute 
book, that the Roman vocabulary has been the recruiting 
ground of our Anglo-Saxon language ; and that the Soman 
engineering genius has created lasting examples for our road- 
makers and bridge-builders. Why then should not Roman 
customs have entered largely into the composition of that base 
on which has been reared our present system of English land 
tenure ? 

We who live in these peaceful and enlightened days can 
scarcely realise how exceptional it was for a nation at the be- 
ginning of the Christian era to enjoy the blessings of security 
to person and property, to travel on roads still the envy of our 
modem highway surveyors, to live iix comfortable and substan- 
tial dwellings, and to cultivate arts and sciences which the 
Greeks and Romans alone of European nationalities were 
refined enough to appreciate. Tet all this was bestowed on 
the British by the Roman occupation. 

Like the Greeks before them and the English after them, 
the Romans possessed the gift of ruling conquered nationalities. 
The secret of their success was no doubt the elasticity of their 
system. Here in Britain they had Celts, Belgse, South Ger- 
mans, and Romans to control ; and, as we have already said, we 
must not expect to find one uniform method adopted ; indeed, 
we could perhaps hardly exaggerate the modifications in their 
methods of government occasioned by altered circumstances 
or times. Moreover the Roman occupation lasted as long as 
from the Norman conquest to the beginning of the Tudor 
dynasty. Could those four centuries have had as little effect 

' Let us cite two instances amongst many. The Norman lawyer dis- 
torted every grade of the villeinage into one common distinction^ that of 
the Boman slave ; and secondly, he applied the Eoman rule to the sub- 
ject of bastardy, thereby fidling on the horns of a dilemma by creating a 
policy contrary to Church doctrine. 


The Birth of the English Land System. 21 

on British land tenure as the British occupation for only a 
quarter of that length of time has had on Indian land tenure ? 
The Britons during the later period of the occupation were not 
so much the conquered subjects as the friendly allies of the 
Eoman. They regarded the severance of that relationship with 
as much dislike as the northern Irish would now regard that 
with England. For a long time after it was brought about 
they turned instinctively to Eome in every difficulty and 
danger. They had, in fact, been so accustomed to lean on 
Borne, that they found it impossible to stand without her. Is 
it then to be supposed that they were so prejudiced against the 
Roman's system of land tenure, or so inappreciative of its 
good poiuts, that they never voluntarily assimilated what 
was beneficial into their own systems ? 

On the other hand, in estimating their influence, we must 
not shut our eyes to the growing tendency in the Itomans of 
the Imperial Civil Service to oppress provincial nationalities 
where they could do so with impunity. The emperor's legates 
were not all endowed with the wisdom and moderation of 
Agricola. The ^ underlings of the fiscal department were over- 
bearing and grasping in the extreme, and Mr. Seebohm has 
utilised this trait in attributing to the Procurator Fisci the first 
assumption of overlordship in Britain. That the manorial 
system in some form came into existence during this period, is 
our firm belief. But it is difficult to imagine that the officials 
of the Fiscus would have coveted the overlordship of a small 
group of natives. They more likely anticipated a successful 
career in the Imperial Civil Service, possibly ending in the 
control of their own department. 

It is, on the contrary, natural to conclude that the local 
headman would have assumed manorial rights analogous to 
those of the * Bengalese Zamindar, who was forced by British 
prejudice into the position of a personal landlord, and thus 
made responsible for the regular payment of the land tax. 

The social status of the overlord must, however, be clearly 

* Seebohm, EngUsh Village Community, ch. B, 

* Maine, AncierU Law, 


22 History of the English Landed Interest. 

defined before we can properly examine the question of his 
origin in this island. He was probably some individual who 
managed to combine in his own person the offices of judge, fiscal 
officer, and landed proprietor. The officials of the Fiscus, we 
are told by Tacitus, ^ though unsuccessful with Tiberius, ulti- 
mately obtained from Claudius a recognition of their claims to 
judicial power. The third qualification ».e., proprietary rights 
over land, alone was wanting, and to attain that they had to 
supply capital as an equivalent for the system of coaration, 
probably then in use, and to become bound by certain social 
regulations and duties towards their serfs, to which modem 
times can afford no parallel. 

Whether then this combination of powers, which under 
Anglo-Saxon rule were known as sac, soc, toll, and team, ever 
endowed some individual of the British era with the same pro- 
prietary rights which afterwards made the king's thane and 
the Norman baron such alarming personages, is doubtful. 
There is, however, little likelihood that the overlord of this 
early period, be he Roman or Briton, survived the Saxon's 
sword, any more than his villa survived the invader's destruc- 
tive tendencies. It is enough if we point out that the manorial 
system was not unknown to the Soman. The Fundus of the 
later republican and imperial times owned by a landlord and 
worked by his servi and coloni, was not dissimilar to the provin- 
cial manor, and Mr. Gomme ^ has gone so far as to produce 
evidence of a British resistance to the growing powers of over- 
lordship, which not even in Rome had been allowed free play. 
But for the present we have cited sufficient instances of close 
parallels between Roman and Anglo-Saxon systems of land 
tenure and agriculture, and are leaving to the Feudal period, 
perhaps, the closest of any, viz. that of the colonus with his 
military service and emphyteutic tenure. So far it is impos- 
sible to form any positive conclusions, for we have yet to 
compare the Anglo-Saxon systems with those of the Teuton, 
the Sclav, and other distinctive branches of the human race. 

^ Tacitus, AnrudeSy zii. GO. « 

* Fustel de Conlanges, Property in Land^ p. 9. Gomme, Village Cam- 
mun%, p. 161. 


The Birth of the English Land System. 23 

Before we have done this it would be rash to decide whether 
those curious similarities described in this chapter are, so to 
speak, a state of equilibrium to which all territorial policy 
tended wherever the supply of land exceeded the powers of the 
cultivators; or whether they are due to the common tribal 
instincts of the Aryan, from which some theorists have sought 
to derive the three nationalities of Celt, Boman, and Teuton ; 
or whether there be a chain of links which connects in un- 
broken continuity the polity of each in the proper chronological 
order of its appearance on the stage of English History. 


perfob of tbe *Roman Occupation. 

B.O. 55— A.D. 420. 


CHAPTER m. 

THE SYSTEM OF HUSBANDBT. 

How then did the ancient British agriculturalists farm in 
order to pay the land taxes levied by their Boman masters and 
at the same time eke out a pittance sufficient for their own 
wants ? What was the condition of the land and climate at 
the commencement of the Boman occupation ? To what state 
of perfection had the agricultural knowledge of the British 
attained ? What, too, could the conquerors teach the subjected 
on this head ? These are interesting and important problems 
which we shall now set ourselves to elucidate. 

We have already seen that a few light soils in the southern- 
most parts of the Island were devoted to com husbandry. 
Possibly, as in the America of to-day, crops were grown in 
succession on the virgin soil, until sterility drove the husband- 
man further afield. The Kentish chalk lands and the Hamp- 
shire downs would be cleared here and there of self-seeded pine ^ 
and beech ; favoured plots sown with grain ; villages formed 
on sheltered, dry uplands, and the flocks and herds pastured as 
near to their surrounding ramparts as was feasible. If not 
before, at any rate shortly after the occupation, herds of tame 
swine would be kept to feed on the mast and acorns that fell 
each autumn in the woodlands. But wherever the soil was 
damp and clayey, or access wanting, the husbandman was 
frightened away ; so that, save where some straight line of 

^ G8dsar, Ba. Oal., lib. v. oh. L*xxiii. 

M 


The System of Husbandry. 25 

Bomon-constracted road cut through these ill-favoured tracts, 
the greater portion of the island was abandoned to the wild 
fowl, the wolf, and the deer, or their equally untamed captors. 
Dank morass and impenetrable forest growth, over which hung 
for the greater part of each day an unwholesome mist, occu- 
pied a large proportion of this uncared-for country.^ 

Yet ere the Boman domination terminated, we read ^ of the 
inexhaustible supplies of British corn, which fed the Boman 
garrisons in Q-auI, and of the fleets of ships constructed for its 
freightage ; and we shall not be wrong in attributing this change 
for the better in the national agriculture to the superior know- 
ledge and energy of that race which owned Virgil and Pliny 
as their countrymen. 

We must however bear in mind, while we examine, as we 
shall shortly do, the agricultural knowledge of these writers, 
that their compatriots were, for all practical purposes, groping 
their way in the dark in adapting the agriculture of their own 
sunny peninsula to the sunless climate of this island. We 
have no hesitation in asserting that the latter was in many 
respects worse than it is nowadays. Apart from any specula- 
tion upon the vagaries of the grea,t GuU Stream which has 
hitherto so benefited the temperature of these favoured Islands, 
we have reason to conclude that the excessive forest growth, 
and the wholly undrained ground, caused so humid an atmo- 
sphere and so frigid a soil as to have fully justified the con- 
demnatory observations which the historians of those days fre- 
quently jotted down on their tablets and eventually copied 
into their literary works. 

The smoke of great cities and the sulphurous fumes of the 
manufacturing districts in modem times have no doubt afiected 
the inherent fertility of many a formerly favoured locality; 
but setting aside the efifects of the manufacturer's destructive 
work, we may conclude that the farmer's assiduous application 
of numerous modem inventions has materially improved the 
climate as a whole. The virgin and fruitful soil of early times, 
if aided by artificial means skilfully applied, will still yield the 

* Strabo, Qeogr., lib. iv. p. 278. 

' 2iosimus, Hist Nova, Ed. Reit^ Leipsic 1784, lib. ill. ch, 6« 


26 History of the English Landed Interest. 

rich harvests which prompted the eloquent pen of Enmenius 
when he wrote his famous panegyric to Constantine Augustus.* 

The Boman, when at length he was able to lay aside the 
sword, and turn his attention to the plough, discovered in the 
ancient Briton a savage whose staple diet ^ was flesh and the 
sour fruits of wild apple, pear, and sloe trees, which he washed 
down with copious draughts of beer and honey ; a barbarian 
whose clothes were skins sewn together by strips of raw hide 
threaded through needles of bone; whose cups were horn, 
whose weapons of war and chase were stone-tipped spears and 
sinew-strung bows, and whose boats were platted willow bark 
covered with the raw hide, which served equally well to 
harness his ox to its wagon or form the lash of his whip. 

The Southron,^ who spread his bread with olive oil, despised 
the Northerner's butter and sneered at his ignorance of cheese- 
making. He was puzzled at the inclemency of a climate, 
which often would not permit winter cattle feeding, and of a 
rainfall which rotted the young com, though the floods from 
his own mountain torrents but enriched its growth. Had he 
found a country parched up like his own, he would have set 
himself with energy to remedy this defect of nature by means 
of some irrigation scheme in vogue at home. But the satu- 
rated air and soil of this northern climate were a novel difficulty 

^ In forming an opinion on this subject, the student must compare the 
antagonistic opinions found in ancient writings. Authors accustomed 
to the climate of Germany would call ours more temperate than that of 
the continent, an advantage we owe to our oceanic surroundings. Their 
opinions may be divided into three classes : 1. Comparison with Germany, 
vidt CsBsar, BdL GalL^ lib. v. ch. i.-xxiii.; Tacitus, Agricola^ ch. 12. 
Glass 2, Condemnatory, Diod. Sic, Bibl, Hist ; Ed. Dindorf, Leipsic^ lib. 
v.. ch. xxi.-xxii. ; Strabo, Geogr,, ed. Falc : Oxon,, 1807, lib. ii. p. 163. 
Class 3, Laudatory, Eumenius, panegyric to Const. Aug. 

• Joann. Xiph., Epit ; Dion. Cass., lib. Ixii., pp. 1-4 : and Strab., 
Creogr,f lib. iv., tom. 1, p. 278. 

' It is wrong to conclude that the Boman was ignorant of butter- 
making, which made itself whenever milk was carried in skins on waggon 
or horseback for even a short distance. Because Pliny's description of 
its manufacture is confused and unpractical, it does not prove that the 
Bomans were ignorant of its use, but only that they disliked it as a 
flavouring. See Hehn's Wanderings of Plants and Animals, article on 
" Beer." 


The System of Husbandry. 27 

which called on his inventive rather than on his industrial 
faculties. In fact, he of the " wine and oil " district was as 
much an exotic as his own olive tree in this cold " beer and 
butter" region of northern Europe. 

It must be remembered too, that the British of the interior 
had been brought up to gain a principal portion of their food 
in the chase, and were consequently ill disposed to learn a 
science which would not only lessen the area of their hunting- 
grounds, but at the same time involve such arduous and 
unexciting work as clearing woods, planting crops, and pastur- 
ing cattle in places where the ravages of wild beasts would be 
sure to work constant havoc. When to this drawback is added 
that of climate, we may take for granted that the Bomans had 
an uphill task before them whilst introducing their superior 
knowledge of husbandry, which only time and patience could 
successfully effect. 

We would gladly, if we could, extract from history some de- 
tails of those experiments, which were certainly tried by the 
leading agriculturalists, who came over from Eome to "prospect" 
the conquered island. We may reasonably conclude that their 
vines and fig-trees accompanied them hither; just as, Strabo 
tells us, these plants entered G-aul soon after its conquest. Pliny ^ 
in the 19th book of his Natural History, informs us how the 
damp and virgin lands of the barbarians suited the growth of 
flax, and we cannot be accused of being too fanciful in con- 
jecturing that the introduction of linseed and some rude form 
of linen manufacture dates from this period. We may also 
take for granted that the cultivation of the olive was attempted 
and abandoned. But we should like to know if the Romans 
brought us over such trees as the Spanish chestnut and the 
cherry, the former of which was well known throughout the 
Italy of this period, and the latter of which Pliny himself de- 
scribes as common in these islands at the time of his writing. 
Who introduced to us such wonderful pets as the cat, an object 
of veneration among the Egyptians; the pigeon, familiar 
enough to the Roman of Pliny's days ; or the rabbit, whose 
excessive fecundity had well-nigh ruined the islanders of the 

^ Cf . Hehn's Wanderings of Plants and Animals, p. 142. 


28 History of the English Landed Interest. 

Gymnesisd, though the Iberians enoouraged its growth on 
account of the delicate flavour of its flesh ? ^ 

It cannot be doubted that the Boman would first turn his 
attention to opening up the country by means of roads; accord- 
ingly we find frequent historical allusions to this kind of work. 
Severus,* for example, in order to subjugate Caledonia, under- 
went indescribable labour in cutting down woods, levelling 
hills, making marshes passable, and constructing bridges over 
rivers. Herodian' refers particularly to the marshes of the 
country, with the vapours of which the atmosphere seemed 
always dense. Many pai-ts also were constantly flooded by 
the tides, whereby the work of road-making was grievously 
obstructed. It is evident that there were some native roads, 
from the facility with which the Somans traversed the 
southern parts of Britain in the early days of warfare, and in 
the allusion by Tacitus ^ to the fact that Agricola, when under- 
taking the invasion of the country beyond the Forth, avoided 
all such, which he felt sure would be infested by the enemy's 
forces, and so sailed northwards with his troops. The Boman 
roads were in great part the work of the soldiery, supplemented 
by enforced native labour of so severe a nature as to have 
stirred the indignation of the captive Galgacus, whom Tacitus^ 
describes as complaining of the stripes and indignities incurred 
whilst clearing woods and draining swamps. 

These works accomplished, it was the policy of the con- 
querors, so Tacitus tells us, to wean their late enemies from 
the crafts of war to the arts of peace; and we may infer that 
they were soon engrossed in planting orchards,* laying out 
ornamental gardens, and assisting the British husbandmen to 
develop their systems of agriculture, undertakings which must 
have called into frequent use such books as the Georgics of 
Virgil and the Natural History of Pliny. Here then is a fresh 
starting-point in our history, inaugurating the first books on 
agriculture which influenced British husbandry. It is curious 

* Hehn, Wanderings of Plants and AnitnalSj p. 843. 
' Herodian, Eisty lib. iii. ch. 4G-51. 

• Id. Ibid. » Id. Ibid.j ch. 29. 
^ TaoituB, Agricola^ ch. 26. * Id. Ibid., ch. 12. 


The System of Husbandry. 29 

to note about those early historians of this science the veins of 
religion and superstition which crop up throughout their 
writings. Whether we take up the volumes of Roman or 
Englishman, Virgil or Fitzherbert, Pliny or Googe, the result 
is the same. There is a devotion which associates religion 
with agriculture, and a superstition which intermingles mys- 
tery with its precepts. Such associations excite respectively 
onr admiration and our laughter. When Virgil, for example, 
pays a devout tribute to Bacchus, to Ceres, to Neptune, or to 
Pan before he sets about his task of teaching ; when Fitz- 
herbert ends up with an essay on the joys of heaven and the 
duties of prayer, or when Q-ooge prefaces his book with "a 
sweete contemplation of God and his woorkes," we bow the 
head in approval. But when Pliny talks rubbish about ser- 
pents' teeth, animals with two hearts,^ and the poison of yew- 
trees neutralised by means of brass nails ; or when the early 
English agricultural authors write about their mystery as 
though they understand by the term not simply a craft, but 
that occult process which it suggests to modem ears, we are 
more inclined to ridicule. 

Unhappily the Puritan times, when Bible texts became 
political watchwords, put an end to the former practice, and 
happily the spread of chemical science effectually killed the 
latter. 

But let us examine the Georgics, and see what the old 
Briton farmers could have gleaned from Roman writings in 
the days when it became fashionable to wear the toga and 
stndy continental manners and customs in the subjected 
country. 

Here in the first book we find the fullest instructions on the 
subject of wheat-culture. The bare fallow, the rotation of 
crops,* the methods for obtaining a fine tilth,^ the pickling of 
the grain,^ the drainage of land, the pasturing of sheep on 
" winter proud braird," * the cleaning of the young crop from 
noxious weeds,* and the bird-scaring are all advocated with 

» Plinius, Hist Nat, lib. xi. * Id. Ihkl, 193. 

• Virgil, Georg., lib. i. 1. 71. * Id. Ibid,, iii. 

' IcL Ibid., 94. • Id. Ibid., 156. 


30 History of the English Landed Interest 

the skill and accuracy of a Cirencester College professor. 
Then comes a graphic description of the implements in use. 
There is the elm plough-tail ^ with its iron coulter, the beam 
eight feet long, the two earth-boards, the share-beam with 
double back, the yoke of lime-wood, and the beechen plough- 
staff to turn from behind the bottom of the carriage. There 
are the minor implements, and particulars of materials with 
which the threshing floor is constructed. Then the writer 
takes in order the cultivation of barley, flax, beans, vetches, 
and lentils, and ends up the first of these poetical essays with 
a description of winter life, in which we seem to picture the 
ploughman during inclement weather sharpening the blunted 
share, the spare hands harvesting the apples, the shepherd 
marking his sheep, the housewife busy at her bread-oven, and 
her maids carding wool. As we turn over the leaves of his 
second book we cull many a hint on soils, vine and olive 
culture, and varieties of useful woods, until another glowing 
picture of Italian home life with its children hanging around 
their father's neck, the cows waiting to be milked, the young 
goats at play outside, and the labourers competing for prizes 
closes the poem. The third Georgio is devoted to the rearing 
and breeding of live stock ; but though we do not recognise the 
points of a modem prize heifer,' as we read of the ugly head, 
long neck, dewlaps extending to the legs, length of side and 
large feet of a good cow, there is something that smacks 
of an Islington horse show in Virgil's description of a 
mettled steed,* with neck raised high, head little and slender, 
barrel short, back plump, chest swelling with brawny muscle, 
a double spinal bone running down between his loins, and the 
solid horn of his hoof. The Eoman steed was not however the 
prototype of a modem shire horse, for we find, as we read on, 
that the bullocks were trained in pairs to draw the wain or 
plough the soil. The poet next turns his attention to goats 
and sheep, and omits not to mention that trusty ally of the 
flock — the watchful sheep-dog. "We need not criticise the 

* Virgil, Gwrg. ■ Id., Georg.^ ill. Bl. 

• Id. Ibid., 79. 


The System of Husbandry. 31 

writer's exaggerated description of the frosts and rigonrs ex- 
perienced by nations in higher latitudes, nor need we examine 
his fourth book, which is mainly occupied by the culture of 


The prose works of his countryman Pliny must, however, 
detain us for a space. Here we find a higher flight attempted, 
which carries us into the dangerous area of scientific farming, 
wherein those favoured with, the chemical knowledge of a later 
era cannot fcdl to detect inaccuracy and exaggeration. 

Passing over his learned essays on the varieties and habits 
of trees, we shall confine ourselves to Book xvii., which is 
devoted to subjects of especial interest to the matters in hand. 
The author commences with a few facts about climates and 
soils whose vagaries he does not profess to explain, and which 
have puzzled the brain of many a modem expert. The vicinity 
of Larissa in Thessaly, he states, was a district suitable to olive 
culture ; but a lake was drained, and the olives ceased to bear. 
Near the town of iEnos a channel was cut for the river Hebrus, 
and for the first time within the memory of man the vines were 
frost-bitten. About Philippi the country was drained, and the 
climate began to alter. Thrace, he says, is fruitful in com be- 
cause it is cold ; Africa and Egypt are equally fraitful because 
they are hot. Chalcia is an island so fertile that a fresh crop 
can be sown after barley harvest and reaped as early as the 
crop on the wheat land. In Venafrium the gravel soil is best 
for olive culture ; but in Baetica, a rich soil ; Pacumian vines are 
ripened upon the rock ; and CsBcuban vines upon lands irrigated 
from the Pontine Marshes. Without in any way committing 
ourselves to an opinion on the causes of these incongruities 
mentioned by Pliny, we may at least take the effects stated by 
him as correct, and point out that the goM de terrain was not 
only known to this clever writer, but was as explicable (neither 
more nor less) as it is to the wine merchants of the present day. 

The defects of empirical knowledge when wholly unsupported 
by science strike us most forcibly in his chapter on Manures.^ 
We wonder why M. Varro gave preference to thrushes' manure, 

* Plinius, Nat Hist, lib. xvii. cb. 6, 


32 History of the English Landed Interest 

or why Columella ranked the fertilising eflfects of pigeon higher 
than poultry dung, or why he despised the guano of aquatio 
birds and the excrement of swine. What too was the peculiar 
virtue of cytisus, by which it enhanced the value of the dung 
from all quadrupeds who ate it? 

We, whose chemical analysis and synthesis have taught us 
the constituents ^ of both animal and vegetable Ufe, can only 
conclude that the same superstition prompted alike Columella's 
classification and the modem belief that the presence of a h^ 
goat can banish abortion from the cowkeeper's byre. 

Let us briefly note in passing the scientific forestry evinced 
by those three chapters devoted to the propagation and nurture 
of trees from their birth either in the nursery or by budding 
and grafting, to their transplantation in the coppice, where the 
author leaves them as full-grown monarchs of the forest, not 
without a few silly comments on the baneful or beneficial 
effects on human life of their various shadows. 

Chapters 4-6 refer to a subject which revives our keenest 
interest in this work, for they consist not only of a masterly 
dissertation on marls, but of frequent allusions to their presence 
and use in the Britain of the author's period. The people of 
Kent were the most civilised of all the British tribes, and their 
system of agriculture included the marling of land. Later on 
there are traces of an export trade in this earth, which was 
thought much of by continental agriculturists. Corroborative 
of this fact we may instance that an altar was found in the 
17th century at Domburgh in Zealand dedicated to the 
goddess Nehalennia by a British chalk merchant for her 
preservation of his freight. 

In Pliny's careful treatise of the eight varieties * of marl, his 
want of chemical knowledge is forcibly accentuated. Liming 
and marling of land have been revolutionised by modern science. 
We know now that the carbonate of calcium must be first 

^ Ammonia, phosphates, and lime are the chief fertilising ingredients 
of a manure, and those mentioned by Pliny are all rich in these qnalitiea. 
Tne dung of swine, though rich in phosphates, does not contain much 
ammonia in proportion to that of fowls. 

' Plinius, Bisl, Nat,, lib. xvii. ch. 4. 


The System of Husbandry. 33 

separated by the action of heat into its oxide and carbonic acid 
gas; next, that the calcined lumps must be distributed in 
heaps on the field, and that the first rainfall will not only pul- 
verise them into powder minute enough for assimilation by 
plant life, but will re-form the oxide into carbonate by acting 
as the medium for its re-absorption of carbonic acid gas from 
the air. And since no such process was known to Pliny, we 
can well imagine that when left in lumps and roughly distri- 
buted, its fertilising efiects would be delayed, and the reaping 
of the first crop or so would be attended with some difficulty.* 
The mechanical efiect that much lime has, especially on light 
soils, in loosening the surface and sometimes throwing out the 
young corn roots will perhaps explain the author's meaning 
when he speaks of an excessive dressing as burning up the 
land. He mentions eight varieties of this earth, some rough 
and gritty to the touch, others plastic and greasy, and nearly 
all of dissimilar colouring. Possibly he is mixing up under one 
common classification all compounds of clay and lime, and even 
clay and sand, which we call marls and loams, but which were 
used in his time under the generic term '' marga." Then too 
the fullers' earth of commerce, potters' clay, and shale may 
account for some of the varieties he mentions ; but his descrip- 
tion of their appearance and eflfocts as fertilisers is too vague 
and untrustworthy for us to speak with any degree of cer- 
tainty. Considered simply as a manure, we know from the 
experiments of the laboratory that the proportion of lime 
existent in any of Pliny's compounds would regulate its value ; 
but marl, lime, and even clay are often used as top dressings 
only for the sake of their mechanical effects on the soil. Since 
however the crops would be thus indirectly benefited, no one 
but a modem analytical expert could have separated out the 
chemical from the mechanical fertilisers in Pliny's eight 
varieties. 

That any of these, when sparsely laid on the land, wiU 
fertilise it for eighty, fifty, or thirty years, is an exaggeration 
which, if even bordering on truth, would upset the compen- 
satory clauses of many an agreement drawn up under the 
* Plinius, BisU Nat., lib. xvii. ch. 4. 


34 History of the English Landed Interest. 

terms of recent Agricultural Holdings Acts. Every practical 
farmer nowadays knows that lime and clay sink rapidly, 
especially on pasture land, because there is no ploughing to 
lift them to the surface again ; and even the rough lumps of 
Pliny's days would have disappeared beyond the reach of vege- 
table roots in eight or nine years at the most. We are glad to 
notice that Pliny recognised the principle contained in the 
old saw, — 

"Lime and lime and no manure, 
Make both land and farmer poor"; 

and that rich, heavy lands are most benefited by its 
application. 

His hints on the purchase of land are as trite and practical 
as if written by a modem land agent. " Consider," he writes,^ 
" first of all, ite neighbourhood, its access to markets, its water 
supply. Never buy unhealthy land in a fertile place, or vice 
versd. The health of a land cannot be judged by the appear- 
ance of its inhabitants, who are acclimatised to the bad air," 
a recommendation which modem farmers might well follow 
out, by a brief study of the local death rate statistics. " Don't, 
if you can help it," he writes, "succeed a bad tenant, who has 
exhausted the farm." Market gardening near towns is cited 
as the most lucrative kind of farming. Grass lands are ranked 
next in order ; arable farms last — facts as unassailable now as 
then. The error common to many a modern squire in building 
too spacious a mansion for the proportions of his small estate 
is next exposed. The best site is fixed upon with a shrewd- 
ness hardly credible in an age so deficient in hydrodynamic 
skill. But we have already afforded ample proofs of the wide 
experience possessed by these two agricultural writers, and 
can safely conclude that the ancient British yeomen had fallen 
into the hands of competent teachers, who would be both reso- 
lute and willing enough to replace the old savage farming 
customs with so much of their own agricultural system as 
could be adapted to so deficient a soil and climate. 

* Plinius, Hist Nat, lib. xviii. ch. 6. 


Zbc teutonic 3nva6ion. 

A.D. 441. 


CHAPTER IV. 

THE MASK SYSTEM. 

When next we pick up the threads of history, the Romans, 
with their imperial and commercial polity, have vanished. 
Gone are scripturss, decum9B,*and portaria, and along with 
them the procurator and his liberti. The Roman villa has 
made way for the lord's rude over-grown hut; bricks and 
mortar for wattle and daub ; Ager Publicus for Folcland, citi- 
zens for landfolk, and in a large degree devastated municipia 
for the rusticity of village life. Roman customs, like their 
vines and fig culture, survived chiefly in genial soils, and spots 
sheltered from the storm. Such were the towns which, from 
their geographical position on the great Roman roads, remained 
still the centres of commerce. 

The causes of this vast social upheaval are to be found partly 
in the instincts of the Saxon conquerors, partly too, in those of 
the conquered. Without entering prematurely on the contro- 
versy of the Mark system, it may be safely concluded that 
the old ethnic habits of the ancient British were far more 
akin to those of the new invaders than of the Romans.^ 

What then was the character of this fresh race of con- 
querors ? How would their system of life affect British rural 
economy ? What were they like in their German homes, these 

* Tacitus, Agricola^ ii 
as 


36 History of the English Landed Interest. 

Jutes, Angles, and Saxons, who had so savagely turned to rend 
the allies that had called in their help? Let us for the present, 
excluding from our minds the opinions of Seebohm, Stubbs, 
Coote, and other theorists, proceed to the fountain-head of our 
information, and examine carefiilly the earliest evidences on 
German life. 

Ancient history, tradition, inference, all combine to afford 
us ample evidence of a great sea of nomadic peoples, which in 
three distinct waves swept over Europe from the eastward, 
overwhelming the prehistoric aborigines, and tearing up the 
forests in its onward rush. Each wave separated from the 
other by different eras, flowed further westwards, as in its 
wake there followed another and greater billow of humanity* 
Finally, this vast flood of nationalities settled itself over the 
face of Europe in the form of three strongly individualised 
races, similar at first in their nomadic habits, but easily dis- 
tinguishable in their three several languages. The first of 
these tides of Oriental peoples, the Cimmerian or Celtic, settled 
down on the uttermost lands westwards; the second, or Gothic 
race, found a halting-place in central Europe, and the third, or 
Slavonic, spent its violence no further eastwards than Russia 
and parts of Turkey.^ 

Comparing the earliest knowledge that we possess of all 
these three races with that of the Babylonians and Egyptians 
we find one great and universal distinction, namely, that 
whereas the former were all nomadic, the latter were all 
stationary. Whether civilisation had effected the change or 
resulted from it does not concern our present purpose. It 
is in the second-named and nomadic race that we are now 
interested, and as long as historical data have established its 
wandering instincts, when first appearing upon European 
scenes, beyond the searching reach of modem scepticism and 
theory, we may, at any rate for the present, shirk the question 
whether those instincts were primeval or acquired. Nor is it 
worth our while to seek to identify the special tribes who 

* Mr. Sharon Turner, in the first volume of his Anglo-Saxons^ has gone 
deeply into this interesting subject. 


The Mark System. 37 

conquered Britain with the Sacae,^ that ancient Scythian 
people so famous in Persian history. Far more interesting is 
it to learn that they were principally islanders like ourselves, 
inhabiting Heligoland and other islands, as well as some of 
the main land about the Elbe's junction with the German 
ocean. 

The earliest direct historical reference to the Saxons is that 
of Ptolemy the Alexandrian,' who lived in the reign of Marcus 
Aurelius ; but all that his scant allusions establish is, that an 
insignificant tribe, called " Saxons," existed in these parts of 
Europe as early as a.d. 141. Forty years before Ptolemy, 
Tacitus had written his Q-erman History ; and though no direct 
allusion is made by him to this tribe under their name of 
Saxons, it has been thought that the Fosi to whom he refers * 
may with reason be identified with this particular unit of the 
six nations which dwelt around the tidal portion of the river 
Elbe.* Earlier still by 160 years than Tacitus, OsBsar had 
written his experiences of the Germans ; and though making 
full allowance for the dilBference in manners between the 
piratical tribes of the seaboard and those inhabiting the in- 
terior, we may reasonably assume that the generalities used 
by both these historians may be equally applied to Germans, 
whether occupying lands watered by the Elbe and Weser, or 
by the Rhine and Danube. 

If we refer to Tacitus, we shall find a somewhat flattering 
account of their manners, because, as M. Guizot ^ has warned 
us, it is coloured by the mood in which it was written. The 
book was intended as a satire on Eoman morals, which the 
author compares unfavourably with those of the barbarian 
Germans. Nevertheless his facts cannot be termed inaccurate, 
and provided we bear in mind this vein of optimism, we may 

* Herodotus vii. 64 

* Vide Sharon Turner, Anglo-SaxonSy Book 11. chap. i. Ptolemy men- 
tions both Angles and Saxons, but not Jutes. 

* Tacitus, Germania, chap, xxxvi. 

* Ibid, Tacitus, however, mentions the Angli ; vide chap. xl. of his 
Otrmania. 

* Guizot, Cours d'Histoire Modeme^ t. xi. p. 258. Compare also Stubbs, 
Constit Hist., chap. ii. p. 17, in which he treats Guizot's theory as exploded. 


38 History of the English Landed Interest. 

glean much valuable and trustworfcliy information from the 
writings before us. 

The land, though it varied considerably, was in many re- 
spects like that of Britain, shagged with forests, deformed by 
marshes, productive of grain, unkindly to fruit trees, abound- 
ing in flocks and herds of an inferior type;^ and since the 
orchards and live stock of modern Germany exhibit no signs 
of inferiority, we may conclude that its climate, like that of 
Britain, was more rigorous and humid before it had been 
opened up and drained. 

The people were brave, chaste, and respectful to women, but 
indolent, drunken, and gluttonous. Their rulers were here- 
ditary chieftains, over whom their peoples had no less power 
than they over their peoples.' Their bravest men became 
generals, their priests judges, and the powers of life and death 
were vested in the hands of magistrates. 

The open-air assemblies, which in Anglo-Saxon days became 
the Folkmote, are fully described. About the ^ aflfairs of little 
moment the chiefs are allowed to consult and settle ; but on 
those of importance the whole community in open assembly 
at fixed periods alone can decide. They all attend with 
weapons, their priest proclaims silence, the chief and the great 
men address them, and they signify their approval or the 
reverse by the clash of arms. The council listens to disputes 
and criminal charges, and fines or punishes the guilty. Chiefs 
are elected to administer justice in the districts and villages, 
who each preside over a council composed of one hundred 
popular representatives.* Tacitus'^ draws attention to the 
complete absence of G-erman cities, and describes the villages, 
not laid out in rows as in Italy, but every house surrounded 
by a vacant space, either by way of security against fire, or 
from ignorance in the economy of building. They knew 
nothing about bricks and masonry, but coated parts of their 
buildings with a shiny earth. They resorted to artificial caves 
in times of cold or danger, and stored their com underground. 

* Tacitus, Germaniay chap. v. • Tacitus, Germania^ chap. xi. 

• Csssar, Bell, Gall.^ v. 27. * Ibid,^ chap. xii. 

• Ibid,^ chap. xvL 


The Mark System. 39 

The condition of the Teutonic serf is also worthy of descrip- 
tion. He has his own house, family, and land, for which he 
pays his lord a share of the produce. Excepting in certain 
tribes where regal government has been established the 
freedman does not possess a social condition much above the 
slave. He, indeed, is not liable to death or mutilation like the 
latter, but he has no political status either in family or tribe. 

So far we have collected extracts from both authors as they 
appeared suitable for our purpose. Now it is necessary to bear 
in mind that 160 years intervenes between the date of Caesar's 
history and that of Tacitus. 

Much depends upon the proper interpretation of one 
paragraph in the twenty-sixth chapter of the latter author's 
Germaniaj as to the mood in which we approach the conflicting 
theories with regard to the Mark system. We therefore give 
this important and difficult passage in full : — 

" Agri pro numero cultorum ab universis in vices [vicis] occu- 
pantur, quos mox inter se secundum dignationem partiunter, 
facilitatem partiendi camporum spatia prsBstant. Arva per 
annos mutant, et superest ager." 

Were, then, the lands in proportion to the number of culti- 
vators taken possession of " ab universis vicis," ^ by whole 
communities, or " ab universis in vices," by whole communities 
in turn? The first reading lays stress on a common land 
tenure, the other on the annual shifting — a circumstance re- 
ferred to in the very next sentence, " Arva per annos mutant." 

Now the earlier history of CsBsar agrees with the latter form. 
" They are not studious of agriculture," he writes,* " the chief 
part of their diet consisting of milk, cheese, and flesh ; nor has 
any one a determinate portion of land, his own peculiar pro- 
perty, but the magistrates and chiefs allot every year, to tribes 
and clanships forming communities as much land and in such 

* The Bamberg Codex has " ab universis vicis." The Leyden Codex 
has " in vicem." It would appear possible that some early scribe may 
have omitted the preposition " in " after " ab universis," but then in 
vices is not such good Latin as in vicem. Hence some commentators 
have converted it into viciSj and others into in vicem, — Vide Stubbs, 
Constit, History, chap. ii. p. 19, note 3. 

2 Caesar, Bell Gall., vi. chap. xxii. 


40 History of the English Landed Interest. 

situations as they think proper, and oblige them to remove (he 
succeeding year J* For this practice they assign several reasons, 
lest they should be led, by being accustomed to one spot, to 
exchange the toils of war for the business of agriculture ; lest 
they should acquire a passion for possessing extensive domains, 
and the more powerful should be tempted to dispossess the 
weaker; lest they should construct buildings with more art 
than is necessary to protect them from the inclemencies of the 
weather ; lest the love of money should arise amongst them, 
the source of factions and discussions ; and in order that other 
people, beholding their own possessions equal to those of the 
most powerful, might be retained by the bonds of equity and 
moderation. 

Struck by so unusual a system, the historian took care to make 
minute inquiries into its causes, thereby as it were, uncon- 
sciously anticipating the reluctance of modem scholars to con- 
ceive a system of existence which was neither wholly nomadic 
nor wholly stationary, but at first sight an aimless mixture of 
the two. And yet this artificially constructed life, with its 
alternate occupation of the tribal lands, accounts for the slovenly 
husbandry and indifference to improvements of a permanent 
nature freely commented on by both historians. It was not, be 
it understood, the modem backwoodsman's expedient of ex- 
exhausting the natural fertility of the soil and then leaving it 
for fresh ground. One Teutonic community, so we understand 
CsBsar, merely took up the agricultural process on ground 
vacated by some other. It was in fact an existence consider- 
ably less primitive than the pastoral stage of man's develop- 
ment, and less civilised than that to which the Greek or 
Roman had attained. There was none of the wild passion for 
wandering which drove ever forwards their Scythian fore- 
fathers or which imbues the restless blood of the modem 
Bedouin. To avoid the indolent habits of an otiose life and to 
maintain paramount the communal interests over those of the 
individual, the central power kept the people moving, and this 
was the germ of a policy which might very soon blossom into 
all the educated ideas associated with imperial interests. In 
fact, the Teuton, as described by Caesar and Tacitus, appears at 


The Mark System, 41 

a half-way halting house between the nomadio irstincts of his 
Scythian father when he wandered into Europe, and those of 
his German descendant in the days of the Othos. 

Bat if we come to examine in detail the accounts of both 
Latin authors we shall soon see that the Teutonic nature had 
greatly changed during the lapse of those 150 years between 
the dates of the two histories. 

The Teuton of CaBsar enjoyed a communal form of land 
tenure. The Teuton of Tacitus divided his lands according to 
social status. The chief of CsBsar was a primus inter pares ; 
the chief of Tacitus was closely akin to the later lord of the 
manor. 

Turning bach to the passage quoted already, we find a fresh 
interpretation of " occupantur " such as Columella would have 
intended to convey when he used the word. The land was 
"|w^ to account " by placing slaves upon it.* Here then in 
chapters xxv. and xxvi. we have three classes — the lord, the 
freeholder, and the serf, answering in all essential features to 
those of that allodialist land tenure which we shall afterwards 
find existing in England. 

But this is not the Mark system of Von Maurer, Kemble, 
and other theorists.* Let us therefore briefly describe their 
views of this famous economy. 

When a nomadic tribe took to settling and cultivating land 
with a view to permanent habitation, its component parts be- 
came split up into families and groups of families (the vid of 
Tacitus), each of which erected their own homesteads on 
unowned wastes. The heads formed themselves into a common 
council, which selected some favoured spot as meadow ground 
and apportioned to each unit a share in the crop of the com- 
munity. After its removal by individual owners the fences 
or divisions were obliterated until the grass began to grow 
again the succeeding year, and the cattle of the community 
fed " horn with horn " on the whole area. The various home- 
steads grouped together formed the village, and the common 

* Fustel de Coulanges, Origin of Property in Landf Engl. Trans., p. 10. 
' Cf . G. L. von Maurer, Einleitung eur Gesch. d. Mark-Hof Dor/- 
u, Stadtver/assunj/, and Kemble. Anglo-Saxons, 


42 History of the English Landed Interests 

pasturage ground was surrounded by an undefined boundary, 
neither divided nor fenced, of woodland and waste. This was 
tyechnically termed the Mark, a word which still survives in 
Scotland to define the boundaries or marches of the various 
estates, and which is the derivation of the name by which the 
province " Mercia " was distinguished. 

As soon as these communities acquired further agricultural 
knowledge they began to till a portion of their territory, and 
since this required the expenditure of labour and capital it 
escaped the annual reallotment customary over the hay 
grounds. The head of each family formed a political unit of 
the village assembly. Each village or vicus had its head man 
or princeps, a primus inter pares^ and each group of villages 
formed the district termed Pagus by Tacitus, and Wapentake 
or Hundred by Anglo-Saxon historians. The old idea that 
each Hundred sent up a representative to some National 
Assembly has been exploded. 

Each individual of the vicus within the doors of his habita- 
tion was a veritable overlord, possessing the judicial powers 
over his family and slaves which extended to life and death. 
Without those doors he sank to the dull level of a common 
mediocrity. As a unit of the Mark Society he was chained 
down by laws and hedged around by customs which must 
have been immensely galling to a man of genius or ambition. 
Each member of the Mark had his equal arable lots in each 
of the three divisions of the plough-land. Every one consigned 
his live-stock to the care of the common herdsman on the 
waste or cut his firewood and turf under the supervision of 
the Communal Officer : no one had more winter com, or spring 
corn, or fallow ground than another in the three divisions of 
the arable Mark ; everybody sowed his seed and reaped his 
harvest at the same time, and all drove their flocks and herds 
on the same day to nibble the herbage of the stubbles and 
fallows.^ 

Such is the Mark System of the theorists, which, if it were 
to stand alone on the evidences afforded by Csesar and Tacitus, 
would have but a flimsy foundation in fact. 

^ Sir E. Morier, Agrarian Legislation (Cobden Club Essays). 


The Mark System. 43 

A history of this kind is not suited for any detaUed ex- 
amination of the pros and cow* concerning it. Nor have we 
either space or inclination to join in the Franco-German 
word-warfare, over which so much ink has been spilled with 
such insignificant results. It is, strangely enough, the same 
doubtful passage already quoted from the Oermania of Tacitus, 
which aflfords one of the many battle-grounds between Von 
Maurer and Fustel de Coulanges. Over the apparently simple 
interpretation of the word agri the German seeks to prove too 
much and the Frenchman too little. "Agri " may be too freely 
translated by the former into Common Field ; but unless the 
latter is prepared to distort its meaning into a number of 
separate enclosures, cultivated by different individuals but all 
belonging to some community or chief, the result is a drawn 
battle. The word, as used by Tacitus in this passage, probably 
means the undivided arable lands of the Germanic village; and 
being undivided, they were, at any rate for part of the year, 
subject to communal rights. 

Then again, though Fustel de Coulanges ^ takes in detail and 
attempts to crush the arguments deduced by Von Maurer from 
expressions in the earlier Teutonic legislation referring to 
communal land tenure, he does not touch the ocular evidences 
surviving up to this day of a communal land economy having 
some time or other existed in Germany. In fact, the French 
author assails Von Maurer's evidences of the Mark, rather than 
the system itself. 

There are too many proofs of some primitive tribal economy 
in modem German agriculture and land tenure for any one to 
attack the Mark theory as a whole, though successful on- 
slaughts may from time to time be made on its details. Taking 
the histories of the Latin authors as an outline, we may easily 
sketch in the lesser features as described by Von Maurer, only 
reserving to ourselves the right to object whenever the earlier 
economy of the Mark is anachronously fitted in to some later 
but incomplete economy of the Manor. 

Sir Bobert Morier^ has pointed out that the Bauem Ge- 

* Fustel de Cotdanges, Orig. of Prop, in Land, EngL trans, pp. 3 to 73. 

• Sir R. Morier, Syst, of Pruss. Land Tenure (CJobden Club Essays). 


44 History of the English Landed Interest. 

meinde, i.e., Peasants' Commtiiiity of a.d. 900 is but a miniatTire 
of the Landes-Q-emeinde, i.e., Land Community of a.d. 100. 
There are still evidences of the three Fluren of the Feldmarck, 
answering to the three divisions of the arable ground, the 
Dorf answering to the vicus, and the Gemeindesanger answer- 
ing to the old uncultivated Mark, which, as surrounding all the 
lands of the village community, came to embrace within its 
meaning their people and customs. 

But let us examine more closely the processes whereby the 
primus inter pares of Cadsar gradually turned into the overlord 
of Tacitus. 

•Each landowner was by law a soldier, and it was this polity 
which provoked the constantly arising warfare between Mark 
and Mark. Such intertribal strife eventually overthrew the 
strange levelling economy of the Teutonic land system, which 
not only equalised men's property but their physical and men- 
tal qualities. 

As one Dorf gradually absorbed by conquest the surrounding 
Dorf 8, she became the Miitter-Dorf of the others. Their several 
common wastes became the one common waste of the new 
system, from which arable Marks would be severed whenever 
fresh Dorfs were founded.^ After this the appearance of the 
overlord was not long delayed. The selection of the primus 
inter pares at first from the whole community came to be con- 
fined to a few privileged families. The gradual growth of this 
individual's hereditary claims, and the combination in his 
person of the war-chief and the judge, eventually introduced 
both the Herzog and the Hof. 

We need not follow the fortunes of the Gemeinde through 
the vicissitudes caused successively by allodial and feudal 
tenures; but it may be added that there are far more survivals 
in Germany to-day of an agricultural economy in which 
movable property was private and immovable property 
common, than in any other country of Europe, except perhaps 
Bussia. 

Before we come to adapt this system of the Teutonic Mark 

* Sir R. Morier, Syst. of Pt^ss. Land Tenure (Cobden Club Essays). 


The Mark System. 45 

to the land tenure of Anglo-Saxon times, there is one other 
point which we must not overlook. 

Tacitus represents the Germans at a more advanced stage 
of civilisation than Caesar ; ^ but he does more — he represents 
particular tribes as further advanced than others. Some he 
describes as having attained to the dignity of separate mon- 
archies. Others, like the ^stii, cramped for room, were forced 
by stem necessity into a more advanced stage of agriculture 
than those whose wide extent of ground facilitated a less in- 
dustrious system ; and we might no doubt multiply the ex- 
amples where remarks of this author directly or indirectly 
point to a higher or lower stage of civilisation in various parts 
of Germany. Unfortunately we are left in ignorance regard- 
ing that particular stage to which the tribes in which we are 
most interested had attained when they sailed forth to conquer 
this country. 

* Tacitus, Germania^ chap. 26, and chap. 45. 


^be anglo^SajTon iperio^ 


CHAPTER V. 

THE CONNECTION OF THE ROMAN, BRITISH, AND TEUTONIC SYSTEMS 
WITH ANGLO-SAXON LAND TENURE. 

If we could determine that the curious system of land tenure 
just described was a peculiarity of the Teutonic race, we might 
perhaps have a firmer foundation for the theory that its intro- 
duction into this country was the result of the Anglo-Saxon 
invasion. Sir Robert Morier^ has pointed out that agrarian 
legislation has been very similar in all the States of Teutonic 
origin. That is certainly true ; but if, on the other hand, we 
can point to a corresponding institution in nationalities of 
absolutely non-Teutonic origin, we are reduced to the inference 
either, as Sir Henry Maine* contends, that there was some 
common race-stem like the Aryan whence sprang this peculiar 
polity, or that wherever land was superabundant and popula- 
tion limited it was the natural tendency of the human race 
to develop such a system. 

Mr. Coote' has laid stress on its similarities to the Ager 
Vectigalis of Italian land tenure, with its distinction between 
Ager Privatus, classed by the jurists among res mancipi^ and 
answering to the Folcland of the Anglo-Saxon, and Ager 
Publicus, classed among res nee mancipi and answering to the 
latter's Bocland. Herr Faucher ^ has traced the village com- 

' Prussian Land Tenure (Ck>bden Club Essays). 

* Maine, ViU<ige Community. 
' Coote, Romans in Britain, 

* in Systems of Land Tenure (Cobden Club Essays). 


The Roman, British, and Teutonic Systems. 47 

munity both in the purely Slavonic nationality of Little Russia 
and the mixed Finnish and Slavonic nationality of Great 
Bussia. Sir George Campbell^ has admitted and Mr. Gt)mme^ 
has insisted that a village communal system with private rights 
in cattle and public rights in pasturage existed in primitive 
India. And the latter author has extended his quest with 
successful results to many other parts of the globe. Even 
in so old a writer as Thucydides ' we may perhaps find trace 
of a Mark, with its peculiar characteristics of sanctity hav- 
ing existed between Megara and Athens. Such evidences as 
these then entirely upset the earlier supposition that the 
village community, with its various methods of cultivation 
and pasturage of the Mark, is a Teutonic peculiarity or 
innovation. When we come to the evidences of its presence 
on English soil, the controversy waxes warm. Men divide 
into schools over its origin and period of existence. They 
debate whether it be a primitive or historical institution. 
They produce proofs of its early adoption by aboriginal 
husbandmen of this Island. Still further has research carried 
them until they have discovered a subtle but quite pos- 
sible distinction between a village and a tribal community.* 

Closely connected with this subject is the origin of the 
Manor. And here again the theories of modem authors are 
most conflicting. 

Let us, then, who have already prepared ourselves for an 
impartial attention by a careful examination of early history, 
now devote a short space to the study of these various opinions, 
and then form our own conclusions. 

And, first, let us turn to Mr. Seebohm, whose profound study 
of early English Land Tenure must earn from the author of 
such a history as this the deepest respect.^ 

He and his following seek to trace two pre-historic rural 
polities with regard to the soil of this island. Both the 

* In Systems of Land Tenure (Cobden Club Essays). 

* Gomme, English Village Community. 
» Thucydides, Hist, i. 189. 

^ Seebohm, English Village Community, chap, vi, 

* Seebohm's English Village Community, 


48 History of the English Landed Intei-esL 

village community of eastern England and the tribal com- 
munity of western England, he points out, had similar 
socialistic ideas as regards land. The former belonged to the 
agricultural period of man's development, the latter rather* to 
the earlier pastoral period. The former was a settled serfdom 
under a lordship, the latter a community of blood relationship 
under a primus inter pares. The former possessed, approxi- 
mately, individual equality of land distribution, the latter, 
household equality of land distribution. When first discovered 
to the modem theorist, the former was undergoing a pro- 
gressive stage from general slavery, the latter neither a 
progressive nor a retrogressive stage. Neither were radically 
affected by either Soman, English, or Norman invasions, but 
both were gradually destroyed by the growth of individual 
enterprise ; yet the germ of each still survives in a recog- 
nisable form — such, for example, as the Lammas lands, terrace 
cultivation, and common rights. 

Other theorists, having discovered traces of a similar polity 
in different parts of Europe and the rest of the globe, ascribe 
the phenomena to some common ethnic stem. Thus Sir Henry 
Maise advances the idea that they are derived from the 
primitive Aryan race, and points to the India of to-day for 
a parallel case. 

Mr. Q-omme,^ following on the same lines as this latter theor- 
ist, but recognising the distinction of Mr. Seebohm between a 
community under a lord and a community under a primus inter 
pares, ascribes the existence of the former to the Aryan people, 
and that of the latter to its contact with a pre- Aryan, or, as it 
is now termed, Iberian people. Just as, he reasons,' in the 
India of the present day there are original village communities 
not Aryan in origin, but formed by a pre- Aryan race which, 
when conquered by tribal Aryans, became subjected to the 
latter's system of overlordship ; so in the Britain of pre-historic 

* The word "rather" is necessary because Seehohm has produced 
evidence of agricultural practices in early Welsh history. Seebohm 
ViU. Commun.y p. 186. 

* Gomme, ViU, Commun.^ passim, 

* Id. Ibid., ch. iv. 


The Romany British, and Teutonic Systems, 49 

times was there the same strange mixture of races with 
identical results of village communal government, and, more- 
over, as the English conquest has hardly affected the Indian 
rural economy, so also the Roman conquest hardly affected 
that of Britain.! 

Though united with Sir Henry Maine in his advocacy of the 
primitive theory, he will not agree with him in attributing 
both polities of village and tribe to one ethnic source ; and 
moreover, like Seebohm, he seeks to sever the village system 
from the tribal.* The former, he thinks, is a later development 
of the latter; and the Iberian, lagging behind in the tribal 
stage, was transformed into the villager by Aryan conquest. 

Let us now proceed to sum up the various evidences and form 
therefrom an opinion of our own. And first, we must draw 
attention to the wide distribution of communal land tenure 
brought to light by the researches of some half-dozen or more 
authors. We must note also that no two systems of land tenure 
thus evolved agree in anything but their most important features. 
That of the Roman agrimensor could in no way be confused 
with that of the Teutonic Mark. Nor could either the English 
village or tribal system described by Seebohm be reconciled 
to the allodial tenures in Von Maurer's system of German 
economy. Nor indeed has the settled serfdom under a lord- 
ship of Seebohm's village much in common with the tribal 
polity of his Welsh discoveries. Again, amongst the nations 
and tribes carrying out a communal system of land tenure, 
there are oflen found marked differences in their processes 
of husbandry. More especially important is it for us to note 
that the three-field system in the arable land has never been 
traced back to the districts firom which the Angles, Jutes, and 
Saxons originated. Hanssen has particularly drawn attention 
to the absence of the fallow division and consequent two-course 
rotation. There is much the same general relationship, but 
a marked distinction of details in the various seignorial 
economies which we have touched upon. 

The tax-collector of Roman Britain, it we may presume that 

* Gomme, YiU. Commun,, p. 60. ' Id. Ibid,, pp. 60, 299. 


50 History of the English Landed Interest. 

he ever became a landlord, is as different from the chieftain of 
CaBsar as the latter is from the aristocrat of Tacitus. We have 
found nothing yet but the rude beginnings of a manorial 
system, and even these have been confined to the more 
civilised regions into which our examination has penetrated. . 

We have also been at pains to show that the stages of civili- 
sation varied considerably in the same country at the same 
period of history. 

In the east of Britain the rural economy was far in advance 
of that in her western and northern highlands. 

A comparison between the tribes of the accessible and in- 
accessible parts of Germany shows the same difference. Even 
the advanced civilisation of the Imperial Eoman had to adapt 
itself to circumstances, and retrograde towards an earlier stage, 
when brought in contact with uncivilised nationalities. 

If it were possible to gauge the degree of civilisation to 
which any race had attained by the progress it had made 
towards the manorial system, we should have one striking 
and common test, which we could apply to each nationality 
in whose condition of civilisation we are at this period of 
history so interested. We should first have to discover that 
particular stage of its growth when a people is ripe for the 
change, also what are the usual processes which lead up to and 
result from that change. 

If, then, we could trace back the economical history of all 
nations to the family, if we could build up process on process 
the same progressive civilisation which finally culminates in a 
State constitution, we should, at any rate, have a fair clue to 
that particular period in national advancement when the tribal, 
the village, or the Mark economies would be most likely to fit 
in. 

Out of nature's unit, the individual, we should be able to form 
the family with its patria potestas and ties of kinship, making 
place in process of time for the gens, where the blood relationship 
is less distinguishable ; and eventually spreading out into the 
tribe with its communal ideas of social and territorid equality. 
Then would come the period when the community has become 
of unwieldy proportions. Blood relationship has ceased to be a 


The Roman, British^ and Teutofiic Systems, 51 

connecting link in the constitution. The machinery of govern- 
ment is too general to cover local necessities. The central 
authority has abstracted the powers of the paterfamilias, and 
has not been able to replace them with anything so far-reach- 
ing. The families group themselves under individual protection 
and start a system of local government, and that, in other 
words, is the manor. But the policy of decentralisation is soon 
carried too far. A common danger reminds the individual 
that he has national interests. A reaction sets in, out of 
which is evolved an organisation, mainly dependant for its 
success on the spirit of patriotism, which culminates in State 
government. 

But there are many exceptions to what has been called the 
patriarchcd theory. The custom of agnation is not universal 
to the human race.^ Amongst the Hebrews the mother had as 
much power as the father, and the latter parent retained a 
claim to his daughters even after marriage. There is the Mutter 
Recht in direct opposition to the patria protestas, closely con- 
nected with which are cognation and esogamy. Thus, in the 
case of the American Indians, intermarriage within the totem 
is strictly interdicted. There is endogamy, with its caste 
distinctions, amongst the Karems and Keokas of India. There 
is marriage by capture, still prevalent amongst the aborigines of 
Africa, and promiscuous intercourse amongst those of Australia. 
Even in certain of the aboriginal tribes of Britain, about which 
we are specially interested, Caesar has told of a polyandric 
tendency, and all these examples militate against the generality 
of the process through which we have just sought to trace the 
evolution of the manorial system.^ 

But they do not really upset the broad lines of man's primi- 
tive procedure laid down above, beyond instancing those 
proverbial exceptions which are said to prove the rule. It is 
probable that, without outside influences, no nationality would 
progress beyond the tribal period ; so at least the prevalence 
of this early stage of man's development in many parts of 
the world at this late age would seem to prove. 

* McLennaDf Patriarchal Theory^ Deut. xxi. 18-21 ; Gen. xxxi. 43. 
> Cessar, BeU. Gall. y. 14. 


52 History of the English Landed Interest. 

The family stage, in which the elevated status of the woman 
is a main factor, also depends on outside influences accidental 
to the ethnic instinct. A religious polity frequently regulates 
man's behaviour to the weaker sex. With the Germans, 
female purity was a sacred tradition principally derived from 
their peculiarities of religion. With the Romans the female 
element entered largely into their mythological worship. To 
Christianity the family was one of the most fundamental of 
moral institutions, and the influence of this religion was 
spreading in Britain long before the arrival of the Teutonic 
element. Occasionally we find political agencies at work, 
sometimes antagonistic to those of religion. Thus, at so late 
a period of English history as the Conquest, the feudal system 
introduced the jus primm noctis, entirely inimical to Teutonic 
and Christian ideas of family sacredness, but no more an 
ethnic idiosyncrasy than it was a connecting link between 
the Norman and Eskimo, amongst whom a similar polity 
prevails. 

Without then extending the patriarchal system to all racial 
phenomena of an Aryan or Iberian origin, we may with reason 
apply it to those peoples about which we are more directly 
concerned. Speaking generally, the history of England before 
the Conquest is mainly occupied with the decentralisation of 
national authority ; after that event its pages are filled with 
the details of the prolonged struggle between the central 
powers and the local seigneurs. Early French history still 
more vividly illustrates the same course of events. 

Bearing in mind the possibility of exceptions, it may be 
stated that the stages of man's general relationship with the 
soil have been also very similar in the history of all civilised 
races. 

Though from a very early period there were primitive agri- 
culturalists like Cain, yet the majority of mankind was at first 
pastoral, Uke Abel. And while it was to the advantage of the 
agriculturalist to keep, as long as its lessening fertility would 
allow, on the same soil, on the other hand it was advantageous 
to the shepherd to change ground as often as he could. 

While the world was thinly populated, the occupation of the 


The Roman, British, and Teutonic Systems. 53 

herdmapSter was not only the most lucrative but the moBt 
pleasant and facile. Then, as man became circumscribed and 
limited in his choice of pasturage, by the growing claims of his 
neighbour, the ground needed artificial treatment, in order 
that it should support the lives of himself and his live stock. 
For a time it paid him best to exhaust the soil of its fertility, 
and then pass on to fresh ground. But even then the nomadic 
habit would be lessened; until a wholly stationary existence was 
necessitated by the expensive processes which were required 
in re-fertilising exhausted mould. The heavy cost of the farm- 
ing stock introduced a system of oo-aration ; blood-relationship 
determined the limits of this primitive form of co-operation, 
and these two circumstances combined would originate the 
idea of communal land tenure. 

Applying these principles to the nations in question, we may 
conclude that the Roman influence had predisposed the British 
in a degree, more or less according to their accessibility or the 
reverse, to the ideas associated with overlordship. 

When antiquarians bring to light traces of old hearth re- 
ligion, tribal houses, communal land tenure, terrace cultivation, 
and the like, they should be treated as evidences of a more 
prolonged survival in certain inaccessible parts of England of 
the tribal stage of man's development. 

This island at the period of the Anglo-Saxon invasion was 
peopled by various nationalities. Some, like the Alemanni, 
may have been half Teutonised already;^ others, like the Belgae, 
had long been in commercial touch with highly civilised 
nations : parts of the country were completely Romanised ; 
and there were districts in which the Celtic population was 
still unadulterated. When, then, the Anglo-Saxons brought 
over a more or less advanced system of the Teutonic Mark, 
they would find parts of the country, like Wales, behind even 
Caesar's brief description of German civilisation; but they 
-would find other parts to which their ideas of land tenure 
-would be utter barbarism. 

The Frisians migrated to these shores, as Bishop Stubbs ■ 

* Seebohm, En,g, ViU, Commun.y p. 285. 

* Stubbs, Constit Hist,, ch. iv., p. 70. 


54 History of the English Landed Interest 

points out, in so wholesale a manner as to have left their old 
homes without an inhabitant; and though their original leaders 
may have possessed no creative genius, their peculiar stage of 
the Mark polity budded forth eventually into the monarchical 
system of the Heptarchy. 

"Whatever were the former systems of land tenure in this 
country, a fresh start must more or less be made when room 
was required for these new peoples. 

The invasion of a race is very different to that of an army. 
Even that of the latter varies according to the objects it has in 
view. 

When, for example, the Greeks or Carthaginians conquered 
a nationality, being republican themselves, they established 
republican colonies with republican ideas of land equalisation. 
When Asiatic nations with despotic forms of government went 
forth to war, their conquests were undertaken for one man's 
pleasure, who had therefore to keep up a standing army dis- 
tributed as garrisons in those cities of the conquered lands 
which were strategical centres. When the Eomans conquered 
a country, they did so for glory ; and, save for the purposes of 
frontier defence, they interfered as little as possible with the 
land question outside their municipia. When modem warlike 
expeditions leave these shores, to open up some fresh market, 
the very instincts of commerce induce us to foster, not crush, 
native manners and customs. When the Hebrews occupied a 
conquered country, they required it as a home ; and 83 the land 
was only just large enough to hold them, a war of extermina- 
tion ensued. Like the last-mentioned people, the Germans, in 
conquering fresh districts, had habitation in view. They sought 
neither glory nor commerce, but security and a livelihood. 
Being a nation of independent tribes with no centralised gov- 
ernment, they invaded foreign lands in small and detached 
parties. To obtain freedom from molestation, they introduced 
military service purely as a defensive measure; and, to procure 
a livelihood, they enacted laws establishing fixity of tenure. 
They were a strange mixture of savagery and tameness. 
Savage enough when over-population drove them to bucca- 
neering, or molestation threatened to disturb their domestic 


The Roman, British, and Teutonic Systems. 55 

economy, but peaceful in their instincts when once they had 
satiated their land hunger and were left alone. Though too 
ignorant to be practical traders, they were commercial in their 
tastes, valuing every transaction of life, even life itself, at so 
many thrimsas. 

Unlike the Roman citizen, the Saxon invader shunned or 
destroyed the municipia, and absorbed himself into the isolated 
existence of rural domesticity.^ 

The possession of land was the basis of all his distinctions of 
rank. The boast of ^^Civis Bomanus sum " had become obso- 
lete and meaningless. If we may use the word citizen in its 
modem English sense, viz. an inhabitant of the town as 
opposed to one of the country, there was nothing like it in 
the new economy. Eorl and ceorl were its Saxon substitutes, 
and the citizen became the political and social inferior of the 
squire and yeoman for centuries after, until the repeal of the 
com laws announced to the nation that he had resumed that 
old social status which he had possessed in the Boman muni- 
cipia. 

We cannot expect to find the system pursued by the con- 
querors under the pecxdiar circumstances of an invasion which 
was piecemeal and incoherent, identical with (we might almost 
say recognisable as) either that pursued at home or that in 
vogue in the conquered country. 

In the Teutonic character there was an independence and 
individualism which afterwards found a vent under allodial 
customs as soon as the Frank settled in Transalpine Gaul. 
Again it was this same disregard of a central authority, this 
mnate love for tribal subdivision, which brought about isola- 
tion and want of cohesion in face of a common enemy, and 

^ It must not be supposed that the ancient British were altogether 
exterminated even in the early times of the Conquest. The Domesday 
record shows that the servi do not appear at all in the Eastern and 
Midland shires, but gradually increase towards the west and south-west. 
Mr. Ashley, in his Economic History^ ch. i., p. 17, deduces from this, that 
the Anglo-Saxons, in the later days of the Conquest, began to enslave 
rather than exterminate their foes; and Camden points out that the 
ancient British gradually retired to spots inaccessible by climate or 
position, such as the north or west of the country. 


56 History of the English Landed Interest. 

rendered the Briton so easy a prey to the Soman eagles; 
which operated again when "those swarmes of dnskish vermin, 
to wit, a number of hideous Highland Scots and Picts,"^ 
flocked over the whole country and exhausted it of victuals ; 
which gave the victory to these very Saxons whom we are 
now discussing, when they turned to rend their host King 
Yortigem, and wrest the land from his cohesionless grasp. 

We have already pointed out that we are completely in the 
dark as to the comparative stage of civilisation to which these 
particular tribes of the Teutonic family had arrived at the 
time of their invasion. 

CaBsar and Tacitus or Von Maurer cannot help us here. The 
evidences at our disposal are too scant, archsaological data too 
untrustworthy, and conclusions too vague to admit of much 
certainty. This, of course, equally applies to the stage or 
stages of civilisation attained in Britain. Even supposing 
that our inference of the assumption of seignorial rights by the 
native tax-collector be correct, what part did he play in the 
ensuing struggle ? He would not, it is true, have been subject 
to the opprobrium of his fellows or the loss of self-respect 
which the rfXciv?;? of Jewish history, owing to his mercenary 
and unpatriotic spirit, invariably incurred. But, on the other 
hand, landlordism might still be distasteful to the old tribal 
instincts of many aboriginal Britons. Nor would the common 
danger weld together into one solid defence the heterogeneous 
communities which were scattered over the country. The 
tribes would rest content with watching their mountain passes, 
the monarchical peoples would keep guard solely over their own 
frontiers, and the seaboard would be left to whatever substi- 
tute the local British had thought fit to appoint for the Comes 
Litoris Saxonici of the Soman coast defence. But even the 
few data which we possess for the history of the struggle are 
liable to mislead ; when, for example, the strategy of the in- 
vaders would necessitate a marching and countermarching 
which might easily be confused with nomadic instincts, and on 
the other hand, the settling down of each band of invaders 
into a kind of separate and tribal community might arise from 
' Camden, Britannia, 


The Roman, British^ and Teutonic Systems. 57 

the exigencies of a cramped and isolated position, hemmed in 
as it was by the hostile peoples of an invaded country. And 
again, these German tribes coming over in driblets, each band 
tinder its private leader, and slicing out a small area of landed 
possessions by means of the sword, would never surely submit 
to such a communal system as that either described by Csdsar 
or fought over by the theorists. The primtis inter pares form 
of communal government might be, and no doubt was, possible 
in times of peace, when hedged around with the restraining 
laws of a central authority, such as described by the Eoman 
historian. It cannot, however, be for a moment imagined that 
a warlike host would be for long restricted by any such arti- 
ficial institution. That the most trustworthy and gifted mem- 
bers of a community should be permanently on an equality 
with those who just escaped the consequences of criminality 
and idiocy, was to destroy aU enterprise and oflfer a premium 
to mediocrity. That the gallant deeds of prowess and leader- 
ship during the recent fighting should be ignored, and that 
the courageous should be placed on a par with the coward, was 
a policy impossible to a band of warriors surrounded by vindic- 
tive peoples, maddened not crushed by recent defeat. The 
discipline of war demands that rigid obedience which creates 
the overlord ; which was able to turn the Consul Buonaparte 
into the Emperor Napoleon, and which would still more turn 
a Mark of freemen into a manor of serfs. However doubtful we 
may be of the former's existence at any time in these islands, 
we need not hesitate to accept that of the latter. The ancient 
British residing outside the Eoman municipia may or may 
not have been hitherto free from the yoke of overlordship, but 
now, at any rate, they would be subjected either to that of a 
Mark or of an individual. Henceforth, then, they were a body 
of serfs, either obeying the beck and call of a community of 
freemen, or of a lord of the Tun — a term which is less ana- 
chronous than the word manor, but which was replaced by the 
latter as soon as the Norman baron turned out the Saxon 
etheling. 

We may give full allowance to the arguments that would 
annul the civilising eficcts of the Eoman occupation, and we 


58 History of the English Landed Interest, 

may reasonably believe that the turbulent years succeeding 
its termination may have obliterated much of a polity which 
was contrary to ethnic instincts ; but it is impossible to under- 
stand how the contact for four centuries with the greatest 
civilising power of the then world could have produced no 
lasting fruit save in the municipal centres of the national 
existence. It is more probable that the civilisation of the 
ancient British at the time of the Teutonic invasion had far 
outstripped that of the " sea wolves," as a Eoman writer of 
the age had termed the invaders, who had never come into 
peaceful contact with any but the rudest and most barbarous 
specimens of mankind. 

It has been pointed out that though the Germans of Csesar's 
time were very far from being savages, they made but little 
progress towards a higher civilisation during the two long 
intervals — the first, from the time of Caesar to that of Tacitus ; 
the second, from their description by the latter to their ap- 
pearance on our shores — and three hundred and fifty years 
made so little impression on their manners as to have pro- 
voked the inference (wrongly, we believe) that they had con- 
tinued stationary throughout.* Yet all this time the ancient 
British were reaping the benefits of contact with a highly 
civilised people. It may be inferred that Eoman strategy 
blocked all tendency to combine in the subject tribes of 
Britain, and to this must be attributed the sole cause of their 
not becoming a homogeneous and powerful nation. In other 
respects their refinement and polish must have exceeded any- 
thing reached in this country up to the Christian period of 
the later Saxon times. When, then, the Teutonic overlords 
with their Mark of freemen settled in their midst, it is surely 
reasonable to believe that the civilisation of the country made 
a considerable retrograde movement back towards the tribal 
stage of man's existence. 

* Mommsen. Rovnan ProvinceSf ch. on Britain. 


Zbc HnfilOii-Sajron Cra. 


CHAPTER VI. 

SBIGKOBIAL POWEBS. 

Thus far we have confined our attention to an examination of 
the systems of land tenure practised by the Soman, the 
Briton, and the Teuton. It is now our object to study the 
rural economy of the mixed peoples who were occupying the 
soil of Britain. 

Passing over the irresolute resistance of the British, the 
gradual progress of the conquerors from isolated footings about 
the seaboard to a final parcelling out of the country into the 
kingdoms of the Heptarchy, we at length arrive at a period 
when the crews of each marauding fleet had finally settled 
down on whatever area of land they chanced to conquer, 
and were carrying out on a small scale as nearly the same 
system of home government as the altered circumstances 
would admit.* 

Their leader was, at first, the earldorman; afterwards, the 
cjming, or creature of the community; and, finally, the Bret- 
walda. 

Parts of the divided lands, it is reasonable to suppose, were 
subdivided amongst the warriors in proportion to their ser- 
vices. Parts became the Folcland, or common ground of the 
community, and the rest, if any still remained, would be in 
native hands. 

The cjnmgj with his wise men, made the laws in open-air 
assembly, ticchnically called the Witangemote. Those warriors 

' Hume, Hist of Englj Append. I. ; Stubbs, Select Charters^ Introd 
Chapter. 


6o History of the English Landed Interest. 

wlio had received large grants subdivided them, partly amongst 
their {ollowers, and partly, in exchange for agricultural ser- 
vices, amongst their bondmen. 

The old home poUty of a common and equal enjoyment of 
all the lands could never have existed in the new economy. 
The inequality of war services had set up a claim which could 
only have been fairly recognised by an inequality in the 
distribution of the plunder. 

But it had not been purely an invasion of warrior bands 
but also an immigration of tribes. In every instance the whole 
Mark disembarked on these shores, with its three social grades 
of edhiling, friling, and lazzus, its wives and little ones, its 
cattle and household gods, and lastly, its domestic associations 
of kindred and land tenure.^ 

Did then the new life start, as Bishop Stubbs maintains, at • 
the point at which the old had been broken off? Were the 
eorl, ceorl, and loet of the new society exactly identical with 
the three distinctive grades of the old? Would the names 
and functions of the magistrates, the principles of customary 
law and local organisation, be the same as in Frisia ? In other 
words, did the long journey over a wilderness of waters effect 
as little change in our Anglo-Saxon progenitors as did the 
long journey over a wilderness of sand in some nomadic tribes 
of the Sahara ? 

To answer these questions in the afl&rmative would be to 
condemn them as barbarians too ignorant to appreciate the 
relics of the advanced Soman culture, too intolerant to imitate 
what was worth imitating in British ethics, and too self- 
sufficient to correct the errors of their own polity. 

It would be to ignore the similarities between Eoman and 
Teutonic land tenure, to discoimect the Ager Publicus from 
the Folcland, the Ager Vectigalis from the common field 
system, and the overlordship of the villa from that of the tihi. 
It would sever completely the long Une of our English an- 
cestors from the British and Boman peoples, and, as Mr. Coote 
puts it, post-date all our great institutions and traditions. 

> Stubbs, Canstit Hist, 4th ed., cb. iy., page 70; Hume, Hist of Bhrtgl 
Append. I. 


Seignorial Powers. 6i 

Though ready to admit that, under similar circumstances, 
any human community will regulate the distribution of its 
landed property on very similar lines, and though the accidents 
of circumstances are stronger than ethnic instincts, we are not 
prepared to throw over any one of the curious parallels which 
we have raked up out of the dead past, in either Eoman or 
British history, until we have further examined the customs 
and manners of the new invaders. 

At the first outset the vicus was probably too small to 
constitute a unit of the pagus ; but as the population of each 
petty dynasty increased, we are prepared to recognise the old 
subdivision of the populus into pagi and vici, as also under 
their Saxon names, the reges, duces, and principes, which 
figured in the works of Tacitus. The rex, however, seems to 
have been surrounded with more of those monarchical attri- 
butes with which our English kings are endowed, than with 
what we associate with the Saxon title of cyning. And with 
regard to the duces and principes, we should be inclined to 
derive from their combination in the person of one individual 
the creation of the overlord. 

But if there was no equality of rank or property a greater 
portion of the British soil remained subject to common rights 
similar to those of the Mark. Nor would any alteration in this 
system occur when the entire community was split up into a 
number of smaller communities, each owning its individual 
lord of the allod. 

There was, however, no authority vested in the central 
power, such as the king and his Witangemote now formed, 
whereby could be enforced the annual interchange of land 
which had so successfully checked anything of that tendency to 
isolation and independence apparently peculiar to the Teutonic 
nature. 

Thus, as soon as these petty and multitudinous settlements 
had become superseded by the kingdoms of the Heptarchy, 
and even long after the latter had grown into a single Mon- 
archy, this fatal tendency continued. The owners of landed 
property acted as though they governed separate kingdoms, 
Each diistrict supported itself by its own efforts and produce 


62 History of the English Landed Interest. 

Any interchange of commodities betwixt village and village^ 
was unusual, and, as we shall shortly see by reference to the 
Saasan Chronicle^ constantly recurring famines and pestilences 
were a necessary result. Well may we believe that as agricul- 
turalists the conquerors might with advantage have become 
the pupils of their slaves. The fields which year by year bad 
borne harvests sufficiently abundant to support the Boman 
garrisons in Gaul, even in addition to native requirements, 
now often failed to maintain their own cultivators. The 
export trade in com ceased entirely, and even its circulation 
in the interior of the country had stagnated to a degree little 
short of actual cessation. 

Bad agrictdturalist though he was, the Anglo-Saxon's hunger 
for land was only equalled by his craving for maritime adven- 
ture. Its possession, as we have already said, was the basis 
of all his social distinctions, and this fact is the more significant 
since it was a time when personal property was immeasurably 
of more value than real. Do we not detect these same charac- 
teristics every time a modem tradesman invests his small 
fortune in a freehold or in farming stock, and breeds a lad as 
keen for salt water as ever had been his Bersaker forefather ? 
Lucky too for the tradesman, that that same forefather had 
never quite succeeded in stamping out the Boman systems of 
municipal government, or he had not been able to accumulate 
the capital out of trade which enabled him to purchase a 
restful and lucrative old age in the country. 

The picture of social life which next presents itself is a king 
presiding over his Witangemote, and the thanes wielding 
almost identical powers over the vassals and agricultural 
classes on their lands. The three great ranks in the kingdom, 
the nobles, the free, and the slaves, each contributing its 
allotted services to the general welfare of the nation, and each 
possessing its own peculiar social distinctions, had become 
further subdivided into six separate grades. The aristocracy 
were divided into king's thanes and lesser thanes, the former 

' It must be borne in mind that for the greater part of the Anglo-Saxon 
era there were trackless wastes separating village and villagei probably 
infested by outlaws and wolves. 


Seignorial Powers. 63 

comprising the allodialists, whose lands were distributed 
amongst the latter in exchange for their military services.* 
The farmers, or to use their Saxon appellation, ceorls, were also 
socially divided into the yeomen, who paid rents in kind, and 
socmen, who performed praedial services for the lands of the 
thanes which they cultivated. The division of the remaining 
class into prsedial and household bondmen completes the six 
distinctive heads under which every soul, except the king and 
the lower priesthood, in Anglo-Saxon England was compre- 
hended. 

By a system of local government the whole country was 
parcelled out into counties, hundreds, and tithings, and over 
these were appointed respectively the vice-comites, prepositi, 
hundredorum, and tithing men, each of whom presided over 
his own peculiar court of justice. 

Thus briefly have we traced the growth of the monarchy 
out of the scattered and separate territories won in warfare 
by the original Saxon chieftains. 

It is now necessary to study in detail the successive processes 
whereby the soil of this country came under seignorial juris- 
diction. 

Bearing in mind what has been said in the former chapter 
on the natural tendency of most European peoples to pass 
through the successive stages of family, gens, tribe, and State 
economies, we propose now to adapt the same principles to the 
nation under discussion. 

When historical data first give us a glimpse of the Anglo- 
Saxon constitution we find the machinery of government divided 
between the public courts, such as those of the Witangemote, 
the Sheriffs Tourm, the Wapentake and the Tithing, and the 
private courts, such as those of the King's Thane and Halmote. 
Great difficulties have been met with in separating out the 
business that would be transa.cted in the former from that of 
the latter, since both jurisdictions frequently embraced the 
same area of land. 

^ Sharon Turner divides tLe nobles into ethelings, earldormen, eorls, 
and King's Thanes, vol. iii., ch. vii., HibU of Angl.-Sax, We shall develojr 
this subject later on. 


64 History of the English Landed Interest. 

Bishop Stubbs^ has pointed out certain franchises or liberties 
identical in extent with the hundreds or Wapentakes, whose 
proprietors possessed those rights of sac and soc, toll and 
team, which also belonged to the president of the public 
court. The same author has suggested ' that this practice of 
sac, soc,' etc., introduces the first idea of a jurisdiction accom- 
panying the possession of land, and attributes to such cases 
the original absorption of national business into the private 
tribunal. Mr. Maitland dealing with the subject of Frank- 
pledge and the Jury of Presentment ^ in their relationship to 
the Court Leet^ holds similar views. He suggests that the Jury 
of Presentment originated long after this era in the Assize of 
Clarendon, and became implicated with the pre-existent view 
of Frank-pledge in the Hundred Court. He further suggests 
that by a piece of seignorial imitation of public judicial rights 
properly belonging to the Hundred Court, it was introduced 
into the Private Tribunal, and that the abstraction or usur- 
pation of these powers, together with sac, soc, toll, team, 
and estate business formed that fortuitous concourse of atoms 
out of which was evolved the Court Leet. We however 
propose to entirely reverse the process, by suggesting that 
the original Saxon over-lord was first a judge, afterwards a 
landowner, and that therefore the abstraction of his judicial 
powers by the nation was just the very opposite process to 
what Bishop Stubbs and Mr. Maitland have imagined as 
taking place.* 

At the time of the early Anglo-Saxon occupation of Britain 
we are at a period too close to the transition stage from com- 

* Con&t, Eist^ ch. v., ed. iv., sec. 47. 
« Id. lb, ch. vii., p. 204. 

" For a definition of sac, soc, etc., vide Laws of Edward the Confessor, 
xxii. Stubbs, SeL Charters, pt. ii., p. 78. 

* Select Pleas in Manorial and other Seignorial Courts (Selden Society, 
1888). See also Appendix M. to Taswell-Langmead, Const, Hist,, ed. IV. 

^ Mr. Henry Adams, in speaking of £dward the Confessor's sweeping 
grants of jurisdiction to the Church, leaves open the question whether they 
preceded or followed the silent assumption of judicial powers by private 
hands. Vide p. 62, The Anglo-Saxon Courts of Law^ in Essays on Anglo- 
Saxon Law, 


Setgnorial Powers. 65 

munal rights to those of the overlord for the latter to have lost 
the magisterial powers which were invested in him under his 
old oflSice of paterfamilias, and on the other hand not sufficiently 
forward in the evolutionary stage of landownership to find 
those plenary powers over the soil to which the later English 
owners of real property attained. Being fer more the owner 
of the people than of the people's land, he was less trammelled 
in the management of the former than of the latter. By the 
time he ceased to be ex officio a judge, he had established such 
prescriptive rights of land ownership, that no champion of the 
masses ventured to dispute his title. When, as late as the 
Tudor period, he attempted to alter the status quo, he raised a 
bloody tumult. Even to-day there are parts of the English 
soil where he is quite content if he can but retain the limited 
rights which he already possesses. 

We have said that the lord was far more owner of his people 
than of the lands constituting the limits of his seignorial 
' powers ; but we must not understand by this expression that 
all the people of the tun were in the condition of a Eoman 
slave. Some there were who ranked as the lord's goods and 
chattels, others performed their allotted tasks by certain fixed 
customs, and a few even thus early were what Vinogradoff 
h»s defined as free agents bound by contract. There are some 
who have imagined that the first-mentioned grade of servile 
economy represents the primary condition of the whole com-r 
munity under the manorial system ; but that is an untenable 
position when we come to examine closely the records that 
exist of popular claims on certain portions of the manorial 
lands, not only advanced by the people, but continually recog- 
nised by the seignorial owners throughout the periods of 
Anglo-Saxon and mediasval land legislation. 

It is clear, then, that this peculiar relationship between lord, 
people, and land called for the private court, just as much as 
the relationship between nation and constitution called for the 
public court. As that relationship altered, a reconstruction of 
the various tribunals was not only necessitated, but took place. 

It is hard for a modem reader in these days of cramped land 
ownership to realise a condition of affairs where a district was 


66 History of the English Landed Interest. 

so extensive and the population so sparse as to leave a large 
area of useless waste even after all the demands of the inhabi- 
tants had been satisfied. Such, however, was the case when 
the invaders first settled on English soil, and so the existence 
of Folcland demonstrates. When each district came to be 
parcelled out by the Bretwalda amongst the various claimants, 
" How little can you do with ? " was less the question than, 
" How much ? " The men who had come all this way across 
the seas were not so much the possessors of a large personalty 
in flocks and herds as leaders of bands of warriors. The over- 
lord of each district was therefore less the owner of lands than 
the governor of a province. He was the magistrate of the 
pagus, and whatever existed of the old Mark system would 
probably be found in the grouping of his subjects into families, 
in the administration of the laws, and in the economy observed 
over the husbandry. Jurisdictory rights, however, would not 
of themselves be sufficiently lucrative to aflford their proprietor 
a livelihood. He would require something more tangible, such 
as a lion's share in the soil of his territory, and he was power- 
ful enough to obtain what he wanted. This, we think, is the 
origin of the demesne land. Must we not expect then, for some 
time after the Teutonic invasion, to find as we progress in 
history fewer traces of village communal customs and more of 
those institutions peculiar to the manorial system ? There will 
be fewer hides in the common pasturage and more in the lord's 
demesne, fewer appeals to the community's tribunals and more 
to the lord's. It were folly to expect events to develop other- 
wise without such artificial and restrictive legislation as was 
resorted to by the Germans of Caesar. As well might we seek 
to confine by law the annual profits of the trader to that sum 
which represents those of the least enterprising of his class, as 
to restrict a community to the equal subdivision of its lands. 
It is hard to believe that any artificial expedient (even the 
occupation of the Marklands in turns) would have restrained 
the now semi-civilised Anglo-Saxon from violating village 
communal laws. For directly a man grows sufficiently 
educated to appreciate the uses of agriculture, the value of 
the waste as common pasturage becomes diminished in his 


Seignorial Powers, 67 

eyes. He decides to reclaim it under the plough ; and the 
ground, mellowed by his labours and green with sprouting corn, 
awakes in him the sense of proprietorship. 

Thus, in the case of the Anglo-Saxon, from the retention of 
his share of the common pasturage ground beyond the usual 
period, to its cultivation, thence to its possession and enclosure, 
and so on to a still further claim on the adjoining waste, are but 
the usual steps to absolute possession which commend them- 
selves to any masterful and progressive mind. There is surely 
no reason to imagine that the rest of the community objected 
to this appropriation of what was everybody's but not any- 
body's property. Possibly some sort of negative permission 
was obtained for each act of encroachment by a chief who had 
a claim on the community's gratitude as a protector at a period 
when, by the solemn act of "commendation," small landed 
proprietors were constantly resorting to protectors. 

Somehow or other, therefore, the largest landowner became 
the lord of the community, and the community became Iseti, 
who possessed much the same common rights as before over 
at any rate a larger portion of the woodland and grassland, 
though parts were no longer known under the the old term 
*^ Folcland," but either terra regis or lord's waste.^ Probably, 
too, they tilled their allotments in much the same fashion, 
using in turns the lord's farm implements instead of their own. 
Only when a cow strayed, or a stream got dammed up, or a 
road required attention, or somebody's swine got confused with 
somebody else's, it was to the lord's court they had to go to 
obtain attention and justice. This we venture to think is the 
origin of the allodialist, perhaps it also explains the division 
of the land into counties and hundreds, each with its peculiar 
court of justice. 

Many an historian has puzzled his brains for an explanation 
why England was unequally subdivided into counties as big 
as Yorkshire and so small as Rutland ; what, too, was the 
origin of the Wapentake, the Lathe, and the Rape, the 
Trithings and Ridings of Yorkshire, and the three shires into 

' We shall discuss this branch of our subject farther in the ensuing 
chapter. 


68 History of the English Landed Interest. 

which the county of Lincoln was divided ? Perhaps Bishop 
Stubbs ^ has collected all the evidence on the subject that can 
be found. It may, however, be suggested that the counties 
represent some division of the English lands into principalities 
of an earlier date than those of the Heptarchy ; when there 
was a polyarchy of little States, each with its cyning and 
separate court of law. According to tradition, the more 
symmetrical subdivision of the counties into hundreds with 
their subordinate courts of jurisdiction was the later work of 
the monarchy.* 

If, then, we may assume that the old Court Leet of each 
principality now became the Sheriffs Tourm of the same dis- 
trict under its new name of county, we may thus explain the 
presence of the Frank-pledge and Jury of Presentment in the 
Scyremote. 

Where however, in the administration of Alfred, it was 
thought fit to leave these old powers in seignorial hands, the 
old name also of Court Leet might linger on, for the purpose 
of distinguishing between the administration of justice that 
was public and that which was seignorial.* The origin of 
these early courts, both private and public, dates from a time 
when the popular rights were gradually lapsing into the hands 
of the overlord, and the community no longer monopolised 
the reins of government. Yet though the primus inter pares 
of the earlier system is hardly recognisable in his new position 
of absolute lord, many traces of the old polity survive and will 
continue to survive. Lammas lands, for example, exist, which 
are still subject to the old rights of the Mark system ; and the 
recent- enclosure of commons has not altogether swallowed up 
that Ager Publicus, which possibly existed under a Roman 
title long before this Anglo-Saxon period. 

* Stubbs, ConstiL Hist ^ ch. v. 

' Henry Adams suggests that the State of the seventh century became 
the shire of the tenth, while the shire of the seventh century became the 
hundred of the tenth. Anglo-Saxon Courts of Law, Vide Essay on 
Anglo-Saxon Law, 

' We shall see later on, that even on the private manorial estates of 
the allodialists there were public lands, the administration of which 
required the public officer. 


Seignorial Powers. 69 

Amongst these survivals we shall class (Mr. Maitland not- 
withstanding) both the Court Leet and the Frank-pledge. 

It is the fashion for modem theorists to ignore entirely 
the statements of the 16th and 17th century writers. They, 
however, had access to works which have long ceased to exist.^ 
Many of them were lawyers, accustomed by profession to sift 
evidence and to act on precedent. When, therefore, such 
writers inform us that the Court Leet was the oldest in the 
kingdom, we should pause before we reject the statement. 
It has always been supposed that it originated in some pri- 
mitive open-air assembly having jurisdictory powers higher 
than those of the Wapentake. It was confined to the discus- 
sion of public business, and was presided over by the lord. Its 
name, derived from the Saxon " Isbo " (i.e. " law ") favours the 
assumption that it was an early institution. There is no doubt, 
however, that it must have been frequently reconstituted to 
suit the continually changing relationship between the lord 
and the land. In its earliest form it would seem to have been 
a miniature of the great national assembly of the Witan- 
gemote. Just as the cyning aflberwards presided over the 
Witan composed of the abbots, bishops, and chief landowners, 
and possibly also attended by an outside circle of non-voters, 
so would each chieftain sit under some sheltering tree and 
hold his Leet Court for the administration of local business 
within his seignorial territory. Closely associated with this 
Court was the Frank-pledge, another survival, no doubt, of a 
communal economy. 

For, where a system of common land tenure and agriculture 
prevailed, the sins and short-comings of the individual were 
visited upon the community. If we may take a comparatively 
trivial example, neglect to weed one plot of land would be 
felt on adjoining plots, where the breeze-blown seeds would be 
sfure to germinate. One man's dilatoriness in sowing or reap- 
ing his com would delay the whole harvest of the district, 
and consequently the community's resumption of pasturage 

* Kitchen, Court Leet; Jacobs, Complete Court Keeper, Vide the list 
of authorities quoted by this latter author, most of whose works are 
extinct. 


70 History of the English Landed Interest. 

rights over the stubbles. The efficacy of the communal 
machinery depended upon that of the individual; where all 
suffered for one's misdeeds, the only remedy was for all to be 
responsible for the good behaviour of each. 

Out of these circumstances was evolved the Fridborh, con- 
fused by the Normans with the " freoh borh," and consequently 
afterwards misnamed Frank-pledge.^ 

This system was not peculiar to the Teutonic nationalities, 
but has been traced, together with a communal form of field 
husbandry, to the Slavonic peoples of Bohemia,* and the Celtic 
tribes of Wales and Brittany.* As soon as the overlord ap- 
peared, in like manner as he had assumed his share in the 
agricultural economy by replacing the community's farming 
stock with that bought with his capital, so now he assumed 
his responsibility in the system of Frank-pledge. Henceforth 
he was the surety for an absconding crimiQal, and would have 
to pay the " were " or fine to the relatives of any one murdered 
by his retainers. The villeinage remained, as before, collec- 
tively liable for an individual's shortcomings. But to the 
intermediate class on the manor, those below the lord but 
of more substantial means than the villein, the pledge did 
not apply, as their worldly goods afforded a sufficient sub- 
stitute.* 

It is impossible to say when the recentralisation of juris- 
dictory powers took place. It was no doubt a gradual process, 
but there are abundant proofs of its steady progress. 

Whatever they were at first, the judicial rights of the in- 
dividual did not long remain plenary. They belonged to the 
assembly and not to the magistrate, and the freemen who 
represented both County and Hundred judged the causes in 
point of law as well as in point of fact.^ 

^ Vide Kemble, Anglo-Saxons, and Saxons in England. 

* Codex Legum SUwonicarum. Analysis by M. R. Dareste, Journal 
des Savants, 1886. 

* Such seems the system of the " led," i.e. witnesses who might be re- 
jected by the defendant, who were summoned by judicial authority, took 
the oathf and could be examined if necessary. 

* Palgrave, Rise and Fall of Engl. Commonwealth. 
' Guizot, Essai sur VHist, de France, p. 259 note. 


Seignorial Powers. 71 

A gradual decrease of seignorial powers and a larger increase 
in proprietary rights are shown to have taken place in the 
former instance by the institution of royal courts, like the 
Scyremote and Hundred, of royal officials, like the King's 
Reve,^ of the royal prerogative, like the subject's right of 
appeal from the decision even of Scyremote,' and in the latter 
by the increased rights of individual ownership to the waste 
and common field. 

Eventually it was only in the Courts of King's Thanes and 
in the Halmotes of a few franchises that seignorial rights over 
life and death survived. 

Where cases occur of fresh grants to individuals of soc and 
sac, as late as the reign of Edward the Confessor, they were 
probably owing to the creation of new manors by the conver- 
sion of Folcland into Bocland, which necessitated a fresh grant 
of judiciary powers, at first not so much connected with the 
grantee's peculiar tenure of land as with the grantor's selection 
of some fitting candidate to perform these solemn duties in a 
newly populated district. Whenever the selection fell (and 
when did it not ?) upon the owner of large landed estates, he 
was no doubt allowed, for convenience sake, to absorb the fresh 
judicial business into the other work of his seignorial court, 
so that both would be held in the same room of the lord's 
house. 

The largest portion of these mixed seignorial and public 
tribunals was found to be, at the close of the Anglo-Saxon 
era, in ecclesiastical hands,' and it may be inferred from this 
fact that the clergy had been less liable than the laity to for- 
feit such right by arbitrary acts of injustice. 

It seems, therefore, not at all improbable that the presidency 
of more than one Court was often invested in the same per- 
sonage.^ The president, for example, of the Leet might also 
be president of his Seignorial Court. Very likely, as Bishop 
Stubbs suggests, there were two officers, one the convener, the 

• Hence the term reveland for allodial territory. 

• Stubbs, Constit Hist, p. 129. 

• Id. Ibid,, ch. v. 

' Coote thinks that the jurisdiction granted to landowners waste relieve 
the pressure of business in Scyremote. 


72 History of the English Landed Interest, 

other the chairman of these Conrts ; the one representative of 
the king's interest, the other that of the freemen ; the former 
called gerefa before, and bailiff after the Conquest ; the latter 
called earldorman before, and hundredman after the Conquest. 

The president of the Seignorial Court seems to have been 
generally represented by a deputy. This man was probably 
the steward of the franchise, and not to be confounded with 
the Eeve, who was the tenant's nominee. The latter was 
ex ofpAAo a representative of the township in the Hundred 
Court, and with four others . of the former's inhabitants 
went to the latter's monthly meetings. Twice yearly the same 
quintet attended the County Court; and on the substitution for 
this Court of that of the itinerant justices, in the reign of Ed- 
waird I., they continued to take their part in the business that 
had required their attendance in the former assembly. It is 
quite possible that the office of Steward and Beve may have 
been vested in one and the same person. "Whether this be so 
or not, it is interesting to note that even in his own Court the 
landlord had by no means matters all his own way. The ten- 
dency to lessen the intimate connection between seignorial and 
magisterial powers is further evidenced by the institution of 
itinerant Justices in Eyre during Angevin times. On the other 
hand, the difficulty to entirely dissociate the two is evidenced 
by the retention to this day of landownership as a necessary 
qualification for a seat on the County Bench. 

Leaving, however, this interesting subject for further con- 
sideration when our history has developed itself, we come now 
to inquire what business occupied the attention of the local 
courts. 

It seems that most offences were punishable with fines. 
Even the lives of .the various state dignitaries were valued at 
certain fixed sums, which however varied in the different 
kingdoms of the Heptarchy ; so that he who indulged in the 
expensive luxury of regicide could reckon up beforehand the 
exact extent of his liability. Prices ran between 30,000^ 
thrimsas for a king's, to 266 for a mere ceorl's, life. There was 

* Stubbs, Select Charters, p. 66. 


Seignorial Powers. 73 

even a money liability for the homicide of so insignificant a 
creature as a slave. If, however, a master so disfigured the 
poor creature as to destroy eye or tooth, he lost this piece of 
valuable personal property altogether, as the slave gained his 
freedom. 

The mixed jurisdiction of the various courts is farther 
demonstrated, by the disposal of most fines in certain propor- 
tions between the king and seignorial master of the district 
in which they were incurred. 

The king's share of the fines was collected by the sherefas, 
who served as county treasurers under the lieutenants (a new 
creation of King Alfred's, and a further attempt to centralise 
authority). The Sherefa, who presided over the Tourm, also 
provided for all the king's wants whilst travelling in his 
particular county, and was, no doubt, the precursor of that 
feudal official, the royal purveyor. 

It is probable, however, that legal disputes over the rights 
of real property occupied the greater portion of the Court's 
time. Though far behind the Romans in legislative genius, 
Anglo-Saxon land legislation astonishes and sometimes shames 
the Englishman of to-day. It is quite probable that here 
again is an instance where Roman civilisation had taken root, 
and the advanced legal formality of obtaining the consent of 
the Witan to the written contract which converted Folcland 
into private property,^ is another link which seems to connect 
it with the Ager Publicus of the former polity. But it was 
not only over the Bocland that the Anglo-Saxon evinced his 
legal acumen. "The limits of land," writes Mr. 0. Wren 
Hoskyns, " were defined with scrupulous accuracy, and a 
register of deeds and decisions, including mortgages, was kept 
in the superior courts. The form of alienation or transfer 
was very simple, but its efficacy W6W secured by publicity. 
Before the C!onquest, grants of land were enrolled in the shire 
book, after proclamation made in public shiremote, for any 

' Called Bocland, of course, from the formality of entering the contract 
in a book. Mr. Allen has sought to prove that in very early Saxon times 
the conveyance of land was still carried on by symbols. Allen, Enquiry^ 
p. 163. 


74 History of the English Landed Interest. 

to come in that cotdd claim the lands conveyed, and this was 
as irreversible as the modem fine with proclamations or 
recovery. It might almost shame a reader of our Blue Book 
on * Sale and Transfer of Land/ to find a B-egistry of Title, 
and what was then almost its equivalent, a ' Begistor of Assur- 
ances,' existing in the ancient English County Courts while 
the age of Christendom was yet written in three figures." ^ 

^ Cobdfin Club Prize Essay Series. 


Bnfilo-'Sayon periob* 


CHAPTEE Vn. 

LAND TBNUBE AND AGRICULTURB. 

In the preceding chapter we attempted to show the relation- 
ship between the lord, the people, and the land. We must 
keep in mind that the land, theoretically at any rate, some 
time or other belonged to the people, but that the people some- 
how or other came to belong to a lord. The next and conse- 
quent step was for the land to come into the lord's possession. 

It is very clear that proprietary powers over either people 
or land would be useless so long as they included the one 
without the other. Directly the overlord was called upon to 
perform national service for his proprietary rights, he began 
to keep a jealous eye on both people and land. The State 
recognised his right thus to protect his interests, dad this 
recognition afterwards took the form of the labour laws; 

But in the days following immediately upon the Anglo-Saxon 
invasion there was no trade to tempt the people off the land, 
and a superabundance of soil, far in excess of all agricultural 
requirements, which remained outside the limits of individual 
ownership, and came to be technically known as the Folcland. 
In the earliest stages of our present subject it is therefore 
permissible to divide the soil of England under three heads : 
viz. (1) that constituting the area still belonging to the nation 
as a whole ; (2) that over which the nation retained part pos- 
session ; and (3) that entirely appropriated by private persons. 

There was a natural tendency for the two first-mentioned 
portions to diminish, and for the last-named to increase. This 
is evidenced both by the innovation of Bocland charters and 

76 


76 History of the English Landed Interest. 

the gnkdnally increasing area which came to be known as 
king's demesne ; and it has been suggested that the Folcland 
must have been absorbed altogether by these two processes — 
an idea which is the more plausible, when there is but one 
allusion to this portion of the country as Folcland in all the 
Anglo-Saxon laws.* A large area of ground in the manorial 
system was known as the lord's demesne, which, with 
that of the king, made up the sum of British soil entirely 
under individual ownership. The bulk, however, of the land 
remained Folcland, as we shall show later on. Now it is 
important to observe that the demesne lands (or as they were 
called at this early period, the thane's inlands), were not 
wholly composed of the separate cultivated district round the 
lord's dwelling-house, but were supplemented by a few acre 
plots scattered over the arable fields of the community. These 
the lord farmed under the same peculiar restrictions of hus- 
bandry which we shall shortly show were in force on the 
people's lands. Not only would the rotation of cropping be 
the same, but their preparation for seed and harvest operations 
identical ; that is to say, they would have been performed by 
the community's labour and the lord's capital, or rather, what 
was equivalent in these times to capital, the lord's goods and 
chattels. 

Either these separated portions of the demesnes represent 
lands seized by the lord from individuals as a set-off against 
neglected boon or predial services, or more likely they were 
the original possessions of the j^rimw* inter pares^ which, on his 
conversion into the overlord, remained in his powerful grasp. 

Another large area of the district was known as the lord's 
waste, over which the people possessed common rights, such 
as those of housebote, cartbote, ploughbote, fyrebote, etc. 
Another area was known as the common arable land of the 
manor, and here again the people's rights are clearly distin- 
guishable. For though the lord gave evidence of his pro- 
prietary rights by claiming his quid pro qtto over each man's 
tenancy, he could not eM&r the famous Trinity system of culti- 

^ Leg, Aed. 6en., o. 2& '*Athor oththe on boclande, oththe on folo* 
lande." 


Land Tenure and Agriculture. *jj 

vation, or deny the rights of common pasturage after harvest. 
Very possibly these instances of divided rights point to some 
remote past, when a class struggle occurred betwixt the seig- 
norial and popular interests, ending in a compromise whereby 
neither side wholly ceded or wholly retained its original posi- 
tion. On the other hand, it is equally possible, as we shall 
now hope to show, that no such contest took place. 

The lord's demesne, there is little doubt, originally consti- 
tuted that portion of the Folcland arbitrarily, or otherwise, 
appropriated to private uses during the days of allodial tenure, 
or even earlier. But if the supreme authorities possessed only 
the crudest notions of political economy, they would have fore- 
seen that every additional acre brought under cultivation 
tended to enhance the wealth of their dominions. It is there- 
fore natural to infer that the utmost inducement would be held 
out to landed capitalists to extend their legitimate boundaries 
at the expense of the people's waste. It is the old story of the 
Ager Publicus over again. There are the wealthy squatters, 
the tenure of the occupatio, and the gradual absorption of the 
community's territory. But there was no code of agrarian 
laws, and no Gracchi to interfere between class and class. 

But this is a theory which at first sight seems to lay the axe 
to the root of all manorial rights, from the days when private 
estates in land were small, and the people's waste enormous, to 
the present age, when the latter has dwindled down to rustic 
cricket fields and gorse-sown village greens. It, however, does 
not necessarily do anything of the kind. In all these theo- 
retical questions regarding origin it is essential that the student 
should keep ever before him a picture of the situation at its 
very beginning. The most noticeable feature of the country * 
throughout the Anglo-Saxon period was its vast areas of forest 
land, interspersed with which were marshes, moors, and scrub. 
Infinitesimally minute in comparison were the rare patches of 
cultivated ground ^ about the village. A few, probably a very 

^ The sparsity of the population can scarcely be exaggerated. At the 
very end of the Anglo-Saxon era, we find the census of a great county 
like Yorkshire consisting of only 9,968 souls. Surrey contained 4,547, 
Middlesex, 2,289. The eastern parts of the island were, however, more 


78 History of the English Landed Interest. 

few, of these centres of human life, together with an enormous, 
impenetrable, roadless tract of the waste, constituted the terri- 
tories of some petty Anglo-Saxon chieftain. Save for purposes 
of the chase, no one would care to dive far into such cheerless 
solitudes, resembling more than anything else the Australian 
bush, but, in days prior to the introduction of the compass, even 
more without hope of ultimate egress for the lost traveller. 

Is it then at all likely that any lord, however arbitrary and 
exacting, would care to lay claim to the proprietary rights of 
such useless wildernesses ? Who could estimate the pannage 
dues of the few swine hidden in their primeval depths ? or the 
quantity of estovers taken ? The scanty wants of some dozen 
or so families in building and firing materials would but help 
to clear ground for future agriculture. The few live stock of 
the village would improve rather than spoil its coarse herbage; 
and the requirements of twenty times as large a population in 
food and fuel would result in no appreciable difference to either 
its stores of game and fish, or its supply of timber and turf. 
On the other hand, the assumption of proprietary rights by 
the lord over what was universally recognised as people's 
ground, so long as it in no way interfered with their few 
wants in estovers, piscary, turbary, and the like, would not 
excite popular opposition. 

Times were bad, famines frequent ; and he who made two 
ears of com grow where one formerly existed, was more of a 
public benefactor then than he has ever been since. The lord's 
capital was as much needed for successful agriculture as the 
people's labour. Even when the community performed their 
tillage operations as tenants, it was from the lord's houses, 
implements, and stock that their outfit came. ^ 

We can imagine a time when the cultivated area of the 
township would not have sufficed to employ all the able and 
willing labour of the community. A mutual arrangement 

densely populated. Thus Norfolk contained 28,365, and Suffolk, 22,093. 
The whole of England numbered 300,785. I cannot agree with Mr. Sharon 
Tumer^s view, in estimating these numbers as referring to families, and 
multiplying them by five. Anglo-Saxons^ bk. viii., vol. iii., p. 266, 
> Seebohm, op. citj p. 183. 


Land Tenure and Agriculture. 79 

wotild naturally be come to between the lord and the people, 
whereby the former supplied capital and the latter labour, both 
amicably dividing the proceeds of produce in some propor- 
tion equal to the sacrifices made on either side. On the death 
of an agriculturist his heirs or executors would make some 
arrangement with their lord for the perpetuation of his loan 
in farm stock ; but to recoup himself for the wear and tear 
of implements and the losses in his live stock by disease or 
old age, as well as to uphold his proprietary rights over the 
loan, the lord would demand and receive some valuable beast. 
This we believe to have been the origin of the heriot, which, 
like many of the old customs, had its peaceful as well as its 
warlike adaptations, and which, though a Danish usage, was 
not necessarily a Danish innovation. It was also the origin of 
the lands held in villeinage, which were in this way rendered 
partly under seignorial and partly under popular control. 

It seems therefore probable that, up to a certain period, 
possibly that particular one at which the system of Bocland 
was inaugurated, kings might appropriate as much Folcland as 
they liked for their demesne, and lords might slice off large 
comers of it for their semi-private uses, without acting in the 
least tyrannically ; rather, on the contrary, conferring a last- 
ing benefit on the community at large. A very different 
state of this question occurred afterwards, when the Norman 
conqueror, for purposes economically useless, afforested half 
Hampshire, and devastated in the process, not only common 
wastes, but private lands under arable cultivation. 

It is, however, likely that, as in the case of the Roman 
Ager Publicus, there came a time when the appropriation of 
the people's waste could only be carried out under certain con- 
ditions, such as reserving the popular rights of turbary, estovers, 
and the like, but vesting all other proprietary rights in indi- 
vidual hands. It furthermore seems sufficiently clear that the 
people must have been able to prove a very strong proprietary 
title, in order to have succeeded in retaining such valuable 
powers over the lord's waste and common field, as the rights of 
pasturage undoubtedly are. And, on the other hand, the lord 
was able to show the same strongly vested interest in the 


8o History of the English Landed Interest. 

appropriated soil as that which his prototype, the Roman 
"possessor," had substantiated before so judicial a political 
opponent as Tiberius Gracchus. 

It would appear then, after all, as though there had been 
very little class contest ; the lord, on the one hand, probably 
taking by a gradual and piecemeal process all he would require, 
and the people tranquilly ceding these matters as immaterial, 
so long as their necessary requirements in the waste and com- 
mon field were reserved. 

We are not without evidence that what has been thus briefly 
sketched represents the true state of the case ; but we must not 
rely upon that afibrded by mediaeval lawyers in order to recon- 
cile the altered views of Norman landownership with the 
ancient seignorial rights of the Anglo-Saxon gentry. The 
only trustworthy evidence is that contained in the scant 
allusions of the Anglo-Saxon statute book,^ and charters to 
LoBuland, Folcland, and Bocland ; but we must make sure of 
the construction originally intended for such terms by those 
who used them. 

Blackstone, for example, merely alludes to the extra-mano- 
rial soil as lord's waste, and distinguishes between what of 
the manorial lands were held in free socage as Bocland, and 
what were held in villeinage as Folcland. * It was convenient 
for those connected with the legal profession throughout the 
feudal era to ignore any earlier history of the waste than that 
which started from the Statutes of Merton and II. Westminster. 
Mr. Seebohm bases an interesting description of Anglo-Saxon 
land tenure on similfiurly false premisses. He considers that all 
the soil of England, originally Folcland, became at the time 
when a monarchical economy was introduced, the king's 
demesnes. Now where we take exception to Mr. Seebohm's 
account is, in the expression king's demesne, which we would 
replace by some term signifying royal jurisdictory rights. If 
we exclude the small area of land known as the crown demesnes, 
the sovereign's prerogative over the English soil, like the seig- 
norial prerogative over the manor, did not extend beyond certain 

* Comp. Ltg. Aelf.^ o. 37 ; Leg, Ead., c. 2. 

* Blackstone, Camm., bk. ii., ch. 2. p. 90. 


Land Tenure and Agriculture. 8i 

fiscal and jnrisdictory rights, such as were understood by the 
expressions sac, soc, toll, and team — ^rights, be it borne in mind, 
that could not be exercised over an uninhabited waste. When 
a communal economy was replaced by a monarchical govern- 
ment, the seignorial rights over all the land in the country, 
except those already appropriated by the allodialists, became 
the king's. Henceforth the extra-manorial waste assumed a 
twofold aspect, being subject during the periods of its tempo- 
rary use to royal jurisdiction, and by the side of this inter- 
mittent authority to popular rights of pasturage, etc. 

This dual control of the national waste ground was very 
diflferent to the economy observed in the royal demesnes, which 
were lands held and cultivated under the king's personal 
direction, and entirely outside of and free from popular rights 
and interference. Mr. Seebohm, therefore, in identifying the 
Folcland with these royal demesnes, has made out that the 
Anglo-Saxon dynasty was even more despotic than the Nor- 
man. It is, however, an error into which any one who has 
studied the terms contained in the Doomsday survey is liable 
to faU. The terra regis is there interpreted by the Norman 
lawyers as signifying the royal demesnes, whereas what it 
really meant was the royal manors, over which the king occu- 
pied the same position as any other lord, and this is tanta- 
mount to saying that he held seignorial jurisdiction over the 
entire district, and only proprietary rights over the small area 
of lands in hand. 

Of the terms used in the Anglo-Saxon records, we find, it is 
true, only once the Bocland contrasted with the Folcland in 
the legislation of the period ; ^ but we have frequent allusions 
to both terms singly in either laws or charters,* and one other 
record of both together in the will of Duke Alfred.* From 
these we hope now to form some definite conclusion as to their 
significance. Perhaps the various processes by which a new 
manor was erected will best illustrate the distinctions between 
these terms as used by the Anglo-Saxon lawyers. The forma- 
tion of a new manor generally came about by the action of 

* Leg, JEd,y 2. « Leg, Adf.^ c. 41 ; Cod, Viplom.y cclxxxi. 

• Cod, Diplom, cccxvii. and Cod, Diplom, cclzxxv. 

a 


82 History of the English Landed Interest 

some portionless younger son of an Anglo-Saxon landlord, wlio 
penetrated into the waste, built dwellings for himself and fol- 
lowers, and cultivated the surrounding land. First there 
would be the settlement, which earned for the portion of the 
waste thus appropriated the term Lssnland ;* then its conver- 
sion into a manor, a process which was not complete until two 
acts of the new overlord had received legal recognition. In 
the first place, the assumption of landed proprietorship over 
that part of the people's land henceforth to be known as lord's 
demesne, had to be confirmed by charter ; and in the second 
place, the grant of seignorial jurisdiction over waste, common 
field, demesne land, and people, had to be obtained from the 
king.* Save over the land appropriated to the private use of 
individuals, no interference with popular rights took place, and 
thus it is that the term Bocland is rightly confined by Black- 
stone to the tenemental lands in free soccage. There was, 
however, a lingering trace of national control over these demesne 
lands, and rightly so, for they represented a complete surrender 
both of royal as well as popular claims. Hence we find that the 
succession to the Bocland is controlled by the National Statute 
Book, and entailed, on pain of its reversion into Folcland, strictly 
amongst the descendants of the original possessor.^ In con- 
tradistinction to the Bocland, the rest of the manorial lands 
were still the people's, even though cultivated by their ploughs 
instead of pastured by their cattle ; hence Blackstone is also 
right in applying the term Folcland to the lands in villeinage. 
But objecting, like all the other medisBval lawyers, to the recog- 
nition of popular proprietorship, or to any limitation of seig- 
norial jurisdiction over the waste, he is careful to distinguish 
between the district to which he applies the term Folcland and 
that to which he applies the term lord's waste.* 

1 Seebohm, English Village Community^ ed. 4, p. 168. 

• The Witan did not interfere with the king's prerogative over juris- 
dictory grants. Vide Mr. H. Adams, Anglo-Saxon Courts of Law, p. 60, 
in Essays on Anglo-Saxon Laws, 

" Cap. 41 Leg. Adf, Essays on Anglo-Saxon Laws; C. Lodge, Land 
Laws^ p. 72. 

^ Balrymple identifies the Bocland with Thainland, and the Folcland 
with Beveland, a probable supposition, but one which requires some fur- 


Land Tenure and Apiculture. 83 

In another sense the nncultiyated lands may be represented 
as the national property hitherto unappropriated, and the 
common arable land as that part of it appropriated by sections 
of the community ; both, however, still retaining their popular 
characteristics. The reward of national services and the de- 
frayment of national expenses were uses to which the Folcland 
was generally put, hence we find Palgrave defining it as ager 
fiscalis, and Cabot Lodge ^ as Ager Yecdgalis; hence also we see 
the reason why it was under the special protection of the witan. 
Totally opposed to lands of this description was the Bocland, 
which was under private jurisdiction and subject to individual 
ownership instead of that of the State. Its owners would, 
however, possess seignorial rights over a larger area of ground 
comprised by their manors, which, as Cabot Lodge has pointed 
out, by the laws of Hen. L resulted in both kinds of lands, 
viz. private and public, becoming merged under the one name 
Bocland, though in principle the latter continued to be partly 
subject to popular rights. 

Our view of early land tenure reduces the question of seig- 
norial usurpation to the limits of the various manorial demesne 
lands, and even here it is more than probable that the early 
times at which this process was brought about, fully justified 
the step in the eyes of those whose interests were most affected. 
Whatever way we view the subject there appears very little to 
justify the opponents of the manorial theory in clamouring for 
a repeal of all the Enclosure Acts from now up to the date 
of that greatest of Enclosure Acts — the Statute of Merton.* 
It may indeed require something beyond and behind the 
manorial theory to reconcile what we know of ancient sys- 
tems of land tenure with what we retain of common rights, 
and to explain away the discrepancies in the Statute of 
Quia Emptores. For such reasons it is advantageous that Mr. 
Scrutton has been able to disconnect the manorial nexus by 
pointing out instances where rights of common exist apart 

ther corroboration than is afforded by early records. VidA Dalrymple, 
Hist, of Introduction of Feudal System, 

* Essays on Anglo-Saxon Law^ p. 78, 

» 20 Hen/ry in. 


84 History of the English Landed Interest 

from a manor ; and that Mr. Percival Birkett has more recently 
demonstrated^ that in Bracton's time there must have been a 
state of things not consistent with this same manorial theory, 
for which the law has had to invent the fiction of a lost grant. 
But though Norman lawyers may have based their legal lore 
on fallacious premisses, though Elizabethan judges may have 
erred in their rulings, and though the people in primitive times 
knew nothing of the mineral wealth beneath the soil that they 
were thus tacitly conceding, there is nothing, surely, in all this 
to menace, say, the Crown's title to the 130,000 forest acres of 
Dartmoor, or the 60,000 acres of the New Forest, or to chal- 
lenge manorial rights in Epping Forest and the Malvern Hills? 

The people knew well enough both, in England and Germany, 
how to defend their liberties later on ; and even to this day 
their claim of pasturage on the fallows and stubbles of the 
common lands remains unchallenged.' 

In valleys, the lord's demesnes stretched along the streams 
at the bottom. The common pasturage ground and Lammas 
meadows adjoined the water side ; above were the arable lands 
separated by untilled balks into numerous strips, as far as 
the conformation of the ground would admit of ploughing. 
Then came the sheep pasturage, and lastly, high above all, the 
woodlands and waste. In level districts, as in the former case, 
the lord's waste and the common field occupied the outer 
portion of the Tun.* On hilly grounds an unusual mode of 
husbandry, attributed to Mountain tribes, seems to have existed. 
Such are the terraces or lynchets of the Wiltshire, Dorset, 
Hampshire, and Sussex highlands, the butts of Carmarthen- 
shire, the reins along the slopes of Wharfdale, Coverdale, 
Wensleydale, and Niddersdale, the " hanging shaws " of Chol- 
lerton ; and such was the cultivation pursued in other hilly 
places throughout England, parts of Scotland, the Eiviera, 
Peru, and even China, the origin of which Mr. Gromme has 

* Compare his paper, jTAe Origin of Rights of Common read before the 
Incorporated Law Society at Plymouth, 1891. 

• Comp. Ket's Rebellion in Tudor Tim^es and 2%6 Beasants^ War in 
Germany that followed the Reformation^ 

■ Gk>mme, Village Community^ 0. iv. ; 


Land Tenure and Agriculture. 85 

attributed to the spade husbandry of some pre-Aryan race. 
But apart from this form of agriculture, the rest of England's 
soil seems to have been split up and uniformly distributed 
in the manner described, i.e. the demesne lands nearest the 
villages, the common arable field next, and the lord's waste 
farthest oflFl 

It may at first cause some wonder why this should have 
been uniformly so throughout the country. It must be, 
however, borne in mind that the most fertile and accommoda- 
ting land first attracted the human settlement, and that inter- 
vening wastes would isolate such from similar communities. 

On the appearance of the overlord, the cultivated centres 
would pass into his possession. Then his subjects (for they 
were little less) would reserve, and he would assume, the usual 
rights over the surrounding rim of waste, thus bringing about 
that uniformity of land distribution, our reader's wonder at 
which we have already anticipated. As in process of time the 
cultivated oases around each village spread wider and wider, 
they would come in contact with other cultivated districts, until 
both the outer and inner circles of people's common and lord's 
waste respectively, not only absorbed the whole uncultivated 
area between village and village, but were themselves brought 
under the mellowing influence of thd plough. This process, 
however, cannot even yet be called complete, as long as an acre 
of untilled, unenclosed soil has escaped the inroads of the 
Enclosure Acts. 

How far back in England's history this system of common 
field cultivation, with its contingent people's waste, really 
goes, is a difficult question. We have evidence of it in 
Britain at a very primitive stage. Mr. Seebohm has drawn 
attention to various codes of Welsh legislation which tend 
further than any other record to support the theory that it 
orginated in the agricultural economy of some tribal com- 
munity. Without traversing in detail the ground already 
trodden by this well-known author, it will suffice if we say 
that he traces out to a legitimate conclusion a Welsh system 
of common field culture, which in all its salient features is 
reconcilable with that similar economy adopted by Anglo- 


86 History of the English Landed Interest. 

Saxon agrictilttirists. There is, however, a nearer approach 
to a tribal economy in the common use by the Welshmen, not 
only of beasts of burden and implements, but of the fruits of 
their combined industry. 

The law itself divided the earth's produce in certain fixed 
proportions. That of the first " erw," or strip, was the due of 
the ploughman, that of the second went to the owner of the 
implement used, that of the third to the master of the outside 
ox, that of the fourth to the master of the inside beast, the 
fifth to the driver, the sixth, seventh, and eighth to the 
owner of the team.^ This was co-operative farming with a 
vengeance, and might well form the basis of some future 20th 
century system. 

Now let us turn to the earliest evidence of it at our disposal 
in Anglo-Saxon soil culture. 

Just as the counties had been sub-divided into hundreds 
and tithings for purposes of local government, and into 
parishes for the purposes of ecclesiastical government, so also 
we shall now show they were divided into townships, for 
purposes of estate management. The word "township," or 
" tun," is derived from the Saxon " tynan," (to enclose), and 
though it first denoted merely the lord's homestead and land 
in hand, it soon came to include the whole of each area under 
seignorial jurisdiction. 

If the estate was of such proportions as to have induced its 
lord to build a separate church and maintain a chaplain, the 
township was oonterminate with the parish. 

The internal economy of a large manor was arranged so 
that a proportion of the lands were parcelled out amongst the 
kindred and free retainers of the lord or atheling, who gave 
their services in war in exchange for the usufruct or life in- 
terest of their holdings. So long as the latter performed 
f aithfrd service to the former, so long were they entitled to 
their beneficia or feuds, but after a time their services became 
hereditary.* 

This system of rear-vassalage or sub-infeudation, which in 

* Seebohm, Village Community, Id Ibid,^ c. vi. 

* Qvdzot, Essai sur VHistoire de Franoef pp. 128-14d. 


Land Tenure and Agriculture. 87 

Norman times became so intricate, did not progress to any con- 
siderable extent in pre-Conquest days, for both the king and 
the king's thanes found that sub-infeudation interfered with 
their independence and reversionary interests, since whenever 
lands became once more theirs they reverted subject to the 
rights of the rear-vassalage. The grants to sub-vassals were 
for this cause never hereditary, though in later Saxon times 
the Bocland charters partook of the nature of leases for two or 
more lives. But whatever the form of tenure may have been, 
a system of communal agriculture prevailed. Let us now 
more especially examine that on the land partly public and 
partly private. 

The tract of the township farmed by the villeins, or (to be 
strictly synchronous in our language) geburs, was known as the 
gafol, gesiths, or geneats land, in contradistinction to the thane's 
inland, f.«. the lord's lands in hand. The geburs included the 
landholders and superior tenantry. They possessed fixity of 
tenure so long as they performed their predial and agricul- 
tural services.^ Most geburs had apportioned to them about 
ten acres or strips in each of the divisions of the common field.^ 
Instead of resorting to the communal practice of the Welsh 
tribal husbandry, the gebur looked to the overlord for plough 
beasts and tackle. He was in fact started in life by the 
landed proprietor, who not only supplied him with his home- 
stead and the stuht or outfit of two oxen and implements 
necessary to cultivate a yard-land, but also added a few neces- 
sary live stock to afford such dietetic wants as eggs and milk; 
and even one division of land in the common field was culti- 
vated and sown with oats for him. Everthing of course re- 
verted to the landlord at death, and everything was paid for 
in some shape or form. There was the Michaelmas charge of 
gafol pence and the gafol ploughing. But besides this, the 
gebur had to perform predial service on the inland twice a week, 
and oftener still in harvest and spring tide, and for the grass 

^ Palgrave, Uiw and Fall of the English Commonwealth, vol. {., pt i., 
p. 18. 

' Rectitudines singularum Personarum, a.d. 900, Vide Seebohm, 
Village Community, ch. v. 


88 History of the English Landed Interest. 

" yrth," or share of the Lammas meadows, three additional 
acres of inland ploughing were required of him. The lesser 
tenantry of the cotter class, requiring no loan of plough oxen 
or tackle, performed proportionately less service. They were 
free from land gafol, sowed only one day a week on the inland, 
but paid their hearth penny and Martinmas scot just as 
though they occupied hides on the common field, instead of 
some half-dozen acres only.^ 

The theows, wealhs, or slaves, made up the remaining in- 
habitants of the township. They performed all menial labour 
of the estate, but were often put to work side by side with the 
lowest class of geburs, though not entitled like the latter to any 
remuneration beyond board and lodging. Occasionally some 
individual's life-long frugality obtained for him the purchase 
money of his freedom, or some act of devotion won the same 
from an indulgent master; and as Christianity spread, the 
class gradually disappeared. Otherwise, the theow was as 
much a chattel of his lord as the latter's hounds, excepting 
(what we have elsewhere mentioned) the liability of the lord 
to fines if he damaged or killed his slave. 

Turning back to the account already given of early Germanic 
tenure, we can trace a close resemblance in ita Landes G-e- 
meinde and Dorf to the "Gau," or common territory, and 
township of the Anglo-Saxon polity. The Gemeinanger 
answered to the Folcland, the Feldmark to the G^setland, the 
three huren to its three divisions of spring com, winter com, 
and fallow. The Hof of the Germanic overlord was the same 
fenced court-house as the tfin of the Saxon overlord. His 
Horige corresponded to the geburs and theows.* Further, there 
is evidence in the limited control of the Anglo-Saxon landlord 
over the common lands, and in his almost unlimited judicial 
authority over the people, of those two distinct aspects which Sir 
Bobert Morier has emphasised in the Teutonic freeman. As we 
have already pointed out, the latter, within the pale of his home- 
stead, was in all aspects autocratic, without it, he was but a 

^ Seebobm, ViUage Community^ c. v. 

* Sir Bobert Morier, Prusfian Land Tenure^ in the Cobden Club Prize 
Essay Series. 


Land Tenure and Agriculture. 89 

oommoner of the Mark. As we shall shortly come to see, the 
landowner of both nationalities was a Miles in virtue of his 
being a holder of seignorial rights, and in this manner can be 
traced the connecting link between politics and agriculture in 
the community of the township. 

It is difficult to see how, in such a system of land tenure and 
agriculture as we have thus briefly described, an able-bodied 
pauper could exist. Within the wide fringe of waste which 
isolated the lord and his people from neighbouring lords and 
their peoples, there was enough work for every one. He who 
had no part nor lot in the lands of the district was at any rate 
a household slave, and so in some way dependent upon his lord 
for livelihood. 

The latter's capital was the thews and sinews of the people, 
by aid of which he obtained his own and their food, dwell- 
ings, implements, and utensils of everyday use, as well as all 
other luxuries or necessaries of life. From the people's point 
of view, their labour was, as it is now, their sole capital. So 
long as the land was sufficient to employ their whole stock 
of energy and yield life's necessaries, they felt secure. Any 
addition to their numbers signified extra mouths to feed, and 
consequently a diminution in the common food supply ; and 
was to be dreaded as greatly as is competition in the labour 
market at the present day. We may well believe, therefore, 
that the people would strongly resent the intrusion of strangers, 
whatever their lord might desire on the subject. Thus we find 
that whoever traversed that essentially people's portion of the 
district, the outer rim of wooded waste, had, as late as Bang 
Ina's days, to shout or blow a horn in order to attract attention. 
The lord, on the other hand, would scarcely brook any dimi- 
nution in his labour supply ; but there was little fear at this 
period of any individual skulking off only to find similar pre- 
cautions observed on the other side of the waste bordering on 
the next village. It was later on, after the Norman Conquest, 
when landlords had to guard against this form of depletion of 
their labour supply. 

Such then was the famous agricultural system, which, at the 
period now reached, was universal, and was to continue so for a 


90 History of the English Landed Interest. 

long time to come. It was to provoke the bloodshed of Ket's 
rebellion ; it was to brave the exposure of its defects by that 
sound critic, Fitzherbert ; * to stand out against the adverse 
reasoning of the Flemish authors ; ' it was to be carried across 
the seas by the emigrant passengers of the Mayflower to New 
England ; it was to defy the intolerant language of Young ; • 
it was to be ignorantly described by authors like Marshall,* 
who possessed no true key to its explanation, and learnedly 
discussed by theorists like Seebohm, who drew from it infer- 
ences for which, perhaps in reality, it afforded no basis ; and 
lastly, it was to survive the onslaughts of ten thousand Enclo- 
sure Acts, and afford the 19th century agriculturist an ocular 
proof of its existence in the royal manor of Hitchin and other 
parts of this country. 

Its birth in Europe is hidden behind a barrier of pre-historic 
ages. It may have been brought across two continents by some 
Aiyan tribe from India, * it may have sprung into life with 
the Mark system,^ it may have owed its existence here to some 
transitional stage of ancient British economy,^ or it may have 
been the sporadic inspiration of some early European states- 
man's brain. These points must remain for ever undecided. 
All we know for certain is, that it was the system of husbandry 
pursued in the Saxon lord's time,® that Saxon ceorls mowed 
and fenced its common meadow doles, that Saxon serfs held its 
yard-lands in villeinage, that Saxon clergy claimed the produce 
of its tenth acre strip as tithe,' that early Norman poets sang 


* FiVfo his Works. 

" Such as Hartlib, Worledge, Blith, etc., etc. 

■ Young was especially indignant at finding it even in France. 

4 Marshall wrote in the 18th century, and Sir Henry Maine uses the 
very expression adopted by us in describing Marshall's views of the 
system. 

^ As Sir Henry Maine has thought. 

* As Bishop Stubbs would probably believe. ■ 
7 As Seebohm thinks. 

* Yidt Seebohm, Bag, Village Community^ ch. v., who cites expres- 
sions in the Saxon version of the parables of the Prodigal Son and Unjust 
Steward as evidences. 

* Ibid,^ ch. iv. Seebohm cites the Saxon Laws. 


Land Tenure and Agriculture. 91 

about it,^ and early Norman prose authors discussed it ; ' that 
its measurements of hide and acre owed their derivation to 
what one man could plough respectively in a year and in a day ; 
that there was a good deal of quarrelling over its headlands, 
a good deal of waste ground about its divisions, a good deal 
of time lost in getting about it, and that altogether it was a 
system destructive of good husbandry. 

But was this Saxon practice of land tenure, strictly speaking, 
feudal? It was, and it was not. There was the military 
service, the lord and vassal, and the State reversionary interest 
on the failure of male heirs ;' but there was no primogeniture, 
for, on the contrary, the custom of gavelkind, still existing in 
Kent, extended the hereditary succession to all the children, 
while a now local practice, called " Borough English," also still 
alive, entailed the estates on the youngest son. Again, upon 
the death of the son without issue, the father inherited, 
whereas by Norman legislation, only recently repealed, he was 
excluded. 

The chief distinction, from a lawyer's point of view, between 
the Saxon and the Norman system of land legislation is very 
clearly expressed by Mr. Williams in his introductory chapter 
on " The Principles of the Law of Real Property." He says, 
"Before the Conquest, landowners were subject to military 
duties ; and to a soldier it would matter little whether he fought 
by reason of tenure or for any other reason. The distinction 
between his services being annexed to his lani^ and their being 
annexed to (he tenure ofhis land, would not strike him as very 
important." The system was so far feudal, if we compare it 
with that of the free Danes, who, with not a single serf in their 
hosts, overthrew the priest and lord-ridden Anglo-Saxon race 
in those thirteen campaigns which gave the crown of all Eng- 
land to Canute. But it was free in comparison with that of 
Continental nationalities. The ancient French system was at 
first, no doubt, similar to that we have just described. The 

* Vision of Piers the Ptownum, 

* Walter of Henley, etc. 

» Compare also Cantfie^s Secular Dooms^ cap. 71. Stubbs, Select Char^ 
tersj pt. ii., p. 74, ed. 5. 


92 History of the English Landed Interest. 

" Alleax " or allodial lands were held by the " Libres." They 
were divided into counties and subdivided into " vills " and 
" hundreds," presided over by the Count and his subordinates, 
the " Vicarii " and " Centenarii." The " Feodaux " or feudal 
lands were held by " Lends " who judged their own people and 
led them to war ; but such lands were not contained in the 
classification we have given for the Alleux, nor were their 
peoples subject to the officers of the latter.^ There were too 
Allodia and Allodiarii in Italy and elsewhere on the Continent. 
But the tendency was for allodial property to become feudal, 
so that before the beginning of the 10th century land abroad 
was almost entirely held by feoffees. 

It is at first surprising to learn that the possessor in many 
cases voluntarily converted his allodial lands into feudal. It 
was, however, found that the king's vassals were in many 
respects better treated than the freemen, and large quantities 
of allodialists presented their lands to the king, to receive them 
back firom him as beneficia or fiefs. This was especially charac- 
teristic of the turbulent days which ensued on the death of 
Charlemagne, when everybody stood in need of a protector, 
and was therefore anxious to incorporate himself among the 
lords of the feudal monarchy. Thus came about that maxim 
in French law : " Nulle terre sans seigneur " ; so, though allo- 
dialism lingered on in Languedoc, Catalonia, and the Low 
Countries until even the 12th century, the great bulk of 
Continental lands had become feudal in Saxon days.' But in 
ante-Norman times the powers of the English king were less 
than those wielded by Continental despots, the nobles were 
more independent, the land superabundant ; all of which 
causes militated against the exchange of the freedom enjoyed 
by allodialism for the servitude inflicted by severe feudal 
customs. The Anglo-Saxon ferocity required frequent blood- 
letting from Norman lances before it would brook the conse- 
quences of homage, reliefs, wardships, marriages, and other 
burdens inseparable from the Continental system of feudalism. 

> Vidt Montesquieu, V Esprit des Lois, lib. 80-31. 
" Id. /ftjd., lib. zzxi., c. 8, vol. 2, p. 431. Compare also Bees, Encyelo^ 
sub voc, " Allodium." 


Land Tenure and Agriculture. 93 

Even, however, in England the arbitrary power of the aris- 
tocracy had induced the common people, whether inhabiting 
country or borough, to purchase the protection and patronage 
of some particular nobleman by annual payments ; and some of 
these very nobility, if not powerfdl enough to stand alone, 
formed confederacies with the object of united action against a 
common aggressor.* 

So far we have alluded to one class only of land taxation, viz. 
the Trinoda Necessitas ; but besides this there was the Dane- 
gelt, instituted by Ethelred the Unready, abolished by Edward 
the (Confessor, reinstated by the Conqueror, once more released 
by Henry L, and finally so by Stephen.* 

It was levied for purposes of national defence against, or as 
bribes to the Danes, and was, if not the origin of, at any rate 
the precedent for, the later land tax. It amounted to one 
shilling per hide, and was imposed by the State.' 

There was, too, the tithe charge on the produce of the land, 
a subject, however, which requires further discussion in a fresh 
chapter. 

^ Hume mentions a bond of this kind called sodalitium. 

* Jacob, Law Dictionary, sub voc. "Danegelt" 

■ Hume, History of England^ Anglo-Saxon Period, Appendix I. 


Zbe Hndlo^Safon Iperiob. 


CHAPTER Vin, 

ITS CUSTOMS. 

If we stndy the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, we shall be struck by 
the frequent recurrence of famine and pestilence, disasters not 
infrequently associated with signs in the heavens.^ These 
events axe markedly features of the period under discussion. 
For up to the Teutonic invsision there is but one record of 
famine ; that occurring in a.d. 48, and accounted for by the 
invasion of Claudius the preceding year — an event which no 
doubt interrupted what little agriculture prevailed in those 
early times. In 664, on the 3rd of May the sun was eclipsed, 
and shortly after there was a great pestilence. In 671 was a 
great destruction among the birds. In 686 the air rained 
blood, and milk and butter were turned to blood. 761 was a 
severe winter. 793 was fraught with dire forebodings, such 
as whirlwinds and fiery dragons in the air, followed by a great 
famine. 89B, 896, 897, were years memorable for the mortality 
amongst men and cattle. 976 was a year of great famine, and 
was remarkable for the appearance of a fiery portent, generally 
at midnight (probably the aurora borealis), but was unaccom- 
panied by disaster. In 986 first came the great murrain 
among cattle. On the 28th September, 1014, was a great 
sea-flood, which washed away many vills and countless numbers 
of people. In 1030 arose the wildfire, such as no man before 
remembered. In 1039 was the great wind, and the sester of 
wheat went up to 35 pence, and even higher. In 1041 it was 

^ Vide the English translation of the Saxon Chronicle in Monunienta 
Hist Brit. 

94 


Its Customs. 95 

a very heavy time : ill seasons for fruits of the earth ; losses 
also by pestilence and storm among cattle. In 1044 there was 
a very great famine, sending the seater* of wheat higher stiJl 
(to 60 pence and over). In 1046 was the severest winter 
within man's memoryj causing mortality among men, murrain 
of catU©^ and great losses of birds and fish. In 1047 there was 
great mortahty over all England* In 1053 came the strong 
wind on Thomas-mass night, which difl much harm ; and in 
1063 it recurred on December 21st, the very same night as 
in the year before. 

When we add to this long list of bad seasons^ panics from 
hairy stars, solar circles, and lunar eclipses, — the constant 
ravage-s of fierce warfare between Saxon and Briton, Saxon 
and Saxon, Saxon and Dane, and Saxon and Norman \ the 
calls upon the husbandman's money ^ and time that such a 
state of affairs involved, and lastly Teutonic ignorance of 
husbandry ; we fear our history must record a retrograde 
movement towards the old savage times of the aborigines. 
We can only speculate as to the nature of these destructive 
visitations wliich (as when the rain and milk became blood) 
remind us of the ten plagues of Egypt. We wonder if the 
constantly recurring murrain was duo to rinderpest, pleuro- 
pneumonia, foot and mouth disease, or other modern epizootic 
complaints. What were the fiery dragons and other portents 
which preceded the great famine ? What caused the de- 
structive tidal wave of 1014 ? Was it the extreme drought of 
1030 that set all the rough grasses and wooded wastes in a 
blaae like a modem prairie fire ? Was 1041 as bad a season as 
1870? and was the agricultural depression as severe then as 
now? Was the winter of 1046 more severe than that of ISW^ 

' TUe seater was tLd saino as tlie quarter. A ciuart^r of wLeat rose to 
' jjBO pennies, or about 15 sliiUiugs, This far exceeded its price during the 
gl^At famine of Qneeo Elizabeth's time, when the quarter ivas hold for 
4 pounds. Hume, HisL of KtufL^ Append, L 

^ *'Aiidin thesameyoar(10o2) King Eilward abolished the hereg^ld . . , 
That KCM distressed all the English nation during so long a Wii\e, a^ It 
is here above written ; that waa eTOr before other ^elds, which wero 
variously paid and wherewith the people were manifoldly disti-essed^'* 
An4jU>-Saxon Ckrc^nicte, The heregeld was a Ux for the army. 



96 History of the English Landed Interest. 

when birds died in the bashes from want of berries, and fishes 
in the frozen ponds from want of air ? * Imagination must 
furnish each reader's answer, for history does not tell us much 
beyond the bare facts ; though absence of united action, the 
want of some central authority to organise relief measures, 
and the total cessation of all foreign com trade, may explsdn 
the frequency of famine, and (since starving men and cattle 
fall easy victims to any ailment) the frequency of pestilence too. 

The most noticeable features of the country in Saxon times 
were vast areas of forest lands, such as Andred wood in^ Kent, 
the Bruneswald in Lincolnshire, or Sherwood in Notts. Wolds 
of sheep pasturage, favoured wheat-bearing uplands ; firm and 
verdant horse fens, on which fed mares and colts, cattle, sheep, 
and geese; brown marshes and peaty bogs encircling ponds 
and meres, and here and there clusters of mud and wood- 
battened dwellings grouped around the holder's house, broke 
the monotony of the tree-covered landscape. The forests 
teemed with life, such as deer, hares, badgers, and pheasants, 
and in their open glades might be seen partridges and plovers, 
whilst in their thickets lurked the wolf and wild boar. The 
game was preserved by forest laws, severe enough in Canute's 
reign, but mild in comparison with the laws to come, when 
the woods were to echo the "recheate" or "morte" of a 
Norman horn. The timber itself was almost worthless, but 
its pannage,* in the form of mast, supported large herds of 
tame swine and formed a noticeable feature in the agriculture 
of that period. 

The lord lived in his square hall of unplaned wood,* with 

* The daily papers, during the severe December frost of 1890, were full 
of piscatorial advice as to the making of holes in the ice to give the fish 
air and a chance for life. 

' " This port (Limenmouth) is in the eastern part of Kent, at the east 
end of the great wood which we call Andred ; the wood is in length from 
east to west 120 miles or longer, and 80 miles hroad." — Anglo-Saxon 
Chronicle, a.d. 893, 

* In Domesday Book pannage is returned for 16,635 hogs in Middlesex, 
and in Essex (then entire forest) for 92,991. One nobleman left in his 
will 2,000 swine to his two daughters. 

* See the description of Gatacre Hall in Shropshire, ArckoRologia^ voL 
iii., p. 112. 


Bil 


Its Customs. 97 

its pillars composed of oak trees and its roof-rafters of their 
roots. It was at first, for purposes of defence, in the form of 
a quadrangle, the windows looking into the yard. Often a 
deep ditch filled with water surrounded the buildings, the 
back of which would be topped with a palisade of pointed 
planks, and the only means of ingress was over a single draw- 
bridge. The interior consisted of one-storeyed sheds, stone 
below and timber above, with high-pitched roofs. The 
principal apartment was the hall, long, wide, and low, its roof 
unceiled and composed of rough-hewn timbers blackened by 
the smoke from the wood in the reredosse. The floor would be 
unpaved, and the wooden walls rudely decorated with weapons 
or covered with hangings. The lord's dining table, com- 
posed of unplaned planking, was T shaped ; the top of the 
letter representing the raised dais, in the middle of which 
sat the lord and his lady. That portion of the table allotted 
to the housecarles was not elevated, and the roof above was 
sometimes even open to the sky. On the same ground plan 
as the hall were the sleeping apartments, often opening out 
into one common ante-chamber. These were seldom wind 
or weather-proof, though the draught was sometimes inter- 
cepted by rich hangings. The domestics slept in mere cells, 
and the furniture of even the best bedrooms was of the rudest 
nature. A wooden framework enclosing a nest of straw served 
as a bed, and the clothes were one or two rugs or sheep-skins. 
The wealthier Saxon etheling kept a large following of stout 
men-at-arms, who combined domestic services with those of 
defence. His lady often presided over a bevy of bower- 
maidens, chosen for their beauty and good breeding, whom 
she brought up and educated in the art of needlework under 
her watchful eye. 

Around this lord's dwelling-house were grouped the villagers' 
houses, each in its own grounds, with its barn and stables 
so constructed as to form an interior yard into which would 
be driven at night the most valuable cattle for the sake of 
security. 

In a central and commanding position stood the wooden 
church, used as a place of worship on Sundays, a fortress in 

B 


98 History of the English Landed Interest. 

troublous times, a storehouse for the valuables of the com- 
munity on week days, and a public record office at all times. 

To women was entrusted the care of the future country 
gentleman's earlier infancy. On the death of their father his 
children remained with their mother, who, if not otherwise pro- 
vided for, was allowed annually six shillings, a cow in summer, 
and an ox in winter, towards the maintenance of each one. The 
f rumstol or head-seat in the house was, however, occupied by 
the father's relations until the boy repossessed it on coming of 
age. One of Eling Ina's laws provided for the fostering of a 
foundling at the rate of six shillings for the first year, twelve 
the next, and thirty the third ; after that, it varied in propor- 
tion to his " white," or personal beauty. Infancy terminated 
the seventh year, and childhood began the eighth. The child's 
education consisted of exercises in muscular agility; and he 
was encouraged to compete in wrestling and other rough sports 
with his compeers. The age between childhood and manhood 
was termed " cnihthade," or knighthood. At fifteen the boy 
could select his profession, and the girl, at seventeen, could 
choose a religious life ; after the age of fifteen she might marry 
whom she pleased. The cleric was the national schoolmaster, 
and no doubt all youths of a studious bent were placed under 
his charge. Those who had selected the pursuit of arms were 
engaged in out-door exercises, of which horsemanship and 
racing were a principal feature. Other amusements of the 
age were, dicing, jugglery, glee-singing, dancing, tumbling, 
bear-baiting, and hunting. Hares, boars, reindeer, and goats 
were chased by hounds or driven into nets, feathered game was 
captured with the falcon, net, gin, lime, trap, or by whistling, 
and the agriculturist found his interests so much injured by 
the large hunting parties, that he sought and often obtained 
the royal consent to the exclusion of his lands from sporting 
trespass. The veneration of the Teuton for woman is strik- 
ingly illustrated by the Anglo-Saxon marriage laws. A 
bridegroom was compelled to produce sureties and a pledge 
before the marriage ceremony could be legally performed. His 
morgen gift corresponded with the modern marriage settle- 
ment ; and a wife who had brought forth children alive and 


Its Customs. 99 

survived her husband obtained half his property. It was only 
in very early ages that the morgen gift reverted to the donor 
in the event of his wife's sterility. Women both inherited 
and disposed of property, and appear frequently in Domesday 
as tenants in capite. A widow was protected by legal penalties, 
varying in proportion to her rank, from violation or other 
wrongs. 

The food of the period was, as now, a mixture of animal and 
vegetable diet. Oxen, sheep, swine, fowls, deer, goats, hare, 
and fish, but principally pork and eels, supplied the former, so 
that the landed estates were often bounded by eel dykes, and 
the woods teemed with pigs. Horseflesh, at first used, soon 
became unfashionable. Barley bread, eaten warm, the dearer 
loudas of wheat flour, milk, cheese, eggs, and fruit were other 
portions of diet. Lac acidum, or butter milk, was consumed as 
a beverage from Hokeday to Michaelmas, and lac dulce, or new 
milk, from Michaelmas to Martinmas. Salt and honey were 
greatly valued, the former chiefly as a preservative of the 
winter's store of meat, the latter as a relish. Salt pans are 
constantly mentioned in the grants of lands ; and some pious 
donor endowed a monastery with the produce of beans, salt, 
and honey from certain of his lands. Ale and mead were the 
most favoured drinks. The first named was of three kinds, 
the clear, the Welsh, and the mild. 

The " ceapealethelum '* was the prototype of the modern ale- 
house, and frequented by all classes save the priest. 

The dinner table of the lord's house was often laid with a 
cloth, and its utensils consisted of a horn, bowl, dish, knife, 
sometimes a spoon, never a fork. The ladies and gentlemen 
seated themselves on the rude benches and settles. An attend- 
ant, holding the meat on a spit, knelt in turn to each guest, 
who cut off his portion and deposited it on the dish held by a 
second person. Dinner ended, the tables were removed, and 
the drinking continued until evening. 

The dress of the lady consisted of coloured tunics, linen web, 
cuff ribands, covering mantle and jewelled ornaments ; and the 
Saxon terms mantle, kirtle, and gown still survive. There 
were no attempts to display a fine waist or a white neck. The 


lOO History of the English Landed Interest. 

pictures of the period represent a long loose robe and sleeves, 
with a hood or veil wrapped around the neck and breast and 
falling down in front. The hair was carefully dressed and 
curled with irons, nor was the rouge-pot unknown thus early. 
The men wore ornaments round their necks, arms, and fingers, 
of costlier value than those of the women. Their garments 
were of silk, linen, and woollen texture. They wore caps or 
bonnets, close coats, girded round the waist with a belt, 
breeches which did not cover the knee, flowing cloaks, and 
leathern shoes fastened with thongs. Their hair was combed 
down the sides of the head from a parting in the middle, and, 
except the clergy, they allowed their beards and moustaches 
to grow. As a nation they were fond of hot baths, but used 
cold ones as a penance. They dried themselves with woollen 
towels.^ 

We must now examine in detail the nicer shades of social 
and official distinctions. And first, over the precedence due to 
the different ranks of the aristocracy the inquirer is as much 
liable to err as is some bungling master of the ceremony over 
a modem court ftmction. 

One historian will divide the Anglo-Saxon nobility into 
king's thanes and lesser thanes, and another will draw care- 
ful distinctions between ethelings, earldormen, eorls, king's 
thanes, gesiths, and lesser thanes. Some, again, will confuse 
a man's military or civil title with that allotted to him by 
society, and introduce further subtle distinctions, many of 
them synonymous, such as heretoch (hold), gerefa (reeve), 
knight (dux), etc., until the student of history is half-inclined 
to abandon the subject in despair. 

It may, however, be taken for granted that in any repre- 
sentative gathering of the kingdom, such as the Witangemote 
or synod, there would always be, besides the royal Bretwalda, 
one main distinction between the greater and lesser nobles, 
whether we choose to denominate the two grades, optimates 
and proceres, greater barons and lesser barons, or king's 
thanes and lesser thanes. Earlier in this work we have, for 

^ Ck>mpare Sharon Turner, Anglo- SaocanSf Books vii. and viii., and 
Hume, Hist. ofBngl, App. I. 


Its Customs. loi 

the sake of simplicity, adopted this last distinction, because 
thane seems to have been a generic term for a military officer, 
and to be such presupposes both nobility and land proprietor- 
ship. In the Saxon translation of the well-known Parable of 
the Centurion, this officer is made to style himself a thane : 
"I am a thane, having thanes under me." In a similar 
strain it is probable that an etheling, earldorman, or eorl could 
have said, " I am a king's thane, having thanes under me." 

There is the evidence of the wergeld and heriot to enlighten 
us on the precedence question. A Bretwalda's wergeld was 
15,000 thrimsas, a thane's 1,200 shillings, a ceorl's 200, and a 
wealh's 100. The etheling's wergeld was identical with that 
of a Bretwalda's, and therefore we may conclude the two terms 
are synonymous. The eorl's heriot was twice that of a thane's, 
and this decides the question of precedence between these 
two. The etheling, though socially higher than the earldor- 
man, was probably officially his inferior. 

The terms heretoch or hold referred simply to military 
rank, and that of gerefa or reeve to civil rank. 

The ceorl who could attain to five hides of land became 
raised to the grade of thane, and his great-grandchildren be- 
came gesithcund. It was even possible for a ceorl to eventually 
attain eorl's rank. 

Last in the social scale was the wealh.^ 

The landed vassalage of the Continental system of beneficia 
had been, as we have already pointed out, introduced into 
England under the system of the comitatus. Those who re- 
ceived grants of terra regis became the king's vassals, and 
those who, by the act of commendation, placed themselves 
under seignorial protection became their patron's vassals. 
Such were individuals of the gesith and thane class.' 

Some of the old agricultural terms date from Saxon times. 
The word " farm," for example, is possibly derived from the 
Latin " firma," but more probably (since there were few agri- 

* The wealh was generally a Briton, whose weregeld was 100 shil- 
lings. 

» Compare Sharon Turner, AngUh8axon8, Bk. VIII. ch. vii. and Stuhhs, 
Constit Hist, oh. vL 


I02 History of the English Landed Interest. 

cultural enclosures in those days) firom the Saxon " f earme ^ 
or "feorme," meaning, food or provision, and proving the 
custom of paying the rent in provisions, victuals, or other 
necessaries of life. The Normans later on distinguished 
between " ferme " simply and " blanche ferme," the former 
signifying that the occupant paid his rent in kind, the latter 
that he paid it in money.* Thus, too, the word "bacon" is 
derived from " bucon," the old term for beech-mast, on which 
the swine fed. But . when compared with the numerous in- 
stances of Boman surnames having an agricultural origin, the 
Saxon vocabulary is markedly deficient. The few words that 
do exist, either as surnames or heraldic emblems, such as the 
scythe of the Sneyds, the haywain of the Hays, and the dress 
of the Washbournes probably owe their agricultural origin to 
some warlike exploit.' 

And here is again evidence how little natural taste the 
Anglo-Saxon had for rural pursuits. Hungering to be a landed 
proprietor, he was utterly destitute of resources to occupy his 
leisure as such. He was, as we have said before, first a soldier, 
then a squire. Furthermore, if he neglected his military 
duties, he ceased to be a landlord. A gesithcund man owning 
land, who neglected the fjnrd, forfeited by Eling Ina's laws the 
very estate which made him a soldier. 

It is indeed strange how everything during this period com- 
bined to oppose progress in husbandry amongst a race whose 
property consisted almost entirely of rural possessions. 

Besides the troublous and disturbed times, the very laws 
and customs of the people militated against good husbandry. 

The first steps towards a proper system of agriculture were 
the drainage of morasses, the destruction of wild animals, and 
the levelling of forests — aU of which were forbidden by the 
forest laws of the time. The monks were the agricultural 
pioneers of the age.' The huge grants of land constantly 
offered by conscience-haunted kings for the purpose of founding 
monastic communities, were largely composed of waste and 

* Rees, Encyclop,, sub voc. " Farm." 

* Prothero, Pioneers of English Farming^ p. 14. 

* Morton, Cyclo. of AgricttUure, Intro. Essay. 


Its Customs. 103 

morass, which only the combined science, industry, seclusion, 
and leisure of their new owners could, have converted into 
fertile tracts ; and charters still exist to prove this interesting 
fact.^ On the other hand, in the opinion of the Saxon laity, 
husbandry was a despised science, fit only for serfs and boors. 
Then again, not only was the external trade of the kingdom, 
except perhaps in wool, at an end, as we have already had 
occasion to point out, but the internal trade was restricted by 
harsh laws, so that no one could buy anything above the value 
of twenty pennies, save in the presence of a magistrate or two 
witnesses, and within the walls of a town. Everything sold 
above that price was subject to a percentage claimed by the 
king. There were also tolls to pay in the weekly markets or 
fairs, which were (at first) held on a Sunday. Exchanges of 
cattle or slaves for other commodities were more often made 
without the intervention of a money medium, and tins practice, 
perhaps, accounts for the value fixed by law on the commoner 
commodities. Thus King Ethelred's laws contain the follow- 
ing schedule of prices : — ^ 







£ s. d. 



= ono pound 

equivalent to 

2 16 3 

Horse 


= 30 shillings 

M 

»» 

1 16 2 

Mare or oolt 

= 20 „ 

»» 

n 

18 5 

Ass or 

mule 

= 12 „ 

»» 

)» 

14 1 

Ox 


= 6 „ 

If 

11 

7 04 

Cow 


= 6 ,, 

n 

»i 

6 6 

Swine 


= 1 shilling and 8 pennies 

»» 

»» 

1 lOi 

Sheep 


= 1 „ 

»> 

jj 

12 

Goat 


= 2 pennies 

i» 

p 

5i 


But these prices were not strictly adhered to. The price of 
sheep's wool, compared with the carcase, was extremely high, 
and is accounted for by the supposition that there was a foreign 
trade in this commodity. From this cause the price of a 
sheep was widely different just before midsummer and just 
after the time of shearing. The value of land, as compared 
with that of cattle or sheep, is another remarkable feature of 
the times. Thus an acre of land was often sold for the price 

^ Hallam, MiddJA Ages^ iii., 26&-435, and Anglo-Saxon Chr,^ a.d. 667. 
* Craig and McFarlane, Hist, of Eng.^ Bk. 11., ch. iy. 


104 History of the English Landed Interest. 

of four sheep. Land, it xnnst be remembered, was plentiful, 
and the lives of cattle and sheep precarious. The milch cows 
alone were sheltered during the winter, which, if at all severe, 
decimated the unprotected and half-starved oxen and calves. 
The cattle were constantly attended by the neatherd, for fear 
of robbery and violence; the swine, too, had their attendant, to 
protect them from wolves and keep them within bounds.^ 
The shepherd pitched hijs fold on the grass lands, and occa- 
sionally moved it when the grass within was eaten down. 
The ewes were milked twice daily, and cows thrice, this latter 
custom giving the name of trimilchi to the month of May, 
when the third milking commenced each year. 

The national agriculture, speaking generally, consisted in 
the cultivation of barley and wheat for bread, and the rearing 
of cattle, sheep, and swine for meat and milk. The orchards 
~ (ftt any rate on monastic lands) afforded figs, grapes, nuts, 
almonds, and pears. Each village community brewed its own 
ale and mead, provided its own luxuries, such as fowls, deer, 
goats, hares, fish, and honey ; bred and killed its own beef, 
mutton, and pork ; grew and baked in querns its own flour 
and barley meal, and manufactured its own linen from flax 
grown in its own territory.' 

But few fields or lands were separated by hedges and 
ditches, save perhaps to partition off the pasturage from the 
tillage in the common lands, or to enclose small bits of grass 
close up to or within the villages. As late as the beginning 
of this century there were districts whose hedges still showed 
traces of the pastoral or forest state, being apparently of great 
age, following crooked and irregular lines, and composed of 
underwood similar in variety to that in the adjoining wood- 
lands, from which they had evidently been collected and 
afterwards planted along the banks.' *' Hedge " is no doubt 
a Saxon word, and equivalent to " hay," another Saxon term. 
The derivation of both is from the common stem *' hssg," an 

^ Craig and McFarlane, Bist, of Ehtg,, Bk. 11., ch. iv. 
' For proof of the utter insulation of each village, vide instance of 
Bampton Village, given in Gomme, Village Community^ p. 169. 
* Bees, Encydo.y sub voc, " Fences.'* 


Its Customs. 105 

enclosure. The mention of " hayes " in early Anglo-Saxon 
charters and deeds refers generally to forest enclosures, which 
were merely game preserves. The most primitive form of 
early English fence was composed of forked boughs thrust into 
the ground at those intervals where posts would now be in- 
serted. On the forks, long straight saplings were tied by means 
of withes, so that all nails and mortices were dispensed with. 
In other districts the fences were no doubt composed of mud 
and straw, much the same as a Galloway dyke ; or of coarse 
rubble, like a modem dry stone wall. Even in these primitive 
days, the principle of emblements was recognised, for the 
holder of twenty hides of land had to leave twelve sown for 
his successor. 

Horses seem never to have been used in husbandry; but old 
illustrations show teams of four oxen dragging the plough, 
and sometimes even eight, the latter probably representing a 
feudal service to the lord. The rough drawings in the Cotton 
MS. and the needlework illustrations of the Bayeux tapestry 
are valuable adjuncts to the written evidence of these times, 
though the absence of a harrow in the former and the presence 
of it in the latter should not lead us to draw any erroneous 
distinctions between Saxon and Norman methods of pulveriz- 
ing the soil. The representation of rustic labour for each 
month in the Cotton MSS. is very interesting, and attracts a 
careful observer's attention to a few peculiarities, such as the 
plough beetle, still used in Tusser's age ; the curious shape of 
the spade, with its haft and handle at one side, instead of the 
centre ; the reapers working to the accompaniment of music, 
and under armed surveillance, the harvest, even allowing for 
the subsequent alteration of the calendar, commencing so early 
as June; the absence of any intermediate stage between 
cutting and carting ; the felling of timber in July, while the 
sap is running strongly; the use of handcarts in preference 
to those drawn by oxen ; and the pruning of fruit trees and 
possibly vines. But we cannot rely on the accuracy of such 
rude scribblings, nor can any practical conclusions be drawn 
from them. 


449-106a 


CHAPTER IX. 

THE LAND IK ITS C0NNEC5TION WITH CHDBCH AND STATB. 

It is clear from what has been already said, that the Saxon 
Polity was utterly unsuited to the cultivation of commerce, 
agriculture, or fine arts, though Camden quotes the eulogistic 
lines of a Gterman poet in proof of the contraiy.^ If this bard 
did not sing falsely, the Continent of Europe must have been in 
worse plight still, since Britain is represented as spreading re- 
ligion and the arts of peace amongst the neighbouring nations. 
It was not, however, till the reign of Edward the Confessor 
that the country began to take breath again and recover some 
of the lost advantages of civilization which she had enjoyed in 
Boman days. 

We can then only reconcile the German poet's views with 
what we know was taking place in England during the stormy 
era of the Heptarchy by looking forward to some fresh and 
foreign influence which could have tamed and civilized the 
wild peoples now occupying England. And sure enough a 
peaceful invasion did at this time occur which vastly affected 
for the better the laws and manners of the times. 

This was the conversion of the people to Christianity, 
The Faith had already obtained a footing in this country 
during Boman times, perhaps even before, through the trade 
intercourse between southern France and we^iem Britain, 
which had brought the respective peoples in^io friendly contact. 

' Ftde Camden, Brt'fannta. 

106 


Its Connection with Church and State. 107 

Aaron and Julius had been martyred for their belief about 
A.D. 300 ; representatives from the three Roman-divided pro- 
vinces of Maxima CsBsarensis, Britannia Prima, and Britannia 
Secunda had taken part in the French Council of Aries, a.d. 
814, and the religion still held ground in Cumberland, Wales, 
Devon, and Cornwall, even in these turbulent days of the 
Saxon invasion. But in the year 597 a.d. the Boman mis- 
sion headed by St. Augustine landed on Kentish shores. Ethel- 
bert, the most important of the Saxon chiefs, was converted, 
and the first bishops of London and Eochester were con- 
secrated in 604 A.D. This religious expedition from Rome had 
as beneficial effects on the native manners and customs of 
Great Britain as any of its warlike precursors. The doctrines 
of the new faith gradually but surely tamed the savage Saxon 
blood, which, true to the tribal instincts of race, was con- 
stantly boiling up into internecine warfare betwixt the various 
princes of the Heptarchy. At last, Egbert, king of the West 
Saxons, obtained the mastery; and the new- formed monarchy 
was able to direct its undivided opposition to the Danish 
invasion. But this fresh disturbance tended to prolong a 
condition of savagery which would otherwise have yielded far 
sooner to the soothing influences of the foreign Christians ; and, 
as we have already said, it was not till the reign of the Con- 
fessor that the country settled down into a peaceful condition. 
But from the outset Church and State were so closely con- 
nected that it is difficult at first sight to distinguish between 
the edict of a Witangemote and the canon of a Synod. We 
have already stated that the Church's dignitaries possessed, 
ex-officio, seats in the former, and that her abbots owned large 
allodial properties, which, like other king's Thanes, entitled 
them to preside over their own courts, from whose judgments 
there was no appeal, and whose jurisdiction extended even over 
the life or death of all connected with the property. At first 
the moneys needed for the erection and repairs of churches, 
the endowment of bishoprics, the maintenance of the clergy, 
and the support of the poor, had been collected from voluntary 
donors. The free gifts and donations of an earlier period 
gradually grew into a more or less compulsory charge under 


io8 History of the English Landed Interest. 

the name of tithes.^ Lord Selbome oonsiders that the first 
canon relating to this payment was that enacted at Bouen a j>. 
630, and that the first law was the celebrated ordinance of 
the eleventh year of Charlemagne's reign. A large amount of 
ambiguity however surrounds the exact period when this 
Continental practice came to be general in our country. The 
discipline of the Church abroad, with its methodical quadri- 
partite distribution of prsedial, mixed, and personal tithes, was 
as distasteful to disorderly Bersaker landowners as were foreign 
feudal customs. 

When, therefore, St. Augustine sought his superior's in- 
structions, the Bishop of Bome merely cited the Continental 
custom of tithe distribution, and left a wise freedom of action 
to the discretion of his lieutenant.' 

That the bishops of the Heptarchy received tithe as early 
as the eighth century, is evident from allusions to the custom 
by Boniface, archbishop of Mentz, in his letter to Cuthbert, 
archbishop of Canterbury, and from the remark in one of 
Beda's latest letters, that " there is no village in the remotest 
parts of Northumbria which could escape the payment of 
tribute to the Bishop.* And here it may be as well to examine 
the Latin nomenclature of the old laws, canons, and charters, 
with a view to deciding once for all where tithes and where 
some other church due is intended. In this particular instance 
the word used by Beda is '^ tributum," which, as a generic 
term, covering all Church offerings, eleemosynary and compul- 
sory, may and probably does include the specific due of 
" decimas." To be strictly accurate, the word " decimas," $.«., 
tithes, is not used in either St. Augustine's message to Pope 
Gregory or in the latter's reply. " De his quae fidelium obla- 
tionibus accedunt altari, quantse debeant fieri portiones ? " asks 
Augustine, and the same word (^' portionibus ") is used in the 
Pontiff's answer. Then again, *' decimam terras suas," " ded- 
mam mansionem," ^' decimam omnium hidarum," '' decimam 

* Awtitid Fads and Fictions concerning Churches and Tithes^ p. 49, 
ed.I. 
' Lord Selbome, Anc, Facts and Fictions, p. 104, ed. L 
' Lingard, Anglo-Saxon Church, vol. i. p. 106, 


Its Connection with Church and State. 109 

regni sui partem/' and " decimavit totum regni sui imperium,"^ 
phrases used by different historians to record Ethelwolf s mag- 
nificent Church offering, do not, as we shall shortly show, 
imply the gift of " decim»." 

The next trustworthy evidence regarding tithe is that in 
A.D. 786, when a foreign mission stirred up King Offa to 
convoke a synod in order to reform the Church laws in the 
same kingdom, out of which the principle of the payment 
became part of the new canon.^ There is however no trust- 
worthy evidence for any legally established custom of tithe 
payment beyond the area of lands comprised in the royal 
demesnes. Offa, possibly urged thereto in expiation for Ethel- 
bert's murder, seems to have paid besides tithe something 
for papal support — possibly the impost known under the name 
of Bome feoh or Peter's pence ; ' but it would not be safe to 
infer that there was any secular co-operation in these ec- 
clesiastical charges enacted in full synod of the lords spiritual 
of the realm thus convoked by Pope Adrian's legate. When 
we come to th^year a.d. 866, there are more conflicting views. 
Dean Prideaux asserts that Ethelwulf, king of the West 
Saxons, in full Parliament at Winchester, dedicated one-tenth 
of his kingdom to God. Dean Hook explains that he offered 
only the predial tithes of those lands over which he had pro- 
prietary control ; and Sir Henry Spelman concludes that the 
origin of the Church glebe lands dates from this Charter. 
There are objections to the conclusions of all three theorists. 
Thus, if Dean Prideaux be correct, where is there any proof 
that the terms of the grant were carried out ? Against Dean 
Hook's suggestion there is the improbability that Ethelwulf 
would require the consent of all his landowning subjects to an 
offering that was purely personal. Lastly, the objection to 
Sir Henry Spelman's theory is the fact that the glebe lands 
were already in existence at the time of Ethelwulf 's Charter. 

The Bev. H. Clarke has recently collated the phrases used in 
recording this event by no less than seven historians. That of 
Ingulphus, "tunc prime cum decimis omnium terrarum ac 

* Tlijs was the Council of Chalchyth. 

' Ancient Facts and Fictions, p. 160, ed. L 


I lo History of the English Landed Interest. 

bonorum aliorum sive catallorum universam dotaverit ecclesi- 
am Anglicanam," alone implies the tithe offerings. All the 
other six signify in unmistakable language the separation of a 
tenth of the land itself for the Church's benefit. To cor- 
roborate the accuracy of the majority, the wording of the 
Charter itself is " decimam mansionem," $.«., the tenth hide. 
Possessed of these data, it is open for every reader to make his 
own exegesis. 

Coming now to the laws of Ethelwulf 's son Alfred, we must 
be careful not to confuse the scriptural preface with the Acts 
that follow it. By doing this we shall have to decide that in 
the laws proper no allusion to tithe occurs. Between the 
Council of Chelsea, a.d. 787, and the treaty between Alfred's 
son Edward and the Danish sovereign Guthrum 11., there is 
no historical allusion to tithes^ a circumstance which, consider- 
ing the disordered condition of the entire kingdom throughout 
this interval, need cause us no wonder. By the treaty be- 
tween the two kings, the produce of both nationalities wsis 
rendered liable for tithe ; penalty clauses more, severe on the 
English than on the Danes, proving the compulsory nature of 
the due. Later on, Athelstan sends forth a royal edict that 
" his Reves shall pay out of his own lands just and due tithes, 
as well of all cattel as of the annual products of the ground, 
and that all his Bishops, Earls, and Beves should do likewise 
out of their lands." ^ Edmund summons a synod which enacts 
a canon compelling every Christian on pain of excommunica- 
tion to religiously pay his tithes, Cyriesceat and "Plow Alms." 
Edgar, seeking a remedy against a prevailing pestilence, con- 
venes his Witan, which finds that it has been caused by the 
diminution in the returns from the " need gafol" (f.6. necessary 
tax) which men ought to render God in their tithes ; and here, 
let us observe, is the first instance of a coercive measure, which 
either created a legal title to tithes or enforced their cus- 
tomary payment.* It was the period of the Parish movement, 

* Vide, Rev. J. Morris Fuller, Out Title Deeds^ p. 68; Ld. Selborne, Anc. 
Facts and Fictions^ p. 200, ed. I. ; and Ilev. H. W. Clarke, A History of 
Tithes^ p. B4. 

• Morris Fuller, Our Title DeedSj p. 74. 


Its Connection with Church and State. iii 

originated by the inconvenience experienced by great seignorial 
owners in having to travel long distances to the nearest min- 
ster church. The lords of manors had began to divert the 
tithes which they had been paying for the support of the great 
monasteries and collegiate churches to the costs of erection and 
maintenance of local chapels on their own lands; and King 
Edgar's laws gave legal sanction to the practice, but at the 
same time regulated and apportioned the distribution of the 
funds derived from this source. Thus, if the tithe-payer had 
no chapel of his own he was not allowed to withhold any por- 
tion of this due from the mother Church. If he possessed a 
private chapel but no graveyard, he might appropriate one- 
tenth towards its expenses ; and in the event of his having 
provided both church and yard he was allowed to retain as 
much as one-third.^ Any violation of these regulations enabled 
the king's reve, bishop of the diocese, and minister of the 
parish to levy a distress, the proceeds of which was distributed 
one-tenth to the Church, four-tenths to the lord of the manor, 
.four-tenths to the bishop, and the remaining tenth to the 
owner. This law was re-enacted in the reigns of Ethelred and 
Canute, with additional penalties. At first these rural churches 
were mere wooden chapels dependent upon the mother Church 
and served by itinerant ministers who gradually acquired the 
privileges to baptize and bury and eventually became resident. 
Suchis briefly the history of the tithe in the England of Anglo- 
Saxon times. Whether this charge on the land's produce was 
enforced with pains and penalties on owners of real property 
by the civil laws of the Witan, or whether it was binding on 
men's consciences by the ecclesiastical canons of the synods, or 
even whether it was merely a custom amongst the devout, 
urged thereto by royal example, and coming under the category 
of what is called in the Boman theology '' the counsel of per- 
fection " it is not here our purpose to inquire. As landowner 
after landowner charged his estates with a tithe of their pro- 
duce the practice widened, and as property became hereditary 
the lands descended from father to son subject to this burden, 
and it matters little to a history of the landed interest how 

» Id., Ibid, 


112 History of the English Landed Interest. 

soon they changed from a gospel oblation to a legal due. 
There is however one main distinction in all the so-called 
Anglo-Saxon laws relating to ecclesiastical imposts and 
those relating to secular taxation. Attached to the former 
we rarely, at any rate in the earlier records, find penalty 
clauses, which, on the other hand, are a marked feature of the 
latter. This is of course the battle-ground of the Liberationist 
and Chujx^hman ; and though if we held a brief at all, it would 
be for the latter, we cannot help pointing out that neither side 
has quite recognised the importance which the Anglo-Saxon 
system of land tenure bears in the dispute. Owners of landed 
property, we have remarked, made oyer as tithe offerings the 
tenth of their produce. Such gifts however would be limited 
to the demesne lands. There would have to be some special 
understanding between lord and gebur over the common arable 
ground before the produce of every tenth plough land coidd 
be dedicated as tithes. The landlord would have to consent to 
forfeit his claim to the boon and weekly services of its culti- 
vators, and they would have to forego the fruits of their in- 
dustry in farming it. As soon then as every fresh district 
taken from the waste came to bear crops the question of tithe 
would ensue. With regard to the waste proper, it was the old 
Boman scriptura arrangement over again, only under the new 
name of mixed tithe. Thus, except with the tithe from the 
thane's inland, it was not so much the lord as the people who 
were concerned. That therefore on the common arable ground 
would be dedicated, if dedicated at all, by the community, 
and not by this or that individual, a circumstance which 
rather points to some form of compulsory taxation than to the 
free nature of this offering for which the champion of Church 
interests contends. Thtis, in the ordinance of King Edgar 
tithe is to be paid both from a thane's inland and from geneat 
land so far as the plough traverses it. 

Important though the history of the tithe undoubtedly is, 
there is another aspect of it, viz. the legal, and this we shall 
now examine. When a landed proprietor dedicated one-tenth 
of lus produce to the Church, he made no provision for the 
variations brought about by time in agriculture and land 


Its Connection with Church and State. 113 

tenure, nor did he foresee the necessity that would arise of a 
redistribution of its proceeds in some other manner than what 
he originally intended. How far the State has powers of in- 
terference is still a fiercely contested point, but that her inter- 
vention has been an absolute necessity over and over again, 
no one we think would care to dispute. What, it may be 
asked, were the intentions of the original benefactors in de- 1 
voting one-tenth of their substance in this manner ? Clearly : 
the maintenance and support of a religious community holding 
certain doctrines as to the Christian religion. But in those 
early times this religious community included the whole** 
nation ; the Church and State were different aspects of the 
same corporation. Gradually, however, large masses of the 
nation renounced the Church's teaching and tenets, and en- 
rolled themselves into various sects. A recent attempt has 
been made to stretch the term " National Church" into covering 
the whole mass of the religious sects. Therefrom a claim is 
set up to a partition of this portion of the original Church's 
endowments amongst all the denominations of Christians who 
belong to this country ; as though the original donors of tithe 
had dedicated their wealth to the National Church per «e, and 
not to the National Church because it upheld their particular 
views of Christianity. On the other hand, it seems equally 
absurd for the ecclesiastical party to resent State interference 
as a violation of private and vested interests. Where would 
the Church's property have been now without that inter- 
ference? It was the action of the State that prevented 
seignorial spoliation in the early days of the parish movement. 
It was the action of the State that regulated and perpetuated 
the various modes in which produce was titheable. It was 
the State that secured to the Church by 2 and 3 Ed. VI., c. 13, 
§5, her tithe dues on barren and waste lands after being 
brought into cultivation. It was the State again which 
awarded, by means of the 18th and 19th century Inclosure 
Acts, the lands and com rents in lieu of tithes ; and it was 
not through her fault that Henry VIII. robbed the Church 
and poor of their dues at the Eeformation. It was she who 
upheld tithe payments in the times of Cromwell, when the 

z 


114 History of the English Landed Interest. 

Nonconformist was almost omnipotent; and again, in the 
days of James 11., when Bomanism was once more to the 
fore. Surely therefore the tithe rent charge is something 
more than private, though something less than publicproperty, 
the incidence of which is alterable by the State, as altered it 
was in 967, 1836, and 1891, but the existence of which the 
State hfiks ever upheld. The State therefore, in its position to 
the tithe, is a trustee, but a trustee bound by no laws save 
those of her own making. If therefore she chose to provide 
a substitute for the present tithe payment, just as she might 
choose to formulate a scheme of national insurance in substi- 
tution of the present poor laws, so long as she supplied the 
National Church with an equivalent income from other sources, 
there seems to be no occasion for an outcry on the part of those 
to whom the present tithe-charge is now payable. 

We have said that the intentions of the original tithe donor 
were to support the Establishment known as the English 
Church ; but the distribution of his oflfering both here and on 
the Continent was carefully defined from the very outset. It 
is a disputed point whether the quadripartite, or even the 
tripartite distribution ever obtained a foothold in this country. 
For the researches of Lord Selborne have in every impartial 
mind fully established that there is no really reliable evidence 
on the subject in all the Anglo-Saxon literature. There are, 
it is true, allusions to tithe partition, but all of a doubtful 
nature. There are first of all the suggestions contained in 
Pope Gregory's reply to St. Augustine ; there is the clause in 
the Church Grith Law at the end of the reign of. Ethelred the 
Unready, and there are the allusions in certain canons of the 
English Episcopate. But Lord Selborne refuses to believe that, 
even after granting the Church Grith Law of 1014 to be 
genuine, it was ever carried out, since there was no confirma- 
tion of it by Canute, who succeeded Ethelred the following 
year. It was therefore no more likely to have established 
compulsory tripartite distribution in this country than that 
earlier suggestion of Pope Gregory's. The third source of 
evidence, viz., the references contained in the canonical laws, 
has been traced by this same author to one original source, 
viz., the Cajpitulare Episcqporum. 


Its Connection with Church and State. 115 

The allusions to a tripartite distribution in the so-called 
excerptions of Egbert, and in the canons of Theodore and 
Aelfric, are in language so similar to those in certain MSS. 
of Metz and Andain as to have led Lord Selbome to conclude 
that they must have been extracted bodily from these older 
documents, which, in their turn, probably owe their origin to 
some earlier copy of the Capitulare Episcoporum.^ Now what 
gives colour to this suggestion is the fact that the clergy in 
England were gradually dividing into two great bodies, viz. 
the monastic and the secular. The former were ardent sup- 
porters of a continental polity in religious matters, while the 
latter were becoming every day more national and insular. 
Here were the germs of that difference in taste and character 
which eventually culminated in open schism at the Reforma- 
tion. We may therefore conclude that the practice of quad- 
ripartite or tripartite distribution was attempted in England, 
though possibly relinquished as impracticable amidst a people 
so wild and stubborn as the Anglo-Saxons. It seems however 
that in a more or less modified form something of the kind 
would become a necessity on the introduction of the parochial 
system, and we see traces of this both in the laws of King 
Edgar, and later on in the frequent State intervention over 
matters of monastic poor relief, about which we shall have 
something to say in its proper place. The parochial system 
initiated a new departure in the division of the counties, 
which, as we have already stated, had been parcelled out by 
early Anglo-Saxon kings into hundreds and tithings. The 
parish, consisting either of a township or a group of town- 
ships, became for most purposes the substitute for the hundred, 

* Briefly stated, Lord Selbome's conclusions are, that the excerptions of 
Egbert could not have been compiled before the 11th century, and were 
not possibly the work of Egbert, who died a.d. 766, but were traceable 
to the sacerdotal laws of Andain ; (2) that the so-called canons of Theo- 
dore were not a translation of those of the Nicene Council, but patched- 
np rules of a Benedictine source for the use of priests; (3) that the 
CapzttUare Episcoporum is the fountain head of the canons of Aelfric. 
Vide Selbome, Anc, Facts and Fictions^ ch. vii., viii., Ed. I. ; M. Fuller, 
Our Title Deeds, p. 113; Rev. H. Clarke, A History of Tithes ; and Sel- 
bome, Anc, Facts and Fictions^ ed. 11., Supplement. 


1 1 6 History of the English Landed Interest 

just as the older dioceses had, at an earlier date, replaced the 
kingdoms of the Heptarchy. 

At any rate, for all administrative measures, relating to 
Church dues, the ecclesiastical land divisions would supersede 
the civil. Add to this consideration the fact that the central 
authority of each ecclesiastical district was entirely in the 
hands of the monastic clergy, and we may conclude that the 
distribution of those tithe dues which passed through their 
hands was, as far as possible, carried out on the lines of the 
Continental polity. Later on, when we come to examine the 
provisions for the maintenance of the national poor, we shall 
find that its relief throughout the Middle Ages was compul- 
sory on the monastic clergy. From these circumstances it 
may be fairly concluded that a large portion of the tithes 
were, during a period difficult to define, disposed of in the 
support of the nation's clergy, in the maintenance of its 
churches, and in the relief of its poverty ; and this, in other 
words, is the tripartite distribution which we have already 
shown to have been prevalent abroad.^ 

If more or less strict rules encompassed the disposal of the 
tithe we may be sure that its sources were jealously watched 
and systematically regulated. There were in fact three main 
distinctions in the various tithes, known respectively as " pre- 
dial," " mixed," and " personal " ; the first of which arose from 
the produce of the earth, such as corn, hay, hemp, hops, fruit, 
seeds and herbs ; the second of which arose from beasts and fowls 
fed on such produce, and the third from earnings and profits of 
individuals. The two first-named were also known as " tithes 
de jure," and included all fruits of the earth renewable annually, 
and the last-named as " tithes by custom." The produce of 
a mine, houses, etc., not being fruits of the earth renewable 
annually, were excluded as well as the daily work of the com- 
mon labourer. It would be almost impossible to enumerate all 
the things which were liable to predial tithes, and it would be 

* The quadripartite distribution included the maintenance of the 
Episcopal Sees, but as soon as these became self-supporting by means of 
endowments from other sources the tripartite distribution would take 
the place of the earlier system. 


Its Connection with Church and State. 1 1 ^ 

tedious to make mention even of those about which question 
has arisen some time or other in the tithes' history. Acorns, 
mast of oak and beech, nurseries of trees, hazel, holly and 
maples, although of twenty years' growth, were titheable; 
whereas oaks and the bark of titheable timber were exempted. 
Parks, whether pastured by deer or converted into tillage, were 
titheable by custom, but fallow ground escaped either form of 
this impost. Another minor distinction in this due was made 
by the terms great and small tithes, which came into exist- 
ence with the parish system. The former comprised com, hay, 
and wood, and generally belonged to the rector ; the latter 
included all other forms of predial tithe, and belonged to the 
vicar. Lastly, extra-parochial tithes, which did not lie in any 
parish, were the property of the sovereign.^ 

But enough has been said to prove how absolutely essential 
were the services of the national statute book for the proper 
administration of justice between tithe owner and tithe payer. 
It is to be regretted that instead of this heavy charge on the 
nation's produce a tenth of the land, as in Ethelwulf 's char- 
ter, had not been originally entirely devoted to the Church, 
for since the abolition of the Com Laws, the British farmer 
has had to compete with the foreign producer in the home 
market on unequal terms ; his circumstances on this account 
being parallel to the case of a pedestrian who is penalised ten 
yards in every hundred, whenever he competes in a trial of 
speed with other runners. 

However closely the national legislation guarded the tithe 
owner's interests, it seems to have been impossible for it to 
have provided against the evasion of the payment of personal 
tithes. Their distinctive name of " tithes due by custom " 
in opposition to those due ** de jure " shows this : The profits 
from commerce and trade were insignificant in these early 
times ; they varied with each individual, and terminated at 
his death. If therefore predial and mixed tithes were diffi- 
cult to collect, how much more personal tithes! Hence we 
find very little allusion to personal tithe in the records of this 
era. The Constitution of Archbishop '^inchelsey appears to 
* Jacobs, Law Dictionary^ 9ub. voc. Tithes. 


ii8 History of the Eni^ltsh Landed Interest. 

be the first definite attempt to regulate the castom, while the 
Statute of 2 and 3 Ed. VI. limits its range and power ; and the 
survival up to the present day of a few grants made from 
time to time of '' things not titheable at common law "^ de- 
monstrates its existence. An examination of this particular 
impost does not by any means exhaust the sum of ecclesiastical 
dues derivable from the land or the land's produce. 

There were the Church estates, generally consisting of one 
manse or hide in extent, which formed the glebe of the rural 
clergy; and there were the voluntary oflFerings, but about 
these we need not trouble. Besides tithes, however, there 
were certain other dues more or less compulsory, such as the 
Cyriesceat, or Church schot, Peter's pence, the Plough alms, 
Leoh schot, and Soul schot. The first of these obtained the 
earliest, protection of the Legislature. It was mostly paid in 
kind, and consisted of a " seame " or horse-load of winnowed 
grass, sometimes also poultry, paid at Martinmas on every 
hide occupied by a free tenant.^ Prom this duty the religious 
often purchased an exemption for themselves and their tenants. 
That it was compulsory there can be no doubt, for in the fourth 
law of King Ina's code, it is enacted that " If any do not pay 
this due, let him forfeit sixty shillings and render the Church 
schot twelvefold," which penalty continued till after the 
Conquest. 

Peter's pence was an institution of King Ina or King OflFa, 
and was a charge of one penny upon every household in the 
kingdom, except the most destitute, for the purposes of sup- 
porting an English college at Rome. The vicissitudes of this 
charge mark the ebb and flow of Bomanist tendencies up to 
Stuart times, it having been prohibited by Edward HE., 
revived by Philip and Mary, and wholly abrogated by Eliza- 
beth.* 

* Fuller, Out Title Deeds, p. 2B0. 

' Lingaid, Sources of Revenue, Hist and Antiquities of AngUhSaxon 
Church ; also Selbome, Facts and Fictions, p. 181, ed. L ; and Jacobs, Law 
Diet., sub. voc. Church Schot. 

* Jacob*s Diet, sub. voc. Peter's Pence ; also Fuller, Our Title Deeds, 
pp. 52, 82. 


Its Cofinectio7i with Church and State. 119 

The plough alms were one penny due to the Church for 
every ploughland, and payable within fifteen days after Easter. 
These three charges are easily distinguishable. The tithe, 
Cyriesceat, and " plow " alms are all mentioned in King Ed- 
mund's laws. Canute defines the Cyriesceat as the firstfruit 
of the seed, payable in the middle of August, and increases the 
penalty for its evasion to 120 shillings. By the same law we 
find that Peter's pence was a charge levied on the whole 
country, cities as well as villages.^ 

Leoh schot was wax of the value of a silver halfpenny, 
chargeable on every hide of land thrice yearly, ia. at Candle- 
mas, Easter eve, and on the Feast of All Hallows, for the pur- 
pose of furnishing lights for the altar at the parish church.^ 

Lastly, there was the soul schot, or customary burial fee, 
payable to the minister for the dead while the grave was yet 
open, or reserved for the church to which the deceased be- 
longed, whenever the burial took place outside his shrift-shire. 
Selden supposes that it was a satisfaction for some negligence 
and omission that the defunct might have been guilty of in 
not paying his personal tithes.' 

Let us now turn to the relationship of the land with the 
State. Just as the Church had looked to the land for the 
maintenance of the national Clergy, Poor, and Houses of Wor- 
ship, so also the State looked to the land for the maintenance 
of the national defences. Practically, in these early times, there 
was little prospect for fiscal officers to find the necessary funds 
elsewhere. Commercial capital was a mere cipher in the national 
wealth. Its compulsory taxation was quite beyond the rude 
machinery employed by the Anglo-Saxon civil service. The 
creed of the political economist, partly from necessity, partly 
also from predilection, remained identically the same until the 
times of Adam Smith ; English finance ministers held views 
associated with that French school of political econonusts 
which flourished towards the close of the 18th century. The 

» Id. Ibid, 
» Id. Ibid. 

» Selbome, FacU and Fictions, pp. 223-47, ed. I. ; and Lingard, Anglo- 
Saxon Church. 


I20 History of the English Landed Interest. 


fnndamental pxinciple of its leaders was, that all profits being 
originally drawn from the soil, so too should all taxation be. 
So strongly rooted was this conception, that not even the pub- 
lication and subsequent popularity of Adam Smith's Wedlih of 

' Nations seems to have dissipated the erroneous doctrine, or 
at any rate led to practical results. Perhaps there is no more 
convincing proof that Boman municipal and commercial prin- 
ciples were by no means obliterated by Saxon ignorance and 
rusticity than that they eventually grew into such a power in 
the country as to threaten the existence of any Government, 
however strong, that ventured to interfere with their interests, 
Statesmen even now cannot and dare not call upon commercial 
capital to bear its proper share in the national taxation ; and 
so the statistical columns of our inland revenue sheets con- 
tinue to be made up principally of items extorted from the 
landed interest, as though the economical table of Quesnai 
and the writings of Mirabeau and Turgot were still the text- 
books of our chancellors of exchequer. 

No wonder then that in these primitive times Danegeld was 
a land tax, that every five hides of ground had to furnish its 
armed unit to the national host ; that the soil supplied the 
requisites for road and bridge repairs, and that its occupiers 
produced the funds necessary for the national fortresses. 

It is clear that for these purposes, the last three of which 
are better known under the name of Trinoda Necessitas, some 

' rough estimate of the country's area would be required ; and 
so even in Heptarchical days the land had been measured and 
its area computed in hides. Without entering into a discussion 
of the particular area known as the hide, which is best dealt 
with when we come to compare it with the carucate, it maybe 
mentioned that it comprised as much land as a man and team 
could plough in a year. 

Camden in his Britannia has given a table containing 
the separate areas of the counties below the Humber as they 
were divided in these times, which we subjoin. 


Myroena ... 

.. 30,000 hides 

Pecsetna 

1,200 hides 

Wokensetna 

7,000 „ 

£lmedsetnA 

600 „ 

Westema ... 

7,000 „ 

Lindes farona ••• 

7,000 „ 


Its Connection with Church and State. 


121 


SuUi Gyrwa 

GOO hides 

Hendrica 

3,000 hides 

North Gyrwa 

600 „ 

Vnecungga 

1,200 „ 

EastWixna 

300 „ 

Aroseatna 

600 „ 

West Wixna ... 

GOO „ 

Fearfinga 

800 „ 

Spalda 

600 „ 

Belmiga 

600 „ 

Wigesta 

900 „ 

Witherigga 

600 „ 

Herefinna 

1,200 „ 

Eastwilla 

600 „ 

Sweodora .. 

800 „ 

Westwilla 

600 „ 

Eyfla 

800 „ 

East Engle 

30,000 „ 

Wicca 

800 „ 

East Sexena 

7,000 „ 

Wightgora 

600 „ 

Cantwarena 

16,000 „ 

Noxgaga 

6,000 „ 

Suthsexena 

7,000 „ 

Ohtgaga 

2,000 „ 

Westsexena 

100,000 „ 

Hynca 

7,000 „ 




Celtem-setna 

4,000 „ 

Total 

243,600 „ 


The total area shows the available forces of the kingdom 
to have been 48,720 men. But by far the most interesting 
feature of this early record is its accuracy, for although the 
hide as a unit of measurement was an unknown and varying 
factor, about which we shall have much to say later on, we 
may take it at this early period as implying from one hundred 
to one hundred and fifty acres.^ 

Assuming then its area to be one hundred and forty acres, 
and bearing in mind that even the acre varied in different 
parts of the country up to Angevin times, we obtain a total 
area which, if added to what is now known to be the extent of 
country north of the Humber, comes very close (almost too 
close) to the 37,000,000 acres, which is our modem computation 
of the country's contents.* 


^ An acre of land in Anglo-Saxon times cost about one shilling, and a 
hide 100 shillings ; but this does not imply that a hide was 100 acres, but 
that the area of land ploughable in a day was worth one shilling, and 
that ploughable in a year 100 shilUngs. — Chron, Preciosum, p. 64. 

* The so-called discovery (alluded to on page 91 in the Rev. W. Clarke's 
History of Tithes) by Mr. Walter deGray Birch, of the MSS. Department, 
British Museum, in 1883, of a MS. in Anglo-Saxon of the late 10th or 
early 11th century, containing the same area and divisions as those 
used in Camden's History and believed to be a copy of some older MS., 
accentuates the importance of this old Survey. Hume uses the same 
figures as Camden, but Brady gives the area of England as 274,950 hides. 
Compare Hume's History of England^ app. 1, and Brady, History of 
England, i., p. 270. 


122 History of the English Landed Interest. 

It seems almost incredible that the Anglo-Saxon surveyors 
could have possessed the technical skill sufficient for accu- 
rately estimating huge forests and vast swamps, a task which 
would puzzle even our Boyal Engineers of the Victorian age. 
It seems (we cannot say more likely, but) less improbable, that 
the Boman agrimensores had left some records behind to which 
the Anglo-Saxon surveyors had access. How even fioman 
ingenuity could compass so difficult a task is a mystery. Nor 
would the undertaking effect any practical results, for neither 
fioman nor Anglo-Saxon fiscal systems were based upon founda- 
tions which required the areas of uninhabited wastes.^ 

Shadowy though the inference of Eoman handiwork is in 
this matter, it is interesting to imagine that this survey, which 
probably formed the framework for all future records, thus 
connects the Boman land surveyor with that great national 
terrier, the Domesday Book of a later era, 

^ It is absurd to suppose that there were 243,000 hides of cultivated land 
at this period, and we can hardly believe that every five hides of unculti- 
vated land would have to furnish its armed unit to the national defence. 
On the other hand 48,720 men is a total quite reconcilable with the 
numbers often engaged in warfare in various parts of the country at the 
same time. The problem is one more suitable for a Constitutional His- 
tory than ours, and we shall therefore leave its solution to other brains. 
Theorists have evaded, not solved, the difficulty by identifying the term 
" hide " with '* family," and estimating the population of England at this 
time at 1,218,000 souls, or 243,600 families, each averaging five persons. 


Zbc {fbibblc UQCB—Zhc florman Conqueet 

A.D. 1066. 


CHAPTER X, 

DISTINCTIONS BETWEEN CONQUEROE AND CONQUERED. 

Again the terminology changes. The village community has 
become a barony, its lord a tenant-in-chief, and his vassals and 
villains are soon to be known as freeholders and copyholders. 
Feudalism grasps all England in its iron fingers, and the 
pitiless accuracy of Domesday Book leaves no loophole of 
escape. The conqueror flings his sword, like Brennus, into the 
scales of justice, and claims seignorial rights over every acre 
of English ground as his share of the spoil. Those of the con- 
quered in whom yet lingers a spark of the old Bersaker or 
Viking fire fly as outlaws to the woods, and each peaceful 
householder on their outskirts nightly barricades his doors 
and windows, and goes to bed in direful doubt whether he 
shall ever see again the morning's sun. 

The race enmity exceeds imagination, and has seldom been 
surpassed. The most insulting and degrading of modem aris- 
tocratic phras€« * — " You're a cad, sir " may be paraphrased in 
Norman Ups by " Fellow, you're an Englishman ! " And this 
is the more remarkable when we trace back the ethnology of 
both conqueror and conquered to identical sources. Julius 
CsBsar had converted Transalpine Gaul as well as Britain 
into a Boman province. The Franks, a race of Germans, and 
the Angles, Jutes, and Saxons, also races of Germans, had 
occupied the two countries. The conquering Northmen of 

^ Vide Macaulay, History of England, 

193 


124 History of the English Landed Interest. 

Scandinavia and Denmark had blended their blood with that 
of Normandy as well as Britain. Nor were the earlier customs 
and habits of the two peoples dissimilar. Whether we look 
back on the methods of annually dividing their landed pro- 
perty resorted to by Frankish as well as Frisian communities 
amidst the woods and wilds of Germany, and the reluctant 
and circumscribed supremacy allowed to their chiefs, or study 
the Teutonic idiosyncrasy which stamped itself into the fresh 
polity both of the Frankish and Anglo-Saxon conquerors in 
each of their new territories, we find a strong family resem- 
blance in the two nations. 

There were, however, one or two distinguishing features, 
results rather of accident than ethnic character, which may 
account for much of the political, if not social, differences be- 
tween these two branches of the Teutonic stem when once 
more they re-unite on English soil. 

In the first place, as the individual's liability to molestation 
on the Continent was greater than in England, so in proportion 
was the process of converting allodial into feudal tenures 
speedier there than here. 

In the second place, the insular position of the Anglo-Saxons 
had kept them almost free from outside influences. Hitherto 
the Teutonic element on English soil had only come into touch 
with that of the Roman at second hand. Whatever of the 
Latin polity had been imbibed had penetrated through two 
channels, viz. the Britons and the Church. 

On the other hand, the Norman with his feudalism repre- 
sented the results of direct contact. The customs of the old 
Teutonic Mark had by now become fused with those of the 
older Eoman militarism. That the process, though started 
about the same period, had progressed less rapidly in England, 
was owing to the less intimate relationship between Saxon 
and Boman which the presence of these intermediaries had 
caused. 

Let us then turn once more to the Boman era, and pick up 
those similarities for which, during an examination of the 
Teutonic economy, we could have found no parallel. 

The Bomans as conquerors had initiated that system of the 


Dutinctions between Conqueror and Conquered. 125 

oolonia which had first associated landownership with military 
service, and when the barbarians in their turn conquered the 
Somans, they adopted the idea of the Lsatic land tenure, 
henceforth remunerating the soldier with portions of the sub- 
jected territories. A soldier by profession, the Germanic land- 
lord looked for the profits of his lands to the military vassalage 
of his tenantry. He, so to speak, split up his seignorial rights 
into two parts, viz. ownership and enjoyment. The first he 
retained, and the last he made over to the vassal. In so doing 
he either consciously or unconsciously plagiarised the Emphy- 
teutic system of the old Eoman conveyancing lawyer — to 
which, however, he tacked on the formalities of the oaths of 
fealty as a picturesque proof of his retention of the dominium. 
Even the homage of the vassal, that mutual compact — whereby 
the superior placed himself under an obligation to protect, 
clothe, and feed for life his inferior, in exchange for all services 
summed up in the phrase " to become so-and-so's man," — was 
as much a Boman idea as it was Teutonic, and who is to decide 
that the position of the cliens did not originally inspire some 
village statesman of G-ermania with the idea of this custom ? 

The method by which the Eomans distributed the lands of 
a colony amongst its veterans has been fully described by Mr. 
Coote, whose study of the writings of the Boman agrimensores 
has been profound.* These prototypes of the modern surveyor 
measured out the ground into rectangular blocks of approxi- 
mately equal size. Beyond these rectangular plots were 
irregular patches fit for cultivation, which were leased by the 
State to farmers, and termed terra vectigalis. Again we ask, 
who can with confidence deny that the ftirlongs and acres of 
the common field system do not derive their origin from this 
Eoman custom ? This would further imply that the agricul- 
tural system of the later Mark was itself a fusion of Boman 
with Teutonic processes.' 

It soon came about in these Boman colonies and other dis- 
tricts of the Empire, that landed proprietors, both individuals 

* Coote, Romans in Britain^ passim, 

3 Encyclo, Brit^ dth £d., sub, voc. Justinian ; vide note on Emphy- 
teusis. 


1 26 History of the English Landed Interest. 

and communities, were often anxious to bring into cultivation 
large tracts of unprofitable land, over which they could not 
themselves aflTord time for supervision or capital for cultivation. 
These they granted to farmers, who enjoyed fixity of tonure 
so long as they paid their " pensio " or annual rent. The new 
tenant could assign or mortgage his property, and at his death 
the estate passed into the hands of his heirs. He was, as it 
were, an extra owner grafted on to the dominium. Save that 
he had to pay a rent, and could not alienate without the con- 
sent of his lord, it would be difficult to distinguish his proprie- 
tary rights from actual ownership. This then was the famous 
Emphyteusis system,^ which, as its name implies, was an inno- 
vation of the Eastern Empire, not appearing in the pages of 
legal codes until its constitution was settled by Justinian about 
the beginning of the sixth century. 

There does not seem much difference between the Emphy- 
teuta and the Vavasour or mesne lord of the feudal system. 
There is in fact no reason why subinfeudation, copyhold 
tenures, and chief rents may not have subsequently been 
evolved from this older Boman institution. 

We must not overlook the influence of the Church in a ques- 
tion of this kind. She was the intermediary throughout 
Europe between the dead past of the Roman polity and the 
living entity of feudalism. The Emphyteusis system was at 
first the monopoly -of the emperors; then the agri vectigales of 
the municipia were allowed to come under this arrangement ; 
and afterwards private owners were permitted to follow the 
custom. The Church at an early date took up the system in 
dealing with its territorial possessions, and to her agency we 
may reasonably ascribe the transmission of the process to 
feudalism. 

But the Boman element in the fresh invaders' constitutional 
system, though exceedingly interesting and important to our 
History of the English Landed Interest does not account for 

Palgrave derives the term Feud from an abbreviation of Emphy- 
teusis, pronounced Emphy tefsis, then Phitef, Fitef, Fief, and Feud.— -22ese 
and Progress of the Eniglish Commonwealth^ p. ccv., and History of 
AnglO'SaxonSf p. 259. 


Distinctions between Conqueror and Conquered, 127 

the animosity and differences of tastes between the two nation- 
alities, whicli are the subjects of this particular chapter. 
Perhaps their hatred was inspired by the same strange motive 
which makes a civil the bloodiest of all wars — it was a case of 
Greek meeting Greek. Even a common religion, much less a 
common ancestry, failed at first to soflen their animosities. 
The patriotic English primate aroused the rage of his con- 
querors by refusing to crown their leader, and the Church 
only escaped spoliation at the expense of its native clergy.^ 

The substitution of the Conqueror's alien nominees for the 
Anglo-Saxon priests restored for a time the waning jurisdic- 
tion of ecclesiastical Rome ; perhaps, too, some of the systems 
of heathen Bome. Though William refused the Pope his 
homage, he re-saddled the soil with its old charge for Peter's 
pence. 

As far as the new constitution would allow, Saxon as well 
as Norman kept up their original habits. Under feudal law 
the land was nominally the king's, but practically in the 
possession of his tenants-in-chief, who paid him for it an 
acknowledgment in homage and military services. They in 
their turn apportioned it amongst their vassals in exchange 
for their homage and services. This process of subinfeudation 
progressed until every acre that could be dignified by the 
term " soil " was held of a lord. 

But the Teutonic race was instinctively opposed to auto- 
cracy, so that even the king (much less his barons) was never 
allowed to usurp unlimited powers over his vasssds. When, 
therefore, the sovereign found it necessary to call upon his 
barons and other tenants-in-chief for any extraordinary ser- 
vice beyond what was due by their tenures, he was obliged to 
summon them together in order to obtain their united consent. 

This assembly was the King's Court ; to attend which, as 
Hume points out, was both a privilege and a burden: the 
former, because it increased the barons' power in proportion as 
it decreased the king's ; the latter, because it drew them from 
the defence and development of their lands. 

^ It is right here to state that Bishop Stubhs shows that this hostility 
has been exaggerated. — SeUct Charters^ p« 82. 


128 History of the English Landed Interest. 

They too held their courts (similar to the seignorial assem- 
blies of the previous age), in which the business matters of the 
estate were discussed side by side with the judicial matters 
which we now associate with the more popular tribunals. 

Each barony was a miniature kingdom, with its varying 
customs and laws ; a condition of a£fairs which urged its lord in 
the direction of complete independence of the central authority, 
and which left its tenantry wholly at the mercy of his despotic 
will. 

But causes, happily, were at work, which counteracted 
these evils. Though Continental countries became thus sub- 
divided into numerous principalities, this tendency did not 
reach any great lengths in England ; where the Crown was an 
hereditary possession, and the bulk of the superior classes con- 
stituted by the feudal system were still in the position of a con- 
quering host, which had settled, sword in hand, amidst a hostile 
and spirited population. The sparks of their smouldering 
resistance yet lingered, and were quite sufficient to minimise 
inter-class diflferences, since the highest as well as the lowest 
constantly confronted this common danger, and needed a 
common leader. Then, too, the determination of William to 
be king as well as feudal lord, induced him to compel all land- 
owners (mesne lords as well as tenants-in-chief) to take the 
oath of fealty ; and the gathering on Salisbury Plain, consist- 
ing, as it did, of 60,000 landed gentry, reminded the nation 
that there was a greater personage than each man's immediate 
lord, who had a claim on his obedience. 

But setting aside any comparison with Continental feudaUsm, 
it is remarkable how isolated and monotonous the life of a 
barony would become. The kingdom was split up into a few 
gp:eat estates, whereon the owner resided in an immense forti- 
fied castle, and wielded the power of a petty sovereignty, with 
all the customary surroundings of courtiers and administrative 
officials. The want of any regular occupation and excitement 
drove him to marauding on other baronies, and finally, to 
crusading abroad. Even the excitement of the chase waxed 
tame at times ; and as for husbandry, it was beneath his con- 
tempt. He was too untaught to take any delight in the fine 


Distinctions between Conqueror and Conquered. 129 

arts, and he left oommerce and trade to the despised citizens or 
detested Jew. The mnsio that he had learnt to love was the 
clash of arms ; that of chinking coins was to be scorned as 
vulgar. His edncation, therefore, combined with his mode of 
life to endow him with a savage energy and despotic will, 
which only blood-letting could abate, and which involved th© 
company of more than half the able-bodied male population 
that composed his barony, whenever opportunity or insult 
drove him forth to gratify these qualities in the tented field. 

The essential feature of feudalism was the use of every kind 
of land tenure as a source of warlike materials, and it was a 
system which stamped itself into the character of the nation. 
The glory of successful warfare was the Norman's profits of 
proprietorship. When we come to treat of feudalism in detail, 
we shall find that every landed proprietor had to supply his 
particular quota to the national military chest. These might 
range from the special care of the king's person in battle to a 
horn's alarm note in some exposed border-land ; from the gar- 
risoning of a fortress to the interpretation of a hostile people's 
dialect ; from the equipment of a squadron to the supply of a 
war pennon. In fact, it was to the land and its produce that 
Norman war ministers invariably resorted whenever the 
national defence wanted funds. Similarly in ancient Borne it 
was thus that all military expenditure was financed. There 
is a close parallel in the pontium et viarum refectio, arcuum 
munitio, and tirorum productio of the Boman, to the Brycgbote, 
Burhbote and Fyrd of the Anglo-Saxon Trinoda Necessitas. 
But here is a coincidence to which we must not give undue 
importance. In every primitive fiscal system there would 
naturally be an overwhelming preponderance of land taxation. 
The finance officer of any rude Civil Service would discover 
every facility in the assessment and collection of taxes on land 
or produce, but the greatest possible difficulty in scheduling a 
fiscal tariff on other sources of national wealth. Even the 
Portoria tax of the Eoman was an indirect charge on the soil. 
All that we have said is opposed to any marked progress in 
the development of landed property or husbandry of the soil. 
The area of unreclaimed bog or forest waste was not likely to 

K 



1 30 History of the English Landed Interest. 

decrease under the hands of such new masters ; on the contrary, 

it increased, for the king's passion for yenery led him into 

wholesale acts of agricultural devastation. The afforesting of 

nearly 3,000 square miles in Hampshire was but the chief and 

culminating act of a long series. This monster hunting-ground 

absorbed into its capacious maw manors and cultivated com 

lands as well as towns, villages, and hamlets ; and traditional 

names still mark the sites of some of those thirty-six parish 

churches which the king's ungovernable desire had turned 

into sylvan haunts of the wild boar, or coverts for the red deer. 

The Norman aristocracy followed their king's example, and for 

the same purposes often drove the workers of the soil from their 

meadows, tillage fields, and pasture lands. The forest laws 

Q -^A— ^ inflicted the fearful penalties of mutilation or death on man or 

Ha^ ^UP^ dog if caught in pursuit of the deer. No person outside the 

^■■^^^••'•y'*^ select circle of the nobility was allowed to indulge in the sport 

^/'^'••^ of hawking. He must have been a bold fellow who would 

^Lihd bave run the gauntlet of a watchful host of wardens, verder- 

i^A^A^MM ®^' foresters, agisters, regarders, keepers, bailiffs, beadles, and 

V^'other forest police for the sake of a juicy venison steak ; nor 

tiitit vi^ was the game worth the candle when the detected possession 

4ni4/c4 ^^ ^ falcon brought its owner before the dread Justice in Eyre 

**^ ^^ ' of the forest. But when, what cannot but be termed Heaven's 

HLm^ ^^/iM^engeance, aroused by the united wails of homeless peasants, 

/_^y^^^^aimed outlaws, and cureless priests, had struck down the red 

f^ king on the very site of his father's crimes, the forest laws 

't/Umtr i^ became reduced in severity, and properly tabulated by the 

' *r^>toCharter of 1217. After that, armless men and dogs mutilated 

'by " lawing," were rarer objects of pity ; lands adapted for 

If ^'•^ tillage escaped the king's afforestation schemes ; and both the 

r^ ^ g laymen and clergy of the middle class were allowed to halloo 

^^*' I their spar-hawks upon the quarry without incessant dread of 
4)^ Il4^ *^® swainmote. 

When the landed gentry of this period were engaged neither 

y^f^JUi ^ warfare nor the chase, they were, no doubt, practising such 

m y^^ games and warlike exercises as were best suited for the de- 

^*^ velopment of strength and agility. Thus fencing, buckler 

XxuH*^ play, and tilting at the ring or quintain, afforded a rigidity of 


Distinctions between Conqueror and Conquered, 131 

muscle and quickness of eye which proved of service to its 
owner in the periodical tournaments or the sterner pastime of 
war. Such a constant demand on a man's nerve and agility 
must have prompted the Norman gentleman to a moderate use 
of the pigment, morat, or hippocras, with which he daily washed 
down his venison and spice-cake. Nor would late hours over a 
gambling bout conduce to a cool head in the morrow's tourney ; 
thus few men remained long awake after curfew had rung the 
knell of all fires and lights. 

But what of the unfortunate conquered — the " greedy Saxon 
swine," as he was contemptuously termed by his more abste- 
mious conqueror? Though elbowed out of all the choicest 
lands, he still had to look for means of subsistence somewhere 
within this island. Thane, ceorl, and villein were all, with a 
contemptuous indifference to accuracy, classified under the one 
despised title of " roturiers," by this foreign aristocracy. Like 
the ranker at his regimental mess, or the self-made millionaire 
elevated by his wealth into a higher social circle, the Saxon 
must have been peculiarly sensitive to a contempt which his 
own sense of inferiority had shown him to be merited. The 
oppression and the scorn between them drove half the men of 
spirit out of the country to seek fortune where their swords 
would be most likely to command a higher price. The gross 
and the self-indulgent, no doubt, sought to dull the brain by 
gluttony, and to drown their keener sense of indignity by 
incessant draughts of mead. The ideal Saxon of Kingsley's 
invention was no more and no less true to Ufe than that of 
Scott's ; and Hereward, the soldier of fortune, was as common 
a type as Athelstane, the dull-headed thane. The Englishman 
of position and property fared far worse than his humbler 
countrymen, for the claims of hungry adventurers were num- 
berless, and the Conqueror's only rewards were the appropriate 
fruits of confiscation, so that few tenants-in-chief could boast 
of Saxon blood. The lower the individual in the social scale, 
the less likely was he to be worth spoliation, until, when we 
arrive at the bondsman's class, we may doubt if many in- 
dividuals realised much difference in the change of masters. 

But the international struggle did not survive the first 


132 History of the English Landed Interest. 

century ; for one of the effects of feudalism is to constitute the 
lord a protector, and the protected a partisan. Vassals who 
had fought once or twice under their lord's banner, began to 
feel a pride in their leader, and he to recognise a claim in them 
to his goodwill. Even as a class, the conquered Saxons began 
to assume a political importance, whose co-operation might be 
worth securing by one side or the other whenever king and 
barons fell out. The Church, too, had always set her face 
against class distinctions, and had early called, as her head, the 
Saxon Brakespeare to the chair of St. Peter. Her influence 
must have been tremendous, since every younger son of the 
nobility who possessed a contemplative or studious bent, 
turned instinctively to her monasteries for a home, and every 
well-taught lady owed her education to convent breeding. 
The common glories and dangers of the Crusades, in which the 
blood of both nationalities had mingled under strokes from 
Saracen scimeters, must have further cemented the bonds of 
union. Though Macaulay may be right in representing Eng- 
land's first four Norman kings as Frenchmen, we cannot make 
any distinction between the laurels won by the two races 
arrayed under her banner. Nor can we see the absurdity to 
which he refers when English historians proudly exult in the 
splendid courage of Bichard I. He may have been French 
bred ; but the blood that stirred his lion heart was that Ger- 
man, Viking, and Celtic mixture which coursed through the 
veins of his English subjects, and still fires the courage of her 
present Majesty's Ueges. As well might we grudge the 
American his participation in that thrill of pride which stirs 
every Anglo-Saxon heart when mention is made of Shak^ 
speare or Milton. 


Zhc HDiDMc BQCB—Zbc Tlorman period 

A.D. 1066-1164. 


CHAPTER XI. 

FEUDALISM. 

It is a legal theory, hence a common error, to suppose that at 
the Conquest all the English soil became the demesne lands of 
the king.^ If this had been so, all popular rights over the soil 
would have lapsed. It is, however, true that all justice was 
vested in the Crown, and therefore, except on suflferance, ^o 
private tribunal could deal with matters of a public nature. 
What the Conqueror claimed for himself was, not all the land, 
bat all the seignorial rights over it. These he redistributed 
amongst his followers in unequal portions. "Whenever he 
found that one particular area of land subject to seignorial 
rights was insufficient to adequately reward some successful 
general, he gave him half a dozen such areas. But he took 
care to decentralise the donee's power by scattering the gift in 
various counties, so that any attempts of the subject to revolt 
and concentrate lus tenantry, would have attracted the atten- 
tion of more than one county sheriflF.* Each of these areas of 
land was henceforth termed a manor, in which the new 
owners had powers to keep a portion of the lands in their own 
hands, to impose services in return for another portion parcelled 
out to inferior tenants, to leave a third portion in waste, and 
to institute a court for the punishment of offences and the 
proper observance of duties and services. The new manor was, 
however, nothing more than the Saxon's ttin. The fresh in- 

* Jacobs, Campleat Court Keeper , oh. i. 

* Stubbs, Constit Hist^ Ed. IV., ch. ix. p. 296. 

1S3 


134 History of the English Landed Interest. 

yaders were ethnically familiar with the machinery of its 
internal economy. Whatever portion of the territory had 
been sufficient for the Saxon thane's inland was found to be 
enough for the Norman's demesne. The system of communal 
agriculture was the only one adapted to unenclosed ground ; 
and the people, since perforce they required firewood, turf, and 
pasturage from somewhere or other, would not have been 
grudged their rights over the waste, so long as they did not 
interfere with Norman predilections for venery. So the fresh 
lord turned out the late owner, replaced the latter's home with 
a castle, and elected his own seneschall, instead of the gerefa, 
as president of the seignorial court, but interfered as little as 
possible with popular rightSy customs, and agriculture. 

But there had been franchises and liberties where the powers 
of sac and soc had been vested in seignorial hands ; there had 
been lords of the manor who had been presidents of the public 
courts as well; and there had been king's thanes who had 
wielded the sword of justice quite as firmly as any sovereign. 
Now, however, the Conqueror claimed a monopoly in the office 
of public magistrate, and he was little likely to leave in 
private hands so kingly a prerogative as the powers of life 
and death. 

On the other hand, to entirely wrest jurisdiction from seig- 
norial hands before the more modem rights of landownership 
had been introduced and established, was doubly impossible 
at a time when the population of each manor was composed 
of defeated foes. From this dilemma the Norman statesmen 
formulated a compromise. The business of the court leet was 
stUl transacted side by side with that of the court baron. 
Juries were selected from the leading freemen of the hundred, 
the youth were registered in the tithing, the view of frank 
pledge was held, homage received, fines levied, sentence of 
furca and fossa pronounced, and all estate business transacted 
by the steward in the hall of the barony or manor. 

But no one was allowed to confuse the two tribunals. At 
this youthful stage of the national growth, when the pages of 
the statute book were almost blank, it would be difficult to 
say how far the regulations for distinguishing the two jurisdio- 


Feudalism. 135 

tions had gone. Afterwards, in Tador and Stuart days, no 
confusion could possibly have occurred, although the seig- 
norial courts had become subdivided, and much of the more 
serious public business had been relegated to the assize courts 
and justices of the peace. Thus, in the court baron of later 
times, the steward presided as vicegerent of his master, the lord 
of the manor, and inflicted fines not exceeding forty shillings 
for trespasses, debts, and injuries. "When, however, the same 
person presided as steward of the leet, his judicial mantle fell 
upon the shoulders of the suitors, nor could they do more than 
give a verdict, and thus enable the steward to certify for 
punishment to the Justices of the assize.^ Not even a stranger 
could confuse the two assemblies, which were held at diflferent 
dates, and not similarly constituted. Everybody knew that 
the court leet was a public tribunal, owing its inception to 
the Saxon sheriflPs Tourn, and that the court baron was a 
private assembly, owing its inception to the Saxon's Halmote. 
In the earlier times now occupying our attention, there was 
already a code of unwritten laws which regulated the business 
of these seignorial tribunals. The steward, even as president 
of the court baron, much more as president of the court leet, 
did not administer justice according to his own views of right 
and wrong, but was guided by certain rules and precedents, 
which found their way into print not long after the introduc- 
tion of the printing press into Europe. By the beginning of 
the sixteenth century some half-dozen treatises appeared, 
which, in the words of Professor Maitland, were intended " to 
teach stewards how to preside, clerks how to enrol, and 
pleaders how to count and defend.'' These productions, how- 
ever, were mostly plagiarisms of a set of still earlier records, 
in the shape of certain thirteenth and fourteenth century 
manuscripts,* which have been recently translated for the 
Selden Society by Professor Maitland and Mr. Baildon, and 
from which we now extract some information about the busi- 
ness of a thirteenth-century seignorial court. 

Let us suppose that " Sir Steward " has already settled him- 

* Jacobs, Compkat Court Keeper. 

* The Court Baron^ passim^ Selden Society, 1891, 


136 History of the English Landed Interest. 

self in his lord's seat of jnstice, that the baronial hall is fall of 
litigants and offenders, and that the sworn bailiff is ready with 
his counts. The first case is some offence against the franchise 
of the lord ; some breach, say of the assizes of bread and beer, 
or some trespass of close, or some chasing of beasts in the 
seignorial park, or some toll subtracted from the lord's mill. 
Let us suppose that it is a case of the first description. Tho 
bailiff explains the charge, and the steward addresses the 
offender in courteous terms : " Fair friend," says he, " hast 
heard that which the bailiff hath counted against thee ? " On 
a reply in the affirmatiye, the prisoner is bidden to answer in 
God's name. According to the formal language of the age, he 
or his pleader does so as follows : " Tort and force, and the 
damages of the lord and of his good folk to the amount of 100«. 
and the shame of 40«. and every penny thereof, and all that he 
surmiaeth against him, and all that is against the ordinance 
and general constitution of the realm, and the statutes of the 
lord and his franchise defendeth William, or John, or Richard" 
(whatever his name may be), " who is here against the bailiff 
Robert byname, and against lus suit and all that he surmiseth 
against him, and well he showeth thee that right fully and 
loyally hath he performed the assize according to market 
prices since the feast of St. Michael until this hour ; and that 
this is the truth we are ready to aver in such manner as this 
court shall award that aver we ought." Plaint and answer 
thus made, the steward replies, " Fair Mend," says he, " this 
court awardeth that thou be at law six-handed to acquit thyself 
that thou hast not since the feast of St. Michael broken the 
assize, in such wise as the bailiff here present counteth against 
thee." This judgment implies, in other words, that the de- 
fendant must produce by a given date a certain number of 
compurgators, varying according to his social standing, who 
will be required to make oath as to his innocence. Sometimes 
a dies amoris is granted in order that the parties may have 
an opportunity of coming to some amicable arrangement before 
the next hearing of the case. 

When an end is at length made of the charges and defences 
in the court baron, the steward proceeds to inquire into such 


Feudalism. 137 

cases where persons are accused of trespass by no man save tlie 
lord, and here the steward himself underbakes the prosecution 
in addition to inflicting the fines. The bailiff hands him a list 
of the cases written in a roll, to which he constantly refers for 
information. This branch of his oflBcial duties satisfactorily 
performed, there remains the plea of the Crown in court baron. 
The prisoners are brought before the steward by the bailiff, 
and charged. A jury, composed of the good folk of the vill, 
is impanelled ; and the faoes of the assembly assume a graver 
aspect in keeping with the more serious business in hand. 
The charge being made, the prisoner is called upon for his 
defence, and offered the right to challenge the jurors. He 
either confesses his guilt at once, or submits to the decision of 
his neighbours, " the good folk of the vill." Many a trembling 
wretch is standing there, in abject dread of hearing the stern 
command of his judge, '^ Take him away, and let him have a 
priest," which is tantamount to a sentence of death. 

It will be seen that the justices, stewards, bailiffs, sheriffs, 
hundredors and representatives of halmotes had to be well 
versed in the intricacies of their various offices before they 
could become efficient in the administration of justice. The 
manner of pleading was not the same in any of the courts, 
whether of justices of the bench, justices in eyre, counties, 
hundreds, or franchises. A special and lifelong training could 
alone render a man familiar with the roUs and pleas of previous 
sittings. The times of their convocation varied according to 
the custom of the county. Every new steward was compelled 
to warn the bailiffs of the hundred or manor by letter when 
he was about to make lus circuit ; and there were, besides 
these, numerous other formalities to be observed before the 
business of jurisdiction could be legally performed. No wonder, 
then, that by the beginning of the sixteenth century there 
was a comparatively large supply of literature eagerly sought 
after by youths of the rising generation who were destined to 
occupy one or other of the judgment-seats in the various tri- 
bunals enumerated above. 

There is no reason to suppose that seignorial was more 
distasteful to the masses than regal jurisdiction. During the 


138 History of the English Landed Interest. 

thirteenth century the sovereign's administration of justice 
does not compare at all favourably with that of the private 
individual. Ten or more years often intervened between the 
visits of the Justices in Eyre. Kings issued their writs of 
assize at prolonged and irregular intervals, so that the business 
of many years would have to be transacted in as many days. 
It was a busy time in the district, when the assize town was 
crowded with sheriff, coroners, bands of jurors from various 
townships, presidents of numerous bailiwicks, lords temporal 
and spiritual of franchises, knights and freeholders of the 
county, litigants and their pledges and attorneys. The entry 
of the dreaded Justices in Eyre was little short of a state 
pageant. The meeting between them and the great landed 
proprietors of franchises was exceedingly impressive. The 
dignified pleading of th© former for their liberties, and the 
solemn granting of such by the latter, awed the crowd of 
common people and inspired it with a reverence for landed 
rights. The loyal oratory of the principal judge, the formali- 
ties surrounding the delivery of the articles of the Eyre, and 
the presentments of the jurors thereon, the infliction of fines, 
pains, and penalties, according to the custom of the country,^ 
and the dread sentence of death, all helped to engender a 
wholesome respect for the law in the vulgar mind. 

But when the business and ceremony was over, and the 
judges had gone elsewhere, it is very doubtful if there were 
fewer innocent persons left behind by them in prison, or fewer 
guilty persons at large, than after some lord of a franchise had 
exercised his powers of sac and soc in the seignorial court of 
his property. The royal judges had each his special clerk, 
who filled in his special strips of parchment with the minutes 
of every day's proceedings. Since each set of parchments was 
stitched together and sent up to the Exchequer for preserva- 
tion, there are plenty of Assize Bolls available for modem 
research. The comiption and extortion that these old MSS. 
bring to light, speak ill for the chances of those prisoners who 
were too poor to buy their freedom. The judge of the seig- 

^ Page. Article on ThrtA Assizes in the County of Northumberland^ 
Surtees society, 1891. 


Feudalism, 139 

norial court might be more arbitrary, but he was certainly 
less venal than the king's representative of justice. He 
seldom cared to keep his prisoners long under lock and key, 
but preferred to inflict a less troublesome if more summary 
form of punishment on those who had offended him. In the 
royal courts, on the other hand, delay between committal to 
prison and sentence was constantly occurring either through 
the royal negligence to execute the writ of assize, or the 
judge's attempts to extort bribes from prisoners in exchange 
for their liberty. It is not improbable that to these circum- 
stances may be attributed the first appearance in England of 
gaol fever. If so, there was a grim justice in its invasion of 
the very judgment seat, and the retribution it wreaked there 
on the executioner of its humbler victims. Those sprigs of 
rue, rosemary, and other garden herbs, which to this day be- 
strew the judge's desk in some assize towns,^ are thus not only 
picturesque survivals of an interesting past, but significant 
reminders of a supreme justice which overrules the very 
judgment-seat. 

It is not without a purpose that we have given preference 
in this chapter on feudal land tenure to the jurisdictory 
tribunals of the country. The Norman baron was presented 
by his royal master with the necessary machinery of magis- 
terial government over certain manors. Save> in the case of his 
demesne lands it was not for many centuries to come that he 
could be said to have established full proprietary rights over 
the whole territory compassed by the royal grant. "What re- 
muneration he gave his king in return for the gift, and 
what remuneration he obtained out of it for himself, involves 
an explanation of the whole feudal system. 

And in the first place we may note that the form which this 
remuneration took is corroborative of the assertion with which 
we commenced this chapter. If the Conqueror had claimed 
and redistributed the ownership of the land, that annual 
assembly would have taken the form of a colossal National 
rent audit. What he had redistributed were the seignorial 
rights over the land, and therefore what he demanded at Salis- 
' Liverpool, for example. 


140 History of the English Landed Interest. 

bury was homage, %a. a recognition that every lord of the 
people was himself a subject of the sovereign. 

Now the Saxon land legislators had held one object only in 
view, and that was the defence of the lands they had usurped. 
For this reason they had instituted the Trinoda Necessitas, 
a military system which had been crushed by the Norman 
Conquest. Before it could be replaced there came a menace 
of Danish invasion. Between the fears of the enemy abroad, 
and the dangers of hostile risings at home, there arose in the 
national breast a sensation of helplessness^ which gave a 
free hand to the Conqueror and his military advisers. They 
proceeded to introduce the polity to which they had been 
accustomed on the Continent. The old Saxon land legisla- 
tion had mixed up the wants of the farm with those of the 
battle. The new system was solely the code of a warlike host. 
The soil, it is true, had to be cultivated, and the wretched class 
of socmen was an objectionable necessity, but its profits must 
be payable in warlike materials, not money. Stout hearts and 
arms were preferable to thrimsas and live stock in such 
boisterous times. The soldier tenant was the ideal of 
feudal polity, and the husbandman a small and despised 
class, with neither political power nor fixity of tenure, the 
fine for whose life was estimated at so low a sum as to be 
hardly worth recovering. Did the king want troops, his 
military tenants flocked to his standard. Did they require 
arming, the weapons were supplied by his tenants in petit 
sergeantry. Did his strongholds need garrisoning, those who 
held lands by castle gard manned the walls. Did his royal 
banner lack a bearer, a vassal by grand-sergeantry was ready 
for the office ; and was a foreign war in hand, the tenants by 
escuage stepped into the ranks of the embarking host. What 
the king demanded of his tenants-in-chief, they in their turn 
demanded of their subfeudarii, adapting, however, the national 
system to their own individual wants. 

Now, tenure by military service required one qualification 
only, namely the ability of the tenant to perform the service. 
Death, of course, prevented this, and it was only natural that 
^ Blackstone, Comm,^ bk. 11., ch. iv. 


Fetulalism. 141 

the lands should revert to the donor nntil a fresh military 
tenant was forthcoming. He who possessed the chief claim 
on the reversion, provided that he could perform the service, 
was the deceased's son, and, if he had more than one, the 
eldest was by his superior age and strength in nine cases out of 
ten the best qualified. These circumstances gave rise to the 
custom, not law, of primogeniture (for, save in the case of in- 
testacy, there has never been a law on the subject). 

When, therefore, the successor was a minor he was not 
eligible for military service, and pending his majority he and 
his fief remained in ''Ward" of his master — not a bad arrange- 
ment in troublous times for either party concerned. But in 
order to shorten as far as possible this interval during which 
the reversionary interest had lapsed back to the lord, it was a 
further incentive for the vassal to bequeath the estates to his 
firstborn male. 

Where the successor was of age it would seem that there 
could be no interval between the death of the late owner and 
the former's entry ; but, for all that, the lord reserved a title 
to possession which brought in, for the sovereign, the incident 
of Primer Seisin, for the subject, that of Relief. These were 
theoretically a present, practically an obligatory charge, for 
the renovation of the fief. In early days of feudalism it was 
a gift of armour, and corresponded to the Danish custom of the 
heriot, which was also a donation of warlike accoutrements on 
a similar occasion. When the incident of non-entry was pro- 
longed over a year and a day the fief was forfeited. 

If a military policy is so far obvious it is even more so when 
we come to speak of the incident of marriage. No lord could 
brook the presence of an enemy in his midst, and such an un- 
toward circumstance might at any time occur by the marriage 
of a vassal without consent A female of a hostile barony was 
bad enough, but a male would be unbearable ; hence the fine 
inflicted in the case of a female's marriage without consent far 
exceeded that in the similar case of a male. 

For a like reason the lord's sanction was very essential in 
the transfer of lands to a fresh vassal. Whenever this occurred 
there arose the Fine of Alienation, an incident which induced 


142 History of the English Landed Interest. 

the alienator to make an arrangement with the new sub- 
fendarins, whereby the latter held his lands of him instead of 
the original grantor of the fief ; and before this abuse could be 
checked the Statute of Quia Emptores was necessitated. 

Perhaps the three most expensive, if not most important, 
events in the life of a Norman warrior was his son's coming of 
age, or rather, reception into the ranks of knighthood, his 
daughter's marriage, and his own capture in battle. To defray 
the expenses respectively of equipment, dowry, and ransom, 
provision was made under the feudal incident of Aids, whereby 
another theoretical " donation " became obligatory on the vassal. 

Whenever a vassal died without an heir, or whenever he 
committed any act unworthy of his feud, the latter reverted to 
the Lord, an incident technically termed Escheat. When the 
first of these occurrences took place, it was an Escheat propter 
defectum sanguinis ; when the second, it was an Escheat prop- 
ter delictum tenentis, more commonly called forfeiture. 

The incident of Purveyance and Preemption was a privilege, 
mercifully for English agriculture, confined in this country to 
the Crown. It was of two kinds, the great purveyance, which 
compelled the nearest farmers in times of war to furnish the 
king's armies and castles with provisions at current prices, and 
the smaller purveyance, which consisted of certain farms on 
the king's ancient demesnes, by the cultivation of which for 
royal necessities, the lords of neighbouring manors held tenure. 
This method, however, soon proved cumbersome, and was there- 
fore replaced by the appointment of royal purveyors, who exer- 
cised rights of preemption and other privileges which, leading 
to gross acts of injustice and exaction, ultimately required re- 
strictive legislation. 

So far we have been concerned with feudal tenures in their 
relationship to military requirements. Many of the incidents, 
like the head of Janus, had a peaceful as well as a warlike aspect. 

There is no doubt, for example, that the incident of Belief 
closely related as it was to that of the heriot, included the 
farmer's peaceful ofiering on succeeding to the inheritance. 
We have already stated elsewhere that the lord's capital sup- 
plied the socman's farming stock, and traced to this practice 


Feudalism, 143 

the agricultural application of this still customary incident in 
copyhold tenure. It is difficult to fix any date at which most 
of these feudal incidents came to bear a twofold significance. 
The transition stage from arts of war to those of peace extended 
over many centuries of national history. Thus, in the pic- 
turesque and imposing ceremony observed over the grant of a 
fief, we read of the kneeling vassal, with sword ungirt and head 
bare, the exclamation " Je deveigne votre homme," and the 
lord's kiss. In fact, all pertaining to the livery of seisin 
breathes of war, and is the very reverse of the peaceful and 
prosy business of a modern lawyer's conveyance. Yet in the 
later court baron a very careful distinction was made between 
homage and fealty. There was in the latter no lord's kissing, 
no humble submission of the vassal on bended knee with head 
uncovered, and no solemn adjuration of a life's devotion in a 
soldier's cause. The tenant merely swore to faithfully mantire 
his lord's ground and carefully discharge his rural duties. 
Without multiplying instances like these, it may be stated 
generally, that as the sword became beaten, into a plough- 
share, and as men turned from devastating the soil to its im- 
provement by agriculture, that system which owed its incep- 
tion to war became revolutionised in its chief characteristics. 
The villeinage rose into the dignified tenure by soccage, while 
military service sank in social importance. The tenant of each 
knight's fee, t .«. portion of land of £20 annual value, no longer 
needed to don his armour and serve his forty days in the field, 
but was permitted to discharge his obligation by deputy. 
Eventually money equivalents, under the incident of scutage, 
allowed the farmer to till his lands at home, whilst the mer- 
cenary fought his battles abroad. 

In like manner the incident of Frankalmoigne (subsequently 
checked and regulated by the Statutes of Mortmain) freed the 
ecclesiastic firom the incongruous pursuit of arms. 

So far the mention of feudal incidents has divided the nation 
into soldiers and farmers; but there was a third and very neces- 
sary class, composed of artificers, who, finding their position 
insecure in the country districts, gravitated towards the old 
Boman towns or built fresh ones for themselves. Even in 


144 History of the English Landed Interest 

Saxon times these oommniiities had received both protection 
and subsistence by the gifts of garrisons and lands, in return 
for which they paid certain taxes. At the Conquest the tenure 
by Burgage drew them within the folds of feudalism. 

Perhaps the most striking circumstance connected with the 
introduction of this new polity into England was the little dis- 
turbance it created in the pre-existent economy of land tenure. 
This was no doubt mainly owing to the common Teutonic 
origin of both conqueror and conquered. Both nationalities 
viewed the land through the same pair of spectacles. Its 
possession involved the fulfilment of certain seignorial duties, 
the recognition of certain popular rights, and the performance 
of sundry national requirements. The obligation of military 
service had been just as inseparable from allodialism as it now 
was from feudalism. It would puzzle a Norman lawyer to have 
satisfactorily explained to a Norman lord the practical diflfer- 
ence between a National Defence Fund based upon land tenure 
instead of land ownership. When we bear in mind how very 
closely connected the two systems were to each other and how 
very remote they were from what we now understand by landed 
proprietorship, the distinction for all practical purposes is re- 
duced to a minimum. 

No wonder then that the transposition of the two systems 
was effected without disturbance. The internecine struggle 
and the expulsion of the bulk of the Saxon landed gentry, had, 
it is true, convulsed and stirred to its very depths the whole 
country. But this was an event outside of and accidental to 
the revolution in the Land Laws, which, had there been no 
change of ownership, might have been carried out as simply 
and silently as the Local Government Eeforms of 1890. In 
nearly all the incidents of feudalism we can trace an Anglo- 
Saxon parallel, sometimes a shadow of some still earlier 
economy. 

The thane was the prototype of the knight, the heriot of 
the relief, and the fyrd of the knight's fee. But the incident 
of Wardship takes us back to the times when blood relation- 
ship welded together in one protective system, not only the 
head of the minor's kin, but the whole of his family. 


Feudalism, 145 

In the incident of the Escheat we can also discern a popular 
claim on the soil which must have been a lingering survival 
of the old Mark. The escheat was both a royal and a seig- 
norial prerogative. In its former aspect it derived its origin 
from the old Saxon practice, by which not only the lands but 
whatever else the offender possessed were forfeited to the 
king. But even before the days of kings, when the com- 
munity was the sovereign power, there must have been a 
similar practice. Possibly in this primitive form it may have 
been implicated with some early system of the frank-pledge. 
Be this as it may, this earliest shape of forfeiture is indis- 
tinctly recognisable in the later feudal incident of escheat. 
As the territorial rights of the vassal originally belonged to 
the lord, they very properly reverted to him when escheat or 
forfeiture occurred. But not so the late vassal's works of 
industry on the escheated lands. They became the property 
of the public, and that is no doubt the principle held in view 
when this incident was first introduced into the feudal system. 
Subsequently we have, by a legal quibble, the king, as chief 
public magistrate, canying all off that he can and destroying 
the rest. Then, in order to get out of so profitless a custom, 
both parties agree that a year's rent shall be substituted for 
the king's right of waste. But these later steps were the 
consequences of the different aspect which landownership had 
now begun to assume. The advance in national agriculture 
helped forward the change. As wars ceased, men turned to 
the improvement of their seignorial property ; and when once 
his capital began to be sunk in the soil, the landlord tightened 
his grasp on real property. Much of this was the work of 
centuries ; and the statute finally abolishing military tenures 
was not passed until the Restoration era, from which date 
feudal incidents affected only the forms whereby real property 
is conveyed, or were permitted to exist on account of their 
picturesque surroundings. There was an old officer in the 
Exchequer as late as Charles 11. who remembered the payment 
of herring pies to the king for the manor of Garleton in Nor- 
folk. The annual delivery of a mew'd sparhawk, a pair of 
spurs, gloves, and such-like trifles into the Exchequer were 
common incidents of tenure L 


146 History of the English Landed Interest. 

Eowland de Sarcere held 110 acres of land by sergeantry, 
for which he should perform on each recurring Christmas Day, 
before our sovereign lord the king, altogether and once a leap 
and a puff, a service by no means so picturesque as that which 
drew crowds on each successive coronation ceremony to see a 
Dymock of Scrivelsby in Lincolnshire ride up Westminster 
Hall, on a goodly white courser, armed at all points in rich 
armour, and having a plume of blue feathers at his helm, pre- 
ceded by the Knight Marshall and followed by his trumpeters, 
sergeant at arms, and esquires, with the Earl Marshall riding 
on one side of him, and the Lord High Constable on the other. 
Then the York Herald would proclaim, to the awe of the gap- 
ing crowd at the lower end of the hall, the following chal- 
lenge — "K any person of what degree soever, high or low, 

shall deny or gainsay our Sovereign Lord King King of 

England, Scotland, France and teland, Defender of the Faith, 
son and next heir of our sovereign lord the last king, de- 
clared to be right heir to the Lnperial Crown of this realm of 
England, so that he ought not to enjoy the same, here is his 
champion who saith that he lieth, and is a false traitor, being 
ready in person to combat with him, and in this quarrel will 
adventure his life against him on what day soever he shall be 
appointed." Then, to the huge delight of the spectators, off 
comes the champion's gauntlet, which falls clashing upon the 
stone pavement, there to lie for a short interval till returned to 
its owner by the York Herald. The ceremony is repeated once 
in the middle of the hall, and once more at the top of the steps, 
after which yome court officials tender the king a gilt cup of 
wine, from which he drinks to the Champion. With several 
reverences the latter then drains the cup to the dregs and 
backs out of the royal presence, taking the piece of plate for 
his fee according as had been adjudged him by the Court of 
Claims. The crowd dissolves, and the service of grand-ser- 
geantry is over. Under that of petty-sergeantry the Dukes 
of Marlborough and Wellington hold their lands on condition 
of the presentation of a flag to the sovereign. These instances, 
perhaps, are the last lingering- evidences of that warlike 
pageantry which surrounded the heyday of feudalism. For 


Feudaltstn. 147 

their glamour to charm the modem eye requires surely the 
stage scenery of battlement, tower, and keep as well as the 
brilliant costumes that we associate with the Middle Ages. 
The imaginative tourist on a Ehine steamer may sometimes 
forget his immediate surroundings and dream of feudal times 
when he gazes up at the castle of some robber baron under 
the Othos silhouetted against the westering sun, or glances 
down on the ancient church of his tenant in frankalmaigne 
centre of a village that once held his vassals, and as the steam- 
boat glides past the ruins of that very pier which paid the 
baron's dues, he may listen in fancy to the winding of the 
horn which summoned the moss troopers to " spur, spear, and 
snaffle." 

The customs of these ancient tenures we have seen vary 
considerably, even in the same species of feudal tenure. Thus 
in that of sergeantry, the gay scene in Westminster Hall soars 
as near the sublime as the leap and the puff of the le Sarceres 
nears the ridiculous. 

The manor of Aston Oautlou in Warwickshire has to supply 
the king with a man armed with a bow without a string and 
one basnet or helmet.* That of Bericote involves the service 
of keeping a white young brach with red ears, to be delivered 
to the king at the year's end. That of Henley in Warwick- 
shire, the service of three shillings or a pair of scarlet hose. 
In the manor of Stoneley (also in Warwickshire) four bond- 
men held each one messuage and one quartron of land by ser- 
vice of making the gallows, hanging thieves, and wearing a 
red clout betwixt their shoulders. The manor of Oukeney 
was held under service of shoeing the king's palfrey,* with 
the prospect of having to supply another of four marks price 
if he lamed the beast in the process. East Bilsington in Kent 
was held by service of presenting the king on Coronation 
Day with three maple cups. Narbrough was held by castle 
gard, which could be redeemed by wayt fee, a term no doubt 
signifying a money equivalent in lieu of attendance or wait- 
ing. Lastres in Herefordshire was held under service of a 

* An instance of tenure by petit-sergeantry. 

' Also an instance of tenure by petit-sergeantry. 


148 History of the English Landed Interest. 

goose fit for the lord's dinner on Michaelmas Day ; Burgas de 
Quldeford under that of protecting the king's laundresses. 
Bertram de Oriol was seised of the manor of Setene in Kent 
under service of providing a vautrer to lead three greyhounds 
when the king should go in Gascony, so long as a pair of shoes 
of fourpence price should last. Wrenoe of Shropshire per- 
formed the service of interpreter between Welsh and English.^ 
The Greens of Norton Dauney in Northamptonshire have to 
hold up their right hand towards the king upon Christmas 
Day. Sloley of Sloley must give the king a poleaxe or xiid.* 
in silver every time his royal master marches into Scotland. 
The holding of a lord's stirrup, the gift of a chaplet of roses 
on Midsummer's Day,* the blast of a horn* on perceiving an 
invasion of the Scots, the charge of the coronation napery, 
the maintenance of dogs for the destruction of wolves, foxes, 
and other vermin, the delivery of a pair of tongs into the Ex- 
chequer, are but a few examples of the multiform services 
required by feudal tenures, some of which from their very 
absurdity have survived up to this date.* 

There are also a few customs so quaint and ludicrous as to 
be worthy of description on this account only. Thus on 
King's Hill at BrOchford in Essex, on the Wednesday morning 
after Michaelmas Day, at cock's crowing, there is by ancient 
custom a court held by the lord of the Honour of Baleigh, 
vulgarly termed the Lawless Court, at which the steward and 
suitors whisper to each other. There are no candles, and a 
piece of coal is substituted for the ordinary uses of pen and 
ink. The absentee who owes suit or service forfeits to his 
lord double rent for each hour of absence. The title of it in 
court rolls runs thus : 

Curia de Domine Bege 
Dicta sine Lege, 

Tenta est ibidem 

Per ejusdem consuetudinem ; 

* Tenure by Latimer. 

* Another instance of tenure by petit- sergeantry. 

* An instance of blencb-bolding. 

* Technically termed tenure by comage. 

* Vidt Blount, Jocular Tenures, 


Feudalism 149 

Ante ortum soils, 
Luceat nisi Polus, 
Nil scribit nisi Colis. 

Toties volueritj 
Gallus ut cantaverit ; 
Per cujus solum sonitam 
Curia est summonit^ 
Clamat clam pro Rege 
In Curia sine Lege, etc., etc., etc. 

Every one knows the custom of the Priory of Dunmow in 
Essex. We cannot, however, refrain from quoting the doggrel 
which the applicant for the famous flitch of ba,con has to re- 
peat, kneeling on two stones at the church door. 

*' Tou shall swear by the custom of our confession 
That you never made any nuptial transgression 
Since you were married to your wife 
By household brawles or contentious strife, 
Or otherwise in bed or at board 
Offended each other in deed or in word. 
Or since the Parish Clerk said Amen, 
Wished yourselves unmarried agen ; 
Or in a twelve month and a day 
Bepented not in thought any way ; 
But continued true and in desire 
As when you joyned hands in holy Quire. 
If to thesa conditions, without all fear, 
Of your own accord you will freely swear, 
A Gamon of Bacon you shall receive, 
And bear it hence with love and good leave ; 
For this is our custom at Dunmow well known, 
Though the sport be ours, the Bacon's your own." 

The customs pertaining to the Honour of Tutbury involve 
the assembling annually of a species of court leet, over which 
the king of minstrels presides. The suitors of this peculiar 
court are also minstrels residing in the counties of Stafford, 
Derby, Nottingham, Leicester and Warwick. Two juries are 
empanelled by the Stewards of Music, each consisting of 
twelve minstrels, who are sworn by the steward to keep the 
Bling of Music's counsel, their fellows' and their own. The 
better to inform the jurors of their duty the steward gives 
them a lecture on the science of music, and the latter then 
proceed to the election of a new king, and three stewards of 


150 History of the English Landed Interest. 

music, to which a fourth is' added by the steward's selection. 
Warrants are issued by virtue of which the stewards of music 
can distrain and levy in any part of the honour all fines and 
amerciaments imposed by the juries on erring minstrels. The 
one moiety of the fines the stewards account for at the next 
audit, the other they retain themselves. The proceedings 
closely resemble those of the Court Leet. Aiter a feast a per- 
formance ensues, which is certainly the principal event of the 
day.* One of the manor bulls, whose horns have been short- 
ened, and ears and tail cut oflF, is smeared over with soap: 
Some pepper is blown into his nose, and the poor brute is let 
loose amongst the minstrels. K they can cut off a piece of his 
skin before he runs into Derbyshire, he is the King of Music's 
bull ; but if not, he is the Lord Prior's again. The custom 
originated in King Henry Sixth's reign, and was changed 
about King Charles n.'s time into a cudgel fight between 
the young men of Staffordshire and Derbyshire, who strove 
the one party to drive the bull into Derbyshire, the other to 
keep him in Staffordshire, a contest which may by now have 
degenerated into an ordinary football match, to which in 
several respects it bore some slight semblance. Whether 
some older custom prompted King Henry to trammel his gift 
with these exceedingly curious conditions, or whether they 
owed their inception to the after-dinner suggestions of his 
court fool, we are unable to determine. 

The sale by the hawkers of Scarborough each Shrove Tues- 
day of parti-coloured balls to persons of both sexes, apparently 
as a necessary preliminary to a stick fight on the sands ; the 
grand tug of war at Ludlow, with its incidents of red and blue 
knob and apotheosis of the chimney sweep's wife ; the football 
match between All Saints' and St. Peter^s in the streets of 
Derby, and many such friendly contests in other parts are cited 
by Mr. Gomme in his village community as relics of the ancient 
feuds of a tribal race. Perhaps the real origin of many of these 
time-honoured customs lies somewhere between the court-fool 
theory and Mr. Gomme's more dignified explanation. 

At any rate, there is no mistaking the inference of the famous 
^ The foregoing ixistances are taken from Blunt's Jocular Tenures, 


Feudalism, 1 5 1 

Charlton spur, which was always served up in a covered dish 
whenever the Hesleyside larder was empty, a relic which brings 
us back to that period of history when any excuse was good 
enough for starting a foray, and from which some of these old 
customs have led us astray. 

Such briefly was the famous Feudal System, out of which 
the artist's brush and the novelist's pen have extracted so 
much to charm the mind, that it is difficult for a modem 
imagination to make room for what in it was inimical to the 
subject's freedom and the nation's progress. A casual observer 
sees only in it the picturesque attire of the noble, hears only 
the rescuing shout of the knights errant, or drinks in the 
melody of its minstrelsy. 

And yet there was much in it to admire; for did it not 
create a now extinct courtesy betwixt man and man, a punc- 
tilious reverence for the woman, and a generous respect for 
weakness and old age, which rendered it a fitting attribute 
of that religion which was fast spreading over Western 
Europe ? The creed and the polity of Christendom acted and 
reacted upon each other, so that the chivalry of feudalism 
permeated religion, and Christian integrity found expression 
in the affairs of secular life. What else was it that induced 
the rude warrior to doff his head-covering in the presence of 
the priest, and led St. Louis of France to tend the sick on 
bended knee, and made Francis de Sales preach reverence 
rather than pity for the impotent, or stamped knighthood 
with the impress of the most scrupulous honour, and elevated 
mere animal strife into a contest where to take an unfair 
advantage was to commit social suicide ? 


Zbe fl>iDMc UQce—Zbc •Rorman (tonqucet 


CHAPTEE Xn, 

DOMESDAY BOOK. 

It is evident that the intricate machinery of feudalism could 
work neither smoothly nor accurately unless some general 
record was taken of the conquered lands. Not only were 
fullest particulars necessary of those portions granted to the 
Conqueror's tenants in chief, but also of those 1,422 manors, 
68 royal forests, 13 chases, and 781 parks, which he reserved 
as his own possessions.^ An accurate list was required, 
both of that host of 60,216 armed men each of whose forty 
days' service provided the fee of a knight ; and of the popu- 
lation from which the profits of wardship, marriage, reliefs, 
forfeitures, and escheats could be computed. The land, 
too, would have to be carefully measured for the purposes 
of collecting the £80,000 due from the six shilling tax on 
each hide, first levied to repay the costs of the survey, and 
which remained as a permanent impost, instead of the old 
Saxon charge of Danegelt. Even the houses had to be counted 
in order to acquire particulars for the triennial tax of one 
shilling on each hearth. The dates and localities of public 
markets and fairs had to be ascertained for the sake of their 
dues and tolls ; nor must we except those irregular sources of 
income, such as the plunder of churches and monasteries, 
whose fat endowments this far-searching record placed under 

* William's revenue is reported to have been £1,060 Ss. Hd, every day 
over and above free gifts, fines, and amerciaments. He had also f)0,000 
^ — semen at his command, without any expense to his purse. Eelham's 
^9day Book. 


Domesday Book. 153 

the greedy eye of the king. These, then, were the causes 
which brought into being that vast national terrier, the Domes- 
day Book, which included a survey of the whole kingdom save 
the four northern counties and part of Lancashire. It speci- 
fied the names of proprietors, the nature of their tenures,^ the 
quantity of their arable, meadow pasture, and woodlands ; in 
many counties the number of their tenants, villains, cotarii, 
and servi ; and, if we may credit the Anglo-Seucon Chronicle^ 
there was not even an ox, cow, or pig that was not described in 
its crabbed Latin manuscripts. It was a modern Ordnance 
Survey and a census combined. It was more ; for it included 
a schedule of the nation's assets in live stock and a land valua- 
tion as careful and complete as that drawn up by any modern 
agent called in to revalue farm rents for some landed proprie- 
tor or rating authority. It was, too, a history ; for, even though 
it doubled the difficulties of their task, the king's justiciaries 
were ordered to compare every particular item of the survey 
with its corresponding item in the preceding reign, whereby 
was afforded an accurate record of the devastating consequences 
of invasion. 

Ordered in 108B, it was finished the following year, an 
incredibly short time when we compare its ten years' passage 
through the press when reprinted in 1783, or the many years 
required for a modem Ordnance Survey. The rapidity of its 
preparation, as well as its Anglo-Saxon cognomen, remind us 
that earlier though less complete records were already in ex- 
istence. First known as the Liber de Wintonia, it subsequently 
passed under the names of Liber Begis, Liber Oensualis An- 
glice, etc. In 1522 it was rewritten, and called the New 
Domesday Book. It was formerly preserved by the side of 
the Tally Court in the Exchequer, under three different locks 
and keys, until in 1696 it was removed to the Chapter House 
at Westminster. In 1861 a facsimile copy was commenced 

^ It did not, however, record the services due from the villeins, which, 
nevertheless, we are able to get at in such works as the Liber Niger of 
Peterborough, written about forty years after, and which corroborates 
the lists of services in the Eectitudines Singularum P^sonarum of the 
Saxon era, Vide Ashley's Economic History and Theory^ Bk. L, p. 8. 


154 History of the English Landed Interest 

by photozincograpliy under the supervision of the Ordnance 
Survey Department, and in 1872 the Local Government Board 
undertook a general return of the owners of the land, which 
was published in 1876, Up to 1B22 the taxes were levied 
according to the divisions in the original survey, after that 
date according to those in the newer work. 

Except for the scant information of the chroniclers, the 
Liber Niger of Peterborough, the Pipe Eolls, and a few char- 
ters, this book is our only source for nearly two succeeding 
centuries of the nation's social life. Professor Sogers, who 
devoted upwards of a quarter of a century to research, has 
given out as his belief that neither farm account nor manor 
roll existed before the last twelve years of Henry the Third's 
Beign. From Domesday Book, therefore, must be extracted 
whatever will throw light on the land history of Conquest 
days. Perhaps the most noticeable feature in the work is the 
care bestowed on the accurate returns of the national posses- 
sions in live stock. This excites little surprise if we bear in 
mind that personal property in those days was far more valu- 
able than real. The intrinsic value of flocks and herds 
exceeded that of the pastures which contained them, almost 
as much as the value of a banker's bullion exceeds that of the 
strong room which holds it. This fact also explains another 
characteristic of the age, viz. the comparative opulence of 
younger sons, who by inheriting their father's personalty often 
came into possession of his live stock, to which the custom 
of primogeniture seldom extended. Li fact, the bequest of 
Norman times was often of greater value than the demise. 
But perhaps the chief proof of the low value attached to real 
property in the medisBval age may be sought in the inaccuracy 
of the land measures. Hitherto a few loose and general re- 
marks have sufficed when discussing the hide. Now, however, 
when Domesday Book teems with statistics relating to land 
areas, we can no longer shirk the question. What, then, was 
meant by the terms Hide, Carucate, Mansum, ox-gang, plough- 
land, etc., etc., which constantly crop up either in Domesday 
Book or the earlier charters ? The latter were to the land- 
wner what the former had been to the king, and when we 


Domesday Book. 155 

come to examine a few of the earliest specimens, we shall be 
less trammelled by difficult terms if we clear the way once for 
all by a thorough examination of their meaning now. 

The carucate is evidently derived from the Latin caruca, a 
four-wheeled carriage, but its abbreviation " carr," is an old 
Gallic term (hence karle and ceorle, Saxon for rustic). It 
was understood by the Normans to mean " plough," and the 
carucate was a Norman innovation which finally superseded 
the old Saxon term " hide." Thus in Domesday Book, when 
referring to the distribution of land in the half-hundred of 
Witham, the surveyors (very likely unconsciously) retain the 
old term " hide " when noting particulars in King Edward's 
reign, but substitute the term carucate when tabulating the 
extent of the Conqueror's demesnes in the same district. 
There is sufficient evidence to lead us to conclude that all 
the terms mentioned above were synonymous, and denoted an 
indefinite area of land understood to contain as much as could 
be ploughed in one year. Applied geometry, Gunter's chain, 
the theodolite and protractor, as well as the enhanced value of 
land now, have all helped to educate the modem eye to a pitx^h 
of accuracy which expects too much from a Saxon or Norman 
land surveyor. It was of no practical use to a landowner of 
the eleventh century to ascertain how many thousand acres of 
waste land he might possess in excess of the live stock required 
to stock it, or husbandmen to cultivate it» The land-capitalist's 
fortune consisted, not as now of broad acres, but of flocks and 
herds ; and though perhaps he could scarcely tell the Domesday 
commissioners the extent of the former, he could count the 
latter without the omission of either a hoof or a horn. What 
we have said of the plough-land applies with equal force to 
the virgate, or yard-land, the knight's fee, and other land 
measurements. The rough and ready calculations of the 
Domesday surveyor were analogous to the process whereby a 
modem valuer computes the probable area of a clay-bed to be 
sold for puddling purposes ; but when the chemical analyst of 
the future discovers some cheap method for extracting its 
aluminium, the vendor will be no longer content with hasty 
foot-rule measurements of its depth and the careless pacing of 


156 History of the English Landed Interest 

its surface. Prefacing oar approaching task thus, we shall be 
less disappointed at the unsatisfactory results which it will 
produce. Henry of Huntingdon defines the hide as "Hida 
autem Anglice vocatur terra unius aratri cultursB sufficiens per 
annum." Bede calls it " Familiam," and says it was as much 
as would maintain a family. An old MSS. declares it to be 120 
acres. Gervase of Tilbury made it 100 acres. Spelman cites 
the Malmesbury MS. as computing it at 4 yirgates, or 96 acres. 
The History of Founding Battle Abbey makes it 6 virgates, 
or 144 acres. Camden gives us a choice of two solutions: the 
" acreage-ploughable-in-one-year " theory, and the " four yard- 
land " theory, which latter merely replaces one ambiguous term 
with another. Sir Edward Coke holds the negative idea, viz., 
that these various terms do not contain any definite number of 
acres. Fleta estimates the hide at 180 acres. Professor Sogers 
throws no additional light on the subject. For what Seebohm 
and Vinogradoff have to say we shall reserve space later on.^ 
To add to our difficulties, the word acre raises further theories,* 
as it was originally applied to any open ground or field, 
such as castle acre, west acre, etc. Then it came to imply 
the lots into which the infield was divided, and was found 
by the Commissioners in 1876 to widely vary in area even 
in the same locality. The virgate, too, may mean 24, 28, 
or even 40 acres, though it was understood at the time 
to hold 4 fardels, whatever area they represent. Two cen- 
turies later than the great survey, Walter of Henley' de- 
fines a plough-land ; and since he had acted as a farm bailiff 
his evidence is almost as worthy of credence as that of any 
modem land surveyor's. He says : " If your lands are divided 

' Dr. Stubbs, in chap. v. of his Constitutional History^ supplies in foot- 
not© No. 2. p. 79, the views of Kemble, Grimm, Robertson, and G. L. von 
Mauzer, on the subject. Stubbs himself believes the later hide to have 
been 120 acres, and suggests that some of the greatest Inconsistencies may 
have arisen from the term being applied to the entire share of one man 
in the four common fields ; but then were there four or three common 
fields? 

' It was not till 33 Ed. I. that the acre was fixed by law as fort^ 
perches long and four wide. 

• Vide Walter of Henley, Husbandry^ R.H. Society's translation, 1890. 


Domesday Book. 157 

in three, one part for winter seed, tlie other part for spring 
seed, and the third part fallow, then is a plough-land nine 
score acres. And if your lands are divided in two, as in many 
places, the one half sown with winter seed and spring seed, 
the other half fallow, then shall a plough-land be eight score 
acres. . . . Some men will tell you that a plough cannot work 
eight score or nine score acres yearly, but I will show you 
that it can. You know well that a furlong ought to be forty 
perches long and four wide, and the king's perch is sixteen 
feet and a half ; then an acre is sixty-six feet in width. Now 
in ploughing go thirty-six times round to make the ridge 
narrower, and when the acre is ploughed, then you have made 
seventy-two furlongs, which are six leagues, for be it known 
that twelve furlongs are a league. And the horse or ox must 
be very poor that cannot from the morning go easily in pace 
three leagues in length from his starting place and return by 
three o'clock. And I will show you by another reason that it 
can do as much. You know that there are in the year fifty- 
two weeks. Now take away eight weeks for holydays and 
other hindrances, then are there forty-four working weeks 
left. And in all that time the plough shall only have to 
plough for fallow or spring or winter sowing three roods and 
a half daily, and for second fallowing an acre. Now see if a 
plough were properly kept and followed if it could not do as 
much." An anonymous writer of the same century mentions 
the vagaries of area in the perch, which varied in different 
parts of the country from 18 to 20, 22 and 24 feet. Happily, 
however, Walter of Henley, as we have seen, defines the 
statute or king's perch as being 16^ feet, and his acre, like 
ours, works out to 4,840 square yards. If we dare not quite 
apply the evidence of two centuries later to a solution of this 
term as used in Domesday Book, we can draw certain general 
conclusions, which, if they do not solve our difficulty, will at 
least help us materially towards solution. 

In the first place, Walter of Henley defines the shape of an 
acre of ploughland by describing it as 660 feet x 66 feet wide, 
or in modem surveyor's language, ten chains by one chain. 
This sets up an intimacy between the acre, the furlong, and the 


158 History of the English Landed Interest. 

mile, the first of whioh was so shaped for arable purposes as to 
be an eighth of a mile, i.e. one furlong long. It is interesting 
to discover in this manner that all our modem lineal measure- 
ments originated in agricultural usages. Even the perch was 
derived from the ploughman's estimate of the width turned up 
by the passage of his implement four times up and five times 
down a furlong. The four perches in width are, says the author, 
ploughable in thirty-six '' rounds/' an expression whioh still 
exists in ploughman's vocabulary, and which represents the 
passage of the plough once up and down the space cultivated. 
The width of sixty-six feet is therefore split up into seventy- 
two farrows, and the distance travelled over by the plough 
during the cultivation of one acre is seventy-two furlongs, or 
nine miles. The breadth of the furrow is eleven inches, and 
the area ploughable in one day is a little short of an acre on 
unturned land, and an entire acre for a second time over. 
Referring to the practice of a modem ploughman, we find that 
his furrow is five inches deep by nine broad on fallow ground, 
and six inches by seven inches on lea ground ; that a yoke of 
two oxen, though slower than a pair of horses, can plough 
as much as the latter, because they never stop before they 
turn on the headland ; and that the extent of ground per diem 
is very much the same as that given by Walter of Henley. 
But show the modem ploughman a picture of the clumsy 
implement in use then, and remind him of the wretched con- 
dition of an ox often kept in the open all the year round, and 
he will indignantly repudiate any comparison of times between 
himself and the Norman socman. Yet by three o'clock, the 
same time at which the Henley man's oxen are unyoked, he 
will, if he has worked moderately hard, have accomplished the 
same area, though owing to his narrower furrow he will have 
travelled two miles more than the 13th century ploughman. 
These but slightly increased capabilities of the modem agri- 
culturist are by no means a cause for boasting. We have 
only to compare the rude plough used by the Henley bailiff, 
and the wretched quadrupeds (whether horses or oxen matters 
not) which drew it, with the light effective implement turned 
out now-a-days by a firm like Bansome & Sims, and such 


Domesday Book. 159 

ploughteams as breeders find it worth their while to produce 
for showyard purposes, and the result is not comforting to the 
pride of us modem farmers. 

The writer next points out that the Trinity system of 
cultivation requires a different computation of the carucate. 
When, says he the land was divided into three parts (i.e. 
winter crop, spring crop, and fallow), the carucate was 160 
acres. This difference is explained by the custom of plough- 
ing summer fallow thrice, which stiU exists on heavy land 
farms where the farmer can afford to pursue so excellent a 
system of husbandry. 

All the conclusion that it is safe to draw from the study of 
this thirteenth century writer's remarks is, that the hide, or 
carucate, was an area of land ploughable by one man and beast 
within the 308 days which constituted his working year ; that 
in Walter of Henley's time and neighbourhood from 160 to 180 
acres could be thus cultivated during those periods of the year 
when the seasons required it ; * that, since the interval of time 
between the introduction of the Saxon system of hide measure- 
ment and the date of Walter of Henley's MS. exceeds several 
centuries, it is reasonable to conclude that, from improvements 
in implements and beasts of burden, the acreage of the carucate 
had gradually increased, even though, as we have shown, the 
acreage ploughable in one day has remained almost constant 
ever since ; and lastly, that from the indefinite and varying 
methods of calculating the area of perches and virgates, the 
carucate or hide did not represent the same acreage in all parts 
of the country, nor even the same area on hilly and stiff soils 
as on those that were level and light. 

Let us now compare these conclusions with those of Seebohm. 
He starts with the virgate or yard-land, which he describes as 
bundles of land composed of acres or half-acres. Searching 
first the Manor Soils of Winslow, he discovers the case of a 
virgate, which loses its indivisible unity by becoming relet in 

' That there were two areas of land understood by the term plough-land 
may be inferred, I think, from the sentence, " Qsaant vos purrez e qtuintes 
des carues vos auctz en ckescun liu petit ou graunt e quantes vos purrez 
auer^^Les Beules seynt Roberd. 


i6o History of the English Landed Interest. 

portions to several persons. The tenancy of John Moldeson is 
found thus to consist of seventy-two half-acre strips, besides his 
messuage in the village of Shipton. Comparing this single 
instance with other neighbouring tenancies in the same manor, 
Mr. Seebohm concludes that every virgate in the Winslow 
Lordship consisted of, besides the messuage, between thirty and 
forty modem acres of land, scattered in three equal numbers of 
half-acre strips over each of the three common fields. Using 
these data for purposes of comparison with the Hundred Eolls 
of Edward I., this writer extends his conclusions to an area of 
country embracing five great Midland counties. Though the 
bundle of scattered strips called a virgate did not always con- 
tain the same number of acres, and though the hide did not 
always contain the same number of virgates, the author gathers 
that the normal area of this larger land measurement was 120 
acres, or four virgates. For purposes of assessment, the land 
measurements involved the area of demesne lands, and these 
were not necessarily cut up by balks into acres. Now this fact 
draws a distinction between the hide and virgate as actual 
holdings and such areas as customary land measures. From 
the same sources of information Mr. Seebohm notes an entry 
showing the scutum or knight's fee to contain four hides of 
land ; in other words, each virgate is one-sixteenth of a scu- 
tum, and to corroborate this fact several entries show that 
it was charged 2^. 6(2. as scutage, or one-sixteenth of 40j;., 
which we know to have been the annual value of a knight's 
fee.^ Thus the normal acreage of both hide and virgate is 
connected with the scutage of 40«. Without analysing fur- 
ther Mr. Seebohm's conclusion regarding the correspondence 
between the national acreage and coinage, we shall now 
proceed to examine his evidence connecting the hide with the 
carucate. Again the Hundred Bolls afford him data by 
which he can show that the carucate occasionally contained the 
identical normal acreage of the hide, but often dropped below 
or exceeded this area. It was, he decides, what it literally 

' We must be careful to distinguish here between the intrinsic value of 
a knight's fee, which was from £15 to £20, and the annual scutage pay- 
ment (405.) on a knight*s fee. 


Domesday Book. 16 1 

signified, the area of land ploughable by one team in one 
year, and varied according to the stiffness of the soil, confor- 
mation of the ground, and strength of the plough beasts. Here 
then is evidence drawn from totally different sources, corrobo- 
rative of what has been already concluded from a study of the 
Henley author's facts.^ 

But before we dismiss this subject of the Medissval Land 
Measurements, we must briefly examine Vinogradoff's views. 
He connects the terms carucate, virgate, and bovate not only 
with an area of land, but with the numbers of plough-oxen 
necessary for its cultivation. According to a very common 
mode of reckoning, the hide or carucate contained four virgates, 
the virgate two bovates or ox-gangs, and the area of land im- 
plied by these last terms fi^fteen acres. When, later on, we 
shall come to examine the manorial process of agriculture, we 
shall find at its very core a system of coaration, which not only 
existed on the servile lands, but extended to those of the lord's 
demesne. Thus Yinogradoff, fixing the carucate as an area of 
land ploughable in one year by eight oxen, assigns to the vir- 
gate and bovate the respective factors of eight ; viz. two and 
one. Owners therefore of a single ox possessed one bovate in 
the arable field, and performed their agricultural operations on 
both demesne and servUe land under a process of coaration, 
which necessitated the yoking of other oxen belonging to 
their neighbours. Four holders of a virgate or eight holders 
of a bovate would be thus expected to plough one carucate of 
demesne land yearly. Now the main objection to this proposi- 
tion of Vinogradoff's is the significant omission of the Henley 
writer to thus associate the number of plough beasts with the 
various land measurements. He does, it is true, include in 
his computation of the time taken to plough the hide, the num- 
ber and species of beasts, the system of husbandry and the 
days in the working year ; but he does not touch on the sub- 
ject of the eight oxen with which we genercJly associate the 
plough work of the heavy demesne implement, nor the rela- 
tionship of the virgate and bovate to any particular number 
of oxen. 

^ Seebohm's English Village Community ^ cbap. ii. 


1 62 History of the English Landed Interest 

The wide variations of acreage brought to light by compar- 
ing the areas understood by these terms in the many manu- 
scripts of the age, would seem to imply that they originated 
at a time of complete isolation between district and district. 
Common to the whole nation was the association between 
certain land areas and the time and materials required to culti- 
vate them ; but peculiar to each district was the exact acreage 
found to be ploughable under the varied circumstances. We 
may imagine that a tradition might well have been handed down 
from father to son, and from tribal community to manorial, in 
which an area of land so many yards long and so many yards 
wide came to be implied as the average day's work of a plough 
and yoke of oxen in that district. Varying with the conforma- 
tion of the ground and the texture of the soil, this unit of all 
English land measurements came to have a different signifi- 
cance in almost every locality. The legislators of the statute 
which procured for it one uniform meaning throughout the 
length and breadth of England had wisely gone to the root of 
the whole difl&culty, and thus evolved order out of chaos. The 
acre, definitely determined by law to be so many yards of land, 
at once removed any vagueness about the bovate, virgate, and 
carucate, each of which henceforth assumed recognised and in- 
disputable areas in the scale of national land measurements. 
The association of these areas with time and plough beasts 
would, however, have long outlived the introduction of the 
statute acre, and this would seem to explsdn how on certain 
manors the number of virgates contained by the carucate 
varied from four to seven, and how, in its turn, the virgate 
varied between fifteen and eighty acres. 

Though there are other difficult terms in the Survey they are 
insignificant, and we may dismiss them with the briefest refer- 
ence. The word " terra " refers rather to quality than quantity 
of land, and signifies either arable, wood, pasture, or meadow 
grounds. "Leu" is pasture land one mile in length and 
breadth; but then who is to decide (especially when it is 
applied to districts remote from London) whether the mile cor- 
responded with the modem distance of 1,760 yards, or contained 
half as much again? Again, the "Leuca" (or in Eni^lish 


Domesday Book. 163 

" Lowy ")j synonymous with the term demesne, was an un- 
known area round an abbey, castle, or manor, in which the 
possessor had peculiar privileges. 

Of terms referring to capacity measure we are not left in 
quite such doubt, for the thrave of Doomsday still contains 
twenty-four sheaves, or four shocks of straw ; the timber was 
known to contain forty skins ; and through our knowledge of 
the weight of com in a bushel we are not materially incom- 
moded by our ignorance about the sextary and vasculum. The 
solius is said to have contained between 216 acres and 180 
acres of land, though, as in the case of the carucate and hide, 
much depended upon whether it was used by Saxon or Norman 
surveyors. 

Almost as confusing are the numerous terms applied in the 
Survey to the various classes which at that time represented 
the Landed Interest, and under that head is virtually included 
the whole population of the kingdom. The necessity for so 
much nomenclature at a time when two class distinctions, the 
noble and the slave, seemed quite sufficient, surprises the care- 
less inquirer. But when we recall the exclusiveness and pride 
of the Norman patrician, the importance attached by his 
heraldry to precedence, and by his chivalry to honourable de- 
scent, surprise vanishes. It is noticeable, too, that the ramifi- 
cation of distinctive titles is greater below the social surface of 
nobility than above it ; possibly because the lower class, utterly 
cut off by impassable barriers from the upper, would have sunk 
into the depths of apathy had not each individuals social ad- 
vancement been provided for by a host of petty grades and 
well-nigh meaningless distinctions. Later on in Tudor times, 
the ambitious youth of the villeinage found the. cowl of the 
monk and the fiat cap of the trade apprentice a more suitable 
covering for scheming brains ; but these gateways of egress 
out of a despised condition of life, always jealously watched, 
were rarely if at all accessible in Conquest times. 

The various classes were entered in the Survey as follows : — 
1,400 tenants in capite. 7,000 cotarii. 
7,871 subfeudarii. 110,000 villanni. 

82,000 bordarii. 26,000 servl 


1 64 History of the English Landed Interest. 

But each of these is farther subdivided into numerous minor 
distinctions whose meanings have often baffled the deepest 
antiquarian research. Of the tenants in capite, all of whom 
held lands direct from the king, perhaps the " Barones regis " 
were the greatest. They were his immediate freeholders, hold- 
ing areas of land neither determinate in size nor number of 
fees. There were, too, the " Earls Palatine," whose state was 
little less than regal ; and there were " earls " simply, who lived 
little less magnificently. They had their own castles, techni- 
cally termed heads of the barony, which were well fortified 
and endowed with many privileges, and their demesnes were 
exempt from the tax of Danegeld. Tenure in capite of the 
king was twofold; viz. "in capite ut de corona," and "in 
capite ut de honore ; " the first of which signified a tenure 
originally " fefl" by the king himself, out of his own demesne, 
to hold to the feoffee and his heirs, of the king and his heirs ; 
and the latter came into use when escheats and wardships 
fell into the king's hands. Many of the "liberi homines" 
mentioned in the Survey were tenants in capite of the king. 
A " Miles " ^ might be a baron, in which case he took his 
name from the military fee and not from the ceremony of 
investiture with the accolade, girdle, and spurs, by which 
knights were created. Many of the Saxon thanes became 
Milites at the Conquest, and are called in the Survey Minis- 
tri or Servientes, though it is possible that the term Taini 
may include men of higher grade than either of the other 
two. 

Next in importance come the subfeudarii, of whom the 
vavassours take precedence. These held manors or honours of 
a mesne lord, not immediately of the king. Subinfeudation 

^ The truth is, that the creation called a knight's fee was a gradual pro- 
cess arising out of definite grants by lords to their subfeudarii, whom they 
designated knights. Speaking generally, the knight's fee is of later date 
than the Conqueror's survey, but the practice was introduced in Saxon 
times. These tenures were probably but carelessly looked after until the 
auxilium mOitum of the first Henry's time and the later scutage pay- 
ment drew upon them the tax-collector's eye. Comp. Stubbs, ConstU, 
Histf chap, ix., p. 284. 


Domesday Book. 165 

had not proceeded to such lengths at the time of the Survey as 
to require the creation of the term Paravail, which afterwards 
signified the rear vassal (xr lowest tenant of the fee. The 
Miles, also termed homo liber, was generally a subfeudarius, 
the value of whose fee (if he possessed a whole one) was 
probably £20, though fees varied in value according to the 
beneficence of the king or other donors of this class of tenure. 
We may be sure that an individual, whether he is called homo 
liber, miles, vav8U9Sour, or any other name, was of the seigneur 
class if he held his lands by sacha and soca,^ which signified a 
liberty to try causes, with a peculiar jurisdiction between the 
lord and tenants, or his men and tenants.' 

On the other hand, the application of the term socman signi- 
fied any one subject to the soc or jurisdiction of a lord.* He 
was a free socman if exempted from servile labour. The term 
seems principally applied to the villeins of the East of England, 
and therefore probably originated in the Danish settlements. 
This class was divided into free soccage tenants and villein 
soccage tenants, according as their services were honourable or 
the reverse. The former were generally liable to military ser- 
vice, and though free from the calls of ordinary weekly predial 
service on the demesne lands, were bound to perform the so- 
calldd precationes or special labour tasks at seed time and 
harvest, like their inferiors, the villein soccage tenants.^ 
Another name for these in the Survey is coliberti, of which 
only a few hundred entries occur. 

Arrived at the villein class, we shall not confine ourselves to 
the various terms contained in the Survey, but shall collate 
the principal nomenclature discovered in the Manorial Bolls 
of later years. 

Now, the two chief distinctions of this class were the villein 
regardant, who was said to be annexed to the Manor, and the 
villein in gross, who was annexed to his lord. It was an im- 

' Scui^saaa^ or ^ac/^u =litigatiQn; socu =: jurisdiction.— Stubbs, Constit. 
Hist 
' Xelbam's Domesday Book, 

• Ashley, Economic History^ p. 18, 

* Id., Ibid. 


i66 History of the English Landed Interest. 

portant legal distinction, because theoretically the latter, as his 
lord's personalty, could be bequeathed by will ; but the former, 
as part of the lord's realty, could only be demised, Vinogradoff ^ 
has been at pains to show that the two terms represented a 
technical difiference only, and might easily be applied to one 
and the same individual. Every villein was a villein re- 
gardant, but a small minority of the class were chattels of the 
lord. In the eyes of the Norman lawyer, however, there was 
no distinction amongst the villeins, who were considered 
slaves in the Roman sense of that word. The villein of the 
Norman period was the geneat' or ceorl' of the preceding 
Anglo-Saxon era, but even the geneat, without the privileges 
as well as the obligations of the oath of fealty, was in no sense 
the chattel of his lord, and was a superior person to the theow. 
Above that class which was actually enslaved, we may there- 
fore expect to find steps of social rank even under the 
generic term of villein. Among the terms that do not appear 
in Domesday Book is Astrier, which seems to have been 
applied to any individual attached to the hearth of a 
seignorial homestead. But setting aside such general nomen- 
clature as socman, villein, and Astrier, we come next to a list 
of terms partly in Domesday Book, partly in Manor Rolls, 
which distinguish the various grades in the social status of the 
rural population. Perhaps the highest of any would be the 
Drench,^ who seems to have been some privileged tenant, 
enfranchised either in the pre-Conquest days, or subsequently, 
on account of certain moneys paid annually as quit rent. 
Possibly the Saxon prototype of the Drench would have been 
the huscarl, who was the military retainer of his lord, and in 
close attendance on his person at board, war, and the chase. 
The Radmanni and Radchenistres were mounted individuals 
of the same class. They appear in the records about the 
same time that military service was most in requisition, 
and they vanish when the want for such service was less 

* P. Vinogradoff, Villeinage in England, p. B2. 

* Id., Ibid., ch. v., p. 144. 
■ Stubb?, ConML Hist 

* Kelham, Domesday Bk,, Glossary. 


Domesday Book. 167 

felt. On the other hand, there is Vinogradoffs supposition^ 
that they were riding bailiffs whose duty it was to super- 
vise and check the agricultural operations of predial and 
boon service. Next in importance were the coliberti, who 
came between the servi and homines liberi, and who held their 
freedom of tenure under certain conditions which still detained 
them in servitude. Chief of the servi was the bordarius, who 
was the gebur of the preceding era.* These villeins were the 
Qibeonites of the manorial community. They held a cottage 
and a small parcel of land for which they paid rent in such 
vile services as grinding, threshing, ploughing, drawing water, 
cutting wood, etc. But they had their social grades, such as 
the cotarii, who paid predial services of poultry or provisions 
in lieu of some of the more degrading labours enumerated 
above. To this class we may also assign the various holders 
of virgates, half virgates, or quarter virgates, who were dis- 
tinguished from each other under the many local terms of 
virgarius, yerdling, half yerdlings, majores and minores 
erdlinges, halferdlinges,' ferling-seti. The cotarii were 
further subdivided into majores and minores cotarii, the latter 
of whom could not have been very far removed from the 
grade of rusticus or nativus, a class which, without any de- 
termined tenure of land, worked at agriculture on the demesne 
lands, or performed less honourable duties about the manor 
house. 

We next come to a numerous list of synonymous terms, such 
as akermanni, carucarii, answering to our description above 
of the coliberti ; operarii, signifying individuals of the bordar 
class who rendered predial instead of monied service; ger- 
sumarii, by which is to be understood bordaru who paid a fine 
for marrying their daughters, and many others, which it is 
not worth our while to examine. 

Terms denoting the same social grade varied throughout 
the country; thus the landsettus of the Eastern counties 

* Vinogradofl^ Villtinagt in EngL, ch. vi., p. 407. 
» Id., Ibid., ch. v., p. 145. 

' Ashley, Economic HisLy p. 54, note 41, and Vinogradoff, Villeinage 
in EngLy p. 148. 


1 68 History of the English Landed Interest. 

might very well be transposed for the hidarius of the London 
district, both words denoting the occupier of an indeterminate 
portion of land. • 

Lastly, " homines " was a generic term applied by the lord 
to all his vassals,^ in much the same sense as a modem colonel 
applies its English translation to all those below commissioned 
rank belonging to his corps. It will be evident that the true 
meaning of most terms thus briefly examined depends greatly 
on the context where they occur. Thus, for example, the two 
terms, milites and socmanni, used conjointly, embrace all 
classes of the kingdom, and distinguish between tenures by 
military service and those by husbandry; used, however, 
singly, they allude to two special classes which were far from 
including the whole community. 

It is scarcely possible to scrape together sufficient data for 
any succinct account of the national agriculture during this 
period; and husbandry is so associated with the landed 
interest of later days, that it is almost futile to attempt to 
realise what an insignificant item it was in early Norman 
times. The Conqueror brought over in his soldiers' brains as 
little agricultural knowledge as was contained in those of the 
Saxon invaders. The latter, however, had the advantage of 
picking up a few farming hints from the aborigines ; but the 
Normans could have learned nothing they did not know before 
of the conquered English. Moreover, they did not care to 
learn, or surely they might have sought tuition from those 
pioneers of European husbandry, the Flemish, some of whom 
had formed a quiet colony about this time in Pembrokeshire. 
The afforestation of fertile lands, the erection of feudal castles, 
and inter-baronial wars, would at first demand so much native 
labour, that it is astonishing how any socmen were left to 
stave off a general famine. Even that vexatious law pro- 
hibiting all purchases above a certain amount save in the 
presence of witnesses, was revived by the Cionqueror. 

No wonder that the Saxon Chronicle continues to be a dire 
record of disaster. In 1070, 1082, 1086, and 1087, famine, 
murrain, and pestilence rang the changes throughout the 

' Kelham, Domesday Book, Glossaxy. 


Domesday Book, 169 

length and breadth of the land. In 1089 they were reaping 
their com at Martinmas, instead of watching the ensuing 
year's wheat crop shoot up into life. In 1096 and 1096 the 
produce was evidently insufficient to keep alive 1,500,000 souls, 
though a few centuries later, viz. 1760, this same country 
could grow sufficient in one season to feed nearly four times 
that quantity for four years. In 1098 the excessive wet de- 
stroyed the crops on all the low-lying soils. Even a great 
wind, as in 1103, was sufficient to cause starvation from short 
supplies, and — so the record goes on — boisterous weather, 
prolonged frosts and snow, immoderate rains, were ample causes 
for famine, blight, and pestilence. 

In the Edinburgh Magazine, vol. vi., 1762, there is a graphic 
description of a famine year in Henry KL's reign, purporting 
to have been transcribed from some ancient record. It begins 
with the usual celestial phenomena — the moon and stars red, 
the earth shadowed with " a thick myst of smoke," notwith- 
standing the north-east wind. The drought begins in March, 
late frosts almost destroy the fruits of the earth, and the 
summer's heat completes the destruction. The pastures bum 
up, and the grass can be rubbed in the hand to a powder. 
Fleas, flies, and gnats increase and torment the people. Dis- 
eases, sweats, and agues ensue. During harvest, murrain 
devastates the cattle. Norfolk, the fens, and the south country 
suffer most. Dogs and ravens feed on the carrion, swell, and 
die, and no one dares eat beef for fear of infection. Young 
<< heyters " and bullocks follow and suck the milch kine in the 
waste. Apples and pears blossom a second time after fruiting. 
After four months' drought the rains of August freshen up the 
soil, and the starved cattle batten and die from overfeeding on 
the fresh young grass. This is no doubt a typical instance of 
a season which left the people utterly destitute of means to 
defy the winter's cold and sterility. 

The Conqueror's chamberlain, Richarde de Rules, lord of 
Deeping, was one of the few great laymen who devoted his 
mind to land improvements. He seems to have converted the 
flooded marsh grounds about the river Welland into the 
orchards and rich com and meadow lands which now cover 


1 70 History of the English Landed Interest. 

the Deeping fen. The monks, too, were carrying out their 
traditional work of industry, and draining or clearing the 
worthless wastes which pious and superstitious souls from time 
to time handed over to them as conscience-money. 

Protected by the Church, which by a canon of the Third 
Council of Lateran threatened excommunication against all 
who molested her servants engaged in this pursuit, the 
peaceful monks hewed down trees and hacked up roots, drained 
fens and banked up rivers, marled and manured com lands, 
oblivious and indifferent to the harrying of farmsteads and 
cutting of throats which went on all round them. How the 
lands of great estates were cultivated we can only surmise. 

The same processes, no doubt, went on as have been de- 
scribed in the Saxon period. There was the in-field and the 
out-field cultivation. There were cowherds, neatherds, swine- 
herds, and keepers of bees. Humfred of Hertfordshire, we 
gather, possessed 68 animales, 350 sheep, 160 hogs, one mare, 
and 59 goats. The last mentioned, no doubt, like the vineyards 
of Middlesex (though termed in the Survey " newly planted "), 
and those in the Vale of Gloucester, were survivals of the 
Roman era. 

Then as now, there were market gardens at Fulham ; then 
as now, rabbit farming was practised in parts of the country. 
Owners of beech or oak woods let the pannage for every hog 
in ten that fed thereon. The Lords of Manors converted the 
waters of their streams into sources of profit by erecting mills 
and restricting their tenants to grind their com there, and 
even baked the flour at the common foume before they gave 
it back in exchange for a money payment. Portions of these 
old customs still exist under the form of multures in the North 
of Scotland, and are considered as safe a source of income as 
the tithe. 

Then, as now, there were ash groves, osier beds, young plan- 
tations, and hedgerow woods.^ Such are a few of the statistics 

* Compare the phrases in the Survey : — 

Silva CXL poTc! de pctsnag* ei de herhagio xuii pore, 

Silva minuta, Silva modica, 

Silva missa est in defendo, Silvula parvula, etc., etc. 


Domesday Book. 171 

gleaned from Domesday Book, which, added to the gloomy 
list of details afforded by the Asglo-Saxon Chronicle, and the 
insight obtained of Norman warlike laws and tastes, combine 
to form a picture in which the yellows of ripening crops and 
the greens of luxuriant herbage are almost invisible amidst 
the glittering greys of armour and the scarlet stains of blood. 


Zl)c flDfbble Uqc9. 


CHAPTER Xm. 

THE BIRTH OP THE LAND LAWS. 

So far our history has been the diagnosis of a country's travail. 
The pangs caused by no less than five invasions preceded the 
birth of a mighty nation. Such interior disorders as arose 
subsequently in class struggles betwixt king and baron ; par- 
tisan belligerency like the Wars of the Boses ; or the bitter 
religious conflicts of Reformation days, were but the usual 
infantile ailments of a vigorous babyhood; and the young 
nation waxed all the stronger, when at length surrounded by 
the gentler atmosphere of peaceful pursuits, because it had 
been well hardened by an early nurture amidst the turmoil of 
constant battle. We have, then, arrived at a period when we 
can distinguish the encouraging cries of the ploughman to his 
oxen from the battle shouts of angry combatants and the wails 
of the widow and orphan. Sweet strains of poetry, learned 
theses of science, and far-reaching schemes of statecraft begin to 
flow from the clerkly pens of Englishmen whose fathers' hands 
had learned but to grasp the sword. 

Henceforth the science of agriculture assumes a considerable 
importance in the economy of the English Landed Interest. 
It had long done so in other countries where the Teutonic in- 
fluence had failed to penetrate or exist. As early as the 10th 
century, Spain, under Saracenic auspices, was the seat of an 
advanced husbandry, which filled her treasury with an annual 
revenue exceeding £6,000,000 sterling. For works of irriga- 
tion and agricultural improvements of heroic proportions, we 
have only to trace the same country^s handiwork in Peru, 
where the penguin, for the sake of its guano, was as sacred to 

178 


The Birth of the Land Laws. 173 

the Inca, as the ibis to the Egyptian; though the motive for 
the former's preservation was as mundane as that of the latter's 
was divine. 

In the England of the period now about to be discussed, a 
marked feature of her rural life was the non-residency of the 
landowners. Most proprietors of real estates were crusading 
in Palestine, and with them had gone the mighty men of 
valour, the bellicose and the violent. This separation of the 
goats from the sheep had left the peaceful, the timid, and the 
industrious behind in England, where they experienced a free- 
dom from interference so unusual and refreshing, as to cause 
little wonder at their marked progress in the peaceful arts. 
The refined and educated influence of the Church, hitherto 
checked by the combined ignorance and violence of the mili- 
tary party, saw its opportunity, and put forth all its strength 
in the elevation of the socman and the enfranchisement of the 
slave. Later on, when the absent landlords returned from 
that country which, in the forcible language of Scripture, has 
been described as flowing with milk and honey, they would 
surely have brought back an increased respect for the husband- 
man and a deeper knowledge of his industry, even though they 
had acquired such feelings whilst trampling under foot the 
crops and fertilising the soil with the blood of those famous 
Saracenic farmers. 

With increased agricultural science grew up fresh legislation. 
If there is generally an intimate connection between a nation's 
politics and its agriculture, surely the intimacy between its 
laws and its agriculture is quite as great ! In the first condi- 
tion of society the idea of property to the savage was confined to 
a few moveables. The wide tracts of country covered daily in 
pursuit of food, would in no way inspire his mind with any 
ideas of possession ; nor in the patriarchal or nomad stage could 
such thoughts occur to the shepherd, as he glanced back on a 
plain nibbled bare by his flocks before he drove them forward 
to fresh pastures. But when meat and milk cease to satisfy 
the human race, and the art of agriculture induces man to sink 
labour and capital in the soil, he finds a connecting link between 
himself and it, which seeks expression in the word " owner- 


1 74 History of the English Landed Interest. 

ship." His efforts give him at first a right of excluding others, 
and then, as they come to produce a more lasting effect, a right 
of transferring his lands to others when death shall have de- 
prived him of their enjoyment. These first few steps are very 
similar in all nations. The Teutonic soldier, for instance, was 
once content with his " munera," or grant of seignorial powers 
over a certain area of land ; then, as his ideas grew, the *' bene- 
ficia " or life interest in the grant alone would satisfy him. 
But to hold such a grant for life on condition that the holder 
jeopardises that life annually in military service, was a land 
system which could not but breed a nation of cowards. Both 
parties therefore saw the necessity of the ^' feud " or extension of 
the grant to the sons of the tenant. And when man arrives at 
the difficult subject of land succession, he has reached a stage 
at which he requires some certain and powerful agency like the 
law to act for him at a time when he can no longer express or 
enforce his wishes. The greater and more permanent his im- 
provements to the property he demises, the greater necessity 
for the law's powerful assistance. That special branch of his 
industry covered by the term "husbandry" necessitates a 
special branch of legislation, which is the more comprehensive 
and intricate the more comprehensive and intricate bis 
husbandry becomes, until in this 19th century there is hardly 
any improvement known to an English husbandman which 
does not find its scale of compensatory charges in the agricul- 
tural Acts of recent years. It might almost be supposed that a 
shrewd farmer would be able to gauge a nation's system of 
husbandry by an examination of its code, and that a shrewd 
lawyer, reversing this process, could diagnose a nation's laws (at 
any rate those referring to real property) by the condition of 
its cultivation. Up to this period all English legislation, so far 
as it referred to fraud, had been confined to the prevention 
and punishment of any offences against movable property. 
The land could not be destroyed or stolen, and trade had been 
so little practised that delinquencies occurred too rarely in 
these interests to attract much legal attention. But the time 
had now arrived when their increased national importance 
necessitated a fresh class of laws. 


The Birth of the Land Laws. 175 

If the protection of goods and chattels had engaged the 
minds of the Saxon lawyers, tenements and hereditaments 
were now to occupy those of their Norman successors. 

Prom the earliest manuscript collections,, mere digests of 
local customs, to the incomplete attempts by later Saxon kings 
to codify their jurisprudence, was a fair stride in a right direc- 
tion. From the so-called Laws of the Confessor to the Charter 
of Liberties granted by Henry I. was another good step for- 
ward ; but greater than either of these was that giant stretch 
which carries the reader to the scene at Bunnymede. 

There is indeed very little referring to the land in the legis- 
lation prior to Magna Charta which need arrest our attention. 
The jurisprudence of the first Henry was a blow to many 
abuses arising out of feudal incidents. It eased the land of 
illegal burdens exacted by reliefs, marriages, military tenan- 
cies, and fines. His was a reign memorable rather for the en- 
forcement than the enactment of laws. The legislation of the 
second Henry referred more to the relationship between Church 
and State than that between Land and State, and far more 
important to the special subject in hand was the commutation 
for personal military service by the payment of scutage, than 
any of the clauses in the Constitutions of Clarendon. 

The expeditions to Palestine in the succeeding reign had 
exhausted the revenues. Excessive taxation had ensued, and, 
though personal property suffered, the land bore the greater 
part of the burden. The tax of carucage (Danegeld in fact, 
under a new guise) imposed a burden of five shillings on every 
hundred acres of land. The clergy headed a carucage war. 
The native English, who had made common cause with Henry 
I. against the landlords, now swelled the ranks of the landed 
interest. 

For a time the sparkle of glorious deeds dazzled the nation's 
eyes and paralysed its energy. But the succession of a 
meaner-spirited king brought the crisis to a head; and the 
throng that opposed John in the Egham meadow, on that 
sunny June day in 1215, represented every class in the country. 
Though the native English failed to get their longed-for resti- 
tution of the Confessor's code, they foresaw that any restriction 


1 76 History of the English Landed Interest. 

on the king's powers of taxation would benefit them. To his 
Norman subjects the charter was a preservation of their feudal 
privileges. Whilst to the king it was a nauseous potion, in 
which, only by the people's moderation, his royal supremacy 
was allowed to serve the purposes of a carminative. 

Of the sixty-three clauses which it contains, the first part 
refers to feudal obligations ; the second to the administration 
of justice ; the third to constitutional principles ; the fourth to 
cities and commerce ; and the fifth to royal exactions. As re- 
gards the landed interest, it freed the villein from every other 
master but his lord ; it protected the ward's estates from acts 
of waste by his trustees ; it restricted the incidents of aids 
to their three original purposes; it reduced their dues to 
proper proportions; it returned escheated lands to the lords of 
the fees at the expiration of a year and a day ; it exempted 
their tenants from any services not performable to their former 
masters ; like the modem law of distress, it excepted the con- 
tenement ^ of the soldier and artificer, and the wainage ' of the 
husbandman from amercements; by the writ of PrsBcipe in 
capite it protected the local jurisdiction of the court baron ; 
it replaced the king's power of levying scutage* by that of the 
Court of Common Council ; it introduced trial by jury, and 
established an uniformity in weights and measures ; it reduced 
the heavy fine on the nation's agricultural produce caused by 
purveyance and other royal exactions, so that a king's bailiff 
could take no man's cow for food without a ready money pay- 
ment, nor his horses and carts for carriage, nor his timber for 
building, without consent ; and, except where there was a pre- 
scriptive right, it stopped enforced labour for purposes of 
bridging and banking. 

Nor was there any possibility for kingly evasion of its terms. 
Every cathedral contained a copy which was publicly read twice 
annually. The surrender of London, the custody of the Tower 

^ The contenement was the generic term for any man's trade neoes- 
saries. 

' The wainage a specific term for the farmer's dead stock. 

' Scutage was a new land-tax imposed upon the tenants in chivalry, 
and not to be confused with the old Danegeld, which still existed \inder 
the name of donum or hidage. 


The Birth of the Land Laws. 177 

by the Primate for two months, and the election of twenty- 
five barons as conservators of the public liberties, left John no 
loophole for after evasion. This disturbance in the nation's 
constitutional law had only been held in solution by the 
agency of the Crusades. When its great men returned and 
saw the devastating results of the Saladin tithe ^ and other 
excessive taxes on their personal or real properties, it only 
needed the acidity of John's disposition to precipitate matters 
and cloud what had seemed all clear and limpid before, with 
the turbid forces of resistance and rebellion.' 

But besides liability to abuse by royal exactions, there were 
other weak points in the feudal harness which required legisla- 
tion. The propensity for alienation, always great in soccage 
tenures, and now grown great in even military holdings, had 
already begun to require legal restraints. It was thus 
checked in Magna Charta; it was checked again in the 
reign of Henry III. ; and it was still further checked in the 
reign of him who has been termed the English Justinian 
(Edward I.). It has been ahready mentioned, that by the 
process of subinfeudation the rear vassals had so lost sight 
of the original owner as to have ceased to recognise his 
rights to their escheats, wards, and marriages, which they 
had come to consider as discharged if rendered to their own 
immediate alienator. In order therefore to annul the powers 
usurped by the lower grades of land tenure, such as mesne 
lords and paravail, the Statute of Quia Emptores was enacted, 
which however, though it restored the superior lord's rights, 
weakened his power in another direction. Land (at any rate 
in England, where the vigour of feudalism had become relaxed) 
had been rendered by the new law as much a subject of com- 
merce as had been allodial land in Saxon times. To the ex- 
clusive and haughty soul of an hereditary aristocrat like the 
Norman, the upstart landed proprietor was a grave shock. 
That through the misfortunes or excesses of individuals his 
select circles should be exposed to such intruders as wealthy 
villeins was intolerable, and induced him to resort to the pro- 

* This was a tax on personal property imposed by Henry II. in 1188. 
' For further particulars of Magna Charta vid% Stubbs, Eoyal Cfiarters, 


178 History of the English Landed Interest. 

cess of entails as a means of protection. The statute '^ De 
Bonis Conditionalibos " gave him public sanction whereby he 
could entail his estates, so as to free them from the dangers of 
alienation, rent charges, and forfeiture. This Act not only 
revived the drooping spirit of feudal law, but fostered such an 
increasing power amongst the landed interest, that in process 
of time the great proprietors were not only able to enslave the 
people, for that they more or less had always claimed to do, 
but occasionally to menace the throne. It was not till com- 
merce had created a class as wealthy as that of the landowner, 
with a power over the attainment of luxuries which the heavy 
burdens on the latter*s revenues prevented him from ever 
enjoying, that the landlord began to shake off those fetters of 
entail which hitherto he had hugged, and to barter his acres 
for the merchant's gold. 

The power to entail admits a right of absolute ownership, 
contrary to the principles of the other statute for which 
Edward I.'s reign is remarkable. If " Quia Emptores " re- 
stored the original lord's feudal rights, " De Bonis " could 
apply to his demesnes only. A feud, we have said, represen- 
ted a grant of seignorial rights over lands to a vassal and his 
sons, the fief reverting to the lord at their deaths. But as the 
vassal grew more independent, and the lord stood in greater 
need of his class, succession was extended by law to grandsons, 
and afterwards to descendants ad infinitum. We require to be 
constantly reminded that lands in those times were of small 
value in comparison with other property, and that therefore 
the improvements of a vassal were often infinitely more im- 
portant and valuable than the sites they occupied. Nominally 
the land might belong to the owner, practically it was his who 
enjoyed its possession ; a distinction which gave rise to the 
terms " dominium directum " and " dominium utile." The 
finishing stage in the method of succession was the establish- 
ment of primogeniture. The inheriting of all the cluldreii 
equally was the ancient law of the land, and it died hard, if it 
may be said to have died outright, as long as Gavelkind exists 
in Kent. In Canute's laws it showed vitality, as also in those 
of the Confessor. It flickered up into life again in Henry L's 


The Birth of the Land Laws. 1 79 

reign, where, in instances where there were two or more fiefs, 
the eldest son had only the " primum patris feudum." 
Though in the case of military fiefs it may be said to have 
received its deathblow in Henry II. 's reign, the eldest son did 
not become the heir ab intestate of soccage fiefs until long after. 
Only as the distinction between soldier and socman faded 
away; as military fiefs became converted into civil ones; as 
their lords saw better and easier chances of obtaining the rents 
from one individual than from many ; and as the soccage ten- 
ants perceived that subdivision of the succession would pre- 
vent their families competing in splendour with those of their 
neighbours, the military tenants, did the old custom of all the 
sons succeeding in capite finaUy breathe its last. In such 
violent times it is not to be expected that the right of repre- 
sentation was much looked after or observed. The infant 
orphan seldom succeeded his grandsire if he had an uncle alive, 
though on his uncle's decease he would have preference over 
his cousins. In fact, succession often depended upon the 
qualifications of the rightful heir. If he were incapable from 
infirmity or age, some other relation better qualified to perform 
military services became the successor. If, too, an eldest son 
was in possession of a fief elsewhere, he was often excluded 
from his deceased father's fief, possibly because he could not 
well guard over or perform military service for both. This 
was not a Norman innovation, for instances are forthcoming 
at a period of English History earlier than feudalism. Thus 
Edrid, succeeding his brother Edmond I., usurped the English 
crown to the exclusion of his nephews, Edwy and Edgar, the 
infant sons of the former, and Edwy succeeded his uncle to the 
exclusion of his uncle's sons. Thus also William Bufus, the 
second son, succeeded to his father's throne of England, be- 
cause his elder brother was already provided for by the Duchy 
of Normandy. 

Progress can be also reported in the methods ot conveying 
land, always a difficulty to half-educated nations. The savage, 
who cannot receive actual possession of any property, has to be 
educated by symbols into the sensation of possessing it. ^ He 

' Compare Blackstone's distinction between corporeal and incorporeal 


j8o History of the English Landed Interest, 

requires much the same ocular proof of this process as he re- 
quires in the adoration of his deity. For the former the sym- 
bol, for the latter the idol, supplies his want. The delivery of 
a shoe by Boaz, a bough by the Englishman, earth by the 
Scotchman, are instances of symbols used in the conveyance 
of land. At the time under discussion the proprietary rights 
over land were so complex that we may excuse the medisBval 
Englishman if he needed some such substantial proof of posses- 
sion as that demanded by the savage. The process of convey- 
ing a manor from one individual to another signified that 
there was a transference of ownership over a small portion of 
its lands, of seignorial rights over another and larger portion, 
and of mixed proprietary and seignorial rights over a third 
and last portion. In other words, the new lord obtained the 
mastership, in a more or less restricted sense, over its people, 
the proprietorship of its demesne lands, the ownership of cer- 
tain services and rents on its servile fields, and the joint right 
with other people to obtain certain necessaries out of its waste. 

Antecedent therefore to the institution of Charters how very 
essential must have been the ocular proof of all this; to furnish 
which the splendid incidents of a feudal transfer of seignorial 
powers over land, with its homage, fealty, and investiture, were 
purposely rendered as imposing as possible. 

The proud bearing of the lord was intended to commemorate 
his retention of the " dominium directum," just as the humility 
of the vassal commemorated the limitation of the grant to the 
" dominium utile " only. But though conveyances by livery 
were not really abolished till the reign of Charles II., and even 
then survived in Gavelkind land, the " breve testatum " * was 
often granted at this time by superiors on application. It was 
confirmatory of the investiture, and paved the way to the 
later institution of Charters. 

There are thousands of these old documents still in existence, 
but it requires a long practice before any one can decipher the 
abbreviated Latin and obsolete Norman - English of their 

hereditaments. The former consist of such as affect the senses, the latter 
exist only in contemplation. — Comm., Bk. U., c. 2. 
» Blackstone, Comm., Bk. H., v. 807. 


The Birth of the Land Laws. i8i 

contents. The keepers of our Public Record Office, long 
familiarised with these parchments, will glance cursorily at 
the words " Sciant presentes et fuiuri^'* with which the eccle- 
siastic who acted as scribe generally commenced his task, and 
then look on for the customary abbreviations, such as An., 
reg., regs.. Hen., sec., p., conq., vismo Oct., die Jov., pxm., a., 
f., ss., P. et J., which gives him information of the day, year, 
reign, and century in which it was drawn up. But if, as often 
occurs in the case of the smaller charters used in the convey- 
ance of private lands, there be no date, the expert compares 
the curious handwriting with that of other charters, carefully 
noting the Anglo-Norman words used, and the nationality of 
the numerals, until he is soon in a position to venture a 
shrewd guess, not only of the decade, but very year of the 
particular century in which the document in question was 
written. He wiU also easily translate " hen. t. ten." into the 
familiar legal phase of " to have and to hold," or "Huj.'s test," 
into its English equivalent of " In witness whereof, etc." 

As this History progresses proofs will be forthcoming from 
time to time of the importance gradually attained by English 
Commerce. To a trading people, as Blackstone points out, the 
writ of Elegit was a signal benefit. It is one more advantage 
derived from the wise rule of Edward I. It provided for an 
execution, not only upon goods and chattels, but upon lands ; 
the latter of which were further charged in a Statute Mer- 
chant for debts contracted in trade. 


Z\)c rftt&bblc Bfica* 


CHAPTEE XIV. 

ESTATE MANAGEMENT. 

We have no means such as the lens, used in the analysis 
of a beam of light, to focus all at once the component parts, 
which in combination form a history of the land. We are, 
therefore, obliged to separate it out as through a prism into 
its several rays, leaving for a time the agriculture in order to 
fix our eye upon the laws, and turning from these to scrutinise 
the owner's management. We have watched this last-named 
process among British nomadic tribes, we have studied it 
again under some modified system of the Mark, then under the 
Anglo-Saxon allodialist, and now we propose to study it further 
at a period when the Norman tenants in chief and subfeudarii 
have erected their castles or manor houses on the sites of those 
rude rambling sheds which served as board and shelter for the 
Anglo-Saxon land proprietor. 

The country parish of the thirteenth century was not unlike 
that of the present day. There was the manor house of the 
lord surrounded by his demesne, the glebe of the parson, the 
small estates of the freeholders, the allotments and tenements 
of the villeins, and the common or waste ground on which all 
the tenants had rights of pasturage and sometimes of turbary. 
It is only when one looks closer that a difference is detected 
between the domestic economy of a.d. 1200 and that of a.d. 
1800. Thus the hall of the manor house combined all the pur- 
poses of a modem village room, local law-court, dining hall, and 
estate office; the solar corresponded with our 19th century draw- 
ing-room ; and the dormitory represented that sleeping space 

182 


Estate Management. 183 

which is now occupied by a dozen or more separate bedrooms. A 
glance directed through any of its mica-glazed diamond-shaped 
lattices would have disclosed wider diflferences still. Instead 
of costly Sir Joshuas and Gainsboroughs which deck the walls 
of a modem hall, sacks, scythes and reaping hooks would be 
the chief mural decoration of an ancient manor house ; instead 
of the warm yielding pile of Turkey and Indian carpets, its 
floor would be strewn with rushes; and instead of the luxurious 
plush-covered lounges of a modem reception room, the solar 
furniture would be rude stools and benches stuflfed with wool 
or covered with beehive-fashioned straw cushions. Closer 
scrutiny, too, will show strong dissimilarities between the 
various classes of the landed interest and their occupations 
then and now ; between Norman tenants in chief and modem 
noblemen, subfeudarii and 19th century squires, free tenants 
and tenant farmers, villeins and day labourers, servi and (be it 
written with shame) the live stock of a modem farm. 

But let us examine in detail the various branches of estate 
management, for we have arrived at a period when the manu- 
scripts of Walter of Henley,^ of an anonymous writer on 
husbandry, of another anonymous writer on the duties of the 
Seneschal, and Bichard Qrossteste's laws, afford us ample 
information on the subject. In times of bad roads, distant 
and unfrequent markets, and dangerous travelling, it was the 
policy of an owner to make his estate as self-supporting as 
possible. Sales of produce ^ were therefore rare, and his stock 
of money small — circumstances which induced him to employ 
the predial rather than the money-paid services of his 
labouring dependants. The available amount of vigorous 
muscle was an important consideration, and compelled him to 
place strong restrictions on its exodus from the Manor. Any- 
thing that tended to diminish the numbers of his workpeople 
tended to diminish his income and the market value of his 
property. Therefore, even their education, much more their 
choice of a profession, were subject to his consent. Depletion 
of his labour supply, by recruits enlisted in the ranks of 
the clergy or apprenticed to town trades, was never permitted 

* Walter of Henley, pub. by Boyal Hist Soo. Introduction, p. xiii. 


184 History of the English Landed Interest. 

to exceed reasonable proportions. It will be also evident that 
times of tumnlt, such as the Norman Conquest, and years of 
disease, such as those of the Black Death visitation, quickly 
brought down prices in the real property market and caused 
depression and discontent. 

As soon, however, as the country was opened out by better 
roads, and the increase of a trade population enhanced the 
value of farm produce offered at the public fairs, the hire of 
labour for money replaced that system of predial service, 
which had not only caused great expense to the lord, but great 
inconvenience to the villein. Thus we shall not be surprised 
to find, as we dip deeper into the subject, that the former was 
compelled to keep a large staff of estate of&cials, whilst the 
latter was immensely hampered in his husbandry, especially 
if a heavy or unkind soil required the employment of every 
seasonable hour for its proper cultivation. Though the whole 
community of the villeinage was responsible for the short- 
comings of the individual, this we may be quite sure did not 
altogether prevent delinquencies, however sharply boon ser- 
vices were scrutinised. 

Before we examine the duties of the various estate officials 
it will be best to glance at the distribution of the land. 

Let us then ascend in imagination an eminence whence all 
the estate can be discerned, and gaze around t)n the busy 
scenes of Lammas day. 

The rough waste yonder, partly wooded partly wild grass, is 
dotted about with sheep and cattle in separate companies, each 
attended by its respective shepherd or neatherd. The pro- 
portions of these flocks and herds vary from the few young 
steers of a humble villein to the fine head of stock belonging 
to a vavasour or miUtary tenant. Occasionally, amidst the 
scrub, a glimpse is caught of some errant porker, after whom 
darts the swineherd's dog, eager to restore him to the rest of 
his fellows, who are feeding on the pannage of those beech 
trees. Down in the marshy ground is a rude pigsty, where, in 
severe weather, the swine are sheltered, and even now some jfew 
weakly members or £etrrowing sows may be lying about inside. 
The various neat and swine herdsmen are hardy fellows, sleep- 


Estate Management. 185 

ing eacli night with their charges in whatever shelter their 
ingenuity has been able to construct. This then is the common 
ground, where the villagers' cattle feed, "horn with hom,"^ 
and just before we turn to look elsewhere, the eye is caught 
by a flash of bright colours among its trees, then a heron flaps 
slowly upward, and a mounted hawking party riding into the 
opBn, let loose their falcons on the prey. These no doubt are 
the inmates of that manor house over there, which is easily 
distinguishable from the other neighbouring village tenements 
on account of its superior size, and surroundings of garden, 
fishpond, pigeon cote, grange, and rabbit warren. Around it 
lies the arable land of the demesnes, on which the boon 
labourers are just finishing harvest. The seneschal rides about 
supervising the work, and the provost flings the last armful of 
the crop up to the waggoners with a gesture of relief, while 
the large crowd of boon tenants' can scarcely refrain a cheer. 
They, poor fellows, have been on short commons the last month 
or so, and are eagerly looking forward to the annual replenish- 
ing of their diminished stores. 

On another spot down by the river the eye lingers to note, 
even thus early in this glorious August morning, the milch 
cows greedily browsing on the unwonted feast of meadow 
aftermath. Busy groups of people under the watchful eye 
of the hay ward are removing the temporary fences, and it is 
not too late in the season for us to detect the rougher herbage 
where these temporary fences had divided the growing hay 
into those separate doles for which the community earlier in 

^ There were four kinds of common rights— common of pasture, t.e. 
cattle feed ; common of piscary, 9.6. catching fish ; common of turbary, t.e. 
digging turf ; common of estovers, t.e. cutting wood. — Blackstone, Comm,^ 
Bk. II., ch. 3. Common appendant was the right to put beasts of the 
plough or such as manure the ground on the lord's waste ; common ap- 
purtenant was the right to put other beasts there, such as hogs, goats, 
etc. — Ibid, 

* This boon service is not yet extinct. There is a book kept on an 
estate in Lancashire where the tenants still perform certain boon services. 
The book records the practice. 

The custom of harvest labourers in parts of Norfolk to go round at the 
completion of their work and shout largess at aU the better classes of 
houses, is a survival no doubt of this period. 


1 86 History of the English Landed Interest. 

the year had balloted. Those numerous small ricks fenced off 
from the mouths of hungry cattle, inform us that here it is the 
manorial custom for the haycrop to be allotted to the various 
claimants of the villeinage, whereas one great stack would 
have shown that the lord claimed the crop and his tenants 
only the aftermath. 

Bunning our eye along the '' ings '' on each side of the river, 
it arrives at the mill, which probably belongs to the lord, un- 
less, like that of the Prior of Holy Trinity in Wallingford, it is 
held in frankalmoigne by the vicar, the round tower of whose 
Saxon church dwarfs the manor chimneys and even the clumps 
of trees on his glebe land. 

But our eye is now attracted to the " wistas," those narrow 
lengths of cultivation on the "servile land" in which the 
yellows of overripe wheat and barley crops form a strong con- 
trast to the sepia colouring of the fallow ground. This is the. 
famous two-field system of husbandry, shortly to give way to 
the better trinity system, when the lines of yellow and brown 
tracts will alternate with the russet green of ripening pulse 
crops. The owners of this portion of the manorial produce have 
hitherto been too busy at boon service to find an opportunity 
for their own harvest operations ; but as soon as the lord's com 
is in stack they will be hard at work, knowing that each day's 
procrastination postpones the hour when their half-starved live 
stock on the waste shall be allowed to roam at will over the 
stubbles and fallows of the commonable land. As the breeze 
waves aside for a moment the overshadowing com, we catch 
a glimpse of the rough herbage of the untilled " balks " and 
" butts " which respectively divide and terminate these strips 
of cultivation. Those odd comers of the arable fields which are 
so difficult to plough, are called either crustoa, pightels, gores, 
fothers, pykes, no man's land, or Jack's land, emd are occu- 
pied by individual tenants. Eoughly gauging areas with our 
eye, we are able to proportion the land in villeinage and that 
of the demesne at respectively two-thirds and one-third of the 
whole. A few of the better dressed tenantry, possessors pro- 
bably of whole virgates in the commonable land, appear to 
be comparing in despondent tones the probable yield of their 


Estate Management. 187 

crops with that just harvested on the lord's demesne. An offi- 
cial, most likely by his dress from the neighbouring monastery, 
has attached himself to the group, and is estimating with an 
expert's eye the probable value of the rectorial tithe. Here 
and there amidst the tenants' com appears a strip of stubble, 
denoting those parts of the servile land which form a portion 
of the demesne. 

Adjoining the arable ground are one or two superior-looking 
pastures, technically known as '^ hams," on which cattle or 
sheep can be finished off and rendered prime for the butcher. 

One remaining touch completes the picture. Far away on 
the distant horizon a sharp eye will detect the baronial banner 
fluttering from the highest tower of the tenant-in-chief 's castle. 
The Lord of the Manor has been there many a time to render 
feudal service, for powerful though he be here, he is the vassal 
of the great noble yonder, whose warder's pikes and moat 
waters are just now reflecting the glittering sunlight. 

But if (still in imagination) we allow ourselves to convert 
those distant battlements and turrets into the towers and spires 
of a stately abbey,* the scene around represents the industry 
and pursuits of Church vassals. Seldom liable to military 
service except on special occasions, and holding their lands for 
a small quit rent or moderate proportion of the produce, they 
could pursue their husbandry without those interruptions fix)m 
boon service and annual calls to arms in which the tenantry of 
the lay barons employed more than a moiety of their days. Their 
infield (as the permanent arable lands were termed) would there- 
fore display a heavier yield of oats and here in the alternate 
husbandlands or raines between the riggs than the crops our 
fancy pictured in the servile lands of the manor; and even the 
" outfield " would show here and there temporary cultivation, 
where some more than usually industrious '^ feuar " had chosen 

* It will be noted that in order to bring in all the terms in use, the 
former scene has been imagined in the south, this latter in the north of 
England, where infield was used instead of common field, spence instead 
of solar, raine and rigg instead of dole and balk, etc. The term infield 
must not he confused with the Saxon term inland. The former was 
the common arable field of the community, the latter the Saxon lord's 
demesne lands. 


1 88 History of the English Landed Interest. 

to break up the virgin soil of the common sheepwalk. Amidst 
the general lawlessness and disorder of the age, the Church 
vassals were considered a privileged class and were seldom 
molested, though their villages were fortified by occasional 
towers whose overlapping battlements and advanced angles 
became hastily manned by sharp-shooters in times of peril. 
Then, even if some daring intruder survived the heavy cross 
fire of quarrels, the nail-studded oaken doors defied his severest 
assault. Cottages thus fortified belonged to the principal 
families of the township. They were miserable dwellings 
at best, erected at the occupant's expense and paid for by some 
yearly nominal rent, as an acknowledgment to the lord that 
they were there on sufferance. Except the principal room, used 
for every kind of house work, and called the " spence," there 
was no place worthy of human habitation. A rough ladder led 
to the sleeping compartment, which was a cramped space 
jumbled up with the roof timbers. The inmates were con- 
tented enough if but allowed to gather in unmolested their 
turf and firewood fix)m the outfield and their bread and ale 
from the infield. These, together with the salted meat of the 
steer killed each November, an occasional pigeon pasty, a 
capon now and then, a fish or two from the river, and a 
cabbage out of the garden, sufl&ced to keep body and soul 
together. Nor did they grudge their masters the venison 
joints, the wafers, flamms, or pasty meats which they heard, 
perhaps from their friend the abbey kitchener, were served 
each day in the great oak panelled refectory. Much less did 
they grudge or withhold the annual quit rent, which was paid 
all the more cheerfully and regularly both because super- 
stitious piety shrank from withholding the Church's dues, 
and memory recalled many a kindly service emanating from 
their reverend landlords' monastery.^ Compared with the 
tenants of a lay barony, even setting aside their immunities 
from military service and molestation, these Ohuroh-land 
tenants had far the best of it. They had resident and indul- 
gent landlords, whose education and calling would not allow of 

* Sir Walter Scott's Monastery contains a very faithful picture of wbat 
has just been roughly painted in the foregoing pages. 


Estate J 

harsh treatment, much less I 
an idealised form of feudal te 
and possibly nearer to what ^ 
mind when he wrote to Sir < 
la petite culture and eulogis< 
from the eminence and inqui 
unaided eye cannot convey t< 
ing off to some other manor o) 
is too busy to rein in, and w^ 
official. He is an important ; 
man, and his day is quite 
modem estate agent, of wl 
knowledge of law is essent 
advise the bailiffs beneath hi 
of inquiry into the rents, se 
manors under his supervisii 
courts, lands, woods, meado 
other such matters liable to j 
legal warrant.' He has, toO| 
and reference of the deme^ 
cultivation of each field, anc 
check the accounts of seed h 
estimate the exact number c 
the arable lands, at the rat 
acres ; deduct from this sur 
predial, or money services, 
stock which the meadow lat 
acreage necessary for the m 
to the Estate EoU for tb 
common lands available as 
sharply after the farm man 
for one of his duties inve 
compensatory fines for bad 
" neglect of guard " over 1 
of the bailiff and other for 
watchful eye. All this is s 

* Vide Letters and Memoir i 

* Seneschancie^ pp. 84, ^eg., ' 


190 Ifi 


191 


agent thaticad of live 
is containeie pastures. 
Q-eorgian >g subdivi- 
or Chitty !al separate 
Contracts, 

defined. T^me among 
his lord wl close and 
orders; ait manorial 
ported to t)cted out of 
ships, mar] on his own 
homage or^Qg to the 
warrant f#©r was the 
of the latfr house, or 
authority ^ tenant-in- 
this early - house and, 
ant for theParly rising 
each man< yoking and 
provement^ok, and the 
where he similar to a 
ought to ling glance, 
great bardte down the 
superintendial service, 
peculiar EJl's warrant, 
taken, and at his own 
those ported firewood, 
baron were^cnts of the 
so in cases fern, which 
his resoun'ni of forage 
employ th^ purchasing 
wisest ancjal's warrant 
into the ^n from his 
in the rollprder of the 
the custon ptirchase of 
areas pert^bove which 
each manc^ sold in fair 
which con 
both the g^ 


I go History of the English Landed Interest. 

agent that the reader will scarcely credit that the information 
is contained in a thirteenth-century MS. Long ages before the 
Q-eorgian legislation on the powers of Factors, and Addison 
or Chitty had written their learned treatises on the Laws of 
Contracts, the seneschal's limits of power had been clearly 
defined. Thus we read that he could not dismiss any servant of 
his lord who was kept and clothed by him, without his special 
orders ; and any dereliction of a bailiff's duties had to be re- 
ported to the lord in council. Nor could the seneschal sell ward- 
ships, marriages, or escheats, nor dower any woman, nor take 
homage or suit, nor sell or make free a villein, without special 
warrant from his employer ; a proviso which savours strongly 
of the later power of attorney, whereby alone the limited 
authority of agency can be legally enlarged. In the words of 
this early writer, " the seneschal ought not to be chief account- 
ant for the things of his ofl&ce, for he ought on the account of 
each manor to answer for his doings and commands and im- 
provements, and for fines and amerciaments of the courts 
where he has held pleas as another, because no man can or 
ought to be judge or justice of his own doings."^ But the 
great baron himself, if fond of a rural life, would sometimes 
superintend his seneschal's management.^ He had his own 
peculiar Estate Boll from which that of the seneschal's was 
taken, and even the heads of each manor possessed copies of 
those portions referring to their particular bailiwick. If the 
baron were ever in doubt (and he must needs have often been 
so in cases where his manors were far off and seldom visited) 
his resour^je was the king's writ, which empowered him to 
employ the sworn evidence of twelve men chosen out of the 
wisest and most loyal freeholders and villeins, who inquired 
into the difficulty and embodied the results of their survey 
in the roll. This purported to supply information concerning 
the custoits, usages, services, franchises, fees, tenements, and 
areas pertaining to all the parcels of land which composed 
each manor. But besides this, there wets another kind of roll 
which contained the names and description of each manor, 
both the actual and possible number of its ploughs, the 
* Senescfiancie, p. 87. * Robert GrosstesUy p. 121. 

i 
\ 

\ . 


Estate Management. 191 

acreage of the arable and meadow lands, and the head of live 
stock existing as well as capable of existing on the pastures. 
And here is perhaps the first ^ allusion to the coming subdivi- 
sion of the business of the Court Baron into several separate 
assemblies. 

It is evident that the seneschal could never find time among 
all these multitudinous engagements for that close and 
detailed supervision which the husbandry in each manorial 
demesne demanded. It was the bailiff, a man selected out of 
the villein class, who performed this duty, acting on his own 
responsibility in all trivial transactions, but looking to the 
seneschal for advice on an emergency. The former was the 
servant of the subvassal who inhabited the manor house, or 
in cases where the manor was kept in hand by the tenant-iu- 
chief, the bailiff himself often tenanted the manor house and, 
like the seneschal, was the baron's officer.* The early rising 
and late attendance entailed by the supervision of yoking and 
unyoking each day, the management of the live stock, and the 
superintendence of all farming operations, are so similar to a 
modem bailiff's duties as to scarcely require a passing glance. 
But besides these duties he had to estimate and writedown the 
acreage ploughed, reaped, or harvested by the predial service. 
He was not allowed to bake or brew without his lord's warrant, 
nor to entertain a visitor on the manor except at his own 
expenses.^ His sole perquisites were straw, hay, and firewood. 
His task was to keep a watchful eye over the contents of the 
granges, and prevent the removal of straw, hay, or fern, which 
had to be consumed on the manor either in the form of forage 
or as manure. A curious rule restricted him from purchasing 
the winter seed-corn without the lord's or seneschal's warrant 
by writ.* The spring seed, however, might be sown from his 
own store, unless " cheapness prevented him by order of the 
writ," a regulation which seems to imply that his purchase of 
seed-com was limited to a certain market price, above which 
he might not go. What little produce had to be sold in fair 

^ Vide chap. xxz. of this book. 

■ SenescJianciej p. 91. Translation of Boyal Hist. Soo, 

» Id., Ibid. * Idem, p. 93. 


192 History of the English Latuied Interest. 

or market could not be purchased by any of the farm servants. 
Every death among the live stock involved an oflS.cial inquest 
before the bailiff was allowed to sanction the flaying of the 
dead animal. It is quite possible that he had to produce all 
skins periodically before the seneschal, to satisfy him respecting 
any deficiencies in the numbers of the herd or flock, and explain 
the causes of death. Possibly, too, these skins had to be kept 
for estimating the Church's dues from mixed tithes, as in an 
ensuing paragraph the bailiff is warned that he should attend 
^' the annual selling and tithing of the lambs, and the tithing 
of the wool and skin, because of fraud." 

It seems to have been customary for the bailiff to call in at 
three stated intervals of the year the services of that person 
who corresponds most to the modern veterinary surgeon. The 
'^ disease of May," and later on when mortality from this disease 
set in, and again after Lammas were the periods fixed. The 
bailiff's policy was of course to dispose profitably of as much sheep 
and cattle as possible before the winter. About August, there- 
fore, he began to cull his weaker animals and fatten them off on 
the best pasture available. These would be sold off as soon as 
fat. From then till Michaelmas he was gradually selling off, 
killing for home use, or salting as a winter meat reserve as 
many as were not likely to survive the cold and bad feeding of 
the ensuing six months. To help him to carry out these many 
duties there were the provost ^ and the hay ward. The former 
was the smartest hand in the township, and was chosen ^^ 
annually by the community of villeins.* He superintended 
the early rising and behaviour of the court servants, the 
cultivation of the demesne lands, the proper attendance on the 
various herds and flocks, and the quality and excellence of the 
dairy produce. He kept accounts of the services of the boon 


* Seneschanciey pp. 97, seq, 

- The post of provost or reeve was not, however, an envied one ; and 
notwithstanding his partial exemption from hoon service and perquisites 
of extra land, meals, and horse keep, the lord had often to insert in the 
Manor Bolls a clause proving the legal liability of all holders of virgates 
or half-virgates to be elected to the post. — Ashley, Economic Histoif/j 
ch. i., p. 12. 

I 


Estate Management. 193 

tenants, whether worked out or commuted, and handed them 
periodically to the bailiflC. 

Unlike the provost, the hayward was permanently appointed, 
but otherwise the duties of the two men were very similar. It 
seems however probable that the provost, who is further on 
called the lord's chattel, was a kind of champion to the boon 
tenants, representing their interests as opposed to those of the 
lord, which the hayward looked after. For this reason the 
former supervised the work of the court servants, so that their 
deficiencies should not add to the predial services of the class 
he represented.^ 

The cowmen slept in the stalls with their charges, the 
ploughmen with the oxen, and the waggoners with their 
horses. All these men were closely watched, to prevent their 
absence from duty at markets, wrestling, wakes, or taverns.* 
The waggoners were strictly forbidden to ride their horses, or 
in any way maltreat them ; and the shepherd's office was con- 
sidered such a position of trust as to require pledges for his 
good and faithful service.^ Besides the remaining rank and 
file of the labouring class we may briefly allude to the messor, 
or chief reaper, and to that body of radmen or riding bailifife 
which Yinogradoff has touched on, but about the existence 
of which we have been somewhat sceptical in an earlier 
chapter. 

An interesting account by Professor Thorold Eogers in his 
Six Centuries of Work and Wages,* introduces us to another 
estate official, the scribe or clerk, who probably led an itinerant 
life travelling from estate to estate whenever his services were 
required. His busy time was no doubt between July and 
Michaelmas, the most usual period for an annual stocktaking 
in the 13th century. Under the direction of the seneschal 
or bailifi" he drew up on parchment the lord's profit and loss 
and capital accounts. The names of the estate and the receiver 
of rents, and the date of the king's reign were engrossed on 

* Seneschancie, Trans. Royal Hist. Soc., p. IQQ, 

• Id., Ibid. pp. 101, 115. 

• Id., Ibid. p. IIB. 

* Six Centuries of Work and Wages, pp. 49 sqq. 


194 History of the English Landed Interest. 

the head of the roll, both front and back. The first entry was 
the arrears debited to the bailiff, then followed the rents of 
assize, %,e. fixed payments of the tenants ; next the rents of the 
grinding and fulling mills, the com and stock sales, commu- 
tations for labour rents, sales of produce and wool, manorial 
fines, heriots, pleas of court, and sundries. The expenses in- 
cluded bad debts, charges payable, cost of ploughs, carts, com, 
stock, dairy utensils, etc., building charges, wages, and extra- 
ordinary items. Lastly appeared the sums paid to and for 
the employer. The ikck of the roll showed the valuation 
of the stock carried over from the preceding Michaelmeis 
and compared with that taken a twelvemonth later, and 
any balance to the good was debited to the bailiff's list of 
liabilities. 

The auditors were often ecclesiastics, who performed all the 
business required of the modem representative of this class, 
but in addition had to go round the granges and check the 
figures in the bailiff's stock account, even searching out 
omitted items of produce and recounting the skins of dead 
stock. 

It was customary to close the granges after harvest so as to 
admit of the usual stocktaking before the visit of these officials. 
A prudent landlord in such times of periodical famine was 
wont to reserve a whole season's com produce in his granges 
as a resource during unfruitful years, in this way following out 
the example set by Joseph in Egypt, though possibly incurring 
the people's curse which Scripture imputes to him that with- 
holdeth com. The yearly visit of the lord, to examine the 
accounts, and his attendance, together with that of the whole 
population, periodically at the court or homage leets in the 
manor hall, was the little that as a rule was seen of the great 
landowners of this period ; but, as subinfeudation increased in 
proportions, the baronies became subdivided among the rear 
vassals, who no doubt by their permanent presence, save in 
rare instances, rendered obsolete the office of seneschal and 
the bailiff's occupancy of the manor house. The change was 
so gradual as to have escaped the notice of historians ; but it 
cannot be doubted that the system which it introduced of 


Estate Management. 195 

smaller estates and resident landlords, instead of great pro* 
vinces managed by paid service, was largely beneficial to the 
subordinate classes of the landed interest. 

This alteration relegated the legal portion of a seneschal's 
duties to the family attorney (a profession which soon after 
became very crowded), and the more practical duties of estate 
business to the bailiff, who grew to be regarded as the land 
steward, while the hayward vanished only to reappear as 
baiUff. 

Before we take leave of the seneschal it would be interesting 
to inquire how these experts were trained. One is left to 
wonder whether the office, like that of bailiff, was hereditary, 
or whether the occupation of the modem " mud pupil " can 
boast of a Norman origin. It must be borne in mind that the 
seneschal was more like a nineteenth-century Scotch factor 
than an English estate agent, for he combined the three pro- 
fessions of lawyer, banker, and steward in his single calling, 
subjects which require a life-long study in order to insure 
satisfactory results. He was probably a polished and courteous, 
if somewhat stiff oflScial, reflecting much of the chivalry and 
exclusiveness characteristic of that exalted class which called 
for his services, and as apt to catch the tricks of manner, and 
idiosyncratic touches peculiar to his particular employer, as 
is any my lord's " gentleman " now-a-days. Let the reader, 
however, bear in mind that, save in this one trait, there can 
be no comparison between the real gentleman who performed 
all the dignified duties of a proconsulship over his baronial 
master's lands, and the serving man who nowadays answers 
his master's bedroom bell and blacks his master's hunting 
boots. In Canon Bridgeman's History of Wigan,^ he gives 
a list of highborn persons who held the coveted offices of 
bailiff and seneschal over the parson's manor; and in 1B51 
Sir Thomas Langton, the Lord of Newton, acted as chief 
steward, with three or four heads of good county families 
officiating as deputy stewards under him. Though in this 

* G. T. 0. Bridgeman, History of Church and Manor of Wigan, p. 127 
(note). 


196 History of the English Landed Interest. 

case the sentiment of honouring the Church may possibly 
have been mixed up with the more mundane desire for a lucra- 
tive office, there is no doubt that as a general rule some very 
good blood flowed in the veins of those who filled this post on 
the great medisdval estates. 


mismmmmmsmmaBBm 


Zbe nDibble Uqcs. 


CHAPTER XV. 

LIFE AND WOBK ON THE BABONY. 

On the principle of giving precedence to whom precedence is 
due, let the rural life of a grand seigneur commence this 
chapter. We will then choose as a typical instance one who 
takes an interest in estate affairs, recognises his onerous duties, 
and is naturally disposed to a peaceful country existence. In 
order to realise most thoroughly the features of such a domestic 
life, let the reader assume the r6le of some honoured guest 
who has been invited for a space to share the magnificent 
hospitality of a baronial castle. Met at the door by porters, 
ushers, and marshals, he would at first feel bewildered at the 
host of ready hands outstretched to relieve him of his mails 
and travelling attire, until the seneschal, in no way to be con- 
fused with the already-mentioned estate officer, advances to 
his rescue, and leads him away to prepare a hasty toilet for the 
great midday meal in the hall. Passing over the preliminary 
introduction to his host, the reader must imagine the scene of 
repast, with its great high cross table at present unoccupied, 
and the baronial freemen, consisting of knights, chaplains, and 
gentlemen, arranging themselves at the two side tables, which 
were placed at right angles to the raised dais. These gentle- 
men are all neatly clad in the baronial livery, and too carefully 
looked after to appear in ragged tabards, soiled herigauts, or 
imitation short hose. After they are seated the crowd of 
grooms files in and sits lower down, rising and leaving to- 
gether at the conclusion of the meal. Under their table might 
be observed the leathern jacks of ale, and upon that portion 
allotted to the gentry the wine bottles, while under the lord's 

197 


198 History of the English Landed Interest 

are both vessels of wine and ale, a fistshion as rigidly adhered 
to then as is the modern arrangement of serving the various 
drinkables to each guest in turn. The lord now enters, and 
takes his seat at the middle of the high table, with his guests 
and family on either side of him, and two overseers super- 
intend his repast. Then the pantler bearing the bread, and 
the butler the cup, march up the hall together, and the mar- 
shal tells off three valets to serve the high table, and two 
others the rest of the diners, with drink. Each course is 
brought in by the servers from the kitchen, and preceded by 
the seneschal, who, while not thus engaged, stands in the 
centre of the chief hall. Other servants take meats to the 
carvers, and, before attending to the wants of his own parti- 
cular table, the lord watches their service until these have 
been placed in the hostel. His dish is then heaped up with 
viands, and constantly refilled for distribution right and left. 
The hostel is served with two large and full dishes of meats 
for the grooms and two lighter dishes for the freemen ; but at 
supper one less substantial dish with cheese suffices, unless the 
addition of unexpected guests necessitates a larger supply. 
This is all the food allowed, except in alms ; for suppers and 
dinners out of hall are as a rule prohibited.^ 

A lord of the type selected would no doubt spend the greater 
part of his time in travelling from manor to manor. Once or 
twice a year he would probably visit the great fairs of the 
kingdom, in order to buy such necessaries of life as were not 
produced on his lands. Qrossteste, Bishop of Lincoln, who 
wrote a treatise on the duties of great landowners, advises my 
lord to stay only short periods at each of his manors, lest he 
leave them in debt, from which it may be inferred that every- 
thing was home-grown and home-made, except such commo- 
dities as wine, wax, and robes, the two first of which could be 
bought at St. Botolph's Fair, and the last-named at that of 
St. Ives. 

Turning next to the occupations and diet of the working 
classes we are confronted with a formidable task. Only those 
in a position to collect together the contents of many Court 
' Vidt Les Beules seynt Eoberd^ Robert Groaateste, 


Life and Work on the Barony. 199 

R>lls, and compare custom with custom, tenancy with tenancy, 
rent with rent, and service with service, could accurately in- 
form us what were the commonest every-day duties of a 
villein on the thirteenth-century manor. We should like to 
know something of the value of land, expressed either in 
money, produce, or service ; how and where the various rents 
were rendered, and many other particulars, which custom of 
the country, the Estate Rental, and other office archives 
would nowadays afford the student of estate management. 
But without proceeding far into detail, one is able to describe 
in general terms the nature of the various holdings, the classes 
of people who occupied them, the way they farmed, and the 
daily routine of their life. 

We must not, however, expect to be able to unravel the 
duties and occupation of that numerous class of agriculturists 
to which we were introduced in our examination of Domesday 
Book and later Manor Bolls. Besides names already familiar 
to us from the examination made then, we might collate from 
the different Manor Rolls of the period a longer list still, such 
as Lundinarii," Terendelli,* etc., signifying certain subtle gra- 
dations of rank, and perhaps only explicable by some one well 
posted up in the customs of the time and locality. 

We can, however, reduce the necessary list to a few simple 
and general distinctions, according to the area of land occu- 
pied by each individual agriculturist of the mediaBval manor. 
The arable lands held in villeinage were split up into virgates 
and half virgates for purposes of distribution among the farmers 
of the district. The villeins who held whole virgates head the 
list, after them come the holders of half virgates, next the 
bordars holding a cottage and one or two acres, and last the 
servile labourers. 

As to their various occupations, we shall find very little 
different to what the Rectitudines Singularum Personarum 
of an earlier period would lead us to expect. There were the 
days of each week set apart for predial service on the lord's 
demesne, and the extra work or precationes at seed-time and 
harvest on the same lands. The rest of the year's work was 
* Yidt Ashley, Ec^onomic History, chap. i. (note 41). 


200 History of the English Landed Interest. 

taken up with the cnltivatioii of their own crops on the servile 
land. Now a virgate or half yirgate was not in itself sufficient 
to employ the time throughout the year of one yoke of oxen, and 
we may therefore conclude that the heavy ploughs of the de- 
mesne drawn by eight oxen, and the service of the averagium, 
or work for the lord's carts, were performed with the oxen 
belonging to the villeinage. Even the more important imple- 
ments in use on the servile lands were probably the property 
of more than one individual. Occupiers of less land than a 
whole virgate would scarcely possess more than one plough 
beast, so that the system of cultivating the lands in villeinage 
would still take that form of coaration which we have before 
suggested was the custom in the tribal era of common field 
husbandry. 

The principal meals of the villeinage were dinner at 9 a.m. 
and supper at 6 p.m. This class fared no doubt better in seed- 
time and harvest, when the precatibnes and other miscellaneous 
services on the demesne lands helped to eke out their own 
private supplies of food. In fact, the regular weekly routine 
of predial service never left them wholly dependent upon their 
own food resources ; and there must have been times when the 
meat broth, bread, cheese, and drink, which was apportioned 
out according to each manorial custom on boon days, would be 
the greatest godsend to the half-starved victims of a famine 
year. To take an example, the daily allowance at Hawstead 
included two herrings, milk from the manor dairy for cheese 
making, and a loaf of bread, fifteen of which were made from 
one bushel of wheat. Much of the com grown by the lord 
went in this way. It was the wages of every waggoner, 
ploughman, and neatherd on the demesne, each of whom re- 
ceived about one quarter every two months. They had also 
land and stock of their own, and even the shepherd possessed 
his special sheep. On the Wolrichston Manor, besides the two 
herrings as a daily harvest allowance, there was a pig for sub- 
division among all the farm labourers ; ^ and on many other 
manors they were feasted after harvest, even being allowed to 
bring a friend. These rights to sustenance and allotments of 
* Bogers, Fric/ts and Agriculture^ vol. i., p. 17. 


Life and Work on the Barony. 201 

victual or provision for maintenance went by the legal term of 
Corodies.^ 

Both villein and serf fared, lived, and died very similarly. 
Existence from harvest up to the long nights and cold blasts 
of winter must have been fairly bearable. There was more 
milk than usual, eggs, and a fowl now and then, such garden 
greenery as nettles, cabbages, and onions, and a warm early 
rising and late setting sun, all of which helped to keep body 
and soul together. But during the long, dreary, dark winter 
the sufferings and discomforts of the majority must have been 
considerable. The poor tenant came home on dark winter 
nights to his draughty damp mud hut, with its glassless open- 
ings for light and chimneyless holes for smoke, only to retire 
at once to that straw kennel which served as bed, where he 
shivered under the sheepskin coverlet till it was time to grope 
his way out and resume work. Many a dark hour before day- 
break must have brought home to some poor pious fellow the 
magnitude of that sacrifice which had devoted a candle to the 
shrine of his patron saint. Then, as the corn store grew less, 
and the long diet on salted viands began to threaten his emaci- 
ated frame with scurvy and leprosy,^ there is little wonder that 
he constantly transgressed the forest laws, stringent though 
they were, on the chance of capturing a plump partridge or 
well-flavoured hare. One need not doubt, too, that the manor 
grange and larder were then as now open to the genuine cry 
of distress, and that many a famine-stricken household owed 
relief to some Lady Bountiful, the progenitrix of a long line of 
dames which will never die out until the landed gentry are 
themselves extinct. 

The infield, or terra villanorum, where grew the crops on 
which depended a man's very subsistence, must have been 
watched with hopeful or sickening expectation in proportion 
as the April showers or cold May winds respectively freshened 
or withered the young com. There is little wonder that the 
utmost care was taken to insure absolute equality to all, both 
in the contour of the land and variableness of the soil. The 

* Blackstone, Comm.^ Bk. II., chap. 3. 

• Eogers, 8ix Centuries of Work and Wages, p. 96. 


202 History of the English Landed Interest. 

throe divisions into which the whole infield was plotted out 
were further subdivided into ten acre " shots," " furlongs," or 
"flats," and again subdivided into one acre strips, locally 
known either as rigs, ox gangs, dales, balks, landshires, etc., 
which were fenced off between seed-time and Lammas Day, 
after which they were thrown open to the community's live 
stock. 

The system of Lammas lands is only suitable for the most 
forward soils and localities. Though the JuUan Calendar was 
in use until superseded in 17B2 by that of the Gregorian sys- 
tem, and old Lammas Day was therefore the 12th instead of 
the 1st of August, we are forced to conclude that the harvest 
was seldom garnered in the north before, and often delayed in 
the south to September, 

The date for the resumption of common pasturage rights 
over the infield was frequently therefore postponed. Thus the 
records of St. John at Hackney contain entries such as the 
following : " July 26th 1692. Proprietors of the commonable 
lands allowed ten days to carry off their crops on account of 
the wett." Again in the year 1703, memorable for the great 
storm which reduced all Queen Ann's subjects to the fald stool 
and fast, a similar postponement of fourteen days' grace after 
Lammas is noted in the same records. 

Every claimant was allotted strips in each of the three 
fields, and the very strips were dotted about all over, in order 
to insure for each not only some fallow ground yearly, but 
some good as well as indifferent soil. The practice too of 
allowing the villein either a share of the meadow hay crop or 
pasturage on its aftermath enabled him to fatten his cattle 
and milk his cows long after that period of the year when the 
herbage of the waste had ceased to nourish them. These plots 
or doles in the meadow pasturage were balloted for as late as 
the present century in some of the Midland counties. 

The whole system was the best under the circumstances ; 
but when the introduction of root crops altered the character 
of English husbandry, the Lammas lands became an intoler- 
able nuisance. 

Such generally was the life and work of an English manor 


Life and Work on the Barony. 203 

during the Middle Ages. For the sake of details let us now take 
an example. On the Manor of Cuxham^ we find that the 
holder of a military fee would have to pay about 40«. annually 
as scutage, that a jfree tenant would be paying about 1«. per 
acre for a portion of his land, and a pound of pepper, valued at 
1^. 6(2., for another of nine acres. A householder would be 
under an obligation to keep two lighted lamps in the church ; 
the parish miller would be paying 40. per annum for his tene- 
ment ; a serf, for the occupancy of about half a virgate, would 
be rendering, (a) a quarter of seed wheat at Michaelmas, a peck 
of wheat, four bushels of oats and three hens on Nov. 12th, a 
cock and two hens at Christmas, and two pennyworth of bread 
annually as predial payments ; (&) the complete tillage of 
half an acre of the demesne, any extra duties demanded by 
the bailiff, and three days' reaping by himself and a man, as 
boon services ; (c) and a money payment at Nov. 12th of one 
halfpenny. In addition to these, his lord's consent was of 
course required for the marriage of his children, the sale of his 
live stock, and the fallage of any oak or ash. The cottager had 
to pay about \s, 6d. annually for his tenement, perform a 
day or two's haymaking at a halfpenny's wage, and do four 
days' labour in com harvest in exchange for his food whilst 
working. The rest of his time was at his own disposal and 
was employed in hiring himself out as herdsman or labourer 
to the richer occupants of the manor. If he could not some- 
how contrive to get into an ecclesiastical profession his highest 
ambition would probably be to become bailiff, and live in the 
manor house ; an office which often became hereditary. 

These mixed rents of partly compulsory, partly boon, and 
partly monied services defeat any attempt at accurately 
estimating the value of lands in MedisBval times, though 
Professor Eogers has accomplished all in this direction that is 
possible. 

The population, size, proportions of land distribution, and 
acreage under cultivation, of course varied in each manor. In 
the Eastern counties two-thirds of the village of Hawstead 

* Vide Eogers, Six Centuries of Work and Wagea^ p. 89, and Prices 
and Agric, vol. i., p. 72. 


204 History of the English Landed Interest 

were held by seven persons and the other third was occupied 
by twenty-six persons. The lord held in hand 572 acres of 
arable land, 60 of meadow, 40 of wood, and pasture for 
24 cows, 12 horses, and as many oxen. His live stock con- 
sisted of 10 horses, 1 bull, 20 cows, 10 oxen,^ 6 heifers, 6 
calves, 92 sheep, 200 two-year old sheep, 6 geese, 80 capons, 
1 cock, and 26 hens. No doubt his cote contained a large 
flock of pigeons,' which, together with rabbits from his warren 
and fish from the moat, largely supplemented the other foods 
which were dished up at his table ; thirty-two tenants did suit 
at his court, and their provost was not only exempted from 
various services but ate his meals at the lord's table and 
" liveried " his horse in the manor stables. 

The processes of cultivation practised by good thirteenth-cen- 
tury farmers have been handed down by several ancient writers; 
and taking first the rotation of cropping, we gather that wheat 
rarely succeeded a spring-sown crop, such as barley or oats, but 
was put in just after the last ploughing of the summer fallow. 
The land was ploughed three times during its year of fallow,' 
first in April, a second time in June, and lastly about Michael- 
mas. A mixed team of oxen and horses* (two of each), was 
preferred for the plough, except on very hard or stony ground, 
when a team entirely of oxen worked best. They ploughed if 
anything quicker than horses, for they were always moving and 
never came to a standstill like the latter on boggy ground, and 
their costs of keep were considerably less. Both lands of animals 
were stalled for twenty-five weeks, beginning from St. Luke's 
day (Oct. 18th) and ending on that of the Holy Cross, or about 
the end of April. During this period the horse ate one-sixth 
of a bushel per diem of oats at \d, and twelve pennyworth of 
grass in summer, his shoeing cost one penny per week, making 

^ In this case it would seem as if the weekly predial and boon service 
was performed with the lord's plough beasts. 

* The pigeon cote was the lord's monopoly, except on church lands, 
where there was less " red-tapism." Bahhit skins were used as articles of 
clothing. 

' The fallow land was called warectatio. 

* The plough horses were called " aflfri," Anglice " avers." Their hair 
was collected hy the provost to make ropes of.— fTosefrotuferte, anon. 


Life and Work on the Barony. 205 

a total annual cost per annum, without reckoning fodder or 
chaff, of 12^. 5d. The ox whilst stall feeding consumed one 
pennyworth or three and a half sheaves of oats weekly, ten of 
which yielded a bushel of grain, and twelve pennyworth of 
grass in summer, which, without fodder or chaff*, would make a 
total annual cost of 8«. Id. ; and further, argued Walter of 
Henley, when both beasts are worn out, there is the value of 
the horse's skin verms the meat on the ox's carcase. Now such 
cogent reasoning as this induces the reader to pause and 
consider if the Sussex people are so very behind the times 
in clinging to plough oxen while the champions of modern 
scientific husbandry are improving the breed of their gigantic 
shire horses. 

Clay and stony soils were sown early, before the dry March 
winds hardened or desiccated the seed bed. Chalky and sandy 
lands were left to the last, and marshy ground was well ridged 
up, though we are not justified in concluding from this that 
there was any process similar to that of raftering by means of 
the modem double-breast plough. 

Sometimes wheat succeeded another crop such as barley, 
but not usually.^ The costs and profits of the crop per acre, 
according to "Walter of Henley, were as follows : * 

Three ploughings, at 6d. . . . 16 

Two bushels se^ . . . . 10 

Harrowing 1 

Weeding OJ 

Heaping 6 

Carrying 1 

£0 3 Ij 

' Walter of Henley implies the succession of a spring crop to the 
** warectatio," and therefore wheat to a spring crop, when he si>eaks of 
the three ploughings as taking place respectively in April, after St. John's 
Day, and at seedtime when the earth is firm. Oomp. Walter de Henle, 
Boyal Hist. Soc, 1890, p. 13, and Rogers, Six Centuries of Work and 
Wages^ p. 443. 

' Professor Bogers is prohahly correct in surmising that sowing was 
always performed by the bailiff, and therefore never counted in the cost. 
Prices and Agriculture, vol. L, p. 16. There was no rolling, and weeding 
was performed in June with the mattock or hoe. 


2o6 History of the English Landed Interest 

The value of the straw was considered equivalent to the 
cost of thrashing. If the crop only yielded three times the 
amount sown^ and was sold at sixpence per bushel, there would 
be a loss of three-hal^nce per acre ; and the writer deduces 
from these figures the importance that every farmer should 
attach to the selection, annual change, and proper cultivation 
of his seed wheat." It is evident that straw was of very little 
value, except for thatching ; and the stubble, if not removed 
and used on the premises, was left so high as to have been 
worth purchasing in cases where bad farmers could be induced 
to sell it. It does not seem to have been used with manure, 
for the latter was generally mixed with earth and placed in 
compost heaps. The object of this seems to have been very 
vaguely understood. It is not profitable to expose the early 
errors of empirical knowledge unaided by science, but it is 
worthy of notice that Walter of Henley,* in explaining that 
manure wastes in descending and that marl wastes in ascend- 
ing, completely traverses the real position of the case. Alas ! 
that whilst chemistry was in the hands of the Alchemists, who 
hung up young alligators in their laboratories to scare the 
curious from the worthless secrets of their crucibles, and vainly 
tried to make impossible gold by spoiling useful brass, the 
ammonia of the farmyard was volatilising far above, and the 
lime of the marl-dressing was sinking far below the root fibres 
of those crops which they might have fertilised. 

The management of the live stock was necessarily different 
to that adopted in modem times, not because less care was 
taken, but because the value and uses of the various species 
were different then to what they are now. Of course the 
introduction of the root crops, some few centuries later, 
completely revolutionised the winter management of live 
stock. The best time to buy beasts was between Easter and 
Whitsuntide, when they were cheapest. The oxen were each 
day bathed and groomed with a wisp of straw, and gene- 

^ The average yield per acre was 10 to 12 bushels, according to Fleta. 

* The rate of seed sown per acre was 2 bushels of wheat, or rye, 2 
bushels of beans, peas, or vetches, and 4 bushels of barley. — Bogers, Pnces 
and Agriculture^ voL i., p. 16. ' Walter de Henle, p. 21. 


Life and Work on the Barony. 207 

rally fed a{ mid-day when at fall work. Male calves were 
weaned gradually, from the end of the first month to the 
beginning of the third ; but the heifer calves were not allowed 
to remain with the cow so long. The average yield of milk 
varied according to the cow's pasturage. Those cows fed on 
salt marshes yielded half a wey* of cheese, and a quarter of a 
gallon of butter per week, on the waste ; on aftermath, or on 
stubbles, somewhat less. The dairy was generally under the 
management of a woman,* but supervised by the bailiff. On 
some manors no cow was milked after Michaelmas, and no ewe 
afler August ; in fact, it is difficult to see any possibility of 
yield after the grass failed. No doubt salted butter and cheese 
supplied the wants of the population during the long interval 
of winter, and the necessity of milk was less felt in an age 
when tea or coffee had not even been dreamed of. The milk 
of the cows and sheep was often mixed for the purposes of 
cheese-making, the busy time for which commenced at 
trimilchi, a name given to the month of May, since the cows 
then began to be milked thrice daily. 

The value of a cow's milk during the twenty-eight weeks, 
from Michaelmas to May was averaged at tenpence on those 
manors where it was the custom to milk them ; but from May 
to Michaelmas it was worth three shillings and sixpence, so 
that the most profitable management was to use or sell the 
winter's yield of milk and make cheese of the summer's. 
During the six summer months the average yield of one cow's 
milk made six stones of cheese.' The annual value of an ewe's 
milk, during the period she was milked, averaged sixpence. 

The sheep-fold was sprinkled with fresh earth once a fort- 
night, a practice which betrays the permanent nature of this 

* The wey was equivalent to 14 stones in weight. The gallon of butter 
weighed 7 pounds. Comp. Walter of Henley, Rogers, Prices and Agric^ 
vol. L, p. 54, and Hosebonderie^ Boyal Hist. Soc. Professor Rogers sur- 
mises that the butter was melted into the gallon jar. — Prices and Agri" 
culture, MedisBval Agriculture, vol. i., p. 54. 

' The dairy woman was technically termed the Deye. It is a common 
surname in Norfolk even now. 

^ Prof. Rogers estimates the largest cheese at not more than 8 lbs. — 
Prices and Agric. For prices of dairy produce, vide Hos^bonderie^ anon. 


2o8 History of the English Landed Interest. 

erection ; for, unlike the modem enclosure of hurdle«, it was 
probably a fixed lambing court, the floor of which would soon 
become tainted and spread foot-rot aud worse disorders unless 
thus renovated. The sheep were sorted out once a year, 
between Easter and Whitsuntide, and those for sale shorn 
earlier and fattened on some stinted pasture. Any old ewe, 
or toothless wether was killed and salted for the use of the 
household servants and labourers. Between Martinmas and 
Easter the sheep were kept up in the fold and fed with hay, 
straw, and pea pods. 

The successful management of swine depended much upon 
the care bestowed on them during the three trying months of 
February, March, and April. They were allowed to lie a good 
time on dry ground during the morning, after which they 
began to roam about in search of pannage. According to 
"Walter of Henley it was possible for sows to farrow thrice 
yearly. How this could be it is difficult to imagine. They 
and the sucking pigs were especially looked after, being 
separated out of the drove and brought nearer home. Geese, 
poultry, peacocks, and bees* were also kept, especially on 
demesne lands, and were mostly in charge of the dairy 
women. Hedging, ditching, and open guttering for drainage 
were performed by the demesne labourers, and in autumn 
there was in addition the cider and oil making. One quarter 
of pears and apples made a '' tun " of cider, and out of a 
quarter of nuts four gallons of oil could be expressed. The 
various old MSS.* from which the greater part of this account 
has been drawn, frequently allude to the tithe dues, both 
predial and mixed, and there is very little doubt that both 
kinds were rigidly collected by the monastic and secular 
clergy at this time. 

Let us end our description of medieval farming with a scene 
from the vision of Piers the Plowman. One of those bright 

^ One gallon of honey fed the contents of eight hives daring the winter. 
— Hosebonderie, For management of swine, vide Walter of Henley, p. 29. 

* Namely Walter de Henle, Hosebonderie^ and Les RerUea Seynt Roberd^ 
hobert Grossteste^ who was the friend of Eoger Bacon. — Trans. ofBoyal 
Hist Soc. 


sov^sn 


Life and Work on the Barony. 209 

mornings in early spring has emptied the village and filled 
the common field. Besides the proper tillers of the soil 
there are bakers, brewers, butchers, woolwebsters, weavers 
of linen, tailors, tinkers, tollers, masons, dikers and delvers. 
In a word all the community which by their various industries 
made each mediaeval village so independent of outside help, * 
have come out to further the spring cultivation. .. 

i It is a " faire felde fill of folk," some " settyng and sowyng 

swonken ful harde," others "putten hem to the plow," and all 
" worchyng and wandrying." There is not one there who is not 
directly or indirectly interested in those handsful of grain " 
which are being flung so rhythmically into the furrow. What- 
ever prevents their fructification decreases the means of the 
community's livelihood during the ensuing season, and no one 
helping there to-day can view such a possibility with indiflfer- 
ence, just at the very time of year when he is experiencing 
what exactly being on short commons means. 
This, however, is a day of hard bodily toil ; and bearing in 

. mind that it is not right to muzzle the labouring ox, no one, 

who has the means, can resist the shouts of " Hote pies ! bote 
pies ! " raised by the cooks, or the tempting liquids displayed 
by the tavern keepers, whose respective stock in trade has 
been brought down to the very scene of action. Everybody is 
busily engaged, save the priest yonder, who has come to look 
on, with thoughts divided between the cultivation of the crop, 
of which one-tenth would be his harvest tithe dues, and the 
possibility of detecting a plump hare amidst the fern and 
rough grass of the " fourlonges." His perceptive powers, dull 
over the perusal of " seyntes lyues," are keen enough when a 
chance of sport is forward. Educated in such a good school of 
agriculture as the monastery we should have expected that his 
supervision and advice would have been invaluable on such a 
day as this ; but, according to the anticlerical Lollard who 
writes this account, the whole of the workers turn with dis- 

I gust from such a false teacher to beg the truth from Piers, and 

we must now take leave of him in the T6le of adopted leader, 

I exhibiting Ids professional skill to the agricultural community, 

I who have made him the hero of the day. 


Zbc ni>i&Me Ugce. 


CHAPTER XVL 

THE TBANSFORMATION OF THE LANDLORD INTO THE LANDOWNER, 
AND THE VILLEIN INTO THE TENANT FABMEB. 

The principal laws of this period bearing on the land in its 
relationship to the feudal system have been already considered, 
but there still remains to discuss a class of legislation whtich 
was necessitated by an alteration in the status of both classes 
composing the landed interest. "We have arrived at a period 
in the history of the English land when its owner was be- 
ginning to find out the small advantage to himself and the 
lajrge disadvantage to the labouring class of the villeinage 
system. Now the reason for this discovery was, that the old 
ideas of seignorial relationship with both land and people had 
been gradually undergoing a change. It had been all very 
well to own and command men in warlike times ; but now that 
nations were beginning to regard bloodshed less as a pleasant 
pastime and more in the light of a stem necessity, to be 
avoided if possible, landlords began to look into their seignorial 
rights with a view to extracting from them something more 
lucrative than that which jurisdictory powers and military 
tenures had hitherto produced. When the feudal system was 
first constructed, men's minds had never grasped all that land- 
ownership would some day come to mean ; otherwise the 
subject would have been dealt with on different lines and in 
more definite terms. The thirteenth-century lawyers had 
therefore to continually invent fictitious rights, such as the 
lost grant, in order to keep pace with the growth in ideas on 
proprietorship. 

On the other hand, the people were not likely to relinquish 


Alterations in the Tenure of Land. 2 1 1 

without either a struggle or a quid pro quo the grasp that they 
still retained on a portion of the soil. How far both parties 
considered that those rights extended is a moot question. It is 
not so long ago that we were tracing primeval man's limits of 
ownership to the herbage of the plain, or the wild animals of 
the chase which it supported. Now, however, his sense of 
proprietorship had grown into a claim which comprehended 
the very bowels of the earth. Minerals were becoming an 
item in the national profits. Besides the early industry of the 
tin miner, lead was being exported from Welsh lodes, iron 
worked in Sussex forges, and coal dug in the neighbourhood of 
Newcastle to such an extent that the jury presented to a thir- 
teenth-century assize that the way from Newcastle to Core- 
brigg was much damaged " per fossas et mineras," and that 
people travelling by night were much endangered. 

But we have little evidence as to the terms on which these 
minerals were got. The cinder heaps in the Forest of Dean 
and their recalcining in after ages 'prove little beyond the 
scanty knowledge possessed by Roman ironfounders. A coalpit 
at Preston in Haddingtonshire had been granted to the monks 
of Newbattle in 1219 ; Henry III. gave a licence to dig coal in 
1234, and the monks of Dunfermline in Scotland had been 
granted liberty, in 1291, by William of OberweU, to get it for 
their own use in his lands of Pittenberg. In 1325 the monks 
of Tynemouth were granting leases varying from £2 to £6 per 
annum to mining tenants; and though, at the end of the 
thirteenth century. Parliament had petitioned the king to pro- 
hibit its use, a good deal of the mineral was carried by ship 
from Newcastle to London, whence arose its name of seacoal.^ 

Nor does Professor Rogers enlighten us beyond giving the 
prices of thirteenth-century iron and steel. The former, he 
states, was sold by the piece, twenty-five of which were equal 
to the hundredweight ; and the latter by the garb or sheaf, 
containing thirty esperducts or gads.' 

Scant though these evidences are, they establish the rights 

> We shall discuss the History of English Mining more fully in Part 
II. of this work. 
* Bogers, Pi*ict8 and Agric, vol. ii. 


212 History of the English Landed Interest. 

of landownership to something a great deal deeper down 
than the surface, and it is of vast importance to collect and 
treasure up these early traces, which establish a precedent at 
the first infancy of that mining industry which now supplies 
the whole world with either raw material or hardware. We 
are a nation particularly subservient to precedents, and turn 
back to history for knowledge how to act whenever our national 
lawyers find themselves amidst unusual surroundings. It is 
thus our great unwritten code of Common Law has been com- 
piled ; and whether it be a king's insanity^ or an unusual phase 
of conjugal relationship,' our judges hark back to precedent for 
their ruling. 

We cannot but doubt then that these early traces of mining 
leases have played over and over again an important part in 
the Common Law of this land. The whole question of mineral 
proprietorship opens out a wide field of thought. Tin, for 
instance, was being excavated at the period of the so-called 
village communal system; and it would be interesting to learn 
how a tribal economy would dispose of its profits. The earliest 
existing reference to Cornish customs of tin mining is contained 
in the Charters of 3 John and 33 Edw. I. ; and the rights of 
the miners are mentioned as ancient even then. Who first 
originated these grants of privileges to the tinners, or rather 
who first assumed the seignorial jurisdiction over such privi- 
leges, is a secret of the remote past. It is not improbable that 
the pre-historic inhabitants of the tribal era of Cornish history 
were totally ignorant of the tin industry. From the very 
earliest ages this part of Great Britain had been exposed to 
foreign influences ; and it is not at all unlikely that the rights 
to dig tin and turves to melt it with were originally vested in 
the person of some exploring PhoBnician merchant or Spanish 
mining expert. 

Handed down from time immemorial, these privileges at 
length found legal recognition in the above mentioned 
charters. By the first of these ancient deeds only the old 

* Macaulay, JTw<. of Engl. 

■ Edward Turner, article on Baron and Feme in the Incorporated 
Law Society^ 8 Proceedings^ of the 18th Meeting, 1891. 


Alterations in the Tenure of Land. 213 

rights to mine and melt the metal wherever tinners had been 
used to do so before in the moors and in the fees of the lords 
spiritual and temporal of Devon and Cornwall, were confirmed ; 
but no limit of area was placed on the industry in the 
charter of the later reign. Not only were the royal demesnes 
thrown open to the tin workers, but the lands, moors, and 
wastes of all Cornish lords were at their disposal. The chief 
custos of the stannaries (a successor, no doubt, of the Earl 
Warden who, before the union of Cornwall with England, held 
jurisdiction over the tin miners) presided, either in person or as 
represented by his bailiflf, over the Stannary Court, which was 
on all fours with the Court Leet. Under the cloak of his 
authority the workers might cut firewood on any waste, divert 
water-courses on any lands, and sell their goods in any markets 
free of tallages, stallages, tolls, and customs.^ But with regard 
to the thirteenth-century mining of other minerals, it is disap- 
pointing to feel that no test case arose as to seignorial and 
popular rights over minerals of the common lands and wastes. 
It is, however, more than probable that such mining operations 
were for centuries confined to the demesne lands of rich 
proprietors, whose capital would alone be available to defray 
the costs of getting this subterranean treasure.^ It would 
be also interesting to inquire how far the getting of 
minerals by the tenant for life could be effected without im- 
peachment for waste. The wording of 20 Ed. I. would seem 
to imply a more rigid protection of reversionary interests 
than that provided by the Victorian statutes regarding settled 
estates. 
No contention, therefore, arose between seignorial and popular 

' Vide Gilbert H. Chilcott's paper, Notes on the Stannaries, in tbe 
Incorporated Law SocMy's Magazine, 1891. 

' It frequently occurs, — it occurred only the other day on an estate 
managed by the author,— that the question arose : To whom belong the 
minerals on the lands once the commonable ground and waste of the 
manor, over which the surface rights had long lapsed ? The legal mind 
refused to go behind the Enclosure Act dealing with the manor in question ; 
but the lord of the manor would probably feel more satisfied if the title 
of the later freeholder were secured, as it is on the Continent, by the loss 
of the original seignorial rights after a certain period of disuse. 


214 History of the English Landed Interest. 

daims to the mineral rights of the foreign lands.^ Nor did 
any direct question of surface rights arise ; but an altercation 
between tenants in capite and their subfeudani indirectly 
brought this subject into prominence. 

The landlords had no intention whatever of emancipating 
the people, and the latter had no intention of emancipating 
the soil. " If the Czar frees the Eussian mpujik," wrote the Due 
de Momy as late as the present century to his imperial master 
in Paris, " he will be freeing the land." This was probably 
exactly the view our Norman aristocracy took of the situation, 
and therefore they clung fast to their powers over the villein 
while they allowed him his full rights over the land. When 
in Tudor times they began to convert his common field into 
the enclosures of individual ownership, the way had been 
paved for them long before, not, as in the Eussian case, by 
a sudden constitutional grant of liberty, but by a gradual 
cession of seignorial rights, which, though terminating in 
emancipation, gained at the same time the co-operation of all 
the enfranchised grades of the villeinage, and in proportion 
weakened the ranks of those whose interests were threatened. 
But even at this early period the pages of the statute book 
betray an ambiguity regarding the ownership of waste lands, 
which led to much contention. As we have said, the agitation 
arose not from the ranks of the villeins, but higher up amongst the 
subf eudarii, and the struggle centred around those remnants of 
the Folcland now known as lord's waste. The infeoffed knights 
and freeholders had their own pasturage and forest rights 
attached to their tenements, but they advanced a further claim 
to rights of houseboote, heyboote, etc., over the whole baronial 
waste. They adopted a policy which has been called " running 
with the hare and hunting with the hounds," and appeared 
under a twofold guise. As possessors of seignorial powers they 
claimed their rights of common to the pastures and woods of 
their own estates, and as possessors of popular rights they 
saved their own private preserves at the expense of those 
assumed to belong to the tenant in capite, and cut their fuel 
and turf or pastured their live stock on the whole baronial 
^ I use the term employed in the Extenta Man., 4 Ed. I. s. 11. 


Alterations in the Tenure of Land. 215 

waste. It was in vain that the State lawyers attempted to 
restrict by legislation this reassertion of popular rights.^ The 
tenants in capite could show no valid title to their pretentious 
claims on the waste, and the vavasours, mesne lords, and para- 
vail were by no means intimidated by such petulant braggadocio 
as Earl Warren's production of a rusty old sword as legal evi- 
dence of his proprietorship. Finally, a title had to be manu- 
factured,* and the statutes of Quo Warranto confirmed all that 
was doubtful in prescriptive rights by sealing them with the 
authority of the king's grant. 

At the same time the Statutes of Merton and II. Westminster 
limited whilst they confirmed the seignorial powers over the 
waste. It is interesting to note and examine the apparent 
callousness of the villeinage over a struggle which might have 
extinguished the last principles of the Ager Publicus. What 
the mesne lords demanded and what the tenants in capite 
refused to cede were unstinted rights of pasturage, etc., over 
the entire waste. The idea that anybody who chose might 
exercise popular rights over the waste brought the respective 
seignorial owners of neighbouring villages into collision. The 
fresh legislation adjusted the difi&culty in such a manner that 
the rights of the villeinage for all practical purposes remained 
unaltered. At the same time, theoretically at any rate, it 
obliterated entirely the original cause of those rights, by dis- 
sociating the Folcland from the people and connecting it with 
the manor. The new statutes limited the tenants' in capite 
right of approver, but in such a way that no visible alteration 
appeared on the surface. They brought about no divisions 
into separate enclosures of the general waste, but they confined 
manorial rights thereon to certain fixed numbers and classifi- 
cations of the general live stock belonging to each district 
bordering upon it. It was not till the fourteenth century that 
the different distinctions in common rights came into being. 

^ Compare Statute of Merton, 20 Hen. III. ; 18 £d. I., st. 1, cap. xlvi. 
and 18 £d. I.» st. 2 and 8. 

' Contrary to Mr. Green's opinion, I hold that the Statutes of Quo 
Warranto were intended to pave the way to the fabrication of titles. 
Comp. Green, Bist, of the English People^ chap. iv. 


2i6 History of the English Landed Interest. 

Bracton, Fleta, and Britton ^ knew nothing about them, and 
fix)m their point of view common could be acquired only in 
two ways, viz. by seignorial grants or long usage amounting 
to seignorial grants and caused by constant seignorial suffer- 
ance.' Henceforth, however, every freeholder of the manorial 
arable ground had his common appendant on the waste, and 
every copyholder his common appurtenant ; but whatever the 
speciality of common rights might be, whether common of 
vicinage, or of estovers, or turbary, or piscary, etc, there was, as 
we shall now show, practically no difference in the old rights 
of the villeinage. When a portion of the tenant's in capite 
lands was separated off to form the smaller manor of a sub- 
feudarius, the inhabitants of the severed district changed 
seignorial ownership, and seconded any attempts of their new 
master to extend his and their common rights over the waste. 
Too poor to possess much personalty in live stock, the limita- 
tion of the district's pasturage rights to a certain fixed head of 
live stock did not affect their few wants in this respect. The 
large freeholders with great possessions in flocks and herds 
alone felt the change, and the dispute was thus limited to the 
upper class of the landed interest. Differences between the 
villeinage and their individual lords were avoided by a wise 
compromise which did not call in the services of the national 
legislature. The lord recognised the popular claims on the 
waste, and the people for their part were ready to recognise 
' that occasion might arise when it would be to the advantage 
of both sides to cede their rights.' Whenever the supply of 
manorial labour began to exceed that of cultivable soil it was 
for the good of the villeinage as well as of the lord to enclose 
portions of the waste. In many manors, therefore, a custom 
prevailed whereby the consent of the homage became the only 
obstacle before the lord could take this necessary step. 

But the lawyers of this period were too astute not to detect 
an incongruity between the lord's fresh attitude with regard to 
the land, and the time-honoured rights never consciously ceded 

' Vinoffradoff, Villeinage in Engl., Essay ii., p. 266. 
■ Id., Rights of Common, chap, ii., p. 274. 
» Seebohm, Ehigl. VilL Commun,, p. 447. 


Alterations in the Tenure of Land. 2 1 7 

by the villeinage. They had to reconcile the new manorial 
economy to the old polity of a communal system of land 
tenure. Q-lanville, Bracton, Fleta, and others, as Vinogradoff 
has shown, simplified the matter by ignoring popular rights 
altogether. They refused to see any distinction in the terms 
servus, villanus, and nativus.^ In their eyes the socman as 
well as the serf was the chattel of the lord. Accordingly in 
the Dicdogus de Scaccario the latter is represented as owning 
not only the chattels ' of the ascriptici, but their bodies ; and 
as late as the reign of James I. we see traces of the same ficti- 
tious assumption. But though an appeal to the King's Courts 
against seignorial high-handedness was futile, and the villein 
could be ousted from his holding at the lord's will, he, as a 
class, still retained rights wholly irreconcilable with the legal 
theories of the age. What instance can be cited of a successful 
seignorial attempt to interfere with, much less to alter, the 
agricultural system on the servile lands? Even more re- 
stricted was, as we have shown, seignorial interference with 
the waste. Nothing could better illustrate the collision of 
legal theory with popular rights than the story told by Mr. 
Ashley, in his Economic History^ of the quarrel between the 
Abbot of Burton and his tenants, which occurred in 1280.^ 
But still more accentuated is the legal error when we come to 
examine that peculiar position of the villeins on ancient de- 
mesne lands, whom Bracton has termed men of free blood 
holding in villeincige, and whose peculiar privileges Vinogradoff 
has described in detail. 

Meanwhile an important economic change was taking place 
over the servile lands which rendered still more untenable the 
Norman lawyer's position with regard to the villeinage. It has 
been pointed out that it was the general practice in primitive 
times for the poorer husbandmen to co-operate in the purchase 
or manufacture of all bat the most trivial of agricultural 
implements, but that this practice was replaced in the ma- 

* Vinogradoff, Villeinage in Engl,, Essay i., p. 44. 
' An idea possibly originating in the custom of the lord to supply the 
villein's farming stock. 
» F/de bk. i., p. 88. 


2i8 History of the English Landed Interest 

norial system by the loan of seignorial stock, both dead and 
alive, for which a percentage of produce and labour was paid 
as rent. Now, though this system still survives in its chief 
features under the Continental metayer tenancy, and in a less 
degree under the steel bow of Scottish law, it was thus early 
recognised in England as antagonistic to the best interests of 
the land. For estate produce was more profitably disposed of 
by the cultivator than by the owner, and fixity of tenure 
brought about such permanent improvements of the soil as 
enabled the one party to demand and the other party to afford 
a higher rate of rental per acre. Once more, then, it became 
the practice for the villeinage, either as groups or individuals, 
to supply their own carts, ploughs, and harness, and purchase 
or breed their own horses and cattle. The granting of feu 
charters and then leases became more frequent, and the adop- 
tion of a money medium became more general throughout the 
kingdom. 

It was in fact a silent, gradual, and bloodless revolution, in 
no way expedited by such occurrences as the Black Death or 
the great Peasant Bising of a later date. It probably began 
before the time of the Domesday Survey; and the entries 
therein referring to the censores or coliberti no doubt repre- 
sent the extent of its adoption at that period. It is not, 
however, likely that there was any tenant entirely enfranchised 
so as to be free from predial service in some form or other. 
Mr. Ashley, in his Economic History, has cited the Manor of 
Beauchamp in Essex to show the progress of this process of 
commutation. In this case, though no liberi tenentes are re- 
corded in the Domesday Survey, their number in the lists of 
1222 has reached thirty-four. From the same manorial re- 
cords the increase of a new class, the tenants in demesne, is 
noticeable, and the same author quoted above has attributed 
this circumstance to the seignorial grants of small holdings to 
the servi. 

These processes bring into use new terms coined to illustrate 
the various steps in the social ladder, the topmost rung of 
which represented absolute enfranchisement. The following 
list out of an inquisition of 19 Ed. I., preserved at the Public 


Alterations in the Tenure of Land, 219 

Itecord Office, and brought into notice by VinogradoflF, stows 
some of the most important distinctions at that age ^ :— 

Liberi tenentes per cartam 
Liberi tenentes qui vocantur fresokemen 
Sokemanni qui vocantur molmen 
Custumarii qui vocantur werkemen 
Consuetudinarii tenentes 4 acras terree 
Consuetudinarii tenentes 2 acras terrsB. 

By the chartered freeholders of this list we may understand 
tenants liberated from all predial service, both weekly and 
precarial; by free socmen those coliberti whose partial en- 
franchisement we have noticed earlier in this book. The 
molmen differed from the workmen in that the former paid 
partly in money, and the latter only performed labour for their 
holdings. The introduction of these gavelmanni or money- 
paying tenants of the manor is notified in the Court Rolls of 
the period by a double register of both the earlier services 
and the later substituted rents, under the respective terms of 
old and new assize.' 

It would take up too much space to describe in detail the 
various duties and privileges which had gradually grown up 
out of the remuneration of popular labour by seignorial food 
and support. The carriage performed for the lord, such as 
firewood for the manorial kitchen, com for market, grain and 
dung for the demesne lands, the driving of geese to the annual 
fair, all duties comprised under the term "averagium," brought 
with them their special remuneration in food, lands, and other 
privileges. Thus the carters of the seignorial produce had 
their grants of tenements called averlands and lodlands, 
labourers with the scythe those of serlands, leaders of the 
plough those of akermanlands, and caterers of dairy produce 
for the consumption of the manorial household those of cheese- 
land. Every villein had to perform the gafol earth or plough 
work on the lord's lands, for which he obtained a share of the 
produce according to the size of his holding. The so-called 
precarial services, such as Lenten earth or extra ploughing 

* Vinogradoff, Villeinage in England^ chap, vi., p. 186. 

* Ashley, Economic History. Note 88, chap. i. 


220 History of the English Landed Interest. 

before Easter, mederepe or hay Ixarvesting, the ingathering of 
the demesne's crops, etc., all had their special remuneration. 
Sheep, lambs, sucking pigs, horse fodder, and honey were 
equivalents for a monied rent, and even the free tenants 
acknowledged seignorial jurisdiction by the payment in kind 
of such small dues as eggs at Easter, roots of ginger, pepper, 
and the like.^ 

Then there comes a time when terms associated with the 
chink of money replace in the old mediaeval manuscripts those 
enumerated above. We begin to read of barlick silver, fish 
silver, malt silver, fald silver, scythe pence, wood pence, ward 
pence, and the like, until the class of molmen arises who re-* 
present the intermediate stage between the tenants paying 
rent wholly in labour and kind and those paying rent wholly 
in money. 

There was another division of the villeinage amongst whom 
the same process was taking place. These were the tenants 
of ancient demesne, who were peasants belonging to manors 
which were vested in the Crown at the time of the Conquest. 
Personally free, they held their lands in villeinage, though a 
villeinage of a privileged type. They possessed their own 
particular courts, and were subject' to a law of their own. 
Free from market tolls and custom duties, exempted from 
serving on juries and from the jurisdiction of the sheriff, not 
assessable for danegeld or the common amercement, and even 
taxed differently to the rest of the villeinage, they were still 
classed among the villeinage, and had their tallages to pay to 
the king, but they were not represented in Parliament.* 

This commutation of predial service, and letting of demesne 
land for monetary equivalents, which did not become general 
till the reign of Edward IE., were agreeable to the interests of 
both parties. The lord, on the one part, was anxious to save 
the costs of supervision, and in cases where he possessed the 
seignorial rights to toll, not displeased in finding an enhanced 
source of profit from his market dues. The tenant in villeinage, 

^ For details of the various forms of predial and precarial services, 
vufo Vinogradoff, Villeinage in England^ passim, 
' Vinogradoff, Villeinage in England, chap. iii. 


Alterations in the Tenure of Land. 221 

as he now came to be called, was, on the other hand, agreeably 
attracted to any arrangement which would allow him to culti- 
vate his own land at the most seasonable times of the year. 
Instead, therefore, of in future consuming his allowance of 
bread and beer, and sticking his sickle into the largest sheaf 
that it would hold each day that he laboured to harvest his 
lord's com, he commuted such services by means of a money 
arrangement with his employer. A record was necessary of 
all such commutations, which therefore became henceforth 
entered on the manor rental. In this way the base and im- 
certain services of the villein regardant were exchanged for 
the more stable tenure in villeinage ; and whoever obtained a 
copy of the Court Roll could prove a prescriptive right to his 
occupancy. Theoretically he was still a tenant at will, bound 
to surrender his lands into the lord's possession before any 
alienation of the copyhold could be completed; nor was it 
until the reign of Edward IV. that a copyholder could bring 
an action for trespass against his lord for dispossession. 

The villein in gross was at the same time growing into the 
free labourer. The clergy, though slow to emancipate their 
own serfs, were ever preaching emancipation to the layman, 
and since naturally their influence was most powerful at the 
death-bed, many a serf owed his freedom to that same half- 
superstitious, half-pious spirit which in modem times endows 
our public charities with so much wealth. Others fled their 
native lands, for by law a villein could obtain his freedom 
provided he could prove a year's residence in a walled town, 
and many a slave thus escaped at one and the same time his 
master's vigilance and his master's fetters. It was indeed such 
an incident which made the Kentish commons' blood boil over, 
and sent them to join forces with the Essex peasants, when 
Sir Simon Barley sought to recapture an escaped servant living 
at Gravesend. 

This was a very curious period in the relationship between 
agricultural labour and capital. It was a transition stage in 
which the position of the farmer, who in modern times comes 
between the land owner and the land labourer, and combines 
in his person the capital of the former with the technical skill 


222 History of the English Landed Interest. 

of the latter, had not yet been clearly defined. Until, there- 
fore, boon and predial services had been entirely replaced by 
a money commutation, the lord was in direct touch with the 
labourer, and looked with a jealous eye on any depletion of his 
industrial store. At the same time the partial introduction of 
rents for services had begun to operate in an antagonistic 
manner between lord and villein. The former ceased to iden- 
tify his profits with those of the latter, so that henceforth two 
divided interests in the soil arose, and the capitalist began to 
restrict the efforts of the producer. It was the object of the 
former to squeeze out of the latter all he wanted at the least 
possible loss to his capital, and there was at this time no 
hostile camp of traders to frighten the two landed classes into 
showing a united front. Interests that ought ever to have 
been identical were formed in battle array against each other, 
but it was a warfare betwixt giants and dwarfs ; for the vil- 
leins had no political power, and even if they had had the 
sense to co-operate and resist, as later on they did for a short 
time resist, they would only have ultimately starved them- 
selves as well as their antagonists. It was the old fable of the 
belly and its members over again, with the exception that no 
patrician was forthcoming to preach a lesson of compromise to 
both sides. 

The effects of the unfortunate split brought about by the 
separation of the interests of the consumer and producer were 
at once apparent in the political arena. 

The legislation of the age forthwith teems with statutes pro- 
hibitory of free trade. As early as 1266 we read of the Assisa 
Panis et CervisisB which determined by sliding scale the market 
prices of wheat, barley, and oats, "according to those of their 
baking and brewing. But in 1315 began a preposterous struggle 
between Parliament and nature. A famine had reduced the 
supply of marketable produce to a minimum, and so forsooth a 
law was passed prescribing the price of all articles destined for 
food consumption, which immediately drove whatever remained 
out of the public market. Meat and grain were henceforth 
sold surreptitiously at prices enhanced by the dangers attend- 
ant on illicit proceedings; until Parliament, seeing its egregious 


Alterations in the Tenure of Land. 223 

error, repealed the new law within a few months of its enact- 
ment. But in 1349 a similar attempt was again directed 
against nature, when a pestilence had diminished the market 
supply of labour. In fact, throughout the reigns of Edward I., 
Edward III., and Richard 11., and even up to the Reformation 
era, this absurd duel between man and the Deity, artificial 
and natural law, the decrees of English statesmanship and the 
visitation of God, continued. These iniquitous statutes com- 
menced plausibly enough with a preamble directed against 
idleness and able-bodied pauperism ; but, as we read on, it is 
apparent that they utterly destroyed all freedom of contract 
(if not that of the subject himself), and placed on equal foot- 
ings the skilled and the ignorant, the idle and the diligent, 
the neat and the awkward, the strong and the weak, and the 
rogue and the honest man. Gk)ldsmiths, horsesmiths, spinners, 
coriers, tanners, whitetawers, cordwainers, tailors, carpenters, 
masons, tilers, shipwrights, carters, and all other artificers were 
bound down to accept not only the wages they had accepted 
during times of competition, but even to refuse under penalty 
of imprisonment more advantageous offers, were such forth- 
coming. The wages of carters, ploughmen, drivers of the 
plough, shepherds, swineherds, d'eyes, and all other farm ser- 
vants were fixed at certain low prices, and their compulsory 
term of service was extended to one year. Workmen were 
compelled to publicly hire themselves out in the market. Ex- 
cept in harvest time, townsmen were not allowed to seek hire 
in the country. Trades-unionism was guarded against by a 
clause prohibiting alliances, covins, congregations, chapters, 
ordinances, and oaths. Labourers were unable, under pain of 
the stocks, to leave the hundred in which they served, without 
letters patent under the king's seal. Artificers, people of *'mis- 
tery," and apprentices " of no great avoir " were obliged to 
serve in the harvest; and the justice's proclamation once a 
year settled the husbandman's yearly wages, and twice a year 
those of the artificer.* Labourers were prohibited from playing 
healthy games such as tennis, football, and quoits, nor were 

» 23 Ed. m.; 84 Ed. m.; 37 Ed. m. ; 12 Rich. II.; 13 Rich. II.; 6 
H«n. VI. c. 3; 23 Hen. VL c. 13. 


224 History of the English Landed Interest. 

they allowed weapons; but, perhaps in grateful memory of 
Crecy, they were encouraged to spend Sundays and holidays 
in archery contests.^ It is a wonder that their very meals 
were not restricted, for their clothing was limited to cloth of 
certain prices. Silk, silver, gold, and embroidery were strictly 
prohibited ; buttons, rings, gaxters, owches, ribands, and chains 
were equally illegal— even the veils of their womankind 
were limited to yam ; and fur jor budge, save that of the 
lamb, conie, cattle, and fox, was not permitted. Blanket, in- 
ferior russet wool, and linen girdles '' according to their de- 
gree," were the limits of decorative vesture granted to farm 
hands by parliamentary statute. These contemptible dress 
restrictions continued up to the reign of good Queen Bess, 
when even then every person except maidens, ladies, gentle- 
women, lords, knights, and gentlemen of twenty msirks a year 
had to wear upon sabbaths and holidays a cap of wool, knit, 
thicked, and dressed in England, or in default pay a fine of 
3«. 4(?. per diem.* 

If such pains, penalties, and restrictions encompassed the 
hardworking labour class, what are we to expect when we 
turn to the valiant beggars and vagrants of these severe times ? 
It was under pain of imprisonment that the charitable relieved 
such folk, the justices of assize or the peace and the sheriffs 
had powers of demanding sureties from them for Aiture good 
behaviour; and a beggar capable of labour soon found his way 
to the nearest stocks. The wandering heremites, university 
students, and begging friars were careful to obtain their or- 
dinary's testimonial before they turned vagrants, or they 
might soon have found themselves in a like disgraceful pre- 
dicament ; and in Henry I.'s reign " all Irish clerks, beggars, 
and chamberdekins were voided out of the realm." • 

» 12 Rich. n. c. 6. 

« 87 Ed. III. c. 9 ; 37 Ed. III. c. 14 ; 8 El. IV. c. 5 ; 13 Eliz. c. 19. 

» 7 Rich. U. ; 12 Rich. II. ; 1 Hen. V. c. 8. 


JShc ADibMe Hge0. 


CHAPTER XVn. 

THE DISPOSAL OF FARM PBODUCB IN MARKETS, FAIBS, AND 

ABROAD. 

As long as the custom of boon and weekly predial services 
was general, the farm was practically independent of the shop. 
The woods supplied the materials for agricultural imple- 
ments, and the villeins themselves performed the crafts of car- 
penter, wheelwright, smith, brander, and wontner. For these 
services special portions of the land were set apart for their 
occupancy, a most necessary bait in times when the towns 
were beginning to attract every individual belonging to the 
artificer class. The national feeling was opposed to the oflfice 
of middle-man, so that every tradesman was generally supplied 
with materials and paid for his labour by day or piece work. 
Beside the arable fields lay the hams, or stinted pastures ; and 
the still existent names of Brandersham, Smithsham, and 
Wontnersham imply that these special allotments of superior 
pasturage were set apart for artificers of the above description.^ 
These people probably performed the work of more than one 
village, travelling to and fro as occasion for employment 
offered itself. The farm, therefore, produced most of the 
necessaries of life. For the linen, which every housewife knew 
how to spin, flax was cultivated. Hemp was grown for rope, a 
material which had now replaced the Saxon usage of twisted 
willows for plough harness. 

The chief external wants up to this period were salt, ob- 
tained from the southern coast or Droitwich, for preserving the 

* Prothero, Pioneers of English Farming, c 1, page 6. 

22b o 


226 History of the English Landed Interest.* 

winter's supply of meat ; iron from Sussex for implements ; 
millstones from Paiis for com grinding ; and tar from Norway 
as a preventive of scab in sheep. 

Bat the commutation of boon and regular predial services 
for money had thrown a large bulk of the national farm pro- 
duce on the markets, so that seignorial rights to toll repre- 
sented a handsome item in the yearly income of the landed 
proprietor. 

The great drawback to the market and fair was the heavy 
expenses incurred by the vendor. "We are not surprised to 
find that the villein showed a preference for disposing of his 
produce at home, when we come to examine the multitude of 
market tolls payable by him before he could commence bar- 
gaining. Long before he entered the fair, he had been mulcted 
of pontage and passage dues every time he crossed a bridge or 
conveyed his goods over a stream. Then there was, besides the 
market toll, the piccage fee payable to the lord of the soil for 
the ground damaged in setting up a booth, the lastage fees on 
each twelve dozen of hides, ten quarters of com, 200 skins of 
leather, or twelve barrels of pitch, and there were the stallage 
dues if he wished to show off his goods to better advantage 
by arranging them on a stall. It is doubtful, too, if the Court 
of Piepowder,^ which administered justice to buyers and sellers 
at fairs, sufficiently compensated him for these drawbacks. At 
any rate there would be no pontage or passage fees at the Sun- 
day auction at home, when he could hang his meat on the 
church doors and fold his live stock in the yard,* as an adver- 
tisement, while he attended morning service. So we may sup- 
pose that the general farmer did not trouble himself to travel 
to the great annual fairs, such as Stourbridge, Abingdon, or 
"Winchester, but just preferred to await the feast of his own 
village saint, when the place was sure to be full both of merry- 
makers and customers. 

But a distinction must be drawn between the two terms 
market and fair ; for though every fair was a market, every 
market was not a fair. The latter was held far less frequently. 

' " Curia pedis polverei," so called from the dusty feet of the suitors. 
■ Put a stop to by the Statute of Winchester. 


The Disposal of Farm Produce. 227 

Its name is derived from " feria," the ecclesiastical term for a 
saint's day ; its origin is lost amidst the ancient customs of some 
tribal community, and its date of fixture probably originated 
from the commemoration of a pagan festival. Its usage was 
well known throughout Europe, and there were German fairs in 
the ninth century. On the other hand, the right of establishing 
a market was ever the prerogative of the State. In the days of 
the Boman Republic the Senate exercised jnrisdictory authority 
to grant or refuse such rights to landowners. The Frankish 
kings claimed plenary powers over all transactions connected 
with trade and traffic ; and the early English sovereigns reserved 
among the jura regalia fullest authority over all commercial 
dealings, such as the exercise of police precautions, the right 
to keep a private beam, yard measure, or bushel, the exaction 
of tolls upon shipping in harbours and transport by road or 
river, and the grant of a market. Not a single unit of these 
various powers was obtained by either individual or corporation 
without a royal grant. 

The fair was partly a religious festival, partly an opportunity 
for pleasure-making, but principally an occasion for commerce. 
The market was wholly a business resort. In the times now 
the subject of inquiry it was dangerous for a purchaser of 
goods to transact a private sale, since he would be naturally 
compelled by law to hand the goods over to any individual who 
could substantiate a better title to their possession than the 
vendor. In market overt, the act of purchase in itself consti- 
tuted a vaUd title, and the toll was originally established as a 
testimony to the contract. We have already alluded, when 
discussing the Saxon era, to the practice of discountenancing 
private barter: the statute of King Ina, prohibiting the sale of 
goods outside a town except in the presence of witnesses, is a 
case in point. The Witan of Athelstan passed a similar Act; 
and the Norman Conqueror testified to the wisdom of such 
legislation by continuing the practice. 

The right of toll, or the liberty of holding markets and trade 
jurisdiction within the lands belonging to the recipient of such 
a grant, was by this time limited to spots where custom or 
charter gave proof of a prescriptive right. During the reigns 


228 History of the English Landed Interest. 

of John and Henry m., 1,400 grants of markets and fairs 
were made, and double that amount in the 285 years A.n. 1199- 
1483. From the Hundred and Quo Warranto Rolls of Edward L 
we gather that 202 private individuals, 116 religious houses, 
15 burgesses and trade associations, and 82 nondescript parties 
claimed market rights.^ 

It is obvious that every fresh grant, unless inquired into (as 
was the usage) by a jury on a writ oA quod damnum, might 
have interfered with existing rights. Two or three of these 
trade resorts in too close juxtaposition would have done so. It 
was suggested by Bracton that few market folk would care to 
be benighted, and that it would take a third of the daylight 
alike in going to, bartering at, and returning from a fair dis- 
tant from home between six and seven miles. It came there- 
fore to be recognised that no new grant of market or fair could 
be made in a locality where that limit was transgressed. 

Passing from the discussion of these inland centres of trade 
with their mercator$8 stdlati, who with the toll-owner's steward 
constituted respectively the suitors and judge of the "Pye 
Poudre" Court, it is interesting to inquire next how the 
heavier goods were conveyed in winter, and what substitutes 
for purchasing the necessaries of life occurred during the 
severer weather of our English climate. There is very little 
evidence that either any really practical means of transit or 
efficient substitute existed. People who were cut off fix)m the 
centres of trade by bad roads, had to provision their larders 
before winter came upon them. The common carrier was 
generally employed to convey goods to and from the villages; 
and his charges, though small, were supposed to cover possible 
loss or damage sustained by goods in transit, and for which he 
was liable by common law. There was, too, possibly an oppor- 
tunity for purchase in the trade of the pedlar, which, however, 
though undoubtedly of great antiquity, cannot be traced so 
far back as the era of which we are speaking. 

Perhaps one of the most marked features of this age was 
the violent fluctuations in the price of wheat In 1243, 1244, 

^ Vide Report of the Royal Commission on Market Rights and Tolls, 
1891. 


The Disposal of Farm Produce. 229 

1248, it was as low as 2«. per quarter, but in 1270 it reached 
the prohibitive price of £4 16«., and from 1316 for several years 
it rose again up to famine prices.* Beef and mutton were 
absurdly cheap, averaging about one farthing per pound.' 
Such high prices for cereals and such low ones for butcher's 
meat would seem to betray the small progress even then made 
from a pastoral to a more advanced stage of land cultivation. 
But if we look closer we shall see that, unless the year's yield 
was exceptionally bountiful, there would be very little occasion 
to go from home to get rid of every bushel of com grown. 
Wheat formed the bread of the upper classes, but com in some 
shape was the staple food of the lower orders. They ate it as 
maslin (a mixture of rye and wheat), and they drank it as beer 
(made sometimes of an inferior barley called drageum, some- 
times of sprig). Oats were the food both of the stables and 
the dwelling, and pulse crops were principally grown for 
swine feed. 

Professor !Bogers has, in guarded terms, made a rough esti- 
mate of the population, wheat-growing area, and wheat con- 
sumption of the fourteenth century. He considers that the 
total average of soil under the plough was not less than it is 
now ; that the yield per acre was about four times the seed 
sown ; and that the grain required for each unit of the popu- 
lation was one quarter per annum. Taking into consideration 
that the total arable sirea in Angevin days included bare fallows 
and other com crops, he deducts one-fifth from the wheat- 
yielding area of the present day, and leaves his readers to work 
out the sum.' To set about the task, we must examine the 
figures of modern statisticians, and shall find that the wheat- 
yielding area of England and Wales, when Eogers wrote his 
History, was about Z\ million acres. This area, under a system 
of wheat cultivation in Angevin days, would yield, according 
to Eogers, four times its seed; and since Walter of Henley 
recommends two bushels at least to the acre, we might conclude 
that the Professor estimates the thirteenth-century crop at 

* Adam Smith, WeaUh of Nations, Prices of Wheat. 

* Rogers, Prices and Agriculture, vol, i., page 57. 
» Id., Ibid,, Bk, I., page 66. 


230 History of the English Landed Interest. 

a quarter per aore, and that the yield of wheat in quarters, 
the national census, and the people's wheat requirements, are 
all three totals expressed by the same figures, viz. 3i millions.^ 
This, however, is a computation greatly in excess of what 
this author intended, as in another paragraph he implies that 
the then population was less than 2^ millions; so that if we 
take the wheat-yielding area of England and Wales at this 
present time, viz. about one million acres less than when 
Rogers wrote his history, we shall be nearer the author's 
meaning. 

Thus, after a bad thirteenth-century harvest, without any 
foreign trade to fall back upon, it is quite easy to imagine that 
the total wheat-growing area of English soil at this time would 
barely yield suflficient breadstuffs to keep alive the population 
who depended upon it for subsistence. On the other hand, the 
rank and file of the rural villeinage possessed no live stock of 
their own, and were too poor to buy meat. Cattle and sheep 
were bred in large quantities by the richer farmers for other 
objects than the butcher's knife. In proportion therefore to 
corn, a large quantity of meat would find its way into the public 
markets, where the urban population would readily buy it. 

But the farm produce of greatest importance was sheepskins, 
for the sake of both their wool and leather, so that, next to 
labour, there was nothing the landed proprietor looked more 
sharply after. The king was no less active in recognising a 
source of revenue in these commodities, and the law stepped 
in fix)m time to time to protect the produce from royal rapacity. 
The principle of the staple (as its German derivation " stapulen " 
signifies) was to gather or heap together in one market or port 
the most prominent of the national exports, with a view to 
fiscal duties. These were times when, as we have shown, the 
king's rights to control mercantile dealings were undisputed. 
The confinement for a time of local trade to one place was 
neither unconstitutional nor unusual ; and kings frequently 

* Ck>ntrastiiig these figures with modern statistics, we find that the yield 
of wheat per acre now is some 28 to 84 hushels, and that the wants of the 
population, including a partial consumption by live stock, are estimated at 
5i bushels to the individual. 


The Disposal of Farm Produce. 231 

exercised their powers in this direction when funds were re- 
quired for private purposes. In 1245 and 1249 Henry III. 
shut up all the London shops, and for fifteen days proclaimed 
a fair at Westminster. Though he drew a large revenue from 
the market tolls there were but few buyers, the goods were all 
spoiled, and their vendors ruined in health by the incessant 
rains. What was constitutional in isolated cases like this was 
was of course constitutional in a case where the whole nation 
was concerned. The sovereign therefore found no legalised 
opposition when he determined to make wool, sheepskins, and 
leather the staple goods, and to bind their merchants to bring 
all such wares to his port to be weighed and measured before 
exportation. The site of the staple was constantly shifted, 
from abroad to at home, or from Antwerp to Calais, or from 
one market to half-a-dozen, until, for a few months in the reign 
of Richard II., the unfortunate merchants of the staple had to 
run the gauntlet of the customs on both sides of the Channel. 
Attempts were periodically made to remove the legislative re- 
strictions on trade ; but this was an epoch when statutes were 
made in much the same spirit as a fickle lover's vows — '^ only 
to be broken." 

Notwithstanding aU these drawbacks, one-tenth of the year's 
exports in 1354 was wool, contained in thirty-two thousand 
sacks, valued at £138,000, and, if we may credit Robert of 
Avesbury, the exports in 1356 reached the enormous total of 
100,000 sacks, which at only 60«. per sack produced a revenue 
of £250,000.^ In the reign of Edward IL Flemish weavers 
had been invited to come over and establish a ^tive cloth 
industry, but this did not seem to affect the export trade. 
In 1390 Richard 11. passed a statute prohibiting any person 
residing in England from purchasing wool except from the 
flockmaster, and then only for his own use, the eflFect of which 
was to hand over the entire export trade to the foreign 
merchant. The G-enoese, the Lombards, and the Venetians 

> Professor Bogers, however, values the greatest wool grant (that in 
1840, mentioned over leaf) at only £138,000.— jS'ix Ceiituries of Work and 
Wages, p. 205. Comp. also Craig and McFarlane, Hist, of Engl, Bk. IV., 
ch. iv., and Bk. Y., ch. v. 


232 History of the English Landed Interest. 

wove the English fleeces into their richest vestmenta Every 
Continental dyer and fuller could distinguish Cotswold wool from 
that of any other country. It became a constant subject for 
legislation, it was more than once used as a kingly present,^ 
and it at one time imperilled the safety of the Calais garrison.* 
But perhaps (for Bobert of Avesbury's statement is probably an 
exaggeration) the zenith of its political importance was reached 
when, in 1340, flushed with the news of that great victory off 
Sluys, the Commons offered Sing Edward an aid of 30,000 
sacks, in addition to the wool tithe levied in 1329 and the 
ninth imposed in the following year. Forestalling the grant, 
King Edward borrowed money on its security, earning by this 
transaction the French king's taunt of '* wool merchant,'' and 
beggared several great Florentine houses. Professor Sogers 
has estimated the average cost of a sack at SOs., which shows 
a total value of £120,000 ; but if computed at the price for 
which wool was actually selling during the year of the grant, 
it reached a higher total still. It is however doubtful if the 
king ever obtained the full value of this aid. Commissioners 
were appointed to assess the quantity of wool in thirty-seven 
counties and four towns. The total arrived at after most 
careful scrutiny was nearly 10,000 sacks less than the amount 
of the grant. So absolute was the monopoly in this produce, 
that though one-tenth of the nation's annual wool supply was 
by this means thrown on the market at one stroke of the pen, 
it enhanced rather than lowered the price per sack.' 

Severe though the penalties were against defrauding the 
staple, many a merchant braved the law to smuggle it across 
the Channel; and the wool packer enhanced the producer's 
profits at the expense of the foreigner, by inwinding with the 
fleeces, peltwool, tar, earth, and other rubbish. Though 
Cotswold sheep furnished the finest wool, which could be 

^ Edward IV, presented King John of Aragon with some ewes and 
rams. 

' In 1464 the merchants of the staple petitioned the king to continue 
the wool trade with Burgundy, for fear the soldiers of the garrison should 
lose their wages. 

■ Rogers, Six Centuries of Work and Wages^ p. 205. 


The Disposal of Farm Produce. 233 

worked up into cloth of gold for kingly robes,^ that of Berks, 
Oxford, Kent, Salop, Hereford, "Worcester, Somerset, Dorset, 
Essex, Cambridge, Norfolk, Suffolk, Surrey, and Sussex was 
also prized. All sorts of schemes were invented to get hold of 
the wool at low prices, and, as is usual regarding information 
pertaining to this age, our sole source is the laws which put 
an end to such attempts. It was bought at so much per sheep 
before shearing, and it was shipped abroad sheep and all. No 
wonder that the farmer was already acquainted with the 
efficacy of arsenical washes, mercurial ointments, sulphate of 
iron, and the like, whenever scab or rot threatened to ravage 
his valued flocks. Coarse and hairy though the wool was, it 
was worth a vast deal more in proportion during the fourteenth 
century than the silkiest Leicester fleece is to-day. 

We must now devote a short space to those centres of 
internal trade, the mediaeval towns. At the time of the 
Conquest some eighty overgrown villages were all that can 
be dignified with this appellation. Out of a total population 
of a million and a half, there were perhaps 160,000 townsmen. 
By the middle of the thirteenth century, the population of the 
whole country had increased by about a million; and Professor 
Sogers,^ estimating the population of each town from the poll- 
tax statistics in 1377, has proportioned the urban to the rural 
inhabitants of England as 1 to 12*34. By the same process, 
London would then have contained 36,000 souls, York 11,000, 
Bristol 9,600, Coventry 7,000, Norwich 6,000, and Lincoln 
6,000. 

Any close descriptiou of mediaeval town life would be out of 
place in a history which professes to confine itself to the dis- 
cussion of a rural economy only; but the urban market at any 
rate comes within our scope, since it was generally subject to 
seignorial jurisdiction. Those townsmen who individually or 
corporately held lands of lords, came, as we have already 

^ In 1438 a licence was .granted to a Portngnese agent in England to 
export 60 sacks of Cotswold wool for cloths of silver and gold for the 
use of the Portuguese king. Craig and McFarlane, Hi^t, of EngL, Bk. 
v., ch. iv. 

■ Six Centuries of Work and Wages, pp. 117, 120. 


234 History of the English Landed Interest 

pointed out in an earlier chapter, under the system of feudalism 
as burgage tenants. Little is known for certain about primi- 
tive urban economy, but it has been thought that a town 
villeinage existed which performed certain crafts under feudal 
obligations. Like their rural brethren, they gradually forced 
their way upwards into complete enfranchisement, and resolved 
themselves into societies for mutual protection under the 
familiar terms of Merchant, and Mystery or Craft G-ilds. The 
old seignorial Court Leet of the oppidan lands became thus the 
Portmanmote, or town assembly, of the newly-formed munici- 
pality, in which the burgess of the Merchant Gild had a right 
to sit. Once constituted, these different Gilds were chary of 
admitting strangers into their select circles, so that the chance 
villein who succeeded in evading the strict seignorial police 
restrictions against labour exodus at home, formed the nucleus 
of that fresh class, the journeyman, who now began to appear 
amidst the commercial centres of the kingdom.^ 

Besides the fixed day for the weekly market, a date, in many 
towns at a period of the year most convenient for purchasing 
winter stores, was set apart for the annual fair. The Flanders 
trade had its centre at Stourbridge, and that with France was 
localised at Winchester. Mr. Ashley gives a graphic descrip- 
tion of this fair, which brings into prominence the complete 
jurisdiction possessed by landlords over such business resorts. 
On the morning of August 31st the bishop proclaimed the 
fair on the hill-top east of Winchester. Li the exercise of 
his seignorial rights he rode through the town on horseback, 
received its keys at the gates, took possession of the weighing 
machine in the wool market, put a stop to all intermural com- 
merce, and then, with the municipal authorities, rode back to 
his pavilion on the hill, where he appointed a special mayor, 
bailiff, and coroner to govern the city in his name during fair 
time. Notwithstanding the erection of a timbered palisade 
round this ephemeral city of wooden shops, and the most com- 

' If the reader would dive deeper into the subject of early municipal 
govemmenty he cannot do better than read chap. ii. in Ashley^s Econjomic 
History^ to which the author is indebted for much of the short summary 
contained here. 


The Disposal of Farm Prodtue. 235 

plete police precautions, daring individoals dug their way 
through the walls to escape the tolls, or lingered on after the 
fair was closed to sell their goods free of stallage dues. Pro- 
tected by the armed tenants of this spiritual lord, the marshal 
stationed guards at all the bridges and other approaches to the 
town, for the purpose of securing their master's proper pontage 
and passage dues, and prevent illegal barter of goods in transit. 
In the Ciourt of Piepowder justices fixed the assize of all 
victuals, and servants tested weights and measures. The 
Flemish tongue in loud tones of barter arose from one wooden 
street, while that of France might be heard raised in lively 
altercation in another. Here were the goldsmiths, and there 
the drapers. Bales of wool cumbered the ground on another 
site. Now a pillory, at which some fraudulent baker or brewer 
was undergoing summary justice, attracted the eye ; and now 
officers in the episcopal livery hurried by, carrying to the jury 
of the Dusty Feet Court in the pavilion the notched wooden 
tallies which in those primitive days represented the invoiced 
goods of the merchants. 

This noisy scene continued for sixteen days and terminated 
at a specified hour, beyond which any further negotiations not 
only endangered the liberty of the vendor but the franchise of 
the seignorial president.^ It is a conspicuous sign of the law- 
lessness of these days, that at an age when the repairs to the 
highways were entirely neglected by the national code, a 
special legislative enactment provided that a clearance of all 
brushwood likely to conceal marauders was to be made two 
hundred feet on either side of highways leading from market 
to market.' This was not an unwise precaution when a noise- 
less bolt might place the successful trader on his way home- 
wards defenceless and at the mercy of any unscrupulous and 
indigent vagabond who could draw a bow or handle the 
arbalist. There was, too, a class of legislation which policed the 
markets, in which we do not find anything very objectionable, 
but rather the reverse, to the community at large ; though 
possibly the motives that induced the king and his barons to 

* Ashley, Economic History^ Bk. I., ch. ii. 

• 33 Ed. /., Stat, of Wiru^hester, 1286. 


236 History of the English Landed Interest. 

set it in motion were not altogether disinterested. To insore 
tlie purchaser a proper quid pro quo on his bargain, the assize 
of weights and measures was enacted. That of bread and beer 
was directed against adulteration, whilst the laws against fore- 
stalling and regrating protected the market dues from spolia- 
tion through the premature purchase of corn on the way, and 
the artificial enhancement of prices by its re-sale at a profit 
in the market for which it was originally intended. These 
various laws introduced the aletaster and other less well-known 
officials belonging to the Court Leet. 

So much then for legislation affecting our inland trade of 
farm produce ; but little remains to discuss when we turn to 
foreign commerce. We imported and we exported even in 
medisBval times, but never without a royal licence. In 1639 
Edward HI. granted liberty to the Flemings whereby they 
could trade in England and export com. In 1376 permission 
was given to import 400 quarters from Ireland to Westmor- 
land. In 1382 corn exportation was entirely prohibited, save 
to the king's territories ; but in 1394 it might be exported any- 
where except to hostile countries, on payment of the customs. 
Excepting, however, the goods of the staple, discussed earlier 
in this chapter, our export trade was still in its infancy. Even 
the merchants of the staple up to the middle of the thirteenth 
century were foreigners. The Flemish and northern French 
manufactured cloths from English wools supplied to them by 
a London Hanse, which was only second in importance to the 
Teutonic institution of the same name. The fashion of a 
feudal age seems to have cast its picturesque mantle over 
this association which had been called into being for the prosaic 
and somewhat sordid purpose of trade protection. 

Its headquarters, the Steel Yard, resembled in part a mo- 
nastery and in part a castle. The celibacy of its inmates, the 
refectory with its high table for the superiors* meals, and the 
other tables in the body of the hall for those of the apprentices, 
resembled the former, while the armour of its master, the stout 
wall which encircled dwelling, warehouse, wharf and garden, and 
the precise closing of all means of ingress at curfew, resembled 
the latter. The stones of this combined factory and residence, 


The Disposal of Farm Produce. 237 

could they have but spoken, might have told many a tale of 
royal favour and disfavour from the date of their foundation in 
12B0 to that of their demolition in 1697. The City grudgingly 
suffered the presence of these Easterlings for the sake of that 
substantial assistance which was always forthcoming when the 
object was worthy. Bishopsgate was maintained, repaired and 
once rebuilt principally out of funds supplied by the Hanse, 
which also sustained one-third of the charges necessary for its 
defence. For a long time these merchants were the sole im- 
porters of foreign com, but without the City's licence they were 
not allowed to supply the bakers and brewers. The mayor 
and sheriffs of London were, however, kept in a gracious 
mood by a judicious administration of perquisites; so that 
when Queen Elizabeth finally abolished this association, the 
corporation felt obliged to console their City officers for the 
loss of Hanseatic gifts in wax, herrings, and sturgeon, by an 
annual money compensation. 


(Tbe ADibMe Uqcb. 


CHAPTEB XVin. 

THE LAND BUBDEKS OF THE EBA. ' 

The Black Death appeared on August l8t,-1348, in Dorsetshire, 
reached London the following November, and within a year 
had exterminated one-third of the entire population. Villeins 
were no longer able to perform their boon service, farms were 
let at half their usual rents, sheep and cattle stalked gaunt and 
hungry through the corn-fields, crops rotted on the ground, 
lands went out of cultivation, provisions and labour grew 
scarcer and scarcer, starvation added its list of victims to the 
long deathroll of pestilence, and the occupiers of the soil lay 
down in thousands to die in those ditches and furrows which 
their own hands had fashioned. 

Notwithstanding all this, the people would have suffered 
and perished without a murmur. Divided into two antago- 
nistic classes of Labour and Capital as the landed interest had 
now become, and harshly and arbitrarily as the former had 
been treated by the latter, there were as yet no angry storm 
mutterings to direct men's eyes to a lowering horizon. 

As long as the Commons were glutted with the pride of 
Edward's foreign triumphs, they kept quiet and submitted to 
every preposterous vagary of legislation affecting their food, 
labour, pastimes, and clothing. Englishmen, alas, have deteri- 
orated since those days when doughty deeds stirred the heart 
of even the serf to its very depths^ and it is to be feared that 
the Tower guns might roar " Victory " many a day before the 
more educated, but less patriotic, nineteenth-century rustic 
forgot his own woes in the thought of his country's triumph. 


The Land Burdens of the Era. 239 

But when a king in his nonage succeeded to the vacant 
throne, and the run of military luck had at last ceased, almost 
anything sufficed to fire the combustible nature of the Com- 
mons' discontent. The new poll tax of itself was perhaps in- 
sufficient, but the coarse methods employed to test the validity 
of excuses on the ground of age, aroused their righteous indig- 
nation. 

The outrage on Wat Tyler's daughter was an incident which 
not only fired the train of smouldering passion, but produced a 
determined and justly furious leader, both able and willing to 
direct the fierce flame of revolt which leaped up in Kent and 
united itself with the fires already aglow in Essex. 

The forces of Jack Straw, the riotous priest, and those of 
Walter, the maddened tyler, joined hands. The emancipation 
of the serf had long formed the theme for ecclesiastical oratory, 
and the addition of John Ball to the insurgent ranks gave an 
impression to the uneducated that Heaven itself favoured the 
rising. 

There was nothing very immoderate at the outset of the 
revolt. In order to test their claims of social equality, they 
kissed the ci-devant Fair Maid of Kent once or twice, and 
butchered a few especially obnoxious magnates, but their four 
simple demands were neither absurd nor impossible. Tradition 
must have reminded them that originally their claims on the 
English soil were far more substantial than any that they at 
present possessed. Now that their proprietary rights had 
dwindled down to a mere shadow, they began to agitate for a 
release from the lord's proprietary rights over themselves. 
Legislation had recently limited their labour profits and 
powers of barter ; so to legislation they now naturally turned 
to limit their rents, and free their powers to buy and 'sell. 
4d, an acre was not an extravagant limitaticm to place on 
the letting value of even the best land, nor was free trade a 
demand with which any enlightened economist of to-day can 
find fault. These, together with the abolition of slavery and a 
free pardon, were the four clauses which the king showed no 
reluctance to confirm by charter. 
Had matters rested thus, the entire nation would have bene- 


240 History of the English Landed Interest. 

fited by the revolt ; but long before the ink of those thirty 
clerks employed in copying the charter was dry, excesses had 
been perpetrated and precious blood spilled which no royal 
clemency could possibly condone. And yet even then no less 
than three charters were submitted to the Tyler only to be 
rejected with ignorant scorn. The demands of the insurgents 
increased in proportion as they mistook their unchecked 
violence for power. The total repeal of the forest laws, and 
the liberty for the poor to hunt or fish on the warrens, parks, 
woods and waters of private sportsmen, in other words, the 
old popular rights of the Ager Publicus were added to their 
former demands. The Government, thus forced to resist, soon 
found itself able to crush out a rebellion undertaken by undis- 
ciplined mobs, armed for the most part with sticks only. Wat 
the Tyler was killed, the crowds dispersed, 1,800 of their ring- 
leaders hanged, and in a few days the sherifis were proclaiming 
the charters of manumission null and void in every county 
throughout England. 

If now we compare the results of the contest which occurred 
betwixt King and People in John's reign with those of the 
insurrection just related, we shall be better able to understand 
the incidence of taxation during the period now before us. In 
the scene at Bunnymeade we have depicted the success of a 
capitalists' revolution, in that at Smithfield the failure of a 
labourers' rebellion. Accordingly, fix)m the fall of the Tyler 
onwards, we may expect to find but little relaxation of those 
fiscal calls which the State had hitherto demanded of the 
producer. G-rants of wool were made as often as the English 
kings wanted supplies. The disposal of produce and labour 
continued to be restricted by statute law ; and poll taxes, hearth 
pence, and even the percentage dues from personalty, weighed 
heavily on the farmer at a period of English history when 
agriculture was the principal, almost the only national indus- 
try of importance, and the rural classes composed two-thirds of 
the national population. 

Setting aside, however, the comparison between the taxation 
incident on capital and that incident on labour, let us next con- 
trast fiscal demands on commerce, with those on land. If we 


The Land Burdens of the Era. 241 

deduct certam boroughs which paid down a lump sum of money 
to compound the charge, and a few churches which had been 
able to establish a claim to entire immunity, the whole English 
soil up to the end of the twelfth century had become subject to 
the hidage tax. With the trivial exception of a few merchants' 
fines and the prisage of wine, the land sustained the entire 
burden of national taxation. Personal property, including rent 
incomes, first incurred indirect taxation at the Assize of Arms, 
in 1181, when its owner's military equipment was proportioned 
to the amount he possessed ; and the same kind of property in- 
curred direct taxation when the Saladin tithe rendered it liable 
to a charge of one-tenth. In 1204 the barons were paying John 
a seventh on the value of their movables, and in 1207 the same 
king exacted a thirteenth fi:om the whole of the laity. 

So far all taxation on real property had been computed by the 
hide, but in Henry the Second's reign this uncertain basis was 
replaced either by the carucate containing a determinate area 
of 100 acres, or by the knight's fee of 20^. The old terms of 
taxation, such as hidage and Danegeld, gave place to the new 
nomenclature of carucage and scutage. No doubt owing to 
the coincidence of dates in the disappearance and reappearance 
respectively of the old and new names. Dr. Stubbs has rightly 
associated Danegeld with the newly imposed carucage, and 
hidage with scutage.^ It seems, however, more natural to 
reverse the process, and connect the new carucage with the old 
hidage payments and the new scutage with the old Danegeld 
charge. For was it not Danegeld which got rid of the enemy 
without recourse to fighting ? and was it not Scutage wBich, 
for similar reasons, commuted personal military service into a 
money equivalent? And further, were not the hidage and \ 
carucage bases theoretically identical, though practically there > 
may have been some 60 to 100 acres difference between them ? 
Be this as it may, for the future, tenants in chivalry were liable 
to scutage, occupiers of land to carucage, townspeople to the 
same charge under the name of tallage, and personal property 
to whatever percentage the fiscal authority demanded ; for this 
tax seems to have varied every two or three years, like our 

» Stubbs, Canstit Hist^ ch. xiii., p. 622. 


242 History of the English Landed Interest. 

modem income tax. Nor did the other two charges remain 
at the same rate for long. Scutage was 20^. one year, two 
marks another, and very often far higher even than this, if we 
may for a moment include under this generic term all the 
heavy charges and fines sustained by the owners of a knight's 
fee. 

Magna Charta, as we have already said, relieved the tenants 
in chivalry of all but the most moderate fiscal charges ; but 
when we turn to the carucage taxation, otherwise called 
donum or auxilium, we find nothing but the abortive peasant 
rising, recently described, which could have in any way tended 
to check the exactions leved under this head by the class in 
power. Carucage began at two shillings per carucate, it rose 
to five, and it fell again to three ; ^ but, as in the case of scutage, 
it is a generic term, used to cover all those dona, auxilia, and 
Parliamentary grants, which have been discussed in a former 
chapter. The scutage returns had been left very much to the 
voluntary statements of the tenants in chivalry, under much 
the same system as income tax is obtained now ; but not so 
the carucage, which in 1198 was assessed and collected by the 
instrumentality of a jury and sworn evidence, as indeed had 
been the Saladin tithe a few years previously. Afterwards, 
two or more knights out of each hundred came to be specially 
elected, in whose presence the reeve and four chosen men of 
every township assessed the carucage, and probably other 
taxation.' It might have been supposed that the distinction 
between those who paid scutage and carucage and those who 
paid carucage only would have drawn the line between those 
landed proprietors who sat in Parliament by right of possession, 
and those freeholders who could only be represented there by 
the knights of the shire ; but this was not so, for the smaller 
tenants in chivalry, if not specially summoned by the king, 
could claim no prescriptive right to a seat in his council. The 
many, therefore, who were never thus invited, gravitated down 
to the freeholder class, and entrusted their political interests to 
the representatives of the shire. Besides the taxation levied by 

^ Stnbbs, Constit, Hist, ch. xiii. 
» Id., Ibid., ch. xii. p. B48, 


The Land Burdens of the Era. 243 

Parliament, there were certain regular and irregular charges 
on particular estates, for foreign service, such as the king's 
gabelle (a tax originally levied on salt, but afterwards signify* 
ing a tribute), the ward of the sea, and the burial of the dead 
on the Scotch battlefields of 1321.i 

Next perhaps to taxation, the heaviest claim on the farmers' 
produce must have been those multifarious market dues which 
have been alluded to in a former chapter. If any further proof 
of their severity were needed it would be forthcoming in the 
fact that the freeing of the markets from all dues formed one 
of the four clauses in Wat Tyler's first formula of terms. In 
addition to the tithe, a percentage was often levied on receipts 
by the Pope or other Church dignitaries ; but this charge dis- 
appeared after the reign of Edward m. As soon as the land- 
owner ceased to cultivate his lands, or to share in the profits of 
their cultivation otherwise than indirectly through the medium 
of rents, the burden of the tithe fell upon the farmer. If we 
except that due upon timber, the whole of the mixed and pre- 
dial tithes were obtained from the farmer's crops, wool, milk, 
and young live stock. Great though the parson's profits must 
have been, it is scarcely credible that Professor Eogers can 
have computed them correctly when he estimates them at 
rather more than two-fifths of the lord's income, even though 
he includes in this calculation those accruing from the cultiva- 
tion of the glebe.' 

There is very little evidence about personal tithe at this 
time, nor need we stop to consider its importance in a history 
such as this, which deals with real property only. Since, 
however, in a.d. 866 the Bishop of Utrecht was advancing a 
claim even on wreckage,^ it is not likely that the English 
monastic clergy, who aped all that was foreign in their Church 
polity, would have overlooked this source of income. The 
ecclesiastic preached the duty of bestowing a tenth on Gk)d's 
service in so drastic a^ fashion, that even the child's pocket- 

* Eogers, Six Centuries of Work and Wages, p. 209. 
« Id., Ibid,, p. 161. 

' Taswell LaDgmeade, Engh Constit Hist; vide Appendix on Tithes, 
by Carmichael. 


244 History of the English Landed Interest. 

money ^as not his own until after he had deducted the few 
pence which he was told belonged to the Deity. Nor was it 
permitted for any individual to assume that he was giving 
alms until after Ids tithe had been paid. This brings up the 
subject of the poor and their maintenance, for which we shall 
shortly see the producer alone was taxed. There were, and 
there always have been, three degrees of pauperism, namely, 
(1) The impotent poor, such as the aged, orphan, lunatip, and 
diseased. (2) The poor by casualty, such as the disabled, 
decayed, and unfortunate. (3) The thriftless poor, such as 
the vagrant, idle, riotous, dissolute and the like. Before the 
statute of 43 Elizabeth there was no universal provision by 
law for relieving any of these three degrees in poverty. It 
has always been supposed that the religious houses were by 
virtue of their institution obliged to make some provision for 
the poor. It is so essential that the reader should be quite 
clear on each important stage in the National Poor Law history, 
that it is necessary, even at the risk of repetition, to once more 
beat the bounds of early tithe distribution. In the days, then, 
prior to the institution of parishes, when it was the practice 
of the bishop to send out his clergy to preach in the several 
parts of his diocese, he divided all the tithes that were paid 
into his hands according to the quadripartite distribution ; 
viz., one part for the maintenance of himself and clergy, a 
second for the repairs and ornament of the churches, a third 
for use of the ministers officiating therein, and a fourth for the 
succour of the poor and necessitous traveller. Directly, how- 
ever, that the episcopal sees became endowed with lands, the 
bishops themselves proffered their particular share of the tithe 
for the encouragement of the Parish Church movement. On 
receipt of this fourth part of the tithe the resident parish 
cleryman adopted the same tripartite distribution just intro- 
duced by his diocesan ; that is to say, he used it for hia own, 
his church's, and his poor's maintenance. What had thus been 
begun voluntarily was soon made obligatory by canonical, if 
not by secular law. It has been argued that this fraction of 
the tithe was insufficient to support the poor of the nation, and 
that if the Saxon laws are searched, traces of Poor Law legia- 


The Land Burdens of the Era. 245 

lation are brought to light. In the codes of both kings, Edgar 
and Alfred, there are laws enacting that the priests and people 
should distribute alms, in order to sustain the poor. It is, 
however, far more likely that such legislation was directed 
against impious individuals who withheld their tithe, than 
that it was a fresh Poor Law provision. The regular and 
national poor funds, derivable out of the tithe, were of course 
largely supplemented, just as they are to-day, by private alms. 
The king, who was a large benefactor, was termed the advo- 
cate and kinsman of the poor ; there was frequent resort to 
the King's Brief in times of pressure, like the necessity for 
rebuilding the church of a poor parish ; then there were the 
Gild charities, to which men constantly demised lands or 
bequeathed personal property, for the purpose of being admin- 
istered for the relief of the poor. The confiscation of the 
property belonging to such corporations by Henry, robbed the 
poor only one degree less than his previous confiscation of 
the monastic lands. 

In early times before the establishment of monasteries, and 
perhaps for some time afler, it is difficult to see how there 
could have been able-bodied poverty. The impossibility of a 
lordless man is grimly provided for by the Cone. Greatanlea 
of Athelstan. The whole pauper population of a district was 
composed of the slaves and the villeinage, both of which 
classes were legitimately entitled to their lord's support for a 
livelihood. Apart from the tithe question, the monastic houses, 
by reason of their seignorial status, were liable for the support 
of the local poor. Here therefore the peculiar relationship of 
lord, land, and people solves the mysteries of early pauper relief. 

But apart from this view of the case, the term " alms " 
implies a voluntary and indefinite payment, not the fixed and 
compulsory rate of a Poor Law. Later on, when monasteries 
had been founded and churches came to be appropriated 
by such religious bodies, it was usual for the vicar officiating 
in the appropriated church to retain one-third of the tithe, 
while the other two-thirds were applied by the monks for their 
own maintenance, the entertainment of the stranger and the 
relief of the poor. 


246 History of the English Landed Interest 

From all this it is clear that the provision for the poor by 
the monasteries was in no way eleemosynary but compulsory. 
These religious communities were the trustees of national funds 
for pauper maintenance, not the irresponsible possessors of the 
nation's tithe. Even their splendid hospitality must be placed 
under the same category. The visitor was the nation's guest, 
and his board and lodging provided for out of the national 
tithe. If this had been otherwise, by what right or excuse 
could the law have interfered, as it so often did, to provide 
for the proper distribution of the Impropriator's Tithe? By 
the 36 Ed. I. c. 1, s. 1, it is enacted as follows : " Whereas 
religious houses were founded and lands given to them, to the 
intent that clerks and laymen might be admitted therein, sick 
and feeble men might be maintained, hospitality, alms-giving, 
and other charitable deeds might be done, and that in them 
prayers might be said for the souls of the founders and their 
heirs ; the abbots and other governors of the said houses, and 
certain aliens their superiors, have laid heavy taxes upon the 
same, whereby the number of religious persons of the said 
houses and other servants therein being oppressed, the service 
of God is diminished, alms being not given to the poor, the 
sick and feeble, the healths of the living and souls of the dead 
be miserably defrauded, hospitality, alms-giving, and other 
godly deeds do cease ; it is ordained that religious persons shall 
send nothing to their superiors out of his majesty's kingdom 
and dominion." 

Thus early was attention drawn to this foreign drain on the 
national resources, which ultimately proved the main cause for 
the suppression and confiscation of monasteries by Henry VHI. 
But this was not the first national interference with the dis- 
tribution of Church endowments. By 3 Ed. I. c. 1, the abuse 
of the monastic hospitality by the constant visits of great men 
was checked. Nor did the Legislature ever withdraw its watch- 
ful eye, as is proved by the statute of Articulo Oleri in Edward 
II.'s reign, by 2 Hen. V. c. 1, and other later enactments. 

The statute 12 Bich. II. c. 7, in which impotent beggars were 
compelled to remain either in the cities and towns where they 
happened to be residing at the time of proclamation, or if the 


The Land Burdens of the Era. 247 

people of such places could not support them, withdraw to 
other towns within the hundred, or to the towns in which 
they were bom, together with what is practically a repetition 
of the same in Henry VlL.'s reign, are the only two other 
allusions in the national statute book to the impotent poor up 
to the reign of Edward VI. 

When we turn to culpable poverty, we are struck most with 
the ingenuity by which our forefathers avoided the expenses 
of imprisonment. A rogue or vagrant, in fact any one coming 
under the category contained in the third degree of poverty 
mentioned above, found but little mercy. He was quickly 
branded with a V ^^^ turned over for a year's serfdom to 
any one who would be troubled with him ; when any further 
delinquency on his part was punished with chains, flogging, or 
death. 

It is the more important to understand clearly the provision 
made for the poor prior to the suppression of the monasteries, 
so that the reader may be prepared to recognise the fact that 
ever since the first Elizabethan Poor Law, the land has been 
twice charged with the burden of the national poverty. 
Clearly when the first tithe provisions were made there was 
little property except land to tax ; but even at the period now 
reached, there was growing up the great English middle class, 
which in Elizabeth's reign had become one of the chief factors 
in the kingdom. 

This leads the reader back to the events with which this 
chapter commenced. The Black Death, though it failed at the 
time to arouse the apathetic villein to any violent exhibition 
of his discontent, had in the long run proved his friend, in that 
it entirely altered the social and political economy of the land ; 
and the Peasants' War, though it failed miserably, had opened 
moderate men's eyes to the anachronism of slavery.^ Emanci- 
pated serfs were flocking into the towns, there to form the 
nucleus of that class which ultimately wrested the political 
supremacy from the land by the repeal of the Com Laws. 

^ Professor Rogers holds that the insurrection, though suppressed, 
scared the authorities into surrender.--/8^x Ceniuri^ of Work and 
WageSf p. 271. 


248 History of the English Landed Interest. 

The scarcity of rnral labour, and the high rate of wages, all 
labour statutes notwithstanding, forced landlords to let rather 
than cultivate their lands. In vain companies, colleges, cor- 
porations, and monastic houses sought to succeed where the 
great landlords were failing every day. By the end of the 
fifteenth century a large portion of England's soil, if we except 
the manorial home farms, was in the hands of the capitalist 
farmer, and the landlord had about as little interest in his 
tenant's welfare, as has the consumer in that of the producer 
in any other industry. 


Zhc ITubor perfo^. 

A.D. 1399-1603, 


CHAPTER XIX. 

FUBTHEB LAND LEGISLATION EXAMINED. 

The glorious sun of the Plantagenets sank amidst a lurid glare 
of civil strife. 

The Wars of the Boses raged for many years up and 
down the country. Great landowners with long trails of re- 
tainers joined one side or the other, were victorious here and 
defeated there, survived this battle or fell in that. But 
throughout the prolonged struggle the agricultural classes 
ploughed and sowed their lands, harvested and marketed their 
produce, lived, and actually prospered, regardless of and indif- 
ferent to a commotion which had originated in causes too high 
up to affect their interests or concern their thoughts.^ 

The constant recurrence of boy kings, a singular feature of 
the times, had perhaps momentarily stunted that reverential 
sentiment for royalty, whose fibres have been ever rooted deep 
down in the Englishman's heart, and whose vigorous growth 
was later on evidenced in the absurd creed that rings conse- 
crated by kingly agency could charm away cramp, and that 
necks touched by kingly fingers could be cured of scrofula. 

Throughout the period we are now about to discuss, the 
exodus of rural labour into the towns continued. It was 
remarkable how defbly hands accustomed to the spade and 
wheelbarrow could manipulate the scales and scoop of the shop. 
Men soon learned that they were* more secure under burgage 
than soccage tenures, that tallage taxation was no more for- 

* Bogers, Agriculture and Prices, vol. iv., p. 19. 

949 


250 History of the English Landed Interest. 

midable tlian carucage, and that more money came ont of the 
till than out of the soil. 

So far-reaching and beneficial had been the land legislation 
of the fourteenth century, that throughout the Tudor period, 
up to the reign of Henry Vlll., very little further was required 
or enacted. The dangers incident to civil warfare indaced the 
great landowners to make frequent use of the statute De Donis, 
so that the whole landed interest was very little affected by the 
confusion that must otherwise have ensued whenever a change 
of ownership occurred by confiscation or other war casualties. 
The younger sons alone suffered from the consequences of this 
rigid adherence to the custom of primogeniture, and they had 
to resort to other means of livelihood and fields for ambition than 
those formerly available out of the revenues of their paternal 
lands. During the reigns of Edward 11. and Edward III. the 
Gk)thic powers of electing the principal subordinate magis- 
trates, the sheriffs and conservators of the peace, had been taken 
from the people, justices of the peace had been substituted, and 
the separation of the Lords and Commons in Parliament had 
been brought about. 

While the wars lasted there was little opportunity for legis- 
lation, if we except a class of laws beginning with that of 
common recoveries in Edward the Fourth's reign which affected 
the question of landed possession. The great lords were at first 
too powerful politically to allow of any alteration being made 
by Parliament in the law of entails ; but they were vigorously 
discouraged by the judges whenever devices for new kinds of 
entail came before the courts of justice. So, though attempts 
in the reigns of Richard 11. and Henry IV. to settle estates 
with substitutes, whose rights in the estate were to arise as 
soon as the grantees or their issue should alienate, were frus- 
trated by the judges before whom such actions were brought, 
the earlier devices invented to elude the old entails were sus- 
tained, and that of a common recovery first received indirect 
legal sanction in the reign of Edward IV. Though originally 
introduced by the clergy, so as to evade the statutes of Mort- 
main, it was adopted by the laity in order to bar entails, and 
was met by the other side (also prompted by clerical invention) 


Further Land Legislation Examined. 251 

with the establishment of Uses. In fact, a struggle lasting 
over many reigns ensued between the king, backed up by a few 
great landlords, and the -remainder of the landed interest ; the 
one side endeavouring to destroy, the other side to retain the 
power of entail. Against the latter Henry VIE. introduced 
the statute of fines for landed property, and limited the benefit 
of clergy, whereby attainders could be stopped and the inherit- 
ance saved, to one intervention only ; and Henry VILL., though 
he sanctioned the demise of real estates by will, endeavoured to 
destroy the protecting efltects of Uses. The practice of the 
latter custom had revolutionised the old mode of conveyancing 
with its assurance by feoffment and livery upon the land, 
which now gave place to secret conveyances to uses, long mort- 
gage terms, and family settlements. By the end of Henry 
VlIL's reign the results of the struggle were palpable in a state 
of affairs very little recognisable from the conditional fees at 
common law in vogue before the passing of the statute De 
Donis.^ 

This brief summary, it is hoped, will enable the reader to 
understand the more detailed account to which it is but a 
preface. 

Taking the various statutes in the order mentioned, we are 
first confronted with the formidable task ' of unravelling the 
process known under the technical term, " Fiction of Common 
Eecovery." ^ It will be more conducive to a thorough under- 
standing of this method if the reader bears in mind that its 
object was to bar entails. 

^ Blackstone, Comm,, Bk. lY., chap. 83. 

' Blackstone expressed a fear that he would be unable to make his 
account of this process clear even to the law students. 

• A "Recovery" was the legal term for obtaining anything by judgment 
or trial at law. It was a " Common Becovery," because it was a beaten 
and common path to the end to which it was appointed, viz. the cutting 
off of the estates* tail. Finally, it was a fiction or feigned recovery, be- 
cause the whole proceedings were a pretence brought about by the collu- 
sion of three parties. These were technically termed (1) the demandant 
(in reality the recoverer) who brings a friendly writ of entry against 
(2) the tenant (in reality the recoveree), and (8) the vouchee whom the 
tenant calls to warranty for the lands in demand. — Jacobs, Law Dict.^ 
sub voc, " Becovery." 


2^2 History of the English Landed Interest. 

The inconyenience of a strict entail was felt by parents of 
children disobedient with impunity, by farmers deprived of 
their leases, by creditors defrauded of their debts, and by pur- 
chasers cheated of lands through the practice of vendors in 
secretly entailing the property sold. As we have said the 
efforts of the Commons to obtain any alteration in the law 
were frustrated by the opposition of the great landlords. The 
remedy, however, came about by the collusive process known 
as " A Fiction of Common Recovery." The judges could not 
aUow a law to be entirely disregarded, but they were favour- 
able to any method of evasion which the aggrieved landowners 
could devise, provided it were sufficiently ingenious to baffle 
any future attempts to upset their judgment by the issne of the 
tenant in tail. The latter determined to work out a scheme 
initiated by the clerical houses in evading the statutes of Mort- 
main. The recovery of the entailed property by means of a 
friendly plaintiff, on a fictitious title was the groundwork of 
their plans, but it was not sufficiently secure j^er se against 
the possible attempt of the tenant's issue to recover the lands 
entailed upon them by means of a writ of formedon} The 
opponents of entail contrived therefore a still more intricate and 
ingenious process, introducing a third party to the collusion. 
The tenant in tail having secured a friendly plaintiff, or de- 
mandant as he was technically termed, appeared in court in 
the apparent rdZe of defendant, and called in a fictitious person- 
age to witness that he had warranted, the title of the lands in 
tail. This the witness admitted, but when further called upon 
for a defence, he suffered judgment to go against him in de- 
fault. 

The court therefore adjudged that the demandant should 
recover the lands from the tenant in tail, and that lands of 
equal value should be handed over to the latter by the default- 
ing vouchee, as the fictitious witness to the warranty was 
technically termed.* As this device gradually became re- 
duced to a nicety, the proceedings grew even more complicated, 
and the lands were first conveyed by a deed called the recovery 

^ So called because they claimed per formam don4, 
« Vide Williams, Law of Real Property ^ ch. 2. 


Further Land Legislation Examined. 253 

deed, to the tenant to the prsBcipe against whom the action was 
to be bronght. Then a second person, called the demandant, 
issued the writ against the tenant to the praecipe. The latter 
forthwith called upon the tenant in tail to warrant his title. 
The tenant in tail, who in the legal phraseology of the age 
was said to have been vouched to warranty, performed the 
same process on another. This last vouchee was smuggled 
out of court by the demandant under the pretence of a private 
interview. Not returning, the court had no other resource but 
to pronounce judgment in favour of the demandant. 

That the judges were favourably disposed to the proceedings 
may be inferred from the circumstance that later on the court 
crier often acted as the vouchee. Such recoveries then were 
governed by the strict rules of common law, and tenants in 
dower, courtesy, for life only, and in tail after possibility of issue 
extinct, as well as those who had made leases for life, or whose 
wives were entitled to dower, often cut oflf the reversioner's or 
remainder man's rights by selling their lands and allowing the 
purchasers to recover by this fiction. Although the judgment 
of the suit known as Taltarum in the reign of Edward IV. 
was adverse to the champions of this ingenious device, on the 
ground that in this particular case it was a recovery improperly 
suffered, it was for ever after recognised as admitting that a 
like recovery properly suffered would bar the issue in tail.^ 

As in the custom just explained, so now in that of Uses, the 
clever brains of the divine were the source of this cunning 
invention. At the close of Edward in.'s reign shrewd ecclesi- 
astics took to driving that proverbial "coach and four" through 
the obnoxious statutes of Mortmain, by obtaining grants of 
land, not to their religious houses, but to the u^' of their reli- 
gious houses; and later on, Torkistand Lancastrian land mag- 
nates went into battle with lighter hearts, because by imitation 

* Beeves, Hist, of Eng, Latv, iii. 831. 

' A Use was a trust or confidence reposed in a man for the holding of 
the land. He to whom the use had been entrusted was intended to have 
the profits and the tenant of the land (technically termed the ter^e 
tenant) was expected to make an estate as the holder of the use (techni- 
cally termed cestui que use) should direct. 


254 History of the English Landed Interest 

of this monkish ruse their estates were not only seonred against 
forfeiture, but their children's livelihood provided for by will. 
Then the Courts of Equity during the fourth Edward's reign 
set to work to reduce Uses to a fine art, and though at first the 
Common Law could take no cognisance of this practice, there 
were up to Henry Vlil/s reign always clergymen-chancellors 
ready upon all occasions to decree the performance of the 
trust and use.^ 

The Statute of Fines introduced by Henry VII. was probably 
intended to make a fine a bar to entail, though some have 
supposed that it was designed to give it the validity it had at 
Common Law before the Statute of Nonclaim had been intro- 
duced by Edward L to bar the right unless contested within a 
year and a day. 

By the ancient Common Law a charter of feoffment was 
generally the only written (if written at all) instrument whereby 
lands were transferred or conveyed.* It would have been sup- 
posed that the great number of witnesses, and the publicity and 
solemnity attending a livery of seisin would have afforded suffi- 
cient and lasting authenticity of the transaction. But this was 
not found a sufficient proof or title to possession in cases where 
charters had been mislaid and destroyed, or when long years 
had elapsed. It was seen that no title could be so secure as one 
that had been unsuccessfully contested in a court of justice. 
To obtain this, landowners resorted to a suit, when, as soon as 
the writ was sued out and the parties were before the court, a 
composition of the suit was entered into, with the consent of 
the judges, whereby the lands in question were declared to 
be the right of the contending parties. The agreement 
having been reduced to writing, was preserved amongst the 
other court records, by which means it was not so liable to loss 
or defacement as a charter of feoffment. A writ was then 
issued to the sheriff of the county in which the lands lay, di- 
recting him to deliver seisin and possession to the person in 
whose favour judgment had been pronounced. This process, 

* Blacksfcone, Comm,^ ii. 27L 

• Charters of feofl&nent were not necessarily loritten instruments until 
writing hecaine a compulsory adjunct by 8 and 9 Vict c. 106. 


Further Land Legislation Examined. 255 

which dates back to pre-Conquest days, was termed a " fine," 
which was strictly not so much the accommodation as the ter- 
mination of a soit.^ 

Though the statute 4 Hen. VII. c. 24 made no apparent re- 
ference to entails, indirectly it was a covert blow against the 
statute De Donis. It did not repeat the declaration of the latter 
statute that fines, as against the issue, should be void, but it 
enacted generally that fines of land levied with proclamation,* 
shall include as well "privies" (f.c. representatives of the 
parties to the fine), as "strangers" (i.e. persons not represen- 
tatives of the parties to the fine). Any one not a party to the 
fine had powers to vindicate his claims within five years from 
the date of levying the fine. This extension of the time, from 
one year and a day, allowed by the Statute of Nonclaim in the 
first Edward's reign, to five years, allowed by the seventh 
Henry's statute, has deceived historians with the idea that it 
had the opposite effect on estates tail to what had really been 
intended. But it must be remembered, that barring the right 
by Nonclaim was abolished by the statute of 34 Edw. III. c. 
16, and only restored under less rigorous conditions by that of 
Henry Vll. ; and what doubts existed as to whether fines could 
be considered a sufficient bar to the issue of a tenant in entail 
were effectually removed by the statute 32 Henry VIII. c. 36. 

By the reign of Henry VIII. Uses had become universal, and 
their defects patent to the whole landed interest. They and 
even feoffments were usually made secretly,^ so that suitors for 
land met with the greatest difficulties in attempts to discover 
the legal tenant. The complaints of defrauded creditors and 
dowerless widows were united with those of the king and his 
great feudal lords, who had been, by the same means, mulcted 

^ Cruise, Dig. Tit, 86, cb. i., ss. 1-6. It has been explained as the final 
agreement or conveyance upon record, for the settliog and assuring of 
lands and tenements, acknowledged in the king's courts by the cognisor 
to be the right of the cognisee. 

■ Vide " Fine," in Jacobs' Law Diet. There were two kinds, viz., the fine 
according to the statutes, because it had been pleaded, whereas the fine 
without proclamation was termed a fine at the Common Law, and was 
levied in the old manner prior to the statute 4 Hen. VII. c. 24. 

' Craig and Macfarlane, Hist o/Englandt B^* VI., ch. iii. 


256 History of the English Landed Interest. 

of their profits from wardship, marriage, or relief. The Statute 
of Uses in the twenty-seventh year of Henry VIIL c. 10 was the 
natural result of such widespread spoliation. The reader has 
only to peruse the preamble of this Act to learn how wide* 
spread was the demand for redress. Lands which by Common 
Law could only be transferred by livery of seisin, had been 
conveyed by fraudulent feoffments, fines, recoveries, and other 
assurances, also by wills and testaments, whereby heirs had 
been unjustly disinherited, lords had lost their wards, mar- 
riages, relief, heriots, escheats, aids, and other profits incident 
on feudalism, married men their tenancies by the curtesy, 
widows their dowers, and many perjuries had been committed. 
The statute converted equitable into legal estates, by making 
the feoffees to uses a mere conduit pipe for transferring the 
estate from them to the ceniui que use — in other words, it 
transformed the use into possession, so that such lands ceased 
to be devisable by will. Even after the enactment of this 
statute it was found that lands could still be transferred by 
secret transaction without formality or lasting document, a 
state of affairs which necessitated the further statute of 27 
Henry Vlli. c. 16, whereby no lands, etc., could pass, alter, 
or change from one to another by reason only of any bargain 
and sale thereof except by written and sealed indenture enrolled 
either in one of the Record Courts at Westminster or laid be- 
fore certain public authorities within the county or counties 
in which the lands, etc., were situate. The intention of this 
Act was to abolish Uses altogether ; but the ingenuity of man 
soon found various methods whereby the statute could be 
evaded ; and the doctrine of Uses, scotched, not killed by recent 
legislation, revived under the denomination of Trusts, as well 
as in other ways.^ 

By statute 32 Hen. Vlil. c. 1, usually called the Statute of 
Wills, it was enacted that every person having manors, lands, 
etc., shall have power to give, dispose, will, and devise by will 
in writing or otherwise, by act executed in his lifetime, «dl his 

* See Cruise, Digest^ Tit. xi., ch iii. ; Barton, Law of Real Property ; 
and Bl&ckstone, Comm, Craig and Macfarlane, Hist. ofEngUmdy Bk. VL, 
oh. iiL, furnish all the prominent allusions in the above. 


Further Land Legislation Examined. 257 

manors, eto., any law, statute, etc., to the contrary notwithstand- 
ing. By the same Act an infant up to the age of twenty-one 
years could make no will of his lands except in case of special 
local customs ; though a boy at the age of fourteen and a maid 
of twelve years might make a testament of their goods and 
chattels, and a feme covert could, with or without her hus- 
band's consent, make neither will of lands nor testament of 
her goods and chattels.* 

This short examination of the national code, though com- 
prehending only the history of a few centuries, discloses a 
system of legislation alternating between fresh enactments 
directed against abuses, and abuses directed against fresh 
enactments. The national lawyers were ransacking their 
brains at one time to counteract some subtle evasion of law, 
and at another to reduce such to a recognised legal preictice — 
thus, in the words of Shelley, " ensnaring justice in the toils 
of law." The august assembly of the legislature was to-day 
solemnly legalising a deceit which only yesterday had upset 
one of its previous enactments, and which to-morrow would be 
in turn upset by some fresh law. It is a relief to turn from 
legal quibbles and examine the condition of society for which 
such legislation, as has just been discussed, was required. It 
has already been pointed out that the unsettled and dangerous 
circumstances of civil war had induced landed proprietors 
to give more careful heed to that process of tying up estates 
which seems to have been so inimical to the royal interests ; 
and it can be well credited that methods such as " uses," which 
deprived the king and other landed grandees of their feudsil 
dues, might truly be termed inimical to royal interests. But 
then this scarcely explains the ultimate success which attended 
the royal efforts when, during the last Henry's reign, the pos- 
session of land became no more secure than after the enact- 
ment of Quia Emptores. The cause of the Crown's success 
must be sought in some later acquisition of support from one 
or other of the three estates of the realm. Dr. Stubbs put the 
whole subject into a nutshell when he wrote as follows : — 

* Jacobs, Law Dict^ siib vqc. Will. 


258 History of the English Landed Interest. 

" It is probably true to say in general terms, tbat from the Conquest to 
the Great Charter, the crown, the clergy, and the commons were banded 
together against the baronage ; the legal and national instincts and 
interests against the feudal. From the date of Magna Charta to the 
revolution of 1899, the barons and the commons were banded in resist- 
ance to the aggressive policy of the crown, the action of the clergy being 
greatly perturbed by the attraction and repulsion of the papacy. From 
the accession of Henry VII. the baronage, the people, and the royal house 
were divided each within itself, and that internal division was working 
a sort of political suicide which the Tudor reigns arrested, and by arrest- 
ing it they made possible the restoration of the national balance.*' ^ 

At the close of mediseyalism the country was filled with 
internecine struggles. During the civil wars, kingly aspirant 
fought against kingly aspirant, baron against baron, and retainer 
against retainer. The clergy were figuratively always at each 
other's throats over the papeJ question, and, as we have just 
seen, the law was constantly mutilating its own majesty by legis- 
lating against itself. If it is aUowed to make an addition to 
Dr. Stubbs's brief summary, it might be said that from the 
accession of Henry VIL to the death of Henry VIH. a great 
middle class had grown into political power which even thus 
early fixed a jealous eye on the land monopolisation. There 
could have been but one avenue to political and social great- 
ness for the trader of Tudor times, and that was the invest- 
ment of his fortune in the purchase of real property. The 
splendour of feudal homage and other dignities peculiar to 
landed proprietors were as unattainable as they were desirable 
so long as the influence of De Donis militated against a free 
trade in land, and the two Henries found no doubt more political 
assistance from the united vote of the burgess class in Parlia- 
ment than from the uncertain views of a few great nobles who, 
though smarting under grievances identical with their royal 
master's, were disinclined to take action against their own 
order. 

Throughout the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the com- 
mons were minding their own business, and prospering ; wisely 
leaving politics alone until their increased wealth afforded them 
a political standing. This apathy of the lower classes, combined 

^ Stubbs, Constit Hist^ cb. xxi. 


F^ 


26o History 


with the war 
clergy, endue 
lutism, whict 
the clergy, bi 
grudged him 
and his dau) 
tion of landed 
the dissolution 
the alienatiot 
lifted the im] 
anticipated an^ 
the acquisitioi! 
commoner. I^ 
had he borne a 
baronage, that 
at the mandat 
would have soo 
could they but 
process would li 
to vote their rel 
constitution. 

Perhaps no 
watched closely 
suspect how eld 
Commons was tl 
agriculture. Tl; 
rural polity prev 
economy of a tril 
the overlord. Tl 
broke up the Enj 
every man on h 
sturdy class of ye 
has stamped its i] 
to one general for 
restrictions, or d< 
tenants of the in( 
their own leisure, 
enterprise or inge: 


out of the irrespon 
British farmer, in 
virtues and some c 
ing Anglo-Saxon : 
medisBval lawyers 
actual slavery, E 
lord, but no one 
name suited his i 
ancient privileges 
of a f r6e commuri ™^e. 
overlord. Beyon^cussion was the 
by the introductijiigj^ i^iddle class, 
line, to transgresade, and within 
gtto was impossil^ ^ wealthy Hull 
improving the mie realm and the 
ing stock, purcht the very crown 
since those servi<ircial houses like 
afterwards comn like Dick Whit- 
tionable whethehero of modern 
fifteenth centur^ba a wide export 
so very great af^hant vessel that 
officials, there wbskins and hides 
Leet protected tlAnd there were 
Baron protected ^ere initiating 
see in this stir^izabeth's reign, 
popular indepei^^ay nooks and 
constitution to ittracted by such 
I, and the clergy 
oo sanctified to 
If too august to 
•refathers might 

»f Suffolk. William 
siege of Orleans; 
ird IV., and their 
e by Richard III., 
house, but died as 


TT' . of the English Landed Interest 
258 History i/ * 

sdble unit of a servile class there arose the 
the GiJLt Chap4*th5^^<>s® character are exaggerated most of the 
together against th^f the weaknesses of this stubborn self-assert- 
interests against thc|:ttce. And yet, despite the assumptions of 
revolution of 1899, tlb ^.j^^ Englishman had never degenerated into 
^tSSrtSTb^ ^^^ W been oaUed a chattel of his 
the accession of Hens hnew better than the latter how little the 
were divided each w^eal position on the manor. He clung to the 
a sort of political su^ ^f ^ tribal economy, and sustained the rights 
ing it they made posi. ^ ^.^^ ^ ^^^ arbitrary innovations of the 
At the close o|i the revolutionary changes brought about 
internecine struglbn of the manorial system there was a fixed 
fought against kiijs which by either party without a quid pro 
against retainer. Je. The expenditure of seignorial capital in 
other's throats o^^norial lands, or supplying the manorial farm- 
seen, the law waSftsed the labour services of the peasants, and 
lating against it^ represented the rents of the land and were 
Dr. Stubbs's britiuted at their fair value in money, it is ques- 
accession of He%r the difference between the villein of the 
middle class had and the tenant fitrmer of the nineteenth was 
early fixed a jeafer alL Besides the ministeriales or manorial 
could have beeifere the village representatives, and the Court 
ness for the tra<be people's rights in the same way as the Court 
ment of his for those of the lord. It is not therefore hard to 
splendour of f eival of a communal polity the germ of that 
landed propriet^ldence which eventually shook the English 
so long as the is very foundations, 
trade in land, ai 
assistance from 
ment than from 
though smartin 
master's, were 
order. 

Throughout 
mons were min 
leaving politics 
apolitical stanc 


Zbc ZTubor pcriob^ 


CHAPTER XX. 

THB CONNECTION BETWEEN LAND AND TRADE. 

The chief feature of the age now under discussion was the 
rapid and vigorous growth of the great English middle class. 
Fortunes were being constantly made in trade, and within 
little more than a century the descendant of a wealthy Hull 
merchant had not only become a duke of the realm and the 
consort of a royal princess, but had died with the very crown 
within his grasp.^ There were great commercial houses like 
the Cannyngs of Bristol, and merchant princes like Dick Whit- 
tington, thrice Lord Mayor of London and hero of modern 
pantomime. There was John Tavemer, whom a wide export 
trade had induced to build so mighty a merchant vessel that 
its great cargoes of woolfels, passelarges, lambskins and hides 
evaded the staple by special royal consent. And there were 
many less famed merchant magnates who were initiating 
that daring spirit of enterprise which, in Elizabeth's reign, 
carried the English flag into all the out-of-the-way nooks and 
crannies of the hitherto ill-explored world. Attracted by such 
success the nobles themselves turned merchants, and the clergy 
followed suit. A reverend abbot* was not too sanctified to 
start a herring trade, nor the very king himself too august to 
seek wealth from commercial dealings. Our forefathers might 

1 The De la Poles of Hull subsequently became Earls of Suffolk. William 
de la Pole was created a duke for his services at the siege of Orleans ; 
John de la Pole, his son, married the sister of Edward IV., and their 
eldest son was declared heir presumptive to the throne by Hichard III., 
and was betrothed to a daughter of the Scottish royal house, but died as 
plain Earl of Lincoln a few years before his father. 

* William of Trumpington, Abbot of St Albans. 

Ml 


262 History of the English Landed Interest. 

have with far more justice earned oar modem reproach of 
being a nation of shopkeepers, had not all classes abroad been 
stricken with the same trading fever. 

Though it was without doubt the aim of the Tudor dynasty 
to exalt the wealth of England, the privileges granted to 
foreigners had tended to place the national commerce almost 
entirely under foreign flags. As soon however as royal attention 
had become focused on the attempts of the Hanse merchants 
to obstruct English trade outlets, and on the monopolisation of 
native commerce by the Lombards, the patriotic queen needed 
not the London mob's clamour in the riot of 1597 to spur her 
on to remedying the abuse. She forthwith expelled the 
Easterlings, closed their Steel Yard, ^encouraged her merchants 
to build ships, and rewarded their successful captains. Hence- 
forth the spirit of adventure stirred the hearts of bold sailors 
like Hawkins, Frobisher, and Drake, whilst the love story of 
Edward Osborne shed a glamour of romance around the 
hitherto prosy trade dealings of the sixteenth-century mer- 
chant, which afterwards proved an eloquent theme for the 
novelist.* 

No wonder then that the Tudor aristocracy never considered 
that commercial dealings would soil their fingers, and that 
younger sons of the landed gentry found thus a suitable vent 
for their loftiest ambition. A few generations before, the 
sword had been the sole profession worthy of their considera- 
tion ; henceforth commerce and the sword were so closely al- 
lied that the former was raised to dignity by the latter's 
agency. By such means was infused into trade the blue blood 
of the Norman, and into the landed interest the hitherto de- 
spised blood of the Anglo-Saxon ; and this alliance of com- 
merce with land obliterated those few remaining traces of race 
antagonism that had survived the lapse of centuries. 

* In Edward Sixth's reign their monopoly was taken away and their 
liberties forfeited, but they still throve by exporting native cloths, till 
Elizabeth expelled them in 1597. 

* Edward Osborne, a cloth worker, saved the life of his master's daughter 
by jumping into the Thames after her, whereupon she refused the Earl 
of Shrewsbury and married her preserver, who thus became the progeni- 
tor of the ducal house of Leeds. 


The Connection Between Land and Trade. 263 

[Reverting once more to the land-holding class, we find a 
marked alteration in their manners and social ethics. The 
old feudal system survived, it is true, as a shadow ; but the 
substance which called it into existence had dwindled away to 
a mere nothing. The great lord might still aspire to lead his 
tenantry whenever he went forth on parliamentary or other 
state business, but it was a poor mimicry of the chivalric ser- 
vices in the old war times. The man who sat in the ancient 
judgment seat of the Court Baron was a feeble representative 
of his forefather, the dread dispenser of a justice which included 
the awful powers of life and death. The freeholders and copy- 
holders who paid him the rents of assize were vastly superior 
beings to the villein who tremblingly tendered his blanch- 
farms and blackmail, and the hired labourer a diflferent person 
to the human chattel who performed menial service under the 
fear of his lash. And yet naturally enough the great land- 
owner clung to the old splendour of feudal associations ; and 
though he could not demand the military services of his ten- 
ants for the purposes of private war, he paid them handsomely 
to wear his livery and become his armed retainers. By means 
of this mimic army he occasionally found opportunity to bully 
the judges on circuit, or arbitrarily usurp another's lands, or 
bolster up a falling cause, whereby he fondly imagined that 
he became once more the chivalrous and autocratic personage 
of a bygone age.* 

During the Wars of the Eoses there had been sufficient rea- 
son for the custom ; but as soon as they ceased the necessity 
for these small domestic armies ceased too. In Warwick's 
castles and manors 30,000 men sat down to dinner each morn- 
ing at their master's expense. Oxen sufficient to stock a small 
farm were consumed each day at his town retinue's breakfasts.^ 
All the London taverns were full of his men. All the streets 
were thronged with those who wore the cognisance of the 
bear. His privy counsellors, treasurers, marshalls, constables, 
stewards, secretaries, heralds, pursuivants, pages, guards, and 

^ Stubbs, Constit Hist, ck. xxi. 

* Stow mentions six oxen. See also Bulwer Lytton's novel, The Last 
of the Barons, 


264 History of the English Landed Interest. 

trumpeters almost eclipsed the officials of the royal household ; 
and the magic of his name overawed majesty itself. 

Sovereigns of the powerful Tudor dynasty coxdd ill brook 
the possibility of a second king-maker, nor could the nobility 
themselves afford the expenses of such grandeur after that 
two-thirds of the estates in England had been half ruined by 
the civil wars and heavily burdened by mortgage and family 
settlements. But before we touch on the inevitable legislation 
which put a stop to this practice, it will be well to examine 
the well-oiled machinery which worked so mighty a system of 
housekeeping. The descendants of the Norman aristocracy 
had added two fresh meals to the two which had sufficed in 
Conquest times. The supper of Richard Qrossteste's days was 
followed in Tudor times by the livery partaken in bed between 
the hours of eight and nine. Otherwise there was not much 
difference in the meals from those of the Angevin era. Break- 
fast eaten at 7 a.m. was the substantial collation required 
by people who had been up and about for hours. It consisted 
of two kinds of bread, fish or flesh, wine and beer. The livery 
was the same with the exception of the fish and meat. The 
dinner, probably the supper too, were the public meals, the 
former of which often lasted three hours. The incidents were 
very similar to those described in an earlier chapter. The 
lord sat on the dais, his tenants and guests according to rank 
above or below the salt. Perhaps the great oak centre table 
had grown somewhat thicker in order to bear without sagging 
the more abundant supply of viands required by the grosser 
appetites of the Tudor aristocracy. Minstrels, tumblers, jest- 
ers and jugglers beguiled the long hours with their songs and 
tricks, while the guests constantly emptied the great wooden 
and pewter mugs, or conveyed to their mouths luscious mor- 
sels with fingers which still continued to serve the purposes of 
a fork. Somehow, the blending of the Saxon and the Norman 
blood had bred an aristocracy in which the old traits of the 
Norman gourmet were lost in those of the Saxon gourmand. 
Even Church festival days were marked more by the consump- 
tion of foods and drinks than by the sanctity of their cere- 
monies ; and the so-called '* glutton masses,'' held five times 


The Connection between Land and Trade, 265 

yearly in honour of the Virgin, began with a short service and 
ended in a debauch which for the rest of the day converted 
the sacred edifice, where they were held, into a howling pan- 
demonium. As for the more secular festivity of the laity, the 
profusion beggars description; and the modem reader can only 
conclude that all Warwick's 30,000 retainers were present to 
do justice to the feast in honour of his brother's induction to 
the archbishopric of York. An undertaking of such heroic 
proportions as this colossal meal prompts one to inquire not 
only whether fatal consequences of gluttony were not infre- 
quent, but whether occasionally a moiety of the guests did not 
leave as empty as when they came, through the unavoidable 
miscalculations of the purveyors ? And yet we never read of 
either occurrence, and can only attribute to the system termed 
'' livery " their secret of successftd management. 

In every great household there were half a dozen or more 
separate departments, each presided over by a distinct official. 
The specialist of the buttery, for example, kept his accounts 
and furnished his supplies entirely irrespective of him who 
supervised the napery ; and again, he who presided over the 
chandlery was a wholly distinct personage from the chief 
kitchen official. Every single inmate of the castle had his 
fixed daily allowance from each department, whose exact pro- 
portions had been furnished beforehand to each official; a 
process that enabled him to keep in store neither more nor less 
than would be required. To each individual went up daily 
from the buttery his due allowance, in trenchers of bread, 
manchetts,^ and other buttery comestibles; and from the chand- 
lery stores his daily proportion of wax and tallow candles. On 
the proper week-day each inmate received his fresh linen from 
the napery department, and at fixed times of the year his new 
clothing from the tailor. There was no delay, no bad debts, 
and no waste. No one could complain and no one could be 
defrauded. Everything was arranged according to strict rule. 
There was the same foresight and discipline which now 
manages the soldier's rations in the barrack -room. But 

* The allowance included two kinds of bread, of which the trenchers 
were common and the manchetts fine flour. 


266 History of the English Landed Interest. 

livery was a system extending beyond even the regimental 
caterer's ideas of foresight, for it provided for the possible 
addition of every sort of unexpected guest. No person, what- 
ever his rank, whether king or subject, lord or commoner, 
Englishman or foreigner, could take the baronial purveyor un- 
awares. The proportion of food and other bodily necessities 
due to each rank was known to a nicety, whether it was fixed 
by treaty as in the case of the retainer, or by national custom 
as in the case of the guest. 

Closely associated with the system of livery were those of 
heraldry and maintenance; for the former afforded devices 
wherewith the retainers of the different nobles distinguished 
each other, and the other furnished causes for resolving them 
into hostile factions. When two lords had taken opposite sides 
in maintaining the quarrel of some insignificant dependant, it 
needed but a sight of the distinguishing heraldic badges to set 
their respective retainers by the ears. The heads of great 
families took to fortifying their houses after the manner of 
their castles; and then all the elements of constant though 
petty disturbance were at hand, which would probably have 
again deluged the country with blood, had not the hostile 
attention of royalty become attracted to these abuses. 

It must not, however, be supposed that the Tudor sovereigns 
were the first monarchs who attempted to cope with the evil. 
Even so early as the fourteenth century, livery had not only 
been the means of extending a lord's protection to any stranger 
who would espouse his quarrel, but sometimes even shielded 
the malefactor from the just arm of the law. By 16 Richard 
n. c. 4, 20 Richard 11. c. 2, and 1 Henry IV. c. 7, the practice 
was limited by law to the lord's own domestics, officers, and 
« counsel learned in the law." By 2 Hen. IV. c. 21, 7 Hen. IV. 
c. 14, 8 Hen. VI. c. 4, and 8 Ed. IV. o. 2, further pains 
and penalties were added to those of the earlier statutes, 
which had only inflicted imprisonment on the offenders. The 
effect of such legislation was not altogether to abolish livery, 
for both its repressive laws and its usage lingered on till 
Stuart times ; the former to be repealed in Charles I's reign, the 
latter to be abolished in that of his son. But from what has 


The Connection between Land and Trade. 267 

been already said on this subject, it will be evident that at the 
cessation of the civil wars these huge retinues of idle men, 
gathered about the great houses under the system of livery, 
had neither excuse for their continuance nor opportunity for 
their employment. Maintenance, however, furnished both, 
and it was against this abuse that Henry Viii. proceeded to 
legislate. The term had long been used to cover sundry and 
manifold malpractices. As early as the thirteenth century the 
maintenance of pleas or suits for lands by the king's officers in 
the royal courts had been prohibited by 3 Ed. I. o. 26. The 
maintenance of quarrels to the let and disturbance of common 
law, had been disallowed by 3 Ed. III. c. 33, and 28 Ed. III. 
o. 11. The statute 1 Bich. II. c. 4 inflicted pains and penalties 
on everybody (king's counsellors, officers and servants included) 
who sustained maintenance. But that particular branch of 
this system which alone concerns us at present received its 
death blow by 32 Hen. VHI. c. 9, which not only prohibited 
on pain of forfeiture the acquisition by purchase or otherwise 
of any pretended right or title to land, but placed the unl/iw- 
ful maintenance of any suit concerning land, or the retention 
of any person for maintenance by letters, rewards, or promises, 
under a penalty of £10 for every such oflfence. 

So far our remarks have applied to a minute though power- 
ful class of the nation, which it seems probable scarcely reached 
the small total of eighty peers at the time we are discussing. 

By striking a rough average between the 2,300,000 estimated 
by the census of 1378 and the 4,400,000 estimated by that of 
1588, Mr. Hallam has computed the entire English population 
in the seventh Henry's times at about 3,000,000 souls.* Ex- 
cluding the peers, both spiritual and temporal, but including 
their children, the whole population was legally distinguished 
as commoners. Though equal in the eye of the law, there 
were many distinctions apparent to that of society. Such were 
the landed gentry, many of whom were knights, and all of 
whom were allowed to wear armour; the yeomanry, some occu- 
pying their own lands as small freeholders, and others farming 
the property of their landlords ; the peasantry, a class composed 
^ Hallam, Constit. Hist of Engl., ch. L 


268 History of the English Landed Interest. 

partly of a few copyholders and largely of labourers; and lastly, 
the burgesses, apprentices, and inferior occupants of the towns. 
There were, too, the professional classes, such as lawyers, 
leeches, scriveners, etc., but, with the exception of the first 
named, their numbers were insignificant.^ The knights 
bannerets, bachelors, and squires, which composed the class of 
landed commoners, followed the example of their betters, and 
displayed a splendid hospitality out of all proportion to their 
incomes. The lesser public honours fell to their share, and in 
much the same worthy fashion as their nineteenth-century 
representatives, they ably filled the dignified offices of sheriff, 
justice, and knight of the shire. Those of the class not desirous 
of following a soldier's profession had the same rooted dislike to 
knighthood as our modem landed gentry. Perhaps too, like the 
squires of the Victorian era, they felt absolutely secure, without 
the ceremony of the accolade and prefix of " Sir," that no one 
would dispute their simple but cherished title to the term 
" Gentleman." ' Setting aside this consideration, there was a 
natural dislike to being mulcted by the heavy dues imposed 
by the State on all recipients of this barren honour. 

The household of the knight included among its servitors his 
younger sons, who, with the yeomen, passed under the generic 
term of valetti or varlets. Their parliamentary representatives 
were the knights of the shire, and until the act of 1446 not 
necessarily gentlemen born. 

^ Ck)mpare Stubbs, Constit, Hist, cb. xxi., Paragrapb 92. I cannot 
tbink tbat tbe bisbop is correct in under-estimating tbe professional 
classes. Tbe doctors may bave been few, but tbe lawyers were a numer- 
ous class, in fact so superabundant, tbat a statute passed in 1455 called 
attention to tbe trouble and vexation occasioned by tbeir large at- 
tendance in tbe Eastern Counties at tbe king's courts, and benoe- 
fortb restricted tbeir number to six in Norfolk, six in Su£folk, and two 
in Norwicb. 33 Hen. VI., c. 7. 

' From tbe year 1278 tbe tenant in free soccage wbose land yielded £20 
annual profits was liable for knigbtbood; but since tbe statute De Mili- 
tibus in 1307, tbougb still eligible, be could commute bis liability to ser- 
vice. Tbence up to 1353 tbere was no term like " bomo gentilis " to dis- 
tinguisb tbe social grade of tbe freebolder. He was a rich yeoman or 
a poor yeoman, as tbe case migbt be, but unless as '* miles," be bad no 
distinguisbing name to testify to bis gentle birtb until tbat created 
hy tbe word " gentleman." 


The Connection between Land and Trade. 269 

There were therefore no marked gaps between the varions 
social grades of the upper landed classes. The sons of peers 
were, as commoners, on a level footing, not only with the 
knights and esquires, but with the peasant class ; and the sons 
of knights and esquires had no practical distinction from the 
yeomen. Pedigree was tacitly allowed to be the sole arbiter of 
precedence, and even pedigree failed as a social standard when 
it placed the commoner knight above the mushroom-grown peer 
of a later creation. Degrees of wealth constituted the towns- 
man's social distinctions, but even the beardless trade appren- 
tices could aspire higher than his social superior the country 
yeoman ; for in his case there was no interclass gulf too wide 
for a golden bridge, provided only he could collect sufficient 
material for its construction. The yeoman, on the other hand, 
could squeeze out of the soil neither the peer's patent nor the 
hereditary right to wear armour, and since to become the 
highest magnate in the landed interest it was necessary to 
desert' that interest for awhile, the soil must have lost many 
of its worthiest sons. 

The burgesses, however, extended no welcoming hand to- 
wards these restless immigrants. They grudged the stranger 
both his enfranchisement and the education of his children 
in their schools, and not once nor twice only did they peti- 
tion Parliament to restrain this bucolic invasion.^ Their reluc- 
tance, however, need cause us no surprise, if we remember that 
a superabundance of unskilled labour not only tended towards 
pauperism, but reduced wages low enough to enable smaller 
men to set up an opposition trade, which brought the levelling 
effects of competition into their hitherto sacred monopoly. On 
the other hand, the villein preferred the townsman's cold- 
shoulder to the unambitious monotony of field culture. He 
readily left the home of his birth, where half->a-dozen masters 
would have welcomed his labour, for the uncertainty of employ- 
ment in the warehouse. He had seen his elders shudder as they 
spoke of the old restrictive labour laws, and he remembered 
their chuckling as they recounted some brilliant trade success of 
a country playmate. There was no doubt, by now, hardly an 

^ Stubbs, Conali%. Hist^ ch. zxL 


270 History of the English Landed Interest. 

English village which had not its recorded instance of some 
splendid gentleman's return to the home he had left as a ragged 
vagabond a quarter of a century before. And so the crowded 
towns widened out their skirts over the green meadow lands, 
and the farmer's corn-fields went back into pasturage for sheer 
lack of hands to guide the plough oxen. 

As socially, so politically the landed interest held prece- 
dence over that of trade. The Upper House, where even the 
spiritual lords held heavy stakes in the soil, consisted more 
entirely of great landed magnates than it does now. Every 
forty-shilling freeholder was qualified both to vote as an elector 
and serve as a juror ; so that the county members swamped 
the small band of townsmen who sat in the Lower House, and 
save in questions of local importance, or on grants of tonnage 
and poundage, the voices of the latter for a long period of 
history were seldom heard. It was outside Parliament that 
trade at first assumed political importance. Thus their grow- 
ing powers enabled municipal authorities to keep royal exac- 
tions at the length of one arm, while with the other their vast 
increase of wealth allowed them to hold aloft a tempting lure 
to royal concessions. When later on the custom of benevolences 
— kingly extortion under the guise of gifts — ^grew up, it may 
be well imagined that the trading instinct of the townsman 
enabled him to obtain his quid pro quo in the transaction. 

In monied capital, the landed interest met its match, and, 
where gold could buy equality, the land could boast of no 
precedence. Partly through a magnificent hospitality, and 
partly through the powers of livery granted by charter, the 
great London guilds, thenceforth known as Companies, began 
to practise so splendid an outward display as to even equal that 
of the landed interest during its best days. It certainly far 
surpassed that of any age since, and it has long outlived the 
oldest memories of its rival's latest triumphs in this particular 
direction. 

But if the labourer had invaded the towns, the trader re- 
turned the compliment by invading the country. He bought 
up the crown lands with avidity, and he pounced down upon 
the confiscated properties of the monasteries. His commercial 


The Connection between Land and Trade. 271 

profits were not only invested in the mortgages and settlement 
charges of heavily burdened estates, but they enabled him to 
buy out their hereditary owners. There was a great land 
hunger in these Tudor times, which originated not so much 
in commercial enterprise as in sentiment, though the success 
which crowned the industrial efforts of the newly created 
tenant farmers might have encouraged the former motive. It 
is worthy of mention, that as soon as the merchant became a 
landed proprietor he not only turned his back on the old trade 
associations, but became a staunch supporter of the new interests. 
It is the same to-day, when the newly imported squire kicks 
down the ladder by which he has climbed into the select circle 
of county society, and tries to forget that the capital by which 
he purchased his lands, was the result of prolonged and honour- 
able assiduity in the successful production of textile fabrics, or 
a daring speculation in hardware. 


Zbc Z^u^or period 


CHAPTER XXL 

THE INFLUENCE OF THE CHUBOH AND THE EFFECTS OF THE FALL 
OF THE ECCLESIASTICAL LANDLOBDS ON THE ENGLISH 
LANDED INTEBESTS. 

In Angevin days the clergy not only owned half the culti- 
vated lands of this country, but claimed a third of the knights' 
fees. Indeed, at this period of history the influence of the 
Church can scarcely be overrated. In Henry I.'s reign Baker, 
in his Chronicle, represents all the labour in the kingdom em- 
ployed in the erection of monasteries ; and Professor Sogers, 
in his Six Centuries of Work and Wages,^ estimates the ecclesi- 
astical population, exclusive of the regular clergy and begging 
friars, as about one in fifty-two of the entire population, male 
and female, above the age of fourteen. 

Besides the monastic and secular clergy, there was the pro- 
fessional class, which included architects, lawyers, scribes, 
physicians and schoolmasters, men who were generally in holy 
orders. They wrote our books, drew up our wills, planned pur 
houses, invented our laws (often plotted their evasion), farmed 
our land, practised phlebotomy on us, dispensed drugs to us, 
taught in our schools, preached in our churches, and begged at 
our doors. But the clergyman under the twofold guise of land 
proprietor and farmer is of most interest to a work of this kind. 
Soils cultivated by Churchmen were remarkable for their fer- 
tility, because abundant capital and a knowledge of ancient 
agricultural writings enabled their proprietors to farm them in 
the best possible way then known to the civilized European. 

* Page 161. 

873 


The Dissolution of the Monasteries. 273 

Even on soils tliat did not belong to the clergy, ecclesiastical 
influence must have been at work. The agriculture of the 
neighbouring Church lands would be closely watched and imi- 
tated by the lay farmers. Advice would be solicited from and 
often proflfered by the monastic husbandmen ; and even a right 
to interfere could be claimed by those whose tithe charge gave 
them a stake in the layman's industrial efficiency. But if 
further evidence of Church influence be needed, it is afforded 
by the general use of saints' days to denote the dates of all 
agricultural operations. The year began on Lady Day ; it was 
Hoketide when fallows should be broken up ; Martinmas was 
the day for slaughtering the winter's meat ; from the feast of 
St. Luke to Holy Cross day were the inclusive dates for shelter- 
ing in stalls the most valuable livestock. The most important 
commercial transaction of the year, the fair, was fixed on the 
anniversary of the local saint's day. Eogationtide (a custom 
originating in France during the fifth century) was the period 
of the "gauging" or beating the parish rounds, which im- 
pressed the public mind with the sacredness of proprietary 
rights, the principles of God's fee,* and the necessity for invok- 
ing God's blessing on man's labour ; finally, harvest was con- 
sidered incomplete without the solemn assembly round the 
village cross for purposes of prayer and praise. Even to this 
day there is an echo of these old and pious observances. Thus 
the chief pent days are more recognised as Lady-day and 
Michaelmas than the particular dates in March and September 
when these events occur. 

There is little doubt that almost every one of the thirteenth- 
century manuscripts, to which in an earlier part of this work 
we had occasion to refer, was the result of ecclesiastical pens, 
and the Latin law book Fleta, said to have been written by a 
judge imprisoned in the Fleet about 1290, contains so much 
valuable advice on the management of land, the cultivation 
of crops, the use of manures, and the sowing of seeds, that 
it is more natural to attribute it to a monkish source. Then, 
too, there is the translation of Palladius, an anonymous manu- 

^ The cyriesceat and tithe were due at Bogationtide. Brand, Fa'puLar 
Antiquities, 

T 


274 History of the English Landed Interest 

script dating from early in the fifteenth century, and in all 
probability the product of some religious house in the neigh- 
bourhood of Colchester. Here is a treatise on agriculture so 
advanced in erudition and scholarship as to have been con- 
sidered worthy by Milton to be ranked with those of Cato, 
Varro, and Columella. There is little doubt that the mediaeval 
monks had access to all these authors, as well as Pliny, Virgil, 
and others. They had but to refer to the pages of the first- 
named writer to learn the uses and cultivation of the cucum- 
ber, cabbage, lettuce, radish, parsnip, turnip, and other now 
well-known garden vegetables, to say nothing of the many 
orchard and field products mentioned therein. 

And yet even the monks were much behind the times ; for 
the French were cropping their gardens with three or four 
different kinds of cabbage, Brussels sprouts, spinach, sorrel, 
beetroot, carrots, turnips, lettuce, rhubarb, fennel, and other 
greens, at a time when their English contemporaries were 
content with little besides the common cabbage, the native 
nettle, the leek, and Egyptian onion,* Then, too, the meats of 
a Frenchman's dinner were rendered wholesome and palatable 
by a ragout of green wheat-ears boiled in butter, or a sauce of 
young vine-burgeons, or a succulent salad, whilst on this side 
the Channel it is not certain if the majority of Englishmen 
knew the flavour of the commonest variety of cabbage. And 
yet the last-named vegetable was a native of Europe ; the 
savoy and wirsing grew wild in Upper Italy. The artichoke 
(merely an improved thistle), the turnip and carrot were also 
of European origin. Of Eastern plants the cauliflower did not 
probably arrive in Europe till just before the Thirty Years* 
War, but the shalot was brought back by the palmers long 
ere this from Palestine.* The most famous, probably also 
the earliest, variety of any edible plant in this country was the 

^ That beaDs and cabbages were cultivated in the cottage gardens by 
the time of Henry III. Is evident from Widow Alice's complaint inConrt 
Leet of the damage done by her neighbour's pigs in rooting up these 
vegetables, vid% Le Placitis et Curiis tenendis, ThA Court Baron SMen 
Society y page 76. 

9 Hehn, Cultivated Plants and Domestic Animals. 


The Dissolution of the Monasteries. 275 

leek. Other vegetables may possibly be entitled to as loug a 
pedigree, but none can vie in historical importance with this 
wholesome root. That it was a garden product at the begin- 
ning of the fifth century is proved by its mention in the 
miracle of S. Ninian. Its lofty elevation into a national 
emblem is stated by an old writer at the end of the seventeenth 
century to have arisen out of a great battle fought between the 
English and Welsh, in which the victory gained by the latter 
was chiefly on account of a sudden accession of confidence 
occasioned by an appeal to the national saint, and which in- 
spired them to act for once on the offensive. In doing this 
they had to traverse certain fields of leeks, which, being 
plucked and placed in the hat, served as distinguishing badges, 
and have been worn as such ever since in honour of S. David 
on each anniversary of his death.^ 

Harrison makes out that there were in England at the time 
of Edward I., '' melons, cucumbers, gourds, radishes, parsnips, 
carrots, turnips, and other salad herbs, but that such herbs, 
fruits, and roots as grew yearly out of the ground of seed (pre- 
sumably the above species) became afterwards neglected, so 
that from Henry IV's. to the beginning of Henry Viii.'s reign 
there was little or no use of them in England." Qerarde, how- 
ever, does not corroborate this view in his Herbal ;}mi it is 
possible to reconcile the two accounts if we confine to a few 
cloistered gardens of the monasteries the introduction of these 
vegetables until the middle of the sixteenth century. That 
strawberries of some inferior quality were in English gardens 
at an earlier date is evident from the famous message of 
Richard HI. to the Bishop of Ely. He asked the bishop to 
send up some of the good strawberries which grew in the 
latter's Holbom garden, just before he attended the council at 
which he seized Hastings. 

The comparison between English and French knowledge of 
horticulture is even less favourable, if the produce of the 
orchard be substituted for that of the garden. English apples 
were good; but save these, damsons, and a few indifferent 

» The New State of England, G.M. 1691, Part IL chap. iii. p. 46, 


276 History of the English Landed Interest. 

pears, there was nothing to vie with the Anjou peaches^ the 
Orleans plums, and the Poitier figs of France. As for g^pes, 
those of the French were as superior to those cultivated out of 
doors here as they are nowadays. 

Yet the backward state of the English kitchen garden and 
orchard neither imputes ignorance to the native ecclesiastic 
nor impugns the leading position he held in all rural pursuits. 
Climate, soil, and an insular position are circumstances quite 
sufficient to account for the difference to which we have 
alluded above, without seeking it in any such causes as a 
national dislike to even priestly direction, or that growth of 
sectarian antipathy to the monastic clergy from whose ranks 
the ecclesiastical landlord was recruited. For the time had 
arrived when the landed clergyman must fall; when the 
polished and carved pillars of his convent home should no 
more be darkened by his stately shadow; when his trim- 
bordered gardens and " erberes " should be tended by other and 
less expert fingers ; when the arches of the minster, with their 
crochets and knobs of gold, should re-echo the admonitions of 
other lips ; when its painted windows, glorious with coats of 
arms and merchant's marks, should admit the sunshine on a 
different ritual, and when the fertile lands should turn over 
under ploughs guided by stranger hands.* With the great 
monastic landowner there went out of the country an import- 
ant feature of medisaval land tenure. It is strange how small 
a gap in the landed interest this upheaval caused. 

The storm had been long brewing ; the monasteries had been 
threatened with spoliation over and over again. The pro- 
perty of alien priories had been seized as early as a.d. 1296 ; 
other Church temporalities had been transferred inym one 
religious order to another; and more than once in times of 
danger the Sovereign had been prompted by the Commons to 
seize ecclesiastical property in order to provide funds for the 
national defence. In fact for many centuries prior to its dis- 
solution, the people of England seem to have treated Monastic 
property as though they regarded it as State property. Mr. 

' See the description of a Dominican monastery in PierB Hmomans 
Crede, 


Tlie Dissolution of the Monasteries. 277 

Clarke in his history of tithes,* cites no less than eight pre- 
cedents for constitutional interference with this class of the 
Churches possessions, each one of which must have appeared 
to the nation as steps paving the way for some such whole- 
sale act of confiscation as was now contemplated. We might 
have expected that the ecclesiastical interests would have 
long since taken the alarm and attempted measures to avert 
the catastrophe. If these premonitory symptoms of the 
State's hostile attitude had not caused apprehension, there 
were such statutes, as those of Mortmain, of Provisors, and of 
Premunire, to demonstrate how determined the nation was to 
curb any foreign participation in the control either of its faith 
or wealth. The Act of 1633 restraining appeals to Eome, 
and that of 1634 transposing the king for the pope as Head 
and Almoner of the English Church, placed Henry VIII. in 
closest contact with the monastic endowments. That fourth 
decade of the sixteenth century was fraught with danger to 
the alien clergy. In 1635 a Boyal Commission had furnished 
Henry with complete details of the revenues of all ecclesias- 
tical benefices, and in 1636 the edict had gone forth which 
began the work of dissolution. 

In a history of this kind it is unnecessary to inquire further 
into the causes which resulted in the confiscation of English 
land valued at over a million pounds rental.* If we accept 
Hume's authority, this colossal spoliation involved one-third 
of the kingdom ; or, if we are only content with the lowest 
computation, it exceeded one-fifth. Henry VIII. must have 
possessed a prodigious capacity for getting rid of money in 
order not only to fritter away the vast fortune inherited from 
his miserly father, but stow out of sight the proceeds of his 
huge burglary on Church property; and it is hardly credible 
that scarcely half a dozen years after, diis sovereign was 


* Rev. H. W. Clarke, A History of Tithes, p. 178. 

■ The clear yearly value was rated at £131,607, but was in reality, if 
we believe Burnet, ten times as great, the courtiers undervaluing those 
estates in order to obtain grants or sales of them more easily. Hallam, 
Hist. ofBngl.^ ch. ii. 


278 History of the English Landed Interest. 

reduced to the old kingly fraud of debasing the national 
coinage.^ 

The effects, however, of this tyrannous act were neither 
disastrous to the nation as a whole, nor to the landed interest 
as a part. Setting aside religious controversy, it may be con- 
cluded that the foreign drain on the country's resources of 
papal tributes flowing through monkish channels, which had 
originated the contemptuous phrase that England had become 
"the Pope's milch cow," would have ultimately resulted in 
national exhaustion ; and the stoppage of the leak by means, 
no matter how drastic, restored that proper circulation of a 
people's wealth which alone conduces to the general pros^ 
perity. Nor did the change of masters over so vast an area 
of soil affect the ultimate welfitre of the landed interest. It 
seemed as though the mission of monasticism had been ful- 
filled, and, like all anachronisms, it must now give way to 
other systems better adapted to the go-ahead but heretical 
times of freer thought and more peaceful commerce. 

Throughout the turbulent era of medisBvalism the cloister's 
walls had long preserved, and its inmates constantly repro- 
duced, the evidences of the Christian faith, the educational 
treatises of ancient classical authors, and the precious historical 
records of an otherwise forgotten past. From generation to 
generation holy fathers had handed down the traditions of 
refinement and erudition. Out of their minds had flowed all 
the learning of an era otherwise utterly and superstitiously 
ignorant. But now the art of the printer could perform the 
same oflBices infinitely more easily and surely. The assiduity 
of the monks had reclaimed swamps and wastes ; their learn- 
ing had improved soils, and their shrewd brains had invented 
schemes which had vastly benefited not only the husbandman, 
but the proprietor of the land. No doubt then in future the 
landed gentry might sorely miss that legal acumen which had 
so often baffled the hostility evinced to their schemes of land 
monopolisation ; the yeomen might look in vain for their hints 
on model farming ; the poor might starve for want of their 

^ Bogers, Prices and Agriculture, Introduotion to yol. iv. 


The Dissolution of the Monasteries. 279 

benefactions, and the traveller might miss their welcome board 
and lodging ; but the family solicitor, the Fleming,* the Poor 
Law, and the wayside inn would soon supply these national 
wantS) and the shoulders of the secular clergy were only 
itching to bear the remaining and more sacred duties of their 
high profession. 

It was not so much the act of confiscation, whereby some 
four or five hundred monasteries were despoiled of their 
possessions, as the uses to which the proceeds were put that 
damaged the landed interest. It lost more than half its re- 
presentative strength in the Upper House, and the provisions 
made for appointing substitutes were never adequately carried 
out by the unreliable king. But that in itself was not suffi- 
ciently grave to have stirred all the north country into open 
and armed rebellion. The funds with which the monasteries 
had been endowed were for masses and prayers on behalf of 
the dead, their revenues from tithes for the relief of the 
nation's poor and the entertainment of the nation's guests. 
The appropriation of these religious offerings by the Crown 
was an act of sacrilege. The national representatives, smart- 
ing though they were under the despotic deeds of Wolsey and 
other ecclesiastical extortion,' would have never given consti- 
tutional consent to this gigantic State raid on corporate pro- 
perty had they not hedged in its consequences with conditions 
that would have scarcely, if at all, outraged the sixteenth- 
century ideas of justice. The monks were to have been pen- 
sioned off, eighteen fresh bishoprics endowed, public highways 
repaired, and Channel ports fortified.' So, later, in the case 
of the endowed chantries, it was enacted that the funds should 
be disposed of for purposes of education and poor relief.^ But 
Henry carried out these schemes just so far as to content his 

1 The green crop and the four-course system were soon to be introduced 
from Flemish sources. 

' For one example, the enormous fees charged by the clergy on probate 
of wills. 

» Hallam, Bisi, of Engl,, ch. ii. 

^ This was in accordance with the policy invariably observed on 
former occasions in any State confiscation of Church property. Vide 
A History of Tithes, Rev. H. Qarke, p. 178. 


28o History of the English Landed Interest. 

people's minds that something was being done in the pre- 
scribed direction. In reality the bulk of the spoil fell into 
the hands of sycophant conrtiers or capitalist tradesmen. The 
endowments of episcopal sees did not escape the avarice of 
these legalised robbers. Statesmen built houses with the 
material of razed churches.^ The great wooden bams and 
cowsheds in the southern counties ' still betray the use put to 
the timbers of ruined monasteries, and even the chestnut 
principals of Westminster Abbey might have been torn off for 
similar purposes, had not the alarmed Chapter averted this 
act of Vandalism by grants of lands,' which greatly reduced 
their future income. But the indigent poor suffered the most ; 
those in the rural districts by the cessation of monastic charity, 
'^hose in the towns by that later confiscation of the guUd lands. 
The soil still supplied the tithes impropriated by the new 
owners, who in many instances were not themselves landlords. 
Henceforth it was charged a second time over for the support 
of the nation's pauper population. It has been contested that 
the tithe never wholly performed this task ; that the unequal 
distribution of the monasteries over the land could merely 
relieve the demands of poverty in certain localities ; that the 
system encouraged and caused pauperism, and that, even while 
the monasteries were standing, legislation was at work to 
formulate a new system.* 

All this, though strictly true, does not surely shake the 
position of those who contend that the present system of 
parochial relief was a necessity consequent on the dissolution 
of the monjtsteries. The portion of the tithe devoted to poor 
relief was no more and no less sufficient than the modem poor 
rates. It might with justice be urged that the latter are by far 
less able to cope now with the national poverty than was the 
former in Elizabethan times. Town pauperism, no doubt, drew 
the bulk of its relief in Tudor days from the guild charities ; 

^ Somerset House was thus built. 

* I have myself seen the queer-shaped rafters, with their old mortice 
holes, in many an old Dorsetshire bam. 

• Hallam, Mst, ofEngl,^ oh. ii. 

♦ Compare Hallam, EisL ofEngL, ch. ii 


The Dissolution of the Monasteries. 281 

even rural poverty obtained a fraction of its eleemosynary 
support from other than tithe sources, and so it is to-day, when 
the irregular assistance of Church oflfertories and other sources 
of private charity largely supplement the poor rate revenues. 
It was because the monastic system encouraged pauperism 
that legislation was at work, not to formulate a new system, but 
perfect an old one. The statute of 27 Hen. Vill. c. 26 merely 
penalised irregular alms-giving, and defined legitimate charity. 
It was not until after the suppression of the monasteries and 
confiscation of the Quild lands that a new system became a 
necessity. So immediate was the want, that legislation ensued 
without delay, and it is interesting to mark the gradual edu- 
cation of the national mind to the necessity for compulsory 
alms-giving. At first the statute book makes as it were a 
mouthpiece of the parson and preaches cbarity. There is 
literally nothing more than this in 1 Ed. VI. c. 3.^ In fact, 
throughout the legislation of this reign relating to poverty, 
there is merely a manufacture of the machinery which could 
set in motion private charity, and distribute its proceeds fairly 
and justly. One clause alone in 6 & 6 Ed. VI. c. 2 introduces 
the idea, but not the reality, of compulsory poor relief, since 
it empowers the clergy first to " gently exhort " the obstinate 
hinderer of charitable work, and then, in the event of per- 
sistent refusal, to covertly threaten him with episcopal " per- 
suasion." In the succeeding reign, Mary, probably finding 
such measures wholly inadequate to cope with the growing 
distress, sanctioned the method of begging licences in parishes 
where the poor were too numerous to be properly relieved 
by the ordinary process.' On the accession of Elizabeth the 
whole system of compulsory poor reUef is gradually unfolded. 
By 5 Eiiz. c. 3 the bishop may not only persuade the opulent 

^ I am aware that Hallam cites 1 Ed. VI. o. 8 as empowering the 
bishop to proceed in his court against such as should refuse to con- 
tribute or dissuade others from contributing, but I think these advanced 
episcopal powers do not occur till 6 Eliz. c. 8, when the bishop can hand 
an offender over to the civil authorities. YidA. Const Hist^ ch. ii. (foot- 
note i.). 

« 1 & 2 P. & M. o. 5. 


282 History of the English Landed Interest. 

to contribute weekly alms to the poor funds, but hand any 
obstinate fellow over to the civil authorities, who had it in 
their discretion to sess, tax, and limit him, and on further 
refusal commit him to gaol. The next step is in the provision 
of documentary evidence,^ not only concerning the number of 
the pauper population in each parish, but the taxation and 
names of those compelled to pay the weekly tribute. It is in- 
teresting to note even thus late the survival of the old system 
of barter. There were many persons deemed sufficiently well 
off to contribute in kind, but to whom a money payment would 
have been a hardship ; and since the collection of so many 
predial contributions would have caused considerable trouble 
and expense, certain of the poor were formally licensed to 
receive those offerings. It was strange that what had thus 
early struck the authorities as cumbrous and irksome should 
have survived in the case of tithe offerings up to the present 
century.' But then it must be remembered that no commu- 
tation was possible without legislation, and the clergy were 
never more afraid of attracting public attention to the tithe 
system than just after the spoliation of their monastic brethren. 
Then, too, the farmer, who was saved immense expense over 
carting, marketing, and selling the parson's share of his crops, 
much preferred the speedy quittance of this debt, which he 
annually obtained as soon as the tithebam doors had closed 
on the last load of parson's sheaves. 

In this same Act provision was made for an appeal from the 
assessment committee to the general county sessions; and 
lastly, the first germ of the workhouse system came into 
existence, when, by the agency of forced labour, rogues and 
vagabonds paid for their own keep during the few hours that 
they were allowed to remain in one parish. 

Houses of correction^ maintainable by the public, contri- 

* 14 Eliz. c. 5. 

* Up to 1833 the old system of course prevailed. The com was cut, 
bound up in sheaves, and set up in hattocks consisting of eight sheaves. 
When ready for carrying, the farmer then sent word to the parson or his 
proctor, who set out the tithe. The farmer then removed his share of 
the crop. 

* 18 Eliz. 0. a 


The Dissolution of the Monasteries. ^^5 

butions of flax, hemp, wool, thread, iron, etc., fsnian was 
industry,* poor houses and hospitals* quickly followel^^^®*'^*^ 
Queen Elizabeth's death the whole fabric of paroc' 
with its poor law officials, rate collectors, workhouses system of 
and industrial homes was fully developed, and only i^D^tions of 
subsequent perfecting or altering touches which i^^y ^^^ 
allow it to boast a precedence over all the soientifif^^®^ ;^^ 
periodically invented to take its place. ^ reciting 

It is interesting to notice the various divisions ii^^ng and 
the country was in turn subdivided for purposes of p^^^j enacts 
By 22 Hen. VIII. o. 12 it was the hundred presided o^ "^ ^^^<^ 
justice. By 6 Eliz. o. 3 the parish, which had super?^ annual 
hundred, was further subdivided into chapelries, and''^*^ ^ ^ 
chapelries, by 13 Eliz. and 14 Chas. 11., were change) expected 
township. The collectors, overseers and governors whofS'tes and 
tered the funds were finally replaced by churchwarl* deduct- 
subsidy men, all of which early schemes formed the^ repairs, 
our nI5dem Union and Poor Law Guardian systems, tem in a 
back to the old monastic tithe partition, it may be said* tte Act 
fear of contradiction that the era of the Eeformation (principles 
with the time when a tithe of the land's produce, re<?^ differ- 
it was by the other reUgious sources of expenditur 
not continue to cope with the wants of a rapidly impersonal 
pauper population. But surely real property, by nf© trades- 
tithe offering, had fully contributed its legitimate shar#^turer s 
was now, if ever, the right time for the legislature to cfi^^nd de- 
personal property to contribute its quota to the nation 
fund? The political power of the landed interest wrf^*^^ ^ 
mount, and why the two houses of legislature, paoke^y ^^^y- 
the representatives of real property, levied fresh taxal^®*^ ^*^ 
their own interest, is an enigma about which every reaF K^^s 
terested in the land would like some explanation. It is jf l^illi^gs 
that the royal exactions on personal estates, in the f< 
benevolences, percentages, and wool grants had squeez*^^^ ,^' 
kind of property well-nigh dry. It is also possible that f^ J^ ^' 
ment hardly realised the detrimental though indirect I3 which 

%\jo Diet J 
^ 89 Eliz. 0. 8. MB Eliz. 0. 8 and 89 Eliz. o. 6. 


282 H\ 


283 


I 


to contribtfor pauper 
obstinate fd, until at 
their discrfcial i^lief 
refusal oon, asylums' 
of docmneieeded the 
the paupe&ven now 
names of Ij schemes 
teresting \ 
of barter, ito which 
off to conloor relief, 
have beeJer by the 
predial cieded the 
and exp<then the 
receive id for the 
early stnadminis- 
have suriens and 
century/ germ of 
tation ^Turning 
never m without 
system loincided 
Then, t<uced as 
cartingjB, could 
much preasing 
annualleans of 
on the I, and it 
In thU upon 
as8essn:al poor 
lastly, s para- 
existend with 
vagab<tion on 
they 'Wder in- 
Houossible 
1 14 prm of 
• Upd this 
boamdparlia- 

thecTC 
•18 


anded Interest. 


|>duce would have on the 

^n possible, it is even pro- 

^ never presupposed such 

^ property a second time 

Jiuper population, two-thirds 

^ the strongholds of trade. 

• adopted in rating strongly 

f hey shall tax and assess all 

|i every city, borough, town, 

^, etc., etc.," says the statute 

j^ery judge's ruling was based 

lb 43 Eliz. c. 2, which defines 

iperty taxable. " The rate," it 

Ion of every inhabitant, parson, 

coupler of lands, houses, tithes, 

6s, coal mines, or saleable under- 

D conceive that the intention of 

but the taxation of all kinds of 

il . Judge after judge interpreted 

ere ruled taxable by Lord Chief 

B, goods in a shop, saltpits and 

ame category. " All things that 

ae," was the definition of rateable 

h rated '' according to their estates 

ig to the known yearly value of 

pyings." But though they might 

ods or lands, they were not doubly 

B and lands were to be rated equally 

er on their yearly value, not their 

charge lay on the occupier, and 

as the land once rated in this way 

ie, by taxing its rental.' A farmer 

tes on his riches and stock if they 

;5essary for carrying on the farm* and 


♦r thA PooTf by S. C. (1710), who quotes from 
See also Burn, On the Poor Laws. 
. " Poor Law." 


Tfu Dissolution of the Monasteries. 285 

paying the rent ; and the personal estate of the tradesman was 
also ruled as coming under the meaning of the Elizabethan 
legislation. 

The reader has now only to refer to the modern system of 
rating to decide for himself how far the original intentions of 
Tudor legislators have been adhered to. The property now 
rateable is perhaps best defined by 6 & 7 Will. IV., intituled " An 
Act to Regulate Parochial Assessment," which, after reciting 
the desirability of establishing one uniform mode of rating and 
lessening the cost of appeal against an unfair assessment, enacts 
that no rate shall be allowed by any justices or be in force 
which shall not be made upon an estimate of the net annual 
value of the several hereditaments rated thereunto, that is to 
say, at the rent at which the same might reasonably be expected 
to let from year to year free of all usual tenant's rates and 
taxes and tithe commutation rentcharge if any, but deduct- 
ing therefrom the probable average annual cost of the repairs, 
insurance and other expenses necessary to maintain them in a 
state to command such rent, provided that nothing in the Act 
contained should be construed to alter or affect the principles 
or different relative liabilities, if any, according to which differ- 
ent kinds of hereditaments were then by law rateable. ^ 

It is quite clear then that the bulk of the nation's personal 
estate had evaded the charge. The merchant's wares, the trades- 
man's goods, the banker's bullion, and the manufacturer's 
profits had proved as variable as the shifting sand, and de- 
fied the best efforts of the assessor. 

It would hardly be within the province of a land history to 
trace how the rate has come to be levied on real property only. 
It may however be concluded that since an Elizabethan law 
enacted that individuals might be taxed either on their goods 
or land, the merchant would prefer to pay the few shillings 

^ The term hereditament signifies any immovable thing, corporeal or 
incorporeal, which a man may have to him and his heirs by way of in- 
heritance. It comprehends in its meaning both real and personal pro- 
perty, but it excludes that form of the latter known as chattels, which 
descends to the executors and not to the heirs. See Jacobs, Law Diet, 
$tib voc. *' Hereditament." 


286 History of the English Landed Interest 

assessment on his warehouse, than the many pounds for which 
he would be liable if his goods were assessed instead. Thus 
administratiye difficulties, combined with a vague wording of 
the law, brought about results antagonistic to the landed in- 
terest. The substitution of a layman for a monk, either as 
landowner or as political representative, caused it no material 
hurt, but it indirectly suffered loss by the sequestration of its 
tithe, even though the bulk of this charge reverted into the 
hands of certain landed proprietors. Indeed, such a circum- 
stance increased the mischief, for in all such cases it upset the 
ordinary standard of rental value between different districts. 
Thus the income of one parish, swelled by the tithe charges 
payable from some other parish, enabled the landlord of the 
former to reduce his rents and improve his lands at the ex* 
pense of the landlord of the latter to a degree that must have 
eventually crippled his powers and capabilities in the same 
direction. 


Zbc (I;u^or period 


CHAPTER XXH 

THE QEXERAL ASPECT OF THE COUNTBY, WITH ITS HOUSES, 
aABDENS, AND OBCHABDS. 

Always pleasant as it is to wander forth into the country, 
it is doubly so when the brain is jaded with the dry topics of 
the Law Courts and the artificial life of a great town. Such 
should be the condition of any reader who has struggled 
through the last few chapters of this history, and who is now 
invited to leave for a while the busy scenes of mart and the 
dusty courts of law to accompany his author on a tour of 
inspection amidst the green lanes and verdant fields of rustic 
life. In Camden's Counties we have as it were a map and a 
picture in one ; but with the graphic accuracy of an eye-wit- 
ness and in the quaint language of the day, this writer 
conveys to his readers an impression of Tudor England far 
more lifelike than that which map and picture could furnish. 

But before we can thoroughly enjoy the vivid colouring and 
sweet scents of wooded hill and nestling valley, we have still 
to traverse the dust of those ill-repaired tracks called by 
courtesy the king's highways. Far back in the now remote 
era of the British rule there were roads which, with the temples 
of the gods ; and the ploughs of tillers, afforded '^ freedom of 
succour" to the fugitive from an enemy's vengeance or a 
country's justice ; and it was with the object of clearly defin- 
ing these particular words that Moluncius and his son Belirus, 
sovereigns of Britain, first introduced the term " King's High- 
way."^ Henceforth the Fosse Way, leading from Cornwall to 

' Vide Banulph Higden, Polychronicon. 

287 


288 History of the English Landed Interest. 

Lincoln ; Watling Street, connecting Kent with the Irish Sea ; 
Erminge Street, stretching from North Wales to Southampton ; 
and Bykenild Street, bisecting the island by a line running 
east and west between the Welsh coast and Tynemouth, be- 
came known as the four royal highways and alone retained the 
above-mentioned privilege, which- in the Norman and Tudor 
dynasties came to be termed " the King's Peace." These routes, 
unworthy of the name of " road " until Roman engineering 
genius took them in hand, were the great thoroughfares of the 
nation. During the Saxon era their maintenance and repair 
was, through the agency of the Trinoda Necessitas, constituted 
a public duty. But after the Norman Conquest up to the 
period under discussion, save for an easily evaded understand- 
ing that by Common Law to repair and maintain them was 
obligatory on the adjoining landowners, and that neglect to 
do so rendered the offender liable to proceedings by present- 
ment in the Court Leet or Sessions, no public provision seems 
to have been made. ^ When, however, the attempt to devote 
a part of the confiscated monastic funds to road repairs failed, 
the spur of legislation was brought to bear upon those liable by 
tradition. Beginning with 8 Hen. VII. c. 5, and continuing 
throughout this king's life there are a series of laws referring to 
local highways chiefly in the neighbourhood of the metropolis, 
calling upon landowners to fulfil their long-evaded obligations. 
These statutes afford us a graphic description of the Tudor 
common ways. Those in the Weald of Kent, for example, were 
so " deep and noyous by wearing and course of water and 
other occasions, that people could not have their carriages or 
passages by horses, upon or by the same, but to their great 
pain, peril, and jeopardy." Those so near* London as Charing 
were also " noyous, foul, and therefore jeopardous." Accord- 
ingly it may be concluded, as has been pointed out by Pro- 
fessor Eogers, that the best and most frequented highways 

* Jacobs, Law Dict.^ sub voc, " Highway." See also Craig and Macfar- 
lane's Hist, ofEng., Bk. V., ch. iv. In the absence of laws for the repairs 
of roads, it was also common for persons of substance to leave by will 
certain sums to be applied to this useful purpose. — Sir J. Cullum, Eist 
Hawsted. 


The General Aspect of the Country. 289 

for carriage of goods were the rivers whenever their route, 
size and depth served as a waterway. Without examining 
Tudor road legislation ad nauseam^ we may cite the 2 & 
3 P. & M. c, 8 as the first general statute for the repair of 
highways, which provided for the appointment of two sur- 
veyors and the boon services four days per annum of all the 
inhabitants in each parish. 

The chief feature of all road legislation is the recognition 
of the land's liability by all the parties concerned in the 
transaction ; nor was there any hardship in this so long as it 
was the farmer's wagon which rendered the highways noyous 
and jeopardous. The introduction of tolls or turnpikes, however, 
in the reign of Charles U., initiates a jGresh policy in road 
repairs, necessitated by the national rather than local use of 
certain thoroughfares, the maintenance of which could not 
have been with justice solely drawn from the pockets of those 
parishioners who were unlucky enough to live in their vicinity. 
But from 1773 to 1836, the highways other than turnpike 
roads continued to be repaired by the boon service* initiated 
by the Tudor statute already referred to. It would be an 
anachronism at this early stage to discuss the road legislation 
of the last half century, though it may be pointed out that 
there is a tendency, evidenced by the recent though abortive 
van and wheel tax, to dissociate the charge for repairs from 
the purse of the landed classes. 

At length then opportunity occurs for examining the 
country along the routes of these highways. Starting then 
on the " Fosse Way," first of the four great roads already 
mentioned, the traveller would find himself traversing many 
Cornish valleys of indiflferent glebe,^ which the inhabitants 
make " rank and batch " with top dressings of orewood and 

' There were six Acts referring to road repairs in Mary's reign, and 
nineteen in Elizabeth's. — Craig and Macfarlane, Hist, of Eng,j Bk. VI., 
ch. iv. 

* Glen, Law relating to Highways, Bk. I., ch. iv. 

3 The whole of the topographical sketch which ensues is taken from 
information contained in Camden's Counties, which work was probably 
written during the reigns of Queen Elizabeth and King James I. 

U 


290 History of the English Landed Interest. 

sea-sand. Occasionally he would glance downwards on the 
trenches of stream works or upwards at the shafts of lode works 
where was proceeding the breaking, stamping, drying, erasing, 
washing, melting, and fining of the tin miner's industry. 
Thence he would pass amidst the low valleys and wooded 
ridges of Devonshire, and note '^ the lean and barren soil " on 
which the husbandman spreads with success the " fertilizing 
sea-sand." Onward stretches the great road into populous 
Somerset with its rich pastures and comlands dotted here and 
there with stony hills. Though worthy of its name's deriva- 
tion during the summer months, the county is " wet, weely, 
miry, and moorish" during the cold season, so that the winter 
traveller is glad to reach Tetbury and. cross into the rich and 
sheltered vale of Gloucester, where the highways and common 
lanes are bordered with pear and apple trees of nature's sow- 
ing, the fields fruitful in corn and grapes, the forests pro- 
ductive of iron, and the hills depastured by the best fieeced 
sheep in the world. Thence onward into the county of 
Warwick, where the river Avon parts the " Feldon" fi-om the 
"Woodland." The former is rich in com and green grass, 
amidst which stand those mercats for sheep and kine, the 
towns of Shipeton and Kinton. The latter is " thickset " with 
woods, and yet not without pastures, cornfields and " sundry 
mines of iron." Here the traveller might rest a night at 
Coventry, a town even then " growing wealthy by clothing 
and making of caps." Forward runs this king's highway 
through the champaign country of woodless Leicestershire, 
where the people have an " ill-favoured, untunable, and harsh 
manner of speech, fetching their words with very much adoe 
deepe from out of the throat with a certaine kind of wharling." 
Passing on the south side distant Harborough, celebrated for 
its cattle fairs, the wayfarer crosses Watling Street, whose 
Boman engineering shows hereabouts traces of time's wear 
and tear. The road now debouches upon the wild plains of 
Notts, then trends away skirting Sherwood forest and across 
the Trent to Newark, and so on through pastures and cornfields 
to Lincoln, beyond which cathedral city lies the impassable 
and boggy Holland, on cultivated parts of which, reclaimed 


The General Aspect of the Country. 291 

from the fish and wild fowl, the horses draw their loads over 
the soft stoneless soil unshod. 

Turning once again to the southern counties, the reader 
might in a similar fashion trace out the route of WatUng 
Street. Starting amidst the Kentish orchards, whose cherry- 
trees invaded England with Julius Caesar,^ he leaves on his left 
that " seagifb " of rich pasturage called Eomney Marsh, and 
skirting the choice fruit gardens of Tenham recently planted 
by Richard Harris, Henry VIII. 's gardener, he might wander 
onward over the fertile Thames valley through the western 
suburbs of London to St. Alban's, and so on past Dunstable, 
Shakespeare's birthplace, and the Wrekin into Wales. 

Abandoning now the great main routes, let us examine 
those parts of the country interesting, on account of some 
special feature, to the student of Landed history. There were 
localities devoted to now extinct industries ; and there were 
others whose landed proprietors little dreamed of the mineral 
wealth lying hid beneath their feet. An example of the latter 
case was Lancashire, most of whose world-famed seams of coal 
were as yet intact. That part of the county adjoining Cumber- 
land was wholly devoted to agriculture. Its plains bore mighty 
crops of barley and wheat ; its hill skirts yielded oats ; its 
inhabitants were "faire and beautiful," and their kine " well- 
proportioned, with goodly heads and faire spread homes." 
About the upper reaches of the Mersey were situated the mer- 
cantile towns ; lower down lay the moss grounds, out of which 
men frequently dug huge trees which served for fuel. The 
river, when just about to join the sea, opens out into a wide 
pool which has furnished a derivation for the town's name 
at its mouth, even then a frequented port for Irish com- 
merce. But though the coal lay undisturbed in this county, 
up away in Northumberland towards the mouth of the Tyne 
" those stones called sea coles were dug in great plenty to the 
great gaine of the inhabitants and commodity of others." 
The mineral was no doubt the more valued from the fact that 
in this region of the Marches agriculture could be practised 
with difficulty, for all the land was " rough and hard," and of 

» A.D. 48, 


292 History of the English Landed Interest. 

necessity everyone was a warrior and every house a fort. The 
adjoining county of Cumberland, though considered cold, was 
said "to smile upon its beholders." Its mountains standing 
thick together " were rich in metals, and in its valleys were 
great meeres stored with all kindes of wildfowle." Here and 
there occurred " pretty hills good for sheep pasturage,*' and 
beneath them "goodly plaines, yielding come sufficiently/' 
Among the fells hemming in the river Derwent were copper 
mines and supposedly veins of gold and silver, the false dis- 
covery of which caused a famous lawsuit between Queen 
Elizabeth by right of her prerogative and Earl Percy by right 
of his lordship which, like the supposed ores, resulted in 
nothing. Not so, however, the discovery of black lead, that 
" hardened glittering stone " which was soon to replace silver 
point among English artists. Not lingering to expatiate on 
the unfruitfulness of Westmorland, we may pass on into 
Durham, whose clammy kind of clay, supposed by Camden to 
have been hardened by heat, yielded a smell of bitumen, 
burnt vehemently when besprinkled with water, and was 
hard, bright, light, and easily cloven into flakes. The author 
was no doubt right in identifying it with the " canole coal " of 
other parts. Other counties had their mining industries. 
Thus there were coal pits at Ashby in Leicestershire ; copper 
mines as early as Richard in. at Wenlock, and a fountain of 
bitumen at Pickford, both Shropshire towns. The Peak 
country yielded lead, iron, and coal. Sussex resounded with 
the water-driven hammer mills and crackling wood fires of 
the ironfounder. The neighbourhood of Birmingham was 
even then disturbed by the incessant clemk of hammer on 
anvil. Salt springs had already been discovered and worked 
in the vicinity of Nantwich. Beer had early selected the 
centre of England as its future home, since the Derby of 
Camden's age was celebrated for its " nappie ale." 

The Essex coast, which had supplied the Roman kitchens of 
Pliny's time with oysters, was then as now celebrated for the 
excellence of its native bivalves, Norfolk, as yet without the 
turnip, was more renowned for its breed of lawyers than its 
husbandry, who, according to Camden, "could fetch contro- 


The General Aspect of the Country. 293 

versial matter of the very prickles, titles, and accents of the 
law.'* Cambridgeshire farmers, not yet sufficiently educated 
to combine the principles of pneumatics and hydrodynamics 
with any practical results, traversed their lands on stilts. 
During the drier months of the year their cattle battened on 
the herbage of the grass fen, the superfluous growth of which 
they fired just before the autumn floods, so that the glare of 
the vast plain startled the flocks many miles away in the 
sheep walks of Norfolk and Suffolk. They were uncouth 
fellows, these lowland stilt-walkers, who made the most of 
their aquatic vegetation by plaiting baskets out of its willows, 
burning its peaty turf in their cottage reredos, and thatching 
their roofs with its water grasses, while every dyke and ditch 
afforded them fish and fowl for the table. 

Throughout Camden's great work there is frequent mention 
of ruined abbeys and castles, forcibly and graphically empha- 
sising the decay of both monasticism and feudalism ; and it 
will be now interesting to watch the growth of a Tudor archi- 
tecture, which quite as graphically emphasises and fitly intro- 
duces a fresh polity, and a coincident departure from the 
time-honoured precedents and customs hitherto associated with 
the landed interest. 

During the Middle Ages there was probably no distinctly 
architectural profession, and buildings were planned by master 
masons, guilds of workmen, or bodies of freemasons. The 
feature of this era had been a religious mysticism which left 
its stamp even on the building trade. But the Renaissance 
architects took their cue from the altered religious views of the 
times which Henry VIII. had initiated by the destruction of 
Church property, and the religious element was henceforth 
eliminated even from the plans of churches and tombs. Fresh 
ideas borrowed from Italy, Germany, and the Low Countries, 
were introduced by foreign architects, and worked out by 
foreign trowels. Torrigiano came over as early as 1B06. 
Holbein, Gerome de Trevisi, Lucca Penni, and John of Padua 
found a patron in Henry VIII., the last-mentioned artist hav- 
ing, it is said, designed Longleat, and both Sion and Somerset 
Houses. In the foUowing century Bernard Janssen, Thorpe, 


294 History of the English Landed Interest 

Holt, the two Stones, and Inigo Jones were the chief archi- 
tects. Many great landowners sent their builders to study in 
Italy, and often imported foreign workmen to carry out the 
designs that they brought back. The old mystic and symbolic 
system of the former style was sometimes carried over into 
the succeeding Benaissance architecture, though in future 
it was more often prompted by loyalty or egotism than by 
religion. Accordingly the Tudor draughtsmen shaped their 
ground plans into anagrams and parabolic figures. John 
Thorpe, for example, designed a house whose basement formed 
the initial letters of his two names, and others showed their 
loyalty by adopting as a ground plan the E which formed the 
first letter of their sovereign lady's name. Buckhurst, part of 
Knole, Kirby Hall, Holdenby, and "WoUaton were built by 
Thorpe. The last named, belonging to Sir Francis Willoughby, 
is especially interesting, since it probably initiated the foolish 
custom of erecting by means of funds derivable from mineral 
royalties an edifice out of all proportion to the size of the 
estates, which could but prove an endless source of extrava- 
gance to less wealthy successors, who would derive no benefit 
from the exhausted mines, and could ill afford to keep up the 
state required by the great block of building. Holt designed 
many of the Oxford colleges, which, unlike most of his work for 
private persons, have survived the ravages of time. The elder 
Stone built Lord Danby's house at Combury, and carried out 
many of the designs from the penoU of Inigo Jones. The 
latter, bom in 1B73 at Smithfield, studied in Italy, acquired 
his reputation in Denmark, and on first settling in England 
employed his talent in designing theatrical costumes and 
scenery. His work properly belongs to the succeeding Stuart 
period, as he did nothing great in architecture before 1615. 
He is supposed to have designed part of Whitehall, the porch 
of St. Mary's, Oxford, a portion (since burnt) of St. Paul's, 
Houghton HaU and Dorfold in Cheshire, Castle Ashby, Stoke 
Park, Amesbury, Gunnersbury, and other country seats of the 
landed gentry ; but, like the works of other eexly Renaissance 
architects, fire and storm have swept them away. The lesser 
gentry seem to have clung fondly to the old Gtothic style ; and 


The General Aspect of the Country. 295 

their manor houses continued to consist of the hall flanked on 
either side by protecting wings, a courtyard at the back, and 
long low lines of roofing broken by dormer windows and gables.^ 
Harrison describes the new houses of the nobility as commonly 
constructed of brick or stone, and states that glass windows 
were beginning to be used. 

It was part of an architect's duties to lay out the gardens ; 
an admirable arrangement, for nothing more tends to show off 
the bricks and mortar of the buildings than the harmonious 
surroundings of terrace, panel, and flower bed.^ At the be- 
ginning of the period under discussion, the gardens were 
generally walled. Such were those at Nonsuch, belonging to 
Henry VIII., and those at Theobalds, which, though long 
obliterated, like most other early Tudor gardens, still exist in 
the imagination through the description handed down by the 
German Hentzner. We can picture the statues along the 
terraces, the walls covered with rosemary, the neatly trimmed 
yew, holly, and lime hedges, the trellis walks with the yew 
bushes shaped into cones and pyramids, the fountains and 
summer houses, and the geometrical flower beds. Thanks to 
the Flemish settlers in Norfolk, the latter were soon to be a 
blaze of colour with the gillyflower, the carnation, and the musk, 
damask, and Providence roses, which were introduced during 
the latter half of the sixteenth century. Separated from these 
pleasure grounds was the higher walled fruit garden, where 
probably would be found the pear, apple, peach, quince, 
almond, cherry, and filbert trees. Perhaps, too, there were a 
few plums, introduced by Thomas Cromwell about IBIO. Even 
some of the Zante currants might have taken root there, thus 
early acting as pioneers for their later invasion of these, shores 
in 1688.® Pale gooseberries and pippins, recently introduced, 
would no doubt have found their first resting-place in the 
royal gardens of Nonsuch. 

These Tudor pleasances were after all but a replica of those 

* Fide R. T. Blomaeld's three articles in The, Portfolio of 1888, on the 
Architects of the Renaissance, to which I am indebted for my information. 

» Vide R. Biomfield's article in The Portfolio, 1889, p. 231. 

• Crai^ and Macfarlane, Hist, of Engl, j Bk. VI., ch. iv. 


296 History of the English Landed Interest. 

described by Pliny the Younger, which had survived up to this 
date in Italy, and came over to these shores with the Renais- 
sance architects. It would have been better for their owners 
if they had looked up the original description, since they 
might have been induced to search for some of the esculents 
mentioned by this ancient historian. The weak point of a 
Tudor garden was undoubtedly its store of vegetables. Queen 
Catherine had to send all the way to the Hague when she 
wanted asalad.^ The potato was only just being experimented 
upon by Raleigh in Ireland. Turnips* were not to be intro- 
duced for another century. Carrots, which Pliny had pro- 
bably eaten in Candia, and which Gerarde, who lived at the 
latter end of the Tudor era, had mentioned as cultivated in 
Germany, were yet to arrive in these islands. Leeks, though 
mentioned by Shakespeare, did not widely establish themselves 
in English soil till after their importation from Switzerland in 
1662. The artichoke was only just coming into use ; and save 
onions, cabbages, cauliflowers, broccoli, the recently imported 
hop, possibly parsnips, wild strawberries and a plentiful 
variety of herbs, it is doubtful if the closest search could have 
brought to light any other growth except weeds, under the 
branches of the fruit trees in the Tudor orchard. That atten- 
tion was being now concentrated on the improvement of 
gardens is patent not only from the introduction of fresh plants 
and seeds during this particular century, but from the superior 
class of men employed as gardeners. John Gerarde, who began 
life as a surgeon, was Lord Burleigh's chief gardener during 
Elizabeth^s reign, and boasted of tending the best collection of 
plants in the kingdom. He not only introduced into his 
master's garden many choice exotics, but set up a large botanic 
garden at Holbom, and published a catalogue of its 1,033 species. 
This Herbalj printed in folio in 1B97, is supposed to have been 
an enlarged and translated edition of the old work Pemptades^ 
written by DodonsBus.' Be this as it may, there is no doubt 

* Htiino's Hist. ofEngl,^ ch. 23. 

* Tusser mentions, however, turnips as a kitchen-garden root to boil 
with butter. 

* Rees, Cydo,^ sub voc, ** Gerarde." 


The General Aspect of the Country. 297 

that we owe to Gerarde a new departure in the annals of 
English gardening, and an intimacy with Elizabethan plants 
which neither Peacham's Emblems nor any later writer's works 
could afford us. He knew everybody, and corresponded with 
both foreigners and countrymen, benefiting therefrom so as 
not only to procure fresh exotics, but to foster scarce indige- 
nous plants in his suburban garden. 

Beautiful though the Elizabethan manor houses and their 
surroundings undoubtedly were, their interior economy was not 
so inviting. Indeed, before this period it had been positively 
disgraceful. Uneducated people never take kindly to sanitary 
improvements: Even the clever Harrison ^ railed against the 
introduction of oak timbers and chimneys. He preferred the 
old willow-built hovels, and alleged that the ancient oaken men 
had not only become willow, but a great many altogether 
straw. The smoke, he said, used to harden both the man and 
his house timbers, preserving the former from the hands of the 
quack.* Up to the later Tudor period the yeomanry lived in 
timbered houses, whose walls were formed of wattled plaster ; 
they slept on straw pallets, with chaff bolsters, covered with 
coarse sheeting; their servants slept on straw with no covering 
at all. They ate their meals from wooden trenchers, and ladled 
their pottage into their mouths with wooden spoons. The clay 
floors were strewn with rushes which only served to conceal an 
ancient collection of beer, grease, bones, and everything nasty. 
Up to 1B26 even the king's scullions, who went naked or in 
vile garments, and lay about the kitchens night and day on 
the ground close to the fire, were very offensive. Erasmus 
ascribes the "sweating sickness" which constantly visited 
England to the " incommodious houses, the filthiness of the 
streets, and the sluttishness within doors." There is then no 
wonder that Wolsey, when he went to Westminster Hall, was 
wont to conceal a sponge saturated with essences in the skin 
of an orange, " into the which he smelt to avoid the pestilent 
odours from the suitors." ' 

* Harrison, Description of England^ i. 212, col. 1 (written about 1560). 

• The Babees Book, p. Ixv., edit. F. J. Fumivall, Early Engl. Text Soc., 
1868. • Id. Ibid., p. Ixvi. 


298 History of the English Landed Interest. 

Some of the old surveys in the reign of Elizabeth contain 
illustrations of village buildings. Mr. Hubert Hall, in his 
Society in the Elizabethan Age, gives a coloured illustration of 
an Elizabethan hamlet, taken from the original plan of the 
manor of Bradwell in Essex.^ The few houses scattered over 
the small fields give the impression conveyed by Osesar when 
describing a Germanic village. The parish church at one side, 
and the chapel of ease at the other, point to the freshly insti- 
tuted subdivision of parishes into chapelries; the highway 
terminating at the parish church vividly illustrates the isolation 
of country life, and the three shades of green and one of brown 
are intended probably to distinguish the different kinds of culti- 
vation.* The chief features of the houses that composed the 
hamlet were the enormous chimneys to which the rest of the 
small building seemed attached as an aflerthought, though the 
reverse was probably the state of affairs ; the windows were 
mullioned, the roofs tiled, and the one or two rooms all on the 
groundfloor. It is interesting to note that even thus early 
thatch had been replaced by other materials. A copyhold 
house was only distinguished from a copyhold cottage by its 
greater size, its red roof, and its enormous chimney stack. 
Even the better building could not have consisted of more 
than two rooms, the smaller of which occasionally had a lower 
roof and was probably a subsequent addition. The copyhold 
bam consisted of a plinth of brickwork timbered above with 
a thatched roof. 

The plan shows no traces of gardens about any of the houses, 
though probably there was an odd half-hidden comer to most 
of them which would be devoted to herbs, if not onions and 
cabbages. The hedgerows of the fields appear full of trees, 
many of which were likely to have been the common species 
of fruits, such as apples, pears, and quinces. Further and more 
minute details, though adding to the picturesqueness of the 
hamlet, would have scarcely been considered proper or useful 

^ Society in the Elizabethan Age^ 8rd edn., pi. 1. 

' The green commons were coloured dark green on the Kitchen 
manorial map, and the Lammas meadows light green. Vide Seehohm, 
Engl. Village Community. 


The General Aspect of the Country. 299 

accessories to the business-like purposes for which this manorial 
plan was drawn by some Tudor surveyor. 

From Harrison's description of the English buildings we may 
conclude that the greatest part of our cities and good towns 
consisted only of timber cast over with thick clay to keep out 
the wind. "Oertes," he says, "this rude kind of building made 
the Spaniards in Queen Mary's days to wonder, but chiefly 
when they saw that * large diet ' was used in many of these 
so homely cottages, insomuch that one of no small reputation 
amongst them, said after this manner : — ' These English,' 
quoth he, * have their houses made of sticks and dirt, but they 
fare commonly so well as the king,' whereby it appeareth that 
he liked better of our good fare in such coarse cabins, than of 
their own thin diet in their princely habitations and palaces. 
The clay with which our houses are commonly empanelled is 
either white, red, or blue." ^ 

' Harrison, Description of England, Bk. II., ch. 12. 


Zbc Znbot pcrlob* 


CHAPTEE XXm. 

ESTATE ECONOMY. 

There are several writers of the sixteenth century whose 
works have survived up to our times. These afford us accurate 
and sufficient data for a graphic description of the rural 
economy practised at the period when they were published. 
Sir Anthony Fitzherbert ^ wrote his Book of Husbandry about 
1B34, and his Book of Surveying a year or two later; Sir 
Richard deBenese his work on Land Measurement about 1537; 
Thomas Tusser his rhymes, containing BOO points of good 
husbandry, about 1B73 ; Reginald Scot his Perfite platforme 
of a Hop Garden in 1B74 ; Bamaby Gkx)ge his four Books 
of Husbandrie 1B77 ; and Harrison his Description of England^ 
a little earlier. Googe's work is principally interesting for the 
list of writers which he gives as his authorities, many of whose 
books have long perished. "Without recording his formidable 
list of classic writers we shall be content with enumerating 
those of a later era, many of whose names have a Dutch ring, 
but most of which sound English enough — 

S. Nich. Malbee. M. Hen. BrockhalL 

M. Capt Byngham. M. Franklyn. 

M. John Somer. H. Kyng. 

M. Nical Yetzvvert. Bicbard Andrewes. 

M. Fitzherbert. Henry Denys. 

M. VVylli Lambert. VVylliam Pratte. 

M. Tusser. John Hotche. 

M. Tho. VVhetenhall. Philip Partridge. 

M. Ei. Deeryng. Kenvvorth DatfortK 

^ Sir A. Fitzherbert was one of the Justices of the Court of Common 
Pleas, and had practised agriculture forty years. There is no need to 
confuse his identity with that of his brother, though some have done so. 


Estate Economy. 301 

Googe's treatise has been somewhat neglected by later 
agricultural writers owing to a not wholly justifiable prejudice 
that it is more or less a transcript from a German work on 
husbandry.^ Sir A. Fitzherbert's writings are undoubtedly the 
most valuable of those still in existence ; but even he has 
helped himself largely to the information contained in "Walter 
of Henley and other thirteenth-century authors, and possibly 
he may have also freely plagiarised portions of those extinct 
Flemish or English works which Googe has cited as his sources 
of information. Nevertheless enough is known of Fitzherbert's 
life to insure for anything that he says, either on law or agri- 
culture, a most respectful hearing. In addition to the works 
already mentioned, there have been experts* of the present 
day who have placed on paper the results of long and careful 
research into the archives of our public record office, museums, 
colleges, universities, and libraries which afford additional and 
valuable data for the purpose in hand. 

Separating then the mass of information thus obtained under 
the headings of Land Management and Agriculture, we propose 
to treat these two subjects in the order named.* When the 
internal economy of a landed estate was last discussed, it will 
be remembered that the management was in the hands of a 
large staff of officials, rising gradually in the social scale from 
the various lowly herdsmen to the exalted personage known 
as the seneschal. It is probable tbat the latter individual was 
still indispensable to the wealthy owner of an Honour or group of 
manors, though he might be known under the less pretentious 
term of supervisor or surveyor. One of Fitzherbert's works is 
undoubtedly intended as a useful handbook for officials of this 
class, and is for all practical purposes an advanced treatise on 

^ Googe's allusion to a car armed with sharp sickles is the first mention 
of the mechanism of a reaping machine. 

' Hubert Hall, Society in the Elizabethan Age ; Thorold Rogers, Prices 
and Agriculture^ etc. 

' Mr. Thorold Rogers, in his works on Agriculture, has given a brief 
epitome of Fitzherbert's treatises. In order to avoid clashing with his 
arrangement of history, I shall describe the land tenure and agriculture 
of the period in general terms, giving references to the authors whence I 
draw my information. 


302 History of the English Landed Interest. 

Elizabethan estate management. There were two distinot 
species of the genus land-agent in those days, and it is some- 
times hard to distinguish the one from the other. Besides the 
individual already described in an earlier chapter, there was 
the steward, who often performed the more important house- 
hold duties of a modem butler, besides the buying, selling, 
measuring, valuing, and appraising of his master's lands and 
livestock. Just as the first-named species was neither wholly 
a lawyer, a banker, a surveyor, or a steward, but a mixture of 
all these professions, so also the latter was neither an estate 
agent, a butler, nor a bailiff, but a compound of the three. It 
would seem to have been vastly more essential then than now 
that both varieties of agent should have been well versed in 
legal lore ; for, together with the new trading blood, ji litigious 
element had entered into the character of the possessors of the 
soil. Up to this period we have traced the sub-tenant's gradual 
climb into fixity of tenure. In 1449 he, as leaseholder, had 
secured a further and securer foothold by means of the legis- 
lation which allowed his lease to override a purchaser's deed. 
Again in 1469 he rose a step when the law protected his pro- 
perty from the clutches of his landlord's debtors; and his 
cherished copy of the court roll, even if it had not formally 
received the recognition of the statute book, had at any rate 
long entitled him to trespass claims against his lord for dispos- 
session. But the commercial instincts which had been brought 
to bear upon the land by the recent change of owners, now 
stimulated the ci-devant traders to win back by fair though 
sharp practice all that had been ceded during the past cen- 
turies. There were no traditions to check the fresh lord's 
proceedings ; and tradition was the very pith of the complex 
system of land tenure in existence. Services rendered in the 
remote past by one side or the other had established hereditary 
claims which found iudelible expression in the manorial cus- 
toms of the court roll. "Why should the new master carry 
out a system of land tenure that shocked his business-like in- 
stincts of justice ? What had he to do with pepper-corn rents 
and widows' claims for free bench ? There were all the con- 
fusing results of a land tenure based on feudalism, without any 


Estate Economy. 303 

of the memories whicli could alone render it intelligible. The 
land had long ceased to be viewed in the light of a military fee. 
The fresh owners had acquired it by purchase, not by descent, 
and the prosy inducement of commercial speculation had pre- 
ponderated over the sentimental and social elements of the 
transaction. It was true, no doubt, that the knight service, the 
homage, the fealty, the escuage and suit of court might be 
tolerated for the sake of the ocular evidence that they afforded 
as to the new man's increased social importance; but his phleg- 
matic trading spirit called out against the inequality of the 
various rents. Here was a freeholder who paid according to 
his charter a minimum in money and a little pepper for his 
holding; there was another paying double this for less and in- 
ferior land. Here was one, who by copy of court roll rendered 
part payment in money, part in capons, and was liable to a 
heriot ; another, who held a cottage and curtilage in exchange 
for an annual sparrow-hawk, and a third who paid as an 
equivalent something equally useless or insignificant. The 
town-bred individual who became landlord had known hitherto 
but one medium of exchange, and it was natural that he should 
be anxious to convert every one of the above services into its 
money equivalent. Eecourse therefore was constantly had to 
legal subterfuges. The copyholder was always before the 
law courts. At one time it was under the pret3xt that he 
had omitted a service, or transgressed a right contained in the 
original court roll. The unlucky wight would produce his 
cherished copy and prove his case ; but woe betide him if under 
a skilful cross examination he was entrapped into some con- 
tradictory and far from intentional admission damaging to his 
tenure.^ The customs of some manors had become so com- 
plicated and inconvenient as to have induced the several parties 
to revise and renew them in a court especially assembled for 
the purpose. Frequently some new lord, by refusing to be 
bound thus, not only annulled the later record, but was legally 
entitled to confiscate the older tenant rights, which, to be 
binding, must have been of immemorial usage.' 

* Mr. Hubert Hall gives many instances of these lawsuits. — Society in 
the MizabetJian Age^ The Tenant, ch. iii. * Id., Ibid, 


304 History of the English Landed Interest. 

It was for these reasons that both supervisor and steward 
were ill qualified for their respective offices if they had not 
acquired a legal training. A student at G-ray's Inn, possessed 
of an hereditary connection with some estate, stood a good 
chance of preferment to its vacant stewardship. The appoint- 
ment does not seem to have been highly lucrative, for the 
salary was a few shillings a year augmented by a few acres of 
low-rented land and the fees from all the courts leet, oourts 
baron and manor courts on which a steward had to sit. It is 
conceivable that this office, which even in modem times brings 
its holder a good deal of popular opprobrium, must have been 
in the uneducated Tudor days almost untenable by reason of 
unfounded charges, such as fraud, favouritism, extortion, and 
the like. As his only refuge therefore from such hostility, the 
steward seldom thought it his duty to see more than his em- 
ployer's side of every question — an unwholesome condition of 
mind in one whose business relationship involved both parties 
to every transaction, and who was alone in a position to re- 
present matters to his master in their true light.^ 

But if the fresh commercial blood had let in upon the land a 
flood of litigation, it had also introduced a flood of fresh know- 
ledge. The English soil had been brought into touch with 
foreign agricultural improvements by means of its trade connec- 
tion. It was not only through the importation of the potato, 
clover, and other useful plants, that agriculture came to the 
front during this century. Merchant adventurers brought 
back from abroad foreign ideas of husbandry. The Flemish 
especially afforded an inexhaustible source of information on 
this head. They taught the Tudor Englishman many of his 
trades, filled his gardens with plants delightful to both taste 
and smell, and by the introduction of root crops and other 
vegetables supplied his table with fresh meat and antiscorbutic 
green food throughout the winter. Not only were we at this 
epoch their inferiors in agriculturjtl and horticultural know- 
ledge, but our municipal buildings were architecturally not 
to be compared with the Flemish commercial halls of the 

* /Society in the Elizabethan Age^ ch. ii,, The Steward. 


Estate Economy. 305 

same date.^ In sole return for all this we seem, according to 
Tusser, to have constantly sold the Fleming our diseased pork 
already salted and pickled. 

Turning now to an English estate of the period, we shall be 
content with a cursory glance at the beautiful Elizabethan 
manor house, with its two cross chambers and central hall of 
stone, brick, or timber, its bams and outbuildings, and its sur- 
roundings of garden and demesne. We pass on to examine the 
distribution of the land amongst the lord and his tenants, and 
see how the system worked. The tenants themselves are easily 
recognisable, though changed both in name and circumstance, 
since last we discussed their life during the* old medisBval era, 
The base tenure of the villein may still cling as an expression 
to the position held by the copyholder, but it signifies no 
more than an expression to an individual who, though origin- 
ally holding his parcel of land at the will of his lord, could 
flourish his copy of court roll in the face of any aggressor who 
attempted to dispossess him. So is it also with the cottagers 
and all the smaller fry of the estate. They still pay their 
curious mixture of rents and produce for the self-same cottages 
and curtilages that their forefathers held of yore ; but they 
are (especially if they choose to hire themselves out as 
labourers) far more prosperous and far more secure from violent 
or arbitrary action than in the old days of their serfdom. 
There is also much the same old system of land distribution. 
Every substantial man of the township has " lands " in the 
infield, but no two of them adjoin, and never more than two 
or three are in the same division. In the meadow land of the 
township, the lord, the parson, the freeholders and the other 
tenants share unequally the yarious plots. Here may be seen 
staked out the four acres of the lord, and next to them the two 
of some freeholder.* 

Lastly there was the common pasture, of which there were 
three kinds, viz. one taken in out of the fields by all the 
tenants of the township in the which every person was stinted/ 

* Thorold Rogers, Prices and Agriculture, vol. iv., p. 69. 

• Fitzherbert's Boke of Surveying : Parish of Dale. 

X 


3o6 History of the English Landed Interest. 

a second in the plain champaign^ country where each person 
was, or should be, stinted according to the size of his holding ; 
and the third, the lord's waste, where he alone was unstinted. 
This practice of stinting on common pasturage was no doubt 
salutary for the poorer cattle owners, for without some such 
restriction the wealthier tenant would have bought up all the 
stock he could lay hands on in the spring, run them through 
the summer on the common pasture, and fattened them off for 
market on his own aftermath, meanwhile leaving the first- 
named pasturage too bare to support the other livestock, viz. 
a few beasts which belonged to.each poorer tenant. As regards, 
however, the waste, its lord who considered himself sole owner, 
reftised to be hampered by any such restrictions, and stinted 
the rest of the community's cattle, or charged a capitation 
penny for every hog's pannage, without incurring any imputa- 
tion for rapacity. 

All this, however, was not in itself contrary to the principles 
of communal agriculture as modified by the manorial system. 
The time however had arrived when shrewd observers, both on 
the Continent and in England had begun to see defects in the old 
popular method of agricultural economy. Under a sense of 
fairness the original distribution of each individual's holding 
had been, as already stated, scattered throughout the great 
common field of the township. Now however it was seen that 
enclosed lands would pay a farmer better. The " acres," taking 
the word in its original sense, would be more servicable all in 
juxtaposition and surrounded by one common fence, than as 
they were then, widely separated. But in order to make the 
alteration, popular rights of common husbandry would be 
seriously affected, if not destroyed. Isolated attempts to alter 
the common field system brought up the whole question of 
landed economy. In the first quarter of the sixteenth century 
the Q-erman peasantry rose in multitudes and demanded the 
abolition of serfdom, the restoration of all the ancient popular 
rights over waste and forest, and the appropriation of the tithe, 
after maintenance of the clergy, to the support of the poor, 
Eobert Ket, the tanner of Wymondham, imitating the example 

' Champaign or campaign signifies open country. 


Estate Economy. 307 

of his foreign brothers, rallied 16,000 men to armed resistance 
under a similar pretext in England. Mixed up with these mun- 
dane causes of insurrection was, in both cases, that of religious 
grievance. Luther and other Protestants had succeeded in 
freeing the popular conscience, and the Reformation had stirred 
up a desire for liberty in things secular as well as sacred. The 
result was that the Q-erman and English peasantry refused to 
release the grasp they still retained on the soil unless at the 
same time emancipated from seignorial jurisdiction. Both 
risings proved abortive, probably because in each case the 
leading agriculturalists of the villeinage had come to recognise 
that the common field system was inimical to the interests of 
good husbandry. The Norfolk labourers however, for at least 
a century after, claimed the right to throw open all field gates 
on Lammas day, and unless compensated in some other way, to 
depasture their livestock on any or every enclosure in the town- 
ship. But the pioneers of the movement in England recognised 
that henceforth the old seignorial rights over the people had 
become obsolete, and as soon as the enclosure system had begun 
to replace the common field economy, men like Norden and 
Hartlib set about picking holes in the seignorial economy 
and thus helped forward for the final abolition of serfdom. 
But at this early stage of the enclosure movement men were 
content to confine the controversy to the best means of amelio- 
rating husbandry. Fitzherbert, who wrote nearest to the times 
of Ket's rebellion, sets himself to the task of replying to argu- 
ments against the separate farming system. Besides the lower 
grades of the villeinage, educated champions of the old economy, 
like Spriggs, asserted that the enclosure would ruin tillage and 
depopulate England. To such, Fitzherbert in answer asserts, 
that " one several close " as he terms it, for the arable land, 
another for his " leyse," a third for his portion of common 
pasture, and a fourth for meadow, would enable a farmer to 
treat his land more generously and use it all through the year 
instead of at those short periods when it was not common 
pasturage.* Beasts that grew thin-haired and unhealthy in 

^ I am speaking of the Lammas day arrangement already described in 
a former chapter. 


3o8 History of the English Landed Interest. 

the winter shed conld flourish better nnder the shelter of the 
new hedges, and even the oottager would be better off with a 
tiny enclosure than when his thin beast was cropping a pre- 
carious livelihood horn with horn on the common. Then, 
argues Fitzherbert, see how the separate field system would 
facilitate cultivation ! If his com in the arable field looked 
bare, he could break up the leyse or pasture ground and grow 
some there instead. Even the wood in the hedgerows would 
be a source of profit, and there was the saving of a small 
fortune in the board, lodging, and wages of herdsmen who 
would be rendered unnecessary by the new process.^ Then, lest 
he should be accused of taking the bread out of a poor man's 
mouth, and remembering the rebellion of King Edward YI.'s 
reigUy Sir Anthony ends up with the suggestion that the now 
useless herdsmen, whom Tusser has aptly named the " fences " 
of the commonable land, could be put on to get, ditch, hedge 
and plash quicksets, whereby our author somewhat invalidates 
his previous contention that closes would save the farmer^s 
pockets in keep and wages of this class. At first sight it is 
rather a shock to a nineteenth-century farmer's ideas to read 
Fitzherbert's airy suggestion as to ploughing up the good turf 
of the leyse and pasture fields. But this was the time when 
from the reign of Henry VII. to that of James I. the legislature 
was constantly called upon to encourage tillage at the expense of 
pasture. " Where in some towns," enacts the 4 Hen. Vli. c. 19, 
" two hundred persons were occupied and lived of their lawful 
labours, now there are occupied two or three herdsmen, and the 
residue fall into idleness." Under a penalty of forfeiting half 
the profits to the lord of the fee, all who for three years had held 
farms containing 20 acres of arable land, were made to uphold 
them as such. On account of the enormous increase in the 
price of wool, which seems to have been attributed to what is 
now vulgarly termed "cornering the market," no one from 
1633 * was allowed to keep more than 2,000 sheep, and about 

^ Tusser in his rhymes on the work of July, hreaks off to compare 
the disadvantages of the ^* Champion Country '' with the advantages of 
the "Several." 

» 2B Hen. Vin, c. 18. 


Estate Economy. 309 

the same period the exportation of wool was prohibited. From 
1597 by 39 Eliz. c. 2 arable land made pasture since 1st of Eliz. 
was to be reconverted to tillage, and that still under the plough 
was to remain so in future. 

The effect of this general tendency to discard the plough 
was naturally to enhance the price of corn. The State there- 
fore turned its attention to restricting its exportation and 
artificially lowering its home market Talue.^ This action of the 
legislature might have prevented the rising want and dis- 
content amongst the smaller class of farmers. There was a 
popular saying of the times that " it was never merry with 
poor craftsmen since gentlemen became graziers." Then, too, 
Fitzherbert's ideas about closes had taken root, and the farmers 
were exchanging their scattered ''acres" in the infield for 
that landowner's ideal, a " ring fenced " holding. 

But legislation soon checked the practice of laying down 
land to pasture, and as soon as the soil became once more 
arable there was work and bread for everybody. Simul- 
taneously the statute book records the change, and a dozen laws 
follow in quick succession, lowering the restrictions on corn for 
exportation, so that the price at which wheat was allowed to 
be exported, rose successively from 6«. 8rf. per quarter in 1663, 
to 10». in 1662, to 20«. in 1693, to 26«. 8d. in 1604, to 32*. in 
1623, to 40*. in 1660, to 48». in 1663, and to almost entire free- 
dom from restriction in 1670.* 

The value of wheat during the sixteenth century varied 
considerably. In 1499 it was 4*. per quarter, and in 1621, 20*. 
During the fifties it kept pretty steady at &. In 1674 it 
leaped up to £2 16*.; in 1694 it was again at this famine 
price, and in 1697 it reached £6 4«. and kept high till the end 
of the century.^ The effect of the later Elizabethan Com 
Laws, and indeed even the statute of 1662 against forestalling, 
regrating, and ingrossing, though it not only stopped its export- 
ation and spoiled its home trade, had no effect on its market 

^ By the statute against forestalling and ingrating, 1552, 5 and 6 
Ed. VI. c. 14. 
' Enclyclo, Brit,^ sub, voc. Agriculture. 
' Adam Smith, WeaUh of Nations^ Appendix, bk. !• 


3IO History of the English Landed Interest. 

price. Farm rents rose generally in the reign of Henry Vlil., 
an event which cannot be better illustrated than by relating 
the personal experience cited by Latimer in one of his sermons. 
The preacher's father, who as a yeoman, though possessing no 
land of his own, held at a rent under £4 per annum, a farm, 
containing sufficient land to employ six men, and carry a 
hundred sheep and thirty cows. , He sends his son to school 
and college, dowers his daughters with £5 each on their 
marriage, provides the king a horse and man, entertains his 
neighbours and supports the local poor out of the proceeds of 
cultivation. His son succeeds to the same tenancy at about 
the same time as Henry VIII. did to the throne. He pays four 
times as much rent, and his profits are hardly sufficient to 
obtain for him the bare necessaries of life. Latimer cites lis 
own case as typical of his class, and goes on to speak in still 
more despondent tones of the yeoman cottager, who had been 
so hard pushed by the new fashion of enclosing fields as to 
have looked more to his profits as a day labourer for subsist- 
ence, than to the small holding which was henceforth to be 
the sole equivalent for his former common rights. And yet 
Fitzherbert was right when he advocated the system, as is 
evidenced by W. S. Gentleman's treatise,^ written sixty years 
after, in 1681, in which he proves that Essex, Kent, North- 
amptonshire, and other counties are most prosperous by reason 
of their more numerous enclosures. 

The general picture that may be drawn of the Tudor landed 
classes from all that has been just said cannot be a very happy 
one. The conflict between the two interests had been em- 
bittered by the litigious propensities of the fresh owners. It is 
true that the rise in wages had considerably ameliorated the con- 
dition of the labouring community, but the small farmers and 
landowners were greatly impoverished. The former, we have 
shown, resorted to hired labour in order to eke out their pre- 
carious existence on the farm, and the latter converted their 
arable lands into pasture, and went into London chambers in 

* A Compendious or Brief Examination of certain ordinary complaints 
of divers of our Countrymen in these our days. By W. S. Gentleman. 
1681. 


Estate Economy. 311 

order to save ttemselves the expenses of housekeeping. Many 
farms were left on hand, and few had sufficient capital to stock 
them. In addition to the legislation already instanced, there 
were other Acts designed to distribute the land more uniformly 
throughout the agricultural community. In 1588 penalties 
were imposed ^ upon those who built cottages without at least 
four acres of land attached. In 1697 all houses of husbandry 
decayed within the preceding seven years were ordered * to be 
rebuilt, and from twenty to forty acres of land attached to 
them. The difficulty seems to have been in enforcing this 
species of legislation, as such statutes had to be constantly 
re-enacted, and even then the rural poverty could only be 
checked by the Elizabethan Poor Laws. Then, as always, 
necessity proved a good mother, so that the skill and care set 
in motion by the lacerating spur of want ameliorated the 
national system of agriculture. Good and properly cultivated 
land yielded twenty bushels of wheat, thirty-two of barley, 
or forty of oats and pulse per acre. Cattle increased to such 
proportions as to obviate the old necessity of restricting by 
statute the slaughter of weanlings.^ Bacon, veal, and even 
fresh fish (wherever good roads gave access to the seaboard) 
began to supplement the salt meats of the winter larder, and 
the Tudor farmer probably was able to sit down to as good a 
Christmas dinner as any farmer of to-day. 

But not content with improving his land and livestock, the 
farmer in many cases turned clothier, and though his class 
has always been looked upon as the very marrow of the 
nation, he incurred by so doing the statute book's contemptuous 
synonym of " foreigner." * When his wife was not spinning 
flax she was sorting wool for her husband, and the two 
together with their children probably dressed themselves 
almost entirely with their own handiwork. The roads were 

» 31 Eliz. c. 7. 

» 39 Eliz. CO. 1 and 2. 

" Harrison, Description of England, This man, bom in London, 
became Canon of Windsor in 1586. He had access to Leland's valuable 
manuscripts, out of which he gathered sufficient materials for the above 
work. 

« 5 and 6 Ed. VI. c. 8. 


312 History of the English Landed Interest. 

still too bad and the market tolls too exorbitant to induce the 
husbandman to look muck outside his own resources for his 
wants, and of course the simple farming implements of the 
period were repaired or replaced by himself and his people. 
The growing political power of the townsman is now evidenced 
by the restrictive measures^ passed through parliament against 
these irregular rustic industries. The manufacturer of cloth 
complained that his monopoly was injured, and in future the 
clothing trade was confined to the towns, though looms were 
stiU allowed in the farmhouses of the North and West, where 
the coarser kinds of hair wool continued to be made up into 
homespun garments for the country folk. 

Up to the reign of Henry VIII. the linen used in England 
was principally foreign, but about 1533 the State encourages 
native talent by enacting that every person who occupied 
sixty acres of arable land should grow a quarter of an acre of 
flax or hemp annually.' 

» 2& B Ph. A Mary o. 11 ; 4 A B Ph. A Mary, o. 6. 
« 24 Hen. Vm. c 4. 


^be IIut>or iperfo^ 


CHAPTER XXIV. 

A SIXTEENTH-CENTUBY FAEM. 

The site for the farm under discussion is best fixed in Norfolk, 
so that we may be able later on to compare its system of 
husbandry before the introduction of the turnip, with that a 
century later, when the famous four-course rotation of crops 
was in full swing. In parts of England, especially in Lanca- 
shire, the farming of the latter end of this century would have 
been scarcely distinguishable from that practised in the same 
locality now. After the introduction of clover from the Nether- 
lands and the potato from Ireland, both of which events oc- 
curred prior to or early in the seventeenth century, there 
could have been no radical change in the system, unless we 
except the gradual absorption of the common tillage field into 
fenced and private enclosures. Let the reader go up into 
south Lancashire, and in fancy blot out of his purview the 
great commercial towns, coal mines, cotton factories and rail- 
ways of the Wigan district. He will then have rolled back 
the centuries to the period when good Queen Bess was becom- 
ing wrinkled and haggard. No agricultural prosperity seems 
to have induced the Lancastrian gentry of these districts to 
add field to field, and pull down their bams in order to build 
greater. The sixteenth-century date stones on many of the 
great buildings which held the Elizabethan tenant's hay afford 
indisputable proofs of our assertion.^ The houses with their 
stone roofs, stone walls and stone mullionS| are hardly even 

* I have seen dozens such in my business visits to the farms about 
Wigan. Turnips and carrots have been grown in one or two fields of late 
years, but otherwise the farming is wholly as I have described. 

81S 


314 History of the English Landed Interest. 

now the worse for the wear and tear of intervening cen- 
turies. Probably the old smoke tattered fence-rows in most 
cases enclose the self-same fiolds into which the Tudor agricul- 
turalists converted parts of the common land, and, too, beftf* 
crops identically similar to those which were cultivated by the 
Tudor yeoman. The pasture land was ploughed up as soon 
as clover seed arrived in this country, and it has never been 
restored since. Oats, grass seeds, potatoes, and occasionally 
wheat have rung the changes of cropping year after year 
throughout the stormy days of Stuart rule, and the calmer 
times of the House of Brunswick. The devastation of disas- 
trous civil war at home and the glories of successful victories 
abroad; the bounties on the exportation of com, the heavy 
fiscal charges on its importation, and the ultimate repeal 
of all its laws ; the agricultural honours paid to the turnip, 
the successes of the Midland graziers, the discoveries of 
chemical science, and the growth of great centres of commerce 
in the very district itself, all alike failed to turn the southern 
Lancastrian from his time-honoured groove of husbandry. He 
clings to his potatoes and oats as sole sources of profit, whether 
their prices range high or low in the local markets. He uses 
no other manures than good farmyard dung, Olitheroe lime, 
and town nightsoil ; he grumbles when Irish potato merchants 
or American comchandlers undersell him, but he sticks to the 
old system through thick and thin, trusts only to his own 
and his family's industry for working his small tenancy, pays 
his rent with the regularity of clockwork, and lives and dies 
in the same building which centuries back sufficed for his 
Tudor ancestors.^ 

Far different is the case in the county chosen for the farm 
we are about to describe. Notwithstanding the resistance to 
the enclosure system as evidenced by Ket's rebellion, the East 
Anglian husbandman has long established his claim to be 
considered the pioneer of English agriculture. Badly circum- 
stanced as he is with regard to the congested centres of com- 
merce, and light as much of his soil undoubtedly is, he has 

' The reader should study the rough ground plan and description of a 
farmhouse given in G. Markham's ThA English Husbandmany 1613. 


A Sixteenth-Century Farm. 315 

always produced mutton and malt whose excellence is as 
widely celebrated as that of the best Kentish hops, or the 
choicest Bordeaux vintages. 

We must again remind the reader before commencing a 
description of Tudor farm life, that the Julian calendar was 
in force during these times ; and that therefore the dates in 
the following account were really twelve days later than they 
appear. The feast of the Annunciation, in other words April 
6th, commenced the year in the Julian calendar, a fact which 
accounts for that date being still fixed on farms in certain of 
the Midland counties for a fresh tenant's entry. It explains 
also the dates of May 12th and November 12th, on which 
Lancashire farmers are required to pay their rents, and for 
that of August 12th on which sportsmen commence grouse 
shooting. There are also several other instances where the 
Qregorian calendar has not affected the fixtures made under 
the old system. Though Scotchmen adopted the latter method 
as early as 1600, Englishmen resisted its innovation a century 
or more longer. Religious prejudices were at the bottom of 
the latter's opposition. The Protestants of the Reformation 
times were too incensed against Bomamsm to accept even 
a benefit, however secular, from such a source. Thus an 
attempt in 1586 to introduce the Qregorian calendar, though 
twice consented to by the House of. Lords, failed to become 
law. Even when re-introduced and sanctioned by both Houses 
in the middle of the eighteenth century, the cry, " Give us 
back our eleven days," continued to be election catchwords 
with the uneducated some years after the better classes had 
made up their minds that the Gregorian was preferable to the 
Julian system. 

In Tudor, as in Victorian days, the usual time of entry was 
Michaelmas Eve ; but since a portion of the farm was in the 
fallowed division of the infield it was of course important for 
the incomer to get on these lands earlier in the summer so as 
to keep them clean from weeds. Hence Tusser's remark, — 

"New fanner may enter (as champions say), 
On al that is fallow at iLent lady day; 


3i6 History of the English Landed Interest. 

In Woodland olde farmer to that will not yielde, 
For losing of pastare, and feed of his field." 

The tenant right was settled either according to the terms 
of the outgoer's lease, or by custom of country, and wa» placed 
in the hands of the professional appraisers, who were called 
champions, and were much the same as the modem burlyman 
or arbitrator.* 

The principal inducements to selecting some particular farm 
were its state of fertility, its dryness, condition of buildings, 
accessibility to markets, and excellency of farm servants. 

The buildings consisted of the farmhouse, the bam, the 
stable, winter cowhouse, hogsoote, boar sty, and hen roost, but 
the last four were probably wooden erections belonging to the 
tenant. 

The implements required were as follows :— 

Bam. 


Locke. 

Wing. 

Gofe ladder. 

Cartnaue. 

Short pitchfork. 

Bushel. 

Long ditto. 

Peck. 

Staile. 

Strike. 

Straw forko. 

Casting Shouel. 

Bake. 

Broom. 

Fan. 

Sack and Band. 


BdbU. 

Locke. 

ShoueL 

Plank floor. 

Spade. 

Back and manger. 

Currie comb. 

Pitchforke. 

Maine comb. 

Doongforke. 

Whip. 

Seeve. 

Buttrlce. 

Skep. 

Pincers. 

Bin. 

Hammer and naile. 

Broome. 

Apron. 

Paile. 

Sizers. 

Handbarrow. 

Bridle. 

Wheelebarrow. 

Saddle. 


^ I fancy that the champions were permanent and necessary officials 
all the year through, so long as the system of a common arable field was 
in vogue, for disputes must have been incessant. 


A Sixteenth-Century Farm. 


317 


Whit lether. 

Ped. 

Nal. 

Line. 

Collar and bameis* 

Halters. 

Panel. 

Crotchets. 

Wanty 

Pins. 

Packsaddle. 

Door chains. 

General Implements, 

Exeltreed cart. 

Sling for woman, ) to scare 
Bow for boy, rooks. 

Cart ladder and wimble. 

Perser. 

Carter's whip. 

Pod. 

Brush sith, ) with rifle («.e. 
Grass sith, handle). 

Wbeel ladder for barvest 

Pitcbforke. 

Barley cradle. 

Wbiplash. 

Bubstone. 

Cartrope. 

Sharp sickle. 

Sacks holding a coome. 

Weeding hooke. 

Pulling hooke. 

Beam, scales and weights. 

Light tumbrel 

Moulspear with barbs. 

Doong crone. 

Cutting spade. 

Shouel. 

Skuppat 

Pikax, 

SkaueL 

Mattocke. 

Sickle. 

BotUe. 

Didall. 

Bag. 

Crome. 

Short saw. 

Claue stock. 

Long do. 

Rabbet stocks. 

Axe. 

Carpenter's crane. 

Ads. 

Seasoned timber. 

Doner court boetle. 

Sawjacke. 

Wedges. 

Soles. 

Ijever. 

Fetters. 

Grindstone. 

Shackles. 

Whetstone. 

Horslock. 

Hatchet. 

Pad. 

Bill. 

Hammer. 

Long ladder. 

Sorted nailes. 

Ox yokes and bowes. 

Frower of iron. 

Plough beetle. 

Sawpit rol. 

Plough stafie. 

Two ploughs. 

Plough shed. 

Plow cheino. 

Sedge collars for plough horses. 

Two culters. 

Seede peck. 

Three shares. 

Barley rake, toothed with irons 

Ground clouts. 

steel. 

Side clouts. 

Pair of harrows. 

Ox bowes. 

RoUer. 

Hay fork. 


3i8 History of the English Landed Interest. 

BJBLj rake. Hammer. 

Pease meake. Trowel. 

Short barley rakes. Hod. 

Great do. Hog yoke. 

Pike. Twitx^ber and rings. 

Skuttle or skreine. Sheep marke. 

Sharing sbeeres. Tar kettle and pot 

Forke. Two pottles of tar. 

Hooke. 1 do. of pitch. 

Lath. 

As we proceed to describe in detail the work on the farm, 
most of the above terms will receive explanation.* Starting 
then at Michaelmas, the beginning of the farming year, we 
shall relate the Tudor husbandman's preparations for winter.* 
His first act is to thrash out and prepare some of the new crop 
for seed com. The farmer therefore proceeds to the bam, 
unlocks its doors, and admits the thresher to the Bye Gtoie or 
Mow of stacked com. The thresher ascends by means of the 
gofe ladder, and pitches the corn down with the short pitch- 
fork, using the long one when the straw mow gets high. The 
flail separates the grain from the stalk, and the fork is used to 
remove the straw from the thrashed corn. The fan and wing 
are used for the winnowing, and the thrasher stands on the 
nave during the process. The casting shovel is freely used to 
spread the floor of the bam with an equable layer of the grain. 
The furthest thrown is generally the heaviest and best, and 
is therefore set apart for sowing. Preference is given to the 
rye grown during the recent summer, as the newer the seed 
the greater its vitality. Owing to its not having thoroughly 
sweated in the gofe, the best com comes out under the flail, 
and the thin inferior grains remain in the ear. The rye is sown 
in time for it to be "out of the milk," and have a full threaded 
root before the winter's frost. It was sometimes mixed with 
white wheat and cropped together ; but though the mingled 
flour made a palatable bread called " Terns loaf," it was 
thought bad husbandry to grow the two crops on the same 

* Vide Glossary. 

' The whole of the description of Tudor farming is from the annotated 
1774 edition of Tusser's Hundred Points of Husbandry, 


A Sixteenth-Century Farm, 319 

land, " Lest," as Tusser puts it, " rie tarry wheat till it shed as 
it stand." ^ K the soil was heavy the swing plough would 
have been used, and if stony, the wheel plough. In either 
case the Dover court beetle ' would be attached for breaking up 
the clods after the plough. The yoke of two or four oxen 
would probably draw the plough, or the horses might be 
taken out of their plank floored stables and harnessed, with 
the light cool sedge collars for the work. The superiority 
of either beast was still a contested point. Though it was 
the practice in some parts of the country to sow the rye and 
wheat upon the pea stubbles,' it was deemed better husbandry 
to cultivate such crops on the fallow land. As soon as the 
limitation fixed by the custom of the manor court to the 
pasturage of the lord's crops on the champion land allowed, the 
husbandry of the winter crops commenced. The wheat was 
sown under the furrow, often by a mere child, who carried a 
bag or hopper full of com in front of the horses or oxen. The 
rye was sown above the furrow and harrowed. Two London 
bushels of wheat were sown to the acre, and about the 
same quantity was necessary in the case of rye. "Flaxen 
wheate, polerd wheate or whyte wheate, were the best varie- 
ties to blend with rye." Other varieties used were red, 
English, and peck wheat.^ The next process was to frighten 
the birds off, for which purpose a boy armed with a bow or a 
girl with a sling were set on to cry out and otherwise get rid 
of these marauders. On damp ground the farmer next pro- 
ceeded to cut a water furrow across the ridges on the lowest 
part of the land, or, if its situation in the common field pre- 
vented this, his only remedy was to dyke up a fence of soil 

* Compare Tusser's with Pitzherbert's ideas, which are at variance 
on this head. My own experience is, that rye will wait any reasonable 
time before it sheds. 

' It was called " Dover court " beetle, either because of the Rood of 
Dover, which was very large and remarkable in Tusser's age, or because 
of the Dover C!ourt signifying all speakers and no hearers, in allusion to 
the noise a great beetle is supposed to make. See Tusser's 1774 edition, 
(September) Fivt Hundred Points of Husbandry, 

* See Fitzherbert, Husbandry 

* Fitzherbert, Husbandry, 


320 History of the English Landed Interest 

against the highways to keep out the water from above.^ 
Leaving his young crop, the farmer could now turn his atten- 
tion to gathering in on a fine day his orchard fruits. Tusser 
recommends him to choose a time when the moon is on the 
wane, possibly because dark nights might save his fruit store 
collected under the trees from the sharp eyes of the Micher.* 
Having styed up his boar, who by now found Uttle feed in the 
field, the farmer next proceeded to harvest his hemp, "retting" 
it in small pools on commons, or near roads, and taking it out 
as soon as it began to swim. K it was left too long it would 
rot, and with the fear of this before their eyes, many farmers 
were wont to dew-ret instead of water-ret it.* This was the 
" shake time " after harvest, when the cattle were turned on 
to the common field, and the farmer made the most of his 
spare moments in collecting brakes and fern to store for firing 
or erect into winter shelters for his livestock. Mast was also 
harvested, partly for sowing in open spaces among the trees, 
partly for throwing on the grass about the homestead where 
the swine could find it. The garden was about this time 
occupying the attention of the farmer's womenkind. They 
would be replenishing the strawberry bed with wild roots 
transplanted from the wood. These, together with the rose- 
mary and giUyflowers, had to be protected with straw in frosty 
weather. Fruit bushes, such as the barberry, respis and goose- 
berry, were also attended to. The herb bed, containing worm- 
wood, rue and other plants, was weeded, and a fresh supply of 
sawdust, brickdust and ashes strewn over the paths. 

In October the next year's barley ground would receive its 
first ploughing, and the winter species of peas, such as the 
Hasting or Eeading, be got into the ground. Any land to be 
set apart for trees would now be fenced off from rabbits and 
cattle, and sown with acorns or other seed. Haws would be 

^ He would perhaps be unable to sow bis headland with wheat until 
after his neighbour's horses had ploughed the adjacent plot. Headlands 
must have been common turning ground in the infield. 

« " Thief." 

• " Dew-retting " was the spreading of the hemp on a water meadoWi 
** water-retting " was done in pools. 


A Sixteenth' Century Farm. 321 

set in rows for future transplanting as quickset hedges. Sloes 
and brambles were also cultivated, the former for verjuice, the 
latter to be boiled with powdered chalk, as medicines for the 
cows. 

The following month was the time for slaughtering the fat 
cattle, which the superabundance of offcom, beans and pease, 
consequent on the recent harvest, had rendered prime for the 
butcher. The mixture of oats and barley termed " dredge,*' 
was thrashed out and malted, their straw used for winter 
cattle feeding, and the overplus thrown on the yard to be 
trampled into manure. Meat and fish were next smoked, 
dried, and stored for winter consumption. Beans and garlic 
were sown in the fields, gardens trenched, and the house 
chimneys cleaned. 

The month of December having ushered in the winter, the 
field husbandry ceased, and all hands were employed on 
hedging and ditching, or the repairs and renovation of im- 
plements. The Tudor farmer seldom troubled the tradesman. 
He was his own blacksmith, and possessed a buttrice for 
paring hoofs, and all the paraphernalia of the smithy. So 
also in the saddlery department, where the **whit lether," 
" nal " or " awl," ^ etc., were familiar to every husband- 
man. Carpentry, joinery, and wheelwright's work occupied 
others of the fanner's household. It was a capital oppor- 
tunity for repairing all kinds of farm implemente, carts 
especially. Eoads in winter were too "noyous" for wheel 
traffic, and the maid took the butter to market, or the boy the 
com to the mill, on horseback, fitted with a short saddle raised 
before and behind, called a pannel, and strapped to the horse 
by means of a leathern girdle, technically termed a " wanty." 
The ped, which was longer, served for heavier loads, and the 
pack saddle, used up to late years in the North, was principally 
in request for the conveyance of wool. Meanwhile the men 
were renovating the cart's body, repairing the cart and wheel 
ladders used during hay harvest, reclouting the axle-trees 
with iron plates, and reshodding the felloes with iron stakes or 

* See Glossary. 


322 History of the English Landed Interest. 

tires. The horses who were wont to draw these carts, botii 
leaders and thillers/ must have had a lazy existence all this 
time, and seldom left their warm stables. All the feeble or 
old cattle, and especially the milch cows, were now housed. 
They were fed chiefly on hay and straw; the rye straw, as 
being the poorest, was used first. The horses were fed prin- 
cipally on hay and chaff, and sparingly on peas haulm and 
dried vetches. 

Save for the occasional visit of the chapman, who seems to 
have both bought farm produce and sold trifling necessaries, 
the farmer and his belongings were almost completely isolated 
from the outside world during the depths of this season. Not 
long after Christmas he was in a state of siege, and had to 
put all living on short rations, to stave off the attacks of famine 
and disease. If times were bad he would seldom allow the 
luxury of a roast joint, but lived principally on broth.* He 
took care that there was no waste of fuel at the servants' fire ; 
and began to replenish his supplies by the fallage of timber. 
In snowy weather the smaller branches were thrown to the 
cattle in the open, for both they and the rabbits were sup- 
posed to do well on this species of food, which received the 
name of "Browse." By the end of the month the fodder 
supply would be often alarmingly short, and farmers would 
search the hedge greens ^ and open spaces of the woodlands for 
prime grass. To correct the humours occasioned whenever 
his cows overfed themselves on this unusual dainty, the farmer 
would resort to his store of verjuice, and dose the suffering 
animals with this medicine. A little later there would be 
some early calves and lambs, which it was good policy to 
butcher as eexly as possible, since by so doing their fresh meat 
as well as their mother's milk might stave off the symptoms 
of scurvy and other scorbutic eruptions, which generally put 

* The wheeler was called thiUer. 

* It is probable that in some districts the labourer was entitled to a 
certain quantity of roast meat per week. See remarks at the end of this 
chapter. 

* In every arable close there would be a headland a rod wide, left lor 
pasture. 


A Sixteenth Century Farm. 323 

in an appearance at this late stage of the winter. Invigorated 
by the better food, all hands would seize the earliest oppor- 
tunity afforded by open weather to get on to the land once 
more. The barley soil would get its second ploughing, the 
oats would be sown, and the manure carted on to the spring 
bean land. 

In these days, when enclosures were few, the dilatory farmer 
was spurred on by his more industrious neighbours, who fore- 
saw that even a single late sown crop would delay not only the 
universal harvest, but the entry of their cattle and swine on 
the infield at Lammas day. About this time of the year 
Tudor farmers in the Eastern Counties might have been seen 
at work in many such a field ploughing a large ridge, in width 
as much as a rod, around that portion of land intended as an 
enclosure. This they would sow with hips and haws, hazel 
nuts, and the fruit of the bramble, harrowing and weeding the 
ground for a couple of years after, and ditching it a still longer 
period, until there sprang up those belts of coppice which have 
received the later appellation of shaws or springs, and which 
were admirably adapted both for shelter and fence. 

Having sown his oats and beans, dunged his meadow ground, 
and (if he possessed any) attended to the setting of his young 
vines or hop roots, it was time for the farmer to look over his 
granaries, and thrash out sufficient grain to convert into the 
Lady-day rent. On the 12th of March, termed by Tusser 
" Gregory," the cattle were removed from the meadow ground, 
and a little later, at Easter day, or as Tusser terms it, " Paske," 
the marsh meadow ground was similarly cleared. This month 
of March was an arduous time for the farmer ; and as in Lent 
it was the rule rather than the exception for Tudor farmers to 
abstain from flesh meat, they had to work on such orthodox 
but meagre diet as salt fish, f urmity, gruel, wigs, milk, parsnips, 
hasty pudding, pancakes, and occasionally eggs. It must have 
been a worse time still for the farmer's dog, whose longing 
for meat sometimes induced him to raid on the flock. 

" Watch therefore in Lent," says Tusser ; " to thy sheep go 
and looke, for dogs will have vittels, by hooke and by crooke." 

During April the barley was sown, the wheat rolled, the 


324 History of the English Landed Interest. 

garden set, the headlands mown, and the oak bark harvested. 
The following month was a busy time in the dairy ; all the 
lamba were weaned, the ewes milked from then up to Augosty 
and cheese-making was in full swing. The roofs of the build- 
ings were re-thatched with reeds, the com weeded, buck and 
brank sown for hay or poidtry and hog feed, and flax and 
hemp for the housewife's distaff or rope-maker's yam. Hemp 
was of two sorts : the Fimble or female hemp, which ripened 
soonest, was not worth half as much as the Carle with its 


After twifallow, or second ploughing of the fallow ground, 
there was little else for the men to do save cart home the rest 
of the winter-fallen timber and watch the various crops grow. 
The farmer's wife would divide her attentions between super- 
intendence of the dairy and distillation of the various aromatic 
garden herbs into pleasant waters, the manufacture of which 
was a feature of the age. In June the hands were taken from 
the summer fallowing and set on to harvest the hay. Right 
on till autumn it was in fact one long harvest, now of hay, 
next of brambles and brakes, then of pulse, com, buck and 
ranke, lastly of flax and hemp. Wet times and early morning 
were taken advantage of to complete the third ploughing (or 
thryfallow) of the summer fallow ground. Hay was cocked 
in unsettled weather, and on some farms each evening. Ck)m, 
especially bread corn, peas and tare stacks were raised out of 
the hog's reach on " hovels," is, places enclosed with crotchets 
and covered with poles and straw. They were wattled with 
whins and furze, so that turf, sea cole, tall wood, bavin and 
billet could be secured underneath the stack. Flax was har- 
vested sometimes as early as July. The crop was divided into 
two lots, that for the linen being gathered before it ran to 
seed. Buck and ranke were made into hay, and had to be 
garnered in an absolutely dry condition. A piece of ground 
in almost every farm was planted with saffron roots, as it 
afforded the best sward upon which to bleach linen. The 
com harvest was sometimes let, either by the day or by 
" great," ^ but the best plan was to hire men at their meat, 
* The old term for piece-work« 


A Sixteenth-Century Farm. 325 

drink, and wages, and to set apart a cow or two and some 
fatted crone ewes for their food. The men worked under a 
sober steady foreman, called a " lord," who led the swarth both 
in reaping and mowing. Every man was furnished with 
gloves, and had the privilege at the end of the harvest to go 
round the neighbourhood crying largesse, which custom still 
clings to the Eastern counties. Before the com was garnered 
the hogs were already in the infield, and the word " hoy " was 
used to frighten the animals from under the carts before moving 
forward each time along the mows. When reaped with the 
sickle, the stubble remained long enough to allow of a second 
mowing, a process which was deprecated amongst good farmers 
as impoverishing the soil. Barley was generally mown, then 
either raked and set up in cocks or tied into shocks. The 
latter custom prevailed when, as in Devonshire, it was carried 
out of the field on horseback, or in Northumberland, where it 
was conveyed to the bam in sledges. The parson of course 
took his tithe either in the swarth or shock, as the case might 
be, prior to the removal of the crop. Peas, according to 
Tusser, were not turned before carried ; but the side that has 
lain long next the ground is sure to be too moist, and such a 
practice cannot pass unchallenged. The stubbles now bared 
of the crop were left to the gleaners, the community's horses 
and swine. By Michaelmas the superfluous grain, having had 
time to sprout up into green shoots, afforded an excellent food 
for the cows. 

The harvest all gathered in, it was high time for a short 
rest and jollification. A good supper was provided for all 
hands ; ribbons, laces and pins distributed amongst the young 
folk ; the best beer (of which there were three sorts brewed 
for harvesters) served out to the men. So much has been said 
about the work of the farm that one may well begin to won- 
der whether any time was left for holiday making. Yet there 
were several widely recognised periods for festivity and fun. 
From Christmas day to Twelfth night the gentry feasted the 
farmers and the farmers their labourers. Plough Monday was 
the occasion for reminding all agriculturalists of the stem work 
before them. On that day men and maids endeavoured to 


326 History of the English Landed Interest. 

prove their diligence in rising earliest. The ploughman 
strove to collect his whip, staff and hatchet, and be by the 
fireside before the maid could get her kettle there, and the 
Shrovetide cock was the prize of the winner. A good supper 
and strong drink in the evening of this day terminated the 
feasting. 

At Shrovetide the fun was renewed, when the lads, blind- 
folded by their sweethearts* aprons, chased one of their fellows 
at whose back dangled a plump hen. Bedecked with horse 
bells, the latter led his comrades a merry dance, and some 
time elapsed before the hen was captured, relegated to the 
spit, and served up with bacon and pancakes for supper. The 
Wakeday was another occasion for jollification, on which was 
celebrated the dedication of the parish church. A morning 
service and afternoon's frolic commemorated the event. As 
after harvest, so after seed-sowing there was joviality, though 
in a less degree. The seed-cake, pasties and furmenty pot 
afforded a pleasant and additional relish to the ordinary fare 
of supper. Except after bad harvests, the farming community 
were not stinted in their diet, and on some farms even the 
labourers expected and received roast joints on Thursday 
evenings and Sunday mornings throughout the year. Many 
of this class were privileged to keep a pig, all were entitled to 
board and lodgings as well as wages, and such a system should 
have spurred all hands to perform the tasks of husbandry 
effectually and without waste of time. It was in fact an 
arrangement in which the co-operative system is clearly re- 
cognisable. A harvest strike, not unheard of in nineteenth- 
century agriculture, would have meant loss and deterioration 
not only of the master's winter food supply, but also of the 
strikers. A robbed hen-roost, lost, stolen or strayed cattle, 
neglectful herding, all signified so much less meat for the farm 
garrison during the approaching winter ; and as for an incle- 
ment season, it was a disaster in which everything that drew 
breath participated. Under such circumstances one might 
almost imagine that nobody would require much supervision. 
It was however, though an accident, still a feature of the 
farmer's position, that he should be the centre of a critical 


A Sixteenth'Century Farm, 327 

circle. His neighbours in the common field watched him, for 
they were each personally interested that he should not get 
behindhand with his husbandry. His landlord's steward 
watched him in order to detect any attempts to impoverish 
the land, and his men not only watched him, but grumbled if 
they thought he was negligent or wasteful of his opportunities. 
No doubt also supervision was just as necessary to the farmer, 
and labourers were just as liable to be idle or dishonest then 
as now. The ideal of good farming, according to Bamaby 
Q-ooge, was wherever the ground was frequently manured 
with the master's foot and the larder provendered with his 
eye. Nor will the reader cavil at this old writer's sentiment, 
since supervision not only deters or detects the bad workman, 
but animates the good by its appreciation and approval. 


Zbc Stuart pctiob. 


CHAPTEE XXV. 

ATTITUDE OF THE LANDED INTEREST IN THE ENSUING 
CONSTITUTIONAL STEUGGLE. 

According to the great poet of the period, it may be said that 
the divinity which is supposed to hedge the sacred person of 
the sovereign was conspicuous throughout the late dynasty. 
A majesty inherent to the Tudor race had kept at arm's length 
that fierce resistance which a long increasing and now formid- 
able power had enabled the commons to oppose against every 
constitutional abuse. 

The vox populi, which neither the rapacity of Henry Vli. 
nor the despotism of his successor, which not even the bigotry 
of Mary, much less the parsimony of her sister, had fully 
aroused, now thundered forth into a rebellious shout at the 
pusillanimity of James and the insincerity of his son. 

Macaulay ^ has opined that the weakness and meanness of 
the former was the saving of the nation, but such a thesis is 
open to grave objection. It is true that the struggle betwixt 
king and parliament had reached a crisis, and that the infe- 
riority of the former ensured the triumph of the latter. A 
limited monarchy replaced for ever that royal absolutism 
which had long threatened the English people. But at what 
a cost ! Both sides threw away moderation. Extremes met. 
The people murdered one representative of royal despotism, 
and almost hunted to death another, only to find themselves 
under a worse despotism still. Then to evade the military 
yoke created by their own efforts, they thrust their necks under 

^ Macaulay, History of England, cb. i. 

S28 


The Civil Wars. 329 

the feet of the worst king who ever ascended the English 
throne. Bat surely had James I. been as generous and strong 
as he was the reverse, all these extreme measures might have 
been avoided ! Hallam ^ has pointed out that no private indi- 
vidual could have claimed a single acre of English soil without 
a better title than James advanced for the English Crown. 
But notwithstanding this, if the religious differences could 
have been bridged over, and the unjust impositions put a stop 
to, the nation would have ignored the illegality of the new 
king's accession far more thoroughly even than it subsequently 
ignored that of the Brunswick family. To successfully sur- 
mount these difficulties required . a stability of character to 
which the reigning House was an utter stranger. It was, then, 
Stuart idiosyncracy combined with the immoderation of a 
democracy as yet uneducated in the exercise of power which 
brought about that series of catastrophes to which we have 
briefly alluded. 

The ecclesiastical interest rallied round the king from the 
very first, and it might have been supposed that the landed 
interest, following out the same traditional policy, would have 
likewise clung to the throne. When, indeed, that throne was 
tottering, it too rallied to the king and spent its best blood 
and treasure to prop up his toppling seat, but during the reign 
of James there were too many grievances to bring about any 
lasting reconciliation. The large accassion of fresh blood to the 
land, and the dislike of the new proprietors to the system of 
feudalism, has been already pointed out. The incidents of 
military tenure having lost all significance remained merely 
irksome and farcical burdens on the land. The sovereign's 
exercise of his rights under the incident of wardship whenever 
he wished to confer on a favourite the estates and hand of some 
heiress, was regarded by all the great families as a badge of 
slavery. The custody by the king, without accounting for the 
profits, of every military tenant's estates until he should reach 
the age of twenty-one, was especially obnoxious to the new 
blood. Vehicles were impressed for the king's service, victuals 
exacted for the king's table, and even trees felled for the 
^ Hallam, Constit Hist. o/England^ ch. yi. 


330 History of the English Landed Interest. 

king's firing, by insolent officials under the pretences of pur- 
veyance.^ Against these customs, in spite of the glamour of 
hereditary right, the prosaic blood of the Stuart country gentry 
rose in revolt and found powerful expression in the Parliament 
of 1604. It was not a time of agricultural depression — quite 
the reverse. Com had risen 10». per quarter, wools had jumped 
from 2O9. to 3Qs. per tod, rents had gone up in proportion to these 
prices,' and the landow;ners were evincing their increased opu- 
lence in the creation of those Jacobean country seats which are 
still the admiration of all beholders. Nor was it the first time 
that royal attention had been thus called to these impositions, 
and it might have been thought that a period of prosperity 
such as this would not have been the selected occasion for re- 
newing the agitation. The meanness of the king afforded an 
opportunity and proved his ruin. A flat refusal would have 
been respected ; a gracious concession would have ensured the 
lasting adherence of the landed interest. He did neither, but 
stooped to unworthy attempts at bartering away these tradi- 
tional perquisites of the Crown for a lump sum of money. BGs 
terms were too hard for acceptance ; valuable time was wasted j 
session after session slipped by in resultless contention. The 
commons gradually felt their way to power, while the king as 
gradually decreased in dignity and advanced in unpopularity. 
To their original demands the landed interest added that of 
the abolition of aids ; the commercial interest that of prises ; 
the two combined, that of benevolences and tonnage and 
poundage. This action associated the two great classes of the 
nation in a united agitation against the king. The whole feudal 
system, including reliefs, primer seisin and wardship, as well as 
purveyance, was now menaced by the commons, and the king's 
sole resource was to dissolve parliament. Out off thus firom 
his supplies, he raised a small income by the sale of peerage 
patents and the newly created baronetcies, and when such 
means failed, faced the two estates of the realm afresh. Thus 
twenty years went by, prolific in nothing substantially bene- 
ficial to either party, but fraught with danger in the near 

^ Hallam, Canstit Hist, ofEngland, oh. vL 
* Id. Ibid, vide Note on Lord Oranfield. 


The Civil Wars, 331 

future. When James lay down to die, he had left as a legacy 
to his son a House of Commons whose members had become 
veterans in the arts of political warfare. Accustomed to kingly 
evasion, hardened to resistance, inured to disappointment, they 
knew not only their own powers, but how best to use them. 

It is doubtful if the ablest of kings could have then satisfied 
a nation in such a mood without his becoming a mere puppet. 
And yet it were unjust to attribute wholly to James's con- 
temptible meanness of character all the dire consequences of 
the succeeding reign. Causes had been accumulating through- 
out the century of Tudor sovereignty. The Statute of Fines 
had, it has been already showii, afforded additional facilities 
for the subdivision of landed estates, and vast quantities of 
these had been thrown on the market at the time of the Re- 
formation. Both incidents combined to create a numerous 
class of small landed proprietors ; many of whom boasted a 
blood relationship with the ancient nobihty, while others were 
sprung from the citizen class. The new order thus com- 
bined in its ranks both the haughty pride of the old Norman 
aristocracy and the cool calculation and shrewd foresight of 
the merchant. By the infusion of this element into the 
Lower House of Parliament there arose that formidable estate 
of the realm, which proudly termed itself the " Commons of 
England." Without the most intimate knowledge of king- 
craft no sovereign could have withstood the determined oppo- 
sition of such people, who were as irresistible in the political 
arena as they afterwards proved in the field. But it needed 
far less than kingcraft, merely indeed a particle of common 
sense, to see that all those demands, which his father had 
barely succeeded in shelving, must be now ceded by Charles. 
Feudal incidents and purveyance were as good as moribund, 
and further attempts to enforce such impositions were as 
futile and imprudent as would have been the revival of some 
long obsolete tax like the ship money. And yet Charles was 
so misguided as to attempt this very step. The musty records 
of Norman legislation were hunted up, and long forgotten 
malpractices, such as this particular tax, the law of knight- 
hood and even the iniquitous forest enactments resuscitated 


332 History of the English Landed Interest. 

from their well-merited graves.* This insane policy touched 
the whole landed interest in its sorest point and brought 
Hampden to the front. As compared with his father's milder 
opposition, Charles's action was as aggressive as that of Reho- 
boam. Smarting under this chastisement with scorpions, it is 
surprising that the entire English gentry did not at once join 
the revolt, and their forbearance amply proves how closely 
associated with the landed interest was the sense of loyalty to 
the Crown. As it was, it was divided into two hostile factions. 
Speaking generally, the hereditary owners of real property 
helped to swell the forces of the Cavaliers, whereas the recently 
imported blood swarmed into the Roundhead camp. Amongst 
the former there still lingered the force of tradition ; and just 
as in times of danger their fathers had rendered obligatory 
service to their feudal lord and master, so now their descen- 
dants voluntarily arrayed themselves in the ranks of the king's 
army. Once more then the land was to be deluged with the 
blood of its occupiers. Small knots of the gentry, well mounted 
and "accompanied (as Macaulay puts it) by their younger 
brothers, grooms, gamekeepers," and huntsmen, might be seen 
dotted over the country, all converging with hot haste on 
the royal field quarters. Estates were mortgaged and heir- 
looms sold to replenish the king's military chest. Even the 
family plate, contemptuously termed by the Roundheads 
"thimble money," found its way into the melting pot for 
a similar object. On the other side, Hampden was enlisting 
a regiment of hirelings whom Cromwell had contemptu- 
ously described as "a mere rabble of tapsters and serving 
men out of place."* But the cream of the Parliamentary 
forces was composed of the farmers' sons and freeholders, and 
these were the raw material out of which Cromwell fash- 
ioned his famous Ironsides. 

It is, however, inaccurate to describe either camp as wholly 
composed of particular classes. There were noblemen in the 
Parliamenteiry ranks, and citizens as well as freeholders in the 
Royal army. Professor Rogers has shown that the opposing 

* ParliaTMniary History^ vol. iL, p. 626. 

* Macaulay, Hi$t» of Engl,^ oh. i. 


The Civil Wars. 333 

forces were ranged on either side of an imaginary line * drawn 
between Scarborough and Southampton, and strange to say the 
same line would have divided the Yorkists from the Lancas- 
trians in the Wars of the Eoses. Those who lived east of this 
line were generally found on the side of the Parliament, those 
on the west side, with the exception of the town populations 
of Bristol and Gloucester, on that of the king. It is difficult 
to find an adequate reason for this phenomenon. East Anglia, 
or the Ajssociated Counties, as that part of England came to be 
called, had recently been inundated with a flood of Flemish 
refugees. Kent and other southern counties had been simi- 
larly intruded upon by the persecuted French Huguenots, and 
it is possible that the religious views of both sects had thrown 
these portions of England into an antagonistic attitude to the 
High Church tendencies of the Eoyal party. Mixed up with 
religious feeling might also have been the subject of finance. 
The Flemish weavers had made Norfolk next to Middlesex 
the wealthiest English county. The poorest counties were the 
northern and western,^ and it is a curious circumstance that 
all the wealthier parts of England should have espoused the 
Parliamentary side, while all the poorest parts were in league 
with the king. It was then no class struggle that ensued; 
sentiment, religious as well as social, was largely mixed up 
with class grievances. All the copyholders did not join the 
Parliamentary standard because they had failed to wring from 
Charles's father their enfranchisement ; nor did all the peers 
espouse the king's cause, because in him they saw the safe- 
guard of their feudal dues. There was just the same curious 
admixture of classes as there is now in the political parties of 
Conservative and Liberal, of which Boyalist and Soundhead 
were the progenitors. 

There is no necessity to linger over the scenes of Marston, 
Naseby and Whitehall. There was war over the face of the 
land, but happily neither murder nor rapine, though every 
atrocity, even cannibalism, was imputed at the time to the 
cavalier horse.^ Hundreds of estates were confiscated, numbers 

* Eogers, Prices and Agriculture^ introd. ch., vol. v. 

" Id., Ibid. » Vide Note C, to Sir Walter Scott, Woodstock, 


334 History of the English Landed Interest. 

of landowners mined, many fertile soils devastated. What 
else could have been expected while half the landed interest 
was at the other half s throat ? Charles sufltered and Cromwell 
came into power. The two Cromwells died, and the military 
absolutism continued. Through the conduct of Charles the 
King, the monarchy had lost all favour with the nation, 
through that of Charles Stuart it regained its lost ground, 
and through the memory of Charles the Martyr it had become 
more popular than ever. It is now time to examine the 
effects of this national struggle upon the rank and file of the 
class which drew its profits from the soil. 

The last years of the Tudor dynasty had been marked by 
unfruitful harvests, but the seasons seem to have had very 
little effect on the prosperity of agriculturalists. Indeed, from 
1B76 prices began to rise, both the yeomen freeholders and 
the tenant farmers profiting by the circumstance, and the 
landowners ultimately sharing in the general prosperity as 
soon as they had obtained a proportionate rise of rents.^ The 
labouring class alone suffered ; their wages remained stationary, 
although the necessaries of life had risen in value. It is an 
ill wind that blows nobody good, and the Civil War, which 
caused to stagnate, if it did not throw back, agricultural de« 
velopment, stepped in between this last-nsuned class and desti- 
tution. Many confiscated estates fell into the hands of men 
risen from the plough who, chiefly animated by a love of gain, 
returned with delight to their old pursuits. Platts, Hartlib, 
Blyth, and many others encouraged the revival of husbandry 
by their writings. Cromwell himself was an interested patron 
of all connected with this profession, and much attention 
began to be directed to the scientific farming of the Flemings,' 
The object of these intelligent and industrious people was as 
far as possible to make a farm resemble a garden. They culti- 
vated small estates only, which they frequently hoed, dug and 
manured. They made the great discovery that ten acres of 
vegetables maintained a larger stock of grazing animals than 
forty acres of common field grass, and that the latter pasturage 

* Rogers, Prices and Agriculture^ voL v. 

* Bees, Encyclo.y sub voc. Agriculture. 


The Civil Wars. 33S 

could support double the usual quantity by the improvement 
of its herbage. Sainfoin, trefoil, sweet fenugreek, buck and 
cow wheat, field turnips and spurrey were therefore grown. 
They let out their farms on improvement, discovered a dozen 
new fertilisers, and were the first of modem nations to appre- 
ciate the beneficial effects of green crops cultivated for plough- 
ing under as manure. They paid special attention to sheep, 
housing them every night in covered sheds whose floors were 
strewed with virgin earth or sand. The manure thus made 
served as an excellent top dressing. Salt, street dirt, sullage 
of streets, clay, fuller's and moorish earth, dunghills in layers ; 
hair, burnt vegetables, malt dust, willow-tree earth, soap-boiler's 
ashes, marl and broken pilchards were rescued from the gutter 
or rubbish heap to fertilise their farms. ^ 

It was to such people that our leading agriculturalists now 
turned for instruction. The new element that had entered 
into part possession of the English soil was composed of needy, 
serious, industrious and skilled husbandmen, who looked upon 
landownership as a profitable profession. Their example 
leavened the whole lump ; and directly men could lay aside 
bandoleer, tuck and corslet, it became the fashion to stop at 
home and cultivate their lands. As regards agriculture, it 
mattered nothing to such men whether they had recently 
worn the blue sash, white plumed hat, and laced cloak of the 
Eoyalist, or the red surtout and steeple hat of the Parliamen- 
tarian MaUgnants and Fifth Monarchy Men; Sectaries and 
Churchmen, all looked to Cromwell as the patron of their 
profession, whether they secretly called him "Old Noll" or 
Lord High Protector. Men of the greatest refinement and 
learning were using their pens in the agricultural cause. 
Hartlib was the crony of Milton, Sir Hugh Platte a friend of 
Cromwell's,* and these two writers were feeling after a some- 
thing that had long been a want in agriculture. One has only 
to study their writings to discover that unwittingly they were 
raising a cry for help to chemical science, to which, alas, for 

* BeeSi E(mycV>.y 9\ib voe. Agriculture. 

* Blitb dedicated his work to Cromwell, and Hartlib received a pension 
from the same patron as a reward for his agricultural research. 


336 History of the English Landed Interest. 

fifty years the latter tnmed a deaf ear.^ Becher in the cen- 
tury before had initiated a new departure in this science, for 
he had relinquished the mad search after the philosopher's 
stone to direct attention to that which about the period of 
which we are writing became known, under StahPs instru- 
mentality, as the Phlogiston theory. Though the idea of an 
inflammable earthy was all nonsense, as Lavoisier ultimately 
proved, it set chemists thinking, and paved the way to the dis- 
covery of oxygen by the eighteenth-century chemists. Tha: 
event proved the key to a treasure store of Nature's secrets, 
and during the last century of the world's history men have 
hardly ceased to wonder over one great chemical discovery 
before another still more brilliant eclipsed in importance its 
predecessor. But at the time of which we write, though Boyle 
had long been feeling his way in a right direction, Lavoisier, 
Priestly, Davy, Dalton, Q-ay Lussac, Berzelius, Dumas, and 
all the other great pioneers of chemical science were as yet 
unborn. We, who are in possession of Liebig's, Gilbert's, and 
Lawe's discoveries, can only marvel at the close and assiduous 
industry of those seventeenth-century Flemish husbandmen, 
which alone could have produced that empirical knowledge of 
plant-life whose accuracy modern science has failed to impugn. 
Even Irish soil showed unmistakable proofs of Cromwell's 
beneficial rule, and new buildings, roads and plantations 
opened up the country and converted sterile lands into a state 
of cultivation as advanced as that of Kent or Norfolk. * In 
Scotland, however, the agriculture of this period was wretched. 
Even of the rich soils of the South-Eastem counties an eye- 
witness in 1660 has handed down an unfiattering account.' 
The Scotch ploughmen were too lazy to take off their cloaks 

^ Worlodge, in his Systema Agricultures^ makes much of the then 
current belief, that there was a universal mercury, sulphur and salt, to 
the proper combination of which a soil owed its fertility. Bogers points 
out that his physical science and chemistry had progressed very little 
beyond the stage of occult causation, which Bacon denounced, and very 
little into that of observation and analysis, which Bacon commended. 
Prices and Agriculture^ Introd. vol. v. 

* Macaulay, Hist, of Eng,, ch. i. 

* Select Remains of John Ray^ London, 17G0. 


The Civil Wars and the Landed Interest. 337 

whilst working ; the Scotch farmers too improvident to resort 
to bare fallowing. Sea- wrack was the only manure used on 
the ley ground. Wheat and rye were never cultivated, though 
the soil, naturally prolific, threw up heavy crops of barley and 
oats. Nothing very satisfactory could result from such dis- 
gracefiil husbandry. The bread, cheese, butter and drink 
were all indifferently bad. The principal diet of the native 
WM a broth of either colewort or barley ; his dwelling a one- 
storied hovel, with neither chimney nor window, and his 
person as uncultivated as his soil. Abroad, farming had re- 
ceived a fresh impetus, about 1478, by the writings of the 
Italian Crescenzio, and at the beginning of the century now 
under discussion, the French, in the persons of Bernard Palissy 
and Charles Estienne, had begun to bestir themselves in a 
similar fashion.^ Other continental writers of this period were 
Herrara of Spain, Heresbach of the Low Countries, and Tarello 
of Italy, Though men's minds were thus set towards improv- 
ing European agriculture, there was no spur of stem necessity 
to urge them forward. This was not to occur till after the 
long war which ended in the Peace of Aix la Chapelle. The 
scarcity engendered by this long period of warfare so fright- 
ened the French, that good farming became a State policy, and 
was therefore encouraged by the king and attempted by the 
nobility. 

^ Rees, Encyclo,j 8ttb voe. Agrioulture. 


ZCbe Stuart period* 


OHAPTEE XXVI. 

ITS AORICULTURB, 

The seventeentli-oentury agricultural writers draw particular 
attention to the rapacity of English landlords, who by levying 
heavy exactions at the determination of a lease, discouraged 
their tenants' attempts at permanent improvements. The 
system of competitive rents occasioned by the former's practice 
of proclaiming vacant holdings in open court, is especially 
deprecated by Norden.^ Farmers had begun to look upon the 
surveyor or agent as little better than a landlord's spy, and 
thereby had arisen a want of cohesion between landlord and 
tenant, which did not fail to prejudice agricultural enterprise. 
Hartlib * objected to the utter lack of system which the grant- 
ing of fines involved, and by which the copyholder became a 
prey to the rapacity of his landlord, and he further deprecated 
the practice of keeping large flocks of pigeons by people who 
held no land, and therefore relied on their neighbours' croj^ 
to support the winged inmates of their dovecotes. These facts 
are the more striking when we come to reflect that the writers 
were men predisposed by birth and education to impartiality. 
Norden was probably a surveyor, Markham a gentleman of 
travelled experience and varied attainments, Hartlib a Dutch- 
man of refined tastes who had visited all Western Europe and 
parts of America, Vaughan a Herefordshire gentleman, Plattes 
of foreign extraction, Worledge a Hampshire squire, several 
like Plat, men of title, Blith a parliamentary oflScer, and 
Weston an ambassador. 
Perhaps two of the most important improvements which 

* Norden, TM Surveyor's Dialogue, 

• Hartlib, Legacy of Husbandry, 


Its Agriculture. 339 

were due to the influence of the Flemish immigrants, were the 
reclamation of those fen lands amidst which they had settled, 
and the cultivation of turnips and annual grass seeds. 

On account of their fowl and fish, the marshy wastes of 
England had heretofore been estimated at a fictitious value 
by their neighbouring inhabitants. Certainly they afforded 
support to vast flocks of tame geese, and the book of the 
Boston Cu5tx)m House shows that it was not unusual to send 
off in one year 300 bags of feathers, weighing \\ cwt. each 
bag. Nor are these statistics beyond the bounds of credibility 
when we reflect that the unfortunate goose underwent several 
pluckings during the year before its owner considered the 
harvest of quills and plumage complete. The lower classes of 
the agricultural community were therefore indisposed to favour 
any innovations on their fen rights, the more so because the 
system pursued where marshes had been already reclaimed^ 
did not encourage them to try the process. They had seen 
avaricious cottagers pay an annual trifle for the rights of 
turning on the reclaimed land a huge flock of geese, which 
rendered the entire herbage uneatable for the solitary cow or 
few sheep of a neighbour whose rights had cost him just as 
much. On the other hand, the landed proprietors, though 
anxious to reclaim such wastes, were deterred from so doing 
on account of the intermixture of mortmain estates and the 
varying rights of bordering parishes. Flemish energy, how- 
ever, found means to overcome these difficulties, and systematic 
attempts were made in many localities to drain tracts of marsh 
country. It is not improbable that the acre tax or acre shot, 
such as 2^. 6d. for draining Hadenham Level, may have owed 
its origin to this period of history,* and Norden records the 
successful experiments, about this same age, of Captain Lovell 
and Mr. Englebert in improving the marshy wastes of no less 
than three counties.' What the Bomans had begun, and the 
monks of Thomey, Crowland, Ramsey, Ely and Spinney carried 

^ Bees, EncyclCj sub voc. Fens. 

' Ibid, ; vide also Sir Jonas Moore, History of the Great Level of the 
Fenms, 1685. 
• Norden, The Surveyor's Dialogue, 


340 History of the English Landed Interest. 

forward, the Earl of Bedford and thirteen gentleman adven- 
turers continued in 1630. The Bedford level was drained in 
Hartlib's time, and Scotch prisoners taken at the Battle of 
Dnnbar in 1650, as well as Dutch sailors captured by Admiral 
Blake in 1663, were set on to labour at the work.^ 

Indeed, it needs but a cursory study of agricultural books to 
see that not only was the irrigation, drainage, and floating of 
land a constant subject of attention, but advanced minds were 
looking on all sides to discover how they could transform the 
inundated flats of Cambridgeshire and the sea-drowned fore- 
shores of the Eastern Counties into fertile land. Even the fre- 
quency of water mills was deprecated, and Blith advocated the 
substitution of wind engines so that the swamping of other- 
wise fertile plots through the back poundage of streams might 
be avoided.' His scheme for the reclamation of the fen dis- 
trict has since been adopted. It was a daring idea, compre- 
hending the drainage of a tract of country seventy miles long 
by thirty broad, comprising 680,000 acres of primeval fen. 
Nature's drainage, consisting of the rivers Cam, Ouse, Nene, 
Welland, Glen, and Witham had become choked and foul. 
Twice daily the tides drove back the fresh water, so that these 
streams added their quota to the already inundated country.® 
In 163B at Skirbeck Sluice, near Boston, a smith's. forge and 
tools were found buried under sixteen feet of deposit. Blith's 
methods included the pumping system by wind engines, which 
now raises the water from the lower dykes into the banked 
up arteries of the higher level. Once reclaimed, he determined 
that the land should be fruitful, and recommended the system 
of " denshiring." The hassocks of coarse water grasses were 
to be shaved off, the turf pared and burned, and the plain 
ploughed, ridged, and cultivated for oats. The great works 
thus undertaken and vigorously pushed forward were however 
a failure, and the east fen became ouce more a shaking bog, 
while even the west fens in 1793 were so wet that their " gos- 
samers, rowty fogs, mildews and rank grass," to which Harri- 

• Prothero, Pioneers of English Fanning. 

• Blith, English Improver Improved^ 1662. 

• Prothero, Pioneers of Engl, Farming, 


Its Agriculture. 341 

son attributes the malady of rot, destroyed 40,000 sheep in 
that single year, while in 1750 on Lindsey fen, Prothero thus 
quotes an historian of the period : " Cows foraged midrib deep 
in water, swimming to their pasture firom their hovels and re- 
turning in the same way, and sheep were conveyed to pasture 
and clipped in flat-bottomed boats." * 

Blith was the next writer to deal with the encroachments 
of the sea, and his method of embankment is described to- 
gether with illustrations of the various tools used for trench- 
ing, paring, turving, and ploughing.' Thus did these Flemish 
experts dispute the sovereignty of every such aqueous waste 
with the fen eagle and the crane. The introduction of sain- 
foin, clover, and other artificial grasses was not only strongly 
urged by the famous agriculturalist Hartlib, but Blith was 
writing out the most careful instructions anent the husbandry of 
weld, woad, and madder for dyes, hops for drink, saflfron as " a 
very sovereign and wholsom thing,'' liquorice for fattening 
cattle and medicinal purposes, rape and coleseed for oil, hemp 
for linen and cordage, and flax for thread and cloth. All to 
no purpose ; for, as Professor Rogers ' has pointed out, Arthur 
Young complained of their absence a century later when he 
traversed the provinces in search of agricultural information. 

The now hackneyed theme of enclosures received reiterated 
advocacy by the seventeenth-century writers. Successful 
precedents were by this time available to second their efforts. 
Blith takes occasion to point out to his readers a case where 
the pasturage enclosures of one lordship bring in a profit of 
one thousand pounds as contrasted with the xx)mmon ground 
of an adjoining lordship which barely realises one-third of the 
sum. He would put the shepherd of the common lands to the 
spade, the herd boys and girls to school, and make short work 
of the great and oppressive flock or herd masters. He would 
increase the national livestock by thus minimising the mortality 
from rot. The cottier should have his allotment, the minister 
his compensation for loss of tithe, the farmer the enclosed 

* Prothero, Pioneers 0/ English Fanning. 
■ Blith, EngL Improver Improved, 

• Eogpers, Prices and Agriculture^ vol. v., ch. iL 


342 History of the English Landed Interest 

land at a low rent, and to the educated mind of the landlord 
the palpable gain needed no demonstration. Before the author 
exhausts his subject he proves under five heads the advantage 
to the national agriculture of his enclosure scheme, viz. 1. the 
increase in fodder to cattle ; 2. augmented fertility of soil ob- 
tained by resting one enclosure while the turf of another is 
ploughed up; 8. availability of the enclosed ground for manur- 
ing ; 4. increase in the yield of cereals ; 6. conversion of the 
obsolete slades, hakeways, balks and highways of the common 
field into profitable tillage. 

If we collect together the topographical information conveyed 
in the writings of the seventeenth-century agricultural school, 
we have a fair peep at English agriculture as a whole. Perhaps 
Somersetshire, a county under a bad name amongst Tudor 
writers ^ on account of the marauding propensities of its inhabi- 
tants, exhibited the greatest fertility, the Taunton district being 
styled by Norden the " Paradise of England." The best meadow 
fields were at Crediton and Welshpool, the best hop gardens 
those of Suffolk, Essex, and Surrey,^ the best firuit grounds at 
Feversham and Sittingboume, and the best apple and cherry 
orchards in Gloucestershire, Herefordshire and Worcester.^ 
The carrot was being grown with success on the light soils of 
East Anglia,* liquorice had been attempted at Pontefract and 
Qodalming,^ saffron had obtained a trial in a comer of Essex. 
Dorset, Sussex, Wilts, Hants and Bucks were celebrated for 
their sheep farms ; at Cobham in Kent had been made one of 
the earliest trials of sainfoin. The best flaxland was about 
Bow and Stratford in Essex, Maidstone in Kent, and the cen- 
tral counties of England.* Sussex farmers were purchasing 
lime from a distance and burning it in their own kilns ; Cor- 
nish farmers rode many miles in search of sand. Middlesex 

^ A Somersetshire justice of the peace says that in his county 40 {Ar- 
sons had heen executed, 35 hurnt in the hand, and 183 discharged for 
rohberies and other felonies. Strype, Annals^ vol. iv., p. 290. 

' Norden, Surveyor's Dialogue, 

• Worledge, Systema Agricultural 

• Norden, Surveyor's Dialogue. 
' Worledge, Sy sterna Agric. 

• Blith, Improver Improved. 


Its Agriculture. 343 

and Hertfordshire farmers were buying up the London street 
sweepings, and the market gardeners of Chelsea, Fulham, 
Battersea and Putney were reaping large profits by using the 
London night soil as a fertiliser.^ Little allusion is found 
either to the northern Midlands or the north of England. 
These parts, together with "Wales, were still thickly wooded. 
They were either behindhand in their husbandry or possibly 
tinvisited by any of the agricultural experts who have jotted 
down their experience on paper. The least fertile districts 
mentioned by these writers were Devon, Cornwall, Derby, 
Lancashire, Yorkshire and Cheshire. 

The science of arboriculture did not escape the notice of the 
agricultural school of this century. Worledge,^ whose book, it 
may be mentioned in passing, is the first of its kind to possess 
an index, and which is valuable if only for its dictionary of 
rustic terms, pays special attention to this subject. Blith too 
touched on the same topic in his Improver Improved, The 
former author describes the uses and propagation of the oak, 
elm, beech, ash, walnut, chestnut, service, birch, maple, horn- 
beam, quickbeam, hazel, poplar, aspen, abele, alder, withy, 
sally, willow, sycamore, lime, horse chestnut, fiir, plane, larch, 
alatemus, phillyrea, bay, laurel, and privet trees. Such orna- 
mental shrubs as the myrtle, box, juniper, tamarisk, arbor 
vitsB, laburnum, Spanish broom, laurestinus, woodbine, etc., 
are described, as well as the whitethorn, holly, blackthorn, 
pyracantha, elder, furze, and other plants suitable for fences. 
The nursing, transplanting, pruning, shrowding, cutting and 
felling of trees receives careful handling; and the orchard 
culture of apples, pears, cherries, walnuts, filberts, quinces, 
plums, medlars, almonds, currants, and raspberries is accu- 
rately described. The localities where the vine once flourished 
are cited, such as Bromwel Abbey in Norfolk, Ely in Cam- 
bridgeshire, and parts of Gloucestershire and Kent, all places 
where the name " Vineyard " was still retained in the author's 

* Norden, Surveyor's Dialogtte. 

' Worledge, Systema Agric, The frontispiece is an illustration of a 
farm of the period, with the oommon lands, enclosures, and arable 
fi^rounds. 


344 History of the English Landed Interest 

time, and in some of which this term sarvives up to the present* 
date.* Other wall fruits mentioned by the author are " apri- 
cocks," peaches, nectarines, gooseberrier and currants, so tlxAt 
nearly all the fruit and the greater portion of the forest species 
which are now grown in these islands existed in the sevexL- 
teenth century. The nursery for stocks, grafting, inoculation, 
raising fruit trees by seeds, stones, nuts or kernels, propagating^ 
them by layers, slips and suckers are all described with an 
accuracy that would put to shame a modem expert. The 
names of the varieties, such as Bed Streak, White Must, 
Green Must, Genet Moyle, Eliots, Stocken Apple, Summer 
Fillet, "Winter Fillet, etc., all good cider apples, have now of 
course long become obsolete owing to the introduction of other 
kinds ; but a perusal of Worledge's process for cider and perry 
making might possibly prove of use amongst the farmers of 
the English orchard districts, whose recipes are often the out- 
come of long hereditary practice. This suggestion might 
possibly also apply to those secrets of hop culture and the oost 
kiln which Worledge unfolds with the greatest conceivable 
elaboration. 

The garden seems to have been viewed by the Stuart 
writers as a part and parcel of every farm, and the old English 
idea that spade work deteriorated a soil ^ now gave way to the 
Flemish fashion, which had been to regard the farm as a mere 
extension of the garden. To the Dutchman the latter was but 
a miniature of the former, involving such greater finish and 
minuter touches as the artists of the Dutch school bestowed 
on their tiny genre paintings. By this time beans, peas, 
melons, cucumbers, asparagus, cabbage, pompions, both sorts 
of artichokes, french beans, large and improved varieties of the 
strawberry, coleworts and coleflowers, savoys, lettuce, beet, 
anise, carrots, turnips, parsnips, skirrets, radishes, potatoes, 
onions, garlic and leeks had taken root in English gardens.' 
Tobacco had been propagated for the short period allowed it 

^ On Mr. Cann Lippincott's Over Court estate there is a wood called 
" Vineyard." 

■ Rogers, Ptic/^ and Agriculture^ voL v., p. B7. 

■ Worledge, Systema Agric, 


Its Agriculture. 345 

by statute law to exist in English soil,* and potatoes, which 
were very usual in foreign parts, were still confined within the 
garden fence. They were however finding universal favour as 
a relished edible when dished up with butter or milk.* Jeru- 
salem artichokes were used for fattening swine as well as for 
human food. It must however be remembered that most of 
these esculents had only recently been introduced into the 
country. Hartlib had seen old men who could recall the first 
attempts of a Surrey gardener with cabbage and cauliflower 
plants, and turnip, carrot, parsnip, and early pea seed. People 
who wanted such luxuries had to send for them all the way to 
Holland and Flanders, and Hartlib himself is an eye witness to 
the time, not more than twenty years before, when the Graves- 
end gourmets would be sending to London for a dish of peas, 
while in the year 1660, when he was writing, he doubted if 
gardening or hoeing was practised at all in the north euid west 
of England. Pot and salad herbs, as distinct from vegetables, 
were more common, and most households were kept well 
supplied with all the varieties still in use. In addition to 
these, pennyroyal was in great request for blood puddings, 
violet leaves for salads, and strawberry leaves for the pot.* 
As for those who were desirous of embellishing their estates 
with arboriculture, or adding fresh varieties of finiits to their 
orchards, they had to send sometimes as much as one hundred 
miles to the nearest nursery,^ and that was an undertaking 
whose magnitude, we, in these days of railroads, are hardly in 
a position to realize. 

The Jewel House of Art and Nature^ which somewhat 
resembles the Enquire Within publications of the present 
day, was written by Sir Hugh Piatt It gives a large amount 
of varied and trivial information. If one wanted to kill a rat 
in a gamer, construct a delicate stove to sweat in, dissolve 
coral or pearl, manufacture salts of herbs, or distil rosewater, 
he had only to refer to this work, but no one would turn over 

* Worledge, Systema Agrie. 

■ Blithe, Improver Improved. 

■ Nordeu, Surveyor's Dialogue, 

< Hartlib, Design for Plentie by a universaU planting of trees. 


346 History of the English Landed Interest. 

its pages in search of agricultural information, and we can 
but regret that the author's other work, styled Adam's art 
revived^ scarce even in Blith's time,^ was not more common 
than this old woman's recipe book. 

In days of such crass ignorance, as that displayed by the 
London citizens in petitioning Parliament against the intro- 
duction of coal because of its stench, and that of hops as calcu- 
lated to destroy the taste of drink and endanger the people's 
health, it was palpable to agricultural experts that a technical 
education must precede any reforms in the national husbandry. 
In the 4th edition of John "Worledge's Systema AgriculiurcB^ 
edited by J. W. Gent in 1687, the author draws attention in 
his preface to the good work done for agriculture by the Boyal 
Society, especially emphasising Mr. Evelyn's eflfbrts to advance 
this science, and recommending the institution of subordinate 
branches in the provinces. But before this, Hartlib, far in 
advance of his age, was already advocating a seventeenth-cen- 
tury Cirencester College, and there is no knowing how much 
might have been done for England's welfare had such an insti- 
tution been founded on the lines set forth in his treatise on the 
subject. "Without the agricultural writers of the seventeenth 
century English husbandry would probably have made but 
little progress even under the fostering care of CromwelL 
Journalism was in its very earliest babyhood. In 1641 the first 
newspaper describing the diurnal proceedings of both Houses 
might have been purchased at its publisher's, William Cook's, 
shop in Purnival's Inn Gate, and before the death of the king 
a hundred other papers were in existence,* but they were all 
at first weekly editions, though during the civil wars the 
printers managed to attain to a tri-weekly issue. These were 
times when the national news took days in travelling the 
length and breadth of the kingdom. Then, too, the scanty 
means of locomotion confined the farmer to his native county 
from cradle to coffin, so that there was no other means of 
communicating popular information save through the book or 

* Vide Blith, Improver Improved, Introduction. 

* Craig and Macfarlane, Hist of Eng,, bk. vii., ch. v. 


Its Agriculture. 347 

pamphlet. The consequence was that implements and usages 
varied in almost every parish,^ and that improvements, when 
they did happen to obtain a footing, made no further progress 
for long periods. We have seen how Blith first pointed out 
the advantage of growing clover for cattle, and how "Weston • 
did the same for the turnip. Gradually it dawned upon the 
Snglish farmer that he possessed the means of fattening 
cattle and sheep during the winter, but it is very doubtful if 
either of these plants would have ever received a fair trial, had 
not the Flemish immigrants afforded ocular proofs of their 
importance. So it was with all other agricultural innovations. 
Reginald Scot was writing on hop culture in 1574 ; Eowland 
Vaughan on irrigation in 1610 ; Blith on drainage in 1649, and 
John Porster on potato culture in 1664 ; but it took centuries 
before many of these new practices were widely adopted ; thus 
in the last mentioned case it was not until the Board of Agri- 
culture at the end of the eighteenth century had onca more 
attracted public attention to the potato that its value as a 
field crop was generally recognised. 

' Craig and Macfarlane, Hist. ofEtig,^ bk. vii., ch. iv. 

* Discourse of Hushandrie used in Flanders and Brabant^ 1650. 


Zbc Stuart £tsu 


CHAPTER XXVn. 

FROM BBSTORATION TO BEVOLUTION. 

The time had arrived when the men of Merrie England had 
received a surfeit of Puritan customs. The sad-coloured dress, 
the sour look, the straight hair and the nasal whine were 
beginning to pall upon all classes of society. The villager 
yearned for his wrestling matches and maypoles, the dilet- 
tante longed for the forbidden fine arts, and the churchman felt 
the want of his prohibited Book of Common Prayer. The 
national playgrounds had been long enough deserted, and the 
national pastimes of bear-baiting, horse-racing, cock-fighting, 
rope-dancing and bowling were beginning to be considered as 
discarded, for insufficient reasons of morality. Buined actors 
were calling out for the re-opening of their playhouses, and 
the poor were clamouring for a renewal of the old Christmas- 
tide hospitalities.* The great Protector was dead, his successor 
a nonentity, and all eyes were turned with dread on such 
rulers as Lambert, Desborough and Harrison. Part of the 
soldiers were quarrelling among themselves at Blackheath, and 
the rest composed the army of Scotland. It was to their leader 
that the people now turned as a possible deliverer from the iron 
stratocracy which was cramping their freedom. Meanwhile 
Monk was sitting upon the fence, still uncertain as to the side 
on which he should alight. When at length he marched 
south at the head of 7,000 warriors, every one was on the 
tiptoe of expectation, and the country gentry turned out on all 
sides to meet him and implore lus interference. The darkest 

^ Macaulay, History of England^ ch. ii 

M6 


From Restoration to Revolution. 349 

hour is the precursor of dawn, and when Lambert had escaped, 
sounded the call to arms, and failed in his attempt to embroil 
England once more in civil war, the crisis had passed and 
matters began to right themselves. A new parliament was 
convoked, and the national electorate proved what the country 
wanted, by returning, in lieu of the Bump, an assembly packed 
with the adherents of royalty. Nothing more was needed but 
to ring the bells, broach casks of ale, wave flags, play music 
and shout a hearty welcome to thei returning representative of 
royalty. The time had arrived when the king should have 
his own again; yet not all that he had before, for military 
tenure and the feudal incidents of warfare were never restored 
to him, so that the landed gentry had now no barrier of 
grievance to stand between them and their natural instincts 
of loyalty. The disbanded soldiers, sullen and dispirited but 
honest and industrious, returned to the plough and wagon, and 
the employers of agricultural labour flocked to court and 
rallied round Charles as if he had been the best king that ever 
sat on an English throne. Henceforth, though foreign guns 
might be heard in the Thames, though the court had become 
the most profligate in Europe, though rents were falling five 
shiUings in the pound, though pestilence might rage and half 
London be burnt to the ground, though the English sovereign 
had stooped to a position little short of vassalage to Louis of 
France, the owners of landed property continued to form an 
impenetrable rampart around the throne. Men who remem- 
bered the glories of CromweU*s foreign policy, exhibited no 
overt disgust for a king who had disgraced the name of Eng- 
land abroad. The sectaries, who had refused to countenance 
the High Church tendencies of the first Charles, now stomached 
the Somish leanings of his son; and the tax payers, who 
had cheerfully supplied the Protector with funds for foreign 
expeditions which always ended gloriously, xingrudgingly 
paid their aids to warfare which now invariably ended in 
disaster. 

The Soundhead element having been eliminated from the 
land's possession, and estates having reverted once more to the 
Cavaliers, their original owners, there was no indecision amidst 


350 History of the English Landed Interest. 

the ranks of the sqidrearchy. If men fretted at the inferiority 
of their present ruler, they at any rate preferred his disgraceful 
patronage to the open hostility displayed by his predecessors. 
Their tenantry were at least left to their own individual con- 
trol, and when a period of high prices ensued they raised rents 
to a height never before attained on English soil. Prom 1661 
to 1690 was a period of agricultural prosperity; and what with 
the emancipation of their estates from feudal obligations, the 
legislation against Irish importation, and the increased rentals, 
English landlords, though poor in comparison to modem land- 
owners, had become extremely prosperous. The yeoman free- 
holders were also benefiting from the rise in prices, but the 
farming and labouring classess were, however, making but 
little headway, and it was only after the Treaty of Utrecht and 
close of the great war, that firesh agricultural improvements 
and better seasons afforded them a fair prospect of greater 
profits.^ But a measure so revolutionary to the landed interest 
as the abolition of the feudal dues requires longer treatment at 
our hands than the cursory allusion conveyed in the foregoing 
sketch. It will be remembered that the step had been mooted 
as early as the reign of James I. An ordinance abolishing the 
court of wards and liveries had been passed by the Lords and 
Commons in 1645, but it remained a dead letter until the end 
of 1666, when the Barebone's Parliament not only confirmed 
this statute, but further enacted that '^ all wardships, liveries, 
primer seisins, and oustrelemains, and all other charges, in- 
cident and arising for or by reason of wardship, livery, primer 
seisin or oustrelemain, and all other charges incident there- 
unto, be likewise taken away from the said 24th of February, 
1645 ; and that all homage, fines, licenses, seizures, pardons 
for alienation incident or arising for or by reason of wardship, 
hvery, primer* seizin, or oustrelemain, and all other charges 
incident thereunto, be hkewise taken away from the same 
date ; and that all tenures in capite and by knight's service of 
the late king or any other person ; and all tenures by soccage in 
chief be taken away; and all tenures turned into free and 

* Eogers, Six Centuries of Work and Wages, ch. xvi., p, 466 sqq. 


From Restoration to Revolution. 351 

common soccage, from the same date." By another Act of the 
same parliament, purveyance and compositions for pre-emption 
were removed, and these measures obliterated every incident 
of feudalism, except heriots and other dues payable to mesne 
lords or private persons. Now Charles, at the treaty of New- 
port, had consented to give up these dues for a fixed revenue 
of £100,000, and this clause of the treaty became the basis of 
agreement between parliament and his son. The difficulty 
that now presented itself was to find proper resources whence 
this commutation grant should be derived, and two schemes 
were promulgated for the consideration of the Commons. 
Lands held in chivalry, as opposed to those held in soccage, 
were alone liable for feudal burdens, and it was suggested that 
these would be the fairest sources of taxation. The landed 
gentry and courtiers opposed to this suggestion a scheme 
taxing the whole community by an excise on beer and other 
liquors. The king for his part preferred the possibility of 
increased income which any growth of the national wealth 
out of this latter source of taxation would afford, rather than 
the stationary revenues from a fixed land tax.* To a nation 
intoxicated with loyalty, the wish of the Crown became the 
law of the land ; the latter scheme was adopted, and by the 
statute 12 Car. 11. c. 24 every feudal custom, except those 
already mentioned as reserved, and the honorary services of 
grand sergeantry, was for ever abolished. The whole landed 
interest rejoiced, not only its gentry but its inferior classes also. 
Church dignitaries, royalist nobles, and Cavalier squires who 
had been traversing their restored estates in sorrowful con- 
templation of their disafforested condition, or drinking to the 
king's health out of the pewter substitutes for their melted 
family plate, forgot the sacrifices they had made and forgave 
the king his luxurious extravagances in the joy that this con- 
cession brought them. The labouring classes romped on the 
village green, toasted the king at its tavern, and omitted to 
grumble at the increased price of their tipple in the thought 
that the royal purveyors would trouble them no more. 

* Hallam, Hist. ofEng,, ch. xl. 


352 History of the English Landed Interest. 

In a speech of Bacon's, delivered in the first session of James 
L's parliament, we may gather how grievous these last exac- 
tions had become. The purveyors, he complained, had become 
" taxers " instead of " takers." They extorted from the people 
annual fines of money, sometimes in gross and sometimes in 
the nature of stipends, in lieu of their oppressive demands. If 
these were refused, they destroyed ornamental timber, defaced 
and despoiled mansions and other dwellings, exacted poundage 
out of the royal debts for themselves twice over, viz. once 
when received and again when discharged. If affronted they 
would watch for the temporary absence of a proprietor or 
his bailiff, and put their axes to some favourite shrub. They 
would seize the poor man's hay or poultry, and mulct him in 
poundage over its payment, which was neither assessed nor 
attested according to law. Though produce on the highwaj^ 
was exempted and the hours of purveyance limited to sunlight, 
they chose to ignore these regulations of the statute book, and 
no one knew when and where he might not be visited with 
their unwelcome presence, or, since they refused to exhibit 
their authority, by whom he was despoiled.* 

"We now come to a period when the sons of those who had 
fought at Edgehill, had, save in a few cases of longevity, suc- 
ceeded to the possession of the family acres. The fervid loyalty 
of the previous generation had become weakened by time, and a 
reaction had set in. Few save the richest of the nobility could 
afford to attend the Court ; and even the latter's income would 
not allow them to compete in splendour with the highly 
salaried or heavily pensioned courtiers and favourites of the 
sovereign. According to Gregory Eling, the average income 
of a temporal lord was £3,200 per annum, whereas such court 
favourites as Burleigh in Elizabeth's reign maintained twenty 
gentlemen retainers at a thousand pounds salary each, and had 
servants whose fortunes varied from one to twenty thousand 
pounds. Yet Burleigh was, pra^ctically speaking, landless.^ 
The bulk of the landed interest remained therefore at home, 
living much the same life as the well-to-do yeoman of the 

* Bacon, Works^ vol. iv., pp. 305-fi. 

* Collins, Z.(/fe of Burleigh. 


From Restoration to Revolution. 353 

present day. Its squires would vary the routine of farm life 
with periodical visits to market, and whenever news from the 
capital penetrated their isolated circles, it would arouse a 
momentary growl at the royal neglectfulness of their past 
services, or an imprecation against the baneful influences at 
work about their royal master's person. Most of them wore 
coats, whose every threadbare seam and ill-patched rent spoke 
eloquently as to the magnitude of their fathers' sacrifices in 
the royal cause. Even that awkwardness of manner engen- 
dered by long absence from court life, was in itself a badge of 
a loyalty which had spent as much as would have defrayed 
the luxuries of two generations. But coarse clothing and 
rustic manners were not in accord with the gallantry and gay 
plumes exhibited by the favourites of King Charles's palaces, 
and so the country gentry stopped at home and perhaps con- 
soled themselves with the thought that their present dress, 
unlike the lace and ruffles of their fathers, aroused no popular 
odium. 

But when the creatures upon whom he had showered riches 
turned against the king, when the officers of his own house- 
hold deserted him, and when the Secretaries of State, and 
Lords of his Treasury were joining the opposition, up rose 
the English landed classes to a man and swarmed up to the 
capital in order to rally around his sacred person, until the 
danger was over. The Church was the sole institution which 
ranked before that of royalty in their affections, and when at 
length James II. forced them to make choice between the two, 
he took the only possible step to estrange a class which was the 
most devoted of all his subjects. Any historian of the English 
landed interest would be inspired with eloquence over the 
description of so sturdy a form of manhood as these squires of 
the Stuart era must have been ; but where the master pen 
of Macaulay has been beforehand it would be superfluous for 
others to follow.* With the graphic touches peculiar to his genius 
he has depicted these needy, iU-educated, hard swearing 
patricians, now examining samples of grain or handling 

^ Macaulay, Bist, of Bag, ^ oh. iii. 

A A 


354 History of the English Landed Interest 

pigs at market, anon imbibing beer at home, until they are 
laid in swinish intoxication under their own hospitable tables. 
We can see them in their taverns making agricultural bargains 
over the tankard, and we can see them in their manor houses, 
with the cabbage plants and gooseberry-trees blocking the 
front doors, and the garbage of the farmyard mounting as 
high as the transoms of their bedroom windows. We can hear 
the squire as he fills his after-dinner pipe, toast the king in 
old October and heartily curse all foreigners and every form of 
heterodox religion. We can picture the family circle, with 
the old man in the ingle nook still garrulous about Goring 
and Lumsford, or the wound he received at Naseby ; with his 
stalwart sons around him, whose knowledge of genealogy and 
field sports alone redeemed them firom utter illiteracy ; with 
the wife curing marigolds or making crust for the venison 
pasty in the kitchen, and with the daughters stitching and 
spinning in the parlour, or brewing gooseberry wine in the 
still room. What a flutter in this domestic dovecot must the 
unexpected arrival of some court gallant have occasioned. 
How the girls' hearts must have palpitated at his good looks and 
fine bearing. With what mingled feelings of envy and admir- 
ation must the rude boors his cousins have heard his exploits 
in the Flemish campaign. How he in his turn must have 
inwardly sneered at the uncouth gait and provincialisms of 
these bucolic kinsmen, and lastly how readily would both 
sides have crossed swords had the least inkling of such 
thoughts appeared on the surface. Generous, honourable, un- 
polished, punctilious, bigoted fellows were these Tories of the 
old school, the progenitors of the so-called " Stupid Party," 
who long after the House of Brunswick had established itself 
securely on the throne, drank " to the king over the water ; " 
who opposed to the utmost the repeal of the Com Laws, the 
introduction of the railroad, the abolition of slavery, the 
extensions of the franchise, and every other Radical innovation, 
good, bad or indifferent. With all their faults and follies, 
England would have never been half so great without such 
staunch supporters of her vested interests. 
It aeems almost incredible that any king, however foolish 


From Restoration to Revolution. ' 355 

and bigoted, could have so invited disaster as to have estranged 
these easily managed gentlemen. Yet James 11. contrived to 
do so, and that after many warnings. He ascended the throne 
amidst the wild enthusiasm of his Tory supporters. In a 
brief interval his Popish leanings drove half this party into 
the arms of the Whigs. Even then he was aflforded a further 
opportunity of regaining their affections when the Rye House 
plot scared them back into Toryism. The House of CommonS| 
refilled at this period of panic with a body of men devoted to 
his interests, might have kept his enemies at bay as long as 
he lived, but the king's bigotry drove him to ruin. The 
disaffected Whigs at home communicated' with their exiled 
friends abroad. Insurrection broke out in Scotland. Its leader, 
Argyle, was taken prisoner and executed, and the danger 
seemed over. A second insurrection occurred in the West of 
England, and Monmouth its leader met with a similar fate, and 
again the danger was averted. But the king would read no 
warnings in these repeated signs of his people's disaffection. A 
struggle began betwixt the Anglican and Boman Churches, and 
the king siding with the latter, persecuted the representatives 
of the former. Riots broke out all over the country, and William 
of Orange came to the fore as champion of the opposition. 
The Whigs rallied round him, but the Tory squires were only 
half-hearted. Their love for the Anglican Church had over- 
powered their devotion to the throne, and had William's 
relationship been as close to the former as it was to the latter, 
their hesitation would not have lasted a moment longer. He 
had however been bred in a hotbed of Presbyterianism and this 
fact divided once again the landed interest into two hostile 
factions. As tne royal bigotry increased, and the very tenets 
of Anglicanism became jeopardised, William's following in- 
creased in proportion as that of James decreased. The 
Declaration of Indulgence, the prosecution and committal to 
the Tower of the Bishops, and the birth of the Prince of 
Wales, were all events which precipitated the approaching 
revolution. The greater bulk of the Tory Churchmen joined 
the Whigs and openly proved their defection by neglecting 
the usual loyal greetings to the judges on the summer oir- 


356 History of the English Landed Interest. 

cuita of 1688. While the parsons and the squires were leaving 
him in shoals, while the army was evincing its disaffection, 
and while the French king and other influential friends were 
repeatedly warning him, James took no heed. When, how- 
ever, William's preparations were complete, and the invasion of 
England was only postponed by contrary winds, he took the 
alarm and attempted to conciliate his subjects. But promises 
wrung by terror did not deceive the nation. Before even this 
fresh departure of the king's could have penetrated further 
than the court, William, surrounded by the representatives of 
every English party, had landed at Torbay, and after a short 
period of hesitation and half-hearted resistance, the males of 
the Stuart Dynasty had vanished for ever from the English 
throne. 

For the nation as a whole the Bevolution effected two 
fundamental reforms, as pointed out by Professor Bogers. 
First, it made supply depend upon the House of Commons; and 
secondly, it affirmed that the monarch should be of his subjects' 
religion instead of their being of his. ^^Save," says this author, 
" that the sovereign's creed should be Protestant, Parliament 
did not and could not define it further. William was a Dutch 
Calvinist, Anne a High Churchwoman, George a German 
Lutheran. Neither the first nor the last had, before he became 
king, been &milar with episcopacy. Both certainly con- 
formed to the English ritual, but William's bishops and 
George's bishops had little in them of the policy of Laud 
or Sheldon." ^ 

What the Bevolution did for the special subject of our 
history we shall see better when we have examined the 
economy of the landed interest during the later Stuart period, 
and compared it with that after the Bevolution. 

^ Eogers, JWcea and Agrictdturet vol. v., Introduction. 


Zhe latex Stuart l^erio^ 


OHAPTEE XXVm. 

THE DOMESTIO AGQUIBEMEKTS OF THE LANDED INTEREST. 

The times of which we are speaking were the days when they 
executed, burned in the hand, or whipped felons ; when spite- 
ful old women were condemned to the stake as witches ; when 
the swarms of highwaymen who infested the main roads were 
regarded as popular heroes ; when wild boars still ravaged the 
crops, and the last wolf had only just been hunted down; when 
red deer herded together in the wilds of Hants and Gloucester ; 
when cattle lifting was still a fashion in the country betwixt 
Tweed and Trent ; when border farmhouses were fortified and 
their inmates slept armed; when the parish bloodhound hunted 
down freebooters; when it was necessary for the judges on 
northern circuits to be escorted by armed attendants ; when 
one-third of England was a barren waste, and two-thirds of its 
inhabitants could scarcely sign their own names. And yet 
this was the age of Milton and Dryden, of Hobbes and Bunyan, 
of Lely and Grinling Gibbons, and to come back to the special 
subject in hand, it was the age of Houghton and of King. 
Men such as the last two mentioned must have written their 
books out of sheer love for writing and not from any hope of 
emolument. There were no printing presses out of London, 
save those of the two universities, while north of the Trent an 
editor was as rare as a nightingale. The library of a manor or 
parsonage house consisted generally of half-a-dozen standard 
works, and as long as freightage dues continued as high as 
they were in the Stuart days no literature but that which 

8(7 


358 History of the English Landed Interest. 

t50Tild be conveyed in a post bag was likely to find its way into 
the hands of the rural gentry. More honour then to John 
Houghton the apothecary and G-regory Eing the Lancaster 
herald. The former was the first to edit a scientific weekly 
paper on agricultural and trade statistics.^ For eleven years 
he persevered with this literary venture until a growing busi- 
ness obliged him to abandon the attempt. But if his editorial 
work had not been the cause of his increased trade it had 
at any rate elevated his social status by gaining for him the 
coveted fellowship of the Royal Society. He and King, whose 
mathematical bent led him into all kinds of queer calculations, 
have proved of more value to the experts of this generation 
than to those of their own. To such a work as The Prices 
and Agriculture of Professor Rogers for instance, the writings 
of these Stuart statisticians have no doubt proved a god-send ; 
but it is more than doubtful if they were read by their con- 
temporaries outside a select circle in the metropolis. 

Of other works useful to our present purpose, there is a 
revised edition of Camden's Counties^ corrected up to 1700 
Yarranton's England^s Improvements by Sea and Land, 1677-8 
Sir Jonas Moore's History of the Oreat Level of the Fennes, 1685 
the same author's England's Interest, or the Qentteman and 
Farmer's Friend, and Leonard Meager's Mystery of Husbandry, 
In the purely agricultural works we cannot expect anything 
fresh on the subjects discussed by Hartlib, Blith, and Wor- 
ledge. It has already been pointed out that all agricultural 
progress was extremely slow, and to further illustrate this 
feature of the times let us examine the case of the turnip.' In 
1662,* it had been boiled with butter and used solely as human 

* Houghton wrote two works, viz. A Collection of Letters for the Im- 
provement of Husbandry and Trade, London, 1681-1703, and An Account 
of the Acres and HoU'Ses, with the proportional Tax etc,, of each County 
in England, London, 1698. 

Gregory King wrote Natural and Political Observations, from which 
work Davenant copied largely when writing his hook. 

■ The turnip was introduced some time during Hartlib's life. He 
alludes to it in the third edition of his Legacy, but not in the earlier 
editions. 

• Tusser, Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry, 


The Domestic Acquirements of the LancUd Interest. 359 

food ; in 1645 ^ it was being given either boiled or raw to the 
pigs ; in 1684 * it had been adopted as a field crop for winter 
sheep feed, but in Houghton's days it was still limited to the 
East Anglian farming area.' So also in the case of the potato. 
Though Ealeigh introduced its cultivation into Ireland with 
such good effect that the soldiers of the conflicting armies 
escaped the consequences of a bread famine by its support, and 
though, no doubt, they advertised its excellent qualities on 
their return home after the wars, it was a long time before it 
followed them across St. George's Channel. Even in Houghton's 
days people preferred to pay 6ci. and Sd. per lb. for the more 
palatable species imported from Spain to the inferior kinds of 
home production, and there is no evidence whatever of even 
its partial cultivation as a field crop in the allusions made by 
this author to its uses and culture.* The general adoption of 
clover culture is probably the one exception that proves the 
rule. It was introduced in 1655, and ten years later it was 
being cultivated on most soils in much the same fashion as it 
is now. But if not an epoch of progress, it was one full with 
future promise for the landed interest. Thus the introduction 
of green crops was the germ of the coming four-course system ; 
the allusion by Markham to the silos of the Azores, that of our 
modern ensilage system ;* the discovery by Dud Dudley of sea 
coal as a smelting agent, that of the pig iron industry ; the de- 
scription by Worledge" of a new form of corn setting, that oi 
the drill, and the literary sketch by Blith of an instrument 
which ploughed, sowed and harrowed, all at the same time, 
that possibly of some future invention. The truth is, that 

> Blith in his Improver Improved^ alludes to this practice in Sir 
Reveston's time. 

• Worledge's correspondence with Houghton in Collection of Husban- 
dry and Trade, 

■ Houghton, Collection of Husbandry and Trade, vol. i., p. 218. 

• Id., Ibid, vol. ii., p. 468. 

• Markham wrote three principal works. 1. The English Husband- 
man, 1613. 2. Farewell to Husbandry, 1649. 3. The Enrichment of the 
Weald of Kent and Sussex, Hartlib also alludes to the silo system, but 
deprecates its adoption in so toet a climate as England ! 

• See Worledge, Sy sterna Agric, 


360 History of the English Landed Interest. 

these seeds of coming agricultural growth were laid in the 
fertile soil of Crom well's Protectorate, and their germination 
was checked by the political events of the ensuing reigns. 
They were mostly the exotic products of Flemish brains, and 
they required the genial soil of iptelligence to enable them to 
fructify. The media by which they were introduced into this 
country were, as we have already pointed out, the pens of 
Cromwell's partizans. Eagerly as such works were read by 
the Eoundhead farmers, probably the mere bigotry of Eestora- 
tion loyalty would prevent their being used by the next genera- 
tion. It has been already pointed out that many of these 
writers had directed attention to landlord's abuses, and it is 
more than probable that amidst a squirearchy so narrow and 
uneducated as that depicted by Macaulay^ the whole class of 
this literature was quite as much tabooed as are the works of 
the extreme Anglican school by the Evangelical party at the 
present day. If we add to drawbacks such as these, the 
universal want of capital amongst every class of the landed 
interest, the uncertainty of tenure, the difficulties of loco- 
motion and the general insecurity of the times, we have ample 
reasons for the want of progress that has been described as a 
feature of this age. 

Out of a total population of five and a half millions in the 
England of Gregory King's day, 160,000 were freeholders, 
150,000 farmers, and 849,000 houses were occupied by the 
agricultural community. Out of a total area in England and 
Wales of 39,000,000 acres, this writer computes^ the area of 
arable land at 9,000,000 acres, averaging a rent of 6«. ^. per 
acre ; pastures and meadows at 12,000,000, averaging 8«. 8d. ; 
woods and coppices at 3,000,000, averaging 6«. ; forests and 
parks at 3,000,000, averaging 3«. 8d. ; barren lands at 
10,000,000, averaging \s, ; houses, gardens, orchards, churches 
and graveyards at 1,000,000 ; and water and roads at 1,000,000. 
The whole national rental he fixes at £12,000,000 and the 
annual yield of com at 90,000,000 bushels, realising a gross 
annual value of £11,338,600. The remaining annual produce 

* Gregory King, JSaiural and Political Canclusiani. 


The Domestic Acquirements of the Landed Interest, 36 \ 

he puts at a value of £12,000,000, the national livestock at 
jei8,287,633, and minor products at £3,000,000. Averaging the 
annual income of a temporal lord at £3,200, that of a bishop 
at £1,300, a baronet at £880, a knight at £650, an esquire at 
£460, a gentleman at £280, a well to do freeholder at £90, 
the less prosperous of the same class at £55, and the farmer at 
.£42 10«., he considers the three national saving classes to be the 
bishop, the merchant and the farmer, proportioning their 
ability to lay by in the order named. If we except an error 
of 1,700,000 acres in the total area of England and Wales, and 
a too low computation of the price of wheat. King's statistics 
have stood the severe criticism of Professor Bogers,^ and, what 
is even more conclusive of his accuracy, his census calculations, 
arrived at by means of the official returns in 1690 for the pur- 
poses of levying the hearth tax, tally with the results of the 
religious census instituted by William HI., and with Mr. 
Finlaison's later calculations obtained by means of a careful 
examination of the baptismal, marriage and burial registers of 
those days.' Comparing the population of one hundred years 
previous, which G-uicardini reckoned at two millions, and Sir 
Edward Coke and Chief Justice Popham at only 900,000* it 
is noticeable that the nation, even at the higher computation, 
had more than doubled itself. Comparing, too, the average 
incomes of the landed aristocracy with those of the later Tudor 
period, we shall find a large diminution. Though the magnifi- 
cent display of the old livery days had been abolished there 
had still lingered an expenditure on dress and luxurious 
living out of all proportion to a man's income. The splendid 
Tudor and Jacobean country seats required a keeping up which 
ate away a large item annually of the estate rental. Decade 
after decade a larger proportion of income was required to be 
sunk in agricultural improvements. Then came civil war again, 
in which, so long as it lasted, the expenses on one side at least 

^ King estimates the price of wheat per bushel at 3^. 6(2. and Rog:era's 
estimate of the price of wheat per bushel is 49. lOjci. to 69. \\d. Prices 
and AgriCf vol. v., ch. 3, p. 92. 

" Macaulay, Hist ofEng,<, ch. iii. 

' Hume, Hist, of Eng,^ Appendix iii. 


362 History of the English Landed Interest. 

were almost entirely defrayed by the landowning class. Estates 
were mortgaged up to the hilt, and many of their tenantry, 
let alone their owners, were ruined. Confiscated lands fell into 
the possession of needy Parliamentarians, only to revert back at 
the Eestoration to the needier hands of their original owners. 
In fact, if rents had not doubled themselves between 1600 and 
1699,^ it is a question if there would not have been a far greater 
sprinkling of the English squirearchy not only at the American 
plantations, but even in the cutpurse profession of the English 
highways. 

No wonder, then, that the Tudor and Stuart days were 
specially marked by the prevalence of crime. All that can be 
said for the latter period is that it was not so bad as the former. 
72,000 thieves and rogues, besides other malefactors, were 
hanged during the reign of Henry VLLl.* at the rate of 2,000 
per annum, and though in Elizabeth's reign this item drops 
to three or four hundred, it is ten times as much as the annual 
cases of capital punishment a century later. 

The large inroad of gipsies, which began in the reign of 
Henry VIII., and by the end of the sixteenth century had in- 
creased the total of this nomadic community to over 10,000 
souls, may have had something to do with these heavy criminal 
statistics. That these people were specially addicted to every 
kind of misdemeanour may be inferred from Harrison's sug- 
gestion that their extirpation can only be brought about by 
the enforcement against them of martial law.' 

The subject leads us by easy stages to that of Local Jurisdic- 
tion with its Justices of Assize, its Courts Leets and BaroD, 
and its County Magistrates, institutions which had so much to 
do with the detection, prevention and suppression of crime. 

The first named had replaced the Justices in Eyre instituted 
in the reign of King Henry 11. In the time of Edward III. the 
counties had been divided into circuits, and two of the king's 
justices had been appointed to travel these divisions twice 
a year for the trial of prisoners and gaol delivery. Having 

^ Davenant. 

• Harrison, Description of England, bk. ii., ch. 11. 

» Id., Ibid,, bk. u., ch. 10. 


The Domestic Acquirements of the Landed Interest. 363 

also to take cognisance of all assizes of novel disseisin they 
Tv-ere also called Justices of Assize ; and further, having to try 
all issues between party and party in any of the king's three 
courts, by Eecognitors of the same peerage, they obtained from 
the writs directed to the sheriflPs for these trials, on which were 
'written the words, . " Nisi Prius,'' the further appellation of 
Justices of Nisi Prius.* 

The Justices of the Peace were altogether a diflFerent divi- 
sion of the State magistracy. Though probably in existence 
from the time of the Conquest, or at any rate from that of 
Edward L, they were still increasing in importance. As the 
Courts Leet died out, the number of justices increased in each 
county from three or four in Edward III.'s reign to six and 
eight in Angevin years, threescore in Spelman's time, and 
without limitation now-a-days.' About the beginning of the 
Tudor period their powers were largely augmented and ex- 
tended to a restricted administration of the laws for poor 
relief, the passing and punishing of vagrants, the repairs 
of highways, and the business of parochial taxation. The 
qualification for the office necessitated the selection of a 
landed gentleman by the king himself, though it was and is 
always relegated to the king's representative in each county. 
But during the time with which we are at present dealing 
the Court Leet was still an important factor in local govern- 
ment. Unlike the Court Baron it was a royal institution, and 
the steward who presided was as much the vicegerent of the 
Crown, in which the administration of all justice is vested, 
as was the Judge of Assize. It was the judicial court of the 
Leet or Hundred, and unless there existed the district of the 
Leet or Hundred no court of the kind was possible. On the 
other hand, the Court Baron was the judicial assembly of 
the manor, whose president, the steward, was but the vice- 
gerent of the lord. There could be no Court Baron without 
a manor, and no manor but by prescription.' Neither kind 

* Camden, Counties, ed. 1701. ITie Law Courts of England, 
' Jacobs, Laxo Dictionary, sub voc. Justice of the Peace. 
' For this description of Courts Leet and Baron the reader is referred 
to Kitchen, C(mrt Leet, 1663. 


364 History of the English Landed Interest 

of court cotdd exist without suitors, and neither kind of court 
could be created. The Court Leet held jurisdiction over 
offences and annoyances to the commonwealth. The Court 
Baron, on the other hand, enquired into injuries, debts, and 
trespasses against the community of the manor. In the 
former was administered the view of Frank pledge, and the 
loyal oath to all who had attained the age of twelve. In 
the latter enquiry was made into tenures, homages, services 
and customs, and in it suits were made to the lord. The 
former was held twice a year, at Easter and Michaelmas, in 
any place within the Hundred, wherever it pleased the lord. 
The latter might be held at any time and anywhere within 
the manor, so long as the tenants should have sufficient notice 
of suit. But let us enter in imagination a Court Leet, and 
listen to the business of the day. The steward has previously 
made a precept as follows : — " J. K., Steward to the Bailiff 
thereof, health, — I command likewise and appoint, that dili- 
gently you give to understand the view of Frank pledge, of 
the court thereto to be held against the Thursday ; that is to 
say, the sixteenth day of October, next coming ; after the date 
of these presents ; and have there this precept. And as, etc., 
Dated under my seal, the first day of this month of October, 
the year of the reign of by the Grace of God, 

of England, France and Ireland ; Defender of the Faith." 

At the beginning of the Court Boll is then entered in the 
following manner — 

" Visus Franc. Plegii cum Cur J F Clerici ibid. Tent die 
Jovis, viz., Decimo sexto Die Octobris, Anno Begni Domini 
nostri Dei G-ratisd AnglisB, FrancisB, et HibemsB, Fidel 

Defensoris, etc., vicesimo primo Tent, per J K Senescal. ibid«" 
Being a king's court the bailiff stands up and makes procla* 
mation thrice^ of the words " yez," and then says, " If any 
man will be essoyned, and in Court Baron, if any will be 
essoyned or enter any plaint, come you in, and you shall 
be heard." The steward next says, "Essoynes and prefer 
of suit and plea " three times, and thereupon enters the essoyn 

' This was enjoined by 21 Ed. IV. fol. 87. 


The Domestic Acquirements of the Landed Interest. 365 

in the Court Roll. He then proceeds to impannel the jury,^ 
and swears them as follows : — " You shall enquire and fai A- 
fnlly make presentment of all things which I shall give you 
in charge ; your companion's counsel, the king's and your own 
you shall keep ; and you ought to present the truth and 
nothing but the truth ; So help you God." The foreman 
first, alone, and then the jury in threes or fours come to the 
Book and are sworn, to whom the steward thus speaks, " The 
same oath which J. S. your foreman hath taken of his part, 
you for your parts shall come to the Book together, and shall 
be sworn together, as afore is said." 

The petty treasons and felonies about to be tried, though 
enquirable and presentable in a leet, were not all punishable 
theret They were written and indented, and one part remained 
with the steward and the other with the jury to be delivered 
to the Justices of Assize at the ensuing gaol delivery of that 
particular county.^ Such were counterfeits of the King's 
seal or arms and money of the realm;' murders, man- 
slaughters, rapes, burglaries, robberies, incendiarisms, thefts, 
taking doves and young pigeons, poaching deer and other 
game, petty larceny, etc. Those offences inquirable, present- 
able, and also punishable, were neglect of capital pledges, 
refusals to swear oaths of loyalty by all over twelve years 
of age who have resided within the lordship a year and a day, 
villains fugitive beyond a year and a day without claim, 
neglect of customs or services due to the court, annoyances 
upon land, wood, water, blocks, stocks, ditches and hedges, 
diversion of ways, waters, ditches, or paths, encroachments, 
nuisances, trespasses, eavesdroppings, corruptions of waters, 
vagabondage, false weights and other deceits of artificers, 
abuses of the assise of bread and ale, appropriations of 
treasure trove, estreys of horses, sheep, hogs, beasts or swans, 
" waifes," fugitives and outlaws, pounds broken, neglect to 
discharge the common fines due to the leet at Michaelmas, 
non-observance of the king's claims on wrecks of the sea, 

^ By 6 Hen. IV. f ol. 2, a presentment in Leet was to be by twelve. 
' Compare 17 Hen. Yin. fol. 2, and 1 Edw. UI., last chap. , 

■ 27 Hen. Vm. 0. 2. 


366 History of the English Landed Interest. 

and sturgeon, improper apparel, wrongful use of the crossbow 
and hand-gun, omissions to provide crow nets, destruction of fish 
fry, unlawful games, the hundred's recompenses for escaped 
robbers, neglected highways, refusal to take musters, iUegal 
mortmain, rioting, netting of pigeons in winter, tracing of 
hares, wrongful retailing of Gascoyne or French wines, etc., 
etc. 

The steward next proceeds to enquire into the defaults and 
pains presented at the last leet, which, if not amended or 
otherwise unsettled, require still further attention by the court. 

This business completed, the " cryer " again makes proclama- 
tion three times, and the steward rises and says, — " If any 
can inform the steward or the jury of any petty treason, 
felony, petty larceny, annoyances, or bloodshed, pound broken, 
or of rescues, or of any other thing, made against the peace, 
or of any person of common ill-behaviour within the leet, or 
any workmen using common deceit, or of any common misde- 
meanour of any officer or other person there, or of any " waife," 
estreys, treasure found, or of any other thing here inquirable, 
come you in, and you shall be heard." Then the witnesses 
come in, are sworn in turns, and give their evidence to the 
jury, upon which the steward addresses the latter thus — " Go 
together, and enquire ye of the matter of your charge, and 
when you are agreed, I shall be ready to take your verdict." 

In giving sentence the steward had to bear in mind two 
considerations : first, the laws on each particular oflfence, which 
required of him a knowledge of the statute book, only attain- 
able by a lifelong legal practice ; and secondly, the extent of his 
authority. This latter was carefully hedged in with plentiful 
limitations. He could, for example, authorise the bailiff to 
distrain,^ fine, and even imprison a juryman who refused to be 
sworn,* swear any stranger who came within the precincts of 
the leet,^ send a prisoner taken for felony to gaol,^ and assess 
a fine for contempt made in leet. He was, in fact, the judge 
of the Court Leet, and the suit at this court was called '^ stiit 

* 16 Hen. VIL foL 14. « 31 Hen. VL 

• 3 Hen. VII. fol. 4; 11 Hen. VU. 14 ; 21 Hen. VH. fol. 4a 
< 18 Hen. IV. fol. 12. 


The Domestic Acquirements of the Landed Interest. 367 

real," inasmuch as it was a king's court. But lie was as well 
the judge of Becord in leet/ and as such, though his bailiff 
that served him was not answerable for his unlawful acts, he 
was, as long as the Court of Star Chamber lasted, liable to be 
punished by it for misdemeanours, and in this respect, his 
powers did not exceed those of the justice of the peace. 

The manner of keeping a Court Baron differed from that of 
the Court Leet, not only in the business transacted, but in the 
formalities observed. The entry on the Manor Boll ran as 
follows : — 

** Curia E.F.C. ibidem tenta die Martis, videlicet decimo quarto die 

Maii , Anno Begni Eegis Dei Gratia, AngliaB, Francise et Hibemaa 

fidei defensoris, etc. Tent per J. K. seneschaUem. 

J. S. J. D. et E. E. Essoin de commune vel essoin prosecta CurisB per E.E. 
Johannes Doo Eobertus Dodg 

Eichardus Eoo Thomas Lodge 

Johannes Den Adam Clarke 

Eichardus Fen David Park 

Walterus Hollen Henricus Eoo 

Eobertus Allen Wilhelmus Croo " 

After the style of the court is entered, the steward makes 
one " oyez," calls the suitors, makes another oyez, and says, — 

" If any will be essoyned, or enter a plaint, come you in and 
you shall be heard." 

The essoyne is then entered, the plaint determined, the jury 
empannelled and sworn. A third ^' oyez" is proclaimed, and 
the steward addresses the jury at great length. He begins by 
showing by whose authority they are there assembled. He 
proceeds to classify the causes of their meeting under three 
heads. (1) That as residents within the precincts of the leet 
they are bound to appear. (2) That as copyholders, free- 
holders, or tenants of their lord they should make him suit 
every three weeks if so warned. (3) That they might learn 
the laws, so as to know what things to follow and what to 
avoid. He then exhorts them to act with truth, justice and 
judgment, for the sake of the duties that they owe their God, 
the commonwealth, themselves, their relatives and posterity. 
He then proceeds to make the charge in Court Baron, which 

» 12 Hen. IV. fol. a 


368 History of the English Landed Interest. 

practically coyers all the intricacies of manorial customs and 
tenures ; a laudable practice when we come to consider their 
ramifications and diversities on every separate manor and in 
a country where " ignorantia juris hand excusat." 

We have already pointed out that in the Court Leet the 
steward was judge, but in the Court Baron the suitors occupied 
this o£Gice, unless they all happened to be copyholders. The 
steward in fact only became judge when the freehold was in 
the lord, f.6. when all the suitors held base estates only in the 
manor.^ It was however as essential for the steward of the 
Court Baron to be skilled in legal matters, as it was for the 
steward of the Leet Court, so that there could be no excuse 
for " reseising " a cause on account of some error of judgment, 

» 12 Hen, VH. fol. 17, 6 Ed. 48, 


^be Stuart ipedob. 


CHAPTEE XXIX. 

THB BUSINESS OP THE COUBT LEBT. 

Wb have reached a period in the national history when real 
property had gradually grown in importance, until its relative 
value had surpassed that of the other form of national wealth 
known as personalty. The rights of ownership had been more 
and more jealously preserved and its wrongs more and more 
jealously opposed ; until in fact there had grown up about the 
possession of land a network of statutes, judges' rulings, and 
precedents, which securely hedged in and protected it from out- 
side interference. What has been technically termed the Law 
of Torts had already grown to such proportions as to occupy 
much of the time spent by steward and jury in the manor 
hall where the Court Leet generally assembled. It is true 
that, as compared with our modem law practice, the sum of 
illegalities embraced by this with difficulty defined term of 
Tort becomes dwarfed to an insignificant item in the statute 
book of the Stuart days. There were, for example, far less 
intricacies then in the process of distraining, in the subtle 
distinctions between various kinds of fixtures ; in the liability 
of one neighbour to fence in and another to fence out ; in the 
perplexing division of repairs into tenantable and decorative ; 
in the powers of riparian owners ; in the rights concerning air 
and lights ; and in the numerous other subjects which crop up 
now-a-days to set two otherwise friendly neighbours at variance. 
But we have only to compare the business of a Court Leet 
presided over by a Jacobean steward, with the same assembly 
presided over by a Plantagenet seneschal, to note not only the 

^ BB 


370 History of the English Landed Interest. 

increase in these kinds of offences, but the enhanced value with 
which landed property had come to be regarded. 

And here let us turn aside to seek a further possible cause 
for that confusion in modem minds respecting mediaaval courts 
to which we have alluded in an earlier chapter. It was pointed 
out that the Court Leet appeared to have been held in the 
same place and under the same presidency as the Manor C!ourt. 
It is now no impossible suggestion that it was also held at the 
same time. This would tend to still further confuse the minds 
of modem theorists, whose evidence is principally the results 
of a careful examination of the early Court Rolls. It will be 
remembered that the solution of the difficulty put forward by 
us was, that both kinds of assembly, though held at the same 
court, presided over by the same person, and (as it is now still 
further suggested) for some time at least fixed on the same 
day and hour, were after all kept distinct by a variation of 
their formalities which could deceive no one attending them. 
It is quite possible that, at an early stage of the national his- 
tory, the business items of both courts were so trivial as to be 
quite capable of transaction in one day, and therefore that, for 
the sake of convenience, a tacit if not formal consent was given 
to such a practice. If, then, on a similar plea of convenience, 
the court scribe entered both sets of transactions on the same 
roll, the mystification of the modem antiquarian becomes 
natural and at the same time explicable.^ 

But at the period under discussion, so imperceptibly bat 
surely had both courts drifted apart, that the business of the 
one in no way corresponded to or interfered with that of the 
other. Bit by bit their jurisdiction in more important matters 
had been relegated to the assizes, so that in the reign of 
Charles 11., though the charters granting the pit and gallows 
had never been formally revoked, the Countess of Derby was 
heavily fined for the execution of William Christian." Gradu- 
ally had offences against the commonwealth been relegated from 

^ The reader should study chapter iv. of Eogers, PrictB and Agric^ to 
see not only the yariability but the extent of the justice transacted in the 
medieeval courts. 

« Id., Ibid, 


Business of the Court Leet. 371 

the Manor Courfc to that of the hundred, and fresh disputes and 
fresh causes for legislation had increased the business of the 
leet jury much in the same proportion as greater powers and 
better education had increased that of the suitors in the Estate 
Court. At length (for it would leave the historical sketch of 
these courts incomplete were it not brought down to present 
times) as the population of certain districts thickened into 
town-like proportions, the corporations replaced the leet and 
manorial courts, and charters vested in these later bodies the 
old powers of the leet and baronial presidents. Finally the 
Courts of Quarter and Borough Sessions separated the civil 
from the criminal jurisdiction, and rendered the use of these 
older assemblies as well as of their officials obsolete. The 
constable was employed elsewhere, but the head-boroughs, 
ale-conners, leather-searchers, and bellman disappeared for ever. 
Still one or two boroughs and a manor here and there cling to 
the old customs, which linger on to attract and delight the 
American professor or colonial antiquarian, though the matter- 
of-fact burgess may term them "tomfoolery."* The curious 
visitor to Warwick on a court day may thus, if he choose, watch 
the proceedings of the jury of presentment, and the view of 
frank pledge submitted for the consideration of the suitors just 
as it used to be in Saxon times, when no man could be a free- 
man or possess a seat in the Court, unless he could obtain two 
neighbours to act as his surety, and the court now as then meets 
annually to examine the claims of all those who desire to be 
entered on its lists. Thus, too, the corporation of Manchester 
a few decades back, bought the manorial rights from the lord ; 
and Professor Rogers^ tells us (we suspect with glee) that 
Cobden, the greatest champion of a free trade in com, held by 
a strange irony of fate the office of ale-taster in that ancient 
manor, a post associated with perhaps the strongest protec- 
tionist statute ever passed by any legislature, native or foreign, 
modem or ancient.* 
By the transference of the machinery of police from the 


* A fact. ' • Pricits and Agric. 

' Assisa Pants et Cervisia, 


372 History of the English Landed Interest. 

parish to the Jastices' office or the Quarter Sessions the land- 
lord's eX'OffuAo claim to the magistracy of the district expired ; 
and, as Bogers points out,^ the old system, concentrating as it 
did the functions of local discipline in the steward and inhabits 
ants of a parish, exercised a control and enforced a responsi- 
bility which was so effective in the thirteenth and fourteenth 
centuries, and which was indifferently compensated for by the 
authority of an individual or a bench of magistrates. This 
same author even goes so far as to attribute the increased 
vagabondage and destitution of the later Tudor period to this 
cause. Here, however, we must beg to differ, for this destitu- 
tion is more probably attributable to the abolition of monastic 
poor relief, an event it immediately succeeded. 

An important item of the business in the Leet Courts was 
the proper repairs of the highways. Macaulay has drawn one 
of those vivid pictures for which he is celebrated, of their con- 
dition at this period. Canals there were none, and the commu- 
nication by water was an insignificant item in the internal 
traffic of the nation. Euts were deep, descents precipitous, 
and the lines of demarcation between what was the route and 
what was unenclosed heath and fen ill-defined. In other 
places a narrow carriage way passed between mudbanks, 
which occupied a large portion on each side of the legitimate 
track. People frequently lost their way by getting off the 
beaten path, coaches stuck fast in the mire, and altercations 
constantly occurred between opposing carriers, neither of 
whom would give place to the other. The inundation of 
rivers menaced the travellers' lives with a watery death, and 
none but the strongest horses or oxen could pull their loads 
through the bogs of Kent and Surrey. There is no wonder 
then that markets distant only a few miles were inaccessible 
in winter, and that the fruits of the earth were often left to 
rot where they grew. The richer travellers passed through 
the kingdom in private carriages and hired coaches, whilst 
their luggage and inferiors were jumbled together in stage 
wagons. Heavier materials, such as coal, were carried by 

* Bogers, Six. Centuries of Work and Wages, p. 4201 


Business of the Court Leet 373 

sea, and through some parts of England the people and their 
goods travelled the highways in cavalcades of pack-horses. 
The expense of the shortest journeys was enormous, for horses 
were dear and inferior. The imported greys of Flemish breed 
far surpassed in strength anything bred in this country, a 
circumstance which gave rise to the old proverb, that the grey 
mare was the better animal.^ 

The administrative machinery of highway repairs was also 
unsatisfactory, as we now propose to show. By the statute 2 
and 3 P. & M. c. 1, two surveyors, bound to serve under a 
penalty on refusal of twenty shillings, were elected each Easter 
week to superintend the ensuing year's work. The following 
Sunday appeared on the church door a notice appointing to 
every labourer in the parish his four days' roadwork. Every 
owner of a carve of land, pasture, or cart had to be there with the 
men upon pain of paying ten shillings a day, and every house- 
holder, cottager and labourer, not being hired servants, had 
also to contribute eight hours' labour for a similar period. In 
the following reign ^ the term was extended to six days, and 
the surveyors were authorised to take materials for road re- 
pair from stone quarries, cinder heaps, and gravel pits, etc. ; to N 
turn watercourses, scour ditches, and compel owners, under 
penalties, to cut roadside trees and hedges, and clear ditches in 
cases where any obstruction to the people's passage was thus 
caused.' Every cottager possessing goods assessed at five 
pounds, and every owner of forty shillings in land, had to find 
his two men to work six days. People who owned land in 
several parishes had to find carts for each of these districts. 
The freehold of the highway belonged to the lord of the 
manor, but the passage for the public to the king.^ This 
circumstance constituted a title to the former of proprietary 
rights over the roadside timber, hedges, and ditches, and also 
a liability on him to keep such in proper order.* The free- 

^ Macaulay, Hist. ofEngl,^ o. ilL 

« B Eliz. c. 13. 

» 8 Hen. VII. fol. 6 and 8, and 18 Eliz. 0. 9. 

♦ 6 Ed. UI. Way 2 ; 8 Ed. IV. fol. 9, and 27 Hen. VI. fol. 9. 

» 8 Hen. Vn. foL 6. 


374 History of the English Landed Interest 

holder, on the other hand, did not possess these adjuncts of 
the highway, and was therefore exempt from the liability 
arising therefrom.^ A distinction must here be made be- 
tween a king's highway and a common way. The former may 
be defined as a route leading from town to town, the latter as 
a route leading from a town to lands.^ Over the former the 
leet held jurisdiction, and it was a special duty of this court 
to examine into cases of neglect and impose the fines inflicted 
by the statute.' Over the latter, on the other hand, the leet 
had no powers, and any annoyance about a private way, even 
if it was the only route to church| would have to be taken be- 
fore the Assize of Nuisances.^ 

But the system of compelling every parish to repair its own 
highways was an unjust one, and the employment of gratui- 
tous labour a hardship on the agricultural community. Take 
for example the case of the great North Eoad, which traversed 
a poor and thinly inhabited district. The six days' enforced 
labour was wholly inadequate to keep in repair a route worn 
by the immense traffic between London and the West Biding 
of Yorkshire. The extra expenditure being defrayed by 
parochial rates, raised such a clamour from the heavily 
mulcted parishes that the outcry penetrated the precincts of 
the Parhament House. This brought about the statute of 
IB Car. n. c. 1, which, by introducing the system of turnpike 
tolls, initiated a new departure in highway legislation. 

Another important duty of the leet was to see that the law 
was properly observed regarding water rights. Here a funda- 
mental distinction has to be made between water that ebbs 
and flows and water that merely flows or is stagnant.* The 
former is considered by law an arm of the sea, and is under 
the jurisdiction of the king as Lord of the Narrow Seas, and 
the right to fish or boat therein is common to all. The latter 


» 8 Ed. IV. fol. 9 ; 27 Hen. VI. foL 9; 6 Ed. HI. 
» 8 Ed. in. 

' A lord of the manor could not be compelled to repair bridges oyer 
the highway. 2 Ed. IV. fol. 9. 
* 83 Hen. VIU. fol. 29. 
s 22 Book o/Assize, dS. 


Business of the Court Leet. 375 

is the property of the landlord, for the soil that it covers is 
considered his freehold, and as such gives him an action for 
trespass against fishers and other intruders.^ The law pro- 
tects the riparian owner who, by the constant but palpable 
action of water running between his lands and another's, loses 
soil.* There is, however, no such redress where the water 
constitutes an arm of the sea. But, as has been already 
pointed out, the rights and liabilities of riparian ownership 
had not been regulated with that legislative nicety to which 
-we of the nineteenth century have attained. As long as the 
highways were not injured there seems to have been little 
cause for complaint in an agricultural age where land drainage 
was seldom practised. If a man's mill was deprived of its 
natural water supply,' he could bring his case before the 
Assize of Nuisances ; and if some flagrant case of drowning 
land occurred, such as the neglect of a riparian owner to re- 
pair a wall of the Thames,* the Court Leet would redress the 
injury, otherwise the artificial backpoundage of watercourses did 
not at this period give rise to much litigation. Nor in an age 
when sanitary science was as yet in its infancy was there 
much outcry against river pollutions, unless a man possessed 
ocular proof (or what he imagined to be ocular proof) of 
damage to the health of his livestock, such as was caused by 
the watering of hemp or flax in the streams or pools where 
they were accustomed to quench their thirst.* 

A thiid duty of the leet was to examine into cases of illegal 
distraint. The lord could only levy distress for rent on lands 
held by him, though the king might do so even in the common 
street or highway.* The direction in which future legislation 
would tend is evidenced by the reservation of fixtures like a 
millstone, windows,^ and doors, of stock-in-trade like fats in a 
dying pan,* of standing crops like com in shock,^ of other's 
possessions like some man's coat in a tailor's shop,^^ etc. 

' 22 Ed. IV. ; 18 Ed. IV. fol. 4. • 22 Ed. III. fol. 22. 

» 6 Ed. IV. fol. 37 ; 2 Hen. IV. fol. 22. * 7 Hen. IV. fol. 9 and Sa 

• as Hen. VIII. c 17. 

* 9 Hen. VI. fol. 9, and Marlebridge, c. 16. 

' 14 Hen. VIU fol. 29. • 21 Hen. VII. fol. la 

» 21 Hen. VU. fol. 41. '• 10 Hen. VIL fol. 22. 


376 History of the English Landed Interest. 

Yet another duty of the leet was the adjudication of poach- 
ing offences. 

Public opinion had now for some centuries been tending to- 
wards a mollification of those severe forest laws which had been 
initiated by the royal sportsmen of the Norman dynasty. It 
is true that Charles I. had been so misguided as to attempt their 
revival,^ but since his attempt proved abortive, we may forgive 
his folly, because by allowing Harvey to experiment upon the 
royal deer, he helped forward that famous discovery of the 
human vascular system, which has added both to the national 
renown and the welfare of mankind at large. 

It appears that offences under the head of poaching were 
divisible into felonies and trespasses. It was to the Court Leet 
that the former, and some too of the latter, were brought, and 
to the Court Baron the latter only. Let us first examine, as 
an example, the most important item in the long list, viz. that 
of deer. Though it was no felony to steal any wild beast 
found in its wilderness,' it was so to kill or even chase the 
lord's deer out of his inclosed lands, and was punishable as 
such in Court Leet.' Imprisonment and fine overtook those 
not having parks, chases, or forests of their own, who kept deer- 
hays or buckstalls, or without license stalked with bush or 
beast in other's preserves ; * or who by force of arms took deer, 
or hunted by day or night with vizards or painted faces.* But 
these offences were trespasses only, though the last of the list 
had not long ceased to be a felony. These, then, occupied the 
business of the Court Baron. The punishment was, however, 
so severe, amounting to heavy fines and long terms of imprison- 
ment, and even outlawry should the offender fail to pay, that it 
is doubtful if this court's authority extended beyond a commit- 
ment of the culprit to the ensuing assizes. It must, too, be 
borne in mind, that forest laws and customs were quite distinc- 
tive from those of other game preserves. No common person 
could possess a forest, which originated by commission and 

^ Lord Holland as Chief Justice in Eyre held a Court almost yearly for 
the recovery of Charles' forestal rights. HaUam, BiH, qfEngl, 

• Stamford, foL 25. » Id., Ibid. 

* 89 Hen. VIL c. 11. • 31 Hen. VIH. c. 12, 


Business of the Court Leet. 377 

proclamation, and had its own laws, its own officers, and its 
own courts. The oflfender therefore would be brought before 
a jury of forest swains and freeholders, and judged by the 
particular verderer who happened to be for the time being 
steward of the swainmote. Happily for the prisoner this court 
could only try and convict, judgment being reserved for the 
court of justice seat. But even then it seems as though a sus- 
pected party would run a poor chance of acquittal. The laws 
respecting venison and vert were complicated, and it is ques- 
tionable whether the person accused of interfering with the 
deer of a chase or park would fare better at the hands of the 
Leet Jury or manorial suitors than at those of the forest 
" sweins." The lord was an interested party, and the juries of 
all three courts his tenants, while the judges were his servants. 
There is a vagueness about this game legislation which, when 
combined with the nature of its tribunals, savours of injustice. 
A man may chase a wild hart, or an escaped and proclaimed 
one.^ He may drive a deer back into its chase by means of a 
little dog, if it be on his own ground. The dog may even 
follow and destroy it with impunity, if its master can prove 
that he used all practicable means to restrain it ; but to have 
driven it away with beagles would have rendered him liable 
for trespass.' Then again, a man and his dog take a stroll in 
the neighbourhood of a deer park, the dog breaks leash and 
chases the deer,' and the law holds the master blameless ; but 
who save an eye witness can prove whether the dog really did 
break away, or was urged to the chase by his owner ? Let us 
trust that the sporting blood of the English juryman overruled 
all considerations of self-interest when the unfortunate prisoner 
awaited his verdict. 

The destruction of fish fry in any waters or rivers, salt or 
fresh ; the killing of trouts and salmons out of season ; the 
taking of pike, salmon, trout or barbel under certain prescribed 
sizes ; the capture of any fish save by angling or by 2^ inch 
meshed nets, the attempt to steal the lord's fish by the 


* 21 Hen. VH. foL 80. ■ 48 Ed. HI. fol. 8. 

■ 18 Hen. VI. fol. 21. 


378 History of the English Landed Interest. 

destruction of a pool dam were all offences ptiniBhaUa with 
fines by stewards of the leet/ 

To kill or destroy winged game by night with snares or 
other devices, to break into a pigeon-honse and steal ihe fledg- 
ling inmates/ to hawk or hunt with spaniel amidst growing 
grain, to trace hares in tbe snow with dogs, to capture young 
goshawks bred in a park, were also felonious acts,' and there- 
fore subject to the leet's jurisdiction. To take, however, doves 
without the dovecote,* hawks or their eggs, to enter into a 
warren and capture rabbits,^ to take the eggs of herons, to in- 
trude on a pheasant preserve and remove the inmates, or to fly 
a hawk and kill game therein,* all these were acts of trespass, 
and therefore subject to the manorial court's jurisdiction. 

There comes now a strange distinction. No artificer or lay- 
man not possessing lands to the value of forty shillings per 
annum, and no clerk not earning ten pounds per annum, might 
keep a sporting dog, or use ferrets, hays, nets, harepipes, cords 
or other engines to take or destroy wild beasts upon pain of a 
year's imprisonment.^ Such offenders were neither answerable 
to the Court Leet or Court Baron, but had to appear before a 
justice of the peace. If, however, they or any other person 
were detected hunting or hawking within the park, chase, 
warren or demesne lands of the lord without his license, they 
had to answer for their illegal action at the tribunal of the 
Court Baron. 

We have pointed out in this chapter certain points with 
regard to these medisBval courts of a condemnatory nature. Let 
us then, conclude with a word or two of praise. How often 
in modem times have not those who firequent a County Court 
heard its bewildered president exclaim : " This case ought 
never to have been brought before me ; it is one for experts, I 
shall refer it to arbitration." Now that is just where the 
judges and juries in these old-world coiurts were so useful The 

» 11 Eliz. c 17. 

» This is doubtful, compare 18 Hen. Vm., and 18 ed. 4, foL a 
» 18 Eliz. c. 10. * 12 Hen. VIII. fol. 4. 

• 8 Hen. VI. fol, 5a •88 Ed. IH. fol. 12. 

' 13 Rich n. 


Business of the Court Leet 379 

experts in the fairs at buying and selling made excellent jury- 
men in the Courts of Pyepowder. The forest freeholders who 
looked after the game were equally calculated to understand 
tlie judicial business of a Swainmote, the jury of presentment 
in Court Leet knew every character in the district intimately, 
and the suitors of the Court Baron were masters in all the in- 
tricacies of feudal tenure. In this respect, then, our modern 
tribunals are at a distinct disadvantage, which a greater pre- 
disposition to impartiality alone can compensate. 


Zhc Stuart period 


CHAPTER XXX. 

THE BUSINESS OF THE COURT BARON. 

When as a guest one wanders from room to room in some old 
country house built in Gothic or Tudor days, one may wish to 
discover the particular apartment in which the seignorial court 
once held its sittings. There is an old south country manor 
in which the choice lies between several oak- wainscoted rooms 
on the ground floor, until in the wall of one there is discovered 
a secret staircase, ascending which the searcher finds himself 
in a tiny oak-panelled apartment. Crouched in what recalls 
to mind the smallest box of some minute provincial theatre, 
he is in a position to gaze down on the apartment below, and 
in fancy picture the scene of a medisBval Estate Court. The 
ghosts of long dead steward and suitors arise before his eyes ; 
he sees the anxious faces of copyholders, and hears their 
plaints. He clothes the actors on this old-world stage in their 
picturesque Elizabethan garb, and listens to the quaint English 
of the speakers. He grows confused over tenancies in dower 
and fee, at will and for years, in curtesie and frank marriage, 
and hopelessly mixes up formedon, wardship and livery of 
seisin with half-a-dozen other incidents of feudal tenure. He 
wonders at the stiff formalities of a bygone chivalry, and wel- 
comes as modem and natural, the half-stifled yawn of the 
lord's bailiff as he wearies over the long morning's sitting. 
The oaken surroundings were not so black and polished then 
as they are this year of G-race 1891, but that official-looking 
chair there, in which the steward is just stretching himself, i^ 
in other respects the same as it is now, and the long oak table 

880 


The Business of the Court Baron. 381 

before it, at which a suitor, proud of his literary skill, has just 
ostentatiously dusted over with sand the curious hieroglyphics 
which represent his notes of the case now occupying the 
court's attention, is the same as that littered to-day with our 
host's nineteenth-century writing materials. 

In discussing the principal business which occupied the 
Court Baron of the Stuart period, we must however be care- 
ful to weed out whatever the great Land Act of the Restoration 
had destroyed. Theoretically, all the military surroundings of 
the feudal constitution had been swept away. Practically, this 
was not entirely the case. The people had bargained with their 
king to pay him an equivalent for his losses in the abohtion of 
the feudal incidents unnecessary to the land tenure of more 
peaceful times. Consequently aids, primer, seisin, escheats, 
marriages, wardships and petit sergeantry were all more or 
less put an end to by this contract betwixt king and people. 
What this king thus sold to his English subjects, G-eorge 11. 
about a century later made a free gift of to his Scotch subjects. 
But in both instances many incidents of feudalism survived in 
a modified form. Take for* example one of the most famous, 
viz. that of escheat. Even now the forfeited lands revert to the 
king disburdened from the dower of the wife ; and though 
the royal reversioner satisfies the creditor at whose suit the 
outlawry is prosecuted, he does so de gratia and not dejure} 

So, too, in dealing with that special branch of escheat con- 
cerned with the defects of heritable blood, the statute of Charles 
n. did not abolish the ultimus hseres, but since that Act a 
tacit understanding supported neither by judges' ruling nor 
legislation has replaced the lord as such with the king. When, 
too, the peculiar political exigencies of the case arising in the 
reign of George I. demanded severer legislation, there is no 
doubt that the so-called Clan Act of that reign was framed 
on the traditional lines of the old feudal escheat.' 

Another example where a feudal incident was modified, 
rather than abolished outright, to meet altered circumstances, is 
the case of wardships. For some time past the judgments of the 

^ Dalrymple, Essays^ Tenures. * Id., Ibid, 


382 History of the English Landed Interest. 

Scotch oonrts and the hnmanity of the English superiors had 
in both countries tended towards placing the minor's person 
in the hands of his relations rather than of his lord. The 
statute of 12 Car. 11. did not abolish either this incident or 
that of marriage; but ever since theBevolution both have been 
exacted by the Crown with the utmost leniency, and it has 
always been found necessary to appoint guardians by will, or 
(failing that) by the Court of Chancery, because infants under 
twenty-one years could not be expected to manage efficiently 
their own estates. Then too (the statute of 12 Car. 11. not- 
withstanding) reliefs continued to be levied on the death of 
tenants on lands held by a rent in fee simple. A single in- 
stance of the aid survives now-a-days in the custom of Parlia- 
ment to grant one for the dowry of the king's eldest daughter; 
and the soutage payment has changed from a feudal perquisite 
into a national land tax. It might have been thought that the 
heriot or custom of rendering the best beast on the tenant's 
death, which was fair enough when all his live and dead stock 
belonged to his lord, might with justice have been abandoned, 
now that he stocked his farm out of his own capital, but this 
practice also survives.* 

The purely agricultural as opposed to the military element of 
course remained. The tenures by copy of Court Eoll, in which 
the villein's relationship with his holding had become, as it 
were, crystallised into a right, to which the archives of the 
manorial muniment room had afforded a title protected hy 
law, had gained a modified but a fresh lease of life by the 
statute now under examination. There were three forms of 
this peculiar tenure. In some cases landlords, less vigilant in 
maintaining their rights than others, had allowed hereditary 
powers to their copyhold tenants, in other cases they were 
determinable at the death of the occupier. To both these the 
custom of the heriot still adhered, to the first of the two that 
also of the wardship and fine.* The third form of copyhold 
tenure was that of ancient demesne. It consisted of those 
lands or manors which though now perhaps granted out to 

^ Blackstone, Comm,^ bk. ii., ohap. vi., par. 1-10. 
• Id., Ibid. 


The Business of the Court Baron. 383 

private persons, were actually in the possession of the Crown 
either in the Confessor's or Conqueror's lifetime. The old 
villein services, such as ploughing the king's land, supplying 
his court with provisions, etc., had long ago been commuted 
into pecuniary rents, but the privileges surrounding these 
tenancies still existed. They were allowed to try the rights 
of their property by the process called " writ of right close," 
in a peculiar court, which, though a Court Baron, was specially 
termed the Court of Ancient Demesnes.* They were exempted 
from tolls and taxes, expenses of knights of the shire, sitting 
on juries, and the like. They were so close to being free- 
holders as to have been called such by Bracton, though he 
distinguishes their class by the term of "sokemen." They 
were also recognisable from common copyholders by their 
inability to convey their lands by the general law of feoff- 
ments, being compelled to surrender them to the lord or his 
steward.* Their copies of the Court EoU stated that they held 
their lands according to the custom of the manor, and not 
at the will of the lord. This form of copyhold tenure, now 
termed customary freehold, still survives, chiefly in the North 
of England. How then did the Act of 12 Car. 11. affect the 
various tenures by copyhold? Simply by reducing all lay 
tenures (for we must except that in frankalmoigne) to two dis- 
tinctive species only, viz. free tenure in common soccage and 
base tenure by copy of Court Eoll.' 

From that date then the business of the manorial court was 
confined to matters affecting socage and copyhold tenures solely. 
The copyholder's estate was secured to him as of right against 
all persons except the lord. Before the reign of Elizabeth 
he was not protected by the king's writ, but could only assert 
his rights in the seignorial court. He could not appeal against 
his lord's judgment to the king's Court of Law, but had to 
file a petition in Chancery. At the time now under discussion 
he had obtained the power to recover possession of his holding 


" Williams. Law of Real Property ^ ch. i., of Estates in Copyhold. 
' Blackstone, Comm,, bk. ii., ch. vi. 
» Id., Ibid. 


384 History of the English Landed Interest. 

from his lord or a stranger, in an action of ejectment brought 
at common law.* 

As the lord possessed rights to mines and timber, the suitors 
of Ck)urt Baron had often to adjudicate on questions of waste, 
such as arose when a copyholder opened mines, cut down 
timber, or committed permissive waste in neglecting to repair.^ 

So fiir the business of the Estate Ck)urt has referred to the 
subject matter of tenures by copy of Court Roll. But this in 
no way exhausts the list of duties to which the suitor of a 
Court Baron lent his ear. The work of the assembly had in 
fact grown so complex as to have for some time necessitated a 
subdivision of its business under different headings. Thus 
much was heard by those special meetings of the Court Baron 
in which only copyholders were suitors, and to which the dis- 
tinctive appellation of Customary Court was affixed.' As has 
been already pointed out, the steward was judge in this and 
all other forms of the Court Baron when all the suitors held 
base tenures. But it must be remembered that the great 
dignitary who appended his name to what was generally 
termed the Court Baron, was the feudal chief of many tenants 
in subinfeudation ; so that affairs relating to freehold estates in 
land came to be discussed in a separate branch of this assembly, 
which was held under the same jurisdiction, and at the 
same place and time as the Court Leet. At this meeting the 
suitors were composed of freeholders. Here, too, the statute 
of 12 Car. 11. had, metaphorically speaking, beaten the sword 
into a ploughshare. All the stately incidents of military feud- 
alism, saving those already excepted, had vanished. Homage, 
fealty and knight service were but memories of a past poUtj 
wherein the peaceful arts of agriculture had been strangely 
confused with the stirring episodes of war. In the Estate Court 
of the freeholders thus distinguished from the Customary Court 
of the freeholders, and from that, too, of ancient demesnes, the 
various kinds of freehold property, together with their rights 
or wrongs, engaged the attention of the baronial suitors. Their 

* Williams, JJeoZ Property ^ Pt. iii., of Copyholds. 

* Kitchen, Court Leet, 

* Jaoohs, Law Dict.j Court Baron« 


The Business of the Court Baron. 385 

duties were principally directed to those intricate points of law 
connected with the taking and passing of estates, surrenders 
of admittances and the like, in the which also the homage 
jury took care that their lords did not lose their suits of courts 
that rents and heriots were paid, lands and tenements kept 
in repair, all common and private nuisances prejudicial to 
the lord's manor presented, and public trespass punished by 
amercement.^ Here tenants in fee simple and tenants in fee 
tail of estates of inheritance appeared to defend their rights 
or redress their wrongs. Here tenants for life underwent im- 
peachment for waste. Here tenants by the curtesy of Eng- 
land proved their titles. Here ladies sought protection for 
their tenures in dower. Here, too, the already disused, but 
still legal, estates in frank marriage had their complicated 
machinery set in motion. Another large portion of the free- 
hold suitors' time was directed to offences against common 
rights. He that did not possess rights to what was called 
" common without number," could not charge the pasturage 
with more than a fixed number of beasts. He who had what 
was called ^' common appendant,'' could not turn into the 
waste beasts not commonable, such as hogs, goats, and geese ; 
nor could he get gravel (except for the highways), or dig turf, 
or build a house, or make inclosures there without the lord's 
special license. These restrictions did not, however, apply to 
commons appurtenant. An offence termed *' rechasing " also 
came before the freehold suitors in this branch of the Court 
Baron, where a farmer holding lands in two manors, who had 
overstocked one with the beasts of the other, had to compen- 
sate his lord for the offence. Trespass on the lord's demesnes, 
removal of meers tones, pound breach, encroachments, letting 
copyhold lands beyond the prescribed period of a year and a 
day, improper husbandry, neglect of suit to the mill, trespass 
in pursuit of game, and in fact any offence, save the most 
trivial, which was calculated to defraud the lord or neighbour 
of his manorial rights, were inquired into at this particular 
Estate assembly.' 

' Jacobs, Law Dict^ Court Baron. ' Id., Ibid, 

C 


386 History of the English Landed Interest 

There was a fourth branch of the Court Baron, resembling our 
modem County Court, in which the freeholders claimed juris- 
diction for trying actions of debt, trespasses, etc., under 40»., 
and which was held every three weeks. Unlike the jurisdic- 
tion peculiar to the county tribunal, there were no powers in 
this assembly to make execution on recovery of debt, but the 
defendant's goods might be distrained and retained till satis- 
faction was made.^ The eflfeot of such a system as has been 
now described in detail, was to advertise throughout the 
honour or manor the legalities and illegalities peculiar to each 
separate landed property. No one could extenuate an oflFenoe, 
much less evade its legal consequences. The estate steward 
was not so much the policeman of the district as the head of 
its police. Every freeholder or copyholder had probably, some 
time or other, been a suitor, and as such had shown his respect 
for the law by dispensing its justice. A judgment pronounced 
by him on other oflfenders warned him for ever afterwards 
against offending in like manner. He who had been plaintiff 
one month might be defendant the following month. He who 
stood before the judgment of his neighbours one time might 
be sitting in judgment on some of them another. He who 
had helped to condone an offence then might be suffering 
from a similar offence now. A severe view of a doubtful act 
inspired to gratify private malice, or any undue display of 
favour, might establish a precedent which would some day 
cause injustice to him who had initiated this very form of 
injustice. The lord was too much hedged in by the evidence 
of his rolls and the publicity of his actions to be unjust, the 
steward dared not be, and the suitors were disinclined to be. 

The business, then, relating to tenures and customs of the 
manor was, it seems likely, well managed. Not so the offences 
foreign to these matters. Poaching, we have already said, 
was vigorously discountenanced, and scant justice meted oat 
whether offenders were haled before the tribunals of the Leet, 
Baron, or Forest. The poacher was of another class altogether, 
neither politically nor judicially represented, and there was 

* Jacobs, Law Dict^ Court Baron, 


The Business of the Court Baron. 387 

no indacement for either lord, steward, or juror to treat him 
with leniency. 

The survival here and there, in these prosaic and bustling 
times, of some form of an ancient court is a circumstance 
which adds reality to their almost forgotten past. It is doubt- 
ful, however, if the busy lawyer who generally represents his 
employer €is steward, appreciates this side of the question at 
its f uU worth. We have had opportunities of discussing the 
subject with one or two, and wer^ disappointed to find that 
the old distinctions between Courts Leet and Baron had 
vanished so completely as never to have occurred to the minds 
of their modern presidents. Nor had any of these old assem- 
blies retained one tithe of their original importance even at 
the period of history that we are now discussing. 

"We have been at pains to collate the principal subject matter 
of a series of presentments belonging to several manors in Lan- 
cashire,^ and extending over the early half of the eighteenth 
century, and have found that the most trivial topics of estate 
management alone occupied the jurors' attention. Formidable 
indeed is the charge of the seneschal, with its long roll of ill 
deeds punishable by death ; but the actual business which 
follows is such that the landlord's agent and tenantry of the 
Victorian era would amicably settle after half an hour's discus- 
sion in the estate office. The jury appoint their burleymen, law- 
men, house looker, moss reeve, affeerer, and court bailiflf, and the 
Court Boll records the names of these worthy rustics as well as 
lists of jurors, members of the court, watercourses ordered to 
be cleansed, etc. After that we read of Lawrence Worthing- 
ton being ordered to cut a ditch through a neighbour's tene- 
ment, of James Dewhurst compelled to erect a fence, and of 
some one else having to repair a house. Then certain edicts 
of the homage are enrolled with the object of protecting 
vested manorial interests. For this reason we find that no 
one is to pasture or put any goods on the manorial moss 
between May and 25th July; that in order to prevent the 
immigration of any tenants or poor people, no member of the 

^ Thomley, Weston and Chipping, belonging to the Earl of Derby. 


388 History of the English Landed Interest. 

manorial commnnity may let a cottage to any person not 
having legal settlement in. the district. Occasionally the roll 
records a penalty for some one's offence in ^' projecting " on a 
highway, and fixes the fines for owing suits and not appearing. 
The inhabitants of some village are ordered to lay ashes or 
muck on the highway, and each to keep his house in proper 
repair. Christian Helme is made to turn his water from Gib 
Hey Lane before the feast of St. John the Baptist ; John Berne 
is stopped putting cattle on Piseloche Common ; the villagers 
of Chipping must construct a pound ; an escheat is made out 
against Edward Hawkinson, who defies the order by pre- 
deceasing its execution; Robert Eales for having some one 
else's wife as a lodger is heavily mulcted and compelled to 
remove the woman from the manor. 

Such business as this, partly that of a modem Local Board, 
and partly that of a modern land agent, occupies the principal 
attention of the court. Schedules and valuations are periodi- 
cally ordered to be made of the manorial leasehold, freehold 
and common lands ; or a fresh enquiry is determined upon by 
the jury concerning the lord's boundary; or an affidavit is 
wanted about a right of road ; or some poaching affair crops 
up to vary the monotony of these everyday occurrences, and 
this represents the sum of all that survives of that jurisdiction 
which under the old Saxon terms of sac, soc, toll and team 
made the landlord of the medissval era both powerful and 
opulent. 

The half of a great subject has been now brought to a 
conclusion. Before the pen is laid aside, let us glance briefly 
over the events hitherto chronicled. We have beheld the 
surface of England's soil trodden by the hoof of a pastoral 
community's cattle, and we have watched it turned over by 
the successive ploughs of Boman, Saxon, Norman, and English- 
man. We have described its very depths a,s stirred by the 
tin miner, chasmed by the iron founder, and tunneled by the 
collier. We have studied the fortunes of its cultivators, and 
have followed the exaltation of the husbandman from slave 
to gebur, from villein to copyholder, and from free-farmer to 


The Business of the Court Baron. 389 

yeoman. We liave seen all t£e profits of the land absorbed 
by the wants of a warlike age, until every difference in its 
tenure had acquired some military significance ; and we have 
seen the peaceful art of agriculture emancipate itself from the 
obstructive infiuences of strife and chase. 

We have accompanied the Englishman throughout his 
struggles for freedom ; from his successful retention of com- 
munal rights during the period of his slavery, until as a 
free agent he can dispose of his labour services in whatever 
market he chooses. We have shown how the innate fireedom 
of the Anglo-Saxon rebelled against the medissval lawyer's 
attempts to enslave him, and we have seen how the civilizing 
effects of Norman refinement raised the tone of the national 
character. We have traced the system of agriculture firom 
the first rude attempts to reclaim forest and morass, to the 
economy observed on lord's demesne, common field, and waste, 
to be replaced in its turn by the enclosure system. We have 
noted the improvement in grain crops, and seen pulse crops 
supplement them. From the dual cultivation of com and 
fallow, to the trinity field system, and from that to the four- 
course rotation, we have carried forward the nation's methods 
of husbandry. Livestock have been bettered in breed and 
condition, winter feeding has come into use, fresh vegetables 
have taken root in the kitchen garden and fresh fruit trees in 
the orchard. Scurvy and famine have ceased to decimate the 
rural population in early spring. A great middle class has 
sprung into being, and the labourer has obtained an important 
if not political status in the national ranks. EUs cottage has 
been fitted with chimneys and his garden brightened with 
fiowers. There remains only to add a slopstone and gully to 
his kitchen, connect his refuse heap with a line of drainpipes, 
and he will do well enough till he shall have educated himself 
to the dignities of the national polling booth. Lastly, we have 
studied England's acres as they were successively possessed by 
families and tribes, by overlords and allodialists, by thanes 
and barons, and by noblemen and squires. We have passed 
through the stages of land conveyance, from symbol to charter 
and from charter to deed. We have jotted down each phase 


390 History of the Evglish Landed InteresL 

of the straggle over its hereditary rights, from the statute of 
Quia Emptores to that of De Donis, thence to the application 
of common recoveries and the legislative attacks of Henry 
Vill/s reign, until we leave estates tail in much the same 
stage as conditional fees were in at common law, before 
medisBval lawyers framed the Act of De Donis. The tenant 
in tail could, at the period in which we take leave of him, 
aliene his lands and tenements not only by fine and recovery, 
but also by other means ; he was liable to forfeiture for high 
treason, and he could charge his estates both with reasonable 
leases, and with such of his debts as were due to the Crown, 
or had been contracted with his fellow subjects in a course 
of extensive commerce.^ This was not the free trade in land 
which is the dream of the modem Radical, it did not affect 
reversionary interests one tithe so severely as the recent 
Settled Estates Acts have done ; but it was a step towards that 
Elysium which alone would seem to satisfy the landless inter- 
ests of this present age. 

The task yet before us is to carry down to the present date 
this study of the great English landed interest, and in so doing 
describe how its exclusive proprietary rights were bit by bit 
abandoned through the moderation of an enlightened age; 
how its system of agriculture improved under the beneficent 
guidance of science, and how its worst customs were altered in 
obedience to the advanced spirit of these later times. We 
have seen enough both of English noble and pea>sant, to be 
sure that a wise spirit of compromise will order all the changes 
about which we still have to speak, as it had ordered most of 
those already recounted ; and we shall be sure that the sense 
of moderation which even curbed the repressive tendencies of 
an aristocracy in the zenith of seignorial jurisdiction, will 
unite with that independence of character which clung to the 
peasant in the most degrading days of his serfdom, until this 
country of England shall have become, what at this day it has 
long been, a beacon light to the foreigner still groping after 
freedom. 

^ Blackstone, Comm,, bk. ii., cb. vii. 


GLOSSARY. 


A. 

Acre-Shot ='J!aji imposed on the lands of the Great Level. 

Ads=A carpenter's tool used by the Tudor farmer to even flooring and 
hollow-out pig troughs. 

Jffeerers =der. afferatores, affidati: persons appointed upon oath by the 
Court Leet to set fines on such as committed faults arbitrarily 
punishable. 

Affri or Avers— CsLrt horses. 

^j^e«^9nen^= Pasturage of other men's livestock on the popular, royal, 
or seignorial wastes. 

Agnation=8ystem of marking the descent by the male line. 

Agrimensor=Jjand Surveyor. 

Akermanland=ThQ ploughman's perquisite in land. 

ilmercemen^= Pecuniary punishment of an offender against king or lord. 

Arcuum munitio =:The furnishing of bows for warlike purposes. 

Assise of novel disseisin=A remedy, maxime festinam, for the recovery 
of lands, etc., of which the party was disseised, called novel disseisin 
because the Justices in Eyre went their circuits from seven years to 
seven years, and no assise was allowed before that which commenced 
before the last circuit, and which was called an ancient assise, in 
contradistinction to an assise of novel disseisin, vzz., one com- 
menced since the last circuit.— Jocob'^ Diet., sub voc "Assise of 
Novel Disseisin." 

Averagium=ThQ villein's service for the lord's carting. 

Averland=The teamer's perquisite in land. 

B. 

Barley Cradle=A three-forked wooden instrument on which the corn 

was caught as it fell from the scythe. 
Baron and j^^eme= Husband and wife. 
Bauem Ge7n€2ndc= Peasants' community. 
Beneficium= An estate in land granted for life. 
Bocto/M?= Public land, rendered private by charter. 
Brach=A bitch of the hound species. 

Breve testatum =The earliest form of a deed of conveyance. 
Brot(75e= Branches and sprigs of trees used as cattle food. 


392 Glossary. 

Brycgbote^The repairs of bridges (part of the Trinoda Necessitas). 
Burgage^The villeinage system as applied to townspeople. 
BurJibote=The repairs of the national defences (part of the Trinoda 

Necessitas). 
Btt^rices=Tool for paring horses' hoofs. 


a 

Capitatio ^FoU. tax. 

CaWe» Hemp which bore no seed. 

CeapeeUthelum^Anglo'SdJion ale-honse. 

Cen«or= Name applied to the two magistrates who presided over the 
Roman fiscal service. 

Ceorl^A freeman who was not noble. 

Cestui que u«e=The party to whose use any other person is enfeoffed 
of lands. 

Cheeseland^ThQ Deye's perquisite in land. 

Onihthade=1!hQ term applied to the Anglo-Saxon youth when over 
eight and under fifteen years of age. 

Cognation=Kmshi'p by the mother's side. 

Colonials A military land settlement. 

CamTnon appendant^ A right to put beasts of the plough, or such as 
manure the ground, on the lord's waste, and confined to freeholders 
as the successors of the original cultivators of the common field in 
the tribal village. 

Common appurtenant=A right of pasturage on the lord's waste, extended 
to hogs, goats, etc., as well as beasts of the plough or such as manure 
the ground ; and enjoyed by tenants of land not anciently arable, 
such as pasture or land reclaimed from the waste within the time 
of legal memory, or for land that is not freehold, but copyhold.-^ 
Blackstone, bk. ii., ch. 3 ; and Vinogradoff^ p. 266. 

Common of pasture=The right for all the villagers' cattle *' levant e 
couchant en le manor," to feed on the waste. 

Common of e^fover^s: Comprehends allowances of housebote, hedgebote 
and ploughbote out of the waste. 

Common of piscary =^'Rights to fish on the waste. 

Common of turbary =^B>ightB to dig turf on the waste. 

Common of vicinage^Where two neighbouring villages have inter- 
communed with one another, so as to allow their beasts to stray over 
the fields of each. 

Compurgator =T\iQ person whose oath helped to establish the innocency 
of the accused in the Court Leet 

Contenement=A man's necessary stock in trade. 

Corporeal and incorporeal hereditaments— The former consists of such 
as afiect the senses, the latter only exist in contemplation. 

Corocf26^= Provision and maintenance of baronial dependants. 

Crome=A dung rake. 


Glossary. 393 

Ourtesie of England=1!he life tenure by a husband of his deceased wife's 
estates in fee simple, when he ,has had issue by her of those who 
might succeed. 


Decuma='Rom&n State dues from the land's produce. 

Denshiring =FskTing, drying, heaping and burning of turf. 

Dew re^tn^= Spreading of hemp on a water meadow. 

2>ej/e= Dairy woman. 

Didall=k. sharp triangular spade. 

Dorf=K German village. 

i>oinfmum=Seignorial rights over land. 

Douer plow beetle=A large beetle-shaped iron instrument fixed to the 

plough, partly in order to prevent the furrow glazing, partly te cover 

the seed. 
Drageum=An inferior barley. 


Emphytettsia^The farming of lands to military tenants: derivation, 

/v^vrcvtf, I graft on, because a second dominium was grafted on to 

the original seignorial ownership. 
.Ehdo^amy= Intermarriage of the members of a tribe. 
Eorl=K noble. 

EoTldorman=Th» head magistrate of a shire. 
iSlso^ainy= Equality by marriage. 
Es8oin=^AiL excuse, such as sickness or infirmity, raised by one summoned 

to appear or answer to an action, or to perform suit to a court 

Baron, etc. 
JE2s^erA= Necessaries of life taken from the waste by popular usage. 


Jre2({ntarc/c= (German lands held in villeinage. 

Feme c(wcr^= Married woman. 

Feoffment^QtTKut of manors, etc. 

llsuar^ North country term for tenant. 

Feud^ Fea^ Fief— A right to lands and hereditaments held byperfermanoe 
of military service. 

Fiction of Common Recovery =8ee page 252, 

J?Y«i6te=The early yellow variety of hemp. 

Fine=A final agreement or conveyance upon record, for the settling and 
assuring of lands and tenements. 

Formedon=A writ that lieth for him who has a right to lands or tene- 
ments by virtue of any entail. 

Frank Marriage ^Where a man, seised of land in fee simple, gives it to 
another with his daughter, sister, etc., in marriage, to hold to them 
and their heirs. 


394 Glossary. 

Fre^ benches An estate in copyhold, which the wife had on the death of 

her hushand for her dower according to the custom of the manor 
Frithborg== Pl&dige for the keeping of peace. 
Frou>er= An iron tool for cleaving laths. 
Frumstal^The master's seat in the Anglo-Saxon house. 
Fundtis^^A Roman farm. 


Qafol^A tax. 

Gqfol earth or erfA= Plough work on the demesne. 

Gatts Germanic common ground. 

Gai;e29?kiniit= Tenants paying rent in 'money. 

Gre6iir=The owner in villeinage of a yard land. 

G^emetnde= Germanic community. 

Oemeindes an^r= Germanic conmion pasturage. 

Geneat^A term embracing all the tenants in villeinage. 

Gens = A group of families i)ossessing blood relationship. 

Crere/a= The king's representative in the Court Leet 

GeaUhland \ ~^^^ ^^ occupation of the villeinage. 

Gesithcundman=^The companion of a king or noble. 

6ro/e=The pile of hay or straw in the barn. 

Ground clouts =The wooden part of a plough that was generally made 

out of old streaks of wheels. 
GoiU de terrain = That occult virtue in a soil which imparts to grapes 

the flavour of a choice vintage. 


H. 

jj^ I =An enclosure. 

Headborough^ChiQi man of the Frankpledge in boroughs. 

flere^ocA= A general: derivation, ** here " an army ; **toecu" or "togu," 

to lead. 
Herzog=A German lord of the manor. 
£ro/=The German manor. 
Hold ^ A Danish noble. 
Hdrige=The German villeinage. 
Houselooker^AjL official of the Court Baron which answers to the 

modem clerk of works. 
£ru9u2red=Anglo- Saxon territorial division, similar to the Germanic 

pagus. 


Kensos=^The tribute money. 


Glossary. 395 


Zioc ac2dum= Butter milk. 

luoc dulce==l^ew milk. 

LcRrUand=A portion of the Folcland granted to an individual as a bene- 
fice for life. 

Landes 6reme}7ule= Germanic land community. 

l^«to^e=Seignorial toll on market produce. 

liOth «- Any piece of wood that can be split. 

liawing=Die mutilation of dogs to prevent their overtaking game. 

Itenten ear^A= Extra demesne work before Easter. 

Liberi tenentes per cartom=: Chartered freeholders liberated from all 
kinds of predial service. 

Livery ^H&s three meanings : 1. A suit of clothes which a landowner 
gives to his followers. 2. A delivery of possession to those tenants 
who held of the king in capite or knight's service. 8. The writ 
which lay for the heir, when of age, to obtain possession or seisin of 
his lands at the king's hands. 
Littery of seisin=K delivery of possession of lands, etc., t.e. a ceremony 

used in the conveyance of lands by common law* 
Lodlands^TYiQ teamer's perquisite in land. 
LoudassA loaf of bread of a certain kind. 

M. 

Maslin^^A mixture of rye and wheat made into bread. 

Jlfea/ce= Implement with handle five feet long, for cutting pea& 

Mic?ierz=T}iiet 

Molmen^^TQUAnta paying partly in labour, partly in money. 

Morgengi/t=^The Anglo-Saxon woman's settlement in marriage. 

Mortmain=Aii alienation of lands and tenements to any guild, corpora- 
tion or fraternity, which had to be legalised by the king's license, 
because they were said to come into ^^ the dead hand " when dedi- 
cated to Gk>d or pious purposes. 

Afou^j?ear= Instrument for destroying moles. 

Mutter 2>or/=: Qermanic parent village. 

N. 

Nat^An awl. 

Novel disseisin=Sed " Assize of Novel Disseisin." 


Occupa^{0= Form of Roman land tenure applied to waste lands. 
OiMtre le maina^A livery of land *'out of the king*s hand." 

P. 

Pack 8addle=Axi equipment used for the carriage of wool on horseback. 
PagtiS=A district in G^rmania comprising a group of vicL 


396 Glossary. 

Pand or pannd^^A short saddle raised before and behind for small 
burdens carried on horseback. 

Parava}7«Thelast of the vassalage in the scale of sub-infeudation. 

i^Msa^e =Seignorial toll for market produce carried over the manorial 
lands. 

1M=A saddle constructed so as to carry the milkmaid and her dairy 
produce to market on horseback. 

Percer—A tool for piercing leather. 

Picca^e =:Seignorial toll levied on stalls as compensation for damages to 
the ground on which they were £xed. 

iVepooxire = Curia pedis puZverc«= A court of the mercatores stellati for 
the administration of justice at fairs. See page 226, note 1. 

Fod^Aa old leathern bottle nailed to the side of a farm cart as a re- 
ceptacle for tools. 

Pm^aj^=Seignorial toll for market produce carried over a private bridga 

Fontium et viarum re/bcf to » Bepairs of bridges and roads. 

Portoria =Boman State tolls levied on imported and exported merchan- 
dise. 

Pi088e88ores =^,1011 squatters on the Roman Ager Publicus. 

Primer Seisin^The first possession : «.e. part of the king*s prerogative, 
whereby he had the entire profits for a year of all lands, etc., on his 
tenant's death until the latter's heir did homage. 

Primus inter pares = A chief on terms of equality with his followers. 

Procurator flsci=The head officer of the Eoman civil service in each 
province. 

R. 

Becognitors^Jnry empanelled on an assize : so called because they ao- 

knowledged a disseisin by their verdict. 
Res manci'j7t= Property of which a person can dispose. 
Res nee nianctpi= Property of which a person cannot dispose. 
Retting =ThQ spreading of hemp on a moist site: if on a meadow it was 

called " dew retting,'* if in a pool it was called " water retting." 
Reve^The popular representative of justice in the seignorial court. 
Rifle^The twisted handle of a scythe. 


Sac^iThe lord's manorial privilege of holding pleas in causes of trespass 

arising from his tenants. 
Scriptura='RomB,n State agistment charge on livestock pastured on the 

Ager Publicus. 
iScutage=The tax on knights' fees. 
Scyremote =ThQ court of the county. 
/Slea7n«<=Ahorseloadof winnowed com. 
8erlands=^The reaper's perquisite in land. 


Glossary. 397 


Shertfa^ThA president of the Tourm. 

Sid,e c2ou^«= Wooden parts of a plough. 

<S^«Y/i= Scythe. 

Skavel=A draining spade, four inches wide and eight deep. 

Sleep or 9Xn^<^= Basket narrow at bottom, wider at top. 

Slcfeine=k. basket 

i8<9C= The lord's manorial privilege to hold a court of justice composed of 

socmen. 
^ence=: The buttery or place where provisions were kept, sometimes 

also the feeding room. 
Sprig =^ An inferior kind of barley. 
iSYaZ2a^e=Seignorial toll on booths at fairs. 
Staple=TeTm applied to those parts to which wool had to be sent prior 

to exportation, for fiscal purposes. 
Swainmote^^The verderer's forest court. 


Team =Seignorial privilege to possess and judge the bondmen and 

villeins of a manor. 
Terra Regis =:Tho Hoyal Manors. 
T7iane=The armed unit of the Anglo-Saxon host, who, after the Conquest, 

became identified with the knight. 
77^eot<7= Anglo-Saxon slave. 
TTiryfallow^The third of the three fallowings on the common arable 

field. 
Tirorum producHo=^The duty of recruiting the ranks of the national 

army. 
7b22=Seignorial privilege of levying market dues. 
Totem^ThQ family symbol among the American Indians. 
r(9urm= Sheriffs court of the county. 
Tributum capitis =The income tax charged by the Roman State on the 

landed community. 
Tributum soli=Taji charged by the Eoman State on owners of per- 
sonalty. 
Trinoda necessitas =The three national obligations on alodial ownership. 
THtst^A. right for any individual to receive the profits of land and 

dispose of the land itself as directed by the lawful owner. 


Use=The profit or benefit from lands and tenements. 

V. 

Vautrer^A lurcher boarhound. 

Vava8s<>ur=ThQ first of the vassalage in the scale of sub-in feud ation 

Vicus^The Teutonic gens. 


398 Glossary. 

w. 

TTatfUi^sThe farmer's stock in trade. 

fTan/ys: The sossingle or surcinglei i.e. a leathern girdle for fastening 
a horse^s saddle around its belly. 

Trapen/aA:e= The Hundred (which see). 

Trarectofto=The summer fallow, otherwise known as Twifallow. 

lFeaZA= The Anglo-Saxon slave. 

lFer^eW=The fine for manslaughter. 

Were = A fine. 

TFerXremfn= Tenants paying rent wholly in labour. 

Tr7itY2efAer»The leather used for mending horse-collars. 

TFim6te= Wheelwright's tool used in cart repairs. 

Witangemftte=^A meeting of wise men, hence the Anglo-Saxon Parlia- 
ment. 


INDEX. 


Abbot of Bunon, 217. 

Abinjrilon Pair, 220. 

Acre. 166. 162. 

Acre Bbot, 339. 

Act of OommendAtion, 67. 

Adam Smith, 11», 120. 

Aelfric, Canons of, 116. 

Aestii, 45. 

AfTeerer, 387. 

Affrs 2<i4. 

Ager pubUcus, 9, 12, 16, 16, 60; vectigalis, 60, 

83, 126. 
Agistment tax, 12. 
Agnation, 61. 
Atrrarian laws, 12, 14. 
Agrioola, 2a 
Agrl, 48. 

Agrimeiisor, 122, 126. 
Agricaltnre, Briti»h, 8 ; Tentonio, 89 ; Anglo. 

Saxon. 78. 87; Norman. 170; Medisval, 

184; Tndor, 313; Btaurt, 338. 
Agricnltnral improf ementa, slow progress of. 

Aid, 142, 381. 

Aix la Ohapelle. Peace of, 837. 

Akermanldnds, 219. 

Alemanni, 1^3. 

Ale taster, Cobden as, 871. 

AlienadoD, 177; fine of, 141. 

AUeux, 92. 

Allodialism, origin of, 67; continental, 92. 

Alterations in land tenure, 211. 

Amercemeut, 385. 

American Indians, 61. 

Ancient demesne, 220; tenure of; 882; court 
of, 883. 

Andain, MS. of, 116. 

Angles. 36. 

Anglo-Saxon, agriculture, 78, 87; Ohronicle, 
94. 163 ; Church, 97 ; commer-ial tastes, 66; 
conversion of. to Christianity, 106 ; diet, 
99 ; domestic life, 97 ; dress, 99 ; farming, 
87 ; fiscal system, 120 ; land divisions, 67 ; 
land ownership, 65 ; land legislation, 76 ; 
land surveying, 132; land tenure, 91; 
local govemmetit, 63; lord and people, 
66; manorial system, 66, 86, 89; pastimes. 
98 ; poor relief, 119 ; prices of produce, 
108: »ocial distiiictions, 100; township, 
86; tun, 97; weather, 94. 

Apples, 208, 341. 

Approver, tenants in capita, right of, 816. 

Arboriculture, 170^ 343. 

Architecture of the renaissance, 283. 

Arcuum mnniUo, 129. 

Area of England, Oreg. King's, 360. 

Areas of counties, UXK 

Artioalo cleri, 246, 


899 


Arvans, 23, 48. 

Ashley's Econ., history. 217. 

Aston Caution, manor of, 147. 

Astrier, 166. 

Assisa panis et cervisisB, 222, 286, 871. 

Assise, old and new, 219; of arms, 2Sl ; justice 

of, 136, 138, 368 ; rolls, 138 ; of nuisances, 

376. 
Athelstan, his edict re tithe, 110: witan of, 

227. 
Augu»tns Constantino, 26. 
Augustine, mission of, 108. 
Aurelius Mairus. 37. 
Averagium. 20a, 219. 
Averlands, 219. 
Awl, 321. 


B 

Babylonians, 86. 

Bacon re purveyance, 862. 

Bntica, 81. 

BailifiT. duty of, 191 ; of Court Leet. 864. 

Balks, 202. 

Barley, Sir Simon, 221. 

Barley harvest, 326. 

Baron, court of, 134^ 866, 380; pleaa of the 

crown in, 187 ; relics of Feudal inddente 

in. 381 ; scenes in, 380. 
Barones Regis, 164. 
Baronial meals, 197. 
Barony, life on a, 197. 
Bauem Qemeinde, 44. 
Beauchamp, manor of, 218. 
Beda. letter re tribute, 106; defines the hide, 

166. 
Bedford level, 840. 
Bees, 208. 
Belg9, 16, 20. 68. 
Bengalese Ze'uindar, 21. 
Berseliiis, 336. 
Bergos de Ouldeford, 148. 
Bertram de Oriol, 148. 
Birkett, Percival, 84. 
Black death, 238. 
Blaokstone, 82, 261. S82, 383, 890. 
Blake, Admiral, 340. 
BUth, 838, 341. 
Boadicea, 17. 
Bocland, 80, 82. 
Borough, English, 91. 
Bordariun, 167. 
Boston Custom House, 889, 
Botolph's Cair, 196. 
Boyle, 896. 
Bracton. 84, 216, 228. 
BradweU, manor of, 296L 
Braketpeare, 188. 


4CX) 


Index. 


Brander, IW. 

Bretwalda, M. 

Breve teeUtum, 180. 

Bridireman** Historj of Wigaa, lOS. 

British babiU, 8. 

Browse, SiS. 

Brjrgliote. 129. 

Bnrhbote. 129. 

Burleynum. 387. 

BarU'ifiTb, his income, 35S. 

Burton, Abbot of, 217. 

Butler. 198. 

Bttttrioe, 321. 


C»bbakffe» ftntiqnity of, 174. 

Cal)ot Lo(1(ro. 83. 

GsBssr, 2, 37. 60. 

Calendar, alterations in. 202, 315. 

Camden. 17. 120, 166. 293, 368. 

Gnmbridffeshire. 293. 

Campbell, Sir George, 47. 

Catnolodonam, 19. 

Cannyngs, of Bristol, 161. 

Capitatio, 18. 

Capitolare episcopomm, 114. 

Carle hemp, 824. 

Carleton, manor of, 146. 

Carthage, 2. 

CarthBgeiiiRns, 64. 

Caruca«;e, 176, 2il. 

Caracate. Definition of, 110, 164^ 161. 

CelUc, 36. 

Censors. IS. 

Census statistics, 182, 168, 167, 861. 

Ceorl.60. 

Cestui que use, 260. 

Chalcia, 81. 

Chantries, abolition of, 179. 

Chapman, 821. 

Charlton ipnr, 161. 

Charter of feofment, 164. 

Charters, instittiUon of, 180; Conn used in, 

181. 
Cheese, 4, 107. 
Cheese land, 210. 
Chemical science, 106, 8S6» 
Cherry. 27, 291. 
Chestnut, 17, 848. 
Chinese, 6. 

Chipping, manor of, 887. 
Christian, W.. execution of, 870. 
Chronicle, Baker s, 272. 
Church, connection of, with land, 106 ; Grith 

law. 114; influence of, 113, 116, 271, 173; 

Bchot, 118 ; yaasals, 187. 
Cider, 208, 3M. 
Cimmerian. 36. 
Clan act. 381. 
Clarke, Rev. H.. 108. 177. 
Clergy, professions of, 171. 
Cliens and Yavasour, connection between, 

125. 
Climate, 16. 
Clothing trade, 311. 
Glover ooltnre, evolution of, 847. 
Coals, 211. 291. 
Coaration. 63, 86, 2ia 
Cobden. 371. 
Code, KSng ina's, 11& 
Cognation, 51. 
Co&s, 17. 
CokCk Bir C, 166. 


ColonJa, 10. 

Coliberti. 167. 

Columella, 32. 

Comes Uteris sazoniosB, 60. 

Common fowl, 4. 

Common soccage, free tenure in, 883. 

Common recorery, 250 

Commons appendant, 216. 386; appeotenaTit, 

116. 886 : or estovers, 216 ; of turbary, 216 : 

of piscary, 116; distincUon of, 306; fl«ld 

cnltivatinn, origin of, 85 ; r^^\^, offences 

against. 885. 
Commons and landed economy, 250. 
Commercial society, 169. 
Communal nlficer of the mark, 41. 
Compurgator, 186. 
Cone, grsatanlea, 115. 
Conqueror's possesaions, 161. 
Gonstaniine Augastus, 16. 
Constitution of Archbishop Wi&cbelMft,117; 

of Clarendon. 175, 64. 
CouTeyance of land, 179. 
Coote, 19, 60. 

Copy of court roll, base tenure by. 88S. 
Copyholder, origin of. 221. 
Copyhold dwelling, 296; tennrea, distinctiona 

in. 881. 
Com, 8 ; laws, 800; prices of 103, 800, 361. 
Cornish stannaries, 118, 190. 
Cornwall, 189. 
Cotarii, 167. 
Gotswold wool, 181. 
Cote ages in the north, 168. 
County, 63, 67 ; court, 71. 
Court Baron, 184^ 867, 880; Leet. 64, 68, ISS. 

869; Leet, bailiiT of, 364; of Piepoudre, 

135; of the stannaries. 118. 
Courts, baron and leet, diflerenoea befcnreen, 

135, 870. 
Corebrigg. IIL 
Corodies, 101. 
Cowmen, 108. 
Cows, medicines for, 811. 
Creecenxio. 337. 
Cromwell, 836. 

Crusades, effect of on Rnglish Agri., 173. 
Cukeney, manor of, 147. 
CultivaUon of peas, 315; of wheat, 104^ 310. 
Cumberland, 181. 
Cunobelius, 18. 

Curtesy of England, tenants l^* the^ 886. 
Cyning, 59, 61. 
C^iesceat, UO, 118. 
Cytisa4,81. 


Dalton, 836. 

Dancgeld, 93, 164, 141. 

Davy, Bir Humphrey, 896. 

De Donis, statute of, 178, 266, 15a 

De la Pole, 261. 

De Trevisi Qerome, 198. 

Dean, Forest of, 211. 

Decums, 15. 

Deoumal system, 17. 

Deepinff Fen, 109. 

Demandant. 161. 

Demesne lands, detnition of. 76, 81, 87; 

labourers, 106 ; tenants in, 118. 
Denshiring, 840. 
Derby, Countess ol^ 870; customs In the town 

or, 160. 
Devonshire, 190. 
Dialogus de 8caooario» 117. 


Index. 


401 


Dio.U. 

IModoroB, 2. 

Disaolntion of the mon&Bterie9» 27X 

IHatraas, law of, 876. 

Ditching, 208, 321. 

Domhiirgh, 82. 

Domesday Book, 162. 

Dominioan Monastery, description of, 27& 

Dominium, 14; directum and atile» 178, 180. 

Dorf, 4i. 

Dower, tennre in, 386. 

Dowry, incident or, 142, 381, 882. 

Dragenm, 220. 

Drainage. 206; of fens, 840. 

Dredge, 821. 

Drench, 160. 

Dress restrictions, 224. 

Drill, 6. 

Drought, description of, 109. 

Droitwich salt, 226. 

Duces, 61. 

Duchy of Normandy, succession to. 170. 

Dnd Dudley, 860. 

Dumas, 336. 

Dunfermline, coal mining in, 211. 

Dunmow, Priory of, 140. 

Dymock of Scrirelsby, 148. 


Earldormen, 60. 

Barls, 104; palatine, 104. 

Bast Bilsington, Manor of. 147. 

Basterlings, expulsion of, 262. 

Bdgar's £aw8, 111. 116. 

Bdhiling. 60. 

EdiTiburyh MoyosiiM, 160. 

Edward I.. 170. 

Bdrid, 170. 

Bdward I., Quo Warranto and Hundred Bolls 

of, 238. 
Bdwy, 170. 

Egbert, excerptions of, 116. 
Bgypt, 6. 

Egyptian wheat, 6. 
Egyptians, 96. 
Elizabethan manor house. 306; Poor Laws, 

283. 
Emancipation of the serf. 222. 806, 382. 
Emnhyteutic system, 16, 22, 126. 
Enclosure Acts. 83, 214 ; system, 841 j system. 

origin of, 806. 
Endogamy, 61. 
English loyalty, 248. 868. 
Entails, attacks on, 260. 
Eori. 100. 

Equipment, incident of. 142. 
Erdlinges (or yerdlings), 167. 
Escheat, 142, 146. 381; propter defectum 

sanguinis, 142 ; prspter delictum tenentis, 

Bscnsge, 140. 

Eskim \ 62. 

Esogamy, 62. 

Esperduct, 211. 

Estate management, 86, 182, 804; roU, 180. 

Estienne, Charles. 387. 

EthelwolTs Charter, 100, 117. 

Bumenitts 28. 

Evelyn, John, 346. 


Fkdr, Abingdon, 226; St. Botolph's. 106; St. 
Ives, 108; Stourbridge, 226, 834; Win- 
chester, 226, 234. 


Familiara, 166. 

Farm festivals, 826. 

Fealty, 143. 

Feme ooyert, 267. 

Fen, cultivation of, 880. 

Feodaux, 02. 

Feoffee, 164^ 

Feoffment, 264. 

Ferling-seti, 167. 

FertlHserB, 33, 886. 

Feuar. 187. 

Fen-charters, 218. 

Feudal incidents, 8«ritaUon against, 820 ; land 

tenure, 139. 
Feudalism, abolition of, 863 ; Church influence 

on, 126, 132 ; essential features of, 120. 
Fiction of common recovezy, 261; of lest 


flrrant,84. 
n Die he 


Fim Die hemp, 326. 

Fine of alienation, 141. 

Fines, statute of, 264^ 331. 

Finnish nationality, 47. 

Fiscal poUcy, 241. 

Fitsherbert, 300, 807. 

Flats, 202. 

Flemings, 80i 

Flemish colony in Pembrokeshire, 168 ; hus- 
bandry, 334; immigrants, 8j3. 880. 

Fleta, 217, 273. 

Flnren,44. 

Folcland, 11, 60, 80, 82 ; end of, 216. 

Food for winter, 201, 321. 

Forest laws, 180, 831, 376. 

Forestry of the Normans, 170. 

Formedon, writ of, 262. 

Fosse Way, 287. 

Frank muriage, tenure by, 886. 

Frankalmoigne, 148. 

Frank-pledge, 64, 68, 69. 

Freeholders, court of, 384. 

French feudal land tennre, 91. 

Freoh borh, 70. 

Fridborh, 70. 

Friling, 00. 

Frisia,60. 

Frisians, 63. 

Fruit cultivation, 276, 344 

Fr omentum, 16. 

Furlong, 168. 

Fustel de Coulanges, 43. 

Fyrd, 120. 


Gabelle. 243. 

Gad, 211. 

Gafol land, 87; pence, 87 1 ploughing, 87. 

Oalgacus, 28. 

Game l^islation, 876. 

Gaol fever, 180. 

Garb, 211. 

Gardens, 874. 206, 841 

Gardening, 274. 

Gavelkind, 178 ; custom of, OL 

Gay Lnssac, 336. 

Gebur, 87. 

Geese. 4, 206, 839. 

Gemeindes anger, 44, 88. 

Geneat's land, 87. 

Gens. 11, 60. 

Gentleman, origin of term, 268. 

Gtooponics. 6 

Georgics, 28. 

Gerarde, 276, 296. 

Gerefa, 134. 

D D 


402 


Index. 


Oermania, 43. 

QtrmAnio land tenure, eomparad with Anglo- 


Qeeith'B land, 87. 

Geirase of Tilbury, 156. 

Gilbert, 836. 

Gipsies, inroad of, 363, 

Olanville, 217. 

Gloaceater. 290. 

Qoata. 103. 170. 

Gomme, 8» 47, 160. 

Googe, Bamabj, 300, 327. 

Gooee f eatheri. 339. 

Oooseberriee, introdaction of, 296. 

Gothic race, 36. 

Go&t de terrain. 31. 

Gracohoa, Tiberina, 14. 

Grand sergeantry, 140, 351 ; inatsnoe of, 146. 

Graaa yrih, 88. 

Greeks, 6. 64. 

Greens of Norton, 148. 

Gregorian calendar, 202, 316. 

Gregory, 323 ; the Pope's reply to St Aogna- 

tine, 108. 
Groaeteste, Bishop of Lincoln, 181 196. 
Goild ohariUea, 246. 
Gnilds, splendour of, 270. 
GQi«)t,37. 
Gymneaia, 28. 


Hadenham lerel, 339. 

Halmote, 63. 

Hams, 226. 

Hanse merohanta, 236, 26L 

TfannaciTi, 46. 

Harris, Richard, 291. 

Harrison, 297, 300, 300, 811 ; deaoription of 

Tudor life, 290. 
HarUib. 335, 338. 

Harvest festivities, 326; wages, 201, 324. 
HawUns, 262. 
Hay ward, 192, 193. 
Hearth religion, 63. 
Hebrews, 10, 64. 
Hedges, 104. 
Hedging, 208, 321. 
Heligoland, 37. 
Hemp, cultivation of, 324. 
Heptarchy, 59, 61. 
Heraldry, 266. 
Herbal, Gerardes, 276, 296. 
Heremites. 224. 
Heresbaob, 337. 
Heriot, 79, 101, 141, 148. 
Herrara, 337. 
Herzog, 44. 
Hesiod, 6. 

Hesleyside larder, 161. 
Hidage tax. 152, 241. 
HidariuB, 168. 

Hide, 120 ; definition of, 154. 
Highlanders, 3. 
Highways, 287 ; condition of, 372 ; repairs to, 

873 ; to markets, 235. 
Himiloo, 2. 
Hippocras, 131. 

History of founding Battle Abbey, 16^ 
Hof , 44. 
Holbein, 293. 
Homage. 126. 146. 
Homines, 168. 
Hostel, 196. 


Houghton, John, 688. 

House looker, 887. 

Hovels, 324. 

Hubert Hall. 801. 

Humfred of Hertfordshire, 170. 

Hundred, 42; court, 72; rolls of Bdward I^ 

160.228. 
Husbandlands, 187. 
Hn8earl,166. 


I 

Iberians, 2, 4fll 

loeni, 17. 

Iemi.8. 

Implenwnts of husbandry, 316. 

Incomes of the Stuart landed dauea, 961. 

Indulgence, deolantlon of, 355. 

Indian vlliage community, 0. 

InOeld, 167. 

Inigo Jones, 294. 

Inquisition of 19 Ed. L, 218. 

Irish husbandry, 3S6. 

Iron. 292; the price of, 211. 

Israelite, 7. 


\ 


James II., policy and character of, 338. 
Jansen, fiiemard, 283. 
Ja^Anese, 6. 
idgesofai 


Judges of 

Jngera^ 14. 

JnUaa Ca.Iendar, 202, 316. 

Jnriadiction in Stuart times, 362. 

Jury of Presentment, 64, 68. 

Jus prime nootia, 62. 

Justice in Eyre, 72; of the Forest, 180, 378. 

JusMces in Byre, description of an aaaiae, 189; 

of the Peace, 364. 
Jutes, 86. 


Karems, 61. 

Kemble, 10, 41. 

Kensos, 18. 

Kentish orchards, 291. 

Keokas, 51. 

Ket's rebellion, 806. 

King, Gregory, 362, 860, 

King's Brief, 246; Court, 127; Gabelle, 213; 

Hill, manorial custom at, 148 ; peaoe, 28S ; 

statistics, 360; Thane. 62. 
Kingsl^, Letter re feudal tenure, 168. 
Kitchen gardens, 276, 846. 


I-aboor laws, 222. 

LaBTiland, 80, 82. 

Lammas Day, 184, 202. 

Lancashire, 291; Ikrmtng, 313. 

Land and the poor, 280; and trade, connection 

of, 261. 
Land, conveyance of, 179: in its connection 

with the Chnioh. 106 ; laws, birth of, 171 : 

measures, 165 ; purchase of, 84. 
Land tenure, communal, 0: Hebrew, 10: 

Lntio, 16, 126 ; ocoupatio, 13 ; Boman. U : 

steel bow, system of, 218. 
Landed gentry, vicissitudes of fortune dnria; 

the Tudor and Stuart pei^ods, 368. 


Index. 


403 


Jjandlord and landowner, di£flBZ«noe between, 

SIO. 
liBndB, hire of, 202. 
Ijandaettas, 187. 
Ijangton, Sir Thomas, IW. 
XAriua.81. 
Ijouta^e, 226. 
liBStres, Manor of, 147. 
lAteran. Ck)nnci1 of, 170. 
Iditimers Farm, 310. 
lATOisier, 836. 
lAwee, Bit J., 836. 
liawing; 190. 

Iawb or the Confeasor, 175. 
IjRHQS, 60. 
Lead, 202. 

liOek, Antiquity of. 275. 
Itoet, basiness of. 372; Court of the, 969, 860! 
eztracte from theEoUa of, 887; jnd^e of 
record in, 867; Steward, buidnetis in, 864^ 
luetic land system, 15, 125. 
lieges Agrariff, 16. 
Legislature affecting markets, 235. 
Lenten earth, 219. 
Leohschot, 118. 110. 
Lesser thane, 62. 
Leu, 162. 

Lenca, or Lowy, 162. 
Leuds, 02. 

liber Censualis Anglica, 158. 
Liber de Wintonia, 153. 
Liber Niger of Peterborough, 1S4. 
Liber Kegis, 163. 

Liberi homines, 164 j tenentes, 210. 
Liberti. 16. 

Liberties, Charter of, 176. 
Libres, 02. 
Liebig, 380. 
Liming, 82. 
Lincoln, 280. 
Linen industry, 812. 
Lireriea, 263. 

Llrery of seisin, 148, 254, 256. 
Loams, 83. 
Lodlands, 218. 

Lombards, Monopolisation of trade b7, 862. 
London Hanse, 237. 
Lord^ demesne, 77 ; waste, 67, 76, 82. 
Loadas,00. 
Lovell, Captain, 880. 
Luoea, 208. 
LnndinarU, 100. 


M 

Maeaalay, 182, 853, 860. 

Magna Charta. 177. 

Mago.5. 

Ma&e, Sir H., 0. 

Maintenance, 266. 

Maitland, 64, 135. 

Malmesbnry MSS., 166. 

Manners of the Stuart squirearchy, 854. 

Manor, conformation of, 84; economy of, 86 ; 
formation of, 61 ; Grange, 101 ; live stock 
of, 204; of Aston Caution. 147; of Beau- 
champ, 218; of Brad well, 206; of Carleton, 
145 ; of Chipping, 887; of Cukeney, 147 ; of 
Cuxham, 203; of Dunmow, 140; of East 
Bllsington, 147; of Hawsteal. 80S; of 
King's Hill, 148; of Norton, 146 ; of Scri- 
▼elsby, 14^; of Serfs, 57; of St. John at 
Hackney, 202 ; of Thoniley, 887 ; of Tut- 
bdry, 140 ; of Weston, 887 ; of winslow, 
160; of Wigan. 105 ; of Wolrichston, 200; 
.origin of, 47, 61 ; roll, 194. 


Manorial ofBdalB, 260. 

Mansum, 164. 

Manures, 81. 

Market gardening, 34, 

Market tolls, 226. 

Mark of Freemen, 57 ; system, 86 ; Tentenio, 0. 

Markbam, 338, 350. 

Marriage, Incident of, 141. 

Maslin, 220. 

Meager, Leonard, 358. 

Mederepe, 220. 

MediflBval abbey lands, 167 ; acooimts, 184 ; 
bailiff, 180; casUe, 187; coaration, 218; 
common field, 185 ; cowman, 108 ; crafte, 
225; cultivation, 204; dairy, 207: diet, 
107; distinctions, 267; distribution of 
noUfeical power, 270; dress restrictions, 
224; estate management^ 182 ; fairs, 225 ; 
form management, 200; harvest wages, 
900; hawking party, 185; hay crop, 186: 
hayward, 102; labour laws, 223; land 
burdens, 238 ; land tenure, 200, 217 ; law- 
yer's views, 216 ; live stock, 204; meadow 
ground, 185, 208 ; manor house, 182, 805 : 
markets, 225; mills, 170; minerals, 211; 
parish, 182 ; ploughing, 900 ; poor relief, 
244; population, 233; radmen, !03 ; rents, 
208 ; scribe, 103 ; shepherd, 103 ; society, 
268; taacation, 240; tithes. 206; towns, 
238; vagrancy, 224; villeinage class, 219; 
waggoner, 198; wheat, area of, 229; wheat 
cultivation, 905; wheat exportation, 996; 
wool trade, 230. 

Meroatores stellaU, 228. 

Merchant adventurers, 262. 

Meroia,42. 

Mesnelord, 126, 164. 

Metayer system of land tenure, 218. 

Mets.MS.of, 116. 

Middle class, rising importance of, 968. 

Milee,164. 

MiUtaiy frontiers, 15. 

Milk, 207. 

Millstones. 226. 

Minerals, history of, 211. 

Ministri, 164. 

Mirabean, 120. 

Mixed tithe, 116. 

Molmen, 210, 220. 

Molnncius, 287. 

Monasteries, fall of, 978. 

Monastic diet, 181 ; gardening, 975 ; poor 
relief, 946. B , *~w 

Monk, 848. 

Moore, Sir Jonasb 868. 

Morat, 781. 

Momy, Due de, his views on Bussian land 
tenure, 214. 

Mortmain, statutes of, 148, 950. 

Moss reeve, 387. 

Multures, 170. 

Matter.Dorf. 44. 
M Beoht, 51. 


N 

Nal, 821. 

Narborough, manor of, 147. 

Nations, 167. 

Nature's unit, 50. 

Neglect of guard, 180. 

Nehalennia, 32. 

Newbattle, mining in, 211. 

Newcastle, miniog around, 211, 

Newport, Treaty of, 351. 

Newspapers, evolution of, 346, 


404 


Index, 


NiebQhr. IS. 

No&olaim, terring ihe right \sjt tNI» 

Norden, 838. 

Norfolk. 203 i Curminff, S13. 

Norman and Anglo-Saxon raoe zelaUonship, 
Ui. 

Norman barony, 128 ; olam diatinetiont, 168 : 
Oonqueflt, 123 : demeanea, MA ; land 
meaaorementa, 161; landed gentry, par- 
BDita of, 130; landtenora, 128^ 133; manor, 
133; taxation, 174. 

North Boad. 374. 

Northnmberland. 291. 

Norwe^f ian tar, 220. 

Nulaanoei, aaalae of, 376. 

Nnta, 208. 


Obenrall. WQliam of, 211. 
Oecnpatio, 12. 
Oifa's laws, 109. 
Olive, 27. 

Oabome, Edward, 262. 
0»ier beda, 170. 
Othos, 41. 
Outfleld, 187. 
Oxgang, 164, 161. 202. 


Pack saddle, 321. 

Padna, John of, 293. 

Pagi, 42, 61. 

PaTgrave, 83. 

Palissj, 337. 

PalladioB, 273. 

Panna«e, 96, 170. 

Pannel, 321. 

Pantler, 198. 

Paravail, 106. 

Parish movement, 110. 

Parochial 63 Btom, 116. 

Parson's profits, 243. 

Pa8ke.823. 

Passage, 226. 

Patria potestas, 60. 

Patriarohal theory. 61« 

Pea harvest. 326. 

Peacocks, 20S. 

Peasants, German and Bnglish rebellion. 807. 

Ped, 321. ' 

Penni. 283. 

Pensio, 120. 

Perch, 167. 

Personal tithe. 110. 

Peter's Pence, 100. 118. 

Petit sergeantry, 140 ; instances of, 140. 

Philippi, 81. 

Phlogiston theory, 390. 

Ph09riicians, 2. 

Piccage. 220. 

Piepowder, Ooort of, 226, 879. 

Piers Plowman, 209; Grede, qaotation from, 

270. 
Pigeon, 27, 338. 
Pig iron, origin of, 869. 
Pigment, 131. 


Pigs, 208. 
Pifgri - 


ifgrim Fathers, 10. 
Pipe Rolls, 164. 
Plat, 338. 

Platte, Sir Hasrh, 336. 346. 
Pliny, 26, 82, 290. 


Plonsrh land, 164, 187 1 Mondaj, 916 1 

Plow AUns, 110. 118. 

Poaching, 377. 

Poljandnc, 61. 

Poljohronioon, 987. 

Pontage, 220. 

Pontiam et viaram refeotio, UB. 

Poor Belief. 244. 

Popolation in Norman times, 100 % of Bngland, 

301. 
Popular risings, 17. 280, 808. 
Portoria tax, 10, 129. 
Possessores, IS. 

Potato cnltnie, evolntlon of, 860L 
Poultry, 206; dnng, 33. 
Prasntagns, 17. 
Pre-Aryan race, 48. 
Preoarial services, 220. 
Preoationes, 108. 
Predial service. 220 ; tithe, 118. 
Pre-emption, abases of, 362. 
Prepoaiti Hnndredomm, 03. 
Preston in Haddingtonshire, Ooal-mJnlng to. 

Prices of meat, 228; wha«t,228. 
Priestley, 330. 
Primer seisin. 141. 
Prlmogenitnrsy 91, 141. 
Primes inter pares, 41, 67. 
Prinoipes, 01. 
Prisage of wine, 241. 
Procurator flsoi, 10, 2L 
Provost, 186. 
Ptolemy, 37. 

Purveyance, abases ot 868 ; agitation against, 
820; and pre-emption, inoident of ,140. 


Quadripartite distribution of tUhe, U4. 

Qaesnai, tables of, liao. 

Quia Bmptores, Statute of, 142^ 177. 

Quo Warranto Bolls, 228; Stotntea of, SU. 


Babbit, 27. 

Badmannl and Badchenistres, 108. 

Badmen, 198. 

Baines, 187. 

Baleigh, Honour of, 148. 

Bansom. Incident (»;, 142. 

Beobasing, 886. 

Bectitudines, Singula ^um Personanim. 190. 

Befectory, abbey, 188. 

Begal jurisdiction, 137. 

BAlief. Incident of, 141, 142, 

Beliefs. 141, 

Beligious views of Bnglish Sovereigns, 360. 

Benaissance architectnre, 290. 

Bes mancipi, 46. 

Bes nee mancipi, 48. 

Bestoration of the monarchy, 8l8i» 

Beve. 72. 

Bevolution, 360. 

Bex. 01. 

Bicharda de Bnlos, 100. 


Biggs, 187. 
Btparia 


ian ownership and rights, S70. 
Bo'gationtide, 273. 
Bofsers, Professor, 164, 229, 861. 
Boman agncultare, 29; land tenure, 
plough, 80 1 steed, 30. 


lit 


Index. 


405 


Komans, 64. 

Roees, introdaction of, 205. 

Rotariers, 131. 

Rowland de Saroere. 146. 

Royal demesaes, 81 ; Society, 868. 

Raudan land tennre, a Frenchman's yiews 

on, 214. 
Rneticne, 167. 
Rye House Plot* 866. 


s 

Sao. 88, 64. 

Sacae, 37. 

Sacha and socca, 166. 

Baladin tithe, 177, 241. 

Salt, 226. 

Saracenic hnsbandrj, 178. 

Saxon Ohronide, 62, 168. 

Saxon's Halmote, 135 ; plough harness, 886 : 
sea wolves, 68; sheriff's tourm, 136. 

BazODS, 86, 37 ; and Nornuus, distinction of, 
264.. 

Soarborongh, onstoms in, 160. 

Soot, Reginald, 300. 

Scotch diet, 337 ; husbandry, 888. 

Scriptnra, 16, 17. 

Scmtton, 88. 

Bcntage, 143. 160, 841. 

Scyremote, 68. 

Scythian, 37. 

Seame, 118. 

Sea wrack as manure, 887. 

Seebohm, 9, 47, 81, 160. 

Seeddrill, First mention of, 369. 

Seignorial Ctourts, 71, 131, 383 ; court of the 
13th century, description of, 136 ; house- 
hold arrangements, 866; meals, 264; 
powers, 69; social grades, 887 : splendour. 

Seisin, Uvery of, 148. 

Seneca, 17. 

Seneschal, 134, 183, 188; training of, 137, 196. 

Serf, Teutonic, 39. 

Serbmds, 219. 

Seryi, 16, 167. 

Servientes, 164. 

Beztary, 163. 

ShawB, origin of, 388. 

Sheep fanning. 208 ; rot, 841. 

Sherefa, 73. 

SheriilB tonrm, 63, 68. 

Ship money, 331. 

Shipton. Village of, 160. 

Shots, 202. 

Shrovetide. 826. 

Silos, first mention of, 369. 

Sixteenth-century farming, 318, 

Skirbeck Sluice. M). 

Slavonic nationality. 47. 

Sloley of Sloley. 148. 

Small Holdings Act, 811. 

800,22.64. 

Socman, 63, 166. 

Solius. 163. 

Somerset. 290, 848. 

Soul 80hot» 118. 

Spanish husbandry, 178. 

Spenoe. 168. 

Spice cake. 131. 

St. Botolph's Fair, 198. 

St. Ives* Fair, 188. 

St. John at Haokn^, 808. 

8tah],886 

Stannaries, 818. 

Staple, 880. 


State, connection of with land, 119; contro- 
versy over Uxe Uthe. 113. 

Statute merchant, 181. 

Statute of Articnlo Oleri, 246 ; De Donis, 178, 
866; Fines, 864, 331; Merton. 88, 816; 
Mortmain, 260, 277; Nonclaim, 266; Quia 
Emptores, 83. 176, 267; Uses, 268; II. 
Westminster, 216; Wills, 866. 

Statutes of Quo Warranto, 816; Premunire, 
877; Provisors, 877. 

Statutes relating to fairs and markets, 887. 

Bteelbow system of land tenure, 818 ; The 


garb or esperduct of, 211. 
iteelyard. 286. 268. 


SI 

Steward, 78. 

Steward's life on an estate, 304. 

Stinted pastures, 825. 

Stoneley, Manor of, 147. 

Stones, the two architects, 294. 

Stourbridge Fair. 826. 834. 

Strawberries, 876. 380. 

Stnart acreage under cultivation,' 860; age, 
ethics of the. 369; agricultural literature, 
368: writers, 836; agriculture. 838; ar- 
boriculture. 843; cider industry. 344; 
Court Baron, 368; 380; Ckiurt Leet, 306, 869 ; 
estate management. 866. 888; gardens, 
844; gentry, 834» 363 ; gentry, disaffection 
of, 866 ; manners of, 864 ; religious views 
of, 866; hop gardens. 848 ; {nrisdiotioOj 
868; Kings, characters of, 888; land 
laws, 860; literary anquirements, 869; 
manor houses, 864 ; market gardens, 843 ; 
meadow lands, 848 ; means <» locomotion, 
878; orchards, 848; neriod, game legisla- 


tion of, 876; law of torts in, 869; popu- 
lation, 861 ; t>nvalence of crime, 368 ; 
wars, 833. 

Btubbs, Bishop, 64; summazy of landed in- 
terest, 268. 

Bnbfendarii, 164. 

Subinfeudation, 86. 127. 

Succession to estates, law of» 179. 

Sussex. 292 ; iron. 220. 

Swainmote, 180. 

Swine, 6 ; Management of, 184. 

Symbols, bse in conveying land, 180. 


Tacitus, 87. 

Taint, 164. 

Tallage, 841. 

Taltarum, suit of, 863. 

Tarello, 837. 

Tavemer. J.. 801. 

Taxation. 841. 

Team, 88. 

Terns loaf, 818. 

Tenant in caplte, 164; in chief, 187; in tail, 

863 ; to the praecipe, 863. 
Tenure, Bmphyteutio, 88; in oapite ut de 

corona, 164 ; in oapite ut de honore^ 164. 
TerendelU, 199. 

Terra, 162; regis, 07; villanorum. 801. 
Terrace cultivation. 68 ; husbandry. 84. 
Teutonic agriculture, 89 : character, 66; oom- 

munity, 40; habits, 88; land tenure, 89. 
Theows, 88. 

Thomley, Manor of, 887. 
Thorpe, 293. 
Thrave, 163. 
Threefield system, 48. 
ThryflkUow, 824 
Thnoydides, 47. 
TUDage, State encouragement of, 800L 

B E 


4o6 


Index. 


Timber, 168. 

Tin Iclando, 1 ; mining, 219. 

Tithe, 10; dispoMkl of, 116; dfttribntion, tM ; 

doM, 306; incidence of, MS; eonroee of, 

116. 
Tithinir men, 68. 
Tithes, bT onetom, 116; de jure. 116; aztm 

pMOohiftI, 117; history of. 106. 
ToU,tt. 
Tolls, 836. 
Ton end force, 186. 
Tort^ law of. 868. 
Totem, 61. 

Trade and land, connection of. 861. 
Trades-Unionism, legislation against, 388. 
Trees, rarieties of, 848. 
Tribal houses, 68; lands. 40. 
Tribute. 16. 

Tribntum capitis, 16 ; soli, 16. 
Trinity system of cnltiTatinn. 169. 
Trinoda Keoessitaa. 120, 129. 2ds. 
Tripartite distribution of tithes. 1 14. 
Trumpin«ton. William of. 291. 
Trusts. 866. 
Tudor agricultural writors. 300 ; copyholder. 

808 ; countij scenes, 287 ; estate economy. 

800; farm mary. 318; farming, 818; gar- 


dens, 306. 820; hisrhways, 267; houses, 
807; husbandry furniture, 816; land 
agent, 808; land legislation, 340 ; tenure. 


806; landlord, 803; leaseholder, 302; 

liTing,307; market communications, 821 ; 

meals, 307: plan, 388; pleasanoes, 396; 

poor reliez. 381; road legislation, 880; 

Tillage. 306 ; winter food. 831. 
Tun. 67. 
Turgot. 130. 

Turnip onltnre, evoluti m of, 859. 
Turnpike roads. 380; tolls, 380. 
Tusser's work, 816. 
Tutbury, honour of. 140. 
Twelfth night, 336. 
TwifUlow, 834. 
Tyw,l, 


U 

Ultimus hseree, 881. 

Uses, 361, 263. 

Utrecht^ Bishop of, 243 ; Treaty of, 860. 


Vagrancy, legislation againBt^ 234, 347. 

Valor Ecclesiasticus, 377. 

Varro, M., 81. 

Vasoulum, 168. 

Vanghan, 838. 

Vavasour, 136, 166. 

Vectisales, 16. 

Venamum, 81. 

Vorolamians, 18. 

Vice comites, 63. 

Vici. 41, 61. 


Villeins in gross and regardant, 166, 336^ 

VUleinage.life of, 301 ; meal* of» 300i 

Vineyaids, 170. 

Vinogradofl. P.. 66. 166. 161. 166. 

Virgate, 156. 

Virg»rlna, 167. 

Von Manrer, K.» 41. 

Vortigem. 66. 

Voaohee, 363. 


w 

Walter of Henley. 166, 188. 

Wanty, 821. 

Wapentake. 43, 68. 

Ward of the Sea, 248. 

Wardship. 141. 144. 381. 

Warranty, 363. 

Warren, the Earl's title to landsi. 316. 

Warwick. C«ourt Leet at, 871. 

Warwick's feasts, 363. 

Warwickshire, 300. 

Waste, acts of, 386 ; caUle on, 186 ; dispute 

over, 314. 
Water, rights of ownership to, S7i. 
Watling Street. 388. 
Wat Tyler. RebeUion of, 380. 
Wattle and danb, 86. 
Wealhs.88. 
Weston. 888. 
Weston, Manor of. 887. 
Wheat, area of. in Middle Ages. S30 ; flnetua- 

tlons in price of. 338. 800; yieul of. 330, 

810. 
Whit lether, 831. 
Whitfeington. Dick. 36L 
Wigaa, Manor of, 196. 
WiUiam of Oranm, his advent, 986. 
Willoughby, BirPrancis, 204. 
Winohelsey Archbishop, constitatlon <^ 117. 
Winchester Fair. 336, 334. 
Winslow. Manor rolls of, 160. 
Winter, oatUe feeding in, 823. 
Witangemote, 60. 
Wolrionston Manor. 800. 
Wolsey. 370, 307. 
Wontnersham, 836. 

Wool grants. 833 ; staple, 230 ; trade. 888,806. 
Worledge, 336. 

Worledge's chemical knowledge, 386. 
Wreckage, tithe on. 348. 
Wrenoc of Shropshire. 148. 
Writ ad quod damnum, 238; of Klegit, 181; 

fbnneooD. 363; right doee, 388. 


Yeoman, 68. 
Yerdlini " '" 
Young i 


Terdlingtf, 167. 
~~ Irthur, 00, 1 


Zemindar, 31. 
Zante currants. 306. 


Bvtler k TauMr, TIm Bflwood Printing Work*. FtMU. Bod London. 




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