The Agrarian Problem in the Sixteenth Century

by R. H. Tawney

FOOTNOTES:

[263] I am inclined to think that an investigation of the manorial records of the fifteenth century would show a considerable decrease in the number of customary tenants, not as a result of evictions, but simply as a consequence of one man buying out another and forming one larger holding out of two or more smaller ones. The evidence for this is as follows: (1) When several holdings pass to one man there must be a diminution unless more land is brought under cultivation. Such an agglomeration of holdings has been shown to be very frequent. (2) A comparison of fifteenth and sixteenth century surveys with those of an earlier date shows a marked diminution in the number of customary tenants (a) before complaints as to enclosure become loud, and on manors where there is no trace of enclosing by lords or large farmers; (b) on manors where more land is cultivated by the customary tenants than at an earlier date. Thus at Haversham there were 52 tenants of all kinds in 1305, 35 in 1458, 14 in 1497 (Victoria County History, Gloucestershire, vol. ii. pp. 61–62). On six Northumbrian manors, where there is no sign of evictions on a large scale, there were 82 customary tenants in 1294, and 37 in 1567, and where intermediate surveys enable one to narrow the limiting points, one finds that there has been a considerable diminution before the end of the fifteenth century. On the four tithings, of South Newton, Childhampton, Stovord, and Little Wishford, which made up the manor of South Newton, customary tenants numbered at the beginning of the fourteenth century 32, 7, 13, 13, and in 1567 10, 3, 7, 1, the average holding having grown from 10-1/2 to about 43 acres (Roxburghe Club, Pembroke Surveys). At Sutton Warblington there were in 1351, 28 customary tenants, and in 1568 there were 7, while the average acreage of each tenant’s holding had increased enormously (Crondal Records, Baigent). At Dippenhall and Swanthrop, two tithings of the manor of Crondal, the customary tenants numbered 40 in 1287, 24 in 1568, while the average size of their holdings had risen from between 18 and 19 to just under 35 acres. At Aldershot the number of customary tenants during the same period fell from 48 to 37 (ibid.). Such figures are of course full of pitfalls. In the North border warfare reduced the population, and the effects of the Great Plague have to be considered. The great growth in the size of holdings does, however, suggest that a diminution in the number of customary tenants may have occurred without any encroachments being made by lords on the customary land, and merely through one tenant buying up the land of another.

[264] Thus the yeomen seem to have increased in prosperity at the end of the eighteenth and in the early nineteenth century (though at the same time large classes of agrarian workers were suffering terribly), because the rise in prices made corn-growing a gold-mine. The collapse came probably after 1815 (see Johnson, The Disappearance of the Small Landowner, chap. vii.).

[265] Crondal Records (Baigent), p. 132–133, Rental of 1287: “The same Hugh holds certain encroachments on payment of 3 ploughlands' worth, 3 hens, and 3d. at the said term." “Emma of Wyggeworthhall ... holds certain encroachments on payment therefor 11s. 6d. and one ploughland’s worth.” These documents throw much light on the whole process of the extension of cultivation over the waste.

[266] Crondal Records (Baigent), pp. 116–120.

[267] Camden Society, 1857. Rental and Custumal of the Manor of Brightwalton. Under the heading virgators it is said, “If they do the full day’s work set out above each of them ought to have his rent reduced 12d.” Under the heading of villeins holding assarted land it is said, “Be it known that no customary tenant shall have any reduction of rent of the lands which he holds by way of assart or in the common of Greeneholt for any office or work to be done for the lord.”

[268] Camden Society, Inquisition of the Manors of Glastonbury Abbey, Brentmarsh, 1189. A tenant holds "1 acre de terra arabili in dominico, utilius esset quod esset in manu domini.”

[269] e.g., on the Devonshire, Somerset, and Cornwall manors surveyed by Humberstone temp. Phil, and Mary (Topographer and Genealogist, vol. i.).

[270] MS. Transcript by A.N. Palmer of the Survey of the Manor of Holt, 1620 (Wrexham Free Library, Ancient Local Records, vol. ii.).

[271] Scrope, History of the Manor and Barony of Castle Combe, p. 258 (1440–-1550).

[272] Victoria County History, Suffolk. I quote the writer’s remarks in full. “The bailiff’s accounts for the manor begin in that very year [1381], and the one striking feature in them is the system of leases which appears to have gradually displaced other kinds of tenure since the time of the pestilence. A few are for forty years, but most are for ten or six years.... The land so leased is not mainly demesne land. It belongs largely to villein tenements that have fallen into the lord’s hands, and the process of consolidation described had already taken place at Mildenhall. The land held by John Kelsynd on a ten years' lease includes, for example, '3 acres of Frere's, Hayward’s and Willway’s tenement in Bradinhawfield, 1 acre of Holmes' tenement in Suttonfield, 5 acres of Zabulo's tenement in one piece at Lambwash,' and the rent of the whole 22 acres is 31s. 1d., or nearly 1s. 5d. an acre, an extremely high rent for land not stated to be meadow or pasture.”

[273] Scrope, History of the Manor and Barony of Castle Combe, p. 203.

[274] Massingberd, Ingoldmells Court Rolls, Introduction, p. xxx.

[275] Ibid.

[276] Stubbs, Constl. Hist., vol. ii. p. 479, n. 5.

[277] The word “usury” denoted in the Middle Ages and in the sixteenth century not merely exorbitant interest on a loan, but any oppressive bargain, including the raising of prices, the beating down of wages, and the rack-renting of land (see e.g. A Discourse on Usurie, by Thomas Wilson, 1584). The phrase “a great taker of advantages" comes from a complaint by the people of Hereford against an unpopular divine who lent money at interest and rack-rented land (S. P. D. Eliz., cclxxxvi. Nos. 19 and 20), and the phrase “weapon bodeth peace" from an account of an agrarian dispute in Lancashire—it is the sort of grim joke that stubborn and humorous people would appreciate—in L. and P. Henry VIII., vol. xiii., Pt. II., p. 535. “On Sunday night Wheateley sent his daughter to bid him to come to Parson’s Close to mow Mr. Tempest’s meadow there. Had heard that whoever should mow the meadow should be beaten off the ground, and sent to ask if he should bring a weapon. Wheateley sent word again 'howe weapon boded peace, therefore bring his weapon with him.' Brought his bow and shafts.”

[278] For the popular attitude towards enclosures see below, pp. [313–340], and Leland (quoted Hone, The Manor and Manorial Records, p. 117): “The Duke of Buckingham made a fair park by the Castle of Thornbury, Gloucestershire, and took very much fair land in, very fruitful of corn, now fair lands for coursing. The inhabitants cursed the Duke for those lands so enclosed.” I cannot refrain from quoting the following passage (Topographer and Genealogist, vol. iii): “To the Right Honble. House of Parliament now assembled, the Humble Petition of the Mayor and Free Tenants of the Borough of Wootton Basset in the Countie of Wilts, Humble sheweth to this Honourable House" [that their common has been seized and enclosed by the lord of the manor, who] “did divers times attempt to gaine the possession thereof by putting in of divers sorts of cattle, in so much that at length, when his servants did put in cowes by force into the said common, many times and present upon the putting of them in, the Lord in his mercy did send thunder and lightning from heaven, which did make the cattle of the said Francis Englefield [the lord of the Manor] to run so violent out of the said ground, that at one time one of the beasts was killed therewith; and it was so often that people that were not there in presence to see it, when it thundered would say, Sir Francis Englefield’s men were putting in their cattle into the land, and so it was, and as soon as those cattle were gone forth, it would presently be very calm and fair, and the cattle of the towne would never stir, but follow their feeding as at other times, and never offer to move out of the way.” For the allusion to invoking the devil, see Moore, The Crying Sin of England, &c. It was said that the grantees of monastic estates died out in three generations (Erdeswick, Survey of Stafford, ed. Harwood, p. 55). The same was said of enclosers (Moore, op. cit.).

[279] See the ballad of Nowadays (1520):

“Envy waxeth wonders strong,
The Riche doth the poore wrong,
God of his mercy sufferith long
The Devil his workes to worke.
The Townes go downe, the land decayes;
Of cornefeldes playne layes,
Gret men makithe now a dayes
A shepecote in the Church.

The places that we Right holy call
Ordeyned ffor Christyan buriall
Off them to make an ox-stall
These men be wonders wyse;
Commons to close and kepe,
Poor folk for bred to cry and wepe;
Towns pulled down to pastur shepe,
This ys the newe gyse.”

[280] “The Leveller’s Petition" (Bodleian Pamphlets, 1648, c. 15, 3, Linc.).

[281] Fitzherbert, Surveying: “I advertise and exhort in God’s behalf all manner of persons, that ... the lords do not heighten the rents of their tenants or cause them to pay more rent or a greater fine. A greater bribery and extortion a man cannot do than upon his own tenants, for they dare not say him naye, nor yet complain.” Norden, The Surveyor’s Dialogue, Book III.: “Lords should not depopulate by usurping enclosures, a thing hateful to God and offensive to man.”

[282] Victoria County History, Nottinghamshire, vol. ii. p. 282.

[283] 39 Eliz. c. i.

[284] Fitzherbert, Book of Husbandry. Norden, op. cit.: “One acre enclosed is worth one and halfe in common." Commonweal of this Realm of England, p. 56. Lee, A Vindication of a Regulated Enclosure.

[285] Commonweal of this Realm of England, p. 49: “That which is possessed of many in common is neglected of all.”

[286] Fitzherbert, Surveying, chap. xl.

[287] Commonweal of this Realm of England, p. 49. Victoria County History, Essex. I am inclined to say “almost certainly" rather than “very probably" (see below, pp. [167] and [262–263].

[288] Trans. R. H. S., New Series, vol. vi., and The Domesday of Enclosures.

[289] Roxburghe Club, Surveys of the Manors of William, First Earl of Pembroke. The manors are South Newton, Washerne, Donnington, Knyghton Estoverton and Phiphelde, Wynterbourne Basset, Byschopeston, and South Brent and Huish (the last in Somersetshire.) The manor where most is enclosed by the customary tenants is Donnington.

[290] e.g., R.O. Rentals and Surveys, Gen. Ser., Portf. 14, No. 70, Barton (3 & 4 Ph. and Mary): “J. Whiting ... 1 close of 7 acres by copy ... J. Whiting ... 1/2 virgate ... 1 intake of 2 acres by copy.”

[291] All Souls' Maps (survey on back of map of Salford).

[292] Ibid., Weedon Weston.

[293] Ibid., Edgeware and Kingbury. All these four instances come from the last decade of the sixteenth century.

[294] e.g. Whitecote (Salop) 40 acres, and at Wyndeferthing (Norf.) 25 acres are enclosed by the villata (see Leadam, Trans. Royal Hist. Soc., New Series, vol. vi.).

[295] Roxburghe Club, Surveys of Pembroke Manors. At Washerne nineteen out of twenty-one customary tenants held separate pieces of meadow and pasture, the largest 7-1/2 and the smallest 3-1/2 acres, but usually almost equal. At Donnyngton, twelve out of thirty-two customary tenants had pieces of land “extractum de communia.” R.O. Rentals and Surveys, Duchy of Lancaster, Bdle. 3, No. 29, Agarsley (Staffs., 1611).; here the pasture appears to have been divided up among the copyholders, but there are considerable inequalities in their shares.

[296] Topographer and Genealogist, vol. i.

[297] Northumberland County History, vol. ix. In this case enclosure was carried out by the freeholders. But the procedure is similar to that at Ewerne. The allusion to “justice and right" shows what the reason for the intermixing of strips had been.

[298] We know why lords wanted to enclose much better than we know why tenants wanted to enclose. Here is a petition from a freeholder (Northumberland County History, vol. v. undated): “To the Right Honourable Earl of Northumberland, William Bednell ... gent., humbly prayeth: That where the said village of Over Buston is held in common ... it would please your good lordship to consent that partition may be made of the same, and that also there may be convenient exchange of the arable lands lyinge in the common fields there to be rateable reduced into severall by the same partition for the reasons under-written.

“First, for that the common and pasture of the said village lying open, unfenced upon the common and fields of [Wordon and Bilton], wherein are many tenants and great number of cattle, the profits of the same are continually by them surcharged, and your lordship’s tenants prevented.

“By reason hereof divers quarrels and variances have happened, and daily like to ensue between the tenants of both towns, by chasing, rechasing, and impounding of their cattle damage fezant, which cannot be kept out but by perpetual staffherding, to the great charge of your honour’s poor tenants.

“Your lordship’s tenants being four in number, unprovided to keep able horses by reason of the want of convenient pastures and meadow, may be enabled by this particion for that purpose.

“Inclosure would greatly strengthen the said village, and your lordship’s tenants, against the incursions of Scotts and foren ryders, which otherwyse, lying open, cannot be defended by the number there, who are forced to watch generally together every night, to their great charge and endurable toil.

“This breeding betterment to the soil and ease to your lordship’s tenants will augment your honour’s revenue there, avoid forren commoners, prevent contentions, enable your lordship’s tenants to do your honour their requisite service, and bind your orator to pray that your lordship live long in happy state.”

[299] Northumberland County History, vol. v. The Surveyor of Buston (1569).

[300] Ibid.

[301] For references to the discussion on this point, see below, p. 244.

[302] Davenport, History of a Norfolk Manor, p. 80.

[303] Scrope, History of the Manor and Barony of Castle Combe, p. 236.

[304] Massingberd, Ingoldmells Court Rolls, p. 276.

[305] M.D. Harris, Coventry Leet Book, vol. ii., pp. 445, 456, 510, and elsewhere.

[306] Hearnshaw, Court Leet Records of Southampton, passim, e.g. 1551: “Thomas Betts and Thomas Fuller continue to oppress the common with sheep, therefore they are fined 8s. each" (p. 21).

[307] e.g. The Commonweal of this Realm of England, p. 56: “And weare it not that oure grounde lieth in the common fieldes, intermingled one with another, I thincke also oure fieldes had been inclosed, of a common agreement of all the townshippe, longe ere this time.”

[308] See opposite, the map of part of Salford.

[309] Merton Documents, No. 5209, Rental of Ibstone (about 1600): “Item, Thomas Skott holdeth ix acres as it is estymed lieinge together in Tillage.” “John ... holdeth 16 acres of Lande lieinge together in Redfield.”

[310] Exchanges are not uncommon, e.g. Roxburghe Club, Pembroke Surveys, Manor of South Brent and Huish: “Note that the same Thomas with leave of the Court has exchanged the said acre lying near Appleworth with John Moore, customary tenant of the lord, for one acre lyinge in Holmefield.” Mr. Kolthammer has called my attention to a case (Ashford Court Rolls, 1605), in which a tenant gives up a number of half acre strips lying between the lands of another, and receives in exchange some strips of the latter which lie between his own.

[311] Victoria County History, Suffolk, Social and Economic History.

[312] Victoria County History, Suffolk, Social and Economic History.

[313] Crondal Records (Baigent), pp. 134, 149, 152, 154–155.

[314] “The defence of John Hales agenst certyn sclaundres and false reaportes made of hym" (Appendix to Miss Lamond’s introduction to The Commonweal of this Realm of England, p. liii.). Two things make the effect of the fifteenth century enclosures obscure. First, the pamphlets on popular grievances which begin in the sixteenth century were hardly possible before the general use of the printing press. Second, in the sixteenth century people appealed to the Tudor government for protection because it was strong enough to give it. In the fifteenth century there was no Government to preserve order, let alone protect the poorer classes. Even if there were, therefore, extensive enclosures producing depopulation, we might very well hear little of them. But, while confessing ignorance, I think Hales' statement compatible with the view expressed above and on page 138, note 1, that the fifteenth century was a time when the consolidation of holdings was going forward slowly through the small speculations of the peasants.

[315] A Vindication of the Considerations concerning Common Fields and Enclosures (Pseudonismus).

[316] Topographer and Genealogist, vol. i., Survey of Whitford: “I woulde wish that the same [the common] were divided among the tenants yielding some small rente ... the poore men with dyligence and labour woulde soon convert yt to amendement, and alter the nature thereof, but the ritche men will not consent to that, for yt is as good to them as theire several grounde or pasture. The poore are not able to store yt with cattle, nor to use the commodytie as they might do if welth woulde serve them. But the rytche do consume their own parts and their neighbouris also: and that is the cause they will not consent to the enclosure and partition thereof.”

[317] There is interesting documentary proof of the statements of surveyors. Warwickshire MSS. Quarter Sessions Records, Michaelmas, 1636: “Fforasmuche as this Courte is informed that Overhinton (?) in this countie consists of 30 yardlands, of which 22 are enclosed and 8 yardlands thereof residue in the possession of Thomas [surname illegible] do lie in the common fields, and whereas the same 8 yardlands lyinge in the comon fields have been heretofore rated equally and proportionablie in all levies with thother yardlands, the said 22 yard of inclosed land being worth xx [pounds], for every yardland and the seid other 8 yardlands being worth but after the rate of x the yardland, it is ordered that the said 8 yardlands shall from henceforth pay in all levies but after the rate of x pounds for every yardland and the said 22 yardlands after the rate of xx pounds for every yardland, unless the owners of the said 22 yardlands shall att the next sessions uppon convenient notice hereof to them given shewe cause to the contrarie.” The Justices do not understand the taxation of unimproved land.

[318] See Topographer and Genealogist, vol. i., for Mudford; for Newham and Tughall, Northumberland County History, vol. i.; for Southampton, Hearnshaw, Court Leet Records of Southampton.

[319] The Commonweal of this Realm of England, p. 49: “I meane not all inclosures, nor yet all commons, but only of such inclosures as turneth commonly arable lands into pastures; and violent inclosures, without recompence of them that have right to comen therein; for if land weare severallie inclosed, to the intent to continue husbandrie thereon, and everie man, that had Right to Common, had for his portion a pece of the same to himselfe enclosed, I thincke no harme but rather good should come thereof, yf everie man did agre theirto.”

[320] Fitzherbert, Book of Husbandry.

[321] Pseudonismus, 1654, Considerations concerning Common Fields and Enclosures.

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[PART II]
THE TRANSITION TO CAPITALIST AGRICULTURE

“The earth is thine, O Lord, and all that is contained therein; notwithstanding thou hast given the possession thereof to the children of men, to pass over the time of their short pilgrimage in this vale of misery. We heartily pray thee to send thy holy spirit into the hearts of them that possess the grounds, pastures, and dwelling places of the earth; that they, remembering themselves to be thy tenants, may not rack and stretch out the rents of their houses and lands; nor yet take unreasonable fines and incomes, after the manner of covetous worldlings; but so let them out to other, that the inhabitants thereof may be able to pay their rents, and also honestly to live, to nourish their families, and to relieve the poor: give them grace also to consider that they are but strangers and pilgrims in this world, having here no dwelling place, but seeking one to come; that they, remembering the short continuance of their life, may be content with that is sufficient, and not join house to house and field to field, to the impoverishment of others, but so behave themselves in letting out their tenements, lands, and pastures, that after this life they may be received into everlasting dwelling places; through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen."—A Prayer for landlords, from a Book of Private Prayer, authorised and set forth by order of King Edward VI.

“Nowe if I should demand of the gredie cormoraunts what they thinke should be the cause of sedition, they would saie:—'The paisent knaves be too welthy, provender pricketh them. They knowe not themselves; they knowe no obedience; they regard no lawes; they would have no gentlemen; they would have al men like themselves; they would have all things commune. They would not have us master of that which is our owne. They will appoint us what rent we shall take for our grounds.... They will caste down our parkes, and lay our pastures open.... They will compel the King to graunt theyr requests.... We wyll tech them to know theyr betters. And because they would have all in common, we will leave them nothing,'"—E. E. T. S., Crowley, The Way to Wealth.

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[CHAPTER I]
THE NEW RURAL ECONOMY

(a) Motives and Causes[ToC]

A common view of social development regards it as the outcome of irresistible causes working towards results which can be neither hastened nor averted, and treats the fact that events have followed a certain course as in itself an indication that no other course was possible. Whatever is has always been implicit in the past; the established fact rules by the divine right of being the only possible dynasty, and no scope is left for pretenders to contest or acts of settlement to alter its legitimate title. It is not surprising that such a theory should be peculiarly popular in interpreting economic history. On their frontiers even the most different forms of social organisation shade into one another. Each generation naturally sees in a strong light those regions of the past which reproduce the features with which it is familiar, and overlooks the existence of wide Hinterlands whose general features are quite different. Since important classes, like important individuals, find it difficult to believe in the truthfulness of any picture where they do not occupy the greater part of the canvas, they insensibly encourage a conventional interpretation of history, which lends an air of respectable antiquity to the legal and economic arrangements which favour them and which they favour, by treating such arrangements as an essential characteristic of civilisation itself. In reality, however, it is only by dragging into prominence the forces which have triumphed, and thrusting into the background those which they have swallowed up, that an appearance of inevitableness is given to existing institutions, which satisfies the desire to see them as links in an orderly chain of unavoidable sequences. Useful as the conception of a continuous development is, it can easily be carried too far. It is carried too far when it causes us to forget that a small alteration in the lie of the land might have caused the stream to take quite a different channel, and that the smoothly flowing waters of the plain are the outcome of a series of crises in the higher regions, where the spur of a mountain or a cleft in the rocks might easily have diverted their course into other directions. If we must talk of social evolution, we ought to remember that it takes place through the action of human beings, that such action is constantly violent, or merely short-sighted, or deliberately selfish, and that a form of social organisation which appears to us now to be inevitable, once hung in the balance as one of several competing possibilities.

Certainly the possibility that economic changes should have followed a quite different line from that which they actually have can hardly fail to strike the student of agrarian history. The facts, as we read them, do not lend unqualified support to the idea that the growth, at the expense of the little landholders, of great estates cultivated by hired labour was the inevitable result of irresistible forces, or that the new agricultural régime was a necessity on account of the sluggishness of the old. To an observer of agrarian conditions living about the year 1500, who looked back over the conditions of the last century, all the possibilities must have seemed to point in the direction of a continuous improvement in the condition of the peasantry. It is evident that the growth of prosperity among the small cultivators was leading from the beginning of the fifteenth century to the gradual consolidation of holdings, to keen competition for the use of land, and to increasing individualism in the methods of agriculture. Though the movement caused a diminution in the number of landholders, the diminution was very gradual. It was not the result of a sudden revolution affecting large numbers of tenants simultaneously; and even those who regarded enclosing with hostility were favourable to the process of gradual redistribution, which did not violate vested interests or cause any sensational disturbance. The appearance of the country would have changed, and the methods of cultivation would have improved. But there would have been no great cause at work to displace the peasantry from the soil, with the rapidity which entailed hardship, until a much later period than we are now considering. Obviously, however, it was not these slow internal changes in the manorial organisation which impressed observers. On the contrary, though they are noticed by the writer who took a scientific interest in agricultural questions, they are hardly mentioned by the majority of commentators on the life of the period, who were interested not in the technique of agriculture but in the social results of changing methods. What aroused their alarm and produced rioting and legislation was, as every one knows, a movement the distinctive feature of which was that it was initiated by lords of manors and great farmers, “the Graziers, the rich buchars, the men of law, the merchants, the gentlemen, the Knights, the Lords,”[322] in short by the wealthiest and most powerful classes, and that it was carried out frequently against the will of the tenants, and in such a way as to prejudice their interests.

As the small capitalist prepared the way for the great, the two movements were connected, and the simultaneous development of both of them explains the rather puzzling mixture of approval and criticism which is to be found in the comments of observers upon enclosing. But their economic and social results were very different. No doubt the incipient movement in the direction of reorganising national life on the basis of industry involved a breach with the customary methods of agriculture, which must in any case have caused a certain degree of dislocation. The development of the textile manufactures, which for two centuries were the chief source of English wealth, could not have taken place without the production of cheap supplies of raw material, and the growth of the towns was dependent on the saving of labour from agriculture. But in such changes the element of time—the speed at which the transition takes place—is all important, because upon it depends the feasibility of social readjustments to meet the new situation. The slow breaking up of the open field system, though it changed the methods of cultivation, might quite conceivably have effected only such a gradual diminution in the number of the small farmers, as to make the absorption into industry of those displaced comparatively easy. In so far as the changes of the sixteenth century were a social revolution, and not merely a gradual development, this revolution was the result not only of technical advances, but of the concentration of landed property and the development of new relationships between landlord and tenant. It is to the second of the two movements that we must now turn.

The new agrarian arrangements which we shall have to consider are called by the name of enclosure, and we will discuss later what exactly enclosure means in this connection. But there are enclosures and enclosures, and we shall do well to begin by drawing some distinctions. In the first place, then, the enclosing movement that will occupy us in this chapter has very little resemblance to the enclosure which we have considered in the last. It is carried out by great men, not by small. It proceeds wholesale, not piecemeal. It does not consist in many little cultivators rearranging their holdings by purchase, or sale, or agreement, but in one great proprietor or his agent consolidating small holdings into great estates. The new arrangements are imposed rapidly and with a high hand from without. They do not arise gradually from within through the spontaneous development of the peasants' needs and resources.

Again, the new movement bears very little resemblance to the rearrangements introduced by lords of manors, which, from an early date, have gone by the name of enclosing. Such rearrangements have not been few. People have talked about enclosing long before they have begun to lament enclosures. Not to mention the encroachments on the waste evidenced by the Statute of Merton, one finds the word “enclosure” used in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries to describe a variety of agreements made between lords whose lands were contiguous, or between lords and their free tenants, by which, instead of the parties concerned using a given area in common as their pasture, each surrenders his right of access to part of it, and obtains in return the right to use another part in severalty. The Abbot of Malmesbury[323] and the men of Niwentone come to an arrangement with Walter of [Asselegge] and the men of that village, whereby the monastery agrees to follow the customary routine in cultivating the land lying between Niwentone and Asselegge, and not to common on the marsh at Cheggeberge, getting in return exclusive rights of pasture over another marsh, and over the east field of Niwentone. The Abbot and Monastery of St. Peter's[324] of Gloucester make an agreement with Lord Thomas Berkeley whereby the former are “to have and hold in severalty and enclose and approve at their will" certain lands lying in Southfield “so that the said Thomas and his free tenants may not ... claim or demand common, but be excluded from it for ever,” and in return covenant that the latter may “enclose and approve their lands in all parts of the summit of the Pike of Coveleigh." Similar arrangements are made between the Abbot of Glastonbury[325] and a neighbouring landowner, between the Abbot of Cerne[326] and Robert of Bloxworth, and between the City of Coventry[327] and the master and brethren of the Trinity Gild of that town.

Whether it is a chance that such agreements seem to occur with special frequency in the records of religious houses we cannot say. It is possible that the perpetual character of a corporation made exclusive enjoyment at once more desirable and more feasible; a great abbey, like St. Peter’s of Gloucester, could pursue a continuous and far-sighted policy, and wait more than a generation to see the results of its experiments. Nor is it possible to understand the motives for such arrangements without information as to local conditions which is not easily obtainable. Sometimes the object was simply to protect land used for agriculture against the depredations caused by the game of a hunting landlord. Sometimes it would seem to have been to allow of a variation in the methods of agriculture, for example the sowing of a piece of land which could not be sown as long as several persons had right of pasture over it. Occasionally it was simply to realise an obvious convenience dictated by the lie of the land, each party gaining more by the exclusive use of pasture lying near to him, than he would lose by surrendering rights of common over that part which lay at a distance. Two points, however, are worth noticing. The first is the use of the word “enclosure.” Arrangements which go by the name “enclosure” are made at a very early date by the manorial authorities, and the latter would have been very much surprised to be told that they were inaugurating an agrarian revolution. The second is the character of these enclosures. They are in every way different from those which produced discontent in the sixteenth century. Though they affected the routine of cultivation they did not imply any abandonment of arable farming. Since they were carried out mainly by an exchange of rights they did not prejudice the tenants. Further, the disputes of which they were sometimes the result were not disputes between the lord of a manor and his tenantry, but between the lord and tenants of one manor and the lord and tenants of another, the ground of the disagreement being the difficulty of adjusting rights of common over the debatable land which must often have lain between two manors, and the division of interests being, as it were, a vertical, not a horizontal, division. In fact, these early examples of enclosure throw light on the later movement only by way of contrast. What we meet in our period is not isolated innovations of this character, but a general movement spreading across England from Berkshire in the South to Norfolk and Lincoln in the North-East, and affecting especially the corn-growing counties of the Midlands, a movement which meant a great extension of pasture-farming, a violent collision of interests between the manorial authorities and the peasantry, and a considerable displacement of population. Clearly some new and powerful causes must have been at work to account for it.

In the third place, the movement which goes by the name of enclosing in the sixteenth century has little similarity with the changes which proceeded under the same name from about 1700 to 1850, and which went on most swiftly in the reign of George III. It differs from them in method. In the eighteenth century Parliament is supreme. It is simply a committee of landlords and their hangers-on, and it makes Private Bill legislation a very easy method of getting enclosure carried out. In our period the Government, for reasons to be discussed later, sets its face against most kinds of enclosing, and such enclosures as are made are made in defiance of the law. It differs from them in motive. We must not prejudge the question whether the enclosures of our period were made mainly for pasture or for arable. But leaving this question on one side, we can point to certain broad contrasts. The ostensible motive of the eighteenth century enclosures is to improve the productive capacity of the land by spending capital upon it. This is the reason alleged when Private Bills are being promoted, and this is the aspect of the movement which causes it to be eulogised by the agricultural experts. Of course landlords were not philanthropists. As Mr. and Mrs. Hammond[328] have demonstrated, there were often very sordid motives behind their resounding platitudes on the advantage of throwing commons and small holdings into large compact estates, and, even when these were not too conspicuous, the interests of the smaller landholders were sometimes treated with the most outrageous injustice. Still the general nature of the movement was clearly in the direction of bringing under better cultivation land which had hitherto not been used to its full economic capacity. The price of foodstuffs after 1750 rose enormously, and the rise in prices offered a golden harvest to any one who would prepare land for producing larger supplies. The landlords of the eighteenth century did not merely enclose. They improved as well. Part of their increased rent rolls was interest on capital which they had invested for the purpose. Now in the sixteenth century there is very little trace of any movement of this kind. What improving is done, is done by the peasants themselves. There is no sign of the great proprietors making large capital outlays in order to render their estates more productive, except in the way of the trifling expenditure entailed by fencing, hedging, and ditching. They are by no means pioneers of agricultural progress. Enclosing is profitable to them not because it enables them to convert barren heaths into smiling corn-fields in the manner described by Arthur Young, but because it enables them to use the land as they please, to let it down to pasture when the price of wool is high, to employ few labourers on it instead of many, and, possibly, to add to their own estates part of their neighbours' holdings. They do not bring under cultivation land which would otherwise lie waste. On the contrary, very often they turn into a waste land which would otherwise be under cultivation. Whether the picture which represents the eighteenth century enclosures as the effort of an energetic and public-spirited class to overcome old-fashioned prejudices by applying the resources of science to agriculture is veracious or not, we need not now inquire. As far as the century and a half from 1485 is concerned it is altogether out of place.

The changes which we are about to describe have at once a social and an economic reference. The former is the aspect which receives most attention from contemporaries. They lament the decay of the peasantry, the embittered relations between classes, the distress and discontent caused by the new agrarian régime. They are usually not much concerned with the economics of the situation. Economic issues are not yet separated from questions of personal and public morality. To find subtle reasons why it is unavoidable that a large number of persons should be impoverished seems to them very like condoning a crime. Some excuses only aggravate the offence, and if men are cursed with a neighbour who insists on fulfilling economic laws by raising prices or taking usury, they are less likely to discuss his conclusions than first to present him for breaking the statutes and then to break his head for his bad principles. So they judge the dominant movement by its fruits, and its fruits seem very evil. But to us the economic problem is the primary one. The occurrence of rapid changes in the structure of an old and stable society implies either some radical revolution in the basis of economic life, or some great change in men’s conception of social expediency, or, what is most likely, an economic and a spiritual change occurring together. To understand its effect we must understand the sort of economic environment from which it springs.

In the first place, then, the age of the Tudors is a commercial age, and it becomes more commercial as the century goes on. No doubt it is only of certain classes and in certain relations of life that such a statement is true. The permanence of economic arrangements, which makes Froude declare that at the end of the fifteenth century the model of the upper classes was still the chivalry of the Arthurian legends, is seen still more strikingly among the artisans and peasants, and it is only very slowly and painfully that they are drawn into the net woven by the growth of capitalist trade. But it is with the classes who respond to the new movement that the power of the future, though not its graces, lies, and it is through the widening of the influence of commerce and commercial transactions that the economic developments most typical of our period take place. The age is a commercial one in the sense that much attention is given by Governments from the reign of Henry VII. onwards to fostering the conditions which promote trade and industry. This is not the place to discuss the meaning of Mercantilism or the truth of Bacon's[329] epigram that Henry VII. “bowed the ancient policy of this State from consideration of plenty to consideration of power." Though in the reign of Henry VIII. the State is almost a religion, one can easily exaggerate the influence of its interference even in that much governed age. Nevertheless no one who looks at the Statutes, or the Acts of the Privy Council, or the Domestic State Papers for the reigns of Henry VII., Henry VIII., and Elizabeth, can fail to realise that much of the time of Governments is occupied with devising measures which are intended to hasten industrial and commercial development. There is a settled habit of mind with regard to these matters which is quite conscious of its ends, though its means may often be ill-chosen. Every one is agreed that the encouragement of trade is the duty of the Prince.[330] There is a real popular demand for the intervention of the authorities, and they respond to it readily enough.

The age is a commercial one in the more fundamental sense that large economic changes are initiated by classes and individuals. Foreign trade grows enormously in the early years of Henry VIII., though certain branches of it suffer a temporary set back at the end of the reign.[331] The use of money, of which during the first quarter of the century there was a shortage, begins in the middle of it to spread throughout all classes. The industry which for the next three centuries is to be the chief manufacture of England becomes firmly established. Under the influence of widening markets, trade separates from trade.[332] Within single industries there is an increasing subdivision of labour; many links intervene between the group supplying the raw material and the group which hands the finished article to the consumer; a special class of capitalist entrepreneurs[333] appears to hold the various stages of production together, to organise supplies, and to find markets. Side by side with the development of manufacturing industry goes a development in the organisation of finance. In the woollen industry men buy and sell on credit. In tin-mining[334] and coal-mining[335] they sink shafts with borrowed capital. The first joint-stock[336] companies are established in the middle of the century with capitals of from £5000 to £20,000. There is a regular money market in London, there are bill brokers, arbitrage dealings between it and the Continent, adventurers who take advantage of the increasing fluidity of capital to speculate on the difference in the rates at which it can be borrowed in the Low Countries and in England. By the end of the century London has partially ousted Antwerp as the financial capital of Europe.[337]

In the second place, the social arrangements of England are such as to make it certain that this increasing activity will react almost immediately on agriculture and on agrarian relationships. There have been countries where a sharp line has been drawn between trade and agriculture, where the landowner could not engage in trade without degrading himself, where the tradesman could not buy up the noble's land.[338] But this has never been the case in England. In that precocious island the Lombards had hardly settled in Lombard Street, when Mr. Pole’s daughters discovered that the fine shades flourished their finest in country air, and there was a market for heiresses among the English aristocracy long before Columbus had revealed to Europe the Eldorado of the New World. From a very early date the successful merchant has bought dignity and social consideration by investing his savings in an estate. The impecunious gentleman has restored the falling fortunes of his house by commercial speculations, of which marriage into a merchant family, if not the least speculative, is not the least profitable. At the beginning of the sixteenth century both movements were going on simultaneously with a rapidity which was before unknown, and which must be explained as the consequence of the great growth of all forms of commercial activity. The rise of great incomes drawn from trade had brought into existence a new order of business men whose enterprise was not confined to the seaport and privileged town, but flowed over into the purchase of landed estates, even before the secularisation of monastic endowments made land speculation the mania of a whole generation. Great nobles plunged into commerce, were granted special trading privileges, and intermarried with the rising middle-class families who were often better off than themselves. In all ages wealth allies itself with wealth, and power with power. As soon as the appearance of rich merchant families creates a fresh and powerful interest in society, the old social system and the new[339] coalesce, and each learns from the other—the merchant how to make a display as a landed proprietor and a Justice of the Peace, the old-fashioned landlord how to cut down expenses and squeeze the utmost farthing out of his property in the best City manner. Even if the political and economic environment had remained unchanged, the mere formation of commercial capital and of a moneyed class could hardly have failed to work a slow revolution in agrarian relationships.

But the environment did not remain unchanged; and as a consequence, in economic affairs as in religion, the new order came, not gradually, but swiftly and with violence, sapping ancient loyalties, confronting with insoluble problems simple men who desired only to plough the land like their fathers, holding out to the privileged orders that prospect of suddenly increasing their wealth which is the most awful temptation from which any class can pray—if it will pray—to be delivered. On the side of politics a powerful motive for a change in the relations between landlords and tenants was supplied by the Tudor peace. In the turbulent days of the fifteenth century land had still a military and social significance apart from its economic value; lords had ridden out at the head of their retainers to convince a bad neighbour with bows and bills; and a numerous tenantry had been more important than a high pecuniary return from the soil.[340] The Tudor discipline, with its stern prohibition of livery and maintenance, its administrative jurisdictions and tireless bureaucracy, had put down private warfare with a heavy hand, and, by drawing the teeth of feudalism, had made the command of money more important than the command of men. It is easy to underrate the significance of this change, yet it is in a sense more fundamental than any other; for it marks the transition from the mediæval conception of land as the basis of political functions and obligations to the modern view of it as an income-yielding investment. Landholding tends, in short, to become commercialised. The meaning of this movement is best understood if one compares with the South and Midlands those parts of England where to the very end of the sixteenth century the older conditions survived. The surveys of many Northumbrian[341] manors reveal throughout this period of rapid agrarian changes the continuance of a very primitive condition of things. The holdings of the customary tenants are often almost rigidly equal; there is hardly any change in their numbers; son succeeds father, and grandson succeeds son, with only the very slightest disturbance. The manorial officials, who in the South were cursed as the agents of evictions and rack-renting, were in the North much concerned with keeping tenants on the soil. At Acklington the tenants, writes Clarkson, “must be helped and rather cherished for service sake.” At High Buston the holdings of the tenantry have been increased in order that “they should the better live and do their dutiful service to their Lord and master,” and a freeholder is rebuked for action which results in curtailing the commonable area on the ground that “the tenants be but poor men and be not well horsed, as they are bound by their copies.” At Tughall[342] the surveyor complains bitterly in 1567 that in time past, apparently a long time past, twenty-three tenants had been reduced to eight by “such as nothing regard his lordship’s service, nor the commonwealth.” To what are we to ascribe this permanence of tenure among the peasants, this exceptional solicitude for the maintenance of a numerous tenantry on the part of surveyors? Partly, no doubt, to the fact that Northumberland lay apart from the main stream of commercial life, and was as yet little affected by the growth of the woollen industry. Mainly, however, it was the result of the military importance of a numerous tenantry on the Northumbrian border. In that wild corner which is neither England nor Scotland, English and Scots, Scroopes and bold Buccleughs, gnash their teeth at each other across the wan water of the Eden. In the long northern evenings about Lammastide moormen win their hay with axes in their belts and bows piled in the corner of the field, and customary tenants are bound by their copies to provide horse and armour, and to ride to the musters in person or by proxy. No wonder that while elsewhere landlords pore over their accounts of wool or timber, in Northumberland they should measure their wealth by the men whom they can bring out when the summons goes, and insist on feudal obligations with a rigour unknown in the South. When any night Scotch[343] raiders may come storming over the marches, any night the red cock may crow up to the very walls of merry Carlisle, a holding means not only a piece of land that grows wheat and feeds sheep, but a horseman in harness; and the dropping out of a holding, or its merging in that of some one else, results in the weakening of the force on which the peace of the border depends. As a consequence, there is nothing like free trade in land between the tenants, such as developed in the South under the forms of surrender and admission, and there is little incentive for the lord or his officials to get rid of them. Such an exceptional state of things comes to an end in Northumberland with the union of the two Crowns under James I., and its termination is the signal for an attempt to break down customary tenures on the part both of the Crown[344] and of private landowners.[345] But it survives a century longer on the border than it does elsewhere, and while it lasts it offers a standard by which may be measured the extent and significance of the change which is overtaking agrarian relationships in other parts of England, where commerce is more developed, and where, since a tenant can no longer serve his lord by fighting, a sheep may easily be more valuable than a man. With the development of a strong central Government the military strength of the great landlords was broken, though it blazed up in the Pilgrimage of Grace and in the rebellion of 1569, and as a consequence they turned their attention to getting the maximum economic return from the soil, or to adding to their social dignity by parks, instead of maintaining a large body of tenants upon it.[346]

The change meant an advance in civilisation among the upper classes, and a tightening of economic pressure upon the peasantry. The feudal seigneur had at his worst been a lawless tyrant, and at his best a despotic parent. But he had governed his estate as the sovereign, often the resident sovereign, of a petty kingdom, whose interests were roughly identical with his own; and though his depredations were a terror to his neighbours, his own tenants had little to fear from them, for his tenants were the force on which his very existence depended. In the new political conditions his occupation was gone, and his place was taken by two types of landed proprietor who were at once more peaceable and less popular. On the one hand, there emerges the landlord who is a laborious and acute man of business, and who sets about exploiting the material resources of his estate with the instincts of a shopkeeper and the methods of a land-agent. Of this kind are the Willoughbys[347] in the Midlands and the Delavales[348] in Northumberland. Often they are sheep-farmers. When their land is rich in minerals they sink coal-pits and mine for iron ore. The predecessors of the captains of industry of two and a half centuries later, they employ labour on a large scale, they open up trade across country by river, they higgle over port dues, they experiment with new inventions, they clear away without mercy any customary rights which conflict with their own. On the other hand, there are the gentry who buzz about the Court, regard London as the centre of the universe, and have periodically to be ordered home to look after the affairs of their country-sides by a peremptory mandate from the Government. When this type becomes prominent, in the reign of Elizabeth, it most commonly spends its time in the interminable pursuit of profitable sinecures, and in endeavouring to induce the City to believe that thrice-mortgaged estates are a gilt-edged security. At its worst it produces Sir Petronel Flash,[349] a figure as typical of the sixteenth century as Squire Western is of the eighteenth. At its best it patronises the arts, sets sail for a new world of drama and romance, sighs over Vergil’s Eclogues, and goes pricking, almost too graceful a chivalry, through the fairy kingdoms of Spenser. But the men of business, and the men of fashion, and the patrons of literature, are alike in being the symptoms of a new economic and political system, a system which has shorn landownership of the territorial sovereignty which had gone with it, broken down the personal relations of landlord and tenant, and, by turning agriculture into a business, has made it at once more profitable and less strenuous for the former, more exacting and less stable for the latter, than it had been when a lordlord was not only a drawer of rents but a local sovereign, a tenant not only a source of income but a dependent who was bound by a tie which was almost sacramental. “It was never a merry world since gentlemen came up"; “never so many gentlemen and so little gentleness"; “the commons long since did rise in Spain and kill the gentlemen, and since have lived merrily there"; such are some of the blessings the new landlords would hear from men who grumble to their mates between the spells of shearing sheep and mowing hay. Those who have watched the uncouth, rough-handed master of a backward industry, who has wrought among his workmen as a friend or a tyrant, blossom, under the fertilising influence of expanding markets, into the sedate suburban capitalist who sets up a country house in the second generation and sends his sons to Oxford in the third, and who scientifically speeds up his distant operatives through the mediation of an army of managers and assistant-managers and foremen, will not need to be reminded that economic changes which bring civilisation to one class may often be fraught with ruin to another. The brilliant age which begins with Elizabeth gleams against a background of social squalor and misery. The descendant of the illiterate, bloody-minded baron who is muzzled by Henry VII. becomes a courteous gentleman who rhapsodises in verse at the Court of Gloriana. But all that the peasants know is that his land-agents[350] are harsher. An Earl of Pembroke has been given immortality by Shakespeare. But the first of his name had founded the family on estates which had belonged to the Abbey of Wilton,[351] and by his exactions had provoked the Wiltshire peasants into rebellion. The Raleigh family—it was a Raleigh’s chance gibe at the old religion which set the West in a blaze in 1549—had endowed itself with a manor torn from the see of Wells,[352] as the Grenvilles had done with the lands of Buckland Abbey. The gentle Sidney’s Arcadia is one of the glories of the age, and it was composed, if we may trust tradition, in the park at the Herberts' country-seat at Washerne,[353] which they had made by enclosing a whole village and evicting the tenants. The dramatists who reflect the high popular estimation of the freeholder[354] see nothing in the grievances of Mouldy and Bullcalf except the disposition of an ignorant populace to cry for the moon. Shakespeare’s Cade, with his programme[355] of seven half-penny loaves for a penny, and the three-hooped pot that shall have ten hoops, is so far proposing only what an energetic mayor is quite prepared to carry out before breakfast. His crowning absurdity, which makes the stalls hiss and the pit cheer, is the promise that “all the realm shall be in common; and in Cheapside shall my palfrey go to grass.” A few months after these words were printed Cade came to life in earnest. In the autumn of 1596 some Oxfordshire[356] artisans and peasants organised a revolt against “the gentlemen who took the commons,” and from that year onwards to 1601 Parliament and the Council had their hands full of the question of enclosures. Men feel the contrast, even when it is only just beginning, and with natural inconsistency sigh for the old order even while they are glorifying the new. “Princes and Lords,” wrote Henry VIII.’s chaplain[357] about 1538, “seldom look to the good order and wealth of their subjects, only they look to the receiving of their rents and revenues of their lands with great study of enhancing thereof, to the further maintaining of their pompous state; so that if their subjects do their duty therein justly, paying their rents at time affixed, for the rest they care not (as is commonly said) 'whether they sink or swim'"!

While the centralised government of the Tudors gave a new bias to the interests of landlords by stripping them of part of their political power, economic changes were hurrying the more enterprising among them into novel methods of estate management. In the situation which developed in the first fifty years of the sixteenth century they were exposed to pressure from two sides at once. They stood to gain much if they adapted their farming to meet the new commercial conditions. They stood to lose much if they were so conservative as to adhere to the old methods. The explanation of the agrarian revolution most generally given by contemporary observers was that enclosing was due to the increased profitableness of pasture farming, consequent upon the development of the textile industries; and though a recent writer[358] has endeavoured to show that most of the land enclosed was used for tillage, and that therefore this explanation cannot hold good, there does not seem any valid reason for disputing it. The testimony of observers is very strong; they might be mistaken as to the extent of the movement towards pasture, but hardly as to its tendency; and with scarcely an exception they point to the growth of the woollen trade as the chief motive for enclosing.

Moreover, their evidence is confirmed by the proofs which we possess of the expansion of the woollen industry at the end of the fifteenth century. It is true that the figures collected by Thorold Rogers do not enable any satisfactory correlation to be made between the rise in wool prices and the progress of pasture farming. But they are statistically much too unreliable to upset the direct evidence of eyewitnesses, being based on various measures which are somewhat arbitrarily reduced to a supposed common standard, relating to many different qualities of wool, and being weighted in particular years by a preponderance of prices from particular counties which are sometimes clearly not typical at all. The figures of Schanz[359] as to the export trade in wool and woollen cloths, are a sufficient proof of the growth in the output of wool, and therefore in the growth of sheep-farming. They show that while the export of unmanufactured wool fell off in the sixteenth century, that of grey cloth grew enormously. In 1354 the export had been 4774½ pieces, from 1509 to 1523 it averaged 84,789 pieces a year, from 1524 to 1533, 91,394 pieces, from 1534 to 1539, 102,647 pieces, and from 1540 to 1547, 122,354 pieces, while in 1554 the total manufacture was estimated at 160,000 pieces of cloth and 250,000 pieces of hosiery. This expansion of the manufactured cloth industry was only the culmination of a growth which had been going on gradually for a hundred years. In 1464 the Flemish manufacturers[360] were complaining that their market had been invaded by English clothiers. Merchants like the Celys shipped enormous consignments of wool from the Cotswolds to the Continent.[361] The large number of sheep kept in England at the end of the fifteenth century was the amazement of foreigners;[362] and English buyers groaned over the high prices to which wool was driven by the competition of continental buyers.[363] The revolution in the technique of agriculture when sucked into the vortex of expanding commerce is, in fact, simply an early, and, owing to the immobility of sixteenth century conditions, a peculiarly striking example of that reaction of widening markets on the methods of production, which is one of the best established of economic generalisations.

At the same time, the revolution was probably hastened by a change in commercial policy, which, while encouraging the export trade in woollen cloth, was after 1485 less favourable to the corn-grower. During the greater part of the fifteenth[364] century the Government was forced by the agrarian interests to allow freedom of export for grain except when prices reached a certain height, after which point an export licence was required. But the victory of Henry VII. produced a policy which was less influenced by the traditional object of helping the corn-growing landlords, and more favourable to commerce and the middle classes on which the new monarchy rested. In 1491[365] the export of grain, except with a special licence, was forbidden altogether, and in 1512 the prohibition was repeated by Henry VIII. Though the administration of such a policy must have been difficult, and its exact effect must be a matter of conjecture, the view taken by some contemporaries,[366] that it was a subordinate cause which stimulated the abandonment of old agricultural methods and caused a good deal of land to go out of cultivation, is at any rate intrinsically probable.

If the expansion of the woollen industry offered a fortune to those who adopted the new methods of estate management, the depreciation in the value of money threatened with ruin those who did not. The agrarian changes of the sixteenth century cannot be traced primarily to the revolution in general prices which all European countries experienced, because they had already proceeded some way before the full extent of the movement in prices became apparent. Throughout the fifteenth century the value of money, as far as can be judged from such statistics as we possess, was fairly stable, and, if anything, somewhat appreciated. During the first half of Henry VIII.’s reign there were complaints[367] of the scarcity of the metallic currency. On the very eve of the dissolution of the monasteries we find a religious house in Northumberland reversing the movement which had been going on for two centuries in most parts of the country, and actually commuting money rents into payments in kind,[368] on the ground that the tenants could not command the necessary coin. Such facts should warn us that England was far from being a single economic community, and that the effects of the cheap money penetrated into the more backward regions only very slowly indeed. Nevertheless, in the more advanced parts of the country, the tide turned soon after the beginning of the new century, though it was not till the fourth decade of it that it became a mill-race in which all old economic standards were submerged. The general course of the movement, so far as it affected commodities in general use, is set forth below. The figures are re-arranged from those supplied by Steffen,[369] whose work is mainly based on that of Thorold Rogers.

Table VII

	Wheat per Qr.	Peas per Qr.	Oats per Qr.	Barley Malt per Qr.	Oxen.	Sheep.	Oxen.	Hens.	Eggs per Qr.
	s. d.	s. d.	s. d.	s. d.	s. d.	s. d.	s. d.	d.	d.
1401–1450	5 9¼	3 2¾	7 9	4 3	16 5½	7 6¾	2 1	2	5
1451–1500	5 6¼	3 4¾	6 6¾	3 8	15 7½	1 10¼	8 3¼	2¼	5¼
1451–1500	6 10¼	5 1¾	9 4¾	4 5	22 9	2 10¼	10 0	3	9
1541–1582	13 10½	...	20 4¾	10 5	70 0¼	6 4	...	4¾	...

Though it would not be right, of course, to force these figures too far, as one cannot be sure that they are in all cases typical, the indication which they offer of a remarkable rise in prices beginning soon after 1500 is in all probability substantially correct. The result of this movement in dragging down the standard of comfort of the people has often been noticed, and need not be emphasised here. But it is important to observe that it had a very marked effect upon the traditional methods of agriculture, because it supplied landowners with a new incentive to squeeze the utmost possible income out of their estates. Since they were buying everything dearer, they were under a strong inducement to turn land to the most profitable use, and to revise all existing contracts which prevented an advance in tenants' payments. In the not unnatural confusion which surrounded the question of the cause of the general rise in prices, this aspect of the agrarian troubles failed very generally to be appreciated by contemporary writers, who were inclined to argue that the higher prices were due to the increased rents, instead of seeing that the increased rents were themselves the consequence of the increased prices. But it was emphasised in the middle of the century by the author of the Commonwealth of England,[370] and at the end of it by Gerrard de Malynes,[371] who puts the case with great power and perspicacity, though he perhaps may be thought to exaggerate the importance of the debasement of the currency. “Every man knoweth,” he wrote in 1601, “that by reason of the base money coined in the end of the most victorious reign of King Henry VIII. all the forrain commodities were sold dearer, which made afterwards the commodities of the realm to rise at the farmers' and tenants' hands, and therefore gentlemen did raise the rents of their lands and take farms themselves and made inclosures of grounds, and the price of everything being dearer was made dearer though plenty of money and bullion coming daily from the West Indies.... If we require gentlemen to abate their rents, give over farms, and break up enclosures, it may be they would do so if they might have all their provisions at the price heretofore.” Yet such a statement gives but a faint indication of the revolutionary effect upon agrarian relationships of the depreciation in the value of money. The modern reader, before whose eyes all economic standards are fluctuating from day to day, can hardly grasp the anarchy which it tended to produce in a world where values, especially land values, were objective realities which had stood unaltered for centuries together. The landlord sees his income slipping from him, though his estate pays as much as before. The tenant finds his landlord pressing for higher rents and fines, though the yield of the land has not increased. Yet neither desires anything but to remain as they were, and both are ignorant of the force which sweeps them out of the ancient ways. For, in the wholesome manner of the age, they ascribe all economic evils to personal misdemeanours, the unreasonableness of merchants, the covetousness of gentlemen, the extortions of husbandmen, and the real cause is an impersonal one, which carries them forward against their will, like men “thrusting one another in a throng, one driving on another.”[372] It is easy to understand that it must have been difficult to maintain customary payments and traditional methods of agriculture against the screw which the rise in prices turned on the landowning classes. Agricultural experiments were in the air, and with experts explaining how to double the value of an estate by enclosure without prejudicing the tenants, it is not surprising that landowners, who saw their real incomes dwindling with the fall in the value of money, should have adopted the principle of their advice and neglected the qualifications.

[(b) The Growth of the Large Leasehold Farm][ToC]

The changed situation created by these causes had the effect of producing a new policy on the part of landlords, which took different forms according to the circumstances of different localities, but which in the counties most deeply affected resulted in an increase in pasture-farming and in an upward movement in the payments made by tenants. The new régime seems to have affected first, as was natural, that part of their estates which was most entirely under their own control, and the disposal of which was least involved in other interests, namely, the manorial demesne. It is not altogether easy to construct a picture of the policy pursued by a typical enclosing landlord from the accounts of contemporaries, who were more interested in results than in the steps by which they were reached. According to some of them, lords in the sixteenth century were resuming into their own hands those parts of the demesne which had been let out, in order to supply their establishments with produce without having to rely on the markets when prices were rapidly rising. On some manors again, when the demesne was “in the hand of the lord,” considerations which were not purely economic came into play; for example, one finds part of it being turned into a park, which was at once profitable as a means of grazing sheep, and prized for those motives of social amenity and ostentation which have done so much to make the English countryside the admiration of travellers, and so much to ruin the English peasantry. It was not seldom that the confiscated estates of monastic houses were converted into a pleasaunce or a deer-park by their new proprietors.

On the other hand, the manorial documents suggest that landlords were usually rather parties to changes in the methods of cultivation than themselves the agents who carried them out, because, at any rate in the case of the larger landowners, the demesnes were usually leased. The actual process of experiment and innovation took place on most manors through the instrumentality of the lessee.[373] The large farmer, who on many manors is foundmanaging the demesne, is much the most striking character in the rural development of the sixteenth century. His fortunes wax while those of the peasantry wane. Gradually he thrusts them, first copyholders and then yeomen, into the background, and becomes in time the parent of a mighty line, which later ages, forgetting poor Piers Plowman, whose place he has usurped, will look on as the representative of all that is solid and unchanging in the English social order. In our period he plays in the economics of agriculture the part which was played in industry by the capitalist clothier, and his position as the pivot of agrarian change is so important that it will repay close attention.

In the first place, then, it is clear that the foundation of the large farm was the practice of leasing the demesne for a term of years, which was the normal way of disposing of it in the sixteenth century. In the reign of Elizabeth the distinction between the demesne and the customary tenancies still survived, and surveyors were at some pains to separate them in order to prevent the demesne being merged in the customary holdings. But the original meaning of the distinction had been almost obliterated; the demesne was no longer the centre of the manorial economy, as it had been when its produce maintained the lord's household, and the labour of the customary tenants, in spite of the survival of many services, no longer supplied the chief means of cultivating it. On the whole, it would be true to say that on ninety-nine manors out of a hundred the demesne was leased by the middle of the sixteenth century, and on the majority of them probably at a much earlier date. There are, of course, some exceptions. Certain manors the lord makes his headquarters, and there the home farm is retained in his hands, because it is required to supply his establishment. On other manors the demesne or part of it can no longer be distinguished from the holdings of the customary tenants, and is held by them by copy of Court Roll in the same way as the “customary land.” In certain parts of England, again, the leasing of the demesne has not proceeded far, because the demesne has always been relatively unimportant. On several Northumberland manors, for example, the surveyor[374] could in 1567 find no demesne at all, either because it had all been divided up among the tenants, or because it had never existed. Nevertheless, in spite of these exceptions, a lease for a term of years to a farmer or farmers is the ordinary method of disposing of the demesne in the sixteenth century. This is proved in a very satisfactory way by the investigations of Professor Savine[375] into the disposition of the lands of monastic houses in 1534. After an exhaustive inquiry relating to several hundred manors he found that the cases in which the demesne was not leased were an insignificant proportion of the whole. An examination of smaller groups of manors tells the same story. Out of thirty-six[376] manors in Wiltshire, Somersetshire, and Devonshire surveyed for the Earl of Pembroke in 1568, it is possible to determine the use made of the demesne on thirty-two, and on twenty-nine of them it was leased. Of twenty-nine other manors examined at random at different periods in the sixteenth and early seventeenth century every one was in the same condition. There is no reason to distrust these instances on the ground that they may represent a development occurring too late in the century to be relevant to movements found in existence at the beginning of it, because in several cases where the history of a manor can be traced backwards, it is clear, as has been shown above, that the leasing of the demesne was quite common at least from the middle of the fifteenth century, and in parts of the country much earlier.

From the allusions made by contemporaries to the large farmer as one of the mainsprings of the changes of the period, one is disposed to look first at the demesne for the beginning of capitalist agriculture. Whether, however, the method of cultivating the demesne differed much from the cultivation of the customary holdings depended to a considerable extent upon the terms on which it was leased, and, in particular, upon whether it passed into the control of a single considerable tenant. It would be a mistake to think that the economic relationships which were established when the demesne ceased to be cultivated by villein labour were all of one type, or in particular that the demesne invariably passed into the hands of one holder. Mention has already been made of the practice of adding the demesne lands, or part of them, to the customary land held by copy of Court Roll, a practice which obviously resulted in maintaining in the hands of small cultivators land which might have gone to build up large properties.

Even when the demesne is leased it is not always leased to a single large farmer. In reality the surveys of the sixteenth century reveal two well-defined types of leasehold property subsisting on the lord's demesne, sometimes on neighbouring manors. The first type has as its distinctive feature that the lessees are a number, sometimes a very large number, of small farmers, who have been given allotments on the demesne and who hold them for various periods of years, sometimes for life only, sometimes for eighty, sometimes for ninety-two or ninety-nine, years. Many examples of this type of small leaseholder come from the west of England. Thus at Ablode,[377] in Somersetshire, before the demesne was leased out by St. Peter’s to a large farmer in 1515, it had already been leased to seventeen of the customary tenants. At Paynton,[378] in 1568, the Barton land was held in small plots by fifty-one leaseholders, at South Brent[379] by eighteen. But examples of this arrangement are found all over England. At Higham Ferrers,[380] in Northamptonshire, the demesne has been divided among nine tenants; at Stondelf,[381] in Staffordshire, among thirty-one. At Shape[382] in Suffolk and Northendale[383] in Norfolk the demesnes are added to the holdings of the customary tenants. At Forncett,[384] in Norfolk, parts of the demesne are in the same way leased out in small parcels in the fifteenth century for gradually lengthening periods of years, though by the beginning of our period they seem to have been held by copy in the same way as the customary land. Elsewhere we get what appear to be variations of the same system, in the form of sub-letting or of joint-cultivation. At Castle Combe,[385] for example, the demesne lands were leased in 1454 to four tenants, “with the intention that they themselves should let to farm to all the tenants of the lord some portion of those lands.” On other manors groups of tenants seem to make themselves jointly responsible for the rent required. It was not an unknown[386] thing even at quite an early date for a whole village to come forward and make a kind of collective bargain with the lord as to the terms upon which they would take over the demesne lands, and when the leasing of the demesne became the regular practice townships sometimes stepped into the shoes of the bailiffs, and averted the entry of the large farmer by leasing the lands themselves, and making their own arrangements as to the way in which they should be utilised. One may suspect, indeed, that such action took place in a good many cases when the land was leased to many small tenants, as at Paynton and South Brent, even though the intervention of the township is not expressly stated. Sometimes, however, the communal character of the bargain is quite beyond doubt. For example, at Cucklington,[387] on the manor of Stooke Trister in Somersetshire, twelve tenants leased together at a rent of £8 for forty years a sheep house with 250 acres of land. At Chedsey,[388] in the same county, the whole of the demesne, which lay mainly in small parcels of one or two acres, was held in 1568 on a twenty-one years' lease by the tenants of the manor. At Caston,[389] in Norfolk, we find an entry of rent which is paid by “the inhabitants of the town of Scratby for certain lands occupied for their benefit.” The phrase “town lands,” which appears not infrequently[390] in the surveys and estate maps of the sixteenth century may perhaps be taken as indicating the same conclusion. In what way exactly we ought to interpret these arrangements—whether we should regard them as nothing more than a summary expression of the fact that all the tenants have severally rights over part of the estate, or whether we should conceive of them as implying some higher degree of corporate action than this, and as the outcome of a bargain struck with the lord by the village as a village, is an interesting and difficult question,[391] to which we shall recur later in speaking of rights of common. But we may mention two points which suggest that there is in them a certain element of practical communism to which legal historians sometimes do less than justice. The first is that we occasionally find certain tenants acting on behalf[392] of, one might almost say, representing, others. The second is that in some cases the demesne lands are divided among them in exactly equal[393] shares, so that, though every one has more land than before, the relative sizes of their holdings are unaltered. The last fact is a very striking one. It means, in the first place, that the new land has been allotted on some common principle and by some formal agreement. Clearly, if each tenant had bought as much land as he pleased, we should have had not equality but inequality. It points, in the second place, to the enduring strength of the ideas and interests underlying the system of agricultural shareholding which is characteristic of the mediæval village. We can understand a very primitive system of agriculture designed to secure each household the standard equipment needed to support it. But one would naturally suppose that at the end of the Middle Ages, when new land which had hitherto belonged to the lord was offered to the villagers, each would buy up as much as he could without regard to the interests of his neighbours. It is probable that in most cases, as in those quoted in Chapter III., this is what happened. But in some instances it is not. The old economic ideas which had governed the disposition of the ancient customary holdings are applied to the new land which the cessation of demesne cultivation by the lord throws into the market, and the villagers re-allot it on the old plan. Even in its decay the mediæval land system shows its vitality by meeting new situations with the ancient methods.

These small tenants were described as “farming the demesne,” and their existence may perhaps mark a sort of half-way house in the evolution of the manorial demesne into the large leasehold farm. One may suspect that that development was not at all likely to take place rapidly in the circumstances of the fifteenth century. According to the generally accepted view the practice of leasing part of the demesne, though occurring at a very early date on manors where the labour supply was too small for it to be cultivated by the villeins, received a great impetus from the scarcity of labour which was produced by the Great Plague, and went on side by side with the gradual commutation of labour services into money rents. Of course one must not dogmatise about changes which took centuries to accomplish, and which developed at very different degrees of speed in different parts of the country. But the accounts of particular manors supplied us by surveyors bear out the view that the development of a class of small leaseholders took place as the result of the abandonment of the old system of cultivating the demesne by means of the works of the tenants organised under the supervision of the manorial officials. “The lorde departed his habitation and caused his officers to grant out parte of his landes to his tenants at will.” “The medowes lying in Hinton were the lordes' severall meadowes, which nowe are divided among the tenants.” “When the lorde departed his habitation, and granted out the demesnes, the part was delivered and letten to the use of the tenants.” “One Sir John Taverney, Knight, dyd inhabit within the said mannor, and kept great hospitalitie, and occupied the demesnes in his own possession, which are large and greate, and now of late years granted out by copye for terms of lyves among the tenants.” Such information, collected by a curious investigator[394] in the middle of the sixteenth century from the lips of aged peasants in the west of England, takes us back to a time when the leasing of the demesne was a comparative novelty. Is it surprising that the landlord who leased for the first time should prefer to do so on this small scale, should choose to grant plots of land piecemeal for short terms of years rather than to form a single farm? The practice was at first an experiment, an alarming departure from accepted methods undertaken only through dire necessity. A great catastrophe like the plague might make it profitable, but time would naturally elapse before it was done systematically and on a large scale. At the same time a class of farmers with sufficient capital to manage several hundred acres of land could not come into existence at once. The ordinary villein tenants, who were the first lessees on many manors, could hardly jump immediately from farming twenty or thirty acres to farming a whole estate, though those of them who as bailiffs had previously been responsible for managing the demesne, and who seem sometimes to have managed it as farmers for the lord, rather than as hired servants, were certainly in a better position to do so.

It would seem indeed that the question whether, when the sixteenth century began, the demesne lands of a manor were leased to many small tenants or to one or two large farmers, was decided largely by local and personal conditions, and may fairly be described as a matter of chance. When they lay in many scattered strips unified culture was impossible till they had been consolidated, and therefore there was no particular reason for leasing them to one tenant rather than to many; whereas, when they were from the start in two or three great blocks, it was obviously very improbable that they would be sub-divided. In those parts of the country where sheep-farming was less profitable than elsewhere one motive for introducing a single large farm was absent, while where the demesne had already been leased in small plots the manorial authorities might dislike to make an abrupt change affecting many households disadvantageously. The general movement would appear, however, to have been in the direction of longer leases and larger tenancies. Thus Miss Davenport has shown that at Forncett the leasing of the demesne began[395] in small parcels and for short periods from the end of the fourteenth century, and gradually took place on a larger scale and for longer periods as the practice became more familiar. The earlier leases of the Oxfordshire manor of Cuxham[396] alternate between six and seven years in length, and it is not till 1472 that the College owning it appears to have granted a lease of as much as twenty years. Sometimes one can see the system of leasing small parcels to many little farmers, and that of leasing the whole demesne to one large farmer, coming into competition with each other. A case in point comes from Ablode[397] in Somersetshire. In 1515 the Abbot and Convent of St. Peter's, Gloucester, leased the whole manor of Ablode to a farmer for eighty years. But at the time when the lease was made the demesne lands and demesne meadows were already occupied by the customary tenants. Accordingly the covenant with the farmer provides that as soon as the other tenants' agreements terminate, he shall have the reversion of their lands to use as he pleases. Here the two types of demesne cultivation are seen merging into one another, with the result that the large farm is consolidated out of the small tenancies which preceded it.

At the beginning of our period these small demesne tenancies had already disappeared from many manors, if they had ever existed on them, and the normal method of using the demesne was to lease it to a single[398] large farmer, or at any rate to not more than three or four. In spite of the instances given above, in which the home farm and its lands were split up among numerous small tenants, most of the evidence suggests that the leasing of the demesne to a single farmer was as regular a way of disposing of it in the sixteenth century as its cultivation by manorial officials with the labour of villeins had been in the thirteenth. The very slow development of the large farm in certain parts of the country was due rather to the insignificance or absence of the demesne on some northern manors than to the prevalence of any alternative methods of utilising it. The terms on which the farmer took over the land varied naturally in detail, but these differences are unimportant. In a few cases he holds it by copy. Normally he is a leaseholder, sometimes for life, more usually for a period of years ranging from twenty-one to eighty. Again the lessee’s interest may be more or less inclusive. Sometimes only the demesne, including any customary works upon it of the tenants which may survive, is leased. Sometimes the lease includes the live-stock of the manor, which, or the equivalent of which, the farmer must replace at the end of his term. Sometimes the profits of the court are leased as well, though more usually they are reserved, together with any income from fines, to the lord. Sometimes there is an arrangement of great interest and importance by which the whole body of manorial rights, including the income from the courts, confiscation of straying beasts, and the rents of the customary tenants, are leased to the farmer, who thus becomes the immediate landlord of the other tenants.[399] The greater part of the farmer’s rent is by the middle of the sixteenth century paid in money. But certain payments in kind[400] survive, and supply a link between the vanishing subsistence cultivation, and the growing commercial economy. Where money was scarce, tenants were sometimes allowed to pay in kind as a concession to their interests, and some landlords still found it convenient to receive part of their rent in grain, fowls, pigeons, fish, or a fat bull, a practice which on college estates lasted down to the very end of the seventeenth century. But the value of such payments was carefully calculated in terms of money, and they were the exception.

The growth of large farms had proceeded so far by the middle of the sixteenth century that in parts of the country the area held by the farmer was about equal to that held by all the other tenants. On some manors it was less; on others it was a great deal more. The average area of the large farmer’s land in Wiltshire seems to have been about 352 acres, and it is not unusual to find manors where there are only two or three customary tenants, while on some there were none at all. Wiltshire no doubt must not be taken as typical of all other counties, as the acreage of the leasehold farms held by men who had capital to spend could so easily be increased by drawing in great tracts from the rolling stretches of Chalk Down. But elsewhere, though the acreage held by the farmer of the demesne is less, 170 or 150 acres, and though one or two of the larger copyholders control a great deal of land themselves, he is still, compared with the bulk of the customary tenants, a Triton among minnows. Arithmetical averages are, however, unsatisfactory, and a better idea of the scale on which the large farmer carried on business may be obtained from the following table:—

[Table VIII]

Column Key

A	Under 50 Acres.	J	450–500 Acres.
B	50–99 Acres.	K	500–549 Acres.
C	99–149 Acres.	L	550–599 Acres.
D	150–199 Acres.	M	600–649 Acres.
E	200–249 Acres.	N	650–699 Acres.
F	250–299 Acres.	O	700–749 Acres.
G	300–349 Acres.	P	750–799 Acres.
H	350–399 Acres.	Q	800–849 Acres.
I	400–449 Acres.	R	850–900 Acres.

	A	B	C	D	E	F	G	H	I	J	K	L	M	N	O	P	Q	R
Eighteen farms on sixteen manors in Norfolk	...	2	2	3	1	...	3	1	...	2	3	...	...	...	1	...	...	...
Thirty-one farms on twenty-three manors in Wiltshire	4	2	4	4	3	4	3	...	2	1	1	...	...	...	...	...	1	2
Eighteen farms on thirteen manors in several counties	2	3	3	1	3	2	1	...	...	3	...	...	...	...	...	...	...	...
Total, sixty-seven farms on fifty-two manors	6	7	9	8	7	6	7	1	2	6	4	...	...	...	1	...	1	2

It will be seen that if all the farms are grouped together, rather more than one half, thirty-seven out of sixty-seven, have an area exceeding 200 acres, and that the area of rather more than a quarter exceeds 350 acres. The figures must be read with the caution that they in some cases certainly underestimate the real extent of the land used by the farmer, as rights of common often cannot be expressed in terms of acres.

(c) Enclosure and Conversion by the Manorial Authorities[ToC]

When we turn from the agricultural arrangements described in previous chapters to examine these large farms, we enter a new world, a world where economic power is being slowly organised for the exploitation of the soil, and where the methods of cultivation and the standards of success are quite different from those obtaining on the small holdings of the peasantry. The advantage to the lord of the system of large farms, compared either with the retention of the demesne in his own hands, or with the leasing of it in allotments to small tenants, was obvious enough for its extension to be no matter for surprise. The utilisation of the produce of the demesne by the lord’s household was unnecessary when markets were sufficiently reliable to offer a regular supply, and inconvenient when the landlord was an absentee. The division of the estate among small tenants meant the creation or maintenance of interests opposed to agricultural changes, and made it impracticable to vary the methods of agriculture to meet varying demands, except by the rather cumbrous process of a common agreement ratified in the manorial court. The leasing of the demesne to a large farmer got rid of those disadvantages. The lord was secured a regular money income, which was considerably higher per acre than that got from the customary tenants; and since the land was under the management of a single individual, who was sometimes equipped with a good deal of capital, it was much easier to try experiments and to initiate changes. When not only the demesne, but the whole body of manorial rights, was included in the lease, the property became of that most desirable kind, in which ownership is attenuated to a pecuniary lien on the product of industry, without administrative responsibility for its management.

Opportunities for new methods of cultivation were afforded by the leasing of the demesne to a single farmer, which would lead us to look at his holding as the place where agrarian changes were most likely to begin, and to start from that in order to trace the effect of these large properties on the small properties of the customary tenants. On the one hand, any wide development of leasehold tenure involves a certain mobility in rural society and a disposition to break with routine. There must be a market for land, which again implies that some class has accumulated sufficient capital to invest and has got beyond mere subsistence farming. It naturally arises either when new[401] land is brought into cultivation, or when the development of trade makes farming for the market profitable, or when changes are being introduced into the methods of agriculture, or when the value of land is uncertain (for example, when it is thought that it may contain minerals),[402] because in all these cases leasehold, being a terminable interest, enables the owner of land to adjust his rent to the tenant’s returns. On the other hand, the landowner does not get the full advantage of the elasticity in rent and management that leasehold tenure makes possible, unless the tenant is a man of some substance, who can spend capital in cultivating land on a large scale, in stocking a farm with sheep and cattle, in carrying crops until the best market is found, and in making experiments in new directions.

One can easily understand the reasons which favoured the large farm, if one reflects on the change in economic environment, the outlines of which have been already described. The most important economic cause determining the unit of landholding is the nature of the crop to be raised and the methods used in producing it; and the nature of the crop depends mainly on the conditions of the market. Now in the sixteenth century the market conditions were such as to leave room for a large number of small corn-growers, because trade was so backward that a great number of households farmed simply for subsistence. On the other hand, even in the case of corn-growing, the size of the most profitable unit of agriculture was increasing with the development of an internal corn trade—a development which is proved by the strenuous attempts which the Government made to regulate it through the Justices of the Peace; while in the case of sheep and cattle grazing on the large scale practised by the graziers of the period, there was obviously no question but that an extensive ranch, which could be stocked with several thousand beasts, was the type of holding which would pay best. That a class of capitalist farmers of this kind was coming into existence in the sixteenth century is indicated both by the complaints of contemporaries that small men find farms taken over their heads by great graziers, who have made money in trade; by the fact that the stock and land lease, a form of metayage under which the working capital was supplied by the landowner, had given way on many manors to the modern type of lease under which it is provided by the lessee;[403] and by the way in which one farmer would become the lessee of two[404] or more manors, a clear indication of the existence of wealthy men who had money to invest in agriculture. It was the substitution of such a class for the small leaseholders among whom the demesne had often been divided, and their appearance for the first time on manors where the demesne had been kept in the hands of the lord until it was leased to one large farmer, which gave a rapid and almost catastrophic speed to the tendency to enclosure which, as we have seen, was already going on quietly among the small tenants, because it meant the control of a growing proportion of the land by persons who had capital to spend, and who, since they held their farms by lease, not by copy, were under the pressure of competitive rents to adopt the methods of agriculture which were financially most profitable. This in itself was a new phenomenon, at least on the large scale on which it appeared in the sixteenth century. In modern agriculture one is accustomed to seeing the area sown with any crop varying according to movements in the market price of the produce, so that on the margin of cultivation land is constantly changing its use in response to changes in the world's markets. But such adaptability implies a very high degree of organisation, and when farming was carried on mainly by small producers for their own households, the reaction of changing commercial conditions on the supply was much slower, and cultivation was to a much greater extent a matter of routine. It was the development of the large capitalist farmer which supplied the link binding agriculture to the market and causing changes in prices to be reflected in changes in the use to which land was put.

The tendency which we should expect to find represented most conspicuously upon the demesne farms is of course that enclosing of land and laying of it down to pasture, which is lamented by contemporaries. The word “enclosing,” under which contemporaries summed up the agrarian changes of the period, has become the recognised name for the process by which the village community was broken up, but it is perhaps not a very happy one. Quite apart from the difficulties which it raises when we come to compare the enclosures of the eighteenth century, which were made under Act of Parliament, with those of the sixteenth century, which were made in defiance of legislation, it is at once too broad and too narrow to be an adequate description even of the innovations of the earlier period, too broad if it implies that all enclosures entailed the hardships which were produced by some, too narrow if it implies that the only hardships caused were due to enclosure. It selects one feature of the movement towards capitalist agriculture for special emphasis, and suggests that the hedging and ditching of land always produced similar results. That, however, was by no means the case. Enclosure might take place, as has been shown above, without producing the social disturbances usually associated with it, provided that it was carried out by the tenants themselves, and with the consent of those affected. The concentration of holdings and the displacement of tenants might take place without enclosure. On a desert island there is no need of palings to keep out trespassers; and a manor which was entirely in the hands of one great farmer was a manor where the maintenance of enclosures was almost unnecessary. At the same time the word does describe one of the external features which usually accompanied the agrarian changes. The general note of the movement was the emancipation from the rules of communal cultivation of part or all of the land used for purposes of tillage or pasture. The surface of a manor was covered with a kind of elaborate network of rules apportioning, on a common customary plan, the rights and duties of every one who had an interest in it. A man must let his land lie open after harvest; he must not keep more than a certain number of each kind of beasts on the common; he must plough when his neighbours plough, and sow when his neighbours sow. The effect of the growing influence of the capitalist farmer was to clear away these organised restrictions from parts of the manor altogether, and violently to shake the whole system. Enclosing was normally the external symptom of the change, for the practical reason that the simplest way of cutting a piece of land adrift from the common course of cultivation, or from the rules laid down for the use of the commonable area, was to put a hedge round it, partly to keep one’s own beasts in, partly to keep other people’s beasts out. The essential feature of the change was that land which was formerly subject to a rule prescribing the methods of cultivation became land which was used at the individual’s discretion.

The agent through whom enclosing was carried out was usually the large farmer. When the farmer leased only the demesne lands, and the demesne lands lay in large compact blocks, not in scattered strips, he could naturally practise the new economy of enclosure upon them without colliding with any other interest, except in the cases where they were divided into several tenancies; while if steps were taken to get rid of the interests which the customary tenants had either in the open fields, in the meadows, or in the common, the land lost by them was normally added to the area which the farmer leased, and enclosed by him. In the surveys of the period one finds manors in every stage of the transition from open field cultivation to enclosure, and though such individual instances tell us nothing of the extent of the movement, they offer a vivid picture of what enclosing meant, and give the impression that enclosure had usually proceeded further on those manors where the farmer held the largest proportion of the land. The slowness of the movement towards enclosure on the holdings of the customary tenants has already been described. As a contrast to it one may look at the following table, which sets out the condition of things on some demesne farms:—

[Table IX]

Number of Demesne Farms Examined.	No signs of Enclosure.	Under 5 per Cent. Enclosed.	5 to 24 per Cent. Enclosed.	25 to 49 per Cent. Enclosed.	50 to 74 per Cent. Enclosed.	75 to 99 per Cent. Enclosed.	100 per Cent. Enclosed
47	12	9	7	7	...	4	8

These figures are not offered as any evidence of the absolute area enclosed in the counties represented. They may, however, perhaps be taken as an indication that the demesne farm was usually that part of the manor on which enclosure was carried out most thoroughly. Thirty-one of the manors included in the table are in Wiltshire and Norfolk, and where the conditions of things on the tenants' holdings can be compared with that obtaining on the demesne, it is almost always the case that the new economy has spread furthest on the latter. Neither in Wiltshire nor in Norfolk had enclosure by the peasants themselves proceeded very far in the latter half of the sixteenth century.

The conditions, however, on different manors varied so enormously that much weight cannot be laid on these figures, and it is both more important and more practicable to examine particular examples of the ways in which the large enclosed estate was built up. In the first place, then, one may say with some confidence that those parts of a manor which lent themselves most readily to enclosing were the waste, the common pasture, and the common meadow, while the enclosing of the farmer’s holdings of arable land took place more gradually, less thoroughly, and with greater difficulty. Thus selecting from the manors tabulated above those in which the quality of the land enclosed is distinguished, and omitting those where it is merely stated to lie “in closes,” one finds that partial or complete enclosure of the arable has been made on nine, of the meadow on eleven, and of the pasture on twenty, manors. The explanation of this is to be found by recollecting the characteristics of the organisation into which the farmer stepped. The arable land which formed the lord’s demesne was often scattered, like the tenant's, in comparatively small plots over the three fields; unity of ownership did not by any means necessarily imply unified culture, and before these could be enclosed they had to be consolidated into fewer and larger blocks. Moreover, if the object of enclosure was conversion to pasture, it must be remembered that the enclosure of the arable implied a very great revolution in the manorial economy. A farm which was well equipped for tillage had barns, granges, agricultural implements, which would stand idle if the arable land was enclosed for pasture, and it was therefore natural that, as long as other land was available in sufficient quantities for sheep-farming, such land should be enclosed for the purpose, before the ordinary course of cultivation on the arable land was abandoned. The common meadows and the common wastes did not offer these obstacles to enclosure. Since the individualising tendencies of personal cultivation did not operate upon these parts of the village land, the method of securing equal enjoyment of them had not been, as in the case of arable, to give each household a holding consisting of separate strips scattered over good and bad land alike, but to give each holder of an arable share access to the whole of the pasture land. They were, therefore, usually not divided and scattered to anything like the same extent, and it was thus much easier for the rights of different parties over them to be disentangled, and for the land to be cut up and enclosed “in severalty.” Hence, where the tenants are most numerous, and where there are fewest signs of change, the effect of the large farmer is often seen in the withdrawal of part of the common waste from communal use. If the growth of sheep farming made the small tenants anxious, as in many cases it did, to acquire separate pastures for their flocks, it can readily be understood that the large farmer, who had more to lose and more to gain, was likely to pursue the same policy unless checked by organised opposition. Normally the change seems to have taken place by converting the right to pasture a certain number of beasts in common with other tenants into the right to the exclusive use of a certain number of acres. Instead of the whole commonable area lying open to a number of animals “stinted” in a certain proportion among the commoners, the stint is abandoned, and the basis of allocation is found not in a fixed number of animals, but in a fixed area of land, which forms the separate common of the individual farmer, and which is naturally enclosed. Many examples of this division of commonable land are found in the surveys, especially in connection with the common waste of the manor, which enable us to trace the change from collective to individual administration. Thus, to give a few instances, at Winterbourne Basset[405] the farmer has all the meadow land except one half-acre, and a separate close of 140 acres on the downs, where he can graze nearly three times as many sheep as all the customary tenants. At Knyghton[406] he has enclosed with a hedge part of the sheep's common, no sheep at all being kept by the customary tenants. At Massingham,[407] in Norfolk, where much of the demesne arable lies “in the fields,” there is an enclosed pasture containing 123-1/2 acres; and on another farm of 203 acres, which has apparently been formed out of the demesne, one finds 28 acres of arable “in the fields" and 65 acres of “pasture enclosed,” the remaining 80 acres lying “in the sheep courses.” The best picture of what the change meant is given by the two maps[408] printed opposite. In No. III. the meadow, save for a small piece used exclusively by All Souls, is common, each tenant presumably being allowed to place so many beasts upon it. In No. IV. the meadow has been divided up among the tenants, and instead of pasturing a limited number of beasts on the whole of it, each can pasture as many beasts as he pleases on part of it. It is not necessary to point out the significance of this change from the point of view of the social organisation of rural life. It means that communal administration of part of the land has been abandoned and its place taken by use at the discretion of the individual tenant.

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III. MAP OF PART OF THE MANOR OF MAIDS MORTON IN BUCKSHIRE (1580.)

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IV. MAP OF PART OF THE MANOR OF CRENDON IN BUCKINGHAMSHIRE (ABOUT 1590.)

But while the pasture ground and meadow offered special facilities for enclosure, there is abundant evidence that the farmer’s arable land was also in many cases enclosed. On some manors the whole of the arable demesne lay together, and in that case there was no obstacle in the way of enclosing it. More usually it lay in three pieces, one block in each of the three great fields, and here again, when there was sufficient motive for enclosure, enclosure was easily practicable. The only arrangement which offered a really difficult problem was that in which it was divided into acre and a half strips scattered about the manor at a distance from each other. One finds cases in which such strips numbered several hundred, but the impression given by surveys is that, at any rate by the middle of the sixteenth century, such extreme subdivision was exceptional, and that the consolidation of holdings by means of exchange and purchase, which we have seen at work from an early date on the holdings of the customary tenants, had often proceeded so far on the demesne as to have rounded off the farmer’s property into comparatively few large holdings. As an illustration of the first steps towards unification and enclosure we may take the manor of Sparham,[409] in Norfolk, which was surveyed about 1590. Here the 189 acres which compose the demesne, and which are leased to a farmer, are still much scattered. They lie in seventy different pieces, most of which are quite small, acres, half-acres, and roods. But even here there has been a considerable amount of consolidation, and it has been followed by the beginnings of enclosure. The 37½ acres of pasture lie in five pieces of 11, 9, 7, 5, 5½ acres, all of which have been enclosed. The arable is still intermixed with the strips of the other tenants in the open fields. But on the arable itself consolidation and enclosure are creeping forward. There are four strips lying together which comprise 6-3/4 acres. There is one enclosure, consisting of arable, wood, and meadow, and containing 17 acres. The neighbouring manor of Fulmordeston[410] offers an example of a state of things in which the same tendency has worked itself out to completion. The 742 acres leased by the farmer of the demesne are entirely enclosed. There are two woods comprising 50 acres. There is an enclosure of 250 acres, 35 perches, consisting of “Corne severall and Broome severall.” There is a “great close" of 130 acres, 1 rood, “longe close" of 57 acres, 3 roods, “Brick kyll close" of 40 acres, 1 rood, “Brakehill close" of 24 acres, 1 rood, a field of 106 acres called Hestell, and another of 83 acres, 2 roods. But these different stages are best illustrated by maps[411] Nos. I., III., IV., V., and VI.

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V. MAP OF PART OF THE MANOR OF WEEDON WESTON IN NORTHAMPTONSHIRE (1590.)

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VI. MAP OF THE MANOR OF WHADBOROUGH IN LEICESTERSHIRE (1620.)

On No. III. it will be seen that there is a good deal of subdivision. On Nos. IV. and V. the tenants whose strips separated parts of the demesne from each other, have in many cases dropped out, so that the process of aggregation is facilitated: on No. I. the concentration of the demesne into a single large block is complete; though it is still unenclosed, it offers no obstacle to enclosure: on No. VI.consolidation has been followed by enclosure, conversion to pasture and depopulation. Between the state of things on map No. III. and that on map No. VI. there is the greatest possible difference. Yet there is no reason to doubt that Whadborough had once been an open field village with tenants who were mainly engaged in tillage. Map Nos. IV., V., and I. are, as it were, the intervening chapters which join the preface to the conclusion. Occasionally one can see the process of consolidation, which was the necessary preliminary of enclosure, actually taking place. At Harriesham,[412] in Kent, the parson held 3 acres of glebe land in two pieces, one of them lying in the middle of a field belonging to another tenant, who ploughed up its boundaries and added it to his own land. Accordingly, to prevent uncertainty in the future, the owner of the field and the parson executed a deed by which the latter surrendered his claim to the detached pieces of land, and in return got three acres laid out in a single plot. In view of the large blocks which are often held by the farmer of the demesne, one cannot doubt that such consolidation by way of exchange must have been a common arrangement.

It remains to ask how far the type of economy pursued by the large farmer differed from that of the smaller tenants, and in particular whether there are signs of his specialising upon the grazing of sheep. The most complete picture of the agricultural changes of the early sixteenth century, not on the demesne farms alone, but on the holdings of all classes of tenants as well, is given in the well-known returns[413] made by the Commissioners who were appointed by Wolsey in 1517 to investigate enclosures, and these are supplemented by the figures published by Miss Davenport[414] as to the relative proportions or arable and pasture land on certain Staffordshire estates. The interpretation of both of these sets of statistics is ambiguous. Mr. Leadam uses them to show that much enclosing took place for arable, and that therefore the statutes and writers of the period exaggerated the movement towards pasture farming. Professor Gay thinks his conclusions untenable, and that a proper interpretation of the Commissioners' returns corroborates the view of contemporary writers that pasture was substituted for tillage on a large scale. Two points emerge pretty clearly from the controversy. The first is that there was a good deal of redistribution of land with the object of better tillage, of the kind which has been described above, and that probably the fact that the word “enclosure" was used to describe this, as well as the conversion of arable to pasture, was responsible for some confusion. The second is that the predominant tendency was towards sheep-farming. To suppose that contemporaries were mistaken as to the general nature of the movement is to accuse them of an imbecility which is really incredible. Governments do not go out of their way to offend powerful classes out of mere lightheartedness, nor do large bodies of men revolt because they have mistaken a ploughed field for a sheep pasture. Even if we accept Mr. Leadam’s statistical analysis of the report of the Commission of 1517, his figures still reveal a great deal of conversion to pasture; and it is clear that many cases on which his totals rest are open to more than one interpretation.

If the general correctness of the view of the sixteenth century observers that there was a wide movement towards sheep-farming is accepted, it ought to be represented more fully on the demesne farms than elsewhere, because changes could be applied to them with much less friction than to the lands in which the interests of other tenants were involved. With a view to showing to what extent this is the case two sets of figures are given below; the first is a table taken from Dr. Savine's[415] work on The English Monasteries on the Eve of the Reformation, and relates to the demesne lands of forty-one monasteries which were surveyed for the Crown on the occasion of their surrender; some were apparently in the hands of the monastery and some apparently were leased. The second gives the approximate use to which land was put by the farmers of the demesnes on forty-nine manors in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. They are subdivided in three groups, (a) manors in Norfolk and Suffolk, (b) manors in Wiltshire and Dorsetshire (one), and (c) manors in other southern and eastern counties, but including one in Staffordshire and one in Lancashire. For purposes of comparison the table given in Part I. Chapter III., illustrating the use made of the customary holdings, is repeated here:—

[Table X]

I

Total Demesne Land of Forty-one Monasteries.	Arable.	Pasture.	Meadow.
Acres.	Acres.	Acres.	Acres.
16780	6235¾	8691½	1852¾
	(37.1%)	(51.7%)	(11.0%)