In the West Felde

1. In manus domine [sic] 1/2 acre of land of the tenement Marre.
2. "1½ roods of the tenement Furell.
3. "½ acre land of the tenement Stanx.
4. "1 acre, 1 rood land of the tenement Gryne.
5. "3 roods land of the tenement Scot.
6. "3½ roods land of the tenement Townsend.
7. "½ acre land of the tenement Byelaugh.
8. "1/2 acre land of the tenement Wheteloffe.
9. "1/2 acre land of the tenement Scutt.
10. "½ acre land of the tenement Coyefor.
11. "1 acre with the gravel pit.
12. "3 roods land of the tenement Nedwyn.
13. "1 acre land late of J. Cockerell.
14. "3 roods land of the tenement Gilbert.
15. "1 acre and 1 rood of the tenement Spotell.
16. "3 roods land of the tenement Spotell.
17. "3 roods land of the tenement Husbond.
18. " 1 acre of the tenement Rodengh.
19. "½ acre land of the tenement Pymans.
20. "3 roods of the tenement Scutt.
21. "1 acre of decay of the tenement Spotell.

Here one has a field divided into twenty-one strips. Of these strips eighteen had at one time been in the occupation of separate individuals. The picture is just what we are accustomed to in mediæval surveys. It is illustrated sufficiently for our purpose by the map of part of Salford, on page 163. But some time before this survey of Walsingham was made a great change had taken place. The separate fragments had been taken out of the hands of the tenants and combined in the hands of the lord; the field is ready for conversion to pasture and for enclosure. How extremely profitable it might be to substitute a single large farm for a number of small holdings is proved by Manorial Rentals. Taking five manors in Wiltshire in the year 1568, one finds that the rents paid by the farmer of the demesne work out at 1s. 6d., 7¾d., 1s. 5¾d., 1s. 1¾d., 1s. 5½d. per acre; those paid by the customary tenants at 7½d., 5d., 1s. 0¾d., 5¾d., 5¾d. per acre.[443]

The difference is, in itself, enough to explain a decided movement towards an increase in the size of the unit of agriculture. But of course a powerful incentive to such procedure was supplied by the growth of pasture farming. In the days when the cultivation of the demesne depended on the labour of the tenants there was obviously bound to be a certain proportion between the land belonging to the former and the land held by the latter, a proportion which might be expressed by saying “no tenants, no demesne cultivation; no demesne cultivation, no income for the lord.” But when tillage was replaced by pasture farming this economic rule of three ceased to work. On the one hand, the limit of size imposed on the demesne farm by considerations of management was removed or at any rate enormously extended, for many thousand sheep could be fed by two or three shepherds. On the other hand, the economic motive for preventing a decline in the number of small landholders was weakened, because there was little use for their labour on a pasture farm; while there was a great deal of use for their land, if only it could be cleared of existing rights and added to it. We have, in fact, an ordinary case of the depreciation of particular[444] kinds of human labour in comparison with capital, of the kind to which the modern world has become accustomed in the case of machinery—become accustomed and become callous.

We shall perhaps best give precision to our ideas of the sort of policy which landlords were inclined to adopt, by taking a single concrete instance, though of course conditions varied locally very much from place to place. It comes from Hartley[445] in Northumberland, where Robert Delavale was lord of the manor in the reign of Elizabeth. The narrator is his cousin, Joshua Delavale—

“Since which time" (i.e. 16 Eliz.), he says, “the said Robert Delavale purchased all the freeholder’s lands and tenements, displaced the said tenants, defaced their tenements, converted their tillage to pasture, being 720 acres of arable ground or thereabouts, and made one demaine, whereon there is but three plows now kept by hinds and servants, besides the 720 acres. So that where there was then in Hartley 15 serviceable men furnished with sufficient horse and furniture, there is now not any, nor hath been these 20 years last past or thereabouts.”

Here we get a complete example of the various steps which are taken to build up a great pasture farm. The freeholders are bought out; the other tenants are (it is to be inferred) evicted summarily; their houses are pulled down; their land is thrown into the demesne; the whole area is let down to pasture and managed by hired labourers, while the land-holding population is turned adrift. It is worth noticing that the word “enclosing” is not used. All the drastic changes that are usually ascribed to enclosure can on occasion take place without it. Indeed, the more drastic they are the less need is there to complete them by the erection of fences, for the smaller the population left to commit encroachments.

If such a process were general or even common, we should certainly have the materials of a social revolution. But was it? The much discussed question of the effect of the agrarian changes on the numbers of the rural population is one which it is not possible to answer with any approach to accuracy, owing to the difficulty of obtaining a sufficient number of continuous series of surveys and rentals. Those relating to single years tell mainly results, when what we want to see is a process. Nevertheless even single surveys are not altogether without value. They show the distribution of land between different classes at a given moment, and sometimes contain indications of the changes by which the existing distribution was reached. In particular they show us the relative areas of the demesne farm and of the land in the hands of all other classes of tenants. And this has a certain interest. For since the demesne farm on a manor where conditions approximated most closely to those of the Middle Ages and had been least affected by more recent changes, rarely contained more than half the whole manorial territory and generally not so much, there is a prima facie case for surmising concentration of holdings and evictions when one finds two-thirds, three-quarters, or even ninety per cent. of it in the hands of one large farmer. It is, however, a very tedious task calculating the acreage held by a number of different tenants, and this may perhaps excuse the small number of instances which are given below. They are as follows:—