II. PART OF THE MANOR OF EDGEWARE, IN MIDDLESEX (1597.)
We have spoken at length of the prosperity of the peasants, because it is necessary to appreciate it in order to sympathise with the point of view from which they and their contemporaries regarded the agrarian problem. But evil days are coming upon the rural middle classes. Indeed they have already come. There is by this time much anger against depopulating landlords, much talk of the good customs of Henry VII., much murmuring lest men be brought to that slavery the Frenchman be in. We must leave the light and follow them into the shadow.[Next Chapter]
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.”