On the other hand, the farmer often rose in the social scale. With the abandonment of the handicaps and restrictions of the common-field system the efficient came more speedily to the front. It was they who had amassed capital, and capital was now needed more than ever, so they added field to field, and consolidated holdings.
The Act of 1845 did away with the necessity for private Enclosure Acts, still further reducing the expense; and since that date there have been 80,000 or 90,000 acres of common arable fields and meadows enclosed without parliamentary sanction, and 139,517 acres of the same have been enclosed with it,[576] besides many acres of commons and waste.
In the Report of the Committee of Enclosures of 1844,[577] there is a curious description of the way in which common fields were sometimes allotted. There were in some open fields, lands called 'panes', containing forty or sixty different lands, and on a certain day the best man of the parish appeared to take possession of any lot he thought fit. If his right was called in question there was a fight for it, and the survivor took the first lot, and so they went on through the parish. There was also the old 'lot meadow' in which the owners drew lots for choice of portions. On some of the grazing lands the right of grazing sheep belonged to a man called a 'flockmaster', who during certain months of the year had the exclusive right of turning his sheep on all the lands of the parish.
Closely connected with the subject of enclosure is that of the partial disappearance of the small owner, both the yeoman who farmed his own little estate and the peasant proprietor. We have noticed above[578] Gregory King's statement as to the number of small freeholders in England in 1688, no less than 160,000, or with their families about one-seventh of the population of the country. This date, that of the Revolution, marks an epoch in their history, for from that time they began to diminish in proportion to the population. Their number in 1688 is a sufficient answer to the exaggerated statement of contemporaries in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as to the depopulation caused by enclosures. Chamberlayne, in his State of Great Britain, published at about the same time as Gregory King's figures, says there were more freeholders in England than in any country of like extent in Europe: '£40 or £50 a year is very ordinary, £100 or £200 in some counties is not rare, sometimes in Kent and in the Weald of Sussex £500 or £600 per annum, and £3,000 or £4,000 of stock.' In the first quarter of the eighteenth century he was a prominent figure. Defoe[579] describes the number and prosperity of the Greycoats of Kent (as they were called from their homespun garments), 'whose interest is so considerable that whoever they vote for is always sure to carry it.'
Why has this sturdy class so dwindled in numbers, and left England infinitely the weaker for their decrease? The causes are several; social, economic, and political. The chief, perhaps, is the peculiar form of Government which came in with the Revolution. The landed gentry by that event became supreme, the national and local administration was entirely in their hands, and land being the foundation of social and political influence was eagerly sought by them where it was not already in their hands.[580] At the same time the successful business men, whose numbers now increased rapidly from the development of trade, bought land to 'make themselves gentlemen'. Both these classes bought out the yeomen, who do not seem to have been very loath to part with their land. The recently devised system of strict family settlements enabled the old and the new gentlemen to keep this land in their families. The complicated title to land made its transfer difficult and costly, so that there was little breaking up of estates to correspond with the constant buying up of small owners. To the smaller freeholder, as has been noticed, the enclosure of waste land did much harm, for it was necessary to his holding. Again, smaller arable farms did not pay as well as large ones, so they tended to disappear. The decay of home industries was also a heavy blow to the smaller yeoman and the peasant proprietor.
Under this combination of circumstances many of the yeomen left the land. Yet though Young, less than a century after King and Davenant, said that the small freeholder had practically disappeared, there were at the end of the eighteenth century many left all over England, who however largely disappeared during the war and in the bad times after the war.[581] But a contrary tendency was at work which helped to replenish the class. The desire of the Englishman for land is not confined to the wealthy classes. At the end of the eighteenth century men who had made small fortunes in trade were buying small properties and taking the place of the yeomen.[582] In the great French War of 1793-1815, many yeomen, attracted by the high prices of land, sold their properties, but at the same time many farmers, attracted by the high prices of produce, which had often enriched them, bought land.[583] During the 'good times' of 1853-75 many small holders, like those of Axholme, noticed in the Report of the Agricultural Commission of 1893, bought land.
A new class of small owners also has sprung up, who, dwelling in or near towns and railway stations, have bought small freeholds. The return of the owners of land of 1872-6 gave the following numbers of those owning land in England and Wales[584]:
| Total number of owners of: | Number. | Acreage. | ||
| less than one acre | 703,289 | 151,171 | ||
| 1 | acre and under | 10 | 121,983 | 478,679 |
| 10 | " | 50 | 72,640 | 1,750,079 |
| 50 | " | 100 | 25,839 | 1,791,605 |
| 100 | " | 500 | 32,317 | 6,827,346 |
The great majority of the first class here enumerated, those owning less than one acre, do not concern us, as they were evidently merely houses and gardens not of an agricultural character, but a large number of the second class and most of the other three must have been agricultural, though unfortunately no distinction is made. It will be seen, therefore, that there were a considerable number of small owners in England in 1872, and their numbers have probably increased since. Many of them, however, are of the new class mentioned above, and there appears to be no doubt that the number of the peasant proprietors and of the yeomen of the old sort has much diminished, especially in proportion to the growth of population.