With the prices of produce rents rose enormously. Very early in the century[262] rents of arable land had increased ninefold, since the fifteenth century, and by 1688 Davenant and King estimated the average rent of arable land in England at 5s. 6d. per acre and of permanent grass at 8s. 8d. Perhaps this is too high an estimate, as on the Belvoir estate of 17,837 acres in 1692 the rental all round was 3s. 91/4d. an acre for land above the average in quality, though it must be remembered that the Earls and Dukes of Rutland were indulgent landlords.
The History of Hawsted affords a valuable index of the increase of rents at this period.[263] In 1500 the average rent was 1s. 4d. an acre; in 1572, 39 acres of arable, meadow, and pasture were let for 2s. 3d. an acre, the landlord, it is interesting to notice, reserving the right of hawking, netting rabbits, hunting, and fowling; and about the same date other lands on the estate were let at 1s. 3d. and 1s. 6d. an acre, so that there had not generally been much advance since 1500, which is what we should expect, as the great rise took place at the end of the sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth centuries. In 1589, therefore, it is not surprising to find that 40 acres of meadow and pasture let at 5s. an acre, and in 1611 some buildings and 155 acres of park at 11s. an acre. In 1616, 366 acres of arable and pasture and 39 acres of meadow were valued at 12s. an acre for letting, and the Hall Farm of 175 acres (81/2 acres meadow) at 10s.; and Great Pipers Farm of 138 acres (8 meadow) at 7s., while meadow and pasture near the mansion was valued at 21s. an acre.
In 1658 the rent of the Hall Farm had advanced from 10s. an acre to about 13s., though in 1682 it went down to 11s. 6d.[264] According to the survey of the Manor of Manydown in Hampshire in 1650, meadow land was worth 20s. an acre, pasture 8s. to 10s., arable from 2s. to 10s., the latter showing a great variation in quality.[265] In 1723 Bryers Wood Farm at Hawsted, which had been let in 1620 for £15, was let at £29 5s. These rents are considerably higher than the estimate of Davenant and King; but it must be remembered that they were for land in the parts of England, where farming was at its best, and they, in accounting for the whole country, had to take into consideration a vast amount of land in the north and west which was worth very little. In the Rawlinson Collection[266] in the Bodleian Library is a rental of Lord Kingston's estate in north Nottinghamshire in 1689, the rents averaging 10s. an acre; but this was an exceptionally good estate, much of the property being meadow and pasture. The farmhouses also were above the average, while in two of the parishes the tenants had rights of common, and in two others the tenancies were tithe free. There was very little arable land on the estate, three small holdings letting for 6s. 8d. an acre; and some of the pasture land was let at 14s., 15s. 6d., and even 18s. an acre. The largest farm, Saundby Hall, of 607 acres, nearly all meadow and pasture, was 9s. 10d. an acre. The cottages were fortunate in having pieces of land attached to them. In Saundby, Richard Ffydall rented a cottage and 2 acres of arable land for £1 13s. 4d.; Widow Johnson a cottage and yard for 13s. 4d.; William Daubney a cottage with 61/2 acres of arable and 51/2 acres of pasture for £7 18s. 6d. A farm in Scrooby, consisting of a messuage, cottage, and 113 acres of arable, meadow, and pasture, only let at £23.
As to the freehold value of land, in 1621, according to D'Ewes, it was worth from sixteen to twenty years' purchase; yet, in 1688, Sir Josiah Child said that lands now sell at twenty years' purchase, which fifty or sixty years before sold at eight or ten; and he also states, 'the same farms or lands to be now sold would yield treble and in some cases six times the money they were sold for fifty years ago'.[267] Davenant puts land at twelve years' purchase in 1600, at eighteen years in 1688.[268] In 1729 the price of land was said to be twenty-seven years' purchased.[269]
The legislation against laying down tillage to grass was continued until the end of the sixteenth century. The statute 39 Eliz., c. 1, repealed 4 Hen. VII, c. 19, and all other Acts against pulling down houses, and provided that a house of husbandry should be a house that hath or hath had 20 acres of arable land. All such houses which had been destroyed during the last seven years were to be rebuilt, and if destroyed more than seven years only one-half was to be rebuilt; but to each of them at least 40 acres of land were to be attached.
The next statute, 39 Eliz., c. 2, sets forth once more the advantages of tillage, viz. the increase and multiplying of people for service in the wars, and in time of peace the employment of a greater number of people, the keeping of people from poverty, the dispersal of the wealth of the kingdom in many hands, and 'the standing of this realm upon itself without depending upon foreign countries'[270]; and therefore enacts that lands converted from tillage to pasture shall be restored to tillage within three years, and lands then in tillage should be so continued; but this was only to extend to twenty-three counties, and omitted most of those in the south-west. At the beginning of the seventeenth century a reaction set in; the price of corn had risen immensely and continued to do so, the price of wool remained stationary, and tillage was as profitable as grass. In 1620 Coke speaks of the man who only kept a shepherd and a dog as one who never prospered. In 1624 several of the tillage laws were repealed.[271]
As an example of the unenclosed fields, at the end of the sixteenth century, we may take the common fields at Daventry, which were three in number, containing respectively 368, 383, and 524 acres, divided into furlongs, a term which had now a very wide signification, each of which was subdivided into lands nearly always half an acre in extent, several of these lands when adjoining being often held now by the same owner. One furlong may be taken as an example. It was 37 acres 1 rood in extent, and contained ninety-six lands, owned by seventeen people. The meadows were divided still more minutely, some of the smaller portions being only a quarter of an acre each. The largest meadow contained 50 acres, divided among fifty-three people. In the manor, besides the arable and meadow, there were 300 acres of common pasture, a park, and a small wood. There were forty-one freeholders and many leasehold tenants, the average freehold being 34 acres, the average leasehold only half an acre, small holdings being the usual feature of the unenclosed township.
In the seventeenth century the price of wool ceased to operate as a cause of enclosure, but in many parts the change to pasture continued, owing to the rise in price of cattle and of wages. The same reason, too, for laying down land to grass that had been so powerful in the preceding centuries still existed, the common arable fields needed rest from continual cropping and poor manuring, while good crops of corn could be grown from the virgin soil of the newly enclosed waste. The preamble of the Durham decrees clearly states this: 'the land is wasted and worn with continual ploweing, and thereby made bare, barren, and very unfruitful.'[272] We may, therefore, take Coke's words as inapplicable to many districts. In the seventeenth century there were several methods of enclosing. Sometimes the lord of the manor enclosed and left the land of the tenants still in common; or a tenant enclosed piece by piece; or enclosures were made by Act of Parliament, the earliest of which for common fields was passed in the time of James I, a method at this period very seldom used; or there was an agreement between lord and tenants often authorized by the Courts of Chancery or Exchequer.
Besides enclosure, another process was going on, the consolidation of farms by the amalgamation of small holdings into larger ones. Farmhouses, as we see them to-day, began to appear on the holdings thus consolidated, instead of being grouped together in villages. A writer in 1604 says, 'we may see many of their houses built alone like raven's nests, no birds building neere them' so unwonted was the sight of isolated dwellings in most places at the time.
However, in 1630 Charles I went back to the policy of his forefathers and issued letters to certain of the Midland counties ordering all enclosures of the last two years to be removed, and Commissions were issued to inquire into the matter in 1632, 1635, and 1636,[273] the chief evil feared from enclosures being depopulation, and enclosers were prosecuted in the Court of Star Chamber.