7. Decay of yeomanry, pp 310-12. (Latimer.)
8. Decay of husbandry, pp 312-14. (Sir T More.)
All these passages are of great interest as shewing how a number of phenomena observable in the case of ancient estates are repeated under medieval conditions. The typical Manor with its elaborate hierarchy and rules, the struggles of the small yeoman, the encroachments of big landlords, the special difficulties of small-scale tillage caused by growth of large-scale pasturage, the increase of wastrels and sturdy beggars, are all notable points, worthy the attention of a student of ancient farm life and labour.
The Big Man and the Small Farmer.
(5) Clifton Johnson, From the St Lawrence to Virginia. New York 1913, p 21. Chapter on the Adirondack winter.
(Conversation in an up-country store.)
‘I worked for Rockefeller most of that season. You know he has a big estate down below here a ways. There used to be farmhouses—yes and villages on it, but he bought the owners all out, or froze ’em out. One feller was determined not to sell, and as a sample of how things was made uncomfortable for him I heard tell that two men came to his house once and made him a present of some venison. They had hardly gone when the game warden dropped in and arrested him for havin’ venison in his house. All such tricks was worked on him, and he spent every cent he was worth fighting lawsuits. People wa’n’t allowed to fish on the property, and the women wa’n’t allowed to pick berries on it. A good deal of hard feeling was stirred up, and Rockefeller would scoot from the train to his house, and pull the curtains down, ’fraid they’d shoot him. Oh! he was awful scairt.’
Eastern Europe.
(6) Marion L Newbigin DSc, Geographical aspects of Balkan problems. London 1915.
Turks—‘not all their virtues, not all their military strength, have saved them from the slow sapping of vitality due to their divorce alike from the actual tilling of the land and from trade and commerce.... He has been within the (Balkan) peninsula a parasite, chiefly upon the ploughing peasant, and the effect has been to implant in the mind of that peasant a passion for agriculture, for the undisturbed possession of a patch of freehold, which is probably as strong here as it has ever been in the world.’ p 137.