CHAPTER IIITHE PEASANTRY (continued)

With these words, so suggestive of the blurring of lines which in previous ages were sharply drawn, we may pause to consider where we stand. Our argument has aimed at showing the large changes which have taken place in the position of the peasantry as landholders before the agrarian revolution of the sixteenth century begins. We have not been able to give any quantitative measurements of the developments. But we have seen enough to understand the direction in which economic forces aresetting. The substitution of hired labour for villein services, and the formation of a middle class of considerable landholders out of the occupiers of virgates and semi-virgates who formed the bulk of the population on most mediæval manors, are changes which have taken place quietly and which have nothing sensational about them. But the growth of relationships based on a cash nexus between individuals, which they both imply, has effected a very real alteration in rural conditions, an alteration which is in a small way like that occurring to-day when the discovery that a quiet village possesses mineral wealth or is a convenient holiday resort puts money into circulation there, causes farming lands to be cut up into plots which are bought by the savings of speculative tradesmen, and adds a new tangle of commercial relationships to the slowly moving economy of village life. Speculation in land on a small scale begins among the more prosperous villeins at an early date, as the inevitable result of an increase in prosperity and of the land hunger of a growing population. It is immensely accelerated through the impetus which the plague, by emptying holdings of their occupants, gives to the formation of something like a land market, and the result is that the holdings of the more fortunate grow and the holdings of the less fortunate diminish. As a consequence, there is in many fifteenth century villages the greatest variety in the economic conditions of the peasantry. Except where commercial forces have been held in check by the remoteness of the township from centres of trade, or where the needs of the manorial authorities oblige them to resist any subdivision of holdings for fear it should lead to the loss of services, the comparative uniformity characteristic of their holdings in the thirteenth century has disappeared, and the equality in poverty of the modern agricultural labourer has not yet taken its place. Though the old Adam of economic enterprise seems to be banished by the insistence of stewards and bailiffs that holdings which are responsible for certain works shall be treated as an indivisible unity, he sneaks back, even in the mediæval manor, in the shape of agreements among the peasantry, agreements which break that unity up byway of exchange, of sale, of leasing, and sub-letting. By the end of the fifteenth century the different elements in rural society are spread, as it were, along a more extended scale, and there is a much wider gap between those who are most, and those who are least, successful.

Taken together these changes mean, on the whole, an upward movement, an increase in the opportunities possessed by the peasantry of advancing themselves by purchasing and leasing land, more mobility, more enterprise, greater scope for the man who has saved money and wishes to invest it. They mean that custom and authority have less influence and that class distinctions based upon tenure are weakened. But the upward curve may turn and descend; for they imply also a tendency towards the dissolution of fixed customary arrangements and of the protection which they offer against revolutionary changes, a tendency which in the future, when great landowners and capitalists turn their attentions to discovering the most profitable methods of farming, may damage the very men who have gained by it in the past. In the next two chapters we shall glance at the first point, and pause at greater length upon the second: first, the economic condition of the mass of the peasantry before the great agrarian movements of the sixteenth century begin; secondly, the signs of coming change which may react to their disadvantage. We shall try to maintain the standpoint of an observer in the early years of the sixteenth century. But economic periods overlap, and Northumberland is still in the Middle Ages when Middlesex is in the eighteenth century. So we shall not hesitate to use evidence drawn from sources that are in point of time far apart.[Next Chapter]

[119]Crondal Records, edited by Baigent, Part I., p. 159; the Crondal customary of 1567. Among the copyholders appears a knight and four gentlemen.

[120]Northumberland County History, e.g.Surveys of High Buston (vol. v. p. 208); Acklington (vol. v. p. 372); Birling (vol. v. p. 201), and figures of eight townships in Tynemouthshire, vol. viii. p. 230.

[121]Roxburghe Club,Surveys of the Lands of William, First Earl of Pembroke.

[122]See below, pp.105–115.

[123]Smith,De Republica Anglorum, Lib. I., c. 24. Harrison,Elizabethan England(edited by Withington), p. 13.

[124]Edict of October 9, 1807, Clauses 10, 11, 12. See Cobden Club,Systems of Land Tenure in Various Countries: Morier’s Essay on Germany.

[125]The instance is taken from a map of the manor of Edgeware now in the All Souls muniment room. The map was made in 1597. But many earlier examples can be found of land being known by the name of one of its early holders, long after it had passed into the possession of some one else.

[126]For the sources from which this table is constructed, and its defects, seeAppendix II..

[127]On three small manors I have included some tenants who may possibly be freeholders or leaseholders.

[128]Merton Documents, Rentale de Cuxham (Nos. 5902 and 5905).

[129]Merton Documents, Rentale de Ibston (No. 5902).

[130]R.O. Rental and Surveys, Gen. Ser., Portf. 19, No. 7, f. 79–87.

[131]R.O. Rentals and Surveys, Gen. Ser., Portf. 14, No. 70.

[132]Roxburghe Club,Surveys of Lands of William, First Earl of Pembroke.

[133]Ibid.

[134]The inconvenience of reckoning in yardlands is noticed by a writer in the seventeenth century: “The tax of land is after the yardland; a name very deceitful by the disproportion and inequality thereof, the quantity of some one yardland being as much as one and a halfe or two in the same field, and yet there is an equality of taxes” (Joseph Lee,A Vindication of a Regulated Enclosure, 1656).

[135]Merton Documents, MS. book labelled Kibworth and Barkby, 1636.

[136]Ibid.

[137]Merton Documents, Rental of Malden.

[138]R.O. Rentals and Surveys, Gen. Ser., Portf. 14, No. 85.

[139]Ibid., Portf. 22, No. 18.

[140]Roxburghe Club,Surveys of Lands of William, First Earl of Pembroke.

[141]Roxburghe Club,Surveys of Lands of William, First Earl of Pembroke.

[142]Ibid.

[143]Ibid.

[144]Crondal Record, Part I. (Baigent), pp. 210–221. Customary of 1567.

[145]All Souls Documents, Map and Description of the Manor of Edgeware (1597).

[146]Ibid., Map and Description of the Manor of Kingsbury (1597).

[147]Similar examples could be adduced from Northamptonshire and Leicestershire, were it worth while,e.g.at Duston in Northants in 1561 there were tenants holding 2 virgates, 1¾ virgates, 1½ virgates, ½ virgate, ¼ virgate (R.O. Rentals and Surveys, Portf. 13, No. 23). At Desford in Leicestershire,temp.Hen. VIII., one finds the same division and aggregation of virgates (R.O. Rentals and Surveys, Duchy of Lancs., Bdle. 6, No. 7).

[148]See below, pp.72–75.

[149]Crondal Records, loc. cit.

[150]Merton Documents, Rental of Maiden, 1496.

[151]History of Castle Combe(Scrope).

[152]For information as to Aspley Guise I am indebted to the kindness of Dr. H.G. Fowler of Aspley Guise, who has allowed me to see the material which he has collected for a history of the manor.

[153]Roxburghe Club,Surveys of Lands of William, First Earl of Pembroke(Straton).

[154]Crondal Records(Baigent), pp. 111–116, and 210–222.

[155]Merton Documents, No. 5902, Rental of Cuxham, 1483: “Johannes ... pro uno messuagio et una virgata terræ et dimidia xxiiis. et 6 precaria in autumno vel 2s.... Thomas Lee, Rector ecclesiæ ibidem pro uno tofto ... et una virgata terræ 18s. et 4 precaria in autumno vel 16d.”

[156]Crondal Records(Baigent), p. 96, Rental of 1287: “Johannes filius Fabri, Stephanus Draghebreck, Rogerus de Hallie, et Willelmus le Hart ... tenent j dimidiam hidatam terræ. Reddendo inde per annum 5s. ad festum S. Mich. et xixd. de Pondpany et ad festum Beati Martini viii gallinas de chersetto, et ii gallinas contra Natale, et x ova contra Pascha, et facient in omnibus omnia sicut Willelmus de Haillie.” P. 125: “William, son of Gonnilda, and Galfrid Levesone, John, son of Matilda, and Emma, a widow, hold one virgate of land containing 27½ acres on paying and doing as the said Robert of Estfelde.” There are many similar entries.

[157]Vinogradoff,Villainage in England, pp. 250–251: “The general arrangement admitted a certain subdivision under the cover of an artificial unity, which found its expression in the settlement of the services and of the relations with the lord.”

[158]Ingoldmells Court Rolls(Massingberd), October 1315 to June 1316.

[159]Crondal Records(Baigent), pp. 152–153. Court Roll of 1282. “Hugh Sweyn gives to the lord 15d. that he may be able to hold 2½ acres of arable land of the tenement formerly Richard Wisdom's, paying therefor yearly 15d. of rent: sureties for the services being Gilbert Swein and Roger Carter.” Nine other tenants take fractions of Richard Wisdom's holding in the same way.

[160]Victoria County History of Suffolk, “Social and Economic History” (Unwin). Professor Unwin has some suggestive remarks on similar developments in other parts of the county.

[161]History of Castle Combe(Scrope), p. 162: “Johannes Pleyslede, nativus domini, cepit de domino unum messuagium et duas virgatas terrae tenendas in bondagio, secundum consuetudinem manerii ... Reddit etiam annuatim sex denarios pro quadam pastura vocata le Hatche, et pro via ad eandem.”

[162]Crondal Records(Baigent), p. 129, Rental of Dupehale (Dippenhall) 1287: “Edmunde de Bosco and William de Bosco hold 2 cotlands which were formed out of one virgate of land which Adam de Bosco formerly held.”

[163]Ibid., p. 153: “Margery Palmer comes and surrenders into the hands of the lord a virgate of land with a house in Crondal, and Galfrid her son comes and gives to the lord 6s. 8d. to have seizin thereof, upon this condition, that the said Margery have the third part, and two pieces more, of the aforesaid tenement, for the term of her life.”

[164]Crondal Records(Baigent), p. 117, Rental of Yateleigh, 1287: “John de la Perke and Thomas Squel hold one virgate of land containing 22 acres, on payment therefor of 2s. 10d. on the Feast of St. Michael and 7½ for Pondpany, and one stoup of honey, and 75 eggs, and shall perform all services like Thomas Kach.... Walter le White and Osbert de la Knelle hold one virgate of land containing 29½ acres.... Roys de Pothulle and John le White hold one virgate of land containing 29 acres.”

[165]Court Rolls of the Lordships, Wapentakes, and Demesne Manors of Thomas, Earl of Lancaster(edited by W. Farrer). Halmote of Colne, 1323: “Thomas le Harper for taverning 3 acres of land, 6d. Roger ... for the same of 2 acres of land, 4d.,” andpassim.

[166]Crondal Records(Baigent), p. 140: “John Thomas holds a messuage and a 'ferdell' of land, excepting one cotland and a perch.... Thomas le Freyn holds of the above a cotland and a perch.”

[167]Ibid., p. 134: “William de Suche gives to the lord 12d. yearly, to be allowed to hold 6 acres through the rents of Hugh of Wyggeworthale.”

[168]Crondal Records(Baigent), pp. 159–383. Customary of 1567. The name does not necessarily imply subtenancy in any way, the Hallmoot being simply the court of the manor. At Yateleigh one copyholder, Richard Allen, held about 263 acres, of which about 126 were held from him by 21 subtenants (pp. 258–265 and 378–379).

[169]Footnote inThe Rebellion of Wat Tyler, by Petruschevsky (Russian), p. 210: “Ricardus Flaxman qui de domino tenuit in bondagio unum messuagium et II. bovatas terræ et xvi acras terræ de Forland quæ quondam fuerunt Johannis Colyn ad terminum xx. annorum ex dimissione prædicti Johannis per licenciam curiæ, venit hic et reddidit in manus domini prædictas duas bovatas terræ et acras di' terræ et prati ad opus Willelmi Dolynes deduct' prædicto messuagio.” Duchy of Lancaster Court Rolls, Bdle. 32, No. 307, andibid., p. 211: “Robertus Bagges redd' in manus domini l bovatam terræ in bondagio ad opus Symonis Clerk Tenend 'sibi et suis, etc. Et idem Symon instanter redd' in manus domini prædictam bovatam terræ ad opus Willelmi Flaxman sibi et heredibus suis secundum consuetudinem manerii, et dat ad ingressum xiid.” Duchy of Lancaster Court Rolls, Bdle. 33,No. 324: “Instanter” is remarkable.

[170]See below, pp.115–121.

[171]SeeE.H.R., vol. xv. pp. 774–813; Vinogradoff’s review of Page’sThe End of Villeinage in England.

[172]Powell,The Revolt in East Anglia, Appendix I.; and Putnam,The Enforcement of the Statute of Labourers, pp. 80–81.

[173]Scrope,History of the Manor and Barony of Castle Combe. p. 233.

[174]Victoria County History of Suffolk, Unwin's article on Social and Economic History.

[175]Ibid.

[176]Merton Documents, “A table of the Matters, Orders, and Customs Conteyned in Severall Courts of the Manor, 1563”: “Daye given to all ye tenants of ye manor to remove and expell their undertenants by Michaelmas that shall be in ye yeare 1563, upon paine of every delinquent forfeiting 20s.” “Daye given to the aforesaid tenants having above one customary tenement to be here at ye next court to shew,” etc., as above. See the Customary of High Furness quoted below, p. 101; also Hone,The Manor and Manorial Records, pp. 177–178, Court Rolls of Payton, Oxon.: “And the aforesaid Laurence Pemerton, in his life time, substituted Walter Milleward as his subtenant ... contrary to the custom of the Manor without license; therefore let him have a talk thereon with the King’s officer before the next court.”

[177]This is the meaning of entries of two names as “sureties” when land changes hands. SeeCrondal Records, Court Rolls of 1281 and 1282,passim.

[178]Since writing the above I have seen that the same view of the advantages of copyhold (the descendant of villein) tenure is taken by Dr. Hasbach, who quotes an eighteenth century writer to the effect that copyhold as compared with freehold land had the advantage of “the greater certainty of its title and the cheapness of its conveyance” (Hasbach,A History of the English Agricultural Labourer, pp. 72–73).

[179]1235, c. 4. One may remark, however, that the power which a single freeholder had had before 1235 to prevent the breaking up or enclosure of common pastures, even when he had more than was sufficient for his own beasts, was a genuine hardship for the lord, for other freeholders, and for the customary tenants; see the remarks in Pollock and Maitland (History of English Law, vol. i. p. 612).

[180]Gesta Abbatum Monasterii St. Albani, vol. iii. pp. 120–121, quoted by Petruschevsky,op. cit., pp. 179–180.

[181]Victoria County History, Derbyshire, vol. ii. p. 170.

[182]Glover,History of Ashton, p. 355. “Richard the Hunte ... for an intake 3d. ... Thomas of the Leghes for the one half of the intake in Palden Wood 13s. 4d. The same Thomas of the Leghes for an intake besyde Alt Hey 10s.”

[183]Court Rolls of the Lordships, etc., of Thomas, Earl of Lancaster(Farrer). Halmote of Ightenhill, 1324, January 18: “John de Briddeswail for entry to half an acre of waste in Habrincham, 6d., for the same yearly, 2d.” Same court, May 7, 1324.: “Richard le Skinner for entry to 4 acres of waste in Sommerfordrod, 6d., for the same yearly, 6d.,” andpassim. In the north of England there seems to have been very much colonising of the waste, perhaps because original settlements were small. See Turner,History of Brighouse, Rastrick, and Hipperholme, pp. 66–67, andTrans. Rochdale Literary and Philosophical Society, vol. vii., Rochdale Manor Inquisition.

[184]Crondal Records(Baigent), pp. 116–120,e.g.“Robert, son of Peter de la Pierke, holds one acre of encroachment land on paying 4d.”

[185]Ibid., pp. 123–127.

[186]Ibid., pp. 131–134. “Richard Wysdon holds half a virgate of land containing 16 acres.... The same holds 63½ acres, which were in his ancient occupation, and were found to be over and above his said virgate, and (included) in many encroachments.”

[187]Ibid., pp. 122–123: “William of Southwoode holds 16 acres of encroachments and other detached pieces.”

[188]Thorold Rogers(Agriculture and Prices, vol. i. p. 34: “Not much less land was regularly under the plough than at present”) thinks otherwise. But (i.) modern agriculture has many ways of using land besides keeping it “under the plough”; (ii.) we know that in the eighteenth century large tracts now cultivated were barren heaths, and it is difficult to believe that these had been cultivated in the Middle Ages.

[189]See below, p.189. The instances there quoted are later than the period with which we are now dealing, but as they mostly come from Northumberland, a very conservative county, they are perhaps to the point.

[190]e.g.at South Newton in Wiltshire (see p.74), tithing of Swanthrop in Crondal, where the area of the tenants' holdings was in 1287 about 360 acres, and in 1567 about 607 acres, and tithing of Crondal, where the area of the tenants' holdings was in 1287 about 181, and in 1567 about 284. But these figures are not altogether satisfactory; and sometimes one finds a reduction,e.g.at Dippenhall (from about 287 acres at the earlier date to about 275 at the later date). The plague relieved the pressure of population, and thus removed one incentive for breaking up the waste; on the other hand, it left the survivors much better off, and thus more able to increase the scale of their husbandry. But until we know much more about the growth of population we shall not make much of general comparisons of this kind.

[191]e.g.at Hadleigh in 1305 (Victoria County History, Suffolk, Unwin’s article); at Crondal in 1287 (Crondal Records, p. 110); at Ormsby in 1324 (Massingberd,History of Ormsby).

[192]e.g.Scrope,Castle Combe, p. 164. Court Rolls of 1357: “Johannis filius Johannis Payn venit et finem fecit cum domino per 12d. pro ingressu habendo in illo messuagio et virgata terræ quæ Johannis le Parkare quondam tenuit.... Et dictum tenementum concessum est ei ad tam parvam finem eo quod dictum tenementum est ruinosum et decassum; et existebat in manu domini a tempore pestilentiæ pro defectu emptorum.” Massingberd, Ingoldmells Court Rolls for years 1349–1352. Gasquet,The Great Pestilence. Page,The End of Villeinage in England.

[193]The view that the equality of holdings was the creation not of the communal needs of the peasantry but of deliberate arrangement by the authorities, seems to be untenable in face of the evidence of early records showing that freeholders as well as the servile peasantry held roughly equal shares (see Vinogradoff,Villainage in England, Essay II., chap. iv. and chap. vi). On the other hand, the apportionment of services to holdings tended to stereotype the existing arrangement. A late example which displays both elements, that of authoritative pressure and that of communal organisation, is supplied by the Customary of High Furness (R.O. Duchy of Lancs. Special Commissions, No. 398): “As heretofore dividing and portioning of tenements hath caused great decay, chiefly of the service due to her Highness for horses, and of her woods, and has been the cause of making a great number of poor people in the lordship, it is now ordered that no one shall divide his Tenement or Tenements among his children, but that the least part shall be of the ancient yearly rent to her Highness of 6s. 8d.” See below, p.101.

[194]Edict of October 9, 1807, Clause 1.

[195]Compare a document,temp.Hen. VIII., quoted by Gonner,Common Land and Enclosure, p. 155 n., which states that whereas landlords at one time could not find tenants, now the case is altered and tenants want landlords.

[196]For the use of the demesne in the sixteenth century see below, pp.200–213.

[197]Dugdale,Monasticon, vol. v., Survey of Tykeford.

[198]Northumberland County History, vol. v., Amble: "4s. 8d. de forlands dimissis diversis tenentibus." "4 acres leased by the Prior for 8 years to Roger at 8d. per acre.”

[199]Ibid., vol. v., Acklington.

[200]Hoare,History of Wiltshire, Hundred of Ambresbury.

[201]Ibid.

[202]Humberstone,Topographer and Genealogist, vol. i. p. 43. See below, pp.208–209.

[203]Roxburghe Club,Surveys of Lands of William, First Earl of Pembroke(Straton).

[204]Ibid.

[205]Ibid.

[206]Ibid.

[207]Topographer and Genealogist, vol. i., Survey of the Manor of Whitforde in the County of Devon.

It was the argument of the previous chapter that the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries saw the emergence from the mass of manorial tenants of a class of wealthy peasants who bought and leased their neighbours' lands, added to their property parcels taken from the waste and demesne, and by these means built up estates far exceeding in size the normal villein holding. The change from labour services to money rents left the peasantry with time for the management of larger holdings, and the spread of a money economy increased their means of acquiring them. Cheap land and easy transfer favour the movement of property from one man to another. In the manorial courts transfer was easy, and, especially after the Great Plague, land was cheap. It is not necessary to take sides in the much debated question of the economic conditions of the fifteenth century, in order to hold that, on the whole, such changes made the greater part of it a period of increasing prosperity among the small cultivators. To support this view one could quote Fortescue's[208]proud description of the well-being of the common people. One could point out that in the dark days in the middle of the sixteenth century the peasants themselves looked back to the social conditions of the reign of Henry VII.[209]as a kind of golden age, andclamoured for their restoration. One could cite a good many examples pointing to an upward movement. Large estates are left at death by men who are legally villeins. Villeins, especially in the eastern counties, buy up freehold land and found considerable properties. A bond tenant in Lincolnshire marries into a knight’s family. Bond tenants are found leasing the manorial demesne in one block and farming estates of several hundred acres. Nor must we forget that the peasants of the sixteenth century are often very substantial people, and that even when the taint of personal villeinage is still upon them.

But isolated instances of this kind, suggestive though they are, are not likely to carry conviction unless they agree with what we know of the general economic situation. Economists who live after the days of Samuel Smiles will hesitate before they base optimistic conclusions as to the conditions of any class on cases of good fortune among individual members of it. We should be false to the spirit of our period if we did not recognise that the economic ideal of most men, an ideal often implied though not often formulated, was less the opening of avenues to enterprise than the maintenance of groups and communities at their customary level of prosperity. We shall have hereafter to speak of the changes which overtook the English social system in the course of the sixteenth century, in so far as they were connected with changes in the methods of agriculture and of land tenure. Before we do so we may pause for a moment to look at the village of the later Middle Ages as a social and economic unit.

The foundation of its whole life is the possession by the majority of households of holdings of land. Land is so widely distributed that the household, all of whose members are entirely dependent for their living upon work for wages, is the exception. Though this cannot be statistically proved, it is rendered almost certain by several converging lines of evidence. Turn first to the table on pp. 64 and 65, which sets out the acreage of the customary tenants' holdings. It will be seen that, when all the counties represented are grouped together, the tenants who have only cottages form less than one-tenth of the total number. In EastAnglia and in Lancashire the proportion, it is true, is considerably higher; but these counties are exceptions to the general rule, and the cottagers usually have gardens, which, if they do not amount to the minimum of four acres laid down by the Act of 1589, are nevertheless not infrequently of one or two acres in extent. If we may trust these figures, the typical family has a small holding of from two and a half to fifteen acres. Our second line of evidence quite falls in with this conclusion. It is clear from the tone of legislation that the class of workers who depend solely on a contract of service is in sixteenth century England not very large. Elizabethan[210]legislation provides expressly for the needs of farmers by empowering Justices of the Peace to apprentice unoccupied youths to husbandry, and to set the unemployed to work in the fields. Even in the middle of the seventeenth[211]century, when a strong movement has been at work for one hundred and fifty years in the opposite direction, there are complaints from pamphleteers that men who should work as wage-labourers cling to the soil, and in the naughtiness of their hearts prefer independence as squatters to employment by a master. Such comments throw a flash of light on the way in which the peasants regard the alternatives of wage labour and landholding. Sometimes they themselves give us a glimpse into their mind on the matter. They tell us how they face that most fundamental of economic problems, the Achilles' heel of modern civilisation, the problem of so arranging their little societies that as many persons as possible may enter life with some material equipment for self-maintenance in addition to their personal strength and skill. Here is an extract from a customary ofthe Lancashire manor of High Furness[212]drawn up in the reign of Elizabeth:—

“As heretofore deviding and porcioning of tenements hath caused great decay, chiefly of the service due to her Highness for horses and of her woods, and has been the cause of making a great number of poor people in the lordship, it is now ordered that no one shall devide his tenement or tenements among his children, but that the least part shall be of ancient yearly rent to her Highness of 6s. 8d., and that before every such division there shall be several houses and ousettes for every part of such tenement.”

This seems a hard rule. Will it not result in the creation of a body of propertyless labourers employed by a small village aristocracy? That danger is appreciated, and is dealt with in the clauses which follow:—

“If any customary tenant die seized of a customary tenement, having no son but a daughter, or daughters, then the eldest daughter being preferred in marriage shall have the tenement as his next heir, and she shall pay to her younger sister, if she have but one sister, 20 years ancient rent, as is answered to her Majesty; and if she have more than one sister she shall pay 40 years ancient rent to be equally divided among them....

“For the avoiding of great trouble in the agreement with younger brothers, it is now ordered that the eldest son shall pay to his brothers in the form following:—If there is but one brother, 12 years ancient rent; if there are two brothers, 16 years ancient rent to be equally divided.

“If there be three or more, 20 years ancient rent to be equally divided.

“Whereas great inconvenience has grown by certain persons that at the marriage of son or daughter have promised their tenement to the same son or daughter and their heirs, according to the custom of the manor, and afterwards put the tenement away to another person; it is ordered that whatever tenements a tenant shall promise to the son or daughter being his sole heir apparent at the time of his or her marriage, the same ought to come to them according to the same covenant, which ought to be showed at the next court.”

The motive of the first rule is a mixed one. Its object is partly to obviate the risk that the Crown, which is lord, of the manor, may lose its services if holdings are too much subdivided, partly to prevent the appearance of a class which has too little land for a living. The motive of the other rules is to ensure that the custom of primogeniture, which obtains among the customary tenants on this manor, shall not result in the creation of a propertyless proletariat. Holdings are not to be divided. But the payment to other members of the family of a sum ranging from about one-half to more than the whole of their capital value is made a charge upon them, and with that money they can purchase land elsewhere, or take, like the French peasant girl, a considerabledotto their husbands. Sue,[213]the daughter of Old Carter, the rich yeoman, whose security for the marriage-portion “shall be present payment, because Bonds and Bills are but Tarriers to catch fools, and keep lazy knaves busy,” was a match for whom gentlemen’s sons were willing enough to compete.

These groups of from ten to a hundred households which constitute the ordinary village of southern and middle England, form small democracies of property holders, who are of course under the authority of a lord, but whose subjection does not prevent them from exercising considerable control over the management of their own economic affairs, nor impose any effective bar on those individuals who have the means and capacity to advance themselves. We can watch them arranging[214]the course of agriculture, deciding when the pastures at Wolsyke and Willoughbybroke are to be “broken,” imposing fines on those who encroach on the several pasture land, throwing open the Pesefield on Holy Thursday to the village horses, shutting them out of Street headlands for fear of the “stroyinge of Korn,” making charitable provision for gleaners who cannot work, punishing those who ought to work but in their depravity would rather glean. We can observe how the wide distribution of land gives an opportunity to a humble family to better itself by judicious husbandry and well-calculated purchases. True, the peasant’s land isno longer held in approximately equal shares as generally as it had been in the thirteenth century. The growth of a money economy, the withdrawal of the levelling pressure of villeinage, the growth of population, has in the more progressive parts of the country left a gap into which individualising commercial forces wind themselves in the way which has already been described. But these changes are important mainly as precursors of more extensive innovations. As yet they have done little more than make tiny breaches in the wall of custom. They have enabled individuals to rise from the general level into positions of comparative affluence. They have not proceeded so far as to enable the successful to exercise a decisive direction over the economic affairs of their fellows. Though Northumberland is exceptional in the way in which down to the very end of the sixteenth century it preserves its system of standardised holdings, it is none the less true that all the petty land speculation, whose operations we have traced above, has not the effect of producing any very large changes in the distribution of property. If, when compared with its condition two hundred years before, the village of our period shows remarkable irregularity, it offers precisely an opposite aspect to the observer who compares it as it is then with its condition two hundred years later. The gaps which have appeared between the holdings mark the disintegrating influence of economic enterprise; but they are gaps which enterprise can span, and the graduation of holdings from the two or three acres of the humblest to the fifty or sixty acres of the most prosperous, together with the abundance of unoccupied land, supplies a kind of staircase along which in the country the younger son can travel from the position of a labourer to that of a small holder, as he does in the towns from apprentice to master-craftsman. From this point of view the characteristicmorcellementof holdings, so bitterly denounced by economists who, like Arthur Young, approached the problem from the point of view of the large farmer, was a positive advantage. It meant that land could be bought and sold, as it were, retail. It meant that the labourer could begin with one strip of land of half an acre, and add other strips to it as he worked his way up. It meant that even the humblest peasant usually had some live-stock of hisown; for even the smallest customary holding usually carried with it rights of common. Such conditions are, of course, no safeguard against poverty. No doubt there were plenty of people like Widow Quin, whose “leaky thatch is growing more pasture for her buck goat than her square of fields.”[215]But they are a safeguard against destitution, and indeed against any complete loss of independence.

Let us turn to a part of England where something like the open field system survives to this day, and ask the inhabitants what they think of it. In the so-called Isle of Axholme there are still common fields with intermixed strips. Here is the evidence[216]which a body of labourers there sent into a Select Committee of Parliament in 1899: “We, the undersigned, being agricultural labourers at Epworth, are in occupation of allotments or small holdings, varying from two roods to three acres, and willingly testify to the great benefit we find from our holdings. Where we have sufficient quantity of land to grow two roods each of wheat, barley, and potatoes, we have bread, beans, and potatoes for a great part of the year, enabling us to face a long winter without the dread of hunger or pauperism staring us in the face.” One of the tests by which the economic prosperity of a community may be measured is its success in preventing the appearance of a residual population, which cannot fit itself into the moving mechanism of industry without ceaseless friction and maladjustments. In most villages before extensive evictions begin that mechanism moves very slowly; property is widely diffused, and the residuum must have been small. That there was often distress through bad harvests and pestilence is certain. But was there much of the economic helplessness, more terrible than physical distress itself, which is the normal lot of most of the propertyless wage-earners of the modern world? We hesitate to say. Hesitation on such a point may perhaps be counted to our peasants for righteousness.[217]

In the second place, let us examine the use which the peasants make of their holdings. Modern writers tell us that among the conditions necessary to the prosperity of a class of small holders the most important are a wise choice of the kind of farming to be pursued, a sound organisation of credit, cheap marketing, and rural bye-employments to back agriculture. Modern writers who are not English would probably add a tariff on imported agricultural produce. In our period the type of cultivation pursued by the large farmer was undergoing rapid changes. That of the peasantry was hardly a matter of choice. It was dictated by the necessity, under which most villages still lay, of being largely self-supporting in the matter of corn supplies,a necessity recognised and crystallised in the customary routine of village husbandry. The preponderance of arable farming among the peasantry is illustrated by the table[218]on page107, which should be contrasted with that given on pages225–226.

The figures in this table do not pretend to complete accuracy. But they indicate the distribution of land between different uses with sufficient correctness to show the sort of agriculture followed by the small holder of our period. They prove unmistakably that his standby was the grain crops grown on the open fields.[219]Students of rural conditions will be quick to recognise the contrast which the picture offersto the economy of the modern small holder. In our own day the breaking up of large farms into smaller tenancies has proceeded furthest in those parts of the country which are most suitable for pasture. The occupier of a holding of less than 70 or 80 acres usually relies mainly on stock farming in one form or another, and on the growing of vegetables and fruit. Corn-growing he leaves to much larger men, and, when he does grow grain, he does so mainly to provide fodder and straw for his beasts. In the sixteenth century almost exactly the opposite was the case. In so far as the large farmer with 200 or 300 acres can be said to have had a specialty, it was not corn-growing but sheep and cattle grazing. The small man relied mainly, though not entirely, upon tillage, and though, even in his case, pasture farming assumed increased importance as the century went on, grazing was chiefly a supplement to arable farming. To this statement there are of course certain exceptions. Though villages where the customary tenants hold more pasture than arable are rare, they are not unknown, and occasionally one finds one where large numbers of tenants of the most diverse economic conditions, with pasture holdings ranging from 6 to 100 acres, have no arable at all. Sometimes such an arrangement is to be accounted forby the fact that a part of the demesne lands of the manor, which happens not to be suitable for tillage, has been divided up among the population of younger sons and labourers who have no holdings in the open fields. In the neighbourhood of considerable towns, again, there was a market[220]for vegetables and dairy produce which gave an impetus to this side of agriculture, and the home counties poured butter and cheese, fowls, eggs, and fruit into London, as France and the Channel Islands do at the present day. Still, to speak broadly, the small holder of the sixteenth century, unlike the small holder of the twentieth, was before all things interested in arable farming, and interested in rights of pasture chiefly as a necessary adjunct to it.

Back to Index Next