Table X

Number of Demesne Farms Examined.No signs of Enclosure.Under 5 per Cent. Enclosed.5 to 24 per Cent. Enclosed.25 to 49 per Cent. Enclosed.50 to 74 per Cent. Enclosed.75 to 99 per Cent. Enclosed.100 per Cent. Enclosed4712977...48

These figures are not offered as any evidence of the absolute area enclosed in the counties represented. They may, however, perhaps be taken as an indication that the demesne farm was usually that part of the manor on which enclosure was carried out most thoroughly. Thirty-one of the manors included in the table are in Wiltshire and Norfolk, and where the conditions of things on the tenants' holdings can be compared with that obtaining on the demesne, it is almost always the case that the new economy has spread furthest on the latter. Neither in Wiltshire nor in Norfolk had enclosure by the peasants themselves proceeded very far in the latter half of the sixteenth century.

The conditions, however, on different manors varied so enormously that much weight cannot be laid on these figures, and it is both more important and more practicableto examine particular examples of the ways in which the large enclosed estate was built up. In the first place, then, one may say with some confidence that those parts of a manor which lent themselves most readily to enclosing were the waste, the common pasture, and the common meadow, while the enclosing of the farmer’s holdings of arable land took place more gradually, less thoroughly, and with greater difficulty. Thus selecting from the manors tabulated above those in which the quality of the land enclosed is distinguished, and omitting those where it is merely stated to lie “in closes,” one finds that partial or complete enclosure of the arable has been made on nine, of the meadow on eleven, and of the pasture on twenty, manors. The explanation of this is to be found by recollecting the characteristics of the organisation into which the farmer stepped. The arable land which formed the lord’s demesne was often scattered, like the tenant's, in comparatively small plots over the three fields; unity of ownership did not by any means necessarily imply unified culture, and before these could be enclosed they had to be consolidated into fewer and larger blocks. Moreover, if the object of enclosure was conversion to pasture, it must be remembered that the enclosure of the arable implied a very great revolution in the manorial economy. A farm which was well equipped for tillage had barns, granges, agricultural implements, which would stand idle if the arable land was enclosed for pasture, and it was therefore natural that, as long as other land was available in sufficient quantities for sheep-farming, such land should be enclosed for the purpose, before the ordinary course of cultivation on the arable land was abandoned. The common meadows and the common wastes did not offer these obstacles to enclosure. Since the individualising tendencies of personal cultivation did not operate upon these parts of the village land, the method of securing equal enjoyment of them had not been, as in the case of arable, to give each household a holding consisting of separate strips scattered over good and bad land alike, but to give each holder of an arable share access to the whole of the pasture land. They were, therefore, usually not divided and scattered to anything like the same extent,and it was thus much easier for the rights of different parties over them to be disentangled, and for the land to be cut up and enclosed “in severalty.” Hence, where the tenants are most numerous, and where there are fewest signs of change, the effect of the large farmer is often seen in the withdrawal of part of the common waste from communal use. If the growth of sheep farming made the small tenants anxious, as in many cases it did, to acquire separate pastures for their flocks, it can readily be understood that the large farmer, who had more to lose and more to gain, was likely to pursue the same policy unless checked by organised opposition. Normally the change seems to have taken place by converting the right to pasture a certain number of beasts in common with other tenants into the right to the exclusive use of a certain number of acres. Instead of the whole commonable area lying open to a number of animals “stinted” in a certain proportion among the commoners, the stint is abandoned, and the basis of allocation is found not in a fixed number of animals, but in a fixed area of land, which forms the separate common of the individual farmer, and which is naturally enclosed. Many examples of this division of commonable land are found in the surveys, especially in connection with the common waste of the manor, which enable us to trace the change from collective to individual administration. Thus, to give a few instances, at Winterbourne Basset[405]the farmer has all the meadow land except one half-acre, and a separate close of 140 acres on the downs, where he can graze nearly three times as many sheep as all the customary tenants. At Knyghton[406]he has enclosed with a hedge part of the sheep'scommon, no sheep at all being kept by the customary tenants. At Massingham,[407]in Norfolk, where much of the demesne arable lies “in the fields,” there is an enclosed pasture containing 123-1/2 acres; and on another farm of 203 acres, which has apparently been formed out of the demesne, one finds 28 acres of arable “in the fields" and 65 acres of “pasture enclosed,” the remaining 80 acres lying “in the sheep courses.” The best picture of what the change meant is given by the two maps[408]printed opposite. In No. III. the meadow, save for a small piece used exclusively by All Souls, is common, each tenant presumably being allowed to place so many beasts upon it. In No. IV. the meadow has been divided up among the tenants, and instead of pasturing a limited number of beasts on the whole of it, each can pasture as many beasts as he pleases on part of it. It is not necessary to point out the significance of this change from the point of view of the social organisation of rural life. It means that communal administration of part of the land has been abandoned and its place taken by use at the discretion of the individual tenant.

ToListIII. MAP OF PART OF THE MANOR OF MAIDS MORTON IN BUCKSHIRE (1580.)

ToListIV. MAP OF PART OF THE MANOR OF CRENDON IN BUCKINGHAMSHIRE (ABOUT 1590.)

But while the pasture ground and meadow offered special facilities for enclosure, there is abundant evidence that the farmer’s arable land was also in many cases enclosed. On some manors the whole of the arable demesne lay together, and in that case there was no obstacle in the way of enclosing it. More usually it lay in three pieces, one block in each of the three great fields, and here again, when there was sufficient motive for enclosure, enclosure was easily practicable. The only arrangement which offered a really difficult problem was that in which it was divided into acre and a half strips scattered about the manor at a distance from each other. One finds cases in which such strips numbered several hundred, but the impression given by surveys is that, at any rate by the middle of the sixteenth century, such extreme subdivision was exceptional, and that the consolidation of holdings by means of exchange and purchase, which we have seen at work from an early date on the holdings of the customarytenants, had often proceeded so far on the demesne as to have rounded off the farmer’s property into comparatively few large holdings. As an illustration of the first steps towards unification and enclosure we may take the manor of Sparham,[409]in Norfolk, which was surveyed about 1590. Here the 189 acres which compose the demesne, and which are leased to a farmer, are still much scattered. They lie in seventy different pieces, most of which are quite small, acres, half-acres, and roods. But even here there has been a considerable amount of consolidation, and it has been followed by the beginnings of enclosure. The 37½ acres of pasture lie in five pieces of 11, 9, 7, 5, 5½ acres, all of which have been enclosed. The arable is still intermixed with the strips of the other tenants in the open fields. But on the arable itself consolidation and enclosure are creeping forward. There are four strips lying together which comprise 6-3/4 acres. There is one enclosure, consisting of arable, wood, and meadow, and containing 17 acres. The neighbouring manor of Fulmordeston[410]offers an example of a state of things in which the same tendency has worked itself out to completion. The 742 acres leased by the farmer of the demesne are entirely enclosed. There are two woods comprising 50 acres. There is an enclosure of 250 acres, 35 perches, consisting of “Corne severall and Broome severall.” There is a “great close" of 130 acres, 1 rood, “longe close" of 57 acres, 3 roods, “Brick kyll close" of 40 acres, 1 rood, “Brakehill close" of 24 acres, 1 rood, a field of 106 acres called Hestell, and another of 83 acres, 2 roods. But these different stages are best illustrated by maps[411]Nos. I., III., IV., V., and VI.

ToListV. MAP OF PART OF THE MANOR OF WEEDON WESTON IN NORTHAMPTONSHIRE (1590.)

ToListVI. MAP OF THE MANOR OF WHADBOROUGH IN LEICESTERSHIRE (1620.)VI. MAP OF THE MANOR OF WHADBOROUGH IN LEICESTERSHIRE (1620.)

On No. III. it will be seen that there is a good deal of subdivision. On Nos. IV. and V. the tenants whose strips separated parts of the demesne from each other, have in many cases dropped out, so that the process of aggregation is facilitated: on No. I. the concentration of the demesne into a single large block is complete; though it is still unenclosed, it offers no obstacle to enclosure: on No. VI.consolidation has been followed by enclosure, conversion to pasture and depopulation. Between the state of things on map No. III. and that on map No. VI. there is the greatest possible difference. Yet there is no reason to doubt that Whadborough had once been an open field village with tenants who were mainly engaged in tillage. Map Nos. IV., V., and I. are, as it were, the intervening chapters which join the preface to the conclusion. Occasionally one can see the process of consolidation, which was the necessary preliminary of enclosure, actually taking place. At Harriesham,[412]in Kent, the parson held 3 acres of glebe land in two pieces, one of them lying in the middle of a field belonging to another tenant, who ploughed up its boundaries and added it to his own land. Accordingly, to prevent uncertainty in the future, the owner of the field and the parson executed a deed by which the latter surrendered his claim to the detached pieces of land, and in return got three acres laid out in a single plot. In view of the large blocks which are often held by the farmer of the demesne, one cannot doubt that such consolidation by way of exchange must have been a common arrangement.

It remains to ask how far the type of economy pursued by the large farmer differed from that of the smaller tenants, and in particular whether there are signs of his specialising upon the grazing of sheep. The most complete picture of the agricultural changes of the early sixteenth century, not on the demesne farms alone, but on the holdings of all classes of tenants as well, is given in thewell-known returns[413]made by the Commissioners who were appointed by Wolsey in 1517 to investigate enclosures, and these are supplemented by the figures published by Miss Davenport[414]as to the relative proportions or arable and pasture land on certain Staffordshire estates. The interpretation of both of these sets of statistics is ambiguous. Mr. Leadam uses them to show that much enclosing took place for arable, and that therefore the statutes and writers of the period exaggerated the movement towards pasture farming. Professor Gay thinks his conclusions untenable, and that a proper interpretation of the Commissioners' returns corroborates the view of contemporary writers that pasture was substituted for tillage on a large scale. Two points emerge pretty clearly from the controversy. The first is that there was a good deal of redistribution of land with the object of better tillage, of the kind which has been described above, and that probably the fact that the word “enclosure" was used to describe this, as well as the conversion of arable to pasture, was responsible for some confusion. The second is that the predominant tendency was towards sheep-farming. To suppose that contemporaries were mistaken as to the general nature of the movement is to accuse them of an imbecility which is really incredible. Governments do not go out of their way to offend powerful classes out of mere lightheartedness, nor do large bodies of men revolt because they have mistaken a ploughed field for a sheep pasture. Even if we accept Mr. Leadam’s statistical analysis of the report of the Commission of 1517, his figures still reveal a great deal of conversion to pasture; and it is clear that many cases on which his totals rest are open to more than one interpretation.

If the general correctness of the view of the sixteenth century observers that there was a wide movement towards sheep-farming is accepted, it ought to be represented more fully on the demesne farms than elsewhere, because changes could be applied to them with muchless friction than to the lands in which the interests of other tenants were involved. With a view to showing to what extent this is the case two sets of figures are given below; the first is a table taken from Dr. Savine's[415]work onThe English Monasteries on the Eve of the Reformation, and relates to the demesne lands of forty-one monasteries which were surveyed for the Crown on the occasion of their surrender; some were apparently in the hands of the monastery and some apparently were leased. The second gives the approximate use to which land was put by the farmers of the demesnes on forty-nine manors in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. They are subdivided in three groups, (a) manors in Norfolk and Suffolk, (b) manors in Wiltshire and Dorsetshire (one), and (c) manors in other southern and eastern counties, but including one in Staffordshire and one in Lancashire. For purposes of comparison the table given in Part I. Chapter III., illustrating the use made of the customary holdings, is repeated here:—

Total Demesne Land of Forty-one Monasteries.Arable.Pasture.Meadow.Acres.Acres.Acres.Acres.167806235¾8691½1852¾(37.1%)(51.7%)(11.0%)

Total Acreage of Sixty-five Farms on Fifty Manors. (Fractions of Acres omitted.)Arable.Pasture.Meadow.Closes.Indeterminate.Acres.Acres.Acres.Acres.Acres.Acres.16866830261721528624240(49.2%)(36.5%)(9%)(3.6%)(1.3%)

Total Acreage of Thirty-two Farms.Arable.Pasture.Meadow.Closes.Indeterminate.Acres.Acres.Acres.Acres.Acres.Acres.881243902928754500240(49.8%)(33.2%)(8.3%)(5.6%)(2.7%)

Total Acreage of Sixteen Farms.Arable.Pasture.Meadow.Closes.Indeterminate.Acres.Acres.Acres.Acres.Acres.Acres.436123931707261......(52%)(39%)(5.9%)

Total Acreage of Seventeen Farms.Arable.Pasture.Meadow.Closes.Indeterminate.Acres.Acres.Acres.Acres.Acres.Acres.369115191536512124...(41.1%)(41.1%)(13.8%)(3.3%)

Total Acreage of Customary Holdings on Sixteen Manors.Arable.Pasture.Meadow.Closes.Indeterminate.Acres.Acres.Acres.Acres.Acres.Acres.77866841555390......(87.7%)(7.1%)(5.1%)

The figures in this table do not pretend to complete accuracy, but their classification of the distribution of land between different uses is not far wrong. Of the customary tenants' land about 87 per cent. is arable, and 12 per cent.meadow and pasture. Of the farmers' land about 49 per cent. is arable, 36 per cent. pasture, 9 per cent. meadow. The proportion of pasture to arable is somewhat higher in the southern and midland counties than it is in East Anglia; but the cases examined are too few to allow of any conclusion being drawn from this fact. Without pushing the figures in either table further than they will go, one may suggest that they seem to imply, in the first place, that the large farmer was by no means always a grazier, and that the writers of the period who spoke as though all large-scale farming meant the conversion of arable to pasture were guilty of some exaggeration. In a good many cases the methods of cultivation pursued by the farmer of the demesne differed from those of the customary tenants only in the fact that his holding was larger; as a matter of fact the customary tenants on some manors deserve the name of grazier better than the farmer of the demesne upon others.

But they suggest, in the second place, that these cases were exceptional, and that, on the whole, arable farming played a much more important part on the holdings of the customary tenants than it did on those of the farmers. The former subsisted mainly on the tillage of the land in the open fields. The latter, though they had often much arable, sometimes had none, or next to none at all, and relied to a far greater extent on the opportunities for stock-breeding offered by pasture and meadow land. These figures, however, include some derived from manors where tillage was virtually the only sort of farming carried on, and they do not give any idea of the arrangements prevailing on an estate where pasture-farming had been pushed far. Taking from the fifty manors dealt with above, the twelve which are most typical of the new régime, one gets a very different picture—

Land Held.Arable.Meadow.Pasture.Closes.(Wood, &c.)Acres.Acres.Acres.Acres.Acres.Acres.447492240330657113(20.6%)(8.9%)(68.3%)(1.5%)

Here arable forms only 23 per cent. of the whole area, while pasture and meadow together form over 77 per cent. This swing of the pendulum from arable husbandry to pasture-farming will not surprise us, if we remember that at the time of the Domesday Survey, and, indeed, throughout the Middle Ages, the area of land under the plough had been, when considered in relation to the population, extraordinarily large. The economic justification of ploughing land which no modern farmer would touch had lain in the fact that the impossibility of moving food supplies had made it necessary for each village to be virtually self-supporting, and had thus prevented the specialisation of districts in different types of agriculture. When the development of trade under the Tudors had combined with the keen demand for wool to introduce a geographical division of labour, the change was naturally all the more violent, because there was, so to speak, so much lee-way to be made up, because so much land was in tillage which had no special suitability for the production of grain. Even so, between 1815 and 1846, the rich water meadows of Oxfordshire were being ploughed up for corn. Even so, after 1879, the collapse of corn-growing was all the more disastrous, because it had been so long delayed.

One would expect the growth of large farms side by side with the customary holdings, especially when the methods of agriculture employed were so different, to result in a powerful reaction of the new interests upon the old, and perhaps in a collision between them, even when no deliberate attempt was made to alter the position of the tenants. And this is what we are told in fact occurred. The customary tenants' holdings and the demesne both formed part of one area, subject to certain rights and privileges defined by the custom of the manor. Both, for example, would lie open to the village cattle after harvest; both were subject to the customary rotation of crops, and necessarily so when the demesne was not separate but mixed with the customary holdings in the open field; both had rights of common on the pasture or waste of the manor. Moreover, the whole organisation of the economic side of manorial life was based on the assumption that tillage was the most important element in it. Forexample, the apportionment of rights over the waste, the “stint” of animals to be grazed, assumed that no one partner would require to graze more than a certain number, and broke down if he gave himself up to cattle-breeding or sheep-farming, and multiplied his beasts by five or ten. It would be natural, therefore, to look for a straining and shifting of those rights as a probable consequence of the existence side by side of two such different agricultural stages, and of such different types of property. Formerly the respective interests of the lord and the customary tenants had been harmonised by the fact that the labour of the latter supplied the chief means of cultivating the demesne, and that the demesne could hardly be a profitable concern if the number of tenants or their standard of living declined very largely, any more than a gold-mine can pay without gold-miners. But when the demesne was largely used for pasture this consideration of course did not apply, and in any case by the sixteenth century, although the services of the tenants were still part of the means by which the farmers found labour, they were probably an unimportant one. As is shown by the smallness of the holdings on many manors, which were quite insufficient by themselves to support a family, and by the evidence of contemporaries, the farmer had a growing, though still small, labour market into which to dip, and the rough agreement which had existed between the interests of the manorial estate and those of the tenants was therefore no longer existent. Thus a collision of interests, a weakening of communal restrictions before the enterprise of the capitalist farmer, the strengthening of some kinds of property and the weakening of others, and the growth of new sorts of social relations in the villages, were consequences to be expected from the increasing predominance of the large farm, and especially of the large pasture farm.

To sum up the arguments of the chapter. At the beginning of the sixteenth century forces both political—the restriction of the territorial sovereignty of the landlords—and economic—the growth in the demand for wool—were working to produce a change in the methods of agriculture; and at any rate by the middle of the century another powerful motive was added by the fall in the value ofmoney. The result was that there was a movement in the direction of converting arable land to pasture, and of enclosure, which affected all classes of landholders, but which was carried furthest by the large farmers who leased the demesne lands of manors, who could afford to make experiments, and who were under a strong incentive to turn the land to its most profitable use.[Next Chapter]

[322]Crowley,The Way to Wealth(E. E. T. S.).

[323]Registrum Malmesburiense, vol. ii. pp. 220–221: “Quod ... dictus abbas de Malmesburia non debet de cetero colere terram de Niwentone ... nisi antiquitus consueverat coli. Et quod dictus Walterus de Asselegge habebit mariscum suum de Cheggeberge quietum a communia hominum de Niwentone. Dicti vero abbas et conventus Malmesburia habebunt mariscum suum iacentem ex Orientali parte stratæ publicæ quæ vocatur Fos quietum et exceptum a communia hominum de Asselegge. Habebunt etiam ... campum Australem in Niwentone quietum et exceptum a communia hominum de Asselegge. Omnes vero aliæ terræ ad dictas villas pertinentes ... erunt in pastura communi.”

[324]Historia et Cartularium Monasterii Gloucestriæ, i. 147–149.

[325]Hoare,History of Wiltshire, Hundred of South Domerham.

[326]Hist. MSS. Com., Cd. 5567 (Report on the MSS. of Lord Middleton), pp. 61–62. This agreement was made in 1231.

[327]Coventry Leet Book(edited by Mary Dormer Harris).

[328]In their book,The Village Labourer from1760 to 1832.

[329]Bacon,History of King Henry VII.

[330]Seee.g.Starkey’sEngland in the Reign of King Henry VIII., p. 173 (E. E. T. S.): “Ye, and though our cloth, at the fyrst begynnyng, wold not be so gud peradventure, as hyt ys made in other partys, yet, in processe of tyme, I cannot see why, but that our men, by dylygence, myght attayne therto ryght wel; specially yf the Prince wold study thereto, in whose powar hyt lyeth chefely such thyngys to helpe.” AlsoThe Commonweal of this Realm of England(Lamond), and Pauli,Drei Denkschriften, &c.

[331]Schanz,Englische Handelspolitik gegen Ende der Mittelalters, Band II., “Zoll und Handelstatistik,” pp. 1–156.

[332]Unwin,Industrial Organisation in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries.

[333]Seee.g.the account of the East Anglian woollen industry in theVictoria County History, Suffolk (Unwin’s article on “Social and Economic History").

[334]G.R. Lewis,The Stanneries, pp. 214–215, and quotations from Lansdowne MSS. 76, fol. 34, given there.

[335]Hist. MSS. Com., Cd. 5567 (Report on the MSS. of Lord Middleton).

[336]W.R. Scott,Joint-Stock Companies to 1720, vol. ii.

[337]For a description of “The Exchange and What It is,” see T. Wilson,Discourse upon Usurie(1584): his remark, “The second kind of bill ... may be called sicke and dry exchange, and is practised where one doth borrowe money abroad ... not meaning to make any real payment abroad, but compoundeth with the exchange to have it returned again," illustrates what is said above. See also Camden Society,Dialogue or Confabulation of Two Travellers(1580): “The said Hans had provided £10,000 for the Prince of Condy upon five in the 100 at interest, and if I would have the like he would help me unto it. Then I ... pondered what benefit it would be to me to let it out again at ten in the hundred to some nobleman in England.” Down to about 1560 at any rate the English Government was constantly in the hands of foreign capitalists. See Gairdner,L. and P. Henry VIII., and Burgon’sLife of Gresham.

[338]e.g.Prussia before 1807.

[339]For examples see A. Abram,Social England in the Fifteenth Century, especially Part II., chap, ii., “The Rise of the Middle Class,” and Plummer’sFortescue, p. 17. In theCely Papers(Camden Society), p. 153, a correspondent of George Cely writes, “yowre sallys made withyn lesse than thys yere amountes above £2000 sterling.”

[340]See the Paston Letters,passim; and also the account given inHist. MSS. Com., Cd. 5567 (Report on the MSS. of Lord Middleton), 142–145, of the marvellous doings of Sir Gylles Strangways in Dorsetshire as late as 1539; pp. 115–117 contain a similar case of private warfare from the year 1477.

[341]Northumberland County History,e.g.Amble (vol. v.), Acklington (ibid.), High Buston (ibid.), Birling (ibid.); vol. viii. p. 230, figures as to eight manors in Tynmouthshire. At Birling out of ten names which appear in the surveys of 1567, eight reappear in 1616; at Acklington, out of eighteen names, nine reappear; at High Buston, out of four names, four reappear in 1616 and two in 1702. But in parts of the county there were rapid changes at the end of the sixteenth and beginning of the seventeenth centuries; see below, pp. 257–258 and 260.

[342]Northumberland County History, vol. i. p. 350: “In the ancient tyme the fermor of the demaines had the charge of the tenants of the said lordship as bailiff, with the fee of £3, 0s. 5d. by year. Then was the town of Tughall planted with xi husbandmen well horsed and in good order, viii cottagers, iiii cotterells, one common smith for the relief and better aid of the said tenants and bailiff, being in number 23 householders, besides the demains, which are nowe by suche as nothing regard his lordship’s service nor the commonwealthe brought to 8 farmers only, to the great decay of his lordship's service and discommodity of the said commonwealth.”

[343]Seee.g.the ballad of “Kinmont Willie," turning on an incident which occurred in 1596.

[344]Cal. S. P. D. James I., vol. cxxxii., July 27, 1622. Letter to the Bishop of Durham to confer with the judges of Assize for the Northern Counties touching tenant-right or customary estate of inheritance claimed in those parts, ordering them to abide strictly by the King’s Proclamation against tenant-right, or the holding of lands by border service, to countenance no claim founded thereupon, and to acquaint the tenants of his Majesty’s pleasure therein, giving them no hope to the contrary. Apparently the instructions were not carried out, as in 1642 the Long Parliament was discussing the subject of the border tenures (RushworthCollections, Pt. III., vol. ii. p. 86).

[345]See below, pp.257–258.

[346]The effect of the Tudor policy on the land system is excellently described by Harrington inOceana, and also inThe Art of Law-giving: “Henry VII. being conscious of the infirmity of his title, yet finding with what strength and vigour he was brought in by the Nobility, conceived jealousy of the like power in case of a decay or change of affections.Nondum orbis adoraverat Roman.The lords yet led country lives; their houses were open to retainers, men experienced in military affairs and capable of commanding; their hospitality was the delight of their tenants who by their tenure or dependence were obliged to follow their lords in arms. So that, this being the Militia of the nation, a few noblemen discontented could at any time levy a great army, the effect whereof both in the Barons Wars and those of York and Lancaster had been well known to divers kings. This state of things was that which enabled Henry VII. to make his advantage of troublesome times and the frequent unruliness of retainers; while, under pretence of curbing riots, he obtained the passing of such laws as did cut off these retainers, whereby the nobility wholly lost their officers. Then, whereas the dependence of the people on their lords was of a strict ty or nature, he found means to loosen this also by laws which he obtained upon a fair pretence, even that of Population. But the nobility, who by the former law had lost their officers, by this lost their soldiery. Yet remained to them their estates, till the same Prince introducing the Statutes for alienations, these also became loose; and the lords, less taken (for the reasons shown) with their country lives, where their trains were clipped, by degrees became more resident at court, where greater pomp and expense by the Statute of Alienations began to plume them of their Estates" (Harrington,Works, 1700 edition, pp. 388–389).

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