[113] 1348 seems also to have been an excessively rainy year. The wet season was very disastrous to live stock; according to the accounts of the manors of Christ Church, Canterbury, about this time (Historical MSS. Commission, 5th Report, 444) there died of the murrain on their estates 257 oxen, 511 cows, 4,585 sheep. Murrain was the name given to all diseases of stock in the Middle Ages, and is of constant occurrence in old records.

[114] The cause of this as usual was incessant rain during the greater part of the summer; the chronicles of the time say that not only were the crops very short but those that did grow were diseased and yielded no nourishment. The 'murrain' was so deadly to oxen and sheep that, according to Walsingham, dogs and ravens eating them dropped down dead.

[115] See Cunningham, Industry and Commerce, i. 335. Also in an age when the idea of Competitive price had not yet been evolved, and when regulation by authority was the custom, it was natural and right that the Government in such a crisis should try to check the demands of both labourers and producers, which went far beyond what employers or consumers could pay. Putnam, Enforcement of the Statute of Labourers, 220.

[116] The average price of wheat in 1351 was 10s. 2-1/2d., which went down to 7s. 2d. next year, and 4s. 2-1/2d. the year after; but judging by the ineffectiveness of the statute to reduce wages, it probably had little effect in causing this fall.

[117] See Appendix I.

[118] Putnam, op. cit., 221. The statute for the first ten years, however, kept wages from ascending as high as might have been the case.

[119] McPherson, Annals of Commerce, i. 543, says that as the plague diminished the number of employers as well as labourers, the demand for labour could not have been much greater than before, and would have had little effect on the rate of if Edward III had not debased the coinage. But if the owners did decrease the lands would only accumulate in fewer hands, and would still require cultivation.

[120] Page, End of Villeinage, pp. 59 et seq.

[121] Ibid. p. 44.

[122] Transactions, Royal Historical Society, New Series, xiv. 123.

[123] This had been done before, but was now much more frequent. Hasbach, op. cit. p. 17.

[124] 'After the Black Death the flight of villeins was extremely common.'—Page, op. cit., p. 40.

[125] Nasse, Agricultural Community of the Middle Ages, p. 1.

[126] Cunningham, Industry and Commerce, i. 137.



CHAPTER IV

HOW THE CLASSES CONNECTED WITH THE LAND LIVED IN THE MIDDLE AGES

The castles of the great landowners have been so often described that there is no need to do this again. The popular idea of a baron of the Middle Ages is of a man who when he was not fighting was jousting or hunting. Such were, no doubt, his chief recreations; so fond was he of hunting, indeed, that his own broad lands were not enough, and he was a frequent trespasser on those of others; the records of the time are full of cases which show that poaching was quite a fashionable amusement among the upper classes. But among the barons were many men who, like their successors to-day, did their duty as landlords. Of one of the Lords of Berkeley in the fourteenth century, it was said he was 'sometyme in husbandry at home, sometyme at sport in the field, sometyme in the campe, sometyme in the Court and Council of State, with that promptness and celerity that his body might have bene believed to be ubiquitary'. Many of them were farmers on a very large scale, though they might not have so much time to devote to it as those excellent landlords the monks.

Thomas Lord Berkeley, who held the Berkeley estates from 1326 to 1361, farmed the demesnes of a quantity of manors, as was the custom, and kept thereon great flocks of sheep, ranging from 300 to 1,500 on each manor.[127] The stock of the Bishop of Winchester, by an inquisition taken at his death in 1367, amounted to 127 draught horses, 1,556 head of black cattle, and 12,104 sheep and lambs. Almost every manor had one or two pigeon houses, and the number of pigeons reared is astonishing; from one manor Lord Berkeley obtained 2,151 pigeons in a single year. No one but the lord was allowed to keep them, and they were one of the chief grievances of the villeins, who saw their seed devoured by these pests without redress. Their dung, too, was one of the most valued manures. Lord Berkeley, like other landlords, went often in progress from one of his manors and farmhouses to another, making his stay at each of them for one or two nights, overseeing and directing the husbandry. The castle of the great noble consumed an enormous amount of food in the course of the year; from two manors on the Berkeley estate came to the 'standinghouse' of the lord in twelve months, 17,000 eggs, 1,008 pigeons, 91 capons, 192 hens, 288 ducks, 388 chickens, 194 pigs, 45 calves, 315 quarters of wheat, 304 quarters of oats; and from several other manors came the like or greater store, besides goats, sheep, oxen, butter, cheese, nuts, honey, &c.[128] Even the lavish hospitality of the lords, and the great number of their retainers, must have had some difficulty in disposing of these huge supplies.

The examining of their bailiff's accounts must have taken a considerable portion of the landlord's time, for those of each manor were kept most minutely, and set forth, among other items, 'in what sort he husbanded' the demesne farms, 'what sorts of cattle he kept in them, and what kinds of graine he yearly sowed according to the quality and condition of the ground, and how those kinds of graine each second or third yeare were exchanged or brought from one manor to another as the vale corne into an upland soyle, and contrarily'. And we are told incidentally he 'set with hand, not sowed his beanes'. He was also accustomed to move his live stock from one manor to another, as they needed it.

The accounts also stated what days' works were due from each tenant according to the season of the year, and at the end of each year there was a careful valuation of live and dead stock.[129]

The difference between the smaller gentry and the more important yeomen[130] who farmed their own land must have been very slight. No doubt both of them were very rough and ignorant men, who knew a great deal about the cultivation of their land and very little about anything else. We may be sure that the ordinary house of both was generally of wood; as there is no stone in many parts of England, and bricks were not reintroduced till the fourteenth century and spread slowly. Even in Elizabeth's reign, Harrison[131] tells us that 'the ancient houses of our gentry are yet for the most part of strong timber', and he even thinks that houses made of oak were luxurious, for in times past men had been contented with houses of willow, plum, and elm, but now nothing but oak was good enough; and he quaintly says that the men who lived in the willow houses were as tough as oak, and those who lived in the oak as soft as willow. There are very few mansions left of the time before Edward III, for being of timber they naturally decayed.

In a lease, dated 1152, of a manor house belonging to S. Paul's Cathedral,[132] is a description of a manor house which contained a hall 35 feet long, 30 feet broad, and 22 feet high; that is, 11 feet to the tie beam and 11 feet from that to the ridge board; showing that the roof was open and that there were no upper rooms. There was a chamber between the hall and the thalamus or inner room which was 12 feet long, 17 feet broad, and 17 feet high, the roof being open as in the hall; and the thalamus was 22 feet long, 16 feet broad, and 18 feet high. About the same date the Manor house of Thorp was larger, and contained a hall, a chamber, tresantia (apparently part of the hall or chamber separated by a screen to form an antechamber), two private rooms, a kitchen, brew-house, malt-house, dairy, ox shed, and three small hen-houses.

The ordinary manor house of the Middle Ages contained three rooms at least, of mean aspect, the floor even of the hall, which was the principal eating and sleeping room, being of dirt; and when there was an upper room or solar added, which began to be done at the end of the twelfth century,[133] access to it was often obtained by an outside staircase.

If the manor house belonged to the owner of many manors, it was sometimes inhabited by his bailiff.

The barns on the demesnes were often as important buildings as the manor houses; one at Wickham, belonging to the canons of S. Paul's[134] in the twelfth century, was 55 feet long, 13 feet high from the floor to the principal beam, and 10-1/2 feet more to the ridge board; the breadth between the pillars was 19-1/2 feet, and on each side it had a wing or aisle 6-1/2 feet wide and 6-1/2 feet high. The amount of corn in the barn was often scored on the door-posts.[135] In the manor houses chimneys rarely existed, the fire being made in the middle of the hall. Even in the early seventeenth century in Cheshire there were no chimneys in the farmhouses, and there the oxen were kept under the same roof as the farmer and his family.[136] When chimneys did come in they were not much thought of. 'Now we have chimneys our tenderlings complain of rheums, catarrhs, and poses (colds);' for the smoke not only hardened the timbers, but was said by Harrison to be an excellent medicine for man. Instead of glass there was much lattice, and that made either of wicker or fine rifts of oak in checkerwise, and horn was also used. Beds, of course, were a luxury, the owner of the manor, his guests, and retainers flung themselves down on the hall floor after supper and all slept together, though sometimes rough mattresses were brought in.

Furniture was rude and scanty. In 1150 the farm implements and household furniture on the Manor of 'Waleton' was valued and consisted of 4 carts, 3 baskets, a basket used in winnowing corn, a pair of millstones, 10 tubs, 4 barrels, 2 boilers of lead with stoves, 2 wooden bowls, 3 three-legged tables, 20 dishes or platters, 2 tablecloths worth 6d., 6 metal bowls, half a load of the invaluable salt, 2 axes, a table with trestles (the usual form of table), and 5 beehives made of rushes.[137] These articles were handed down from one generation to another, and in a lease made 150 years afterwards of the same manor most of them reappear. The greater part of the furniture, until the fifteenth century, was most likely made by migratory workmen, who travelled from village to village; for except the rudest pieces it was beyond the village carpenter, and shops there were none.

It is not to be expected that when the master lived in this manner the lot of the labourer was a very good one. His home was miserably poor, generally of 'wattle and dab', sometimes wholly of mud and clay; many with only one room for all purposes. A bill is still in existence for a house, if it can be called one, built in 1306 for two labourers by Queen's College, Oxford, which cost 20s. in all, and was a mere hovel without floor, ceiling, or chimney.[138] Their wretched houses appear to have been built on the bare earth, and unfloored. Perhaps as time went on a rude upper storey was added, the floor of which was made of rough poles or hurdles and was reached by a ladder. The furniture was miserably poor; a few pots and pans, cups and dishes, and some tools would exhaust the list.[139] The goods and chattels of a landless labourer in 1431 consisted of a dish, an adze, a brass pot, 2 plates, 2 augers, an axe, a three-legged stool, and a barrel.[140] Englishmen of all classes were hopelessly dirty in their habits; even till the sixteenth century they were noted above other countries for the profuseness of their diet and their unclean ways. Erasmus spoke of the floor of his house as inconceivably filthy. To save fuel, the labourer's family in the cold season all lay huddled in a heap on the floor, 'pleasantly and hot', as Barclay the poet tells us; and if he ever had a bed it was a bundle of fern or straw thrown down, with his cloak as a coverlet, though thus he was just as well off as his social superiors, for with them the loose cloak of the day was a common covering for the night. He was constantly exposed to disease, for sanitary precautions were ignored; at the entrance of his hovel was a huge heap of decaying refuse, poisoning air and water. Even in the sixteenth century a foreigner noticed that 'the peasants dwell in small huts and pile up their refuse out of doors in heaps so high that you cannot see their houses'.[141] Diseased animals were constantly eaten, vegetables were few, and in the winter there was no fresh meat for any one, except game and rabbits and, for the well-to-do, fish, but we may doubt if the peasant got any but salt fish. The consequence was that leprosy and kindred ailments were common; and we do not wonder that plagues were frequent and slew the people like flies. The peasants' food consisted largely of corn. In the bailiff's accounts of the Manor of Woodstock in 1242, six servants at Handborough received 41-1/2 bushels of corn each, 2 ox herds at Combe received the same, and 4 servants at Bladon had 36 bushels each. In 1274 at Bosham, and in 1288 at Stoughton in Sussex, the allowance was the same.[142] The writer of the anonymous Treatise on Husbandry says that in his time, the thirteenth century, the average annual allowance of corn to a labourer was 36 bushels.[143] Fish, too, seem to have formed a large portion of his diet; all classes ate enormous quantities of fish, before the Reformation, in Lent and on fast days, and the labourer was constantly given salt herrings as part of his pay. In 1359, at Hawsted, the villeins when working were allowed 2 herrings a day, some milk, a loaf, and some drink.[144] Eden[145] says his food consisted of a few fish, principally herrings, a loaf of bread, and some beer; but we must certainly add pork, which was his stand-by then as now.[146] In the fourteenth century, at all events, there were three kinds of bread in use—white bread, ration bread, and black bread; and it was no doubt the latter that the peasant ate.[147] Clothing was dear and cloth coarse, the most valuable personal property consisting of clothing and metal vessels. Shirts were the subject of charitable gifts.[148] By 37 Edw. III, c. 14, labourers were not to wear any manner of cloth but 'blanket and russet wool of 12d.' and girdles of linen. If they wore anything more extravagant it was forfeited to the king.

To the labourer of modern times the life of his forefathers would have seemed unutterably dull. No books, no newspapers, no change of scene by cheap excursions, no village school, no politics. The very cultivation of the soil by the old three-course system was monotonous. But there were bright spots in his existence: the village church not only afforded him the consolations of religion but also entertainments and society. Religion in the Middle Ages was a part of the people's daily life, and its influence permeated even their amusements. Miracles and mystery plays, played in the churches and churchyards, were a common feature in village life; as were the church ales or parish meetings held four or five times a year, where cakes and beer were purchased from the churchwarden and consumed for the good of the parish. Indeed, there can be no doubt that there was much more sociability than to-day, in the country at least. Labour was lightened by the co-operation of the common fields; common shepherds and herdsmen watched the sheep and cattle of the different tenants, 'a common mill ground the corn, a common oven baked the bread, a common smith worked at a common forge.' His existence, moreover, was enlivened by a considerable number of sports. A statute at the end of the fourteenth century (12 Ric. II, c. 6) says he was fond of playing at tennis(!), football, quoits, dice, casting the stone, and other games, which this statute forbad him, and enacted that he should use his bow and arrows on Sundays and holidays instead of such idle sport. This is a foretaste of the modern sentiment that seeks to wean him from watching football matches and take to miniature rifle clubs. He was also, like some of his successors, fond of poaching, though he appears to have been rash enough to indulge in it by day. 13 Ric. II, c. 13, says he was prone on holidays, when good Christian people be in church hearing divine service, to go hunting with greyhounds and other dogs, in the parks and warrens of the lord and of others, and sometimes these hunts were turned into conferences and conspiracies,' for to rise and disobey their allegiance', such as preceded the Peasants' Revolt of 1381; and accordingly no one who did not own lands worth 40s. a year was to keep a dog to hunt, or ferrets other 'engines': the first game law on the English statute book.

FOOTNOTES:

[127] Smyth, Lives of the Berkeleys, i. 302. No doubt the riches of the Berkeleys were considerably greater than those of many of the barons.

[128] Lives of the Berkeleys, i. 166. There is no reason to doubt Smyth, as he wrote with the original accounts before him.

[129] Lives of the Berkeleys, i. 156.

[130] The yeoman is said to have made his appearance in the fifteenth century, but the small freeholders of the manor before that date were to all intents and purposes yeomen. No doubt, as trade grew in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries successful tradesmen bought small freeholds in the country and swelled the numbers of yeomen.

[131] Harrison, Description of Britain, F.J. Furnivall edn., p. 337.

[132] Domesday of S. Paul, Camden Society, p. 129.

[133] Turner, Domestic Architecture, i. 59.

[134] Domesday of S. Paul, p. 123.

[135] Historical MSS. Commission Report, v. 444.

[136] Ormerod, History of Cheshire, i. 129.

[137] Domesday of S. Paul, p. xcvii.

[138] Denton, England in the Fifteenth Century.

[139] Eden, State of the Poor, i. 21.

[140] See Cullum, History of Hawsted.

[141] Harrison, Description of Britain, Appendix ii, lxxxi. In some manors, however, there were careful regulations for public health. According to the Durham Halmote Rolls, published by the Surtees Society, village officials watched over the water supply, prevented the fouling of streams; bye-laws were enacted as to the regulation of the common place for clothes washing, and the times for emptying and cleansing ponds and mill-dams.

[142] Ballard, Domesday, Antiquary Series, p. 209.

[143] Walter of Henley, Royal Historical Society, p. 75.

[144] Cullum, Hawsted, 1784 ed., p. 182.

[145] State of the Poor, i. 15.

[146] Thorold Rogers, History of Agriculture and Prices, i. 32.

[147] See Knights Hospitallers in England, Camden Society, Introduction.

[148] Thorold Rogers, op. cit. i. 66.



CHAPTER V

THE BREAK-UP OF THE MANOR.—SPREAD OF LEASES.—THE PEASANTS' REVOLT.—FURTHER ATTEMPTS TO REGULATE WAGES.—A HARVEST HOME.— BEGINNING OF THE CORN LAWS.—SOME SURREY MANORS

We have seen that the landlords' profits were seriously diminished by the Black Death, and they cast about them for new ways of increasing their incomes. Arable land had been until now largely in excess of pasture, the cultivation of corn was the chief object of agriculture, bread forming a much larger proportion of men's diet than now. This began to change. Much of the land was laid down to grass, and there was a steady increase in sheep farming; thus commenced that revolution in farming which in the sixteenth century led Harrison to say that England was mainly a stock-raising country. The lords also let a considerable amount of their demesne land on leases for years. 'Then began the times to alter' says Smyth of the Lord Berkeley of the end of the fourteenth century, 'and hee with them, and he began to tack other men's cattle on his pasture by the week, month, and quarter, and to sell his meadow grounds by the acre. And in the time of Henry IV still more and more was let, and in succeeding times. As for the days' works of the copyhold tenants, they also were turned into money.'[149] Such leases had been used long before this, but this is the date of their great increase. In the thirteenth century a lease of 2 acres of arable land in Nowton, Suffolk, let the land at 6d. an acre per annum for a term of six years.[150] It contains no clauses about cultivation; the landlord warrants the said 2 acres to the tenant, and the tenant agrees to give them up at the end of the term freely and peaceably. The deed was indented, sealed, and witnessed by several persons. The impoverished landlords also let much of their land on stock and land leases. The custom of stocking the tenants' land was a very ancient one: the lord had always found the oxen for the plough teams of the villeins. In the leases of the manors of S. Paul's in the twelfth century the tenant for life received stock both live and dead, which when he entered was carefully enumerated in the lease, and at the end of the tenancy he had to leave behind the same quantity.[151] It was a common practice also, before the Black Death, for the lord to let out cows and sheep at so much per head per annum.[152] The stock and land lease therefore was no novelty. In 1410 there is a lease of the demesne lands at Hawsted by which the landlord kept the manor house and its appurtenances in his own hands, the tenant apparently having the farm buildings, which he was to keep in repair. He was to receive at the beginning of the term 20 cows and one bull, worth 9s. each; 4 stotts, worth 10s. each; and 4 oxen, worth 13s. 4d. each; which, or their value in money, were to be delivered up at the end of the term. The tenant was also to leave at the end of the lease as many acres well ploughed, sown, and manured as he found at the beginning. Otherwise the landlord was not to interfere with the cultivation. If the rent or any part thereof was in arrear for a fortnight after the two fixed days for payment, the landlord might distrain; and if for a month, he might re-enter: and both parties bound themselves to forfeit the then huge sum of L100 upon the violation of any clause of the lease.[153] There is a lease[154] of a subsequent date (the twentieth year of Henry VIII), but one which well illustrates the custom now so prevalent, granted by the Prior of the Monastery of Lathe in Somerset to William Pole of Combe, Edith his wife, and Thomas his son, for their lives. With the land went 360 wethers. For the land they paid 16 quarters of best wheat, 'purelye thressyd and wynowed,' 22 quarters of best barley, and were to carry 4 loads of wood and fatten one ox for the prior yearly; the ox to be fattened in stall with the best hay, the only way then known of fattening oxen. For the flock of wethers they paid L6 yearly. The tenants were bound to keep hedges, ditches, and gates in repair. Also they were bound by a 'writing obligatory' in the sum of L100 to deliver up the wether flock whole and sound, 'not rotten, banyd,[155] nor otherwise diseased.' The consequence of the spread of leases was that the portion of the demesne lands which the lords farmed themselves dwindled greatly, or it was turned from arable into grass. Stock and land leases survived in some parts till the beginning of the eighteenth century, when it was still the custom for the landlord to stock the land and receive half the crop for rent.[156] According to the Domesday of S. Paul, in the thirteenth century, a survey of eighteen manors containing 24,000 acres showed three-eighths of the land in demesne, the rest in the hands of the tenants. In 1359 the lord of the principal manor at Hawsted held in his own hand 572 acres of arable land, worth 4d. to 6d. an acre rent, and 50 acres of meadow, worth 2s. an acre.[157] He had also pasture for 24 cows, which was considered worth 36s. a year, and for 12 horses and 12 oxen worth 48s. a year, with 40 acres of wood, estimated at 1s. an acre. In 1387, however, the arable land had decreased to 320 acres, but the stock had increased, and now numbered 4 cart horses, 6 stotts or smaller horses, 10 oxen, 1 bull, 26 cows, 6 heifers, 6 calves, 92 wethers, 20 hoggerells or two-year-old sheep, 1 gander, 4 geese, 30 capons, 26 hens, and only one cock. The dairy of 26 cows was let out, according to the custom of the time, for L8 a year; and we are told that the oxen were fed on oats, and shod in the winter only.

But if the position of the lords was severely affected by the great pestilence that of the villeins was also. The villein himself was becoming a copyholder; in the thirteenth century the nature of his holding had been written on the court roll, before long he was given a copy of the roll, and by the fifteenth century he was a copyholder.[158] There was, too, a new spirit abroad in this century of disorganization and reform, which stirred even the villeins with a desire for better conditions of life. These men, thus rising to a more assured position and animated by new hopes, saw all round them hired labourers obtaining, in spite of the Statute of Labourers, double the amount of wages they had formerly received, while they were bound down to the same services as before. The advance in prices was further increased by the king's issuing in 1351 an entirely new coinage, of the same fineness but of less weight than the old; so that the demands of the labourers after the Black Death were largely justified by the depreciation in the currency.[159] There had also arisen at this time, owing to the increase in the wealth of the country, a new class of landlords who did not care for the old system[160]; and it is probably these men who are meant by the statute I Ric. II, c. 6, which complains that the villeins daily withdrew their services to their lords at the instigation of various counsellors and abettors, who made it appear by 'colour of certain exemplifications made out of the Book of Domesday' that they were discharged from their services, and moreover gathered themselves in great routs and agreed to aid each other in resisting their lords, so that justices were appointed to check this evil. But there were other 'counsellors and abettors' of the Peasants' Revolt than the new landlords. One of its most interesting features to modern readers is its thorough organization. Travelling agents and agitators like John Ball were all over the country, money was subscribed and collected, and everything was ripe for the great rising of 1381, which was brought to a head by the bad grading of the poll tax of King Richard. It has been said that the chief grievance of the villeins was that the lords of manors were attempting to reimpose commuted services, but judging by the petition to the King when he met them at Mile-end there can be no doubt that the chief grievance was the continuance of existing services. 'We will', said they, 'that ye make us free for ever, and that we be called no more bond, or so reputed.' Also, as Walsingham says,[161] they were careful to destroy the rolls and ancient records whereby their services were fixed, and to put to death persons learned in the law.

As every one knows, the revolt was a failure; and whether it ultimately helped much to extinguish serfdom is doubtful. It probably, like the pestilence, accelerated a movement which had been for some time in progress and was inevitable. There is ample evidence to prove that there was a very general continuance of predial services after the revolt, though they went on rapidly decreasing. One of the chief methods adopted by the villeins to gain their freedom was desertion, and so common did this become that apparently the mere threat of desertion enabled the villein to obtain almost any concession from his lord, who was afraid lest his land should be utterly deserted. The result was that by the middle of the fifteenth century the abolition of labour services was approaching completion.[162] It lingered on, and Fitzherbert lamented in Elizabeth's reign the continuance of villeinage as a disgrace to England; but it had then nearly disappeared, and was unheard of after the reign of James I.[163]

Seven years after the Peasants' Revolt another attempt was made to regulate agricultural wages by the statute 12 Ric. II, c. 4, which stated that 'the hires of the said servants and labourers have not been put on certainty before this time', though we have seen that the Act of 1351 tried to settle wages. In the preamble it is said that the statute was enacted because labourers 'have refused for a long season to work without outrageous and excessive hire', and owing to the scarcity of labourers 'husbands' could not pay their rents, a sentence which shows the general use of money rents.

The wages were as follows, apparently with food:—

s. d.

A bailiff annually, and clothing once a year 13 4 A master hind, without clothing 10 0 A carter, " " 10 0 A shepherd, " " 10 0 An ox or cow herd " " 6 8 Swine herd or female labourer, without clothing 6 0 A plough driver, without clothing 7 0

The farm servants' food would be worth considerably more than the actual cash he received; a quarter of wheat, barley, and rye mixed every nine weeks was no unusual allowance, which at 4s. 4d. would be worth about 25s. a year. He would also have his harvest allowance, though the statute above forbids any perquisites, worth about 3s., and sometimes it was accompanied by the gift of a pig, some beer, or some herrings.[164] His wife also, at a time when women did the same work as the men, could earn 1d. a day, and his boy perhaps 1/2d. If his wages were wholly paid in money, we may say that in the last half of the fourteenth century the ordinary labourer earned 3d. a day, so that as corn and pork, his chief food, had not risen at all, he was much better off than in the preceding 100 years.

Cullum, in his invaluable History of Hawsted, gives us a picture of harvesting on the demesne lands in 1389 which shows an extraordinarily busy scene. There were 200 acres of all kinds of corn to be gathered in, and over 300 people took part; though apparently such a crowd was only collected for the two principal days of the harvest, and it must be remembered that the towns were emptied into the country at this important season. The number of people for one day comprised a carter, ploughman, head reaper, cook, baker, brewer, shepherd, daya (dairymaid); 221 hired reapers; 44 pitchers, stackers, and reapers (not hired, evidently villeins paying their rents by work); 22 other reapers, hired for goodwill (de amore); and 20 customary tenants. This small army of men consumed 22 bushels of wheat, 8 pennyworth of beer, and 41 bushels of malt, worth 18s. 9-1/2d.; meat to the value of 9s. 11-1/2d.; fish and herrings, 5s. 1d.; cheese, butter, milk, and eggs, 8s. 3-1/2d.; oatmeal, 5d. salt, 3d.; pepper and saffron, 10d., the latter apparently introduced into England in the time of Edward III, and much used for cooking and medicine, but it gradually went out of fashion, and by the end of the eighteenth century was only cultivated in one or two counties, notably Essex where Saffron Walden recalls its use; candles, 6d.; and 5 pairs of gloves 10d.[165]

The presentation of gloves was a common custom in England; and these would be presented as a sign of good husbandry, as in the case of the rural bridegroom in the account of Queen Elizabeth's visit to Kenilworth who wore gloves to show he was a good farmer. Tusser bids the farmer give gloves to his reapers. The custom was still observed at Hawsted in 1784, and in Eden's time, 1797, the bursars of New College, Oxford, presented each of their tenants with two pairs, which the recipients displayed on the following Sunday at church by conspicuously hanging their hands over the pew to show their neighbours they had paid their rent. In this account of the Hawsted harvest the large number of hired men and the few customary tenants is noteworthy as a sign of the times, for before the Black Death the harvest work on the demesne was the special work of the latter.

In the fourteenth century the long series of corn laws was commenced which was to agitate Englishmen for centuries, and after an apparently final settlement in 1846 to reappear in our day.[166] It was the policy of Edward III to make food plentiful and cheap for the whole nation, without special regard to the agricultural interest: and by 34 Edw. III, c. 20, the export of corn to any foreign part except Calais and Gascony, then British possessions, or to certain places which the king might permit, was forbidden. Richard II, however, reversed this policy in answer to the complaints of agriculturists whose rents were falling,[167] and endeavoured to encourage the farmer and especially the corn-grower; for he saw the landlords turning their attention to sheep instead of corn, owing to the high price of labour. Accordingly, to give the corn-growers a wider market, he allowed his subjects by the statute 17 Ric. II, c. 7, to carry corn, on paying the duties due, to what parts they pleased, except to his enemies, subject however to an order of the Council; and owing to the interference of the Council the law probably became a dead letter, at all events we find it confirmed and amended by 4 Hen. VI, c. 5.

The prohibition of export must have been a serious blow to those counties near the sea, for it was much easier to send corn by ship to foreign parts than over the bad roads of England to some distant market.[168] Indeed, judging by the great and frequent discrepancy of prices in different places at the same date, the dispatch of corn from one inland locality to another was not very frequent. Richard also attempted to stop the movement, which had even then set in, of the countrymen to the growing towns, forbidding by 12 Ric. II, c. 5, those who had served in agriculture until 12 years of age to be apprenticed in the towns, but to 'abide in husbandry'.

One of the most unjust customs of the Middle Ages was that which bade the tenants of manors, except those who held the jus faldae, fold their sheep on the land of the lord, thus losing both the manure and the valuable treading.[169] However, sometimes, as in Surrey, the sheepfold was in a fixed place and the manure from it was from time to time taken out and spread on the land.[170]

In the same district horses had been hitherto used for farm work, as it was considered worthy of note that oxen were beginning to be added to the horse teams. The milk of two good cows in twenty-four weeks was considered able to make a wey of cheese, and in addition half a gallon of butter a week; and the milk of 20 ewes was equal to that of 3 cows.

On the Manor of Flaunchford, near Reigate, the demesne land amounted to 56 acres of arable and two meadows, but there must have been the usual pasture in addition to keep the following head of stock: 13 cows, who in the winter were fed from the racks in the yard; 4 calves, bought at 1s. each; 12 oxen for ploughing, whose food was oats and hay—a very large number for 56 acres of arable, and they were probably used on another manor; 1 stott, used for harrowing; a goat, and a sow.

L s. d.

In 1382 the total receipts of this manor were 8 1 9-1/2 The total expenses 7 0 5 ——————— Profit L1 1 4-1/2 ==============

Among the receipts were:— For the lord's plough, let to farmers (perhaps this accounts for the large team of oxen kept) 6 8 14 bushels of apples 1 2 5 loads of charcoal 16 8 A cow 10 0 Among the payments:— For keeping plough in repair, and the wages of a blacksmith, one year by agreement 6 8 Making a new plough from the lord's timber 6 Mowing 2 acres of meadow 1 0 Making and carrying hay of ditto, with help of lord's servants 4 Threshing wheat, peas, and tares, per quarter 4 " oats, per quarter 1-1/2 Winnowing 3 quarters of corn 1 Cutting and binding wheat and oats, per acre 6

On the Manor of Dorking the harvest lasted five weeks as a rule; the fore feet only of oxen used for ploughing, and of heifers used for harrowing, were shod. For washing and shearing sheep 10d. a hundred was the price; ploughing for winter corn cost 6d. an acre, and harrowing 1/2d. 30-1/2 acres of barley produced 41-1/2 quarters; 28 acres of oats produced 38-1/2 quarters; 13 cows were let for the season at 5s. each. In the same reign, at Merstham, the demesne lands of 166-1/2 acres were let on lease with all the live and dead stock, which was valued at L22 9s. 3d., and the rent was L36 or about 4s. 4d. an acre, an enormous price even including the stock.

FOOTNOTES:

[149] Smyth, Lives of the Berkeleys, ii. 5. There is no doubt the lease system was growing in the thirteenth century. About 1240 the writ Quare ejecit infra terminum protected the person of a tenant for a term of years, who formerly had been regarded as having no more than a personal right enforceable by an action of covenant. Vinogradoff, Villeinage in England, p. 330; but leases for lives and not for years seem the rule at that date.

[150] Cullum, Hawsted, p. 175.

[151] See Domesday of S. Paul, Introduction.

[152] Thorold Rogers, History of Agriculture and Prices, i. 25.

[153] Cullum, Hawsted, p. 195.

[154] Cunningham, Industry and Commerce, i. 586.

[155] Banyd, afflicted with sheep rot.

[156] Eden, State of the Poor, i. 55.

[157] Cullum, Hawsted, p. 182. Another instance of the difference in value between arable and tillage. At the inquisition of the Manor of Great Tey in Essex, 1326, the jury found that 500 acres of arable land was worth 6d. an acre rent, 20 acres of meadow 3s. an acre, and 10 acres of pasture 1s. an acre. Archaeologia, xii. 30.

[158] Medley, Constitutional History, p. 52.

[159] Cunningham, op. cit. i. 328, and 335-6.

[160] Domesday of S. Paul, p. lvii.

[161] Hist. Angl., Rolls Series, i. 455. The other political and social causes of the revolt do not concern us here. The attempt to minimize its agrarian importance is strange in the light of the words and acts above mentioned.

[162] Page, op. cit. p. 77.

[163] Cunningham, Industry and Commerce, i. 402, 534; Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, New Series, xvii. 235. Fitzherbert probably referred more to villein status, which continued longer than villein tenure.

[164] Thorold Rogers, History of Agriculture and Prices, i. 278, 288.

[165] Harrison, Description of Britain, p. 233, says the produce of an acre of saffron was usually worth L20.

[166] Exportation of corn is mentioned in 1181, when a fine was paid to the king for licence to ship corn from Norfolk and Suffolk to Norway.—McPherson, Annals of Commerce, i. 345. As early as the reign of Henry II, Henry of Huntingdon says, German silver came to buy our most precious wool, our milk (no doubt converted into butter and cheese), and our innumerable cattle.—Rolls Series, p. 5. In 1400, the Chronicle of London says the country was saved from dearth by the importation of rye from Prussia.

[167] Hasbach, op. cit.. p. 32.

[168] Lord Berkeley, about 1360, had a ship of his own for exporting wool and corn and bringing back foreign wine and wares.—Smyth, Lives of the Berkeleys, i. 365.

[169] Nasse, Agricultural Community of the Middle Ages, p. 66.

[170] Customs in some Surrey manors in the time of Richard II, Archaeologia, xviii. 281.



CHAPTER VI

1400-1540

THE SO-CALLED 'GOLDEN AGE OF THE LABOURER' IN A PERIOD OF GENERAL DISTRESS

In this period the average prices of grain remained almost unchanged until the last three decades, when they began slowly and steadily to creep up, this advance being helped to some extent by defective harvests. In 1527, according to Holinshed it rained from April 12 to June 3 every day or night; in May thirty hours without ceasing; and the floods did much damage to the corn. In 1528 incessant deluges of rain prevented the corn being sown in the spring, and grain had to be imported from Germany. The price of wheat was a trifle higher than in the period 1259-1400; barley, oats, and beans lower; rye higher.[171] Oxen and cows were dearer, horses about the same, sheep a little higher, pigs the same, poultry and eggs dearer, wool the same, cheese and butter dearer. The price of wheat was sometimes subject to astonishing fluctuations: in 1439 it varied from 8s. to 26s. 8d.; in 1440 from 4s. 2d. to 25s. The rent of land continued the same, arable averaging 6d. an acre,[172] though this was partly due to the fact that rents, although now generally paid in money, were still fixed and customary; for the purchase value of land had now risen to twenty years instead of twelve.[173] The art of farming hardly made any progress, and the produce of the land was consequently about the same or a little better than in the preceding period.[174]

At the end of the fourteenth century the ordinary wheat crop at Hawsted was in favourable years about a quarter to the acre, but it was often not more than 6 bushels; and this was on demesne land, usually better tilled than non-demesne land.[175] As for the labourer, it is well known that Thorold Rogers calls the fifteenth century his golden age, and seeing that his days' wages, if he 'found himself', were now 4d. and prices were hardly any higher all round than when he earned half the money in the thirteenth century, there is much to support his view. As to whether he was better off than the modern labourer it is somewhat difficult to determine; as far as wages went he certainly was, for his 4d. a day was equal to about 4s. now; it is true that on the innumerable holidays of the Church he sometimes did not work,[176] but no doubt he then busied himself on his bit of common. But so many factors enter into the question of the general material comfort of the labourer in different ages that it is almost impossible to come to a satisfactory conclusion. Denton paints a very gloomy picture of him at this time[177]; so does Mr. Jessop, who says, the agricultural labourers of the fifteenth century were, compared with those of to-day, 'more wretched in their poverty, incomparably less prosperous in their prosperity; worse clad, worse fed, worse housed, worse taught, worse governed; they were sufferers from loathsome diseases, of which their descendants know nothing; the very beasts of the field were dwarfed and stunted; the disregard of to sell their corn at low prices to the detriment of the whole kingdom: a typical example of the political economy of the time, which considered the prosperity of agriculture indispensable to the welfare of the country, even if the consumer suffered. Accordingly, it was enacted that wheat could be exported without a licence when it was under 6s. 8d. a quarter, except to the king's enemies. On imports of corn there had been no restriction until 1463, when 3 Edw. IV, c. 2 forbade the import of corn when under 6s. 8d: a statute due partly to the fear that the increase of pasture was a danger to tillage land and the national food supply, and partly to the fact that the landed interest had become by now fully awake to the importance of protecting themselves by promoting the gains of the farmer.[178] It may be doubted, however, if much wheat was imported except in emergencies at this time, for many countries forbade export. These two statutes were practically unaltered till 1571,[179] and by that of 1463 was initiated the policy which held the field for nearly 400 years.

Thorold Rogers denounces the landlords for legislating with the object of keeping up rents, but, as Mr. Cunningham has pointed out, this ignores the fact that the land was the great fund of national wealth from which taxation was paid; if rents therefore rose it was a gain to the whole country, since the fund from which the revenue was drawn was increased.[180]

In spite of the high wages of agricultural labourers, the movement towards the towns noticed by Richard II continued. The statute 7 Hen. IV, c. 17, asserts that there is a great scarcity of labourers in husbandry and that gentlemen are much impoverished by the rate of wages; the cause of the scarcity lying in the fact that many people were becoming weavers,[181] and it therefore re-enacted 12 Ric. II, c. 5, which ordained that no one who had been a servant in husbandry until 12 years old should be bound apprentice, and further enacted that no person with less than 20s. a year in land should be able to apprentice his son. Like many other statutes of the time this seems to have been inoperative, for we find 23 Hen. VI, c. 12 (1444), enacting that if a servant in husbandry purposed leaving his master he was to give him warning, and was obliged either to engage with a new one or continue with the old. It also regulated the wages anew, those fixed showing a substantial increase since the statute of 1388. By the year:—

A bailiff was to have L1 3s. 4d., and 5s. worth of clothes. A chief hind, carter, or shepherd, L1, and 4s. worth of clothes. A common servant in husbandry, 15s., and 3s. 4d. worth of clothes. A woman servant, 10s., and 4s. worth of clothes. All with meat and drink.

By the day, in harvest, wages were to be:—

A mower, with meat and drink, 4d.; without, 6d. A reaper or carter, with meat and drink, 3d.; without, 5d. A woman or labourer, with meat and drink, 2d.; without, 4d.

In the next reign the labourer's dress was again regulated for him, and he was forbidden to wear any cloth exceeding 2s. a yard in price, nor any 'close hosen', apparently tight long stockings, nor any hosen at all which cost more than 14d.[182] Yeomen and those below them were forbidden to wear any bolsters or stuff of wool, cotton wadding, or other stuff in their doublets, but only lining; and somewhat gratuitously it was ordered that no one under the degree of a gentleman should wear pikes to his shoes.

In 1455 England's Thirty Years' War, the War of the Roses, began, and agriculture received another set back. The view that the war was a mere faction fight between nobles and their retainers, while the rest of the country went about their business, is somewhat exaggerated. No doubt, the mass of Englishmen, as in the civil war of the seventeenth century, preferred to 'sit still', as Clarendon said, but the business of many must have been very much upset. The various armies were compelled to obtain their supplies from the country, and with the lawless habits of the times plundered friend and foe alike, as Cavalier and Roundhead did afterwards; and many a farmer must have seen all his stock driven off and his grain seized to feed the combatants. For instance, it was said before the battle called Easter Day Field that all the tenants of Abbot's Ripton in Huntingdonshire were copyholders of the Abbot of Ramsey, and the northern army lay there so long that they impoverished the country and the tenants had to give up their copyholds through poverty.[183] The loss of life, too, must have told heavily on a country already suffering from frequent pestilence. It is calculated that about one-tenth of the whole population of the country were killed in battle or died of wounds and disease during the war; and as these must have been nearly all men in the prime of life, it is difficult to understand how the effect on the labour market was not more marked. The enclosing of land for pasture farms, which we shall next have to consider, was probably in many cases an absolute necessity, for the number of men left to till the soil must have been seriously diminished.

FOOTNOTES:

[171] See table at end of volume. The shrinkage of prices which occurred in the fifteenth century was due to the scarcity of precious metals.

[172] Thorold Rogers, History of Agriculture and Prices, iv. 128. The rent of arable land on Lord Derby's estate in Wirral in 1522 was a little under 6d. a statute acre; of meadow, about 1s. 6d.—Cheshire Sheaf (Ser. 3), iv. 23.

[173] Thorold Rogers, op. cit. iv. 3.

[174] Thorold Rogers, op. cit. iv. 39.

[175] Cullum, Hawsted, p. 187. The amount of seed for the various crops was, wheat 2 bushels per acre, barley 4, oats 2-1/2.

[176] By 4 Hen. IV, c. 14, labourers were to receive no hire for holy days, or on the eves of feasts for more than half a day; but the statute was largely disregarded.

[177] See England in the Fifteenth Century, p. 105: 'The undrained neglected soil, the shallow stagnant waters which lay on the surface of the ground, the unhealthy homes of all classes, insufficient and unwholesome food, the abundance of stale fish eaten, and the scanty supply of vegetables predisposed rural and town population to disease.'

[178] Cunningham, Industry and Commerce, i. 448.

[179] McCulloch, Commercial Dictionary (1852), p. 412. In 1449 Parliament had decided that all foreign merchants importing corn should spend the money so obtained on English goods to prevent it leaving the country.—McPherson, Annals of Commerce, i. 655.

[180] Cunningham, Industry and Commerce, i. 191.

[181] Much of the weaving, however, was done in rural districts.

[182] See 3 Edw. IV, c. 5; Rot. Parl. v. 105; 22 Edw. IV, c. 1.

[183] Cunningham, op. cit. i. 456.



CHAPTER VII

ENCLOSURE

We have now reached a time when the enclosure question was becoming of paramount importance,[184] and began to cause constant anxiety to legislators, while the writers of the day are full of it. Enclosure was of four kinds:

1. Enclosing the common arable fields for grazing, generally in large tracts.

2. Enclosing the same by dividing them into smaller fields, generally of arable.

3. Enclosing the common pasture, for grazing or tillage.

4. Enclosing the common meadows or mowing grounds.

It is the first mainly, and to a less degree the third of these, which were so frequent a source of complaint in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries; for the first, besides displacing the small holder, threw out of employment a large number of people who had hitherto gained their livelihood by the various work connected with tillage, and the third deprived a large number of their common rights.

The first Enclosure Act was the Statute of Merton, passed in 1235, 20 Henry III, c. 4, which permitted lords of manors to add to their demesnes such parts of the waste pasture and woods as were beyond the needs of the tenants. There is evidence, however, that enclosure, probably of waste land, was going on before this statute, as the charter of John, by which all Devonshire except Dartmoor and Exmoor was deforested, expressly forbids the making of hedges, a proof of enclosure, in those two forests.[185] We may be sure that the needs of the tenants were by an arbitrary lord estimated at a very low figure. At the same time many proceeded in due legal form. Thomas, Lord Berkeley, about the period of the Act reduced great quantities of ground into enclosures by procuring many releases of common land from freeholders.[186] His successor, Lord Maurice, was not so observant of legality. He had a wood wherein many of his tenants and freeholders had right of pasture. He wished to make this into a park, and treated with them for that purpose; but things not going smoothly, he made the wood into a park without their leave, and then treated with his tenants, most of whom perforce fell in with his highhanded plan; those who did not 'fell after upon his sonne with suits, in their small comfort and less gaines.'[187] Sometimes the rich made the law aid their covetousness, as did Roger Mortimer the paramour of the 'She Wolf of France'. Some men had common of pasture in King's Norton Wood, Worcestershire, who, when Mortimer enclosed part of their common land with a dike, filled the dike up, for they were deprived of their inheritance. Thereupon Mortimer brought an action of trespass against them 'by means of jurors dwelling far from the said land', who were put on the panel by his steward, who was also sheriff of the county, and the commoners were convicted and cast in damages of L300, not daring to appear at the time for fear of assault, or even death.[188] Neither dared they say a word about the matter till Mortimer was dead, when it is satisfactory to learn that Edward III gave them all their money back save 20 marks. We are told that Lord Maurice Berkeley consolidated much of his demesne lands, throwing together the scattered strips and exchanging those that lay far apart from the manor houses for those that lay near; trying evidently to get the home farms into a ring fence as we should term it.[189] In this policy he was followed by his successor Thomas the Second, who during his ownership of the estate from 1281 to 1320, to the great profit of his tenants and himself, encouraged them to make exchanges, so as to make their lands lie in convenient parcels instead of scattered strips, by which he raised the rent of an acre from 4d. and 6d. to 1s. 6d.[190] There is a deed of enclosure made in the year 1250, preserved, by which the free men of North Dichton 'appropriated and divided between them and so kept for ever in fee all that place called Sywyneland, with the moor,' and they were to have licence to appropriate that place, which was common pasture (the boundaries of which are given), 'save, however, to the grantor William de Ros and his heirs' common of pasture in a portion thereof named by bounds, with entry and exit for beasts after the wheat is carried. The men of North Dichton were also to have all the wood called Rouhowthwicke, and to do what they liked with it.[191] In return they gave the lord 10 marks of silver and a concession as regards a certain wood. It has been noticed that the Black Death, besides causing many of the landlords to let their demesnes, also made them turn much tillage into grass to save labour, which had grown so dear. We have also seen that the statutes regulating wages were of little effect, and they went on rising, so that more land was laid down to grass. The landowners may be said to have given up ordinary farming and turned to sheep raising.

English wool could always find a ready sale, although Spanish sheep farming had developed greatly; and the profitable trade of growing wool attracted the new capitalist class who had sprung up, so that they often invested their recently made fortunes in it, buying up many of the great estates that were scattered during the war.[192]

The increase of sheep farming was assisted by the fact that the domestic system of the manufacture of wool, which supplanted the guild system, led, owing to its rapid and successful growth, to a constant and increasing demand for wool. At the same time this development of the cloth industry helped to alleviate the evils it had itself caused by giving employment to many whom the agricultural changes wholly or partially deprived of work. 'It is important to remember, that where peasant proprietorship and small farming did maintain their ground it was largely due to the domestic industries which supplemented the profits of agriculture.'[193]

Much of the land laid down to grass was demesne land, but many of the common arable fields were enclosed and laid down. John Ross of Warwick about 1460 compares the country as he knew it with the picture presented by the Hundred Rolls in Edward I's time, showing how many villages had been depopulated; and he mentions the inconvenience to travellers in having to get down frequently to open the gates of enclosed fields.[194]

Enclosure was really a sure sign of agricultural progress; nearly all the agricultural writers from Fitzherbert onwards are agreed that enclosed land produced much more than uninclosed. Fitzherbert, in the first quarter of the sixteenth century, said an acre of land rented for 6d. uninclosed was worth 8d. when enclosed. Gabriel Plattes, in the seventeenth century, said an acre enclosed was worth four in common. In fact, the history of enclosures is part of the history of the great revolution in agriculture by which the manorial system was converted into the modern system as we know it to-day of several ownership and the triumvirate of landlord, tenant farmer, and labourer. No one could have objected to the enclosure of waste; it was that of the common arable fields and of the common pasture that excited the indignation of contemporaries. They saw many of the small holders displaced and the countryside depopulated; many of the labourers were also thrown out of employment, for there was no need in enclosed fields of the swineherd and shepherd and oxherd who had tended the common flocks of the villagers in the old unfenced fields. But much of the opposition was founded on ignorance and hatred of change; England had been for ages mainly a corn-growing land, and, many thought, ought to remain so. As a matter of fact, what much of the arable land wanted was laying down to grass; it was worn out and needed a rest. The common field system was wasteful; the land, for instance, could never be properly ploughed, for the long narrow strips could not be cross-ploughed, and much of it must have suffered grievously from want of manure at a time when hardly any stock was kept in the winter to make manure. The beneficial effect of the rest is shown by the fact that at the end of the sixteenth century, when some of the land came to be broken up, the produce per acre of wheat had gone up largely.[195] Marling and liming the land, too, which had been the salvation of much of it for centuries, had gone out partly because of insecurity of tenure, partly because in the unsettled state of England men knew not if they could reap any benefit therefrom; and partly because, says Fitzherbert, men were lazier than their fathers. There can be no doubt that enclosures were often accompanied with great hardships and injustice. Dugdale, speaking of Stretton in Warwickshire,[196] says that in Henry VII's time Thomas Twyford, having begun the depopulation thereof, decaying four messuages and three cottages whereunto 160 acres of 'errable' land belonged, sold it to Henry Smith; which Henry, following that example, enclosed 640 acres of land more, whereby twelve messuages and four cottages fell to ruins and eighty persons there inhabiting, being employed about tillage and husbandry, were constrained to depart thence and live miserably. By means whereof the church grew to such ruin that it was of no other use than for the shelter of cattle. A sad picture, and true of many districts, but much of the depopulation ascribed to enclosures was due to the devastation of the Civil Wars.

In spite of these enclosures, which began to change the England of open fields into the country we know of hedgerows and winding roads, great part of the land was in a wild and uncultivated state of fen, heath, and wood, the latter sometimes growing right up to the walls of the towns.[197] An unbroken series of woods and fens stretched right across England from Lincoln to the Mersey, and northwards from the Mersey to the Solway and the Tweed; Warwickshire, Northamptonshire, and Leicestershire were largely covered by forests, and Sherwood Forest extended over nearly the whole of Notts. Cannock Chase was covered with oaks, and in the forest of Needwood in Camden's time the neighbouring gentry eagerly pursued the cheerful sport of hunting. The great forest of Andredesweald, though much diminished, still covered a large part of Sussex, and the Chiltern district in Bucks and Oxfordshire was thick with woods which hid many a robber. The great fen in the east covered 300,000 acres of land in six counties, in spite of various efforts to reclaim the land, and was to remain in a state of marsh and shallow water till the seventeenth century.

North and west of the great fen was Hatfield Chase, 180,000 acres mostly swamp and bog, with here and there a strip of cultivated land, much of which had been tilled and neglected; a great part too of Yorkshire was swamp, heath, and forest, and of Lancashire marshes and mosses, some of which were not drained till recent times. The best corn-growing counties were those lying immediately to the north of London, stretching from Suffolk to Gloucestershire, and including the southern portions of Staffordshire and Leicestershire; Essex was a great cheese county; Hants, Cambridgeshire, Northamptonshire, and Bedfordshire were famous for malt, and Leicestershire for peas and beans. The population of England in 1485 was probably from two to two and a half millions. At the time of Domesday it was under two millions, and from that date increased perhaps to nearly four millions at the time of the Black Death in 1348-9, which swept away from one-third to one-half of the people, and repeated wars and pestilences seem to have kept it from increasing until Tudor times. Of the whole population no fewer than eleven-twelfths were employed in agriculture.[198]

It was sought to remedy enclosure and depopulation by legislation, and the statute of 4 Hen. VII, c. 19, was passed, which stated in its preamble that where in some towns (meaning townships or villages) 200 persons used to be occupied and lived by their lawful labours, now there are occupied only two or three herdsmen, so that the residue fall into idleness, and husbandry is greatly decayed, churches destroyed, the bodies there buried not prayed for, the parsons and curates wronged, and the defence of this land enfeebled and impaired; the latter point being wisely deemed one of the most serious defects in the new system of farming. Indeed, the encouragement of tillage was largely prompted by the desire to see the people fed on good home-grown corn and made strong and healthy by rural labour for the defence of England. It therefore enacted that houses which within three years before had been let for farms with 20 acres of tillage land should be kept in that condition, under a penalty of forfeiting half the profits to the king or the lord of the fee. Soon after Henry VIII ascended the throne came another statute, 6 Hen. VIII, c. 5, that all townships, villages, &c., decayed and turned from husbandry and tillage into pasture, shall by the owner be rebuilt and the land made mete for tillage within one year; and this was repeated and made perpetual by a law of the next year.[199]

But legislation was in vain; the price of wool was now beginning to advance so that the attraction of sheep farming was irresistible, and laws, which asked landowners and farmers to turn from what was profitable to what was not, were little likely to be observed, especially as the administration of these laws was in the hands of those whose interest it was that they should not be observed.

Their ill success, however, did not deter the Parliament from fresh efforts. 25 Hen. VIII, c. 13, sets forth the condition of affairs in its preamble: as many persons have accumulated into few, great multitude of farms and great plenty of cattle, especially sheep, putting such land as they can get into pasture, and enhanced the old rents and raised the prices of corn, cattle, wool, and poultry almost double, 'by reason whereof a mervaylous multitude and nombre of the people of this realme be not able to provide drynke and clothes necessary for themselves, but be so discoraged with myserie and povertie that they fall dayly to thefte and robberye or pitifully dye for hunger and colde.' So greedy and covetous were some of these accumulators that they had as many as 24,000 sheep; and a good sheep, that was used to be sold for 2s. 4d. or 3s. at the most, was now from 4s. to 6s.; and a stone of clothing wool, that in some shires was accustomed to be sold for 18d. or 20d., is now 3s. 4d. to 4s.; and in others, where it was 2s. 4d. to 3s. it is now 4s. 8d. to 5s.

It was therefore enacted that no man, with some exceptions, was to keep more than 2,000 sheep at one time in any part of the realm, though lambs under one year were not to count. The frequency of these laws proves their inefficacy, and the conduct of Henry VIII was the chief cause of it; for while Parliament was complaining of the decrease of tillage he gave huge tracts of land taken from the monasteries to greedy courtiers, who evicted the tenants and lived on the profits of sheep farming.[200] For the dissolution of the monasteries was now taking Place,[201] and the best landowners in England, some of whom farmed their own land long after most of the lay landlords had given it up or turned it into grass, and whose lands are said to have fetched a higher rent than any others, were robbed and ruined. Including the dissolution of the monasteries and the confiscation of the chantry lands in 1549 by Edward VI, about one-fifteenth of the land of England changed hands at this time. The transfer of the abbey lands to Henry's favourites was very prejudicial to farming; it was a source of serious dislocation of agricultural industry, marked by all the inconvenience, injustice, and loss that attends a violent transfer of property. It is probable also that many of the monastic lands were let on stock and land leases; and the stock was confiscated, with inevitable ruin to the tenant as well as the landlord.[202] And not only was a serious injury wrought to agriculture by the spoliation of a large number of landlords generally noted for their generosity and good farming, but with the religious houses disappeared a large number of consumers of country produce, the amount of which may be gathered from the following list of stores of the great Abbey of Fountains at the dissolution: 2,356 horned cattle, 1,326 sheep, 86 horses, 79 swine, and large quantities of wheat, oats, rye, and malt, with 392 loads of hay.[203] It must indeed have seemed to many as if the poor farmer was never to have any rest; no sooner were the long wars over and pestilences in some sense diminished, than the evils of enclosure and the dissolution of the monasteries came upon him. Many ills were popularly ascribed to the fall of the monasteries; in an old ballad in Percy's Reliques one of the characters says, in western dialect:—

'Chill tell the what, good vellowe, Before the friers went hence, A bushel of the best wheate Was zold vor vorteen pence, And vorty eggs a penny That were both good and newe.'

NOTE.—If any further proof were needed of the constant attention given by Parliament to agricultural matters, it would be furnished by the Acts for the destruction of vermin.[204] Our forefathers had no doubt that rooks did more harm than good, yearly destroying a 'wonderfull and marvelous greate quantitie of corne and graine'; and destroying the 'covertures of thatched housery, bernes, rekes, stakkes, and other such like'; so that all persons were to do their best to kill them, 'on pain of a grevous amerciament'.

FOOTNOTES:

[184] Much the same tendencies were at work in other countries, especially in Germany.

[185] Slater, English Peasantry and Enclosure, 248.

[186] Smyth, Lives of the Berkeleys, i. 113.

[187] Cal. Pat. Rolls, 1331, p. 127.

[188] Lives of the Berkeleys, i. 141.

[189] Ibid. i. 141.

[190] Lives of the Berkeleys, i. 160.

[191] Historical MSS. Commission, 6th Report, p. 359.

[192] Cunningham, Industry and Commerce, i. 379.

[193] Ashley, English Woollen Industry, pp. 80-1. Broadly speaking, there are four stages in the development of industry—the family system, the guild system, the domestic system, and the factory system.

[194] Hist. Reg. Angl., p. 120.

[195] Gisborne, Agricultural Essays, pp. 186-9.

[196] Antiquities of Warwickshire 2nd ed., p. 51.

[197] Denton, England in the Fifteenth Century, p. 135.

[198] See Cunningham, Industry and Commerce, i. 331; Denton, England in the Fifteenth Century, p. 127.

[199] 7 Hen. VIII, c. 1.

[200] Cunningham, Industry and Commerce, i. 489.

[201] Dissolution of small monasteries, 1536; of greater, 1539-40.

[202] Thorold Rogers, History of Agriculture and Prices, iv. 129.

[203] Dugdale, Monasticon, v, 291.

[204] 24 Hen. VIII, c. 10; 8 Eliz. c. 15; 14 Eliz. c. 11; 39 Eliz. c. 18.



CHAPTER VIII

FITZHERBERT.—THE REGULATION OF HOURS AND WAGES

The farming of this period is portrayed for us by Fitzherbert, the first agricultural writer of any merit since Walter of Henley in the thirteenth century. He was one of the Justices of Common Pleas, and had been a farmer for forty years before he wrote his books on husbandry, and on surveying in 1523, so that he knew what he was writing about; 'there is nothing touching husbandry contained in this book but I have had experience thereof and proved the same.' In spite of the increase of grazing in his time he says the 'plough is the most necessarie instrument that an husbandman can occupy', and describes those used in various counties; in Kent, for instance, 'they have some go with wheeles as they do in many other places'; but the plough of his time is apparently the same as that of Walter of Henley, and altered little till the seventeenth century. The rudeness of it may be judged from the fact that in some places it only cost 10d. or 1s. though in other parts they were as much as 6s. or even 8s. He says[205] it was too costly for a farmer to buy all his implements, wherefore it is necessary for him to learn to make them, as he had done in the Middle Ages before the era of ready-made implements, when he always bought the materials and put them together at home. On the vexed question of whether to use horses or oxen for ploughing, he says it depends on the locality; for instance, oxen will plough in tough clay and upon hilly ground, whereas horses will stand still; but horses go faster than oxen on even ground and light ground, and are 'quicke for carriages, but they be far more costly to keep in winter.'

According to him, oxen had no shoes as horses had.[206] Here is his description of a harrow: it is 'made of six final peeces of timber called harow bulles, made either of ashe or oke; they be two yardes long, and as much as the small of a man's leg; in every bulle are five sharpe peeces of iron called harow tyndes, set somewhat a slope forward.' This harrow, drawn by oxen, was good to break the big clods, and then the horse harrow came after to break the smaller clods. It differed slightly from the former, some having wooden tines. For weeding corn the chief instrument 'is a pair of tongs made of wood, and in dry weather ye must have a weeding hoke with a socket set upon a staffe a yard long.'[207]

He recommends that grass be mown early, for the younger and greener the grass is the softer and sweeter it will be when it is hay, and the seeds will be in it instead of fallen out as when left late; advice which many slovenly farmers need to-day. He does not approve of the custom of reaping rye and wheat high up and mowing them after, but advises that they be cut clean; barley and oats, however, should be commonly mown. Both wheat and rye were to be sown at Michaelmas, and were cast upon the fallow and ploughed under, two London bushels of wheat and rye being the necessary amount of seed per acre. In spite of his praise of the plough he allows that the sheep 'is the most profitablest cattel that a man can have', and he gives a list of their diseases, among the things that rot them being a grass called sperewort, another called peny grass, while marshy ground, mildewed grass, and grass growing upon fallow and therefore full of weeds were all conducive to rot. The chief cause, however, is mildew, the sign of whose presence is the honeydew on the oak leaves. In buying cattle to feed the purchaser is to see that the hair stare not, and that the beast lacks no teeth, has a broad rib, a thick hide, and be loose skinned, for if it stick hard to his ribs he will not feed[208]; it should be handled to see if it be soft on the forecrop, behind the shoulder, on the hindermost rib upon the huck bone, and at the nache by the tail. Among other diseases of cattle he mentions the gout, 'commonly in the hinder feet'; but he never knew a man who could find a remedy. He was a great advocate of enclosures; for it was much better to have several closes and pastures to put his cattle in, which should be well quick-setted, ditched, and hedged, so as to divide those of different ages, as this was more profitable than to have his cattle go before the herdsman (in the common field).

It will be seen from the above that Fitzherbert made no idle boast in saying he wrote of what he knew, and much of his advice is applicable to-day, though the time is past for the farmer's wife to 'wynowe all manner of cornes, to make malte, to shere corne, and in time of nede to helpe her husbande to fyll the mucke wayne or dounge carte, dryve the plough, lode heye, corne, and such other'; though she may go or ride to the market 'to sel butter, cheese, milke, eggs, chekyns, hennes, and geese.'[209] It appears that the horses of England at this time had considerably deteriorated, for the statute 27 Hen. VIII, c. 6, mentions the great decay of the breed, the cause it is stated being that 'in most places of this Realme little horsis and naggis of small stature and valeu be suffered to depasture and also to covour marys and felys of very small stature'; therefore owners and farmers of deer parks shall keep in every such park two brood mares of 13 'hand fulles' (hands) at least. Another statute, 32 Hen. VIII, c. 13, strove to remedy this evil by enacting that no entire horse under 15 hands was to feed on any forest, chase, waste, or common land.

This statute was a useful one, so also was 21 Hen. VIII, c. 8, which forbade for three years the killing of calves between January 1 and May 1, under a penalty of 6s. 8d., because so many had been killed by 'covetous persons' that the cattle of the country were dwindling in number. Others, however, were merely meddlesome, and directed against that unpopular man the dealer. For instance, owners refusing to sell cattle at assessed prices were to answer first in the Star Chamber (25 Hen. VIII, c. 1); and by 3 and 4 Edw. VI, c. 19, no cattle were to be bought but in open fair or market, and not to be resold then alive, though a man might buy cattle anywhere for his own use. No person, again, was to resell cattle within five weeks after he bought them (5 Edw. VI, c. 14); and a common drover had by the same Act to have a licence from three justices before he could buy and sell cattle. We may be sure that these laws were more honoured in the breach than in the observance, as they deserved to be.

Hops were said to have been introduced from the Low Countries about the middle of Henry VIII's reign; but there can be no doubt that this is a mistake. It has been mentioned that they flourished in the gardens of Edward I, and a distinguished authority[210] says the hop may with probability be reckoned a native of Britain; but it was first used as a salad or vegetable for the table, the young sprouts having the flavour of asparagus and coming earlier. Hasted, the historian of Kent, states[211] that a petition was presented to Parliament against the hop plant in 1428 wherein it was called a 'wicked weed'. Harrison says, 'Hops in time past were plentiful in this land, afterwards their maintenance did cease, and now (cir. 1580) being revived where are anie better to be found?'[212] Even then growers had to face foreign competition, as the customs accounts prove that considerable quantities were imported into England. In 1482 a cwt. was sold for 8s. and 1 cwt. 21 lb. for 19s. 6d., an early example of that fluctuation in price which has long characterized them.[213] Their average price about this time seems to have been 14s. 1/2d. a cwt.

During the Tudor period the number of day labourers increased, largely owing to the enclosures having deprived the small holder and commoner of their land and rights. But judging by the statutes those paid yearly and boarded in the farm house were still most numerous.

In 1495 the hours of labourers were first regulated by law. The statute II Hen. VII, c. 22, says that 23 Hen. VI, c. 12,[214] was insufficiently observed; and besides increasing wages slightly set forth the following hours for work on the farm: the labourer was to be at his work from the middle of March to the middle of September before 5 a.m., and have half an hour for breakfast and an hour and a half for dinner and sleep, when sleep was allowed, that is from the middle of May to the middle of August; when sleep was not allowed, an hour for dinner and half an hour for his nonemete or lunch; and he was to work till between 7 and 8 p.m. During the rest of the year he was to work from daylight to dark. The attempt to regulate hours, which seem fair and reasonable, no doubt met with better success than that to regulate wages, for 6 Hen. VIII, c. 3 (1514), says the previous statutes had been very much disregarded, and sets down the rates once more:—

A bailiff's yearly wages, with diet, were to be not more than L1 6s. 8d., and 5s. for clothes.

A chief hind, carter, or chief shepherd, with diet, not more than L1, and 5s. for clothes.

A common servant or labourer, with diet, not more than 16s. 8d., and 4s. for clothes.

A woman servant, with diet, not more than 10s., and 4s. for clothes.

By the day, except in harvest, a common labourer from Easter to Michaelmas was to have 2d. with food and drink, 4d. without; and from Michaelmas to Easter 1-1/2d. with food and drink, and 3d. without. In harvest:—

A mower, with food, 4d. a day; without, 6d. A reaper, with food, 3d. a day; without, 5d. A carter, with food, 3d.; without, 5d. Other labourers, with food, 2-1/2d.; without, 4-1/2d. Women, with food, 2-1/2d.; without, 4-1/2d.

FOOTNOTES:

[205] Booke of Husbandry (ed. 1568), fol. 5. The surveyor of Fitzherbert's day combined some of the duties of the modern bailiff and land agent: he bought and sold for his employer, valued his property, and supervised the rents.

[206] Booke of Husbandry (ed. 1568), fol. vi.

[207] Ibid. fol. xv.

[208] Booke of Husbandry (ed. 1568), fol. xxix.

[209] Fitzherbert adds pigs and all manner of cornes, so altogether the farmer's wife seems to have done as much as the farmer.

[210] Sir Jas. E. Smith, English Flora, iv. 241.

[211] History of Kent (ed. 1778), i. 123.

[212] Description of Britain (Furnivall ed.), p. 325.

[213] Thorold Rogers, History of Agriculture and Prices, iii. 254.

[214] See above.



CHAPTER IX

1540-1600

PROGRESS AT LAST.—HOP-GROWING.—PROGRESS OF ENCLOSURE.—HARRISON'S 'DESCRIPTION'

The period we have now reached was one of steady growth in the value of land and its products. In 1543 Henry VIII, who had given away or squandered, in addition to the great treasure left him by his thrifty father, all the wealth obtained from the dissolution of the monasteries, debased the coinage in order to get more money into his insatiable hands, and prices went up in consequence. But there were other causes: the influx of precious metals from newly discovered America into Europe had commenced to make itself felt, and the population of the country began to grow steadily. Also, it must not be forgotten that the seasons, which in the early part of the century had been normal, were for the next sixty years frequently rainy and bad. It is unnecessary to say that this must have largely helped to raise the price of corn. The average price of wheat from 1540-1583 was 13s. 10-1/2d. a quarter; from 1583-1702, 39s. 0-1/2d. Corn was still subject to extraordinary fluctuations: in 1557, Holinshed says before harvest wheat was 53s. 4d. a quarter, malt 44s. After harvest wheat was 5s., malt 6s. 8d., the former prices being due to a terrible drought in England. Oxen in the period 1583-1703 were worth 75s. instead of under L1 in the period 1400-1540. Wool was from 9d. to 1s. a lb. instead of about 3-1/2d., and all other farm products increased with these.[215] Hops were from 1540-1582 about 26s. 8d. a cwt., and from 1583-1700, 82s. 9-1/2d. In 1574 Reynold Scott published the first English treatise on hops,[216] in which he says, 'one man may well keep 2,000 hils, upon every hil well ordered you shall have 3 lb. of hoppes at the least, one hundred pounds of these hoppes are commonly worth 26s. 8d., one acre of ground and the third part of one man's labour with small cost beside, shall yield unto him that ordereth the same well, fortie marks yearly and that for ever,' an optimistic estimate that many growers to-day would like to see realized. 'In the preparation of a hop garden', says the same writer, 'if your ground be grasse, it should be first sowen with hempe or beanes which maketh the ground melowe, destroyeth weedes, and leaveth the same in good season for this purpose.[217] At the end of Marche, repayre to some good garden to compound with the owner for choice rootes, which in some places will cost 5d. an hundredth. And now you must choose the biggest rootes you can find, such as are three or four inches about, and let every root be nine or ten inches long, and contain three joints.' Holes were then to be dug at least 8 feet apart, one foot square, and one foot deep, and in each two or three roots planted and well hilled up. Tusser, however, recommended them much closer:

'Five foot from another each hillock should stand, As straight as a levelled line with the hand. Let every hillock be four foot wide. Three poles to a hillock, I pas not how long, Shall yield the more profit set deeplie and strong.'

Three or four poles were to be set to each hill 15 or 16 feet long, unless the ground was very rich, the poles 9 or 10 inches in circumference at the butt, so as to last longer and stand the wind well. After they were put up, the ground round the poles was to be well rammed. Rushes or grass were used for tieing the hops. During the growth of the hops, not more than two or three bines were to be allowed to each pole; and after the first year the hills were to be gradually raised from the alleys between the rows until, according to the illustrations in Scott's book, they were 3 or 4 feet high, the 'greater you make your hylles the more hoppes you shall have upon your poals'. When the time for picking came, the bines when cut were carried to a 'floore prepared for the purpose', apparently of hardened earth, where they were stripped into baskets, and Scott thought that 'it is not hurtfull greatly though the smaller leaves be mingled with the hoppes'. In wet weather the hops were to be stripped in the house. The fire for drying hops was of wood, and some dried their hops in the sun, both processes to us appearing very risky; as the first would be too quick, and the latter next to impossible in September in England. They were sometimes packed in barrels, as Tusser tells us, 'Some close them up drie in a hogshead or vat, yet canvas or sontage (coarse cloth) is better than that.'

By this time England had largely changed from a corn-growing to a stock-raising country; Harrison, writing in the middle of Queen Elizabeth's reign, says, 'the soile of Britaine is more inclined to feeding and grazing than profitable for tillage and bearing of corne ... and such store is there of cattle in everie place that the fourth part of the land is scarcely manured for the provision of graine.' But this statement seems exaggerated. We know that by Harrison's time enclosures had affected but a small area, and the greater part of the cultivated land was in open arable fields. The yield of corn was now much greater than in the Middle Ages; rye or wheat well tilled and dressed now produced 15 to 20 bushels to the acre instead of 6 or 8, barley 36 bushels, oats 4 or 5 quarters[218], though in the north, which was still greatly behind the rest of England, crops were smaller. No doubt this was partly due to the much-abused enclosures: the industrious farmer could now do what he liked with his own, without hindrance from his lazy or unskilful neighbour. Tusser's preference for the 'several' field is very decided; comparing it with the 'champion' or common field he says:—

The countrie inclosed I praise the tother delighteth me not, There swineherd that keepeth the hog there neetherd with cur and his horne, There shepherd with whistle and dog be fence to the medowe and corne, There horse being tide on a balke is readie with theefe for to walke, Where all things in common doth reste corne field with the pasture and meade, Tho' common ye do for the best yet what doth it stand ye in steade? More plentie of mutton and beefe corne butter and cheese of the best More wealth any where (to be briefe) more people, more handsome and prest (neat.) Where find ye? (go search any coaste) than there where enclosure is most. More work for the labouring man as well in the towne as the fielde. For commons these commoners crie inclosing they may not abide, Yet some be not able to bie a cow with her calf by her side. Nor laie (intend) not to live by their wurke, But thievishly loiter and lurke. What footpaths are made and how brode Annoiance too much to be borne, With horse and with cattle what rode is made thorowe erie man's come.

But the rich graziers boasted that they did not grow corn because they could buy it cheaper in the market; and they are said to have traded on the necessity of the poor farmer to sell at Michaelmas in order to pay his rent, and when they had got the corn into their hands they raised the price. The corn-dealers of the time were looked upon with dislike by every one; many of the dearths then so frequent, and nearly always caused by bad seasons, were ascribed to 'engrossers buying of corn and witholding it for sale'. By a statute of 1552 the freedom of internal corn trade was entirely suppressed, and no one could carry corn from one part of England to another without a licence, and any one who bought corn to sell it again was liable to two months' imprisonment and forfeited his corn. Although we shall see that this policy was reversed in the next century, the feeling against corn-dealers survived for many years and was loudly expressed during the Napoleonic war; indeed, we may doubt if it is extinct to-day.

Many of the fruits and garden produce, which had been neglected since the first Edward, had by now come into use again, 'not onlie among the poor commons, I meane of melons, pompions, gourds, cucumbers, radishes, skirets (probably a sort of carrot), parsneps, carrots, cabbages, navewes (turnip radishes (?)), turnips,[219] and all kinds of salad herbes, but also at the tables of delicate merchants, gentlemen, and the nobilitie.'[220]

'Also we have most delicate apples, plummes, pears, walnuts, filberts, &c., and those of sundrie sorts, planted within fortie years past, in comparison of which most of the old trees are nothing worth: so have we no less store of strange fruite, as abricotes, almonds, peaches, figges, cornetrees (probably cornels) in noblemen's orchards. I have seen capers, orenges, and lemmons, and heard of wild olives growing here, besides other strange trees.'[221]

As a proof of the growth of grass in proportion to tillage between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries, Eden gives several examples,[222] of which the following are significant:—

Arable. Grass. acres. acres.

1339. 18 messuages in Norfolk had 160 60 1354. a Norfolk manor 300 59 1395. 2 messuages in Warwickshire 400 60 1560. 2 messuages in Warwickshire 600 660 1567. a Norfolk estate 200 400 1569. " manor 60 60

'Our sheepe are very excellent for sweetness of flesh, and our woolles are preferred before those of Milesia and other places.'[223] So thought Harrison and many English landowners and farmers too, so that legislation was powerless to stop the spread of sheep farming. In 1517 a commission of inquiry instigated by Wolsey held inquisition on enclosures and the decay of tillage, and it seems to have been the only honest effort to stop the evil. It was to inquire what decays, conversions, and park enclosures had been made since 1489, but the result even of this attempt was small. In 1535 a fresh statute, 27 Hen. VIII, c. 22, stated that the Act limiting the number of sheep to be kept had only been observed on lands held of the king, whereon many houses had been rebuilt and much pasture reconverted to tillage; but on lands holden of other lords this was not the case, therefore the king was to have the moiety of the profits of such lands as had been converted from tillage to pasture since 4 Hen. VII until a proper house was built and the land returned to tillage; but the Act only applied to fourteen counties therein enumerated. The enclosing for sheep-runs still went on, however, often with ruthless selfishness; houses and townships were levelled, says Sir Thomas More, and nothing left standing except the church, which was turned into a sheep-house:

'The towns go down, the land decays, Of corn-fields plain lays, Great men maketh nowadays A sheepcot of the church',

said a contemporary ballad.

Latimer wrote, 'where there were a great many householders and inhabitants there is now but a shepherd and his dog.' 'I am sorie to report it,' says Harrison,[224] 'but most sorrowful of all to understand that men of great port and countenance are so far from suffering their farmers to have anie gaine at all that they themselves become graziers, butchers, tanners, sheepmasters, and woodmen, thereby to enrich themselves.' The Act against pulling down farmhouses was evaded by repairing one room for the use of a shepherd; a single furrow was driven across a field to prove it was still under the plough; to avoid holding illegal numbers of sheep flocks were held in the names of sons and servants.[225] The country swarmed with heaps of miserable paupers, 'sturdy and valiant' beggars, and thieves who, though hanged twenty at a time on a single gallows, still infested all the countryside, their numbers being swollen by the dissolution of the monasteries and the breaking up of the bands of retainers kept by the great nobles.

Rents also were rising rapidly. Latimer's account of his father's farm is too well known to be again quoted; his opinions were shared by all the writers of the day. Sir William Forrest, about 1540, says that landlords now demand fourfold rents, so that the farmer has to raise his prices in proportion, and beef and mutton were so dear that a poor man could not 'bye a morsell'. 'Howe joyne they lordshyp to lordshyppe, manner to manner, ferme to ferme. How do the rych men, and especially such as be shepemongers, oppresse the king's people by devourynge their common pastures with the shepe so that the poore are not able to keepe a cowe, but are like to starve. And yet when was beef ever so dere or mutton, wool now 8s. a stone.

'Now', says another, later in the century, 'I can never get a horse shoed under 10d. or 12d., when I have also seen the common pryce was 6d. And cannot your neighbour remember that within these thirty years I could bye the best pigge or goose that I could lay my hand on for four pence which now costeth 12d., a good capon for 3d. or 4d., a hen for 2d., which now costeth me double and triple.'[226]

Parliament, of course, tried to regulate the price of food; an Act of 1532, 24 Hen. VIII, c. 3, ordained that beef and pork should be 1/2d. a lb. and mutton and veal 5/8d. a lb. The decrease in the number of cows also received its attention; 2 and 3 Philip and Mary, c. 3, states that forasmuch of late years a great number of persons have fed in their pastures sheep and cattle with no regard to breeding, so that there was great scarcity of stock, therefore for every 60 sheep kept one milk cow shall be kept, and for every 120 sheep one calf shall be bred, and for every 10 head of horned cattle shall be kept one milk cow, and for every two cows so kept one calf shall be bred. The Act was to last seven years, but 13 Eliz. c. 25 made it perpetual.

In 1549 came the rising of Robert Kett in Norfolk, the last attempt of the English labourer to obtain redress of his wrongs by force of arms, though Kett himself belonged to the landlord class and took the side of the people probably by accident. The petition of grievances drawn up by his followers aimed at diminishing the power of lords of manors as regards enclosures, the keeping of dove-cots, and other feudal wrongs. 'We pray', said the insurgents, 'that all bondmen may be made free, for God made all free with His precious blood-shedding.' The rebellion came to nothing, and some of the abuses at which it was aimed were dying a natural death, though enclosure often acted hardly on the poor man.

The manorial system went on steadily decaying, and by this time the demesne lands had much diminished in area on most manors. Many parcels had been sold to the new landlord class, who had made their fortunes in the towns and, like most Englishmen, desired to become country gentlemen.

Much of the demesne had been sold in small lots to well-off tradesmen, and as the villeins had become copyholders a large part of the land was owned or occupied by yeomen or tenant farmers, who cultivated from 20 to 150 acres. Many of the labourers also owned or rented cottages with 4 or 5 acres attached to them. Such was the rural society at the end of the Tudor period. The progress of enclosures helped to destroy this, for the labourers gradually ceased to own or occupy land, farms increased in size, the ownership of land came to be more and more the privilege of the rich, and people flocked in increasing numbers to the towns.[227a] In five Norfolk manors in Elizabeth's time only from one-seventh to one-tenth was in demesne, and little of what was left was farmed by the lord, but let to farmers on leases.[227b] On some manors the demesne land lay in compact blocks near the manor house; on others it was in scattered strips of various size; in others it lay in blocks and strips. The following particulars of a manor in Norfolk give a good picture of an estate in 1586-8, the tenants on it, their rank, and the size of their holdings:—