These statistical indications of declining productivity of the soil are supported by the overwhelming evidence of the poverty of the fourteenth century peasantry—poverty which can be explained only by the barrenness of their land. Many of the features of the agrarian changes of this period are familiar—the substitution of money payments for villain services, the frequency of desertion, the amalgamation and leasing of bond-holdings, the subdividing and leasing of the demesne. A point which has not been dwelt upon is the favorable pecuniary terms upon which the villains commuted their services. Where customary relations were replaced by a new bargain, the bargain was always in favor of the tenant. What was the source of this strategic advantage of the villain? The great number of holdings made vacant by the Black Death and the scarcity of eligible holders placed the landowner at a disadvantage, but this situation was temporary. How can the difficulty of filling vacant tenements before the Black Death be accounted for, and why were villains still able to secure reductions in their rents a generation after its effects had ceased to be felt?

Even before the Black Death, it was frequently the case that villain holdings could be filled only by compulsion. The difficulty in finding tenants did not originate in the decrease in the population caused by the pestilence. There is little evidence that there was a lack of men qualified to hold land even after the Black Death, but it is certain that they sought in every way possible to avoid land-holding. The villains who were eligible in many cases fled, so that it became exceedingly difficult to fill a tenement when once it became vacant. Land whose holders died of the pestilence was still without tenants twenty-five and thirty years later, although persistent attempts had been made to force men to take it up. When compulsion succeeded only in driving men away from the manor, numerous concessions were made in the attempt to make land-holding more attractive. It is important to notice that these concessions were economic, not social. The force which was driving men away was not the desire to escape the incidents of serfdom, but the impossibility of making a living from holdings burdened with heavy rents. These burdens were eased, grudgingly, little by little, by landlords who had exhausted other methods of keeping their land from being deserted. It was necessary to reduce the rent in some way in order to permit the villains to live. The produce of a customary holding was no longer sufficient to maintain life and to allow the holder to render the services and pay the rent which had been fixed in an earlier century when the soil was more fertile.

Notices of vacated holdings date from before 1220 on the estates of the Berkeleys. Thomas the First was lord of Berkeley between 1220 and 1243, and

Such were the tymes for the most part whilest this Lord Thomas sate Lord, That many of his Tenants in divers of his manors ... surrendred up and least their lands into his hands because they were not able to pay the rent and doe the services, which also often happened in the tyme of his elder brother the Lord Robert.[57]

This entry in the chronicle is significant, for it is typical of conditions on many other manors at a later date. The tenants were not able to pay the rent and do the services, and therefore gave up the land. It was leased, when men could be found to take it at all, at a rent lower than that which its former holders had found so oppressive. It is interesting to note that much of this land was soon after enclosed and converted to pasture, more than a century before the event which is supposed to mark the beginning of the enclosure movement. The productivity of the land had declined; its holders were no longer able to pay the customary rent, and the lord had to content himself with lower rents; the productivity was so low in some cases that the land was fit only for sheep pasture.

Land holding was regarded as a misfortune in the fourteenth century. The decline in fertility had made it impossible for a villain to support himself and his family and perform the accustomed services and pay the rent for his land. Sometimes heirs were excused on account of their poverty. Page has made note of the prevailing custom of fining these heirs for the privilege of refusing the land:

In 1340 J. F., who held a messuage and half a virgate, had to pay two shillings for permission to give up the land, because he was unable to render the services due from it. Three other men at the same time paid six pence each not to be compelled to take up customary land ... at Woolston, 1340, R. G. gave up his messuage and half virgate because he could not render the necessary services; whereupon T. S. had to pay three shillings three pence that he might not be forced to take the holding, and another villain paid six shillings eight pence for the same thing.[58]

Miss Levett mentions the fact that cases were fairly frequent at the Winchester manors in the fourteenth century where a widow or next of kin refused to take up land on account of poverty or impotence;[59] and three villains of Forncett gave up their holdings before 1350 on account of their poverty.[60]

In case no one could be found who would willingly take up the land, the method of compulsion was tried. The responsibility for providing a tenant in these cases seems to have been shifted to the whole community. A villain chosen by the whole homage had to take up the land. At Crawley in 1315 there were two such cases. A fine was paid by one villain for a cottage and ten acres "que devenerunt in manus domini tanquam escheata pro defectu tenentium & ad que eligebatur per totam decenuam." At Twyford in 13433-1344, J. paid a fine for a messuage and a half virgate of land, "ad que idem Johannes electus est per totum homagium."[61] In other entries cited by Page, the element of compulsion is unmistakable: the new holder of land is described as "electus per totum homagium ad hoc compulsus," a phrase which is frequently found also in the entries of fines paid on some of the Winchester manors after the Black Death.[62]

This method of compulsion was useful to some extent, but there were limits beyond which it could not be pushed. Five men of Therfield in 1351 were ordered to take up customary land, and several of them left the manor rather than obey. "Vendiderunt quod habuerunt et recesserunt nocitante."[63] At Nailesbourne, in the same year, "Robertus le Semenour compulsus finivit et clam recessit et ea tenere recusavit."[64] The problem which confronted landowners during the Black Death was not so much an absolute lack of men on the manors, as a stubborn unwillingness on the part of these men to hold land. There were enough men left by the pestilence, but they were determined to avoid taking up the tenements whose holders had died. The pressure which was brought upon the villains to induce them to take up land and to prevent them from leaving the manor could not prevent the desertions, which had begun before the pestilence, and which took away the men who would naturally have supplied the places of those who died. The whole village must have been anxious to prevent the desertion of these men, for the community was held responsible for the services from vacant tenements, when they failed to provide a tenant. At Meon, for instance, each of twenty-six tenants paid 1 d. in place of works due from a vacant holding, according to an arrangement which had been made before the Black Death,[65] and at Burwell, in 1350, when three villains left the manor, their land was "tradita toto homagio ad faciendum servicia et consuetudines."[66] In spite of the deterring force which must have been exerted by public opinion under these conditions, and in spite of the aggressive measures taken by bailiffs to prevent desertion and to recapture those who had fled, the records are full of the names of those who had been successful in making their escape. Throughout the latter half of the fourteenth century and the first part of the fifteenth there was a gradual leakage from the Winchester manors. "Villeins were apt 'to go away secretly' and to be no more found."[67] Page describes a similar tendency on the part of villains of the manors whose records he has examined. At Weston, three villains deserted in 1354. At Woolston in 1357 a serf "recessit a dominio et dereliquit terram suam." At Chilton, between 1356 and 1359, eleven men and two women fled, some of whom were recaptured. At Therfield in 1369 a man who held twenty-three acres of land fled with his whole family. In the same year at Abbot's Ripton a man escaped with his horses, and three years later another villain left Weston by night.[68] At Forncett, "Before 1378 from 60 to 70 tenements had fallen into the lord's hands. It was the serfs especially who were relinquishing their land; for a larger proportion of the tenements charged with week-work were abandoned than of the more lightly burdened tenements."[69] This, of course, is what we should expect, as the lighter burdens of these holdings caused their tenants to feel less severely than the ordinary serfs the declining productivity of the land.

The method of compulsion failed to keep the tenants on the land. They ran off, and the holdings remained vacant. It was necessary to make concessions of a material nature in order to persuade men to take up land or to keep what they had. They were excused of a part of their services in some cases, and in others all of the services were definitely commuted for small sums of money. When no tenants for vacant land could be secured who would perform the customary services due from it, the bailiff was forced to commute them. "'So and so holds such land for rent, because no one would hold it for works,' is a fairly frequent entry both before and after 1349," on the records of the Bishopric of Winchester. The important point to be noticed here is that the money rent paid in these cases was always less than the value of the services which had formerly been exacted from the land; not only that, it was less than the money equivalent for which those services had sometimes been commuted, an amount far less than the market value of the services in the fourteenth century at the prevailing rates of wages. For instance, when Roger Haywood took up three virgates and a cotland at a money rent instead of for the traditional services, "quia nullus tenere voluit," he contracted to pay rents whose total sum amounted to less than twenty-five shillings and included the church scot for one virgate and the cotland. On this manor, Sutton, the total services of one virgate valued at the rate at which they were ordinarily "sold" must have amounted to at least eighteen or twenty shillings. At Wargrave the services of thirty-two virgates were all commuted at three shillings each, and the same sum was paid by each of twenty-three virgates at Waltham.[70]

At Forncett and on the manors of the Berkeley estates commutation had little part in the disappearance of labor dues. The vacated land was leased in larger or smaller parcels at the best rents which could be obtained. This rent bore no relation to the value of the services formerly due from the land. The customary tenements which had been the units upon which labor dues were assessed were broken up, and the acres leased separately, or in new combinations, to other men.[71] At Forncett, as in the case of the Winchester manors where the services were commuted, the terms of the new arrangement can be compared with those of the old, and it is seen that the money rent obtained was less than the value of the services formerly due. The customary services were here valued at over two shillings per acre; the average rent obtained was less than one shilling an acre. The net pecuniary result of the change, then, was the same as though the services had been commuted for money at less than their value.

Another method of reducing rents in this period was the remission of a part of the services due. Miss Levett notes the extent to which this took place on the Winchester manors, and suggests that the Bishop wished to avoid the wastefulness and inefficiency of serf labor.[72] She overlooks the fact that he failed to exact the money payment in place of the services for which manorial custom provided. It was a well established custom that in case work owed by the tenants was not used they should pay money instead. The amount of work needed each year on the demesne varied according to the size of the harvest, etc., but the number of days' works for which the tenants was liable was fixed. The surplus of works owed above those needed were "sold" each year to the villains. Frequently the number of works sold exceeded the number performed, although formal commutation of dues had not taken place. At Nailesbourne (1348-1349), 4755 works were due from the villains, but nearly 4000 of these were sold.[73] If the Bishop had merely wished to avoid waste, then, in ceasing to require the performance of villain services on his manors, he would have required the payment of the money equivalent of these services. When the services were excused, and the customary alternative of a money payment also, the change was clearly an intentional reduction in the burden of villain tenure. This fact makes emphasis upon the payment of money as the distinguishing feature of the changed relations between landlord and tenant in this period misleading. There was every precedent for requiring a money payment in the place of services not wanted. When, therefore, a great many services were simply allowed to lapse, it is an indication that it was impossible to exact the payment. It makes little difference whether the services were commuted at a lower rate than that at which they had formerly been "sold" or whether the villain was simply held accountable for a smaller number of services at the old rate; in either case the rent was reduced, and the burden of the tenant was less.

The reduction of rent is thus the characteristic and fundamental feature of all of the changes of land tenure during this period. This fact is ignored by historians who suppose the chief factor in the commutation movement to have been the desire of prosperous villains to rid themselves of the degrading marks of serfdom. Vinogradoff, for instance, in his preface to the monograph from which most of the foregoing illustrations have been drawn, has nothing at all to say of the reduction of rent and the poverty of the tenants when he is speaking of the various circumstances attending the introduction of money payments.

In the particular case under discussion the cultural policy of William of Wykeham may have suggested arrangements in commutation of labour services and rents in kind. In other cases similar results were connected with war expenditures and town life. In so far the initiative in selling services came from the class of landowners. But there were powerful tendencies at work in the life of the peasants which made for the same result. The most comprehensive of these tendencies was connected, it seems to me, with the accumulation of capital in the hands of the villains under a system of customary dues. When rents and services became settled and lost their elasticity, roughly speaking, in the course of the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries, the surplus of profits from agriculture was bound to collect in the hands of those who received them directly from the soil, and it was natural for these first receivers to turn the proceeds primarily towards an improvement of their social condition; the redemption of irksome services was a conspicuous manifestation of this policy.[74]

This paragraph contains several suggestions which are shown to be misleading by a study of the extracts from the original sources embodied in the essay of whose preface it forms a part. It is true that the cultural policy of William of Wykeham was an extravagant one, and that he was in need of money when the system of tenure was being revolutionized on his estates; but it is misleading to interpret the changes which took place as measures for the prompt conversion into cash of the episcopal revenues. No radical changes in the system of payment were necessary in order to secure cash, for the system of selling surplus services to the villains had become established decades before the time of this bishop, and no formal commutation of services was necessary in order to convert the labor dues of the villains into payments in money. The bulk of the services were not performed, even before commutation, and the lord received money for the services not used on the demesne. The essential feature of the changes which took place was a reduction in the amount paid—a reduction which the bishop must have resisted so far as he dared, just as other landowners must have resisted the reductions which their tenants forced them to make at a time when they were in need of money. The commutation of services was incidental, and was only a slight modification of the system formerly in use, but, whether services were commuted or were in part excused, the result was a lessening of the burden borne by the tenant, and the reduction of the rent received by the lord.

It is true, as Professor Vinogradoff states, that there were powerful tendencies in the life of the peasants which made for this result. In fact no initiative in selling services—at these rates—could have come from the side of the landowners. The change was forced upon them. Unless they compromised with their tenants and reduced their rents they soon found vacant tenements on their hands which no one could be compelled to take. The amount of land which was finally leased at low rents because the former holders had died or run away and no one could be forced to take it at the old rents is evidence of the reluctance with which landowners accepted the situation and of their inability to resist the change in the end.

But it is not true that the most comprehensive of these tendencies was the accumulation of capital in the hands of the villains, and their desire to improve their social condition. The immediate affect of the commutation of services and similar changes at this time was to leave their social condition untouched, whatever the final result may have been. These villains did not buy themselves free of the marks of servitude. Their gradual emancipation came for other reasons. At Witney, for example, where the works of all the native tenants had been commuted by 1376, they were still required to perform duties of a servile character:

they were all to join in haymaking and in washing and shearing the lord's sheep, to pay pannage for their pigs, to take their turn of service as reeve and tithingman, and to carry the lord's victuals and baggage on his departure from Witney as the natives were formerly wont to do.[75]

This example, taken at random, is typical of the continuance of conditions which should make the historian hesitate before adopting the view that the social condition of the peasants was improved by the new arrangements made as to the bulk of their services and rents. But more than that, the terms of the new arrangements are not those which would be offered by well-to-do cultivators in whose hands the profits from the soil had accumulated. In all of these cases the new terms were advantageous to the tenants, not to the lord, and advantageous in a strictly pecuniary way. The lord had to grant these terms because the tenants were in the most miserable poverty, and could no longer pay their accustomed rent.

Neither the Black Death, whose effects were evanescent, nor the desire of prosperous villains to free themselves of the degrading marks of serfdom was an important cause in the sequence of agrarian changes which took place in the fourteenth century. Serfdom as a status was hardly affected, but a thousand entries record the poverty and destitution which made it necessary to lighten the economic burdens of the serfs. At Brightwell, for example, the works of three half-virgaters were relaxed, the record reads, because of their poverty (1349-1350).[76] Some villains had no oxen, and were excused their plowing on this account, or were allowed to substitute manual labor for carting services.[77] At Weston, in 1370, a tenant "non arat terram domini causa paupertate."[78] At Downton, in 13766-1377, no money could be collected from the villains in place of the services they owed in haymaking.[79] Frequently when services were commuted for money, the record of the fact is accompanied by the statement that the change was made on account of the poverty of the tenants. At Witney, for instance, the

works and services of all the native tenants were commuted at fixed payments (ad certos denarios) by favour of the lord as long as the lord pleases, on account of the poverty of the homage.[80]

The reduction in rent in this case was at least a third of the total. The value of the customary services commuted was at least ten shillings six pence per acre, and they were commuted at six shillings eight pence. Other explicit references to the poverty of the tenants as the cause of commutation are quoted by Page:

At Hinton, Berks, the Bailiff reports in 1377, that the former lord before his death had commuted the services of the villains for money, "eo quod customarii impotentes ad facienda dicta opera et pro eorum paupertate" ... At Stevenage, 1354, S. G. "tenuit unam vergatam reddendo inde per annum in serviciis et consuetudinibus xxii solidos. Et dictus S. G. pauper et impotens dictam virgatam tenere. Ideo concessum est per dominum quod S. G. habeat et teneat predictam terram reddendo inde xiii solidos iv denarios pro omnibus serviciis et consuetudinibus."[81]

In connection with the matter of heriots, also, evidences of extreme poverty are frequent. Frequently when a tenant died there was no beast for the lord to seize.

The heriot of a virgate was generally an ox, or money payment of its value. But the amount as often reduced "propter paupertatem," and sometimes when a succeeding tenant could not pay, a half acre was deducted from the virgate and held by the lord instead of the heriot.[82]

The rate at which the value of these holdings declined when their tenants possessed too few cattle was rapid. Land without stock is worthless. The temptation to sell an ox in order to meet the rent was great, but when the deficiency was due to declining productivity of the soil, there was no probability that it would be made up the following year even with all the stock, and with fewer cattle the situation was hopeless. After this process had gone on for a few years nothing was left, not even a yoke of oxen for plowing. Whatever means had been taken to keep up the fertility of the land, attend to the drainage, etc., were of necessity neglected, and finally the hope of keeping up the struggle was abandoned. The spirit which prompted the reply of the Chatteris tenant when he was ordered by the manorial court to put his holding in repair can be understood: "Non reparavit tenementum, et dicit quod non vult reparare sed potius dimittere et abire."[83] If he left the manor and joined the other men who under the same circumstances were giving up their land and becoming fugitives, it was not with the hope of greatly improving his condition. Some of the fugitives found employment in the towns, but this was by no means certain, and the records frequently state that the absent villains had become beggars.[84]

The declining productivity of the soil not only affected the villains, but reduced the profits of demesne cultivation. It has already been seen that the acreage under crop was steadily decreasing, as more and more land reached a stage of barrenness in which it no longer repaid cultivation. This process is seen from another angle in the frequent complaints that the customary meals supplied by the lord to serfs working on the demesne cost more than the labor was worth. According to Miss Levett:

This complaint was made on many manors belonging to the Bishop of Winchester in spite of the fact that if one may judge from the cost of the "Autumn Works" the meals were not very lavish, the average cost being 1 d. or 1-1/4 d. per head for each Precaria.... The complaint that the system was working at a loss comes also from Brightwaltham (Berkshire), Hutton (Essex), and from Banstead (Surrey), as early as 1325, and is reflected in contemporary literature. "The work is not worth the breakfast" (or the reprisa) occurs several times in the Winchester Pipe Rolls.... By 1376 the entry is considerably more frequent, and applies to ploughing as well as to harvest-work.[85] At Meon 64 acres of ploughing were excused quia non fecerunt huiusmodi arrura causa reprisae. A similar note occurs at Hambledon (Ecclesia) and at Fareham with the further information that the ploughing was there performed ad cibum domini. At Overton four virgates were excused their ploughing quia reprisa excedit valorem.[86]

Miss Levett quotes these entries as an explanation for the tendency to excuse services, forgetting that the lord could usually demand a money equivalent for services not required for any reason. We have here the reason why so few services are demanded, but no explanation of the failure to require money instead. The fundamental cause of the worthlessness of the labor on the demesne is the fact which accounts for the absence of a money payment for the work not performed. The demesne land was worn out, and did not repay costs of cultivation; the bond land was worn out, and the villains were too poor to "buy" their labor.

The profits of cultivating this unproductive land were so small that a deficit arose when it was necessary to meet the cost of maintaining for a few days the men employed on it. It is not surprising that men who had families to support and were trying to make a living from the soil abandoned their worthless holdings and left the manor. The lord had only to meet the expense of food for the laborers during the few days when they were actually at work plowing the demesne or harvesting the crop. How could the villain support his whole family during the entire year on the produce of worse land more scantily manured? In this low productivity of the land is to be found the reason for the conversion of much of the demesne into pasture land, as soon as the supply of servile labor failed. It was, of course, impossible to pay the wages of free men from the produce of soil too exhausted to repay even the slight cost incidental to cultivating it with serf labor. The bailiffs complained of the exorbitant wages demanded by servants in husbandry; these wages were exorbitant only because the produce of the land was so small that it was not worth the pains of tillage.

The most important of the many causes which were at work to undermine the manorial system in the fourteenth century is, therefore, plain. The productivity of the soil had declined to a point where villain holdings would no longer support the families which cultivated them and where demesne land was sometimes not worth cultivation even by serf labor. Under these conditions, the very basis of the manor was destroyed. The poverty of the peasants, the difficulty with which tenants could be found for vacant holdings, even though the greatest pressure was brought to bear upon eligible villains, and even though the servile burdens were considerably reduced, and the frequency with which these serfs preferred the uncertainty and risk of deserting to the certain destitution and misery of land-holding, are facts which are intimately connected, and which are all due to the same cause. It had been impossible to maintain the productive capacity of the land at a level high enough to provide a living for the tillers of the soil.

Footnotes:

[39] E. J. Russell, The Fertility of the Soil, Cambridge, 1913, pp. 43-46.

[40] Ibid., pp. 48-52.

[41] Political Science Quarterly, vol. xxviii, p. 394.

[42] Ibid., p. 393.

[43] Levett and Ballard, The Black Death, p. 216.

[44] Walter of Henley's Husbandry, together with an Anonymous Husbandry, etc., ed. by Elizabeth Lamond (London, 1890), pp. 19, 71.

[45] Curtler, Short History of English Agriculture, p. 33.

[46] Davenport, Econ. Dev. of a Norfolk Manor (Cambridge, 1906), p. 30.

[47] Rogers, History of Agriculture, etc., vol. i, pp. 38-44.

[48] Cullum, Hawsted, pp. 215-218.

[49] Unfortunately, the figures for the year 1299-1300 reveal an error which makes it impossible to use the test of the representativeness of Witney in a third season with accuracy. The acreage planted is obviously understated, and it is possible to make only a rough estimate of the correct acreage. The acceptance of the area given by Gras (82 acres) results in the conclusion that 22 bushels per acre was reaped. The suspicion that this result must be incorrect is confirmed when it is found, also, that 68-1/4 quarters of seed were sown—an amount sufficient for 270 acres at the average rate of 2 bushels per acre, or for 220 acres at the rate of 2-1/2 bushels per acre, which Ballard gives as the rate usual at Witney. (Levett and Ballard, op. cit., p. 192.) In 1277 the acreage sown with wheat at Witney was 180 acres, and in 1278, 191. (Ibid., p. 190.) If 3 bushels per acre were sown in 1299, the area in this year also was 180 acres. If these estimates are used instead of the figure 82, as indicating the correct acreage, the yield for the year is found to be between 7 and 10 bushels per acre, in a season in which the average yield for the whole group of manors was 9 bushels per acre. The figures at Witney in the three seasons where a comparison with the general average for the group is possible deviate from it within limits narrow enough to indicate that conditions at Witney were roughly typical.

[50] Rogers, History of Agriculture and Prices, vol. i, p. 228.

[51] Ibid., vol. i, p. 234; vol. iv, p. 282.

[52] Op. cit., p. 19.

[53] Gras, Evol. of the Eng. Corn Market (Cambridge, 1915), appendix A.

[54] Gras gives 1.35 quarters as the acre produce, or nearly 11 bushels. This figure is incorrect, as it is derived by dividing the total produce of 42 manors by the total acreage planted on only 38 manors. The produce of the four manors on which the acreage planted is unknown amounts to nearly 750 quarters, a large item in a total of only 4527 quarters for the whole group of manors. The ratio of produce to seed, however, is independent of the number of acres planted, and these four manors are included in the computation of this figure.

[55] Gras, op. cit., appendix A. These figures are given only for the manors for which the acreage planted in both periods is known—25 in the case of wheat, 4 in the case of the other grains.

[56] Gras, op. cit., appendix A; Levett and Ballard, op. cit., pp. 190, 203.

[57] Smyth, Lives of the Berkeleys, vol. i, p. 113.

[58] Page, End of Villainage (Publications of the American Economic Association, Third Series, 1900, vol. i, pp. 289-387), at p. 324, note 2.

[59] Levett and Ballard, op. cit., p. 83.

[60] Davenport, op. cit., p. 71.

[61] Page, op. cit., p. 345.

[62] Ibid., p. 340, note 1, and Levett, p. 85.

[63] Ibid., p. 340, note 1.

[64] Levett and Ballard, op. cit., p. 85.

[65] Levett and Ballard, op. cit., p. 85.

[66] Page, op. cit., p. 340.

[67] Levett and Ballard, op. cit., p. 135.

[68] Page, op. cit., p. 344, note 2.

[69] Davenport, Decay of Villainage, p. 127. For further evidence of the voluntary relinquishment of land in this period, see Seebohm, Eng. Village Community (London, 1890), p. 30, note 4, and Davenport, Economic Development of a Norfolk Manor, pp. 91, 71, 72.

[70] Levett and Ballard, op. cit., pp. 42-43.

[71] Davenport, Economic Development of a Norfolk Manor, p. 78, and Smyth, op. cit., vol. i, p. 113.

[72] Levett and Ballard, op. cit., p. 157. "On many manors the majority of the services owed were simply dropped, neither sold nor commuted. They were evidently in many cases inefficient, expensive, and inelastic."

[73] Ibid., p. 89.

[74] Levett and Ballard, op. cit., p. v.

[75] Levett and Ballard, op. cit., p. 199.

[76] Levett and Ballard, op. cit., p. 108.

[77] Ibid., pp. 38, 115.

[78] Page, op. cit., p. 342, note 2.

[79] Levett and Ballard, op. cit., p. 115.

[80] Ibid., p. 200.

[81] Page, op. cit., p. 342, note 2.

[82] Seebohm, op. cit., p. 30, note 2.

[83] Page, End of Villainage, p. 365.

[84] Ibid., p. 384.

[85] Levett and Ballard, op. cit., p. 157.

[86] Levett and Ballard, op. cit., p. 121.



CHAPTER III

THE DISINTEGRATION OF THE OPEN-FIELDS

For the reasons given in the last chapter, bailiff-farming rapidly gave way to the various forms of the leasehold system in the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. The economic basis of serfdom was destroyed; a servile tenement could no longer be depended upon to supply an able-bodied man to do work on the demesne for several days a week throughout the year, with extra helpers from his family at harvest time. The money received in commutation of customary labor, or as rent from land which had formerly been held for services was far less than the value of the services, and would not pay the wages of free men hired in place of the serfs who had formerly performed the labor. Moreover, the demesne land itself was for the most part so unproductive that it had hardly paid to cultivate it even at the slight expense incurred in furnishing food for the serfs employed; it was all the more a waste of money to hire men to plow it and sow it.

The text books on economic history usually give a careful account of the various forms of leases which were used as bailiff-farming was abandoned. We are told how the demesne was leased either as a whole or in larger or smaller pieces to different tenants and sets of tenants, for lives, for longer or shorter periods of years, with or without the stock which was on it, and, in some cases, with the servile labor of some of the villains, when this had not all been excused or commuted into money payments. Arrangements necessarily differed on the different manors, and the exact terms of these first experimental leases do not concern us here.

The fact which does interest us is that with the cessation of bailiff farming the last attempt at keeping the land distributed in fairly equal shares among a large number of tenants was abandoned. Bond land had been divided into portions which were each supposed to be sufficient for the maintenance of a laborer and his family. As long as the demesne was cultivated for the lord, it was to his interest to prevent the concentration of holdings in a few hands, unless some certain provision could be made to insure the performance of the labor due from all of them. But even when the demesne was still being managed for the lord, it had already become necessary in some cases to allow one man to hold two or more of these portions, for the productivity had so declined that one was no longer enough. Now, with the leasing of the demesne, the lord no longer had an interest in maintaining the working population of the manor at a certain level, but was concerned with the problem of getting as much rent as possible. When the demesne and the vacant bond tenements began to be leased, the land was given to the highest bidder, and the competitive system was introduced at the start. This led to the gradual accumulation of large holdings by some tenants, while other men were still working very small portions, and others occupied holdings of every intermediate size. The uniformity of size characteristic of the early virgates disappeared. In this chapter these points will be considered briefly, and a study will also be made of the way in which these new holders managed their lands.

In the first place, as the more destitute villains were giving up their holdings and leaving the manor, and as no one could be found to take their places on the old terms, the landlords gave up the policy of holding the land until someone should be willing to pay the accustomed services and let the vacant lands at the best rents obtainable. Freeholders, and villains whose land was but lightly burdened, and those who by superior management had been able to make both ends meet, were now able to increase their holdings by adding a few acres of land which had been a part of the demesne or of a vacated holding. The case of the man at Sutton, who took up three virgates and a cotland, has already been mentioned. Another case of "engrossing," as it was called, dated from 1347-1348 at Meon, where John Blackman paid fines for one messuage with ten acres of land, two other messuages with a virgate of land each, one parcel of four acres, and another holding whose nature is not specified.[87]

Legislators who observed this tendency issued edicts against it. No attempt was made to discover the underlying cause of which it was merely a symptom. The first agrarian statutes were of a characteristically restrictive nature, and no constructive policy was attempted by the government until after a century of futile attempts to deal with the separate evils of engrossing, enclosure, conversion to pasture, destruction of houses and rural depopulation. The first remedy these evils suggested was limitation of the amount of land which one man should be allowed to hold.[88] In 1489 the statutes begin to prohibit the occupation of more than one farm by the same man, or to regulate the use of the land so occupied. The statute of 1489 refers to the Isle of Wight, where "Many dwelling places, fermes, and fermeholdes have of late tyme ben used to be taken in to oon manys hold and handes, that of old tyme were wont to be in severall persons holdes and handes."[89] The proclamation of 1514 regulated the use of land held by all persons who were tenants of more than one farm.[90] A law of 1533 provides that no person should occupy more than two farms.[91]

The old villain holdings did not necessarily pass intact into the hands of one holder, but were sometimes divided up and taken by different men, a few acres at a time. One Richard Grene in 1582 held lands of which ten and a half acres had been gradually acquired through as many as ten grants. This land had formed part of six other holdings, and much of the rest of the land belonging to these holdings had also been alienated.[92] The Inquisition of 1517 reported numerous cases of engrossing, and Professor Gay notes some of the entries in the returns of the Inquisition of 1607 which are also interesting in this connection: W. S. separated six yardlands from a manor house and put a widow in the house, a laborer in the kitchen and a weaver in the barn. The land was divided between two tenants who already had houses, and presumably, other land, and were taking this opportunity to enlarge their holdings of land. G. K. took from a farmhouse the land which formed part of the same tenement and leased the house to a laborer who had "but one acre of land in every field."[93]

The growing irregularity of holdings, combined with the decrease in the number of holders whose interests had to be consulted, made it easier than it had formerly been to modify the traditional routine of husbandry. Even though the new land acquired by tenants from the demesne or from old bond-holdings did not happen to be adjacent to strips already in their possession, exchange could accomplish the desired result. At Gorleston, Suffolk, a tenant sublet about half of his holding to eight persons, and at the same time acquired plots of land for himself from another eight holdings.[94] Before 1350 exchanges, sales and subletting of land by tenants had become general on the manors of the Bishopric of Winchester. It is unusual to find more than two cases of exchanges in any one year, even on a large manor; but Miss Levett adds: "On the other hand, one can hardly look through the fines on any one of the episcopal manors for a period of ten years without finding one or two. From the close correspondence of the areas exchanged, together with exact details as to position, it is fairly clear that the object of the exchange was to obtain more compact holdings."[95]

Fitzherbert writes that "By the assente of the Lordes and tenauntes, euery neyghbour may exchange lands with other."[96] This practice was especially sanctioned by law in 1597 "for the more comodious occupyinge or husbandrie of anye Land, Meadows, or Pastures,"[97] but it was common in the open-field villages before the legal permission was given. Tawney reproduces several maps belonging to All Souls' Muniment Room, which show the ownership of certain open-field holdings of about 1590. Here consolidation of plots had proceeded noticeably. There are several plots of considerable size held by a single tenant.

The advantage of consolidated holdings are considerable. In the first place, the turf boundaries between the strips could be plowed up, or the direction of the plowing itself could be changed, if enough strips were thrown together. Fitzherbert advises the farmer who has a number of strips lying side by side and who

hath no dung nor shepe to compost nor dung his land withall. Then let the husband take his ploughe, and cast al such landes three or four tymes togider, and make theyr rigge theyr as ye raine was before.... And so shel he finde new moulde, that was not sene in an hundred yeres before, the which must nedes gyue more corne than the other dydde before.[98]

In two Elizabethan surveys examined by Corbett, we have evidence that the theoretical advantages urged by Fitzherbert were not unknown in practice. It is now and then stated that the metae between strips have been plowed up. But sometimes, even though all of the strips in a furlong had been acquired by the same owner, and enclosed, the land was left in strips. Some of the pieces were freehold, others copyhold, and the lord may have objected to having the boundaries obliterated.[99] Cross plowing is also occasionally referred to in these surveys, but it was apparently rare.[99]

The possibility of improvement in this direction, although not to be ignored, was, however, comparatively slight. The important changes which resulted from the increased size of the holdings were not so much in the direction of superior management of the land, as in that of making a selection between the different qualities of land, and cultivating only the land in comparatively good condition. Tenants taking up additional land cultivated only a part of their enlarged holdings. The least productive strips were allowed to become overgrown with grass. The better strips were kept under crop.

If we are to accept the testimony of Fitzherbert and Tusser, strips of grass in the common fields, or lea land, as it was called, were a feature of every open-field township, by the sixteenth century. According to Fitzherbert, "in euery towneshyppe that standeth in tillage in the playne countrye, there be ... leyse to tye or tedder theyr horses and mares vpon."[100] According to Tusser, the process of laying to grass unproductive land was still going on.

Land arable driuen or worne to the proofe, and craveth some rest for thy profits behoof, With otes ye may sowe it the sooner to grasse more sooner to pasture to bring it to passe.[101]

The later surveys give additional evidence of the extent to which the new tenantry had restricted the area of cultivation in the old fields which had once been entirely arable land. The most noteworthy feature of the survey of East Brandon, Durham (1606), was, according to Gray,

the appearance in certain fields of meadow along-side the arable. Lowe field was almost transformed by such procedure, for seldom did the tenants retain any arable there. Instead they had large parcels of meadow, sometimes as many as twenty acres; nor does anything indicate that these parcels were enclosed. They seem, rather to have remained open and to point to a gradual abandonment of arable tillage. Such an abandonment is more clearly indicated by another survey of this series, that of Eggleston.... Presumably the fields had once been largely arable. When, however, the survey was made, change had begun, though not in the direction of enclosure, of which there was still little. Conversion to meadow had proceeded without it: nearly all the parcels of the various tenants in East field and West field are said to have been meadow; arable still predominated only in Middle field, and even there it had begun to yield.[102]

At Westwick, Whorlton, Bolam and Willington in Durham, and at Welford, Northamptonshire, a similar transformation had taken place.[103]

This land was obviously withdrawn from cultivation not because the tenants preferred grass land, or because grass land was more valuable than arable, but because it could be plowed only at a loss. Where, as at Greens Norton, arable and leas are valued separately in the survey, the grass land is shown to be of less value than the land still under cultivation.[104] The land craved rest, (to use Tusser's phrase), and the grass which grew on it was of but little value. Here we have no capitalist systematically buying up land for grazing, but a withdrawal of land from cultivation by the tenants themselves, even though they were in no position to prepare it properly for grazing purposes. The importance of this fact cannot be over-emphasized. It is true that pasture, properly enclosed and stocked, was profitable, and that men who were able to carry out this process became notorious among their contemporaries on account of their gains. But it is also true that the land which was converted to pasture by these enclosers was fit for nothing else. Husbandmen had had to withdraw much of their open-field ground from tillage simply because it was so unproductive that they could not count on a bare return of seed if they planted it. The pasturage for an additional horse or cow which these plots furnished was pure gain, and was not the object of the conversion to grass. The unproductive strips would have been left untilled even though no alternative use had been possible. They were unfit for cultivation.

The advantage of holding this lea land did not end, however, with the fact that a few additional horses or cows could be kept on the grass which sprang up. This was undoubtedly of some value, but the greatest advantage lay in the fact that this land gradually recovered its strength. When the strips which were kept under cultivation finally produced in their turn so little that they had to be abandoned, the tenant who had access to land which had been laid to grass years before could plow this instead, for it had regained its fertility and had improved in physical quality. Fitzherbert recommends a regular interchange between "Reyst" ground and arable land which had become exhausted. When the grass strips become mossy and make poor pasture, plow them up and plant them; when arable strips fail to produce good crops, lay them to grass. Lea ground, "the whiche hath ben errable land of late" should be plowed up.

And if a man haue plentie of suche pasture, that wil be mossie euery thyrd yere, lette hym breake vp a newe piece of gronde, and plowe it and sowe it (as I haue seyde before), and he shal haue plentye of corne, with littell dongynge, and sow it no lengar thu it will beare plentye of corne, without donge, and it will beare much better grasse, x or xii yere after.... Reyst grounde if it be dry, will bringe much corne, for the mosse will rotte, and the moll hillockes will amende the ground wel.[105]

Tusser's references to the practice of plowing up lea ground and laying other land to grass are so incidental as to be good evidence of the fact that this was not merely the recommendation of a theorist, but a common practice, the details of which were familiar to those for whom he intended his book. A passage in which he refers to the laying to grass of land in need of rest has already been quoted.[106] In discussing the date at which plowing should take place he mentions the plowing up of lea land as well as of fallow.[107]

The superior value of enclosed pasture to open-field leas, and of enclosed arable to open-field arable, is not only asserted by Fitzherbert and others who are urging husbandmen to enclose their land, but appears also when manorial surveys are examined. It would seem, therefore, that the tenants would have been anxious to carry the process to an end and enclose their land. Undoubtedly the larger holders were desirous of making the change, but as long as the rights of the lesser men were respected, it was almost impossible to carry it out. The adjustment of conflicting and obscure claims was generally held to be an insuperable obstacle, even by those who urged the change most strongly, while those who on principle opposed anything in the way of enclosure took comfort in the fact that holdings were so intermixed that there was little prospect of accomplishing the change:

Wheare (men) are intercominers in comon feildes and also haue theare portions so intermingled with an other that, thoughe they would, they could not inclose anie parte of the saide feldes so long as it is so.[108]

Just as the services of a promoter are needed in the formation of a modern industrial combination, pressure from above was usually necessary in order to overcome the difficulties of the situation. The Lord of Berkeley (1281-1321)

drewe much profitt to his Tenants and increase of fines to himselfe ... by makeing and procuringe to bee made exchanges of land mutually one with an other, thereby casting convenient Parcells togeather, fitting it for an inclosure and conversion. And by freeinge such inclosures from all comonage of others.[109]

A landlord of this sort would do much to override the opposition of those who, through conservatism, fear of personal loss, or insistence upon more than their share of the benefits of the readjustment, made it impossible for tenants to carry out these changes unassisted.

Where tenants with or without the assistance of the lord had managed to enclose some of their land and free it from right of common, they were in a position to devote it to sheep-farming if they chose to do so. Ordinarily they did not do this. If, as has been claimed, the large-scale enclosures which shall be considered later were made because of an increasing demand for wool, it is surprising that these husbandmen were willing to keep enclosed land under cultivation, and even to plow up enclosed pasture. The land had to be kept under grass for a part of the time, whether it was open or enclosed, because if kept continuously under the plow it became unproductive; and it was better to have this land enclosed so that it could be used advantageously as pasture during the period when it was recovering its strength. But the profits of pasturage were not high enough to prevent men from plowing up the land when it was again in fit condition.

At Forncett, the tenants had begun sheep-farming by the end of the fourteenth century, and had also begun to enclose land in the open-fields; the situation was one, therefore, in which agriculture was likely to be permanently displaced by grazing, according to the commonly accepted theory of the enclosure movement. This change failed to take place; not because enclosures ceased to be made—nearly half of the acreage of the fields was in enclosures by 1565—but because the tenants preferred to cultivate this enclosed land.[110] If the enclosures had been pasture when they were first made, they did not remain permanently under grass. Like the land still in the open fields, and like the small enclosures in Cheshire reported by the commission of 1517, they were sometimes plowed and sometimes laid to grass, according to the condition of the soil. In a Cheshire village, two tenants had small enclosures in the same field, which were treated in this way. At the time the commission visited the place, one of these closes was being used as pasture, and the other was in cultivation. John Monkesfield's close, which had been made six years before,

continet in se duas acras & diversis temporibus fuit in cultura & aliis temporibus in pastura & nunc occupata est in pastura.[111]

John Molynes' close of one acre had been made the year before and

fuit antea in pastura & nunc occupata est in cultura.

It had evidently been a strip of lea land which had been so improved by being kept under grass that it was in fit condition for cultivation, while John Monkesfield's close had been plowed long enough and was just at this time in need of rest. These men were apparently unaffected by any increasing demand for wool, but were managing their land according to its needs.

By the sixteenth century, then, some enclosures had appeared in the open fields, and the old common-field system was disintegrating. The old customary holdings had been so altered that they were hardly recognizable. Some tenants held a great number of acres, and had managed by purchase or exchange to get possession of a number of adjacent strips, which they might, under certain conditions, be able to enclose. Much of the land, however, was withdrawn from cultivation, and for years was allowed to remain almost in the condition of waste.

For the most part, however, there had been no revolutionary change in the system of husbandry. The framework remained. The whole community still possessed claims extending over most of the land. The village flocks pastured on the stubble and the fallows of the open fields. The advantages which could in theory be derived from the control of several adjacent strips of land were reduced to a minimum by the necessity of maintaining old boundaries to mark off from each other lands of differing status. Even where the consolidation of holdings had proceeded to some extent, the tenants who had acquired the most compact holdings in comparison with the majority still possessed scattered plots of land separated from each other by the holdings of other men, and some of the smaller holders had no two strips which touched each other. When the tenants had been left to themselves, all of the changes which took place before the eighteenth century, numerous as they were, usually left the fields in a state resembling more their condition in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries than that of the nineteenth century.

FOOTNOTES:

[87] Levett and Ballard, op. cit., p. 49, note.

[88] A speech on enclosures commending bills proposed in 1597 contrasts the constructive character of that legislation with the earlier laws: "Where the gentleman that framed this bill hath dealt like a most skilful chirugien, not clapping on a plaster to cover the sore that it spread no further, but searching into the very depths of the wound that the life and strength which hath so long been in decay by the wasting of towns and countries may at length again be quickened and repaired." Bland, Brown & Tawney, Eng. Econ. History—Select Documents, pp. 271-272.

[89] 4 H. 7, c. 16, as quoted by Pollard, Reign of Henry VII, p. 237.

[90] Leadam, Domesday of Inclosures (London, 1897), p. 7

[91] 25 H. 8, c. 13.

[92] Gray, English Field Systems (Cambridge, 1915), pp. 95-96.

[93] "Midland Revolt," R. H. S. Trans., New Series, vol. xviii, p. 230.

[94] Tawney, Agrarian Problem, pp. 164-165.

[95] Levett and Ballard, op. cit., pp. 52-53.

[96] Husbandry (ed. English Dialect Society, 1882), p. 77.

[97] 39 El., c. i, vi.

[98] Surveying (2nd ed., 1567), ch. 24.

[99] Corbett, "Elizabethan Village Surveys," Royal Hist. Soc. Trans., New Series, vol. ii, pp. 67-87.

[100] Surveyinge, ch. 41.

[101] Five Hundred Points (London, 1812).

[102] Gray, op. cit., pp. 106-107.

[103] Gray, op. cit., pp. 35, 106-107.

[104] Lennard, Rural Northamptonshire, pp. 100-101.

[105] Fitzherbert, Surveyinge, chs. 27 and 28.

[106] See p. 79. Another reference to this process is made in October's Husbandry, vol. 22, ch. 17.

[107] Tusser, January's Husbandry, vol. 47, ch. 32.

[108] A Discourse of the Common Weal of this Realm of England, ed. by Elizabeth Lamond, Cambridge, 1893.

[109] Smyth, Lives of the Berkeleys, vol. ii, pp. 159-160.

[110] Davenport, Norfolk Manor, pp. 80-81.

[111] Leadam, op. cit., pp. 641-644.



CHAPTER IV

ENCLOSURE FOR SHEEP PASTURE

Enclosure made by the tenants themselves by common agreement aroused no opposition or apprehension. No diminution of the area under tillage beyond that which had already of necessity taken place occurred, and the grass land already present in the fields was made available for more profitable use. The Doctor in Hales' dialogue carefully excepts this sort of enclosure from condemnation:

I meane not all Inclosures, nor yet all commons, but only of such Inclosures as turneth commonly arable feildes into pastures; and violent Inclosures, without Recompense of them that haue the right to comen therein: for if the land weare seuerallie inclosed to the intent to continue husbandrie theron, and euerie man, that had Right to commen, had for his portion a pece of the same to him selfe Inclosed, I thincke no harm but rather good should come therof, yf euerie man did agre theirto.[112]

In this passage Hales recognizes the theoretical possibility of a beneficial sort of enclosure, but the conditional form in which his remarks are thrown indicates that, so far as he knew, there was little systematic division of the land among the tenants by common consent.

Orderly rearrangement of holdings into compact plots suitable for enclosure was difficult unless the small holders had all disappeared, leaving in the community only men of some means, who were able to undertake the expenses of the readjustment. In most villages, however, holdings of all sizes were the rule. Some tenants had almost no land under cultivation, but picked up a living by working for others, and by keeping a few sheep on the commons and on the fallow lands of the town. There was thus always a fringe of peasant families on the verge of destitution. They were being gradually eliminated, but the process was extremely slow. A few of them in each generation, feeling as a realized fact the increasing misery which has been predicted for the modern industrial laborer, were forced to give up the struggle. Their land passed into the hands of the more prosperous men, who were thus gradually accumulating most of the land. In some cases, no doubt, all of the poorer tenantry were drained off in this fashion, making it possible for those who remained to consolidate their holdings and enclose them in the fashion advocated by Fitzherbert, keeping a part under tillage until it needed a rest, and pasturing sheep and cattle in the closes which were under grass.

It is impossible to estimate the number of these cases. What we do know is that in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries no such stage had been reached in hundreds of English townships. The enclosures which had been made by the tenants were of a few acres here and there. The fields for the most part were still open and subject to common, and consisted in part of poor pasture land. We do know also that many landlords took matters into their own hands, dispossessed the tenants, and enclosed a part or all of the land for sheep pastures. The date at which this step was made, and the thoroughness with which it was carried out, depended very much upon the character and needs of the landlord, as well as upon local circumstances affecting the condition of the soil and the degree of poverty suffered by the tenants. The tendency for landlords to lose patience with the process which was gradually eliminating the poorer men and concentrating their land in the hands of the more prosperous is not characteristic of any one century. It began as early as the middle of the fourteenth century, and it extended well into the seventeenth. By 1402 clergy were being indicted as depopulatores agrorum.[113] In the fifteenth century statutes against enclosure and depopulation were beginning to be passed, and Rous gives a list of fifty-four places near Warwick which had been wholly or partially depopulated before about 1486.[114] For the sixteenth century, we have the evidence of numerous statutes, the returns of the commissions, doggerel verse, popular insurrections, sermons, etc. Miss Leonard's study of the seventeenth-century enclosures is confirmed by additional evidence presented by Gonner that the movement was unchecked in this period. In 1692, for instance, Houghton was attacking the "common notion that enclosure always leads to grass," by pointing out a few exceptions.[115] In 1695 Gibson spoke of the change from tillage to pasture, which had been largely within living memory.[116]

There is no reason to believe that the landowners who carried out this process were unusually mercenary and heartless. The need for putting their land to some remunerative use was imperative, and it is surprising that the enclosure movement was of such a piece-meal character and extended over so many years, rather than that it took place at all.

There was little rent to be had from land which lay for the most part in open fields, tilled by men who had no capital at their command for improving the condition of the soil, or for utilizing profitably the portion of the land which was so impoverished that it could not be cultivated.

Poor tenants are unprofitable tenants; it is difficult to collect rent from them and impossible to raise their rent, and they attempt to save by exploiting the land, leaving it in worse condition than when they received it. Contemporary references to the poverty of these open-field tenants all confirm the impression given by Hales:

They that be husbandmen now haue but a scant lyvinge therby.[117] I that haue enclosed litle or nothinge of my grond could (never be able) to make vp my lordes rent weare it not for a little brede of neate, shepe, swine, gese and hens that I doe rere vpon my ground: whereof, because the price is sumwhat round, I make more cleare proffitt than I doe of all my corne and yet I haue but a bare liuinge.[118]

Harrison, at the end of the century, writes of the open-field tenants:

They were scarce able to liue and paie their rents at their daies without selling of a cow or an horsse, or more, although they paid but foure poundes at the vttermost by the yeare.[119]

The tenant who could not pay this rent without selling stock was, of course, one of those who would soon have to give up his land altogether, if the landlord continued to demand rent. If he sold his horses and oxen to raise the rent one year, he was less able to work his land properly the next year, and the crop, too small in the first place to enable him to cover expenses, diminished still more. When the current income was ordinarily too small to cover current expenses, no relief was to be found by reducing the capital. A time came when these men must be either turned away, and their land leased to others, or else allowed to stay and make what poor living they could from the soil, without paying even the nominal rent which was to be expected of them.

Lord North's comment on the enclosure movement as he saw it in the seventeenth century is suggestive of the state of affairs which led to the eviction of these husbandmen:

Gentlemen of late years have taken up an humor of destroying their tenements and cottages, whereby they make it impossible that mankind should inhabit their estates. This is done sometimes barefaced because they harbour poor that are a charge to the parish, and sometimes because the charge of repairing is great, and if an house be ruinous they will not be at the cost of rebuilding and repairing it, and cast their lands into very great farms which are managed with less housing: and oftimes for improvement as it is called which is done by buying in all freeholds, copyholds, and tenements that have common and which harboured very many husbandry and labouring families and then enclosing the commons and fields, turning the managry from tillage to grasing.[120]

Not only were these men able to pay little rent for the land they held, but, as has been suggested, they were unable to maintain the land in proper condition by the use of manure and marl. These expenses were beyond the means of the farmer who was falling behind; they neglected the soil because they were poor, and they were poor because the yield of the land was so low; but their neglect caused it to decline even more. Fitzherbert, who deplores the fact that marl is no longer used in his time, points out that not only the leaseholder, who is averse to making improvements on account of the insecurity of his tenure, but the freeholder, also, is neglecting his land; although

He knoweth well, he shall take the profits while he liueth, & his heyres after him, a corrage to improw his owne, the which is as good as and he purchased as much as the improwment cometh to.[121]

But if he spent money on marling the soil, he would have nothing to live on while waiting for the crop. The very poverty of the small holders made it necessary for them to sink in still greater poverty, until the lord deprived them of the land, or until they became so discouraged that they gave it up of their own volition. They might easily understand the force of Fitzherbert's arguments without being able to follow his advice. "Marle mendeth all manor of grounde, but it is costly."[122] The same thing is true of manure. According to Denton, the expense of composting land was almost equivalent to the value of the fee simple of the ground. He refers to a record of the early fourteenth century of the payment of more than twice the ordinary rent for composted land.[123] With manure at high prices, the man in difficulty might be tempted to sell what he had; it was certainly out of the question for him to buy more. Or, what amounted to the same thing, he might sell hay or straw, and so reduce the forage for his cattle, and return less to the soil by means of their dung.

Dr. Simkhovitch points out the difference between the farmer who is unable to meet expenses in a particular year because of an exceptionally bad season, and one who is suffering because of progressive deterioration of his farm. The first may borrow and make good the difference the following year; the latter will be unable to extricate himself. He neither has means to increase his holding by renting or buying more land, nor to improve the land which he has already. His distress is cumulative:

Only one with sufficient resources can improve his land. By improving land we add to our capital, while by robbing land we immediately add to our income; in doing so, however, we diminish out of all proportion our capital as farmers, the productive value of our farm land. The individual farmer can therefore improve his land only when in an economically strong position. A farmer who is failing to make a living on his farm is more likely to exploit his farm to the utmost; and when there is no room for further exploitation he is likely to meet the deficit by borrowing, and thus pledging the future productivity of his farm.[124]

While small holders in the open fields were in no position to pay higher rents, the land owners were suffering. Prices were rising, and while the higher price of farm produce in the market was of little help to the tenant whose own family used nearly everything he could raise, the landlords felt the pressure of an increasing cost of living.

Many of us [says the Gentleman, in Hales' dialogue] haue bene driuen to giue over oure houshold, and to kepe either a chambere in london, or to waight on the courte Vncalled, with a man and a lacky after him, wheare he was wonte to kepe halfe a score cleane men in his house, and xxtie or xxxtie other persons besides, everie day in the weke.... We are forced either to minyshe the thirde parte of our houshold, or to raise the thirde parte of our Revenues.[125]

It was difficult for the landowners to make economic use of even those portions of the land which were not in the hands of customary tenants. If they were willing to invest capital in enclosing demesne land and stocking it with sheep, without disturbing their small tenants, they found it impossible to do so. Not only did the poorer tenants have to cultivate land which was barely productive of more than the seed used, because they could not afford to allow it to lie idle as long as it would produce anything; not only did they allow the land which was under grass to remain practically waste, because they could not afford to enclose it and stock it with sheep; not only did they neglect manuring and marling the land because these improvements were beyond their means, so that the land was constantly growing poorer in their hands, and so that they could pay very little rent; but they were also tenacious of their rights of common over the rest of the land, and resisted all attempts at enclosure of the holdings of the more prosperous tenants, because they had to depend for their living largely upon the "little brede of neate, shepe, swine, gese and hens" which were maintained partly by the gleanings from other men's land when it lay common.

They undoubtedly suffered when the lord himself or one of the large leaseholders insisted on enclosing some of the land. If the commonable area was reduced, or if the land enclosed was converted from arable to pasture (as it usually was), the means by which they made their living was diminished. The occasional day's wages for labor spent on the land converted was now withdrawn, and the pasturage for the little flock was cut down. The practical effect of even the most innocent-looking enclosures, then, must have been to deprive the poorer families of the means of livelihood, even though they were not evicted from their worthless holdings. Enclosures and depopulation were inseparably linked in the minds of contemporaries, even when the greatest care was taken by the enclosing authorities to safeguard the rights of the tenants.

These rights, however, seriously interfered with the most advantageous use of land, and often were disregarded. Not only did the small holders have rights of common over the rest of the land, but their own strips were intermingled with those of the lord and the large holders. The typical problem confronting the enclosing landlord is shown below:

HOLDINGS IN OPEN FIELD, WEST LEXHAM, NORFOLK, 1575[126]

Strips in Furlong A Strips in Furlong B 1. Will Yelverton, freeholder. 1. Robert Clemente, freeholder. 2. Demesne. 2. Demesne. 3. Demesne. 3. Demesne. 4. Will Yelverton. 4. Demesne. 5. Demesne. 5. Demesne. 6. Demesne. 6. Demesne. 7. Demesne. 7. Demesne. 8. Demesne. 8. Demesne. 9. Demesne. 9. Will Lee, freeholder. 10. Glebe. 10. Will Gell, copyholder. 11. Demesne. 11. Demesne. 12. Demesne. 12. Demesne. 13. Glebe. 13. Demesne.

If, as was probably the case, the product from these demesne strips was so small that the land was fit only for conversion to pasture, the pecuniary interest of the lord was to be served best by enclosing it and converting it. But should he make three enclosures in furlong A, and two in furlong B, besides taking pains to leave a way clear for Will Yelverton and Lee and Gell to reach their land? Or should he be content merely with enclosing the larger plots of land, because of the expense of hedging and ditching the smaller plots separately from the rest? If he did this, the unenclosed portions would be of little value, as the grass which grew on them could not be properly utilized for pasture. The final alternative was to get possession of the strips which did not form part of the demesne, so that the whole could be made into one compact enclosure. In order to do this it might be necessary to dispossess Will Lee, Will Gell, etc. The intermingling of holdings, in such a way that small holders (whose own land was in such bad condition that they could not pay their rents) blocked the way for improvements on the rest of the land, was probably responsible for many evictions which would not otherwise have taken place.

But not all evictions were due to this cause alone. The income to the owner from land which was left in the hands of customary tenants was much lower than if it was managed by large holders with sufficient capital to carry out necessary changes. Where it is possible to compare the rents paid by large and small holders on the same manor, this fact is apparent:

AVERAGE RENT PER ACRE OF LAND ON FIVE MANORS IN WILTSHIRE, 1568[127]

I II III

s. d. s. d. s. d.

Lands held by farmers 1 6 7 3/4 1 5 3/4

Lands held by customary tenants 7 1/2 5 1 0 3/4

IV V

s. d. s. d.

Lands held by farmers 1 1 3/4 1 5 1/2

Lands held by customary tenants 5 3/4 5 3/4



The differences in these rents are sufficient to be tempting to the lord who was seeking his own interest. The large holders were able to expend the capital necessary for enclosing and converting the part of the land which could not be profitably cultivated because of its bad condition. The capital necessary for this process itself was considerable, and besides, it was necessary to wait several years before there was a return on the investment, while the sod was forming, to say nothing of the large expenditure necessary for the purchase of the sheep. The land when so treated, however, enabled the investor to pay higher rents than the open-field husbandmen who "rubbed forth their estate in the poorest plight."[128]

A lord who was willing to consider only pecuniary advantage had everything to gain by clearing the land entirely of small holders, and putting it in the hands of men with capital. It is, therefore, to the credit of these landowners that there are so few authentic cases of the depopulation of entire villages and the conversion of all of the arable land into sheep runs. These cases made the lords who were responsible notorious and were, no doubt, exceptional. Nearly fifteen hundred places were covered by the reports of the commissions of 1517 and 1607, and Professor Gay has found among these "but a round dozen villages or hamlets which were all enclosed and emptied of their inhabitants, the full half of them in Northamptonshire."[129] For the most part, the enclosures reported under the inquisitions as well as those indicated on the maps and surveys of the period involved only small areas, and point to a process of piece-meal enclosure. The landowners seem to have been reluctant to cause hardship and to have left the open-field tenants undisturbed as far as possible, contenting themselves with the enclosure and conversion of small plots of land.

The social consequences of so-called depopulating enclosure were serious, but they are not seen in their proper perspective when one imagines the condition of the evicted tenants to have been fairly good before they were dispossessed. The cause lying back of the enclosure movement was bringing about the gradual sinking of family after family, even when no evictions were made. To attribute the poverty and misery of the rural population to the enclosure movement is to overlook the unhappy condition of the peasants, even where no enclosures had been made. Enclosures had been forbidden in the fields of royal manors in Northamptonshire, but this did not protect the peasantry from destitution. The manor of Grafton, for instance, was surveyed in 1526 and a note was made at the end of the survey that the revenue drawn from the lordship had lately been increased, but "there can no ferther enprovemente there be made and to kepe the tenantries standyng. Item the tenauntriez there be in sore decaye." The surveyor of Hartwell also notes that the "tenements there be in decay."[130]

The economic basis of the unfortunate social changes which were associated with the process of enclosure came gradually to be recognized. It was evidently futile to enact laws requiring the cultivation of land "wasted and worn with continual plowing and thereby made bare, barren and very unfruitfull."[131] Merely restrictive and prohibitory legislation was followed by the suggestion of constructive measures. Until the middle of the sixteenth century, laws were made in the attempt to put a stop to the conversion of arable land to pasture under any conditions, and required that land which had been under cultivation should be plowed in the future. In the act of 1552, however, an attitude somewhat more reasonable is to be seen. It was provided that land which had been under cultivation within a certain number of years preceding the act should be tilled, "or so much in quantity."[132] Public men were also urging that less time be devoted to the futile attempt to force men to cultivate land unfit for tillage, and that encouragement be given instead to measures for improving the waste, and bringing fresh land under the plow.[133]

After a time, moreover, another fact became apparent: there was a marked tendency to break up and again cultivate the land which in former generations had been converted to pasture. The statute of 1597 not only contained a proviso permitting the conversion of arable fields to pasture on condition that other land be tilled instead,[134] thus tacitly admitting that the reason for withdrawing land from cultivation was not the low price of grain, but the barrenness of the land, but also explicitly referred to this fact in another proviso permitting the conversion of arable land to pasture temporarily, for the purpose of recovering its strength:

Provided, nevertheless, That if anie Pson or Body Pollitique or Corporate hath ... laide or hereafter shall lay anie grownde to graze, or hathe used or shall use the same grownde with shepe or anie other cattell, which Grownde hath bene or shall be dryven or worne owte with Tillage, onely upon good Husbandrie, and with intente bona fide withowt Fraude or Covyne the same Grownde shall recover Harte and Strengthe, an not with intent to continue the same otherwise in shepe Pasture or for fattinge or grazinge of Cattell, that no such Pson or Body Politike or Corporate shall be intended for that Grownde a Converter within the meaning of this Lawe.[135]

A speaker in the House of Commons commends these provisions:

For it fareth with the earth as with other creatures that through continual labour grow faint and feeble-hearted, and therefore, if it be so far driven as to be out of breath, we may now by this law resort to a more lusty and proud piece of ground while the first gathers strength, which will be a means that the earth yearly shall be surcharged with burden of her own excess. And this did the former lawmakers overslip, tyeing the land once tilled to a perpetual bondage and servitude of being ever tilled.[136]

Several years before the passage of this statute, Bacon had remarked that men were breaking up pasture land and planting it voluntarily.[137] In 1619, a commission was appointed to consider the granting of licenses "for arable lands converted from tillage to pasture." The proclamation creating this commission, after referring to the laws formerly made against such conversions, continues:

As there is much arable land of that nature become pasture, so is there by reason thereof, much more other lands of old pasture and waste, and wood lands where the plough neuer entred, as well as of the same pasture lands so heretofore conuerted, become errable, and by husbandrie made fruitfull with corne ... the quantitie and qualitie of errable and Corne lands at this day doth much exceed the quantitie that was at the making of the saide Lawe.... As the want thereof [of corn] shall appeare, or the price thereof increase, all or a great part of those lands which were heretofore converted from errable to pasture and have sithence gotten heart, strength and fruitfulness, will be reduced to Corne lands againe, to the great increase of graine to the Commonwealth and profite to each man in his private.[138]

John Hales had protested against depopulating enclosures, in 1549, by appealing to the public spirit of landowners. They increased their profits by converting arable land to pasture, but, he argued,

It may not be liefull for euery man to vse his owne as hym lysteth, but eueyre man must vse that he hath to the most benefyte of his countrie. Ther must be somethynge deuysed to quenche this insatiable thirst of greedynes of men.[139]

But now it was no longer necessary to persuade the owners of this same land to forgo their own interests for the sake of the public good. Those whose land had been used as pasture for a great number of years were finding it valuable arable, because of its long period of rest and regeneration. Land which had been converted to pasture was being put under the plow because of the greater profit of tillage.

So great was the profit of cultivating these pastures that landlords who were opposed to having pastures broken up by leaseholders had difficulty in preventing it. Towards the end of the sixteenth century at Hawsted, and in the beginning of the seventeenth, a number of leases contained the express provision that no pastures were to be broken up. In 1620 and the years following, some of the leases permitted cultivation of pasture, on the condition that the land was to be laid to grass again five years before the expiration of the lease.[140]

There is no doubt of the fact that much land was being converted from pasture to arable in this period. Evidence of this tendency multiplies as the century advances. In 1656 Joseph Lee gave a list of fifteen towns where arable land hitherto converted to pasture had been plowed up again within thirty years.[141]

Barren and insufficiently manured land did not produce good crops merely because other land had been given an opportunity to recover its strength. The conversion of open-field arable to pasture went on unchecked in the seventeenth century because it had not yet had the benefit of the prolonged rest which made agriculture profitable, and without which it had become impossible to make a living from the soil. The lands which have been "heretofore converted from errable to pasture.... have sithence gotten heart, strength and fruitfulnesse," and are therefore being plowed again; but the land which has escaped conversion, and has been tied to the "perpetual bondage and servitude of being ever tilled," is "faint and feeble-hearted," and is being laid to grass, for pasture is the only use for which it is suited. The cause of the conversion of arable fields to pasture is the same as that which caused the same change on other lands at an earlier date—so low a level of productivity that the land was not worth cultivating. Lands whose fertility had been restored were put under cultivation and plowed until they were again in need of rest.

Thus the final result was about the same whether an enclosing landlord cut across the gradual process of readjustment of land-holding among the tenants, and converted the whole into pasture, or whether the process was allowed to go on until none but large holders remained in the village. In both cases the tendency was towards a system of husbandry in which the fertility of the soil was maintained by periodically withdrawing portions of it from cultivation and laying it to grass. In the one case, cultivation was completely suspended for a number of years, but was gradually reintroduced as it became evident that the land had recovered its strength while used as pasture. In the other, the grazing of sheep and cattle was introduced as a by-industry, for the sake of utilizing the land which had been set aside to recover its strength, while the better land was kept under the plow. Whether enclosures were made for better agriculture, then, as Mr. Leadam contends, or for pasture, as is argued by Professor Gay,[142] the arable enclosures were used as pasture for a part of the time and the enclosed pastures came later to be used for tillage part of the time, and the two things amount to the same thing in the end.

This end, however, had still not been reached in a great number of open-field villages by the beginning of the eighteenth century, and we should expect to find that the history of the land in this century was but a repetition of what had gone before, in so far as the fields which had not hitherto been enclosed are concerned.

But, during the seventeenth century, an agricultural revolution was taking place. Experiments were being made with new forage crops. For one thing, it was found that turnips could be grown in the fields and that they made excellent winter forage; and grass seeding was introduced. The grasses and clovers which were brought from Holland not only made excellent hay, but improved the soil rapidly. The possibility of increasing the amount of hay at will put an end to the absolute scarcity of manure—the limiting factor in English agriculture from the beginning. And the comparative ease with which the artificial grasses could be made to grow did away with the need of waiting ten or fifteen years, or perhaps half a century, for natural grass to cover the fields and restore their productiveness.

Only with the introduction of grass seeding did it become possible to keep a sufficient amount of stock, not only to maintain the fertility of the soil, but to improve it steadily. The soil instead of being taxed year after year under the heavy strain of grain crops was being renovated by the legumes that gathered nitrogen from the air and stored it on tubercles attached to their roots. The deep roots of the clover penetrated the soil, that no plow ever touched. Legumes like alfalfa, producing pound by pound more nutritious fodder than meadow grass, produced acre by acre two and three times the amount, and when such a field was turned under to make place for a grain crop, the deep and heavy sod, the mass of decaying roots, offered the farmer "virgin" soil, where previously even five bushels of wheat could not be gathered.[143]

As the value of these new crops became generally recognized, some effort was made to introduce them into the regular rotation of crops in the fields which were still held in common, but, for the most part, these efforts were unsuccessful, and new vigor was given to the enclosure movement. Frequently persons having no arable land of their own had right of common over the stubble and fallow which could not be exercised when turnips and clover were planted; for reasons of this sort, it was difficult to change the ancient course of crops in the open fields. For example, late in the eighteenth century (1793) at Stiffkey and Morston, the improvements due to enclosure are said to have been great, for:

being half-year land before, they could raise no turnips except by agreement, nor cultivate their land to the best advantage.[144]

At Heacham the common fields were enclosed by act in 1780, and Young notes:

Before the enclosure they were in no regular shifts and the field badly managed; now in regular five-shift Norfolk management.[145]

At Northwald, about 3,000 acres of open-field land were enclosed in 1796 and clover was introduced. The comment made is that "the crops bear quite a new face." The common field of Brancaster before enclosure in 1755 "was in an open, rude bad state; now in five or six regular shifts."[146]