of towns [villages] and decay of houses was before the beginning of the reign of King Henry VII.", and his statement deserves more attention than has been paid to it. There is evidence to show that the changes in the direction of pasture farming had already made greater progress before the accession of the Tudors than is generally recognized. As early as 1414 a petition asserted that at Chesterton 1 near Cambridge no houses were left standing, "but if it were a sheep-cote or a barn", and in the same year the tenants of two villages in Nottinghamshire 2, Darleton and Ragenell, made complaint against enclosures. John Ross inserted in his Historia Regum Anglia a list of villages and hamlets supposed to have been destroyed in Warwickshire 3. The speech of the Lord Chancellor delivered at the opening of Richard III.'s parliament indicates that the movement which was to occupy the minds of Tudor statesmen for a century, was already arresting attention. "This body falleth in decay, as we see daily it doth by [en]closures and emparking, by driving away of tenants and letting down of tenantries". It is significant that the expenses of hedging are more frequently set down in manorial account rolls, while a new offence, the destruction of hedges, began repeatedly to recur in the court rolls 5 in spite of heavy fines. Cases in Chancery also attest the strength of the opposition which the enclosing movement was already arousing. At a manor in Edmonton (c. 1413) sixscore men" did break up divers pastures, closes and severalties, and enter therein and turn them into common". A few years earlier the abbot of Westminster appealed to the protection of the chancellor, of gradual consolidation and piecemeal enclosures carried out by the smaller cultivators". But this view can scarcely be upheld; Hales would not have described ' gradual consolidation' (which he favoured, when intended to promote tillage) as the destruction of villages and farm-houses. 1 Rot. Parl. iv. 60 b. 2 Ibid. iv. 29b; compare also the reference to 'depopulatores agrorum ' in 4 Hen. IV. c. 2 (Statutes, ii. 132). 3 Historia Regum Angliæ (1745), 122 seq., but the list may have been inserted by Hearne. 4 Grants of Edward V. (Camd. Soc. Pub.), p. lii. At Coleshill (1451) all breakers of hedges were to be fined 3s. 4d.: Vict. County Hist. Berkshire, ii. 193. • Select Cases in Chancery, No. 115. because sixty persons had burnt the hedges and enclosures of the coppice in a wood belonging to the convent1. An example of sheep-farming in the fifteenth century comes from the manor of Burghclere in Hampshire. In 1320 the arable demesne covered 265 acres. In 1455 the amount of land sown with corn had shrunk to 100 acres, yet the size of the demesne had been recently extended by over 500 At the same time the cry was being raised that wealthy and unscrupulous graziers overcharged the commons with excessive number of sheep. At Coventry Laurence Saunders was the stalwart champion of the poor; and elsewhere complaints were made that sheep-farmers "overburdened the common pastures "4. Altogether it seems undoubted that the movement towards sheep-farming was already proceeding more or less rapidly before the Tudor dynasty ascended the throne. farming. For many centuries English wool was the staple article Reasons of export and the chief basis of England's wealth. It was for sheepacknowledged the best in Europe, and the repute in which it was held is reflected in the Woolsack," the seat of our wise learned judges "5. The Cistercians in particular had been the pioneers of pasture farming, and at the time of Richard I.'s captivity they devoted a year's wool to his ransom. In 1421 the amount raised by the king on wool was seventy-four per cent. of the entire customs revenue. The striking feature of the agricultural revolution was the remarkable extent to which wool-growing was now substituted for corngrowing. Many factors combined to bring about the change. In the first place, tillage was ceasing to be a source of profit, since the export of corn was forbidden when prices were high, in order to ensure a sufficient home supply for the country's needs. At the same time the price of agricultural labour had risen considerably, and landlords and farmers welcomed an escape from a situation which must often have 1 Select Cases in Chancery, No. 66. 2 Vict. County Hist. Hampshire, v. 422. 3 The Coventry Leet Book (ed. M. D. Harris), ii. 574-580. 4 E.g. court rolls of Leckhamstead (Berks): Hone, The Manor, 167. John May, A Declaration of the Estate of Clothing (1613), 1. J. Smith, Memoirs of Wool (1757), i. 12. 7 G. Schanz, Englische Handelspolitik (1881), 14 (n. 1). been intolerable to them. While tillage was thus heavily handicapped, English wool readily found a market at home and abroad. Formerly the bulk of the wool produced in England was exported as raw material "unto a more ingenious nation" 1, to be worked up by the famous looms of Bruges, Ypres and Ghent. But in the fifteenth century the native cloth manufacture began to expand with great rapidity, and there was a corresponding demand for wool on the part of the English clothiers. Apart from the home market, England still retained the markets of Europe, especially Flanders and Italy, and no restriction at this period was placed on the export of wool. The profit derived by graziers from the growing of wool tempted landlords and farmers to turn their land into pasture 2, and it is scarcely surprising that Fitzherbert should regard sheep "as the most profitablest cattle that any man can have". "The foot of the sheep", men said, "turns sand into gold" 4. We have also to take into account that much land had been brought under cultivation which was better suited for pasturage than for tillage, apparently owing to the fact that every village as a rule sought to raise its own food supply; the pasture may be such that it is at double or treble the value of the arable land "5. It has also been contended that the soil was exhausted and needed rest from corn-growing." Another important consideration was that sheep-farming exacted "small charge and small labour" 7. Where twenty tillers of the soil had once been employed a single shepherd now sufficed, and shepherds were the worst paid of all classes of rural labourers.8 It is evident, then, that strong inducements existed in favour of sheep-farming; its profits were higher and its expenses were lower than those of tillage. There was more profit, said a contemporary writer, "by grazing of ten acres to the occupier alone than is in tillage 1 May, op. cit. 2. 2 R. Pauli, Drei volkswirthschaftliche Denkschriften (1878), 22. 3 Husbandry, 42. 4 R. E. Prothero, Pioneers and Progress of English Farming (1888), 21. 5 Fitzherbert, Surveyinge, c. 2 (p. 5). • Denton, England in the Fifteenth Century, 160; Gonner, Common Land and Inclosure, 135, 324. 7 Discourse 122. 8 E. P. Cheyney, Social Changes in England (1895), 24. of twenty "; and it was natural that the fato a sheep"joy to set his plough in the ground"1. Another Nord was the situation was the growth of a moneyed class enrich he the woollen industry and by their control over the financia business of the realm, which was now passing into their hands. They were anxious to find an outlet for their wealth, and sheep-farming afforded ample opportunities for safe and ✓ profitable investment. Speculation in land, especially after the dissolution of the monasteries brought great estates into the market, became widespread. Lincolnshire families 2 which had built up a fortune in trade invested money in land, and London citizens purchased manors in Surrey3 or received grants from Henry VIII. in liquidation of his debts. In this way three London aldermen obtained a large part of Newstead in Nottinghamshire, and a London mercer acquired estates at Worksop. Crowley 5 bitterly attacked the merchants who were becoming landowners: "To purchase lands is all their care And all the study of their brain". Lever wrote (1550): "The merchants of London" are 1 Discourse 122. 2 Vict. County Hist. Lincolnshire, ii. 326. 3 Vict. County Hist. Surrey, iv. 427. "Letters and Papers Henry VIII. ix. 244. 8 T. Starkey, A Dialogue between Cardinal Pole and Thomas Lupset (F.E.T.S.), 93, 177. I. On the demesne and leasehold. 128 been intolera handicap TION 129 ed by mer had no factor in freeno. MIC HISTORY rs combined together to bring an development of the sixteenth ace the course of the movement by as substituted for corn-fields, and to s to the nature of its effects upon the life of England. It will be convenient pal changes under four heads, according 1) the demesne and leasehold, (2) the pyhold and (4) the commons. I. The Demo...e.-When the lord retained the manor in his immediate ownership and worked it through a bailiff, the justification for converting it into a sheep-run was at least more apparent than in other circumstances, for this would not involve the eviction of tenants. "The duke of Buckingham at Brystwyke in the East Riding converted a hundred acres of demesne from arable into pasture, and no house or plough was on that account put down" (prosternitur) 1. On the other hand, it reduced the demand for agricultural labour, and deprived of employment those who earned a livelihood by working upon the large farms. In this way it depopulated the village by withdrawing from rural wage-earners their means of subsistence. Moreover, where the lord's demesne was still composed of strips scattered among those of his tenants, it is difficult to see how enclosure was carried out without disturbing the traditional arrangements of open field husbandry, the customary course of cultivation and the villagers' rights of common over the arable. "Understand", says Fitzherbert 2, "whether the demesne lands lie in the common fields . . . among other men's lands, or in the fields by themselves", and this implies that the demesne and peasant holdings were still often interlaced. We know at any rate that the monasteries sometimes had the whole of their arable land dispersed over the open fields 3, and we have also sure evidence that their successors were inspired by no tender regard for the rights of others. The injury inflicted upon the agricultural 1 Trans. Royal Hist. Soc. N.S. vi. 177 (from the returns of 1517). |