corn and provisions 1. Accordingly the expedient was proposed that commissioners should be appointed to value /farms, and fix their rents " as they were let at forty years agone "2. It is true that the new nobility, created out of the spoils of the abbey lands, were to all appearance not very scrupulous in their treatment of the old tenantry; and Hales may have had the rich upstarts in mind when he used the bitter words: " Is it not a pitiful hearing. that man which was ordained of God to be a comfort for man is now clean changed and is become a wolf, a devourer and consumer of men? "3 None the less it is difficult to believe that everywhere the minds of men became perverted by the new opportunities of acquiring wealth, or that the foundations of morality and just dealing between landlord and tenant were suddenly undermined. In the first place, changes in the currency were effecting a great revolution in the general level of prices. The value of money was depreciated, partly on account of the debasement of the coinage, and at a later period owing to the influx of precious metals from the Peruvian mines. The extent of the debasement may be gauged from the fact that while in the early years of Henry VIII.'s reign 18 dwts. of alloy were reckoned to II oz. 2 dwts. of silver, in 1544 there were 6 oz. of alloy to 6 oz. of silver, and in 1551 there were 9 oz. of alloy to 3 oz. of silver 5. A ballad written during the Protectorate of Somerset told how

ν

"This coin by alteration

Hath brought this desolation,
Which is not yet all known,

What mischief it hath sown "6.

The author of the Discourse of the Common Weal, written about 1549, accurately traced the source and original

1 Brinklow, Roderyck Mors, 12; Starkey, Dialogue, 175; Forrest, Pleasaunt Poesye, p. xcv.

2 Forrest, op. cit. p. xcvii.

3 Strype, ii. App. Q, 50.

4 Tawney, Agrarian Problem, 309, would seem seriously to ante-date the period when American silver upset all traditional standards of payR. Ruding, Annals of Coinage (1840), i. 310, 320. "Vox Populi, Vox Dei", in Ballads from MSS. i. 136.

ment."

cause' of the dearth to the debasement of the currency. But the fall in the value of silver is not the only explanation of the rise in rents, for the enhanced price of land had attracted attention before Henry began to debase the coinage. Another [thing] there is", wrote Thomas Starkey about 1538, "which few men observe, which is the enhancing of rents of late days induced", and he complains of the dearth "which is among us reigning "1. One important cause of the rise, apart from changes in currency, was perceived by Lever in a sermon, "Made in the Shroudes in Poules". He told the farmers, with the outspoken directness of his generation, that " to get your neighbour's farm ye will offer and desire them to take bribes, fines and rents, more than they look for or than you yourselves be well able to pay " 2.

tion of the landlords.

It would throw considerable light upon the problem, if The posi we could determine how far the rise in rents may be attributed to the avarice of the landlords and the free play of commercial forces, and how far it was really forced upon the landlords in self-protection on account of the changes in prices. This much at least is clear: the landlords were confronted with the alternative of raising the rents of their tenants, or contenting themselves with an income which no longer corresponded with its nominal value. How seriously they were affected by the debasement of the currency may be gauged from a statement made by the privy council in explanation of its failure to raise money for the recovery of Calais. "The noblemen and gentlemen for the most part receiving no more rent than they were wont to receive, and paying thrice as much for everything they provide, by reason of the baseness of the money, are not able to do as they have done in times past". The situation, in fact, as it presented itself to a sixteenth-century landlord who had no desire to exploit his tenantry unfairly, was more complex than at first sight may appear. Under the circumstances the best solution perhaps would have been to raise rents all round, in such a way as to maintain the landlord's income

1 Dialogue, 175.

2 Sermons, 37. 3 Burnet, History of the Reformation, v. 491.

exactly at its old rate of purchasing power, and to apportion the burden equitably among his tenants. But this solution was impossible. The most numerous class of landholders were copyholders and leaseholders, and their rents could ✓ only be touched when copyholds and leaseholds came to an end. The expiration of indentures, however, would only occur at irregular and infrequent intervals, and whenever it did happen their holders bore the whole brunt of the lord's demands. Moreover, in a great many cases rents were fixed, and it was beyond the lord's power to increase them. Here the copyholder enjoyed an unearned increment, since his rent remained stationary in spite of the fall in the value of money and the consequent rise in the value of land. On the manor of Wilburton a virgate worth seven pounds paid one pound 1, and there is abundant evidence that customary rents continued during the sixteenth century. The failure of the landlord to intercept the surplus value in the shape of an enhanced rent compelled him to adopt more drastic expedients. Every copyholder upon his entry to the holding paid an admission fine, and on two manors out of every three, fines were uncertain 2. This enabled the landlord to capitalize the increment and levy the whole sum as the price of admission. But it was obviously less of a hardship for a tenant to pay an increased rent based upon an estimate of the real value of the holding, than to be confronted with demands which must often have been practically prohibitive. An example of arbitrary fines comes from the manor of Thingden 3, where the lord extorted a fine of thirty shillings upon copyhold of which the yearly rent was five or six shillings, that is, an equivalent of five years' rent. Not until 17814, it would seem, was the legal rule established that two years' rent was the common law maximum of an uncertain fine, though this was one of the demands put forward in the Pilgrimage of Grace.5 Hence the result was brought about that a system devised

1 English Hist. Review, ix. 436.

Of the manors investigated by Dr. Savine the fine was certain on 28 manors and uncertain on 58: Quarterly Journal of Economics, xix. 53. 8 Select Cases in the Star Chamber, ii. 17.

4 Ibid. ii. p. lxiv.

5 Letters and Papers Henry VIII. xi. 507.

in the interest of the tenants1 really turned to their disadvantage. This curious circumstance can best be explained on the ground that the protection afforded by custom was only partial, and it is the fate of half-measures to injure the interests they are designed to serve. In fact the combination of fixed rents and arbitrary fines tied the lord's hands in the direction where economic pressure could perhaps have been best justified, and gave him unlimited power in the direction where economic pressure was bound to be ruinous. Accordingly the statement that "the effects of limited duration and arbitrary admittance payments were, to a large extent, counterbalanced by the fixity of customary rents " needs perhaps to be reversed; the protection afforded by an immovable rent was greatly diminished when accompanied by the liability to a variable fine.

3

(3) The consolidation of farms, the displacement of the (3) Pauperpeasants from their holdings, the exaction of rack-rents and excessive fines, the curtailment of the commons, all contributed to foster the rapid growth of pauperism. "There were no rates for the poor even in my grandfather's days", wrote the historian of Wiltshire (c. 1550). "Since the Reformation and Enclosures these parts have swarmed with poor people. . . . Enclosures are for the private, not for the public good". Roger Ascham declared in a letter to the Protector Somerset that the life which now so many lived was not life but misery 4. Strype cites a sermon preached by Bernard Gilpin before Edward VI. :" Thousands in England beg now from door to door who have kept honest houses" 5. A familiar sheep tract asked, "Whither shall they go? Forth from shire to shire, and to be scattered thus abroad . . . and for lack of masters, by compulsion driven, some of them to beg and some to steal". The alarming increase in the numbers of the poor was viewed

1 R. Lennard, Custom and Change in Sixteenth-Century England", in English Hist. Review, xxviii. 745 seq. 2 Savine, op. cit. 55.

Aubrey, History of Wiltshire, cit. T. E. Scrutton, Commons and Common Fields (1887), 99.

• Cheyney, Social Changes, 68.

6 " Certayne Causes", in Four Supplications, 98.

Strype, ii. 441.

with the liveliest concern. "Whereas now London, being one of the flowers of the world as touching worldly riches, hath so many, yea innumerable of poor people forced to go from door to door and to sit openly in the streets a begging, and many, not able to do for other, but lie in their houses in most grievous pains and die for lack of aid of the rich, to the great shame of thee, O London!" 1 Those who were suddenly thrust out of their employment were reduced to wander "from door to door and ask their alms for God's sake. And because they will not beg, some of them do steal and then they be hanged, and thus the realm doth decay" 2. Crowley also wrote in a similar strain: "If the sturdy fall to stealing and robbing, then are you the causers thereof, for you dig in, enclose, and withhold from them the earth out of the which they should dig and plough their living "". At the same time, the dissolution of the monasteries aggravated the evils inseparable from all periods of transition by flinging upon the country-side the multitude of beggars whom in the past they had succoured. The institution of a national system of poor relief became an imperative need ; religious and voluntary agencies were no longer able to cope with the situation, but broke down completely before the advancing tide of pauperism. While many circumstances contributed to the spread of destitution in the sixteenth century, the revolutionary changes which were taking place in the organization of rural society introduced a new and ominous factor. There was much suffering and misery in the Middle Ages, but to all appearances the labour market was not overstocked, and there was generally employment to be found for those who were able and willing to work. After the Black Death there was a notable rise in wages, in accordance with the principle laid down by Cobden: when

1 H. Brinklow, The Lamentacyon of a Christian agaynst the cyte of London (E.E.T.S.), 90. The date is 1545. Cf. Stubs, Anatomy of

Abuses," in Ballads, i. 32.

"

2 Certayne Causes, 102.

"

3 Works, 164. Cf. Starkey, Dialogue, 89: In no country of Christendom, for the number of people, you shall find so many beggars as be here in England, and more now than have been before time."

4 In 1263 the number of poor coming to Westminster to the feast of St. Edward was estimated at a hundred thousand, which would appear greatly exaggerated: Patent Rolls, 1258-1266, p. 282.