consequent eviction of the peasantry; they were not intended to prevent the consolidation of strips for purposes of arable farming, "for that had been ", as Bacon 1 recognized, "to forbid the improvement of the patrimony of the kingdom”. Of course we have no reason to doubt that enclosures were sometimes carried out with a view to a more progressive husbandry. The enclosing movement of the fifteenth century must have been largely directed towards this end; indeed, whenever enclosures were made on a small scale, it is unlikely that the plough was displaced or tillage abandoned. But in any case the consequences were far different from those entailed by the spread of sheep-farming, and to all appearance there were neither depopulation nor evictions. The absence of definite evidence on this aspect of the enclosing movement only proves that the more striking phenomena which attended the conversion of arable to pasture, the depopulation of villages and the turning adrift of tenants, seized upon the imagination of contemporaries and obscured the more silent, because harmless, changes which were in progress at the same moment 2. The fundamental feature of the agrarian revolution was the enclosure of land for purposes of sheep-farming. “ Always the most part of enclosures", says Leland3, " be for pasturages". This was the theme of countless sermons, pamphlets, ballads and acts of parliament, and filled the minds of statesmen, preachers and writers to an extent which only finds an adequate parallel in the religious changes contemporaneous with it. According to John Hales, "the chief destruction 1 Works, ed. J. Spedding (1858), vi. 94. Speaking of the early years of Henry VII.'s reign Bacon says, Inclosures began to be more frequent, whereby arable land. . was turned into pasture": ibid. 93. " Contemporaries well understood the difference between enclosures, (a) for improved tillage, and (b) for pasture farming. The word Enclosure "is not taken where a man doth enclose and hedge in his own proper ground, where no man hath commons. For such enclosure is very beneficial to the Commonwealth it is a cause of great increase of wood. But it is meant thereby when any man hath taken away and enclosed any other man's commons, or hath pulled down houses of husbandry, and converted the land from tillage to pasture": Hales's Charge to the Commissioners, in J. Strype, Ecclesiastical Memorials (ed. 1721), ii. App. Q. p. 56. * Itinerary, (ed. L. T. Smith), iv. 10 (speaking of Lancashire). " • Discourse, Introd. Ixiii. Mr. Tawney (p. 166) would regard Hales's statement as " a curt summary of the impression produced by a century II. En closure for pasture. 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 Angliæ 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" 4. 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). • Historia Regum Angliæ (1745), 122 seq., but the list may have been inserted by Hearne. 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 convent. 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 acres. 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 cf 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. Vict. County Hist. Hampshire, v. 432. The Coventry Leet Book (ed. M. T. Harris), ii. 574-580. E.g. court rolls of Leckhamstead (Berks): Hone, The Manor, 167. J. Smith, Memoirs of Wool, (1757), i. 12. 1 G. Schanz, Englische Hondelspolitik (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 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 " 3. 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". 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. 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 volkswirtschaftliche Denkschriften (1878), 22. 3 Husbandry, 42. 4 R. E. Prothero, Pioneers and Progress of English Farming (1888), 21. Fitzherbert, Surveyinge, c. 2 (p. 5). • Denton, England in the Fifteenth Century, 160; Gonner, Common Land and Inclosure, 135, 324. Discourse 122. • E. P. Cheyney, Social Changes in England (1895), 24. of twenty"; and it was natural that the farmer had no "joy to set his plough in the ground"1. Another factor in the situation was the growth of a moneyed class enriched by the woollen industry and by their control over the financial 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 not "content with the prosperous wealth of that vocation to satisfy themselves and to help others, but their riches must abroad in the country to buy farms out of the hands of worshipful gentlemen, honest yeomen, and poor labouring husband [men]". Thomas Cromwell even contemplated (1535) an act "that merchants shall employ their goods continually in traffic and not in purchasing lands . . . and that no merchants shall possess more than forty pounds lands by the year". Thus the merchant became a squire and aspired to the status of a country gentleman. "Every gentleman flieth into the country", so that in the cities you shall find no policy, no civil orier almost, nor rule "8. " 1 Discourse 122. 2 Vict. County Hist. Lincolnshire, ii. 326. 3 Vict. County Hist. Surrey, iv. 427. 4 Vict. County Hist. Nottinghamshire, ii. 281. 5 R. Crowley, Works (E.E.T.S.), 41, 87. • T. Lever, Sermons, ed. E. Arber (1870), 29. 7 Letters and Papers Henry VIII. ix. 244. T. Starkey, A Dialogue between Cardinal Pole and Thomas Lupset (E.E.T.S.), 93, 177 |