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Effects

of the agrarian

All these various factors combined together to bring about the great agrarian development of the sixteenth century.

We have now to trace the course of the movement by which pasture land was substituted for corn-fields, and to revolution. form some estimate as to the nature of its effects upon the economic and social life of England. It will be convenient to group the principal changes under four heads, according as they affected (1) the demesne and leasehold, (2) the freehold, (3) the copyhold and (4) the commons.

I. On the demesne and

leasehold.

I. The Demesne.-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 demesie 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). * Savine, English Monasteries, 181.

Surveyinge, c. 2.

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labourers when the demesne was converted into a sheeprun, raised the fundamental question whether the lord was morally justified in turning his land to whatever use he considered best for his own interests. The economic theory of the Middle Ages had subordinated the interest of the individual to the welfare of the community, and mediaeval morality was no less binding on the lord than on his tenants. But the older conceptions of right and wrong were breaking down, and in their stead grew up the conviction that a man might do with his own as he would. "As for turning poor men out of their holds ", cried Gilpin 1, "they take it for no offence, but say the land is their own". More stress ✓ began to be laid upon the rights of ownership than upon its duties. Land came to be regarded purely as a source of wealth, and its real relation to the community was utterly obscured. Common law placed no legal obstacle in the way of the lords, but though the legality of their action, was not called into question, its morality was unsparingly denounced.

In the great multitude of cases, however, the lord had already abandoned the mediaeval system of direct cultivation of the demesne, and preferred to lease it to tenants. Not only the demesne, but also land reclaimed from the waste, and customary holdings which had escheated to the lord after the Black Death, were let on a lease, sometimes for one or more generations, sometimes for a term of years, and sometimes at the lord's will. Where land was thus held on a lease the tenant would be evicted when the indenture expired, the villages were depopulated, the inhabitants rooted in the soil for generations were sent adrift (inhabitantes lacrimose recesserunt) 2, their houses destroyed or allowed to decay, and the land turned into a sheep-run. There was nothing to restrain the lord from tightening his grip upon the soil at the promptings of economic interests.

1 Strype, ii. 441 (temp. Edw. VI.).

Trans. Royal Hist. Soc. N.S. vi. 179.

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According to the statement in Pauli, Drei volksw. Denkschr. 55, 'commonly in all places rich farmers be the keepers of such ground that is laid to pasture," i.e. the agrarian changes were accomplished not by the lords but by wealthy graziers to whom they rented the land, sanctioning the change. Cf. also Tawney, Agrarian Problem, 201 (and n. 1).

The

monas

teries.

example of an overbearing landlord is given by Leland. "Edward, Duke of Buckingham, made a fair park hard by the castle and took much fair ground in it very fruitful of corn, now fair lands for coursing. The inhabitants cursed the duke for these lands so enclosed". Another park was enlarged from one to six miles, "not without many curses of the poor tenants "1.

The monasteries were great landowners, and it is necessary therefore to distinguish between land owned by lay lords and land in ecclesiastical ownership. The actual area of monastic property cannot easily be determined, though its income has been estimated at a hundred thousand pounds 2. Nine-tenths of this rural landed revenue were drawn from the rents of tenants-copyholders, freeholders, leaseholders and tenants-at-will. The rest was derived from land retained by the monks in their own hands as a home farm. The extent of monastic demesne was thus very considerable, and implies that on the eve of the dissolution a great quantity of land was immediately controlled and farmed by ecclesiastical owners. It is difficult to define with certainty the attitude of the monasteries towards their tenants. returns for the Commission of 1517 are insufficient to form the basis of any trustworthy generalizations. Sir Thomas More declares they were drawn into the movement, and that certain abbots among them, "holy men no doubt ", left

3

The

no ground for tillage". On the other hand, Becon tells us that "the cloisters kept hospitality, let out their farms at a reasonable price, nourished schools, brought up youth in good letters", while their successors "did none of these things". His testimony is borne out by other writers, and Brinklow asserts (1542) that "but for the faith's sake. . . it had been more profitable no doubt for the commonwealth that they had remained still in their hands. For why? They never enhanced their rents nor took so cruel fines as do our temporal tyrants "5. This is the evidence of men

1 Leland, Itinerary, v. 100.

* Savine, English Monasteries, 140, 147. The gross temporal income from all sources amounted to £120,000.

3 More, Utopia, ed. E. Arber (1869), 41.

T. Becon," Jewel of Joy", in Works (Parker Soc. Pub.), 435.
H. Brinklow, Complaynt of Roderyck Mors (E.E.T.S.), 9.

who were strongly in favour of the Reformation, and may be accepted as all the more impartial.

attitude.

It is worth while to notice that More wrote about 1515 Their conbefore the monasteries were dissolved, and the monastic servative houses are also attacked in other pre-Reformation writings, for example, in William Roy's Rede me and be nott wrothe (c. 1527) and in A Proper Dyaloge betwene a Gentillman and a Husbandman (1530)1. On the other hand, Becon, Lever and Brinklow wrote after the dissolution when the monasteries, whatever their conduct had been, shone by comparison with their successors. Another piece of evidence supports the conclusion that on the whole the monks were not deeply implicated in the agrarian revolution, as recent writers often maintain. We should expect to find indications of a general conversion of arable to pasture, if anywhere, on the lands retained by the monastic establishments in their immediate ownership. But, on the contrary, the extent of the arable on the demesne appears scarcely less than the extent of the pasture 2. The monks had every inducement to swim with the tide and become sheepfarmers. Grazing was more profitable and involved less outlay than tillage; above all, the monasteries lived in daily fear of dissolution and would be tempted to seek for immediate returns on their capital. In the light of these considerations we may well agree that the figures of monastic tillage are eloquent 3. The government recognized the danger that monastic property might fall into unscrupulous hands, and the act of 15364 which dissolved the monasteries forbade conversion to pasture. But legislation was powerless to stem the tide of change.

"We have shut away all cloisters,

but still we keep extortioners;

We have taken their lands for their abuse,
but we have converted them to a worse use "5.

"Those goods", said Lever, "which did serve to the

1 Ballads from Manuscripts (Ballad Soc. Pub.), i. 16, 20. * Savine, English Monasteries, 177-178.

Statutes, iii. 578.

"Vox Populi Vox Dei", in Ballads from MSS. i. 139.

3 Ibid.

II. Freehold.

relief of the poor, the maintenance of learning, and to comfortable, necessary hospitality in the commonwealth, be now turned to maintain worldly, wicked, covetous ambition "1. The holders of monastic property were even charged with extorting from their tenants their copies and leases, pretending that by virtue of the king's sale of the property " all our former writings are void and of none effect "2. Hence the dissolution of the monasteries greatly accelerated the agrarian changes, and large areas of land passed into the hands of private owners who were generally absentees, and showed but little regard for local custom and tradition. This explains the increased invective against sheep-farming which marks the reign of Edward VI.

II. Freehold.-Land in the occupation of freeholders was protected by common law from any encroachment on the part of the lord. They enjoyed complete legal security, and could neither be turned adrift from their holdings nor subjected to rack-rents and arbitrary fines. To all appearance they were in a position to reap for themselves the full benefit derived from a more progressive husbandry, and to exploit the soil directly in their own interests. The changes which the sixteenth century witnessed in the general level of prices must have served to increase their prosperity, and enable them the more successfully to withstand the economic pressure to which the competition of large capitalist farmers would tend to expose them. Their superior legal status made them also the natural champions of the villagers in the struggle for the commons, and they were able to demand a hearing in the king's court as their inherited right, and not by virtue of a belated and humanitarian concession. Even among the freeholders, however, enclosures were possible in one of two ways. In some cases they exchanged and consolidated their strips to form compact holdings 3. At other times it is probable that a practice which was common in the seventeenth century was sometimes adopted a century 1 Lever, op. cit. 32.

2 "A Supplication of the Poore Commons ", in Four Supplications (E.E.T.S.), 80.

8 In the returns for 1517 it is sometimes definitely stated that the enclosure was the work of the tenant: Trans. Royal Hist. Soc. N.S. vi. 177.

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