Real gravity of the movement. These statistics lend colour to the view that contemporary writers drew an exaggerated picture of the actual condition agrarian of affairs; in any case they certainly serve as a check upon the imagination. But we may easily fall into the opposite error of minimising the real gravity of the movement. In the first place, the returns made by the Commissioners were collected in the teeth of bitter opposition, and there is reason to believe that they fell considerably short. A more serious defect is that we are not told what proportion of land actually under cultivation was affected by the enclosing movement; it is not enough merely to know the proportion of enclosed land to the total acreage of the county. This consideration is all the more important when we bear in mind the great extent of forests and waste. Every manor had a large area of waste, and forests1 covered much ground in certain counties. Again, social statistics and percentages, while their value is indisputable, may sometimes tend to obscure a true perspective of the social and economic situation. The inhabitants of a whole village might be turned adrift, and the suffering and general dislocation entailed by their eviction would be very inadequately expressed in the statement that a handful of acres out of every two hundred in the county had been enclosed, or a handful of families out of every hundred reduced to poverty. On the whole, however, one or two conclusions may be hazarded. There is every reason to believe that the agrarian changes of the sixteenth century inflicted intense hardships and often actual destitution upon the population of many rural districts. The accounts given by contemporaries were as a rule not fanciful, but represented a condition of affairs that can be supported by unmistakable evidence. On the other hand, they exaggerated the extent of the enclosing movement; they regarded as normal, occurrences which were after all only occasional. Taking the country as a whole, the agricultural revolution affected a smaller area than is usually supposed. At the end of the sixteenth century England was still a land of open fields and common waste, and in the next century the movement continued in certain parts of the country on an 1 E.g. see Leland, Itinerary, passim. extensive scale. We can no longer hold that the common fields were, speaking generally, "undisturbed for a century and a half" (1600-1760) 1; the seventeenth century, it is now recognized, was not "a period of repose "2. circumstances. Two other considerations merit attention. The growth Moderating of the textile industries would disclose opportunities of employment to many who were cut adrift from the soil. One famous clothier of the fifteenth century, John Tame, kept large flocks of sheep at Fairford, and the wool produced there was worked up in his manufactory at Cirencester 3. The undoubted increase in vagrancy and destitution during the Tudor period forbids us to lay too much stress upon the openings provided by the cloth trade. Still, we may suppose that the development of grazing would have its compensations in the districts where it was most stimulated, namely, where the woollen industry was established, and could absorb some of those who were thrown out of employment. The agrarian changes were spread over a considerable period of time, and rendered it more possible for those affected to find alternative means of subsistence. It must not be assumed that the corn-growing districts where the textile industries were least developed, and where enclosures called forth the chief disturbances, were those in which the movement was necessarily advancing most rapidly. The " " Ashley, Economic History, ii. 286. Nor can we hold that about 1530 the movement somewhat slackened". Some of the later decades seem to be periods of not less precipitate change than the earlier decades. For the geographical distribution of the enclosing movement, see map in Johnson, Disappearance of the Small Landowner, 164 (based on Gay's tables in the Quarterly Journal of Economics, xvii.), and also Geographical Journal, xxix. 2 In 1607 a proclamation announced that" the king is not unmindful of the abuse of enclosures and of the loss he suffers by depopulation": Tudor and Stuart Proclamations, i. No. 1042. Ballads continued to denounce enclosures and "you gentlemen that rack your rents and throw down land for corn": C. H. Firth," Ballad History of James I.", in Trans. Royal Hist. Soc. 3rd ser. v. 34-36. Similarly, The Roxburghe Ballads, i. The ballad of the "Northern Beggar Boy" (c. 1635) contains the 112. lines: "My fields lie open as the high way, I wrong not the country by greedy enclosing". On the Midland Revolt (1607), see Gay in Trans. Royal Hist. Soc. N.S. xviii. 3 Journal of the British Archeol. Association, xxvii. 118. greatest outcry came from the Midlands, yet at the close of the seventeenth century these counties were less enclosed than many other counties in England1. We may perhaps infer that pasture farming excited most protest where opportunities of industrial employment were most restricted; that on this account the government was forced to take more active steps to protect the population, and so the movement really made less progress here than elsewhere. Hence the extent of the opposition aroused by enclosures may serve to measure the tardiness rather than the rapidity of the agrarian changes; where other sources of livelihood were rarest, popular clamour would be most insistent and most effective. Again, there was to all appearance no appreciable scarcity of corn or other provisions, in spite of the limitation of the corn-growing area. Complaints were sometimes raised that "all manner of victuals hath been dear" (1529), and that "sheep and sheep-masters doth cause scarcity of corn" (1550) 2, and a proclamation complained of the dearth of provisions in 15513. It was also said that prices had risen; but apparently this was due to the debasement of the currency. It is probable that the curtailment of the arable land was balanced by the increased quantity of crops raised on the enclosed farms where cultivation was now pursued with more skill and initiative. Moreover, the fortunate succession of favourable seasons helped to tide over the evils associated with all periods of transition. " 1 Trans. Royal Hist. Soc. xix. 103. Of Northamptonshire, "the incloser's county, par excellence", it was said in 1712 that the main body of the country is champaign " (open field): Quarterly Journal of Economics, xvii. 595. 2 Ballads from MSS. i. 18 (1529); Certayne Causes, 95 (1550). 3 Tudor and Stuart Proclamations, i. No. 397. 4 Discourse, 52. CHAPTER V THE GROWTH OF TOWNS cultural In the Middle Ages industry and commerce played a sub- The agriordinate part in the economic life of the English people. element in The wealth of England lay in her fields, not in her work- town-life. shops or factories, and the great mass of the nation followed the plough and were tillers of the soil. The typical figures of mediaeval society were the knight and the husbandman rather than the artisan and the trader, and while many towns attained prosperity, the agricultural element was always present and often predominant1. At the end of the thirteenth century half the inhabitants of Colchester had no other occupation than tillage, and everywhere the ordinary pursuits of urban life were made secondary to the more important needs of agriculture. At London the holding of the Husting court was suspended in the harvest 3, and a statute of 1388 laid down that all artificers of whose craft "a man hath no great need in harvest-time shall be compelled to serve in harvest, to cut, gather and bring in the corn "4. As late as the sixteenth century the weavers of Norwich were forbidden to work at their craft during the harvest month "for the relief and help of husbandry ", since tillage was said to be " much decayed for want of labourers "5. The sharp cleavage between town and country, in some respects the most striking feature of modern economic conditions, is in fact the product of industrial forces which exerted but slight pressure in earlier times. For centuries F. W. Maitland, Township and Borough (1898), 8; C. Gross, Gild Merchant (1890), i. 4 (n. 1).. Vict. County Hist. Essex, ii. 329. De Antiquis Legibus Liber, ed. T. Stapleton (1846) 207. 4 Statutes, ii. 56. Records of Norwich, ed. W. Hudson and J. C. Tingey, ii. 377 (1511); 134 (1560). English towns were scarcely more than large-sized villages, and their pre-eminence consisted chiefly in the fortified walls or mound, behind which the inhabitants found shelter and security; beyond these walls lay the broad acres and open fields, the meadows and pastures, that were part and parcel of the townsmen's heritage. In the map of the mediaeval borough and in the economy of the mediaeval burghers, the town-fields occupied a place no less important than the restricted area where stood their houses and shops. At Leicester1 the space within the circuit of the walls covered a hundred and thirty acres, while without it was almost thirty times the number. This explains the importance attached to the annual perambulation of the city boundaries2, for the right to pasture cattle on the town meadows constituted a valuable appurtenance to the rights of citizenship. The Survey of 1086 records that "all the burgesses of Oxford have common of pasture without the wall", and to this day freemen are still entitled to send their cattle to Port Meadow 3. At Northampton a bye-law of 1553 enacted" that no man shall keep more for his franchise than three beasts upon the commons in all"; and in other towns also it was forbidden to overstock the commons. Indeed, throughout the Middle Ages the urban community never completely lost its rural characteristics. The offices of pinder, cowherd, hogherd and herdsman 5 survived even in the sixteenth century among the institutions of town-life, and repeated injunctions were necessary to prevent stray cattle from wandering about the streets. The importance of the 108. 1 Records of Leicester, i. p. xi. 2 Coventry Leet Book, i. 45, iv. 821; N. Bacon, Annals of Ipswich (1884), 3 J. Parker, Early History of Oxford (1885), 300. Records of Northampton, i. 253-254, ii. 215; Southampton Court Leet Records, ed. F. J. C. and D. M. Hearnshaw (1905), 39-40; Leet Jurisdiction in Norwich, ed. W. Hudson (1892), 92. Records of Northampton, ii. 215; Records of Leicester, iii. 123; Red Paper Book of Colchester, ed. W. G. Benham (1902), 132. The list of towns where this regulation is found shows how extensively agricultural life persisted in urban centres: Coventry Leet Book, i. 27; Records of Leicester, ii. 103; Records of Oxford, ed. W. H. Turner (1880), 109, 132; York Memorandum Book, ed. M. Sellers (1912), i. 18; Memorials of London, ed. H. T. Riley (1868), 20; Records of Norwich, ii. 205; Oak Book of Southampton, ed. P. Studer (1910), i. 53; V. Green, History of Worcester, (1796) ii. App. lxvii. |