In

so small that it could not consume all the corn it grew. any case, "the great private estates surrounding the villas of wealthy landowners, and cultivated by dependants of various grades-coloni, freedmen, and slaves "1-cannot have been numerous enough to influence the agricultural development of the country as a whole. Had this been the case, we should almost certainly find more traces than we do of the Roman implements of husbandry,2 which are wellknown and continue in use at the present day, with very little difference in their structure, in those countries where Roman influence was most deeply felt. But, as a matter of fact, as Mr Seebohm shows, though he draws a different conclusion therefrom, one of the main features of English husbandry was the plough-team of eight oxen, common to the agriculture of England, Wales and Scotland, but certainly not Roman in origin. Moreover, the remains of the homesteads and houses of early English villages show us that Roman influence never extended very markedly into agricultural buildings. "The villager in his wattle and daub, and the lord in his oak-rooted hall, carry us back to primitive economics within which there is no room for the great commercialism of the Roman world," and it is a significant fact in this connection that the art of making bricks, and building in brick, introduced by the Romans, was never taken up by the agricultural population as a whole, but became extinct after the Roman occupation till its revival in the fifteenth century.5

§ 16. Celtic and Non-Roman Influence in Agriculture.

The same conclusion-that the Roman occupation had little practical influence with the agricultural industry of the country, except in a few favoured districts —is forced upon 1 Ashley, as above, p. xxv.

* E.g. the wheel-plough; cf. Gomme, Village Community, p. 277.

3

* Seebohm, Village Community, p. 388.

• Gomme, Village Community, p. 46.

* Thorold Rogers, Econ. Interp. of Hist., p. 279.

• The extent of the Romanised area is often exaggerated. The North and West were almost untouched by Romans, and no villas are found north of Aldborough in Yorks. See F. T. Richards in Social England, i. p. 24.

us again by a review of the philological and ethnological evidence, which has hitherto been almost disregarded by economic historians. Where Roman power was greatest in Britain was in the creation of a national government. It hardly so much as entered the life of the agricultural village communities, in which, in spite of the influence of the Romanised towns, the mass of the population of Britain continued to dwell from the first dawn of civilisation till the advent of the factory system and its concomitants. Rome had probably no more effect on the agricultural life of the people of Britain than England has on the methods of the peasant population of India, and when we hear that Britain exported large quantities of corn in the Roman era, we merely note that India exports equally large quantities to England at the present day, without inferring therefrom that the Hindu ryot has adopted English agricultural methods. The agricultural history of our country begins, not with the Roman invasion, but with the pre-historic efforts of those ancient hill-tribes,2 whose industrial relics still remain for our investigation, and who cultivated their hill-sides in terraces, because these were the only clearings that emerged from the all-pervading primeval forest. This is the reason why the population, even at the close of the Roman period, was most numerous in the uplands. The hillmen gave way to the Celts, though their traces are still among us, and the Celts, with their superior culture, developed agriculture probably almost up to the level at which it was found at the Saxon conquest, and at which it remained for many centuries afterwards. The philological evidence on this point is of considerable interest. An extraordinary number of words in our present language referring to agricultural implements and industry are of Celtic origin, and those are said to be "not a twentieth of what might be alleged." A few instances

* For a careful investigation of this evidence see Gomme, Village Commwnicy, pp. 71, 83-95, * Green, Making of England, p. & Garnett, in the Journal of the Philologioni Society, i. 171. Among others he instances -bran (skin of wheat), cabin, gusset (gr. Welsh, cwysed, ridge or furrow), threave (a bundle of sheaves, W., dryin), bill, fieam W., finasm, a cattle lancet), wain, wall, trace, stook of corn), gavelock (a fork), park (=a field), filly, fog (=fog-grass), basket, &c., &c. Measures of

1

are given in the footnote, and it should also be noticed, as showing the permanence of ancient populations in the rural districts, that many rural or "provincial" terms are Celtic in origin. The survivals of curious customs connected with land, and the evidence of folk-lore generally, must be left to the archeologist; 2 but the student of industrial history cannot fail to notice the persistence of ancient populations, even in a subject condition, and their influence upon industrial life. Very possibly it is to this persistence that the backwardness of English agriculture for so many centuries is largely due. Learning little from the Roman, the

4

native inhabitants of Britain had little to teach the Saxon. Even now, at the close of the nineteenth century, in the remoter districts of Ireland the heir of centuries of Celtic civilisation may be seen ploughing with his rude plough fastened to his horse's tail, while in the Isle of Man a farmer of the present generation sacrificed one of his cattle at the cross roads to cure a plague which was destroying the others. The ethnological evidence has of late been carefully studied, and distinct traces of an earlier (non-Aryan) population have been found in many places, the distinguishing characteristics of this early race being their dark hair, dark eyes, dark skin, and small stature. Such traces are seen in such varying localities as the counties comprising the ancient Siluria - Glamorgan, Brecknock, Monmouth, Radnor, and Hereford-in Cornwall and Devon, and in Gloucester, Wiltshire, and Somerset.5 We may

grain show Celtic origin-e.g., windle (Lancs. dialect for a measure, from W., gwyntell, a basket) hoop (Yorks. for a quarter peck), hattock (Yorks. for a shock of corn), peck (cf. W., peg). Also flannen (Hereford for flannel), frieze, brat (Yorks. for "pinafore,” cf. W., brat=clout; rag), mesh (cf. W., masg, a stitch), borel (O.E. for coarse cloth, cf. bureler), lath, &c., may be instanced for textile industry. Probably a careful investigation of rural dialects would furnish many more.

1 Besides provincialisms given above, cf. Yorks. toppin, a crest or ridge; sile, a strainer; Northern stook, a shock of corn; Somerset, soc, a ploughshare, on which last cf. Schrader, Sprachvergleichung (Eng. trans.), p. 288. 2 Cf. Gomme, ut supra, chs. v. and vi.

3 The author heard this stated publicly by a Notts farmer who was an eye-witness during a visit to Ireland.

4 Walpole, Land of Home Rule, p. 190 n. This farmer was alive in 1893.

5 Elton, Origins, p. 137, with which cf. the note on p. 57 of Cunningham's English Industry and Commerce, vol. i.

expect to find survivals in the west, but it is more surprising to discover them still existing in the eastern fen country and in the Midlands-especially round about Derby, Stamford, Leicester, and Loughborough 1 — for here we know, from place names and other evidence, that the Saxon and Danish conquerors settled in overwhelming numbers. But this merely proves how hard it is to destroy a subject population,2 and if the non-Aryan, pre-Celtic inhabitants of early Britain have thus survived, a fortiori must we make allowance for the survival of the Celtic races who succeeded and conquered them, only to be in turn conquered themselves. The Celtic race, in spite of some modern appearances to the contrary, possesses, under certain circumstances, a considerable power of amalgamation with other races without entirely losing its distinctive characteristics. They amalgamated as conquerors with the Iberians, and as conquered with the Saxon and Scandinavian, and the most recent historian of the Isle of Man, where their influence is so strongly marked, has called attention to their place in the history of culture. "We live in a time when the Celtic race is gradually disappearing. Those parts of Europe where Celtic blood is predominant are those where population is decreasing (as in Ireland) or with difficulty maintained (as in France). Yet we ought not, in consequence, to forget the great part which the Celt has played in history, or the influence which the Celt has exercised in the civilisation of the world." 6 Hitherto, certainly, the economic historian has neglected to note his influence upon English agriculture, an influence which, though at first in favour of progress up to a certain point, was probably afterwards rather conservative

1 Elton, u. 8.

2 Cf. also S. Walpole, Land of Home Rule, p. 14, and also p. 21, for description of the Celtic and Iberian population as existing in the undisturbed isolation of the Isle of Man in Roman times.

3 As now in the United States.

4 Walpole, ib., p. 14.

5 Strikingly so in the Isle of Man, which affords a very favourable field for ethnological study; cf. Walpole, ib., 6 Ib., 76. p. p. 41. 7 Though some admit the survival of many of the Celtic and pre-Celtic population (cf. Ashley, preface to F. de Coulanges' Origin of Property in Land, p. 36), they forget the influence which these must have exercised.

or even retrogressive. If it is true, as Professor Ashley puts it, that "under the Celtic, and therefore under the Roman, rule, the cultivating class was largely composed of the pre-Celtic race," and that "the agricultural population was but little disturbed," it seems clear that the economic influence of such a population must have been very marked. Such indeed we shall find afterwards to be the case, when we come to investigate more closely the manorial system as it appeared in Anglo-Saxon and Norman times.

4

§ 17. Commerce and Industry in Roman Britain. But before proceeding to the Saxon period we must in conclusion give a short glance at trade and industry under the Romans. The pax Romana allowed both to develop as far as they were at that time likely to do, and, though never a rich country, in this early time3 Britain was certainly not a land of poverty. Agriculture went on, as it had done before the Romans came, and as it was sure to do under a peaceful regime, while mining seems to have been even more vigorously carried on than of old. Lead was mined in the Mendip Hills, Derbyshire, and elsewhere, and became so abundant that its output was limited by law; copper in Anglesey and Shropshire; iron in the Forest of Dean, Hereford, and Monmouth; coal, though only for home use, in Northumberland; and in some parts a little silver.5 The roads also threw those parts of the country through which they passed open to trade and intercourse, though on the other hand in later periods nothing is more striking than the self-contained character of the villages, and their comparative isolation one from the other." The harbours of the south and south-east coast did a busy trade with Gaul, whose merchants acted as intermediaries between Britain and the outer world. The chief British exports seem to have been, besides corn and the minerals already

1 Ashley, preface to F. de Coulanges' Origin of Property in Land, p.37. 2 Cf. also Gibbon, Decline and Fall, ch. xxxviii.

3 Cf. F. T. Richards in Soc. England, vol. i. p. 93.

4 Cf. O. M. Edwards in Social England, vol. i.

5 F. T. Richards in Social England, vol. i. p. 92.

p. 87.

6 Cf. the case of Bampton, quoted by Gomme, V. C., p. 160.