A Short History of English Agriculture

The farm servants' food would be worth considerably more than the actual cash he received; a quarter of wheat, barley, and rye mixed every nine weeks was no unusual allowance, which at 4s. 4d. would be worth about 25s. a year. He would also have his harvest allowance, though the statute above forbids any perquisites, worth about 3s., and sometimes it was accompanied by the gift of a pig, some beer, or some herrings.[164] His wife also, at a time when women did the same work as the men, could earn 1d. a day, and his boy perhaps ¹/₂d. If his wages were wholly paid in money, we may say that in the last half of the fourteenth century the ordinary labourer earned 3d. a day, so that as corn and pork, his chief food, had not risen at all, he was much better off than in the preceding 100 years.

Cullum, in his invaluable History of Hawsted, gives us a picture of harvesting on the demesne lands in 1389 which shows an extraordinarily busy scene. There were 200 acres of all kinds of corn to be gathered in, and over 300 people took part; though apparently such a crowd was only collected for the two principal days of the harvest, and it must be remembered that the towns were emptied into the country at this important season. The number of people for one day comprised a carter, ploughman, head reaper, cook, baker, brewer, shepherd, daya (dairymaid); 221 hired reapers; 44 pitchers, stackers, and reapers (not hired, evidently villeins paying their rents by work); 22 other reapers, hired for goodwill (de amore); and 20 customary tenants. This small army of men consumed 22 bushels of wheat, 8 pennyworth of beer, and 41 bushels of malt, worth 18s. 9¹/₂d.; meat to the value of 9s. 11¹/₂d.; fish and herrings, 5s. 1d.; cheese, butter, milk, and eggs, 8s. 3¹/₂d.; oatmeal, 5d. salt, 3d.; pepper and saffron, 10d., the latter apparently introduced into England in the time of Edward III, and much used for cooking and medicine, but it gradually went out of fashion, and by the end of the eighteenth century was only cultivated in one or two counties, notably Essex where Saffron Walden recalls its use; candles, 6d.; and 5 pairs of gloves 10d.[165]

The presentation of gloves was a common custom in England; and these would be presented as a sign of good husbandry, as in the case of the rural bridegroom in the account of Queen Elizabeth's visit to Kenilworth who wore gloves to show he was a good farmer. Tusser bids the farmer give gloves to his reapers. The custom was still observed at Hawsted in 1784, and in Eden's time, 1797, the bursars of New College, Oxford, presented each of their tenants with two pairs, which the recipients displayed on the following Sunday at church by conspicuously hanging their hands over the pew to show their neighbours they had paid their rent. In this account of the Hawsted harvest the large number of hired men and the few customary tenants is noteworthy as a sign of the times, for before the Black Death the harvest work on the demesne was the special work of the latter.

In the fourteenth century the long series of corn laws was commenced which was to agitate Englishmen for centuries, and after an apparently final settlement in 1846 to reappear in our day.[166] It was the policy of Edward III to make food plentiful and cheap for the whole nation, without special regard to the agricultural interest: and by 34 Edw. III, c. 20, the export of corn to any foreign part except Calais and Gascony, then British possessions, or to certain places which the king might permit, was forbidden. Richard II, however, reversed this policy in answer to the complaints of agriculturists whose rents were falling,[167] and endeavoured to encourage the farmer and especially the corn-grower; for he saw the landlords turning their attention to sheep instead of corn, owing to the high price of labour. Accordingly, to give the corn-growers a wider market, he allowed his subjects by the statute 17 Ric. II, c. 7, to carry corn, on paying the duties due, to what parts they pleased, except to his enemies, subject however to an order of the Council; and owing to the interference of the Council the law probably became a dead letter, at all events we find it confirmed and amended by 4 Hen. VI, c. 5.

The prohibition of export must have been a serious blow to those counties near the sea, for it was much easier to send corn by ship to foreign parts than over the bad roads of England to some distant market.[168] Indeed, judging by the great and frequent discrepancy of prices in different places at the same date, the dispatch of corn from one inland locality to another was not very frequent. Richard also attempted to stop the movement, which had even then set in, of the countrymen to the growing towns, forbidding by 12 Ric. II, c. 5, those who had served in agriculture until 12 years of age to be apprenticed in the towns, but to 'abide in husbandry'.

One of the most unjust customs of the Middle Ages was that which bade the tenants of manors, except those who held the jus faldae, fold their sheep on the land of the lord, thus losing both the manure and the valuable treading.[169] However, sometimes, as in Surrey, the sheepfold was in a fixed place and the manure from it was from time to time taken out and spread on the land.[170]

In the same district horses had been hitherto used for farm work, as it was considered worthy of note that oxen were beginning to be added to the horse teams. The milk of two good cows in twenty-four weeks was considered able to make a wey of cheese, and in addition half a gallon of butter a week; and the milk of 20 ewes was equal to that of 3 cows.

On the Manor of Flaunchford, near Reigate, the demesne land amounted to 56 acres of arable and two meadows, but there must have been the usual pasture in addition to keep the following head of stock: 13 cows, who in the winter were fed from the racks in the yard; 4 calves, bought at 1s. each; 12 oxen for ploughing, whose food was oats and hay—a very large number for 56 acres of arable, and they were probably used on another manor; 1 stott, used for harrowing; a goat, and a sow.

CHAPTER VI

In this period the average prices of grain remained almost unchanged until the last three decades, when they began slowly and steadily to creep up, this advance being helped to some extent by defective harvests. In 1527, according to Holinshed it rained from April 12 to June 3 every day or night; in May thirty hours without ceasing; and the floods did much damage to the corn. In 1528 incessant deluges of rain prevented the corn being sown in the spring, and grain had to be imported from Germany. The price of wheat was a trifle higher than in the period 1259-1400; barley, oats, and beans lower; rye higher.[171] Oxen and cows were dearer, horses about the same, sheep a little higher, pigs the same, poultry and eggs dearer, wool the same, cheese and butter dearer. The price of wheat was sometimes subject to astonishing fluctuations: in 1439 it varied from 8s. to 26s. 8d.; in 1440 from 4s. 2d. to 25s. The rent of land continued the same, arable averaging 6d. an acre,[172] though this was partly due to the fact that rents, although now generally paid in money, were still fixed and customary; for the purchase value of land had now risen to twenty years instead of twelve.[173] The art of farming hardly made any progress, and the produce of the land was consequently about the same or a little better than in the preceding period.[174]

At the end of the fourteenth century the ordinary wheat crop at Hawsted was in favourable years about a quarter to the acre, but it was often not more than 6 bushels; and this was on demesne land, usually better tilled than non-demesne land.[175] As for the labourer, it is well known that Thorold Rogers calls the fifteenth century his golden age, and seeing that his days' wages, if he 'found himself', were now 4d. and prices were hardly any higher all round than when he earned half the money in the thirteenth century, there is much to support his view. As to whether he was better off than the modern labourer it is somewhat difficult to determine; as far as wages went he certainly was, for his 4d. a day was equal to about 4s. now; it is true that on the innumerable holidays of the Church he sometimes did not work,[176] but no doubt he then busied himself on his bit of common. But so many factors enter into the question of the general material comfort of the labourer in different ages that it is almost impossible to come to a satisfactory conclusion. Denton paints a very gloomy picture of him at this time[177]; so does Mr. Jessop, who says, the agricultural labourers of the fifteenth century were, compared with those of to-day, 'more wretched in their poverty, incomparably less prosperous in their prosperity; worse clad, worse fed, worse housed, worse taught, worse governed; they were sufferers from loathsome diseases, of which their descendants know nothing; the very beasts of the field were dwarfed and stunted; the disregard of to sell their corn at low prices to the detriment of the whole kingdom: a typical example of the political economy of the time, which considered the prosperity of agriculture indispensable to the welfare of the country, even if the consumer suffered. Accordingly, it was enacted that wheat could be exported without a licence when it was under 6s. 8d. a quarter, except to the king's enemies. On imports of corn there had been no restriction until 1463, when 3 Edw. IV, c. 2 forbade the import of corn when under 6s. 8d. a statute due partly to the fear that the increase of pasture was a danger to tillage land and the national food supply, and partly to the fact that the landed interest had become by now fully awake to the importance of protecting themselves by promoting the gains of the farmer.[178] It may be doubted, however, if much wheat was imported except in emergencies at this time, for many countries forbade export. These two statutes were practically unaltered till 1571,[179] and by that of 1463 was initiated the policy which held the field for nearly 400 years.

Thorold Rogers denounces the landlords for legislating with the object of keeping up rents, but, as Mr. Cunningham has pointed out, this ignores the fact that the land was the great fund of national wealth from which taxation was paid; if rents therefore rose it was a gain to the whole country, since the fund from which the revenue was drawn was increased.[180]

In spite of the high wages of agricultural labourers, the movement towards the towns noticed by Richard II continued. The statute 7 Hen. IV, c. 17, asserts that there is a great scarcity of labourers in husbandry and that gentlemen are much impoverished by the rate of wages; the cause of the scarcity lying in the fact that many people were becoming weavers,[181] and it therefore re-enacted 12 Ric. II, c. 5, which ordained that no one who had been a servant in husbandry until 12 years old should be bound apprentice, and further enacted that no person with less than 20s. a year in land should be able to apprentice his son. Like many other statutes of the time this seems to have been inoperative, for we find 23 Hen. VI, c. 12 (1444), enacting that if a servant in husbandry purposed leaving his master he was to give him warning, and was obliged either to engage with a new one or continue with the old. It also regulated the wages anew, those fixed showing a substantial increase since the statute of 1388. By the year:—

In the next reign the labourer's dress was again regulated for him, and he was forbidden to wear any cloth exceeding 2s. a yard in price, nor any 'close hosen', apparently tight long stockings, nor any hosen at all which cost more than 14d.[182] Yeomen and those below them were forbidden to wear any bolsters or stuff of wool, cotton wadding, or other stuff in their doublets, but only lining; and somewhat gratuitously it was ordered that no one under the degree of a gentleman should wear pikes to his shoes.

In 1455 England's Thirty Years' War, the War of the Roses, began, and agriculture received another set back. The view that the war was a mere faction fight between nobles and their retainers, while the rest of the country went about their business, is somewhat exaggerated. No doubt, the mass of Englishmen, as in the civil war of the seventeenth century, preferred to 'sit still', as Clarendon said, but the business of many must have been very much upset. The various armies were compelled to obtain their supplies from the country, and with the lawless habits of the times plundered friend and foe alike, as Cavalier and Roundhead did afterwards; and many a farmer must have seen all his stock driven off and his grain seized to feed the combatants. For instance, it was said before the battle called Easter Day Field that all the tenants of Abbot's Ripton in Huntingdonshire were copyholders of the Abbot of Ramsey, and the northern army lay there so long that they impoverished the country and the tenants had to give up their copyholds through poverty.[183] The loss of life, too, must have told heavily on a country already suffering from frequent pestilence. It is calculated that about one-tenth of the whole population of the country were killed in battle or died of wounds and disease during the war; and as these must have been nearly all men in the prime of life, it is difficult to understand how the effect on the labour market was not more marked. The enclosing of land for pasture farms, which we shall next have to consider, was probably in many cases an absolute necessity, for the number of men left to till the soil must have been seriously diminished.

CHAPTER VII

We have now reached a time when the enclosure question was becoming of paramount importance,[184] and began to cause constant anxiety to legislators, while the writers of the day are full of it. Enclosure was of four kinds:

It is the first mainly, and to a less degree the third of these, which were so frequent a source of complaint in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries; for the first, besides displacing the small holder, threw out of employment a large number of people who had hitherto gained their livelihood by the various work connected with tillage, and the third deprived a large number of their common rights.

The first Enclosure Act was the Statute of Merton, passed in 1235, 20 Henry III, c. 4, which permitted lords of manors to add to their demesnes such parts of the waste pasture and woods as were beyond the needs of the tenants. There is evidence, however, that enclosure, probably of waste land, was going on before this statute, as the charter of John, by which all Devonshire except Dartmoor and Exmoor was deforested, expressly forbids the making of hedges, a proof of enclosure, in those two forests.[185] We may be sure that the needs of the tenants were by an arbitrary lord estimated at a very low figure. At the same time many proceeded in due legal form. Thomas, Lord Berkeley, about the period of the Act reduced great quantities of ground into enclosures by procuring many releases of common land from freeholders.[186] His successor, Lord Maurice, was not so observant of legality. He had a wood wherein many of his tenants and freeholders had right of pasture. He wished to make this into a park, and treated with them for that purpose; but things not going smoothly, he made the wood into a park without their leave, and then treated with his tenants, most of whom perforce fell in with his highhanded plan; those who did not 'fell after upon his sonne with suits, in their small comfort and less gaines.'[187] Sometimes the rich made the law aid their covetousness, as did Roger Mortimer the paramour of the 'She Wolf of France'. Some men had common of pasture in King's Norton Wood, Worcestershire, who, when Mortimer enclosed part of their common land with a dike, filled the dike up, for they were deprived of their inheritance. Thereupon Mortimer brought an action of trespass against them 'by means of jurors dwelling far from the said land', who were put on the panel by his steward, who was also sheriff of the county, and the commoners were convicted and cast in damages of £300, not daring to appear at the time for fear of assault, or even death.[188] Neither dared they say a word about the matter till Mortimer was dead, when it is satisfactory to learn that Edward III gave them all their money back save 20 marks. We are told that Lord Maurice Berkeley consolidated much of his demesne lands, throwing together the scattered strips and exchanging those that lay far apart from the manor houses for those that lay near; trying evidently to get the home farms into a ring fence as we should term it.[189] In this policy he was followed by his successor Thomas the Second, who during his ownership of the estate from 1281 to 1320, to the great profit of his tenants and himself, encouraged them to make exchanges, so as to make their lands lie in convenient parcels instead of scattered strips, by which he raised the rent of an acre from 4d. and 6d. to 1s. 6d.[190] There is a deed of enclosure made in the year 1250, preserved, by which the free men of North Dichton 'appropriated and divided between them and so kept for ever in fee all that place called Sywyneland, with the moor,' and they were to have licence to appropriate that place, which was common pasture (the boundaries of which are given), 'save, however, to the grantor William de Ros and his heirs' common of pasture in a portion thereof named by bounds, with entry and exit for beasts after the wheat is carried. The men of North Dichton were also to have all the wood called Rouhowthwicke, and to do what they liked with it.[191] In return they gave the lord 10 marks of silver and a concession as regards a certain wood. It has been noticed that the Black Death, besides causing many of the landlords to let their demesnes, also made them turn much tillage into grass to save labour, which had grown so dear. We have also seen that the statutes regulating wages were of little effect, and they went on rising, so that more land was laid down to grass. The landowners may be said to have given up ordinary farming and turned to sheep raising.

English wool could always find a ready sale, although Spanish sheep farming had developed greatly; and the profitable trade of growing wool attracted the new capitalist class who had sprung up, so that they often invested their recently made fortunes in it, buying up many of the great estates that were scattered during the war.[192]

The increase of sheep farming was assisted by the fact that the domestic system of the manufacture of wool, which supplanted the guild system, led, owing to its rapid and successful growth, to a constant and increasing demand for wool. At the same time this development of the cloth industry helped to alleviate the evils it had itself caused by giving employment to many whom the agricultural changes wholly or partially deprived of work. 'It is important to remember, that where peasant proprietorship and small farming did maintain their ground it was largely due to the domestic industries which supplemented the profits of agriculture.'[193]

Much of the land laid down to grass was demesne land, but many of the common arable fields were enclosed and laid down. John Ross of Warwick about 1460 compares the country as he knew it with the picture presented by the Hundred Rolls in Edward I's time, showing how many villages had been depopulated; and he mentions the inconvenience to travellers in having to get down frequently to open the gates of enclosed fields.[194]

Enclosure was really a sure sign of agricultural progress; nearly all the agricultural writers from Fitzherbert onwards are agreed that enclosed land produced much more than uninclosed. Fitzherbert, in the first quarter of the sixteenth century, said an acre of land rented for 6d. uninclosed was worth 8d. when enclosed. Gabriel Plattes, in the seventeenth century, said an acre enclosed was worth four in common. In fact, the history of enclosures is part of the history of the great revolution in agriculture by which the manorial system was converted into the modern system as we know it to-day of several ownership and the triumvirate of landlord, tenant farmer, and labourer. No one could have objected to the enclosure of waste; it was that of the common arable fields and of the common pasture that excited the indignation of contemporaries. They saw many of the small holders displaced and the countryside depopulated; many of the labourers were also thrown out of employment, for there was no need in enclosed fields of the swineherd and shepherd and oxherd who had tended the common flocks of the villagers in the old unfenced fields. But much of the opposition was founded on ignorance and hatred of change; England had been for ages mainly a corn-growing land, and, many thought, ought to remain so. As a matter of fact, what much of the arable land wanted was laying down to grass; it was worn out and needed a rest. The common field system was wasteful; the land, for instance, could never be properly ploughed, for the long narrow strips could not be cross-ploughed, and much of it must have suffered grievously from want of manure at a time when hardly any stock was kept in the winter to make manure. The beneficial effect of the rest is shown by the fact that at the end of the sixteenth century, when some of the land came to be broken up, the produce per acre of wheat had gone up largely.[195] Marling and liming the land, too, which had been the salvation of much of it for centuries, had gone out partly because of insecurity of tenure, partly because in the unsettled state of England men knew not if they could reap any benefit therefrom; and partly because, says Fitzherbert, men were lazier than their fathers. There can be no doubt that enclosures were often accompanied with great hardships and injustice. Dugdale, speaking of Stretton in Warwickshire,[196] says that in Henry VII's time Thomas Twyford, having begun the depopulation thereof, decaying four messuages and three cottages whereunto 160 acres of 'errable' land belonged, sold it to Henry Smith; which Henry, following that example, enclosed 640 acres of land more, whereby twelve messuages and four cottages fell to ruins and eighty persons there inhabiting, being employed about tillage and husbandry, were constrained to depart thence and live miserably. By means whereof the church grew to such ruin that it was of no other use than for the shelter of cattle. A sad picture, and true of many districts, but much of the depopulation ascribed to enclosures was due to the devastation of the Civil Wars.

In spite of these enclosures, which began to change the England of open fields into the country we know of hedgerows and winding roads, great part of the land was in a wild and uncultivated state of fen, heath, and wood, the latter sometimes growing right up to the walls of the towns.[197] An unbroken series of woods and fens stretched right across England from Lincoln to the Mersey, and northwards from the Mersey to the Solway and the Tweed; Warwickshire, Northamptonshire, and Leicestershire were largely covered by forests, and Sherwood Forest extended over nearly the whole of Notts. Cannock Chase was covered with oaks, and in the forest of Needwood in Camden's time the neighbouring gentry eagerly pursued the cheerful sport of hunting. The great forest of Andredesweald, though much diminished, still covered a large part of Sussex, and the Chiltern district in Bucks and Oxfordshire was thick with woods which hid many a robber. The great fen in the east covered 300,000 acres of land in six counties, in spite of various efforts to reclaim the land, and was to remain in a state of marsh and shallow water till the seventeenth century.

North and west of the great fen was Hatfield Chase, 180,000 acres mostly swamp and bog, with here and there a strip of cultivated land, much of which had been tilled and neglected; a great part too of Yorkshire was swamp, heath, and forest, and of Lancashire marshes and mosses, some of which were not drained till recent times. The best corn-growing counties were those lying immediately to the north of London, stretching from Suffolk to Gloucestershire, and including the southern portions of Staffordshire and Leicestershire; Essex was a great cheese county; Hants, Cambridgeshire, Northamptonshire, and Bedfordshire were famous for malt, and Leicestershire for peas and beans. The population of England in 1485 was probably from two to two and a half millions. At the time of Domesday it was under two millions, and from that date increased perhaps to nearly four millions at the time of the Black Death in 1348-9, which swept away from one-third to one-half of the people, and repeated wars and pestilences seem to have kept it from increasing until Tudor times. Of the whole population no fewer than eleven-twelfths were employed in agriculture.[198]

It was sought to remedy enclosure and depopulation by legislation, and the statute of 4 Hen. VII, c. 19, was passed, which stated in its preamble that where in some towns (meaning townships or villages) 200 persons used to be occupied and lived by their lawful labours, now there are occupied only two or three herdsmen, so that the residue fall into idleness, and husbandry is greatly decayed, churches destroyed, the bodies there buried not prayed for, the parsons and curates wronged, and the defence of this land enfeebled and impaired; the latter point being wisely deemed one of the most serious defects in the new system of farming. Indeed, the encouragement of tillage was largely prompted by the desire to see the people fed on good home-grown corn and made strong and healthy by rural labour for the defence of England. It therefore enacted that houses which within three years before had been let for farms with 20 acres of tillage land should be kept in that condition, under a penalty of forfeiting half the profits to the king or the lord of the fee. Soon after Henry VIII ascended the throne came another statute, 6 Hen. VIII, c. 5, that all townships, villages, &c., decayed and turned from husbandry and tillage into pasture, shall by the owner be rebuilt and the land made mete for tillage within one year; and this was repeated and made perpetual by a law of the next year.[199]

But legislation was in vain; the price of wool was now beginning to advance so that the attraction of sheep farming was irresistible, and laws, which asked landowners and farmers to turn from what was profitable to what was not, were little likely to be observed, especially as the administration of these laws was in the hands of those whose interest it was that they should not be observed.

Their ill success, however, did not deter the Parliament from fresh efforts. 25 Hen. VIII, c. 13, sets forth the condition of affairs in its preamble: as many persons have accumulated into few, great multitude of farms and great plenty of cattle, especially sheep, putting such land as they can get into pasture, and enhanced the old rents and raised the prices of corn, cattle, wool, and poultry almost double, 'by reason whereof a mervaylous multitude and nombre of the people of this realme be not able to provide drynke and clothes necessary for themselves, but be so discoraged with myserie and povertie that they fall dayly to thefte and robberye or pitifully dye for hunger and colde.' So greedy and covetous were some of these accumulators that they had as many as 24,000 sheep; and a good sheep, that was used to be sold for 2s. 4d. or 3s. at the most, was now from 4s. to 6s.; and a stone of clothing wool, that in some shires was accustomed to be sold for 18d. or 20d., is now 3s. 4d. to 4s.; and in others, where it was 2s. 4d. to 3s. it is now 4s. 8d. to 5s.

It was therefore enacted that no man, with some exceptions, was to keep more than 2,000 sheep at one time in any part of the realm, though lambs under one year were not to count. The frequency of these laws proves their inefficacy, and the conduct of Henry VIII was the chief cause of it; for while Parliament was complaining of the decrease of tillage he gave huge tracts of land taken from the monasteries to greedy courtiers, who evicted the tenants and lived on the profits of sheep farming.[200] For the dissolution of the monasteries was now taking Place,[201] and the best landowners in England, some of whom farmed their own land long after most of the lay landlords had given it up or turned it into grass, and whose lands are said to have fetched a higher rent than any others, were robbed and ruined. Including the dissolution of the monasteries and the confiscation of the chantry lands in 1549 by Edward VI, about one-fifteenth of the land of England changed hands at this time. The transfer of the abbey lands to Henry's favourites was very prejudicial to farming; it was a source of serious dislocation of agricultural industry, marked by all the inconvenience, injustice, and loss that attends a violent transfer of property. It is probable also that many of the monastic lands were let on stock and land leases; and the stock was confiscated, with inevitable ruin to the tenant as well as the landlord.[202] And not only was a serious injury wrought to agriculture by the spoliation of a large number of landlords generally noted for their generosity and good farming, but with the religious houses disappeared a large number of consumers of country produce, the amount of which may be gathered from the following list of stores of the great Abbey of Fountains at the dissolution: 2,356 horned cattle, 1,326 sheep, 86 horses, 79 swine, and large quantities of wheat, oats, rye, and malt, with 392 loads of hay.[203] It must indeed have seemed to many as if the poor farmer was never to have any rest; no sooner were the long wars over and pestilences in some sense diminished, than the evils of enclosure and the dissolution of the monasteries came upon him. Many ills were popularly ascribed to the fall of the monasteries; in an old ballad in Percy's Reliques one of the characters says, in western dialect:—