A Short History of English Agriculture

and Latimer calls bacon 'the necessary meate' of the labourer, and it seems to have been his great stand-by then as now. The bread and bacon were supplemented largely by milk and porridge.[233] The statute, 24 Hen. VIII, c. 3, says that all food, and especially beef, mutton, pork, and veal, 'which is the common feeding of mean and poor persons.' was too dear for them to buy, and fixed the price of beef and pork at ¹/₂d. a lb. and of mutton and veal at ⁵/₈d. a lb.; but the statute, like others of the kind, was of little avail, and the price of beef was in the middle of the sixteenth century about 1d. a lb. or 8d. in our money. As the average price of wheat at the same date was 14s. a quarter, or about 112s. in our money, fresh meat was comparatively much cheaper, and it is no wonder that even the farmer could not afford wheaten bread regularly. Moryson, writing in Elizabeth's reign, says 'Englishmen eate barley and rye brown bread, and prefer it to white as abiding longer in the stomeck and not so soon digested'.[234]

A tithe dispute at North Luffenham in Rutlandshire throws considerable light on the financial position of the various classes interested in the land about 1576. At the trial several witnesses were examined, who all made statements as to the amount of their worldly wealth, and it is a noteworthy fact that even the humblest had saved something; perhaps because there was no poor law or State pension fund to discourage thrift.[235] Thomas Blackburne, a husbandman, who had served his master as 'chief baylie of his husbandrie', had at the end of a long life saved £40. Another, William Walker, eighty years of age, during forty years of service to Mr. John Wymarke had put by £10. Robert Sculthorp, who had at one time been a farmer, was worth £26 6s. 8d., but the size of his farm is unfortunately not told us. Roland Wymarke, a gentleman farmer, who had farmed for forty years at North Luffenham, was little better off than Thomas Blackburne, the baylie, for he estimated his capital at £50. £50, however, must not be taken as representing the average wealth of a 'gentleman', though a few hundred pounds was then considered a considerable fortune. In 1577 Thomas Corny, a prosperous landlord at Bassingthorpe, Lincolnshire, had a house with a hall, three parlours, seven chambers, a high garret, maid's garret, five chambers for yeomen hinds, shepherd, &c., two kitchens, two larders, milk-house, brew-house, buttery, and cellar; and it was furnished with tables, carpets, cushions, pictures, beds, curtains, chairs, chests, and numerous kitchen and other utensils, besides a quantity of plate, which was then looked upon not only as a useful luxury but as a safe form of investment. The small squire was not nearly so well off as this. In 1527 the house of John Asfordby, who was of that degree, contained a hall, parlour, small parlour, low parlour, a chamber over the parlour, gallery chamber, buttery, and kitchen, and furniture was scanty, but the plate cupboard was well filled.[236] A prosperous yeoman was often comparatively better off than the small squire. Richard Cust, of Pinchbeck in the same county, though his house was small, consisting only of a hall, parlour with chamber over, kitchen with chamber over, brew-house, milne-house (mill-house), and milk-house, was richer in furniture, possessing a folding-table, 4 chairs, 6 cushions, 27 pieces of pewter, 10 candlesticks, 4 basins, 1 laver, 6 beds, and other articles.[237]

CHAPTER X

The cattle and sheep of this period have generally been described as poor animals, and no doubt they would seem small to us. To Jacob Rathgib, a traveller, writing in 1592, they seemed worthy of praise: 'England has beautiful oxen and cows, with very large horns, low and heavy and for the most part black; there is abundance of sheep and wethers, which graze by themselves winter and summer without shepherds.' The heaviest wethers, according to him, weighed 60 lb. and had at the most 6 lb. of wool, a much heavier fleece than is generally ascribed to them; others had 4 or 5 lb. Horses were abundant, and, though low and small, were very fleet; the riding horses being geldings and generally excellent. Immense numbers of swine were in the country, 'larger than in any other.' Six years later another traveller, Hentzner, noticed that the soil abounded with cattle, and the inhabitants were more inclined to feeding than ploughing. He saw, too, a Berkshire harvest-home: 'As we were returning to our inn (at Windsor) we happened to meet some country people celebrating their harvest-home, their last load of corn they crown with flowers, having besides an image richly dressed by which perhaps they would signify Ceres; this they keep moving about, while men and women, men and maid-servants, riding through the streets in the cart, shout as loud as they can till they arrive at the barn.' Harrison[238] tells us, no doubt with patriotic bias, that 'our oxen are such as the like are not to be found in any country of Europe both for greatness of body and sweetness of flesh, their horns a yard between the tips.' Cows had doubled in price in his time, from 26s. 8d. to 53s. 4d. 'Our horses are high, but not of such huge greatness as in other places,' yet remarkable for the easiness of their pace; and 5 or 6 cart-horses will draw 30 cwt. a long journey, and a pack-horse will carry 4 cwt. without any hurt,—a statement which is one more proof of the poorness of the roads. The chief horse fairs were at 'Ripon, Newportpond, Wolfpit, and Harborow,' where horse dealers were as great rogues as ever. Pigeons were still the curse of the farmer, and their cotes were called dens of thieves.

By the end of the sixteenth century, certainly by the first quarter of the seventeenth, the villein, who in the Middle Ages had formed the bulk of the population, had disappeared.[239] It is probable that even at the beginning of the Tudor period the great majority of the bondmen had become free, and that the serf then only formed one per cent. of the population, and many of those had left the country and become artizans in the towns, for personal serfdom had outlasted demesne farming; though even there the heavy hand of the lord was upon them and enforced the ancient customs.

In the sixteenth century flax was apparently grown upon most farms, the statutes 34 Hen. VIII, c. 4, and 5 Eliz., c. 5, obliging every person occupying 60 acres of tillage to have a quarter of an acre in flax or hemp, and Moryson says the husbandmen wore garments of coarse cloth made at home, so did their wives, and 'in generall' their linen was coarse and made at home.[240]

sings Tusser. The statute of Henry VIII enjoined the sowing of flax and hemp because of the great increase of idle people in the realm, to which the numerous imports, especially linen cloth, contributed.

Saffron also was much grown, that at Saffron Walden in Essex was said to be the best in the world, the profit from it being reckoned at £13 an acre. Its virtues were innumerable, if we may believe the contemporary writers; it flavoured dishes, helped digestion, was good for short wind, killed moths, helped deafness, dissolved gravel, and, lastly, 'drunk in wine doth haste on drunkenesse.'

The most important novelty of this century was the potato, which the colonists, sent out in 1586 by Sir Walter Raleigh, brought from Virginia to Ireland, though it had been introduced into Europe by the Spaniards before this. According to Gerard, the old English botanist, it was, on its first introduction from America, only cultivated in the gardens of the nobility and gentry as a curious exotic; and in 1606 it occurs among the vegetables considered necessary for a nobleman's household.[241] It is curious to find Gerard comparing it to what he calls the 'common potato', in reality the sweet potato brought to England by Drake and Hawkins earlier in the century. In James I's reign the root was considered a great delicacy, and was sold to the queen's household at 2s. a lb., an enormous price.

Like most agricultural novelties it spread very slowly, but about the middle of the seventeenth century began to be planted out in the fields in small patches in Lancashire, whence it spread all over the kingdom and to France.[242] At this date it was looked upon as a very second-rate article of food, if we may judge by the Spectator (No. 232), which alludes to it as the diet of beggars. About 1690, Houghton says, 'now they begin to spread all the kingdom over,' and recommends them boiled or roasted and eaten with butter and sugar.[243] Eden notes its increasing popularity during the eighteenth century, and by his time (the end of that century) in many parts it was the staple article of food for the poor; in Somerset the children mainly subsisted on it, and in Devon it was made into bread. Its cultivation on a large scale in the field did not, however, spread all over England till the Napoleonic war, and the ignorance and prejudice against it lasted for long; even Cobbett called it 'the lazy root,' and whole potatoes were used for seed regardless of the number of eyes.

In 1563 was passed the famous Act, 5 Eliz., c. 4, which Thorold Rogers has asserted to be the commencement of a conspiracy for cheating the English workman of his wages, to tie him to the soil, to deprive him of hope, and to degrade him into irremediable poverty.[244] The violence of this language is a prima facie reason for doubting the correctness of his assertion, which on examination is found to be grossly exaggerated. Under Richard II the justices were authorized to fix the rate of wages, provided they did not exceed the maximum fixed by Parliament. The Elizabethan statute abolished the maximum and left the justices to fix reasonable rates. So far from being an attempt to keep wages down it seems to have been an honest effort to regulate them according to prices,[245] whereas most previous statutes had merely reduced wages. The preamble of the Act states this clearly enough, saying that the existing laws with regard to the hiring and wages of servants were insufficient; chiefly because the wages 'are in dyvers places to small and not answerable to this time respecting the advancement of prices in all things that belong to the said servants and labourers, the said lawes cannot conveniently without the great greefe and burden of the poore labourer and hired man be put in due execution.' But as several of these Acts were still beneficial it was proposed to consolidate them into one statute in order to banish idleness, advance husbandry, and give the labourer decent wages. It was enacted therefore that all persons between the ages of twelve years and sixty, not being otherwise occupied, 'nor being a gentleman born, nor having lands of the yearly value of 40s., nor goods to the value of £10,' should be compellable to serve in husbandry with 'any person that keepeth husbandry' by the year, and the hours of work were re-enacted.

This method of fixing wages was in force until 1814, and its repeal then was entirely contrary to the opinion of the artizan class; but it may be doubted if the magistrates extensively used the powers given them by the Act, and wages seem to have been settled generally by competition. Several instances remain, however, of wages drawn up under this Act. Almost immediately after it was passed, in June 1564, the Rutland magistrates met under the Act, and stated that the prices of linen, woollen, leather, corn, and other victuals were great, so they drew up the following list of wages[246]:—

The chief shepherd is only to receive 20s. and 5s. for his livery; but this must be an error, as in the statutes 6 Hen. VIII, c. 3, and 23 Hen. VI, c. 12, he was placed next the bailiff as we should expect.

These wages were evidently 'with diet', and show a considerable advance on those fixed by 6 Hen. VIII, c. 3.[247] By the day the ordinary labourer was to have 6d. in winter, 7d. in summer, and 8d. to 10d. in harvest time, 'finding himself.' A mower with meat earned 5d., without meat 10d. a day; a man reaper with meat 4d., without 8d.; a woman reaper 3d., and 6d.

As the price of corn and meat was three times what it had been in the fifteenth century, and the labourers' wages, taking into consideration his harvest pay, not quite double, the Rutland magistrates hardly observed the spirit of the Act. Rutland, moreover, judging by the assessments of the time, was a county where agriculture was very flourishing; and thirty years after we find in Yorkshire that the winter wages of the labourer were 4d. and the summer 5d. a day: that is, he had little more wages than in the fifteenth century, with provisions risen threefold. At Chester at the same date his day's wages were to be 4d. all the year round.[248] In 1610 the Rutland magistrates at Oakham[249] decreed that an ordinary labourer was to have 6d. a day in winter and 7d. in summer, the same wages as in 1564, yet wheat in that year averaged 32s. 7d. a quarter. A bailiff by the year was now advanced to 52s., a manservant of the best sort, equal no doubt to the chief servant in husbandry, to 50s., a 'common servant' to 40s., and a 'mean servant' to 29s., but all without livery. At Chelmsford, in 1651, there was a very different rate fixed, the ordinary labourer getting from 1s. to 1s. 2d. a day; but this seems to have been exceptional, as at Warwick in 1684 he was only to have 8d., and as late as 1725 in Lancashire 9d. to 10d. a day.[250] In 1682, by the Bury St. Edmunds assessment, a common labourer got 10d. a day in winter and 1s. in summer, and a reaper in harvest 1s. 8d. By the year a bailiff was paid £6, a carter £5, and a common servant £3 10s., of course with food.[251] These figures clearly prove that the wages fixed by the magistrates were often terribly inadequate, though it must be said in their defence that the great rise in prices probably struck them as abnormal and not likely to last. It should be remembered, too, that besides his wages the labourer and his family had often bye industries such as weaving to fall back upon, and in most parts of England still a piece of common land to help him.

CHAPTER XI

But the greatest agricultural event of the century was the introduction of clover and the encouragement of turnips as grown in Holland, by Sir Richard Weston, about 1645. No doubt the turnip was already well known in England. Tusser and Fitzherbert both mention it, apparently as a garden root only; but Gerard in his Herbal, 1597, says it grew in fields 'and divers vineyards or hoppe gardens in most places of England', which certainly points to an effort having been made generally to use it as a field crop whenever an enclosed space gave it some protection from the depredations of the common herds. However, its cultivation must have declined, as long after this it was regarded as a novelty as a field crop in most parts of England.[252] In Holland it had been used in the field universally, and this use with that of 'great', as it was called, or broad clover, Weston pressed on the English farmer. But their progress was wofully slow. At Hawsted in Suffolk clover and turnips were first sown about 1700, and the eastern portion of England was far ahead of the north and west; as late as 1772 Arthur Young wrote that 'sainfoin, cabbages, potatoes, and carrots are not common crops in England; I do not imagine above half or at most two-thirds of the nation cultivate clover.'[253] Yet their introduction must have been of the greatest benefit to the farmer and the public; his stock of hay was increased, he could utilize his fallows, and keep a much larger head of stock through the winter, who would give him a greater quantity of manure. Every one where turnips were grown could now have fresh meat during the winter. The slow progress of these great blessings is perhaps the strongest testimony in our history of the innate conservatism of the farmer. The green crop was for long considered to be suited only to the garden, and as our forefathers were prejudiced against the spade it was difficult to get such crops cultivated even there; but it should also be remembered that no crop was possible in the common fields which did not come to maturity before Lammas, unless some special agreement was made as to it.[254] Clover, Sir Richard Weston said, thrives best when sown on the worst and barrenest ground, which was to be pared and burnt, and unslaked lime added to the ashes. Then it was to be well ploughed and harrowed, and about 10 lb. of seed sown per acre in the end of March or in April. 'It will stand five years, and then when ploughed up will yield three or four years running rich crops of wheat, and then a crop of oats, after which you may sow clover again.'

In the seventeenth century the practice of liming and marling, which had been largely discontinued since the fourteenth century, was revived (Westcote, in his View of Devon in 1630, calls liming, &c., a new invention), and there was also a great improvement in implements. Patents were taken out for draining machines in 1628, for new manures in 1633-6, ploughs 1623-7 and 1634, mechanical sowing 1634-9. Only six were taken out, however, between 1640 and 1760 that concerned agriculture.[255] The Civil War checked the improvement, for though the great mass of the people had nothing to do with either party, the country was of necessity in a very unsettled state, and both sides plundered indiscriminately. Yet in some parts, as in Devonshire, so many of the able men served in the two armies, that few but old men, women, and children were left to manage the farms, and even they were afraid to grow more than enough to supply themselves since both armies seized the crops.[256] These bad effects lasted for some time afterwards; Chapple, a Devonshire land agent of the eighteenth century, says he had talked with people who remembered the state of husbandry in the last ten or twelve years of the reign of Charles II, when in many parts of Devonshire an acre or two of wheat was esteemed a rarity.

That the rate of progress in the century was not more rapid is attributed by Blyth to several causes[257]:—

[258]A proclamation of 1633 fixed the following prices for London poulterers and victuallers:—

According to the Manydown Manor Rolls the Wootton churchwardens in 1600 paid from 8s. to 11s. for calves, 4s. 4d. for a fat lamb, 8s. for a sheep, 6s. 8d. for a barren ewe, 6d. for a couple of chickens, 1s. 6d. for 500 faggots.[259]

After the restoration in 1660 another period of prosperity set in,[260] and altogether the century was a prosperous one for farmers and manufacturers. The newly established Royal Society materially helped agriculture. 'Since his majesty's most happy restoration the whole land hath been fermented and stirred up by the profitable hints it hath received from the Royal Society, by which means parks have been disparked, commons enclosed, woods turned into arable, and pasture lands improved by clover, St. foine, turnips, cole-seed, and many other good husbandries, so that the food of cattle is increased as fast, if not faster, than the consumption, and by these means the rent of the kingdom is far greater than ever it was.'[261] The century was distinguished also for the curious number of cycles of good and bad seasons; 1646-50 were years of prolonged dearth, wheat reaching an enormous price, and 1661-2, were famine years, while the end of the century was long famous for its barren years.

With the prices of produce rents rose enormously. Very early in the century[262] rents of arable land had increased ninefold, since the fifteenth century, and by 1688 Davenant and King estimated the average rent of arable land in England at 5s. 6d. per acre and of permanent grass at 8s. 8d. Perhaps this is too high an estimate, as on the Belvoir estate of 17,837 acres in 1692 the rental all round was 3s. 9¹/₄d. an acre for land above the average in quality, though it must be remembered that the Earls and Dukes of Rutland were indulgent landlords.

The History of Hawsted affords a valuable index of the increase of rents at this period.[263] In 1500 the average rent was 1s. 4d. an acre; in 1572, 39 acres of arable, meadow, and pasture were let for 2s. 3d. an acre, the landlord, it is interesting to notice, reserving the right of hawking, netting rabbits, hunting, and fowling; and about the same date other lands on the estate were let at 1s. 3d. and 1s. 6d. an acre, so that there had not generally been much advance since 1500, which is what we should expect, as the great rise took place at the end of the sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth centuries. In 1589, therefore, it is not surprising to find that 40 acres of meadow and pasture let at 5s. an acre, and in 1611 some buildings and 155 acres of park at 11s. an acre. In 1616, 366 acres of arable and pasture and 39 acres of meadow were valued at 12s. an acre for letting, and the Hall Farm of 175 acres (8¹/₂ acres meadow) at 10s.; and Great Pipers Farm of 138 acres (8 meadow) at 7s., while meadow and pasture near the mansion was valued at 21s. an acre.

In 1658 the rent of the Hall Farm had advanced from 10s. an acre to about 13s., though in 1682 it went down to 11s. 6d.[264] According to the survey of the Manor of Manydown in Hampshire in 1650, meadow land was worth 20s. an acre, pasture 8s. to 10s., arable from 2s. to 10s., the latter showing a great variation in quality.[265] In 1723 Bryers Wood Farm at Hawsted, which had been let in 1620 for £15, was let at £29 5s. These rents are considerably higher than the estimate of Davenant and King; but it must be remembered that they were for land in the parts of England, where farming was at its best, and they, in accounting for the whole country, had to take into consideration a vast amount of land in the north and west which was worth very little. In the Rawlinson Collection[266] in the Bodleian Library is a rental of Lord Kingston's estate in north Nottinghamshire in 1689, the rents averaging 10s. an acre; but this was an exceptionally good estate, much of the property being meadow and pasture. The farmhouses also were above the average, while in two of the parishes the tenants had rights of common, and in two others the tenancies were tithe free. There was very little arable land on the estate, three small holdings letting for 6s. 8d. an acre; and some of the pasture land was let at 14s., 15s. 6d., and even 18s. an acre. The largest farm, Saundby Hall, of 607 acres, nearly all meadow and pasture, was 9s. 10d. an acre. The cottages were fortunate in having pieces of land attached to them. In Saundby, Richard Ffydall rented a cottage and 2 acres of arable land for £1 13s. 4d.; Widow Johnson a cottage and yard for 13s. 4d.; William Daubney a cottage with 6¹/₂ acres of arable and 5¹/₂ acres of pasture for £7 18s. 6d. A farm in Scrooby, consisting of a messuage, cottage, and 113 acres of arable, meadow, and pasture, only let at £23.

As to the freehold value of land, in 1621, according to D'Ewes, it was worth from sixteen to twenty years' purchase; yet, in 1688, Sir Josiah Child said that lands now sell at twenty years' purchase, which fifty or sixty years before sold at eight or ten; and he also states, 'the same farms or lands to be now sold would yield treble and in some cases six times the money they were sold for fifty years ago'.[267] Davenant puts land at twelve years' purchase in 1600, at eighteen years in 1688.[268] In 1729 the price of land was said to be twenty-seven years' purchased.[269]

The legislation against laying down tillage to grass was continued until the end of the sixteenth century. The statute 39 Eliz., c. 1, repealed 4 Hen. VII, c. 19, and all other Acts against pulling down houses, and provided that a house of husbandry should be a house that hath or hath had 20 acres of arable land. All such houses which had been destroyed during the last seven years were to be rebuilt, and if destroyed more than seven years only one-half was to be rebuilt; but to each of them at least 40 acres of land were to be attached.

The next statute, 39 Eliz., c. 2, sets forth once more the advantages of tillage, viz. the increase and multiplying of people for service in the wars, and in time of peace the employment of a greater number of people, the keeping of people from poverty, the dispersal of the wealth of the kingdom in many hands, and 'the standing of this realm upon itself without depending upon foreign countries'[270]; and therefore enacts that lands converted from tillage to pasture shall be restored to tillage within three years, and lands then in tillage should be so continued; but this was only to extend to twenty-three counties, and omitted most of those in the south-west. At the beginning of the seventeenth century a reaction set in; the price of corn had risen immensely and continued to do so, the price of wool remained stationary, and tillage was as profitable as grass. In 1620 Coke speaks of the man who only kept a shepherd and a dog as one who never prospered. In 1624 several of the tillage laws were repealed.[271]

As an example of the unenclosed fields, at the end of the sixteenth century, we may take the common fields at Daventry, which were three in number, containing respectively 368, 383, and 524 acres, divided into furlongs, a term which had now a very wide signification, each of which was subdivided into lands nearly always half an acre in extent, several of these lands when adjoining being often held now by the same owner. One furlong may be taken as an example. It was 37 acres 1 rood in extent, and contained ninety-six lands, owned by seventeen people. The meadows were divided still more minutely, some of the smaller portions being only a quarter of an acre each. The largest meadow contained 50 acres, divided among fifty-three people. In the manor, besides the arable and meadow, there were 300 acres of common pasture, a park, and a small wood. There were forty-one freeholders and many leasehold tenants, the average freehold being 34 acres, the average leasehold only half an acre, small holdings being the usual feature of the unenclosed township.

In the seventeenth century the price of wool ceased to operate as a cause of enclosure, but in many parts the change to pasture continued, owing to the rise in price of cattle and of wages. The same reason, too, for laying down land to grass that had been so powerful in the preceding centuries still existed, the common arable fields needed rest from continual cropping and poor manuring, while good crops of corn could be grown from the virgin soil of the newly enclosed waste. The preamble of the Durham decrees clearly states this: 'the land is wasted and worn with continual ploweing, and thereby made bare, barren, and very unfruitful.'[272] We may, therefore, take Coke's words as inapplicable to many districts. In the seventeenth century there were several methods of enclosing. Sometimes the lord of the manor enclosed and left the land of the tenants still in common; or a tenant enclosed piece by piece; or enclosures were made by Act of Parliament, the earliest of which for common fields was passed in the time of James I, a method at this period very seldom used; or there was an agreement between lord and tenants often authorized by the Courts of Chancery or Exchequer.

Besides enclosure, another process was going on, the consolidation of farms by the amalgamation of small holdings into larger ones. Farmhouses, as we see them to-day, began to appear on the holdings thus consolidated, instead of being grouped together in villages. A writer in 1604 says, 'we may see many of their houses built alone like raven's nests, no birds building neere them' so unwonted was the sight of isolated dwellings in most places at the time.

However, in 1630 Charles I went back to the policy of his forefathers and issued letters to certain of the Midland counties ordering all enclosures of the last two years to be removed, and Commissions were issued to inquire into the matter in 1632, 1635, and 1636,[273] the chief evil feared from enclosures being depopulation, and enclosers were prosecuted in the Court of Star Chamber.

The assertion that enclosures ceased during the seventeenth century has been proved inaccurate by modern research, and there is no doubt that they went on continuously. In 1607, in the Midlands, the enclosing of land produced serious armed resistance, probably because the Midland counties were then the great corn-growing district of England, and the change to pasture and the consolidation of farms displaced a larger population there than elsewhere. Between 1628 and 1630 enclosures in Leicestershire, for instance, were very numerous, no less than 10,000 acres being enclosed in that time, most of which was converted to pasture. The attempt of the Government to check the movement, initiated by Charles I, seems to have had considerable effect, but died away with the Civil War, and though other attempts were made under the Commonwealth they came to nothing, and from this time enclosures went on unchecked by the Government,[274] and were soon to have its active support. Yet there was a vast amount still in common field: the whole of the cultivated land of England in 1685 was stated by King and Davenant to amount to not much more than half the total area, and of this cultivated portion three-fifths was still farmed on the old common-field system. Northamptonshire, Leicestershire, Rutland, Huntingdonshire, and Bedfordshire were comparatively unenclosed.[275] From the books and maps of the day 'it is clear that many routes which now pass through an endless succession of orchards, corn-fields, hay-fields, and bean-fields then ran through nothing but heath, swamp, and warren. In the drawings of an English landscape made in that age for the Grand Duke Cosmo scarce a hedgerow is to be seen.... At Enfield, hardly out of sight of the smoke of the capital, was a region of five-and-twenty miles in circumference which contained only three houses and scarcely any enclosed fields.'[276] The enclosure of these areas was to be mainly the work of the latter half of the eighteenth and the first quarter of the nineteenth centuries.

The amount of enclosure in the fifteenth, sixteenth, and the first half of the seventeenth centuries was, according to the latest research, much, and perhaps very naturally, exaggerated by contemporaries. Between 1455-1607 the enclosures in twenty-four counties are said to have amounted to some 500,000 acres, or 2.76 of their total area,[277] but the evidence for this is by no means conclusive. However, there seems no reason to doubt that the enclosure of this period was but a faint beginning of that great outburst of it that marked the agrarian revolution of the middle of the eighteenth century, and that it was mainly confined to the Midland counties, Mr. Johnson, in his recent Ford Lectures, has stated that the enclosure of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was not accompanied by very much direct eviction of freeholders or bona fide copyholders of inheritance; yet the small holder suffered in many ways, e.g. by the lord disproving the hereditary character of the copyhold, or by changing copyholds of inheritance into copyholds for lives or leases for lives or years. He and his successors could then refuse to renew at the termination of lives or years except on payment of a practically prohibitory fine. In short, though there was not much violation of legal right there was much injustice, and enclosure, though its effects were exaggerated at this period, certainly tended to displace the small landholder. It does not appear, however, that the moderate-sized proprietors were seriously affected. Many of the larger freeholders and copyholders on manors enclosed on their own account, and perhaps increased at the expense of the very large and the very small. Indeed, the decrease of small landowners was chiefly due to political and social causes. The old self-sufficing, agricultural economy of England, which we have seen beginning to break up in the fourteenth century, was becoming thoroughly disintegrated. The capitalist class was increasing; the successful merchant and lawyer were acquiring land and becoming squires; there was an intense land hunger. Simon Degge, wilting of Staffordshire in 1669, says that in the previous sixty years half the lands had changed owners, not so much as of old they were wont to do, by marriage, but by purchase; and he notices how many lawyers and tradesmen have supplanted the gentry.[278]

In fact, there was a much freer disposal of lands from the end of the fifteenth century, when the famous Taltarum's case enabled entailed estates to be barred, until the Restoration, than there has been before or since. For these two hundred years the courts of law and parliament resisted every effort to re-establish the system of entails; the owners of land constantly multiplied, and this tendency must have counteracted the displacement of the small holder by enclosure. Sir Thomas Smith, writing towards the end of the sixteenth century, says that it was the yeomen who bought the lands of 'unthrifty gentlemen;' and Moryson tells us that 'the buyers (excepting lawyers) are for the most part citizens and vulgar men'.[279] It became one of the boasts of England that she had a large number of yeomen farming their own land. During the Civil War, however, it became important to landowners to protect their properties in the interest of children and descendants from forfeiture for treason. The judges lent their aid, and the system of strict family settlements was devised, under which the great bulk of the estates in England are now held. This system favoured the accumulation of lands in a few hands and the aggregation of great estates, and was largely responsible for the disappearance of the small freeholder.

In reviewing the progress of agriculture in the seventeenth century, the drainage of the fen country of Lincolnshire and the adjoining counties must not be forgotten. It had been for centuries the scene of drainage operations on a more or less extended scale, few of which, however, met with success; but in the seventeenth century the growing value of land caused a serious revival of these efforts. Attempts made under Elizabeth and James I had only succeeded in rescuing a certain amount of land for pasture,[280] but in the reign of Charles I the scheme of Cornelius Vermuyden was more successful. His system, however, was defective, and in the reign of Charles II the Bedford Level was in a lamentable state and in danger of reverting to its primitive condition. Many of the works too were destroyed by the 'stiltwalkers', and in 1793 Maxwell states that out of 44,000 acres of fen land in Huntingdonshire only 8,000 or 10,000 were productive[281]; and in 1794 Stone tells us that the commons round the Isle of Axholme were chiefly covered with water.[282] Still to Vermuyden and his contemporaries must be assigned the credit of the first comprehensive scheme for rescuing these fertile lands from the waters that covered them.

At the commencement of this important century an old calendar of 1606[283] clearly sets forth the farming work of the year:—

January and February are the best months for ploughing for peas, beans, and oats, and to have peas soon in the year following sow them in the wane of the moon at S. Andrewstide before Christmas; which may be compared to Tusser's advice for February,