A Short History of English Agriculture Part 11

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 t.i.the dispute at North Luffenham in Rutlands.h.i.+re throws considerable light on the financial position of the various cla.s.ses 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 Ba.s.singthorpe, Lincolns.h.i.+re, 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, b.u.t.tery, and cellar; and it was furnished with tables, carpets, cus.h.i.+ons, pictures, beds, curtains, chairs, chests, and numerous kitchen and other utensils, besides a quant.i.ty 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, b.u.t.tery, 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 cus.h.i.+ons, 27 pieces of pewter, 10 candlesticks, 4 basins, 1 laver, 6 beds, and other articles.[237]

FOOTNOTES:

[215] See table at end, and Thorold Rogers's prices in Vol. V. of his great work.

[216] 'A perfite platforme of a Hoppegarden', in _Arte of Gardening_, by R. Scott, 1574.

[217] Tusser recommends that the hopyard be dug. Thomas Tusser was born in Ess.e.x, about 1525, and died in 1580. He led a roving life, which included a good deal of farming; but the statement that he died poor appears to be inaccurate. Much of his advice is not very valuable.

[218] Harrison, _Description of Britain_, p. 110.

[219] Usually grown in gardens, until the middle of the seventeenth century. Tusser also mentions them.

[220] _Description of Britain_, ii. 324 (Furnivall ed.).

[221] Harrison, _Description of Britain_, ii. 329.

[222] _State of the Poor_, i. 48-9. Blomefield's _Norfolk_, iv. 569, i. 51, i. 649. Dugdale, _Warwicks.h.i.+re_, p. 557.

[223] _Description of Britain_, iii. 5.

[224] _Description of Britain_ (ed. Furnivall), ii. 243.

[225] Froude, _History of England_, v. III.

[226] 'A compendious or brief examination of certain ordinary complaints', quoted by Eden, _State of the Poor_, 1. 119.

[227a] _Transactions of the Royal Historical Society_ (New Series), xix. 103.

[227b] Ibid. xi. 74 sq.

[228] Na.s.se, _Agricultural Community of the Middle Ages_, p. 9.

_Archaeologia_, x.x.xiii. 270.

[229] In the still surviving open fields at Laxton, mentioned above, there are certain unploughed portions called 'sicks', or gra.s.sy patches, never cultivated.--Slater, _op. cit._ p. 9.

[230] _Archaeologia_, xlvi. 374.

[231] _Description of Britain_, ii. 150.

[232] In the reign of Mary, 'the plain poor people did make very much of acorns.' Cullum, _Hawsted_, p. 181.

[233] Eden, _State of the Poor_, i. 116.

[234] _Itinerary_, iii. 140.

[235] _Rutland Magazine_, i. 64.

[236] _Victoria County History: Lincolns.h.i.+re_, ii. 331.

[237] See _Records of Cust Family_, i. 56.

CHAPTER X

1540-1600

LIVE STOCK.--FLAX.--SAFFRON.--THE POTATO. THE a.s.sESSMENT OF WAGES

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 Berks.h.i.+re 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 coa.r.s.e cloth made at home, so did their wives, and 'in generall' their linen was coa.r.s.e and made at home.[240]

'Good flax and good hemp to have of her own In Maie a good housewife will see it be sowne',

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 Ess.e.x 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 n.o.bility and gentry as a curious exotic; and in 1606 it occurs among the vegetables considered necessary for a n.o.bleman'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 Lancas.h.i.+re, 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 b.u.t.ter 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 pa.s.sed the famous Act, 5 Eliz., c. 4, which Thorold Rogers has a.s.serted 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 a.s.sertion, 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.

The rates of wages of artificers, husbandmen, &c., were to be ascertained yearly by the justices and the sheriff, 'if he conveniently may,' at quarter sessions, 'calling unto them such discrete and grave persons as they shall thinck meete and conferring together respecting the plentie or scarcitie of the tyme and other circ.u.mstances necessary to be considered,' and the wages fixed were to be certified into Chancery. Then proclamations of the wages thus determined were to be made in the cities and market towns. Every person who gave higher wages than those established by the proclamation was to be imprisoned for ten days and fined 5, every receiver to be imprisoned twenty-one days. The importance still attached to the harvest season is shown by the section that all artificers and others were compellable to work in harvest or be put in the stocks two days and a night. For the better advancement of husbandry and tillage every householder farming 60 acres of tillage or more might receive an apprentice in husbandry, but no tradesman or merchant might take an apprentice save his own son, unless his parents had freehold of the annual value of 40s.; and no person was to use 'any art mistery or manual occupation now in use' unless he had served seven years' apprentices.h.i.+p to it. There can be no doubt that the clauses last quoted confined a large portion of the population to agricultural work, but as we know that the people were deserting the country and flocking to the towns, this must have seemed to the framers of the law very desirable.

This method of fixing wages was in force until 1814, and its repeal then was entirely contrary to the opinion of the artizan cla.s.s; 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 compet.i.tion. Several instances remain, however, of wages drawn up under this Act. Almost immediately after it was pa.s.sed, 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]:--

A bailiff in husbandry, having charge of two plough lands, at least should have by the year 40s., and 8s.

for his livery.

A chief servant in husbandry, which can eire (plough), sow, mow, thresh, make a rick, thatch and hedge, and can kill and dress a hog, sheep, and calf, by the year 40s., and 6s.

for his livery.

A common servant in husbandry, which can mow, sow, thresh, and load a cart, and cannot expertly make a rick, hedge, and thatch, and cannot kill and dress a hog, sheep, or calf, by the year 33s. 4d., and 5s. for his livery.