The Agrarian Problem in the Sixteenth Century Part 15

At Birling out of ten names which appear in the surveys of 1567, eight reappear in 1616; at Acklington, out of eighteen names, nine reappear; at High Buston, out of four names, four reappear in 1616 and two in 1702. But in parts of the county there were rapid changes at the end of the sixteenth and beginning of the seventeenth centuries; see below, pp. 257-258 and 260.

[342] _Northumberland County History_, vol. i. p. 350: "In the ancient tyme the fermor of the demaines had the charge of the tenants of the said lords.h.i.+p as bailiff, with the fee of 3, 0s.

5d. by year. Then was the town of Tughall planted with xi husbandmen well horsed and in good order, viii cottagers, iiii cotterells, one common smith for the relief and better aid of the said tenants and bailiff, being in number 23 householders, besides the demains, which are nowe by suche as nothing regard his lords.h.i.+p's service nor the commonwealthe brought to 8 farmers only, to the great decay of his lords.h.i.+p's service and discommodity of the said commonwealth."

[343] See _e.g._ the ballad of "Kinmont Willie," turning on an incident which occurred in 1596.

[344] _Cal. S. P. D. James I._, vol. cx.x.xii., July 27, 1622.

Letter to the Bishop of Durham to confer with the judges of a.s.size for the Northern Counties touching tenant-right or customary estate of inheritance claimed in those parts, ordering them to abide strictly by the King's Proclamation against tenant-right, or the holding of lands by border service, to countenance no claim founded thereupon, and to acquaint the tenants of his Majesty's pleasure therein, giving them no hope to the contrary. Apparently the instructions were not carried out, as in 1642 the Long Parliament was discussing the subject of the border tenures (Rushworth _Collections_, Pt. III., vol.

ii. p. 86).

[345] See below, pp. 257?-258.

[346] The effect of the Tudor policy on the land system is excellently described by Harrington in _Oceana_, and also in _The Art of Law-giving_: "Henry VII. being conscious of the infirmity of his t.i.tle, yet finding with what strength and vigour he was brought in by the n.o.bility, conceived jealousy of the like power in case of a decay or change of affections.

_Nondum orbis adoraverat Roman._ The lords yet led country lives; their houses were open to retainers, men experienced in military affairs and capable of commanding; their hospitality was the delight of their tenants who by their tenure or dependence were obliged to follow their lords in arms. So that, this being the Militia of the nation, a few n.o.blemen discontented could at any time levy a great army, the effect whereof both in the Barons Wars and those of York and Lancaster had been well known to divers kings. This state of things was that which enabled Henry VII. to make his advantage of troublesome times and the frequent unruliness of retainers; while, under pretence of curbing riots, he obtained the pa.s.sing of such laws as did cut off these retainers, whereby the n.o.bility wholly lost their officers. Then, whereas the dependence of the people on their lords was of a strict ty or nature, he found means to loosen this also by laws which he obtained upon a fair pretence, even that of Population. But the n.o.bility, who by the former law had lost their officers, by this lost their soldiery. Yet remained to them their estates, till the same Prince introducing the Statutes for alienations, these also became loose; and the lords, less taken (for the reasons shown) with their country lives, where their trains were clipped, by degrees became more resident at court, where greater pomp and expense by the Statute of Alienations began to plume them of their Estates" (Harrington, _Works_, 1700 edition, pp.

388-?389).

The change meant an advance in civilisation among the upper cla.s.ses, and a tightening of economic pressure upon the peasantry. The feudal seigneur had at his worst been a lawless tyrant, and at his best a despotic parent. But he had governed his estate as the sovereign, often the resident sovereign, of a petty kingdom, whose interests were roughly identical with his own; and though his depredations were a terror to his neighbours, his own tenants had little to fear from them, for his tenants were the force on which his very existence depended. In the new political conditions his occupation was gone, and his place was taken by two types of landed proprietor who were at once more peaceable and less popular. On the one hand, there emerges the landlord who is a laborious and acute man of business, and who sets about exploiting the material resources of his estate with the instincts of a shopkeeper and the methods of a land-agent. Of this kind are the Willoughbys[347] in the Midlands and the Delavales[348] in Northumberland. Often they are sheep-farmers. When their land is rich in minerals they sink coal-pits and mine for iron ore. The predecessors of the captains of industry of two and a half centuries later, they employ labour on a large scale, they open up trade across country by river, they higgle over port dues, they experiment with new inventions, they clear away without mercy any customary rights which conflict with their own. On the other hand, there are the gentry who buzz about the Court, regard London as the centre of the universe, and have periodically to be ordered home to look after the affairs of their country-sides by a peremptory mandate from the Government. When this type becomes prominent, in the reign of Elizabeth, it most commonly spends its time in the interminable pursuit of profitable sinecures, and in endeavouring to induce the City to believe that thrice-mortgaged estates are a gilt-edged security. At its worst it produces Sir Petronel Flash,[349] a figure as typical of the sixteenth century as Squire Western is of the eighteenth. At its best it patronises the arts, sets sail for a new world of drama and romance, sighs over Vergil's Eclogues, and goes p.r.i.c.king, almost too graceful a chivalry, through the fairy kingdoms of Spenser. But the men of business, and the men of fas.h.i.+on, and the patrons of literature, are alike in being the symptoms of a new economic and political system, a system which has shorn landowners.h.i.+p of the territorial sovereignty which had gone with it, broken down the personal relations of landlord and tenant, and, by turning agriculture into a business, has made it at once more profitable and less strenuous for the former, more exacting and less stable for the latter, than it had been when a lordlord was not only a drawer of rents but a local sovereign, a tenant not only a source of income but a dependent who was bound by a tie which was almost sacramental. "It was never a merry world since gentlemen came up"; "never so many gentlemen and so little gentleness"; "the commons long since did rise in Spain and kill the gentlemen, and since have lived merrily there"; such are some of the blessings the new landlords would hear from men who grumble to their mates between the spells of shearing sheep and mowing hay. Those who have watched the uncouth, rough-handed master of a backward industry, who has wrought among his workmen as a friend or a tyrant, blossom, under the fertilising influence of expanding markets, into the sedate suburban capitalist who sets up a country house in the second generation and sends his sons to Oxford in the third, and who scientifically speeds up his distant operatives through the mediation of an army of managers and a.s.sistant-managers and foremen, will not need to be reminded that economic changes which bring civilisation to one cla.s.s may often be fraught with ruin to another. The brilliant age which begins with Elizabeth gleams against a background of social squalor and misery. The descendant of the illiterate, b.l.o.o.d.y-minded baron who is muzzled by Henry VII. becomes a courteous gentleman who rhapsodises in verse at the Court of Gloriana. But all that the peasants know is that his land-agents[350] are harsher. An Earl of Pembroke has been given immortality by Shakespeare. But the first of his name had founded the family on estates which had belonged to the Abbey of Wilton,[351] and by his exactions had provoked the Wilts.h.i.+re peasants into rebellion. The Raleigh family--it was a Raleigh's chance gibe at the old religion which set the West in a blaze in 1549--had endowed itself with a manor torn from the see of Wells,[352] as the Grenvilles had done with the lands of Buckland Abbey.

The gentle Sidney's _Arcadia_ is one of the glories of the age, and it was composed, if we may trust tradition, in the park at the Herberts'

country-seat at Washerne,[353] which they had made by enclosing a whole village and evicting the tenants. The dramatists who reflect the high popular estimation of the freeholder[354] see nothing in the grievances of Mouldy and Bullcalf except the disposition of an ignorant populace to cry for the moon. Shakespeare's Cade, with his programme[355] of seven half-penny loaves for a penny, and the three-hooped pot that shall have ten hoops, is so far proposing only what an energetic mayor is quite prepared to carry out before breakfast. His crowning absurdity, which makes the stalls hiss and the pit cheer, is the promise that "all the realm shall be in common; and in Cheapside shall my palfrey go to gra.s.s." A few months after these words were printed Cade came to life in earnest. In the autumn of 1596 some Oxfords.h.i.+re[356] artisans and peasants organised a revolt against "the gentlemen who took the commons," and from that year onwards to 1601 Parliament and the Council had their hands full of the question of enclosures. Men feel the contrast, even when it is only just beginning, and with natural inconsistency sigh for the old order even while they are glorifying the new. "Princes and Lords," wrote Henry VIII.'s chaplain[357] about 1538, "seldom look to the good order and wealth of their subjects, only they look to the receiving of their rents and revenues of their lands with great study of enhancing thereof, to the further maintaining of their pompous state; so that if their subjects do their duty therein justly, paying their rents at time affixed, for the rest they care not (as is commonly said) 'whether they sink or swim'"!

[347] _Hist. MSS. Com._, Cd. 5567 (Report on the MSS. of Lord Middleton), especially the entries relating to the development of the coal trade.

[348] _Northumberland County History_, vol. viii., p. 238, vol.

ix. (under Cowpen). Robert Delavale apparently began life as an agent to the Earl of Northumberland, but he owned considerable property himself; in 1605 the whole of the lands of Cowpen were in his hands. He was an energetic encloser; see below, p. 260.

[349] See Marston's _Eastward Ho!_

[350] See the following extract (Lodge, _Ill.u.s.trations of English History_, iii., 41). William Hammond to the Earl of Shrewsbury on the subject of raising money on the latter's estates from Palavicini, a moneylender: "Though his froward fortune hath made him unable to stand you almost in any steadde, hee hathe dealt with Mr. Maynard to aide him in the provision of this 3000 against the second of next month. He finds him very backwarde to disburse any money upon bond or any other security but lands; neither will he deal with lands in any way of mortgage for years or any long time, but only 2 or 3 months....

Yf, therefore, it stands with your honour's good liking to make a conveyance of Kingston to Sir Horatio ... after the rate of 7000 ... and withal to pa.s.se it in this absolute sort that iff the money then laid out by them for your Honour's use bee not repaid on May day next, that they fully enjoy and possess the lands as their owne.... Hee saith besides that his surveyors have certified him 500 will bee the most the lands will ever yeald yerely rent, without racking and oppressions, which are no course for suche meane men as they be to take."

[351] Roxburghe Club, _Surveys of Manor of William, First Earl of Pembroke_, Straton's introduction.

[352] _History of the Parish of Wivelis...o...b.._, by Hanc.o.c.k. For Walter Raleigh and the revolt of 1549, see the dramatic account given by Holinshed. The incident is described in Froude's _Edward VI._ For the Grenvilles and Buckland Abbey see _Trans.

Royal Hist. Soc._, vol. vi. It ultimately came to Francis Drake.

[353] Straton's introduction to _Surveys of Pembroke Manors_.

[354] _e.g._ Heywood's _A Woman Killed with Kindness_, Act iii.

sc. 1.

[355] _Henry VI._, Part II., Act iv. scene 2. I am indebted for the reference to Professor Unwin. Part II. was first printed in 1595.

[356] _Hist. MSS. Com._, MSS. of Marquis of Salisbury, Part III., pp. 49?-50: "The attorney-general to Mr. Robert Cecil.

Some information concerning those that intended the rebellion in Oxfords.h.i.+re. Bartholemew Stere, carpenter ... was the first person of this insurrection. His outward pretence was to overthrow enclosures, and to help the poor commonalty, that were like to perish for want of corn, but intended to kill the gentlemen of that county and take the spoil, affirming that the commons long since in Spain did rise and kill the gentlemen in Spain and sithen have lived merrily there. After that he meant to have gone to London and joined with the prentices ... and it was but a month's work to overrun England."

[357] E. E. T. S., _England in the Reign of Henry VIII._, p. 85.

While the centralised government of the Tudors gave a new bias to the interests of landlords by stripping them of part of their political power, economic changes were hurrying the more enterprising among them into novel methods of estate management. In the situation which developed in the first fifty years of the sixteenth century they were exposed to pressure from two sides at once. They stood to gain much if they adapted their farming to meet the new commercial conditions. They stood to lose much if they were so conservative as to adhere to the old methods. The explanation of the agrarian revolution most generally given by contemporary observers was that enclosing was due to the increased profitableness of pasture farming, consequent upon the development of the textile industries; and though a recent writer[358] has endeavoured to show that most of the land enclosed was used for tillage, and that therefore this explanation cannot hold good, there does not seem any valid reason for disputing it. The testimony of observers is very strong; they might be mistaken as to the extent of the movement towards pasture, but hardly as to its tendency; and with scarcely an exception they point to the growth of the woollen trade as the chief motive for enclosing.

[358] See the discussion between Mr. Leadam and Professor Gay in _Trans. Royal Hist. Society_, vol. xiv., new series.

Moreover, their evidence is confirmed by the proofs which we possess of the expansion of the woollen industry at the end of the fifteenth century. It is true that the figures collected by Thorold Rogers do not enable any satisfactory correlation to be made between the rise in wool prices and the progress of pasture farming. But they are statistically much too unreliable to upset the direct evidence of eyewitnesses, being based on various measures which are somewhat arbitrarily reduced to a supposed common standard, relating to many different qualities of wool, and being weighted in particular years by a preponderance of prices from particular counties which are sometimes clearly not typical at all. The figures of Schanz[359] as to the export trade in wool and woollen cloths, are a sufficient proof of the growth in the output of wool, and therefore in the growth of sheep-farming. They show that while the export of unmanufactured wool fell off in the sixteenth century, that of grey cloth grew enormously. In 1354 the export had been 4774-1/2 pieces, from 1509 to 1523 it averaged 84,789 pieces a year, from 1524 to 1533, 91,394 pieces, from 1534 to 1539, 102,647 pieces, and from 1540 to 1547, 122,354 pieces, while in 1554 the total manufacture was estimated at 160,000 pieces of cloth and 250,000 pieces of hosiery. This expansion of the manufactured cloth industry was only the culmination of a growth which had been going on gradually for a hundred years. In 1464 the Flemish manufacturers[360] were complaining that their market had been invaded by English clothiers. Merchants like the Celys s.h.i.+pped enormous consignments of wool from the Cotswolds to the Continent.[361] The large number of sheep kept in England at the end of the fifteenth century was the amazement of foreigners;[362] and English buyers groaned over the high prices to which wool was driven by the compet.i.tion of continental buyers.[363] The revolution in the technique of agriculture when sucked into the vortex of expanding commerce is, in fact, simply an early, and, owing to the immobility of sixteenth century conditions, a peculiarly striking example of that reaction of widening markets on the methods of production, which is one of the best established of economic generalisations.

[359] Schanz, _Englische Handelspolitik gegen Ende des Mittelalters_, Band II., p. 18.

[360] Abram, _Social England in the Fifteenth Century_, p. 33.

[361] _Ibid._, pp. 40-41.

[362] Camden Society (1847), _Italian Relation of England_.

[363] Camden Society (third series, vol. i.), _Cely Papers_. In 1480 the elder Cely writes: "I have not bought this year a loke of woll, for the woll of Cottyswolde is bought by the Lombardys;" and in the following year, "Ye avyse me for to buye woll in Cottyswolde, bot it is at grate prise, 3s. 4d. a tod, and gret ryding for woll in Cottyswolde as was any yere this vii yere."

At the same time, the revolution was probably hastened by a change in commercial policy, which, while encouraging the export trade in woollen cloth, was after 1485 less favourable to the corn-grower. During the greater part of the fifteenth[364] century the Government was forced by the agrarian interests to allow freedom of export for grain except when prices reached a certain height, after which point an export licence was required. But the victory of Henry VII. produced a policy which was less influenced by the traditional object of helping the corn-growing landlords, and more favourable to commerce and the middle cla.s.ses on which the new monarchy rested. In 1491[365] the export of grain, except with a special licence, was forbidden altogether, and in 1512 the prohibition was repeated by Henry VIII. Though the administration of such a policy must have been difficult, and its exact effect must be a matter of conjecture, the view taken by some contemporaries,[366] that it was a subordinate cause which stimulated the abandonment of old agricultural methods and caused a good deal of land to go out of cultivation, is at any rate intrinsically probable.

[364] Cunningham, _Growth of English Industry and Commerce_, Early and Middle Ages, pp. 447-448. The statute sanctioning export without licence when the price was below 6s. 8d. was 15 Hen. VI., c. 2, which was made perpetual by 23 Hen. VI., c. 5. 3 Ed. IV., c. 2, forbade the importation of foreign corn except when the price reached 6s. 8d.

[365] _Ibid._, Modern Times, Part I., p. 85.

[366] _e.g. The Commonweal of this Realm of England_, pp.

54-60.

If the expansion of the woollen industry offered a fortune to those who adopted the new methods of estate management, the depreciation in the value of money threatened with ruin those who did not. The agrarian changes of the sixteenth century cannot be traced primarily to the revolution in general prices which all European countries experienced, because they had already proceeded some way before the full extent of the movement in prices became apparent. Throughout the fifteenth century the value of money, as far as can be judged from such statistics as we possess, was fairly stable, and, if anything, somewhat appreciated.

During the first half of Henry VIII.'s reign there were complaints[367]

of the scarcity of the metallic currency. On the very eve of the dissolution of the monasteries we find a religious house in Northumberland reversing the movement which had been going on for two centuries in most parts of the country, and actually commuting money rents into payments in kind,[368] on the ground that the tenants could not command the necessary coin. Such facts should warn us that England was far from being a single economic community, and that the effects of the cheap money penetrated into the more backward regions only very slowly indeed. Nevertheless, in the more advanced parts of the country, the tide turned soon after the beginning of the new century, though it was not till the fourth decade of it that it became a mill-race in which all old economic standards were submerged. The general course of the movement, so far as it affected commodities in general use, is set forth below. The figures are re-arranged from those supplied by Steffen,[369]

whose work is mainly based on that of Thorold Rogers.

[367] See the whole question discussed in Schanz, _Englische Handelspolitik_, Band II., pp. 481-540.

[368] _Northumberland County History_, vol. viii. p. 232. In 1595 a dispute as to corn rents arose between the Earl of Northumberland and the Tynemouths.h.i.+re tenants, the Earl insisting on payment by the Newcastle measure, the tenants demanding to pay by the Winchester measure, on the ground that they are so poor that "they are not able with horse, furniture, and geare to serve as their ancestors have done, as it appeared upon the late muster." Evidence given by an ancient yeoman before the Commission appointed to hear the case showed that the tenants had formerly paid in money, and that the change from money to corn had been introduced in the time of the last Prior for the sake of the tenants, not for the sake of the Priory.

[369] Steffen, _Studien zur Geschichte der Englischen Lohnarbeiter_, Band I., pp. 254-255 and 365-366.

TABLE VII

+---------+----------+----------+----------+---------+ Wheat Peas Oats Barley per Qr. per Qr. per Qr. Malt per Qr . +---------+----------+----------+----------+---------+ s. d. s. d. s. d. s. d. 1401-1450 5 9-1/4 3 2-3/4 7 9 4 3 1451-1500 5 6-1/4 3 4-3/4 6 6-3/4 3 8 1501-1540 6 10-1/4 5 1-3/4 9 4-3/4 4 5 1541-1582 13 10-1/2 ... 20 10-3/4 10 5 +---------+----------+----------+----------+---------+

+---------+----------+----------+----------+------+------+ Eggs Oxen. Sheep. Pigs. Hens. per Gross. +---------+----------+----------+----------+------+------+ s. d. s. d. s. d. d. d. 1401-1450 16 5-1/2 2 1 7 6-3/4 2 5 1451-1500 15 7-1/2 1 10-1/4 8 3-1/4 2-1/4 5-1/4 1501-1540 22 9 2 10-1/4 10 0 3 9 1541-1582 70 0-1/4 6 4 ... 4-3/4 ... +---------+----------+----------+----------+------+------+

Though it would not be right, of course, to force these figures too far, as one cannot be sure that they are in all cases typical, the indication which they offer of a remarkable rise in prices beginning soon after 1500 is in all probability substantially correct. The result of this movement in dragging down the standard of comfort of the people has often been noticed, and need not be emphasised here. But it is important to observe that it had a very marked effect upon the traditional methods of agriculture, because it supplied landowners with a new incentive to squeeze the utmost possible income out of their estates. Since they were buying everything dearer, they were under a strong inducement to turn land to the most profitable use, and to revise all existing contracts which prevented an advance in tenants' payments.

In the not unnatural confusion which surrounded the question of the cause of the general rise in prices, this aspect of the agrarian troubles failed very generally to be appreciated by contemporary writers, who were inclined to argue that the higher prices were due to the increased rents, instead of seeing that the increased rents were themselves the consequence of the increased prices. But it was emphasised in the middle of the century by the author of the _Commonwealth of England_,[370] and at the end of it by Gerrard de Malynes,[371] who puts the case with great power and perspicacity, though he perhaps may be thought to exaggerate the importance of the debas.e.m.e.nt of the currency. "Every man knoweth," he wrote in 1601, "that by reason of the base money coined in the end of the most victorious reign of King Henry VIII. all the forrain commodities were sold dearer, which made afterwards the commodities of the realm to rise at the farmers' and tenants' hands, and therefore gentlemen did raise the rents of their lands and take farms themselves and made inclosures of grounds, and the price of everything being dearer was made dearer though plenty of money and bullion coming daily from the West Indies.... If we require gentlemen to abate their rents, give over farms, and break up enclosures, it may be they would do so if they might have all their provisions at the price heretofore." Yet such a statement gives but a faint indication of the revolutionary effect upon agrarian relations.h.i.+ps of the depreciation in the value of money. The modern reader, before whose eyes all economic standards are fluctuating from day to day, can hardly grasp the anarchy which it tended to produce in a world where values, especially land values, were objective realities which had stood unaltered for centuries together. The landlord sees his income slipping from him, though his estate pays as much as before. The tenant finds his landlord pressing for higher rents and fines, though the yield of the land has not increased. Yet neither desires anything but to remain as they were, and both are ignorant of the force which sweeps them out of the ancient ways. For, in the wholesome manner of the age, they ascribe all economic evils to personal misdemeanours, the unreasonableness of merchants, the covetousness of gentlemen, the extortions of husbandmen, and the real cause is an impersonal one, which carries them forward against their will, like men "thrusting one another in a throng, one driving on another."[372] It is easy to understand that it must have been difficult to maintain customary payments and traditional methods of agriculture against the screw which the rise in prices turned on the landowning cla.s.ses. Agricultural experiments were in the air, and with experts explaining how to double the value of an estate by enclosure without prejudicing the tenants, it is not surprising that landowners, who saw their real incomes dwindling with the fall in the value of money, should have adopted the principle of their advice and neglected the qualifications.

[370] _The Commonweal of this Realm of England_ (Lamond), especially p. 81: "Knight: What sorte is that which youe said had greater loss thereby then those men had profitte? Doctor: It is all n.o.blemen, and gentlemen, and all other that live by a fixed rent, or stipend, or doe not maner the grounde, or do occupie no byinge or sellinge.... He that maie spend 300 a yeare by such revennewes and fees, may kepe no better porte then his father, or anie before him, that could spend but 200. And so ye maie perceave, it is a great abatement of a man's countenance to take awaie the third part of his livinge. And therefore gentlemen doe so much studie the Increase of theire landes, enhauncing of their rentes, and so take farmes and pastures into theire owne hands."

[371] _A Treatise of the Canker of England's Commonwealth_ (1601).

[372] _The Commonweal of this Realm of England_ (Lamond), p.

100.