The Agrarian Problem in the Sixteenth Century Part 29

Somerset's Government had too short a life for us to judge how far, in happier political circ.u.mstances, he might have succeeded, not in checking agrarian changes, which would in any case have been impossible, but in securing that reasonable consideration should be given to the vested interests of the poorer cla.s.ses. As Elizabethan statesmen discovered[665] at the end of the century, there was room for a policy which would prevent the wholesale displacement of tenants, and nevertheless offer an encouragement to the formation of the compact holdings out of the scattered strips and common pastures, which the agricultural experts were unanimous in condemning. There are faint indications of an understanding that a fair middle course was possible in a remarkable case which comes from the little Huntingdons.h.i.+re town of G.o.dmanchester.[666] At G.o.dmanchester there had been the usual changes of the preceding half century. Rents had been raised, cottages pulled down, woods destroyed and turned to pasture, while the meadows, which under the Act of 1547 had been confiscated from the local gild, offered a tempting prey to some enterprising speculator. On complaints coming before the Council in the summer of 1549 a comprehensive scheme of reorganisation was drawn up. All persons with more than one house were to let at the customary rent that which they did not use themselves. All persons who had pulled down houses or converted them to other purposes than the accommodation of tenants were either to rebuild them or to build new ones, and to let them to any one offering the customary rent before Michaelmas 1549. The groves of wood converted to pasture were to be enclosed, so as to prevent the depredations made upon them by straying beasts, and, if necessary, the land was to be sown with acorns.

With the gild lands a course was taken which, in the scramble for land which was going on in the middle of the sixteenth century, was unfortunately highly unusual. According to the Council's directions they were to "be divided among the inhabitants thereof in this manner; that is to say to every ploughland five acres, and to every cottager and artificer there dwelling, or which hereafter upon the houses to be now builded shall dwell, one acre, and, if the number do not extend, then for every ploughland four, and so for lack of the rate every ploughland three, and the residue of the said acres falling after that rate to be divided among the cottagers, paying for every of the said acres 3/4."

This case is the high water mark of administrative interference on behalf of the tenants. The action taken embraces nearly all the expedients of re-edifying decayed cottages, fixing fair rents, preventing common land from pa.s.sing into the control of a single individual, and making equal allotment among the inhabitants, which had been demanded by the peasants and suggested by their friends. It shows that the enclosing of land hitherto used in common was not resented, provided that the division was made in such a way as to give a fair share to all the parties interested. It may perhaps be taken as a specimen of the kind of policy which lay behind Somerset's expressions of sympathy with the peasantry, and which he would have pursued if his colleagues on the Council had permitted. As it was, he was not strong enough to carry out his programme. While the failure of the Commission resulted in the revolts of 1549, his reluctance to crush their authors, whom he believed to be men goaded into rebellion by intolerable grievances, united the whole weight of the greater property against him as a traitor to his order. In the attack made upon him as by his colleagues, the actions which evoked their special denunciation were those which embodied his agrarian policy, the use of the Court of Requests to protect tenants, the appointment of the Royal Commission to enforce the Acts against enclosures, the pardon granted in June 1549 to the riotous peasants, and the statements attributed to him that "the covetousness of the gentlemen gave cause to the common people to rise,"

and that "people had good cause to reform the things themselves,"

because "the lords of Parliament were loathe to incline themselves to reformation of enclosures and other things."[667] To the last a popular hero, the "good Duke" could expect no help from those whom he had befriended, and no mercy from the sordid counter-revolution which he had provoked. His epitaph was given by the sad cries of "Too true," with which the crowd about the scaffold greeted his dying declaration that he had "ever been glad of the furtherance ... of the commonwealth."[668]

[665] See p. 355.

[666] _Acts of the Privy Council_, New Series, vol. ii. pp.

294-296.

[667] Strype, _Ecclesiastical Memorials_.

[668] Somerset's execution took place on January 22, 1552, more than two years after he had been deposed from the Protectorate, for supposed complicity in a plot to overthrow the Government. The evidence for the existence of a conspiracy appears to be feeble. See Pollard, _The Political History of England_, 1547-1603, pp. 61-65.

With the fall of Somerset in October 1549 the landowning cla.s.ses had their revenge, and, under the guidance of Warwick, the policy of the Government swung violently in the opposite direction. The intervention of the Council to protect tenants of course stopped at once; in the two cases which are reported as having come before it in the year 1550 and 1551 the line taken was that the presumption was against the tenants who had broken open enclosures.[669] While, in the absence of John Hales, who appears to have found it convenient to leave the country, the Reports of the Royal Commission were allowed to slumber, the Government, by way of reducing opportunities for undesirable meetings, instructed the Bishop of London to prevent unseasonable preaching in his diocese, and set itself to establish the new agrarian regime by law. The ways in which men seek liberty are infinite in number, but the methods of tyranny are everywhere the same; and the nearest parallel to the behaviour of Somerset's successors is the att.i.tude of the panic-stricken aristocracy of the early nineteenth century towards trade unions. Under an Act of 1550 all meetings of the peasantry were treated as a sort of "illegal conspiracy." Any forty of them who a.s.sembled to break down an enclosure might be condemned as traitors. Any twelve who a.s.sembled for the same purpose were guilty of felony, as also were those who summoned such a meeting, or who combined to reduce rents or the price of corn.

Even the rusty legislation of the thirteenth century was revived by the re-enactment of the Statute of Merton of 1235,[670] which permitted lords to enclose as much as they pleased, provided that "sufficient"

remained over for the tenants, with the significant improvement that the latter qualification was swept away by a clause declaring that enclosures might be made "notwithstanding their gainsaying and contradiction." The tyranny of the oligarchy which ruled from 1549 to 1553 has been obscured by the more dramatic events which preceded and succeeded it. But it marks the bottom point in the condition of the sixteenth century peasantry. It indicates how the new agrarian regime will develop when the political forces impeding it are removed. More had asked, What is Government? and had answered that it is "a certein conspiracy of riche men procuringe theire owne commodities under the name and t.i.tle of a Common Wealth." His immortal definition does less than justice to the cynicism of the generation which succeeded his own.

Mary executed Protestants for reasons of religion, as Elizabeth executed Catholics for reasons of State. But Warwick, a hypocrite in religion, was at least guiltless of the hypocrisy of sheltering his land policy "under the name and t.i.tle of the Common Wealth." It was exactly what it seemed to be, a straightforward attempt to prevent the poor from protesting when their possessions were taken from them by the rich.

[669] _Acts of the Privy Council_, New Series, vol. iii. pp.

181-182 and 247 and 252. "Mr. Grenewaie was this day before the Counsaill and rebuked sore for his attemptate in causeng Raf Lees hedges to be broaken up; nevertheless considering his long service [as gentleman usher] he was borne withall, and for this tyme without further punishment he was commaunded to make up those hedges again."

[670] 3 and 4 Edward VI. c. 3.

The general policy of the Government during the reign of Elizabeth and the first half of the seventeenth century shows neither the desire of Somerset to undo the agrarian revelation, nor the complete indifference to the interests of the poorer cla.s.ses of the party which succeeded him.

During the reign of Elizabeth there was little agrarian agitation. It is possible that the limits of profitable pasture-farming had been reached.

It is possible that the policy of encouraging the export of corn, which had been suggested by Hales, and which was adopted in 1563 and extended in 1571, reacted favourably on arable farming. It is possible, again, that Warwick's measures had had their effect, and that the peasantry had been cowed into silence. Though, on the whole, the Government maintained the traditional att.i.tude, it did not interfere except in circ.u.mstances of special hards.h.i.+p, or when there was danger of serious disturbance.

Cases of this nature came before it fairly frequently in the reigns of Elizabeth, Charles, and James. One finds it intervening on the ground that the poverty of tenants makes it impossible for them to go to law, or that the offenders concerned are so powerful as to be able to disregard inferior authorities, or that the local authorities themselves have been unfairly bia.s.sed, or to prevent disturbances by hearing tenants' grievances, or to compel a great n.o.ble, like the Earl of Shrewsbury, to reinstate tenants whom it thinks to have been wrongfully evicted, or to stop action being taken by a landlord pending a decision by the courts in his favour. In 1579 the Council writes to the Lord President of Wales ordering him to take proceedings against two persons who have been enclosing part of the Forest of Fakenham, and have disturbed the copyholders; he is to prevent any further enclosures being made until the whole matter has been considered by the Government.[671]

In 1581 it interferes to protect a copyholder who has been kept out of his holding by the Dean and Chapter of Peterborough.[672] In 1586 it directs the Cambridges.h.i.+re justices to inquire into the complaint of some tenants who claim that a piece of common pasture has been let over their heads, and to see that both parties to the dispute come before the Justices of a.s.size.[673] The Justices of a.s.size in Norfolk are to take action in the matter of a common at Kettlestone which two of the tenants allege to have been overstocked with sheep.[674] Several letters are addressed to the Council of the Marches of Wales ordering them to prevent the eviction of copyholders.[675] A landlord is requested to attend the Council and prove that his tenants' fines are uncertain, and not, as they allege, fixed.[676] The Court of Chancery has dismissed a case arising out of the enclosure of commons at Bath, and the Council orders a retrial.[677] Occasionally it cites offenders into the Court of Star Chamber,[678] and in 1592, just when the Court of Requests was beginning to be attacked by the common lawyers, we find a case as to fold-courses coming before the Court of Requests.[679] More often it appoints special Commissioners to act as arbitrators, or refers pet.i.tioners to the Justices of a.s.size in their county, with a request to take local evidence and inform the Council what they advise. Throughout the reigns of James and Charles we get glimpses of administrative activity which show that the traditional policy was, perhaps fitfully, maintained. In 1603 the Council of the North[680] were instructed to make "from time to time diligent and effectual inquisition of the wrongful taking in of commons and other grounds, and the decay of tillage and of towns or houses of husbandry," and to correct offenders with "some notable punishment." The rebellion in the Midlands in 1607 produced special measures, the chief offenders being summoned before the Council and bound over to rebuild houses which had fallen into decay, while in the following years two Commissions were appointed to compound with enclosers.[681] In Yorks.h.i.+re the justices are evidently fairly active in 1607 and 1608. A Richmond freeholder who owns two-thirds of the manor is presented "for decaying five husbandries, and also for converting 30 acres of tillage ground to meadow and pasture," and similar presentments are made at Malton, Thirsk, and Helmsley.[682] A Justice of a.s.size writes about the same time from the western counties to the effect that twenty-six houses of husbandry have been rebuilt and the offenders punished.[683] In 1614 the justices of Norfolk inform the Council that in accordance with its directions they have examined the enclosures made in the last two years, and have ordered the hedging and ditching of lands to be stopped till further notice.[684] In the following year one William Combe was negotiating with the corporation of Stratford for their consent to the enclosure and conversion to pasture of his freehold lands lying in the common fields at Welcombe; in 1615 an order made at Warwick a.s.sizes was confirmed by the Chief Justice restraining him from doing so on the ground that it was "against the laws of the realm," and in the following year a peremptory letter was addressed to him by the Council directing his compliance.[685] In 1619 there was a temporary reaction owing to the low price of grain, which led to the appointment of a Commission to grant pardons for breaches of the Acts forbidding enclosure, and in 1624 all the Statutes except the two pa.s.sed in 1597 were repealed, But this did not stop administrative interference. In 1621 the Justices of a.s.size for Bedfords.h.i.+re are directed to check encroachments on a common, and in 1623 a Commission is appointed to remove grievances arising in connection with enclosures at Cheshunt.[686] The rise in corn prices which occurred from 1629 to 1631 produced another burst of activity, which is to be attributed partly to a genuine desire to protect the poorer cla.s.ses, and partly to the hope that the fines imposed upon enclosers might squeeze a few drops into the Government's ever thirsty Exchequer. In 1630 directions were issued by the Council to the justices of five Midland counties to remove all enclosures made in the last two years on the ground that they led to depopulation and were particularly harmful in time of dearth.[687] In 1632, 1635, and 1636, three Commissions were appointed, and special instructions to enforce the Statutes against enclosure were issued to the Justices of a.s.size.[688] That the inquiry was not a mere formality is proved by the State Papers of the period. In part of the country, at any rate, land which had been pasture was ploughed[689] up in obedience to the Government's orders, and a list of offenders, including--the Government must have seen his name with grim satisfaction--Lord Saye and Sele, was returned to the Council, some of whom were still being prosecuted in the Court of Star Chamber as late as 1639. This is the last occasion on which we can trace the administration of this part of the Tudor State policy. The agitation against enclosures was carried on under the Commonwealth. The diggers under Winstanley came into prominence for a moment, only to be disclaimed by the respectable[690]

opponents of enclosure and to be instantly suppressed by the Government, and there was a crop of pamphlets in the years between 1650 and 1660 which dealt with the evils of depopulation in quite the old manner. But the traditional doctrine as to the importance of the peasantry had decayed, and the central machinery for forcing the justices to take action had been destroyed in 1641. The last Bill to regulate enclosures was introduced into the House of Commons in 1656, and was rejected on the second reading.[691]

[671] _Acts of the Privy Council_, New Series, vol. xi. pp.

191-192. A letter to the Lord President of Wales that whereas upon complaints exhibited to their lords.h.i.+ps by the tenants of the Forest of Fakenham against Sir John Throgmorton, and one Mr.

William Bell his stuarde, concerning an inclosure by him made of certen commons ... encroachment upon their copieholds ... it was by them ordered that the suite against the tenants commenced at the Common Lawe in respect of their commons and copieholds should surcease and the matters in controversy abyde triall before their lords.h.i.+ps ... and untill the matter should be heard and determined they enjoyned to proceed no further in the inclosure of the said Common ... forasmuch as the tenants do now again complaine that since their lords.h.i.+ps' said order Sir John and the said William Bell have inclosed more of the said common ... but hath also caused Bell to proceed against the tenants by _ejectione firmae_ at the Common Lawe, he is therefore required ... to will and command the said Sir John and William Bell to forbear their inclosures of the said Common ... untill the same shall be ... determined by their lords.h.i.+ps according to their lords.h.i.+ps' form and order."

[672] _Acts of the Privy Council_, New Series, vol. xiii. pp.

91-92. A letter to the Justices of the County of Lincoln: "If they thinke it agreeable with equitie and justice that the poore man should be put in possession of the said Landes, that they give commandment unto the said Lacy to admit him thereunto."

[673] _Ibid._, vol. xiv. pp. 201-202.

[674] _Ibid._, vol. xv. pp. 394-395.

[675] See p. 373, n. 1, and _Acts of the Privy Council_, New Series, vol. xvii. p. 76. For a similar letter to the Council of the North, _ibid._, vol. xxvii. pp. 228-229.

[676] _Ibid._, vol. xxii. p. 379.

[677] _Ibid._, vol. xxii. pp. 360 and 370. Letters to the Master of the Rolls ordering retrial of case concerning enclosure of commons at Bath.

[678] _Ibid_., vol. xvi. pp. 366-367. A letter to the Solicitor: "Whereas divers poor men, tenants of the manor of Chilton, have exhibited very grievous complaints unto their lords.h.i.+ps against William Darrell, Esq., of divers and sundry misdemeanors committed by him in breach of her majestie's peace" ... the solicitor is to "cause a byll to be drawn into the Court of Star Chamber against Darrel," and Camden Society 1886, _Cases in the Court of Star Chamber and High Commission_, pp. 44-45.

[679] Holkham MSS., Sparham, Bdle. No. 5, 14th June, 34 Eliz: "In the matter in variance brought before the Queenes Majestie in her Maj{tie's} hon{ble} Court of Requests at the suit of John Byrd against Christopher Saye and other defendants upon the motion of Mr. Edward c.o.ke recorder of the City of London being of Councel with the said defendant.... For that it appeareth that the said Defendant hath had three verdicts and judgments at the Common Law, one of them against the said complainant himself."... The defendant is awarded costs, "and the said complainant shall from henceforth forbear to put any sheepe upon the said ground, and suffer his sheepe to feede there."

[680] Prothero, _Statutes and Const.i.tutional Doc.u.ments_, 1558-1625, pp. 370-371.

[681] Prothero, _Statutes and Const.i.tutional Doc.u.ments_, 1558-1625, pp. 470-472, and Gay, _Trans. Royal Hist. Soc._, New Series, vol. xviii.

[682] Atkinson, _North Riding Quarter Sessions_, vol. i. pp.

106, 108, 111, 122. The last presentment runs: "Will Marwood of Busby, gent{n}, for decaying of x.x.x acres of arable land or thereabouts, and converting of x.x.x acres of arable land or thereabouts, the same, from tillage into pasture or meadow, and tilled nothing in the same parish in lieu thereof, contrary, etc."

[683] Leonard, _Trans. Royal Hist. So.c_, vol. xix.

[684] Leonard, _Trans. Royal Hist. Soc._, vol. xix.

[685] Ingleby, _Shakespeare and the Welcombe Enclosures_.

[686] _S. P. D._ J., I., vol. cxxiv., December 20, 1621, and _S.

P. D._, Ch. i. cliii., October 2, 1623.

[687] Leonard, _Trans. Royal Hist. Society_, vol. xix.

[688] _Ibid._

[689] For the ploughing up of pasture, _S. P. D._, Ch. I. vol.

cccciv. 142, and vol. cccclxxv. 72; for Lord Saye and Sele, vol.

ccclxii. 60, 1637; order of Council that the Attorney-General should forthwith proceed by information in the Star Chamber against Viscount Saye and Sele for depopulation and conversion of houses and lands.

[690] J. Moore, _A Target for Tillage_: "My purpose is not here to plead for ... any other idle drones and wretched atheists....

All these I acknowledge to be the greatest wasters and spoylers of our country, worse by many degrees than any depopulators, oppressors, and decayors of villages.... All these I know abhorre the plough, and are enemies to the State; who yet (I confesse) in their high talke do justify tillage and will be ready no doubt to reforme the decay thereof with spade and pickaxe." (The copy of this pamphlet which I have seen is dated 1611. I have ventured to a.s.sume that this is a misprint, and that it should be placed with John Moore's other pamphlets on enclosure, 1653-1656.)

[691] Leonard, _Trans. Royal Hist. Soc._, vol. xix.

(c) _The Success and Failure of State Intervention_

It remains to ask how far the policy of trying to check the agrarian changes, which was pursued by Governments for nearly a century and a half, had any effect on economic practice. Statesmen were certainly bia.s.sed in favour of protecting the weaker landholding cla.s.ses. But was their intervention simply the expression of a pious opinion? Was it so entirely futile as--to give a modern parallel--the Small Holdings Act of 1892? Or did it to any extent modify or r.e.t.a.r.d the course of economic events? The view usually taken, that legislation was so ineffective as to be almost negligible, is in accordance with what we know of the character of local administration in the sixteenth century, and is supported by much contemporary evidence. The constant introduction of fresh proposals suggests that the previous laws were disappointing. The failure of existing Acts was the reason given in Somerset's proclamation for the appointment of the Commission of 1548. Hales, who is certainly the most reliable authority on the situation between 1540 and 1550, speaks of them as being notoriously a dead letter.[692] If one looks at the Statutes pa.s.sed against depopulation in the sixteenth century, with a view to discovering how far they really met the situation, one will be inclined to say that they quite failed to go to the root of the matter.

The special evil which they were intended to combat was depopulation caused by evictions. But evictions could be checked only by giving tenants security, which would have meant turning customary into legal t.i.tles, and fixing judicial rents for leaseholders and immovable fines for copyholders; in short, the sort of interference which the peasants and their champions demanded, but on which no Government depending on the support of the landed gentry would venture, except upon an extraordinary emergency. In the absence of such an attempt to grapple directly with the fundamental fact that the peasants' insecurity made them liable to suffer whenever there was a change in the methods of agriculture, legislation designed merely to prevent those changes was almost certain to be evaded. Even with the best intentions the Statutes could never have been easy to administer. There was the difficulty inherent in the whole Tudor and Stuart policy of authoritative interference with trade and industry, the difficulty of making State action keep pace with economic changes. The Government is often like a man pursuing a tram from one stopping-place to another, and just missing it at each. It insists that land which has. .h.i.therto been in tillage shall remain in tillage. But there are a few years of b.u.mper harvests, and the farmers complain that they cannot pay their way.[693] The Government tries to get over the difficulty by allowing them to convert arable to pasture, when a providence unversed in statecraft sends a wet summer, and it scrambles hastily back to the position which it has just abandoned.[694] By excepting from the operation of the Statutes certain districts which are specially suitable for grazing, it encourages a rough local division of labour, one part of a county confining itself to pasture-farming and another to tillage. But then, in pursuit of its traditional and quite reasonable policy of securing that food is cheap, it insists that all farmers are to supply the markets with grain, with the result that those who have specialised in corn-growing are threatened with ruin by the fall in prices which ensues, and that it is even questionable whether they will not convert arable to pasture to evade the obligation imposed upon them.[695] Old enclosures were tolerated and new forbidden. But how distinguish between old and new?

Land turned to pasture simply to restore it to a condition in which it would be fit for tillage escaped the condemnation pa.s.sed on other kinds of "conversion," and one can imagine that nice arguments must have arisen as to a farmer's motives. Again, suppose a man converted to pasture land which should have remained under the plough, and then leased it to some one else, who retained it as pasture, was the lessee guilty of an offence? In a case which came before the Court of Exchequer in 1582, the defendant pleaded that he merely "used" the land as pasture, and had not converted it, while the Crown argued that use was equivalent to conversion, that he was in the position of a man profiting by the continuance of a nuisance, and that a fine of 10s. an acre for each year since the original conversion ought to be imposed.[696] Points like this give colour to c.o.ke's complaint against the whole body of Acts against enclosure that "they were labyrinthes, with such intricate windings or turnings as little or no fruit proceeded from them."

[692] Hale's defence in appendix to Miss Lamond's introduction to _The Commonweal of this Realm of England_.

[693] D'Ewes _Journal_, p. 674 (1601). Mr. Johnson said: "In the time of dearth, when we made this Statute, it was not considered that the hand of G.o.d was upon us; and now corn is cheap. If too cheap, the husbandman is undone." See also Raleigh's speech in the same debate.

[694] _e.g._ in 1593 the clause in the Act of 1563 forbidding conversion of arable to pasture was repealed. In 1595 and 1596 bad harvests produced loud complaints of high prices, and in 1597 conversion to pasture was again prohibited.

[695] _Original Papers of the Norfolk and Norwich Archaeological Society_, 1907, pp. 131 ff.

[696] Moore's _Reports_, p. 117, plea 262, Claypole's case: "Le conseil de Reigne argue que ... l'entent de Estatute fuit que le user sera accompt equivalent en tort al convcon." Judgment was apparently given for the Queen. The decision was quoted as an authority in the debate in Parliament on the Bills introduced in 1597. _Hist. MSS. Com._, MSS. of Marquis of Salisbury, Part VII., pp. 541-543: "And 26 Eliz. in the Exchequer, in Claypole's case, an information was exhibited upon the Statute of 4 Hen.

VII. against a purchaser for converting of tillage into pasture, and adjudged good, though the purchaser were not the converter, but only a continuer of the first conversion. So as this new law tends but for an instruction and explanation of the old."