A Short History of English Agriculture Part 4

[66] Davenport, _A Norfolk Manor_, p. 36; and see Hall, _Pipe Roll of Bishopric of Winchester_, p. xxv.

[67] Chevage, poll money, paid to the lord.

[68] Vinogradoff, _Villeinage in England_, p. 230.

[69] Cunningham, _Industry and Commerce_, i. 117.

[70] Vinogradoff, _Villeinage in England_, p. 307. On the Berkeley estates in 1189-1220 money was so scarce with the tenants that the rents, apparently even where services had been commuted, were commonly paid in oxen.--Smyth, _Lives of the Berkeleys_, i. 101. In the thirteenth century the labour services of the villeins were stricter than in the eleventh. Vinogradoff, _op. cit._ 298.

[71] Page, _End of Villeinage_, p. 39.

[72] Thorold Rogers, _History of Agriculture and Prices_, i. 82.

[73] Hampshire Record Society, i. 64. See Appendix, i.

[74] Hasbach, _English Agricultural Labourer_, p. 14.

[75] Hallam, _Middle Ages_, iii. 361

[76] Denton, _England in the Fifteenth Century_, p. 56.

[77] Cunningham, _Industry and Commerce_, i. 273.

[78] Cullum, _History of Hawsted_, 1784 ed., p. 180.

[79] Ballard, _Domesday_, p. 207.

[80] Walter of Henley, Royal Historical Society, p. 12.

[81] Walter reckons the above food of the horse at 12s. 3d., and of the ox at 3s. 1d.; but both are wrong.

[82] Ibid. p. 15.

[83] Walter of Henley, Royal Historical Society, p. 19.

[84] Walter of Henley, Royal Historical Society, p. 71.

[85] Davenport, _A Norfolk Manor_, pp. 29 et seq. See also Hall, _Pipe Roll of the Bishopric of Winchester_, p. xxvi, which gives an average yield of wheat over a large area in 1298-9 at 4.3 bushels per acre.

[86] Walter of Henley, Royal Historical Society, p. 77.

[87] Thorold Rogers, _Agriculture and Prices_, i. 397; _Archaeologia_, xviii. 281.

[88] Walter of Henley, pp. 69, 75. In Lancashire, at the end of the thirteenth century, mowing 60-1/2 acres cost 17s. 7-1/2d. _Victoria County History, Lancashire, Agriculture_, and _Two Compoti of the Lancashire and Cheshire Manors of Henry de Lacy_ (Cheetham Society).

[89] Walter of Henley, p. 63.

[90] _Crondall, Records_, Hampshire Record Society, i. 65.

[91] See Thorold Rogers, various tables in vol. i. of _History of Agriculture and Prices_. Compare these with the prices on the Berkeley estates from 1281 to 1307, omitting years of scarcity: wheat, 2s. 4d.

to 5s.; oxen, 10s. to 12s.; cows, 9s. to 10s.; bacon hogs, 5s.; fat sheep, 1s. 6d. to 2s.; and in the early part of Edward III's reign, wheat, 5s. 4d. to 10s.; oxen, 14s. to 24s. Other prices about the same.--Smyth, _Lives of the Berkeleys_, i. 160.

[92] If it is true, as generally stated, that the mediaeval ox was one-third the size of his modern successor, it is apparent that he was a very dear animal. Cattle at this date suffered from the ravages of wolves.

[93] _Crondall, Records_, Hampshire Record Society, i. 64.

[94] _History of Agriculture and Prices_, i. 528.

[95] Seebohm, _Transactions of Royal Historical Society_, New Series, xvii. 288, says that rent in the fourteenth century was commonly 4d.; the usual average is stated at 6d. an acre.

[96] _Domesday of S. Paul_, Camden Society, p. li.

[97] _History of Agriculture and Prices_, i. 26.

[98] _Pioneers of Agriculture_, p. 13.

[99] Ed. Lamond, Royal Historical Society, p. 19.

[100] Denton, _England in the Fifteenth Century_, p. 93.

CHAPTER III

THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY.--DECLINE OF AGRICULTURE.--THE BLACK DEATH.-- STATUTE OF LABOURERS

After the death of Edward I in 1307 the progress of English agriculture came to a standstill, and little advance was made till after the battle of Bosworth in 1485. The weak government of Edward II, the long French War commenced by Edward III and lasting over a hundred years, and the Wars of the Roses, all combined to impoverish the country. England, too, was repeatedly afflicted during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries by pestilences, sometimes caused by famines, sometimes coming with no apparent cause; all probably aggravated, if not caused, by the insanitary habits of the people. The mention of plagues, indeed, at this time is so frequent that we may call them chronic.

At this period corn and wool were the two main products of the farmer; corn to feed his household and labourers, and wool to put money in his pocket, a somewhat rare thing.

English wool, which came to be called 'the flower and strength and revenue and blood of England', was famous in very early times, and was exported long before the Conquest. In Edgar's reign the price was fixed by law, to prevent it getting into the hands of the foreigner too cheaply; a wey, or weigh, was to be sold for 120d.[101] Patriotic Englishmen a.s.serted it was the best in the world, and Henry II, Edward III, and Edward IV are said to have improved the Spanish breed by presents of English sheep. Spanish wool, however, was considered the best from the earliest times until the Peninsular War, when the Saxon and Silesian wools deposed it from its pride of place. Smith, in his _Memoirs of Wool_,[102] is of the opinion that England 'borrowed some parts of its breed from thence, as it certainly did the whole from one place or another.' Spanish wool, too, was imported into England at an early date, the manufacture of it being carried on at Andover in 1262.[103] Yet until the fourteenth century it was not produced in sufficient quant.i.ties to compete seriously with English wool in the markets of the Continent; and it appears to have been the long wools, such as those of the modern Leicester and Lincoln, from which England chiefly derived its fame as a wool-producing country.

Our early exports went to Flanders, where weaving had been introduced a century before the Conquest, and, in spite of the growth of the weaving industry in England, to that country the bulk of it continued to go, all through the Middle Ages, though in the thirteenth century a determined effort was made to divert a larger share of English wool to Italy.[104] During the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries the export of wool was frequently forbidden,[105] sometimes for political objects, but also to gain the manufacture of cloth for England by keeping our wool from the foreigner; but these measures did not stop the export, they only hampered it and encouraged much smuggling. It commanded what seems to us an astonishing price, for 3d. a lb. in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries is probably equal to nearly 4s. in our money. Its value, and the ease with which it could be packed and carried, made it an object of great importance to the farmer. In 1337[106] we have a schedule of the price of wool in the various counties of England, for in that year 30,000 sacks of the best wool was ordered to be bought in various districts by merchants for Edward III, to provide the sinews of war against France. The price for the best wool was to be fixed by the king, his council, and the merchants; the 'gross' wool being bought by agreement between buyer and seller.

Of the former the highest price fixed was for the wool of Hereford, then and for long afterwards famous for its excellent quality, 12 marks the sack of 364 lb.; and the lowest for that of the northern counties, 5 marks the sack.

Somewhat more than a century afterwards we have another similar list of wool prices, when in 1454 the Commons pet.i.tioned the king that 'as the wools growing within this realm have hitherto been the great commodity, enriching, and welfare of this land, and how of late the price is greatly decayed so that the Commons were not able to pay their rents to their lords', the king would fix certain prices under which wools should not be bought. The highest price fixed was for the wool of 'Hereford, in Leominster', 13 a sack; the lowest for that of Suffolk, 2 12s.[107]; the average being about 4 10s.

The manorial accounts of the Knights' Hospitallers, who then held land all over England, afford valuable information as to agriculture in 1338.[108] From these we gather that the rent of arable land varied from 2d. to 2s. an acre; but the latter sum was very exceptional, and there are only two instances of it given, in Lincolnshire and Kent.

Most of the tillage rented for less than 1s. an acre, more than half being at 6d. or under, and the average about 6d. On the other hand, meadow land is seldom of less value than 2s. an acre, and in Warwickshire, Oxfordshire, and Norfolk rose to 3s. This is one of the numerous proofs of the great value of meadow land at a time when hay was almost the sole winter food of stock; in some places it was eight or ten times as valuable as the arable.[109] The pasture on the Hospitallers' estates was divided into several and common pasture, the former often reaching 1s. an acre and sometimes 2s., the latter rarely exceeding 4d. The most usual way, however, of stating the value of pasture was by reckoning the annual cost of feeding stock per head, cows being valued at 2s., oxen at 1s., a horse at a little less than an ox, a sheep at 1d. The reign of Edward III was a great era for wool-growers, and the Hospitallers at Hampton in Middles.e.x had a flock of 2,000 sheep whose annual produce was six sacks of wool of 364 lb.

each, worth 4 a sack, which would make the fleeces weigh a little more than 1 lb. each. The profit of cows on one of their manors was reckoned at 2s. per head, on another at 3s.; and the profit of 100 sheep at 20s.[110] The wages paid to the labourers for day work were 2d. a day, and we must remember that when he was paid by the day his wages were rightly higher than when regularly employed, for day labour was irregular and casual. The tenants about the same date obtained the following prices[111] for some of their stock:--

s. d.

A good ox, alive, fatted on corn 1 4 0 " " " not on corn 16 0 A fatted cow 12 0 A two-year-old hog 3 4 A sheep and its fleece 1 8 A fatted sheep, shorn 1 2 " goose 0 3 Hens, each[112] 0 2 20 eggs 0 1

In the middle of the fourteenth century occurred the famous Black Death, the worst infliction that has ever visited England. Its story is too well known for repet.i.tion, and it suffices to say that it was like the bubonic plague in the East of to-day: it raged in 1348-9, and killed from one-third to one-half of the people.[113] It is said to have effected more important economic results than any other event in English history. It is probable that the prices of labour were rising before this terrible calamity; the dreadful famine of 1315-6,[114]

followed by pestilence, when wheat went up to 26s. a quarter, and according to the contemporary chroniclers, in some cases much higher, destroyed a large number of the population, and other plagues had done their share to make labour scarce, but after the Black Death the advance was strongly marked. It also accelerated the break-up of the manorial system. A large number of the free labourers were swept away, and their labour lost to the lord of the manor; the services of the villeins were largely diminished from the same cause; many of the tenants, both free and unfree, were dead, and the land thrown on the lord's hands. Flocks and herds were wandering about over the country because there was no one to tend them. In short, most manors were in a state of anarchy, and their lords on the verge of ruin. It is not to be wondered at, therefore, that they immediately adopted strong measures to save themselves and their property and, no doubt they thought, the whole country. Englishmen had by this time learnt to turn to Parliament to remedy their ills, but as the plague was still raging a proclamation was issued of which the preamble states that wages had already gone up greatly. 'Many, seeing the necessity of masters and great scarcity of servants, will not serve unless they get excessive wages', and it is, therefore, hard to till the land. Every one under the age of 60, it was ordered, free or villein, who can work, and has no other means of livelihood, is not to refuse to work for any one who offers the accustomed wages; no labourer is to receive more wages than he did before the plague, and none are to give more wages under severe penalties. But besides regulating wages, the proclamation also insists on reasonable prices for food and the necessaries of life: it was a fair attempt not only to protect the landlords but the labourers also, by keeping both wages and prices at their former rate, so that its object was not tyrannous as has been stated.[115] It was at once disregarded, a fate which met many of the proclamations and statutes of the Middle Ages, which often seem to have been regarded as mere pious aspirations.