The Agrarian Problem in the Sixteenth Century Part 13

"This breeding betterment to the soil and ease to your lordship's tenants will augment your honour's revenue there, avoid forren commoners, prevent contentions, enable your lordship's tenants to do your honour their requisite service, and bind your orator to pray that your lordship live long in happy state."

Much more general, however, than enclosure by agreement of the whole township, is the enclosure which takes place through the initiative of individual tenants, who, without any common agreement as to a policy of enclosure being reached by the village community as a whole, make sporadic encroachments on the common pasture or waste, and consolidate their arable holdings by exchanging strips with their neighbours. Our best information on the first point is obtained from the manorial court rolls. The court was the guardian of the customary methods of cultivation. How far it could maintain them against a lord or his farmer who wished to break them down, and how far it was merely his mouthpiece, is a difficult question, which we need not at present discuss. Certainly it did occasionally uphold the common rule of the township even against the lord; certainly the mere fact that when that rule is uncertain the lord refers the matter to the court in the form of a series of questions which it is to answer, gave the tenants the opportunity of building up a kind of case law which can hardly have failed to act as a brake upon arbitrary action by the manorial authorities. But however impotent it may often have been when confronted by an enclosing lord of the manor, its rules set very effective limits to the discretion exercised by tenants in their agricultural arrangements, and it checked enclosing by individuals for several reasons. It was of the essence of the open field system of tillage, and of the joint use of common meadows and pastures, that unauthorised encroachments by a single tenant should be an inconvenience to his neighbours. If made on the arable, they might interfere with the customary rotation of crops, and would certainly diminish the area of land available for the village cattle on the fallows and after harvest. If made on the common waste, they threw the village economy into confusion by upsetting the arrangements under which each holding could place so many beasts to be grazed there. "It is both law and reason," wrote a surveyor grieved by such aggression on the part of a large tenant, "that every tenant of like land and like rent have like portion in all things upon the common pasture."[299] The court, as the upholder of manorial custom, was occupied with discovering and checking breaches of it. On manors where there was not sufficient grazing land to allow of each tenant pasturing as many beasts as he pleased, it fixed "the stint" which each was allowed to turn out on the common. It decided whether rights of pasture were confined to old tenements or whether they could be extended to cottages recently erected. It made rules as to what fields should be sown with what crops.

It would fine a man "for refusing to consult his neighbours touching the common affairs of the township."[300]

[299] _Northumberland County History_, vol. v. The Surveyor of Buston (1569).

[300] _Ibid._

Such action does not, of course, necessarily imply any highly developed communal organisation of village life. When four householders to-day bring an action against a fifth who has interfered with "ancient lights," they act simply as individuals who are temporarily united in defence of a common interest, and when a court customary fines a man for over-stocking the common pasture, it is possible to argue that there is no more in its action than the temporary alliance of individuals to suppress a nuisance. Yet such a view of the matter is incomplete. The common interest is there in both cases; but in the case of the village community it is a permanent, not merely a pa.s.sing, ground for co-operation; and if we must take to heart the warnings given by some legal historians not to see communism where there is only joint action, we must also insist that common action, which is in effect communal action, is quite possible without those who act either possessing, or feeling the need of possessing, any definite status.[301] It is perhaps not too presumptuous to suggest that the very precision with which the lawyer applies his keen a.n.a.lysis of juristic conceptions to remove the misconceptions of the lay mind, is sometimes an obstacle to the understanding of forms of organisation created by the daily routine of men quite unversed in the law. An employers' a.s.sociation or a trade union to-day in an industry which is not highly organised is, during two-thirds of its life, a mere collection of individuals. But in an emergency it can show very effectively that it is the organ of a common will. It is surely rather hard to deny the peasantry some measure of corporate management of common interests because they cannot answer questions as to the legal nature of a corporation, because they do not express their communal arrangements by the use of terms of art which they would not have understood. The economist, at any rate, will look at practice rather than theory. He will be inclined to doubt whether the villagers were any clearer as to the basis of their a.s.sociated action than the ma.s.s of trade unionists were between 1875 and 1906. But he will see that, like trade unionists, they do in fact habitually act together and act effectively for the regulation of their common interests. No doubt such action was often mere adherence to a customary rule. But it is possible again to draw the ant.i.thesis between custom and organisation too sharply. After all custom does not work by itself. Especially in times of change, like the sixteenth century, it only works in so far as men make it work. On some manors it is frequently changed by the court, and clearly, when it is changed, we have not automatism but deliberate action.

[301] For references to the discussion on this point, see below, p. 244.

But the power of a rule is not recognised till it is broken, and it is just these collisions between the plan of cultivation upheld by the court and the interests of individual tenants, which show how prevalent are the small enclosures made by the latter. They begin very early and are increasingly frequent throughout the fifteenth century. Let us make the picture more precise by giving one or two instances. In 1405 some customary tenants at Forncett[302] are fined 2s. 2d. because "they have made enclosures of their lands within the manor against the custom of the manor, on account of which action the tenants of the manor are not able to have their common there." In 1418 the court at Castle[303] Combe presents that three tenants "have sown the common fields and kept them several without the licence of the lord, when they ought to be common, to the common damage." At Ingoldmells,[304] in 1437, the court impounds the sheep of some tenants who have "entered upon the fields of Burgh and occupied the common there, where they have no common." At Coventry[305]

from the middle of the fifteenth century, and at Southampton[306]

throughout almost the whole of the century and a half following, continuous war was waged by the Court Leet against those who "oppressed the common" by over-stocking it with more than their authorised quota of beasts. Yet, in spite of elaborate and ever-changing regulations which were made as to the number which any person might place upon it, in spite of bye-laws requiring them to be delivered personally or through a servant into the charge of the town herdsman, ruling off aged animals which were past work, and imposing heavy fines on offenders, the constant references in the doc.u.ments of the sixteenth century to pieces of land which are held by customary tenants in severalty show that this sporadic individualising of part of the manorial area had to a great extent broken down the customary routine of cultivation, even on manors where no extensive enclosures were carried out by the manorial authorities.

[302] Davenport, _History of a Norfolk Manor_, p. 80.

[303] Scrope, _History of the Manor and Barony of Castle Combe_, p. 236.

[304] Ma.s.singberd, _Ingoldmells Court Rolls_, p. 276.

[305] M.D. Harris, _Coventry Leet Book_, vol. ii., pp. 445, 456, 510, and elsewhere.

[306] Hearnshaw, _Court Leet Records of Southampton, pa.s.sim, e.g._ 1551: "Thomas Betts and Thomas Fuller continue to oppress the common with sheep, therefore they are fined 8s. each" (p.

21).

So far we have spoken of the encroachments by tenants on the common pasture. The growth of several occupation could occur there with less disturbance than on the arable holdings, because, if the pasture was a large one, the clipping off of a corner might leave the other tenants with more than was sufficient for their cattle. But enclosure made by one tenant on the open arable fields created a disturbance which was immediate and obvious. Indeed, if his holding lay in scattered strips, separated from each other by the strips of his neighbours, how could he enclose at all? He would at once come into collision with their demand that his holding should lie open for grazing purposes after harvest.

Moreover, even from his own point of view, enclosure could hardly pay, for he would have to put hedges round each of 30 or 40 or 50 acre and half acre plots. One would expect, therefore, that individual tenants would be slow to undertake the hedging and ditching of their arable holdings; and this expectation is on the whole confirmed by the impression which one gets from the surveys and from the accounts of contemporaries.[307] On the tenants' arable land enclosure has not proceeded by the middle of the sixteenth century as far as on their pasture and meadow. Yet, even in this matter, the tendency is perhaps to exaggerate the stability of agricultural conditions. Even on the arable fields themselves individual tenants set themselves to overcome the obstacles in the way of enclosure, and they do so in the only way they can, by attempting first of all to consolidate their strips into larger holdings. This tendency is revealed most clearly by the open field maps.

The picture of mediaeval agriculture, to which Mr. Seebohm has accustomed us, is one in which holdings were made up of strips which lay scattered over the open fields at a considerable distance from each other. In the sixteenth century this condition of things survived in its entirety on many manors and partially on most. But, side by side with it, there is going on a process by which the strips coalesce into larger bundles, so that one tenant's pieces of land, instead of being far apart, very often lie next to each other, forming blocks of several acres. Those who make maps show the change by putting brackets round the contiguous strips.[308] Written surveys, instead of describing parts of holdings with the words "lying between the land of A and the land of B," call attention to the new condition of things, which is still sufficiently unusual to deserve remark, with the words "lying together."[309]

Sometimes in the maps one finds twelve or twenty strips bracketed as belonging to one man; sometimes the surveys state that 16 or 20 acres lie together. But even 10 acres is a big field, quite big enough to repay the cost of hedging and ditching. When sufficient strips have become contiguous to form a close of this size one great obstacle to enclosure has been removed. Unity of cultivation has been added to unity of ownership. The difficulty that enclosure will probably, though not necessarily, mean the exclusion of the other tenants' beasts after harvest still remains. But an individual tenant will no longer find enclosure impossible if he can persuade his neighbours to acquiesce in it. In fact he does sometimes persuade them, and in the midst of fields which are still open one finds here and there blocks which have been enclosed.

[307] _e.g._ _The Commonweal of this Realm of England_, p. 56: "And weare it not that oure grounde lieth in the common fieldes, intermingled one with another, I thincke also oure fieldes had been inclosed, of a common agreement of all the townshippe, longe ere this time."

[308] See opposite, the map of part of Salford.

[309] Merton Doc.u.ments, No. 5209, Rental of Ibstone (about 1600): "Item, Thomas Skott holdeth ix acres as it is estymed lieinge together in Tillage." "John ... holdeth 16 acres of Lande lieinge together in Redfield."

[Ill.u.s.tration: I. PART OF THE MANOR OF SALFORD, IN BEDFORDSHIRE (1590.)]

[Ill.u.s.tration: II. PART OF THE MANOR OF EDGEWARE, IN MIDDLEs.e.x (1597.)]

[Ill.u.s.tration: III. MAP OF PART OF THE MANOR OF MAIDS MORTON IN BUCKSHIRE (1580.)]

[Ill.u.s.tration: IV. MAP OF PART OF THE MANOR OF CRENDON IN BUCKINGHAMSHIRE (ABOUT 1590.) ]

[Ill.u.s.tration: V. MAP OF PART OF THE MANOR OF WEEDON WESTON IN NORTHAMPTONSHIRE (1590.)]

[Ill.u.s.tration: VI. MAP OF THE MANOR OF WHADBOROUGH IN LEICESTERSHIRE (1620.)]

Nor can we doubt that this process of forming strips into blocks took place through deliberate action on the part of tenants, though we need not a.s.sume that the probability of its leading to enclosure was always foreseen. The amalgamation of the scattered parts of a single holding had sufficient advantages to commend it without any further change, and enclosure may often have been an afterthought. How could this amalgamation come about? It would naturally take place by a process of exchange[310] between tenants. As we have seen, the tenants were from an early date buying and selling, leasing and sub-letting, parts of their holdings. What could be more reasonable than that in doing so they should have regard to the situation of the plots which they acquired, and so arrange their bargains as gradually to subst.i.tute a few larger blocks for many scattered strips? This hypothesis (for it is only a hypothesis) receives a certain amount of confirmation from a curious fact to which attention was called for the first time by Professor Unwin.[311] It occasionally happens that we find the very tenants who sell and let part of their holdings are buying and leasing parts of other holdings from their neighbours. Thus, at Gorleston,[312] in Suffolk, a customary tenant sublets about half his holding of 12 acres to as many as eight other persons, and at the same time acquires plots of land from another eight holdings himself. At Crondal[313] Richard Wysdon adds enormously to his half-virgate by encroachments, and at the same time sublets 2-1/2 acres to Hugh Sweyn. Henry Simmond enters on land belonging to the same Richard Wysdon, and in turn transfers 8 acres of his holding to Matilda Huthe. What is relevant to the question in these transactions is not the mere sub-letting and selling of land.

That, as we have seen, was common enough. The noticeable thing is that the same tenant who surrenders part of his holding acquires part of the holdings of other people. After the transactions are completed he holds about as much land as before, only it is differently arranged. May it not be that the desire that it should be differently arranged was one of the motives of the double transaction, and that in this way he sought to subst.i.tute for his dispersed strips a compacter and more manageable holding? Is he not like a shareholder who sells out Canadian Pacifics and invests in Consols, in order to have his property more directly under his own eye? At any rate such an explanation would account for the undoubted fact that in the sixteenth century holdings are much more compact than they are in the thirteenth century. But whether it is correct or not the growth towards compactness is a fact, and a fact which makes possible the enclosure of holdings in the open fields.

[310] Exchanges are not uncommon, _e.g._ Roxburghe Club, _Pembroke Surveys_, Manor of South Brent and Huish: "Note that the same Thomas with leave of the Court has exchanged the said acre lying near Appleworth with John Moore, customary tenant of the lord, for one acre lyinge in Holmefield." Mr. Kolthammer has called my attention to a case (Ashford Court Rolls, 1605), in which a tenant gives up a number of half acre strips lying between the lands of another, and receives in exchange some strips of the latter which lie between his own.

[311] _Victoria County History_, Suffolk, Social and Economic History.

[312] _Victoria County History_, Suffolk, Social and Economic History.

[313] _Crondal Records_ (Baigent), pp. 134, 149, 152, 154-155.

It is plain from these and similar instances that there was a well-defined movement from the fourteenth century onwards which made for the gradual modification or dissolution of the open field system of cultivation, and that it originated not on the side of the lord or the great farmer, but on the side of the peasants themselves, who tried to overcome the inconvenience of that system by a spontaneous process of re-allotment, sometimes, but not always, in conjunction with actual enclosure. On one manor it proceeded by the piecemeal encroachments of individuals, on another by the deliberate division of the common meadow or pasture, on a third by the voluntary exchanging by tenants of their strips so as to build up compact holdings, on a fourth by the redistribution of the arable land. It was a spontaneous movement in the sense of being initiated by the tenants and not merely forced upon them.

The economic, as distinct from the legal, arrangements of the village community were much less rigid than some of the books about it would suggest. The open field system of cultivation was, in fact, already in slow motion in several parts of England, when the impact of the large grazier struck it, enormously accelerated the speed of the movement, and diverted it on to lines which were new and disastrous to the bulk of the rural population.

This aspect of the enclosures, though not overlooked by contemporaries, has perhaps hardly received the emphasis which it deserves from modern writers. For one thing, a recollection of it explains certain apparent contradictions, the difference in the views expressed by different writers in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as to the social effect of enclosures, the disagreement between Mr. Leadam and Professor Gay as to whether enclosing was or was not usually followed by conversion to pasture, the strange statement of Hales[314] that "the chief destruccion of Townes and decaye of houses was before the beginning of the reigne of Kynge Henry the Seventh." The latter remark can hardly have been true of the great and sudden evictions which caused rioting and depopulation, and evoked the long series of statutes which begin in 1489. It may well have been a curt summary of the impression produced by a century of gradual consolidation and piecemeal enclosures carried out by the smaller cultivators. It would seem, again, to be the case that while landlords usually enclosed with the object of putting sheep where men had been, the tenants of customary holdings enclosed simply for the sake of better arable farming, or for the more convenient employment of meadow and pasture land. That is why Hales could make himself detested by landlords as the chairman of the only effective committee of Somerset's ill-starred Enclosure Commission, and at the same time say that certain kinds of enclosure are "very beneficiall to the commonweal." That is why Fuller and Moore a century later could d.a.m.n enclosure in one sentence and qualify their verdict in the next. That is why Moore's numerous critics could repudiate his aspersions with some acrimony, and nevertheless admit that "when townes are in the hands of one or few men ... enclosure doth produce depopulation."[315]

[314] "The defence of John Hales agenst certyn sclaundres and false reaportes made of hym" (Appendix to Miss Lamond's introduction to _The Commonweal of this Realm of England_, p.

liii.). Two things make the effect of the fifteenth century enclosures obscure. First, the pamphlets on popular grievances which begin in the sixteenth century were hardly possible before the general use of the printing press. Second, in the sixteenth century people appealed to the Tudor government for protection because it was strong enough to give it. In the fifteenth century there was no Government to preserve order, let alone protect the poorer cla.s.ses. Even if there were, therefore, extensive enclosures producing depopulation, we might very well hear little of them. But, while confessing ignorance, I think Hales' statement compatible with the view expressed above and on page 138, note 1, that the fifteenth century was a time when the consolidation of holdings was going forward slowly through the small speculations of the peasants.

[315] _A Vindication of the Considerations concerning Common Fields and Enclosures_ (Pseudonismus).

For another thing, the prevalence of small enclosures suggests that the view of those who represent the agriculture of the period as needing a violent shock to rouse it from a state of intolerable inefficiency can only be accepted with considerable qualification. We know that by the middle of the sixteenth century in certain counties, notably Kent, Ess.e.x, and Devonshire, the common field system of cultivation was already the exception and not the rule. We know, too, that though in parts of these counties its absence may have been due to differences in the original forms of settlement and clearance, it had elsewhere disappeared within historical times. We may conjecture that the reason why it decayed sooner in Kent and Ess.e.x than elsewhere was the fact that the neighbourhood of those counties to London and the sea, and to the commercial routes from the Continent, caused the influence of commerce and of a money economy to be felt there sooner than in the Midlands, with the natural result of accelerating economic and agrarian changes, and that in the examples quoted above we have the same process of individualisation in the method of agriculture going on quietly elsewhere in a way which would sooner or later have brought about a similar result to that which had already occurred in those two progressive districts. At any rate these rearrangements suggest a good deal of adaptability among the tenants who carried them out, and not the condition of organised torpor which some writers profess to find in the unenclosed village. That communal cultivation was incompatible with swift change may be granted. Of that fact its survival into almost our own day is a sufficient proof. That it prevented improvements altogether must be denied; and though no doubt to large farmers and impatient surveyors the petty operations of the smaller tenants seemed intolerably dilatory and wasteful, the student who looks at them in an age which has some experience of economic revolutions may well doubt whether rapid technical progress cannot be bought too dear, and regret that the gradual movement towards more rational methods of farming on the part of the small man was so soon overtaken by one over which the small man could exercise no effective control. Now, as then, land agents shake grave heads at the wastefulness of sacrificing the well-ordered dignity of a great estate to the encouragement of undercapitalised, untidy, higgledy-piggledy small holdings, and prove by arithmetic that the labourer has more comforts for less work. Now, as then, in those countries where the peasant tradition has not died altogether away, the unreasonable creature prefers starving on land which is his own, though it be but a tiny patch where he sweats from dawn to dark.

If it be objected to the view which we have taken of the slow spread of enclosure among the peasantry that they were notoriously opposed to enclosing, we must answer by repeating that there was nothing inconsistent in approving one kind and detesting another. After all there is no curse attached to landmarks, but only to the man who removes his neighbour's. Even in an open field village no one had a conscientious objection to fences in general; it all depended on where the fences were put. The object of enclosure was to shut in, or to shut out, or to do both. The villagers were not unwilling that an agreement should be reached whereby each man should shut his own beasts in a close of pasture, and shut out the beasts of other people from his arable after harvest. On the contrary, it was sometimes a grievance[316] that enclosure was not allowed. What they objected to was that one man should exclude others without compensation from rights of pasture or from their arable holdings. Moreover, provided that enclosure took place by consent, the advantages of it were overwhelming. When the superior[317]

value of enclosed over unenclosed land was so marked that the former was sometimes a.s.sessed to subsidies at a higher rate than the latter, a man who, like many of our tenants, had money to spend on timber, would naturally wish to enclose. The growth of pasture farming by large graziers turned the minds of the smaller tenants in the direction of enclosing for themselves, because this, paradoxical though it may seem when the outcry against enclosure is remembered, was the most obvious way in which they could protect themselves. The explanation is that the system of open field cultivation and of common pasturage made it peculiarly easy for one large shareholder to ruin the rest by letting his cattle stray at large over the common, and even by encroachments on his neighbour's strips. Its underlying principle had been the apportionment of rights on a basis which was settled by the custom of the manor, as opposed to the acquisition by individuals for themselves of such rights as they could obtain by economic power, or by the acc.u.mulation of capital. This was the meaning of the strict allotment of grazing privileges by the establishment of a stint which each tenant, or rather each tenement, was not to exceed. The limitation to the capital which a man could acquire in the shape of stock--cattle and sheep--was practicable as long as that capital was small. When it became large, as in the sixteenth century it did, it was too powerful to be dammed up by the rules as to cultivation enforced in the manorial court, and the outward sign of this was the failure of the latter to prevent the "overcharging" both of the common waste, and of the common pasture formed by the field after harvest, with the beasts of the large grazier.

Hence in some places the enclosing of pasture or arable was used by the tenants as a way of protecting themselves: at Mudford the tenants, at Newham and Tughall the surveyor in the interests of the tenants, at Southampton the Leet jury, were anxious[318] for enclosing, in order that the weak barriers which the custom of the manor offered to the farmers' or to neighbouring villagers' depredations might be supplemented by a strong quickset hedge. What damaged the smaller tenants, and produced the popular revolts against enclosure, was not merely enclosing, but enclosing accompanied either by eviction and conversion to pasture, or by the monopolising of common rights. When some of the tenants became large capitalists, what the rest lost by surrendering common rights might be more than compensated by the security which they thus obtained of grazing their own beasts undisturbed on a smaller area.

[316] _Topographer and Genealogist_, vol. i., Survey of Whitford: "I woulde wish that the same [the common] were divided among the tenants yielding some small rente ... the poore men with dyligence and labour woulde soon convert yt to amendement, and alter the nature thereof, but the ritche men will not consent to that, for yt is as good to them as theire several grounde or pasture. The poore are not able to store yt with cattle, nor to use the commodytie as they might do if welth woulde serve them. But the rytche do consume their own parts and their neighbouris also: and that is the cause they will not consent to the enclosure and part.i.tion thereof."

[317] There is interesting doc.u.mentary proof of the statements of surveyors. Warwickshire MSS. Quarter Sessions Records, Michaelmas, 1636: "Fforasmuche as this Courte is informed that Overhinton (?) in this countie consists of 30 yardlands, of which 22 are enclosed and 8 yardlands thereof residue in the possession of Thomas [surname illegible] do lie in the common fields, and whereas the same 8 yardlands lyinge in the comon fields have been heretofore rated equally and proportionablie in all levies with thother yardlands, the said 22 yard of inclosed land being worth xx [pounds], for every yardland and the seid other 8 yardlands being worth but after the rate of x the yardland, it is ordered that the said 8 yardlands shall from henceforth pay in all levies but after the rate of x pounds for every yardland and the said 22 yardlands after the rate of xx pounds for every yardland, unless the owners of the said 22 yardlands shall att the next sessions uppon convenient notice hereof to them given shewe cause to the contrarie." The Justices do not understand the taxation of unimproved land.

[318] See _Topographer and Genealogist_, vol. i., for Mudford; for Newham and Tughall, _Northumberland County History_, vol.

i.; for Southampton, Hearnshaw, _Court Leet Records of Southampton_.

At the same time, though voluntary enclosing by the peasants was partly a symptom of the overshadowing of small property by large, it was much more than this, and was due partly to a change in their methods of agriculture, and partly, perhaps, to a genuine progress in the technique of cultivation. This is indicated by the enthusiasm of the expert opinion of the period for "several" holdings, and by the qualified praise of discriminating critics like Hales.[319] As we have seen above, there were parts of England--for example, "the sweet country of Tandeane," described by Norden--where cultivation was quite intensive in character, and intensive cultivation naturally gave an impetus to the individualising of arable holdings. Again, the advantage to the cattle breeder of "several closes and pastures to put his cattle in, the which would be well quicksetted, hedged, and ditched,"[320] was a commonplace.

It has been already pointed out that on many manors of Southern and Eastern England the customary tenants were sheep farmers on a considerable scale. The adjustment of common rights must always have involved some difficulty: the fixing of so many head of beasts to each tenement was obviously a rough and ready arrangement based on the idea that the holding in the arable fields was the backbone of a man's substance, and that therefore it might properly be taken as a standard by which his rights of pasture and common could fairly be measured. The problems which arose could be imagined, even if they were not described for us at some length: "Where fields lie open and the land is used in common, he that is rich and fully stocked (up to the limit allowed) eateth with his cattle not his own part only, but also his neighbour's who is poor and out of stock. Besides that, it is an ordinary practice with unconscionable people to keep above their just proportion ... those who have consciences large enough to do it will lengthen their ropes, or stake them down so that their horses may reach into other men's lots."[321] As long as the great bulk of the customary tenants relied for a livelihood mainly on the subsistence farming of the arable land, these practical difficulties were probably not felt very keenly, because the comparatively few beasts which were kept could pick up a living without overcrowding each other. But when the raising of stock became almost as important as the cultivation of arable, the demand for more pasture and for better pasture grew enormously, and in the face of the compet.i.tion for it the strict maintenance of the customary stint became more difficult. On manors where 150 or 200 sheep were kept by almost every tenant the motive either to enclose surrept.i.tiously and in defiance of the custom of the manor, or to divide and enclose meadow and pasture by agreement, must have been extremely strong. Ought we not to ask why the open field system survived so long, rather than why it partially disappeared in the sixteenth century?

[319] _The Commonweal of this Realm of England_, p. 49: "I meane not all inclosures, nor yet all commons, but only of such inclosures as turneth commonly arable lands into pastures; and violent inclosures, without recompence of them that have right to comen therein; for if land weare severallie inclosed, to the intent to continue husbandrie thereon, and everie man, that had Right to Common, had for his portion a pece of the same to himselfe enclosed, I thincke no harme but rather good should come thereof, yf everie man did agre theirto."

[320] Fitzherbert, _Book of Husbandry_.

[321] Pseudonismus, 1654, _Considerations concerning Common Fields and Enclosures_.

We may now summarise the argument of this part of our work. The manor, as we see it from the middle of the fourteenth century onwards, is not the rigid, motionless organisation which it is sometimes represented as being. Though it is governed by custom, custom leaves room for the growth of commercial relationships on the extending fringe of new land over which the village spreads; for the withdrawal by the villagers of part of their holdings from the common scheme of open field husbandry, the division of meadows and pastures, the exchanging of strips, the formation of closes like those represented in the map on the opposite page, which a man can use as he pleases and over which the customary routine of agriculture has no authority. This side of the enclosing movement, more properly described as redivision and reallotment than as enclosure, develops earliest in those parts of the country which, owing to their geographical position, are particularly exposed to the dissolving forces of trade and of a money economy. But with the improvement in the condition of the peasantry and the growth of pasture farming it spreads far afield, and by the middle of the sixteenth century, quite apart from the large changes introduced by lords of manors and capitalist farmers, it has effected a considerable alteration in the methods of agriculture even of the more stationary inland counties. Such piecemeal alterations are a gradual process; they are not regarded unfavourably by the peasantry; and a balance between their tentative individualism and the rule of communal custom is preserved by the action of the manorial court. They are to be carefully distinguished from the sweeping innovations of the sixteenth century, which alone deserve the name of an Agrarian Revolution. But they are closely connected with that revolution. For by making a breach in the walls of custom they bring us to the edge of two great problems, the growth of compet.i.tive rents, and the formation of large pasture farms out of the holdings of evicted tenants.

We have spoken at length of the prosperity of the peasants, because it is necessary to appreciate it in order to sympathise with the point of view from which they and their contemporaries regarded the agrarian problem. But evil days are coming upon the rural middle cla.s.ses. Indeed they have already come. There is by this time much anger against depopulating landlords, much talk of the good customs of Henry VII., much murmuring lest men be brought to that slavery the Frenchman be in.

We must leave the light and follow them into the shadow.