The Agrarian Problem in the Sixteenth Century Part 5

CHAPTER II

THE PEASANTRY

(a) _The Variety of Conditions_

When one turns from what legal historians have said on the origin and development of copyhold tenure to consider the economic position of this cla.s.s of tenants, one finds oneself in a region of much greater uncertainty. The legal historian may speak of the copyholders as const.i.tuting, in spite of minor differences, a fairly well-defined cla.s.s. The economic historian cannot. He finds, on the contrary, the widest difference between the economic conditions of tenants holding their land by copy of court roll, not only, as would be expected, in different parts of the country, but on the same manor. In the thirteenth century to say that a man is a villein tells us something at least about his economic position, at any rate when the general features of the manor on which he is a villein are known. He will probably have a standard holding of a virgate or half-virgate; he will have rights in the common meadow land and in the common waste; he will do work on the lord's demesne. In the sixteenth century tenure is no clue to economic status, and to say that a man is a copyhold tenant tells us nothing at all about the extent of his holding or the sort of husbandry which he pursues. The vast majority of copyhold tenants are peasants, men who make a toilsome living from their land with the help of their families and a few hired servants. But in England by our period the line between cla.s.s and cla.s.s has ceased to coincide with differences of t.i.tle; if copyhold tenure is born of a humble stock, yet it has risen so much in the world that the upper cla.s.ses are not ashamed to hold out a hand to welcome it; and among copyholders are found the names not only of many small freeholders, but also of gentlemen and knights.[119]

[119] _Crondal Records_, edited by Baigent, Part I., p. 159; the Crondal customary of 1567. Among the copyholders appears a knight and four gentlemen.

Among the peasants who form the bulk of the population there is, again, the greatest diversity. Sometimes the copyholders are simply emanc.i.p.ated villeins, who have commuted most of their services, and who hold by copy instead of at the will of the lord, but whose economic condition has hardly changed at all. Thus in Northumberland[120] the holdings of the copyholders on several manors reflect very accurately the distribution of land between the bondage tenants in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries; the holdings have grown slightly in size, but they have apparently a more or less continuous individual existence from the earliest times. In parts of Wiltshire,[121] on the other hand, though not in all parts, there is no possibility of establishing any connection between the virgate and semi-virgate of the fourteenth century villeins and the acreage held by the copyholders two hundred and fifty years later; both in size and number the holdings are markedly different. In Norfolk and Suffolk ancient cla.s.s divisions have often been obliterated altogether, and bond and free lands are interlaced in the holdings of the customary tenants in quite inextricable confusion.

[120] _Northumberland County History, e.g._ Surveys of High Buston (vol. v. p. 208); Acklington (vol. v. p. 372); Birling (vol. v. p. 201), and figures of eight townships in Tynemouthshire, vol. viii. p. 230.

[121] Roxburghe Club, _Surveys of the Lands of William, First Earl of Pembroke_.

Again, there is the greatest variety in the methods of agriculture.[122]

Everywhere among the copyhold tenancies arable land predominates to an extent which is in marked contrast to the frequent preponderance of pasture land on many of the demesne farms. But to some tillage seems to be their sole livelihood, while others are very considerable sheep-farmers. Some are cultivators on quite a big scale, well outside the Board of Agriculture's interpretation of a "small-holder" to-day, with 80, 90, 100, or even 200 acres of land. Often they are better off economically than many freeholders, and when Harrison and Sir Thomas Smith cla.s.sify[123] copyholders in general with "day labourers and poor husbandmen," they must surely have been either speaking loosely, or else thinking not of their economic but of their legal position. But others hold only 5, 10, 15, or 20 acres, so that arithmetical averages of the size of their holdings are very little guide to the real distribution of land. Yet it would not be true to say that such inequality is universal, for in the same county one finds some manors on which the holdings seem all to be cut to a regular standard pattern, and others where the variety of size is almost infinite, while in the North striking divergences of area seem to be as much the exception as they are the rule in the South and the East. On some manors, again, the copyhold tenants have enclosed land and hold much in severalty; on others nearly all of it lies in the open fields. Some have extensive rights of common, while on other manors such rights are non-existent, or are too insignificant to be recorded by surveyors.

[122] See below, pp. 105-115.

[123] Smith, _De Republica Anglorum_, Lib. I., c. 24. Harrison, _Elizabethan England_ (edited by Withington), p. 13.

In fact the impression given by the surveys is that of a condition of things which is very far from being stationary, but in which, on the contrary, much shifting of property and many changes in the methods of cultivation have been going on, and in which the legal position of the peasants is no guide at all to their economic characteristics. The task of finding a manor to serve as a pattern and standard for the rest, which is hard enough in the thirteenth century, is a sheer impossibility in the sixteenth, and the student works with a deep sense of the danger of sacrificing fidelity to simplicity of statement.

(b) _The Consolidation of Peasant Holdings_

But difficult as it is to reduce to any order the very diverse economic conditions of the customary tenants at the beginning of the sixteenth century, the task, at any rate in outline, has got to be faced. And this involves a short account of movements which take us some way back into the Middle Ages. No one can understand the contrast between the conditions of the Irish peasantry in 1850 and their condition to-day without knowing something of the agencies which have been at work in the interval, of the Fair Rent Courts, the Congested Districts Board, and the Land Purchase Acts; no one can appreciate the changes which are taking place in rural France without having taken at any rate a glance at the position of the peasantry before the Revolution, and at the Code Napoleon. Certainly the substantial alteration which overtook agrarian relationships in many parts of England between 1500 and 1640 is unintelligible if it is regarded as a wave suddenly appearing in a calm sea, a revolution by means of which commercial relationships of sometimes an almost modern elasticity developed quite rapidly in village communities of an almost mediaeval immobility. To understand the agrarian problem of the sixteenth century we must know the sort of framework on which the new forces worked, and the sort of tendencies of which they were the continuation.

Moreover, the history with which we are concerned is primarily the history of the peasants as landholders, and only secondarily the history of their personal condition. Generalisations about the disappearance of villeinage and the subst.i.tution of hired labour for the working out of rents in labour services do not help us much here. Speaking broadly, it is no doubt true that, in spite of the survival of many vestiges of the old order, wage-labourers are as normally the means of cultivating the demesne at the end of the fifteenth century as servile tenants are at the end of the thirteenth. But significant as this change is for the history of the wage-earning cla.s.ses, it does not by itself seem to throw much light on the characteristic features of the sixteenth century problem, the subst.i.tution of large tenancies for small, the displacement of small holders, and the undermining of the customary routine of the open field village. Certainly the two movements are connected; equally certainly that connection is not a direct or obvious one. The change in the personal condition of the peasantry is not by itself the key to changes in the use and distribution of property. Why should it be? In Prussia the abolition[124] of villein services in 1807 was carried out by a decree which had as its object not a diminution, but an increase, in the number of small tenants; and it is not self-evident that an alteration in the method of cultivating the lord's demesne must have produced changes in the disposition of the customary holdings in fifteenth and sixteenth century England.

[124] Edict of October 9, 1807, Clauses 10, 11, 12. See Cobden Club, _Systems of Land Tenure in Various Countries_: Morier's Essay on Germany.

The very variety in the economic conditions of the peasantry which makes generalisation so difficult is, however, itself a significant feature, because it is in marked contrast with the comparative uniformity which existed among great ma.s.ses of them in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. It suggests that even in agriculture custom has to some extent been broken down by commercial enterprise, and that commercial enterprise has had the natural result of accentuating inequality in the possession of property. It warns a student of the agrarian changes of the sixteenth century that he has not only to explain the way in which the small cultivator lost ground then before the large estate, but also how it was that his economic position differed in many cases so much from that of the villein of two hundred years before, and that it may very well be that the answer to the latter question will throw light upon the former.

Let us put ourselves in the position of a jury catechising some "aged man" about the year 1500, catechising him not about boundaries, or rights of common, or manorial customs, but about the general changes in the distribution of property in his village. If surveys and court rolls may be trusted, there is one thing that he could hardly fail to tell us, and that is that for as long as he can remember there has been a great deal of buying and selling of land by the customary tenants, a great many changes in occupancy, and on the whole a tendency for those changes to result in the concentration of several holdings in fewer and larger tenancies. "Virgates which in grandfather's time," he would say, "used to belong to A., B., C., and D. now belong to A. alone. Men who used to occupy one holding each, now occupy two or three; when they cannot buy they lease, and some have bought so much that they sublet part of their holdings to others. Indeed there is not much sense in talking about virgates or half-virgates at all. Once each of them had a separate holder; once Durrant's shottes belonged to Durrant, Gunter's mead to Gunter, Parry's croft to Parry, Hawkins' meade to Hawkins, Woolmer's lande to Woolmer, Blake's tenement to Blake. To-day, though the old names remain, they are no guide to the families holding the land.

Frankling has bought Durrant's and Gunter's and Blake's, Vites has bought Parry's, while Pynnole's and Pope's and Hawkins' and the rest of Blake's holdings have all pa.s.sed into the hands of Blackwell."[125]

[125] The instance is taken from a map of the manor of Edgeware now in the All Souls muniment room. The map was made in 1597.

But many earlier examples can be found of land being known by the name of one of its early holders, long after it had pa.s.sed into the possession of some one else.

One thing at any rate is clear. If frequent changes of occupancy point to a free land-market, then such a free land-market has existed for a long time among the customary tenants; and if a keen demand for land among the peasantry is a proof that small men are thriving, and see their way to thriving still more by adding to their properties, then there is a good deal of this healthy land hunger in English villages before the age of the Tudors. We read to-day of how the French peasant will pinch himself and his family to add a few acres to his little estate, and we take it as an indication that small cultivation has a firm root in France, and that rural life is on the whole enterprising and prosperous. Certainly such a state of things is in marked contrast with the stagnation prevailing in the lower ranges of village society in countries where great estates pa.s.s almost intact from generation to generation between the tall palings of family settlements, with the small man, who would get land if he could, staring helplessly through the bars. Now, at any rate in the fifteenth century, England belonged very markedly to the first type, not to the second; to the type where there is much buying and selling of land in small plots by small cultivators, not to the type where land is locked up and rarely comes into the market, rarely at any rate into a market where it can be bought by the small peasantry. This mobility of land is of much significance when we come to consider the breaking down of customary rules before the forces of compet.i.tion, and the formation of great estates out of the holdings of the customary tenants. Let us consider it in more detail, first from the point of view of the changes in the economic basis of rural life which it produces, and secondly from the point of view of the process by which those changes were brought about. We will for the present leave on one side the demesne farm and the land held on lease, and look only at the customary land which forms the backbone of the copyholders' estates.

The first source of information to which we turn consists of the surveys and rentals, in which the holdings of the tenants are set out in detail.

To those accustomed to the picture of village life contained in the records of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the surveys of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries present certain features which at once arrest attention. For one thing, there is a much greater inequality between the holdings of different customary tenants on the same manors than is usually found among the holdings of virgators and semi-virgators two centuries before. For another thing, some of their holdings are very much larger than anything we find belonging to the same cla.s.s of tenants at an earlier date; occasionally, indeed, they can only be described as enormous, running into 150 or 200 acres of land; often they amount to 80 or 90. In the third place, the number of customary tenants is, on the whole, much smaller than it was 200 years before, and that even on manors where there has been an increase in the area cultivated by them.

The latter fact is significant, and we shall return to it later. But before doing so, let us ask the meaning of the growing inequality in the holdings of the customary tenants and of the great increase in the size of some among them.

Great as is the variety of conditions visible on a thirteenth century manor, it is on the whole true to say that this variety usually conforms to a rough rule or principle. One can find on the same manor families whose holdings differ very largely in size, from the 25 to 40 acres occupied by the holder of a virgate, the 12 to 16 acres of a semi-virgator, to the 2 or 3 acres or less occupied by a cottar. But normally each individual holds much the same amount of land as other individuals of the same cla.s.s; one holder of a virgate has about as much as another holder of a virgate, one holder of half a virgate about as much as his fellow, one cottager about as much as another cottager.

There are in fact different grades, but for each grade there is what may be called a standard area of land, a unit of agrarian organisation, and though that standard area varies a good deal in different parts of the country it is usually fairly easy to discover what it is on any one manor. Outwardly, at any rate, village life is organised, and the distribution of property is settled in the main by the authority of custom, rather than by commercial forces acting directly upon the tenants.

Now after the middle of the fifteenth century it is common to find quite a different condition of things from this. There are, it is true, manors where holdings preserve their primitive equality down to the very end of the sixteenth century, especially manors in backward parts of the country, where the influence of commerce has been little felt; especially also manors where the demesne farm, instead of being leased, has been retained in the hands of the lord. But in the South of England these are the exception. The rule is that with regard to the area held by the customary tenants there is no rule at all. On the same manor copyholders may be cultivating anything from a quarter of a virgate to two, three, four, or even more virgates; if their holdings are expressed in acres they may be holding anything from 1 acre to 100 or 150.

Economically, indeed, customary tenants are often not a cla.s.s at all, if the essence of a cla.s.s is common characteristics and a similarity of economic status, though in the face of certain dangers they will act as one. On many manors the nature of their tenure is the only common link between them, and the nature of their tenure is compatible with the greatest economic variety.

This variety is most noticeable when we examine a large number of manors one by one, since, when the figures of many different manors are added together, their distinctive features are liable to be concealed in the aggregate. Still, to get some idea of the scale on which the peasants carried on their agriculture, it is perhaps worth examining the following table[126] of the holdings of 1600 odd customary[127] tenants on fifty-two manors.

[126] For the sources from which this table is constructed, and its defects, see Appendix II.

[127] On three small manors I have included some tenants who may possibly be freeholders or leaseholders.

This table enables us, in the first place, to make a comparison between the economic positions of groups of tenants in different parts of England. It will be seen that the "predominant rate"--what we may call the predominant acreage--varies considerably. In Wiltshire it is between 20 and 25 acres, and, including the next two columns, 36 per cent. of all the tenants hold something between 20 and 35 acres. In Northumberland the predominant acreage is between 30 and 35, and nearly one half the tenants, 41 per cent., hold between 30 and 40 acres.

Elsewhere the most common holding is a good deal smaller. In Lancashire (if we omit the cottagers, nearly all of whom come from one manor) the predominant acreage is between 10 and 15 acres, though a great many persons hold between 5 to 10 acres. In Staffordshire the largest group of tenants is that holding under 2-1/2 acres, and more than one-half of them hold less than 10 acres. In Norfolk and Suffolk the same state of things obtains, but in a more p.r.o.nounced form. Little emphasis need be laid on the large number of cottagers there, nearly all of whom are found on a single semi-urban manor, that of Aylsham. But it is clear that the ma.s.s of the peasantry in those counties are very small holders indeed. When the cottagers are left on one side, 22 per cent., about one-fifth, of the landholders have under 2-1/2 acres; 54 per cent., more than one-half, have under 10 acres. It is fortunate for them that Norfolk and Suffolk are the home of the woollen industry.

In the second place, let us notice a fact which is more relevant to our immediate purpose. That fact is the great variety in the scale of landholding obtaining between different tenants in the same part of the country. In this matter, again, some counties present a marked contrast to others. In Northumberland the uniformity in the size of the holdings of the tenants is much more marked than the variety. About two-thirds of them appear in the four columns representing holdings from 30 to 50 acres. Only six hold more than 50, and though on one manor there are ten tenants holding less than 2-1/2 acres, there are, apart from these, comparatively few holding under 25 acres. On all the manors which have been examined in this county there is, in fact, a regular standard holding in the sixteenth century, which varies from 30 to 45 acres on different manors, but which on the same manor varies hardly at all. But Northumbrian agriculture is always several generations behind that of the South and East, and when we turn to Wiltshire, or to East Anglia, or to the nine manors given at the bottom of the table, we find a condition of things in which there is much greater irregularity. The line extends farther at both ends than it does in Northumberland. There are more individuals and fewer cl.u.s.ters. The grouping of holdings round certain standard patterns is much less marked. If we look at all the manors together, we find that the four most populous columns contain almost exactly one-half (49.1 per cent.) of the whole population, exclusive of cottagers without land. In Northumberland the corresponding columns contain two-thirds, in East Anglia, Lancashire, and Staffordshire rather less, on the nine manors in the South and Midlands about one-half, in Wiltshire a little over one-third. Again there are more large holders and more very small holders in the South and East, than there are in Lancashire and on the Northumbrian border. In Lancashire and Northumberland 4.4 per cent. of the tenants, exclusive of cottagers, have holdings of more than 50 acres. In Suffolk and Norfolk the corresponding figure is 8.5 per cent., in Wiltshire 16.9 per cent., on the nine other manors 14 per cent.

TABLE IV

--------------------------------------------------------------------------+ 30 and under 35 Acres. 25 and under 30 Acres. . 20 and under 25 Acres. . . 15 and under 20 Acres. . . . 10 and under 15 Acres. . . . . 5 and under 10 Acres. . . . . . 2-1/2 and under 5 Acres. . . . . . . Under 2-1/2 Acres. . . . . . . . Cottages or Houses with or without . . . . . . . . . Gardens . . . . . . . . . Total Number of Tenants. . . . . . . . . . -------------------------------- . . . . . . . . . . Ten manors in Northumberland 96 10 1 2 1 3 1 12 27 Four manors in Lancashire 168 38 14 19 29 35 7 4 7 7 Three manors in Staffordshire 103 8 21 16 14 6 10 11 3 1 Two manors in Northamptonshire 255 30 53 24 22 22 13 22 5 10 Three manors in Leicestershire 129 13 17 6 6 8 3 3 5 1 Five manors in Suffolk and eight manors in Norfolk 391 52 77 40 69 28 26 19 14 5 Seven manors in Wiltshire and one manor in Somersetshire 156 3 5 7 12 8 7 27 16 14 Nine other manors in the South of England 366 23 58 27 52 29 31 16 22 12 +--------------------------------+----+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+ Total 1664 167 255 140 206 137 100 103 84 77 +--------------------------------+----+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+

TABLE IV _(cont'd)_

--------------------------------------------------------------------------+ Uncertain. 120 and over. . 115 and under 120 Acres. . . 110 and under 115 Acres. . . . 105 and under 110 Acres. . . . . 100 and under 105 Acres. . . . . . 95 and under 100 Acres. . . . . . . 90 and under 95 Acres. . . . . . . . 85 and under 90 Acres. . . . . . . . . 80 and under 85 Acres. . . . . . . . . . 75 and under 80 Acres. . . . . . . . . . . 70 and under 75 Acres. . . . . . . . . . . . 65 and under 70 Acres. . . . . . . . . . . . . 60 and under 65 Acres. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 and under 60 Acres. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 and under 55 Acres. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 and under 50 Acres. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 and under 45 Acres. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 and under . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 Acres . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . +---------------- . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Northumberland 13 10 10 1 1 2 1 1 Lancashire 2 2 1 1 2 Staffordshire 2 2 2 2 1 1 1 2 Northamptonshire 3 7 2 5 2 7 2 2 2 2 2 4 14 Leicestershire 10 7 8 7 7 6 2 4 1 2 1 1 2 1 1 7 Suffolk/Norfolk 9 4 2 4 7 3 3 1 1 1 1 1 2 1 4 17 Wiltshire/ Somersetshire 10 12 5 7 2 4 3 4 1 2 1 2 4 South of England 11 10 13 3 6 7 6 3 5 4 4 1 2 4 1 1 7 9 +----------------+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+ 60 52 42 28 26 29 18 17 11 11 8 2 7 4 4 2 1 18 55 +----------------+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+

In the non-commercial, non-industrial North there is something like economic equality, something like the fixed equipment of each group of tenants with a standard area of land which is one of the first things to strike us in a mediaeval survey, and, as we shall see later, manorial authorities for a long time insist on that rough equality being maintained, because any weakening of it would disorganise the old-fashioned economy which characterises the northern border. In the industrial East and South this uniformity existed once, but it exists now no longer. Wiltshire is humming with looms; Norfolk and Suffolk are linked to the Continent by a thousand commercial ties, and will starve if the clothiers lose their market. The mighty forces of capital and compet.i.tive industry and foreign trade are beginning to heave in their sleep--forces that will one day fuse and sunder, exalt and put down, enrich and impoverish, unpeople populous counties and pour Elizabethan England into a smoking caldron between the Irish Sea and the Pennines; forces that at present are so weak that a Clerk of the Market can lead them and a Justice of the Peace put a hook in their jaws. It is natural that mediaeval conditions of agriculture should survive longest in the North. It is natural that they should survive least where trade and industry are most developed, and where men are being linked by other bonds than those of land tenure. But we must not comment until we have examined the text more closely. We would only draw attention to the contrast between the South and the North, to the contrast also between the great diversity in the size of the peasants' holdings in the sixteenth century, and the much greater uniformity two or three hundred years before.

This contrast gives a clue to certain features of village life which are distinctive of our period, and at the risk of wearying the reader one may ill.u.s.trate it from the circ.u.mstances of particular manors. At Cuxham,[128] in 1483, there are, in addition to tiny holdings of a few acres or of fractions of acres, holdings of one-quarter of a virgate, of half a virgate, of one virgate, of four virgates. At Ibstone[129] in the same year there are two tenants at will holding one virgate each, one tenant holding five tofts and three crofts, while the rest hold little except cottages and gardens. At Warton[130] in Lancashire, there are in the reign of Henry VIII., in addition to various holdings expressed in terms of acres, four holdings of half a bovate, two of three-quarters of a bovate, seven of one bovate, two of one and a quarter bovates, four of one and a half bovates, four of two bovates, one of two and a quarter bovates, one of three bovates. At Barton[131]

in Staffordshire, in 1556, the typical holding is one virgate of 24 acres. But though this forms the nucleus of the copyholders' properties a good many of them have acquired so much extra land, and a good many apparently have parted with so much of the land which they once held, that though 24 acres is still the predominant holding, the majority of the tenants hold something more or something less than this. At Byshopeston,[132] in 1567, there are men holding half a virgate, two virgates, three virgates, four virgates, six virgates. At Knyghton[133]

there are holders of anything from a half to two and a half virgates.

[128] Merton Doc.u.ments, Rentale de Cuxham (Nos. 5902 and 5905).

[129] Merton Doc.u.ments, Rentale de Ibston (No. 5902).

[130] R.O. Rental and Surveys, Gen. Ser., Portf. 19, No. 7, f.

79-87.

[131] R.O. Rentals and Surveys, Gen. Ser., Portf. 14, No. 70.

[132] Roxburghe Club, _Surveys of Lands of William, First Earl of Pembroke_.

[133] _Ibid._

Looking at this grouping of holdings, one is tempted at first sight to say that the virgate has ceased to be a unit of open field tillage, and has become merely a common form, an idea which is laid up in the minds of surveyors, and which is produced automatically, even when it corresponds to nothing in the fluid world of agriculture. This, however, would be an error. On the contrary, the conservatism[134] of rural arrangements is such that yardlands, bovates, virgates, and oxgangs, continue to do duty in circ.u.mstances which seem quite incongruous, and to be used, not only in theory, but in practice, to apportion rights over arable, meadow, and pasture, long after holdings have been redistributed in such a way as altogether to destroy the former equality of shares. On the Leicestershire manors of Barkby[135] and Kibworth[136]