Book Iii., P. 370, and His Quotations From Maitland: "the

villains of Bright Waltham ... constituted a community which held land, which was capable of receiving a grant of land, which could contract with the lord, which could make exchange with the lord."

Roxburghe Club, Surveys of Lands of William, First Earl of Pembroke.

Roxburghe Club, Surveys of Lands of William, First Earl of Pembroke.

R.O. Rentals and Surveys, Gen. Ser., Portf. 12, No. 52, p. 10 d.

See the map of part of Salford, p. 163, and compare R.O. Rentals and Surveys, Gen. Ser., Portf. 27, No. 32 (Lavenham in Suffolk): "Of Township of Tuddenham Free land foldcourse, 6s. 9d." Ibid., Portf. 13, No 21 (Colly Weston in Northants): "The inhabitants for bushy ground paying two years 11s. Item, in every third year they pay nothing." At Wymondham (R.O. Aug. Off. Misc. Bks., vol. ccclx., f. 91) one finds under the heading "Towne lands" 38 acres held by copy by the "feoffees of the Vill of Wymondham" (37 Eliz.) in Trust for the school.

See references quoted below, pp. 244-253.

e.g. Scrope, History of Manor and Barony of Castle Combe, p. 203. Extent of Manor, 1454: "Et notandum quod prædictae terræ dominicates cum pratis et pasturis supra specificatis dimittebantur ad firmam Ricardo Hallewey, Edwardo Yonge, Johanni Costyn, Willelmo Gaudeby, et Edwardo Noorth, ea intentione quod ipsi dimitterent ad firmam omnibus tenentibus domini aliquas portiones dictorum terrarum secundum magis et minus pro earum cultura, et reddunt pro firma inter se cxiiis. viiid."

R.O. Land Revenue Misc. Bks., vol. ccxxi., fol. 1. Survey of Manor of Brigstock (Northants) 4, James I. Here the demesne is held by twenty-two tenants, each having 8 acres, 3 roods, and 1 acre of meadow. Mickleholme meadow (also demesne land) is held by five tenants, each having 1 acre. One finds on some Northumberland manors a growth in the size of customary holdings combined with the preservation of almost exact equality between them, which surely must be taken as proving that the increase in the area held grew, not by sporadic encroachments on the part of individuals, but by definite allotment on some communal plan. Thus at Birling there were in 1248 ten "bondi," each holding 30 acres or one husbandland; in 1498 nine holding 30 acres or one husbandland, and four holding one husbandland of 30 acres between them; in 1567 ten customary tenants, each holding 33 acres; in 1616 the average holding has risen from 33 to 42-1/2 acres, but there is still substantial equality, the largest holding amounting to 44 acres, 3 roods, 3-1/2 poles, and the smallest to 40 acres, 0 roods, 33 poles (I omit the facts as to the cottagers). In spite of two considerable additions to the land of the village, there is little change in the relative proportions of the tenancies. At Acklington there were in 1352 thirty-five bondage holdings of 16 acres each, of which nine were vacant (presumably on account of the plague). In 1368 these nine vacant holdings were let to the other tenants for herbage. In 1498 there were eighteen tenants, of whom seventeen held two husbandlands apiece (i.e. 32 acres) and one, one husbandland (i.e. 16 acres). Northumberland County History, vol. v.

These small tenants were described as "farming the demesne," and their existence may perhaps mark a sort of half-way house in the evolution of the manorial demesne into the large leasehold farm. One may suspect that that development was not at all likely to take place rapidly in the circumstances of the fifteenth century. According to the generally accepted view the practice of leasing part of the demesne, though occurring at a very early date on manors where the labour supply was too small for it to be cultivated by the villeins, received a great impetus from the scarcity of labour which was produced by the Great Plague, and went on side by side with the gradual commutation of labour services into money rents. Of course one must not dogmatise about changes which took centuries to accomplish, and which developed at very different degrees of speed in different parts of the country. But the accounts of particular manors supplied us by surveyors bear out the view that the development of a class of small leaseholders took place as the result of the abandonment of the old system of cultivating the demesne by means of the works of the tenants organised under the supervision of the manorial officials. "The lorde departed his habitation and caused his officers to grant out parte of his landes to his tenants at will." "The medowes lying in Hinton were the lordes' severall meadowes, which nowe are divided among the tenants." "When the lorde departed his habitation, and granted out the demesnes, the part was delivered and letten to the use of the tenants." "One Sir John Taverney, Knight, dyd inhabit within the said mannor, and kept great hospitalitie, and occupied the demesnes in his own possession, which are large and greate, and now of late years granted out by copye for terms of lyves among the tenants." Such information, collected by a curious investigator in the middle of the sixteenth century from the lips of aged peasants in the west of England, takes us back to a time when the leasing of the demesne was a comparative novelty. Is it surprising that the landlord who leased for the first time should prefer to do so on this small scale, should choose to grant plots of land piecemeal for short terms of years rather than to form a single farm? The practice was at first an experiment, an alarming departure from accepted methods undertaken only through dire necessity. A great catastrophe like the plague might make it profitable, but time would naturally elapse before it was done systematically and on a large scale. At the same time a class of farmers with sufficient capital to manage several hundred acres of land could not come into existence at once. The ordinary villein tenants, who were the first lessees on many manors, could hardly jump immediately from farming twenty or thirty acres to farming a whole estate, though those of them who as bailiffs had previously been responsible for managing the demesne, and who seem sometimes to have managed it as farmers for the lord, rather than as hired servants, were certainly in a better position to do so.

Humberstone, Topographer and Genealogist, vol. i. (surveys temp. Phil. and Mary of various manors belonging to the Earl of Devon).

It would seem indeed that the question whether, when the sixteenth century began, the demesne lands of a manor were leased to many small tenants or to one or two large farmers, was decided largely by local and personal conditions, and may fairly be described as a matter of chance. When they lay in many scattered strips unified culture was impossible till they had been consolidated, and therefore there was no particular reason for leasing them to one tenant rather than to many; whereas, when they were from the start in two or three great blocks, it was obviously very improbable that they would be sub-divided. In those parts of the country where sheep-farming was less profitable than elsewhere one motive for introducing a single large farm was absent, while where the demesne had already been leased in small plots the manorial authorities might dislike to make an abrupt change affecting many households disadvantageously. The general movement would appear, however, to have been in the direction of longer leases and larger tenancies. Thus Miss Davenport has shown that at Forncett the leasing of the demesne began in small parcels and for short periods from the end of the fourteenth century, and gradually took place on a larger scale and for longer periods as the practice became more familiar. The earlier leases of the Oxfordshire manor of Cuxham alternate between six and seven years in length, and it is not till 1472 that the College owning it appears to have granted a lease of as much as twenty years. Sometimes one can see the system of leasing small parcels to many little farmers, and that of leasing the whole demesne to one large farmer, coming into competition with each other. A case in point comes from Ablode in Somersetshire. In 1515 the Abbot and Convent of St. Peter's, Gloucester, leased the whole manor of Ablode to a farmer for eighty years. But at the time when the lease was made the demesne lands and demesne meadows were already occupied by the customary tenants. Accordingly the covenant with the farmer provides that as soon as the other tenants' agreements terminate, he shall have the reversion of their lands to use as he pleases. Here the two types of demesne cultivation are seen merging into one another, with the result that the large farm is consolidated out of the small tenancies which preceded it.

Davenport, History of a Norfolk Manor, p. 57. When first leased in 1373 the demesne was leased as a whole, but this plan was abandoned. Early in the fifteenth century it was leased in small plots, at first for six or seven years, and then for twelve, twenty, or forty years. Finally parts of the demesne were granted to be held at fee farm.

Merton Documents, Nos. 3100 (lease of 1361 for seven years), 3002 (lease of 1420 for seven years); 2856 (lease of 1424 for one year); 1874 (lease of 1472 for twenty years).

Historia et Cartularium Monasterii Gloucestriæ, vol. iii. App., pp. 291-295. The words are "Sed bene licebit præfatis ... substituere tenentes ad eorum bene placitum in omnibus illis terris dominicalibus supradictis modo in manibus tenentium ibidem existentibus, cum reversio prædicta inde acciderit."

At the beginning of our period these small demesne tenancies had already disappeared from many manors, if they had ever existed on them, and the normal method of using the demesne was to lease it to a single large farmer, or at any rate to not more than three or four. In spite of the instances given above, in which the home farm and its lands were split up among numerous small tenants, most of the evidence suggests that the leasing of the demesne to a single farmer was as regular a way of disposing of it in the sixteenth century as its cultivation by manorial officials with the labour of villeins had been in the thirteenth. The very slow development of the large farm in certain parts of the country was due rather to the insignificance or absence of the demesne on some northern manors than to the prevalence of any alternative methods of utilising it. The terms on which the farmer took over the land varied naturally in detail, but these differences are unimportant. In a few cases he holds it by copy. Normally he is a leaseholder, sometimes for life, more usually for a period of years ranging from twenty-one to eighty. Again the lessee's interest may be more or less inclusive. Sometimes only the demesne, including any customary works upon it of the tenants which may survive, is leased. Sometimes the lease includes the live-stock of the manor, which, or the equivalent of which, the farmer must replace at the end of his term. Sometimes the profits of the court are leased as well, though more usually they are reserved, together with any income from fines, to the lord. Sometimes there is an arrangement of great interest and importance by which the whole body of manorial rights, including the income from the courts, confiscation of straying beasts, and the rents of the customary tenants, are leased to the farmer, who thus becomes the immediate landlord of the other tenants. The greater part of the farmer's rent is by the middle of the sixteenth century paid in money. But certain payments in kind survive, and supply a link between the vanishing subsistence cultivation, and the growing commercial economy. Where money was scarce, tenants were sometimes allowed to pay in kind as a concession to their interests, and some landlords still found it convenient to receive part of their rent in grain, fowls, pigeons, fish, or a fat bull, a practice which on college estates lasted down to the very end of the seventeenth century. But the value of such payments was carefully calculated in terms of money, and they were the exception.

Thus in 1535, on nineteen out of twenty-two manors owned by Battle Abbey, the demesne was farmed by a single tenant, on one by two, on one by three, while on one it was retained in the hands of the monks (Oxford Studies in Social and Legal History, vol. i.; English Monasteries on the Eve of the Dissolution, by A. Savine). On twenty-five manors out of thirty-two held by the Earl of Pembroke in 1568, the same unified management obtained (Roxburghe Club, Surveys of Pembroke Manors). Savine's remarks are to the point: "The lord of the manor seldom divided up the demesne into separate plots of land to be let to local tenants. Usually the demesne and its buildings, sometimes even together with the live and dead stock, passed into the hands of one farmer" (ibid.).

As at Knyghton in Wilts in 1568 (Roxburghe Club, Pembroke Surveys), where the holdings and rents of the customary tenants appear in the farmer's lease, e.g. "Walter Savage ad voluntatem tenet ut parcellam dicti manerii l close etc. ... et reddit 56s. ad manus dicti firmarii."

Here is an example from a lease of 1562. The farmer pays "yearly to the lord for the aforesaid farm--

10 quarters of corn, per bushel, 12d. £4 20 quarters of barley, per bushel, 8d. 106s. 8d. 10 quarters of oats, per bushel, 3d. 26s. 8d. 20 capons, per caput, 4d. 6s. 8d. 20 pigeons, per caput, 4d. 6s. 8d. 12 great fish called trouts, per caput, 3d. 3s."

(Survey of South Newton, ibid.).

The growth of large farms had proceeded so far by the middle of the sixteenth century that in parts of the country the area held by the farmer was about equal to that held by all the other tenants. On some manors it was less; on others it was a great deal more. The average area of the large farmer's land in Wiltshire seems to have been about 352 acres, and it is not unusual to find manors where there are only two or three customary tenants, while on some there were none at all. Wiltshire no doubt must not be taken as typical of all other counties, as the acreage of the leasehold farms held by men who had capital to spend could so easily be increased by drawing in great tracts from the rolling stretches of Chalk Down. But elsewhere, though the acreage held by the farmer of the demesne is less, 170 or 150 acres, and though one or two of the larger copyholders control a great deal of land themselves, he is still, compared with the bulk of the customary tenants, a Triton among minnows. Arithmetical averages are, however, unsatisfactory, and a better idea of the scale on which the large farmer carried on business may be obtained from the following table:--

TABLE VIII

+-----------------------------------------------------------------------+ | 850-900 Acres.| | 800-849 Acres.|.| | 750-799 Acres.|.|.| | 700-749 Acres.|.|.|.| | 650-699 Acres.|.|.|.|.| | 600-649 Acres.|.|.|.|.|.| | 550-599 Acres.|.|.|.|.|.|.| | 500-549 Acres.|.|.|.|.|.|.|.| | 450-499 Acres.|.|.|.|.|.|.|.|.| | 400-449 Acres.|.|.|.|.|.|.|.|.|.| | 350-399 Acres.|.|.|.|.|.|.|.|.|.|.| | 300-349 Acres.|.|.|.|.|.|.|.|.|.|.|.| | 250-299 Acres.|.|.|.|.|.|.|.|.|.|.|.|.| | 200-249 Acres.|.|.|.|.|.|.|.|.|.|.|.|.|.| | 150-199 Acres.|.|.|.|.|.|.|.|.|.|.|.|.|.|.| | 100-149 Acres.|.|.|.|.|.|.|.|.|.|.|.|.|.|.|.| | 50-99 Acres.|.|.|.|.|.|.|.|.|.|.|.|.|.|.|.|.| | Under 50 Acres.|.|.|.|.|.|.|.|.|.|.|.|.|.|.|.|.|.| +-----------------------------------|.|.|.|.|.|.|.|.|.|.|.|.|.|.|.|.|.|.| | Eighteen farms on sixteen | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | manors in Norfolk | |2|2|3|1| |3|1| |2|3| | | |1| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Thirty-one farms on twenty- | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | three manors in Wiltshire |4|2|4|4|3|4|3| |2|1|1| | | | | |1|2| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Eighteen farms on thirteen | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | manors in several counties |2|3|3|1|3|2|1| | |3| | | | | | | | | | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | Total, sixty-seven farms | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | on fifty-two manors |6|7|9|8|7|6|7|1|2|6|4| | | |1| |1|2| +-----------------------------------+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+

It will be seen that if all the farms are grouped together, rather more than one half, thirty-seven out of sixty-seven, have an area exceeding 200 acres, and that the area of rather more than a quarter exceeds 350 acres. The figures must be read with the caution that they in some cases certainly underestimate the real extent of the land used by the farmer, as rights of common often cannot be expressed in terms of acres.

(c) Enclosure and Conversion by the Manorial Authorities

When we turn from the agricultural arrangements described in previous chapters to examine these large farms, we enter a new world, a world where economic power is being slowly organised for the exploitation of the soil, and where the methods of cultivation and the standards of success are quite different from those obtaining on the small holdings of the peasantry. The advantage to the lord of the system of large farms, compared either with the retention of the demesne in his own hands, or with the leasing of it in allotments to small tenants, was obvious enough for its extension to be no matter for surprise. The utilisation of the produce of the demesne by the lord's household was unnecessary when markets were sufficiently reliable to offer a regular supply, and inconvenient when the landlord was an absentee. The division of the estate among small tenants meant the creation or maintenance of interests opposed to agricultural changes, and made it impracticable to vary the methods of agriculture to meet varying demands, except by the rather cumbrous process of a common agreement ratified in the manorial court. The leasing of the demesne to a large farmer got rid of those disadvantages. The lord was secured a regular money income, which was considerably higher per acre than that got from the customary tenants; and since the land was under the management of a single individual, who was sometimes equipped with a good deal of capital, it was much easier to try experiments and to initiate changes. When not only the demesne, but the whole body of manorial rights, was included in the lease, the property became of that most desirable kind, in which ownership is attenuated to a pecuniary lien on the product of industry, without administrative responsibility for its management.

Opportunities for new methods of cultivation were afforded by the leasing of the demesne to a single farmer, which would lead us to look at his holding as the place where agrarian changes were most likely to begin, and to start from that in order to trace the effect of these large properties on the small properties of the customary tenants. On the one hand, any wide development of leasehold tenure involves a certain mobility in rural society and a disposition to break with routine. There must be a market for land, which again implies that some class has accumulated sufficient capital to invest and has got beyond mere subsistence farming. It naturally arises either when new land is brought into cultivation, or when the development of trade makes farming for the market profitable, or when changes are being introduced into the methods of agriculture, or when the value of land is uncertain (for example, when it is thought that it may contain minerals), because in all these cases leasehold, being a terminable interest, enables the owner of land to adjust his rent to the tenant's returns. On the other hand, the landowner does not get the full advantage of the elasticity in rent and management that leasehold tenure makes possible, unless the tenant is a man of some substance, who can spend capital in cultivating land on a large scale, in stocking a farm with sheep and cattle, in carrying crops until the best market is found, and in making experiments in new directions.

See pp. 139-?147.

See Northumberland County History, vol. ix., account of Cowpen, and Victoria County History, Lancashire, article on Social and Economic History. For the same reasons mills and fisheries were naturally the first parts of a mediæval manor to be leased for terms of years.

One can easily understand the reasons which favoured the large farm, if one reflects on the change in economic environment, the outlines of which have been already described. The most important economic cause determining the unit of landholding is the nature of the crop to be raised and the methods used in producing it; and the nature of the crop depends mainly on the conditions of the market. Now in the sixteenth century the market conditions were such as to leave room for a large number of small corn-growers, because trade was so backward that a great number of households farmed simply for subsistence. On the other hand, even in the case of corn-growing, the size of the most profitable unit of agriculture was increasing with the development of an internal corn trade--a development which is proved by the strenuous attempts which the Government made to regulate it through the Justices of the Peace; while in the case of sheep and cattle grazing on the large scale practised by the graziers of the period, there was obviously no question but that an extensive ranch, which could be stocked with several thousand beasts, was the type of holding which would pay best. That a class of capitalist farmers of this kind was coming into existence in the sixteenth century is indicated both by the complaints of contemporaries that small men find farms taken over their heads by great graziers, who have made money in trade; by the fact that the stock and land lease, a form of metayage under which the working capital was supplied by the landowner, had given way on many manors to the modern type of lease under which it is provided by the lessee; and by the way in which one farmer would become the lessee of two or more manors, a clear indication of the existence of wealthy men who had money to invest in agriculture. It was the substitution of such a class for the small leaseholders among whom the demesne had often been divided, and their appearance for the first time on manors where the demesne had been kept in the hands of the lord until it was leased to one large farmer, which gave a rapid and almost catastrophic speed to the tendency to enclosure which, as we have seen, was already going on quietly among the small tenants, because it meant the control of a growing proportion of the land by persons who had capital to spend, and who, since they held their farms by lease, not by copy, were under the pressure of competitive rents to adopt the methods of agriculture which were financially most profitable. This in itself was a new phenomenon, at least on the large scale on which it appeared in the sixteenth century. In modern agriculture one is accustomed to seeing the area sown with any crop varying according to movements in the market price of the produce, so that on the margin of cultivation land is constantly changing its use in response to changes in the world's markets. But such adaptability implies a very high degree of organisation, and when farming was carried on mainly by small producers for their own households, the reaction of changing commercial conditions on the supply was much slower, and cultivation was to a much greater extent a matter of routine. It was the development of the large capitalist farmer which supplied the link binding agriculture to the market and causing changes in prices to be reflected in changes in the use to which land was put.

Owing to the advantages which the small holding has for dairy purposes (personal attention to cattle, &c.), it is still the custom in parts of the country, e.g. Devonshire, for the large farmers to sublet small dairy farms out of their holdings, and to supply the lessee with all the stock, including the cows and the cottage. See Levy, Large and Small Holdings, chap. ix.

Several examples of this are to be found in the Pembroke Surveys. Contemporaries called it "the engrossing of farms."

The tendency which we should expect to find represented most conspicuously upon the demesne farms is of course that enclosing of land and laying of it down to pasture, which is lamented by contemporaries. The word "enclosing," under which contemporaries summed up the agrarian changes of the period, has become the recognised name for the process by which the village community was broken up, but it is perhaps not a very happy one. Quite apart from the difficulties which it raises when we come to compare the enclosures of the eighteenth century, which were made under Act of Parliament, with those of the sixteenth century, which were made in defiance of legislation, it is at once too broad and too narrow to be an adequate description even of the innovations of the earlier period, too broad if it implies that all enclosures entailed the hardships which were produced by some, too narrow if it implies that the only hardships caused were due to enclosure. It selects one feature of the movement towards capitalist agriculture for special emphasis, and suggests that the hedging and ditching of land always produced similar results. That, however, was by no means the case. Enclosure might take place, as has been shown above, without producing the social disturbances usually associated with it, provided that it was carried out by the tenants themselves, and with the consent of those affected. The concentration of holdings and the displacement of tenants might take place without enclosure. On a desert island there is no need of palings to keep out trespassers; and a manor which was entirely in the hands of one great farmer was a manor where the maintenance of enclosures was almost unnecessary. At the same time the word does describe one of the external features which usually accompanied the agrarian changes. The general note of the movement was the emancipation from the rules of communal cultivation of part or all of the land used for purposes of tillage or pasture. The surface of a manor was covered with a kind of elaborate network of rules apportioning, on a common customary plan, the rights and duties of every one who had an interest in it. A man must let his land lie open after harvest; he must not keep more than a certain number of each kind of beasts on the common; he must plough when his neighbours plough, and sow when his neighbours sow. The effect of the growing influence of the capitalist farmer was to clear away these organised restrictions from parts of the manor altogether, and violently to shake the whole system. Enclosing was normally the external symptom of the change, for the practical reason that the simplest way of cutting a piece of land adrift from the common course of cultivation, or from the rules laid down for the use of the commonable area, was to put a hedge round it, partly to keep one's own beasts in, partly to keep other people's beasts out. The essential feature of the change was that land which was formerly subject to a rule prescribing the methods of cultivation became land which was used at the individual's discretion.

The agent through whom enclosing was carried out was usually the large farmer. When the farmer leased only the demesne lands, and the demesne lands lay in large compact blocks, not in scattered strips, he could naturally practise the new economy of enclosure upon them without colliding with any other interest, except in the cases where they were divided into several tenancies; while if steps were taken to get rid of the interests which the customary tenants had either in the open fields, in the meadows, or in the common, the land lost by them was normally added to the area which the farmer leased, and enclosed by him. In the surveys of the period one finds manors in every stage of the transition from open field cultivation to enclosure, and though such individual instances tell us nothing of the extent of the movement, they offer a vivid picture of what enclosing meant, and give the impression that enclosure had usually proceeded further on those manors where the farmer held the largest proportion of the land. The slowness of the movement towards enclosure on the holdings of the customary tenants has already been described. As a contrast to it one may look at the following table, which sets out the condition of things on some demesne farms:--

TABLE IX

+-----------+------------+-------------+-----------+ | | | | 5 | | Number of | No signs | Under | per Cent. | | Demesne | of | 5 per Cent. | to 24 | | Farms | Enclosure. | Enclosed. | per Cent. | | Examined. | | | Enclosed. | +-----------+------------+-------------+-----------+ | 47 | 12 | 9 | 7 | +-----------+------------+-------------+-----------+

+-----------+------------+-------------+-----------+ | 25 | 50 | 75 | | | per Cent. | per Cent. | per Cent. | 100 | | to 49 | to 74 | to 99 | per Cent. | | per Cent. | per Cent. | per Cent. | Enclosed. | | Enclosed. | Enclosed. | Enclosed. | | +-----------+------------+-------------+-----------+ | 7 | ... | 4 | 8 | +-----------+------------+-------------+-----------+

These figures are not offered as any evidence of the absolute area enclosed in the counties represented. They may, however, perhaps be taken as an indication that the demesne farm was usually that part of the manor on which enclosure was carried out most thoroughly. Thirty-one of the manors included in the table are in Wiltshire and Norfolk, and where the conditions of things on the tenants' holdings can be compared with that obtaining on the demesne, it is almost always the case that the new economy has spread furthest on the latter. Neither in Wiltshire nor in Norfolk had enclosure by the peasants themselves proceeded very far in the latter half of the sixteenth century.

The conditions, however, on different manors varied so enormously that much weight cannot be laid on these figures, and it is both more important and more practicable to examine particular examples of the ways in which the large enclosed estate was built up. In the first place, then, one may say with some confidence that those parts of a manor which lent themselves most readily to enclosing were the waste, the common pasture, and the common meadow, while the enclosing of the farmer's holdings of arable land took place more gradually, less thoroughly, and with greater difficulty. Thus selecting from the manors tabulated above those in which the quality of the land enclosed is distinguished, and omitting those where it is merely stated to lie "in closes," one finds that partial or complete enclosure of the arable has been made on nine, of the meadow on eleven, and of the pasture on twenty, manors. The explanation of this is to be found by recollecting the characteristics of the organisation into which the farmer stepped. The arable land which formed the lord's demesne was often scattered, like the tenant's, in comparatively small plots over the three fields; unity of ownership did not by any means necessarily imply unified culture, and before these could be enclosed they had to be consolidated into fewer and larger blocks. Moreover, if the object of enclosure was conversion to pasture, it must be remembered that the enclosure of the arable implied a very great revolution in the manorial economy. A farm which was well equipped for tillage had barns, granges, agricultural implements, which would stand idle if the arable land was enclosed for pasture, and it was therefore natural that, as long as other land was available in sufficient quantities for sheep-farming, such land should be enclosed for the purpose, before the ordinary course of cultivation on the arable land was abandoned. The common meadows and the common wastes did not offer these obstacles to enclosure. Since the individualising tendencies of personal cultivation did not operate upon these parts of the village land, the method of securing equal enjoyment of them had not been, as in the case of arable, to give each household a holding consisting of separate strips scattered over good and bad land alike, but to give each holder of an arable share access to the whole of the pasture land. They were, therefore, usually not divided and scattered to anything like the same extent, and it was thus much easier for the rights of different parties over them to be disentangled, and for the land to be cut up and enclosed "in severalty." Hence, where the tenants are most numerous, and where there are fewest signs of change, the effect of the large farmer is often seen in the withdrawal of part of the common waste from communal use. If the growth of sheep farming made the small tenants anxious, as in many cases it did, to acquire separate pastures for their flocks, it can readily be understood that the large farmer, who had more to lose and more to gain, was likely to pursue the same policy unless checked by organised opposition. Normally the change seems to have taken place by converting the right to pasture a certain number of beasts in common with other tenants into the right to the exclusive use of a certain number of acres. Instead of the whole commonable area lying open to a number of animals "stinted" in a certain proportion among the commoners, the stint is abandoned, and the basis of allocation is found not in a fixed number of animals, but in a fixed area of land, which forms the separate common of the individual farmer, and which is naturally enclosed. Many examples of this division of commonable land are found in the surveys, especially in connection with the common waste of the manor, which enable us to trace the change from collective to individual administration. Thus, to give a few instances, at Winterbourne Basset the farmer has all the meadow land except one half-acre, and a separate close of 140 acres on the downs, where he can graze nearly three times as many sheep as all the customary tenants. At Knyghton he has enclosed with a hedge part of the sheep's common, no sheep at all being kept by the customary tenants. At Massingham, in Norfolk, where much of the demesne arable lies "in the fields," there is an enclosed pasture containing 123-1/2 acres; and on another farm of 203 acres, which has apparently been formed out of the demesne, one finds 28 acres of arable "in the fields" and 65 acres of "pasture enclosed," the remaining 80 acres lying "in the sheep courses." The best picture of what the change meant is given by the two maps printed opposite. In No. III. the meadow, save for a small piece used exclusively by All Souls, is common, each tenant presumably being allowed to place so many beasts upon it. In No. IV. the meadow has been divided up among the tenants, and instead of pasturing a limited number of beasts on the whole of it, each can pasture as many beasts as he pleases on part of it. It is not necessary to point out the significance of this change from the point of view of the social organisation of rural life. It means that communal administration of part of the land has been abandoned and its place taken by use at the discretion of the individual tenant.

Roxburghe Club, Surveys of Lands of William, First Earl of Pembroke. The farmer has four closes of meadow amounting to 9 acres, one meadow of 2-1/2 acres, one meadow of 7 acres, one meadow of 8-1/2 acres. In addition to that and the hilly pasture, there is in his possession "unus campus noviter inclusus, qui aliquando seminatur, aliquando iacet ad pasturam," and which "olim sustentare potuit 900 oves et catalla non extenta."

Ibid., "De terra montanea unde pars includitur cum sepe iuxta Crowcheston continens per estimationem 100 acres, et custodire potest supra prædictam 900 oves." Sometimes it is expressly stated that the farmer alone is to have a certain pasture, e.g. at Chalke (ibid): "Et etiam dictus firmarius habet ibidem unum montem vocatum a Doune et bene cognitum est quia circumcinctum est per sepem et bundas, et custodire potest 600 multones quia nullus habet communiam in eo nisi firmarius solus, et continet per estimacionem 200 acres."

R.O. Rentals and Surveys, Gen. Ser., Portf. 24, No. 4, f. 46 (temp. Hen. VIII.). "The fold course will carry 1800 sheep at £8 a hundred."

In All Souls' Muniment Room.

But while the pasture ground and meadow offered special facilities for enclosure, there is abundant evidence that the farmer's arable land was also in many cases enclosed. On some manors the whole of the arable demesne lay together, and in that case there was no obstacle in the way of enclosing it. More usually it lay in three pieces, one block in each of the three great fields, and here again, when there was sufficient motive for enclosure, enclosure was easily practicable. The only arrangement which offered a really difficult problem was that in which it was divided into acre and a half strips scattered about the manor at a distance from each other. One finds cases in which such strips numbered several hundred, but the impression given by surveys is that, at any rate by the middle of the sixteenth century, such extreme subdivision was exceptional, and that the consolidation of holdings by means of exchange and purchase, which we have seen at work from an early date on the holdings of the customary tenants, had often proceeded so far on the demesne as to have rounded off the farmer's property into comparatively few large holdings. As an illustration of the first steps towards unification and enclosure we may take the manor of Sparham, in Norfolk, which was surveyed about 1590. Here the 189 acres which compose the demesne, and which are leased to a farmer, are still much scattered. They lie in seventy different pieces, most of which are quite small, acres, half-acres, and roods. But even here there has been a considerable amount of consolidation, and it has been followed by the beginnings of enclosure. The 37-1/2 acres of pasture lie in five pieces of 11, 9, 7, 5, 5-1/2 acres, all of which have been enclosed. The arable is still intermixed with the strips of the other tenants in the open fields. But on the arable itself consolidation and enclosure are creeping forward. There are four strips lying together which comprise 6-3/4 acres. There is one enclosure, consisting of arable, wood, and meadow, and containing 17 acres. The neighbouring manor of Fulmordeston offers an example of a state of things in which the same tendency has worked itself out to completion. The 742 acres leased by the farmer of the demesne are entirely enclosed. There are two woods comprising 50 acres. There is an enclosure of 250 acres, 35 perches, consisting of "Corne severall and Broome severall." There is a "great close" of 130 acres, 1 rood, "longe close" of 57 acres, 3 roods, "Brick kyll close" of 40 acres, 1 rood, "Brakehill close" of 24 acres, 1 rood, a field of 106 acres called Hestell, and another of 83 acres, 2 roods. But these different stages are best illustrated by maps Nos. I., III., IV., V., and VI.

On No. III. it will be seen that there is a good deal of subdivision. On Nos. IV. and V. the tenants whose strips separated parts of the demesne from each other, have in many cases dropped out, so that the process of aggregation is facilitated: on No. I. the concentration of the demesne into a single large block is complete; though it is still unenclosed, it offers no obstacle to enclosure: on No. VI. consolidation has been followed by enclosure, conversion to pasture and depopulation. Between the state of things on map No. III. and that on map No. VI. there is the greatest possible difference. Yet there is no reason to doubt that Whadborough had once been an open field village with tenants who were mainly engaged in tillage. Map Nos. IV., V., and I. are, as it were, the intervening chapters which join the preface to the conclusion. Occasionally one can see the process of consolidation, which was the necessary preliminary of enclosure, actually taking place. At Harriesham, in Kent, the parson held 3 acres of glebe land in two pieces, one of them lying in the middle of a field belonging to another tenant, who ploughed up its boundaries and added it to his own land. Accordingly, to prevent uncertainty in the future, the owner of the field and the parson executed a deed by which the latter surrendered his claim to the detached pieces of land, and in return got three acres laid out in a single plot. In view of the large blocks which are often held by the farmer of the demesne, one cannot doubt that such consolidation by way of exchange must have been a common arrangement.

MSS. of the Earl of Leicester at Holkham, Sparham Documents, Bdle. No. 5.

Ibid., Fulmordestone Documents, No. 59. Description of manor at bottom of map (1614).

In All Souls' Muniment Room.

Maps in All Souls' Muniment Room: "The description of the parsonage of Harriesham in the countie of Kent, with the glebe lands thereunto belonging." Note on back of map: "Memorandum that whereas there are and always have been 4 parcelles of land in Mr. Steed his fielde called Harriesham field belonging unto the parsonage of Harriesham, conteyninge by estimation three acres, whereof the one did lye along by the landes of Sir Edward Wootton, called the Cowe doune, the other ... abutteth on the said Cowe doune toward the east, the other boundes thereof not being certainly known by reason that they were plowed up by one Robert Brinkley, tenant of the whole field, and were laid out by Robert Brinkley as in the Platte doth appeare under the Redd colour; It is now covenanted by the said Mr. Steede and Mr. George Hovenden, incumbent there, by deed bearing date the 20th of July in the 17th year of the Queen's Majestie's reign, that nowe all that the said three acres shall from henceforth be possessed by the parson and his successors for ever in manner and form as it is nowe laid out in the platte in the yellow colour after the maner of a square" [here follow the boundaries].

It remains to ask how far the type of economy pursued by the large farmer differed from that of the smaller tenants, and in particular whether there are signs of his specialising upon the grazing of sheep. The most complete picture of the agricultural changes of the early sixteenth century, not on the demesne farms alone, but on the holdings of all classes of tenants as well, is given in the well-known returns made by the Commissioners who were appointed by Wolsey in 1517 to investigate enclosures, and these are supplemented by the figures published by Miss Davenport as to the relative proportions or arable and pasture land on certain Staffordshire estates. The interpretation of both of these sets of statistics is ambiguous. Mr. Leadam uses them to show that much enclosing took place for arable, and that therefore the statutes and writers of the period exaggerated the movement towards pasture farming. Professor Gay thinks his conclusions untenable, and that a proper interpretation of the Commissioners' returns corroborates the view of contemporary writers that pasture was substituted for tillage on a large scale. Two points emerge pretty clearly from the controversy. The first is that there was a good deal of redistribution of land with the object of better tillage, of the kind which has been described above, and that probably the fact that the word "enclosure" was used to describe this, as well as the conversion of arable to pasture, was responsible for some confusion. The second is that the predominant tendency was towards sheep-farming. To suppose that contemporaries were mistaken as to the general nature of the movement is to accuse them of an imbecility which is really incredible. Governments do not go out of their way to offend powerful classes out of mere lightheartedness, nor do large bodies of men revolt because they have mistaken a ploughed field for a sheep pasture. Even if we accept Mr. Leadam's statistical analysis of the report of the Commission of 1517, his figures still reveal a great deal of conversion to pasture; and it is clear that many cases on which his totals rest are open to more than one interpretation.

Leadam, Domesday of Enclosures. For a discussion as to whether they suggest that enclosing took place for arable or pasture, see Trans. Royal Hist. Soc., New Series, vol. xiv.

Quarterly Journal of Economics, vol. xi.

If the general correctness of the view of the sixteenth century observers that there was a wide movement towards sheep-farming is accepted, it ought to be represented more fully on the demesne farms than elsewhere, because changes could be applied to them with much less friction than to the lands in which the interests of other tenants were involved. With a view to showing to what extent this is the case two sets of figures are given below; the first is a table taken from Dr. Savine's work on The English Monasteries on the Eve of the Reformation, and relates to the demesne lands of forty-one monasteries which were surveyed for the Crown on the occasion of their surrender; some were apparently in the hands of the monastery and some apparently were leased. The second gives the approximate use to which land was put by the farmers of the demesnes on forty-nine manors in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. They are subdivided in three groups, (a) manors in Norfolk and Suffolk, (b) manors in Wiltshire and Dorsetshire (one), and (c) manors in other southern and eastern counties, but including one in Staffordshire and one in Lancashire. For purposes of comparison the table given in Part I. Chapter III., illustrating the use made of the customary holdings, is repeated here:--

TABLE X

+-------------------------------+----------+----------+----------+ |Total Demesne Land of Forty-one| Arable. | Pasture. | Meadow. | |Monasteries. | | | | +-------------------------------+----------+----------+----------+ | Acres. | Acres. | Acres. | Acres. | | 16780 | 6235-3/4 | 8691-1/2 | 1852-3/4 | | | (37.1%) | (51.7%) | (11.0%) | +-------------------------------+----------+----------+----------+

+-------------------+-------+--------+-------+-------+---------------+ |Total Acreage of | | | | | | |Sixty-five Farms on| | | | | | |Fifty Manors. |Arable.|Pasture.|Meadow.|Closes.| Indeterminate.| |(Fractions of | | | | | | |Acres omitted.) | | | | | | +-------------------+-------+--------+-------+-------+---------------+ | Acres. | Acres.| Acres. |Acres. |Acres. | Acres. | | 16866 | 8302 | 6172 | 1528 | 624 | 240 | | |(49.2%)| (36.5%)| (9%) |(3.6%) | (1.3%) | +-------------------+--------+-------+-------+-------+---------------+ | | | COMPOSED OF (a) THIRTY-TWO FARMS ON | | TWENTY-THREE MANORS IN WILTS AND ONE MANOR IN DORSET | | | +-------------------+-------+--------+-------+-------+---------------+ | Total Acreage of | | | | | | | Thirty-two Farms. |Arable.|Pasture.|Meadow.|Closes.|Indeterminate. | +-------------------+-------+--------+-------+-------+---------------+ | Acres. | Acres.| Acres. | Acres.| Acres.| Acres. | | 8812 | 4390 | 2928 | 754 | 500 | 240 | | |(49.8%)|(33.2%) | (8.3%)| (5.6%)| (2.7%) | +-------------------+-------+--------+-------+-------+---------------+ | | | (b) SIXTEEN FARMS ON THIRTEEN MANORS IN | | NORFOLK AND SUFFOLK | | | +-------------------+-------+--------+-------+-------+---------------+ | Total Acreage of | | | | | | | Sixteen Farms. |Arable.|Pasture.|Meadow.|Closes.|Indeterminate. | +-------------------+-------+--------+-------+-------+---------------+ | Acres. | Acres.| Acres. | Acres.| Acres.| Acres. | | 4361 | 2393 | 1707 | 261 | ... | ... | | | (52%) | (39%) | (5.9%)| | | +-------------------+--------+-------+-------+-------+---------------+ | | | (c) SEVENTEEN FARMS ON THIRTEEN OTHER MANORS | | MAINLY IN SOUTH AND MIDLANDS | | | +-------------------+-------+--------+-------+-------+---------------+ | Total Acreage of | | | | | | | Seventeen Farms. |Arable.|Pasture.|Meadow.|Closes.|Indeterminate. | +-------------------+-------+--------+-------+-------+---------------+ | Acres. | Acres.| Acres. | Acres.| Acres.| Acres. | | 3691 | 1519 | 1536 | 512 | 124 | ... | | |(41.1%)|(41.1%) |(13.8%)| (3.3%)| | +-------------------+-------+--------+-------+-------+---------------+

III

+-------------------+-------+--------+-------+-------+---------------+ | Total Acreage of | | | | | | | Customary Holdings|Arable.|Pasture.|Meadow.|Closes.|Indeterminate. | | on Sixteen Manors.| | | | | | +-------------------+-------+--------+-------+-------+---------------+ | Acres. | Acres.| Acres. | Acres.| Acres.| Acres. | | 7786 | 6841 | 555 | 390 | ... | ... | | |(87.7%)| (7.1%) | (5.1%)| | | +-------------------+-------+--------+-------+-------+---------------+

Oxford Studies in Social and Legal History, vol. i. pp. 171-173.

The figures in this table do not pretend to complete accuracy, but their classification of the distribution of land between different uses is not far wrong. Of the customary tenants' land about 87 per cent. is arable, and 12 per cent. meadow and pasture. Of the farmers' land about 49 per cent. is arable, 36 per cent. pasture, 9 per cent. meadow. The proportion of pasture to arable is somewhat higher in the southern and midland counties than it is in East Anglia; but the cases examined are too few to allow of any conclusion being drawn from this fact. Without pushing the figures in either table further than they will go, one may suggest that they seem to imply, in the first place, that the large farmer was by no means always a grazier, and that the writers of the period who spoke as though all large-scale farming meant the conversion of arable to pasture were guilty of some exaggeration. In a good many cases the methods of cultivation pursued by the farmer of the demesne differed from those of the customary tenants only in the fact that his holding was larger; as a matter of fact the customary tenants on some manors deserve the name of grazier better than the farmer of the demesne upon others.

But they suggest, in the second place, that these cases were exceptional, and that, on the whole, arable farming played a much more important part on the holdings of the customary tenants than it did on those of the farmers. The former subsisted mainly on the tillage of the land in the open fields. The latter, though they had often much arable, sometimes had none, or next to none at all, and relied to a far greater extent on the opportunities for stock-breeding offered by pasture and meadow land. These figures, however, include some derived from manors where tillage was virtually the only sort of farming carried on, and they do not give any idea of the arrangements prevailing on an estate where pasture-farming had been pushed far. Taking from the fifty manors dealt with above, the twelve which are most typical of the new régime, one gets a very different picture--

TABLE XI

+------------+---------+---------+----------+---------+-----------+ | | | | | | Other | | Land Held. | Arable. | Meadow. | Pasture. | Closes. |(Wood, &c.)| +------------+---------+---------+----------+---------+-----------+ | Acres. | Acres. | Acres. | Acres. | Acres. | Acres. | | 4474 | 922 | 403 | 3065 | 71 | 13 | | | (20.6%) | (8.9%) | (68.3%) | (1.5%) | | +------------+---------+---------+----------+---------+-----------+

Here arable forms only 23 per cent. of the whole area, while pasture and meadow together form over 77 per cent. This swing of the pendulum from arable husbandry to pasture-farming will not surprise us, if we remember that at the time of the Domesday Survey, and, indeed, throughout the Middle Ages, the area of land under the plough had been, when considered in relation to the population, extraordinarily large. The economic justification of ploughing land which no modern farmer would touch had lain in the fact that the impossibility of moving food supplies had made it necessary for each village to be virtually self-supporting, and had thus prevented the specialisation of districts in different types of agriculture. When the development of trade under the Tudors had combined with the keen demand for wool to introduce a geographical division of labour, the change was naturally all the more violent, because there was, so to speak, so much lee-way to be made up, because so much land was in tillage which had no special suitability for the production of grain. Even so, between 1815 and 1846, the rich water meadows of Oxfordshire were being ploughed up for corn. Even so, after 1879, the collapse of corn-growing was all the more disastrous, because it had been so long delayed.

One would expect the growth of large farms side by side with the customary holdings, especially when the methods of agriculture employed were so different, to result in a powerful reaction of the new interests upon the old, and perhaps in a collision between them, even when no deliberate attempt was made to alter the position of the tenants. And this is what we are told in fact occurred. The customary tenants' holdings and the demesne both formed part of one area, subject to certain rights and privileges defined by the custom of the manor. Both, for example, would lie open to the village cattle after harvest; both were subject to the customary rotation of crops, and necessarily so when the demesne was not separate but mixed with the customary holdings in the open field; both had rights of common on the pasture or waste of the manor. Moreover, the whole organisation of the economic side of manorial life was based on the assumption that tillage was the most important element in it. For example, the apportionment of rights over the waste, the "stint" of animals to be grazed, assumed that no one partner would require to graze more than a certain number, and broke down if he gave himself up to cattle-breeding or sheep-farming, and multiplied his beasts by five or ten. It would be natural, therefore, to look for a straining and shifting of those rights as a probable consequence of the existence side by side of two such different agricultural stages, and of such different types of property. Formerly the respective interests of the lord and the customary tenants had been harmonised by the fact that the labour of the latter supplied the chief means of cultivating the demesne, and that the demesne could hardly be a profitable concern if the number of tenants or their standard of living declined very largely, any more than a gold-mine can pay without gold-miners. But when the demesne was largely used for pasture this consideration of course did not apply, and in any case by the sixteenth century, although the services of the tenants were still part of the means by which the farmers found labour, they were probably an unimportant one. As is shown by the smallness of the holdings on many manors, which were quite insufficient by themselves to support a family, and by the evidence of contemporaries, the farmer had a growing, though still small, labour market into which to dip, and the rough agreement which had existed between the interests of the manorial estate and those of the tenants was therefore no longer existent. Thus a collision of interests, a weakening of communal restrictions before the enterprise of the capitalist farmer, the strengthening of some kinds of property and the weakening of others, and the growth of new sorts of social relations in the villages, were consequences to be expected from the increasing predominance of the large farm, and especially of the large pasture farm.

To sum up the arguments of the chapter. At the beginning of the sixteenth century forces both political--the restriction of the territorial sovereignty of the landlords--and economic--the growth in the demand for wool--were working to produce a change in the methods of agriculture; and at any rate by the middle of the century another powerful motive was added by the fall in the value of money. The result was that there was a movement in the direction of converting arable land to pasture, and of enclosure, which affected all classes of landholders, but which was carried furthest by the large farmers who leased the demesne lands of manors, who could afford to make experiments, and who were under a strong incentive to turn the land to its most profitable use.