CHAPTER IV

PROGRESS OF AGRICULTURE IN THE SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES

§ 1. RÉSUMÉ OF PROGRESS SINCE THIRTEENTH CENTURY—It will be remembered that great agricultural changes had taken place since Henry III.’s reign. For a century or so after his death (1272) the land-owner was also a cultivator, living upon his land and owning a large amount of capital in the form of stock, which he let out under the stock and land lease system. But after the Great Plague (1348) this method of cultivation by capitalist land-owners ceased, except in the one case of sheep farming; the land-owner became generally a mere rent receiver; and agriculture consequently suffered. Marling, for instance, fell into disuse, and the breed of sheep, it is said, deteriorated somewhat. The great feature of the change was the transformation of large tracts of arable land into pasture for sheep, and the growth of enclosures for the sake of the same animal. The landlords rapidly proceeded to raise their rents, till, in the sixteenth century, extortionate renting became so common that Bishop Latimer, and Fitzherbert, the {110} author of a useful work on surveying, complained about it both in sermons and other writings. Hence English agriculture did not materially improve between the days of Henry III. and of Elizabeth. But in this queen’s reign, as we saw, several improvements were made under the influence of foreign refugees. For the inhabitants of the Low Countries and Holland have been our pioneers not only in commerce and finance, but in agriculture also. It was now these people who introduced into England the cultivation of artificial grasses and of winter roots, the want of which, it will be remembered, greatly embarrassed the English farmer in the mediæval winter. The introduction of hops also was of great importance.

§ 2. PROGRESS IN JAMES I.’S REIGN. INFLUENCE OF LANDLORDS—Of course the greatest industrial progress of this period was made in the direction of foreign trade, and in James’s reign progress in agriculture was slow as compared with that in commerce, but it was substantial—substantial enough, at any rate, for the landlords to exact an increased competitive rent, as we know from Norden’s work, The Surveyor’s Dialogue (1607). It was even complained that the actions of the landlords tended to discourage progress, for when a tenant wished to renew a lease he was threatened with dispossession if he did not pay an increased rent for the very improvements he had made himself. However, from the facts given by Norden, and also by another writer—Markham, the author of The English Husbandman (1613)—it is evident that there was considerable improvement, development, and variety now shown in English agriculture. The special characteristic feature of the seventeenth century is the utilization of the fallow for roots, though these had been known in gardens in the previous century. Land was still largely cultivated in common fields, and was, of course, {111} much subdivided. The most fertile land was to be found in Huntingdon, Bedford, and Cambridge shires, the next best being in Northampton, Kent, Essex, Berkshire, and Hertfordshire.

§ 3. WRITERS ON AGRICULTURE. IMPROVEMENTS. GAME—Oxen were still preferred to horses; but a noticeable improvement is the attention now paid to the various kinds of manures, on which subject Markham was the first to write specially. The fact that agriculture was now made the topic of various treatises proves that important development was taking place. Besides the works already mentioned, we have the Systema Agriculturæ by Worridge, a farmer of Hampshire, the second edition of which appeared in 1675. He is a strong advocate of enclosures, as against the old common field system, on the plea that the former is more conducive to high farming; but he also is in favour of small enclosed farms. Though at first local and somewhat spasmodic, and hindered by the landlord’s power of appropriating the results of increased skill on the part of the tenant, under the head of “indestructible powers of the soil,” yet the progress made was sufficient to double the population of England. A curious fact in the agriculture of the seventeenth century may be here mentioned; I mean the existence of a very large amount of waste land, and the use made of it for purposes of breeding game. At that time it is evident that killing game was not the exclusive right of the land-owners, but was a common privilege. Large quantities of game were sold, and at a cheap price, and “fowling” must evidently have been an important item in the farmer’s means of livelihood.

§ 4. DRAINAGE OF THE FENS—A most important feature in the development of agriculture in the Eastern counties was the drainage of the fens—i.e. all that large district {112} which extends inward from the Wash into the counties of Lincoln, Cambridge, Northampton, Huntingdon, Norfolk and Suffolk. This district had been reclaimed by the Romans, and had been then a fertile country. But in the time of the Domesday Book it was once again a mere marsh, owing to incursions of the sea, which the English at that time had not the ability to prevent. Although even in 1436, and subsequently, partial attempts had been made to reclaim this vast area, the first effectual effort was begun only in 1634, by the Earl of Bedford, who got 95,000 acres of the reclaimed land as a reward for his undertaking. The contract was fulfilled in 1649, and a corporation was formed to manage the “Bedford level,” as it was now called, in 1688. The reclaiming of so much land naturally increased the prosperity of the counties in which it stood, and their agriculture flourished considerably in consequence, Bedfordshire for instance being now the most exclusively agricultural county in the kingdom.

§ 5. RISE OF PRICE OF CORN, AND OF RENT—The price of corn, meanwhile, was now steadily rising. From 1401 to 1540—i.e. before the rise in prices and the debasement of the coinages—the average price had been six shillings per quarter; after prices had recovered from their inflation and settled down to a general average once more, taking the price from 1603 to 1702, corn was forty-one shillings per quarter. The average produce had apparently declined since the fifteenth and before the improvements of the seventeenth century. In the former period it was about twelve bushels per acre, and in the fourteenth century eleven bushels; but Gregory King, writing in the seventeenth century, only gives ten bushels as the average of his time. His estimate, however, is doubted. At the same time, rent had risen from the sixpence per acre of the fifteenth century to four shillings, according {113} to Professor Rogers, or even 5s. 6d. according to King, who says the gains of the farmer of his time are very small, and that rents were more than doubled between 1600 and 1699. We will reserve the topic of the rise of rent, however, for a separate section, and keep to the agricultural developments of the period.

§ 6. SPECIAL FEATURES OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. POPULARITY OF AGRICULTURE—As the use of winter roots had been the special feature of the seventeenth century, so the feature of the eighteenth was the extension of artificial pasture and the increased use of clover, sainfoin, and rye-grass; not, of course, that these had been hitherto unknown, but now their seeds are regularly bought and used by any farmer who knew his business. At first, like all other processes of agriculture, the development was very slow and gradual, but it went on steadily nevertheless. A great stimulus to progress was given by the fact that the English gentlemen of the eighteenth century developed quite a passion for agriculture as a hobby, and it became a fashionable pursuit for all people of any means, citizens and professional men joining in it as a kind of bye-industry, as well as farmers and land-owners who made it their business. Arthur Young, the great agricultural writer of this century, declares that “the farming tribe is now made up of all classes, from a duke to an apprentice.” But two important mistakes were made in the eighteenth century, and they have not ceased to exist in the nineteenth, causing very largely the distress under which English agriculture has for some time been labouring. They are the mistakes of occupying too much land with insufficient capital, and of not keeping regular and detailed accounts. Still, between 1720 and 1760, progress was very rapid, and noble land-owners made great efforts to improve their estates, in {114} order thereby to raise their rents and increase their profits, in the hope of outdoing the great merchant princes who had now appeared upon the scene. They thus became in a way the pioneers of agricultural progress, the principal result of their efforts being seen in the increased number and quality of the stock now kept on farms.

§ 7. IMPROVEMENTS OF CATTLE, AND IN THE PRODUCTIVENESS OF LAND. STATISTICS—The extended cultivation of winter roots, clover, and other grasses, naturally made it far easier for the farmer to feed his animals in the winter; and the improvement in stock followed closely upon the improvement in fodder. The abundance of stock, too, had again a beneficial result in the increased qualities of manure produced, and the utilization of this fertilizer was scientifically developed. The useful, though costly, process of marling was again revived, and was advocated by Arthur Young; soils were also treated with clay, chalk, or lime. So great was the improvement thus made, that the productiveness of land in the eighteenth century rose to four times that of the thirteenth century, when five bushels or eight bushels of corn per acre was the average. Stock, also, was similarly improved; an eighteenth century fatted ox often weighed 1200 lbs., while hitherto, from the fourteenth to the end of the seventeenth century, the weight had not been usually much above 400 lbs. The weight of the fleece of sheep had also increased quite four times. Population being even then small, a considerable quantity of corn was exported, the British farmer being also protected from foreign competition by the corn laws (made in Charles II.’s reign, 1661 and 1664), forbidding importation of corn, except when it rose to famine prices. Young estimated the acreage of the country at 32,000,000 acres (King put it {115} at 22,000,000 in the seventeenth century); its value (at thirty-three and one-half years’ purchase) was, says Young, £536,000,000. The value of stock he places at nearly £110,000,000, and estimates the wheat and rye crop at over 9,000,000 quarters per annum, barley at 11,500,000 quarters, and oats at 10,250,000 quarters. The rent of land had risen to nearly ten shillings an acre.

§ 8. WRONG DONE TO SMALL LAND-OWNERS BY THE STATUTE OF FRAUDS—The development and success of English agriculture, from 1700 to 1765 or 1770, was thus remarkable and extensive; but it was not effected without considerable economic changes and great and unnecessary suffering among two important classes of the population—the yeomen or small freeholders, and the agricultural labourers. The decay of the yeomanry, indeed, forms a sad interlude in the growing prosperity of the country. The position of many small land-owners had been greatly and disastrously affected by the Statute of Frauds, passed in the time of Charles II. By this extraordinary and high-handed Act it was decreed that after July 24th, 1677, all interests in land whatsoever, if created by any other process except by deed, should be treated as tenancies at will only, any law or usage to the contrary notwithstanding. The intention, apparently, of those who passed this law—an intention which resulted successfully—was to extinguish all those numerous small freeholders who had no written evidence to prove that they held their lands, as they had done for centuries, on condition of paying a small fixed and customary rent. This Act certainly succeeded in dispossessing many of the class at which it was aimed; but there were yet a certain number against whom it was inoperative; hence, at the end of the seventeenth century, twenty years or so {116} after this Act, Gregory King is able to estimate that there were 180,000 freeholders in England, including, of course, the larger owners. But by the time of Arthur Young these also had disappeared, or at least were rapidly disappearing, and he sincerely regrets “to see their lands now in the hands of monopolizing lords.”

§ 9. CAUSES OF THE DECAY OF THE YEOMANRY—The cause was partly political and partly social. After the revolution of 1688, the landed gentry became politically and socially supreme, and any successful merchant prince—and these were not few—who wished to gain a footing sought, in the first place, to imitate them by becoming a great land-owner; hence it became quite a policy to buy out the smaller farmers, and they were often practically compelled to sell their holdings. At the same time, the custom of primogeniture and strict settlements prevented land from being much subdivided, so that small or divided estates never came into the market for the smaller freeholders to buy. It is also certain that this result was accelerated by the fact that small farms no longer paid under the old system of agriculture, and the new system involved an outlay that the yeoman could not afford. Farming on a large scale became more necessary, and this again assisted in extinguishing the smaller men, for large enclosures were made by the landed gentry in spite of feeble opposition from the yeomen, who, however, could rarely afford to pay the law costs necessary to put a stop to the encroachments of their greater neighbours. Thus the yeomen lost their rights in the common lands, and at the same time the new agriculture involved a breaking up of the old common field system, which could not possibly hold its own against the modern improvements.

§ 10. GREAT INCREASE OF ENCLOSURES—The abolition of {117} the old system was necessary, but the manner in which it was carried out was disastrous. The enclosures of the landed gentry were often carried on with little regard to the interests of the smaller tenants and freeholders, who, in fact, suffered greatly; and in this present age English agriculture is, in a large measure, still feeling the subsequent effects of the change, while many people are advocating a partial return to small holdings, cultivated, however, with the improved experience given by modern agricultural progress. Apparently, this was not the first occasion on which the land-owners had made enclosures and encroached upon the common lands of their poorer neighbours, and not merely upon the waste; but the rapidity and boldness of the enclosing operations in the eighteenth century far surpassed anything in previous times. Between 1710 and 1760, for instance, 334,974 acres were enclosed; and between 1760 and 1843 the number rose to 7,000,000.

§ 11. BENEFITS OF ENCLOSURES AS COMPARED WITH THE OLD COMMON FIELDS—The benefits of the enclosure system were, however, unmistakable, for the cultivation of common fields under the old system was, as Arthur Young assures us, miserably poor. The arable land of each village under this system was still divided into three great strips, subdivided by “baulks” three yards wide. Every farmer would own one piece of land in each strip—probably more—and all alike were bound to follow the customary tillage; this was to leave one strip fallow every year, while on one of the other two wheat was always grown, the third being occupied by barley or oats, pease, or tares. The meadows, also, were still held in common, every man having his own plot up to hay harvest, after which the fences were thrown down, and all householders’ cattle were allowed to graze on it freely, {118} while for the next crop the plots were redistributed. Every farmer also had the right of pasture on the waste. This system produced results miserably inferior to those gained on enclosed lands, the crop of wheat in one instance being, according to Young, only seventeen or eighteen bushels per acre, as against twenty-six bushels on enclosures. Similarly, the fleece of sheep pastured on common fields weighed only 3⁠½ lbs., as compared with 9 lbs. on enclosures. It is noticeable, too, that Kent, where much land had for a long time been enclosed and cultivated, was reckoned in Young’s time the best cultivated and most fertile county in England. Norfolk, also, was pre-eminent for good husbandry, in its excellent rotation of crops and culture of clover, rye-grass, and winter roots, due, said Young, in 1770, “to the division of the county chiefly into large farms,” and, it must be added, to unscrupulous enclosure.

§ 12. THE RISE IN RENT—The farmer himself, however, was heavily taxed for his land, and though the high prices he got for his corn up to the repeal of the corn laws enabled him to pay it, his rent was certainly at a very high figure. The rise had begun after the dissolution of the monasteries in the sixteenth century, though in that period the rise was slow. But Latimer asserts that his father only paid £3 or £4 for a holding which in the next generation was rented at £16, the increased figure being only partially accounted for by the general rise in prices. In the seventeenth century, according to King, rents were more than doubled, and the sixpence per acre of mediæval times must have seemed almost mythical. The Belvoir estate, the property of the Dukes of Rutland, who are spoken of as indulgent landlords, forms a good example of the rise of rent in the two following centuries. In 1692 land is found rented at 3s. 9⁠¼d. an acre, and a little {119} later at 4s. 1⁠½d. By the year 1799 the same land had risen to 19s. 3⁠¾d., with a further rise in 1812 to 25s. 8⁠¾d. In 1830 it was at 25s. 1⁠¾d., but in 1850 had risen to 38s. 8d., that is about ten times the seventeenth century rent. This enormous rise was not by any means due solely to increase of skill in agricultural industry, but was largely derived from increased economy in production, or, in other words, from the oppression and degradation of the agricultural labourer.

§ 13. THE FALL IN WAGES—This degradation was brought about by the system of assessment of wages which we noticed in Elizabeth’s reign, a system by which the labourer was forced by law to accept the wages which the justices (generally the landed proprietors, his employers) arranged to give him. It is not the business of an historian to make charges against a class, but to put facts in their due perspective. Therefore without comment upon the action of the justices in this matter I shall merely refer to one or two of these assessments and show their effect upon the condition of labour, especially of agricultural labour, which occupied more than one-third of the working classes. Speaking generally, we may quote Professor Rogers’ remark, that “if we suppose the ordinary labourer to get 3s. 6d. a week throughout the year, by adding his harvest allowance to his winter wages, it would have taken him more than forty weeks to earn the provisions which in 1495 he could have got with fifteen weeks’ labour, while the artisan would be obliged to have given thirty-two weeks’ work for the same result.” To give details, we may first quote, as an example, the Rutland magistrates’ assessment, in April 1610. The wages of an ordinary agricultural labourer {120} are put at 7d. a day from Easter to Michaelmas, and at 6d. from Michaelmas to Easter. Artisans get 10d. or 9d. in summer, and 8d. in winter. Now, the price of food was 75 per cent. dearer than in 1564, while the rate of wages are about the same; and compared with (say) 1495, food was three, or even four, times dearer. Another assessment, in Essex in 1661, allows 1s. a day in winter, and 1s. 2d. in summer, for ordinary labour. But, in 1661, the price of wheat (70s. 6d. a quarter) was just double the price of 1610 (35s. 2⁠½d.). The labourer was worse off than ever. Another typical assessment is that of Warwick, in 1684, when wages of labourers are fixed at 8d. a day in summer, 7d. in winter; of artisans at 1s. a day. At this period Professor Rogers reckons the yearly earnings of an artisan at £15, 13s.; of a farm labourer at £10, 8s. 8d., exclusive of harvest work; while the cost of a year’s stock of provisions was £14, 11s. 6d. It is true that at this period the labourer still possessed certain advantages, such as common rights, which, besides providing fuel, enabled them to keep cows and pigs and poultry on the waste. Their cottages, too, were often rent free, being built upon the waste, while each cottage, by the Act of Elizabeth, was supposed to have a piece of land attached to it, though this provision was frequently evaded. But yet it is evident that, even allowing for these privileges, which, after all, were now being rapidly curtailed, the ordinary agricultural labourer—that is, the mass of the wage-earning population—must have found it hard work to live decently. By the beginning of the eighteenth century his condition had sunk to one of great poverty. The ordinary peasant, in 1725, for instance, would not earn more than £13 or about £15 a year; artisans could not gain more than £15, 13s.; while the cost of the stock of provisions was £16, 2s. 3d. Thus {121} the husbandman who, in 1495, could get a similar stock of food by fifteen weeks’ work, and the artisan who could have earned it in ten weeks, could not feed himself in 1725 with a whole year’s labour. His wages had to be supplemented out of the rates; and there was but little alteration in these rates till the middle of the eighteenth century. But about that time (1750) he had begun to share in the general prosperity caused by the success of the new agriculture and the growth of trade and manufactures. The evil, however, had been done, and although a short period of prosperity, chiefly due to the advance made by the new agriculture, cheered the labourer for a time, his condition after the Industrial Revolution again rapidly deteriorated, till we find him at the end of the eighteenth century and for some time afterwards in a condition of chronic misery.