CHAPTER I. Agriculture in Mediæval England

AGRICULTURE IN MEDIÆVAL ENGLAND

§ 1. INTRODUCTORY. RISE OF A WAGE-EARNING CLASS—The long reign of Henry III., although occasionally troubled by internal dissensions among the barons, was upon the whole a prosperous and peaceful time for the people in general, and more especially for those whom historians are pleased to call the lower classes. For by this time a remarkable change had begun to affect the condition of the serfs or villeins, a change already alluded to before, by which the villeins became free tenants, subject to a fixed rent for their holdings. This rent was rapidly becoming a payment in money and not in labour, for, as we saw, the lords of the manors were frequently in want of cash, and were ready to sell many of their privileges. The change was at first gradual, but by the time of the Great Plague (1348), money rents were becoming the rule rather than the exception; and though labour rents were not quite obsolete, it was an ill-advised attempt to extort them again that was the prime cause of Wat Tyler’s insurrection (1381). Before the Plague, in fact, villeinage in the old sense had become almost {41} extinct, and the peasants, both great and small, had achieved practical freedom. The richer villeins had developed into small farmers; while the poorer villeins, and especially the cottars, had formed a separate class of agricultural labourers, not indeed entirely without land, but depending for their livelihood upon wages paid for helping to cultivate the land of others. The rise of this class, that lived by wages and not by tilling their own land, was due to the fact that cottars and others, not having enough land of their own to occupy their whole time, were free to hire themselves to those who had a larger quantity of land. Especially would they become labourers at a fixed wage for the lord of a manor when he had commuted his rights to the unpaid services of all his tenants for a fixed money rent. Of course this change came gradually, but its effect is seen subsequently in the difficulties as to wages expressed in the Statute of Labourers, difficulties which first became serious after the Great Plague.

§ 2. AGRICULTURE THE CHIEF OCCUPATION OF THE PEOPLE—Throughout the whole of this period the vast majority of the population were continuously engaged in agricultural pursuits, and this was rendered necessary owing to the very low rate of production consequent upon the primitive methods of agriculture. The production of corn was only about four, or sometimes eight, bushels per acre, and this naturally had the effect of keeping down the population, at this time still only between 1,500,000 and 2,000,000. It is a remarkable fact that even the inhabitants of the towns used at harvest-time to go out into the country to get agricultural work, and people often migrated from one district to another for the same purpose, just as Irish agricultural labourers of to-day are accustomed to cross over to England for the harvesting. {42} Some attention was being paid to sheep farming, and a noticeable increase in this branch of industry took place in the beginning of the fourteenth century. One order of monks in particular, the Cistercians, used to grow large quantities of wool; and indeed England had almost a monopoly in the wool trade with Flanders, for even Spanish wool could not be utilized without an admixture of English. But the great increase of sheep farming occurs rather later, at the beginning of the sixteenth century.

§ 3. METHODS OF CULTIVATION. THE CAPITALIST LANDLORD AND HIS BAILIFF. THE “STOCK AND LAND” LEASE—The agriculture of the early part of this period is described to us by Walter de Henley, who wrote a book on husbandry some time before 1250. It cannot be said that our agriculture was at this time at a high level, for, as we have seen, the production of wheat (e.g.) was exceedingly low, not being more than four to eight bushels per acre. If we look at a typical manor, we shall find that the arable lands in it were divided pretty equally between the landlord and the tenants of the manor; and before the Great Plague the landlord was not merely a rent-receiving master, but a capitalist land-owner, who cultivated his land by means of his bailiff, subject to his personal supervision. These bailiffs kept very accurate accounts, and we are thereby greatly helped in our investigations in this period. The average rent paid by tenants from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century was sixpence per acre. In many cases, especially on lands owned by monasteries, the land was held on the “stock and land” lease system, by which the landlord let a certain quantity of stock with the land, for which the tenant, at the expiration of his lease, had to account either in money or kind. A relic of this kind of lease {43} existed even in the eighteenth century, for Arthur Young occasionally mentions the practice of the landlord letting cows to dairy farmers. In mediæval times the person to whom cows were leased for dairy purposes was the deye—i.e. dairyman or dairymaid. The stock and land lease plan was favourable to the tenant, for it supplied his preliminary want of capital, and if he was fortunate allowed him often to make considerable profits, and even eventually purchase an estate for himself.

§ 4. THE TENANT’S COMMUNAL LAND AND CLOSES—It must always be remembered, however, that the arable land in a manor was “communal”—i.e. each tenant held a certain number of furrows or strips in a common field, the separate divisions being merely marked by a piece of unploughed land, where the grass was allowed to grow. The ownership of these several strips was limited to certain months of the year, generally from Lady Day to Michaelmas, and for the remainder of the year the land was common pasture. This simple and rudimentary system was utterly unsuited to any advanced agriculture. The tenants, however, also possessed “closes,” some for corn, others for pasture and hay. The rent of a close was always higher than that of communal land, being eightpence instead of sixpence per acre. Besides the communal arable land, and his close, the husbandman also had access to two or three kinds of common or pasture—(1) a common close for oxen, kine, or other stock, pasture in which is stinted both for landlord and tenant; (2) the open (“champaign” or “champion”) country, where the cattle go daily before the herdsmen; (3) the lord’s out-woods, moors, and heaths, where the tenants are stinted but the lord is not. Thus the tenant had valuable pasture rights, besides the land he actually rented. But the system of holding arable land in strips {44} was very cumbrous and caused many disputes, since often a tenant would hold a short lease on one strip and a longer lease on another; or confusion of ownership would arise; while in many ways tenure was made insecure, and no encouragement was given to advanced agriculture.

§ 5. PLOUGHING—As regards the cultivation of the land, it was generally ploughed three times a year. Ordinary ploughing took place in the autumn, the second ploughing in April, the third at midsummer. The furrows were, according to Walter de Henley, a foot apart, and the plough was not to go more than two fingers deep. The ploughing and much other work was done by oxen, as being cheaper than horses. The hoeing was undertaken by women, who also worked at harvest-time in the fields. In Peres the Plowman’s Crede (about A.D. 1394) we have a description of a small farmer ploughing while his wife leads the oxen. “His wife walked by him with a long goad, in a cutted cote cutted full high” (l. 433).

An average yield of six bushels per acre is what Walter de Henley thinks necessary to secure profitable farming.

§ 6. STOCK, PIGS AND POULTRY—As to stock, the amount kept was generally rather large, and the agriculturist of the thirteenth century was fully alive to the importance of keeping it; for Walter de Henley advised stocking land to the full extent it would bear. Oxen, as we saw, were kept for the plough and draft; but not much stock was fatted for the table, especially as it could not be kept in the winter. There was no attempt to improve breeds of cattle, for the scarcity of winter food (winter roots being unknown till much later), and the general want of means for resisting the severities of the winter helped to keep all breeds much upon the same level. On the other hand, {45} swine were kept in large numbers, and every peasant had his pig in his sty, and, indeed, probably lived on salt pork most of the winter. Care was taken with the different breeds. The whole of the parish swine were generally put in summer under the charge of one swineherd, who was paid both by tenants and the lord of the manor. The keeping of poultry, too, was at that time universal, so much so that they were very rarely bought by anyone, and when sold were almost absurdly cheap. This habit of keeping fowls, ducks, and geese must have materially helped the peasant in ekeing out his wages, or in paying that portion of his rent which was paid in kind; as e.g. in the case of the Cuxham tenant (p. 15) who had to pay his lord six fowls in all during the year.

§ 7. SHEEP—This animal is so important in English agriculture that we must devote a special paragraph to it alone. For the sheep was, in the earlier periods of English industrial history, the mainstay of the British farmer, chiefly, of course, owing to the quantity of wool required for export. England had, up to a comparatively recent period, almost a monopoly of the raw wool trade, her only rival being Spain. There were, as mentioned before, a great number of breeds of sheep, and much care was taken to improve them. The fleece however was light, being only as an average 1 lb. 7⁠¾ oz., according to Professor Rogers, and the animal was small. The reason of this was that the attempts of the husbandman to improve his breeds were baffled by the hardships of the mediæval winter, and by the prevalence of disease, especially the rot and scab. It is probable that the average loss on the flocks was 20 per cent. a year. They were generally kept under cover from November to April, and fed on coarse hay, wheat, and oat straw, {46} or pea and vetch haulm; but no winter roots were available.

§ 8. INCREASE OF SHEEP FARMING—A great increase of sheep farming took place after the Great Plague (1348), and this from two causes. The rapid increase of woollen manufactures promoted by Edward III. rendered wool growing more profitable, while at the same time the scarcity of labour, occasioned by the ravages of the Black Death, and the consequently higher wages demanded, naturally attracted the farmer to an industry which was at once very profitable, and required but little paid labour. So, after the Plague, we find a tendency among large agriculturists to turn ploughed fields into permanent pasture, or, at any rate, to use the same land for pasture and for crops, instead of turning portions of the “waste” into arable land. Consequently from the beginning of the fifteenth century we notice that the agricultural population decreases in proportion as sheep farming increases; and the steady change may be traced in numerous preventive statutes till we come (in 1536) to those of Henry VIII. about decayed towns, especially in the Midlands and the Isle of Wight, culminating in the excitements of 1549. Another cause that, in Henry VIII.’s time, had a distinct influence in promoting sheep farming, was the lack of capital that made itself felt, owing to the general impoverishment of England in his wasteful reign, and which naturally turned farmers to an industry that required little capital, but gave quick returns.

§ 9. CONSEQUENT INCREASE OF ENCLOSURES—One consequence of this more extensive sheep farming was the great increase in enclosures made by the landlords in the sixteenth century. So great were these encroachments and enclosures in north-east Norfolk, that they led, in 1549, {47} to a rebellion against the enclosing system, headed by Ket; but, though more marked, perhaps, in Henry VIII.’s reign, the practice of sheep farming had been growing steadily in the previous century. Fortescue, the Lord Chancellor of Henry VI. (in the middle of the fifteenth century), refers to its growth and the prosperity it caused in rural districts—a prosperity, however, that must have been confined only to the great land-owners. We receive other confirmation of this from various statutes designed to prevent the rural population from flowing into the towns, as, for example, the Acts of 1 and 9 Richard II. (1377 and 1385), of 17 Richard II. (1394), promoting the export of corn in hopes of making arable land more valuable. Another Act was passed in 1489 (4 Henry VII.) to keep the rural population from the towns. But the growth of sheep farming is also connected with a great economic and industrial development in England, the rise and progress of cloth manufactures and of the weaving industry generally, and to this we must now devote our next chapter.