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 c.u.mbrous 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 cla.s.s has acc.u.mulated sufficient capital to invest and has got beyond mere subsistence farming. It naturally arises either when new[401] 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),[402]

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.

[401] See pp. 139-?147.

[402] 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 mediaeval 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 cla.s.s 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;[403] and by the way in which one farmer would become the lessee of two[404] or more manors, a clear indication of the existence of wealthy men who had money to invest in agriculture. It was the subst.i.tution of such a cla.s.s 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 compet.i.tive 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.

[403] 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.

[404] 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 a.s.sociated 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 trespa.s.sers; 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 emanc.i.p.ation 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 quant.i.ties 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 Ba.s.set[405] 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[406] he has enclosed with a hedge part of the sheep's common, no sheep at all being kept by the customary tenants. At Ma.s.singham,[407] 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[408] 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.

[405] 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."

[406] _Ibid._, "De terra montanea unde pars includitur c.u.m sepe iuxta Crowcheston continens per estimationem 100 acres, et custodire potest supra praedictam 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 circ.u.mcinctum 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."

[407] 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."

[408] 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 ill.u.s.tration of the first steps towards unification and enclosure we may take the manor of Sparham,[409]

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[410] 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 ill.u.s.trated by maps[411] 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,[412] 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.

[409] MSS. of the Earl of Leicester at Holkham, Sparham Doc.u.ments, Bdle. No. 5.

[410] _Ibid._, Fulmordestone Doc.u.ments, No. 59. Description of manor at bottom of map (1614).

[411] In All Souls' Muniment Room.

[412] 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 ... ab.u.t.teth 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, inc.u.mbent 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 cla.s.ses of tenants as well, is given in the well-known returns[413] 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[414] 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 subst.i.tuted 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 cla.s.ses 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 a.n.a.lysis 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.

[413] 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.

[414] _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[415] 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., ill.u.s.trating the use made of the customary holdings, is repeated here:--

TABLE X

I

+-------------------------------+----------+----------+----------+

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%)

+-------------------------------+----------+----------+----------+

II