W. H. R. Curtler - A Short History of English Agriculture

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A SHORT HISTORY OF ENGLISH AGRICULTURE

BY

W.H.R. CURTLER

OXFORD
AT THE CLARENDON PRESS
1909

HENRY FROWDE, M.A.
PUBLISHER TO THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
LONDON, EDINBURGH, NEW YORK
TORONTO AND MELBOURNE

PREFACE

'A husbandman', said Markham, 'is the master of the earth, turning
barrenness into fruitfulness, whereby all commonwealths are
maintained and upheld. His labour giveth liberty to all vocations,
arts, and trades to follow their several functions with peace and
industrie. What can we say in this world is profitable where
husbandry is wanting, it being the great nerve and sinew which
holdeth together all the joints of a monarchy?' And he is confirmed
by Young: 'Agriculture is, beyond all doubt, the foundation of every
other art, business, and profession, and it has therefore been the
ideal policy of every wise and prudent people to encourage it to the
utmost.' Yet of this important industry, still the greatest in
England, there is no history covering the whole period.

It is to remedy this defect that this book is offered, with much
diffidence, and with many thanks to Mr. C.R.L. Fletcher of Magdalen
College, Oxford, for his valuable assistance in revising the proof
sheets, and to the Rev. A.H. Johnson of All Souls for some very
useful information.

As the agriculture of the Middle Ages has often been ably described,
I have devoted the greater part of this work to the agricultural
history of the subsequent period, especially the seventeenth,
eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries.

W.H.R. CURTLER.

_May 22, 1909._

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I

Communistic Farming.--Growth of the Manor.--Early Prices.--The
Organization and Agriculture of the Manor

CHAPTER II

The Thirteenth Century.--The Manor at its Zenith, with Seeds of Decay
already visible.--Walter of Henley

CHAPTER III

The Fourteenth Century.--Decline of Agriculture.--The Black Death.--
Statute of Labourers

CHAPTER IV

How the Classes connected with the Land lived in the Middle Ages

CHAPTER V

The Break-up of the Manor.--Spread of Leases.--The Peasants'
Revolt.--Further Attempts to regulate Wages.--A Harvest
Home.--Beginning of the Corn Laws.--Some Surrey Manors

CHAPTER VI

1400-1540. The so-called 'Golden Age of the Labourer' in a Period of
General Distress

CHAPTER VII

Enclosure

CHAPTER VIII

Fitzherbert.--The Regulation of Hours and Wages

CHAPTER IX

1540-1600. Progress at last--Hop-growing.--Progress of Enclosure.--
Harrison's _Description_

CHAPTER X

1540-1600. Live Stock.--Flax.--Saffron.--The Potato.--The Assessment
of Wages

CHAPTER XI

1600-1700. Clover and Turnips.--Great Rise in Prices.--More
Enclosure.--A Farming Calendar

CHAPTER XII

The Great Agricultural Writers of the Seventeenth Century.--Fruit-growing.
--A Seventeenth-century Orchard

CHAPTER XIII

The Evils of Common Fields.--Hops.--Implements.--Manures.--Gregory
King.--Corn Laws

CHAPTER XIV

1700-65. General Characteristics of the Eighteenth Century.--Crops.
--Cattle.--Dairying.--Poultry.--Tull and the New Husbandry.--Bad
Times.--Fruit-growing

CHAPTER XV

1700-65. Townshend.--Sheep-rot.--Cattle Plague.--Fruit-growing

CHAPTER XVI

1765-93. Arthur Young.--Crops and their Cost.--The Labourers'
Wages and Diet.--The Prosperity of Farmers.--The Country
Squire.--Elkington.--Bakewell.--The Roads.--Coke of Holkham

CHAPTER XVII

1793-1815. The Great French War.--The Board of Agriculture.--High
Prices, and Heavy Taxation

CHAPTER XVIII

Enclosure.--The Small Owner

CHAPTER XIX

1816-37. Depression

CHAPTER XX

1837-75. Revival of Agriculture.--The Royal Agricultural
Society.--Corn Law Repeal.--A Temporary Set-back.--The Halcyon Days

CHAPTER XXI

1875-1908. Agricultural Distress again.--Foreign Competition.--
Agricultural Holdings Act.--New Implements.--Agricultural
Commissions.--The Situation in 1908

CHAPTER XXII

Imports and Exports.--Live Stock

CHAPTER XXIII

Modern Farm Live Stock

APPENDICES

I. Average Prices from 1259 to 1700

II. Exports and Imports of Wheat and Flour from and into England,
unimportant years omitted

III. Average Prices per Imperial Quarter of British Corn in England
and Wales, in each year from 1771 to 1907 inclusive

IV. Miscellaneous Information

LANDMARKS IN ENGLISH AGRICULTURE

1086. Domesday inquest, most cultivated land in tillage. Annual value
of land about 2d. an acre.

1216-72. Henry III. Assize of Bread and Ale.

1272-1307. Edward I. General progress. Walter of Henley.

1307. Edward II. Decline.

1315. Great famine.

1337. Export of wool prohibited.

1348-9. Black Death. Heavy blow to manorial system. Many demesne
lands let, and much land laid down to grass.

1351. Statute of Labourers.

1360. Export of corn forbidden.

1381. Villeins' revolt.

1393. Richard II allows export of corn under certain conditions.

1463. Import of wheat under 6s. 8d. prohibited.

End of fifteenth century. Increase of enclosure.

1523. Fitzherbert's _Surveying and Husbandry_.

1540. General rise in prices and rents begins.

1549. Kett's rebellion. The last attempt of the English peasant to
obtain redress by force.

1586. Potatoes introduced.

1601. Poor Law Act of Elizabeth.

1645. Turnips and clover introduced as field crops.

1662. Statute of Parochial Settlement.

1664. Importation of cattle, sheep, and swine forbidden.

1688. Bounty of 5s. per quarter on export of wheat, and high duty on
import.

1733. Tull publishes his _Horse-hoeing Husbandry_.

1739. Great sheep-rot.

1750. Exports of corn reached their maximum.

1760. Bakewell began experimenting.

1760 (about). Industrial and agrarian revolution, and great increase
of enclosure.

1764. Elkington's new drainage system.

1773. Wheat allowed to be imported at a nominal duty of 6d. a quarter
when over 48s.

1777. Bath and West of England Society established, the first in
England.

1789. England definitely becomes a corn-importing country.

1793. Board of Agriculture established.

1795. Speenhamland Act.

About same date swedes first grown.

1815. Duty on wheat reached its maximum.

1815-35. Agricultural distress.

1825. Export of wool allowed.

1835. Smith of Deanston, the father of modern drainage.

1838. Foundation of Royal Agricultural Society.

1846. Repeal of the Corn Laws.

1855-75. Great agricultural prosperity.

1875. English agriculture feels the full effect of unrestricted
competition with disastrous results.

" First Agricultural Holdings Act.

1879-80. Excessive rainfall, sheep-rot, and general distress.

CHAPTER I

COMMUNISTIC FARMING.--GROWTH OF THE MANOR.--EARLY PRICES.--THE
ORGANIZATION AND AGRICULTURE OF THE MANOR

When the early bands of English invaders came over to take Britain
from its Celtic owners, it is almost certain that the soil was held by
groups and not by individuals, and as this was the practice of the
conquerors also they readily fell in with the system they found.[1]
These English, unlike their descendants of to day, were a race of
countrymen and farmers and detested the towns, preferring the lands of
the Britons to the towns of the Romans. Co-operation in agriculture
was necessary because to each household were allotted separate strips
of land, nearly equal in size, in each field set apart for tillage,
and a share in the meadow and waste land. The strips of arable were
unfenced and ploughed by common teams, to which each family would
contribute.

Apparently, as the land was cleared and broken up it was dealt out
acre by acre to each cultivator; and supposing each group consisted of
ten families, the typical holding of 120 acres was assigned to each
family in acre strips, and these strips were not all contiguous but
mixed up with those of other families. The reason for this mixture of
strips is obvious to any one who knows how land even in the same field
varies in quality; it was to give each family its share of both good
and bad land, for the householders were all equal and the principle on
which the original distribution of the land depended was that of
equalizing the shares of the different members of the community.[2]

In attributing ownership of lands to communities we must be careful
not to confound communities with corporations. Maitland thinks the
early land-owning communities blended the character of corporations
and of co-owners, and co-ownership is ownership by individuals.[3] The
vills or villages founded on their arrival in Britain by our English
forefathers resembled those they left at home, and even there the
strips into which the arable fields were divided were owned in
severalty by the householders of the village. There was co-operation
in working the fields but no communistic division of the crops, and
the individual's hold upon his strips developed rapidly into an
inheritable and partible ownership. 'At the opening of Anglo-Saxon
history absolute ownership of land in severalty was established and
becoming the rule.'[4]

In the management of the meadow land communal features were much more
clearly brought out; the arable was not reallotted,[5] but the meadow
was, annually; while the woods and pastures, the right of using which
belonged to the householders of the village, were owned by the village
'community'. There may have been at the time of the English conquest
Roman 'villas' with slaves and _coloni_ cultivating the owners'
demesnes, which passed bodily to the new masters; but the former
theory seems true of the greater part of the country.

At first 'extensive' cultivation was practised; that is, every year a
fresh arable field was broken up and the one cultivated last year
abandoned, for a time at all events; but gradually 'intensive' culture
superseded this, probably not till after the English had conquered the
land, and the same field was cultivated year after year.[6] After the
various families or households had finished cutting the grass in their
allotted portions of meadow, and the corn on their strips of tillage,
both grass and stubble became common land and were thrown open for the
whole community to turn their stock upon.

The size of the strips of land in the arable fields varied, but was
generally an acre, in most places a furlong (furrow long) or 220 yards
in length, and 22 yards broad; or in other words, 40 rods of 5-1/2
yards in length and 4 in breadth. There was, however, little
uniformity in measurement before the Norman Conquest, the rod by which
the furlongs and acres were measured varying in length from 12 to 24
feet, so that one acre might be four times as large as another.[7] The
acre was, roughly speaking, the amount that a team could plough in a
day, and seems to have been from early times the unit of measuring the
area of land.[8] Of necessity the real acre and the ideal acre were
also different, for the reason that the former had to contend with the
inequalities of the earth's surface and varied much when no scientific
measurement was possible. As late as 1820 the acre was of many
different sizes in England. In Bedfordshire it was 2 roods, in Dorset
134 perches instead of 160, in Lincolnshire 5 roods, in Staffordshire
2-1/4 acres. To-day the Cheshire acre is 10,240 square yards. As,
however, an acre was and is a day's ploughing for a team, we may
assume that the most usual acre was the same area then as now. There
were also half-acre strips, but whatever the size the strips were
divided one from another by narrow grass paths generally called
'balks', and at the end of a group of these strips was the 'headland'
where the plough turned, the name being common to-day. Many of these
common fields remained until well on in the nineteenth century; in
1815 half the county of Huntingdon was in this condition, and a few
still exist.[9] Cultivating the same field year after year naturally
exhausted the soil, so that the two-field system came in, under which
one was cultivated and the other left fallow; and this was followed by
the three-field system, by which two were cropped in any one year and
one lay fallow, the last-named becoming general as it yielded better
results, though the former continued, especially in the North. Under
the three-field plan the husbandman early in the autumn would plough
the field that had been lying fallow during summer, and sow wheat or
rye; in the spring he broke up the stubble of the field on which the
last wheat crop had been grown and sowed barley or oats; in June he
ploughed up the stubble of the last spring crop and fallowed the
field.[10] As soon as the crops began to grow in the arable fields and
the grass in the meadows to spring, they were carefully fenced to
prevent trespass of man and beast; and, as soon as the crops came off,
the fields became common for all the village to turn their stock upon,
the arable fields being usually common from Lammas (August 1) to
Candlemas (February 2) and the meadows from July 6, old Midsummer Day,
to Candlemas[11]; but as in this climate the season both of hay and
corn harvest varies considerably, these dates cannot have been fixed.

The stock, therefore, besides the common pasture, had after harvest
the grazing of the common arable fields and of the meadows. The common
pasture was early 'stinted' or limited, the usual custom being that
the villager could turn out as many stock as he could keep on his
holding. The trouble of pulling up and taking down these fences every
year must have been enormous, and we find legislation on this
important matter at an early date. About 700 the laws of Ine, King of
Wessex, provided that if 'churls have a common meadow or other
partible land to fence, and some have fenced their part and some have
not, and cattle stray in and eat up their common corn or grass; let
those go who own the gap and compensate to the others who have fenced
their part the damage which then may be done, and let them demand such
justice on the cattle as may be right. But if there be a beast which
breaks hedges and goes in everywhere, and he who owns it will not or
cannot restrain it, let him who finds it in his field take it and slay
it, and let the owner take its skin and flesh and forfeit the rest.'

England was not given over to one particular type of settlement,
although villages were more common than hamlets in the greater part of
the country.[12] The vill or village answers to the modern civil
parish, and the term may be applied to both the true or 'nucleated'
village of clustered houses and the village of scattered hamlets, each
of a few houses, existing chiefly on the Celtic fringe. The population
of some of the villages at the time of the Norman Conquest was
numerous, 100 households or 500 people; but the average townships
contained from 10 to 20 households.[13] There was also the single
farm, such as that at Eardisley in Herefordshire, described in
Domesday, lying in the middle of a forest, perhaps, as in other
similar cases, a pioneer settlement of some one more adventurous than
his fellows.[14]

* * * * *

Such was the early village community in England, a community of free
landholders. But a change began early to come over it.[15] The king
would grant to a church all the rights he had in the village,
reserving only the _trinoda necessitas_, these rights including the
feorm or farm, or provender rent which the king derived from the
land--of cattle, sheep, swine, ale, honey, &c.--which he collected by
visiting his villages, thus literally eating his rents. The churchmen
did not continue these visits, they remained in their monasteries, and
had the feorm brought them regularly; they had an overseer in the
village to see to this, and so they tightened their hold on the
village. Then the smaller people, the peasants, make gifts to the
Church. They give their land, but they also want to keep it, for it is
their livelihood; so they surrender the land and take it back as a
lifelong loan. Probably on the death of the donor his heirs are
suffered to hold the land. Then labour services are substituted for
the old provender rents, and thus the Church acquires a demesne, and
thus the foundations of the manorial system, still to be traced all
over the country, were laid. Thegns, the predecessors of the Norman
barons, become the recipients of grants from the churches and from
kings, and householders 'commend' themselves and their land to them
also, so that they acquired demesnes. This 'commendation' was
furthered by the fact that during the long-drawn out conquest of
Britain the old kindred groups of the English lost their corporate
sense, and the central power being too weak to protect the ordinary
householder, who could not stand alone, he had to seek the protection
of an ecclesiastical corporation or of some thegn, first for himself
and then for his land. The jurisdictional rights of the king also
passed to the lord, whether church or thegn; then came the danegeld,
the tax for buying off the Danes that subsequently became a fixed land
tax, which was collected from the lord, as the peasants were too poor
for the State to deal with them; the lord paid the geld for their
land, consequently their land was his. In this way the free ceorl of
Anglo-Saxon times gradually becomes the 'villanus' of Domesday.
Landlordship was well established in the two centuries before the
Conquest, and the land of England more or less 'carved into
territorial lordships'.[16] Therefore when the Normans brought their
wonderful genius for organization to this country they found the
material conditions of manorial life in full growth; it was their task
to develop its legal and economic side.[17]

As the manorial system thus superimposed upon the village community
was the basis of English rural economy for centuries, there need be no
apology for describing it at some length.

The term 'manor', which came in with the Conquest,[18] has a technical
meaning in Domesday, referring to the system of taxation, and did not
always coincide with the vill or village, though it commonly did so,
except in the eastern portion of England. The village was the agrarian
unit, the manor the fiscal unit; so that where the manor comprised
more than one village, as was frequently the case, there would be more
than one village organization for working the common fields.[19]

The manor then was the 'constitutive cell' of English mediaeval
society.[20] The structure is always the same; under the headship of
the lord we find two layers of population, the villeins and the
freeholders; and the territory is divided into demesne land and
tributary land of two classes, viz. that of the villeins and that of
the freeholders. The cultivation of the demesne (which usually means
the land directly occupied and cultivated by the lord, though legally
it has a wider meaning and includes the villein tenements), depends to
a certain extent on the work supplied by the tenants of the tributary
land. Rents are collected, labour superintended, administrative
business transacted by a set of manorial officers.

We may divide the tillers of the soil at the time of Domesday into
five great classes[21] in order of dignity and freedom:

1. Liberi homines, or freemen.
2. Socmen.
3. Villeins.
4. Bordarii, cotarii, buri or coliberti.
5. Slaves.

The two first of these classes were to be found in large numbers in
Norfolk, Suffolk, Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire, Leicestershire, and
Northamptonshire. It is not easy to draw the line between them, but
the chief distinction lay in the latter being more burdened with
service and customary dues and more especially subject to the
jurisdictional authority of the lord.[22] They were both free, but
both rendered services to the lord for their land. Both the freemen
and the slaves by 1086 were rapidly decreasing in number.

The most numerous class[23] on the manors was the third, that of the
villeins or non-free tenants, who held their land by payment of
services to the lord. The position of the villein under the feudal
system is most complicated. He both was and was not a freeman. He was
absolutely at the disposal of the lord, who could sell him with his
tenement, and he could not leave his land without his lord's
permission. He laboured under many disabilities, such as the merchet
or fine for marrying his daughter, and fines for selling horse or ox.
On the other hand, he was free against every one but his lord, and
even against the lord was protected from the forfeiture of his
'wainage' or instruments of labour and from injury to life and
limb.[24]

His usual holding was a virgate of 30 acres of arable, though the
virgate differed in size even in the same manors; but in addition to
this he would have his meadow land and his share in the common pasture
and wood, altogether about 100 acres of land. For this he rendered the
following services to the lord of the manor:

1. Week work, or labour on the lord's demesne for two or three days a
week during most of the year, and four or five days in summer. It was
not always the villein himself, however, who rendered these services,
he might send his son or even a hired labourer; and it was the holding
and not the holder that was considered primarily responsible for the
rendering of services.[25]

2. Precarii or boon days: that is, work generally during harvest, at
the lord's request, sometimes instead of week work, sometimes in
addition.

3. Gafol or tribute: fixed payments in money or kind, and such
services as 'fold soke', which forced the tenants' sheep to lie on the
lord's land for the sake of the manure; and suit of mill, by which the
tenant was bound to grind his corn in the lord's mill.

With regard to the 'boon days' in harvest, it should be remembered
that harvest time in the Middle Ages was a most important event.
Agriculture was the great industry, and when the corn was ripe the
whole village turned out to gather it, the only exceptions being the
housewives and sometimes the marriageable daughters. Even the larger
towns suspended work that the townsmen might assist in the harvest,
and our long vacation was probably intended originally to cover the
whole work of gathering in the corn and hay. On the occasion of the
'boon-day' work, the lord usually found food for the labourers which,
the Inquisition of Ardley[26] tells us, might be of the following
description: for two men, porridge of beans and peas and two loaves,
one white, the other of 'mixtil' bread; that is, wheat, barley, and
rye mixed together, with a piece of meat, and beer for their first
meal. Then in the evening they had a small loaf of mixtil bread and
two 'lescas' of cheese. While harvest work was going on the better-off
tenants, usually the free ones, were sometimes employed to ride about,
rod in hand, superintending the others.

The services of the villeins were often very comprehensive, and even
included such tasks as preparing the lord's bath; but on some manors
their services were very light.[27] When the third of the above
obligations, the gafol or tribute, was paid in kind it was most
commonly made in corn; and next came honey, one of the most important
articles of the Middle Ages, as it was used for both lighting and
sweetening purposes. Ale was also common, and poultry and eggs, and
sometimes the material for implements.

These obligations were imposed for the most part on free and unfree
tenants alike, though those of the free were much lighter than those
of the unfree; the chief difference between the two, as far as tenure
of the land went, lay in the fact that the former could exercise
proprietary rights over his holding more or less freely, the latter
had none.[28] It seems very curious to the modern mind that the
villein, a man who farmed about 100 acres of land, should have been in
such a servile condition.

The amount of work due from each villein came to be fixed by the
extent or survey of the manor, but the quality of it was not[29];
that is, each one knew how many days he had to work, but not whether
he was to plough, sow, or harrow, &c. It is surprising to find, that
on the festival days of the Church, which were very numerous and
observed as holy days, the lord lost by no work being done, and the
same was the case in wet weather.

One of the most important duties of the tenant was the 'averagium', or
duty of carrying for the lord, especially necessary when his manors
were often a long way apart. He would often have to carry corn to the
nearest town for sale, the products of one manor to another, also to
haul manure on to the demesne. If he owned neither horse nor ox, he
would sometimes have to use his own back.[30]

The holding of the villein did not admit of partition by sale or
descent, it remained undivided and entire. When the holder died all
the land went to one of the sons if there were several, often to the
youngest. The others sought work on the manor as craftsmen or
labourers, or remained on the family plot. The holding therefore might
contain more than one family, but to the lord remained one and
undivided.[31]

In the fourth class came the bordarii, the cotarii, and the coliberti
or buri; or, as we should say, the crofters, the cottagers, and the
boors.

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