Читать книгу The Agrarian Problem in the Sixteenth Century - R. H. Tawney - Страница 17

[53] Pauli, Drei volkswirthschaftliche Denkschriften aus der Zeit Heinrichs VIII. von England: How to reform the Realme in setting them to work, and to restore tillage. “The whole welth of the body of the realm riseth out of labours and workes of the common people.”

[54] The Commonweal of this Realm of England (Lamond), p. 63: “And I marvell no man taketh heade unto it, what nombre first of trifles cometh hether from beyonde the seas, that we might either clene spare, or els make them within oure owne Realme, for the which we paie inestimable treasure every yeare, or els exchange substanciall wares and necessaries for them.” E. E. T. S., England in the Reign of King Henry VIII., Part II., p. 84: “Craftys men and makers of tryfullys are too many.” Harrison in Elizebethan England (Withington), p. 15: “O how many trades and handicrafts are now in England whereof the Commonwealth hath no need!” &c.

[55] e.g. the prayer for merchants in Edward VI.’s Book of Private Prayer: “So occupy their merchandise without fraud, guile, or deceit.”

[56] Coventry Leet Book, Part III., pp. 679–680.

[57] See Smith, De Republica Anglorum, Lib. I. c. 23: “These are they which in the old world got that honour to Englande ... because they be so manie in number, so obedient at the Lorde’s call, so strong of bodie, so hard to endure paine, so courageous to adventure ... these were the good archers in times past, and the stable troops of footmen that affaide all France that would rather die all, than once abandon the knight or gentleman their captaine,” and Harrison in Elizabethan England (Withington), pp. 11–13.

[58] E. E. T. S., England in the Reign of King Henry VIII., Starkey’s Dialogue, Part II., p. 49: “To the handes are resemblyd both craftysmen and warryarys.... To the fete the plowmen and tyllarys of the ground, beycause they, by theyr labour, susteyne and support the rest of the body.”

[59] In this essay we are concerned only with the landholders, not with the wage workers. The relative number of persons holding land and of agricultural labourers without land is an important question on which it is not easy to get light. The surveys and rentals, a species of private census invaluable in giving information about the holders of property, tell us only the number of householders, and as the labourers employed in agriculture (like many of those employed in manufacturing industry) usually lived on the premises of their masters, they do not enable us to calculate the number of those living entirely by their labour. Still, since they include all tenants, whether holders of a cottage only or holders of land in addition, they enable us to say what proportion of heads of families held land, and what proportion had none, or none except a garden. This is of some importance. A tenant holding even as much as fifty acres can hardly have employed more than two or three agricultural labourers, and most tenants held less than this; so that in those places where the cottagers form a small proportion of the whole population we may conclude that a large proportion of the villagers were landholders (for the figures on this point see the tables given below).

Unfortunately, we do not possess for the sixteenth century even such a loose estimate as was made by Gregory King at the end of the seventeenth. In 1688 he calculated that there were 16,560 families of nobles and gentlemen, 60,000 families of yeomen, 150,000 of farmers—presumably on lease—400,000 cottagers and poor, 364,000 labouring people and out-servants, obviously a very rough calculation, the most remarkable feature of which is the large number of yeomen. Poll Tax returns might give us the kind of information we require, since they included, or were meant to include, the whole population above a certain age, irrespective of whether they held land or not, and sometimes divided them roughly into classes. Thus on sixteen manors in the Norfolk Hundred of Thingoe the return to the Poll Tax of 1381 showed a population of 870 male and female inhabitants over fifteen years of age, of whom 9 were set down as knights, 53 as farmers, 102 as artificers, 344 as “labourers” (laboratores), 362 as “servants” (servientes). If, as is not improbable, the first four classes held land (the labourers being serfs working on the demesne), and the last consisted of farm and household employees who did not, this would put the landholding classes on these manors at a little more than half the total population over the age of fifteen. But this return was probably falsified to escape the tax; see Powell, The East Anglian Rising, App. I., and Oman, The Great Revolt of 1381. The figures published by Dr. Savine (Oxford Studies in Social and Legal History, vol. i., pp. 223–226) of the monastic population show that on the eve of the dissolution there were residing in 22 houses in Leicester, Warwick, and Sussex, 255 “hinds” and 76 “women servants,” presumably employed on the demesne farm, which gives an average to each farm of about 11 hinds and about 3 women servants. In the Kentish Nunnery of St. Sexburge, Sheppey, the demesne farm employed a carter, a carpenter, two cowherds, a thatcher, a horse keeper, a malter, three shepherds. Best, describing his farming arrangements in Yorkshire in 1641 (Surtees Society, vol. xxxiii.), states: “Wee kept constantly five plowes goinge, and milked fowerteene kine, wherefore wee had always fower men, two boyes to go with the oxeploughe, and two good lusty mayde-servants.” These were in each case only the permanent staff, and their comparatively small numbers suggest that much work must have been done by men who worked on their own land and only occasionally helped on the demesne, i.e. that the proportion of landholders to non-landholders was high. This conclusion agrees with the evidence of the surveys, which show that, especially in the East of England, many of both the free and the customary tenants' holdings were so small that they could hardly have made a living out of them without working as wage-labourers as well, and also with other indications as to the classes in rural society; e.g. out of 3780 persons mentioned in Worcestershire recognizances, 1591–1643, as either “labourers,” “husbandmen,” or “yeomen,” 667 are entered as labourers, 1303 as husbandmen, 1810 as yeomen, the latter designation always, and the second usually, implying a holder of land (J.W. Willis Bund, Kalendar of the Sessions Rolls, 1591–1643, Part II.) On the other hand, conditions varied enormously from place to place. Where there was a considerable body of small landowners the number of hired labourers tended to be small, the work of cultivation being done by the holder and his family; e.g. we read of a manor in the seventeenth century where thirteen freeholders farmed 580 acres with the aid of only ten men-servants and shepherds before enclosure, and six or seven afterwards (Joseph Lee, A Vindication of a Regulated Enclosure).

Some of the surveys supply us with extreme cases of the opposite kind, where the whole manor consists of two or three holdings or of even one great estate, and where almost the whole of the population must have been working for wages; these illustrate Harrison’s complaint that in many places “The land of the parish is gotten up into a few men’s hands; yea, sometimes, into the tenure of one or two or three, whereby the rest are compelled betimes to be hired servants unto the others, or else to beg their bread in misery from door to door” (Withington’s edition of Elizabethan England, p. 21). A protest made to the Council from Norfolk in 1631 against its policy of trying to keep down prices by insisting that all corn should be sold in the open market points out that in “the woodland and pasture part” of the country there are “a great many handicraftsmen which live by dressinge and combinge of wool, carding, spinning and weaving, etc., and the Townes there commonly very great consisting of such like people and other artificers with many poor, and none of them all ordinarilye having any corn but from the market.” As to the “champion part” of the county, the document divides the rural population into three classes: “1. Tilth masters that have corn of their own growing and sell it to others. 2. Labourers that buy it at an under-price of them unto whom they worke. 3. Poore people that are relieved by good orders in every towne” (Original Papers of the Norfolk and Norwich Archæological Society, 1907). But the case of Norfolk was exceptional, owing to its position as the chief seat of the textile industries.

On the whole I am inclined to think that though the process of commutation which went on from 1350 onwards can hardly be explained except on the supposition that there was a considerable population of persons who held little land and were ready to eke out a living by working for wages, yet in the sixteenth century even the wage-working heads of families usually held a certain amount of land (even if only a garden) as well. This agrees with what we are told by contemporaries of the scarcity of wage-earners (see below, pp. 99–102). One may add, that in view of this, the fixing of maximum wages bears a somewhat different colour from that often given it. It was only practicable, one is inclined to say, because so few persons depended entirely on wages for a living. The social problem in the sixteenth century was not a problem of wages, but of rents and fines, prices and usury, matters which concern the small-holder or the small master craftsman as much as the wage-earner. The “working classes” were largely small property holders and small traders.

[60] The summary statement given above is liable to be misleading. The reader will find a fuller discussion of the questions arising in connection with it below in Part II., chap. iii.

[61] They include also tenants on the lands belonging to Cockersand Abbey, lying in many different parts of Lancashire, in 1503. For the sources from which this table is constructed and its defects, see Appendix II..

[62] The Lancashire figures are unduly weighted by those of the single large manor of Rochdale, where, in 1626, there were 612 tenants. If this manor be omitted, there remain only 19 leaseholders on the other Lancashire manors. Like Northumberland, Lancashire seems to be (as one would expect) a county of customary tenants.

[63] There is an error of 4 in the Norfolk figures which I have been unable to trace and correct.

[64] In Domesday Book 35 per cent. of all the tenants in Suffolk are liberi homines, 32 per cent. of all those in Norfolk are either liberi homines or sochemanni. See Vinogradoff, The Growth of the Manor, note 24 to chap. iii. Book III. (p. 376); Maitland, Domesday Book and Beyond, p. 23; Seebohm, The English Village Community, map opposite p. 85. Domesday also gives a large number of liberi homines and sochemanni in Leicestershire. In the table given above the Leicestershire manors come after Suffolk and Norfolk as having the third largest proportion of freeholders, viz., 21.6 per cent. The return of freeholders supplied to the Government in 1561 (Lansdowne MSS. V., 8, 9, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15) appear to be considerably understated, probably because only the more substantial men were thought worth mentioning. They are as follows: Beds 282, Berks 166, Essex 880, Notts 189, Oxon. 198, Herts 363, York 787, Lincoln 444. The large number in Essex is noteworthy.

[65] Smith, De Republica Anglorum, Lib I., c. 23.

[66] History of King Henry VII. (Lumley), pp. 70–72. He makes his meaning quite clear by saying “tenancies for years, lives, and at will, whereupon much of the yeomanry lived, were turned into demesnes.”

[67] Trans. Royal Hist. Soc., vol. xvii. (Savine, “Bondmen under the Tudors”).

[68] Ibid.

[69] Smith, De Republica Anglorum, loc. cit.

[70] MSS. of Earl of Leicester at Holkham. Billingford and Bintry MSS. No. 9 (Manor of Foxley, 1568).

[71] e.g. ibid., Sparham MSS. No. 5, a freeholder pays “a pounde of cumming seede and a gillyflower” (c. 1590). R.O. Rentals and Surveys, Duchy of Lancaster, Portf. 6, No. 15: “nyne golden threads of vi.d.” (1568). R.O. Land Rev. Misc. Bks., 182, fol. 1: a tenant “holds freely a cottage paying a red rose.”

[72] Norden, The Surveyor’s Dialogue, Book I., pp. 4–5, to which the farmer answers: “Fie upon you. Will you bring us to be slaves? Neither lawe, nor reason, nor least of all religion, can allowe what you affirme.”

[73] Op. cit., Book III. Here is a bitter cry from the bailiff of a manor (Merton Documents, No. 4381). “Good sir let me entreat you yf the Colledge determyne to make survey this spring of the lands at Kibworth and Barkly to send Mr. Kay or me word a month or 3 weeks before your coming that we may have Beare and other necessaries, and I desire you to gather up all evidences that may be needful for the Lordshipp, for all testimony will be little enough, the Colledge land is so mingled with Mr. Pochin’s freehold and others in our towne. There ys an awarde for keepinge in of the old wol (?) close in our fields for (from ?) Mr. Pochin’s occupation, very needfulle for the ynhabitannts yf that awarde can be founde at the colledge where yt was loste.” (For the remainder of this letter see Appendix I.) The Crown suffered especially, see Norden, Speculum Britanniae, Part I., pp. xl.-xliii. of introduction (Camden Society): “In many of his Majesty’s manors, free holders, their rents, services, tenures and landes ... become strange and unknown ... and when escheates happen the lande that should redound to his Majesty cannot be found.” In the common entry in manorial surveys under the heading of freeholders of “certain lands” we should probably take the word “certain” to mean “uncertain.”

[74] For the sources and defects of this table see Appendix II..

[75] See below, pp. 105–115.

[76] See e.g. Northumberland County History, vol. ix. p. 327, below, pp. 157–158, and Calendar of Proceedings in Chancery, temp. Eliz. B, b. 1, 58, Ll. 10, 62.

[77] Smith, De Republica Anglorum, Lib. I., c. 23: “These be for the most part fermors unto gentlemen.” Elizabethan England (Withington), p. 120. “Yeomen” frequently occur in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as lessees of the Merton Manors.

[78] See below, pp. 105–115.

[79] Norden, The Surveyor’s Dialogue.

[80] Fuller, Holy and Profane State. The concluding paragraph is obviously copied from Bacon’s History of King Henry VII.

[81] Paston Letters, I. 12, II. 248. Plummer’s edition of Fortescue, On the Governance of England, Intro., p. 21.

[82] Atkinson’s Quarter Sessions of the North Riding of Yorkshire, lists of recusants.

[83] e.g. Topographer and Genealogist, vol. iii. (quoted below, pp. 251–253), and Selden Society, Select Cases in the Court of Star Chamber, vol. ii., Inhabitants of Thingden v. Mulsho; also Holkham MSS., Burnham Documents, Bdle. 5, No. 94 (quoted below, p. 245 n.).

[84] Harrington’s works, 1700 edition, p. 69 (Oceana), pp. 388–389 (The Art of Law-giving). See also Firth, The House of Lords during the Civil War, pp. 28–32.

[85] It is stated by good authorities that between 12 Ed. IV., when the collusive action known as a common recovery used to evade the Statute de donis conditionalibus was confirmed by a judicial decision (Taltarum’s case), and the introduction into settlements of “Trustees to preserve contingent remainders” by Sir Orlando Bridgeman and Sir Geoffrey Palmer under the Commonwealth, the tieing up of lands in one family was impossible (e.g. Johnson, The Disappearance of the Small Landowner, pp. 11–13). But in 1538 Starkey’s Dialogue speaks strongly of the practice of entailing lands. “This faute sprange of a certayn arrogancy, whereby, wyth the entaylyng of landys, every Jake would be a gentylman, and every gentylman a knight or a lord” (E. E. T. S., England in the Reign of Henry VIII., Part II. pp. 112–113, and pp. 195–196.)

[86] Reyce, Breviary of Suffolk, p. 58, quoted Victoria County History, Suffolk.

[87] See below, pp. 200–213 and 283–287.

[88] Oxford Studies in Social and Legal History, vol. i. Savine, English Monasteries on the Eve of the Dissolution, pp. 156–159.

[89] Trans. Royal Hist. Soc., vol. xvii.

[90] R.O. Misc. Bks. Land Rev., vol. 220, fol. 220, Brisingham (Norfolk) 1589: “Alice Bartram, the widow of W. Bartram, the lord’s villain by blood, took by surrender of said William for term of life on 4 Feby., remainder to Roger Bartram, lord’s villain by blood.” Holkham MSS., Titleshall Documents, Terrier of Godwick, 1508: “Also five roods of the Prior in the hands of Thomas Frend, native.”

[91] Among the 742 customary tenants on the manors belonging to the Earl of Pembroke surveyed in 1568 there appears to be 7 nativi domini, i.e. villeins by blood, viz., 1 at Washerne (Wilts), 2 at Stooke Trister and Cucklington (Somerset), 4 at Chedeseye (Somerset), of whom one has been manumitted.

[92] Selected Records of Norwich (Tingey), vol. vi. p. 180: “Robert Ryngwoode brought in a certain indenture wherein Lewis Lowth was [bound] to hym to serve as a prentys for seven years. And Mr. John Holdiche cam before the Mayor and other Justices and declared that the said Lewis is a bondman to my lord of Norfolk’s Grace, and further that he was brought up in husbandry untyl he was xx year old. Whereupon he was discharged of his service.”

Note the way in which Statute law is used to compel the agricultural labour which the vanishing jurisdiction of lord over serf is ceasing to be able to enforce.

[93] Roxburghe Club, Surveys of Manors of William, First Earl of Pembroke, Manor of Chilmerke: “Johannes Reve tenet per indenturam totum illud capitale messuagium excepta et omnino reservata omnia wardas, maritagia fines ... nativos,” &c.

[94] Russell, Ket’s Rebellion in Norfolk, p. 49: “We pray that all bond men may be made free, for God made all free with his precious blood shedding.” The German peasants in the articles drawn up at Memmingen in 1525 demanded the abolition of serfdom “since Christ hath purchased and redeemed us all with his precious blood.” The Christian appeal is a common one; see below.

[95] Selden Society, Select Cases in the Court of Requests, John Burde and another v. The Earl of Bath. The quarrel dragged on from 1535 to 1544, when the plaintiff's goods were restored. (In 1551, however, when all bad landlords were raising their heads, his house and cattle were again seized.)

[96] Ibid., Netheway v. George, 1534. For other cases see Selden Society, Select Cases in the Court of Star Chamber. Carter v. Abbot of Malmesbury (vol. i., 1500), and Selby v. Middlemore (vol. ii., 1516–1522). Mr. Leadam's remarks (int. cxxix.) show that a man who was legally a villein might be economically very prosperous: “Thomas Carter ... was charged 40 marks for his enfranchisement. He kept a man-servant. He rode on horseback. He gave a feast to celebrate his freedom. He was even on friendly terms with the gentlemen of the Abbot’s household.” See also Savine, Trans. Royal Hist. Soc., vol. xvii. Lord Stafford actually tried to seize the Mayor of Bristol and his brother as bondmen!

[97] Hargreave’s speech in Somersett’s case (1771–1772, Howell, State Trials, xx.) is based largely on precedents drawn from villeinage: “Though villeinage itself is obsolete ... those rules, by which the claim of it was regulated, are not yet buried in oblivion.... By a strange progress of human affairs the memory of slavery expired now furnishes one of the chief obstacles to slavery attempted to be revived.... The law of England, then, excludes every slavery not commencing in England, every slavery, though commencing there, not being ancient and immemorial. Villeinage is the only slavery which can possibly answer to such a description, and that has long expired by the death or emancipation of all those who were once the objects of it. Consequently there is now no slavery which can be lawful in England.”

[98] 1 Ed. VI., c. 3. Possibly, however, the penalty of bondage was regarded as a step towards greater leniency, as the punishment of “incorrigible rogues” had hitherto been death.

[99] More’s remarks on the lot of the wage-workers of his day have a refreshing note of reality. The Utopians are “not to be wearied from earlie in the morning to late in the evenninge with continuall worke, like labouringe and toylinge beastes. For this is worse then the miserable and wretched condition of bondemen. Whiche nevertheless is almooste everywhere the lyfe of workemen and artificers, saving in Utopia” (More, Utopia, Pitt Press Edition, pp. 79–80).

[100] Smith, De Republica Anglorum, Lib. III., ch. 8. See also Fitzherbert, Surveying (1539): “How be it, in some places the bondmen continue as yet, the which me seemeth is the greatest inconvenience that now is suffered by the law.” Norden, The Surveyor’s Dialogue (1608): “Which kinde of service and slavery, thanks be to God, is in most places of this Realme quite abolished and worne out of memory.... Truly I think it is a Christian parte so to do [i.e. manumit bondsmen], for seeing we be nowe all as the children of one father, the servants of one God, and the subjects of one king, it is very uncharitable to retain our brethren in bondage, sith, when we were all bond, Christ did make us free.”

[101] Norden, The Surveyor’s Dialogue. He continues: “For in some places of this Realme Tennants have no copies at all of their lands or tenements, or anything to show for that they hold, but there is an entry made in the Court Books, and that is their evidence.”

[102] See Appendix II.

[103] Archbishop Sandys to Queen Elizabeth, Saturday 24 November to 4 December, 1582 (quoted by E. Arber, The Story of the Pilgrim Fathers, pp. 61–64).

[104] Harrison in Elizabethan England (Withington), p. 120.

[105] Quoted by Nasse, The Land Community of the Middle Ages (Ouvry’s trans.). I have not been able to trace the reference.

[106] Norden, The Surveyor’s Dialogue.

[107] E.g., R.O. Rentals and Surveys Gen. Ser., Portf. 27, No. 32, Dunstall (Suffolk): “Bond land held by copy of court roll, 13s. 4d. Of holders of 3 bond pightells, 5s. 4d.” MSS. of Earl of Leicester at Holkham, Tittleshall Books, No. 62, Langham Hall (Norfolk): “Redditus assissæ native tenentium. ... John Rose per copiam, 4d.” R.O. Rentals and Surveys Gen. Ser. Portf. 14, No. 70, Barton (Staffs.): “T. Collinson 1 messuage 1/4 virgate land de bond ... by copy 2 Hen. viii.”

[108] MSS. of Earl of Leicester at Holkham, Billingford and Bintry MSS., No. 9, Foxley: “Native tenentium per copiam rotuli curiæ.”

[109] Roxburghe Club, Surveys of Manors of William, First Earl of Pembroke.

[110] Roxburghe Club, Surveys of Manors of William, First Earl of Pembroke.

[111] Merton Documents, 5902.

[112] Northumberland County History, vol. viii., p. 220 (one may add that in parts of Northumberland the labourers are still called “bondagers”; Mr. Clay tells me that in the Calder valley farmers still use “daywork” as a unit for measuring fields). See also Calendar of Proceedings in Chancery, temp. Eliz., D. d. 2, 44, for a suit by a farmer to recover services due from tenants.

[113] Pembroke Surveys.

[114] Chetham Society Miscellanies, vol. iii.

[115] Pembroke Surveys, Estoverton and Phipheld: “Tenentes de Estoverton reddunt annuatim pro pannagio et tallagio ... ivs.” For salt silver, ibid., South Newton. For liability to serve as Reeve, ibid., Paynton.

[116] Chetham Society Miscellanies, vol. iii.: “I would wish you to call the tenants first all together and to signify unto them that my father and I have gone through with Mr. Ireland for Warrington, and the summe we are to give is above £7000; and this was done making no doubt that towards it every one of them being tenants would by their assistance enable us to finish it.... If they faile in this, they may provoke us to sharp courses, especially mee, who have had a purpose to take the third part of every living as it falls.”

[117] Wrexham Free Library, Ancient Local Records, vol. ii. MS. transcript by A.N. Palmer, “Survey of the Town and Liberty of Holt.”

[118] Savine, Quarterly Journal of Economics, vol. xix.