Читать книгу The Agrarian Problem in the Sixteenth Century - R. H. Tawney - Страница 22

A	Total Number of Tenants	K	35 and under 40 Acres.	U	85 and under 90 Acres.
B	Cottages or Houses with or without Gardens.	L	40 and under 45 Acres.	V	90 and under 95 Acres.
C	Under 2½ Acres.	M	45 and under 50Acres.	W	95 and under 100 Acres.
D	2½ and under 5 Acres.	N	50 and under 55 Acres.	X	100 and under 105 Acres.
E	5 and under 10 Acres.	O	55 and under 60 Acres.	Y	105 and under 110 Acres.
F	10 and under 15 Acres.	P	60 and under 65 Acres.	Z	110 and under 115 Acres.
G	15 and under 20 Acres.	Q	65 and under 70 Acres.	A'	115 and under 120 Acres.
H	20 and under 25 Acres.	R	70 and under 75 Acres.	B'	120 and over.
I	25 and under 30 Acres.	S	75 and under 80 Acres.	C'	Uncertain.
J	30 and under 35 Acres.	T	80 and under 85 Acres.

	A	B	C	D	E	F	G	H	I	J	K	L	M	N	O	P	Q	R	S	T	U	V	W	X	Y	Z	A'	B'	C'
Ten manors in Northumberland	96	...	10	1	2	1	3	1	12	27	13	10	10	...	...	1	1	2	1	...	1	...	...	...	...	...	...	...	...
Four manors in Lancashire	168	38	14	19	29	35	7	4	7	7	2	...	...	2	...	...	1	...	...	...	...	...	...	...	...	...	...	1	2
Three manors in Staffordshire	103	8	21	16	14	6	10	11	3	1	2	2	2	2	...	1	1	...	...	...	...	...	...	...	...	...	...	1	2
Two manors in Northamptonshire	255	30	53	24	22	22	13	22	5	10	3	7	2	5	2	7	2	2	2	2	...	...	...	...	2	...	...	4	14
Three manors in Leicestershire	129	13	17	6	6	8	3	3	5	1	10	7	8	7	7	6	2	4	1	2	1	1	2	...	...	...	1	1	7
Five manors in Suffolk and eight manors in Norfolk	391	52	77	40	69	28	26	19	14	5	9	4	2	4	7	3	3	1	1	1	1	...	1	...	2	1	...	4	17
Seven manors in Wiltshire and one manor in Somersetshire	156	3	5	7	12	8	7	27	16	14	10	12	5	7	2	4	3	4	1	2	1	...	2	...	...	...	...	...	4
Nine other manors in the South of England	366	23	58	27	52	29	31	16	22	12	11	10	13	3	6	7	6	3	5	4	4	1	2	4	...	1	1	7	9
Total, twenty-two manors	1664	167	255	140	206	137	100	103	84	77	60	52	42	28	26	29	18	17	11	11	8	2	7	4	4	2	1	18	55

In the non-commercial, non-industrial North there is something like economic equality, something like the fixed equipment of each group of tenants with a standard area of land which is one of the first things to strike us in a mediæval survey, and, as we shall see later, manorial authorities for a long time insist on that rough equality being maintained, because any weakening of it would disorganise the old-fashioned economy which characterises the northern border. In the industrial East and South this uniformity existed once, but it exists now no longer. Wiltshire is humming with looms; Norfolk and Suffolk are linked to the Continent by a thousand commercial ties, and will starve if the clothiers lose their market. The mighty forces of capital and competitive industry and foreign trade are beginning to heave in their sleep—forces that will one day fuse and sunder, exalt and put down, enrich and impoverish, unpeople populous counties and pour Elizabethan England into a smoking caldron between the Irish Sea and the Pennines; forces that at present are so weak that a Clerk of the Market can lead them and a Justice of the Peace put a hook in their jaws. It is natural that mediæval conditions of agriculture should survive longest in the North. It is natural that they should survive least where trade and industry are most developed, and where men are being linked by other bonds than those of land tenure. But we must not comment until we have examined the text more closely. We would only draw attention to the contrast between the South and the North, to the contrast also between the great diversity in the size of the peasants' holdings in the sixteenth century, and the much greater uniformity two or three hundred years before.

This contrast gives a clue to certain features of village life which are distinctive of our period, and at the risk of wearying the reader one may illustrate it from the circumstances of particular manors. At Cuxham,[128] in 1483, there are, in addition to tiny holdings of a few acres or of fractions of acres, holdings of one-quarter of a virgate, of half a virgate, of one virgate, of four virgates. At Ibstone[129] in the same year there are two tenants at will holding one virgate each, one tenant holding five tofts and three crofts, while the rest hold little except cottages and gardens. At Warton[130] in Lancashire, there are in the reign of Henry VIII., in addition to various holdings expressed in terms of acres, four holdings of half a bovate, two of three-quarters of a bovate, seven of one bovate, two of one and a quarter bovates, four of one and a half bovates, four of two bovates, one of two and a quarter bovates, one of three bovates. At Barton[131] in Staffordshire, in 1556, the typical holding is one virgate of 24 acres. But though this forms the nucleus of the copyholders' properties a good many of them have acquired so much extra land, and a good many apparently have parted with so much of the land which they once held, that though 24 acres is still the predominant holding, the majority of the tenants hold something more or something less than this. At Byshopeston,[132] in 1567, there are men holding half a virgate, two virgates, three virgates, four virgates, six virgates. At Knyghton[133] there are holders of anything from a half to two and a half virgates.

Looking at this grouping of holdings, one is tempted at first sight to say that the virgate has ceased to be a unit of open field tillage, and has become merely a common form, an idea which is laid up in the minds of surveyors, and which is produced automatically, even when it corresponds to nothing in the fluid world of agriculture. This, however, would be an error. On the contrary, the conservatism[134] of rural arrangements is such that yardlands, bovates, virgates, and oxgangs, continue to do duty in circumstances which seem quite incongruous, and to be used, not only in theory, but in practice, to apportion rights over arable, meadow, and pasture, long after holdings have been redistributed in such a way as altogether to destroy the former equality of shares. On the Leicestershire manors of Barkby[135] and Kibworth[136] holdings were set down in terms of yardlands in 1636, though the condition of things in which a yardland or half yardland formed one tenant’s holding had long since given way to one in which the smaller holders occupied a few acres and the wealthier 2½, 3, and 3½ yardlands. Still, though the continuance of these measures even into the eighteenth century should be noted, there is no reason why we should use them, and the modern reader will perhaps get a better idea of the growing heterogeneity in the economic conditions of the customary tenants if the distribution of their property is expressed in terms of acres.

Our first example comes from Malden[137] in Surrey. It shows on a small scale the tendency towards concentration of property in larger parcels. In 1452 there were on that manor one holder of 24 acres, three holders of 16 acres, two holders of 15 acres, and families holding 10, 8, 6, 5, 2 acres respectively. That 16 acres had been the normal holding is fairly obvious; it is obvious also that though this normal holding is still traceable, it is on the way to being obliterated. Later specimens of a similar kind come from Ashfield[138] in Suffolk and Ormesby[139] in Norfolk. In 1513 there were on the former manor tenants holding 7, 10, 15, 21, 22, 36, 37, 45, 107, 121 acres, and all intermediate sizes. On the latter, in 1516, the holdings were much smaller, but they were still more various in area, ranging from 2 to 31 acres. One or two of the Wiltshire and Somersetshire manors surveyed for the Earl of Pembroke in 1567 offer examples of the reverse state of things in which the tenants' holdings were all cut out to a standard pattern. At Washerne,[140] for example, a manor where the demesnes were not leased but retained “in the hand of the lord,” nearly all the copyholders had exactly 20 acres each. But this is an exception which proves the rule. At Estoverton[141] there were some tenants holding 69, 48, 38 acres of arable, and others with 12, 10, 9, 3, and 2 acres. At Donnington[142] there were holders of 63 and 52 acres in the fields and holders with only 8 or 9 acres. At South Brent[143] the divergence between large and small customary tenants is more striking still. One occupies about 90 acres, several others over 50, while the vast majority hold less than 30 acres in holdings which are hardly ever of the same size. At Crondal[144] we find in 1567 exactly the same inequality in the area cultivated by different tenants, exactly the same combination of very large with very small holdings. Taking one tithing only of that manor—that of Swanthrop—we are met by tenants holding 112, 104, 66, 58, 47, 44, 30, 27, 25, and 3 acres. Finally, let us take two extreme instances. They are drawn from the closing years of the sixteenth century; but their inclusion may be justified by the fact that they reveal in a pronounced form the tendencies which we have seen at work elsewhere a century and a half before, and that they offer a peculiarly clear example of larger customary holdings formed out of the aggregation of several smaller ones, since the names of the previous tenants are stated by the surveyor. On the two Middlesex manors of Edgeware[145] and Kingsbury[146] all relics of the state of things which had presumably existed there, as on other manors, two or three centuries before, the state of things in which there were groups of men holding virgates or half virgates, has disappeared so entirely as to leave no traces behind. On the former the thirty-eight copyholders occupy holdings of almost any size between 1 rood and 130 acres; out of the 722 acres of copyhold land as much as 254, a little over one-third, are in the hands of two large tenants. On the latter there is, mutatis mutandis, the same story; out of the twenty-seven copyholders thirteen hold less than 15 acres, eight hold more than 30, and of those eight two hold more than 100 acres apiece.

These examples are drawn from 12 different counties.[147] Let us see more exactly what they suggest. They suggest that, quite apart[148] from any movement on the part of lords of manors to throw the holdings of the customary tenants into large farms and to evict their holders, quite apart from any external shock such as was given to the organisation of village life by the change from tillage to pasture on the part of lords and their farmers, there has been going on an internal change in the relation of the customary tenants to each other. So far we have been concerned only with the result of that change, not with the process by which it is brought about. The result, as evidenced by the surveys, is the consolidation of several holdings, or parts of holdings, into fewer and larger tenancies, the appearance of a class of well-to-do peasants by whom such larger tenancies are held, and a widening of the gap between the most prosperous and least prosperous. Customary tenants hold 3 or 4 virgates, 80 or 90 or 100 acres, and their holdings are composed of holdings and parts of holdings which formerly belonged to several different tenants. Customary tenants even become the landlords of other customary tenants. At Yateleigh[149] one copyholder has as many as twenty sub-tenants, and it is not at all uncommon for the surveyors of the sixteenth century to record the names both of owners and occupiers in estate and field maps. There can hardly be a clearer proof of the re-arrangement of property which has been going on among them than the fact that some of them hold more land than they can cultivate themselves and sub-let it to smaller men, who become their sub-tenants.

May one not say, in fact, that by the beginning of the sixteenth century the rough equality which had once existed between the holdings of different groups of customary tenants is fast disappearing, and that by the middle of that century it has, in some parts of the country, disappeared altogether? The village community is often no longer made up of compact groups of holders with more or less equal holdings, more or less equal rents and services, more or less similar economic positions. Even as early as the time when the great agrarian changes which contemporaries summed up under the name of “enclosing” begin to produce legislation on the part of governments and riots among the peasantry, its appearance of a systematic adjustment of property and obligation is already far on the way to disappearance. Its members still hold shares in the open fields, and are still bound by a common routine of cultivation, save in so far as that routine has been undermined in the ways to be described below. But it is easy to be deceived by the external shell of organisation into thinking of village life at the end of the fifteenth century as being much more homogeneous than it really was. After all there are shareholders and shareholders. There is very little similarity in economic interest or social position between the artisan who buys a £5 share in a Bolton spinning-mill and a capitalist who invests £5000 in the same concern. There was hardly more, one may suspect, between the copyholder who cultivated a few acres and the copyholder who held 100 or 200 acres and sublet part of his holding to a poorer neighbour, though the lands of both were intermixed, though both held of the same manor, though both were nominally bound by the same custom. This comparison says more than we mean; for, with few exceptions, the inequality in the holdings of the peasantry revealed by the manorial documents is not so great that it cannot be spanned by enterprise and good fortune. Looking back from a world in which the mass of mankind have no legal interest in the land which they cultivate or the tools which they use, what strikes the modern reader most in the sixteenth century is not the concentration of property, but its wide distribution. Nevertheless, even in these petty rearrangements of holdings there is a meaning. They are the beginning of greater things. To appreciate their importance we must obliterate from our minds our knowledge of later developments, and regard them as the innovation which they are. We must remember that they are the economic foundation of a prosperous rural middle class.