CHAPTER VIII

AGRICULTURE IN MEDIEVAL ENGLAND

Rise of a Wage-earning Class.

§ 64. Introductory. THE long reign of Henry III., although occasionally troubled by internal dissensions among the barons, was, upon the whole, a prosperous and peaceful time for the people in general, and more especially for those whom historians are For by this time a pleased to call the lower classes. remarkable change had begun to affect the condition of the serfs or villeins, a change already alluded to, by which the villeins became free tenants, subject to a fixed money rent for their holdings. This rent was rapidly becoming a payment in money and not in labour,1 for, as we saw, the lords of the manors were frequently in want of cash, and were ready to sell many of their privileges. The change was at first gradual, but by the time of the Great Plague (1348), money rents were becoming the rule rather than the exception, and though labour rents were not at all obsolete, it was an ill-advised attempt to insist upon them unduly that was the prime cause of Wat Tyler's insurrection (1381). Before the Plague, in fact, villeinage in the old sense was becoming almost extinct, and the peasants, both great and small, had achieved a large The richer villeins had developed measure of freedom. into small farmers, while the poorer villeins, and especially the cottars, had formed a separate class of agricultural labourers, not indeed entirely without land, but depending for their livelihood upon wages paid for helping to cultivate the land of others. The rise of this class, which lived by wages and not by tilling their own land, was due to the

1 The entries in the Hundred Rolls show us that at the end of the thirteenth century the process of substituting money payments for actual service had gone a long way; Cunningham, Growth of Industry, i. 218.

111

rent.

fact that cottars and others, not having enough land of their own to occupy their whole time, were free to hire themselves to those who had a larger quantity. Especially would they become labourers at a fixed wage for the lord of a manor when he had commuted his rights to the unpaid services of all his tenants for a fixed money Of course this change came gradually, but its effect is seen subsequently in the difficulties as to wages expressed in the Statutes of Labourers, difficulties which first became serious after the Great Plague. At the end of the thirteenth century we can trace three classes of tenants (1) Those who had entirely commuted their services for a fixed money rent; (2) those who gave services or paid money according as their lord preferred; and (3) those who still paid entirely, or almost entirely, in services.1

§ 65. Agriculture the Chief Occupation of the People.

Throughout the whole of this period the vast majority of the population were continuously engaged in agricultural pursuits, and this was rendered necessary owing to the very low rate of production consequent upon the primitive methods of agriculture. The production of corn was only about four,2 or sometimes eight, bushels per acre, and this naturally had the effect of keeping down the population, at this time still only between 1,500,000 and 2,000,000.3 It is a remarkable fact that even the inhabitants of the towns used at harvest-time to go out into the country to get agricultural work, and people often migrated from one district to another for the same pnrpose, just as Irish agricultural labourers of to-day are accustomed to cross over to England for the harvesting. Some attention was being paid to sheep farming, and noticeable progress in this branch of industry took place later. One order of monks in particular,

1 See the Hundred Rolls; Rot. Hund., ii. 636, ii. 324, and ii. 494. 2 Rogers, Six Centuries, p. 119.

But cf. the discussion between Seebohm and Rogers in Fortnightly Review, II., III., IV., where Seebohm seems to think 5,000,000 possible in 1346.

Rogers, Hist. Agric., i. 63.

the Cistercians,1 used to grow large quantities of wool; and, indeed, England had almost a monopoly of the wool trade with Flanders (p. 120). But the great increase of sheep-farming occurs rather later, at the beginning of the sixteenth century.2

§ 66. Methods of Cultivation.

The Capitalist Landlord

and his Bailiff. The "Stock and Land" Lease.

The agriculture of the early part of this period is described to us by various writers, of whom we may specially notice three-Walter de Henley, Robert Grossteste of Lincoln, and a third author whose name is unknown. The most noticeable of these is certainly Walter de Henley, whose treatise, called "La Dite de Hosbanderie," and written in French, is still preserved in many manuscripts.3 There is little doubt that he wrote in the early part of the thirteenth century, and his treatise remained the standard work on agriculture till the appearance of Fitzherbert's in 1523. The treatise by Grossteste of Lincoln is called Reules Seynt Robert, and was written about 1240 A.D., for the guidance of the Countess of Lincoln in managing her estate and also her household.* It consists of twenty-eight practical maxims, but is more concerned with the household than the farm. The anonymous work, called Husbandry,5 seems to have been specially written for landowners, who at this period were beginning to take care that the accounts of their estates were presented to them in writing, and it lays down the proper methods of drawing up and presenting the accounts, the receipts and outlay necessary on an estate, and the probable returns from both land and stock. It has a special interest, because it was in the reign of Henry III. that the system of keeping accurate agricultural accounts first came into vogue, and it is owing to this fact 1 Cunningham, Growth of Industry, i. 196 and 547. 2 More's Utopia, p. 41.

3 E.g., Oxford, Bodleian, Douce, 98; Merton, cccxi.; British Museum, Add. 6159, and several others. Pegge, Life of Grossteste, 95.

5 Several MSS. exist; e.g., Merton, Oxford, cccxxi.; British Museum, Add. 6159.

• Cunningham, English Industry, i. 272; Rogers, Six Centuries, 48. Of course it is on these accounts that Rogers' unique History of Agriculture and Prices is based.

H

that it has been possible to gain a very clear idea of the agricultural economy of England in the Middle Ages.

If we look at a typical manor, we shall find that the arable land in it seems to have been divided fairly equally between the landlord and the manorial tenants, and before the Great Plague the landlord appears to have been not merely a rent-receiver, but a capitalist who cultivated his land by the aid of a bailiff, subject very often to his own personal supervision. Now, the business of a manor was very elaborate, and required a great deal of supervision, and we have an account of the various officers on a large estate given in a small work called Senescalcia. We find three officers specially mentioned-the Seneschal, Bailiff, and "Praepositus." The seneschal was employed on large estates, consisting of many manors, to visit the manors in turn and see that the bailiff of each did his duty; he therefore had to know the details and customs of each estate, and what it ought to produce, in order that his lord might receive his full dues from it. The bailiff was the representative of the lord in single manors, and had the responsibility of cultivation of the soil of the demesne land and of agricultural operations generally; while the "praepositus was the chief man among the villeins, and shared the responsibility of cultivation with the bailiff, as representing the interests of the tenants. The bailiff had to keep accurate accounts to present to his lord or the seneschal, and it is from these accounts, which were kept with wonderful clearness, neatness, and accuracy, that we derive our knowledge of the agriculture of this period.

Tenancies were, of course, of various kinds, as we have already seen (pp. 71, 75), but there is one which came into vogue about this time that specially deserves our attention. In many cases, especially on lands owned by monasteries, the land was held on the "stock and land lease" system,2 whereby the landlord let a certain quantity of stock with the land, for which the tenant, at the expiration of his lease, had to account either in money or kind. An instance of this kind of lease was the practice of the landlord letting 1 Cunningham, i. 222.

2

Rogers, Hist. Agric. and Prices, i. 25.