and in the stubbles after the harvest; and the question of boundaries was another fruitful source of dispute; for we are told that in some common fields there were no baulks," or strips of unused land to divide the holdings, and men would plough by night to steal a furrow from their neighbours.1 Hence it is not surprising that those who followed the new agriculture also encouraged the practice of enclosures. The old methods had to give way to the new, and these were hardly possible on unenclosed land; and therefore we note, together with the progress of agriculture, a simultaneous increase in the amount of land enclosed.

§ 166. Great Increase of Enclosures.

The abolition of the old system was necessary, but the manner in which it was carried out was often disastrous. The enclosures made by the landowners were frequently carried on with little regard to the interests of the smaller tenants and freeholders, who, in fact, suffered greatly; 2 and in the present age English agriculture is, in a large measure, still feeling the subsequent effects of this change, especially in regard to the size of holdings, while many people are advocating a partial return to small farms, cultivated, however, with the improved experience given by modern agricultural progress. Certainly this was not the first

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occasion on which the landowners had made enclosures and encroached upon the common lands of their poorer neighbours, and not merely upon the waste; but the rapidity and boldness of the enclosing operations at the end of the eighteenth century far surpassed anything in previous

1 Young, View of the Agriculture of Oxfordshire, p. 239; Toynbee, Indust. Rev., p. 40.

24 Though we cannot pretend to estimate the extent of the evil, there is no reason to doubt its reality. Enclosure was carried on by means of private bills; these were passed through Parliament without sufficient inquiry and when many of the inhabitants were quite unaware of the impending change or powerless to resist it." Cunningham, Growth of Industry, ii. 486.

3 Arthur Young found that out of 37 parishes which had been enclosed there were only 12 in which the labourers had not been injured. Annals of Agriculture, xxxvi. 513.

times. Between 1710 and 1760, for instance, only 334,974 acres were enclosed; but between 1760 and 1843 the number rose to 7,000,000.2

§ 167. Benefits of Enclosures as Compared with the Old Common Fields.

3

The benefits of the enclosure system were, however, unmistakable, for the cultivation of common fields under the old system was, as Arthur Young assures us, miserably poor. This system produced results far inferior to those gained on enclosed lands, the crop of wheat in one instance being, according to Young, only seventeen or eighteen bushels per acre, as against twenty-six bushels on enclosures. Similarly, the fleece of sheep pastured on common fields weighed only 3 lbs., as compared with 9 lbs. on enclosures.5 It is noticeable, too, that Kent, where much land had for a long time been enclosed, was reckoned in Young's time the best cultivated and most fertile county in England. Norfolk, also, was preeminent for good husbandry," in its excellent rotation of crops and culture of clover, rye-grass, and winter roots, due, said Young in 1770, to the division of the county chiefly into large farms.8 'Great farms have been the

1 Toynbee, Industrial Revolution, 38, 39.

2 Ib., quoting Shaw Lefevre, The English and Irish Land Question, p. 199. The General Report on Enclosures, p. 46 (Board of Agriculture), gives 4,187,056 as the acreage enclosed from Queen Anne's reign to 1805 only.

3 It may be well to summarise it again briefly. The arable land of each village under this system was still divided into three great strips, subdivided by "baulks" three yards wide. Every farmer would own one piece of land in each strip-probably more—and all alike were bound to follow the customary tillage; this was to leave one strip fallow every year, while on one of the other two wheat was always grown, the third being occupied by barley or oats, pease or tares. The meadows, also, were still held in common, every man having his own plot up to hay harvest, after which the fences were thrown down, and all householders' cattle were allowed to graze on it freely, while for the next crop the plots were redistributed. Every farmer also had the right of pasture on the waste.

At Risby, Yorks; see Northern Tour, i. 160-162.

5 Northern Tour, iv. 190.

• Eastern Tour, iii. 108-109; Northern Tour, i. 292. Eastern Tour, ii. 150.

8 Ib., ii. 160, 161.

soul of the Norfolk culture." These would have been impossible without enclosing land, and it is clear that great advantages were derived from this practice. Essex, again, was a county notable for its progressive husbandry, and one of the first in which turnips were introduced as a root crop; and Essex had been noted for its enclosures for many generations.2 But, in spite of these advantages, there was one gloomy feature in this new agricultural epoch which cannot be lightly passed over. I refer to the decay of the yeomen, who, at one time, were the chief glory of the agricultural life of mediæval England.

§ 168. The Decay of the Yeomanry.

For centuries the yeoman had held an honoured position in English history, and as lately as the reign of Elizabeth, he is alluded to in sympathetic and admiring terms by the descriptive Harrison. "This sort of people," he says, "have a certain pre-eminence and more estimation than labourers and the common sort of artificers, and these commonly live wealthily, keep good houses, and travel to get riches. They are also for the most part farmers to gentlemen, or at the leastwise artificers; and with grazing, frequenting of markets, and keeping of servants, do come to great wealth, insomuch that many of them are able to, and do, buy the lands of unthrifty gentlemen, and often setting their sons to the schools, to the Universities, and to the Inns of Court, or otherwise leaving them sufficient lands whereon they may live without labour, do make them by those means to become gentlemen. These were they that in times past made all France afraid. And albeit they be not called 'master,' as gentlemen are, or 'Sir,' as to knights appertaineth, but only John' and 'Thomas,' yet have they been found to have done very good service. The kings of England in foughten battles were wont to remain among them (who were their footmen), as the French kings did

1 In 1694. See quotation from Houghton, Collections in Husbandry and Trade in the Encyclopædia Britannica, s. v. Agriculture.

2 Above, p. 215.

amongst their horsemen, the prince thereby shewing where his chief strength did consist." 1

The decline of this sturdy body of small farmers forms a sad interlude in the growing prosperity of the country, and is due to a combination of various causes. Among these we may place the "Statute of Frauds," of 1677, not indeed as a primary cause, but as having a weakening effect upon the position of the yeomen, and contributing in some degree to assist other causes which made themselves felt more keenly in the eighteenth century. By this somewhat highhanded Act it was decreed that after July 24th, 1677, all interests in land whatsoever, if created by any other process except by deed, should be treated as tenancies at will only, any law or usage to the contrary notwithstanding. The intention, apparently, of those who passed this law— an intention which in the end resulted successfully-was to extinguish all those numerous small freeholders who had no written evidence to prove that they held their lands, as they had done for centuries, on condition of paying a small fixed and customary rent.3 This Act certainly succeeded in dispossessing many of the class at which it was aimed; but there were yet a certain number against whom it was inoperative; hence, at the end of the seventeenth century, twenty years or so after it was passed, Gregory King is able to estimate that there were 180,000 freeholders in England, including, of course, the larger owners. But by the time of Arthur Young these also had disappeared, or at least were rapidly disappearing, and he sincerely regrets "to see their lands now in the hands of monopolising lords." This view is the more remarkable as coming from Arthur Young, because he was an ardent advocate of the new agriculture and large farms; but as a 1 Harrison, Description of England, Bk. III. ch. iv. (edn. 1577), page 13, Camelot Series edn.

The 29 Charles II., c. 3.

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3 Cf. Rogers, Hist. Agric., v. 15, 87.

See Macaulay, History of England, ch. iii., who thinks this too high, and suggests 160,000.

In 1787 they had practically disappeared in most parts of the country. Young, Travels in France, i. 86, ii. 262 (edn. 1793).

6 Young, Inquiry into the Present Price of Provisions and Size of Farms (1773), pp. 126, 139.

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practical man he could see what a loss the vanished yeoman was to his country. The curious thing about their disappearance is its comparative rapidity. Of course many yeomen existed at the beginning of the nineteenth century, and a few still remain at the end of it; but there was a sudden and remarkable diminution in their numbers during the century just before Arthur Young wrote (1700-1800). At the close of the seventeenth century a writer on the State of Great Britain was able to say that the freeholders of England were "more in number and richer than in any country of the like extent in Europe. £40 or £50 is very ordinary, £100 or £200 in some counties is not rare; sometimes in Kent and in the Weald of Sussex, £500 or £600 per annum, and £3000 or £4000 stock." The evidence, says an eminent economist, is conclusive that up to the Revolution of 1688 the yeomen freeholders were in most parts of the country an important feature in social life.

We may therefore well inquire into the reasons of their decay.

After

§ 169. Causes of the Decay of the Yeomanry. The cause was partly political and partly social. the revolution of 1688, the landed gentry became politically and socially supreme, and any successful merchant prince -and these were not few-who wished to gain a footing, sought, in the first place, to imitate them by becoming a great landowner; hence it became quite a policy to buy out the smaller farmers, who were often practically compelled to sell their holdings. At the same time, the custom of primogeniture and strict settlements prevented land from being much subdivided, so that small or divided 1 Toynbee, Industrial Revolution, p. 59, whom see for his special chapter on the decay of the yeomanry.

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2 Chamberlayne, State of Great Britain, Part I., Book III. p. 176 (edn. 1737). First published in 1669.

3 Toynbee, u. s., p. 60.

4 Toynbee, Industrial Revolution, p. 62.

Ib., 63, 64, who quotes Laurence's Duty of a Steward (1727), p. 36. Cunningham, Growth of Industry, ii. 379, says they were not bought out then, but his assertion seems unsupported by any adequate evidence. He admits, however, that "in subsequent years they were forced to sell."