A Short History of English Agriculture. W. H. R. Curtler
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There is no event of greater importance in the agrarian history of England, or which has led to more important consequences, than the dissolution of this community in the cultivation of the land, which had been in use so long, and the establishment of the complete independence and separation of one property from another.[125] As soon as the manorial system began to give way, and men to have a free hand, the substitution of large for small holdings set in with fresh vigour, for we have already seen that it had begun. It was one of the chief causes of the stagnation of agriculture in the Middle Ages that it lay under the heavy hand of feudalism, by which individualism was checked and hindered. Every one had his allotted position on the land, and it was hard to get out of it, though some exceptional men did so; as a rule there was no chance of striking out a new line for oneself. The villein was bound to the lord, and no lord would willingly surrender his services. There could be little improvement in farming when the custom of the manor and the collective ownership of the teams bound all to the same system of farming.[126] In fact, agriculture under feudalism suffered from many of the evils of socialism.
But, though hard hit, the old system was to endure for many generations, and the modern triumvirate of landlord, tenant, and labourer was not completely established in England until the era of the first Reform Bill.
FOOTNOTES:
[101] Cunningham, Growth of English Industry and Commerce, i. 130. A weigh in the Middle Ages was 182 lbs., or half a sack.
[102] Second edition, i. 50 n. See also Burnley, History of Wool, p. 17.
[103] Gross, Gild Merchant, ii. 4. It is from the Spanish merino, crossed with Leicesters and Southdowns, that the vast Australian flocks of to-day are descended.
[104] Cunningham, op. cit. i. 628.
[105] Ashley, Early History of English Woollen Industry, p. 34.
[106] Calendar of Close Rolls, 1337–9, pp. 148–9.
[107] Rolls of Parliament, v. 275.
[108] The Hospitallers in England, Camden Society.
[109] Denton, England in the Fifteenth Century, p. 147.
[110] Hospitallers in England, p. xxvi.
[111] Ibid. pp. 1, li.
[112] Poultry-keeping was wellnigh universal, judging by the number of rents paid in fowls and eggs.
[113] 1348 seems also to have been an excessively rainy year. The wet season was very disastrous to live stock; according to the accounts of the manors of Christ Church, Canterbury, about this time (Historical MSS. Commission, 5th Report, 444) there died of the murrain on their estates 257 oxen, 511 cows, 4,585 sheep. Murrain was the name given to all diseases of stock in the Middle Ages, and is of constant occurrence in old records.
[114] The cause of this as usual was incessant rain during the greater part of the summer; the chronicles of the time say that not only were the crops very short but those that did grow were diseased and yielded no nourishment. The 'murrain' was so deadly to oxen and sheep that, according to Walsingham, dogs and ravens eating them dropped down dead.
[115] See Cunningham, Industry and Commerce, i. 335. Also in an age when the idea of Competitive price had not yet been evolved, and when regulation by authority was the custom, it was natural and right that the Government in such a crisis should try to check the demands of both labourers and producers, which went far beyond what employers or consumers could pay. Putnam, Enforcement of the Statute of Labourers, 220.
[116] The average price of wheat in 1351 was 10s. 21/2d., which went down to 7s. 2d. next year, and 4s. 21/2d. the year after; but judging by the ineffectiveness of the statute to reduce wages, it probably had little effect in causing this fall.
[117] See Appendix I.
[118] Putnam, op. cit., 221. The statute for the first ten years, however, kept wages from ascending as high as might have been the case.
[119] McPherson, Annals of Commerce, i. 543, says that as the plague diminished the number of employers as well as labourers, the demand for labour could not have been much greater than before, and would have had little effect on the rate of if Edward III had not debased the coinage. But if the owners did decrease the lands would only accumulate in fewer hands, and would still require cultivation.
[120] Page, End of Villeinage, pp. 59 et seq.
[121] Ibid. p. 44.
[122] Transactions, Royal Historical Society, New Series, xiv. 123.
[123] This had been done before, but was now much more frequent. Hasbach, op. cit. p. 17.
[124] 'After the Black Death the flight of villeins was extremely common.'—Page, op. cit., p. 40.
[125] Nasse, Agricultural Community of the Middle Ages,