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PREFACE
PREFACE
Many histories have been written of the governing class that ruled England with such absolute power during the last century of the old régime. Those histories have shown how that class conducted war, how it governed its colonies, how it behaved to the continental Powers, how it managed the first critical chapters of our relations with India, how it treated Ireland, how it developed the Parliamentary system, how it saved Europe from Napoleon. One history has only been sketched in outline: it is t
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CHAPTER I THE CONCENTRATION OF POWER
CHAPTER I THE CONCENTRATION OF POWER
‘Là l’aristocratie a pris pour elle les charges publiques les plus lourdes afin qu’on lui permît de gouverner; ici elle a retenu jusqu’à la fin l’immunité d’impôt pour se consoler d’avoir perdu le gouvernement.’ De Tocqueville has set out in this antithesis the main argument that runs through his analysis of the institutions of ancient France. In England the aristocracy had power and no privileges: in France the aristocracy had privileges and no power. The one condition produced, as he read hist
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CHAPTER II THE VILLAGE BEFORE ENCLOSURE
CHAPTER II THE VILLAGE BEFORE ENCLOSURE
To elucidate these chapters, and to supply further information for those who are interested in the subject, we publish an Appendix containing the history, and tolerably full particulars, of twelve separate enclosures. These instances have not been chosen on any plan. They are taken from different parts of the country, and are of various dates; some are enclosures of common fields, some enclosures of commons and waste, and some include enclosures of both kinds. At the time of the great Whig Revol
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CHAPTER III ENCLOSURE (1)
CHAPTER III ENCLOSURE (1)
An enclosure, like most Parliamentary operations, began with a petition from a local person or persons, setting forth the inconveniencies of the present system and the advantages of such a measure. Parliament, having received the petition, would give leave for a Bill to be introduced. The Bill would be read a first and a second time, and would then be referred to a Committee, which, after considering such petitions against the enclosure as the House of Commons referred to it, would present its r
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CHAPTER IV ENCLOSURE (2)
CHAPTER IV ENCLOSURE (2)
In the year 1774, Lord North’s Government, which had already received a bad bruise or two in the course of its quarrels with printers and authors, got very much the worst of it in an encounter that a little prudence would have sufficed to avert altogether. The affair has become famous on account of the actors, and because it was the turning point in a very important career. The cause of the quarrel has passed into the background, but students of the enclosure movement will find more to interest
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CHAPTER V THE VILLAGE AFTER ENCLOSURE
CHAPTER V THE VILLAGE AFTER ENCLOSURE
THE governing class continued its policy of extinguishing the old village life and all the relationships and interests attached to it, with unsparing and unhesitating hand; and as its policy progressed there were displayed all the consequences predicted by its critics. Agriculture was revolutionised: rents leapt up: England seemed to be triumphing over the difficulties of a war with half the world. But it had one great permanent result which the rulers of England ignored. The anchorage of the po
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CHAPTER VI THE LABOURER IN 1795
CHAPTER VI THE LABOURER IN 1795
In an unenclosed village, as we have seen, the normal labourer did not depend on his wages alone. His livelihood was made up from various sources. His firing he took from the waste, he had a cow or a pig wandering on the common pasture, perhaps he raised a little crop on a strip in the common fields. He was not merely a wage earner, receiving so much money a week or a day for his labour, and buying all the necessaries of life at a shop: he received wages as a labourer, but in part he maintained
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DIET REFORM
DIET REFORM
A disparity between income and expenditure may be corrected by increasing income or by reducing expenditure. Many of the upper classes thought that the second method might be tried in this emergency, and that a judicious change of diet would enable the labourer to face the fall of wages with equanimity. The solution seemed to lie in the simple life. Enthusiasts soon began to feel about this proposal the sort of excitement that Robinson Crusoe enjoyed when discovering new resources on his island:
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MINIMUM WAGE
MINIMUM WAGE
The attempts to reduce cottage expenditure were thus a failure. We must now describe the attempts to increase the cottage income. There were two ways in which the wages of the labourers might have been raised. One way, the way of combination, was forbidden by law. The other way was the fixing of a legal minimum wage in relation to the price of food. This was no new idea, for the regulation of wages by law was a venerable English institution, as old as the Statute of Edward III. The most recent l
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POOR LAW REFORM
POOR LAW REFORM
Pitt, having secured the rejection of Whitbread’s Minimum Wage Bill in 1796, produced his own alternative: Poor Law Reform. It is necessary to state briefly what were the Poor Law arrangements at the time of his proposals. The Poor Law system reposed on the great Act of Elizabeth (1601), by which the State had acknowledged and organised the duty to the poor which it had taken over from the Church. The parish was constituted the unit, and overseers, unsalaried and nominated by the J.P.’s, were ap
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Allotments
Allotments
Another policy that was pressed upon the governing class was the policy of restoring to the labourer some of the resources he had lost with enclosure, of putting him in such a position that he was not obliged to depend entirely on the purchasing power of his wages at the shop. This was the aim of the allotment movement. The propaganda failed, but it did not fail for the want of vigorous and authoritative support. We have seen in a previous chapter that Arthur Young awoke in 1801 to the social mi
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THE REMEDY ADOPTED. SPEENHAMLAND
THE REMEDY ADOPTED. SPEENHAMLAND
The history has now been given of the several proposals made at this time that for one reason or another fell to the ground. A minimum wage was not fixed, allotments were only sprinkled with a sparing hand on an estate here and there, there was no revolution in diet, the problems of local supply and distribution were left untouched, the reconstruction of the Poor Law was abandoned. What means then did the governing class take to tranquillise a population made dangerous by hunger? The answer is,
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CHAPTER VIII AFTER SPEENHAMLAND
CHAPTER VIII AFTER SPEENHAMLAND
The Speenhamland system is often spoken of as a piece of pardonable but disastrous sentimentalism on the part of the upper classes. This view overlooks the predicament in which these classes found themselves at the end of the eighteenth century. We will try to reconstruct the situation and to reproduce their state of mind. Agriculture, which had hitherto provided most people with a livelihood, but few people with vast fortunes, had become by the end of the century a great capitalist and speciali
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CHAPTER IX THE ISOLATION OF THE POOR
CHAPTER IX THE ISOLATION OF THE POOR
The upper classes, to whom the fact that the labourers were more wretched in 1830 than they had been in 1795 was a reason for making punishment more severe, were not deliberately callous and cruel in their neglect of all this growing misery and hunger. Most of those who thought seriously about it had learnt a reasoned insensibility from the stern Sibyl of the political economy in fashion, that strange and partial interpretation of Adam Smith, Malthus and Ricardo which was then in full power. Thi
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CHAPTER X THE VILLAGE IN 1830
CHAPTER X THE VILLAGE IN 1830
We have described the growing misery of the labourer, the increasing rigours of the criminal law, and the insensibility of the upper classes, due to the isolation of the poor. What kind of a community was created by the Speenhamland system after it had been in force for a generation? We have, fortunately, a very full picture given in a Parliamentary Report that is generally regarded as one of the landmarks of English history. We cannot do better than set out the main features of the Report of th
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CHAPTER XI THE LAST LABOURERS’ REVOLT
CHAPTER XI THE LAST LABOURERS’ REVOLT
Where not otherwise stated the authorities for the two following chapters are the Home Office Papers for the time (Municipal and Provincial, Criminal, Disturbances, Domestic, etc.), the Times and local papers. I A traveller who wished to compare the condition of the English and the French rural populations in 1830 would have had little else to do than to invert all that had been written on the subject by travellers a century earlier. At the beginning of the eighteenth century England had the pro
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CHAPTER XII THE LAST LABOURERS’ REVOLT
CHAPTER XII THE LAST LABOURERS’ REVOLT
II The bands of men and boys who had given their rulers one moment of excitement and lively interest in the condition of the poor had made themselves liable to ferocious penalties. For the privileged classes had set up a code under which no labourer could take a single step for the improvement of the lot of his class without putting his life and liberties in a noose. It is true that the savage laws which had been passed against combination in 1799 and 1800 had been repealed in 1824, and that eve
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CHAPTER XIII CONCLUSION
CHAPTER XIII CONCLUSION
A row of eighteenth-century houses, or a room of normal eighteenth-century furniture, or a characteristic piece of eighteenth-century literature, conveys at once a sense of satisfaction and completeness. The secret of this charm is not to be found in any special beauty or nobility of design or expression, but simply in an exquisite fitness. The eighteenth-century mind was a unity, an order; it was finished, and it was simple. All literature and art that really belong to the eighteenth century ar
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APPENDIX A (1)
APPENDIX A (1)
The information about Parliamentary Proceedings in Appendix A is taken from the Journals of the House of Commons or of the House of Lords for the dates mentioned. The place where the Award is at present enrolled is given, where possible, under the heading ‘Award.’ A Return, asked for by Sir John Brunner, was printed February 15, 1904, of Inclosure Awards, deposited with Clerks of the Peace or of County Councils. Armley, Leeds, Yorks.—Enclosure Act, 1793 Area. —About 175 acres. Nature of Ground.
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APPENDIX A (2)
APPENDIX A (2)
Ashelworth, Gloucester.—Enclosure Act, 1797 Area. —Not given in Act. Commonable Land of every kind stated in Petition (see below) as 310 Acres in all. Nature of Ground. —‘Open and Common Fields, Meadows, and Pastures, Commonable and intermixed Lands, and a Tract of Waste Ground, being Part and Parcel of a Common called Corse Lawn, [490] and also a Plot, Piece, or Parcel of Land or Ground, on the Eastern Side of the said Parish, [491] adjoining to, and lately Part of the Parish of Hasfield ... bu
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APPENDIX A (3)
APPENDIX A (3)
Cheshunt.—Enclosure Act, 1799 Area. —2741 Acres. Nature of Ground. —Common Fields and common Lammas meadows about 1555 acres; A common called Cheshunt Common about 1186 acres. Parliamentary Proceedings. — February 23, 1799. —Petition for enclosure from Sir George William Prescott Bt. (Lord of the Manor), the Rev. Joseph Martin (Tithe owner), Oliver Cromwell, William Tatnall and others. Leave given. Bill read twice; committed April 25. May 7, 1799. —Petition against the bill from various propriet
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APPENDIX A (4)
APPENDIX A (4)
Croydon, Surrey.—Enclosure Act, 1797 Area. —2950 acres. Nature of Ground. —Open and Common Fields, about 750 acres, Commons, Marshes, Heaths, Wastes and Commonable Woods, Lands, and Grounds about 2200 acres. Parliamentary Proceedings. — November 7, 1796. —Petition for enclosure from Hon. Richard Walpole, John Cator, Esq., Richard Carew, Esq., John Brickwood, Esq., and others. Leave given; bill presented May 8, 1797; read twice and committed. May 18, 1797. —(1) Petition against the bill from Rich
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APPENDIX A (5)
APPENDIX A (5)
Haute Huntre, Lincs.—Enclosure Act, 1767 Area. —22,000 Acres ‘more or less.’ Nature of Ground. —Haute Huntre, Eight Hundred or Holland Fen and other commonable places adjacent. Owners and Proprietors of Houses and Toftsteads in the following 11 Parishes or Townships have Right of Common:—Boston West, Skirbeck Quarter, Wyberton, Frampton, Kirton, Algarkirke, Fosdyke, Sutterton, Wigtoft, Swineshead, and Brothertoft; and also in a place called Dog Dyke in the Parish of Billinghay. Parliamentary Pro
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APPENDIX A (6)
APPENDIX A (6)
Knaresborough Forest.—Enclosure Act, 1770 Area. —About 20,000 acres. Nature of Ground. —Open, Commonable or Waste Lands. Parliamentary Proceedings. — February 8, 1770. —Petition for enclosure from several freehold and copyhold tenants within the Forest; stating that the said tracts are of little advantage now, whereas it would be of public utility to have them divided into just allotments and enclosed. Leave given, bill presented, read twice, March 19; committed March 28. Petition against the bi
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APPENDIX A (7)
APPENDIX A (7)
Laleham.—Enclosure Act, 1774 Area. —(From Award), 918 Acres. Nature of Ground. —‘Several large and open Fields,’ ‘and likewise certain Wastes and Commons.’ Parliamentary Proceedings. — First attempt, January 31, 1767. —Petition from Sir James Lowther, Lord of the Manor, and from ‘divers owners’ for enclosure of the open fields and commons, and also of ‘a large Pasture called Laleham Burway.’ Leave given, but bill dropped after first reading. Second attempt, December 7, 1767. —Petition for enclos
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APPENDIX A (8)
APPENDIX A (8)
Louth, Lincolnshire.—Enclosure Act, 1801 Nature of Ground. —‘Open Common Fields, Meadows, Pastures, and other Commonable Lands and Waste Grounds.’ Description from Eden, vol. ii. p. 395 (June 1795).—‘Most of the land belonging to this town lies in 2 large common fields, which are fallowed and cropped alternately: in several parts of these common fields there are large tracts of waste land, upon which a great number of poor people summer each a cow, which in winter go at large in these fields. Th
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APPENDIX A (9)
APPENDIX A (9)
Simpson, Bucks.—Enclosure Act, 1770 Area. —Not specified anywhere. The annual value unenclosed is stated to be £773, so the acreage was probably over 1500. Nature of Ground. —Open and Common Fields, Lammas Grounds and Pastures. Parliamentary Proceedings. — First Attempt, December 13, 1762. —Petition from Walden Hanmer, Esq., Lord of the Manor, William Edge, Gentleman, and other owners and proprietors, stating that the holdings are at present intermixed and dispersed, that the land in its present
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APPENDIX A (10)
APPENDIX A (10)
Stanwell.—Enclosure Act, 1789 Area. —According to Act ‘by Estimation about 3000 Acres,’ but Award gives 2126 Acres only. Nature of Ground. —‘Large open fields, Arable and Meadow Grounds, and Lammas Lands, about 1621 acres, and also several Commons, Moors and Waste Lands,’ about 505 acres (unstinted). Parliamentary Proceedings. — First Attempt, December 12, 1766. —Petition for Enclosure from the Lord of the Manor, the Impropriator of the Great Tythes, the Vicar, and the most considerable Propriet
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APPENDIX A (11)
APPENDIX A (11)
Wakefield, Yorks.—Enclosure Act, 1793 Area. —2300 acres ‘or thereabouts.’ Nature of Ground. —Open Common Fields, Ings, Commons, Waste Grounds, within the townships of Wakefield, Stanley, Wrenthorpe, Alverthorpe, and Thornes. Parliamentary Proceedings. — January 23, 1793. —Petition from several owners and proprietors for enclosure. Leave given to prepare bill. January 28, Wilberforce presented it; February 18, it was committed to Wilberforce, Duncombe and others. February 28. —Petition against th
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APPENDIX A (12)
APPENDIX A (12)
Winfrith Newburgh, Dorset.—Enclosure Act, 1768 Area. —2254 Acres or thereabouts. Nature of Ground. —Common Fields, Meadow Grounds, Sheep Downs, Commons, Common Heaths, and other Waste Grounds. (In Report, Common Arable Fields and Common Meadows = 1218 acres.) Parliamentary Proceedings. — December 1, 1767. —Petition for enclosure from Edward Weld, Esq., George Clavell, Esq., Benjamin Thornton, Clerk, William Weston, Clerk, John Felton, Gentleman, and others. Leave given; bill read twice and commi
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APPENDIX A (13)
APPENDIX A (13)
Quainton.—Attempted Enclosure, 1801 Parliamentary Proceedings. — March 20, 1801. —Petition for enclosures from ‘several persons.’ Leave given. Earl Temple, Sir William Young, and Mr. Praed to prepare bill. April 2. —Bill read first time. April 13. —Petition from various proprietors of Lands, Common Rights, and other Hereditaments against the bill, stating that enclosure ‘would be attended with an Expence to the Proprietors far exceeding any Improvement to be derived therefrom.’ Ordered to be hea
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APPENDIX A (14)
APPENDIX A (14)
Subsequent History of King’s Sedgmoor In 1775, Mr. Allen, Member of Parliament for Bridgwater, tried to get an enclosure bill passed. ‘Sanguine of success, and highly impressed with the idea of its importance, he purchased a large number of rights, and having obtained a signature of consents, went to Parliament; but not having interest enough in the House to stem the torrent of opposition, all his delusive prospects of profit vanished, and he found himself left in a small but respectable minorit
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APPENDIX B
APPENDIX B
Bedfordshire.—Clopshill, 1795. [504] Family of Six Persons. N.B. —‘The Harvest earnings not included: they go a great way towards making up the deficiency.’ Dorset.—Sherborne, 1789. [505] Family of Five Persons. Hampshire.—Long Parish, 1789. [507] Family of Six Persons. Herts.—Hinksworth, 1795. [508] Family of Six Persons. Northamptonshire.—Castor, 1794. [509] Family of Six Persons. N.B. —To the earnings may be added what is got by gleaning. Norfolk.—Diss, 1793. [510] Family of Six Persons. N.B.
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CHIEF AUTHORITIES
CHIEF AUTHORITIES
Journals of House of Commons for period. Journals of House of Lords for period. Reports of Parliamentary Debates for period in Parliamentary Register , Parliamentary History , Senator and Parliamentary Debates . Statutes, Public and Private for period. Enclosure Awards in Record Office or Duchy of Lancaster. Home Office Papers in Record Office. Parliamentary Papers for period; specially— For Enclosures — Report from Select Committee on Standing Orders relating to Private Bills, 1775. Report from
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