The Agrarian Problem In The Sixteenth Century
R. H. (Richard Henry) Tawney
55 chapters
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55 chapters
PREFACE
PREFACE
This book is an attempt to trace one strand in the economic life of England from the close of the Middle Ages to the beginning of the Civil War. As originally planned, it included an account of the relations of the State to trade and manufacturing industry, the growth of which is the most pregnant economic phenomenon of the period. But I soon found that the material was too abundant to be treated satisfactorily in a single work, and I have therefore confined myself in the following pages to a st
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(a) The Classes of LandholdersToC
(a) The Classes of LandholdersToC
If an Englishman of ordinary intelligence had been asked in the reign of Henry VIII. to explain the foundations of national prosperity, he would probably have answered that the whole wealth [53] of the country arises out of the labours of the common people, and that, of all who labour, it is by the work of those engaged in tillage that the State most certainly stands. True, it cannot dispense with handicraftsmen and merchants, for ours is an age of new buildings, new manufactures, new markets. T
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(b) The FreeholdersToC
(b) The FreeholdersToC
In spite of the constant complaints of the sixteenth century writers that one effect of the agrarian changes was the decay of the yeomanry, we shall not in the following pages be much concerned with the freeholders. In our period the word “yeomen" was ceasing to be given the narrow semi-technical sense which it possessed in Acts of Parliament and legal documents, and was beginning to acquire the wide significance which it possesses at the present day. To the lawyer the yeoman meant a freeholder,
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Table II
Table II
The apparent immunity of the freeholders in the face of movements which overwhelmed other groups of tenants sug gests indeed that economic causes alone, which all classes, whatever the legal nature of their tenure, would have experienced equally, are not sufficient to explain the sufferings of the latter. The situation in our period is not like that which arose in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, when widening markets throw all the advantages of increasing returns on the side of th
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(c) The Customary TenantsToC
(c) The Customary TenantsToC
Important, however, as the freeholders were from a social and political standpoint, they were in most parts of England far inferior in point of numbers to those described as “customary tenants.” It is with the latter class that we are mainly concerned, and leaving the leaseholders on one side for examination later, [87] we may summarise shortly certain features in their position. The number of customary tenants varied from one manor to another, according to the extent to which in different distr
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Table III
Table III
These figures, one must repeat, are merely a summary of the entries in surveys and rentals. Probably they underestimate the number of copyholders, as we know that copyholders were sometimes entered as tenants at will or as customary tenants for the sake of brevity, while it is not probable that tenants at will who had not got copies were often written down as copyholders. One may suspect that this, rather than any difference of custom, is the explanation of the relatively small number of those w
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(a) The Variety of ConditionsToC
(a) The Variety of ConditionsToC
When one turns from what legal historians have said on the origin and development of copyhold tenure to consider the economic position of this class of tenants, one finds oneself in a region of much greater uncertainty. The legal historian may speak of the copyholders as constituting, in spite of minor differences, a fairly well-defined class. The economic historian cannot. He finds, on the contrary, the widest difference between the economic conditions of tenants holding their land by copy of c
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(b) The Consolidation of Peasant HoldingsToC
(b) The Consolidation of Peasant HoldingsToC
But difficult as it is to reduce to any order the very diverse economic conditions of the customary tenants at the beginning of the sixteenth century, the task, at any rate in outline, has got to be faced. And this involves a short account of movements which take us some way back into the Middle Ages. No one can understand the contrast between the conditions of the Irish peasantry in 1850 and their condition to-day without knowing something of the agencies which have been at work in the interval
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Table IV
Table IV
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 Sou
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(c) The Growth of a Land Market among the PeasantsToC
(c) The Growth of a Land Market among the PeasantsToC
If the surveys were our sole source of information it would not be easy to say how this regrouping of holdings has been brought about. Even the surveys, however, do not leave us quite in the dark. They suggest that it has taken place very largely through the play of commercial forces within the ranks of the customary tenants themselves, through the eager purchasing of land which we noticed as one feature of rural life at the close of the Middle Ages, and through the growth of a cash nexus betwee
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(d) The Economic Environment of the Small CultivatorToC
(d) The Economic Environment of the Small CultivatorToC
It was the argument of the previous chapter that the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries saw the emergence from the mass of manorial tenants of a class of wealthy peasants who bought and leased their neighbours' lands, added to their property parcels taken from the waste and demesne, and by these means built up estates far exceeding in size the normal villein holding. The change from labour services to money rents left the peasantry with time for the management of larger holdings, and the spread
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Table V
Table V
Corn-growing in England has been for the last hundred years a branch of farming so completely surrendered to the large capitalist, that it is not easy to realise a state of things in which the typical corn-grower was a man with less than 60 acres, and a man who could make a good living from a holding of that size. To understand the economics of his position we must think away the conditions which have in the last century made it intolerable. Or rather we must think away all except one. That one
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Table VI
Table VI
It will be seen that, in spite of some considerable increases, many rents were comparatively stationary during long periods of time. Moreover, in all probability, they were more stationary than is suggested by the statistics given above. For at the earlier dates there were works the value of which usually does not appear among the money rents. As time went on, more land was brought under cultivation and the demesne was leased; and though an attempt has been made to exclude the latter factor, it
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(e) Signs of ChangeToC
(e) Signs of ChangeToC
So far attention has been concentrated upon those phenomena which suggest that, before the great agrarian changes of the sixteenth century begin, there has been a period—one may date it roughly from 1381 to 1489—of increasing prosperity for the small cultivator. We have emphasised the evidence of this upward movement which is given by the growth among the peasantry of a freer and more elastic economy. We have watched them shake off many of the restrictions imposed by villeinage and build up cons
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(f) The Growth of Competitive Rents on New AllotmentsToC
(f) The Growth of Competitive Rents on New AllotmentsToC
The development of competitive rents is a subject which must always possess a peculiar fascination for the historical economist, inasmuch as the distribution of wealth depends to no small degree upon the manner in which the surplus gains wrung from nature are shared between different classes. The wealth which, under a régime of great estates and leasehold tenure, accrues to a tiny body of landlords, is, in a community of small freeholders, retained by the cultivating tenant, and, when the tenure
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(g) The Progress of Enclosure among the PeasantryToC
(g) The Progress of Enclosure among the PeasantryToC
While competitive conditions are creeping forward on those parts of the village lands which have been most recently taken in, even more momentous changes are occurring on the customary holdings themselves. By the end of the fifteenth century we are walking through fields that are being cut up with the hedges which give the dullest English landscape the trim beauty of a garden. For a century and a half, while in the great world the new state rises on the ruins of the Middle Ages, while Tudors giv
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PART IITHE TRANSITION TO CAPITALIST AGRICULTURE
PART IITHE TRANSITION TO CAPITALIST AGRICULTURE
“The earth is thine, O Lord, and all that is contained therein; notwithstanding thou hast given the possession thereof to the children of men, to pass over the time of their short pilgrimage in this vale of misery. We heartily pray thee to send thy holy spirit into the hearts of them that possess the grounds, pastures, and dwelling places of the earth; that they, remembering themselves to be thy tenants, may not rack and stretch out the rents of their houses and lands; nor yet take unreasonable
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(a) Motives and CausesToC
(a) Motives and CausesToC
A common view of social development regards it as the outcome of irresistible causes working towards results which can be neither hastened nor averted, and treats the fact that events have followed a certain course as in itself an indication that no other course was possible. Whatever is has always been implicit in the past; the established fact rules by the divine right of being the only possible dynasty, and no scope is left for pretenders to contest or acts of settlement to alter its legitima
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(b) The Growth of the Large Leasehold FarmToC
(b) The Growth of the Large Leasehold FarmToC
The changed situation created by these causes had the effect of producing a new policy on the part of landlords, which took different forms according to the circumstances of different localities, but which in the counties most deeply affected resulted in an increase in pasture-farming and in an upward movement in the payments made by tenants. The new régime seems to have affected first, as was natural, that part of their estates which was most entirely under their own control, and the disposal o
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(c) Enclosure and Conversion by the Manorial AuthoritiesToC
(c) Enclosure and Conversion by the Manorial AuthoritiesToC
When we turn from the agricultural arrangements described in previous chapters to examine these large farms, we enter a new world, a world where economic power is being slowly organised for the exploitation of the soil, and where the methods of cultivation and the standards of success are quite different from those obtaining on the small holdings of the peasantry. The advantage to the lord of the system of large farms, compared either with the retention of the demesne in his own hands, or with t
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Table IX
Table IX
These figures are not offered as any evidence of the absolute area enclosed in the counties represented. They may, however, perhaps be taken as an indication that the demesne farm was usually that part of the manor on which enclosure was carried out most thoroughly. Thirty-one of the manors included in the table are in Wiltshire and Norfolk, and where the conditions of things on the tenants' holdings can be compared with that obtaining on the demesne, it is almost always the case that the new ec
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III
III
The figures in this table do not pretend to complete accuracy, but their classification of the distribution of land between different uses is not far wrong. Of the customary tenants' land about 87 per cent. is arable, and 12 per cent. meadow and pasture. Of the farmers' land about 49 per cent. is arable, 36 per cent. pasture, 9 per cent. meadow. The proportion of pasture to arable is somewhat higher in the southern and midland counties than it is in East Anglia; but the cases examined are too fe
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Table XI
Table XI
Here arable forms only 23 per cent. of the whole area, while pasture and meadow together form over 77 per cent. This swing of the pendulum from arable husbandry to pasture-farming will not surprise us, if we remember that at the time of the Domesday Survey, and, indeed, throughout the Middle Ages, the area of land under the plough had been, when considered in relation to the population, extraordinarily large. The economic justification of ploughing land which no modern farmer would touch had lai
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(a) The Removing of LandmarksToC
(a) The Removing of LandmarksToC
The history of the agrarian problem in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries—indeed its history ever since—is largely the story of the small cultivator’s struggle to protect his interests against the changes caused by the growth of the great estate. In that struggle there is much that is detailed, tiresome, and obscure. The student hears very little about general principles, very much of technicalities about the nature of common appendant and common appurtenant, of stinted and unstinted pastur
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(b) The Struggle for the CommonsToC
(b) The Struggle for the CommonsToC
But sporadic encroachments are not the worst which the small man has to fear. He may wake to find the path along which he drives his beasts to pasture blocked by a hedge. When he goes to renew his lease or buy the reversion of his copy, he may be told that his holding is to be merged in a pasture farm. The great estate is not always built up by the mere consolidation of pieces of land which are already united in ownership, though spatially they may be separate. If it were there would be few stat
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(c) The Engrossing of Holdings and Displacement of TenantsToC
(c) The Engrossing of Holdings and Displacement of TenantsToC
We have dwelt at some length on the loss of rights of common, because the misleading modern associations of the word seem sometimes to prevent a proper appreciation of the very important place which they occupied in the agricultural economy of our period. It must be confessed, however, that, in dealing with them first, we have reversed the order in which grievances due to enclosure were set out by the writers of the time. Though there are many bitter complaints against the enclosure of commons,
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In the West Felde
In the West Felde
Here one has a field divided into twenty-one strips. Of these strips eighteen had at one time been in the occupation of separate individuals. The picture is just what we are accustomed to in mediæval surveys. It is illustrated sufficiently for our purpose by the map of part of Salford, on page 163. But some time before this survey of Walsingham was made a great change had taken place. The separate fragments had been taken out of the hands of the tenants and combined in the hands of the lord; the
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Table XII
Table XII
It will be seen that on eight of these sixteen manors more than two-thirds of the whole area, and on seven more than three-quarters, is in the hands of one individual, the farmer of the demesnes. These figures are at any rate not inconsistent with a considerable consolidation of tenancies and displacement of tenants, though we cannot say that they prove it. Occasionally the surveys take us behind this presumptive evidence and enable us to trace the building up of large farms out of small holding
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(d) The Agrarian Changes and the Poor LawToC
(d) The Agrarian Changes and the Poor LawToC
The obscurity in which the statistics of depopulation are involved does not prevent us from seeing that it played an important part in providing an incentive to the organisation of relief on a national and secular basis, which was the most enduring achievement of the social legislation of sixteenth century statesmen. An influential theory of Poor Law History regards the admission finally made in 1601 that the destitute person has, not only a moral, but a legal, right to maintenance, as a last fa
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(a) The Tenants at Will and the LeaseholdersToC
(a) The Tenants at Will and the LeaseholdersToC
We have said above that we cannot measure the extent of the depopulation caused by enclosure, even for those years with regard to which figures are supplied us by Royal Commissions. But, after all, it is happily less important to arrive at an exact statistical estimate of the acres enclosed and of the number of tenants displaced, than it is to get a general view of the economic forces at work and of the structure of legal relationships upon which they operated. Given the economic reasons for the
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(b) The CopyholdersToC[502]
(b) The CopyholdersToC[502]
But were the tenants at will and the leaseholders the only classes to be evicted? No allusion has yet been made to the most difficult problem which confronts the student of the sixteenth century agrarian changes—the degree of protection enjoyed by the copyholders. If this problem is the most difficult it is also one of the most important. As far as can be calculated, the copyholders far exceeded in number upon most manors all other classes of tenants together. Copyhold tenure was the rule, and t
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Table XIII
Table XIII
It will be seen that the degree of security enjoyed by copyholders varies very greatly. When the copyhold is one of inheritance, it is legally complete, unless the tenants incur forfeiture by breaking the custom. An estate for life with right of renewal is virtually as good as a copyhold of inheritance. Estates for life or lives are precarious. Copyholds for years without right of renewal are scarcely distinguishable from leases. On the whole, when these examples are added to those of Dr. Savine
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(c) The Undermining of Customary TenuresToC
(c) The Undermining of Customary TenuresToC
The importance of the predominance of copyholds for lives for the question of the degree of security enjoyed by the tenant is shown by the efforts which were made by lords of manors, where copyholders had estates of inheritance, to persuade them to give up their copies and take leases instead. It is evident that in this course they encountered a good deal of opposition. On manors, however, where the copyholds escheated to the lord at intervals of one, two, or three lives, he could substitute lea
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PART III THE OUTCOME OF THE AGRARIAN REVOLUTION
PART III THE OUTCOME OF THE AGRARIAN REVOLUTION
“We must needs fight it out, or els be brought to the lyke slavery that the Frenchmen are in.... Better yt were therefore for us to dye like men, than after so great misery in youth to dye more miserably in age."—E. E. T. S., Crowley, The Way to Wealth . Doctor. “On my faithe youe trouble youreselves ... youe that be justices of everie countrie ... in sittinge upon commissions almost wekely.” Knight. “Surely it is so, yet the Kinge must be served and the commonwealth. For God and the Kinge hathe
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(a) The Political and Social Importance of the PeasantryToC
(a) The Political and Social Importance of the PeasantryToC
The changes which have been described in the organisation of agriculture created problems which were less absorbing than those arising out of the religious reformation and the relation of England to continental powers. When we turn over the elaborate economic legislation of the reign of Elizabeth, with its attempts to promote industry, to define class relationships, and to regulate with sublime optimism almost every contract which one man can make with another, we are tempted at first to see sta
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(b) Legislation and AdministrationToC
(b) Legislation and AdministrationToC
This was its instinct. But can we say more than this? Can we say that the presumption in favour of protecting the small landholder was translated into any definite policy, and that such a policy was carried out in practice? The answer to these questions is by no means easily given. There is the difficulty of making any generalisation which will cover the century and a half during which, from time to time, the agrarian problem claimed public attention. True, this difficulty is not so serious as m
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(c) Success and Failure of State InterventionToC
(c) Success and Failure of State InterventionToC
It remains to ask how far the policy of trying to check the agrarian changes, which was pursued by Governments for nearly a century and a half, had any effect on economic practice. Statesmen were certainly biassed in favour of protecting the weaker landholding classes. But was their intervention simply the expression of a pious opinion? Was it so entirely futile as—to give a modern parallel—the Small Holdings Act of 1892? Or did it to any extent modify or retard the course of economic events? Th
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CHAPTER II GENERAL CONCLUSIONSToC
CHAPTER II GENERAL CONCLUSIONSToC
Those who have had the patience to follow the detailed changes in rural organisation which have been described above will naturally ask, “What is the upshot of it all? What are the main landmarks which stand out from the bewildering variety of scenery? How does the agrarian England which is sleepily hunting out old guns and older bows on the eve of the Civil War differ from the England which saw the first Tudor 'with general applause and joy, in a kind of military election or recognition, salute
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(I)
(I)
Good Sir lett me intreat you yf the colledge determyne to make survay this springe of the lands at Kibworth and Barkby to send Mr. Kay or me word a month or 3 weeks before your coming that we may have Beare and other necessaries. And I desire you to gather up all evidences that may be needful for ye Lordshipp, for all testimony will be little enough, the colledge land is soo mingled with Mr. Pochin’s frehold and others in our towne. There is an awarde for the keepinge in of the old wol close in
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(II)
(II)
The said Manor has one lete by the year ... and hath also the Court from 3 weeks to 3 weeks called the 3 weeks Court. Item.—Every tenant payeth for a cottage ground not buylded if it conteyn 80 ft. every way Item.—Every tenant payeth for a cottage ground not buylded if it conteyn 80 ft. every way              1d. Item.—Every tenant payeth for half a cottage which is 40 ft. every way                              ½d. Item.—For every curtilage containing 40 ft. or under    ½d Item.—For every fyne o
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(III)
(III)
To the Right Honble. Sir Edward Cooke, Knight, Attorney-Generall unto the King’s Ma tie . Humblie sheweth unto your good lord yo r poore and dayley orators Thomas Ffawcett, Thomas Humphry, and Nicolas Farnes [?] yo r worshippes tenants of the Manor of Ffulmordeston cum Croxton in the Duchie of Lancaster and the moste parte of the tenants of the same Manor that whereas yo r said orators in the Hillary Term laste commenced suite in the Duchie Courte against Thomas Odbert and Roger Salisbury, Gent.
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(IV)
(IV)
To the Kings most Excellent Ma tie . The humble peticoɳ of yo r Ma te poore and distressed Tennants of yo r Mannor of North Wheatley in the Countie of Nottingham belonging to yo r Ma ties Duchie of Lancaster. Most humbly shewing. That yo r poore Subiects have tyme out of mynd byn Coppieholders of lands of inheritaunce to them and their heires for ever of the Mannor aforesaid, and paid for every Oxgang of land xvj s viijđ rent, and paid heretofore vpon every Alienacoɳ xijđ for every Oxgang, but n
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(V)
(V)
Right Ho le Uppon the ix th of July and also the 23 d of Septemb r I deliⱱd petitions vnto yo r Lo pp desireinge to shew y e great hurt y t ys done to his Ma tie & y e land by inclosiers w ch decay tillage, & depopulate townes in ye best naturall corne countryes, w ch affore supplyed the wants of others every way beinge in y e middle of y e land, for yt their is dearths vppon any vnseasonable seedes tyme or springe, and is a great cause of decayinge of trades and vndoeinge many t
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(VI)
(VI)
Most Honor ble Wee have caused a view to bee made according to yo r Lo ps Late Lr[~e]s of all Inclosures and conv r sions of Arrable Land to meadow and pasture , w ch are now in hand or haue beene made w th in two yeares Last past, And wee haue signifyed yo r Lo ps direc[c~o]ns vnto such ᵱsons as are causers of any such Inclosures & Conⱱtions and have given them notice that they ought not to ᵱcede w th hedgeing or dytchinge in of any such grounds but to Let them so rest vntill wee shall
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(VII)
(VII)
Lincoln An abstract of such depopulators as have bene hetherto dealt withall in Lincolnshyre, & receyued their pardon. Sir Charles Hussey Kn t. Fyne, 80ɫ. Bond of 200 ᶆkes, w th Condicoɳ to sett up in Homingtoɳ 8 farmhouses w th Barnes &c. and to lay to eⱱye house 30 acres of land, and to keepe 10 acres thereof yearlye in tyllage. S r Henry Ayscough Knt. Fyne, 20ɫ. Bond 200 ᶆkes. To sett vp 8 farmhouses in Blibroughe w th 30 acres to eⱱy farme, and 12 thereof to be kept yearlie i
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(VIII)
(VIII)
That vpon the Commission of enquiry after depopulacoñ The Lord Archbishopp of Canȶ and other the Commissioners at the solicitacoñ of Tho: Hussey gent. did direct a leɽ nature of a Coᶆission to certain persons w th in the County of Wilts to certifie what number of Acres in South Marston in the ᵱish of Highworth were converted from arable to pasture and what number of ploughes were laid downe &c. Wherevpon the Archdeacon with two others did retourne Certificate, to the Lord Archbishopp &am
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Table I. (p. 25)
Table I. (p. 25)
This table is based on documents relating to the following manors:— 1. Northumberland. Acklington (1567, Northumberland County History , vol. v. pp. 367–8); Buston (1567, ibid. , vol. v. p. 209); Thirston (1567, ibid. , vol. vii. pp. 305–6); Birling (1567, ibid. , vol. v. pp. 200–1); Amble (1608, ibid. , vol. v. p. 281); Hexham (1608, ibid. , vol. iii. pp. 86–104). 2. Lancashire. Warton (Hen. VIII., R.O. Rentals and Surveys, Gen. Ser., Portf. 19, No. 7, ff. 79–87); Whyttington (Hen. VIII., R.O.
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Table II. (pp. 32 and 33)
Table II. (pp. 32 and 33)
This table is based on documents relating to the undermentioned manors. The sources from which the information is taken are given in the explanation of Table I., and I therefore do not repeat them. 1. Norfolk. Metherwolde, Northendall, Brisingham, Massingham, Skerning Billingford. 2. Suffolk. Ashfield, Stratford juxta Higham, Kentford, Dunstall. 3. Staffordshire. Drayton Basset, Barton, Burton Bondend. 4. Lancashire. Warton, Overton, Widnes. 5. Northamptonshire. Paulespurie, Brigstock, Higham Fe
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Table III. (p. 48)
Table III. (p. 48)
The figures in this table are an analysis of the figures given under the heading of “Customary Tenants" in Table I., and the source from which they are taken will be found by looking at the explanation of that table given above. As I have pointed out in the text, it is probable that not all the “Tenants at Will" should have been entered as “Customary Tenants" in that table. I hope that any error which may have arisen through their inclusion under that heading there may be neutralised by setting
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Table IV.(pp. 64 and 65)
Table IV.(pp. 64 and 65)
This table is based on documents relating to the undermentioned manors. The sources from which the information is taken are given, with a few exceptions (see below), in the explanation of Table I. 1. Wiltshire and Somerset. South Newton, Byshopeston, Washerne, Knyghton, Donnington, Estoverton and Phipheld, Wynterbourne Basset (all in Wilts), South Brent and Huish (Somerset). 2. Suffolk. Stratford juxta Higham, Ashfield, Snape, Desnage Talmaye, Chaterham Hall (the last Hen. VIII. R.O. Misc. Bks.,
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Table V (p. 107)
Table V (p. 107)
1. Northumberland and Lancashire. Acklington, Birling, High Buston, Thirston, Whytyngton. 2. Wiltshire and Dorsetshire. South Newton, Estoverton and Phipheld, Winterbourne Basset, Washerne, Donyngton, Byshopeston, Knyghton, Ewerne (the last in Dorsetshire, Topographer and Genealogist , vol. i. There are only three customary tenants on this manor, and only one is represented in the table, as the use made by the others of their land is not ascertainable). 3. Bedfordshire, Northamptonshire, Staffor
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Table VI. (p. 115–117)
Table VI. (p. 115–117)
1. Ingoldmells, Lincolnshire: Massingberd, Ingoldmells Court Rolls, Preface, p. vii. I quote the words of the editor, “In 1086 the annual value of the manor of Ingoldmells was £10.... In 1295 the rents of the free and bondage tenants were £51, 17s. 1d.... In 1347 the same rents were £61, 9s. 4d., and in 1421 they were £71, 10s. 3d.... But in 1485 £3, 7s. 4d. had to be deducted for lost rents ... from a total of £72, 6s. 8d.... When the manor was sold in 1628 by Charles I., the reserved rent ...
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Table VIII (p. 212)
Table VIII (p. 212)
1. Norfolk. Massingham Priory (two farms, Hen. VIII., R.O. Rentals and Surveys, Gen. Ser., Portf. 24, No. 4, f. 46); Wymondham (Hen. VIII., R.O. Augm. Off., Misc. Bks. 408, f. 25); Marshams (Marham(?), Hen. VIII., Augm. Off., Misc. Bks. 408, f. 19); Thetford (Hen. VIII., Augm. Off., Misc. Bks. 408, f. 22); Bockenham (Hen. VIII., R.O. Augm. Off., Misc. Bks. 408, f. 9–10); Langley (Hen. VIII., R.O. Augm. Off., Misc. Bks. 399, f. 228–9); Walsingham (Hen. VIII., R.O. Augm. Off., Misc. Bks. 399, f. 2
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Tables IX, X, and XI (pp. 218, 225–226 and 227)
Tables IX, X, and XI (pp. 218, 225–226 and 227)
The farms from which these tables are compiled are included in the list given in explanation of Table VIII. (with one exception, Ewerne in Dorsetshire, Topographer and Genealogist , vol. i.), and it is therefore unnecessary to set them out in detail here. The figures as to arable, pasture, and meadow on the demesne of 41 monasteries are taken from Savine, “English Monasteries on the Eve of the Dissolution," Oxford Studies in Social and Legal History , vol. i. p. 172....
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Table XIII (p. 300)
Table XIII (p. 300)
This table is compiled from documents relating to the undermentioned manors. When the reference has already been given I do not repeat it here:—23 manors in Wilts, Somerset, and Devon, Roxburghe Club, Surveys of Lands of William, First Earl of Pembroke . West Lexham (Norfolk), Sparham (Norfolk), East Dereham (Norfolk), Wighton (Norfolk), Stockton Socon (Norfolk, 1649, R.O. Parly. Surveys, Norf. No. 14); Aldeburgh (Suffolk, Hen. VIII., R.O. Misc. Bks., Treas. of Receipt, vol. 163); St. Edmund (Su
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