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THE LIBRARY
OF THE

NEW YORK STATE SCHOOL
OF
INDUSTRIAL AND LABOR

RELATIONS

 

AT
CORNELL UNIVERSITY

 

 

 

 

 
SIX CENTURIES

WORK AND WAGES

Che bistory of English Labour

BY

JAMES E. THOROLD ROGERS, M.P.

 

NEW YORK STATE SSNCOL
INDUSTRIAL AUB LAEP® RELATIONS

ORNELL UliVERS
PORN Ton PITY

SWAN SONNENSCHEIN AND CO, Lim.
25 HIGH STREET, BLOOMSBURY

1906
nD
First EDITION, February, 1884; SECOND, December,

1885; THIRD, November, 1889; FOURTH, August,

1894; FIFTH, /anuary, 1901; SIXTH, December, 1901;
SEVENTH, May, 1903; EIGHTH, March, 1906.
PREFACE,

ed

INCE I published, nearly eighteen years ago, the first two
volumes of my history of agriculture and prices, I have
been frequently urged to extract and exhibit those parts of
my researches which illustrate the history of labour and
wages. To have done this to any purpose, it was necessary
that I should have in my possession such a continuous record
of wages actually earned as would enable me to traverse the
whole of the six centuries which intervene between the time
at which the first information begins and that at which our
present experience concludes. I have already published the
facts which bear on more than half the whole period, ze, for
324 years, and I have collected evidence, as yet unpublished,
for 120 years more, z¢., for the 444 years which begin with the
forty-third year of Henry III., 1258-9, and conclude with the
first of Anne, 1702-3. Sufficient information for the residue
has been supplied from the writings of Arthur Young and Sir
Frederic Eden in the eighteenth century, and from numerous
writers in the nineteenth, the principal authority in the latter
period being Porter.

It would have been of little value to have collected evidence
as to the wages of labour unless I had also been in possession of
adequate information as to general prices from which toestimate
precisely what was the purchasing power of wages. Now I have
published the prices of food from 1259 to 1582, and from 1582

PROPERTY OF LIERARY 5410
NEW YORK ST278 SCNCOL
ABESTEGAL ACD LAGSR RELATIONS
ECORNELL UNMERSITY |
4 Preface.

a record of wheat and malt prices has been registered every’
six months at four important centres, Oxford, Cambridge,
Windsor, and Winchester, under the statute 18 Eliz. cap. 6.
Besides, for the purposes of my inquiry, I am sufficiently pro-
vided with the evidence of such other prices as enables me
to translate money wages actually paid into the necessaries
of life. I cannot, indeed, in the later period exhibit the posi-
tion of the labourer with the same exactness which is in my
power for the period during which I have compiled and pub-
lished the evidence of wages which were actually paid, and
provisions which were actually purchased or sold. In the
period which intervenes between the first record of wages and
the death of Henry VITI. (1547), during which the condition
of the labourer was progressively good for more than a century
and a half, and stationary at the highest level for nearly the
whole of Henry’s reign, more than thirty-seven years in dura-
tion, it is possible to follow the course of wages as exactly as
that of any other article which is bought or sold, and to re-
present them by their power over all kinds of commodities.
After this date, when they declined greatly in value, and the
degradation of labour, owing to causes which I hope to make
clear, began, I possess nearly the same continuous and minute
knowledge for more than a century and a half, some being
published, some being in notes. But except for about fifty
years in the earlier part of the eighteenth century, the
wages of labour have been a bare subsistence, constantly sup-
plemented by the poor rate, till, in modern times, a consider-
able amelioration in the condition of some kinds of labour,
owing, I believe, to a peculiar cause, has been effected. I
have attempted to point out what that cause has been, and to
suggest that it should be extended and encouraged.

It may perhaps be objected, that though I have dealt with
a subject which is entirely new, I have appended no notes and
have given no authorities for my facts. But for half the period
Preface. 5

1 could have made no reference except to my own publications,
and for another century and more I can refer only to my
unpublished notes, and the tabular statements which I have
drawn up from them. The difficulty is an exceptional one,
for no one has entered on this field of research but myself, or
has even, to the best of my knowledge, attempted to make
use of what I have published for purposes like those which are
before me in compiling the present volume. I could, if it
were needed, however, give ample verification for all that I
have alleged, not, indeed, from the original sources, for those
are contained in muniment rooms, in the Record Office, and in
public libraries, but from my own transcripts and averages. For
the later period, the authorities, as I have said, are chiefly
Young, Eden, and Porter.

Again it may be objected, that I reiterate particulars in
dealing with the topic before me. But in the reconstruction
of the social state of England six centuries ago, and in the
narrative of its history or development, it is frequently the
‘case, especially when there is seen to be no marked change in
the process under which men lived and worked, except in so far
as the interests of the class about which I am writing are raised
or depressed, that one has to piece out the picture which one
attempts to draw from details which may need to be restated
in the narrative, but were characteristic of an earlier as well as
of alater epoch. Thus there is little change in the economy
of rural life, as far as the labourer is concerned, from the
days of the third Henry till the days of the eighth, and illus-
trations of the labourer’s condition may be safely taken from
any part of the period.

The plan which I put before myself was to devote the first
chapters of the book to a sketch of early English society up
to and during the latter half of the thirteenth century. In
handling this part of my subject, I had to deal with the pur-
suits of the Englishman at this time, and especially with that
6 Preface.

which was the business of the vast majority of our people,
agriculture ; land in England, as one can gather by a wide
induction from the facts contained in existing records, having
been divided in nearly equal moieties between manorial lords
and tenants at fixed rents and with permanent holdings.
Having dealt with the pursuits of this vast majority, it re-
mained that I should say a little about life in towns and the
processes by which trade was carried on. This is followed by
an account of the several classes who made up medieval
society, all these subjects being handled in the first six
chapters.

The remainder of the work deals particularly with the history
of labour and wages, though I have felt myself constrained to
touch on the general history of agriculture, and to dwell on
some few particulars in the political history of the country, in
connection with the main topic of my inquiry. But I have
designedly abstained from entering on the new system of tax-
ation which, beginning with Cecil’s book of rates and continu-
ing through the excise and customs system of the Protectorate,
the Restoration, and the Revolution, at last imposed nearly al}
the burden of taxation on those whose resources were crippled,
and whose freedom was taken away by a variety of enact-
ments imposed in the interests of a narrow but powerful class.

I have attempted to show that the pauperism and the de-
gradation of the English labourer were the result of a series
of Acts of Parliament and acts of government, which were de-
signed or adopted with the express purpose of compelling the
labourer to work at the lowest rates of wages possible, and
which succeeded at last in effecting that purpose. These Acts
have become historical, and except in so far as they are re-
sponsible for the existence of much that is difficult and regret-
table in the condition of the working classes now, they have
no existence at the present time We have long since ceased
to regulate wages by Acts of Parliament and the ordinances
Preface, ?

of quarter sessions. The despotic law of parochial settlement
has been materially modified ; working men are no longer
liable to imprisonment and penal servitude for trying to sell
their labour at the best advantage ; and the wages of labour
are no longer mulcted by corn laws and other restraints o1
trade. There still, ] am aware, exist persons who would, it
they could, resort to the old system upon specious pretexts,
or with avowed audacity. But it does not follow that because
the cause is removed, the effect has ceased.

I cannot, therefore, be charged with attempting to set class
against class in the narrative which I have given. Were it
necessary, indeed, to do so, in order to assist the moral and
material progress of those who, living by labour, enable others
to live without labour, or live by mischievous labour, I should
not hesitate to use all my powers in that direction, for the
charge of setting class against class has always been made by
those who wish to disguise their own indefensible advantages
by calumniating the efforts of those who discover abuses and
strive to rectify them. But I believe that the efficacy of the
charge has been much weakened by the estimate which the
public instinctively forms about those who venture on using it.

My reader will, I trust, find that I have been able to trace the
causes which brought about the misery and degradation of
labour to acts and persons which are historical, and that the
process of restoration is retarded by privileges and practices
which are still dominant,—privilegesand practices which, unless
they are relinquished and abandoned, will give occasion in
England, which has hitherto been quit of it, for an extension
of that spirit of communism which finds its origin and its
apology in the injuries, some real and some imaginary, which
the many suffer at the hands of the few.

I have the further purpose of contributing one portion to
the historical method of Political Economy. The older dog-
matism of this science or philosophy, after being for a long
8 Preface.

time distasteful, has latterly been shown to be untrue. Many
of the formularies which were accepted as axiomatic truths by
the disciples of Ricardo and Mill are now found to be as in-
correct as they are unsatisfactory. Besides, it is not enough
for the economist to predict, he is expected to suggest the
remedies for the evils under which society is labouring, or yield
the social question up to the socialist. It may be that he has
discovered certain laws of nature which will, unless proper
means are used, bring about permanent evils, though very
frequently his laws are merely tendencies, the corrective to
which is supplied, partially at least, from agencies which the
science has hitherto neither suspected nor accounted for ; some-
times are paradoxes which are quite baseless. Now a science
which detects a disease has its use if it can point out how the
disease has arisen, and thus can check the development of
that which would make the malady continuous and permanent.
That science, however, takes a far higher place which is not only
accurate in its diagnosis but skilled in the proper therapeutics.
But the discoverer of true causes has travelled a long way on
the road to the remedy. And this, if it be rightly taken, is
what the historical economist may effect, but the theoretical
economist has mistaken.

Since I have written the pages which follow, the attention
of the people has been called from various, and I am bound to
say, very unexpected, quarters, to the question of how the
working classes in large cities, perhaps even in rural England,
are to be housed. I am not quite sure that many of those who
have made this an urgent question will relish the inevitable
answer which will be given as to the causes of the situation
and as to the changes which must precede the develop-
ment of a better result. If an attempt is made to meet the
mischief by putting the burden of satisfying a public necessity
upon those who are no way responsible for the result, and by
exempting those who are responsible from all the charges of
Preface. y

teform, and even by enriching them through the machinery of
the reform, I venture on predicting that some of those who
have raised the question will regret that they were rash enough
to have stirred in the matter.

Fortunately for all, the leaders of English labour have sought
to better the condition of their followers by processes which
the most rigid of economists cannot condemn. I have taken
occasion to point out what, in my opinion, is the economical
significance of a trade union or labour partnership. That
this principle may be extended so as to embrace all labour,
should, I am convinced, be the wish of every one who desires
to save his country from the spread of doctrines which are as
pernicious to the true interests of labour as they are de-
structive of all progress, and ultimately of all hope. Nothing
would be more fatal than the despair which might succeed in
reconstructing society from its foundations.

Since this book has been written,—since, indeed, the fore-
going part of the preface has been written—I have had the
advantage of seeing the very able and intelligent essay of
Mr. Giffen, the President of the Statistical Society, on the
progress of the working classes during the last half-century
—ze. from 1833, speaking generally, to 1883. A great deal
of what Mr. Giffen has collected by way of material for his
conclusions is of very unequal value. Many of his inferences
are perhaps too hopeful, many of his economical principles
are of very doubtful cogency, and I have, indeed, read
nothing lately, the results of which are more open to debate
and discussion.

But Mr. Giffen’s figures (and he regrets, as I do, that
evidence for the last fifty, or, indeed, for the last hundred
years, is not more copious) are, as far as they go, exact
and instructive. The period with which he starts was one
of unexampled oppression. The legislature had, indeed, got
cid of the combination laws, but the political economists of
10 Preface.

the old school and the judges had revived them in the very
worst form and with the most malignant pedantry. I need
only refer to the conviction of the six Dorsetshire labourers.
in July 1834, their transportation for a perfectly innocent act,.
their pardon, and the concealment of the pardon from them, in
consideration, I presume, of the vested interest to which the
Sydney Government had sold them at a pound a head. It
is, I think, to be regretted that Mr. Giffen did not describe,
as he certainly could have done, what was the condition of
wages in relation to profits fifty years ago. I hope that |
have sufficiently stated it; I am certain that I have done
so with much restraint and moderation in the following pages..
That wages have risen I thankfully admit. Water rises in
an artesian well. But the physicist who explains the rise
has to take account of the pressure which previously kept
the water below its just level. In the case of labour, the
economist should have announced and deplored it.

It is noteworthy, too, that the kinds of labour for which
Mr. Giffen has adduced evidence have all been aided and
protected by trade unions. I refer to those which are tabu-
lated in page 5 of his address. The inference from those
paid for seamen is more doubtful; for the comparison is.
between wages paid in sailing and in steam vessels, two
callings which are only nominally one. Most doubtful is the

estimate of Sir James Caird as to the wages of agricultural
labourers. Here we do not know whether the 60 per cent.

means the rate of wages, or the cost of labour. We do not
know, as we can know in the case of artizans, whether it means.
real wages or money wages, or whether it is not true that
the mere cost of living fifty years ago in country places was.
fifty per cent. less than it now is, while occupation was more
certain and more continuous. The critics whom the land-
owners employed to examine the agricultural statistics of the
past, always used to comment on the allowances made to
Preface. Ip

farm labourers. There must have been some meaning in the
plea, or it would hardly have been put forward. I speak of
responsible writers ; no reasonable person notices anonymous.
critics, least of all those who take the wages of a publisher’s.
review.

The question, in fact, of the present position of labour:
cannot be discussed in a short essay. But no comment,
however slight or superficial, will be other than misleading
which does not give an estimate of the English labourer’s
condition fifty years ago, when it dwells on the progress.
which he has made since that period. What the state of
this country would have been, if he had not made progress,.
is pretty certain; and I am afraid that we shall not entirely
escape the speculative evils on which most far-sighted people:
are now dwelling, if he is not made to realise that other and:
considerable reforms are forthcoming in the near future.

In the interval, despite the interest which is felt in specu-
lative novelties and startling theories of reconstruction, the
English workman, in his best and most thoughtful forms, is.
more intent on seeking out and adapting the process by
which the interests of employer and employed should be-
harmonized than in striving after an entirely new departure.
The Continental socialist has hitherto owned that England is
a barren field, which bears none of his fruit, and seems unable
even to make the seed which he sows germinate. This in~
difference to theory is not due to selfishness or to the deaden-
ing effects of competition, for it is the essential characteristic:
of the trade unionist that he sacrifices himself to the good of
the voluntary corporation with which he has associated him-
self, to an extent which foreigners do not understand or
imitate. According to those who are entitled to speak with
authority on the subject, the English unionist readily sub
scribes for the purpose of his organization fully two-and-a-half
per cent. of his income, and sometimes more. The Conti-
{2 Preface.

nental artizan, it would seem, can with difficulty be persuaded
to contribute a sixth of the sum. I do not, therefore, infer,
with my friend M. Laveleye, that the English workman is
yielding to Continental ideas, for I find that the essence of
all foreign schemes, as portrayed in M. Laveleye’s excellent
work, “Le Socialisme,” is the sacrifice of others, while the
English workman essays to.achieve the solution of his pro-
iblems by the preliminary sacrifice of himself; partially,
imperfectly, and unequally, I grant, but still consistently and
on principle. Above all, he does not invoke the aid of the
State.

For my part, I believe that as the English people has
taught other nations the machinery of parliament and repre-
sentative government, has slowly, after many struggles, and
after having been long made the experiment of insincere
factions, won, or is winning, the admission of all who deserve
it to the constitution, and has constantly falsified those
Sinister predictions about a hungry and angry democracy
which have been the stock-in-trade of reactionaries, so it is
likely hereafter to solve the far more important question as
to the true harmony between the rights of property and the
rights of labour. We have been confidently warned that the
power of the people will be the spoliation of the rich, Nothing
of the kind has happened as yet; nothing of the kind has
been threatened; nothing of the kind has been hinted at.
‘The democracy of the towns have formulated no claim,
instructed no representative in this direction. They wish to
distribute property, but by the honest operation of an equita-
ble purchase. They wish to better the wages of the workman,
‘but by the equally equitable interpretation of the market, of
the goods which they produce, and the price which the con-
sumer is prepared to give for them. They are singularly,
generously oblivious of past ill-usage, and seem to have no
animosity against the classes and the institutions to which
Preface. 13

their fathers owed the miseries deliberately inflicted on their
lot. They contrast favourably with many of their critics,
who do not disguise their desire for reaction. But the best
hope of the future lies in the existence of a temper among
the people, which is equally removed from the temptation to
revenge and is contemptuous of the sophistries which a
narrow self-interest is ventilating.

I am well aware that these views will seem paradoxical.
But in political matters it has been long since proved that
aristocratical government is a failure and its prolongation a
mischief and a menace. It forms wrong judgments, and
when it is right by accident in its ends, it adopts wrong
means, or inverts the order in which its grudging and tardy
reforms should be effected. Nor has the franchise of a more
extended and real kind than that which existed from the
Restoration to the first Reform Bill done much better. This
country owes much to the Parliaments which sat between
1832 and 1868. But they would have done far better had
the franchise been that of 1867. They will do better still
when the peasant is allowed to express his judgment on the
policy of Government.

But the value of popular opinion on the policy of Parlia-
ment and the administration is as nothing to the usefulness of
combined action on the part of labour with regard to social
questions. “The crowd,” says Aristotle, the wisest interpreter
of ancient political forces under the clearest circumstances in
which they have ever been estimated, “makes better general
judgments than any individual whatsoever. It is in the main
incorruptible. Like a large sheet of water, the multitude is
less liable to sinister influences than the few, for when the
individual is influenced by passion or any similar impulse, his
judgment must be distorted, while it is hard for all collectively
to be led by passion or to err.”

The difficulty is not to get wise action, but to get any
14 Preface.

action at all. The mass of persons in England take a languid
interest in political action, and a capricious line on social
‘questions, They have had reason to believe that politics are
the mere game of two hereditary and privileged parties, in
which it signifies little which gets a temporary ascendency.
‘They are convinced of the hollowness of political cries, and are
under the impression that the public service is a phrase by
which politicians mean private advantage. Since 1867, they
ave made few demands on Parliament, apparently because
‘they have seen that Parliament is more busy in arbitrating
‘hetween rival interests of a special character than in con-
‘sidering the general good. They may do more in the future.
They may, like Jonathan in the day of battle, taste the wild
honey in the wood and find their eyes enlightened. But I
for one do not fear that, like the rest of the people, they will
ly upon the spoil.

JAMES E. TITOROLD ROGERS.

house of Commons,
CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.
UYNTRODUCTION . .

CHAPTER II.
RURAL ENGLAND—SOCIAL LIFE

CHAPTER IIL.
RURAL ENGLAND—AGRICULTURAL

CHAPTER IV.
TOWN LIFE

CHAPTER V.
THE DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH AND TRADE

CHAPTER VL.
SOCIETY—WAGES—PROFITS

CHAPTER VII.
THE KING AND HIS EXTRAORDINARY REVENUES

CHAPTER VIII.
THE FAMINE AND THE PLAGUE

CHAPTER IX.
DISCONTENT— COMBINATION—INSURRECTION

PAGE

17

38

7O

- 102

. 128

. 159

. 188

2 205

243
16 Contents.

CHAPTER X.

THE LANDLORD’S REMEDIES . . B . ,

CHAPTER XI.
THE DEVELOPMENT G¥ TAXATION ‘ . ’

CHAPTER XII.
LABOUR AND WAGES ‘ . . . .

CHAPTER XIII.
THE CLERGY TILL THE REFORMATION . . .

CHAPTER XIV.
WAGES OF LABOUR AFTER THE RISE IN PRICES .

CHAPTER XV.
THE ENGLISH POOR LAW : ’ . . :

CHAPTER XVI.
ENGLISH HUSBANDRY FROM THE RISE IN PRICES

CHAPTER XVII.

AGRICULTURE AND AGRICULTURAL WAGES IN
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY . . : .

CHAPTER XVIII.
WAGES IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY . -

CHAPTER XIX,

THE PRESENT SITUATION . . . . .
CHAPTER XX.

REMEDIES . . 2 - . .

INDEX . . . . . . : .

PAGS

- 274

» 300:

. 326

- 356

+ 387

» 414

THE
. 468

» 494

. 52)

- 548

- 577
CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION.

Archives of English History—Number and Copiousness of—Domesday, arid the
Blank which follows it—Commencement of Economical Archives—Degradation
of the Anglo-Saxon Nobility—The English the Allies of the King—He is the
largest Landowner—The Ministers of the Sovereign, Churchmen—The King’s
Principal Revenues—The Exchequer, a Source of Power and Object of Attack
—The Method of the Exchequer Audit copied in private Accounts—These
Accounts Evidence of Title, and therefore preserved—Henty the Second’s Posi-
tion and Abilities—Effects of Becket’s Murder—The Liability to Military Service
at the bidding of the Crown—The Origin and Effects of Escuage—The English
Army, its Character and Traditions—Open to Villeins, though the Militia was
not—The Story of Sale in 1381—The Contrast of England with other Nations
in Western Europe—The Treatment of the English King by his Subjects—The
Commutation of Military Service for Money imitated in Domestic Matters
between Lord and Serf—Matthew Paris—His Value as an Interpreter of
Public Opinion and Social life—The Beginnings of Hostility to the Roman
Court—Henry III.—His Character, and that of his Reign.

HE archives of English history are more copious and

more continuous than those of any other people. The
record of public events begins with the Teutonic invasion of the
fifth century, and is prolonged, with scarcely a break, down to:
our own times. There are periods in which the information
is scanty. The events of the reign of Edward IV. have not
been preserved in such abundance as those of Edward I.
We know more about the life and times of Archbishop
Becket than we do about the life and times of Archbishop
Morton. But weare rarely left without contemporary annalists,
and those authoritative materials by which the historian can
give continuity and vivacity to his narrative. As the political
history of England can be written from its beginnings, so can
the history of its laws, which are founded on the customs of
the Teutonic races. Again, the constitutional history of our
people has been traced back to customs which long precede

2
18 Lntroduction.

the Conquest. Its financial history is contained in a series
of documents engrossed annually from the days of the first
Plantagenet to those of the fifth monarch of the House of
Hanover, which exist in unbroken continuity in the great
collection of national archives. No other country possesses
such a wealth of public records, But those, for the last three
centuries at least, are supplemented by still more abundant
materials in private collections, the quantity and value of
which are not yet estimated, though research into them has
frequently thrown a new light on public events, or suggested
sa new theory of public policy, or modified the traditional
judgments which have been promulgated about public men.

The economical history of England is illustrated with

singular clearness towards the end of the eleventh century,
by that gréat survey of the whole kingdom, with the exception
of the four northern counties and part of Lancashire, which is
known as Domesday Book. This unique and invaluable
record, which has never yet been adequately analysed, is a
register of landowners and tenants, describes the changes
which had been effected by the Conquest, and exhibits the
economical condition of the English under the government of
William. But the social history of England is almost a blank
for nearly two centuries afterwards, except for the little which
may be gathered from the chroniclers. The new light which
is thrown on the economic and social condition of the country
at the time when continuous archives inform us of the facts,
reveals a very different state of things from that which is
exhibited in Domesday.

The information from which the economical history of
England and the facts of its material progress can be de-
rived, becomes plentiful, and remains continuously numerous
from about the last ten or twelve years of the reign of
Henry III. Before this time there is not, I believe, a farm
account or manor roll in existence. Suddenly these docu-
ments, from which this aspect of English history can be
constructed, are found abundantly. It is noteworthy that
changes of practice in the conduct of business occur almost
simultaneously all over the country. Even changes of hand-
English Archives. The Conquest. 19

writing are discovered at widely different places, but with
singular uniformity of time. An expert in the common hand
of the English scribe will tell the date of a document within
a few years, whether its origin be Lancashire, Kent, Warwick-
shire, Norfolk, or Northumberland. It is plain that the
intercourse of Englishmen in the so-called middle ages must
have been frequent and familiar, even if there were not
abundant evidence to show how general was the habit of
travel with certain classes of the community. But such an
intercourse is the principal factor of what is called public
opinion, that sentiment which has been so difficult to
interpret, still more to anticipate, in the political action of
this country, but which has, at various epochs of English
history, startled sovereigns and governments by the sudden-
ness of its action and the intensity of its purpose.

The Norman Conquest appears to have almost completely
supplanted the aristocracy of the Anglo-Saxon race, and to
have put the adventurers who accompanied William into the
place of those nobles who had ruled the peasantry. It seems
that the lower classes were no better off, and no worse off,
after the Conquest than they had been before it. The thane
had his villeins and slaves; and there is no reason to believe
that the Norman baron was a worse master than the Saxon
thane whom he superseded. William changed the local
administrators in Church and State; and he had to deal with
those whom he had dispossessed. The disinherited had their
partisans ; and naturally there was partisan warfare wherever
it was likely to be successful,—in the morasses of Ely and the
fells of the Northern borders. The outlaws of the Conquest,
when resistance became hopeless, assassinated the intrusive
Norman; and William imposed a serious liability on the
district in which the outrage was committed, By a series of
accidents, the collective importance of which cannot, in the
interests of administrative government, be over-estimated,
any murder, the doer of which was not taken red hand,
became an affair of the King’s court; for the hundred was
liable to a penalty of from £36 to £44 in case the culprit
were not found out and surrendered,
20 Introductton.

With few exceptions, the Anglo-Saxon lords were de-
graded, and assumed a lower social position, or were wholly
dispossessed, and sought their fortunes in other countries.
But the higher social element of the residual English was still
strong enough to be useful to the sovereign in an emergency,
and the lower retained and clung to their local institutions.
It was therefore easy for the king to appeal to his English
subjects, and to use their services against rebellious barons
and their retainers and, if he were strong enough, to secure
them, after he won his victory, against notable outrages. He
soon saw that it was wise to keep entire a force which might
be employed against the dangers which his own aristocracy
might cause him. Experience confirmed his anticipation.
The second and third Norman kings found their most useful
allies in their English subjects; and the savants of the
Norman and Plantagenet sovereigns soon began to protect
the tenants of the Norman lords, by the machinery of the law
courts, against the arbitrary authority of their superiors.

The English king was the largest landowner in the kingdom,
and he stood to his tenants in the same position that any
great landowner did to his. But great as his estate was in
comparison with that of others, it was scanty in amount com-
pared with that of his great lords, if they acted in concert,
and it was liable to demands to which they were not exposed.
The king had to undertake the expenses of administration,
of justice, and of police, except in so far as the machinery of
local self-government relieved him from such duties. Besides,
in order to keep up his own influence, he had to conciliate his
advocates, his officials, and his partisans with gifts. In other
words, he had to construct, maintain, and occasionally to revive:
a royal party. Such a policy required mature vigour and
incessant care. The Crown was enfeebled and the country im-
poverished and irritated whenever these conditions were not
observed. It cannot be by accident that social discontent and
disorder always followed on the reign of a sovereign who
succeeded to the throne in his minority. The government
of the country was put to its severest strain in the reigns
of Henry III., Richard Il, Henry VL, and Edward VI. The
The King and the Exchequer. 21

certainty that the same result would ensue in the contingency
of Edward V. reigning under tutelage, is the sole apology for
Richard the Third’s usurpation. It is probable that the danger
of a child-king was present to the minds of those who brought
about the Revolution of 1688; and that the position which
English statesmen for four centuries have successfully insisted
on, that the office of regent is in the gift of Parliament, and
can be exercised only under such conditions as Parliament
may impose, has been constantly affirmed.

The king was led, for many reasons, to employ such persons
as could be rewarded for their services from the revenues of
the Church. At the Conquest, the dignitaries of the old
monarchy were constrained to retire, but the patrimony of
the Church was not diminished. Its bishoprics, deaneries,
canonries, and benefices were frequently the reward of secular
service on the Crown’s behalf. When the Papacy arrived at
despotism over Christendom, as absolute, as far reaching, and
as aggressive as that of the old Roman Empire, through agencies
which it believed to be moral, but later criticism has declared
to have been superstitious, and a short experience proved to
have speedily become dishonest, it saw with unerring instinct
that the bestowal of benefices for political services was the
principal obstacle which must be removed before these aims
could be achieved. When it found that it could not succeed
in the war against investitures, it most adroitly and with far
greater success insisted on the right of provision, that is, of
nominating to ecclesiastical offices in expectancy, or of taking
advantage of technical flaws in an election, the legal right to
which was in certain hands,in order to establish its own
nominee. Sometimes the king was disappointed, sometimes
the pope. Henry II. thought that he had secured a courtier
prelate in Becket, and- owed all the misfortunes of his reign
to the miscalculation which he madeinhis man. Innocent III.
imagined that he secured a papal prelate in Langton, and
found that his hold over England was irrecoverably loosened
by the man of his choice.

Beyond the profits which he derived from his private
estate, the king was in receipt of certain dues from his
22 Introduction,

subjects. He was the heir of all escheats—that is, of all
estates in which there was a failure of legal heirs, and of all
forfeitures—that is, of all estates, the owners of which had
committed such crimes as involved the destruction of rights
in property. The former, in an age of violence and risk,
were probably more frequent than the latter, though for
feiture was by no means uncommon, unless the partisans

of a rebellion were too numerous and too united to be-

disinherited. But whether the estate was escheated or for-
feited, the grants of the former possessor were respected, and
the king succeeded to those rights only which the misfortune
or the misconduct of the owner could extinguish.

The king had also the right of claiming fixed and casual
dues from those of his inferiors who stood in certain relations
to him. The tendency in the mind of his subjects was to
make all dues, with some exceptions, fixed, to estimate them
once for all in an unchangeable quantity of money, to resent
or resist all attempts to collect more than was due, and to
exercise a discretion as to the frequency of collection. In the
first Great Charter, that of John, the assent of the kingdom is
to be required for all extraordinary grants; and though this
condition was omitted in some subsequent editions of the
Charter, it was never forgotten, was suspended for special
reasons, and was ultimately acknowledged to bea fundamental
right of the subject.

The king had trivial dues on exports and imports, called
customs. It is obvious that, in the first place, the trade of
the time was too small to make such sources of revenue
lucrative, and that in the next, there neither did nor could
exist any adequate police for the collection of other than
small dues at the principal ports. In all likelihood the
imports and exports at the numberless smaller ports were
necessarily neglected.

He derived, however, and in consideration of very solid
advantages secured to the subject, a considerable income
from fees of court for conveyances. From very early times,
the conveyances of estates by what were called fines, were
registered and carefully recorded in the archives of the Court.’
The Audit of the King's Revenue. 23

The convenience of an indefeasible title was obvious, the
guarantee of the register was complete, and there was no
part, perhaps, of the business of the great office of the
Exchequer, in which the whole revenue of the sovereign was
collected and audited, which excited so little dissatisfaction
as that by which the estates of the great landowners were
conveyed and assured.

But the Exchequer was felt to be armed against every one.
to be constantly watching for the rights of the Crown, and to
be actively. vigorous in the vindication of these rights. The
Crown and its officers knew that it was dangerous to rouse
discontent by any general usurpation, and that it could only
attempt oppression where oppression roused no sympathy
forits victim. The Crown could alternately caress and fleece
the Jew; but the Jew was held to be the private enemy of all
debtors. It could assail successfully those whom the nobles
hated, or the people distrusted and disliked. It was often
incapable of defending its own instruments or favourites, but
this was when it transgressed prudence in administration
and excited general dislike. Individuals were wronged and
outraged, and public opinion was not arrayed against the
ill-doer, But it was a very different thing if the Crown
attempted to oppress the whole people, to levy contributions
at its own discretion, or to increase the amount of that which
had been conceded. The Exchequer was the principal in-
strument of government, the real centre of the adminis-
tration, which was always striving to increase its business
and the king’s revenue. Against this ever present and ever
prying institution, baron and franklin, esquire and yeoman,
were united. When a revolution occurred, sometimes when
a revolution was avoided, the principal objects of popular
indignation were the ministers of the revenue.

The great audit of the king’s revenue was imitated in the
account taken of the receipts and outgoings of a manor.
These were made up annually, and always in the same form.
The scribe who wrote out the annual roll examined the rough
notes and tallies of the bailiff, and reduced the particulars to
an exact profit and loss account ; and on the back of the roll
24 Lntroauction.

entered all the stock, live and dead, on the estate, giving an
account of the whole. In the same way a register was kept
of the manor services and dues. The names of the tenants,
the extent of their holding, the amount and value of their
services, were all entered. The receipts of the lord from the
police of the manor, the fines paid for offences, for assaults,
for trade frauds, were all duly recorded, just as in the great
roll of the Exchequer the multifarious sources of royal
revenue were all duly entered, and on audit, credited to the
officer whose duty it was to collect them. This system came
suddenly into use all over England a few years before
Henry the Third’s death.

Only a few thousands of these documents survive. They
had, it would appear, only an ephemeral interest. The
account of one year had no importance, it would seem, to
the owner of the estate, except in so far as the undischarged
liabilities of the bailiff or other agent whom he employed
are noted. But the universal practice of drawing up an
annual account of receipts and disbursements, of assets and
liabilities, of stock-taking, besides the engrossing of the
manor-roll, and in the case of large properties or large
establishments, other exact accounts of household expendi-
ture, must have involved a large amount of clerical work at
certain times of the year. The scribe must have been nearly
as universal a person as the smith, and the number of persons
who were competent to draw up a balance-sheet of numerous
particulars must have been very large. There is a general
impression that few persons in the later middle ages knew how
to read and write. But the prodigious amount of documents
penned yearly, and penned precisely, and at nearly the same
time of the year, just before Michaelmas, proves that educa-
tion must have been far more widely diffused than is com-
monly imagined. It is probable that the bailiff was not
uneducated either. I have occasionally found the accounts
of this personage, accounts which the scribe examined,
verified and copied fairly out. It is remarkable, too, that,
with hardly an exception, the accounts are written in Latin.
The Latin is, of course, barbarous, full of English words
The Accounts of the Manor. 25

with Latin terminations; but it is always grammatical. I
cannot believe that the language into which his annual
balance-sheet was rendered was an unknown tongue to the
bailiff, or that he would have been content to allow his
liabilities to be expressed in a form which he could not
understand. But I must return to this topic hereafter.

These documents, I do not doubt, were preserved because
they formed evidence of title. The courts of law had laid
down the rule, that no title could be shaken by adverse
evidence of an earlier date than 1189. But evidence would
be admitted subsequent to that date; and therefore any proof
of continuous possession was valuable. At the beginning of
the present century, one of the Oxford colleges attempted to
establish an ancient right to tithe in an Essex parish, and
supported their claim by presenting in court a number of
their most ancient rolls of receipt and expenditure. It was
customary, too, for a purchaser to receive from a vendor all
the evidence of which the latter might be possessed. Thus
the founder of an Oxford college bought an estate from an
Oxfordshire family at the latter end of the fourteenth
century, and received with it a number of accounts which go
back to the latter part of the thirteenth, Another founder,
nearly a century later, succeeded in procuring the suppression
of a wealthy priory in Hampshire, the character of which
was not very good, and carried to the record room of his
college a number of accounts of this religious house, which
run back for a long period before the suppression. The
great abbey of Sion contained a number of documents which
illustrate the domestic history of many among these alien
priories, with the estates of which this fifteenth century
religious house was endowed.

It is well known that the construction of the Exchequer
was the work of Henry IL, and that he was assisted in the
elaboration of its machinery by the unwearied services of
certain ecclesiastics who were devoted to the Crown and the
interests of the Crown. The most eminent of these persons
were of one family, which had long held bishoprics as the
reward of their fidelity to their employer and his policy.
26 Lntroduction.

Henry had every opportunity for the work which he set
before himself. The country was exhausted by a war of
succession, which had degenerated into mere brigandage.
Englishman and Norman were equally anxious to secure
quiet and good government, to live under the same laws, and
to aid in maintaining the king’s peace. The miserable
experience of anarchy and disorder had united the two
nations against common foes. England is almost the only
European country in which the nobles, the gentry, the yeomen,
and the burghers have for ages made common cause against
public dangers, whether the danger was a foreign enemy
introduced into the kingdom by a tyrannical ruler, as was the
case under John, or a reckless waste of the resources of
government, as was the case in the reigns of Henry III. and
Henry VI., or the peril of unworthy favourites, whom the
experience of the country detected in the times of Edward II.
and Richard II., or the development of an arbitrary system
of government such as that which made opposition to the
king irresistible in 1641 and 1688. In those emergencies the
whole body of the English people were of one mind, as they
have been in the defence of governments which were not
indeed perfect, but interpreted the true interests of the
country.

Henry II. was a man whose political instincts were far in
advance of his age, and he owed his troubles to the fact that
he yielded to them and strove to do what was premature.
He came to the conclusion that he was strong enough to do
battle with the Church in the interests of good government.
That he nominated Becket to the see of Canterbury under
the conviction that he had a thorough-going partisan of the
royal power and policy in him is plain. That the hesitation
of Becket in taking the office was understood by Henry to be
mere prudery is equally manifest. That Henry’s suspicions
were aroused when Becket instantly divested himself of his
secular offices, and determined to give himself up wholly to his
ecclesiastical duties, was the natural result of the disappoint-
ment which he felt at the error which he committed and
of the foresight with which he anticipated trouble to come.

*
Henry and Becket. 27

He might ha¥ temporized with the new archbishop, and have
employed him in the correction of those ecclesiastical abuses
which he saw were scandalous and increasing, as his great-
grandfather employed Lanfranc, under the cloak that by so
doing the archbishop could strengthen the Church. He might
have delayed his action till he had assured himself of success
in the project which he had set his heart on. He was fully
assured, as the event proved, that all the other bishops would
support him, and he concluded that Becket would not stand
away from his brethren. As it is well known, Becket at first
subscribed to the Constitutions of Clarendon, a summary of
customs which would have anticipated the changes brought
about by Henry VIII. nearly four centuries afterwards,
repented of his compliance, sought the pope’s pardon, and
irretrievably quarrelled with the king. Henry might have
thought that the pope, who had quarrelled with the Emperor
Frederic, and was denounced by an anti-pope, would not
support Becket; and many persons must have thought with
him, at times even Becket himself. But the pope strove to
effect a reconciliation, and did effect it. The issue of Becket’s
restoration was the murder of the prelate.

I do not doubt that Henry’s horror and alarm at Becket’s
death was genuine. He must have foreseen that the whole of
his projected reforms in the Church, and his cherished hope
that he would make the clergy obedient to the law, were
indefinitely postponed. He had not only miscalculated the
forces to which he was opposed, but he had given them, by
his indiscreet language, and through the agency of Becket’s
murderers, who thought they were doing his bidding, an almost
irresistible power against him. Henceforth the only means
by which the Crown could succeed in checking the power of the
ecclesiastical party, was by rousing its interests in national
purposes against those of the Roman Court; and it generally
did this unwillingly. Sometimes the higher clergy take
part with the péople against the misgovernment of the
king, as Langton did against John, and many of the prelates
did against his son. Sometimes the bishops are incensed
against the Papal court, by reason of its exactions and the
28 Lntroduction.

scandals which its favourites caused. Sometimes the monks
are the objects of hostility, for their privileges and immu-
nities were derived from the action of the Roman court, and
were a perpetual grievance to the bishops and the secular
clergy. At last Edward I. seized the opportunity, when both
regular and secular clergy were unpopular, and were indiscreet
enough to shelter themselves under the mandate of Boniface
and his bull forbidding payments of taxes by the clergy, to
frighten them so thoroughly that henceforth, with rare excep-
tions, the authorities of the Church became as docile to the
Crown as they had been refractory in earlier days.

By his marriage with Eleanor of Guienne, Henry had
acquired nearly the whole sea-board of France from the
mouth of the Seine to Bayonne, and claimed rights of inheri-
tance over the greater part of the Mediterranean sea-board.,
He inherited Normandy, which had a sort of suzerainty over
Brittany, from his mother, and the territories which lay
between Normandy and Guienne, and formed, as was found
in the fifteenth century, a necessary connection between the
two great duchies, from his father. Guienne came to him
with his wife, who had also claims on Toulouse. He pre-
pared to vindicate these claims in 1159, and took his chan-
cellor Becket, now his dearest friend and soon to be his
principal foe, with him on the expedition. He laid siege to
the town, but soon abandoned the attempt, through good
feeling towards the French king, who held the duchy by a
claim inferior, as some jurists asserted, to those of Henry’s
wife. It issaid that he thought it unwise to attack the French
king, his feudal superior in respect of his foreign possessions,
on territory which he was holding by a disputed title indeed,
but by one of considerable duration. But the attempt led to
results which no one could have anticipated at the time.

The universal rule under which military tenants held their
possessions from the Crown was that they should give their
personal attendance on the king during hig wars, for a given
time, exclusive of that required for going to and returning
from the seat of war. When the English baronage marched
to the Scctch or Welsh frontier, the charges of the journey
The Origin of the Scutage. 29

were comparatively slight, and were endurable. The peculiar
character, too, of the double tenure in England and Nor-
mandy which the comrades of the Conqueror and their
descendants possessed, made the transit from one country to
another natural and easy, though in course of time it plainly
became the custom for the English and French possessions.
of the family to be divided between descendants of the same
degree, so that one should hold the former, another the
latter. But the obligation imposed upon an English baron
to travel on his own charges from Yorkshire or Cheshire to
Toulouse might well seem intolerable. It was, and it re
mained to avery late period, a popular impression that the
foreign possessions of the Crown were an advantage to the
English people, that their revenues lightened the charge of
government and increased the estate of the Crown, and more
reasonably, that the intercourse between the producers and
traders of England and the transmarine possessions of the
king was of signal importance to the former. This was
especially the case with Guienne, as I shall show hereafter.
But the burden of defending those distant territories, cast on
the English tenants in chief, was a great, an unfair, an in-
tolerable load. A commutation of this payment in kind for
a payment in money, which should be a fair and equal assess-
ment, would be an advantage to all parties. It would relieve
the baronage from a most unequal incident, it would give the
king a manageable revenue.

Becket is understood to have been the agent in negotiating
this commutation, which is known under the name of scutage
or escuage. The bargain was effected, as usual, on a fixed
and uniform rate, and the tenants of the Crown were made
familiar with taxes levied in lieu of personal services, and at
a fixed rate. In course of time the scutage is dropped, and
a subsidy based on a valuation, made in the time of Edward L,
and revised in that of Edward III., was substituted for it.
But the fact remained,—a money contribution in lieu of
personal service. The contribution again was extracted from
those who were alone liable to it,—the immediate tenants
of the Crown, ze, to all persons, whether holding of the
30 Lntroductzon.

Crown or not, whether military tenants or socagers, from
persons who held by a rent, and from those who held bya base
tenure, as is proved by the taxing rolls or assessments of
Edward I.

The funds derived from this money commutation enabled
the English monarch to maintain a military force of picked
and trained volunteers, whose efficiency contrasted strongly
with that of the continental or ordinary feudal levies. Ido
not assert that at the commencement of the system such a
military force was developed and maintained, but it certainly
was in course of time. Nor does it appear that Henry II.
used to the full the new instrument which was put into his
hands. As is known, he regulated the militia of freeholders ;
and probably found in the wars which he undertook, most of
which were for the defence of his continental dominions, that
the ordinary feudal force was sufficient for his purpose.
Richard was hardly at all in England. But John appears to
have exacted the scutage from his English tenants constantly.
He had a plea in the loss of Normandy and in the peril to
which his mother’s duchy was exposed. He employed the
funds which he extorted in maintaining an army of mercenaries
on the English soil, which he had collected for foreign
service, and on the plea of foreign service had used for the
oppression of his English subjects.

That at some time or other the English prelates, baronage,
and commonalty would make common cause against the Crown,
and assert that they must be consulted before the king was
competent to levy the military tax was to be expected.
This was done in 1216, and the principle of popular assent to
all extraordinary taxes was affirmed in the Great Charter,
was confirmed subsequently, and was never lost sight of.
The right of the subject to examine into and interpret the
needs of the Crown, to give or refuse subsidies, was the origin,
and remained the essence of Parliamentary government.
Sevetal times, during the reign of Henry III. and before
Parliamentary institutions had been formed and developed,
the great council summoned by Henry debated the king's
necessities and gave or refused to give assistance to the
The English Army. 3l

Exchequer. To have acknowledged that the king was the
sole judge of the extent to which his necessities should be
relieved, would have been to surrender the fortunes of the
whole of England to his discretion. To have merely received
the king’s message, and to have directed a scutage or a sub-
sidy in accordance with the royal wish, would have been
only the same result disguised. Debate involved the inherent
right of refusal,and Matthew Paris shows that the refusal wag
not infrequent. It is known that the improvidence of the
king, the difficulties in which the Exchequer was placed by
his action, and the fact that the country was compromised,
formed the apology for the association at the head of which
were Simon de Montfort and Clare, and for the Barons’ War.
The king could not be trusted; and an attempt, temporarily
futile, was made to exact guarantees from him. It is a
mistake to imagine that the relations of the king and his
people remained the same after the victory of Lewes and the
defeat of Evesham. If Henry was anxious to grasp all that
he had before these events, he found that others, especially
his son, knew better, and saw that there must be a new de-
parture. The commutation of personal service for money
was the germ of the Parliamentary system, of the power of
the Commons over the public purse and of the appropriation
of supply. It took centuries to develop these results, but they
were in the beginnings of Parliament as surely as the forest
oak is in the seedling.

The army formed out of these parliamentary grants was
developed during the “hundred years’ war” with France. Its
jefficiency was remarkable. It constantly broke in pieces
“armies infinitely more numerous than itself, if it were only
properly trained, disciplined, and handled. It was always, or
nearly always, victorious in the field, though it was too small
to permanently occupy the country which it conquered. But
from the Battle of Crecy to the Treaty of Picquigny, an
English army was the terror of continental militias. From
the defeat of Charles the Bold to the battle of Marignano,
the Swiss were the most renowned and formidable soldiers in
Europe. From the decline of the Swiss power till the latter
32 Introduction.

end of the sixteenth century, the Spanish foot-soldier took the
first place in the military force of Europe. Cromwell's New
Model was founded on the same principle as that which had,
nearly three centuries before, been adopted by Edward III. ;
as was also the British army of the Revolution and the war
of the Spanish Succession, as was that which Wellington
formed and commanded.

None but freeholders could serve in the militia, as con-
structed by the Assize of Northampton. But servile birth was
no obstacle to enlistment in the king’s own army, and we get,
incidentally, evidence of the fact. When in 1381, the uprising
of the serfs took place, and the siege of Norwich was under-
taken by Littlestreet, Sir Robert Sale was captain-general
of the city. The insurgents tried to induce him to desert and
become their leader. He had been born of villein descent,
had enlisted in the king’s army, had served in France, had
been knighted, and raised to high military command. The
rebels argued that as he was no gentleman born, but, like
themselves, the son of a villein, he should and ought to lead
them. They proposed, as a reward for his compliance, to put
a quarter of England under his obedience, for it was Tyler’s
plan to govern England in the king’s name, by military
officers set over various districts of the country. Sale refused
to comply, and remained faithful to the king’s service.
Perhaps the reasoning employed by the insurgents was not
the most prudent and convincing that might have been sug-
gested. He defended himself as long as he could, till,
notwithstanding his gigantic strength, he was overpowered
by numbers. But the story shows that a serf could rise to
knighthood during the wars of Edward, at a time when it
was difficult indeed to overcome obstacles of birth, and knight-
hood appeared to be peculiarly the privilege of the well born.
The royal army, like the Church, effaced distinctions of birth,
in the case of those who entered its ranks. A Sale could
become a general, just as a century or more before a Grostéte
could become a bishop. Hence while in France and Germany
the distinction between the noble and the peasant or burgher
was intensified as time went on, in England the nobility was
Public Opinion. 33

constantly recruited from the lower ordersthrough thearmy,and
in course of time through trade. I do not recall any instance
in which the collateral relatives of Churchmen were ennobled
by the wealth of prelates or other opulent ecclesiastics, but it
is clear that the brothers of Chichele, perhaps the kinsmen
of Wykeham, were enriched by the fortunes of their clerical
relatives, though both these personages devoted a large part
of their wealth to the foundation of colleges in Oxford and
elsewhere.

We may therefore trace the germ of great political and
social results in the commutation for personal service on the
foreign possessions of the English kings,—possessions, it will
be remembered, which to a greater or less extent were united
to the English Crown, for nearly four centuries, 2.2. from the
Conquest in 1066 to the final expulsion of the English from
France in 1453. The commutation led directly to the for-
mation of parliamentary institutions, which bargained for
the development of public liberties and private rights by
grants in aid of the Crown. It created an army which from
time to time has had no parallel in efficiency. It broke -
down the distinction of race and birth, and ultimately made
the tenure of the peasant more desirable than that of the
knight and noble ; so that in the end the higher qualities of land
were transformed into the semblance of the lower. It united
all parties, the nobles fitfully and last of all, against the
extravagant pretensions of the prerogative, so that England
at a very early period was the theatre of very singular
political events. A change of dynasty owing to the de-
cadence of a reigning house and the rise of a powerful
subject was effected thrice in French history. The balance
of power in the German Empire was so nicely dubious in
German history, that at one time the interposition of the
pope was able to ruin an imperial family ; and at another
time the ambition of the German princes led to the complete
degradation of the imperial authority, during the period
which intervenes between the fall of the House of Suabia
and the rise of the House of Austria. But in England the
whole people has deposed the reigning monarch six times,

3
34 Introduction.

selecting in five of these cases some other member of the
same family to fill the room of the dethroned king. On two
occasions, earlier than any of these instances, it strove to
dethrone the king. The first attempt would probably have
been successful had not the king died in the midst of the
crisis ; for John appears to have been reduced to almost the
lowest extremity at the time of his opportune death. In
the other case there was a counter revolution, effected, as is
manifest, by the singular tact and ability of the heir to the
throne; for Edward I. was as vigorous and far-sighted a
ruler as his father, Henry III., was irresolute and imprudent.
Now it does not seem that this unity of purpose, frequently
recurring in English history, so puzzling to foreigners that
they called the English “the disloyal nation,” could have been
developed except there had not only been a community of
interest, but familiarity with the agency by which discontent
could be effectively expressed. In the course of this inquiry
we shall find some instances of a similar intensity of opinion
influencing the action of large masses of the common people.

The commutation of precarious service for fixed money
payments became the rule. The charters of self-government
accorded to the towns were always accompanied by an
obligation on the part of the town to pay the fee farm rent
of the municipality to the sovereign; and these annual
payments, fixed in amount, were in early times an important
part of the king’s income. Nor could the lords of the serfs
avoid following the example. It may be the case that
Madox is right in his interpretation of those entries in John’s
pipe-rolls, which seem to indicate the actual sale of serfs and
their families. I am disposed to interpret these entries as
implying that the services of these persons were sold, or the
customary payments made by them in lieu of service were
farmed out—a practice which prevailed long after the period
to which Madox refers. But in the many thousands of
bailiffs’ and manor rolls which I have read, I have never met
with a single instance of the sale of a serf. Nor have I
discovered any labour-rent for which an equivalent money-
payment could not be substituted. That the base tenure of
John's Regn. 35

these serfs, villeins, and ultimately tenants by copy or custom,
involved certain very disadvantageous contingencies and
some very humiliating liabilities is certain, and I shall have
hereafter to comment on them. Most of these nearly cease
at or about the middle of the fifteenth century, for reasons
which I hope I can explain hereafter. It was by these con-
-tingencies and liabilities that the tenure of the copyholder
differed at a very early period from that of the socager, who
paid a fixed money, or fee-farm rent, for his holding, who
had fixity of tenure, but who was liable to distraint or even
eviction on the non-payment of his permanent annual charges
as late as the sixteenth century.

Any one who reads the work of the ablest and most instruc-
tive of our chroniclers, Matthew Paris, will find how marked
a change has come over English life between the accession
of John and the rise of the opposition to the government
of Henry III. During John’s reign, there was but little
organization against the arbitrary action of the Crown, and
every class in England was in turn the victim of its rapacity.
John defied the pope, but was brought on his knees only
because his people were deserting him. When he made
England a fief of the Roman see, he imagined for a time
that he could hold his people in complete subjection by the
assistance of the pontiff; but the whole nation rose against
him, extorted the liberties of the Great Charter, and, with
Langton at their head, defied both pope and king. But
John, thanks to the mercenaries whom he levied and paid
was able to resist them, till they invited Louis of France
to wrest the crown from the unworthy king. It seems that
the action of the pope in John’s reign, and in that of his son, in
interfering on the side of the king with the universal demands
of the people, is the beginning of that deep-seated hostility to the
Roman court which is so marked in the best and most zealous
Churchmen during the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth
centuries. But it is also clear that John was far more autocratic
than any of the sovereigns who followed him, and that the con-
federates of Runnymede did much more than extort a charter,
for they organized a permanent opposition to the government.
30 introduction.

Langton and Pembroke contrived to free England from
Louis and from John’s mercenaries. The policy of these great
men was followed by the Justiciary, Hubert de Burgh, and
the king’s peace was generally maintained. Fortunately for
England, the death of Philip Augustus was soon followed by
that of his son, Louis VIII., and the accession of a child,
Louis IX., the management of whose minority occupied all
the anxieties of the queen-regent. There was, on the whole,
peace between England and France, and, on the whole, peace
between England and Scotland. During this reign, prosperity
was general. The grant of a fifteenth was conceded, under
the express condition that the charter of the forests should
be granted in return,—a precedent for similar bargains, not
always completed, and for constant wrangling, when the king
made his poverty the plea for demands on his subjects.

It is possible that during the minority of Henry III. the
estate of the Crown was lessened. Henry was always in
pecuniary difficulties. His debts grew, payments to his
household were in arrears; and on one occasion we are told
of the brigandage which disgraced Hampshire, the head-
quarters of which were at Alton, that not a few of the culprits
were Henry’s own servants, driven to these acts in consequence
of the non-payment of their wages. The king gave away
largely, not to say lavishly, to his favourites, especially to
his half-brothers and to his wife’s relations. He was fond
of splendid entertainments, and indulged in a passion for
building. He engaged recklessly in undertakings which
were certain to be costly, and unlikely to be successful. The
English were not only perpetually importuned for money,
but were pillaged by the papal emissaries, and fleeced by
intrusive nominees of the pope. The court of Rome had
prohibited, under the plea that the transaction was almost
certain to be simoniacal, the nomination of prelates by the
prince, only to appropriate the collation of these benefices
on behalf of his own creatures, and the king was passive or
consenting. The plainest language is employed by Matthew
Paris to describe and denounce the king’s administration,
who is openly rebuked for his wilful and wanton extrava-
flenry LL. 39

gance by his nobles and clergy, Matthew himself having
constantly told the king his mind about Henry’s conduct.

Though generally good-natured and easy-tempered, Henry
was liable to violent fits of passion. He was served faithfully
by Hubert de Burgh, but turned upon him at last savagely,
stripped him of his property, threatened his life, compelled
him to take sanctuary, and dragged him from his refuge.
In the end, however, he was reconciled to his minister, and
restored him to his property. He furthered the marriage of
his sister Eleanor with Simon de Montfort, employed Simon
in several important offices, but at last quarrelled with both,
assailed his sister in the coarsest language, drove her and her
husband from court, and, after a time, made up the quarrel.
Never was man more capricious and uncertain, more violent
and more placable. He was easy, but perfidious. The
morality of the Roman court assumed to free sovereigns
from the obligations of an oath; and Henry constantly
availed himself of the opportunities to which his own interests
prompted him, and papal dispensations made obvious and
easy. He tried to manage all the affairs of his kingdom, and
so directed all the unpopularity of his administration against
himself, till at last every one, even his brother, whom he had
so enriched that he was credited with being the wealthiest
noble in Europe, took part at first with the malcontents
against him.

It is, I believe, arule that dissatisfaction with a government,
and a determination to reform the conduct of affairs, are
ordinarily shown when a community is generally prosperous.
and that those uprisings which are the outbreak of despair,
lack that organization which attains the end which it purposes.
From the scanty notes which contemporary writers make of
the seasons, it appears that the middle of Henry’s reign was
a period of plenty, owing to propitious seasons. In the later
years of his activity Matthew Paris generally gives some
account of the weather and crops of each year. In four of
these years—1244, 1245, 1247, and 1248—this author informs
us that the harvest was exceedingly abundant, the price of
wheat falling to two shillings a quarter.
33

CHAPTER II.

RURAL ENGLAND—SOCIAL LIFE,

The Contrast between Town and Country Life early Established—Some English
Towns maintained themselves and their Institutions during the Teutonic
Conquest—Ranks in the English Manor—The Tenants at Cuxham, their
Rents and Services, with the Money Equivalents of such Rent—The Bailiff
and Serf—Ibstone Tenants, and their Services—These Services finally
commuted for Money—The Money Payments carefully" Exacted—The
Disabilities of the Serf—Bye Industries in the Villages—Cultivation of Land
Universal among all Classes—The Bailiff’s Annual Roll—Leases occasionally
granted for Terms—Social and Political Effects of this Practice of great
Lords cultivating their own Property—The Agriculture of the small Tenants
identical with that of larger Holdings—The ‘‘ Rent’ of the Thirteenth
Century—Wheat the Principal Product of English Agriculture, and the
Principal Food of the People—Facts and Reasons for this Opinion—The
Lord of the Manor—The Rector of the Parish, his Revenues—The Miller—
The Free and Serf Tenants—The Parish Church—The Houses of the Yeomen
and the Cottagers—The Social Opportunities of the Peasantry—Their Power
of Organization—Past and Present.

T is necessary, in order to arrive at a fairly accurate con-
ception of the economical condition and the social life

of our forefathers in the thirteenth century, to attempt the
description of rural and of town life up to this century. The
country parish had constantly remained, with some modifice-
tions, the Teutonic settlement of the sixth century. The
town, however, had acquired municipal rights, and the
management, under certain conditions, of its own affairs, and
was striving to attain that comparative independence and
freedom from external authority which the municipalities
of Roman origin had, it seems, continuously enjoyed or
exercised. It is impossible to doubt that English merchants
and travellers journeying to Flanders, to the towns of southern
France and of Italy, or those of Rhenish Germany, should
have noted what they saw in those foreign regions, and
have striven to develop the institutions which had given
The English Village, Cuxham. 39

freedom and opulence to those cities. It is likely, too, that
some of the English towns, which had a distinct history
during the Roman occupation, and contrived to maintain
their existence continuously during the days of the Saxon
conquest and the Saxon monarchies, also retained during
this obscure period some of those institutions which the
system of imperial Rome had long made universal. London
and York, Lincoln and Winchester, Exeter and Bath, have
been inhabited cities from the days of Suetonius and Agricola.
They remained, as the great military roads of the Roman
occupation remained, in existence, if not in their ancient
efficiency and form.

The English village, or manor, as the earliest court rolls
inform us, contained several orders of social life. At the
head of the settlement was thg¢ lord, to whom belonged the
manor house, the demesne, which was a several estate,
enclosed and occupied exclusively by him, and such rights
over the inhabitants or tenants of the manor as ancient
compact or more ancient custom secured to him. Sometimes
these tenants held military fees, and were bound to such
obligations as tenancy in knight service defined. Thus the
Warden and Scholars of Merton College, in Oxford, at the
close of the thirteenth century, were lords of Cuxham manor,
in Oxfordshire, and its demesne, with divers rents and services.
The two principal tenants, Quartermain and Pageham, each
hold the fourth part of a military fee within the limits of the
manor. If a scutage is imposed, they have each to pay Ios.,
zé. the fourth part of the assessment on an entire fee.
They made suit in the court. If their heirs are under age,
the college has the guardianship of those heirs; if they have
a female heir, the same persons have the right of disposing
of her in marriage. The Prior of Holy Trinity, of Walling-
ford, holds a messuage, a mill, and six acres of land in free
alms, z¢, under no other obligation or liability than the
offering of prayers on behalf of the donor. A free tenant
has a messuage, with three and three quarter acres, the
portion of his wife. The rent of this is 3s.a year. He has
another messuage with nine acres, for which he pays annually
40 Rural England—Social Lye.

a pound of pepper, the cost of which at the time was about
Is, or Is. 6d. The rector of the parish church has part of a
furrow—ze., one of the divisions by which the common arable
field is parcelled out. For this he pays 2d. a year. Another
tenant holds a cottage in the demesne under the obligation of
keeping two lamps lighted in the church. Another person is
tenant at will of the parish mill, at 40s. a year. The rest of the
tenants are serfs (wativi), or cottagers (coterelli)—thirteen of
the former, and eight of the latter. Five of these tenants
appear to be widows, and the whole manor, omitting the two
tenants of military fees, appears to have contained twenty-
four households.

Each of the serfs has a messuage and half a virgate of
land at least, ze. certainly not less than twelve acres of
arable. His rent is almost entirely corn and labour, though
he makes two money payments,—a halfpenny on Nov. 12th,
and a penny whenever he brews. He is to pay a quarter of
seed-wheat at Michaelmas, a peck of wheat, four bushels of
oats, and three hens on Nov. 12th; and at Christmas a cock
and two hens, and two pennyworth of bread. He is to
plough, sow, and till half an acre of his lord’s land, and give
his services, as he is bidden by the bailiff, except on Sundays
and feast days. He is to reap three days with one man at
his own charges in harvest time. He is not to marry son or
daughter, to sell ox, calf, horse, or colt, to cut down oak
or ash, without the lord’s consent. If one estimates these
services and payments in money of the time, they amount
to near 9s. of which 3s. at least must be set down for the
house and curtilage about it. The labour rent for the land is
therefore about sixpence an acre in money value. The soil
at Cuxham is very good wheat land, a loam lying at the base
of the Chiltern Hills, and yielding in good harvests what was
at that time a very full return, viz., thirteen bushels of wheat
to the acre, twenty of barley, sixteen of oats, and fourteen of
peas. This production is far in excess of other land, the
exact produce of which has come under my observation, and
will be commented on.

Some of these tenants hold, besides their virgate, some other
Labour Rents. 4

plots of land. For these allotments they have to make hay for
one day, with a comrade, and receive a halfpenny; to mow
with a comrade for three days in harvest time, but at their
own charges, and three other days, receiving at the latter the
lord’s food. The nature of these labour payments and allow-
ances being calculated, is about 2s. 4¢.; and the plot was
therefore almost certainly between four and five acres in
extent,

The actual rent paid in this indirect way is the ordinary
amount paid for fairly good arable land. After their harvest
work they are to have together sixpennyworth of beer, and
each a loaf of bread. The amount of the bread given to all
is to be the produce of three bushels of wheat. Every
evening, after the hours are over, each of the reapers is
entitled to carry off as large a sheaf of corn as he can lift
on his sickle.

The cottagers pay from 2s. to Is. 2d. a year for their tene-
ments, and have to give a day or two to haymaking, receiv-
ing a halfpenny for the service. They are also bound to
harvest work for from one to four days, during which they
are fed at the lord’s table. During the rest of the year
they are free labourers, earning wages on the lord’s demesne,
tending cattle, sheep, or pigs on the common of the manor
or in the woods, and engaged in the various crafts which were
customary in the village, or might be required by the more
opulent employers. The village probably contained from
sixty to seventy inhabitants. The parish of Cuxham is
small, containing only 487 acres at the present time. But
it is noteworthy that the tenants in knight service hold their
tenements in Chalgrove; and it will be seen that in the
thirteenth century the arable and common land in the
neighbourhood contained a far larger area than the modern
dimensions of the parish would imply.

The average amount cultivated by the college, who are the
lords of the carucates in the manor, is, during four years for
whick accounts have been exactly preserved, 1814 acres. No
doubt fully one-third of the arable land in these two carucates
was in fallow, which brings the total to about 242 acres
42 Rural England—Social Life.

the land held by the serfs amounts to about 170 acres ; and
the other tenements probably absorbed 30 acres more, so
that from 440 to 450 acres of the present area were, in the
thirteenth century, under tillage or permanent occupation.
But it is perfectly clear that there must have been originally
a far larger amount of common land for pasture than is
implied in the residue of the present area.

For at least three generations one of the serfs of the manor
was the bailiff of the college, cultivated its estate, exacted
its rents and services from the other tenants, and supplied
accurate accounts at the annual audit of receipts and dis-
bursements. The office was transmitted from father to son,
and many transactions of moment were entrusted to this
serf-bailiff. But at last he and all his perished in the plague
of 1348-9, for the name disappears from the college records,
and the college inherits the chattels of the family.

The manor of Ibstone, which is partly in Oxfordshire,
partly in Bucks, was also one of the estates of Merton
College. Here also the college had two carucates, which
were let to farm during part of the period for which infor-
mation has been supplied for the Cuxham estate. They
were let, indeed, for nearly forty years. At the latter part of
the thirteenth century, the college cultivated its own property
by a bailiff’ The modern area of the parish is 1121 acres.
The freehold tenants are twenty in number, the serfs four,
the cottagers four.

One of these freeholders holds a virgate by charter, and
pays a penny yearly at Christmas. His liabilities are—to
ride with his lord when there is war between England and
Wales,—the conditions of tenure were evidently old, for
Wales was thoroughly subdued in 1298, the date of the
rental,—to be armed with iron helmet, breastplate, and lance,
and to remain with his lord, at his own charges, for forty
days. If his services are required for a longer period, he is
to remain with his lord at the lord’s expense. He is also to
do suit in the lord’s court. Besides, he holds a croft, for
which he pays 8¢. yearly. A second has two half-virgates.
He pays 5s. 6d. yearly, and three capons. For the first of these
Lbstone Rents. 43

half-virgates, he is to find at his own cost a reaper for three
days in harvest time, is to carry his lord’s corn in harvest for
a day and a half, receiving as pay a sheaf of corn, and to
annually carry a load to Henley-on-Thames. For the second
half-virgate he is to pay 5s. a year. Another tenant is under
the same liabilities for a similar extent of land, but he also
pays a fee of 20s. for getting possession. Some of the parcels
of land are at higher, some at lower rates, and from his name
one of the tenants appears to be by origin at least a resident
in Oxford. A few hold for a term of life.

The serfs (za¢zvz) all hold half a virgate of land, for which
they have to pay the following, in money or labour: 44a. each
quarter, 44d. on Nov. 12th, and Is. on Christmas-eve, a hen
at Christmas, ten eggs at Easter, and a goose on August Ist.
During one week in harvest the tenant (in this case a woman)
is to find two reapers on Monday and Friday, and on Tuesday,
Wednesday, and Thursday to cut half an acre of corn daily,
unless any day be a feast-day. On another week she is to
find two reapers on Monday, and one on Friday. She is, at
the lord's discretion, to find two men during harvest, who are
to be boarded by the lord. Every fourth week, between
September 29th and August Ist, save Saturdays and feast-
days, she is to work with one other person. She is to take
part in washing and shearing the lord’s sheep. She is to
plough six measures of land, every fourth Sunday, if notice
be given on the Saturday, and during the same period to
plough and hoe half an acre of land sown in winter, half an
acre of Lent land, and half an acre for fallow. The other
three tenants have exactly similar duties, so that it would
seem that the labour rents of the four serfs provided the farm
labour of eight persons from Michaelmas to August Ist, and
four weeks’ harvest work, abundant time being given to the
tenants for getting in their own produce. The tenancy is
more onerous than that at Cuxham, but the rents paid for
the supplementary crofts and acres is low.

The four cottagers got their homes and curtilages at very
low rents. But they have to reap for three days in harvest
time, sometimes for one day in each of four weeks, receiving
44 Rural England—Social Life.

a sheaf of corn every day for their labour. Two of them have
to help in washing and shearing the sheep, and to carry five
hurdles when the fold is pitched in a fresh spot.

I have given these rents, in money, in produce, and in labour,
partly because they exhibit the social economy of the time,
and show how the services, which in the early part of the
next century were entirely commuted for money payments,
were imposed on freeholders and serfs respectively ; partly to
point out that, onerous as these labour-rents occasionally were,
they indicate a real bargain between lord and serf, and, by
implication, point toan arrangement which is very far removed
from that ideal state of villeinage which is described in our
law books, and has been incautiously accepted by those
who have written on the social state of England. According
to these authorities, the serf had no rights of property or
person against his lord. But as long as these dues were
satisfied, it is plain the tenant was secure from dispossession,
Within a little more than half a century of the period of which
Iam writing, when these labour-rents had been universally
commuted for money payments, the same tenants are de-
scribed as copyholders or customary tenants.

Mr. Hallam, the most shrewd and judicious of writers on
early English history, is misled by the emphasis with which
lawyers in the middle ages comment on the dependent con-
dition of the serfs, and therefore conceived that they owed
their emancipation from thraldom, and all negation of rights
and property as regards their lords, to the good-natured con-
tempt with which anoble would look upon the miserable savings
of his serf, and his unwillingness to appropriate so poor a spoil.
No opinion can be more mistaken. The noble and the lord
of a manor gathered, through their bailiffs, stewards, and
collectors of rent, every farthing and half-farthing which was
due to them. When the custom of cultivation by the lord
was abandoned, and land was let for terms of years, or upon
a yearly tenancy, the collection of these ancient and minute
rents became the principal business of the landlord’s agent.
Occasionally they were farmed out for a lump sum to any
cultivator who hired the lord’s demesne. They were, no
The Serf’s Liabcletzes. 45

doubt, frequently bought up by the copyholders. The last
trace of them disappears in the reign of Elizabeth, though
fee farm rents, which have very likely taken the place, in
copyholds of inheritance, of these ancient liabilities, remain
to our own day.

The serf was disabled from migrating to any other
habitation than the manor of his settlement. He could not
bear arms in the militia. He could not enter into religior
or become a secular priest, without the license of his lord,
though it is very unlikely, if he furtively professed himself
that the Church would, at least in the thirteenth century,
suffer him to be seized and handed back to his lord. The
prohibition of the villein’s ordination is one of the Constitu-
tions of Clarendon, and the enactment points to a systematic
evasion of villeinage in the middle of the twelfth century.

If the serf obtained leave of his lord to live away from the
manor, he paid a small annual tax, called capitagium or
chivage. These items of income are long recognised and
entered among the bailiff’s liabilities. They may have con-
stantly hindered the absent serf from obtaining the privileges
of burghers in the towns. But in course of time the chivage
was capitalised and bought up. Sometimes the tax is, con-
temptuously perhaps, called culage, for this expression is not
solely applied to women.

The serf was, as I have said, disabled from marrying his
daughter without license and fine. Very numerous instances
are found of these kinds of payment, under the name of
mercheta, in the earlier times. Similarly fines are paid for
marrying a daughter outside the manor, for marrying a nief,
z.¢.a female serf, who was possessed of property, and by men
of another manor for marrying a female serf from her lord’s
manor. I have found traces of this custom, though they
‘become very infrequent, far on into the fifteenth century.
Sometimes the serf purchases his chivage and his license to
marry at the same time, and is thereafter quit of all obligations.

The serf’s son was unable to get instruction and enter
orders, regular or secular, without his lord’s consent. Entries
of fines paid for going to the schools and entering the Church
46 Rural England—Social Life.

are exceedingly common in the manor rolls of the thirteenth
and fourteenth centuries, though they become increasingly rare
and finally disappear in the fifteenth. These payments, de-
grading as they may seem, are indirect proof, occurring early,
that the chattels of a serf were safe, at an early date, from
arbitrary forfeiture to the lord. In 1394, at a village in
Hunts, a serf had committed homicide and abjured the realm.
His chattels, forfeited to his lord, the Abbot of Ramsey, are
valued at 45 os. 8d. We may be sure that he had carried
away with him as much of his movables as he could. The
suni, supposed to be recoverable, represents fairly enough the
stock of a small farmer, the actual value of his holding, after
his dues were deducted, not being more than a third or
fourth of this sum.

A thirteenth century village then contained some sixty to
eighty inhabitants, most of whom were constantly engaged in
husbandry, all, indeed, for certain periods of the year. There
were few handicraftsmen, for probably common carpenter's
work was undertaken by ordinary farm hands, as we know it
was by the small farmers four or five centuries later than the
thirteenth. The most important artificer, indeed, was the
smith; but it is plain from the records which have been
preserved, that the smith’s work, even on the demesne estate,
was not sufficient to maintain a smith in any manor, and that
the same person served the needs of three or four. When the
bailiff of one of these Oxfordshire parishes makes a large
purchase of millstones in London, and brings them by water
to Henley, he hires the smith at this town to complete the
necessary work on his purchase, before he carries them by
road from Henley to their destination at Cuxham and Oxford.

It is only by casual notices that we learn anything about
the existence of other industries besides agriculture in the
rural districts. But it may be taken for granted that weaving
was a bye product in nearly all villages, and the tanning or
tawing of leather in most. Coarse linen and woollen clothing
were doubtlessly manufactured in the cottages of the peasantry,
for we occasionally find that flax or hemp was purchased in
a raw state, and given in the villages to be woven, the former
The Annual Audit. 47

much more rarely than the latter. The fact that woollen
cloth is so rarely found in the charges of agriculture,
especially at a time when payments in kind are so general,
except when the purchase is made for a great noble or a
wealthy corporation, suggests that homespun fabrics were
generally available. The same inference is implied in the
sale of locks and refuse wool in the neighbourhood of the
farm. But it is also contained in the fact, though the
evidence is of a later date, that many small and obscure
villages in the south of England had flourishing manu-
factures of textile fabrics, at a period long preceding the
migration of part of the Norfolk industries to the west of
England, from whence, in comparatively recent times, they
have travelled to the north. Even in Norfolk, which was
their special home in the thirteenth century, they were
carried on in villages where agriculture must have been a
principal employment. The yeoman and the labourer un-
doubtedly fashioned for themselves in winter time, as we
learn from the earliest works on husbandry, most of the tools
which were needed for their calling,—all, in short, which were
not made of iron or steel, or shod with iron.

The first information which we get as to the occupations
of the people in rural districts discloses to us the fact that
almost every one not only possessed land, but that he cul-
tivated it. The king was not only the largest landowner in
the realm, but the most extensive agriculturist, the wealthiest
owner of live and dead stock. The estates of such magnates
as the Earls of Norfolk and Gloucester were nearly all cul-
tivated by their lords; and I owe to the accident of the
‘surrender of Bigod’s lands at the beginning of the fourteenth
century, and to the escheat of other and similar estates, and
to the preservation of some few fragments of what must have
been at one time exceedingly abundant in the public archives,
that I have been able to discover so much of the economical
condition of medizval England. On nearly every manor
there was a bailiff, who cultivated the soil for his lord, made
purchases of necessary stock and materials, hired labour, sold
produce, and submitted his account in an exact and elaborate
18 Rural England—Social Life.

balance sheet yearly. The form which this account takes
is uniform, whatever part of the country it comes from. No
manuscripts of the middle ages are commoner, and frequently
none are better preserved than the handy books of those
legal and commercial forms which were adopted universally,
Among copies of the statutes and forms of writs and cove-
nants, one generally finds the form in which the annual
balance sheet of the lord’s profit and loss and capital account
is to be rendered by the bailiff.

The name of the estate is engrossed on the head of the roll
of parchment, front and back. Then follows the name of
the bailiff, provost, seneschal, or receiver of rents, as the case
may be, with the date, generally the regnal year of the king,
though in the case of some monastic houses the date of the
abbot’s or abbess’s election is substituted for the regnal year,
or taken with it. Generally the date is from Michaelmas to
Michaelmas, rarely a little later, more frequently a little
earlier. I will illustrate the facts by the Cuxham bailiff’s roll
of 1316-17. The first entry is the arrears with which the bailiff
is debited. Then follow the rents of assize, that is, the fixed
payments of the tenants. At Cuxham, these amounted to
38s. 102¢. In the rental they amount to 38s., with a variable
tax on domestic brewing. Then follows the rent of the two
mills, one for grinding corn, the other a fulling mill, a proof,
by the way, of the prevalence of these domestic industries to
which I have referred. Next follow the corn sales, the sales
of stock, the exits of the manor, z.e., commutations for labour
rents, sales of farm produce, except those of the dairy, which
follow under the next heading, and sales of wool. Then come
manorial fines on entry, heriots, the pleas of court, and sun-
dries. This completes the schedule of receipts.

Next come the expenses. The first item is always the bad
debts of the estate and the charges payable to others. Then
the charge of the ploughs, the carts, small purchases, charges
of the dairy, and purchases of corn and stock. Next we have
the cost of the buildings. Then comes the bill for wages, for
threshing and winnowing, hoeing and mowing, harvest work,
servants’ yearly wages, and extraordinary expenses. The last
The Bawltff’s Roll. 49

item is foreign charges, ze. items which cannot be reduced to
any of the foregoing heads. The whole is reckoned up.
Then the bailiff notes the sums which he has paid to his
employers, and what he has paid on their account. Among
these items, but under a separate head, are occasionally tallies
for wheat taken by the king’s purveyor. This concludes the
entries on the face of the roll.

The back of the roll contains an exact account of all the
stock and produce of the farm, of all that was on it at the
conclusion of the last audit, of all that has been produced in
the current year, of all that has been disposed of by sale or
otherwise, and of all that remains as a liability against the
bailiff. Besides sales, there is the seed corn, that used for
domestic consumption, and that in payments to farm servants.
The tailings of the wheat—it is a year of famine—are mixed,
in the proportion of two to one, with coarse barley and pea
meal. The same exact account of the sale or consumption of
every peck of any other kind of grain is rendered. Then
follows an account of the live stock on the estate—horses,
cattle, sheep, pigs, and poultry; the produce of cheese, of
woolfels, and wool. Each of the several particulars is balanced
after the statement, for the account is more minute and exact
than any modern account. Printed in full, it requires twelve
pages of closely ranged type in a full-sized octavo page.

The figures are all Roman. I have found Arabic numerals
as early as the middle of the thirteenth century; but their
use in accounts is not familiar before the latter part of Eliza-
beth’s reign. This is acurious but not an isolated illustration
of the conservative habits of the age in all matters of business,
One would have thought that the obvious convenience of a
decimal system in calculation would have commended thé
practice in accounts which are so minute and elaborate as
those which I have described, especially as this practice of
account keeping and stock taking was so general. The
account is drawn up by a “clerk,” who is paid a moderate
fee for his trouble. The demand for the services of such
scribes must have been considerable between the latter end
of July and the beginning of November. Frequently similar

4

PROPERTY OF LIBRARY 5410
NEW YORK eT ATE SCUOOL
INGUSTRIAL AND LAGSR RELATIONS
CURNELL UNTWERSITY
50 Rural England—Social Life.

or analogous accounts were rendered at other times of the year,
as, for instance, on the vacancy of the bailiffs office before the
time of the annual audit came round, or for general stock
taking over the whole estate of a noble or a monastery or a col-
lege. The bailiff’s audit was only one of the numerous schedules
of receipt and expenditure which were constantly being com-
piled. There could have been no lack of scribes during this
period, and no cessation of employment. The art of account
keeping and engrossing must have been very generally known,
considering the demand which must have been made on the
scribes’ labours, and instruction must have been far more
readily accessible than modern writers are apt to imagine.

Though the custom of landholders cultivating their own
estates was general, it was not invariable. The corporate
owners of a small estate would probably not be opulent
enough to incur the charges and the risks of an agricultural
occupancy, and probably let their lands, as a rule, to tenants,
But even the more opulent corporations created leases on
some of their estates. Thus the fellows of Merton College
let their Ibstone estate for thirty-five years, and their Gam-
lingay estate for fourteen years from the year 1300. They
let their Basingstoke estate for twenty-one years from 1310,
and their Wolford estate before that date. The property
which they possessed in Northumberland and Durham was
let as early as 1280, and they never cultivated their estates in
Leicestershire. But in all but the last, they let land and
stock, alive and dead, together, stipulating that at the termi-
nation of the lease all their chattels should be replaced in
good and sound condition, or that a fixed price should be
paid for all that was deficient or deteriorated. This land and
stock lease is so significant in the history of English agricul-
ture that I shall have to comment on it at greater length
hereafter.

Several very significant consequences followed from this all
but universal practice on the part of landowners of cultivating
their own estates with their own capital and at their own risk.

1. The practice made every one anxious to keep the peace
and to put down marauders. Every owner of property was
Effects of Landlord Cultivation. 51

interested in an efficient police. There was plenty of crime
and violence in the middle ages, not a tittle brigandage from
time to time, for highway robberies and the organization of
gangs of plunderers were not unknown. But it is remarkable
how very seldom one reads in these farm accounts (and I
have read very many thousands) of agrarian robberies. Even
in years of great dearth, such as the terrible time 1315-1321,
when there was a veritable famine in England, and many
perished from want, we read indeed of alarm that the dire
pressure might induce thefts of live stock, but there have been
no instances in my reading of that period, the evidence being
plentiful, that agrarian robberies were actually committed.
There is a well-known complaint of the younger Despenser
about the outrages and losses which he suffered at the hands
of marauders ; but it will be remembered that Despenser was
looked upon by a very powerful faction asa public enemy,
whom it was lawful, and even meritorious, to harry. Long
after the distress to which I have referred ceased, there
remained a feeling of respect, even in the most disturbed
times, for agricultural property. We read of no complaints
of plundering during the war of succession, except when
Margaret of Anjou’s northern army, in the beginning of the
year 1461, did not refrain from pillage; an act of folly as well
as of violence, for it raised Edward IV. tothe throne. The
fact is further illustrated by the special characteristic of
English agriculture,—the extensive maintenance of sheep. I
know no reason why France, the Low Countries, and the Valley
of the Rhine should not have bred sheep as successfully as
the English farmer did from the middle of the thirteenth
century, except in the fact that a sheep is a very defenceless
animal, and needs for his continued existence that. he should
live without the risks of violence. It seems to me that the
comparative success of English agriculture in early times is
due to the general conviction that every person was interested
in preserving agricultural property from theft or violence.

2. The custom which prevailed materially modified the
effects of primogeniture. It is easy to explain the origin and
motive of thé English law of succession to real estate, though
52 Rural England—Social Life.

it is not so easy to follow its growth. But during the period
in which landowners cultivated their own estates, a great part
of the harshness and mischief of the custom was obviated.
On ordinary arable land in the thirteenth century, stock was
three times the value of the land, when adequate stock and
farm implements were kept upon the land. Water or warped
meadow was always very valuable. But ordinary arable
land, yielding, when let to farm, rarely more than 6d. an
acre rent, was worth, to buy or sell, little more than from
6s. to 8s. an acre; while the stock on the land, live and
dead, the cost of labour, and the amount of capital held in
suspense, was from 18s. to 20s. an acre. Now, the younger
children shared with their elder brother in the personal
estate of their ancestor, unless, indeed, they were deprived
of it by an ancestor’s will, Hence the phenomenon of an
opulent younger son is seen commonly enough during the
time that the ancient custom lasted; while the appearance
of the impecunious younger son, who is to be provided for
by war, or the Church, or the public treasury, is synchronous
with the abandonment of the ancient practice.

3. The system under which owners of land were generally
capitalist cultivators must have regularly and materially
assisted the distribution of land. Itis true that in the time
of which I am writing the ownership of real estate—often,
I admit, under onerous conditions—was all but universal,
A landless man was an outlaw, a stranger; one registered in
no manor, a thief. There were owners of real estate whose
possessions were limited to a cottage and curtilage about it,
a cow’s grass on the common, or at least grass for geese and
fowls, since, as I have already shown, cottagers had to pay
poultry rents, just as villeins at half a virgate did. But I
am thinking of something more—of the necessity under
which the eldest son was put of making such terms with his
brothers, perhaps his sisters, as would enable them to exchange
portions of the stock which came to them by inheritance or
by will for the land which came to the eldest son by
inheritance, and could not come to him or his brothers by
will. 1 make no doubt that it was the custom to arrive at
Effects of Landlord Cultivation. 53

these arrangements by subinfeudation—ze, by the elder \
brother granting the younger, lands to be held of the elder
as superior lord; and that when it was thought to be public
policy to put an end to subinfeudation by the statute known
as guia emptores, it was necessary to give the owner of land
full powers of alienation, in order to make it possible that
these bargains should be negotiated and completed. For we
do not hear of the poverty of younger sons till a far later
period; and we hear of it most of all after the risks of the
civil wars during the last half of the fifteenth century
encouraged the extension of entails from the small and few
holders of such estates to the great nobles, and further
suggested the additional security of what was called a use
—i.é., the introduction of a trustee whose estate might endure
for others, and thus the penalties of forfeiture might be
avoided.

4. As the tradition of a time in which the great noble was the
capitalist cultivator of land survived after the practice ceased,
as is proved by the care shown for the farmer’s interest, even
during the heats of civil discord and actual war, so it early
suggested legislative aid to the agricultural interest. The
attempt so frequently made, so long unsuccessful, and so
successful finally, when a combination of circumstances made
it possible to make labour abundant and cheap for the
farmers, was not, for a century and a half, an effort made
to keep up rents in the interests of the landowners, for these
were virtually stationary long after landlord agriculture had
entirely ceased, but was an attempt to give the farmer a
chance, and probably to increase the area of arable land by
enclosures, the object of all writers on agriculture during
the seventeenth century. Nordo I believe that the purpose of
the landowner during the early part of the eighteenth, in the
bounties and corn laws, which were enacted and extended,
was his own direct advantage, except in so far as he got the
lion’s share in the enclosure, but was the encouragement of
arable farming. Any student of Adam Smith will find that
his fear that free trade doctrines could not and would not
be accepted, in spite of their justice and wisdom, was not
54 Rural England—Social Life.

derived from the attitude of the landowners, but from that of
the manufacturing, and still more from that of the mercantile
classes. In fact, it was only after the great rise in rents, con-
sequent on the continental war, that the landowner became
passionately protectionist.

5. The custom of capitalist cultivation by the landowner led
again to that peculiarity in the relations of landlord and
tenant which has been called the English system. Under
this, the landowner was expected to do all repairs, to effect
all permanent improvements, other than those which were
conceived to be in the course of good husbandry, and, in the
earlier days of the landlord and tenant system, to insure
his tenant against extraordinary losses of stock, especially
sheep. The relations of landlord and tenant began, as I shall
show, at the beginning of the sixteenth century, to be °
unsatisfactory, particularly in the fact that good husbandry,
which seems an obvious duty of the tenant, was discouraged
by raising rent on the sitting tenant, to use a modern phrase,
in proportion to the excellence of his husbandry, the eager-
ness with which he adopted improvements in the process of
his art, and the difficulty he had of extricating his capital
from his holding on its determination. But the principle that
the landowner should do repairs, and contribute all permanent
‘additions to fixed capital in land, has been for ages the
practice, and was in early times a far wider practice than
it has been for the last century. Without such a custom it
would have been impossible to have maintained the English
land system. Agriculture would have hopelessly stagnated,
and there would have been either discontent as fierce as that
in Ireland, and as violent, or the farmers would have entered
into some combination which would have had the effect of
establishing either a customary rent by the submission of the
landowner, or one fixed by a general understanding among
occupiers, and determined in the same way that trades unions
fix wages and capitalists in certain industries fix prices.
Combination may neutralize competition in the rent of land
as effectualiy as it does in railway rates and in divers
trades,
The Landlords Liabwlitees. 55

The lord did no repairs to the holdings of his freehold
tenants or to those of his serfs. The annual accounts of
bailiffs are silent about such repairs, though the rents due
from cottages are duly entered along with other rents of
assize. It would even seem that the rent of cottages was
a payment made to the lord for permission to erect and
maintain a hovel. But the amount of the rent was unalter-
able, and thus was an equivalent of the concession. But the
fact that such tenants on fixed rents were liable to repairs
on their holding—they were generally allowed to obtain the
raw material from forest or close or common—was a reason
why tenants-at-will or on short leases, or even on long leases,
should look to the landlord for all repairs. In town houses
these repairs were constantly very costly, and made the

- difference between gross and net rent very large indeed. On
farms they would not be so considerable; but the repairs on
the lands occupied by precarious tenants are found, as time
passes on, and rackrenting, or its nearest equivalent, became
general, to be a very serious item in the rent collector’s
schedule of expenses. And when we add to this the insurance
of stock, which must have been a grave outlook in years
when sheep-rot was general, as, for instance, in 1448, the cost
to the landowner of recouping his tenant for these losses to
his stock, when the loss exceeded a certain amount, might
have reduced the gross rent of land to almost as great an
extent as the charge for repairs lowered the actual rent received
for house property in towns.

We have, as may be expected, no account of the produce
obtained from the holdings of these small freeholders and
serfs. But there is no reason to doubt that it was identical
in character with that produced, manipulated, and sold by
the lord’s bailiff. The peasant’s homestead, barns, and byres
were the microcosm of the greater estate, and were probably
quite as productive and even better cultivated. In my native
village in Hampshire there was in my youth no tenant-
farmer at all, though one sale of an outlying farm to a uon-
resident landlord was effected just before I came to the
university. The holdings of these yeomen varied, the land
56 Rural England—Social Life.

being generally light, from forty to eight hundred acres. But
the parish contained fully twice as many homesteads as there
were several estates, all with yards and barns about them,
though the farmhouses had been cut up into tenements for
agricultural labourers. The process of accumulation by owning
occupiers had been going on for seventy or eighty years, as I
learnt from the talk of old people in the village, and it is
certain that if one could have gone back to the earlier rentals
—the copyhold of the manor, then only a small part of the
parish, was held under somewhat onerous conditions—we
should have found that there were far more yeoman land-
holders than in the period within living memory, that there
were sixty original proprietors, while in the time I speak
of there was evidence of no more than thirty. In this village
the system of cultivation carried on by the smaller proprietors
was exactly identical with that which was practised by the
larger, and the system under which labour, supplementary to
that of the yeoman, was hired. Generally speaking, too; there
was the same simplicity of life, unchanged, I believe, except
in a few particulars, from that which was general in a far earlier
age. Nor were these yeomen unprosperous when they were
active, temperate, and thrifty. The greatest peril they ran
was in purchasing land with their savings, mortgaging it to
obtain possession, and, up to this having committed no serious
error, cultivating the land with insufficient capital. I have
known several yeomen, who, having fallen into this mistake,
have lived a life of extreme labour and thrift, and, having
enlarged their estate, were poorer at their death than they
were when they began their career. And in this day I believe
that agricultural distress is, and has been for some years past,
due to the double cause of enlarged domestic expenditure
and insufficient capital for the extent of land occupied.

In the thirteenth century there was no rent paid, in the
ordinary economical sense of the word. There was no com-
petition for holdings in that state of society in which the
great landowner cultivated his property with his own capital,
and the smaller tenants had a genuine fixity of tenure under
traditional, customary, and certain payments. There were
Rents of the Middle Ages. 57

occasions, it is true, in which from an early period l»~- were
let to farm. But these tenancies, to which allusion has been
made above, were land and stock leases, on really beneficial
terms to the tenant; for the estimated value of the stock, or
its compensation, in case the tenant failed to restore it at
the termination of his lease, was from thirty to forty per cent.
below the market value, unless, as is highly improbable, the
stock on such land was far inferior in quality to that for
which market prices are recorded. . Besides, such leases were
for the convenience of the landowner or from his necessity,
and consequently would be negotiated on terms which were
as low as, or probably lower than, customary holdings at a fixed
rent. This at least is the inference which I gather from the
rate at which stock and land are let together when the
custom becomes general. The only apparent illustration of
the existence of competitive rents is the fine which is
occasionally paid for admission to the property of an outgoing
tenant. Instances of the payment of such a fine are rare. It
is sometimes called a fine, occasionally gersinna, or gersuma.
In all cases, however, it appears to be a payment made either
for entering on the estate of an ancestor, and therefore is
indirect evidence that the tenancy even of a serf was of a
beneficial kind, or for acquiring the exhausted or abandoned
tenancy of some other occupier in the manor. But a com-
petition which is practically limited to the tenants of the
same manor could hardly be called a competition at all.
These fines correspond in amount generally to the two years’
value of the tenancy, which ultimately became the maximum
fine on succession or alienation in manors. As I deal farther
with the subject of genuine farmers’ rents, I shall be able to
point out when competitive rents arose, and with what con-
sequence to the tenant and to English agriculture.

In point of fact, the rent of the tenant in the time immedi-
ately before me may have been, and probably was, in its
origin, as the Dialogue on the Exchequer (i. 10) states, a
license to live on and cultivate the soil, always, indeed, less
than a competitive rent, and perhaps, in its beginning, a
precarious tenure. But in course of time the tenancy became
58 RuralEngland—Social Life.

permanent, the rent remaining fixed. It was as full, indeed,
as could be obtained, for I find that when land is let on lease
for short periods, or for life, the rent is no higher than that
paid by freeholders and copyholders, but it is not as much as
could be paid, seeing that the tenants were constantly able to
add to their tenancies, and were frequently called upon for
extraordinary payments, which could not have been yielded
from a genuine rack rent. And it is a proof of Adam
Smith’s sagacity, that without the materials before him from
which the facts could be demonstrated, he saw that rent was
originally a tax, and that a long interval must have occurred
before farmers’ rents became real and oppressive.

I have commented above on the rents paid by the Cuxham
and Ibstone tenants at the latter part of the thirteenth
century. I could illustrate the topic further by quotations
from rentals of a later date, and in other parts of England,
from tenancies far larger in extent than those which I have
dealt with, and from holdings in which serf-labour is regularly
commuted for money payments. In some cases the labour rents
have entirely disappeared and fee farm rents have taken their
place at a very early date. This is especially the case in the
north of England. But in all, or nearly all, a small amount
being deducted for house and curtilage, the maximum rent paid
is 6d. an acre. On one estate in Durham seven tenants hold
over two oxgangs, each equal to a carucate, or hide, and con-
taining at least 120 acres, four a single oxgang, and one
holding thirty-three acres, atoft, and a cottage. Here there
are coterells with cottages, and pieces of land ranging from
nine acres to two. These instances could be multiplied
indefinitely, and prove how general was the distribution of
land, and how the tenant of the small estates was husband-
man as well as possibly labourer, if not in his own person
in that of his sons and daughters. Indeed, it is frequently
found that the principal servants on a farm, the bailiff,
the shepherd, and the carter, were tenants of the manor, and
held land and stock, having dealings on their own account
with the lord, derived but apart from their relations to him as
big farm hands. Their occupation and their industry were |
‘ Wheat and Barley. 59

ae

identical in kind, but differed only in extent from those of
the lord himself.

There is a general impression that the Englishman in the
days of the Plantagenets lived on the coarser and inferior
kinds of grain. That most of the best wheat went to market,
supplied the towns, and was even exported to foreign
countries, is probable, or even certain, especially during the
fifteenth century. But over the greater part of England, over
all, indeed, which has come under my inquiry, even as far north
as the county of Durham, the staple produce of agriculture, and
by implication the staple food of the people, was wheat, though
oats are also consumed as the food of man in those northern
regions. From the earliest times wheat has been the prin-
cipal grain on which the English have lived. No better proof
of this can be given than an account of the acreage devoted
to the different kinds of grain on various estates. It will be
plain that the crop with the widest area was the staple
produce, and had the widest market. Now the proof of this
is forthcoming, for by an accident the account of the acreage,
the seed sown, and the produce obtained for four years during
the first half of the fourteenth century, on eleven estates
belonging to one corporation, have been preserved. I say by
accident, for the record had nothing but a temporary interest,
and is probably one surviving from a long series of similar
documents which have perished.

1. During the four years 1333-1336, Merton College,
Oxford, was cultivating with its own capital eleven of its own
estates. Three of them are in Surrey, one in Kent, two in
Cambridgeshire, one in Bucks, one in Warwickshire, two in.
Oxfordshire, and one in Hants. In the first of these years
1,206 acres were under cultivation for grain; in the second,
1,3154 acres; in the third, 1,457 acres; and in the last 1,440}
acres. But in the first year 527 acres are sown with wheat ;
in the second, 460; in the third, 5604; and in the fourth, 510};
so that the acreage of wheat is nearly 44 per cent. in the first
year, nearly 35 in the second, about 39 per cent. in the
third, and nearly 354 per cent. in the fourth.

The next most considerable crop is that of oats, the acreage
40 Rural England—Soctal Life.

of which is 333, 330, 2994, and 3354 for the four several years.
‘Oats are very slightly the food of man in southern and central
England. They are chiefly used for horses.

The two kinds of barley, ordinary barley with two rows of
grain, and the coarse kind of four rows, called bigg or bere in
modern husbandry, but anciently known most frequently
under the name of drage, a term now entirely obsolete,
occupy 263 acres in the first year, 310 in the second, 3964 in
the third, 3523 in the fourth. Of these the former was used
for beer almost exclusively, the latter for beer occasionally,
‘but most commonly for feeding pigs and poultry. It entirely
‘disappears from cultivation at about the middle of the fif-
teenth century.

Rye is more scantily cultivated than any of the cereals.
In the first and second years, 524 acres are sown with it; in the
third, 50; in the fourth, 72. The only places where it forms a
considerable crop are at Gamlingay in Cambridgeshire, and
in the immediate neighbourhood of Oxford. It is occasionally
mixed with wheat for the manufacture of bread. But it almost
disappears as a grain crop in southern and central England
at or about the middle of the fifteenth century. Sometimes,
under the name of mixtil, wheat and rye are sown together.
During the four years under examination, 7} acres are sown in
the first, 19 in the second, 144 in the third, and 132 in the fourth.

The three kinds of leguminous plants’ cultivated at this
time, beans, peas, and vetches, occupy in the area of culti-
vation for the four years, 113, 144, 136}, and 156% acres
respectively. Among these is a small amount of white peas
on one estate, three acres in one year and five in another.
These are used for human food. Beans and vetches are horse
food ; grey peas are generally given to pigs. It will, I think,
be clear from this analysis of farm produce that the production
of wheat for human food, and barley for malting purposes, was
the principal and most important part of arable cultivation.
There are, however, certain other facts, which prove the same
position, that the Englishman of the middle ages subsisted on
wheaten bread and barley beer.

2. The monastic chroniclers constantly give, though one
Wheat the Food of the English. 61

must set little store by their figures, amounts of prices in
years of special plenty or exceptional dearth. I have already
adverted to a nearly continuous account of the harvests in
England, noted by Matthew Paris, during the last fifteen
years of this author’s literary labours. In every case, the only
grain on which the writer thinks proper to comment is wheat.
What is true of Paris is true of other authors, of the notes
made by farmers and corporations. Corn with them is
wheat, and they note the dearness or cheapness of this ex-
clusively, as the main or the principal agricultural interest.

3. In the research which I have made into agricultural
values, the amount of information obtained as to wheat
prices, whether one takes the record of production and sale
on cultivated land, or that of consumption by corporations
and individuals, the number of the entries of wheat and malt
grains far transcends that of any other information, though
the quantities and prices of other kinds of grain are sufficient,
as is proved by the maintenance of the ratio of value between
them, for the purposes of inference. I have collected, between
1259 and 1583, in my published volumes, 13,313 prices of
wheat, 5,172 prices of barley, 4,344 prices of malt, and 6,494
prices of oats. The prices of wheat recorded in these volumes
are more than double those of any other kind of grain.

4. At an early period, so early that the statute is reputed
to be the oldest after the Great Charter, if, indeed, it be not
earlier still, for no date is assigned to the enactment, the
assize of bread was made an English law, and every locality
had a police for making it effective. But the assize takes no
account of any but wheaten bread, and when it is extended
to malt, contemplates only that manufactured from barley,
I cannot but think in the provident care which the legislature
took at so early an epoch of the interests of the consumers,—
a care which it has not wholly abandoned in our own day,
—attention would have been given to rye, or oaten, or barley
bread, if these had been in early times the food of the people.

5. With the same purpose the legislature prohibited the
exportation of corn when the price of the quarter exceeded a
certain amount. Thus in the year 1438-9, the petitions in
62 Rural England—Social Life.

Parliament request that permission should be granted to
facilitate the inland distribution of wheat and malt by water
carriage, the year being one of severe dearth. The petition
was refused on the ground that advantage would be taken of
the concession to export English produce to foreign countries
where the dearth was as severe as it was in England. But as
before, the restraint is only on wheat, barley, and malt, the
latter being generally sold at nearly the same price as the
former, since the manufactured article fills more space than
the natural grain.

6. The extreme rarity of famine in England. I have no
doubt that there were local scarcities, possibly local famines,
though, as I shall show hereafter, the means of communication
between the producer and the market were good, and the
cost of carriage, as might be expected in a country of
numerous small proprietors, was very low. But I know of
only one distinct period of famine in the whole economical
history of England, in so far as contemporaneous and statis-
tical evidence demonstrates the facts. This is the seven years
1315-21, especially in the first two and thelast. Then famine
prevailed, the people perished for lack of food, and the most
conclusive proof of famine is afforded, for wages obtained a
real and a permanent rise, owing to a scarcity of hands, pro-
longed for a considerable time, and thereupon effecting a
lasting increase of wages; for temporary dearth rather depresses
wages. It needs a considerable reduction in the number of
those who seek employment to bring about a real increase of
wages, and this state o things must last till the increased rate
becomes familiar or customary.

Now it is a fundamental principle in the theory of popula-
tion and wages, that the former does not increase beyond
what is the customary food of the people, and that the latter
do not fall below the amount necessary for the labourer and
his family to subsist on, during the less advantageous part of
the labour year. Hence a high standard of subsistence is a
more important factor in the theory of population, than any of
those checks which Malthus has enumerated. The economist
who treats of the social state of any country should note in the
Inhabitants of the Manor. 63

very first instance what is the customary food of the people.
Famine is, or has been, periodical in Ireland and India, for the
mass of the people in those countries feed on an agricultural
produce which is the cheapest of any, and is most affected by
contingencies of climate or weather. Scarcity has occurred
from time to time in England, frequently in the fourteenth
century; in only one year of the fifteenth, at least in any
marked degree; seriously in the middle of the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries, being aggravated in the former of these
epochs by the scandalous state of the currency; in the latter
part of the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries; and during the
first fifteen years of the present, when, perhaps, the dearth more
nearly approached famine than at any period since the great
famine which is referred to above, the only example in the
statistical history of England.

I have dwelt in detail on these facts, and have given this
evidence of the condition of the English peasantry, in order
that I may, if possible, once for all show how untenable the
opinion is which doubts that, as far as the mere means of life
were concerned, the Englishman of the middle ages lived in
ordinary times in coarse plenty. I shall, in a subsequent part
of this work, treat of his wages and their power of purchase,
and of the profits which were obtained from agriculture. Ido
not indeed myself doubt that the comforts of all but the most
destitute dwellers in cities have been increased by the growth
of society and the diffusion of knowledge, that the continuity
of comfort is more secure, and that the workman has shared in
the advantages of economical progress. But the landowner,
the capitalist, and the trader have done infinitely better than
he has, and for a longer period. I am convinced that at no
period of English history for which authentic records exist,
was the condition of manual labour worse than it was in the
forty years from 1782 to 1821, the period in which manu-
facturers and merchants accumulated fortune rapidly, and in
which the rent of agricultural land was doubled.

Even though the lord did not reside within his manor, the
principal house in the village belonged to him, and was
inhabited by his bailiff. Here the court baron and court leet

~e ~
64 Rural England—Social Life.

were held, the former of freeholders, and concerned with civil
proceedings, the latter of all tenants, free and serf, whose
principal business it was to be a jury for the trial or acquittal
of offenders. Such manor houses are still to be found, the
building of which goes back nearly to the thirteenth century.
Many have been expanded into larger homes, or been partly
razed forthe building of country houses, or have been turned into
farm houses. In my native place the latter result has occurred ;
but the antiquary can discover in the walls of the yeoman’s
homestead unmistakable relics of thirteenth or fourteenth
century work, when the house was the residence of the lord of
a single manor. This manor house was generally near the
church. , Sometimes the church and churchyard were within
the private grounds of the lord. His ancestors had probably
built the church, and he was the patron of the advowson, as
well as the principal parishioner. If he was the lord of other
manors, he paid periodical visits to his manor house, at least to
take the audit of his bailiff, perhaps for a temporary residence
there.

The next most important personage in the parish was the
rector. We will suppose that some neighbouring monastery
has not been able to secure the impropriation of the benefice,
and to serve the parish with the offices of some starved vicar
or ordained monk. This rector has generally a fair share of
glebe land, as well as tithes and dues. As the owner of the
glebe, he is, like the rest of the inhabitants, an agriculturist ; as
the tithe owner, he keeps his eye on the yeoman’s corn strips or
closes, on his lambing fold, his shearing stead, and his poultry
yard. As the receiver of dues for ecclesiastical offices, he
exacts his fee, graduated according to the means of his
parishioner, on churchings, weddings, and burials, claims his
Easter dues from every home, and his price for obits and
masses. For one of the most singular features in the par-
ticulars of medizval estates is the permanent charges which
are imposed on the tenant. We have seen what was the
character of those which were exacted in the interest of the
lord. Very likely the lord’s estate, beyond what was due to
the Crown, was charged with some payment to a monastery
The Parson—The Miller. 65

some exhibition to a college, some annual pension for a
chantry, as well as with dower to a widow, and portions, to
be realized from the sale of stock, or by a rent charge, for
brothers and sisters.

We learn from information given us at a later period than
that on which I am immediately commenting, that some of
these rectors had large incomes from the benefices. Gas-
coigne, writing in the fifteenth century, tells of some which
were worth £100 a year, and the Rolls of Parliament con-
template others at £200. These must have been parishes in
which the glebe and the dues were very large, for the tithe of
no ordinary parish could have nearly reached this sum. Such
benefices were eagerly coveted by the monks, and were
frequently, as we are told, impropriated, that is, the larger
revenues from tithe of corn and wool were secured to the
monastery, while the vicar was left with the smaller tithes and
the fees. Sometimes, if the monastery were near, even the fees
were absorbed. Thus the monks of Bicester acquired the
rectory of the town, and all its ecclesiastical revenues. The
record of their gains from this source has been preserved for
two years of the fourteenth century. The fee for churchings
varies from Is. Iod. to Is. o4d.; for weddings, from §s. 3d.
to 2s.; for burials, from 9s. 3d. to 3a. The fellows of Oriek
College, Oxford, obtained the principal church of St. Mary in
High Street, and derived no small part of their corporate
income from religious offices, and from trafficking in wax
tapers, which they manufactured and sold to devotees. It is
no wonder that the king, knowing how large were the profits
of the parochial clergy and the monasteries, insisted on liberal
contributions from them towards public necessities, and that
the clergy should have striven to obtain the powerful aid of
the pope, in order to escape from these exactions.

The most important lay tenant of the manor was the
miller. Every parish had its watermill,—sometimes more
than one, if there were a stream to turn the wheel,—or a
windmill, if there were no running water. The mill was the
lord’s franchise, and the use of the manor mill was an obliga-
tion on the tenants. The lord, therefore, repaired the mill,

5
66 Rural England—Soctal Life.

the wheels, or the sails, and found—often a most costly
purchase—the mill-stones. Sometimes the homage at the
court baron supervises the contract with the local carpenter
for the labour needed in constructing the mill wheel; some-
times the jury of the court leet presents the miller for using
a false measure and for taking excessive toll. The miller
figures in the legends and ballads of the time as the opulent
villager, who is keen after his gains, and not over honest in
the collection of them.

The residue of the tenants generally inhabited the prin-
cipal street or road of the village, near the stream, if one ran
through the settlement. There were to be sure isolated
farmhouses, and these probably in early times; but, as a
rule, I believe the building of these distant homesteads
followed on the enclosures, and was not usual as long as the
system of open arable fields remained. The houses of the
cottagers were also generally in the principal street ; but some,
even at an early date, were in remote parts of the manor.

The parish church, even in the most thoroughly rural
districts, was far larger than the needs of the population
would seem to require. It is certain that villages with less
than fifty or a hundred inhabitants possessed edifices which
would hold a congregation of five or even ten times that
number. But it will be remembered that the church was the
common hall, perhaps even the common market-place, of the
parish. The parish vestry is said to be the most ancient of
our social institutions, and a vestry of the whole inhabitants
could be summoned at the discretion of the rector. Here,
too, mysteries are performed, processions marshalled, and
perhaps even secular plays exhibited. When the Host and
portable altar were rernoved, the church could be employed
for all uses. Sometimes it was employed as a storehouse for
grain and wool, a small fee being paid to the parson for this
convenience. The tower, especially in the more exposed
districts near the sea, was a place of refuge, the castle of the
inhabitants. As late as the time of the Parliamentary wars,
the royalists of a Hampshire town garrisoned the parish
church, and stood a siege and cannonade in it.
The Church and the Homesteads. 67

The houses of these villagers were mean and dirty. Brick-
making was a lost art, stone was found only in a few places,
and, though cheap enough, was certainly not generally em-
ployed, even where it was plentiful and within reach. The
better class of yeomen had timber houses—housebote was a
customary right of the tenants—built on a frame, the spaces
being either lathed and plastered within and without, or filled
with clay kneaded up with chopped straw. The floor was the
bare earth, though it was sometimes pitched with split flints.
The sleeping apartments under the thatched roof were
reached by a ladder or rude staircase. A few chests were
ranged round the walls, the bacon-rack was fastened to the
timbers overhead, and the walls of the homestead were
garnished with agricultural implements. The wood fire was
on a hob of clay. Chimneys were unknown, except in castles
and manor houses, and the smoke escaped through the door
or whatever other aperture it could reach. Artificial light
was too costly for common use, for the hard fats were four
times as dear as the meat of animals, and a pound of candles
could only have been procured at nearly the price of a day’s
work.

The floor of the homestead was filthy enough, but the
surroundings were filthier still. Close by the door stood
the mixen, a collection of every abomination,—streams from
which, in rainy weather, fertilized the lower meadows, gene-
rally the lord’s several pasture, and polluted the stream.
Two centuries and a half after the time of which I am
writing, the earliest English writer on husbandry comments
on the waste, the unwholesomeness, and the agricultural
value of these dunghills.

The house of the peasant cottager was ruder still. Most
of them were probably built of posts wattled and plastered
with clay or mud, with an upper storey of poles, reached
by a ladder. In the taxing rolls of Edward I., preserved
numerously in the Record Office, the household furniture of
such cottages is inventoried, and valued at a very few
shillings. It consists of a few articles of furniture, generally
of home manufacture, some coarse bedding, and a few
68 keural England—Social Life.

domestic implements, mostly earthenware. The most valu-
able articles in use were copper or brass pots, and a few
common iron utensils, all metals being exceedingly dear;
and iron, relatively speaking, being the dearest of all.

Rude, however, and coarse as village life was, it must not
be imagined that it was without its hopes and aspirations.
The serf could arrange with his lord to remove to a neigh-
bouring town, and there prosecute his fortunes, perhaps
emancipate himself. The king, when war arose, would look
out the likeliest and most adventurous of the youth of all
ranks, and employ them in his army with good pay, and
prospects of plunder and ransom. The parish priest would
encourage some bright and quick child to devote himself to
the schools, to the university, to the service of the Church in
the monastery, or in parochial offices. Many a peasant had
heard doubtless of the learned Grostéte, the son of a serf, the
most distinguished scholar of thirteenth century Oxford, of
the Oxford which existed long before a college was founded,
—the friend of the reforming friars, the enemy of the Roman
court, the advocate of England for the English; and was
eager, out of his scanty means, to buy the license, that his
son might go to the schools and take orders. Perhaps with
these openings for himself and his kind, the yoke of de-
pendency did not press very heavily on him. But the lord
must beware of breaking the customary bargain between
himself and his serf. He once attempted to do so, and a
sudden and unexpected revolution shook England to its
centre, and, though organized by serfs, was a memorable and
perpetual warning.

I am far from forgetting that in many material points the
man in our day, who lives by manual labour, is better off
than his ancestor of the thirteenth century, just as he is
better off than his ancestor of the eighteenth. One of the
earliest objects to which wealth has given encouragement
is the science of health. I do not know that they who
welcomed this great change in the conditions of human life
thought or cared that it should be extended beyond their
own interests. To judge from the indifference with which
The Prospects of the Serfs. 69

the housing of the poor in cities is recognised and permitted,
I should conclude that the desire for health is not beneficent,
even when reflection points out that for one’s own sake it is
better to be one’s brother’s keeper. I am aware also that all
classes, though at a period long after that of which I am now
speaking, shared the benefits of those great improvements in
agriculture, under which fresh food is supplied all the year
round ; and that many forms of inveterate disease, which once
afflicted humanity, have been banished, and life has been
rendered easier and longer. The means of life were as
plentiful, considering the population, in the thirteenth century,
as they were in the eighteenth, the continuity of labour was
secured, and the prospects of those who lived by manual toil
as good. The age had its drawbacks, as every age has, but
it had its advantages; and I hope to be able to show that
the peasant of the thirteenth century, though he did not
possess, and therefore did not desire, much that his de-
scendant had in the eighteenth, had some solid elements
of present advantage and not a few hopes of future advance-
ment.
7O

CHAPTER III.

RURAL ENGLAND—AGRICULTURE,

‘The earliest Writer on Agriculture in England—Acreage of Land under Arable
Cultivation in eleven Estates—Live Stock on these Estates—Money Value of
the Stock and other Capital—The Character of the Lord’s Property and his
special Advantages in Relation to it—Meadow, Wood, Common, Dovecots
Ploughing—The relative Advantage of Ox and Horse Ploughing—The Cost of
Arable Farming—Live Stock—Oxen and Cows—Sheep—Their Importance—
English Wool, a Monopoly—Breeds of Sheep various—Diseases of Sheep—-
Rot, Scab—Remedies for their Cattlk—Swine—Poultry, universal—Rabbits—
Mode of Life in Rural England—Dead Stock and Tools—Cost of Iron—
Tenures generally Communal—Closes in Severalty—Common of Pasture—
Distress for Rent—Communal Tenure a Hindrance to Improvement—Permanent
Improvement—Marl, Lime—The Dairy—Cheese, Butter—Salt—Its Benefits
~— Entirely produced by Solar Heat—The fairest Index of the Summer Season
—The Court Days—The Harvest Time—The Highwaymen at Alton—The
English Climate.

HERE is a single essay on English agriculture which

was written before the middle of the thirteenth century.
This essay is by Walter de Henley. The earliest copy of
this work is contained in a lawyer’s handy book, written
at the conclusion of the thirteenth century; though a few
additions have been made to the volume up to the latter part
of Edward II.’s reign by a later scribe, as the book contains
the Statute of York. The work is in Norman French; and the
copy which I have used is considerably later than the author's
own age. There is a story that it was translated into Latin
by the great Bishop Grostéte; and a Latin version of the work
is also found. “La Dite de Hosbanderye” was a handy book
of agriculture; and, as is probable, was frequently copied in
one or the other language, It was not superseded till the
sixteenth century, when the English work of Fitzherbert
makes its appearance.
The Merton Estates. 7)

The date of Walter de Henley’s work cannot be exactly.
ascertained. It contains a careful description of the diseases
to which sheep are liable, but it makes no mention of “scab.”
Now we know that this disease did not make its appearance
till about the beginning of the last quarter of the thirteenth
century. Again, the treatise contains on the last three leaves
a remarkable list of certain English towns and other localities,
each of which is designated by some characteristic; and a
schedule of the English bishoprics, with the various counties
of which they are composed. From internal evidence, the
list of towns appears to have been compiled shortly after the
year 1249. The schedule of the bishoprics appears to refer
to even an earlier date, as the counties of Northumberland,
Cumberland, and Westmoreland are grouped under the
common name Northumbria. I shall have occasion to revert
to this list of towns in a later chapter, and shall treat of Walter
de Henley’s account of English husbandry as I have occasion
to refer to what was the actual practice of the agriculturist.

As I stated in the preceding chapter, wheat was cultivated
on every estate, a larger breadth being sown than there was
even on those which cultivated rye. The following is the
acreage of all the land under tillage in the eleven estates
referred to before. At Maldon the average under cultivation
for the four years is 2684 acres; at Leatherhead, 1483 acres ;
at Farley, 182 acres; at Elham, which was chiefly a horse
breeding estate, 154 acres; at Cambridge, 864 acres; at
Gamlingay, 153+ acres; at Cheddington, 123 acres; at Wol-
ford, 723 acres; at Cuxham, 181} acres; at Holywell, Oxford,
118% acres; and at Basingstoke, 100} acres. The average
amount of arable land in cultivation on the whole eleven
estates for the four years is therefore 1,448} acres, The same
inventories give us an account of the live stock on the estates.
Horses are found everywhere. But there are others called
stotts, a word used at Maldon and Cambridge only, and
affers, a word used on all the estates except Elham. Both
probably mean the breeds of coarse large ponies, which are
occasionally found in country places at present. The average
on all the estates is thirty horses, eight stotts, and thirty-eight
72 Rural England—Agriculture.

affers. These animals are kept principally for draught, but
were probably employed for ploughing also. The average
number of oxen and cows kept on ten of the estates is 215,
Elham possessing none. No sheep are kept at Elham, Holy-
well, and Cambridge. But on the other eight estates an
average of 1,133 sheep and lambs are kept in stock, the largest
number being wethers. They are known as ewes, muttons,
hoggs, rams, and lambs. About 9 rams are kept to 287
ewes. An average of twenty-one calves is given in the
audit. There are on an average 159 pigs, and 137 store pigs.
There are in the same way 246 geese, 146 capons, 281 fowls,
and 103 ducks.

The stock does not, it is clear, represent the maximum of
the year, but the amount on all the farms at the date of the
audit. The list, therefore, does not account for the sales nor
for the purchases, But the enumeration is not only suggestive
of the amount of stock on a series of estates, but it shows how
general stock keeping was, how necessary it was to have other
resources for maintaining such a stock beyond common
pasture or the balks in the open fields, and that there must
be implied in the amount of arable land occupied by the
tenant a considerable further area of several pasture. These
were the crofts and closes, which are generally added to the
virgate or half virgate of the freeholder or serf.

Taken at the average values of the four years, the live stock
on the farms, as accounted for by the several bailiffs, is of
the money value of £291 19s. tid. But the same record
informs us that the average floating balance left in the
several bailiffs’ hands was £115 12s. 84¢.—a sum in live stock
and working expenses of £407 10s. 10d. The dead stock
and seed amount to at least £200, and the rental of the land
alone to £75 more. The capital invested in the farm buildings
mills, and similar property cannot be less than 4800 more,
so that a capital sum, in fixed and floating form, of more
than 41,482 was required in order to take in hand and
manage properly the amount of 1,448 acres of land in
cultivation on an average of years. Now, in the period before
me, arable land was not worth more than fourteen years’
Value of Stock. 73

purchase,—ze., land yielding 6a. an acre rent was worth about
7s. an acre,—and, as the foregoing calculation points out, the
stock, capital, and buildings on an arable farm were three
times the value of the land when taken apart from their
necessary conditions. Even if we omit the buildings and
rent, the necessary floating capital is considerably in excess
of the value of the land, and the position which I laid down
before is worked out, that the system of landlord cultivation,
with its vast amount of floating capital, divisible in equal
parts among the representatives of a common ancestor, and
open to distribution by will, must have considerably modified
the effects of the custom of primogeniture.

Speaking generally, the arable lands of a manor were
divided pretty equally between the lord and the tenants of
the manor. There were, however, certain advantages possessed
by the lord, some of them of very solid significance indeed,
some vexatious and injurious to the tenants rather than
profitable to him.

1. Whenever there existed natural meadow, regularly
warped or watered by streams, it was, as a rule, the property
of the lord, and held by him in severalty. In the entire
absence of all artificial grasses and winter roots, this kind of
land bore a very high rent. About Oxford it is constantly
let at 75., 85, or gs. an acre; aftermath, or rowens, called
vewannum in its Latinised form, being let at 2s. 6d. Now,
taken generally, the value of grain has risen about twelve
times in nominal value since the period before me, and such
water meadow as let at the high rates referred to five or six
enturies ago has risen to from about £4 45. to £5 10s, an acre—
£.¢.,in about the same proportion, while ordinary arable land
has risen from fifty to sixty times. For the same reason—-
viz., the singular importance of water or natural meadows—
sales of hay are very rarely found in the bailiff’s account,
though they are occasionally seen in the account of con-
sumption by nobles and great corporations. In later times,
when nearly all the information procurable as to prices is
from the records of consumption, entries of the price of hay
are common enough
74 Rural England—Agriculture.

2. The tenants of the manor had a right generally to the
use of wood from the lord’s timber for the repair or enlarge-
ment of their homesteads, for their agricultural implements,
and, to a limited extent, for their fires. On the other hand,
as we have seen, they are prohibited from cutting oak or
ash, even on their own holdings, without the lord’s consent.
Now it was generally the case that the manor contained,
especially on its boundaries, a considerable and extensive
belt of wood. For example, the northern slopes of the
South Downs were generally covered with beech woods,
and the higher grounds on the north were similarly over-
grown with coppice, oak, and ash. The sales of fuel from
this wood were a very considerable source of income to their
owners. After the great rise in prices occurred, during the
latter half of the sixteenth century, though rents remained
provokingly stationary, the profits of coppices and forests
were a welcome advantage to landowners, who often found
in the rise on the price of their woods that there was some
compensation for the stagnation of agricultural rents. Besides,
they got payments for the grass in the spring, and the pannage
of pigs in the autumn. One can quite understand, then, how
indignant the nobles in the seventeenth century were, when
the examination and claim of the Crown’s forestal rights so
seriously lessened the estates of some among the nobility,
and greatly curtailed a lucrative source of income. Of course,
much wood and forest was held by private owners and in
severalty.

3. Generally the use of the common pasture was without
stint—ze., any tenant could put as many beasts as he liked
on it. It is a common subject of complaint that the lord,
being possessed of several meadows, saved his pasture for
hay or summer feed, and cropped the land bare by the
multitude of cattle and sheep which he put on the common
pasture. Such a common without stint exists still near
Oxford, in the large space known as Port Meadow—a piece
of ground which belonged to the inhabitants of Oxford as
long ago as Domesday, the sole use of which was subsequently
usurped by the citizens, who, indeed, after the city got its
The Lord's Domains. 7S

charter, were the principal, or at least the permanent, residents
in the borough.

4. Generally, also, the lord had or claimed the right of
erecting a dovecot or pigeon-house on his demesne. Pro-
digious numbers of these birds were kept, and though they
doubtlessly plundered the lord’s fields, they must have been.
a greater nuisance to the tenants. Even if there were no-
evidence of the number accounted for in the bailiff’s roll as.
sold or sent to the lord, the price, about a farthing each,.
would show how common they were. There was hardly a
manor without its dovecot. The right to keep a pigeon-
house was confined to lords of manors, who could punish in-
their own courts any one who imitated their practice. When,,.
as was sometimes the case, the same parish contained two or
more manors, the loss and inconvenience must have been
great to the other tenants’ crops. In the year 1332, the bailiff:
of one estate accounts for the sale of nearly 700 pigeons.

An estate under the plough was divided into three parts,.
and the ploughing of each part had its own name. Ordinary
ploughing was undertaken in the autumn, and was called’
hyvernagium ; the second plough-time was in April, and was.
called warectatio; the third was at midsummer, and was-
called rebinatio. The last should be undertaken when the
ground is dusty. The furrows should be a foot apart, and:
the plough should go two digits deep, no more. Now in order
to traverse this space of an acre, there will be thirty-three-
journeys made. Walter de Henley advises thirty-six. It
will be found that the whole space traversed in order to plough:
two acres will be nine miles—he says six leagues; and he
says that it would be,a poor stott or ox which could not do am
acre in a day. He concludes, therefore, that a carucate off
land, ze., the amount which a team of horses or oxen could
plough, is from a hundred and sixty to a hundred and eighty
acres in the year, taking forty-four weeks in the year, and:
omitting eight for marketing and other hindrances. By this.
he means, not that a team is engaged in ploughing all the
year round, but that if it were so engaged, it would cover the
space of an acre a day. But he is willing to allow three and:
76 Rural England—Agriulture.

a half roods for the first, and one acre for the second plough-
ing.

Land should be ploughed three times, unless it be such a
soil or such parts of the soil as will bear a crop every year.
After sowing, the young plants should be hoed, and drawn
out of the furrows to the ridge. Always get seed from some
other estate. If you doubt my advice, try half your land with
foreign seed, half with that of your own growth, and you will
see the wisdom of my counsel. Plough with two oxen and
two horses together. You will do better than with horse
ploughing alone, unless the ground is very stony, when oxen
find it difficult to get a grip at the ground with their hoofs.
During the time of ploughing, whatever be its kind, the farm
bailiff, or head reaper, or head man, should be constantly about
the plough, to see that the serf do his work well; see at the
send of the day’s work what they have done, and that they
keep up to the amount every day afterwards, unless they are
.able to account for a deficiency by some hindrance. Servants
-and customary tenants shirk their work, and you must be on
your guard against their rogueries. Besides, the head reaper
must look after them daily, and the bailiff see to them all
that they do their work well, for if they do not they should
‘be chidden and punished.

The ox was considered a far cheaper and, on the whole,
‘more effective animal for the plough and for other kinds of
farm work than the horse, though it is true that ploughing by
thorses is speedier. The cost of a horse between Oct. 18th
and May 3rd, the period during which they cannot graze, was
reckoned as nearly four times that of the ox. Besides, when
an ox grows old, he may be fattened for the table, and his
hide will fetch a good price, whereas there is no such economy
possible in a horse, whose flesh is useless and hide of little
value. Oxen were shod, though the shoe is far cheaper than
that of the horse,

The agriculturist of the thirteenth century was quite alive
‘to the importance of stock keeping. When you can do so,
says my author, stock your land to the full extent which it
will bear, for you may be certain that if your land be wel
The Process of Cultivation. 47

stocked, if your stock be well kept and properly handled,
your land will give you a threefold return; by which I pre-
sume is meant over arable farming only. I shall beable here-
after, by an examination of the balance-sheet of farms, to
show what was the rate of profit obtained.

The cost of arable farming in the thirteenth century, when
the crop is wheat, is thus reckoned :—The land is ploughed
thrice at the cost of 6¢.an acre ; hoeing costs Id. an acre; two.
bushels of seed at Michaelmas, Is.; a second hoeing, 4a. an
acre; reaping, 5d. an acre; carriage, 1d. an acre. The straw or
forage will pay for the threshing. In this account of the cost,
taken from Walter de Henley, no estimate is made of rent ;
but my author infers that at 4s. a quarter, unless more than
six bushels are reaped, there will be a loss on the operation
of 13d.

The hoeing of land was generally undertaken by women.
There was full opportunity for this employment till the
middle of the fourteenth century, after which the outdoor
employment of women almost disappears for a long time.
In harvest time, women worked at piece work, as the men did,
and generally at the same rates. I refer to these facts at the
present time only to illustrate the course of husbandry, not to
anticipate what I have to say on the wages of labour and the
general condition of those who lived by hired labour, at least
in the main.

I have already referred to the amount of stock kept om
1,448 acres under the plough, and bearing crops. It is now
desirable to deal with the several kinds of animals kept on
land.

Oxen and Cows.—The ox was kept for plough and draught,
a few were kept for fatting, but I conclude that the amount
of stock regularly fatted for the table was a very small per-
centage of the whole. They would be consumed only by
wealthy nobles and wealthy corporations, and, as a matter of
fact, fresh beef was put on table only for a few months in the
year. Much was killed and salted in November, but this beef
was of grass-fed cattle. The ox, quit of skin, head, and offal,
did not weigh on an average more than 400 pounds, and was
78 Rural England—Agriculture.

worth about 11s. to sell. The hide of an ox was worth at
deast 2s, and the head and offal amply paid the services of
‘the butcher. The meat was therefore worth about a farthing
a pound, It was lean, for the hard fats were worth four times
the price of meat; and tough, for it was neither young nor
stall fed. Whatever stock the agriculturist could not keep
-during the winter or dispose of to opulent consumers in town
‘and country, was killed, and put into the powdering tub at
“‘Martinmas.

There was no attempt to improve breeds of cattle. The
»proof is the low price of bulls. A collateral proof is the low
price of cows. The ox was valued for his work and for his
flesh. The maintenance of the bull was a necessity, and the
suse of the cow was for the dairy. At the same time I do not
assert that there were not different breeds, but I am sure that
‘the difference was in the size, not in the quality of the animals,
and that there was no distinction made in the character of
the breeds. In point of fact, the scarcity of winter food and
its poor nutritive powers, the absence of all winter roots,
-even carrots and parsnips, and the change from the scanty
ypasture of the summer to the straw-yard in the winter, must
have brought about that all breeds were on the same level in
point of size and quality, unless they were the few animals
kept for the consumption of wealthy persons.

Sheep—The mainstay of English agriculture was the sheep,
at once for the profit which its wool supplied, and for the
walue of its droppings to the fields. It is well known that
England had virtually the monopoly of the wool trade from
the earliest records till at least the middle of the seventeenth
‘century. The unrestrained export of wool, by which I do
not mean the taxation of the export, but the permission to
export under a heavy customs duty, more than once deter-
anined the policy of the Low Countries, and was the subject
of numberless diplomatic arrangements. If supplied freely
-and plentifully, the Flemish burghers throve accordingly; if it
were curtailed or prohibited, discontent was sure to arise in
‘those manufacturing ttowns of the middle ages. The burgher
life of Ghent, Bruges, Malines, a thousand towns, depended on
Cattle and Sheep. 79

this important raw staple. It is almost the only article, as far
as I have been able to discover, on which an export duty could
be put, the whole of which was paid by the foreign consumer.
Financiers have always desired to find some product possessed
of those qualities which will, without harm to the domestic
producer, render it possible for the foreign consumer to
inevitably pay a tax levied on the material. The conditions
are four :—It must be a necessity ; there must be no substi-
tute for it; there must be no other source of supply; and
there can be little or no economy practised in the use of it.
Such an article in the middle ages was English wool. It was
a necessary material for clothing, and no other material could
be used in its stead. It was produced, efficiently at least, in
no other European country, for the Spanish wool, scanty in
‘quantity, was so weak a fibre that it could not be woven with-
out an admixture of the English material, and the Saxony
supply was not yet developed. And although it is possible
that the dearness of woollen garments may have led to some
economies in their use, these could not have been considerable.
Hence the Government was able to constantly impose, in times
of emergency, a cent. per cent. ad valorem duty on the export
of average wool, such, for instance, as the produce of Lincoln-
shire, Gloucester, and ordinary Hereford. The foreign wars
of the Edwards and the Henrys were carried on mainly by the
proceeds of wool taxes, and the enormous revenues which
from the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries were exacted from
England by the Papal Court and the Italian ecclesiastics
who were quartered on English benefices, were transmitted
in the shape of wool by the Lombard exchangers to Flanders,
and thence by a cross exchange to Italy.

There were a great number of breeds of sheep, and it is
evident that pains were taken to improve the breed. This is
proved by the high price of rams, whom our forefathers called
hurtards (the butters); very often much more being paid for
rams than for the best wethers. There is other testimony to
the fact in a remarkable petition presented to Parliament
in 1454. The Commons present a schedule of forty-four
qualities of English wool, designated by the locality of their
80 Rural England—Agriculture.

origin, the money value of which ranges from £13 the sack
of 364lbs. for wool grown near Leominster, the highest, to
that of £2 10s. the sack for wool grown in Sussex, the lowest.
And the prayer of the petition is that no quality should be
exported, except at the prices in the schedule, under a
penalty of £40 the sack. The petition was rejected. Now
in the fifteenth century it was a very common expedient for
Parliament to impose an export duty of 100s. the sack on
wool, without distinction of quality. But it was not found to
be so easy to put export duties on the last of hides, another
important English export. To have imposed too high a duty
on hides would have driven the trade to other countries. I have
no doubt that these forty-four kinds were so many brands, as
we should say, of English wool, which were fully recognised
in the Flemish market, and I am the more convinced of this
because the names of some of the qualities are taken from
very narrow districts.

The wool was coarse and full of hairs. I say this because
I have seen cloth manufactured from fourteenth century wool,
in which the quality of the raw material is very discernible,
though from the use made of it the cloth was almost certainly
the best procurable. The fleece, too, was light, an average
from many entries which I have made giving 1 lb. 7$0z. to
the fleece. But the unimproved sheep of the eighteenth
century gave nearly 5 lbs. to the fleece. Hence the animal
must have been small, and I think I may certainly say that
a wether in good condition weighed a good deal less than
forty pounds

The sheep master was liable to heavy losses on his stock.
I mentioned above that an average of 1,133 sheep of all kinds
was kept on eight of the sheep-breeding estates. In one year
the losses were 308 ; in another, 242; in a third, 300; in a
fourth,—a more fortunate year,--34. But the average is 221, or
close upon 20 per cent. of the stock. No doubt there were
considerable losses in lambing time, but the rot made the
most serious ravages. Our forefathers, who comprehended alk
cattle diseases under the generic name of murrain, were well
aware of the risks they ran from rot, and give the symptoms
Wool and Sheep. 81

with the precision of a modern farmer. “There are,” says
Walter de Henley, “several means by which shepherds
profess to discover the existence of rot:—(1) They look at
the veins under the eyelids; if they are red, the sheep is
sound ; if white, unsound. (2) They pull at the wool on the
ribs ; if it holds firmly to the skin, the sign is good ; if it tears
off easily, it is bad. (3) If the skin reddens on rubbing, the
sheep is sound ; if it keeps pale, the animal is rotten. (4) If
in November the hoar-frost in the morning is found to cling
to the wool, it is a good sign; but if it be melted, it is a sign
that the animal is suffering from an unnatural heat, and that
it is probably unsound.” Experienced farmers have told me
that it is not easy to better the exactness of these symptoms.
The farmer of the earliest period had a vague idea that the
presence of a small white snail on the grass was dangerous,
and the most modern experiments have proved that a water
snail is the carrier of the fluke. Our forefathers advised that
sheep should be kept under cover from November to April
and should not be allowed to go on the ground between
mid-August and November, till the sun had well purified the
ground. They were fed under cover on coarse hay, wheat
and oat straw, or, failing these, on pea or vetch haulm.

The most valuable product of the sheep, his fleece,—and the
fleece is often worth half the value of the animal when shorn,
—was liable from the iatter part of the thirteenth century to
a new disease, the scab. We can almost define the year—
1280—in which this disease first appeared, by the simultaneous
record of the medicines employed for its cure. At first the
agriculturist tried sulphate of iron, verdigris, mercurial oint-
ments, and occasionally arsenical washes. Soon, however,
the use of these articles was abandoned for that of tar, which

. begins to be imported for this purpose in the southern and
eastern counties at the end of the thirteenth century, after
which it was used as a specific for all skin diseases in sheep,
“ The shepherd,” says a writer of the early sixteenth century
“should never be without his tar-box.”

The hardships of the winter must have generally baffled
the efforts of the husbandman to improve his breeds of sheep.

5
82 Rural England—Agriculture.

It appears that the goodness of wool in England is not so
much a matter of breed as of soil, and I am told that the
localities which supplied the best English produce in the
fifteenth century and in the centuries before that period are
characterized by analogous excellence in the nineteenth, The
sheep were washed ; the wool appears to have been sorted or
picked, for “locks” and “ refuse” are always at a much lower
price than the rest of the fleece. Black wool, used for russet
and dyed cloth, bore as high a price as white wool, and lambs’
wool is generally a great deal cheaper than that of the sheep.

Sheep were occasionally hired to lie on the ground. This
must evidently have been done in enclosures. A hundred
and fifty sheep were folded on an acre at from Is. 4d. to 25,
the acre, or two hundred sheep were kept on a field at 8¢,
a week, for eight weeks, It would seem, then, that such a
flock was kept on land from three to eight weeks, in order to
fertilise it, the owner, of course, feeding them.

Swine—lIt is to be expected that swine were, for general
use and consumption, the most important object of all English
agriculture in the thirteenth century, and for many a century
afterwards. The pig is a saveall, a universal consumer, and
as universal a producer. It was kept by the peasantry
throughout the whole parish; the sow, during farrowing time,
in the sty, the only period, except during that in which the
animal was fatted, when it was of any immediate cost to the
owner, The object of the agriculturist was to have his herd
in such a position as that there should be three farrowing
times in the year; and we are expressly informed that care
was taken in the selection of breeds.

The pigs were the scavengers of the medieval village. In
the autumn they were turned into the cornfields after the
crop was carried, and into the woods to gather mast and
acorns. The ringing of pigs, in order to prevent their uproot-
ing the ground, was known, though not perhaps universally
practised. The whole of the parish stock was put under the
charge of a single swineherd, who, receiving a payment
from the owner of every pig under his charge, had a smaller
wage from the lord of the manor, to whom he was also a
Swene and Poultry. 83

servant. It is said that the pannage of pigs, #.¢, the practice
of feeding hogs on mast and acorns in the woods, was not a
matter of original right, but had to be granted by deed. But
the concession was very general, and the payment was
ordinarily fixed at a penny or halfpenny for each head of
swine. Pigs are often said to be leprous; but most of the
‘diseases to which they are liable are classed under measles,
-properly entozoa. Three centuries after the time on which
I am commenting, the pious and patriotic Tusser recommends
that when the disease is very prevalent, the animals should
be slain, salted, packed, and the pork sold to the Flemings.

The fatted boar was a lordly dish, and though often the
principal item in the Christmas feast, was even served up at
Midsummer. Large quantities of barley, bere, beans, and
peas were consumed in order to bring these animals into
condition. But ordinarily the pig in the sty was put into
saleable form at the cost of from two to four bushels of
grain. The boar sometimes consumed ten times the larger
amount before he was ready for the feast. Store pigs, when
ordinary food was scarce, were fed largely on brewer's grains,
which were purchased at a few pence the quarter. But as
every peasant was frequently brewing ale,—it will be remem-
bered that the drink was not hopped, and was therefore of
rapid consumption,—such food was generally forthcoming
Some idea can be formed of the condition of the ordinary
pig from the fact that the lard of thirty-five of these animals
was a little over five pounds a piece. The meat was, as now,
salted as pork or smoke-dried as bacon. Wild boars are
occasionally mentioned ; and it may be added that salted or
smoked pork was slightly higher in price than other kinds of
meat, certainly than other kinds of salted meat. There can
be no doubt that, in the thirteenth century, every peasant had
his pig in the sty.

Poultry—It is even more certain that he had his fowl in the
pot. Poultry keeping was universal, and poultry and egg
rents were the very commonest form of rendering dues. Fowls
are found everywhere, the cocks rather cheaper than hens,
and pullets cheapest of all. Geese and ducks were also well-
84 Rural England—Agruulture.

nigh universal, the former called green when they were stubble
fed, but often put into coops and fattened on oats. Capons,
which are exceedingly common, are about double the price of
ordinary poultry, being always fattened in coops. That they
were found everywhere is shown by the fact that “capon’s
zrease” is constantly used for cart wheels and sheep dressing.
In modern times, one might as reasonably prescribe hare’s fat as
so costly a lubricant. Swans and peacocks were occasionally
kept by the wealthy, and were sold at high prices.

It may not be amiss to refer here to the singularly high
price of rabbits. I am convinced that they had lately been
introduced to the country; that they were found in very few
localities, and were often procured from a considerable dis-
tance. In the last half of the thirteenth century a rabbit was
often sold at one-third the price of a wether. At the end of
the fourteenth, they were as dear as geese, were purchased at
a spot which was more than sixty miles from the place for
which they were procured, and were carried at considerable cost.
The rabbit warren is known to Fleta, but it is not mentioned
in Domesday. It may be added that the bailiff, who is ready
to explain any extraordinary cost or failure, has never, in the
thousands of accounts which I have investigated, set down
losses to the ravages of ground game. I may add, too, that,
save in years of exceptional dearth, he rarely speaks of losses
of poultry by theft, though he has to account for all deficiencies
in stock,—a pretty clear proof that his neighbours, even the
poorest, had similar property of their own, and were therefore
interested ina police over property, or were removed from the
temptation to pilfer.

Such was the live stock of the medizval farmer, whether he.
were landlord or peasant. I have taken for granted that
the husbandry of the peasant was like that of the lord, and
that the servants of the manor house, save that they were
more secure in the income which they received in wages and
allowances, lived with and in the same manner as their fellow
villagers. Except that the thirteenth century villager was
greatly better off, there was little change induced on the rustic’s
tondition in many parts of England from the middle of the
The Life of the Peasant. 85

thirteenth to the beginning of the nineteenth century. Sixty
years ago there was many a village, in the south of England at
least, which was out of the way of the great high roads, in which
few of the yeomen knew how to read and write, and scarcely one
of the labourers. For five centuries and a half, for fifteen or
sixteen generations, there was no appreciable alteration in the
condition of these people. The discipline of the manor court
had passed over to the justice’s room, and perhaps was more
severe after the custom, that no one could be prosecuted as an
offender except at the action of his peers, was exchanged for the
information of the master, the game-keeper, or the constable.
The village weaver made homespun cloth from the hempen or
woollen yarns a century agoas he did six centuries ago. The
year witnessed the same unvaried round of occupation that it
was when the third Henry was king. Only there was a change
in the land of the parish, now generally enclosed. The ancient
rights of the villagers were extinguished as these several proper-
ties were created. But in many parishes the loss of communal
privileges had long been forgotten. In one place, the enclosure
might have dated back to the age of the last Plantagenet ; in
another, to that of the Tudors. If the commons had endured
beyond these several spoliations, or some residue of them had
been left, they were gradually absorbed by those numerous
Acts of Parliament which, beginning with the age of Anne,
were the principal private bill legislation of the eighteenth cen-
tury. Now and then the peasantry had risen in insurrection
against those who invaded their ancient privileges. There had
been the uprisings of Tyler, of Cade, of Kett. But since the
days of the clubmen, the dwellers in rural England have been
apathetic.

Changes of dynasty, civil wars, changes in religion, haa
occurred without making a break, or leaving a memory in the
routine of rural existence. The church of the medizval
village became the church of the Reformed Establishment,
The parish priest of the old faith was succeeded, though with
a greatly shorn income, by the rector of Cranmer’s and Crom-
well’s, of Parker’s and Grindal’s, models. Sometimes, perhaps,
in the days after the Reformation a more than ordinarily
86 Rural England—Agriculture.

opulent ecclesiastic, having no family ties, would train up
some clever rustic child, teach him, and help him on to the
university. But, as a rule, since that event, there was no
educated person in the parish beyond the parson, and he had
the anxieties of a narrow fortune and a numerous family. The
villagers frequented the same ale-house as that at which their
forefathers had caroused for generations, held the parish feast
on the same day—generally the name-day of the church, or
of that on which the parish guild was founded—as that which
had been set apart when the old church was a new one, or
the guild was started in the days of the third Henry, or in
those of his great-grandson, or during the prosperous epoch
of the fifteenth century; and, except for slow, trivial, and
insensible changes, everything was continued as it was when
the beginnings of that constitution were effected, outside which
the mass of Englishmen remained, or from which they had, in
the fifteenth century, been excluded. There is, I believe, no
part of the Western world in which so little change was
induced on the fortunes, on the life,and on the habits of the
people, as there has been in rural England from the peaceful
reign of Henry III. to the earlier years of George ITI.

I stated above that one of the estates from which I have
taken my facts as to the husbandry and live stock was employed
for the breeding of horses. In one year of the fourteenth
century, the bailiff of this estate buys twelve horses for 1575. 9a,
and sells them for 180s. 8a, besides getting rid of eighteen of
his own rearing. These were cart or ordinary saddle horses.
The war charger was a much more expensive affair, and
frequently cost more than a dozen others.

Dead Stock and Tools.—The estate of Holywell, Oxford, the
whole of which, with the exception of some twelve acres,
possessed by a monastery, and a few tenements inhabited
by cottagers, was the property of one owner, lay outside the
north wall of the city. It had been possessed by its owner
in severalty, and had been enclosed in the middle of the
thirteenth century, and was about two-thirds arable and one-
third pasture, the latter being regularly warped by the Cher-
well. The pasture, as I have stated above, was very valuable
Dead Stock and Tools. 87

and the land, lying near a great city, fortress, royal palace, and
university, was as well placed as land in the middle ages
could be. Oxford was a favourite residence of the first
Angevin king. Two of his sons were born there, and the
palace occupied a considerable space in another district to
the north of the city, from which point, indeed, the place
was alone assailable. But a legend had grown into shape,
that a residence in Oxford was dangerous to the English
king, and the palace was almost deserted in the thirteenth
century.

The arable land under cultivation in Holywell was, on an
average, nearly 120 acres. It was divided into at least twelve
corn fields, six of which were called furlongs. The principal
articles employed on the farm are :—Four iron-bound carts,
and four cart frames, with four sets of rope harness ; four forks
for lifting trusses, and one long one for the rick ; three ploughs,
six iron dung-forks, three hoes, a reaphook and a scythe, two
mattocks, two wheelbarrows, a seed cod, two axes, a saw, two
winnowing fans, three pairs of leg chains, divers measures and
kitchen utensils, three milk buckets, a butter churn, three
cheese vats with cheese cloths, and a variety of other articles.
Of these the most costly were the carts. Speaking generally,
the dead stock on the farm must have been worth in money
of the time at least £25. The inventory was made up on the
occasion of the appointment of a new bailiff, and is an ex-
haustive account. But it was the practice to enumerate the
principal articles on the farm in the annual roll.

The most formidable item of expenditure in the supply of
necessary dead stock was the annual cost of iron. Relatively
speaking, iron was considerably dearer than lead, and fre-
quently nearly as costly as copper, tin, and brass. It was
generally bought, whether it were of English or of foreign
origin, in bars of about four pounds in weight. This was
ordinarily purchased at one of the great fairs, and carefully
preserved by the bailiff, being served out for the local smith
to fashion into what was needed, and the weight being debited
to him on each occasion. Sometimes, but rarely, it is bought
in mass, Steel, which was employed to tip the cutting edges
88 Rural England—Agriculture.

of iron tools, was four times as dear as iron. Over and over
again, the bailiff seems to apologize for the large consumption
of iron in his ordinary operations, by the dryness of the
seasons, and the consequent wear of the material. The high
cost of iron explains the fact that cart-wheels were frequently
unprotected, being made from the section of a full-sized tree.
Again I must repeat that harrowing with a frame set with
stout iron pins was unknown or unpractised. Nearly three
centuries after the time on which I am writing, when the
practice was generally known and adopted, the principal
writer on English husbandry states that the agriculturist
cannot afford iran-toothed harrows in stony ground, and
recommends the use of strong oaken pegs in their place. The
share, too, must have been a very slight affair,—I judge by its
price,—little more, indeed, than an iron point to a wooden
frame, the frame being protected by clouts or plates of iron
nailed to it. The principal source of foreign iron was Spain,
the produce of which was about one-third dearer than that of
home manufacture. What is called Osemond iron is as dear
as steel, and appears to be identical with it. The cost of
working iron or steel into the requisite implements was about
as much as that of the raw material. The shoes with which
horses and oxen.were shod were exceedingly light.

The arable land of the manor was generally communal, tz,
each of the tenants possessed a certain number of furrows in
a common field, the several divisions being separated by balks
of unploughed ground, on which the grass was suffered to
grow. The system, which was all but universal in the thir-
teenth century, has survived in certain districts up to living
memory, though generally it gave way to enclosures, effected
at a more or less remote period. The system has been traced
back to remote antiquity. The ownership of these several
strips was limited to certain months of the year, generally
from Lady Day to Michaelmas, and for the remaining six
months the land was common pasture. The communal culti-
vation had its advantages for the poorer tenants, since the
area of their pasture was increased. But at the latter end of
the seventeenth century it was denounced as a wasteful and
Communal Fields. 89

arbarous system, and wholly unsuited to any improved
system of agriculture.

In Fitzherbert’s treatise on surveying, a work of the early
part of the sixteenth century, a description is given of these
communal districts. The work, though two centuries and a
half later than the period on which I am speaking, deals with
a system which is of immemorial antiquity, and was probably
entirely unchanged from what had prevailed in the earlier
epoch. There is, he says, a field, which he calls Dale Furlong,
in which the several inhabitants have “lands.” In this field
the parson has two strips, the lord three, a tenant one, another
two, a third one, the lord four, the prior two, the parson one,
a fourth tenant two, a fifth one, a sixth one, a seventh two,
the prior three, the lord two and one headland, the parson
having the other. The rest of the fields, of which he gives
four names, are similarly divided.

He then treats of a long meadow containing 122 acres,
which is similarly staked and bounded. This appears to be
devoted to hay, and the several tenants mow and stack their
portions. In this typical manor there are also closes of
various dimensions. Every husbandman, in addition to his
share in the communal field, has six of these closes,—three for
corn, and the others for pasture and hay. The rental of the
communal land is sixpence an acre, of the enclosed eight-
pence, the difference in the value being derived from its being
possible to let oxen lie on it. This rent illustrates what I have
said above as to the average rental of arable land. It is
unchanged from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century.

Besides his several closes, and his use after harvest of the
communal fields, the husbandman had access to three kinds
of common of pasture:—(1) In many places, where closes and
pastures exist in severalty, there is often a common close,
taken in out of the common or fields by tenants of the same
place—and I conclude by the action of the homage—for oxen,
kine, or other cattle, in which close every man is stinted from
the lord downwards. (2) The plain champaign country, where
the cattle go daily before the herdsman, this lying near the
common fields. Here again each person who has the right
go Rural England—Agriculture.

of use should be stinted ; and a suggestion is made that the
principle of the stint should be determined by the extent of
the tenant’s holding. (3) The lord’s outwoods, moors, and
heaths, which have never been under the plough. Here the
lord should not be stinted, for the soil is his; but his tenants
should be, for they have no certain parcel of this district
annexed to their holdings, but only bit of mouth with their
cattle. The stint of cattle, we are told, is necessary, in order
to prevent the rich man from buying sheep and cattle in the
beginning of summer, getting them into condition, and selling
them, all the while sparing his own pasture, and so defrauding
the poor man. As an equitable adjustment of the stint, it is
proposed that the tenant’s right should be proportioned to
the amount of cattle which he can maintain in the winter
from the amount of hay and straw housed during the season
from his several holding. These passages make it clear that
the interest of the medizeval tenant was by no means limited
to the acreage with which he is credited in the manor survey ;
and that, under proper regulations, his common of pasture
was necessary and valuable.

The division of communal fields into lands, or regular plots
of equal length and breadth, as far at least as the unit is
concerned, of which the several owners had multiples, neces-
sitated, after the practice of tenant farming became general,
an accurate survey and terrier of the different interests in the
field. As long as cultivation was carried on by the owner,
whether lord or tenant, identification was easy, and boundary
disputes rare. But when the occupier ceased to be the owner,
a great deal of care and frequent visits were necessary to
prevent fraud or encroachment. The owner of one strip in
freehold might be the tenant on a short term of years on
another strip, and would be strongly tempted to edge on his
landlord’s property. This is curiously illustrated by some of
the bad debts which landowners made in later times. They
had defaulting tenants, whose property was insufficient to
meet the debts which they had incurred. But the remedy
of distress, the common law process, by which the lord could
recover his rent, appears to have been available only on the
The Law of Dustress—Pastures. gr

land from which the rent issued; and if by any means the
boundaries of it were lost or obscured, the landowner might
be unable to recover, because he could not find the precise
spot from which his rent issued. Now it was a common
practice in later times to let different strips for various terms ;
and thus the tenant, not taking his holding in the aggregate,
but piecemeal, could with difficulty be dispossessed. It also
became difficult to discover, unless the area of the several
strips was accurately registered, to find out what plot was liable
for overdue rent. I have constantly found, in the accounts
presented by rent collectors, that arrears extending over a
long period of years, especially in the fifteenth century, are
described as not recovered because the collector cannot
identify the land from which the rent issues. It was, I believe,
to meet such contingencies as these that the old remedy of
distress was supplemented by the action for covenant and
the action for debt; and thus that the rights of the landowner
have been made a far more secure debt than they were under
the ancient system.

The system of communal tenure, it must be admitted, was
hostile to permanent or even transient improvement, because
it left the personal advantage of outlay on such land insecure.
The argument may be pressed with great force in favour of
the tenant under the modern system; and it is certain, as we
shall see hereafter, that as soon as ever it was possible to
apply new methods of cultivation, and to enhance by such
methods the natural capacity of the soil, the complaint arose
that the landlord entered on the benefit of the tenant’s
improvements, deprived him of them by the exaltation of
rent, and therefore discouraged agriculture. This complaint,
which begins in the sixteenth century, is exceedingly common
in the seventeenth, when English agriculture was making
rapid progress.

Still, improvements were made in the thirteenth century.
These consist of ditching, draining, and ridging wet land, of
marling and claying stiff or poor soils.

Ditching was generally contracted for by the pole, and, to
judge from the price, a pole of ditching was about a day’s
92 Rural England—Agriculture.

work, I should gather, however, that this is not the cost of
the first construction, but of subsequent cleansing. Draining
was practised on wet lands by digging a trench and laying
angular stones in the cavity, or, in some cases, by setting an
arch of stone through the length of the trench, provision
being made for an exit into the ditch, or even by laying
hollowed alder stems in the trench. Ridging was practised
on wet arable land or meadows, and sometimes the ridge is
raised to a considerable elevation. This is the most inde-
structible of agricultural improvements; and districts may
be found where, time out of mind after arable cultivation has
ceased on the land, the artificial ridge of the ancient field
is as marked as ever.

Much more important, however, is the marling and claying of
light and poor lands. If in marls the proportion of calcareous
matter is large, it is said to be a good dressing for clay soils;
if the amount of clay is large, it is good for light, sandy soil.
It was extensively adopted at Maldon, in Surrey, one of the
eleven estates on which I have so frequently commented ; the
operation extending over thirty-seven years, and nearly 143
acres having been gradually treated in this manner. Maldon
is in the sandy district of Surrey.

It was a costly operation. It appears that about one hundred
loads were spread to the acre, and that the cost—I am speaking
of Maldon only—was from 3s. to 3s. 6d. an acre, that is, nearly
half the value of the fee simple of ordinary arable land. Some-
times it cost more to the acre, the charge rising in the case of
one estate to 7s. an acre, and in another to nearly 8s. The
effect in altering the texture and increasing the fertility of the
soil was supposed to be very great, and the value of marl
pits was generally recognised. There is no reason to doubt
that the freehold and copyhold tenants, whose rents and
services were fixed, followed the example of the lord in
improving their property, especially as the cost of carriage,
owing to the fact that so many beasts of burden, relatively
speaking, were kept, was exceedingly light.

Writing two centuries and a half afterwards, Fitzherbert
tells us that the most useful process for mending ground is
Marling and Claying Land. 93

marling, and that generally, when such a material exists within
convenient reach, marl pits have long been opened. Latterly,
he adds, the practice of marling has become uncommon. Two
causes are assigned for this change of agricultural custom.
One is “that tenants”—he is speaking now of tenants at will,
or on short lease—“ be so doubtful of their landlords, that if they
should marl and make their holdings much better, they fear
lest they should be put out, or make a great fine, or else pay
more rent. And ifa lord doso, meseemeth he is unreasonable,
seeing that it is done all at the cost of the tenant, and not at
his. The second cause is that men be disposed to idleness,
and will not labour, as they have done in times past; but it
meseemeth a freeholder should not be of that condition, for he
is in asecurity, for his chief lord cannot put him out doing his.
duty. And he knoweth well that he shall take the whole profit
while he liveth, and his heirs after him ; a courage to improve
his own, the which is as good as he had purchased as much as
the improvement cometh to. And one man thus doing would
give other men the courage and a good example to follow
the same. Marl mendsall manner of ground, but it is costly.”
He goes on to say that in Cheshire and Lancashire the process
of marling has doubled the value of the land.

While marling was the expedient, according to the quality
of the article, for sandy land and some kinds of clay, lime was
employed for the destruction of moss and some kinds of
insects, and for altering the texture of heavy clays. Lime
was manufactured, the owner supplying kilns, fuel, and raw
material, at about 14¢@. the quarter, or at about 2d. the day,
when the service is not paid by the piece, and the operation
was carried on at bye times of the year. I find no record of the
amount needed for the acre; it probably varied, and was
frequently employed as a dressing. Our forefathers seem to
have sometimes committed the error of mixing it with stable
dung, and thereby of liberating the ammonia in their manures.
The sort of liming of course varies with the proximity of the
estate to chalkpits or limestone.

The. Dairy—Cheese and butter were abundant and cheap.
The proof is that, except kitchen stuff, butter is the cheapest
94 Rural England—Agriulture.

of the fats. Both appear to be produced on every farm. But
information in detail, such as the statistician would require,
is defective. Cheese is generally sold by tale, not by weight.
It is made up into three shapes, great, middle, and small,
and the weight of the aggregate is rarely found. So, again,
butter is frequently sold in pats. Again, it was a common
practice to let out the cows, the owner supplying food, at
5s. to 6s. 8d. a year, and the ewes at about Is., to the dairyman,
who had the calves, often repurchased by the bailiff, as part
of his bargain. The dairyman, or deye, engaged to restore
the animal in sound condition at the end of the year. Here
it is worth noting that such a bargain implied not only a
power of contracting on the part of persons whom the law
books describe as having no rights of their own against the
lord and his agent, but the possession of a considerable
amount of private resources on the part of the contractor,
who is generally a farm servant. The custom, in short, is
proof that the condition and means of persons who entered
into hired service on annual wages and allowances with the
lord’s bailiff, were far better than anything of which our
modern experience informs us as to the condition of farm
labourers in our time, or, indeed, within recorded memory.
Butter was worth about three farthings, cheese about a half-
penny the pound. It appears that butter was occasionally
melted, as it is sold frequently by the gallon. This may be
accounted for by the high price of salt.

The manufacture of cheese generally commenced at
Christmas, and was continued to Michaelmas. Within these
nine months, two cows should produce, in fair pasture, a wey
(224 lb.) of cheese, and about I9 gallons of butter. It seems,
then, that cheese was made of skimmed milk, or, at least, that
a portion of the butter was abstracted from it. If the pasture
is light, as in woods, meadows after mowing, or in stubble,
three cows were required for the same produce. Now, says
Walter de Henley, if a cow produces, as it may, 33d. worth of
cheese and 1d. worth of butter weekly, its gross annual return,
deducting the cost of keep, will be gs. a year, and, therefore,
it is strongly advisable that cows should be kept. Ten ewes
Cheese, Butter, and Salt. 95

were considered to be equal in productiveness to one cow.
Goats, for obvious reasons, were rarely kept. In the open
country they would have been entirely unmanageable.

Rennet was employed (generally the produce of the farm,
but occasionally purchased) for manufacturing cheese. The
curd was put into a vat and pressed through cloths. The
charge for vats and cheese-cloths is found on every farm.
The cheese thus manufactured seems to have been sold at
once, if possible, in the nearest town, and the sale was con-
tinued through the whole season. It appears that the
produce of certain dairies was stamped, not probably as
evidence of quality, but of ownership. It was the practice,
as I have said, to make cheeses into three shapes. These
seem to have been, to infer from the prices, six, four, and two
pounds respectively. In a later period we find very different
qualities of cheese, the practice being to make them into
larger shapes. The best cheese at this time came from the
eastern counties ; the cheapest from the southern.

Butter is generally sold by the gallon. Of course this may
have been salted and pressed into earthenware pans or small
barrels, which were very cheap,—the art of the cooper, like
his name, being universal,—or, as I have suggested, it may
have been melted. Its use for purposes which could hardly
bear salt argues that the melting of butter was not unknown.
At any rate it was abundant.

Salt—In connection with these articles of agricultural
produce, salt should be referred to. It was a matter of
necessity to an extent which we cannot conceive, and the

.acquisition of a good quality of the article was as important
as its cheapness and plenty. For five or six months in the
year, our ancestors, at least the majority of the people, lived
on salted provisions. The wealthy had game, fish from
their stores, and even fresh meat from their farms, though the
latter in varying quantity; for it was plainly a piece of
extravagance to habitually consume fresh meat in the winter.
But the mass of the people had to live on salted meat, or
to go without meat at all. The pig was doubtless the prin-
cipal food; but salted beef, and even mutton and poultry, were
go Rural England—Agriculture.

common articles of diet. The usages of the Church prescribed
that just before the coming of spring all should live on salted
fish, and, as a consequence, there was a great and most
important trade in salted sea-fish, the earliest maritime ad-
venture being directed towards the discovery of new and
more abundant fishing-grounds. Now, in the absence of alk
winter roots and herbs, beyond a few onions, a diet on salted
provisions, extended over so long a period, would be sure to
engender disease, even though the salt were of the best quality;
and as a matter of fact, scurvy and leprosy, the invariable
results of an unwholesome diet, were endemic, the latter
malignant and infectious, in medizval England. The virulence
of these diseases, due, in the first instance, to unwholesome
food, was aggravated by the inconceivably filthy habits of the
people.

The salt, however, with which the provisions were seasoned
made matters even worse. It was entirely produced by solar
evaporation in the southern counties, in so far as it was an
English product. That the Romans made use of the brine
springs of Worcestershire and Cheshire I can well believe ;
that the English did not, before the beginning of the
eighteenth century, I am quite certain; for the best au-
thorities at the time, those on the spot, declare they did not.
English salt, therefore, was full of impurities. It contained,
or was likely to contain, all those salts which the skill of the
modern chemist easily separates from the staple product.
It contained sand and dirt besides. “White” salt was very
properly a good deal dearer than grey or black salt; salt
that was used for the dairy than that which was supplied to
the servants. Great or bay salt was the dearest of all English
products.

The acquisition of salt, therefore, from such foreign regions
as could supply a purer article, was a great consideration.
Such a supply could come from the south-west coast of
France. As long as Guienne was parcel of the English
Crown, and trade was regular between the district and
England, salt and wine were the principal exports to this
country. In 1450, Guienne, after being annexed to the
foreygn Supplies of Salt. 97

English Crown, though with some interruptions, for three
venturies, was lost. The French king, knowing how impor-
tant the export of salt and wine was to England, ventured
on imposing an export duty on these commodities. The
Gascons rebelled in 1452; and were supported by the English
Parliament and the force under Talbot for very good reasons.
Talbot and his son were slain at Chatillon in 1453, and
Guienne was irretrievably lost. Thenceforward the English
kings strove to negotiate commercial treaties in which the
free exportation of the salt of Guienne was stipulated for.

I have said that English salt was always produced by
solar heat. The proof of this fact is to be found in the
exaltation of the price when the summer was wet. The
price of salt is even a better index of the rainfall during
harvest time than the price of wheat; for the latter might
recover, even when August rains were heavy, since it was cut
high up on the stalk; but the lost heat was never regained.
The stocks were generally, it would seem, larger; and the
exaltation of price is always, or nearly always, seen in the year
following on the agricultural scarcity. In what was a matter
of necessity, this was to be expected.

My reader will be now able to construct for himself the
picture of an English village in the thirteenth century: of its
timber or stone manor house,—brick-making, we must re-
member, was a lost art, and was not revived till the middle
of the fifteenth century,—of the rough buildings in which the
peasant owners lived, and the still ruder huts of the peasant
labourers. From childhood to old age, all labour. There is
no change in their career, their industry, their experience,
from generation to generation. Sometimes, indeed, an enter-
prising or favoured village youth quits his rustic home, and,
successful in war or the Church,—a Sale or a Wykeham or a
Fox,—is knighted or raised to episcopal dignity and such
wealth as to enable him to say, as Fox is said to have pre-
dicted, that the whole village would not serve for his kitchen.
But though a few persons became opulent in the middle
ages,—exceedingly opulent by way of contrast with their
countrymen,—the mass of men in the rural districts were

7
98 Rural England—Agriculture.

removed equally from excessive poverty and from the prospect
of much wealth. They could and did make their savings add
strip to strip, accumulate the wages of the harvest, and—
there being little to tempt them to expenditure—constantly
invest their earnings in plots of land.

Doubtlessly the court days, when all were summoned on
pain of fine for non-appearance at the manor hall, to serve
on the homage or court leet as the case might be, were
occasional breaks in their monotonous lives. There they pre-
sented scolds for wrangling; there the miller who took
advantage of his monopoly was indicted and punished; the
widow was allotted her charge on the land; the baker or
brewer, who had broken the assize or outraged the discipline
of the manor, was fined; ambitious fathers bargained for per-
mission to send their sons to school; and mothers got leave
to marry their daughters. The labourer who is defrauded of
his wages is permitted to distrain on his employer’s goods and
even household chattels ; and poachers are mulcted for their
offences. Sometimes the whole parish strives to emancipate
itself from the obligation of grinding its corn at the lord’s
mill, and is amerced for so heinous a breach of manor law.
The common carrier is summoned for failing to deliver goods
trusted to him, and is constrained to make compensation
A woman is fined for harbouring a stranger in her house.
A son comes into court, and, on succeeding to his father’s
tenement, not only fines in a mark for quiet entry, but
acknowledges that he is bound to pay an annuity to his
mother for her whole life—of a quarter of wheat, another of
barley, another of peas, and forty pence; proffering, as
sureties for the due performance of his obligation, two other
residents. The parish priest is generally the peacemaker.
These courts are held about three times a year, and seem
always to have had a day’s business to do.

At harvest time, again, there is a glimpse of the outer world.
The lord of the manor comes to take audit of his bailiff’s
doings through the past year, and perhaps to reside tempo-
rarily in the manor house. The parson hires labour, super-
intends the reaping of his own lands, and collects the tithe of
The Incidents of Peasant Lufe. 99

the produce into the huge barns which stand by his manse on
the close of his glebe. The busy Benedictine from some
convent is there, to watch over the harvest of his portion and
to look covetously on the rector’s lands and tithes, with a view,
if possible, of getting the impropriation of the benefice out of the
hands of the secular, and into the grasp of the regular, clergy.
Sometimes the parish is visited by the begging friars, the
revivalists of the thirteenth century, now in the height of their
reputation for piety and self-abnegation, and therefore en-
couraged to contrast their labours with the lives of luxurious
monks and worldly clergymen. When the harvest is over
there are processions to the village cross, hard by the church,
with thanksgivings for past benefits, and with litanies depre-
catory of real or impending calamities.

Grave offences against life and property are exceedingly
rare, else the penalties inflicted for these would have been
recorded in that exact and faithful transcript of the year's
accounts, the bailiff’s roll. But it is quite likely that though
the little community was generally at peace within its own
borders, and property was so generally distributed that none
was imperilled, it heard with indifference that strangers were
robbed on the high roads, and was even pleased that the
foreigner was not allowed to have his way in England. An
incident in Matthew Paris is so characteristic that I am
induced to quote it at length, the more so because it is
strange that so curious a narrative is omitted from the current
histories of England. The scene is Winchester and Alton in
Hampshire, two places which are equidistant from what is
probably the scene of the transactions in question. The date
is 1249.

The king, who had taken the whole conduct of affairs into
his own hands, and had neither Justiciary, Chancellor, nor
Treasurer under him, was residing in Winchester during
Lent, when two merchants of Brabant complained to him
that they had been robbed of two hundred marks in money
by certain highwaymen, whom they thought they could
identify. The culprits were arrested, and being put to the
test of compurgation, were set free by the oaths of their own
100 Rural England— Agriculture,

neighbours. The whole county was an accomplice tn te
robbery, and was agreed to convict no one; so that the
efforts of the judge to detect the scandal were fruitless.
The despoiled merchants pressed the king, assuring him that
the Duke of Brabant would certainly grant reprisals against
English merchants in Flanders, and thus amicable relations,
then of great importance, between England and the Low
Countries would be seriously interrupted, or at least im-
perilled.

So the king summoned the bailiffs and freemen of the
county of Southampton to him. Looking angrily at them he
said, “ What is this that I hear of you? The cry of those who
are robbed reaches me, and I must needscome down. There
isno county or district in the whole of England so scandalous
or so stained with crimes as yours. Even when I am here,
in this city, its suburbs or its neighbourhood, robberies and
murders are committed. Even this is not enough. My own
wine in my own casks is stolen by grinning and drunken
thieves. I am ashamed and disgusted at the abominations
of this city and its neighbourhood. I was born in this city,
and yet have never been so dishonoured in any place as here.
It is probable, credible, nay, all but certain, that you are
confederates and accomplices with these criminals. But I will
deal with you. Shut the gates, and let none go forth!”

After certain expostulations from the bishop, who was
present and excommunicated the offenders, a jury of twelve
was appointed out of Winchester and Hampshire men. They
were kept under strict custody, and held long debate. Sum-
moned at last, they could make no mention of the thieves.
The king was exceedingly enraged, for he knew they were
well acquainted with the facts. So he cried out, “ Seize these
cunning traitors, and put them heavily ironed into the lowest
prison. They are concealing what they ought to tell, Then
choose another jury of twelve from the same district, who will
be willing to tell the truth.” After a long and secret collo-
quy, these came forward, and disclosed the crimes and
offences of many persons from Alton and the bishop’s liberty
of Tanton. The result was that many persons of substance,
The Robbers of Alton. 101

numerous bailiffs and servants of the king, and some even of
the king’s household, were convicted and hanged. Among
these thieves was one William Pope, whose house, when
searched, was found to have no less than fifteen tuns of wine
in it. More than sixty were executed for their offences.
Such brigands must have lurked in the numerous forests
which covered much ground in the south-west, centre, and
north-east of Hampshire. The villages, however, would have
cared little for the calamities of a Flemish merchant or a
papal collector. The story, moreover, illustrates the state of
society and the process by which justice was done through
the agency of a jury of witnesses and compurgators.

The winter and the summer were in violent contrast. The
former was dark and cheerless, for the cost of artificial light
was disproportionately high—a time in which the peasant lived
perforce on unsavoury and unwholesome food. Such clothing,
too, as could be obtained was inadequate to repel the cold.
Hence the chroniclers comment on severe winters as the most
serious calamity of the year. But, on the other hand, the
freshness and glory of spring was heightened by the rudeness
of the season which it followed. The earliest English poetry
is that of the spring-time and its surroundings.

It is probable that the summer of the thirteenth century
and for some generations later, was better than that of
modern experience. Wheat was grown much farther north
than it was in the eighteenth century. Vineyards are found
in Norfolk, and wine, manufactured from English grapes, is
sold at a price not much less than that given for ordinary
Bordeaux. There are traditions of similar plantations over
many of the southern counties. In the fifteenth century,
wine was made in Devonshire, and in the sixteenth, after the
dissolution of the monasteries, a vineyard of five acres is
scheduled as part of the possessions of Barking nunnery. In
the thirteenth, as in the nineteenth century, the danger of
English agriculture was in unseasonable wet in summer. A
wet harvest is the cause of every famine and dearth in the
agricultural history of England.
102

CHAPTER IV.

TOWN LIFE.

Mary Roman Colonies survived the Saxon Conquest—Many grew up round
Monasteries, some Ports—Southampton in the Twelfth Century—Charters
granted to the Towns—List of English Towns in the Thirteenth Century, with
the Characteristics of each. The Guilds—were possessed of a Monopoly—
adopted and Enforced Apprenticeship; supplied a Military System to the
Towns, and in London gave great Political Influence; were Benefit Societies ;
had to be cautious how they admitted Serfs—London, a perpetual Market—
Attachment of Londoners to the City—Trade in London Illustrated by a
par.icular Purchase—Political Activity in England—Relative Opulence of
London in 1341, 1453, 1503, as compared with other Towns—Population of
the Principal Towns in 1377—Difficulties in the Estimate of Population—The
Population of England and Wales, and the Principle on which it has been
Estimated—Population and Occupations at Colchester in 1301—The whole
Population engaged in the Harvest—The Commerce of the Towns.

URING the slow progress of the Teutonic invasion and
D occupation, many a Roman colony perished. The sites of
some are now entirely lost, and some have been recently,
as Uriconium, Silchester, and the like, discovered. Roman
England was dotted over with villas, the foundations of which
are now and then exposed in places which have long since been
abandoned to tillage. Saxon England was not a settlement
of towns, but of villages and communal customs. Even most
of the bishoprics were settled in places which never could
have been considerable. The seat of the bishop whose juris-
diction extended from the Humber to the Thames was an
Oxfordshire village, which grew round an ancient monastery,
founded within the walls of a Roman town. The Bishop of
the West had his see at the hamlet of Crediton, that of the
Centraland East at Elmham. A few were from the first placed
The Oldest Towns. 103

In the ancient colonies of Roman England, as at London,
Winchester, York, and Worcester.

Even if the names did not prove the fact, some of the cities
of Roman Britain clearly survived the ruin of the second
conquest, and must have had a continuous existence. The
sites of London, of York, of Lincoln, Winchester, Exeter,
Chester, Gloucester, and several others could never have been
abandoned. In the fragments of history which throw a little
light on the annals of the petty Saxon kingdoms, there are a
few hints of the independent existence of London, and of a
corporate vitality there. This was to be expected. Unless
the town offered an obstinate resistance, the invaders might
well be content to spare those places which they had no mind
to occupy. It is true that the desolation of Roman Britain
was more thorough than that of Roman Gaul ; but it is more
than probable that the towns which the Saxon tolerated he
found useful afterwards ; that the Saxon king discovered in
these towns some means for strengthening his authority, and
that Edward the Elder was not the first king who made the
successful merchant “who had passed thrice over the sea by
his own means” thegn worthy. From various notices in the
Codex Diplomaticus, London appears to have been included
in the kingdom of Mercia. Nor can it be doubted that when
the intercourse between the England of this and even a
remoter age and France began, men learned about the Roman
municipalities which survived. These became the patterns of
the chartered towns which were so numerously enfranchised
in the early Plantagenet period.

Many of the English towns grew up round monasteries
The piety of the converted Saxons led them to spend lavishly
in the foundation of these institutions, and the principal part
of the documents which have been preserved from a period
antecedent to the Conquest refer to these early monasteries.
Thus the town of Oxford grew up under the shadow of the
great monasteries of St. Frideswide and Osney. Such was
the origin of Abingdon, of Reading, of St. Alba: s, of Coventry,
of Durham. Some, when trade was developed or restored,
owed their existence to the convenience of the site for com-
104 Town Life.

merce. Such must have been the origin of Southampton,
which migrated from the Roman Clausentum to the eastern
side of the Itchen; of Bristol, and of Norwich. Some were the
havens of fishermen, as Yarmouth, Grimsby, and Scarborough.
In the beginning of Richard the First’s reign, Southampton must
have been a thriving town, for the possessions of God’s House,
a charity for decayed merchants, founded in 1189, were ex-
ceedingly extensive. The hospital holds houses, shops, and
lands in the parishes of Holy Cross, St. John, St. Michael, St.
Lawrence, All Saints, St. Mary’s, and in the district outside
the Bars. In point of fact, Southampton was the chief port
of southern England, with which the principal part of the
French trade was carried on, especially that in wines, It did
not recover for many generations the ruin which fell on it when
the French landed and burnt it on October 6th, 1338. The
names in the Southampton rental of the twelfth century
imply a considerable population of foreigners, especially of
Flemings; and it appears from documents that there was a
constant immigration from North-west Germany into the
Eastern Counties.

The towns which depended on the Crown were liable to
certain annual payments, which were collected by the sheriff.
In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the custom began of
entrusting the town with the collection of its fee farm pay-
ments, and of confirming and enlarging the jurisdiction which
the authorities of the town had over their own burghers.
These were granted very extensively by Richard I. and John,
and generally contain exemptions from harassing and vexa-
tious charges, the right of self-government, of the election of
their own officers, and the power of forming guilds and
enacting bye-laws for their government. The municipal
privileges of London are even recognised in a charter of
William the Conqueror. Most of the charters are confirma-
tions of privileges which were alleged to have existed from
ancient times. The permanent and fixed sources of income
which the Crown enjoyed from these chartered towns were
occasionally charged with payments to other permanent
institutions. One of the principal sources of income pos-
The Produce of Towns. 105

sessed by the King’s Hall of Cambridge, the predecessor of
Trinity College, was a portion of the fee farm rent of the
town of Scarborough.

In a lawyer’s handy-book of the thirteenth century, the com-
pilation of which was clearly made at or about 1250, and
which contains the earliest copy which I have found of Walter
de Henley’s work on husbandry, though, as the corrections
show, it is a copy of a still earlier original, is a list of English
towns and similar places, each with some marked characteristic
annexed to it. Thus we have the Baronage of London, a
phrase which seems to point to that period in the earlier re-
corded history of the great city when the artizans and traders
were struggling against the dominant influence of the local
nobles, and the Fitzosberts were seeking to give method to their
discontent and their efforts. The relics of Westminster, the
pardons of St. Paul’s, the approach to Thorney, perhaps the
enclosure of the old Palace of Westminster, if not the isle of
Ely Abbey, and the prostitutes of Charing, designate the
characteristics of localities near London. With the excep-
tion of Berwick, York, and Chester, no place north of the
Humber is named.

Oxford is renowned for its schools, Cambridge for its eels—
a proof that the list was compiled before the latter University
was recognized. Manufactures of cloth are noted :—Scarlet
at Lincoln (Nichol); blanket at Bligh; burnet at Beverley ;
russet at Colchester (eight weavers are enumerated at this town
in the rolls of Parliament under the year 1301); produce of
linen fabrics at Shaftesbury, Lewes, and Aylesham ; of cord
at Warwick and Bridport, the latter being also quoted for its
hempen fabrics; of fine bread at Wycombe, Hungerford, and
St. Albans; of knives at Maxstead ; of needles at Wilton; of
razors at Leicester. Banbury is distinguished for its drink,
Hitchin for its mead, and Ely for its ale. Gloucester is the
mart for iron, Bristol for leather, Coventry for soap, Doncaster
for horse girths, Chester and Shrewsbury for skins and furs,
Corfe for marble, Cornwall for tin. Grimsby is famous for
cod, Rye for whiting, Yarmouth for herrings, Berwick for
salmon, Ripon is a horse market, as it was in the sixteenth
106 Town Life.

century, and gloves are bought at Haverhill, while oxen are
sold at Nottingham, and, unless I am mistaken, saddlery at
Northampton.

Southampton is famed for its navy, Norwich for its harbour,
Stamford and Dunstable for inns. Some towns are indicated
by uncomplimentary characteristics—as the robbers of Alton,
in allusion, doubtless, to the story of brigandage in that
aeighbourhood recounted in the last chapter—butchers at
Winchester, and villeins at Tamworth, The plains of Salis-
vury, the hot springs at Bath, the cloister at Lichfield, the
narvel of Stonehenge, the passage of Chelmsford, the ferry
of Tilbury, the warren of Walton, the prairie of Waltham,
the mills of Dunwich, the forest of Sherwood, the chase of
Englewood, the forest of Windsor, the manor of Woodstock,
the castle of Dover, and the marsh of Ramsey, are natural or
artificial objects which made the localities famous. The
courage of the Cinque Ports probably refers to the battle with
Eustace the Monk in 1217, when these ports bore the brunt of
the struggle, and made the cause of Louis of France hopeless.

The inhabitants of these towns were merchants and artizans.
London was, no doubt, from the earliest times wholly unlike
any other English town, as well for its magnitude, its
opulence, as for its singular political importance, for its
military defences, and for the energy with which it strove to
free itself from the overpowering influence of the magnates
within its walls. But the essence of the medieval town was
the formation of the guilds of merchants and craftsmen ;
and if the town was large enough, of craftsmen who repre-
sented each and every calling which was carried on in the
locality. There was every motive for the creation of these
guilds, for the establishment of rules for their private
governance, for jealous supervision over those who had the
privileges of these corporate bodies, and for care lest an
unauthorized person should intrude on what was a valued
right, which might be and was watched with suspicion and
alarm by other forces in the state.

1. Within the limits of the corporation, the guild had the
monopoly of manufacture or trade. Such a privilege was
The Guilds. 107

entirely in accordance with the fundamental characteristic:
of these societies which constituted the parish or manor of
rural England. There were no strangers in the manor. It
was an offence, punishable with fine, to harbour one. If a.
tenement changed hands, it was generally to some other
villager. For generations it was no easy matter to import a
stranger; and when competitive rents began, this virtual
exclusion of strangers checked for a long time the develop--
ment of such rents. In the same way, and from the same
ancient feeling, centuries after the period on which I am.
writing, the first law of parochial settlement, under which
the peasant labourer was formally declared to be adscriptus.
glebe, or a serf without land, who might be debarred from:
seeking employment in any other place than that of his birth:
or settlement, and dragged back to his native field of labour,.
did not seem unnatural or unjust. It was not, therefore,
remarkable that, apart from the obvious but secondary motive-
of self-interest, the guild should number its members on the-
lines of a register in the decenna, or tithing, and should put:
effectual hindrances on the introduction of strangers. Mem--
bership in a guild was a birthright, an inheritance.

2, But it was also a great advantage. The members of the:
guild had paid good money for their privileges in their-
collective capacity. They had, as individuals, contributed to-
the common stock, not, perhaps, always in fair proportion..
for the contribution in all likelihood, as in modern times,.
pressed hardly on the poorer among the fraternity; but the-
privilege was all the more valuable because it had been gained
by solid sacrifices. They alone who were of the fraternity-
had the right to manufacture and sell within the precinct..
They took care that this right should not become obsolete.
They insisted, as one of the hindrances to the too free
distribution of the privilege, that new-comers should undergo:
a long period of servitude or apprenticeship. This custom, or
innovation, which was rightly interpreted by Adam Smith,.
required that a considerable time should elapse before the
workman or trader should be able to set up for himself, his.
services during the time of his apprenticeship being the:
108 Town Life.

‘property of his master. The object of the rule was to restruir
-competition, and the restraint was further enforced by limiting
the number of apprentices which the master could take. The
‘rules of trade were copied by the Inns of Court and the
Universities, who enacted that no one should be free to
‘practise in a court or to lecture in the University till seven
years had elapsed from his entrance to the initial privileges
-of the order. In some corporations it was prescribed by
-byelaws, which had the effect of public laws, that the apprentice
-should work for a period after his probation had elapsed as a
‘journeyman to his employer. He wasa freeman to the guild,
‘but not in the trade. Hence the celebrated statute of
+s Elizabeth was merely declaratory of custom, was in reality
-only a re-enactment of 7 Hen. IV., with the fact that the
“machinery for enforcing the law was applied.

3. The organization of the guilds bestowed that military
-system on the London artizans, and similarly on the guilds of
“other trading towns, which the circumstances of the time
-seemed to demand. The London apprentices and train
-bands were a force, not indeed considerable enough to with-
‘stand the charge of regular soldiers, as was proved at the
-battle of Lewes, but as good as the militia, and for purposes
-of defence entirely adequate on ordinary occasions. The
wealth of London was great, and naturally provoked the angry
-comment of Henry III, when, in 1248, his “ parliament” of
nobles having refused to assist him in one of his recurrent
‘straits of poverty, and his foreign possessions being wasted,
he sold his plate and jewels for what they would fetch, and
found they were bought in London: “I know that if the
‘treasure of Imperial Rome was to be sold, that London
-would take and buy it all. These London clowns, who call
‘themselves barons, are rich to loathing. The city is an
dnexhaustible well.” And so he bethought himself of spoiling
‘the citizens, and the citizens to arm the companies, till at last
they ranged themselves on De Montfort’s side in the civil
‘war, as they had nearly fifty years before taken part with
Langton and the barons in the exaction of the Great Charter.

During the many political dissensions of the middle ages
The Power of London, 109

the side which London took was always in the end, and.
generally at an early period, victorious. To pass over the
uprisings in the reigns of John and Henry, they joined in
deposing Edward II. and Richard II, They put away the
House of Lancaster in 1461. When the rapacity of his.
courtiers and the poverty of his exchequer led the guardians.
of Edward VI. to despoil the guilds in the country towns, they
were prudent enough to spare the possessions of the London
guilds, which still exist, though with very different objects.
from those for which they were first incorporated. The
indignation of the robbed and ruined traders overset the
calculations of Northumberland, extinguished the project of
setting Jane Grey on the throne, though she had a parlia-
mentary title, and affirmed the right of Mary Tudor. The
adherence of London to the cause of Parliament during the
long struggle which began with the book of rates, and was.
concluded by the battle of Naseby, made the issue of the
conflict manifest to all foresighted persons. And lastly, when
Charles was bent on despotism, and discovered the best means
by which to attain his ends, at least for a time, he employed
legal chicanery to rob the citizens of their liberties, which he
never could have destroyed by violence. The situation of
the city was doubtlessly very strong. It was protected on
the north by extensive marshes, on the south by the river
and a lofty bank, on the west by other fortifications and the
Fleet stream. But the strength of medizval London lay in
the sturdy determination and military spirit of its citizens,
For centuries it held the balance of power in England.

4. The guilds were the benefit societies in the middle ages.
It does not follow that they were under a legal obligation
to relieve their destitute members, as they are in those modern
cities of Europe in which the guild system has continued to
our own day, as at Munich. But it was a common practice
for the wealthier members of a guild to give or devise sums
of money to the guild, the proceeds of which were lent with-
out interest to struggling members of the fraternity, adequate
pledges or securities being exacted from the borrowers. Such
gifts were frequently made to the University of Oxford in its
X10 Lown Life.

earlier days, the trustees being the University officials, and
the money being deposited in chests or hutches in the Uni-
versity church, where also the pledges were left. The college
in Oxford which is now reputed the earliest, though its
‘incorporation was much later than that of Merton College,
‘began with the proceeds of such a hutch, limited to a certain
‘number of beneficiaries. These gifts are common in London
and other cities, both to guilds and parishes, and constitute
alarge part of their estates, purchases of real estate being
made with the benefactions which belong to the companies
and the parishes, often from nameless donors. Still more
frequently the members of guilds devised lands, tenements,
and moneys, the proceeds of which were to be charged first
with the cost of religious offices for the repose of the dead,
the residue being devoted to the common purposes of the
guild. Sometimes the benefactor founded an almshouse for
destitute or decayed members of the guild, their widows and
orphans. Such almshouses, though unconnected with guilds,
were founded near Canterbury by Lanfranc and Anselm in
the reigns of the Conqueror and Rufus; by Henry de Blois,
near Winchester, in the reign of Stephen; and by Stephen’s
‘wife, Matilda, in London. The condition that prayers should
‘be said for the deceased was the plea on which those guild
lands were confiscated in 1547, though the court did not
dissolve the London companies, and the colleges in Oxford
and Cambridge were allowed to retain their chantries dis-
charged of the trust. Besides these funds, there were fines on
admission, payments for membership, and penalties for
breaches of the corporation bye-laws. The accumulation
must have been considerable at an early date, for in the
fourteenth century two Cambridge guilds contributed from
their funds to found a new college in the University. The
origin of the trading companies, their revenues and their
statutes, are almost exactly like those of academical colleges.

5. The guilds ‘had to be careful in the bestowal of their
privileges. Residence for a year and a day in a corporate
town precluded a lord from regaining his serf; and we have:
seen that the lords, by exacting an annual fine on absentees
Lts Markets—Medieval Londoners. LI!

of base origin, were not remiss in claiming their rights. It
might have been dangerous for the guilds to openly defy
tthe feudal lords by making their fraternities an asylum for

runaway serfs. We may conclude that not only selfish
motives, but those of reasonable prudence would have made
them cautious in welcoming strangers. Still they would not
put up with an invasion of any right which was or seemed to

them clear in the case of any enrolled member of their order.

In 1381, Sir Simon Burley gave no slight stimulus to Tyler’s

insurrection by imprisoning a Gravesend burgess on a plea

of villeinage. It is not easy to see indeed how the suit

against a runaway villein could be prosecuted, except he had~
taken refuge in a town.

6. London was a perpetual market. If goods were sold in
‘open market, it is an ancient custom that the owner of
stolen property has no remedy against an innocent purchaser.
Hence it was throughout the year what the great fairs were
at stated intervals. The market for heavy goods, especially
of foreign origin, was below the city walls on the river wharves.
Within the city walls were great open spaces, now built over,
no doubt because the tolls of these markets were the property
of the city, of individuals, or of companies ; spaces like those
which are still to be seen in Nottingham and Norwich, the
last of which cities in the thirteenth century was only second
to London, though at a great interval behind it. London, in
fact, was a perpetual fair, the localities of whose trades are
still discernible in the Cornhill, the Cheapside, the Poultry,
the Leadenhall, or designated in literature,as Bucklersbury
and Smithfield are.

7. Macaulay, in a well-known passage, has dwelt upon
the intensity of feeling with which a Londoner looked upon
his city and its privileges at the conclusion of the seventeenth
century. The feeling must have been keener in the thirteenth
and fourteenth, when it did not contain a population of over
40,000 persons, even before fire and plague had desolated it.
The streets were narrow, and the upper stories, projecting
from the timber frames, nearly touched each other. But in
the rear of the houses were trim gardens, in which the citizen
112 Town Life.

sat in the summer evenings. I have often noticed the charges
to which corporations are put in repairing the fences and
walls in the gardens of their London tenements. These
gardens are now occupied by courts and lofty buildings, the
value of which is estimated by the square foot, the rental of
one such court being in nominal amount equal to the whole
fee farm rent which London, in the middle ages, paid her
Plantagenet kings. But London in these times was a rus tw
urbe, as nearly all the walled towns in England were, the
inhabitants of which were densely enough packed in the
buildings which they occupied, but had open spaces in
abundance within: the walls, and in the ward without, the
western outskirt of the city. The attachment which the
merchant princes of the seventeenth century felt for London
was a feeble sentiment beside that which the “ barons” of the
thirteenth entertained towards their home and their strong-
hold. There was little opportunity for handsome houses, or
for costly furniture, such as might be seen in the Italian cities,
perhaps in Flanders and the free towns of the Rhine; the
tale of domestic goods is scanty and mean, but the burghers.
accumulated wealth, which they liked to expend, as the piety
of the age dictated, in handsome churches, in splendid presents
to the shrines of saints, and in the pomp of religious worship.
Fitzstephen, a century before the time of which I write, is
eloquent about the opulence of London, and how it constantly
recovered after the disastrous fires with which it was frequently
visited. The churchyard of the great cathedral might be in
ordinary times the burial-ground of the whole city, as its vast
aisles and nave were for the chief citizens, the ecclesiastics on
its establishment, and some of the nobles; but there were
numberless city churches and monasteries where space was
ample for ail the burials of the inhabitants,

There is an entry in one of the accounts of Cuxham which,
with very little effort of the imagination, may give one a picture
of those daily mercantile transactions of magnitude which
were carried on in London. In the summer of 1331, the lords of
Cuxham and Holywell determined to make an extensive pur-
chase of the best millstones procurable for the purpose of sup-
Traffic in London. 113

plying their mills at the village and at Oxford. These stones
were formed probably from the chert which is found in the
neighbourhood of Paris, or were perhaps quarried at Ander-
nach on the Rhine, the two localities from which, it appears,
the best foreign millstones were procured, and still are. At
daybreak, therefore, the bailiff, who, like his father, was a
serf of the manor, started on the road to London, some forty-
five miles distant, over the Chiltern Hills, through Wycombe
and Uxbridge to London, along one of the most beautiful
highways in England. He arrives in London, with servants
and horses, and takes up his lodging at one of the numerous
inns in the city or in Southwark, and, according to the fashion
of the time, goes out to purchase provisions for man and horse,
. for the inn did not necessarily provide travellers with more
than lodging and sleeping accommodation. Early next day
he sets about the business on which he had come, inspects the
warehouses on the wharf below the southern wall of the city,
and finds the five stones which will suit his own and the
Oxford mill. Having chosen them, he adjourns with the
merchant to some tavern near, in which to discuss the terms -
of his bargain. The chaffering was doubtlessly long and
anxious. In so large an affair it was worth while to stint
neither time nor money, and the bailiff debates the price
over the exceptional and extensive order of five gallons of
Bordeaux wine. The business, too, is worth the merchant’s
while, for the order is also a considerable affair to him, since it
is plain that the bailiff wants the best articles in the warehouse.
At last the bargain is struck, the price first asked abated,
the luck penny—“God’s silver”—is delivered. There are
witnesses to the transaction, and the bailiff delivers his
acknowledgment of debt. Next morning the bailiff returns
to his farm and his duties, and communicates the terms of
his purchase to his lords and employers. Shortly afterwards
he makes a second journey to London, to pay for his mill-
stones,—the five cost 415 16s. 8d,,—and to make a bargain
for their carriage by water. Two days are spent in London
on this business, and more potations, now cheaper, as he is
dealing with sailors and wharfingers, are found necessary. At
8
114 Town Life.

last they are set on board, a considerable sum being paid for
shipping them. Dues are claimed for wharfage and murage,
tolls for maintaining the bank and the city wall, and the bailiff
rides back to his home on the fourth morning of the second
visit. The vessel with its freight passes up the river, through
the swans and salmon fisheries and the forest of Windsor, as
it is emphatically called, which was still a mere hunting seat,
though soon to be crowned with the palace which the young
king erected on Wykeham’s designs. At Maidenhead the
boat pays a second murage, perhaps because the jurisdiction
of the city over the Thames extended as far as this. Then it
passed along the horseshoe of the Thames till the boat rested
at Henley, beyond which it is probable that the navigation of
the river did not extend, at least insummer. Here the stones
are bored for the use of the mills, and two are carried in hired
carts to Cuxham. The Oxford servants looked after what
was needed for their wants.

On his road to and from London, Oldman. the bailiff, passed
Tyburn brook, which had been employed a century before to

- supply water for the growing necessities of London, a supply
which sufficed till more than a century after the journey which
I have described, when springs at Paddington were added,
now, I believe, collected in the Serpentine. A few months
before, Mortimer had been hanged at Tyburn, the place
which was for many a century to be notorious in the annals
of metropolitan crime. The downfall of the foolish, disreput-
able Edward had not been followed by the reforms which the
nation expected, the dignity of the English Crown demanded,
and the interests of the English exchequer required. Mor-
timer had been the queen’s paramour, and had made peace
with the Scots, even selling the young king’s sister to the
son of the detested Bruce. He had suffered the claims of the
English monarch to be neglected in France. But this was
over, since Mortimer’s righteous execution.

It cannot, I think, be doubted, as we shall see when we come
to deal with subsequent events, that political questions were
discussed among the peasantry with great freedom and
keenness. The mass of men had that interest in public affairs
English Towns tn 1341. 115

which is bred by the possession of property and by the habits
of self-government in the manor courts. In the days of
Henry III., the Parliament was, as far as the record informs
us, of prelates and nobles only, and it was to them that Henry
appealed on the frequent occasions of his importunate mendi-
cancy for aid. That the charge of this taxation, when a
grant was made, was paid from the moneys of the nobles
alone cannot be believed, unless, indeed, it were a scutage,
But, at any rate, the commons are summoned in 1259, not only
to assent to certain proceedings, but to undertake responsi-
bilities ; and when the full Parliamentary system is adopted in
Edward’s reign, we find that direct taxation of all householders
is forthwith introduced. And as the possession of property
and the habit of self-government predispose to political debate,
so the incidence of direct taxation stimulates it, and I make
no doubt that the domestic and foreign policy of the English
sovereign, involving as it did a sensible contribution from the
peasants’ hoard, in order that his crops, his stock, and his
household goods should be ransomed, was discussed with
eagerness, and opinion, sometimes adverse, sometimes danger-
ous, was formed, which burst out occasionally with unexpected
violence.

In 1341, the first year in which I have been able to find any
trustworthy evidence on which to infer as to the comparative
opulence of the English counties and principal towns, the city
of London, exclusive of the county of Middlesex, was rated at
less than one fourth of the whole county of Norfolk, inclusive
of Norwich, which was probably, for its size, the second city in
the kingdom in point of wealth, and about as much as the
counties of Berks, Cambridge, Devon, or Northampton. The
assessment is more than ten times that of the “city of the
county of York,” about seven-and-a-halftimesthat of Newcastle-

on-Tyne, and about eight times that of Bristol, these being}
the only municipalities which are severally assessed, and each’
being thus assessed for special reasons, for in each of them
a considerable district in the neighbourhood was included in
the city liberties, or put under the direction of the local
authorities. The assessment of the county of Norfolk is far
116 Town Life.

in excess, estimated ratably by the acreage, of that of any
other county; the next to it, though at a considerable distance,
being Oxfordshire and Middlesex, exclusive of London. The
cause is the inclusion of the opulent city of Norwich within
the assessment.

In 1453, another assessment of an equally unsuspicious.
character exists. In this, the next city to London is York;
the rate of London being about seven-and-a-half times more
than that of York. London is about nine-and-a-half times as.
opulent as Norwich, the second city; twelve times more wealthy
than Bristol, the third ; fifteen times more than Coventry, the
fourth ; twenty-one-and-a-half times more than Newcastle;
nearly twenty-three times more than Kingston-on-Hull; twenty-
four-and-a-half times more than Lincoln; nearly twenty-
eight times more than Southampton; and thirty-eight times
more opulent than Nottingham, the lowest on the list. Some
of these facts are to be accounted for, notably York and
Coventry, by political and temporary causes. York was one
of the headquarters of the Yorkist faction ; and Coventry, the
special stronghold of the Lancastrians, had been latterly
enriched and extended by Margaret.

Fifty years later another and a similarly unsuspicious
assessment can be found. In this seventeen cities and towns
are separately valued. On this occasion, Bristol, which had
been greatly enriched by the trade with Ireland and the
North Sea, was the second city in the kingdom. London is
assessed at only three-and-three-quarter times over Bristol ;
but there had been a great conflagration in London in the
same year. Next comes York, with nearly one-fourth the
amount. London is about five-and-a-half times richer than
Lincoln. The next is Gloucester, with less than a sixth of
the London quota. But London is seven-and-a-half times
richer than Norwich, the manufacturers of which were now
migrating southwards and westwards. Shrewsbury has nearly
the same assessment as Norwich. The assessment of Oxford
is a little more than a ninth that of London. That of
Salisbury and Coventry about a ninth; of Hull less than a
tenth; of Canterbury a little more than a tenth; of South-
Population of the Towns. 117

ampton a little more than a twelfth; of Nottingham about
a seventeenth ; of Worcester and Southwark about a thirty-
fourth ; and of Bath, the lowest, about a forty-seventh that of
London.

In 1377, the Parliament granted the king a poll-tax of
fourpence a head on all lay persons over fourteen years of
age, none but known beggars being exempted. Beneficed
clergymen paid a shilling; and other ecclesiastics, except
mendicant friars, paid fourpence. The number who paid the
tax in each of the principal towns is preserved. If the
number of those under sixteen is taken as one-third of the
population, the estimate made a century ago, and one-third
as therefore added to the amount, the population of London
was 35,000; and next to it York, with near 11,000. Bristol
had about 9,500, Coventry a little over 7,000, Norwich near
6,000, Lincoln about 5,000. No other English town had over
§,000 inhabitants,

In this record, the counties of Bedford, Surrey, Dorset,
Middlesex, exclusive of London, Westmoreland, Rutland,
Cornwall, Berkshire, Herts, Hunts, Bucks, and Lancashire,
do not appear to have contained any town which was thought
worthy of particular enumeration. It is to be expected that
the relative opulence of London was greater per head of
population than that of any other city, and the facts of the
poll-tax square with such an estimate. The same rule will
apply to towns like Norwich, which were conspicuous for
their manufactures, and others, like Bristol, which had already
become eminent for their commerce.

There is no topic in political arithmetic on which persons
who are inexperienced in the art of interpreting figures are
more likely to be deceived than they are in the population
of any given country, or any given city, when a direct!
enumeration of the inhabitants is not at hand. Guesses have
been made as to the populousness of English towns, and,
indeed of England itself, during the middle ages, which would.
be ludicrous, if they were not misleading and mischievous,
because they suggest economical results which a more minute
inquiry into the facts of the case will show to be impossible,
118 Town Life.

Now to estimate the real progress which this country has
made, it is expedient that we should attempt to arrive at
precise information as to what was the product of English
agriculture; for we may be pretty sure that no importation
of food worth speaking of was regularly made into England
till very recent times; that what was produced in the
country was the measure of its possible population ; and that
if an estimate is formed from vague surmises and still vaguet
numbers, the inferences which are based on such estimates
are sure to be delusive.

The estimate given above, which adds one-third to the num.
ber of persons liable to the tax in consideration of those who
were under fourteen years of age, and raised to sixteen years
in order to cover the probability that in the collection of the
tax there were many evasions, may be taken exception to
as too low an estimate of the untaxed population. It is true,
that at present the number of persons under fifteen years of
age, as compared with all above that age, is as nearly as
possible in the proportion of 9 to 11, instead of 6°33 to
13°66. But it must be remembered that in the middle ages
the risks of life from disease were far greater than they are
at present, that medical skill was almost non-existent; that
the conditions of life were eminently unwholesome; that the
diet of the people, during fully one-half of the year, though
abundant, was insalubrious; and that when human life is
shortened by unfavourable circumstances, the mortality is far
greater in the young than it is in those who, having escaped
the perils of childhood, are, so to speak, selected and |
hardened. Besides, there was a large part of the population
which was, by ecclesiastical rule, obliged to celibacy and
chastity ; and however much we may give ear to the gossip
about monks and nuns, and the secret marriages or open
concubinage of the secular clergy, public opinion and dis-
cipline must have exercised a very considerable check on the
contribution of the clergy to the population of the middle
ages. I am therefore disposed to conclude that the calcu-
lation made by Mr. Topham, in the seventh volume of the
Archeologia, from whom I have borrowed the facts and the
Population of England. 119

estimate of the English towns in the fourteenth century,
is as correct as can well be imagined, and that it would
not be probable if any other basis of addition than that
of one-third were made in determining the population of the
towns.

When I published my first two volumes of the history of
agriculture and prices, I was led to investigate the grounds on
which estimates were made of the population of England in the
thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and to give the grounds
on which I arrived at my own. My reasoning was nearly as
follows :—“ There were generally as many people existing in
this country as there have been, on an average, quarters of
wheat to feed them with. The evidence supplied from the
produce of arable land of average quantity gives about
a quarter an acre. At present it is about from three to
four quarters an acre; and this food is supplemented by other
products which were unknown in the thirteenth century or
for many centuries afterwards.” I concluded, that setting the
amount of land which has been devoted to towns, roads,
and pleasure-grounds, in modern times, against that which
was not broken up or cultivated six centuries ago, the possible
wheat-growing land of the thirteenth century was about three
million acres, and that from this must be deducted—though I
admit that by far the greatest breadth sown was wheat—
about a sixth of the average wheat-land—much more of which
could be given under modern rotation to other crops—which
would lie in fallow. I therefore concluded that about two-and-
a-half millions of population was the maximum that could be
reckoned with any probability for England, and that it was
possibly even less. The view which I took was challenged
with some acerbity, chiefly on the strength of certain numeri-
cal accounts given at the time or soon afterwards as to the
loss of life in the great plague of the fourteenth century.
After a brief controversy, I dropped the subject, for I know
no time which is lost more thoroughly than that devoted to
arguing on matters of fact with a disputant who has no facts,
but only very strong convictions.

I had a singular confirmation of my inferences on the
120 Town Life.

subject in the actual enumeration of certain Kentish hun-
dreds, nine in number, the facts of which I discovered in the
Record Office. The document is undated, but is clearly of the
time of Henry VIII., among the state papers of whose reign
it was found. The hundreds are on the south-east side of
Kent, and the enumeration, besides the population, contains
an account, taken after the middle of the agricultural year,
zé., about the beginning of April, of the stock of corn in the
various hundreds. It may be observed here that there is no
rye grown, the principal crops being wheat, barley, and oats.
Kent at this time was one of the most thriving and populous
parts of England, and these hundreds are in the richest
agricultural district of the county. They contained no
large town at that time, and contain none now. They are
fair specimens of what was the wealthiest part of agricul-
tural England in the later middle ages. Now the population
of these hundreds in the first half of the sixteenth century
(14,813) is almost exactly one-sixth of that at which it stood
in 1861 (88,080). It will be seen that the population
almost precisely corresponds to that which I stated, from
an estimate of the rate of production, was the maximum
population of England, and that this population was almost
stationary for three centuries and a half. There is further
evidence that the rate of production had not increased, and
that, in fact, no improvement whatever had been made in the
art of agriculture.

These inferences are signally confirmed by the estimate
which is made from the record of the poll tax in 1377. The
forty-two towns, with the addition of one-third to the actual
numbers paying the tax, contained a population of 168,720
persons. The rest of the population is 1,207,722, together
making 1,376,442. Durham and Chester are reckoned at
51,083, a very large, perhaps excessive estimate, Wales with
Monmouth, at 131,040. The two Counties Palatine were
separately assessed, and the return is not included, and Wales
with Monmouth is not assessed at all. This gives a total of
1,558,505. By adding a third for the children, and making a
very liberal allowance for ecclesiastics and mendicants, no less
Occupations in Colchester. 121

than 162,153, Mr. Topham concludes that the whole population
of England and Wales, in the last year of Edward the Third’s
reign, was two and a half millions. I cannot but think that
three calculations, two of them being from matters of fact,
could not be so exactly similar in their results and be merely
fortuitous coincidences.

The distribution of occupations in a town of some magni-
tude, Colchester, estimated in 1377 to contain a population of
4.432, as it had a taxable number of 2,955, and is reckoned as
tenth in the list, is curiously illustrated by the rolls of Parlia-
ment of the years 1296 and 1305. The first is, I] imagine.
imperfect, only 251 persons being specified in it, whil 391
are found in the second. If we take five persons to a family, and
consider the last enumeration to be exhaustive, there must
have been about 2,000 persons residing in Colchester and its
vills in 1301, and the population must have doubled within
three-quarters of a century. It is very possible that certain
of the eastern towns made considerable progress, as during
Edward’s wars an active agricultural trade, and no little purely
commercial intercourse, took place between the eastern coun-
ties on the one hand, and the Hanse and Flemish towns on
the other.

In the second list, there are 229 persons, whose calling is not
specially designated. Besides these, there are twelve clergymen,
ten persons of considerable substance, sixteen shoemakers,
thirteen tanners, ten smiths, eight weavers, eight butchers,
seven bakers, six fullers, six girdlers, five mariners, four mil ers,
four tailors, three dyers, three fishermen, three carpenters,
and three spicers or grocers. The following trades are also
enumerated :—cooper, white leather seller, potter, parchr ent
maker, furrier, cook, tiler, bowyer, barber, mustarder, wool-
comber, lorimer, wood-turner, linen draper, wheelwright,
glover, fuel dealer, old clothes dealer, sea-coal dealer, gla ier,
brewer, ironmonger, and vintner. Two of the girdlers were
also mercers, and one sold verdigris and quicksilver (for shee
dressing). It will be noticed that the number of tanners is
large, as also of shoemakers, The fact points to a local manu-
facture and handicraft. Essex contained a large amount of
122 Town Life.

forest, and especially oak forest, and the town was therefore
well placed for a leather industry.

The activity of the townsfolk was not confined to their
special craft-or trade. In harvest time they poured out of
the towns into the country. When the king dismisses his
parliament in the middle ages, he sends the nobles to their
sports, the commons to their harvest, and makes no distinction
in his directions between knights of the shire and burgesses.
So, we are told, the long vacation in the courts and the
universities was extended from July to October, in order that
such persons as followed the pursuits of law and letters
might have ample leisure for the all-important work of the
harvest. It is true that the aggregate of the town population
was not of much account in the mass of the rural folk, and
for the purposes of the harvest. But beyond doubt the land
in the immediate neighbourhood of towns was better dressed
and more heavily manured than that at a distance from any
considerable centre of population, and the spare hands from
the town were welcome to the larger proprietors.

The chief port of England was London, as it was the
centre, and, in a great degree, the controller of the govern-
ment. It would seem, however, from the accounts which
have been preserved as to the accommodation which the
ports were able to supply to the Government on emergencies,
that London did not possess the greatest number of vessels,
In the enumeration of the contingents which each English
port provided in 1346 towards the siege of Calais, the largest
contribution to the south fleet was Fowey, with forty-
seven vessels, each-manned with a little over sixteen men;
and Yarmouth for the north, with forty-three ships, each with
more than twenty-five men on an average. London sends
twenty-five vessels, each with twenty-six men.

The principal English ports, some few on the east coast,
with Bristol on the west excepted, are in the south, for
the southern contingent is more than double that of the
northern, the former being the district south of the Thames
and Severn. The principal southern ports are Dartmouth,
Plymouth, Bristol, Sandwich, Winchelsea, Southampton,
English Ports. 123:

Weymouth, Looe, Shoreham, Dover, and Margate. Those
of the north are Newcastle, Boston, Hull, Lynn, and Har-
wich, in addition to those in each district which have been
referred to above as supplying the largest number of vessels..
The total number of sailors in the employment of private
individuals is 13,732, or at least that number with the ships.
“7oo) were impressed, together with the vessels in which they.
were employed and rated. Most of the southern ports were
engaged in the French and Flemish trade. They may have:
ventured to the coast of Spain, though as late as the middle
of the sixteenth century it does not appear chat the English
mercantile mariner passed the straits of Gibraltar. It was,
however, especially with the coasting trade that the English:
mariners were concerned ; and if we may trust the calumnies
of their French enemies, they did not scruple to maintain.
their supremacy in the narrow seas by acts of piracy, and by
a total abstention from the duty of checking Mohammedan:
corsairs, who had, even in early times, gained a detested
notoriety. It is said that towards the close of the fourteenth
century a Genoese merchant offered the government of-
Richard IL. that if he were allowed to store his property in-
the castle at Southampton he could make it the principal port
of the Oriental produce which the Genoese used to despatch to
the Flemish, Norman, and Breton marts, and that the London.
merchants put an end to the plan by murdering the pro-
jector. The story may be, probably is, merely monkish.
gossip, but it shows what were reputed to be the capacities
of Southampton, and the convenience which belonged to its.
port.

Bristol was the principal port for Ireland and the western,
fisheries, especially for the salmon of the Severn, then and
for a long time after the source of the best of this fish, We-
learn also that it was a great mart for hides, derived probably
from Wales and Ireland. But the number and importance:
of these southern ports must be explained by the favourable:
position in which they stood for the trade with France and:
eastern Europe, and by the fact that, owing to the lightness.
of their draught, the small craft which swarmed upon the-
124 Town Life.

-coast found abundant shelter in the numerous creeks and
rivers of southern England.

Still, the northern, and especially the eastern, marine of
England had a considerable mercantile trade for the time.
‘Newcastle from early times was the centre of the coasting
-supply of coal. The central coal-fields of England, except those
‘in the valley of the Trent, were unknown. But early in the
thirteenth century, sea-coal, probably as ballast, was carried
as far south and west as Southampton. The vessels in which
‘they were conveyed were under forty tons burden, and the
trade, on which a ratable toll was paid to the king, became so
general and so important in the fifteenth century that frauds
were practised on the revenue by returning the tonnage at
ess than its actual amount.

Many of the eastern ports, from Hull to Colchester, were
‘connected with the Flemish, Norwegian, and Baltic trade.
‘Lynn, as the list of towns quoted above informs us, was a
considerable resort for merchants, especially during the time
-of Stourbridge fair. Norwich is designated for its haven,
-and barley and malt were largely exported from it. So was
-also wool, notably from Hull. The small craft ran across
‘the German Ocean during the fine weather of the summer
months, and traded extensively with the Continent.

But the most important industry of the eastern ports was
the fishing trade. Yarmouth was, as now, the chief centre of
the herring fishery; Grimsby of cod, such at least as was
‘caught in the neighbourhood ; and Berwick of salmon. The
:greatest enterprize was, however, shown by Scarborough.
This little town coasted along Scotland to Aberdeen, from
which they brought fish, the name of which, Haberdens,
‘implies the origin of the take, though it has long been a
-puzzle, They went on to the Orkney and Shetland Islands,
-and even to Iceland, where they gained great store. At last,
‘in the fifteenth century, the Bristol fisherman, fired by trade
-emulation, and now acquainted with the mariner’s compass,
‘reached the same goal through the stormy Hebrides, and
«competed successfully with their eastern rivals.

English towns were generally commanded by castles. The
The Castles. 125

most important of these were in the king’s hands, and were
garrisoned by his captains and troops. Such were the castles,
for example, of Oxford, Wallingford, and Windsor, which.
commanded the most important points in the Thames valley.
Of these the two first were supposed to have the highest
strategic value. It is noteworthy, that when the articles of
impeachment were drawn up against Suffolk in 1450, the fact
that, while he held Wallingford castle nominally for the king,.
he had garrisoned and victualled it really for himself, was
emphatically insisted on as proof of his treasonable inten-
tions and designs against the reigning family. But these
castles, though frequently held by nobles as part of their
private estate, were in reality licensed by the king; and it
appears that, when the authority of the administration was
unimpaired, it was held that the power which gave license
to fortify a dwelling-house was competent to rescind the
permission.

I do not find, in searching through the records of medizval
business, that complaint is made of rapine or wrong-doing,
either by the king’s deputies or by the nobles who had those
fortified habitations. The castle does not appear to have
often been, even after the use of gunpowder became familiar,
furnished with artillery, though it was and remained in the
immediate possession of the Crown. The establishment of a
private fort would, I conceive, be looked on with the gravest
suspicion, and be conceived to be evidence of sinister designs.
It is remarkable, too, after the general demolition of castles
on the accession of Henry II., that medizval warfare in
England was rarely characterized by sieges, though in the
war between king and parliament the fortified house, doubt-
lessly under royal license or command, is constantly assailed,
defended, and captured, or successfully held. These castles
were useful in maintaining the peace, as quarters for such
soldiers as the king habitually kept under arms, and as
residences for the sovereign and his court. Thus, on the
Scotch and Welsh borders, they were important instruments
for checking marauders ; and, as is well known, the line of
fortified castles from Flint to Carnarvon was part of the
126 Town Life.

‘machinery by which Edward held the Principality in a firm
grasp. But it does not appear that the castle was conceived
to be a means for controlling the king’s subjects.

The towns themselves were walled, and the castle was
almost always outside the circle of the city wall and moat,
‘though connected with it by an outwork. It was the duty,
too, of the citizens or townsfolk to keep their own walls in
repair. The king could also make a requisition, it appears,
on the vicinage of his castles, or on the inferior tenants, for
‘money or labour towards the repair of such castles, when
-they were conceived to be part of the public defences. Some-
‘times charters were given, expressly relieving the tenants
‘from this liability. But the fortifications of the town were in
the hands of the burghers, and we may be sure that the
‘Crown would encourage them in forming, as far as they
-could, an equipoise .to a powerful or turbulent noble. I am
persuaded, that had the possession of these fortified places
‘been abused, the dismantling of them, which became the
necessary policy of the Parliamentary army, would have been
anticipated centuries before.

Though the king was entitled to demand the assistance of
-his subjects, or at least of his tenants, towards the repair of
‘his castles, I do not find that the demand is made, or the
expense of satisfying it recorded. There is, however, a good
deal of evidence -still existing, through the thirteenth, four-
teenth, and fifteenth centuries, of the charges to which the
king’s personal revenue was put in maintaining these public
defences. .It is probable that not a few towns in England
rose under the walls, and on account of the protection of the
castle.

Many English towns, long since decayed, owed their origin
to the development of some local industry. It is well known
‘that many ‘settlements, which afterwards grew into towns,
were gifted subsequently with parliamentary representation,
‘though not with municipal institutions, in consequence of a
‘special manufacture carried on in them. -Such were several
-of the Sussex.towns, where, .as late as the reign of Anne, iron
-of high quality was manufactured. So, again, not a few of
Decayed and New Towns. 127

the western towns became the seats of the cloth manufacture,
though it has become extinct in them now.

On the other hand, the most populous and busy districts
of our day were the fens and moors, scantily peopled by a
rude race. Lancashire was one of the poorest English
‘counties, as was also the West Riding of York. As late as
the end of the seventeenth century, these two counties were
nearly at the bottom of the list in opulence. Population was
scanty in them, and wages low. The Mersey was still a
‘silent estuary ; the Irwell a mountain stream. There were.
forges and cutlery works in Hallamshire, and Bradford was
a cloth mart in early times. But the greater part of the
‘district, now so densely inhabited, which lies within the
circuit of twenty miles from Leeds, was occupied by wild
animals and lawless men, the latter hardly kept in order by
swift justice. The maiden of Halifax is the type of a juris-
‘diction which had long been obsolete in the more settled
parts of England.
128

CHAPTER V,
THE DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH AND TRADE,

Source of the “ Distribution ” of Wealth—Comparative Wealth of English Counties
—Norfolk and Oxfordshire the most Opulent—Poverty of the North and
West—Present Condition of Agricultural Counties—Markets—English Roads
in the Thirteenth Century—Carriage of Goods—The Common Carrier—The
Scattered Character of Estates—English Inns—The Control of Markets—The
Assize of Weights—The Assize of Bread—The Regulation of Labour Prices
—Usury Laws, their Origin—Bankruptcy—Forestalling and Regrating—The
Absence of Middle Men—Low Cost of Building—Bargains Universal—Fairs
and their Origin—The Discipline of Fairs—Their Object and Place in the
Middle Ages—Their Usefulness even to Recent Times—Stourbridge Fair—
Its Magnitude and Importance—Routes by which Foreign Produce reached
Europe—The Hanse Towns—The Spice Trade with India—Routes in the
Thirteenth Century—The Discoveries of the Cape Passage and the New
World—The Conquest of Egypt in the Sixteenth Century.

CONOMISTS understand by the distribution of wealth
that share which each of the factors in production is
able to secure for himself out of the gross total of objects
possessing value in exchange. I purpose to postpone this
interesting subject to later chapters, as I have discussed the
distribution of social privileges, in so far as it was relative to
the occupancy of land, in an earlier chapter, and in the present
to deal with the comparative opulence of different districts in
England, with the locality of other than agricultural industry,
with the relations of England to domestic and foreign trade,
with the fair at home and the centres of commerce abroad,
and with the machinery by which Eastern produce was carried
to England and acquired by the consumer.
I have already adverted to the relative position in which
the principal cities and towns of England stood at different
times in the various documents which supply us with evidence
English Countzes. 129

on the subject. This comparison is instructive, because it
indicates at once the amount of the population which could
be spared, in the thirteenth and succeeding centuries, from the
primary aim of all human industry,—the acquisition of food,
and suggests, by a contrast between population and taxation,
what were the opportunities of accumulation which particular
towns possessed. In the fourteenth century, the urban stood
to the rural population in the proportion of I to 12°34; and
many of the towns enumerated are mere villages according to
present ideas.

The comparative wealth of the different English counties ‘s
to be learnt from such assessments of taxation as have been
referred to in the previous chapter. The boundaries of the
counties have not been materially changed for centuries.
There was no motive to alter these boundaries ; indeed, there
was every motive to keep them strictly, for the administration
of the district, and its liabilities to taxation, of whatever kind
it were, would have been rendered uncertain had not the
boundaries been defined. It is true that some counties,
particularly northern Norfolk, eastern Kent, and the coast
of Sussex, have lost by denudation, or perhaps by gradual
subsidence. But it isnot likely that this incident has mate-
rially altered them, and perhaps the loss has been compensated
by accretion. Ihave therefore, in estimating the relative
opulence of the several counties, taken the existing acreage,
and have calculated a past burden, and the past means of
bearing it on the present area.

Including London, Middlesex is, of course, the most opulent
of the English counties, though, even if London is excluded
from it, the wealth of Middlesex is considerable. It would
naturally, as being in proximity to the principal market of
England, from which it could get its wants supplied at the
cheapest rates, and in which it could sell its produce at the
best price, possess advantages from which remoter districts
would be excluded. Nor does it follow that because a com-
parative decline in the relative opulence of London and
Middlesex seems to take place, that the city and the home
county had become poorer, If a fixed sum is to be raised by

9
130 The Distribution of Wealth and Trade.

way of taxation, a town or district may seem worse off, when
in reality its contingent is lessened by other towns and dis-
tricts being better off. In the earliest valuation for taxation
which I have been able to obtain and analyse, the opulence
of Middlesex, without London, was equal to that of the second
county. In later assessments it falls, under the same circum-
stances, to the eighth or tenth place.
In the earliest assessment, Norfolk, excluding Middlesex
‘with London, was the most opulent county in England. The
explanation of the fact is that, in the thirteenth and the first
half of the fourteenth centuries, it was for the time densely
peopled, being the principal seat of the woollen manufacture,
a considerable place for linen manufacture, and in close rela-
tions with the Low Countries. It grew large quantities of barley,
which was exported, either raw or malted, to Flanders. The
cloth manufacture was carried on in many villages and small
towns; the linen was principally woven at Aylsham. Even
when the woollen manufacture spread to the west and north,
Norfolk was still largely employed in this industry, and though
it declined relatively, and, indeed, absolutely, after the second
half of the fourteenth century, it remained till the sixteenth
the second county for opulence in England. It is noteworthy
that it was the head-quarters of Lollardy in the century pre-
ceding the Reformation, and the most deeply imbued with
the tenets of the Gospellers at and after the Reformation.
The victims of those new opinions seem to have been more
mumerous in Norfolk than in the whole of the rest of England
during the persecutions of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
My reader may be perhaps surprised to hear that, in the
earliest assessment, Oxfordshire was only a little behind
Norfolk, and soon surpassed it, though it does not appear
ito have had any local manufactures, and must have owed its
wealth entirely to its agriculture. But an inspection of the
county will explain the fact. It had only one or two incon-
siderable forests, one not very extensive fen, and very little
waste land. The county is generally flat, and watered by
two important rivers and their affluents. The amount of
natural pasture in this county is probably larger than in
Wealth of the Countzes. 132

any other. The soil, except in the south-east, is exceptionally
fertile, and adapted to heavy crops of wheat and beans. The
character of the county, even in remote times, is indicated by
the extreme paucity of roads. When land was of little value,
even though the district was near the metropolis, as in Surrey,
coads are very abundant, the gravel or stone lying near the
surface, and a track being made without offence or hindrance.
The next counties are Bedfordshire, Rutlandshire, and Berk-
shire. In early times, Kent takes a higher place than it does
later on. The soil of the first of these counties is not unlike
that of Oxfordshire, though there is more chalk and gravel
in Berks. Hunts, Cambridgeshire, Wilts, Northants, Lincoln-
shire, and Gloucestershire form the next group. Then come
Herts, Suffolk, Somerset, Warwickshire, Leicestershire, and
Bucks; Somerset, if we include Bristol, and the East Riding of
Yorkshire, if York be included init. A fifth division contains
Dorset, Notts, and Hampshire. A sixth includes Surrey,
Sussex, and Essex, to which may be added Worcester. The
ratable value of the remaining counties and divisions of
counties rapidly declines. The least unprosperous of them
are Hereford, Stafford, Shropshire, Derby, Devon, and Corn-
wall, but the opulence of the best off of these is not much
more, acre for acre, than a fourth of the Oxfordshire rating,
and of the poorest, little more than a sixth. The North and
West Ridings of Yorkshire and Westmoreland come next.
Far behind these come Lancashire, Northumberland, and
Cumberland, though in the earliest assessment Northumber-
land stood thirty-first in the assessment, while, later on, it is
uniformly thirty-eight. At the same time Lancashire is the
poorest English county. But in the assessments of 1375, 1453,
and 1503, Cumberland is at the bottom. Cheshire and Durham
were never valued, being taxed by a different machinery, and
being unrepresented in Parliament. The extreme south-west,
the northern counties, and the Welsh marches, were the
poorest districts of medizeval England, while the east and
those which lie within the Thames valley system were the
most wealthy. Wilts, Northants, Gloucester, and Lincolnshire
owe their position to other. causes. The first two in all the
132 The Distribution of Wealth and Trade.

assessments are nearly stationary. The last two occupy a
much higher position in the sixteenth than they do in the
fourteenth century.

The comparative poverty of the northern counties and the
Welsh marches is, I make no doubt, to be ascribed to the
unsettled condition of a district which was engaged in a con-
stant struggle against the incursion of plunderers over the
border. The princes of Wales had been extirpated, and the
Principality could put no force in the field which could cope
with an English army. But the spirit of independence was
not dead, and the Welsh were troublesome neighbours. The
prolonged revolt of Owen Glendower in the fifteenth century
was, no doubt, preceded by frequentincursions of the Welshmen
from the hills) And on the Scotch border there was incessant
warfare, hardly lessened by the engagements which the
Scottish kings made on behalf of their subjects.

If we take the twenty English counties which are principally
engaged with agriculture at the present time, we shall find,
excluding Westmoreland, the poorest ; Cornwall, the assess-
ment of which is double that of Westmoreland, Cumberland,
and Dorset, that there is no material difference in the ratable
value of the property, ranging as it does between 41 I5s. an
acre, the valuation of Wilts and Rutland, and 42 8s., the
valuation of Herts, which, by the way, is not unaffected by
proximity to London. After Hertfordshire, the next highest
is Cambridge, at £2 75.; Berks, at 42 5s. 6d.; and Oxford, at’
42 4s. The progress of agriculture has done much towards
eliminating such hindrances to the adequate cultivation of the’
soil as were present to the imperfect husbandry of a bygone
age, and of rendering agriculture possible where pasture
seemed to be often the only use which could be made of land.
A range, however, of only 13s. an acre, to be accounted for in
part by other than purely agricultural operations, indicates the
direction which agricultural improvement has taken. Nor
do I see any reason to doubt that, according to their lights,
oat ancestors, six centuries ago, did not willingly neglect to
cultivate that which their experience showed to be likely to
return a fair compensation for their labour.
English Roads. 133

The cultivation of England in the middle ages demanded
the establishment of markets at which the villager could pur-
chase what he needed for his calling, obtain the few necessaries
which his domestic industry could not supply, and sell his own
produce. In order that he might do all this the more con-
veniently, it was necessary that he should be able to find
sufficiently serviceable roads.

It is a general impression, gathered, I suspect, from the
scandalous condition of the English highways at about the
middle of the eighteenth century, just before the General Turn-
pike Act (1773) was passed, that at an earlier age the means
of communication between places was difficult at all times of
the year, and all but impossible at certain periods. This
opinion, I am persuaded, is a mistake. The proof that com-
munications were good in the time of which I am writing is
partly to be explained by the rapidity with which journeys
were effected, partly by evidence as to the cost of carrying
goods over known or ascertainable distances.

Many of the English roads were a survival of the Roman
empire, in which the construction of highways was a military
and political necessity. Great lines of road traversed Roman
Britain from its principal colonies, London and York, to the
other settlements. Roman villas are constantly discovered
in secluded spots, but near those great roads, which ran
in rigid lines. Now we are told that, among other ancient
obligations, the maintenance of existing roads was one of the
earliest and most lasting, They were from remote times
under the authority and protection of the king,—were his high-
ways. As new towns sprung up, like Oxford, Coventry,
Reading, Abingdon, under the shadow of great monasteries,
though probably the last two were always Saxon villages,
roads were constructed from such towns to the main or
ancient roads. Generally, however, the houses of the villages
were grouped on either side of the old road, where such a
road was in existence, or on the new road, when it was neces-
sary to connect the settlement with the old system of com-
munication. The roads of England are roughly exhibited in
a fourteenth century map still preserved in the Bodleian
134 The Distribution of Wealth and Trade.

Library, and are identical with many of the highways which
we know familiarly. In time these highways fell out of repair,
and were put, as I have said, in the last century under the Turn-
pike Acts, when they were repaired. But comparatively little
of the mileage of English roads is modern. What has been
constructed has generally been some shorter and easier routes,
for in the days of the stage coaches it was highly expedient
to equalise the stages.

I set no particular store by the evidence which may be
found in plenty as to the rapidity with which journeys on
horseback were effected during summer, The head of an
Oxford or Cambridge College was able to travel to London
in a single day in summer, and would take two days in winter.
The journey from Oxford to Newcastle-on-Tyne, near which
one of these colleges had two valuable estates, occupied six
days, one other being a day of rest, five being occupied in
reaching Thirsk. In the thirteenth century, the Earl of
Gloucester takes three days in journeying from London to
Leicester, and three from Melton Mowbray to London, fifteen
days from Lincoln to Carnarvon, and seven from Shrewsbury
to the Isle of Axholm. And to extend this record, the
traveller bound to the court of Avignon in the winter,
started on Monday, Jan. 23rd, and reached Dover by Satur-
day, got to Paris on the following Saturday, and to Avignon
by the end of a fortnight. The return journey occupied
eighteen days from Avignon to Calais, and a week more from
Calais to Oxford. In the journey of the Earl of Gloucester
there were no doubt some wheeled carriages in attendance.

The cost of carrying heavy goods by land is about a penny
per ton per mile, whenever the journey backwards and
forwards could be accomplished within a single day. If the
carrier were employed over night, of course the charge was
somewhat greater, as the traveller had to be lodged, though
this was always at a cheap rate, for, as I have already stated,
he purchased or carried with him his own provisions. The
lowness of the charge, which continued till the great rise in
prices in the sixteenth century, is, I have no doubt, to be

ccounted for by the fact that the freeholders and tenants in
'

The Common Carrver. 135

villages were numerous; that horse and cart, or oxen and cart,
were part of the equipment of any holding beyond mere
cottage farming, and that, therefore, plenty of the service was
readily available. Even after the great rise in prices, land and
water carriage, especially the former, were disproportionately
cheap. We find this fact in the carriage of stone, bricks, and
other building materials, in that of wood and charcoal and
analogous kinds of fuel, and in the low price which is con-
stantly paid for the conveyance of farm produce to market.

The ultimate test is the rate paid for carriage by the
common carrier. Here, however, it should be remembered
that the carrier was by common law a bailee of the goods,
and liable to the consignor for their safe delivery. Hence his
charges involved a variable sum for insurance. When he
conveys money his rate is high, as it also is, though in a less
degree, when he conveys, as he sometimes does, personal
baggage. Now an excellent test of the cost of carriage over
known distances is the charge for conveying wine, for the
distance is considerable at any inland town, and the carrier
may, in some cases must, have passed several days and nights
on the road. The article is bulky, packed with labour and
difficulty, and is peculiarly liable to being pilfered. I find that
it was conveyed in winter time at about 34d. per ton per mile
for the double journey ; and I think that no article could be
found of more difficult and laborious conveyance than a tun of
wine (252 gallons) in bulk during winter, over the ancient road
from Southampton to Oxford, with the loading from the
wharf, and unloading at the place of destination.

The very existence of a class of common carriers, who got
their living by conveying the most valuable kinds of goods,
and by regularly traversing the country from Southampton
and Winchester to Oxford, from the midland counties to
Stourbridge fair, near Cambridge, and even from Oxford to
Newcastle-on-Tyne, is proof, not only that there was a
demand for the carrier, but that the means of communi-
cation were fairly good, and the principal roads, even in
winter time, were kept in decent repair. Nor were the
motives for such a practice, the adequate maintenance of
136 The Distribution of Wealth and Trade.

highways, wanting. Estates even of wealthy noblemen were
rarely in a ring fence, but were greatly scattered. Persons
living at a considerable distance had often for that time
important interests in the matter of rent charges on the
estates of others, rent charges frequently paid in kind. This
was especially the case with the monasteries. A religious
house was in the first place endowed with an estate imme-
diately adjacent to the site on which the conventual buildings
were erected. In course of time, piety or fear endowed the
monastery with scattered and outlying portions of an estate,
a few strips in this communal field, a close and house in that
parish, a mill and curtilage in another. As time went on, it
became a custom to enrich monastic and collegiate founda-
tions, and lastly, academic colleges, with the great tithes of
valuable livings, for the impropriation of which the consent
of king, bishop, and pope was necessary, or at least so
convenient that prudent persons would not neglect the
precaution. In Fitzherbert’s time, just before the dissolution
of the monasteries, the Benedictine was everywhere looking
after his rents, his produce, and his tithes, and the Cistercian
after the woolpacks of the conventual sheep farms. The
earliest foundation of Balliol College, in Oxford, was from
the great tithes of a Yorkshire benefice. The fellows of
Merton College took long journeys to Avignon and Northum-
berland in order to procure the appropriation of the great
tithes in a large parish on the Scotch border. And if we add
to these the annual circuits of the authorities, three a year,
one of which, that in autumn, was carried out in great detail,
we can understand, in an age when cultivation by owners was
universal, and the collection of dues, rents, and produce a
matter of great interest, how important it was to have
adequate and regular means of communication.

In the more sparsely peopled and outlying districts it is
probable that accommodation was afforded on long journeys
by the monasteries, though I am sure that people, mistaking,
as they constantly do, concurrent facts for causes, exaggerated
the use of these conveniences after or at the Reformation,.
and ascribed. to the Dissolution that rapid interruption of
A Journey—Inns. 137

accommodation and the means of transit from place to place
which certainly ensued on that event. But England from the
very earliest times was a country full of inns. In the year
1332, the Warden of Merton, Robert Trenge, and two of the
fellows, make a journey to Northumberland, for the purpose
of inducing the bishop to acquiesce in the impropriation of a
benefice to which the papal consent had been given the year
before. They leave Oxford on Monday, Jan. 5th, and are
absent for ten weeks, till March 16th. During the greater
part of this time—indeed, the whole of the time, except
when they are resident on their own manor—they stay for
the night at inns, where they pay a small sum for lodging,
and buy. provisions, beer, wine, fuel, light, for their own wants,
with corn and hay for their horses. They feast the bishop’s
commissioner for a week, and the parishioners for a Sunday ;
and though the most costly articles of the feast are procured
at Newcastle-on-Tyne, and even the better beer, the wine
appears to have been purchased on the spot. I know no
trade, indeed, which has clung longer to special localities
than that of the innkeeper. Not a few of the Oxford inns can
be traced back for centuries. The constant tradition was
that an ancient inn frequented by Shakspeare stood in one
street, from which it was removed only a few years ago to
make room for the newer buildings of a neighbouring inn.
Another, opposite St. Mary Magdalene Church, which I have
been able to trace to the fifteenth century under the same
sign, was removed only twenty years ago. One great Oxford
inn, near the Four Ways, was in existence as the principal
hostel for five centuries, under the name of the Fleur-de-
Lys, and the names of many others bear evidence of a
remote antiquity. Indeed, the signs of inns are constant
proof of the period in collateral history when the site was
dedicated to a hostel. The Tumble Down Dick and the
Royal Oak are specimens of the manner in which partisans,
contemptuous or loyal, ridiculed Richard Cromwell and
welcomed back the Stuarts, as the Boulogne Gate and the
Boulogne Mouth refer to the expedition of Henry in 1544,
the Blue Boar to the short-lived reign of Richard III. The
138 The Distribution of Wealth and Trade.

sign was not, indeed, confined to the inn. It was the advertise.
ment to all shops; not, I believe, for the reason which has
been absurdly guessed, that the arts of reading and writing
were comparatively unknown, but because the eye could be
caught and informed as to the kind of goods which were to
be found in the low dark shop. There is certainly no country
where elementary teaching is more general than in the
eastern cities of the American Union, there is none in which
the goods in shop or store are more openly displayed, and
there is certainly none in which the use of signs designed. to
attract the eye is more general.

The establishment and control of the town market was the
most universal and the most valued of municipal privileges.
The market in London was perpetual, and the market spaces
were the property of the Corporation. In Norwich, which
was said to have received its first charter from Stephen in
1147, there were many markets in the square where the
Guildhall is built, and, indeed, elsewhere, the tolls of which
were regularly collected under separate schedules, and formed
part of the corporate income of the city. The same was the
case in Oxford, where there was a conflict of jurisdiction
between the University and the city, which ultimately ended
in a compromise, under which the discipline of the provision
market was conferred on academical officials, and the tolls
were divided between the two corporations. The two days
of the Oxford market, Wednesday and Saturday, can be
traced back to the thirteenth century.

The control of the market was undertaken for a treble
purpose,—to prevent frauds, to regulate the cost of manu-
facturing products, and to ensure what was believed to be a
natural price. The assize of weights and measures, that of
bread and beer, and the enactments directed against fore-
stalling and regrating, are examples of the mode in which
our forefathers exercised the police of the market. The first,
which has, without objection, remained to our own day, is a
statute so early that its date is lost. The repression of false
weights and measures was part of the police of every manor,
village, or town. The ale-seller and miller, the two perma-
The Police of the Market. 139:

nent traders or craftsmen of the village, were constantly

under the control of the court leet,.and were frequently

presented for frauds. An attempt was made to guarantee:
the quality of the drink served, as well as to regulate its just

quantity, by giving authority to two officers of the manor,.
called ale-tasters, to certify to the character of the ale which

was to be sold. Their function was to prevent adulteration..
So there was a corporation in Norwich whose business it was.
to see that woollen goods were up to quality, measure, and

weight, and to amerce offenders. It was generally part of the-
business of a London company, in consideration of the privi--
leges bestowed on it, to see that the public was not defrauded:
by dishonest craftsmen and traders. A survival or two of-
this universal duty is to be found in the Hall marking of the
Goldsmiths’ Company, and the control which the Fishmongers--
are supposed to exercise over the supplies of Billingsgate.

We leave manufacturers to charge what they please for the
process of transforming raw material into consumable articles,
with the conviction that competition will be a greater check:
to excessive rates than market regulations could be. But in:
the middle ages such a notion would have been repudiated,.
and justly so. Even now it is doubtful whether competition
is of universal efficacy, and whether it is not more correct to:
say that where combination is possible, competition is in--
operative. Hence we subject some callings to regulated
prices, and it may be doubted whether the progress of opinion
will not hereafter enlarge the area of regulated prices. Stilk.
the inclination of people is as yet to let prices find their level
by competition in every case where distinct proof is not
given that such a concession would be unsafe or unfair. In
the middle ages, to regulate prices was thought to be the only
safe course whenever what was sold was a necessary of life, .
or anecessary agent inindustry. Hence our forefathers fixed
the prices of provisions, and tried to fix the price of labour-
and money.

We have seen that the early history of municipal institu-
tions was identified and associated with the principles of.
self-government and a regulated monopcly. The munici--
140 The Distribution of Wealth and Trade.

ypality was permitted to frame bye-laws for its own conduct,
-such bye-laws to be not adverse to the general well-being, and
‘the guilds were similarly allowed to limit, on definite and well
winderstood conditions, entrance into and a share in the
business which was to be done. A mediaeval guild, in short,
was not unlike the regulated company of the seventeenth
century, into which admission was allowed on the payment
-of a fine, and the individual so admitted was left to carry
-on his calling as his means, his abilities, and his reputation
gave him opportunities. Where that which he produced and
-sold was a matter of optional use, the custom of the middle
ages gave him the discretion of bargaining and exacting
-such a price as the needs of the purchaser might fix, though
it is probable that the guild would look suspiciously on
under-selling, as it did on buying over the heads of other
‘members, But no police of the middle ages would allowa
\producer of the necessaries of life to fix his charges by the
needs of the individual, or, in economical language, to allow
‘supplies to be absolutely interpreted by demand. The law
did not fix the price of the raw material, wheat or barley.
‘It allowed this to be determined by scarcity or plenty ; inter-
preted, not by thc individual's needs, but by the range of the
‘whole market. But it fixed the value of the labour which
must be expended on wheat and barley in order to make
‘them into bread and ale. Not to do this would have been
‘to the mind of the thirteenth century, and for manya century
afterwards, to surrender the price of food to a combination of
bakers and brewers, or to allow a rapacious dealer to starve
‘the public. It was thought that whenever the value, or part
of the value, of a necessary commodity was wholly deter-
minable by human agencies, it was possible to appraise these
-agencies, and that it was just and necessary to do so. That
we have tacitly relinquished the practice of our forefathers is,
I repeat, the result of the experience that competition is
sufficient for the protection of the consumer. But I am
«disposed to believe that, if a contrary experience were to
tbecome sensible, we should discredit our present practice, and
srevive, it may be, the past, at least in some directions.
Csury Laws. I4¥

The history of usury laws is curiously illustrative of the
.manner in which society interprets contracts. I think I am
right in saying that, without exception, in the infancy of
social organization, contracts, even involving the severest
consequences, were enforced with rigour. The Athenian and
Roman law of debt, and the stringency with which principal
and interest were exacted by the law, are well known. It is
said that much of the slavery which.prevailed in early English
history was the punishment for unfulfilled contracts, the
compensation for debts that could not be paid. The earliest
mercantile law of England permitted the borrower to pledge
his land, and to render his person liable for unpaid debts.
It was felt, I do not assert that it was said, that when men
discovered that trade and commerce made credit a necessity,
stringent penalties were necessary in order to educate people
into the habit of not making default in contracts. The
acknowledgment that a debt is a binding obligation, and the
cultivation of commercial integrity, are, I believe, two of the
most difficult and important lessons which civilized society
teaches, and are far more difficult to learn than the control of
passion and deference to custom. In course of time it is found
that the rigid interpretation of contracts for loans of money
may lead to outrageous oppression, to the slavery of many de-
faulters, and to grave social perils. We know that in Athens.
and Rome the inconvenience led from discontent to revolution,
and that usury laws were enacted. Now it is easy to say
and prove that, in a later stage of society, usury pretends to
assist the debtor, and in reality makes the loan more onerous,
because it compels the lender to exact a further price for his.
risk, or to compensate him for breaking the law. Our fore-
fathers saw that there were some loans to which, from their
point of view, the usury laws should not apply; for loans om
bottomry were always exempt from these enactments, and
the equity of redemption was always implied in mortgages.

No doubt the remedy is to be found in the equitable
nterpretation of contracts. It is one thing to forbid a con-
tract, except under certain conditions, another to see whether
the situation under which one of the parties to a contract
xiq2 The Distribution of Wealth and Trade.

“has made it, has not been abused by the other party. The
English law relieves the borrower on the expectancy of the
reversion to a settled estate against usurious bargains; and
‘it might very possibly extend its power of interpreting
contracts equitably to other bargains. The legislature has
recently decided to interpret contracts for the use of agricul-
-tural land on equitable principles, partly on the plea of the
public food, partly on the ground that the occupier is in a
‘position of disadvantage, and therefore is disabled from
‘making a perfect contract. But the principal difficulty in
‘the equitable interpretation of contracts is to find a competent
arbitrator. The Irish landlords accuse the Land Commissioners, .
sunder the Act of 1881, of scandalous favouritism towards the
‘tenants; and the advocates of the Irish tenants accuse the
same persons of scandalous favouritism towards the landlords,
Arbitrators on disputed questions are pretty certain to be
criticised adversely by those whose interests are contrariant.
Jt may be the case that the usury of the Jewish, or Greek, or
Armenian money lenders in Eastern Europe, in Egypt, in
iIndia, in countries where the law gives unlimited protection
‘to lenders, is producing discontent and violence, or is threat-
‘ening social revolution. But if the persons could be found
‘who could adjudicate between borrowers and lenders on
equitable grounds, it might be expedient to make use of such
agencies, even at the risk of being charged with the virtual
‘revival of the usury laws,

In this country we have, though in a clumsy and indirect
way, and of late years to the serious injury of commercial
morality, given effect to what is a usury law, or perhaps
an equitable interpretation of contracts, by our bankruptcy
-system. A law of bankruptcy, even in the more stringent
‘form in which it has latterly been re-enacted, differs economi-
-cally from a usury law, in the fact that the latter extinguishes
a portion of the interest, the former a portion of the principal.
Every person who buys on credit gives a price for the credit,
whether he borrows money or goods, and it makes no dif-
‘ference to the economical position of credit as a factor in’
trade, and to the rate at which credit is accorded, if the law
Market Regulations. 143

intervenes to cut off a portion of the creditor’s interest, or to call
upon him to give his debtor a quittance on the payment of part
of his principal. The evils which Bentham alleged to be the
‘consequent of the usury laws are equally consequent on the
bankruptcy law, which relieves a debtor of his liabilities. It
is true that usury laws may put a heavier burden on perfectly
solvent borrowers than they would have to bear in the absence
of such laws ; but the burden is exceptional and temporary,
and does not differ from an exalted price due to temporary
Scarcity or exceptional demand ; but a bankruptcy law must
require, however severely it is administered, that all losses in
trade must be paid either in the enhanced profits of dealers
‘or in enhanced prices to consumers, the latter being in effect
the same process as the former. But this is what the opponents
of the usury laws have always alleged to be the inevitable
effects of such legislation.

Our forefathers in their market regulations were always
anxious to ensure what I may call natural cheapness. They
‘did not, as I have said, except in some commodities,—money,
labour, and certain labour processes,—attempt to fix the price
-ofarticles the plenty or scarcity of which depended on theabund-
ance or the dearth of the seasons, for the assize of bread and
ale contemplated the extremes of either cheapness or dearness.
But they strove to prevent the artificial enhancement of price.
Hence the offences of forestalling, that is, the purchase of corn
-on the road to the market, and of regrating, zz., the resale of
corn in the same market at an increased price. The first
offence was probably a double one; it lessened the dues of
the market, as well as seeming to curtail supply. The second
was thought to be an offence against the consumer. The
criticism of these obsolete statutes and, as they have been
<alled, imaginary offences is well known. To forbid traffic
in articles of prime necessity is to encourage waste when
plenty prevails, to induce famine when dearth is near. The
«corn dealer equalizes supply, and if by withholding his
corn from market he makes it dearer, he also makes it
cheaper than it would be by bringing it out when it otherwise
would be scarce. Now this is certainly true. But though
144 The Distribution of Wealth and Trade.

our forefathers doubtlessly erred in making these practices an
offence, they did not compel sales, and I find that producers.
were very acute during the middle ages, and for the matter
of that, buyers, too, in doling out their supplies to the market,
or in making purchases, according to their interpretation of
the amount in hand or available for sale. The most critica)
sales of the year are those effected in early summer, when the
amount of the last year’s produce was known pretty correctly,
and the prospects of the ensuing harvest could be fairly
guessed.

The Englishman of the middle ages disliked intermediaries
in trade, and strove to dispense with them as far as possible.
He did his best to buy all his goods at first hand. He had
his stock of iron for tools, and doled it out for fashioning to
the local smith. He bought his stock of tar for sheep dressing
in bulk. If he wished to have some article of luxury, as a
silver cup, he purchased the metal, and paid the craftsman
for his labour, weighing what he gave out and got back, as.
the merchant in Shakspeare’s comedy is invited to do. A
great corporation or a wealthy noble purchased their cloth and
linen in large quantities, and hired tailor and seamstress to
shape and sew them. If an opulent person resolved on
building castle or church or convent, he rented a quarry for
stone, and hired labourers and carts by the day to dig and
carry it; he burnt lime with his own wood and in his own
kiln, paying for the services of the lime-burners, He had
trees cut down in his own forest or park, and shaped them
by the hands he hired himself. He hired sawyers to prepare
planks for floors, bought cranes to lift the materials and raw
iron for the bars and frames of the windows. He got, in
short, all the materials together, and frequently supplied the
plans of the building and superintended the work of his
labourers himself. As a consequence, the cost of building
was inconceivably low—so low that, though wages and
materials were at full relative prices, the ultimate cost of
the building is far less than could be expected from any
ordinary multiple which could be supplied with fair accuracy «
for the materials and labour. I have constantly inspected
Intermediaries—Bargains. 145

the accounts of buildings, in which a multiple of twelve
would give good modern prices for materials and labour ;
while one of thirty or forty would do no more than meet the
cost in our present experience of the completed structure.
It is the fashion with economists to speak of the functions of
middlemen with admiration or complacency, as cheapening
agents. I can only say that in many building operations, if
Iam to judge from medizval prices, they have trebled the
natural cost of the object produced, and, as far as I can see,
with only one advantage, rapidity of construction—a result
often more than compensated by scamped work, bad masonry,
and other shameful frauds. The whole cost of building the
bell tower at Merton College, Oxford, in the two years—
May 1448 to May 1450—was under £142; this including the
cost of three cranes, amounting to £6 6s. Ido not believe
that at present it could be built for less than £5,000, perhaps
for not less than £6,000, though at a multiple of twelve the
masons employed would have had 4os. a week for ten months
of the year, and 34s. for December and January; the car-
penters 24s. I shall comment on this hereafter.

The essence of medizval trade was the bargain. It was no
doubt as long and as anxiously discussed as it now is in an
eastern town. The importance of it, when hands were struck on
it, was indicated by the gift of the luck penny—God’s silver,
as it was called—the earnest or pledge of the contract. The
custom survives, or did survive till recently, in the accepta nce
of the king’s shilling by recruits. There might be witnesses
to the transaction, and there was frequently a memorandum
of the purchase exchanged by indenture between the parties
when the business done was of importance. Such acknow-
ledgments of purchase are sometimes discovered tacked on
to annual rolls, and thus preserved from the destruction which
would be the lot of mere temporary engagements,

As important, however, as markets in the economy of
medizval society were fairs. It is not easy to understand
their origin. They were often held on land which lay outside
the mark or manor or parish, as was the great fair on the
north hundred of the city of Oxford,—the barbican of its

10
146 The Distribution of Wealth and Trade.

medizval fortification, the only point at which the fortress
was assailable by the acts of medizval warfare. Hence in
the middle ages the custody of the north hundred was
entrusted to some trusted subject. It was on the side of the
north hundred that Cromwell attempted his siege of Oxford
after it had been the king’s head-quarters. Sometimes they
were part of the franchise of a great monastery. As late as
Hearne’s time, there was a fortnight’s fair in Oxford called
St. Frideswide’s Fair, at which I find that, in the sixteenth cen-
tury, the sale of books was carried on, Occasionally there were
fairs for special objects, as at Leeds for cloth, at Weyhill for
cheese. It is difficult for us, in the very general decline of
these institutions, to understand how important they were in
the middle ages. As I have said, London was a perpetual
market, and yet there were fairs within the precinct of the
city.

The franchise of a fair was one of great significance to the
possessor thereof. It was always supposed to have originated
with a grant from the Crown, or to be of prescriptive antiquity,
and, consequently, to imply such a grant. If it were obvious
or convenient to do so, the fair was associated with some
church or religious house, and was opened at some convenient
time at or after the day of dedication. Hence they were
sometimes held in churchyards, till the practice was forbidden
by a statute of Edward I.

A universal incident to a fair was what was called the
court of pie-powder. The wayfarer, with “ dusty foot,” coming
ito the fair, and bargaining, might dispute with the vendor of
woods, and words might go on to blows. There were con-
sequently always judges, or at least a judge, to arbitrate on
‘bargains, to keep the peace and to punish offenders. Of
course it was an obligation on the authorities that just
weights and measures should be used. There was a summary
yjurisdiction on ill-doers, perhaps the highest ; for it is reason-
able to conclude that a right, constantly conferred on lords
of manors, to punish offenders, should be appurtenant to these
great gatherings. The receipt of toll for what was sold—no
toll could be taken on what was not sold, and the payment
The Fair. 147

of toll therefore rested with the buyer—was the profit of the
franchise, But if the owner of the franchise attempted foolishly
to take excessive toll, he was liable to action, even though
he was destroying his own profits.

The object of the fair was twofold. It was to supply a
market in which goods, which could not be found in the
ordinary town market, would be procurable, and in which
there would be a wider market for ordinary goods. The
trader did not exist in the villages. In most villages he
hardly existed at the beginning of the present century. In
my native village the first shop was opened, for general trade,
about sixty years ago, as I have heard, and, for many a year
afterwards, the wants of the villagers were supplied by pack-
men and pedlars, or, in the case of the more opulent, by carts
which came periodically from the nearest towns for orders,
In the thirteenth century, all but the largest towns were less
than modern villages. In 1377, the taxable population of
Oxford was a little under 2,500 persons. It was probably not
much more populous at the beginning of the fifteenth century.
In 1411, Beaufort, Wykeham’s successor, paid a sudden visit
to New College, the foundation of Wykeham, and the college
was called upon to entertain its visitor and lord, who was the
king’s brother and the Bishop of Winchester, and a possible
benefactor, for the Oxford college always was on the look-out
for him. Now pepper was an ingredient in every feast, and
the college was out of the spice. The fellows had to buy half
a pound of the Oxford grocer, and they paid a price for it
which is entirely without parallel. Except in London, it was
not possible to get foreign produce, other than wine, at a
reasonable rate, and the purchaser of such produce obtained
it more cheaply at the great fairs than he did in London
itself.

Again, there were products sold in most towns which
could be purchased in the greatest variety and at the
lowest rates at the great fairs. The landowner gained
the best market for his wool at the mart to which traders
thronged from all parts of the world. But he had to lay in
his own stock, either by exchange for his produce or with
148 The Distribution of Wealth and Trade.

his own money. For forty days he lived on fish; here he
could buy herrings and salt fish at the lowest prices. He
needed to put up his own winter store in the powdering tub,
and he purchased salt at half the rate which the country dealer
demanded, and of much better quality. He wanted sheep
medicines, verdigris and copperas, or, best of all, tar, and he
could buy it by the barrel at half the retail price. Cloth and
teather, linen and fur, kitchen vessels of iron or brass,—I am
writing of what I find was actually bought,—could be obtained
here at reasonable or natural prices. Nothing was too cum-
brous or too costly for a medizval fair, for if the dealer did
not find customers here, he could find them nowhere else. It
was frequented by noble and serf, by churchman and soldier,
by merchant or trader, and peasant, by monk and craftsman.
And it was at these gatherings, a veritable parliament of the
people, that discontent ripened into ‘action; that doings in
church and state were discussed; that Straw and Ball laid their
plans, and the Lollards whispered their doubts. Only the
king was exempt from toll, and it was said that his tenants in
ancient demesne shared the privilege. But that the court of
pie-powder, or the lord of the franchise, showed much consi-
deration to these favoured tenants may well be doubted.

I am drawing no imaginative picture. Sixty years ago, a
visit to an autumn fair, for the sake of laying in winter
supplies, was part of the ordinary life of a small country
gentleman or a wealthy yeoman. Here he got bales of West
of England cloth for his household, hides and uppers for shoes
and boots, cheese in districts where dairy farming was not
practised, and a host of conveniences and rare luxuries.
Some of Wedgwood’s finest pottery was regularly sold over
southern England at village fairs; and in the old days of
differential and sumptuary duties, upright and pious men,
who would have defrauded no man consciously, thought it
no harm if, in the inner recess of the booth, they bargained
for a keg of French brandy, or a case of Hollands, or a roll of
ribbon, or a yard of lace. Soa century and a half before, or
over two centuries, books, which would have hardly found a
sale by any modern means, were circulated, even when they
English Fairs—Stourbridge Fazr. 149

were unlicensed. In a curious day-book of an Oxford book-
seller of the sixteenth century, preserved in Corpus College
library, the pious dealer notes his sale of books at St. Frides -
wide’s and St. Giles’ fairs, and I have constantly met with
entries in the annual account of receipt and expenditure of
books purchased for college libraries at these universal and
important marts. I cannot, indeed, conceive how the writings
of such an author as Prynne could have been disposed of
except at the places which were at once so open and so
secret, where every one was welcome, and those who were
unwelcome could, with common prudence, so easily escape
detection. For in a fair, where all were strangers, no one
was a stranger.

None of the English fairs were so important as the great
and famous fair of Stourbridge, whose reputation was ex-
tended over all Europe, probably in places where no European
had been seen, for we are told that not only was it a mart
for European goods, but for Eastern produce—for everything
which could be bought at the time.

Stourbridge fair was held in a field near the monastery of
Barnwell, about a mile from Cambridge, and for the profit of
the corporation of that town. Its origin is unknown, the stories
as to the cause of its first establishment being obviously idle.
The situation of the fair was excellent. It was within easy
distance of the two busy medizval ports of Lynn and
Blakeney, and was accessible by the river from the sea. Lynn,
in the list of towns which I have referred to as drawn up
in the middle of the thirteenth century, was the “town of
merchants,” and there was great activity at it. The fair
was commenced and concluded with peculiar solemnity.

It was proclaimed on the 4th of September, for, in old
times, the proclamation of a fair was an essential condition
of the franchise. It was opened on the eighth, and the
business was continued for three weeks. The field in which
it was held was what is called Lammas, ze, was open and
common ground during part of the year. The temporary

_ wooden buildings erected for the purposes of the fair were
commenced by custom on St. Bartholomew’s Day (Aug. 24th),
150 The Distribution of Wealth and Trade.

and the builders of these houses were allowed to destroy corn
grown on the spot with impunity if it were not cleared
before that day. On the other hand, the owner of the field
was empowered to destroy the booths on Michaelmas day, if
they were not cleared before that time. The space allotted
to the fair, about half a square mile, was divided into streets,
which were named, sometimes by nations, and in each of
these streets some special trade was carried on, the principal
being foreign spices and fruits, ironmongery, fish, metal goods,
cloth, wool, leather, and, latterly, books. But every conceiv-
able commodity was brought hither for sale, for I have found
records of every article in use at the time as purchased at
Stourbridge fair. On Sept. 25th, late in the period allotted
to the fair, the chief business was the purchase and sale of
horses.

Purchasers frequented Stourbridge fair even from the
vicinity of London, as, for example, from the religious house
of Sion. The Oxford colleges bought here their stock of
winter herrings and Lent fish, as well as their spices. Here
they laid in salt and tar, olive oil, wax, and frankincense. As
the time for closing the fair drew on, strings of waggons laden
with goods were despatched to all parts of England, and the
carriers bargained for the rates at which they conveyed the
goods to their destination. Had I made a collection of the
articles which are noted in medizval accounts, and even later,
as purchased at Stourbridge, the list would have included
nearly all kinds of such goods as were purchased out of the
village. It was as famous in its day as Novgorod, or Leipsic.
There were few households which were possessed of any
wealth which did not send a purchaser or give a commission
for Stourbridge fair.

The Lombard exchanger was present to assist in the sale of
goods, and to facilitate commercial transactions, for at the
close of the thirteenth century the Jew was expelled from
England, and lingered in such places only as could, from
their great privileges, give him a secure asylum. It is stated
that a Jewish colony in Oxford remained under the protection
of the great University. The Venetian and Genoese mer-
Stourbridge Fair. 151

chants brought with them precious store of Eastern produce.
silks and velvets, stores of delicate glass and jewellery,
cotton and alum. The Flemish manufacturers from Bruges
and Liége, from Ghent and Mechlin, brought their linens and
lawns, their diapers and holland. The Spaniard supplied
iron and the best kinds of the wine which the country grew,
while the commoner and cheaper growths of Guienne were
abundant; and even those of Greece and Crete were found.
There were currants, raisins, and almonds from the Levant,
and occasionally cocoa-nuts, whose shells were fashioned into
cups, and adorned with gold or silver. The Norwegian
brought tar and pitch, the Hanse towns furs and amber,
copper, and the choicest iron, bow-staves for the English
archers, flax and thread, fustian, buckram and canvas, and
the finest kinds of ornamental timber. These towns were the
channel by which the precious stones of the East, set un-
polished in mitre and coronet, on rings and jewelled gloves,
came to the West through the markets of Russia. And
these were probably the means by which the porcelain of
the farthest and earliest East, the fragments of which are
occasionally found in the most unlikely places, were exposed
for sale in these booths. To assist in this great and varied
activity, the eastern harbours were full of foreign vessels,
while eastern England grew rich by the traffic. Can we
doubt the interest with which franklin and bailiff, cellarer and
bursar, priest and knight, frequenting this scene of unusual
bustle, talked of the wonderful world before them, and dis-
cussed the geography and politics of the known world?

To this great fair came the huge wool-packs, which then
formed the wealth of rural England, and were the envy or
surrounding nations, on which monarchs did not disdain te
trade and jest. Hither came the produce of the Cornish
tin mines, stamped with the sign of the rich earl who had just
bought the German empire, though his purchase was only a
barren title. Here was lead from the mines of Derbyshire,
and iron from the Sussex forges. Here also bargains were
made for the barley of the eastern counties, to be transported,
if the price fell low enough, and therefore the law, provident
152 Lhe Distribution of Wealth and Trade.

_ for plenty among the people, permitted the export to the
Flemish breweries, which more than two centuries later
taught Englishmen to flavour and preserve their ale with
hops.

In order to regulate the currency, to prevent the loss of
specie, always an object of concern to the statesman of the
middie ages, and with more reason, in order to exclude
spurious or defaced coin, the officers of the king’s exchange
examined into the mercantile transactions of the foreign
traders, and the servants of the king's exchequer collected
their dues on exported products, the wool and the hides on
which the foreign manufacturer depended. To supply aready
remedy against fraud and violence, against disputes on con-
tracts and breaches of bargains, the mayor sat at his court
“of the dusty feet.” All classes were busy; the nobles
securing what their wealth could give them in articles of
luxury, their velvet robes, their costly furs, their armour from
Milan, their war-horses from Spain. IJ have found that even
the purchase of high-priced rams, doubtlessly to improve the
breed of sheep and the quality of wool, was negotiated at
this fair. And on holidays and Sundays some one of the
numerous clergy in the diocese of Ely,—for there were more
in this than in any other diocese,—or one of the monks from
the neighbouring priory, said mass in the ancient chapel which
still stands near the spot, the most notable relic of the
greatness of this fair, now long departed and forgotten. In
a less degree there were many other such gatherings in
England, and Walter de Henley may have reasonably assigned
eight weeks in the year as required by the farmer who
frequents fairs and markets.

Ten or twelve generations ago these fairs were a necessity,
three or four a great convenience, with which the country
could ill dispense. At present the importance which they
once possessed has passed away, and their significance is
forgotten. There is no part of English social lite which has
been so totally altered by improved means of communication
as trade, especially trade in the country. Two generations
ago pedlars carried tea about in packs on their shoulders. At
Foreign Routes. 153

the present time a country grocer can one evening bid his agent
iby letter free a chest of tea from bond, and the next day he
can have it in stock. Goods can be carried at one-tenth the
cost, time, and risk, from the centres of trade to distant
willages. Migratory trade has, therefore, become superfluous
and obsolete, and the great marts of the Plantagenets, of the
‘Tudors, of the Stuarts, and of the early reigns of the later
family, have degenerated into scenes of coarse amusement, and
after having been granted and protected as the highest and
most necessary franchises, have been tolerated for the sake
‘of their traditions, and are now being generally suppressed as
muisances,

It remains that I should describe, as far as the existing
information enables me to do so, what were the routes by
which foreign, and especially Eastern, produce was introduced
into this country. I need not dwell here on the coasting
trade between the English ports and the Continent, from
Bristol on the west, from the long coast line commencing
with Fowey and ending with Dover on the south, and from
the eastern ports along the coast of Kent as far north as
Hull, where there were innumerable ports, some silted up and
forgotten, some perhaps buried in the German Ocean. It is
probable that few English vessels ventured far from Bayonne
in the thirteenth century, though after the conquest of Spain
at the latter end of the fifteenth, they seem to have traded as
far as “the crane of Seville.” I am at present concerned with
the trade of the Hanse towns, and that of the routes to India.

Towards the latter end of the thirteenth century the
Hanse towns appear to have been recognised by the English
sovereigns; to have been established in the neighbourhood
of the Tower under the name of the Alderman and Mer-
chants of the Steelyard; and to have maintained their
position, though with some reverses, till their institution
‘was suppressed, and their representatives expelled from the
kingdom by Elizabeth at the conclusion of her reign, They
‘were an association of free towns carrying on trade, with a
staple at Bergen and a treasury at Wisby, who were united
for purposes of mutual protection, They appear to have
154 The Distribution of Wealth and Trade.

been at the height of their influence in the early part of the
fifteenth century, just at the time that the Teutonic knights
were extending their rule over Lithuania and Old Prussia
by sheer violence and outrage. They were leagued together
against these and other lawless chiefs of Eastern Europe, as.
the League of the Rhine was against the robber barons of the
great German waterway. Their trade was in the produce of
Scandinavia, of the Baltic, and of Muscovy; one of the
confederation from early times till the middle of the sixteenth
century being the ancient republic of Novgorod. That they
were of great importance in English trade is proved by
the protection accorded to them by the Court, despite the
jealousy and the remonstrances of those London merchants.
who were not in this privileged class. They seem to have
had settlements not only in London, but at Boston andi
Lynn. The chief cities of the four divisions into which the
various Hanse towns were ranged were Liibeck, Cologne,
Brunswick, and Dantzic, and the principal factories were
Novgorod, London, Bruges, and Bergen. The opulence of
Hanseatic prosperity is well seen in the numerous and costly:
churches of the town of Liibeck. This association of trading
cities is a notable phenomenon in the age of feudalism and
chivalry; and it is to be regretted that its history has not
been better told than in the works of Mallet, Schézer, and
Lappenberg.

More immediately significant, however, is the trade with
the East by caravan routes and a sea passage. It is difficult
for us to imagine the eagerness with which our forefathers,
as far as they could afford the luxury, sought after the spices
of the East. But the appetite was natural enough. Their
diet was coarse; and, owing to the absence of winter food for
cattle, unwholesome. They seem to have had few native
condiments. It is certain that they were excessively fond of
spices, and used them, when they could be procured, in all
their dishes, as the cookery books of the Plantagenets testify.
Spiced wine, called Hippocras, was a present to princes; and
a seat near the spice box was a greater privilege than one
above the salt.
Foreign Routes. 155:

The Crusades and the decline of the Eastern Empire, the
latter due more than to anything else to the scandalous
capture of Constantinople by the Latins, stimulated the
fanaticism of the tribes which inhabited Central Asia, and:
soon made that caravan trade which was common and easy
enough in the twelfth century all but impossible in the-
thirteenth. The numerous channels of trade were dried up,.
especially over land, and but three routes remained. In two-
of these, goods from India, ze., from the western coasts, were-
conveyed by water to Bagdad. Thence they were carried by
the Tigris till a point could be reached in the river which
was nearest to Seleucia and Antioch. This was in the early
period the chief and most convenient course of trade. But.
it had been rendered dangerous, and finally blocked, by the:
ferocious and fanatical tribes of Mesopotamia.

The second route was from the same point to the highlands.
of Asia Minor and Armenia to Trebizond. This course of
trade must have passed over the same, or nearly the same,,.
ground which Xenophon travelled with his famous tem
thousand. This, the most difficult and precarious route, was
not so dangerously blocked as that to the Orontes and the
Mediterranean. It was the opinion of Sanuto, to whom we
are indebted for the narrative of the facts, that by energetic
action these two ancient and convenient lines of traffic couldi
be restored, reopened, and sufficiently guarded, if Europe in:
general, and the pope in particular (he is writing to one of
the Avignon Popes, John XXI.) were united and public
spirited. It is needless to say that the hope was dis-
appointed.

The third route was that from Western India to Aden,,.
thence across the desert by a nine days’ journey to Chus-
on the Nile, from thence by a fifteen days’ river transit to.
Babylon, ze. Cairo, and thence.by a canal, two hundred miles.
long, to Alexandria. From Aden this route went through:
the Sultan of Egypt’s dominions; and we are informed that
a toll of thirty-three per cent. was levied on all the goods
which went this way. Hence the writer concludes,, although.
the cost of package and land carriage across the old: routes.
156 The Distribution of Wealth and Trade.

were large, the tolls, if the caravan transit could be restored,
were small. The spices, too, which passed through Egypt
were damaged and adulterated; so that articles of the greatest
value—cloves, nutmegs, and mace—went by the land road,
notwithstanding the perils of the way; while pepper, ginger,
frankincense, and canella, go through Egypt. The trade, too,
ds not one-sided. Egypt depends greatly on Europe for many
products, and entirely for iron, timber, and pitch. Sanuto
concludes, therefore, that by the equipment of a competent
fleet, the Sultan of Egypt might be compelled to respect the
feeling of Europe, and even be starved into submission.

The greater part of this Eastern trade, whether it passed into
the Black Sea or the Mediterranean, by Antioch or by Alex-
andria, fell into the hands of the Italian cities, especially Genoa
and Venice. Thence it was conveyed to western Europe, along
the Upper Danube and its tributaries, and down the Rhine.
The stream of commerce was slender enough, but it enriched
the free cities on the banks—Ratisbon, Niiremberg, Coblentz,
Mayence, and Cologne. The opulence and power of the
‘burghers raised the cupidity and envy, and after a time
secured the association, of the nobles in the neighbourhood.
As the wealth of the West was poured into the lap of the Court
of Rome, so the treasures of the East were distributed by the
‘cities which lay on the road. I conclude that, heavy as the
‘tolls were which the Sultan extorted, he must have known
that the trade was too advantageous to be destroyed without a
permanent loss, and too reciprocal to be sacrificed without
serious danger. And so the trade went on, and in some
‘directions flourished. For example, the manufacture of cane
sugar, a very costly article, and at first confined to Sicily,
was set up in Alexandria, and within a hundred years, 22,
between the beginning and end of the fifteenth century, the
dater price sank to less than one-eighth of the rate at which
it stood at the earlier date.

Still the conquest of Constantinople, the progress of the
Turkish arms, and the tota! desolation and block of Central
Asia, made the trade centres of Western Europe uneasy.
‘The march of the Turks seemed to the fifteenth century
The Effects of the Conquest of Egypt. 157

like that of a devouring pestilence, or of the sword of God.
The battle of Belgrade was a great deliverance, but only for
atime. At any rate, it was of supreme importance to get to
the rear of these warlike savages, and so reach India. Hence
the efforts of Henry of Portugal, a grandson of our John of
Gaunt, to discover a sea passage round Africa, in the first
half of the fifteenth century ; the voyages of Vasco di Gama,
of Columbus, and of Cabot in the second half. As is well
known, the discovery of the Cape Passage and of the New
World were almost simultaneous.

The discovery was not too soon. Between 1512 and 1520,
Selim I, the most active and ferocious of the Turkish
sultans, conquered Mesopotamia, got possession of the holy
places of Arabia, and annexed Egypt to his empire. The
last ancient route to the East was blocked, and though the
region of spices had been opened by Portuguese enterprise
to the Western world for some years, the voyage was long,
dangerous, and uncertain. The price of Eastern produce rose
rapidly to famine rates. The trade with the East was succes-
sively appropriated by Portugal, Spain, Holland, England; and
in our own day, under better conditions, the old road of the
Pharaohs and Ptolemies has been reopened, and the border
of Egypt has become the water-way of India.

Before this epoch could be dreamed of, the commercial ruin
of Italy set in, and with it the decline of those great cities
which had been the carriers and distributors of Eastern pro-
duce. The wealth of the burghers and the resources of princes
dwindled, though it is likely that few saw the causes of the de-
cline, or could trace them to their proper origin. As the nobles
grew poorer—for the trade was starved before it was annihi-
lated—they began to oppress the peasants, and the Boors’
war broke out. The discontent of town and country alike
had no little influence on the temper which gave Luther
a hearing and the theses of Wittenberg an ominous signifi-
cance. The decline of trade, the pressure of poverty, the
discontent engendered by distress, the angry inquiry into the
causes of these unexplained calamities, the reference of these
distresses to papal extortion and extravagance, and the out-
158 The Distribution of Wealth and Trade.

‘burst of a passionate longing for reform in the Church, are not
‘remotely connected with the battles which Selim won at
Cairo and the Pyramids, and with the break which those
‘victories made in the commerce of the East. Then the
‘inquiry into the causes of commercial and social decay be-
-came wider, and the discontent with authority more marked.
The Western world revolted. Germany, a century after
Luther’s age, lay wasted and bleeding at the feet of the
Austrian emperor. France was torn by wars of religion, and
finally succumbed to a central despotism, while England
began anew that struggle for constitutional liberty which
-has now, we trust, been founded securely, and to be wisely
progressing, though two centuries elapsed before the mass
-of the people were emancipated from injurious laws,—a people
which is not yet re-admitted to the constitution.
159

CHAPTER VI.

SOCIETY— WAGES—PROFITS.

“The Labour of an Agriculturist always leaves a Margin for others—The Nobles
and the Clergy—Number of the Clergy—The Incidence of Tithe in the Middle
Ages, and its Proportion to Agricultural Profits and Rent—The Position of
the Clergy—The Use of the learned Monk and Chronicler—Education
was probably Diffused—Proofs thereof—Education of Girls in Nunneries
—Oxford, its Reputation—Number of Students there—Merton’s Founda-
tions—The Fortunes of Oxford—Wages of Labour—Of Farm Hinds
—Payments for Threshing—Wages high in the Eastern Counties and London
— Wages in the Irish Pale—The general Distribution of Land, and its Etfect
-on Wages—Comparison of wages in the Thirteenth and Eighteenth Centuries—
‘The Profits of small Proprietors Estimated, and their Expenditure—Artizans
‘tew, and all Work on Raw Materials hired by Employers—Working Days ith
the Year—Money Wages of Artizans—Farm and Domestic Servants—Wages
of Clerks and Scribes,

T is certain that the agriculturist must earn more than is
necessary for his own support before any other person can
contrive to exist. It was with some reason, therefore, that the
economists and Adam Smith put him in the first rank of
productive labourers. However scanty may be his share in
the distribution of wealth, except he abide in the ship, none
can be safe. It is true that in the rudest agricultural, and
even in the rudest pastoral age, the labour of the individual
always produces more than is requisite for himself and his
family. He can therefore be made to maintain others on his
labour. Some of these consumers will benefit him, by
‘increasing his comforts, by allowing him to devote his un-
-divided attention to his own industry or calling, and by
‘furnishing him with economies in the conduct of his business,
Some will quarter themselves as of right or by force on his
‘labours and their produce, and will colour their usurpation by
160 Soctety— Wayes—Profits.

alleging that he owes them allegiance or duty. These claims
are always most insolent and incessant when society is
barbarous. As it becomes civilized, people reiterate, with
apparent reason, that only the criminal and the utterly
destitute are burdens on society, and that they who provide
the pageantry, or are recognised as the ornaments of civil life,
represent the highest utilities. It is to be hoped that labour
and poverty are satisfied with this assurance, and are convinced
that these pretensions are founded on a solid basis of facts.
It will be found in the course of English social history that
the assurance has been occasionally disputed, and the pre-.
tensions severely criticised. It is possible that the temper
which disputes or criticises may occur in force hereafter,
when it is not anticipated or expected.

The nobles and the clergy were the two powers in the
middle ages which enforced the subjection or affirmed the
duty of those who lived by labour. As both orders were
engaged in industry of the same kind as that of the mass of
the people, as landowner, priest, and monk were all employed
on husbandry, and were all adding to the sum of visible wealth,
there was a harmony of purpose and interest which made
Grostéte and De Montfort, the barons of London and the
franklins of Kent, the monks of St. Benedict and the parsom
of Dale, the lord of the manor and the serf under him, all
toiling and spinning, impatient critics of a foolish king, who.
would have no responsible councillors; and of foreign
favourites, who drew income out of that to which they con-
tributed nothing—the Mansels, the De Valences, the herd of
the Savoyards and the Poictevins. In two or three genera~
tions afterwards there begins the struggle between labour
and ease, between obligations and privileges,—a struggle which
commenced five centuries ago under Tyler and Ball, and has
continued under various leaders and various phases into this.
our present unsatisfied condition.

The clergy of the thirteenth century were very numerous.
There were certainly as many as in the fourteenth, when the
poll-tax, which excludes the most popular and growing class
of the regular clergy, the begging friars, makes them 29,161,
The Clergy and Trthes. 161

or about one in fifty-two of the population, male and female,
which was above fourteen years of age. It is probable, indeed,
that the numbers of the clergy, secular and regular, had been
greatly reduced in the third quarter of the fourteenth century
by the great plague and the drain which Edward’s wars laid
on the population.

It will be obvious that the more costly the process of agri-
culture, the more ungrateful the soil, and the more scanty the
produce, the more onerous is the impost of a tithe of the pro-
duce, even though it may seem to supply but a small income
to the recipient. The average tithe of the produce in corn
and wool on the eleven estates of Merton College in the year
1333, as taken from the return of produce in that year,
rendered by the bailiffs on all the farms which are cultivated
by the college, and estimated at the current prices of the year,
is about 44. But not more than half of the titheable area
was ordinarily in the hands of the lord. The income of the
parson was therefore, on an average of corn and wool, and, on
this produce only, at least £8. To this must be added a
further £4 at least, for the tithe on stock, and, finally, the dues,
ordinary or extraordinary, payable to the rector. Now I find
that, taking one estate with the others and setting the profit of
bailiff cultivation, inclusive of the rents and dues paid by the
tenants, at 20 per cent. on the capital (and there is good reason
for believing that such a rate was realised on the average),
the receipts of each estate were, on an average, £36 a year,
while I have calculated the average receipts of the parson at
about £15. The parson therefore received from each estate
under cultivation rather more than two-fifths of the income
of the lord; this income, it should be remembered, being in
part derived from the agricultural operations of others, and
often supplemented by the profits of glebe lands. In towns,
benefices are of far greater value. Gascoigne speaks from his
own knowledge of rectors who had £100 a year of annual
income.

My readers may now see why the pope and the king claimed
a heavier percentage tax on the clergy than they did on the
laity. Unlike the rest of the community, they subsisted on

II
162 Soctety— Wages—Profits.

the produce of other men’s labour. They often held, as I
have said, glebes in addition to their tithes. These, with their
personal goods, appear to have been taxed at the same rate
as lay tenements and chattels, as were also lands held by
spiritual persons in mortmain, and by the consent of the
Crown since the 20th year of Edward I. (1292).

The estates of the monasteries are said over and over again
to have comprised a third of the knight’s fees in England.
Most of these religious houses were founded before the close
of the thirteenth century, many of them in the early ages of
the Saxon polity. Only a few were founded in later times,
Besides these monastic estates, the bishops and the chapters
held large possessions. They added to them, especially in
the fifteenth century, by procuring, through the action of the
Roman court and with the connivance of the Crown, the
great tithes of valuable livings, while they left a pittance to
the vicar, or served the church by one of their own monks or
chaplains, in which case they appropriated the fees which the
piety of the age conferred on the clergy, or usage secured to
their order. Hence the king, who had enacted over and over
again, in the interests of the Crown, and, indeed, of the public
at large, that the clergy should be debarred from adding to
the real estate which they already possessed, claimed on
various occasions large contributions from the religious orders
and the secular clergy, and once in the thirteenth century put
a novel but very effective kind of pressure on them, by with-
drawing from them the protection of the king’s peace, and
subjecting them to a virtual outlawry.

Large as the proportion of the clergy is to the rest of the
community, and it is stated that the numbers given are not
exhaustive, it must be remembered that the clergy, in the
widest sense of the term, contained nearly the whole of what
‘we should call the professional classes, The architects, the
yphysicians, the lawyers, the scribes, the teachers of the middle
ages, were almost always clergymen, and when employed in
these callings, were rewarded for their services with benefices.
We know but few of the men who designed the great
cathedrals, churches, and castles of the middle ages,—those
The Monks. 163

buildings which are the wonder of our age for their vastness,
their exquisite proportions, and their equally exquisite detail.
But when we do know, as it were by accident, who the builder
was, he is almost always a clergyman. It seems as though
skill in architecture, and intimate acquaintance with all which
was necessary, not only for the design of the structure, but,
for good workmanship and endurance, were so common an
accomplishment, that no one was at the pains to proclaim his
own reputation or to record the reputation of another. It is
known that we owe the designs of Rochester Castle and the
Tower to one ecclesiastic. It is recorded that William of
Wykeham was Edward the Third’s architect at Windsor, as
well as his own at Winchester and Oxford, and of various hand-
some churches which were built during his long episcopate.

It is probable that Wayneflete designed the beautiful buildings

at Magdalen College; and it is alleged that Wolsey, in his

youth, planned the matchless tower, which has charmed every

spectator for nearly four centuries. But no one knows who

designed and carried out a thousand of those poems in stone

which were the glory of the middle ages, and have been made

the subjects of servile and stupid imitation in our own.

The monks were the men of letters in the middle ages, the
historians, the jurists, the philosophers, the physicians, the
students of nature. It is owing to their labours that we know
anything of our annals, of the events by which the political
history of England is interpreted. They were often frivolous,
frequently credulous, but they collected the facts to the best
of their ability. It is true that the material which they put
into shape is far less in quantity than those voluminous
archives are which are preserved in our national collection.
_But these, though of great collateral value, would have but
little constructive importance in the absence of the chronicles
which the monks compiled. This is abundantly illustrated
by the history of the fifteenth century and part of the
sixteenth. The archives of this time are exceedingly
copious. Public documents are numerous, the rolls of Par-
liament are full and precise, the record of legal proceedings
is very large, and there is no lack of private memoranda,
164 Society— Wages—Profits.

But the chronicler has disappeared, to the regret of the few
authors of the time. Gascoigne, the Oxford Chancellor, is
constantly indignant at the fact that the literary monk is
nowhere found, that the scripiorium of the abbey is deserted,
and chronicles are no longer compiled. He suggests the
sternest measures, fine and even confiscation, for such a
neglect of duty. But owing to the absence of such chronicles,
the history of England from the middle of Henry the Sixth’s
reign to the beginning of Henry the Eighth’s, between sixty
and seventy years, is as dark a period as any in our annals.
We depend, to a great extent, for our own history on the
works of foreign authors.

In our sense of the word, these chronicles were not
published. They were copied over and over in the same
monastery; they were frequently inspected by monks of
other houses or other orders; but they do not appear to
have been accessible to a public, if any, which could read
them. Hence the authors of these books are exceedingly
plain spoken. Matthew Paris writes of Henry III., with
whom he seems to have had more than a personal acquaintance,
with a candid severity which was certainly never designed
for the royal eye. But they do not, like some memoirs,
appear to have been composed with a view of postponing
that information to posterity which might be given when
the writer was out of the reach of all who might resent his
calumnies, or when a cynical avowal of licentiousness and
malignity could be safely made. That the reflections of the
monk took a colour from his surroundings was natural ; that the
indignant critic of the Roman court should have been equally
angry with Grostéte for striving to make the monks amen-
able to discipline was an intelligible inconsistency ; but on the
whole, when his abilities were equal to the task, the literary
monk addressed himself to his labours fearlessly and honestly.

The monasteries do not appear to have become scandalous
in the thirteenth century, as they were in the latter part of
the fourteenth and the whole of the fifteenth. But they
lacked zeal. Wealth had made them negligent, if not
corrupt. Without becoming absolutely unpopular, they had
Chronicles— Education. 105

ceased to be an ideal of religious life, and piety no longer
expended itself in founding establishments for the older
orders, But for a time, especially in the thirteenth century,
two new orders, those of Francis and Dominic, were popular,
energetic, and influential, and had a great reputation for
saintliness. One of the old military orders was, on the other
hand, about to fall, and give the first precedent for the
dissolution of a religious society, and the confiscation of its
possessions.

It is a common opinion, but, I believe, a common error,
that education, in the sense of reading and writing, was
hardly ever acquired out of the ranks of the clergy, I
cannot account for the universal practice of keeping elaborate
and exact accounts if the bailiffs were wholly illiterate. I
decline to believe that an official in an estate could carry
in his head or verify by tallies the exceedingly numerous
details which he must have supplied in order to get his
assets and liabilities balanced at the end of the year to a
farthing. I have seen from time to time, but rarely, a
rough set of entries, evidently scrawled by a very different
person from the neat and accomplished scribe who finally
indites the roll. Again, we are told that schools were
universal. I have alluded to them in London. I am con-
vinced that they were attached to every monastery, and
that the extraordinary number of foundation schools esta-
blished just, after the Reformation of 1547 was not a new
zeal for a new learning, but the fresh and very inadequate
supply of that which had been so suddenly and disastrously
extinguished.

The bills presented by artizans and mechanics in the early
period of this inquiry would not be worth keeping. But for
several years during the fifteenth century, New College, in
Oxford, preserved by some accident, filed and rolled up ina
scrap of parchment, the tradesmen’s bills which were pre-
sented and paid before the audit. They are rudely written,
and are evidently the composition, of persons who were not
adept penmen; but they are evidence that artizans in the
fifteenth century knew how to write out an account.
166 Society— Wages—Profits.

During the course of the same century I find it was the
practice of country gentlefolks to send their daughters for
education to the nunneries, and to pay a certain sum for their
board. A number of such persons are enumerated as living
en pension at the small nunnery of Swyn in Yorkshire. Only
one roll of expenditure for this religious house survives in
the Record Office, but it is quite sufficient to prove and
illustrate the custom. The eagerness, too, with which the
Lollards treasured, copied, and disseminated the Bible and
the controversial works of their sect, is proof that reading and
writing were not strange accomplishments among the Norwich
weavers, who were the head-quarters of the Lollard move-
ment, and offered an asylum to the proscribed and hunted
teachers of the sect. The Lollards’ Pit, on the other side of
the Cathedral Close at Norwich, had probably as many
victims as Smithfield, though the chronicle of their sufferings
has not been written. It is probable, too, that Latin, such
as it was, was not unfamiliar to all. The bailiff’s accounts
are invariably written in it. That the monks and academics
should universally employ Latin was intelligible enough;
but it is surely unreasonable to conclude that bailiff and
lord, master and servant, should have agreed to record trans-
actions of vital importance and minute detail in a tongue
which neither of them understood, or either was ignorant of.
The likelihood that Latin was generally understood is further
enforced by the frequency of political songs in Latin or in a
maccaroni of Latin and English. Nor were these bailiffs men
in any superior position. The bailiffs of Cuxham, father and
son, from the days when Merton College became possessed
of the estate to the time when the whole family perished in
the plague and their chattels became the property of the
lords of the manor, were serfs, and so described. Inventories
of chattels also designate books frequently, though they are
generally of small value in the estimate.

In the middle of the thirteenth century, Oxford, which had
been in existence for at least a hundred years, was at the
height of its reputation as a university. “The schools”—by
which title the University was generally known—were situated
eee

The University of Oxford. 167

on part of what is now Bodley’s Library, the ground floor of
which when built was devoted to the same uses as the older
structure was. Oxford appears to have attracted students from
all parts of the world. The reputation of Grostéte, the famous
bishop of Lincoln, whom succeeding ages reverenced as the
greatest of English saints, though uncanonized, was reflected
on the University in which he lived and taught for the greater
part of his life. This was during the first half of the thirteenth
century. The situation was admirable. The town is placed
on a slight eminence above the river, which embraces nearly
three sides of it. It is naturally protected. It possessed one
or two ancient and opulent monasteries, founded in Anglo-
Saxon times, and others of more recent date. On the north
of the town was the royal palace of the Plantagenets, where
two kings of England, Richard and John, were born. Near it
was the park and manor of Woodstock. The circuit of the
walls was densely packed with houses, in which students
lodged, the dedication of buildings to their use greatly en-
hancing the value of the tenements in which they dwelt.

In the fifteenth century, Gascoigne tells us that he inspected
the records of his predecessors, Chancellors of Oxford, and
found that before the Great Plague, the University had thirty
thousand students within its liberties. I confess that, with
every respect for this pious and estimable person, the number
seems to me absolutely incredible,—to be, in short, ten times
more than the possible truth, That the majority of the clergy
studied here is almost certain. That a large proportion of
the monks were here also as students during their novitiate
is proved, for large establishments, sometimes collective, as
Gloucester Hall, sometimes single, as Durham College, were
entirely devoted to the reception of monks. That students
came from all parts of Europe is clear. It is far from unlikely
that many a poor foreigner, after studying in Oxford, as
Alexander V. did, returned to his country and reached the
papal chair.

In the latter part of the thirteenth century, an ecclesiastic,
who had long been engaged in secular business, and when
advanced in life was made bishop of the small see of
168 Soczety— Wages—Profits.

Rochester, being possessed of considerable private means,
and being high in favour with the king, his brother, and his
sons, and even with the barons of the popular. party, deter-
mined to found a house of students, At first he placed it in
a Surrey village, but soon removed it to Oxford. He gave it
very considerable possessions, estates indeed numerous and
valuable enough for an abbey, these being partly his patri-
mony, partly purchases, partly donations from the king, the
King of the Romans, and the younger brother of Edward I.
He founded it for a warden and as many fellows as the revenues
could maintain, provided for religious offices in or near the
building, and prescribed that the fellows should for ever
maintain a school in which his kinsfolk and others should
be taught. He put certain geographical limits to the area
from which his fellows should be eligible, but no other con-
ditions. Only they should be at once excluded from the
benefits of his foundation if they became monks, They were
not bound to become secular clergy, or to betake themselves
to any particular calling, but to be students and men of busi-
ness. To use a modern phrase, the liberality of the views
entertained by Merton is amazing in a thirteenth century
ecclesiastic,

This foundation became the type of the Oxford colleges,
It was speedily imitated at Cambridge, the earliest house of
that university having statutes copied almost literally from
those of the first among the Oxford colleges. For a long
time, however, these institutions were almost unimportant
members of the academical system into which they were
planted. As Grostéte attracted students from all parts of
the world in the thirteenth century, so did Wiklif in the
fourteenth. In the fifteenth, Oxford began to decay. At the
beginning of the sixteenth it seemed likely, under the influence
of Erasmus and the Humanists, to revive. But the Réforma-
tion came, and it was almost ruined, and far more seriously
compromised than Cambridge was. Inthe seventeenth it fell
under the baneful influence of Laud. In the eighteenth it
sunk to its lowest degradation. It has been successively the
prey of Jacobites, obscurantists, and adventurers from the
Lis Reputateon—Past and Present. 169

beginning “of those evil days. There never has been an
English institution which has_ been at times so noble and
at times so ignoble, in which partizanship has been so con-
temptible and public opinion so dead.

During the epoch of its occasional reputation, the University
of Oxford must have powerfully leavened English life. It is
remarkable that it has developed every great religious move-
ment in English history. The teaching of its students was
carried to Bohemia in the fourteenth century, and to the
Mississippi in the eighteenth. Chaucer has sketched its
clerks in their student days ; Gascoigne in the decline of
letters. During the short-lived ascendency of the Common-
wealth, it founded what became the Royal Society. It has
never been entirely without witnesses. In the eighteenth
century it had great astronomers. In the nineteenth it had
a great scholar. But though these men had a vast reputation
outside it, they never leavened the inert mass within it. It
has constantly stoned its prophets, but has never even built
their sepulchres, and hardly knows their names.

The leisure classes in England in the thirteenth century
were therefore a few nobles, a few opulent ecclesiastics, and
a large number of clergy and scholars. The supplementary
industries were those of the traders and artizans in the towns,
and a very few, and those very scattered, smiths and car-
penters in the villages. Even these persons, in rural districts
at least, united the functions of the husbandman or labourer to
that of the craft which they practised. There were, indeed,
very few of the population which were wholly dissociated from
agriculture. The fellows of a college, the monks in the
monastery, all took their part at times in supervising at least
the work of the fields) And though agriculture was unpro.-
gressive, the husbandman was diligent. His wants were few,
and most of them were satisfied on the spot, and it was quite
possible, by thrift and painstaking, not only to satisfy the
claims of his lord and the charges of the tax collectors, but to
make a store, with which to gratify his paternal ambition or
to enlarge his holding.

Agricultural labourers were rarely paid by the day, but
170 Soctety— Wages—Profits.

generally by piecework. The bailiff hired hands by the year,
but these were constantly paid in allowances of grain and
a small sum of money. Where one does find day work paid
for, it is at about the rate of 2d. a day for men, td. for women,
4d. for boys. Now it must be remembered that a penny con-
tained at that time three times as much silver as a penny now
would contain, if a pound of silver were coined into 720 pieces,
instead of being, as it would be now, if silver pence were
minted, cut into 792 pieces. I need not trouble my reader
bere with the difference between the Tower pound and the
Troy pound, beyond saying that the former stood to the
latter in the proportion of 15 to 16. The rarity of payment
by the day is indirect evidence that the great majority of the
labourers were occupied on their own holdings during a con-
siderable part of the year. Omitting exceptional rates paid
for piecework, the wages of an agricultural labourer would
be at a rate of £2 115. 8d. a year, or taking, besides Sundays,
twenty days for church holidays, £2 10s. In harvest and hay-
making time, which may have well lasted five weeks, his wages
would be doubled, and this would raise them to £2 15s. His
wife was paid for harvest piecework as well as he was, and
could earn another five shillings, raising his amount to 43.
If he had two children fit for employment, at their rates
they might raise the total earnings of the family to £3 15s.
or £4.

When the hinds were hired by the year, they received
a quarter of corn, at say 4s. every eight weeks, and 6s. money
wages, ze, about the value of 325. a year. They were always,
however, boarded in harvest time and at periods of exceptional
employment. This board, as I find from other sources, was
reputed to cost from 14d. to 14d. a day, and if we take six weeks
as the time thus employed, the real wages which they received
would be in the aggregate about 35s. 8¢.a year. Such hinds
were undoubtedly single men. Occasionally the labourer
serves more masters than one, and his allowances and money
are therefore reduced. Thus the swineherd is the servant of
the whole village; the deye, or dairy servant, of more than one
or two; the shepherd frequently of two persons. During the
Wages of Agricultural Labourers. wr

harvest quarter the money wages are always three times the
amount of what is paid in the other quarters. This rule is of
course adopted in order to prevent the hind from deseiting
his employment during the most profitable time of the:
labourer’s year, and is indirect evidence of the voluntariness.
of the engagement. Had the labour of the resident serf been.
entirely at his lord’s discretion, such a distribution of monry
wages would have been a superfluous precaution.

The wages of agricultural labour were higher in the Easterr
counties and the neighbourhood of London than in the rest
of England. So copious has been the information which I
have collected as to the price of agricultural labour andi
produce in England at the close of the thirteenth and through:
the greater part of the fourteenth century, that I have found.
it in my power to construct a table of the prices of one kind
of labour from five districts of England,—east, west, south,
midland, and north. The labour which I took as an illustra-
tion was that of threshing a quarter of the three kinds of corn—
wheat, barley, and oats—in the several districts. The rate of
payment is, speaking generally, that of 3, 2, and 1. No better
illustration of labour by the piece could be conceived. The
process was in universal demand, and was not, as far as F
have seen, provided by customary labour. It is that kind of
labour which is, relatively speaking, the cheapest, for it can
be carried on at all times of the year under cover, in good and.
bad weather, and at the discretion of the employer and
labourer. It was comparatively easy work, for our forefathers.
cut their corn high on the stalk, leaving the straw for a second
reaping or mowing at their convenience or discretion, or even.
for ploughing in. All corn was, as a rule, reaped, little or none-
was mown; and asthe reaper took only such a length of straw-
to his sickle as would be sufficient to bind by, it is clear that:
it was easily spread and threshed. The labour of threshing.
the three principal kinds of corn-growing grasses differs with:
the difficulty of separating the seed from the husk, and the
graduated rate of payment expresses the difficulty with exact-
ness. It is 3d. for wheat, 2¢. for barley, 1d. for oats. Win-
nowing was performed by the women, at about a farthing the:
472 Society ~Wages—Projfits.

quarter, the fan being provided by the employer, as, indeed,
‘most tools and implements are.

The higher rates paid in the eastern counties are to be
explained by the competition of manufacturing labour, just in
ithe same way as now the wages paid to agricultural labourers
dn the manufacturing districts of England are far in excess of
‘those customary in purely rural parts, and would, if they were
familiar to the farmers of the south, become another of those
foolish and futile cries by which English agriculturists habitu-
cally deafen and blind themselves to those facts which have
to be comprehended before the agricultural problems of our
-own time can be solved. It does not, however, appear that the
price of agricultural products is higher in the east than it was
elsewhere. On the contrary, Norfolk prices are generally low,
especially for its staple product, barley. Again, London wages
are high, for prices are high in or about London, and it is
‘reasonable to conclude that the strongest and the most skilful
Jabour gravitated towards the metropolis, or was to be
wegularly found there. I may add here that the Anglicised
part of Ireland, in which Roger Bigod had several estates,
and in which there were thriving manufactures, paid as high
wages as England did. The glimpse which the preservation
-of the bailiff’s accounts from Bigod’s Irish estates gives us
as to the position of the English pale in Ireland during the
last few years of the thirteenth century is instructive, and, I
believe, unique. These estates were in the counties of Wexford,
‘Carlow, and Kildare. Now in Arthur Young’s time (Southern
Tour, p. 81) threshing near Braintree was paid at the rate of
2s.a quarter for wheat, and 1s. for barley and oats. If we
take the multiple of twelve as a fair and, on the whole, exact
representative of the rise in the price of provisions and the
other necessaries of life between the years 1260 and 1760, the
labourer in the time of Henry III. was paid better than he
was in the first year of George III. I reckoned, when estimat-
‘ing the position of the medizval labourer by the side of his
descendants in the eighteenth century, that the former received
‘for the labour of threshing rather more than one-eighteenth of
‘the wheat he threshed, rather more than a twenty-second part
Prices of Labour Compared. 173

of barley, and rather less than a fourteeath part of oats, taking.
the rate of wages and the price of grain as the factors in the
calculation. In the eighteenth century, the peasant got one
twenty-fourth part of wheat and barley, and a one-and-
twentieth part of the oats he threshed.

T have little doubt that the comparative price of labour at
these remote periods, separated by five centuries, and the rela-
tively advantageous position which the peasant occupied at this.
period, are to be ascribed to the general distribution of land.
When persons are engaged in a calling which regularly
demands a particular kind of labour for its conduct, and an
external demand as regularly arises for the same kind of
labour, the tendency of the market for labour is to rise, z.2, the
labourer is able to require and obtain more than he would if
he had no identical calling of his own to follow. It has been
noticed that in a country of small agricultural proprietors hired
labour is always absolutely or relatively dear, and that contracts.
with labourers for harvest or other work were always to the
advantage of the labourer. But if the labour given by the
small proprietors is a bye occupation, ze., it is followed when
the requirements of the labourer’s ordinary calling are satisfied,
the remuneration is low. Hence Adam Smith (Book L,
Chap. x.) declines to admit such kinds of labour into his
estimate of the causes which determine the rate of wages.
Agricultural labour, hired by employers, would be dear; home
industries, such as spinning and weaving and similar employ-
ments, would be carried on for a small or an inappreciable
remuneration.

The facts to which I have referred will be further illustrated
by an examination into the prices paid for such kinds of
labour as that for which there was or might be a comparatively
urgent demand. The persons who first fixed labour rents
were shrewd enough to see that it was most important for
them to tie their tenants to the obligations of ploughing,
hoeing, mowing, and reaping, because three at least of these
operations had to be undertaken at what might be a critical
time for the agriculturist, and certainly would be in districts
where there were numerous peasant holders. Now it is clear
174 Society— Wages—Profits.

‘that this customary labour, judiciously exacted, would tend to
depress the price at which it would be hired in the open
market. For the lord and his bailiff had only to bargain for
such services as were over and above what would be afforded
by the regular hinds on the farm and the customary labour of
‘the tenants. The latter they could exact, the former they
secured by larger money allowances, by giving board in
addition to payments in corn and money, and by a few luxuries
‘in harvest time. They knew, to be sure, that the enforced
‘labour was not of a satisfactory kind, hence they were always
ready to commute it for a reasonable money payment, with
consequences which we shall see hereafter.

In the thirteenth century, wheat was reaped at a fraction
over 5a. an acre, barley at 53a, oats and rye at 43d. Beans,
peas, and vetches at §d., or a fraction less. Hay was mown at
-$@.an acre. The discrepancy between the price at which rye
.and oats, on the one hand, and wheat and barley on the other,
~were reaped, is to be accounted for by the fact that the rye
crop, always a small and unimportant one, comes to maturity
earlier than any other kind of grain, and therefore at a time
when there is a less energetic demand for hands, while oats
-can lie out with less injury than any other kind of grain during
wet. Barley, too, was a heavier crop than wheat.

In Arthur Young’s time, to revert to a comparison made
above, the average price, compiled from very numerous
entries made in his various tours, paid for the service of
‘reaping wheat was 5s. 6d. an acre, #¢., a little over twelve times
what was paid five centuries before; but so little over that
the rate may be considered, in view of the multiple employed
‘before, as inappreciable. Estimated in the price of wheat,
the reaper of the thirteenth century received about one-
‘twelfth of a quarter for his labour. During the period of
Young’s tours, which were made during the remarkable
-abundance which characterized the first three-quarters of the
eighteenth century, the receipts of the reaper of wheat were
about one-ninth of a quarter. But in the eighteenth century,
-all other kinds of corn were mown, the labourer receiving,
“On an average, Is. 2d. am acre for corn and hay; while the
Profits of the Peasant Farmer. 175

thirteenth-century peasant received, again taking twelve as
the multiplier, over 5s. an acre for his labour. Now the
average price of the other kinds of grain, which were paid at
the higher rate, is 3s. 6d. a quarter, and for this part of his
work the labourer received in value about the eighth of a
quarter, or a bushel of grain for the labour of reaping a
quarter of the produce. This cost of labour corresponds with
that given in Walter de Henley’s estimate, who sets the
whole cost of cultivating an acre of corn at 3s. 14d. an acre,
and reckons the reaping at 5d.,the carrying at 1d. But
taking the average price of barley, oats, and beans in Arthur
Young’s time, we shall find that the labourer earned, on an
average, not more than the nineteenth of a quarter for the
labour of mowing them. It is clear, moreover, that the
average crop of the eighteenth century was more than
double that of the thirteenth, as may be readily discovered
from a very hasty examination of what I have shown in my
history of agriculture and prices on the one hand, and the
facts of English husbandry which Arthur Young has so
copiously collected on the other.

It remains that I should attempt to point out what were
the profits of such a small proprietor as is described on the
Cuxham and Ibstone manors, as having a holding, for which
he pays a quit-rent, or a quit-rent and service, at about 6d. an
acre; his holding being about twenty acres of arable land.
If he carried on his cultivation in the same way and to the
same advantage, one thing being put against the other, as the
lord did on the land which he held in his own hands and
cultivated by his bailiff with the assistance of hired labourers,
though we might expect with reason that his small husbandry
would be more profitable, he should expect to obtain, by a
capital of about £15, about 43 10s. profit, out of which he
would have to pay 10s. for rent and dues. In addition to
his land, and contributing to the profit which he earned, *
would be his pasture rights in common, field, waste, and wood.
‘These would be after the rate obtained by the lord, though he
might have to pay a few pence for the pannage of his hogs.
If, in addition to the labour which he gives to his own little
176 Soctety— Wages—Profits.

homestead, he, his wife, and his boys take their share in
harvest work and winter threshing, in hoeing, and similar
avocations, he would find, as the evidence of numberless
records testify, no difficulty in bringing his aggregate earnings
up to 44 annually, or even more; for I have shown above
that this sum was not unattainable by the free labourer who
had only a cottage and curtilage, but got regular farm work
at day wages. I am content, however, to take the less sum.
The distribution of his income would be as follows :—
Taking the average price of wheat, and assuming that four
quarters a year were sufficient for the support of the farmer
and his family, the first and heaviest charge on his resources
will be 41 3s. 6d. for bread. I have taken the price of the
best wheat which comes to market, and has been screened
from the lighter produce. Let us suppose that he uses the
inferior produce for home consumption, and, with a very
liberal margin, the difference between the price of the best
and of inferior corn, fully 25 per cent., will be amply sufficient
to reimburse the miller for his labour and his toll. Two
quarters of second quality malt may be allowed for the
home manufacture of beer. This allowance, nearly a bushel
of malt every three weeks among the members of a small
family, though liberal, is not excessive, for it gives about four
gallons of tolerably sound ale weekly to the whole number.
The cost of malt will be 7s. 7¢. Now if we allow 800 lbs. of
meat at the rate of 4d. per lb., its ordinary price in the
thirteenth century, as we may find from the weight and prices
of oxen and sheep, a further sum will be expended on beef,
mutton, and bacon of 16s. 8d. This puts the cost of main-
tenance on a somewhat liberal scale of £2 7s. od. a year.
The residue of his charges would be for clothing. But much
of this was homespun russet cloth, and hempen or linen
shirting ; a pair of rude boots, worth about 2s., and of leather
gaskins, which do not cost more than Is. 6d., being all that
was necessary for him to purchase, though substitutes of home
manufacture would doubtlessly be found even for these. But
if we take the whole of his purchases together, they will not
amount to more than 12s. 3d.,the sum needed to raise his
The Expenditure of the Peasant. 177

expenditure to £3. He might, therefore, be supplied abun-
dantly from the produce of his farm, debiting himself with
the cost of his own produce, and laying aside 205. a year,
with which hereafter, as opportunity might arise, he might
increase his holding, portion his daughters, provide for his
widowed mother, or put forward his son in the Church, or any
similarly advantageous calling.

Such may be fairly taken to represent the receipts and
expenditure of these small landowners, who were, as I have
frequently stated, so numerous in the thirteenth century. I
have taken the schedule of profit and loss which a lord’s
accounts supply as the basis on which to estimate a tenant’s
income and outgoings, and I have gathered my inferences
from years of undoubted prosperity, though not of exceed-
ingly low prices. I have taken the expenditure not from the
prices of a few years or of one or two years, but from the
general average of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries,
and so have allowed for a considerable margin. Again, I
have included only the simplest necessaries in the family
expenditure. Even after I have reckoned £3 as farming
profit, there is certain to have been some produce of cheese,
milk, and butter, which was consumed by the family, besides
poultry and eggs, which would hardly have been reckoned
cost or loss by the small proprietor. And lastly, in order to
avoid the suspicion of exaggeration, I have taken the quantity
of earnings from a period preceding the great change in the
circumstances of the labourer and yeoman, to which I
shall presently allude, though I have gathered the estimate
ef his expenditure from a period which includes the rise in
prices consequent on that change. That a working farmer
with his wife and children could find opportunity for more
labour than that required to cultivate twenty acres of arable
land, I have taken for granted. In Arthur Young’s time,
when agriculture was far more developed and land was much
more highly cultivated than was thought possible, or, indeed,
expedient, in a previous age, twenty acres per head of labour
is reckoned the standard of excellent management. It is
clear, too, that there was a periodical demand for labour, since

12
178 Soctety—Wages—Profit.

the Statute of Labourers, passed in the middle of the fourteenth
century, though it strove to prevent peasants from migrating
from one parish to the other in search of higher wages, made
an exception in favour of those who temporarily travelled
from the north to the south in quest of harvest work. The
statute, though enacted in favour and with a view to control
the prices of labour, is evidence of a custom with which
agriculturists had been long familiar.

I am sensible that these arithmetical calculations, which I
have indeed reduced to the narrowest limits consistent with
accuracy, will, after all, be deterrent to the general reader, if
any such care to examine what I have written, and will be
distasteful even to the student of economical history. But I
have no choice in presenting them. Had the views which I
have proved elsewhere, which are the result of long and careful
calculations, gathered from very numerous and unquestionable
facts, been already incorporated into the history of the Eng-
lish race, in place of those absurd fables and careless guesses
which have hitherto been taken as the history of the English
people,—if there had been any inclination to search into the
life and doings of the great mass of our forefathers, instead
of skimming the froth of foreign policy, of wars, of royal
marriages and successions, and the personal character of the
puppets who have strutted on the stage of public life, I might
have dispensed with this marshalling of facts and figures.
But even in English political history, writers have only at-
tempted to deal with the antiquities of forms, and not with
the realities which lie beneath these forms; much less have they
attempted to revive, as Hallam wished, though he thought
the wish hopeless, the life of a single village in medizval
England. To do this, even when the materials are discovered,
is impossible without facts and figures, and the student of
what is the genuine life of our forefathers, and withal the
conditions under which modern society has been instructed
and developed, may well comfort himself with the conviction,
which will be overwhelmingly demonstrated as he labours
honestly and fairly on his materials, that the man who first
formulated the statement that “nothing is more false than
Artizans. 179

facts, except figures,’ uttered a shallow epigram. The false-
hood is in the incompetent use of them.

The number of artizans in medieval England must have
been very small. In my early researches, I was under the
impression that the smith was in every village, the carpenter
in most. But I seldom find these personages enumerated in
the rent-rolls of the manors, and I am persuaded that their
trade would have been designated had they been generally
present. Nearly every village had its miller, but he was a
privileged person, sturdy in defence of rights, for which he
paid the lord handsomely, and reputed to be not over honest
in his calling. The miller, if the village stream was a scanty
one, had always a standing quarrel with the owners of the

upper water meadows, whom he accused of keeping back his
‘ supplies, and against whose. interests, in the dry season, he
was charged with furtively raising his weir. But the smith
and the carpenter served, I suspect, several villages together,
as the country doctor does now.

In almost all cases the artizan supplied labour only, and
not materials. Even where costly and elaborate iron work is
designed and constructed, the smith receives the iron from
his employer, fashions it from designs supplied to him, or
perhaps devised by himself, accounts for the residue of the
raw material, and receives his pay for the work. His stock-
in-trade was his forge and bellows, his hammers, anvils, and
pincers. That he wrought up scrap-iron is certain, for one
product of his craft is always bought in a manufactured
state, lath-nails, and frequently other kinds of nails. So the
carpenter and wheelwright fashion the manor timber, the
mason uses the stone and lime which his employer has
bought ; and lead in pigs, with solder for joints, is served out
in bulk or mass, is rolled, or cast and smelted by the
plumber. Even the glazier receives the purchases of his
employer, and fits them into casement or frame. As might
be expected, the Eastern counties and London are the earliest
localities in which the capitalist artizan who deals in finished
goods is to be found, and his transactions are generally with
opulent individuals or with wealthy corporations. The capita-
180 Society— Wages—Profit.

list employer, the first middle man, is entirely unknown till the
seventeenth century, and the capitalist purchaser of raw
materials, the later middle man, is later still in the economy
of society.

Hence the wages of the artizan are generally reckoned by
the day, more rarely by the piece, though where piecework
can be conveniently given, it is found. Thus the pair of
sawyers are constantly paid by the day, but nearly as often
by the hundred of boards sawn, this quantity being about the
amount an average pair of sawyers could turn out in a day's
work. In the thirteenth century we find traces of a different
quality in carpenter’s labour, the best being paid at 34d. a day,
the ordinary at 3d. Artizans’ wages are from 25 to 60 per
cent. higher in London, where they reach 4d. and §¢. A pair
of sawyers will get 7a. a day together, or from 7d. to 8d. the
hundred. Where labour is of special quality, or impressed,
the rate rises in the country to 4a. or even 5d. The master
mason or master carpenter received slightly higher wages,
and sometimes in addition to his weekly earnings a yearly
fee. At the building of Newgate Gaol in 1281, one set of
carpenters receives 54@,, another §d@., a third 4¢.; the sawyers
have gid. the pair, and the masons 5d. a day each.

From 312 to 252 or 235 days are reckoned in the mason’s
year. That of the carpenter, who is independent of the
weather, and can work under cover continuously, is as long as
the first of these quantities. The winter’s wages are about
25 per cent. less than those of the other seasons; but the
winter seems to have been limited to the months of December
and January. This fact, which I have frequently noticed, is
proof that the hours-of labour were not long. They seem to
have been not more than eight hours a day, and at a later
period in the economical history of labour the eight hours’ day
seems to be indicated by the fact that extra hours are paid at
such a rate as corresponds to the ordinary pay per hour for eight
hours, being a little in excess. Hence the artizan, if he were
minded to do so, would have time during summer for some
agricultural employment. It would seem that this occupation
of spare time was not unusual, for I have found employers of
Working Days in the Year. 181

artizans occasionally purchasing agricultural produce from
the mason and carpenter, or from their wives. Extra hours
are often paid for when the work is pressing and time was
an object. On the other hand, employers reckoned halves of
days, and when the artizan was in regular employment.
carefully noted and deducted his absences, These facts are
more noticeable when the workmen are employed by the
king, who generally pays a higher wage for his men than his
subjects do, and if he impressed them at a distance for his
service, paid an allowance for their journey to and from their
homes.

The medizval labourer took very few holidays. There is a
general impression that, previous to the Reformation, much
of the labourer’s time was wasted in the compulsory idleness
of religious festivals. How far this is true in foreign countries,
I do not know, but it is certainly not true of medieval Eng-
land. An employment for 312 days leaves only one holiday
besides the Sundays. Walter de Henley reckons the working
days of the year as 308, which gives only five holidays. In
all the continuous accounts which I have seen of labour
payments for work extending over a long period, the work-
men, with the exception of one set, cease from working
on Sundays. The exception is the building accounts of
Henry VIII. Here the clerk of the works draws out the list
of all persons in the king’s employ, and presumes that they
will work six days in the week only, and cease from labour on
Sundays and certain holidays. But the hurry in which the
king was, put such pressure on the men, that they not only
worked extra hours, but many of them by night, and con-

uuu Stantly on Sundays and holidays. I cannot but think that if
there was conceived to be anything very unusual or highly
improper in this, the king would not have allowed such work,
especially as the practice begins, as far as the accounts give
me information, after Henry’s quarrel with the Pope, and
during the time when his conscience constrained him to
compensate for his schism by the severity of his orthodoxy.
But work on holidays was paid at rather higher rates than
that done on ordinary days. It is singular that in these
182 Soctety— Wages—Profit.

account books, four of the principal artizans sign every page,
as though they were a check on the clerk of works.

It is not always easy to determine whether the artizan was
boarded as well as paid. At times he is certainly not. At
times it is stated that he is boarded, and the cost of his board,
generally about half his ordinary wages, is noted. But very
often, especially when the job for which he is engaged isa
short one, the work of a day or two, and he is employed by a
corporation where an abundant table is kept, and the servants
have their separate meal, the labourer appears to get his meal
also. In the fifteenth century, the abbot of St. Edmund’s-
Bury engages an architect for certain new work. He and
his servant are to be boarded, lodged, and each to have a
livery by the year, and 410 for the two. The architect’s
board is to be that of a gentleman, his servant’s to be that
of a yeoman, zz., the architect is to sit at the table where the
gentlemen-in-waiting of this opulent abbot were fed, and the
man is also to be provided at the upper servants’ table. He
and his man were to be fined at a fixed rate if they were
absent more than two days in each quarter of the year. But
in every case workmen had an allowance of beer and bread,
which went by the name of Nonschenes, a word which, I pre-
sume, is the origin of our modern luncheon.

An artizan, therefore, if he worked for 300 days in the
year, was able to earn from £3 15s. to 44 7s. 6d., according
to the reputation which he possessed as a workman, or even,
in exceptional cases, as much as 45. In London, his pay
might be as much as £6 55. to £6 17s. 6d.a year. It may,
however, be doubted whether artizans could safely count on
such continuous employment. In such a case there was the
recourse to agricultural operations, in which we may be certain
that almost every adult was experienced and competent.

The ordinary hired servants on a farm for a year were, be-
sides the bailiff, three ploughmen, three drivers, a carter,a reaper,
a swineherd, a shepherd, a cowherd or dairywoman, and a cook.
This was the establishment ona farm of two carucates, 2.¢, of
about 240 acres. In places where horses were bred, there
were grooms, or breakers, and stable men, one of whom acts
Wages of Servants by the Year. 183

as marshal or farrier to the stud. The domestic servants of
a private house or college were few, beyond the ordinary
officials—butler, porter, steward or manciple, cook, and sewer,
with their under servants. If the college had a garden they
had servants there, and if the house kept horses, grooms. But
attendance at table seems to have been performed by poorer
students or servitors, perhaps even waiting in chambers and
cleaning them. A large society keeps rarely more than one
laundress, and, if we may judge by her usual rate of remune-
ration, the labours of her calling were not incessant or onerous.

As compared with ordinary servants in husbandry, the
domestics in a large house or an opulent corporation were
well paid. They were boarded, lodged, provided with a livery
annually, the quality and quantity of the cloth being inferior
to that served out to the other inhabitants of the house or
corporation, and received wages in money, ranging from 4os.
a year, the highest generally paid, to 13s. 4d, the lowest.
Such servants frequently saved money, and obtained a start
for their children. It has constantly been my chance to see
the names of college servants, which appear in the next gene-
ration as traders in the university, and, later on, as the founders
of county families.

On the other hand the wages of clerks and scribes were
very low. The scribe who writes out the long account of
the Cuxham bailiff, a document which fills thirteen closely
printed octavo pages, and balances all the items, gets only
two shillings for his trouble, though a further present of
a similar sum is given him by favour. A clerk of works
is not so well paid as an artizan. The labour of copying
and illuminating is very poorly remunerated. The three
chaplains whom Henry ITI. maintained at his hunting
lodge of Woodstock get only 50s. a year each; while an
advocate, retained to defend a will, is remunerated by 6s. 8d.,
and the fees to attorneys were very small. I have found one
fee paid for conducting a case, which is also 6s. 8d.

My reader therefore, if he has the patience to pursue this
dull account, will see that the life of our ancestors, though
laborious, was not without its hopes. All the necessaries of
184 Soctety—Wages—Profit.

life in ordinary years, when there was no dearth, were abun-
dant and cheap, and even in dear years, the margin of wages,
or profits, over the bare wants of life was considerable enough
to fill up the void, even though the labourer had to subsist for
a time on some cheaper food than wheaten bread. Meat was
plentiful; poultry found everywhere; eggs cheapest of all.
The poorest and meanest man had no absolute and insur-
mountable impediment put on his career, if he would seize his
opportunity and make use of it.

I am well aware that in many particulars he was far behind
his descendants in the conveniences and comforts of life. His
diet, as I have allowed, was coarse, though plentiful, and
during great part of the year was unwholesome. It took three
centuries before the Dutch, who were for a long time the
centre of economical civilization, were able to discover and
adopt those succulent and wholesome roots which have given
health to man by banishing the loathsome diseases of the
middle ages, and have rendered it possible to improve the
breeds of cattle. I am well aware that such medical skill is
now at the service of the poorest as princes and prelates
desired, but were entirely without, in the middle ages. I am
quite familiar, as we all are, with the victories which human
ingenuity has acquired over nature, and how man’s skill has
forced into his service the most common and the most unlikely
agencies. I know that four grains of wheat and barley, or any
other grain, are produced by modern tillage where one was
with difficulty raised before; that the ox has been selected,
bred, and fed from 400 lbs. or less to 1,200 or more; that sheep
which once yielded a pound of wool precariously now produce
seven or nine pounds; that the powerful cart-horse has taken
the place of the wretched and stunted pony of the old English
breed, and that all other animals which are destined to the
service of man have been selected, till there seems nothing to
desire in their shape, size, and utility. I see in all directions
that human toil has been supplemented, and sometimes super-
seded, by mechanical agencies, which genius has invented
and patience has elaborated. I know that many of our fellow
countrymen have exchanged squalid habitations and uncleanly
Progress, and ws Derection. 185

practices for houses built by the newest lights of sanitary
science, and for fastidious cleanliness. I am alive to the
fact that what were once the luxuries of the very few have
often become the habitual comforts of the many, and that
enterprize has scoured the earth in order to make these and
newer luxuries abundant and cheap. I know that owing to
the spread of knowledge, the adaptation of industry, the
energy of invention, and the extension of trade, the popula-
tion of England and Wales is tenfold what it was six centuries
ago; that trim gardens, magnificent mansions, noble parks,
rows of handsome houses, vast and splendid cities, occupy sites
which were covered by squalid hovels or frequented by wild
boars, curlews, and bitterns, or were marshy fens and wild
moors. I can see, without being reminded, that the most
lofty and subtle pleasures, those of literature, are now common
and profuse, and that the world of civilization is so strong
that there seems no possible danger of its becoming destroyed
by a new incursion of barbarians, not even of those barbarians
whom it creates. The inhabitants of this country, at least
those whom the historian and the politician think worth in-
structing and consulting, enjoy the refined pleasure of criti-
cising, and, as many of them believe, conducting in no small
degree the affairs of their own country, and even of other
peoples, and have got far away from the time when the Eng-
lishman believed it his interest to support his sovereign’s
dream of foreign conquest, because in this way, as he fondly
fancied, he could lighten his own burdens at home. I do not
need to be told that the wealth of London is such, that
a single block of buildings pays ahigher rent to its fortunate
owner than was derived from the whole customs of the port
in the days of the Plantagenets and Tudors; that in a few
hours a loan could be raised in London sufficient to equip
and provision an army more numerous than all the men-at-
arms were in medieval Europe, and this probably without
deranging the course of trade or materially interfering with
the functions of credit. And I suspect that when we are in-
vited to consider all these things and more of the same nature,
as the prodigious strength of modern governments, the bound-
186 Society— Wages—Profit.

less resources of modern societies, the enormous accumulations
of inherited opulence, the priceless collections of art and
letters, the ceaseless activity of enterprise, and the ever in-
creasing discoveries of science, it is fancied that a complete
answer is given to those who entertain misgivings, because
they believe that there is a reverse to the picture, another
side to the shield, which those triumphant eulogies on modern
progress would have us conceal or forget. But I am con-
vinced that modern civilization will be judged, not by what
it has done, but by what it has left undone; not by what it
has remedied, but by what it has failed to heal, or at least to
have relieved; not by its successes, but by its shortcomings.
It may be that the progress of some has been more than
counterbalanced by the distresses and sorrows of many, that
the opulence and strength of modern times mocks the poverty
and misery which are bound up with and surround them, and
that there is an uneasy and increasing consciousness that the
other side hates and threatens.

It may be well the case, and there is every reason to fear
it is the case, that there is collected a population in our great
towns which equals in amount the whole of those who lived
in England and Wales six centuries ago; but whose condition
is more destitute, whose homes are more squalid, whose
means are more uncertain, whose prospects are more hopeless
than those of the poorest serfs of the middle ages and the
meanest drudges of the medizval cities, The arm of the law
is strong enough to keep them under, and society has no
reason to fear their despair; but I refuse to accept the
superficial answer, that a man is an admirer of the good old
times because he insists that the vaunts of civilization should
be examined along with, and not apart from, its failures. It
is not possible to give the solution of one problem, the
growth of opulence, and to refuse all attention to the other
problem, the growth of penury.

I do not assert that my researches into the economical.
history of England will throw a clear light on these complex
and contradictory phenomena; but I am convinced that tilh
we learn how it was that this society has grown and been
Its Reverse. 187

collected, and how wealth has been distributed between
labourer, capitalist employer, and those who enter on the rest-
of the inheritance which labour has earned, we shall only be-
dealing with the most superficial elements and the least
important problems of social life; we shall be offered
remedies which are more dangerous than the disease; we
shall be invited to adopt, as a complete solution of a profound:
difficulty, that which would make the confusion more inex-
tricable, and the prospect of unravelling it more hopelessly
remote, if we accepted it without reserve, examination, or

anxiety.
188

CHAPTER VII.

THE KING AND HIS EXTRAORDINARY REVENUES.

Death of Henry—Legislation of Edward—The Statute of Entails and of Free
Sale—Mortmain—The Creation of the House of Commons—The Conquest
of Wales and Scotland—Edward’s Struggle with the Church—Edward II. :
his Political Errors—The Murder of Stapledon—The Claim of Edward III.
to the French Throne—The Acquisition of Calais, of Boulogne, and Dunkirk
—The English Troops—The Distress of the French Peasant—The French
Nobility—The English Peasant—The Cost of the Hundred Years’ War—
Richard’s Reign—The Finance of the War with France—Fifteenths and
Tenths—The Wool Tax, the Aid, the Tax on the Parishes—The Poll Tax
—The Incidence and Percentage of Fourteenth Century Taxation—Taxes for
the King, for the Pope—The Wages of Proctors and Members—Taxation
necessarily direct—Attempts to escape Taxation.

HE last years of Henry III. were passed in profound
quiet. The rebellious barons were pardoned, the
-administration was improved, and the king made peace
‘with all. So safe seemed the State, that the king’s eldest
‘son and successor, the warlike and politic Edward, had left
England on the last crusade, and did not return to his
‘country and kingdom till nearly two years after his father’s
-death.
The reign of Edward is well known as an epoch in land
Megislation. It also saw the commencement of regular parlia-
ments, to which the prelates and lords, the knights of the
‘shire, the citizens and burgesses of the cities and towns, and
‘the barons of the Cinque Ports were summoned. The king
-conquered and garrisoned Wales, almost conquered and
garrisoned Scotland. He published, with or without the
-authority of his parliaments, a variety of statutes, many of
which affect the law of England to this day. He banished
Edwards Laws. 18g

the Jews from England. He quarrelled with the clergy, and
treated them in so peremptory a fashion that he broke their
spirit. He confirmed the charters of his predecessors, and.
surrendered the right of tallaging his proper subjects at his.
will.

The land legislation of Edward, under which entails were
permitted, and subinfeudation was forbidden, is well known.
The former law is memorable from the importance which the
practice of entail assumed in later times ; the latter, because
it made a sale of lands common, and extinguished the
creation of manors. I am persuaded that in early times,
and for many years after Edward’s legislation, entails were
few, unimportant, and small, and that the condition which
the statute declared to be for ever binding, and not obsolete
when it was satisfied, was intended to secure the status of
a new body of small military tenants, almost always of the
male sex, who would be perpetually dependent on their
lord, called the donor of their estate, and whose interests.
would revert to the lords when male heirs failed the object
of the gift. It is, I think, impossible that I should have
never found instances in rentals of such tenancies in tail, if, as.
is assumed, these were freely and largely created. We are
told, indeed, that during the great: war of succession, as soon
as the combatants discovered that defeat might involve
forfeiture, it became the’ practice to entail the great estates,
and as tenancies in tail were protected from forfeiture as well
as incapable of alienation, that the entail became a pre-
caution. If this be the fact, the protection was not enduring,
for Margaret began the system of parliamentary attainder,—a
precedent which was followed by sovereign after sovereign,
till by an enactment of Henry VIII. the forfeiture of entails.
followed on a judicial conviction of treason.

The plea for the statute under which subinfeudation was
put an end to, and manors could no longer be created, was
the loss of dues to the lord, owing to the multiplicity of
interests carved out of the estate which was subject to such
dues. It is said to have been passed at the instance of the
nobles. It provided that the purchaser of an estate, to whose
190 The King and his Extraordinary Revenues.

-action it gives full freedom, should hold of the same person as
that from whom the vendor held his estate, and that no more
‘mesne or middle lords should be created. That it immediately
served the interests of the nobles is probable, and this, indeed,
‘is the avowed motive of the enactment; but it seems to me still
‘more markedly, though more remotely, to have served the
interest of the Crown, since escheats would finally come to
‘the Crown, and anything which limited the number of subor-
‘dinate interests in the same estate must have aided in
securing the rights of the only person who was ultimate
‘heir of every subject. But I think it cannot be doubted that
‘by stereotyping the existing manors and their tenancies, it gave
-an additional security to the lowest class. of tenants, those in
villeinage, whose status would now be defined and even pub-
‘lished, or at least be open to inspection. We are told, and I
‘can well believe it, that the lawyers favoured the legal irre-
movability of the serfs, and materially assisted them in
‘becoming what they were styled, a generation or two later,
‘tenants by copy, or by custom of the manor. But though
‘this famous statute stopped subinfeudation, the old practice
was virtually revived in the practice which rapidly grew of
charging estates with grants, annuities, rent-charges, and
analogous burdens, so that in many cases the nominal receipts
-of the owner.were largely diminished by the liabilities which he
‘had created, or inherited, or had to accept when he purchased.
‘Thus, to quote an example, when Wykeham was founding his
colleges at Oxford and Winchester, he purchased an estate in
‘Oxfordshire from the family of Lisle. As usual, the old
bailiffs’ rolls, some of them going back to the commencement
-of the first: Edward’s reign, were handed over at the time of
‘purchase, and are preserved, with those which were drawn up
-after the property came into the possession of New College.
“One of the Lisles ‘had .charged this estate with the payment
-of five quarters of wheat on November rst to the monks of
‘Bicester; and the ‘liability is continued to the purchaser, for
‘the fellows of New:College ;purchase and pay the monastery
‘this quantity of wheat for more than a century, when they
ifinally commute .it for a money payment. But it seems
Free Sale of Land—Mortmazn. 1g}

manifest that if the present possessor of an estate were able
to charge it with all manner of dues and payments, he was
doing that which this famous statute was seeking to prevent,
and was creating interests out of a property which wete
‘dependent on himself, his heirs and successors.

More effectual than either of these statutes, and, as it
appears, more necessary, was the statute directed against gifts
in mortmain. Grants to religious houses’ were made void by
the Great Charter, the plea, as before, being the loss of dues
and services. But the Act of Edward inflicted a penalty on
such transactions by introducing the interest of the Crown as
a reversioner on such grants, when the giver or his heirs were
indisposed to claim them, or the intermediate lord was
negligent in setting up his right. But the devices by which
the monastic orders strove to evade the Statutes of Mortmain,
- and the sleights by which they sought to cover their acquisi-
tions, are well known to students of Englishlaw. As time went
on, they contrived to get possession of charges, annuities, rents,
and finally impropriations, where they were often out of the
reach of any statutes.

As Edward has been called the English Justinian, so he is
credited with being the author of the English House of
Commons. The precedent had been set him by De Montfort,
who seems to have wished to make the counties and towns, as
well as his party among the nobles, accomplices in his designs.
But I cannot imagine that Edward intended or foresaw that
his Commons would take part in legislative action, then or
thereafter. It is plain that the grants made to Henry were
conceded by the nobles and prelates. It is certain that the
taxes paid to Edward were contributed from valuations of all
persons, their household goods, chattels, and corn in stock,
serf as well as free, for the taxing rolls of Edward I. almost
amount to a census of the families, It would appear, then,
that the knights and burgesses were summoned to grant and
distribute the tax, perhaps even to assess it. That they
would inevitably, in time, criticize the occasion on which the
tax was granted, that they would consider themselves entitled
to withhold or refuse it, or burden it with conditions, any
192 The King and his Extraordinary Revenues.

statesman of the age might anticipate. But Edward, though
he is constantly asking for taxes, constantly gets what he
wants, There are several occasions on which Edward dis-
regarded differences of tenure, and therefore of liability, and
strove to bring all his subjects under the same liabilities. The
right of the Commons to a place in Parliament, under the
condition that enactments were not valid except with the
consent of the Commons, was affirmed for the first time at
York in 1322, when Edward’s son was striving to restore the
Despensers, who had been banished by the Peers the year
before.

The principality of Wales had long acknowledged the
feudal superiority of the English Crown; the kingdom of
Scotland had done so periodically. Thus the suzerainty of
England was admitted in the reign of Henry II., remitted in
that of Richard. But I presume that Edward’s claim, fruitful
of so many miseries to both kingdoms, though it undoubtedly
had a great influence in moulding the national character of
the Scotch, was derived from the reputed claims of those
early English princes of whom the Norman conquerors
affected to be the rightful successors. It is probably for
some reason of this kind that Edward is sometimes called
Edward IV., and his son Edward V. The Lowland Scotch
were more strongly Teutonic in their origin than the English
themselves. Perhaps there is no English king who has been
more variously depicted by his foes and by his subjects than
Edward. With the one he is the greatest of the Plantagenets;
with the other he is an implacable and ruthless tyrant, who
trampled on the most sacred rights of nations and the most
undoubted title of his pupil, his subject, and his rebel, for
Robert Bruce was a Norman noble, who had been educated
and promoted by Edward, who had solemnly pledged his
allegiance to him, who was seduced by the prospect of a
crown, and murdered one nearer in blood than himself to that
crown, in order that he might, it appears, remove a rival
out of the way.

The administrative and military abilities of Edward were
plainly of a very high order. He was reputed to be studiously
Edward's Administration. 193

true to his word, to have been conspicuous in his own age for
his integrity and good faith, and to have exacted similar
fidelity from all who were under obligations to him. Hence
his confirmation of the charters, and his pledges to levy taxes
only with his subjects’ consent, were concessions from which
he did not mean to swerve, but to honourably keep. His
reign is therefore an epoch in English history on which con-
stitutional antiquaries love to dwell, and in which politicians
of later ages have thought they could detect the development
of English institutions.

The most successful part of Edward’s administration was
his short and decisive struggle with the Church. The time
was favourable to him, for Boniface, whose pretensions were
as exalted as those of any among his predecessors at the
beginning of the century, had contrived to quarrel with
Philip IV. of France ; and France has always been the most
inconvenient foe which the Papacy has ever wrestled with.
Deceived by the belief that Boniface could shelter them from
Edward’s authority, the English prelates seem to have de-
termined to defy the king, perhaps to have obtained the very
bull which forbade their obedience to his demands. The
king put them out of his peace, that is, refused them the
protection of the law, and excluded the bishops from
Parliament. In the end they submitted, and granted the
king his demands. But it is remarkable that this is the last
occasion on which the clergy, as an order, resisted the -
authority of the Crown. In some particulars the occasion
was favourable to them, for the quarrel with the bishops
and clergy was simultaneous with the famous altercation of
Edward with the two earls. But there appears to have been
no party in the country which was willing to side with the
Church, and it is only a pious belief that they had a notable
part in the solemn confirmation of the charters.

The great reputation of Edward I. was followed by the
scandals which marked the career of his foolish and disrepu-
table son. Edward of Carnarvon was a person of considerable
accomplishments, of graceful manners, and of genial temper.
But from the first he roused to fury a party among his

13
194 The King and his Extraordinary Revenues.

nobles by his unseemly attachment to scandalous favourites.
The gossip of the time affirmed that he was not the true son
of the Hammer of the Scots, but that the real royal infant
bad been mutilated in his cradle by some animal, hog or dog,
and that the nurse, fearing the king’s displeasure at her care-
lessness, had substituted her own son. In just the same way,
when his great-grandson, Richard II, became unpopular, a

_story was current that he was not the son of the Black Prince,

4

ome

but a supposititious or even adulterine child. Edward’s reign
was marked by unheard-of calamities. England suffered a
famine to which there has not been before or since a parallel,
To the disgust of the English people, his army was hopelessly
defeated at Bannockburn, and all hope of recovering Scotland
was lost. But, worst of all, the king was incurably attached
to utterly hateful persons. Gaveston had been banished by
the old king, and was instantly restored when death had re-
moved the obstacle to Edward’s affection for his favourite.
He is again banished, and again restored; again driven into
exile, again recalled, and finally murdered by the discontented
lords, Edward vowed vengeance on his cousin, the ringleader
of the party, and found the opportunity of satisfying his
revenge nine years afterwards.

In the later years of the king’s reign, the Despensers were
the king’s favourites, especially the younger. They excited

.. the same animosity which had been roused by Gaveston, were

banished, restored, and finally fell with their master. In the
first attack on the Despensers, they were charged with usurp-
ing royal power. I find, in many accounts of the time, that
they exercised the privilege of purveyance, #.e., the compulsory
purchase of agricultural products and merchants’ goods, at
fixed rates, paying for them by orders on the Exchequer ; and
the accounts frequently mention that bribes were given them
in order to escape their exactions. Purveyance was an ancient
right of the Crown, but I donot find that it was generally abused.
It was occasionally inconvenient for the bailiff or farmer to
have his stock entirely cleared out, even when full market
prices were given for what was taken, but the bailiff rarely, if
ever, notes that his master’s goods were seized by the royal
Eaward of Carnarvon. 195

officers without payment, or for nominal sums. After the
accession of the Stuarts, purveyance became a real grievance,
for the Crown declared the contingent of live stock or pro-
visions which a county should supply, fixed the price, often
at one-third of the real value, and then called on the county
to provide for the demand,

Edward was deposed on Jan. 7th, 1327, by the Lords and
Commons in Parliament, after articles had been exhibited
against him. Commissioners were sent from Westminster
to Kenilworth, where he was, to inform him that his subjects
had renounced their allegiance to him, and were no longer
bound by their oaths. An oath of adherence to Isabella’s
quarrel was exacted from the nobles in Guildhall. Edward
resigned, and his son was proclaimed. The Despensers,
the king’s favourites, were executed ; the chancellor, Baldock,
who had fled with the king, was thrown into prison; and
Stapledon, Bishop of Exeter and Lord High Treasurer, was
murdered by the London mob. This kind of violence shows
that the people were irritated by fiscal oppression, for the
public anger is directed against the officials of the Exchequer.
The murder of Stapledon is a strong indication of the change
which had come over the mind of Englishmen. It was an
act of sacrilege, from which, a generation or two before, every
one would have recoiled with horror, At the beginning of
the next century, an archbishop was executed after judicial
process; and fifty years after Scrope’s death, two English
bishops attached to the Court were murdered by infuriated
mobs. In Edward’s reign, too, the order of the Knights
Templars was dissolved; and though these military eccle-
siastics did not, in England, suffer the atrocious punishments
which were inflicted on them in France, their possessions
were confiscated, and a precedent given for dealing with the
property of religious organizations.

The principal events of Edward the Third’s reign are con-
tained in his claim to the throne of France, and the great
war of the French Succession, which continued, with inter-
cuptions of truce, from the Battle of Sluys to that of Chatillon,
There were persons who believed, even in France, that
196 The King and his Extraorammary Revenues.

Edward’s title was valid. Stated briefly, it was that he was
the nearest male heir of Charles IV. Some historians, in
commenting on the nature of Edward’s claim, observe that
Charles of Navarre was nearer in blood to the last king of the
older stock ; but this personage was not in existence when
Edward’s claim, whatever it was worth, accrued. The effect
of this claim was a war which lasted, with intervals, for more
than a hundred years, during which, at one time, the great
province of Aquitaine, less, indeed, than the ancient dominions
of Henry of Anjou, was annexed to the English crown by
the Treaty of Bretigni; at another time, the succession in
France was altered and transferred to Henry VI.

The English people were under the impression that the
possession or acquisition of considerable transmarine domi-
nions by the English king would lessen the burdens which
the exigencies of the king’s exchequer called upon them to
bear. The more reasonable advocates of foreign empire
pointed to the benefits which would accrue to trade by the
possession of a country, the supplies of whose produce was
a matter of high necessity to England, and whose people
might be purchasers of English produce. In any case, it
was of great military importance that the country should
have for itself some means of entry into France. Thus Calais
was conceived to be of the greatest value to England. It
was garrisoned with extraordinary care. The charge of main-
taining it was a heavy burden on the English exchequer. It
was made the principal mart for English produce, or, in the
phraseology of the time, the staple was fixed there. The
custody of Calais was the highest office of trust which the
king could confer on any subject. The acquisition of Bou-
logne by Henry VIII., in the latter part of his reign, was
also conceived to be of supreme military significance. The
loss of Calais was a sign, though not the cause, of the decline
of English influence on the Continent. When Elizabeth
succeeded, she affected to be anxious for its recovery. But
this wise queen knew that the recovery of it would be a
most serious burden on her finances, and that political
strength does not always consist in the possession of strong
The War with France. 197

places. When, during the splendid career of Cromwell, Dun-
kirk was captured from the Spanish Netherlands, no part of
the Protector’s career, not even the capture of the Plate fleet,
excited so much enthusiasm as the acquisition of this town
on the French border. When, after the Restoration, Charles
prudently, but meanly, sold it, at Clarendon’s instigation, as
was believed, to the King of France, the English public was
excited to extreme wrath at the event, nicknamed Clarendon’s
new mansion Dunkirk House, pretended to believe that it was
built out of the bribes given for the surrender of the town,
and drove the owner into exile.

The wars of Edward took place at a time in which the
spirit of ancient feudalism was breaking down, and a military
system was supplanting it. Edward had taken advantage of
the latter before France had rid itself of the former. Hence
his armies, composed of selected men, taken from every class
of the community where likely recruits could be found, were
picked, drilled, and kept under discipline. Though they were
numerically always inferior, the chivalry of France was scat-
tered in confusion before them. They were taken to Spain,
and the Spanish militia was easily routed at Navaretto. For
generations they were the best troops in Europe. Sometimes
a captain of the companies, when employment at the seat of
war was scanty and pay was not to be had, migrated to Italy
or Germany. Thus Sir John Hawkwood, one of Edward’s
captains, served the republic of Florence. These companies
were the scourge of France, pillaging friend or foe indifferently.
The French peasantry rose in insurrection against them,
committed horrible atrocities on the chivalry which had
oppressed them, and made havoc where they could. The
combatants suspended their hostilities, made common cause
against the peasants, and drove them back into even more
abject misery.

The oppression of the French roturier dates from the evil
days of the first war of the French Succession. The miseries
of the Thirty Year’s War in Germany were not, I believe, more
terrible than the calamitous times of Philip,of Valois, John,
and Charles V. While the English yeoman was growing in
198 Zhe King and his Extraordinary Revenues.

opulence and spirit, and even the English serf was attaining
a legal tenancy, the French peasant was becoming more and
more degraded, more hopelessly ground down between the
two great millstones of the king and the aristocracy. In
France, from the days of Philip Augustus to those of
Louis XIV., the struggle was always between king and
nobles, for the French king never had the wit to make the
people his friends. At one time the great feudatories, Nor-
mandy, Toulouse, and Guienne, were striving after indepen
dence, and seeking to limit the kings of the House of Capet
te. the city and outskirts of Paris, as generations before
the kings of the House of Charles the Great were confined
to Laon and its suburbs, At another, a party of nobles is
willing, for its own ends, to give the crown to a foreigner.
The most sagacious act of Edward was to accept Aquitaine,
which he could manage, in lieu of the throne of France, where,
even if he had exterminated every pretender of the House of
Valois, he would have had an incessant struggle with the
turbulent chivalry of the kingdom. A generation or two
later, and the crown of France is the prize which the Bur-
gundians and Armagnacs were ready to offer to the claimant
which would give them the best price for the splendid bauble,
while either would make the acquisition intolerable to the
king of their choice. The King of England, sometime King
of France, is expelled, and the faction fight revives, under the
grotesque name of the War of the Public Good, the most im-
pudent fiction which a party has ever assumed. In the next
century the conspiracy of the nobles against the sovereign is
that of the Huguenots and the faction of the House of Guise.
The genius and contempt of Henry curbs the factions for a time,
and the traditions of his policy are inherited, though with far
inferior sagacity, by Richelieu, who succeeded in discovering
a modus vivendt with the Huguenots, while he strengthened
the central authority. He and his wretched, selfish, callous
master, Louis XIII., whose brother was even baser than he
was, pass away, and again the ever-present conspiracy breaks
out in the war of the Fronde. That the French have endured
a monarch or a despot is intelligible, for he has been the
The French Peasant. 19g

symbol of order and government. But I can well understand
that a Frenchman who had the most superficial knowledge
of his own country’s history, or had even experienced a tra-
ditional instinct, should have loathed his aristocrats, and
should have rent them, even when, as in 1789, they postured
on behalf of the people’s rights.

I know nothing in history which is sadder than the story
of the French peasant. The picture which Michelet gives of
him in his better days implies and contains the accumulated,
tragedy of generations. From century to centyry the gulf
between him and the privileged classes grew deeper and
deeper. He bore all the burdens of government, taxes in
money, taxes in produce, taxes in blood, and was treated, as
time went on, with increasing brutality and contempt. The
France of the writer of memoirs and novels is the country of
fine ladies and gentlemen, in which the mass of Frenchmen
counts for absolutely nothing, except to be robbed and
cudgelled. When the economists urged a reform in the laws
which regulated husbandry and its products, they had nothing
to say about the rights of the roturier, but dwelt on the
supreme utility of his industry. But in England the case
was very different. The yeoman and the noble were on the
same level as regards the law and the Crown. The former
was constantly being levelled up to the latter, till at last the
incidents of the farmer’s tenancy being found to be more
convenient and less onerous than those of the military
occupant, the estate of the noble and the knight was levelled
down to that of the yeoman and the peasant. The picture
which Fortescue in the fifteenth century gives of the English
franklins and freeholders, and the contrast which he draws
between their condition and the beggarly poverty of the
French husbandman, where the civil law is supreme, and the
kingdom is not “political,’ as he calls a constitutional
monarchy,—borrowing the term from the politics of Aristotle,
—but one which is absolute in theory and arbitrary in prac-
tice, shows that even at this time the difference between the
husbandmen of the two nations was striking and appreciated.

The war of the French Succession inflicted excessive misery
200 The King and hts Extraordinary Revenues.

on France and permanent degradation on her peasantry. But
it also did England the mischief of creating that most dan-
gerous of all classes,—the professional soldier. This incon-
venience is not so manifest in the fourteenth as it was in the
fifteenth century, when the hired partizans of the two factions
literally destroyed each other, and England for a century
became a despotism under parliamentary forms.

The constant want of money for his foreign campaigns made
Edward more than ever dependent on his Parliaments. In
course of time the chambers are separated, and sit apart. In
course of time the function of granting taxes is left to the
Commons, for as the king sat with his lords, the debate as to
the king’s necessities was best carried on in a chamber from
which he was absent, and from which, as far as possible, the
ministers of the Crown were excluded. At last the king him-
self consults his Commons on questions of public policy. Thus,
in 1366, he put the question to them, what course of action
they should recommend, in case the pope put his threat into
execution of citing the king to Avignon, to make answer for
default in the non-payment of the tribute granted by John
for the realm of England and the lordship of Ireland ; and
in 1369, the Parliament is asked whether, in their opinion, the
King of England should resume the title of King of France,
ze, engage afresh in war at their expense. At the conclusion
of the king’s reign they revive or invent the process of Par-
liamentary impeachment, or, at least, energetic criticism in
Parliament on the conduct of the king’s ministers. The
declining years of Edward were clouded by military reverses
and domestic troubles. His eldest son, who had declared
himself on the side of the popular discontents, predeceased
him, leaving an heir only ten years old. His third son,
John of Gaunt, the titular King of Castile, through whom
the claims of Philip of Spain to the English throne were
derived, was credited with ambitious aims, and with having
proposed that the issue of females should be declared to be
out of the royal succession.

The old king was succeeded by a child. The natural
guardian of the realm during the king’s minority was John
Richards Accesston. 201

of Gaunt. But the custody of the king’s person and the
administration of affairs appears to have been left in the
hands of his mother. The war in France languished ; there
were quarrels, becoming more and more bitter, among the
members of the royal house; and the Duke of Gloucester
took the position of a regular opposition to the king, which
the Earl of Lancaster had taken in opposition to the king’s
great-grandfather. Already the precedent of that reign was
talked about. As early as 1386, Richard was threatened
with a sentence of deposition. In the same year the
Commons proceed to the impeachment of an unpopular
minister. In the next, the king’s attempt to obtain a legal
decision in favour of his prerogative, and the premature
disclosure of his design led to the uprising of the lords
appellants. But the combination of the nobles was soon
broken up, and Richard regained his authority. For some
years he remained on terms of apparent amity with his
former enemies, but nourished his animosity towards them
with that patient dissimulation which is the only sign of
persistent vigour in a man whose character is otherwise weak
and uncertain. At last he found himself able to strike.
Gloucester was arrested and murdered at Calais; Arundel
was executed after trial; and the Archbishop of Canterbury
was banished. Soon after this followed the banishment of
Norfolk and Bolingbroke, the unlucky expedition to Ireland,
the death of John of Gaunt, whose possessions the king,
unwisely and illegally confiscated, the return of Bolingbroke,
the general uprising of the nation against Richard and his
government, and the king’s formal deposition.

The political troubles of Richard’s reign were, I am con-
vinced, greatly inflamed by the number of military adventurers
whom the cessation of the French war had brought back to
England. In the early years of Richard, we read that
formidable bands of brigands had established themselves in
various parts of England, especially in Lancashire and
Cheshire, which were under a special jurisdiction, and that
they committed incredible atrocities. The Commons explain
the great insurrection of 1381, to which I shall hereafter refer
202 The King aud his Extraordinary Revenues.

in detail, to the existence of these lawless bands, and to the
impunity with which they committed their crimes, But they
also complain of the grievance of purveyance, and the
discontent which it caused among the peasantry. It is.
highly probable that during the non-age of the king, the prin-
cipal servants of the Crown may have abused their power,
and that the king’s half-brothers, the Holands, may have
committed the offences of which the Despensers were guilty.
But I seealso in these banditti, as well as in the rapidity with
which the discontented nobles could collect an army, that
there must have been a large body of persons in the country
who had followed the profession of arms, who were ready to
be enlisted by any one who could offer them pay, and quite
prepared for acts of violence, Still we do not hear that the
peasantry was plundered.

The long war with France, though from many notices im
the rolls of Parliament it seems to have been certainly popular,.
was attended with great expense. The principal source from
which supplies were derived was an assessment on the
personal estate of every householder. When such a tax was
granted in Parliament, assessors were appointed to value
property and collect the proceeds. It is possible that the
duty of this assessment and collection was originally imposed
on the representatives who assented to the tax. If so, the
practice was found inconvenient, for in the parliament of
1352, a grant by the Commons is made on the condition that
no knight, citizen, or burgess of parliament should be a
collector of the aid so granted. This limitation is frequently
repeated on subsequent occasions.

Parliaments were held constantly during Edward the Third’s.
reign for financial and legislative purposes, Even in the early
part of it, a promise was made that Parliament should sit every
year once, and even oftener, if necessary. From the time,.
too, in which Edward began to prosecute his claims, first im
Scotland and next in France, he was constantly appealing to-
his subjects for assistance,—the counties, the towns, and the
clergy. The general rule was that a fifteenth should be levied
on the counties, a tenth on the cities and the boroughs and
Taxes—Fifteenths—Tenths— Wool Grants. 203;

the clergy. These fifteenths and tenths were granted at least
eleven times during the reign, as well as seven other contribu--
tions designated as grants, or subsidies, or aids,

In 1339 and 1340, when the war was beginning, very great
efforts were made. In the first year a tithe was given to the-
king of corn, fleeces, and lambs; and in the second, the grant:
of a ninth of each of these agricultural products was conceded
for two years. On both occasions the “bondmen” of the lords-
were exempted from the charge. The inhabitants of towns.
were to pay an equivalent.

But the most novel and important financial expedients are
those adopted in 1341, in addition to the tithe named above,.
in 1371 and in 1377. Each of these requires a_ short:
comment.

In the first of these years, the king having warned his par--
liament and the clergy three years before that he was about
to enter on a most serious and costly war, besides the large-
grants in produce, which were of course redeemed at market:
rates, the Commons offer an aid of 30,000 sacks of wool, under
certain conditions. In order to assist the king’s credit, they
pledge themselves in any case to guarantee 2,500 sacks, which
they make a free gift to him. It is clear, then, that in the case-
of a grant like this, perhaps in the case of any grant, the
king anticipated the revenue which he should receive by bor-
rowing money on the security of future income. We know
that he did this to a great extent, that two Florentine houses-
made considerable advances to him, and that they suffered.
great losses when, subsequently, he was unable to meet his
engagements. There was, however, no grant which was of
greater value for the purpose of negotiating commercial bills.
than wool, for it was always saleable, especially in Flanders,
where the king at this time had amicable relations with the-
popular leaders.

It might be supposed that the grant of so large an amount:
of the staple produce of England at such a crisis, to be dis-
posed of by a sudden sale, in case the payment were made in.
kind or redeemed at market rates, in the event of the obliga-
tion being met in such a manner, as it was from those whe
204 The King and his Extraordinary Revenues.

were not sheep-masters, would have materially reduced the
market value of the article. But no such result ensues ; wool
had indeed been cheap for some years past, about 25 per cent.
below what had been the average for half a century; but im-
mediately on the settlement of this financial operation, the
price rose to nearly the old average, and remained compara-
tively high. The fact is, the monopoly of this produce was
‘so absolute, and the necessity of procuring it was so urgent,
‘that even so large a quantity as 30,000 sacks, which I con-
-clude to have been nearly a tenth of the annual produce of
tthe kingdom, though made the basis probably of a single or,
at any rate, a concerted commercial transaction, was put on
the market, or at least was known to be forthcoming, without
the price of the article being adversely affected. As I have
-stated, the price immediately rose.

The average price of wool during the nine years 1349-47
was 35. 64d, the stone of fourteen pounds; while the average
prices for the seventy years 1261-1330 was 4s. 83d. Hence
the sack of wool was worth at the time of the grant about 92s.
‘This closely corresponds to the average of the values given
‘to the different kinds of wool by Parliament in 1452, when
‘the Commons petitioned that wool of the qualities named and
ypriced in the schedule should not be exported at less than the
price quoted, under a penalty of £40 the sack. In the year
1452, I find that the average value of wool was 3s. 4d. the
-stone, according to such sales as I have found, or 86s. 8d.
‘the sack. The average of the Parliamentary schedule is
gos. 3d.

The Commons, or some commissioners appointed for the
“purpose, scheduled the several counties and four towns,
London, Bristol, Newcastle, and York, omitting, as usual,
sDurham and Chester, the two counties palatine, which were
-not represented in Parliament, but were undoubtedly assessed
.and taxed by the proper authorities. The assessment is ex-
-ceedingly minute, descending to quarters of pounds, and is
‘undoubtedly, according to the lights of the time, an exact
-and equitable distribution of an exceptional tax proportion-
ately to the reputed wealth of the several counties. I have
The Great Wool Grant. 205,

already commented by anticipation on this and similar assess—
ments, when I was treating of the comparative opulence or
poverty of the several English counties in the fourteenth
century. For this purpose any value might have been as-
signed to the sack of wool, and I accordingly took 80s. as the
market value of the unit, since it formed a convenient mul-
tiple, and, according to the practice constantly adopted by
statisticians, I added a unit to the gross sum when the fractiom
was over half, and omitted all notice of it when it was less.

The quantity of wool assessed over the thirty-seven counties.
and four towns is a good deal less than the grant. It amounts.
to 20,376 sacks, and, at 80s. the sack, it is valued at £81,504.
It is quite possible that the king accepted a less amount than
the Commons offered in their burst of enthusiasm after the
great naval victory of Sluys, as more than a century later
Henry VI., or his advisers, accepted a less grant than his
Commons were willing to give him after the revolt of Guienne.
But it will be seen that, taking the actual price of wool at the
time, the grant amounted in money value to £138,000, am
enormous sum, and far in excess of any similar grant, for the
subsidy of a fifteenth and tenth on the property of laymen
amounted to about £38,176; and this, as the war went on,
was conceived a reasonable annual contribution to its
expenses,

It does not follow that the tax was paid in kind. In the
case of the towns it is improbable that it should have been 3
and as the grant of the tax is unaccompanied by an equivalent
contribution from the districts where, as Parliament says on
other occasions, corn and sheep are not found, the payment
in kind could have been no possible convenience to the king,
and would have been a very great inconvenience to the
burgesses. In accordance with such an hypothesis I find
that the fellows of Merton College paid on their Cambridge
and Chesterton property certain sums in two instalments—on
the former of 40s., on the latter of 5s.—as their contribution to
the great wool tax of 1340-1. It is plain that these were not
only money payments, but assessments in money.

In 1346, the king claimed the aid which was payable out of
206 The King and his Extraordinary Revenues.

vevery knight’s fee on the occasion of his eldest son being made
a knight. He demanded 4os.; but the Commons answered
‘that by the Statute of Westminster the first, this aid had been
‘fixed at 20s. Such a sum was, I find, actually paid from two
-of the Merton College estates on this ground. But at another
-of these estates the quarter of a knight’s fee pays Ios. It is
‘noteworthy that an aid for knighting the king’s eldest son
“was not paid again by the military tenants of the Crown till
1503, when Henry VII. demanded it on behalf of Arthur,
who had actually died three years before. If, as was stated
-commonly,—for instance, in Wynkyn de Worde’s “ Chronicle
of England,” printed in 1489,—the knights’ fees in England
‘were 75,000, of which the “men of religion” had 27,015, the
‘receipts from this aid were a very notable sum. But numbers
.are habitually exaggerated in these estimates. The next tax
‘on which I shall comment is a well-known instance of the
untrustworthiness of early statistical calculations.

In 1371, the Commons give the king a round sum of
450,000 in an assessment of an average of 22s. 3d. on each
parish in England. This estimated the number of English
yparishes at nearly 44,950. But it was speedily found that the
‘number of parishes had been absurdly miscalculated, and
tthey at once amended their grant by assessing the parishes
at an average of 106s., which gives about 9,434 as the real
number. This is probably accurate. I find several entries
-of taxes to a large amount paid during this year; but as the
clergy gave an equal sum of 450,000 from their revenues,
-and two, at least, of the payments are from impropriate
tithe, and a third maybe, the amount is from too uncertain
a source to be suggestive. The payment from a fourth is
undoubtedly from a lay holding, and is twenty-five per cent.
above the amount ordinarily paid on account of a subsidy.

The third of these financial expedients is the poll-tax of
4377. It was 4a. on all persons of both sexes over fourteen
vyears of age, mere mendicants excepted; a shilling on all
beneficed clergy ; and 4d. on all non-beneficed clergy. I have
already referred to this tax, as it gives information about the
-amount of the population in England, and supplies other
The Poll-Tax. 207

valuable statistics fo. the fourteenth century. The tax, if we
‘can rely on the numbers, must have brought in a little less
than 424,000; but its unfairness could hardly fail of being
irritating, Even when the poll-tax was graduated in the
mext reign, it became the immediate, though not the real,
«cause of Tyler’s insurrection. Probably, however, the Commons
were at their wits’ end for expedients, and a tax which was
‘suggested by the charge for enrolling names on the manor
wecord, and which treated the whole of the king’s subjects as
‘the members of a vast manor, appeared obvious and natural,
‘The threefold payment made by the beneficed clergy accords
with the view which, as we have seen, generally prevailed,
that the proportion contributed by them ought to be larger
than that of the laity.

It may be convenient at this point to say a little about the
incidence of taxation, and the proportion which it bore to
dncome. I have never, as my reader will anticipate, found an
unbroken series of accounts from any manor or parish. There
are gaps in them all, even though care was originally taken
for their preservation. The wonder is rather that so many
have survived in muniment rooms, when all interest in their
existence had passed away, and they were often thrown in
heaps on damp stone or tiled floors. Thus for the fifty years of
Edward the Third’s reign, of the annual rolls of one estate,
constantly cultivated by its owners, up to the last year of
Edward’s reign, twenty-nine alone survive; and in nineteen of
these years, the estate pays a fifteenth to the king, in one the
tax twice over, the impost of two years having been probably
collected in one. It is probable also that in not a few cases
the lord paid the tax to the collector at his own audit when
he was in receipt of money.

On one particular estate, the farming profits of which I
have exactly estimated, and which amount to about £30a
year, the amount of a fifteenth imposed by Parliament is, on
an average of three years, about 30s., or five per cent. ; and this
I should conclude was the ordinary incidence of a fourteenth
century subsidy. The wool tax, however, if it had been paid in
full and assessed proportionately, would have been between three
208 The King and his Extraordinary Revenues.

and four times the amount of the ordinary subsidy, or about
18 per cent. of the annual profits of the estate. And this I
find is nearly verified by the amount of taxation paid on other
properties. A fifteenth on an estate at Cambridge is Ios. ; the
wool tax, as I stated above, is 4os.

The rolls of Parliament, from which we derive all our
knowledge of public business from the thirteenth to the be-
ginning of the sixteenth century, are far from perfect. Many
of the records have been lost. When the journals of the two
Houses began with the reign of Henry VIII. that of the
Lords, though the early years exist, has large gaps in its con-
tinuity, while that of the Commons is lost for Henry’s reign, the
record commencing with the reign of Edward VI. In conse-
quence, my accounts, though I did not record the payment of
taxes on any but the Merton College properties and one or
two besides, give me many more taxes than the rolls of Parlia-
ment grant to the king. There are only eight out of the fifty
years of Edward’s reign in which one or the other of these
estates is not represented as paying the king a tenth or fifteenth
as atax ora subsidy. The estate at Leatherhead, which pays
nineteen taxes in the twenty-nine years for which its accounts
are preserved, had about 160 acres under the plough, earned
about the same profit, some £30 a year, from its agricultural
operations, and pays about five per cent. on its profits when it
contributes toa subsidy. After the Great Plague, its payments
drop to half their original amount. The same shrinkage of
taxable property is observed in other estates, and it is there-
fore possible that the amount of a subsidy in the later years of °
Edward is considerably less than the amount which was
collected before that great social convulsion occurred. At
any rate, if the wool tax of 1340-1 represented a charge of
18 per cent. on the annual profits of labour and capital, the
net income of the English people at the time was probably
about £766,600 a year, or a little over 6s. a head, to be saved
by labour, or appropriated by the non-producing classes.

The taxes paid to the king were by no means the whole
of the charges which were imposed upon the fourteenth
century Englishman. The pope and his minions, the car-
Other Taxes. 209

dinals, the archbishop, the bishop, and the archdeacon levy
their charges, generally in the form of a percentage on receipts.
The amount varies considerably. It is sometimes as much as
two-and-a-half per cent. on the taxpayer’s income, in this case
the recipient of an ecclesiastical revenue, sometimes at no
more than a halfpenny in the mark. The payments to the
pope are most noticeable during the weak reign of Edward IL.,
who, we are informed, paid John’s tribute regularly. Thus
on one estate in Cambridgeshire a payment is made to the
pope in 1314 for six years, ze, for the whole period during
which Edward had been reigning. These taxes to foreign
ecclesiastics became rarer during Edward the Third’s reign,
but do not disappear. I find them up to the close of his
reign.

Sometimes the estate pays a regular tax, quite distinct from
those which are levied by authority of Parliament. Thus one
pays a fixed sum under the head of foreign service, another
a tax called the king’s gabelle. In each case the amount is
precisely, or almost precisely, the half of the ordinary fifteenth.
I find no record in the rolls of Parliament of a tax of the
twentieth sack of wool given in 1347, amounting to nearly
three times the ordinary fifteenth, and paid in several places.
So sometimes a locality is charged with the maintenance of
soldiers, to repel an invasion or raid of the Scotch; or a levy
is made upon inland counties for the “ ward of the sea,” the
precedent for Noy’s ship money. Similar to these are a con-
tribution made by a Cambridgeshire parish for the burial of
the dead in Scotland in 1321, the year in which Edward made
his second foolish expedition into that kingdom. But these
charges are exceptional and rare. .

When the Parliament became a regular institution, and the
Convocations of the two provinces were summoned and duly
warned of the obligation that they must meet, to discuss the
king’s necessities and supply the requisite means for the
defence of the kingdom and the maintenance of the king’s
estate and rights, the parties represented were bound to pay
wages to the knights, citizens, and burgesses who appeared
for the laity, and the proctors who appeared for the Convocation

14
210 The King and his Extraordinary Revenues.

of the clergy. The prelates were in both assemblies, in a
double capacity and under a double duty, as lords of parlia-
ment and peers. They held by barony, and were liable to the
ordinary obligations of the Crown’s vassals. As the recipients
of incomes derived from estates in free alms or other bene-
fices, they were of the clergy, and made their grants for such
estates in Convocation. It seems that for this reason a dis-
tinction is constantly drawn between two kinds of clerical
estates, or rather estates held by clergymen. Some of these
are said to be amortized at or after a given date; some to have
been in the hands of these dignitaries from time immemorial.
It was an object with the ecclesiastics to escape what might
be, perhaps was, a double risk. The Abbot of Osney,
in Oxford, and the Abbot of Thorney, in Cambridgeshire,
constantly claim to be relieved of attendance at secular
assemblies. They sometimes succeed in proving a license
of exemption; but it is clear that there is an adviser of
the Crown, who counsels the permanent officials that this
is a disputable shift, and that the abbots must come to
parliament, all objections notwithstanding. In point of fact,
absence from parliament is a sign of disaffection among the
lay lords and of evasion among the spiritual peers; and just
as absentees were treated with considerable severity if they
were nobles, and with very significant threats, even of confis-
cation, if they were ecclesiastical dignitaries, so it is clear that
the Government was clearly alive to the wisdom of compelling
an appearance and submission to the general rule.

The payment made to the proctor in Convocation is,
generally a rate. The ordinary amount is a halfpenny per
mark of income; and probably if these payments, in which a
sum is given, could be referred to known quantities, it would
be found that the basis of the payment was always a fixed
amount. In the case of lay representation, the amount could
not be anticipated in this way.

The Member of Parliament had daily wages; the knights
or county members receiving more—the amount is not
invariable—than the burgesses. When the Parliament
was prorogued or dismissed (it is premature to use the
Wages of Members. 211

word dissolved), the writs for payment were made out,
and the time during which the House sat was exactly
calculated. Now it is plain that the charge put by repre-
sentation on a small town was a far more onerous burden
on the inhabitants than that imposed on a county. Hence
the burgesses were frequently dismissed, in the early days of
Parliament, long before the knights were, though we may,
I think, conclude that the former would be held to their
attendance if duties common to town and county were before
parliament. To many of the towns representation was a
formidable burden, was most unwillingly borne, and was gladly
evaded. Even in the counties there was a struggle, which
lasted for a century, and which the Crown always refused to
decide at the instance of the Commons, under which the old
tenants of the Crown, those in ancient demesne, were relieved
from contribution to the wages of the knights of the shire,
though these tenants had long been taxed by the same Act
and on the same principle as other people had. But with the
towns the cost was always grudged. Even in the opulent city
of Norwich the expense was serious. The cost of representa-
tion is a considerable item in the municipal accounts.

If I am correct in my conclusion that the direct taxation
of the fourteenth century, though frequent, and during the
war almost annual in its imposition, was not more than five
per cent. on the net profits of agriculture, and probably less
on manufactures and trade, one cannot but be struck at the
discontent and impatience with which the appeals to Par-
liament are received. The Commons plead that they are
impoverished and wasted by incessant subsidies; that the
country cannot bear the charges which the Government seeks
to impose on it; and that the patience of the people is taxed
beyond endurance. Part of these complaints are, no doubt,
the real expression of those who found they had but a very
narrow margin of receipts over expenditure, and felt the
urgency of any drain. But most of this dissatisfaction is due
to the form which taxation took—the ransom, namely, of

‘one’s chattels from an inquisitive and rapacious inquiry. Our
forefathers, too, were under the impression that, except on
212 The King and his Extraordinary Revenues.

rare occasions, when it was certainly the duty of the subject
to aid his king, the king could live, and ought to live, on his
hereditary revenue, ample if properly husbanded, and con-
stantly receiving accretions from well-known and obvious
sources, The prince, they argued, has a vast estate. If he
is so weak and lavish that his wealth, which he possesses in
order that his subjects may not be harassed by exactions, is
wasted on favourites, it is intolerable that his people should
be the victims of his or their waste. His household should
be ordained, his expenditure controlled, his grants resumed,
his favourites banished. So before the deposition of Edward
and Richard, attempts were made to reduce the royal
expenditure by an interference in the king’s private affairs
and by the sumptuary regulations of his palace. Above all
things, the Englishman of the middle ages disliked any
indefinite risk in his liabilities. Hence in Edward’s time
the amount which was to be paid in a subsidy was finally
fixed, and grants were made on condition that there should
be no alteration whatever in the assessment. The grant once
conceded, the locality distributed the charge over those who
were liable to it. This ancient and continuous precedent was
followed in the last of these grants, the land-tax of the
Revolution, which has remained on the assessment of
1692.

It is always difficult to raise a revenue from direct taxation
in a country where industry is mainly agricultural. The
financier of the middle ages had no other resource, besides
land and goods, on which to lay his charges. Even if the
scanty consumption of foreign articles could have borne any
check beyond the trifling import duties which were imposed
on it, the charge of collecting the customs would have
exhausted, perhaps have exceeded, the receipts. Besides,
the customs duties were virtually an octroi on the larger
towns. The south and east of England are full of creeks
into which the light vessels of the time could easily run and
discharge a cargo without risk of detection. After the Union
of England and Scotland was effected, it was necessary to
put the northern kingdom under the English revenue laws,
Attempts to Evade Taxatzon. 213

for otherwise Scotland would have a free port for smugglers.
But for nearly a century the receipts of the Scotch custom
houses, according to Macpherson, were quite insufficient to
satisfy the charges incurred in collecting the duties on imports.
It is probable that with a view to the king’s revenue, particular
towns were designated as staple ports for various products,
and the sale of such products to the foreign exporter was
forbidden in any other locality. In the fourteenth century
the English financier had not yet learned how important
and elastic a source of revenue was the export duty on
wool.

Constant attempts were made to obtain a release from the
payment of direct taxation by petition to the Crown. In the
year 1347, the warden and fellows of Merton College, Oxford,
prayed the king that their land should be relieved from all
tallages, fifteenths, and prises, and every other charge beyond
the tithes of their churches, and that they might hold all their
possessions in free alms. On this the king, by his son Lionel,
the Warden of England, directs that an inquisition should be
held by the escheator of the county of Oxford, and a return
made of all the lands and tenements which they possess in
the county, a similar inquiry being directed, no doubt, to
the proper official in other counties where they held posses-
sions. The inquiry was also to include information as to
the injury which the king or others would receive if the prayer
of the petitioners were granted. There is indirect evidence
that the inquiry was duly held, and direct proof that the
application was unsuccessful, for the College after this time
pays these taxes to the Crown on its Oxford property from
which it prayed to be relieved.

Later on it became a common custom to insert exemptions
in Parliamentary grants. Thus the Colleges of Eton and
Winchester and the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge
are frequently, and at last regularly, excused from taxa-
tion. The same favour is shown to certain towns whose,
revenues had diminished, or which had otherwise become
impoverished.

In some cases payments of money are made to the assessors
214 The King and his Extraordinary Revenues.

which are obviously bribes to secure a favourable valuation.
The knowledge that this risk was always run, perhaps an
occasional detection of the culprits, would have materially
aided the demand that the assessment of the fifteenth should
be a fixed and invariable quantity, and should be distributed,
though not collected, by those who made the grant and earned
the wages of a public service.
215

CHAPTER VIII
THF FAMINE AND THE PLAGUE,

Dear Vears—Famine in England—Causes of the Famine—Effects of the Famine
of 1315-16—Commutation of Labour Rents—The Beginning of the Black
‘ Death—Its Appearance and Progress in Europe, and in England—The Loss
of Life—The Memories of the Plague—Persecution of the Jews—Recovery
of the Population—Effects of the Plague—Attempts of the Legislature and
King—The Statute of Labourers—Obedience to the Statute impossible—
Exaltation of Wages and Effects on Agricultural Profit illustrated by Facts—
The Actual Rise in Agricultural Wages, General and in Harvest Work,
Threshing, Reaping, Mowing, Thatching—The Rise in Artizans’ Wages—
The Effect on Prices of Agricultural and other Products—Position of the
Capitalist Landowner—Position of the Tenant Farmer, of the Peasant
Labourer,

HE average price of a quarter of wheat for the 280
years, 1261-1540, is 5s. 114d. During this long period

there were years of exceptional plenty and of exceptional
scarcity, the range being from 2s. 104d, the average of the
year 1287, the lowest, and 16s. in 1316, the highest recorded.
The latter year is, however, one of famine. In 1315, the
average was about Is. 2d. lower. In 1438, the price was
14s. 74d. In 1527, it is nearly 13s. On two other oc-
casions it nearly reaches 12s. On four occasions it is a little
over 10s. Four shillings, according to Walter de Henley,
was a price below remuneration, unless the crop was
more than six bushels to the acre. In ordinary years, the
price varies between 4s. 6d. and 6s. 6d. There are, of course,
prices paid which are greatly above the highest average, and
others which are a great deal below the lowest. The highest
price which I have found during the whole period is a sale on
May 30th, 1316, at Leatherhead, where two quarters are sold
at 26s. 8d. If there be any scarcity, the market is always at
216 The Famine and the Plague.

its highest in May, because the stock of the past harvest is
falling low, and the prospects of the next are uncertain. In
this case, the harvest of 1315 was found after Christmas to
have been exceedingly deficient. That of 1316 was as bad,
so low that the scarcity was hardly lightened during any part
of the period between harvest and harvest. The highest
quotation of wheat in modern English history was in March
1801, when it was returned at 156s. 2d. This, however, is
not much more than double the customary price of the
time. In the two years 1315-16, the average was nearly
three times, and on the occasion quoted above, five times,
the ordinary price.

I do not think, however, that the climate of England from
the forty-fifth year of Henry III. to the thirty-first of Henry
VIII. 280 years in all, could be treated as extraordinarily
capricious or treacherous, since in only ten of the years did
the price of wheat nearly reach or exceed double the average,
the two greatest scarcities of 1316 and 1438 being separated
by an interval of 122 years, and the third, that of 1527, occur-
ring after an interval of eighty-nine years. It may be stated,
too, that when the harvest is bad, it is always worst on a belt
which lies between the Thames and the Wash, and includes
the Midland and Eastern Counties. Hence the whole of the
country is seldom similarly affected, South Wales and the
southern promontory of Cornwall and Devon being generally
more favoured when bad harvests afflict the Midland and
Eastern Counties. This is even seen at the commencement
of the great famine of 1315-16, for during the first year, the
Welsh and extreme West were not so seriously injured. In the
second year, the ruin is universal. As may be expected, corn
is generally cheapest in the early winter, dearest in the early
summer, even when the price is at an average, unless the
previous year has been one of comparative scarcity, when the
purchase of seed always affects the average. If the prospects
of the coming year are of abundance, the rise in May and
June is very slight, and hardly appreciable. There is, I think,
reason to conclude, on looking at the course of the wheat
markets, that information as to the aggregate crop was very
Lhe farvests of 1315—1321. 217

widely diffused, and that corn was sent to very considerable
distances for sale. There were horses and carts in plenty,
the rate of carriage was low, and the bailiff could easily
reach a market where there was a demand. Beyond question,
the surplus produce of country places was taken to the nearest
towns, and sometimes to those which were at a distance.

The cause of bad harvests is always excessive rain. In the
years 1315-16, we are told that the wet was incessant, and
much of the corn never ripened. Contemporary writers tell
us that the poorer classes were constrained to live on un-
wholesome or disgusting food, and that numbers of them
perished from famine. An attempt was made to procure
corn from the Continent, and ordinances were published
fixing maximum prices—of course without avail, and pro-
hibiting the consumption of beer, as was done in 1800 with
the distilleries. To add to the distress, a pestilential murrain
broke out among the cattle, and the bailiffs’ rolls bear tes-
timony to the universality of the disease, and the magnitude
of the losses. It is said by chroniclers, that in the universal
scarcity, numbers of servants and domestics were discharged ;
that, made desperate, these people became banditti; and that
the country folk were constrained to associate themselves in
arms, in order to check the depredations of those starving
outlaws.

That the famines of this unfortunate period led to a consi-
derable loss of life is proved by the unquestionable rise in the
rate of agricultural wages after their occurrence. This is
visible in the payments made for threshing corn, and still more
markedly in those for reaping, where the rise is fully a penny
an acre, the exaltation in the rates for oats and rye, previously
the lowest paid, being the most considerable. The same rise
is seen in payments for mowing, for thatching, and for women’s
labour. Now it is generally the case that, unless the labourer
is paid at a rate which leaves him no margin over his necessary
subsistence, an increase in the price of his food is not followed
by an increase in the rate of wages, this result being arrived
at only when there is ascarcity of hands. We shall see, when
‘we come to deal with the wages of the sixteenth century, how
218 The Famine and the Plague.

slight was the rise in their amount compared with that of
other values. Now the exigencies of the weather put certain,
opportunities within the reach of the labourers which, as their
numbers had now become scantier, they could easily use.
The immediate rise in the wages of labour after the famine of
Edward the Second’s reign is as much as from 23 to 30 per
cent., and a considerable amount of this becomes a permanent.
charge on the costs of agriculture. That part which is per-
manent amounts to 20 per cent. on an average.

The habit of cutting corn high up on the straw, and there-
fore of avoiding weeds, must have materially shortened the
drying process, and subsequently that of threshing out the
grain. Hence I conclude, if the corn only ripened, the mere
presence of rain was not so injurious as it came to be, when,
at a later period, the corn was cut low with the weeds. That
this change took place is proved by the statement of Fitz-
herbert, who advises that corn used for home consumption
should not be screened too carefully, as the seeds of many
weeds in corn supply a notable quantity of meal which might
well be saved for flour. In Arthur Young’s times, it is again
clear that wheat was cut high on the stalk.

During the reign of Edward II., the practice became in-
creasingly general to accept money compensations in lieu of
labour rents, and by the end of the first quarter of the cen-
tury the rule had become almost universal. It was to the
interest of both parties that these commutations should be
effected. It was a vexation to the tenant that he should be
called away from the work of his own holding to do the lord’s
labour, It is plain, from Walter de Henley’s statement, quoted:
above, that the bailifi nad no little trouble in getting the due
quota of work from the tenant, some three roods of first plough-
ing a day, or an acre of second stirring. Hence, if the lord
could get a fair money compensation for the labour, he could
spare the cost of the bailiffs supervision over unwilling
labourers. And as money was more useful than the work he
got, as well as perhaps more profitable in the end, he would
be induced to make liberal terms with his tenants in villeinage,
even if he were not morally constrained to take the alterna-
Flarvests before the Plague. 219)

tive in money, which was prescribed as an alternative in case
the labourer, for any cause, made default in the field. At the-
same time he could, unless he made a special bargain, save
the allowances which he made of bread and beer, and the:
license of every day taking as large a sheaf as the serf could
lift oft his sickle from the corn crops. These commutations.
would be entered on the manor rental, and would tend to-
assimilate the tenure of the serf, now increasingly called a.
tenant by copy or custom, with that of the freeholder who sat
at a fee farm rent, besides familiarising all parties with the
redemption of those contingencies which affected the status of:
aserf. Ultimately the money payments would be deemed to-
be fixed and determinate liabilities, the satisfaction of which.
was a discharge of all the old labour rents, and the proffer of
which was a tender which the steward was bound to accept.
I do not mean to say that the change was invariable, for there-
is evidence that the monasteries clung to the old system
longer than lay lords did, and it is alleged that, while the:
regular clergy urged on these lords the expediency and hu--
manity of enfranchising their serfs, they failed to practise in
their own persons the moderation which they commended:
to their patrons and their penitents.

The period which intervened between the last of three bad:
harvests and the great event to which I shall next advert
was one of exceptional prosperity. The harvests were gene--
rally abundant, the wages of labour had been permanently
improved, and all kinds of produce were cheap. The early
days of the great war did not impair the general well-being
of the English people. The supremacy of England on the:
sea was assured, and the famous battle of Crecy was fought,.
less considerable in its immediate consequences than in the
exalted reputation which it conferred on English arms. But:
this country, and all Europe with it, was on the verge of a great:
calamity, the most extensive in its immediate incidence, and.
the most significant in its ultimate effects, of all events which
have happened in the history of this country, and, indeed, of all.
Europe.

The Black Death is alleged to have had its origin in the:

‘
220 The Famine aua the Plague.

«centre of China, in or about the year 1333, and is reported
to have been accompanied by various phenomena in the earth
and atmosphere of a very novel and destructive character,
such, indeed, as were noticed as long ago as in the plagues
-of Athens and the simultaneous visitations at Rome, or the
mortality which prevailed in northern Europe near three
centuries before our era, and at the terrible pestilence which
visited the known world in the age of Justinian. So in later
‘times the cholera and the influenza were traced to particular
spots in India or China, which had been desolated by earth-
quakes, as Justinian’s plague was said to have had its origin
at Pelusium. Nearly every infectious or contagious disease
which has desolated mankind appears to have had its origin
‘in the farthest East, and to have travelled along thence to
Europe, though the yellow fever is said to be a product of
‘tthe West. It is alleged, that before it reached the West, the
Black Death exhausted itself in the place of its origin. Like
‘most other plagues, it was infinitely more destructive at the
‘commencement of its career than after it had endured for
-atime. This is not to be accounted for by the fact that the
‘weakest members of the community naturally succumbed the
‘first, for we are told that it killed the strong, and that, just
-as with the Asiatic cholera, when it is most virulent, many
-of those attacked perished speedily, and before the disease
had developed its most characteristic symptoms. It appears,
indeed, and the impression is confirmed by scientific research,
that when some new infection or contagion is developed, the
whole population is specially liable to the assaults of the
‘disease, and that sometimes it may totally perish, as in all
‘likelihood the ancient occupants of the ruined cities in Central
-America have disappeared without leaving any sign, other
‘than their stupendous buildings, of their existence. So also
‘diseases familiar to us in England, and now become mild, are
-specially deadly to those races into which they have been
‘for the first time introduced. In course of time, either the
original virus of the disease is weakened, or those who are
most susceptible of it are removed by death, or remedial
ameasures are discovered which check or extinguish it. For
é

The Black Death—Its Origin. 22F

more than three centuries the plague wasted England, though
at no time, it seems, so seriously as at its first and last
visitations.

The Black Death, as our forefathers called it, from the
dark purple blotches which appeared on the skin, when the
blood and tissues-had become wholly disorganized through
the virulence of the disorder, still lingers in the East, under
the name of the Levant, or Oriental, plague. Even now we
are occasionally informed of some outbreak in an Eastern
plague spot, where the hateful Turk has reduced every one
to squalid poverty and misery, and whence Europe is again
threatened, But the progress of sanitary science has probably
put an end to the worst ravages of a disease which was so-
terrible more than five centuries ago. In England it does
not seem to have been assisted by any prevalent distress
among the people, as the Athenian plague was by overcrowd-
ing, as that of Cadiz was in 1800, or as the last visitation
of small-pox was by the miseries of the Franco-German war.
The period just before the plague was one of prosperity and
abundance; and though our forefathers were immeasurably
unclean in their habits and surroundings, and remained un-
clean for centuries afterwards, the best conditions of life do
not appear to have given an immunity from the plague.
Among the victims of the first year were one of Edward’s
daughters and three Archbishops of Canterbury. So the
narrative given us by Boccacio proves that all classes were
equally affected, for the ladies and gentlemen who retire in
the Decameron to tell each other stories in a country house
on the road to Fiesole had all of them lost relations by the
plague. The Black Death visited Christ Church, Canterbury,
very lightly, for a century before the prior had laid on pure
water from the hills to the monastery.

The Black Death first attacked Europe in Cyprus at
about the end of the year 1347,and was accompaniec by great
convulsions of the earth, and by atmospheric disturbances.
Many persons who were seized with the disorder died
instantly. The plague seemed not only to the frightened
imagination of the people, but even to the more sober
222 The Famine and the Plague.

observation of such men of science as lived at the time, to be
moving forward with slow progress from the desolated East,
sunder the form of a dark and fcetid mist, which settled on the
garden of the Lord, and left it a howling wilderness. On
January 25th, 1348, an earthquake had laid waste gréat part
of the peninsulas of Italy and Greece. Meanwhile the mis-
«chief was steadily progressing along the basin of the Medi-
‘terranean, for the caravan traffic was carrying it everywhere,
as the pilgrimages to and from Mecca disseminate disease in
the homes and cities of returning devotees. The Black Death
appeared at Avignon in January 1348, was in Florence by the
middle of April, and had thoroughly penetrated France and
‘Germany by August. It entered Poland in 1349, reached
‘Sweden in the winter of the same year, and Norway, by in-
fection from England, at about the same time. It spread even
to Iceland and Greenland,—the former, a well-wooded country
and fairly flourishing colony of Norse origin; the latter a
region with which communications had been kept up for
centuries. We are told that, among the physical changes
which ensued from the Black Death, or preceded and aided
it, vast icebergs were formed on the eastern side of Iceland
.and on the whole coast of Greenland, and effectually cut off
all communication between the Old World and those parts
-of the New which heretofore had been familiarly visited. In
1351 it reached Russia, after having inflicted its first severities
on the rest of Europe, and having taken the circuit of the
Mediterranean. It is probable that the caravan trade through
Russia had been at this time suspended, and that the natural
spread of the disease had been checked by the barrier of the
«Caucasus.

On the Ist of August, 1348, the disease made its appear-
:ance in the seaport towns of Dorsetshire, and travelled slowly
‘westwards and northwards, through Devon and Somerset, to
Bristol. In order to arrest the progress of the mortality, the
-authorities of Gloucestershire prohibited all intercourse with
the citizens of Bristol. It was in vain; the plague spread to
‘Oxford, where it was terribly destructive, and travelling
slowly in the same measured way, reached London by the
ts Extension. 223

ast of November. It appeared in Norwich on the Ist of
January, and thence spread northwards, Later in the year
1349, the Scotch made one of their customary raids into
England, and, as they ravaged the north, invented an oath,
““ By the foul death of the English.” On their retreat they
were attacked by the pestilence in the forest of Selkirk, and
the northern part of the island suffered as seriously as the
more populous south.

The mortality was no doubt enormous and appalling. It is
probable that one-third of the population perished. To be
sure, panic always exaggerates numbers. One chronicler
‘says that nine out of ten died. Similar amplifications, which
have been heedlessly accepted by writers who are inex-
perienced in possibilities, are found in all the chroniclers.
‘We are told that sixty thousand persons perished in Norwich
between January and July, 1349. Norwich was probably the
second city in the kingdom at the time, and Norfolk was
certainly the richest county; but the number is twice as
auch as the population of both city and county at the time.
Joshua Barnes, the author of a diffuse life of Edward III,
pretends to give exact information as to the persons who died
in the principal English cities. His numbers are undoubtedly
untrustworthy. The nearest estimate to likelihood which I
have seen is that of Knighton. He was a canon of Leicester,
and lived a short time after the events. He tells us that the
deaths in the three parishes of Leicester.town were 1480.
Even this number I believe to be exaggerated, for there is
reason to conclude that at this time the population of
Leicester was under 3,500.

Every town had its plague-pit. That of London was
@ spot afterwards occupied by the Charterhouse, and
purchased for the purpose of sepulture by Sir Walter
Manny, one of Edward’s captains. Some years ago, being
at Cambridge while the foundations of the new Divinity
School were being laid, I saw that the ground was full
of skeletons, thrown in without any attempt at order, and
d divined that this must have been a Cambridge plague-pit.
I have no doubt that the principal place of burial for the
224 The Famine and the Plague.

Oxford victims was at some part of New College garden, for
when Wykeham bought the site, it appears to have been one
which had been previously populous, but was deserted
some thirty years before during the plague, and apparently
made a burial-ground by the survivors of the calamity.
Hecker estimates the loss of population in Europe at twenty.
five millions, a moderate and probable calculation.

No doubt the ravages of the pestilence were more general
among the poorer classes. But, as I have already stated, the
more opulent were not unaffected by it.. The disease made
havoc among the secular and regular clergy, and we are told
that a notable decline of learning and morals was thence-
forward observed among the clergy, many persons of mean
acquirements and low character stepping into the vacant
benefices. Even now the cloister of Westminster Abbey is
said to contain a monument in the great flat stone, which we
are told was laid over the remains of the many monks who
perished in the great death. The novelist Boccacio dwells on
the effect which the mortality caused in the character of the
survivors, and how panic or despair made men callous, reckless,
superstitious, heartless, cruel, and licentious ; and Sismondi,
in his great history of the French people, and of the Italian
Republics, has collected contemporaneous evidence to the same
effect.

The Black Death formed an epoch, and, for many years
afterwards, facts were computed according to their nearness
from the great pestilence. A century after the event, Gascoigne
makes it the era of the new departure in Oxford, after which
learning, morality, and the adequate discharge of duties began
to wane; the universities were, relatively speaking, deserted,
and the whole spirit of society was changed. It is said by Sir
Harris Nicolas that of the three years, 1349, 1361, and 1369, in
which note was made of the extraordinary virulence of a disease
now become sporadic, the first pestilence was said to have lasted
four months; the second through the winter, for eight months
and nineteen days; the third for nearly three months. These
dates of duration, given centuries after the event, cannot be
accepted as authentic, but they are indirect testimony of the
Effects of the P.ague—The Jews. 225

singular impression which the ca amity left on the mind of Eng-
land. I have been struck with the fact, from more trustworthy
sources, when I have noted certain entries made in the records
of several Hertfordshire manors, where the plague appears to
have been specially deadly. In these manors it was the
practice for thirty years to head the schedule of expenditure
with an enumeration of the lives which were lost and the
tenancies which were vacated after the great death of 1348.
Nor have I any doubt, if some antiquary were to have the
patience to peruse and tabulate the taxing rolls of Edward I,
and compare the names of residents in the several manors
with the entries of tax-paying inhabitants resident in the
same manors after the great plague, he would find that
thousands of names perish from the manor registers, as that
of the Oldmans did from Cuxham. It may be noted that
the foundation of colleges in Oxford, which was rapidly pro-
ceeding before this stupendous event, ceased for many years,
when it was taken up with renewed vigour.

At first, as is constantly the case in times of panic, there
was a suspicion that the disease was the work of human
agencies. As usual, the Jews were credited with having con-
trived the calamity. They were charged with poisoning the
wells, and throughout France, Switzerland, and Germany,
thousands of these unhappy people were destroyed on
evidence derived from confessions obtained under torture,
or even from the fact of their religion and origin. They ,
were protected as far as possible by the Emperor, Charles IV.,
whose own influence in Germany was very circumscribed.
They escaped persecution, too, in the dominions of Albrecht
of Austria. It is said that the large Jewish population of
Poland is due to the fact that Casimir the Great was induced,
by the entreaties of Esther, a favourite Jewish mistress, to
give them harbour and shelter in his kingdom. The story
is curiously corroborated by the respect which is still paid
by the Podolian Jews at the present time to the memory of
this second Esther, who, being taken into the harem of another
king, also alien to the race of Israel, remembered her kindred
in the day of their trouble, and to the generosity of the Polish

15
226 The Famine and the Plague.

monarch who yielded to her wish. It ought to be added that
Clement VI. forbad the persecution of the Jews at Avignon,
where the pope was still residing. The English people was
saved from being tempted to the crime of murdering the
Jews, because the king’s grandfather had expelled the whole
race from England, And yet, in this our own day, one some-
times wonders whether we have really escaped from the con-
tingency, even in countries calling themselves civilised, of
witnessing again the bigotry, the malignity, the spirit of hatred
which accepts impossible lies, for which there was the excuse
of ignorance in the middle ages, but not the shadow of an
excuse now.

We learn from contemporary accounts, and here we can
trust them, that a rapid growth of population followed on the
destruction of the Black Death. It is said that after this
event, double and triple births were frequent; that marriages
were singularly fertile; and that, in a short time, the void
made by the pestilence was no longer visible. The repressive
check of a high standard of living was removed by the ease
with which the survivors could obtain that standard, and
accumulate from a considerable margin beyond it. The
physiologists of the time, however, averred that the human
race suffered a permanent diminution in the number of teeth,
which had been always possessed by those who were born
before the visitation of the Black Death. I make no doubt
that the population speedily righted itself, as it has done on
many other occasions when a sudden or abnormal destruc-
tion of human life has occurred in a people and the people has
a recuperative power. That they had this power is proved by
the events which followed.

I stated above that probably a third of the population
perished. Froissart made the same estimate a generation
later, when fear had ceased to disturb the judgment; and,
as I have said, it is described as having been peculiarly deadly
to persons in the vigour of life. It is certain that the imme-
diate consequence of the plague was a dearth of labour, an
excessive enhancement of wages, and a serious difficulty in
collecting the harvests of those landowners who depended on
Lowering of Rents and Dues. 227

a supply of hired labour for the purpose of getting in their
crops. We are told that these crops were often suffered to
rot in the fields for want of hands; that cattle and sheep
roamed at large over the country for lack of herdsmen ; that
{and went out of cultivation; and that the grandees were
utterly impoverished. I have referred already to the collateral
evidence of an extraordinary falling off in the assessments
under customary taxes. Many of the lords excused their
tenants’ rents lest they should quit their holdings from a want
of labour and the increasing and excessive cost of materials ;
the omission of rent sometimes extending to a half, sometimes
for a term of years, as the landowner could arrange with the
tenant. So, says Knighton, “they who had let lands on labour-
rents to tenants, such rents as are customary in villeinage, were
compelled to relieve and remit such labour, and either to
utterly excuse them or to rehabilitate their tenants on easier
terms and less payments, lest the loss and ruin should become
irreparable and the land lie utterly uncultivated.” It appears,
therefore, that in the panic, the confusion, and the loss which
ensued on the Great Plague, that process which, as I said
before, was going on already, the commutation of labour-
rents for money payments, was precipitated ; that the lords
readily gave in to compositions ; and that even less than had
hitherto been demanded in exchange for the service was
arranged for the future. The plague, in short, had almost
emancipated the surviving serfs.

I shall point out below what were the actual effects of this
great and sudden scarcity of labour. At present I merely
continue the narrative. Parliament was broken up when the
plague was raging. The king, however, issued a proclama-
tion, which he addressed to William, the primate, and circu-
lated among the sheriffs of the different counties, in which he
directed all officials that no higher than customary wages
should be paid, under the penalties of amercement. The king’s
mandate, however, was universally disobeyed, for the farmers
were compelled to leave their crops ungathered, or to comply
with the demands of the labourers. When the king found that
his proclamation was unavailing, he laid, we are told, heavy
228 The Famine and the Plague.

penalties on abbots, priors, barons, crown tenants, and those
who held land under mesne lords, if they paid more than
customary rates. But the labourers remained masters of the
situation. Many were said to have been thrown into prison
for disobedience ; many, to avoid punishment or restraint, fled
into forests, where they were occasionally captured. The
captives were fined, and obliged to disavow under oath that
they would take higher than customary wages for the future.
But the expedients were vain, labour remained scarce, and
wages, according to all previous experience, excessive.

As soon as Parliament could meet, the proclamation was
reduced to the form of a statute, which remained, with the
proclamation, a law, till both were formally repealed by 5
Elizabeth, Cap. 4. The statute contained eight clauses :—
(1) No person under sixty years of age, whether serf or free,
shall decline to undertake farm labour at the wages which had
been customary in the king’s twentieth year (1347), except
they lived by merchandize, were regularly engaged in some
mechanical craft, were possessed of private means, or were
occupiers of land. The lord was to have the first claim to the
labour of his serfs, and those who declined to work for him or
for others are to be sent to the common gaol. (2) Imprison-
ment is decreed against all persons who may quit service
before the time which is fixed in their agreements. (3) No
other than the old wages are to be given, and the remedy
against those who seek to get more is to be sought in the
lord’s court. (4) Lords of manors paying more than the
customary amount are to be liable to treble damages. (5)
Artificers are to be liable to the same conditions, the artificers
enumerated being saddlers, tanners, farriers, shoemakers,
tailors, smiths, carpenters, masons, tilers, pargetters, carters,
and others. (6) Food must be sold at reasonable prices. (7)
Alms are strictly forbidden to able-bodied labourers. (8)
Any excess of wages taken or paid can be seized for the king’s
use towards the payment of a fifteenth and tenth lately granted.
The statute provides for the difference between summer and
winter wages, and guards against the emigration of the town
population to country places in summer, In answer to com-
The Statute of Labourers. 229

plaints from the employers of labour, the Statute of Labourers
is constantly re-enacted, with accumulated penalties and
precautions,—penalties sometimes laid on the labourer only,
sometimes on the employer, sometimes on both. An attempt,
which was, I believe, premature, was made to enforce ap-
prenticeship in handicrafts at the beginning of the fifteenth
century, with the view of making the agricultural labourers
an ever-increasing residuum, and thereby securing cheap
labour for the tenant and the lord.

The Statute of Labourers may have induced some slight
effect on the wages of farm labourers. The peasantry were
under the eye of the lord’s steward or bailiff, and might have
been denounced and punished if they claimed more than the
law allowed them. But they had great power of combination,—
a power which they used, perhaps, in a manner which made it
very difficult to enforce the statute, for the enforcement of it
is given to the manor court, where the goodwill of the tenants
was essential to harmonious action between lord and tenants.
This combination the statute called the “ malice of servants in
husbandry.” But there was the pretence of submission to the
statute in the bailiffs’ rolls, which might have been taken in
evidence. After the Black Death, payments are frequently
entered in these rolls, at a particular rate, and this a very
exalted one. These payments are drawn through with a pen,
and a less sum substituted. Thus, in 1349, on one estate, the
bailiff enters 5¢. as the price at which wheat was threshed.
A line is drawn through the figure and 3d. substituted. In
the next year, wheat, rye, peas, and vetches are threshed at 6d,
barley at 3@,, oats at 2d. Buta pen is drawn through these
rates, and 24d¢, 14d. and Id. are substituted. In the same
year, barley is reaped at Is. 2d. at first, but the sum is altered
to Is. Very many of these instances could be quoted. Occa-
sionally, but rarely, the hirer of labour makes similar changes
in artizans’ labour, as though to show obedience to the
statute.

I cannot help thinking that these transparent erasures are
simulated, and that they point to evasions of the statute.
The labourer, if he did not receive his full money wages, was
230 The Famine and the Plague.

compensated in some covert way to the full extent of the
previous entry, and by some means which would not come
under the penalties of the law, and the process by which
these penalties might be enforced. There might be larger
allowances at harvest time, a more liberal concession of
common rights, or, as I have often seen, a license given to
a shepherd to turn his own sheep into the lord’s pasture, or
some analogous equivalent to a necessary, but, under the
statute, an illegal money payment. Even though we take
the substituted entries, we shall find that a great rise in the
wages of labour was effected. We know that this rise was
in direct contravention of the law,—a law created in the
interest of those who employed labour, and, therefore, who
wished to have it cheap, and who might be within the risk of
the penalties imposed on employers for violating that law
which they had probably been instrumental in enacting, but
were compelled to incur. Besides, the wages of many kinds
of labourers whose callings were enumerated in the statute
were not affected by the law at all. These men took their
full increase. It was no marvel that Parliament constantly
complained that the Statute of Labourers was not kept. The
marvel is that they did not see that it could not possibly be
kept. But the straits in which the capitalist landowner found
himself were sufficiently serious for any one; and the land-
owner might be pardoned for believing, that if he could fix,
as he thought he could, the price of provisions and materials,
he could also fix the price of labour. He clung to this
delusion for centuries, and at one time he seemed to have
achieved what he desired. But he paid for his remedy in a
far more ruinous way than that of giving what would have
been in the end cheaper labour than he actually procured.

I mentioned in a previous chapter that the rate of profit
derived from agricultural operations, after all charges had
been deducted and an average allowance had been made for
rent, when the occupier was also lord, was about 20 per cent.
on the capital invested, about 2 per cent. being represented
by the rents of assize and manorial receipts. This estimate
has been taken from an actual balance-sheet, in a year of
Increase of Cost in Agriculture. 231

average, or rather more than average, fertility, but when the
price of stock was, on the other hand, rather high, and so
returned more than the ordinary profit to the farmer. Still,
it will be remembered that the superintendence by the bailiff
was a heavy charge on the owner’s profits, or, at least, was a
charge from which the small proprietor was free. It will be
obvious that, with such a rate of profit before them, land-
owners, who possessed by inheritance a large amount of live
and dead stock, would naturally cultivate their land them-
selves. There was, indeed, no way in which they could use
their property to equal advantage.

In the year which I have taken, 1332-3, the outlay, though
in some particulars large, is, on the whole, very much an
average. The charges which come under the head of neces-
sary expenses are rather high, but the bad debts are very
low, and the cost of labour is so small as to suggest that
some part of the regular cost of farm labour must have been
omitted or put under another head. In another year we
shall find a large cost incurred for fittings to the mill; ina
second, a serious loss in customary or ordinary rents; in a
third, a heavy loss of stock, and the consequent necessity of
large purchases. An enormous quantity of cider was this
year produced from the orchard, and, therefore, the spring
must have been mild and the summer genial. On the
whole I cannot but think that the year was in no way excep-
tional, and that the rate of profit on agricultural operations
was neither unduly exalted nor unduly depressed.

Now if we take the balance-sheet of the same estate in the
year 1350-1, we shall see the full effects of the loss of life and
the scarcity of hands which ensued from the plague. The
whole family of the bailiff, as I have more than once said,
had perished. The rents of assize have sunk to one-third
their former amount, The fulling mill is abandoned ; there
is no tenant for it. No one will give more than 22s. for the
corn-mill—the previous rent having been 50s.; and next year
there is no tenant to be found at all. The exits of the
manor are a little more than a fourth of the sum previously
received, and the profit of the court is not a tenth. The
232 The Famine and the Plague.

harvest had been poor, for notwithstanding the loss of popu-
lation, the price of wheat was 50 per cent. above the average,
and the crop was small, the sales being less than two-thirds
of the earlier year. The profits of the dairy are about three-
fifths of those in 1332, and about half the amount of stock is
sold. On the other hand, the expenses are very heavy. The
outlay is cut down ; but little is spent on repairs, nothing but
what is absolutely necessary in order that farm operations
should be carried on is bought. Labour in harvest time and
in the manor house costs three times what it did in 1332.
There is a great increase in the cost of all services, and of
such articles as depend mainly on labour for their manu-
factured value.

The expenses exceeded the receipts. The new bailiff,
however, possesses a quantity of wool, the accumulations of
two years. He had no doubt kept.it in hand in the hopes of
more remunerative prices.) He had good reason for this
caution, for wool had been sold at little more than three-fifths
the money value which it realised in 1332. Then there were
some of the chattels of the deceased bailiff and his family,
which could hardly be reckoned among the profits of the
farm, but an accidental escheat. Without them the profit
for the year is only 4 per cent., with them it is 53. In all
these calculations I have taken corn and stock at their
average prices for the year, when the actual value of any item
is not given, as is of course the case with anything except
what is actually bought and sold. In the next year the
owners of the estate did not lose heart, they sowed a larger
breadth of corn than usual, and strove to carry on their
operations, only to meet with a second failure. Four years
later, in 1354, there were lower prices and greater plenty. But
the old rates of profit on such farming operations as had been
carried on by the capitalist landowner had entirely passed
away, never to be recovered, at least to their full amount.
Sooner or later, labour must be hired at the old prices, or a
new system must be adopted.

Although I am by no means convinced that the erased
figures were not paid to the labourer, and that the substituted
Increase of Wages tn England. 233

amounts were, I have always assumed that the after-thought
was the real payment. Even under these circumstances the
tise in agricultural labour was enormous; and if, as we are
told, the young and healthy were the principal victims of the
disease, the quality of the labour must have been considerably
deteriorated.

In the autumn of the year 1340, the fullest effect is induced
on the price of agricultural labour, in the Eastern, Midland,
and Southern Counties. The cost of threshing wheat is
nearly doubled in the first division, that of barley and oats
considerably more than doubled. In the Midland and
Southern Counties the rise is even greater for wheat and
barley, but oats, in the south, are still threshed at the old
rates. The price in the west is raised, but in a far less
degree, and, indeed, it appears that Western England did not
suffer so much from the disease and the consequent paucity
of hands as the greater part of the rest of the country did.
But the prices of this year are panic rates. Even if the
Statute of Labourers had not been passed, a fall would have
ensued, though the price of labour, proclamations and statutes
notwithstanding, did not ever fall to its old rates.

If we take the whole period from 1350 to 1400, when
the prices paid for labour had been steadied by custom, and
examine the divisions of England which it will be convenient
to take, we shall find that the final rise in the prices of
threshing, taking the three principal kinds of grain together,
is 60 per cent. in the Eastern Counties, 73 in the Midland,
48 in the Southern, 37 in the Western, and 59 in the Northern.
The most notable rise is that in the payment for threshing
oats. But the prices paid for this service had been very low,
and, as may be expected, the dearth of hands told far more
on low-priced labour than it did on high-priced. This is
strikingly illustrated in the price of women’s labour. Before
the plague, women were employed in field work, as in reaping
straw after the corn was cut, in hoeing, in planting beans,
in washing sheep, and sometimes in serving the thatcher and
tiler. Generally they are paid at the rate of a penny a day,
but sometimes less. After the plague, women’s labour is
234 The Famine and the Plague.

rarely recorded, but they are seldom paid less than twopence,
sometimes as much as threepence, a day. The same facts are
observed in boys’ labour, which becomes much dearer.

The rise in the wages of harvest work is equally suggestive.
Naturally the increase should be less as the rate in the old
time was higher. But against this is to be set the opportunity
which the labourer had of pressing his claim in a time of
urgency. In the first place, the rate is equalised, or nearly so.
Before this event, the highest price was paid for barley, the
lowest for rye and oats. Now the same, or nearly the same,
rate is secured for all. The price, too, is constantly rising.
The old average was about 54¢. an acre. It rises at once to
7a. and 74d., and soon is much more, so that it is evident that
the Statute of Labourers was from the first entirely inoperative
as regards harvest work. For the ten years 1371-80, it is
more than double what it was before the plague. We shall
see hereafter how serious were the consequences which ensued
from this progressive exaltation in the price of harvest labour.
About 1770, as Young tells us in his “ Eastern Tour,” vol. iii,
the rate for reaping wheat, the only corn reaped, was 5s. an
acre; for mowing other corn, Is. In the decade I am referring
to it is 10d. all round, though nearly every kind of grain was
below the average price. With corn of all kinds at an average
of 3s. 84a, and reaping at Iod. the acre, the peasant in
Young’s time got a little more than one-tenth of the price of
a quarter of wheat for his labour, and the fourteenth century
peasant about two-ninths of the value of the whole produce.

The general rise of harvest work, however, if we omit the
exceptional period 1371-90, is 593 per cent., the reaping of
the acre of wheat and barley rising by 51, bigg by 44, rye
by 47, beans, peas, and vetches by 59, and oats by 69, per cent.
But after the plague, the cultivation of bigg and rye becomes
increasingly rare. Had this not occurred, I am convinced
that the invariable rule in prices, whether of labour or food ;
that in a general rise of anything in demand, what was paid
for or purchased at the lowest rate previously gets the largest
increase subsequently, would have been again exhibited. The
rise effected in the labour of mowing grass is not so consider-
Flarvest Work—T/atching. 235:

able. But it is found to be 34 per cent. above the old rates..
I should not expect that so notable an increase would be-
effected in the rate at which grass was mowed by the acre,
as in ordinary harvest work. The mower is hired at a time
when—I am speaking of the fourteenth century, when early
summer ploughing for root-crops was unknown—agricultural:
labour is least in demand, and, therefore, better bargains could
be made for it. But at the same time, if we refer to the
parallel already cited, the prices paid for labour in the middle-
of the third quarter of the eighteenth century, the facts when:
compared are very striking. The rate paid for mowing grass,.
on the authority of this writer, Arthur Young, was a maximum.
of 2s. 6d. an acre, but was ordinarily 2s. At the latter rate
the labourer received no more than the equivalent of a twenty--
fourth part of a quarter of wheat; at the former rate it was
about a nineteenth; whereas before the plague the rate was.
about a thirteenth of the quarter; and in the latter part,
2zé., after the plague, it rose to one-tenth, I have already
observed that in the eighteenth century the price paid for-
mowing an acre of corn is far less than that given for mowing:
an acre of grass.

The price paid for the thatcher’s labour is equally sug--
gestive. He was practically a farm-servant, employed to-
keep buildings in repair, when the thatch was worn out or
imperfect, as occasion required, but constantly to cover stacks.
after harvest, and hayricks before harvest. His labour attains.
a slight and permanent rise after the great famines of 1315-21,.
but a far greater rise afterwards. He is always accompanied
by a help or homo. This assistant is ordinarily a woman, and
the wages are frequently paid conjointly, though sometimes.
separately. This is explained by the fact that the help was.
very often the thatcher’s wife or daughter, or perhaps young”
son, When the wages are paid separately before the plague,.
the rate is about a penny a day: afterwards it rises to 24d.,.
or by an increase of 125 per cent.

Now we might expect that a thatcher’s employment was.
influenced generally by the two causes which affected or mode—
rated labour prices. His services were occasionally needed
236 The Famine and the Plague.

when the roofing of houses and barns was to be done, and if
this wages were over high, this demand might be economized.
But no such economy was possible in the roofing of ricks
and haystacks. Hence we should expect that the rise in his
wages would not equal that of other kinds of farm labour.
It is actually 48 per cent. But if we take the payments
«made to himself and his help together, the proportion is sure
to be enhanced by the extraordinary increase made for the
helper’s services. It is found to amount to 79 per cent. Even
this is less than the amount paid for the two services taken
‘separately. I conclude, that if the help was, as I have said,
his wife, daughter, or young son, a slightly lower rate of
remuneration would be agreed on than that demanded or paid
when the bailiff or employer was hiring two persons whose
bargains with him were independent.

It is necessary to follow out the facts in the wages of
artizans. These are chiefly the carpenter, the mason, the
tiler, the tiler and help, the slater, the slater and help, and
the sawyer, either by the day and the couple, or by the
hundred feet of plank; this latter, the only kind of piece
work which can be conveniently handled, being taken as
almost identical with the day’s work of a pair of sawyers.
‘The others are paid by the day.

There are two kinds of carpenters regularly employed.
‘The one is engaged on ordinary farm work, and was in
frequent requisition. The other was employed for the more
-difficult business of house building, and the more delicate
‘business of joinery, for which there was plenty of occupa-
:tion in the domestic buildings of the more opulent classes.
‘The best paid carpenter gets about 25 per cent. above the
-average paid to common carpenters, though, in taking a
general average, I have thought it fair to include the former's
wages with those of all others, as he may have been engaged
-at lower rates, or even the same rate if he were a good
workman, on commoner kinds of employment. Here the
‘same facts appear. He gets a slight permanent rise after
tthe great famfMhes, and a large one after the great plague.
“The common carpenter’s wages experience an enhancement
Artizans Labour. 237

of 48 per cent., and, exactly in accordance with the rule laid
down as the regulator of prices, the highest kind of carpen-
ter’s work gets a rise of only 42 per cent. Masons, however,
are more fortunate. The rise in their wages is 60 per cent.
It is very probable that the combination which these:
artizans were able to effect, the regulations by which they
might govern their trade, and the manner in which they
were certainly associated together under the title of free
masons (as is proved by the fact that these combinations.
were made felony by 3 Hen, VI., cap. 1), would have enabled
them to take full advantage of the situation, The tilers”
wages rose only 34 per cent. But the joint wages of the
tiler and help rose 90 per cent. The evidence of the slaters”
wages is less clear. The calling was confined to some of the
Midland Counties, where fissile oolite had long been used for
roofing, and, as we have seen, the general rise in the rate of
wages was very great. It would seem that the increase is 60
per cent. in this kind of labour. The rise in the wages of
the pair of sawyers is 70 per cent. and that of sawing by
the hundred feet is nearly the same amount.

The rise in agricultural labour is, all kinds of men’s work
being taken together, about 50 per cent; and of women’s
work, fully 100 per cent. When taken together, the rise in
the wages of artizans’ labour is almost exactly the same as
that effected in the case of the husbandmen. The result is
marked, universal, permanent, and conclusive, even if we had
not on record the complaints of the landowners in Parlia-
ment that the Statute of Labourers was entirely inoperative.

The peculiarity of the situation is that, while every kind of
agricultural produce experiences no rise, everything to which
labour adds its principal value is exalted proportionately.
Thus the price of wool, though temporarily depressed, re-
covers, though only to its old rate. There is no appreciable
alteration in the market value of cheese, butter, and eggs, in
the price of the different kinds of fat and candles. The price
of wax and cider remain the same; and so does that of fire-
wood, except during the very height of the plague. But
there is a rise of 50 per cent. in the price of charcoal.
238 The Famine and the Plague.

The price of salt is nearly doubled, that of lime and iron
‘more than doubled. The price of laths rises 60 per cent.,
of tiles 75. Crests, 7.2. ridge tiles, are three times as dear as
‘they were before the plague; and the different kinds of nails,
‘such as were fashioned by the town smith, and sold by retail
‘to his customers, are proportionately enhanced. Quite as
great is the exaltation in the price of millstones, articles
which the lord was constrained to buy if he were to get the
‘profits of his most lucrative franchise, the manor mill. The
‘price of hurdles, which are generally purchased, is exactly
doubled; of horse-shoes more than doubled, as are also
‘horse-shoe nails and plough gear. The share and the shoe are
almost doubled. The iron clouts, by which the frame and
axles of a cart are strengthened, are nearly trebled in cost;
and the nails by which they were fastened rose as other nails
did. Plain wheels—that is, wheels formed from the trunk of
‘a tree, with holes bored through them for the axles to run
‘on—are more than doubled in price. Wheelwrights’ wheels
are nearly trebled; and the iron framework of a pair of cart-
‘wheels, one of the most costly parts of agricultural furniture,
‘rose by 130 per cent. There was scarce an article needed for
-agricultural operations, the cost of which was not doubled
instantly after the calamity occurred, and which did not
‘remain at these exalted and ruinous rates. Even the coarse
canvas, which was employed for fans, mill-sails, and sacks,
was nearly doubled in price. The hair-cloth used for drying
malt was more than doubled, as was linen for shirts and
sheets, and ‘that which was used for table, with most of which
probably, if not with all of which, the peasant dispensed,
‘The least rise was effected in woollen cloth, one of the indirect
illustrations of the fact that the domestic manufacture of
woollen goods was a very general, and also what is called a
‘bye industry. ‘Lead, again, a metal used very frequently and
‘generally in the middle.ages, was more than doubled in price.
Tin, pewter, or solder articles, substantially the same, rose
30 per cent.; while little increase occurred in the price of
brass and copper vessels. They were probably economized,
and, lasting a long time, few purchases were made of them.
Rise tn Other Prices. 239

I have stated before that in the face of these serious
changes in the value of these articles, on the regular and
cheap supply of which the success of capitalist agriculture in
the fourteenth century so largely depended, there was no
corresponding rise in the price of provisions. The different
kinds of grain are not appreciably dearer, beyond what is
occasionally due to the unfavourable character of the seasons.
Oxen and cows are a little dearer, but in no such degree
as to suggest that there was any rise of general prices to
account for the change. The price of horses is absolutely
stationary. There is no change in the price of sheep or in
that of pigs. Poultry, too, is similarly unchanged in money
value. The loss of the agriculturist was confined to the
cost of labour and the products of labour, and the only
thing which could have been sacrificed was rent, or rather,
under the circumstances which prevailed at the time, the
profits of capitalist husbandry. The fact that these profits
had to bear the first shock of the crisis, and therefore that a
little time intervened in which the landowner could look
round him, and probably take some new departure, and so
keep his fixed rents, probably saved English society from a
severer shock than it would have otherwise experienced. No
doubt, as we indeed have seen, these fixed rents were at first
reduced and generally imperilled. In many cases, where the
landowner had leased his land, and had abandoned cultivation
on his own account, he was constrained to remit a portion, or
even, as Knighton says, to effect a new and permanent com.
position with his old tenants ; for just as rent, when agriculture
improves and a country progresses, is a constantly increasing
quantity, so when a serious reverse takes place, when labour is
dearer and deteriorates, or capital is lost or scanty, or agricul-
tural profits are otherwise depressed, it is natural, nay, inevitable,
that rent should have its reverses, and decline in value and
quantity, even for a time to a vanishing point. We shall see
hereafter how the English landowners of the fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries applied themselves, when they found that
parliamentary regulations were futile and misleading, to the
solution of the great problem which lay before them.
240 The Famine and the Plague.

One article of food rose greatly in price, was, in fact,
doubled in amount. This was fish, especially herrings, an
article which derives all its value from human labour, the
raw material, so to speak, being free to all. The consumption
of herrings was all but universal, even in the inland counties
of England, large numbers of them being salted and smoked,

r pickled without being smoked, and called in the former
case red, in the latter white, herring. It would seem that the
barrel or cade of smoked herring was marketed earlier than
the barrel of white herring ; for the former is found in the
purchases long before the latter. But in the thirteenth and
fourteenth centuries the art of the fish-curer had not reached
that amount of skill and variety which was common in the
fifteenth, and we know from various sources that much
capital and enterprise were devoted to deep-sea fishing in
many of the eastern ports and at Bristol during the reigns of
the House of Lancaster.

All at once, then, and as by a stroke, the labourer, both
peasant and artizan, became the master of the situation in
England. The change was as universal as it was sudden.
The lord found on all sides a stationary or retrograde
market for every kind of produce, in which he dealt as a
seller, and a rapidly advancing market for everything he
needed as a buyer. Even if he should succeed, after making
desperate efforts, in recovering labour at the old prices ; if the
old but deep-seated delusion that law can regulate prices should
turn out in the end to be possible as regards the wages of
farm hands ; should the police of the manor be only armed with
sufficient power for the purpose, he was still confronted with
the difficulty that everything he wished to buy, beyond the
labour employed on his own fields, had risen by 50 or 100
or even 200 per cent. Even on his estate nearly one-half of the
charges of cultivation set down to the credit side of the bailiff’s
account are derived from outlay, over the amount of which
no proclamation, statute, or ordinance could have had any
influence whatever, and the exaltation of price on these items
alone would reduce his profits to a minimum, If the value
of his own produce had risen to an equivalent, the void would
the Fortunes of the Peasant. 241

be filled, but no Act of Parliament could be devised by
which the producer should be able to compel the consumer
to pay 50 or 100 or 200 per cent. more for bread and beer,
beef and mutton, pork and poultry. Besides, he was not the
only dealer. A number of industrious and prosperous tenants
were settled round his manor house, who tilled their own
lands, from which they could not be evicted; on the profits
and improvements of which he could not, as long as they
paid their dues, lay his clutches, and it was certain that if he
strove to force an enhanced price for what his bailiff had to
sell, they would undersell him. They were protected against
him, as he was against the king, by custom,—a custom which
he dared not break if he could, and could not if he dared.
No position could be more unsatisfactory. If he left matters
as they were, ruin to all appearance was imminent. If he
strove to remedy the mischief by violent or unusual means,
the danger was serious. We shall see, by-and-by, that he
tried the remedy of force, and signally failed.

The peasant farmer shared the new charges which were
put on his calling, but not in the same degree. The costs of
the harvest to the lord amounted to 43 13s. 9d. before the
plague, they are swollen to £12 19s. 10d. in the year following
it. From this charge the surviving peasant farmer was free.
He found his own labour on his own holding, and hired none.
Besides, he could, after his work was over, hire himself and
his children out at the enhanced rates; or, if he had thriven
and saved, he could double his own holding, and that on easy
terms, for the lord was seeking tenants, not tenants seeking
lords, Perhaps the household of the miller was desolate and
without inhabitants, and he was one of those who offered
less than half the old rent for it; or, maybe, he aspired to the
bailiff’s vacant place, for the lord was not going to desert his
old calling without an effort. Only he could now save his
wife and daughter from field labour, and set them to spinning
and weaving for the household; perhaps do better at that
than they did at the drudgery of the field. The tools had
become dear, the sickle and scythe were doubled in price,

and the shares and plough-shoes were going the same way.
16
~

242 The Famine and the Plague.

But he would patch up his stock of husbandry tools in the
winter, and rub along for a time with the old, as his lord did.

The free labourer, and for the matter of that, the serf, was,
in his way, still better off. Everything he needed was as
cheap as ever, and his labour was daily rising in value. He
had bargained for his labour rent, and was free to seek his
market. If the bailiff would give him his price, well; if not,
there were plenty of hands wanted in the next village, or a
short distance off. Ifan attempt was made to restrain him,
the Chiltern Hills and the woods were near, and he could
soon get into another county. There was no fear in these
times that the lord could spare to follow him, or that they
who wanted his service would freely give him up. He had
slaved and laboured at the farm, and now his chance was
come, and he intended to use it. So the peasant farmer and
the labourer were to try conclusions with the landlord. We
shall see how the struggle was fought out. The machinery
which the former used had been long in preparation, though
no one guessed its efficiency.
243

CHAPTER IX,

DISCONTENT—COMBINATION—INSURRECTION.

Growing Discontent with the Papal Court—Sections of the English Church—The
Party of the Fourteenth Century—The Secession to Avignon—Attitude of
England to the Pope in the French War—The Mission of Wiklif—His
Residence in Oxford, and Safety in the University—The Poor Priests, and
Wiklif’s Theory of their Office—The Relative Condition of Landowners,
Peasant Proprietors, and Labourers—The Course of Events after the First
Statute of Labourers—Counter Organization of the Labourers—The Need of
Agents—The Attitude of the Lords—The Teaching of the Poor Priests—The
Outbreak—The Trivial Causes of it—The First Movement in Kent—Events
in London—The Conference at Mile End and in Smithfield—The Insurrection
Collapses—The Outbreak at Norwich—The Energy of the Bishop—The
Serfs of St. Albans—The Prosecution and Punishment of the Leaders—The
discovery of the Organization—Proceedings in Parliament—The Attitude of
the Government—The Mayor of Cambridge and the University—Resistance
to Reform—Arguments against and for it—The Demands of the Serfs
Conceded—The Persecution of the Lollards—Causes of the Success of
Religious Movements—Discontent, the Outbreak of Prosperous Times—The
Continuity of the Lollard Movement in the Fifteenth Century—Its Influence
at the Reformation.

OR many years the English people had been getting

. discontented with the Papal Court. In the days of
Becket, this court, though it had to take account with an
antipope, was too strong even for so vigorous a monarch as
Henry II., because the people still bowed to the authority
and believed in the sanctity of the Holy See. At the
beginning of the thirteenth century it was even more
powerful than in the days of Hildebrand; and the influence
it possessed was laboriously exercised by the active genius
of Innocent III. His successor, Honorius III., was able to
use the machinery which Innocent had devised. But soon
afterwards the inherent vices of the Papal Court weakened
244  Dauscontent—Combination—Insurrection.

the pope’s influence; and, except in purely spiritual matters,
on which as yet no general interest was felt, all hostility
to which was perhaps exterminated for a time, the influence
of the papacy was rapidly declining. The excommunications
and interdicts, at which a generation or two before the
boldest trembled, had become far less terrible. When the
pope could excommunicate Grostéte for maintaining the
discipline of the Church against a scandalous act of nepo-
tism, and Grostéte could afford to disregard the censures
of the pontiff as long as he knew he was in the right, to
denounce the unrighteous and greedy harpies of the pope’s
court, and, while still professing veneration for the spiritual
functions of the father of Christendom, to repudiate his
authority in secular affairs, a great change had come over
men’s minds. The position of a ruler who shares his
authority, or divides his responsibility with his ministers or
his court, is safer than that of one who controls everything
himself. But the ruler who delegates his authority, soon
ceases to be infallible and autocratic. The same nation,
which in the twelfth century would have sided with the pope
in the quarrel about clerical privilege against the second
Henry, would have agreed in the thirteenth to a Statute of
Provisors if the third Henry had been energetic enough, or
perhaps independent enough, to take action in this direction.

Towards the latter end of the thirteenth century, the
English clergy, with the connivance or at the instigation of
the pope, refused to make a grant to Edward I. tried
conclusions with him, and were signally worsted. Thence-
forward they take care not to provoke the king, and the
papal party in England ceases to be a dangerous power to
the State. The English Church had indeed always three
sections within it:—One, which busied itself with affairs of
state, and supplied from time to time some very able and
energetic politicians, was, to anticipate a word from later
ecclesiastical history, profoundly Erastian, and exceedingly
secular in its sympathies. Examples of this party were the
clerical officials of the Exchequer. At the time of Becket’s
elevation they were all of this mind it seems, for they were
Parties in the Church. 245

willing to accept the Constitutions of Clarendon, which they
must have been aware were not only distasteful to the pope,
but were a naked submission of the English Church to the
royal authority. Such persons were always found in the
English Church, and as long as it remains an establishment,
always will be found. Such men were Roger of Salisbury
in the twelfth, and Wolsey in the sixteenth century. The
second party in the English Church is essentially Anglican.
It stands aloof equally from secular subservience and from
foreign complications. This element, again, has always been
present. Langton and Grostéte are among its earliest types.
Gardiner and Bonner represented it at the Reformation.
Laud revived it in the seventeenth century; and Atterbury
was a type of it in the eighteenth, till he became the dupe
or the tempter of Harley and St. John. It has been
revived in our own day, and is vigorous and pretentious.
The third is that which sincerely allied itself with Rome, and
saw in submission to the papacy the unity of Christendom.
In the thirteenth century this was an active and not a very
creditable party. In the fourteenth, and on to the Reforma-
tion, it consisted mainly of the monks, especially of those
orders on whom the pope had conferred great immunities.

In the fourteenth century there sprung up a fourth party
in the Church, which was at first favoured, then silenced, and
finally persecuted by the other three. Disagreeing in other
particulars, the Official, the Anglican, and the Papal clergy
were ultimately agreed in striving to suppress the Lollards.
The annals of these obscure but enthusiastic sectaries have
never been written; perhaps the materials for the history
could not be collected. But there is enough known to show
that they were numerous and formidable; that they were
credited with political and social aims which were highly
distasteful, and perhaps dangerous to existing authorities
and powerful interests; and that the tenets of the sect were
widely disseminated, enthusiastically adopted, and doggedly
retained. As might be expected, they had the greatest hold
in the towns, and especially in the manufacturing districts,
That the persecution directed against them constrained them
246  Diuscontent—Combination—Insurrection.

to make their tenets and their rites a secret is highly
probable; but it would be a very incorrect estimate of
human nature to imagine that the hierarchy succeeded in
extirpating that which they hated so heartily. The hatred
felt by the clergy to the Loellards was naturally heightened
by their own enforced submission to the Crown.

Early in the fourteenth century the popes migrated froia
Rome to Avignon. The city of Rome had not escaped the
infection of that passionate desire for liberty which animated
Italy in the fourteenth century, which made it the scene of so
much intellectual activity, of such furious feuds, and ulti-
mately of so degraded a servitude. Rome was no pleasant
place for a pontiff to live in, and Boniface VIII. had troubles
enough. His next successor but one migrated to Avignon; and
for more than seventy years the pontiffs lived in a town in the
south of France, were all Frenchmen, and were thoroughly
devoted to, or dependents on, the French king. Still, so great
was the force of habit, that the rest of the European states
acquiesced in the attitude taken by their spiritual head, who
was fortunately, except for a short time, not troubled with
an antipope. I cannot but think that the indifference shown
at this voluntary residence in Avignon is a symptom of the
decline of the papal authority. At the beginning of the
fifteenth century it had become a pious opinion with most
good and devout men, that a general council was superior in
articles of faith and Church government to the pope himself,—
an opinion which would have been strangely unnatural a
century before. The pope had been a reformer, he then
became a despot, and he was rapidly sinking into being a
huckster of spiritual wares.

The long course of the French war, and its alternate
successes and reverses, during which it was alleged that the
Avignon pope was on the side of the English enemy, pre-
pared the minds of the English people for a revolt against
the papal authority, and especially against the encroach-
ments of the Roman see and court. The pope most
inopportunely claimed the arrears of the tribute promised
by John, and its punctual payment for the future; and the
The Avignon Popes. 247

king, shrewdly appealing to his parliament, enlisted public
opinion against the claim. Great discontent was felt at the
practice long adopted by the pope of nominating his
creatures to benefices, and even to sees, before they were
vacant; or, as it was technically called, making such
dignities the subject of provision. This practice had always
been unpopular, and the opportunity for putting an end to
it seemed to have come. Hence, in 1350, a statute was
passed, prohibiting the practice, and enacting fine and ran-
som, with imprisonment, on those who procured such letters
from the pope. But it was one thing to pass a statute
curtailing the pope’s power, another to secure obedience to
it; and the Statute of Provisors was very indifferently kept.
In point of fact, the elections to bishoprics and deaneries was
theoretically, and by the Great Charter, in the hands of close
corporations. But the king was always anxious to nominate
to them, and frequently did not scruple to invoke the aid of
the very power against which he had procured the enact-
ment of the law. At last, in July 1374, Edward sent a kind
of legation, of seven persons in all, to Bruges, with a view
towards effecting a settlement of the question with the
pope. These persons succeeded in obtaining an authori-
_tative document from the Roman see, in which the practice
was surrendered, and a compromise was effected. But it
was by no means a final act. Martin V. threatened to put
England under an interdict, near sixty years afterwards, in
case this obnoxious Statute of Provisors was not repealed,
and it was supposed that but for his opportune death he
would have put his threat into execution. One of the
commissioners was the celebrated Wiklif.

This personage has had a more extensive influence in
England and Europe generally than any other English
ecclesiastic before or since. He was born in or about the
year 1324, at a small village in Yorkshire, from which his
name was derived. It is said that his kinsfolk resided in the
manor house till the seventeenth century, and that they
remained strict papists after the Reformation. He went to
study at Oxford, where isnot known, But he was a fellow of
248  Dzscontent—Combinatcon—Insurrection.

Merton College in 1357, and master of Balliol in 1361. After
“several preferments, during the tenure of which he generally
resided at the University of Oxford, he was appointed to the
benefice of Lutterworth, whither he ultimately retired. Here
he died on Dec. 31st, 1384. He received this living from the
king, as a reward for his services on the embassy to Bruges.
Wiklif is well known as a theologian, who evidently aspired
to the influence in Oxford which Grostéte had wielded a
century before. In this capacity he had a vast following,
and was the author of Lollardy, the repudiator of the
pope’s authority, the translator of the Bible, and the pre-
cursor of the Reformation. Crowds came to hear him from
all parts of the world. Among them were many Bohemians,
who, carrying his books and tenets back to their native
country, and being proscribed with their leaders and teachers
at the Council of Constance, provoked the war of the Hussites,
as their descendants did the terrible strife of the Thirty Years’
War two centuries later. But I am not concerned with
Wiklif’s religious opinions, except in so far as they are neces-
sarily connected with his social and political theories.

The first objects of Wiklif’s attack were the monks and
the friars. The older orders had long become wealthy,
worldly, luxurious, and, it was whispered, profligate. They.
were generally exempt from the authority of the bishop, and
their independence was not favourable to their reputation.
In order to purify the Church and gounteract the vices of
these older orders, Francis and Dominic, a century and a half
before, had founded their famous fraternities of begging and
preaching friars. These men were prohibited from acquiring
any permanent property. Even the houses in which they
lived were held in trust for them, and so popular were they
in the early days of their career, that the town corporations
eagerly became their trustees. They tended ‘the sick, especially
those who were affected with loathsome diseases, such as
leprosy, which was then very common. As they could acquire
no gain, they became the unsuspected confessors of the
wealthy. They were exceedingly popular, especially the
Dominicans, as preachers, and their homely, earnest dis-
The Morals of the Regular Clergy. 249

courses were much sought after. Still; a century and a half
of popularity had corrupted the friars and had diminished
their reputation. Upon these monks and friars, and upon
the secular clergy, whose lives and conduct the mission of
the friars was supposed to rebuke, came the frightful calamity
of the plague, with all the moral evil which such a social
convulsion was sure to produce. Benefices were vacated and
ignorant men were thrust into them, cloisters were emptied,
and new monks, wholly unworthy of their calling, were
professed. It seemed as though Satan were let loose, as the
Apocalypse had predicted.

The University in which Wiklif resided was assured of
its independence by the bulls of popes and the charters of
kings. No bishop or archbishop, said the Chancellor of
Oxford in Wiklif’s time, has any authority over the University
in matters of belief. It was, therefore, if a man could get an
audience, a place where speculative novelties were tolerated.
The fashion of the University, in which the graduates dis-
puted against each other on all topics, aided in developing an
inquiring, perhaps a sceptical habit of mind. So far was it from
being an ecclesiastical foundation, that it was for a long time
the only safe refuge for heterodox opinion. Now Wiklif’s
teaching was national. He despised the pope, and denounced
the usurpations of the Roman Court. He argued that all
ecclesiastics should be subject to the civil power. He made
no distinction, says Melancthon, between the gospel and the
state. He told the king, in a time of financial difficulty, when
counselled as to the transmission of English money to the
papal coffers, that the prohibition of such an operation was
not only justifiable, but a public duty. He denounced the
friars as the emissaries of the pope. He advocated the heavy
taxation, perhaps the confiscation of the monasteries. He
probably suggested the fable which he makes a lord tell in
the Parliament of 1371, to the effect that a featherless owl
came to an assembly of birds, and begged a feather from
each bird present. In compassion they give him a plumage,
when he suddenly turns into a hawk and begins to harry
them. So they demanded their feathers back again, and
250 Duscontent—Combination—Insurrection.

reduced him to the bare and beggarly condition in which he
was when he first came as a mendicant. “This,” said the
lord, “is the history of the monks’ wealth; and, if we are
wise, we shall make them bare again.” He probably urged
that ecclesiastics should be excluded from secular offices, and
formulated the petition to that effect which was presented to.
the king. As time went on, Wiklif, protected by John of
Gaunt and his party, and by many noblemen who relished
the courage and plainness with which he attacked the over-
grown wealth of the clergy, uttered louder and bolder denun-
ciations of the moral and political evils which, in his opinion,
the papacy necessarily induced. As is well known, he was.
persecuted for these opinions, and practically silenced.

He had, however, before this occurred, taken a step, the
effects of which neither he nor his contemporaries foresaw.
In order to counteract the influence of the begging friars,
who were as devoted to the pope as the Jesuits were after-
wards, he established an order of persons whom he called
poor priests, whom he had clothed in russet, that is, in cloth
made of undyed black wool, and sent about barefoot to
preach, and rouse men to good works. These men were to
be entrusted at their discretion with the function of address-
ing the people, were responsible to no authority, and were
provided with no credentials beyond their own zeal and
convictions. It does not seem that they were to make any
place their special residence, nor were they to report them-
selves to any person, nor to have any restraint put on their
utterances. The pope, Wiklif held, had no more spirituab
authority than any other ordained minister. The monks had
no more intrinsic holiness by virtue of their profession tham
a wall has solidity because it has been whitewashed. No.
man should be imprisoned or hindered for coniscience’ sake.
A wealthy Church is sure to be corrupt. Dominion is founded
in grace, by which the reformer intended that allegiance to
authority is due only when it is guaranteed by deserts and
that authority is founded on merit. It is easy to see how
passionate, earnest, and sympathetic men could gain influence
by these teachings, and how terribly they might abuse theirs
Wikhif's Poor Priests. 259

influence. Wiklif had created an order of ecclesiastics on
whom he had imposed no discipline; and these men speedily
emancipated themselves from all control. Their violence of
‘language, their contempt of authority, their advocacy of
equality, in its coarsest and homeliest form, soon distin--
guished them, and disgusted those who had at first favoured!
the movement. Occasionally their vehemence exhausted.
itself. Some of the most violent of Wiklif’s poor priests.
ultimately deserted the cause they had taken up, conformed:
to the existing order of things anew, rose to high rank in
the Church, and persecuted that which they had aforetime
preached.

My readers will remember that the crisis of the Black:
Death left the great landowners in very evil case, with rents:
and profits reduced, the latter almost to a nullity. The small
proprietors had to bear some part of these exalted prices; but:
these were more than compensated by the advantages im--
mediate and prospective of their position. But the labourers.
gained all which the landowners lost, and could extort what.
terms they liked from the necessities ‘of their employers..
This attitude was met by the Statute of Labourers, and the
attempt to restrain wages to the rates which prevailed in.
1347. The attempt failed. Year after year, almost century
after century, the Parliament complained that the Statute-
of Labourers was not kept, re-enacted it, strove to make it
effective, were bafiled, adopted new and harsher expedients,.
and were disappointed. They tried to keep up the old
system of capitalist cultivation, but gradually dropped it..
Some, as the college from which I have derived so much
information, let out all their lands to lease within ten years.
of the great plague. Some, more conservative, more hopeful,
or more successful, continued the system a little way into.
the fifteenth century. Some of the landlords, especially those
who lived near hill pastures, took extensively to sheep
farming. <A few, especially the monasteries, kept home farms
in cultivation, mainly for the convenience which it was to
them in order to supply their houses with certain kinds of
produce, But sooner or later, in the great majority of cases.
252 Dauscontent—Combination—Insurrection,

‘very soon, the old system was abandoned in despair, and the
land was leased in a peculiar fashion, to which I shall refer
hereafter, to tenants for terms of years.

Still, ineffectual as the enactments were, they were intended
to be effectual, and were certain to be irritating. The pea-
ssants met the law by combinations. They organized them-
‘selves, subscribed, as we are expressly told, considerable sums
of money for the defence and protection of the serfs, perhaps
for the payment of fines. In plain modern English, the serfs
-entered into what are now called trades unions, and supported
each other in resistance to the law and in demands for higher
wages. This is especially noticeable among the peasantry, the
upland folk, as they were called, to distinguish them from
-artizans and townspeople generally. These facts are proved
‘by the averages of agricultural wages. At first it is only
occasionally that the price of their services is excessively high
in comparison with what had been customary. When such
-demands are effectual, they are so chiefly on harvest labour,
-when, naturally, the greatest pressure could be employed and
felt. At last, twenty years after the first incidence of the
plague, the combination appears to have been completely
-successful, and the price of harvest labour is more than double
-what it was before the plague, all kinds of reaping being paid
‘for at the same excessive rate: This lasts without a break,
-except in one year, till the time of Tyler’s insurrection, after
which, though the price is still high, it is less than it was.
“The wages of other labour were steady at the enhanced rate
which was obtained at and after the year 1350.

Now a combination such as that which is described by con-
‘temporary writers, and which the chroniclers certainly could
not have invented, must have needed agents who were com-
‘petent to organize, who could be trusted, and who could keep
‘the particulars of their organization secret, if they could not
‘the fact. But the peasants could not have done this among
themselves. Any conference which they might have held
‘would have been detected, suspected, and punished. The
‘essence of medizval society was that, in every manor,
‘everyone knew everything about his neighbour. The lords,
Combinations among Labourers. 253

armed with the force of law, would never have suffered a
conspiracy against the interests of property to have been
hatched at their doors. They would have brought their
retainers, or some of the discharged soldiers, down on these
wretched, isolated helots, and have slain them without
mercy, if they had found that they were collecting money,
making deposits of arms, and conspiring against the state.
In their opinion, the revolt of the serfs, even the bare sus-
picion of a revolt, would have justified a massacre; and if
we had no other evidence, we might be quite certain that
the peasants would do all they could to avert suspicion from
themselves.

When I first began to examine the social condition of
England, as it is described by those who wrote at the time,
and, afterwards, when I corrected the narrative by the uner-
ring evidence of those statistical facts which bear on the
circumstances of the case, the meaning of which was a secret
to those who recorded them, I stated, though I had no doubts
myself, what I thought was the course of events and the
causes of what ultimately happened, as an hypothesis. Larger
investigations, and, I may add, the general agreement of alk
who have studied the subject with me, convince me that the
lords attempted, in despair of getting back to the old wages
by law, to reverse the customary commutations of money for
labour by force. Let me state, or re-state, the case. The
lord had agreed to take, when labour, especially harvest
labour, was plentiful and cheap, small sums of money in
lieu of labour. Such labour was sure to be half-hearted, and
had to be habitually watched by the bailiff or overlooker, in
order that the serfs might not shirk their work. Besides,
there were a number of ways in which a sullen or discontented
serf might disappoint his employer or avenge himself. Money
in hand would be better than unwilling labour, and so the
commutation took place on very favourable terms to the serf,
even when compared with the old labour prices. Now,
however, it was urged, these people are demanding for the
work which they were bound to do, and their lord’s good
nature has remitted, for an insignificant consideration, three
254  Duscontent—Combination—Lnsurrection.

times the amount of the commutation. It is very possible
also that perfidious lawyers, bailiffs, and agents pointed out
‘to the impoverished and angry lords that, after all, in law
and in past times these serfs had no rights at all; that they
‘possessed what they had by the good-natured easiness of
their superiors; and that their black ingratitude should be
punished by resuming those lands and that liberty which
thad been so grossly abused. At any rate, they argued, we
‘may well imagine, as follows: “ The experiment is worth
‘trying. The landed interest is perishing, and with it the
ancient nobility, the chivalry, the gentry of the kingdom, its
culture, its honour, its institutions, all that makes its character,
enterprize, and prestige, and this by the malice and malignity
-of a mob of clowns, whose fancied rights we have, of all people,
mo reason to respect.” Guided by these counsels, or of their
own motion, they certainly strove to reverse the bargain which
they had made with their serfs, and had engrossed on their
manor rolls, determining to reduce them to villeinage again,
or, at least, to exact the old labour rents.

They could not have anticipated, when they came to this
‘determination and began to put it cautiously into execution,
how the poor priests, who alone could traverse the country
iby right and without suspicion, would advise their followers.
‘They could not have seen that these were precisely the
persons who would organize resistance among the serfs, could
‘win and keep their confidence, and could be trusted with
‘their subscriptions, their plans, and their communications,
“‘Wiklif’s poor priests had honeycombed the minds of the
upland folk with what may be called religious socialism. By
Wiklifs labours, the Bible men had been introduced to the
new world of the Old Testament, to the history of the human
wace, to the primeval garden and the young world, where the
first parents of all mankind lived by simple toil, and were the
-ancestors of the proud noble and knight, as well as of the
-down-trodden serf and despised burgher. They read of the
‘brave times when there was no king in Israel, when every
aman did that which was right in his own eyes, and sat under
+his own vine and his own fig-tree, none daring to make him
The Teaching of the Poor Priests. 255

afraid. They read how God, through His prophet, had
warned Israel of the evils which would come to them when
a king should rule over them, and how speedily this was
verified in the conduct of the young Rehoboam, with his
depraved and foolish counsellors, of how woe had been
predicted to the people over whom a child should rule. The
‘God of Israel had bade His people be husbandmen, and not
mounted knights and men-at-arms. But, most of all, the:
‘preacher would dwell on his own prototype, on the man of
‘God, the wise prophet who denounced kings and princes and
high-priests, and, by God’s commission, made them like a
potter’s vessel in the day of His wrath, or on those bold judges,
who were zealous even to slaying. For with this book, so
old, yet so new, the peasant preacher—we are told that many
learnt to read when they were old that they might tell the
Bible story—could stir up the souls of these clowns with the
true narrative of another people, and would be sure that his
way to their hearts and their confidence would be, as it always
has been with the leaders of a religious revival, by entirely
sympathising with their wrongs, their sufferings, and their
hopes. And when they told them that the lords had deter-
mined to drag them back to their old serfdom, the preacher
could discourse to them of the natural equality of man, of
the fact that all, kings, lords, and priests, live by the fruits of
the earth and the labour of the husbandman, and that it
would be better for them to die with arms in their hands than
to be thrust back, without an effort on their part, into the
shameful slavery from which they had been delivered. And
as their eyes kindled, and they grasped their staves, he could
tell them to keep their ears open for the news of their deliver-
ance, that on the password being given, they were al once to
hie to the appointed place, where a great work could be done
for God’s people by His appointed servant. Sometimes the
preacher was denounced, detected, and imprisoned, for Ball,
one of the most active and outspoken of these poor priests,
had been put into Maidstone gaol in consequence of his
violent harangues.

This was the way in which the communications were kept
256 Duascontent—Combination—Insurrection.

up, and the organization made ready to be called into activity
at a moment’s notice. The secret was well kept. The storm,
which no politician of the time anticipated, burst on June roth,
1381. The uprising of the upland folk was simultaneous.
It extended from the coast of Kent to Scarborough, alk
through the Eastern towns. Norwich, the richest English
town of the fourteenth century after London, full of thriving
artizans, who were the disciples of the poor priests, as the
county was subsequently their hiding-place, fully shared in
the insurrection, for the rioters took Norwich and stormed
the castle. On the west it extended from Hampshire to
Lancashire, The story of the insurrection is told by all the
chroniclers. They connect the outbreak, it is true, with a
trivial incident,—the outrage on Tyler’s daughter and the
Roman vengeance which he took on the ill-doer. Others
ascribe the discontent to the poll-tax. It is true that the
first was very unfair, being an equal contribution from alk
persons except beggars and mendicant friars, a triple tax
being demanded from beneficed clergymen. This tax, how-
ever, though exacted at the time when combinations were
general, seems to have caused no open expression of feeling.
The second tax was graduated, was levied on the king's
uncles as well as on the peasantry, for the dukes of royal
blood and the archbishops were rated at five hundred and
twenty times the tax of the labourer. The tax, too, was not
imposed on married women. The third poll-tax, synchronous
with Tyler’s insurrection, was not so fair, for the maximum
payment was sixty groats, the minimum, one. The limit of
age in the first poll-tax was fourteen, in the second sixteen,
in the third fifteen years of age.

The cause was far more deep-seated than a personal
grievance and a personal outrage, as we might conclude from
the evident concert with which the uprising was carried out.
The true cause was the incidents of villeinage, and the dissatis-
faction felt at revived oppression. It is noteworthy that
Kent takes the lead in the movement. But there were no
serfs in Kent. To have been born in that county, and to
prove one’s birth there, was a bar to the proceedings by
The Outbreak. 257

which a lord claimed the recovery of his serf. In the many
accounts which I have read from the county of Kent, there is
no trace of the serf-tenure or of the serf. The foremost place,
then, which the men of Kent took, must be assigned to their
sympathy with popular movements. It was traditional in
the county. Kent was the headquarters of Cade’s revolt in
1450, and took action in almost all considerable events up to
the days of the Commonwealth. Under Tyler the commons
of Kent liberated Ball from Maidstone gaol, and a burgess of
Gravesend, who had been imprisoned by Sir Simon Burley on
a plea of villeinage. They marched to London, occupied Black-
heath and Southwark, and constrained Sir John Manly to com-
municate their demands to the king. Then they crossed the
bridge and entered London, a thing which would have been
impossible, unless divided counsels had distracted the city.
There they burned John of Gaunt’s new palace and sacked
the hospital of St. John. Their animosity was specially
directed against the Flemings, whom they dragged from the
churches. In all likelihood this was the work of their asso-
ciates in the city, with whom the Flemish merchants were
always unpopular. These events took place on the 11th, 12th,
and 13th of June. On the last of these days, Thursday, the
insurgents encamped in London, probably in the open space
near St. Paul’s, or in Smithfield.

The city took counsel on Thursday evening. It is said
that the mayor and some of the aldermen were anxious to
attack the rebels by night, but that they were dissuaded
by the Earl of Salisbury, who was, by the way, a partizan of
Wiklif and the reforming party, on the ground that if the
attack was repulsed everything would be lost. Three of
the aldermen and certain of the council are said to have been
friendly to the movement. During this night of terror, the
young king, his mother, his two half-brothers, some of the
nobles, and Simon Sudbury, Archbishop of Canterbury and
Chancellor, were lodged in the Tower, with only a slender
garrison. On Friday morning the insurgents presented them-
selves at the Tower, and informed the king, who was not yet

| fifteen years old, that unless he granted them a conference

/ 17
258 Diuscontent—Combinatieon—Insurrection.

they would attack the Tower, capture it, and slay all! that
were in it. To satisfy them, the king left the Tower with his
two brothers, and appointed the place of conference at Mile
End. He sent his two brothers out of the way, for the Earl
of Kent and Sir John Holand had already become notorious
for their misdeeds, He had no sooner left the Tower than
the rebels burst in, seized the Archbishop and certain others,
and forthwith put them to death. In the sudden capture of
the Tower, we must, I think, see that Tyler's insurrection
was aided by old soldiers of the French wars; and in the
murder of the archbishop, as in that of Stapledon fifty-four
years before, the hatred entertained towards the officers of
the Exchequer.

The king, it is said, with courage beyond his years, gave
audience to the rioters at Mile End, and demanded what they
wanted. They answered, “We will that you make us free for
ever, ourselves, our heirs, and our lands, and that we be
called no more bond, or so reputed.” The king immediately
assented. He bade them return to their homes, leaving two
or three from each village, who should receive and carry back
the charters. Many of the insurgents, misled it would seem
by so prompt a compliance, obeyed, and quitted the city, and
the king assigned one of his banners to each of the counties
which had furnished complainants. It is more probable that
Tyler was quite willing to reduce his forces into manageable
dimensions, for we are told that thirty thousand men, a
number far in excess of the adult male population of the city at
the time, remained under arms. The king, in all appearance
anxious to fulfil his pledge, set thirty clerks to work in writing
out and sealing the patents of manumission. One of these,
dated June 15th, is preserved in Walsingham, being that
addressed to the authorities of Hertfordshire. It frees all the
king’s subjects in the county of bondage, and makes them
quit, ze, free of any charge accruing from the past, pardons
them all offences committed, and assures them of the king’s
peace. Hertfordshire was the county in which Walsingham’s
abbey, St. Albans, was situate. In these matters the king
was probably advised by the Earl of Salisbury. At the same
Tyler. 259

time Richard had in his company a youth of exactly his own
age, his own cousin, who was hereafter to depose him, and be
the indirect instrument of his murder—Henry Bolingbroke,
Earl of Derby.

On Saturday morning Tyler occupied Smithfield in force.
The king was attempting to escape from London, though
one can hardly see whither he would have fled, as the whole
country was insurgent. He found the peasants under arms,
halted at St. Bartholomew's Abbey, and prepared to parley
with them. As he came near, Tyler bade his men fall back,
and advanced to confer with the king. Then Tyler was slain
by Walworth, the mayor, who seems to have gathered a
aumber of partizans together, and perhaps to have made them
simulate sympathy with the rebels and mingle with them.
The king appeased the enraged crowd by riding up to them
at the peril of his life, declaring himself their monarch and
their friend. He checked Walworth and Knolles, who wished
to attack them. He is said to have ordered the banners and
charters of manumission to be given up, and to have destroyed
whatever were surrendered ; but this part of the narrative we
must assuredly disbelieve. The army of the rebels returned
to London, satisfied with his assurance, and soon after, for
here the details of the story fail us, seems to have dispersed.
But though Richard spoke them fair, he assured his coun-
sellors, with a dissimulation which could hardly be credited in
‘ so young a person, that he would take full vengeance on
them hereafter. But the longing for revenge, dissimulated
by a show of patient acquiescence and even friendship, was
the one steady feature in Richard’s character. He returned
to the Tower, and when his mother congratulated him on his
safety in the evening, he told her that he had well-nigh lost
and actually gained his crown on that memorable morning
Before the evening he issued a proclamation, commanding
the departure of all the country folk from London. We are
told that the order was obeyed.

The insurrection broke out in Norwich on June 13th, under
the command or guidance of Littlestreet. The captain-
general of the city, Sir Robert Sale, had been born a serf,
2fo Discontent—Combinatton—Insurrection.

but had risen to knighthood and an office of great trust.
The insurgents invited him to join them, and offered to
put a third of England under his obedience if he would con-
sent. He refused, and fell overpowered by numbers. But
they did not long retain possession of their advantages. The
cathedral close and buildings at Norwich are a fortress by
themselves, isolated from the rest of the city. The young
and warlike Henry Spenser, one of the aristocratic prelates
who were beginning to occupy the highest offices in the
Church, collected an army of his retainers and others, attacked
the entrenchments of the rebels by surprise, forced them, and
routed the enemy. He slew many of them with his own
hand, and ordered to instant execution all those who escaped
the carnage and were taken prisoners. Among these was
Littlestreet. A short time afterwards Spenser led an army
into the Low Countries, where he was not so successful as he
was in dealing with the Norfolk peasants,

If the chronicles compiled in the writing rooms of the
several abbeys had all been preserved or continued (for only
a portion of these annals has come down to us), we should
have learned how universal the panic was, and how frequent
were complaints like that which comes to us from St. Albans.
The serfs who held of the monastery surrounded the abbey,
and claimed an audience of the abbot. They averred that
a charter had been granted long since in their favour, in
which their liberties had been secured, but that this had been
secreted by the monks, and they demanded that it should
be surrendered to them. The abbot made promises in
abundance, and ordered the seal to be affixed to the docu-
ment required. But when the seal was pressed on the wax,
we are told that it could not be pulled away from the
impression, and the monks thereupon inferred that the
patron saint of the abbey, the proto-martyr of the British
Church in Roman days, was unfavourable to the demand
for the emancipation of the serfs. One would like to know
the serfs’ account of the transaction.

The peasants’ war was over in a week, if we are to trust
the account given of the events. And now the authorities
The Magnitude of the Insurrection. 261

began to discover the process by which the insurrection was
fomented, organized, and developed. A letter of an enigma-
tical but sufficiently intelligible kind addressed by one Schep,
formerly a priest of York, but latterly of Colchester, to the
confederates was discovered and has been preserved. It
speaks of John Nameless, and John the Miller, and John
Carter, Piers Plowman, and John Trueman, bids them beware
of guile in borough, and to stand together in God’s name.
Piers Plowman is to do his work, and chastise Hob the
robber. The confederates are assured that the king’s son
in heaven shall pay for all, and the circular ends with
a few lines of doggerel. Richard did not long delay his
vengeance. A commission was sent into the disturbed
districts, and the movers of sedition were claimed from the
chief persons in the towns and villages. The culprits were
hanged, some say gibbeted in chains. It is stated that
fifteen hundred suffered death in the various counties. Ball
was taken to prison at Coventry, condemned by Tressilian,
and executed. Seven years after Tressilian was himself
hanged at the instance of the Duke of Gloucester, as was
also Sir Simon Burley, who had given occasion to the
Kentish and Essex insurgents by imprisoning the Gravesend
burgess. The rolls of Parliament give a list of the several
leaders in the insurrection with a view to their being indicted.
These are probably persons who had not been captured in
the assize of the judges. Seventeen are set down to Norfolk,
twenty (four of whom are beneficed clergymen) to Suffolk,
four to Cambridge, eleven to Essex, four to Herts, twenty-
three to Middlesex, one hundred and fifty one to London,
eight to Winchester, twenty to Kent, eight to Sussex, eleven
to Somerset, and eight to Canterbury. Most of the London
leaders are craftsmen and artizans. But I conceive that the
harshness with which the rioters were treated by the law
did not break the spirit of the people, or make them tamely
submissive to authority, as it has not at other times. The
bloody assizes of Jefferies were of no little assistance to the
march of William of Orange, while he was in the West of
England.
262 Discontent—Combination—LIlnsurrection.

Tyler according to the judgment of his enemies (the
unsuccessful leaders of insurrections have no friends), was
a man of ready abilities and sound sense. He seems to
have kept those who were under him in good order and
discipline. He had probably seen military service, and kept
a guard of picked followers about him, whom he was unwise
enough to leave in the rear when he advanced to the parley
in Smithfield. It is said, on the confession of some among
his companions, that he intended to secure the King’s person,
to overset the system of feudal dependence, and to establish
in its room a government of county districts, over each of
which was to be put a person of like principles with himself,
The monasteries would provide ample funds for these major-
generals of the fourteenth century. It is curious that the
scheme was that adopted in the seventeenth century by
Cromwell, and shows at least that the purposes of the leaders
in this insurrection were far more extensive than the remedy
of mere personal wrongs, and that they contemplated even
more than the extinction of services in villeinage—a scheme,
namely, for the reconstruction of English society. I admit
that the confessions of criminals are always suspicious, but
there is just the probability in this confession that the plan
is one of singular political foresight, and could never have
been invented by a foolish monk.

The Essex serfs sent certain delegates to the king, praying
that the charters of manumission should be confirmed. We
are told that he answered the petitioners savagely, in language
which was suggested by the reply of the rash Rehoboam.
The story is exceedingly improbable. It is not likely that,
when the embers of insurrection were still smouldering, he
would have told the serfs that he “ would so order with them
and their descendants that the generations to come should
curse the memory of those who had provoked the insurrec-
tion.” Besides, it is clear that the best of his counsellors
would have gladly seen the charters confirmed by Parliament,
as is proved by the authentic record of proceedings contained
in the Rolls. He had, perhaps, revoked the charters of manu-
mission. They were not legal and could not be binding. It
Parliament and the Commons. 263

was and is a plain maxim of law, that no grant or remission
on the part of the king could be allowed to injure another.
The king could remit a forfeiture, the benefit of which would
accrue to the Exchequer, but not an escheat, the benefit of
which might accrue to a lord. He could pardon a murderer
convicted in his court by a jury summoned to try an offender
against the Crown; he could not pardon a criminal, even
one who had been pardoned after a first conviction, who was
convicted on an appeal of blood at the instance of the nearest
relative of the deceased. The charters could not be con-
sidered valid. Seventy years afterwards, when Cade’s insur-
rection occurred, and the artifice of a promise of pardon was
employed to disperse the insurgents, we are informed by
Gascoigne, no mean judge of contemporary events, that Cade
hesitated to take the proffered pledge on the ground that it
needed the confirmation of Parliament.

Parliament met on Sept. 16th, and the situation was imme:
diately put before it. The Treasurer, Sir Hugh Segrave,
informs the Commons that “the king had been forced to
grant the insurgents letters patent under the Great Seal,
enfranchising to a considerable extent those who were only
bond servants and villeins of the realm, for which the king,
knowing it to be against law, directs them to seek remedy
and provide for the confirmation or revocation thereof. If
they desire to enfranchise and manumit their villeins by
common consent, he will assent to it.” The answer given
unanimously is, “That all grants of liberties and manu-
mission to the said villeins and bond tenants, obtained by
force, are in disherison of them, the Lords and Commons,
and to the destruction of the realm, and therefore null and
void ;” and they add, that “this consent they would never give
to save themselves from perishing all together in one day.”

Language such as the above, employed by the king or
his councillors; suggestions so generous as those proposed to
the Commons by the Crown, and, I may add, so much in
accordance with the policy of the Government afterwards,
are inconsistent with the threats and reproaches which
Walsingham puts in the mouth of Richard a few weeks
264 Dauscontent—Combination—Jnsurrection.

before. We know that the policy of the Government was by
no means unfriendly to the emancipation of the serfs, that
every construction which lawyers could put upon usage or
statute was favourable to their freedom, and that in after
years the king put his veto on those petitions of the Com-
mons by which he is entreated to impose social disabilities
on the condition of villeinage. Thus in 1391, ten years after
the insurrection, the king declines to accede to the request
that the sons of serfs should not be allowed to frequent the
universities, or to listen to the complaint that “they fly to
cities and boroughs and are there harboured, and that the
lord, on attempting to recover his serf, is hindered by the
people.” The Commons suggest in their prayer that the lord
should be allowed the remedy of allowing the serf to be
seized without regard to the franchise of the place in which .
he has taken refuge.

In singular contrast to this outbreak, and yet to some
extent in harmony with its temper, is an account of an
outrage committed by the Mayor of Cambridge, one Lystere,
and four of the bailiffs of the same town, on April 30th, 1381,
some six weeks before Tyler’s outbreak. These officials of
the city were dissatisfied with the charters granted to the
University. So they set on the University authorities, com-.
pelled them to deliver up all charters conferring franchises
and privileges on the students, which they burnt on the spot,
and further constrained them to execute-a formal renuncia-
tion of all their rights by an instrument under their common
seal. The citizens for this outrage were fined 101 marks.
The act was certainly not so alarming as the insurrection of
the peasants, and did not portend such serious consequences;
and the penalty was, perhaps, even for a town of nearly three
thousand inhabitants at this time, light; but it shows that
passionate demonstrations against privileges or usurpations
were not confined to the lower orders, but were encouraged
even among the burgesses of an east county town. Cam-
bridge was probably at this time, like its neighbour counties,
strongly leavened with those doctrines of equality which the
poor priests had been preaching.
The Surrender. 265

The peasants were dispersed and defeated; their leaders
were tried, sentenced, and hanged; but the solid fruits of
victory rested with the insurgents of June 1381. It may have
been the case that the discontent was too widespread. The
peril had been so great, and the success of the insurrection
was so near, that wise men saw it was better to silently
grant that which they stoutly refused in Parliament to con-
cede. It has always been so, and, until social man has solved.
every problem, an impossible Utopia, it always will be the
case that wise men counsel concession when the less far-
sighted clamour for resistance. The history of the English
Parliament is full of examples, instructive in the highest
degree, of the fact. There have been constantly persons who
affirm that the grant of the commonest justice will bring about
“that they all will perish in one day,” as the Commons of
1381 predicted, when the English landowners were in the
most grievous strait that has ever occurred in their history.
It is true that in the great majority of cases, and till com-
paratively recent times, the efforts of those who have led the
way in reform have been directed towards the maintenance
of those public liberties from which, in the nature of things,
the wealthy and well-to-do reap more benefit than the poor
and the anxious. This is not, indeed, to be regretted, for till
liberty and equal law are granted to all, the amendment of
the poor man’s lot is indefinitely postponed, though, when
that earliest justice is done, the righting of other wrongs may
be remote, but is within the ken of the true statesman. When.
wreck was made of Parliamentary institutions in the great.
war of the English Succession, and a despotism, not, indeed,
absolute, but therefore more dangerous, was induced over
every part of an Englishman’s life, except his memory, it took.
two centuries and a half before even the shadow of the
fifteenth-century Parliament was restored. Since that time,
we of this generation and our fathers have been striving for
fifty years to secure some of those acts of justice and wisdom
which are essential to the well-being, the progress, the moral
health of our countrymen. If any one were to collect the
predictions which have been uttered as to the certain ruin
266 Discontent—Combination—Insurrectton.

of our institutions and our fortunes should this or that be
conceded ; if one were to narrate the intrigues, to expose the
falsehoods, to unravel the diplomacy, to reveal the hypocrisy,
to excuse the timidity of those who have resisted wholesome
change, we should be telling the history of the English Parlia-
ment for the last fifty years. Liberty and property, the two
conditions of social order, have been invoked as names, by
those who know nothing of any liberty but their own privilege
to do wrong, and no property but that which custom has.
allowed them to appropriate and fence.

It would not be difficult for one to exhibit in moderm
argument the defence of serfage and the attack on the
institution, for the slight echoes which have come to us from
the strife of tongues in 1381 are no way different, except in
the faintness of the sound, from those which are ringing
loudly in our memories five centuries later. The advocates.
of the old order would allege, that “on the foundations of
submission had grown up marvellously noble institutions, a
beautified land, full of handsome churches, served by a devout.
and faithful priesthood, whose labours were supplemented by
the prayers of holy and religious monks, within whose cloisters.
the young of all classes are taught and promoted, and the
annals of the kingdom are faithfully transcribed. The
country is embellished with noble castles, not now an offence,
but a protection; and every parish has its manor-house, in
which justice is done, agriculture is fostered, and the ancient
institutions of England are maintained. The owners of these
possessions feed the hungry, give employment to the needy,
a career to the active and bold. When the heir of the ancestral
house comes of age, the country side is feasted, and the salt
is put below the tenants of the lordship and the manors. It
may be the case that, in some degree, we live by the earnings
of our tenants, but we have made the name of England terrible
in Palestine and Egypt, in Sicily and Spain, and have over-
thrown the proudest chivalry of Europe. Is it nothing that
the English king has been offered the imperial crown, and
that we hold the balance of power in Europe; that the king’s
eldest uncle is the rightful king of Spain, as our king is the
Lhe Arguments on Both Sides. 267

rightful heir of France, in the just recovery of which he wilh
imitate the deeds of his glorious father and grandfather? Take
from us, who have been the pioneers of England’s greatness,
the means by which we can maintain the traditions of the
race, and England will be the last of nations, as she has beem
the first. If we do not hold our grip upon what we possess,.
and regain what we should possess, our supremacy is gone,.
our place in the councils of Europe will be forgotten, and:
trade will desert the flag to which we fail to rally. Besides,
it is the lot of the poor to labour, and their duty to be patient.”

On the other hand, it might be alleged that “contracts.
must not be one-sided, but equitable; that they should be,.
in the interests of all, faithfully kept by both parties; that
the peasant, who has improved his holding at his own cost,
cannot safely, without wrecking the real fortunes of the
people, be discouraged from that toil which, one way or
other, continues and adds to the wealth of the nation; that:
discontent, fostered by unjust dealing, is more dangerous tham
any foreign foe; and that in no case should the misfortunes.
of one class be made a pretext for wronging all others. Alk
have suffered, they might continue, from a grievous visitation.
There is no home in England which does not mourn its losses.
Is it wrong that the survivors should make the best of their
condition ; or, at least, is it not reasonable that they should
enjoy the fruits of those agreements which you have volun-
tarily, and in what appeared to be your interests, extended ?
The effects of the calamity will pass away, and you will find
that your difficulties will be also transient. Besides, you have
another remedy. Your ancestors founded those lordships
which opulent abbots possess. Valuable as their prayers may
be, it was never intended that those prayers should be en-
dowed so richly as to reduce the kingdom to penury. These
holy men have a third of the land of England in fee. They
were far holier when they were poorer. English honour and
English power could be supported abroad by a portion of
their superfluities, and, if the worst comes, knights and nobles
enough could be maintained on the lands of the monks, The
poor priests went too far, but they have been chastised Those:
268 Diuscontent—Comébination—Insurrection.

who took up arms have been dispersed. But you will never
‘break the spirit of an Englishman, and it is far better to drop
that which you cannot justly claim and you could not safely
exact.” I can imagine a Salisbury of the Montacute race
arguing in this fashion, if not publicly, yet earnestly in private
or in the lobbies; and I can easily conceive an unanimous
vote against that which, a short time afterwards, would be
churlishly granted, or more wisely conceded in silence. For
in those times 4 Roy s'avisera meant the opposition of the
Government.

That the claims of the serfs were conceded, or, if you
please, the claims of the landlords were dropped, is absolutely
certain. The Parliament cried “ No surrender!” in September,
and began to surrender immediately. “Snap resolutions”
~were no doubt made ten years or less afterwards, but the
Government evaded them, and declined to give effect to the
petition, as they called it in those days, convinced that matters
would turn out better than malcontents and reactionaries
imagined. The custom of commuting the old labour rents
#or money payments became universal; the serfs became copy-
holders, and the insurrection of Tyler, once a terrible memory,
4+ecame in the later annals the mere outbreak of a mob,
which had been stirred to indignation by a brutal tax-gatherer,
-or an insurrection of frantic communism, or, as one of our
Jater philosophers has described it, “The outcome of an age
in which social inéquality was over keenly felt.” The wiser
contemporaries of the movement agreed to abandon its
provocations, and consign it to oblivion or misconception.

But the Court and the Government could not forgive the
Lollards. They drove them from Oxford, and threatened to
extinguish the University itself, unless they were suppressed,
In appearance Oxford submitted. It displaced the Lollard
chancellor, and elected one of Wiklif’s colleagues at Bruges.
The preachers were silenced, which means that they were
wrendered cautious. Many went across the sea, and spread the
new Gospel of the Bible-men to the furthest confines of the
‘Christian world. Some recanted, and became bishops,
«cardinals, and persecutors. But many remained. You cannot
The Lollards’ Strength. 269

meet, said one of the monkish historians, five people talking
together, but three of them are Lollards. The Archbishop of
Canterbury, who was noble, orthodox, and treasonable, said
that there were wild vines in the University, and therefore
little grapes; that tares are constantly sown among the
pure wheat, and that the whole University is leavened
with heresy. Nor do I doubt that when Henry IV. came
to the throne, he still remembered the scene in Smithfield,
and putting cause and effect together, though he had no ill-
will to the country-folk, to whom he conceded the largest
franchise, a franchise not yet restored, that he had little love
to the Lollard priests, and readily put the duty on the sheriffs:
in boroughs and mayors in towns of burning such heretics as.
the clergy had handed over to the secular arm.

Two inferences beyond these which fall within the domain
of ordinary politics can be gathered from the causes which
preceded the outbreak of 1381, and from the consequences
which ensued after the storm was over. One of them has
often been noticed, the other I think rarely, if ever.

I. The success of a religious movement has generally, if
not invariably, been associated with a movement for improving
the moral and secular advantage of those whom it seeks to
benefit. In this permanent condition lies the difference
between a superstition and a religion, between the slavery and:
the freedom of dogmas. The teachings of Buddha and
Zoroaster, of Christianity and of Islam, are based on the
principles of freedom, of the giving liberty to the captives, of
the opening of the prison to them that have been bound.
They invariably contain the doctrine of the equality of man,
if not before the secular ruler, at least in the sight of God,
and for the saving of men’s souls, and have as regularly been
a reaction or protest against tenets which are intended to serve
limited interests. It is possible to carry out what you may
call a reformation, an entire and wholesale purification or
abscission of dogmas, but if in the end it is felt or seen that
the process is merely intended to serve the functions of
government, or to bolster up an existing order, or to controk
personal but devout freedom, it never commands sympathy
270 © Ltscontent—Combination—Insurrection.

and never has a lasting influence. It has over and over again
been the fate of national churches, created in what seemed to
be the interests of order, to fade gradually out of all living
weality, and to become extinct forms. The institution may
be useful, it may be respectable, it may from time to time
become the rallying ground of vehement party spirit, but it
never becomes the inner life of its disciple, the object of his
existence. This is curiously illustrated in the history of
Scotch Presbyterianism, for certain reasons the most national
‘of religions, and its numerous sects.

Now Lollardy in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries was
a religion which associated itself directly with the moral and
material interests of its disciples. It was probably sour and
‘opinionative. It certainly made no scruple in scoffing at and
dnsulting the State creed, and in the few records we have
of the doings of these poor and obscure sectaries, the fact
ris noted. “All the Lollards,” says one chronicler, “hated
images; they even called the image of our Lady at Lincoln,
‘the witch of Lincoln.” One of the poor priests is said to have
dighted the fire at the lepers’ chapel at Leicester with an image
of St. Catherine. A number of these Lollards cut down the
crucifix in the parish of Westcheam, tied it to the tails of
horses, and threw it into a sewer at Kingston-on-Thames,
‘Very likely persecution bred hatred and outrage. But these
‘sectaries inculcated those virtues of social life which among
active men give a solid earnest of religious hope. The
Lollard would sacrifice his worldly possessions, even his life,
to his creed; but while he was allowed or permitted to
cherish his creed, or his creed escaped detection, he did not
disdain the assistance which his religion gave him towards
prosperity in his calling. Hence they were thought to be
‘disaffected men, who wanted an opportunity, but had no
excuse for wishing it.

2. Such political movements as are organized and de-
veloped with any hope of effecting their object ultimately
and permanently are always the outcome of times in which
prosperity, or at least relative comfort, is general. The
forces of society always make easy work of the outbreak
Soctal Discontent in Prosperous Times. 271

which despair sometimes instigates. The Jacquerie in
France, the Peasants’ War in Germany, were desperate
efforts, ferocious reprisals, but futile struggles. The years
which preceded the Peasants’ War in England were times
of high wages and low prices. The means of life were
abundant, the earnings of the labourer exceptionally great.
‘The teachings of the poor priests were addressed to men
whose prospects were far higher than those of their fathers,
‘whose opportunities were greater and more immediate than
those of their remote descendants. What is the use of
preaching social equality to the indigent and miserable?
How can men combine and organize when their one thought
is for their daily bread, and that is only secure for the
day? The message of Wiklifs priests would have seemed a
mockery to the destitute. How can the starving contend
for their rights? The overmastering sense of a struggle for
bare life leaves no room for any other thought. I am
persuaded that the most remarkable religious movement
of which we have accurate and continuous information, that
of Wesley, with its unlimited sympathy and easily attainable
optimism, would have fallen on deaf ears in other times
than those of the extraordinary plenty which marked the
first half of the eighteenth century, and agriculture became
a favourite calling. But this plenty was as nothing to the
golden times of the fifteenth, when the earth brought forth
by handsful, and the yeomanry were planted in England.

Once in the history of England only, once, perhaps, only
in the history of the world, peasants and artizans attempted
to effect a revolution by force. They nearly succeeded; at
jeast they became, for a short time, the masters of the
situation. That they would have held the advantages they
gained at Mile End, had they provided against the tragedy
of Smithfield, is improbable. But they caused such terror
by what they actually did, that they gained all that they
claimed, and that speedily. The English labourer, for a
century or more, became virtually free and constantly
prosperous. The machinery with which they began their
efforts still existed.
272  Dzscontent—Combination—Ilnsurrection.

I have no doubt that the services which the poor
priests, Bible-men, and Lollard preachers had done in and
after the great crisis of 1381, is the explanation, in some
degree at least, of the passionate persistence with which
Lollard tenets were secretly cherished during the whole of
the fifteenth century. It was due to the fact that she
upland folk and the village artizans favoured, protected, znd
concealed an organization which was reputed to be hostile
to the rights of property, that the influential laity at rhe
beginning of this century made no serious demur to the
unconstitutional statute under which convicted heretics were,
after trial in the spiritual courts, handed over for execution
to the secular authorities, who were compelled to carry out
the decrees of the bishops and their deputies. That this-
statute would have been rescinded if it had not been con-
ceived supremely useful is, I am convinced, certain, if one
takes account of what the temper of the English laity was
at the time. But the working classes identified the Lollard
teachers with their emancipation in the past and their
progress in the present. It is known, obscure as the annals
of fifteenth-century Lollardy are, that one of the most
audacious of these preachers laboured long in his calling,
and so constantly eluded his persecutors that he seemed to
bear a charmed life. William White, who had for years
preached in Norfolk, disguised and hidden by the weavers,
was at last captured in 1427, and burnt at Norwich. He
left successors to his teaching, who were as much trouble,
more than a century later, to Somerset and Cranmer as
he and his had been to Bedford and Chicheley. But
what was a disservice and a danger to property, was a
service and a security to labour. The villagers and crafts-
men whispered the names of those men with respect and
affection whom the landowners and the clergy had proscribed.
They hid them in the day of peril, though their means of
concealment must have been imperfect, just as they secreted
those fragments of the Bible and their comments on its
teaching which seemed to them to be the irreversible charter
of their liberties and of their hopes,

4
The Enduring Injluence of Lollardy. 273

They who have discussed the history of religious move-
ments in England have discovered in the vigorous courage
of those who began and continued the Puritan movement in
England, immediately after the Reformation, and especially
that early off-shoot from it, the Independent or Congrega-
tional organization, nothing but the influence of Genevan
experiences in the exiles of the Marian persecution. To my
mind, and in the light of what I have read, this explanation
is quite insufficient, though I can readily allow it a proper
force. Geneva would have produced little fruit in the minds
of the better off peasantry and the artizans unless it had
found the soil already prepared by the teaching of Lollardy.
Wiklif is infinitely more the father of English Protestantism
than Cromwell and Cranmer, Parker and Grindal were.
There is a saying that Cambridge bred the founders of the
English Reformation, and Oxford burnt them. There is a
grain of truth in the statement. The English Reformation
took root in the minds of the people in the Eastern Counties
not because State Anglicanism was developed in the younger
University, but because for nearly a couple of centuries the
poor priests of Wiklif’s school had pursued their obscure
but effectual labours in the east of England, and had
familiarized the minds of men with an organization which was
first bitterly hostile to Rome, and afterwards as irreconcilable
with Canterbury.
274

CHAPTER X.

TIIE LANDLORD'S REMEDIES,

The Changed State of Affairs—The Currency—The Meaning of Changes in it—
The Supervision of the Exchanges—Leases an early Phenomenon, but
Occasional—Land and Stock Leases—Their Analogy to Métairie—How it
was a Necessity to all Parties—Analysis of such a Lease, and Statement of its
Profits—Duration of the System—Continued by Religious Houses—Distress,
Law of—The Insurance of the Tenants’ Stock—Rise of the Value of Land in
the Fifteenth Century—The Estate of Lord Cromwell—The Purchase of
Copyholds by Persons of Position—Fastolfe’s Trade with Flanders—The
Opulence of the Fifteenth Century manifested by its Churches—Effects of
Ordinary Leases and Yearly Tenancies on Primogeniture, on the Profits of
the Farmer—The Younger Son—The Extension of Entails and Trusts—The
Charge of the Younger Son on the Public Funds—Peculiarities in the Early
Leases—Freeholds for Life—The Long Leases of Corporations—The Profits
of Woods—The Corn Rents of the Eastern Counties.

HE old system of cultivation by the capitalist landlord

was hopelessly doomed. Wages were rising, profits and

prices were falling. During the twenty years between 1371
and 1390 the labourer was engaged in stereotyping his new
rate of remuneration, and during the best part of a generation
had accustomed himself to a scale of living and saving, which
was far in excess of previous experience. During the last
twenty years of the fourteenth century, the price of corn was
greatly below the average, though it must be allowed that,
when compared with the twenty years to which reference has
so often been made, labour was a little cheaper. The fact is,
a new class of farmers had become, or was fast becoming, the
employers of labour,—those who were occupiers on a lease, and
such persons were capable of striking a harder bargain in the
open market than the old capitalist landowner was. The rate
of wages is always lower when the principal employers are
Prices of Stock. 275

small tenant farmers, if the number of labourers seeking for
work and wages is considerable enough to compete against
each other for employment. An Irish labourer gets very
poor wages from an Irish farmer, an American farm hand gets
good wages from an American occupier. But the reason is
that the labourers are many in the former case, the employment
scanty, and the bargain hard. In the latter the field labourers
are comparatively few, and, in consequence, the labourer is
often better off than the small farmer. In fourteenth and
fifteenth-century England, the labourer was not indeed poorly
paid ; far from it, but had it been possible for the old system
to have continued, he would have been better off than he was
under that which succeeded to the old.

The price of live stock was stationary. There is hardly
a sensible difference between the old rates at which farm
stock is sold, and those at which it changes hands during the
last twenty years of the fourteenth century. On the whole,
the rate rather declines than rises ; for we must remember that
as landlord farming passes away, the record becomes one of
consumable rather than of store stock, which it largely was at
first, because the evidence of market values is chiefly that
supplied by purchasers. The price of wool is still that of
production, and is slightly lower. Dairy products are a little
cheaper. The other articles which were essential to the
conduct of husbandry are even dearer; such, for instance, as
iron. Fifty years had elapsed since the Great Plague, and
the habitually adverse balance on the producer’s side of the
account, and there was no prospect that the conditions would
be altered. Thesame facts apply to agricultural implements,
to the various materials used for building, and, in short, to all
articles which, being produced by labour and sold to the best
purchaser, could command the market price without restraint.

I am quite aware that the weight of the silver penny was
reduced by about ten per cent, ze, from 224 grains to 20
grains during the century. But it is also clear that if the
lessening of the weight in the coin effected, as it would seem
natural that it should, a rise in prices, it ought to have had
the effect all round. But we find that the price of food is
276 The Landlord's Kemedues.

lessened ; while in the price of labour, and all articles whose
value is related to labour only, by which I mean in which
there was no elementof rent or profit against which thetendency
to rise would operate, there is a rise which is wholly dispropor-
tionate to, and in excess of, the lessening of the silver unit.
Whatever effect, then, the action of the mint might have had,
or however much the concurrent circulation of gold, either of
foreign origin or of English mintage, should have had an
effect on the price of silver, it is plain that it did not produce
the result of heightening prices all round. The ingenious
explanation, then, of Adam Smith, that silver was gradually
becoming scarcer,—a conclusion he arrived at by noticing, in
the very scanty evidence which was supplied him, a constantly
decreasing price of food, and the principal necessaries of
private life—is untenable, as Smith would himself have de-
clared had information as to the wages of labour during this
period been in his possession.

The English government was keenly alive to the risk which
it imagined that it ran from the depletion of the precious
metals. In the interpretation of the painful problem before
them, though the English landowners set sufficient importance
on the factor which was represented by the enhanced rate of
wages, they are willing enough to believe that the scarcity of
silver increased the mischief. Long before the trouble came,
however, the king established, in 1335, the office of the King’s
Exchanger, appointing William de la Pole, a Hull and London
merchant, to the office, with the duty of superintending the
import and export of the precious metals at the various staples.
In the same reign, but shortly afterwards, the offence of
coining and clipping was made high treason, and I cannot -
believe that Parliament, which was keenly awake to griev-
ances, would have quietly acquiesced in the reduction of the
penny by ten per cent. if the value of the piece had been, as
we conclude it would have been, sensibly diminished, or the
older and heavier coins had disappeared, as they should have
done, and it appears did not.

It would be a long and tedious business to state the
arguments which have persuaded me that from the earliest
The Currency. 277

times till after the issue of base money under Henry VIII.,
payments in England were not made by tale but by weight,
and that consequently it was of no great importance that the
size of the piece should be uniform or continuous. I do not
affirm that my reasons are entirely conclusive, for they lack
the proof of direct evidence, but the circumstances are so
probable, and the facts are so inexplicable on any other
interpretation, that I feel myself compelled to conclude in
the manner which I have indicated. I cannot conceive that
for the temporary advantage which the fraud of reducing the
weight would have given, the Crown would have committed
the extraordinary folly of reducing the whole of its revenue
which was derived from fixed sources, and represented by
fixed payments for ever, or that the most patient and the
most supine body of landowners, and such the nobles, knights,
and gentry of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries were
certainly not, would have acquiesced in the permanent and
irreversible reduction of all their dues and rents.

For many years before the Great Plague, landowners had
been occasionally in the habit of letting land on lease. If
the estate were too distant for convenient access, it was found
advisable to adopt this expedient. Thus Merton College
possessed estates in the counties of Durham and Northum-
berland, the latter having been a gift to the founder of the
college by Edmond of Lancaster. At first the college culti-
vated these estates with its own capital and under the super-
vision of its own bailiffs, as Lancaster had done before them.
But the place was very distant, and could not be brought
under that constant supervision of the owner which the bailiff
system required. Again, the estate was near the border, and
constantly liable to be overrun. Fraudulent bailiffs were not
unknown, and it would have been easy to magnify or even
invent a loss. Hence the college determined, at a very early
date, to lease these lands. Sometimes, again, the owner suc-
ceeded to, or purchased, an estate in which the lease of the
wholé manor, under the ordinary process of granting per-
petual tenancies at fixed rents, had been already effected—a
system in which the commutation of labour for money was a
278 The Landlord's Remedies.

necessity, since the labour rent could have been turned to
no account if the lord had no land in his own hands. Some-
times the owner, for reasons of his own, which it is now
impossible to discover, granted a lease of lands which, under
ordinary circumstances, he had cultivated himself, to some
tenant for a varying term of years, and when the term was
over, resumed the property, and resumed the old system of
bailiff cultivation with the landlord’s capital. I have already
illustrated this practice. It takes place in property near as
well as remote, and was probably due either to the fact that
the landlord had advantageous offers, or it was difficult to
find a sufficiently trustworthy bailiff, or because the land-
owner was suffering from some temporary straitening of his
circumstances, and was glad to avoid a large immediate
outlay and unproductive arrears, for the arrears which were
necessarily in the hands of the bailiff were often very con-
siderable. Occasionally these leases were long, thirty years
or more. Sometimes they were short, for five or seven.
Sometimes the lord would let the arable land and retain the
pasture, especially if he kept stock, and determined on a
sheep, cattle, or horse-breeding farm ; for it is clear that the
supervision of a stock farm would need beyond what was sunk
in the stock, a less working capital, and should represent
fewer arrears.

The abandonment of landlord cultivation takes place at
various times after the plague. This is partly due to the
conservative feeling of certain proprietors, who struggled
against the change, hoping things would mend, or that they
should get cheaper labour, or that they might find Acts of
Parliament and royal ordinances efficacious. Sometimes it
would seem that in cases where the landowners—in this case
a corporation of an ecclesiastical or quasi-ecclesiastical kind
—were possessed of tithes as well as land, or land held with
tithe as part of the ecclesiastical endowment, they kept the
system up because it was difficult to separate the tithe and
the lay estate, or because they found it all but impossible to
find a lessee. In the end they generally granted a lease of
the tithes to their vicar, and as generally, also, on very
Abandonment of Landlord Cultivation. 279

advantageous terms,—so advantageous occasionally as in some
degree to make the impropriation little more than a moderate
rent charge. But everything goes at last, and the tenant
farmer takes the place of the landlord. The last bond fide
cultivation of the old kind that I have seen is in 1433-4; and
here I suspect that the amount of land held by the lord had
been considerably cut down before the residue was leased.
Sometimes it is true that the corporation retained home
farms in its hands. Battle and Sion Abbeys do so up to
the beginning of the sixteenth century.

When, during the prevalence of the old system, a landlord
occasionally let his lands to farm, he invariably let his stock,
live and dead, with them. The stock—never quite as copious
as during the landlord’s occupation, and, to judge from the
valuation assigned to it, never of so high a quality—was
carefully recorded on the lease which the tenant and landlord
executed, and as regularly entered on the back of the tenant’s
roll of account, for such tenants rendered audit annually, just
as the old bailiffs did, and had to exhibit their stock to tlie
collector or steward. It is probable that at the creation of
one of these stock and land leases the landowner disposed
of the household effects and the best of the herd and flock,
leaving only such a quantity as the tenant would take, or
would find necessary in order to supplement the deficiency
of his own capital. The landlord generally leases along with
the live and dead stock a certain amount of seed corn,
occasionally corn for wages and food. All this the tenant
covenants to restore at the conclusion of his time in good
condition, reasonable depreciation excepted, at a fixed price
for every quarter of corn, head of cattle, sheep, and poultry,
with the assessed value of the dead stock left on the farm.
As I have said, the valuation is generally low.

Now in the old times, the stock and land lease, as it had
its occasional utility to the landlord and its necessity to the
tenant, was also an inevitable arrangement for the landlord.
Such a lease was essentially a temporary bargain. The land-
lord always might, and generally did, contemplate the
resumption of his estate and its renewed cultivation under
280 The Landlord's Remedies.

the old capitalist landlord system. To have got entirely rid
of his stock would have made it difficult for him to resume
his old relations. He might have wished, when he called in
his arrears, and either exacted his debts or wrote them off as
irrecoverable, to put himself in funds by the sale of his best or
superfluous stock. But he would not entirely abandon the
means of renewing, perhaps under more favourable conditions,
the advantageous and profitable system which was so general.

There was, indeed, one kind of stock leasing which was of
immemorial antiquity,—that of letting cows to dairy farmers,
It was exceedingly common in the middle ages,—so common
that it was the rule on many estates ; and thus the records of
dairy produce are frequently absent from such estates as kept
considerable herds of.cattle. It endured longer than any
custom which was handed down from the middle ages, fox it
is constantly referred to by Arthur Young, not only as a
practice but as an index of profit on good pastures. In the
older agriculture, the lessee of the cows, sometimes of the
oxen, is the deye, #.¢., the dairyman or maid, and the fact bears
testimony to the growth of property among those who had
belonged to the servile classes.

The new stock and land lease was generally for a short
period, from seven to ten years. The advantage of this was
obvious, not that the lord was likely to get better terms, but
that he had better security for the due return of his stock at
the end of the period. The lord always covenants to keep
the buildings in repair, for in this the lessee on a term differed
from the tenant on a fee farm rent; but he also stipulated
to insure the tenant against the losses by murrain in his sheep,
the word used generically for all diseases which are fatal to
animals. On the other hand, the tenant took the risks of
scab, which the farriery of the time conceived to be curable by
proper precautions and remedies. The risk was not trivial,
though it imposed a minimum loss on the tenant. The
maximum which the tenant had to bear appears to have been
ten per cent. of the stock ; and the landlord frequently had to
compensate him to the extent of twenty per cent. more.
Besides this the landlord was expected to assist the tenant,
The Land and Stock Lease. 281

either when the price of corn was very low, or when the
farmer had suffered serious losses in his own harvest or in-
the quality of his crops. In short, the landlord learnt early
that he had to submit to part of those casualties which the
tenant affirmed that he had endured, for under a stock and
land lease the amount of goods on which the landlord could
distrain was necessarily limited to the tenant’s crops and
property.

Adam Smith (Book III. chap. ii.) saw that such a form of
tenure as that which I have described must have existed in
England at some period between that in which the small
tenancies in villeinage existed, and the holdings of tenant
farmers cultivating land ‘with stock of their own commenced.
He compares it to the metayer tenancy, which in his time
prevailed, and for a much longer time, which probably pre-
vails now in Southern France and Northern Italy. It differs
from métazrie in the fact (1) that it was essentially a tempo-
rary expedient, (2) that the rent was open to periodical
adjustment, z¢, was not a fixed quantity, and (3) that the
stock was valued to the tenant, and had to be restored by
him on the determination of the lease. A metayer tenancy is
a virtual partnership between landowner and tenant, by
which, in consideration of certain advances of stock made
and renewed, the landowner receives a certain share of the
produce, whatever the amount may be. In the land and
stock lease, the tenant, subject to the regular insurance and
the occasional help alluded to above, took his chance of the
seasons and the markets, and made what he could by his
land. We are told by Adam Smith that even in his time
such farmers existed in Scotland, under the name of steel
bow tenants. They had a much shorter existence in England,
for they had passed away so completely, and had become so
much a matter of distant tradition, that the law-writers of
modern times who commented on them entirely misunder-.
stood their meaning.

The stock and land lease was a necessity to both landlord
and tenant, but it was an advantage to both. It enabled the
latter to increase his holding, his margin of profit, his savings,
282 The Landlord's Remedtes.

and to become either a tenant with his own capital, or the
purchaser of freehold or copyhold estate for himself. It is
plain that the former must have been the result of the system,
or the capitalist tenant would never have been developed.
It is equally clear that the latter was no infrequent conse-
quence, or we should not see how very large the number of
the freeholders was in the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth
centuries. An occupying freeholder of eighty acres with
rights of common was, if we may conclude from the rent rolls
and manor records, in the fourteenth century and earlier, a
comparatively rare personage; in the fifteenth he becomes
numerous enough to form the basis of a new political system,
and in the seventeenth he gives that system solidity and
strength. That this tenant made the best bargain he possibly
could with the landlord we may be quite sure; that he was
not slow to take advantage of the landlord’s necessities, to
get stock at the lowest possible rate, and to exaggerate his
losses in fold and market, we may be also quite certain ; but
it is even more certain that he was thriving, and that the
business of the agriculturist was eminently profitable in the
fifteenth century. In about seventy years, with rare excep-
tions, land which is hitherto let on the stock and land system
is turned into the holding of an ordinary capitalist tenant
farmer. It was naturally kept up longest where the land-
lords were the easiest, and it is noted that the practice
continued with some of the monastic lands to the time of
the Reformation, as we find from the sales of monastic chattels,
the accounts of which are preserved in the Record Office.
These show by the prices at which the stock is sold that they
were either forced sales, or that great allowances were made
to the tenants in purchasing them.

We are fortunately able to determine what the profit of a
stock and land lease was to the landowner. I have printed
in my third volume of the “ History of Agriculture and Prices”
(pages 705-8), the stock on a farm let ona land and stock
lease at Alton Barnes, in Wilts, in the year 1455, and at a
rental of £14.

The farm contains the manor and domain lands, except
The Stock in Such a Lease. 283

meadows and pasture at the manor. It is said, at the end of
the account, to amount to 108 acres of the second ploughing,
of which 44 have been composted by sheep. The tenant has,
however, been for some time in possession of the tenancy. The
stock is corn, live stock and dead stock, most of the live stock
and some of the dead being valued. The corn will be taken
at market prices near the locality, where it is very cheap, and
the few other articles which are not valued will be estimated.
It is to be observed that the quantity of corn left on the
estate is far in excess of any requirements of seed, and is to
be interpreted as a stock for the exigencies of the year, from
Michaelmas to Michaelmas, just as under the old bailiff
farming a considerable amount of corn and stock is treated
as working capital independently of the arrears. The col-
lector of rents has arrears in his hand, the particulars of which
are not given. The amount, however, proves that the collector
had succeeded some one who is very remiss. The arrears
amount to 413 I1s. 2d. The rents of assize are £5 10s. 8d.
The farmer's rent is £14, and the collector’s total liabilities
are £32 Is.10d@. He is allowed for void and excused holdings
IQs. 11¢@.; and in external expenses, including his own fee of
5s. 6d., 7s. 8a. The warden’s visit to the manor involves a
cost of 4s. 44d. He pays 425 6s. 10d. in two sums to his
employers. The college allows the farmer £2 45. 54d. off his
arrears, on the ground that his farm for previous years has
yielded unsatisfactory crops. He pays 420 rent and arrears.
in part, a further allowance of £2 being made for this year,
and acknowledges a liability of £1 18s. 7a.

Now the corn which the tenant takes over is worth, at the
nearest place in Wilts, 411 8s. 6$d.; the live stock, five
horses, eleven oxen, a bull, three cows, two heifers, and two
yearlings, are valued at £13 25. 4a; the sheep, 571 (it is
specially a sheep farm, with extensive hill pastures, long
since enclosed), at £39 9s. 6@.; the rest of the live stock at
15s. 4@.; and the whole live stock is, therefore, valued at
464 15s. 44a. The dead stock, which partly is priced, is put at
43 15s. 2d. There are, however, a large number of other arti-
cles which the tenant takes over under the same conditions, and
284 The Landlord's Remedies.

the whole amounts to £68 10s. 64d. To this must be added
the purchase value of the land, which at 6d. an acre rent and
twenty years’ purchase, the ordinary payment for unstocked
land, and the purchase value of land at or about the time that
the lease was delivered, brings the capital value of the holding,
land, and stock, up to 4122 10s. 6$d@. Here I must also add
the unvalued dead stock. Besides ordinary farm implements,
ploughs, rakes, prongs, hoes, a sickle, a scythe, wood-hooks,
and similar articles, it comprises a brass cover and basin, a
brass four-gallon pot, a spit weighing 20 |b., and 20 lb. of raw
iron for repairing the ploughs. We shall deal fairly with the
sum total if we raise it to 4125, by including the value of
these articles.

I have taken the prices nearest the estate. They are very
low this year. Wheat is only 4s. barley 2s. 4d., pulse 2s.,
and oats 1s. 8d. a quarter. I think it would be reasonable,
in estimating what was in the mind of the owner when he
made his bargain with his tenant (especially as he allows
him a considerable sum in consequence of unremunerative
prices), to take better prices. The average of the decade in
the midst of which this year stands would raise the corn
prices £5 higher, and the tenant would thus be paying a
little under eleven per cent. of its capital value for a land and
stock farm in the middle of the fifteenth century. It is true
that the landowner is still under a risk. By the terms of his
agreement, the tenant is to restore every article enumerated
in his holding in good condition,—the corn in the quantities
specified, the live stock similarly —the landlord having the
right to claim their pecuniary valuation at his discretion. In
theory the owner’s property is therefore indestructible. But
the following clause is inserted in the document after the
enumeration and assessment of the sheep :—* And be it known
that if the wethers (284) die of common murrain in a year
to the number of 28 or less, the ewes (160) to the number of
16 or less, the hoggs (120) to the number of 12 or less, the
farmer shall bear the loss himself. But whatever die in
excess of these numbers, the landlord shall bear the loss
of them.” The landlord, therefore, guarantees his tenant in
Lhe Landlords Insurance. 285

all loss of sheep over ten per cent. This was no slight
contingency. Three years before the landlord paid on 46,
seven years before on 116, eight years before on 63. These
charges would reduce the rent payable materially.

In the year 1530, the same. person, one John Benger, is at
once farmer and rent collector, as Richard Benger, his father,
had been in 1484. The land and stock lease is still in opera-
tion, for his arrears are limited to the stock, and his indebtedness
at the end of the year is also said to be the stock. His rent
is now 415 10s. and a quarter of oats. But his tenancy now
includes the meadow, pasture, and close of the manor house,
which appear to have been excluded in the lease of 1455.
The rents of assize are 5s. 4a. less than they were 75 years
previously, but just the same as they were 46 years before.
Considering that the tenant has now a fair quantity of
meadow land, we may conclude that there is no appreciable
rise in the rental of this farm for three-quarters of a century.
The clause of insurance is not inserted in the subsequent
accounts, but neither are the particulars of the stock. They
had undoubtedly been continued on this hypothetical basis
of indestructibility with the condition previously stated during
this very lengthened period.

So prolonged a land and stock lease is, however, very
exceptional, at least in such accounts as I have seen, and
these amount to many thousands. In the great majority of
cases the land is ultimately let for short terms. Thus, in an
estate belonging to the same proprietors with that which I
have described above, and in Oxfordshire, the three manors
contained within the parish, or within the range of the
collector’s labours, are severally let, one for a term of ten
years, the other two for a year certain only. In the last two
cases the farmer takes the rents of the other tenants, ze.,
stipulates as part of the tenure which he has to guarantee to
the landlord his rents of assize for the term. The lessee of
the third manor lands does not undertake the collection of
the rent. They pay 48 135. 4d, £12., and 416 respectively. It
is impossible to separate the particulars of these holdings, for
the dimensions of farms since the days of enclosures no way
286 The Landlord's Remedies.

correspond with their ancient limits. They have been quoted
partly to show that leases on terms and for a year certain
were familiar, and also for another cause.

The rent could not be levied, or in case of default, the
tenant could not be distrained, unless the precise grcund
from which the rent or service issued was known and defined.
This perpetually reappears, for instance, in the Oxfordshire
account before me. “There is a deficiency of 28s. 2d. in the
rents of divers customary tenants, because one does not know
from what lands and tenements to levy them.” “Seven
capons should come from tenants there, and one does not
know whence to collect them.” “There is a particular field
called ‘Matchyngbernys,’ but the rent is not forthcoming,
amounting to £1 6s. 8d., because we do not know what land
to distrain on.” But the list of arrears is far more formidable.
“There is a sum of £56 13s. 4a, an arrear of 95 years, and
we do not know what to distrain on.” Collectors make
default, nine of them successively in the collective amount
of £86 gs. tod. Two of the farmers make default, or are
in arrears, to a sum which is over £50, while the whole
value of this very considerable estate appears to amount to
#102 4s. 6d.

I have referred to these particulars, tedious and technical
though they may seem to be, because they illustrate the
difficulties in which the landlord was put. If he had a tenant
farmer on a stock and land lease, he was perpetually called
on to put his hand in his pocket, for repairs, for trade losses,
and for what were called in these days, as well as in ours, times
of agricultural distress, “debclitas annorum.” If, on the other
hand, he leased his land without stock, he had to be exceed-
ingly careful with his terriers and his rentals, in order to
secure his remedy of distress, and he ran the risk after all
of dishonest agents and defaulting tenants. That circulation
of capital which involves competition for occupancies was
certainly in its infancy, if, indeed, it were known at all. Except
as a purchaser, and then he would prefer his place of birth,
the occupying farmer was very unlikely to go far in order to
find a holding, and by parity of reasoning, when he did apply
Law of Distress. 287

for a holding in his native place, he was very unlikely to find
a competitor from a distance. Even in London, offers of
rent over another person’s head were exceedingly distasteful.
The annals of the Grocers’ Company in the fifteenth century
contain the record of fines of 410 each inflicted on two free-
men of the Company for having offered a higher rent than
a sitting tenant, and so having rented his house over him.

The exceedingly scattered character of the several lands in
the common fields of manors must have been a serious incon-
venience to the non-resident landowner, who had to employ,
in addition to his own labour of supervision, the charge and
risk of a collector of rents. When the old system prevailed,
the bailiff was not only a trusted servant in constant commu-
nication with his employers, but was conversant with every
furrow which belonged to the domain, and constantly on the
alert for his master’s interests. But when the direct interest,
and hitherto uninterrupted relations of the landowner with his
estate, had come to a sudden end, especially with the memories
of the past in their minds, and with the constant irritation of
the Statute of Labourers, the “small farmers, who were mere
peasants, must have sympathised with everything which
would weaken the hold of the landlord over property; and
the landlord, as we shall see, was very keenly alive to any
chance which the tenant gave him of increasing the rent of
the occupier, and appropriating the benefits of his skill or
industry.

During the fifteenth century, however, and notwithstanding
the difficulties and losses of the landowner, the value of land
rose rapidly. In the fourteenth century it was constantly
obtained for ten years’ purchase, the amount of land in the
market being probably so abundant, and the competition for
its purchase so slight, that it easily changed hands at such a
rate. There was also no purchasing as yet on the part
of the small proprietors, and it is always the case, that when
land is made accessible to small buyers, the price rises rapidly,
whereas if a country is one of large holders only, and hin-
drances in the way of the acquisition of land prevent small
purchasers from buying or even discourage them, a panic in
288 The Landlord's Remedies.

the land market leads to a most disastrous depreciation. At
the present time, if one may anticipate or deal with such
a subject, while, under certain agricultural difficulties, the
market price of land in England has fallen by thirty per cent.
at least below what it was a dozen years ago, and in the
opinion of some, a further fall is imminent, a late return
from France shows that in almost every part of that country
the price of land is still notably rising, though the agricul-
tural calamities which have affected England affect France,
besides what has been superadded in the disastrous diseases
which have visited the vine, and in a less degree the silk-
worm. In England the opportunity and inclination for pur-
chasing are seriously cramped by the absurd system of
English conveyances and the preposterous charges which are
imposed by the legal profession on the purchase and sale of
land.

Land was valued at twenty years’ purchase in the middle
of the fifteenth century. In 1469 a valuation was made of
Lord Cromwell’s property. His lands were estimated at a
capital value of £41,940 9s. ofd,, that is, he was considered to
have a rental of £2,097 a year. In his lifetime he had made
gifts to Tattenhall College, in money, of over £15,000; in land
and goods of more than £7,500; and in jewels of £3,000; so
that he had inherited and collected an estate of £67,440.
Cromwell was Lord High Treasurer in 1433, and was subse-
quently an ardent Yorkist. The same rate of purchase is
indicated by the amount of money which divers benefactors
gave to certain of the Oxford colleges with a view of settling
a fixed stipend on the object of their benefaction, the invest-
ment being generally directed to be made in land.

The passion for acquiring land, and the habit of constantly
purchasing it in parcels, led, during the fifteenth century,
to the purchase of copyholds by persons of good means and
position. Such a practice must have considerably raised
copyholds in social value. No doubt they purchased or
extinguished the baser parts of the tenure, perhaps repudiated
them, and were powerful enough to do so with impunity. I
do not doubt that the transaction under which the dues of
feise in the Value of Land. 289

the Abbess of Sion, in the manor of Cheltenham, were reduced
from £10 to ten marks (46 13s. 4a.) by the arbitration of Sir
Ralph Cotiller and others—an award which I discovered in
the Record Office—was only a type of many such. Here Sir
Ralph Cotiller, who, with others, undertakes the duty, appears
to me to have the interest of a tenant in the manor. The
award takes place at Cheltenham, in the presence of no less
than twelve “esquires and many others.” It is difficult to
explain such a gathering for such an object, unless there had
been interests influencing the assembly which are not stated
on the record. But whatever may have been the motive, the
change from the position of persons holding by a base tenure
in 1381 must have been immeasurably different from what it
was in 1452, when in the latter year the tenants were able, not
only to force the Abbess of Sion into a renunciation of a third
of her dues, but to enlist so powerful a body as the Prior of
Deerhurst, Sir Ralph Cotiller, and others, to assist at and
enforce the reduction of these liabilities.

It must not be imagined that the landowners and capitalists
of the fifteenth century were indifferent to gain, and solely
concerned with military operations. One of the most renowned
captains of Henry’s wars, Sir John Fastolfe, after having
amassed a very considerable fortune in the wars and having
settled in Norfolk, engaged very actively in the business of a
corn dealer with the Low Countries. Many of his papers
after his death came into the hands of Waynflete, the founder
of Magdalene College, Oxford, and a protégé of Henry VI.
He was appointed by this king his first master at Eton
College, and, on Beaufort’s death, to the bishopric of Win-
chester. He appears to have been Fastolfe’s executor, and
to have succeeded in diverting a portion of the funds, which
the deceased captain intended for a very different foundation,
to the opulent college in Oxford which he was endowing.
From these papers, still preserved in the archives of the
college, we find that Fastolfe sent large consignments of malt
from Norfolk to Flanders, with which country it is probable
that such transactions were habitually carried on. The price
of barley and malt was exceedingly low in the Eastern Counties

19
200 The Landlord's Remedtes.

during the greater part of the fifteenth century; and as the
law permitted its exportation when the price was below a
certain amount, the trade was constantly brisk. The malt
appears to have generally been shipped from the port of
Norwich. In return, the Flemings taught the Eastern Counties
the use of hops, which appear to have been employed in that
region for flavouring beer nearly half a century before they
became known to the rest of England. It is highly probable
that the practice, of which the accidental preservation of
Fastolfe’s accounts informed me, was very general, and that
not a little, we may hope, of Cromwell’s fortune was procured
from this innocent source.

The passion for acquiring land was further stimulated by
the success with which trade was carried on in the fifteenth
century, certainly for that early part of it which preceded
the loss of the French and Gascon seaboard. I shall take
occasion hereafter to point out what the nature of that trade
was, how it was extended, and how the Cannyngs and the
Chicheles were the prosperous successors of the Poles, the Wal-
worths, and the Whittingtons, But the principal evidence of the
opulence of England in the fifteenth century is to be found
in its splendid churches and handsome residences. The
castle gives way in the greater part of the country to the
embattled house, built when the owner was wealthy and
luxurious, if he could afford it, of the new and costly material,
brick. And such brick it was. After four centuries it is as
good and sharp as when it was first turned out of the kilns.
Arches were turned in it, which might, for their flatness and the
strength of their crowns, well excite the envy of the modern
builder, or rather of the modern householder. The vast and
solid churches, too, with their lofty towers, are a special result
of the wealth and taste of the fifteenth century, more costly,
more business-like, but far less full of that poetry in stone
which marks the exquisite structures of the earlier genera-
tions. These places, like York Cathedral, were long in build-
ing, for the great minster was being slowly raised through the
greater part of the fifteenth century, and, if all told is true, this
noble church was paid for by expedients which were so scanda-
Effects of the New System. 291

lous that they gave no slight motive tothe Reformation. But
there is no building of this age which is marked by the
beauties and the luxury of the time so fully as the gift of the
pious Cannyngs, the church of St. Mary’s, Redcliffe. Success-
ful trade was no doubt a great source of English wealth in the
time before me, but it was by no means the only source.
The architectural antiquary can illustrate the fact more fully
than I can pretend to do, or, for the matter of that, the
professional architect.

It is more important for me to consider the consequences
which ensued from the extinction of the capitalist landlord,
and the decline of stock and land letting in England. They
are so significant and become so permanent that they form an
epoch in the social and economical condition of the country.

In the first place, they materially altered and ultimately
destroyed those qualifications in the crude law of primo-
geniture which had for a long time modified its stringency.
Whether it were by ordinance or custom, matters not ; whether
it arose at the epoch of the Conquest, or during that obscure
period when the Norman and Saxon customs were being
amalgamated in order to give effect to an aristocratical
system, is not probably discoverable; but it is certain that
the rule of giving the whole fee to the eldest son was early
established, not only in the military tenures, but in that which
we are advised the Norman settler would have disdained,—_the
estate of the free socager. The Kentish landowner kept his
custom of equal division among all heirs of the same degree.
There were manors where the serf was allowed to partition
his holding, and some in which the parody of primogeniture,
the succession of the youngest, under the name of borough
English, was allowed, not without coarse guesses at the origin
of the practice, to prevail, or was, maybe, constrained, in
order that the lord might have the longest possible succession
in the labour of his serf. But, with these exceptions, the
whole land was under the custom of primogeniture. I have
stated above that this custom was virtually modified under
the system of capitalist cultivation by landlords. As long as
the stock and land lease existed, it was in a less degree
292 The Landlord's Remedzes.

alleviated. But as soon as ever the farmer’s tenancy came
into existence, and the farmer’s capital superseded the earlier
systems, the custom of primogeniture became absolute and
dominant.

We know now, from the records of religious and secular
corporations, that the stock and land lease was not infrequent
with such proprietors. We know that even the old system
of capitalist cultivation survived among some corporate land-
owners. But the majority of corporate estates, and almost
all private estates, were, after a varying period, which averages
some sixty or seventy years, according to the date at which
the custom began, let to ordinary tenant farmers on short
leases, who cultivated the land with their own capital, because
they had succeeded in saving so much from the profits of a
business, in which three times the value of the land was
needed as capital in the older days, when land was cheap,
and one-and-a-half times at least in later times was needed,
as to either purchase their holdings out and out, of course
with the old rents, or to cultivate a lease with their own
property. My reader may perhaps think that this is an
extravagant interpretation of the facts ; but he will remember,
if he has followed what I have pointed out pretty often, that
there was little difference between a terminable and a per-
petual lease, as far as the charge on the lessee was concerned,
and that the real difference, discovered later on, when the
money value of a fee farm rent was seen to be fixed, and
that of a renewable lease was seen to be elastic, lay in the
precarious nature of the latter. In point of fact, the way in
which, on a demise, the lord could raise the letting value of
his estate to a temporary tenant, was by mulcting him ofa
part of the average profits of agriculture, under the threat of
eviction. When a considerable number of the tenants were
freeholders at a full fee farm rent, by which I mean a rent
not at all below what the tenant on a lease would pay, no
grievance would arise in the mind of the lessee on a term;
but when the landlord succeeded in exacting, under threat of
eviction, an increased rent, that result ensued which Fitz-
hubert deprecates and Latimer denounces,—the raising of
The Younger Son. 293

the rent on the tenant, so that he dared not improve, and
perhaps could hardly live.

It is not surprising that the landowner strove to screw his
tenants. It is certain that during the fifteenth century the
landowner was unable to screw them directly, and that the
rack rent is a product of the early part of the sixteenth
century. There is good reason to believe that the manorial
lords enclosed largely where they could, and so curtailed the
common pasture. This was the natural process by which a
sheep farm was constructed, and sheep farms were common in
the fifteenth century. But the lord had also to provide for his
own. Any person who cares to study the Fastz Anglicant,
by which the editors of that laborious publication mean the
succession of the English bishops and deans, will see how
the younger son after the Great Plague was quartered on the
English Church. Even in the fourteenth century we find
the names of Arundel, Courtney, Grandison, Nevil, Percy,
Spenser, Stratford, Wentworth. They were more numerous
in the fifteenth.

The great resource of the younger son, without land or
means, and therefore sure to be quartered on the English
people, was the army. The great war with France was
maintained in the interest of the younger son. When the
war was over he was to be a hanger on at the elder brother's
house, or at the Court. For generations he was a mischievous,
and sometimes a hateful adventurer. But as long as the
stock and land lease lasted, he had his prospects in the
division of the family estate. When it was no longer his
share, he became a soldier of fortune. No one, I think, can
doubt this, when he compares the aristocratic feuds of the
reign of Richard II. with those of Henry VI. They were as
bitter in the former reign as in the latter. I find it difficult
to discover any more savage family vendetta than that
between the house of Lancaster and the house of Norfolk
after 1397. It endured for nearly a century, and was sus-
pected; and, suspicion always awakening vengeance, punished
for nearly a century more. It is true that the rivals in the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries abstained from harrying
204 The Landlord's Remedies.

the peasant. But it is quite certain that they fought the
battle out among themselves till both were nearly exhausted,
and that Richard was only able to levy a poor following
when he met the latest adventurer at Bosworth.

The perils of the war of succession, or, as I should prefer
to name it, the war of the nobles, who had not the hypocrisy
to call it, as the French at the same epoch did, the war of
the public good, led to the general use of entails and the
adoption of the civil law expedient of trusts. The mischief
of the former, as far as the political result went, was obviated
by parliamentary attainder; that of the latter, under the
name of uses, was more immediately unmanageable and
more permanently disastrous. I am disposed to believe that
parliamentary attainder was much more a threat than a
reality, more a proclamation that loss would ensue if par-
tizanship in arms were persisted in, than a real risk to
combatants. On any other hypothesis I cannot under-
stand how it was that on petition, at least in the reign of
Edward IV., a parliamentary attainder was always remitted
by the king. We are told that Edward was suspicious and
vindictive. And much might have made him so. He had
to deal with a bitter faction, once dominant, and only lately
repressed or proscribed. He had to count with the creatures
of his own folly, a new nobility and political nepotism. He
subdued the defection of those to whom he owed much,
and who thought he owed them much more—the most
dangerous enemies with whom any man has to deal, and
with whom a ruler can hardly make any terms, He lived
in an age when the revenge of injuries had risen to the
dignity of a moral virtue, to be corrected only with the
pretence of forgiveness and the exaction of the fullest
usury for the delay. He had to deal with the hardest
struggle of all, the treachery of his own brother, the only
person whom he could not forgive. But he forgave every one
else, excused their hostility, remitted their forfeitures. But
he was expensive and poor. His grandson remitted nothing
which came within the reach of his clutches.

But the use, or the trust, as it was subsequently called,
The Effects of the Younger Son. 295

was a different matter. It was the origin of the true law
of entail, under which the possession of land may be a
danger, and is the means of fraud. It perpetuated the
poverty of the younger son and the system of quartering
him on the public purse. It was the origin of the principle
of vested interests, perhaps the most anti-social and danger-
ous doctrine which has pretended to justify the robbery of
all labour, and will justify the antagonism of all labour to
privilege. The development of the younger son as a social
pauper and a social leech, is at the bottom of most of the
financial extravagances and all the financial meanness of the
English administrations to our own day. It is difficult to be
thrifty in the public expenditure where one should be, and
impossible to be generous where one ought to be. It is
true that the most glaring scandals of the old system have
been put out of sight, but not a few of the indirect incon-
veniences remain, and among them especially the retention
of sham offices in the public service.

In the fifteenth century these law-made paupers appear to
have been quartered on the royal revenues, especially on the
hereditary estate of the Crown. Ina later age they were put
on such fixed sources of revenue as were considered to be
permanent, such as the post-office or the civil list. Hence
the constant outcry in the fifteenth century, when the poverty
of the Crown rendered an appeal to Parliament almost annual,
or at least as frequent as the meeting of Parliament, that
grants should be resumed. The prayer is often answered
affirmatively, but the exceptions are so numerous that the
remedy is one of little efficacy. My readers will be familiar
with the history of the struggle between Parliament and
William IIL, when that king, with very pardonable feelings,
wished to reward and enrich the Dutch gentlemen who had
followed and served him.

The leases which were granted to tenants were, as I have
said, generally short,—from six to ten years. This rule was,
I conceive, not adopted in the hope that rents might be
raised at the termination of the period, since the rent for the
mere use of land was singularly invariable from the earliest
296 The Landlord's Remedies.

times till close upon the end of the sixteenth century, but in
order to secure the constant verification of the property from
which the rent issued. It is a curious fact, too, that these
tenancies were generally made up of a number of plots, the
terms for which ran out at different periods. Thus a farmer
might have five or six separate holdings from the same land-
lord, the demise of which might, and constantly did, run over
the whole period for which he held his longest lease. His
tenure would cease, say, in one plot, in two years from a given
date; in another, the remainder would be three years; in
another, four; in another, five, and so on, so that his leases
were constantly falling in and being renewed or transferred
to another tenant. It seems probable that such a system
arose by the fact that the small tenants extended their
holdings as opportunities offered, taking a strip here, a land
there, a close in another place, a meadow in a fourth place,
at different dates. The custom, much more frequent in
ordinary estates than it was in those of corporations, must
have indirectly given the tenant a hold on his tenancy which
he would not have had if the whole estate were entered on
at once, and all the parcels of the occupancy were for the
same term. I do not imagine that, provided his rent was
paid, the tenant was often disturbed, as it was not till the
sixteenth century that attempts at rack-renting began.
Grants of freehold estate for life are by no means un-
common in the earliest times. But these tenancies I generally
find were additions made to the holding of some existing
freeholder in fee of inheritance, in consideration of some
service rendered, or in satisfaction of some debt, or for any
other private reason of the lord’s own. Thus, at Ibstone, in
1298, one of the free tenants, who holds a half-virgate by deed,
under conditions of certain payments in money, kind, and
labour, holds also a couple of crofts containing another half-
virgate for the term of his life, at a rent, but without service.
But it is unlikely that life estates were, in early times, or for
a long time subsequently, common. An instance apparently
to the contrary occurs to me in a tenure of the fifteenth
century. In 1441, John Franke, Master of the Rolls, devised
Leases and ther Kinds. 297

41,000 to his executors in order to purchase lands for the
benefit of Oriel College. The college acquired, with com-
mendable self-denial, the reversionary interest in a Berkshire
estate, then held for life by John Norris and his wife Alice,
and were a good deal disappointed at the prolonged period
during which the widow’s life was protracted. It is, however,
quite possible that these persons, being childless, had them-
selves purchased the freehold as an annuity, as the best means
for investing their funds, or savings, since the college pur-
chased their interest from the reversioners.

It is said that the monastic houses, foreseeing the dissolution
which threatened them, and for which there were very ominous
precedents during the fifteenth century in the confiscation of
the alien priories, and the not infrequent suppression of indi-
vidual religious houses on the plea of misconduct, began to
grant long leases of forty years or more. It is, I believe, well
ascertained that, at the general dissolution, such leases were
found to have been very frequent, and that in consequence
the spoil in land was far less in actual value than had been
anticipated, though the chattels of the religious houses must
have been relatively of enormous value. This is confirmed by
the fact that very shortly after the dissolution Henry was in
as great pecuniary difficulties as ever, an incredible result had
he not only acquired the chattels, much of which probably went
to pay his debts, but the lands, which are over and over again
said to have been one-third of the whole area of the kingdom.
‘The reversionary interest in these lands was very large, but
even this appears to have been soon lost or alienated from the
Crown.

The practice of the religious corporations was followed by
the secular clergy and the colleges, who adopted the system
of granting long leases of lands, renewable at fixed periods on
the payment of a fine. Originally these fines were very small,
probably only a handsel, or earnest money, or a compli-
mentary present to the principal authorities of the corpora-
tion. The fine for entrance was familiar enough in the case
of copyholders or tenants in villeinage, and instances could
be multiplied of such payments by such tenants on the entry
298 The Landlord's Remedies.

or succession to customary estates. But they are not entered
on the earlier college accounts, either because they were
trivial and treated as the perquisites of the officials, or
because they were not paid at all. The earliest price for
entry by a personage who must have entered on one of
these leases is a payment of £50 made by the Earl of
Derby to King’s College for the zztvoit into Prescot in the
year 1533-4.

There was, however, one considerable source of income
besides sheep farming, to which allusion has been made
already. I refer to the profits obtained from the sale of
firewood and timber. The more opulent and better-built houses
had long possessed chimneys, and with the use of the new
material, brick, these conveniences became general and even
necessary; the purchases of bricks in places where the article
was not, as in the Eastern Counties, largely manufactured,
being generally described as for fireplaces. I find andirons
in the Eastern part of England early in the beginning of the
fifteenth century. In these fireplaces wood, called generally
tall-wood, was burnt, as also what was called logs and great
wood, the trimmings of timber. Faggots, reed, sedge, and
turf were burnt in open grates, but most commonly were
employed, it seems, for heating ovens.

The most important kind of fuel, however, was charcoal.
The trade of the charcoal-burner was very ancient and very
common, considerable districts where wood was abundant
being occupied by colliers, and the price of the article rapidly
rising. The most common way for warming the large halls
of mansions and colleges was by a charcoal-burner set in the
middle of the hall and filled with glowing embers, the fumes
of the burning mass escaping through a lantern in the roof.
These vast charcoal grates have been continued within
modern memory in some of the Cambridge colleges, and
must have been exceedingly common at an earlier period.
I have constantly found, in examining the accounts of colleges
in Oxford and Cambridge, that the amount received from
the woods of these corporations rapidly became equal to
and gradually exceeded the rent derivable from the lands
Rents tn Kind. 299:

let to farm or lease, till at last the profits on their woods
became the most important source of income.

One other expedient was adopted, peculiar, as far as I
have been able to discover, to the Eastern Counties, where
rents were as stationary and inelastic as elsewhere. This was.
to stipulate that, in place of money, the tenant should pay a
certain amount of wheat, barley, or malt, and a number of
sheep at fixed rates. Thus a corporation would require
twenty quarters of wheat and an equal amount of barley to-
be supplied to them at 5s. and 4s. a quarter, when the market.
value of these commodities would be three times as great..
So they would demand the delivery of fifty sheep at Is. 6a.
or 2s. each, as the case may be, when the market prices show
a similar rise in the true price of mutton. This practice:
begins very early, and even before the rise of prices, which I.
shall comment on hereafter. It seems to me to be an
attempt to get in an indirect way that increase of rent
which the landowner evidently thought he ought to obtain,.
but which he was hopeless of obtaining in money. At last,.
as far as Oxford and Cambridge and the two great schools
of Winchester and Eton were concerned, the practice was.
enforced by law, under the celebrated statute of 1576. This.
statute is supposed to-have been due to the prescience of Bur--
leigh, but the principle had been adopted many years before:
in that part of England with which Burleigh in his earlier-
days was familiar, and in which the spoils of the Cecils had.
been accumulated. That it had not been adopted in other
parts of England was not, I conclude, from want of will, but.
from want of opportunity, or from the jealously conservative:
attitude of the tenant farmers,
320

CHAPTER XI,

THE DEVELOPMENT OF TAXATION,

‘The Particular Scope of Economical History—The Revolutions of 1399 and 1668
Compared—The Parliaments of Henry IV.—The Career and Character of
Henry V.—The Taxes of the Time—The Character of Henry VI.—The
Wealth of the Aristocracy and the Poverty of the King—The Speaker’s
Function—Income Taxes—The Allowance for Impoverished Towns-—-The
Speakership of Tresham—The Unpopularity of the Bishops—Cade’s Rebellion
—The Imprisonment and Death of Henry—Tresham’s Finance —Thorpe’s
Budget—Edward IV. and his Revenue—Benevolences—Henry VII. ; his
Income Tax—The Aid of 1503—The Expedients of Henry—The Treaty of
‘Commerce—The Succession of Henry VIII.—His Extravagance—The Dis-
solution of the Monasteries—The Acquisitions soon squandered—The
Debasement of the Currency.

q N dealing with the history of agriculture and wages, I
am not immediately concerned with those topics on
which historians ordinarily dilate. The struggles of bygone
‘diplomacy, the claims of extinct dynasties, the exploits of
historical heroes, the rivalries of buried factions, the ambitions
of mythical statesmanship, the plans of obsolete policy, the
enmities and friendships, the intrigues, the victories, the
defeats of kings, generals, and ministers, are nearly all out of
that which I propose to myself. They are properly recorded
and dwelt on by historians. It may be that not a single force
in politics is wasted, as we are told none are in nature, and that
if we could trace the effect of those political occurrences, which
are not wholly superficial, we should be able to follow them into
the life of our own age. It is sometimes, indeed, the fortune
of the historian to detect some such results, and to trace
them back to their veritable causes,—as, for example, the
development of the Burgundian duchy of the fifteenth century,
and its influence on the politics of Western Europe even up
Economical History. 307

to recent times. But the narrative of the historian rarely aids
the science of politics, and only occasionally the philosophy
of society.

But the knowledge of what a nation’s industry and economy
have been, the discovery of the processes by which the facts
and purposes of the past have been developed into the habits,
the traditions, the pursuits, and the energies of the present,
is the true history of the race. Unfortunately, no age, except
by accident, takes cognizance designedly of contemporaneous
practice, and the economical historian has to piece his par-
ticulars together, when he can obtain them, with the same
care which the naturalist adopts (though, unfortunately, he
cannot do it with the same conviction) who builds up a
skeleton and an organism from a few fragments of bone.
Here, however, all facts have their place and relevancy ; for
it is more certain that the existing generation of Englishmen
have received their habits, their practices, and their public
character from a series of continuous and abiding influences,
than it even is that they have inherited capacities and ten-
dencies from the generations of whom they are the descend-
ants. It is, however, necessary that I should give a sketch
of the leading political events of the age which I am treating,
partly because the action of governments always has its in-
fluence on the economical condition of the nation, however
much the genius of a people can modify the effect induced
by the administration of its public affairs, and partly because
“the financial expedients of government illustrate the social
condition of the people. The fifteenth century, moreover,
has a peculiar interest to English students. In it the most
important constitutional principles were affirmed and the
most important parliamentary precedents established, so that
the patriots of the first Stuart kings could claim that they
were restoring the fabric of a bygone age when they were
resisting the forces of despotism and the conspiracies of the
Court and the Church.

The Revolution of 1399 bears a strong resemblance to that
of 1688—the difference of time and manners considered. In
both cases, a sovereign, who a little while before appeared to
302 The Development of Taxation.

‘have a secure throne, was suddenly deposed from his dignity
and found to be entirely friendless. In both cases a powerful
‘faction of nobles and churchmen prepared the revolution,
and for atime the whole country acquiesced in it. In both
dt was found necessary, if the change were to be made, to
supersede an infant heir of higher claim than the sovereign
avho was actually accepted. In both cases, the reaction com-
amenced immediately after the throne appeared to be settled.
‘In both cases, the new king had to reckon with a discontented
‘faction of nobles and churchmen. In both cases, the worst
‘enemy of the new monarch was a man whom he had loaded
‘with benefits but could not satisfy, who had aided the revo-
lution by his dissimulation and strove to reverse it by his
-perfidy ; for Northumberland was as false and as treacherous
.as Marlborough, and though Henry was constrained to keep
peace abroad in order to maintain himself at home, and
William’s life was, except for a short period, engaged in an
incessant struggle with the French king, yet each reign was
4ollowed by a succession of splendid victories, which in the
end were barren. And, to make the parallel complete even
‘in particulars, the first Parliament of Henry was summoned
under circumstances not unlike those of the Convention Par-
diament under William. !
‘Whether :it was that the Commons of the fifteenth century
‘thought that the Parliament which changed the succession
-and put Henry -on the throne was entitled to be consulted
in the conduct of all affairs and to be strengthened in its
privileges, or the peculiar character of the times aided their
pretensions, it is.certain that at no time before, and, for many
enerations, at no time subsequently, did the Parliament
-obtain so large.a place in the government. They claim to
-have a conference with a Committee of the Lords; they go
-some distance in taking cognizance of their own returns; they
‘insist on privilege of Parliament; they claim the right of
‘sending for and amending the Lords’ Bills ; they provide that
due notice shall be given of elections; they extend the county
‘franchise to suitors in the county court and all others, which
seems to bestow .a universal suffrage in the counties; they
The Revolution of 1399—Henry lV. 303

attempt to exercise an absolute control over the administra-
tion and the estates of the Crown, and appear to have secured
to themselves the right of originating grants. If, as was
Stated at the time, the execution of Scrope was followed
immediately by Henry’s sickening with leprosy, we may
conclude, perhaps, that the public opinion of the age con-
sidered that Henry's treatment of his cousin, which was said
to have been signally perfidious, was visited by the dis-
pleasure of Providence. It is not unlikely, too, that Henry
had found it necessary to bribe his partizans in the revolution
with lavish grants from the Crown estates, as he was con-
stantly appealing to his subjects for money, and they for
their part ordered a resumption of his grants, and prohibited
in the future that any person should receive part of the
ancient inheritance of the Crown without the consent of
Parliament. And yet the king had added to the ordinary
estate of the Crown the extensive possessions of the duchy
of Lancaster, which remained a separate domain till it was
united to the Crown by Edward IV., though it was kept, as
it is to this day, under an independent administration.

But whether the unpopularity of Henry was due to the
defects of his title, to the perjuries by which he had won his
crown, and to the harshness of the means which he employed
to make his position secure, or to the compliances and con-
‘cessions which he made in order to disarm opposition, or to
the blight and disease which came upon his life, and cut him
off at an early age—he was a little over forty-seven years old
at his death—everything was forgotten in the splendid career
of his son. Henry of Monmouth was twelve years old at the
time of Richard’s deposition, and only sixteen when he
fought with Percy at Shrewsbury. If the stories of his
youthful dissipations are not pure inventions, they are pro-
bably heightened by contrast with the stern morality of his
riper years, and were perhaps invented by the Lollards, whom
he felt himself constrained to persecute. No English monarch
was ever more popular than Henry. He had to meet a
conspiracy at the beginning of his reign, but it was put down
with little difficulty. He had previously escaped from a
304 The Development of Taxation.

conspiracy of some desperate and fanatical Lollards, whom
persecution had driven to fury, and whose rank in society
shows how the teachings of the Wiklifite party had permeated
the most unlikely persons.

Henry united those qualities which the English have always
admired but have rarely witnessed even in their best kings.
He was strictly orthodox and severely just, tenacious of his
right, and loyal to his word. He wasa model of private virtue,
of knightly courage, of military skill, who conquered fortune
rather than was favoured by her. He seems to have entered
on the French war not merely to recover what was lost by the
violated peace of Bretigni, perhaps to revive and enforce his
claim of descent, but more to correct the frightful scandals
of the French Court and society. Heannounces his purposes
and his motives in language like that of some Puritan com-
mander in the early days of the Parliamentary War, as though
he had been sent by God to chastise the guilty. His army,
well schooled, drilled, and invincible, was kept under rigid dis-
cipline, and, as far as the king could make it, was as pious as
Cromwell’s Ironsides, as confident as they were in the genius
of its general, as staunch in the hour of battle, and as severe
in that of victory. Nor was Henry simply influenced by the
lust of conquest. He was beyond measure anxious to heal
the scandals which troubled the Church and the schism which
distracted it. He did all in his power to hasten the assem-
blage of the Council of Constance, and to constrain all heretics
and schismatics, from the Pope to the Hussites, to obey the
will of Christendom in that assembly of kings and prelates
and doctors of law. He could not suffer the Lollards, whose
tenets he believed to be subversive of society as well as
dishonouring to God. But he condescended to argue with
these sectaries, and to show them, as he thought, the more
excellent way, lamenting that their obstinacy left him no
alternative to the punishment which the law inflicted on
them.

The demands of the first two Henries of the House ot
Lancaster were met by grants of fifteenths and tenths, by
taxes on wool and hides, differential duties being levied on
Henry V.—The War with France. 305

these materials when exported by aliens, and by increased
ad valorem duties on exports and imports. These fifteenths
and tenths were granted nearly every year. During the first
twelve years of the century, the price of wool is exceedingly
high, and though after this the value falls slightly, it keeps
high for the first thirty years. It is plain, therefore, that
the export duty did not lower the price of the article or
materially check its use, and that, therefore, it was practically
paid by the foreign consumer. If, as I stated above, a
fifteenth and tenth amount to 5 per cent. on lay incomes,
and something less than Io per cent. on clerical incomes, the
direct taxation of the war amounted to nearly Io per cent.
on the laity, and nearly double that on the clergy. But no
discontent is expressed at these burdens as long as the
war was successful or not unprosperous. The total revenue
derived from the customs and the wool tax appears to
have been a little over £40,000, of which 430,000 was
derived from wool.

The French War lasted with hardly a truce from Aug. 11th,
1415, when Henry sailed from Southampton, till July 17th,
1453, when Talbot and his son fell before Chatillon. The
charges of the war did not exhaust the wealth of England,
for one sees in a thousand ways how great was the opulence
and abundance of the country, if one gathered it only
from the style of living and in the expenditure of great
corporations before and after the change which took place
in the sixteenth century. But it demoralised an influential
section of the English people, and it filled the country, after the
struggle with France was over, with military adventurers,
who were eager to enter into the service of those nobles
who, now divided by rancorous feuds, some of them con-
tinued from the days of the Lords Appellants, were ready
for civil war, with or without a genuine pretext.

As long as the alliance with Burgundy lasted and the
Duke of Bedford lived, the war in France seemed likely to
be successful, or at least to be open to a settlement on
terms favourable to the English claims. But the English were
expelled from Paris in April 1436, the year after Bedford

20
306 The Development of Taxatzon.

died. The utmost that they could expect was to retain
Normandy and Guienne, the connecting links of which were
Anjou and Maine. The successors of Bedford were Suffolk,
Somerset, and York.

While the war in France was being carried on, the princi-
pal figure in English society was a prince whom every one
revered, no one consulted, and every one, who could do so,
pillaged. Born on December 6th, 1421, he was less than nine
months old at his father’s death, and he had been brought
up by the old Earl of Warwick, who had scourged all his
spirit out in his youth. In business, especially the business
of the kingdom, Henry was always a child. He seems to
have taken no part in it, but always to have remained in-
different and passive in the hands of those who administered
his affairs, whether it were Beaufort or Gloucester, Suffolk
or Somerset or York. To the English he was a saint, per-
haps almost the only saint of the fifteenth century. He was
not a monk, for the monk of this age had become a gross
and greedy voluptuary, whom every one wished to get rid of,
though no one saw how to do without him decently. Henry
was no ascetic, nor did he pretend to disclaim natural affections,
He was loving to his mother, he was generous to his half-
brothers, whose education and advancement he took care of;
he was warm-heaited to all his kinsfolk ; he conferred great
benefits on the man who was afterwards his rival; he heaped
honours on the Neviles, who owed everything to his family;
on the Mowbrays, who were his hereditary foes; onthe Beau-
forts, the Percies, and the Poles, who were his parasites and
who ruined him. He was gentle and affectionate to the
furious woman whom he married, who, like one of those
mysterious persons in ancient tragedies, was the evil genius
of his house, the reputed murderess of his last surviving
uncle, and who made it at last impossible that he should
reign, since, under his name, she was bent on destroying all
those whom she hated. The king’s delight seems to have
been in reconciling foes, in hearing mass (his courtiers would
allow him to hear no sermons which they had not previously
perused and approved), in watching the boys for whom he
Henry VI.—fits Character. 307

had provided at Eton, in giving them kindly and affectionate
advice, and in surprising those whom he met and with whom
he conversed by his exceeding simplicity and unworldliness,
Before he was twelve years old, the estate of the Crown had
been nearly squandered, and the king was hopelessly im-
poverished. The annual regular expenditure had become
more than five times the hereditary income of the king, and
nearly four years of this expenditure were in arrear.

Henry was the most unlucky of English monarchs, After
such a minority, no abilities could have saved him, and he
had none. He inherited a war in which he took no share,
except as part of a pageant. The lord of two kingdoms,
he had no authority in either, The war which made others
rich made him a pauper. Fastolfe and Cromwell gathered
gigantic fortunes from the spoils of office, from the spoils of
war, and from lucrative trade. The opulence of the great
houses of the Neviles, with their fortunate marriages, their
numerous titles, their vast estates; of the Beauforts, the
Holands, the Poles, and the rest, was prodigious. The
riches of the great English houses were amazing even to
men like De Commines, who had been familiar with the
opulence of the House of Burgundy and the wealth of the
great Flemish burghers. When acts of resumption were
passed, we-can see in the exceptions the noble mob who
were squabbling over the plunder of the Crown, and were
soon to fly at each others’ throats like wild beasts,

A curse seemed to hang over the House of Lancaster.
When, in 1406, the Parliament settled the crown on the king’s
sons successively, it might have seemed that there was every
prospect of numerous issue to the House of John of Gaunt.
Four sons (the daughters are passed over in the Act), the
Prince, Clarence, Bedford, and Gloucester would hardly be
childless. But the eldest had died leaving one child; the
next was slain in battle; and the other two, both married
twice, had died without issue, the youngest not without
suspicion of foul play. The king was married in 1445, when
he was in his twenty-fourth year. But there was no child
of the marriage for more than eight years, and it seemed
308 The Development of Taxatzon.

likely that the family would become extinct. From certain
statements in the rolls of Parliament it seems as though the
succession in 1450 was supposed to be in the Beauforts. It
is probable, however, that others looked to the Duke of York.
The animosity which existed between the House of York
and that of Somerset was certainly first developed during the
time in which Henry was childless, and the title of the pre-
sumptive heir to the crown was necessarily discussed. But it
is noteworthy that during the whole of Gascoigne’s life, though
he was plainly unfriendly to the administration, and had little
respect for the person of his king, this writer does not give a
hint of the superior claims of the House of York, nor, indeed,
of any claim other than that of the king in possession. Now
Gascoigne died on March 12th, 1458, and was writing certainly
up to within three months of his death.

In the early days of parliamentary history, the Speaker was,
to use a modern phrase, the Chancellor of the Exchequer. He
framed budgets and announced grants, and, it may be noted
that up to the date of the Union, the Speaker of the Irish
Commons always held this office. That he took counsel with
the House of Commons is undoubted, but the initiative in taxa-
tion having been now tacitly resigned to the Commons, since
it would have been inconvenient, if not indecent, to discuss
the question in the Lords, and before the king, the Speaker
announced his plans for the consideration of his fellows. That
they were in the main his own is, I think, clear from the
various expedients which different Speakers adopted. On
Dec. 23rd, 1435, John Bowes, Member for Notts, and Speaker,
gave, among several other grants, the first income tax that
I have read of to the service of the Crown. It is graduated,
and in three schedules. The minimum taxable income
derived from manors, lands, tenements, rents, annuities, and
offices, and all other temporal possessions of freehold, is £5 a
year. On this income and others up to £100 a year, the tax
is to be 6a. in the pound. Between 4100 a year and £400,
the tax is to be 8d. in the pound. On incomes above £400
a year, 2s. in the pound. It is noteworthy that this income
tax, like the others of the fifteenth century, satisfies the
The Graduated Income Taxes. 309

conditions of Adam Smith’s “First Law of Taxation,”
that it claims from those who pay it a sum proportionate
to what they are enjoying under the protection of the
State; a graduated income tax levied on permanent revenue
being the only tax which exactly squares with Smith’s
rule. It may be observed that Pitt’s first income tax was
graduated, though the maximum stopped at a very low
amount.

It is possible that a laborious search in the pipe rolls would
give the amount collected under this tax, and nothing would
be more instructive than a tabulated account of the persons
who came under the three schedules, and the amounts paid
in the several counties. We may, however, I think, conclude
that a considerable number of persons must have been ranged
under each of the schedules in order to have given the finan-
cial expedient any significance or value, and that this applies
even to incomes over £400 a year, since, large as the residual
tax is, we must conclude that Bowes intended to raise a
revenue by it. Again, it seems piain that the tax was intended
to catch the grantees of the Crown, such as those who are
mentioned in Cromwell’s schedule of the king’s liabilities as
quartered on the revenue. It should be added that ecclesias-
tics, though they were allowed to tax themselves on their
ancient possessions, were made liable to the income tax on
all lands which they had acquired by license of mortmain
from the Crown since 20 Edward I. (1292). But I have no
doubt that this income tax supplied a notable revenue. The
wealth of the country had grown rapidly during the fifteenth
century already, to grow more rapidly as the century pro-
gressed. Any one who reads, as I have read by hundreds,
the daily bills of fare of not very wealthy monasteries and
colleges, can understand how sumptuously people fared in
this singularly prosperous age, when Jeshurun waxed fat
and kicked.

Tenths and fifteenths were always the favourite property tax.
But in 1433, a curious custom begins of deducting a sum
(44,000) from the amount given, and, as I have often said, fixed,
for the purpose of enabling the commissioners to relieve any
310 The Development of Taxatzon.

particular town, or even village, from its contribution. In the
great majority of cases the commissioners are plainly left
to their own discretion, though they were no doubt aided
by the representations of the members from the less opulent
districts, who very likely gave the commissioners of the
Exchequer some trouble, and were probably sent to the
authorities to scramble and lobby for these remissions. But
there are always some places named whose claims for exemp-
tion must have been examined and allowed in Parliament.
Thus in the first year Lincoln and Great Yarmouth were
so designated. In 1435, Andover and Lincoln are named;
in 1437, Lincoln, Elm, Wisbeach, and two villages in
Cambridgeshire with it, Andover and Alresford; in 1442,
Lincoln, Cheltenham at half it assessment, Alresford, Scar-
borough and Headington (near Oxford); while Great Yar-
mouth is to pay a quarter of its ordinary liabilities. These
arrangements in Parliament imply not only that the House
of Commons was dealing with the details of finance, but
that there was a considerable amount of intelligence and
method in the way in which the House manipulated public
business, and in the general pressure, was ready to allow for’
exceptional emergency. In the same way we can trace not
obscurely the practice of appropriating supply. In 1445,
the exemption rises from £4,000 to 46,000. The king was
married in this year, and it seems that for a time loyalty
was predominant. In 1446, Gloucester died, as was supposed
murdered by Margaret’s ordér, at Bury. Between this year
and 1450, nearly all the possessions of the English in France
were wrested from them. The Norman towns capitulated,
and Guienne was overrun. The conquests of Henry V.
were lost by the treason or incompetence of those who suc-
ceeded to the inheritance of the great victor and his brother.
The nation was thoroughly angry with the administration,
with the Court, and with the commanders in France. Par-
lament met six days after the capitulation of Rouen, on
Nov. 6th, 1449, determined to take vengeance on those who
had brought English affairs to so shameful a pass. They
did not, however, as they did later on, fall into the trap
The Parliament of 1449 and 1640. 311

of factious opposition. They elected, for the fourth time,
William Tresham as Speaker. This man, as we can see
for a few months through the mists of that time, when the
passions were being roused and the feuds engendered which
were to be extinguished only after thirty years of bloodshed,
was one of the ablest statesmen of the fifteenth century. He
was a member of the king’s household, and his family
remained zealous Lancastrians, It is clear that his re-ap-
pointment to the high office which he had so often held
before was a proof that Parliament was not yet hostile to
the House of Lancaster, and that it was thought possible
that remedies could be found for the alarming state of public
affairs. Somerset was in France, York in Ireland.

The Parliament of 1449 is singularly like that of 1640
in its temper and policy. In both Parliaments the country
had been stirred to its very centre, and an extraordinary
number of new men, instructed to find a full and complete
remedy for the mismanagement of public affairs, was sent
to Westminster. In both, for a time at least, the Common:
were practically unanimous. In both the House insisted on
the redress of grievances before the grant of supply. From
Nov. 6th to Dec. 17th, the Commons debated public affairs.
In both an attempt.was made by the Court to force on those
topics only, which the administration put before them. In
both the king’s ministers and the bishops were the objects
of absolute detestation. In both the Court was surprised
and staggered by the unanimity with which the Commons
insisted on their own course, and by the complete accord
between the two Houses. In both the Commons resolved
to destroy a powerful minister, whom they considered re-
sponsible for all the disorders that had happened, and to
establish a precedent of Parliamentary impeachment which
should be a warning to all bad ministers in future. The
difference between the results of these two great Parliaments
is in the subsequent course of events. Just before the Parlia-
ment metafterthe Christmas recess, one of the King’s ministers,
the Bishop of Chichester, was seized at Portsmouth, put to
a kind of trial, and executed by the populace. Suffolk was
a12 The Development of Taxation.

impeached, imprisoned, released, banished, intercepted, and
slain after the pretence of a trial. The king’s counsellors
were trying to browbeat the Parliament, while the Parliament
was resolved on reforming the royal household and the
administration. While this was going on at Leicester, where
Parliament was sitting, a sudden insurrection, which has
been strangely misrepresented by historians, broke out under
Cade. The bishops fled from London, one into his own
diocese, where he was murdered. The battles of Sevenoaks
and London Bridge were fought, and Cade entered London.
Here Fiennes and his son-in-law were put to death. But
the insurgents dispersed, as Tyler’s did, and Cade was slain.
In the autumn the great Speaker was murdered as he was
on his way to a conference with the Duke of York, and the
civil war virtually began. There is no doubt that Tresham
was assassinated at the instance of that faction which is
particularly identified with Margaret, that of the Percies,
Beauforts, and Cliffords—a faction, namely, withi: the
wider Lancastrian party. I do not dwell on this most in-
teresting and significant part of English history, that in
which the effects follow clearly and closely on the causes,
because the strife of the civil war is essentially of Margaret
and York and the partizans of both, and the struggle does
not appear to have in the least degree affected the ordinary
life of England.

Had the errors of the administration been in any way
chargeable to Henry, his throne would have certainly passed
away in the autumn of 1450. Personally the king was
entirely blameless. No one thought of setting any of the
mischief down to him. When partizanship became furious,
vindictive, implacable, he was no partizan, but was trying
in his poor, gentle way to reconcile enemies. The king’s
blamelessness touched all strangely. The Houses would not
depose him, even after the Coventry Parliament had made
parties irreconcilable. He owed his deposition at last to the
mad fury of his wife. And I make no doubt that he was
used well during the nine years of his residence in the Tower.
While he lived, every one reverenced the saintly and patient
Cade— Tresham. 213

son of the great Henry. Nor do I believe that he was done
to death after Tewkesbury. © The story of his assassination in
the Tower is, I am persuaded, a Tudor calumny ; I prefer to
conclude that nature, which had hid his misfortunes from him
more than once in his life by a lethargy which seemed almost
like death, at last released him in the same merciful fashion
from the recurrent sorrows of his life. It is not surprising that
the heir of his house should have encouraged the belief that
the saint was not only a confessor, but a martyr.

Tresham, who had previously conducted, though a member
of the king’s household, the prosecution of Suffolk, as he was
bound to do in duty to the house whose servant and spokes-
man he was, revived the income tax for which Bowes had
given a precedent fifteen years before. But he takes a much
lower taxable unit, though,as before, he makes three schedules.
Freehold estates in lands, tenements, rents, services, annuities,
offices, fees, pensions, or temporal commodities are declared
liable. In this income tax also persons having an income
for term of life, or, in an annuity not issuing from a certain
place, all persons having occupation in ancient demesne
(previously exempt from taxes) or elsewhere, and all having
estates by copy of court roll of custom of the manor, are
chargeable. The first schedule is from twenty shillings to
twenty pounds annual income. This pays two-and-a-half
percent. The next is between £20 and £200 annual re-
venue, which is to pay five per cent. The third is on incomes
of £200 per year and upwards, which are to pay ten per
cent. on all income over £200. The guardians of tenants in
ward are to pay. Every person having an office, wages, fee
or fees, or term of years is to come under the schedules, but
the first is to begin at forty shillings a year. Four paid com-
missioners are to receive the tax, but no Member of Parlia-
ment is to be a commissioner. The Lords agreed to this
searching and remarkable Property Tax, declaring it
reasonable. They seem to have had fairer views about
taxation in the fifteenth than they have in the nineteenth
century. The next Parliament, which had for its Speaker a
partizan of Cade, was far more hostile to the Court than its
314 The Development of Taxatzon.

predecessor was, It continued the income tax, but heightened
the minimum, beginning with forty shillings revenue from
freehold’ and copyhold lands instead of twenty, and £3
a year from offices instead of £2. No such tax is granted
again till the accession of the Tudor dynasty.

In 1452, the revolt of the Gascons occurred, the nomination
of Shrewsbury to the lieutenancy of Guienne, and the hope
that Aquitaine would be recovered. The hope was short-lived,
the disappointment at its failure great, and the reaction
thorough. But in the interval all was loyalty, enthusiasm,
and confidence. Thorpe was appointed Speaker. This man
was a zealous Lancastrian, and in the retinue of Somerset.
A tenth and fifteenth were granted ; export and import duties,
some of them raised, are given for the king’s life. The taxes
on the export of wool and hides are increased, to a greater
extent, as events proved, than they would bear, a license duty
is put on aliens, and a charge of 13,000 archers for six months
(the Commons offered 20,000) is put virtually on the towns
and counties. They supplemented these grants by that of a
half-fifteenth and a half-tenth. The last grant was on July
2nd,1453. On July 17th occurred the battle of Chatillon, the
deaths of Talbot and his son, and the total wreck of the cam-
paign. The entire amount of the grants must have exceeded
4130,000. Had the king accepted the whole force which the
Commons gave him, it would have exceeded: £160,000, the
largest sum ever offered by the Commons in one year during
the middle ages.

On the re-assembling of Parliament, Thorpe, the Speaker,
was in prison, along with Walter Raleigh, knight of Devon-
shire. The history of this transaction is entirely misconceived.
Thorpe had been convicted in his own court of a trespass,
accompanied by a breach of the peace,—offences for which
there never was privilege of Parliament. The king was
insane, no doubt through the disasters which had occurred
during the summer. Tiptoft, afterwards a zealous and
ferocious Yorkist, was made the king’s lieutenant; but two
days afterwards the Duke of York superseded him. It
is probable that there was a palace revolution, which
Grants in 1453. 315

Margaret and her party could not resist. Her son had been
born in the previous October, during the king’s insanity.
The story of Henry’s dementia is told minutely in the rolls
of Parliament. The Battle of the Kites and the Crows com-
mences with the affair of St. Albans, May 22nd, 745 5, and
Parliament becomes the toy of faction.

I have referred to the financial expedients of the Bia war
with France at some length. They indicate, first, that finance
was attempted on system and on principles. It is true that
the fiscal system of the time was mainly direct, no other
being, I conceive, possible under the circumstances. But it
is clear also that the Commons did their best, while they
called on all to contribute, to make those pay who could best
afford it, by imposing a graduated income-tax on the property
of the wealthier classes, and this when there is no reason to
doubt that the knights of the shire at least belonged to this
class themselves. I do not pretend to admire the virtue or
the honour of public men in the fifteenth century, though it
is clear to me that the laity were infinitely better than the
clergy; but the English gentry, who put these heavy burdens
on themselves at a crisis of the nation’s affairs, will contrast
very favourably with their descendants, who, when Pitt
proposed to tax real estate with legacy duty at the same rate
as personalty, compelled him to withdraw that part of his
budget, while they cheerfully taxed the small savings of
industry, under the threat of turning him out of office,—a
threat to which he ignobly yielded. Again, when he ventured
to adopt in a slight degree the principle of a graduated income
tax, they compelled him also to relinquish that, though the
suffering and sacrifice in England were far greater in the
beginning of the nineteenth than they were in the middle of
the fifteenth century, and the danger to the country was in-
comparably more threatening. The great war with France
in the days of our fathers and grandfathers was fought with
the blood and sweat of the industrial classes, while the profits
and the vaunts went to the propertied and capitalist few.
And, again, the enormous amount, relatively speaking, of
taxation which the English Parliament gladly offered when
316 The Development of Taxation.

it seemed that it might be spent worthily, is a proof of how
singularly prosperous England was during the fifteenth
century. It was, indeed, said that the taxes on wool were
too heavy, and depressed the price. They were speedily
reduced to a more moderate amount.

Edward IV. asked his people for very few taxes, if we can
rely on the rolls of Parliament. There are only four grants
of fifteenths and tenths. In view of the expedition which was
concluded by the Peace of Pecquigni, Edward obtained the
grant of the 13,000 archers which was promised nineteen
years before. I entirely discredit the stories told of this
king’s tyranny and suspiciousness. All the evidence of his
reign is against the charge. He never refuses a petition for
pardon; while the errors and misfortunes of his reign, and
the calamities which came upon his house, appear to have
resulted from the neglect of the commonest precautions and

"an overmastering confidence in his own genius and good
fortune. He lived with most treacherous men in a most
treacherous age, when political perfidy was being gradually
developed into a science by such masters in the craft as
Louis of France and the Italian princes, while he had to be
on his guard against enemies in his own household, as well as
against the rancorous relics of the Lancastrian party, when
the bishops were more sordid, time-serving, and false than at
any period in the history of Churchmen. In the midst of this
quicksand of politics he was gay, dissipated, negligent, and
supine. It would seem that Edward was unwilling to risk
his popularity with his subjects by asking for parliamentary
grants,

He is credited with having devised the famous benevolences.
These were gifts or loans from wealthy citizens and others,
pressed for with importunity and exacted with disguised
force. Such gifts had constantly been made to kings in
earlier times, but Edward is reported to have systematised
the custom, The appeal to these wealthy persons may have
been disagreeable, but it is very likely that the gift or loan
carried with it countervailing advantages of a solid kind,
analogous to those patents of monopolies which were so freely
Benevolences. 317

granted a century and more afterwards. Nor do I set much
store by the statute of Richard III., in which these bene-
volences are declared illegal, or on the language which,
according to the rolls of Parliament, was employed to
Richard by those who urged him to usurp the crown. The
terms of this address are general, and need not apply to
benevolences at all, but to be a mere criticism of the last
reign and its administration; and we should remember that
Richard’s partizans were chiefly in the city of London, where,
if the benevolence were compensated by a monopoly, the mass
of traders would resent the favour; and if it were not, but
were a merely disguised tax on the rich, the wealthier citizens
would be dissatisfied under the exaction. This seems to be
the more reasonable because the practice of exacting these
gifts or loans was resumed by Henry VII. on the plea that
a usurper’s statutes had no authority, though it is quite certain
that Henry had every motive to conciliate his subjects, and,
after all, passed a very uneasy and anxious reign.

In the early part of Henry Tudor’s reign, considerable
demands are made on the people through Parliament.
Among these is the equipment and pay for 10,000 archers
for twelve months, the cost of which is estimated at £100,000.
This sum it is proposed to raise by an income tax of £75,000:
on the estates of commoners, the remaining £25,000 being
derived from a property tax on all chattels over ten marks
of a very small amount. The income tax was supposed to be
ten per cent. But the particulars are not given, and we do
not know whether, like the taxes of Henry VI. it was
graduated. The collection of the tax was resented, and its.
produce was said to have been disappointing. If the estimate
made was a correct one, the taxable income of the Commons.
was 4750,000 a year. In 1503, three years after his son
Arthur’s death, Henry bethought him of the aid due on
making his eldest son a knight, and marrying Margaret to
the King of the Scots. There had been no opportunity for
making this claim for a century and a half. The last aid of
this character was granted to Edward III. for the knightage
of the Black Prince, and subsequent kings could not claim it,
318 The Development of Taxatton.

as their sons were either knighted before the succession, as
was the case in Henry the Fourth’s reign, or their children
were below age, as was the case with Henry V. and Henry VI.,
Edward IV., and Richard III. Henry estimated the aid at
440,000. As, however, the full exaction of the tax would
press heavily on the poor, he declares himself willing to remit
410,000, and be content with £30,000. The tax is to be paid
by all who had over twenty shillings a year in “free charter
lands,” or above twenty-six shillings and eightpence in lands
“held by will,” which is afterwards explained to mean copy-
holds. Cattle used for the plough, stock, and implements of
husbandry are exempt, but farm produce, corn harvested
and stock-in-trade, are declared ratable. Nothing shows
more clearly how entirely obsolete the aid had become than
Henry’s claim to include copyholds, goods, and stock-in-trade
in the ratable elements of an aid, which was originally
leviable from lands in knight service only. A very large
number of commissioners, whose names are given, are ap-
pointed to assess and collect the aid, who are paid two per
cent. on the whole amount. It is illustrative of Henry’s
character that, in distributing the assessment, he took care
that it should realise a little more than 41,000, after all costs
are deducted, over the estimated total. The claim is de-
manded in the Parliament of 1504, when Dudley, the father
of Northumberland and the grandfather of Leicester, was
Speaker. It was very likely suggested by this instrument of
Henry’s exactions.

Henry called but few Parliaments and asked for few grants.
But he was penurious and avaricious, greedy and mean. He
practised severe economy in his household,—I have studied
his accounts,—and he involved his people in no foreign wars
of importance. His reign, as far as the materials of ordinary
history go, is sordid and uneventful. But his people prospered.
Food is plentiful and cheap. In the last year of his reign,
wheat falls to a price which had not been known for 222
years, when two years of similar plenty prevailed. Nor do I
imagine that Henry was unpopular with the mass of his
subjects, although it was still possible, since the ferment of
Henry Vil._— His Expedients. 319

the great war of succession had not entirely ceased, for
adventurers and pretenders to disturb his quiet. But with
the noble and wealthy he was odious. He seems to have
been the first English king who improved his revenue by
expedients which would have been discreditable to a low
sharper or a pettifogging attorney. He began the practice
of setting his agents to ferret out any claim which the Crown
could make and a subservient judge would affirm. The
Stuart kings improved on the meanness and knavery of
Henry’s expedients, and they added this much, that by
beginning the practice of making their judges’ patents depend
on the royal pleasure, they made their lawyers the cringing,
rapacious, and unprincipled crew, who dishonoured the six-
teenth and seventeenth centuries, with very rare exceptions,
and could not, as a profession, be made tolerably honest,
except by giving them well paid freeholds in their offices.
The judges of the Plantagenet kings used their office for the
best ends,—the maintenance of civil rights and the extension
of liberty. Those of the Tudors and Stuarts, under the
teaching of the crafty adventurer who won at Bosworth,
were the persistent and malignant enemies of all right and
all liberty. No profession has had meaner representatives
than Empson and Dudley, Cowell and Noy. The English
bench sank to the lowest depths of turpitude, by the con-
tinuous selection of the basest, till it produced Williams and
Jeffries.

The mean projects of Henry, his meaner expedients, and
,utterly mean agencies were relieved by one act of consum-
.mate but accidental statesmanship. He was troubled by
adventurers, whom Edward’s sister, the Dowager Duchess of
Burgundy, widow of Charles the Bold, harboured and helped.
It is impossible to prove that Warbeck was an impostor.
It is quite certain than Simnel was, and that if the former
was the Duke of York, Mary of Burgundy had done one
genuine nephew irretrievable injury by countenancing an-
other person, who was assuredly not her nephew. Now
Henry believed, and he lived and died in the belief, that
private interest was the one thing to which people are faithful,
320 The Development of Taxation

The commercial relations of England and Flanders had been
intimate since the days of Arteveldt and Edward III., and
were interrupted only to the injury of both, and by the
ambition or passions of princes. It would be well, he argued,
if -these interests were enlisted for the safety of princes.
Hence the king concluded that he could protect his govern-
ment and dynasty—for Henry was an affectionate father—
by associating with his own ends the material advantage of
Englishman and Fleming.

The great Intercourse (I suppose this is Bacon’s own name
for the treaty of commerce with Flanders executed in 1496)
is sensible and practical, and some of its provisions have been
acknowledged as part of that comity of civilized peoples which
is called international law in very modern times only. The
particulars are to be found in all works which deal with the
true history of human civilization, and are, therefore, seldom
studied. But the effects of this treaty were marked. It led,
despite some modifications which Henry made in this treaty
in 1506, to a continuance of friendly relations between
England and the Low Countries for more than a century,
and predisposed England, though in a halting and imperfect,
perhaps a higgling fashion, to aid in the heroic struggle for
independence which those Lowlanders fought for and part of
them won,—a struggle as noble, as difficult, as important as
that of Greece against Persia, and infinitely more prolonged
and fertile. It would have been greatly to the reputation of
England if, returning good for good, she had not taken for
her policy the one most foolish act of Selden’s great career,
the paradoxes of the mare clausum, and had not been led
into the one most unpardonable crime of Cromwell’s Govern-
ment, one which was, it seems, against that great man’s
judgment, the war with the Dutch. Selden’s folly led to the
martyrdom of Barneveldt, the crowning wickedness of the
House of Orange, and Cromwell’s blunder to the trickeries of
Charles and his crew of profligate sharpers, and to the murder
of the De Witts. If Dutchmen in our day had a spark of
their forefathers’ merits, they would see their ghosts in the
Binnenhof, and atone for their ancestors’ evil doings by setting
The Great Treaty—Henry VII. 321

up the statues of their prophets. But waning nations have
nothing but the sepulchres of their great men.

Henry Tudor died, and his son came after him. Never was
a contrast more violent than that between father and son. The
one was penurious as no other English king had been, the
other was extravagant to such a degree that he succeeded in
ruining the unfortunate people over whom he reigned. The
foreign policy of the father was cautious, prudent, and, on the
whole, successful, that of the son was reckless, blundering, and
disastrous. Henry VIII. succeeded to a position of great
strength. He held the balance of power in Western Europe.
At the conclusion of his reign, England was of no more
account in the political system of the time than Portugal or
Naples. Sovereign and people were alike impoverished. The
wastefulness of Henry was incredible. The establishments of
each of his infant daughters were more costly than the whole
annual expenses of his thrifty father. He had fifty palaces,
whims of the hour, in which profusion was constantly going
on. He was incessantly building, altering, pulling down, by
day and night, on Sundays and festivals, from year to year.
As Wolsey said of him, “ Rather than miss any part of his
will, he will endanger one half of his kingdom.” By the
conclusion of his reign he had endangered the whole of it.

The earliest taxes of Henry, besides the customary
fifteenths and tenths, are poll and property taxes. The
former ranges from ten marks, payable by dukes, toa shilling,
which is to be contributed by all. The latter is an equal or
nearly equal percentage on income. The maximum is £800
and over, the minimum, 4os.; but labourers, whose annual
earnings are from 40s. to 20s. are to pay 6d; those less, 4a.
No one is to be exempt, except married women and beggars.
The assessment was estimated to yield £160,000, but it only
reached £50,000; and Parliament granted 24 per cent. on all
income and wages above 20s. a year, and on all personalty
over 40s. But this tax did not even yield so much as the pre-
vious income tax, either because Parliament miscalculated the
resources of the kingdom, or because it was found impossible
to extort the money. In 1523, a property tax of 5 per cent.

21
322 The Development of Taxation.

on the rent of all lands held by natives, and a double rate in
the case of aliens, was imposed for two years; but if the
income was less than £20 a year the tax is to be 24 per cent.
In the third year, 1525, the tax of 5 per cent. is levied on
those incomes only which are over £50 a year. It was in the
Parliament which granted these last taxes that the well-known
scene occurred between Wolsey and More the Speaker.

I am persuaded that the ever-increasing necessities of
Henry and his vast expenditure would have led to the
suppression of the monasteries, or the confiscation of their
wealth, even if the king had not quarrelled with the Pope.
The religious orders had, one and all, long been discredited
with the people. The abbeys and convents were, with few
and well-known exceptions, dens of gluttony and vice. Nearly
a century before their suppression, Gascoigne gives them the
worst of characters for profuse and luxurious living, and tells
tales of worse practices or theories. If only a portion of
what was told of them by the visitors is true, they were
stained with the vilest debauchery. Besides, they had been
pointed out as the natural prey of the Government, both in
and out of Parliament, by nobles and knights as well as by
Lollards and Bible-men. The pious and devout Henry V.
confiscated all the alien priories on the plea that they
succoured his enemies, and, in 1524, Wolsey obtained per-
mission of pope and king to suppress more than forty
monasteries and nunneries, chiefly Augustinian and Benedic-
tine, in order to found his colleges at Oxford and Ipswich.
Henry affected to be scrupulous at the time, but eleven years
afterwards he took the spoil of all religious houses whose
income was under £200 a year. Four years later, the
larger houses were dissolved and confiscated. Six years after
this, and an Act was passed by which all colleges, free chapels,
chantries, hospitals, fraternities, brotherhoods, guilds, and
endowments for stipendiary priests were vested with their
lands in the Crown. The execution of this Act was, however,
delayed till the reign of his son.

The annual value of the monastic lands was estimated at
over £160,000. This is certainly not an exaggeration, if, as
The Dissolution. 323

is so frequently alleged, these institutions held a third of the
land in the kingdom, and that not the least fertile portion.
But it may be the net value, after the charges on the
property, created by Henry himself; for he gave handsome
pensions to the dispossessed abbots, officials, and monks, if
they surrendered peaceably; and after the beneficial leases,
which the corporations were said to have extensively granted in
view of the coming storm, are deducted or allowed for. The
king intended to have created a number of new bishoprics
and a variety of educational institutions, perhaps some public
charities. But his necessities, probably the situation in which
he found himself placed, and the need to have associates in
the plunder, perhaps his debts, made him stay his hand and
abate his purpose. He founded a new nobility on the ruins
of the medizval Church, the descendants of whom are among
the most ancient of our peers. But the mass of movable
property which these religious houses possessed, the accumu-
lations of ages, was immense. The shrine of Becket must
have resembled the treasury of Delphi when Herodotus saw
it, or before the Phocians plundered it. But all the spoil was
rapidly wasted. Whatever wealth came into Henry’s hands
soon disappeared, as the treasure did which Bunyan saw
poured into the lap of Passion, and change to rags. The
wonder is what became of it. In three or four years it was
nearly all gone, and Henry was forced to seek fresh plunder
by even baser means,

The dissolution of the monasteries must have been, even
from the fact of so vast an amount of property being suddenly
transferred from one set of owners to a new and needy
aristocracy, the cause of much disturbance in the economical
condition of England. I have stated above that the custom
of land and stock leasing remained with the corporations,
especially the religious houses, much later than it did with
the ordinary lay proprietors, for the reason that it was the
most advantageous mode in which the landowner could get
profit from his property. As the corporation was not mortal,
the personal estate continued with the successors of each
generation of monks; while, in the case of lay owners, such
524 The Development of Taxation.

personalty would always be divided, and was probably
devised, after the death of the proprietor. Now though the
alienees or allottees of the monastic estate got the lands,
they certainly did not get the chattels; for the register of
such properties as they had possessed, other than their plate
and jewels, which soon disappeared, still exists, and is a
long inventory of the Crown’s property in the early days of
Edward VI. It is almost certain that the Crown respected
the stock and land leases which the monks had granted, and
dealt with the chattels on the land only as the leases expired.
The only wonder is, that when the heirs of the founders were
still in existence, the dissolved abbeys did not revert to them,
but were at once vested in the Crown. It may be that these
heirs, when they were found, were compensated, and that
only a few of them had survived from the slaughter of the
war of succession. In the fifteenth century, Gascoigne suggests
that if the monasteries continue their lazy and gluttonous
course, the heirs of the founders, who are their natural
visitors, should coerce and, if need be, dispossess them, as
if this were a power which such persons legally retained.
But it is certain that the aristocracy of Henry’s day was far
too much broken and cowed to make head against the
imperious, suspicious, and unforgiving king. He had used
the terrible power of parliamentary attainder which Margaret,
in an evil hour for the English nobles, invented, and employed
a docile majority in the Lords, now to execute a Surrey or
a Buckingham, and at another time to delight the old
nobility with the slaughter of the upstart Essex.

Four years afier the dissolution of the larger monasteries,
Henry, who seems to have prudently dreaded the discontent
of a Parliament which might well suppose that his new
acquisitions ought to have been sufficient for his wants, and
would therefore hesitate before they made him grants, hit
on a new expedient for supplying his necessities, He began
to debase the currency, the gravest crime which a king or
ruler can commit against his subjects, the mischief and
misery of which is rapid and sure. But the consequences
of this act, which was more deep and lasting than any event
Flenry's next Expedient. 325

in English economical history, except perhaps the Great
Plague of 1348-9, and the details of the transaction itself,
must be reserved for separate treatment in a subsequent
chapter. Henry’s offence was hidden from his subjects, for
the evil was exaggerated as well as detected in his son’s
days. He was popular,—wasteful people generally are.—and
he was the instrument of a reform which was greatly desired
by the best men of his own day, was a source of wealth to
those who shared in the plunder, and a great opportunity
for political intrigue. Besides, the course of events connected
the ecclesiastical policy of Henry, halting and contradictory
as it was, with the cause of the Reformation, and gave him
credit for what he never designed nor anticipated.

It is said that Henry spent part of his spoils in fortifications
on the south coast of England and in building a navy. It
may be so, and with the results of such expenditure, Pitt and
Palmerston built fortifications which have become nuisances.
What Henry’s fortifications were was shown in his elder
daughter’s reign. I have read an account—it was among the
waste papers of Henry’s reign—of one of his big ships. It
was built on as costly a scale as his palaces were, and was
not seaworthy. The fight with the Armada was won by
other structures than he made, and by other men than he
degraded.
326

CHAPTER XII.

LABOUR AND WAGES.

The Fifteenth Century the best Time for the Labourer—The Working Hours of
the Day, and Yearly Wages—The Labourers’ Board—Spread of Piecework
—The Wages of the Agricultural Labourer—The Impressment of Labourers,
and Journey Allowances—Prices of Food do not increase, while Labourers’
Wages are increasing—The Great Plague—The Civil War—The Effect of the
latter on Husbandry and Wages imperceptible, and the People indifferent—
The Lollards probably friendly to the House of York—The Sweating Sick-
ness—The Capitalist Artizan in the Fifteenth Century—The Decay of Towns
—The Increase of Sheep Feeding in the Sixteenth Century—The Debase-
ment of the Currency—Its Effect on Wages—The Confiscation of the Guild
Lands—The Origin and Uses of their Property—The Guilds like the Oxford
Colleges—Induced Weakness of the English Labourer—No Rise in Rents,
and the Reason—The Statute of. Apprenticeship—The Result of these
Changes, Pauperism—The Cost of ‘maintaining Labour illustrated—Elizabeth’s
Expedient of making the Coin only Two-thirds its nominal Value.

HAVE stated more than once that the fifteenth century
and the first quarter of the sixteenth were the golden age
of the English labourer, if we are to interpret the wages which
he earned by the cost of the necessaries of life. At no time
were wages, relatively speaking, so high, and at no time was
food so cheap. Attempts were constantly made to reduce
these wages by Act of Parliament, the legislature frequently
insisting that the Statute of Labourers should be kept. But
these efforts were futile; the rate keeps steadily high, and
finaJly becomes customary, and was recognised by Parliament.
It is possible, that as the distribution of land became more
general, and the tenancy of land for terms of years became
habitual, the phenomenon which has often been noticed as
characteristic of peasant proprietorship, a high rate of wages
paid to the free labourer, may have been exhibited in the
period on which I am commenting. ns
Wages in the Fifteenth Century. 327

The wages of the artizan during the period to which I refer
were generally, and through the year, about 6¢.a day. Those
of the agricultural labourer were about 4¢. I am referring to
ordinary artizans and ordinary labourers. Persons who plied
a craft in which greater skill was needed, perhaps one which
was rarely procurable except from a distance, received more
Thus, the carpenter, taken generally, gets a little under—ic
is a very small fraction—6d¢. He was constantly employed in
agricultural operations and for domestic business. But the
plumber, who might not be so regularly employed or was
hired from a distance, gets 64¢@. on an average. The mason,
whose labour was likely to be suspended during winter time
or in very bad weather, gets the full average. The joiner,
who is employed in finer carpentry, is better paid than the
average carpenter. It should be noted, too, that as the
century goes on, the wages of labour tend decidedly upwards.
Nor is there any material difference, with one notable
exception, in the payments made for labour all over England.
It is equally well paid throughout the whole country. The
exception is London, where the wages were from twenty-five
to thirty per cent. over the rates paid in other places. This
increase may be due either to the cause that the guilds made
labour in London comparatively scarce, or to the greater cost
of living in London, for general prices are, as a rule, higher
in or near the metropolis ; or to the fact that the best crafts-
men sought London as a place of employment, and were
better paid, because worth more than elsewhere.

There is no reason to think that these labourers were paid
well because their employment was precarious. Men got just
as good wages in the fifteenth century, whether they were
employed for a day or a year. Nor, as I have already
observed, were the hours long. It is plain that the day was
one of eight hours. Nor was the period of winter wages, when
the pay was lessened, considerable, for the short-pay s«ason
is, when such a period is specified, only the months of
December and January. Sometimes the labourer is paid for
every day in the year, though it is certain that he did not
work on Sundays and the principal holidays. Thus, at
328 Labour and Wages.

Windsor, in 1408, four carpenters got 6d. a day, and six got
sa., for 365 days in the year, ze, the former receive £9 25. 6d.
for their year’s wages, the latter 47 12s. Id, the rate per day
and the amount for the year being specified in each case.
These men were no doubt in the service of the king, and the
king, as I shall show presently, was a very good paymaster ;
but he is not the only person who hires labour on these
liberal terms. At York cathedral, six masons got £8 85. a
year each; six others, £7 16s.; six more, £6 3s.; and one
carpenter gets £7 55. 4a. This is in 1415, when the prices
of labour had not risen to their full amount.

Very often the labourer is fed. In this case, the cost of
maintenance is put down at from 6d.to 8d. a week. Some-
times the labourer is paid as though he were fed, and a
further allowance for his board is given him, this probably
being paid to some person who has contracted to feed him at
arate. Sometimes the food is given in, and the labourer’s
wages are paid at the full average. This is especially the
case when the workman is hired by opulent corporations and
on their premises. There was always a servants’ table in these
establishments, and the workman is bidden to it without
stint or grudging. I find, for example, at some of the Oxford
colleges that ordinary rates are paid, and the workman is fed
into the bargain. Food was so abundant and cheap that it
was no great matter to throw it in with wages.

Piece work becomes more common in artizans’ labour. In
the earlier time, for instance, the pair of sawyers were gene-
rally paid by the day, occasionally by the hundred feet, ze,
the long hundred of 120, the pair evidently being understood
to be competent to get through such a quantity ina day. In
the earlier time the piece price is a little less than the day
price. In the fifteenth century it is a little more. This is
evidence of an upward tendency. When the reaction, on
which I shall hereafter comment, begins, the former state of
things is reversed in an exaggerated form, piece work falling
below the remuneration of day work. So laying tiles and
slates by the thousand, splitting laths by the hundred, walling
by the yard, casting and rolling lead by the hundred-weight,
Puece Work—The King’s Wages. 329

making plate by the ounce, and doing ceiling work by the
yard, are found, and are generally well paid.

The agricultural labourer gets about 4d. a day for his work;
‘but in harvest time 6¢. The practice of paying this person
by the day instead of by the piece becomes commoner than
it was. But piece payments are progressively higher than
they were in the dearest period of the fourteenth century.
The man (4omo) who is employed asa help to the thatcher
or tiler, and often to the mason, later on to the bricklayer, is
(paid at the rate of agricultural labourers in ordinary times, or
a little less. This help was sometimes a woman, as was
generally the case in the earlier period; and thus it is seen
that women’s work, when of what we may call an unskilled
kind, was equally well paid with that of men. Piece work in
the harvest field was paid at even higher rates than during
the famous years of the fourteenth century, in which the
dabourer’s combinations were so effectual and so alarming to
employers. The full price of a labourer’s board was a
shilling a week, often considerably less; his wages were
twice or three times the cost of his maintenance under con-
tract. In 1467, two girls are hired to work, and are paid
twopence a day. They are also boarded, and this is put at
twopence a day more. In the same year, at Selborne Priory,
in Hampshire, the board of men is put at 2d@, of women at
itd.

The king, who pressed labour at his pleasure, and from all
parts of England, for he sends for workmen from distances of
150 miles, paid his agent in the business handsomely. This
official sometimes also got a handsel for not taking workmen
who were employed by private individuals and on works where
despatch and convenience were important. But he cannot
succeed in misusing the king’s press, as Falstaff does, for he
is paid by results, and would no doubt run considerable risks
if he sent inefficient workmen. The men are also well paid.
They are frequently boarded on contract, and we shall see
presently how important is the information which these con-
tracts give. They were also paid a véaticum on coming to
and going from their work, at so much per mile of distance.
330 Labour and Wages.

One reads, too, of free-masons who get a slightly higher pay
than ordinary craftsmen do; of principal masons, who receive
an annual fee, besides their daily wages; and of master masons,
like that one at York in 1423, who was paid £10 a year.

From 1260 to 1400 inclusive, the price of wheat is 5s. 102a.
a quarter. From 1401 to 1540 inclusive, it is 5s. 113?@, and
this slight increase of a penny a quarter is due to the dearer
years of the period, 1521-1540. Had it not been for the
rise induced on the general average, the price would have been
5s. 83a., or 3d. a quarter less, But, including these dearer years
in the average, every kind of grain, except wheat and peas, is
cheaper in the fifteenth and part of the sixteenth centuries.
than it was in the thirteenth and fourteenth. Now, notwith-
standing the extraordinary cheapness of provisions (a fact to
which public men turned their attention in the sixteenth
century, by comparing the prices of the past with current
experiences), there is no evidence that the wages of labour
‘were depressed, or that the payment for service was the least
affected by the low price of food. I do not, indeed, imagine
that the economist who duly corrects his inferences from a
wide range of facts, would be under the impression that such
a result would necessarily ensue, or, indeed, unless there were
other causes at work, conclude that the tendency of population
would be to grow up to the limits of subsistence, as it grew for
special causes in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
We shall see in the course of this inquiry that an excess of
population is quite compatible with no increase in numbers,
and that the misery of the working classes can be frequently
ascribed to other causes besides their own improvidence and
recklessness.

There occurred during this long period from the accession
of Henry IV. to the dissolution of the great monasteries a
number of social facts to which one should refer. And, im
the first place, to the waste of human life by pestilence and
other causes.

The Great Plague was said to have visited England twice
in the fourteenth century after its first appearance, in 1363
and in 1369. But there is no information of a contemporary
The Recurrence of the Plague. 231

kind as to its ravages on these subsequent occasions, and
though it is exceedingly likely that the disease remained
endemic, it does not appear to have recurred with alarming
severity. The farm accounts of the time make reference abun--
dantly to the losses of 1348, but none speak of the return of the-
disease at the later dates, though we are told that the summer-
of 1361-2 was exceedingly hot and dry, and we know that
though the price of wheat was low, that of other kinds of
grain was abnormally high. But in 1369-70, all kinds of*
grain were very dear,—dearer than at any time since the
great famine of 1315 and 1316, a convincing proof that the-
summer and autumn were cold and wet, and that, therefore,.
the temperature was unfavourable to the spread of contagion;.
and I therefore set little store by the computation given by
Sir Harris Nicolas, on the authority of a King-at-arms in the
reign of Charles I., as to the duration, and even as to the
occurrence, of these visitations. The notes I find of plagues-
in the fifteenth century are in 1477, 1478, and 1479, whem
unusual mortality seems to have prevailed in the Eastern,
Counties ; and during the sixteenth, in 1521, in 1538, in 1545.
and 1546, when it was at Cambridge and Oxford; in 1555 and
1556, in 1570 and in 1579. All these are re-appearances of
the Levant plague; for another disease, which occurred for-
the first time in the fifteenth century, will be treated sepa--
rately. In some of these cases, the note is of precautions.
taken against a possible visitation ; but in 1579, the Norwich
register expressly states that 4,918 people died, a loss of life-
which must have been as serious as that in the first attack..
But I cannot discover that the wages of labour were affected
by any of these occurrences of the fifteenth century, nor in.
those of the sixteenth, until the general change in money-
values puts it out of one’s power to infer anything from
such events. I conclude, therefore, that the steadiness.
with which high relative wages were secured was in no.
sense due to the losses which labour suffered from pestilence.
The existence of this formidable disease may have checked
the growth of population ; but if abundant evidence as to
the rate of wages and silence as to the loss of life are to go-
332 Labour ana Wages.

for anything, it did not create a sensible void in the number
-of labourers.

From 1455 to 1485, the country suffered from civil war. I
doubt the statements made in chronicles as to the number of
combatants engaged in the struggle. In the first battle of
St. Albans we have been told that five thousand persons
were slain. It is almost certain that not much more than
thalf that number were in action. It was an accidental
‘skirmish, provoked, as is alleged by contemporary writers
and even eye-witnesses, by the king’s party. Henry had
liberated Somerset from the Tower, and York felt, or pro-
fessed to feel, that his life was in danger. Nor do I doubt
that, if we could arrive at the actual facts of the case, the
combatants in the other battles were far fewer than the
marrative affirms.

There was abundance of wealth in England possessed by
the partizans, especially by the Duke of York’s party, which
-was strong in London and the Eastern Counties. In the first
yperiod of the war, indeed till after the battle of Wakefield
.and the second fight at St. Albans, the sole purpose of the
Yorkist party seems to have been the reform of abuses in
ithe administration. It is true that the unfortunate murder
of Tresham, and the development of violent partizan feeling
"in the Commons, made men, I conclude, despair of constitu-
tional remedies against misgovernment. Matters were further
complicated by the fact that, after Parliament had appointed
York Protector, and had continued his office till he should
be discharged of it by Parliament, Margaret contrived to
-create such a diversion in favour of the royal party that York
surrendered his authority little more than two months after
+e had it granted him, and the queen went off with her
dhusband and son into the county of Chester,—by which I
believe is meant the city of Coventry,—the stronghold of the
ALancastrian party, and there undertook the management of
affairs. I make no doubt that during this period the Yorkist
faction settled their differences and consolidated their plans.

The soldiers of fortune, who had long been familiar with
,partizan warfare in France and had now returned to England,
The Crvil War. age

were numerous enough for the armies of the rivals. In this.
the Yorkist party had an advantage, for Warwick was in
command of the fleet and was governor of Calais—offices
which he would certainly not have retained if the king’s.
party had at all suspected the direction to which affairs were
tending. When they were discovered, Margaret took the
decisive step of summoning the Coventry Parliament, which
was said to have been packed, and in which Tresham’s son
was Speaker, and of passing a sweeping bill of attainder by
which York and all his partizans were proscribed.

We are told that house was divided against house, that
families were rent by factions, and that partizanship invaded
even monasteries and colleges. Our great dramatist, as is
well known, has illustrated the passions of the day with
tragic incidents in his plays of Henry VI. But in this I
suspect there is the special pleading of the Tudor writers,
who wished to represent in the strongest way how great were
the blessings which came in with the accession of the family
under which they lived, and how healing had been the pacific
policy of the first Tudor prince. I can only say, that though I
have read hundreds of private documents compiled for private
inspection only during the whole of this period, I have never
met with any significant allusion to the troubles which were
impending or the scenes which were enacted. It is true that,
in the summer of 1460, between June 26th and July 8th, just
before the battle of Northampton, where Grey de Ruthin,
the murderer of Tresham, deserted to the Yorkist party, and
so ensured the defeat of the king’s troops, the provost and
fellows of King’s College, Cambridge, who had despatched
two of their number to Coventry the year before, and had
induced the University of Cambridge to celebrate the
obsequies of the king’s warrior father, were exceedingly
anxious for news, and sent no less than eight times in the
twelve days to obtain information as to the king’s affairs and
his doings. It was natural enough; the college was Henry’s
favourite foundation, which a year before had received its last
statutes from the king, in which all disciples of the heretics
Wiklif and Pecok were proscribed. Besides, the chapel was
334 Labour and Wages. :

sunfinished, and the king was making an annual grant for its
-completion.

During the struggle between the rival houses, it seems to
ame that the people were absolutely indifferent. It was not a
war of sieges but of battles, in which the combatants appear
‘to have sought out some secluded spot, and to have fought
-Out the combat. I have never seen or read of any injury done
to neutrals, except the outrages of Margaret’s northern army
“in the beginning of 1461,—deeds which led to the instant
-deposition of Henry and the coronation of Edward. The
war, as I believe, was as distant from the great mass of
English people, and was as little injurious in its immediate
effects, as summer lightning is. If it was followed by the
destruction of human life, the loss did not fall on the working
men of England, but on the nobles and professional con-
-dottiert, .It had no bearing on work and wages. At the
same time it is not wonderful if the partizans on either side
believed that the rest of the country took sides in their
struggles, One of the commonest and most persistent delu-
‘sions into which parties fall is that of imagining that the rest
-of the world has as keen an interest in their affairs as they
have themselves. A strong upheaval of national feeling is a
are event. Its continuity beyond the occasion of its first
vactivity is rarer still. The farmer and workman, during the
dast half of the fifteenth century, must have had only a
dransient and languid interest in the faction fight which was
going on around them.

It is exceedingly likely that the Lollards were active
“enemies of the House of Lancaster when the issue was fairly
before them. John of Gaunt had been the friend and the
patron of Wiklif; and the reforming party, who finally over-
threw the Government and put an end to the reign of
Richard II., was identified with those who had been willing
‘to strip the Church of its overgrown wealth. But Henry
Bolingbroke had made his peace with the persecutors, and
ccompelled, in deference to them, the civil authorities to
-execute the sentences of ecclesiastical tribunals. The Lollards’
spit at Norwich always had its stake and faggots ready, and
The Lotlards—The Sweating Sickness. 335

we may be pretty sure that the Norwich weavers had no love
for their persecutors, whom they identified with Henry and
his bishops. So I can quite understand that the authorities
of the city were doing no unpopular act when they clothed
and paid forty hired soldiers to join the king at Tewkesbury
fight, and aid in the final discomfiture of the House of
Lancaster and its chiefs, as they had sheltered the queen
and her daughter a short time before the king’s triumphant
return. So the same citizens the year following gave a hand-
some present to the Duke of Gloucester in a gilded purse,
fed his actors, and put in prison those who spoke evil of
the duke and the king.

After the battle of Bosworth, a new and fatal disease
occurred in England, It is remarkable that for a long period it
was confined to this country, or to Englishmen, though at last
it broke out in Germany and the Low Countries. Its appear-
ance was at special and well-defined periods, its duration being
on each occasion brief. While it lasted, it was specially
destructive, especially in the towns. So local was it that
it did not reach Scotland or Ireland. The Sweating Sickness
broke out in Henry’s army during its march to London. It
appears to have had its origin, according to the chroniclers of
the time, in the Welsh mountains, and to have been primarily
due to the privations which Henry’s army underwent before
he reached his foe and gained the timely treason of the
Stanleys. The disease was a violent inflammatory fever,
accompanied by great prostration, general disorder of the
viscera, great oppression of the brain, a lethargic sleep, and a
profuse fetid perspiration, which flowed from the patient in
streams. “So deadly was it,” says Holinshed, copying the
exaggerated language of the older annalists, “that not one in
a hundred recovered.” The course of the disease was very
brief, the crisis being always over in a day and a night. Men
who had been quite well at evening were often dead in the
morning. It attacked robust and vigorous people more fre-
quently than the weak, and went from east to west through
the kingdom. Two lord mayors and six aldermen were
victims to the disease in a week.
336 Labour and Wages.

It visited the country again in 1506, though on this occa~
sion the malady was not so severe. As before, its ravages.
were confined to England. In 1517, it appeared for a third
time, when it was as destructive as it had been thirty years.
before, and was particularly deadly in the Universities. It
also attacked Calais, but it was noticed that it affected only
the English inhabitants of the town. The fourth visitation
was in 1528 and 1529. It was so destructive that the time
was known afterwards as the Great Mortality. The period
was one of scarcity, almost of famine, and it was noticed
that the “smut” first appeared in wheat in this year. On
this occasion it attacked Northern Germany, beginning at
Hamburg, where it is said that 1,100 persons died in
twenty-two days. Thence it spread to Dantzic, Cologne, and
the Low Countries, and afterwards to Amsterdam, Copen-
hagen, and Stockholm. The last visitation of the disease was
in 1551, when it was described by Dr. Keyes, or Caius, the
founder of a well-known and distinguished Cambridge col-
lege. Since that time it has not re-appeared in England,
though epidemics closely resembling the described symptoms
of the sweating sickness have occurred in modern times,
especially in Northern Germany and North-eastern France.

The sweating sickness, though alarming for its virulence
and the rapidity of its course, was not so destructive of
human life as the plague had been and still was. Still it is
desirable to give a brief account of it, because not only are
the effects of pestilence marked on the social condition and
moral character of nations, but the many economical con-
sequences of plagues are more lasting and more significant
than those of famines. Famine, indeed, has rarely occurred
in England, for a reason which I have frequently given. But
the habits of the people were favourable to pestilence.
Every writer during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries
who makes his comments on the customs and practices of
English life, adverts to the profuseness of their diet and the
extraordinary uncleanliness of their habits and their persons.
The floor of an ordinary Englishman’s house, as Erasmus
describes it, was inconceivably filthy, in London filthier than
Periodical Visits of the Disease. 337

elsewhere, for centuries after these events. The streets and
open ditches of the towns were polluted and noisome beyond
measure. The Englishman disdained all the conditions of
health, and in the large towns the deaths, to judge from the
returns up to the eighteenth century, greatly exceeded the
births. When pestilence was abroad, the town folk, not
always welcome visitors, hurried into the country; the
students of colleges sought their country seats, generally
provided by the foundation against those occasional risks of
town life, and there perhaps encountered nothing much more
serious than a dunghill heaped with all sorts of festering
offal at their doors. But the residence was only temporary,
the townsman and the student had no love for country life,
and when the danger was over, the shop-keeper and artizan
returned to their guild houses, the student and the monk to
common hall and refectory.

I cannot, therefore, conclude that either the civil disturb-
ances of the fifteenth century or the visitation of disease,
sporadic from the re-appearance of the old pestilence, or
endemic at times from the occurrence of the new, materially
affected the population of England during the period before
me. It must not be imagined that the outbreak of a new
disease such as the sweating sickness is evidence Ly
itself of a low vitality among the people. We are expressly
told that the victims of this disease were constantly the
strong and healthy, not the weakly, the infirm, or the young.
The disease, it is supposed, sprung from the privations to
which Henry Tudor’s army were exposed. But it is con-
stantly the case that an epidemic which. has its origin in the
privations of one set of people, or even in a foreign nation,
may seriously affect those who have not been brought under
the conditions to which the first outbreak of the disorder is
due. It is, I think, admitted that the severe and destructive
outbreak of small-pox which passed through many parts of
Europe, and our own country in particular, some ten years
ago, was directly traceable to the sufferings which the French
and German armies underwent in the war of 1870, just as
it is probable that the ravages of the same disease at the

22
338 Labour and Wages.

conclusion of the seventeenth century were not obscurely
connected with the wars of Louis XIV.

One notable fact in the economy of the fifteenth century
is the development of the capitalist artizan. At a previous
period of social history in England, this personage has
scarcely an existence. The farmer, landowner, or noble,
the monastery, or lay corporation, when it wants products
on which the craftsman’s labour is required, buys the material
in a raw state, and hires the smith or other artizan to fashion
it. Thus iron and steel, lead and copper, or brass, stone, and
lime are either purchased raw and in bulk, or, as in the case
of the latter articles named, are manufactured from chalk
or limestone, or quarried by the person who requires to use
them. There are always, indeed, some articles which the
purchaser buys ready made. Such, for instance, are lath
nails, and, in certain parts of England, particularly the Eastern
Counties, other nails, these being, Iam convinced, manufactured
by the local smith, when he is not being engaged in regular
employment by others. But other iron articles were, at the
commencement of the century, regularly manufactured from
the employer’s material. In course of time finished articles
were more and more purchased from what is evidently the
stock of the craftsman. Take, for instance, a farmer’s waggon.
In early times, every part of this is constantly fashioned on
the spot as I have described. In course of time, the farmer
buys the cart frame from one person, the wheels from another,
and the iron-work, the most costly part of the whole, from
a third. Later on he purchases the whole article complete
from the wheelwright. The same is the case with ordinary
ironwork, First he hires the smith to fashion it from his
stock; then he buys the article from the smith by weight;
then he bargains for the article he needs at a price, without
reference to weight. The special department in which the
custom of buying materials lasts the longest is in building.
In the Midland Counties the purchase of bricks and tiles,
stone and lime, is continued, though often with special con.
tracts for particular work, in which the items are not given,
till the epoch of the Parliamentary wars. In the Eastern
The Capitalist Artizan. 339

Counties, the old system lasted longer. But in the middle
of the fifteenth century, small repairs were often done by
craftsmen, who send in their charges with a bill of par-
ticulars. Now the growth of this system proves that the
artizan was beginning to accumulate such capital as would
enable him to wait for and deal with customers, and therefore
is indirect evidence that wealth was growing.

I have referred before to the fact, that in the first half of the.
fifteenth century, grants of fifteenths and tenths were made
with a fixed deduction from the total, afterwards increased,
for the relief of towns which were decayed or temporarily
impoverished, and that generally certain towns were named.
It is highly probable that some of this decay is due to the
spread of woollen and linen manufactories into country
places, where the charges of the town dues and the restric-
tions of the guilds did not apply. But in the year 1515 (by 6
Henry VIIL., cap. vi.), complaint is made of the decay of towns
and the growth of pastures. The Act states that, in “ places
where there used to be two hundred persons, men, women,
and children, who used to be occupied and also lived by
the growing of corn and other grain, and the herding of cattle,
and the increase of man’s sustenance, the number is lessened,
and that husbandry, which is the greatest commodity of the
realm for the sustenance of man, is greatly decayed, that
churches are destroyed, divine offices neglected or suspended,
and that public health and safety are endangered, by various
causes,” pointing to urban depopulation. The owners of
these houses are bidden to rebuild them under pain of
forfeiture to the king or the lord, and the pasture lands are
to be restored to tillage. The statute is re-enacted in the
following year.

Acts of Parliament in the sixteenth century complain that
enclosures of arable and common fields are made for the
purposes of laying them down in pasture, and that there is
a serious increase in sheep breeding, accompanied by a great
enhancement in the price of sheep and wool. The complaint
about enclosures is as old as the fifteenth century, when the
land hunger of the age led to encroachment on common
340 Labour and Wages.

pastures, and the forcible extinction of rights over common
land. I do not, indeed, find that the price of sheep has risen
generally as high as the Act of 1533 asserts it to have been,
but wool was undoubtedly dear, being in some places nearly
8s. the tod,—a price, however, which was frequently reached
as early as the beginning of the fifteenth century. The
preamble to the Act states that some persons keep as many
as 24,000 sheep, and some from 20,000 to 5,000, and the
statute enacts that hereafter no one shall keep more than
2,000, and in order to avoid the ambiguity in the number
implied by a hundred, which sometimes means the long
hundred of six-score, the sum shall be five-score only, and
any breach of the Act shall be followed by a penalty of
3s. 4d. on every head above the legal number, to be recovered
by any informer, who shall receive half the penalty, the
other moiety going to the king. The adoption of sheep
farming in lieu of ordinary tillage was due to the greater
profit gained by sheep raising, especially as the importation
of wheat and rye from the Baltic had already attracted the
notice of the legislature.

Twenty years afterwards, in 1536, in order to prevent the
decay of agriculture, a new statute orders that the owners
of land taken by tenants to farm shall provide proper farm
buildings for every holding from fifty to thirty acres which
were so let. The Act is made to apply principally to the
Midland Counties, twelve of which are specified, to Lincoln-
shire, and to the Isle of Wight. These counties had been, in
the assessments made at different times, among the most
prosperous in the country. In the same year, and in divers
Acts of Parliament between this year and 1545, lists of towns
are given which are said to be greatly decayed. There is
scarcely a town in England which is not in a declining condi-
tion, if we can rely on the statements contained in these Acts.
Complaints are made that the decay of some of these towns
is due to the fact that the country people have set up the
business for themselves which had hitherto been the staple
of the town, and the practice is forbidden. Thus the town
of Bridport is protected in rope making, and the towns of
Sheep Breeding—The Towns. 34}

Worcestershire in cloth weaving, But I do not discover that
the rate of wages falls, though the price of wheat keeps
continually, though slightly, rising. Complaint is made by
the city of London that foreign manufactures are injuriously
imported, and that English agricultural produce is extensively
exported, and that remedy should be supplied.

It would have been well for the English labourer and artizan
if no worse fortune had been before them than was apprehended
in these several Acts of Parliament, and provided for, on paper
at least, by these regulations. Henry had spent his own
substance and that of his people. The treasures of the religious
houses had been squandered in an incredibly short time,
hurled away in the wanton waste of his boundless extravagance.
In the short remainder of his life he inflicted two wrongs on
his people, the mischief of which was incalculable, the effects
of which lasted for centuries. They were the debasement of
the currency and the confiscation of the guild revenues. It
is possible that the king did not understand the mischief which
he was doing, for his apologist certainly does not.

It has been stated before that at various periods of English
history the English sovereigns lessened the weight of the unit,
the silver penny, till, in the year 1464, the penny of Edward IV.
was almost exactly half the weight of the penny of Edward L.
It is remarkable, that notwithstanding these successive diminu-
tions, no effect is traceable in the price of commodities, and
no discontent is expressed at the action of the Crown. If
anything, after the last change, commodities became cheaper,
and yet all those persons who were receiving fee farm or fixed
rents, the amount of which had not varied from the thirteenth
century, were receiving contentedly, and without the conscious-
ness of change, about half the money in the fifteenth which
their ancestor received in the thirteenth century. The king,
too, whose fifteenths and tenths, whose dues and aids had
long been a fixed sum, had deliberately, and for the sake of
a temporary gain, from time to time deprived himself of half
his income. Now Adam Smith, imperfect as his materials
were for the interpretation of prices, saw that when the weight
of the coin was diminished no appreciable rise of prices
342 Labour and Wages.

ensued, and he came to the conclusion that silver, measured
in commodities, was becoming increasingly dearer in the
fifteenth and earlier part of the sixteenth century. But it is
difficult to understand why it was that the increase of value
and immobility of prices corresponded with chronological
precision to the several changes which were made by the
indentures of the mint, and how the issue of new light money
was not followed by the immediate disappearance of all the
old heavy money. And if it be alleged that the force of
Government is constantly able, provided the country is not
affected by the foreign exchanges, to give a nominal value to
a legal currency, it may be answered that the commercial
transactions of England in the fifteenth century were con-
siderable, especially with Antwerp, at that time the principal
centre of trade, and that every effort was made by Govern-
ment to regulate the exchanges, as was supposed, in the
English interest.

I cannot explain the facts given above, except on the
hypothesis already stated, that payments were ordinarily made
by weight. This appears to be confirmed by the price paid
for silver plate. In the very year in which the penny is
reduced to one-half the amount it stood at in the thirteenth
century, plate is bought at 3s. and 2s. 11d. the ounce. In
1493, an Oxford college purchases a quantity of new plate,
some of it gilt (and medizval gilding was very substantial),
at 2s. 94d. the ounce. But it is difficult to understand how
raw silver could be purchased at anything lil these prices,
and the cost of manufacturing plate, when the goldsmith was.
on the premises and had his commons, was not less than 8d.
an ounce, and gilding assuredly doubled the cost of workman-
ship at least, and, on many occasions, more than trebled it.
Such low prices are inconsistent with a payment by tale, but
are perfectly intelligible if they are estimates by weight.

In 1543, Henry put out his first debased money. Hitherto
the coin had contained eighteen pennyweights of alloy in the
twelve ounces of metal, and the pound was coined into forty-
five shillings. In the issue of 1543, the debasement was two
ounces in twelve in 1545, it was six ounces in twelve; in
eR

*

The Currency Debased ana Reformed. 343

1546, it was eight ounces in twelve. This vile mixture was
coined into forty-eight pieces. The process was continued
by the guardians of Edward VI. In 1549, the alloy was six
ounces, and in 1551 nine ounces, the pieces now being seventy-
two in the pound, and the nominal shilling possessing less
than 54d. worth of silver in the one, and less than 23d. worth
in the other. In the last year of Edward’s reign, 1552, an
issue was put out of nearly the standard fineness, and nearly
the weight of the later currency. But there is no doubt that
this coinage was made in order to enable Edward to negotiate
for the payment of his debts at Antwerp, through the agency
of Gresham, who was his factor there.

When Elizabeth reformed the currency in 1560, restoring
the old standard, and coining the pound Troy into sixty
shillings, the amount of base money by weight received at
the Mint was nearly 632,000 lbs. Its nominal value is said
to have. been a little more than £638,000, which gives an
additional illustration to my theory that payments were
made by weight and not by tale. The actual amount of
sterling silver contained in the mixture was 244,416 lbs,
and the average debasement was therefore 60 per cent., or a
little more than seven ounces in twelve. Elizabeth coined
£733,248 in the new coinage out of the silver she refined.
She was supposed to have made a profit on the transaction.
I shall show hereafter that the difference between the actual
and the reputed value of the old base currency was almost
exactly the ratio between the price of provisions and the
general necessaries of life, before the debasement occurred,
and after it had taken full effect.

Now it is clear that prices were rising, though slowly and
moderately, during the first forty years of the sixteenth
century. In the first decade the money value of the principal
necessaries of life, corn and wheat, were at the rates, speaking
generally, at which they had stood for two centuries. In the
last decade they had risen by twenty to forty per cent.; and
the rise was recognised and wondered at, being set down to
the changes which had been made, as I have already stated,
in agriculture. But the knowledge of the fact should have
344 Labour and Wages.

stayed Henry’s hand, when he contemplated the great fraud
which he practised on his people. Silver, probably owing
to the conquest of Mexico, was getting progressively cheaper ;
and had Henry not taken the step he did in 1543, the rise in
prices, inevitable after the discovery of the New World, would
nave been as slow and regular as it was during the period to
which I have referred, as foreign trade gradually distributed
the fruits of the Spanish conquests over Europe.

It is not possible, I believe, to determine the precise extent
to which a government may exact a seigniorage on a metallic
currency, or issue an inconvertible paper, which it professes
that it will afterwards redeem, without seriously disturbing
internal prices. It may easily render its paper valueless, as
the French did with their assignats and mandats at the time
of the Revolution, It may lower the actual value of its
metallic currency while it gives it a nominal value, till it
stimulates private coining, either at home or abroad. In the
interval, however, it may give an appearance of prosperity to
a country where such a policy is adopted, for the price of
exports may be raised, while the money value of products in
the home market may remain unaltered. It is very likely
that the operation of Henry’s issues was disguised for a time
at home, and it is remarkable that corn was very cheap in
1547, and not dear, as matters now ruled, in 1546 and 1548,
perhaps owing to very plentiful harvests. The monetary
history of all countries is full of instances which illustrate the
rapidity with which people fall into the delusion that high
prices, due to over issues of paper, the coinage of an over-
valued metal, or to excessive speculation, are evidence of
prosperity. Our English Parliament in the present century
endorsed the follies of Vansittart and repudiated the truths
which were announced by the Bullion Committee and Lord
King. But the issue of base money is rapidly and irreme-
diably mischievous. It affects all, except those who are
quick at measuring the exact extent of the fraud, and, by
turning the base coin into an article of traffic, can trade on
the knowledge and skill which they possess. To the poor,
and, indeed, to all who live by wages and fixed salaries, it is
Lffects of the Debasement. 345

speedily ruinous. The effect of Henry’s and Edward’s base
money, though it lasted only sixteen years, was potent enough
to dominate in the history of labour and wages from the
sixteenth century to the present time, so enduring are the
causes which influence the economical history of a nation.
Whether payments were made by weight or not before the
debasement, they were certainly made by tale speedily after-
wards, and when Elizabeth reformed the currency, the new
system, to her evident disappointment, was permanently
adopted.

The proportionate money value of meat is nearly three
times the old rates, that of corn nearly two and a half times,
that of dairy produce, two and a half times. But the rise in
wages is a little more than one and a half times. In other
words, if a labourer’s wages rose from 6d. a day to 9d.,
he had to pay 3s. for meat, 2s. 5¢ for bread, and 2s. 6d.
for butter or cheese, where he paid 1s. before. And
the same facts are visible in those products whose value
depends almost entirely on the labour which renders them fit
for the market. The price of fish, of prepared fuel, of build-
ing materials, rises but a little above the rate at which labour
rises. The producer of animal food, grain, and other agri-
cultural necessaries commanded,a better market than the
dealer in any other article of value did, while labour, and
those products the value of which is principally derived from
the outlay of labour, partook in the least degree in the rise of
prices. Henry and his son had at last, though unwittingly
given effect to the Statute of Labourers,

Had the offence of issuing base money not been committed,
and had prices risen through the distribution of the precious
metals over the civilized world, the oondition of the labourer
would have still been impaired, for when prices are raised
without there being any increased demand for labour, wages.
very slowly follow the rise. The general inflation of prices
which I have pointed out as taking place in the forty years
which followed Henry’s base money have their particular
explanation. But between the middle of Elizabeth’s reign
and the breaking out of the Parliamentary War, a period of
346 Labour and Wages.

sixty years, general prices were more than doubled, while a
very miserable percentage of increase is effected in the wages
of labour, certainly not more than twenty per cent. Wages
are raised first by an increased demand for labour; secondly,
by a limitation of those who compete for employment, and,
thirdly, by the regulative action of labour partnerships, or
trade unions as they are commonly called. Wages may rise
when profits are stagnant or even declining.

The second injury which Henry put on his people was the
destruction of the guilds and the confiscation of their
property. The sums he had received from the monasteries,
and the profits which he made by debasing the currency, were
still insufficient for his wants, and he resolved on confiscating
the rest of the corporate revenues which still survived. In
the last year but one of his reign a Bill was actually passed by
both Houses for the dissolution of all colleges, chantries,
hospitals, free chapels, etc.; and it is probable that the uni-
versities, the colleges, and the public schools would have been
swept away into the all-devouring exchequer, had not Henry
died before the Act was carried out,

The corporate existence of the town long preceded that of
the guild. It is possible that associations of traders, volun-
tarily united or recognised by some external authority, were
active from very remote times, from the merely gregarious
instinct of human beings. They are traced to a period before
the Conquest. It is probable, for instance, that the guild
of goldsmiths in London was an association at a date
earlier than the earliest extant charter of the city, just
as it is probable that in the town of Oxford associations
of students preceded the foundation of the University. But
the chartered town or. city was antecedent to the chartered
guild. In course of time the associations of traders obtained
charters, but were obscure and feeble societies, though rallying
places for the burghers against the urban aristocracy. In
time they united in a guild-hall; in time they constrained all
the inhabitants of the city to enter in one or the other of the
companies, and ultimately obtained the exclusive franchise.
But the relics of an older constituency remained in the
The Guilds. 347

residential electorate of the wards. In just the same way
the Oxford and Cambridge colleges, which were in the first
instance tolerated excrescences on the academical system,
became finally the monopolists of education and academicak
authority.

The guilds gradually acquired property, sometimes entirely
for their own ends, more generally as interested in the re-
mainder of a trust. <A brother of the craft would give house
and lands to better the annual feast, which the craft always.
held; or he might found a school, an hospital, or an alms-
house, and after defining the amount of his benefaction, would
leave the surplus, if any, to the discretion of the guild. Or
he would make the guild the trustees of the fund from which.
the mass priest should receive his stipend for spiritual offices,
the residue being left to the guild as remuneration for
management. Occasionally the corporation bargained for-
the amount of the spiritual service, and refused to agree to a
proposal which might be too costly for the fund to bear.
They exacted fees for apprenticeship, for taking up freedom
by inheritance or servitude, and more lately for admission
into the guild by purchase. Like prudent men, who might
be liable to occasional charges, they saved and invested these-
funds, as also gifts for lending without usury to poorer citizens,
for apprenticing poor boys or girls, or for marriage portions,.
or for widows’ pensions, or for the relief of the destitute
members of the craft, the first and the most enduring duty of
the guild. The guild estates, the chest of the company, its.
revenues and rents, were, like the endowments of an aca--
demical college, at once the support of the fraternity and the.
means by which the discipline of the order or craft was.
maintained. The analogy between the guild and the college.
was Close, and perhaps this was fully understood. Two guilds.
in the town of Cambridge founded out of their resources one:
of the older colleges in that University. Sometimes the
permanent revenues of the guild or college were scraped.
together from the savings of the fees which bygone genera-
tions of applicants had paid, and the college or guild had
hoarded.
348 Labour and Wages.

Somerset, Edward the Sixth’s uncle, procured the Act by

which these guild lands were confiscated, on the plea of the
“ superstitious use” with which they were generally associated.
He did not, indeed, venture on appropriating the estates of the
London guilds, for London had it in its power to make revolu-
tions, and they were spared, after ransom paid, under the plea
that the guild did service to trade. Similarly the chantries
annexed to the Oxford and Cambridge colleges were not reft
from these institutions, but allowed, discharged of the duty.
I conceive that most of the outlying bits of land in the urban
boundaries of Oxford and Cambridge which were possessed
by the pre-Reformation colleges are mainly chantry lands.
These guild lands were in the aggregate considerable, and the
confiscation made Somerset and the Reformation unpopular.
After Somerset’s execution, the rapacity of Northumberland
‘made the Reformation still more odious; and when this
schemer attempted to set Jane Grey on the throne, the most
Protestant district of England rose against the new order of
things, protected Mary, who trusted herself to them, and made
sher queen, to be repaid by fireand faggot. For anything which
‘Northumberland, the son of Henry the Seventh’s hateful instru-
ament, the father of Elizabeth’s worthless favourite, had touched,
-was tainted. He had secured, in the last year of Edward’s reign,
tthe surrender of the see of Durham, with the regalian rights
of the County Palatine. He intended to appropriate this to
chimself, and to dismember northern England by making an
‘independent principality, which should include the Northern
‘Counties, and probably York, to ally with the Scots, and to
procure the hand of Mary Stuart for his son Robert. In this
«case he would be able to defy all attempts to dispossess him.
But Edward’s death disconcerted his plans, and the hatred of
-all parties cowed him.

The issue of the base money was recognised to be the cause
-of dearth in the realm. Latimer preached before the king and
damented that the silver had become dross, All the good
“money disappeared, of course, and the king’s credit with it.
‘Pauperism began to show itself, and the people were exhorted
‘to charity and almsgiving by proclamations which issued
The Confiscation of the Guild Lands. 349

from a gang of coiners and smashers. In Mary’s days the
rich who declined to give were to be denounced to the
ordinary as heretics. It may be doubted whether, even if she
had reformed the currency in her reign, the old prices would
have been restored. Elizabeth effected the reformation, but the
facts were too strong for her, the wages of labour possessed
less and less purchasing power, and pauperism increased. The
great queen’s government strove to stay it by insisting on the
creation of ‘peasant holdings, or by supplementing wages with
land allotments of four acres to each cottage. But the evil was
too far gone for the remedies of legislation, and a poor law,
under which the relief of destitution was guaranteed, was the
only expedient before her government when it was left face to
face with the irremediable poverty of labour.

The English labourer, then, in the sixteenth century was
almost simultaneously assailed on two sides. The money
which he received for his wages was debased, and the assis-
tance which his benefit society gave him in times of difficulty,
which allowed him loans without interest, apprenticed his son,
or pensioned his widow, was confiscated. All the necessaries
of life, as I have already stated, rose in value in the propor-
tion generally of 1 to 24, while the wages of labour rose
to little more than from 1 to 14. His ordinary means of
life were curtailed. The considerable advantage which the
London labourer and artizan had over his country fellow
in the calling disappeared, and the wages of country and
London hands were nearly equalised. This was indeed to
be expected, for in the virtual decline of wages, the advan-
tage of the better paid or selected hands would certainly be lost.
But the deterioration of his condition was not confined to the
loss of money wages. He lost his insurance also, the fund des-
tined to support him and his during the period of youth and
age, when work is not open to the imperfect powers of youth,
and has become impossible to the enfeebled powers of age.
Nor is the extent of the loss which the working classes
suffered by the confiscation of the guild lands to be estimated
by the value which was set upon the capital fund, as we may
see from the enormous amount to which those funds have
350 Labour and Wages.

‘increased in London, where they were spared, for it is
admitted that most of the guild or corporate estates of the city
‘companies are of pre-Reformation origin. The estates of the
guilds in country towns might not have nearly reached the value
of the London property belonging to the companies, but they
would hardly have been so entirely perverted from their
original objects as they have been in the city, and would
‘have remained, in some degree at least, to fulfil the original
purposes of the donors. The country guilds, though not
formally suppressed after being plundered, were practically
superseded by the corporate action of the burgesses, who
appropriated such income as was left, from fees and fines, to
the common purse of the freemen.

The purpose which the legislature had before it for two
centuries had now become possible. The Statute of
Labourers had been passed, re-enacted, invoked, and put
into execution in vain. There is hardly a trace in the
history of English labour and wages that the passionate
‘desire of the employers of labour that workmen should be
constrained to accept reasonable wages had been satisfied.
The rise in wages, and what was even more significant, of
articles the price of which no law could pretend to control,
had changed the form of English husbandry from capitalist
cultivation on a large scale to the stock and land lease, and
‘thence to tenancies of the ordinary farm kind on short lease,
or to tenancies at will. But though there was a formidable
increase in prices after the full effect of the debased currency
was reached, there was no rise in rents. The landowner
was paying nearly three times as much in the first years
of Elizabeth’s reign as he paid in the first years of her’
father’s reign, and receiving no more rent in the later than he?
-did in the earlier period. This is proved by the evidence '
‘given of corporate income at the two periods when the income
is the source of the corporation’s existence. For a long time
the revenues of King’s College, Cambridge, and New College,
All Souls, or Merton, Oxford, show no increase in amount,
‘The Cambridge College, it is true, tries to remedy the loss by
‘demanding its rents in kind, but the Oxford societies either
The Rise in Rents Delayed. 351

did not attempt the expedient or found that their tenants
could resist it. The bishoprics were opulent before the
Reformation, but poor after it, not so much because they had
generally been shorn of their possessions by the greedy courtiers
of the later Tudor princes, though this took place, as because
rents had remained stationary while prices had been rising.
Nor is the cause far to seek. Rents do not rise because
prices rise, for the power of the tenant to pay an enhanced
rent which the rise in the price of farm produce will give him
may be entirely neutralized by the rise in the price of that
which he must purchase in order to carry on his industry.
‘This is made clear at the present (1883) time. The high
price of meat and dairy products is more than a compensa-
tion for the low price of corn, if one is to interpret the power
of a tenant to pay rent by the price of agricultural produce.
But all farmers will tell us that, owing to the great price of
lean stock, no profit, or little profit beyond manure, attends
stock keeping. Nor would the difference between high and
low wages materially diminish or increase the power of
paying rent, apart from other causes. Wages may be high,
and profits may remain high, because demand is great and
supply indefinite. This is the common case when there is
great activity in manufactures, and it arises from the fact that
business has become more brisk, that the industry is for the
time capable of indefinite extension, or that a great and
notable economy has been induced on the process of pro-
duction. Wages may be high and profits low, not because,
as some economists have absurdly argued, wages trench on
profits, but because an increasing number of persons compete
for an inelastic or stationary amount of business, and there-
fore at once overbuy each other in the wages market and
undersell each other in the produce market.

In medizval agriculture the greatest outlay, as I have
frequently said, was on stock, live and dead. It is not easy, in
the old system of capitalist farming, to precisely figure the
wages of labour, because the tenants of the manor frequently
paid the rents for their small holdings in labour, and an
estimate of this would have to be given in any interpretation
352 Labour and Wages.

of the cost of labour in the earlier husbandry, But in the
small tenancies which followed, this kind of labour is ex-
tinguished, and it is not easy, in the absence of direct
evidence, to determine what additional cost the tenant would
be at. Still the farmer gave, as in older times, his own
labour and that of his household to his holding, and would
not be as likely to employ independent labour as the capital-
ist farmer was, except in harvest time and under urgency.
And it will be clear, that unless hired labour formed a
considerable item in the costs of the tenant farmer, a fall in
wages would not of itself render him, under such altered
circumstances, able and willing to pay an enhanced rent.
There is only one cause for a rise in rent, and this cause has
manifested itself at well-defined periods in the history of
English agricultural industry.

This is an economy in the process of production due to
improvements in the process of agriculture. From the days
of Henry III. to those of James I, no such economy or
improvement occurred. It is probable that some processes
by which land was tilled were neglected or forgotten. It
is not unlikely that the care which had been taken to improve
breeds of sheep had been remitted. Only one new kind of
agricultural industry had been introduced,—the cultivation-
of the hop; and this was suspected and even denounced.
But from the time of James I., especially after the middle
of his reign, large and important improvements are made
in agriculture, great economies discovered, and a rapid rise
in rent ensues. These will be subsequently commented on.
It is to be regretted, though it is not to be wondered at,
that these improvements and economies had no beneficial
effect on the wages of labour.

The government of Elizabeth was, however, convinced that
the legal restraint of wages was a necessity or a benefit, or
both. Hence the Statute 5 Eliz. cap. 4 (which enacts that
no person shall, under a penalty of forty shillings a month,
use or occupy any art, mystery, or manual occupation
without a previous seven years’ apprenticeship), seems to
favour traders and artizans at the expense of labourers in
The Statute 5 Elizabeth. 353

husbandry, by limiting the number of the former and
making the latter the residuum of all non-apprenticed labour.
But the favour is more apparent than real in the case of the
artizan; for what the statute gives with one hand it takes
away with another. The justices in Quarter Sessions are
empowered to fix the rate of wages in husbandry and in
handicrafts, and they do not let their powers lie idle. The
great collection of Elizabeth’s proclamations now in the
Bodleian Library, a volume which probably once belonged
to Cecil, gives two of these exhaustive assessments,—one for
the county of Rutland, which seems to have been published
as a type for the southern counties, and one for that of
Lancashire, which is probably a guide for the northern
counties, There are others in existence.

This expedient was at last successful, and was the third
in the set of causes from which pauperism was the inevitable
effect. The two former, the base money and the confis-
cation of the benefit societies’ funds, are economical, and can
be so interpreted. The third is capable of historical proof.
The wages of labour do conform, notwithstanding the con-
tinual increase in the price of the necessaries of life, to the
assessments of the Quarter Sessions, and the system is
continued under legal sanction till 1812, and by a sufficient
understanding for long after that date. It seems that as
long as the practice remained, under which the wages of the
peasant were eked out by land allowances and commonable
rights, he continued to subsist, though but poorly, under the
system; but that when the enclosures of the eighteenth
century began, and the full influence of the corn laws was
felt, during the fourth quarter of that century and the first
quarter of the nineteenth, it became necessary to supplement
his wages by an allowance from the parish fund, and thus to
indirectly qualify the assessment which the magistrates had
established.

Had, however, the first two acts to which I have so often
referred not been committed, the third would have, I am per-
suaded, been nugatory. It was nothing more than had been
enacted in the reign of Henry IV., and had been wholly

23
354 Labour and Wages.

inoperative, at any rate in the direction which it was intended
to take—the reduction of agricultural wages; for these, as
we have seen, improve after the enactment. But it was a
very different thing when the workman had been weakened,
and he had been constrained for half a generation to submit
to a base currency and to undergo other losses.

The altered condition of the labourers is further illustrated
by the rise in the price of their maintenance. In the early part
of the fifteenth century the average cost of a labourer’s board
is Qd. a week. In the famine year of the fifteenth century,
1348-9, it rose to an average of Is. 6a, a proof that the rates
which 1 have given were contract prices. Nor is there much
variation in the rate till after the issue of the base money. In
1542, board and lodging are put at Is. a week; but in ten years
from this time it rises to an average of 3s. a week. In 1562,
1563, and 1570, Elizabeth makes quarterly contracts for
victualling her worsmen in her dockyards at Deptford and
Portsmouth. In the first year the contract is at an average
of 4s. 0}d.; in the second, at 4s. 6@.; in the third, at 35. 11d;
the first and third being a cheap, the second a dear year. The
Queen also rents lodgings at 2d@, a week, the contract being
that the men should have feather beds, that two should lie in
a bed, and that the Queen should find sheets and pay for
washing them at Id. the pair. Similar contracts are made at
4s. in 1573; at 4s. 84d. in 1577; at 4s. 3a. in 1578. These
prices represent the highest increases of any, for I find that
in 1562 the average price of labour was 45. 9$d. the week; in
1563, 45. O4d.; in 1570, 4s. 7a.; in 1573, 45. 114d.; in 1577
4s. 103a@.; and in 1578, 4s. 8d.; these average rates of
wages, taken from eight different kinds of labour, five
artizans and three ordinary or unskilled, being only a very little
in exccss of the amounts for which Elizabeth contracted in
the same years to board her artizans at the docks.

Elizabeth soon discovered that one of the causes which was
impoverishing her people was making her also poor. The rents
and dues of the Crown, the subsidies, tenths and fifteenths,
all the revenues of the Crown, except, perhaps, customs, were
fixed in amount. The purchasing power of the revenue had
Cost of the Labourer's Board. 355

fallen to about one-third of its ancient capacity, and the Queen
strove to meet the difficulty by declaring that the new
currency should run at only two-thirds its nominal value—
zé. that the shilling should be current at 8a, and soon. But
the proclamation, though drafted, was not issued, probably
because the Queen’s advisers feared that the step would be
‘unpopular, and would suggest that the Crown was trying
arbitrarily to enhance its rights against its debtors.

The enactment and development of the English poor law,
unique among legislative enactments, must be treated in a
separate chapter. But I must remind my reader that it by
no means follows that population had increased because there
was a virtual decline in wages. Low wages may be the con-
comitant of a scanty population, high wages of an abundant
one. Nay, unhappily, society may make notable progress in
wealth, and wages may remain low, misery may be general,
and discontent may be imminent. The mass of English
workmen are far better off now than they were two generations
ago, though population has greatly increased. But relatively
speaking, the working man of to-day is not so well off as he
was in the fifteenth century, when the population was not
one-tenth of what it is now.
356

CHAPTER XIII.

THE CLERGY TILL THE REFORMATIUN,

The Merits and Action of the Medizval Church—Reformers, their Zeal and
Ferocity—The Seats of Resistance to the Church—The Treatment of Ec-
clesiastical History by Ecclesiastics—The State of England in the Monastic
Age—The Affair of-1297—The Meeting at Canterbury—The Policy of the
Pope—The Residence at Avignon—The Schism—The Prosperity of the
People, and the Mismanagement of Government—The Bishops of the
Fifteenth Century—Arundel, Chichele, Stafford, Kemp, Bourchier, Scrope,
Booth, Wykeham, Beaufort, Waynflete, De Molyns, Ayscough, Pecok—The
Position of the Latter, His Books, His Trial and Condemnation—The Clergy
and the Monks—The Progress of Church Reform from the Days of the
Oxford Reformers to the Settlement of Elizabeth—The Ordinary History

of the Fifteenth Century, as that of the latter part of the Seventeenth,
Superficial.

N Q inquiry into the economical history of England would

be complete which did not give some account of the
clergy. During a long time they were the most powerful
factors in the progress of civilization, were the principal
instruments by which the very memory of ancient literature
was preserved, and some of its relics treasured ; were the only
historians of the age, the only educators of the people, the
only refuge from tyranny and violence, the asylum of the
past, the hope of the future. At one time the national
and secular clergy performed, to the best of their power, these
high functions; at another time, the protection of society
becomes the business of monasteries, though often uncon-
sciously; at another, the papacy is the ark of refuge; at
another, the hierarchy of different European states was com-
pelled to save the corporate Church from the ambition, the
vices, the incapacity of its chief; at another, the authors of
schisms within the order were the agents in working out the
The Services of the Clergy—Langton. 357

higher destinies of mankind. As they preserved the relics of
culture, of order, of law, of obedience to a common purpose ;
as they maintained a bold front against the degrading and
debasing ‘selfishness of a turbulent aristocracy, the common
foe of the administration, of trade, of religion, of morality, of
every national and every private interest, so they were the
principal cause why England became thoroughly settled and
occupied, that agriculture was safely and, for the times, suc-
cessfully carried on, and that the husbandman was not
utterly trodden down and impoverished. No body of per-
sons has played a more important part in the history of
English progress than, the English clergy have, especially
when they were at once Englishmen, and yet had higher and
more far-reaching aims than the mere political interests of
the day or the mere ends of their order. The visitor to the
cathedral church of Canterbury will see that the grave of the
greatest English prelate, Stephen Langton, lies partly within
and partly without the church. Perhaps it is an accident
that, an addition having been made to the fabric after
Langton was laid in the grave, the architect of the Warriors’
Chapel would not disturb the remains of the great statesman
and bishop who saved England from John in the first instance,
and from Innocent and Honorius in the second, but arched
the grave over with the wall which he was constructing. But
the place of Langton’s grave is an apt symbol of what the
work of the best churchmen was. It is at once of and in the
Church, and of and in the world; in the Church of the past,
and in the world of the past, but in what was Church and
world together, the ancestor of that of which our present
England is the descendant. <A century after Langton’s time,
and the Church has become the handmaid of the regal autho-
rity, without spirit and without a policy, and the forces were
slowly gathering which weakened its influence, overset its
power, confiscated its revenues, and claimed to inherit its
ancient rights over all men, for the policy of the Puritan in
the middle of the seventeenth century had been the policy of
the Lollard in the latter part of the fourteenth—an attempt
to supersede one ecclesiastical dynasty by another.
358 The Clergy till the Reformation.

The Church of the middle ages conferred inestimable
benefits on mankind, and especially on England, from the
days of Lanfranc to those of Grostéte; but it inflicted enor-
mous mischief in other ways. It was in the last degree
intolerant to all who would not agree with its tenets and
its policy. As it became more zealous it became more im-
placable. It educated the human mind, but only on its own
lines, and, though it allowed it growth, it stunted and distorted
it. It had no patience with those who challenged its authority
and the means by which it thought fit to maintain its authority.
It put out the most shameless fictions in order to vindicate
its claims. It forged a whole body of law that it might
maintain, first, the appellate, and, next, the original juris-
diction of the papal court. It forged charters innumerable,
in order to give the pretence of independence for its action
and status. It forged miracles by thousands, in order that
it might at once enslave the people and fill its coffers,
Mr. Hallam has quoted some of these stories, which he
conceives were invented in order to be a counterpoise to
the foolish romances of chivalry. They long preceded any
such romances, and a heap of them—those which Mr. Hallam
quotes among the rest—-may be seen in an eleventh century
MS. (Laud, No. F. 34), still preserved in the Bodleian
Library. Nor was the papacy above sharing in these frauds.
I do not say that the alleged miracles at Becket’s tomb were
deliberate impostures, The circumstances under which
the unparalleled crime of Becket’s murder was committed
were sufficient to strike every imagination in the twelfth
century, even that of the murderers themselves, when the
paroxysm of passion was over. I can well believe that for
a long time “the martyrdom chapel” was full of apparitions
to the devout believer; the tomb of the saint a scene of
divine manifestations. I can understand why the Black
Prince chose the proximity of the shrine, to which Becket’s
body fifty years after the murder was translated, as the
place of his own sepulchre; and why Henry IV., who had
himself put to death another archbishop by form of legal
process, chose the same spot for himself and his wife. But the
Forged Credentials—Intolerance 359

bargain under which the translation was permitted by the
pope is most significant. The murder of Becket occurred in
midwinter, a most inconvenient time for pilgrimage, and the
monks sought for the pope’s permission to put the day of
transldtion in midsummer. The bargain was long and
anxious. The pope claimed half the gross profits of the
shrine, and on the monks insisting that they could not carry
on the business on such terms, allowed himself to accept half
the net profits. The pope was Honorius III., who had suc-
ceeded to the policy and pretensions of Innocent III., and the
narrative of the transaction is in the archives of Christ Church,
now the Canterbury chapter.

The more zealous was the reformer of Church discipline
and doctrine, the more ferocious was his zeal. We owe the
Inquisition to Dominic, one of the founders of the missionary
movement at the end of the twelfth century; and the savagery
of the Inquisition’s orthodoxy at the commencement of its
career was as implacable as that of its later organization and
activity. The mission of the new order was, like that of its
predecessors, to save society ; but if any members, or all the
members, declined the means which the mission laid down
by the agents of the reform, the doctors of the new way were
quite ready to destroy society, for the fundamental condition
under which it would do good was that of unhesitating obedi-
ence, of a total surrender of the judgment to dictation, and of
unquestioning faith in the authorised revelation.. The Church
in the twelfth century needed reform grievously, but the dis-
cipline of the orthodox reformer fell on those whom the
Church had offended. So the whole Church became hope-
lessly corrupt in the fourteenth century, so corrupt that there
seemed no prospect of an internal reformation such as that
effected by Dominic and Francis, and only one remedy re-
mained,—the submission of the hierarchy to the decrees of
general councils. But the Council was as bloodthirsty, as
perfidious, as the Inquisition. And when the Reformation
became an accomplished fact, and a new race of obedient
reformers sprang up in Loyola and his followers, there still
was to be no truce, no faith, no mercy for the heretic; there
360 The Clergy till the Reformation.

was to be nothing but submission or death. If the Church
of the middle ages strove to mitigate, to resist, to control, to
subdue the evils of the age in which it found its work, it
would do so only on condition that the progress of man-
kind went on the lines which it had sketched out, and to the
limits which it had defined. Any onward movement was
dangerous, suspicious, and, finally, intolerable.

It cannot be by accident that those parts of Europe which
have been from time to time distinguished for manufacturing
and commercial activity have also been, with one exception,
and that capable of easy explanation, generally hostile to the
pretensions of the Church, and that they have, when possible,
revolted from it. It was so in Toulouse, before the crusade
of Simon de Montfort wasted the fairest part of France. It
was so in Flanders and Holland, in the Baltic towns, in Scan-
dinavia, and in the eastern parts of England. It was so in
the most industrious and opulent parts of France in the six-
teenth century. It was not indeed so in Italy; but the
papacy laid all Europe under tribute, and whatever may have
been the lot of its own subjects, the presence of the papal
court was an enormous factor in the wealth of Italy. It was
not in human nature that it should willingly quarrel with the
process by which it became opulent, though in the end it paid
dearly for its advantages. Being necessarily disunited, for it
hated the temporal power heartily and consistently, it became
the prey of the strongest adventurer, of the tyrants which it
bred within itself, till the close of the fifteenth century, when
Charles VIII. gave the earliest occasion for that interference of
foreign adventurers in Italy which continued to our own days.
Nor again can it be by accident that those countries which
have thrown off the yoke of the Roman see were and have
been most distinguished for intellectual activity. The true
literature of modern Europe is almost exclusively the work
of those countries in which the Reformation has been finally
settled—of England, of Holland, of Northern Germany.

Some years ago I remember to have heard of a Roman
Catholic prelate in Germany who stated that Lingard’s
History of England was the fairest which he had ever read
Clerical ‘rstory. 361

But on being told that Lingard was a priest of his own creed,
he exclaimed, “ What an atrocious knave!” The bishop took
that clerical view of history which has been generally prevalent
among all clergymen of all established, or dominant, or pre-
tentious churches, who have written on ecclesiastical topics,
even in the treatment of secular history. To suppress or
colour inconvenient truths, to palliate ecclesiastical crimes
when they cannot be ignored, to distort the motives, or
traduce the characters, or ridicule the arguments, of reformers
outside the Church, is the common vice of clerical historians.
Such persons cannot be dispassionate. Any person who will
be at the pains to read how Lingard, the fairest and most
cautious instance of an ecclesiastical historian, deals with the
attitude which Langton took towards Innocent and Honorius,
of how he treats the resistance of Grostéte to the papal pro-
visions, can see how strongly he was biassed. Under such
circumstances it is not reasonable to expect that he would
be even commonly just to Wiklif and the Lollards, to Luther
and the reformers; or to wonder that he speaks of the first
as an irresolute, impudent, and absurd fanatic, his followers
as communists and rebels; and of the Saxon reformer as a
man whose motives are to be found in disappointed ambition,
in vain-glorious love of display, and whose conduct in affairs
is coarse, insolent, and offensive. He has little or nothing to
say about the unparalleled misdeeds of the papal court from
the accession of John XXIII. till that of Adrian VI.

England was planted full of monasteries and of capitular
bodies. The monks, especially those of the Benedictine
order, the most learned and respectable of the older bodies,
generally chose some locality of great natural beauty, being
often settled in some poorly peopled district, Here they
built their magnificent churches and set up their conventual
buildings. Some of these establishments were founded in
times almost prehistoric, by kings, the boundaries of whose
dominions can be no longer traced, and whose names alone
have survived in their charters of donation. The towns were
full of those ecclesiastical corporations, whose history and
whose downfall is recorded in the vast work of Dugdale.
362 The Clergy tell the Reformation.

These monasteries were in the zenith of their reputation
during the first half of the thirteenth century, when they had,
it would appear, been stimulated to a beneficent activity by
the rivalry of the two new orders of preaching friars, those of
Dominic and Francis. They had to be sure the fatal gift of
wealth, but they seem to have used their wealth well. They
were founders of schools, authors of chronicles, teachers of
agriculture, fairly indulgent landlords, and advocates of
generous dealing towards the peasantry. They drove to be
sure an active trade in miracles and relics, and they were not
very particular in scrutinizing reports of visions and dreams
which portended honour to the saint on whose merits they
depended and by whose good offices they were enriched. It
is, however, very difficult to put oneself in the place of those
whose devotion to saints and reverence for relics seems to us
so credulous and even degrading, but it would be intolerable
to believe that the respect which they professed and imposed
on others was a mere hypocritical grimace put on to serve the
most sordid and dishonest ends.

It is not easy to understand how these monasteries declined
in character and usefulness, till they came to the condition
which is described so indignantly by Gascoigne,—a condition
which renders probable the charges which Henry the Eighth’s
commissioners made against them. But many causes appear
to have contributed to the result. Their wealth doubtlessly
made them unpopular, especially when they had committed
the fatal error in 1297 of praying Boniface VIII. to issue
a bull by which the whole body of the clergy were forbidden
to make any grant from their revenues to laymen without the
express permission of the pope. The extreme rashness and
pride with which Boniface contrived at once to embroil
himself with Edward and Philip is surprising enough, but
that the English clergy should have sought his assistance
against a monarch whose character and authority they had
good cause to be acquainted with is still more strange. The
issue of the contest is well known. The king was completely
victorious, and really gained at a stroke all that his great-
grandfather strove to obtain by the celebrated Constitutions
Lhe Burgesses at Canterbury, 363

of Clarendon. The clergy, secular and regular, were forced
to submit, and never afterwards attempted to make head
against the king’s will. It seems reasonable to infer that the
change from such high pretensions to such complete sub-
mission should have stimulated lay persons to try their own
strength against corporations which were wealthy, were un-
willing to contribute to public purposes, and yet might be
cowed into acquiescence. A singular illustration of this
temper occurs in the ledger book of the Priory of Christ
Church, just thirty years after the struggle between Edward
and his clergy, the particulars of which I have extracted from
the original.

On May 27th, 1327, a letter came from the king to William
of Chilham, bailiff of Canterbury, and the citizens of the town,
requesting them to provide a contribution in men in order to
repel an invasion of Robert Bruce, who had taken advantage
of the disturbed state of England to renew his ravages on the
border. The bailiff and citizens agreed to equip and send
twelve men-at-arms to Newcastle-on-Tyne, and invited the
prior and monks of Christ Church to give their aid in the
undertaking. The prior declined on the ground that the
possessions of the monastery were, and always had been, in
free alms, and were, therefore, not liable to any such con-
tribution ; and that, indeed, they could not make it without
the consent of the king himself. On the receipt of this
message the bailiff and citizens met in the field adjoining the
house of the preaching friars, and came to the following
resolutions :—(1) That they would pull down all the tene-
ments in Burgate to the mill ; (2) that no one under penalties,
to be imposed by the city, should inhabit the prior’s houses ;
(3) that all rents of 200 marks and upwards should be levied
for the benefit of the city; (4) that no one should buy, sell,
or exchange drink or victuals with the monastery under
similar penalties; (5) that all carts and horses from the
-manors of the convent containing victuals or stock for the
monastery should be seized and sold with their contents;
(6) that if the prior or any of the monks go out of their
church they should be spoiled of their clothes and goods and
364 The Clergy tell the Reformation.

be attached ; (7) that a deep ditch should be dug outside the
great gate of the monastery, so that no one should go in or
out ; (8) that no stranger should enter the church, unless he
take oath first that he will offer no gift to the shrine of
St. Thomas or elsewhere ; (9) each of the citizens swore that
he would have from the shrine of St. Thomas a gold ring of
,the best, for each finger of each of his hands, from those
which were hung up at the aforesaid shrine of St. Thomas.
It was a common custom, when gifts of money and jewels
were made to the shrine, to acknowledge them, and inform
the donor that the ring had been hung on the shrine.

No further statement is made in the ledger-book of the
consequences which followed from this transaction. The
statement made to the prior is probably an exaggerated
account of some violent language or threats used at the
town’s meeting ; for we can hardly imagine that these reso-
lutions were formally committed to writing and forwarded to
the monastery. But however much they may be softened
down, they contain enough which must be real to show that,
at a date long before the epoch at which monastic corruption
was said to have commenced, there was a very active feeling
of animosity against monastic privileges, even when the prior
was so cautious as this ecclesiastic was. For the letters
which precede this and are copied into the ledger express
the prior’s alarm at what was going on in England, his
disinclination to take any side in the quarrel between the
king and queen, and his request that all his communications
on the subject should be burnt as soon as read. At this
comparatively early date, in short, the lay tax-payers are
beginning to be discontented with the wealth and the im-
munities of the clergy, and to cast about how they might
relieve themselves from these recurrent claims, by insisting
that their wealthy neighbours should share the burden.

The regular orders and (as long as their secular brethren
identified themselves with the aims of the monks) the bishops
and parochial clergy were supposed to sympathize with the
policy of the pope. Now beyond doubt, the popes had
exercised an enormous power, and, as many have recognized,
The Policy of the Pope. 365

for important objects,—objects which at the time seemed a
public good,—over the affairs of Europe, especially in the
German Empire. The struggle with the house of Swabia
lasted from the days of Hildebrand till after the middle of
the thirteenth century. But, to carry out their policy, the
popes had taxed Europe severely ; had spent largely, beyond
question, in corrupting those persons who might resist the
authority of the emperors; had constantly violated private
rights; and had encouraged resistance to central and con-
stituted authority. The long agony and weakness of Germany,
continued for eight centuries at least, perhaps even from the
days of Charles the Great's eldest son, were the work of the
papal court. The pope did his best to make the German
Empire and the German people powerless in Europe, and, to
be just, the pope’s policy was eminently successful ; for it
stereotyped the miserable German aristocracy, and created
the German kinglets—the curse of the Teutonic race—from
the earliest ages of later Europe. A divided and disunited
Germany was the true temporal power of the pope, and the
dissensions of Germany are his temporal power to this day.
To effect this end, the pope wanted money. He gathered it
from all his spiritual subjects by any pretext which he could
devise, by capitation fees, by dues, by taxes on ecclesiastical
successions, by exacting enormous bribes for confirmations in
dignities, by the sale of canonizations, by the sale of relics,
by the sale of pardons, licences, indulgences. He invented
prohibitions in order to make a market of them. He invented
affinities in order to sell dispensations ; and he gave dispensa-
tions for the marriage of near blood relations, as, for instance,
those of an uncle and niece. He borrowed and paid interest
and principal by annuities, levied on anything which came
handy. “The Roman Church,” said Alphonso of Arragon
to Eugenius IV., “is a veritable harlot, for she offers herself
to every one who approaches her with money.”

It was remarkable that the European sovereigns did not
see that if the Roman court were successful in Germany it
would follow out the same policy with every European state
which it could influence. But the European kings and states-
366 The Clergy till the Reformation.

men were like children in a nursery, where, though one of
the number may be convulsed with grief, the rest go on
unconcernedly with their games or their occupations. All
were indifferent. Still it is possible, if the popes had remained
at Rome during the fourteenth century, that the Reformation
might have been anticipated by two centuries. They mi-
grated to Avignon, lost their political influence by being
simply the echoes of French policy, became more hungry
and rapacious than ever, and more disliked. Then came the
great schism, the epoch of the Councils, the decline of the
papal authority, and finally the Reformation.

The residence at Avignon, occurring as it did at the epoch
during which the English king carried on the first war with
France, made the pope still more unpopular in England.
He was believed to be the ally of the English enemy, the
adviser, counsellor, friend, mainstay of the usurper who kept
the Plantagenets out of their just inheritance. The attacks
of Wiklif and others his followers on the Roman Court,
on Roman doctrines, and the pope’s adherents, the monks
and friars in England, were popular, and were encouraged
in high places. It seems to me highly probable that there
would have been a reformation in England on the lines of
Wiklif’s teaching had it not been for the tremendous in-
surrection of Tyler and his associates. Thenceforward the
Church became the ally, the servant, the spy of the govern-
ment, and earned the continuance of the wealth and influence
it possessed by the conviction which all the dynasties en-
tertained, Plantagenets, Tudors, and Stuarts, that it was on
the watch against the common enemy of disaffection. As
it gave all its energies to this struggle, it ceased to be national,
and became the advocate of a party. As it became more and
more the advocate of a party, it was loyal only to that which
gave it security. As it concentrated its purposes on the
prosecution of its own wealth and place, it ceased to be
moral, and identified religion with acquiescence in secular
authority. As might be expected, the corruption of the
religious houses was greater than that of the secular clergy,
As again might be expected, the hierarchy of the secular
The Church in the Days of the Councils. 367

clergy were more time-serving, more negligent, more disloyal
to their true duty than the parochial clergy were. The
fifteenth century was the worst age of the Anglican Church.
It was the worst age of the papacy, at least since the time
when Hildebrand began to reform the Church with a view
to enslaving the state, and after denouncing simony, to
make simony the machinery of ecclesiastical government.

At the beginning of the fifteenth century, or at least after
the Council of Pisa, there were three simultaneous popes,
each claiming to be lawfully elected, each claiming the
allegiance of Christendom, and each cursing his rival and
his rival’s supporters. As the schism was scandalous, another
Council, that of Constance, was summoned, and the unity of
Christendom was nominally restored. But it was impossible
to restore respect for the papal authority, or to revive that
empire over governments which had been the dream of
Gregory VII. and the achievement of Innocent III. There
still remained the vast and indeterminate influence over
men’s minds, sanctioned by ancient tradition, supported by
every artifice which ingenuity could suggest and interest
insist on. I do not foolishly allege that the system of the
Roman Church was the outcome of a conscious and deliberate
conspiracy against every impulse that makes human nature
hopeful and courageous, because it insists that the individual
is responsible, for I am well aware that in the darkest age
of ecclesiastical morality, the fifteenth century, there were
men who were sincerely attached to Roman Christianity,
and would have been an honour to any religion. But the
degradation of the hierarchy in England and abroad was
conspicuous, the appeals to popular superstitions were gross
and scandalous, and, in this country at least, men who
recorded the facts and made an estimate of their necessary
consequences were being trained to accept the reform which
was inevitable in the following century, and might well have
been anticipated had not the English Government been
demoralized by prolonged and furious feuds.

I have stated frequently that the fifteenth century was
an epoch of peculiar prosperity, that the means of life were

*
368 The Clergy till the Reformation.

cheap, that wages were high, that the price of lagd went
rapidly up, that English commerce increased, that enterprise,
according to the lights and opportunities of the age, was
general, that the yeomanry and small gentry were firmly
planted, and that remarkable opulence was attained by many.
The Cannyngs and the Chicheles are examples of the wealth
which was won by traders, the Fastolfes and the Cromwells
of the opportunities given to knights and nobles. The solid
and splendid buildings of this century denote its wealth and
illustrate its profusion. The eulogy which Fortescue utters
on the English constitution is testimony to the character
and spirit of the people. The mass of the nation was thrifty
and thriving. The Lollardy which is said to have infected
all those who prospered and grew rich was very likely sour
and contemptuous, but it was hardy and vigorous, like its
descendant in the seventeenth century. It was sufficient
to leaven the religious life of the English, though it was not,
as yet, powerful enough to change it. The persecution which
its adherents suffered (and the story of these persecutions
could be gathered by laborious compilation from municipal
archives, such as those of Norwich and Canterbury, where
the charge for burning heretics is a recurrent expense on
the city revenues) would point out how widely spread were
the tenets of the sectaries. Now a hunted creed, if it be not
extirpated, and is held by the most progressive of the in-
dustrial classes, makes its votaries reserved, concentrated on
their callings, vigilant in their action, and, in the end, wealthy.
These men had nothing to spare for monk and priest, least
of all for the former. But there was no organization by
which to give effect to the discontent which was felt, for
insurrection was tried by Cade and failed, and in this re-
markable uprising, political and social grievances are the
staple of the complaint put forward by the Captain of the
Commons.

On the one side is the picture of secure and progressive
opulence, on the other of mismanagement, waste, debt, a
corrupt aristocracy, and a still more corrupt Church. The
whole machinery of government was hurrying the constitution

*
The County Franchise—The Bishop. 369

into ruin. The Act of 1430, corrected by that of 1432, had
made the county franchise, at that time by far the most
important part of the representation, essentially aristocratical ;
and as from time to time, especially in 1450, the Court
strove to neutralize the effect even of this restricted franchise,
by granting representatives to what were from the beginning
mere nomination boroughs, or, it would seem, to get a
temporary influence, as much against the genuine boroughs
as against the counties, the people were more and more
deprived of any true place in Parliament. But it is clear that
Parliament possessed considerable powers. It had begun to
legislate. The Paston Letters prove that a seat in the Lower
House was not only the object of ambition but of intrigue ;
and it is certain that the impulse which would lead persons in
that day to seek for a place in the Commons was much more
composite than a desire to earn the wages of knight or
burgess, citizen or baron of one of the Cinque Ports.

On the accession of Henry IV., Arundel, who had been
banished by Richard, was restored to the primacy. He held
his place till 1414, when he was succeeded by Henry Chichele,
a man of very humble origin, who occupied the see for twenty-
nine years, longer, it is said, than any other primate before.
Chichele was succeeded by Stafford, who was archbishop a
little over nine years. Kemp followed, but was archbishop
a little less than two years. He was followed by Bourchier
in 1454, who remained archbishop till after the accession of
Henry VII., dying in 1488. He was followed by Henry’s
partizan, Morton. Again, at the accession of Henry IV.
Scrope was Archbishop of York, and was executed near his
own residence in 1405. Two years after he was succeeded
by Bowet, who had been Henry’s agent or proctor, who was
followed in 1426 by Kemp. Kemp remained archbishop till
1452, when he was succeeded by Booth. The see was after
an interval filled by Nevil, the younger brother of the Earl
of Warwick. Among other prelates of note are Wykeham,
Beaufort, and Waynflete, bishops of Winchester successively
from 1367 to 1405, from 1405 to 1447, and from 1447 to 1486;
De Moleyns, Bishop of Chichester, Ayscough of Salisbury,

24
370 The Clergy till the Reformation.

and the celebrated successor of De Moleyns, Reginald Pecok.
The character of most of these prelates is known to us,
generally from the comments of Gascoigne, an eminent
clergyman, many times Chancellor of Oxford, a person whose
fortunes and rank gave him access to much information, and
whose piety and zeal led him to comment with severity on
the scandals of his age.

Arundel was one of those prelates of noble birth who begin
to appear in the highest dignities of the English Church after
the Great Plague. He had taken part in the revolutionary
movements of Richard’s time, and had been a partizan of the
appellants, was banished in 1397, and restored after Richard’s
deposition. He is noted for having procured the Statute
De heretico cémburendo, under which the sheriff in the county,
and the chief magistrate in towns was compelled to carry out
the ecclesiastical sentence of death pronounced by the bishop.
With detestable hypocrisy churchmen pretended that they
could not take life; and, therefore, in a statute accepted by
the king at the instance of the clergy, but not agreed to
by Parliament, they put on others the duties which they
declined. He also procured another statute, under which,
on the pretence of silencing heretical preachers, the inferior
clergy were obliged to take out a license for preaching, and
to pay a fee for the privilege. This, we are told, was made
the means by which the king was kept in ignorance of
popular discontent consequent on mis-government. To the
mind of the pious Gascoigne, the inhibition of the preachers
by this prelate far more than counterbalanced the activity
which he showed in denouncing heresy, purging the university
from Wiklif’s followers, and putting the obnoxious opinions
to the test of fire and faggot.

Chichele, though of humble origin, was a dignified and
popular prelate. He was noted for the courtesy with which
he received those who came to him, for his munificence and
liberality. But he was not above the charge of nepotism, as
perhaps no archbishop ever has been. He owed his nomina-
tion to the pious zeal of the great Lancastrian conqueror.
But if we can trust the account given of his favourite, Richard
Arundel, Chichele, Stafford, Kemp. 371

Andrew, the primate was either unable or unwilling to check
the scandals which became dominant at the time. He is
said, which is probably untrue, to have counselled the invasion
of France, in order to countervail the growing determination
of the reformers to attack the wealth of the Church, and, with
greater truth, to have acquiesced in the suppression of the
‘alien_priories, that is, those religious houses the surplus
-revenues of which belonged to foreign monasteries, The
property of these priories was confiscated on the ground that
they were the means of sustaining the king’s enemies; and
from their possessions the archbishop founded three colleges
in Oxford and elsewhere, the king the great monastery
of Sion and the splendid establishments of King’s College,
Cambridge, and of Eton. But it does not seem that Chichele
took much part in the politics of the time, or even acted as
the chief ecclesiastical minister of England. The first place
in English affairs appears to have been taken by Beaufort,
the king’s great uncle, or by Gloucester, as the partizans of
each had the ascendency.

Stafford, the successor of Chichele, was a scion of the
house of Buckingham, descended through females from the
youngest son of Edward the Third, and brother of the Stafford
whom Cade defeated and killed at the battle of Sevenoaks in
the summer of 1450. According to Gascoigne, he was of base
birth and scandalous life, and lived with a nun, by whom he
had sons and daughters. He had been a lawyer, and became
ultimately Chancellor, and he is described as being insolent
as well as profligate.

Kemp, who succeeded him, had a long episcopate, having
been consecrated in 1419. He was for twenty-six years
Archbishop of York, but was almost always absent from his
duties and constantly in attendance at the Court, though he
appears to have held no public office. Kemp was probably a
person of considerable private fortune, who preferred the ease
and comfort of his country seat in Kent to the fatigues and
duties of the northern province. During his short episcopate
at Canterbury he was Chancellor, and his death, while holding
office, in 1454, rendered a visit to Henry necessary, and with it
372 The Clergy till the Reformation.

the discovery of the king’s insanity and the appointment of
York to the protectorate.

It is probable that the next archbishop, who held the see
for thirty-four years, and whose tenure therefore exceeded
that of Chichele, owed his elevation to the influence of York.
Bourchier was brother to the Earl of Essex, who seems
to have cautiously favoured the reforming party, of which
York was the head. He sat in judgment on Pecok, and
degraded him. But of all the bishops of the age, none
equalled Bourchier in pliancy. One of those who was sworn
to maintain the title of Henry VI, he deserted after to
Edward IV., and crowned Henry’s rival, deserted again to
Henry in 1470, acknowledged Edward IV. again, recognized
the title of his son, crowned Richard III., wheedled Elizabeth
Woodville out of her children when she took sanctuary at
Westminster, and concluded his contemptible career by
crowning the conqueror at Bosworth. In every age of English
history, except during the war of succession in the fifteenth
century, pretenders and rivals have had their partizans on the
episcopal bench who were willing to share the fortunes of
those with whom they were associated. But the feuds of the
fifteenth century furnished only two political victims in the
whole of its course from the ranks of the prelates, Scrope
and Pecok. The others were too time-serving and too con-
temptible to be distrusted or punished. Even Nevil was
forgiven after he had shared the treasons of his family.

The political and social importance of the see of York was
far less than that of Canterbury. After the execution of
Scrope, a bold and startling act which seems to have been
intended to strike terror into the malcontents of the North, .
the see appears to have been vacant for more than two years,
when it was filled by one Bowet, who seems to have been
attached to the king’s court, as his successor, Kemp, was.
His successor, Booth, who had been Margaret’s Chancellor
and was probably appointed for purely political reasons, was
a person of no education, who had been at no university, and
was rapacious, corrupt, and foolish. He is stated to have
been the author of infinite scandals in his diocese, to have
Bourchter—The Sees of York and Winchester. 373

been notorious for his nepotism, and disreputable for
the discouragement he gave to men of learning and
character. Nevil, his successor, was raised to the episcopate
by the influence of his family when he was twenty-three
years old only, though, in consequence of his youth, he was
disabled from consecration for a time, while he held the
temporalities of the see.

The see of Winchester, though inferior in titular rank to
those of London and Durham under the precedency established
by Henry VIII. was next to Canterbury in influence, and
superior to it in wealth. The bishop had noble castles at
Farnham, Waltham, and elsewhere, and a London palace in
Southwark. Three bishops of this opulent see have founded
some of the richest of the Oxford colleges, St. Mary of
Winton, known as New College, Magdalen, and Corpus.
The first was the gift of Wykeham, a prelate who first
conceived the idea of establishing a special training school
for his beneficiaries before they came to the university, and
thereby also of disassociating them from the teaching of the
monks. As Merton was the founder of the collegiate system,
so Wykeham developed the idea of uniting school and college,
and making the former a regular feeder of the latter. He
was exactly imitated by Henry VI., who similarly founded
Eton and King’s College. Wolsey intended to do the same by
Ipswich and Cardinal College. But the system was not fully
developed, a few only of such double institutions having been
founded at and after the Reformation.

Beaufort is the most conspicuous English ecclesiastic in the
first part of the fifteenth century. He was sent to Queen’s Col-
lege, Oxford, in his youth, for, oddly enough, this college was
for a short time, and for some unexplained cause, the special
place of education for young men of high birth. He was made
a bishop when young, since he was for nearly fifty years a
prelate, having been raised to the see of Lincoln in 1398, and
made Bishop of Winchester in 1405. His nephew, afterwards
Henry V., was sent to the same college, and was lodged over
the great gate, in the provost’s apartments, under his uncle’s
care. It is clear that he would not have been made bishop
374 The Clergy till the Reformation.

at an early age of the most extensive English diocese, had not
Richard believed that his kinsman would be useful and loyal.
His birth on the mother’s side was not dangerous. Old John
of Gaunt was still alive, and might well be pleased with the
early elevation of his and Catherine Swinford’s son. The
Beauforts were not yet legitimated, though they were subse-
quently, and without reservation. It is needless to say, that
a family which claims rights not yet awarded, is always more
pretentious than one whose position is indisputable ; and that
when the rights are admitted, it always remembers that they
were disputed, and is proportionately sensitive and exacting.
This is, I imagine, the key to the quarrels between the Car-
dinal of Winchester and the Duke of Gloucester. It does
not, indeed, explain the unpopularity of Beaufort in his life-
time, for I set nostore by the gossip of Holinshed, even though
it has been immortalized by the genius of Shakespeare.

If the correspondence of Beaufort is ever discovered and
published, I venture on predicting that, though the bishop
was not averse to the continuance of the French wars, he was
conscious that the pitiful personal ambitions of Gloucester
were fatal to success abroad and the proper conduct of business
at home. His mistake was that he trusted his own kindred,
the House of Somerset, the most incompetent advisers and
lieutenants which the unfortunate family of John of Gaunt
employed. He lent money to his nephew’s government (to
have lent it to Henry would have been absurd), as he lent to
his elder nephew, and, when he died, bequeathed money for
the same purpose.

Beaufort occupied a very considerable place at the Council
of Constance. The Church was ina very perilous position.
The schism and the rapacity of three popes at once scan-
dalized all Christendom, as it irritated all who were fleeced
by these harpies. It was impossible to be indifferent. All the
nations of the West were roused, and the German Emperor
became an important personage for a time, as the nominal
head of the European laity. Even John the Twenty-second
or Twenty-third was constrained to agree to a general council,
though he had every reason to dread it. He was believed to
Beaufort—Waynfiete. 375

have poisoned his predecessor, he was known to be guilty of
enormous and nameless vices, and was suspected of sorcery. He
was deposed, and sentenced to perpetual imprisonment. The
fathers of Constance proceeded, after deposing a licentious
pope, to condemn Wiklif, and burn Huss and Jerome of Prague.
Two years afterwards, after sitting in constant debate, Martin V ,
was elected, as is said, owing to the intrigues of Beaufort,
when a French doctor, who would have made a better pope,
might have been chosen. Beaufort survived the marriage
of Henry and Margaret for two years, the death of Gloucester
for one year.

The third Bishop of Winchester with whom I am here
concerned was Waynflete. He had been a protégé of Henry,
taken from being Master of Winchester school to be the first
Provost of Eton,and made Bishop of Winchester at Beaufort’s
death. Waynflete is the type of the pious founder in the
fifteenth century. He determined on erecting a college-at
Oxford, and he succeeded by every kind of expedient, for he
pursued with singular perseverance his project for thirty years,
during which he employed every artifice towards enriching
his college. He dedicated it, with great appropriateness, to
the memory of the repentant sinner, Mary Magdalen. In
secular matters he steadily crept after the successful party in
the state, and was an apt pupil of his metropolitan Bourchier.
I know no memories which are more hateful than those of
the foremost prelates in the fifteenth century. Waynflete
has probably been the most fortunate with posterity, for his
college had, in the sixteenth century, a just reputation ; in
the seventeenth, a transient popularity, and since has been
known to be opulent.

Three other bishops of the fifteenth century obtained a
sombre notoriety—De Moleyns and Ayscough, who were mur-
dered in 1450; Pecok, who was deposed in 1457. The fate
of these three persons is so instructive and so suggestive of
the social state of England during the last ten years of the
House of Lancaster’s existence, that I shall dwell for a short
time on them.

‘De Moleyns was one of those official clergymen who, during
376 The Clergy till the Reformation.

the whole of the middle ages, and for some time afterwards,
rose through secular employment to ecclesiastical rank. A
generation or two ago an editor of Greek plays was supposed
to qualify himself for the episcopate by his labours in this
field ; in our own age, a schoolmaster is reputed to be the
best raw material for a bishop; in the fifteenth century, the
selection was made from those who had been conspicuous in
the public service. In the case of De Moleyns, Bishop of
Chichester, the elevation of the ecclesiastic is better justified
than in most cases, if, indeed, he was the author of the “ Libel
of English Policy.”

The “Libel of English Policy” is a poem in which the
condition of English commerce is described, its security
advocated, and its expansion suggested. The writer is
evidently of opinion that the continuity of English trade
depended on English supremacy in the narrow seas, and in
the retention of the sea board on either side the Channel. As
he was writing, the English were the real or reputed masters
of the whole coast from Calais to Bayonne ; they were friendly
with Portugal, which was rapidly growing into an adventurous
and successful mercantile kingdom; and they traded as far as
the Straits of Gibraltar. Twelve years before the work was
composed, the Bristol merchants had, by the use of the
mariner’s compass, reached Iceland from the west, and thus
were able to compete with the eastern ports of England,
especially Scarborough, in the cod fishery. But the writer’s
special interest, after the restoration and development of
English trade, is the settlement of Ireland. Its produce, he
says, is abundant, its gold mines excellent, its harbours the
best in the world. But, he adds, that the wild natives are
continually encroaching on the English settlement, and
threatening its very existence, while, on the authority of
the Earl of Ormond, the cost of a single year of the French
war would entirely and completely settle the country, to the
great commercial advantage of England. If, however, he
concludes, either Ireland or Wales were to rise in rebellion
against England, they would readily get the assistance of
Spain or Scotland.
De Moleyns—Ayscough—Pecok. 377

De Moleyns was Keeper of the Privy Seal. He had taken
part in the negotiations which led to the unhappy marriage
of Margaret and Henry, and was associated with the policy
of Suffolk, whose unpopularity he shared. In the beginning
of the year 1450, he went to Portsmouth to pay the soldiers
and seamen there. He was set on by a mob, seized, subjected
to a sort of rough trial, and, notwithstanding his protestations
of innocence, was slain. In the summer of the same year,
Ayscough, Bishop of Salisbury, was murdered by his own
dependents and others, after he had fled from London upon
the panic which followed the uprising of Cade. He was con-
fessor to the king, had entirely neglected his diocese, except
as a source of revenue, and was engaged in improving his
large means by being the fraudulent trustee of an imbecile, who
was loaded with ecclesiastical dignities and. preferments, the
revenues of which were appropriated by this scandalous and
rapacious bishop. But, besides these men, there were the
profligate De La Bere, Bishop of St. David’s;  Lyhert,
Bishop of Norwich, the queen’s confessor and a courtier ;
Lumley, Bishop of Carlisle, the Treasurer,—all, according to
Gascoigne’s authority, negligent, scandalous, and greedy.
Only a little time intervened between the murderof De Moleyns
and the impeachment of Suffolk; but, in the interval, the
minister succeeded in procuring the translation of the famous
Pecok from the poor Welsh see of St. Asaph, where he had
sat for nearly six years, to the more important and lucrative
bishopric of Chichester.

Pecok was a Welshman by birth, and a fellow of Oriel College,
Oxford, where he had a considerable reputation for learning
and orthodoxy. He quitted Oxford for the Court at a rather
early age, and soon achieved still greater notoriety by his
writings. He was the most voluminous writer of the fifteenth
century, for the titles of about forty of his books are preserved.
After a time he fell under the displeasure of the king and
court, was arrested on a charge of heresy, tried by Archbishop
Bourchier, deprived, compelled to publish a recantation of his
opinions, and was sent for the residue of his life to close con-
finement in Thorney Abbey. For a long time Pecok was
378 The Clergy till the Reformation.

considered an arch-heretic, and was condemned as roundly
by Edward as he was by Henry, for his followers were rigidly
excluded from the foundation of King’s College, Cambridge,
in the last revision of the statutes of that college; and
Edward, according to Mr. Churchill Babington, denounced his
Oxford disciples. He is rehabilitated by Fox, who, in his
search after witnesses, makes him a precursor of the Refor-
mation, a pious prelate, who was hounded down by popish
bigotry.

Pecok was a defender of existing order, opinion, and practice,
on the ground that it was wholesome and convenient. The
peculiarity of his work lies in the method adopted in the treat-
ment of the subject. He abandons authority for reasonable-
ness. Human opinion in the highest places, individually and
collectively, in pope, council, bishop, and priest, is liable to
err. But the same contingency belongs to those who criticise
or repudiate these opinions. The real question is, how do
what may be directed by authority, the existing practices of
an ecclesiastical organization, accord with the public good
and the general interests of mankind? Toleration is the
immediate condition of tenets which assert that the probable
and reasonable is the highest aim of the human mind and its
invariable limits, for no man can be responsible for inability
to accept what is, after all, not demonstrable. But, on the
other hand, no one can be permitted to assail an existing
order of things contemptuously, because he is persuaded of
the absolute truth of his own opinion. Every existing fact
can be excused or palliated on these grounds. Pecok strove
to defend, and for a long time with great acceptance, the
wealth of the clergy and hierarchy, their absorption in secular
business, the monastic orders, the worship of images, and all
the practices of the Church. His heresy, for which he was
ostensibly condemned, consists in the fact that he combated
the Lollards with the weapons of expediency instead of those
of authority, and affirmed that reason was a sufficient guide
in practical matters, while faith might be left to deal with
topics which were unproved and unprovable. For a long
time the charges against him were chiefly that he excused
Pecok’s Opinions. 379

the bishops from their duties, and that he had no high
opinion of the fathers of the Church as ultimate authorities.
But the bishops were not displeased with their apologist, and
it is probable that the charge of heresy would never have
been made but for another event, which has not, as far as I
know, been discovered and commented on.

Pecok, who, whatever his intellectual qualities were, and
however much his rationalism was in advance of his age, was
a person of inordinate vanity, sent in the year 1456—in
what part of the year is not stated—a letter to Cannyngs, the
Lord Mayor. This man was brother to the more celebrated
Cannyngs, who built St. Mary Redcliff church at Bristol, and
was brother-in-law to that Young who, being Member for
Bristol, is said to have moved in the House of Commons
that Richard of York should be declared heir-apparent. On
May 22nd, 1455, occurred the affair of St. Albans. In
November of the same year, York was made Protector for
the second time, but with the significant addition that he
should hold the office until discharged of it by Parliament.
In February 1456, the king himself took the office away from
him, at the instance of Margaret and some of the lords,
probably the kinsmen of those who were slain at St. Albans.
There was no parliament between February 1456 and Novem-
ber 1459, when the Houses met at Coventry, and York,
with all his partizans, was attainted. After the dismissal of
the parliament of 1456, the king, queen, and princes went
away to Chester or Coventry, and there remained in seclusion.
There is no public instrument existing of a date between
July 26th, 1456, and January 28th, 1457. During the early
part of the year 1457, the king was at Coventry, a Lancastrian
stronghold. In August 1457, the king was at Westminster,
where he remained till 1459, when he went again to Coventry.
If this account of the king’s movements, which is taken from
Rymer and Gascoigne, be correct, Cannyngs must have kept
the letter back till he found it possible and convenient te
present it.

Cannyngs, on reading the letter, detected in it “ very suspi-
cious passages, tending to change of faith and to insurrection
380 The Clergy till the Reformatzon.

in the realm of England,” and sent it onto the king. “When
the king and the lords read it, they discovered the same ten-
dencies, and great scandal arose about the great lords of the
realm, who, as the bishop said, were on the side of him and
his English works. Thereupon all the temporal lords, who
were with Henry, demanded that he should be expelled from
the king’s council and the council of the lords, for no lord
could state his opinion or give his advice in council till
Pecok was driven out of the council-chamber.” I cannot be-
lieve that this zeal was manifested by a body of Henry’s lords
on behalf of orthodoxy, or that Pecok could have been of
such imbecile vanity as to have knowingly written a polemical
letter to the London mayor which should precipitate a prose-
cution of him and his writings, or that the public would have
taken so hostile an attitude against him as we are told that they
did. He suggested, I am convinced, some political measures
which might have been dangerous, and were certainly com-
promising, and all those who were about the king were
anxious to be rid at once of so imprudent a counsellor. What,
for instance, if he had proposed that sharp measures should
be taken at once with Richard of York and the Neviles, now
absent from the king’s councils, for the skirmish of St. Albans
was indecisive? What, on the other hand, if he had advised
that there should be genuine co-operation with the Yorkist or
reforming party, in order to disarm public discontent and
settle the administration, and this was conceived to be pre-
mature? What if he had pointed out that York was ready
on a favourable opportunity to claim the throne, and had
given voice to what many believed, that even if this claim
might be postponed, not one person in twenty who thought
on the matter held that Edward was the legitimate off-
spring of Henry? Hints on these dangerous topics in so
critical a time, when men were so cautious that they abstained
from committing themselves, or destroyed every scrap of writ-
ing, since hardly any correspondence of the time is preserved,
were exactly what a conceited able man would make, and
shrewd politicians would make much of. The council, there-
fore, resolved to remove Pecok on a charge of heresy, tc
Pecok’s Offences. 381

make him abjure his theological opinions, and to take good
care that his political tendencies should be forgotten in the
discredit which would be cast by Catholic and Lollard alike
on a man who had in those days been indiscreet enough, not
only to set up reason as superior to the Church and the
fathers and even the creeds, but to give it a seeming pre-
eminence over the Bible itself.

The bishops of the fifteenth century till its close were,
on the whole, bad men. But the parochial clergy were little
better, and the monks were worst of all. The inhibition
of preaching had made the former little other than mass
priests, whom the people deserted for the stirring but secret
exhortations of the Bible-men, or wandering Lollards, or, as
they called themselves, as a password, the Known-men. The
clergy fell into gross and evil practices, neglected the duties
which once were reputed to belong to their profession, and
adopted any trick to avoid residence on their benefices,
Pluralities were common, ecclesiastical offices of considerable
importance were given to children, to idiots, to laymen.
Gascoigne speaks of one person in particular who was Arch-
deacon of Oxford, though never ordained, and the holder
of many prebendaries and livings, who lived at Oxford dis-
solutely, while the income of his many preferments went
into the hands of the Bishop of Salisbury, a pretended trustee.
The monks were worst of all, insatiate in getting money,
in appropriating benefices, in ousting the parochial clergy,
in squandering their ill-gotten gains in gluttony and drink-
ing. The pious writer of the age suggests the confisca-
tion of their ill-used wealth by the heirs of those who
founded monasteries with very different objects, for the
maintenance of piety, of learning, of education, and of
other good works. The diatribes of Gascoigne have a
strong flavour of the sixteenth century and Henry’s whole-
sale devastation.

Perhaps the English Church might have been reformed
and its abuses remedied by a strong hand within it or
without it. Such a reform was not to be expected from
the hierarchy, and would not be accepted from the Bible-
382 The Clergy till the Reformation.

men. It might have come from a vigorous ruler, or from
a gradual growth of wholesome public opinion among men
of influence in the royal councils. But the nobles, even
before the great feud broke out, were as greedy, as violent,
as unscrupulous as the clergy. The lay-counsellors of the
Court were as averse to reform, even when suggested by the
more respectable among the clergy, as the prelates were.
For behind all this system was the papal court, poor because
committed to boundless expense, avaricious, and utterly
regardless of the means by which it could gather supplies.
In 1440, Engenius IV. sent one Peter de Monte to
England to sell indulgences, and Gascoigne denounces the
scandal with a warmth as sincere and almost as outspoken
as that of Luther. He credits the papal court with infinite
crimes, though he allows that the Pope is either ignorant
of what is done or is coerced into acquiescing in the mischief,
or teased into allowing the practices which he condemns
in his heart and conscience. Every one knows how, from
the testimony of writers whose orthodoxy has never been
questioned, the papacy went from bad to worse in the
fifteenth century, that the enormous vices of John XXIII.
were dwarfed by the still more scandalous iniquities of
Alexander VI, and that even the revival of letters which
purified the rest of Christendom was only made the stimulant
to even grosser depravity in papal Italy. The facts may be
and have been denied, they cannot be gainsaid.

The first means by which this hideous mass of accumulating
and festering sewage began to be removed from English life
was the revival of letters to which I have referred. The first
agents of the Reformation were the obscure, humble, austere,
devout, and persecuted Lollards and Bible-men, who grasped
at least one. fundamental truth, that a religion which is
divorced from morality is the worst curse which human
societies can be called on to bear. The next agents were the
Humanists, or reformers who, like More, Erasmus, and Colet,
were content to reform the Church from within, to purge
away the grossness which had been contracted by the cunning
and superstition of long ages, and to attempt the splendid
Indulgences—The New Learning. 383

Utopia of a purified Church, founded on the old lines, with
a spiritual Cesar at its head, who would be a Christian
Aurelius, a virtuous, wise, and paternal monarch who might
counsel and guide the soul of a regenerated Christendom.
The dream of these reformers came out of the ivory gate,
and England had to get her reformation from other hands.
It was to be begun by an overbearing, sensual, suspicious,
wasteful tyrant, who had only one spark of wisdom in his
nature, some judgment as to the temper of the people whom
he ruled over and ruined, to be continued by a camarilla
of the vilest adventurers who ever gathered in a Court, the
guardians of Edward VI., the best of the crew being suc-
cessively removed by the worst, to be purified by a reaction
under Mary Tudor, and a persecution, which, thanks to the
new engine of liberty, the press, became known and duly
interpreted, and to be settled after a fashion by the con-
structive genius of Elizabeth, who could not, with all her
wisdom, see far enough to dispense with what was the most
powerful instrument of government, a despotic hierarchy,
or to trust herself to the energies of a free church on a re-
formed model. Her scheme has remained to our own day,
with as much strength as she could give its constitution,
and as much weakness as must inevitably belong to a
creature of political expediency and compromise.

I have dwelt on the position and character of the unreformed
Church of England because it is, as I have said, impossible to
form a true estimate of social life in this country unless some
account is given of those who represented its more manifest
‘fife, and, as far as they could, directed its forces. And I do so
the more because, owing to the singularly outspoken com-
ments of Gascoigne, whose great work I was the first to make
full extracts from, it is possible to learn precisely what the
condition of the Church was during this dark period of our
annals, Christianity and morality was not left without
witnesses even in that age. There were men among the
clergy who were worthy of their calling, whose zeal was far
above the smug opportunism of Pecok. But the life of
religion, I am persuaded, lay with the persecuted sectaries,
384 The Clergy till the Reformation.

whose sufferings are unrecorded, whose history is perhaps
irrecoverable. Above them, what people call history was
being enacted. A depraved Church and a depraved
aristocracy, splendid, wealthy, and surrounded by majestic
memories which hid, as ivy does, the rottenness within, were
hurrying to their ruin. There was to come a war, the
bitterness and treachery of which has probably not been
equalled since the famous strife of the parties in that great
struggle which destroyed the life of ancient Greece. It
occurred when Louis XI. and Castracani, Borgia, and
Machiavelli were to become the types of political sagacity,
the models of wise and far-sighted statesmanship. It ended
in the suspension of the constitution, in the abject submission
of the aristocracy, in the enslavement of the hierarchy. The
king and the people stood face to face with each other, the
people of whom no one took account during the great war of
succession.

It was during the fifteenth century that the English yeo-
manry and smaller gentry took deep root in the land. A
nation is never ruined but by its government, and then only
when a government does not fear the nation. The English
people was the only force which the Tudors feared, and the
people saved the constitution and restored it. The aristocracy
was the only power which the French kings feared, and at last
king and aristocracy were hurled into a common destruction.
But during the fifteenth century the under-current of English
life went steadily on and prospered. Most fortunately for man-
kind, the vices of churchmen and nobles are not and cannot
be the vices of those who work and save. In the evil days of
Henry VI, in the turmoil and crimes which came to an
ignominious end at Bosworth and England rested under the
quiet rule of an adventurer whose political genius was no
higher than that of a pettifogging lawyer, the English people
were prosperous and grew opulent, to be almost ruined, 1
grant, by his successor, who ruled over his nobles like a king
of Dahomey, but was over-reached and baffled by every
European monarch in succession, who wasted his substance
wildly, and died, after creating a crew who were worse than
The Makers of a Nation. 385

himself, in the act of cheating his people by a trick which
they would have bitterly resented had they comprehended it.
One can understand and even sometimes respect a despot,
but the combination of a blood-thirsty tyrant and a thimble-
rigger can only be admired by a lover of paradoxes.

Similarly, there was another epoch in English history,
when to all appearance all that is noticeable is a mere
scene of coarse, insolent frivolity, a society where all the men
are sharpers and all the women courtesans, where honest
public service was laughed out of existence, and the most
capable statesmen were guilty of offences which deserved
the gallows instead of peerages, pensions, and garters,
Perhaps the ablest person in the reign of Charles II.
was Shaftesbury. He did certain good services, by reason
of which he has found an apologist. They chiefly concerned
the upper and middle classes, for I fancy that the liberties of
a ploughman or an artizan were not materially secured or
enlarged by the Habeas Corpus Act. But Shaftesbury, after
the Restoration, lent himself to the shameful fiction by which
his old associates, the regicides, were left to a judicial murder,
endorsed the king’s worst and meanest acts, intrigued against
his employer while making his fortune out of his employment,
suborned Titus Oates, and after taking part in a reactionary
plot, fled to leave other and better men to their fate. Shall
we say that the English nation was represented by the Benets,
the Osbornes, the Maitlands, the Spencers, the Finches, the
Churchills, the Villierses, the Howards, by the sharpers, the
bullies, the harlots of Charles’s court?

The thrift and prosperity of the period which lies between
the Restoration and the Revolution, the unseen and un-
recorded life and work of the English people, created the
spirit which developed the Revolution, and the wealth which
defended it when it had been developed. The conspiracies
against it were the work of the men who had been bred in the
stew of Charles’s Court. The hopes of the exiled Stuarts
were centred on those who had betrayed every one who
trusted them, and were constant to one thing only, their
own gains and advancement. The strength of the New Con-

25
386 The Clergy till the Reformation.

stitution was the outcome of the time for which superficial
history narrates the doings of courts and unravels the in-
trigues of diplomatists, but has not troubled itself with dis-

cussing the condition of the people.
387

CHAPTER XIV.

WAGES OF LABOUR AFTER THE RISE IN PRICES.

Corn Prices should be Estimated over a Wide Area—Bad Harvests in the
Sixteenth, Seventeeth, and Eighteenth Centuries—Estimate of a Labourer’s
Real Wages in 1495, 1533, 1563, 1593, 1597, 1610, 1651, 1661, 1682, 1684,
1725—The Consequence of the Assessment of Wages System—The Extension
of Conspiracy to Workmen’s Combinations—Principles of a Trade Union—
Mr. Mill on Unions—The Artizan from 1725 to 1750—Arthur Young’s Notes
on Wages—The Rise from 1750 to 1770—Wages of Manufacturers—The Dear
Years from 1780 to 1820—The Speenhamland Act of Parliament—Tooke
on Prices, from 1800 to 1815—The Rise in 1853—Concluding Remarks on
Trade Unions.

N examination of the rise which was effected in the price
of all articles of consumption during the last sixty years
of the sixteenth century enables us to see clearly what was
now become the condition of those who lived by wages. If
we look at the money value of most articles, we shall see that,
with very few exceptions, it keeps steadily increasing during
each successive decade. This is not, it is true, precisely the
fact with regard to wheat and other kinds of grain, for the
money value of this produce is affected in each decade by
the occasion of years of special scarcity and plenty. Hence,
in the case of wheat or similar kinds of grain, it becomes
necessary, if we would exactly interpret the change which
had come over money values, to take a longer period, during
which cheap and dear years neutralize each other. But the
course of the seasons during the period which intervenes before
prices have reached their true level and go on steadily rising,
on the whole, for half a century, is striking and exceptional.
The issues of base money put into circulation by Henry
were in the years 1545 and 1546. Those of Edward’s guar-
dians were in 1549 and 1551. In 1560 the currency was
388 Wages of Labour aster the Rise in Prices.

restored. It is important to remember these dates in es-
timating prices, and the immediate effect of the issue on
them. There must have been, I conclude, some general
impression at first that these moneys would be redeemed,
and, under these circumstances, it appears that they did not
produce the immediate effect which such a proceeding in-
variably does sooner or later. Now the harvest of 1545 must
have been a very bad one, for the price of wheat was higher
than it had been in any year since 1316, the great famine of
Edward the Second’s reign, though it was soon to be sur-
passed. But for the next three years wheat is decidedly
‘cheap; in 1547 very cheap, the price being lower than it had
been since 1510. Then follow three dear years and two
comparatively cheap ones, Mary Tudor having come to the
throne in the last year. Then follow three dear years, the
third being dearer than in all previous experience, wheat being
nearly five times the average price for the 280 years, 1261-1540,
and standing, during the spring, at a price which must have
indicated the worst anticipations of famine. In the next two
years it is cheap again, a cheap year being now about double
the old price. The years 1563 and 1573 are alsodear. After the
latter year, the ordinary price becomes about three times the
old rate. The next dear year is 1586, when the price again
goes beyond previous experience. But the harvest of 1588,
the Armada year, was very abundant. Five years succes-
sively, 1594-98, are very dear, the last but one, 1597, being
a veritable famine, the price being ten times what it was in
the early period, and not being paralleled till 1648 and 1649.
By this time, however, the average price had reached from
five to seven times that at which it had previously stood for -
more than two centuries and a half. The price of wheat in
1649 was reached again in 1674, in 1661-2, in 1709, and 1710,
and not again till 1767, 1774, and 1795.

Now up to the year 1540, the average wages of an artizan
in the country were 3s. a week; of a labourer in husbandry,
working by the day, 2s.a week. Such wages, in some cases
rather more, are allowed by 11 Hen. VII., cap. 22 (1495), to
which I shall presently refer. The labourer in harvest time,
Wages in 1495, 1533. 389

when working by the day, received the same wages as the
artizan; and, in harvest time, the wages of the women
labourers were only a little less than those of men. It should
be remembered that this Act of Henry VII. is one which
was intended to carry out the Statute of Labourers, and
that therefore the minimum rate would be prescribed and, as
far as possible, enforced. The price of wheat in 1495 was
4s. o2d.; of malt, 25. 44a.; of oats, 1s. 73a.; and of oatmeal,
5s. 4d. a quarter. An artizan, therefore, earned nearly a bushel
of wheat by a day’s labour, and an ordinary labourer three-
quarters of a bushel. A week’s work would enable an artizan
to purchase more than a quarter of malt, and a little more
than seven days’ work would supply the farm labourer with a
quarter of malt. In so cheap a year as this, the peasant could
provision his family for a twelvemonth with three quarters of
wheat, three of malt, and two of oatmeal, by fifteen weeks
of ordinary work; an artizan could achieve the same result in
ten weeks. Such wages were regularly paid, and even more,
particularly in London.

In 1533, a large proportion of Henry’s artizans got 45. a
week, even during the winter months, the labourers earning,
as before, 2s. In 1533, the price of wheat was, relatively
speaking, high, 7s. 8d. a quarter, while malt was 55. 54d,
oatmeal 8s., and oats 2s. g¢@. the quarter. In this case, then,
the farm labourer would have had to give nearly double the
labour in wheat and oats, and more than double in the case
of malt, though a good deal less than double in that of
oatmeal, to make such a provision as his ancestor did in
1495 ; while the artizan at 3s., would have had to give between
fourteen and fifteen weeks’ work for a similar store. The first-
named year is an exceedingly cheap one; the latter, though
less advantageous to the labourer, is one in which he might
still be able, as we see, to maintain his family, and lay by a
considerable margin from the charges of his household, from
a fourth to a half of his earnings.

In June 1564, the Rutlandshire magistrates met in order
to carry out the provisions of the Act to which I have several
times referred, and which had just been passed. The schedule
390 Wages of Labour after the Rise in Prices.

of wages to which I am about to refer is printed by the
royal authority among the proclamations of the Queen, and
is preserved in the great collection of Elizabeth’s instruments
which was begun by Burleigh and continued by Cecil. It is
without doubt a typical list, intended by the fact of the
publication to be a guide to the other Quarter Sessions
throughout the country. The list is drawn up “on considera-
tion of the great prices of linen, woollen, leather, corn, and
other victuals.” The ordinary artizan is to have 9d. a day in
summer, 8d. in winter; the heads of the craft, who are to be
competent draughtsmen of plans, to have Is. The labourers
are to have 7d. in summer, except in harvest time, when
they have 8d. to 10d, and in winter 6d. The summer is
from Easter to Michaelmas, the winter from Michaelmas to
Easter. In 1563-4, wheat was 19s. 92d. a quarter; oats, 75.,
malt, 10s. 8a. The price of oatmeal has not been found, but
it could not have been less than 25s. the quarter. The
Rutlandshire schedule is a little lower than the prices actually
paid in Cambridge and Oxford, as far as regards artizans’
labour, for the artizan is paid, as a rule, not less than 1s. or
10od.a day: The wages of ordinary labour are those of the
magistrates’ schedule. Now the price of food is more than
three times the old average, though malt, as we might expect,
when wheat was at a scarcity price, is less than the corre-
sponding price, being actually cheaper than barley. Now if
we suppose the ordinary labourer to get 35. 6a. a week
through the year, by adding his harvest allowance to his
winter wages, it would have taken him more than forty weeks
to earn the provisions which in 1495 he could have got with.
fifteen, while the artizan would be obliged to have given
thirty-two weeks’ work for the same result.

In 1593, the magistrates of the East Riding of York met
on April 26th, and fixed the wages of artizans and labourers in
husbandry. The mower is to have 1od., the reaper 8d. a day,
or by the acre 10d. for meadow and 8d. for corn, it being
clear that a man was supposed to mow an acre of corn or
grass ina day. The winter wages of labourers are to be 4a.,
in summer §¢. Ordinary artizans are to have 8@. and 7d.
Wages wn 1563, 1593, 1597, 1610. 391

The price of wheat in 1593 is 18s. 44¢.; of oatmeal, 29s. qd.;
of malt, 12s. 3k¢. The work of a whole year would not
supply the labourer with the quantity which in 1495 the
labourer earned with fifteen weeks’ labour. The artizan could
procure it with forty weeks’ labour.

In the same year, the mayor and others in the city o
Chester fixed the wages of artizans and labourers who dwelt
within their jurisdiction. The roll is unfortunately mutilated,
and the day payments of artizan and labourer, without meat
and drink, are torn off. But it is clear that the workmen here
are even worse paid than in the East Riding,—that the wages
of artizans were not more than 6d.,, those of labourers than 4d,
and that there was actually no rise here from the older prices.

The year 1597 was one of fearful famine. The price ot
wheat was 56s. 104¢.; of oats, 135. 9a. (I do not find that of
oatmeal, but it appears to have been 645.) ; malt, 28s.94@. It
is said by the Mayor of Chester in his assessment to be a
time of dearth and scarcity. The schedule is again unluckily
mutilated; but the extra allowance for the dearness of this
year, the price being generally almost three times that of the
year 1593, is only Ios. more for wages by the year without
food than in the earlier year. The wages of artizans are from
45 tos. the year to £4 105.3 those of husbandmen, 43 Ios.
It is not easy to see how they could have lived through
the famine. :

In 1610, the Rutland magistrates met at Oakham on
April 28th, and made their assessment. The day wages of a
mower are 10@.; of a reaper, 8@., if a man, if a woman 62,
of ordinary labour from Easter to Michaelmas, 7@.; from
Michaelmas to Easter, 6¢. Artizans are to have from Iod.
to o@. in the summer, 84. in the winter. Master artizans, with
skill as draughtsmen, are to receive Is. a day in summer, 10d.
in winter ; and it appears from the register of hirings that these
rates were maintained till at least 1634. The price of wheat
in this year was 40s. 4¢., of malt 15s. 44¢.; and it therefore
appears that a Rutland artizan with 9¢@. a day wages, sup-
posing oatmeal were worth, as its natural price should be,
about 43s. 4@. a quarter, would have to work forty-three
392 Wages of Labour after the Rise in Prices.

weeks in order to earn that which an artizan in 1495 obtained
with ten weeks’ labour; while the wages of the peasant, who
got this supply by fifteen weeks’ labour 115 years before,
would be insufficient, even if he worked for fifty-two weeks in
the year, and every day except Sunday, by 245. 93a, to win
that quantity of provisions. Even the extra payments iv
harvest would not make up the deficiency.

In 1651, the Essex magistrates met at Chelmsford on
April 8th, and fixed the wages for the county. Wages
had now risen. The artizan had from Is. 5d. a day in
summer and Is, 2d. in winter to 1s. 6d. and Is. 4d., the latter
prices being paid as usual to foremen or heads of gangs.
Ordinary labourers had from Is. 2d. to Is., except in harvest
time, when mowing was paid at Is. 6¢., reaping at Is. 10d.
the day. Women in the harvest field had 1s. 2d@.; in the
hay-field, 10d. Piece-work is paid at 1s. 8@. an acre for
mowing, 2s. for making and cocking. The reaping of wheat,
rye, beans, and maslyn is 3s. 4¢@.; of barley and oats, 2s. 6a.,
this including binding and shocking. Mowing and binding
barley and oats is 2s. 2d. Threshing and winnowing are,
for the quarter of wheat and rye, Is. 10¢.; barley, oats, and
other kinds of grain, 10d. Sawing planks are paid at 2s. 6d.
the hundred of six-score feet. The advent of the Common-
wealth had induced some beneficial change on the workman’s
labour, at last in appearance. In 1651, the price of wheat
was 51s. 4a.; of malt, 225. 7a.; oats were dearer than malt,
being 23s. 10¢.; and oatmeal was from 645. to 48s. the quarter.
The artizan on an average could earn from 7s. gd. to 85. 6d.
a week; ordinary workmen an average of 6s. 9@., except in
hay and harvest time, when they could get from gs. to IIs.
a week; and the women reapers, 7s. Piece-work in the harvest
field is calculated at a little less than an acre of grass a day,
and a little more than half an acre of grain, if the reaper
bound and stacked the sheaves. The sawing a hundred
of planks, always estimated from early times as a day’s work,
is paid at the rate of 15s. a week between the two workmen,
the upper and under sawyers being estimated at the rate
of 8s. to 7s.
Wages tm 1651, 1661. 393

The cost of the stock of wheat, malt, and oatmeal is now
in the aggregate £16 13s. 92 If the artizan worked fifty-
two weeks in the year, he could earn £20 3s.; and therefore
it would still take him about forty-three weeks to earn his
stock of provisions. The peasant, however, apart from his
harvest earnings, could, with the same unbroken and con-
tinuous diligence, earn £17 I1s.; and perhaps the sum could
be made up to £18 by his extra wages in the hay and corn
field. He is therefore distinctly better off than he was forty
years before, at least in Essex.

The rate paid for mowing grass by the acre is a little in
excess of that paid at Oxford in the latter part of the sixteenth
century, where the price is 1s. 33a. for mowing, 15. 74d. for
making and cocking. But during this period, the average
price of wheat was 145. 24¢.; of malt, Ios. 5¢.; of oatmeal,
20s. 102@. To such rates of wages the corresponding price
of wheat should be 18s.; of malt, 135. 232; of oatmeal, 26s.
64d.,in order to equalize the real wages of mowing in the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and a similar propor-
tionate increase for the labour of tedding and cocking. The
price of threshing is relatively high, being about four times
the rate which prevailed in the period before the rise in prices
began. The same difference characterises the prices given
for reaping, binding, and stacking an acre of wheat; but the
rate paid for cutting barley and oats is less. Already much
of the two latter kinds of grain was mown. On the whole,
then, though the wages of labour in 1651 are infinitely below
what they were in the old times, and contrast unfavourably
even with the rates paid immediately after the passing of
Elizabeth’s Quarter Sessions Act, they represent better rates
than those which were prescribed under the same machinery
forty years before, and as we see actually paid, as is proved
by the register of hirings.

At the Easter Sessions of 1661, the Essex magistrates
again revised the wages of labourers. The summer wages
are still 1s. 2¢, the winter Is. a day. The woman gets
10d.; mowing is Is. 6d¢., whether it be grass or corn; reaping
by men, Is. 10@.; by women, Is. 2¢. Mowing grass is raised to
394 Wages of Labour after the Rise in Prices

Is. 10d,; reaping wheat, rye, and maslyn is 45.; oats, 25. 62.;
beans, 3s. 6@.; mowing barley and oats by the acre is Is. 6d,
the price of threshing and winnowing being unchanged. But
in 1661 the price of wheat is 70s. 6d. a quarter; of malt,
34s. 6a. The purchasing power of wages is, therefore, consider-
ably reduced.

In Suffolk, 1682, the magistrates at Bury St. Edmund’s
fixed the day wages of haymakers—men at Iod, women
at 6d.; of male reapers in harvest at 1s. 8d, of women at
Is.; and the regular wages at Is. in summer and Iod. in
winter. The wages of artizans are not given, but from other
sources we may learn that they were from Is. 6a. to Is. 4d.
In 1682, the price of wheat was 43s. 8¢.; of malt, 26s. 8d.;
and the natural price of oatmeal, about 48s. Either the
wages were reduced as corn became cheaper, or the price
of labour was ordinarily lower in Suffolk than it was in
Essex. We shall see reason to arrive at the former con-
clusion.

On April gth, 1684, the magistrates of Warwick met at
the county town and assessed the wages for the year under
the Act of Elizabeth. The assessment is said to have special
regard and consideration to the prices at this time of victuals
and apparel. The price of wheat was 42s. o}d. a quarter ; of
malt, 245. 5¢@.; and the analogous price of oatmeal, 46s. 6d.

The artizans’ wages are here 15, a day, with the exception
of the free mason, who has Is. 4a, the only man of the class
who gets this rate. The plasterer is to have only 8¢.; com-
mon labourers, except in harvest time, are to have 8d.; the
mower of grass and corn, Is.; the reaper, Is.; while the hay-
maker, if a man, has only 8¢@., the women 4d@,, and the woman
reaper 8¢. These are summer wages; the winter pay is a
penny a day less. The hours of labour are defined between
March and September to be from five in the morning till
between seven and eight at night, ze, fourteen-and-a-half
hours, from which two-and-a-half hours are to be allowed for
meals. Of these half an hour is given for breakfast, an hour
for dinner, an hour for “ drinkings,” and between the middle
of May and the middle of August, half an hour for sleep.
Wages in 1682, 1684. 395

From the middle of September till the middle of March he
is to work from daybreak till night, and is to forfeit a penny
an hour, that is at the rate of 50 per cent. above his earnings,
for absence. Persons who give more wages than the pre-
scribed assessment are to be imprisoned ten days and be
fined £5; persons taking more than the assessment are to be
imprisoned twenty-one days; and any retainer, promise, gift,
or payment of wages in contravention is to be void and of no
effect. The document is signed by eight magistrates, among
whom we find the names of Mordaunt, Clopton, and Fielding,
the last at this time knowing, it seems, how to spell his name.

The wages fixed by these Warwickshire magistrates are
decidedly less than those allowed in Essex thirty-three years
before. It is fair to them to state that the Lady-day prices
of wheat and malt were lower than those which prevailed for
the real hiring time (that from some date after Lady-day toa
similar period in the following year), for wheat was 345. 4d@., bar-
ley 22s. 7d, a quarter on Lady-day 1684, when the justices met.
It should also be remembered that these daily payments were
for regular, not for occasional service, and that the master was
as much bound to pay his man as the man was to stay in the
service of his master during the term of his engagement. It
is to this practice that we must ascribe, in part at least,
the higher wages of harvest time and, occasionally, of piece
work.

If we take the allowances of wheat, malt, and oatmeal
employed for our calculations before, and fix that of oatmeal
hypothetically at a low amount, say 46s. 6d. a quarter, we
shall find that the cost of the stock of provisions in this year
amounted to 414 IIs. 6d., that the yearly wages of the artizan
are £15 13s., and those of the farm labourer, exclusive of his
earnings in the hay and corn fields, are £10 8s. 8d, te., in-
sufficient in their aggregate, whatever addition may be made
for harvest work, to purchase the stock which his ancestor was
able to procure on such easy terms. I have always, through-
out these investigations into the labourers’ wages, taken his
earnings only, without allowing for what his wife or his
children might earn for him, and, in the rase of an artizan,
396 Wages of Labour after the Rise in Prices.

perhaps his apprentices. But in a contrast established
between money values and payments at different epochs, it
is above all things important to take the simplest elements of
calculation and comparison. I am not discussing what might
have been the aggregate earnings of a family, but what were
the resources on which an individual labourer could rely for
procuring the means of life for a family, when those means of
life were confined to what, according to the fashions of the
age, were the simplest materials of customary existence.

The magistrates of Lancashire met at Manchester on May
22nd, 1725, when certain “discreet and grave men of the
county, having held conference respecting the plenty of the
time and other necessary circumstances” (words costing
nothing in a preamble, and, it is to be hoped, deceiving no
one), determined on certain rates of wages for the county,
and issued them, under the authority of George and Thomas
Cheetham.

The best husbandry labourer is to receive, from March to
September, Is. a day; ordinary ones, Iod.; and during the
other six months the payment is to be 10d. and 9@. Haymakers
are to have—men, 10d. a day, women, 7d. ; mowers, Is. 3d. ;
shearers, 2¢, reapers—Is. men, and 10¢. women ; taskwork in
husbandry being 10d. a day. All artizans are to receive a
maximum of Is. a day, and a pair of sawyers, 2s. It may be
observed that the maintenance of labourers is generally put
at 3s.a week. Piece-work is paid by a double kind of acre,
one said to be seven yards to the rood, the other eight yards.
For oats, the payments are 5s. for the former, 6s. for the
latter; in barley, peas, and beans, the quantities paid are 6s.
and 7s.; for wheat and rye (a proof by the way that wheat
was cultivated in Lancashire in the eighteenth century), 7s.
and 8s. Threshing and winnowing oats are paid at Is. a
quarter; barley, beans, and peas at Is. 6d.; wheat and rye at
2s. It is interesting to note that colliers were paid Is. a ton
for getting coal in a low delf, 1s. 3a. for the same labour in a
high one. The master workman in the various handicrafts is
to have Is. 2d. a day, except the tailor, who is to be content
with 1s. The plenty of the time is not very conspicuous in
Wages tn 1725. 397

1725, as the price of corn is higher than it had been since
1713, being 46s. 1d. for wheat, 24s. for malt. Oatmeal should
be 54s.

If one can arrive at a judgment from the language of the
Lancashire magistrates’ proclamation, these authorities appear
to be alarmed at symptoms of combination and disaffection
among the workmen. They order that these wages should not
be exceeded in the county, though they think that they are a
little too liberal for the northern part thereof, but they direct,
that they should be proclaimed in every market town ‘of the
county by the authority of the sheriff, and that on market
days, when business is at its height, proclamation should be
solemnly made, and a legible copy should be set up and fixed
in some open public place in each of the market towns, and
that the rates decided on should be continued till an amended
list be proclaimed. The justices then proceed to publish the
penalties which are denounced by divers Acts of Parliament
on offenders under the several statutes which are made to
regulate the wages of labour.

They cite a statute of Edward VI., 2 and 3, cap. 15, under
which a combination of workmen “concerning their work or
wages” is to be followed by a penalty on conviction of ten
pounds, or twenty days’ imprisonment on bread and water for
the first offence, a fine of twenty pounds or the pillory for the
second, and a fine of forty pounds, the pillory, the loss of one
of his ears, and judicial infamy for the third. This statute
was confirmed by 22-23 Charles II., and was in force till the
general repeal of all such prohibitions on the combinations of
workmen which took effect under 6 George IV., cap. 129.
The rest of the warnings are those derived from the statute
of Elizabeth, and recited by the Warwickshire magistrates in
1684.

The best servants in husbandry, who must have been of a
very exceptional character, are to receive Is. a day for six
months, and 10d. for the other six months, ze., taking every
working day into the pay-days, £14 7s. a year. The
ordinary peasant is to receive £12 7s. 10d. These persons,
however, might increase their wages by harvest work, and
398 Wages of Labour after the Rise wn Prices.

probably did, so as to raise the total to £15 and £413.
Artizans are to be paid at the rate of £15 135. a year, if they
are at work during the whole year. Now taking the test
which has been supplied so many times, and putting oatmeal
(for which I have not at present a price, but shall probably be
not far wrong in my estimate) at 54s. a quarter, the aggregate
sum is £16 2s. 3a, and as I repeat for the last time, what a
husbandman earned with fifteen weeks’ work, and an artizan
with ten weeks’ work in 1495, a whole year’s labour would not
supply artizan or labourer with in the year 1725, throughout
Lancashire.

I have protested before against that complacent optimism
which concludes, because the health of the upper classes has
been greatly improved, because that of the working classes
has been bettered, and appliances, unknown before, have be-
come familiar and cheap, that therefore the country in which
these improvements have been effected must be considered
to have made, for all its people, regular and continuous pro-
gress, I contend that from 1563 to 1824, a conspiracy,
concocted by the law and carried out by parties interested in
its success, was entered into, to cheat the English workman of
his wages, to tie him to the soil, to deprive him of hope, and
to degrade him into irremediable poverty. In a subsequent
chapter I shall dwell on the palliatives which were adopted
in order to mitigate the worst and most intolerable burdens
of his life—palliatives which were rendered necessary by no
fault of his, but by the deliberate malignity of Governments
and Parliaments. For more than two centuries and a half, the
English law, and those who administered the law, were
engaged in grinding the English workman down to the lowest
pittance, in stamping out every expression or act which indi-
cated any organized discontent, and in multiplying penalties
upon him when he thought of his natural rights. I am not
deceived by the hypocrisy which the preamble of an Act of
Parliament habitually contains, and the assertions which are
as habitually contradicted by the details of the measure.
The Act of Elizabeth declares that “the wages of labourers
are too small, and not answerable to these times ;” and speaks
The Law and the Labourer. 399

of the “grief and burden of the poor labourer and_ hired
man,” and thereupon enacts a law which effectually makes the
wages small and multiplies the labourers’ grief and burden, by
allowing those who are interested in keeping him poor to fix
the wages on which he shall subsist, and to exact a testi-
monial from his past employers and the overseers or church-
wardens when he quitted a service, which he had to show
before he entered another.

By construction of law, the offence of conspiracy ; which was
originally a combination for the purpose of bringing false
evidence against others, or for the purpose of subsequently
committing a crime; was extended to those associations of
workmen, whose purpose it was to raise the rate of wages by
such a combination, for the whole basis of the practice on
the subject appears to be inferential from the statute of
Edward VI., under which penalties are inflicted on those
who combine not to do work, except at a certain price and
for a certain time, and for implied violations of the 18th, 19th,
and 2oth clauses of the Act of Elizabeth, which must be
forced in order to bear such a construction. But at the con-
clusion of the eighteenth century an Act of Parliament was
carried, which declares all contracts, except between master
and man, for obtaining advances of wages, altering the usual
time of working, decreasing the quantity of work, and the
like, illegal. Workmen who enter into such illegal combina-
tions are punishable by imprisonment, and a similar punish-
ment is inflicted on those who enter into combinations to
procure an advance of wages, or seek to prevent other work-
men from hiring themselves, or procuring them to quit their
employment. Meetings and combinations for effecting such
purposes are punishable in like manner, and offenders who
inform against their associates are to be indemnified. This
Act, it may be remembered, was passed when wheat was at
famine prices, ranging from 100s. to I50s. a quarter, and
the magistrates were beginning to confess the atrocious
cruelty of the Quarter Sessions assessment of wages by adopt-

ing that system of Poor Law allowances which I shall comment
on hereafter.
400 Wages of Labour after the Rise m Prices.

The imaginary offence which employers and lawyers in-
vented for the purpose of keeping wages low is on a par
with the crime of witchcraft. That no end, however excellent
in itself, should be, indeed can be, aided by violence, is a
commonplace in the law of all civilization. It is equally
true that the pretence to a supernatural power of working
mischief on others by a mysterious process which its victim
cannot foresee, resist, or escape, is an offence against even a
more rudimentary civilization. But the ordinary forces of
law and police ought to be, and under a proper administra-
tion always are, sufficient against ruffians and cheats, though
the phenomena of ruffianism and knavery ought to direct
the attention of government to their causes, and to guide
legislatures to preventive remedies.

A trade union conducted on legal and peaceful principles,
by which I mean moral forces only, and with an entire
abstention from violence, both in its inception and its ad-
ministration, does not ecorfomically differ from any other
joint stock partnership. When a number of persons combine
their capitals, their energies, and their experiences in consti-
tuting a commercial undertaking, when they carry it on with
integrity, and gain all the advantages they can by interpreting
demand and regulating supply, so as to secure the greatest
possible profit to themselves, the business is welcomed as
legitimate, and the managers and agents of it are ap-
plauded. If the undertaking is greatly successful, the
promoters of it are styled merchant princes, pioneers of
industry, creators of public wealth, benefactors of their
country, and guarantors of its progress. They are presumed
to be peculiarly fit for offices and titles of honour, to merit
places in Parliament, occasionally to be even qualified to
transmit hereditary fortune, rank, and authority, Examine
into the process by which individual or joint stock wealth is
created, and you will always find that it has been developed
from the practice of buying or producing judiciously, and by
selling at as high a price as the market will consent to give.
There is, indeed, no other process by which wealth can be
accumulated or capital increased. The phrase may be
4

The Objects of Labourer and Capitalist. 401

varied as one wills, but it always means the same thing,
that profits can be obtained only by selling at a better price
than one has bought or made, whatever one may have ob-
tained and is bringing into the market.

Now this is precisely what a trade union, or labour partner-
ship as I prefer to call it, does for that which workmen
possess,—their labour. They have something to sell in their
strength and their skill. Like the capitalist, they wish to sell
their property to the best advantage, that is, at a charge
which will leave them something above, as much as possible
above, the cost at which they are put in keeping themselves
in an effective condition for their labour, and which exactly
corresponds to the cost of production in the case of the manu-
facturer, and to the cost of acquisition in the case of the mer-
chant or trader. They also know perfectly well that if they
are constrained to sell their labour to the first comer or at a
moment’s notice, they sell at a disadvantage, and they are as
much in their right in withholding their goods from the market
till they can get their price, or, in other words, in refusing to work
till they get satisfactory wages, as a shop-keeper is who will not
sell his goods except at his price, or a manufacturer who will
not bring his produce to market unless he gets his profit. In
one particular, indeed, they are worse off than merchant and
manufacturer. The goods in which they deal are very costly
to keep, and therefore they have to be very circumspect in
refusing to sell, because to withhold from the market is in
their case a serious loss. In order to make this loss as light
as possible, though at the best it is exceedingly heavy, they
require to adopt the joint stock principle of mutual insurance
against the loss of keeping their goods from the market, and on
the widest possible scale. They seek to enlist the largest pos-
sible number of workmen in their association, to include all in
the same trade if they can, to include all in a corporation of
trades in the end, so that they may be able to strengthen, as
far as possible, the exceptional weakness of their position.
Now to do this successfully they should develop the most
important of the social virtues. They should have con-
sideration for the rights of others, in their own fellowship

26
402 Wages of Labour after the Rise in Prices.

necessarily ; in that of others, that they may not destroy
the common agency by the harmony of which they can
procure the greatest advantage: patience, and forbearance :
shrewd foresight as to the condition, present and future, of
the craft by which they live; and intelligence in proving that
the machinery which they employ is for the common benefit
of all, workmen, producers, and consumers alike. If they
take their measures rightly, they can demonstrate all this.
I confess that I look forward to the international union of
labour partnerships as the best prospect the world has of
coercing those hateful instincts of governments, all alike
irresponsible and indifferent, by which nations are perpetually
armed against each other, to the infinite detriment, loss, and
demoralization of all.

Mr. Mill, misled by two positions which he takes to be
fundamental, but both of which are equally baseless ; the first
that the amount payable in wages is a fixed and _ inelastic
quantity ; the second, that an increase of wages must neces-
sarily be effected at the cost of the employer or consumer,
or both, has entirely ignored trade unions in his estimate
of the popular remedies for low wages, and speaks doubtfully
or slightingly about the machinery of trade unions in better-
ing labour generally, though he does, as might be expected,
condemn in becoming terms the spirit which dictated the
Statute of Labourers. But in point of fact, if trade unions
do or can raise wages, they may do so to the ultimate
benefit of producers and consumers. It is very possible, late
experience proves it to be a fact, that aggregate profits may
be abnormally high and individual profits small, owing to
the competition of capitalists in the same employment, and
a tacit or avowed understanding that competition shall be
directed not to selling cheaply, but to getting custom. Now
if the operation of a trade union takes the form of reducing
the number of competing capitalists or traders, the workmen
may be better off, the survivors of the reduction better off,
and the consumers better off, too. There is an unproductive
consumption of a marked character in the presence of a num-
ber of persons engaged in the same calling who cannot all
full Wages and Profits. 403

live well by the calling, but who do contrive in the scramble
to load the charge of the goods produced by their presence
and their profits. Men are beginning to find out that persons
who were once conceived to be a beneficial class, the inter-
mediaries of trade and production, are engaged in destroying
profits to an infinitely greater extent than high wages do;
that they have become customary in many callings, do
mischief instead of service, are parasites, and not, in any
sense, producers. There is, of course, a fixed quantity of
merchantable wealth produced in any given time. It may
be distributed among an excessive number of persons, many
of whom are useless, many of whom, though in their degree
serviceable, could be spared, and by the excision of both,
profits and wages might be greatly enhanced for those who
are essential to the operation, and the public be, after all,
considerably benefited.

I do not defend the tactics which trade unions have some-
times adopted. They have, indeed, the poor excuse that
they are imitative of practices which are sanctioned by
custom or success in others. A strike, seldom, I believe,
successful, though the contingency of it may be, is, to an
economist, no way different from a speculative purchase by
which the projector hopes to control the market by shorten-
ing supply. The violence which has characterized the action of
workmen against those who abstain from their policy, compete
against them for employment in a crisis, and, as they believe,
selfishly profit by a process which they are too mean to assist,
but from which they suck no small advantage, is indefensible
and suicidal. Butit has its parallel in the attitude taken by joint
stock companies of trade to interlopers, and in the devices by
which traders have over and over again striven to ruin rivals
who will not abide by trade customs, or even seek to be
independent competitors against powerful agencies. I see
no difference, beyond the fact that law allows them, between
the rattening of a Sheffield saw grinder and the expedients by
which, in the Committee rooms of the House of Commons,
railway directors seek to extinguish competitive schemes,
Men who have not had the refinements of education, and
404 Wages of Labour after the Rise in Prices.

who are not practised in the arts of polite malignity, may
be coarse and rude in the expedients which they adopt, but
when the process is essentially the same, when the motive
is practically identical, and the result is precisely equal, the
manner is of no importance to the analyst of motives and
conduct.

There is but little alteration in the material condition of
the artizan and labourer in husbandry up to the end of the
second quarter of the eighteenth century. The wages of the
former were generally Is. 6a. to 2s. a day, those of the latter
Is. to Is. 6d, though they are sometimes more, for the
employer seems to have not infrequently disregarded the
assessments of quarter sessions. In 1767 and onwards
Arthur Young began and continued his tours through rural
England, and constantly gives an account of the wages paid
in different parts of the country. Thus, in Hertfordshire he
reckons that the amount of a labourer’s annual earnings is
418, of which his board, washing, and lodging amount to
£12. This amounts to a little less than 75. a week. In
Northamptonshire it is £17 a year, and Young notes that
day labour in that part of the country used to be only 4s. a
week in winter, or even 3s. and that this was the rule ten
years before. At Kettering, he’ tells us that labour has risen
by one-third during the twenty years preceding his visit. In
Derbyshire, he tells us that the price of labour (the annual
earnings are set at £17) has increased 50 per cent. during the
last twenty years; in Yorkshire, a fourth within the same
period. In the fourth volume of his “Eastern Tour” he sets
down the average wages of husbandmen at 7s. 10d. a week, this
quantity being made up by the extra allowances of the hay.
and corn harvest; and he notes that in many places the wages
had risen 50 per cent. within the last twenty years, and taking
all places together, 25. This gives £20 35. 4d.a year on an
average. The house rent of the labourer is at an average
of £2, his fuel at £1 6s. Bread, which he supposes to be
wheaten, is 1}. the lb,; butter, 64¢.; cheese, 33¢.; meat of ali
kinds, mutton, beef, pork, and veal, 34¢. Young comments
on the equality of the price of bread throughout England as a
Wages in Arthur Young's Time. 405

singular and instructive fact. He also holds that such a rate
of wages ought to nearly exclude parish assistance, adding
that “sound and spirited husbandry, while products bear a
fair price, will very well pay a high price of labour, and that
thorough good farmers who are alive to their business do
not complain of the rates of labour, provided men can be
got.” Wages, too, had again become higher in the neigh-
bourhood of London.

Such a result is to be expected. Unless the rate of wages
be artificially lowered, the cheaper products are, the higher
wages are, provided, of course, that the cheapness is due to
progressive industry. Now this is precisely what occurred
about the middle of the eighteenth century. Agriculture
made a prodigious start, and though population was evidently
increasing with great rapidity, prices fell. Inclosures were
general, and still prices fell; a bounty was granted on the
exportation of grain, and prices were still declining. Now
if prices fall with an increasing population, with a greater
breadth of land enclosed and under cultivation, and even
under the stimulus of a payment made by the State to such
persons as would export grain, the natural inference would be
that rents would fall. But, on the contrary, rents rose as prices
fell. The value of land, according to Arthur Young, and on
this point he was not likely to be deceived, was on an average
thirty-three-and-a-half years’ purchase; and the owner had, at
teast ordinarily, to do repairs to the homestead and buildings,
to run the risk of vacant farms and bankrupt tenants. Now
it is impossible that so high a price should be paid for land,
unless the purchaser contemplated a prospective advantage in
his acquisition, was convinced, in short, that what he expected
to get 3 per cent. from as an investment to-day he could get a
constantly increasing percentage from shortly after he had
acquired it. The country was constantly producing more ven-
dible commodities at less cost, and the advantage was shared
by the labourer, the farmer, the landowner, and the consumer.
And though much that Arthur Young says is crude, and not a
little even foolish, as when he ascribes the progress of agricul-
ture to the Corn Laws and the Bounty, much that he says
406 Wages of Labour after the Rise in Prices.

about the necessary, the inevitable progress of opulence is
true. The workman, it is true, got less of the profit than
others did—less than the farmer, the landlord, and the
general consumer, because his previous margin had been so
low, but he did share in the advantage—the advantage of
lower prices and higher wages. In 1768, when Young began
his tour, prices to be sure were high, and the cheapness of
the preceding forty years was beginning to give way to a
series of harvests which were almost famine years; but it
well might have been that these exalted prices were con-
sidered exceptional and likely to be reversed, and that at the
most they would have afforded an additional impetus to the
rise in the value of land.

In addition to the information which Young gives us so
copiously about the price of agricultural labour, his tours
supply us with the wages paid at various manufactories in
different parts of England. The highest are those earned by
colliers, which at Newcastle were 15s. a week, and at Wake-
field 11s. The next are those in the iron and cutlery works,
which are 10s. at Rotherham, and 13s. 6¢. at Sheffield. The
next highest paid are the workmen in porcelain at Liverpool,
Burslem, and Worcester, who get respectively 8s. 112, 9s. 6@,,
and gs. The average payment for spinning and weaving is
8s. 7a., the lowest wages out of seven localities being paid at
Manchester, for fustians, 7s. t@.; the highest at Wakefield, for
cloth, 10s. The average wages of women in textile manufac-
tures is 45. 24¢.; of boys, 2s. 113@; of girls, 25. 7¢. The earn-
ings, therefore, of the manufacturing population were already,
as far as the men are concerned, greater than those of the
hind ; and, besides, the former calling gave a more regular and
highly paid wage to women and children. The effect of the
attraction to manufacturing districts may have been, indeed
must have been, injurious to the health and vigour of the
people who were drawn into these employments, but the fact
of the attraction is plain. Again, the drugget weavers of Brain-
tree earn about 9s.; the woolcombers, 12s. ; the Wilton carpet
weavers from Ios. to 125.; the Gloucester pinmakers from 10s.
to 15s.; the woollen manufacturers of Henningham 7s. ;
Wages of Factory Hands, 407

the combers from 12s. to 145.; the steel polishers of Wood-
stock, from 15s, to 425.; the blanket weavers of Witney, from
Ios. to 12s. The manufacturers of Woodstock, now extinct,
were the best paid of any.

The best paid workmen in textile fabrics were the wool-
combers, who earned on an average, wherever they were,
about 13s. a week ; the lowest the say and calimanco weavers
of Lavenham at 5s. 9@. The best paid agricultural labourers
were those in Kent and Middlesex, with a weekly payment
of 115. 4a. The worst are those of Gloucestershire and Wilt-
shire, at 5s. 24¢@. The wages of the manufacturing labourer,
says Young, are, on an average, 8d. a week beyond those of
agricultural labourers, some of whom, in the West of Eng-
land, get no more than 5s. and 6s. allthe year round. Young,
who is an ardent advocate of high rents and high prices,
informs us that the rioting which had latterly disturbed
England had been invariably got up by those labourers who
earned the best wages. He evidently does not see that dis-
content and disaffection are frequently the outcome of
tolerable well-doing, rarely of penury and despair.

The old days of cheapness and abundance were now over,
and dear times succeeded. In 1744 and 1745, when the
upward movement of wages commenced, wheat was between
21s. and 22s, the quarter; after 1780, it was rarely below 50s.;
and towards the end of the century it rose to double that
price. It is possible that the deficiency in the English
harvests, prices being also elevated by the rapid growth of
population, and this being due to the growing demand for
hands in the factories, and especially for the labour of the
young, could not have been supplemented by foreign impor-
tation in the generally disturbed state of Europe at the out-
break of the continental war. But even if the supply had
been possible, the corn laws were a sufficient discouragement
to foreign trade in food. If the foreign producer had known
that the English people would buy corn in emergencies, he
could not tell when the emergency would arise, and at what
time he should make preparation for it. Trade rests upon
the anticipation of a market, and the legislation which makes
408 Wages of Labour after the Rise in Prices.

a market uncertain, adopts the most effectual means for
destroying the market altogether. The scarcity which now
became chronic for a quarter of a century in England, de-
veloped besides that detestable interest in the mind of the
farmer and landowner, and keeps it still alive in that of the
former, that the best profit which they can hope lies in the
calamities, the miseries, the misfortunes, the losses, the
impoverishment of their fellow-countrymen. Thanks to the
efforts of those who established free trade in food, the
farmer and the landlord are now deprived of the pleasure
which they once felt when unpropitious seasons raised the
price of food in so rapid and increasing a proportion, that
a scanty harvest was bringing enormously increased gain to
the agriculturist and the receiver of rents, and their satis-
faction is limited to the prospect of interruption between
the trade of this country and those regions from which
food supplies are derived.

On May 6th, 1795, a meeting of the Berkshire magistrates
was held at Speenhamland, after a public advertisement had
been made of the intended meeting, when it was unanimously
affirmed that the state of the poor required larger assistance
than had been given them generally. The meeting also decided
that it was not expedient for the magistrates to grant that
assistdnce by regulating wages according to the Statute of
Elizabeth, but that the magistrates should earnestly recom-
mend the farmers and others to increase the pay of their
labourers according to the price of provisions. They there-
upon put out a scale, in which they calculated what should be
the wages of workmen, according to the rise or fall in the price
of bread, the scale being based on the same principle as the
assize of bread. Thus when the gallon loaf should cost Is.,
they reckoned that the labourer should receive, either by his
own earnings or by an allowance from the poor rates, 3s. weekly
for himself and Is. 6@. for each of his family, and that with
the rise of every penny in the loaf, he should receive an
additional 3¢. for himself and id. for each of his family. An
unsuccessful attempt was made twice over in the House of
Commons to enforce what was called the Speenhamland Act of
The Labourer's Real Wages Decline. 409

Parliament by law, and Bills to this effect were introduced in
1795 and 1800 by Mr. Whitbread.

There had been some rise in the rate of wages at the
conclusion of the century. The poor could not have sub-
sisted had not such a rise been effected; but it bore no
proportion to the rise in the necessaries of life. In 1801,
Arthur Young calculated that a Suffolk labourer could (at
some date which he does not give, but it must have been
nearly sixty years before) have bought with 5s. what, in
1801, would have cost him 26s. 5a, and that, therefore, as
his wages and parish allowance would at the best have
given him only 15s., he was virtually put on little more
than half the scale of his earnings in the earlier period.
The workmen of the time put out statements as to their
condition, in which they admitted a slight increase, but
showed how inadequate it was when contrasted with their
present outgoings. Thus, the journeyman tailors stated that
their wages from 1777 to 1795 had been 21s. 9a a week,
with which they could purchase thirty-six loaves at the
average prices, that they had risen to 25s. in 1795, and to
27s. in 1801, but that they were only able to purchase
eighteen-and-a-half loaves with the larger nominal sum.
Compositors had secured an advance from 24s. to 27s. in
1795, and to 30s. in 1801, but were really worse off than
they had been. A similar rise had been effected, and with
the same consequences, in the labour of carpenters, brick-
layers, and masons. The rise was from 3s. a week to Is. 6d.
and Is. But it was proved that the cost of maintaining a
household at the beginning of the last quarter of the
eighteenth century was, by a comparison of prices, more
than trebled at the close of the period. It should be noted
also that while prices were so high in England they were
remarkably depressed abroad, but that owing to the out-
rageous fiscal system in England, the famine in England
was contemporaneous with a foreign glut. Now a free in-
tercourse with other countries would have obviated much
mischief and misery on both sides of the Channel. The
report as to the state of the home trade is what might be
410 Wages of Labour after the Rise in Prices.

expected. The trade of Birmingham was in a very distressed
condition. A large number of workmen were out of employ-
ment, and those who got work had the utmost difficulty in
subsisting, owing to the exorbitant price of food. The ribbon
trade of Caventry was in a most deplorable state, the woollen
trade of Yorkshire, if possible, still worse. The seasons had been
unpropitious, and the law designedly intensified the scarcity.

Between 1800 and 1812 the nominal wages of agricultural
labourers and artizans were considerably increased, either by
actual payments or by parish allowances. Still the rise was
not proportionate to the increased cost of living, for dearth
had become an institution in the country. But the wages of
persons employed in factories were not increased, or very
partially, and many people were out of work altogether.
In 1785, the poor rate was 42,004,238. In 1802, it was
44,267,965; in 1813, it amounted to 48,640,842. At the
conclusion of the eighteenth century the rate of agricultural
wages was Is. 4d.a day. In the year 1810 it was Is. 8a, and
it is noteworthy that the carpenter’s wages, generally about
50 per cent. above those of the agriculturist, did not go above
the level of the latter at the time. For as Mr. Tooke
(“ History of Prices,” ii. 71) said in 1837, “According to all
experience, whether within modern observation or recorded
in history, it may be laid down as an established maxim
that labour is the last of the objects of exchange to rise in
consequence of dearth or depreciation, and that commonly
the price of labour is the last to fall in consequence of in-
creased abundance of commodities or of increased value of
money.” The condition of labour was considerably bettered
after the peace, was greatly benefited by the comparatively
low prices which prevailed in the period intervening between
the commencement of fiscal reforms and the repeal of the
corn laws, and has, speaking generally, made further progress
since that time.

The repeal of the ancient laws against the association of
workmen for the purpose of raising their wages, led to the
creation of trade unions. In course of time these associations
took active steps, and especially in 1853 were successful in
The Labourer's Condition Bettered. 41)

several directions. The lightermen on the river, the labourers
in the docks, a number of artizans on the south of the river
Thames, where there are great and important manufactures,
the men employed in the building trades, masons, bricklayers,
and carpenters, demanded and obtained an increase of 10 per
cent. in their wages, and a considerable shortening in the
hours of their labour. This movement has progressed, and at
the present time the hours of labour are probably less in
England than they are in any country, certainly considerably
less than they are in the United States, Nor was this move-
ment confined to artizans. The agricultural labourers, partly
owing to their own action, partly to the greater mobilization
of labour, brought about by the construction of the railways,
which attracted numerous hands from the rural districts,
partly to the easier means of communication, and the inter-
course with other markets for labour which the railways
opened up, made their demand also for a better remuneration,
and generally achieved it. It is true that the wages of the
farm hand are still low, and, as a consequence, country districts
have suffered a great depletion of population, and it may be
feared have lost their best hands, and, it is possible, the best
stock. Emigration also became exceedingly active. Thou-
sands went to the United States and the Colonies, although
population, especially in the towns, continually increased,
partly because, under better sanitary conditions, the number of
births became greater and life was greatly prolonged, partly
because there has been a steady inflow to the towns from rural
districts, and even from foreign countries.

Working men have been far more effective in the combina-
tions they have adopted than in the instrument which they
have used for enforcing their demands. Strikes have soseldom
been successful that a doubt has been expressed as to whether
the rise in wages, fortunately an accomplished fact, has not
been due entirely to demand, and in no case to the combina-
tion. But it cannot, I think, be doubted that however little
the battle between capital and labour has resulted in the
victory of the latter, the contingency of a battle must have
frequently averted its occurrence. The tendency towards the
412 Wages of Labour after the Rise in Prices.

struggle, too, is always when trade is bad and a reduction
threatened, i.e, at a time when the minimum of loss is put on
the employer and a maximum on the workmen. But the
fullest proof of the real efficacy of trade unions as a means
for improving the condition of the labourer and increasing his
material benefit lies in the stimulus which they have given to
the construction of boards, which should conciliate both parties
and arbitrate between them. Many of us can well remember
the time when the master repudiated the interference of arbi-
trators with great warmth, and men looked on the proposal
with cold incredulity. But this to a great degree is changed,
and though the mechanism of conciliation works still with not
a little friction, all persons testify to the infinitely improved
tone with which trade disputes are avowed, carried on, and
settled, It was not to be expected that persons unused to
argument, and inexperienced in the analysis of facts, much
more of motives, should not at first be violent when they were
angry. The tendency, however, has greatly changed, and, in
the opinion of most fair judges, with great rapidity.

Working men in England have now their future very much
in their own hands. They see, I suspect, much more clearly
than their critics do, what are the limits of their power over
capital and prices—on the former because the profits of capital
depend on the sufficiency of the latter ; on the latter because
they know that they may check or even destroy the market of
what is voluntarily purchased, and may raise against themselves
and their own order what must necessarily be used or con-
sumed. But the joint action of working men is only in its in-
fancy yet. As association becomes wider and more coalescent,
many steps which have not yet been taken will become easy
and natural ; as, for instance, the maintenance of a standard of
honour and efficiency in work, and the protection of the public
against the roguery of producers, of which at present workmen
are the silent witnesses, but should not be the willing accom-
plices. I know nothing which would exalt the reputation
and justify the action of trade combinations more than the
establishment of a rule, that members of such unions would
denounce and expose dishonest and scambling work, and
Improvement in the [exe of Trade Unions. 413

protect those of their order who may suffer ill-usage or wrong-
doing for having reported and checked such nefarious practices.
As yet the rules of trade unions are principally confined to
the process of bettering the whole class. Hereafter they will,
or should, extend towards purifying the class, and making it a
potent instrument for the moral and material advancement of
all. Other professions exclude, either formally or informally,
misbehaving, disreputable, or incompetent persons from their
ranks. It cannot be doubted that in time to come artizans
and labourers will elaborate those necessary police regulations,
by which they will increase the usefulness, elevate the reputa-
tion, and cultivate the moral tone of those who ply the craft
whose interests they seek to serve, and whose character they
ought scrupulously to maintain,
4r4

CHAPTER XV.

THE ENGLISH POOR LAW.

The Intimate Acquaintance of each Man with his Neighbour in the Middle
Ages—The Relief of Destitution in Early Times—The Religious Orders
and the Secular Clergy—The Guilds—The Legal Relief of Destitution
under Henry VIII., Edward VI., Mary—The Act 43 Elizabeth—lIts Effects
on Labour—The Necessary Result of the Act on Rent and Labour—The
Defence of Relief—The Land Laws and Pauperism—The History of the
Degradation of Labour—Wages and Prices—The Effect of a Rise in Prices
on Labour under Various Circumstances—The Struggle against Despotism
in the First Half of the Seventeenth Century—The Position of Labour—
Rise in Wages during the Civil War—The Enactment of the Law of Parochial
Settlement—The Labourer at the Revolution of 1688—Effects of Parochial
Settlement—Political Economy and Pauperism—The Cost of Parochial
Settlement—The Allowance System—The Rise of Manufactures — The
Abolition of the Combination and Assessment of Wages Law—The New
Poor Law—Trade Unions—Co-operation—Benefit Societies.

HERE has always been poverty in human societies
when men are settled on the soil, though not, per-

haps, more poverty than exists among peoples who are still
wanderers, or hunters, or herdsmen. I make no doubt that
the ordinary hardships of human life in England were
greater, and I am sure they were more general six centuries
ago than they are now. Life was briefer, old age came
earlier, disease was more deadly, the risks of existence
were more numerous. The race was smaller, weaker, more
stunted. But the extremes of wealth and poverty were, by
the fact of these common conditions, less widely separated.
Above all things, what is now characteristic of human life,
that one-half of the world does not know how the other half
lives, a very moderate statement of the fact, was not true of
the early ages of English progress. Society was small, and
not packed densely. Not only did each man know all about his
Contrast of Ancrent and Modern Society. 415

neighbours’ affairs, but the whole machinery of government
pre-supposed that he did. The ancient jury was not a body
of men brought together to interpret the relevance of a set
of facts which they hear for the first time when they get into
the jury-box, but a dozen men who were supposed to know
all the facts of the case beforehand, who were held responsi-
ble for not knowing them, and still more responsible for not
giving a satisfactory verdict on the facts which they knew.

As the English householder in the middle ages was sup-
posed to know the acts and the character of every man in
the neighbourhood, he was equally well-informed as to each
person’s circumstances. No doubt people hoarded, the more
because taxation was on the visible means of the tax-payer;
but it is certain that the periodical visits of the assessor must
have brought out the fact of narrow circumstances, poverty,
and want very plainly, perhaps over plainly, as destitution was, _
under certain circumstances, held to be a virtue, or, at least,
the preparation for virtue. I cannot say that people did not
perish from want in very bad times. I am tolerably sure
that they did, and in considerable numbers, during the great
famines of 1315 and 1316, when all but the very opulent
must have been stinted. But fortunately for the English
people, as I have frequently stated, their habit, even under
the adverse circumstances of their existence and the un-
cleanly ways of their life, was always to subsist on abundant
provisions of naturally high quality. They ate wheaten
bread, drank barley beer, and had plenty of cheap though
perhaps coarse meat. Mutton and beef at a farthing a
‘pound, take what multiple you please, and twelve is a liberal
one, were within the reach of far more people than they
now are. The grinding, hopeless poverty under which
existence may be just continued, but when nothing is won
beyond bare existence, did not, I am convinced, characterise
or even belong to medizval life. That men died from want
I can believe, but I do not think that they lived and died by
inches, so to speak. There were many means by which
occasional distress was relieved. I am not sure that I have
been able to collect all the means.
416 The English Poor Law.

In the first place, the relief of destitution was the funda-
mental religious duty of medizval Christianity, I might have
said of Christianity itself. In ancient polities it might be
the duty of the state to relieve distress; it was always its
prudence, if it cared for security. To get abundant supplies
of food for the poorer citizens in one way or the other was
the constant anxiety of democratic Athens and of imperial
Rome. But from the very first Christianity transferred this
duty from the state to the individual, and to the volun-
tary corporation. The early Church undoubtedly preached
patience, but it much more emphatically inculcated the duty
of almsgiving. The contribution of the tithe was enforced
in order that a third part at least of the proceeds should go
to the relief of the deserving poor. In the fifteenth century
nothing moves the righteous wrath of Gascoigne more
than the teaching of Pecok to the effect that ecclesiastical
revenues enjoyed by churchmen can be disposed of ac-
cording to the discretion of the recipient as freely as the
proceeds of private property. After heresy, simony, and
sorcery, the heaviest charge which could be levelled against
a churchman was that of avarice, and a covetous priest who
hoarded his revenues was lucky if the charge of avarice was
not coupled with those graver vices to which I have referred.
We may be certain, too, that the duty which was so generally
imposed on them by public opinion—the force of which is not
yet extinct—was inculcated by them on others. In times
of plenty, too, food was often given with wages. A wealthy
monastery or college would find a place at the servants’
table for the artizans whom they employed without much
grudging, and still more would the poor at the gate not be
sent away empty-handed. Where mendicancy was no dis-
grace, almsgiving was like to be considered the most necessary
and the most ordinary of the virtues.

It has been often said and often denied that the monas-
teries supplied the want which the poor law, two generations
after the dissolution of these bodies, enforced. That the
monasteries were renowned for their almsgiving is certain.
The duty of aiding the needy was universal. Themselves the
4
Early Expedzents. 417

creatures of charity, they could not deny to others that on
which they subsisted. But some orders were under special
duties. The Hospitallers were bound to relieve casual destitu-
tion. Hence, when Waynflete procured the surrender of the
house of the Oxford Hospitallers, he bound his college to the
duties which thesurrendered house had performed, duties which,
it is almost superfluous to say, were speedily evaded. So again
the preaching and begging friars were the nurses of the sick,
especially of those who laboured under infectious diseases.
There were houses where doles of bread and beer were given
to all wayfarers, houses where the sick were tended, clothed,
and fed, particularly the lepers. There were nunneries, where
the nuns were nurses and midwives; and even now the ruins
of these houses contain living record of the ancient practices of
their inmates in the rare medicinal herbs which are still found
within their precincts. In the universal destruction of these
establishments, the hardest instruments of Henry’s purposes
interceded for the retention of some amongst the most meri-
torious, useful, and unblemished of them. Itis possible that
these institutions created the mendicancy which they relieved,
but it cannot be doubted that they assisted much which
needed their help.

The guilds which existed in the towns were also found in
the country villages. They are traceable to the period before
the Conquest, and Hickes long ago printed some of the rules
under which they were constructed and governed, though these
are in the towns of Cambridge and Exeter. Blomefield finds
some in the Norfolk villages. Vestiges of their halls re-
mained long in small villages, these halls being devoted to
the business and occasional feasts of the society. They were
convenient instruments for charity before the establishment
of a poor law, and they employed no inconsiderable part of
their revenues, collected from subscriptions and from lands
and tenements, in relieving the indigent and treating poor
strangers hospitably. Blomefield, speaking of their feasts,
says: “But as the poor of the parish always were partakers
with them, I much question whether their revenues were not
better spent then than they have been since they were rapa-

a 27
418 The English Poor Law.

ciously seized from the parishes to which they of right be-
longed.” (Norfolk, iii, 185). The guilds frequently survived
the Reformation, though, of course, they had lost their property,
and are probably represented in later times by the parish
feast. Their property, as I have already said, was finally
confiscated by 1 Edward VL, cap. 14, after having been com-
prised in the last of Henry’s acts of rapine (37 Henry VIII,
cap. 4).

Before the dissolution of the monasteries, but when this
issue was fairly in view, in 1536, an attempt was made to
secure some legal provision for destitution. The Act of this
year provides that the authorities in the cities and boroughs
should collect alms on Sundays and holy days, that the
ministers should on all occasions, public and private, stir up
the people to contribute to a common fund, that the custom
of giving doles by private persons should be forbidden under
penalty, and that the churchwardens should distribute the
alms when collected. The Act, however, is strictly limited
to free gifts, and the obligations of monasteries, almshouses,
hospitals, and brotherhoods are expressly maintained.

The Supplication of Beggars puts the contributions given to
the begging friars by the people at £45,333 6s. 8d. annually,
supplied by 520,000 households. There was a considerable
party in England which was willing enough to see the monas-
teries destroyed, root and branch, and one of the most
obvious means by which this result could be attained would
be to allege that all which could be needed for the relief of
destitution would be derived from the voluntary offerings of
those who contributed so handsomely to the maintenance of
indolent and dissolute friars. The public was reconciled to
the Dissolution by the promise made that the monastic estates
should not be converted to the king’s private use, but be
devoted towards the maintenance of a military force, and
that therefore no more demands should be made on the
nation for subsidies and aids. Similarly when the guild lands
and chantry lands were confiscated at the beginning of
Edward’s reign, a promise was made that the estates of these
foundations should be devoted to good and proper uses, for
Growing Destttution. 419

erecting grammar schools, for the further augmentation of
the universities, and the better provision for the poor and
needy. They were swept into the hands of Seymour and
Somerset, of the Dudleys and Cecils, and the rest of the crew
who surrounded the throne of Edward, It cannot therefore,
I think, be doubted that this violent change of ownership,
apart from any considerations of previous practice in these
several institutions, must have aggravated whatever evils
already existed. It was idle to expect that they who saw
ancient institutions, on which the duty of almsgiving was im-
posed, not only swept away, but devoted to entirely different
purposes, in which these obligations were utterly neglected,
would contribute of their free will to the relief of destitution,
even if their resources were as considerable as before. But as
I have already stated, there came upon this violent change
another and far more formidable calamity, the issue of base
money and the total derangement of currency and prices.
Foolish people talk of the influx of the new silver. It had
not reached England, and did not reach England till a
generation after, and then superficially. What England
wanted was silver, and the Government put it out of her
power to get it.

The guardians of Edward attempted, in a savage statute
passed in the first year of his reign, to restrain pauperism and
vagabondage by reducing the landless and destitute poor to
slavery, by branding them, and making them work in chains,
The Act, however, only endured for two years. In the last
year of Edward’s reign two collectors were to be appointed
in every parish, who were to wait on every person of sub-
stance and inquire what sums he will give weekly to the
relief of the poor. The promises are to be entered in a
book, and the collectors were authorized to employ the poor
in such work as they could perform, paying them from the
fund. Those who refused to aid were to be first exhorted by
the ministers and churchwardens, and if they continued
obstinate were to be denounced to the bishop, who is to
remonstrate with such uncharitable folk. In Mary’s reign,
when the Act is renewed with a penalty on such collectors as
420 The English Poor Law.

decline the office, the reference to the bishop is accompanied
with the hint that refusal to give might be construed as
suggestive of heresy. This Act put the canvass for weekly
subscriptions at Christmas in place of Whitsuntide. In the
beginning of Elizabeth’s reign (5, cap. 3) the unwilling giver,
after being exhorted by the bishop, is to be bound to appear
before the justices, in quarter sessions, where, if he be still ob-
durate to exhortation, the justices are empowered to tax him
in a weekly sum, and commit him to prison till he pays.
This Act precedes that enforcing apprenticeship and em-
powering the magistrates to fix wages, on which latter I have
often and fully commented, and should probably be taken
with it. The law has. now proceeded fror- exhortation to
compulsion.

It seems highly probable that destitution and vagabond-
age were still further developed by the decline of that
manorial jurisdiction which had been so effective in the
thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and the transference of
the machinery of police from the parish to the justice's office
or to the quarter sessions. The old system, concentrating as
it did the functions of local discipline in the steward and
inhabitants of a parish, exercised a control and enforced a
responsibility which was indifferently compensated by the
authority of an individual or a bench of magistrates. And
this impression is confirmed by the almost insensible change
from a jury who are witnesses to a fact to a jury who are
merely judges of a fact,—a change so gradual that we get the
first hint of it in the celebrated case of Throgmorton, who
was acquitted in Mary’s reign ; though the legal irresponsi-
bility of a jury which acquits in face of a judge’s ruling, or
what he conceives to be the law, was only affirmed by Chief
Justice Vaughan as late as the reign of Charles II. in the
Quakers’ case.

There was only a step from the process under which a
reluctant subscriber to the poor law was assessed by the
justices and imprisoned on refusal, to the assessment of all
property under the celebrated Act of 43 Elizabeth, cap. 3.
The law had provided for the regular appointment of
Mary's Expedtent—Elizabeth's Law. 421

assessors for the levy of rates, for supplying work to the
able-bodied, for giving relief to the infirm and old, and for
binding apprentices. It now consolidates the experience
of the whole reign, defines the kind of property on which the
rate is to be levied, prescribes the manner in which the
assessors shall be appointed, and inflicts penalties on parties
who infringe its provisions. It is singular that the Act was
only temporary. It was, by the last clause, only to continue
to the end of the next session of parliament. It was, how-
ever, renewed, and finally made perpetual by 16 Car. IL,
cap. 4.

The economical history of labour in England is hence-
forward intimately associated with this remarkable Act. It
was the result of a series of causes, each of which has been
already commented on, the most dominant unquestionably
being the rapid and serious rise in the money value of food
and other necessaries, and the halting manner in which the
rate of wages followed the rise. In the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries the labourer secured increased wages in the midst
of decreasing prices. In the sixteenth, the reverse which he suf-
fered was far more considerable than the advantage which his
forefathers had gained. I do not, indeed, find that they who
regulated his wages by Act of Parliament were aware how
seriously his condition had been deteriorated, or that even
those who busied themselves with the phenomena of social
life, as Latimer did in the worst times of the bad currency,
and Stafford and Harrison did in the days of Elizabeth, took
any thought whatever of the labourer’s condition under these
deplorably altered circumstances. Even Eden, whose careful
investigations into the condition of the poor, and whose com-
ments on the various statutes which regulate their wages,
their condition, and their movements, are fairly exhaustive,
does not seem to have realized, though the facts were toa
considerable extent before him, how great a change had come
over the life of the labourer and the artizan. I cannot but think
that a growing disaffection, which Elizabeth and her counsellors
were not slow to discern, the remedy for which seemed to be
the continuance of expedients adopted in the three previous
422 The English Poor Law.

reigns, was the cause which induced them and parliament to
acquiesce in the Act of 1601. The Act was to be tentative,
indeed, but in its general principles it lasted till 1835.

It is plain that had the Act of Elizabeth been carried out
in all its details, the whole revenue of land would have ul-
imately been swallowed up in the relief of the poor. To
some extent the framers of the Act saw that this was already
locally possible, for the third clause of the Act contemplates
the possibility of the resources of a parish being inadequate
to the charge of maintaining the local poor, and directs that
the deficiency, if any arises, shall be supplemented from the
rest of the hundred. Now it was plain that ifthe magistrates
in quarter sessions were to fix the rate at which labour should
be paid, as they regularly did in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries, they would have every motive to put the rate at the
lowest sum which would sustain life, knowing well that if
the labourer became destitute, all occupiers would have to assist
in his maintenance, while the benefit of cheap labour would
_ remain to those only who employed him, as, indeed, actually
happened. In country places this would not at first be a very
important matter, as there would have been few persons rated
to the poor who, being occupiers, were not immediate em-
ployers of labour. But in the towns, the incidence of the poor
rate was a very serious addition to the burdens of such
occupiers as did not employ labour, and at the latter end
of the eighteenth century it became a very heavy charge
generally.

The effect of poor law relief on the wages of labour was to
keep them hopelessly low, to hinder a rise even under the
most urgent circumstances. This will be seen most clearly
in the history of wages during the seventeenth century, when
prices of corn were very high, and the labourer’s standard of
subsistence undoubtedly fell. For even if he were still able to
maintain himself on wheaten bread, his power of purchasing
other kinds of food was greatly curtailed. We must not be
led into believing that because meat was comparatively cheap—
it rapidly rose to three times the old rate, while wages did
not increase more than fifty per cent. over the rate in Eliza-
Effects of Elizabeth's Law. 423

beth’s reign after the first exaltation of prices was established —
it was therefore within the range of his expenditure. On
the contrary, the comparative cheapness of meat, beside that
of corn, is proof that the power of consuming it was narrowed
by the deteriorated condition of the mass of the people. The
fact is, the relief of mere destitution was the removal of every:
prudential restraint. If the labourer got scanty wages, he
was at least guaranteed against faminé in sickness, in infancy
and in old age, and he was, therefore, discouraged from
exercising any foresight whatever. I am persuaded that the
singular indifference with which, on the whole, the condition
of the working classes was viewed in relation to profits and
rent was due to the impression, that as the propertied classes
had bound themselves by law to ensure the labourer against
the contingencies of life, the facts of the case needed no
further anxiety on the part of any person whatever, except
in so far as the maintenance of the destitute seriously trenched
on the value of land.

It has been said, and with great apparent justice, that the
legal relief of destitution, though perhaps incapable of an
economical defence, is justified on the highest political and
social grounds. If the relief of misery is left to private
charity, the assistance given is capricious and imperfect.
Besides, the destitute and unrelieved are always dangerous;
and though the forces at the command of modern society
are powerful enough to check any outbreak, they cannot be,
except at an enormous expense, so efficient as to protect
property against desperate distress. Again, serious as the
strife has been between labour and capital, when the former is
at least guaranteed against the worst contingencies; it would
be infinitely sharper were the guarantee repudiated. Nor
must one forget how harsh and bitter life becomes when it
is familiarized with the signs of unrelieved distress. I cannot,
indeed, doubt that in the magnitude of modern societies the
relief of the poor is a necessity which cannot be, however
much labour makes progress and betters itself, repudiated
or neglected. Society may not be responsible for nine-tenths
of the misery and poverty within it, but it will never restrain
424 The English Poor Law.

poverty and misery unless it takes them in hand, and to do
so is to relieve them.

But the English poor law, after all, was the outcome of great
crimes committed by government, and is aggravated even
now by customs permitted by government. It could not
be free from the vices of its origin, and it is still in many
‘particulars made mischievous and harsh by those provisions
and those contingencies which arise from the customs to
which it is partly due. I have referred to the crimes of the
Tudor government. The customs to which I take exception
have an earlier origin, and are even more enduring, for they
have given occasion to two of the greatest problems of our
own day,—the housing of our poor in cities and the settlement
of agricultural labour in the country.

How far beggary, wretchedness, and crime, with their most
fruitful concomitants, drunkenness and hopelessness, recipro-
cally act on each other we cannot and never shall be able to
tell. We know that they are the miserable circle in which
thousands of our people, especially in London, revolve. We
know that they have destroyed all interest, except in the
means of the present day, in thousands. There is a large
population which would, if it could, make war on society,
which measures its own misery by the opulence of others,
and is profoundly convinced that every power which society
has and uses is employed against it. These people live
in squalid dens, where there can be no health and no hope,
but dogged discontent at their own lot and futile discontent
at the wealth which they see possessed by others.

But it cannot, I think, be doubted that when prudence and
thrift are deliberately discouraged, and recklessness is incul-
cated by law or practice, the misery which must, it seems,
accompany human life in society may become general and
chronic. The legislature strove to tie the peasant to the soil,
not, indeed, as a mere serf, for the Act of 1592 prescribed
that every labourer’s cottage in future should have four acres
of land attached to it,—a law which roused the wrath of
Arthur Young in 1770, and was no doubt habitually broken.
But it also gave him, as a compensation for the policy which
The Consequences Lasting. 425

permitted entails and the accumulation of land in few hands,
the right to be a pensioner on the soil, from all real and per-
manent share in which he was practically excluded. He
had been robbed by the landowner, and he was to be here-
after quartered on the occupier. He had been impoverished
by misgovernment, and was to be degraded by a charity
which was to compensate him for the losses which he had
sustained and for the hard measure which was being dealt
out to him, but which would ultimately degrade him and
make him helpless and hopeless. I can conceive nothing
more cruel, I had almost said more insolent, than to condemn
a labourer to the lowest possible wages on which life may
be sustained, by an Act of Parliament, interpreted and
enforced by an ubiquitous body of magistrates, whose interest
it was to screw the pittance down to the lowest conceivable
margin, and to inform the stinted recipient that when he had
starved on that during the days of his strength, others must
work to maintain him in sickness or old age. Now this was
what the Statute of Apprenticeship, supplemented by the Poor
Law, did in the days of Elizabeth. And if you go into the
streets and alleys of our large towns, and, indeed, of many
English villages, you may meet the fruit of the wickedness
of Henry and the policy of Elizabeth’s counsellors in the
degradation and helplessness of your countrymen.

Still their evils have been aggravated by other agencies.
The cost of living in large towns has been reduced by the
excellent and regular services of supply. In the -middle ages
most articles of food and analogous necessaries were fully fif-
teen per cent. dearer in London than elsewhere. Itis probable
that at present they are as much cheaper. But to these
economies there is one notable exception. The cost of house
rent is enormous. Some of this cost is doubtlessly due to the
density with which the people are packed, and the advantage
contained in proximity to one’s calling. But the cost is
greatly increased by the power which the law confers on
corporations and private proprietors to withhold land from
the market at a minimum of cost. It will be clear that if
the law encourages an artificial scarcity, it creates an un-
426 The English Poor Law.

natural dearness. By permitting corporations to hold land
in towns, and by allowing private owners to settle land in
towns, it gives such persons a power of exacting the highest.
terms possible for the use of their property, by keeping it:
out of the market till they can enforce their price. To use
an American phrase, taken from the slang of speculators,
the Russells and the Bentincks, the Cecils, the Portmans, the
Grosvenors, and the rest, with the corporations, have had
for a long period a ring or corner in the land market, and
can force buyers to give famine prices. Now what is an
injury to the moderately wealthy is oppression on the poor.
It is well known that vile and loathsome buildings, probably
the property of some opulent landowner, yield from the misery
of their inmates a far larger rent than the plots on which
the most luxurious and convenient mansions are built. Dives
is clothed in purple and fine linen, and fares sumptuously
every day from the crumbs which he sweeps out of the
wallet of Lazarus; and if Lazarus has to be fed occasionally,
and at last taken care of permanently, the fund which helps
him comes, not from the pockets of those who grow wealthy
from his want, but from those of others who are made liable
in their degree to the same extortion. The law which
levies rates on occupancy instead of on property makes the
evil worse, for it puts the minimum inconvenience on the
person who holds the strongest position. But they say, rates
are paid by property in the end. If so, there can be no hard-
ship in making the possessor of property pay them in the
beginning. The facts and their effects may be dwelt on at
greater length below.

In the ten years ending with 1590, the average price of
wheat was 20s. 6d.; in the next decade, 31s. 114¢.; the
average being heightened by two years of famine, 1596 and
1597; in the next, 29s. 54¢.; in the next, 345. ohd.; in the
next, 375. 54d. ; in the next, 43s. ofd. ; in the next, 46s. 14d.;
in the next, from 1651 to 1660, 44s. 6a.; the price being
lowered in the last decade by the three abundant years
1653-5 inclusive. Now my readers will notice that the price
of food is, on the whole, steadily rising, and he will readily
Real Wages and Reltef. 427

discern that the two years of famine, 1596-97, when wheat
was 46s. 3d. and 56s. 10}d., precipitated the passing of the
Poor Law. At the commencement of the period, the artizan’s
wages were Is. a day; the ordinary labourer’s, 8¢. At the
conclusion of it, the former were Is. 6d, the latter, Is.; and at
these prices they remained under the Act of 5 Elizabeth and
the quarter sessions’ assessment for a century and a quarter,
since this is the rate at which they ordinarily stood in Arthur
Young’s time. In the time preceding the issue of base money,
when the average price of wheat was below 6s. a quarter, they
were 6d. and 4d. In the earlier period, then, an artizan could
buy ?; of a quarter of wheat, the ordinary labourer J of a
quarter by a day’s work. But in the eight decades since
1581 they could get only 4, and 4 parts, sy and z parts, 2,
and #5 parts, y$, and apg parts, 7 and zy, parts, 7 and z
parts, Zs and /5 parts; while, in the last decade, when 50
per cent. was added to wages, owing, perhaps, to the charges
of war and the circulation of money, they rose to ¢ and 25
parts, omitting minute fractions throughout. Such figures
show plainly how lessened the wages of the workman had
become since the prosperous age to which I have so often
referred,

Estimated by his power of purchasing wheat, the artizan
and labourer in the last twenty years of the sixteenth and
the first fifty years of the seventeenth century got pro-
gressively less, so that in the ten years from 1641 to 1650,
their wages were little more than the fourth of that which
had been earned by their grandfathers and great grandfathers.
In the Percy Ballads, one of the speakers, called Ignorance,
sings =

*‘T’ll tell thee what, good fellow!
Before the friars went hence,

A bushel of the best wheat
Was sold for fourteen pence ;

And forty eggs a penny,
That were both good and new.”

The price of the wheat in the song is a good deal above
the average, though it does happen to be the price which
428 The English Poor Law.

prevailed just about the time of the Dissolution. The peasants
naturally connected the change with the great event which
had occurred before their eyes, and from which, chronologically,
the decline in their condition commenced. It may have
had its effect in the general cataclysm. It is certain that the
majority of persons, most of all those who are quite unused
to analyse the causes which lead to a result, ascribe to one or
two events, occurring concurrently with an effect which makes
them anxious or distresses them, the whole effect of which they
complain. The event may have no relation to the phenomenon
on which they rely, it may have a slight relation to it, it may
have a partial relation to it, but be only one in a considerable
congeries of causes, of which the principal remain undetected.
Now the principal factor in the progressive decline of the
Jabourer’s condition was, as I have more than once stated, the
issue of base money by Henry and Edward.

When the prices of the necessaries of life rise, the wages of
labour do not rise with them. Even under the best conditions
of labour this will not be found to be the case, or, what is the
same thing to the economist, given a fixed order of things,
under which the labourer is restrained from seeking employ-
ment in the best market, has his wages defined for him by a
hostile authority, is made—as in the case of the agriculturist
—the residuum of all labour, and is compensated by supple-
mentary allowances raised by the taxation of occupiers, as
under the Poor Law, the exaltation in the price of food is
never compensated by a corresponding increase in the rate of
wages, or, indeed, of the supplementary allowances. By con-
trast with the facts which prevailed before 1640, the labourer’s
service sank to the worst scale of remuneration during the
first half of the seventeenth century, for the price of food
increased, while wages remained stationary. By contrast with
what prevailed during the first three-quarters of the eighteenth
century, the wages of the labourer were again depressed
during the last quarter of the eighteenth and the first quarter
of the nineteenth centuries, when the old rates continued, and
wheat kept rising; for the average price between 1801 and
1810 was 96s. 4d., or more than double that which existed in
Wages and Prices. 429

the worst decade in the first half of the seventeenth century,
At this time it is true that something slightly analogous to
Henry’s base money occurred—the issue of inconvertible
paper; but the poverty of the poor was practically unalleviated,
their wages only nominally improved, the assessment of their
earnings unchanged, and no thought whatever was taken of
their condition by the Legislature, unless it be that the
attempt to repress by atrocious penal laws the violence which
their unparalleled sufferings drove them occasionally to com-
mit may be called thought.

As, therefore, wages do not rise with prices, no crime
against labour is more injurious than any expedients adopted on
the part of government which tend to raise prices. Un-
luckily for them, many working people have been misled
by interested sophistry into believing that high prices for
employers mean good wages for workmen. Ido not deny that
if an artificial stimulus is given to some particular industry,
the demand for the produce of which is limited but continual,
and the craftsmen in which are also limited, such a calling
may get enhanced wages for a short time. But others soon
crowd into the calling, and very speedily the thing is made
dearer, and the producer remains no better off, having lost in
the interval the knowledge which competition gives as to the
best conditions under which industry can be exercised. But
it is idle to argue that such an artificial stimulus can be given
to every kind of industry. Were it universal, the country
would be debarred from all intercourse with foreign commerce,.
and the legislature would raise a blockade round the ports.
far more effective than anything which the most successful
belligerent could enforce. If it be partial, it will either affect
all consumers or some. [If all, it induces a universal scarcity
without benefiting any one, for internal competition is sure to:
do its work on profits and wages ; if some, it simply narrows.
the area of consumption, and with even more rapid results on.
profits and wages. These elementary principles, which one is.
almost ashamed to allege, could be illustrated by a thousand
facts.

The case is rather more difficult when, in a country where
430 The English Poor Law,

labour is free and mobile, a marked addition is made to the
currency, in the only form in which the addition can be
made, a debased coinage, or a large increase of circulating
credit. Here we find temporarily all the appearances of great
industrial activity,—wages rise, profits are large, at least when
the labourer is free to choose his locality and his employer,
though wages never rise to the level of profits. But the
benefit is only for a time, and generally for a very short time.
The labourer is the first to lose his advantage. Then profits
shrink, and ultimately the collapse ensues, with its disappoint-
ments, its bitterness, and its degradation, The English
labourer, indeed, has had little experience of such advantages
as come from inflation, though something analogous to it
occurred in 1873, when the capitalists made much money,
and circulated a great many calumnies about the hands. But
in the sixteenth century, whatever advantage ensued, was
entirely on the side of the employers, on those who could
interpret a base currency, could make the labourer pay for
their commission on the exchange, and could succeed in
permanently degrading him.

The first half of the seventeenth century is a magnificent
political drama, in which the stage of public life in England
is crowded with those historical characters on whom the
better off and more educated of the English people dwell
with a peculiar and lasting interest. We seem to see before
us the Scottish king who had dropped into the English
throne, who looked and spoke like a fool, but was not such a
fool as he looked and spoke, with his strange brogue, his strange
manners, his named and unnamed vices; and his son, who
seemed grave and wise, but was hotbrained and foolish, proud
and false, the type of those unlucky liars who are always
found out. Then there is the first leader of the constitutional
opposition, Phelips, and the wily but dangerous counsellor of
the court, Cecil. There is Carr, with his wife, one of the
harlots of the House of Howard, who had so bad an eminence
in the century ; and the grim Coke, loyal to the law and him-
self; and Bacon, whose splendid reputation has obscured the
baseness of his life ; the shrewd Cranfield, who almost made
The Drama of the Seventeenth Century. 431

James absolute ; and Buckingham, who ruined the Treasurer,
and bringing his schemes to nought, assisted in pulling down
that which Cranfield had laboriously striven to build up; and
behind, below, but infinitely above these, are those men of
genius whose writings are the choicest treasures of the human
racé and the special pride of the English tongue, for the same
generation witnessed the maturity of Shakespeare and the
precocious intellectual wealth of Milton. As time passes on,
the whole energy of the nation is concentrated on the struggle
between absolutism and free institutions, free, alas! only for
the few, but these, as yet, the best types of our race. The
rare learning of Selden, the grave, inflexible patriotism of
Eliot, the dexterous tact of Pym, the resolute gentleness of
Hampden, the stern prescience of St. John, the wise modera-
tion of Bedford, and, ultimately, the military genius and clear
foresight of Cromwell, were to be arrayed against the perfidy of
Charles, the passionate bigotry of Laud, the fierce energies of
Strafford, against the herd of Finches and Noys, against bullies
from the Thirty Years’ War and pettifoggers on the Bench, The
age was so dramatic, the men were so typical, that Hyde was
able in his first exile to sketch their portraits as no one has
sketched individuals since, because men were so individual ;
for the imaginative drama had died out, since living men
were more characteristic than the subtlest pictures of the
poet. There has been and there will be no period in English
history which commands and deserves such attention as the
first fifty years of the seventeenth century, for memory sees
gods ascending out of the earth.

By the middle of the century there were probably four
millions of people in England and Wales, for hardships and
poverty do not always check the growth of population. The
half at least of these lived by weekly wages. There are no
‘annals of these people, of their work and their sufferings,
except in the record of their wages and the cost of their
living. We see the characters on the stage, and a little more,
but nothing of those who enabled these great actors to play
their parts, or of the work which was being done behind the
scenes. History, which crowds its canvas with these great
432 The Englsh Poor Law.

names, tells us nothing of the people. But they who take
note of the pittance which the peasant or artizan earned, and
of the cost at which he spent his wages on his needful food,
can interpret the hardships of his lot, the poverty of his life,
the barrenness of his labour, the growing hopelessness of his
condition. The eager spirits who crowded into the House of
Commons, the mounted yeomen who rode with Hampden,
the men who fought and won at Marston Moor and Naseby,
thought no more of the peasant and the workman, had no
more care for bettering him, than the Irish patriots of 1782
cared for the kernes and cottiers on whose labours they lived.
For in the midst of this battle of giants, when the king was
made subject first, and his foe, the parliament, followed him
in submission to the great army which Cromwell wielded as
dexterously as a swordsman does his weapon, the English
people who lived by wages were sinking lower and lower,
and fast taking their place in the contrast with the opulence
which trade and commerce began, and manufacturing activity
multiplied, as the beggarly hewers and drawers of prosperous
and progressive England. In 1651, the magistrates of Essex
in quarter sessions at Chelmsford fixed the wages of artizans
and labourers at Is. 6¢@. and Is. a day respectively ; and this
was the price which they generally secured. The price of
wheat in this year was nearly 50s. a quarter.

I have little doubt that during the civil wars and the Pro-
tectorate there was some little stirring among the labourers.
Their wages were raised, as I have said, fifty per cent. above
what they stood at in the times which preceded these civil
convulsions. It is probable, too, that trade and manufactures
made progress; it is certain that agriculture did. It was
natural that labour should seek after a better market, and
should acquire some mobility. The government of the
Protector was not likely to stop this movement, and it is
plain that labour began to stir. But the Restoration came,
the landed interest became dominant; the principle that the
crown and the parliament should be employed in the interest
of the landlord and the trader was stereotyped, and the law
of parochial settlement was forthwith enacted. This law
Parochial Settlement. 433

consummated the degradation of the labourer. It made him,
as it has left him, a serf without land, the most portentous
phenomenon in agriculture. It applied equally to the artizan,
but he was able to extricate himself at an earlier period from
the toils of this hateful law.

The Act 13, 14 Car. IL, cap. 12 (1662), begins with a hypo-
critical preamble, that it was enacted for the good of the
poor, for the correction of rogues and vagabonds, and for
the proper employment of such as were legally chargeable
to the parish of their settlement, and so empowers the church-
wardens and overseers of any parish into which a person
comes and occupies a tenement of less than ten pounds
annual value, within forty days of such a person’s coming, to
apply to a justice of the peace for the removal of such
a person to his place of legal settlement, under the hands
of two justices. The person in question may, however, give
security that he will not become chargeable, and may in any
case appeal from the justice’s decision to quarter sessions, ze.,
from Herod to Pilate. The Act, however, permits, with
tender care for the farmer’s interest, that strangers may,
under proper precautions, be employed in harvest work.

The great Revolution, which established the authority of
Parliament, put an end to arbitrary power, and relieved the
consciences of those who could not accord themselves to the
worship of the English Church, brought no liberty to the
peasant and artizan. It stereotyped their servitude by con-
straining (3 William and Mary, cap. 11) that notice of new-
comers should be published after service in Church. Labourers
had ceased to be factors in political action, and are simply
ignored for a century or more. But an Act of William IIL.,
8 and 9 cap. 30 (1697), recognises the effect of the law of settle-
ment passed thirty-five years before. It allows that persons
are imprisoned in their place of settlement, where they cannat
get work, though work may be wanted elsewhere, where the
increase of manufactures would employ more hands, and
that the provision of the Act of 1662, requiring the new-comer
to give security that he would not be chargeable to the parish
of his new residence, confines them to live in their own

28
434 The English Poor Law.

parishes. It therefore permits churchwardens or overseers,
who acknowledge their contingent liability, to give licenses
to those who might wish to migrate, the effect of the license
being that, if the incomer became chargeable, he could be
forthwith removed with his children, even though they had
been born in the new settlement. It is superfluous to say
that such licenses would be looked on with suspicion, as
expedients to relieve a parish of its quota of poor. Hence
it became customary for those who employed foreign labour
to give certificates of indemnity to the parish (often to a con-
siderable amount, £100 or more) that they would bear the
risk of the new comer’s chargeability, the recognisance being
stored in the parish chest. The effect of the law of parochial
settlement was not only to annex the labourer to the parish
of his residence, and to make him a serf. Those persons
who possessed the whole of a parish took care, whenever they
could, to pull down cottages on their estate, and rely on
labour from a distance. By this system they hired labour at
quarter sessions rates, 2¢, at factitiously low wages, while
the parish of the man’s residence had to supplement
his wages and to bear all those contingencies which were
enhanced by the labourer being constrained to travel a con-
siderable distance to his work in all weathers. The law of
settlement, therefore, not only fixed the tenant to the soil,
but enabled the opulent landowner to rob his neighbour, and
to prematurely wear out the labourer’s health and strength.
All this, too, was done when the patriots and placemen
chattered about liberty and arbitrary administration, and
fine ladies and gentlemen talked about the rights of man,
and Rousseau, and the French Revolution, and Burke and
Sheridan were denouncing the despotism of Hastings. Why
at his own doors at Beaconsfield Burke must have daily seen
serfs who had less liberty than those Rohillas, whose wrongs
he described so pathetically and dramatically.

Most writers of the eighteenth century take the law of
parochial settlement as a matter of course. There were
persons who, such as Alcock and Burn, took a different view
from the complacent landowners and farmers, but above all
And its Effects. 435

Adam Smith. The former dwell upon the effects which the
law of parochial settlement and chargeability had on the
condition of the poor; but the great philosopher of social
science detects the inherent injustice of the system. “To
remove a man,” says Smith, “who has committed no mis-
demeanour from the parish where he chooses to reside, is
an evident violation of natural liberty and justice, and an
oppression, to which the people of England, though jealous
of their liberty, but like the people of most other countries,
never rightly considering in what it consists, have for more
than a century together suffered themselves to be exposed
without a remedy.” The péople of England have a very just
view of what constitutes their own liberties when they are
in a position to vindicate them, and can bring sufficient force
to bear upon the machinery by which those liberties have been
outraged and may be restored, but which has had no very
great consideration for unrepresented and powerless interests.
It is generally vain to expect political justice on behalf of
those who can by their own action bring no pressure to bear
on Parliament. And this is as much matter of modern as
it has been of past experience.

It is one of the commonplaces of an ignorant optimism
to allege that the remedy is supplied by taking away the
cause of the disease; but the maxim that the effect ceases
when the cause ceases, is true in inorganic nature only, and
mot always true there. The present condition of English
society, its violent contrasts of opulence and penury, of
profligacy protected by law and misery neglected by law,
Js the outcome of causes which have had a longer pedigree
than the recorded generations of any family. The people
of this country have become what they are by reason of
events and acts which it is the duty of the genuine economist
to discover, as contrasted with the economist who constructs
a system out of a few axioms and a multitude of postulates.
The reproach of political economy is that it is a hard and
dry system, which has no sympathies, and only proposes to
suffering humanity a bundle of unwelcome truths which it
affirms to be natural laws. In many cases these are neither
436 The English Poor Law.

truths nor laws, but paradoxes, which have not even the
merit of experimental inductions, but at the best are doubtful
tendencies elevated to the rank of principles. I cannot take
up any ordinary work on political economy without finding
‘in every page a dogma which is controverted by facts, and,
with the great exception of Adam Smith, I know no writer
in England who has been at the pains to verify what he
confidently affirms by the evidence of what has actually taken
place. Mr. Mill is an ardent advocate of human liberty, and
deserves all honour for his labours on behalf of it, but I do
not remember that throughout his work on political economy
he has been at the pains to point out how powerful a factor
the law of parochial settlement has been in bringing about
the unthrift and recklessness of the working classes, or
how it has stereotyped improvidence and justified incon-
tinence.

No trifling percentage of the funds collected for the main-
tenance of the poor was expended in litigation on the cases
which sprang out of the Act of Charles II. It was an evil
inheritance to the English people, perhaps the worst Act of
the worst Parliament which ever sat, but it was a Potosi, an
Eldorado to the lawyers. Many a barrister owed his place
in Parliament and on the Bench to his skill in arguing settle-
ment cases, to the ingenuity with which he was able to tighten
the bonds on the peasant. The wealthy landowners clung to
it with desperate tenacity, for it increased their rents at the
expense of the occupiers and the poor. What mattered it
to them that the English peasant’s life was aged soon after
his prime, if they could get cheap labour and increasing rents?
The whole force of law was for nearly two centuries directed
towards the solution of this problem, How much oppression
can the English people endure, how much privation, misery,
starvation, without absolutely destroying the labour on which
growing rents depended? We, in our generation, though
a portion of this evil has been prevented for the future,
inherit the outcome of these two centuries, and with it
problems of the gravest kind daily pressing for solution,
and to which it is idle to offer the nostrums of over-population,
Allowances in Ard of Wages. 437

emigration, competition, and the other formularies of an ideal
society.

Towards the conclusion of the eighteenth century, the
Berkshire magistrates, struck with the appalling discrepancy
between wages and the price of food,—for the labour of the
peasant could only procure him for several years one-eighth
of the amount of wheat which the same person could have
earned before 1540,—met and proposed, not that the mis-
chievous law of Elizabeth which established quarter sessions
wages should be repealed, or that the infamous law of paro-
chial settlement should be done away, but that able-bodied
labourers should have their wages supplemented by allow-
ances from the overseer, proportionate to the number of their
children or the general charges of their family. By this
means they would be able to prevent a general increase of
wages, to fix the wages of the single and the childless at
a low amount, and compel all occupiers to contribute towards
the cost of agricultural operations. This expedient, sanctioned
by the courts, and, indeed, implied by 9 Geo. I, cap. 7, and
22 Geo. IIL. cap. 83, was known as the allowance system, and
has been criticised adversely, not for its manifest harshness
and injustice in giving that as charity which was due for
work, but because it removed a check on population, at that
time not much more than one-third of the number which
now subsists in infinitely greater comfort in England than
the lesser number did at the beginning of the century.

The English Poor Law would have ultimately devoured the
rent of all open parishes, that is, those in which there were
many owners, and consequently the possibility of housing the
poor, and have enormously exalted the rent of all close parishes,
z.¢., those in which there was one owner only, who cleared off
every cottage on his domain, had it not been for the almost
simultaneous discovery of steam power and the substitution
of machine for hand-loom weaving. The capitalist inventors
of these processes found that they wanted labour (though at
first it appeared that the discoveries would dispense with
labour), and were therefore indifferent to the contingencies of
an unlicensed settlement. But it may be doubted whether
438 The English Poor Law.

their discoveries were an immediate boon to labour. The
parochial system of relief must have been condemned lon
before it was imperfectly abandoned, when the system of close
and open parishes had been thoroughly developed and the
outrageous injustice of the practice had been exhibited in its
fulness. The wages of the mill-hand were settled by the
justices, like those of the artizan and peasant. Children/and
women were worked for long hours in the mill, and the
Arkwrights and Peels and a multitude more built up colossal
fortunes on the misery of labour. Any attempt on the part
of workmen to combine for the purpose of selling their labour
at better rates was met with stern repression, any overt act
with sharp punishment. The English workmen earned all
the wealth and bore nearly all the cost during that long war
on which the fortunes of manufacturers and landowners, the
glory of statesmen and generals, were founded. High profits
were extracted from the labour of little children, and the race
was starved and stunted while millowners, landowners, and
stock-jobbers collected their millions from the toils of those
whose wages they regulated and whose strength they ex-
hausted. The student of economical forces can tell whence
that wealth came by which England stood almost single-
handed against Europe, and subsidized the wretched govern-
ments whom Napoleon humiliated,—governments which were
saved by their subjects, but who repaid these subjects with the
Holy Alliance, a name, after that of the League of the Public
Good, which was the most hypocritical lie ever forged in the
devil’s chancery. The story of the workman’s sufferings is told
by Mr. Porter in his “ Progress of the Nation.”

At last, and not at its deepest midnight, a change began.
The laws directed against the right of workmen to combine
together in order to sell their wages in the best market, which
had lasted for nearly five centuries, were repealed in 1824.
So was the Quarter Sessions assessment of wages. The
workman was not indeed free to find his market, for the law
of parochial settlement remained, as the shadow of it
remains to this day. But a trade union ceased to be a
crime. It was no longer forbidden by law. It was not,
The Rise of Trade Unions. 439

indeed, under the protection of law; and I conceive that
much of the savagery which for a long time characterized the
conduct of trade unions was due to the outlawry under which
those wholesome institutions were placed.

For nearly five centuries the legislature had declared that
labour partnerships, that is, associations of working menl
formed for the purpose of selling their labour collectively to
the best advantage, were under the ban of the law. The
motive for this repression was never concealed. It was
designed in order to increase and secure rents and profits at
the cost of wages. For two centuries it failed, for nearly
three it succeeded. ‘The experience of the English workman
had been of its success. It was therefore in human nature
that he should believe in the efficacy of that which the
legislature had so long striven to repress. It is commonly
noted that those men who have been persecuted are more
apt to be intolerant, when the persecution has passed away,
than those who have never been oppressed. It is much more
reasonable, then, that those who have been denied a right
should conceive that the right is of inestimable value and
should overrate its efficacy. Stolen waters are sweet, says
the Hebrew apothegm, and bread eaten in secret is pleasant.
But such joys are as nothing to the early delight of obtaining
a liberty which has hitherto been forbidden. One has a right
also to ask a reason for any restraint put on us. A workman
might have laid out his money better at his master’s tally shop
than at the village store. But he objected to being forced to
buy there, and rightly. The public-house may be a con-
venient place even for a total abstainer to receive his wages
in, but a master should not be allowed, and latterly has not
been allowed,t elect such a place, and constrain his workmen
to take their money there, for all the Liberty and Property
Defence League may say.

Eleven years after the repeal of the Acts against combina-
tion the new Poor Law was enacted. The change was needed,
but it should have followed, not preceded, the repeal of the
Corn Laws. The Corn Laws were defended on the ground
that if they raised the price of food the Poor Law assured
440 The Englsh Poor Law.

the peasant his subsistence from the land. The Act of 1835
took away this right, except under hard conditions, but it left
the artificial scarcity. The result was that for once in English
history a genuine communistic movement took root in the
minds of the English workmen, for Chartism had only a
political mask, the principal object of the organization being
the repeal of the new Poor Law. When the Corn Laws were
repealed, the movement collapsed. If it be ever revived, the
motive force will be the laws and customs which direct the
devolution and permit the settlement of land; laws and
customs which are barbarisms, and would be infinitely
grotesque, if they were not infinitely mischievous and in-
finitely dangerous. Already there is an ominous sympathy
with the theory for making that a national estate which
Englishmen have been studiously excluded from sharing by
ordinary purchase as private owners. A political interest,
like a political party, may seem to be strong when it is, after
all, on the edge of a precipice. If it topples over, strength
and weakness are all one.

Three processes have been adopted by the working classes,
each of which has had a vast, and should have an increasing
influence in bettering the condition of labour and making the
problem of dealing with individual distress, however caused,
easier and readier. They should be viewed by statesmen
with unqualified favour, and be treated by working men as
the instruments by which they can regain and consolidate the
best interests of labour. They are trade unionism, or, as I
prefer to call it, labour partnership ; co-operation, or the
combination in the same individuals of the function of labour
and capital ; and benefit associations, or the machinery of a
mutual insurance society. So important do I conceive these
aids to the material, intellectual, and moral elevation of the
working classes to be, that I would, even at the risk of being
thought reactionary, limit the privileges of citizenship, the
franchise, parliamentary and local, to those, and those only,
who entered into these three guilds—the guild of labour, the
guild of production and trade, and the guild of mutual help.
Nor do I think it extravagant to believe that were those
The Polity cf Labour. 441

associations rendered general, and finally universal, the social
problems which distress all and alarm many would ultimately
arrive at a happy solution. The first and third are only re-
vivals of ancestral practice, the second is not very unlike the
habit which prevailed in ages which I hope I have made in
some degree familiar. I must, however, advert to them in
another chapter, for this is already unduly long. Only let
me assure my readers, that though it is a foolish dream to
think that everything was better in the past, it is arrogant
presumption to conclude that all progress is a modern
acquisition, and that we can complacently despise the wisdom
of our ancestors. Would that we could unite the opulence
of the fifteenth century to the civilization of the nineteenth,
and diffuse or distribute both.
442

CHAPTER XVI.

ENGLISH HUSBANDRY FROM THE RISE IN PRICES.

Identity of Agricultural Operations for Four Centuries—The Three Course Sys-
tem—The Communal Field a Loss—Enclosures in Early Times—The Price
of Wool and Sheep Feeding—Causes Stimulating the Practice—Latimer’s
Account of Farmers—The Tenant’s Charges and Profits Equalized, except
in Labour on Land—The Margin for Increased -Rent—The College Act of
1576—Fines on Renewal—The Monks and Fines—Their Adoption by Cor-
porations and Private Owners—The Successive Tenancies of Lease on Fine,
of Repairing Lease, and of Tenancies at Will—The Pamphlet of W. S.—
The Cultivation of Hops—The Source of Better Agriculture, Holland—The
War of Dutch Independence—Its Effects—The Truce of 1609—Agriculture
in Herefordshire, 1610, and Vaughan—Gabriel Plattes, his Comments on the
Tenant Farmer—The True Place of Rent—Blith and Hartlib—The Growth
of Opulence after the Restoration—The County Assessments of 1636 and
1693—Houghton’s Tables—Gregory King’s Estimates of Population, Income,
and Savings—Productive and Unproductive Classes—The Information this
Gives as to English Society—The Origin of Savings—The Restoration of the
Currency and the Bank of England.

HERE is no reason to believe that English husbandry

was improved or even altered for nearly four centuries,

ze., from the thirteenth to the beginning of the seventeenth
century. There is even some reason to conclude, if we can
trust the complaints of the first English writer on agriculture,
Fitzherbert, whose two works were published at the latter end
of the first quarter of the sixteenth century, that in certain
directions husbandry had retrograded, that the crops of his
day had become less plentiful than they were in a previous
age, and that the use of such fertilizers as the skill of the age
recognized was declining. This author expressly states that
the uncertainty of the tenant’s position, the risk that he may
not recover his outlay, and the power which the landlord of
a tenancy on a short lease had of raising the rent, against a
The Three Course System. 443

sitting tenant, were discouragements to the practice of. marl-
ing and liming lands, and that the alarms and risks of the
sitting tenant were paralleled by the slovenliness and want of
energy which were now exhibited by the freeholder. Fitz-
herbert is the first to raise the complaint, reiterated by writers.
on agriculture in one form or another for two centuries and a

half, that the danger to English husbandry lies in the in—
security of the tenant, in the rapacity of the landlord, and.
in the impossibility of developing self-reliance and courage:
under the terms of a precarious tenure.

The process of English agriculture during all this period
was a three course system—of wheat in the first year, of a
crop of oats or barley or beans, peas or vetches in the
second, and a bare fallow in the third. This is the course
regularly prescribed by the authorities at Christ Church,.
Canterbury, to their bailiffs on their numerous and valuable
estates in Kent. The writer on husbandry in the thirteenth
century, to whom I have already referred, contemplates the-
possibility of land being of such exceptional fertility as to
bear an annual crop of corn. But I have found no such
estate, though I have examined the records of the best and:
most careful cultivation on some of the most fertile land in:
England. The course, indeed, was inevitable. During all the:
period on which I am commenting the English farmer had.
nothing but arable crops, meadow hay, the pasture of closes,,.
and the run of common grass to depend on. He had no.
winter roots and no artificial grasses with which to vary his
rotation. The system of open fields made it impossible to-
pen sheep upon land, even if the grass on the balks or the
weeds and straw left on the stubbles had been sufficient
forage. Sheep were kept under cover from November to-
May because there was no forage for them out of doors,
For the same reason cattle were housed. Animal manure
was of the highest value, and was saved with care. The
farmer was advised, when he was about to let his sheep out:
of fold, to drive them gently for a while round the fold, im
order that they might add to his stock of manure within the
fold during this exercise.
444 English Husbandry from the Rise in Prices.

It is perhaps remarkable that systematic steps were not
taken at an early period in the direction of that form of
enclosure under which the lands in common arable or lammas
fields might be assigned, to the advantage of any one, in
severalty, according to the extent of each person’s holding.
At an early period it was recognised that land held in severalty
-was worth 25 per cent. more than land of equal quality held
‘in the lammas field; and that when such distributions and
assignments were made, the land was found to be far more
serviceable, But the habits of agriculturists are very con-
:servative, and the smaller proprietors had, or believed they
shad, a considerable advantage in the run of feed in which
they shared when the crops were gathered. There were
‘beyond question numerous enclosures in the fifteenth century.
Much of this had been wood, always considered, even when
‘pasture and pannage were permitted within it, as much more
‘the lord’s property than the ordinary common of pasture
was, the fee simple of which, subject to communal rights, was
-also in the lord. But it appears that a considerable enclosure
of ordinary common of pasture went on, under one plea or
-another, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, particularly
dn the latter, for complaints are rife about the practice. It is
-said that Ket’s Norfolk rebellion was due to discontent about
enclosures in that county, and that similar disaffection was
amanifested elsewhere. It is probable that other and stronger
‘motives were at work; but the statement that the peasantry
were stirred to sedition by these practices is sufficient evi-
-dence of the fact that the practice was general.

For the first thirty years of the fifteenth century, wool was
-at a very high price, being 8s. 13d. for the tod of 28 Ibs.
During the next 110 years, the average price of the same
-quantity is 5s. 43a. In the forty years from 1541 to 1580,
‘the price is 175. 4d@., ze, it had risen more than threefold in
‘price. Wool growing, therefore, was the most profitable
employment of agricultural capital. In the existing state
-of the English currency, and till its reformation by Elizabeth,
sit was also the most advantageous means by which the
wroducer could obtain the benefit of good merchantable
Wool and Sheep Farms. 445.

money. I cannot, indeed, assert that the extraordinary
price of the tod of wool during Edward’s reign, when it was.
over 205., can be interpreted in good coin, but it is plain that
the stimulus of so exalted a price, four times the old average,
must have had its effect on agriculture. Even the moderate
rise of about eighteen per cent. in Henry’s reizn had power-
fully assisted the development of sheep-farming in England,
and had drawn the attention of the king and the legislature
to the reputed evils of the practice; but the stimulus of later
prices was still stronger. Besides, a violent change in the
ownership of large tracts of land had followed the dissolution
of the monasteries, the confiscation of the guild lands, and
to some extent the spoliation of the secular clergy. The
new owners got the land, under conditions, burdened with
the leases which the monks had, foreseeing the coming storm,
made with their tenants. But unlike the old owners, the
adventurers of the Reformation were not in the older sense
of the word capitalist landlords, and to such persons sheep-
farming was the easiest and most profitable mode of increas-
ing their revenues. The dissolution was virtually a new
conquest, and the successors of the monks had no motive
in dealing with their new tenants beyond that of interpreting
their own interests in the harshest manner.

Complaints made about the spoliation of the tenants’ im-
provements and good husbandry by a penal rise in rents,
with the alternative of eviction and loss, are, as we have seen,
made by Fitzherbert before the king and the pope quarrelled,
and while the dissolution of the monasteries was only a talk
in the air, as it had been for more than a century. The com-
plaint of Latimer in his Thirty-first Sermon is well-known.
“ His father,” he says, “had a farm of £3 or £4 year,” that
is, according to the regular rent of land at the time, of from
120 to 160 acres arable, with considerable communal rights
of pasture. “On this he employed six labourers. He had
walk for a hundred sheep, and his wife milked thirty cows,
which also, of course, must have mainly subsisted in
summer on the common pasture. He served on summons
as a mounted yeoman, and repaired to the king’s banner
446 English Husbandry from the Rise in Prues.

-at Blackheath, receiving pay when he had joined his troop.
He gave his daughters portions, £5 or 10 marks a piece, kept
‘hospitality, and gave alms to the poor, from the profits of
this tenancy. The present farmer gives 416 a year for the
same holding, and has no surplus for the king’s taxes, for
chis own savings, for his children’s advancement, or for the
poor.” On such a tenancy and with such a rent the bishop’s
father might, in the cheap days of the previous generation,
ihave lived plentifully and saved considerably.

An examination into the prices of the time will show that
the tenant farmer, no improvement having been effected in
the art of agriculture, and no economy in production being
therefore possible, could only afford a very moderate increase
of rent to his landlord if he were to remain in the same
-condition as he was in before. His corn, his wool, his cattle
and sheep, his dairy products got far higher prices. But his
outgoings, with one exception, were exalted in just the same
proportion as his increased takings were. In point of fact, if
‘we exclude from the average of his corn prices such years
-aS 151, 1555-6, 1563, 1573, 1576-7, which were years of
positive scarcity, when the high prices only partially
‘compensated for deficient harvests, the cost of his necessary
-expenditure, being greater, relatively, than the increased
;price which he obtained for his products, would leave him a
‘very narrow margin for a possible increase of rent, an increase
‘which might not be discovered by a fair landlord, and would
certainly be disputed by a tenant. If any person is at the
pains to draw up a balance sheet of a farmer’s probable
‘receipts and expenditure, calculated on the known prices of
.all which he needed, and on the equally well known market
~value of what he had to sell, he will find that, were the
farmer to keep his old position, the increase of rent would be
‘very small; and if such an inquirer were to turn, as I have
‘been able to turn, to the actual rents paid and received by
dandlords for the occupation of land which had been rented
‘before and after the change, he would find that a fair landlord
wot very little increase of rent during the sixteenth century.

In one item of cost his outlay would certainly be lessened.
Latimer's Farm. 447

fe paid less for wages. But when we examine the outgoings
of such a tenancy as that occupied by Latimer’s father, we
shall find that the gains here were inconsiderable. On a large
estate, such as used to be cultivated by the bailiff of a
capitalist landowner, the cost of labour is a considerable
sum. The landowner, besides the bailiff, whose time was
generally occupied by superintendence, and who did, I have
good reason to think, little more labour than that of sowing,
which was demanded of him, had to hire two or three carters,
two or three ploughmen, a shepherd or two, to make an
establishment for the dairy and cheese room, besides en-
gaging cowherds and other hinds. The labour of mowing
and harvesting, of thrashing and winnowing is generally
hired. But Latimer’s father would have guided the plough,
sowed the seed, done most of the sheep-shearing, have taken
his part at least in the corn harvest, while his wife milked
the cows and superintended the dairy with her daughters.
The sons of such a husbandman could have done generally
the rest of the farm work. The six hands which he employed,
a complete staff for the extent which I have assigned to his
arable farm, being, with the farmer and his wife, one man to
every twenty acres, or precisely the labour which Arthur
Young, two centuries afterwards, thought was the full quota
of generous and effective husbandry, must have been em-
ployed for the greatest part of their time on work connected
with the common pasture, the carts, and the sheep-fold.
Now if, as is highly probable, these men in later times,
always provided there was room for their employment, were
boarded as well as paid wages, the expense of the former
part of the bargain would rise with the rise in prices, and the
saving on the latter part would be trivial. I concluded from
‘divers calculations that one estate which brought in rent to the
amount of £12 under the old system could not have been
taised to more than £16 to £18, even under the Act of 1576;
and on examining an account of the rent actually paid in the
existing accounts of its owners, I found that, in 1590, the rent
was £16 17s. 6d.

The Act of 1576 was passed in order to remedy the in-
448 English Husbandry from the Rise in Prices.

elasticity of rents in the case of certain corporations. It
provided that the colleges of Oxford and Cambridge, and
those of Eton and Winchester, should receive a third of their
rents in wheat and malt, or their equivalent values in money,
at the best price on the market days of the four towns,
Oxford, Cambridge, Windsor, and Winchester, which were
nearest to Lady-day and Michaelmas, The converse of the
rule prescribed in this celebrated law, from which all the
information as to corn prices in the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries has hitherto been derived, had long
been the practice in the Eastern Counties, where the land-
owners had received part of their rents in kind under the
covenants of their leases, the tenant stipulating to pay in
wheat at 6s. 8d. the quarter, in malt at 45., or in sheep at 2s.,
when the market price was greatly in excess of these rates.
The merit of Elizabeth’s Act is given to Burleigh. He
copied it, I make no doubt, from a practice which had been
familiar to him when he had been a student at Cambridge,
and probably at the instance of those who found how difficult
it was to increase rents. The rule which was prescribed in
the case of a few corporations became the custom with
others. But a commoner method, and one which in course
of time became very characteristic of tenancies, especially
those held from corporations, though far from infrequent in
the case of individuals, was that of the fine on the renewal
of a lease.

The circumstances of the case, as I have already indicated,
made it difficult to procure increases of rack-rent, except
very slowly. The population, especially that which was
engaged in agriculture, was unwilling or unable to move,
for law was powerfully assisting custom in stereotyping the
distinction between town and country, artizan and farm-hand.
Tenants from a distance were not to be expected, and tenants
on the spot were, I suspect, very slowly willing to accept a
rise in rents, except under strong compulsion. Either
Latimer was exaggerating the case when he speaks of a
farmer within his knowledge and in a single generation sub-
mitting to a fourfold rise in rent, or the case must have been
Rents and Fines. 449

too exceptional to become the basis of an inference, as most
persons have made it. That a rise in rents was directly
effected I have no doubt. That in the course of the seven-
teenth century they were increased six or eight fold is ex-
ceedingly probable, if not certain. But that it required strong
and continuous pressure to effect this result is more certain,
and I am disposed to believe that the cases in which rents
were earliest enhanced were those of the monastic lessees,
when their terms came to an end.

The monks are credited with having foreseen the catas-
trophe which was impending, and with having invented or
adopted the Fine. The customary tenants, who were the
lineal successors of the serf, had always been liable to fines
on alienation, which must at first have been excessively rare,
and on succession, which must have been regular, and soon
became fixed. In course of time and during the land hunger of
the fifteenth century, persons of free, knightly, perhaps of noble
origin, became purchasers of copyholds, and thereupon liable
to such incidents of villeinage as still remained, while they
aided in extinguishing others, which were derogatory and
obsolete. But fines were assuredly paid both on surrender
and admission. The practice was copied in the grant of leases,
One can quite understand how a fine on admission to a lease
of lands for a term of years, for a life, or for lives, which
became exceedingly common, universal in the case of cor-
porations, and general in that of private owners, should be
employed by the monasteries with a view to getting a con-
siderable lump sum at the commencement of a lease, which
should be drawn up for a lengthy term, in place of the mere
handsel which such a fine originally was. Now it is plain
that a tenant, who was informed that, at a certain period
during the continuance of his lease, when it had a long time
still to run, he might surrender and renew it on the same
terms if he were willing to pay a sum down, would discover
in such a bargain an advantageous arrangement for himself;
and the landowner might in such a manner believe that he
could virtually get a better and a less invidious rent than he
could by running out the term and making a fresh bargain.

29
450 Lxglish Husbandry from the Rise in Prices.

I do not find the renewable lease on customary rents, and
on the payment of a fine in anticipation of rents, prior to the
sixteenth century, though I have examined many hundred
rent rolls, and in particular those of the corporations, which
invariably adopted the practice as soon as ever the event of
greater crops at less cost made a rise in natural or economical
rent, at first possible and next necessary. These leases,
known afterwards as beneficial leases, were universal in the
case of some owners, and frequent among others, and were
exceedingly common, I am persuaded, during the whole of
the seventeenth century. They were succeeded, in the case
of ordinary landowners, by the long lease of the eighteenth,
in which the obligation of doing repairs is often put by
bargain on the tenant, and in the nineteenth by the tenancy
at will, or from year to year, the common form of English
occupancy at present, with the old liability on the part of the
Jandlord to effect the permanent improvements, the tenant
being tied down to good husbandry only. These are the
outcome of the inflated prices which prevailed during the
period 1780-1820. These prices were due to the stimulus
given to population by the discoveries of Watt, Arkwright,
and others, and the growing demand for labour, the con-
tinuance of unpropitious seasons, the incidence of a great
European war, and the existence of a restrictive corn law.

A remarkable pamphlet, long supposed to have been
written by Shakespeare, and now known to be the work of
William Stafford, was published in 1581. It is a dialogue be-
tween five persons, a husbandman, a manufacturer, a merchant,
a knight, and a doctor, z¢.,a person who was more or less
competent to interpret the facts. All complain—the husband-
man, that arable land is enclosed and turned into pasture,
that rents are raised and labour is unemployed; the manu-
facturer, that labour is dearer and labourers wotse off; the
merchant, that the towns are decaying, and customers are
scarce at these enhanced prices; the knight, that in the uni-
versal exaltation of prices rent has by no means followed,
and that they who live by their land are stinted, and find
no remedy except in keeping land in their own hands and

~‘
Stafford’s Pamphlet. 451

Storing it with stock. The doctor, who deals with the situa-
tion, states that he does not think matters would be mended
if a successful attempt were made to revert to the old prices
by proclamation or by law. It is allowed that commodities
are plentiful; the question is why prices are high, why com-
_plaints are general and employment scanty. The facts were
plain enough,—prices had been rapidly rising since 1576.

We are in a better position to interpret the facts of the
situation than an observer, however acute he might have
been, was at the time when Stafford’s pamphlet was written.
There can be no doubt that the persons who profited most
by the rise in prices were the yeomen freeholders, cultivating
their own holdings, and the tenant farmers; that the land-
holders had a struggle, and a very severe one, in pressing
their rents up to the rate which should compensate them for
the enhanced prices which they paid in their capacity as
consumers; that the mercantile and manufacturing classes were
hardly able to find compensation in the comparative opulence
of the occupiers, as contrasted with the stint which those
who lived on rents and fixed incomes had to endure; and
that the working classes, as is always the case when prices
are advancing, were worst off of all. The rise in prices was
first effected by the dishonest and fraudulent act of the
Government. This lasted so long, that prices accommodated
themselves to the facts, and when the reform came, they had
become habitual. Occasions arise during which the plenty
of the seasons seems likely to depress the price of corn to
nearly its old level, as in the nine years 1564-72, when wheat
was 12s. Id. a quarter on the average, ze, about double the
old price. Soon, however, the price went up steadily, as
that of all other commodities had gone up and was in-
creasing.

There was only one direction in which English agriculture
at this time took a new step. This was in the cultivation
of the hop. The use of hops was borrowed from the Low
Countries, and was introduced into Eastern England at the
conclusion of the fifteenth century. The practice of growing
hops attracted the attention of the legislature in 1552, when
452 English Husbandry from the Rise wn Prices.

it was permitted under some restraints. The earliest litera-
ture on hop-planting in England is a work by one Reynold
Scot published in 1576. The statements made in this trea-
tise prove that the whole details of hop-growing, picking,
drying, and packing were borrowed from some place in which
the process had long been familiar.

The first movement in the direction of general agricultural
improvement came, like that of hop-growing, from the Low
Countries, now divided into two parts,—the obedient Nether-
lands, which Alva and Parma had entirely ruined, and the
great Republic of Holland, which had now, after exertions
the most heroic, the most sustained, the most useful in the
whole history of mankind, achieved its independence. The
struggle of the united Netherlands against the power of
Spain is in the history of modern civilisation what the
struggle of Greece against Persia was in that of antiquity. 1
do not, indeed, affirm that if Holland had been vanquished
the results would have been so considerable to the human
race as those which would have ensued if a different event
had been recorded from the fields of Marathon and Platea and
from the bays of Salamis and Mycale, and if the spirit of
continental Greece had succumbed to the same force which
extinguished the genius of Ionia. We know fairly well
what would have been the consequence had Persia been
victorious from the desolation and beggary which now reign
in those seats of ancient culture which the Turk has occu-
pied. We have fortunately been unable to discern what
would have followed if the Jesuit and the Spaniard had
subdued Amsterdam as they subdued Antwerp, if Holland
had been delivered over to the Inquisition, for the success of.
the Dutch struggle lightened the yoke of the obedient
provinces, as well as broke the strength of their oppressor.
To the philosopher and the statesman, the square of the
Binnenhof should be the holy place of modern Europe,
because there the greatest problem of modern history was
solved, and the greatest of deliverances planned and carried
out. Unhappily for Holland, the genius of three generations
of the House of Orange was believed to be hereditary, and
The Work of the Dutch. 453

the historical republic was handed over, in 1815, to a new
royal family, which might indeed claim descent from William
the Silent, but is much more closely akin to Paul of Russia.
The genius of the House of Orange perished with our William
the Third.

The Hollanders conferred infinite benefits on modern
civilisation beyond those which were derived from the
spectacle of their obstinate struggle for freedom. There is
nothing which they did not teach. They were the first
people who practised toleration for all religions, though they
were not always faithful to their principles. They were
scholars, jurists, diplomatists, and statesmen. They developed
navigation and commercial enterprise; founded factories
and ruled colonies. They discovered the principles on which
trade with the East could be safely and continuously con-
ducted. They were the inventors of modern banking and of
modern finance. The experience and the success of Holland
aroused the wonder, the emulation, the envy of other states.
At one time it seemed as though the empires of the West
and the East, of the Indies of Alexander and the Indies of
Columbus would pass under their sway. Unhappily for
them, the Dutch democracy, always swayed by the House of
Orange, took the side of the Stuarts during the great civil
war, and quarrelled with Puritan England. It is not remark-
able that Charles IL, who owed his safety, his very life, to
the Dutch friends of his family, should have done his best
after his restoration to ruin his benefactors, to stereotype hos-
tility between the two great commercial powers of Western
Europe, and to plan the partition of the republic.

We owe the improvements in English agriculture to
Holland. From this country we borrowed, at the beginning
of the seventeenth century, the cultivation of winter roots,
and at that of the eighteenth century the artificial grasses,
The Dutch had practised agriculture with the patient and
minute industry of market gardeners. They had tried sucess-
fully to cultivate everything to the uttermost which could be
used for human food, or could give innocent gratification’ to
a refined taste. They taught agriculture and they taught
454 Englsh Husbandry from the Rise in Prices.

gardening. They were the first people to surround their
homesteads with flower-beds, with groves, with trim parterres,
with the finest turf, to improve fruit trees, to seek out and
perfect edible roots and herbs, at once for man and cattle.
We owe to the Dutch that scurvy and leprosy have been
banished from England, that continuous crops have taken the
place of barren fallows, that the true rotation of crops has been
discovered and perfected, that the population of these islands
has been increased, and that the cattle and sheep in England
are ten times what they were in numbers and three times
what they were in size and quality. Even now the ancient
agricultural skill of the Hollander is not extinct. The gar-
deners of Haarlem still purvey roots and bulbs of flowers for
the civilised world, and there is much which the English
agriculturist of the present day could learn with advantage
from the industry, patience, and skill of the Dutch farmer,
and perhaps will learn, when England is relieved from the
curse of her present land system, and her tenant farmers till
the land under the same guarantees as the Dutchman does.
The introduction of improvements in agriculture from
Holland begins with the truce which James negotiated, very
much to his credit, between Spain and Holland in 1609. The
Spanish Government, though wholly unable to carry on the
war, was very reluctant to acknowledge the independence of
the revolted provinces, and the Dutch, who were perfectly
willing to accept the reality of independence and peace,
under any form or no form, agreed to the truce, with the
certain conviction that when it was over they would be
stronger than ever. Just at the time this truce was made, .
and before the changes came, one Vaughan, a Herefordshire
gentleman, in a project which he published in 1610 for esta-
blishing waterworks in the “Golden Vale” of the Wye, gives a
picture of the social condition of the district where he lives.
He tells us, that stretching fora mile and a half on either side of
his house are five hundred pcor cottagers, who are entirely en-
gaged in spinning flax, hemp, and hurds; that when the harvest
is over, he has counted three hundred persons gleaning in one
field. He observes that in the mountains certain provisions are
Vaughan and Plattes. 455

very cheap, that one may buy twenty eggs for a penny, and a
bullock in good condition for 26s. 8d. But he says that not
two sermons had been preached in the Golden Vale for the
last two centuries, that there were twenty-four parishes in
the hundred, not one of which could maintain a preaching
minister, and that the people in the Vale surfeit on salmon as
the Northamptonshire men do on fat venison. He proposes
that to relieve the poor and unemployed population, water
power should be employed for manufactures, and that some
thirty looms moved by the abundant stream should be set up
for spinning and weaving woollen, flaxen, and hempen fabrics,
and even silk, promising that in this way a market would be
found for a far larger amount of agricultural produce than
could be profitably raised or grown at present. It is worth
noticing that this Herefordshire squire suggested the adop-
tion of a process which did not become a factor in English
industry for more than a century and a half after the
publication of his proposals.

Among the advocates of a better agricultural system than
had prevailed was Gabriel Plattes, whose work on English
husbandry was published in 1638. Plattes was probably a
Dutchman by descent. He was as unlucky a person as nearly
every one has been who has tried from his own observation
and experience to benefit English agriculture, for though
his reputation was of the highest kind in his generation, he
fell dead in London streets shirtless and starved. During his
experience, rents had risen, agriculture had improved, and
though, as I showed in my last chapter, the condition of the
labourer had become progressively worse, I do not dispute the
fact that the landlord’s rent and the trader’s profit, as
Clarendon tells us, were greatly increased. The proof of
the former, and the effect on such agricultural industry as
was not secured on a freehold tenure, is to be found in the
following passages from Plattes’ treatise. He tells us (chap. iv.),
“I see no reason why tenants at will, for life or a term of
years, should be industrious, whereas the benefit of their
labours is to fall into other men’s purses, unless there be a
contract between landlord and tenant, whereby a just share
456 English Husbandry from the Rise in Prices.

may redound to both parties axswerable to their merit, which,
if this were done, then would the husbandman be much
stirred up to try experiments.” Again in the seventh chapter
he tells us, “There would be many improvements if there
were a law that every tenant, if he were put out, should
recover double his charges of the succeeding tenant, which
also may be done by contract between landlord and tenant,
if they could agree. And then men would labour cheerfully,
as for their posterity, if they were sure that another should
not reap where they have sown.”

In Plattes’ criticism on the tendencies of the English land
system we have the strongest, though not the earliest, indica-
tions of that obstinate determination to keep the tenant
farmer a slave to his landlord’s greed, or caprice, or ambition,
or vice, till the true agricultural interest, which is entirely
distinct from that of the landowner, has been involved in
temporary ruin. If, under foreign competition or from domes-
tic folly, (provided only English industry can get its food in
exchange for its labour or the products of its labour,) all
agricultural rent vanishes, industry, which ‘alone makes man,
is none the worse, perhaps all the better. Rent is the result
of the fact that man, by his labour, can earn what is worth
in the market more than his labour can earn for him. In
that sense, and in that sense only, labour is paid by labour.
Capital is worthless without labour, ze., the labour of using
capital wisely and discreetly, and labour is immovable with-
out capital, ze, the fund belonging to one kind of labour,
which gives the handicraftsman the power of getting food as
his work goes on. But no human being need trouble himself
about a landlord’s rents, other, to be sure, than the landlord
himself. The happiest state which the human race could
conceive is such a mobility of labour and such an extension
of the cultivable land and the productive industry which
man gives to cultivable land, as to produce that plenty, in
which rent finds no place. To mourn over the decline of
rent is to regret that one has extinguished friction and loss
in the machinery of human industry and social life. To rail
at rent is silly, to declare that one would confiscate it is dis-
Plattes on the Farmer. 457

hhonest,—to seek out such a machinery of industry as would
reduce it to a minimum is the best service one can render to
mankind, is the best answer to the insolence of unmerited
wealth, and to the bitter discontent of starved and ill-paid
labour. To fight against nature is always folly, and rent is
as much nature as dirt and disease and misery are; but to
remedy the evils of ignorance and vice, which always grow
the greatest rents, is the true medicine for social misery. The
most impudent hypocrite of all is the great proprietor, who
being a principal cause of the misery which he affects to
‘deprecate, would be disgusted and furious if he were to be
shown in his true colours, and so trusts to ignorance and so-
phistry when he laments the condition of the poor, but
secretly and steadily adds to their burdens. “The bane of
husbandry,” says Plattes again, “is the uncertainty of their
tenures, as may be seen in Ireland at this time.” One might
think that this author of the seventeenth century had been
writing in the nineteenth, just as when one reads Swift, one
might imagine that the words of those who have denounced
the tyranny and injustice of the Irish land system—now, we
may hope, evil things of the past—were ringing in our ears.
But the misery which the English people have borne, and the
dangers which they now run, while they still endure the
hateful and disastrous traditions of our social system, have
never failed to attract attention, and although as yet vain,
remonstrance and warning.

The fact that English agriculture was making rapid progress
in the seventeenth century, though unfortunately the progress
was accompanied by a marked depression in the labourers’
position, is proved by other comments of Plattes. “An acre
enclosed,” he says, “is better than four acres in common.”
“ A load of pigeons’ dung exchanged for a load of coals, and
carried sixteen miles, though it would have done harm where
it came from, would confer a double value on the land where
it was put.” “I have seen a hundred loads of earth sold at
Hampstead at Is. a load, and carried three or four miles to
higher ground, and with great advantage.” “I have known
meadow land so improved by irrigation that though it was
458 English Husbandry from the Rise tm Prices.

worth only tos. a year, it has grown £10 worth of hay in a
dry season, and I have seen land near London, on which
irrigation at the cost of a shilling has raised the value by a
pound.” Plattes says that all land must have once been sea,
and that all valleys have at some time been channelled by
water. “In Devonshire,” he tells us, “they carry sea sand
many miles on horseback to inland fields in order to break
the clays.”

This intelligent and unfortunate author tells us that the
best wheat in England was grown in the vale of Belvoir, and
states that he has seen a sowing machine at work, which he
describes, the saving of which is 15s. an acre and with the
result of a better crop; comments on the uncertainty which
attends a crop of hops, the price of which varies according
to the year from 20s. to £10 the hundred-weight ; warns the
farmer of the loss which comes from allowing any drainage
from his manure; states that he has observed that rot in sheep
is most prevalent when beehives are light, z¢., in cold and
wet springs, for he adds, that when May and June are wet,
sheep are more liable to rot than when the same weather
holds in July, August, or September; warns the shepherd
against “frim and frothy grass,” and bids him “keep his flock
on high land in May and June,” assuring him that if he does
this “the tenant never need lay the key under the door, and
bid good night to his landlord.” But keen as Plattes’ interest
is in the fortunes of the tenant, he urges that “no common
should ever be enclosed without leaving a cow’s grass to every
cottage.”

In 1649, Walter Blith wrote on English husbandry. The
particulars of his work are those commonplaces of agricul-
ture which are found in all treatises of the time. But there is
one passage in the preface which he writes, the interest of
which is high, because it is continuous testimony to the mis-
chief which every one detected in farmers’ ordinary rents :
“If a tenant be at ever so great pains or cost for the improve-
ment of his land, he doth thereby but occasion a great rack
upon himself, or else invests his landlord with his cost and
labour gratis, or at best lies at his landlord’s mercy for requital,
Blith and Hartt. 459

which occasions a neglect of good husbandry, to his own,
the land, the landlord, and the kingdom’s suffering. Now
this I humbly conceive may be removed if there were a
law enacted whereby every landlord should be obliged, either
to give him reasonable allowance for his clear improvement,
or else suffer him or his to enjoy it so much longer as till he
hath had a proportionable requital.” One seems to be read-
‘ing the platform of the Farmers’ Alliance in the preface to a
work on seventeenth-century husbandry, and the demand for
an Act of Parliament which should not only affirm the
principles of justice, but guarantee its details. This absence
of security is the principal “prejudice,” as Blith calls it, to the
farmer’s industry; the second is the drowning of land by
‘niller’s privileges, a fruitful cause at the present day of
periodical floods, and by far the most important fact to
grapple with in the treatment of river basin drainage; the
third is the existence of common fields and the absence of
enclosures ; and the fourth is the right of common without
stint on the open pastures. Blith informs us that land lets
from Is. to 10s., from Ios. to 20s. an acre, while some of the
very highest quality, I presume he means naturally warped
meadow, from 20s. to 44. But these figures are probably
exaggerated. We shall see that even in the eighteenth cen-
tury the rent of land was not such as to reach these amounts.

But the most considerable and voluminous writer on hus-
bandry in the seventeenth century was Simon Hartlib, a
Dutchman by birth, though naturalised in England, who
enjoyed and esteemed the friendship of Milton. Hartlib
made it his business to explain and inculcate the various
processes by which the Dutch had become the most success-
ful agriculturists in Europe, and were instructing the rest of
the world. His information extends over the whole range
of agriculture, and his “Legacy,” as he called his principal
work, contains suggestions which he did not see put in
practice during his own time, though they were adopted with
such signal success in the next century.

To the farmer and the merchant, the seventeenth century
was a period of great prosperity. The twelve years’ truce
460 English Husbandry from the Rise in Prices.

between Spain and Holland expired in 1621, and the two
countries went again into strife. But Spain was also engaged
in the deplorable Thirty Years’ War, the last and the most
ferocious, the most atrocious and most destructive of the
religious wars. The quarrel between Charles and his Parlia-
ment enforced neutrality on England, even had Charles
wished to assist his brother-in-law. But during this period,
when England alone of the western nations was at peace,
there was naturally a period of high prices, of considerable
commercial activity, and not a little agricultural progress. On
this prosperity Clarendon comments. But he gives no true
cause of it, and he does not know, or care to know, that it was
accompanied by great suffering, terrible poverty, and con-
tinuous degradation of the working classes.

From the Restoration to the Revolution occurred another
period of even greater prosperity, as far as the traders and
agriculturists were concerned, corn prices being, on the whole,
moderate in the thirty years from 1661 to 1690. But
during this time foreign trade made extraordinary strides.
The English colonies were rapidly becoming numerous and
thriving in the New World, and the foundations of many
opulent houses were being laid on successful commerce with
the East, where the English had become the successful rivals
of the Dutch, and had inherited the possessions of the Portu-
guese in India, and, with them, a footing on its western coasts.
In fact, ignominious and dishonest as the government of
England was, stained as the court was with libertinism and
profligacy, low as was the literary condition of England, for
it had become a poor copy of the immodesties which charac-
terised French literature half a century before, the country
was at peace, and the mass of Englishmen were active,
energetic, and uncorrupted, of austere morals, and acute,
persevering enterprize. Macaulay speaks of the reaction
which followed on Puritanism. The reaction was only super-
ficial, and characteristic of that class only to whom accident
and the absurd parody of representation, called the House of
Commons, gave prominence and power. The English people
at heart was the Puritan England of Cromwell and Pym,
The Distribution of Ship-Money. 461

as a few years proved. Had the Revolution been followed
by a Reform Bill, the history of the nineteenth century would
have been anticipated in the eighteenth.

In the year 1636, the various counties in England were
assessed for the levy of ship-money. An examination of the
estimate of taxation by the acreage of each county shows how
wealth had been displaced in England after little more than a
century and a quarter had elapsed, and curiously Charles’s
levy of ship-money is almost exactly six times as much as
Henry’s aid. Of course Middlesex, including London, is
put at the highest assessment. In 1503, its assessment per
acre is twice that of the nearest county to it in wealth,
Oxfordshire. In 1636, it is nearly twelve times as much as
that of its nearest neighbours, Hertford and Bedfordshire.
Oxford occupies the 17th place in the counties; Norfolk,
before the third, is now the 25th. On the other hand, Bucks,
from being the 19th is now the 4th. Lincoln, which was the
1oth county in opulence in the earlier list, is 31st in the later.
Lancashire and Cumberland are still the poorest of the
English counties, standing almost exactly on the same level
absolutely and relatively as they occupied in the several
centuries for which information of this kind has been dis-
covered. The industries which made certain counties and
districts opulent at the end of the fifteenth century had left
them at the beginning of the seventeenth, and had not yet
been localised in their later abodes.

The ship-money of 1636 was calculated to yield nearly
4207,000, and had not been contested yet in the law courts.
Taking the existing acreage of England and Wales, the tax
amounted to 41 on every 174,447 acres. In 1693, an assess-
ment of 4s. in the 4 was imposed by Parliament to meet the
charges of the war with France ; and this was also distributed
through the counties. The total was 41,977,714, and when
assessed on the whole acreage of England and Wales amounts
to 41 on each 18,923 acres. The proportion which London
and Middlesex bear to the rest of the country is not materially
altered, is, indeed, slightly less, for in 1636 it was assessed at
about one-fifth of the whole amount, and, in 1693, its contribu-
462 English Husbandry from the Rise tn Prices.

tion is about a sixth. The most considerable change is that
in the county of Surrey. In 1636 it was 18th in the list
of contributors ; in 1693 it comes after London and Middlesex.
The purely agricultural counties have made considerable pro-
gress. Oxfordshire, which was 17th in 1636, is now 8th; Kent,
which was 14th, is now 9th; Essex, which was 15th, is
7th ; Norfolk, which was 25th, is 18th. On the other hand,
Lancashire, though still one of the poorest cotinties, which
stood nearly fifty per cent. below Westmoreland, has now
become, acre for acre, three times as wealthy as that county ;
while York, which was more than twice as opulent as West-
moreland, by the same test, is now four times better off. This
change must be ascribed to the growth of woollen manufactures
in the latter, and the general growth of nearly all textile
industries in the former county.

At the latter end of the century, one Houghton, an apothe-
cary living near the Royal Exchange, conceived the plan of
issuing a weekly paper, which should contain on one side some
short essay on natural history, or agriculture, or manufactures ;
and on the other a price list of the different kinds of grain,
collected from the principal towns of the kingdom. He
continued the work, though with one short interruption, from
1691 to 1702, and seems to have been the inventor of syste-
matic advertising. We may learn from his short essays that the
growth of agriculture was leading to even more extensive
enclosures than had hitherto been practised, and that the
science of forestry was attracting considerable attention.
Potatoes were being largely cultivated in Lancashire, whence
they were spreading over the kingdom. He tells us that
barley bread had been used by the people in dear times,
but only through the scarcity of wheat, which had always
been, in every part of England, the customary food of the
people. Houghton was a Fellow of the Royal Society, and
was probably the person for whose election that association
apologised to Charles, who assured them that so far from
being dissatisfied at the election of a tradesman, he should
be only glad to see more of such a stamp as the person whom
they had latterly taken into their number.
Floughton and King. 463

During the seventeenth century the population of England
had doubled. It could not have been more than 24 millions
at the conclusion of Elizabeth’s reign ; it was nearly 54 at the
accession of Anne. This was due to the growth of agriculture
during the century, and probably to the increasing activity of
the English in textile industries. These were spreading in
the west and the north, as the convenience of climate, and
ultimately of climate and steam power, dictated. The various
and independent calculations on which the estimates are made
as to the amount of the population, and the closeness of the
result in the several processes by which the numbers are
arrived at, are stated by Macaulay, and are well known to
the readers of his history. But the statistical account given
by one of these persons, Gregory King, contains some other
estimates, which have seldom, if ever, been commented on,
but which suggest some considerations in connection with the
subject which is before us.

King based his calculations of the population on the
number of houses in the country, which were well known
through the registers of the Hearth Tax, and the probable
number of inmates in each house. These estimates were
not made from what were likely to be the numbers born
in each family, as most of King’s critics alleged, but from
the persons who constituted the establishments in the several
houses. Thus he set down forty persons in the household
of every temporal, twenty in that of every spiritual peer,
and soon. The custom of the time was that most persons
of substance kept a considerable number of domestics; and
\there is abundant evidence that service in a household was
“one of the means by which part of the agricultural population
was extensively employed. In King’s estimate, the average
income of a nobleman is set down at £3,200 year; of a bishop
at £1,300; of a baronet at £880; of a knight at £650; of an
esquire at £450; of acountry gentleman at £280. The annual
income of merchants and traders is estimated at from £400
to £200; of lawyers at £154; of the dignified clergy at'¢72;
and of the inferior at £50. He states that there are 160,000
freeholders in the kingdom, with incomes ranging from £90
464 English Husbandry from the Rise in Prices.

to £55; and 150,000 farmers, to whom he gives an average
income of £42 10s. Those who are engaged in liberal arts
and sciences earn each £60 a year. Shopkeepers and trades-
men, whom he estimates at 50,000, get 445 a year. There are
artizans and craftsmen, 60,000 in number, with wages amount-
ing to 438a year ; the residue being naval and military officers,
whose average pay is from £80 to £60. Together these per-
sons and their families constitute nearly half the population,
and inhabit over 500,000 houses.

The agricultural labourers and country folk, those engaged
in husbandry and divers local industries, inhabit 849,000
houses, earning at the best Is. a day by their labour, and
sometimes not more than half the amount. King sets the
income of the more opulent classes of the community at 344
millions, that of the country population engaged in unskilled
labour or in analogous employments at nearly nine millions, In
number they are a little in excess of those who are engaged
in more profitable callings. To the labouring class King
adds vagrants, thieves, and beggars by profession. Including
the latter, he finds the average yearly income of those who
are engaged in these ill-paid pursuits to be about 45, or less.
than 2s. a week; and he reckons that their necessary sub-
sistence must require at least an average of 75. a year more.
The thieves and beggars, he concludes, earn about as much
as the poorest class of cottagers and those who are habitually
receiving parish relief; but he naively concludes that their
expense is greater, and that they cost the community as great
a sum as they earn.

The issue of the whole is that the first schedule of
persons, whose incomes have been given in detail, appear
as the productive classes, who add to the wealth and in-
crease the resources of the country, the second schedule
as the unproductive classes who diminish it. He reckons
that the gains which the former collect and add to the
national capital are as much as 43,000,000, while the
loss from the latter is about £600,000. This, with the loss
which he assigns to the presence of predatory people and
beggars, almost exactly corresponds to the amount which
King's Theory of Income and Savings. 465

the poor rate reached at the end of the seventeenth century.
Excluding a few of the more opulent classes, my readers will
be struck with the smallness of the incomes which are earned
at the end of the seventeenth century by the mercantile
and professional classes, even when they are described as
holding great offices and places, as being eminent merchants
and eminent clergymen. The whole income from land, if
we can set the nobles, clergy, country gentlemen, and free-
holders together, is reckoned at 164 millions, or nearly half
the income of the propertied and prosperous classes.

All working men, other than 60,000 artizans and handicrafts-
men, in which we must, I presume, recognize capitalist workmen
or employers of journeymen, are set down, from the point of
view which contemplates the growth of national wealth, as un-
productive people. Even the farmer is credited with only a
fifth of the income and a sixteenth of the saving power in the
gross total of this national progress. The farmer is supposed,
and probably with reason, to have the scantiest margin apart
from necessary expense out of which to accumulate. King
thinks that the bishop has the largest available surplus, for
he gives him a family of twenty and a saving power of £20
a year from each member of his household, while the temporal
magnate is allowed £10, the merchant £13, the tradesman 41,
the naval officer £2, and the artizan tos. But the farmer's
clear gain, with a household of five persons, is only 5s. a year
per head. The calculations are, I am wholly persuaded,
accurate, for Gregory King has rarely, even in modern
times, been surpassed in the special and very exceptional
power of understanding what is meant by statistical figures.
King discovered the law which regulates the price of the
necessaries of life on the occasion of a scarcity, and formulated
a geometrical proportion which experience has proved, with
some minor qualifications, to be arule of safe action. Without
knowing it, he demonstrated that the function of the corn-
dealer was an indirect benefit to society, and that the pursuit
of private gain, under ordinary conditions, may be of the
greatest utility to the consumer by equalising prices.

We shall now be able, by the light of these figures, to

30
406 English Husbandry from the Rise in Prices.

interpret the position of farmer and labourer at this time.
As I have stated, the times were then of great prosperity and
rapid opulence to the landowner, the trader, and the
placeman. The exiles of the royalist party had learned in
France the secret of official plunder and the mechanism of
official bribery. They usurped the government, and wisely
allowed the renegades of the old republican party to share their
spoils, knowing that no knave can be trusted so thoroughly
as the man who has been a traitor to his old associates. The
landowner had found out how to compensate himself for
high prices by enforcing high rents, had emancipated his own
estates as soon as possible from their traditional obligations,
and, much more important, had secured a strict law against
imports of agricultural products, even from Ireland. He had
contrived to make the condition of the poorer sister so uneasy,
that even a Tory like Lord Anglesey winced when Bucking-
ham told the Lords that Irish produce was a nuisance. The
legislature had been degraded utterly during the Long
Parliament of Charles, and though they took care after the
Restoration that they should live, they lived in the uncleanest
fashion. The traders had revived monopolies under parlia-
mentary authority, and the chiefs of the mercantile classes
manipulated the Commons when they could, as Osborne did,
or bribed wholesale, as Child did, or when their opportunities
were not so open, forged, as Duncombe did, and all founded
_noble families, and, as Gregory King thought, added to the
national wealth.

They who created it, the farmers and the labourers, were
the unproductive classes, who worked hard, benefited all,
robbed nobody, and, as King informs us, saved little or
nothing, for the aggregate gain from the savings of the
farmers is about a third of the aggregate loss incurred by the
waste of the labourer’s existence. In point of fact, the princi-
pal savings of the wealth which was so rapidly accumulated
by the few at the latter end of the seventeenth century were
derived from the direct plunder of the public by placemen
and the indirect plunder of the public by the great monopolist
companies. who bribed the financiers with advances of money
The Growth of Particular Wealth. 467

on loan to government, and besides the dividends which they
received from this stock, appropriated a guinea of monopolist
gain for every shilling which they lent on interest. It is not
wonderful that the public at large, at least those who were
able to interpret the machinery of government, aided by
place-hunters out of office, should have striven, not always
wisely, to arrest the process by which their scanty incomes
were mulcted in order to build up the colossal fortunes which
the trade in politics and the politics of trade were accumulating.

The evil reign of Charles had left one mischief with which
the government of William had to cope. Charles had not
committed the crime of Henry in issuing base money, but
he had issued money in such a form as to invite its practical
debasement. The folly of the age forbade its export, and
thereupon assisted the exportation of it. Clippers of coins
were hanged by scores, and it seems that not unfrequently
a prosecution for clipping was set on foot in order to get rid
of inconvenient persons. But these wholesale executions did
no good, they did not improve the coinage, check crime, or
prevent the exportation of bullion produced by melting the
best pieces. At last the re-coinage was ordered, and
Montague, by a bold stroke of administrative genius, set the
currency on a sound basis. To the same accomplished
financier was due the foundation of the Bank of England,
and with it the establishment of credit and the economy of
the currency. But the last institution, all-important as it
was to the trade of London, and convenient as it was to the
- government, had little or no meaning beyond the metropolis.
Better times were to come for both farmer and labourer by
the operation of causes which were quite independent ot
governments and the utilisation of commercial credit——a new
departure in agriculture and the bounty of the seasons. But
the change could not take effect till peace was restored.
The Treaty of Utrecht closed the first great war waged on
behalf of the balance of power, and closed it on this issue
for nearly a century. The other wars of the eighteenth
century were waged in the reputed interests of commerce,
till the upheaval of 1792.
400

CHAPTER XVII.

AGRICULTURE AND AGRICULTURAL WAGES IN THE
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.

The Slow though Real Progress of Agricultural Improvements — The Passion
for Agricultural Pursuits at the beginning of the Century, and its Continuance
for some Time in the Next—Failures due to too much Land with too little
Capital, and Slovenly Book-keeping—Motives for this Fashion of Agricul-
tural Pursuits—The Gains of Commerce in the Eighteenth Century—The
Pride of the English Nobility—The Immediate Benefit of Improved Agri-
culture—Arthur Young’s Testimony—Increased Stocks of Animals—Manures,
Marling — The Increase of Production estimated—Rental of England—
Farmer’s Profits—Leases Necessary and Universal—The Estimated Value of
Stock in 1770, and of Wages in Agriculture—Rise in Rents—The Earnings
of Labour—Young’s Estimate of Earnings—Comparison of Wages in the
Eighteenth and the Fifteenth Centuries—The Particulars of Agricultural
Progress in 1770—Abundance and Scarcity, their Effects on the Landed
Interest—Corn Laws—The Seven Barren Years of the Seventeenth Century—
Enclosures in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries—The Period of
Scarcity in the Eighteenth Century—The Corn Law of 1773 and 1791—The
Rise in Rent at the Close of the Century—Eden’s Information in 1795—
Weekly Earnings and Annual Deficits—Porter on the Cost of Poor Relief
in Wheat—Summary of the Action of Government on Labourers, and their
Consequent Condition—Its Effects on their Minds now—The English Work-
man no Socialist—The Function of Employers and Labourers—The Attitude
of Farmers—The Result.

HAVE stated already that while the agricultural progress

of the seventeenth century was chiefly in the direction.

of utilising the fallow for roots, that of the eighteenth was.
especially characterised by the extension of artificial pasture,
and the increased use of clover, saintfoin, and rye grass. By
this I mean that the development of each was the principal
feature of agriculture in three successive centuries. The
winter roots were known in gardens in the sixteenth century,
at least towards its close, for Tusser speaks of them as
Roots and Grasses. 469

garden plants. Saintfoin was known to be useful to the
agriculturist as early as 1637, for in this year a small work
was published in which its cultivation is strongly recom-
mended. Clover seed is to be found in prices current some
time before the end of the seventeenth century, and that not in
the London market only. But these seeds are regularly bought
from the beginning of the eighteenth century by any farmer
who had any idea of improved agriculture. On the other
hand, the extension of the cultivation and the improvement
of the article were of very slow development. The roots
were small, and the crop at first was scanty. In course of
time the farmer procured good seed, and increased his pro-
duce by judicious treatment; and similarly he studied the
best means by which to supply himself with clover and
saintfoin hay, and to utilise the aftermath. No record, however,
of the progress is left us. It is the characteristic of agriculture
that its improvements are so gradual as to be almost im-
perceptible, and it is only by contrasting rents and produce
at different times, and perhaps prices, that we are able to
arrive at any exact conceptions as to the progress which
was effected. Writing in 1772, Arthur Young says that
“saintfoin, cabbages, potatoes, carrots, are not common crops
in England. I do not imagine above half, or at most two-
thirds of the nation cultivate clover. It is a surprising
number of years that are necessary firmly to introduce the
culture of a new plant.” If gentlemen of the present age,
says Young, “had not assumed a spirit in agriculture vastly
superior to former times, I much question whether that
excellent vegetable would make its way fairly through
the island in a thousand years.”

The Englishman of the eighteenth century was greatly
addicted to agriculture as a business or a pleasure, or both.
It was the “reigning taste” of the age. There was scarcely
a nobleman or country gentlemen who did not betake
himself to the cultivation of land, not merely in the sense of
keeping a home farm in his hands, which he managed by his
steward, but as an overseer of his land, and as an experimenter
in husbandry. Writers of the time note that country gentle-
470 Agriculture wm ine cignteenth Century.

men talked about land and its properties, the benefit of
certain courses, the advantage of turnip fallows, and the
economies of agricultural machinery, about breeds of cattle,
sheep, and pigs, with the same interest which their fathers
and grandfathers used to exhibit on the subjects of the
stable and the kennel only. The fashion had been set in
Norfolk by Lord Townshend, after his quarrel with Walpole
and his retirement, when he devoted himself to agricultural
pursuits, especially to turnip growing. “There have been,”
says Young, “ more experiments, more discoveries, and more
general good sense displayed within these ten years in agri-
cultural pursuits than in a hundred preceding ones.” And
the same writer adds, that “if this noble spirit continues,
we shall soon see husbandry in perfection, and built upon
as just and philosophic principles as the art of medicine.”

The pursuit was universal. Citizens who were engaged in
London business five days in the week were farmers for the
other two; men who had been brought up to other pursuits
deserted them for a trade which appeared easy and inde-
pendent. It was a bye industry with those who had other
callings. Physicians, lawyers, clergymen, soldiers, sailors,
and merchants were farmers as well. “The farming tribe,”
says Young, “is now made up of all ranks, from a duke to
an apprentice.” This habit continued till the beginning of
the second quarter of the present century, especially in places
remote from towns, out of the way of main roads, and before
the first railways were constructed. Parson Trulliber, though
perhaps an exaggeration, was not an imaginary character.
Fielding must have seen such clergymen by hundreds, I
am old enough to remember the type, very little changed,
in my own youth; as I can also remember the doctor and
country lawyer to have been as keen after the cultivation of
their fields as they were after patients and clients, and a number
of country gentlemen, with pedigrees of undoubted antiquity,
as proud as the haughtiest noble and as coarse-mannered
as the most illiterate rustic.

Of course, experimental farming such as this often was
frequently ended in failure. The principal cause of ruin a
The Pursuit of Agriculture Universal. 471

hundred years ago was precisely the same as it has been and
is to-day,—too much land in occupation, and too little capital
to cultivate it with. Young considers an average of £6 an
acre the minimum necessary for successful agriculture; and
it is certain that stock, live and dead, and labour, some few
items excepted, cost the husbandman less than half the sum
which they do now, the produce, as a whole, being sold for
much less than half the price it reaches in our days. If he
were criticising English agriculture at present, he would
certainly set down £12 an acre as the average minimum,
Every one knows that much less than half this was, unluckily,
the capital of the agriculturist when the course of bad seasons.
came five years or so ago. English agriculture has, as I have
good reason to know, been in the course of the six centuries
of its recorded history subject to severe strains. But there
was no period in which the ordinary farmer was less able to
stand the shock as he was when the present crisis came. Five
years ago (1878) I was told by a land agent who managed a
large amount of property in two of the most fertile among
the arable counties in England, that the average capital of
the farmer on land let at about 30s. an acre was considerably
under 46 an acre.

Another frequent cause of discomfiture in the agriculture
of this highly progressive period was the neglect of keeping
proper accounts. Exact and careful book-keeping, Young
urges, is the only way in which one can not only demonstrate
the success of an experiment, but the prudence of imitating
the experiments of others. In the case of a gentleman who
farms with the aid of a bailiff, accurate book-keeping is the
only satisfactory check which the landowner can employ in
order to test his servant’s integrity. The ordinary farmer, he
tells us, guesses, and often with remarkable accuracy, at the
items and the totals, though he is unable to reduce his profits
to figures. But such a rule of thumb process is always unsafe,
and is fatal to the inexperienced. I can imagine the delight
with which Young would have studied the particulars and
the accurate balancings of a bailiff’s roll in the thirteenth and
fourteenth centuries, and how his preconceptions as to the
472, Agriculture in the Eighteenth Century.

rudeness of the age four or five hundred years before his time
would have been modified by an examination of the facts. .
Though the farmer of the eighteenth century was far better
provided with agricultural appliances and far more competent
for the work of agriculture than his ancestor of the thirteenth,
—the rent he paid would be a sufficient proof if other proof
were wanting,—he was, I suspect, more illiterate.

The fashion so prevalent of making agriculture a pursuit
among the wealthy landowners was stimulated in many cases
by the desire they felt of maintaining themselves against
the new aristocracy of trade. There were some mercantile
callings which were not beneath the reputation of cadets
whose lineage was ancient. It is known that in the West of
England this was particularly the case with the cloth trade,
and that half the country gentlemen in the counties where this
calling was general had son or cousin in the business. A
brewer's occupation was also considered compatible with
social rank. The advantage of direct dealings with the
consumers of wool and barley was considerable and con-
ciliatory. “Wheat,” says Young, “from the sowing to the
selling, goes through the hands of a set of pilferers, whose
principal business it is to steal it, as every farmer in the three
kingdoms knows.” But it is perfectly clear that much of the
rapid improvement made in agriculture from about 1720 to
1760 was due to the eagerness with which landowners strove
to improve their estates. Such a fashion could not have been
mere caprice.

The truth is, the gains of commerce in the first half of the
eighteenth century were very large. Owing to the fact that
most of this gain came into the hands of joint-stock companies,
who possessed monopolies paid for by large advances to govern-
ment, enormous fortunes were made by a comparatively small
number of persons. The very low rate of interest which
prevailed throughout the same period is a proof that profits
must have been large, and saving, among the moneyed classes
at least, general. Even in those trades, however, which were
not protected by the monopoly of a joint-stock company
under charter, the same result was attained by large capitals;
The Gains of Commerce. 473

and my reader will remember how Walpole’s famous excise
scheme, under which bonded warehouses would have been
established, the revenue improved, and the consumer benefited,
was defeated by the combinftion of capitalist merchants. But
comparatively few as the merchant princes were in the begin-
ning of the eighteenth century, they weme a new body, and
becoming more numerous than the nobles and great landed
gentry. That they were new is proved by Gregory King’s
estimate of their income, which he sets at half that of a baronet,
little more than an eighth that of a nobleman, and little more
than a third of that of a bishop at the end of the seventeenth
century. In 1750, it is probable that the city of London hada
larger commercial income than the rents of the whole House
of Lords and the episcopal bench. Their savings supplied the
elder Pitt with his enormous loans, the 4 75,000,000 which he
borrowed during his administration, while the whole rental of
England twelve years after the Peace of Paris was not more
than £16,000,000, and the interest on the whole debt was
almost one-third of the rental.

There is no period in English history in which the pride of
the English noble was more absorbing and more obtrusive
than during the time on which I am immediately commenting.
It betrayed itself in a thousand affectations and a thousand
insolences. Noble youth found a satisfaction in street out-
rages and indecencies, noble age in vapouring about the privi-
leges of the peers, and in attempts to constitute themselves
a limited order. Sometimes they dreamt of passing an Act
and procuring a grant for the separate education of their own
order in a special academy. Three-fourths of them would
have restored the Stuarts, from sheer hatred to the moneyed
men. They joined the patriots in denouncing the place-men,
and swallowed public money with avidity ; for it is generally
seen that as religion is imitated and mocked by hypocrisy,
so public duty is parodied by patriotism. To countervail the
growing interest of the city and its eagerness in buying land
and honours, they supported Chamberlain’s Land Bank, rushed
into and denounced the South Sea Bubble, succeeded in
exacting a property qualification in land for all members of
474. Agriculture in the Eighteenth Century.

the House of Commons, except the eldest sons of peers, and!
supported what they hated against Walpole, in the hopes of
weakening it. But all their efforts were in vain. When Wal-.
pole met his rival Pulteney on thé floor of the House of Lords,
he described both as the two most insignificant fellows in the
kingdom. Pulteney got a large pension for himself and his.
heirs, which the British public still pays,—to whom, Heaven
and the Paymaster-General alone know. He had been a
patriot.

The effort to improve their estates, to increase their profits,
and to raise their rents, was the only wholesome outcome from
this struggle. I am persuaded (on the rule that it is wise
to assign action to the rational and intelligible motive of self-
interest in matters innocent and in their effects laudable,
instead of postulating mere whim) that the English landowners
set the fashion of making the best of agriculture, because they
desired to make one wealth-producing agency become a rival
in personal interest and in popular sympathy with another.
The inference is obvious, that a person who makes wealth
is more useful than one who gets wealth. It is not clear
that the man who gets wealth does not destroy at least as
much as he gets, and sometimes more,—a thief does so
plainly, as society concludes. A speculator often does, as
those who have to purchase the materials of industry
discover. A hundred men live in opulence on time bar-
gains. Somebody pays for their enjoyments. There is
a superstition among old-fashioned economists that all
parties are the better for the middle man. Experience is
gradually proving that the abstract theory is incorrect.
Hence under competition producers are getting rid of the
middle man, and tle modern economist, who studies facts.
instead of spinning theories and dilating on tendencies, is.
beginning to prove that he is generally a nuisance. Now
that a man who wins more food from the earth is more
useful than one who wins more food from somebody else’s.
labour without offering anything solidly desirable in return,
for his function, needs no proof. If you can entirely get
rid of the middle man, all the better; if you cannot, it is.
Speculators and Middlemen. 475

an economy, which even he can hardly dispute, to narrow
his functions and to curtail his profits.

It is curious to see how alive Arthur Young is to this
sentiment. He is no economist at all in the most shadowy
sense of the word, for he has no real conception of the
harmony of interests, the exposition of which is the true
function of the economist. His entire sympathy is with.
agricultural production. Everything must lend itself to
this result. The labour must be cheap, whatever it cost
in penury to the workman. The produce must be increased
by every effort of ingenuity and skill, The energies of the
farmer must be stimulated, and his ignorance and sloth
cured by a rack-rent lease. The continuity of these bene-
ficent processes must be secured by prodigal bounties on.
the exportation of agricultural produce and judicious re-
straints on its importation. The great landowners have-
been the pioneers of agricultural progress. Young is not
at all a lackey. He speaks plainly about the shortcomings.
of those landowners who do not come up to his ideal.
But he is so grateful to those who do that he describes.
their houses, measures the largeness of their reception
rooms, and comments on their pictures as learnedly as:
Goldsmith’s critic does in the story of his charming vicar.

The principal result which agricultural improvement ex--
hibited on such estates as were cultivated with assiduity
and skill was the increased stock of animals. The general
adoption of root crops in place of bare fallows, and the
extended cultivation of clover and other such plants by the
use of the plough, supplied the farmer with a great increase
of winter feed, besides materially improving its quality and
sustaining powers. In consequence, on abundance of fodder,.
abundance of stock followed. But abundance of stock implied
the great increase of barn-yard manure, the principal fertilizer’
of the time, indeed of all times, on the spot. So great is the
increase that the farmer is in difficulty as to the means by
which he can adequately compost or dilute it before he
distributes it over his fields, and it is expedient to convey
the whole of the straw or stubble produced on the farm to
476 Agriculture in the Eighteenth Century.

the yards. The grazing of meadows in winter time he con-
siders injurious to cattle and destructive to the pasture. But
the littering of cattle with straw will increase the litter in its
‘conversion into manure five-fold in quantity, and the littering
of pigs will increase it ten-fold. Better, he concludes, purchase
Straw, fern, or stubble than sell a single truss. The manure
‘was mixed with earth, better still with chalk, best of all with
marl. A dressing of twenty loads an acre of barn-yard manure
thus composted will give a four years’ fertility to the land
which is so treated. The greatly increased produce of the
eighteenth century was entirely due to the increased use of
matural manures. The lessened price of agricultural imple-
ments had the effect of diminishing generally the cost of pro-
duction. 2

Marling had now been revived, and was, relatively speaking,
far less costly than when it was practised in early English
agriculture, as compared with the value of land; for in earlier
times, as I stated in Chap. III., the expense attending it
was from half the value to nearly the whole value of the
fee simple. In Young’s time it cost from sos. to £4 the
acre, This is about twelve times the average price at which
the improvement was made five centuries before. In Young’s
‘day the operation cost, at the value which he assigns to arable
land, from one-fourth to one-eighth of the fee simple. The
benefit of the operation, we are informed, lasts for twenty
years; but, he adds, it yields no advantage for the first year,
and but little in the second. In the third it is distinctly
useful; but most of all from the fourth to the fifteenth, when
its effect is nearly worn out. Soils were also treated with
‘clay, with chalk, and with lime. But the principal agent in
successful husbandry is stable and shed manure; and my
author estimates that land properly dressed with this fertilizer,
‘and continually dressed, will yield, if the land be capable of
such treatment, from 40 to 48 bushels of the different kinds
‘of corn. The average produce of the fourteenth century in
(prosperous years, and when low prices prevailed, was under
t1 bushels of all kinds of grain. Manure was carted from
towns, but the price was high and the carriage costly. The
Rapid Increase of Production. 477

dressing of land with soot, ashes, bones, malt-dust, woollen
rags, and even oil-cake was known; but the price was so
high, and the evidence of the advantage so scanty, that the
use of these articles had not yet transcended the stage of
experiment.

The productiveness of agriculture in the eighteenth century
was, it is plain, when land was properly cultivated, four times
that of the thirteenth, both as regards corn and stock. The
weight of the fatted ox was raised at least three-fold; for the
maximum weight in the earlier period, and even up to the
beginning of the eighteenth century, was 400 lbs., while in
Arthur Young’s time he constantly reached 1,200 lbs. A similar
but not so extensive an increase had taken place in sheep,
while the weight of the fleece had become fully four times
above the average of the carlier period. Nowif the produce
of England in the middle of the fourteenth century was
sufficient to feed two millions and a half, that of the middle
of the eighteenth was sufficient for ten millions. But it is
almost certain that when Young wrote, the population was
only seven and a half millions, or possibly eight. England
was, therefore, a considerable corn-exporting country, and
would have been, even without the bounty, which was, of
course, a virtual addition to rent. The bounty being, as was
believed, a settled maxim in English policy, accounts in part
for the fact that land, the value of which was constantly
rising, sold in the beginning of the latter half of the century
at 334 years’ purchase.

Young tells us that in his northern tour he traversed and
inspected more than 70,000 acres of land under cultivation,
and that he registered the rent of the whole. He concludes,
and with very good reason, that the parts which he visited
are a fair sample of the whole of England. He sets the
acreage of the whole country at thirty-two millions, a skilful
calculation arrived at seventy years before by Halley the
astronomer, by means of a most ingenious process, and only
in error by about half-a-million acres. The rent of the land
which he visited is, good and poor included, Ios. an acre;
and he therefore concludes that the total agricultural rental
478 Agriculture in the Eighteenth Century.

-of the country is £16,000,000. He continually urges that this
rental, especially for good land, is too low, and that good
husbandry and an enlightened self-interest suggest and even
demand a considerable exaltation of rents. There is, he says,
a proverb current among farmers that a man cannot pay too
much for good land and too little for bad; and he illustrates
his proverb by showing what is the rate of production and
the cost of land rented at 5s. an acre and that which is rented
-at 20s. He makes out the profit of the former to be 8s. 8d.
an acre, under the best known husbandry, and that of the
latter 29s. It may be observed that, according to Young’s
calculations, the profit of the farmer, all charges deducted,
as considerably in excess of the rent he pays. But it is
considerably less than that procured under the ancient system
of capitalist agriculture, or that which succeeded, the land
and stock lease, and even than that of the short lease which
followed. ;

Young considers it impossible that agriculture should thrive
except under the security of a lease. Leases in his day were
well-nigh universal, often with the obligation of repairs being
imposed on the tenant. There was no motive as yet for keeping
the tenant in a state of political dependence. No tenant on
term of years had a vote, not even a copyholder had one.
The only county voter was the freeholder; and even the
freehold for life would not guarantee subservience. I suspect
that the Chandos clause in the first Reform Bill is to a great
extent answerable for precarious tenancies, though the con-
stantly rising rent of land in the fifty years preceding that
famous clause is more responsible for the result. When the
«country gentlemen became passionately protectionist, it was
.an aid to their policy that the tenant farmers should be not
only enlisted in the same interest with themselves, but
should be plainly informed that their livelihood depended
on the interpretation which the country party chose to give
of that interest.

In the estimate which Young makes of the capital
walue of agricultural wealth in England, land is put at 334
years purchase of the rent and valued at 536 millions, farmers’
farmers Profits and Labourers’ Wages. 479

stock at nearly 110 millions, while house property is estt-
mated at 100 millions. He reckons the wheat and rye crop
at over 9 millions of quarters annually, that of barley at
t1} millions, that of oats at 10} millions. It will be seen
that this estimate, which he bases on the amount of those
kinds of grain which he found to be actually produced in
the district over which he travelled, corresponds closely
with the inference which I have arrived at as to the possible
population which could be maintained on English produce
at two periods which are separated from each other by an
interval of five centuries. The tithe payable from the pro-
duce he estimates at 54 millions; and he is clearly alive to
the injury which a tithe in kind inflicts on progressive agri-
‘culture. The whole earnings of agricultural labour are set
at 144 millions, shared among 836,235 persons ; or, in other
words, the cost of agriculture, as far as labour is concerned,
is supplied at nearly £17 9s. per head of persons. The
estimate includes harvest labour, but not that of the tenant
himself, which Young says was general, and, for farmer’s
profits, necessary.

The average rent of land is, he tells us, actually gs. 11d.
an acre, but for the sake of convenience he puts it at 10s.
In the middle ages, and down to the rise in prices, it was
det at not more than 6¢. an acre. The payment, therefore,
made for the occupation of land has risen twenty times.
The average rise in the price of wheat is about six-and-
a-half times, and the average rise in the price of labour
is almost exactly three-and-a-half times, for the price of
wheat is set at about 4os. a quarter, while that of the
jabourer is 7s. Id. per week, the corresponding prices in the
earlier period being 6s. and 2s.; and it should be remem-
bered that while the labourer in Young’s time had his
earnings of hay and harvest time included in the aggregate
average, the labourer of the earlier period had his harvest
earnings over and above. The agriculturist of the eighteenth
century called the forty-one weeks which remained before
and after the harvest period winter, when the regular wages
were about two-thirds of the better paid eleven weeks. As,
480 Agriculture in the Eighteenth Century.

however, I have often said, the agricultural labourer in the first
half of the eighteenth century was better off than he had
been at any period since the fifteenth and the first half of
the sixteenth.

The rise in rent is the result of diffused agricultural skill.
The cost of production had so far diminished, that the farmer
could afford to pay out of the enhanced general profits
twenty times as much for the use of land as his ancestors.
did some two centuries before. If the peasant’s wages had
risen with the general progress of that skill, in which he
shared to the full with the farmer, the rise in rent would
have been checked. The labour bill on a 500 acre farm in
Young’s days, on his estimate, was £335 8s. 4a.; the rent,
4250; the profit, about £400. But assuming the profit to
remain the same, and the labourer to have received a rise
of wages at all proportionate to the rise in the price of wheat,
rent would have again sunk to zero. The farmer's profit
is estimated at from 14 to 18 or even 20 per cent. on his.
capital, a return on the smallest of the figures, which is
sufficient to account for the popularity of agriculture and
for the generally prosperous condition of the farming
class.

Two facts exceedingly puzzle this careful statistician. He
finds that the local price of labour does not correspond with
the local dearness and cheapness of provisions, and that rela-
tively high and low wages are not connected with relatively
low and high poor rates. It never seems to have struck him
that the Law of Parochial Settlement, and the consequent
temptation put before the owner of a whole parish to check
the local growth of population, would, directly there arose
a demand for labour in particular localities, tend to decrease
the liabilities of one district and increase those of another,
but that the demand for labour and the consequent rise in
local wages might very well go on with pauperism and
overcrowding. Similarly he does not in the least discern
the effect of the quarter sessions assessment in stereotyping
apathy and helplessness. What he complains of is the occa-
sional prodigality of the justices in their valuations of labour
Young’s Aggregate Wages. 481

and the rate at which they fix the price of the peasant’s
contribution to the general growth of opulence.

In estimating the earnings of labour, Young gives many
and elaborate tables based upon a preposterous postulate,
the unreality of which he admits. The labourer is supposed
to be in constant work, and to earn the average of the
three seasons, hay-time, harvest-time, and winter, the latter
being forty-one out of the fifty-two weeks. His wife is to
work in hay and harvest-time, and to get six weeks’ work
in winter. His eldest son is to be a first-hand, his second
an ordinary hind, his third a farmer's boy, each at the
average wages which such a calling supplied. One of his
daughters is to be a dairy-maid, and the other a common
maid. This family of seven are all capable of work, all at
work, and are all collecting their wages into a common fund.
He finds the average of such a family’s wages to be close

to £51 8s.a year. Now it is plain that not one family in

a thousand corresponded at that time or afterwards to
Young’s hypothesis, and that, therefore, the calculations based
on the statement are, as regards the remuneration of labour,
entirely fictitious. What they do represent, and as I believe
accurately, is the average cost at which a farmer in the
Eastern CountieS could procure the services of seven persons
in the distribution of occupations in husbandry. Each of
these services was necessary, and was, indeed, traditional in
English husbandry on the large scale from the very earliest
times, and they would be and could be proved to be equally
necessary in the economy of modern English agriculture.
How far the figures which Young has collected fell short of
the facts in the case of an agricultural labourer’s aggregate
earnings will be shown in the evidence supplied by Sir
Frederic Eden, on which I shall hereafter comment.

Now if any of my readers will take the pains to calculate
what a family of seven, engaged as Young contemplates,
would have received in the aggregate under the Act of
1r Hen. VIL, cap. 22, in the year 1495, he will find that
it amounts to 424 Ios., or nearly one-half of that which the
same persons employed in identical industry received in the

31
482 Agriculture in the Eighteenth Century.

tenth year of George III. In 1495, the four-pound loaf of
bread cost 44.; in 1770, §¢.; and to take and contrast Young’s
other prices with those of the earlier year, butter, Id.
and 7da.; cheese, }a@. and 4d.; meat, td. and 4d. Of these
prices the first is very low, for the year 1495 is a very cheap
year. The others are the average price for the whole period
of 283 years. Now if we apply the same rule to bread, we
should raise the price of the four-pound loaf to 3a.

If, therefore, it were the case, as it certainly was not, that
the same amount of labour was required to secure the produce
which was obtained in the eighteenth century as was needed
in the fifteenth, it is clear that had wages in the later period
been made to possess the same purchasing power which
they had in the earlier, the family of seven would have received,
in nominal or money wages, seven and a half times more
than they received in 1495, in order that they might obtain the
same amount of the necessaries of life, #2, 4183 15s. instead
of £51 8s. It will be plain that such a rate of wages would
have reduced rent first, and profits afterwards, and have left
no opportunity for the growth of the former, except in so far
as labour might be economised by the increased productive-
ness of land at less cost, by substituting mechanical for manual
labour, by cheapening the carriage of goods, by increasing the
fertility of the soil, and by improving seed and stock. All
these were, except perhaps the second, effected. But I do
not think that any one who examines the facts will doubt
that much of the increase of rent which was effected in the
first half of the eighteenth century, and nearly all which was
obtained in the seventeenth, was obtained at the expense of
the agricultural labourer, whose real wages were, as I have
shown here and elsewhere, reduced by all the difference
between their earlier and their later purchasing power.

The advance which agriculture had made by the year 1770
was great and remarkable. Tools and implements were far
cheaper and far better. The breeds of cattle and sheep were
greatly improved, threefold in many cases within living
memory, and the comparative cheapness of agricultural
produce, a cheapness which is general and fairly uniform,
High Rents and Low Wages. 483

is proof that, apart from the continuous abundance of the
seasons and the success of agricultural operations, for a time
at least production had gone ahead of population. Of the
character of the seasons, Young asserts that a proper distribu-
tion of cultivation over the area of the farm, and especially
the adoption of that husbandry which recognises the place
“of root and hay or grass crops in connection with crops of
corn, will practically make the farmer independent of the
weather, since he will get his compensation, in the vast
majority of cases, for what he loses in one kind of produce
by what he gains in another. Now I am ready to admit
that much of this improvement was due to the public spirit
and enterprise of some who had turned their attention to the
good of their own estates, and (as the farmer must work in
the open, and has neither the inclination nor the power to
make a secret of a profitable process) who had _ benefited
their neighbours by the proof of their success. It is possible,
if wages had advanced on the same lines as rents and profits
did, that the margin of advantage would have been so
narrowed that there would have been little impulse given
towards either experiment or improvement. An industry
may be discouraged by the excessive cost of labour, espe-
cially when the product is of optional use. But the production
of food is not so much affected by these considerations, at
any rate in the same degree, as long as rent exists and profits
are large.

When there were seasons of great abundance and, con-
sequently, of low prices, there was general complaint on the
part of the landed interest, who considered, because nature
was propitious and prices were low, that the country had
become poor. We are told that in the few cheap years
in the first half of the seventeenth century the tenants could
not pay their rents, and that land was reduced in value from
twenty to sixteen or seventeen years’ purchase. The abundance
of the seasons between 1666 and 1671 led to the prohibitive
Act of 22 Chas. IL., cap. 13, under which a duty of 16s. 4a. was
imposed on wheat as long as it was below 535. 4¢. a quarter,
and one of 8s. when it was below 80s. The Act, which was
484 Agriculture in the Eighteenth Century.

intended to keep up prices, failed of its effects, for the prices
again became low. In order further to secure high prices and
full rents, a bounty of 5s. a quarter, when the price did not
exceed 48s. was granted immediately after the Revolution.
To the operation of these two enactments the scientific
agriculturists, who affected to discuss the economic bearings
of husbandry on the growth of opulence, ascribed the develop-
ment of agriculture in the eighteenth century and the plenty
of its produce. It is probable that the belief in the efficacy
of these legislative remedies led to the very numerous
enclosures which begin under the authority of Parliament
in the reign of Anne, under which, in the eighteenth century,
nearly 3,000,000 acres were enclosed, and in the nineteenth,
up to 1854, nearly 6,000,000 more. The amount so enclosed
is more than one-third of the whole cultivable surface of
England and Wales,

The seven ‘barren years at the conclusion of the seventeenth
century were long noted for the distress of the people and for
the exalted profits of the farmer, as they probably gave occa-
sion to the celebrated law of Gregory King, that when there
ensues a scarcity in an absolute necessary of life, and the
quantity falls off in an arithmetical ratio, the price is exalted
in a geometrical one. But when prices fell, as they did in the
period between 1715 and 1765, there was a general outcry of
agricultural distress, which, when it comes to be analysed, is
always resolved into the shrinkage of the landlord’s rent.
Noblemen arid country gentlemen demanded the aid of
the legislature in order to enable the farmers to pay their
rents. In eleven years nearly 42,000,000 were paid in
bounties. But much new land was brought under tillage,
and the price of labour, as I have said, rose twenty per
cent. Mr. Malthus accounted for the rise characteristically,
by alleging that there was no proportionate increase of the
population, for that the English people, having now achieved
a notable increase in the real wages which they received,
decidedly elevated the standard of their comforts and con-
veniences. It is doubtful whether moral or prudential reasons
had much to do with the matter. Wages are always, both in
The Latter Part of the Century. 485

nominal amount and in real power, greater when food and the
other conveniences of life are cheap; and the demand for
labour was receiving an additional stimulus from improvements
in agriculture and the increasing area of land which was taken
into cultivation. But whatever may have been the cause, a
reverse was near at hand.

Up to 1765, England had been an exporting country in
divers agricultural products. Subsequently it became an
importing country. It was supposed to have suffered this
change from the fact that the population increased rapidly.
The view is untenable on two grounds. In the first place,
an increase of population cannot take place at a bound; in
the next, it has always been found that a time of distress,
when food is dear, checks population. Undoubtedly after
the Peace of Paris an extraordinary development of English
tradeoccurred. The colonial empire of England was doubled,
and the monopoly of the trade, according to the accredited
policy of the age, was conferred on English shippers and
merchants. Undoubtedly, too, the manufacture of textile
fabrics took a great start, the production of them being
cheapened and the market for them widened by the suc-
cessful application of machinery to the process. But the
displacement of industries must have produced much local
suffering, and the check to population which this loss of
revenue induced must have more than counterbalanced the
miserable stimulus given to it by the increased demand for
the labour of the young. In the long run, labour has gained
by the inventions of Arkwright, of Watt, and of Cartwright,
but the process which preceded the gain was accompanied
by profound suffering, part of which, to the benefit of all
parties, was remedied by the prohibitive regulations of a
later time.

The seasons from 1765 were as generally unpropitious as
those up to that period were abundant; and in 1773, the
opponents of the existing corn law secured the alteration
of the Act of 1671. By this law importation was permitted
at 6d. a quarter, when wheat was at or above 48s., and the
bounty was to cease when it was at or above 44s. But when-
486 Agriculture tn the Eughteenth Century.

ever the seasons happened to be abundant, the old cry was
raised that landlords were distressed and farmers ruined. As
a consequence, in 1791, a new corn law was enacted, under
which a very heavy duty was imposed while wheat was
below 50s., though it was slight when the price rose above
this amount. But the general scarcity of these later years
produced its effect on rent. Arthur Young, writing more
than forty years after the date of his celebrated tours
comments on the singular and rapid rise in rent which
took place after 1782, and the development of competition
for occupancy. The landlords were alarmed at their own
good fortune, and for a time hesitated to take advantage
of it; but tenants rushed into the occupation of husbandry,
which was thenceforward highly profitable when scarcity
ruled, as was the case generally till 1820, and was corre-
spondingly depressed when occasional abundance intervened.

After the deficient harvest of 1795, wheat rose to 1045.
a quarter, and remained at that amount, or near it, for a
whole year. It was during this time that Sir Frederick Eden
collected his evidence as to the wages of labour and the cost
of maintenance. The facts are in remarkable contrast to the
hypothetical earnings which are drawn up with such fulness
by Arthur Young. It must be admitted that the government
of the day adopted very active measures against the dearth.
They seized all neutral ships laden with corn and bound for
France, and compelled them to discharge their cargoes at
English ports, and at a handsome profit to their owners,
They offered a bounty of from 16s. to £1 on imported corn.
But the scarcity was universal, extending even to the United
States, though the barren lands of the eastern and central
states could never have been relied on for any great amount.
The two Houses of Parliament signed an engagement to
reduce their domestic consumption by at least one-third, and
the distillation of corn spirits was prohibited. Many of the
poor perished by want, and nearly all persons were stinted.
But it was a time of great prosperity to the landed interest,—
to the landlords whose rents were rapidly rising, and to the
farmers who were realising enormous gains during the cur-
Wages in 1795. 487

rency of their leases. The deficiency was variously calculated
at from one-fifth to one-third short of an average crop.

During the first two months of the year 1796, Eden col-
lected the amount of wages actually earned by families
engaged in agricultural labour in different parts of England,
many of them being records of 1795 wages. Five are taken
from Clopshill, in Beds; four from a village near Carlisle ;
four from Buckden, in Hunts; six from Hinksworth, in
Herts; four from Kegworth, in Leicester; four from Lin-
colnshire parishes; four from Diss, in Norfolk; five from
Northampton; six from near Oxford; six from Suffolk;
four from Stogursey, in Somerset ; and one from Yorkshire,—
fifty-three in all. The collective earnings of these families
average IIs. 9d. a week in Beds, ranging fram Qs. to 145. 6d. ;
and these wages fall short of their expenditure, poor enough,
by an average of 43 155. 9@, though a part of this deficiency
is made up by harvest earnings.

At Carlisle the average earnings are 10s. for the whole
family, and the average deficiency in the whole is 43 25. 4d.
In Hunts the average wages are 9s. 3d., and the average
deficiency 42 15s. 4@. The six families in Herts earn an
average of 12s. 64d., but their necessary expenditure exceeds
their receipts by an average of £22 3s. 64d. The average
earnings of two families in Leicester are 135. gd@., and the
average deficiency is £18 os. 32a. In one family in Lindsey
the earnings are 115. 6¢., the expenditure in excess of wages
being £21 18s. 4¢.; another family is only 7s. 4a. short, but
the wages of man, wife, and child are only 11s. 3d¢, and the
family live on bread alone. In the case of three Norfolk
families, the total earnings are IIs. 3d., and the average
deficiency £13 115. 4a. In Northants, four families earn an
average of 10s. 74d., but are on an average £3 155. short on
the year. The six Oxfordshire families earn an average of
12s. 10d., the total being heightened by one household in
which three boys earn nearly as much as their father does.
Here the average deficiency is 43 5s.9¢. In Suffolk, four
families, in each of which the children contribute largely to
the earnings, the average wages are 155. Id., and the average
488 Agriculture in the Exghteenth Century.

deficiency £12 13s. 6a., which in these cases is slightly
lessened by harvest wages. In Somerset, four families earn
an average of 8s. 93@., and their annual expenses exceed their
annual income by an average of 411 35. 102. The Yorkshire
labourer is worst off. His own earnings are under 6s.
a week, his wife’s a little over Is. and his child’s an infi-
nitesimal sum. His expenses exceed his income by 412 13s.
a year, though his fare is the humblest conceivable. I have
taken those rates of wages only which were paid in 1795
and 1796. Between 1792 and 1795 such provisions as these
labourers could procure had risen by about 125 per cent.
The poor rate rose to 44,000,000, and yet the people were
starving. Mr. Porter has acutely observed, that in years of
dearth, in which the largest sums have been expended on the
poor, the amount estimated in wheat is the lightest borne by
the community. He has inferred, indeed, that this is right,
that the poor in seasons of dearth should suffer with those
by whom they are supported, and feel the inconvenience
which the niggardliness of nature has put upon the whole
community. The inference is just, if it be also true that the
position which they occupy is one which they have chosen for
themselves, and for which they are therefore responsible.

The examination of the facts shows that this was not the
case. We have been able to trace the process by which the
condition of English labour had been continuously deteriorated
by the acts of government. It was first impoverished by the
issue of base money. Next it was robbed of its guild capital
by the land thieves of Edward’s regency. It was next brought
in contact with a new and more needy set of employers—the
sheep-masters who succeeded the monks, It was then, with a
pretence, and perhaps with the intention, of kindness, subjected
to the quarter sessions assessment, mercilessly used in the first
half of the seventeenth century, the agricultural labourer being
still further impoverished by being made the residuum of all
labour. The agricultural labourer was then further mulcted
by enclosures, and the extinction of those immemorial rights
of pasture and fuel which he had enjoyed so long. The poor
law professed to find him work, but was so administered that the
Low Wages and Legislatzon, 489

feduction of his wages to a bare subsistence became an easy
process and an economical expedient. When the monarchy
was restored, his employers, who fixed his wages by their own
authority, relieved their own estates from their ancient dues
at the expense of his poor luxuries by the excise, tied him to
the soil by the Law of Settlement, and starved him by a pro-
thibitive corn law. The freedom of the few was bought by
the servitude of the many. Fletcher of Saltoun, an ardent
republican for a narrow class, suggested hopeless slavery as
the proper doom of the labourers, argued that the people
existed only to work, and that philosophical politicians should
have the power to limit their existence by labour. Through-
out the eighteenth century the most enlightened men gave
the poor their pity, occasionally their patronage, sometimes
would assist them at the cost of other workers; but beyond a
bare existence, never imagined that they had rights or remem-
bered that they had suffered wrongs. The weight of taxation
fell on them in every direction, and with searching severity.
It was necessary to find funds at all risks and from every
source, and it is obvious that the most fruitful source of
taxation is that of necessary consumption and cheap luxuries.
It was, of course, impossible to tax the absolute necessaries of
the individual workman, else he would starve and perish. But
the process left him nothing but a bare subsistence. The
interpretation of his wages is always incomplete unless one
takes into account the virtual reduction which taxation made
of them; and to know this would require an exact and
searching analysis of the customs and excise, and of their
incidence. Even this would be insufficient, because to
adequately interpret the situation we should have to esti-
mate the privation of enforced abstinence, as well as the
contribution of universal taxation, and measure the labourer’s
losses not only by what he consumed but by what he was
forced to abstain from consuming. And withal the existing
condition of things bred and strengthened that mean and
malignant passion for profiting by the miseries of others which
became the policy of the landed interest, and to some extent
even now remains a dominant hope in the minds of landlords
490 Agriculture in the Eighteenth Century.

and farmers. To crown the whole, the penalties of felony
and conspiracy were denounced against all labourers who
associated together to better their lot by endeavouring to
sell their labour in concert, while the desperation which
poverty and misery induce, and the crime they suggest, were
met by a code more sanguinary and brutal than any which a
civilized nation had ever heretofore devised or a high-spirited
one submitted to.

Such was the education which the English workman received
from those evil days, when the government employed and
developed the means for oppressing and degrading him. It
is no marvel that he identifies the policy of the landowner,
the farmer, and the capitalist employer with the machinery
by which his lot has been shaped, and his fortunes, in the
distribution of national wealth, have been controlled. He
may have no knowledge, or a very vague knowledge, as to
the process by which so strange, so woeful an alteration has
been made in his condition. But there exists, and always
has existed, a tradition, obscure and uncertain, but deeply
seated, that there was a time when his lot was happier, his
means more ample, his prospects more cheerful than they have
been in more modern experience. From one point of view,
the analyst of “the good old times” may be able to show that
life was shorter, disease more rife, the market of food more
unsteady, the conveniences and comforts of life fewer and
more precarious than they now are. From another point of
view, and that by far the most accurate and exact, the relative
position of the workman was one of far more hope and far
more plenty in the days of the Plantagenets than it has been
in those of the House of Hanover; that wages were, relative
to their purchasing power, far higher, and the margin of
enjoyable income over necessary expenditure was in conse-
quence far wider.

The remarkable fact in the history and sentiments of the
English workman is that he is neither socialist nor anarchist.
He believes, and rightly believes, that in the distribution of
the reward of labour his share is less than it might be, than
it ought to be, and that some means should be discovered by
The English Workman no Soctaltst. 491

which the unequal balance should be rectified. He does not
indeed detect the process by which this advantage can be
secured to him, and relies, though doubtfully, upon certain
expedients by which he thinks he can extort better terms.
He has good reason for believing that he can gain his ends,
in some degree at least, by association with his fellows; for
he cannot have forgotten how angrily any action of his in
this direction has for centuries been resented and punished,
and how even now it is assailed by sophistical and interested
criticism. But he has never dreamed of making war on
capital or capitalist. In his most combative temper he has
simply desired to come to terms with capital, and to gain
a benefit by the harmonious working of a binding treaty
between himself and his employer. He is wise in his
contention, though not always wise in his strategy.

Food and the materials of industry constitute the capital
ef a community, of which money is the symbol. Labour is
engaged, whether of head or hand, in replacing the former
as it is consumed, and of imparting utility to the latter.
The produce of the former is that upon which all subsist,
those by whom it is procured and those who, by one plea or
another, are able to make good their claim to a portion in the
common stock. All who are engaged in industry strive to
complete their work in the briefest and easiest manner. The
employer of labour works as truly as the peasant and artizan,
with head and hand, though in a different manner. His
principal function, as far as the common interest is con-
cerned, is to interpret the means by which labour may be
continuously employed. When the product is secured and
exchanged, always ultimately for food and other necessaries
and conveniences, this question is always arising, What is
the share, all expenses being deducted, which the employers
shall have on the one hand, and labourers on the other, of
the residue? The quarrel between capital and labour, as it
is called, but as it would be more accurately styled, between
employer and employés, is, What is the amount of the share
each should have in profits and wages? For centuries the
law and the government interposed on the side of the
492 Agriculture in the Enghteenth Century.

employer in order to lessen the labourer’s share. For a very
long period, two centuries, the efforts of law and government
were unsuccessful. At last they gained their object, and
gradually reduced the labourers’ share to a bare subsistence,
so bare that in order to get their necessary work from him
they supplemented his wages by a tax on the general public,
as they do in a less degree to this day. The worst time,
however, in the whole history of English labour was beginning
when Eden collected the facts which he gives us as to the
labourer’s earnings. This condition of things was continued
for twenty-five years,

The farmers competed against each other for occupancies,
and constantly offered higher rents, which the enforced
cheapness of their labourers’ wages enabled them to pay, and
the necessities of the public artificially created by the corn
laws enabled them to increase. They made common cause
with the landlord, and worked against the interests of the
labourer and the general public, the body of consumers.
They saw that if they.pledged themselves to higher rents,
they must needs procure the means by lowering the cost of
what they produced and by heightening its price. They
achieved the former by driving wages down to a bare
subsistence, and the latter by maintaining an artificial
dearth.

Now it is plain that contracts founded on such unnatural
conditions were certain, sooner or later, to bring mischief on
those who agreed to them. It was certain that at an early
period the nation would resent the existence of laws which
were designed to stint them. It was certain that manu-
facturers and traders, now secure of a foreign market, if trade
were open to them, would demand that they should be able
to sell their goods for that which the people would always
readily consume, and would, therefore, be the best and safest
object of exchange. It was probable that workmen would
not be for ever content to accept nothing but a bare sub-
sistence, and that they would seek to extricate themselves
from so ungrateful a position. But the vitality of the old
system was singular. It took the active agitation of a
Continuous Rise in Rents. 493

quarter of a century before free trade in food was granted.
The labourer, unused to the action which springs from the
consciousness of a common purpose, even when the liberty
of union was given him, was too ignorant and too apathetic
to use that force of combination which his ancestors five
centuries before had employed with such effect. He fled
from his calling. Other and better paid industries hired him
from the farmyard and the harvest field, sometimes, indeed,
to his ultimate injury. The most enterprising sought in the
United States and the colonies a future which was denied
them here.

But though there was a shrinkage on both sides in the
quality and quantity of labour, in the price of certain farm
products, and in the profits of agriculture, rents went on
steadily increasing. It was an open secret that even when
these enhanced rents were being paid, the farming class had
so narrow a margin of profits that even slight reverses would
become serious. It was known that agricultural capital had
greatly diminished, and that the cultivation of the soil was
gradually becoming slovenly and imperfect. At last the
crisis came, and the foolish payment of excessive rent, and
the equally foolish receipt of excessive rent, have led to
disasters in English agriculture to which there is no parallel
in the annals of that industry. The case is made worse by
the fact that there appears to be no prospect of an early and
vigorous recovery, even though much rent is sacrificed.
494

CHAPTER XVIIL

WAGES IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.

The Rate of Wages and the Price of Food—Pressure on the Operatives in Factories
and the Weavers—Machine Breaking —The Manufacturing Districts worst off
-—Causes raising Wages—These not Operative till Late—Difficulties in the
formation of Labour Partnerships and their Management. The Competition
of Capitalists, and its Effects on Labour—Recent Events—Effects of a Relaxa-
tion of Foreign Tariffs—The Depreciated Currency of the War—Abrogation
of the Quarter Sessions Assessment—The Allowance System—lIllustrations of
its Working—The Abolition of Compulsory Apprenticeship—The Defence of
Apprenticeship—The Objection to it—The Cost of the War—Hostility of
Capitalists to the Workmen's Advance—Their Sinister Predictions— Animosity
felt by the Workman towards the Combination Laws—Hume’s Committee—
The Unions—The Agricultural Labourer—History of his Wages and the Poor
Law—The Factory Acts not Extended to the Children of Peasants—
Agricultural Gangs—Mr. Girdlestone—Joseph Arch—The Difficulties of an
Agricultural Labourers’ Union—The Work of the Primitive Methodists—The
Attitude of the Farmers Erroneous—The Moral Education of Labour
Partnerships—The Present Position of Agriculture.

URING the first twenty years of the nineteenth century,

the price of wheat was on an average 98s. 6d. a quarter,

2.é., 16'4 times the rate which prevailed on an average for the
280 years in which there was practically no variation in
money values, beyond those which arose from exceptional
scarcity. In the year 1800, when the working man was
within the range of this extraordinary exaltation in the price
of his food, the average wages of artizans were 18s. a week
in London. They gradually rose by about 75 per cent.
during the years of dearth, being generally highest in the
years which were characteristicalily dear. When greater.
plenty prevailed, they fell. In the country they were about
one-third less than they were in London. It does not appear
that artizans had their wages supplemented by the allowance
Inventions and Wages. 495

system, for when, in 1824, Lord John Russell moved for a
committee to inquire into the consequences of a practice which
had now become general, and drew his motion in such general
terms as to include all kinds of labour, Mr. Peel objected
that the reference to the committee would include superfluous
subjects, and, in consequence, the inquiry was limited to
agricultural wages.

These wages, which I shall refer to more particularly, in so
far as evidence is forthcoming, further on in this chapter, were
largely supplemented by parish allowances. The maximum
sum expended in the relief of the poor under the old law was
in 1818, when it was nearly eight millions, or 13s. 9d. per head
of the population. The factory hand was even worse off than
the labourer, and, as machinery was gradually being introduced
into the manufacture of textile fabrics, the hand-loom weaver
was worst off of all. Great as was the demand for labous
under the new system, it was, unfortunately, not countervailed
by an increase of real wages, hardly of nominal wages, for the
demand was for both sexes and nearly all ages. But the
severest penury fell on those who had been, in the older days
of manufacture, the specially skilled artizans in textile fabrics,
for the effect of machinery is to reduce labour as much as
possible to the functions of attention and guidance. The
weavers, therefore, who either could not or would not accom-
modate themselves to the new order of things, suffered the
direst reverses. It was no wonder that they looked on
machinery with the profoundest hostility, that riots and
machine breaking were frequent, and that the bitterest
animosities were engendered. Thus in 1811-12, stocking and
lace frames had been applied to the staple manufactures of
Nottingham, and the discontented labourers, foreseeing or
fancying that their livelihood would be imperilled, broke into
houses and destroyed frames. The legislature thereupon
passed an Act inflicting, as usual, the punishment of death on
the frame-breakers. The Act only lasted two years; but
on the occasion of its second reading, Lord Byron warmly
attacked it, and recommended that if the Act were carried, it
should be so amended as to provide that the jury should
496 Wages in the Nineteenth Century.

always consist of twelve butchers, and that a judge of the
temper of Jefferies should be always engaged to preside in
the court. Such a judge would not have been hard to find
at that time.

It is easy to prove that the great movement of modern
days, the employment of mechanical in the place of human
forces, operates ultimately in cheapening produce and in
bettering the wages of labour. But until that is brought
about, the producers on the old lines may be subjected to
severe privations. Nay, unless precautions are taken against
the abuse of labour on the part of employers, it is very possible
that the mass of those who work under the new system may
sink into a lower position than that which they previously
occupied when they were engaged with the old. The efficiency
of labour may, by the use of mechanical expedients, be greatly
enhanced, but unless the demand for labour is simultaneously
enlarged, the profits of the employer may be increased enor-
mously, while the wages of the workmen may even be lessened.
Such a result may be further assisted by the temporary
monopoly of patents. That the patents of Arkwright and Peel
secured enormous fortunes for these inventors or purchasers
of inventions we all know, that they ultimately cheapened
production is equally clear; that they gave England well-
nigh a monopoly in the supply of textile fabrics is as manifest ;
but it does not strictly follow that the English workman was
better paid. The handloom weaver was undoubtedly im-
poverished, but I do not find that the machine weaver bettered
his position. His wages remained low, his means were even
straitened, and the misery of the manufacturing districts was
even greater than that of the agricultural.

There are three processes by which the wages of artizans
may be increased concurrently with the adoption and develop-
ment of mechanical appliances. Any of these has its effect
on the fortunes of labour, and as they have worked together,
though at a comparatively recent period, they have had a
marked influence on their wages, in results which can be clearly
traced. They are restraints imposed by law on the employ-
ment of labour; restraints imposed by the joint action of
Causes whith Increase Wages. 497

‘labourers ; and the competition of capitalists as producers.
Further, since the existence of such restraints and such a
competition sharpen those inventive faculties which are ever
on the look out for the means by which the process of pro-
duction is cheapened, and when, in addition to these causes,
there is the further stimulant of a market restricted by the
policy of other countries, and therefore only open under the
conditions of such a further cheapening as will enable the
product to get over the barrier of foreign protection, the
most powerful stimulants are applied to mechanical intelligence
and productive invention.

Now for the early part of the nineteenth century, for nearly
the first half of it, these conditions did not exist concurrently
with the development of mechanical appliances. There was
no control put on the employment of the young in any calling,
and the manufacturer who had cheapened his production by
the introduction of machinery could add to his profits by the

employment of children in that kind of work which, under an
earlier system, was carried on by adults. He could further,
the poverty of workmen assisting the silence of law, make a
saving by paying his wages, in part at least, by tallies on a shop
which belonged to himself, and could add the profits of retail
trade to the profits of cheap labour. The Factory Acts, which
prohibited the employment of some persons altogether, and
regulated the hours: during which some other persons
could be employed, increased the wages of labour absolutely
and relatively, and, as has been shown, without diminishing,
as also did the prohibition of the truck or tally system, the
legitimate profits of the employer. The restraints which
could be imposed by the joint action of labourers, though
legally possible at an earlier date, were very slow in their
operation. The illegal combination, branded asa conspiracy
and sometimes treated as a felony, was certain to resort to
violent action when its aims were thwarted, and in the earlier days
of its imperfect legality constantly outraged the liberty which
it purposed to secure. The trade unions of the earlier period
had very much to unlearn, in that they were to substitute
confidence for distrust, prudence and judgment for haste and

32
498 Wages in the Nineteenth Century.

rash action, conciliation for force, foresight for passion, and a
careful interpretation of their powers in place of headlong
vengeance for the wrongs which they conceived that they were
still suffering. They who try to combine individual forces and
purposes, and to substitute joint-stock action, with its methodi-
cal subservience to a central authority, for independent action,
find that they may make serious errors before they discover the
proper use of the new powers which they are wielding. The
founders of the Bank of England collected subscriptions from
their shareholders, and applied them with ail the judgment
they possessed in a novel way to trade and finance. During
the first twenty years of its existence, the managers of the
Bank committed errors which, had it not been for the great
commercial and political value of the institution, would have
been fatal to its existence. The errors and failures of joint-
stock enterprise have been incessant and disastrous. The
railway passenger in England would be providing ample
dividends to the shareholders in those companies if he paid a
half-penny a mile on the most convenient conveyance, had
not these undertakings been permanently burdened, and their
nominal capital increased threefold by the blunders of those
who projected them, by the rapine of those who gave them
a legal status, and by the follies and recklessness of those who
have managed them.

But no undertaking requires more care, more prudence,
more tact, more patience, more watchfulness, than the applica.
tion of the joint-stock principle to labour. In the first place,
persons whose means are exceedingly slender have to make a
sacrifice for an object highly advantageous if it can be
secured, but the success of which is always problematical and
generally doubtful. In the next, they have to surrender their
judgment to the determination of those who have to interpret
the most difficult of problems,—the question whether the
market for labour will bear the cessation of labour. My
readers are aware that the leaders and managers of labour
partnerships have very rarely formed a correct estimate of
the powers at their disposal, and the powers which they
strive to resist and overcome, for the immediate object of a
Causes which Increase Wages. 499

strike has only occasionally been obtained. In the next, they
who combine for these ends have the mortification of knowing
and seeing that their sacrifices and labours in the machinery
of their organization are made by a small portion of the
order to which they belong, while the benefit of their action,
if it be successful, is shared by those who decline to participate
in the movement, and even take advantage of the occasion to
baffle those who assert, and with perfect sincerity, that they
are labouring for the common good of all their fellows. I do
not wonder that passion and violence have in past times
accompanied the action of trade unions, when the promoters
and members of them have felt that they were thwarted, not
by the resistance of employers, but by the selfishness, as
they hold it, of those who profit by their policy and take
advantage of them in the crisis of their struggles.

The third cause which has affected favourably the position
of labour and wages is the competition of capitalists, aggra-
vated, though not perhaps adversely affected, by the restrictions
put on foreign markets. This competition is rendered intense
by the occurrence from time to time of exceptional demand
and of real or imaginary scarcities. Thus the waste of wealth
and the demand for foreign products consequent upon the
civil war in America added largely to the permanent industries
of this country, and induced the investment of great masses
of capital in undertakings from which the capital could not
be extricated or the capitalist disengage himself. Within ten
years of this event, a war, brief in its duration but exceedingly
destructive and dislocating, occurred in Europe. By a financial
blunder of the gravest kind, the vanquished nation was called
upon to pay a vast ransom to the victor. This, a new capital,
was at once thrown on the market, and beyond doubt Germany
paid, in enhanced prices and inflated but unsafe activity, far
more than she exacted. Now the waste of wealth, which had
to be restored by foreign imports in the one country, and the
vast exaltation of prices, which for a time levelled the dam
of protection in the other, called other masses of English
capital into active and permanent investments for such
industries as were stimulated at the time. Hence, with
500 Wages in the Nineteenth Century.

increasing production, we hear of declining profits and un
remunerative trade. But, on the whole, wages have not
declined. The phenomenon, often adverted to in these pages,
that a time of low prices is a time of good wages, has been
exhibited during the last ten years. I make no doubt that
there are compensations. It is admitted that the efficiency
of labour in attention, rapidity, and exactness keeps pace
with the growing perfection of the machinery which it
manipulates ; that the special skill of the mill-hand is getting
more marked and complete; and that, perhaps, were it not
for the increasing number of those who share in the employers’
profit, the cheapening of the process would more than com-
pensate for the cheapness of the product.

Undoubtedly, if a relaxation of foreign tariffs were to take
place, this concurrent efficiency of machinery and labour in
England, which, as far as I can observe, is far greater than
in any country which I have visited, would be followed by a
large increase of profits, and, relatively speaking, a far larger
increase of wages. At present I believe that the workmen
of this country, speaking of them in the mass, are better paid
than those of any other settled and fully peopled community,
if one takes into account not merely the money wages which
they earn, but the power which these wages have over com-
modities. But the rise is entirely of the last thirty years,
and, unfortunately, it has not been shared by all in equal
proportion, while the case of some has been rendered worse.

The distress of the English workman during the earlier
years of the nineteenth century was heightened by the issue
of a depreciated paper currency. The history of that deprecia-
tion, the causes which brought it about, and the consequences
which followed from it, have been told so exactly and so
exhaustively by Mr. Tooke, that, in my opinion, that branch
of monetary science which is concerned with the functions of
paper currency has had no substantial addition to it since he
wrote, though one frequently meets with the heresies and the
fallacies which this acute writer detected or refuted by antici-
pation. The effects of the depreciated currency fell, as usual,
“ith more severity on labour, and on those generally who had
The Growth of Wages. 501

small incomes, than it did on those who could interpret the
discount on the currency, and make a profit by their interpre-
tation. In 1813, the premium on gold—ze., the depreciation of
the paper—was nearly thirty per cent., and nominal wages were
therefore in reality little more than two-thirds of their reputed
value. The injury which was done to all was made a pretext
for continuing the mischief beyond the time in which it could
have been removed; but it has often been found to be the
case in the economical history of England that a demonstrated
wrong has been defended and its continuance supported on
the plea that to do justice to the many would inflict a loss on
the few.

In 1814, the quarter sessions assessment and the compulsory
apprenticeship enacted by the Act of Elizabeth were abrogated.
They had done their work thoroughly, and the regulation of
the labourers’ wages had been so completely successful that they
were made mechanically to follow the price of food—a sure
proof that wages are down to the level of subsistence.
Thenceforward they were regulated by the farmers and the
employers. There had been symptoms already that the
justices were a little too considerate of the labourers’ neces-
sities. Besides, the Speenhamland Act, as it was called, of
1795, had authorized the allowance system, under which the
employer of labour paid half the wages, and the ratepayers,
employers or not, contributed the other half. The farmers,
therefore, had only to meet together, when wheat was I00s.
a quarter, and meat by the carcase was 74d. a pound (having
been less than half the price twenty years before), and
agree that they would pay their workmen a shilling a day,
with the rider that the rest of the public should pay him
another shilling, which they took care to assess, collect, and
distribute at their discretion. It is no wonder that, except
in the fact that the breadth of arable land was greatly
increased, and that locally certain improvements were made
in the breed of sheep, very little real progress was made in
agriculture during the sixty years between 1780 and 1840.
The Board of Agriculture, over which Young presided with
such efficiency and diligence, was dissolved, and agriculture
502 Wages in the Nineteenth Century.

has never since, unfortunately, been made the object of a
department of State. For some unexplained reason, the
political party which has had the principal management of
public affairs since the first Reform Bill has always been
averse to the revival of this department, and their rivals,
who are perpetually talking about the necessity for it when
out of office, have as strangely neglected to renew it when
they have been in.

Vicious, demoralizing, and unjust as the allowance system
was in principle, it occasionally gave an opportunity to indi-
viduals who had sufficient prudence and thrift to make use of
it. In my native village in Hampshire, I well remember two
instances of agricultural labourers who raised themselves
through the machinery of the allowance system to the rank
and fortunes of small yeomen. Both had large families, and
both practised a bye industry. The village was peculiar in
its social character, for there was not a tenant-farmer in it, all
being freeholders or copyholders. The rector was opulent
and generous, and there were a few persons of some private
means in the parish. But, on the whole, the rates and the
allowances came from the resources of occupying owners, and
were, therefore, the contribution of the vestry from its own
resources, the only non-employers being one or two humble
tradesmen, the rector, and a country gentleman, whose house
and grounds were not a hundred acres in extent. There was
no poverty in the whole place. Most of the labourers baked
their own bread, brewed their own beer, kept pigs and poultry,
and had hali-an-acre or an acre to till for themselves as part
of their hire. But they had regulated wages, and, when their
families were large, allowances, There were not infrequent
sales of land in the village, as families came to an end, but
rarely in large quantities. The rector built extensively, par-
sonage, schools, and finally church, from his own means, and,
therefore, employment was pretty general. The village mason
became a considerable yeoman. But the two labourers of
whom I am speaking had their allowances, lived on their
fixed wages with the profits of their bye labour, one being
pig-killer to the village, and, therefore, always busy from
Indirect Consequences of the Allowance. 503

Michaelmas to Lady-day, at a shilling a pig, and the offal,
on which his family subsisted, with the produce of their small
curtilage for half the year. In the end, the allowance, saved
scrupulously, and, I presume, made a profound secret, was
invested in land by each. The one bought some forty acres
of poor soil, on which he got a comfortable and independent
living; the other some twenty, on which he did still better,
for the land was some of the best in the village.

The abolition of compulsory apprenticeships in such call-
ings as were specified in the Act of Elizabeth, or had been
interpreted to come under its conditions, and the settlement
of wages by the quarter sessions assessment or other magis-
terial authority, was not considered a boon by the artizans in
1814. In the first place, the repeal of Elizabeth’s Act was
demanded by the employers of labour, and it was, therefore,
suspicious. In the next, the legislature from time to time
had referred trade disputes between employers and employed
to certain permanent authorities. Besides, the capitalists
were exceedingly averse to any restraints on the employment
of apprentices under the old system; and it was concluded,
not without reason, that the repeal of the legal necessity
would be followed by a rush into the calling. It should be
remembered also that the change was effected at a time when
the distress of the working classes was the deepest, that the
avowed object of the repeal was to cheapen labour, and that
every effort was made then and thereafter to sharpen the
edge and expedite the use of the hateful laws which had been
constantly enacted up to 1800 against combinations of work-
men, and were still strictly enforced.

The defence of apprenticeship is two-fold. It secures, if
the apprentice is adequately taught, a supply of good work-
men, thoroughly instructed in the craft. It lessens the number
of persons employed in the calling, by putting an impediment
in the way of earning full wages. In the former of these ends
the public is interested, though it may be doubted whether,
in the absence of a trade regulation under which the workman
should refuse to work for a dishonest manufacturer, and
should be assisted by his union, and probably protected by
504 Wages in the Nineteenth Century.

the law, in case the denunciation is made a means of oppres-
sing him, the skill of the workman is not sometimes enlisted
in concealing the dishonesty of the employer. In the second
aim of those who insist on or advise apprenticeship, the trade
alone is concerned. The further precaution taken in some
callings of limiting the proportion of apprentices to journey-
men, though defensible on certain grounds, is much more
open to challenge. It is a restraint on the choice of callings,
and is, therefore, apparently at least, an injury to those who
are kept outside a calling which they would desire to enter.
Mr. Howell has stated the case in his work on capital and
labour with great fairness. But it would appear from his
own admissions that while up to 1814 the practice of un-
limited apprenticeship was general, and the results disastrous,
the abolition of the law and the consequent discontinuance of
the practice has been followed by an epoch of better and
continually increasing wages. Now, though wages were said
to have been less in the twenty years between 1820 and 1840
than they were in the previous twenty years, it is admitted ©
that the intrinsic value of these wages, as measured by their

purchasing power, was greatly increased. But if we can rely

on Mr. Leoni Levi’s figures, taken from the record of prices

paid at Greenwich from 1800 to 1820, and between 1821 and.
1840, we shall find that, in the former period, the rate of wages

as compared with the cost of food was at 55°25 to 232'5, the
first figure being the daily wages in pence, and the second

the aggregate cost in shillings of seven chief necessaries; while

in the latter period, the wages stand at 62°75, and the same

articles cost only 146°35. Wages, then, had actually risen, and

the price of the necessaries of life had greatly fallen.

The chief economical objection to apprenticeship, which has
not been anticipated by Mr. Howell, is that it tends to create
an ever-increasing residuum of unprotected labour. That
all human societies as they grow more populous will have a
proportionately larger element of helplessness, misery, and
crime within them, is apparently inevitable. It is most visible
in countries where emigration goes on largely from the best
and most vigorous stocks, and immigration into towns from
The Defence of Apprenticeship. 505

poorer districts and foreign countries is active; for when
immigration is from near localities, the least desirable addition
to the growing population is likely to take place. Now during
the existence of the famous Statute of Apprenticeship, the
residuum was driven to agricultural labour, or to the new
industries where apprenticeship did not prevail. That the
whole body of working men suffered greatly is only too
manifest ; that those callings suffered most which consisted
of the non-apprenticed classes is proved, if by nothing else,
by the resistance which the workmen made to the abolition
of the custom. The common defence for the limitation of
apprentices is that if bad times come, it is better for few to
suffer than that many should, and that the limitation of hands
is analogous to and identical with a limit of output in pro-
duction. But the answer is, that the restraint puts a perma-
nent suffering on those who would otherwise enter a better
paid calling, and reduces an increasing number to permanently
low wages.

In point of fact, the sufferings of the working-classes during
the dismal period on which I have dwelt might have been
aggravated by the practices of employers, and were certainly
intensified by the harsh partiality of the law; but they were
due in the main to deeper causes. Thousands of homes were
starved in order to find the means for the great war, the cost
of which was really supported by the labour of those who
toiled on and earned the wealth which was lavished freely,
and at good interest for the lenders, by the government.
The enormous taxation and the gigantic loans came from the
store of accumulated capital, which the employers wrung from
the poor wages of labour, or the landlords extracted from the
growing gains of their tenants. To outward appearance, the
strife was waged by armies and generals; in reality the resources
on which the struggle was based, and without which it would
have speedily collapsed, were the stint and starvation of
labour, the overtaxed and underfed toils of childhood, the
underpaid and uncertain employment of men. Wages were
mulcted in order to provide the waste of war, and the profits
of commerce and manufacture. It is no wonder that working-
506 Wages in the Nineteenth Century.

men have no great trust in government by party, for the two
great historical parties have fleeced and ground them down
with impartial persistence.

Employers have constantly predicted that ruin would come
on the great industries of the country if workmen were better
paid and better treated. They resisted, and have resisted up
to the present day, every demand which workmen have made
for the right of association, for the limitation of children’s and
women’s labour, for the shortening of hours, for the abolition
of truck, for the protection of their workmen’s lives and limbs
from preventible accidents, and are now appealing to the
doctrine of liberty of contract, after having for centuries
denied the liberty. This misconception as to the conse-
quences which would ensue from just and, as events have
proved, wise concessions, has not been due to a cunning
selfishness, but to the natural disinclination which all men
have to make those efforts which have always compensated
the loss which they thought that they foresaw, and have
frequently turned it into a gain. For it is a remarkable and
an indisputable result of those interferences with what is.
apparently free action, that when their justice or necessity
has been demonstrated, and the change or reform or re-
straint has been adopted, benefit instead of injury to the
imperilled interest, strength instead of weakness, have been
the consequence. The concession of the right of combination
was thought to be an infinite peril, and the workmen have
gradually learnt their proper strength, and what is far more
important, the strength and solidity of the calling in which
they are engaged, and the profits which are required in
order to secure its continuity and their employment. They
are getting to know what is the point at which cost wilh
cripple production, and may be safely trusted not to destroy
by excessive exactions that by which they live. The Factory
Acts were believed to be the death-blow to English manu-
facture, and they have made labour more efficient, more
intelligent, more decent, and more continuous, without
trenching on profits. Only three years ago, the legislature
determined on abolishing some of the fictions which lawyers
The Progress of Labour no Loss to Capital. 507

had induced over the theory of common employment, and
the same predictions of ruin were uttered. The law was.
passed, however, and a concession being made to the em--
ployers, under which, as is so often mischievously done, they
were allowed to contract themselves out of the law, they-
eagerly clutched at the opportunity, as though the whole
life of their industry depended on their being able to save
a few shillings a year in remedying the losses of their own.
heedlessness, or a few pounds which might, properly spent,.
obviate the risk and ensure that justice should be done.
The Parliament and the Law, which never do better work
than when they arbitrate between timid interests, have over
and over again by their action demonstrated the futility of
these apprehensions and the folly of these fears. The only
pity is, that Parliament has not had the courage to extend:
its action.

The old laws against combination and the doctrine of
trade conspiracies were so dangerously wide, so capricious.
and uncertain, that at last the exasperation and anger of
the workmen became excessive. The country was honey-
combed with secret societies, and political disaffection was.
coupled with social discontent. The complaints of hungry
workmen were met by the Peterloo massacre, and the
demands for political reform, which the workmen had beem
instructed to consider remedial, by the Six Acts. In the-
early history of the English people, the bias of judges and
law courts was directed towards the emancipation of the-
peasant and the maintenance of personal rights. The pro--
cess by which the serf became the copyholder was greatly
assisted by the interpreters of the common law. But from.
the days of the Stuarts, the judges were servile, timid, and:
the enemies of personal liberty. Over and over again
Parliament has interposed to sweep away precedents which.
have coerced natural liberty, and interpretations which have-
violated justice. For generations it seemed that the worst
enemies of public and private liberty were those courts.
whose duty it was to adjudicate equitably and to state
the law with fairness, The English people owes much
508 Wages in the Nineteenth Century.

to the perseyering acuteness of Bentham and the high-
minded courage of Romilly that it was delivered at last
from the Kenyons and the Eldons.

The credit of abolishing the combination laws is due to
Joseph Hume. He procured a committee in 1824, took
evidence, reported to the House, and obtained an instruction
from it to the Chairman of Committees that a Bill should
be drafted on the lines of eleven clauses dealing with the
combination laws, and four which examined the effect of
certain prohibitions put on artizans going abroad. The
Committee declared itself unable to express any opinion
on the propriety of removing the prohibition then put on the
exportation of machinery. The Bill appears to have passed
without debate or opposition, for I find no record of any
such debate in Hansard. The Act inflicted penalties on
such combinations as attempted to further their ends by
violence.

It was inevitable that the working classes should im-
mediately take advantage of the powers which the law had at
last awarded to them. For nearly five centuries law after law
had been passed under which the workman’s wages had been
regulated, for the reputed advantage of their employers,
The English law has never affected to fix the price of food,
though sometimes proclamations have pretended to do so, and
Jocal authority has occasionally been empowered to publish
fair prices. But when a scarcity of labour occurred, due to
natural causes, it attempted to control the claims of the work-
men. For more than two centuries the law was a complete
failure. For nearly three, as I have shown at length, it was
a complete success. Now it was entirely natural for the
workmen to believe that what they had gained at last was a
boon, since their employers had so long and so successfully
deprived them of its use. The employers and Parliament
became alarmed, and revised the Act of 1824, though they
did not venture on materially modifying it.

The ingenuity of the judges, always interested in the defence
of property and very little friendly to that of liberty, dis-
covered that the common law against combinations was stil]
The Slow Emancipation of Labour. 509

alive, and a series of prosecutions on false or frivolous grounds
was undertaken, convictions recorded, and punishments inflicted.
Mr. Howell has collected several instances of these trials, and
commentson the general dissatisfaction felt among working men
at the administration of the law. The ultimate emancipation
of trade unions or labour partnerships from the difficulties
and hindrances to which they were still exposed, and from
the disabilities which precedents had put on them, is of very
recent date. /

The condition of the agricultural labourer has been different
from that of the artizan. Scattered and incapable of combined
action with his fellows, bowed down by centuries of oppression,
hard usage, and hard words, with, as he believes, every social
force against him, the landlord in league with the farmer, and
the clergyman in league with both, the latter constantly
preaching resignation, and the two former constantly enforc-
ing it, he has lived through evil times. Under the allowance
system, he seems to have been guaranteed against starvation,
and under the law of parochial settlement he avenged himself
on some of his oppressors, though not on the worst, those
who, on one pretext or another, quartered him on another
parish, employed him on quarter sessions or farmers’ vestry
assessment wages, and left others to supplement his wages by
the allowance, and to support him when they had worn out
his body, as they had worn out his spirit long before. There
is nothing in the history of civilisation more odious than the
meanness of some English landlords, except it be their insolence.
They have been abetted by the foolish farmers, who ground
down their labourers in order to enrich the landlords, and
have finally sacrificed themselves to the rent-rolls of profli-
gates and gamblers.

The sharpest trial they had to bear was the wholesome
surgery of the new poor law. This famous measure, which
was so necessary, so harsh, so inopportune, so unjust, was
modelled on the practice which had been adopted in two
Nottinghamshire parishes, Southwell and Bingham, in the
former of which the workhouse test was organised by Sir
George Nicholls, in the latter by Mr. Lowe, the father of an
510 Wages in the Nineteenth Century.

eminent statesman and very rigid economist of the /azssez-
faire school. The experiment of these two parishes was
made the type of the new system. It is only just to say,
‘that what might have been fairly equitable to all, though still
‘severe in the last degree to the agricultural Jabourer, was
mutilated by the owners of the close parishes, who succeeded
‘in making others pay for the maintenance of their labourers,
.as all the landed interests had made the occupiers pay.

The average wages of the agricultural labourer, according
‘to Arthur Young’s calculations, had been 7s. 6d. a week from
1767 to 1789; 10s. from 1799 to 1803; and 12s. from 1804 to
1810. In 1811, they were 125.9d@. They continued at this
wate for three years; sunk about 17 per cent. from 1814 to
1818; about 20 per cent. more in 1819-20; about 12 per cent,
‘more in 1821; and 5 per cent. more in 1822. Then they
‘began to rise, and, according to Mr. Villiers’ returns in 1861,
wwere Qs. 4d. in 1824; 10s. 4a. in 1837; and IIs. 7a. in 1860.
In 1866, Mr. Levi sets them at 13s. It may be doubted,
however, whether these several increases of money wages
«were not, so far as the labourers were concerned, more than
counterbalanced by the increase of house rent, the curtailment
cof allotments and similar indirect aids to labour, to say
nothing of the excision of the allowances under the old poor
daw. In 1837, the cost of maintaining the poor was less than
in any year since 1800, and was three millions below what it
thad been in 1832, though the average price of wheat in the
‘former year was 58s. 8¢.; in the latter, 525. 62.,—a difference in
the ordinary consumption of a labourer’s family, as estimated
in bread, of about 4d. a week. The rise thus effected in 1837
probably represents the compensation for the loss of the
allowances, for some expenses under the new poor law were
considerably increased. I may add, that Young argued in
4813 that the wages of the agricultural labourer were below
dis necessary food, omitting all estimates as to house rent,
‘fuel, clothing, and extras,

The beneficent restraints of the Factory Acts were not
extended to the children of agricultural labourers engaged
as helps to:the paternal employment. Much of the activity
Agricultural Wages. 511

which assisted the agitation for those excellent acts and
insured their success, was the hostility felt by benevolent
landowners to over-prosperous manufacturers. Even if the
language employed by them did not warrant this inference,
and the tactics they adopted did not confirm such a con-
clusion, the fact that agricultural children were not protected
against premature labour would prove my contention. One
‘does not see why they should not have been protected. The
exposure of young children to weather, the custom of putting
them under brutal carters and ploughmen, the common prac-
tice of sending them to drive birds from newly-sown fields in
the most inclement seasons of the year, with scanty food and
clothing, was, I imagine, as likely to be injurious to their
health and growth as employment in mills. But the desire
to secure an increasing rent, to be procured by the stint of the
dabourer, is, I imagine, as keen a passion in the bosom of the
landlord as that of getting an increased profit from the un-
‘suitable labour of women and children or from the misery of
the factory hand has ever been in the constitution of the
manufacturer.

I do not remember, in the very extended study which I
have given to the history of agricultural labour and wages
during the six centuries for which there is recorded and con-
tinuous evidence, that, in the worst experiences of the labourer,
he was till very recently open to the risk of having his young
children of either sex taken from him, and put under the care
of a gangmaster, with a view to their labouring in the fields,
being housed for the night in barns, without the pretence of
decency, not to say comfort, and apart from the obvious
degradation of their condition, exposed to the coarse bru-
talities of the manager of children’s labour. But in the
Eastern Counties it appears to have been till recently the
practice, perhaps still is, for farmers to contract for the ser-
vices of agricultural gangs, 22, of crowds of children set to
work under an overseer who had hunted them up. The
practice, I remember, was defended on the ordinary ground
of cheap labour being a necessity for profitable agriculture,
which, when it is interpreted, means that tenant farmers are
512 Wages in the Nineteenth Century.

too cowardly to resist rents which they cannot pay, except
by the degradation of those whom they employ. That a
peasantry, underpaid and underfed, should be constrained to
submit their children to such an odious and demoralising
slavery, is unhappily intelligible; that the middle-man can be
found to undertake the office of such an agency, is a fact to
be regretted but expected ; that farmers should allow them-
selves to employ such an expedient, is scandalous; but that they
who pretend to consider the condition of the poor, and to be
active in the interests of humanity, should be complacent and
silent, is a negligence which ought to bring its punishment, or
is an acquiescence in ill-doing which I do not care to charac-~
terize.

Some twenty or more years ago, Mr. Girdlestone, a clergy-
man in a country parish in the west of England, and then or
subsequently a canon of Bristol, called attention to the miser-
able condition of agricultural labour in that part of England
with which he was familiar. The agricultural labourers of
Devon are more than ordinarily numerous, for within the
memory of man, a lucrative local industry, cloth weaving,
has decayed, and the ordinary population has been swollen
by the accession of unemployed weavers. Mr. Girdlestone
had the ordinary fate of those who attack the doings of the
landed interest. His better behaved opponents denied the
accuracy of his statements, and published their own account
of the facts. His rougher critics, the farmers, threatened him
with violence and the horse-pond. It is not quite clear that
his poor clients thought him their kindest friend in letting the
world know what was their condition, for employers in country
places have many opportunities of letting their workmen feel
that discontent or complaint, even if expressed by an advocate,
is dangerous. Quarter sessions’ justice is very often, appa-
rently, partial, but the tender mercies of farmers to their
labourers are the reverse of gentle. Nor, indeed, is there
much good done in calling attention to such facts as Mr.
Girdlestone disclosed, unless the remedy is clear and can be
applied immediately. Even the activity of the press, now far
more searching than it was twenty yéars ago, and the tender-
Messrs. Girdlestone and Arch. 513

ness of the public conscience, are apt to be transitory. Be-
sides, though modern England is curious and sensitive, we
may be certain that much unrecorded wrong is done. The
public prints do not know everything, and might find it
inconvenient to know everything.

Some years later, Joseph Arch, a Warwickshire peasant,
undertook the heroic task of rousing the agricultural labourer:
from his apathy, of bearding the farmers and the landowners,
and of striving to create an agricultural labourers’ union. I
believe that I was the first person in some position who
recognised his labours, by taking the chair at one of his
meetings, and I have been able to see how good his judgment
has been, how consistent his conduct, and how prodigious are
his difficulties. I believe he has done no little service to his
own order, but I conclude he has done more for the general
interests of labour, if only by showing how universal is the
instinct that workmen can better their condition only by joint
and united action. And it should be said, that other work-
men, trained for a longer period in the experience of labour
partnerships, have aided, and that not obscurely, the under-
taking in which Arch is engaged.

The difficulties in creating and maintaining a labour part-
nership of agricultural hands are very great. In the darkest
period of their history, artizans, even when their action was
proscribed by the law, still clung together, had common pur-
poses, took counsel, though secretly and in peril, and struck
against oppressively low wages. But for three centuries at
least, agricultural labourers have had no organization whatever
on behalf of their class interests. I shall have written in vain
if I have not pointed out how effectively the employers of
rural labour contrived to enslave and subdue them. It is
hard to see how any one could have hoped to move them.
But even when they were moved, it was still more difficult
to make the units cohere. I remember that an eminent.
clergyman of my acquaintance, now deceased, told me that
when he first took a country living,—some of Arch’s kindred
were among his domestic servants, and he was entirely friendly
to Arch’s policy,—nothing struck him more painfully than the

33
514 Wages in the Nineteenth Century.

evident suspicion with which the labourers in his parish met
kindness. He said that he very early despaired of their con-
fidence, for he noticed that invariably any trust he showed in
them was distrusted, was supposed to be tendered with the
object of overreaching them. I do not comment on the ex-
periences which must have induced this habit of mind on them,
but simply say that this was the material with which Arch
had to deal.

I am willing enough to admit that my clerical friend’s position
was more awkward than that of other persons. The landlord,
generally non-resident, is, ordinarily speaking, as unknown to
the English peasant as if he were a foreign potentate, and I
suspect that the Arcadian pictures we now and then get of the
peasant-labourer, his wages and his allowances from the great
house, are, with rare exceptions, rustic ornaments in the im-
mediate neighbourhood of the country seat, cottages with trim
gardens, with honeysuckles trained on the walls, and neat
borders of old-fashioned flowers in the little garden by the
road, the creations of a benevolent despot, who from some good-
nature and more ostentation keeps his poorer neighbours in
apparent content. But the peasant who has to do with the
tenant-farmer enjoys none of these amenities, and the parson
who took the peasant’s part would be thwarted in a hundred
ways, and perhaps threatened with the horse-pond. I do not
doubt that most country clergymenare kindly and conscientious,
but they are poor hands at arbitrating between employers and
labourers ; and when the former are farmers and the latter are
hinds, I have generally found that the clergy put a personal
interpretation on the apostle’s advice, and seek to live peace-
ably with all men.

But though, being one of their order, the advocate of an
agricultural union occupies a more independent and more con-
fidential position than the intelligent parish clergyman, the tem-
per of the peasants must be, even to an enthusiast, no easy
instrument to play on. He has to combat with the persistent
apathy of despair. He has to contend with the sluggishness
of ignorance. He has to interpret the habitual mendacity
of distrust. He has to rebuke the low cunning with which
The Difficulties of a Leader of Peasants. 515

the oppressed shirk duty, for only those who are worthy
can take a good part in the emancipation of the English
serf. I well remember that a friend of mine, earnestly
anxious to better his labourers on his model farm, gave
them high wages, regular work, and showed them infinite
consideration. At last he despaired and sold his property,
because they thought him, in their poor puzzled way, a
fool; and he found that he had made them worse knaves
than he found them.

Again, such a man, constrained to be a leader of men,
is obliged to assert an authority and exercise a decision,
which others, inevitably less informed, cannot understand
and are loath to submit to. This difficulty is universal.
The most awkward persons to deal with when debate is
meeded are two mobs, one of uneducated, and the other
of fairly educated persons; for the former are generally
suspicious, the latter generally conceited. Neither will con-
cede to the expert unless there is danger, or till patience
wearies conceit. The greatest difficulty, we are told, even
with the comparatively well trained artizan, is willing obe-
dience to necessary discipline. It is said that the ill-success
which has attended various schemes of co-operation has
been due to the disinclination of operatives to obey the
necessary orders of one who is of their own order, whom
they have invested with authority. They will obey an
overlooker whom their employer selects, even though his
rule be harsh and severe; but it is not so easy to induce
them to acquiesce in the directions of those whom they
could depose at their pleasure. But the difficulty is greater
the less instructed persons are, and the less familiar they
are with the process by which the reality of liberty is achieved,
—by the sacrifice of a portion of liberty itself. I have heard
that in Mr. Arch’s efforts he has been constantly baffled for
a time by revolts from the necessary authority with which
the manager of a labour organization must be invested.

Again, the scattered character of the agricultural population
must needs be a great difficulty in the way of adequately
organizing them. The heads of a trade union in towns can
516 Wages in the Nineteenth Century.

summon their men speedily ; and take action, if action seems
desirable, promptly. But it is far more difficult to manipu-
late the scattered elements of an agricultural union, especially
when the hostility to it is so marked, as has been generally
shown, and the opportunities of giving effect to that hostility
are so numerous. I do not believe that the mass of peasants
could have been moved at all, had it not been for the organiza-
tion of the Primitive Methodists, a religious system which, as far
as I have seen its working, has done more good with scanty
means, and perhaps, in some persons’ eyes, with grotesque
appliances for devotion, than any other religious agency. I
have often found that the whole character of a country parish
has been changed for the better by the efforts of those rustic
missionaries, who possess many of the qualities, and have
reproduced not a little of the discipline which the preaching
friars of the thirteenth, and the Lollard Bible-men of the
fourteenth and fifteenth century displayed or enforced. I
believe it is true that all successful religious movements have
aimed at heightening the morality and improving the material
condition of those whom they have striven to influence.

The poverty of the agricultural labourer is a serious bar to
the organization of the order. If trade unions have done, as
I feel persuaded they have, much to raise the moral and
better the material condition of artizans and operatives,
they still cost money. I see from the excellent and, on the
whole, complete apology for trade unions written by Mr.
George Howell, that the charges put on the members by the
machinery of the union of engineers amounts to an annual
average of £1 17s. 2d. for the last six-and-twenty years ; and,
if I remember, my friend Mr. Broadhurst told the foreign
workmen at the Paris conference, that the funds necessary for
the mechanism which he recommended would be a shilling a
week from every member. But though the work of an agri-
cultural union is greater than that of an urban association, there
is no hope that peasants will be able to contribute at this rate.
The economies of the agricultural labourers’ union are rigid
the expenditure is cut down to the narrowest limits.

Iam persuaded that the jealousy which the farmers feel

*
The Value of Agricultural Unions. 517

and the resentment which they express against Arch and his
union are mistaken. The first condition under which a work-f
man can be expected to be honest and intelligent, efficient and
effective, is that he should have a sense ofself-respect. Halfa
man’s worth, says the Greek poet, is taken away on the day
that he becomes a slave. The increase in the labourer’s pay,
if it be obtained, will be much more than compensated by
the moral education which he has got by submitting to
discipline and by understanding the principles of a labour
partnership. When working men make a free contract, and
they can never make such a contract as individuals, I am
persuaded that they will make more intelligent and more
beneficial bargains for the use of their labour than they ever
will if they are hindered from corporate and collective action,
remain under the impression that their wages are fixed without
any discretion on their part, or are constantly called upon to
defend or apologize for what they believe is their undoubted
right,—a right which no consistent economist would dispute.
The public is profoundly interested in the efficiency and the
independence of the working man. By the former the indus-
trial success of the country is guaranteed and secured. In the
datter, there lies the only hope that we shall ever be able to
realize in our day what the trade guilds of the middle ages
aimed at, and in some directions unquestionably secured,—
the character of the workman, as contained in his moral and
professional reputation, and the excellence of the work which
he turned out, to say nothing of the practical refutation of
social fallacies. Among the members of the Agricultural
Labourers’ Union, sobriety, independence of publiccharity, and
education, are conditions. The trade unions of London and
other large towns do not perhaps exercise the moral discipline
over their members which they might do if their fellows more
generally enlisted in the system, and they will do, as they get
stronger and better informed. But Iam abundantly convinced
that the English trade unionists include in their numbers the
most intelligent, conscientious, and valuable of the working
men.

I have referred to the difficulties which beset those who
518 Wages in the Nineteenth Century.

strive by the machinery of trade partnership to better the
condition of the agricultural labourer. At all times they
would be many, but they are sensibly enhanced at the present
time. It is patent to every one, that a vast amount of
English land is going out of tillage. It is known that the
value of land during the last five years has sunk to panic
prices, for much of the price of land was due to the expecta-
tion, realized during three centuries, that agricultural land would
continually rise in value. Now the mischief cannot have come
from lowered prices, for they are incontestably higher than they
were ten years ago. It cannot have come from the fact that |
effective agriculture is a lost art; for if one takes every
particular in the schedule of the conditions under which
agriculture is successful, the progress of the art in the United
Kingdom is as remarkable and as continuous as it possible to
conceive it. Agricultural machines are better, breeds of animals
are better, seeds are vastly better, manures have been multi-
plied by chemical skill and tested by elaborate experiments,
and in every direction progress of a solid and substantial kind
has been made. But in spite of all this, there is serious
agricultural depression and serious national loss. For once,
at least, the complaints of the farmers are substantial, for they
have in numbers abandoned their calling.

There is only one explanation possible for the decline of agri-
cultural profit. It must be that the income is not proportioned
to the outlay, that the cost of agriculture with a number of
individuals who have hitherto followed the calling has been
excessive. Now there may be four causes for this result, any
one of which would be serious, but all together may be now,
as in past times, fatal. They are, first, insufficient capital ;
second, excessive rent; third, insecure tenure; fourth, in-
efficient labour. No writer on agriculture has ever hesitated
to ascribe disastrous consequences to the occurrence of any
one of these incidents. What may we expect if all four are
coincident? That there are many agriculturists who during
the last few years have escaped these evils I can readily
believe. But that many have failed through the pressure of
the whole is manifest. And it should be remembered that
The Decline of Agricultural Profit. 519

excessive rent is a relative term; that rent is excessive to
one farmer which is easy to another; and to discover what
was the rent that not only the land but the cultivator could
bear should have been, as it assuredly has not been, the
business of the landowner and his too often most dangerous
adviser, the agent or surveyor. Of this I am convinced, that
the effect of unpropitious seasons has been trivial when
compared with the other causes. Foreign competition has
had no effect except in the muddled and selfish heads of
protectionists, as may be proved by obvious and measurable
facts. Whether the partial and halting security which the
late Act gives to the tenant will have any solid effect is too
problematical for any one to anticipate.

The inefficiency of agricultural labour, its alternate scarcity
and abundance, is, I believe, to be admitted. Low wages,
harsh usage, and the temptation of advantage in other
localities, explain much of the evil. Perhaps changes in the
mode of cultivation, the extension of pasture, and the use of
machinery may have contributed in some slight degree. But
the most hopeful prospect in this direction appears to me to
lie in the extension of union principles among agricultural
labourers. It is quite possible to pay too little for labour.
Low wages, as economists have frequently demonstrated, do
not always mean cheap labour. What Young says about
land, that you cannot give too little for poor soil or too
much for good soil, is true of your workmen. Some few
years ago, an eminent agriculturist of my acquaintance told
me that he preferred to have union men on his land, and
bore testimony to their sobriety, steadiness, and integrity.
Discontent with one’s lot is not always a vice; it may be the
prelude to many virtues, the parent in the end of that which
its timid or jealous critic would be the first to welcome. It
seems that the foolish and frantic calumnies which have been
told about’ labour partnerships have this foundation. They
who utter these statements are uneasy at the supreme utility
of labour, and are afraid that it will destroy public prosperity.
Labour knows the conditions of its existence and continuity
better. Meanwhile the retention of foolish and suicidal privi
520 Wages in the Nineteenth Century.

leges has created a dangerous interest, as yet wild and
undefined, about the relation in which the people of England
stand to the land of England. The lack of wisdom and
foresight is, I am convinced, more prevalent among those
who have governed the nation than in the nation whom they
have governed
521

CHAPTER XIX,

THE PRESENT SITUATION.

Summary of the Preceding Statements—Mr. Newmarch’s Inferences—Labour
Partnerships—Views of Senicr, Thornton, and Mill—Trade Unionists and
Political Economists—Certain Writers and their Views—Utility of Rigid
Theories — The Statesman’s and the Social Philosopher’s Use of these
Theories—Effect of Interference with the Natural Development of Society
—This Universal in all Civilised History—The Services of Political Economy
to Free Trade—The Distribution of Wealth, its Importance in the Theory—
Restraints on Some Labour Necessary—The Remaining Facts of the Past
which need Reform—The Land System and Local Taxation, Exceptional
Advantages Given in Each to Certain Classes, and the Results—Rent of Land
in Towns—Mr. George—Effects of Putting Local Taxat’on on Occupiers, on
Public Opinion, un the Value of Land—Incidence of Local Taxation—The
Common Statement—The Fact—Effects on Agriculture, Trade, Labour—
The Practice in America—The Effect on Workimen of State Paid Dwellings
~—Comparison of Fifteenth Century Wages in Building Trades and Present
Rates—Women’s Wages at the Two Epochs—Allowances other than Wages
now and then—Effects of Machinery on Agriculture—The Old Day of Eight
Hours—The Character of the Work Done under it—Effects of Great Business
in which Labour is Employed—Spontaneous Increases of Wages—Power and
Weakness of Labour—The Course of History.

HAVE now, I trust, stated with sufficient distinctness
the facts which bear on the history of wages and labour

for six centuries in England. The evidence is taken from
unimpeachable sources, from the record of what was
actually paid, and the power which the wages earned had
over the necessaries and conveniences of life. For nearly half
the period, I have myself supplied all the evidence from
which the inferences have been derived, or could be as yet.
For another century I have relied on the notes which I
have already collected for the history of prices during the
period extending from the middle of Elizabeth’s reign to
the accession of Anne. For the rest I have trusted to Arthur
522 The Present Situation.

Young and Eden to the end of the eighteenth; to Tooke,
Porter, and others for the nineteenth. I have been able, I
hope, to discover and explain the special causes which.
affected the labourer from the middle of the sixteenth
century to the end of the first quarter in the nineteenth.
I have shown that from the earliest recorded annals, through
nearly three centuries, the condition of the English labourer
was that of plenty and hope, that from perfectly intelligible
causes it sunk within a century to so low a level as to make
the workmen practically helpless, and that the lowest point
was reached just about the outbreak of the great war be-
tween King and Parliament. From this time it gradually
improved, till in the first half of the eighteenth century,
though still far below the level of the fifteenth, it achieved.
comparative plenty. Then it began to sink again, and the
workmen experienced the direst misery during the great
continental war. Latterly, almost within our own memory
and knowledge, it has experienced a slow and partial im-
provement, the causes of which are to be found in the
liberation of industry from protective laws, in the adoption:
of certain principles which restrained employment in some
directions, and most of all in the concession to labourers of
the right so long denied, of forming labour partnerships.
Though the materials before him were exceedingly inade-
quate, and in many particulars quite untrustworthy, my late
friend Mr. Newmarch, one of the very few persons who have
been competent to interpret related statistics, discovered and
announced in the last volume of the “ History of Prices,” that
the best condition of the English workmen was during the
fifteenth century, and subsequently, but in a less degree, in
the first half of the eighteenth; the worst in the first half
of the seventeenth and in the first quarter of the nineteenth.
The periods, however, for which his information was defective
were the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries, for one of which,
till I published my third and fourth volumes, no evidence
of value had been adduced; for the other, none has been
printed. I am glad to have the opportunity of referring
here to the great synthetical abilities of my late friend, the
The Critecesm of Political Economists. 523;

more so because one is so constantly vexed by the rashness
of many who attempt the work of one who did it so well.
and thoughtfully, and even put their names to it.

My reader will observe that I set great store by the
reparative energy of labour partnerships or trade unions in
improving the material prospects of the working classes..
These institutions were repressed with passionate violence and.
malignant watchfulness as long as it was possible to do so..
When it was necessary to relax the severities of the older:
laws, they were still persecuted by legal chicanery whenever:
oppression could on any pretence be justified. As they were
slowly emancipated, they have constantly been the object
of alarmist calumnies and sinister predictions. I donot speak:
of the language used by newspapers and reviews which merely
take the capitalist side of the question and give anonymous.
utterance to the passion of the hour. Far graver were the
allegations of such persons as Senior and Thornton, econo-
mists whom I knew and respected for their clearness of
sight and the excellence of their intentions. Even my friend
Mr. Mill treated these forces of industrial life with a strange
indifference. I confess to having at one time viewed them
suspiciously ; but a long study of the history of labour has.
convinced me that they are not only the best friends of the
workman, but the best agency for the employer and the
public, and that to the extension of these associations
political economists and statesmen must look for the
solution of some among the most pressing and the most
difficult problems of our own time. I shall hope to show
this after I have dealt with the facts of the present situation.

The trade unionists speak with considerable bitterness of
political economists, and with some reason. The ordinary
teaching of political economy admits as its first definition
that wealth is the product of labour; but it seldom ‘tries to
point out how the producer should obtain the benefit of his
own product. It treats of the manner in which wealth is.
produced, and postpones or neglects the consideration of the
process by which it is distributed, being, it seems, attracted
mainly by the agencies under which it is accumulated.
524 The Present Situation.

Writers have been habituated to estimate wealth as a general
does military force, and are more concerned with its con-
centration than they are with the details of its partition. It
is not surprising that this should be the case. Most writers
on political economy have been persons in opulent or at least
in easy circumstances. They have witnessed, with profound or

interested satisfaction, the growth of wealth in the classes to

which they belong, or with which they have been familiar or
intimate. In their eyes the poverty of industry has been a
puzzle, a nuisance, a problem, asocial crime. They have every
sympathy with the man who wins and saves, no matter how;
but they are not very considerate for the man who works.
Ricardo, an acute stockbroker, went so far as to say that there
should be no taxation of savings, so profound was his interest
in the process of accumulation by individuals. It was strange
that he did not see that the only fund which can be taxed is
what the individual may save. To tax what he must spend is
to destroy industry.

In point of fact, ordinary political economy does not go
further than to describe the process and some of the conse-
quences of a state of war. The war is industrial, in which
each man is striving to get the better of his neighbour, to
beat him in the struggle for existence. Malthus and the elder
Mill laid down the Darwinian hypothesis before the modern
prophet of the physical life of the future and the past began
to speculate on natural forces. Malthus, a most excellent
and benevolent person, was so convinced that the limitation
of what produces wealth should be effected in the interests of
wealth, that he proposed to do away with all relief to desti-
tution. The elder Mill endorsed the dismal and absurd
theorem of Ricardo that the production of food was obtained
only in diminishing quantities by increased labour, and his son
insisted on it with pious zeal. John Mill was so impressed
with the risk of over-population that he hints, not obscurely,
at unqualified restraint, at even more than the coercion of
prudential foresight. It is needless to add that these

writers magnify the function of the capitalist employer, are

ander the impression that capital can be transferred from
Their Narrow Inferences. 525

object to object with almost the facility of a balance from
one banker to another Danker, and are alarmed at the risk
that national wealth may be sacrificed by a change in the
relation which exists at any given time between profits and
wages. Nothing illustrates this alarm better than Mr. John
Mill’s famous paradox that the fund available for paying
wages was a fixed quantity. The countenance which he gave
to this doctrine has been made the basis of a perennial attack
on trade unions. It insists on the inference that when the
representatives of one industry strive to better themselves,
they can do so only at the expense of other labourers. This
doctrine, which Mill at last saw was an error, has been the
greatest difficulty in the way of the trade unions, It is as
baseless in industrial life as the quadrature of the circle is in
mathematics. But this postulate would not, I think, have
been gravely alleged had not Mr. Mill been affected by the
supreme significance of the production of accumulated wealth,
the ideal of the speculative economists.

It is exceedingly useful for men to know what will be the
consequences of an industrial war, of a struggle for existence
in society, of the results of that kind of competition, in which
the strongest is entitled to use all his strength, and the
weakest is to be judged, not by his utility, but by his success
in the scramble. In these days we are told that the inferences
of the economist are only tendencies. Had they been verita-
ble, living realities, society would have long since collapsed,
for they would have left only the alternative of two conditions
—the relentless despotism of the few, or the anarchy of the
many. I do not believe that, however great are the forces at
the control of government, the logical consequences of rigid
political economy would have been suffered to ensue. Force
could extinguish discontent for a time, but the extinguisher
would have had to be hired, and would in the end itself take
fire,

The political economist of the strict school tells you what
will happen (though he seldom tells you all that will happen)
under certain conditions. Fortified with this information, and
warned by it, the statesman in the true sense sees what must
526 The Present Situation.

not happen, and takes his precautions, applies his remedies,
and neutralises the disastrous consequences. The struggle
for existence, interpreted strictly, is not progress but retro-
gression, and civilization is constantly engaged in moderating
the struggle, even at the risk of sometimes burdening itself
with indefinite liabilities. The information as to what will
come to pass under the unrestrained action of certain social
laws, is a boon which we cannot over-estimate, provided, of
‘course, that the antecedent causes are fully stated and pro-
perly estimated. The student of social science thus discovers,
-or tries to discover, which of these causes are preventible, and
‘the statesman, if he be worthy, deals with the problem. In
the sense that the researches of the economist tell us the
truth, his laws are beneficent, just as the physical laws, which
‘connect disease with its causes, and show us thereby the
means of prevention, are also beneficent. It is only when
the economist becomes arrogant, and avows that he is a guide
to all social action, instead of being the interpreter of certain
‘definite results, that he is informed by the workman that his
conclusions cannot be accepted as final in the practice of life,
-and by the statesman that they may consist with the consti-
tution of another planet, but not with this.

The case is rendered infinitely more complicated, and
abstract political economy becomes still more unpractical,
when the social condition of any community has not grown
naturally, but has been distorted by selfish laws and mischievous
ipractices, the effects of which still survive, though the causes
have passed away, and more difficult, when some of the most
‘potent among these causes still survive. There has never yet
‘been a civilised society in which nature was allowed to have
her way, and where, in consequence, the economical condition
of the people is one of spontaneous growth. One class has
oppressed another; and even when the oppression has been
remedied for the future, the present still bears, and for a long
‘time will bear, the inherited tendencies of the past. Even in
a country which, like that of the United States, has had an
apparently spontaneous development, and has been freed
rom tyrannous customs, the immigrants bring with them the
The Control of Economical Tendencies. 527

traditions, the weaknesses, the resentments of the country
which they have quitted,—feelings and habits which have
‘been engendered by past experience,—and have been cun-
ningly introduced to political and social heresies, promulgated
for the benefit of the few, in their new home.

Political economy has indeed taught one lesson of enormous
value, though the truth has only been accepted in its fulness
among ourselves, It is that any hindrance put by law or
custom on the purchaser's market is a wrong to every one—
‘to the community first, to the labourer next, to the capitalist
employer last. It is due to the facts that the injury comes
last to the capitalist, and that before the mischief is worked
out such a person is able to gain abnormal profits by the
losses of others; and that they who get these profits are an
organization, the consumers and the labourers, asa rule, are
only a mob ; that protectionist laws, as they are called, exist
for aday. When labour is thoroughly organised, and work-
men find out the significance of the truth, which I have
insisted on and illustrated in this work, that wages have
always increased absolutely,—zz., in their money amount, and
telatively, 22. in their purchasing power, when prices were
low,—they will be still less disposed to listen to the insidious
advice of those who counsel them to help the movement for
faising prices, through restraints on trade, under the plea of
fairness. But it will be found that all the best inferences of
the political economist have had the advantage of being
inductions from experience, and have been supported by
practice after they have been demonstrated in theory.

Had economists worked out the most important part of
their science, that which deals with the distribution of
-wealth, instead of merely busying themselves with hypothetical
theories about rent, profits, and population, they would have
inculcated every one of those legislative acts which have
seemed to control the production and distribution of wealth,
but in reality have assisted the former, and have made the
latter more natural, and therefore more equitable. I think
that my contention, which I see quoted by Mr. Goschen,
could be exhaustively proved, that every act of the legislature
528 The Present S2ztuation.

which seems to interfere with the doctrine of laissez-faire,
and has stood the test of experience, has been endorsed
because it has added to the general efficiency of labour and,
therefore, to the general well-being of society. A civilised people
desires that they who produce its wealth should be intelligent,
honest, thrifty, far-seeing, prudent, and, to the fullest extent
possible, cultivated and well-mannered. It is impossible that
these advantages should be secured, and the economies which
they invariably effect secured with them, unless the workman
is adequately remunerated for his labour, and is encouraged
to hope. “The liberal reward of labour,” says Adam Smith,
“as it is the necessary effect, so it is the natural symptom of
increasing national wealth. The scanty maintenance of the
labouring poor, on the other hand, is the natural symptom that
things are at a stand, and their starving condition that they are
going fast backward.” The first sentence is indisputably true ;

but the phenomena referred to in the second may be artifi- __

cially induced, and were induced for a generation or two
after Smith wrote. Employers will get labour cheap if they
can ; it is the business of the State to prevent them getting
it so cheaply, that they imperil the future of the race by the
process; and it is the business of particular crafts of workmen
to sell their labour at as good a price asthey can. They never
have ruined, and they never will ruin, the capitalist employer
by the process, for they may be trusted not to ruin them-
selves, since they are quite as acute as their employers in
discerning what price the market will bear.

There still exist in all their mischievous force two factors
in the evil legacy of the past, which exercise a mischievous
influence on the fortunes of English industry. One of these
is the permission still given to accumulate land under settle-
ments, and to suggest its devolution by primogeniture. The
other is the unfairness which puts local taxation on the occu-
pier in place of putting it, in part at least, on the owner. The
first of these is partly an inheritance of the Norman conquest,
partly a result of the great War of Succession in the fifteenth
century, partly the acquiescence of corrupt courts of justice in
conveyancing practices, which were contrary to public policy
3 Local Taxation. 529

and to the declared purposes of the common law. The
second begins with the poor law of Elizabeth. At that time
the occupier was generally the owner, and the rule was
commended for its simplicity. But the slow operation of
the former practice changed the conditions of the latter, and
the occupier is rarely the owner, and can rarely become the
owner. The convenient rule of Elizabeth’s law became the
interested practice of every other kind of assessment imposed
by Parliament. The cost incurred in the maintenance of
roads, the police of town and country, the health of towns,
the education of the young, are imposed on the occupier;
and the owner, except when he happens to be the occupier,
is freed from all direct payments. As the revision of assess-
ments is put into the hands of the quarter sessions, and the
magistrates are not only generally landowners, but have a
necessary property qualification, these authorities have in-
vented a special system of valuing their own property, and
on the plea that they assess their houses and grounds at what
they would let for, have put nominal rates on themselves.

Now that the owner of land should be allowed to get the
best price he can for that which he has to sell or let is, I
conceive, as fundamental a right as that of the manufacturer
to secure the fullest price which the market will allow him
for his produce, and the labourer the best price for his labour.
Nothing is, I think, more foolish than the theory that the
State should regulate the prices of land, produce, or labour,
should fix a maximum or minimum of either. Nothing, I
think, could the theory become a practice, would be more
disastrous to all. The English law attempted to carry out
the theory with regard to labour, as I have shown, for
centuries, and with the most mischievous results to land,
produce, and labour. But, on the other hand, nothing is
more natural and proper than that a person who owns land,
produce, or labour should get the best price he can for it;
should not, in short, be constrained to sell it to the first
applicant, either at that person’s price or ata fixed price
determined by law.

But it is another thing for the legislature to give any vendor

34
530 The Present Situation.

exceptional powers under which he can enhance the price of
what he has to sell by constraining him to keep out of the
-market a large portion of that which is strictly limited in
quantity. The custom was originally permitted, in order to
protect the successors of an existing generation of landowners
against the consequences of their own vices, and the result
has been to make them more vicious. This might be of no
consequence, except in so far as it is not in the public
interest that profligates in high position should be deliberately
engendered by law; but the protection accorded to them is
injurious to others, however good the personal character of the
protected individual may be. It stands to reason that if the
market of a necessary of life is deliberately straitened, its cost
will be enhanced. I have not the slightest doubt that the
miserable condition of the poorer classes in our large towns is
greatly due to the accumulation of land in few hands in such
towns, and to the possession of land by corporations. Icannot
doubt that if settlements of land were forbidden by law, and
corporations were constrained to grant leases in perpetuity to
purchasers, the market for convenient sites would be adequately
stocked, and the price of land in towns weuld fall. It is, of
course, impossible to find a parallel object to the existing area
of acountry, its land. But if we could conceive that the supply
of the precious metals in any given country became a rigid
quantity, and the law permitted individuals to take portions
of this quantity out of currency, and hinder its natural distri-
bution, it is certain that all prices but those of the precious
metals would constantly fall. Something analogous to the
case is to be found in the fact that the paper currency in the
United States is limited by the necessity of purchasing
government stock by the issuing banks. The debt in the
States is rapidly being decreased, and the price of the residue
is gradually advancing. It has been found necessary to permit
an issue based on silver certificates, that is, on deposits of silver
estimated at the factitious value of the silver coin. This
expedient will, however, soon be ineffectual, and it will be-
come necessary, unless the paper currency is to bear a
premium, to find a further basis for the security of the issues,
Artificral Scarcity. 531

or to discover some new means for supplementing the paper
circulation.

No parallel, however, can be found to exactly illustrate the
effect of an artificial stint of marketable land. It is a per-
petual corner, to use an Americanism, created or permitted
by the law to the injury of the multitude and for the advan-
tage of the few. It gives the owner the power, not only of
constraining the public to purchase in an artificially narrowed
market, but of compelling him to part with capital which he
has laid out on a terminable lease at the expiry of the term.
Now this may be no injury to the middle man, for he will
recoup himself from the necessities of the public, his cus-
tomers. It may be no injury to the trader, though there are
signs, not very obscure, in the growth of so-called co-operative
shops, that the public are beginning to see that enormous
rents for shops enter into the price of commodities purchased
in them ; and it may be no injury whatever to persons whose
transactions are very large, because the addition of a per-
centage to cover office expenses is infinitesimal under such
circumstances. But where rent is the most important and the
most increasing part of the cost of subsistence, as it is with
the urban labourer, especially in large towns, the mischief is
prodigious. The self-complacency with which some persons—
owners of land to a great extent in London, for the temporary
use of which the severest terms which the law allows and the
market gives are extorted, to say nothing of taxes on renewal,
equivalent to the appropriation of the tenant’s good-will—
advocate the housing of the London poor at the cost of the
London occupiers, and, of course, to the enormous benefit of
those who hold this induced monopoly, and will be vendors
under forced sales, would be absolutely amazing in any other
country besides England. But this kind of complacency is
dangerous.

While in the United States in 1881, I found that the reading
public was interested and amused by Mr. George’s work on
“Progress and Poverty.” A clever man had caught up a few
real facts and a few doubtful theories, and had constructed from
them a sketch of social life, which was characterized by growing
532 Lhe Present Sztuatzon.

evil and waning hope. The sketch was not lacking in dramatic
force, and in that probability which is frequently unreal,
because it is based on, or appeals to, narrow or exceptional
experiences. For this misery of the present and the future,
Mr. George prescribes a single and, in his opinion, a complete
remedy, just as the owner of a patent medicine is ready to
assert and advertise that his nostrum will prevent or cure
every disease to which either sex and every age is subject.
The book was written with great clearness. The Americans,
always pleased with clever paradoxes, and not devoid of that
interest in speculative pessimism which well-to-do people like
to indulge in, especially when it is illustrated from foreign
practices, read the book, not seriously, I conclude, and have,
I presume, forgotten it. In England it has run through numer-
ous editions, and is said to be eagerly accepted as a new gospel
of labour by multitudes of intelligent workmen, who recognize
in the English land system the aggravation of their discom-
forts, the spoliation of their wages, and the present beggary
of agriculture. The situation, it seems to me, is sufficiently
ominous, and the attitude which landowners take, have taken, -
and appear likely to take in the future, discourages the defence
of what is their proper right in the minds of competent and
disinterested advocates. It is clear that class is set against
class; but who is to blame, in the past and in the present?
for this distrust is not always made manifest. It is certain,
however, that if discontent retaliates injustice by injustice,
they are most in fault who gave the original provocation,
and affect to be ignorant that they gave it, and continue to
give it. ‘
The other serious cause of dissatisfaction is the practice of
putting all local taxation on the occupier. This is especially
felt in towns, where local taxation is increasingly severe. The
industries which aggregate in towns have, by their natural
competition for building sites, aggravated by artificial scarcity
induced on a limited area, continually enhanced the ground
value of house property in densely peopled localities. I could
show, if the nature of my work required the proof, that land
for two miles round St. Paul’s has increased during the last
Mr. George and His Popularity. 533

hundred and fifty years a thousandfold in value. In so far as such
an exaltation in value is not the arbitrary creation of a partial
law, it is a natural result. If it could be shown to be the
entire creation of labour and capital, as the Thames Embank-
ment was, it is as much the property of the producers as a
bale of cloth or a cask of sugar. Now it is the opinion of
many, and these very respectable persons, that a very large
portion of this enhanced value should become the property of
the tax-payer, and that the revenue of it should be employed to
diminish his burdens. Others gofurther. Asa matter of fact,
the owner contributes nothing to local taxation. Everything is
heaped on the occupier. The land would be worthless without
roads, and the occupier has to construct, widen, and repair
them. It could not be inhabited without proper drainage,
and the occupier is constrained to construct and pay for the
works which give an initial value to the ground rent, and, after
the outlay, enhance it. It could not be occupied without a
proper supply of water, and the cost of this supply is levied
on the occupier also. In return for the enormous expenditure
paid by the tenant for these permanent improvements, he has
his rent raised on his improvements, and his taxes increased
by them. The occupier in towns is worse used by far than
the Irish tenant was before the changes of the Land Act, for
if the landlord made him pay interest on his own outlay, the
cost of local taxation was shared between the parties.

It is commonly and confidently said that these taxes are
only paid through the occupier, and not by him; that if they
were shifted to the landlord or the owner of the ground-rent,
the price would be enhanced by all the tax. To this itis a
sufficiently practical answer to say, that in such a case no wrong
can possibly bedone by transferring local taxation to the ground
owner and building owner in towns, where the tenancy is pre-
carious ; and where the tenancy isa term, by dividing the charge
between house landlord and ground landlord, according to the
respective capital values of their interest, with the object of
imposing the whole of the taxation on the ground Jandlord at
the termination of the lease. When this period arrives, the
ground landlord may, if he pleases, not now being supplied
534 The Present Situation.

by the law with a protected market, and under another con-
dition to be stated hereafter, make his subsequent bargain
with the tenant. Such an arrangement would test the truth
of the allegation, and would clearly not mulct the owner of
the unearned increment, since it would come back to him
in an increased rent. I have never found that ground land-
lords welcome or even relish this proposal, which, on their
own showing, would only involve a re-arrangement.

The fact is, the statement is not true. It is, of course, the
case, that when a tenant-farmer takes a farm he inquires about
and calculates the outgoings before he offers a rent. A tithe
rent charge, he knows, is only part of the rent, and if the land
be tithe free or if the landlord pays this rent charge, he gives
all the more for the land. If the two other charges were
remitted, it entirely depends on the way in which they are
remitted whether he will include them in his rent or not. I
am referring to poor rates and highway rates. If the legal
relief of the poor were extinguished, he would pay less rent,
for he would assuredly have to pay more for labour, plus what
those pay in poor rates who do not employ labour. If the
highway rates were extinguished, and the state of things re-
curred which was general before the Act of 1773, under which
every occupier or owner was bound ‘o find at least six days’
labour on the roads, he would probably pay less rent, because
the cost of carriage would be enhanced, and the charge of
taking goods to market would be increased. The fact is, the
two principal rates levied on rural occupancy are in reality
beneficial outlay, since without labour and roads no land has
value. They are antecedent conditions of agriculture in the
first place, and rent in the second, in satisfying which the
landowner and the farmer get subventions from other occu-
piers, who do not ay labour and yet contribute to the
double fund.

These taxes are transferred from the farmer to the land-
owner in the shape of a reduced rent, because they are
associated with what is essential to agricultural operations.
A tax levied on an individual remains with him, unless he has
some relation of exchange with another person, when he always
Incidence of Local Taxation. 535

strives to transfer that tax to such a person. If an income
tax is levied on a farmer, he cannot transfer it to his landlord,
or to the purchaser of agricultural produce: not to the former,
because there is no transaction to which it can be annexed;
not to the latter, because it is excluded by the competition of
the market. A landlord who pays an income tax cannot
make his tenant or any one else reimburse him. A tradesman
who pays an income tax can possibly add it to the price of
his goods, and would certainly attempt to do so, and it seems,
from what tradesmen have said, may succeed in doing so. But
in the case of beneficial outlay, such as that on poor rates and
roads, the poor really pay the former in stinted wages, and the
landowners do, and should do, most of the latter.

These operations do not apply, or do not in anything like
the same degree apply, to dwellings in towns. That the
tenant takes the outgoings into account is certain. But what
determines his rent in the vast majority of cases is not the
profit which he makes on the occupancy, but the proportion
which rent bears to his income. It has been long since seen
that the ground-rent of shops, and also the rates, in popular and
business thoroughfares, are compensated for by enhanced prices
to purchasers, or, at least, by a much more rapid turnover,
the latter being frequently a matter of personal reputation.
If the local taxation were transferred from the tenant to the
ground-landlord, he might lower his prices, but there is no
reason to believe he could be made to pay more rent. A man
does not pay an increased rent because he makes more profits,
but because the owner of his place of business can reduce his
profits by offering, when opportunity occurs, this site to a
rival tradesman. The local tax, therefore, tends to remain
with him, but is transferred along with the greater portion of
his rent to the customer, under the head of trade charges, in
so far as his energy and ingenuity can affect the transfer.

With the mass of those who live in town tenements, these
circumstances do not apply. A London labourer, I conclude,
does not get better wages because he lives in London and
pays a higher rent, but because, as a rule, the best labourers
gravitate to the best market. I have pointed out before, that
536 The Present Situation.

during the period in which the best wages were paid to th.
labourer, London wages were about 25 per cent. more than
country wages of the same kind, and that when labour was de-
pressed universally, the London labourer lost his advantage.
During the first twenty years of the present century, London
wages were higher than country wages, but then both were on
the margin of existence. At présent, the more important
orders of artizans in London are in receipt of higher wages
than those who ply the same craft in the country; but I have
always been told that this was because they were worth all
the difference. I have been constantly informed that it pays
the employer to take London workmen into the country, at
London wages, because their superiority is so marked.

The practical immunity of ground rents from all taxation
except income tax raises, naturally, the cost of sites. Local
taxation in London is in the aggregate about one-third
the annual value of ground and building rent together, the
proportion of the two varying from many times more in the
ground rent, to equality, and to the reverse. I am persuaded
from my experience as a director in an industrial dwellings
company, whose buildings are erected in the borough which I
represent (1883), that if the charge of local taxation were
distributed equitably over the ground landlord and the building
landlord, the effect on the cost of sites would be such as to
render the housing of the industrious poor, in a two-roomed
flat, with all conveniences of decency and cleanliness in each
habitation, a matter of comparative ease and of moderate
commercial success. The solution of the problem would be
easier still, if the law permitted a cheap registration of title
and an inexpensive mortgage on advances made by Govern-
ment, with a wide margin for security. The unnatural cost of
sites and the unnatural cost of legal instruments are the great
hindrances to the economical housing of the poor in large
towns, In the worst parts of London the ground rent is
almost the whole of that for which rent is paid; and it is well
known that when the Metropolitan Board of Works purchased
the rookeries, they often paid for a filthy and dilapidated
tenement the price of a mansion in a fashionable square.
The Immunity of Landowners. 537

In the eastern and middle states of the American Union,
focal taxes are levied on owners, and not on occupiers; upon
property, and not on the use of property ; no kind of property
being exempt from contribution, as is, I think, absolutely just
and necessary. Hence the owner of a magnificent house,
‘with well-appointed and ample grounds, does not, as in
England, escape with a nominal assessment, on the ground
that the letting value of the property is problematical and,
therefore, low. Again, the owner of void tenements is not
excused from contributing on their assessed value. It is not
the duty, American statesmen argue, of the public to
remit an obligation on the ground that an owner does not
dwell in his own house or discover a tenant for it. This
system of taxation values stock-in-trade, furniture, even the
balances of customers at bankers, and taxes all. There is no
reason why an empty house or shop should escape, because
the owner does not employ it for the purpose which led to its
erection. Hence, while in England landowners, being relieved
from a tax on void tenements, escape everything but loss of
interest on their property, and, therefore, if rich, are able to
withhold their property from the market, under terms of
special advantage, the American owner gets the sharp reminder
of local taxation that it is his business to inhabit or sell or
let his tenements. /

I have no doubt that strenuous efforts will be made to
impose the expenditure necessary for the adequate housing
of the industrial classes in London and other large towns on
the local ratepayers or on the general public; and that, if
possible, the purchase of sites for the erection of such habi-
tations as are needed will be made a means for procuring
exaggerated prices for those owners of town property who
have been able hitherto to evade all contributions to local
purposes from their property, and to employ the machinery
which the law allows them or confers on them in order to
enhance the price of that which is needed to satisfy what
either social danger, or a sense of moral duty, or an awakened
humanity declares to be urgent. What the other cities may
do, I do not pretend to predict, nor how far they will realise
538 The Present Situation.

that they will be called on to perform a duty at a great cost
to themselves and at a great profit to the landowners. But
London is helpless. Nothing can be conceived more ludi-
crously incompetent than the Board which manipulates its
expenditure and at present transacts its municipal business.
It is to be hoped that London may have an audible voice:
given it before the Legislature attempts to aggravate its
burdens. But as yet London is administered, and not self
governed.

It is noteworthy that the demand for some action on the
part of the Legislature for the better housing of the poor has.
not proceeded from labour itself. The working classes have
made no claim on the State for the supply of one of the
necessaries of life at an arbitrated rate. It is probable that
they can foresee that this process is not friendly to the object:
which they have before themselves,—to sell their labour at
the best possible price; and to effect that object by selling
it collectively, and on the joint-stock principle. On the other
hand, they have not resented, except when the action pro-
ceeded from the masters, the competition of foreign workmen.
Nor have they been, in the only capacity in which they
deliberate, deluded by the sing-song of the fair trade syrens.
To commend them for this is to patronise their good sense ;.
for it is certain, and they are, I conclude, as convinced as any
one can be, that state gifts, like charitable donations for
purely business transactions, are always more than com-
pensated by the reduction of what is, without them, the
natural market rate of wages. If they are wise, they should
be resolute in determining that the conditions under which
they will engage in the social warfare and the social harmony
are that those with whom they are concerned shall have
or shall retain no privilege, and that they will be beguiled
with no gifts, the most insidious manner in which the
workman may be led to sacrifice the advantages of his
position.

Some of the working classes in London, and those who
have been long educated in the machinery of labour partner-
ships, have at last regained the relative rate of wages which
Modern Wages in London. 539°

they earned in the fifteenth century, though, perhaps, in some-
particulars, the recovery is not complete. I can illustrate
what I mean by giving the details which J promised above.
From 1449 to 1450, divers workmen were engaged in building.
at Oxford. The head mason got 4s. a week for nine months.
in the year; the others, 3s. 4d. for ten. For two months the-
under masons got 2s.10¢@. Nowa multiple of twelve will fairly
represent, except in house-rent, the general difference in the-
cost of living at the present period and that to which I have:
referred. In modern values, then, these sums represent 48s.,
4os., and 34s. Mr. Howell informs us that the building trades.
in London in 1877 had reached 7s. 14d. a day, or 425. 9d.
a week. I am not informed whether this rate is for the-
whole six days, and for how many days in the year it may be-
reckoned on. The workman of the fifteenth century only
missed eighteen days of the year, of which a fortnight was at
Christmas, three days at Easter, three at Whitsuntide, and six.
on other days scattered over the year. My reader may care-
to see the average prices for the two years 1449-50. Wheat
was 55. 10d. a quarter; malt, 3s. 10a; oatmeal, 55.; beef,
4s. Id, the cwt.; mutton, 4s. 6a.; pork, 55.; geese, 4d. 5.
fowls, 14¢.; pigeons, 4@. a dozen; candles, Is. 1a the
dozen pounds; cheese, 4d. a pound ; butter, 4a.; eggs, 5d. the
hundred of 120; firewood, Is. 10}d. the load; shirting 6d. a.
yard; and cloth, 1s. 54¢@. If my reader cares to construct
a table for himself from these facts, he will find, I think, that,
leaving out house-rent, the most formidable item in modern,
the most trivial in ancient times, my multiple of twelve is-
moderately low.

I have taken the best prices of artizan labour in the best
English market for such labour in order to contrast them,,.
improved as they are by the mechanism of a trade union,
with the prices paid spontaneously in a county town in
England 434 years ago. I will now contrast the lowest prices.
of the most poorly paid labour (not, indeed, that in London,
where the extremes of poverty are to be expected and are
witnessed, but) in places where, if kindness can discover and
aid struggling and ill-paid industry, the search will be made-
540 The Present Situation.

and the assistance accorded, with the remuneration of the
:-same kind of labour more than four centuries ago.

Women’s labour in agriculture is rare in the fifteenth
century. When it is found, it varies from 2s. a week paid in
shay and harvest time to Is. 6d.; for ordinary field work, such
.as hoeing corn, I have found it as low as Is., the rate paid old
‘women for weeding pitched pavements. In the calculations
«made as to the rate of women’s wages in the agricultural
‘districts supplied by Mr. Villiers in 1860, the average given
ds 4s. 2d. But if the price of this kind of labour had risen as
highly as that of other commodities has, the wages of a woman
dabourer in husbandry would be from 24s. the best paid, and
18s. the ordinary rate, to 12s. the most poorly paid. I do not
‘know whether any material increase has occurred in such
wages since 1860, very little information being given as to
the amount generally paid, and I think that such an outgoing
would have been put prominently forward as a further cause
-of agricultural distress; but even if it be the case that it has
increased some twenty-five per cent. and is now at 6s., the
‘wages of ordinary agricultural labour earned by women are
snot more than a third of the amount which they were four
-centuries ago.

In almost all comments on the wages paid the agricultural
Habourer, they who invite our attention to the facts in the
ypublic prints, and are invariably the landowners, dwell with
-satisfaction on the indirect allowances made to the peasant, his
flow-rented house and garden, his bit of potato ground, his
-occasional payment in kind by a periodical bushel of un-
saleable wheat, and the concession of collecting wood or
getting an allowance of loppings and roots as fuel, and insist
that these are substantial additions to his weekly earnings.
‘Undoubtedly he would be worse off without them, and gene-
‘rally when they are given they are an addition to such wages
-as the labourer could not live upon alone. But it should be
‘remembered that these are to be compared with the facts of
far better days, of a time in which the peasant’s hut and
curtilage was occupied at a fixed rent of 2s. a year, which,
treated by the multiplier given above, would be less than
Modern Wages of Agricultural Labour. 54%

sixpence a week at present; that the curtilage of his cottage
was far larger than the villager’s garden is in our time; that
he had his share in the common of pasture; that he was able
to keep poultry, probably a cow, certainly pigs; that his
employers constantly gave him portions of food, under the
name of nonschenes, daily; and that in harvest-time his.
wages were not only increased, but he was frequently boarded
as well. I do not imagine that the present privileges and
allowances of labourers in husbandry are to be reckoned as.
spontaneous acts of generosity on the part of employers, in
whom I have never seen any such tendency, but simply as the
curtailed and by no means equivalent survivals of much larger
and more solid advantages, which could not, perhaps, with
safety be suddenly and entirely extinguished,

It is probable, too, that the wages of labour were far more
continuous in agricultural operations than they are at present.
The farmer, before the use of machinery in substitution for
human forces was adopted, and for a considerable time after
it was familiar, employed his hinds in many kinds of service
for which mechanical means are now found. We learn from
Young that many improvements had been made in the imple-
ments employed in agriculture, and his English tours are full
of engravings of such machines as he found in use. But
sowing, reaping, mowing, and threshing were all done by
hand, ploughing, of course, and the building of ricks. It was
Young’s great desire to see improved ploughs adopted, and
with them much more rapid and clean work, with less wear for
man and cattle. Now, many of these necessary processes are
effected by machinery, sowing universally, mowing generally,
reaping and binding frequently. Ricks are often built by
means of elevators, and the threshing of corn is invariably
done by machines, But the six or eight weeks of the labourers’
hay and corn harvest were what he relied on for supplementing
the scanty earnings of the rest of the year, and were con-
stantly the source from which he supplied himself with the
extras, over and above the bare food, of fuel, house-rent,
clothing, and casualties. He expected to have much work
in the barn during winter at threshing, and now the use of
2542 The Present Sttuation.

‘the flail is a lost-art. It is more than likely that the shorten-
‘ing of his exceptional advantages, and the change which has
-come over the previous regularity of his occupation, would be
very indifferently compensated by a rise of 25 per cent. in his
‘wages when he is employed.

I stated in a previous chapter that the day was one of
‘eight hours’ work, and grounded my opinion on the fact that
winter wages were reckoned to be payable only in the
months of December and January, and from the fact that
-extra hours, sometimes as many as forty-eight in the week,
are frequently paid for by the king’s agents when hurried
‘work was needed. These hours, of course, were not con-
:tinuous, being broken for nonschenes, dinner, and supper in
‘the summer, and for nonschenes and dinner in the shorter
days. During the winter solstice it seems that only the
-dinner-time was allowed. Even when the Act of Elizabeth
and the regulations of the quarter sessions prescribed a day
-of twelve hours all the year round, for this is in effect the
meaning of the clause, two hours and a half were allowed for
rest, and the day was brought down, on an average, to nine
hours and a half. But this was precisely one of those pre-
-scriptions which labourers would be sure to resist and
-employers would find it expedient not to insist on. That it
was evaded is, I think, clear from the fact that the quarter
-sessions’ ordinances constantly call attention to the law, and
‘remind artizans of the penalties they incurred,—a penny for
every hour of absence. Employers were very likely to
discover that the labourer’s resistance to an excessively long
day was not entirely personal, and that the work might suffer
‘from the workman’s weariness or exhaustion. Now the quality
of the work in the old times of which I have written is
‘unquestionable. It stands to this day a proof of how excellent
ancient masonry was. The building from the construction
-of which I have inferred so much as to work and wages, is
still standing as it was left four centuries ago. Iam persuaded
that such perfect masonry would have been incompatible with
.a long hours’ day. You may still see brickwork of the next
century, which I venture on asserting no modern work would
flours of Labour. 543

parallel; and within five minutes’ walk of it Roman brick-
work, probably sixteen centuries old, which is as solid and
substantial as when it was first erected. The artizan who is
demanding at this time an eight hours’ day in the building
trades is simply striving to recover what his ancestor worked
‘by four or five centuries ago. It is only to be hoped that he
‘will emulate the integrity and thoroughness of the work
which his ancestor performed. According to Mr, Leone Levi,
tthe average amount of hours in the building trades at the
-date of his work on the wages of the working classes (1867)
was fifty-five hours.

The magnitude of commercial undertakings, due to the
-cheapening which ensues when business is concentrated in few
hands, is a characteristic of modern times. In some particulars
it is better for the working classes; in some it induces in-
conveniences; in all it makes the organization of labour a
necessity, and, as I hope to show hereafter, a solid advantage
to the public. I have already stated that in the past, which
I have been contrasting with the present, the relation of
-employer and employed was exceedingly direct; nor do I
doubt that it was to this directness that the high remunera-
tion of the artizan was due. A church or a mansion was to
be built, a new wing or new offices to be added to a conventual
thouse or college. Perhaps the owner supplied the plans. If
not, the master rnason knew how “to draw his plot,” and the
master carpenter his. The employer bought all the raw
materials direct from the manufacturers, and put them ready
for use on the spot. He could calculate within a very
moderate margin what the whole would cost, and what
‘would be the charge of labour. In the building to which I
have referred, the cost of materials, on much of which labour
is expended, was £54 10s. 34d.; of labour, £73 os. o}¢.; and
the extras connected with the structure, but not immediately
associated with the materials and labour, 414 gs. of¢. Thus
in the aggregate charge, the cost of materials is 383 per cent. ;
that of labour, 51°4 per cent.; and of extras, 10°3 per cent.

The multiple of twelve would put this structure at a cost
of £1,703 12s. 6d., from which should be deducted the sale of
544 The Present Situation.

certain cranes, worth, on the same estimate, £73 12s.,and there-
fore leaving £1,630. Now I make no doubt that at the present
day the tower would cost from £4,000 to £5,000, and I infer
that the additional cost would be entirely due to the charge
of contractor’s profit, architect’s commission, and middle-
men’s advantage. It is upon the saving of this enormous
waste that the energies of the intelligent employer are directed,
and the advocates of increased wages for workmen should be.
When the economy is effected, it will be found, concurrently
with another reduction of charge alluded to already, that
workmen may get better wages and may be more cheaply
housed. It is assuredly from the stint of wages that the
profits of middle-men have been derived.

The employer in our day is unknown probably to nine-
tenths of his workmen. Their relations are generally with
his agents and overlookers only, and probably must remain
so. But it will be evident that the more able and shrewd
the employer is, the greater will be his profits, because such
mental qualities are rare ; and the more difficult his workmen
make his position, either by slackness or slovenliness of work,
or by the necessity of supervision, the greater do they them-
selves make his profits to be. He has a large margin from
which he can save in the competition with those who are
engaged in the same calling, by the reduction of the middle-
man’s charges. He has another large margin from which he
can save, in the character of his workmen and the goodness
of their work, for the better this is than the average, and the
greater its efficiency is, the cheaper it is to him. If, however,
this quality of excellence becomes general in workmen, they
ultimately have it in their power to attach a portion of his
profits, by a demand for higher wages, and by a conviction
that he will not forego a cessation of his advantage by re-
fusing to part with a portion of it. It will be found, I
believe, that those heads of firms who best know their
business are most amenable to the reasonable demands of
their workmen, and the analysis given above shows that
the reason of this is that they make greater profits than
their rivals. For though it is true that, in the first place
Causes Ratsing Wages. 545

an increase of wages can only be derived from profits, and
where rent is a principal result from profits, as it is notably
in agriculture, from rent, the efficiency of labour may be
so increased in the end that profits and rent may rapidly
recover themselves. This is the way in which the judicious
employment of machinery tends to raise wages. That it
lessens the demand for labour immediately is possible, just
as a successful demand for more wages lessens profits, but
in the end it increases them, for it cheapens production,
and thereupon sets up a fresh demand for labour, and lessens
cost, and thereby leaves a larger margin of gross profits to
be divided. The increase in the wages of agricultural labour
between 1730 and 1760 was not merely due to the fact that
agricultural produce was cheap, but to the fact that profits
in agriculture were large, that a rapidly increasing area of
cultivation was taken in hand, and that a rapidly increasing
capital was put into the land.

Now it cannot be denied that capital may seek labour,
and that labour may, without an effort, be able to gain the
advantage of this demand. Such an event has occurred
when there has been a sudden deficiency of labour, as after
the great pestilence of 1348. It has occurred when the
distribution of employment has become so exactly pro-
portionate to the current demand for labour that demand
has been always in excess of supply, as was the case in
the fifteenth century, and is normally the case in countries
where labour is scarce and the opportunities of wealth are
great, as in the western, and especially the mineral districts
of the American Union. Such an event has occurred when
there has been a sudden and increasing demand for special
products, as happened to the coal and iron trades in 1865
and 1873. It does to some extent when the supply of
labour is in equilibrio, and the competition of capitalists is
great,—a rarer phenomenon. But in the great majority of
cases, the whole advantage of a new discovery, a new
process, and a new machine rests with the capitalist em-
ployer. The great inventions of steam and the machinery
employed in textile fabrics remained with those who invented

35
546 The Present Sttuation.

and applied these capital forces and processes. The artizan,
by whose labour the development of this wealth was alone
possible, became more impoverished and stinted. If popu-
lation was stimulated, it was made more miserable, and
population will grow rapidly when the condition of the
people is deteriorated. Now it is impossible to doubt that
had labour partnerships been general and legal in the latter
part of the eighteenth century, the Englishman of that
epoch would have been as assuredly able to make better
terms with his employer as we are told he did in the
fourteenth, when the legislature vainly strove to put down
the combinations of those ancient trade-unions. ;

It would be possible to go through the various kinds of
labour which were carried on in those remote times, and are
still special industries. But enough has, I trust, been said to
sustain the main conclusions at which I have arrived. From
what is supposed to be the natural, and, on the whole, justi-
fiable, tendency of the parties to a contract, the employer
strives to enlist the services of the common factor with himself
of profit and wealth on the most favourable terms for his part
of the bargain. The labourer or workman, on the other side,
seeks as naturally to achieve his advantage, though he is
seriously hindered by his individual impotence and by the
urgency which disables him from lingering long over the
terms of the bargain. But in the process of settling it, he has
on very rare occasions been put in the position of using his
power with prodigious force, so as almost to annihilate interests
which seemed secure and progressive, as in the middle of the
fourteenth century, and to effect a social revolution. From
time to time, in a minor degree, he has been able to produce,
by his discontent and the temporary cessation of his industry,
great inconvenience. The power which he possessed, and the
use which he made of it, suggested that the rare occasions on
which he could act should be anticipated and restrained, and
the legislature at last succeeded in binding him, though he
struggled vigorously, and in the end proved that his liberty
was less dangerous than his servitude.

Then began a new departure. The policy of the past had
Occasional Opportunities of Labour. 547

‘done mischief to the interests which it professed to further,
and the new poor law was enacted. The policy of repression
thad led to results which seemed to threaten the very existence
of a large class of artizans and of the future of the nation, and
tthe Factory Acts were passed. The soil of England became
‘too narrow for its people, and employment, even under the
circumstances of those restraints on employment which the
Factory Acts induced, became precarious. There was danger
in the air,and perhaps the Legislature became alive to the
duty of considering other interests than one, and free trade in
food was established.

Meanwhile the working classes were not idle, and not a few
of them adopted, though still with great risks, the new freedom
which was accorded them, and founded labour partnerships.
These have grown; and whatever the capitalist and some of
the public may think of them, they are believed by many
workmen to be a far greater and more powerful instrument
for good to those who have conceived, developed, and
supported them than any guarantee of law or custom. The
advocates of the system have demanded as yet but little from
the Legislature beyond what is essential to their free action.
It remains to be seen whether they have not been a benefit in
‘tthe past, and are a principal hope in the future, not of that
labour merely for whose ends they have been severally estab-
lished, but of labour in general, of human progress; and lastly,
whether they do not form the readiest means, perhaps the
only means, by which the gravest social and political problems
may be stated and solved. I shall try to make an estimate of
this question in the next and concluding chapter.
548

CHAPTER XX.

REMEDIES.

Changes Necessary for the Improvement of the Social State Incomplete—The
Remedies for the Present rendered more Difficult by the Errors of the Past—
Labour in Other Countries during the Past—Protection against Foreign Com-
petition, and its Effect on Wages—In the United States—Fair Trade—
Extension of the Functions of Government an Error—The Meaning of Fran-
kenstein’s Demon—The Population of Large Towns, though in a Bad State,
Better than it was—Foreign Immigration—Theory of Lodging being Provided
by the State—Nationalization of Land, Origin of the Movement for—Effects.
of such a Policy—Emigration of the Young—The Agricultural Remedy—Mr.
Vallis on a Peasant Occupier’s Earnings—Trade Unions, the Factor in Im-
proving the Condition of Artizans—Their Prevalence in the Fifteenth Century-
—Duty of the Workman as Regards his Labour—The Economy of Waste—
The Effect of Machinery may be Mischievous if not Counteracted by Labour
Combinations—Labour Combinations and Rent, especially Ground Rents—
Domestic Servants’ Wages—Overcrowded Callings often Relievable by Trade
Unions—Extension of Trade Unions to Women’s Work.

HE English Government, till very recent times, having:
been administered by opulent landowners and successful
traders, did its best to depress the condition of those who live
by labour. Parliament has, indeed, within the last sixty years,
done much in abrogating severe and repressive laws, in giving
freedom to labour, in making the United Kingdom a free
market, and thereby educating its industry, in restraining the
greed which employed immature labour, in disabling women
from certain degrading employments, inconstraining employers.
to deal fairly with their workmen, and in arbitrating between
rapacious landlords and defenceless tenants. It has, indeed,
by no means completed its duties to the public. It must
sooner or later, the sooner the better, sweep away the distinc-
tion between real and personal estate, forbid the settlement of
land, and release conveyances from the grip of the attorney
Past Mischief Lasting. 549

by establishing a cheap and compulsory registration of title.
It has been reckoned that the conveyance of real estate in the
United Kingdom is mulcted in law charges, exclusive of taxes,
ito the extent of £12,000,000 annually. I do not answer for
the accuracy of the figures, or know, indeed, what are the ele-
ments from which they are derived. But I know that such
charges are a present loss, which are not only without any
equivalent whatever, but constantly bring about an insecurity
from which properly registered titles would be free. And,
again, there must be a revision of local taxation, under which
landowners shall be made to bear their just share in local
‘burdens ; and to which, as I readily admit, all property should,
except in the case of poor rates and roads, contribute by re-
dieving occupancy and taxing property. But though much
remains to be done, more has been done in this country than
in any other to remove the legal disabilities of labour, and
give it freedom of action. The result of this wisdom is mani-
fest. The unwise delay in other needful reforms will soon be
plain,

It is, indeed, impossible to do away at once with the effects
of the past. The growth of society has been distorted by
partial and injurious laws, and the distortion will not be
removed by the removal of the causes which induced it. You .
cannot, as the adventurer in the Greek comedy does, take the
nation, and, by some magic bath, restore it from decrepitude,
disease, vice, dirt, drunkenness, and ignorance, to manliness,
health, virtue, self-respect, sobriety, knowledge, forethought,
and wisdom at a stroke. It will need. long years of patient
and disappointing labour before the marks imprinted by
centuries of misrule and wrong-doing are effaced. And
furthermore, the renewal, if it 1s to come, cannot be imposed
from without. It must be developed from within. Beyond
the removal of positive mischief, which it has in past times
created, the legislature can do little more that give every free-
dom it can for innocent energy, and check all the mischief, as far
as is possible, which comes from the strong domineering over
the weak. If it does too much, it enfeebles enterprize and dis-
courages practical wisdom. If it neglects to adequately
550 Remedies.

protect the weak, and thereby gives license to selfishness and
fraud, it permits a trouble, for which it has assuredly to find a
remedy. Nor can the aid of well-meaning persons outside
the mischief which has to be remedied do much beyond
perhaps, disclosing the disease and indicating a means of
cure, If there be evil at work in the condition of those who.
live by wages, most of the cure must come from themselves.
There is no means for it but self-help. The constitution is.
needed more than the medicine, and, without it, the medicine
is naught. Philanthropy is superficial, intermittent, transient,
partial, at best. There is infinite danger that it may become a
scheme by which attention is diverted from causes which
contribute to or create the mischief, and duties may be
enforced vicariously. I can easily imagine a great proprietor
of ground rents in the metropolis calling attention to the
habitations of the poor, to the evils of overcrowding, and to.
the scandals which the inquiry reveals, while his own income is
greatly increased by the causes which make house-rent dear in
London, and decent lodging hardly attainable by thousands of
labourers. It is quite possible for the indirect agents of these
evils to denounce the mischief to which they are the contributors,
and to claim from others the funds by which to remedy the
injuries which they cause and from which they profit. When
a London landowner invites the public to consider how the
London poor are housed, he should simultaneously recommend
that the laws and privileges which aggravate the evil should
be repealed or abandoned.

Bad as the condition of labour has been in England, it has.
been worse in other countries. When, five centuries ago, the
insurgents under Wat Tyler and his associates brought about
the emancipation of the serf, the peasantry of Western Europe
were thrust into gradually increasing misery. I have already
commented on the beggary of the French peasant and the
failure which attended his early efforts for freedom. The
Peasants’ War in Germany was the result of intolerable oppres-
sion. The conquest of Egypt had closed the last of the
ancient routes to the East, and the traders of Italy and the
Rhenish cities were impoverished. In the profits of this trade
Labour in Other Countries. 551

the nobles shared, and when these profits declined, they strove
to reimburse themselves by extortion from the peasantry. The
peasants claimed to be freed not only from these new exac-
tions, but from their ancient dues, revolted, were put down,
punished severely, and driven back into more hopeless
bondage. The Thirty Years’ War in the next century com-
pleted their misery. It is noteworthy that as the Black Prince
and the Captal de Buche suspended hostilities and united
their forces in order to chastise the Jacquerie in France, so, in
1525, the Duke of Guise, on behalf of the French king, who
was then at war with Charles the Fifth, and was his prisoner,
took an active part in punishing the boors in Germany. So
both the historical parties in England have been equal adepts
in oppressing labour.

At the French Revolution, the people turned on their
ancient oppressors and rent them, avenging the wrongs of
centuries by a savage butchery. The cruelties of the Terror
were due to a reaction from the sense of accumulated wrongs,
and to the dread which freed slaves feel that if they are
not thorough in their work, the latter end will be worse than
the beginning. When, in his old age at Brussels, the infamous
Barrére was asked to explain the mad fury into which the
French Revolution rapidly developed, and the ferocity which
the Mountain exhibited, he merely answered, “Mous ¢tions des
aches.” The answer is an epitome of the Terror and of its
doings,

Modern governments still wrong labour by pretending to
protect it against foreign competition. What they really do,
is to swell the profits of the capitalist, to cripple the energies
of the workman by narrowing his market, and to shorten the
means 2f the consumer by making that dear which he wishes
to purchase. The establishment of protective duties is a
confession that the industry cannot thrive at home, still less
be successful abroad, unless the people at home pay an
increased price for its use. There is nothing done by levying
such a tax on consumption, unless it be imposed on those
articles which are in general demand, and therefore are
the necessaries or conveniences of the many; for the more
552 Remedies.

voluntary the use of an article is, the less does it serve the
ends which are proposed by the régime of protective duties.
It is very likely true that an industry may be developed by
protection, and a foreign market found. This is said to be
the case with German iron, and that the manufacturers of
this article undersell Belgian and English iron masters. But
a moment’s reflection will show that they can do so only at
the expense of the German consumer, who not only pays an
enhanced price for what he uses, but finds the profit which
reimburses the manufacturers for what would otherwise be a
loss in the foreign market.

In the United States, the process is being exhibited on the
most gigantic scale. The freest people in the world, whose
administrations and parliaments have been able to study and
avoid the errors and crimes which older governments have
committed against labour, have submitted to a tariff which
clips the wages of the workman to the extent of fifty per
cent., under the pretence of supplying him with variety of
employment. It is a trifle that heavy duties are imposed
on a few foreign luxuries, except in so far as they give a
semblance of equity to those which are laid on common
necessaries, on the clothing of the workman, and on his tools,
and on the farmer’s implements of husbandry. The motive
of the impost is, of course, to increase the profits of capital ;
and this has hitherto been the result, and the impoverishment
and dependence of labour,—a consequence as certain though
not so manifest. The more remote but inevitable conse-
quence, a bitter distrust and a growing enmity of the
labourer towards the employer, has been occasionally seen
in the furious outbreaks which have from time to time
occurred in America, and are likely to recur whenever, as
is frequent in protected trades, a great depression comes over
the special industry. :

From sheer folly, or from interested motives, a belief that
better profits would ensue to employers, or in order to serve
party ends by giving a false interpretation of economical
phenomena, there are persons who are foolish or wicked
enough to advocate the return to a protective policy in
Protection and Labour. 553

England under the name of fair trade. The good sense of
the better educated and more experienced English workman
shows him that his acceptance of this doctrine would be
nugatory in articles of voluntary use, and suicidal in those
of necessary use, and he has, therefore, rejected the sug-
gestion. There are, moreover, persons who have the effrontery
to invite workmen to accept and acquiesce in a tax on their
food, in order that landlords may keep up their rents at the
expense of the general public. Such shameless mendicancy
is in keeping with the traditions of aristocratic government,
which has, in the history of English finance and legislation,
put the burdens of state on the many, and freed the property
of the few; but when it is fully understood, it will not serve
the men who advocate it, or the party which has the mean-
ness to encourage it. Unless his nature is changed, there is
nothing which the average Englishman more thoroughly
distrusts than a politician who gives furtive and occasional
support to a proposal which he publicly condemns.

When a Government goes beyond its proper functions, which
are to maintain the public safety, to propound useful and
equitable legislation, to arbitrate between interests when it
is necessary, to extinguish privileges, to unite efficiency with
economy in the administration of affairs, to punish fraud
and violence, and to undertake those great offices for which
private action, individually or collectively, is inadequate,
and attempts to distribute employments among its people, |
to favour one class at the expense of another, to meddle with
the innocent habits of its subjects, and to mould their lives
after its own pattern, to coerce the open expression of
opinion, and to silence criticism on its own proceedings, it
makes itself, or those whose affairs it administers, responsible
for all the failures of its action, and engenders the belief that
if man is made unhappy, the Government has brought about
the result. The English Government from the days of the
Pale till the passage of the second Irish Land Act, has
attempted to create or support an aristocracy of race in Ireland,
and has thereupon developed a democracy of discontent, hatred,
aud violence. Half the German army is engaged in protecting
554 Remedies.

the German soil from an invasion of revenge, and the whole
believes it is. But the other half is engaged in restraining
that wild outburst of socialism which a meddling and pedantic
administration has induced the German people to believe to be
the only opposition which the government really recognises
and fears. The huge empire of Russia is undermined by a
universal conspiracy. The Austrian administration lives by
setting race against race, and achieves an apparent union
by nourishing implacable aversions. When the traditional
purposes of a government are detested, its best intentions.
are distrusted.
_ The strange story of Frankenstein was, I make no doubt,
suggested to Mary Godwin out of the opinions which she
received from her father. Frankenstein had contrived to put
life into a gigantic being which he had constructed, and on
which he intended to bestow superhuman strength, stature,
and beauty. His creation had strength and stature, but was.
unutterably and shockingly hideous. The maker of the
monster abandoned the horrible creature, which had to shift
for itself, and to learn the arts of life in solitude, as all fled
with loathing from the sight of it. It possessed infinite powers
of endurance, infinite capacity for learning, great determina-
tion and cunning, irresistible strength. It yearned for society,
for sympathy, and for kindliness; and meeting with none of
these, being rejected by all and made a loathsome outcast,
after it had been called into being, it became an infuriate
fiend, which pursued with implacable hate and with the most
cruel wrongs the man who, being the author of its existence,
was thereupon its most detested enemy. This remarkable
conception was intended, it is clear, to personify the misery,
the loneliness, the endurance, the strength, the revenge of that
anarchic spirit which misgovernment engenders, the sudden-
ness with which its passions seize their opportunities, and the
hopelessness of the pursuit after it, when it has spent its fury
for a time. Most European governments have been engaged
in the work of Frankenstein, and have created the monsters
with whom they have to deal.

The great sities and towns of England contain a vast
Modern Frankensteims. 555.

population which lives, one hardly knows how, on mean and
precarious wages, in dismal and unwholesome dens. Some
of this poverty is merely miserable, some of it is vicious,
some is criminal. The growing population of these English
towns is partly of local origin; for though apparently a.
century ago the deaths in London exceeded the births, the:
increase of sanitary appliances have made London so healthy
that the relations are reversed; every week the amount of
the births equals the number of a large village. There is also.
a large immigration into London and other towns. The
German population of London is fully equal to that of a
first-class town in the German empire, The Irish population.
is probably larger than that in any Irish town, except Dublin
and Belfast. London, it is probable, also receives a consider--
able part of that population which has deserted the agricultural
districts. Now London is the greatest manufacturing town
in the world. Naturally its inhabitants are engaged in an.
infinite variety of occupations. But these occupations are
stinted by the fact that an octroi duty on coal is levied to an
amount which seems insignificant, but is sufficient to kill such
manufactures as depend on a prodigal consumption of this
source of power. The tax was first imposed, I believe, to-
supply a fund for rebuilding St. Paul’s Cathedral, was con-
tinued for the use of that absurd and obsolete Corporation of:
the City Proper, and now forms part of the fund for the pur-
poses of a hardly less grotesque institution—the Metropolitan
Board of Works,

Evil as the condition is of destitute and criminal London,
with its misery and recklessness, it is not, I am persuaded, so-
miserable and so hopeless as nearly all urban labour was sixty
years ago, It is not, I believe, so bad as it was at the be—
ginning of the eighteenth century, when, as one sees from
Luttrell’s diary, the executions at Tyburn formed a notable
percentage in the weekly bills of mortality. It is not so-
ignorant nor so unclean as it was twenty years ago, though,,
as usual, the pedantry of the Education Department, in driving
all children through a rigid examination, produces a distaste:
afterwards for books and learning, which makes the standard.
556 Remedies.

of proficiency a barrier towards subsequent study and learn-
ing, which is nearly as insurmountable as ignorance. In order
to enable the Government officials to calculate the charge of
national education in the easiest manner for themselves, they
pay by results, and in consequence induce results which are
very adverse to those for attaining which public money is
expended.

It is a matter of great gravity whether we should welcome
or even permit the perpetual immigration of a foreign element
into the country. The American people, with an unlimited
extent of territory, decline to allow themselves to be the
recipients of European pauperism, and keep a sharp look-out
on the character of the steerage passengers to the States,
They suspend the rights of citizenship during a considerable
period of probation. They have decided, for reasons which
are very intelligible, though not very convenient to be
published, not to allow their population to be polluted by the
presence of a Chinese proletariat. Now it is quite certain
that the English people at one time gained considerably by
the influx of foreigners. Some of our best industries were
‘developed before the Reformation by the inflowing Flemish
artizans from the time of Henry II. onwards. Others owe,
it seems, their development in England (though not without
some remonstrance, as we find from an Act of 1454 directed
against foreigners engaged in the silk manufacture) to the
exiles whom religious bigotry and persecution drove away.
Such were the workmen who fled from the Spanish Inquisi-
tion in the Low Countries, and the Bourbon Dragonnades in
France. We owe, indeed, some of our best stocks in England
to these migrations. No Englishman can regret, for the sake
of his country, that it was an asylum for a Romilly,

But it is quite another thing, when cheap transit being
provided, the great towns in England swarm with pauper
foreigners. Perhaps the readiness with which this kind of
population is accepted, is a survival of the experience in
which the addition of the foreign element was an indisputable
good; perhaps it is a convenience to those capitalists who
anake large profits out of degraded and impoverished labour,
Lmmigration of Foreign Pauperism. 557

Working men, who understand the interests of their order,
are alive to the risk which their organizations run from the
competition of foreign immigrants, and with characteristic
public spirit have suggested to foreign labour that it should
seek to raise itself, not at the expense of other labourers,
but in concert with other labourers. The advice which Mr.
Broadhurst gave last autumn (1883) at the Paris conference
of workmen was in the best interests of all workmen. In
brief it is, Raise yourselves, not by depressing others, but by
acting with them. You cannot escape, try whatever you can,
from the influence of competition, any more than from the
survival of the fittest. But the survival of the fittest may be
the survival of the analogue to Frankenstein’s demon, while
the effort of all true civilisation is to improve those who are
improvable, and to deal with the residuum. It is possible
that the struggle for existence, unless controlled and elevated,
may be the degradation of all. It nearly came to be so
during the first thirty years of the present century.

Various remedies have been proposed for the immediate
benefit and the permanent improvement of the working
classes, especially the industrious poor in large cities. It
may be expedient that I should state, in this conclusion
to my inquiry, what appears to me to be the value of the
several projects which have been propounded.

I am persuaded that an attempt to relieve distress, pro-
vide proper lodging, and find work for the inhabitants of
large towns would in the end produce even worse evils than
that condition which the expedients would seek to relieve.
No one disparages kindliness and charity. For certain
calamities, such as those which are relieved in hospitals,
they are indispensable. For extraordinary casualties they
are invaluable. But as a universal process they would be
disastrous, especially if the charity is compulsory, or pro-
vided out of the funds which the Government raises by
way of taxation. To adopt such an expedient would be
to despair of the recuperative power of honest industry.
If the London ratepayers, or even the London landlords,
are to find the means by which homies are to be provided
558 Remedies.

‘for workmen at prices which are unremunerative to those
who supply the homes, and work on products for which
‘there is no market, or an overstocked market, it needs no
\particular acuteness to discover that the emigration into
-such towns will be more rapid than ever, and the restraints on
iimprovidence, not now over strong, will be entirely removed,
-and the old allowance system restored in its worst form.
It seems plain, too, that in the end, what was seén to be
not very remote under the old poor law, will ensue, and
‘tthe relief of poverty will absorb nearly all the products of
‘labour.

The nationalisation of land is a favourite project with
‘those who believe that socialism is the true remedy for
‘low wages. Now I cannot believe that this project, from
tthe extreme form which it takes in Mr. George’s proposal,
‘that the property of all landowners, great and small, should
be confiscated, to the milder proposal, that after due com-
\pensation secured to existing interests, the state should
-constitute itself the universal landlord, and appropriate for
public ends all future accretions of value in land, would
shave been ever gravely contemplated had it not been for
‘the policy of English landlords, who have clung to the
obnoxious privileges of primogeniture and the right of
settling land. The instinct of the public leads them to con-
-clude that there is a very strong motive for the maintenance
-of these customs, and naturally that the motive is a selfish
‘one. They are aware that the soil of this country is
limited in extent, that what is scarce is dear, and that if
what is scarce can be made artificially more scarce, it will
ibe made more dear. That this impréssion is correct cannot,
I think, be doubted. It is not indeed easy to discover the
precise amount of additional or unnatural dearness which
ithe application of Gregory King’s Law, which formulates
the effect of scarcity on the price of a necessary of life,
would prove to be induced on building sites in the metropolis.
But it is clearly understood that the cost is greatly enhanced,
-and discontent at an unfair advantage conferred by law on
the owners of certain kinds of property, exaggerates the
Nationalization of Land. 559

impression formed as to the amount. I am at least per-
‘suaded that the socialism which desires in a more or less
‘drastic manner to curtail the present rights of landowners
will become more prevalent and more threatening as long
as the invidious privileges to which I have often referred
are maintained. These mischievous privileges explain the
popularity of Mr. George’s theory and his remedy of uni-
versal confiscation,—a confiscation which will include not
only palaces and parks, mansions and farms, but every free-
hold cottage or homestead in which working men have
invested the savings of their lives. Discontent constantly
accepts ludicrous and even suicidal paradoxes. .

The policy which would make the state the universal
landlord, after providing for the compensation of existing
interests, would be only less fatal and foolish than that
which confiscated them without compensation. It would
confer on the state the most gigantic functions, which would
require for their administration a machinery which, were it
entirely honest and thoroughly efficient, would cost more
than all which the project hoped to gain, would create an
enormous body of fundholders, the recipients of the rents
which the government received for the use of the national
estate, fundholders who would not be, by the very terms
of the bargain, tied by a single responsibility to the society
which paid them the dividends on the new stock, and would
certainly lead to a bureaucracy which would be vexatious,
inquisitorial, and corrupt. If the state is to revise its
contracts with its tenants periodically, the tenant will be
divested of all motives to improve his holding; if the new
‘tenancy is to be a permanent one, the state of things which
the nationalisation of land was intended to obviate will
instantly recommence. But the progress of human liberty
is always connected with the restraint of government inter-
ference, except when government, by arbitrating between
‘conflicting interests, saves the weak from the tyranny of
the strong, and thus secures justice, and benefits the whole
community by its police. Again, the object of the wise
€conomist, that result to which all the practical teaching
560 Remedies.

of his science and all the experience of social history tend,
is the distribution of wealth into as many hands as possible.
A country is infinitely safer, infinitely stronger, infinitely
more capable of genuine progress, in which the many are
in comfort and content, than that is in which much wealth
is accumulated, but the process of distribution is artificially
hindered.

Another remedy is emigration, or migration. Spontaneous
emigration is almost invariably a loss to the community from
which it proceeds. It is supposed to relieve the country of a
surplus population, and thereupon to be a remedy against the
danger of over-crowding. But a process which takes away
the best of the working classes, as must be the case with
spontaneous emigration, since only the most vigorous and
enterprizing are influenced by the movement, is the reverse
of a gain to the country which loses them, and if their places

_are filled, as it seems they are, by immigrants of inferior type,
and, as is generally the case with such types, of greater
fecundity, the loss becomes a double one. The fact that the
emigration is a benefit to the emigrant does not alter the
result. Now emigration is a boon to the country from which
it takes place only when it relieves society from that class of
the industrious and honest workers which is certain to be
over-crowded, and from which, therefore, depletion is a good to
all,—to the people which runs the risk of being constrained to
support the excess, and, far more important, to the labour
which is likely to be in excess. The class which most exactly
fulfils the conditions referred to, is the young of both sexes;
and it is well known that this is the class of immigrants that
our colonies eagerly welcome, and are willing in their new
homes to surround with every safeguard.

I am persuaded, from reason and experience, that the
emigration of the young is the best remedy for hereditary
pauperism. Some years ago, when I was a guardian of the
poor in my own city, my Board took pains to carry out this
kind of emigration, through the agency of Miss Rye, and with
absolute success. Nor do I doubt that in London and other
large towns, especially as education is sharpening the faculties
The Best Emigration. 561

and developing the intelligence of the young, such a system
of emigration would be welcome and highly beneficial, espe-
cially if care were taken that the parent should be carefully
and exactly informed of the way in which the child was going
on, and the child was made to understand the duty of relieving
the parent, perhaps of finding him or her a home in the new
country to which he or she may have gone. The children of
the poor are not undutiful or ungenerous to their parents. I
am convinced from my personal knowledge that the wages of
domestic servants are freely given by young women to their
parents, and that the miserable earnings of agricultural
labourers are constantly eked out by the wages of daughters
in service. In the case of pauper children, I hold that they
who have put upon others the charge of their maintenance
have morally forfeited the right of determining their career;
and that in the case of criminals and persons of infamous
character, they should be, in the interest of the children,
deprived of parental rights at once and altogether. It is the
interest of honest and industrious workmen that pauperism
should be diminished as much as possible in the present and
obviated in the future, and that crime should be isolated and
watched. Everything which increases the cost of administer-
ing human societies, and still more everything which involves
the waste of wealth, diminishes the resources available for the
employment of industry.

' The disastrous dissociation of agricultural skill and com-
petent capital has led to a diminution of the rural population,
and to the abandonment of tillage over a large and, it is to be
feared, an increasing area of English land. The poverty of
the towns has been swollen by agricultural immigration, amd
the necessary cultivation of the country has been injured by
the lack of hands. Hence it has been proposed, and with
great reason, to revive and extend the system of smati hold-
ings, so as to attract a rural population to the land before it
is too late. My friend, Mr. Jesse Collings, in the House of
Commons, has already procured some legislation in this
direction, and the system has the warm support of Mr. Arch’s
practical experience. I believe that the only reason why

36
562 Remedzes.

farmers are hostile to such an arrangement is that they fear
it will make the agricultural labourers too independent. It
seems that it is disliked by landowners because they are
wedded to the tradition of having large farm tenants and a
system which is plausible in itself, and, until the recent agri-
cultural break-down, has been apparently successful. But at
the present crisis one would think that any and every expe-
dient which would tend to replace labour on land and attract
new capital to land would be advantageous, and should be
eagerly adopted. Though the individual capital of peasant
holders (I am thinking of much more than miserable acre
allotments of the worst land in the parish, at double the rent
of the best) is small, the proportionate capital is large. I am
sure, at least, that if intelligent labourers had the prospect of
getting a ten or fifteen acre farm, with a decent dwelling and
corresponding farm offices, the amount of capital per acre
with which they would stock their holdings would soon be
relatively far higher than that of the large farmer, and that
the produce per acre would be far larger, especially if they
betook themselves to dairy farming and ensilage, as the small
fifty acre farmers of the Eastern States in America are doing,
and with such marked success, on the worst land in the world.
Fortunately small farms are under the protection of the Agri-
cultural Holdings Act.

I have before me a little work, written by a national school-
master some fifteen years ago, and to which I then put a
preface. I stated in it that “the position of the agricultural
jabourer in husbandry was one which pressed for a solution,
and that speedily, or that the country would have to face
difficulties which cannot be evaded, difficulties which, unless
foreseen and provided against, may be in the highest degree
serious.” The crisis has come, and it is worse than I anti-
cipated.

Mr. Samuel Vallis, in the little book to which I have
referred, gives a balance-sheet of his receipts and expenditure
on five acres of land cultivated by spade husbandry. He shows
a gross return of £109 10s., his live-stock being two cows and
two pigs, his grain crops being an acre of wheat and half an
The Cottage Farmer. 563

acre of green peas. He puts down on the other side 43 an
acre for rent,—an unconscious avowal as to the enormous rent
procured for cottage farms,—45 tos. for seeds, and £20 16s.
for labour, the latter item being of course one which was
necessary for the schoolmaster, but would not be incurred as
a money payment by the labourer, and so shows a profit of
468 4s., which he states, almost superfluously, is more than
double the wages of the ordinary farm labourer. He steadily
pursued what he calls “the soiling system” with his cows,
ze., they were constantly fed under cover, and he reckons that
the advantage of this over the “exposed system” is fully
25 per cent. He adds that if young agricultural labourers
remained single till twenty-five, and saved half their wages,
they would soon find the necessary capital for such a little
holding, or, indeed, for one three times the size.

I do not doubt that it is still possible to recall a rural
population to the English soil, to renew and extend the
productiveness of English land, and to find abundant high-
class labour tor the capitalist farmer when he reappears,
It is true that the occupiers of peasant holdings might
demand higher wages than they now earn. But what of
that? They might illustrate anew the doctrine that low
wages do not mean cheap labour, and that high wages
may. It is certain that the possession of property is the
best, nay the only means under which people are educated
into respecting property, and that diligent labour on a
small holding will lead to diligent labour on another’s
tenancy. I am told that the experiment of a beneficent
despotism, under which the labourer has been gifted with
enough land for cow and pigs to his cottage, with the con-
dition that he worked honestly for an employer at hire, has
been tried successfully, the landowner being the arbiter as to
the wages paid. The system is the revival in our own day
of the old tenancy in villeinage, though with less land and
onan uncertaintenure. If this system succeeds, though the in-
trinsic faults which belong to it were found out and commented
on in the earliest agriculture, I should anticipate that a more
generous tenure would be still more successful, and that the
564 Remedies.

most obvious solution of the agricultural difficulty would be
to win back the labourer to the land by the temptation that
there is annexed to his cottage such an amount of land as
would give him an interest in the soil, and by leaving him free
to contract for his time and skill with the larger tenants.

In course of time it may be possible to reunite capital and
agricultural skill, and bring back the labourer to the soil. It
is necessary to do both, and to face the solution of the
problem. At present, the parties immediately interested will
net see the facts, and the public at large, which is profoundly
interested in the rehabilitation of agriculture, is kept in the
dark. No more deplorably unsatisfactory and incomplete
account of the situation can be conceived than that contained
in the report of the Duke of Richmond’s commission, which is
crowded with irrelevances, and destitute of true information
on the real facts of the situation. So ill-informed are those
who are concerned for agriculture, or pretend to be, that
there are persons addressing working men who imagine that
they can by bold assertions induce industry to believe that it
will benefit itself by replacing taxes in the form of a sliding
scale on wheat, by so restricting the foreign market, and thus
rendering the wages of the workman more uncertain, than
they otherwise would be, and by raising the price of food,
and thus diminishing their purchasing power.

The future of the artizan, factory, and urban population has
yet to be discussed. For this there is but one remedy,—the
extension of labour organizations on the trade union principle,
but with considerable improvements in detail. If it be found
that those callings alone have prospered in which labour part-
nerships have been developed, and those have prospered
most in which the fundamental principles of such labour
partnerships have been most prudently kept in mind and
acted on, it stands to reason that an extension of the
system to other callings, now notoriously underpaid, is the
most obvious remedy for low wages and uncertain Prospects.
Such associations are a revival of the best traits in the
medizval guilds.

I confess that in my earlier writings, before I had studied
Usefulness of Trade Unions. 565

the history of labour and its strange vicissitudes in England, I
was of opinion, though with some misgivings, that the organi-
zation of a trade union was directed against the consumer
through the employer, that it appropriated out of an elastic
but common fund from which labour was paid (though I never
agreed with Mr. Mill’s wage-fund theory), an undue share,
and that it aimed at establishing an aristocracy of labour, from
the benefits of which the great mass of working people would
be excluded. An inquiry into the history of labour has dis-
pelled these opinions, I do not aver that the organizations
of the middle ages are models for working men in modern
times to imitate. They were partly concessions to artizans
in towns, partly encouraged in so far as they were benefit
societies; but they were much more a reaction against
interested oppression. The modern labour partnership is
freed from the enforced vices of the older organization, and
has generally purged itself from the equally adventitious vices
which were engendered by the interpretations which the
courts put upon the atrocious combination and conspiracy
laws.

Now the existence and development of the ancient system,
described in detail in the previous pages, was accompanied by
remarkable and general prosperity, for the vices of society in
the fifteenth century were mainly those of the Church and the
nobles. Every one throve, except the foolish people who,
after wasting France, came back to England and wasted each
other. The singular prosperity of the age has greatly puzzled
those who have even in part recognised its character, but was
easily seen, to such experienced eyes as those of Tooke, to
have had no relation to the reputed value of the currency, or
to the other explanations which had been given of so remark-
able a phenomenon.

I can discover no other cause for this remarkable material
progress beyond the universal associations of labour. I admit
that the situation was in itself favourable to high wages.
Land was greatly distributed. The seasons must have been
singularly propitious. The country was permeated by a
religious feeling which scorned the worldliness and immorali -
566 femedies.

ties of the established system, was severe, parsimonious, ardent,
secret, and personal. Unfortunately, the mass of the people
either could not or would not use what power they had to
check the growing violence of the nobles, the scandals of the
Church, and the vices of the administration. They sided, it
seems, with the reforming party among the nobles, the Yorkist
faction, and found, as people always find who entrust popular
interests to a noble partizan, that they were made tools of and
deluded.

It is probable, too, that the success of their private organiza-
tions, necessarily a secret, made them indifferent to such
political action as they could take. The towns, and even the
villages, had their guilds, and it is certain that these guilds
were the agencies by which the common interests of labour
were protected. In a prosperous people, legal persecution
develops cautious resistance and judicious organization. In
an unprosperous one, it encourages the growth of violent
opinion and a passion for destructive remedies. I can quite
believe that the working classes of the fifteenth century grew
indifferent to politics, or found that they could not grapple
with lawless domestic feuds. I am certain that the factions let
them alone, just as I am certain that when the working classes
became impoverished and powerless in the sixteenth century,
the destruction of the guilds was seen by their oppressors to
be the best way of breaking up their organization. In the
same way the modern trade union has had to fight for two
generations in order to get its funds protected against fraud
or embezzlement.

The evidence of the present and the example of the past
appear to prove that labour partnerships are the remedy
for low wages. They undoubtedly put the employer in a
difficulty. They claim a greater share for labour in the gross
profit of industry. They constrain him (if he is to hold his
own in the struggle) to find his remedy in the economy of
waste, in the development of invention, or in the reduction of
rent. The analysis of these agencies requires a fuller exposi-
tion of the circumstances.

The workman should seek to make his labour as efficient
The Moral Improvement of Labour. 567

and fruitful as possible. The honourable desire to protect
every workman in the same craft, by seeking to establish a
minimum of wages, may lead to the suggestion of a minimum
standard of efficiency. It is entirely essential not only to the
dignity but to the strength of labour that it should do what
it has to do as well as it possibly can. Iam sure that the
workman of the fifteenth century was as proud of the integrity
of his work as he was of the agencies by which he was
independent. We can, even at the present day, measure and
appreciate its excellence. And in order to maintain their
own character, workmen are, in my opinion, justified in de-
nouncing incompetence, sloth, or scamping work in their own
order, and in exposing fraud and dishonesty among employers.
If it were possible for the employer to dispense with over-
lookers, and trust his w rkmen, much saving would be effected,
for in order to get a larger share in the joint profits of the
capitalist and workmen, it is essential that the deduction from
gross profits should be as little as possible. But it must, I
fear, be admitted, that in the modern strife between labour
and capital, the importance of securing that every care should
be taken of the employer’s interest by the workmen has been
lost sight of, and, in consequence, that fund from which alone
the condition of the workman can be bettered, the net profits
of the whole industry, has been needlessly and injuriously
diminished. It cannot be too strongly insisted on that em-
ployer and employed have a common interest,—the production
of a. maximum profit from their common industry ; and that the
only question which ought to arise in the partnership between
them, is that of the respective shares which each should receive
in the equitable distribution of the profit. But I venture on
asserting that the economy of this kind of waste is the most
important of all.

There are various other forms of it. The extraurdinary
application of natural forces to purposes of human utility is
the most striking fact in the history of modern industry. The
economy of waste is the discovery of the process by which
the force may be used with the least friction and loss, and the
success which has attended individual effort in this direction
568 Remedzes.

is a commonplace in the history of industry, manufacture, and
wealth. Such discoveries, secured as they are by patents,
exist entirely for the benefit of the capitalist, and the profits
derived from them can be appropriated in no degree by any
one. In just the same way the special skill of the individual
agriculturist, who cannot protect his processes by patent,
remains with him as a profit-bearing agency, and cannot be
appropriated by labourer or landowner till the economy is
diffused among all persons engaged in the same calling. But
other economies, some of which have been alluded to already,
—viz., the extinction of middle profits and the moral develop-
ment of industry,—immediately become the object on which
iabour may ground its claims to a share in the enhanced
profit of the undertaking, though here again, until the economy
is diffused over all the operations of a similar kind, the appro-
priation of the part is hindered. And perhaps the monopoly
of the patentee (the natural justice of which I do not dispute,
though the grant of the monopoly is constantly inequitable in
fact) may help to break that immediate loss to labour which
often follows for a while on the economy of productive pro-
cesses, and so give time to prepare for the re-arrangement with
labour, which the greater profits of the employer justify. In
illustration of what I say, I may refer to the effect of sewing
machines. It was calculated that this invention would mate-
rially Jessen the toils, and, in the end, increase the gains of
tailors and seamstresses. It has not done so, because the
tailors’ union is not strong enough to enable the members to
claim better terms from employers, and the seamstresses
have hardly any union at all. That they who have em-
pleved the labours of such artizans as I refer to have
made prodigious profits, is pretty evident. I find no fault
with the advantage which they have acquired, my only
regret is that it has not been shared with those who have
created the wealth, as it would have been under a proper
organization. :

The circumstances under which rent may be made to bear
a larger share of public duties, in return for the enormous
benefits which industry and the progress of society have
The Recovery of Rents and Profits. 569.

conferred upon landowners, have been already in part referred
to. The well-being of the mere landowner is a matter of no
concern to anybody but himself. The well-being of the
labourer, or of the capitalist who gives the concentration of
intelligence and administrative power to the affairs of a
complicated instrument of profit, or of the artizan, who con-
‘scientiously and faithfully carries out the details of work,
is of interest to all. I cannot join in the chorus of exulta-
tion which comments on the virtues of a middle-man who,.
having saved ten or twenty millions, dies in the odours of the
peerage and of sanctity. I do not care for the opulence
which, beginning with questionable gifts or grants or plunder,
thas, through generations of fools or profligates, at last, and
by the labour and even by the presence of others, contrived to
take enormous tolls on enterprize, on industry, and on popu-
dation, and is ever on the look-out to fleece all, if they will
submit to be fleeced. To suggest that the owner of land
should be deprived of his property is dishonest, and, were it
carried out, would be disastrous. To value his present inte-
rest, and to appropriate the future increase of the area which
he possesses, would be an enormous task, and would make
government, society being a vague force of which government
must be the agent, an ubiquitous function, the jobs of which
would be demoralizing, the discontent with which would be
dangerous, the cost of which would be enormous, and the
tisks of which would be formidable. Suppose in 1870 the
English Government had adopted Mr, Mill’s suggestion, had
accepted the position of universal and immediate landlord, and
had agreed to pay in perpetuity the agricultural rents which
were then raised, it would have made an excellent bargain
for the landowners, and an exceedingly bad one for the public.
The doctrine that agricultural rent will always rise, which
was at the bottom of Mr. Mill’s theory cf decreasing produc-
tion from land, is one of the most dangerous, and I may add
‘erroneous notions conceivatle. A knowledge of the history of
rent, in the third quarter, for example, of the seventeenth
century, and the first quarter of the eighteenth, would have
entirely dispelled a delusion which was founded on the acci-
570 Remedies.

dental conditions under which rent was increased in the first:
half of the nineteenth century.

But the case is quite different with ground rents. Here
the State has a right to interfere with that exceptional
accretion of value which comes from other than the outlay
on the land. It is easy to separate the ground value from
the building value, and to tax the one on the principle which
should be applied to all property, and the other on the
principle which should be applied to property whose only
or principal value is derived from the existence and action:
of others. That the reformers of local taxation should insist
on the ground landlord contributing to the fund, which is.
necessary for the very existence of those who create his.
wealth, is plain; that they should anticipate the necessity, by
joint action, of lessening the exorbitant rents which their
supineness induces them to pay for sites, is wise; for in
many branches of business there is clear enough evidence
that trade customers will be no longer willing to pay
them; and that what is called co-operative shop-keeping,.
a system already in its infancy, and still exposed to the
risks of inexperience, will seriously limit the future of
those traders who are too slovenly or too servile to resist
extortion.

The organization of labour, with a view to its sale in the
aggregate, is incomparably more important, when the con-
dition of any class is such that the wages it earns are not
progressive, or are retrogressive, than it is when the demand
is generally less than the supply. Persons have often stated:
that there has been no trade union among domestic servants,
and that the wages of such persons have greatly risen by the
mere operation of demand and supply. There is no doubt
of the increase; and it bears indirect testimony to the fact
that the profits of the higher branches of industry are greater
than those of the lower, and that there is m re employment for
domestic labour in consequence. But it is also certain that
the demands made on such labour cause that it should be
increasingly select. The domestic servants who satisfied the
‘simple habits of a generation or two ago, were very inferior
Domestic Servants. 57h

in tact, in manner, and in function to those which are needed
in very moderate households at present. Besides, it is not-
quite clear that there is not an understanding among domestic.
servants which is just as effective as a trade union. The:
training of an efficient domestic servant is a long appren--
ticeship. Those who enter into this calling know what is.
expected of them, and what is the reputation which they
must acquire and keep, and are very fully aware of the claims.
which they can make for wages. Good as the position is,.
and, relatively speaking, high as are the wages of peasant
girls who enter into domestic service and are carefully trained
in it, the calling is not in itself attractive, and young women.
often exchange it for a married life of much toil and little
hope, for the poor earnings of dressmakers and seamstresses,
and even for a ruinous freedom. The supply always tends.
to fall short of the demand, and those who enter the calling
are fairly cognisant of the fact.

But there is no doubt whatever that many callings are, in.
technical language, overcrowded. I say technically, for they
may not be under a better distribution of profits. I find no-
fault with employers for attempting to arouse the common
scare of those who are threatened with the risk of having to-
pay higher wages, that the industry will be driven from the
country, but I am not called on to believe them. The-
prediction is made so freely, and has so rarely been verified,.
that any person who hears it may be pardoned for doubting
it. It is certainly not an imminent risk if the profits of the
capitalist continue to be large, and there is plenty of evidence-
that in those callings where the labour of the employed is.
worst paid, the profits of employers are abnormally high,
as in the case, for example, of ready-made clothes. There-
is plenty of evidence as to the enormous profits of most
employers in the manufacture of textile fabrics in the days.
when factory-hands were very ill-paid. Never, I imagine,.
was wealth more rapidly accumulated in Lancashire and.
Yorkshire than it was between 1800 and 1840. It is rarely-
the case, however, that the liberal reward of labour is followed.
by a material enhancement of price. No one believes that:
572 Remedies.

if the London seamstresses, tailors, and match-box makers
received double the wages which they do at present, there
would be an appreciable difference in the price of the pro-
ducts sold, or any present risk that any of those industries
would cease to be plied in this country.

There is some evidence that the principle of organization
as applied to labour is extending even to the poorest paid
work-people. It is gratifying to see, for instance, that the
process is gradually spreading among women. The first step
ds the modest benefit society, which provides a fund against
sickness, and gradually for accidental or enforced abstinence
from employment. The habit of making provision against
«casualties arising from the weakness of the individual’s own
position in relation to the risks of sickness or other contin-
gencies, is soon extended towards making provision against
the risks which attend the employment. Thence it is an easy
stage to the process by which some slight barrier is made
against an arbitrary lessening of wages. This step is aided
by the avowed sympathy of those who are convinced that
labour should be helped, or, at least, not hindered, in selling its
‘work at the best price which it can get; and is justified in resist-
ing, by all the means it can command, the process which would
-compel it to a forced sale of the only article of value which it
possesses. In course of time, employers become habituated to
the process under which workpeople sell their labour, on the
same principle which others adopt in selling their goods, for
tthe dealer knows the ruinous effect of a compulsory and sudden
sale. And perhaps, finally, the sternest economist will come
‘to see, not only that workpeople may adopt the principle of
the capitalist in withholding goods from the market till a re-
munerative price is obtained, but that the process as applied
‘to labour is ultimately as beneficial as most persons see it is
‘when applied to trade. The market price, they tell us, must
in the long run conform to the cost of production, plus the
yproft of the capitalist. Is this to be true of one of the
factors in production only, and to be false in the case of the
-other ?

The moralist might dwell at length and with satisfaction on
The Extension of the Union Principle. 573

the education which the principle of mutual aid gives to human
nature. The rational economist knows that the best way in
which the various forces which contribute to a common result
can carry out their end is by the harmony of these forces. But
the harmony is impossible if there be a well-founded distrust
as to the equity with which the distribution of profits is
effected. There will be a longing for violent remedies if law is
plainly enlisted on behalf of any one interest, and to the detri-
ment of all others. For, I repeat, the excellence of the social
state does not lie in the fulness with which wealth is produced
and accumulated, but in the fact that it is so distributed as to
give the largest comfort and the widest hope to the general
mass of those whose continued efforts constitute the present
industry of the nation and the abiding prospect of its future
well-being.

To the historian, however, as distinguished from the mere
annalist, the narrative of the varying fortunes which have
attended on these centuries of work and wages is immeasur-
ably instructive. Whatever claim other people may make to
a share in the common work of civilization, the English race
may justly affirm that the English people has instructed man-
kind in the machinery of government, and in the process by
which freedom may be secured in the fullest measure to all,
and the administration of public affairs may be effectively
carried on. The institutions of England have been copied,
with more or less success, by all civilized races. They may
be faulty, but they contain the best agencies which experience
has discovered and practical wisdom has adopted.

We do not owe them to the dynasties which have ruled in
England, for the English constitution has been wrested from
the several families who have been permitted from time to
time to be at the head of affairs, and have one and all con-
spired against the welfare of those who have endured them,
till, more frequently than any other people, the English have
deposed them, and driven them away. We do not owe them
to statesmen and lawyers, for they have constantly abetted
their employers in those purposes which have been so happily
fled. We do not owe them to the English aristocracy,
574 Remedies.

-which has been by turns turbulent, servile, and greedy, and
‘is now probably the most unnecessary, as a body, that any
civilized society exhibitsand endures. We do not owe them to
‘the Church, which has been, since the days of the first Edward,
‘the willing servant of statecraft, and has rarely raised its voice
-against wrong-doing. Had the English people relied on the
‘mere machinery of its government and the character of those
who have manipulated this government, it would have never
been an example and a model of civilized organization. Tomy
«mind, England was at its lowest degradation during the twenty
years which intervened between the destruction of the monas-
‘teries and the restoration of the currency, when the worst
possible government was carried on, but with strict adherence
‘to parliamentary forms.
The fact is, even in the darkest time there still was some-
‘thing which despotism feared or discovered that it must fear.
England has never been entirely without a public opinion,
‘which has been constantly acute, and has not infrequently
‘been dangerous. There have always, too, been public men
‘who could give effect to that opinion, and make it strong by
‘marshalling it. The traditional parties have in turn thriven or
‘become powerful,—the one by appropriating at its convenience
the work of those who have interpreted and formulated popular
‘demands; the other by putting itself at the head of all in-
-terests which are hostile to the public good, and by relying on
the organization which is sure to be developed on behalf of
such interests, and on apathy, ignorance, or unintelligent dis-
«content. But by dint of patience and by watching for
opportunities, the English people has developed a system
‘which, though far from perfect, has achieved much of that
which had long been the Utopia of philosophers. But the
eforms which have been effected are the work of the people,
-and they are to be traced ia that history only which is rarely
“written, of the stubborn perseverance with which Englishmen
have criticised their own condition, have discovered that from
‘themselves only, whoever may be the agent of the remedy,
‘the remedy can be found, and have, under infinite discourage-
ments, effected so much. The student of social forces will
The Services of Labour to Freedom. 575

find, that in order to understand the order of things in his
-own time, he must take account not only of the process by
which the machinery of our social condition has been made
and constantly marred, but much more of the opinion and
action which have developed and moulded the character of
the English people.
INDEX.

A

ABBEYS, the, property belonged to heirs of founders, 324.
Accounts, absence of careful, a cause of agricultural loss, 471.
—— private, an imitation in form of the royal accounts, 24.
Acreage, the, of England, as estimated by Young, 477.
Aggregate wages, Young's calculations of, 481.

Agriculture, board of, its dissolution, sor.

—— by capitalist landlord, profits of, before and after the Plague, 232.
—— English, its indebtedness to Holland, 453.

—— improvement in, true cause of rise in rents, 352.

—— its produce always in excess of cost, 159.

—— popularity of, in the eighteenth century, 470.

—— three course system of, in ancient, 443.

Agricultural interest, aid to the, by legislation, 53.
Agricultural labour, allowances to, their meaning, 540.
Agricultural wealth, estimate of capital value of, 478.

Aid, the, on the knightage of the Black Prince, 317.
Alban’s, St., events at abbey at, 260.

Allowances, recognized by court, 437.

Allowance system, occasional effects of, 502.

Alton Barnes, stock and land lease at, analysed, 282.

Alton, the brigands of, in 1249, story of, 99.
Apprenticeship, defence of, 503.

Army, English, character of, 31.

~— English, character of in Edward the Third’s reign, 197.
Architects, of middle ages, generally unknown, 163.
Animals, increase of, in the eighteenth century, 475.

Arable farming, cost of, in the thirteenth century, by the acre, 77.
Arch, Joseph, his objects and difficulties, 513.

Archives, English, number and fulness of, 17.

Aristocracy, English, and the people, 573.

Artizan, capitalist, rise of the, 338.

—— his duty to employers and the public, 567.

Artizans, wages of, in manufacturing districts, 496.

—— wages of, in thirteenth century, 179, sag.

37
578 Index.

Artizans, wages of, in eighteenth century, 406.
Arundel, Archbishop, episcopate of, 370.
Assessments, of wages in Quarter Sessions. early, 35%
Assize, of bread and malt, the, 61.

Attainders, parliamentary, generally remitted, 294.
Avignon, migration of popes to, 246.

Ayscough, Bishop, his murder, 377.

B.

BANK OF ENGLAND, the, in its earlier days, 467.
Bailiff's roll, description of the, 48.

Bankruptcy, law of, another ferm of usury law, 142,
Barére, anecdote of, 551.

Beaufort, Bishop, his career, 373.

Becket, murder of, 27.

——- translation of, 359.

Beggars, supplication of, on alms, 418.

Benevolences, reputed character of, 317.

Bills, tradesmen’s, of the fifteenth century, 165.
Bishops, cadets of noble familes in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, 93
—— English, principal in the fifteenth century, 369.
—— the, of the fifteenth century, their character, 381.
—— in 1450, unpopularity of, 311.

Black death, origin and history of, 219.

Blith, Walter, on English husbandry, 458.

Blomefield, on Norfolk guilds, 417.

Boar, the fatted, a dish at feasts, 83.

Boarding, contracts for, by Elizabeth, 354.

Boccacio, on the Plague, 224.

Boors’ war, the, in 1525, 157.

Bounty, the, at the Revolution, 484.

Bourchier, Archbishop, episcopate of, 372.

Bread, equality of price of, fn England in eighteenth century, 404.
Bribes, paid to assessors, 214.

Broadhurst, Henry, his experience of trade unions, 516.
— in Paris, his advice, 557-

Bruges, embassy to, in 1371, 247.

Building, cost of, in fifteenth century, 543.

Burgundian Duchy, the formation of, its importance in European history, 30a,
Butter, cheapness of, 93.

Bye industries, in villages, common, 47.

Byron, Lord, on the frame-breaker’s ‘Act, 495.

Cc
CALLINGS, overcrowded, remedies for, 571.
Cambridge, riot at, 264.
Capitalist, agriculture, clearly impossible after 1381, 274.
Cannyngs, Lord Mayor, his letter from Pecok, 379.
Lndex. 579

Canterbury, citizens of, their conduct in 1327, 36}

Capital, true nature of, 491.

—— on land, in Young’s time, 471.

——- occasional relations of, to labour, 545.

Carrier, common, a calling in England, 135.

‘Carucate, extent of, 75.

Castles, generally built near towns, 124.

Tattle, no special or improved breed of, 78,

‘Causes, effects from, after the cause has ceased, enduring, 435.
‘Charles II., his ingratitude to the Dutch, 453.

—— reign of, and court of, impression from, 385.

‘Charters, grant of, to towns, 104.

Chartism, purpose of, 440.

‘Cheese, production of, 94.

‘Cheltenham, manor of, 288.

‘Chester, city of, wages at, in 1593 and 1597, 391.

Chichele, Archbishop, episcopate of, 370.

‘Chivage, tax ordinarily called, 45.

Christianity and almsgiving, 416.

Chronicles, the compilation of, 164.

Church, devices of the, 358.

—— parish, size of, no index of population, 66.

‘Churches, fifteenth century character of, 290.

‘Churchmen, wealth of, objects of, 33.

‘Civil war, effects of, on wages, 432.

———— the, its slight effect on the English people, 332.
‘Clergy, duty of, in almsgiving, 416.

—— employment of, in secular offices, 21.

-—— in Middle Ages, numerous, 160.

-—— the, services of, 356.

Clerks, wages of, low, 183.

‘Climate of England, character of, 216.

‘Clover, cultivation of, its slow extension, 469,

‘Coal tax, effects of, in London, 555.

‘Collings, Mr., his Agricultural Act, 561.

‘Colonial empire, development of, after the Peace of Paris, 485.
‘Colchester, occupation of inhabitants in, 121.

Combinations of labourers in fourteenth ceztury, their effects, 252.
‘Commons, the House of, its power in the fifteenth century, 302.
Communal land, general in early times, 88.

-—— tenure, disadvantage of, 91.

‘Commerce, development of, in countries hostile to Roman see, 360.
‘Companies, monopolist gains of, 466.

Competition of capitalists, advantage of, to workmen, 499.
‘Conquest, Norman, effects of on the Saxon aristocracy, 19.
Conspiracy, legal interpretation of, 399.

Constitution, English, work of the people on the, 574.
Co-operation, practical difficulties of, 515.

Co-operative shops, significance of, 531.
580 Index.

Com laws, effects of, on wages and prices, 407.

—— law, the, of 1773, 485; of 1791, 486.

———— of Charles II., 483. ie
Corn, leasing, practice of, 280,

Corn rents, origin of, 447.

Corporations, leases of, 292.

Councils, general, conceived to be superior to popes, 246.
—— general, epoch of, 367.

Counties, comparative wealth of, at different times, 129.
Criminal parents, rights of, 561.

Cromwell, Lord, estate of, 288.

Cottage, Labourers’, Act of 1592, annexing four acres to, 424.
Cottages, rent of, 41.

Currency, additions to, and effects on wages, 430.

—— the, from Edward I. to Edward IV., 341.

—— the, at end of the seventeenth century, 467.

—— power of governments over, 344.

Cuxham, Oxfordshire, tenancies in, 39.

D.

Dairy, profits of, 94.

Debasement of currency, the, 1543—58, 343.
Debts, due to landlord, remedies for, go.

Demand, of labour, effects of, 429.

De Moleyns, Bishop, his career, 375.

Destitution, legal relief of, justification of, 423.
Direct taxation, effects of a system of, 211.
Distoyal nation, a name applied to the English, 34.
Distress, difficulties in levying a, 286.

Dissolution the, inevitable, and why, 322.
Distribution of land, in Middle Ages, assisted by landlord cultivation, 52.
Domesday, its importance, its isolation, 18.
Dovecots, privilege of, in the lord’s hands, 75.
Durham, tenancies in, 58.

Dutch, the services of the, 452, s¢¢.

Dynasties, English, and the people, 573.

E.

East, trade with the, 153.
Eastern Counties, higher wages in, 171.
Economy, political, its practical value, 525.
Eden, Sir Frederic, his table of wages in 1796, 486.
Education, more general than is commonly supposed, 165.
Edward I., his legislation on land, his establishment of the House of Commons,

his conquests, his quarrel with the clergy, 189, sgg.
Edward IL, his character, and the calamities of his reign, 193.
Edward III., political and military events of his reign, 195.
Edward IV., his taxation, 316.
Lndex. 581

Edward VI., his guardians, and the confiscation of the guild lands, 109.
Egypt, the route through, 155.

Elizabeth, last trace of serf rents in time of, 45.

Emigration, its remedial value, 560.

Employers, prophecies of, 506.

—— savings of, in modern times, 544.

Enclosure, why unpopular, 444.

England, a corn exporting country, and why, in the eighteenth century, 477.
an exporting country till 1765, 485.

—— from 1661 to 1690, 460.

—— population of in the Middle Ages, r19.

English, its services to civilization in political institutions, 573.

—— the, easy rally of, to the Anglo-Norman kings, 20.

—— Church, historical parties in the, 244.

—— policy, libel of, 376.

‘* English system,” the, how developed, 54.

Escuage, origin of, 29.

Essex, serfs of, their petition, 262,

——- wages in 1651, 392; 1661, 393.

Estates, of Merton College, acreage of, under cultivation, 71.
Exchequer, importance and unpopularity of, 23.

keys, the office of, 276.

Excommunication, force of, declining in the thirteenth century, 244.
Exemptions, from taxation, prayed for, 213.

Exportation of corn, prohibited or controlled, 61.

Export duties, when possible, 79.

Exports and imports, trivial, 22.

 

 

F,
Faction, the inner Lancastrian, 312.
Factory Acts, not extended to agricultural operations, 510,
— hands, wages of, in eighteenth century, 406.
Fairs, importance of, in England till recent times, 146.
Fair trade, its reception by workmen, 553.
Famine, rarity of, in England, 62.
—— of 1315—21, character of, 217.
Farm products, increasingly cheap, 275.
Farmer, his relation to local taxation, 534.
Farmers, mistake of, in objecting to union organizations, 517.
Farmers’ rents, rise of, 492.
Fastolfe, Sir John, trade of, 289.
Fees of court, right of king to, 22.
Fines, on renewal of leases, origin of, 449.
—— on grants or renewals, 297.
Firewood, profits on, 298.
Fisheries on eastern coast of England, 124.
Fitzherbert on retrogression of agriculture, 442.
~— his description of communal land, 89.

*
582 Lndex.

Fleece, weight of, in Middle Ages, 80.

Fletcher, of Saltoun, his theories about the poor, 489.

Food, of labourer, cost of, 328.

Foreign competition, no cause of the decline of agricultural profits, 519
— produce, how brought to Europe from the East, 153.

-— tariff, relaxation of, and effects of, 500.

Forestalling and regrating, offences of, 143.

France, nobles of, 198.

possessions of Henry II. in, 28.

the beginning of the war with, 196.

Franchise of 1430 and 1432, 369.

Frankenstein, story uf, and moral of, 554.

Freeholders alone in the militia, 32.

Freeholds for life, not common, 296.

Free trade, the teaching about, a true proof of political economy, 527
Friars, corruption of the, 248.

 

 

G.
GaNncs, agricultural, atrocity of, 511.
Gascoigne, on the fifteenth century, 383.
Gascons, revolt of, and battle of Chatillon, 314.
George, Mr., on “ Progress and Poverty,” 531.
German empire, quarrel of the pope with, 365.
Germany, army of, its formation, 554.
—— effects on, of French ransom, 499.
Girdlestone, Canon, his action and his risks, 512.
Gold, premium on, in 1813, its effects on wages, 501.
Government, as universal landowner, position of, 559.
— its duties and limits, 553.
Governments, English, responsibility of, in relation to the poor, 424.
Ground rents, equitable taxation of, 570.
Guienne, salt of, 97.
Guilds, country, notices of, 417.
— English, origin and privileges of, 106.
—— history of the, and suppression of, 346,
— realization of the principles of, 565.

H.
HaaBITATIONS, provided by the State, effects of, 557.
Hallam, Mr., his opinions on the earnings of the serfs, 44,
Hampshire, a parish in, tenures in, 55.
Hanse towns, the, and their importance, 154.
Hartlib, Simon, his agricultural works, 459.
Henley, Walter de, his essay on English agriculture, its date, 70.
Henry II., his character and purpose, 26.
Henry III., beginning of domestic accounts in the reign of, 18
his character and reign, 36.
Henry IV., his unpopularity, 303.
Lndex, 533

Henry V., his great reputation, 303.
Henry VL., his singular character, 306.
Henry VII., his financial expedients, 317.
Henry VIII., his building accounts, 181.
his opportunities, and his use of them, 321.
Hinds, yearly wages of, 170.
Holidays in the Middle Ages, five, 181.
Holywell, Oxford, dead stock at, 87.
Hop, the, cultivation of, 451.
Hospitallers, the, their duties, 417.
Houghton, John, his Works, 462.
Hours of labour in day, amount of in fifteenth and sixteenth century, 542
Houses in Middle Ages, dirtiness of, 67.
Howell, George, on apprenticeship, 504.
Humanists, the, hopes of, 382.
Hume, Joseph, on combination law, 508.

I
IBsTONE, Oxford taad Bucks, tenants in, 42.
Immigration, consequences of unlimited, 556.
Incomes of various classes according to Gregory King, 463.
Income taxes of, 1435, etc., 308.
Indemnity, certificates of, under Settlement Act, 434.
Indulgences, the, of Eugenius IV., 1440, 382.
Inns, English, number and antiquity of, 137.
Inquisition, ferocity of the, 359.
Insurrection, the, of 1381, its extent and suddenness, 256.
Intercourse, the great, its origin, 320.
Intermediaries, not known in early England, 144.
Invention, effect of, on labour, 437.
Inventions, effects of, to capitalist, 568.
Ireland, Bigod’s estates in, 172.
—— Plattes on, in 1638, 457.
Iron, great cost of, 87.

J.
J=ws, persecuted, as the authors of the Black Death, 225,
John, his abilities and career, 35.
John of Gaunt, English descendants of, childless, 307.
Journeys, frequent in Middle Ages, 136.
Judges, English, character of, from 1485 to 1688,-219,
—— the bias of, 507.
Jury of compurgators, their action, 100,
—— ancient character of, 415.
—— change in duties of, 420,

K,
Kemp, Archbishop, episcopate of, 371.
584 Lndex.

Kent, absence of serfage in, 256.
Kind, rent paid in, in the Eastern Counties, 299.
King, English, his sources of income and his expenditure, 2a
——, pressed workmen, and paid good wages, 329.
Kings, treatment of, by English, 34.
~—— Gregory, calculations of, 463.
———— his merits as a statistician, 465.
on the price of corn, 484.
Knighton on the Black Death, 223.
—— on the remission of labour rents by landowners, 227.

L.

Lazour, agricultural, continuity of, 541.

alarms at the claims of, 519.
—— deterioration of, 493.
——- English, summary of causes affecting it, 485.
—— evil condition of, in other countries, 550.
—— in first half of the seventeenth century, its condition, 432.
—— fund, the theory of, and paradox, and a fallacy, 525.
——— losses of, after 1543, 349.
—— rents, exacted in particular services, 173.

money compensations for, accepted in Edward the Second’s reign, 218

Labourer, agricultural, his hard lot, 509.
—— his relation to capital, 546.
——— improvement of, his condition after 1348, 242,
Labourers, agricultural, earnings of, 479.
recovery to the soil, 563.
the difficulty in the union of, 513.
Statute of, its provisions, 228,
wages of, in 1701-50, 404.
Lancashire, wages in 1725, 396.
Land, agricultural, fall in the value of, 518.
—— owner of, his right to get the best natural price, §29,
—— power of accumulating by law, its origin, 528.
— price of, in eighteenth century, 405.
scarcity and price of, in towns artificial, 426.
value of, in fifteenth century, 287.
Landlord cultivation, effects of, 50, sgg.
Landowners, condition of the, in the latter end of the fourteenth century, 251.
—— their policy at the end of the seventeenth century, 466.
Langton, Stephen, grave of, 357.
Latimer, Bishop, his description of his father’s farm, 445.
—— his judgment on the base money, 348.
Law, its attitude towards labour, 399.
Lease, early instances of, 277.
—— importance of, according to Arthur Voung, 478.
Leases, history of, 450.
-— not infrequent in early times, 50.

 

 

 
Index.

Levi, Leone, on wages, 504.

Lime, use of in agriculture, 93.

Lingard, his history, 361.

Litigation, amount of, under parochial assessment, 436.
Literature, development of, in countries hostile to Roman see, 360,
Lollards, dislike of Churchmen to the, 245.

—— natural attitude of, to the House of Lancaster, 334.
—— unpopularity of after 1381, 268.

Lollardy, character of, 270.

—— economical effects of, 367.

London, a great manufacturing city, 555.

—— a perpetual market in, I11.

existed continuously from Roman times, 103.

—— wages in, 327.

Londoner, the, his attachment to his home, III.

Lords of manors, special advantages of, in their estates, 73.

 

M.

MACHINERY, effects of, on labour, 495.

Malthus, on the population of the eighteenth century, 484.

on population and poor laws, 524.

Manor farms, regular servants on, 182.

house, proceedings at, 63.

Manorial jurisdiction, effects of decline of, 420.

“Manufactures, early advantages of capitalists in, 497.
Manumission, charters of, legally void, 263.

Manure, extended use of, in eighteenth century, 476.

Markets, control of, 138.

Market, control of, its importance to workmen and capitalist, 401.
Marling, cost of, 92.

—- revival of, in the eighteenth century, 476.

Masons, combination, of, to raise wages, made a felony, 237.
Matthew Paris, his witness to a change in society, 35.

Meadow, natural, high value of, 73.

Means of various classes, according to Gregory King, 463.
Merton, Walter de, his foundation, 168.

Methodists, Primitive, labours and services of, 516.

Metayer tenancy, differences of, from stock and land lease, 281.
Middle Ages, life of persons in, contrasted with the present, 184.
Mile End, the scene at, in 1381, 258.

Military adventurers, development of, 200.

Mill, parish, repairs of, the duty of the landlord, 65.

Mill, Mr., causes of his slight of trade unions, 402.

——— his proposal of 1870, 569.

Miller, the third most important person, 65.

Millstones, narrative of the purchase of, in 1331, 113-
Monasteries often the origin of towns, 103.

magnitude of, estates of, 162.

 

 

 

585
586 Index.

Monasteries, the treasures of, speedily dissipated, 323.

~—— the, their merits and deterioration, 362.

duties of, in almsgiving, 416.

Moneyed men, hatred of nobles to, 473.

Monks, their literary services, 163.

fable about, in Parliament of 1371, 249.

the reputed inventors of fines on renewal of leases, 449.
Money payments, fixed, adopted in lieu of precarious service, 34-

 

 

 

N.

NATIONALISATION OF LAND, theories of, 558.

Newmarch, Henry, his power of interpreting statistics, 522
Nobles, English, wealth of, in the fifteenth century, 307.
—— pride of the, in the eighteenth century, 473.

Norfolk, spread of Lollardy in, 272.

Northumberland, Duke of, his purposes in 1553, 348.
Norwich, the insurgents of, 256.

Numerals,;Roman, prolonged use of, 49.

Nunneries, duties and services of some, 417.

oO.

OccuPiER, his payments to local taxation, 533.
Occupiers, assessments on, their development, 529.
Oxen were considered'best for ploughing, 76.

Oxford, the early history of its University, 166.

—— University, its privileges, 249.

—— wages at, in latter part of sixteenth century, 393.
Opulence, growth of, in fifteenth century, 368.
Orange, House of, its degeneracy, 453.

P.
PapaL Court, discontent felt with the, 243.
Parents of paupers, rights of, 561.
Paris, Matthew, his plainness of speech, 164,
Parish assessment, the, of 1371, 206.
Parliament, conduct of, to English labourer, 398.
its attitude about the serfs, 263.
—— of 1450 and 1640 compared, 311.
—— English, and the people, 574.
growing power of, in Edward the Third’s reign, 200
—— Member of, wages of, 210.
rolls of, do not contain all the taxes granted, 208.
Parties, traditional, their action, 574.
Pasture, common, use of, 74.
Pastures, extension of, in sixteenth century, 339.
-— kinds of, 89.
Pauperism, attempt of Edward’s guardians to check, 419.
Peace, the king’s, maintenance of, in England, 51.

 

 

 
Index. 587

Peasant, English, the present apathy of, 514.

—— French, his increasingly calamitous condition, 197.
Peasant, his prospects in the Middle Ages, 68.

—— farmers, profits of, 562.

—— proprietor, earnings and profits of, 175.

——— profits of, after the Plague, 241.

Peasantry, life of, 85.

Pecok, Bishop, his history and opinions, 377.

Penny, silver, decrease in its weight, 275.

Percy Ballads, on the Dissolution, 427.

Petition in Parliament, 1454, 79.

Piece-work becomes more common, 328.

Pitt, his income-tax compared with that of Bowes and Tresham, 315.
Plague, the, its subsequent visitation, 330.

Plate, silver, prices of, 342.

Plattes, Gabriel, his work and his fortunes, 455.

Ploughing, kinds of, and amount of, in the day, 75.
Political economy, ordinary books on, 436.

its value, and its weakness, 525.

Poll-tax, the, of 1377, 206.

Poor, housing of, 42.

—— housing of, in towns, 536.

Poor law of Elizabeth, its importance, 421.

new, its severity and origin, 509.

Poor rates and wages, non-relation of, 480.

—— rate, amount of, in 1785, 1802, 1813, 410,

—— priests, institution of the, 250.

— relief, early legislation on, 418, sgg.

Population, theory of, correctives to, 62,

— of towns in 1377, I17.

-— relations of, to wages, 355.

—— growth of, from Elizabeth to Anne, 463.

Porter, Mr., on the cost of poor relief in dear times, 488.
Ports, English, shipping at, 122.

Possessions, foreign, of English kings, their effect on the people, 33.
Poultry, abundance of, 84.

Prices, regulation of, 140.

—— rise of, after the Plague, 238.

—— rise in, after the currency was debased, 345.
Primogeniture in Middle Ages, modified, 51.

—— effects on, by abandonment of capitalist agriculture, 291.
Preaching cf the poor priests, its character, 254.

Profit, agricultural, causes of the decline of, 518.

Produce, agricultural, increase of, in the eighteenth century, 477.
Productive classes, Gregory King’s theory of the, 464.
Prosperity, a stimulant to social or political discontent, 37.
—— general, a condition of, efforts for improvement, 271.
Protectionism, effects of, 551.

 

 
588 Index.

Provisions, character of, among English, 415.
Provisors, statute of, 247.

R.
Raszits, rarity and high price of, 84.
Rain, excessive, cause of bad harvests in England, 217,
Ratepayers, unfair burdens on, 537.
Recovery of moral growth, slow and from within, 549.
Rector, the, his importance in the medizeval village, 64.
Rectories, tithes of, and dues of, 65.
Reforms, immediate, necessity of, 549.
Regency, right of appointing, in Parliament, 21,
Religious movements, when successful, 269.
Rent of land in thirteenth century, 4o.
—— agricultural, of England in the eighteenth century, 478.
economical, not paid in the thirteenth century, 56.
—— increase of, in the eighteenth century, source of, 482.
—— origin and economical meaning of, 456.
—— slowness of rise of, in sixteenth century, 446.
Rents, causes of rise in, 351.
—— amount of, in eighteenth century, 405.
rise of, due to small earnings of agricultural labourers, 48¢
rise of, after 1782, 486.
winter cultivation of, 469.
Repairs, by law, custom of, 55.
Revolution of 1399 and 1688 compared, 301.
French, its atrocities, 551.
state of labourer, at and after the, 433.
Ricardo, on savings and rent, 524.
Richard II., general character of his reign, 201.
Richmond, Duke of, report of his commission, 564.
Roads in Middle Ages, character of, 133.
Roots, winter, cultivation of, 469.
Routes, of foreign trade, ancient, 153.
Rural life, description of, necessary, 38.
Russell, Lord John, his committee of 1824, 495.
Rutland, wages in 1564, 389; in 1610, 391.

S.
‘SALE, Sir Robert, story of, in 1381, 32.
Salt, importance of, and character of, 95.
Scab in sheep, origin of, 81.
‘Scarcity, highest price during, in May, 216,
artificial, of building sites, 530.
Scarcities, from 1545 to 1795, 388.
Schools, attached to monasteries generally, 165,
Scot, Reynold, on hop cultivation, 452.
Seasons, effect of variety of, according to Young, 483.
the, after 1765, 485.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
Index. 589

Seats, country gentlemen’s, assessment of, 529.
Seeds of artificial grasses their we 466
Sehm ¥., conquest of Egypt by, its effects, 157.
Senior, Mr., on trade unions, 523.
Serfs, could serve in the king’s army, 32.
—— tenancies of, 40.
—— the insurrection of the, 256, s¢g.
Serfage, arguments alleged for and against its maintenance, 266.
Servants, domestic, wages of, 570.
Settlement, parochial, particulars of, act of, 433.
—— of land, its origin and its mischief, 530.
Seventeenth century, first half of, its character, 430.
Sheep, breeding of, in England, its significance, 51.
—— importance of, in English husbandry, 78.
—— rot, signs of, 81. :
— insurance of, 284.
— farms, complaints about, 340.
—— farming, stimulants to, 445.
Shipping at English ports in 1346, 122.
Ship money, distribution of, 461.
Smallpox, severity of, to what due, 337.
Smith, Adam, on parochial settlement, 435.
on wages, 528.

Smithfield, the scene at, in 1381, 259.
Speenhamland, magistrates of Berkshire at, 408.

. Stafford, Archbishop, episcopate of, 371.
— William, his pamphlet, 450.
State, duty of the, in relation to wages, 528.
Statesman, the functions of, on economical theories, 526
Steelbow tenants, the, of Scotland, 281.
Stock, live and dead, value of, on certain estates in the jourteenth century, 72.
—— live, amount of, and character of, 77, sgq.
—— and land lease, origin of, 279.
Stourbridge fair, its importance and character, 149.
Strikes, rarely successful, 411.
Students at Oxford, reputed number of, 167.
Subsidies, refusal to grant, 31.
Suffolk, wages in 1682, 394.
Sweating sickness, the, described, 335.
Swine, importance of, 82.

ne

T.

TALLY-sHop, advantage of, to employer, 497.
Taxation of the clergy, why heavy, 161.

—— to income, its amount, 207.

—— local, on occupiers, injustice of, 532.
Taxes on property, the first imposed, 202.
—— character of, during the French war, 30%
‘590 Index.

‘Tenants unwilling to compete against each other, 448,
Thornton, Mr., on trade unions, 523.
“Thorpe, his speakership and imprisonment, 314.
Tithe, character of, in early times, 161.
evidence of, importance of, 25.
“Tooke, Mr., his merits on monetary science, 500.

on wages, 410.
Trade, aristocracy of, its unpopularity, 472.
unions, early difficulties of, 498.
charges incurred in the policy of, 516.
economical character of, 400.
effects of, in 1853, 410.
their growth after 1824, 438.
“Towns, impoverished, relieved of taxation, 310.
-—— decay of, the, affirmed by Parliament, 339.
—— dwellings in, local taxation of, 535.
English, comparative opulence of, at different periods, 115.
of Roman origin, some survived, 102.
“Tresham, speakership of, 311; murder of, 312.
“Tyler, his march and entry into London, 257.
judgment of his contemporaries about him, 262,

 

 

 

 

 

 

U.
‘UNITED STATES, principle of local taxation in, 537.
protection in, 552.
Usury laws, origin of, 141.

 

Vv.

“‘VALLIS, Mr., his work on cottage farms, 562.

“Vaughan, his account of the Golden Vale, 454.

‘Viilage, English life in, 97.

—— population of a, in the thirteenth century, 46.

Villager, life of, not without hope in the thirteenth century, 68,
"Vine, culture of, in England, 1o1.

“Violence, when practised by trade unions, suicidal, 403.

Ww.
"WaGEs, amount of, in the fifteenth century, 327.
"—— aggregate, of Young, compared with those of the fifteenth century and the
eighteenth, 481.
~—— agricultural, in nineteenth century, 510.
~—— and cost of board, 1562-78 compared, 354.
-—— between 1800 and 1840, 504.
between 1801 and 1812, 409.
effect of poor law relief on, 422.
effects of scarcity or famine on, 217,
English, as compared with those of Europe, 500.
in 1449 and 1877 compared, 539.

 

 

 

 

 
Lndex. 591

‘Wages, in 1495, etc., 388.

—— London, cause of price of, 536.

—— low, not always cheap, 527.

—— and prices, their slight relation, 428,

-—— of agricultural labourers in the thirteenth century, 170,

-— rates of, in 1796, 487.

— rise of, after the Plague, 233.

War, continental, the charges of, how met, 505.

Warwick, wages in 1684, 394.

Waynflete, Bishop, his college, 375.

‘Wealth, comparative, of various English counties, 129.

— growth of, among mercantile classes, 473.

—— production of, in the eighteenth century, 474.

‘Wheat, average price of, for two hundred and forty years, 215.

-—— prices in 1564-72, 451.

— price of, from 1801 to 1820, 494.

prices of, and wages, 1581-1660, 427.

——— rise in price of, how to be estimated, 387.

—— the staple crop, proof of, 59, sgq.

White, William, his labours and his fate, 272.

Wiklif, his influence and career, 247.

‘Women labourers, organization of, 572,

‘Women’s wages in the fifteenth and nineteenth century, 540.

Wood, the lord’s, its value to him, 74.

‘Wool, production of, motives for the, 444.

~—— English, importance of, 78.

tax of 1340, the, 203.

‘Work of labourers in Middle Ages, excellence of, 542.

Working classes have not demanded better homes from the state, 538.
processes adopted by, to better their condition, 440,

‘Working men, power of saving by, at end of the seventeenth century, 465.
English, their present powers and duties, 412.

Workman, English, no socialist or anarchist, 490.

‘Workmen in towns, effect of local taxation on, 535.

—— purposes of, ina trade union, 401.

Wykeham, Bishop, his colleges, 373.

 

 

Y.
‘YEARS, the seven barren, in the seventeenth century, 484.
Yeomanry, the, in the fifteenth century, 384.
York, Archbishops of, 372.
—— East Riding of, wages in, 390.
Young, emigration of, 560.
—— Arthur, comparison of wages in his time with those in thirteenth century,
172-4.
his position as an economist, 475.
on rise of wages, 404.
Younger son, position of, 293.

 

 
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