Cornell Alniversity Library BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME FROM THE SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND THE GIFT OF Henry W. Sage 1891 ‘peel “UU 10 paxseul s300q jo saseo [le yoda 0} paexse sie siapvay “uappiq 40} Ay}914}S SyOOg Buryaew ‘aye]NdI19 0} pamoT[e Jou 91¥ ‘}L SoYsIM IAAls oy} Us ‘syooq }J18 pue onjea [etoads jo syoog sil aAIasSar Tf] UO play are uosiad auo uey} aiour Aq papas syoog *payuem Jr ‘aouasqe $19 -MO110g SulINp winjos Jay} 40} apem sjuow -o8ue1ie 10 ‘Areiqly aq} 0} pauinjel eq prnoys spotiad ssase1 Surmmp pepsau jou syxoog “‘suosiad 19430 Jo 1y -oHaq a} Jojsasaqiarid Areiqi] ey. osn jou plnoys siaMor0g ‘QUIT poy eB JO} NO Waals aie {IT} sasodind |e1ads 10,7 siqissed se tones AreIYI] OY} Vi play ore sjatqdined jo pue seo -Iporied jo samo, ‘sya. POLI aTqeuanjer oe yorevas -d1 IO UOTNAYSUL IOF papeeu jou syxoog “WeOeY 0} JOa!qns syoeg IIy “Sa7NY 3SA JWOH ‘ fe “UaYL} SUM JUINJOA SI} UaYA SMOYS O3EP ON . uo VlL9 090 O€0 bebl AMT VU, €cD” ZESLOH Aseign) Ayissaaiun jjaus0g ' BY THE SAME AUTHOR History e OF THE English Landed Interest. 2 VOLS., DEMY 8VO0, EACH 10/6. Opinions of the Press. VOL, I. ‘Mr. Garnier is fortunate in his subject. Mr. Kenelm Digby has dealt with ‘its legal aspects ; the late Professor Rogers, Mr. Seebohm, Mr, Cunningham, and a host of writers have written of it as economists ; and the literature of the subject in all its many sides is prodigious. It was a happy thought on the part of Mr. Garnier to focus some of the scattered rays of light. He writes, it is important to note, with a living knowledge of the rural England of to-day. He has read much and widely ; he has mastered most of the authorities on the subject. The book grows in value and interest when he touches the realities of rural England, and especially when he endeavours to portray the work-a-day of a manor or farm in various ages,” — Times. “‘Mr. Garnier modestly bases his qualification for the task on many years of practical experience, coupled with much personal intercourse with all the various industries connected with land and employed on larger estates. In short, the author is a rare and precious combination of practical experience together with scholarship. Well knowing the difficulty of the task Mr. Garnier has undertaken, I venture to compliment him on having ‘set so stout a heart to so steep a brae,’ 7 With considerable success Mr. Garnier has achieved the difficult task of clothing the dry bones of technical history with the flesh and blood of vivid pictorial descriptions of rural and domestic life.” —/Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society. “He aims at throwing light upon, and creating interest in, English country customs and social features of several kinds. We do not think that any one has before made a similar attempt on the same scale. His book is one strongly to ‘be recommended to every agricultiral college and every local authority dealing with agricultural education throughout Great Britain,” —Féeld. “ The growing importance of the land question, and the probability that it will come up for discussion in even more acute phases jn the near future, give great ' value to Mr. Garnier’s book."— North British Economist. “« Could not fail to excite some special attention, and was well worth the study. An excellent summary of the questions with which it was professedly occupied, and was informed with a practical spirit often wanting to such treatises.”—A theneum, a ‘© This is a really brilliant book. Mr, Garnier-discourses pleasantly and profit- ably, and his readers will look forward to the volume in which he proposes to carry his history of the landed interest down to the present day."—Morning Post. ‘ VOL. II. ‘The author sketches with light hand, and in a luminous way, the land system and the vicissitudes of agriculture in that period, and collects a mass of varied information well worth reading. . . . He has much to say which is not found elsewhere.” — Times. “No future historian will be able to ignore Mr. Garnier’s work ; and the politi- cian will gain not a little by hearing what the practical agriculturist, who is also a student of the past, has to say on such momentous points as the taxation of land, the relative advantages of large and small farming, and many other burning ques- tions.""—Economic Review. “The work of Mr. Garnier improves as he approaches our own time. We have the same happy combination of historical and practical knowledge of the subject without the drawback of having to deal, as in the former volume, with matters on which scholars themselves are not yet agreed. His remarks on the difficult question of the poor laws, and of the experiments of the Legislature on them, are peculiarly valuable at the present time, and, like the rest of the book, are full of instruction for politicians. Mr. Garnier can write picturesquely and well, and is ° able to impart his knowledge in a pleasant and readable form. He has produced an exceedingly useful, and, in some ways, a remarkable work.” —Athene@um. “There was much room for a book of this nature. Though many of the topics here dealt with have been often treated of by different writers in various connec- tions, yet the field as a whole has hardly been occupied before, and our author has certainly many qualifications for the task he has set before himself. . . . There is much that is valuable and interesting in this volume. Especially may be mentioned an excellent estimate of the character and writings of Arthur Young.”— Academy. ‘‘In this masterly work the author compresses a vast amount of information respecting the history of the English landed interest. Every page teems with infor- mation of the deepest interest to all who desire to have an accurate historical know- ledge of the greatest of all national interests. The book is one that may be most cordially recommended, not only to the landowner, land-agent, and farmer, but also to all who can appreciate a production of superior literary merit."—MNorth British Agriculiurist. ‘‘ The work which is one of gigantic research and pains. . . . Mr. Garnier showed that he was master of his subject. What is more, he handled the theme with distinguished literary ability. We have no space to do justice to this brilliant book, to the practical experience which it displays on every page, to its scholarship, to its descriptive power, nor to its other attributes. This is a book to be pondered over by all who are interested in a topic which should be interesting to every patriotic Englishman. It is crammed full of facts and information of all kinds, with just and ingenious comments.”—Bristol Times. ANNALS OF THE BRITISH PEASANTRY BY RUSSELL M. GARNIER, B.A Author of the “History of the English Landed Interest,’ “Land Agency,” etc. ‘Let not ambition mock their useful toil, Their homely joys and destiny obscure, Nor grandeur hear with « disdainful smile The short and simple annals of the Poor.” Rondon SWAN SONNENSCHEIN & CO New YorK: MACMILLAN & CQ 1895 © pics PREFACE \ J RITING this Preface, like all authors, at the end of my ; task, I am experiencing, so to speak, the sensation of rest after a fatiguing journey. The Peasant and I have been, for many long months, travelling companions. Our route lay across no level plain. There were mountain ranges to traverse, and well-nigh impenetrable jungles to cross. Our path was often beset with obstacles and clouded with dust. But, generally, when most “noyous,” it was found to be leading us into especially delightful scenery, The close contact into which such circumstances brought us, has rendered me thoroughly intimate with my comrade. When I started with him, he was the property of another; when I parted from him, he was his own master. He began his travels as both a landed proprietor and a slave. Before he ends them he bids fair to become both free man and freeholder. But we had many a steep climb and many an abrupt descent to make together, before we succeeded in reaching the lofty eminence on which I bade him “ Farewell.” I have descended with him into the abyss of servitude. I have crawled after him up the frowning cliff which culminated in his enfranchisement. I have followed him into the depths of beggary. I have toiled beside him amidstithe miserable scenes of his poverty. I have mounted arm-in-arm with him the numerous steps by which he attained to the summit of his present independence. I was with him when he was starving for bread, when he was emaciated by disease, when he was dispirited by bad management. I have v vi Preface studied him in his varying moods of humiliation and exaltation, of despair and hope, of resentment and gratitude. I have seen him whining fora crust and fighting for a right. I have stood by when he was whipped at the cart-tail, turned away from the doors of the charitable, ejected from his employer’s household, evicted from his own pasturage grounds, thrust out of his own cottage, and driven into the workhouse. I was also in his com- pany when he was feasted by lords, nursed by monks, petted by magistrates, and made the hero of political parties. At different periods of our tour he has been clothed by his. employers, clothed by the State, clothed by the parish, and clothed by himself. Whether he has posed as a chattel, as a landed proprietor, as a farmer, as a soldier, as a rebel, as a tramp,” as a pauper, or as a labourer, I have found in him much to admire and but little to despise. He has been generally a pleasant companion, rarely the reverse. I have noticed in him. occasionally the traits of a crass stupidity, more often those of an intense shrewdness ; but never have I found him otherwise than a most interesting study. This relation of my experiences, which has pleasantly occupied the many spare hours of a temporary release from the duties of my profession, must not be regarded as a diary of our adventures together. It is rather a narrative of my reminiscences. It con- tains no detailed description of each trivial episode, but merely those features which struck me most forcibly at the time. If it is only half as interesting for the Public to read as it has been for its author to write, I shall be amply repaid for the trouble it has caused me. SYNOPSIS OF CHAPTERS CHAPTER I THE ORIGIN OF THE EMPLOYER PAGE Causes of social rank—Origin of proprietorship in land—The nearest approach to inalienable property—Description of early communal economy—Early neces- sity for various social distinctions—Origin of the over-lord and his demesne Jands—Influence of warfare on a communal economy—Protector and protected —Necessity for a national constitution—Origin of manors—Gradual evolution of a hereditary and landed aristocracy—Causes for the severity and fierceness of medizeval class contests . ‘ J : 3 c . . : 2 » 1-33 CHAPTER II THE ORIGIN OF THE LABOURER His existence in the Tribal era—Scottish clan-system—The landed economy of the Sept—lInstitution of the Scottish manorial system—The separation of the labouring class—Its status in a feudal economy—Its political and economical distinctions—The villein regardant and villein in gross—The rights of the slave —His subsequent loss of landed rights—The reasons against his desertion of the manor—Attempt to reconcile his actual status with that described in the medizeval law books—Causes at work tending towards his emancipation . . 14-27 CHAPTER III MEDIZVAL LOCAL GOVERNMENT Views of slavery in the abstract—The slave's existence on the manor—The hard- ships of his life contrasted with those of the modern labourer—Machinery in force for his disposal in sickness and in health—The jurisdictory rights of the feudal landlord — Their origin and history — The manorial courts of justice in medizval England and Scotland—The struggle between king, lord, and people regarding magisterial powers—Short history of the changes in local government which occurred in the city of Norwich . . ~ é 5 - 28-42 CHAPTER IV CONFLICTING INTERESTS ON THE WASTE The outer rim of the manor—Origin of the folcland—Causes why the Ager Publicus came to be known as the lord’s waste—Necessity for utilising the waste— Methods of so doing—Reasons for the enactment of enclosure legislation— The statute of Merton shcwn to refer to interseigniorial disputes solely—The Vil viil Synopsis of Chapters PAGE social status of free tenants—Distinction between common appendant and common appurtenant—The statutes of Extenta Manerii and Quia Emptores— Various uses to which the waste could be put—Its improvement shown to be a national advantage—The rights of the people respected by the Legislature— The use of the wooded portions of the folcland—The vexed question of game rights—The position of the hunter—The forestral police shown to be not merely concerned with game rights—The retention by the villagers of their ancient rights 6 eke ee 8 43753 CHAPTER V ORIGIN OF THE LABOUR LAWS The advantages and defects of Patriarchal government—The form of slavery that ; "this necessitated—The bargain between the landlords and their villeinage— Failure of the mutual contract brought about by disease and famine—The attempts of the Government to enforce the obligations of both parties—Impossi- bility for either side to surrender their rights—The necessity for doing so caused by the Black Death—Stringent measures adopted by the central author- ities to uphold the rights of landlords—Revolt of the villeinage against the harsh labour laws—-The insurrection of Wat the Tyler—Attitude of the regular and dissenting clergy—Causes and progress of the revolt—Demands of the rebels—Agrarian nature of the disturbances—The king’s rash promise repudi- ated by the landlords—Suppression of the rising—Subsequent insurrection of the Kentish commons under Mortimer—Fresh agrarian grievances—Defeat of the rebels and fall of Jack Cade—The commencement of an enclosure agitation + 54-63 CHAPTER VI MEDIAZVAL PEASANT LIFE Fresh labour laws—Wages of the peasantry—Relaxation of the laws of settlement— Sumptuary laws—The liability of landlords to support their field-workers under every circumstance of life —The Government involved in an employer's liability economy—The State classification of the working classes—The social results of the late rebellions—Commutation for money wages of ancient feudal ser- vices—Less necessity for.a system of protectors and protected—The contract between employers and labourers still has to be enforced—Gradual extinction of slavery—The villeinage exchange their rights over the land for the landlord's tights over their persons—The landlords turn their newly-acquired monopoly over the soil into uses inimical to the wants of their dependants—The State frequently interferes in favour of the labourer—Sheep pasturage and the engrossing of farms is discountenanced—Comparative statement between the welfare of the Tudor peasantry and that of the Victorian—The domestic com- forts of the medizeval peasantry—Each manor more or less self-sufficing—The various tasks of male and female workpeople—The economy of several manors contrasted—Landlords’ dues—Evening tasks inside the cottage—The peasants’ sleeping and feeding arrangements—The drunkenness of Tudor rustics—Their diet and gardens—Comparison of English creature-comforts with those of the French—Possibilities of the Tudor peasantry for bettering their condition— Their days of service on the demesne lands—Police arrangements on the manor—Educational availabilities for the peasantry at this period—The first provisions of the Legislature for education, poverty, and game preservation— The Tudor rustic shown to be a formidable fellow . - 64-81 Synopsis of Chapters ix PAGE CHAPTER VII THEFT OF THE SICK FUNDS Renewal of the dress and labour restrictions—Magisterial control over wages main- tained—The landlords thus establish their rights to the labour of the peasan- try, but the latter entirely lose their monopoly over the manorial soil—The landlords recognise their obligation to maintain those who supply them with their labour—The means for defraying the costs incident to this duty—The tithe question—The various funds for pauper relief—The monks shown to be the trustees and administrators of the seigniorial poor funds—Their mismanage- ment of these offices—The reasons for the dissolution of the monastic institu- tions, and the objections to any misappropriation of their endowments—The misdoings of Henry VIII., and the refusal of the Houses of Legislature to countenance him in his scheme of spoliation—The disendowment of the mon- asteries proved to be the origin of Poor rates—The growing outcry against any encouragement of beggary—The spread of the national poverty shown to arise from several causes alien to the spoliation of ecclesiastical treasuries—A con- trast drawn between the arbitrary spirit of the new landowners and the charitable practices of the old monastic landlords—Beggary, thieving, and poverty largely increased by the cessation of monastic influences—Classification of beggars— The State futilely ordains that every idle person shall work, and punishes every one who cannot—lIt still looks to the landlords to provide the means of pauper relief and to the clergy to provide the ways of it; and visits on the innocent head of the peasant the failures of both these parties to comply with its impos- sible demands—Though the practices of the monks in attempting to contest the national poverty are shown to have been defective, those of their succes- sors proved to be worse still—The poor man virtually left for the time being to the mercy of the community. . ¥ ‘ : ‘i . . . 82-96 CHAPTER VIII THE REBELLION OF KETT The despairing peasantry resort once more to arms—Popular risings occur in various parts of England—The authorities puzzled whether to ascribe their causes to religious or agrarian discontent—The real reasons shown to be a mixture of both—Sheep proved to be devouring men at this period of history—‘‘ Pluck down the enclosures,” a frequent cry of rebellious Tudor husbandmen— The first royal commission on agriculture—Pros and cons of the enclosure ques- tion—Another rural exodus—The outbreaks in Norfolk—Lenient attitude of the Government—The brawl at Attleborough—Kett assumes the command of the insurgents—The rencontre with the High Sheriff—Negotiations with the mayor of Norwich—The encampment at Mousehold Heath—The charter of grievances—Kett's reluctance to proceed to acts of overt warfare—The sum- mons to surrender—Assault of Norwich—Advance of Northampton to the rescue—Fresh Government overtures of peace—Warwick’s arrival with a second relieving army—Further negotiations of a fruitless nature—Recapture of the city after fierce street fighting—Retreat of the rebels and flight of Kett —Warwick's final offer of pardon accepted—Results of the rebellion illustrated by an event which occurred in the reign of Elizabeth—The only later instances of agrarian rebellion—The Levellers of 1607, and the Clubmen of 1645. 97-114 CHAPTER IX THE STATE'S RECOGNITION OF POVERTY The economic circumstances of the peasantry at the date of the first Pauper Legis- ation—A European crusade against indiscriminate charity—Scottish pauper x Synopsis of Chapters PAGE legislation—Breakdown of the Feudal means of poor relief—The social and Political status of the Scottish villeinage—Similar responsibilities and powers shown 'to be existent on Scottish manors as on English—The landlord's failure to support his dependants—The English, Scottish, and Irish provisions for poor relief contrasted—The Ireland of the nineteenth century likened to the England of the sixteenth century—A parochial assessment gradually takes the place of private charity—Fundamental differences between the first English and the first Scottish Poor Law—The Kirk Sessions in Scotland occupy in many respects the position of the House of Commons in England—They assume the administration of poor relief—The voluntary features of the Scottish system —The peasantry of the Northern kingdom regard as a gift what the peasantry of the Southern regard as a right—The interpretation of the sentence ‘‘ to set the Poor on work "—The Parish becomes an employer of labour—The methods by which Elizabeth managed to provide work for the labourers—The immigra- tion of a foreign industrial element—The merits and defects of the Elizabethan labour law—The magistrates shown to be interested parties in the question of a wages assessment ; é . : F % ‘ é $ . » 115-136 CHAPTER X THE LABOURER AT HIS WORK AND AT HIS PLAY The necessity for a strict system of supervision on the part of a master—The duties of a shepherd, of a ploughman, of a dairymaid, and of a teamsman—The life of a Stuartine labourer—The methods of labour ona Yorkshire farm— Wages — The statute fair—Marketing of produce—The grinding of grist at the mill— Evening work in the farmhouse — The festive customs of farm labourers—The yearly routine of rural tasks—The sale of the year’s wool- clip — Haymaking — Corn-shearing — The harvest-feast — Stack and roof thatching . 3 3 - é , A ‘ : . + 137-157 CHAPTER XI THE SCOTTISH PEASANT BEFORE AND AFTER THE TIME OF THE UNION Scotland's feudal peasantry—The violence of the age—The abortive attempts of the Legislature to encourage the husbandman—The manners and customs of the Highland peasantry — Their food and life— The survival of a tribal economy amidst the island labouring class—Their rents, wages, and means of livelihood—A time of famine—The methods of seigniorial jurisdiction in the Western Islands—The husbandry of these primitive districts—Difficulty of distinguishing the poorest class—Lowland agriculture and labour—The habits and life of the Lowland peasantry—Scottish maidservants—Prospects of an improved economy . x 1 é ¥ : - 7 : - . 158-172 \ CHAPTER XII THE COTTAGE AS A FACTORY Mandeville’s description of the division of labour—The system of work in the cottages of Great Britain shown to be entirely an opposite practice—The im- portance of the English woollen industry—The early discovery of the value of a fleece — Primitive methods of spinning — The necessity for distinct woollen manufactures—The early interference of the Legislature in this in- dustry — Discouragement by the community of machinery—Various frauds practised by our native manufacturers—Consequent decline of our foreign trade — The sheep comes to be regarded Principally as a source of food— ' Synopsis of Chapters xi : ; Z ' / PAGE Advantages of the English soil and climate for wool-producing—The system of woollen manufacture practised in the cottage—Tanning of leather on the farm homestead—The English linen industry—This pursuit shown to be the staple trade of Scotland—Efforts of the Legislature to encourage it—The Flemish and Scottish systems contrasted—The various linen acts—The spinning schools —Facilities for peasant labour in the linen trade—Scottish bleaching grounds —Survival of cottage industries in Scotland long after they died out in England —The English village shop—The costs of clothing outfits for men and women —The distaff still found in Highland cottages a hundred years ago—The cottage shoemaker—The Highland rural economy shown to be self-sufficing —The recent revived interest in village arts. ‘3 : ‘ 3 s - 173-192 CHAPTER XIII THE COTTAGE LARDER The inferiority of breads used in mediseval days—Early varieties of breads—The foods of the French and English peasantry contrasted—The substitutes used for wheat throughout the United Kingdom—French breads—The lord’s mill—The most primitive methods of cottage grinding and baking—The quern—The customs of grinding at the mill—Cobbett’s views on corn-grind- ing—The medizeval Scotsman's simple means of bread-making—How Scot- land earned her appellation ‘‘The Land of Cakes ”’—Varieties of her farina- ceous foods—The less laborious systems of bread-making practised in England —A description of cottage bread-making—The Legislative control of shop loaves—History of the Assize of Bread—Cobbett’s attempts to persuade the peasantry to bake at home—Modern bread-making—The cottage as a dairy— Cobbett shows how the poorest peasant may maintain a cow—The cottager's pigstye—Early methods of cheese and butter-making—Varieties of cheeses— The social results of a flitch of bacon in the cottage larder . 3 5 + 193-210 CHAPTER XIV THE MEANS OF POOR RELIEF Vagrancy as a profession—Prevalence of Scottish beggary—The English rural beggar—Growing dislike of beggary—The pauper becomes the subject of political discussion— Legislative attempts to suppress sturdy beggars—The impotent poor find neither eleemosynary nor compulsory relief available—The employer of labour assumes the position of the landlord regarding the national poverty—Rapid increase of poor rates—The system of setting the poor on work found erroneous—The Government employs means of estimating the amount of poor-rates in England and Wales—The poor-laws and parochial system shown to be a continuation of the labour laws and manorial system—Employers, who are owners of personalty, evade their responsibilities—The Legislature refuses to interfere with this dereliction of duties—The fear of a redistribution of the rating system induces parochial authorities to readjust their assess- -ments—The original basis of the National Assessment—Early statistics of rates shown to be incorrect—A revaluation advocated—Obstacles to any re- assessment of rates—The evils resulting from assessing realty only—The reduction of the rates caused by the Amendment Act of 1834 shelves the question—Recent opposition to the Expiring Laws Continuance Act. + 211-229 CHAPTER XV THE WAYS OF POOR RELIEF The laws themselves excellent, but their administration defective—Their failure to effect their object attributed to various extraneous causes~The poor them- xii Synopsis of Chapters ‘ PAGE selves partly to blamé-—The reason why the County was originally subdivided into small administrative districts—The problem of centralisation versus de- centralisation—K.ing Alfred’s system advocated —Outdoor versus indoor relief— Introduction of the Workhouse test—The poorhouse becomes a criminal prison—Firmin’s proposals for setting the poor on work—Beller’s suggestions— Various other ideas on the subject of workhouses—Those who proposed altera- tions in the system of relief shown to have attempted too much—The necessity for the Workhouse test—The relative costs of outdoor and indoor relief— Parochial responsibility for the administration of the Poor Laws—The short- comings of the parochial officials—Legislative interference with the magistrates, churchwardens, and overseers—Increased magisterial control causes graver mischief than that which it was intended to abate—The pauper defies the overseer. : , : : : $ ‘ : : 3 Z + 230-245 CHAPTER XVI WHEN PARISHES WERE PRISONS, A more accurate aspect of the value of labour dawns on the public mind—The fluidity of labour advocated—A communal system of labour in force—The law of settlement interferes with labour’s free vent—The necessities for this law and the evils of it—Rights of settlement—Alterations in them made from time to time by the Legislature—The costs of enforcing these laws and the litigation they necessitated—Test cases tried in the Courts—The hardships of the system on both ratepayer and pauper . é x : . 4 r ‘ . 246-257 CHAPTER XVII THE DEGRADATION OF THE LABOURER The Reforms in Poor Relief advocated by Gilbert—He favours a system of centralisa- tion—His three bills—Tremendous indictment against overseers—Objections to the centralisation scheme—Increased authority of the Bench over overseers —Recapitulation of administrative blunders in Parochial Poor Relief—Work- houses fall into disrepute—The evils of the Scale System of Outdoor Relief— The views of Davies on the causes for the increased National Poverty—The measures of the Speenhamland Bench—Whitbread’s attempts to fix a minimum rate of wages—The Parish falls into subjection to the pauper—Labour becomes prostituted to the most absurd duties—The opinions of local experts disregarded —Fears arise of fresh agrarian disturbances—Paupers become spoiled children 258-271 CHAPTER XVIII THE PAUPER AT THE TRIBUNAL OF PUBLIC OPINION The Poor Laws incur the danger of extinction—The Poor Law Commission of 1834 —Its constitution—Agrarian revolts occur in various parts of the country— Abuse heaped upon the Poor Laws—A consensus of opinion condemns the Workhouse system—The authorities attempt to allay public irritation—The Poor Rates proved to be less alarmingly excessive than they at first sight appear —A single Poor Law suggested as a substitute for the entire code—The evils of over-population demonstrated by Malthus—The effects of the Pauper Code on imprudent marriages—The peasantry must be educated into a proper frame of mind—Cobbett abuses Malthus—Posterity more correctly sums up his great services —Cobbett attempts to divert public indignation from our pauper system to our Fiscal system—He condemns all proposals for amending the Elizabethan Poor Law—Analyses the evidence collected by the Royal Com- Synopsis of Chapters xiii soe . . PAGE missioners—Tells the ratepayers that they are stupid dolts—And prognosticates the despair and rebellion of our English peasantry—The large-minded views of the English farmers on the subject of the national poverty—Being as it were behind the scenes, they are able to point out defects and remedies in our Poor system—Their organs of the press found to teem with intelligent comments . 272-290 CHAPTER XIX THE FINAL BLOW TO BRITISH BEGGARY Results of the Poor Law Amendment Act—Central control proves beneficial—Irish poverty and Scottish beggary begin to attract public attention—The miserable condition of the Irish peasantry—The determination of the Legislature to bring the Irish landlords to a proper sense of their responsibilities—The good results of the English Amendment Act bring about a Poor Law Code in Ireland—A Workhouse test proved essential, and its results admirable—The Scotch almost wholly adverse to a compulsory system of relief—Scottish beggary laws found useless—The strenuous opposition of Dr. Chalmers to any fresh departure in Scottish pauper legislation—The causes for the increase of Scottish beggary —The evils and terrorism caused by uncontrolled beggary arouse in populous districts a desire for compulsory poor relief—Alison and his party obtain evidence of the failure of the Scottish voluntary system—Pitmilly and his school oppose their efforts in vain—English experts change their expressions of ad- miration for the voluntary system into an outcry against its defects—The Government institutes inquiry—The one-sided nature of the Commission—Its Report, by exposing the evils of beggary, is regarded as necessitating a com- pulsory system— The new Scottish Poor Law—Its results a few decades later. 291-304 CHAPTER XX THE PARISH AS A HOME The effects of greater independence on both Northern and Southern peasantry— The contentment of the former and the discontentment of the latter—Differences in the dietary of the two nationalities -The Englishman’s prejudices and the Scotchman’s philosophical intellect both shown to have produced important results on the comforts and discomforts of the peasants existence—The Scotch labourer’s pint of milk compared. with the English labourer's gallon of cider— The gains derived by the Northern peasantry from utilising their female labour, and the losses sustained by the Southern peasantry in neglecting to do so— : Differences in the parental management and early training of the two Nation- alities and their far-reaching results—The gradual conversion of the Feudal practice of labour employment into the free competitive methods of the present day—The disadvantages of paying labour in kind to employers, and the dis- advantages of paying labour in money to employees—Home life in both countries as contrasted by the prejudiced Cobbett—Difficulty of the historian in estimating the wants of an earlier age regarding refinement and comforts owing to the rapid evolution of the national sense of fitness on these subjects —Individuals of the peasant class shown to have been capable of bettering them- selves in both countries even at this depressed period of its fortunes—The life of Alexander Somerville briefly related in order to afford a typical instance— His birth, education, youthful duties, early ee to better himself, and final complete success . 2 ‘ a . 3 3 . é . ‘ aera XIV Synopsis of Chapters PAGE CHAPTER XXI . THE ENFRANCHISEMENT OF LABOUR Our Statute Book proved to have been too harsh on the peasant class—Early demo- cratic principles—The peasant’s necessity for a master—The release of wages from magisterial control—The repeal of the law.against combinations—The failure of the Legislature to take up the lapsed parental duties of the landlord— Carlyle and Cobden protest—The causes of the political reform movement— The peasantry, no longer under control, become dangerous—The efforts of the community to satisfy them—Their food must be rendered cheaper or their incomes increased—Magisterial control over the rates of wages still lingers in an indirect form—The Poor Law Amendment Act necessitates a repeal of the Corn Laws—Parliament at this period resembles a farmers’ debating society —After the Reform Bill the commercial element gives a new character to our legislative assemblies—The views of the landed interest on the Corn Laws represented by Sinclair—While the squires and the merchants discuss the Free Trade Question, the working classes take action—The agitation, which is really a democratic movement, is treated as a knife-and-fork question— Cobbett shown to have recognised its real import—The disturbances which he foretold break out in rural districts—The town industrial classes also show signs of rebellion—No political connection proved to exist between either town labourers and rural labourers, or town labourers and town capitalists— The views even of the merchant class are for a time divergent—The Corn Law agitation arises—The tactics of the Manchester School—Its failure to win over the Chartists—Its increasing success among the farming classes—The desperate condition of the Tory squires—Rumours of a failure in the potato crop — Prorogation of Parliament—The Edinburgh letter of Russell—A Repeal Ministry formed, and cheap bread insured for ever . : : + 329-343 CHAPTER XXII THE SOCIAL ELEVATION OF THE LABOURER The landlords undergo adverse criticisms—Beneficence and charity resented as part of the pernicious feudal economy—The sequestration of the last remains of the Ager Publicus-—The enclosure controversy—Its historical, political, social, and moral features—The enclosure legislation relates to both common arable field, and common pasturage—Efforts of statesmen, philanthropists, and landlords to find the peasantry some equivalent for their lost common rights—Iand tenure in miniature from an economical standpoint—Measures taken by Parlia- ment to prevent further encroachments on the commons — The allotment question— Opinions of various experts on the subject—The antagonism between its excellent moral results and its bad economic results—The Crofter system—Its economic failure—Attempts at the beginning of the century to replace it with some better economy—The good results thus derived—The moral and political bearings of the Crofter controversy—Deer forests and sheep walks economically superior to crofter’s husbandry—Legislation affecting the crofter’s condition — The success of subdivided husbandry dependent on climate . . + 344-357 CHAPTER XXIII THE SOCIAL ELEVATION OF THE LABOURER (continued) Short history of the various attempts to encourage thrift among the peas- antry — Provisions for their sickness and old age — The club system over- Synopsis of Chapters xv PAGE done — Benefit societies foster labour conspiracies — Compulsory mutual assurance—The effect of Priestley’s and Bentham's views on society—The tights of poverty—Struggles of the earlier benefit societies to exist—Classi- fication of the various institutions for promoting national thrift—Attitude of the Government — Description of the economy of county and village friendly societies—-The local sharing-out club dying out —The insurance of children’s lives—Old age pensions—Leave measures of mutual thrift to an educated peasantry 358-371 CHAPTER XXIV THE INTELLECTUAL ELEVATION OF THE LABOURER Earlier prejudices against the literary education of field-workers—The grammar and charity schools of bygone centuries—Mandeville’s and Cobbett’s objections to peasant schools—The effects of the parochial school system in Scotland— Cobbett'’s dislike to follow the Scottish example—The services of Raikes, Lan- caster and Bell in promoting schemes of national education—The disputes of great societies over the methods of education—Religious versus secular teach- ing—The attitude of the Government during this controversy—The growth of a national education system—Lord Ashburton’s famous address to the elementary schoolmasters—The educator becomes duly honoured—Historical sketch of the legislation concerning education—The effects of all these measures on the rural peasantry—The English villager less appreciative of the advantages of education than the Scottish labourer—Child-labour essential to the farmers— The ignorance and superstition of English labourers—The farmer's views on the subject of educating the children of the labouring class—What still remains for our parochial schoolmasters to effect. . : 7 . + 372-388 CHAPTER XXV THE MORAL ELEVATION OF THE LABOURER The immorality and sanitary defects found amidst our village tenements—Model cottages—Evil systems of labour employment—The gang master— Legislative measures for controlling and regulating agricultural gangs—The gang system in Scotland—The defective cottages of Southern England—Attempts made to improve them—Overcrowding—The evils of the Scottish Bothy system—Im- provements subsequently made in this economy—The cottages of Scotland— Efforts to improve them—The Scottish peasantry dislike stairs—The evidence 7 of the last Royal Commission on the cottage homes of Great Britain—Further suggestions of the author regarding cottage architecture . ‘ . «389-405 CHAPTER XXVI THE GOLDEN AGE OF LABOUR Evidence of the Royal Commission of 1891—The immorality of the British peasantry exaggerated—Female field labour, its advantages and disad- vantages—Differences observable in the idiosyncrasies of northern and southern labourers—Wages in drink—The rural exodus a result of education—The advantages of wages in kind—The divorce of the labourer from the farmer's kitchen—Pros and cons of. the hiring system—The pernicious effects of the Truck Acts—The results of the rural exodus on village life—The peasant still requires guidance—He is learning very gradually how to better his lot—His bad management in the past still impedes his powers of exerting himself—He ‘Xvi Synopsis of Chapters PAGE must be treated as an invalid—The farmer's benevolence—Piecework and a co-operative system of labour employment—The advantages of a rural existence over that of a town—Employers of labour must acquire a greater intimacy with their dependants—The growing desire for a return to the system of outdoor relief . ‘ ie : % * é ‘ j * ‘ » 406-423 CHAPTER XXVII THE APOTHEOSIS OF LABOUR The latest rural chartism—The political economist in disgrace—Elevated ideas on modern sociology—The land reformers attempt to utilise this change in public opinion for improper purposes—The anomaly of the great wealth and the abject poverty of different sections of the community—The wrongs of labour— The various attempts ‘to remove them—The peasant asa labourer considered to be a slave of the wages system—Class legislation threatened with repeal— Various political propaganda—Land nationalisation—The emancipation of the soil from private ownership—A modern interpretation of the zmpét unique— The existence of the landlord at stake—No individual or class can rely any longer on the justice of a cause—The teaching of Bentham—The various remedies suggested by the land reformers—The failure of those familiar with the rural labourer to discover his supposed wrongs—The landlords and farmers proved to have been too indulgent masters—How employers and educators of the peasantry can yet improve the condition of this class—The probable results of the Parish Councils Act—The mischief caused by the teaching of false systems of economy—The rural peasantry constitutes a fourth grade of society, and requires different treatment from the artisans and operatives of our great cities—An appeal to the landlords and farmers to sacrifice self when- ever the wants of their employés require it—Demand for the guidance of the Established Church out of the difficulties at present surrounding the landed interests. 5 " f ‘ . . . . 7 . . + 424-438 INDEX OF AUTHORITIES . . ‘ q . . ‘ ‘ . + 439°, GENERAL INDEX . : : : . 5 eS ; ; : + 452 ANNALS OF THE BRITISH PEASANTRY CHAPTER I s THE ORIGIN OF THE EMPLOYER 1 is hard to conceive any considerable aggregation of human beings without its various grades of social distinction. The most primi- tive form of association was.a collection of individuals knit together by blood ties for purposes of mutual support. But even in the family we find the patriarch, and even amidst that congeries of families known as the tribe we find the primus inter pares. Admitting that there may be instances of primitive human societies, where property has for a time remained communal, we yet have to learn that power, skill, and influence could be as equally distributed amongst their individuals. Power is so closely connected with wealth that some of our earlier economists treated the two terms as though they were synonymous. In the first stages of social evolution it would be difficult to imagine the presence of power without wealth 3 for without the co-operation of the one, the other could scarcely have existed. Moreover, as wealth is only derivable from either sea or land, it follows that proprietary rights over these two elements at once enter into any discussion concerning degrees of social distinction. The soil of itself, however, so economists of every shade of opinion now agree, is not wealth ; and if we search far enough back in the history of any country, we shall’arrive at a period when there were no rights of property in land. It cannot be supposed, for instance, that nomadic nations thought it worth their while to establish a title to anything beyond rights of pasturage for ground, ephemerally occupied by themselves and their livestock. When grass was as plentiful as fish, the human race treated the respective elements in which these two commodities flourished very similarly. But there inevitably succeeds a period in the history of human societies when both the soil’s produce 1 B I 2 Annals of the British Peasantry and the sea’s produce become locally limited. The question of pro- prietorship crops up, and traditional customs become the unwritten laws of various communities. Few will be found to dispute the dictum of Blackstone :! “ Bodily labour bestowed upon anything, which before laid in common to all men, is universally allowed to give the fairest and most reasonable exclusive property therein.” This principle need not confine exclusive ownership to an individual. We have instances of primitive societies, which regarded exclusive ownership as the attribute of the family, the sept, the tribe, or the nation. Certain areas of the soil then ceased to be the communal property of the human race, and became that of various sections of it. Every individual belonging to such sections possessed rights of land tenure, but no one was entitled to a greater area of soil than his fellows. The essence, however, of such a proprietorship would surely be the power to convert it into any- thing which might prove of greater benefit to its owner? If it were not within his means to utilise his land for his own livelihood by cultivation, he would at least be entitled to exchange it for some other kind of property, which would afford him the resources of livelihood. Unless its proprietor has the means of converting it into marketable commodities, it is as useless to him as a watch that cannot be wound up, or a spade in the hands of a paralytic. Every able-bodied member of society possesses in his powers of labour the chief, but not the only, agency for producing wealth out of the soil. He must have, in addition, the implements and skill which will enable him to apply that labour in an efficacious manner. Whether, therefore, we start from the economy of the family, or of the tribe, or of the village community, we are obliged to postulate one of the following alternatives: either the unit of each possessed these means of cultivating the soil, or he was in a position to barter, at any rate temporarily, his share of it for some other form of property. It was always preferable for such an individual to be well fed as a slave, than to remain starving as a landed proprietor. The nearest approach that I can find to what is technically termed inalienable property is that furnished by the Hebrew land laws. They limit toa period of fitty years rights to barter, mortgage, or exchange the inheritance.? The instance likely to be most familiar to my readers, where popular rights over the soil were permanently surrendered for temporary advan- tages, is that when Joseph, Pharaoh’s minister of agriculture, exchanged the royal corn stores for the land itself. The central authorities may 1 Commentaries, Book II. c. i. p. 5, ed. iv. ? It is noticeable that under the theocratic administration of the Hebrews, the law of family settlements was strictly enforced. Compare Numbers xxxvi. v7 7. The Origin of the Employer 3 do all they can to discourage the alienation of landed property, but they will never meet with complete success. Take, for example, the communal economy of land tenure, practised by the Teutonic tribes in the days of Cesar. No individual could claim a determinate portion of land as his own peculiar property. The magistrates and chiefs allotted, annually, portions of the soil to tribes and clanships. Lest any of these minor divisions of the Germanic nationality should acquire a passion for large landed proprietorship, they were compelled to emi- grate annually to other portions of the soil. This economy might be more or less adaptable to a pastoral society, but it failed as soon as the greater outlay in labour and capital, necessitated by an agricultural economy, occurred. Tacitus, writing 150 years later, alludes to social grades, and to a less perfect system of communal land tenure in Germany. John Stuart Mill, an economist, to whose views the advocates of land nationalisation are fond of appealing, and who endeavours to hedge in the rights of private property in land with severe restrictions, insists that ‘the ownership of a thing cannot be looked upon as complete, without the power of bestowing it at death or during life at the owner’s pleasure.” Such an owner may, for the sake of security, elect to pay out of his land a portion of its profits for the protection of some superior ; but such a superior, whether he be an individual or a government, cannot set up a reversionary claim to the entire property on that account. The rights of the individual to bestow his share of the soil would soon upset any communal system of land tenure, especially such as was probably in existence in the Britain of Roman times. Let me briefly describe the chief features of an early communal economy, and endeavour to reconcile the rights to alienate its lands with the political and social equality of its inhabitants and property. And, firstly, although outside, their habitations the units of the society were equals, within their doors this equality ceased. The head of each family was possessed of magisterial and other administrative powers, which were not shared by the rest of the household. In times of common danger from without this miniature form of domestic govern- ment was extended to the whole district The representatives of paternal power met in common council to take steps for the protection of the inhabitants, comprised by their united jurisdiction. The election of what, for the sake of explanation, I may be excused for calling the “ chairman ” of the assembly, created the office of “ primus inter pares,” or “first amongst equals.” Upon him the whole duty devolved of taking the initiative and keeping order. This temporary chief, how- ever, had no distinction as regards worldly possessions, care being taken 4 Annals of the British Peasantry that he should not acquire an undue share of his neighbour’s land and personalty. For such objects the arable ground was split up into tiny unfenced holdings, and re-distributed annually by ballot amongst the community. The rest of the soil remained in a state of nature, consist- ing principally of wild grasses and self-sown trees. It was pastured by the entire livestock of the district, under the supervision of one official herdsman. It was a characteristic of these inhabited oases, that their centre was occupied by houses clustered near, but not adjoining, each other for purposes of the occupant’s defence. Round about these was situated the open arable ground, to which the waste invariably formed an outside rim. The cause of this phenomenon is very simple; viz., the fact that the original family had been attracted to, and had settled in its centre, because of its superior fertility, facilities of cultivation, or easy access to water. Gradually extending their husbandry outwards, until the crops just kept pace with the growing demands of the inhabi- tants, the society exercised such shadowy rights of proprietorship as were required for hunting, pasturage, and firing over an area of the waste, which would be only limited by the extent to which it happened to spread, before coming in contact with the wants of other similar: collections of humanity dotted over the face of the land. So long as we can picture a period of peace and plenty, so long, and no longer, can we realise this system of communal land tenure. But. once admit such disturbing factors as war and famine, and the whole economy falls to pieces. Each village community found in its own lands all the necessaries of ordinary life, and had no inclination to intermix with the similar institutions in its neighbourhood. But how would it fare when the news from without penetrated of a wave of marauding peoples, spreading devastation among the distant settlements on the common ethnic frontier? The chiefs of each village would at once collect in some central spot and discuss provisions for their mutual safety. A chairman of this greater parliament would be elected, and a debate on what, in these modern times, would be termed “im- perial business,” would ensue. This temporary expedient soon became crystallised into a permanent institution, so that, in turning over the early pages of history, we are not surprised to find mention made of the Dorf and Mutter Dorf in Germany, and of the hundred and shire in Anglo-Saxon England, each with its separate magisterial courts. Warfare, in fact, whether successful or unsuccessful, tended to upset the conditions of social equality. In the former event, the merits of skil- ful or daring leaders required some form of remuneration, and captured foes proved useful slaves. In the latter event the hitherto free villagers were degraded into hewers of wood and drawers of water by their The Origin of the Employer 5 conquerors ; and in both instances the equal subdivision of the land became an extinct economy. And, indeed, it is not by any means proven that either in the family, tribal, or village stage of national economy there was no servile class. Three different social grades have been traced in the ranks of the invading Frisian hosts, and the com- munity of free villagers, whether here or abroad, is said to have always had its manor of serfs. If so, we can, even under the conditions of a time of peace, reconcile the rights of an individual to alienate his particular plot of the land, with his claim as a free villager to maintain himself on an equal footing with his fellows. For,-whenever anybody lost the means of self-support, he regained them at the expense of his hereditary rights to the soil. Thereupon, being left solely with his powers of labour, he forfeited the conditions of his freedom and gravi- tated towards the servile class. Now, although I have no intention of deriving the origin of our modern rural labouring class from the slave of the village community, I do ultimately intend to prove that its ranks were made up from time to time by recruits from that section of the nation who, by their faults or misfortunes, were obliged to exchange their proprietary rights in the soil for something more immediately serviceable to existence. I shall, in like manner, now show that, by exercising these same powers of barter, certain individuals of the community became exalted into the position of the overlord, for whose first appearance in our midst, I believe, we must go back to Roman times. Though it lasted for four centuries, the Roman occupation does not seem to have effected popular proprietary rights to the land. The imperial practice was to levy a kind of district rate on conquered provinces, and to appoint local fiscal officers to collect and transmit itto Rome. These were probably natives chosen in each district from among the most influential villagers. Who so likely to be selected for the post as the particular primus inter pares of the year? The Romans allowed these officers some percentage out of the tax, as a remuneration for their trouble, and later bestowed on them magisterial powers. Here, then, we have vested in a single individual in each district influence, capital, and punitive powers. Without inferring that any arbitrary agencies were at work, we may conclude that, with these combined qualifications, a person, if of masterful temperament, would not be long before he acquired a lion’s share in the lands of his district. The Roman knowledge of agriculture was more advanced than that even of the monks in Tudor times. When the leading natives in each locality had picked up some hints from their conquerors on, say, the subject of stercoration, they would be very loth to part with that 6 Annals of the British Peasantry portion of the common land where they had sunk their spare capital in costly experiments. By a study of the archives of the English manors, instances are discoverable where parts of the “ family-lands,” subsequently known as demesnes, remain, even to this late date, dotted about amongst what was originally the site of the lands in villeinage. This evidence would seem to imply that the earlier overlords obtained the permission of the community at first to hold their particular plots for which they had balloted, longer than a year, and then permanently. Finally, the same object which induces our modern landowner to con- solidate his estates into a ring fence, and to pay a very high price for any small freehold surrounded by his property and offered for sale, was at work influencing these aboriginal landlords to exchange their out- lying strips in the common field for more accommodating sites nearer the homestead. In future, therefore, we must expect to find the lands about the village forming the bull’s-eye, as it were, of the district, in the possession of the head villager ; while the common arable field and waste constitute, in the order named, its two outer circles. The stage now reached may be considered as intermediate between the original village community and the coming manorial economy. Seigniorial rights are ill-defined and insignificant ; popular rights prac- tically the same as before. A system of coatation, by which all the more expensive implements of husbandry are common property, is practised on the open arable field, and no one claims exclusive powers over the waste. Then we may suppose to ensue another period of strife. Famine and want are threatening the community. In order to procure supplies, a marauding party is formed, which penetrates the waste and attacks some neighbouring settlement. Or we may imagine some other village community to be the aggressors, the chief of the threatened district marshalling his neighbours in battle array and trans- forming the country under his control into a fortified camp. It is a period when everybody has need of a protector, and when the smaller communities unite together and voluntarily place themselves under the gegis of some renowned leader of men. The hurried preparation to meet a time of imminent peril, however, proves faulty, and necessitates a more matured system, carefully worked out during an interval of peace. On a repetition of the disturbance, therefore, the inhabitants of every district concentrate, as pre-arranged, on some strategic centre, and are officered by leaders chosen beforehand. In all this my readers will no doubt recognise, as foreshadowed, the economy of a national constitution. The rights of property are found to involve the re- sponsibilities of its protection. Each individual is content to form a unit in the national army, and to submit to the privations of war and The Origin of the Employer 7 the authority of leaders. The latter require of their followers fidelity, discipline, and obedience.t Courts are founded in order to promote these objects. Taxes are levied for defraying the necessary expenses of successfully prosecuting the struggle. Laws are formed to restrain the violent, and rewards must ultimately be forthcoming for the recog- nition of meritorious conduct. To such circumstances seigniorial rights owed their being—a fact which brings us to that stage of the manorial system which came into force after the Anglo-Saxon in- vasion. The duties of the primus inter pares devolved upon the Anglo- Saxon overlord. The people grouped themselves and their property under the protection and jurisdiction of local magnates. Henceforth we find two forms of assembly in each district—the popular court of the community and the magisterial court of the overlord. The people retain their ancient rights over the soil, though they have volun- tarily curtailed their individual freedom of action. But in order to see fair play between protector and protected, a supreme authority was essential. It was sucha requirement as this which called into being a national constitution and a national over- lord. The latter became the chief freeholder, in whom all rights not. permanently granted out on noble tenure were vested. He, in the words of Robertson,? was recognised as “‘ the fountain of honour, the source of justice, and the sole arbiter of the national policy.” His magisterial court became the parliament of the nation, and the magistrates of each local court formed its council. At first it was a nomadic assembly, wandering over the country and administrating supreme justice in each locality. Finally it settled down at some cen- tral spot which became the capital of the kingdom. But it will no doubt be asked how, if all unclaimed property were held in trust by the king for future national wants, did the people come to lose their hold over the waste? Let my readers, however, realise the uses to which this portion of the country could, at first, alone be put. It was full of wild beasts, tangled vegetation, and unwholesome morasses. Being uninhabited, it could not come under seigniorial jurisdiction. As waste it was merely useful for the purposes of the chase, pasturage, firing, and building materials. I can only find an usurpation at this period by the landlord of the first-named use, and even there I am 1 Compare the following paragraph: ‘‘ Of all principles of military regiment there is none so necessary or so elementary as this, that all men must be under a captain, and such a captain as is able to command prompt and willing obedience. Upon this military principle I conceive the English settlements were originally founded, that each several settlement was under a military leader, and that this military leader was the ancestor of the lord of the manor.”—Land Charters, §5. Earle. 2 Scotland under her Early Kings, The Conclusion, vol. ii. p. 167 e¢ seg. 1862, 3 “Annals of the British Peasantry doubtful whether the people had time, means, or inclination to pursue the sport of venery. But setting aside for the moment this early phase of the game question, I doubt if any instance of seigniorial encroach- ment on the people’s waste is capable of proof. The national land was considered as set apart for the national wants, and was distributed when required by the national representatives at some session of the Witenagemot. The king himself, so Beda tells us, had to obtain the consent of the Witan before he could erect a royal manor on it. Of course this law was evaded. When was there a law which was not? Grants of loen land were only irrevocable when made to monasteries. Consequently, earldormen and thanes made a pretence of erecting some religious house, and thus secured an inalienable heritage. From what Dr. Lingard has brought to light,! it is clear that M.P.’s in the times of the Heptarchy were as corruptible as they were in the days of the Georges. Be this as it may, it was universally recognised that the greater the area of cultivated soil the greater would be the prosperity of the community. Consequently when a younger son of some local mag- nate took it into his head to migrate with a few companions into the adjoining waste, he was not deterred from doing so by the national authorities, provided that he complied with certain set formule. Now, in order to institute a new manor, it was, I have shown, necessary to obtain a grant of jurisdictory rights from the king and Witenagemot, and a transfer of the rights enjoyed by the entire community over the folcland as a whole to that small section of the public which was about to develop a fresh arable field in the new manor. No interference on the part of the overlord was permitted with the popular rights to this last- mentioned portion of his manor. He and his followers were obliged to submit to the popular agricultural economy of the period, and, if he wanted a demesne, he had to set to work to obtain it as I have supposed his prototype, the Roman fiscal officer, did centuries before. In due course he would erect his mill, build and endow a parish church, and establish a market and magisterial court; that is, supposing that he had obtained from the authorities a grant of what was called sac, soc, toll, team, and infang-thief. The folcland thus appropriated be- came known as bocland, provision being made for the resumption of popular rights, should the new overlord or his descendants ever tran- gress certain laws restricting their powers of alienation. Lastly the charter containing his title to the manor was preserved for public in- spection in the new church. 1 History and Antiquities of Anglo-Saxon Church, vol. i. p. 407, Note K. John Lingard, D.D., 1845. The Origin of the Employer 9 We now come to the Norman invasion, and here again we find no interference with popular rights over the soil. The new king assumed the magisterial powers over the conquered people possessed by Edward the Confessor, and distributed them amongst his followers. The only difference was that they were in theory, though not actually, vested in the Crown from the outset, instead of, as originally, belonging to the aristocracy, and gradually being surrendered to the monarchy. William I. found a system of land tenure which had been adopted for the purposes of the national defence. All he did was to accentuate its warlike features, exchanging his rights of jurisdiction over the entire country for some form or other of those services which afforded him the means for successfully coping with the national enemies. The lord of each manor succeeded to the old powers of his Anglo-Saxon predecessor, which the latter in his turn had derived from some original primus inter pares. Thus, whenever danger threatened from foreign enemies, the king called upon his vassals, in the interests of their property and his, to arm and follow him into the battle. It had been their wish to do this in the old tribal days, and it was certainly their interest to do so at a time when all the inhabitants of the eastern coast were trembling at the rumours of Danish invasion. : It was, no doubt, a more civilised and drastic method of military land tenure. The formalities of homage, fealty, and investiture strik- ingly accentuated the fact that the possession of realty involved stern duties and severe sacrifices. Even the Saxon landlord, unless a king’s thane, forfeited his fief when he neglected his liabilities under the Trinoda Necessitas ; consequently the rank and file of the nation were not likely to resent the performance of duties from which they saw that individuals far higher in the social scale than themselves were not exempt. The lord of a fief, so far from evading his obligations of military service to the new king, displayed his approval by imposing similar obligations on his vassals. Imitation of the royal example carried the process down from knight to franklyn, from franklyn to ~ villein, and from villein to house servant. Every rank in the kingdom was involved in this system of subinfeudation. The employer at that early stage of the feudal polity which once existed in France was not so much the employer of peaceful labour as of warlike labour. Before the 11th century the French aristocracy was one of wealth rather than of descent; but of a wealth not cal- culated by the number of acres, but by the number of men. Where- fore the richest nobles were the most powerful, and the immediate advisers of the Crown were the largest possessors of landed estates. As we shall afterwards find in the case of the English villeinage class, 10 Annals of the British Peasantry the services of the original military nobles were at first undefined and uncertain. But soon local usages began to crystallise into unwritten laws. Forty days became universally recognised as the term of ser- vice for the tenant of a knight’s fee. Benefices could no longer be revoked at the pleasure of the sovereign. Becoming hereditary, they also became subject only to temporary confiscation when a life owner failed to fulfil his obligations of service in the field. Thus was evolved an hereditary aristocracy, not indeed entirely or directly connected with the national soil, but almost so. Gentility of blood in a warlike age could not solely depend upon proprietary rights over land. They, no doubt, enabled a military leader to place in the field a large force of armed combatants; but, for the purposes of the warfare peculiar to these early times, redoubtable soldiers, whose only capital was their natural gifts of valour and skill, were also essential. During the r1th and 12th centuries we therefore find in the continental feudal system a title to gentility of blood bestowed by the adoption of surnames and armorial bearings.1 Nevertheless, without such ownership of land as was constituted by the possession of a manor, no gentleman could claim jurisdictory rights over his fellows. In the French feudal system, for example, only the seigneur who had a right to a castle possessed /a haute justice ; and barons, chatelains, and inferior lords, who all shared this privilege, were socially distinguished, not by heraldic differences, but by the numbers of posts with which they were allowed to support their gallows. In England, indeed, from the date of the Conquest, we find in the Domesday Survey the strongest proof of the importance of land tenure on questions of social rank. William I., adopting the system which he found in existence, utilised it for his own purposes. The only drastic change that he found necessary was one of ownership. 20,000 French- men replaced some 20,000 Englishmen, not as proprietors of our native soil, but as employers of our native labour. The Anglo-Saxon form of Ja haute justice remained in the hands of private individuals, although William’s kinsmen and generals had ousted from their earldoms, bishoprics, and abbacies the great thanes who wielded it in the days of Edward the Confessor.? Both the freeman and the slave enjoyed the same rights and performed the same obligations as they had done under the former polity. ‘The Conquest,” writes Mr. A. L. Smith, ‘‘ meant, indeed, that the executive, the central administration, and the local government, temporal and spiritual, had been taken over by a new set 1 State of Europe during the Middle Ages, vol. i. ch. ii, pt. iii H. Hallam, roth ed., 1853. ? Social England, pt. i. p. 240. Edited by H. D. Trail, 1893. The Origin of the Employer II of men, better managers, keener, more unscrupulous, less drunken and quarrelsome, better trained, hardier, thriftier, more in sympathy with the general European movements, more adventurous, more temperate.” ! It had not, however, revolutionised class distinctions, nor interfered with class privileges. The employer was in existence long before the battle of Hastings, and in any question regarding his origin and early status we only need search the records relating to Norman times, because they are fuller than and confirmatory of those relating to Anglo-Saxon times. Before, however, we deal with later phases of the manor, it is well to bear in mind that its every insignificant custom originally signified a warlike use. The tenure of the greatest noble in the land depended upon some form of military service to the king, and the tenure of the poorest serf was controlled by a similar polity. Every incident of feudalism was saturated with the requirements of the battle; and whether we examine into the custom of primogeniture, or marriage, or relief, or wardship, or purveyance, we arrive at last at its warlike purpose. What the tenant-in-chief rendered to his king, what his vassals in turn rendered to himself, and what each villein rendered to the vassals, were all, so to speak, the various parts of a warrior’s armour. The lord of the fief was liable for military service: who so fitted to succeed him at his death or disablement as his eldest son ? Hence the custom of primogeniture. An army in the field requires food : where could it be more easily obtained than amidst the manors through which it happened to be marching? Hence the incident of purveyance. Every leader requires his panoply of war: what more facile method than to make it the terms of tenancy in the manorial rent roll? Hence the incident of the relief. A daughter of a vassal falls in love with the son of his feudal superior’s foe: what more likely to breed an enemy in the camp than the union of these two? Hence the incident of marriage. I might multiply cases of this kind until I wearied my reader, but I have cited enough for the purpose in hand. As the master, so the serf; for whether the latter possessed whole virgates or half virgates in the common field, or whether he held a more humble curtilage nearer home, he was virtually an owner of real estate. His eldest son succeeded to the land,.and made the best bargain that he could make with his brothers and sisters ? over the redemption of their chattels for stocking it. He, too, had to obtain his lord’s permission 1 Social England, pt. i. p. 243. 2 The medizeval peasant, as far as he was able, ignored the custom of primogeniture ; hence came his frequent descents into a lower social grade, where he remained until he could work his way up again. 12 Annals of the British Peasantry for his daughter’s marriage, and his tenancy was liable to the heriot and fine. Lastly, though, happily, purveyance was an incident confined in England to the prerogative of the Crown, there was in the predial service of each villein, a resemblance to it sufficiently marked to justify the theory that it had been originally imitated from it. In a social system founded thus on military principles, there natu- rally lingered for a long period to come some of the savagery and discipline of war. The substitution of scutage by military service was not allowed to obliterate the fact that every landowner was ex-officio a unit of the standing army. The Assize of Arms in 1181 was indeed no gentle reminder of this important fact. Consequently owners of realty regarded their proprietary rights as more military than agricul- tural, more in the light of magisterial powers than as monetarily re- munerative. Most of them, if asked by what warrant they held their judicial franchises, would have replied as Earl Warrenne did in 1278, by flinging a well-used sword on to the justices’ table ; 1 or, if the extent of their incomes had been inquired into, would have answered like Macdonald of Keppoch: “I can raise so many hundred men.”* When we begin to examine the harsh measures which were frequently adopted in order to keep the villeinage in their proper stations, we must recall to mind that, besides being hewers of wood and drawers of water, many of them were trained soldiers. A class which could use bills and bows as effectually as these Anglo-Saxon peasants required constraints considerably more formidable than the milk-and-water statutes which our modern democracy provides for the use of its executive. The struggle between the peasant and his master was no mere class con- test. It was an international one, in which the master represented the Norman race, and the villein the Saxon race. When, therefore, we read of such arbitrary interference with the comforts and free- dom of the subject as the ordinance of the curfew and the venery laws of the forest, we must bear in mind that the darkness of night and the gloom of trees were the shelter as well as the opportuni- ties of the Saxon assassin, and that corpses of murdered Normans had become familiar wayside objects to those whose business led them far afield. From the reign of the Conqueror to that of John, England was the theatre of a guerilla war, in which the sympathies of every landlord were enlisted on the opposite side to that of his tenantry. The traditions of the harsh legislation rendered necessary by such circum- stances as these, lingered on to infuse with severity the labour, the sumptuary, and the poor laws of a later epoch. Indeed, it will perhaps 1 4 Short History of the English People, ch. iv. p. 204. J. R. Green, 1891. ® Quarterly Review, vol. xiv. Sir Walter Scott’s article on the Culloden Papers. The Origin of the Employer 13 surprise the reader when he learns how the shadow of this international struggle extended across the pages of the statute book until far on into Stuartine times. After all that can be said concerning seigniorial oppression, there was no arbitrary interference with the rights of the people. For, to repeat what has been already urged in this chapter, the people requiring protection exchanged for it their personal freedom. By their labour they undertook to nourish their protectors, just as in the old Roman proverb the belly was shown to have nourished its members. Without the skill and resources of the one party, the other would have lost both freedom and property, just as without the active co-operation of the limbs, the belly would have starved amidst plenty. The exchange once made became stereotyped amidst the records of each manor. CHAPTER II THE ORIGIN OF THE LABOURER HE presence of a labouring class in our midst dates back to prehistoric times. Consequently it is difficult to speak with any certainty of its original status. There is no doubt that it existed in — the tribal era, and that, with other institutions of that economy, it was carried over into the manorial system. The Frisians brought the lazzus class with them when they migrated to these shores,! adding, no doubt, largely to its numbers by means of captive Britons. But we want to picture the peasant’s condition under the patriarchal economy, We would like a peep at him just at the transition stage between a communal and a seigniorial polity. It is no use searching the pages of England’s history for this purpose. We require some instance of a tribal economy, whose barbaric customs have been handed down by the historians of civilised nations, which were both its contemporaries and its neighbours. We could no doubt deduce by analogy something concerning the ancient British labourer from Roman histories. We could indeed study tribal slavery with our own. eyes by means of a temporary sojourn amidst the savage peoples of Southern Africa. We could draw valuable inferences from modern India concerning the labour customs of a communal society. Happily for our purpose, the respective conditions of social economy known as the village and the tribal communities were not peculiar to the Teuton, or Northman, or Celt. A mark of freemen, exercising magisterial powers over a manor of serfs, has existed in Ireland, in Wales, and in Scotland, as well as in England and Germany. Moreover, in the instance of the most northern of these districts, we find throughout its history two sections of the community, the one in an advanced stage of civilisation, the other lagging behind in a state of barbarism. It is from the personal experience of writers belonging to the first-mentioned section that I shall attempt to get at the habits and customs of the last mentioned. Notwithstanding the views of the Duke of Argyle to the contrary, Iam forced to believe that the prehistoric tribal rights of 1 Stubbs’ Constitutional History, vol. i. ch. iv. p. 70, ed. iv. 14 The Origin of the Labourer 15 the Picts and Scots survived the transforming processes of their clan system, and that we can catch a glimpse of them earlier, in the process of being carried over into a feudal polity.} At the beginning of the 12th century, the inhabitants of the district known as Moravia recognised in Alexander I. the powers wielded, not by a sovereign, but by a suzerain. Their territories were, in the language of Seebohm, “occupied by human swarms of septs, each of which was clustered about its queen bee, the chief, A sort of feudal relation prevailed between the parent swarm and the inferior kindred which had separated from it.”* As long as all the land was pasture, it remained common to all ; but the arable land, as soon as there came to be any, was split up into ballys and quarters, and distributed annually among the family-men, who cultivated them on the runrig system. Soon, however, amidst the duineuasal, as these free kinsmen of each district were called, social distinctions and proprietary rights, which had once been temporary, came to be regarded as permanent. First the chief or tighern, and the judge or brehon, and then their blood com- rades, the ogtierns, appropriated the privileges afforded by fixity of tenure. It was only the biotaghs, or attachtuatha, that remained sub- ject to the shifting rights of allotment made annually by the maor or steward of the tighern. These various tenures of land, regulated as they were by brehon laws, were fully recognised during the 11th century in the Scottish Constitution. The elective and hereditary magistrates of tribes and confederacies came to be early confirmed, and probably later instituted, in their offices by the suzerain. Moreover, they in their turn acknowledged his rule by payments of produce and performance of personal military service. All that I am now relating is but an illustration in fact of what was discussed in the last chapter concerning the evolution of a seigniorial economy. The Celtic mor- maer, like the Saxon earl, had degenerated into the vassal of a king. The chief of a clan, now the lord of a manor, sat within the earthern rampart of the old Rath, or homestead,? in the seat of the primus inter pares. The baille tighern had become his seigniorial demesnes, and the baille biotagh the infield, outfield, and shepherd land of his villein- age.* 1 Scotland as it Was and as it Is, p. 21. Duke of Argyle, ed. ii., 1887. 2 The English Village Community, ed. iv., p. 220, Fred. Seebohm. 3 Mediaeval Scotland, p. 6. R. Cochran Patrick, 1892. 4 For the use of my Welsh readers I may briefly assert that in the Welsh tribal system of land tenure we find corresponding with the duineuasal were the free kins- men, and with the attachtuatha were the taigan, or servile cultivators. The aillt, like the nativus of the Scotch and English manorial villeinage, did no menial service for his land. The maerdref was the tenants’ town and the taiog its lands in villeinage. 16 Annals of the British Peasantry In this early phase of the Scottish manor we have all the features of an English manor. First in the list of its cultivators came the free tenants, chief of whom were those holding lands for lives,! subsequently the tacksmen of Scotland and the free socmen of England. Far on in the histories of both kingdoms we find them existing. Some of them were not necessarily farmers,—such, for example, as those who had sublet their tacks ; nor was theirs ever an ignoble tenure,—indeed, many of them claimed kindred with their superior lord. As they were always anxious to convert their estates into freehold tenures, and as undis- turbed possession for more than three generations gave them this power, they were the same well-conducted section of the community which their descendants, the bonnet lairds of the North and the yeomen of the South, subsequently proved to be. Next in importance to these were the feefarmers, or feuars, in whom we recognise another section of the original ogtierns of the Gaelic tribe, as well as the villein socman, or later copyholder of the English manor. Then came an individual designated in the Scottish statute book as the owner of five cows. Though a member of the original daerclan or attachtuatha, he was no longer subject to the inconvenience of a shifting allotment. The authorities soon realised that such an uncertain land tenure as this was not calculated to inspire men with any eagerness for a less indolent existence than that of the pastoral life. Therefore, about the begin- ning of the 13th century, the Scottish legislature had ordained 2 that every bondman possessing five cows (ze. property of the value of one pound) must continue to hold the land of which he had been pos- sessed the previous year, and raise a corn crop thereon for the benefit of his lord. He now, therefore, became the manorial tenant of twenty- six Scottish acres, “where scythe and plough may gang,” otherwise known as the husbandland. He and his tenancy, therefore, corre- sponded respectively with the gebur and virgate holding of the Anglo- Saxon economy.’ By the same Act alluded to, those who had attained ° or were working their way up to the modern labourer’s ideal condition of happiness, viz., the proprietorship of three acres and a cow, were compelled to sell their beast and begin digging and sowing for the benefit of their lord. Some of these, perhaps, subsequently became tenants of those labourers’ allotments, supposed to have been created 1 It is worth attracting the reader’s attention to this origin of the lease for three lives, which lingered in many parts of England, notably Lancashire, up to the present century. After undisputed possession for three generations a clansman ob- tained inborn right. The lease for three lives just stopped short of the requisite period. ? Parl. Scot., Alex. II., c. 1., 1214, vol. i. p. 397. 3 Rect. Sing. Personarum, Thorpe, vol. i, The Origin of the Labourer 17 by Alexander III., which, from their name of oxgang, have been thought to evidence a Scottish system of coaration.! Amongst the most insignificant persons of the labouring class ranked the cottager with his small messuage, who no doubt was the northern representative of the Anglo-Saxon cotselda. During the tribal era strangers in blood were, either voluntarily or compulsorily, attached to the sept. The Duke of Argyle speaks of clans which, from time to time, had been largely recruited, if not replaced, by such “ broken men.” Until these intruders had acquired the privileges and obligations of settlement, for which the fourth in the line of their descent was the first to qualify, some of them, at any rate, seem to have been permitted to quit the district whenever they chose. They were not actually thralls therefore ; though such existed, and were probably members of the impoverished and criminal classes. This, the lowest rank of all, together with the grades of the original attachtuatha, already mentioned, constituted the labouring element of the early Scottish manor. It may. be suggested that I could have separated the industrial classes in the feudal economy more easily if I had distinguished be- tween those who were bound by military service and those who were not. But before the roth century the old military duties of feacht and sluaged,? though confined to the baronage, did not necessarily en- noble an individual. Even after that date the obligations of expedi- tion and hosting, known as “Scottish service” in the old charters, descended as low as the tenant of a husbandland ; indeed lower, for, in the violent times of Robert Bruce, the want of armed men induced that sovereign to seek spearmen and archers amidst the ranks of the most servile of the farming class. that can be said in the Scottish case is, that military tenants were freemen, but not necessarily nobles. There was a lesser duineuasal, the bonnachts by name, whose trade was not agriculture but war. In the Welsh case those forming this class were regarded as gentlemen, but in England they were mere camp followers. Consequently “churl,” as pointed out by Robertson, 1 The oxgang was in area thirteen Scottish acres, and was one-eighth of a davoch, an area of land which corresponded with the Norman carucate. The former con- tained about 104 Scottish acres, the latter about 200 English acres. The great common and demesne ploughs of Scotland were sometimes drawn by twelve, some- times by eight oxen, those of England invariably by eight. The holder of an ox- gang is supposed to have furnished for it one draught beast, and that of a husband- land two draught beasts. This was called “‘ keeping good neighbourhood.” 2 Scotland as it Was and as it Is, p. 164. Duke of Argyle, ed. ii, 1887. _ § The can and conveth were produce dues, and the feacht and sluaged obliga- tions of military service. 4 Act Parl. Scot. Rob. I. p. 114. \ 18 Annals of the British Peasantry has remained a far less honourable appellation in our English dialect than has “ benniddigion,” its equivalent in the Welsh dialect.1 A political distinction between employer and employed would, however, have served my purpose better. It separates the barons, the vavassours or knights, the subvavassours or squires, the subarmigeri or ‘yeomen, and the free tenants by charter, together with the clergy (in fact, the capitalist classes), from those in which we are now mainly interested. The former were known as the communitas, and were the only real people of Scotland at this period. The latter composed the great majority of the population, and included every section of the in- dustrial community.? But, by having adopted the economic distinctions recognised by the manorial populations, I shall now be able to include in the following remarks the inhabitants of both Scotland and England. In a legal sense one fundamental distinction divided the entire servile class in every feudal territory into two sections. All who were not freeholders were attached either to the lord of the soil or to the soil itself. The difference between being a portion of the seigniorial person- alty and of being a portion of the seigniorial realty was known in Anglo- Saxon times under the names respectively of ehte swain and of gafol swain, and in Norman times under those of villein in gross and villein regardant. Other synonyms were those of servus and nativus, thryll and bond. At the outset of the feudal economy every inhabitant of the manor who had not been enfranchised was, at least theoretically, part and parcel of it,—in fact, fastened to it in such a way as to be in- separable from it in the eyes of the lawyer. This is equivalent to asserting that the lord could not turn a single villein off the manor, or bequeath him as a legacy to a stranger, because he was neither more nor less alienable than the soil on which he was born, and to a portion of which he was entitled as long as he performed whatever duties his particular tenure of it involved. But when through illness, misfortune, injustice, or other causes he became incapacitated from fulfilling his allotted tasks, he lost or for- feited his landed rights, became separated from field cultivation, and, as a villein in gross, was finally merged in the other forms of seigniorial personalty. Such an unfortunate individual was transferable by deed, sale, or conveyance from one master to another.’ It was his class which, in spite of the discountenance of the Conqueror towards such a form of human commerce, glutted the medizeval slave markets, so that s 1 Scotland under her Early Kings, Robertson, vol. i. Pp. 245. ® Id. ibid., vol. ii. p. 167, ed. 1862. ® Dialog. ae Stace. 1 The Origin of the Labourer 19 scarcely a southern Scottish cottage,! or an eastern Irish one,? existed in the 13th century, which did not imprison an English servant. But if, as I contend, every native peasant, both in Scotland and England, was originally entitled to rank as an adscriptus glebe on some manor or other, we have an intelligible explanation of the law of settle- ment, the statutes of labourers, and the prolonged seigniorial control over the habits and relief of the poor—a combination of circumstances which form} the groundwork of all English and Scottish pauper legis- lation, We must bear in mind that the existence of an able-bodied pauper was hardly possible in these early times. Idle labourers can only be differentiated by the terms criminal poor and impotent poor. To be incapable of self-support was to commit a legal offence, and the guiltless pauper came in only with the independent class, which earned a livelihood in the oppidan factory. In early feudal times, therefore, a landless man was regarded as an outlaw and a lordless one as a thief. Even if a serf obtained his master’s license to live off the manor, he had to pay for the privilege a periodical due, known as “chivage.” The attempt to penetrate the waste, and escape into the towns, was fraught with as much danger as when death had been the doom of him who issued out of the forest without first advertising his approach by blast of horn. A short explanation will justify the severity of this harsh measure ; for had strangers been allowed to settle down amidst the cultivated lands of the village, popular rights would have been in- fringed ; and had some overlord thus incurred the loss of a labourer, his wealth and power would have been diminished. It was therefore understood that whoever stole away out of the manor committed a theft, and to steal oneself was no mere act of petty larceny, but a grave offence. A deadly epidemic was as inimical to seigniorial rights as was a bad harvest to popular interests, and we shall shortly see that the Black Death almost necessitated an entire reconstruction of the manorial machinery. There was, in fact, at this early period very strong economical objections to that fluidity of labour which now enables the working classes to go from district to district, wherever high wages attract them. Nor was there any fluidity of capital,—in fact, there was nothing capable of being regarded as capital, save the stock-in- trade of the husbandman. In times of peace the income of the land- lord depended upon the tolls received from his market and mill, together with the payments, in labour and kind, with which his depen- dants remunerated him for his protection. Each manor was sell- 1 R. Hoveden, 260. (Also quoted by Eden). 2 Giraldius Cambrensis Hibern. Expugn., 770. (Quoted by Sir F. Eden in his State of the Poor). 20 Annals of the Britesh Peasantry sufficing, and the sale of most of its products to the inhabitants of other manors was for a long time sternly interdicted. Chapmen, it is true, were allowed to traffic between village and village, but publicly before witnesses, and, as any convenient medium of exchange, like money, was rare, the bulk of these transactions were mere barterings of one form of goods for another. Whether, therefore, he were partly or wholly enslaved, every villein had no alternative but to work hard for his livelihood in that particular spot of country where he had been born, and under those particular conditions which manorial customs had regulated. If he had been so fortunate as to have retained the popular rights of his forefathers to the soil, he was a villein regardant, as such performing the various offices of an agriculturist, and entitled to occupy a small portion of the land, provided that he conducted himself properly and did his duty. If he ceased to be capable of supporting himself by his exertions out of doors, he naturally fell back upon a less exposed existence near or within doors. As suggested by me in the last chapter, proprietorship carried with it the right to barter. Both the Saxon geneat and the Norman villein must therefore have had powers of selling, and liabilities of forfeiting, their rights as coloni, and so of becoming mere servi. There are writers! who have, rightly in my opinion, traced back the villein in gross to the Frisian lazzus, and the villein regardant to the Anglo-Saxon ceorl. If it was possible, as Hallam points out,? for a ceorl, by misdemeanour or tyranny, to become a theow, it would surely be equally possible for a villein regardant by the same causes to become a villein in gross. But, when we examine the evidences of the medizeval law books, we find that it was by no means impossible for one individual to be regarded as both a villein regardant and a villein in gross. One explanation of this phenomenon is the suggestion that, as the old economy of the manor altered according to the changed exigencies of the times, the lawyers attempted to reconcile the obsolete rights of slavery by inventing a fresh interpretation of their meaning. Glanvil, Britton, Bracton, Coke, Littleton, and Bacon, unlike the amateur jurists of a previous age, were professional men. Having had access to the Roman code, they may have derived from a study of the terms ‘‘colonus” and “servus ” their interpretation of the status of our English villeinage. When viewed from the standpoint only of their relationship with the lord, the medizeval farm labourers were, in their eyes, servi. But when the occasion necessitated any accentuation of their peculiar relationship with the manorial soil, they regarded them 1 Gurdon on Courts Baron, p. 592. Norman Conquest, R. Freeman, ch. v. p. 477. 2 Europe in the Middle Ages, vol. ii. ch. vii. pt. i. The Origin of the Labourer BI as coloni. For all practical purposes, however, they treated them as though they were the absolute property of their masters.} This explanation of our earlier lawyers’ bias of mind is more or less plausible, but it does not altogether satisfy the searching curiosity of the modern historian. So long as villein services were uncertain, so long as the labourer did not know at night what duty he might be called upon to perform in the morning, it did not much signify whether he was termed a villein regardant or a villein in gross. He might be the former at one moment, and the latter at the next.? If the medizeval lawyers were justified in asserting that “Zenir en pure villenage est ‘a faire tout ceo qu le seigneur luy voet commander,”® they were also justified in denying to any member of such a class civil rights so far as regards his lord. An individual who, by the non-performance of an impossible task, could find himself in the stocks one hour, and on his way to the Bristol slave market the next, could not be treated as a law- worthy man. Thus we find Glanvil* writing as follows: “Von potest aliguis in villenagio positus, libertatem suam propriis denarits suis qua- rere, quia omnia catalla cujuslibet nativi intelliguntur esse in potestate domini sui.” And in the Scottish code we have an echo of this harsh saying in “a bondman may buy or purches his libertie with his awin proper gudes or gett . . . because all the cattel and gudes of all bonda- men are understanded to be in the power and dominion of the maister, swa that, without consent of his maister, he may not reclame himself out of bondage with his awin proper denires or money.” ® This, indeed, was abject slavery, and fully accounts for the numerous evidences of a slave trade found in ancient records.® But that all the English and Scottish villeinage should have been in such a degraded status is impossible. How could there have been popular courts like those of the tithing and hundred, and free institu- tions like the frank pledge entirely composed of the villeinage class, if all its members had been slaves? How antagonistic to abject servi- tude was the power of the villein to “inherit, purchase, sue in the courts of law, and when a defendant in a real action or suit wherein land was claimed, to actually shelter himself under the plea of villein- age?” Moreover, his tenement and waynage (ze. stock-in-trade) were 1 Compare what Mr. Vinogradoff has to say on the subject. Villainage in England, P- 44, etc., 1892. ? Ingulphus, 520; Kennet, Pari, Ant., 288; State Trials, xi. 342. (Quoted by Eden in his State of the Poor.) 3 Old Tenures, Thos. Littleton, ed. 1525, p. 6. * Za, lii. cap. 2. 5 Auld Laws of Scotland, Buke 2nd, c. 12. ® Scotland in the Middle Ages, p. 139. Cosmo Innes. 7 Europein the Middle Ages, vol. i. ch. ii. pt. ii. p. 200. H. Hallam, ed. x. 22 Annals of the British Peasantry absolutely inviolable, so long as he performed his predial services. There lingered, it would seem, out of the past, a taint of that old heathen economy, in which the working classes were regarded as mere chattels of their employers; but it was to some extent smothered by the popular rights which had been handed down along with it out of the tribal era. The truth is that there were, in the medieval manor, agriculturists who were as entirely bondmen as the body-servants of the lord; and there were agriculturists almost as entirely free as the lord himself. Mentioned in the Domesday Survey are 25,000 servi, as compared with 110,000 villani. Some of the former still existed at the begin- ning of the 16th century, but were almost extinct by the end of it.? As early as the Anglo-Saxon era there were ceorls with land, and ceorls without it; and in the Norman period there was the same distinction amidst the villeinage class. But there was one fundamental distinction between the two constitutions which controlled this class. The Anglo- Saxon one, in the words of Hallam, laid more stress on judicial power than on legislative, its code of laws being designed more for the determination of punishment than for that of rights. The Norman Constitution was just the opposite. In spite of the efforts of medizeval lawyers to reduce the villeinage class to slavery, our early English judges succeeded in elevating it to freedom. William I. recognised in the penalties, imposed by the Anglo-Saxon code for the maltreatment of a serf, the fact that he was in part law-worthy. His successors gradually contrived to make him wholly so. Though his master was still allowed, by exercising his hereditary right of vetoing marriages, to prevent his entering this world, he was never permitted to expel him from it without certain forms of law. Furthermore, the descendants of those ceorls, who had exercised free rights over their lands in the days of Edward the Confessor, were encouraged to retain them in the days of William the Conqueror, even though they were classified as slaves by the later lawyers. Every doubtful clause in a law, as well as every doubtful act of a master, was interpreted as favourable to the interests of the weaker side. Who, then, were the villeins who thus retained their position of freedom? Undoubtedly all those descendants of the primeval family-men, who still occupied the ancient common field. But a large proportion of the attachtuatha had ceased to derive a livelihood entirely from such a source. These had fallen back on employment in the lord’s demesne, being, in fact, labourers on his home farm—agriculturists still, but bondmen, who 1 Boke of Surveyinge, 1539. John Fitzherbert. 2 The Commonwealth of England, p. 123, 1609. Sir Thos. Smith. The Origin of the Labourer 23 tilled their lord’s soil entirely for his benefit. Their services were un- certain, and their stock-in-trade borrowed property. Many of them were still occupiers of the common field, merely filling up their spare time by servile work on the homefarm. As tenants-of the former they were villeins regardant, and as tenants of the latter villeins in gross. Their tenure of the one was ad voluntatem dominz, but that of the other was fixed and inalienable. Thus it was possible for the services of the serf to be performed by the freeman without any derogation of his superior status. Soon, however, the lord found it preferable to make distinct grants of tenure to some of his demesne-land labourers. These the courts showed great eagerness, to interpret into acts of en- franchisement. Though they were moulded ‘on the fashion of those prevalent in the common field, the ceremony of admission was different. _ The lord, instead of bestowing a written copy of the tenant’s services from his court roll, handed him some symbol, such as a rod, which came to be called the verge. This class was distinguished in the later law books from the copyholders of the ¢erva nativa or open arable field, as tenants-at-will, holding by like custom and service as the superior copy- holders.!' Directly the lord had made such a grant of his demesne lands to some serf, it was assumed by the courts that he had volun- tarily surrendered to him his claims over him as a slave-owner, and the beneficiary, though a serf, became admitted to civil rights.2 Causes, however, irrespective of legislative and political influences, were at work tending to raise the status of the slave. The economy of servile cultivation was sufficiently wretched to induce the overlord him- self to take steps to alter it. There was no incentive for a villein to exert himself in better methods of cultivation, as long as he knew that any extra profits would not accrue to himself. If only he could derive from his allotment the bare necessaries of existence, and leave a narrow margin of profits for his lord’s requirements, he was quite satisfied with his efforts. Not so his lord, who soon sought to exchange his rights to the hospitality of his dependants for some equivalent, which he might barter in the local markets for the pleasures and luxuries of life. As soon as he began to substitute fixed rents for predial services, his villeinage found that the more the soil produced, the greater became their prosperity. The lord, on the other hand, perceived that the more soil he could induce the manorial population to bring under cultivation, 1 Boke of Surveyinge. J. Fitzherbert. 2 For a most exhaustive as well as clear explanation of the social distinctions in the. villeinage class, I refer the reader to Mr. J. S. Leadam’s article, ‘* The Inquisition of 1517,” edited from the Lansdowne MS., 7ransactions of the Royal Hist. Society, vol, vi., 1892, 24 Annals of the British Peasantry the higher would grow his rental. It is related of a Norwegian jarl that in his anxiety to increase the profits of his manor, he bought slaves and settled them on its adjoining wastes, portions of which they cleared, thus becoming free rent-paying farmers. “ Wherever,” says Robertson, “the shrewd Northman is traceable in Southern Britain at the date of Domesday Survey, it is conceivable that the same practice had been common. Amidst the Anglo-Saxons of the Eastern Danelage, and upon the frontiers of Anglian Mercia, the free tenant is found amidst an absolutely servile population.”! It is not likely that this individual was altogether unknown amongst the Normans, who had come from the freest province of medizval France. But, whether this be so or not, at any rate, shortly after the Conquest an economic distaste for enslaved labour is apparent. Every interval of peace, with its usual healthy symptoms of trade prosperity, was conducive to the enfranchisement of the peasant. An increased interchange of commodities with the outer world introduced a money medium, and the records of the ensuing centuries became a history of money commutation for rents in kind. The landlord turns into a capitalist, the virgate holders are converted into tenant farmers, and the bordars, cottars, and landless men are transformed into wage-earning labourers. The sword is beaten into a ploughshare, and the incidents of military tenure assume a peaceful aspect. The villein in gross, who, as Mr. Cosmo Innes? expresses it, ‘was able to stipulate regarding the amount of his services, was far ad- vanced towards entire freedom.” A valuation of such services could not have been difficult. It had already been required, whenever a member of this class had been exposed for sale in the slave market. All that was now required was a record office for the preservation of such valuations. It was now, therefore, that the various manorial courts came into prominent use. It was through ecclesiastical agencies as well, that the villeinage ulti- mately obtained its enfranchisement. Even in Anglo-Saxon times, when slaves convicted of theft were frequently stoned or burned to death, the vengeance of the Church, if not of the State, followed swiftly on any outrageous deed of seigniorial cruelty. Though disgusting ill- usage was sometimes bestowed on wylors, as well as on their husbands, it was perpetrated in defiance of ecclesiastical teaching. Thus even the most inhuman tyrant was under certain wholesome restrictions. If a slave was disfigured by a master’s brutality, so as to lose eye or tooth, the State granted him his freedom. In Scotland and Wessex, if not in other districts, the statute book contained a stern prohibition of the 1 Scotland under her Early Kings, vol. ii., The Conclusion, ed. 1862. 2 Scotland in the Middle Ages. The Origin of the Labourer 25 Sunday labour of manorial servants. The excommunication of the Church was meted out to those who sold their children, and Christian burial denied to those who kidnapped those of their fellows. As for the wretch who took the life of a dependant, both Church and State vied with each other in making him pay heavily for so hateful a luxury. Early in the 11th century the voice of Christendom began to be raised in unanimous detestation of slavery. Thus the great Council of West- minster set its face against what it described as “the wicked trade of selling men in market like brute beasts”; and soon after, a bull for the manumission of slaves was issued from Rome. But more powerful than the thunders either of Westminster or Rome was, I fancy, the still, small voice of conscience, which made itself heard on the death-bed. When life was ebbing fast, and all personal interest in, and necessity for, the slave was at an end, “‘ temporal men,” we are told, “ by reason of that terror in their conscience,” were glad to obey the behests of the Church, and manumit their slaves. The family lawyer and family doctor were ecclesiastics, as well as the family chaplain! By means of this threefold capacity, the clerical element gained admittance to every sick-room, where it exercised an irresistible influence. These ecclesiastical lawyers were eager to catch at everything, in their interpretation of the law, which commended itself to their religious teaching. Many a villein owed his freedom to some legal subtility or mere act of good nature, which had been distorted into a formal deed of enfranchisement by the ingenuity of an expert. These family advisers had to reconcile the information given by them as lawyers with that which they administered as father confessors.?_ I donot suppose that in such rough times, clergymen, however scrupulous, could indulge in the luxury of a nice discrimination over their choice of the means used to further their ends, nor can I think a pastor blameworthy if he coaxed, cajoled, or frightened his flock along the right path, when- ever he found the practice of leading it a failure. From one cause or another, therefore, many slaves received their emancipation, although any national movement resulting in legislation for this purpose was yet to come. Chalmers, speaking of Scotland, declares that “no canon of the Church, no assize of the King, and no act of Parliament appears in favour of freedom, until at any rate the end of the 14th century.” $ Nevertheless, before that period, though grants of nativi, together with the soil of their settlement, continued to be made until the middle of the 15th century, proceedings under the Brief for the recovery of fugitive 1 Sx Centuries of Work and Wages, p. 160, Stereo edition. Th. Rogers. 2 Commonwealth of England, ed. 1635, p. 250. Sir T. Smith. 8 Caledonia, 1807. Geo. Chalmers. 26 Annals of the British Peasantry slaves had ceased to be taken. In fact, according to Mr. Innes, the last case of the kind occurred in the court of the sheriff of Banffshire in 1364.1 It was the exigencies of war which brought about this speedier emancipation of the Scottish thrall. It was improvements in the peace- ful arts that more slowly performed the same office for the English serf. The able-bodied population of both England and Scotland shared un- equally the lands of the manor. Some there were who possessed large areas in the arable field, and numerous livestock on the waste. Others were the humble possessors of a tiny cottage, a few poultry, and a croft. All paid rent to the landlord, either by so many days’ labour on the demesne land, or by periodical offerings of livestock and produce,— generally, however, by a mixture of these two services. Some had enough land under cultivation to employ two or more yokes of oxen. Others tilled their less numerous strips with the combined aid of their neighbours’ farming outfit. These people were the forefathers of our Scottish feuars and English copyholders, tenants in perpetuity but not by charter, unable to alienate their lands without first resigning them into the lord’s hands. Then came the descendants of those who had either lost or never obtained inborn rights. These, both English and Scottish, co-operated with each other in providing work and oxen for the heavier ploughs of the demesne lands ; and in other services, which were included in the phrase, ‘keeping good neighbourhood.” They were provided with their farming outfit by the landlord; from which procedure probably arose the surrender of the tenants’ stock-in-trade to the lord at death, or its redemption by means of the heriot; tenures, known as setene in England, and the steelbo or stuht in Scotland.? A mixed staff of manorial officials superintended the obligatory labour and offerings of the demesne villeinage, some of whom were nominees of the lord and some nominees of the people. There were the bailiffs, stewards, provosts, rent collectors, clerks, and auditors of the one party ; and the reeves, burleymen, haywards, and livestock-tenders of the other. Concerning the various courts in which these officials transacted their business I shall speak next. Of the fortunes of these servile agricul- turists I shall not cease to speak till my task is finished. For these men were the prototypes of our present British peasantry, and the whole of this short work will be devoted to a record of the grievances and dis- putes, which that original bargain between protector and protected left as a legacy to both employer and employee. Triumphs, followed by discomfitures, will be found to be the experience, now of this side and now of that. A period arrives when the landlords, finding no use for 1 Scotland in the Middle Ages. Cosmo Innes. 2 Rect. Sing. Pers. Gebur’s Services. Thorpe. The Origin of the Labourer * 39 I their rights over the people, allow them to be bought back with the only purchase money available, viz. the land. Still discontented, the enfranchised peasantry utilise their freedom in a struggle to regain their original proprietary rights over the soil. When, indeed, I drop the curtain for the last time, this, the hardest battle of all, remains still undecided. t CHAPTER III ' MEDIAEVAL LOCAL GOVERNMENT HREE great divisions can be drawn in such a history as this : the T first relating to the labourer as a slave ; the second dealing with him as free, though restricted in his hours, wages, and place of work ; and the third, concerned with his status as an independent person, bound only by contract. Before I pass on to the intermediate stage of his history, I must say a few words on the advantages and disadvantages of the labourer’s lot as a serf. And first I would suggest that people nowadays are inclined to approach the subject of slavery with prejudiced minds. Sir Frederick Eden, who devoted a large portion of his life to the amelioration of pauper existence, had much to say in favour of slavery as an abstract principle. Rousseau had once asked why it is that the poor are more miserable in a thriving city than they are in localities where there are no instances of immense wealth ; Eden’s answer was,} that in cities people are more independent than in the country, and inde- pendence is to slavery as marriage is to celibacy: the one, so Dr. Johnson alleged, has many pains, the other no pleasures; for, where you cannot rise very high, you cannot fall very low. If the ethnic idiosyn- crasies of the Anglo-Saxon had been identical with those of the African, it is not to be doubted that he would have been more uniformly com- fortable under the cordial relationship existing betwixt an indulgent master and a faithful slave, than under that modern business etiquette which now freezes the sympathies between employer and employé. But, to a ruling race like the Teutonic, complete dependence upon the caprices of another has been ever unpalatable. Though in an age of lawless violence an intermediate status between that of protector and protected could not exist, yet, throughout England’s history, we find the peasantry submitting to protection with every expression of protest. For human beings of ordinary strength and courage to glow with the warmest gratitude and devotion in return for protection is, in the 1 State of the Poor, vol. i. chap. i. Sir F. Eden. 23 Medieval Local Government 29 estimation of Mill, a sentiment more despicable than beautiful. To be under the power of any one is, he thinks, tantamount to occupying a situation exposed to grievous wrong. But even this pronounced economist would have admitted that, in the early times now under discussion, the labouring class was still in that stage of tutelage when protection was essential to its welfare, when, in fact, without some restraining power, it would have inevitably fallen into mischief. The poor, so Mill maintained, have come out of leading-strings and can no longer be governed like children. In my humble estimation it is a moot question whether they are even yet capable of acting entirely for themselves ; whether, in fact, almost unconsciously in their longings after the lapsed filial relationship with their masters, they are not too much inclined to substitute the government in loco parentis. So, at least, it would seem, when a class cannot decide for itself the proper amount of daily labour conducive to its health. How, then, did the working man fare in these days of his servitude ? Thirteenth-century villages contained about eighty inhabitants, of whom, next in importance to the lord and vicar, ranked the seneschal and then the miller. The rest of the community was composed of husbandmen, herdsmen, tradesmen, and domestics. Close to the church, which was the stronghold in times of danger, and the local registry office in those of peace, stood the manor house, and hard by the river was the village street, composed of filthy lath-and-plastered huts, without chimneys, stairs, or windows. Sanitary arrangements were conspicuous by their absence, and the inhabitants, subsisting for the greater part of the year on an insufficient and unwholesome diet, were decimated each spring by different diseases. In fact, the only period in his life when the poorer individual of the servile class could depend upon a sufficiency of victuals was when he was fed by his lord whilst working in the demesnes. Happily for him this was frequently the case, for there was always something which required labour on the lord’s land. Now it was the cleansing of his fishponds, to-morrow it might be the sowing or harvesting of his corn, a week later the building of his park wall, anon the grinding of his corn or the gathering in of his fruit. From what has been shown in the last chapter, the tenant farmers of these modern times would correspond in social status with the nativi of Norman times, and the ploughboys and teamsmen of Queen Victoria would answer to the villeins in gross of King William I. J am not at all sure that at both periods the lower of the two grades was not the happier circumstanced. Certainly the evidence of the Scottish statute book, as late as the 13th century, would imply this in the northern kingdom. There can be no question that those who 30 Annals of the British Peasantry guided the oxen both on the davoch and on the carucate at the beginning of the r2th century were better off than those who worked for English and Scottish farmers at the beginning of the present one. Cobbett asserted that England in 1820 contained the most miserable people that ever trod the earth, and, though he did not ascribe this unenviable state of affairs to the poor laws themselves, he attributed it to their maladministration. But the earlier of the two periods was one long antecedent to pauper legislation, when the poor man has been supposed to have been, in his abject dependence on the seigniorial class, not far removed from any of the nobler domestic animals. In such a case, if misery existed, the blame would seem to rest entirely with the master. But this was not really so, for masters have no control over health andseasons. When a pestilence made cattle cheap and men dear, the peasants who survived its ravages were in affluent circumstances. Eden demonstrates that in 1296 the labourer, at least in point of woollen clothing, was much worse off than he was in 1796, because a yard of coarse russet cost him at the former period four or five days’ work, while a yard of strong Yorkshire broadcloth at the latter period could be purchased with the wages of three days’ labour only. As regards his food supply, he was assuredly more secure at the earlier period. His perquisites were numerous, and no improvidence could reduce him to extreme want, because his system of wages in kind prevented him from indulging in extravagances. There is an old MS. in the British Museum, apparently of the period of Elizabeth, which gives us a detailed description of the services performed by each of the grades in the villeinage class. Both nativus and cotrellus were employed at least one day in every week of the year on the lord’s business, and from hay harvest to fruit harvest more frequently still. At these times the meals provided by the lord consisted of a few 1 Nativij are bound for a messuage and the land to pay the rent, shall plowe every weeke in the yeare one daie at the Lo: will: shall mowe in harvest tyme every weeke two dayes, shall reape from Ste Peter and Paul daie until Ste Peter day ad vincla every week one day, or pay the Lo: ob: qu: shall gather the Lo: nutts: shall make the, Lo: park wall over against his land: shall with 2 men mowe the Lo: corne for a day at the Lo: charge: shall 2 dayes called beene dayes repe at their owne charges and shall carry the Lo: workes iij daies with one man and a horse: shall grynde at the Lo: milne, shall mowe the Lo: meadowe, and make the hay after den the acre ; and shall carry the Lo: corn home every fortnight in the Saturday, and shall plowe athis . . . one daye at his seede tyme in Lent and shall yele ij hens at Xtimas. A cotager that holdeth one cotage or a croft and a roode land shall do manuall werke with one man every week in the yere for one day. And from the 1st of August shall also do all manner other worke or the nativie do. These are the customs of the manor of Preston in Com. North. The like custom in Gretton within the same county.”—Quoted in Zhe State of the Poor, vol. i. chap.i, Sir F. ‘Eden. Medieval Local Government ot fish, chiefly herrings, a loaf of bread and some beer for the mowers and reapers. The mutton and cheese weré reserved as a treat for festive occasions, such as the harvest home. Times of eating were 9 a.m. for breakfast and 5 p.m. for supper, the diet being generally salted food, not supplemented, as it should have been for the sake of health, with fresh vegetables. The peasants’ chief pastimes were, until interfered with by law, archery, football, quoits, and wrestling at wakes and taverns. As early as the year 1237 there came into existence a class of labourer which was neither entirely free nor entirely enslaved. Sir Frederick Eden speaks of a middle grade of workpeople which did not possess the power of bartering its labour to the best bidder, yet was not subject to the imperious caprices of a master. These were holders of culti- vated land in the common field, who might, if they chose, employ a substitute for the lord’s labour. That rara avis, the free labourer, existed in both England and Scotland long before the notice taken of him by our statute book in 1350, and was just the very man for the job. If, indeed, choice had been made of any other substitute —somebody, for example, annexed to the lord’s demesne land—there would have been an interference with other seigniorial claims of service. Nor, as we shall come to confess later, was the independence of the pauperised workman of the Third George’s reign much superior to that of the villein in gross of say the First Edward’s. It is true that out of both these classes some of the most splendid fighting material the world has ever witnessed could be produced. The man-at-arms, who came off the medizval common-field, carried a quiver, which, in the language of Scripture, was an open sepulchre. The man-of-war’s man, kidnapped by the press gang from amidst some group of parochial roundsmen, wielded his cutlass with no less deadly results. There is little to distinguish between the heroes of Crecy and Poictiers and the heroes of Trafalgar and Vittoria) The spirit of the peasant at both epochs was the subject of mingled dread and admiration throughout the armies of Europe. But for cool daring and effrontery we must bestow the palm on the medizval rustics who invaded London under the leadership of Wat the Tyler, rather than on -the beggarised farm- men who fired ricks under the nightly leadership of the imaginary “ Captain Swing ” in Georgian times. The slavery imposed by the feudal employer never, therefore, seems to have broken the spirit of our British peasantry. It was not every master who found it necessary to “ have hund to godsib and stent their oder hand.”! A well-behaved servant was held, in a good employer's 1 Clench your fist and be accompanied by a dog. 32 Annals of the British Peasantry estimation, “something better than his dog, a little dearer than his horse”; and we all know how well, as a rule, these domestic animals are in the habit of being treated. It no doubt shocks the enlightened understanding of these modern times to learn that in pre-Norman days a slave was only valued at four times the price of an ox; but if the same proportions applied to a master’s treatment of these two forms of chattel, the human one must have been exceedingly well cared for. We have, it is true, a very pitiful account of the existence of a farm labourer at this period. It is the imaginary dialogue of a ploughboy and. his lord, contained in the colloquium of A£lfric. But if we investigate closely the man’s troubles, we do not find him complaining of worse evils than those that his descendant of the present day has to undergo. He tells his interlocutor that he labours excessively. So thinks, no doubt, Giles, the teamsman of our own acquaintance. There is, he says, no weather so severe that he dares rest at home, for fear of his lord. Our Giles is under a similar necessity, for fear of coming into “ the house.” Hodge of ancient times has to be at work by dawn, and to plough a whole field before he unyokes at night. By a whole field we are to understand the acre strip which our Giles with, it is true, better appli- ances, cultivates no faster, but more effectually. When ancient Hodge gets home, he must, he tells us, fill the mangers of the oxen with hay, water his charges, and carry out their dung. It is the modern Giles’ lot to undergo a similar hardship, though he has ceased to exclaim, like his prototype, “Oh! oh! it is a great tribulation!” The reader will not be much moved when he hears that ancient Hodge’s companion, the boy with the goad, becomes hoarse with cold and shouting. Cobbett was, during his childhood, often in similar plight, but he omitted to treat it as a grievance, when, as a prolific writer, he was in a position to publish abroad all the wants of his class. What, however, created a sense of hardship concerning these trivial discomforts of ancient peasant life is summed up in the last sentence of the colloquium: “ Yea, it is a great tribulation decause [am not free.” Farm labour was, throughout the early centuries of our history, mack too scarce for those who performed it to be ill-cared-for or oppressed. As a general rule, therefore, the mediaeval peasant was not subjected to harsh treatment so long as he proved of any value to his employers. If he committed an offence against the community, he was made answer- able to the local court of the hundred. If he transgressed the regula- tions of his landlord, he was haled before the steward of the manorial court. If he outraged the laws of nature, and became incapacitated from work by ill-health or accident, his only sanatorium was the neigh- bouring monastery. Between such a Scylla and Charybdis as the two Medieval Local Government 33 courts just mentioned, a man, so long as he maintained his health, was able to steer an even course. But when his health was shattered by an insidious disease, and he had to look out for some other source of livelihood than wages, it would have gone terribly hard with him had there not been a national sick fund upon which he might depend. I scarcely like to conjecture what our progenitors did with their sick and aged relatives in the heathen days of the village community, We most of us have read with a shudder of the accabatura of the Sar- dinians, and of the pointed axe with which the Poles despatched those of their relatives who had been robbed by nature or accident of their working or fighting energies. Mercifully, early in the history both of England and Scotland, the relief of the impotent poor became a first charge on the soil. Landlords paid the tenth of its produce into the treasury of the collegiate Church in order that the chief ends of the Christian religion might be effectually attained. Then, at any rate in England, on the institution of the parish system, permission was afforded by the legislature for decentralising a portion of this great national charity, in order that the local churches, clergy, and poor might be supported by the manors with which they were more imme- diately connected. So, when some temporary misfortune interfered with the efficiency of the poor labourer, he looked for relief to his vicar ; and when some more terrible visitation of Providence laid him on the shelf, it was the monks, as almoners of the nation’s poor, who nursed and fed him. The machinery which kept the sound labourer to his duties needs a more careful examination than that coricerned with his sick nursing. The fact that there were courts at all proves that the lord was not long suffered to have things on the manor entirely according to his own sweet will. If he had been an omnipotent despot, he would have taken care to avoid the publicity which even the halmote (a court perhaps more under seigniorial control than any other) gave to his acts. The fact, however, that no record of a court’s procedure has been dis- covered before the year 1239 induces the belief that villein services were too uncertain to be reduced to writing. If, in addition to this, the seigniorial court of the baron had been the only available machinery for local government, then we might conclude that the peasantry of the Anglo-Saxon and Norman periods were in no way secure from class oppression. But as in every manor there were two conflicting interests of land- lord and people, so in every manor we may expect to find that there were two distinctive courts, the one dealing with popular interests—a relic of some old tribal assembly—the other dealing with seigniorial D, 34 Annals of the British Peasantry interests, a relic of the patriarchal jurisdiction. But as no distinct classification of jurisdictory rights was attempted till the beginning of the reign of Edward I., it is very difficult to ascertain clearly how the business of these courts was previously transacted. The early history of local government in this country must therefore be always more or less conjectural, and, in now attempting it, I candidly confess that I am far from claiming for my views infallibility. Believing, however, as I do, that when a society nominates one of its individuals to the office of protector, it perforce bestows on him a considerable share in its jurisdiction, I am led to conclude that the original English and Scottish overlords were judges of men rather than owners of lands. As soon, therefore, as “the powerful man of the district” built his burh in the tun, he became vested with rights over his neighbours which the early French writers termed /a haute justice, and the early English ones sac, soc, toll, etc. Directly, however, a supreme national overlord was appointed, all jurisdictory and magis- terial rights, not zz esse but zz posse, belonged to him. Then com- menced a struggle between the monarchy and the oligarchy, the former attempting to wrest from the latter their magisterial prerogative. The sovereign’s only chance of success in such a contest was to set up, as the rival of seigniorial jurisdiction, a popular claim to it. It was the survival of courts possessing an element of popular jurisdiction which afforded our English kings an opening for this contention, and pro- bably finally gave them the victory. But as long as local laws were merely ancient customs, it was useless for the central authority to meddle with them. If a point of dispute arose between the landlord and his tenantry, it was referred to the perhaps partial, but at any rate expert, decision of the general assembly of freeholders. Our early kings, therefore, contented themselves with jealously guarding such popular rights of jurisdiction which still survived in the local hundred and shire moots of the realm. But when oral traditions and verbal customs found their way into written documents, and attempts were being made to mould our English jurisprudence on the lines of the Roman code, then the unlearned found it necessary to refer frequently to outsiders for advice. At last, so subtle did the interpretation of right and equity become, that a professional class of lawyers had to be called into being. Here occurred an opportunity for royal interference, which Henry II. was the first of his line to seize.) Like those of his predecessors, his main efforts were engaged in limiting seigniorial juris- diction. I shall attempt to show that he invented no new process, but rather 1 Viz. by the Assize of Clarendon in 1166 and Inquest of Sheriffs in 1170. Medieval Local Government 35 ably utilised those which he found to hand. The only representatives of his authority within the territories of the baronage were the sheriffs of each county and the itinerant justices who travelled the circuits, col- lecting his income from fines, feudal dues, and danegeld. The former were, without exception, representatives of the very class which he sought to humble. The latter were too insignificant a body to exercise adequate authority in the affairs of local jurisdiction. By putting a stop to the acquisition of hereditary powers by the sheriffs, and by selecting persons for the office who did not possess manors, Henry broke up the seigniorial monopoly of the judgment-seat. By increasing the numbers and judicial duties of his fiscal staff, he exercised an in- creased authority over criminal jurisdiction and local government. Fur- thermore, he allowed the people to exercise a salutary control over the seigniorial tribunals of justice. Trials by battle were abolished, and trials by compurgation altered. The decisions of the judgment-seat were, however, not allowed to be called in question, care being rather taken that they should -be based on reliable and impartial evidence. The prisoner was, in fact, a condemned criminal before he received the sentence of his judge. This was effected first by the arrest of a sus- pected party at the hands of communal officers,? secondly by the pre- sentment of communal accusations, the latter process being the essence of our present jury system. Thus, as soon as the individual was taken in charge by the “catchpole,” he underwent a first examination by a jury of neighbours, selected from the frankpledge group, and then a second one by a grand jury of twelve freeholding hundred-men, whose sworn presentment was essential before he received, as a criminal, sentence in the sheriff’s tourn or lord’s leet. Was this a creation or a resuscitation of popular jurisdiction by Henry II.?3 The answer is still under dispute. In order to discuss this question properly we must again retrace our steps to the earliest times. An individual of the tribal period accused of crime was judged by a jury of his kinsmen. When in Anglo-Saxon times the township became a subdivision of the hundred for all purposes of local govern- ment, this time-honoured principle of the original markmen was main- tained. In the West Saxon kingdom, possibly in other -parts of the country also, there was the minor subdivision of the tithing. History 1 Select Charters. Untroductory sketch, pp. 21, 22. W. Stubbs, D.D. Fifth edition. 2 In the court leet the constable was elected by the jury of presentment, and so became virtually the popular nominee. This insured his behaving both mildly and impartially. 8 Compare what is said in the Constitutional History of England, p- 661, ed. iv. W. Stubbs. D.D. 36 Annals of the British Peasantry has associated with this, whether rightly or wrongly I do not pretend to decide, the combination of ten men under a capital pledge or tithing-man, who were held responsible for each other’s misdeeds. To the periodical business-meetings of this body, the term “ view of frank- pledge” was applied. Professor Maitland, however, tells us that the earliest evidences of this institution are subsequent to the Conquest ; and, even then, do not show that it was the duty of the frank-pledges to make presentments. Bishop Stubbs, on the other hand, cites the laws of Ethelred as proving an early employment of a jury of present- ment.! Though such evidence has never perfectly satisfied our exacting modern researchers, it cannot wholly be disregarded. At any rate, when Henry II. undertook to reform the then existing system of local jurisdiction, he required a representation of townships in the sheriff’s tourn, and, as a natural consequence, the"capitales plegii became the primary jury of presentment. A little more than a century later came the inquiry into seigniorial jurisdiction, instituted by Edward I. in 1285. One of the first questions demanded by the royal inquisitioners was, whether the lords of the courts leet were complying with the conditions of the Assize of Clarendon. Was it their custom to sum- mon the freemen of the hundred and swear a jury of presentment ? According to Mr. Maitland,? those landlords who had foreseen some such inquiry had taken steps to imitate the procedure of the sheriff's tourn, and had evolved from a pre-existent system of collective respon- sibility that form of popular jurisdiction known as the jury of pre sentment. On the other side is the belief of Bishop Stubbs,® that “the leet jury bears every mark of the utmost antiquity.” To decide between two such reverenced disputants as these would be an im pertinence on my part. But I would suggest to the reader that the responsibility of a whole district for the misdeeds of an individual, and its participation in his sentence of punishment, is the very essence of the communal interests enjoyed by an ancient mark of kinsmen. Where the entire society shares in the profits of its industry, the entire society must suffer for the wrong-doing of its units. Whatever may be the etymology of the term leet—whether it be from the Anglo-Saxor Jeod (t.e. people), or the Dutch J/oef (ze. a peasant tenant, subject tc certain jurisdiction)—there is no question that it is a name of greal antiquity applied to a court, which the Year Book of 1429 declares tc be the oldest in the land.* I see, therefore, nothing strange in the fac that the pleaders of Edward I. frequently discovered that private indi 1 Constitutional History of England, vol. i. p. 655, ed. iv. W. Stubbs, D.D. 2 Select Pleas in Manorial Courts. F,. W. Maitland, Selden Society, vol. i. 5 Constitutional History of England, vol. i. p. 662, ed. iv. W. Stubbs, D.D. 4 Year Book. 7 Hen. VI.. pv. 12. Medieval Local Government 37 viduals were exercising in their manorial courts the duties of police, and at the same time neglecting to comply with the requirements of the Assize of Clarendon. Their answer to all charges of this nature was that they claimed continuous seisin, not only from before the coronation of Richard I., but from time immemorial. The fact that we have evidence in no single case of a reassertion of the royal prerogative over criminal jurisdiction satisfies me that the landlords succeeded in establishing their prior claim to such a right. Franchises and regalities which had belonged to private individuals before the Conquest, had been left in their or their successors’ hands after it. Though the de- scendants of many an original landlord had lost, ceded, or forfeited their judicial powers, some remained who still wielded them. But if the sequestration by the Crown of seigniorial jurisdiction was, before the Conquest, more or less of an usurpation-of private rights, that after it, perpetrated by the landlords, was just the reverse. To puta stop to this, we have the Placita de quo warranio inquisition of Edward I., The nature of each man’s seigniorial court was not so much interrogated as the antiquity of the powers which he exercised in it. It was not only a question whether the prerogative of the Crown had been interfered with by this or that landlord, but also whether the jurisdictory rights of the people had been injured. The landlord, who claimed the view of frank-pledge and the powers of sac, soc, toll, team and infang-thief, was supposed to be acting as the delegate of the king. But was he justified in usurping jurisdiction such as this, which properly belonged to the old popular courts of the hundred and shire?! The manor had never been chosen as the unit of local government in Anglo-Saxon times. In many cases, however, it was an institution which antedated the period when our local administrative centres had been redistributed. Often it was conterminous with the township, in which case the gerefa of the latter had been the lord of the former. Thereupon, if only for the sake of convenience, popular jurisdiction would have been transacted at the same time and in the same court as seigniorial jurisdiction. Conse- quently the court leet? was in many instances the same assembly as the court baron, until the final separation between the two occurred through the legislation enacted in the reign of Edward I. Henceforth the court leet would be the office of what very inadequately answered to a combination of our modern local sanitary boards and magisterial 1 Of the antiquity of the shire see The Old English Manor, p. 55. C. M. Andrews, ee it possible that the original courts leet were the lathe (z.e. shire) courts in the days when the shires were subdivided into rapes or ridings or lathes ? being, as Bishop Stubbs suggests, ‘‘under-kingdoms” with their folk-moots.—Con- stitutional History of England, vol. i. p. 130, ed. iv. 38 Annals of the British Peasantry sessions. The court baron would represent the highest ideal of our modern estate office. Speaking generally, an offence against the State brought the delinquent before the former court, and an offence against the lord before the latter court. But as an offence against the lord was often an offence against the Commonwealth also, and an offence against the Commonwealth one against the lord, the distinction does not invariably hold good. An attempt to defraud the official who levied the dues from baking and brewing, a charge of selling fish against the franchise of the vill, acts of trespass, breach of close, tolls subtracted from the lord’s mill, chasing beasts within the lord’s park, cutting trees in the lord’s wood, carrying off stubble from the lord’s field, etc., were clearly cases for the court baron. Counterfeits of the king’s seal, murders, manslaughters, robberies, incendiarisms, rapes, petty larcenies, etc., were as clearly cases for the court leet. But annoyances upon land, wood, water, regarding ditches and hedges, trespasses, nuisances, false weights, abuses of the assize of bread and ale, estreys and waifs, pound’s breach, etc., which were as often as not offences against the lord, became included in those inquirable and presentable in court leet.1 The court baron, with its one “ oyez,” becomes indeed separated from the court leet, with its ‘“‘oyez” thrice repeated; but the inter- mingling of seigniorial and popular jurisdiction continues.2 As the centuries roll by we find, however, that the distinctions between royal, municipal, and seigniorial courts of justice considerably increase, and are rigidly maintained. The judges of assize appear on the scenes ; hundred courts pass out of private hands; criminal business is removed from the manorial courts; courts of borough and quarter sessions separate the criminal from the civil jurisdiction; minor seigniorial courts relieve the court baron of an ever-growing and overwhelming weight of business ; the central government continues to gradually divest the landlords of their jurisdictory rights. Very soon the creation of justices of the peace constitutes an elective and representative body of landed gentry, in whom the magisterial rights of the whole order become merged. The bent of public opinion at the present day is to rob that body of its magisterial monopoly, by throwing open the candidature of the Bench to the whole nation. I may say in passing, that it is impos- sible to find the reason for this policy of the Crown in any grave dereliction of duty on the part of the earlier seigniorial magistrates. Even so hostile a witness to the landlords’ cause as the late Professor Rogers ? gives evidence in favour of the local discipline enforced in 1 Kitchen’s Court Leet, passim, 1580. ? For further details of these courts see my History of English Landed Interest, vol. i. passim. 3 Six Centuries of Work and Wages, p. 420, stereoed. J. E. Thorold Rogers. Medieval Local Government 39 their court by the steward and inhabitants of each manor, and considers that it has been very indifferently compensated for by a bench of magistrates. Of these early manorial courts we have, from the middle of the 13th century, the fullest information. Then appear two classes of documents—the extent and the roll—the former, in the words of Mr. Maitland,! “displaying the manor at rest, the latter displaying it in motion ; the one telling us of the tenure and the status of the actors, the other showing us how great or how small is the influence which distinctions of tenure and of status have on the behaviour of suitors and litigants.” These two documents, together with a third one, dealing with the accounts of manorial officials, include all the business peculiar to seigniorial courts at this period. I record the following valuable opinion of its successful results:—‘Let the lawyers,” writes Mr. Maitland, “say what they will, the manorial juris- diction is a true jurisdiction, an administration of the custom of the manor ; it is no mere exhibition of the will of the lord, who is owner of the villain tenements and owner of the villains.” 2 Similar seigniorial courts existed in the northern kingdom to those pertaining to the southern. Next to the royal court came that of the regality, in which the higher nobility, both ecclesiastical and lay, exer- cised a civil and criminal jurisdiction within the limits of their territories. Most, if not all of these, claimed to be the judges of the Four Pleas of the Crown.? In other words, they possessed a gallows for the execution of male criminals, and a pit for the drowning of female criminals. Immediately below the court of regality ranked that of the baron. The magistrates of this, though originally claiming the same rights of adjudicating in capital cases as the lords of regality, did not for long venture to exercise all of them. They still, however, claimed to deliver the death sentence to the homicide taken red-handed, and to the thief in fang (Ze. caught with stolen property within the limits of the manor).* Then came the courts of the vavassours, originally held on the moot hill of each thanage. Here was enacted that lowest form of criminal jurisdiction confined to battery and bloodwits.6 But whatever distinctions these inferior courts once retained were lost as soon as they became merged in those of the heritors. This, the lowest class of landed gentry, exercised the rights of a civil magistracy only; its juris- diction being principally confined to the collection of seigniorial dues and the regulation of manorial tenures. 1 Select Plesa, etc. F. W. Maitland, Selden Society, vol. i., 1888. 2 Td. ibid. 8 Viz. murder, robbery, rape, and incendiarism. 4 Scotland under her Early Kings. The Conclusion. E. W. Robertson. 5 An Essay upon Feudal Holdings, etc., etc., 17475 p. 16. 40 Annals of the British Peasantry The most fundamental difference in the history of jurisdiction in the two countries remains to be mentioned. The kings of Scotland had early been in the habit of making grants of all the Crown lands ; subse- quently, therefore, their want of territorial powers entailed a want of jurisdictory powers.1 They had been prodigal of and indiscriminate in the bestowal of rights of furca and fossa to boroughs, baronies, and sheriffdoms. Utterly ignoring popular claims of jurisdiction, they failed to follow the wholesome example of their English neighbours in setting up a democratic form of jurisdiction as a formidable rival to the oligar- chical monopoly of it. By making the office of the sheriff hereditary, its holders ceased to regard themselves as royal deputies. The king’s sheriff lost by disuse his power of controlling the sentences of the terri- torial magistrates. By a right known as repledging, one baron could reclaim from another court, and in some cases from that even of the sheriff, any person subject to his own.2. The people became heavily oppressed from the multitude of jurisdictions. If a royal burgh lay within a regality, that regality within a commissariot, and that commis- sariot within a, shire, the inhabitants of the burgh were liable to all these courts for the same cause. It is true that appeal was legal from the sentence of the baron to the sheriff, from that of the latter to the justi- ciary, from that of the justiciary to the chamberlain, and from that of the chamberlain to the king’s council. This final tribunal was, how- ever, almost as independent of the king as the first-mentioned one.® It consisted of a parliament of the great territorial aristocracy, and was as hostile to any interference with seigniorial monopolies as was any insignificant heritor. Moreover, all jurisdictions that were hereditary (and the majority were so) could not be confiscated. The result of all this seigniorial monopoly in matters magisterial was that trial by jury came to be disregarded. The custom, it is true, lingered on in the sheriff's and justiciary courts as late as the reign of James 1V. But when in course of time the justiciary was replaced in his civil jurisdiction by a collection of judges, the latter dispensed with a jury, the inferior courts soon following their example. The possessors of feudal jurisdiction were strong enough to procure the repeated consent of the statute book 1 Leg. Male. II. c. 1, vol. i, p. 345. ? Stat. Alex. II. c. 4, vol. i., p. 69; Rob. I. c. 10, vol.i., p. 109. ® Superiorities displayed ; or Scotland's Grievance on account of Holdings and Hereditary Jurisdictions, 1716, with which compare An Essay upon Feudal Hold- zngs, etc., London, 1747, which is an answer to the earlier pamphlet. ‘An Essay towards a General History of Feudal Property in Great Britain. J. Dalrymple, p. 236, 1758. 5 Id. ibid., p. 237. ° Td, p. 253. Medieval Local Government 41 to a preliminary trial of suits in their own courts, and to the non- interference of the lords of sessions with questions of heritage. In 1455 James II. succeeded in enacting that for the future no regalities should be created without the consent of Parliament, and no grants -of hereditary jurisdiction be under any circumstance possible. Hence- forth the jurisdictory powers of the feudal landlords began to wane. First burghs and then baronies lost their rights of repledging. A supreme court of council superseded that of the lords of session. The creation of justices of the peace was made to balance seigniorial juris- dictions. Charles I. bought back from the family of Argyle the kingly office of chief justiciary of Scotland. Many barons still retained their powers of capital punishment; many sheriffdoms and regalities were still hereditary ; but the court of justiciary at last obtained the right to review the sentences emanating from all private tribunals. It was not, however, till after the union of the two kingdoms that the powers of judging became, in’ general, official, and that the courts of Scotland were brought on nearly the same footing as those in England.t In conclusion, let us examine some special instance in. order to ob- ‘ serve the reforms in England’s local jurisdiction which occurred during the lapse of time. For whenever a change took place in the seigniorial proprietorship of local jurisdiction, our English kings seemed to have ‘seized the opportunity to diminish seigniorial power. The Rev. W. Hudson has afforded us in his article concerning the leet jurisdiction of Norwich a case in point? The city of Norwich was originally a royal manor, and though no records of its jurisdiction at so early an epoch exist, yet I am surely justified in concluding that a landlord, who was also a monarch, would have possessed all the powers of an haut justicier. In 1194, however, Richard I., the then life-owner, ceded the city and “its appurtenances ” to the inhabitants, with leave to choose their own provost. In 1223, whatever jurisdiction this nominee of the citizens still retained was relegated to four bailiffs, each of whom represented a separate leet, and all of whom, collectively, exercised a police jurisdiction over the citizens, which included the right to try, by communal presentment, petty offences punishable by amercement. This they transacted in their Tolhouse (situated on the site of the later Guildhall), where they assembled annually to preside over the presentments of the capital 1 Vide A Letter to an English Member of Parliament from a Gentleman of Scotland concerning the Slavish Dependencies, etc., A.D. 1721. Much of what this ‘writer com- plains of was rectified by 20 Geo. II. 50. 9 Leet Jurisdiction in the City of Norwich. Rev. W. Hudson, Selden Society, vol. v., 1891, 42 Annals of the British Peasantry pledges and daily to receive pleas, try issues, record recognitions of bonds and deeds of conveyance, etc., etc. Throughout this period, however, the sheriff, within a stone’s throw of the Tolhouse, continued to exercise his magisterial powers over the county in his court at the Castle. Now the information derived by a study of this special instance corroborates what I have suggested earlier as taking place generally regarding seigniorial rights of jurisdiction. It was not the kingly policy at the period when Richard I. granted the citizens their charter to part with jurisdictory powers. We may therefore infer that both collective responsibility and collective jurisdiction, if not pre-existent in the earlier manorial economy, were introduced into the Citizen’s Court at the Assize of Clarendon. Criminal jurisdiction of a serious nature, unless coming under the category known as “infangthief,” was not transacted in their Lenten Leet Assembly, but was passed on to the sheriff’s jurisdiction. From the date of 9 Hen. III. c. 17, by which no sheriff, constable, escheater, coroner or bailiff was allowed to hold Pleas of the Crown, the Norwich magistrates, who found any individual guilty of crime, arrested him after presentment in their court, and handed him over to the king’s justices for sentence of punishment. Lastly, whatever jurisdiction still lingered in their court would seem to have been derived from the powers of sac, soc, etc., belonging to the original seigniorial court. CHAPTER IV CONFLICTING INTERESTS ON THE WASTE HE difficulties attending the adjustment of the various rights of ownership on ground wholly unused, partially unused, or in the process of undergoing a change of usage, must now engross our atten- tion. The theatre of these was generally those uncultivated tracts which served to separate, socially as well as geographically, one manor from another. Though originally, of course, every yard of soil in this planet was the common property of the human race, portions of it soon came to be regarded as the peculiar property of those sections of the race which first established a title over them by the exercise of some right of ownership. Hence we arrive at the people’s proprietary rights to the folcland considered as a whole, and at those of each separate village community to the outer portions of it, whenever such portions happened to be in contact with any area of cultivated soil. Let it be borne prominently in mind that the proprietary rights of the people over the land included nothing beyond the ownership of the ground itself, and that, on the necessity of organised protection arising, all magisterial powers were ceded to the central authority, in whose hands they rested until redistributed by it amongst the seigniorial class. At the period of England’s history now under treatment, all such rights, if unappropriated, or undistributed, were vested in the Crown. Many of our constitutional lawyers, especially in medizeval times, contended that the royal prerogative also included the title to everything over which neither the community nor the individual could exercise the rights of ownership. This important point we may, however, tempo- rarily ignore, confining our attention entirely to the respective interests of lord and people in the vegetable growths of the waste. It is quite impossible to justify the early policy of what has always been held to be a particularly impartial legislature over the adjustment of these frequently conflicting claims, unless the economy which made the land popular property and the people seigniorial property is kept well inview. Thus we find that a landlord acting on this principle fre- quently took the greatest liberties with the persons of his dependants, 43 44 Annals of the British Peasantry but as few as possible with the soil which they tilled. If a baron wanted more rights over the land, he had to put up with less rights over the people ; and if the latter wanted greater freedom from seigniorial inter- ference, they purchased it with a portion of their proprietary rights to the soil. Widening this principle so as to embrace all possible contin- gencies, we find ourselves committed to the fact that if some individual failed to perform his proper services to his feudal superior, either he himself had to find some substitute who could perform them, or have such found for him by some one else. Such usages would soon intro- duce the notion that a title to the tenure of land entirely depended upon various military, predial, or laborial duties. This was a polity binding alike on noble and peasant. For if a knight died before his eldest son was old enough to perform his father’s services, the fief lapsed into the hands of the feudal superior until the heir arrived at mature manhood. And if a poor villein failed to perform his day’s precations on the lord’s demesnes, he too was liable to the loss of his tenure as a villein regardant. But the forfeiture of half a virgate of arable land on the common field, much less of a fiefin the barony, constituted no encroachment whatever on popular rights, because every change of ownership left the soil itself in the original possession of the villeinage. The waste as waste was, as its name implies, a useless possession to both lords and people. Two factors, viz. capital and labour, had to be brought into force before it could become remunerative. Both sections of the community, therefore, were interested in the undertaking, and neither could be induced to stir in it without some assurance of profit, The most legitimate use to which a part of the waste could have been put was the supply of extra food and employment for the ever-increasing wants of each manorial population. This could be effected in three ways: First by the conversion of a portion of it into common arable field ; the lord providing the capital, the people the labour, and both parties sharing the increased profits according to the principle that the extra cultivated area still belonged to the people, and they to their lord. A second method, somewhat more damaging to popular interests, was by the creation of tenants of the essart or clearance, a term implying that certain inhabitants of the manor had obtained the consent of the homage to cut off and cultivate each his small plot of waste, for which he paid the lord a money acknowledgment only. Generally these were members of the tradesman class, whom it was to the interest of the whole manorial population to coax into remaining on the manor, for fear lest better wages and greater facilities of employment should entice them into the towns. The third process, which still more Conflicting Interests on the Waste 45 seriously affected established rights over the waste, was when the lord of an unwieldy manor subdivided his seigniorial rights among certain of his vassals. The question then ,arose whether the latter could claim unstinted rights of pasturage over the entire waste, or only accessibility to a part of it, proportionable to the size of their several fiefs. As their new status had not extinguished their old popular rights, it might very easily have happened that, by using them to an unlimited degree, insufficient pasturage would have been left for the supply of the grantor of the fief and of his more immediate tenantry. Now it is not quite clear which of these three practices evoked the legislation of 1235. It is, however, natural to infer that the adjustment of the waste merely to meet the wants of the manorial population under its original economy would be a subject best dealt with in the local courts of justice ; whereas an interseigniorial or intermanorial dispute would be serious enough to call forth the more effectual and impartial services of the central Government. From the wording of the Statute of Merton it would seem that it was the last-mentioned process which was the subject of legislation, though in ascribing to this law an adjust- ment of interseigniorial business only 1; am making a contested state- ment. Nobody, however, will dispute that this statute was intended to limit the lord’s right of “approver” (¢.e. improvement) in such a manner as to leave sufficient common rights for all. It is hard to believe that there was, quite so early as this particular period, any practice on the part of the greater nobles of separating off, by means of boundaries defined by fences or otherwise, large areas of the com- mon pasturage as adjuncts to those “small tenements” with which they had “ infeoffed their vassal knights and freeholders.” } Separate areas of pasturage there no doubt were in most manors. These, though laid down in grass, and used as meadows, were subject to the same economy as that of the arable field, being generally thrown open to the community’s livestock as soon as the lord had removed his hay, though in some manors both hay and aftermath belonged to the villeinage. But the practices which called into being the Statute of Merton were more important than such a process as this ; something more revolutionary than even the bestowal of a tenancy of essart ; the creation, in fact, of miniature manors by grants which carried with them certain undefined powers of pasturage over the common waste for the new lords and their villeinage. All that the new statute required was that the pasturage left to the tenants of the old economy should be sufficient for and accessible to them all. But how could this be ascertained? That is a question 1 20 Hen. III. c. 4. 46 ‘Annals of the British Peasantry which has puzzled the historian considerably. A jury of the homage would be best calculated to deal with the subject efficiently, and its decision would have to be recorded in the instrument which confirmed the new grant. But on what could the jury base such a decision? It would have been a simple business if all that had to be ascertained was the number of livestock that the new tenement would carry. But, as Mr. Vinogradoff points out, the area of the holding and its relationship with other holdings had to be taken into account as well.t Fitzherbert, writing more than three centuries earlier, recognised this same difficulty, and suggested that the rule should be for a tenant to be allowed enough common in summer to support the cattle which his holding could keep on hay and straw during the winter.? Let us suppose that this proposal had been adopted, and that the area of land granted to a fresh free- holder was found to be capable of wintering one hundred head of cattle. Did this imply that the new landlord might slice off and enclose an area of waste containing pasturage sufficient for the summer- ing of one hundred beasts, or did it merely give him the right to turn on to the entire manorial waste a herd of this particular size? This is avery important problem, because our modern land reformers regard this legislation at Merton as the first and most important of all those Enclosure Acts which crowd the later pages of our statute book, Consequently they date back to this period the first assent of the legislature to what was from their point of view the seigniorial spolia- tion of public property. There is one incident related by Bracton and cited by Vinogradoff which supports this extreme view. A lord in 1226, prior, it is to be observed, to the Statute of Merton, granted rights of pasturage to a new tenant everywhere. He was subsequently non- suited by one of his tenants on the plea that wbigue (everywhere) was beyond the limits of his seigniorial powers. 3 Strongly bearing on this problem is the question as to what social status these free tenants exactly belonged. If they were a grade of the seigniorage, the whole dispute was above the heads of the popular party, and the statute was, as I have suggested above, intended to adjust an interseigniorial quarrel. If, on the other hand, the new feoffees were, so to speak, the cream of the villeinage class, the contest was between the seigniorial and popular interests. In the first place we have evidence that the new feoffees were free- holders, and that their freedom raised them to a higher grade than that of the socmen. In common with the latter, they were exempt from 1 Villainage in England, Essay I1., p. 275. P. Vinogradoff. 2 Boke of Surveyinge, ch. vi. 8 Villainage in England, Essay I1., p. 274. P. Vinogradoff. Conflicting Interests on the Waste 47 laborial duties, but, in addition to this privilege, they enjoyed complete immunity from predial services which the socmen did not enjoy. Their grants included a portion of the demesne lands, a possession that must necessarily have carried with it a right to the laborial and predial services of those villeins whose duty it had been to till these lands when belonging to their original owner. It would seem, therefore, that the only distinction of these freeholders from the vassal knights with whom they are classed in the Statute of Merton was the non-military nature of their tenures. In the inquisition of 19 Ed. I. they head the list of free peasantry, and are termed /ideri tenentes per cartam, whereby they are distinguished from the next grade below them, who are termed Jdiderd tenentes qui vocantur fresohemen. Next to these came the molmen, i.e. rent-paying farmers; then the werkemen, i.e, labour- paying farmers; and lastly the customary tenants, who were mere allot- ment-holders. In the next place, as pointed out in the last chapter, the free tenants, or hundredors as Britton calls them, composed a kind of judicial tribunal which answers most closely to our present Grand Jury.? If so, we may at any rate regard them more in the light of country gentry than in that of peasantry. Bishop Stubbs relates that disputes, political and otherwise, were constantly taking place between these lesser free- holders and the barons ; and that, though the common bonds of chivalry and consanguinity might have been expected to have decided the former to throw in their lot with the latter, yet they recognised early in their existence that they were more likely to ultimately win political power by carrying on a distinct and separate struggle. Eventually, therefore, they consorted with the commons, and became that por- tion of the third estate which was represented by the knights of the shire.3 The same encroachments on the part of this class when belonging to different but neighbouring manors soon after called for the enactment of the second Statute of Westminster, more commonly known as De Donis conditionalibus. Only in this law mention is distinctly and frequently made of the practice of fencing off portions of the waste, to which, indeed, it indirectly gave a legal sanction.* It is interesting to note that these two statutes created a fresh distinction between the rights of commonage. ‘The first statute, viz. that cf Merton, deals 1 Economic History and Theory. Ashley. Bk. L., p. 26. 2 Villainage in England, Essay I., p. 193. P. Vinogradoff. 3 Constitutional History' of England, ch. xv. vol. ii. p. 193. 4th edition. W. Stubbs, D.D. 4«* Quod aligquis jus habens, appruare si, fossatum aut sepem levaverit.” 13 Ed. I. c. 4. 48 Annals of the British Peasantry with rights henceforth known as common-appendant ; the second, viz. that of II. Westminster, with those henceforth known as common- appurtenant—the former belonging to and enjoyed by freehold tenants “ of the same manor, the latter being shared by freehold tenants of two or more neighbouring manors.! The period of the latest of these two statutes clearly coincides with that when, in a few districts at least, an increased population was already tending to exhaust the limited pasturage of the old folcland which once divided every village community from its neighbour. Cor- roborative of this view is the statute termed Zx/enta Manerii, passed some nine years previously, with the apparent object of defining, beyond the range of future evasion or dispute, the limits to the rights of each lord on this and every portion of the manorial area. On the other hand, the solution given by Fitzherbert for the origin of this Act may be the correct one. He points out that it was passed soon after the battle of Evesham had terminated the barons’ war, at a period, in fact, when many attainted estates, more or less in a ruined and decayed condition, were escheated to the Crown. The king and his council, in their anxiety to put such to a lucrative use, originated this ordinance as a source of general instructions to the commissioners and surveyors , who managed them.? A few years later, namely in 1290, the statute of Quia Emptores8 was passed, from which date any grant of a freehold did not constitute Its recipient a tenant of the manor, and consequently did not afford him a claim to rights over its waste as incident to his feoffment.* The species of landed proprietor, known as a freeholder after the eighteenth year of King Edward, was therefore not at all similar to that of the individual whose social status I have just attempted to elucidate; nor was he, as regards complete independence, on all-fours with what we understand nowadays by the term freeholder. There was the ceremony of fealty still in existence, and in most cases the incidents attached to knight service. These ties between lord and freeholder did not, how- ever, survive the blow dealt to feudalism by the statute of Charles II.,5 and the freeholder nowadays enjoys undisputed ownership of everything connected with the surface of his property, though occasionally the lord of the manor attempts to assert his traditional claims on its minerals, We may now ask if all that has just been recorded is the narrative of 1 History of the Law of Real Property, ch. iv. p. 160. Digby. ? Boke of Surveyinge, 1539, ch. i. John Fitzherbert. 5 18 Ed. I. st. 1, c. i. ‘4 History of the Law of Real Property, ch. iii. p. 135. 5 12 Car. II. c. 24. , Conflicting Interests on the Waste 49 oligarchical spoliation? If so, our English legislature, which con- firmed it by means of the statute book, must forfeit its traditional character for impartiality. I, for one, cannot bring myself to impute to the medizval lawyers so serious a charge. Whenever they ap- proached the subject of the waste, they came upon a scene of kaleido- scopic changes, which necessitated a constant readjustment of the rights to realty. Fresh uses for the various parts of the manor, but more especially for its waste, were constantly being invented. Woods, parks, meadows, game preserves, rabbit warrens, fish ponds, eel dykes, and duck decoys, combined, it is true, to diminish the common pasturage of the villeinage. In these early times, however, the supply was practically unlimited, and it was not till the Tudor period that complaints against the right of approver arose from the ranks of the villeinage. But the disturbances occurring in the reigns of Henry VIII. and his son, to which I shall in due course allude, were usually caused by an overcrowding of the waste, to prevent which clauses in the statute of Quéa Emptores were especially designed. The redemption of the waste, preferably with the plough, failing that by other means, was not only a national benefit, but a benefit especially adapted to the wants of the poor man. Even eel dykes were a source of extra food in times of scarcity; and as for warrens, they were a means of shelter and livelihood to the rabbit, which at this period was regarded as a valuable addition to the farm livestock, But the fresh uses to which the waste could be put, one and all, re- quired the expenditure of capital, and it was madness for the landlords to sink it in ground to which their title was disputed.1. To whom did this dreary tract belong—the lord or the people? If to the former, why did he not reclaim it? If to the latter, how-were they to utilise it? Is it, then, to be wondered if the Norman and Angevin lawgivers shuffled out of ‘sight its old popular appellation as soon as possible, and re- named it the “Lord’s Waste”? They robbed the villeinage of their only title to it, literally a nominal one, but they did not deprive them of-a single practicable right over it. The people retained their common of estovers, their common of turbary, their common of piscary, and such-like powers, but they were asked to regard them merely as “rights of user” on their master’s property. Whether they ever quite under- stood this obscure expression is doubtful, but the landlords immediately recognised its favourable interpretation of their claims. To place the question, however, beyond the range of subsequent dispute, the lawyers 1 Hence the old legal dictum : ‘The oak scorns to grow save on freehold: land.” , E 50 Annals of the British Peasantry set to work to manufacture for the landlords a more substantial title, which was effected by the fiction of the lost grant. Looking back on this episode, it would seem that the policy pursued by the legislature was not inconsistent with the causes which necessitate its existence. Society neither creates nor destroys, but defends the rights of property. When, however, they are found to clash with general interests, it reserves for itself powers of adjustment. There was nothing, in its attempts to adjust the conflicting claims over the waste, inconsistent with its action regarding other disputes of property. It pursued, in fact, the same policy which it adopted, say, when dealing with the regulations of markets. Grants of fresh manors and grants of fresh markets were legitimate as long as they did not interfere with the rights of ancient manors and markets. On this principle it was illegal to institute a market so close to an existing one as to lessen the latter’s tolls and receipts, and therefore it was illegal to enfeoff a new free- holder if by so doing original pasturage rights, over the waste were stinted. Unfortunately in both cases the decision as to whether it would tend to interfere with existing rights had to be based not so much on certain recognised precedents as on the opinions of experts. The most unsatisfactory part of the whole business was, however, that the onus proband? rested with the proprietors of established rights, and not, as it should have done, if feasible, with the candidates for fresh rights. As the medizval villager penetrated deeper and deeper into the waste, he encountered labyrinths of underwood and forbidding morasses, until he found himself surrounded by a primeval forest growth, and became overwhelmed with bewilderment as to his next course. So, metaphorically speaking, is,it with the modern historians who would penetrate too deeply into those rights of property which, amidst the wooded portions of the waste, existed in a state of suspended animation. Let the writer be imagined as some such explorer who has now reached a spot on the folcland, far beyond the chance ken of some energetic searcher after firewood, or beyond the range even of some restless wanderer of the porcine species. To whom does the leafy mould beneath my feet belong? To whom have I myself to render the dues of lordship? Who claims the rights of venison over yonder fleeting hart, or those of vert over the majestic oak beneath whose ancient limbs I have stopped to cogitate? Who owns these pheasants and hares, whose numbers and temerity speak eloquently of the absence oi mankind? The answer to such questions as these depends upon < knowledge of the locality, to which no chance visitor like myself car attain. Some verderer, could I but step in his way, would be able to tel Conflicting Interests on the Waste 51 me whether the spot on which I stand is part of forest, chase, or park ; but nothing in my surroundings affords me the clue to distinguish which, In fact, the absence of any forestial official whatever justifies the doubt if rights of property have ever travelled so far afield, I approach this subject with proper caution and respect, being aware that in the agrarian rebellions which it will shortly be my task to describe their lost game rights was one of the chief grievances of the insurgent peasantry.1 While, however, I fear lest, in my efforts to deal impartially with the vexed question of game rights, I may mortally offend the partisans of all the interests concerned, I fully realise that it will never do to burke an inquiry so intimately connected with, and so deeply interesting to, the class whose history I have taken upon myself to relate. To begin with, it is palpable that an isolated tract of country rendered impenetrable by bogs, thickets, want of roads, and other physical defects, was not likely to invite the labour of the industrial classes. It was too damp and unhealthy for human habitation, and too remote from the centres of commerce for the capitalist. In fact, its only attraction for man was the facilities it afforded for sporting. Notwith- standing all these circumstances, there were lying dormant within its compass certain claims which would spring into existence as soon as it became the resort of the hunter. The majority of the nation regarded its jurisdictory rights as held in trust by the king, and there could be no extravagance in the theory that such a trusteeship extended over its unappropriated or undeveloped products. Instead of corn, it yielded timber ; instead of supporting by its vegetation the ox and the sheep, it afforded food and shelter for the wolf and the deer. Like Alexander Selkirk, the possessor of England’s crown was here lord only. of the fowl and the brute. As chief magistrate of the realm, he claimed a prescriptive title to venison and vert, and monopolised the game rights over pheasant, partridge, and hare. If we can bring ourselves to believe that the ownership of animals Jere nature was in this way part of the royal prerogative, our course of inquiry is henceforward considerably cleared. The grant of a manor from feudal superior to vassal would naturally have included its game rights, and no seigniorial usurpation of popular property could have occurred. But I must first point out that proprietary rights to game presuppose the fact that game has ceased to consist of animals fere nature. A wild animal is practically the property of no one, though 1 Knyghton says that Wat Tyler insisted on the total repeal of the forest and game laws. All warrens, woods, waters, and parks were to be common, and the poor as well as the rich were to have rights of venison, vert, piscary, and hawking. 52 Annals of the British Peasantry theoretically it may be deemed that of the Crown; but when any individual exercises the rights of ownership over it by curtailing its riatural freedom, supplementing its natural supply of food, or protect- ing it from the ravages of its natural foes, he establishes a title to it which ex vf termini converts it into more or less of a domestic creature.' To effect this process on a large scale would require the expenditure of capital, a circumstance which naturally confined the proprietorship of game rights to the seigniorial class. Now the preservation of the part- ridge, pheasant, rabbit, and hare, was, at any rate in medieval times, an unmitigated boon to the manorial population. They were an invaluable source of food after a bad harvest, and their preservation afforded extra employment to the villeinage class. There was at this early period, therefore, no need of very stringent or intricate legislation touching the rights of this species of game. The State seems to have assumed that none but capitalist landlords could exercise proprietary rights over wild animals ; and, therefore, the statute book merely prohibited “ artificers, labourers, and other laymen, who have not lands to the value of 4os. a year, nor priests if they be not advanced to the value of £10 a year,” from taking or destroying other gentlemen’s game.? It was thus that I venture to suggest “this bastard slip of the forest law,” as Blackstone termed it, was originated. ° When, however, we turn to those territories of woody grounds and pastures replenished with beasts of venery or chase, and containing coverts of vert for succour of the said beasts, we find the laws vastly more stringent. This I believe to have been owing to two causes : first because the preservation of the forest game necessitated an intricate and expensive system of police, and secondly because these localities were harbours of refuge for all the outlaws and malcontents in the king- dom. No more formidable foe to the established authority can be imagined than some rebellious subject who had fled into the woods and surrounded himself with a band of desperadoes, all trained by the necessities of everyday existence to accuracy of aim with the long. bow. The outgoings for estate management on a manor in the open could not have been greater than those in these sylvan townships, with their courts of woodmote, swainmote, and justice seat. It must not be imagined that men were maimed and dogs lamed merely because 1 Our judges have not yet decided where the boundary line between animals fera nature and animals domite naturecan be drawn. From a recent case I deduce the conclusion that a fierce beast caged and terrorised into obedience is still a wild one. This seems a very unsatisfactory decision. Harper v. Marcks. Before Justices Cav: and Wright, May 23, 1894. ? There is also the question as to the ownership of game and fish after as well a: before they are killed. Conflicting Interests on the Waste 53 the Norman kings delighted in the sound of the recheate or morte from their hunting-horns. The forest outlaws of medizval times cor- responded with the anarchical dynamitards of our period. Every right hand struck off by the State executioner had probably been the terror of loyal lieges for months past, and the only expedient for freeing the country from these murderous sharpshooters was by literally disarming them. The wardens, agisters, regarders, keepers, and other officials of the forest police were the irregular troops of the royal army; not merely the preservers of the monarch’s hunting grounds, but the guardians of his people’s lives and property. Their duties included the recovery of robbed livestock, and the detection of deeds of violence. Swine feeding on the pannage of the purlieu, and beasts browsing on the foliage of the waste, were driven off into the forest fastnesses by these rapacious outlaws. Timber and firewood were purloined for the necessities of their forest home. Every species of game found its way into their camp kettles. All such came thus within the purview of these sylvan police. It may have been the primary duty of the latter to defend the haubboys, subboys, and special vert in the deer coverts, from damage and rapine, but they were also entitled to arrest on suspicion those who had carried off the products of private woodlands. As early as King Ina’s times, the laws provided for the protection of the national timber supply, and even the sound of an axe in a seigniorial woodland was evidence sufficient to lead to conviction. But enough has surely been said to prove that there is no very clear case, as yet, against the landlords for spoliation of the popular rights over the waste. The public still retained rights ample enough to supply them with all their wants in fyrebote, hedgebote, housebote, and pastur- age, and we must wait for a later period before the agitator began to complain of the wants of the villeinage regarding these commodities. A deficiency of them was bound to occur as population increased ; but no laws could have provided against a scarcity, which was occasioned by the fact that the supply remained perpetually constant, whilst the demand increased rapidly. There was no custom of primogeniture amongst the labour class to limit their rights of property to a select few, as there was amongst the seigniorial party. We must, therefore, attribute the subsequent failure of pasturage and other popular rights on the waste, not to the partiality of the State lawyers, but to the over- division of such rights occasioned by increased population. ¢ CHAPTER V ORIGIN OF THE LABOUR LAWS IX hundred years ago the form of government existing in Great Britain was still impregnated with the patriarchal system. Some of the most enlightened statesmen of the present day regret that it has not remained more or less so ever since. For example, Mr. Glad- stone, in his early manhood, claimed for an ideal Government the same position in moral science that 76 wav occupies in physical science ;} and Charles Kingsley, who loved the working man, expressed a wish for this portion of the feudal polity to be resuscitated. Mill, on the other hand, as I have pointed out earlier, would have completely an- nulled any relationship of rich with poor which resembled that of a parent to his child. He sawin the fatherly system of government merely an excuse to oppress, and he would have had the working classes through- out Western Europe demand as a right what formerly they had to seek as an indulgence. Then, too, Macaulay had pointed out that ‘“ No- thing is so galling toa people, ot broken to it from the birth, as a paternal, or, in other words, a meddling Government.”* The villeinage, how- ever, at the period now under treatment, had been broken from the birth to have their homes settled, their hours of recreation and labour fixed, the cut and texture of their clothes decided, their dishes of meat and mugs of beer limited, their choice of wives prescribed, their lan- guage and ballads chosen, and, what in the estimation of many atoned for all else, their livelihood secured in sickness as well as in health by a paternal system of government. Though this was of course a form of slavery, it was not that unsup- portable form of it which tears human beings away from all the delights of freedom and ties of home, as is the case with prisoners of war carried off by savage races, If we are to believe Holinshed, there were labour and sumptuary laws 1 The State in its Relations with the Church. W.¥. Gladstone. 2 Letters and Memoires of Charles Kingsley, by his Widow. 3 Principles of Political Economy, vol. ii. bk. iv. ch. vii. 4 Critical Essays, sub voc. Southey’s Colloguies on Society. Origin of the Labour Laws 55 from the very beginning of the feudal era, probably long before it. William I., he tells us, constrained the conquered English, “‘asa further testimony of their servitude, to shave their beards, round their hair and to frame themselves, as well in apparel as in service and diet, at their tables after the Norman manner.” It was indeed a fatherly office for a Government to undertake to see its children into bed each night at curfew toll. Before I describe the harsh measures which now had to be adopted by Government in order to prolong that particular condition of servi- tude to which the English villein was heir, I must place before the reader all the circumstances of the case. As we proceed we shall find that the men, not the masters, were originally to blame, that the former evaded their contracts with the latter, and that, when the higher powers intervened in the dispute, it was the villeins who had recourse to armed rebellion. Unfortunately such a circumstance momentarily revived much of that international animosity between employer and employee which had fast been passing away. Here, on the one hand, was the seigniorial party, landowners only of their demesnes, but enjoying certain traditional rights over the people. There, on the other hand, was the popular party, exercising over the waste and common fields powers scarcely less plenary than those they had enjoyed in the old tribal times. As long as the conditions of life were normal, neither party had much cause to complain. It was not as if the landlords had evicted their tenants or denied them work. On the contrary, the latter were too precious to their masters, who were de- frauded of a portion of the only kind of rent then existing whenever a villein deserted his duties and home. Knights and barons, who had become crippled by a too extravagant indulgence in the display of the livery system, were frequently obliged to capitalise the life services of some serf, by commuting his servitude for a lump sum of money.1_ The king also, requiring recruits to replenish the ranks of his war-worn army, had frequently to send commissioners into the royal manors on a mission of enfranchisement.2 So that, on the whole, there was at this epoch a large section of the labouring class which had acquired the right to wander. Naturally, when one or two of these revisited their old homes, they provoked in the breasts of their still enslaved brethren a spirit of discontent, Before the termination of the Third Edward’s reign, therefore, an exodus of absconding villeins took place. The citizens of those towns in which they sought shelter welcomed the truants, and, by the exercise of the powers of their franchises, defied the 1 Short History of the English People, p. 248. Green. 2 State of the Poor, vol, i. ch. i. Sir F. Eden. 56 Annals of the British Peasantry territorial aristocracy to reclaim them. Even the serfs remaining at home took the infection of revolt, and, presuming on the knowledge of their enhanced value, bearded the once-dread overlord in his very den. Parliament was inundated with complaints from lords temporal and lords spiritual, concerning the loss of capital thus sustained. All they demanded was the State’s protection of existing rights of property. I would submit that the action of the employers, in thus obtaining a constitutional recognition of their contract with the labourers, was not necessarily more arbitrary than that of some party to a modern agree- ment, who takes the precaution of obtaining its legal confirmation by getting it stamped. In many instances, indeed, the villeinage had as much necessity for State intervention as the landlords. The informal manumissions and commutations, alluded to above, had never received a legal confirmation. In the case both of seigniorial and popular claims, the courts wisely refused to confirm any manorial customs which had not become crystallised into rights by the only -reliable evidence forthcoming, viz., that of the muniment room. It was not only the rank and file of the people that had surrendered rights, the landlords themselves had contracted obligations, both with their inferiors the villeinage, and their superior the king. Had it been possible to have made one clean sweep of all the feudal services, there still remained an intricate system of compensation to be set in force, dealing with all the capital of the freeholder and villein, sunk in the soil. Nothing, in fact, but a coup d@’état could have brought about such a readjustment of all these difficulties. Attempted coups d’état there undoubtedly were. The first, emanating from the capitalist element, was successful, and extracted from the Crown the Magna Charta. The others, emanating from the labour element, were failures, and resulted in nothing but violence and bloodshed. The incidents of feudalism have, in fact, so eaten into the very marrow of this nation, that eight centuries of time have not been able to entirely wear their impressions away. Even in France, where the soil has been more than once saturated and fertilised with the blood of the seigniorial class, medizeval tenures are by no means extinct. Whatever by peaceful means could be effected to meet the require- ments of less troublous times was done. The informal commutation of services for rents had created a class of tenant farmers. Equally informal manumissions and exemptions had created a class of free labourers. Indeed, by the middle of the 14th century the latter were specifically mentioned by the legislature. In another generation they might have established themselves securely in the rural economy. 1 Rot. Parl, iti. 448. Origin of the Labour Laws 57 Unfortunately, circumstances occurred which forced the hands of both parties to the bargain. At the close of 1348 the Black Death swept over the face of the land, decimating the manorial populations and annihilating whole villages. The predial services which had effected the cultivation of large areas of the manorial soil ceased, and half the leaseholding husbandmen perished. The free labourers were either extorting excessive wages on the manor of their birth or hiring themselves to the highest bidder else- where. Villeins in gross and villeins regardant were turning vagrants and going off on the tramp. For the first time in England’s history the sturdy beggar appeared on the scenes. Many a landlord was at his wits’ end to find means of refilling the offices vacated by death or desertion. Farmers were unable to till their own lands, much less perform their services on the demesnes. The common fields were overrun with the unherded livestock off the waste. The village lanes were silent as the grave; the city streets thronged only with the dead carts. Members of parliament and members of the local courts of justice were afraid to assemble. The machinery of government, both national and manorial, had for the nonce completely broken down. Prices and wages continued to rise rapidly. Violence and rapine per- vaded the land. In their extremity the impoverished nobility reiterated their appeal for State assistance. Happily for them, they had control over the pages of the statute book, and only required the royal ratifi- cation of their acts of legislation. Indeed, at this juncture, they, for a time, dispensed altogether with the former and got the king to issue a proclamation, which, as soon as Parliament ventured to assemble, they took care to have placed on the statute book. It was a summons to every villein to fulfil his obligations under the old regulations of the court rolls. It enacted that “ every man and woman, of what condition he be, free or bond, able in body, and within the age of threescore years, not living in merchandise, nor exercising any craft, nor having of his whereon to live, nor proper land whereon to occupy himself, and not serving any other, shall be bounden to serve him which shall so him require, and take only the wages which were accustomed to be given in the place where he served in the twentieth year of the present king, or five or six other common years next before.” The immediate lord of each man, provided he did not retain more labourers than were necessary, had the first call on his services, being entitled to them during the usual eight working hours of each day, as long as the term of con- tract lasted. This Act at once put an end to the small stream of fluid labour which 1 23 Ed. III. c. 1. 58 Annals of the British Peasantry had been allowed for many years past to percolate through the manorial economy. lLandless men were no longer allowed to scandalise the medizval economist’s sense of fitness by roaming over a country on which harvests rotted and fields lay fallow for want of their husbandry. But I gravely fear that all those unfortunate peasants who had purchased or received their freedom were, by this Act, grossly swindled out of the fruits of their bargain. Once more they became, not necessarily in name but for all practical purposes, villeins regardant. Whether a sense of this injustice pervaded the whole labour class, or whether it had by now learned that it could rebel with impunity, is not certain. At any rate the king’s ordinance was tacitly ignored, and matters pro- gressed as badly for the landlords as they had before it was issued. Two years later, therefore, there were added to the statute book severe penalty clauses against carters, ploughmen, shepherds, swinehérds, and d’eyes, who neglected to serve by the year. The remuneration of the haymaker was fixed at one penny per diem. Meadows had to be mown at fivepence per acre. Corn reapers had to subsist without extra meat, drink or courtesy, on whatever food could be exchanged for a wage of twopence a day during the first six days of harvest and an extra penny for the remainder of this operation. No one, save in harvest, was allowed to dwell out of his own peculiar district ; to insure this end all labourers had to attend a periodical roll call, for such I imagine the ceremony of being sworn twice a year before the manorial officials to have been. They also had to go annually with their implements carried openly to ply for hire in a public quarter of the marchant town of their district.1_ Many of my readers will recall the scene at some west or north country mopp on a statute fair day—the piece of whipcord in the carter’s hat, the locks of cow’s hair in the button-holes of cowherd and dairymaid, and the bunches of wild flowers in the hands of the hind. But few of us have heretofore associated this custom with a capital and labour struggle happening nearly six hundred years ago. The results of this Act were merely to exasperate the turbulent peas- antry. They began to conspire and collect together, hereby taking a leaf from their master’s book. They remembered how confederations of “trail bastons” had defied the recognised authorities, and supported themselves by general outrage.? They realised the advantages of the “frith geld,” and adopted the motto of their town brethren,—“If any misdo, let all bear.” In short, they practised the method then known as the covin, thereby bringing upon their devoted heads a law pro- hibitive of combinations and strikes.4 'a5Ed.Il.c 1. % History of English People, p. 204, 1891. J. R. Green. 3 Jd. ibid., p. 197. 4 34 Ed. III. c. 9 (1361). Origin of the Labour Laws 59 Nothing, however, prevented them from proceeding to extremes. Even the disastrous ending of the Jacquerie revolt in France excited no deterrent influence on our stubborn English rustics. As a set-off against the discouraging reports from France, there arrived in England the news of the recent democratic triumphs in Flanders. Then, in defiance of the legislature, the industrial class of manor after manor closed its ranks and struck for freedom of contract. Gatherings of fugitive serfs became frequent spectacles throughout the eastern counties, The seigniorial officials of many manors wcre menaced with peril to life and limb, did they dare to entice their seditious subordinates back to their homes and duties. All the regular clergy were counselling the land- lords to emancipate their serfs. Many of the irregular clergy, such as the Lollards, were impressing upon the latter that their enfranchise- ment was a right Divine. If it was lawful for them, as Wycliff main- tained, to withhold their tithe from sinful priests, it was surely. so to withdraw their services from unjust masters. At a social crisis, such as this, there generally appears some fanatic who, by caricaturing the wise advice of the moderate reformer, brings discredit, if not ruin, on the whole movement. John Ball, with his Communistic propaganda against class distinctions, proceeded to utilise the ground prepared in men’s minds by the sober advice of their legitimate clergy for the propagation of his absurd notions on the rights of man. Unfortunately, our un- educated peasantry have been at the beck and call of some hare-brained adventurer throughout their long history. At the period under discussion it was the “mad” John Ball! A couple of centuries later it was the truculent tanner, Kett. Two hundred years later still it was that idiot Ludd, who led our simple-minded ploughboys into serious mischief. I know, however, only of two occasions in the history of the British workman when he has developed communistic proclivities. On both he was threatened with starvation ; and though in the case of most nationalities the famine-stricken peasant grows mean-spirited, it is not so with our Anglo-Saxon bull-dogs. In 1380 we managed to starve them into rebellion, and in 1840 we were on the verge of repeating this folly, when pulled up short by the intervention of the commercial capitalist.2 It is absurd, therefore, to attribute the agrarian outbreak of the earlier of these two periods to isolated acts of injustice, such as the illegal arrest of a villein at Gravesend by Sir Simon Barley, or the disgusting outrage on Wat the Tyler’s daughter. The peasantry were not so much discontented with the hardships of our national fiscal sys- tem, as with the slavery of our manorial rental system. The recent 1 « The mad priest of Kent,” Froissart calls him. * Chartism was put an end to by the Repeal of the Corn Laws. 60 Annals of the British Peasantry labour laws had tied a man down to starve on a particular spot at a day’s wage fixed lower than the current price of his day’s bread. It was this circumstance which, from the coast of Kent to that of York- shire, fomented the labour element into open rebellion ; which caused the sack of Norwich by a host of peasants, under John the Litster ; which drove to arms the rustics of counties as wide asunder as Devon- shire and Lancashire; which sent a flood of insurgent yokels, under the Tyler, up one bank of the Thames towards London, while a second flood, under Hales, went pard passu up the other bank; and which prompted the intrusion by another wave of serfs, under Grindecobbe, on the sanctified cloister of St. Albans. The fact that the head of the rebellion centred in Kent, where slavery was practically unknown,! cannot weigh against the evidence afforded by the demands of the peasants during the first blush of a temporary success, and before men’s imaginations had become inflamed by bloodshed. ‘These consisted of the abolition of market tolls, the commutation of all manorial services into a fixed maximum rent per acre, the cessation of all menial offices, and the seigniorial surrender of game rights.? In their anxiety to annul their bargain with the landlords, they destroyed the manor rolls when- ever they could get hold of them, and, on their march to Blackheath, killed all the land-stewards who fell in their way. In doing so they were unconsciously surrendering their only title to realty, and beggaring their unborn descendants, who otherwise would have flourished as copyholders. ‘They aimed,” says Cunningham,? ‘at securing a legal status by the violent means of destroying legal evidence.” Mill- stones were chipped into fragments, so as to demonstrate that the seigniorial monopoly of corn-grinding was at an end. Royal ladies 4 were kissed, just to furnish an object lesson that social ethics had gone back to the days of Adam. The Government, when it once more got the upper hand, took them at their word, and showed them exactly what a patriarchal polity, such as that of our first parents, involved. In liberating themselves from the impositions of lords’ millers, the excessive dues of lords’ markets, and the heavy labour exactions of lords’ bailiffs, they forgot that they were exonerating the other side from its obliga- tions of caring for their welfare in sickness as well as in health. At the crisis of the struggle, before the central authority quite knew what might happen next, there was no alternative but to temporise 1 Six Centuries of Work and Wages. Th. Rogers. Stereo. edition, pp. 256, 257. 2 So Knyghton asserts, Chronica in Turpden. : * “Growth of English Industry and Commerce.” Cunningham. arly and Middle Ages, p. 359. 4 The Black Prince’s widow. for example. Origin of the Labour Laws 61 with the rebels. We all know by heart the episode of the boy king’s visit to Mile End, his dignified “‘ What will ye?”—the hoarse roar of peasants’ voices claiming in reply freedom of person and lands. I doubt if young Richard realised a tithe of what he was committing himself and his landed gentry to when he acceded to this request. One or other of these two forms of freedom he might possibly have. granted, but the cession of both would have beggared the whole English oli- garchy. The dyer of Norwich possibly recognised all that the king’s rash promise signified when he made some of his aristocratic. prisoners act as his meat-tasters and serve him on bended knee. But, by the end of a week, Wat, the ringleader, had perished, and his followers, partly on account of the royal promise, partly by the onslaught of the royal troops, had been dispersed. Most of the East Anglian insurgent leaders had been captured, shriven, and executed by their energetic and polemical bishop. A fresh hecatomb of those priceless workers whom the plague had spared was taking place throughout the dis- affected districts. The king’s councillors then proceeded to point out to him that his grant and letters to the rebel chiefs required the consent of Parliament. It is needless to add that, in an assembly packed with the landed gentry, confirmation was not forthcoming. Men were not likely to surrender such valuable commodities as their serfs and niefs still were. They replied to the king’s message, that the villeinage were their own private capital, and that they would all die before they would yield them to the country. The yoke, therefore, was once more securely fastened about the re- bellious necks of this unfortunate class, and fresh legislation, restrictive of its freedom, was enacted. There probably went on throughout England a similar readjustment of manorial customs, which Mr. Hudson has recently discovered in certain parchments rescued from the boiling pot. In these documents, which had only just escaped being made into size, this expert reader of old MSS. discovered two rolls belonging to the Abbey of St. Benet,.and dealing with business transacted in the year 1381. Their contents revealed the fact that the abbot had just been engaged in reinstating every one of his tenants in the position on the manor which he formerly occupied prior to the destruction of the Court records during the peasants’ revolt. That which strikes the reader most concerning this business is the total absence of a spirit of 1 Men and women were still the movable property they were constituted by Magna Charta (9 Hen. III. c. 4), and in the Charters of Henry III. In 1283 the Abbot of Dunstable sold a family of slaves; in 1333 a grant of slaves was made to a chantry, and in 1339 a nief, or female slave, with all her offspring, prospective as well as retrospective, was transferred from one lord to another.—State of the Poor, bk. i. ch. i, Sir F, Eden. ’ 62 Annals of the British Peasantry revengé on the part of the abbot. The tenants had placed themselves, by a wanton act of revolt, entirely at his mercy. With the greatest magnanimity, he put aside the memory of their past misdeeds, and re- stored to them their early privileges.! Baffled, humbled, and enslaved as our English peasantry now were, let no one imagine that their spirit was ever really broken. Those French historians who have to explain away the defeat of Agincourt will decide whether I am right. But, if further proof be needed, let my readers recall to mind the second peasants’ outbreak, scarce seventy years later. Many of the inhabitants of Blackheath in 1450 must have been still living who had heard their fathers speak of the fighting there in 1381. Indeed, a few of the senior Kentish men may have been survivors of the rebel hosts which had marched under Jack Straw, Ball, or Hales. The fact that the ostensible cause of this second outbreak was the self-aggrandisement of Cade must not induce us to conclude that it was less agrarian in its nature than that of Ball. During his first temporary successes the latter, indeed, forgot his doctrine of social equality, and put in a claim for the ‘primacy; but neither he nor Mortimer aroused the whole country-side just for their own selves’ sake. If we study the Patent Rolls,? we shall find that Cade’s follow- ing consisted chiefly of peasants. If we peruse the Bill of Petitions,? rejected by the Privy Council, but afterwards forming the basis of negotiations for the charter of pardon, we shall learn that the agrarian question was well to the fore. The repeal of the Statute of Labourers occupied a conspicuous place therein. “It is openly noysed,” runs another part of this document, “that Kent should be destroyed with royall power, and made a wild forest ;” that “ divers poor people, their titles being perfect, had nevertheless been impeached and indicted, so that grants might be obtained of their lands, and themselves prevented from utilising them ;” that “stuff and purveyance for the king’s house- hold” had not been paid for, and that feigned indictments had been brought against poor and simple folk ‘‘that used not hunting.” It was complaints such as these which filled the ranks of sedition with Kentish, Surrey, Essex, and Sussex yeomen, and with their work- people, the sons of the Piers Ploughmen, Jack Millers, and Jack Carters, who struck for freedom in Richard’s reign. “It was no dis- organised mob,” writes Mr. Brogden Orridge. “In several hundreds constables, duly as legally, summoned the people.” + Strictly speaking, no doubt, Mr. Green is right when he says the question of villeinage 1 The Antiquary, May, 1894, p. 215. ® Patent Roll, 28 Hen. VI., p- 2, m. 13, etc, 3 Stowe’s Annals, 388. ‘ Illustrations of Jack Cade’s Rebellion. B. Brogden Orridge. 1869. Origin of the Labour Laws 63 and serfage finds no place in the complaint of 1450.1 There were no villeins and serfs in Kent; but there were the farmers’ men, whose livelihood was gone had their masters’ holdings been swallowed up by a scheme of afforestation, or their titles to tenure invalidated by false indictments, or their profits confiscated by means of unremunerated purveyance. “The great company of Kent’s tall personages,” which Holinshed calls a part of Cade’s following, was induced to rise by other causes of discontent, suchas those which aroused our English commons in the Reform days of 1832. But “the divers idle and vagrant persons out of the shires of Sussex and Surrie,” of which he describes the other part as consisting, were husbandmen, grown desperate under the weight of agrarian oppression. To this cause we must also ascribe the mur- ders, rapes, robberies, and burnings? which pervaded Sussex for some time before the call to arms sounded by Cade. This insurrection, like that of the Tyler, was easily quelled; but not before the sons of the Agincourt bowmen had sacked part of the metropolis, and fought a pitched battle with its citizens at London Bridge. The only differences between the two risings were that the first, though far more widely extended, lasted only a week, whereas the second continued six times as long. In the former pillage was sternly prohibited ; in the latter it was disgracefully countenanced by the insurgent leaders. As soon as the “Complaint” was sanctioned by the authorities, the better class of the rebels dispersed to their homes. Cade, in his desperation, freed the prisons and recruited his ranks with gaol-birds. Violence and quarrelling quickly broke out amongst this heterogeneous gathering. Their general took to flight, only to en- counter death at the hands of the Kentish sheriff. The discontent of the agrarian population did not, however, die with Jack Cade. In his insurrection the farmers and the labourers had, for the second time in English history, mingled their blood in a common cause. The military households of the greater nobility had begun to break up; the system of liveries was banned by the legislature. Landlords were taking, as substitutes for war and display, to the more peaceful pursuits of engrossing farms and utilising large areas of the common lands as separate sheep walks. The enclosure agitation sprang ‘into existence, riots occurred in many parts of the country, and the ranks of the discontented peasantry were recruited with those formidable allies, the soldiery disbanded after the conclusion of the civil wars. It will be my next task to take my reader with me inside the cottage and alongside the plough, in order to show him more clearly those features of domestic peasant life which occasioned such disturbances as disgraced the pages of Tudor history. 1 Historv of the English People, p. 282. 2 Rot. Parl., 1430, p. 421. CHAPTER VI MEDIZVAL PEASANT LIFE HAVE ventured to suggest that our English landlords as a class followed the noble example set them by William de Methwold, the Norfolk abbot, and, regardless of the past, reinstated their repentant tenantry in the positions which they held prior to the first agrarian rebellion. Yet there must necessarily have lingered behind in the minds of most landlords a sensation of mingled annoyance and alarm. Their natural course, therefore, was to induce the legislature to ratify afresh the conditions of the bargain which their class had struck with that of labour. The first step in this direction was to enforce the law of settlement! The legislature recognised the justice of this policy, and enacted that henceforth no servant or labourer should depart out of the hundred, even at the end of his term of service there, without a letter patent under the king’s seal. The State was also asked to decide the money equivalent for the services which the various grades of the villeinage had originally arranged to pay for their tenures. In com- pliance it undertook the reconstruction of the wages tariff. The annual remuneration of the bailiff in husbandry was fixed at 135. 3d. and a suit of clothes ; that of the master hind, of the carter, and of the shepherd, at ros. ; and that of the oxherd and of the cowherd at 6s. 8¢. The swineherd, the female labourer, and d’eye, were each to receive 6s. and the ploughman 7s. annually for their respective services.? It is curious to notice how this, the first law of settlement, was, in point of fact, the State’s earliest recognition of the villein’s right to wander. A step that was intended to localise the national labour actually rendered it more fluid. Until the enactment of the first laws dealing with wages a servant in husbandry had possessed no social status, save on the spot where his parents resided. As a villein regardant his remuneration was fixed by the customs prevailing on the particular manor of his birth. Henceforth, however, his livelihood was insured so long as he was able and willing to work in any district where he might happen to settle. The institution of a general wages tariff 1 12 Rich. IT. c. 3, 1388. 2 Td.c. 4. 5 23 and 25 Ed. III. Medieval Peasant Life 65 tended to sever the nexus between himself and the soil. For, although the law of settlement still tied him to one particular site, it was not likely to be put in force unless he became a burden on the manor of his choice. If labour was scarce in the district to which he properly belonged, he had no incentive to wander; and if it was superabundant, no obstacle was likely to be put in his way should he decide to do so. The able-bodied peasant in search of employment was, therefore, no longer chained to one spot. It is dubious if at this late period the landlords, as a general rule, ever claimed their chivage and culage dues. These had only been intended to prevent the villein from obtain- ing those burghess privileges which a year’s unchallenged residence in a town entitled him to do. They were now, therefore, being either bought up and capitalised, or tacitly abandoned.t Moreover, in Staffordshire, Lancashire, Derbyshire, Yorkshire, and the marches of Scotland, the labourer did not come under the purview of the statute of settlement. The new license to wander on sufferance, therefore, though by no means perfect freedom, was not the slavery which had forced a landless man to find a master on pain of outlawry. It accus- tomed the nation to the sight of wandering but well-to-do labourers, and paved the way for further concessions in this direction. Thus, in the reign of Henry VI., we find a servant permitted to leave his old master, and engage with a new one, on giving due warning.” Sir George Nicholls, alluding to 12 Rich. II. c. 3 and 7, states that “it cannot be said that either settlement or compulsory relief were directly contemplated,” but he calls it the origin of our poor laws, and points out that its chief characteristic was the ‘distinction which it made between beggars able to labour and beggars impotent to serve.”® This view is so far correct in that a class of impotent poor became the firstfruits of the policy which permitted a peasant to become a lordless man. The State naturally attempted to re-weld the link which once bound such useless members of society to one particular master and district. Within three years of its grant of a license to wander we therefore find it enacting that whenever paupers were refused support by the inhabitants of the towns or cities, they were to be sent back to the site of their birth within forty days after proclamation had been made.* As might be expected, this attempt to enforce the law of settlement in six short weeks could not but fail. It has taken almost as many centuries to do so. Even now neither ratepayer nor pauper is fully satisfied with the provisions of our settlement legislation. 1 Sx Centuries of Work and Wages, p. 45. 2 23 Hen. VI. c. 13. 3 History of the English Poor Law. Six George Nicholls, 1854. 4 12 Rich. IL c. 7. wT 66 Annals of the British Peasantry Having determined to limit the labourers’ profits, the least the Government could have done was to have limited the prices of his food. This it sought to effect partly by encouraging that, of late, roundly abused truck system,! and partly by that clumsy contrivance the assize of bread. When this latter statute was first instituted is uncertain, but it was undoubtedly framed as early as the reign of Henry II. The Government never really pretended to be able to limit the price of the raw material, but merely to ensure that its market value should not be enhanced by such practices as forestalling, regrating, and engrossing. It, however, determined to introduce a sliding scale into the prices of bread, and by 51 Hen. III. st. vi. it ordained that the several varieties of loaf were to vary with the value of corn, the price of the latter being to some extent regulated by the State control of the export market. It is, however, doubtful if wheaten bread was the staple food of the labouring class at this period; it most certainly was not during the entire year, for the ancient records tell us of mixtures of oats and tares, or oats and pease, called bulmong ; of wheat and rye, called meslin ; and of oats and barley, called dragel; all of which were breads used by the commoner sort of people. But the three varieties of wheaten loaves mentioned in the statutes,? as well as wastel, cockel and simnel bread, were probably the food of the better classes. Even if some of the latter varieties had been the common food of the villeinage, there was no practicable means of regulating their value according to the rates of labour remuneration. It is true that by 13 Rich. II. c. 8, the justices were empowered to alter periodi- cally the wages tariff, whenever a time of dearth required such a step. But the high price of grain which prevailed when this Act was first put in force, at once proved its inability to satisfy either of the parties con- cerned. By the collusion of masters with servants,? statute fairs and statute wages were rendered futile. In vain the authorities enforced the penalties for exceeding the maximum rates of wages, now punishing the taker, and now the giver. Here was a case in which both landlords and peasants, the two parties to the original bargain, seemed disposed to set aside the ruling of their great umpite, the Government. It does 1 By 25 Ed. III. st. i. c. 1. the bushel of wheat was made the substitute of rod. in wages. In the reign of Edward IV., however, the State began to set its face against the truck system so far as it affected cloth manufacturers. ? Vide the Statute of the Tumbril and Pillory, 51 Hen. III. st. 1, and Ovd. pro Pistor. incertd temp., c. 1. 3 Re-enacted by 7 Hen. IV. c. 17. * Compare 34 Ed. III. c. 9, which makes servants responsible; 12 Rich. II. c. 4, which makes both servants and masters responsible ; 4 Hen. V.c. 4, 2 Hen. VI. c. 14, and 6 Hen. VI. c. 2. which makes servants onlv resnonsihle. , Medieval Peasant Life 67 not appear to have been the policy of statesmen to interfere in such a matter unless called upon to do so by one or other of the parties concerned. The labourer’s peaceful attempts to free himself were favourably regarded ; but any tendency to promote class freedom by force was sternly interdicted. Gatherings of peasants, even for apparently the most innocent objects, might become subterfuges for conspiracy. Servants and artificers, therefore, were prohibited from playing at tennis, football, quoits, dice, skittles, casting the stone, etc., such pastimes being considered incentives to idleness, and conducive to skill in the arts of neither peace nor war. Weapons were prohibited, so far as not to interfere with the efficiency of the foot-soldier. Bucklers, swords, and daggers might never be worn, but bows and arrows were permitted on festive occasions! Though the peasantry had been thus virtually disarmed, they had soon taught themselves the use of a new weapon. For at the end of the 14th century the staff-strikers had become such a terror to law-abiding folk that the Commons petitioned Parliament to class those who used the staff with vagrant beggars. A mob of these cudgel players, drawn . together under the colour of a coursing match, might have worked considerable havoc in the township before the authorities could have collected a sufficient force to disarm them. ‘Truly these medizval rustics were formidable fellows, and we need not be surprised if our warlike kings entertained a sneaking fondness for such splendid fighting material as they invariably proved. At any rate the king in this case allowed them to retain their cudgels, though the petition of the Commons subsequently received a partial answer in a statute forbidding the bestowal of alms on staff-strikers. The terror that recent agrarian rebellions had left behind gave rise to yet another new departure in legislative history—no less than the enact- ment of the first game law. Poaching was to occupy much of the business in future courts leet, and to form the basis of a series of statutes which have occasioned considerable class bitterness ever since. Divers artificers and labourers had taken to keeping greyhounds, in order that they might poach their lords’ preserves during the hours of a Sunday, when all decently behaved folk were at divine service. It was suspected that the hunting of the deer was being made a veiled prepara- tion for that still deadlier pastime of which it has been called the counterfeit. Afraid of armed rebellion, the legislature prohibited the possession of dogs, ferrets, heys, nets, hare-pipes, cords, or other engines for destroying game to any one whose worldly possessions were insuffi- 1 12 Rich. II. c. 6. 68 Annals of the British Peasantry cient to free him in the eyes of his countrymen from the suspicion of discontent.t Rich clothing was considered as tending towards conceit and discon- tent; and as England at this period was inundated with the spoils of furred garments, fine linen, jewels, and gold and silver ornaments, captured from the French in the late wars, every woman of rank be- decked herself with these, and the commoner classes were not long in aping their betters in similar extravagances. So vain had the so-called meaner sort become, that it was impossible, as Knyghton tells us, to distinguish rich from poor. Though the former were not altogether exempted from the purview of the sumptuary laws, it was on the latter that this class of legislation fell most severely ; which was not altogether fair, for it was the rich who had first set the example in such extrava- gance. We may, indeed, apply the remarks of John Taylor, the Water Poet, in 1605, to the voluptuous habits of this earlier age. The courtiers of Richard II., as well as those of James I., wore in the equivalents of dress then fashionable— ee a farm in shoe-strings edged with gold, And spangled garters worth a copyhold. A hose and doublet which a lordship cost, A gaudy cloak three manors’ price almost. A beaver band and feather for the head, Prized at the church’s tithe—the poor man’s bread.” Hitherto the common garb of rustics had been the coarsest russet, manufactured at Kendal, and worth 6s. to 7s. per dozen yards. The legislature now forbade them the choice of aught else. To wear ornaments, whether ribands, silks, metals, embroideries, or furs, was a misdemeanour. The cloth and cut of their coats and cloaks became an object of State solicitude, and were to be of plain russet or blanket un- stuffed with wool, cotton, or cadas, and of sufficient length to fall below the middle. Blackstone has observed that women have ever been great favourites with our constitutional lawyers; but I doubt if they thought themselves such at this period of history. It is true that for offences which brought their male relatives to the gallows they were only liable to the pit, but the sex could not surely believe a legislature leniently disposed, which baulked it of its natural desire to look pleasant in the eyes of its husbands and lovers. For a woman of the peasant class to appear in church without an ugly cap of wool was to commit an offence, punishable by the fine of half of her husband’s weekly wages. For either sex to be detected in the act of begging was to incur the penalty of the stocks. To receive alms was to tempt one’s benefactor to the commission of an illegal act. 1 13 Rich, II. st. 1, c. 13. Mediaeval Peasant Life 69 There was no help, therefore, for a poor man, if he could not subsist in the place of his birth, on the wages allotted to him by law, with the bread fixed by the assize, on the courses and meals prescribed by statute, and in the clothes allowed to him by Parliament; his only consolation was that he could not well starve, even if he fell ill or were incapacitated by accident from active labour. There was a rough system of employer’s liability in force, which compelled a landlord to support a helpless dependent as long as he continued to remain in this troublesome world. Masters were not allowed to shoot rubbish of this sort on the next manor, and thus get quit of it. But a Government which was so paternal as ours at this particular epoch, ought to have had the power to cure all ailments and relieve all aches. Unfortunately, the medical and sanitary skill of the age was worse than useless. By thus, therefore, pretending to limit the profits of labourers, and the cost of their necessaries of life, the Government had incurred a grave responsibility. It realised its position so far as to punish those who would not work, and help those who could not. Henceforth, the villeins in every manor were classed under three heads: viz., able-bodied labourers, sturdy vagrants, and impotent paupers. In the first capacity an individual looked for the means of life to the Jandlord ; in the second he fell into the hands of the police ; and in the third he became the object of ecclesiastical charity. In all these conditions, however, the funds which provided for his livelihood were entirely derived from the profits of his own peculiar manor, and emanated directly or indirectly from seigniorial sources. It was, no doubt, this responsibility for the villein, whether sick or sound, poor or prosperous, well-behaved or criminal, which induced the Constitution to allow his masters to control the hours of his working day, the nature of his pastimes, the number of his meals, the kinds of his viands, and the quality of his apparel, In no other way can we account for, or justify, such legislation as that dealing with these subjects during the reigns of the Third and Fourth Edwards.+ Any animosity, caused by the agrarian rebellions, between employer and labourer, did not last long. The landlords of the feudal era had not been able to brook the defiance of their inferiors. But, when they had insured their implicit obedience, they dispensed as far as possible with those powers of oppression with which the recent legislation had endowed them. Professor Rogers surmises that the terror, generated by the late violence, urged them to concede the greater portion of the demands which rebellion itself had failed to extort. The practices 1 Compare 10 Ed. III. c. 43 37 Ed. III. c. 8 toc. 15; 12 Rich. II. c. 6; 3 Ed. IV. c. £: 17.Ed. IV.c. 3; 22 Ed. IV. c. 1, etc., etc. 70 Annals of the British Peasantry which ensued, of laying down a portion of their tillage lands to sheep pasturage, of letting out other parts of their manors on lease, and of continuing to commute the services of the villeinage for money payments, at first sight give probability to this view. On closer scrutiny, however, I fail to see anything in such concessions beyond what was rendered necessary by the altered circumstances of the times. The policy of resorting to a system of tenant farming may possibly have been partly inspired by a wish to interpose the person of the agriculturist as a kind of buffer between themselves and the labour element. But the adoption of pastoral husbandry would be necessitated by the diminished supply of able-bodied labour. If it had been prompted by the desire to dispense, as far as possible, with hired industry, we must conclude that the supply was still in excess of the demand, and that the views of the landlords regarding the value of labour had become suddenly revolutionised. For by reducing their requirements on this head toa minimum they would be stimulating a growth of the pauper element, unless they were also prepared to facilitate the emigration of the unemployed to other manors. As for the commuta- tion of predial services for money wages, that was more naturally attributable to the growing facilities for external trade, and consequent increase in the profits derived from market tolls. The presumed terror of the landlords had not, in fact, contributed anything really conducive to the emancipation of the industrial class; which was, indeed, well nigh as remote when that class had become composed of wage-earning workmen bound by contract, as when it had consisted of serfs bound by boon service. The machinery of bondage was all there, ready to be set in motion whenever the villeins showed signs of insubordination, though wisely kept out of sight as long as they behaved properly. But that it remained in constant working order is palpable, if only we look forward some four centuries to a time when the English peasant was in as dire straits as itis possible to conceive any human being to be in a pre- sumably free country. In fact, towards the close of the last century, he was starving amidst plenty, unable to live except by becoming a beggar, and unable to combine and agitate for higher pay except by becoming a criminal. Not the least bitter drop in his cup of woe was to see on all sides of him his employers enjoying the luxuries of an abnormal prosperity. The cause of his helplessness was the unrepealed labour legislation of the 14th century. The reason why this state of things had not long before crushed the life out of him was, because under the feudal economy it was the duty of the protector and the privilege of the nrotected ta flanrish ar draan tacathar Medieval Peasant Life 71 But feudalism was a polity framed to meet the necessities of war, and though it could be, and indeed had been, modified, so as to suit the requirements of a rude system of agriculture, it became. unadaptable as soon as a commercial instinct pervaded the nation. As long as personal service (whether in war or in peace matters not) was the medium of exchange between the capitalist and the labourer, feudalism was suffered to exist. But the sound of the chink of gold and silver caused it to droop and diminish. Dr. Johnson pointed out the reason for this when he stated that money confounds subordination, by overpowering the distinctions of rank and birth, and weakens authority by supplying powers of resistance or expedients for escape. Already, therefore, the commutations of service had rendered a modification of manorial customs imperative. Slavery was tolerated by the legislature as late as the reign of James I., payments in kind were common in that of Queen Anne;? but both practices were repugnant to all sober-minded citizens as early as the times of Richard II. The legislation, therefore, that we have. been examining, did not aim at enforcing the slavery of the individual, but only at upholding the contract that the labour party had made with the capitalist class. The villein as a labourer was subjected to such rigorous con- ditions of existence that he was still sometimes mistaken for a slave. In fact, he is not only mentioned, but treated as such, in the statute book, as late as 1547.2 Moreover, we read of instances of a slaveé’s emancipation long after this date, and philanthropic writers such as Fitzherbert* continue to lament not only the possibility of slavery, but actual instances of its existence, as a disgrace to our legislation and religion. At any rate, the peasant could not only wander, but acquire property and purchase therewith a complete immunity from hereditary obligations. In one sense he could not be called free because he inces- santly found the original bargain that he had made with the landlords anirksome burden. But he was no more a slave on this account than his master, who frequently experienced the same sensations. Nothing can be imagined much more galling than for a landed capitalist, well read in classical agriculture, to feel that he was fettered to the miserable practice of the common field husbandry. Without, however, means of compensation it was hopeless for either party to attempt the negotiation of terms with the other. As such compensation was not 1 Tour in the Western Islands, 1765. * A form of the metayer system was in vogue, especially in Norfolk in Queen Anne’s days.— Origin of Tithes, Dean Prideaux. 8; Ed. VI. c. 3. 4 Boke of Surveyinge, ch. xiii., 1539. 72 Annals of the British Peasantry generally available, the land of each district continued to remain the common property of its inhabitants, and its labour the common property of those who employed it, long after the period when the terms villeinage, landlord, and manor had become merged in those of parishioners, parochial authorities, and parish. To these causes, more than to the ill-will engendered by the rebel- lions, we must attribute the strained relationship which existed between the two classes for centuries after the peasants’ war had been forgotten. Both landlord and labourer were unwilling parties toa bargain. ‘The former, as we have just said, regarded the popular rights to the soil as a deterrent of good husbandry; the latter resented the State compulsion which had converted his voluntary tasks into travaux forctes. The landlords recognised that the best means of emancipating the land from popular control was by the system of enclosures. Wherever a fence could be erected without interfering with the common field economy, a fence soon appeared. Often some of the demesne lands were situated on the common field, and whenever they consisted of “ great flattes or furlongs” their owners, whether rightly or wrongly I cannot pretend to judge, claimed the power to enclose.1 Small freeholders followed their lord’s example, and exchanged with others their scattered acre strips for one solid piece of land, which they at once set to work to fence. Landlords took a hint from this practice, and let out parts of their demesne lands to superior villeins, thereby shifting the responsi- bility for enclosing and laying down such farms in grass on to others’ shoulders. The system of setting some twenty or thirty strips in the common arable field to customary tenants gave place to the letting of compact farms on lease. ‘‘Covetous and insatiable cormorantes” are the terms applied to landlords who practised this economy, especially to those who “ by coneyne and fraude thrust owte the husbandmen of their owne, and compassed about and inclosed many thousand akers of grounde together with one pale or hedge.”? By these means the labourer not only lost his chance of employment, but was deprived of- his rights of swine pasturage and goose pasturage on the commons when- ever those rights were not confirmed by charter.® It was such practices as these which called for the frequent inter- vention of the legislature in Tudor times. As many as 24,000 sheep were occasionally found in the possession of one individual. In 1534, therefore, the flocks of one proprietor were limited to 2,000,4 1 Boke of Surveyinge. Fitzherbert, 1539. 2 Utopia. Sir Thos. More, 1548. 3 Boke of Surveyinge, ch. vi. Fitzherbert. 4 25 Hen. VIII. st. 3, c. 13. Medieval Peasant Life 24 and in 1536 a restriction was put on the practice of converting arable land into pasture. It would have been wise if Parliament had at once extended its prohibition against the practice of engrossing farms and pulling down towns in the Isle of Wight to the rest of the kingdom,? as in the following reign it found itself compelled to do.? There is, however, but little room for doubt that the landlords found ample means of evading all such legislation by subterfuges which satis- fied the lenient views of the justices who were entrusted with its enforcement. But we are dealing with the period immediately succeeding the century when three plagues and two rebellions had decimated the ranks of the industrial class. So long as the supply of labour did not exceed the demand, so long as seasons were fruitful and epidemical diseases were absent, the poorer classes were in a prosperous con- dition. Mr. Green points out that a hundred years after the Black Death the wages of an English labourer could purchase twice the amount of the necessaries of life which could have been-obtained for the wages paid under Edward III.4 Men who trusted for a livelihood to the efforts of their hands turned up their noses at penny ale and bacon, and demanded fresh flesh and fish.5 The 15th century and the first quarter of the 16th were, as the late Professor Rogers tells us, “the golden age ” of the class in which we are most interested. To the mind of the English labourer of the present reign the fact that his medizval forefathers were in receipt of 4d. a day for wages conveys no realisation of their abnormal prosperity. The fact was that the cost of a man’s maintenance was from 6d. to 8d. per week, and that, at many periods of the year, he, in addition to his wages, was entitled to a free seat at his employer’s table. “Food,” says this same author,® “was so abundant and cheap that it was no great matter to throw it in with wages.” ‘The agricultural labourer,” says Rogers, ‘in the last half of the 14th century received one-seventh of the nominal money wages possessed by the labourer in Young’s time, while he purchased many of the necessaries of life at one-twelfth the price of the 17th century, and bread at one-eighth.” 7 1 27 Hen. VIII. c. 22. 2/4 Hen. VII. st. 2, c. 16. 3 6 Hen. VIII. c. 5, and 7 Hen. VIII. c. 1. 4 Showt History of the English People, ch. v. p. 257. J. R. Green, 1891. 8 The Vision of Piers Ploughman, 4415. “ Laborers that have no land to lyve on but hire handes. Deyne d noght to dyne a day nyght-olde wortes ; May us peny ale hem paye ne no pece of bacone, but if it be fresshe flessh outher fisshe fryed outher y-bake.” 8 Six Centuries of Work and Wages, stereo edit., p. 328. Th. Rogers. 7 History of Agriculture and Prices, vol. i. p. 690. J. Th. Rogers. 74 Annals of the British Peasantry This comparison somewhat exaggerates the prosperity of the earlier peasantry. Professor Rogers based his calculations on the assumption that employment was constant in the earlier of these periods. Professor Cunningham has since produced evidence to prove that this was not always the case; and, moreover, that at busy periods men worked extra hours, and frequently all through Sundays and holidays.!_ Corroborative of this view of the latter Professor is Langland’s representation of Piers Ploughman’s condition during the season immediately preceding harvest. He often had no penny to buy meat, poultry, and salt bacon, but had:to exist on the produce of his garden and cow, feeding, however, himself and his family on apparently no mean substitutes, such as green cheese, curds, cream, oaten cakes and bean bread.? Certainly, on the whole the evidences are in favour of the prosperity of the peasant at this epoch ; no better proof of which can be forthcoming than the Act of 1436, which sanctioned the exportation of corn when wheat was so plentiful as not to exceed 6s. 8d. per quarter. 3 We are now in a position to inquire more closely into the domestic life of the medizeval labourer. So scarce were the precious metals that in 1436 a law was enacted, compelling exporters of native produce to bring home and deliver to the Master of the Mint a certain quantity of bullion for every sack of wool, last of hides, etc., which they carried abroad. It was the duty of nobody to keep the roads in repair, and, consequently, save in places where it was to the advantage of a landlord to gain access to a market, or where some great Roman highway existed, ‘the lanes were in a miserable state. These two circumstances com- bined to make the manorial population almost wholly dependent on its own resources for the necessaries of life. The meat of the herd and flock, the milk of the cow and ewe, the crops of the demesne lands and common fields, the fish of the river and pond, the game of the warren and chase, the produce of the garden and poultry yard, the supplies from the pigstye, dovecote and beehive were the sole sources of its food and drink. The wool of the sheep, the hides of the cattle, the harvest off the flax-ground, had to be manufactured into clothing. Artificial light was obtainable solely from local sources; only iron, salt, and silk were imported from the great south country fairs. Most manors had their hemp land, their mill, their tan-vat, their local police, their courts of justice, their church and vicarage. The clergy, secular and monastic, continued to divide amongst themselves the 1 Growth of English Industry and Commerce, Early and Middle Ages, p. 393, note. J. W. Cunningham. 2 The Vision of Piers Ploughman, 4361. 3 te Hen. VT. c. 2. Medieval Peasant Life 75 offices of doctor, lawyer, scrivener, and veterinary surgeon. The waste furnished the buildings, implements, and fuel of the community. The male inhabitants were experts in husbandry, brewing, baking, car- pentry, horse-shoeing, rope-making, tanning, and grinding, as well asin saddler’s, cobbler’s, and wheelwright’s work. The females could not only spin, weave, wash, and cook, but were employed in jobs now wholly confined to male labour. Fitzherbert tells us! that it was not good economy for a woman to. confine her efforts to the distaff only. The women of his day measured the corn for grinding, tended the poultry, swine, and cows, tilled the garden, preserved its pot -herbs, and replenished the house floors with its strewing herbs ; winnowed the corn, made the malt, tossed the hay, filled the muckwain, drove the plough, marketed the dairy and poultry produce, and seem indeed to have left little labour which could be called the monopoly of the sterner sex. In a statute of Edward III. mention is made of broceresces, pesteresces, listeresces, fileresces, et cevresces, si bien de leine come de liegne, toile et de soie, broadsters, kardesters, pyneresces de leine, et toute autres que usent et everent overaigne mameles.” The customs of manors differed greatly even in the same district. Examples are available in the 14th century of landlords far in advance of the age, as regards their dealings with the tenantry. The sketch, for example, given a few years back in the /Vineteenth Century by Dr. Jessop, of the rector of Harpley’s management, differs widely from that on the manor of Hawsted.? In the former case, personal service had already been partly commuted for wages payments, whereas in the latter it was still in full force. On some manors, such as that of Penrith, the least tendency to free trade was rigidly checked. Every householder who kept a fire-hearth in this cold northern district had to pay a fine for the privilege of turbary on the lord’s waste. Curriers and shoemakers paid 20s. per annum; dyers and weavers, 65. 8d. ; bakers and brewers, rod. ; vendors of beer or ale, 5¢.. Those who used the lord’s market,—and there were no other means of selling their produce, —were mulcted by an official, called the sheldraker, of a handful out of every sack of corn and salt which they brought there, for the cost of cleaning the market streets. Besides this they had to pay another officer, the metlaw, a dishful of corn and salt for every sack sold, and 4d. on every wool sack. Then there were the usual stallage, piccage, and passage dues demanded of the few merchants and pedlars who pitched their booths there. What with soccage, bondage, and purpestre 1 Husbandry, J. Fitzherbert, 1534. 2 Rot. Parl, ii. 278. 3 Dr. Jessop’s account of a 14th century Norfolk estate. ' 76 Annals of the British Peasantry rents ; way, passage, and mill dues ; fair and market tolls ; waifs, straies, deodands and claims on liberties ; franchises, jurisdictions, privileges, etc., the 14th century landlord possessed an income almost entirely exempt from the losses by murrain and bad harvests to which his agri- cultural rents were liable. In these early times ‘custom weaving” had not come into being. During the long winter nights the wives and daughters of the villeinage congregated together in the larger kitchens, each contributing their own light of rushes peeled and greased for the purpose, and spun their tow and line on the foot-wheel, weaving it into web during the spring, and bleaching it during the autumn on the foggs of the meadow land1t It is not to be imagined that the common labourer had much store of tallow: until the time when the travelling pedlars could procure and bring round the balls of cotton wick, a rush was the only substitute. The hard fats were too costly for his slender purse, and the tallow generally used was mutton fat. This the housewife moulded round the rush in a tin tube, which was set upright in a dish half full of moist sand, and lighted when required. Candles were such luxuries that when a poor man wished to perform an act of severe self-abnegation, he presented a couple to the shrine of his patron saint. He could not have needed the sound of the church curfew bell to remind him that nightfall was his natural bedtime. Though he supped an hour later than his forefathers had done, his meal was so frugal that there was little fear of his early slumbers being disturbed by indigestion. His vigorous outdoor life kept him from tossing on the comfortless contrivance which served him for a bed. “Our fathers,” says Harrison,? ‘‘yea, and we ourselves have lain full oft upon straw pallets or rough mats, covered only with a sheet, under coverlets made of dog’s wayne or hop harlot, and a good round log laid under their heads instead of a bolster or pillow.” A sack of chaff to rest his head upon, and a mattress of flock for his weary back was the acme of a poor man’s luxury. No wonder that when day dawned, and even before that hour, he was glad to crawl out of his comfortless kennel amidst the roof timbers, and climb down the rickety ladder in order to hurry forth from his wattle and daub hut into the fresh keen air outside. Two hours’ work on the common field gave a sharp appetite for his breakfast at eight. If seasons were good and work regular, this consisted of bread corn ; if they were otherwise, he contrived to satisfy the cravings of his stomach with dried herbs. “ Hunger,” says a proverb of those times, “setteth his first foot into the horse manger,” by which we are to under- 1 History of Penrith. J. Walker, 1857. 2 Description of England in Holinshed’s Azstory. Medieval Peasant Life "7 stand that when wheat, barley, and rye were scarce, peas, beans, tares, and lentils became their substitutes as human food. A prudent house- wife generally contrived to keep a store of salt meat in the bacon rack throughout the year, and a hot rasher, together with a cabbage, onion, or leek from the garden, covered the wooden trencher at the noon- tide meal. Fortescue probably exaggerates when he describes the commons of England in his day as living in such abundance that they never drank water except for penance.’ Yet, if we consider the frequent allusions of ancient writers to the drunkenness of the times, to the multiplication of taverns, especially in the reign of Elizabeth, and to the numerous varieties of peasants’ liquors, we cannot doubt that even the poorest man indulged in strong drinks too freely on occasions. Harrison describes rustics as becoming red as cocks and little wiser than their combs over their potations of huffcap.? In fact, in 1496, the justices were empowered to restrain the common selling of ale in towns and places where they should think fit, and to take surety of the keepers of alehouses for their good behaviour. There were besides _single beer and double beer, dagger ale and lambswool. Few were content with the teetotal beverage composed of water, honey, and spice, and known as swish-swash. The numerous varieties of malt liquor, however, are not conclusive evidence of wide-spread rustic inebriety. There were no less than ninety-six kinds of foreign wines in use among the Tudor upper classes. Yet, only a few decades earlier, neas Sylvius had astonished the inhabitants of a large Northumberland village, when in 1437 he exhibited the, to them, hitherto unknown articles of wine and wheaten bread. The fruit of the grape was, in fact, even a stranger luxury to the English peasant than manchet loaves or saffron cakes. The scourges of the spring months to the cottager were leprosy and scurvy, produced by the long course of salted diet and insufficient green food throughout the winter. Though gardens were considered as objects of value, and their produce specified in the judicial records of 1279,” their importance was not appreciated in later times. Evelyn tells us that the cabbage was first imported from the Netherlands in 1 De laud. Leg. Angl. Fortescue. 2 Huffcap, a kind of ale. 8 rr Hen. VII. c. 2. + Lambswool ale, warmed and spiced, and with a roasted crab apple floating therein. 5 Gascoigne’s Delicate Diet for Dainty-Mouthed Drunkards. 6 Opera Pii II. 7 Capitale Messagium, quod valet per annum cum herbagis et fructu jardinti. Registr. Hon. de Rich, App. 44. 78 Annals of the British Peasantry 1539; and though he is in érror, yet the fact of his committing this mistake proves how scarce this vegetable must have become. That it did exist in the 14th century in the gardens of the poor is evident from a complaint made by a widow in a court leet of that period that her neighbour's pigs had entered her garden and rooted up her beans and cabbages.1 But gardening declined amidst the ravages occasioned by the Wars of the Roses—a fact certified by Harrison when he relates that vegetables, plentiful enough in the First Edward’s days, had been neglected from those of Henry IV. to the beginning of the reign of Henry VIII. ; and even where they had continued to be cultivated, their use was “for hogs and savage beasts” rather than for their owner’s tables.2 When horticulture did revive, the poor man obtained as much seed as he would require from the gardens of the rich, and no doubt he could have got, it at any period of history by going to the nearest monastery. But the best method of ascertaining the condition of the English peasant at this period is to compare what I have related con- cerning his life with what Fortescue tells us of his foreign brethren. Describing the habits of the French rustic, he writes as follows :3 “ They drynke water, they eate apples with bred right brown made of rye. They eate no flesche, but if it be seldom, a litell larde, or of the entrails or heds of bests sclayne for the nobles and merchants of the land. They weryn no wollyn, but if it be a porecote under their utter- most garment, made of grete canvas, and cal it a frock. Their hoses be of like canvas, wherfor they be gartrid and their thyghs bare. Their wyfs and children gone barefote.” He goes on to describe their labour as so arduous and their taxation as so heavy that they walked crooked and feeble, lived in extreme poverty and misery, and were unable to defend themselves against the national foes. Such was the state of a people who inhabited the most fertile realm of Europe. Even the lot of the lowest servant in English husbandry contrasts favourably with theirs. The “maner dey,” ze. the poultry woman, though, according to Chaucer, she had no wine to drink, possessed a board served with white and black bread, milk, bacon and an egg or two. Her worldly possessions included three large sows, a boar, three cows, and a sheep ; and though no dainty morsel passed her lips, and she could never in- dulge in the luxury of eating to repletion, she was healthy and happy, because a temperate diet and exercise were her only physic.4 1 De Placitis et curtis Tentendis. See The Court Baron, Selden Society, 1891, P+ 75: 2 Deac. of England, 208, prefixed to Holinshed’s Chronicles. 8 Absolute and Limited Monarchy, p. 17. 4+ The Nonnes Preestes, Tale 1, 14836-14848. Medieval Peasant Life 79 It is now interesting to inquire if there were any facilities in the vil- lage of his birth for a labourer to better his condition. Ona modern estate every ploughboy may aspire to a snug berth as bailiff on the home farm. Some striving fellows put by sufficient funds to establish themselves in matured manhood on a small holding of their own. Some, indeed, die possessed of several acres of realty, the result of a prudent investment of lifelong savings. It was not different in the times of which we are speaking, though savings banks, benefit clubs, and com- pulsory sale clauses of a Small Holdings Act had not come into exist- ence. ‘The management of a medieval estate required even a greater number of foremen and workmen of different kinds than that of a 1gth century one.” Though no mere peasant could hope to attain to the office of seneschal, which was usually hereditary, yet the position of the reeve was attainable by all;1 and if a man’s ambition did not soar so high as this, he might at least aspire to become the messor, or harvest lord. Failing this office, there were the posts of plough leader and shepherd. If he was not of robust constitution, there remained a chance of employment amongst the numerous retinue of body servants who found food and shelter in the great house of the lordship. Even a swineherd had his perquisites, and any work, how- ever irregular, in the lord’s demesne must have been welcome to people who often knew not where to find the wherewithal to fill their bellies. It must be remembered that there were no paupers in England, until the peasantry, by commuting their life services, released their masters ‘from the onus of employing them under every circumstance. Few could be so muscularly incapacitated as not to be competent to tend bees, yet the bee ceorl of Anglo-Saxon times was the supervisor of a slave, who performed the menial part of his duties.? Again, few could be quite so stupid as not to be able to tend pigs, yet the swineherd of Anglo-Saxon times had his subordinates, who did the drudgery of his office. The cowherd and ploughboy were even better treated, though if single men they were obliged to sleep with their charges.* Let us examine the economy of some particular manor. In the village of Hawsted two-thirds of the land was held by seven persons, and the other third was occupied by twenty-six persons. The lord = Professor Ashley seems to think that the post of provost or reeve was not coveted, “from the fact that the lord had often to insert in the manor rolls a clause proving the legal liability of all holders of virgates and half-virgates to be elected to it.—Zcon. Hist., vol. i. c. i. p. 12. W. Ashley. 2 Rectitudines Singularum, p. 5+ 3 The Old English Manor. Andrews, 1892. ; ; * I do not touch upon the duties of the higher servants in this History, but for further particulars see my /estory of English Landed Interest, Part I., p. 193. 80 Annals of the British Peasantry held, in hand, 572 acres of arable land, 50 of meadow, 40 of wood, and pasture for 24 cows, 12 horses, and as many oxen. His livestock consisted of 10 horses, 1 bull, 20 cows, 10 oxen, 16 heifers, 6 calves, g2 sheep, 200 two-year-old sheep, 5 geese, 30 capons, 1 cock and 26 hens. In the year 1389 there were 200 acres of corn to reap or shear, and this was all harvested in two days, even to the thatching of the stacks, by means of the boon service of 250 villeins.!| Every one of these labourers was supplied each day with two herrings, milk from the manor dairy for cheese-making, and a loaf of bread containing the fifteenth part of a bushel of wheat. On the Wolrichston manor they received, besides the daily harvest allowance of two herrings, the finishing-up treat of a portion of a fat pig;* and on some estates they were allowed to bring a friend to the harvest-home feast. Imagine the delight with which the scurvy-stricken workers must have partaken of this unwonted cheer. Imagine, too, the satisfaction of an agriculturist in catchy weather at being in a position to command so large a staff of labourers. A hundred years later both parties to this bargain must have looked back to some of its lost conditions with regret. At first sight the student of history may be pardoned if, on perusing such records as the ectitudines Singularum, or some of the earlier manor rolls, he discredits the ability of either lord or villeinage to maintain in working order the intricate machinery which was surely required to insure the proper performance of each individual’s duties. There were, it is true, the two judicial courts already described. But what would be easier than for any individual who considered that he had been too severely punished for some trivial breach of discipline to slip out of the manor and hide away in the towns, where his ser- vices would be sought after. It was easy enough, and for this very reason the’ pit, gallows, and stocks were not kept out of sight like a modern policeman’s truncheon, but were erected at a conspicuous part of the manor. It was just as well in these rude times that the peasantry should understand that, besides an occasional meal in the manorial kitchen as a reward of their virtues, there was awaiting them in the manorial justice-room severe methods for the repression of their vices. It is to be feared this was the only form of education provided for the peasant for a very long period of his history. But he already recognised the advantages of schooling, because, like his 19th century descendant, his ambition was to see one or two of his sons in a black coat. The rustic of to-day, however, wants his boy to become a half starved clerk. The rustic of the 14th century chose a profession 1 Cullum’s Hawsted, p. 191. 2 Agriculture and Prices, vol. i. p. 17. J. Th. Rogers. y Medieval Peasant Life 81 for him far more important and lucrative. He aimed at becoming the father of a clergyman, and for this object he sent the lad, as soon as he could walk so far, to the nearest borough school. The burghers, however, objected, and petitioned Parliament to prohibit this practice, and Parliament, by making a compromise, and allowing children under the age of twelve to be sent to school, passed the first provisions for the education of the poor ever enacted in this realm,! 1 Rot. Purl. v. 601, year 1406. 12 Rich. I]. c. 5, and 7 Hen. IV. c. 17. CHAPTER VII THEFT OF THE SICK FUNDS S we should naturally expect to find, the money prices of labour increased with the wider circulation of the coinage.! During the forty years, dating from 1388, the bailiff’s yearly remuneration had risen to 235. 4@.; clothes, of the value of 5s., and his meat and drink. Foremen, carters, and shepherds received 20s.; common hinds, 16s. ; women, ros.; and children, under fourteen years of age, 6s. ; together with clothes and food. The daily wages of mowers were 4d. with food and 6d. without; reapers, 3¢@. with food and 4d. without? Fifty years later statutable rates have risen, as also the value of the clothes allowed. The legislature merely ordered a maximum rate of remuneration to be fixed by proclamation, leaving with the justices the option of sanc- tioning lower rates in districts where they had been hitherto prevalent. A tendency on the labourer’s part to curtail his hours of work is guarded against by a recognition of the employer’s right to fine his workpeople for any dilatoriness in recommencing their duties after the different periods for repose and recreation. The Act of 1495 was, how- ever, repealed the following year,? being found to press hardly on the wage-earning class, during a period of inflated corn prices. In 1514, however, it again came into force,* the wages of the higher servants in husbandry becoming, however, slightly raised, but those of the others remaining the same as before. Hours of work were definitely defined, being from sunrise to nightfall in winter, and from 5 a.m. to 7 p.m. in summer, with the usual times for repose and food. The State continued to display the same obtrusive interest in the wearing apparel of the peasantry as it had done before. Apparently, in these times of general asperity of manners, and uncouthness of speech, the only means of distinguishing the ‘“ quality” from the 18 Hen. VI. c. 24317 Ed. IV. c. 1; 4 Hen. VIL. c. 23. ? 23 Hen. VI. c. 13. 5 tr Hen. VII. c. 22. Repealed by 12 Hen. VII. c. 3. “ 6 Hen. VIII. c. 3. Repealed by 7 Hen. VIII. c. 5, and 5 Eliz. c. 4. ® 37 Ed. III. c. 9 and 14; 3 Ed. IV. c. §; 8 Ed. IV.c. 2; 12 Ed. IV. c. 4; 22 Ed. IV. c. 1; 1 Hen, VIIL c. 14; 6 Hen. VIII. c. 1; 7 Hen. VIII. c. 63 24 Hen. VIII. c. 133 13 Eliz. c. 19; 39 Eliz. c. 18, all deal with the national dress. 82 : Theft of the Sick Funds 33 a “ quantity ” was by differences of dress. By soliciting the intervention of the legislature in this matter, our aristocracy advertised the inability of its blue blood to assert itself by natural agencies. The dress of the ‘peasant was a combination of cloth pantaloons and stockings, called trunk hose, jacket or coat buttoned and fastened round the waist by a leathern belt, and a cloth bonnet. That the material of a man’s jerkin did not exceed the price of 2s. the broad yard, that his hosen cost no more than 1s, 2d., and that his belt was not “harneysed with silver,” or that his wife’s apparel was devoid of ornament or embroidery, and that the plight of her kerchief was worth 1s. only, were apparently the only proofs of their lowly origin.! On the other hand, to be seen in a fur cloak, fringed, or silk hose, a garded shirt, or a pinched partlet of linen, was proof that, however vulgar their wearer might be, he was either of the degree of knighthood, or one so anxious to strut in peacock’s ~ plumes, that he would risk “heaven’s great displeasure,” ? as well as three days’ confinement in the stocks, to do so.8 It is now evident that the landlords had established their proprietor- ship to the labour of the industrial classes, and the question arises whether the latter had retained all that they had stipulated for by the bargain. Popular rights over the soil still existed, but they were vested in a middle class of the rural population, which had by now become completely distinct, both from the seigniorial and industrial sections of the community. By successfully agitating for the liberty to wander, the rural labourers, as I have already shown, had severed the nexus between the land and themselves. The only property remaining to them, and it was a valuable one, was that afforded by their muscles and skill. This they could still barter for a livelihood by employing it on the soil, but the soil itself had gone from them for ever. Had they been wise in thus divesting themselves of their interest in the land? They had originally exchanged it for the benefits afforded them by seigniorial pro- tection in times of peril. Now that violence was repressed by the strong arm of the Constitution, what advantage could seigniorial protec- tion. afford them? Were there any circumstances in their humble existence which still needed this protection, and, if so, had they powers of enforcing it? I hold that these questions can be answered in the affirmative. ‘It is true that the monopoly of their labour was no longer seigniorial, but national; the machinery for enforcing it no longer manorial, but constitutional. The form of property still remaining to them was wholly dependent on their health and prosperity, and when 13 Ed. IV.c. 5, Rot. Parl. v. 505. 22 Ed. IV. c. 1, Rot. Parl, vi, 220. 2 So expressed in 3 Ed. IV. c. 5. § t Hen. VIII. c. 14. 84 Annals of the British Peasantry either of these possessions deserted them, they were entitled to support at the hands, not only of the seigniorial interest, but of every employer of labour. Only by their own fault, not merely by their misfortunes, could they forfeit that support. It was, therefore, the duty of the State to clearly define, under every circumstance, whether fault or misfortune was the cause which deprived a person of his sole remaining means of livelihood. Ifthe former proved to be the cause, it was the State’s office to punish him as an offender; if the latter, it was its duty to oblige the employer to support him. The landlords themselves never disputed the justice of this polity, and have never evaded the obliga- tions which it imposed upon them. The burden of maintaining the artisan and labourer in their times of distress has rested on the shoulders of employers from the days of the servile system to those of the workhouse system. All the heptarchical legislation is eloquent of this principle; all the poor laws are based on it, and all the modern Employers’ Liability Acts recognise it. I pass over the Wars of the Roses, an interseigniorial contest, in which the farmers and labourers took but a languid interest, and from which they derived neither benefit nor loss. Both Warwick and March had given orders to spare the common people, and, as is usually the case, civil strife, unlike invasion, had been less inimical to the interests of the rank and file than to those of the capitalist and trader. I come now to an event in English history which was fraught with the gravest consequences to our English labour class. I mean the loss of the national poor funds, by the plunder of the monastic treasuries. However prosperous the times, however ample the oppor- tunities for employment, and however cheap the necessaries of life, sickness and old age must have reduced a large proportion of the masses to a dependence for their livelihood on the resources of the rich. It has already been said that a third portion of the tithes had been originally entrusted to ecclesiastical agencies for this purpose. But it must be here admitted that Lord Selborne and other reliable authorities have demonstrated that there is no conclusive evidence to establish what is technically known as the quadripartite, or even the later tri- partite, distribution of these dues. In my History of the Landed Interest, and other works, I have laid before the reader as impartially as Iam able the Jvos and cons of this problem. Here it is sufficient for my purpose if I base the responsibility of the monastic clergy for this duty on the unassailed assertions of an Anglican bishop. Thus Dr. Stubbs briefly collates the various evidences tending to prove that alms-deeds were a religious duty, incumbent, if not by law, at any Theft of the Sick Funds. 85 rate by conscience, on all the servants of God.t These consist (r) in the instructions of Pope Gregory to St. Augustine, urging him and his bishops to set apart a fourth part of the Church’s income for the poor ; (2) in the ecclesiastical legislation of the 14th century purporting to enforce the same object; (3) in the regulation of Archbishop Strat- ford in the same century? as to the disposal of the tithe; and (4) in the legislation of Ethelred’s Witenagemot, decreeing the disposal of a third of the tithes in the relief of God’s poor and the needy ones in thraldom. But on such evidences as these I take up a position which Dr. Stubbs would possibly be reluctant to assume. For I hold that they afford reasonable grounds for concluding that a portion of the tithe was, from the earliest times, set apart for the relief of the national poverty (mzseris Jaicis is the expression used in a charter of tithes granted by King Ethelwulf).2 I do not deny that the monastic almoners, by whose agency it was distributed, were largely assisted by supplementary contributions, bestowed by every English sovereign under his office of “kinsman and advocate of tke poor”; by the col- lected alms of mendicant friars wandering about in search of charity, and by those of the beneficed clergy who were the authorized recipients of local donations. Take, for example, the records of some single parish. In the manor of Penrith, alluded to by me on another occasion, there was the poll pence or Church rate; there were the penalties raised on the violation of public order, and there was the interest of the parish stock ;* all funds whence contributions might be drawn for the relief of the parish paupers. When, in the 15th cen- tury, the people of Penrith wanted to rebuild the parish church, they had recourse to the king’s brief and extra rates, and no doubt it was usual, in times of extraordinary want, to draw upon these same resources. But the tithe offerings were the regular and ordinary means of poor relief. Such Acts as 15 Rich. II. c. 6, and 4 Hen. IV. c. 12, ordain that, under the direction of the diocesan, convenient sums of money should be set apart in every parish for the aid of its poor parishioners, and that it was to be compulsory on each incumbent to keep hospitality in his own particular benefice. But whence, if not from his income or tithes, 1 Constitutional History of England, vol. iii. ch. xxi. p. 619, 4th ed. W. Stubbs, D.D. 2 1342. 3 Ethelwulfs donation has been pronounced as having nothing to do with the tithe; but even Dr. Stubbs admits that it showed the sanctity of the tenth portion. Zd., vol. i. ch. viii. p. 249. 4 For particulars of what the parish stock consisted, see Lever’s Sermon before the King tt 1550. 86 Annals of the British Peasantry could the incumbent obtain the necessary funds? Moreover, as Dr. Burn, in his History of the Poor Laws, informs us, “in those Acts of Endowment of Vicarages, which are yet extant, we generally find that the bishop did apportion, so near as could reasonably be estimated, one third part to the vicar, and the other two parts to the religious houses for these purposes.” ? Even more compulsory still was it on these older institutions, such as abbeys and monasteries, to maintain the poor in their own peculiar ecclesiastical district. That particular portion of a monastic edifice which Lingard compares to the Greek Xenodochium, should by right have been the relieving office of the poor, and a source of temporary refreshment to the traveller. Consequently, the statute book, not once or twice only, gives proof of State interference, when these apartments came to be utilised for improper purposes. For example, under the pretence of hospitality, some religious houses were being converted into hostelries for the great. For this reason, as early as the year 1257, the sheriffs were made to swear, on entering office, that they would not take anything but meat, such as was wont to be brought to table, and but for one day at most, that they would not carry with them, to the place where they meant to lodge, above five horses, nor lodge with any person who had less than £40 a year in land, nor with any religious house that had less than 100 marks in land and rent.2. The neglect of these conditions called into existence the statute of 3 Ed. I.c. 1; and in 35 Ed. I. st. ic. 1,and 2 Hen. V.c. 1, not only is the abuse of them exposed, but the objects for which these religious hospitals were instituted are minutely specified. It was in vain for charitable landlords to cope with the distress, even of these early days, by periodical distributions of food to some hundreds of indigent neighbours. The proceeds from Whitsuntide church ales and the “Gatherings with Hobbyhorse” at Christmastide festivals? were wholly inadequate. It was not even enough that a large propor- tion of medizeval wills contained a species of voluntary death duties in the form of bequests to the local poor. Although at one time there had been nearly five hundred almshouses in the country, yet, on account of the abuses of their monastic staffs, many of them had begun to languish for want of funds long before the Reformation. It is not, therefore, my purpose to insinuate that the tithe offerings were ever sufficient for the wants of the national poor. Merely do I urge that they were a large portion of the funds raised for that purpose. 1 History of the Poor Laws, p. 4. JR. Burn, LL.D., ed. 1764. 2 Madox’s Hist. Eccl., ii. 147. 8 See Ashley’s Economic Hist. and Theory, pt. ii. ch. v. p. 311. Theft of the Sick Funds 87 If this be so, what a terrible crime was the sequestration of all this wealth! No wonder that an increasing poor rate has hung round our necks ever since, interfering with our agriculture and commerce, weighing us down in our competition with foreign producers, a constant source of riots and strikes ; the curse, in fact, of an unexpiated crime. Our troubles began almost immediately after the plunder of the monasteries in the third decade of the 16th century. There were strong constitutional reasons in favour of their dissolution, but there were none in favour of the misappropriation of their endowments. For the first act the nation must take the blame; for the last, the king alone was answerable. Against the errors which had crept in with the Christian religion there had long been a growing protest, which ulti- mately found a constitutional expression in the Articles of Religion. Serious statesmen had begun to feel that the nation was losing touch. with the original evidences of the faith. The illiterate classes had derived from such object lessons as miracle plays, mysteries, and morali- ties, an inaccurate and unreliable smattering of sacred history. These the earliest forms of our national drama had been evolved from the showy ritual of our collegiate churches. They had soon lost their religious significance and become theological. The monastic play- wtights ceased to regard themselves as preceptors and became agitators. When they saw the people wearying of their performances, they de- generated into mere vulgar farcists. Thoughtful and holy persons began to realise that religious instruction was not to be derived from the grotesque attitudes of Cain’s ploughboy or the coarse jocularity of Noah’s wife.* For such reasons, probably, Erasmus now became bent on introducing a Bible rendered in such language as, in the words of Mr. Green, “ the weaver might repeat at his shuttle and ploughmen sing at their work.”? Accordingly, he translated the New Testament into the vulgar tongue, ‘'yndale afterwards completing what Erasmus had begun by presenting his countrymen with the Lutheran version of the Holy Scriptures. By these means the heresies of the continental doctrines became patent to the meanest understanding. A large and influential party began to clamour against the misappropriation of the monastic funds for improper ' purposes. The English soil was said to have become the milch cow of a foreign despot, and Henry VIII. required it to serve the same office for himself. In order to effect this, he saw that he must usurp the Pope’s position. A difference of opinion concerning the ethical problems 1 See Mr. L. G. Bolingbroke’s interesting article on Pre-Elizabethan plays, in the Norfolk and Norwich Arch. Society’s Original Papers, vol. xi.. pt. ili., 1892. 2 History of the English People, p. 341. J. R. Green, 1891. 88 Annats of the British Peasantry raised by the divorce of Catherine had long since broken off the interchange of cordialities between Rome and Windsor—Wolsey had fallen and Thomas Cromwell had usurped his position at the king’s ear. His project was to elevate his royal master to the exalted post occu- pied by the Sovereign Pontiff over the Anglican Communion. At the entreaty of his court, Henry assumed the title of Defender of the Faith, and carried out his mission by appropriating the funds which, century after century, had been accumulating for the propagation of that faith. Anticipating opposition, he first enslaved the clergy, then terrorised his people, and finally forced through Parliament the Act of Dissolution. But.the English statesmen of this period, gagged though they were, left on record the fact that they never intended the king to misappro- priate the confiscated property. The improper use to which it had been put by its monastic trustees had justified its removal into safer keeping, but not its appropriation for purposes antagonistic to the terms of the original bequest. The funds with which the religious houses had been endowed were for masses and prayers for the dead, their revenues from tithes partly for the relief of the poor, and partly for the distribution of hospitality. A glance at the legislation dealing with the subject assures us that the king, in his office of Advocate and Kinsman of the Poor, was selected as the most fitting substitute of the monks, not so that he might utilise their estates to gratify his own avarice, but that he might distribute them as a trustee of State charity. From 27 Hen. VIII. c. 25, for example, we learn that he is given all the monasteries which have not lands above £200 a year, “to have and to hold, with all their rights, etc., to himself, his heirs, and assigns to do and use therewith, his will and their own wills, to the pleasure of Almighty God, and to the honour and profit of this realm.” In one clause all the old rights and dues are preserved ; in another all to whom the king or his representatives give, grant, let, or demise a portion, are compelled, under penalties, to keep up the ancient hospitality of these institutions under the original economy. Moreover, eighteen fresh bishoprics were to have been endowed, seemingly implying that a large proportion of the confiscated property was to have been maintained in ecclesiastical keeping. Indeed, Henry’s Government, in deciding to pension off the monks without the preliminaries of a Suspensory Bill, proved itself more conservative of vested interests than that of the present day. Lastly, some of the Channel ports were to have been fortified and the highways repaired, possibly with that portion of the endowments which had been bequeathed for purposes, by then, found antagonistic to Protestant views. This would account for the fierce opposition, culminating in Theft of the Sick Funds 89 bloodshed, which sprang up throughout the northern counties, where the views of the Lollards and other reforming clergy had not so deeply penetrated. Such a State policy, as I have now attempted to demon- strate as having been projected, is reconcilable with the discoveries of recent research. Professor Ashley, for example, contends that, in the State interference with the craft guilds, their endowments were left unmolested and only their religion was attacked. Did this seizure of one-fifth of the English soil increase destitution amongst the industrial class? This.is the question which we have set ourselves to answer in this chapter. Was the robbery of the monastic endowments the prime cause of the ensuing poor laws? Both Hallam and Ashley repudiate any such suggestion. “The legislation,” says the latter, “ beginning in 1536, was the English phase of a general Euro- pean movement of reform, and the period when our history of the poor law began to diverge from that of the rest of Europe was rather the 17th than the 16th century.” I shall deal with this phase of the problem in due course. Let us admit, for the nonce, that what Professor Ashley relates is true. Let us also recognise that the beginning of English poverty considerably antedated the misappropria- tion of the monastic doles. The religious houses had long regarded beggary as a grievance. It had been recognised and classified by the legislature in 1530. “Throughout the realme,” begins the preamble of the statute of that year,! “vagabonds and beggars have of long increased, and daily do increase, in great and excessive numbers.” It goes on to encourage, by means of begging licenses, the solicitation of alms by the aged and impotent, and to sternly prohibit the practice in the case of the vagabond and idle. Moreover, it enforces the compulsory relief of the unfortunate, and the compulsory maintenance in work of the idle in every hundred of the kingdom. This affords proof that the attention of the legislature had become attracted to the fact that indiscriminate almsgiving was an inadequate method of dealing with the national poverty, even before the dissolution of the monasteries. But, after the dissolution, how to cope with this evil became the burning question of the hour. What could otherwise have been expected when 50,000 monks, unused to active industry, but excellent administrators of our national charities, had been suddenly converted into what Eden describes as ‘“ miserable pensioners.” The king had done this deed with his eyes open. Even whilst only gloating over the display of possible plunder afforded by the Valor Lcclesiasticus, in 1535, entreaties were 1 22 Hen. VIII. c. 12. 22 Hen. VIII. c. 10 alludes to another tax on the purse- strings of the benevolent at this period ; viz., the incursions of those pauper aliens, the gipsies. go Annals of the British Peasantry pouring in. from his Commissioners to preserve to the poor that “ great relief and rich education” which they derived from the monks. With such expostulations ringing in his ears, Henry VIII. in an incredibly short space of time, ‘hurled away,” as Professor Rogers expresses it, “in the wanton waste of a boundless extravagance,” the foundations on which the happiness and prosperity of an entire class were based, Unfortunately, he had set in motion another agency for cheating the labourer out of his livelihood. For sixteen years he and the advisers of his son were busily engaged in debasing the coinage. The hoarding propensities of his father had appreciated the purchasing powers of wages. This process was reversed when the value of money was lessened by its debasement. The small rise in the statutable rates of labour afforded no equivalent advantages. Moreover, other influences were at work tending to increase the numbers of those applying for rural employment, and to lessen the requirements for that class of labour. A Baltic trade in imported corn had arisen, which gave a fresh impetus to the practice of converting arable land into sheep walks. The fresh owners of the Church lands had introduced a commercial spirit into the English soil. ‘‘Though princes,” as Eden asserts, “had bought cheap of their prelates, they had sold dear to their favourites.” Our landed gentry had never before and never since sunk so low in public estimation. A class or an individual is in dire circum- stances when society considers them past praying for. But in the reign of Edward VI. the landlords had arrived at that still more desperate stage when they had to be prayed against. There can be only this one interpretation of the “ Prayer for Landlords” used at that time.? It would indeed have promoted anarchical tendencies if the Deity had been directly called upon to confound the knavish tricks of the class which still monopolised the powers of local government. In letter, therefore, this prayer besought Heaven to endow “ covetous worldlings” with more humane views. But in spirit it was an appeal for Divine protection on behalf of those who were being rack-rented or otherwise oppressed by the owners of realty. Nobody can assert that it was not needed. ‘ After the Reformation,” says Mr. Hubert Hall, “a violent land fever raged in town and country. The Crown was a ready seller, and found still more eager buyers. These new men, officials, lawyers, usurers, jostled the ancient owners impoverished by mismanagement and extravagance and each other.” ? All alike joined in an attempt to wrest from the sub- 1 Sundry Godly Prayers for Divers Purposes, sub voc. ** Prayer for Landlords,” Edward VI. Prime? of Private Prayer. 2 Society in the Elizabethan Age, p. 27.. H. Mall, 1888. Theft of the Sick Funds gI tenant his vested interest or fixity of tenure in the land. When they could not effect this, they introduced a system of rack-rents, and drove the unemployed off their manors. How unlike is such a description tc that of the benign rule of the mitred abbot. “There was no person,’ Says a contemporary writer, “ that came to them (the monks) heavy or sad for any cause, that went away comfortless; they never revenged them of any injury, but were content to forgive it freely or upon sub: mission ; and if the price of corn had begun to start up in the market they made thereunto with wain loads of corn, and sold it under the market to poor people, to the end to bring down the price thereof.’ Those who lacked seed corn or bread went as a matter of course tc the monastery and borrowed them till such times (after harves' generally) that they. could repay them. If a poor man’s ox or hors¢ died, he obtained another on easy credit from the monks, If he required help to start him in a married life, he got it from the Abbey “Thus,” adds the chronicler, “they (the monks) fulfilled the works o charity .in all the country round about them to the good example of al lay persons that have now taken forth other lessons.” } No wonder, therefore, that after the annihilation of monastic doles the country began to be overrun with gangs of valiant beggars, whc inundated the towns, or extorted alms from isolated householders. Nx wonder that Henry found the Vagrant Act of his father’s reign toc lenient, and had to keep on increasing the stringency of this class 0 legislation. In vain did he do to death no less than 72,000 thieves. In vain did his son Edward chain, brand, and beat starving mendicants. In vain did his daughter Elizabeth “truss up rogues apace,” causing thi gallows to swallow up some 4oo of these gentry yearly. It was not a: -if the depredations of the unemployed were only confined to the con gested centres of population. A reign of terror existed as far distant a: Somersetshire, where farmers, armed to the teeth, watched night anc day over crops and sheepfolds for fear of rapine. The religiou: instruction and eleemosynary support of the monastic clergy had beer eradicated from England’s soil, and it was only natural for that soil tc yield for years afterwards crops of vagabond thieves. Indeed, thes people became in time a topic both for the historian and the artist Their numerous subterfuges had been exposed, and their various grade: and distinctions scheduled, by no less important an authority than Martir Luther. The picturesque vagaries of their ragged garb inducec 1 Cole MSS., vol. xii. p.8. Zhe Fall of Religious Houses. 2 27 Hen. VIII. c. 25. 3 Harrison’s Description of England, p. 186. 41 Ed. VI. c. 3. 92 Annals of the British Peasantry Rembrandt to etch twelve different representations of them. Long before the days of mouchers and their doss and padding kens, as many as twenty-eight forms of begging imposture were existent in the north of Europe. Among that “raingeing rabblement of rascals” which infested our English kingdom, there were (besides nine distinctions of female imposture) rufflers, uprightmen, hookers or anglers, rogues, freshwater mariners,! counterfeit cranks,? dommerars, jackmen, and patricios, all belonging to the male genus of beggar.® The English statute book classes under the head of ‘ vagrants,” proctors, pardoners, heremites, clerks, pilgrims, procurators, patent gatherers, collectors for gaols, hospitals, etc., university scholars and discharged soldiers and sailors, all these if without sufficient authority ; idle persons using divers and subtil, crafty and unlawful games and plays, such as fortune tellers, physionomists, physicists and palmists, rufflers calling themselves serving men, able-bodied labourers on tramp, unlicensed pedlars, tinkers, petty chapmen, and all who deal in pins, points, laces, gloves, knives, glasses, tapes, and coney skins ; fencers, bear-wards, minstrels, play-actors, and jugglers; Irish and Mannish vagabonds, Egyptians, and seafaring men pretending losses at sea. The classification of the Scottish statute book is as follows :—Un- licensed thiggers and lippers, lymmers, maisterful beggars, sornaires, overlyars, fules, feinzied fules, fules that are not bardis, arbairdes, rinners about, persons ganging about using subtil, crafty, and unlauch- ful plays, as jugulairie, and fast and lous; Egyptians, or any other that feinzies them to have knowledge of charming, prophecie, or uthér abused sciences, yuhairby they persuade the people they can tell their weirds, deaths, and fortunes, and sik uther phantastical imaginations; all persons haill and starke in bodie and abill to work, alledging themselves to have been herried or burnt in sum far pairt of the realme; uthers nouther havand land nor maisters, nor using any lauchful marchaundise, craft, or occupation, minstrells, sangsters, and tale tellers, not avowed in speciall service be sum of the lords of Parliament, or great Burrowes ; vagabonds, schollars, schipbroken men, and lastly, the most formidable of any, the proverbial “‘ beggar on horseback.”4 It was no earthly use for the legislature to insist merely that all 1 Shipwrecked, it was said, on Salisbury Plain. 2 Imaginary victims of the Falling Sickness, 8 A Caveat or Warning for Common Cursetors, vulgarly called Vagabonds. Thos. Harman, 1566. 4 From the description of this last-mentioned scoundrel, he was of a sporting propensity, being a mounted poacher, armed to the teeth, and accompanied by dogs of chase. Theft of the Suk Funds 93 these wandering impostors must work—the difficulty was to find them any work todo. It was worse than useless to legalise, by grants of begging licenses, their novel and only occupation of terrorising honest people. More essential was it that some individual, or group of individuals, should be rendered responsible for the good behaviour of the, submerged tenth in each locality. A regular system of relief was wanted, not an organised process of beggary. The Poor Law of 1536! was another step in the right direction, but the goal was still distant. By making each local community responsible for the maintenance of it: own poverty, the principle of a compulsory assessment loomed big in the distance. If voluntary contributions fell short, the community was fined, and therefore it took good care that they should not fal short. Moreover, by throwing back the pauper on to the district of his birth the manorial principle was retained. Every villein had once belongec to some particular manor, and when he had become incapacitated fo1 work, he had found relief from local ecclesiastical sources. By re placing the word manor in the statute book by the word parish neither of these ancient usages were affected. |The same seignioria authorities which had formerly regulated the terms of the poor man’: employment in their office of magistrates assessed the terms of hi labour now. By leaving the machinery of his eleemosynary relief ir the hands of the clergy and churchwardens, the same ecclesiastica agencies were at work as of yore. The lordless man, who wanderec forth to try if stout limbs and heart were more marketable commoditie: in the congested centres of trade, had still to proceed with utmos caution. Though not in such peril as his prototype, the abscondin; weahl, it was rash of him to start without the funds necessary to defra his expenditure till he found work. If unlucky in his search, an hou would come when begging or starving were his unpalatable alternatives The mere fact of absconding did not, as in 1360, render him liable t the punishment of branding. But his refusal of some uncongenial offe of employment—an offence only punishable with imprisonment il 1349—would now subject him to the same form of disfigurement. Iti very evident that a careful distinction was observed between thos: unemployed who were willing, and those unemployed who wen unwilling, to work. When the former were encountered on tramp or it search of work, or even resting idly indoors in the hope of work findin, them, they were gently dealt with under some system of outdoor relief but, for the unwilling, there was either a choice of hard unpaid labou or the indelible disgrace of the branding iron. A wandering labourer 1 27 Hen. VIII. c. 25. 2 Repealed in 1547. 94 Annals of the British Peasantry therefore, had to be careful neither to beg for bread, nor to refuse an offer of work. If he beggéd, he was subjected to a whipping at the cart’s tail, after which he was presented with a testimonial of his shame ‘and passed on to the next village in the direction of his late home. On producing the evidence of his castigation, he received a night’s board and lodging on the way. If he loitered, the upper part of the gristle of his right ear was cut away. If he repeated the offence, he was put to death asa felon. Ifhe got to the place of his birth alive, he was compelled to sojourn there, work or no work, for three years. ‘Truly the progress of an enterprising, but unlucky, young giant on the road to better himself is a pitiable story! Fucilis est descensus Avernt. The steps from “free labourer” to “ruffler,” and from “‘ruffler” to “enemy of the Commonwealth,” were a vast deal easier than those of the apprentice, Dick Whittington, to a home in the Guildhall. Yet the dissolution of the monasteries must have rendered home-life unbearable to many of the rural poor in the times under our notice. Rents were increased, cottagers’ rents amongst others. More, writing his Utopia in 1516, gives a most pitiful account of the medieval eviction. The Tudor crofter’s or the Tudor cottier’s messuage was re- quired for the wants of the sheephold. Husbands, wives, woful mothers, and fatherless babes had to make way for the ewe and lamb, and so the simple goods which had taken the savings of more than one generation to collect, had to be disposed of at a forced sale, and their owners turned out to starve or steal in the highways. If this, occasionally, was the heartless practice of the feudal landlords, what widespread misery must there not have been, when it became the general practice of the fresh landowners? Harrison gives us an insight into what had occurred, when he speaks of the people beggared by the action of those ‘“‘covetous of a better economy in their commons, holds, and tenures,” declaring that the final condition of these victims was that of stark thieves, whom the gallows soon swallowed up.1 Absentee landlords were expending their surplus cash in the capital. The peasant, like old Henry Jenkins,? had often to lament that there was no longer a lord abbot’s chamber, where he might occasionally feast on the quarter of a yard.of roast beef, and the wassail of a black jack. The recent attempts of Henry’s ministers to regulate the prices of butcher’s meat, and dairy produce,* would have been, even if both these laws had remained in force, poor substitutes for the lost hospitalities of the abbey kitchens. Indeed, Henry himself acknowledged the futility 1 Economic History and Theory, book ii. ch. v. p. 354. Ashley. * Gilpin’s Morthern Tour, ii. 185, 324 Hen. VIII. c. 3, and 25 Hen. VIII. c. 1. Theft of the Sick Funds 95 J of such legislation by suspending in 1535,1 and repealing in 1542,2 the one ‘relating to butchers. But it was not only in a poor man’s township that monastic benevolence was missed. Most of the religious houses contained a casual ward for the tramp. At such institutions the homeless wanderer need not have presented the credentials of a scourged back to obtain a night’s refreshment and a replenished purse to cheer him on his departure. No awkward questions were asked of one struggling towards the goal of a lucrative employment. The kindly treatment, the elevating society of holy men, and the parting words of sound advice must have exercised a wholesome influence on the simple rustic, when he set out the following morning to trudge along the highways in the company of the “idle and loitering serving men,” whom the abolition of liveries had turned loose on society to corrupt the morals of all with whom they came in contact.® The promiscuous and indiscriminate charity of the monastic orders has been condemned. Some contemporary of theirs (Fuller, if I am not mistaken) described them as relieving the poverty they themselves had created. But we must bear in mind that, had it not been for this spirit of charity and hospitality inculcated by the medizval monks, and imitated by the benevolent long after the monasteries had vanished, the harsh laws would have driven not only a section of the peasantry as that under the leadership of Kett, but the whole class, into armed rebellion. The shocked economists who framed the statute of 1 Ed. VI. c. 3, recognised that, in feeding the beggar, people had been imitating the monastic practice of cherishing beggary. But that prevalence of “pitie and mercie,” which the wording of the Act has dubbed “ foolish- ness,” must have respited many a desponding wretch from the terrible punishments which it brought into force. It is a measure which in sooth bristles with severities. For an individual of either sex to be idle three days after refusing work was to incur the brand mark V/, and to be sentenced to two years’ slavery. And what slavery! The most menial work could be enforced by a master, whose powers included the administration of a dog’s punishment, a dog’s diet, and a dog’s neck ornament. One act of insubordination brought upon the unhappy culprit a life-long slavery. The brand mark §& left him no plea of a ' first fault, if, in desperation at his hopeless condition, he invited deatk by offending once more. To loiter three days in a strange place was to incur the risk of the branding-iron, of being sent home as a vaga. 1 27 Hen. VIII. c. 9. 2 33 Hen. VIII. c. 11. 3 Henry VILL. and the English Monasteries, vol. ii. p. 500. F. A. Gasquet, \ 96 Annals of the British Peasantry bond, and of living and dying there the common drudge of the parish. There is happily, however, evidence to show even in this severest of poor laws, that only the most recalcitrant and robust were liable to its severity—that an opening was left for mercy, if a spark of that virtue lingered in the breast of an employer. The really infirm were to be removed on horseback, or in chariots, to the place of their birth, there to be boarded out, and tended ‘by the devotion of good people.” The partially disabled were to be distributed by the authorities amongst the employers of labour, and at least allowed to earn their food and lodging, if not wages. The wording of the Act rendered it easy for the clement to mistake hunger for partial infirmity, and to treat it accord- ingly. Thus we find that the unfortunate practice of a later age, viz. the “roundsman process,” was already in force, strangely associated almost in succeeding paragraphs with the still existent but already anachronous economy of the villein in gross. But, to the credit of our Tudor forefathers, even in the days when that old nursery rhyme of “ Hark, hark, the dogs do bark!” really did terrify householders into the belief that the beggars were coming into the township; when the ruffler was far more ubiquitous and formidable than his successor the highwayman, we find a strong sense of intolerance prevailing against such harsh remedies, which almost immediately swept them from the statute book, and reinstated the milder penalties of 22 Hen. VIII. c. 12. CHAPTER VIII THE REBELLION OF KETT E now again come to times of civil disturbance, to armed re- bellion in the north, south, east, and west of so-called Merrie England ; not one concerted action this time, but a series of isolated outbreaks, easier therefore of suppression than the great agrarian move- ment of 1381. The Lincolnshire rising in 1536 had been closely followed by that of Aske, commonly known as “The Pilgrimage of Grace to the Commonwealth.” The latter was succeeded by the outbreak of 1549 in Norfolk. Before that could be subdued the Devon and Cornish commons were giving trouble, and in 1568 the more serious insurrec- tion of the northern earls took place. Most of these disturbances were more or less religious. Even those of Norfolk and Devonshire were not entirely agrarian. The true cause of such widespread disaffection was certainly not clear, even to the Government of those times. The Duke of Somerset, writing of it to his friend the Ambassador at the Court of Charles V., expressed his inability to decide whether the dissolution of the monasteries, the ex- tensive game preserves of the gentry, or the illegitimate enclosure of commons, were at the root of the evil. There was every excuse for the Duke’s perplexity, for if the Devon men had been asked whether they were fighting for the restitution of the ancient religion, or of the ancient common rights, they would have had to hesitate before replying. The grievances of Kett and his followers were apparently purely agrarian ; yet, as we shall see later, when Kett came to tabulate his requirements, they included not only a revolution of the land laws, but a reformation of religious instruction. In my readers, who have just studied the condition of rural society, this news of widespread disaffection will create no surprise. Eager to adopt a more lucrative economy of husbandry, landlords had been attempting for some considerable time past to deprive the industrial classes of their rights over the English soil, This nefarious enterprise was not, however, confined to the seigniorial orders; much less was it the result of a general concerted action on their part. Unfortunately for the peace of the community, 98 Annals of the British Peasantry the practice of enclosing was at one and the same time both conducive to better farming and injurious to the interests of labour. Instances of the spoliation of commons were prevalent amongst the old landlords, as well as amongst the new. The Statutes of Merton and II. West- minster had been broken by occupiers of land, as well as by owners of manors; by the clergy as well as by the laity. Villeins oppressed villeins, copyholders were more often the evictors than the evicted. The whole difficulty originated in the discovery that the wool trade was the most lucrative employment of the times for the landed and agricul- tural capitalist. As Sir Thomas More described the situation in 1516:2 “Your sheep may be said now to devour men and unpeople not only villages, but towns.” “It was never merry with poor craftes- men since gentlemen became graziers,” was the popular way of putting the case. But when the poor man’s patience had become exhausted ; when his expectations of obtaining effectual legislative assistance had died out, he changed his tones and shouted angrily, ‘‘ Pluck down the enclosures.” What was the Government about in allowing things to come to such a pass? Here let me state a few facts in answer to those modern Radicals who accuse our former lawgivers of partiality for oligarchical interests. Our early English sovereigns hardly ever faltered from their original policy of pitting the commons against the nobles, so as to utilise the divisions between the two interests for the furtherance of their monarchical ends. Yorkist statesmen have been compared to the Whigs in their leanings towards democratic principles, and the Tudor statesmen possessed the same tendency. Both Wolsey and Cromwell were inimical to the seigniorial monopolies. Somerset, called by the people “the Good Duke,” was as favourable to the cause of the masses as is our present popular hero, Mr. Gladstone. The aim of Elizabeth’s advisers was to disperse and distribute the national wealth, instead of allowing it to accumulate in a few hands. In the case now before us the Government had never turned a deaf ear to the symptoms of agrarian discontent. Numerous measures had appeared in the statute book purporting to curtail the more obnoxious features of the enclosure system.3 The Inquisition of 1517 had been entirely confined to this subject. Somerset had issued a proclamation in 1548 sternly pro- hibiting the practice of illegal enclosing, the letting of houses to decay, and the converting of arable lands into sheep walks. He had wisely 1 The Ingutsition of 1517—Inclosures and Evictions, Edited from the Lans- downe MS., I. 153. J. S. Leadam, Trans. of the Royal Historical Society, 1892. 2 Utopia. (22. 3 4 Hen. VII. c. 195 7 Hen. VIII c. 13 25 Hen. VIII. c. 13; 27 Hen. VIII. c. The Rebellion of Kett 99 followed this measure up by the appointment of an agricultural com- mission, which, however, was unfortunately instructed to limit the sphere of its activity to the midlands. The earlier portion of this State interference with the malpractices of the landlords and their agricultural tenants had been evaded; the remaining portion of it caime too late. While the Court was thus laudably engaged in rectifying the statute book, Aske’s rebellion had broken out: while the Royal Commis- sioners of the later Inquisition were collecting valuable information in one part of the country, the “men with the clouted shoon” were already up in another. Let us first glance at such causes of the earlier outbreak as were agrarian. So far, in the history of the English farmer, copyholders only had acquired fixity of tenure. One of the demands put forward by the parliament of rebels assembled at Pomfret in 1536, was that the statute book should extend the same privilege to the lesser husband- men as it did to the superior ones. The custom prevailed for copy- holders to lease out part of their holdings to sub-tenants on a life tenancy, the latter paying a fine of admittance called the God’s penny. It was a charge similar to the old tallage of the nation, and was re- garded by the lessee as the token of his bargain with the lessor. Whatever was its origin, whether ecclesiastical or secular, it had, unfortunately, become interpreted by the lawyers into the price of a rue-bargain rather than the earnest money of each fresh contract. Besides the God’s penny another fine had come to be levied, known as the gressum. By raising its amount to a prohibitive price, landlords possessed the means of barring at will any renewal of these life leases. The rebels under Aske demanded that, at least, this form of tenancy should include the lives of a man’s widow and children. But no doubt they would have been best pleased if they could have obtained the consent of the legislature to the conversion of all tenancies-at-will into perpetual leases. What I have now said will explain the meaning of their proclamation, which ran as follows: “Claim ye old customs and tenant right to take your farms by God’s penny, all gressumes and heyhtnynges to be laid down.”! These, therefore, were the grievances which brought, almost daily, detachments of farmers, under the leader- ship of the parish priests, to Lord Dacre’s camp of insurgents at Pomfret. The causes of discontent in the later rising under Kett were more intricate. It was encroachments on the common arable field which now incensed the peasantry, not the hedging-in by a proprietor “ of his 1 Gaird, Z. and P., xi. 8933. Quoted by Mr. Leadam in his article for the Royal Historical Society, entitled 7he Jnquzsttion of 1517. 100 Annals of the British Peasantry own proper grounds, where no man hath commons.” ‘The latter was a practice declared by John Hales, one of the most eminent of the Royal Commissioners, to be beneficial to the commonwealth. But to fence off other men’s commons, to pull down houses of husbandry, and to convert lands from tillage to pasture, deprived the industrial classes of a chief source of livelihood and employment. The bawkes separat- ing the “lands” belonging to different proprietors in the common arable field gave employment to that large class of “delvers and dikers” which we read of as “swonken (toiling) full hard” in the Vision of Piers Plowman. It was in the common arable field that they found a means of pasturage for their swine and cattle at Lammas- tide, a period of the year when the unstinted herbage of the waste was liable to become exhausted. On the other hand, the advanced farmer of this period was equally disgusted with an economy which suffered him to grow no other crop but what might be harvested before Lammas Day. Though the turnip was already a garden product, it had not as yet found its way into the field. Nevertheless there were other remunerative crops, such as saffron, which the rights of com- mon pasturage on and after the 12th August prevented the farmer from cultivating. The grievance is summed up in a few pithy sentences by the husbandman in his imaginary dialogue with representatives of other industries in the year 1549: “I have knowen of late a docen plowes,” he says, ‘‘ within lesse compasse than 6 myles aboute me laide downe with in theise vii. yeares, and wheare xl. persons had theire lyvinges, nowe one man and his shephard hathe all, which thinge is not the least cause of theise uprors, for by theise inclosures men doe lacke livinges and be idle; and therefore for verie necessitie they are desirous of a change, being in hope to come thereby to somewhat, and assured, howe soever it befall with them, it cannot be no harder with them than it was before.” ? The valuable information derived by the Commission was, as I have shown, destined to come too late. Towards the end of the year 1536 the news of the Lincolnshire rising had travelled into Norfolk, creating there a widespread feeling of emulation. Sir Nicholas Myleham, sub- prior of Walsingham, and others, who had so far suppressed their in- dignation at the spoliation of the monasteries, saw in the deep-seated discontent of their poorer neighbours an instrument to effect their ends. They determined to fire the beacons, raise the countryside, and proceed by forced marches to help their brethren of the northern county. Their plans were divulged, the conspiracy was nipped in the bud, and 1 Tusser’s 500 Points of Good Husbandry. 2 A Discourse on the Common Weal of this Realm of England, 1581. W.G. The Rebellion of Kett IO] the ringleaders were executed at Norwich. Others, nothing daunted, attempted the task which had thus failed. In 1537 some of the Fin- cham malcontents proposed to ring the alarm bells and raise the people threatening their squire that if he did not join them they would make “a carte wey betwixt his hed and hys shulders.” In 1540 John Walker of Griston called upon his neighbours to furnish themselves with bells, cry, ‘‘ To Swaffham! To Swaffham!” marshal their forces in that town, and march through the country, ransacking the manor houses for arms on their way. Thus “harnessed,” they hoped to be in a position to strike an effectual blow against the enclosure system. These attempts, and several others too trivial to mention, also came to nought. But the widespread disaffection which they disclosed in- duced the Protector to take measures of precaution. In 1548 the Norfolk gentry were warned that they must provide a force of demi- lances, to be ready equipped and prepared to take the field at an hour’s notice. They were possibly too busy enclosing to attend to these directions. At any rate they disregarded them. In spite of the Act against combinations, added to the statute book this same year, bands of peasants in various parts of the country began “to pluck down men’s hedges and dispark their pleasure grounds.” The Protector caused a proclamation to be issued pardoning these seditious acts, but threaten- ing with death any one who repeated them. For this merciful attitude he was much blamed at the time;1 Hales and his commissioners also receiving abuse for the disturbances which appeared to follow in the wake of their enquiry. No doubt there was a strong feeling amongst the rebels that their violent course of action would be winked at in Court circles. But it is difficult to see how Somerset could have dealt differently with ignorant rustics who, after all, were merely rendering effectual that legislation against unjust enclosing which the Eas itself had failed to enforce. The first act in the drama of Kett’s rebellion was, as Russell has described it,? a mere village brawl at Attleborough. The fences of one Green of Wylby, being regarded as an encroachment of the common, were thrown down. So had been hundreds of other fences in different parts of the kingdom. In Kent, the other county famous in the annals of history for agrarian rebellion, the peasantry had soon repented of their violence, and were already availing themselves of the terms offered in the Protector’s proclamation. But the Norfolk commons 1 See Appendix to the Introduction, p. 40, Discourse of the Common weal of this Realm of England, W.S. Edited by the late Elizabeth Lamond, 1893. 2 Kett’s Rebellion in Norfolk. Rev. F. W. Russell, 1859. Compare also Nevill’s Furor, and Blomefield’s History of Norfolk. 102 Annals of the British Peasantry had more completely forgotten the severe lessons taught them by defeat in 1380. Secret meetings of the disaffected took place. Men began to look around for some competent leader to direct a general crusade against enclosing. Strangely enough, they found such an one in a per-: son who had himself been guilty of the practice. A long-standing feud had existed between two families in the parish of Wymondham. The Ketts and Flowerdews had once quarrelled over some trivial incident, and had never forgiven each other. Flowerdew, irritated to find one morning that the hedges by which he had severed a parcel of land from the common, had been demolished, and that Robert Kett, the tanner, who had similarly encroached, had escaped scot-free, bribed some of the malcontents to treat his old enemy as they had treated him. Kett, however, was evidently a favourite with his neighbours. The parties whom Flowerdew had suborned rued their bargain and divulged their unpalatable errand to the intended victim. They naively asked him to inflict the injury on himself. Kett fell in with their views, admitted the justice of their cause, was obliging enough to help to level his own hedges, and went so far as to tender his services as leader. With wild acclamation they accepted his offer, whereupon Kett, anxious, like all perverts, to prove his sincerity, and glad to pay out his antagonist in his own coin, helped them to destroy every hedge of Flowerdew’s which they had before spared. The next step taken by the new leader was to appoint his brother, a bold and determined butcher, his chief of the staff, and then to institute a camp. This seems to have been the common and first method of procedure in all popular risings. Like the cave of Adullam, it became the resort of every discontented individual within miles. Here ap- peared all the victims of the abolished livery system, all the rustics rendered desperate by arbitrary evictions or harsh labour laws, and all the ragamuffins who preferred a life of adventure to the every-day routine of honest work. At the head of this heterogeneous multitude the Ketts ‘crossed the river at Cringleford, and halted at Bowthorpe, some two miles distant from Norwich. The first test of their steadfastness of purpose was afforded the following morning, when Sir Edmund Wind- , ham, high sheriff of Norfolk and Suffolk, rode up and summoned the rebels, in the king’s name, to disperse peacably to their homes. He must have been a man of blunt speech and scant courtesy, for he so exasperated the insurgents that they attempted to lay violent hands on. him, and he only escaped a short shrift and a long drop by being well horsed. They followed up this vigorous action by destroying the fences, round the town-close of Norwich, and so well did this advertise their purpose, that a large stream of people poured out of the city and made The Rebethon of Kett 103 common cause with them. Frequent attempts to parley with the rebels were made, now by the mayor, and now by sundry popular county gentlemen. But it was of no avail, for the Ketts no doubt shrewdly suspected that the real object of these negotiations was to gain time. Thomas Codd, the mayor, seems to have acted with great discretion and promptitude. He sent a messenger post-haste to the court with news of the rising ; he consulted the other municipal authorities, and by their instigation refused the rebels’ request to pass quietly through the city. Now ensued a pause in the proceedings ; the insurgent host drew off; stopped the night in Eaton Wood, and finally settled down in camp at Mousehold Heath. The city authorities again assembled in the council chamber, and consumed much malt liquor over their troubled consultations. Around the new rebel camp, village bells were pealing, and beacon lights were blazing. Parties of Kett’s army spread over the country, destroying the fences and dovecotes, and beating up re- cruits. A better class of malcontents began to collect around the standard of revolt. Occupiers of considerable areas on the common arable field, and copyholders who had been deprived of sufficient pasturage rights on the wastes by the unstinted herds of large free- holders, joined the rendezvous at Mousehold Heath. Persons esteemed for religion, doctrine, virtue and innocency of life associated with the rebels. Thomas Codd himself, though never a party to their cause, frequently visited the camp. The Rev. Mr. Coniers, minister of St. Martin’s, acted as their chaplain, and read them morning and evening prayers. Robert Watson, an eminent divine, preached them eloquent sermons, and Thomas Aldrich, lord of Mangreen Hall, and brother of a Norwich grocer, afforded them the benefit of his sobering advice. Whether any of these respectable citizens were willing participators in the desperate designs of the conspirators is, to say the least, doubtful ; but their presence at Mousehold Heath exercised a restraining influence on the wild passions of the turbulent, and strengthened Kett’s hands when he sought to control excesses. Such were inevitable in so great a gathering of desperate men, but we must give the tanner the credit of ex- erting every energy which he possessed to suppress them. Indeed, from first to last, there is no single act of unnecessary violence which can be brought home to the leaders. Kett himself must have been a man well versed in his country’s history : so I argue from the class of government which he instituted:at Mousehold Heath. The open-air parliament under “the Oak of Reformation” was clearly a revival of the ancient Gothic justice seat. Here divine service was read daily, and rules of behaviour discussed. Here were invited, under a promise of complete 104 Annals of the British Peasantry immunity, all who cared to expostulate with the conduct of the in- surgents. Here also were drafted the various demands of the ring- leaders, In this lengthy list, containing twenty-eight grievances, one main division may be made; viz., between those that had a religious nature and those that had an agrarian one, The latter I need only discuss. The document was in the form of a petition to the king, and contained the names of the delegates from twenty-two hundreds in Norfolk and only one in Suffolk. The reforms in the agrarian economy petitioned for were briefly as follows : That the enclosure of saffron grounds should henceforth cease ; that the freeholders no longer be compelled to pay their landlord’s chief rents to his feudal superior ; that lords of manors “have no common rights; that the statutes of mortmain be enforced ; that the rent of reed and meadow grounds, the chief rents on the royal marshes, and the dues from copyhold tenures be reduced to what they were in the beginning of the reign of Henry VII. ; that Clause XXV. of Magna Charta, dealing with weights and measures be revived ; that the lords and not their tenants be held liable for the feudal dues of castle- ward, blench farm, etc. ; that no knight or esquire erect a dovecote unless entitled to do so by ancient custom; that small freeholders and copyholders be not deprived of their profits from the commons ; that the appointment of public officers be controlled by popular franchise instead of by private patronage; that the court leet instead of the court baron decide all agrarian disputes; that fines be reduced to ' mere nominal acknowledgments ; that all villeins be enfranchised 3 that the fishing and passage of rivers be common property ; that nobody be allowed to become the substitute of a feudatory without the qualifica- tion of an annual income of £10 in land; that the creation of fresh copyholds on purchased freeholds be rendered illegal; that tithes be commuted for a money payment ; that nobody under a certain rank be allowed to preserve rabbits in such a way as to damage his neighbours’ crops; that guardians be prohibited from selling the estates of their wards, and from controlling their marriages (the king’s wards only ex- cepted) ; that a check be imposed on the influence of a lord of the manor by preventing his acceptance of the post of bailiff to any other lord ;1 that a Royal Commission consisting of the aggrieved commons be appointed to reform the land laws, its members being remunerated for their services ; lastly, that no landlord be allowed to keep flocks 1 A common practice of the times. Canon The Hon. G, T. O. Bridgeman, in his History of Wigan, p. 127, gives a list of high-born persons who acted as chief steward on the parson’s manor, with three or four heads of good county families officiating as deputy stewards under him. See also my History of Landed Interest, Part I., p. 195, The Rebellion of Ket 105 and herds for purposes of trade, but merely for the use of his own household.! There was nothing very revolutionary in these demands, and so both Codd and Aldrich probably thought, for they subscribed their names to the memorial. Some of the grievances were already recognised by the statute book as reasonable. The enclosure of commons, for example, was a distinct contravention of the statute of II. Westminster. Others were the subject of almost universal complaint in the 18th and 19th centuries. Thus the practice, under the system of fines, of making large calls on the capital of an incoming tenant, just when he wanted it to stock his farm, evoked the indignant protests of Hartlib, Marshall, and many other enlightened agriculturists of a later date. If lords of manors had been forbidden common rights, there would have been no need now for such miserable substitutes for peasants’ pasturage as Small Holdings and Labourers’ Allotment Acts. One uniform standard for weights and measures has been the desire of the community ever since. The depredations caused by over-preservation, whether of pigeons and conies, or of hares and pheasants, has remained a bone of contention between landlord and tenant to the present day. The court of quarter sessions has long replaced both court baron and court leet to the general advantage of the community. The same will be said by many of Kett’s proposals for the extension of the franchise, for the emancipation of labour, for the abolition of wardships, marriages and other feudal dues, for the enfranchisement of copyholds, for the commutation of tithes, and for the preservation of commons,—all events foreshadowed by this petition and since conceded by the politicians of an enlightened era. _ Some of the other suggestions savour too much of the extreme economy advocated by our modern land nationalisers. The suggested appointment of a popular assembly hints at some institution like the Tiers Etat then in existence across the Channel.?. The proposal to pay the services of its members has not yet ceased to be the aim of a radical section of the electorate. The State control of the landlords’ profits, suggested in more than one clause of the petition, is the modern cry of those who advocate the three F’s and a land court. Kett and his advisers, in demanding a return to the rents prevailing at the beginning of the reign of Henry VII., probably omitted to take into account the lessened purchasing powers of money. The Government, as lately it has done in the case of tithes, might have agreed to compel the land- owners to pay such dues as came under the heading of seigniorial 1 See Kett’s Rebellion in Norfolk, pp. 47 et seg. Rev. F. W. Russell, 1859. 2 Histoire de France, vol. iii. p. 268 e¢ seg; and vol. vii. p. 190. H. Martin. 106 Annals of the British Peasantry liabilities ; but the rents of holdings would soon have risen until a readjustment of profits had taken place. We cannot, however, expect from a 16th century council of village politicians, the sound economical views on the nature of rents propounded by an Adam Smith or a David Ricardo. Comparing the concessions petitioned for by the Norfolk insurgents with those momentarily wrung from Richard II., by Wat the Tyler, their moderation is the most striking feature. Most of them, indeed, are accurate minutes, so to speak, of the bargain completed during the lapse of centuries between capitalist and labourer. Had they been conceded, there would have been established a strong basis for the purposes of future bartering, the necessity for which the advancement in the national methods of husbandry would have rendered imperative. So far, the movement had been but little different from a modern strike. Unfortunately, a strike at this period partook too much of the nature of conspiracy and riot to be legal.t_ Moreover, there were no strike funds, and an appeal for temporary help by this federation of peasants at Mousehold Heath was the equally illegal act of begging. Time was on the side of the authorities, and before a board of concili- ation could be formed, Kett, in order to feed his sixteen thousand followers, had to devise enterprises which led to much spoliation of property, and ultimately to severe reprisals. In order to victual his camp he had to devastate the surrounding country, sparing as much as possible the poor man’s produce, and seizing only the flocks and herds of the rich. There is no doubt that Norwich lay for a long time at his mercy ; and that the majority of his followers would have enjoyed nothing better than the sack of that city. The rank and file were impatient of further delay. The Suffolk insurgents, acting independently, had seized and temporarily held Yarmouth. The Cambridge peasants had risen, been defeated, and were being summarily and severely dealt with by the authorities. The temptation to march to their rescue must have been well-nigh overwhelming. Tidings of the Devonshire revolt were rife in the camp. Every day news arrived of the spread of the insurrection. Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Surrey, Essex, and Kent, were all known to be in a state of ferment ; so much so, in fact, that the king’s council was evidently unable to focus its attention on the Norfolk rising. The memory of the successes of the Swiss peasants filled the hearts of our English insurgents with the most extravagant expectations. 1 Compare 33 Ed. I. st.2; 2 and 3 Ed. VI.c. 15; 8 Hen. VI. c. 14; and 21 Hen. VIII. c. 20. These various Acts would have brought Kett and his followers under | the ban of the law, even though 3 and 4 Ed. VI. c. 5 had not as yet been enacted. The Rebellion of Kett 107 A warning of the dangers of procrastination was furnished by the dis- astrous results of the peasants’ war in Germany. The fact that Kett and his army were merely attempting to carry out the views of the Royal Commission must have buoyed them with the thought that the Executive secretly favoured their undertaking, Many fondly imagined that the Princess Mary, then residing at Kenninghall, was disposed to further their enterprise. Kett, Codd, Aldrich—in fact, all the moderate men—were losing their influence by thus delaying action. Parker’s good advice began to be suspected as interested. ‘One morning while he was preaching from his wonted pulpit in the oak, with his usual elegance of diction, a noisy section of his audience menaced him with personal violence. Matters began to look serious ; some rascals in the crowd proposed to make him the target of their arrows, and the preacher paused in natural trepidation. At this crisis the chaplain Coniers, with admirable presence of mind, chanted the first few words of the Te Deum. His choristers took up the refrain, and the sweet music asserted its usual soothing influence on the savage breast. The danger was averted for the moment ; but Parker had been too frightened to risk a repetition of the scene, and withdrew himself from the camp on the first favourable opportunity. Meanwhile, Kett’s emissaries were ubiquitous; visiting every rich person’s house within miles, levying contributions on the larders, and compelling the inmates to bake and brew for the wants of the Mouse- hold establishment. The slightest show of resistance brought the offender before Kett. Many a gentleman knew what it was to be the cynosure ofall eyes under the oak of Reformation. However temporary their detention, these persons underwent no pleasant experience. All prisoners had to walk to and from the camp between a double row of armed men, who, though stationed thus to protect, did not for- bear to intimidate their charges by pricking them with their pikes and spears. On several occasions their pretence of violence was so like reality that the victims barely escaped with their lives. Indeed, an unpopular gentleman named Wharton, and a usurious lawyer named Moulton, were so roughly handled, that a report was spread of their deaths. Some of the tanner’s following now came into armed collision with Sir Edmund Knevet at Hingham; and being worsted, returned to headquarters, and urged Kett to despatch a punitory force to the assault of Buckenham Castle, where Knevet, after his vigorous exploit, had fled for refuge. Kett, however, still followed a policy of forbear- 1 Why they should have done so, it is difficult to conceive, as their views and hers regarding the old religion were diametrically opposite. 108 Annals of the British Peasantry ance ; but his inactivity at this juncture gave cause for still further umbrage among his followers. The news of this episode, together with an account of the perilous position of the city, was conveyed to the King’s Council by one Leonard Sotherton, who had himself experienced rough usage at the hands of the rebels. By his advice the council despatched Yorke, the herald-at-arms, with orders to proceed post-haste to the insurgent head- quarters, and offer the king’s full pardon to all who would submit themselves and depart quietly, every man to his own home. The message appeared to be welcomed. Some shouted, “God save the King’s Majesty!” others fell on their knees and thanked both God and the king for their great clemency and pity. Kett, however, recognised that, as a ringleader, he was not likely to be included in the terms of this general amnesty. He therefore, in a few spirited words, stemmed the tide of submission, and called upon his followers to support him. The herald’ charged him with high treason, and summoned his sword-bearer to arrest him. The opinions of the peasants became divided ; a fierce clamour arose, and the alarmed herald withdrew from Mousehold Heath, accompanied by those who grasped at this chance of escape. By these means the camp was weeded of all persons of a desponding or moderate disposition, only the most desperate characters being left behind to carry on the movement. The Norwich citizens had barely time to fortify the city, and take steps to deprive the insurgents of their food supplies, before the second scene in the drama commenced. Kett directed an immediate assault on the city; but, finding his breaching cannon did less execution than he expected, he drew off and held a council of war, in order that measures might be concerted for a more effectual attack. But the townspeople’s expedient of cutting off the insurgent supplies had been so ably carried out that Kett could not afford to wait. Nor would the other side allow him to. In vain he solicited a few days’ truce, in order that he might re-victual his garrison on the heath. The mayor and aldermen no longer temporised, but sternly refused an armistice, and the disgusted rebels delivered a second and more determined assault on the city. Coming so suddenly, just after Kett had given evidence of being in great straits, it took the Nor- wich defenders by surprise. A wild hubbub arose. Amidst cries of “To arms! to arms! citizens; if ye be men, to arms!” the shouts of the assaulting army began to be audible. Halberts and pitchforks were already waving on the city hill. The enceinte of the defences had been penetrated, the rebel ordnance was thundering through the Bishop’s gate, looting had begun in the suburbs. The king’s herald saw that time now fought on the side of Kett, and that, momentarily, concessions must The Rebellion of Kett 109 be offered. Accompanied, therefore, by Codd, he hunicd out of the market place and repeated the royal offer of pardon. The victorious peasantry howled at him, shouted him down, and drove him out of the city. They then seized the mayor and some of the leading citizens, and hurried them off as hostages to Mousehold Heath. Kett de spatched messengers with the news of his success all over the neigh- bouring country, bidding them to beat up recruits and return with as little delay as possible to headquarters. Meanwhile, the citizens, fear- ing for the life of their mayor, despatched Aldrich on a mission of mediation to the rebel camp. This brave man fulfilled his task most effectually, at first advising Kett to release Codd, and then, when he found Kett in a hesitating mood, sternly rebuking him for his cruelty in thus risking the life of a faithful lieutenant of the king. The tanner does not seem to have intended to harm the mayor, but merely to retain him as a valuable pledge of his own ultimate safety. And, indeed, the later surrender of Codd might have become the means of negotiating his own pardon. But, carried away by Aldrich’s vehemence, he allowed Codd a safe pass into the city, whence the latter frequently and fearlessly returned to the camp in order to exert his influence in the cause of moderation and order. Kett now spent much of his time in parading his prisoners in front of the oak of Reformation. What his object in thus acting was, does not seem to be clear. But it caused much anxiety of mind among these unfortunate gentlemen, who were frequently menaced with the rope by Kett’s followers, and occasionally brutally ill-treated. Meanwhile succours under the command of William Parr, Marquis of Northampton, approached, and summoned the city to surrender. This news was brought to Codd, who had again been detained by Kett in the Mousehold camp. He was allowed to reply, and accordingly informed the marquis of his detention, and stated that the defence of the city had been deputed to one Augustine Steward, a very wise and careful man. The marquis thereupon entered Norwich, and assumed control of its defences. Some Italians in his following were sent out to reconnoitre, and coming into collision with the rebels, lost one of their leaders, who was seized and hanged to a tree, in the neighbourhood of the skirmish. Hardly had Northampton completed his preparations of defence when the rebels were upon him. They came down at nightfall on St. Stephen’s gate like a rushing torrent, fired the gates, climbed the walls, swam the river, and swarmed in through the breaches. On both sides, it is recorded, there was “an exceeding desire to fight.” Northampton fiercely resisted throughout the three darkest hours of the night. Kett’s people fought to the last gasp—wounded wretches on both sides IIO Annals of the British Peasantry finishing each other off, as they lay side by side on the ground. At length, with the loss of three hundred men, the baffled Kett returned sullenly to camp ; the victors, during the short remainder of the night, keeping watchful guard on the scene of battle. Early next morning Northampton’s herald demanded a parley. A promise of pardon was again offered to all (the ringleaders alone excepted) who would lay down their arms. A prevaricating and insolent answer was returned, and then, on a sudden, the insurgents streamed out of the camp again, broke into the city at the Hospital meadows, and carried all before them. Between one and two hundred of the soldiers were slain, amongst whom were Lord Sheffield, Sir John Cleere, and a gentleman named Cornwales. Northampton now collected his shattered forces and re- tired, leaving the city at the mercy of the victorious Kett. A wild scene of anarchy ensued. The thatched roofs of the houses were fired, their contents looted, the rebels wreaking their vengeance on all who came in their way. No one was left to protect the women and children, for all the males had fled in their doublets and hose. The cathedral became the scene of a bivouac, in which the insurgents gloated and fought over the looted property of the runagates. The attempts to treat with the rebels, the frequent visits of chief citizens to their camp, and especially the feeble defence of Norwich when at length this fierce trial of strength occurred, brought that city for a time under the imputation of disloyalty. Those at Court drew a damaging contrast between the vigorous and successful defence of Exeter by its citizens, and the disastrous and complete defeat which those of Norwich had just sustained. But, though a quarrel so purely agrarian as this could not be of paramount importance to people engaged in commercial pursuits, there is no doubt that the Norwich men defended their hearths and homes with the utmost eagerness and loyalty. Exeter was a hill stronghold; Norwich, in the words of Fuller, was like a great volume with a bad cover, having at best parchment leaves. It lay immediately beneath the frowning brow of the rebel camp. Its river, the Wensum, ran partly through and partly by the city walls, contributing thus but little to the defence. Moreover, the Govern- ment despatched for the recapture of the western city (which was only menaced by 10,000 insurgents) Sir John Russell, a tried warrior. For the defence of the eastern city against double that number of foes, it sent down a man more skilled in music and poetry than in the uses and strategy of war. The third scene in this pitiful drama begins with the advance of a relief force under Warwick. The news that a “ captayn, armour, bands of men and all instruments for the terror of warre were at hand” did The Rebellion of Kett IIt not, however, dismay the triumphant peasantry. They put the defences of the city in order, and awaited with confidence the onslaught. The usual herald appeared in due course, but this time his terms were those of unconditional surrender. CKett, as he had frequently done before, protested his willingness to consent to the king’s will, drew a moving picture of his difficult and desperate position, professed that he and all his followers were full of contrition for the troubles they had caused, and offered to immediately lay down their arms if the king would afford everybody reasonable hopes of impunity. The herald retired for further orders, and at length brought back an equivocal message, that if the portcullis were pulled up, Warwick “would see what to do.” Their cause was now too desperate for Kett to be too exacting ; reluc- tantly, therefore, he ordered the portcullis to be raised and the gates thrown open. Immediately an alarmingly great rout of rebels flocked © out, shouting, “God save the King!” “The herald refused to treat with so numerous and menacing an assemblage. A deputation was there- fore composed of a select few, whom he harangued on the adjoining hill. The substance of the speech partook too much of the nature of a scolding and was not satisfactory enough in promises of mercy to be favourably received. The rebels evinced their discontent by shouts and cursings. They likened the terms of the so-called pardon to barrels filled with ropes and halters, and the beautiful dress of the royal messenger to a garment sewed together out of those Popish vestments of which the State had recently robbed their churches. At this moment a rude boy offended one of the soldiers, who thereupon shot him dead. A cry of treachery arose in the insurgent ranks, and all chance of a peaceful termination seemed over. In vain Kett used his influence to obtain for Warwick’s herald a respectful hearing, riding in his company hither and thither wherever he imagined: he saw groups of those in favour of surrender. In his extremity the herald was rash enough to hold out hopes of pardon even to the tanner. The latter, who had been excepted from the terms of the general amnesty, saw one last chance for his own safety, as well as for the success of the petition, open to him. He represented himself as willing to accompany the herald to the royal camp. All seemed now to point to a speedy as well as happy termination of the outbreak. But at this momentous crisis a large section of the rebels rushed forward and offered to accompany their leader. The herald unfortunately mistook their meaning, became alarmed for his own safety, besought Kett to keep back the rabble and retire quietly into his camp. Kett complied, and the opportunity was lost for ever. The rest of the sad story is soon told. Warwick battered down the 112 Annals of the British Peasantry portcullis with his cannon and obtained an entrance into the city. ‘The defence was not so stubborn as the assault had been. The market place was soon gained, and some of the rebels were already being strung up in the streets. Occasionally the prowess of that ancient weapon of the English peasant, the bow, made itself felt. Thus, when Warwick came to Saint Andrew’s, a temporary check was sustained from “a mighty force of arrows” which fell amongst his troops like “ flakes of snow in a tempest.” But the arquebusiers of the royal army would not be denied, and the rebel bowmen were shot down or forced back. A daring seizure of a cannon by a small band of desperate fellows, armed with pitchforks and staves, created another momentary halt in Warwick’s forward march. With this captured piece a stand was made by Kett at Bishop’s Gate, until Warwick him- self ‘“‘wardid the breach more strongly, and kept ye rebelles owte all that nyghte.” The following day was a Sunday, and in that part of the city still held by Kett’s people it was one prolonged scene of havoc. Even in quarters where Warwick had obtained the mastery, it was a time of anxiety and bloodshed, for the rebels still continued to deliver telling assaults on various weak portions of the defences. By Monday, however, it was palpable even to the insurgents that the end was at hand. They were pinched for food, and disheartened with defeats. Some foolish prophecy decided them to move their quarters to Dussin’s Vale, where they entrenched themselves. Here the merciful Warwick sent them yet another message of peace. Upon its being truculently refused, he assaulted and carried the position, The wretched Kett, seeing that all was lost, ignominiously betook himself to flight. A momentary dismay pervaded the insurgent ranks as soon as this cowardly defection became known. Then, recognising that they were now fighting with halters round their necks, they determined, with a valour worthy of a better cause, to sell their lives as dearly as they were able. Happily, news of the tanner’s flight and of the rebels’ reckless condition of mind had reached Warwick, who, in order to put an end to a resistance born of and nurtured by despair only, merci- fully repeated his offer of pardon. The suspicious East Anglian character, however, asserted itself to the last, and the peasants still hesitated to trust in an enemy’s sincerity. Warwick offered to come himself and assure them of his Jona fides, and on their acquiescence in this generous proposal he rode among them, accompanied by his herald, whom he caused to read over again to them the king’s com- mission. Thereupon a great shout of ‘‘God save King Edward!” went up, and the rebellion was at an end. Thus, the chroniclers relate, many men were saved, as it were from the jaws of death, by the wisdom and compassion of Warwick. The Rebellion of Kett 113 Poor Kett was soon captured, and duly executed. Not a few will think that he died the victim of a legislation which, by unjustly pro- hibiting all the means of peaceful agitation, forced the common people, as the only remedy for their grievances, to incur the terrible conse- quences of armed sedition. It follows usually, as a result of civil strife, for the adherents of the lost cause to incur increased oppression. In this instance, however, such a policy would but have rekindled the sparks of civil war. I have indeed lingered over each episode of the fight in vain, if any one can still imagine that the spirit of our English peasants could be crushed out of them by a few such defeats as those they had just sustained. Unfair enclosing and arbitrary evictions may not have entirely ceased, but they had to be transacted surreptitiously, or in the teeth of united popular execration. An instance, afforded some years ago by Mr. W. Day, will illustrate my meaning.! During the reign of Elizabeth, we find amidst the scenes of the late rebellion a certain Norfolk squire, named Dye, attempting to revive the old oppressive policy. He surcharged the people’s commons with his sheep, curtailed their pasturage rights, broke down their fences in order to drive his livestock over their new-sown lands, exposed his own fields to their stray cattle, and then cruelly maltreated these dumb and innocent trespassers. Expostulation was hopeless with a fellow such as this Fakenham squire, who openly professed his intention of break- ing his tenants’ heart-strings. It needed only a few dozen more Dyes to once more set East Anglia, from the Wash to the Thames, in a ferment ofinsurrection. Happily, however, all that these farmers and peasants had now to do, was to state their hard case to the local magisterial representative of that class to which their oppressor had become a disgraceful addition. Sir Nathaniel Bacon, the unanimously accepted arbitrator and peace-maker for all neighbours within a wide radius of Alethorp, acting in his twofold official capacity as sheriff of the county and justice of the peace, soon found means of stopping these malprac- tices. We hear no more either of Dye or his neighbours, and may conclude that the one was humbled, and the others were satisfied by Sir Nathaniel’s intervention. Both sides had, in fact, learned a salutary lesson by the Enclosure rebellions. The governing class henceforth took care to protect oppressed interests before the champions of those interests grew absolutely desperate. On the other hand, the governed classes retained a lively memory of the dire consequences which armed rebellion 1 Glimpses at Country Life in the Sixteenth Century. Norfolk and Norwich Arch, Society, vol. x. pt. ii., 1886. 14 Annals of the British Peasantry involves. From the fate of Kett to the present day, only once or twice have our English rustics found it necessary to raise the standard of revolt. There was a fresh outcry against the enclosure system in 1607, but the actions of the so-called Levellers were not very violent ; and though some of their ringleaders had to be put to death, the disturbance was hardly more formidable than the machinery riots at the beginning of the present century. The rising of the Clubmen, however, in 1645, was a more serious matter. There is this excuse for both parties con- cerned in it—it was a period of civil war, and amidst the clash of arms laws cease. At any rate, the peasantry of the West, finding that both Parliamentarians and Cavaliers, in fighting out their differences, did considerable injury to agricultural property, took up arms against both parties. The motto on the banners of these ‘‘ Clubmen” explains their object in rising. It was— “Tf you offer to plunder our cattle, Be assured we will give you battle.” To the impartial view of posterity, their casus bel/i seems to have been more justifiable than that of either of the other belligerents. It was a matter of supreme indifference to these simple rustics whether king or parliament obtained the mastery, so long as they sustained no damage to their particular industry. Cromwell, however, finally taught them different politics, Parliament denounced their combination as high treason ; the Parliamentary generals drove them out of the field of battle, while a renewal of peace removed the chief causes for their presence in it.! * Compare Parl, Hist., iti., p. 390. Héstory of English Revolution, pp. 279, 290, F. Guizot, 1851. CHAPTER IX THE STATE'S RECOGNITION OF POVERTY T is curious to note that the poor laws commence at a period of our history when neither the peasant nor the artisan, if only in. full work, could complain that their wages were insufficient for their wants. Should the reader be in a position to examine those admirable diagrams of Mr. Gustav Steffen, exhibiting the relationship between money, wages, and food prices during six centuries of English poverty, he will see that the periods most likely to have required pauper legis- lation were the r4th, the first part of the 15th, the 17th, and latter half of the 18th centuries. During the whole of the 16th century the prices of the necessaries of life were rising, but so were the wages of the industrial classes. Indeed, the agricultural labourer could have purchased the six or seven pounds of wheat and the pound and a half of meat, allowed him daily by Mr. Steffen,? in order to keep the bodies and souls of his family together, and at the same time have put by a large portion of his earnings as a fund with which to stock some day a small holding. Only once has he been so flush of funds, and that, I am happy to say, is during the reign of our present gracious Sovereign. It seems, therefore, clear enough that ifthe ordinary means of coping with the national poverty had failed, it must have been owing to one, possibly to both, of two causes. Either the relief funds had been tampered with by the disendowment of the monasteries (as has already been demonstrated), or the supply of labour had become in excess of the demand. It was quite possible, in the time of a State interfergace with wages, for the latter to have occurred without a decrease in the fates ‘of labour remuneration. If, as is probable, both causes were at work, we should expect to find the industrial community split up into two sections—the one, that was in employment, prospering in the receipt of high wages, the other, that was unemployed, languishing from the want of adequate relief funds. This miserable condition of affairs is 1 Nineteenth Century, No. 196, June, 1893, p. 936. ¢” The actual daily rations supposed to be necessary for an average family are 6 Ibs. 1402. wheat. 1 Ib. 8 oz. meat.—Zd. zbed. 116 Annals of the British Peasantry perfectly reconcilable with the historical evidences at our disposal. Moreover, it was, as we shall see later, in danger of recurring when, at the end of the 18th century, Mr. Whitbread wished to revive the Elizabethan measure fixing a minimum rate of wages. But Professor Ashley has pointed out that, not only in England, but throughout Western Europe, the system of indiscriminate charity was breaking down, and the relief of the poor being transferred to public authorities. | Were, then, the same causes at work affecting these ends on the Continent? There isno doubt they were, for by the close of the 16th century the Teutonic revolt against the domination of the Latin races (as the Reformation has been termed) had been successful throughout Western Europe. But in order to see clearly the reason why this religious movement was the cause of a widespread system of State poor relief, we must dive a little deeper into the subject. The essence of the feudal polity, I have repeatedly affirmed, was that of protector and protected. When the former began to fail in his duties to the latter, the State stepped in and performed them for him. Now, the medizeval landlords had relegated a portion of these duties to the Church. They had placed in the hands of the ecclesiastics the control of certain funds, destined for the support of those members of the villeinage class who had become, by casualty or otherwise, incapacitated from performing their obligations to the manors. By the introduction of printing, and the cessation of internal violence, the necessity for monasticism had ceased. On the institution of what has been called “the New Learning,” the religious houses, together with their endowments, were swept away, and the feudal landlords had to look elsewhere, not only for the agents of poor relief, but for the funds of it. The Nominalist theologians began to call upon the State to assume the lapsed functions of the abbeys, and, in responding to this appeal, the State took over the control of the national poverty, utilising the old machinery as far as possible, and keeping the landlords to their ancient bargain of providing the necessary means.1 Mendicancy was sternly discountenanced, chiefly because it shifted the onus of supporting the impoverished villeinage from the shoulders of their feudal superiors to those of the general public. Luther declaimed against the system of beggary in Germany, Zwingli in Switzerland, Vives in France. The latter’s pamphlet? on the subject was translated into Spanish, Italian, and French. The civic authorities of Ypres framed ordinances on the lines laid down in it, and applications for copies of these were constantly made by the authorities 1 Economic History and Theory, bk. ii. ch. v., p. 341. 2 De Subventione Pauperum. Lodovig J. Vives, 1526. The State's Recognition of Poverty 127 of other districts. In 1531, Charles V. based on them the famous poor law, known as the Pragmatic,! which illegalised beggary throughout his vast empire. The magistrates of Ypres were so inundated with requests for information, that they drew up in 1531 ascheme for general reference, entitled “‘ The Method of Poor Relief practised at Ypres, and most profitable to the whole Christian world.” But the case of Scotland affords the most interesting illustration of this general crusade against mendicancy. The lipper man, or poor by casualty, had never been favourably received in Scottish burghs. As early as 1283, the Gild Society of Berwick merchants had taken drastic steps to prevent the intrusion of strangers on the town’s charitable resources, though the benevolent were invited to relieve the native poor of the district.2 In 1424, a general Act had been passed empowering the sheriffs to taxe the kinges skaith upon vagabonds, and to compel them to find burrowes (z.e, sureties) for their future good conduct.3 In 1425, the sheriffs were empowered “to arrest and gar keep in fastenesse quhill it be known quhairupon they live any idle men found wandering within their baillies.” Such were to be detained in prison forty days, search meanwhile being made for means of their proper employment.4 In 1449, @ measure as severe as that of Edward VI. c. 3, appeared in the Scotch statute book against “‘sornares, overlyars, feinzied fules, bairdes, and maisterful beggars, with horse, houndes, and uther gudes.” The property of all these lawless ruffians was to be escheated to the king, they themselves confined in ward until the proceeds of the sale of their goods were exhausted in their support ; then they were to have their ears cut off, and to be banished the country. The second offence was punishable with the gallows.6 Unlike the English Act of the same description, this measure was reinforced in 1455, and again in 1457 and 1478, the sornare being then regarded as a thief and a riever.6 1 See Eden’s State of the Poor, and Ashley’s Economic History and Theory. 2 “Na lipper men sall enter within the portes of our burgh, and gif any be chance enters within them he sall be incontinent put forth be the sarjant of the burgh. And gif any lipper man uses commonlie contrair this our discharge, to come within our burgh ; his claiths quherewith he is cled sall be taken fra him, and sall be brunt ; and he, being naked, sall be ejected forth of the burgh. Those lipper folk who were indwellers of the burgh some gude men sall gather almes to them. Regiam Majes- tatem.”— Statutes of the Gild, c. 15. § Jac. I. c. 21; v. ii, p. 8. 4 Jac., 1425, c. 20, vol. ii., p. 11. * Jac. II., 1449, c. 9, vol. ii, p. 36. 6 Jac. II. c. 8, vol. ii., p. 433 Jac. II. c. 20, vol. ii, p. 51: Jac. III. c. 10, vol. ii, p. 119. 118 Annals of the British Peasantry The feudal economy, so far as it applied to the relief of the poor, had, therefore, broken down in Scotland about the same period as it had in England, and from apparently the same causes. The ignor- ance and immorality of the clergy had been far worse there than they had been in England. The doctrines of Huss and Wycliff had been introduced into Scotland by Resby and Crawar. There were Scottish Lollards in the 15th century, as well as English Lollards. Lutheran principles had penetrated in due course. Hamilton, Abbot of Ferne, in 1528, George Wishart, in 1546, had suffered martyrdom for their so- called heresies ; but by 1560 Knox and the Reformers had established the Confession of Faith and the Book of Discipline. Long before the final triumph of the Congregation, however, the religious houses had vanished in a storm of persecution, and the need of a State poor relief system had become apparent. The landlords of Scotland, like their brethren in England, were held responsible for this breakdown in the manorial system. Seigniorial control over the labour popula- tion was quite as complete as we found it to have been in England. Landlords there had sought the authority of the State to enforce their rights, and the State had exerted it, not only by recognising and defining the position of the zativus, but by compelling him to fulfil his obli- gations on the manor, and driving him back to it when found off it. In the first place, the methods by which a serf could gain his freedom from seigniorial control, were closely and jealously guarded by the legislature. Even if he acquired it by the grant of his lord, he could not act as a witness or assizer unless he had been confirmed in his new status by the consent of the sovereign.t He could obtain a partial freedom if a stranger were good enough to purchase it and present him with it, or.if his master had drawn blood from him, or had refused to stand pledge for him when unjustly accused of crime? He could become free if he could prove either a year’s undisturbed residence in a burgh, or a seven years’ undisturbed residence anywhere but in the district of his birth.* If, however, his master claimed him within the prescribed period, he was certain to be surrendered ; because, if his detainer declined to give him up, he incurred a penalty of double the value of the fugitive. If found in holy orders without the previous consent of his master, he was still liable to serve him in divine offices, though if it could be proved that the priest who ordained him had been cognisant of his master’s ignor- ance of the case, he remained free, and his benefactor had to find his 12 Reg. Maj., 1598, c. 2, vol. i., p. 607; c. 8, vol. i, p. 608; c. 9, vol. i, p. 609; c. 11, vol. i., p. 509; Frag. Coll., c. 18, vol. i., p. 744. 2 Frag. Coll., c. 10, vol. i, p. 738. 34 Reg. Maj., c. 29, vol. i, p. 637. Lhe State's Recognition of Poverty I19 substitute in serfdom.) His class was recognised in the statute book as pertinents of the land as late as the 14th and 15th centuries, grants? of natu, together with the soil of their settlement, being made in 1323 and 1450.3 His good behaviour on the manor, as well as off it, was early brought under State control. There is evidence of a widespread imitation amongst the Scotch of the practice mentioned in the parable of The Tares. The manorial nadivus had but few ways of showing his resentment of a too-exacting master. His recourse was to an expedient which, though an instance of amputating one’s nose to spite one’s face, did most effectually damage the landlord’s interest as well as his own. The revengeful husbandman procured and secretly sowed the corn marigold amidst the crops of the manor. In a wet season the weed spread rapidly, and overpowered the cultivated produce. So detrimental was this practice to the interests of the community, that the seigniorial courts instituted a system called “gool riding,” * by which a specially organised police patrolled each manor, and not only promoted the extirpation of the weed, but meted out the severest punishment to all on whose husbandlands it was found growing. This local legislation soon found expression in the Scottish statute book. By an Act, of uncertain date, any well-to-do individual of the farming class, being expected to set a better example, was, if detected in planting guld, regarded as a public enemy and punished accordingly. The nief, similarly offending, got off by paying the fine of a sheep and cleaning the land.® Early in the 13th century, the Scottish servant in husbandry was compelled, under pain of such seigniorial fines as a cow or a sheep, to remain in the place where he had lived the previous year, and begin to plough and sow fifteen days before the Feast of the Purification.® In the 15th century every man “who ought to be a labourer” was required to have half an ox in the plough, or to delve seven feet square every work day.” Every owner of a ploughgate had to sow 1 t Reg. Maj.,c. 10., vol. i, p. 609. 2 Parl. Scot., 1323, i. 481¢ 4; 1358, i. 52423 1450, c. 20, ii, 65. 8 During the 12th, 13th, and 14th centuries many charters of the Crown set the example of conveying, along with the right of property in the soil, the right of pro- perty in those who cultivated it.—See Zhe Crofter in History, p. 9, ed. iv. Lord Colin Campbell. 4 For an account of gool riding, see Medieval Scotland, note 2. Cochran Patrick. 5 Parl. of Scot. Frag. Coll., cc. 10, 11, 12, vol. i, pp. 738, 750, 751 5 Dav., 1366, vol. i, p. 4992. 6 Parl. of Scot. Alex. II., 1214, c. 1, vol. i., p. 3973 1230, c. 4, vol. i., p. 399. 7 Id., Jac. I., 1424, c 20, vol. ii., p. 8. 120 Annals of the British Peasantry yearly, at the least, a firlot of wheat, half a firlot of pease, and forty beans, or, in default, pay certain fines to the owners of the land. Rights to the soil were secured to the poor labourer by certain Acts of the same period.? His ox might not be impounded when used in the plough,? and he was not to be inconvenienced by delay in the teinding of his corn.* In 1617 we find the first instance of a State interference with his wages. His class had, it appears, reduced the poorer sort of farmers to great straits, both by demanding excessive wages, and by casting themselves loose from service after they had completed the half-year, ending on Whit-Sunday. Henceforth, therefore, they were compelled to remain with their masters at the same rates of remuneration all the year through, and the latter were empowered to set to work all loose and masterless men and women found within their boundaries.5 The regulation of the wages of farm labourers came within the purview of the justices at quarter sessions in 1617,® and frequent statutes dealt with this subject up to the year 1686.7 In 1545 Queen Mary put down any tendency of the industrial class to strike for better wages by forbidding any convocation or gaddering for resistance to the lords of the ground.® The same measures against excesses in the peasants’ dress,9 which occurred in the English statute book, occurred also in that of the Scotch. In 1457 a law was enacted wherein all, but “gude, worthy men,” were debarred from wearing silks and furs. No labourers or husbandmen were to appear on work days in apparel of any other colour than grey and white; and on holidays, of light blue, green, and red. Women were not to go to kirk or mercat with their faces missuled (z.e. covered), for fear lest they should intrigue. Their curches (deriva- tion couvres chef) were to be short, with ‘little hudes,” as worn in Flanders and England, either of their own making, or, if bought, not exceeding the price of forty pennies the elue. Nobody but the wife 1 Parl. Scot. Jac. I., 1426, c. 6, vol. ii., p. 13 3 Jac. II., 1457, c. 28, vol. ii., p. 51. 2 Td., Jac. II., 1449, c. 6, vol. ii., p. 35. Jd. zbid., vol. ii., pp. 384, 620. 8 Jd., Jac. IV. c. 50, vol. ii., p. 2463 Jac.-VI. c. 14, vol. iii., p, 217. 4 Td. Jac. VI., 1579, c. 11, vol. iii., p. 139; 1587, c. 32, vol. iii, p. 450; 1606, c. 7, vol. iv., p. 285; 1612, c. 5, vol. iv., p. 471; 1617, c. 9, vol. iv., p. 5413 1639, vol. v., p. 594, 6, etc. 5 [d., 1617, c. 8, § 14, vol. iv., p. 537, § 18, vol. p. iv., 5383 1621, c. 21, vol. iv., p. 623; 1648, c. 119, vol. vi. ii., p. 68. ® Jd., 1617, c. 8, § 14, vol. iv., p. 537. 7 Id., 1661, c. 338, vol. vii., p. 308; zd., 1663, c. 52, vol. vii., p. 485; 1672, c. 42, vol. viii., p. 91a 63; 1686, c. 16, vol. viii. p. 472. 8 Compare also /d., 1563, c. 11, vol. ii., p. 539; 1585, c. 6, vol. iii., p. 376, etc. 9 /d., 1429, c. 8, vol. ii, p. 18; zd. 1457, c. 13, vol. ii, p. 493 1581, c. 18, vol. ili., p. 220; c. 13, vol. ii, p. 49 ; repealed 1621, c. 25, § 6 and 7, vol. iv., p. 626. The State's Recognition of Poverty 12 of a kirk dignitary (and an immoral woman, who might dress as she liked) was allowed to wear scarlet gowns, or the furring of mertrikes’ (martens’) tailes unfitt in length, and furbelows. To offend in this respect was to forfeit the loss of any such finery.!' Servants might wear their master’s old clothes, but no other costly apparel. We discover also in the Scottish statute book a stricter system of employers’ liability than that pertaining to the English laws. Lords, especially on borders, were responsible for the consequences of their servants’ theft.2 They were to pay the penalties incurred by the latter when suspected of Papistry,? and they were liable for the profanation of the Lord’s Day occasioned by Sunday labour.* Thus we find in Scotland, as well as in England, the masters en- joying plenary powers over their servants’ freedom, more or less re- sponsible for their good behaviour and welfare, yet totally unable to keep them from becoming burdens on the community. It was this combination of circumstances which called into being the pauper legislation of the 16th century in both kingdoms of this island. Accordingly, in 1579, at a Parliament of James VI., held in Edin- burgh, the first great general poor law was enacted,® just twenty-two years before that celebrated and similar Act of 43 Elizabeth came into force in England. Meanwhile in Ireland nothing in the shape of pauper legislation was being attempted, the Sunday collections and the donations of the benevolent affording the only means of relief. We shall find, as we proceed further, that these three kingdoms afford us an opportunity of contrasting three different systems of poor relief. That in England was mainly dependent on legislation, that in Scotland was partly so, whereas that in Ireland was entirely devoid of it. In the first kingdom the poor laws were henceforth strictly en- forced ; in the second they were generally disregarded ; in the third they were not even in existence. In England the nationality of the people was almost entirely Teutonic; in Scotland it was partly Teu- tonic, partly Celtic; in Ireland it was principally the latter. It is possible that in this direction we may find the cause of the variations in their systems of poor relief. Could the independence of the Teutonic character ever have stomached a nationalised system of mendicancy ? 1 Jd., 1457, c. 13, vol. vii., p. 49. 2 Jd., 1524, c. 9, vol. ii., p. 286 ; 1685, c. 60, vol. viii., p. 495@; 1698, c. 35, vol. X.y Pp. 175. 8 ]d., 1593, vol. iv., p. 474; 1700, c. 3, vol. x., p. 2184, etc. 4 Td., 1641, c. 73, vol. v., p. 3900; 1644, c. 183, vol. vi, p. 1943 1656, vol. vi., ii., p. 8664. 5 Jd. 15793 Jac. VI. c. 12, vol. iii, p. 1400. 122 Annals of the British Peasantry On the other hand, will the Celtic idiosyncrasy ever entirely subject itself to the discipline of a strict code of poor laws? The Anglo-Saxon exhausts all the expedients for finding an independent livelihood before he will migrate into the workhouse. The Irishman takes much more kindly to such a condition of dependence. It is principally from these circumstances that I attribute the presence of the poor laws in England as early as the first half of the 16th cen- tury, and their absence in Ireland as late as the first half of the rgth. It is a fact well worth noticing that the state of society in the rural districts of England, immediately preceding the enactment of our poor laws, was strangely similar to the state of society in the rural districts of Ireland, immediately preceding their poor laws. The English peasantry of 1530, in their eagerness for agricultural holdings, were submitting to exorbitant rents. Arbitrary evictions were general ; the engrossing of small tillage tenancies, and their subsequent conversion into pasture farms, was a universal grievance. These very phenomena were occurring in the sister isle before the introduction of the Irish poor laws. Moreover, the outrages by the followers of Kett in 1549, which precipitated the pauper legislation of Edward VI. and of his sisters, were repeated by the Terry Alts in the county of Clare, and precipitated the pauper legislation of Victoria. : Before we put aside the case of Ireland, it may be well to inquire if the absence of all legal forms of relief is calculated to increase the morality of a people. Archdeacon Paley has said, that a man ina state of extreme necessity has a right to use another’s property, when it is necessary for his own preservation to do so; aright to take without or against the owner’s leave, the first food, clothes, or shelter he meets with when he is in danger of perishing for want of them. With this reasoning the earlier views of Lord Bacon thoroughly concurred. The law, he says, chargeth no man with default, when the act is compulsory and not voluntary. He goes on to point out the three kinds of neces- sity that know no laws, and amongst acts of the first kind he classes the theft of viands to satisfy hunger. But Blackstone and other men of great legal acumen assert that the taking of another’s property here in England can never be otherwise than a larceny or felony, because charity has been reduced to a system, and interwoven in our very con- stitution by the several statutes made for the relief of the poor. The absence of these provisions in the Irish statute book up to the present century would, therefore, point to a different conclusion, and if so, Hibernian ideas about meum and tuum could not be expected to have reached a very high standard of morality. Turning now to a comparison of the English and Scotch systems, we The State's Recognition of Poverty 123 find that the former was gradually fabricated ; the latter was suddenly brought into force. The Act of 14 Eliz. c. 5 is a development of those of 22 Hen. VIII. c. 12; 3 & 4 Ed. Vi.c.16; 5 & 6 Ed. VI.c. 3; 2& 3 Ph.&M.c. 5; and 5 Eliz. c. 3. .From it the Scottish Act of 15791 was imitated. But while the statesmen of the northern kingdom, for ‘nearly a century, rested content with this one measure,? those of the southern kingdom, within the space of a few years, completed and perfected their system by the Acts of 18 Eliz. c. 3; 39 Eliz. c.3; and 43 Eliz. c. 2. | Both legislatures placed the administration of the new scheme of national poor relief in the same hands which had anciently bestowed the national alms. Only for the interpretation of the laws, and the setting in motion of their machinery, were the services of the secular authorities employed. In England, the justices, mayors, sheriffs, and bailiffs were to tax and assess the inhabitants, and appoint overseers and collectors in the boroughs, towns, villages, hamlets, or ‘“ places known” of their several jurisdictions.2 In Scotland, the provosts, baillies, and judges were to “‘taxe and stent the haill inhabitants with- in the parochien according to the estimation of their substance without exception of persons ; to sik oulkie charge and contribution as sall be thocht expedient and sufficient to sustene the saidis pure peopil to- gedder with their taxation ; to be likewise registrate that at their dis- cretion they appeynt overseers and collectours in every burgh, town, and paroche for the haill zeir, for collecting and receiving of the said oulkie portion.” But as regards the collection and distribution of the poor funds, the clergy of the Established Churches in both kingdoms were recognised as possessing a prescriptive claim. We find, it is true, Henry VIII. arranging that the hundred presided over by the justices dwelling in or near the parish, is to be the local centre of administration.4 But the churchwardens of each parish were the first and original overseers. Their periodical meetings for the transaction of business were to be held on Sundays in the church. Their collections for the relief of the poor were made in the church, and the whole business was, as a parochial concern, placed in the hands of the ecclesiastical authorities. Where parishes, on account of their unwieldy dimensions, had to be sub-divided, the minor sections of poor relief were not originally town- ships and villages, but chapelries.© When they became otherwise, in the reign of Charles II.,5 great inconvenience was experienced. The 1 Parl, Scot. Jac. VI. c. 12, vol. iii., p. 1400. 2 This remark does not, of course, include legislation concerning vagrancy. ' 8 14 Eliz.c. 5. 4 22 Hen. VIII. c. 12, ° 5 Eliz.c. 3. © 13 & 14 Car. IL. ¢. 12. 124 Annals of the British Peasantry proper head of the village was the constable, and the proper heads of the parish were the minister and churchwardens. The latter still re- tained their original offices, and only in the reign of George II. (and then merely in exceptional cases, where townships existed without churchwardens) were the overseers allowed to act alone. From the very first the pulpit had been made the mouthpiece of the statute book in these matters. By 1 Ed. VI. c. 3, the parson was instructed to preach the duty of poor relief, and by 5 & 6 Ed. VI. c. 2, to gently exhort, finally to threaten with episcopal persuasion, the obstinate. It is, in fact, only during the present century that the administration of the poor funds has been partly relegated to secular agencies. There were stronger reasons for thus utilising the services of the Church authorities in the case of the northern kingdom. In the first place the poor relief of the Scotch had not yet lost its eleemosynary character, and in the second place the Established Church of Scotland exerted a powerful political influence in the national economy. In many respects it answered to our lower House of Legislature. The separation of the lesser gentry from the greater had not produced the same important political results as it had done here in England. There had been, it is true, a Parliament dating from the reign of David II. which comprised the three estates of the realm, But the third estate consisted only of burgesses. Originally the smaller barons, as well as the tenants zz cafite, had possessed the option of legislating. Objecting to the trouble of a personal attendance on such duties, they had freely availed themselves of the privilege to delegate such powers. In course of time the neglected privilege became a disqualification. The lesser freeholders ceased to be recognised as members of Parlia- ment, being only represented there by the knights of the shires! Nor did they find a voice either in the councils of the realm, or in those of the counties, until the establishment of the Reformed Church offered them the opportunity of effecting both these purposes. Prob- ably it was her political character, as much as her religious character, which now induced the legislature to make her the trustee of the poor funds.” Directly the machinery of the poor laws had been set in motion in both kingdoms, the capabilities of those working it came to be tested. Efficiency was measured by the increase or decrease in the numbers of 1 Parl. 1425, c. 8, vol. ii., p. 9 3 1427, c. 2, vol. ii., p. 15; 1503, c. 26, vol. ii., p. 244. 2 Compare Constitutional History of England, ch. xviii. vol. iii, p. 308, H. Hallam, and Scotland under her Early Kings, E. W. Robertson, vol. ii, pp. 127 et seg., ed. 1862. The State's Recognition of Poverty —128 wandering mendicants, In the English case it would not be fair to apply this test until the poor law system had become perfected. For a time there had been a partial return to the old Continental expedient of encouraging mendicancy, as evidenced by grants of begging licenses. These were issued until well on into the reign of James I., and no doubt restricted the flow of charity into the pockets of the legitimate and regular poor. This circumstance must have hastened the establishment of a compulsory system. In fact, Elizabeth soon found it necessary to strengthen the hands of her clergy by empowering the civil authorities to interfere, and punish all those who resisted the milder pressure brought to bear on their purses by the ordinary.” Then came the obligatory measure of parochial assessment of 1572, and shortly afterwards the establishment of various houses for the correc- tion, employment, and healing of the criminal, unfortunate, or ailing pauper. The interval of twenty-seven years which remained before the final repeal of begging licenses may be assumed to have been the necessary period before the new system of relief could become effectual. Unfortunately, in the finishing touches put by Elizabeth in 16014 to this code of laws, the clauses in the earlier Acts relating to the total prohibition of wandering and begging were omitted. By this apparent oversight, the law of settlement was not at this period so strictly enforced in England as it was in Scotland.5 In both codes, however, it was, like many other ordinances, closely connected with the older feudal economy. The villein both in Scotland and England had been able to obtain the rights of free citizenship by existing, unchallenged by his lord, a year and a day in any franchised town. But, in the former country, he acquired similar rights by existing under like conditions for seven years in any manor, irrespective of his birth.6 His successor, the labourer of a freer and later period, was consequently permitted to acquire rights of settlement in any parish, irrespective of his birth, after a seven years’ unchallenged residence there.” In the case of England, where a serf’s seven years’ residence in any manor, irrespective of birth, had not been a qualification for freedom, this term is not contained ina single one of our laws of settlement. Residence, however, soon replaced 1 22 Hen. VIII.c. 12, repealed by 1 Ed. VI. c. 3, revived by 3 & 4 Ed. VI. c. 16, and 5 & 6 Ed. VI.c. 2, and finally repealed by 21 Jac. I. c. 28. 2 5 Eliz. c. 3. 3 14 Eliz. c. 5; 39 Eliz. c. 3, 4, etc. 4 43 Eliz. c. 2. 5 By Parl. Scot., Jac. V., 1535, ¢c. 29, vol. ii., p. 347, it was ordained that no beggars be thoiled to beg, save in the parish which bore them. 6 4 Reg. Maj. c. 29, vol. i., p. 637. 7 Act of 1579, Jac. VI. c. 12, vol, iii., p. 1400. 126 Annals of the British Peasantry birth as a qualification of settlement, but in an accidental and slipshod way, as though the authorities would not take the trouble of ascertain- ing a pauper’s birthplace. First, therefore, we read of him ordered to abide where he is; then either in some suitable locality within the hundred, where he happened to be residing, or in the town of his birth ; next, where he last dwelled, or was best known. Only in the reign of Henry VIII. did a specified term—viz. three years—become a qualifica- tion of settlement. This was reduced to forty days in 1662.1 But in the Scottish case the necessary term of unchallenged residence seldom varied from seven years. Only in 1663? do we find it reduced to three years. In the proclamation of 1693 it goes back to the old number. There, legally, it remained, though the report of the Royal Commis- sioners in 1844 asserts that three years’ residence had, for all practical purposes, been long established as constituting settlement. They, however, recommended the adoption of the longer term, which resulted in a compromise of five years. There were many candidates for the honour (such it was deemed at any rate in the northern kingdom) of making up and administering the poor’s roll. Few, however, were found equal to the task of suppressing the ubiquitous beggar. Under the compulsory system of the English statute book it was difficult enough, but under the voluntary system of the Scottish statute book it was well-nigh impossible. I have already shown how the Churches of both nations came to be associated with the administration of poor relief, and it will be remembered that the political factor in the ecclesiastical councils of the Scotch peculiarly qualified their Church for the work. It was this same factor, no doubt, which at one period led the Edinburgh statesmen to place in the hands of the minister, elders, and heritors the control of the beggar. That was a mistake which the statesmen of the southern capital carefully avoided. The relief of misfortune was the Church’s first duty ; not so the suppression and punishment of vagrancy. We English kept the legislation connected with the latter quite distinct from that connected with the former. Consequently, in 1713 we were able to reduce all former measures to one distinct Act. In Scotland, however, the ecclesiastical authorities soon relegated to the civil magistrates all responsibilities of a police nature. But whenever the latter attempted to perform them, they found it necessary to search through the whole pauper code until they found the clause which referred to some particular case. Even then it was scarcely possible for them to decide 1 13 and 14 Car. II. c, 12. ? Parl. Scot. 1663, Car. II. c. 52, vol. vii. p. 485, 8 12 Anne st. 2, c. 23. The State's Recognition of Poverty 127 if the culprit belonged to the criminal class of poverty. Any poor man might be an honest labourer one day, and a vagabond or riever the next. It would seem that, so widespread and disastrous had vagrancy become, the Scottish magistrates took to treating every doubtful instance as a subject for punishment. The stocks and prison-irons of every burgh and landwart parish came to be filled to overflowing with the fruits of their severity. To prevent wholesale starvation Scotland’s states- men had to fill even the common prisons of the shires! with a portion of her pauper population, and to order the erection of other houses for its further accommodation.? Tired of scourging and branding the beggar, they reverted in part to the opposite policy of legitimising his occupation by means of licenses. Thus it happened that there were some poor people who were entitled to alms when they begged, and there were other poor people who were in danger of what was tanta- mount to eleven years’ penal servitude for doing so. Moreover, employers of labour were bribed to engage and even kidnap any mas- terless but masterful person. Then they took to exiling their beggar population, thus shifting their responsibility in this matter on to the shoulders of the English ratepayer.5 Once they went so far as to invite the entire community to undertake the office of policeman, and drive all vagabonds back to their proper parishes.6 Asa last resort, they attempted to utilise the class for the purposes of warfare.” All these remedies were, however, of no avail. What had thus been made every- body’s duty came to be practically nobody’s. Sufficient employment for such labour as the vagabonds’ was not forthcoming, relief funds languished, houses of correction did not get built, and in spite of com- pulsory emigration beggary increased. Every sort of local official had unsuccessfully attempted in turn to cope with the evil. Men who from their life-long training might have proved either admirable administrators of relief or impartial and stern ‘ upholders of justice, failed because they did not combine both these attainments in their own persons. The elders and deacons of towns, and the headmen of landward parishes were the first who undertook the preparation of the poor rolls and the punishment of vagabonds.® The provosts and baillies within burghs, and the judges constitute by 1 Jac. VI., 1574, vol. ili., pp. 86, 89, and Jd. zézd. pp. 874, 1402. 2 Car. II., 1672, c. 42, vol. viii., pp. 89, 91, 91a. 8 Td. ibid. 4 1597, c. 39, vol. iv., p. 140; 1606, c. 10, vol. iv., p. 287; and 1646, c. 290, vol. vi., i, p. 608. 5 1609, c. 10, vol. iv., p. 287; 1655, vol. vi., ii., p. 5360. * Proclamation of Privy Council, Aug. 11, 1692. 7 1695, vol. ix., p. 4590. 8 1574, vol. iii., p. 88a. 128 Annals of the British Peasantry the king’s commission “in parochen to landwart,” were the next to attempt the administration of the poor laws.! In 1592 the sheriffs and their deputies, together with certain justices and commissioners nomi- nated by the kirk sessions, were permitted to try if they could put the law in force.2 In 1600 the kirk sessions, assisted by the presbytery, made their first effort in a similar direction. About half a century later the services of justices of the peace and village constables were requisitioned. Overpowered by these combined attacks, the sturdy mendicant was kept more or less in check till 1661. The authorities showed their approval of the success thus derived by strengthening the hands of the existing local officials. They relieved them of the most irksome part of their task by appointing overseers to perform its petty details.5 But by 1672 idle beggars and vagabonds seem to have again become areproach to the kingdom.® Thereupon the now thankless office is once more entrusted to the kirk session, with the assistance of the heritors, the commissioners of excise superseding the magistrates in authority. Whether under ordinary conditions this fresh departure in local administration would have proved a success, we can never ascertain; for between 1692 and 1699 there occurred the seven dis- astrous seasons which ‘nearly depopulated some parishes in the north of this island.? Then, if ever, it might be thought that a compulsory poor system ought to have been introduced. Indirectly, no doubt, the Act of 1663 had been such a measure, for it had prescribed a stent roll and sanctioned a compulsory assessment. But the courts of law re- garded it as intended for beggars and masterless persons only. It is difficult to see how such a distinction could have been maintained. Anybody out of employment and without the means of subsistence must have necessarily fallen out of the ranks of legitimate poverty, and become either a stationary or nomad “masterless person.” Be this as it may, the uneasiness of the authorities during this crisis is evident by the frequent proclamations which they then issued regarding poor law administration. For a time they relied solely on the heritors, ministers, elders, and their overseers for assistance; then they once more invoked the controlling influence of burgh magistrates and sheriffs. Next they summoned the aid of nearly all the formerly dis- credited authorities. What with ministers, elders, heritors, and house- holders, sheriffs, sheriffs’ deputies, justices of the peace, and magistrates of the burgh, and, as a final court of appeal, the Privy Council, there 1 1579, c. 12, vol. iii, p. 1400. 2 1592, c. 69, vol. iii., p. 576. 8 1600, c. 28, vol. iv., p. 232. 4 1655, vol. vi., ii., p. 8354. 5 1661, vol. vii., p. 3110. § 1672, c. 42, vol. viii., p. 89d. 1 History of the Scottish Poor Law, p. 78. Sir Geo. Nicholls. The State's Recognition of Poverty 129 must have been the same deplorable results as when too many cooks attempt to dish up palatable broth. By their fourth proclamation of 1698 the authorities partially remedied this mistake. The magistrates and sheriffs, with the advice of the presbytery, were made to confine their attention to the punitory clauses of the poor laws, while the ministers and elders, with the advice of the heritors, were left alone to administer the necessary succours to the needy. Well was it for the Scottish peasantry that the Act of 1698 thus finally established the administration of the poor laws in the hands of the heritors and Church authorities. There survived, it is true, a certain amount of magisterial authority, but it did not exceed its proper limits. Though it controlled the execution of the laws, it never, as in England, was allowed to interfere with questions of relief. Subject only to the supervision of inspectors appointed by the Privy Council and this almost nominal control of the county magistracy, the Church au- thorities henceforth produced the utmost perfection which could be attained from a faulty system. The same cannot be said in the case of English poor law history. The kirk sessions in Scotland and the parochial vestries in England henceforth possessed almost identical powers, But the uses to which these powers were put by the parish sessions of Scotland were infinitely superior to those to which they were put by the parish vestry of England. No wonder, therefore, that Scottish public opinion has ever since clung unfalteringly to the ad- ministration of the kirk authorities. The statesman or party would have been rash indeed to have altered that “unparalleled system of frugality and perfect management” which this body of conscientious and public-spirited persons had developed and perfected. The ex- cellence of its administration had, in the Scottish case, after a few early failures, finally made effectual.a bad system. The defects of its ad- ministration had, in the English case, slowly but surely rendered a good system inoperative. Consequently the organisation of Scottish charity was for over a century and a half performed for charity’s sake. Once, twice, and even oftener a week, the elders met all the year through to administer relief. Though the management was “ entirely a labour of love, and a great labour too, often attended with much obloquy, and seldom or never rewarded, even by the grateful acknow- ledgement of the heritors, yet as it involved the interests of the poor, it was regarded by every elder as a sacred deposit.” ? How different was the case in the southern kingdom! I have said that the English vestry, up to the end of the last century, was, for 1 1698, c. 40, vol. x. p. 177. 2 Stat. Account of the Parish of Kilsyth, Stat. Account of Scotland, xviii. 258. 130 Annals of the British Peasantry matters of parochial government, quite as omnipotent as the Scottish parochial sessions. It was the practice of the ratepayers, when fore- warned on the previous Sunday by the parson, to congregate at toll of the church bell in the vestry, immediately to adjourn to the nearest alehouse, and, over pipes and beer, discuss the outfit of a pauper, the repairs of the sacred edifice, the precautions against the spread of epidemics, or the necessity for a revised assessment. In small, isolated villages this was, however, a rare and perfunctory affair. The costs of the tobacco and liquor consumed were generally defrayed out of the rates. Many churchwardens derived from the same funds the price of a suit of clothes or a pair of top-boots, which they regarded as a lawful perquisite of their important office. The business performed was generally the election of a new constable, a cursory supervision of the different ley-books, and the purchase of a pair of looms for the employ- ment of a few industrious paupers. One or two of the half-dozen rate- payers in the parish capable of signing their names were called in to support the proceedings. Then the mugs of beer were drunk to the dregs, the ashes of clay pipes knocked out, and the vestry adjourned for another year.! Scotland’s statesmen have regarded a compulsory assessment as the last resort of the destitute. It was not even introduced into her statute book till nearly a hundred years? after her first poor law was passed, and, even then, the courts made it virtually impracticable. Eden, who exaggerates somewhat the extent to which voluntary aid was carried, cites the case of “a public-spirited and learned Scotchman” who re- fused to pay the poor’s rate with which he was assessed by the over- seers of his parish, and, standing an action in the Court of Sessions, prevailed upon the broad ground that there was no Scottish law in force by which an involuntary assessment could be established. How he managed to establish this claim is difficult to see, because, when the funds from voluntary sources were inadequate, the Act of 1663 clearly empowered the authorities to levy a rate equally between the heritors and possessors of the parish. The minister, acting upon the instruc- tions of this statute, gave notice from the pulpit of a meeting of the heritors and elders. In the kirk session or vestry thus formed, the heritors elected a preses,? after which the minutes of the former sede- runt and roll of the poor were read by the clerk. The heritors then made an estimate, and assessed themselves in a certain sum, to be 1 Vide example of Royston, Fragments of Two Centuries, p. 32. Alfred Kingston. 7 By the Act of 1649, c. 161, vol. vi. ii. p. 220, a compulsory poor rate was ordained if voluntary means of relief failed, but it never seems to have been enforced. 3 Parish of Jedburgh, Stat. Account of Scotland. The State's Recognition of Poverty 131 collected from them severally, according to the proportion of their valued rents, of which the proprietor paid half and the tenant half. Though the tenants were not mentioned in the summons, they were welcomed, and their advice solicited. The poor in want of temporary assistance received an interim supply, and those permanently disabled from work were taken upon the roll, being first obliged to subscribe a bond of conveyance, bequeathing all their effects to the heritors. Though this was never put into force, the poor were thus indirectly prevented from concealing their property, and so alienating public charity by un- worthily gaining admittance to the roll! As a rule, however, the weekly collections in the churches, the charitable donations, the pro- ceeds of pew rents, mort cloths, marriage and baptismal dues, letting out of the hearse, interest on money lent, fines for breaches of Church discipline, and rents of mortified lands and houses were sufficient for the wants of ‘the failed, the cruiked, the seik, the impotent and the weak folke,” which collectively constituted the whole pauper population re- garded by Scottish public opinion as legally worthy of relief. The one fundamental difference between the laws of the two nations remains to be mentioned. The Scotch Act of 1579 omits the clause in the English Act of 1576? which directs the procuring of work for able-bodied vagrants. At the same time, a discretionary power had always been lodged in the kirk sessions, by which the industrious poor were assisted out of the fund obtained by voluntary contributions. The result is that in England the able-bodied labourer out of employment has always believed that he possesses a righ¢ to relief, whereas the able-bodied labourer out of employment in Scotland regards such relief as a gift. : The effect of this difference was soon apparent in England. A difficulty in interpreting the clause empowering the overseers to raise weekly or otherwise a convenient stock of flax, hemp, wool, thread, iron, etc., to set the poor on work,? was experienced as early as 1604. The authorities of a certain parish submitted the point to the opinion of Mr. Sergeant Sprigge in the following words +: ‘ It has been proposed that, in order to make the relief as impartial as possible, notices should be sent to the labourers in the parish to give in each an account of what they are disposed to earn and of their numbers in each family, and then to relieve them all with money by a scale to be fixed, so as that all 1 State of the Poor, Appendix x. vol. iii. Sir F. Eden. ? 18 Eliz. c. 3. § 39 Eliz. c. 4. 4 Report on the Administration under the Poor Law Amendment Act in Suffolk and Norfolk, by J. Philips Kay, M.D., Gentleman. Second Annual Report of the Poor Law Commissioners, 1836. 132: Annals of the British Peasantry may fare alike, whether industrious or idle, and whether they earn much or little; your opinion is entreated on this point.” In reply the learned sergeant wrote: “I deem that this would be a perversion of the Act, so as to make it an incitement to vice and idle- ness. The industry of men must be awakened by the call of necessity, and if he who earned little is to fare as well and to have his family as plentifully kept as he who laboureth hard and earneth much, all induce- ment to labour among the poor will be taken away, and the realm will be rendered torpid by a grievous lethargy, as the Mantuan swan doth sweetly sing. Upon referring to the Act, the parish will see that it is the duty of the overseers at their meetings there to consider of some course to be taken for affording occupation to the poor, so as to enable them to maintain themselves and their families. If a labourer, there- fore, working with due diligence and industry, cannot on account of any hurt received, or from feebleness of body, or from any other cause, earn sustenance for himself and for his family, he may be deemed impotent, —and that is unable or not having the power to maintain himself and family, and as such may come within the description in the preceding section, and be an object of pecuniary relief ; but not otherwise.” How prophetic were the words of Sergeant Sprigge when he thus foretold the approach of a grievous lethargy which would creep over the realm if the parishes ever took to providing employment for the idle! But, unfortunately, his advice contributed largely to bring about the very evils against which he warned the parishioners to be on their guard. Conceiving that they were bound to provide employment for their poor, he bade them consider at their meetings some course of affording it. Long afterwards, in the action of the Speenhamland magistrates and in Pitt’s Act, we see the bitter fruits of this policy. The parish authorities assumed the 7é/e of the individual employer without being able to avail themselves of his powers to dissolve a contract of labour by the mis- conduct, disobedience, or violence of the employee. Another pernicious result of the English poor laws was, as Thomas Alcock pointed out in 1752,1 that the contributions to the poor boxes the oblations at the altars, the monies raised at public gatherings, and charitable bequests dwindled down to a mere cipher. Instead of be- stowing their alms to the parochial charities, people subscribed to hospitals, infirmaries, and pauper schools. They reasoned that any monies contributed to the parochial funds for poor relief really found their way into the pockets of the ratepayer. This was the disastrous consequence of making the compulsory assessments the chief fund of relief, whereas the Scotch had taken care to cause them to be regarded 1 Observation on the Defects of the Poor Laws, etc., 1752. The State's Recognition of Poverty (33 as a resource after all voluntary means of relief had failed. But let us omit for the nonce any further inquiry into the defects of the Tudor pauper legislation, and rather examine the difficulties with which it was intended to cope. If we compare the prices of labour with those of food at this epoch, we find, as I have mentioned earlier, the industrial class, both artisan and unskilled, fully able to provide themselves with sufficient daily food at the prices of labour then existing. Elizabeth had, however, received a damnosa heritas from those of her relations whom she succeeded on the throne. A large minority of the industrial population could not find employment. Distress and disaffection were not growing to a crisis, but had reached one, when she passed through vast throngs of the poor on her short journey from Hatfield to the metropolis, where the crown awaited her. Rebellion lurked'within her borders, defeat hovered over her troops without them. Scotland was a standing menace on her northern marches, the Spanish Inquisition threatened her with invasion on her southern frontier. The Calvinistic refugees were hurrying back from Switzerland to introduce discord amidst her internal councils. Above all, there stalked through the land the gaunt form of the national poverty. By her great powers of observation and decision she at once recog- nised that work must be found for the able-bodied and relief for the helpless. She not only introduced a poor law, she also introduced fresh sources of industry. She converted the Spanish Inquisition into ‘an unwilling ally by utilising its persecutions as a means of food for her hungry people. She saw that the foundations of Flemish prosperity were on English soil. She determined that the cloth, stuffs, baize, saize and serges then manufactured around Antwerp should be produced on the spot where the sheep which afforded the raw material were born and bred. By establishing the Inquisition in the Netherlands, the Duc d’Alva gave his great religious foe the opportunity for which she was vainly searching. The more this Spanish bloodhound worried the un- fortunate Flemings, the more this far-seeing Englishwoman entertained and cherished them. Fleeing from his treatment, a multitude of foreigners crossed the seas and settled in England. The alarmed economists of her council cried out that 50,000 tatterdemalions had been thus added to the roll of England’s poverty. Elizabeth would not have altered her policy had 500,000 poured in upon her. At Nor- wich, at Ipswich, at Colchester, Canterbury, and Exeter, these impover- ished guests of the nation began to teach our girls to spin and our boys to weave. Our manhood took its station at the looms, instead of swelling the ranks of foreign mercenaries. Flemings showed us how 134 Annals of the British Peasantry lace could be made; Walloons how linen could be wrought ; Dutch- men how fish could be netted by methods never acquired here in Eng- land before. Our merchant adventurers poured in upon us a flood of captured silver from the galleons of the Spanish main. Up went the customs from 400,000 crowns to £ 2,000,000 sterling ; up went wages, and up went prices also. Money was cheap, trade was good, and labour was scarce in some parts of the country, superabundant in other parts. Unfortunately for the poor man, Elizabeth could not’ see her way to desist from the policy of a State interference with labour. Otherwise the increased cheapness of money would not have injured his prosperity. For atime grain became abundant ; for Bacon, writing in 1592, asserts that “ whereas England was wont to be fed by other countries from the East, it sufficeth now to feed other countries.” So plentiful was it that farmers were tempted, without the compulsion of the legislature, to break up more ground under the plough. But, un- fortunately, Bacon had to eat his words in 1597, and introduce a new measure compelling the restitution in tillage of all land broken up since the beginning of the reign.2, The development of the town manufac- turies, brought about by the Flemish immigration, seems to have depopulated rural districts; for the Statute of Apprentices must have been intended to attract all surplus labour into the fields, especially in times of emergency, such as harvest. In addition to this, Elizabeth instituted a Small Holdings Act, whereby no cottage might be erected without its appurtenance of four acres of land. These were steps calculated to increase the prosperity of the peas- ant ; not so the repetition of the pernicious labour laws by 5 Eliz. c. 4. Now this Act has been both praised and blamed by modern historians. By the one it has been supposed to have formed, with the poor law of the same year, not only ‘‘a great system for controlling both the em- ployed and unemployed,” but “a means of adjusting wages, so that they might be sufficient for the labourer to live on in times when prices were high.” By the other it was considered as the prolongation of an evil—nay, more, the means of spreading an evil—partly because it could be more effectually put into force, and partly because it appeared at a time when wages were already depressed by the debasement of the coinage.* By its applauders it is supposed to have introduced an effectual method of determining what is now called “the living wage.” By its 1 Spedding, Letters and Life, i. 158. ? Growth of Industry and Commerce, Part II. p. 53. W. Cunningham. 3 Growth of English Industry and Commerce, Modern Part, p. 39. Cunningham. * Six Centuries of Work and Wages, p. 353, stereo. ed. Th. Rogers. The State's Recognition of Poverty 135 detractors it was regarded as a further surrender of industrial freedom into the hands of the capitalist. Its long duration! was hailed asa proof of its popularity by the former, but by the latter this circumstance was attributed to the ability of the peasant to eke out the meagre pit- tance it afforded him by means of land allowances, commonable rights, and other perquisites. The wording of the preamble tends to corrobo- rate the views of those who have regretted its abolition. The Eliza- bethan lawgivers express a hope that it might be instrumental in yield- ing “ unto the hired person, both in time of scarcity and in the time of plenty, a convenient proportion of wages.” That it promoted so laud- able an end as this, induced Davies to write favourably of it in his Case of the Labourer; Pitt to speak admiringly of it in the House of Com- mons; and Whitbread, both inside and outside of Parliament, to strenuously advocate its revival. It not only fixes the minimum rate, but provides punishment for those who pay more than the maximum settled by the justices. If the Act was thus really beneficial to the labourer, all the praise must be bestowed on those who had the execution of it, and not on those who framed it. The fact that it was ably administered reflects no credit on those who placed its machinery in the hands of the justices. Indeed, for doing so, the Elizabethan legislators have been condemned as “cruel and insolent.”2 Without adopting so extreme a view of them as this, many have called them both unwise and imprudent. Apparently they had deliberately placed the disposition of the wages funds at the mercy of those who were not only representatives of the employers’ class, but employers themselves. Before, however, we thus impugn their action, we must remember that if the labourer fell into penury, the class to which the country justices belonged alone provided the means for his relief. If, therefore, he could not support himself out of the so-called “pittance” bestowed by a “ ubiquitous body of magis- trates,” that same “ubiquitous body” made it up to what would sup- port him by means of their increased contributions to the poor funds. To have called in any one else to assess the rates of labour, just after Kett’s rebellion, would have been an unsafe concession to armed resist- ance, as well as an interference with vested interests—interests, be it remembered, which were the outcome of that bargain between lord and villein to which I have so often alluded in these pages. Until the times of the enclosure movement, a century or more later, the class affected by this law sustained no very serious injury from it. As soon as objections to it became evident, the landlords themselves surrendered 1 Repealed in, but certainly not enforced up to, 1813. 53 Geo. III. c. 4o. 2 Six Centuries of Work and Wages, p. 425. Th. Rogers. 136 Annals of the British Peasantry their rights over the wages-tariff into the hands of the executive. The very fact that they retained them so long unchallenged is surely a proof that they exercised them with large-minded generosity. When the great cry of industrial distress went up at the end of the 18th century, the causes of it were so numerous and so obscure that few agreed as to the remedies essential for its relief. We may well excuse the landowners if they long hesitated, waiting for fuller information, before they surrendered to the nation such lucrative rights as their monopoly of local jurisdiction and control over the corn and labour markets undoubtedly were. CHAPTER X THE LABOURER AT HIS WORK AND AT HIS PLAY HAVE shown how the peasant could fight ; it is now my purpose to depict him in the peaceful pursuits of his calling. No longer is he the chattel of his master, as when I last touched on his habits and labour. It is, however, a subject of regret to find that he required quite as much supervision now as then. Yet it was a time when the Anti-Truck Laws had not been applied to his industry, and when star- vation or plenty principally depended upon his own individual efforts. He had, therefore, a greater inducement to be diligent than at the pre- sent day, when, as a free man, he is bound only by a money contract. Even in the 13th century, therefore, it was important for the employer of labour to be circumspect in his choice of farm hands. Walter of Henley, who possessed a lifelong experience in the super- vision of labour, exhorts the farmer to select servants ‘“‘not for kindred or liking,” but because they are “of good reputation, and skilled in their dealings with cattle and tillage.”! Barnaby Googe’s idea of good farming was where the master frequently manured his ground with his foot and provendered his larder with his eye.2. And Fitzherbert bade the farmer ‘‘take hede both erly and late, at all tymes, what maner of people resorte and comme to they house, and the cause of theye commyngs, and specially if theye brynge with them pitchers, cannes, tancardes, bottelles, bagges, wallettes or bushell-pokes : for if thye ser- vantes be not true, they may doo thee great hurte and themselves lytel avarntage, wherefore they should be well looked uppon.” As a rule, large employers of labour, like Walter of Henley, Richard Grossteste, and Fitzherbert, speak kindly about their servants. Gross- teste exhorted the master to address his inferiors in fair and pleasant tones, asking them discreetly and gently how they fared, and demand- ing openly what they wanted to know, instead of ferreting it out clandestinely. Possibly by Tull’s days servants had become more obstreperous, 1 Walter de Henle, p. 11. R. Hist. Soc. Translation, 1890. 2 Four Books of Husbandrie, 1577. 1R7 % 138 Annals of the British Peasantry for writing about the middle of the 18th century, he spoke bitterly of the exorbitant powers of husbandry servants and labourers over their masters.! Owing to such causes as these, it was essential that all employers of farm work should be thoroughly familiar with the duties which they required their labourers to perform. It goes ill with the master who has to learn from the hind, says a writer as ancient as Cato.? Walter of Henley, therefore, recommended the appointment of an expert foreman, who should guard against fraud by overlooking the men and administering reproof if they required it. To such persons he principally addresses his treatise. Servants and provosts, he says, who have the goods of others in their keeping, ought to bear in mind the following aim: To bring themselves to consider that in helping to augment the profits of another’s business they are really bettering themselves, and in helping to increase its outlay they are robbing a beloved and respected master. He bids the shepherd not to be hasty, for an angry man will overdrive his flock. To avoid such a catastrophe, a later writer, William Ellis of Little Gaddesden, recommended the appointment of an old shepherd and a lame dog.* The latter appears to have always been a necessary adjunct of the flock, for Fitzherbert ordains that a shepherd must possess a dog trained to bark, run, and halt at his master’s pleasure, and that he ought never to be found with- out his sheephook, shears, and tar-box.5 So important was this office in the times when the fleece was the source of England’s wealth, that the shepherd was required to find pledges for his good and faithful service, and was closely watched, for fear he should desert his precious charge in order to frequent fairs, markets, wakes, and wrestling matches.® . In the 13th century, when a farmer’s holding was reckoned by the amount of land which he could cultivate within a specified period, it was essential to know the proper acreage which could be ploughed in aday. Nowadays this varies with the soil, the quality of the plough beasts and implements, and also (more than people imagine) with the temperament of the man at the plough tail. Marshall assures us that the step of the Wiltshire ploughman is so slow that he accomplishes barely two miles an hour, whereas the Norfolk hind averages three 1 Horschoeing Husbandry, 1732. : 2 «*Male agitur cum domino quem villicus docet.” 8 Walter de Henle, p. 35. R. Hist. Soc, Trans., 1890. 4 A Compleat System of Experienced Improvements made on Sheep, etc., etc. W. Ellis, 1749. 5 Husbandrie, 1523. § Seneschaucie, p. 115. R. Hist. Soc. Trans., 1890, The Labourer at his Work and at his Play 139 miles and a half! The same considerations, I have every reason to believe, applied to cultivation in medizval times. The plough, it is true, varied less than either labourer or soil, for it was always “the heavy cartload of timber” described in Zhe Pirate by Sir Walter Scott. Indeed, the English implement seems to have compared, even up to the end of the last century, unfavourably with that used in Scotland ; for in the Farmer's Magazine of July, 1800, a writer of the northern kingdom likens that used in Hertfordshire to a giant, and his own toa child, but considers both as cumbersome as they could possibly be. Though Fitzherbert mentions different sorts, as used in Somerset, Kent, Bucks, Leicester, Lancashire, Norfolk, etc., the one he specially describes is much the same as that in vogue among the farmers of the Henley writer’s time, save that the Tudor agriculturist had already begun to advocate that its working parts should be tipped with steel. Dismissing, however, the idea of any large variation in the form of plough used in medisval farming, we may take it for granted that differences in management, industry, and soil go far to solve the vexed questign why the hide, the carucate, the ploughgate, and all the lesser areas of agricultural land varied so greatly in sundry parts of this country. The horse or ox, says Walter of Henley, must be very poor that cannot from the morning go easily in pace three leagues in length from his starting place and return by three o’clock. The league of these times was 12 furlongs in length, and each furlong was 4o perches or 220 yards long. Therefore the Henley writer expected the ploughman to traverse daily a single furrow nine miles long. Or to put the task in a more practicable form, an acre was a furlong in length by 22 yards in breadth. It required 36 rounds of the plough to cultivate it, and that task included 15,840 yards of furrow. Walter of Henley therefore con- sidered 72 furrows, which together measured nine miles in length, an average day’s work. But to perform it effectually the plough beasts had to be well kept, and the ridges maintained at the proper depth and breadth. Consequently this writer lays down special laws for the feed- ing and attendance of the animals, and for the proper supervision of the task. The former were to be maintained in the stalls between the feast of St. Luke in October and the feast of Holy Cross in May, each horse receiving a sixth part of a bushel of oats at night, and in summer twelve pennyworth of grass per week ; and each ox three sheaves and a half of oats in winter, and twelve pennyworth of grass in summer. The furrows were to be little and well laid together, the ridge between 14 Review and Complete Abstract of the Reports of the Board of Agriculture for the Midland Department of England. York, 1815. Wm. Marshall, 140 Annals of the British Peasantry them narrow, and the seed, after the third fallowing, had to be dis- tributed evenly. The ploughmen were expected to repair and mend their implements, and at leisure moments to scour and clean ditches, draw off the water, and do other odd jobs. They were strictly pro- hibited from beating or ill-using their animals. ‘‘Take heed to thy man, in his fury and heat, With ploughstaffe and whipstock for maiming the neat ; To thresher for hurting of cow with his flaile, Or making thy hen to play tapple up tail,” says Tusser three centuries later.1 If a beast died, Walter of Henley forbade it to be flayed until it had been inspected by the provost. The wagoners were similarly restricted and particularly forbidden to ride their horses, or to enter their stalls with naked lights. They had to account each day for the number of loads of marl, manure, hay, corn, or firewood that they brought home, and the provost had to decide whether the animals had been overworked or the reverse. Ploughmen, wagoners, and swineherds were expected to sleep with their charges each night, and were closely watched to prevent thefts of corn and fodder. , “Some pilfering thresher will walke with a staffe, Will carry home corne as it is in the chaffe, And some in his bottle of leather so great Will carrie home daily both barlie and wheat.” ? Dairymaids had to be faithful and of good repute, skilled in the duties of their office, and competent to help in winnowing the corn and pro- tecting the poultry yard from thieves both two-legged and four-legged. No cow ought to have been milked or suckled after Michaelmas, and no ewe after the feast of Lady Day.3 Any deficiency in the average yield of milk from cow or ewe had to be accounted for; of course this varied according to the kinds of food on which the beasts were fed. Walter of Henley reckoned that two ordinary cows, or twenty sheep, if fed on the pasturage of a salt marsh, ought to yield weekly a wey of cheese and half a gallon of butter, but that it would take three cows or thirty ewes to yield the same if fed on woodland herbage, or on the aftermath of meadows, or on the stubble of the common field. But, he adds, there are many servants, provosts, and dairymaids who would contradict this statement, because they are in the habit of giving away, wasting, or consuming the milk.* It will be seen, therefore, that the eye of the master could alone make the horse fat, the work good, and servants careful, 1 Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry. Tusser. 2 Id. ibid. 3 Seneschaucte. R. Hist. Soc. Trans., 1890. 4 Walter de Henle. R. Hist. Soc. Trans., 1890. The Labourer at his Work and at his Play 141 Clearly no farmer could be expected to carry all these considerations in his head. Fitzherbert recommends, therefore, every employer of farm labour to provide himself with tablets, and jot down each day all he required to remember, and “ Yf he canne not wryte, lette hym nyche the defautes uppon a stycke, and to, shewe his bayely. . . and when he commeth home to denner, supper, or at night, then let hym call his bayely or his heade servante, and soe shewe hym the defautes that they may be shortly amended . . . and when it is amynded, then let hym put it out of his tables.” 1 But let us pass on to a later period, and examine the life of a labourer in the 17th century. At the first setting out of the plough after Christmas, which was the time to begin fallowing, or breaking up the pease earth, the teamsman rose before 4 a.m., and after thanks to God for his night’s rest, proceeded to the beast house. Here he foddered his cattle, cleaned out their booths, rubbed down the animals, currying the horses with cloths and wisps. Then he watered his oxen and horses. He next foddered the latter with chaff, dry pease, oat hulls, beans, or clean garbage, such as the hinder parts of rye. While they were eating their meal, he got ready his collars, hames, treats, halters, mullers, and plough gears. At 6 a.m. he received half an hour’s liberty for breakfast. From seven till between two and three in the afternoon he ploughed. Then he unyoked, brought home his oxen, cleansed and foddered them, and, lastly, partook of his dinner, for which he was granted another half-hour’s spell of leisure. By 4 p.m. he was again in the stable. After rubbing down his charges and re-cleansing their stalls, he went to the barns, where he prepared the fodder for the following day’s bait. He carried this to the stable, and then watered his beasts and replenished their mangers. It was now close on 6 p.m. He there- fore went home, got his supper, and then sat by the fireside, either mending his and the family’s shoe-leather, or knocking hemp and flax, or picking and stamping apples and crabs for cider or vinegar, or grinding malt on the quern, or picking candle rushes, till 8 p.m. He then lighted his lanthorn and re-visited the stable, where he again cleansed the stalls and planks, and replenished the racks with the night’s fodder. Then, returning to his cottage, he gave God thanks for benefits received during the day, and went to bed.” About 1622 a great rise in wages had taken place. Henry Best relates that his shepherd, who in 1620 had been content with 26s. a year, required £5 two years later, and that the wages of other servants had within the same interval of time become doubled. To his foreman, 1 Husbandrie. J. Fitzherbert, 1523. 2 Farewell to Husbandry. Gervase Markham, 1653. 142 Annals of the British Peasantry who could sow, mow, stack peas, drive a team of four horses, and was used to marketing and sowing all kinds of produce, he gave five marks a year and 2s. 6d, as a godspenny. To a horseman who could go ‘“‘happenly with a waine, and lye on a loade of corne handsomely,” he gave seven nobles. Toa good ploughman with sufficient strength to carry poakes and fork a waine, he gave 35s. to 36s. Toa “ wigger” and “happen”?! youth, brought up to the plough, and capable of loading a waine, and going with a draught, he gave four nobles; to a good stubble youth for driving the ox plough, and who could on necessity carry a mette, or three bushels of pease, from barn to garner, 205. ; and to a good lusty maid, 245. to 28s., with 2s. as a godspenny.? Such were the rates of wages ordained in the East Riding of York- shire by the justices acting under the terms of the Elizabethan statute, passed some fifty years previously. I shall begin thé agricultural year with a description of the Statute Fair, and proceed to describe the principal farm operations of autumn, winter, spring, and summer. , About ten days or a fortnight before Martinmas,? the chief constable of every division issued a summons to all petty constables, requiring them to give notice to the masters and servants of their several con- stabularies of his intention to sit in a certain place on such and such a day, and commanding each to be ready with a list of the names of all the masters and servants within his special jurisdiction. He then sent out a warrant to a certain number of townships, acquainting them of his intention to sit for the statute hirings in their neighbourhood on specified days of the week. Those townships first called had the advantage of the rest, because their inhabitants secured the benefits derived from attending the subsequent sittings in other parts of the district. Until the other townships had been summoned, their servants could not be hired, for their masters had not as yet set them at liberty. On the arrival of the constable, those plying for hire appear in their “Sunday best,” in order that their masters may see them “ well cladde.” Having got their breakfasts, they congregate together in an open space about 10 a.m., and if not previously hired do not depart thence till sundown. The first action of the presiding officer is to call his petty constables together and receive their lists. He then summons the masters, and asks each in turn if he be willing to set his servants at liberty. If the master refuses, the constable acquaints him with the rate * Wigger=strong. Happen=smart. * Rural Economy in Yorkshire in 1641; being the Farming and Account Books 7 Henry Best, of Elmswell. Surtees Society, 1857, vol. xxxiii. 8 November 11th. The Labourer at his Work and at his Play 143 of wages prescribed by statute, and receives a fee of 1d. for every person thus hired for a second term of service. The petty constables collect the money, and subsequently furnish their superior with an account of these proceedings. If the master agrees to release his servant, the latter pays the constable a fee of 2d, receives a ticket, and goes off to negotiate terms of service with a fresh employer. “Our sittinges,” says Best, ‘‘weare both at Kirkburne this yeare, the chief constable sate at Mr. Whipps’, and the servants stoode in the churchyard.” It was possibly at one of these that he overheard a servant say,— **T can sowe, I can mowe, And I can stecke, And I can doe My master too When my master turns his backe.” Best was not likely to inquire further into that individual’s past, for he was very particular as to whom he employed. His practice was to stand ‘in the churchyard, call any likely-looking person aside, walk with him fo the back of the church, and there commence a sharp cross-’' examination. His first inquiries would be where he was born, in whose service he had previously been, in what labour he had been most exer- cised, and whether he was capable of performing this and that duty. If his answers were so far satisfactory, Best next assured himself that the man had received or given the usual quarter’s notice. This his possession of a ticket would imply, but probably his old master was present, and would afford Best the information whether the man was at liberty. Best, therefore, sought him out, and learned whether the applicant was true and trusty, one of gentle and quiet demeanour, and not addicted to “companyinge.” If still satisfied, he returned to the back of the church and proceeded to bargain with the man over his wages. Some servants demanded perquisites, such as “an old suite, a payre of breeches, an olde hatte, or a payre of shoes.” Many of them expected “an apron smocke” besides, and some a summering of so many sheep, the cost of which, according to Best, was about eighteenpence per head. The final precaution was to demand and retain the fellow’s ticket and to remit to him his previous disburse- ment of 2¢., though this was by no means compulsory. The hiring is now completed, and Best goes off to look for other hands. In select- ing his maidservants he was very choice, for he would, as he called it, “void” such as appeared of a “sluggish or sleepy disposition,” for danger, so he said, of fire. He took care also to learn if they had friends in the neighbourhood of their proposed new home, because 144 Annals of the British Peasantry he bore in mind the adage that “occasion makes the thief,” and he wanted no pilferings of his larder as soon as his back was turned. After the hirings came a slack time of a week or so, because servants were in the habit of making their old masters the gift of one or two days’ extra work, and then of spending a well-earned holiday among their friends. But we will suppose that this recess is over, and that the new inmates of the farmhouse have settled down and become domiciled. Though comparatively an idle time of the year, there is plenty of work to test their dexterity. They have had their one annual outing, and cannot plead that they are stale and jaded for the want of a change. The sowing of the winter corn would have probably been completed before Martinmas. At any rate, as I have given a full description of it in another work,! I shall begin my account of farm operations with the threshing and marketing of the sale corn. Best seems to have put his hands on task work whenever he had the opportunity. He gave his threshers 6d. a day as long as the wheat and rye were under the flail, thence till Candlemas they received 4d., and from Candlemas till Lady Day, 5@. If they kept at the job throughout the week, they also claimed a thrave of straw as a perquisite. Another scale of prices for threshing was wheat and rye 8d. per quarter, pease 7d@., barley 6¢., and oats 4d. The first test of the new hands was in the conveyance of farm produce to market. During the spring months wains were occasionally used for the carriage of heavy goods, but in late autumn and throughout the winter months the roads of the Stuartine period were utterly impassable. Best tells us that “it was ill-going to Malton with draughts when the fields adjoyning to the highwaye were most of them fough.”? Wheel traffic being therefore out of the question, the men took the corn, and the maid the butter, to market on horseback. For light weights a short saddle raised before and behind, called a “pannel,” was sufficient. It was strapped to the horse by means of a leathern girdle termed “ wanty.” The longer ‘‘ped” served for heavier loads, the pack-saddle being reserved for the wool traffic. All this horse-furniture was not only kept in repair, but even made, on the farm. The oats were packed in three- bushel poakes, two of which were a horse-load. Wheat, rye, massledine, and barley were put into mette poakes.? Half-quarter sacks were also used, being carried by the short-coupled, well-backed horses. Best often sent his corn to Bridlington Quay, where he came in touch with the sea trade from Newcastle. But generally he had to fall back on the 1 History of English Landed Interest, vol.i., p. 318. 1892. ? In other words, at the time of year dating from the ploughing of the stubbles to the sowing of spring crops. Fough = fallow. 3 A mette was two bushels. The Labourer at his Work and at his Play 145 Beverley market, where the following practices were observed. At day- break on the market morning each man rose and provided his charge of two horses with a bottle of hay; part of this was eaten while the pannels were being strapped on, the rest was left for the night’s baiting. Each man then led six horses to the garner door, and there tied them head to tail, arranging the animals in a line, with their backs towards the garner doors. All able to carry a poake of corn then set to work and placed half a load on each horse. They next brought and loaded up the second poakes, whereupon the cavalcade of two men and twelve horses, with their nine quarters of corn, started on its journey. On arriving at their destination, the men sheltered their horses in stables hard by the market-place, the payment for which shelter was 1¢. per horse. If it was a Saturday, they put up at the “‘hoast houses” and dined, the cost of the stable room being thrown in with that of the meal, Each man was provided with 4d. for his dinner, and an extra 2a, to be spent for the good of the hostelry. Meanwhile the foreman, if not Best himself, was attempting to come to terms-with the dealers. Here a familiarity with local prices, and a thorough knowledge of the qualities of various grains was essential. Barley generally outsold oats by.8s. a quarter, rye outsold barley by 7s., and massledine outsold rye by 1s. Dodd-read-massledine,! if the wheat was a “ pubbe, proude and well skinned” corn, was in request ; but wheat-massledine was worth 6d. a quarter more than even the best samples of the other. The Beverley bakers would bite a few corns of these varieties, and if they appeared of a darkish “bley” or flinty colour they would have nothing to say to them. They were altogether in favour of the grey and long red wheats, the meal of which was far whiter ; but even these would be rejected if the samples gave evidence of “slaine,”? or if they contained a few corns of “driven wheat.” 3 The white variety was the best of all, and sure of a ready sale, unless badly weathered ; but massledine was only bought to mix with rye. The tempsed bread which it yielded was merely suitable for the coarse palates of the bakers’ poorer customers. If unsuccessful in his quest of a good customer, the foreman’s only resource was to pack up his goods again and hie homewards to see if he could do better with the local millers. These were so plentiful in Best’s neighbourhood that he was sure of a brisk competition. Their allies, the middlemen, such as 1 Massledine or maslin = a mixture of rye and wheat. It was called monk wheat in some counties up to the end of last century. Monk der: mong, to mingle ; hence mongrel, amongst. 2 Slaine = a disease resembling smut. 8 Driven wheat had no awnes, and was an inferior kind which came up amongst the better varieties. ‘ Y 146 Annals of the British Peasantry cadgers, badgers, pedlars, and hucksters, frequently called at the home- stead, and some of the mills were working all night when they brought back sufficient grist for the undertaking. Soon after Martinmas the foreman began to cut whatever underwood in the spinneys and woodlands he required for flail handles, scythe cradles, carrying rakes, shafts, rack staves, harrow spindles, etc. During the long evenings the farm hands sat round the great kitchen chimney and shaped the wilfes and saughs into flail hand staves, etc.1 Sorted bundles of these were fetched and set up against the hudde (chimney hob), under which a good fire was kept burning. Ready to hand lay a bottle of pease straw, wisps of which the men held in their right hands and employed for straightening the heated saplings. When cool, these were “‘ beaked”? and placed in the oven for the night. The saughs were employed for the heck stowes and spindles of the harrow.? Finally all were sorted into separate bundles and put by till required for use. Some of the men manufactured light sedge collars for the draught oxen, others were busy with their awls on the whit leather in the saddlery department ; some again were occupied with wheelwrights’ work in the waggon shed, and others were assisting the shepherd in peeling willow wood for the construction of folde barres (hurdles). In such employments, varied with outdoor work, the days, wet or fine, slipped quickly by till Christmastide. Then came a spell of seasonable festivities, though, judging from the list given by Best of his theological library, I shall venture a shrewd guess that he was not disposed to encourage much gaiety among his subordinates. The rustics of York- shire were not, however, as a rule, neglectful of time-honoured customs. They observed the grotesque ceremonies of yule log, the lord of mis- rule, carol singing, Twelfth Night, and Plough Monday, with such hearty good-will that, just at this very period, they had received a stern reproof from the authorities for profaning the sanctity of their parish churches, in which these otherwise innocent frolics generally took place.* For all this, I doubt not that the poor women going “ a gooding ” on St. Thomas’s Day called at Best’s hospitable door; that his servants laid " Wilfe = willow ; saugh = sallow. 2 Beake = to peel. 8 Heck stowes were rack staves, and spindles were cross-pieces which were to be mortised into harrow-frames. 4 Some time during the third decade of the 17th century the churchwardens and sworn men of the Archdeaconry of York were instructed to inquire ‘‘ whether hath your church or churchyard been abused and profaned by any fighting, chiding, brawling or quarrelling, and playes, lordes of misrule, summer lords, morris dancers, pedlars, bowlers, bearwards, butchers, feastes, schooles, temporal courts or leets, lay juries, musters, or other profane usage in your church or churchyard.”— Odserva- tions on the Popular Antiquities of Great Britain. J, Brand. New ed., 1883, vol. i. Pp. 503. The Labourer at his Work and at his Play 147 their large knotty log on the Christmas fire, and received from Best the wonted allowance of ale and frumety as long as it crackled on the hearth ; that some of the more superstitious of his household went into the stalls on Christmas Eve to see if the oxen were kneeling in adora- tion ; that after the Christmas sermon they all helped to make the walls of their parish church ring with the cry Ule! Ule! and that plum por- ridge, minced pies, and yule dough formed the usual Christmas additions to the ordinary dinner after its service. Nor do I doubt that a dozen strong arms from Best’s household aided in dragging the “ fond plough ” round the parish, urged forward by blows of the bladder attached to its driver’s whip, and accompanied by “Captain Caufstail,” whose queer garb, rough wit, and grotesque dancing would draw a smile from even a puritanically disposed master. But directly after Twelfth Night it was time to commence farming operations once more. The plough was put to its. legitimate use of pre- paring the land for spring sowing, and the time of the shepherd was soon absorbed in the lambing yard. The last year’s clip of wool had to be sold early in April, and the men were already busy in getting it ready for tithing. Best had been careful so far to keep it on the stone floors of his barn under lock and key, so as to preserve it from dirt and thievish fingers. Now it was thrown open to the men, and they were busy arranging it in piles of ten fleeces for the teending. Soon after the parson’s proctor had come and gone, woolbrokers with strings of packhorses appeared from Leeds, Halifax and Wakefield. Now was the opportunity for testing the powers of the shepherd in feeding and management. If the fleeces showed traces of dirt, they had not been properly washed; if of tar, they had been oversalved. If the sheep had been kept too long on the fallows, their wool was complained of as too coarse. All these matters would be noted by the farmer, and alluded to again at the ensuing Martinmas hirings. The price of wool, if the sheep had been properly looked after, was about 8s. a stone; but it probably fetched 12s. when sold again in the West. Best began to mow his hay whenever he found that the “ pennie grasse” had commenced to “ welk” and get dry. He gave his mowers tod. a day and their meat. These came armed with a scythe, shaft, strickle (whetstone), hammer,! sandbag, and grease horn. A scythe cost from 1s, 10d. to 2s. 6d., and the best strickles, made of “‘ froughy,” ? cost 1d.each. The mowers set to work before 5 a.m., and kept at it as long as they could see, with only the usual short intervals for food and sleep. However early they arrived in the hayfield Best was also there, in order to 1 «To pitte the strickle with in order to make it keepe sande.” @ Penan nAcwn eennd wanavanll ancancanad aalr 148 Annals of the British Peasantry see that they took their full breadths and ‘‘cutte cleane atte point and atte heale.” ‘A good mower,” says Best, “will goe the breadth of a broad- lande with a whette, and take it and more atte four sweathes ; and when hee hath done, you shall scarce perceive his sweathe balke.” If we consider that a broadland was eleven yards in breadth, it did not require much ingenuity for a mower to clear a perch with two sweeps of his scythe. Unless the foreman cut his proper swathe, the man immediately following him had “to cutte him out allmost to his foote,” and there was loss both of time and produce. On the common field, where the lands of different owners lay together, the farmer who was first to com- mence mowing had to be careful to rake his swathes away from his: neighbour’s standing grass, or the crops of the two owners might have become intermixed. The tifting of the hay included spreading, in un- favourable weather turning, raking, cocking, throwing together, and casting into great cock. To every mower there were two haymakers, each of whom received 4d. a day and his meat. Four of those tifting were supplied with rakes, with which they threw the hay into windrows ; the other four had short forks, with which they cocked it. One spreader would do as much in a day as six good mowers could cut. The forkers could cock in one hour as many windrows as those raking had taken two hours to construct, consequently the former seldom commenced operations before 3 o’clock in the afternoon. When the hay had stood in small cock four or five days (more or less according to weather), two or three cocks were raked into one big one, which was kept in position by means of two hay bands raked from the bottom of the cock and turned on each side of it, so as to meet and be joined together at the top. A good mower was expected to cut as much hay in a day as would make forty cocks, which were sufficient for aload and a half. Four good haymakers could rake and cock five such loads a day, one of which would sell for 16s. ‘‘ Look,” says Best, ‘as many haymakers you have, and you may expeckt that there shall bee soe many good loades raked and cocked in a day as they are in number.” The shafts of hay-rakes were made of “saugh,”2 and their heads, which contained fifteen teeth, of ash; the short rake was constructed wholly out of seasoned ash. The former cost at Malton 22d. per dozen, the latter 2s. per dozen. Before the hay could be lead it had to be tithed. This was per- ‘I have endeavoured to compare the powers of our 1gth-century mowers with those of Best. A good Kentish mower told me he could cover eleven furrows at a stretch with the short scythe and thirteen furrows with the long one ; these are respec- tively breadths of 7 ft. 4 in. and 8 ft. 8in. An Irish mower said that he had known of a sweep of twelve feet being done, but that nine feet was usual. 2 Sallow tree. The Labourer at his Work and at his Play 149 formed best while it was in small cock. Docks or cuttings from the hedgerows, called by Best “reade weekes,” were used for “ wikes” (marks). Two of these were set up on either side of each cock. If put on the top they were not so easily observed, and, when blown out of the perpendicular by the wind, were often mistaken for some weed cut with the grass. After the teendings the wains appeared, each accom- panied by two men and a woman. The strongest of the trio acted as forker, and received 6d. a day ; the other man loaded, and the woman raked, for which labour she received 3d. per diem. “In loadinge of a waine,” says Best, “they first fill the body, and then doe they beginne with the farre fore nooke, and after that with ‘the neare fore nooke, and then with the far hinder nooke, and last with the near hinder nooke, lay- ing, as usually, three good course, but some will lay on four. Some that buy hey be the loade will say that they will give soe much for three course above the waine ; others again for as much as an eighteen-fathom bande, which is usually accounted a load, if there be no conditions made ; others will bargain for as much as they can lye on; but the honestest and best way is to have the waine loaden, and then to bargaine when they see the loade.” Best filled his hay leath (shed) as full as possible, and made the overplus of the harvest into either a stack or pyke. The former was a parallelogram in shape, with a ridge similar to that of a house ; the latter was round and pointed at the top. The operation of corn harvest was the severest test of a servant’s capabilities. The principal implement used was the shearing hook, and, as it has now become obsolete in most parts of the country, I must digress for a short space in order to acquaint such of my readers to whom it is strange with its uses. Shearing is still practised on the wolds of Yorkshire in much the same way as it was in Best’s times. But in Sussex, Kent, and other parts of the country, it has been replaced by an implement known as the swapping, bagging, or begging hook. The shearing, reaping, or ripping hook is toothed, whereas the later forms of sickle are smooth. In the days of the flail it was preferable for a farmer to cut off his ears of corn as high up the straw as possible, the long stubble thus left being, when required, subsequently mown for thatch or litter. If the winter season was precocious, advantage was taken of the first night’s frost to dispense with the process of reaping altogether, the ears of corn being snapped off by means of the flail or ox goad. In reaping (ze. shearing) the operator first calculates the length of ground which will enable him, by going backwards and forwards four or six times, to cut sufficient corn for one sheaf. This depends on two factors—the dexterity of the workman and the size of his fist. An expert, by giving his left hand a twist, though not specially favoured by nature 150 Annals of the British Peasantry with a large grasp, could collect more corn into a smaller compass than another with longer but clumsier fingers. Clutching his sickle with the right hand, the harvester proceeds to the further end of the length selected and cuts his bond or tie-band of straw for the sheaf. For the moment laying this aside, he retraces his steps to the other extremity of the prescribed distance, and standing with the corn on his right side he, by an auxiliary motion of his right leg, encircles as much of the crop as the curved blade of his sickle will hold. Then with his left hand he grasps the bunch of imprisoned ears, and with the implement thus freed severs the collected stalks about twelve or fifteen inches from the ground, and as close as possible beneath his left hand. If a similar practice were attempted with the swap hook, its sharp, smooth edge would dissever prematurely every ear of corn collected within its curve. This the serrated edge of the reaping hook prevents. Of the two im- plements the swap hook is by far the most popular with the labourers. With the reaping hook sooner or later a man comes to sprain his right hand and cut his left one. To obviate as far as possible the former casualty, white leathern gloves used to be worn, the two middle fingers of the right-hand one being tied together. It was a custom in some parishes to present each labourer with these in church after the morning service on Easter Sunday, as a first preparation for harvest.+ In the use of the implement which has supplanted the shearing hook, quite a different practice is necessary. Instead of having his corn on the right hand, a swapper, if not left-handed, keeps it on his left. He cuts and lays his bond at the place where he starts. Then, with a primitive kind of lever, composed of a handful of straw, he pushes back the over- standing crop, and with the swapping hook slashes down the corn, severing its stalks close to their roots, Having cut with marvellous speed what he reckons to be equivalent to half a sheaf, he retraces his steps, collecting the fallen straws on his way. By a repetition of this pro- cess he should have completed his first sheaf. Drawing from this his second bond, he proceeds as before, until the premonitory symptom of a backache induces him to re-sharpen his hook and set up a few shocks. The man with the swap hook does not regard with favour the employ- ment of women for these lighter tasks of the harvest field, which thus afford him a short interval of busy rest. If, therefore, his wife or his daughters can afford spare time for harvesting, they, like him, are expected to swap as well as stook. Though one man can seldom either swap or shear more than half an acre per diem, it must be borne inmind 1 Possibly this originated the custom observed by the sheriff of presenting our judges with these articles of apparel at a Maiden Assize, as a certificate that his harvest of criminals had been garnered. The Labourer at his Work and at his Play 151 that he leaves in his wake no further harvest duties save that of carrying. I venture to assert that for wheat crops in hilly districts swapping is a more economical process than that of our latest-invented self-binders.” } We are now in a position to understand all that Best has to say on shearing in the times of Charles I. It would seem that he set this class of harvest work to gangs of labourers. To really efficient male shearers he paid 8¢. a day and their meat, and to the most efficient female shearers he allowed 6¢. For binding and stooking he paid 8d. a day, as well as food. The gang would no doubt arrange among themselves to take turns about in the lighter duties. Sometimes each shearer would bind and stook his own reapings. At other times, one man would follow every eight or ten shearers in the performance of these operations. Best tells us that he had once hired a fellow who could keep thus in constant employment thirteen shearers. From five to seven shearers were appointed for every broadland under wheat or rye cultivation. The two sides of each ridge were usually distinguished by the gang under the names of “‘forefurre” and “hinderfurre” respec- tively. It did not much signify which they called the forefurre, but the left-hand one was usually so-called. It was not only the best for cutting, but the best for those that were “rowlinge.”? Consequently the weakest and worst shearers were selected for this side, the strongest taking up a central position on the ridge where the corn grew rankest, and the men of medium dexterity shearing the hinderfurre. All good shearers “followed the corn,” that is to say, cut it in such a way that its heads bent towards them. When each shearer made his own bands, he occasionally hung his sickle over the left shoulder, picked up some of the cut corn, and twisted it into a narrow wisp. Now was the oppor- tunity for Best to gauge the abilities of his men. ‘‘Some,” says he, in the quaint Yorkshire dialect of Caroline times, “ merely gripe the corn, others rowle it properly. Some there are who take as much att one dinte as others will doe at three, and others againe that will take but a little atte once, for fear of over griping and strainynge their. hands ; some men they have a trick to treade upon it, and women to laye their legges over it and ‘keepe it down with their coates, for the more it yeeldeth from them the better it is to cutte; yette for men to treade upon every peece they cutte is an hindrance to .their labour.” 1 preserve on the walls of my hall with much care both one of the old-fashioned shearing hooks and its 2#s-d-vds a new swapping hook. I wish that I could add to my collection one of the ancient implements of the Welsh reapers, described by Giraldus as a small knife with two movable wooden handles. He had seen it in use, and greatly eulogises its efficacy. 2 To rowle = to gather an armful of the corn before it falls to the ground. 152 Annals of the British Peasantry The men commenced work about 7.30 a.m.— as soon, in fact, as the corn was dry. A really adroit shearer would cut ten stooks of winter corn a day. Best relates that on his ‘“‘demaine Flatte,” a dozen shearers once cut 520 stooks, partly of masledine, and partly of clear wheat, in four days. In every stook of winter corn there were twelve sheaves. “ Their manner is,” says Best, “to sette nine of the sheaves with their arses donne to the grounde, and their toppes caven up, soe that they stande just fower square, havinge three sheaves on every side and one in the midst, and then doe they take the other three sheaves that remaine and cover the toppe of the standing sheaves, and they most commonly lay the arses of the three sheaves towards the work folkes, and the heades or toppes of the sheaves backwards towards the place wheare they beganne.” As is now the rule, wheat alone was shorn, so that if a shearer was called out of the gang to mow oats, he received tod, a day. . If he had not done so already in hay harvest, Best. now imported extra labour into the farm, hiring moor folk for this purpose at Malton. The same evening that the new hands were expected, the foreman went about sunset to the “ folkes chamber” to make ready their bedding. This consisted of a foundation of rye or haver straw, on which was laid a “long codde putte on a harden bagge” to serve as a mattress, A shorter codde, “done in the same manner,” was the substitute of a pillow. ‘A paire of cleane harden sheetes,” “a feyringe cloth for to lye upon,” and “an olde coverlette or blankette ” completed the list of bed furniture. The new employees were put on to mow the oat crop at 2s. 6d. a week and their meat. All who were good lusty binders, and able to “ forke a wain,” received 2s. a week and their meat. Sometimes Best preferred to set the mowing, tying, and laying of the crop in band (but not the binding and stooking), at 2s. 6d. the acre. Task-workers were often allowed, as well, an acre of stubble, or carriage of their coals, or a contribution towards their “downdrews,”! such as a tempse loaf, a cheese, or a flesh pie. The area of the crop thus set for task- work was roughly calculated by the amount of seed which had been used in sowing it. This was usually fixed at three bushels per acre of clay land, and a mette per acre of the ‘ wouldes.”2 As these moor folk could mow an acre and a half daily, they and their women folk con- trived to earn 245. to 305. a week. . Oats, or haver, and barley, were mown as follows. Each scytheman had a girl behind him to gather what he cut, who was technically termed an “‘outligger.” There was also one binder to every three scythes, and one stooker to every three binders. A good corn mower would, at one 1 7.e, afternoon repast. 9 The lighter soil of the Yorkshire hill grounds. The Labourer at his Work and at his Play 153 stroke of the scythe, cut a foot and a half beyond each ridge of a broadland, clearing the whole area in four swathes. He would lay his tool so near the ground, and cut so evenly at point and at heel that one following him would fail to find how his swathe had gone. An outligger would soon realise if she had a dexterous mower in front of her, for if he set his corn well she could gather it with far greater ease than if he set it in an ungainly fashion. Indeed, some mowers threw the corn so badly that the binders could scarcely tell which was the top and which the bottom of the bundle that was to form a sheaf. Though mere clumsiness was not an offence, the men on taskwork were not inclined to overlook any wilful waste of time. In many parts of England the accused was tried by an a/ fresco court of harvesters, and, if found guilty, spanked with a hobnail boot.! The test of a good outligger was the closeness of her attendance on the mower, and the way she made her bands after that she had collected her sheaf with the gathering rake. Her proper position was with her face towards the standing corn, her left hand grasping the rake about the middle, her right lower down its shaft, and her forward foot close behind that of the mower. In this way some four acres of oats were cut and stooked daily. Sometimes the outligger was provided with a broad swathe-rake, often containing as many as thirty-eight teeth, with which she could draw aside a whole mower’s swathe and finish the broadland by twice passing up and down it. Tied to such implements by a string was a broad head-stall, which, says Best, “‘they putte about their neckes like a paire of sword hangers, and soe trail the rake therewith.” Some twenty-two to twenty-eight stooks of haver filled a wain, which was in the charge of one forker and one loader. Barley was stooked as well as other corns, nine sheaves being set together in three rows. Pease were neither mown nor shorn, but pulled with “ hookers,” three hands clearing each broadland. Women worked the right-hand or farrefurre, and men the left-hand or hinderfurre. The pease were generally ex- tracted by the roots, “and then, ever as the hand strikes, they rowle them on forwards, tumbling them over and over till there bee as many as they thinke sufficient for a reape, and then doe they parte them, and throwe by the reape.” The foreman had to see that this was properly done, otherwise the reape would be flat towards the ground, and “soe drinke up raine.” Twelve pease reapes were then made up into a cock, and fourteen to sixteen cocks filled a wain. It was, however, 1 See Brand’s Antiquities, vol. ii. p. 23. The custom was called ten-pounding in Suffolk, and ‘giving so-and-so the boot ” in Warwickshire. The latter expression is now almost as common as ‘‘ giving so-and-so the sack,” for which it is an equivalent. 154 Annals of the British Peasantry unusual to cock pease unless they had to be tithed. Best used to load and stack them direct from the reape in his helms or cartshed. This was the last harvest operation, for ‘‘when wee perceive,” says Best, “mowinge to growe to an ende, then doe wee seeke out our pease hookers, grinde them, and lye them in readiness.” After all this description of farm work the reader will be almost as glad as were Best’s servants to turn to the subject of harvest feasting. We will suppose, therefore, that all the farm produce has been §* Well cut, well bound, Well shocked, well saved from the ground.” I do not find that the Norfolk custom of largess prevailed in Yorkshire, but I cannot refrain on that account from giving the following details of it. On the first day of harvest the men leave. the field about four o’clock and visit the alehouse, where they indulge in a “whet”—in other words, a glass or two of ale—to cheer their hearts for the heavy labour before them. On their way they accost every person they meet, and solicit a largess. If the boon is conceded, they ask the giver if he will have his largess halloaed. If he assents, the halloaing is at his service. At the end of wheat harvest their employer gives each man the price of two pots of ale, with which they again make merry at the adjacent ale- house. The last or horkey load is decorated with flags and streamers, about which the whole gang of harvesters arrange themselves, and with, much shouting escort it to the rickyard. Here the mistress and her maids come out to welcome the revellers. The horkey supper follows in due course ; the farmer, his friends and relations sitting down to table with the men, At the conclusion of the repast the men retire outside the house, where a circle is formed by taking hands, in the centre of which stands their foreman, with a gotch of horkey ale beside him on the ground. He now produces a tin trumpet, and makes the signal for a last cheer. Three times a mighty shout of “ Largess!” goes up, accom- panied by a prolonged and deafening blast from the trumpet. Then follow three successive whoops, after which the men refresh their hoarse throats with the spirit-stirring ale. Meanwhile all is confusion within doors. Maids hurry away the furniture until the floor is cleared for dancing. Tobacco and pipes are freely handed round, and good malt liquor becomes as plentiful as water. The following quaint rhyme from the Worfolk Drollery expresses far better than I can essay to do the men’s sentiments on this occasion :— ** We have a custom nowhere else is known, For here we reap where nothing e’er was sown. Our harvestmen shall run ye cap and leg, And leave their work at any time to beg ; The Labourer at his Work and at his Play 155 7 They make a harvest of each passenger, And therefore have they a /ord'-treasurer.” _ Though the revelry of the largess halloa and the horkey feast did not find a home in Best’s kitchen, I do not doubt that there were the frumenty pot to welcome home the harvest cart, and the garland of flowers to crown the captain of the reapers. No doubt, too, the pipe and the tabor were “busily set at work,” and that the lad and the lass would ‘‘ have no lead on their heels.” 2 No doubt, also, that the following toast would have to be drunk, even though not couched in the terms of the Suffolk labourer :— ‘* Here’s a health to the barley mow, Here’s a health to the man Who very well can Both harrow and plough and sow.” 3 The prize sheaf would have to be competed for, and the “inning ” goose devoured. Let us hope that the shearer who had occupied the place of honour on the ridge did not so belittle himself at Best’s hospitable board as to illustrate the old adage by becoming “ drunk as a lord.” It is more than probable that Best never gave him the chance, for at the churn suppers, prevalent in the East Riding in those times, cream was the substitute for ale. One of the last offices for the old master before the approaching Martinmas hirings is to thatch his stacks, and there is none too much time for doing it if the men want to leave behind them a neat rick- yard, and everything in such trim that the new hands may at once centre their attention on the winter sowing. So the wheat and rye straw, which has been stowed away at some house end for the pur- pose, is got out, and the foreman looks up his needles, eize and switching knives, and iron rake. If it has been a bad year, it may be necessary to send men to the wheat and rye stubbles, where, as a result of the process of shearing, a depth of covert delightful to the thoughts of a modern partridge-shot still remains. The stubble having been mown, or more often pulled up by the roots, is handed over to the thatchers’ assistants, in order that two parts of it may be mixed with one of haver* straw, to make it “cragge” well. The thatcher mounts the stack, and sprawls full length on its slant- ing roof. He begins at the eaves and goes upwards. Below him 1 The best shearer was called a lord. 2 Herrick’s Hesperedes, p. 113. 3 Observations on the Popular Antiquities of Great Britain, vol. ii. p. 19, ed. 1888. Job Brand. 4 Haver = oats. 156 Annals of the British Peasantry are four assistants: one halfway up the stack, handing him the large wisps or bottles of thatch; another on the ground, making the stubble into bottles; a third sitting beside the haver straw and feeding the bands; and a fourth working backwards with a rake to finish them off. The thatcher lays the thatch lengthwise along the stack, each length overlapping the one immediately below it. When he comes to within a foot of the ridge, he lays loose straw only. In and out of this, which he calls “the rigginge,” he twines hay-bands, casting their ends over the ridge to prevent the rigginge from blowing away. For every yard in length of the stack two bands at equal distances are laid parallel to the lengths of thatch, being made fast at each end by string tied to wooden pegs. The ridge is constructed by means of a layer of stubble, the ends of which are bent over the top and secured, so that any rain will run down instead of through the stack. A foreman soon became expert in this work, for every year, just before hay harvest, he was furnished with an object lesson in the art by the arrival on the farm of hired experts, whose office it was to thatch the roofs of the houses and cottages. These men received 6d. a day and their meat in summer, and 4d. and their meat in winter. They had three meals: the first, breakfast, at 8 a.m.; the second, dinner, at 12; and the third, supper, at 7 p.m. Each of these consisted of four services, viz. butter, milk or porridge, cheese and eggs, pies or bacon. Good though this fare appears to have been, they sometimes asked for 10d. a day instead. The best materials for roofthatching were wheat and rye straw ; ling was used, and barley, if clean and free from weeds. Haver straw was the worst, because the birds meddled with it most. This drawback could, however, be partly obviated by mixing it up with water and lime till it became in consistency like putty. Three assistants dressed the straw, two of them carrying it to a watering-place and shaking it lightly out, while a third thoroughly soaked it with scoopfuls of water. When it had been drenched nightly for some time, it was set up in bottles and again watered. The thatcher began at the eaves, and proceeded up- wards towards the ridge. First, with his rake he scratched the old thatch, thus freeing it of dirt and old mortar. He then laid on with his trowel fresh mortar. Finally, he fixed his needles and arranged the bottles, sewing them to the rafters with bands of staddle hay or twisted haver straw. The thatcher was often nicknamed by the bucolic wits of the Stuartine period “ hange strawe.” The term seems to have originated from an ancient Worcestershire rhyme which the farm hands, after a “ geastinge,” ' were wont to repeat :— 1 Feasting. The Labourer at his Work and at his Play 157 ‘** Theaker, theaker’ (they cried out), ‘theake a spanne, Come off your ladder and hang your man.’” The menaced knave was prompt in the reply— ‘** When my maister hayth thatched all his strawe, He will then come down and hang him that sayeth soe.’ ” History does not relate whether these direful threats produced any more serious results than a rough guffaw. From the apparent obscurity of the joke, I should question if they always produced even that. CHAPTER XI THE SCOTTISH PEASANT BEFORE AND AFTER THE TIME OF THE UNION HOUGH the feudal system had been in full force amidst the lowland peasantry of Scotland long before the 17th century, the clan system was destined to linger in her highlands and islands until a far later period.1 No very marked distinction can, however, be drawn between the social condition of the poorer classes under a manorial and under a tribal polity. There was oppression in the clan homestead as well as in the feudal homestead. Violence was pre- valent amidst the level ploughlands of the heritor, as well as down in the craggy glens of the chieftain. ‘Whatever was harsh in the Celtic polity,” says Lord Colin Campbell, “was stereotyped by feudalism.” ? The clans utilised the military elements of the latter system to serve their own warlike purposes. Though the great lords might hold here- ditary jurisdiction over each northern and western county, the chieftains ruled over its lands. The tighern was degenerating from a patriarchal ruler into a rapacious landowner. He still walked abroad with a com- pany of armed attendants ; not, however, as formerly, to vindicate the impartiality of tribal justice, but to defy the majesty of the national legislature. Instead of homage, he expected rent; and when either the one or the other was withheld, the offender was ejected arbitrarily from his holding. He divided his territory among the hereditary tacksmen, on conditions of “ makking slaughter” on hostile tribesmen. His vassals, in order to maintain the population of the clan at its fight- ing strength, were compelled to subdivide their tacks into labourers’ allotments ; and the cultivators of these tiny holdings inhabited those clusters of huts known as tenants’ towns. During the periods of armed strife, all farmers were exempted from the obligations of cultivating the soil. Sheafs of arrows continued to be forms of rent long after a couple of capons or a tribute of pepper had taken their place in England. The husbandry practised was almost wholly pastoral, and the agricul- tural produce of a Highland estate was composed principally of the » Skene’s Celtic Scotland. ® The Crofter in History, p. 9, 2nd ed. 158 The Scottish Peasant 159 spoils of war. A disputed title to lands was fought out regardless of any appeal to the central authority. If a robber was sheltered by a neighbouring chief, one of his kinsmen was seized as a substitute. If some stranger wanted to drive his herd through the tribal lands, he had to leave behind him so many beasts as a wayleave. The require- ments of a marriage settlement, or a funeral feast, furnished an excuse for an autumn’s raid into the lowlands. Not only did the Highland gentry thieve from their neighbours; they pilfered the property of their own followers, exercising “the exorbitant lawless power” with which a helpless Government and tenancies-at-will combined to endow them. “IT have asked,” says a writer,! “many of the Highland tenantry why they did not choose to have better homes, and the answer I had was commonly much the same; namely, that the building of good houses, or making any such improvement, was a sure way to get themselves removed, as for a shilling or two more rent the master would give the preference to the first that offered; so that it seems every kind of in- dustry was studiously discouraged, and that laziness, that delusive mother of vice and source of dependency, was the chief thing aimed at.” This aptly illustrates the old truism, “like master, like man”; for the commoners of Scotland were as cunning, lazy, and vindictive as their betters. Agriculture was only a secondary consideration. To improve, as in England, had been found merely a preparation for a compulsory flitting. To bouch, on the contrary, was the only chance of securing fixity of tenure. As in Ireland at the present moment, many a sitting tenant was more indebted for his immunity from evic- tion to the terrorism created by frequent agrarian outrages than to the goodwill of his landlord. The offgoing farmer had an unpleasant practice of obtaining some compensation for his lost tenant-right by leaving his dirk in the throat of the incomer. Throughout the High- lands, therefore, there was still too much strife and bloodshed for the peaceful arts of husbandry to find a place. As long as the old aristo- cracy existed, lands, in most parts of Scotland, were held by ward tenures. Hosting, hunting, watching, and warding were the chief means of raising and carrying on both the outbreak of 1645 and the rebellion of 1745. The power of the county was in the hands of the great families, its property in those of a vassal soldiery, and its hus- bandry was performed by servants who paid for their tenures a certain portion of the produce. 1 « Some Remarks on the Highland Clans, and Methods proposed for Civilisation.” MSS. British Museum, circa 1718, quoted by Lord C. Campbell in his Crofter in Hestory, p. 17. 160 Annals of the British Peasantry At the time of the union between the two kingdoms, the land tax had reached the sum of £48,000. The legislature was more than ever disposed to do what it could; in other words, to enact laws favourable to agriculture, which were certain to be broken. It abolished rookeries * and weeds?; but neither crows nor marigolds were frightened thereby out of existence. It frequently commanded “ilk man tilling” to sow ‘“‘benes and peis’”;* but this did not prevent the Aberdonians and other parsimonious agriculturists from ruining large areas of their lands by converting them into rotting heaps of “‘fulzie.” It gave repeated evi- dences of its great liking for fixity of tenure ;* but “ puir labouris of the ground” were evicted none the less frequently on that account. It ordained that destroyers of standing corn were thieves ;® but no one imagined himself to be so when, in company with an armed expedi- tionary party, he helped to tread under foot the grain of a hostile clan. The royal troops constantly damaged agricultural interests, why there- fore might not tribal troops do the same? It illegalised a distress when levied on the husbandman’s contenement during use;® but having possibly been supplied some generations back by the tribal ‘overlord, his descendants saw no justice in this attempt of Edinburgh lawyers to upset the principles of the steel-bow. Yet, even in the Highlands, there were faint evidences of an ap- proaching change to a better economy. Prior to the introduction ot the flock, the clansmen drove their tiny black cattle each spring up to the mountain shielings, and beguiled the long summer days in fishing and shooting, and the long summer nights in dancing and singing,” The prejudice against swine flesh was gradually being overcome. The horse’s tail was no longer regarded as a piece of natural harness; and the superstition that what was bestowed in the relief of beggary was doubly lost had begun to die out. Yet in 1773, as soon as Dr. Johnson got up amongst the peat fires of Nairn, his account of Highland life is pitiful in the extreme. Roads and trees, often milk and bread, were conspicuous by their absence. The poorer sort lived principally on kail, and went barefoot. Their shanties, which served the purposes of a common shelter for man and 1 Jac. I., 1424, c. 20, vol. ii., p. 65 Jac. II., 1457, c. 32, vol. ii, p. 51. ? Frag. Col., cc. 11, 12, vol. i., pp. 750, 757. 5 Parl. of James I., 1426, c. 6, vol. ii., p. 13; of James IL, 1455, c. 28, vol. ii, p- 51. * Jac. IT., 1449, c. 6, vol. ii., p. 35, and Zd. vol. ii., p. 386. § Dav. II., 1366, vol. i., p. 499¢; Jac. III., 1481, c. 4, vol. iii., p. 2173 Car. I, 1645, c. 75, vol. vi. i., p. 469. 6 Td., Jac. 1V., 1503, c. 50; ii. 246, c. 453 ii. 254. Jac. VI., 1581,c. 143 iii. 217. 7 The Crofter in History, p. 3. Lord Colin Campbell. 1886. The Scottish Peasant 161 beast, were disposed in spots where wind could not act and water could flow. They consisted of loose stone walls six feet high, roofed with a few spars, covered with heather and weighted with stones! The only means of access for light was the smoke-hole, so constructed that the rain in penetrating could not extinguish the fire. In other parts, we learn, from sources of a later date still,? that the cottages were mere mud erections, consisting of two apartments called butt and ben, which became so dilapidated and filthy in course of time that they had to be razed to the ground and re-erected with fresh materials every five or seven years. A seventeenth-century Highland town was not much superior to the villages. It consisted of sod-covered cottages, in whose mud walls occasional round moor stones were embedded. A deep narrow close intersected every pair of these tenements, which terminated with a tiny garden, consisting principally of nettles, but also of cabbages and parsnips (the latter vegetable being the earlier substi- tute of the potato). The chief characteristics of these oppidan dwellings were a tiny window at front and at back, a huge chimney-place for fish curing,? and a conspicuous want of furniture. The people were dressed in a coarse cloth of home manufacture. The men, prior to the disarmament Act of 1714, and the dress restric- tions of 1745, donned the plaid, philabeg, shoulder-belt, bonnet, and other portions of the ancient tribal garb. Their principal ornaments were the target, claymore, and dirk. The women generally wore the guile-chan or small plaid, tartan nether garments, and, if married, mutches, fastened with ribbons. Both mountaineers and lowlanders, if they used any foot-gear at all, made it out of native materials. The buskin of the former was usually a piece of hide, cut to the shape of the foot, from the back of a red deer; the thin brogue of the latter was untanned cow leather. The Highlander on the march, or during the chase, was a wilder animal than such of his kindred who were en- gaged in more peaceful pursuits. He subsisted principally on what he stole or caught each day, eating his venison or beef raw, as soon as he had pressed out the blood by means of hazel rods, or on the rare occasions, when time allowed, boiling it in the paunch or skin of the animal, and washing down this supper with whey or water. His early morning meal was a little barley cake and a draught of broth. On this support he would accomplish the fighting and marching of a long day, and, after it, sleep soundly in the open, no matter how rigorous the weather, merely covered with his plaid. The fear of becoming effeminate 1 Journey to the Western Islands, 1773. 2 Statistical Account of Scotland. 3 Scenes and Legends in the North of Scotland. Hugh Miller, 3rd ed., 1853. M 162 Annals of the British Peasantry influenced his habits at home. His bed was the ground, his mattress a mere bundle of fern; and if he found himself for a time in better lodgings, he flung the bed-clothes on the floor, and, wrapping himself in his plaid, snored peacefully on the tumbled heap. Like Sir James Douglas, he liked better to hear the lark sing than the mouse cheep; and even if occasionally this wild outdoor ‘life brought him within perilous proximity to starvation, he could subsist for a while, like the untamed deer or rabbit, on the bark of trees. At a later and more degenerate date a skalk out of the choppin bottle of usquebaugh (which could be easily replenished when empty at the ubiquitous blind spirit- houses) was an unwholesome addition to the Highland breakfast. Cheshire cheese was the principal pzece de resistance at the tables of the better sort. Meat, in the few houses where it was consumed, was cut up with the dirk, and distributed among the females, who ate it with their fingers, But asin many districts it was impossible to purchase less than a carcase at a time, few of the poorer classes ate much besides coarse cakes of oatmeal, thicker and softer cakes of barley, and occa- sionally unfermented wheat, all of which had been previously graddaned and ground in the quern. Among.the less civilised clansmen a custom prevailed of bleeding their cattle in the spring, boiling the blood in kettles together with a great quantity of salt, and storing it for winter food. The most innocent drink of the Highlander was goat’s milk, the most intoxicating was whey. The latter was barrelled and kept in cold. cellars until it became so potent that a very little of it would turn the strongest head. Butter-milk, mixed with water and called “bland,” was used, and beer was a common drink among the tacksmen. On the coasts fish was consumed to such an extent that scurvy, though kept in check by its natural antidote, scurvy grass, was greatly prevalent. Salted solan geese and other sea-birds contributed largely to this dis- ease. Another ailment prevalent in these districts was smallpox, though a dressing of vaccine lymph on the unbroken skin was widely used, and said to have been more or less of a preventative.” In the Northern Islands at this particular period prevailed a purer and therefore more equitable system of tribal economy than that existing on the mainland. It is doubly interesting, as it affords us a glimpse of medizeval cottage life through the spectacles of educated and civilised witnesses. Cultivation was still confined to scattered spots environed by deep mosses. These “rooms,” as they were called, were split up into unequal merklands, and subdivided into pennylands. Their rents were at one period paid in ‘ wadmale,” a coarse kind of cloth manufac- tured on the spot, at another period in grain, and at a later one in 1 Tour through Great Britain, vol. iv. p. 337. D. Defoe. 7% Jd., vol. iv. The Scottish Peasant 163 butter ; finally in money—hence the name of pennyland. The weight called the merk was equivalent to 1 Amsterdam pounds, and 24 merks composed the lispund. A pennyland was supposed to be capable of yielding 14 merks of butter, and to contain about eight acres of soil. But such estimates as these were merely the later attempts of civilisa- tion to introduce method into the chaotic practices of a barbaric era, The sole title of a landowner was uninterrupted succession; the sole title of a land-holder the fact that he had hitherto been able to meet the wants of his superior. The wealth of a district was estimated by the number of its ploughs or the supposed area of its cultivated land, to- gether with the produce of its fishing nets. The only methods of con- veying land were the shaking of hands, or the drinking of spirituous liquors? in the presence of witnesses. Property was disposed of to the highest bidder during the burning of a shred of linen in moulded fat. A rent audit was often the reception of numerous payments of meal sewn up in the skins of sea-birds. The archives of great families were handed down by the senachi and recited by the bard. As neither of these could read or write, there have never been any historical manuscripts in the Earse tongue. The English tenure by copy of court roll was the product of a civilisation far in advance of this rude Highland economy. The requirements of a landlord and the supply of them by his tenantry had remained so irregular that they could never have become crystallised into customs. Take, for example, the parish of Reay. There, all that could be learned of its rental was that personal services by tenants for their landlord varied from 20 to 120 days each year ; that a well-esteemed master in times of temporary pressure could reckon on voluntary assistance ; and that if only one-half of the usual prestations had been commuted into fixed money payments, the entire tenantry would have become insolvent.” In another parish a writer, despairing of means to tabulate all the various dues, sets down the rental as a deep arcanum in the sole possession of the factor.3 We recognise Roman, Danish, Saxon, and Norman customs of ancient land tenure, strangely jumbled up in one and the same district. Malcolm II. had established the Roman lcetic polity on the mainland about Dingwall, when he feued out the lands to great families as a defence against the Danes.t The due known as the 1 The latter custom was, however, I believe, confined to the more thirsty south of Scotland. 2 Parish of Reay. Rev. David Mackay. Counties of Caithness and Sutherland. Stat. Account of Scotland, vol. vii. No. 52, 570. 8 Parish of Lairg, County of Sutherland. Stat. Account of Scotland, vol. xi. p. 569. No. 49. - 4 Stat. Account of Scotland, vol. i. No. 30, p. 259. 1791. 164 Annals of the British Peasantry scatt, originally claimed by Danish landlords, was a kind of ¢ridutum soli ; that known as the oxpenny was similar to the Scriftura tax. The grassum} was an equivalent for the Danish heriot, and the holders of a cottage and one-eighth of a pennyland performed the same personal services on the lord’s farm as the Anglo-Saxon cotarius.? These Island and Highland peasants were, however, amphibious beings, who derived a livelihood as much from the sea as from the land. The communal tenure of the runrig system was applied to that of the sea net. The occupation of so many pennylands on the soil carried with it one or more thwarts in the six or eight-oared common fishing boat. The landlord was also a sea lord, and claimed his due of fish from the profits of the toilers on the deep. Ifit had not been for the products of the fisheries, those of agriculture would have been wholly inadequate for the support of the population. We read of districts where a year’s farm products were barely sufficient to supply the food necessary for half that period. There were Crown rents and ecclesi- astical rents, besides landlords’ rents. The grantees of the sovereign had not only usurped the dues originally payable to Norwegian and Danish overlords, but had introduced a new system of land taxation. The cess had not replaced, but had been added to, the scatt. In Popish times, when holy water was of commercial value, the “ wattle” had been introduced, and this had now become another of these Crown dues. There were also corn teinds and live-stock teinds, payable in produce to both rector and vicar.? On the whole, therefore, the poverty of the entire district was extreme ; for even after a good harvest with the fishing nets some fortunate tacksman, by whom this industry had been farmed, alone reaped the benefit. Thus we find every class of the community reduced to a condition of dependence : the farmer begged, the landlord borrowed, and the unemployed stole. If a bad season occurred, the misery reached an acute stage. Hugh Miller affords us an insight into the straits to which these people could be brought, even on the mainland, in his account of the famine years of 1694 and 1740.4 Let me briefly retail in the graphic words of this brilliant writer the scenes belonging to the latter of these two periods. One evening in late summer, crops of rich promise were waving in every field ; the following morning a chill, dense fog had settled over hill and dale. When it cleared off, the half-filled ears drooped on their 1 Stat. Account of Scotland, Parish of Northmaven, vol. xii. p. 346. 2 Rect. Sing. Pers. Thorpe. The owner of a cottage and one acre of land. 3 Parish of Northmaven, Presb. of Shetland. Rev. Will. Jack. Vol. xii. No. 27, p: 346. 4 Scenes and Legends of the North o* Scotland, 3rd ed., 1853. Lhe Scottish Peasant 165 stalks, and the long pointed leaves slanted towards the soil as if scathed with fire. The sun shone once more with his accustomed splendour, and a light breeze from the south rolled away every lingering wreath of vapour. But the warm rays merely shrivelled the blighted produce, and the favouring wind rustled through unproductive straw. The husbandman, instead of singing and feasting with his shearers, brooded over his ruin in the recesses of his cottage. The poor craftsman, who had already secured his ordinary store of fish, launched his boat a second time, and attempted to provide against the impending famine. Later in the year the unrepealed law of the sheriffdom was put in force ; search being made into “girnals” and meal chests for hoarded corn. Every one knows the story of the wretched “ pocks mither” who had secreted a sack or two of the precious grain under a mountain of bed- clothes, and of the Cromarty farmer who spent the winter in picking out the sounder grains from a blasted heap of corn, not so as to derive thereby a supply of food, but only with the hope of obtaining sufficient seed for the ensuing spring. Yet the soil of these northern districts was not by any means barren. Martin, when he wrote at the beginning of the 18th century, speaks of the great natural fertility of Skye.! Pennant merely alludes to the distress of its inhabitants? Walker refused to regard emigration as the remedy for the distress which he found everywhere in the Hebrides, but rather advocated an increase of population if only it could have been accompanied by improvements in agriculture.? It was not the soil itself which was to blame; it was the wretched management of it. ‘The tenure, the labour, and the implements were all equally incompatible with profitable husbandry. A careful search into the numerous works on this island life does not incline me to believe that landlords were unnecessarily harsh, or that tenants were abnormally vicious. Ignorance was at the root of most of the misfortunes to which these simple folk were a constant prey. Charity and hospitality, though greatly influenced by superstition, were their chief virtues. What, for example, can be imagined more benign than the paternal rule of MacNeil, thirty-fifth lord of Barra, as described by Martin?* Picture his complete control over the love affairs of his tribal children, as illus- trated by his universal practice of choosing each man’s helpmate ; his benevolent system of poor relief, with its almshouse for the impotent and its fund of milch cows for the victims of casualty ; his equitable 1! Description of the Western Islands, 1703. 2 Pennant’s Zour, Descr. of Skye, vol. i. p. 353- 8 Economical History of the Hebrides. Dy. Walker. 4 Description of the Western Isles of Scotland, 1703. M. Martin. 166 Annals of the British Peasantry administration of justice, which disposed of all necessity for the attorney. Perhaps one of the most suggestive, as well as the most impressive, features of a patriarchal polity was that mentioned by Toland? as practised in Skye. So fertilizing were both climate and soil, that men and beasts increased rapidly. The fecundity of his tribal children was always regarded as a source of wealth by the overlord, but that of flocks and herds was more of a gain to their immediate owners. A simple rule prevailed, gratifying alike to both parties concerned. If a tenant’s wife had twins, or if his cow or ewe had twins, one in each case became the property of the landlord. The custom of fosterage was another pleasing feature of patriarchal sway ; but in this case, instead of the poor man’s child migrating to the great house of the district, it was the rich man’s which some honoured tenant had the privilege of bring- ing up. Though the infant was accompanied from its father’s dwelling by several valuable milch beasts, I doubt if the system known as ‘“« Macalive cattle” enriched the fosterer.2, On the whole, but few traces of injustice are apparent in the various systems of patriarchal police adopted by these islanders. The “lawright” men of the Orkneys, with their powers of midnight search, were only a source of inconvenience to the malefactor. Sub-tenants on the island of Harris were compelled, on a fixed date, to quit temporarily their holdings each year, as a proof of their entire dependence on the will of the tacksmen. If they refused, they became degraded into scallags; but there was no reason why they should refuse, and if by chance they did, their new position of mingled slavery and beggary insured for them a more Christian treatment than when they had been independent. Buchanan maintains that the pauper was much respected among the commonalty of the Hebrides, and with him other writers concur. In the island of Arran there was all the machinery for oppression, but no distinct evidence of its being used unjustly, at any rate by the chief families. If a farmer was obstinate enough to withhold his rent, the coroner proceeded to his holding, fixed therein his staff, thus convened the neighbours, and, with their con- currence, seized either the defaulter or his goods by way of surety.? It was not, therefore, the injustice of landlords, but the systems of land tenure that were at fault. Personal services and tenancies at will were deprecated. Instead of tacksmen and their sub-tenants, there should have been a class of farmers paying fixed money rents direct to the landlord. Instead of those who received produce for their services, there should have been a class of day labourers paid by money wages. 1 History of the Druids. 2 Tour in the Western Islands, 1773. Dr. Johnson. 3 Description of the Western Isles of Scotland, 1703. M. Martin. The Scottish Peasant 167 The husbandman’s energy was wofully misapplied. Barclay, in his statistical report of Orkney, talks of infields which had borne crops of beans for forty years without a fallow. This portion of the arable field, instead of being divided into three sections, one of which was (supposed to be) manured annually, and all of which were perpetually cultivated with white crops, should have been converted into small pasturage en- closures. The outfield, which was treated similarly, save that it never received a particle of manure, should have been covered with all the dung made on the holding, and placed under a seven years’ shift.t The cattle should have been herded, and green crops grown for their winter food. The plough in ordinary use, fitted with the restle or sickle-shaped blade for cutting the tough roots of bent, was drawn by four horses and attended by five men, one of whom followed with a spade to rectify the imperfections of the tilth. The harrow often con- sisted merely of two rows of teeth, and a collection of heather instead of a third row. Many farms were too small for a plough, the spade being used as a substitute, and even on larger holdings the former implement was confined to the long-lands, and the latter used as its substitute on the short-lands. In some districts no carts were used at all. Women, carrying on their backs creels of seaweed, climbed laboriously over the mountain ridges intervening between the shore and their holdings, and while their husbands cut the sward of the furrow with a spade, they, on their knees before them, lifted every sod, and covered it with the ware. Barley was pulled up by the roots; oats were never sown before the middle of April, and, when ripe, were shorn with the sickle. Sheaves were generally carried to the stackyard by means of a frame of sticks on horseback. Where carts were in use they _were generally wheelless. Sometimes horses were yoked to frames of rough timber, the two pointed extremities of which scraped along the ground. In other parts the kellachy was in use. It consisted of a coarse basket, shaped like a sugar-loaf, and resting on small circles of wood, called tumbling wheels. The poorer tenants united promis- cuously horses, cows, and oxen in the draught of their heavier imple- ments. All were harnessed, not yoked like oxen, being provided with a collar fitted with a strap which opened and shut, and thus did not interfere with the horns of the animal. Reins were made of horsehair, birch twigs, or straw. A stick under the horse’s tail served as a crupper. The chief wants of these districts were good roads, good markets,? a money medium of exchange, and mills for lint, barley, and other grain. 1 Economical History of the Hebrides. Dr. Walker. 2 Introduced under the auspices of General Wade in 1726. 168 Annals of the British Peasantry In some places the most common articles of civilised life were difficult to obtain. Dr. Johnson, for example, when in Skye, experienced much inconvenience by not being able to replenish his ink-pot, and when a woman of that island broke her needle she had to stop sewing till another was imported. Everything that could be, was manufactured on the spot. The men, besides being farmers, were carters, shoemakers, weavers, and wheelwrights. The women assisted in field-culture during the day, spun at night, and knitted whilst attending the manure horse, Coarse cloths, nightcaps, mitts, etc., were made in the cottage. The superfluous yarn was destroyed, or made into worthless stockings, or bartered in places like Lerwick for tea, snuff, tobacco, linen, lawns, etc. ‘The wayside tavern was a kind of pawnbroker’s shop, where produce, stolen from the farmers, was exchanged by servants for other require- ments.! Where all the population was so poverty-stricken, it is difficult to pick out the peasant. Servants in husbandry were less to be pitied than those who engaged their labours; in fact, masters were at the mercy of this class, especially at a later date, when its labour came to be paid for partly in money. Generally a servant engaged with a farmer only when bribed with the promise of high wages. When money failed, these were converted into the tenancy of a portion of ground, and the keep of one or more cows in summer, the expense of which often ruined atenant. The mailers or sub-tenants of the farmers were neither wholly husbandmen nor wholly day labourers. They were often both, some- times mechanics as well. Good farm hands received wages in so many bolls of meal. Maids lived in their employers’ houses, and were paid in sheep, from which source they derived all the articles of their dress. Harvest hands were hired for the season ; but this was a plan deprecated by intelligent husbandmen, who complained that in one stormy day they lost as much as would defray the whole cost of shearing. There had been in medizeval times many grades of agricultural workers below the tacksmen. Mr. Cochran Patrick speaks of bowers, steel-bowers, cottars, crofters, and dryhouse cottars, Of these, the last mentioned possessed nothing but a hovel and a kailyard.2, The poorest class, however, consisted probably of those who were employed with sickles, cutting the ware off the rocks for kelp. Theirs was certainly the severest toil, if not the least remunerative. They seldom made enough 1 From which circumstance it was known as the change house. Example: ‘ All the elders report that they know nothing to the contravencies of the late Act ordaining that no ale be sold in the change house on the Lord’s Day.—24 Sept., 1654.” Ex- tracts from the Sesston Records of Arbuthnot in Kincardineshire. 2 Medieval Scotland, p. 26. R. W. C. Patrick, 1892. The Scottish Peasant 169 by their summer labour to pay the cottage rents. They often ran short of oatmeal, and then had to subsist on periwinkles and charity. ‘Those who were most prosperous kept either a milch cow or two ewes tied together with the rope called the caiggean chaorich. Frequently the necessities of an empty stomach tempted them to kill and eat one of the latter. This advertised the fact that they had become too frail to protect themselves, a circumstance of which their neighbours took immediate advantage by depriving them secretly of their remaining milk producer. The superstitions of these strange tribes were strongly redolent of pagan customs. ‘The cure of epilepsy by the slaughter of a cock, the anxiety to preserve the continuity of the cottage fire even though the cottage itself had to be removed to another site, and the sun worship concealed in the celebration of Beltane, were all slowly yielding ground before the determined advance of the Society for Promoting Chris- tian Knowledge.1 A very little later the establishment of parochial schools by William ITI. helped to entirely abolish, or give Christian interpretation to, these heathen customs. The misery and lawlessness of the Highlands had their disastrous effects on Lowland agriculture. Macaulay tells us that the burgesses of Perth were daily familiar with rows of wind-fluttered plaids hanging from the gallows tree. A writer to the Farmer's Magazine of 1806 recounts a conversation he had held with an old Forfarshire farmer, who had more than once been compelled to drop the corn sickle, and bare blade in defence of his crops. Husbandmen in the north and centre of that country at the beginning of the 18th century continued to practise the common field system of husbandry, not because it was the most profitable, but because it was the best for purposes of mutual defence. So sure as their crops ripened in the autumn, so sure were they of having to defend them against inroads of Highland caterans. In order, therefore, to share the profits and losses, they divided the adjacent fields into alternate parcels called cavils, and cultivated them on the runrig system. The boundary or balk of each ridge was a strip of uncultivated soil, into which all stones and roots were thrown. These became an impervious and secure nursery for weeds, which appear to have afforded more food to bees than either to man or beast. In order to keep the mould from falling to the march, each farmer feered his land in the middle until the centre became so heaped up with soil that a dozen oxen could scarcely drag the cumbrous plough along its crooked furrows. That portion of the farm called the infield, being nearer the homestead, received all the manure, and was reserved for the most valuable crops. 1 Interests of Scotland, etc. 170 Annals of the British Peasantry The outfield was taithed and quird, which signified’ that three-quarters of its area was folded with young stock (hence taithed with their droppings), whilst the quird, or fourth, was broken up yearly for tillage. Their tenure was that of the steel-bow. Though it was a struggle for superiority between corn and weeds in which the farmer took but a feeble part, he generally contrived not only to produce the three rents known under the old adage as ** Ane to saw, ane to chaw, And ane to pay the laird witha’,” but gradually to redeem the cost of his stuht. The wages of labourers were all equal, consisting of about twelve pounds Scotch yearly, and bounties in the shape of boots and personal apparel. As in the Highlands, so in the Lowlands, everything was of home manufacture. The smith, the wright, the weaver, and the tailor each received an amount of grain and wages, called their bow, and pro- portioned to their services. The cottager had his garden and cow pasturage, the shepherd his few sheep and clothes. A wife manufac- tured her husband’s cakes and ale, the carter his horses’ harness. Nothing was imported on to the homestead save a few nails used in the construction of sheds and implements. Cottage roofs, coulters, shares of ploughs, and domestic furniture were all of wood. Beds were boxes, chairs were benches, plates. and mugs simple platters and trenchers. It was a wooden age as far as regards the peasants’ furniture and utensils ; one, indeed, that Cobbett, who knew the annual cost of breakages, would have liked to resuscitate in the England of his day. Cottage walls were alternate strata of stones and feals; cottage roofs were supported by “ cupples,” resting on the ground, and covered with divots. Floors were innocent of stone or wood ; doors were cowhides strung on clumsy frames ; windows, save for a few movable boards, were completely pervious to the weather; chimneys were smokeholes, and hearths low mounds of earth. Farmhouses were the same damp, dirty habitations, only larger. Masters and servants ate together, the em- ployer sitting at the upper corner, the men and maids on either side of him, his wife standing at the lower end, and occasionally replenishing the table. Supper consisted of green kail, or cabbage, boiled in the condition in which it grew. Breakfast was the remains of supper, reboiled and poured upon oatmeal, thus forming the dish known as “‘kail brose.” Dinner was sowens, a kind of pudding made of oatmeal that had been previously steeped and soured. Occasionally unboiled sowens were added to the pottage. Milk was a treat only enjoyed al the height of summer. Potatoes and turnips were as yet unknown luxuries, Though a quarter of a sheep could be bought for sixpence. The Scottish Peasant 171 and that of an ox cheap in proportion, no meat was used ; indeed, a flesher was a vara avis in the 17th century burgh. The ordinary road was a path made by horses’ feet, bordered on either side by a track cut by the wheels of the farm cart. It was often intersected by shallow streams, and was useless for heavily burdened vehicles. The usual amount of a two-horse load was three bolls of barley (Linlithgow measure). Grain, coals, and merchant goods were carried in sacks on horseback. The currock or English pack-saddle was largely used.. Crops were conveyed in sledges, dung in creels. Two of the latter were laid across a horse’s back, and, by means of a slip bottom, their contents deposited on the ground. Near great towns, stones were collected, strewn along the track, and covered with mud. These dight roads, as they were called, were considered the perfection of engineering skill. Frequent disputes occurred betwixt employer and employee over the wages remuneration, which happily led to the ultimate substitution of task work for day labour. Even on the rich soils of the southern and eastern counties an eye- witness in 1660! hands down the same unflattering tale. The Scotch ploughmen too languid to take their coats off whilst working; the Scotch farmers too improvident to resort to bare-fallowing ; sea-wrack the only manure used ; wheat and rye never cultivated ; all kinds of diet indifferently bad ; dwellings in the barons’ towns mere enlarged dog- kennels. “When seed-time was finished,” writes Dr. Playfair, alluding to the district of Strathmore before “the ’45,” “the plough and harrow were laid aside till after autumn, and the sole employment of the farmer and his servants consisted in weeding the corn fields, and in digging and carrying home peat, ling, and heath for winter fuel.”* The profits of such farming were of a hand-to-mouth description, and not calcu- lated to furnish a reserve fund for the inevitable losses during a bad season. Scotland in the 17th century was still a country of huts and caves. Rough manners were characteristic of the nobility as well as of the peasantry. Nobles rudely jostled each other even in the royal presence. Straw beds were to be found in the castle as well as in the farmhouse. Filth of an unspeakable description collected on the landings of noble staircases as well as in the corners of cottage kitchens. The maid- servants of the burgess as well as the daughters of the clansman were uncovered as far as midleg, and wore the blanket which they used as a 1 Select Remains of John Ray. 2 Quoted in Robertson’s Rural Recollections, p. 9. 2 Defoe’s Tour through Britain, vol. iv. p. 88. 172 Annals of the British Peasantry head-gear during the day as a sleeping-dress at night.1 This useful class was, however, better circumstanced than in England, where its scarcity led to a barbarous system of kidnapping. If the girls behaved well, and got engaged to be married, their masters, under a widespread custom, known as the “penny wedding,” contributed largely towards their dowries. Those that emigrated to the Plantations were more in request than their English sisters, and generally did better than the latter in their new homes.” ‘ Notwithstanding lawlessness, violence, and an inclement climate, there were not wanting signs of better things to come; of an awakening to the importance of the national husbandry, which was destined to carry it far in advance of that practised in England a century later. A fixed annual payment was slowly replacing explicit and special pres- tations.2 As related earlier in this work, the court of justiciary began regularly to review the sentences of the baillies of regality, and of the hereditary sheriffs in 1748.4 A General Bill of Enclosure in 1695 had enabled almost every farm to become a distinct possession. A system of fencing, far preferable to that introduced at a later date into England, had crept in. Tithes were commuted in 1629 at an unalterable corn rent ; the bondage of thirlage ® had been converted into money multures, and personal service came to be regarded as an obsolete economy. * Defoe’s Zour through Britain, vol. iv. p. 243. 2 Td. ib., p. 144. 3 1 Geo. I. c. 24. 4 There were 151 landlords and 51 clans mentioned in the rolls subjoined to the Parliament in 1587, to which the people were under a slavish subjection, —Swperiorities Displayed, etc., 1716. ‘ 5 Servitude to any particular mill. CHAPTER XII THE COTTAGE AS A FACTORY ANDEVILLE has graphically described! the commotion occa- sioned all over the world by the production of one piece of crimson cloth. The amount of native industries which he is able to enumerate as being called thus into use, is astonishing enough. But when he comes to describe the different kinds of foreign labour which have to be requisitioned as well, his readers are fairly lost in bewilder- ment. He speaks of men digging in various parts of both hemispheres, of merchants trading all over the globe, and of sailors either sweating in the tropics or shivering in the arctics, all for the sake of bringing together in one small kettle the ingredients of the dye. Adam Smith, when he gave us his famous description of the manufacture of a pin, did not afford a better illustration than this of the extent to which the sub-division of labour could be carried. It is my present purpose to furnish an entirely opposite aspect of the subject—to represent, in fact, the clipper, the comber, the spinner, the weaver, the worker, the scourer, the dyer, the setter, the drawer, the packer, the merchant, the middleman, and the customer of wool or woollen goods as all members of one small cottage household. When any particular industry is found to add to the wealth of a community, it is sure to receive the favourable attention of the central authority. The king of Tunis, on being invaded by a powerful enemy, promised to a neighbour who assisted him the philosopher’s stone, and sent him a plough.2 The expedition of the Argonauts to Colchis, in search of the Golden Fleece, was a woollen trade transaction, which Jason successfully accomplished when he brought back a quantity of the material and natives to work it. Henry III. and Queen Elizabeth carried out similar undertakings when they invited the Flemish experts in cloth manufactures to settle in this country. But long before their days —long before the industry of the husbandman came to be regarded in England as a source of national wealth—it had been recognised that we possessed, growing on the backs of our native sheep, a veritable “golden 1 Fable of the Bees, ed. 1795, p. 228. ® Preface to Lord Kaimes’ Scotch Husbandry. 173 \ 174 Annals of the British Peasantry fleece.” Dionysius Alexandrinus had asserted that the wool of Great Britain could be spun into a thread that would rival the spider's in fine- ness. Moreover, the combined skill of our early weavers and litsters was capable of accomplishing this feat, if only encouraged thereto by the authorities. For such reasons King Alfred, in 885, took no small pains in improving this particular industry. For such reasons Edward, in 918, having married the daughter of a shepherd, instructed his children in the art of carding, spinning, and manufacturing wool; and for such and similar reasons Edgar, in 961, set a price on the heads of wolves, because they were inimical to the interests of the flockmaster. In course of time, wool became our substitute for a money medium, then the source of our land taxation, and finally the staple of our mer- chandise. As early as 1220, we made and dyed our own clothes. In 1331 we began to manufacture broadcloths. Wool was the source whence we obtained the ransom moneys of Richard I., the numerous subsidies of Edward III., the royal gifts of Edward IV., and the richest vestments of foreign potentates. Our export trade in it was so important to the community that it acted as a check on unnecessary warfare ; while if a quarrel was forced on us, it supplied us with the means of bringing it to a speedy and triumphant close. In Tudor times, our wool brought us in £ 3,000,000 annually. At the beginning of the 18th century, the value of one year’s fleeces was, according to Davenant, 42,000,000, and that of the manufactures which they produced, four times as much. In 1837, Youatt estimated one year’s fleeces as worth £7,000,000, and in 1855 Lavergne computed the number of our sheep at 35,000,000. No wonder, therefore, that, even to this day, our chief lawyer, whenever he sits down to transact State business, has a perpetual memento of the national importance of the woolsack ; that many an inattentive village scholar has been told that his wits have gone a “ wool-gathering” ; and that every maid in the kingdom is regarded in the eyes of the law, before all other considerations, as a spinster. There no doubt was a period in our early history, when we dressed the skins of our sheep with the wool on, and rested content with such cloth- ing as they thus afforded. But our Roman masters soon taught us to see that this was a policy of killing the goose with the golden eggs, and induced us to cultivate the backs of our sheep, as we did our soil, in such away that they yielded their produce annually. We then dis- covered that clothing derived from hair was inferior to that derived from wool. It was very difficult to distinguish the two substances. They grew on the same animal’s- back, and they were both found in different lengths of the same filament. The preponderance of the one over the The Cottage as a Factory 175 other depended on the species and breed of the animal, as well as on soil and climate. After the raw material had been separated by the shears, it was found necessary to prepare it carefully for the process of spinning. Pages might be written on the evolution of the machinery used in its manufacture. Before the introduction of the card, fingers first, and then a thistle, were employed as substitutes. We read in the herbals of the older botanists of the Dipsacus fullonum or fuller’s teazle, and of the carduus—both vegetable growths of a prickly nature. Every ditch, bank, or piece of waste ground furnished the cottage woollen manufacturer with the hooked awn, by which she could card her fleeces before spinning. The earliest form of loom consisted of a wooden frame. The earliest form of spinning machinery was a stick, about which the wool was wrapped. The spinster held this in her left hand while she twisted the thread betwixt her right hand and thigh. It is said that Bishop Blaise invented the comb, and St. Catherine the spinning-wheel. It is more likely that these early martyrs, who were tortured by means respectively of iron combs and the wheel, were on that account selected as patron saints of the industry. As long as the employment of the loom remained in touch with that of the field; as long as the shepherd’s wife monopolised the distaff and the dyeing vat, and the shepherd’s family wore the products of her industry ‘on their persons, no necessity arose for State interference with the woollen trade. But as soon as we began to export wool or woollen goods abroad, it was found that the proper separation of the many different kinds of wool found on one sheep’s back baffled the ingenuity of the most expert cottage housewife. Thus was the employment of the stapler called into being. During the 13th and two following centuries, when fleeces only were being exported to foreign markets, his powers of assortment were but little in request. But as soon as he became the agent of the manufacturer, it was his business to watch the state of trade, to notice the changes in the demand for different articles, to remark the nature and qualities of wool, and to point out to the grower the properties of each fleece. The trade was no longer contented with a workman who merely tore the fleece across the loins, took off its skirts, and divided the remainder into three parts. Each of those three parts had to be assorted in a different manner from the others. Thus a number of minor distinctions of wool became known to the trade Six of these were peculiar to the hose manufacturer, sixteen to the worsted manufacturer, while those who broke the shorter wools main- tained as many as seventeen! 1 An Essay on Wool. John Luccock, 1809. 176 Annals of the British Peasantry Till the time of the Tudors, most of our woollen goods for home consumption had been manufactured in farmhouse and cottage ; most of those for the foreign market in corporate towns and cities. But the capitalist clothiers were in the habit of giving out the raw material in small quantities of twelve pounds avoirdupois (of which only a quarter of a pound was allowed for waste) to the weavers, walkers, fullers, shear- men, dyers, forcers of wool, carders, sorters, and spullars of yarn to work up in their homes. Besides these small artisans, there were the farm and cottage manu- facturers of coarse cloth forhome consumption. Many of these could only purchase small quantities of the raw material ata time. The con- sequence was that aclass of middlemen arose, who bought fleeces wholesale from the flockmaster and retailed them in small quantities to the village manufacturers. The latter got rid of their surplus goods by market sales. The consequence was that a class of inferior cloth, generally deficient in the lengths and breadths prescribed by statute, became known to the trade. This practice tended to discredit our woollen goods in the foreign markets. In 1552, therefore, an Act was passed abolishing the middleman. This obviously menaced the small artificers, not only of the village, but also of the town, with speedy destruction. It was, therefore, subsequently mitigated, so as to allow an intermediate trade if transacted in open market. The inhabitants of Halifax, who were situated in a neighbourhood of poor pasturage, were especially privileged in this direction, being allowed in 1555 to buy wool otherwise than by ingrossing, and sell the same to poor, but not to rich folks. The same year the small weavers complained that their industry was oppressed by the practice of the rich clothiers, in setting up divers looms and letting them out at excessive rents. An Act was therefore passed limiting each clothier’s stock of plant to one loom. The Government for a long period seems to have regarded machinery with the same hostile views as did the Luddites in subsequent times. Inventive genius was termed “subtle imagination,” and any substitute for the ‘manufacture by hands and feet” was regarded as conducive to the “ final undoing of the industry concerned.” For this reason the fulling mill in 1482,* the newly invented gig mill in 1551,5 and the tucking mill in 1555,° were discountenanced. On the whole, the policy of the legislature had been so far to en- courage the smaller wool worker rather than the large clothier. Even the Act of 1553, if examined closely, will bear the same interpretation, 1 5 and 6 Ed. VI. c. 7. ? 2and 3 Ph. & M.c. 13. 8 2 and 3 Ph. & M. e. 11. 4 2 Ed. IV. c. 5, § 5 and 6 Ed. VI. c. 22. ® 2and 3 Ph. & M.c. 11. The Cottage as a Factory 177 though at first sight it seems to befriend the industry in corporate and market towns only.1_ A struggle had commenced between the clothiers whom the restrictions of the towns had driven into the country, and those who preferred to remain within touch of the advantages derived from centralised labour. This resulted in the manufacture of superior cloths being confined to the cities, where skilled labour was available, and in the manufacture of inferior cloths being confined to the rural districts, where that kind of labour was scarce. In the four northern counties, where the coarser cloths were principally made, the country industry was exempted from all legislative restrictions.2 Similarly each cottage clothier of Devon and Cornwall was permitted to retain three looms and use flocks and hair, and lamb’s wool for the manufacture of certain inferior goods with which he was wont to supply the Breton peasantry. Asa result of all this legislative interference, various de- scriptions of woollen manufactures became centralised in distinct localities. Coarse kerseys for exportation were principally made in the counties of Berks, Oxford, Surrey, Sussex, and Yorkshire; friezes and cottons, the latter really a species of woollen fabric, were made in Wales, Taunton, Bridgewater, and other west-country towns; rugs and friezes in Manchester; coverlets in York; druggets at Farnham, Newbury, etc.; baizes, and saizes, and shalloons, at Colchester, Bocking, and Sudbury; fine cloths in Somerset, Wilts, Gloucestershire, etc. ; wor- steds had been an article of export in Norfolk ever since the beginning of the 14th century. The development of the East Anglian woollen industry was brought about by Elizabeth, who, instead of allowing us to go on sending fleeces to be woven in Flanders, and dyed in Florence, imported artificers to teach us these processes here. Thereupon a wave of woollen industries burst forth from Norwich, and inundated the surrounding counties ; so that, in spite of prohibitive legislation, the whirr of the spinning wheel continued to be heard in many an English cottage. But the bulk of the wool ultimately destined for exportation was, unfortunately for some reasons, manufactured by those who had not produced it, and were uninterested in its wearing capabilities. The ingenuity by which this class contrived to cheat their foreign customers was worthy of a better cause. They happened, however, to be just a degree too clever, for the Continental consumer soon evinced a pro- pensity for shunning English products, which caused our custom to decline. The legislature was not to blame for this untoward state of affairs, In earlier times, if our cottage weavers returned to the clothiers goods of a dishonest weight, it put the offender into the pillory 1 Mary, sess.3,c. 7. % 2and3 Ph, &M.c. 11, clauseg. * 27 Eliz. c. 18, N ‘i 178 Annals of the British Peasantry or the cucking stool. It banished the gig mill because it considered it inimical to “the true draping of our wool.”? Its aulnagers, ever since the beginning of the 14th century,® carefully regulated, according to the terms of the Assize of Cloth, the length and breadth of each piece. It sternly vetoed the use of flocks and other inferior materials. Its overseers and searchers were supposed to visit every village and hamlet. The official stamp of its approval, at one time in wax and at another in lead, had to be affixed to every saleable piece of cloth. Furthermore, it sternly forbade the substitution of Brazil wood and other new dyes instead of the earlier world-renowned English substitutes.* It even went so far, in Elizabeth’s time,® as to prohibit the use of logwood as a dye, though in 1660 ® it wisely withdrew its veto. But all these measures were ineffective, and our statesmen had to learn, especially from the annals of the wool industries, “ of what force, subtility, and violence is trade.” 7% In despair they issued a proclamation almost entirely prohibiting the foreign sale of our discredited goods.8 This measure resulted in an unexpected reversal of our traditional policy, which had always been to watch vigilantly avenues whence the foreigner might derive the means of rivalling us® The effect of confining exportation to the raw materials was that in 1681 the French were supplying foreign markets with er manufactures of ovr wool. Notwithstanding this fact, quite a million of the English people were by then engaged in the indus- try. It was still, in the words of a contemporary writer, “like the water to the wheel that driveth round all other things.” Besides broadcloth, we were now manufacturing bags, perpetuanos, saizes, stockings, etc., and were even imitating some of the new drapery imported from India. The State now prohibited the transportation of wool in the. rough,!® thereby receiving a second lesson in the futility of attempting to force trade! The clandestine running of English wool, called in smuggling circles “owling,” began. To prevent the French thus obtaining our 1 3 Hen. VIII. c. 6. 2 5 and 6 Ed. VI. c, 22. 3 9 Hen. III. c. 25; 2 Ed. III. c. 143 25 Ed. III. st. 4, c. 13 27 Ed. III. st. 1, c. 45; 3 Rich. II. c. 25; 7 Rich. II. c.9; 11 Hen. VI. c. 9; 4 Ed. IV. c. 1, etc, ete. 4 24 Hen. VIII. c. 23 3 and 4 Ed. VI. c.2; 5 and 6 Ed, VI. «. 6, etc. 5 23 Eliz.c. 9, s. 13 39 Eliz. c. 11. 6 13 and 14 Car. II. c. 11. 7 New Discourse of Trade, p. 174. Sir Jos. Child. 8 27 Hen. VIII. c. 13; 33 Hen. VIII. c. 19. ® a1 Ed. Ill.c.1; 27 Ed. III. st. 2, & 7, c. 123 38 Ed. III. st. 1, ¢. 6; 8 Hen. VI. c. 22; 3 Ed. IV. c. 13 1 Rich. III. c. 8; 23 Hen. VIII. c. 17; 8 Hen. VI. c. 23; 23 Hen. VI. c. 3; 5 Hen. VIIL c. 3. 10 12 Car. II. ¢. 32. ™ Cause of the Decline of the Foreign Trade, p. 184, ed. 1756. Sir Matthew Decker. The Cottage as a Factory 179 raw material, the legislature introduced the measure of 1697.1. The French, not to be baffled, set up a fresh wool trade with both Ireland and Portugal. Our statesmen again found their endeavours frustrated. They indeed had confessed as much, alleging in the preamble of their recent statute that the sending of the raw material abroad still ‘“ notori- ously continued to the great prejudice and discouragement of the woollen trade and manufacture of England.” Hoping against hope, they now attempted, by prohibiting Irish exportation? and by nego- tiating an advantageous treaty with the Portuguese, to lessen the French competition. The dishonest practices of our traders counteracted all the good effects of these last manceuvres. Our neighbours across the Channel still contrived to get hold of good fleeces and undersell us in the markets. The old days when the wool trade was esteemed the gold mine of this country, when English kings had incurred the contemptuous imputation of being mere wool merchants, and English landlords that of being mere clothing knights, were gone for ever. In vain we now removed all restrictions whatever to the trade. Spanish produce, clipped from the descendants of those Cotswold ewes which Edward IV. had given to John of Aragon, began to be largely mixed with Eng- lish, and our merchants no longer retained the least control over the foreign market. The quick-witted French had discovered that a lighter cloth, more adapted for warm climates than our substantial English goods, fetched a better price in the extreme East. They noticed that every bale of woollen goods arriving at a Turkish port had by law to _be opened on landing, its contents compared with the invoice, and, if found defective, returned to the port of lading. Their Government therefore established a more effectual Merchandise Marks Act than any that we, with our plurality of middlemen, had succeeded in devising. ‘Thereupon French trading houses appeared everywhere in the far East. Ships carrying cargoes of French woollen goods plied constantly be- tween Marseilles and the Levant. The Turkey trade, like that of the West of Europe, had ceased to be England’s monopoly. No wonder, therefore, that our farmers gave up the rearing of sheep for the sale of their wool in disgust, and, encouraged by Bakewell, took to breeding them for the sake of their meat, thus hoping to derive from the butcher some of the gains they had once received from the woollen stapler. The extreme care formerly bestowed on cotting and salving the flock was abandoned ; and the Spanish, by still continuing to utilise these processes, soon usurped our superiority in the production of marketable wool. It was not because our means of producing excellent fleeces had 1 7 and 8 Will. III. c. 28 § 1a. 2 yoand 11 Will, III. c. 10. 180 Annals of the British Peasantry failed, but because our wish to do so had vanished. The Icelander could only procure from the backs of his flocks mere hair; the Norwegian from his, a cloth, but little superior to flannel ; the Musco- vite from his, no better results. The Spaniard and the Portuguese could alone rival the excellence of our wool. The Frenchman, so far as regards the native means at his disposal, was out of the running ; because, owing to the prevalence of wolves, he had to shelter his sheep in winter, thereby being prevented from keeping them clean and sweet. Rich pasturage did not necessarily produce a fine fleece, for the Spanish sheep grounds were barren hillsides, while the Norwegian ones were magnificent herbage. Our pastures were as gocd as any in the world for producing good wool, our climate in no way dele- terious to ovine existence, and our earlier management of the flock had been a model for the whole of Europe. We were, too, first in the field. Gloucester had been an important sheep mart in Roman times, and its inhabitants were said to have presented some royal visitors of the Heptarchical era with clothes of Cotswold homespun. But we be- came less careful in the sorting of our fleeces than the foreigner. We gave up the process known as the “triage of wool.” We sold it on the sheep’s back, while the Spaniard sold his already washed, clipped, cleaned and triaged. Since the former process was best for the buyer, and the latter for the seller, we put ourselves thus at a disadvantage with foreign competitors. It was not that our wool sorters had lost their cunning in distinguishing the nine different qualities of wool which were then said to belong to each fleece. Before our clothiers set their , looms in motion, they were careful to reserve the superfine, the heads, the downrights, the seconds, and the livery for the manufacture of their cloth, and to put on one side the superfine matching, the fine, neat combs, the say casts and the long and short coarses, all of which came under the head of combings. No such careful distinctions as these were made by the cottager. But then he was certainly not disposed to mix wool that he intended for his own clothing with white sand, or to contaminate it with traces of numerous pitch brands, or to spoil it with frequent moistenings with water—practices adopted by dishonest sales- men in order to make it weigh heavier. There had been at an earlier period an honesty of purpose surround- ing the cottage loom which did not contrive to exist amidst the fouler atmosphere of the factory. What we lost in morality we certainly did not regain by augmented skill. Facilities for increased ingenuity and easier access to markets no doubt demanded the removal of the trade into the towns, but its results were by no means universally bene- ficial. The new poor laws were full of schemes for setting the in- The Cottage as a Factory 181 digent to work ; the new woollen laws were indirectly taking them off it. Later we shall see that when a village industry migrated into the cities, it left behind an abnormally large pauper population in a fair way to be further increased by ruined ratepayers. Be this as it may, we learn now, that first the spinning wheel sup- planted the distaff and spindle, then the finishing methods of fulling and dyeing were removed to the factories; next the hand-loom dis- appeared from the labourer’s parlour, then the combing and sorting, leaving only one process behind, that of shearing. Let us, however, go back to the time when most of these methods were performed in the farm homestead. We will suppose that sheep- shearing was over, and that the mistress of the house was about to pre- pare her wool for the family clothing. The first thing that she did was to open the wound-up fleece with a pair of shears and cut away all the foul pieces, knots, and lumps. These were temporarily laid aside, being destined for meaner purposes. The rest, having been broken and divided between her deft fingers until no portion of it remained matted together, was now clean, loose, and fine, ready in fact for carding. As some of it, however, would have been required white and some coloured, it was divided into two separate parcels, which were kept each in its bag of netting with the weight affixed on it. A pair of stock cards were then fastened to a form, and the wool repeatedly combed, carded, mixed, and blended, until, on being broken with the hand, not a knot or lump was perceptible. That portion destined to be coloured was now ready for the dye. All the common hues were of home manufacture. For a blue cloth one pound of indigo was ground in a mortar, mixed with two gallons of stale urine, set on the fire, stirred frequently, and the wool inserted whilst the concoction simmered. Galls and green copperas boiled in water formed a black dye; wheat bran and alum boiled in water, and then mixed with madder, a red one ; and when madder was replaced by dyers’ weed, a yellow one. The blue cloth, when dipped in the red mixture, formed green, and other colours were obtained quite as simply. The next process was greasing, for which the wool was spread evenly on a large, flat bed, and either rape oil, made from coleseed, or melted hog’s lard, carefully sprinkled over it with the hand. It was then moulded and worked into the hand till not a thread was left un- moistened. The perfection of the web depended upon this process, for if it was over-greased the thread would not draw, but break into small pieces, It had, therefore, to be frequently turned over during the sprinkling and occasionally tested with the wheel. When the wool had absorbed about one-third of its own weight in oil and was beginning to 182 Annals of the British Peasantry draw well, it received a second carding, called “tumming,” which brought it to a greater degree of fineness and suppleness. The tum- mings thus separated by this second carding and combing were not mixed with the first foul parcel, because they were a great deal finer and more useful, There was a considerable difference in the fineness even between the wool of one shearing and another; much more was there between tummings and the other carded wool. It would not have done to have forced a coarse wool to run into a fine thread, because it would have beaten to pieces, or at any rate not bedded well in the mill; either of which results would have produced a cloth of little strength. If, on the other hand, a wool of a finer description had been spun out into a thick thread, part of the over-thickness would have to have been subsequently taken away to waste, otherwise the cloth would have worn coarse. Two kinds of thread were spun; viz., the warp and the woof. The former was made close, round, and hard-twisted, so that it contained a large proportion of strength. The latter was spun loose, open, and but half twisted. The warp had to run through the whole, and endure the fretting of the beam; the woof, on the contrary, required no great strength or smoothness, because it only crossed the warp without any violence or straining. Imagining that both threads should be equally hard, many excellent spinsters regarded the leaving of the woof thus open as a piece of idleness, and insisted upon the whole of the parcel being spun alike. The French, quicker in per- ception than their English sisters, realised that this difference in the spinning of woof and warp was the secret of ultimate success, and therefore produced from inferior wools cloths much extolled for their pliancy and easy wear. After the dressing, oiling, tumming, and spin- ning, came the winding. Each kind of thread was wound off separately into a “clew,” or bundle, as it was furnished from the brooch. The making of it up was early discovered to be the business of one who had served an apprenticeship in weaving, and therefore became in most parts of the country a separate trade. All that the cottager required to know before parting with her thread was how much cloth her wool ought to yield. That she roughly estimated by the expression, “it will run yard and pound.” After weaving, the cloth was carried to the fulling mill, where it was generally found that different kinds of yarn required different amounts of milling, in order to shrink them. The next process was to cleanse, but not to tear, the cloth with the scouring earth. It then passed into the hands of the sheerman, who hurled, dressed, and sheered it, until it was left in a condition not too rough to wear clean, and not too close to become soon threadbare. It is curious to note that knitted stockings, which now every pit-brow The Cottage as a Factory 183 woman in Lancashire manufactures as she passes to and from her’ work, and which every gilly’s wife in Scotland constructs almost un- consciously during the idle moments of a busy day, were not even intro- duced into England before the reign of Elizabeth. Skins of all sorts were cured in the farmhouse and cottage with common salt or alum; and either green-salted or dried by being thrown into a pit with lime and oak bark.» When the hair had been removed and the leather toughened by this means, they were sent to the currier, who returned them ready for working up into various uses. Sheep’s hides were made into parchment; those of goats into ““shammy ” leather ; those of sucking calves into vellum ; those of the asses’ buttocks into shagreen ; and those of cattle into breeches, brogues, etc. The same kind of legislation dealt with this industry as we have seen enacted with regard to that of wool. There was a staple of leather.1 It had to be sold in open market,? was prohibited from exportation,? and finally restricted to the uses of the legitimate and professional manufacturer,* The fact that the linen trade in England was found to interfere with that of the clothier was a chief reason, no doubt, which rendered unsuccessful several early attempts of the legislature to force the culti- vation of flax and hemp.5 Yet, as most districts contained suitable soil for the propagation of linseed, and every stream and aftermath was sufficient to ret and bleach flax, the industry was not wholly neglected here in England. Some hands on most English farms at one time or another were probably competent to harvest and water the hemp. Some housewives in most villages knew how to dress flax and weave it into the various sorts of plain or table linen. By the operation of the Poor Laws, many parishes contained facilities for teaching and employ- ing people in this work. The chief difficulty was to find a situation sufficiently remote from the centres of the woollen trade, so as not to interfere with that industry. At Darlington, in parts of Lancashirc,® and in Dorset and Devon some linen was made, principally for inland sale. But the bulk of our fine goods and cambrics were imported from Holland or France. In 1622 we were actually deriving the raw material from abroad as apparently the only alternative to buying it ready for wear. Yarranton, who had been an apprentice to a linen draper, 1 27 Ed. III. st. 2, c. 1, ¢. 3, c. 273 38 Ed. III. st. 1, c. 6. 2 3 Hen. VIII. c. 10; 5 Hen. VIII. c. 7; 24 Hen. VIII. «. 1. 8 27 Hen. VIII.c. 14, §§ 5,73 1 Eliz. c. 9. 4 y Jac. I. c. 22§ 7. 5 24 Hen. VIII. c. 43 5 Eliz. c. 5. 6 Where the manufacture of fustian goods required cotton for the woof and linen yarn for the warp. 184 Annals of the British Peasantry and had visited Holland on purpose to study its manufacture, set up, with the help of his wife, a local industry for the sake of his poorer neigh- bours. Thereby, he adds, “he did promote the making of much fine linen with good success.” He fixed on the inland counties of Warwick, Leicester, Northampton, and Oxford, as containing the best soils for producing flax, and as also being remote from centres of other staple industries.1 But he could not get the Government to follow his example on a large scale, and so the project fell through. In 1666, Charles II., however, had afforded strong encouragement to all who should help to establish the trade by offering foreign linen workers the privileges of Englishmen, if they would but work three years at their trade in our midst. But, with the exception of a few French Protest- ants who settled at Ipswich, no one availed himself of this invitation.? If wool was the staple industry of our English manufacturers, linen was that of their Scottish brethren. Nevertheless, save that it became subject to a fiscal charge in the times of Bruce, and was forbidden to be exported in those of James VI., nothing seems to have been done towards increasing the production of it till 1639. It had then become “ane of the pryme commodities of this kingdome” (of Scotland), and therefore was rightly brought under State control. This took the form of regulating its manipulation, a policy which generally ended in removing a trade, but not necessarily an industry, from the kitchens of the cottagers to the factories of the town. Twenty years after the English statute book had ordered the dead to be dressed in wool,’ the Scottish statute book provided that theirs should be clothed in linen.* A very mixed feeling seems to have pervaded Scottish commercial circles at this period regarding this trade. Some thought its forced encouragement would damage woollen interests. By the policy of non-interference, however, observed by the State lawyers, this latter industry was chiefly confined to the efforts of villagers to keep them- selves in homespun garments. Notwithstanding this circumstance, quite a hubbub arose in 1691 when the Master of Stair wanted to intro- duce English artisans into his country, and erect a linen factory on English principles. So long as the cottage industries were confined to the production of goods for home consumption, they were ignored by the central authorities. But when they began to place on the markets their overplus supplies, they brought the commercial efficiency of the 1 Englands Improvements by Sea and Land, 1677. 2 15 Car. II. c. 15. 3 18 Car. IT. u. 4, repealed 30 Car. II. c. 3. 4 1686, v. 28, vol. viii., p. 591, repealed 1707. The Cottage as a Factory 185 country into disrepute by ceasing to bestow sufficient care on their handiwork. But for the Linen Acts at the beginning of the 18th century, the Scotch would never have established a thriving foreign trade in that commodity. I doubt, however, if those Acts of them- selves would have accomplished this result. ‘The funds that they pro- vided were miserably inadequate, and the trustees who administered them could establish but few spinning schools, bleaching grounds, and bounties. The Acts did not originate, but merely invigorated an industry to which the junction of the two kingdoms in 1652 had given birth. Outlets for the sale of linen goods had been thus created just when the trade with Ireland was about to be checked by the institution of a native output. Anderson alludes to these circumstances in the following language: “ By this union, Scotland’s coarse woollen stuffs and stockings and her more valuable linen manufactures, now of many, various, beautiful, and ingenious kinds, have a prodigious vent, not only in England but for the American plantations.”1 Be this as it may, within five years of the Linen Acts, an increase in the national out- put of 2,200,854 yards bears testimony to the success of such legis- lation.? It is, however, my present purpose to examine the processes of producing and manufacturing this new staple commodity of Scottish commerce as performed in its earlier factories, the farm parlour and cottage kitchen. We must not expect to find the same advanced skill which, here in England, had at one time rendered our cottage woollen goods the most renowned of any in Europe. Indeed, so imperfectly were the elementary principles of the linen industry understood in Scottish rural circles that the Lord Provost of Edinburgh had to confess, in 1733, “ Unless we are at pains to reform our way of managing our lint, we had better purchase it entirely from the Baltic, Holland, and Flanders.” 3 If genius be the art of taking pains, there was a sad want of it in these rural manufacturers. From the outset they began badly, by mis- understanding the requirements of the raw material in its growing state. In order to produce good flax, a flat, low-lying soil of a peaty or sandy nature is required. The Scotch husbandmen sowed their lint on any kind of ground. Instead of fallowing it at least two winters and a summer, then getting it into good heart by dung, and into a fine tilth by spade and harrow, they neglected even to weed the ground. They sowed their lint seed thickly—a hogshead to the acre—as they were 1 Chronicles of Commerce, vol, ii. p. 26. Anderson. : =f 2 Interests of Scotland Considered, p. 98, 1733+ Patrick Lindsay. 3 Ld. tbdd, 186 Annals of the British Peasantry obliged to do on ordinary and ill-cultivated soils. The consequence was that the crop ripened unevenly. Without waiting for the entire yield to mature, they pulled the whole of it, and, not even picking out the immatured stalks, made it up into unwieldy sheaves, which, with- out adequate exposure to the drying influences of sun and air, they proceeded to water. The Flemings—whom the trustees of the Linen Acts had imported in order to teach the natives a better system—acted quite differently. So careful were they in the preparation of the soil that they required only two bushels of seed per acre. They were diligent in picking out the unripe specimens, and patient in waiting till the whole crop was matured. Their sheaves were no bigger than could be easily grasped with both hands. Every two of these they tied in such a way that the seed end of one was at the root end of the other. If the roots of both had been at the same end, the lighter seed tops would have remained above the surface of the water in the retting stream. They turned these once, or, if the weather was hot, twice daily. When sufficiently watered, the boon could be broken freely and separated from the flax. Directly the sheaves were taken out of the stream, they were carefully washed and spread in thin layers to bleach on the grass. So much of the lint as was intended for the best seed was stacked like corn, and when thoroughly won, stripped at sowing time in May, and treated similarly to that watered in the autumn. The lint remaining undressed after the month of March was laid out again on the grass as soon as the dews began to fall, and left thus till bleached ; care being taken to remove it during the dry periods of a sunny day. All these apparently trivial details were ignored by the Scottish farmers. The fault was, however, not theirs but their wives’, An unfortunate idea prevailed amongst spinners that the best flax could be made from unripe lint, and so it was pulled just after the blossom had fallen off. There was this excuse for the mistake. Yarn, as fine as any from Picardy, was spun ia the West of Scotland from unripe lint; but when tested by the magnifying glass, it appeared rough, “ ouzie,” and of a bad colour. The French yarn, when submitted to the same scrutiny, proved smooth and clear, like a horsehair fishing-line, and of a fine colour. The disastrous results of this difference in the yarns of the two nationalities appeared in the later processes. When spun, that of the Scotch housewives wasted much in the washing, and yielded in the bleaching a badly coloured thread, as thin and almost as brittle as a cobweb. This proved more serviceable as the woof than as the warp of cambric goods. The Scotch linen-workers, when remonstrated with on this subject, complained that the preliminary processes of the foreign The Cottage as a Factory 187 producers were too costly for their slender means. A complete refutal of such a contention was the fact that, in a favourable season, the foreign yield of lint per acre averaged from 800 lbs. to 1,000 lbs., which sold at 2s. per Ib. But the mismanagement of the cottage linen-workers did not cease here. Machines had been invented for dressing the lint by water. The best man-dresser, unaided by such means, even if he did his utmost, could not furnish above 12 Ibs. weight of lint daily ; whereas a lint mill would dress, at the rate of every hand employed, 16 lbs. daily. Hand-dressed lint, therefore, could not be produced under a cost of 2s. 8d. per long stone, but at the mill it could be dressed at a cost of 2s. per stone. Moreover, at each mill boys were employed in breaking and scutching the flax, and skilled dressers in finishing it by hand. These pulled and drew it in so dexterous a way that the root and seed- ends were never put together. Where, however, the flax was dressed at home, without the agency of the lint mill, but little attention was bestowed throughout the various processes of manipulation in keeping it in the same way in which it had originally grown. Clumsy spinners, after it had been either heckled or dressed by brushes, were not sufficiently careful to draw their thread from the root-end, but by the “bucht” from the middle. The cottage housewife was, as a rule, competent enough to spin yarn into more or less inferior thread, but as a heckler she was beneath contempt. Now the heckler was to the linen industry what the stapler was to the wool industry. His duty was to staple the lint by means of proper heckles into fine-dressed flax, fine-dressed tow, common tow, backings, and breards. While the country people were ruining good lint by bad heckling, they ought to have been spinning that particular staple of flax or tow, to which they were most accustomed, into cloth sufficiently serviceable for home uses. But linen wholly manufactured in the cottage was useless for the foreign markets ; or, indeed, for any market where it came into compe- tition with superior goods. On the institution of a foreign trade, the usual legislative enactments for securing excellence of workmanship in exported goods were put in force. Thread could not, however, be subjected to official stamps and checks; therefore much more of it than of cloth was produced amongst those who manufactured their home-grown yarn for purposes of trade. The results of bad heckling would be universally evident as soon as the interchange of foreign and home goods became general. Consequently the wives of the peasantry soon came to realise that yarn all of the same girst, colour, and fineness, washed, emptied, and ready for the loom, produced a cloth superior to theirs, because free from bars, strips, or pirns. When, therefore, they 188 Annals of the British Peasantry wanted to renew the contents of their providing chests, they took to buying the raw material from the yarn merchants. The business of weaving was as little understood as the other pro- cesses. The reeds of country practitioners were not only bad in con- struction, but all of one sort. Different staples of cloth had, therefore, to be manufactured on the same reed, whereby the bad practice known as “working threes in the reed” occurred. The remaining processes necessary before fine linen was fit to compete with the highly perfected foreign article were quite beyond the limits of a cottage or farmhouse economy. This notwithstanding, the peasant women misemployed five months of the year in bleaching a few pieces of ordinary cloth on the banks of every running rivulet. ‘The materials for this operation were all foreign and unnecessarily costly. Poland, for example, produced some mysterious substance without which no cloth, however fine, could be brought to a full colour. Bleaching, in fact, was both an art which required the services of the chemist, and an industry whose success depended upon its being carried out on a large scale. When the cloth bleached by many different people came together in one pack of goods, there were hardly two pieces of the same colour. In making up and finishing goods for the linen market, even the town manufactureys were deficient in contrivances until somebody set up a Dutch press in Glas- gow, and some one else imported a hot press from Manchester. It would be too much to assert that the cottage element should have been entirely eliminated from the manufacture of this important com- modity. The trustees of the Linen Act did not think so, and they were in a position to judge correctly. There was room somewhere amidst the various processes of the industry for the farmer and the peasant, as well as the trader and the artisan, If native-grown flax could have been skilfully cultivated, if lint mills could have been universally avail- able, if Dutch looms could have been largely imported, if yarn merchants could have been ubiquitous, if the number of public bleaching grounds and of public presses could have been largely increased, and, lastly, if country housewives could have been brought to utilise all these agencies, there is no doubt that a portion of the linen trade might have lingered on in its early home. But these are many “ifs,” and so, on the whole, linen as a trade was best situated where the facilities for centralised and skilled workmanship were most available. This conclusion does not, however, apply to linen as an industry. The trustees of the Linen Acts recognised this view of the case. They therefore had recourse to measures which would discourage the cottage traders but encourage the cottage manufacturers. Their first action was naturally directed towards increasing the home production of the The Cottage as a Factory 189 raw material. For this purpose they offered a bounty of 14s. on every acre of ground thus cultivated. This was a blunder which took six years to betray itself. A great deal more flax was grown, but no increase in improved lint was thereby derived. The raising of a crop had not merely been required, but the raising of a good crop. It was very naturally suggested, therefore, that the premium should be limited to the acreage of the land cultivated by the approved Flemish method. On the whole, the trustees made but few mistakes. They invited over Flemish flax-growers and dressers, distributed them amidst likely centres of the industry, encouraged the erection of lint mills, founded spinning schools under French management, offered prizes for good native products, introduced skilled reed-makers from Ireland, bestowed sub- stantial marks of their approval on the proprietors of successful bleach- fields,! diffused over the land many of Holden’s excellent recipes for purging and washing the yarn, and, by means of his machine for examining cloth, submitted every pack of linen for exportation abroad to the severest of tests before they allowed their stamp-master to affix * his mark of approval to it.# Unfortunately for the peasantry of both kingdoms, the prevention by the, legislature of a country trade in any commodity generally tended to abolish a country industry in it. Persons who are reduced to confining their skill to the production of articles for home consump- tion eventually lose that skill, and find it more economical to purchase what they want from professional manufacturers. Foreseeing this ten- dency, many public-spirited people in both countries sought to utilise the machinery of the Poor Laws for the diffusion of skill in textile fabrications throughout the rural districts. Experts were to have been appointed in each parish of Scotland at the expense of the heritors to instruct idle persons in freeing and mixing wool, spinning worsted and knitting stockings. The Lord Provost of Edinburgh suggested in 1753 that the best method of spreading the knowledge of the linen trade was to empower the justices of peace to employ the poor in the country workhouses as they were then being employed in England, viz. at different branches of the staple trade of the kingdom. It remains for me to relate the results of all this legislation regarding the staple trades of this island on cottage industries. Soon after the period we have been just discussing, the manufactures of the cottage died out in the south of England ; but the huswives’ cloth, mentioned 1 The Catcairn Bleach-field, for example, which was established in 1751. Vide Report of Rev. H. Robertson, Stat. Account of Scotland, vol. i. No. xxx. p. 259. 2 Interests of Scotland, passim, Patrick Lindsay, 1753. 8 Parl, Scot., Jac. VI., vol. vii. p. 2562. 190 Annals of the British Peasantry in 5 Eliz. c. 4, § 34, continues to be wrought in ‘Highland hamlets to this very day. Eden, speaking of his own times, describes the main distinction between the cottage economy of the north and south of this island as being, that in the former district every article of clothing worn by its inmates was of home manufacture, whereas every article of the same description in the latter was brought from elsewhere. It was not legislation, but the village shop, which gradually extinguished the cottage factory. Only the poorest northern labourer of Eden’s day found it cheaper to buy shop stuff than to manufacture it out of raw material, For a long time the balance of expense swung in the opposite direction. A few opulent farmers displayed on a Sunday or festival day the extravagances of shop coat and money buckles, but most villagers wore clothing of their own dyeing, or that stuff called kelt, which was not dyed at all. Yet the dress outfit from the village shop was not expensive, even if made up bya village tailor. Four yards of broad- cloth for a coat cost 10s.; 14 yards for a waistcoat cost 35. 6¢.; a pair of leathern breeches, which lasted one year, 3s. 6¢.; and the tailor’s charge for making up these materials into a suit was only 5s. Eleven ounces of wool at 8d. per Ib. was sufficient for spinning and knitting a strong pair of stockings ; 33 yards of linen for a shirt cost 1s. 5d. A dowlas shirt cost 4s. 62.; a pair of strong shoes, 7s. ; a hat fit to last three years, 2s. 6d.; and a man’s whole outfit could be purchased for under £2. The woman’s wardrobe was equally simple and cheap, A common stuff gown cost 6s. 6d.; a linsey woollen petticoat, 45. 62. ; a shift, 3s. 8d. ; a coarse apron, rs.; shoes, 3s. g@.; check apron, 25.; . stockings, 15. 6¢@.; hat, rs. 8d. ; neckerchief, 1s.; common cap, 1od.; cloak, 4s. 6d. ; and a pair of stays, 6s. In the extreme north of Scotland the labourer’s wardrobe could be annually replenished at even less expense than that of his English brother. He could buy a bonnet for rs. 6¢.; 34 yards of coarse cloth for a great-coat, and 5 more yards for a jacket, waistcoat and two pairs of breeches, at 25. 6d. the yard; four pairs of shoes at 2s. 6d. each, and three pairs of hose for a mere song.! But he had no necessity to spend his money thus as long as he possessed a wife and a few sheep. He did not even require money for procuring the machinery for manufacturing his clothing. Any fellow with moderate dexterity could cut what he wanted out of the nearest wood. In Eden’s days the ancient beart or loom was still used for the weaving of broad gaiters and belts. It was, he thought, less injurious to health than: its more modern substitute, over whose large beam a woman had to lean too 1 Stat. Account of Scotland, vol, iv. 16, 130. Report on Diurnish, Isle of Skye. Rev. W. Bethune. The Cottage as a Factory IQI far forward for his liking. The cuigel or distaff, on the other hand, could be worked from an elbow chair, or low stool, by mere children, and was therefore also still employed. He had encountered old women in his walks abroad, spindle in hand, distaff in girdle, proving to his delight that— ** Still froe the russet lap the spindle plays.” + Thus, though women had ceased to work at the loom as they once did, with the exception of weavers, there was as yet no occasion for the assistance of the fuller, shoemaker, mason, carpenter, turner, cooper, dyer, tailor, and blacksmith. Many a shepherd and cotter, with wife and children, appeared at kirk “neat, tidy, and even fine,” in clothes which, from the time the stuff of which they were made was sown in the flax ground, shorn from the sheep, or cut from the cow’s hide, had been touched by no hand but their own. When the ordinary sources of fuel failed, dried cow-dung was the substitute. A ‘“seap’d” shirt was washed with soap, home-made, generally of hog’s dung ; other garments with chamber ley. I doubt if, in many parts, where wages were still paid in kind, a coin was ever exchanged the whole year through for any xecessary of life. Every Highland peasant made out of home-tanned leather shoes of astonishing elegance and strength, sewn by himself with thongs of calf skin,? though, in order to comply with the regulations of the statute book, some one would perhaps be compelled to test his old pair by a tramp of twenty or thirty miles to the nearest assize officer. Little co- operative societies, of two or three Highlanders each, continued to purchase and dress a hide in order to supply their wants of shoe leather ; wants, be it borne in mind, which cost the less contriving southern labourer a considerable sum annually.® I began this chapter with a description of the vast energy wasted in collecting the materials for dyeing wool. I will end it by showing how easily the Highland housewife dispensed with most of these so-called resources of civilisation. Except the awl, needle, thimble, dyeing cauldron, and a few bits of iron work for the weaving shed, all imple- ments and materials were manufactured on the spot. Trees, shrubs, and herbs furnished the various ingredients of the dye pot, and every 1 Fergusson’s Farmers’ Ingle. 2 Hemp grounds were so scarce that thread was not always available. —Eden’s State of the Poor, vol. ii. chap. ii. 8 This home industry was not allowed in England. The two pieces called wombs cut off every hide to be converted into sole leathers, commonly called backs, could only be used by professional bootmakers. 1 Eliz. c. 9. 192 Annals of thé British L£easaniry want in life was supplied with those hands and feet which the English statute book some three centuries earlier had preferred to all the cunning contrivances of machinery. Truly there was a modicum of method in the madness of that machinery destroyer, Ned Ludd, and of his poor, deluded followers, after all—only they, unlike most re- formers, had come into the world a few centuries too late. Even at the present time we can, if we journey up into the High- lands, see the cottage factory still in its perfection. Only the other day I asked my boatman on the Cromarty Firth if anything he wore was of home manufacture, and he astonished me when he replied that his blue tweed suit, cap, shirt, stockings, and boots were all made during the silent night watches by himself and his dexterous spouse. It was a still summer’s day, but had a gale been blowing from the south-west, I doubt not that the man would have produced. the barked sheepskin overall and large, wide boots which were a hundred years ago the usual home-made substitutes for the seaman’s waterproof storm attire on this part of the coast, Signs of an awakened interest in the public mind on the subject of cottage industries have been apparent of late. Great ladies in the north address meetings of home industries workers;! and our southern organs of the press announce the publication of an important work which is to advocate the revival of village arts and handicrafts.? In these times of increased local government, when out-door relief is certain to be largely increased, the establishment of a depét for the sale of tweeds or the delivery of a few lectures concerning the techni- calities of dyeing might be indirectly instrumental in lowering the rates of our future poor assessment. Our forefathers found this to be the case, and were accordingly lavish in their gifts of spinning wheels to female paupers. Instead of these now obsolete constructions, the hand-loom, or even the sewing machine, might prove an excellent substitute. 1 Vide the account of the Rogart meeting presided over by the Duchess of Sutherland. Court Fournal, Oct. 13, 1894. 2 The Rural Industries of England, J. L, Green, Still in the press. \ CHAPTER XIII THE COTTAGE LARDER HE ingenuity of our peasantry in supplying themselves with all ~ the necessaries of life from local sources has never extended to the larder. The various simple articles of food on its shelves might have been (I may also say might be) procured cheaper and purer if the same principle of self-help which enabled them to manufacture their own clothing and furniture had been applied with similar ingenuity to their bread, cheese, and bacon. As compared with our neighbours across the Channel, we have. always been miserably deficient in culinary skill. With the like materials at our disposal as the French, we have proved ourselves, time after time, to be clumsy cooks and bakers. This circumstance is the more strange considering how very much more fastidious we are as a nation than our neighbours on the Continent. History relates that even in medizval days we refused to eat bread “that beans in were, but of cocket or clerematyn, or else of clean wheat—ne, no piece of bacon, but if it be fresh flesh, other fish fried other bake.”! In such early times the finest wheat flour was reserved for the breads of our aristocracy. But even demesne? and pouf breads, as well as spice, simnel, and wastel cakes, were not always of the best quality. Peter of Blois, in one of his letters, speaking of the wretched food provided for the household of Henry II., tells us that a priest or a soldier had often placed before him bread from the court bakery which was like lead, full of bran, thick, greasy, rancid, sour and mouldy, not even kneaded, leavened or baked, and made out of the dregs of beer. What poor food, then, must have been those compounds of rye, oats, and barley, which Moryson tells us the English peasantry preferred as abiding longer in the stomach! If the manchet bread, made out of the finest wheat flour, was such as Peter of Blois described it, what must have been the grey-coloured loaf, known as chete bread, from which 1 Quoted by Mr. C. Creighton on p. 370, vol. ii. of Socza? England. Cassell & Co. 2 The Panis Dominicus, or demesne bread, was that on which the figure of Christ was stamped.— Social England, vol. ii. p. 436. Cassell & Co. 3 Translation in Quarterly Review, vol. 58. 193 194 Annals of the British Peasantry only the coarsest of the bran had been sifted? If these better breads were hardly edible, what miserable productions of the bake-oven must the ravelled bread have been, which contained a large part of the grosser elements of the grain; and the two kinds of brown bread, the one baked of husk and flour just as they came from the mill, called tourte, or trete bread; and the other, consisting of bran with a little wheat or rye added, called misselen, or masledine. Even the saffron cake, a so-called luxury, must have required large quantities of beer before it could have been washed into the stomach. No doubt neither the English nor Scotch peasantry were financially circumstanced.so as to be nice in the choice of their materials for baking. Sir Frederick Eden has gone so far as to say that in no period of our history could the price of wheat have been taken as a criterion of a man’s ability to subsist by his labour, In 1595 it was #2 the quarter, while wages of labourers in husbandry were 4d. or 5a. a day; and in 1682 it was much the same price, though wages were still only 3a. a day higher. With such proportions, therefore, between prices of corn and of labour, the luxury of a wheaten diet was quite beyond the range of a peasant’s means. But at any rate the coarsest materials might have been worked up into purer food than Henry’s bakers had produced. Dr. Johnson has asserted that what was horse food in England was human food in Scotland. But that is a statement which will not bear investigation. We have the narrative of AEneas Sylvius, already alluded to, showing how, when he supped with the curate of a small border parish in the middle of the 15th century, and contributed as his share of the repast a runlet of wine and some loaves of bread, with which certain hospitable monks had provided him, he had all the village in to see these strange novelties. : Harrison states that the rich provided themselves with wheaten bread, but that the poor had to be content with rye} or barley, and, in times of dearth, with beans, pease, oats, tares, lentils, and acorns. He describes brown bread as of two sorts, “ one baked as it commeth from the mill, so that neither the bran nor the floure are anie what diminished ; the other hath little or no floure left therein at all, and it is not onlie the worst and weakest of all sorts, but also appointed in old time for servants, slaves, and the inferior kind of people to feed upon. Hereunto, likewise, because it is drie and brickle in the working (for it will hardlie be made up handsomelie into loaves) ; some adde a portion 1 Mr. C. Creighton considers that black or rye bread was never the staple food of our peasantry, to which circumstance he attributes their escape from that awful scourge, St. Anthony’s Fire or ergotism. The Cottage Larder 195 of rie meale in our times, whereby the rough drinesse or drie roughnesse thereof is somewhat qualified, and then it is named miselin, that is, hand- made of mingled corn, albeit that diverse doe sow or mingle wheat and rie of set purpose at the mill, or before it came there, and sell the same at the markets under the aforesaid name. In champaigne countries much rie and barleie bread is eaten, but especially where wheat is scant and ! geson.” 2 From the household book of Sir Edward Coke, we learn that in 1596 rye bread and oatmeal formed a considerable portion of the servants’ meals, even in the greatest of English households. Henry Best, writing in 1641, relates that “‘poore folkes putte usually a pecke of pease to a bushel of rye, and some again two peckes of pease to a frundell of massledine, and say that these make hearty bread”; also that for their pie-crusts they ground “‘ the hinder ends or efter temsings of massledine.” Charles Smith, writing in 1766, says: “Bread made of wheat is become much more generally the food of the common people since 1689, than it was before that time, but it is still very far from being the food of the people in general.” He did not believe that more than one- half lived on it in his times. It was, he thought, the food of a large majority in the southern and midland counties. Barley was the food of the majority in Wales. Rye was not eaten at all in the south, but was, together with oats, two-thirds of the food in the northern counties. We have also the results of Arthur Young's investigations on this subject, which are fully corroborative of Smith’s. The substitutes for wheat were, in the districts of Leeds, Fremington, Sherstone, and Newcastle-under-Lyme, oats ; at the other Newcastle, rye ; about Raby, Alnwick, Belford, Helton, Fenton, and Rathbury, a mixture of barley and pease; and in other districts various compounds of barley, rye, pease, and beans. Eden mentions, as favourite English dishes, crowdie, skilling, pease kail, clap bread, all preparations innocent of wheat, which I shall describe later. The only thing that can be said in favour of these forms of food is that they were preferable to what the French peasantry had to be content with. We derive from the writer of the British Merchant * an account of the poor man’s diet across the Channel in 1664, which is hardly less pitiful than that of Fortescue about a century earlier. Our neighbours of the peasant class seem to have been greater vegetarians than ever, living principally on roots, cabbages, and other herbage, reduced to only chestnuts in four of the largest French provinces, and only tasting bread made of barley, millet, Turkey corn, 1 Ze, rare. 2 Description of England, p. 168. 3 Three Tracts on the Corn Trade and Corn Laws, Charles Smith. 4 British Merchant, vol. i. p. 7. 196 Annals of the British Peasantry and black corn, in the most favoured districts. Yet Evelyn, only twenty years later, mentions a long list of excellent French loaves, the best of which was the pain de Gonnesse, the worst the pazn Bourgeois. The pain @ Esprit, pain a la Mountreau, pain de Chapitre, pain de Gentilly, pain Benit o brioche, pain de Citroville, and the pain de Cousin, were all excellent breads, being various compounds of wheat, butter, milk, cheese, eggs, and even pompions. Though some varieties were rough and harsh, as, for example, that made without sifting the bran just as it came from the mills around Rouen, such were deemed especially wholesome and strengthening foods.} The methods of preparing the raw material for baking differed in various parts of this island. For avery long period it was imperative on the manorial populations in both England and Scotland that they should take their corn to be ground at the lord’s mill. But when this regulation fell into disuse, all sorts of contrivances for grinding crept in. | The most primitive was undoubtedly that of the Highland peasant. The first process was the separation of the grain from the ear. This was not threshed, but graddaned—that is to say, it was burned out of the ear in much the same fashion as the parched corn of Boaz. Either whole sheaves or several ears were fired on the cottage floor. Though the burning of the entire sheaf was the most expeditious process, it was a sad waste of manure and thatch. Sometimes oats were beaten out of the straw with a rude mallet, and kiln-dried. But usually both they and barley underwent the burning treatment. The housewife knelt before the fire, holding a few stalks in her left hand. Setting the ears alight, she deftly beat out the grain with a stick, just when the husk was quite consumed. The grains, blackened like coal, were picked off the floor with the hand, and placed in the quern.* This consisted of two stones, 14 ft. in diameter, the lower slightly convex, the upper slightly concave. Inthe middle of each was a round hole, and on one side of ita long handle. The Scotch housewife shed the grain into the hole with one hand, and worked the handle round with the other. The corn slid down the convexity of the lower stone, and by the motion of the upper one was ground in its passage? These handmills were very similar to those used in India ; they cost about 14s., and were managed with the greatest ease by mere children.” On the other hand, Pennant took exception to the process, stating that it was so tedious as to require two pairs of hands to grind a single bushel of corn in four 1 4 Collection of Letters for the Improvement of Husbandry and Trade, 1681- 1703. No. 22. January, 1682-3. 2 Pennant’s Tour in Scotland, ed. 1774, vol. i. p. 280. 8 Dr. Johnstone's Journey to the Western Islands, 1773. The Cottage Larder . 197 hours. Eden dispels this false impression by relating the experiences of a friend who once called at a Highland cottage in Lochaber. There he found an old woman, who had just put her kail pot on the fire. Though no other food was in the house, her sense of hospitality lent invention to her brain and wings to her heels. She tripped out to her croft, cut down a little barley, graddaned it in the straw, winnowed it by throwing it against the wind, ground it in her quern, and applied it to the simmering kail pot as a thickening to the liquor. While this was in preparation, she made some of the meal into bannocks, which she baked by laying them upright against a stone placed near the fire. Thus, in less than half an hour, an excellent repast was smoking on the table. 1 Primitive though these processes were, they had this advantage, namely, that the corn escaped the chances of theft at the hands of a dishonest thresher. Moreover, they were undoubtedly preferable to the intricate methods pursued by Best, when he wanted his corn ground for household uses. His practice was to put a bushel of it into a mette poake, or a mette into a three-bushel sack, or three bushels and a half into a quarter-sack, according to the extent of his wants, and send it to the miller. The miller retained, as mowter,? one-twelfth to one-sixteenth of the quantity ground ; and if for every bushel sent, six pecks of meal were not returned, he was considered to have exceeded his charge, and consequently lost Best’s future custom. Though the cadgers generally called for orders, and could take away at a time eight or ten bushels of corn on one horse, Best often had to convey his own grist to the mill. In that case he looked out his poakes, bushel, and strickle,® together with the quantity of meal required to be ground, and himself accompanied them to the mill. Here, seated on his heels, the miller first ryed 4 the corn, removing with his hands the chaff, capes,® and heads, which had settled on the top. He then ground it and returned it to Best. The same bushel, with which the corn had been measured previous to its despatch to the mill, was used to test its weight in the form of flour. This was done by heaping up the bushel with the ground grain, and laying the hands crossed, one above the other, inside it. If after the insertion thus of the hands the contents did not upheap the bushel again, then the miller was considered to have failed {in his undertak- ing. But if all had been found as it should be, the flour was then tempsed,® and finally baked into bread. In the heat of summer only. 1 State of the Poor, bk. ii. ch. 2, Sir F. Eden. 2 Toll in kind. 8 Strickle=a flat piece of wood used in striking off an even measure of grain. * Winnowed. 5 Capes=ears of corn broken off in threshing. 6 Tempse=a coarse hair sieve. 198 Annals of the British Peasantry a bushel for the baking of tempse bread could be sent at a time, because the flour would get mouldy with long standing. For the brown bread baking, even further precautions had to be observed. A bushel of rye, of pease, and of barley were made up separately, and, before they were put into one common sack, the miller was made to sweep a clean place on the floor with a besom and pour the various grains into a heap, which he blended with his hands, and then scuttled into the “ poakes.” Bushels of wheat for the best pies, of masledine for the folks’ pies, and of barley for their puddings, had also to undergo similar treatment at the mill. In some places people hand- waved the grist, that is to say, they drew the corn lightly about with the hands until they considered the bushel full enough. But this process was not generally favoured by the millers, who asserted that it often left the corn hollow towards the middle. As they were expected by their customers to return, for every stricken bushel of corn, an upheaped bushel of tempsed meal, or of meal that was undressed one upheaped bushel and one upheaped peck, they were very careful to ensure that they received at the outset the full allowance of grist. The disputes caused by this system of upheaped measures were, however, so un- avoidable, that the legislature abolished it in 1834.1 After what has been just related, we cannot wonder that Cobbett, the champion of cottage interests, was anxious to discover some substitute which would avoid the losses sustained by the mill process, and the bad results derived from that of the quern. He suggested that heads of large families should adopt the mill, which he himself had in use in 1822.2, A man and stout boy could grind and dress with it six bushels of wheat daily, and its prime cost was only £24. It was absurd, he said, for American farmers to carry their grists fifty miles, and for English farmers to carry them fifteen miles to be ground at mills, only to risk the losses sustained by passing them thus through the dangerous hands of dishonest corn merchants, millers, flour-dealers, and hucksters. It was, indeed, false economy for anybody to pay anything zz money that he could pay for in anything du¢ money. The next process was the baking; and here it is important to dis- tinguish between the various methods required for different kinds of bread. The most primitive of any process was that adopted by the ancient Scotsmen when on the warpath. “They,” says Froissart, “‘carye with them none other purveyance but on their horse. Between the saddell and the pannell they trusse a broade plate of metall, and behynde the saddell they wyll have a lytell sacke full of otemel, to the 15 and 6 Will. IV. c. 63. 2 Cottage Economy, 1822, 17th ed., 1850. The Cottage Larder 199 entent that, when they have eaten of the sodden fleshe, then they ley thys plate on the fyre, and tempse a lytell of the otemel, and when the plate is hote, they cast of the thyn paste thereon, and so make a lytle cake in maner of a crakenell or bysket, and that they eate to comfort withall their stomaks, wherefore it is no great merveille though they make greatter journies than other people do.”1 “This,” adds Eden, who quotes the passage, “answers equally to a description of the Arabian practice ; the Arabs using dried camel’s dung to keep the heat in, and the Scotch a ball of oatmeal covered with the embers of the oat hulls and called a fitch hack.” * But Scotland, if not at this early period, soon earned her appellation of being “the land of cakes.” Moryson, writing of the times of James VIL, says, “the Scotch vulgarly eate harth cakes of oates, but in cities have also wheat bread ;” and Patten, earlier still, remarks of the provisions found in Douglas Castle that “the spoile was not riche sure, but of white bread, oten cakes, and Scottish ale.” * Ray, in his Collection of North Country Words, mentions several different kinds of oaten bread, viz. thar cakes, #.e. the bannocks or hearth cakes of Moryson’s account, kitcheness bread, clap bread, girdle cakes, riddle cakes, hand-hoveo bread, and jannock bread. “Clap bread was made of thin, hard oat cakes in Scotland, and of barley in Cumberland. It derived its name from being clapped or beaten out with the hand, while in the condition of dough, into the form of large round cakes on a board. It was in use in Norwegian cottages under the name of fadbrod. There the women took a handful of dough, rolled it out with the pin to the size of a round iron plate, on which they baked it, turning alternately each side to the fire with a small stick called a spurtle. One woman could bake ina day a year’s supply for her household. This thin plate was twenty inches in diameter, being used in Scotland under the name of girdle, and in the South of England under that of plank (from which the term “ plank bread” was derived). Kitcheness bread was oat cake of thin batter. Riddie cakes were those used in Wales under the name of “ baragreiddel,” being thick, sour com- pounds, much esteemed in Lancashire and the West Riding of York- shire. Hand-hoven bread, or hoven-cakes, were loaves of unleavened barley meal. Jannock oaten bread was the Johnny bread made in Virginia and Maryland of maize, and the journey cake of South Carolina. 1 Froissart’s Chronicle, fol. viii. col. 3. 2 State of the Poor, bk. ii. ch. ii. Sir F. Eden. 8 Jtinerary, pt. 3, bk. iii. ch. iv. p. 155. 4 Expedition into Scotland, etc., fol. 65. W. Patten, 1548. 5 Travels in Poland, 4th ed. c.v. p. 11. Quoted by Sir F, Eden in his State of the Poor. 200 Annals of the British Peasantry It was similar to bannocks, a name derived from donm, the Gaelic for a round piece of money, whose shape they resembled. They were thick cakes of unleavened bread, made with meal and water. Oat, barley, and pease meals were all used, and frequently milk, butter, cream, eggs, and caraway seeds added. They were fired upon a brander or gridiron, and toasted by being set against a stone or wooden frame close to the hearth. Small circular biscuits called “ bignets” were used in Aberdeen- shire and Morayshire. Castings, made of pease or beans, steeped in water and then “fired”! with butter or milk, was the general Scottish dish on the last Sunday in Lent. Skilling was probably used in England as well as in Scotland. It derived its name from the operation of the mill known as shelling, or skilling. ‘The oats were shelled in one mill, cleansed in another, and ground in a third, and then sifted. The refuse of the sieve, consisting principally of husks, was used by the economical Scotch wife in the manufacture of sowens or flummery. These “seeds,” as they were called, underwent frequent soakings and washings with water. Towards the end of this tedious process, the cereal pre- cipitate was allowed to settle, and then the clear superincumbent liquid was canted off and thrown away. Finally, the white sediment was collected in a pot, boiled, stirred with a stick, thrown out into a basin, and served up with milk as a kind of blanc-mange. The poet peasant of Ayrshire thus describes the repast that would ensue :— “Till buttered sowens wi’ fragrant lunt? Set a’ their gabs® a steerin, Syne w’ a social glass o’ strunt* They parted aff careerin, Fu’ blythe that night.” § This same substance was prepared in a much less economical way in England, where it was called dish wheat. I can find no better illustra- tion of the differences of idiosyncrasy between Scotch and English peasants than these two preparations afford. On the one hand is the painstaking Scotch housewife bestowing almost as much care on the purification and filtration of what was otherwise a waste product, as a modern analytical chemist would bestow on some infinitesimal, but valuable precipitate. On the other hand is the English house- wife corroborating Defoe’s description of her class as being “ the most lazy diligent people of the world,” and true to the national preju- dice against the relaxing effects and bitter taste of any cereal food other than wheaten, who, dispensing with the frequent washings, mixings, } Dressed. 2 te. smoke, 8 Mouths. * Spirits. 5 For a fuller description of Scotch bread food see Eden's State of Poor, bk. ii. ch. ii, 1 The Cottage Larder 201 standings and boilings, steeps some wheat in water, closely ties it up when dry in a bag, and beats it with sticks until the outer coat or bran ‘ peels off, softens it by boiling, frees it from the superfluous liquor, leaves it to cool into a jelly, and then pronounces it ready for the table. In Derby the custom was to put a pint of wheat in a mortar, add as much warm milk as would wet it, press with a pestle not hard enough to break it, add more warm water, until it had sucked up three pints, then dose it with cold water until the bran had come off and was all floating on the surface, next put it in an earthen pan, together with three quarts of water, leave it in the oven all night, finally draw it off into dishes, and dissolve it in hot water, heat when required for use, and flavour it with butter, sugar, and cinnamon, when it became the mess known as “buttered wheat.” If, however, it was boiled with a greater quantity of milk and relished with cinnamon and sugar, without butter, it became the excellent and well-known dish called frumenty. Puft paste, pancakes, fritters, buns, wafers, etc., were largely used in England. Hasty pudding was a great favourite among the poorer sort. Indeed, all spoon meat of a sweet description was popular, as Houghton proves by a delightful little anecdote. Two Norfolk boys once were overheard discussing the kind of treat in which either of them would indulge if he became King of England. The one decided that he would have pudding every day for dinner; the other burst into tears, because his comrade’s wish had left him nothing good from which to choose. Wheat seems to have been the English substitute for most of the better forms of food. It replaced oats in the manufacture of our fancy breads, being the sole ingredient of biscuits, simnels, manchets, plum cakes, etc.; and during a temporary scarcity of coffee, it became, on being roasted, its substitute in the English taverns. When ground without any sifting, it formed the meal of which household bread was either wholly or principally made. But when boulted, five varieties of flour were obtained. The finest and heaviest was that at the end next the boulter, the least desirable that most remote from the boulter. Four varieties remained in the mill, and the bran which went through composed a fifth variety. The sieves of the boulting mill were originally made of wool or hair; but about the middle of the 17th century a wire sieve had been patented by a friend of Houghton. Out of the first and finest flour, biscuits, simnels, and cakes were made; out of the second, spice buns, plum cakes, etc.; out of the third, household bread; out of the fourth (called the chizels), a dry, short, or horse bread, which was usually that mixed with rye. Leavened bread was common in households, especially in Shropshire, where they 202 Annals of the British Peasantry seldom brewed. French bread was used by well-to-do families in Essex, but household, maslin, and barley breads were the three varieties most eaten by English farmers and labourers. London bread was dry and crumbly, because made of the coarse bran. The moistest bread was that made of the separated flour. This, even if sifted from the coarse bran only, produced a loaf in excellence second to none in the world. Kalm, the Swede, who visited us in 1733, could not say suff- cient in praise of the whiteness of our bread, and was puzzled why we toasted it, unless it was because of the chilliness of our breakfast- rooms. Barley and malt had become, in Houghton’s day, quite dear, owing to the large consumption of barley bread. He states that a mill at Wickham, in Buckinghamshire, was grinding seventeen quarters of corn a week, of which sixteen were barley. Houghton had tasted, and liked, the Clapham bread, made out of equal parts of wheat and barley, as also a turnip bread, much used in Wales. The latter he assured his readers was, to eye and nose, not distinguishable from wheaten bread, but it was unpopular in more refined circles, because, as the London bakers asserted, the juice of turnips could add but little nutritive quali- ties to the ordinary ingredients of the staff of life The same might be said of potato bread; yet the evidence of an Agricultural Commis- sion, sitting some ten or twelve decades later, went to prove that it had become largely used by the labourers in our western counties. By then, London bakers must have got over their prejudices against juicy ingredients, for Cobbett tells us? they had established mills for grinding potatoes. Household bread does not seem to have been always entirely made of wheat. Evelyn says: ‘‘The more the quantity of wheat the better, yet it is a good sort of bread for servants which is made of four parts of coarse corn and one of barley. This is a competent proportion for one batch.” His recipe was as follows: ‘‘Searce it through the coarse sive ; of this take a bushel about 10 at night, and put leaven into it with some of the same meal. To temper it in winter, make the water as hot as you can indure it with your hands. In summer it is sufficient to be lukewarm. Next morning leaven the rest of your meal, temper- ing and kneading it very long, till it be stiff; for though the softer, lighter and bulkier it appears, yet will it be less tasting. This paste well kneaded, you shall turn it in the trough, laying the bottom upmost, then thrust your fist to the very bottom of the trough two or three 1 Houghton’s Collection of Letters, April 6th, 1694. 2 Cottage Economy, 1822. 3 Houghton’s Letters, No. 22, Jan., 1683. The Cottage Larder 203 places, then cover it with meal sacks and clean blankets. Let stand a while longer in winter than summer, till you find those holes closed or swelled up. The rising is perfect. ‘*Now let somebody be heating the oven whilst you cut the mass in pieces of sixteen pounds weight each, or more. Mould and form into loaves,! lay in a clean tablecloth so asa fold of the linnen may part keep the loaves from touching. Your oven hot (known by raking the end of a stick against the roof or hearth; if the sparkles rise plentifully), make it very clean, reserving only a few coals near the mouth, wipe it with a mopp wet and wrung, then close it up awhile to allay the heat and dust. When the fiery colour is abated set in your loaves as fast and quick as possible, ranging the biggest towards the upper end and filling the middle space last. He that heats the oven must see he burns his wood in every part alike, continually scraping away the ashes with his iron. Stop the mouth of the oven with the plate door and wet clothes at edge. Four hours are sufficient for the large bread, but draw a loaf and knock it against the bottom with your knuckles, and if it be sound and hard, draw the rest. Let your bread be cold before you put it up, and eat the least baked loaves first.” It is to be feared that the bulk of the rural population were not suffi- ciently skilled to follow these careful instructions. Many labourers bought their bread from the village shop. Let us then inquire how far the legislature protected them from the impositions of millers and bakers. The ancient statute of 51 Hen. III. c. 1 had never been re- pealed, though it was amended in the reign of Queen Anne, and again in that of George II. It purported to prevent the separation of the flour into pure meal and inferior meal. Whether it ever effected this object is doubtful; but as soon as the industries of the mealman and of the baker became two separate branches of trade, the former was able to withdraw his dealings from under the regulations of the Assize, and the latter was compelled to take those divisions of flour which it had been the chief object of the legislature to forbid. What could the magistrates do? It was no use for them to punish the innocent bakers, who were powerless to comply with the terms of the Assize, and so they quietly abrogated their powers. The State, unable to make the meal- men conform to the old Act, passed a fresh one, conformable to their practices. Two sorts of bread stuffs now became legal,” viz. wheaten bread, made from the finest parts of the flour, and purchased by the well-to-do, and household bread, composed of inferior flour, and pur- chased by the peasantry. Three pernicious results ensued :—first, 1 Possibly the later ‘‘ peck loaf.” 2 31 Geo. II. c. 29. 204 Annals of the British Peasantry there was henceforth drawn an unfortunate distinction between the food of the rich and that of the poor; secondly, whenever the price of grain stiffened, the mealmen adulterated both varieties, until the cheaper of the two became almost, if not quite, innutritive; thirdly, bakers, by being allowed to sell two sorts of bread, had it in their power to palm off on unwary customers the inferior kind for the other. The legislature soon recognised its blunder, and decreed that the “ Assize” bread must not be sold at the same time or place as the so- _ called “ Prize” bread. It also ordained that every loaf of “ wheaten ” flour must be marked with a large Roman W, and that loaves of ‘“ house- hold” flour should be marked with a large Roman H.1 But the price of flour and its separation into various bread stuffs still remained at the caprice of miller and mealman. Recognising, therefore, that it was impossible for it to exercise any control over a bread which was not made out of the whole fruit of the wheat plant, the legislature once more naturalised the old traditional loaf, called it ‘‘Standard Wheaten ” bread, and distinguished it with the letters SW.? But many people were still dissatisfied with legislation which did not contain any means of controlling the operations of miller and mealman. Gover- nor Pownall, therefore, in 1788, attempted to pass into law a measure regulating the making and selling of flour, but it was thrown out by the Lords. It was only optional, whereas it ought to have been com- pulsory, for the justices to set an Assize within their several jurisdictions, and, after ascertaining from the clerks of the neighbouring markets the prices of grain, meal, or flour, to fix any money value they thought fit. The bakers possessed the worthless privilege of scrutinising the returns ; but no alteration in the Assize was permissible, unless the price of wheat set forth in the returns could have been shown to have varied threepence in the bushel. Local authorities attempted from time to time to give force to the law. The Westminster magistrates, for ex- ample, published a schedule, wherein the weights and prices of various loaves of wheaten and household bread were stated.6 Thus the gallon or half-peck loaf of wheaten bread was fixed at eight pounds eleven ounces in weight, and at 1s. o}d. in price, and the same loaf of household bread was to be a similar weight and g$d. in price. It was this latter bread which John Bennett, M.P., had considered sufficient for the daily wants of an average labourer’s household in Wiltshire, a 1 3 Geo. III. c. 11. 2 13 Geo, III. c, 62, 8 Annals of Agriculture, vol. ix. p. 557. * Lord Hawkesbury’s speech on Feb. 18th, 1795. 5 History of the Landed Interest, part ii. p. 321. The Cottage Larder 205 sentiment which subsequently led Cobbett to speak of that province as “the horrible county of the gallon loaf.” 1 This same writer did all he could to induce the labourers to make their own bread. He told them that they must not think that loaves were made by the bakers just as knights were made by the king. He asserted that it was common to hear the expression, ‘children crying for bread.” So they must do, if their parents persisted in giving 135. for a bushel of bread, instead of 5s. 9¢. A bushel of wheat, weighing 59 lbs., yielded thirteen and a half quartern loaves at a price, if home- made, of 8s. But if bought at a Kensington baker’s it would cost 14s. 7$@, Even if bought in the cheaper country shops a saving of ss. on the thirteen loaves could be effected. Thus, if half a bushel a week were consumed, at the rate of a quartern loaf daily, the saving of a whole year when bread was made in the cottage oven was £3 45., or nearly one-fifth of the earnings of a labourer in husbandry. More- over, it was a purer source of food than that adulterated with alum and other noxious compounds by the bakers. Unfortunately, the labourer took no pains to teach his daughters useful employments. It was common to hear of farmers’ servants who were ignorant of the art of baking. If such were a woman’s deficiencies in the house of her employer, what else could they be in the house of her husband? The lover is blind, but as a husband he regains his eyesight, and dis- covers that he requires qualities more practical than dimples and cherry cheeks. Fathers, therefore, were asked by Cobbett to reflect seriously whether the way to make their daughters long admired, beloved and respected by their husbands, was not to educate them in the most common concerns of family life.? Since this writer’s day, machinery has superseded manual labour in many operations of the larger bread-making establishments. What with milling, sifting, stirring and kneading machines, an adroit application of screws, revolving blades, gas or steam piping, a perfect system of divided labour, an intimate knowledge of the nutritive constituents of each cereal, and a brisk competition between rival houses, the bake- oven of the shop can turn out breads almost as cheap as and far more excellent than any householder can expect to produce. Moreover, the townsman’s ubiquitous van deposits the quartern loaves at every cottage door, however isolated and distant. Yet, notwithstanding all these improvements in the shop loaf, Cobbett’s plea for a system of home 1 Rural Rides, This is almost as much as the allowance which Mr. G. S. Steffen has estimated to be sufficient.—Mzneteenth Century Review, June, 1893, sub voc. ‘¢Six Hundred Years of English Poverty.” 2 Cobbett’s Cottage Economy, 1822. 206 Annals of the British Peasantry baking has lost but little of its original force. The cottage housewife needs neither the Act of 1836 to secure for her tinned loaf its proper weight, nor that of 1878 to regulate the condition of her bakehouse. All she asks of her landlord is access to a properly built brick oven. The keen appetites of those for whom she bakes will make up for all other deficiencies in her limited means and skill.t Next to the produce of the corn field, that of the cow was the chief constituent of a poor man’s larder. Cobbett, alluding to the days of his rook-scaring, tells us that his granny, in her extreme poverty, used to exhort him to sup off the bread and only smell at the cheese. He adds that he was hungry enough to follow her advice to the letter and strong enough to find it sufficient for his wants. It will be contended that, even if the English peasantry were able to purchase the luxury of cheese, they were not capable of producing it at home. Moreover, what produce of the cow that they could manage to procure ought to have been applied as a milk diet for their children. The primary question for us to discuss is not what form of food a cow’s milk ought to take, but whether milk in any form should be considered as one of the products of a cottage home. Now Cobbett, who had drunk little else than skim milk for many years, considered it a preferable substitute for beer in promoting the heavy labour of the farm. Consequently, he set himself the task of proving that a good cow was not out of the reach of an ordinary labourer’s means. The cottager’s animal, he asserted, should be the smallest bred, such as would réquire seventy or eighty pounds of good moist food daily. How was this to be supplied from those forty rods of ground which formed the ordinary garden of a country hind? He concluded that, though the cow might not have access to a common, there would always be a lane near at hand, where it might occasionally pick up a bite of fresh grass. But, even if there were not, it was within. the bounds of possibility to cultivate the cottage garden so that it produced sufficient fodder to enable the cow to supply, on the average, five quarts of milk per diem. All he stipulated was, that the land should be unshaded with apple trees and gooseberry bushes, which were only a source of fits and belly-aches among the juveniles of the cottage household and of livelihood to blackbirds and thrushes. He told the labourer to clean the allotment by trenching it deeply in spring, laying it in ridges, two feet apart, in April or May, turning them in dry weather, and thus burying the weeds, while the top spit of soil was always kept uppermost. At the end of August every scrap of manure was to be collected and spread over the ground ; half a rod was then to 1 Possibly no one but a land agent of long standing realises how important it is to erect and keep in repair a good bakehouse for every group of three or four cottages. The Cottage Larder 207 be sown with early York cabbage seeds, and another half with sugar-loaf cabbage seeds, each lot in little drills, eight inches apart. The plants were to be subsequently thinned until two inches apart, then 4,000 of each sort pricked out and set in rows, eight inches apart, and at intervals of three inches along each row. Thus four rods of ground would be covered, which had to be kept clean with the hoe. Early in November more manure was to be laid between the ridges, and thirty-six rods planted with the seedlings at intervals of fifteen inches. By the rst of June, slugs and weeds having been suppressed, a fine, solid crop of the early Yorks should have been reared. A cow, just calved, or about to calve, was then to be bought at a price of about 45, and fed for two hundred days with eighty pounds of the cabbages daily. In the following March and April more early Yorks were to be prepared similarly in seed-beds, and planted out in August, which would serve to keep the cow going till the end of November. By that time 3,000 turnip plants should have arrived at perfection. The roots of these alone would average five pounds in weight, and would therefore keep the cow 187 days at the rate of eighty pounds consumption per diem. The green tops would have also contributed to help the latest cabbages to carry the cow through November, if net later. But then, for the six months ending in May, the Swedish turnips could alone be relied on. These were not to take the place of the early Yorks cut in spring and replanted with fresh seedlings in summer, but that of the Sugar-loaves, cut later. But where was the place in which to keep the cow? All Cobbett deigned to say on this head was, that he did not pretend to teach a labourer how to stick up a shed against the gable end of his cottage. If any one could not collect a few poles, rods, wattles, rushes, furze, heath, and coopers’ chips, and construct some shelter out of such materials, he was not fit to keep a cat, much less a cow. But “Oh!” would say some labourer, ‘‘I have to do my master’s business and have no time to attend to my own.” Cobbett ventured to hint in reply, that such a fellow would find time to spend at the alehouse, or in creeping about after a miserable hare. In nine cases out of ten there was a boy big enough to help, and, failing him, a girl. Apropos of the latter, he relates that in 1822 he watched a very pretty woman in the “horrible county of the gallon loaf” digging a piece of ground and planting it with early cabbages as handily and as neatly as any gardener he ever saw. Moreover, the attendance on the wants of a cow was a work of necessity, and as such, he maintained, a legitimate employment on a Sunday afternoon. He finishes his homily —for such it appears to have been—by pointing out that five quarts of milk yield as much butter as could be bought with two days’ wages, and 208 Annals of the British Peasantry the skim milk was worth the wages of a third day. He also begs those labourers who complain that their gardens are too small for such an important undertaking to go and see for themselves what market gardeners round Brompton and Battersea could produce out of equally small areas of soil. But I would speak of an earlier period, when rights of common were still available, and of other districts, where the keep of a cow was part of the labourer’s remuneration. I would take my readers with me up into the northern kingdom, where a stricter and juster view of Sunday labour prevailed, but where industrious habits obviated any necessity for violating its restful hours. Cobbett had cited cases where the youthful sons of farmers and labourers had applied to him for the situation of cowman, and pro- fessed a total ignorance of milking. How can we expect, therefore, to find a real, practical knowledge prevailing in the arts by which milk could be converted into other forms of food? I refer to an age long before Jersey contrivances and centrifugal forces came to be applied to the dairy utensils. But it was a period when empirical knowledge was at its zenith; a period when butter and cheese were not only made from new milk, but from other products of the churn; a period when the first milking, which contained the most whey, was carefully separated from the last milking or stroakings, which produced the most butter and cheese, and when the proverb was in force which asserted that, ‘ if the cows be not milked by the time the herdsman blows his horn (sunrise), the dairymaid’s wedding is spoiled.” An observing cheesemonger once told Houghton that there was commonly 4s. in the hundred difference between the Suffolk and northern butter, because, by clumsy management, the housewives of the latter district did not extract all the butter-milk, The Irish were said to rot their butter, and the dairymaids of hot climates to clarify it. In some parts of England it was made from the whey of curds,1 in other parts entirely of new milk. Though the latter made the best butter, it did not last the longest. If, then, good management was the secret of success in butter-making, how much more was it in the making of cheese. It has been said that a good housewife will make excellent cheese anywhere.? There was, however, another way of spoiling it, besides in the making, viz. in the pasturing of the beasts which produced the raw material. Weeds, such as melitot and garlick, gave the cheese an ill flavour: dirty utensils and clumsy manipulation 1 I lived eight years next door toa Lancashire farmer, who made all his butter thus. Iam ashamed to confess I never had the curiosity to taste it. 2 4 Compleat Body of Husbandry, 1756. The Cottage Larder 209 prevented it from keeping. Let us, however, confine our attention to faults in the making. To turn the milk, the stomach of the young sucking calf was in- variably used in England; but in France many substitutes for rennet, such as the juice of the fig, ginger, the inner skin of a hen’s stomach, the spawn of a pike, and the seed of the Carduus benedictus, were used.t It is not, however, in this direction that we need search for the causes of failure. That occurred whenever the dairymaid pro- duced a cheese either too lean or too fat. To effect a happy mean, she mixed with the morning’s milk, fresh from the cows, the over- night cream, and still in fear of making it too rich she reduced the compound by means of hot water. When cool, she applied one spoonful of rennet in proportion to. every three gallons of milk, covered the vessel until the milk was turned, and then rummaged and tossed the curd to and fro in the whey. Here dexterity was everything, for unless she entirely separated the whey, the cheese would not keep. Finally, she removed the whey by means of a shallow dish, and tilted the curd into the cheese vat; she then broke it, pressed it down, and, when the utensil had been thus crammed with the curd, she placed the cheese board over it and slightly weighted it. When the last dregs of the whey had been thus exuded, she turned the cheese on toa cloth, and pressed it down with a thin slice, then turned the cloth over it, carried it to the press, and left it weighted half an hour; she next turned it into a dry cloth, re-weighted it in the press, repeating the process every two hours. After it had remained in the press till the evening of the next day, it was removed into a tub and frequently salted. In three days’ time it was placed on the shelf and wiped daily till required for the table. There were one-meal cheeses, two-meal cheeses, and morning-milk cheeses, nettle cheeses, sheep-milk cheeses, Cheshire and Somersetshire cheeses, skim or fleet-milk cheeses, cheeses made from the stroakings? only, such as those of Angelot, cheeses made mostly of cream, such as those of Parma, but they were all managed very similarly. : There was therefore plenty of choice for rich and poor. If a new- milk cheese were too expensive, a fleet-milk one could be bought at 2d. per lb., and being seldom brought to market, generally found its way into the cottage larder. Though butchers’ meat was rarely found on the peasant’s dinner table, pork and bacon often were. ‘A couple of flitches,” says Cob- bett, ‘‘are worth 50,000 Methodist sermons, and the sight of these upon the rack tends more to keep a man from poaching and stealing than 1 Maison Rustique, 2 The last milking. P 210 Annals of the British Peasantry whole volumes of penal statutes, though assisted by the terrors of the hulks and gibbet.” The breeding sow was the chief favourite with the peasant ; but, as Cobbett pointed out, a cottager could not expect to compete with a farmer in producing young pigs, as there was too much expense and risk about the undertaking. He impressed upon his reader the fact that all pigs graze, and that every patch of ground in lane and open was their natural pasturage. He also impressed on cottage children that it was their duty to appreciate and relish bread spread with sweet lard, the invariable luncheon, he added, of not only his own early years, but of many a substantial French farmer. 1 Cottage Economy. CHAPTER XIV THE MEANS OF POOR RELIEF NE method of dealing with this history would have been to divide it into four sections, the first treating of the peasant as a slave, the second treating of him as a beggar, the third treating of him as a pauper, and the fourth as a labourer. In each section. there were periods when we either maltreated or pampered him. Indeed, the one process invariably followed close on the other, as though a natural consequence of it. In the times of his beggary, horribly severe laws were being constantly put in force against him. Thereupon many kind-hearted persons got it into their heads that he was a martyr, and delighted in secretly shielding him from the violence of the statute book. Henry VIII. foresaw this state of public feeling, and sought to counteract it by imposing a fine of ten times the sum given by the alms-giver.1 Dr. Burn, though apparently ignorant of this legal pro- vision, pointed out, at a much later date, that there were two parties to the process of begging, and that before it could be arrested, the State would have to inflict penalties on both principal and accessory.? But, by then, society had become more enlightened in its views regarding beggary, and stigmatised the suggestion as a plan more fitted for the meridian of Utopia, than for our country in the days of an excessive poor rate. The habits of the vagrant had grown, as a writer in 1704 asserts, into an employment,‘ those following it being looked upon as pleasant additions to the social circle. How otherwise can we reconcile such a hagiology as the following rhyme, with the severe legislation then in force P— ‘When at the fire, I’m’set a wee, Then I'll begin to sing ; And do my best to gar them gauff, All round about the ring : 1 27 Hen. VIII. c. 25. 2 Historical Dissertations on the Law and Practice with regard to the Poor, and on the Modes of Charity. Rev. Richard Burn. 8 Quarterly Review, vol. xxvi., 1821-22. Art. vi. 4 Giving Alms no Charity. D. Defoe, 1704. — 211 — 212 Annals of the British Peasantry Tl pick up all the merry tales That I hear anywhere ; And all the news of town.and land, And oh! I'll tell them clear. When I of any weddings hear, T’ll cast me to be there ; And pray my hearty benison Unto the winsome pair. Then I'll wallop out a dance, Or tell some merry tale ; Till some good fellow on my dish, Turn o’er the stoup and ale.” 4 Notwithstanding ‘‘sundrie lovabil Acts of Parliament,” Scotland was long to continue a hotbed for the maisterful and idle beggar. In 1593, lymmers and sornares infested the country districts, going about disguised and armed to the teeth, and compelling ‘gentlemen and yeomen after their daily labours to stand on their feet all night for safety of their own gear.” Even a century later, viz. in 1698, an eye-witness wrote as follows : ‘“ There are at this day in Scotland, besides a great number of families very meanly provided for by the Church poor boxes (with others who, with living upon bad food, fall in various diseases), 200,000 people begging from door to door.” These, he goes on to say, made submission to the laws of neither God nor nature. None knew whether they had been baptised or how they died, but everybody was aware of their deeds of violence and incest. In years of plenty many thousands of them met together on the moun- tains to feast on their spoils, and congregated at country weddings, markets, and funerals, where both sexes perpetually drank, swore, and fought before the scandalised eyes of their unwilling hosts.2 But after the enactment of the first poor law, this state of affairs was not, at any rate in the southern kingdom, longer tolerated. The system of compulsory poor relief exterminated much of the kindly feeling for this class. Hospitality to the vagrant and a strictly enforced poor rate could not exist together. That it did exist in an extorted form right up to the time of the Elizabethan poor law is evident from the follow- ing quaint and graphic description by a writer in 1610: “The Golden Vale in Herefordshire, being ye pride of al that country, being the richest (yet for want of implements) the plentifullest place of poore in the kingdom—yielding two or three hundred folde, the number so increasing (idleness having gotten the upper hand) if trade bee not 1 Beggars’ song. ? Fletcher’s of Saltoun Political Works, Second Discourse on the Affairs of Scotland, pp. 100, IOI. The Means of Poor Relief 213 raised, beggery will carry such reputation in my quarter of the country, as ifit had the whole to halves. There bee, within a mile and a halfe from my house every waye, 500 poore habitations, whose great- est meanes consist in spinning flaxe, hempe, and hurdles. They dis- pose the seasons of the year in this manner. _I will begin with May, June and July (three of the merriest months for beggars), which yield the best increase for their purpose, to raise multitudes, whey, curdes, butter milk, and such belly provision, abounding in the neighbourhood serves their time. As wountes or moles hunt after wormes, the ground be dewable, so these idelers live intolerablie by other meanes, and neglect their painful labours by oppressing the neighbourhood. August, September, October, with that permission which the Lord hathe allowed the poorer sorte to gather the eares of corne they do much harme. I have seen 300 leazers or gleaners to one gentleman’s corne field at once, his servants gathering and stacking the bound sheaves lying on the ground like dead carcasses in an overthrown battell, they followed the spoyle, not like souldiers (what scorne to rifle) but like thieves desirous to steale, so this army holdes pillaging wheate, rye, barly, pease, and oates, oates a graine which never grewe in Canaan nor Egypt ; and altogether out of the allowance of leazing.! Under colour of the last grain, oates it being the latest harvest, they doe (without mercy in hotte blood) steale and robbe orchards, gardens, hop yards, and crab trees, so what with leazing and stealing they doe poorly maintain themselves November, December, and almost all January with some healpes from this neighbourhood. Thus your lordships see (before God and the world) the principal means of their maintenance. The last three moneths, Februery, Marchand Aprill, little labour serves their time they hope by the heats of the sunne (seasoning themselves like snakes under headges) to recover the moneth of May with much poverty, long fasting, and little praying, and so make an end of theire year’s travel in the Easter holydays.” 2 : There was, however, no sudden revulsion of feeling against the beggar, but a slow, sure change which increased pari passu with the in- crease of parochial burdens. His life, we read at this period, was that — of asoldier. ‘He suffers hunger and cold in winter, and heate and thirst in summer. He goes lowsie, he goes lame, hee’s not rewarded. Here only shines his glorie, the whole kingdom is but his walk; a 1 Henry Best avoided this evil by confining his authority to glean to the families of his own servants. —Farming Book of Henry Best, 1641. 2 Most Approved and Long-experienced Water-works, containing the manner of Winter and Summer Draining of Meadow and Pasture, etc. Rowland Vaughan, 1610. 214 Annals of the British Peasantry whole cittie is but his parish, In every man’s kitchen is his meat drest, in every man’s seller lyes his beere, and the best men’s purses keepe a penny for him to spend.” ? ; If such a description could but have been truthfully applied to the industrious labourer instead of to the idle tramp, nothing much would have remained to be desired. But the time was approaching, not for the apotheosis of work, but merely for the beatification of idleness. The pauper had to pass first through the same fiery ordeal as the beggar had done. He was, as we shall see before long, to be turned into the parish outcast by the harsh laws of settlement, and then into the parish pet by the roundsman process. Unfortunately, in our anxiety to make atonement to the indigent peasant, we unwittingly degraded the independent one. Always going to extremes, we have of late years so energetically set to work to free him, that it is not impossible he may end in enslaving us. Here, in a few words, is an epitome of his history. That the pauper had now replaced the beggar as the chief object of the community’s attention is best illustrated by a brief glance through the literature of the 16th and 17th centuries, to say nothing of that of the 18th century. Titles to pamphlets and books, not necessarily dealing with poverty, frequently contain the word “poor.” There was the Treasure of Poor Men in 1544, A Good Booke of Medicine, called the Treasure of Poor Men, in 1548, The Epistle that there ought to be no respect of Personages of the Poor, etc., in 1552, Relief of the Poor in 1592, Provision for the Poor now in Penurie in 1597, Certain Articles con- cerning the Statute lately made for the relief of the Poor in 1599, Groans for the Misery of the Poor in 1621, Miseries of the Poor of London in 1644, Zhe Poor Man’s Case in 1648, A Help for the Poorin 1650, The Outcries of the Poor Oppressed in 1650, Bread for the Poor in 1653, Zhe Relief of the Poor in 1656, The Poor Man’s Comfort in 1655, Advice to the Poor by way of Cure in 1655, etc., etc. In fact, if an author wanted to attract attention to his work, he had merely to insert the word “poor” in its title, and he was sure of a ready hearing. Some few works there are dealing with the condition of the labourer, but no one cared much about him until he became a useless member of society, and so he remained neglected by the community up to the times when the doctrines of Adam-Smith began to take effect. The beggar, however, had fallen into disgrace. In 1572 the authori- ties whipped him until he was all over blood, and burned the gristle of his ear, without a remonstrahce from the general public. In 1597 they would have less to do with him still, and either consigned him to 1 Belman of London, 1608. The Means of Poor Relief 215 the galleys, or banished him out of the kingdom. At this period, therefore, he was in no fitting condition to enliven the society of a farmer’s kitchen with his “ quips and cranks and wanton wiles,” even if the farmer in his new ré/e of ratepayer would have suffered his presence there. The country had, as it imagined, only just provided for his employment. It was not, therefore, disposed to take a lenient view of an individual who apparently refused to avail himself of its good offices, In 1609 it complained, by means of its statute book,! that ‘many idle people, finding that they, having children, have some hope to have relief from the parish wherein they dwell, and being able to labour and thereby relieve themselves and their families, do nevertheless run away out of their parishes and leave their families upon the parish.” It regarded such as incorrigible rogues, and ordained that they should be punished accordingly. It, however, recognised that the local authorities had hardly had time to erect the houses of correction, which it had thought necessary for the suppression of vagabonds; and it therefore gave orders that steps should be immediately taken to provide them in every county, together with “mills, turns, cards, and such-like necessary implements,” for setting the said rogues and other idle persons on work.? It was the period, already alluded to in a former chapter, when the justices of the peace were seeking advice as to the proper inter- pretation of the Elizabethan statute. No doubt they were everywhere hesitating to utilise the spare cash of industrious parishioners in setting on work idle and disorderly persons who had lawful means wherewith to sustain life otherwise. But now so great a legal expert as Lord Coke interposed, and corroborated the opinion of Sergeant Sprigge ; namely, that houses of correction were intended for this special class. Moreover, he went so far as to chide the justices for their apparent neglect, and to assert that few delinquents were committed to those institutions without coming out better.? The parochial authorities still, however, hesitated, even though several statutes in the reigns of James and Charles confirmed the Eliza- bethan poor laws. Thus in 1622 we read that the numbers of the poor had increased, that collections for their support had ceased to be made for several years, that lusty labourers, and, worse still, soldiers maimed in their country’s service, were being turned off to beg, filch, and steal, ‘until the law brought them unto the fearful end of hanging.” * 17 Jac. Ic. 4, § 8. 2 Td. ibid., § 2. 3 Coke’s 2nd Institute, 729 and 734. 4 Grievous Groans for the Poor, 1622. MichaelSparke. Sir G. Nicholls, how- ever, states that this work is attributed to Decker. See his Héstory of the English Poor Laws. 216 Annals of the British Peasantry In the troublous times of 1630, when few laws could be enacted, an order of the Privy Council came out which directed the stewards of seigniorial courts to inquire into the habits of those that haunted taverns or alehouses, went in good clothes, and fared well, yet none knew whereof they lived ; further, that workhouses should be erected adjoining the common prisons, where the inmates might be taught honestly by labour, not merely how to live idly and miserably for a long time, and eventually be turned loose on society, not, as Coke had asserted better, but worse for their confinement; constables were admon- ished to prevent the harbouring of rogues in barns and outhouses, and to demand from vagabonds particulars of their antecedents. ‘These people,” adds the order, “live like savages, neither marry, nor bury, nor christen, which licentious liberty makes so many delight to be rogues and wanderers.”! The country had just been overrun with dis- banded soldiers belonging to the army in Ireland, and these were now ordered to be passed on from constable to constable, to some one or other of our western ports, and there reshipped to Ireland.?, Some of them returned in the succeeding reign, and, there being a difficulty about their identification, the statute book settled the matter by branding all that were caught begging with a Roman R, so that if they repeated the offence they might be quite certain of a felon’s death.® It would seem that there was still a tendency in some quarters to befriend the beggar. A writer in 1646 computes that the amount of money expended on all the idle, thievish and drunken persons that lived upon beggary or plunder was threepence per head daily. We are, however, left in doubt whether the bulk of these alms were extorted by the plunderer or solicited by the beggar. “T find,” says a modern Irish writer, contrasting the existing unhappy condition of his own country with that of England at this earlier period, “after the passing of 43 Eliz., no further mention of agrarian outrages, of extensive misery among the peasantry, or of the nuisance caused by large bodies of vagrants.”® Generally speaking, this, no doubt, is not an exaggerated statement, but the Elizabethan poor law had not suddenly converted England into a paradise for the peasant. In many parishes it had checked eleemosynary assistance, and not as yet re- — ! State of the Poor, vol. i. p. 156e¢ seg. Sir F, Eden. 2 Rymer Foedera, xix. 72. %2Jac. I. c. 7. Continued by 3 Car. I. c. 4, 16 Car. Ic. 4, and uepenied by 12 Ann, st. 2; ¢. 23. 4 Stanley's Remedy on the Way how to Reform Wandering Thieves, Highway Robbers and Pickpockets, 1646, 5 Evils of the State of Ireland, p. 108. The Means of Poor Relief oy placed it with compulsory relief! In such districts the last state of the beggar was worse than the first. Such a condition of affairs meant nothing short of extermination to the bashful poor, those whom the French called pauvres honteux, and relieved principally by the aid of the church money boxes. They wanted means of employment which did not parade their shame. What had they done to render themselves liable to the punitive system of a house of correction? Surely the legislature could have found them work without sending them to prison to get it! We shall see in the next chapter that there was plenty of choice amongst the suggestions offered to Govern- ment at this period. Unfortunately, thus early, hardly any one, save Firmin, was prepared to entirely dissociate the employment be- stowed in the relief of want from that which the convict has to perform towards self-support. The pauper’s prison cell is always, therefore, planned so as to be close by the pauper’s workroom and sick ward. Now there were certain reasons for this arrangement, to which I have already alluded in a former chapter. The parish when it em- ployed labour, entered upon a contract which neither idleness nor in- subordination could annul. In order, therefore, to secure that its work should be properly executed, its churchwardens and overseers had to become gaolers. The slender limits of their wages fund prevented them becoming generous task-masters. For as the roll of our pauper population increased, the available moneys, or rather the moneys which parochial authorities would consider alone available, began to grow more and more inadequate for the purpose. It was not, as we shall shortly see, Walsingham and Cecil that were to blame. It was the churchwarden and the pauper who were at fault. Adverse criticism of the Elizabethan statute began almost immediately after its enactment, and has never ceased since. Have we ever carried it out to the letter? and if not, can there be any conclusive proof of its failure? A few pages of the ensuing narrative will, I trust, fully answer both questions in the negative. In 1697, one Richard Dunning,” having inspected the poor accounts of a few parishes, and found that within the last sixty years the charges of maintenance had advanced from 4os. to £40 annually, and that in his own county of Devon the rates had doubled themselves in twenty _years, notwithstanding an increase in the costs of labour, set himself the task of discovering the cause. He attributed it partly to profuse- ness in diet, partly to increased idleness, but principally to excessive 1 The author of Bread for the Poor says, in 1695, no rates were levied for twenty, thirty, and forty years after the enactment of 43 Eliz. c. 3. 2 Bread for the Poor. R. Dunning, 1697/8. 218 Annals of the British Peasantry poor relief. He maintained that the pay given to a pauper by the parish enabled him to live three times as prosperously as an honest labourer could do on his earnings. He asserted that those maintained by the parish were the principal supporters of the village brandy shop and alehouse; that they subsisted on stronger beer and finer wheat flour than the ratepayer could afford to purchase. All this he at- tributed to a wrong interpretation of the clause in 43 Eliz. c. 3, which empowered overseers to administer outdoor relief to the unemployed. It was a common saying in his day, of those receiving parish pay, that if they did work they got no thanks, and if they did not, the overseers were bound to maintain them. He observed that the authorities thought they would be liable to a fine if they did not find work for those parishioners who could not find it for themselves. He pointed out that the Elizabethan lawyers never intended to promote imposture when they ordained that the parish should set the poor on work. Parish relief was intended to prevent starvation. Parish employment was not instituted that it might yield the same fruits of labour as those harvested by the self-supporting worker. No comfortable provision was to be afforded for those whose interests it was to evade the terms by which every reward of labour ought alone to have been obtained. All the statute implied in the words “to set the poor on work,” was that a less eligible source of livelihood was to be found for those incapacitated from obtaining the fruits of ordinary industry. This excellent interpretation of the vexed question did not apparently meet with the attention it deserved, and the unemployed continued to exclaim, ‘‘ Hang sorrow and cast away care, the parish is bound to find us.” Worse errors in the administration of this clause soon crept in. It directs that the children of the poor should be set on work, but the almost general practice was for the parochial authorities to give their parents money instead. This deviation attracted the attention both of Lord Hale and Locke. A report to the Board of Trade was drawn up by the latter and confirmed by other Commissioners in 1697. It states that the children of labouring people had become an ordinary burden to the country, and it suggests the setting up of schools of industry in each parish, which, as we shall.see later, was the scheme of Firmin, of Gilbert, and of the Poor Law Commission in 1817. The Board, before adopting such proposals, very wisely called for statistics. Most of those available were mere guess-work. One writer had estimated the annual expenditure in relief as nearly £840,000.! 1 The Grand Concerns of England explained in several Proposals offered to the Consideration of Parliament, etc. The Means of Poor Relief 219 Another put the figure at £700,000. The most laborious, but not the most reliable, estimate was that compiled by Arthur Moore, which made the total amount of relief £665,000, and represented Norfolk, Essex, Devonshire, and Lincolnshire as the counties most highly as- sessed, and Cheshire, Lancashire, and Westmoreland as those with the smallest assessments. Also available for the purposes of the Board of Trade were Gregory King’s statistics based on the particulars of the hearth tax in 1696. He computed the total number of pauper families in England and Wales at 400,000, and the number of vagrants at 30,000. Those who received alms he estimated at 330,000; those not paying church rates at 380,000; in all, 750,000 more or less insol- vent persons out of a population of 1,300,000.2 These figures would imply that, according to Moore’s estimate of the annual poor rate, each — pauper cost annually for his maintenance ros. Naturally dissatisfied with such imperfect and unreliable statements, the Board, in July of the same year, applied to the two Archbishops for information respecting the poor rates of each parish. In the Decem- ber following these Commissioners represented to the king that, though they had met with much obstruction from the humours of parishes, they had procured accounts from no less than 4,415, the rates of which amounted to £184,735 18s. 6d. They were therefore led to infer that the support of the poor could not be less than £400,000 _ annually. That Moore had exaggerated the amount is now definitely known, for in 1817 the Speaker of the House of Commons discovered in the closet adjoining the Ingrossing Office certain statistics which showed that many of the counties, as late as the middle of the last century, raised a less sum than what Moore attributed to them seventy ~years earlier.5 This topic of means should necessarily precede that of ways. It is indeed impossible for the reader to take in all the significance of the various remedies suggested from time to time, unless he has a thorough grasp of the rating question. The parochial system is still more or less on its trial. Those who advocate a decentralising economy principally base the prospects of its success on the history, not of the poor laws, but of the poor rates. The first step in this branch of our subject is to recall to mind that the compulsory rate of Queen Elizabeth’s law was a phase of a bar- 1 Davenant’s Essays on Ways and Means, 1695. 2 Whitworth’s Davenant, vol. ii. p. 203. 8 Some Reflections on the Poor Rates from Abstracts of the Returns made to the House of Commons in 1776, £ Domestic Trade. 5 Quarterly Review, pp. 18, 19, 1818. 220 Annals of the British Peasantry gain. It was part of the sale moneys of the popular rights over the national soil. ‘The peasant may be represented as saying to his tradi- tional protector, the manorial lord, “ Take my title deeds to the soil, and provide for my wants in sickness as well as in health.” The poor rate was the landlord’s method of carrying out his part of this bargain. It was the peasant’s insurance fund against the wants incurred by the ills of frail human nature. It had partly supplemented, but principally replaced, the tithe, which was an earlier provision for the same purpose. Some never lost sight of this fact, and thus we have men like Ruggles at the beginning of this century, and liberationists like Miall at the end of it, demanding an acknowledginent by the tithe-owner of his obliga- tions towards the national poverty. Be this as it may, at first sight it would appear that the poor rate should have been obligatory on the landed interest only. It might be said that the commercial classes had not participated in that bargain between villein and lord, of which the poor rates were the outcome. But on closer scrutiny it will be seen that the labour monopoly of a medizval landlord had by now changed into the heritage of the entire class of employers. By becoming a master, every individual not only succeeded to the rights but to the obligations which the labour legisla- tion had originally bestowed on the seigniorial interest only. By refus- ing to regard the historical aspect of the poor laws, statesmen at all periods have hesitated to make relief an obligation on personalty. A somewhat ambiguous wording of the rating clauses in the Elizabethan legislation has done much to promote controversy on this subject. ‘There is this excuse, however, for the Tudor lawyers, that in their day the entire wealth of the nation was derived from its own soil, and they could hardly have been expected to look forward to a period when that source contributed only a fraction to the national riches. “‘ They shall tax and assess all and every inhabitant dwelling in every city, borough, town, village, hamlet, and place known, etc., etc.,” says 14 Eliz. c. 5. “ The rate,” says 43 Eliz. c. 2, “shall be made by taxa- tion of every inhabitant, parson, vicar, and other, and of every occupier of lands, houses, tithes impropriate, propriations of tithes, coal mines, or saleable underwood.” It is hardly possible to conceive that the intention of the legislators meant anything but the taxation of all kinds of property, personal as well as real. In my Aistory of the Landed Interest, | have gone into this subject in detail Here I shall only quote Lord Chief Justice Hale’s opinion that “Stocks are as well by law rateable as Jand, both to the relief of and raising of a stock for the poor.”? It is sufficient for my purpose to add that the Poor Law Com- 1 Part I. p. 284. ® Discourse touching Provision for the Poor, p. 120. The Means of Poor Relief | 221 missioners of 18171 were reluctantly compelled to confess that “ not- withstanding, in some instances, contradictory decisions, the Courts of Law had recognised as an indisputable fact that the intention of the Elizabethan statute was to tax the inhabitants of the parish for their local and visible property, as well as occupiers of land; and if in practice the burthen has been imposed almost exclusively on land and houses, it has not arisen from the taxation of personal property being either illegal or unjust, but from the insurmountable difficulty of ascer- taining, legally, the amount or even existence of a species of property to which in truth the terms ‘local and visible’ seem scarcely to apply. The intention of the legislature has failed in this instance, as it has done subsequently under the original land tax Act, which was designed on its first establishment as a tax on all income, owing to the difficulty of ascertaining, only to be overcome by the exercise of powers which the exigency of the State in time of war has alone induced the legisla- ture to grant.” Of what was, then, the compulsory contribution to consist? By 35 Eliz. c. 4, no parish was to be rated above 6d. nor under td. weekly, and the sum total in any county where there was above fifty parishes was not to exceed the rate of 2d. per parish. By 39 Eliz. c. 21, the above sums were increased, for the sake of soldiers and mariners, to 8d., 2d., and 4d. respectively. Appeals to the Quarter Sessions by persons aggrieved over their assessments were allowed. Experimental at first, this clause was prolonged by 3 Car. I. c. 4, and made perpetual by 16 Car. I. c. 4. But though 6d. in the £1 was to be raised indiscriminately upon every parish in the kingdom, Alcock, in 1752,” gave a list of parishes in the inland counties which had succeeded in evading their responsi- bilities under the Act. The next point was, on what valuation was the rate to be raised? Was it to be reassessed according to the increase or decrease in the national rent receipts at stated intervals, or was it to be assessed once for all by the valuation made in the reign of Elizabeth on the institu- tion of the impost? Besides the original assessment, there had been the valuation for the land tax in the reign of William III. Already a doubt had been raised as to which ought to be the basis of rating. “Ask,” says Alcock, “the parishioners of any parish how much their poor rate is in the pound, and they'll say so much according to the land tax, or about so much according to the present real value. But ask what it is according to the valuation in Queen Elizabeth’s time, and 1 Report for the Select Committee on the Poor Laws, 1817. 2 Observations on the Defects of the Foor Laws. Thos. Alcock, 1752. 223 Annals of the British Peasantry no one can tell you. If you bid them raise one, two, or three rates, the overseers know how to go about it, and can easily compute what every payer’s part comes to. But tell them to raise 6¢. in the £1, and they don’t know what rule to go by, for they don’t know what their lands were yearly valued at in Elizabeth’s time, nor what 6d. in the AI according to that valuation would come to. It may be said, indeed, that the first assessment for the poor was after the rate of 1d. in the £1 according to the then valuation of land, and that six of these poor rates in a parish will now make the 6¢. in the £1 re- quired. Well, be it so; and let it be further said that this 12. in the I rate being a small sum was to be made and gathered monthly. But then, to save the trouble of going about so often to collect, and also to raise a larger sum answerable to the increased demand of a growing poor, two or three of these rd. in the £1 rates were by many parishes flung together, and these rates combined came afterwards to be called and considered as one simple rate. In the parish where I live the overseers collect only one a year, and what is now called in their assessment one rate, was originally, and is really, three rates of 1d.in the £1 each.” Alcock goes on to show that if the Government now decided to levy a fresh rate of 6d. in the £1, his parish would be very likely assessed as though its existing rate was only one instead of three rates, whereby it would be really paying 18¢., and consequently be two-thirds over-charged. Many parishes, thus circumstanced, being apprehensive of some action of this kind on the part of the legislature, had already begun to reduce their poor rates to one-third of the existing assessment. But this was only one of many causes which were then inducing parishes to tamper with the assessment. Alcock relates an instance where a non-resident, but considerable contributor to the poor rate, had made an unreasonable demand to be eased. The parish resisted, and the dispute was referred to Quarter Sessions. After two or three appeals the parish was nonsuited, and the ratepayer triumphed. But at the next assessment the authorities had recourse to easing every other ratepayer in like proportions, so that the victorious litigant found himself no better off than before. Alcock adds that he does not wish to comment on the merits of the case, but only to show upon what various accounts the poor rates of the kingdom might have been lessened and altered since their first establishment. A parliamentary order that had just been issued, demanding that all parishes should give an account of the then charge of their poor, had raised a suspicion that some new tax was contemplated. This set cunning folk at work designing means whereby their particular districts might The Means of Poor Relief 223 escape the threatened impost. The land tax valuation in the reign of - William III., though slightly higher than the poor rate assessment, had been probably based upon it. In any case it would be taken as the framework for a new assessment, so that all parishes would have been brought to contribute to the poor in proportion as they then contributed to the land tax. In the fifty years dating from the imposition of that charge, not only had many parishes largely increased, but new town- ships had arisen. These, being all assessed to the land tax, paid their 6d. in the £1, and thereby lessened every individual’s contribution to the original sum assessed upon the old parish. But in the case of the poor rate there were numerous instances where no increase in houses and inhabitants, but a prodigious one in paupers, had occurred. The result was a rise in the rate equivalent to 4s. in the £1. The subject with which I am about to deal in the next chapter relates to certain schemes of centralisation, in which a combination of townships, or even one whole county, was to become the local centre of relief, instead of a single parish. The equalisation of the rate, whereby a certain sum, say 6d. in the £1, could be raised indiscriminately upon every parish through- out the kingdom, as, for example, suggested by Hay, was a concomitant item. In case of this new general levy, such parishes or estates as have just been alluded to would have been far from paying towards the poor in proportion to the charge they would have brought. All that they before paid short of this sum would have had to be thrown upon others that were then contributing less than that amount. The result would have been that parishes would not have cared how much they multiplied their own poor. The appearance of a settled permanent tax would only have discouraged private charity still further, while it effected nothing towards relieving the landed interest from their inequit- able share of the burden. Before the end of the reign of Anne the proceeds of the national assessment are supposed to have reached one million sterling. But any statistics afforded before the year 1776 are mere guess-work. Alcock, in 1752, mentions, on the authority of accounts given to Parliament, that the whole sum laid out on the poor in England and Wales for four years preceding the date of his publication amounted on an average to nearly three millions per annum.4__— Kaimes, in his Sketches of the History of Man, puts the rate for the entire kingdom in 1764 at 42,000,000 ; in 1773, at £3,000,000; and in 1776, at £5,000,000. Young, in his Farmers’ Letters, quotes D’Anguill as estimating it at 43,500,000. Eden, in his State of the Poor, believes it to have been, even in 1689, as high as £689,000. This last total seems to have been 1 Observations on the Defects of the Poor Laws, etc. Thos. Alcock, 1752. 224 Annals. of the British Peasantry taken as correct by all our later statisticians. It is “ the take off” whence advocates of a decentralised system of relief have jumped at a false conclusion. They allege that under the purely parochial administration in force from the times of Moore to those of Gilbert, the expenditure, in spite of an increased population, had not materially risen. As, however, I have sought to establish, the total poor rates in 1689 did not reach two-thirds of the total poor rates in 1750.! On the other hand, as I shall show in a later chapter, the evidence based on the large increase in our relief expenditure is utterly illusory. The committee on the poor laws of 1817 justly lamented the want of any authentic accounts of the disbursements for pauper mainte- nance during the 17th and 18th centuries, for Alcock’s colossal error had continued to lead economists astray until exposed by the corrected averages of their report. Even, subsequently, not two accounts agree in their various estimates of poor relief, and the rate of it per head of the population. Relating to this early period I can only give my readers a choice between a few of the most authoritative. In 1776 the returns prepared under legislative control showed a total assessment of £1,720,316 14s. 7¢., and an actual expénditure in relief of £1,556,804 6s. 3¢. The average assessment for the three years ending 1785 was £ 2,167,749 13s. 8d., and the actual expenditure 42,004,238 58. 112. In 1801 the total expenditure had reached 44,077,871; in 1803, £4,067,965; in 1812, £6,656,106; in 18165, 45,072,028; in 1817, £7,870,801. It then dropped slowly to 46,317,255 in 1834. These figures were somewhat altered by the corrected averages published by the Commissioners in 1817. Corrected average ‘orrespondi: ver: Year. expenditure. S " ace of ae leak 1748 S. a. 1749 £692,000 4 5 1750 1776 41,566,000 6 9 1783 1784 £2,010,000 7 7 1785 1803 £4)268,000 81 1813 ish 46,147,000 12 8 1815 But whatever was the exact rise (which may be roughly taken as 1 Assuming that the Board of Trade’s estimate of about £400,000 in 1697 is correct, and that the average for 1750 of £692,000 obtained by the Commission of 1817 is reliable. The Means of Poor Relief 225 one-thirtieth annually from 1750 to 1815), it was out of all proportion to the increase in population. In 1714, at the accession of George I., the poor rates were said to average 3s. 33d. per head in a population of 5,750,000, while in 1834 they averaged 8s. gd. per head in the population of 14,372,000. The following table, taken from the Eucyclopedia Britannica,‘ will furnish the reader with another and more detailed statement :— Years. aed Woes Expenditure. Per head. 1750 6,467,000 £689,000 2'2 1760 6,736,000 £965,000 3'0 1770 7,428,000 £1, 306,000 36 1780 7,953,000 41,774,000 4°5 1790 8,675,000 42,567,000 S1r 1800 9,140,000 43,861,000 85 1810 10, 370,000 45,407,000 10°3 1818 11,702,000 47,890,000 13°4 1820 12,046,000 47:329,000 12°2 1830 13,924,000 46,829,000 9°9 1832 14,372,000 47,036,000 9°9 There were some who, notwithstanding the evidence of these figures, maintained that the poor rate had not increased out of proportion with the increase of the national prosperity and profits. Such was Wayland, who, though he admitted that the poor rate, when in 1803 it had exceeded four millions sterling, had become an alarming item of ex- penditure, yet preferred to ascribe the cause not to defects of the laws, but to the depreciation in money. He pointed out that the rates must be unequally levied, because out of 140 millions sterling assessable only 40 millions were assessed. If, he said, the collection were equalised on all the kinds of property which ought by law to contribute, the complaints against the parochial administration would cease, because estates would then be paying no more than 7d. in the £1.” In 1808 Willis asserted that every assessment throughout the king- dom had been found faulty. As the valuation for the poor rate was the basis on which the land and property taxes, church and highway rates, were usually founded, it followed that the whole of this superstructure shared the weakness of the foundation. All the properties that had been recently surveyed had become rated to the full value of both governmental and parochial imposts; but only one thousand parishes out of ten thousand had submitted to the ordeal. Willis therefore in- 1 Sub voc. ** Poor Laws.” 2 4 Short Enquiry into the Policy and Humanity and Past Effects of the Poor Laws. Wayland, J.P., 1807. Q 226 Annals of the British Peasantry sisted that every parish should be at once re-valued by Crown surveyors. As the law directed at this period, assessors of the property tax had the option of forming their rate by the lease, their own estimate, or the poor rate. Not being disposed to be either troublesome or troubled, they chose the poor rate. Willis maintained that whatever might be the proportion of rating in a parish, whether to the full value or otherwise, the rate ought to have been equally made on all persons. After the adjudication of a recent case, termed the King versus Mast, in the Court of King’s Bench, he argued that there could have been no plea for unequally levying the poor rate. The words of Lord Kenyon were decisive: ‘ Every inhabi- tant ought to be rated according to the present value of his estate, whether it continues of the same value when he purchased it, or whether the estate be rendered more valuable by the improvements which he made on it. . . . Whatever be the proportion of rating in a parish, whether to the full value or otherwise, the rate must be equally made on all persons ; there cannot be one medium of rating for one class of persons and another for another class. The appellant Mast was rated at the full value of everything he possessed in the parish, while others were rated at one-third of their rates. This rate appears so defective throughout that it cannot be amended. It must be quashed fer curiam. Let the Order of Sessions be quashed.” Willis added, “If there was an universal survey, the difference of payment in one year would, on the property tax alone, amount to an immense sum,—fifty times as much as would pay the cost,—and, on the aggregate, we should all pay less.” + The Commissioners of the Poor Laws in 1817 pointed out, as Gilbert had done long before, that “‘a system which had become interwoven with the habits and very existence of a large class of the community left absolutely no powers of arresting the large increase of the rates.” Parliament had been importuned with petitions to distribute the burden more equally, by rendering the interest of money and the profits of stock liable to the assessment. But the committee, after careful con- sideration, was unable, as I have stated earlier in this chapter, to recommend the House to institute an inquiry into private incomes. It conceived that the equalisation of the poor rate by such means would have been too dearly purchased. It found that there was one species of income derivable from personalty, namely, the dividends payable by the public creditor, which, being neither local nor visible, had not hitherto come within the Act. It was, however, free from the other difficulties attending an investigation into private incomes, and its con- 1 The Poor Laws of England, etc. Rev. Jas. Willis, J.P., 1808. The Means of Poor Relief 927 venience of assessment suggested it as a proper source of contribution. But, added the Commissioners, “even though it could be equitably distributed, was the public creditor about to be fairly dealt with by taxing a dividend which the Act stated to be free from all taxes, charges, and impositions?” In the case of the income-tax the profits from all personalty were brought into equal contribution for the general purposes of the empire. But in this instance the tax, unlike that on income, could not be levied on the dividends due to a foreigner. It had also been suggested that, as each householder was likely to burden the parish in proportion to the number of his employees, it would have been equitable that his contribution to the poor rate should have borne some proportion to that number. The obvious objection to thus taxing the large staff of a manufacturer was that it would discourage commercial employment. The committee, however, omitted to men- tion that the result of leaving the full burden of the rate on the landed interests discouraged agricultural enterprise. By this period the mis- chievous practice of making up the deficiency of wages out of the poor rates had come into existence. While the rate was derived chiefly from land, the occupier paid, in the shape of poor relief, what should have been more properly paid in wages. Still, however, he threw some share of the burden for the maintenance of his labourers on other con- tributors. But if personalty had been taxed, the mischief would have become of intolerable magnitude. Turning to the Reports! of experts to the Board of Agriculture at the end of the 18th century, we find how unfair the incidence of pauper relief on the farming interest had become. The township of Modbury became the seat of a woollen manufactory, which for a time was carried on with much energy and enterprise, but eventually, failing to be of longer service, was abandoned. All the vice and debility which it had drawn together were left by the manufacturer as an expensive legacy to the farmers; so that, in a neighbourhood where the poor rate averaged 2s. in the £1, Modbury was contributing’ 5s. In the parish of Kettering in Northampton- shire the poor rate was 15s. in the #1 at a rack-rent, and in the parish of Norwich it was no less than 24s. Fhe Commissioners, in 1817, directed attention to this evil state of affairs. “The House is aware,” they wrote, “that some parishes, such as Wombridge in Salop, cannot produce sufficient to pay rates; their lands and mines are con- sequently being relinquished, and, from the evidence of petitions, we gather that this, is only the beginning of a wholesale dereliction of parishes.” Seeing that to check the accumulation of fresh funds was merely to enhance the evil, the committee recommended a limitation 1 Report for the Select Committee on the Poor Laws, 1817. 228 Annals of the British Peasantry of assessments from time to time by means of local Acts only. But even here the far-seeing advisers of Elizabeth had prepared a remedy. Parishes of the hundred, and in some instances those of the county, might be rated in aid of every rating district in which the inhabitants could not levy sufficient funds. The committee refused, however, to recommend any facility being granted for the furtherance of this clause. It had received many suggestions for the equalisation of the burden by making it a national instead of a parochial impost. ‘Let the fund be national,” said Colquhoun, “and parish settlements, removals, appeals, certificates, and all the miserable train of endless litigation, of questions of no earthly importance to the nation or individuals, vanish.” But the authorities anticipated insuperable obstacles to such a course, be- cause, if every excess in parochial disbursements were to become merged’ in the general expenditure of the empire, there would be no check upon sucha fund. The committee thus met every suggestion to render personalty once more liable for pauper relief with a non possumus, It remains for me only to record the last processes by which the commercial capitalist slipped out of all responsibility on this head. The Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834? had succeeded in largely reducing the expenditure. The total expended in the twelve years prior to the Act—viz., from 1823 to 1834—exceeded 676,096,000 ; that expended during the twelve subsequent years was only 457,247,000. The legislature, satisfied with these results, made no further effort in the direction of extending the assessment to personalty. Two years after its enactment of the Poor Law Amendment Statute it passed the | Parochial Assessment Act, by which the rate for the relief of the poor was to be made solely on the net annual value of the several heredita- ments of each parish. That value was estimated on the yearly rents, which might be reasonably expected, after that all usual tenants’ rates and taxes, tithe commutation rent-charge, insurance, and necessary re- pairs had been deducted. Nothing, however, in this Act excluded the principle of rendering personalty liable. The statute of Elizabeth, ex- tended in some respects as to places by 13 and 14 Car. II. c. 12, still remained in force. Though with reluctance, the courts continued to cede the rateability of personal property, until, in 1840, the legislature temporarily excluded the taxation of profits from stock or trade.4 Under the Expiring Laws Continuance Act this privilege has been prolonged up to the present moment. The last heard on the subject was when Mr. Brookfield, in the session of 1893, advertised his inten- 1 Treatise on Indigence. 2 gand 5 Will. IV. c. 76. 3 6 and 7 Will, 1V.c. 96. 4 3 and 4 Vict. c. 89. The Means of Poor Relief 229 tion of opposing its renewal, on the ground that the effect of the Act was deleterious to the general interests of agriculture. As might have been expected from historical evidences, the commercial element of the population was strong enough to at once nip in the bud any such excelient enterprise. CHAPTER XV THE WAYS OF POOR RELIEF - AVING discussed in the last chapter the means of poor relief, I come now to the ways of it. The enormous increase in the poor rate within the short space of one hundred and fifty years, as just evidenced, will have led the reader to expect that something was radically wrong with either the methods or the administration of its funds. So, at any rate, thought many public men in the last century ; and, consequently, the amount of elaborate suggestions that the historian has to wade through is positively bewildering. Now the majority of experts, from Judge Blackstone to William Cobbett, refused to impute the blame to the poor laws themselves. It has been pointed out that the two great objects of the Statute of Eliza- beth were to relieve the impotent poor and to find employment for such as were able to work. According to Blackstone it was the latter pro- vision which had been “ most shamefully neglected”; according to Addison it was the former. “Whilst,” says the last-mentioned writer, “we are cultivating and improving the young, let not the ancient and helpless creatures be shamefully neglected. The crowds of poor or pretended poor in every place are a great reproach to us, and eclipse the glory of all our charity. It is the utmost reproach to society that there should be a poor man unrelieved, or a poor rogue unpunished.” Though Sir Matthew Hale considered that the parochial system had failed, he refused to attribute the fact either to the law itself or to the deficiency of our available means. Whether, if he had lived to see the heavy expenditure entailed by the workhouse system, he would have modified his views, cannot now be ascertained. ‘Let any man,” he says, “look over most of the populous parishes in England, indeed there are rates made for the relief of the impotent poor, and it may be the same relief is also given in a narrow measure to some others that have great families, and upon this they live miserably, and at best from hand to mouth ; and if they cannot get work to make out their livelihood, they and their children set up a trade of begging at best.” But he was 1 Viz., from 1604 to 1750. 230 The Ways of Poor Relief 231 sanguine enough to believe that if the ways and means of relief had been : properly administered, indigence would have been almost extirpated. “Every pauper,” he says, “might be transformed into a labourer earning full support for himself by his own hands, if only the parishes would supply the necessary stock.” The failure to do so was: “(r) Because the generality of people that are able are yet unwilling to exceed the present necessary charge. They do choose to live for an hour, rather than project for the future. (2) Because those places where there are most poor consist for the most part of tradesmen, whose estates lie principally in their stocks, which they will not endure to be searched into, to make them contributory to raise any considerable amount for the poor. (3) Because the churchwardens and overseers, to whom the power to raise stocks is given, are inhabitants of the same parish, and are either unwilling to charge themselves, or displease their neighbours in charging more than they needs must towards the poor. (4) Because people do not consider the inconvenience that will in time grow to themselves by this neglect, and the benefit that would accrue to them by putting itin practice if they would but have a little patience.” 4 Many attributed the failure of the poor law system to causes entirely independent of it. James I. imagined that the rating machinery of the country was put out of gear by the absence of our landed gentry during a greater part of each year at the metropolis. In 1632, therefore, he put a drastic stop to the London season by packing off all such visitors to their own homes at forty days’ notice. During the first ten years of the reign of Charles I.,-the growing indigence of the peasantry was partly ascribed to the practice of paying the wages in farthing tokens of spurious metal.? John Bellers, in 1695, gave as one of its causes the suppression of saw-mills.3 Another writer conceived that it had been chiefly occasioned by the diminution that had taken place in the number of saddle-horses, in consequence of the introduction of stage-coaches.* Tucker put it down to the engrossing of farms, selling by sample, the failings of millers, forestalling and regrating, etc. Some one else sup- posed it was owing to the increased cost of human food, brought about by the improvement in the manner of living and the greater demand for horse food.* Others were saying, as they are now, that the only method 1 Discourse touching Provision for the Poor. Lord Hale: written in 1660, printed in 1683. 2 State of the Poor. Sir F. Eden, 1797. 3 Proposals for Raising a College of Husbandry. J. Bellers, 1695. 4 Grand Concerns of England. 5 Causes of the Dearness of Provisions, 6 An Enquiry into the Connection between the Present Price of Provisions and the Size of Farms. 232 Annals of the British Peasantry ‘of finding employment for all was by shortening the hours of labour. But even in the 17th century such a fallacy was exposed. Thus John Bellers wrote in 1695: ‘‘ Laws for shortening of labour are as unreason- able as to make a law that every labouring man should tie one hand behind him.”! Many preferred to see the price of provisions high, imagining that such a circumstance would increase the productive power of labour. Such economists evidenced the Dutch in support of this untenable theory—a nation which, though more heavily taxed, and pay- ing higher prices for the necessaries of life than the English, was able to undersell us in our markets. “In order to advance the trade of Ireland,” said Sir William Temple, “ provisions must be rendered so dear as to enforce general industry.” ‘‘ High taxes,” said De Witt, ‘promote invention, industry, and frugality.” Arthur Young, Locke, Sir William Petty, Sir Josiah Child, and many other learned authorities, held that trade could never be extended where the necessaries of life were very cheap. Davies, on the other hand, laid the blame on exces- sive taxation, adopting Adam Smith’s view that a tax imposed on any one article of general consumption raises the price, not only of the article taxed, but of all other articles also.2 The Malthusian theory was in existence before the times of its greatest exponent. Men welcomed the fact that the expensive method of relieving the poor had induced many parochial authorities to decrease population by discouraging marriage. Some, on the contrary, deplored a system which had made the country short-handed for agricultural labour, and would have intro- duced a Bill for the General Naturalisation of Foreigners. ‘Thereupon, the theorists, who argued on the lines which Malthus subsequently adopted and made his own, declared that, if it were passed, a shoal of ragged foreigners would be imported into the kingdom.’ In opposi- tion to this last objection, Daniel Defoe maintained that there was already more labour than hands to perform it, and consequently a want of people rather than of employment. He it was who had declared that we are “the most lazy-diligent nation of the world,” and undertook to produce without difficulty, and ona short summons, above a thousand families in England which remained in rags, and their children in hunger, though the fathers could earn 15s. to 25s. a week if they chose to work. He adds that he once paid six or seven men together on a Saturday night, the least 10s., and some 30s. for work, and that he had subsequently seen the lot go with the money direct to the alehouse, lie there till Monday, and spend every penny, running into debt to boot, 1 Proposal for Raising a College of Industry, etc. J. Bellers, 1695. 2 Case of the Labourer in Husbandry. Rev. J. Davies, 1795. 8 Observations on the Defects of the Poor Laws, etc. Thos. Alcock, 1752. ’ The Ways of Poor Relief 233 and not leaving a farthing towards the ensuing week’s maintenance of their wives and little ones.1 The poor were, no doubt, helplessly improvident, as Arthur Young plainly showed. “Go,” he writes, “to an alehouse kitchen of an old enclosed country, and there you will see the origin of poverty and poor rates. For whom are we to be sober? For whom are we to save? For the parish? If I am diligent, shall I have leave to build a cottage ? If I am sober, shall I have land for a cow? If I am frugal, shall I have half an acre for potatoes? You offer no motives, you have nothing but a parish officer and a workhouse. Bring me another pot.”® These are some of the questions which he puts in the labourer’s mouth, and they were more or less unanswerable. But to accuse the poor laws of indirectly promoting that hereditary vice of the Anglo-Saxon race—tippling—was unjust. A late writer has stigmatised the Acts of the Tudor and Stuart reigns against inebriety as Puritanic in their severity. The tippling shop was brought under the control of the justices in the reign of Edward VI., and keepers of ale- houses had to find sureties for their proper behaviour.4 The statute book regarded these establishments as lodging-houses for wayfarers, not as places of entertainment for lewd and idle people® It therefore enforced severe penalties against drunkenness,§ holding the innkeepers as well as their customers responsible for any violation of its edicts.” Granted, indeed, that the poor, through their laziness and early marriages, were themselves partly the cause of their own misfortunes, is that a reason for entirely exonerating the poor laws from all blame? Did our statesmen and parochial authorities encourage as much as possible a better spirit in the peasant? Setting aside, therefore, all ex- traneous causes of the distress then existing, let us now turn to the flaws and the remedies pointed out in the poor laws themselves for an explanation. Dean Swift had remarked: “ We have been amused these thirty years past with numberless schemes, both in and out of Parlia- ment, for maintaining the poor and setting them to work, most of which were idle, undigested and visionary, and all of them ineffectual, as it plainly appears by the consequences.” If I thought that this brilliant essayist were right, I should not trouble the reader with a careful scrutiny of all the literature of the period bearing on the subject, as I am now going to do. 1 Giving Alms no Charity. 2 Inquiry into the Propriety of Applying Wastes to the Maintenance and Support of the Poor. A. Young. 8 Norfolk and Norwich Arch. Soc.: ‘Glimpses at Country Life in the XVIth Cen- tury.” W. A. Day. Vol. x., p. ii., 1886. 45 and 6 Ed. VI, c. 25. 51 Jas. I.c. 9. 64 Jas. I. c. 4, 5- 73 Car. Ic 3. 234 Annals of the British Peasantry Now the points around which adverse comment was grouped were centralisation versus decentralisation of administration, outdoor versus indoor relief, and the policy of local officials. I shall treat of these in turn. First, it may be asked why the country was ever subdivided into such small administrative centres as the parishes. For this, however, my readers will easily account if they have carefully followed the various processes by which I have sought to dovetail the Elizabethan pauper system with the manorial one. The parish was but the manor, and the pauper but the indigent villein under new appellations. The opponents of centralisation always cited Alfred’s policy in favour of the parochial system. -This king, in order to guard against mischief by robbers and other lawless people, divided the shires or counties into hundreds, and those again into tithings of ten families, over each of which presided a petty officer. By a system of registration every sub- ject was made to belong to one of these minor districts, whence he could not depart without the consent of his fellow-pledges. Even then he could not leave his county without the license of the sheriff. Before, therefore, a stranger could gain settlement in any locality, he had to produce a testimonial from his late tithing, and be formally registered a member of the new one. Ingulphus had told the advocates of this system that such was its admirable results that a traveller might have openly left a sum of money in the fields and high- ways,! and have found it safe and untouched a month afterwards. Corroborative of this incredible statement was that of. William of Malmesbury,” who declared that the King ordered bracelets of gold to be hung up in the crossways as a proof of his people’s honesty. ‘ While this excellent constitution remained entire,” says Lord Coke,’ “such peace was present within the realm, as that no injuries, robberies, riots, tumults, or other offences were committed, so as that a man with a white wand might safely have ridden, before the Conquest, with much money about him, without any weapon, through England.” It might have been urged against any repetition of this policy that the increase in our population, even though accompanied by a more perfected police system, would have militated against its success. But Charles Gray, M.P. for Colchester in 1751, an advocate of decentralisa- tion, met this possible objection by pointing out that China and Japan, the then most populous countries of the known world, both contained 1 Ingulphus. Zdz¢. Oxon., p. 28. 2 dit. Franc., p. 44. 3 Inst. 9, p. 30. * Considerations on Several Proposals lately made for the better Maintenance of the Poor, Chas, Gray, 1751. The Ways of Poor Relief 235 provisions very similar to those of our Saxon ancestors, and attended with the same beneficial results. Thus, in China, every town was divided into four parts, and these subdivided into smaller districts, each containing ten houses, over which an officer presided, who gave his account of the behaviour of the inhabitants to a sort of head- borough, the president over what answered to the hundred of the Saxon system. This officer made his returns to the mandarins, who in cases of robbery and violence demanded and obtained restitution at the hands of the father of the offender. It is, however, absurd to suppose that such an institution would have met with the same successful results in these later times. Imagine a modern tramp coming across money or jewellery on his way from one workhouse to another, and pausing even for a moment to consider whether the ties of blood relationship precluded him from appropriating such valuables to the relief of an empty stomach ! The necessity for centralisation did not arise until schemes of indoor relief had come into force. It was the failure of single parishes to pro- vide funds for the erection of workhouses, which called for the junction of several separate centres of relief into one corporate body. The first to tackle this difficult problem was Sir Matthew Hale, for though his views were not published till 1683, they were in existence twenty years earlier. He assumed that the average family of a working man, con- sisting of himself, his wife and four children, could not be supported in meat, drink, clothing, and house rent under tos. a week, -The value of money two centuries ago was, of course, greater than it is now, yet the wages of agricultural labour at the present day do not in some coun- ties much exceed this minimum estimate for a family’s support. It must, however, be taken for granted that two of the children would be able to contribute by their labour to the general support of the house- hold. At any rate, the available funds of any small administrative centre were not likely to hold out if many such families existed requiring re- lief. Hale’s remedy was, therefore, to empower the justices at the Quarter Sessions to set out and distribute the parishes in their several counties into unions, each consisting of a workhouse for in- door relief. So much was granted by the statute book in 1722.1 But he further demanded that the parochial authorities should be made to attend periodically the Sessions and exhibit their several rates, from which the justices should assess three, four or five yearly payments, and see that they were levied and collected in one entire sum, for the purpose of instituting in each union a capital fund. This the legislature refused to countenance, for though it saw that systems of indoor relief 19 Geo, I. c. 7. 236 Annals of the British Peasantry were not suitable to small administrative centres, it did not recognise any advantages in centralisation, when it came to be applied to the collection and distribution of relief funds. It therefore contented itself with allowing the churchwardens and overseers of the poor, with the consent of the major part of the inhabitants in vestry or other meeting for that purpose assembled, ‘‘to contract with any person or persons for the maintenance and employment of the poor in their respective parishes ; or with the churchwardens or overseers of the poor in any other parish where workhouses are or shall be provided.” Most of the workhouses that were projected in consequence of this enactment were built and contracted for under the supervision of Matthew Marryott, of Olney, in Buckinghamshire, and the practice was fruitful in almost an immediate diminution of the rates.! But these good effects were merely temporary; for Sir Frederick Eden, writing in 1797, could only say that “the charge of maintaining the poor has advanced very rapidly, notwithstanding the aid of work- houses, and perhaps as rapidly as in those parishes which have con- tinued to relieve the poor by occasional pensions at their own habita- tions.” 2 As we shall shortly see, numbers of other experts advocated the union of parishes for the erection of one common workhouse. But the reasons why their suggestions were so little heeded was because they mixed up every sort of remedy with this one prominent idea. Their views were too revolutionary to commend themselves to cautious states- men, and frequently fraught with menace to the vested interests of local authorities. Itis doubtful if Hale’s idea would have met with the favour- able reception that it did meet with, had it not been for John Locke and John Carey. The latter had likewise directed the bulk of his atten- tion to centralisation schemes, and though he jeopardised his proposals by a suggestion for the equalisation of the rates, he was wise enough to confine that portion of them referring to workhouse centralisation to the congested centres of the population. In this course he was sup- ported by Sir Josiah Child, who also made his proposals tentative by confining them to those places situated within the bills of mortality.4 Until, however, I come to deal with other branches of poor law reform, I shall not be able to make my readers comprehend the full 1 An Account of several Workhouses, published in 1725 and republished in 1732. 2 State of the Poor. 1797. : _° An Essay towards regulating the Trade and Employing the Poor of this Kingdom. 1699. John Carey. 4 New Discourse of Trade, 1668, ch. ii. This was partly carried out by 13 and 14 Car. II. c. 12, and 22 and 23 Car. II. c. 18. The Ways of Poor Relief 237 force of Child’s suggestion. I postpone, therefore, an exposition in detail of his pamphlet for the present, and revert to Carey’s views. | His central workhouse scheme, the result of a suggestion by Locke, bore fruit in an Act passed by Parliament in 1697, which joined into one union the different parishes of the city of Bristol. These urban work- houses came much into vogue during the reigns of William and of Anne. Two years after the enactment of the Bristol scheme, Exeter, Hereford, Colchester, Kingston-upon-Hull, and Shaftesbury received and utilised powers of a similar description. Then Lynn, Sudbury, Gloucester, Plymouth, Norwich, and Worcester adopted the same practice. There were, however, still some who thought the erection of a workhouse in every parish feasible. Sir Humphrey Mackworth contrived to get a Bill passed through the Commons in 1704 for this object, but it was thrown out by the Lords. By 1752 we possess particulars showing that I already sixty country and fifty metropolitan workhouses had come into existence.! €But the unpopularity of these establishments with the poor had led several philanthropists from the very first to advocate other means of relief. ) There were two entirely opposite ways of setting the poor on work. One was to make relief resemble, as far as possible, a punitory process.—— That complexion was put on it by the statute which ordained that the workhouse should be a house of correction, situated as close as possible to the common prison. The other was to model it on the lines of an industrial school. That was Firmin’s method. He relates? how he got a friend to buy flax ready dressed, and to deliver it to such poor ‘ people as either could spin or were willing to learn.? Finding that many took advantage of this opportunity, he resolved to build a house | for their necessities. He collected a store of hemp, and placed its management in trusty hands. He was soon in a position to state that the inmates of his establishment were earning 3¢. and 4d. a day per head. This was chiefly owing to the co-operation and encouragement of the East India and Guinea Companies, which had taken off his hands all the Allabas cloths and canvas pepper-bags made by his protégeés. Firmin was a strong advocate of infant labour, citing Chamberlain’s statement, viz. that at Norwich its introduction into the stocking branch of the knitting industries had brought an addition of £12,000 a year to the city’s wealth.t He therefore urged on all 1 An Account of several Workhouses, published in 1725 and republished in 1732. These establishments were carried out under the provisions of 9 Geo. I. «. 7. 2 Some Proposals for the Employment of the Poor, 1678. T. Firmin. 3 This idea was quite in accordance with the policy contained in 15 Car. II. c. 15. + The Present State of England, p. 137. 238 Annals of the British Leasantry parochial authorities the necessity of educating their pauper children in the arts of spinning, knitting, and lacemaking.t A working-school for the youngsters, an industrial home for the adults, and an almshouse for grey-heads was the workhouse system which this shrewd philanthropist sketched out many decades before the times of the rage for indoor relief. _ His proposals soon produced dissentient views. Defoe, in 1704,” pointed out that for every skein of worsted spun by poor children in a workhouse, there must be a skein less to be spun by some poor family or person that had spun it before. For every piece of baize made at Firmin’s establishment at Aldersgate, there must be a piece less made at Colchester, unless a trade or consumption could be found for more baize than was made before. Why, he asks, take the bread out of the mouths of the poor of Essex to put it into the mouths of those in Middlesex? We can imagine Firmin replying, Because the law of settlement forbids the starving poor of the one county from going where the work of the other county would enable them as well as their Essex brethren to fill those mouths. ~ In 1695 a further protest was made, this time by Bellers the Quaker, against the system of associating the workhouse with a punitive establishment. The name, he maintained, bespoke too much servitude for people of means to send their children there for education, and too much of a Bridewell for an honest tradesman’s liking. He thought the name “community” also objectionable, because it implied greater unity in spirit than was likely to prevail in such an establishment, and suggested the phrase “college of industry.” Before our experts had done with this subject, they had tried “ house of correction,” ‘ work- house,” “‘ charity-house,” “ poor-house,” “school of industry,” “house of maintenance,” “house of protection,” ‘bettering house,” and, finally, in despair, the indefinite expressions “house” and “union.” They have, however, never coaxed the peasantry into entering its y gloomy portals, unless driven thereto by the worse predicament of ‘famine. One naturally is inclined to re-echo the hackneyed phrase, ‘““What’s in a name?” The evil of having originally associated this establishment with the local prison was not to be remedied by a mere change of nomenclature, or even of site. It was this drawback which led men like Alcock and Jekyll to desire a return to the pre-Elizabethan —methods of eleemosynary relief; that induced Baron de Maseres in 1772 to suggest the institution of life annuities for the poor; and 1 Indirectly effected by the Apprentice Act of 8 and 9 Will. III. c. 30. 2 Giving Alms no Charity. : 3 Proposal for Raising a College of Industry. John Bellers, 1698. The Ways of Poor Relief 239 Townshend, in his Dissertation on the Poor Laws, to advocate com- pulsory friendly societies. Many writers, however, continued to advocate “the trinity system ” of workhouse management (as I ask to be allowed to call the absurd attempt to connect the three incongruous wants, of poverty, beggary, and criminality, under a single roof). One writer demanded an insti- tution containing distinct apartments for youth, age, and disease. ~Fielding, the novelist, wanted to introduce some such establishment in the county of Middlesex, with the addition of a fasting-room for the violent! It is a wonder that he did not, while he was about it, add a padded room for the demented. One wiser than his fellows pointed out that such an asylum would result in a conglomeration of nastiness, infection, sickness, pillage and want. Samuel Cooper, a Cambridge don, attempted in 1763 a compromise between the large county edifice and the small parochial house. His idea was to build in every two or three hundreds, according to their capacities, a conglomerate erection of workhouse, infirmary, and bridewell. Such a scheme had actually been put into execution with (it was said) good results in the two small hundreds of Colneis and Carlford, which had taken advantage of 29 Geo. II. c. 79 to form of themselves one corporate union.? Robert Nugent considered that workhouses were not in themselves to blame, but that their management was at fault. In this idea we shall soon see there was much sense ; but his remedy was the same old trinity system. He pointed out that a practice had come into force, whereby parishes contracted out their poor, which had resulted in the cutting down of workhouse comforts to a minimum, in order that the official manager might swell his own profits. He instanced a case where one contractor had the indoor relief of thirteen parishes in his sole charge. He approved of the office, but not of its occupants. He wanted to insure such a freedom of admittance that the sick stranger might enter the doors of a workhouse and there work for his cure; that the hungry traveller might derive from thence his sustenance; and even the miser- able but often blameless debtor might thus have the option of earning subsistence, perhaps even redemption, by the sweat of his brow. “What numbers,” he says, “of unemployed labourers, what multitudes of mowers and reapers disappointed by the season, how many handicrafts- men and manufacturers would in these intervals probably contribute to the contractor’s gain?” So far so good. These sentiments did him the greatest credit. But then he goes on to suggest an establishment 1 Proposal for Erecting a County Workhouse. 2 Definitions and Axioms relative to Charity, Charitable Institutions, and the Poor Laws. S. Cooper. 240 Annals of the British Peasantry which would embrace a hospital for the weak and infirm, a workhouse for the able and willing, and a house of correction for the lazy and vicious, in which the removal from one department to the other should become a punishment; but, at the same time, where the profligate could be kept separate from the corrigible rogue, and where idleness and sloth would not be absurdly punished with more idleness and greater sloth. If that was his end, and he did not really want, as he states he did not, to convert a prison into a pesthouse, or to drag the sound, the curable, and the incurable into one promiscuous heap of wretchedness and infection, why did he propose to bring them all thus into close contact? Why, for the sake of saving a few outside walls and one or two salaries, did he wish to collect all these classes together under one roof? He would have accomplished his ends better if he had proposed to put the breadth of many miles between each of these different establishments. Be this as it may, his pro- minent idea was to have some control over the contractor. This he would have accomplished if he had been allowed, by adopting the practice of the old manorial courts of justice; namely, by the appoint- ment of two presiding officers, one the nominee of the ratepayer, to control the work and expenditure, the other the nominee of the pauper, to prevent harsh dealings.t It would take up too much space to examine James Massie’s Plan Jor the Establishment of Charity Houses, in 1758, and William Bailey’s Treatise on the Better Employment and More Comfortable Support of the Poor in Workhouses, of the same year. More important is the main — problem, viz. Centralisation versus Decentralisation. I have said that, mixed up with this question, were other unsatis- factory points, such as indoor or outdoor relief, administrative defects, and the law of settlement. It was the introduction of the last problem into Hay’s Bill of 1735 which contributed towards its ultimate rejection. His proposal was to substitute county instead of parochial govern- ment. The measure was entrusted to the friendly offices of several prominent statesmen. A delay, fatal to its success, was however un- avoidably incurred. Before it could be re-introduced into the Lower House, a flood of objections poured in from the country; and, worse still, its original promoter, Sir Joseph Jekyll, had come secretly to prefer a system of purely voluntary poor relief. Its clauses for a general county rate, and a modification in the law relating to the passing of vagrants, raised alarm in quarters where the process of depopulating, and thus easing a district of its rates, had been surreptitiously going on. In vain was it now to split the scheme up into two separate bills, 1 Letters to the Author of Considerations, etc. R. Nugent, 1752. The Ways of Poor Relief 241 leaving that dealing with the settlement question to prosper or fail on its own merits. In vain was it that the local unit of administration had been reduced from one single county to smaller divisions of not more than ten, and not fewer than three, parishes. There were altera- tions in both measures, when they reappeared, which were distasteful not only to their promoter, but to their projector. The measure passed through the Commons in 1747, but was thrown out by the Lords.! Before it could be remodelled, Charles Gray, M.P. for Colchester, was strongly advocating the opposite policy of decentralization, clamouring, in fact, for a return to King Alfred’s system of local government. Furthermore, he was supported by a majority of owners of realty in the Country, who thought with him that an equalisation of the rates was calculated to perpetuate the system by which the entire burden of poor relief had been thrown on the land. Though Sir James Creed,? the following year, ably exposed the difficulties and expenses of the small parochial system, though Hay, nothing daunted, published a second edition of his views in 1751, and though Lord Hillsborough elaborated a splendid plan of centralization in 1753, the idea had fallen into dis- favour. Has it ever been warmly espoused since? As evidence to the contrary we have the important judicial opinion in 1790 of Chief — Justice Kenyon, in which Judges Buller and Grose fully concurred. A case had come before him of an attempt by a large parish to make a small one within it contribute to its poor rate, and the Court of the King’s Bench confirmed the Order of Sessions quashing the rate. In _ the course of his summing up, Lord Kenyon remarked: “It has been doubted by country gentlemen whether the poor are better maintained in large or small districts, though the former has been said officially in this court. In small divisions the officers are more attentive to their duties, and in the part of the country with which I am acquainted the _- poor are better provided for in the small districts.” With this senti- ment Judges Buller and Grose fully concurred. It was a fine idea, that of Colquhoun’s, that the country should be the settlement of His Majesty’s subjects and the legislature their guardian. Unfortunately it was impracticable. ‘ Pauperism,” says a modern writer, “is a disease which requires comparative isolation and individual treatment ; if paupers are herded together in large numbers their cure is hopeless.” 4 1 Remarks on the Laws relating to the Poor for their better Relief and Employment. W. Hay, 1735; republished in 1751. 2 An Impartial Examination of the Proposals, etc. 1752, Jas. Creed. 3 The King v. The Inhabitants of Leigh. Dunford and East’s Term Reports, vol. iii. p. 748. 29 and 30 Geo. III., 1789-90. 4 Parochial Self-Government in Rural Districts. HH. C. Stephens, M.P., 1893, and ed. p. 43. R 242 Annals of the British Peasantry Next as to the problem of outdoor versus indoor relief. This is partly a ratepayer’s question, partly a pauper’s. Both costs and morals are involved in its solution. The opponents of outdoor relief say that it is too attractive to the poor. The opponents of indoor relief allege that it is too costly for the ratepayer. The former plead, in favour of their plan, that it does not undermine the self-respect of the peasant like the other. The latter plead, in favour of theirs, that it reduces to a minimum the class which is in danger of losing its independent spirit. Moreover, neither of the contending parties will admit the other's premisses. The one party collates statistics of all the unions with a high rate of outdoor relief, and compares them with all those whose indoor relief has been whittled down to a diminishing factor. The other party, adopting the principle that prevention is better than cure, contends that indoor relief acts as a deterrent against a spirit of dependence, whereas outdoor relief encourages the very reverse. Dealing first with the question of relative costs, we are confronted with the following phenomenon. In the account given us by Eden of the good results effected by opening a workhouse at Beverley, we find that before that event 116 persons received parish relief; after it, the numbers were reduced as low as 8 and never higher than 26. At Hampstead, before the institution of a workhouse, the weekly pension was at the rate of 25. 6d. to 3s. 6d. per pauper ; the cost of indoor relief was only 2s. It must, however, be pointed out that the reduction in the numbers in the Beverley case cannot be relied upon as favouring a system of indoor relief, because, as Eden points out, the way in which, on their first establishment, workhouses effected a reduction’ in this direction was by deterring the poor from making applications for relief, This was not, however, because the diet of the workhouses was dis- tasteful. It was, in fact, superior to that enjoyed by the free labourer. A breakfast of wheaten bread and cheese, broth or porridge, a dinner of boiled beef, suet pudding, pure though cheap beer, and a supper similar to breakfast, was a diet of which not even a farmer could com- plain. ~. It was the surrender of family, friends, character, and liberty which deterred the poor from entering these establishments until menaced with imminent starvation. The question arises whether anything short of this should have been allowed to intervene between the peasant and his independence. Who shall decide how far the attempt to overcome his reluctance to indoor relief should have proceeded, and within what limits the alternative of outdoor relief should have been confined? Firmin, with a singleness of purpose the want of which withheld success from most of the later Poor Law reformers, held the interests The Ways of Poor Relief 245 of the poor alone in view. He tells us that, as a result of close observa- tion at his Aldersgate establishment, he was confident that outdoor relief was the preferable alternative. Sir Richard Lloyd had in 1753 drawn up a scheme favouring the workhouse system, but providing in ecertain contingencies for outdoor relief as well. Hitherto, parishes had adopted one or other process, but seldom both. We have arrived at a time when each has been carried in turn to an absurd extreme. It was during both of these periods that the peasantry were most to be pitied. But we must now retrace our steps and ascertain how far the local authorities were to blame for the existing unsatisfactory state of affairs, The great Elizabethan statute had especially taken care that the parishioners themselves should possess the power of exercising a salu- tary control over the actions of their representatives. For this purpose it had invited the attendance of all the parochial population at the councils of the authorities by fixing the times of assemblage after the Sunday afternoon service, and the site of it in the most public place it could hit upon, viz. the parish church. For a: time, while the novelty of the proceedings attracted the curious, these meetings would be well attended. But after a while the entertainment palled and parish officers were left pretty much to work out their own whims and conceits undis- turbed by adverse public opinion. Is it presumptuous to prophesy that the same phenomena will attend this new institution of a village Witenagemot at the present day? ' The unlimited power of the churchwardens and overseers first attracted the notice of the Statute book in 1691.4 But private indivi- duals had as usual been beforehand in their adverse criticisms. Sir Josiah Child, in 1668,” wanted to incorporate into one assembly all the constables, churchwardens, and other parish officers within the bills of mortality. These officials were to be called, as in Holland, fathers of the poor, and were to be presented with an honourable badge of office. They were not to be stipendiary magistrates : on the contrary, they might add to their numbers all willing to serve God, king, and country in the pious and public w/tks of poor relief, provided that such applicants for office contributed to its tuuds an entrance fee of £100. Their powers were to be plenary, for not only were they to include the judicial offices of the Justice and the administrative offices of the parochial official, but the punishment of the, froward, and the ability, by means of emigration, to relieve the congested centres of the population within their jurisdiction. Not only were they to have entire control over the compulsory contributions of the ratepayers, but she the elecmosynary contributions of the benevolent. Furthermore, they were tu be allowed 1 3 and 4 Will. & Mary c. 11. 2 New Discourse of Trade. 244 Annals of the British Peasantry to levy a tax on play-going or any other luxury which parliament might see fit to bring under contribution. Ten years later, however, we have the first outspoken protest against the parochial bureaucracy. Firmin asserted that a poor law administrator was not necessarily elected because of his fitness for the post. Many churchwardens, he declared, were no more affected by the wants and necessities of a poor creature than the gravedigger was at the sight of a corpse! He wanted men like those employed in the French and Dutch Churches, who took care to earn their honourable title of ‘‘ Fathers of the Poor” by a life of zeal and charity—men who would not wait for the poor to come to them, but who would take the initiative by visiting the poor in their own homes, thus discovering and relieving their wants before matters had become desperate with them. “@ As I have, however, stated, by 1691 the legislature had been aroused to action. It was discovered that? the parochial authorities “do fre- quently upon frivolous pretences (but chiefly for their own private ends) - give relief to what persons and number they think fit, and, such persons being entered into the collection bill, do become after that a great charge to the parish, notwithstanding the occasion or pretence of their receiving collection oftentimes ceases ; by which means the rates for the poor are daily increased, contrary to the true intent of a Statute made in the 43rd year of the reign of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth.” The remedy fos this state of affairs was, naturally, not to repose a greater control in the hands of the parishioners, who had just proved their unworthiness to have any at all, but in the as yet untried hands of the justices. The petty parochial officers were, therefore, compelled to keep a record of their transactions, and submit the same periodically for the justice’s sanction, nobody being “allowed to have or receive col- lection at the charge of the parish but by authority under the hand of one local Justice of the Peace.” Perhaps the most impartial tribunal before which the justices could have appeared in answer to a summons for giving’ an account of this stewardship, is the Poor Law Commission of 1824. The important State paper containing its Report not only cox.2cmns the administration of the Bench, but hesitates to believe that the legislature ever intended to repose such authority in the hands ef those who were not neces- sarily even resident in the parisn, ‘atid were certainly not calculated to be familiar with its concerns. The effect upon the vestries of this increased magisterial gontrol was so to disgust many of their members 1 Sone Proves jor the Employment of the Poor, 1678. T. Firmin. 23 Wigh & Mary c. 11. 3 Poor Faw Commissioners, First Report of, 1834, Pp. 73. The Ways of Poor Relief 245 that they gave up attending and left the overseers to fight matters out with the pauper and the magistrate. The effect upon the paupers was to raise a spirit of insubordination against the overseers. A story is told of an individual who had appealed to some soft-hearted “ beak ” against the ruling of the overseers, returning home and flouting the discom- fited ratepayers by flinging his hat in the air and raising a general cheer at the expense of the local bureaucracy.!' As for its effects on the overseers, these are best described in the forcible language of Arthur Young. Not only was his opinion of the law itself adverse, but of its administrators. The former was “ vague,” he says, ‘“ doubtful, and per- plexed, the assessment was unequally and in general ignorantly laid, and all appeals from it were, in other words, nothing but plunging into the dreadful abyss the .-2 Fonnereau, in his Short View of the Frauds, Abuses and Impositions of Parish Officers,? shows how th householding element overwhelmed that of the landholding, whereby it secured a majority of votes and consequently the election of its own nominees to all the important parochial offices. The result was that mean “ unsubstantial fellows ” obtained appointments originally intended for the well-to-do householders, who vented their spleen on all the respectable landholders of the community by laying the burden of the poor rate on real property. The legislature very soon dealt with the abuses arising from magis- terial mismanagement,* but it took a much longer time before it inter fered with the prerogative of the overseer. It needed the devoted energy —of the philanthropic Gilbert to stir it into action, and then it entered upon the path of Poor Law reform in real earnest. Before, however, we can treat of this later period, we must devote a chapter to the vexed question of Settlement. 1 This happened at South Petherton, near Taunton. Vide Poor Law Commis- stoners’ Report, 1834. 2 Farmer's Letters, p. 267. 5 P. 9, 1744. 4 By 9 Geo. Lc. 7. CHAPTER XVI WHEN PARISHES WERE PRISONS MORE accurate aspect of the value of labour was dawning on the A public mind. An Elizabethan politician, named Johnson, inspired with the same exaggerated views regarding agriculture to which Quesnai was subsequently to give prominence, had once told his audience that it was the duty of society to provide for the husbandman, because “ he is the staple man of the kingdom.”! Though he was probably not aware of the fact, he was merely re-echoing the sentiments of many early authorities. For example, an ancient Persian king instituted a yearly feast for husbandmen, at which he presided. When toasting his humble guests, he would say, ‘‘ From your labours we receive our suste- nance, and by us you are protected. Being mutually necessary to each other, let us, like brethren, live together in amity.” An emperor of China, in his anxiety to show that no man is above being a field labourer, toiled at the ploughtail one day in every year.?, About the middle of the 17th century, Hobbes had discovered that “plenty dependeth, next to God’s favour, on the labour and industry of man” ; Locke re- cognising that labour puts the difference of the value in everything, exclaimed,* “I think it will be a very modest computation to say that, of the products of the earth useful to the life of man, nine-tenths, nay, ninety-nine-hundredths, are wholly to be put in the account of labour.” Hume had asserted that all real power and riches consist of the national stock of labour. Sound, though possibly crude, ideas were also in existence regarding the good effects derivable from the unobstructed fluidity of labour. Sir Josiah Child declared ® “ that the resort of the poor to any place, if well managed, is the conflux of riches to it, for which reason the Dutch re- ceive all without inquiring what nation, much less what parish, they are of.” Six years later Daniel Defoe drew attention to the fact that pro- 1 Dr. Ewes’ Journals of all the Parliaments during the Reign of Elizabeth, p. 674. 1682. 2 Quoted by Kaimes in his Preface to Zhe Gentleman Farmer, 1776, 3 Leviathan, 1657, ch. xxiv. 4 Essay on Civil Government, vol. ii. pp. 178, 179. 1689. 5 A New Discourse of Trade. 1694. 246 When Parishes were Prisons 247 visions were equally plentiful in Kent as in Yorkshire, yet in the former county wages were from 3s. to 6s. more than in the latter. Provided that it had been unchecked, the superfluous labour of the north would have quickly spread itself southwards when trade required it. “If,” he writes, “there is one poor man more in England than there is work for, either somebody else must stand still for him, or he must starve. If another man stands still for him, he wants a day’s work, and goes to seek it, and, by consequence, supplants another, and this a third, and this contention brings it to this: ‘ No,’ says the poor man that is like to be put out of his work, ‘rather than that man shall come in, I’ll do it cheaper.’ ‘Nay,’ says the other, ‘I’ll do it cheaper than you’; and thus one poor man wanting but a day’s work would bring down the price of work in a whole nation, for the man cannot starve, and will work for anything rather than want it.” We. see such views as these, regarding the fluidity and competition of labour, slowly developing until, towards the end of the 18th cen- tury, we read from another and later work of Lord Kaimes’, written in a country where no strict laws of settlement were in force, the followirfg admirable statement: ‘“ The price of labour resembles water, which al- ways levels itself—if high in any one corer, an influx of hands brings it down.” ? These views come to their full perfection, however, under the master mind of Adam Smith. This great champion of free labour not only proved that it is the fund which originally supplies a nation with all its necessaries, but that prosperity rests on the way in which it is ap- plied. It is not merely essential to see that all the community works, but that sufficient work is available and properly applied in those centres where it is especially needed. Amongst savage nations, where a// labour, the greatest want is sometimes apparent. In civilized states, though multitudes do not labour, all are often abundantly supplied. The cause of these phenomena is that in the former case there is no proper division of labour, and in the latter a perfect division of it is in force.3 Why, then, did not the opinions of these advanced economists occa- sion an immediate revolt on the part of popular opinion against all legis- —Jative restrictions on labour’s free vent? Partly because public opinion was being biassed by the less logical, but more plausible and equally prevalent, views of other economists ; partly because all ideas of a revo- lutionary character went out of public favour at the end of the 18th century, owing to the horrible fruit which they were then yielding amongst our neighbours across the Channel; but chiefly because the 1 Giving Alms no Charity. 1704. 2 Written in 1788. 8 Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith. 248 Annals of the British Peasantry legislature was at the outset unable to approach this subject with a free hand. The manorial system was in force, and could not be suddenly broken up just for the sake of giving labour fluidity. It was an interest vested in the hands of the seigniorial class, and had become the common property of a district. A communal system of land tenure had ceased to exist; a communal system of agriculture was also ceasing; but a communal system of labour had obtained too firm a hold of our rural economy to be suddenly upset. Labour, in fact, came at last to be just as much the common property of the parish as its church, its schools, its bull, or its one pump. The statute of 13 and 14 Car. II. c. r2 was not the foundation of the law of settlement, but the perfection of it. Previous to {its enactment, the poor were at liberty to seek employment wherever it was to be had. No one was obliged to abide in the place of his settlement, unless unable or unwilling to work.!_ There were, it must be remembered, two kinds of settlement,—one by birth, the other by inhabitancy.? But both of these at first only affected the impotent poor and vagabonds. Every labourer in husbandry, or other employments, was permitted, both by 12 Rich. II. c. 7 and 5 Eliz. c. 3, to quit the township and county where he had last served, on providing himself with a properly signed and attested testimonial of his circumstances. But by 13 and 14 Car. II. c. 12, before obtaining settlement, a new- comer had to reside forty days in a parish. If during that period the churchwardens saw fit to complain of his presence there, two justices could have him removed to the district where he was last legally settled, unless he either rented a tenement of £10 a year, or could produce such security as would be deemed sufficient proof of his independence of parish aid. ‘This single clause,” says Eden, ‘“‘ has occasioned more doubts and difficulties in Westminster Hall, and has been perhaps more profitable to the profession of the law, than any other point in English jurisprudence.” Omitting as it did all mention of foreign subjects, a Scotch or Irish vagrant could be neither removed nor relieved under its authority. On the other hand, though unable to gain settlement for themselves, their children, servants, and apprentices could do so on easier terms than those of home-born Englishmen. It was not until 1819 (just before the death of George III.) % that natives of Scotland, Ireland, the Channel Isles, etc., became removable from any parish in which they were actually chargeable to their places of birth. Moreover, the old Act made it easy for fraudulent parties to gain settlement by clandestine 1 Blackstone's Commentaries, vol. i. p. 361. 2 Burn, Justice of the Peace, vol. iii. p. 333. 3 59 Geo. III. c. 12. When Parishes were Prisons 249 residence. This called into force the Act of 1 Jac. II. c. 17, which rendered it imperative on the new-comer to deliver notice in writing of the place of his abode and the number of his family to the church- wardens or overseers of the parish, before the residence of forty days necessary for a settlement could commence. It seems, however, as though cases of collusion had occurred between the officials of a parish and such immigrants in order to evade these provisions ; for, by 3 Will. & Mary c. 11, § 5, it was ordained that the notices prescribed by 1 Jac. II. c. 17 should be read in church after divine service on the Sunday succeeding their delivery to the overseers. But by now it became evident that a distinction could be made with advantage between the settlement required under the manorial system and that required under the parochial system. In the former it had been more essential to control the output of labour from the district ; in the latter, to control its influx into it. In the former the rights of the landlord were molested if a loss of the labour element occurred ; in the latter the rights of the ratepayer were molested if an access of the pauper element occurred. By 3 Will. & Mary c. 11, therefore, other ways of gaining settlement were provided. Any one could acquire it _ without giving notice by being charged to the public taxes and paying them, by filling some parochial office, serving an apprenticeship, or being lawfully hired for the space of a year. The Act of 8 and g Will. III. c. 30, § 4, expressly stipulates that the year’s engagement in every case should be completed before the rights of settlement commenced. Both bastards and legitimates by birth, if the father’s place of settlement were unknown, could, at the age of seven years, acquire settlement by a residence of forty days; children of apprentices by indenture, women by marriage, and persons of property could also thus acquire the privilege. But the legislature soon found that “persons of property” was too vague a term if it wanted to protect a parish from an influx of impecunious strangers. By g Geo. I. c. 7, it ordained, there- fore, that nobody was allowed to acquire settlement by the purchase of an estate of less than £30 for a longer period than he or she should reside on it. Slowly but surely the legislature was recognising the advantages of a fluidity of labour. In 1697, it actually confessed+ that many poor persons, chargeable to one parish, could become useful members of society in another by merely being allowed to give proper security. Certificates, therefore, signed by the churchwardens or overseers of one parish were delivered to those of another, entitling a man to settlement so long as he remained independent. ‘These documents 1 8 and g Will. III. c. 30. 250 Annals of the British Peasantry seem to have carried doubts in the official ‘mind whether they consti- tuted the notice in writing required by a former Act. At any rate, they were thus conveniently construed by their recipients. Many, on the strength of forty days’ residence, dating from the delivery of the certifi- cate, claimed settlement. But by 9 and ro Will. IIL. c. 11 no cer- tificated person was allowed to gain settlement unless he rented a to tenement, or executed some annual office in the parish. This alteration in the law was found to admit to rights of settlement the servant of the certificate-holder or his apprentice bound by indenture, which, of course, had not been intended, and was therefore prohibited by 12 An. st. 1, c. 18. The distinctions between the vagrant, the rogue, and the pauper were so small that the poor rate was often devoted to unworthy objects. The State, therefore, enacted that those entitled to relief must hence- forth wear a uniform, and carry on their right shoulder sleeve the initial letter of their parish as a badge of their poverty.1 Even then it was not uncommon for individuals, who were unable to obtain relief from the usual sources, to apply to some soft-hearted justice, and by a trumped- up story to obtain from him that assistance which the overseers of the public poor rates, more accurately informed of their characters, had thought fit to refuse. The legislature again set to work and formulated a scheme which forbade the justices to administer relief, unless an applicant could not only prove that he had been improperly denied it elsewhere, but produce sworn evidence of the reasonable nature of his claims. The overseers were further ordered to register in the parish-book every case of relief, the failure to do which rendered them liable to fines. Thus stood the law of settlement until, by 35 Geo. III. c. rox, an English labourer became authorised to remain in any place which he chose for residence, so long as he remainéd solvent. Let us, however, examine the consequences of this legislation before the date of the last-mentioned happy departure from the old stringent regulations of the settlement system. First of all, it brought every parish into a state of active warfare witly all the rest of the nation. It caused the poor of all other districts to be regarded by parochial authorities as aliens. It created a feeling of indifference as to what became of a poor man after he had been ostracised from some local social circle. He was avoided as the most noxious of animals are avoided. He was removed from places where he could live, in order that he might undergo a life-long im- prisonment in places where he could not live.? After expulsion he was 1 8 and 9 Will. III. c. 30, § 2. 2-9 Geo. Lc. 7, 8 Remarks on the Laws Relating to the Poor. W. Hay, 1735. When Parishes were Prisons 251 next found as a sturdy beggar insulting his fellows, or as an impotent beggar perishing in some public street. No parish would elect him toa public office ; no master would hire him for a year’s service, lest, by so doing, he should acquire settlement. In fact, the old system of hiring labour by the year looked as though it was destined to die out. When a young man or woman approached the stage of matrimony, he and she were expelled the parish for fear of their breeding paupers. Eden relates an instance of a poor cobbler, who, together with his stock in trade, entered a West Riding village. A shoemaker, already established there, stirred up the authorities to eject him, which they were proceeding to do when the rector interposed and threatened to let the stranger a small tenement of £10 a year as a qualification for settlement. I am glad to add that, notwithstanding the competition of four others of the same trade, the new-comer succeeded and did well. The very stringency of these laws eventually brought relief to the pauper. Like the beggar before him, he had become a martyr. The next process was for the community to convert him into a saint. To- wards the end of the 18th century he waxed more prosperous than the independent labourer ; though, unfortunately, what he gained in comforts was at the expense of the latter. At first the expostulations of the private philanthropist fell upon unheeding ears. Sir Josiah Child had, as early as 1668, described the useless cruelty of shifting off, sending or whipping back the poor wan- derers to the place of their birth or last abode, in the following feeling terms.1 “A poor, idle person without work, or that nobody will em- ploy in the country, comes up to London to set up the trade of begging. Such a person probably may beg up and down the streets seven years— it may be seven and twenty—before anybody asketh why she doth so ; and if, at length, she hath the illhap in some parish to meet with a more vigilant beadle than one in twenty of them are, all he does is but to lead her the length of five or six houses into another parish, and then concludes, as his masters, the parishioners, do, that he hath done the part of a most vigilant officer. But suppose he should yet go further, to the end of his line, which is the end of the law, and the perfect execu- tion of his office,—that is, suppose he should carry this poor wretch to a justice of the peace, and he should order the delinquent to be whipped and sent from parish to parish to the place of her birth or last abode, which not one justice in twenty, through pity or other cause, will do, even this is a great charge upon the country, and yet the business of the nation itself wholly undone; for no sooner doth the delinquent arrive at the place assigned, but for shame or idleness she presently 1 New Discourse of Trade. 1668, 252 Annals of the British Peasantry leserts it, and wanders directly back, in some other way, hoping for »etter fortune ; whilst the parish to which she is sent, knowing her a azy and perhaps a worse qualified person, is as willing to be rid of her ts she is to be gone.” ¥ As the law stood at this period, a vagrant that was apprehended after hat he had been either whipped or sent to the House of Correction, if ie had gained no settlement, was to be sent to the place of his birth, or, if he was under fourteen years of age, to the abode of his parents. [n the event of their not being alive, he was despatched to the place where he was last found misconducting himself, and provided with a yass, with which he journeyed from constable to constable until he urived at the supposed site of his settlement. . Now all depended upon whether the vagrant chose to return to his sald home. If he did not choose, he probably made a false statement. His home was beyond the seas, or at some equally inaccessible spot, he would persist in declaring. Supposing, therefore, a vagrant apprehended n London chose to say that his home was in Northumberland. Accord- ng to law, the constable of the London parish had to convey him to the irst town in the next county. The constable there took charge of him, drought him before a justice of the peace, who corrected him and ‘hen provided him with a pass into the next county. This process was -epeated till he arrived at his alleged home. As Hay pointed out, it was yuite possible for one out of the many constables through whose hands ae would have to pass to neglect his duty. But supposing that the wanderer did reach his journey’s end, was it likely that the parochial authorities there would welcome this addition to their pauper element ? Would they not rather attempt to repudiate his statement? Ifso, what was to become of him? He would have to journey back to the old starting-point, thereby costing the parish that had originally despatched him as much as would have paid the relief of him and several other oaupers besides. Even in cases where the vagrant had obtained settle- ment somewhere or other, it was quite possible to conceive the case of a constable whose whole time must be occupied in conveying such persons to their distant homes. When a constable had returned from piloting a vagrant from London to Northumberland, he might find another waiting to be taken to the Land’s End. In a great measure such circumstances as these accounted for the negligence of the justices in ordering ‘‘ privy searches” to be made for vagrants, according to the direction of the statute. Even after the institution of certificates, where- by the paupers’ liberty became enlarged, it was very doubtful if parish officers, to whom the granting of certificates was left optional, would ivail themselves of the power. “Half the business,” says Hay, “ of When Parishes were Prisons 253 every Quarter Sessions consists in deciding appeals or orders of removal. It seems strange that any doubt remains after all the cases resolved in the King’s Bench, but the generality of country gentlemen know of and regard these events but slightly. The officers of a parish, even after they have conveyed a pauper to his distant place ‘of settlement, have afterwards to attend with evidence on the appeal, which does not always end at the Sessions, but is sometimes removed into Westminster Hall, and at last, perhaps, the order is quashed, causing, on the whole, expenditure sufficient to have maintained the whole family in the mulcted parish. The poor man gets into a good situation, is removed backwards and forwards till he becomes ruined by the expense of re- moving his family and goods, is forced to sell the latter at a dis- advantage, loses his time, and neglects his work—his only support.” 2 Let us briefly examine a few of the doubtful cases, which came up for judgment at this period before the court of King’s Bench. We shall, I think, see thereby that Hay had not exaggerated the difficulties of the parochial authorities in this direction. The possession of a tenement worth £10 a year afforded settlement ; 2 but how was that to be found in the case ofa man renting one situated in two parishes? He was a parishioner, decreed Judge Parker, where he lodged, and that was in the district where his bed was. But suppos- ing he had a shop in one parish and lodged in another, what then? It was decreed that he was a parishioner where he drove his trade. Thirdly, there was the case of a man who owned land in a parish, but did not reside there ; were the proceeds of the property to rank as trade profits? No, said the judges, he is only chargeable to the reparations of the church, but not to the buying of ornaments, for that shall be levied of the goods of the parishioners and not of their lands. Did the tenancy of two properties, with £5 per annum each, constitute a title to settlement? Yes, said Lord Parker; because the design of the Act was that so long as a person was of ability and competency to stock land of #10 per annum it did not matter if he had ten tenements of 41 each, or one of £10. Supposing, however, a man rents land of 410 a year, but possesses no house; being a person of ability and competency to stock it, does he not gain settlement? No, was the decision ; because he is one of those forbidden by the statute as coming with a design to settle. The law* stipulated that the payment of local taxes constituted settlement; did this include a compulsory contribution to the county bridge? No; because all the County is 1 Remarks on the Laws relating to the Poor, etc., 1735. 2 13 and 14 Car. II. c. 12; 12 An. st. i. c. 18 § 1. 8 9 Geo. I.c. 7 §7. 4 3 and 4 Will. & Mary c. 11 § 6. 254 Annals of the British Peasantry liable, and he pays, not as a parishioner, but as an inhabitant of the larger area of administration. For the same reason a payment to a scavengers’ rates, or to the land tax, did not, save in London, gain settlement. A year’s occupation of a local office constituted settlement under the terms of the Act. Could, therefore, a scavenger or a con- stable, whose offices were not parochial, establish a claim thus? Yes, they could, said the courts ; but ‘if, as often happened, they were not confined to one parish, they only entitled their respective holders to settlement in the parishes where they slept. One method of acquiring this Jocus standi was by being hired as a servant and serving throughout the year. Did one who had served half a year with one master and the rest of the period with another gain settlement? No, said the judges ; because the original contract must be fora year. But if a man, being hired by the week, completes a year’s service for one master, does he gain settlement? No, again was the answer; because he only works six days of the week, and therefore does not complete the 365 days’ qualification. Supposing a master, however, hires a servant and bar- gains with him that he shall come within a day of Michaelmas, but afterwards says he did not agree for a whole year’s service, what then? The contract must be taken for a year, replied the courts ; because it is apparent that the employer has contemplated a fraud, in order to evade the statute. Lastly, there was the possibility of a man interrupting his year’s service by visiting a friend for a week’s recreation. Had he lost his right of settlement by thusleaving incomplete the 365 days’ qualifica- tion? No, was the decision ; that did not constitute a breach of the contract, and therefore did not cancel the right of settlement in the eyes of the law. Another qualification for settlement was when an unmarried person, having no wife or child, was hired for and carried out a year’s service. Did this hold good in the case ofa married man? Yes, provided that all the members of his family had gained settlement as well. Persons coming to dwell in any parish, etc., and bringing with them a certificate under the hands and seals of other parish authorities, owning them to be in- habitants of their former parish, were entitled to be provided with relief. Sometimes, however, doubts arose whether the evidence contained in these orders constituted a legal settlement. Thus, a certain A. Smith and her baby had been intruded on the parish of St. John the Baptist, in Peterboro’. Her certificate alleged that she and her child had been born in Spalding, “being settled there.”. The justices, however, ob- jected, because a child gains no settlement by being born in a place, 1 3 and 4 Will. & Mary c. 11 § 7;8 and 9 Will. III. c. 30 § 4 ® 8 and g Will. III. c. 30 §1; 12 An. st. i. c. 18 § 2; 3 Geo. Il. c. 29 §§ 8, 9. When Parishes were Prisons 255 unless he is a bastard or his father and mother are vagabonds. Judge Parker’s reply was, “You say well, but here it is made good by the subsequent words, ‘being settled there.’” Again, one of these orders recited that Abraham Clyson had intruded into Crowland, being last legally settled in the parish of St. John the Baptist, Peterboro’, where he had served one year with John Diplaw. The justices of Crowland objected, because it did not appear upon the face of the order that he had been hired for a year. The decision of the court was: “It is said he was last settled there. Justices need not allege how he was settled. And it being said he served a year, the law presumes he was hired for a year ; as when an order is made for the payment of servants’ wages, the law presumes it is for husbandry wages, unless the contrary appears.” ! But enough doubtful points have been now cited to prove some of the frivolous occasions on which precious funds had been expended in litigation. The amount that could be thus spent in a year we learn from the official returns to have been, in 1776,? £35,000; in 1803, 4190,000 ; and in 1815, £287,000. The number of appeals against orders of removal that could occur in a single year, we find to be 4700, and how much could be ,spent over a single case we ascertain from the following instance given by Willis:3 “Ata quarter sessions held in the county of Westmoreland, a settlement cause was tried of a pauper and his family, by name Swain. They had been chargeable in Egremont parish, but the result of the appeal fixed them in Haver- sham. ‘The expenses of it would, however, have not only covered the charge of maintaining and relieving the whole family, but have left 100 besides in the pockets of the ratepayers.” It must not, however, be supposed that parochial authorities were so reckless as to embark on expensive litigation without good, if inadequate, reasons. Thanks to the efforts of Sir William Young, 35 Geo. III. c. ror had removed most of the hardships of the settlement system from the peasant’s shoulders. It had, for example, rendered impossible a recurrence of the episode of the West Riding shoemaker already related. But there was the ratepayers’ side of this question, which presents us with a wholly different view of the settlement system. Unless the avenues by which settlement could be gained were jealously watched, a great increase in a parish’s rates would have occurred. 1 Cases, Resolutions of Cases, adjudged in the Court of Kt ing’s Bench, concerning Settlements and removals, from the first year of King George I. to the present time. Most of them adjudged in the time when Lord Parker sat Chief Justice there. 4 Edit. Foley, 1742. ‘ 2 Report from the Select Committee on the Poor Laws, in 1817. 3 The Poor Laws of England. Rev. Jas. Willis, J.P., 1808. 256 Annals of the British Peasantry For example, the qualification by which any householder who occupied lands worth £10 a year acquired settlement in a parish was regarded by ratepayers with the greatest misgivings. “The country,” says Stanley, in his Report to the Board of Agriculture from Cheshire, ‘is absolutely losing population by the operation of the law which gives a settlement to the occupier of #10 a year.” He deemed it absurd to suppose that such a position necessarily placed an individual over the heads of those likely to become paupers. It was a practice, he maintained, for the indigent to apply for the tenancy of a small parcel of land in one or two parishes, and then select a residence wherever they could find charitable institutions or other advantages. There were people thus gaining settlement that no sensible person would have trusted with the occupation of a garden. Such circum- stances were driving out of the agrarian economy the holding, so dear to a modern Radical’s heart, viz. that which included three acres and a cow. Landlords, sooner than risk the chance of thus bringing upon their parishes an increased rent-charge, were either pulling down these miniature homesteads or letting them without their proper messuages. They had no alternative, if they wished to bar out the pauper; for that individual was far too crafty to be baffled by their landlord merely dropping the rents,of these tenements a pound, or even more, below the prescribed limit. In fact, a good cottage, with land just sufficient to keep a cow, was worth £8 or £9 a year. Its occupant, by renting in addition an acre of aftermath and a little potato allotment, brought his tenancy up to the £10 value required as a qualification for settle- ment. Unless, therefore, this sum were speedily doubled, cottages would become insufficient for the wants of our peasantry. The statesmen who introduced this mode of obtaining settlement must not, however, be blamed for the depopulation of the rural districts which it caused. The old Elizabethan Act against the erection of cottages without four acres of land had then been in force, and would have prevented the landlords from thus separating houses and messuages in their estate rentals. But when Stanley wrote, it had been repealed for more than twenty years,! and had it been still in existence it would have occasioned worse evils than those it might have prevented. For not only had it tended to lessen the supply of labourers’ tenements, quite as much as the £710 settlement qualification, but, by introducing as a substitute a system of alehouse lodgings, it had largely augmented rustic intemperance. It might be thought that if a landlord were thus energetic in resisting an invasion of extraneous poverty, he would soon find that he was at 1 15 Geo. III. c. 32, 1775. When Parishes were Prisons ae the same time expelling native industry. Unfortunately, as soon as wages came to be supplemented by the poor rates, such a contingency was actually beneficial to his interests. It was far more profitable to him to depopulate his own parish of labour, and hire what he required from a distance at quarter sessions rates, than to give work to his own cottagers. By adopting the first alternative he compelled the rate- payers of other districts to contribute towards the expenses of his weekly wages sheet. In other words, the parish which reaped the fruits of the labour did not contribute to its entire support—a muddled state of affairs, which must almost have made Walsingham and Cecil restless in their graves, The whole system of settlement was so oppressive, that at first sight we may well wonder, as Adam Smith evidently did, why it had never become the subject of popular clamour. The great Scotch economist wrote of it, of course, before it had been rendered more or less bearable by its amendment in 1795. ‘To remove a man,” he says,! ‘who has committed no misdemeanour, from the parish where he chooses to reside, is an evident violation of national liberty and justice. The common people of England, however so jealous of their liberty, but, like the common people of most other countries, never rightly under- standing wherein it consists, have now, for more than a century together, suffered themselves to be exposed to this oppression without aremedy.” But though men of reflection had constantly complained of it asa public grievance, and scarce a peasant of forty years of age had not in some part of his life felt himself most cruelly oppressed by it, no concerted agitation had occurred in favour of its abolition. Had we no demagogues in those times? Did our ploughmen, tilers and tanners produce no popular champions, as in the days of Piers, Wat and Kett? The cause of the peasants’ apparent indifference is rather to be found in the fact that those who had gained settlement, and those who wanted to gain it, were the partizans of two opposite camps. The pauper who was a parishioner regarded the pauper who was not one as an invader of his vested interests. Perceiving the means of poor relief to be limited, the native peasant beheld in the stranger peasant one who menaced the sources of his own livelihood. In this one direction only was there a union of interests between ratepayers and paupers of the same parish. 1 Wealth of Nations. Bk. i. ch. ro. CHAPTER XVII THE DEGRADATION OF THE LABOURER O far, I have but cleared the ground, in order that my readers may approach the subject of poor law reform with an intelligence born of familiarity with its defects. Our legislators had been engaged in much the same process. They had almost, but not quite, reduced the national poverty from two varieties to one variety. Hitherto their attention had been distracted from plans for ameliorating the lot of the stationary pauper, to those for suppressing the nomad pauper. Their efforts against vagrancy had been so far successful that they had, so to speak, brought the floating pauper population, more or less, to anchor in the various harbours of refuge provided for it. They were now, if they chose, in a position to give undivided attention to the site, construction and oven of these relief havens. Gilbert, the patriotic member for Lichfield, took care that they should choose. He came into notice in 1765, by attacking vigorously the entire parochial system. He introduced a centralisation scheme into Parliament, which would have divided every county into those large, administrative centres which Hale, Child, Hay, Hillsborough, Lloyd, Fielding and Burn, had already advocated. His Bill, considerably amended, passed through the House of Commons, but was rejected by a narrow majority in a full House of Lords, Parliament, however, exhibited a greater determination in the pursuit of reform than it had hitherto done. It set Gilbert to work making investigations into the machinery of the poor laws. Between 1765 and 1787 he was collecting statistics relating to the amount of assess- ments in each parish, the proportions in which the funds had been bestowed in poor and county rates,! the sums allowed for rents of workhouses and habitations of the poor, the numbers receiving relief, and the aggregate expenses thus incurred, the workhouse accommoda- tion in each separate parish, and the totals of funds wasted in litigation. The gravity of the crisis was recognised as soon as the returns of 1776 caine in from all our English and Welsh relief centres. Six years 1 16 Geo, III. c. 40; 26 Geo. III. c. 56. 258 The Degradation of the Labourer 259 later, Gilbert was ready to make his great effort in the direction of poor law reform. Having learned wisdom from the failures of his predecessors, he did not jumble up in one act several distinct pro- posals, but introduced three bills into Parliament: the first, relating to houses of correction ; the second, to the better relief and employment of the poor; and the third, to the amendment of the laws relating to rogues and vagabonds. The first two received the consent of both Houses, and became part of the statute book,! the last was thrown out by the Commons. The first Act dealt with an old offender, viz. the parish officer. He had again been weighed in the balances, and found wanting. This time he was detected in the practice of “contracting with obnoxious persons of savage disposition,” for the maintenance of the poor, on purpose to make the workhouse a terrible alternative to want. Gilbert hands him down to the execration of posterity, in the preamble of his Bill, by there recording that “the practice of letting out the poor had been productive of great oppression.” 22 Geo. III. c. 83, therefore, repealed so much of 9g Geo. I. c. 7 as empowered parish officers to contract with any person thus, and directed the justices of the peace to appoint annually guardians, with all the authority of overseers, except that of making and collecting rates. They were, likewise, empowered to elect a governor and treasurer for each workhouse, and to appoint, as inspecting visitor, the nominee of the guardians. The earlier Act did not compel the parishes to grant outdoor relief, nor did the new one compel them to grant indoor relief. On the contrary, it only per- mitted the admission into the workhouse of any individual who was indigent from old age, or infirm from sickness, and orphans, who had been furnished with an order from the guardians or visitor. Idle and disorderly persons were to be punished by the Vagrant Act, or hired out by the guardians to parochial labour.? It also provided that none of the parishes in a union were to be more than ten miles distant from their common workhouse. Though repeatedly enforced in after years, this provision had been constantly evaded. Consequently many of Gilbert's workhouses had to be re- formed in the year 1834. His second Act, which had also received the consent of Parliament, had been only intended as a temporary expedient to afford instant relief to distressed parishes. It left the clauses relating to centralisa- 1 22 Geo. III. «. 83. 2 Abstract of the Act passed in the 22 Geo. III. for the better relief and employ- ment of the poor. This Act was enlarged by 33 Geo. III. c. 35; 41 Geo. IIIL.u. 9; 42 and 43 Geo. III. c. 74 and 110; 1 and 2 Geo. IV. c. 56. 260 Annals of the British Peasantry tion optional on each parish. Partly because its methods of uniting parishes were clumsy, and partly because a more perfected system was expected, but few local authorities had availed themselves of its powers. Parishes showed a strong reluctance to enter what a later writer has termed “ the spider’s web of centralisation.” 1 The village bureaucrat was alarmed, for a feeling had gone abroad that he had grossly mismanaged his trust. Gilbert and Burn had got their heads together, and were bent on exposing the defects of paro- chial government. The latter had just published a tremendous indict- ment against the active overseer. I have described him at work in the last three chapters, so that my readers will be able to judge if Dr. Burn was too severe in his strictures. He depicts him as always on the watch, ready to pounce down upon the intruding vagrant, demanding to see his certificate, flying off to the nearest justice for a removal order if it was not forthcoming, and if it was, canvassing the ratepayers lest they should inadvertently afford him settlement. In a word, if I may use an anachronous one, the stranger was “boycotted.” If he was foolish enough to persevere in his attempts at settlement, until he succeeded, his lot was less enviable still. The “active overseer” turned him over to “the sturdy person, who took his class by the lump,” not in order to maintain it, but to menace it with vengeance, if any complaints emanated therefrom to the justices. If an individual happened to be particularly feeble he was more lucrative as a beggar, and, accordingly, was sent out to crawl to, and whine at, people’s doors for his livelihood. His children were bound out as apprentices to any trade, so long as their master lived in another parish. In the dispute of a settlement, heaven and earth were moved, and no expense spared. Yet, to lessen the rates, cottages were razed to the ground and parishes depopulated. Immorality was encouraged, for, in order to get rid of a bastard child, the reputed father was bribed to marry its mother on condition that all three vacated the parish. Industry was ostracised because, whenever a striving labourer was considered to be repro- ducing his species too rapidly, he was offered £10 to go and hire a farm in another parish. Genius was banished because, whenever a poor fellow displayed a mercantile bent, he was presented with a box of pins, needles, laces, and buckles, on condition that he turned chap- man and went on the tramp. “But to see,” adds Burn, “that the poor shall resort to church, and to bring their children there to be instructed 3 to contract with a master that he shall procure his apprentice, at proper times, to be taught to read or write; to provide a stock of materials to set the poor on work ; to see the aged and impotent comfortably sus- Parochial Self-Government, H. C. Stephens, ed. ii. Pp. 59, 1893. The Degradation of the Labourer 261 ‘tained; the sick healed; all of them clothed with neatness and decency—these and such like, it is to be feared, are not so generally regarded as the laws intended, and the necessity of the case requires.” Gilbert’s comment on all this is: “If the waste and mismanagement in the business of the poor is to be accounted for in this way,'it should seem that the defect is partly in persons, and partly in the laws which provide such a description of officers as from the nature of the thing must be inadequate to the design of their appointment.”! ‘Those en- trusted with the making of rates and assessments for raising money to maintain and employ the poor, and for inspecting and superintending the workhouse, in short, for the whole government of the poor, were overseers, annually appointed by the justices according to a sort of rotation among the substantial householders. Unfortunately they re- garded the office in much the same light as our modern sheriff regards his. They were wholly occupied with their own concerns, and were not to be expected to sacrifice, for a whole year, their private interests, merely to promote those of their parish. Gilbert’s remedy was to magnify the office by increasing the size of each administrative centre. It was, in other words, the development of the centralisation scheme, which had received the consent of the statute book in 1765. Instead of large districts, consisting of whole hundreds or several parishes, he now proposed a union of parishes and smaller districts. The executive of each new centre was to consist of a board of commissioners, a district committee, a district agent, a subordinate overseer, and a county committee. The whole controlling power was to be invested in the last named. As Bate Dudley? showed in 1788, the penalty of £10 for non-attendance would not have counteracted the reluctance of its members (all county gentlemen) to attach themselves to public business. Other opponents of the suggestion advanced further objections. First, it was contrary to the intentions of those who framed our poor law system. In answer to that Gilbert cited the authority of Lord Mans- field, who had repeatedly stated that the statute of 13 and 14 Car. II., which regulates the jurisdiction of overseers in townships and villages, was founded on a mistaken policy, “because, by the reason of the largeness of some parishes, the benefits of the statute 43 Eliz. could not be reaped, and that therefore the divisions should rather have been enlarged than diminished.” Secondly, they maintained that the idea was impracticable. To this objection Gilbert replied with statements © Considerations on the Bills for the better Relief and Employment of the Poor, etc. Thos. Gilbert, 1787. 2 Observations on the Defects of the Poor Laws. Rev. B. Dudley, 1802. 8 Burr. Mansfield, 1610. 262 ‘Annals of the British Peasantry of its success in those districts where his first measure had been adopted. In the counties of Norfolk and Suffolk, the incorporations consisted sometimes of a whole hundred, sometimes of two hundreds, sometimes of twenty to forty-six parishes. Most of these had been carried out under the provisions of statutes passed in 4 Geo. IIL, and, at the distance of ten years from their first establishment, it appeared by a report made to the House of Commons in 1776 that they had been enabled, not only to pay the interest of large sums borrowed for the erection of workhouses, but to discharge some thousands of the prin- cipal, though the rates had continued as before. It had been thus found that the necessities of the poor could be supplied at less expense under the system of centralisation. Accommodation in one central building necessitated a less number of fires and officers. Provisions bought in large quantities cost less in proportion than those bought in small quantities. Lastly, labour thus centralised was rendered more easily productive. Moreover, the superintendence and control over the concerns of the poor were placed in the hands of those most suited for the trust, both persons electing and persons elected being required to have such a qualification of estate as would carry with it some con- sideration and consequence. Officers were, therefore, chosen for their ability and diligence, and being expected to devote all their attention to their professional duties, were compelled to give security for their regular performance, and were entitled to receive competent salaries. It was the district agent who, standing between the committee and the overseers, gave energy to the one, and conveyed information to the other. Gilbert did not want to increase expenditure ; for he proposed that the annual rate should be settled for each parish at the medium of the years 1783, 1784, and 1785. That was never to be exceeded ; on the contrary, economy and good management were expected to dimin- ish it. Litigation between parishes was to be made partly a county and partly a parish concern. All casual poor were to be relieved in the place where they became necessitous. These were understood to be such as had not been resident forty days, but had obtained a certifi- cate from some local agent, testifying that they had left their last place of residence for better employment. Those who had resided forty days were to be deemed arishioners. Those who had not, and had no certificate, were to be regarded as vagrants. The county com- mittee was to have control over the district committees, and to meet quarterly to put the poor rates of every district “to a course of being levied”; also, if necessary, to promote the erection of schools or hos- pitals for the use of all districts in the county. It was not to interfere with the existing county committees, which were concerned with The Degradation of the Labourer 263 county rates, county treasurers, and such county works as the erection of bridges, etc. Nothing, in fact, which did not affect the poor was to come within its purview. There was, however, a more formidable objection to such schemes of centralisation than any already cited, which Gilbert and all other advo- cates of them have failed to answer. By the degradation of the petty official, parochial responsibility was at an end. Those who levied or supplied the funds of relief began to lose all control over their adminis- tration. Every appeal to quarter sessions degenerated into a statement and counter-statement, unsupported by any evidence or document. Consequently the bench, with every desire to do justice, had not the power. ‘The leaning in the spectators was decidedly in favour of the pauper. The magistrates considered themselves to be the protectors of the poor, and whatever were the demerits or merits of the case, felt themselves equally bound to prevent the parties from starving. The overseers were looked upon as almost devoid of the feelings of humanity, and the tendency was still more forcibly to render the deci- ‘ sions of the vestry of no avail. Every appeal gained by the pauper was esteemed a triumph over the vestry, and this feeling, in some cases, was participated in by the labouring classes in general.” } If this was the state of affairs before the Act of 22 Geo. III. c. 83, what must it have been after, when the administration of the poor funds came to be relegated almost entirely to persons devoid of local knowledge or interest ? In 1793 the justices were empowered at petty sessions to inflict fines upon the overseers for disobedience to the orders of any of their body, whether within or without their jurisdiction. Even a guardian could be fined, and, worse still, part of the penalty was bestowed upon the pauper who had brought a complaint against him.” In 1796 the vestry was deprived of the workhouse test,? and the magistrates were empowered to order outdoor relief to any one whom they thought a fitting person. The authority of the bench over the vestry was now so supreme that only persons seeking to make a profit out of the office would consent to serve as parochial authorities. In 1801 the magistrates became the rating as well as the relieving authori- ties, being permitted to appoint as many guardians as they chose ;4 and these, on the approval of ‘a magistrate-appointed visitor,” might order the payment of any money for poor relief. Being themselves the principal property owners, their consideration of rating questions be- came suspected of bias. They were jealously watched, and had to be 1 Poor Law Commissioners’ First Report, 1834, p. 85. Captain Chapman’s evidence. 2 33 Geo. ITI. c. 55. 8 36 Geo. ITI. c. 23. 4 41 Geo. III. c. 9, ¢. 23. 264 Annals of the British Peasantry protected from vexatious litigation by an Act passed in 1803,' which limited any one penalty recoverable from them to 2d. Finally, in 1810, they replaced the inhabitants in the examination of overseers’ accounts. It was now that Gilbert’s centralisation scheme was made compulsory on all parishes with the one proviso, viz. that of magisteriai consent.® Then a new departure took place: local knowledge and local interest, as says Stephens, ‘‘were discovered to be desirable aids in poor relief management.” The powers of magistrates were largely neutralized by a series of Acts, passed between 1802 and 181o,* and still further re- stricted by Sturges Bourne’s Act in 1819,° which brought into being a new administrative authority, viz. the Select Vestry. But by the great Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834, those who had supplied and managed the funds for pauper relief were deprived of all powers of dispensing them. The effects of this step were wholly beneficial to the pauper. They may be said to have been so to the ratepayer, but not if we regard him in the light of a landlord and a farmer. Even Adam Smith considered it as the height of impertinence for kings and min- isters to pretend to instruct private people how they may best employ their capital and industry. Nevertheless, as McCulloch points out, this pretension was exceeded when the authors and abettors of the new Poor Law deprived the ratepayers of all control over their own affairs.® But before we examine this great revolutionary measure of pauper government, we must retrace our steps and see how the increased magisterial control had prospered. There are many who attribute the wretched effects of the allowance, the roundsman, the labour rate, and the scales of relief systems to the justices’ want of practical local knowledge.” Let me, by way of preface, once more enumerate the successive steps by which the parochial authorities descended into the depths of misery and confusion, caused by supporting idleness with the wages of industry. First, we have the ambiguous phrase, in 43 Eliz., directing the overseers “to take order for setting to work all such persons as have no means to maintain and use any ordinary or daily trade.” Next we have the authorities interpreting this clause into an obligation to find work for the 1 43 Geo. III. c. 141. ® 50 Geo. III. c. 49. 3 50 Geo. III.c. 50. 442 Geo. ILL. c. 743 43 Geo. III. c. 110; 45 Geo. III. . 54; 50 Geo. III. c. 49. Vide Parochial Self-government, p. 61, ed. II. H. Stephens. 5 The Two Vestry Acts, as 58 Geo. III. c. 69 and 59 Geo. III. c. 12 (viz. that of Sturges Bourne) were called, were the results of the Committee’s Report in 1817, for which Curwen had moved. § Treatise on Political Economy. J. R. McCulloch. 7 Parochial Self-government, p. 65. H. Stephens. Ed. ii. 1893. The Degradation of the Labourer 265 temporarily unemployed. Next comes the Act of 9 Geo. I. c. 7, which enabled parishes to establish workhouses for the performance of this clause, but was designed to limit rather than to enlarge its scope. Then, in Gilbert’s Act of 1782,! we have an attempt ‘to define and limit the powers of authorities in this direction. ‘ When there shall be in any parish,” runs the clause in question, “any poor person who shall be able and willing to work, but who cannot find employment, it shall and may be lawful for the guardian of the said parish, on applica- tion made to him on behalf of the said poor person, to agree for the labour of such poor, etc., etc.” By the cruel irony of fate the philan- thropic Gilbert was destined thus to injure deeply the interests of the class which he particularly desired to serve. Wherever his Act was in force, the ratepayers were invited to throw the peasantry out of em- ployment, in order that they might afterwards contract for their labour on lower terms. Most of the local Acts of Incorporation contained a similar clause, “inviting,” as it has been expressed, ‘‘a conspiracy among the employers for the reduction of wages.” ? The only deterrent to a wholesale adoption of this fatuous policy was the idea that indoor relief cost the ratepayer less than outdoor. That, however, was now thought to have been exploded, for first Davies, the Berkshire vicar, had shown in 1795 that the annual cost of board and lodging in the poor-house was £7 165. per head, whereas in the cottage it was only £5 45. Moreover, he strongly advocated the outdoor relief system as being far more calculated to promote profitable labour.’ In 1805,4 men like Rose were advocating the abolition of workhouses by the repeal of 9 Geo. I. c. 7, citing in support of sucha step the favourable results derived from outdoor relief in Scotland, and the evidence of the Parliamentary returns, which estimated the cost to the country of the out-pauper at £3 35. 73d, and that of the in-pauper at Giz 38. 6hd. Howlett, writing of his own parish of Dunmow about the same period, declares that the chief aim of the authorities was to make use of the workhouse as little as possible. Then came East’s Act of 1815, which empowered the justices to order relief for any length of time they chose, and to enact that the pauper should no longer be required to come into any workhouse, but should receive his or her allowance in money, at his or her own home.5 Alluding to this subject 1 22 Geo. III. c. 83, § 32. 9 Second Annual Report of the Poor Law Commissioners, 1836. J. Philips Kay, M.D. ® Case of the Labourers in Husbandry. Rev. J. Davies, pp. 18, 23. + Observations on the Poor Laws and thetr Management. 555 Geo. IIL. ce 137 266 Annals of the British Peasantry in 1817, the Select Committee on the Poor Laws stated that “ work- houses, though condemned, are indispensable.” ; When workhouses fell thus into disrepute, the period for the canon- isation of the pauper had arrived. Only the much-abused overseer, too familiar with his true character to be deceived, refused to join in the general hymn of adulation. His opposition, however, was regarded as that of the devil’s advocate, and contributed nothing towards the enlightenment of a purblind public. Idleness rose to a high premium in the national consideration. Labour sank correspondingly low. The magistrates professed themselves anxious to support the latter by raising its rates of remuneration. Was their ignorance of political economy so crass that they imagined anything able to effect this object, save an increase in the wealth by which labour is supported? They were like a customer who pays half the price of his purchase out of one pocket, and the remaining half out of the other, and then imagines he has doubly remunerated the vendor. Did landlords imagine that either they or their labourers were better off by merely transposing in their ledger accounts part of the disbursements in estate wages to the columns set apart for parochial charges ? Such virtually was the meaning of the Bill introduced by Sir William Young in 1788, by which two-thirds of the labourers’ wages were to be paid by the employers and the other one-third by the rate- payers. But the authorities were to be guilty of worse folly before they had done. Never before had they beenso prosperous. Seasons were above the average, prices were high, wages abnormally low. Save for a heavy poor rate, prospects were exceptionally bright. But out of the clear sky was to fall the bolt of the Corn Law agitation. I am inclined to believe that the scale system may have gone far towards setting it in motion. It was the benevolent Davies who first directed attention to the possible relationship between the prices of bread and those of labour. While prices of a day’s food had advanced from the middle to the end of the century about one-third, the advance on those of a day’s labour during a corresponding period had been only one-seventh.! Dr. Price demonstrated that the nominal price of labour was not so much as five times higher than it was in 1514, whereas that of corn was seven times, and that of flesh meat and raiment fifteen times higher.2 ‘ Why not,” said Davies, “ either adjust the relative prices between bread and labour on the sliding scale system, or, better still, leave the whole business for Nature, unrestricted by art, to settle?” To carry out the 1 Case for the Labourer, Rev. J. Davies, 1795, p. 65. 2 Reversionary Payments, vol. ii. p. 273. The Degradation of the Labourer 267 last alternative would have implied a total repeal of the corn laws. Apparently it was not recognised that they were equally doomed to destruction by the adoption of the first. At any rate, Davies’ neigh- bours seem to have jumped at the idea. The hitherto insignificant parish of Speenhamland sprang into a lasting notoriety by becoming the site of the first scale allowance process. A crowded bench took place at Easter, in 1795, when two plans were submitted for con- sideration. The magistrates were asked to decide whether they would fix the lowest price to be given for labour, as they were empowered by 5 Eliz. c 4 to do, or whether they would procure a uniformity of relief by means of the following table :— ADOPTED CALCULATION SHOWING WHAT SHOULD BE THE WEEKLY INCOME OF THE INDUSTRIOUS POOR AS SETTLED BY THE MAGISTRATES FOR THE COUNTY OF BERKS AT SPEENHAMLAND. INCOME. May 6th, 1795. One Woman Man &| One Two | Three | Four | Five Six | Seven Man. Wife. | Child. |Childr’n|Childr’n|Childr’njChildr’n Childr’n|Child'n s. ats. dad.) s. do} d|s dj. dis. djs. djs. als. dls. d. I 0/3 0}2 0}4 6/6 o| 7 6] 9 oOf10 6/12 oO] 13 6/15 2 {1 1/3 3/2 1]410] 6 5) 8 of 9 7/11 2/12 9/14 4/15 11 S@]r 2);3 6)2 2/5 2 630} 8 6/10 2]/11 Io/13 6/15 2/16 10 = 11 3/3 9/2 3/5 617 3] 9 oOfro gl/i2 6)/14 3/16 O17 9 & {1 4/4 of2 4)510| 7 8] 9 6/ar 4/13 2/15 016 10/18 8 11 5/4 012 5/511) 710] 9 O}ir 8/13 7/15 6117 5) 19 4 wir 614 3/2 616 3] 8 3]/10 3/12 3/14 3416 3/18 3/20 3 Ss}! 7/4 31/2 7/6 4] 8 5/10 6/12 7/14 8/16 9]18 10}20 11 ae |/i 8l4 6|2 8/6 8] 8 roj/r1 Of13 2/15 4]17 6]19 8}21 10 = it9}4 612 9/6 9] 9 ol1r 3]13 6/15 9]18 O}20 3/22 6 = }110\/4 9/210)7 1] 9 5j\1r g/14 1/16 5/18 g/2t 1423 5 Tir|}4 9/211/7 2| 9 7)]12 0114 5§]16 10/19 3/21 S}24 1 2 0/5 0] 3 0|7 6]10 of12 6}15 o]17 6/20 o}]22 6!25 oO In favour of the first proposal it was suggested that, by enforcing a payment for labour in proportion to the price of bread, the relief would have been bestowed on the peasant as a labourer, and not as a pauper; in other words as a right, not as a charity. Consequently, the recipient would have retained that spirit of independence which he lost when the second proposal was_adopted by the Berkshire Justices. But the rejected plan had attracted considerable public attention, and an early opportunity was taken by Parliament to consider it. The central authorities, as well as the local, were concerned in their minds at the failure of wages to rise in proportion with prices. ‘There are some,” said Fox, ‘ who think that the price of labour has not kept pace with the increased price of provisions. I am afraid that this disproportion too much takes place in almost all the counties of England, and that, while 268 Annals of the British Peasantry provisions have been rapidly rising to an unexampled height, labour has by no means advanced in proportion. It is indeed a melancholy and alarming fact that the great majority of the people of England— an enormous and dreadful majority—are no longer in a situation in which they can boast that they live by the produce of their labour ; and that it does regularly happen, during the pressure of every inclement season, that the industrious poor are obliged to depend for subsistence on the supplies afforded by the charity of the rich.” At the end of the same year, viz. on the 9th of December, 1796, Whitbread introduced his Bill for fixing a rate below which wages should not be suffered to be paid. It was rejected only because it was considered to be an aggravation rather than a cure of the evil with which it purported to cope. It would, it was justly urged, have condemned to starvation all who could not find employment at the rate fixed. In vain Whitbread returned to the charge in 1800. The Bill was, as before, thrown out on the second reading. But Whitbread had laid bare such a miserable state of affairs with such unusual eloquence that Parliament was aroused to action, and in 1796 gave its sanction to (1) the periodical regulation of assessments according to fluctuations in the price of wheat in Mark Lane, and (2) to the disastrous scheme of outdoor relief under the rounds-man process.! / Henceforth the remuneration of the labourer was associated in the public mind with the price of bread, for almost at the same time that Pitt was promoting these new schemes of assessment and relief Lord Hawkesbury was moving for leave to introduce a measure for regulating the assize of bread, and showing how the number of consumers of wheaten food depended upon the abundance and prices of the crop. It was no use for Eden and others to argue that the price of labour did not necessarily depend upon the price of bread-corn, because the natural effect which the enhanced price of any article has upon its con- sumption is to diminish its use. The idea that the prosperity of the labourer depended upon the cheapness of corn had taken firm hold of the public mind, and the repeal of the corn laws was a mere question of time. As soon as the scale allowance system was adopted in any parish, all fared alike, whether industrious or idle, and a struggle com- menced among the occupiers, which had for its primary object the equal distribution of the rate on the labourer. In some parishes, the whole of this class was paid from the poor rate; in others, after a cer- tain portion of it—according to the acreage—had been distributed among the occupiers by mutual consent, the remainder was paid out of the rates. The men thus receiving “scale pay” were employed as 1 36 Geo. III. c. 23. The Degradation of the Labourer 269 rounds-men, or allotted to the occupiers according to the extent of each occupation.1. Acre by acre, a whole administrative centre became in this way a convict colony. Family by family, its entire labouring popu- lation degenerated into paupers, bound to toil, but labouring, as it was pointed out, “with the reluctance of slaves and the turbulence of de- moralised freemen for their bankrupt master, the parish.” The object of the parishioners was merely to convert a national calamity into a selfish profit? In order that a portion of the expenditure on labour might be derived from the poor rate, the occupiers were not careful to detect cases of malingering. The plea of partial inability was admitted without scrutiny, and thus a premium placed on imposture. The magistrates, ignorant of each individual’s circumstances, judged, by means of a scale, the sum which they thought necessary for his support, and ordered the overseers to supplement his wages out of the poor funds until they reached it. The paupers regarded this payment as a right, and called it their “income.” Recognising that the system equalised industry and idleness, they relaxed their efforts, and lived at ease on the rates. The allowance of gallon loaves was termed by each recipient his “ bread ” or “ make-up ” money; and, whatever the extent of his earnings, he demanded his portion from the magistrates.3 Winipey, in his Rural Improvements, published in 1778, had asserted that the journeyman tradesman was the most debauched and burden- some class of parochial poor, and that husbandmen were seldom troublesome unless through singular misfortune. But this practice had destroyed all the great sources of happiness and virtue by weakening the domestic affections. In the words of the authorities, it had reduced servants in husbandry “to the state of domesticated animals, fed, lodged and provided for by the parish, without mutual dependence or mutual interest.”* Farmers turned off their men in order to have ticketed employees. Surplus labour was put up to auction and hired by the day at the price usually given for a new-laid egg. The labour value of half a score of able-bodied men was about what one would be inclined to pay for that of a second-rate donkey. Character went for nothing in such a system, for the authorities refused to visit the sins of the fathers upon the children. Magistrates, when applied to, always made their orders according to the ‘bread money ” system, taking the labourers’ earnings at the usual price of day work, without regard to the conduct or ability of the applicant. The overseers, being powerless to 1 Second Annual Report of the Poor Law Commissioners, 1836. 2 Td. ibid. 3 Poor Law Com., First Report, 1834. Evidence of Mr. Russell (of Swallowfield). 4 [d. ibid. p. 59. 270 Annals of the British Peasantry remonstrate, naturally threw all the blame for this miserable state of affairs on the bench. If they refused to pay what was demanded, the pauper obtained a summons against them, and got both it and relief without difficulty ; for both were granted indiscriminately. The rate collectors instanced cases where they had visited small farmers on their official beats, and found them not only with nothing to pay, but with nothing to eat. Landlords gave up their rents, farmers their tenancies, and clergymen their tithes. Cases occurred when, after the land had been thus surrendered to the labourers, the assistance of two years’ rates to support them in its cultivation was required and not forth- coming. The labourers regarded the parish allowance as though it were a first mortgage on the land, and awaited with equanimity the opportunity when foreclosure would afford them an effectual enjoyment of the estate. In many parishes an irremovable surplus population accumulated, until its wants menaced the entire absorption of the rental. This is not the exaggerated description of one who, in attempting to reanimate the scenes of a dead past, overdoes his task. I use the lan- guage, sometimes the very words, of sober-minded commissioners, who derived the materials for their narrative from the lips of eye-witnesses. Aroused by such a grave crisis, even the most supine would attempt to concert defensive measures. Sometimes a manufacturer was invited to establish his trade in the parish, whereupon the 32nd clause in Gilbert’s Act was carried into practical execution. That is to say, the labourers, being cut off from all other sources of livelihood, were obliged to accept such wages as their new and only employer was ready to offer. But unless thus tempted by artificially lowered wages, no merchant would risk his capital in districts too remote from markets, and other- wise ill-suited for its development. As a rule, this wretched economy had a soporific effect on the peasantry, but in districts where the population was abnormally turbulent violence was rife. Sometimes the populations of a union consisted chiefly of smugglers and poachers, who extorted their scale allowance from reluctant overseers by threats of personal injury, and openly menaced their guardians at the Union Ward.! “The present race,” says Okeden, an Oxfordshire magistrate, ‘‘ which this illegal perversion of the poor laws has created, are playing the game of cunning with the magistrates and overseers ; give them ten years, and they will convert it into the dreadful game of force. My humble opinion is that, if some measure be not adopted to arrest the progress of the evil, a fearful and bloody contest must ensue.” ? 1 Second Annual Report of the Poor Law Commissioners, 1836. ? Poor Law Commissioners’ First Report, 1834, p. 80. The Degradation of the Labourer 271 Though in 1819 the legislature! applied a few simple remedies, it was not until 1834 that it finally healed the malady. In 1817 the Committee on the Poor Laws merely alluded to the rounds-man process as contrary to principles of political economy, directing the bulk of its attention towards the development of charitable institutions. Notwith- standing the disgust generated by the truculent bearing of the pauper under this spoiling process, the landlords, to their lasting renown, were not slow to second the efforts of the legislature in their benevolent aims. 1 59 Geo. III. u. 12. CHAPTER XVIII THE PAUPER AT THE TRIBUNAL OF PUBLIC OPINION E now reach a period when both poor law and poor rate were regarded solely from the standpoint of expediency. The original bargain between employer and employee had dropped out of sight ; in other words, the historical aspect of the question had been relegated to the bookshelf. The system was on its trial; the existence of the peasant as a pauper was at stake; compulsory almsgiving had become a polity in disgrace. For two centuries and more it had failed to achieve its object in England, had been quietly ignored in Scotland, and not yet even sug- gested in Ireland. In which of these three countries was the peasant least distressed? That was one important problem of the time, with which we shall soon have to deal. Another was—which had failed here in England—the law or its administration? That either the one or the other was at fault no doubt was entertained ; the only fear was lest both might be defective. It was no use suggesting that parochial officials were foolish, or that paupers were reckless. That was merely tan- tamount to confessing that our legislators had erred in the provisions which they had established affecting these two classes. The failure must rather be sought either in the statute book itself or in the interpretation of its contents. The politician, the philosopher, the philanthropist, the poet and the novelist were for once unanimous in their opposition to the system of relief as then practised. Considering that the ratepayer and the pauper, ze. those more directly concerned, were quite as much disgusted with poor law legislation and its results, we can only wonder how it survived this crisis in its fortunes. But our Gallic neighbours had just furnished us with a repulsive lesson in the lengths to which a spirit of change could carry Society, unless kept within the bounds ofa proper control. For this reason, all well-balanced minds here in England were anxious to leave to the legislature its own choice of a time when action should seem to it imperative. Men saw that Government was busily engaged in the collection of evidence, and, as long as it thus proved itself in earnest, they were reluctant to force it prematurely into the path of reform. 272 The Pauper at the Tribunal of Public Opinion 273 Long before the Commissioners were ready with their report of 1834, most defects in the system of our poor relief were apparent to the public. The constitution of that commission, however, satisfied most people because they saw that every school of poor law reform was represented. There was Nassau Senior, holding many of the views of Kaimes, Malthus, Ricardo and Chalmers; and there was Sturges Bourne, holding those of the Commission of 1817, on which he had himself served. There were, besides, men like Blomfield, Bishop of London, and Chadwick, who approached the subject with minds as yet unbiassed. The nation, therefore, waited with more or less patience to see whether the outcome of their deliberations would be a mending or an ending of this portion of our statute book—an unravelling or a complete severance of this knotty point. And yet there was much to make even the most submissive of our forefathers restive. The bread riots of 1795 ; the machinery disturbances of the Luddites in 1811; the agrarian outrages of 1816; the incendiarism of 1830, had shown how little more discontent was required to renew the times of Wat the Tyler or of Kett the Tanner. The intolerant spirit of our peasantry to injus- tice, whether imaginary or real, which had displayed itself in 1670,! in 1720,” and again in 1726,3 was once more aroused. There is no more secluded spot than the Isle of Ely. It is far removed from the centres of commercial labour. The whirr of machin- ery had not yet introduced there discordant notes between capital and labour. Amidst a population under the strong ecclesiastical influence of a bishop, on a sudden, a pot-house parliament breaks out into open revolt. In the bucolic districts of East Anglia and in the sleepy shires of Huntingdon and Cambridge nightly assemblages are held, threatening letters are circulated, and houses, barns and rickyards ignited. The insurrection is quelled more easily than the authorities deserve to ex- pect. The ringleaders are arraigned before a special commission, and eventually pay the penalty with their lives. But what is discovered when all has quieted down once more? Merely that ratepayers are widely unpopular amongst the poor, and that our Government is ignorant of the gravity of the crisis. Fourteen years later, nothing having been done meanwhile to remedy the case, rebellion breaks out afresh. This time the authorities have been forewarned, but not apparently forearmed. Numerous county petitions are presented to Parliament during the 1 We learn from 22 and 23 Car. II. c. 18 that much damage to agricultural pro- perty was perpetrated at this period. 2 A renewal of the Enclosure disturbances. Véde 6 Geo.I. c. 16. $Rural incendiarism. Vide 12 Geo. I. c. 30. * Compare Annual Register, 1816, ch. viii, p. 91, and Quarterly Review, 1818, vol. xviii. T a4 Annals of the British Peasantry session, not only dwelling on the prevailing depression in agriculture, but predicting renewed outrages unless something is speedily done to satisfy the popular clamour. Immediately after harvest, midnight con- flagrations light up the country side in Kent, Hants, Wilts, Sussex and Surrey. Economists and politicians, magistrates and overseers, awake out of their first sleep to behold the glare which forebodes destruction to the national stores of winter food. Every post brings them letters of a threatening nature. Every rural ride which they take confirms their views regarding the gravity of the crisis. The metropolis is glutted with handbills, headed, ‘‘To arms, to arms! liberty or death!” The walls of market towns are disfigured with similar literature. County magistrates imagine that the poor laws are mainly responsible for all this discontent, but refuse to admit that their misinterpretation of them is the cause. The same errors of a dull brain, rather than of a cold heart, which had marred their administrative policy recur: the misguided benevolence which had prompted a prodigal distribution of relief, rather than a parsimonious withholding of it, now shows itself afresh in the unwise clemency which determines the sentence meted out to the incendiary. Eventually a display of military force, and the offer of large rewards for the conviction of ringleaders, quells a disturb- ance for which its starving perpetrators are at a loss to give any poli- tical pretext.1 It needed not, however, open violence such as this to prove that our poor law system was defective. Every organ of the press was exposing the errors of its administration. Everybody who took any interest at all in the subject recognised that the parish allowance was often extorted by force and dispensed with partiality; that it promoted improvident marriages, and while it checked emigration, abnormally increased popu- lation; that it bred poverty, demoralised labour, discouraged thrift, reduced small capitalists to the pauperism which they were expected to relieve ; absorbed the capital of all the southern counties, constituted a . corrody upon land for lusty spendthrifts, and, in spite of Sturges Bourne’s select vestries and assistant overseers, was spreading rapidly throughout the north of England. They read, in the earlier reports of the commissioners, of a reign of terror which threatened with arson and violence all who refused relief, of fees bestowed for tolling the knell of a defunct pauper, just because the parish clerk was known to be of pugilistic propensities, of overseers who could neither write grammati- cally nor argue intelligibly, of a workhouse master whose only knowledge of the paupers under his control emanated from the good memory of a blind inmate, of authority relegated to bouncing maidens who hid their 1 Annual Register, 1830, ch. vi., p. 149. : The Pauper at the Tribunal of Public Opinion 27 5 pretty faces under a profusion of ringlets as they read out the numerous names of low women and “hillyjitimites” on their fathers’ poor’s list. They heard philanthropists like Chalmers speak of our system as a moral nuisance, a bane, a burden, an excrescence in the body politic, a sore leprosy which had spread itself over the 10,000 parishes of England. If they wanted the opinions of less biassed philosophers, they could turn to their French contemporaries who denominated it “a plate politique del Angleterre la plus devorante.” If, as some alleged, all its defects were to be attributed to a neglect of the workhouse test, they had economists like Davison describing this process as a renewal of such slave labour as existed in the Ergastula of antiquity.1 They had novelists like Dickens, who made the hero of his plot a pauper, and one of its chief villains a workhouse official ; or if they were poetically inclined, they might study the moving story as told by Crabbe :— “Tt is a prison with a milder name, Which few inhabit without dread or shame. Be it agreed the poor who hither come Partake of plenty, seldom found at home ; That airy rooms and decent beds are meant To give the poor by day by night content ; That none are frightened, once admitted here, By the stern looks of lordly overseer : Grant that the guardians of the place attend, And ready ear to each petition lend ; That they desire the grieving poor to show What ills they feel, what partial acts they know; Not without promise may desire to heal Each wrong they suffer and each woe they feel. Alas'! their sorrows in their bosoms dwell ; They’ve much to suffer, but have nought to tell ; They have no evil in the place to state, And dare not say it is the house they hate. They own there’s granted all such place can give; But live repining, for ’tis there they live. Grandsires are there, who now no more must see, No more must nurse upon the trembling knee The lost, lov’d daughter’s infant progeny. Like death’s dread mansion, this allows not place For joyful meetings of a kindred race. Ts not the matron there to whom the son Was wont at each declining day to run? He (when his toil was over) gave delight By lifting up the latch and one ‘‘ good-night.” Yes, she is there, but nightly to her door The son, still lab’ring, can return no more ; 1 Columella lib., i. c. 69. 276 Annals of the British Peasantry Widows are here, who in their huts were left, Of husbands, children, plenty, ease bereft, Yet all that grief within the humble shed Was softened, softened in the humble bed. But here, in all its force remains the grief, And not one soft’ning object for relief. Who cares, when here, the social neighbours meet ? Who learns the story current in the street ? Who to the long known, intimate impart Facts they have learned, or feelings of the heart ? They talk, indeed, but who can choose a friend, Or seek companions at their journey’s end ? a ‘* Here the poor pauper, losing all the praise By worthy deeds acquired in better days, Breathes a few months, then to his chamber led Expires, while strangers prattle round his bed.” 1 But even this was a rosy view of workhouse life, such as might be pictured in establishments which had come into being by means of Gilbert’s Act. One of these Sir Francis Head has described as lofty and costly, the hovels near to which he likened to wheelbarrows around the Lord Mayor’s coach. Others were mere tumble-down, deserted farm-houses, “whose walls of mud scarce bear the door,” dwellings as infirm as those who inhabited them, and in whose dark- ened chambers separate collections of doubled-up manhood and_ worn- out woman-kind rested like “motionless pieces of gnarled ship timber.” 2 Many parochial authorities regarded these dwellings as little better than prisons. Even the industrial houses of Gilbert’s invention had degener- ated into houses of correction, some, indeed, into mere dungeons ; so we are justified in inferring from the fact that, as late as 1816, it was necessary for the legislature to forbid the use of manacles for any sane occupant of them. In one or other of these institutions, most of the useless labour of the kingdom, unless in receipt of out-door relief, was congregated. Here, as a writer in 1825 describes it, were lodged and fed promiscu- ously the aged, infirm, and orphan, as well as the loose and dissolute characters discharged from penitentiaries and prisons.2 No wonder that magistrates when they asked a pauper why he did not stay on in the workhouse often received the reply: “It is so full of vermin, and there are such indecencies, and I have been used to live better; and, in fact, I cannot bear it.” 4 With such a /es¢ as this there was indeed no fear in England (wWhat- ever there may subsequently have been in Ireland) that the poor-house 1 The Borough, G. Crabbe. 2 Quarterly Review, liii. 1835, No. 106. Sir Francis Head. 3 /d., xxxili. p. 444. * Td, 1818. The Pauper at the Tribunal of Public Opinion 277 might degenerate into a castle of indolence. But I am referring to a ‘time when confinement in the workhouse was considered too cruel, and the relief of the pauper in any other way too expensive, for either prac- tice to be longer tolerated. When the peace came; when a series of bad seasons combined with a reduction of profits and a lessened demand for labour had diminished the funds and increased the demand for relief ; when, as an essayist of the times described it, ‘‘ the nation had once more begun to live on its revenue instead of its capital”; then, indeed, dismay took hold of the hearts of ratepayers. Sturges Bourne and his committee of 1817 were pestered with proposals for preventing the expenses of litigation, the costs of removal, and the extravagances of the allowance system. Though the institution of select vestries did for a time apparently diminish the poor rates, economists were inclined to attribute the benefit to the improved state of manufactures, and the lowered prices of provisions. Bourne was blamed for not having bestowed sufficient attention on the desperate condition of the rate- payer, and the clamour for either poor law reform or for poor law repeal was redoubled. But then evidence began to flow in, tending to show that the supposed increase of the national expenditure on this head had been greatly exaggerated. It was pointed out by Nolan? that the sum raised for the exclusive use of the poor did not exceed one twenty-fifth of the yearly national profits, and consequently was an expense at which few gentlemen could collect and manage their private incomes. Drummond demonstrated that much of this expendi- ture returned to the farmers in the labour performed on their holdings, or was bestowed in road repairs instead of poor relief, or went towards the payment of exorbitant cottage rents.2 Even if it were admitted that the whole of the seven millions sterling then levied on the rate- payer had been expended on the poor, and that the amount levied and expended in 1750 did not exceed two millions, it did not necessarily follow that pauperism had increased since this latter date in the propor- tion of two to five. On the contrary, many believed that, in proportion to the increase of the population, pauperism, properly so called, had been on the decrease. Formerly the impotent peasant had alone been relieved by-compulsory contributions ; latterly, the wanderer and the beggar had been forced to depend also on this source of sustenance. The sums once lavishly bestowed in illicit almsgiving were now sparingly expended in legalised ratepaying. It had taken a century or more to 1 Speech of Michael Nolan, delivered in the House of Commons, July jo, 1822, P- 54- 2 Evidence of Henry Drummond ; Report of the Committee on Labourers’ Wages, p- 47, 1826. 278 Annals of the British Peasantry obtain the mastery over our nomadic hordes of mendicants ; but a length they had been reluctantly compelled to acknowledge the domi- nion of the parochial bureaucracy. It was regarded by many as a Pyrrhic victory, for it had involved an annual outlay amounting apparently to nine-fold that of 1750. Money, however, thus bestowed must always be considered with reference to the price of provisions, As, therefore, the average price of wheat had increased pretty regularly from 4s. to 12s, per bushel during this period, and the rental of land accordingly, the burden of the poor had not really augmented more than threefold. Even that estimate was alarming ; in fact, so alarming that the com- mittee of 1817 went to some trouble in attempts to reassure the public mind. Experts had been warning the legislature that before the rental of the soil came to be fully absorbed in poor relief landowners and farmers would cease to have an adequate interest in land cultivation. In many districts they alleged that the limit had been already over- stepped, What else could be the result wherever rates had reached 20s. in the pound? Why, landowners ceased to be paid for the trouble and expense of their supervision, and farmers were financially unpre- pared to expend the capital necessary for permanent improvements. It remained, therefore, only for the pauper to foreclose and enter into possession. Was he, however, likely to do so when his farming stock would at once become liable to distraint for poor rates ?! The commissioners admitted that such a deadlock would be a national catastrophe, but at the same time they refused to regard it as imminent. They pointed out that the assessable rental of the English and Welsh soil was £50,000,000, and that the heaviest assessment for poor rate hitherto known was £10,000,000. Such a proportion as these two amounts was usually considered as 4s. 7 the pound. The more accurate expression was, however, 45. 02 the pound. Thus, though in some parishes the rates were really above 20s. om the pound, they were happily not so much zz it. An ancient rental was usually assumed as the basis of assessment—one that would decrease as the rates increased. Therefore the true state of the case was to be found by adding to- gether the nominal rental and the poor rates. Thereupon it became evident that zos. 02 the pound was but half the actual rental, 4os. on the pound but two-thirds, and even 60s. on the pound no more than three-fourths. Even after taking into consideration such extenuating circumstances as these, the case was sufficiently desperate. There were other for- midable charges besides poor rates to be defrayed out of the landlords’ 1 Report of the Poor Law Commissioners, 1817, p. 9. The Pauper at the Tribunal of Public Opinion 279 profits, such as tithes and imperial taxation. Sussex, the most agri- cultural of the English counties, paid in 1813 sevén-eighths on the pound, and in tithes more than any other county, Hants alone excepted, so that its husbandmen were burdened by a charge of about 135. 4d. on the pound, or two-fifths of the rental. But even in this extreme instance the custom of paying wages partly out of the poor rate lessened its seriousness,! There was another cause of complaint against the poor laws, and that was their multiplicity, contrariety, and intricacy. This had attracted public attention from the very outset. Sir Francis Bacon, the Lord Keeper in Elizabeth’s reign, had strongly urged that the statutes should be reduced and digested. James I. had warmly recommended this step in a speech from the throne. A proposition of like nature had been made during the Protectorate. Dr. Burn took up the subject in 1764, and wrote :# “If it may be reasonable to advance still further speculation, perhaps a time may come when it shall be thought con- venient to reduce all the poor laws into one. The laws concerning the poor may not improperly be compared to their apparel. When a flaw is observed, a patch is provided for it, upon that another, and so on, till the original coat is lost amidst a variety of patchwork. And more labour and materials are expended (besides the clumsy and motley figure) than would have made an entire new suit.” Then, in 1768, some public-spirited individual went so far as to formulate a scheme for this object.3 So little did this idea find favour, that at the present day there are about 140 separate enactments referring to the poor, most of which have been added to the statute book since 1834. We are now in a position to recognise that not only were the poor laws in themselves defective, but that their administration was disgraceful and their results disastrous. We shall learn next that their principles were objected to. No authority on the subject of population could ignore their influence, and though in the days of Plato and Aristotle, of Franklin, Hume, and Rousseau, they were either not in existence or not sufficiently to the fore to attract attention, when Malthus took up the pen they were at once brought into his argument. He pointed out that as vegetation, so population, if allowed to increase unchecked, would soon require more room than this planet affords. Anything, therefore, which tended to multiply mankind abnormally must be jealously watched. Three years before Malthus published his essay, Whitbread was arousing the pity of Parliament by describing the mar- 1 Quarterly Review, vol. xviii., 1818. 2 History of the Poor Laws, 1754. Dr. Burm. 3A Digest of the Poor Laws in order to their being reduced to one Act, etc., 1768, " ra The following yé ar he rears Bates. 2, o rs zat was to be his death- bed, and indites one last tirade the co e law. He points out that his worst prognostications jiaffordin oe eevd. Another rural war seemed imminent. Half-a-dozen-sse.gPes*were in a state of partial commotion. The jails were filling ;; wives and children were screaming after their husbands and fathers. Blood was beginning to boil again in Bucks, Beds, Kent, Sussex, and Suffolk. And all this before even the foundation of a grand workhouse had been yet dug. The “ Two- thousand-a-year Lewis’ scouts” were busy dealing with poor girls and aged women, but it was with the young and single men that they would ultimately have to count. ‘Cunning Althorp ” had recommended that 286 Annals of the British Peasantry the Bill should not be attempted to be carried into effect until on the eve of the busy hay season. What would he think of a refusal of all the men of any parish either to cut grass or to cut corn? The dis- turbance was only at its beginning; of what might come of it Cobbett washed his hands. But lest the authorities should eventually deal severely with those whose interests he had so much at heart, he begged them with his dying breath to remember, that in order to prevent the poor from swallowing up the estates of the landlords, a reformed Parlia- ment had introduced a measure, the expenses of which would have exceeded those of the relief it purported bestowing.! In conclusion, let us turn to the agricultural press, and glean there- from what the farmers themselves thought of this question. Though they were the chief sufferers under the poor laws, they treated the subject with the greatest moderation, showing themselves fully alive to the necessity for relief, and in all their suggestions keeping the comforts of the poor prominently in view. Naturally, as the burden of the rates pressed heavier and heavier upon them, a reduction of expenditure occupied the chief place in their schemes of amendment. The most striking feature in the literature emanating from such sources was, as might be expected, the practicability of the views expressed, and the familiarity of the writers with their subject. Every scheme, directly it comes before the public, is carefully examined and freely criticised. Its possible effects on other interests beside their own are impartially ex- posed by the farmers. Men thus behind the scenes had long been familiar with the faults and foibles of the principal actors. Discussion is earnestly invited in the pages of the Annals of Agriculture.* While Gilbert’s centralization scheme is applauded, it is yejected as having “too many things thrown together.” For Aclapd’é plan ‘of rendering the poor independent of public contributio#” is demande; “ the attention it merits.” No sooner does Rose@l"Act of 1793 1” \ the encouragement and relief of frien?1~.,societies come into force,? an it is carefully analysed for the fs a ny Nolan’s Bill of 1823 received the adverse criticism it! ¥°" * It was easy enough, said the farmers, to add new powers to ok aw to order new rates, and to make new plans for the emplo wof labour. It was another matter to find funds for these object at at a time when the rates already in force were not available.* Scarlett was complimented on his courage for in- troducing a measure which attempted to grapple with such a monster 1 Political Register, June, 1835. 2 «On the Management of the Poor.” Edward Haines’ Annaés, vol. vii. p. 179. 3 Annals, vol. xviii. p. 213. 4 Farmers’ Fournal, Aug. 4, 1823. Lhe Pauper at the Tribunal of Public Opinion 287 as our poor law system. But no one felt sanguine of his success.1 Farmers saw that where Whitbread and Pitt had failed, others were unlikely to succeed. They wisely, therefore, confined the bulk of their attention to the exposure of faults in the existing system, rather than to the fabrication of fresh laws. Magistrates were told that, if they would pay more attention to their duties, expenditure could be cut down. Our German ancestors, said one writer, “ deliberant dum fingere nesciunt, constituunt dum errare non possunt.” Our vestries, however, reversed this principle by deliberating whilst sober, and, finding the process dry, imbibed beer until they came to determine matters in a state of intoxi- cation. He, therefore, suggested that one way of lessening lawyers’ bills and excessive assessments was by illegalising every vestry order which had not been signed before noon and in the parish church.? In 1795 the poor were robbing the farmers’ larders, and breaking out into bread riots. Even such provocation as this did not alter the views of this long-suffering class. One Ward 8 asserts that the theft of food by a starving man is not a punitive offence. To avoid bringing any labourer to such a pass, he advocates a fluctuation of his pay according to the undulations of the provision market. Education of pauper children, multiplication of feminine industries, complete isolation of the criminal element from society, parish mills and bakehouses, mainly supported by voluntary contributions, where the poor could purchase bread at less than cost price, are a few of the schemes advocated, sometimes carried out. Agrarian crime continues to increase; sheep and horse-stealing become alarmingly prevalent ; and the village police system is found inadequate. That open-air prison, the parish stocks, may be considered an economical means of punishment, but it is not considered a humane one. While the constable goes off for a warrant of arrest, the village thief slips away in another direction. The overseers, rightly consider- ing that prevention is better than cure, have illegally instituted village watchmen paid out of the poor-rates. Such a state of affairs must not be ignored by the readers of the Farmers’ Journal. One writes to advocate the Scotch practice of affording the, parish its ancient control over the pauper’s goods, both zz esse and iz posse. He proposes the substitution of a village cage for the stocks; greater facilities for the more prompt suppression of crime; and the payment of village watch- men out of the land-tax or county rate.6 A strong party, headed by 1 Farmers’ Journal, June 4, 1821 ; May 28, 1821. 2 Annals of Agriculture, vol. xviii. p. 213. 8 Id., vol. xxiv. p. 360. 4 /d., vol. xxv. p. 153 vol. xxviii. p. 160; vol. xxvi. p. 58. 5 Farmers’ Journal, March 27, 1826. 288 Annals of the British Peasantry Arthur Young, is in favour of reducing the luxuries of pauper ‘diet, and increasing the facilities for pauper labour. To this end Count Run- ford’s and Eden’s writings on cheap foods are ransacked. A General Enclosure Act is suggested, the fresh fencing necessitated by which would, it was urged, alone employ many thousands of extra hands. Even the existing fences, especially in southern counties, were disgrace- fully neglected.1 Farmers could not with justice plead that the short- ness of their purses or the want of labour were causes for this slovenly economy. It was a time when our peasantry was ordered to earn its parish allowance by standing idly in the pound, or by digging and re- filling useless holes. It was widely admitted that, while the poor laws tended to increase population, the advance of science reduced the demand for its labour. No farmer wished either to abolish compulsory relief, or to check the invention of machinery. What then remained to be done towards remedying the evil? The fact that some culti- vated districts had begun to show signs of insufficient labour pointed to a greater demand for it than was actually available, On the other hand, the practice of employing able-bodied paupers in useless jobs demonstrated an excess of labour. These two opposite conclusions lead many to infer that the law of settlement restricted its fluidity. It is a sign of the wide-mindedness of our English farmers at this period that they deprecated any drastic revolution in this law, because they foresaw that it would tend to throw the chief burden of relief on popu- lous manufacturing districts. Those who considered that the supply of labour was in excess of the demand, and saw in this circumstance an excess in the demand for poor relief over the supply, advocated either emigration or a revision of our fiscal system. A certain Mr. Poppy maintained that something was radically wrong in our economy when a female pauper applied for relief without a stitch of British pro- duce on her back, and received it in tea from China, sugar from: the Indies, and bread from Poland. As long as our taxation allowed the home market to be flooded with foreign goods it was likely that our pauper class would remain without the means of purchasing the raw material necessary for their work and existence.? It was freely admitted, even by the most prejudiced farmers, that the out-poor were maintained with more comfort to themselves in their small habitations than in the best regulated houses of industry. Even when it came to be recognised that indoor relief was the least expen- sive of the two methods, this just view of the question was not ignored, Then, however, the problem resolved itself into one of means. Some wanted to extend the assessment to game coverts and lands only partly 1 Farmers’ Journal, September 25, 1826, 2 Td., April 3, 1826. The Pauper at the Tribunal of Public Opinion 289 or temporarily unoccupied. It was absurd to suppose that any small addition to the general poor monies from these sources would have been adequate. As the editor of the Aarmers’ Journal rightly observed in 1822,1 there were two alternatives only—either to obtain increased funds by means of more remunerative cultivation, or to subsidise the public funds for the same purposes for which the land was being sub- sidised, viz. the expenses of our Church, our State, our poor, our high- ways. Lastly, Nolan’s plan of starving down the poor to a convenient and profitable number found no favour. The poor, both able-bodied and impotent, must be maintained, even though the payers of the rate became themselves a and the payees of it were ungrateful and insolent. The Parliamentary returns, as analysed by Wodehouse in 1820, showed the following results :— Poor RATES. [Farmers Journal, March 20, 1820.]} Comparative amounts paid by the land and by the trading property, with the numbers of hands employed on each, in different counties. There were in counties considered chiefly trading— LANCASHIRE.—152,271 families employed in trade; 22,723 families employed in agriculture. Total amount of charge, 1823, £326,477; of which £157,790 charged on land, £49,375 on trade. WEsT RIDING OF YORKSHIRE.—108,841 families employed in trade; 31,613 in agriculture. Totalamount of charge, £281,968 ; £185,658 charged on land, £21,825 on trade. STAFFORDSHIRE.—42,425 families employed in trade ; 18,285 in agriculture. Total charge, £140,257; £99,715 land, £6,021 trade. WARWICKSHIRE. —39, 189 families employed in trade ; 16,779 in agriculture. Total charge, £139,666; £89,725 land, £9,618 trade. DERBYSHIRE.—20,505 families employed in trade; 14,582 in agriculture. Total charge, £90, 386 ; £75,068 land, £1,727 trade. NOTTINGHAMSHIRE. —21, 832 families employed in trade; 13,664 in agriculture. Total charge, £81,321 ; £57,613 land, £2,862 trade. CHESHIRE.—27,105 families employed in trade; 18,120 in agriculture. Total charge, £117,212; £60,796 land, £5.219 trade. COUNTIES CONSIDERED MORE PECULIARLY AGRICULTURAL. Essex. —33,206 families employed in agriculture ; 17,160 families in trade. Total charge, £277,013 ; £225,493 agriculture, £6,204 trade. KENT.—30, 169 families employed in agriculture ; 30,130 families in trade. Total charge, £373,786 ; £257.917 agriculture, £8,258 trade. LINCOLNSHIRE. —20,881 families employed in agriculture; 13,184 families in trade. Total charge, £193,117; £166,760 agriculture, 44,067 trade. SUFFOLK.—26,405 families employed in agriculture ; 15,180 families in trade. Total charge, £259,747 3 £214,666 agriculture, £5,285 trade. NorFoLkK.—31,451 families employed in agriculture; 23,082 families in trade. Total charge, £282,158; £224,977 agriculture, £4,295 trade. 1 Farmers’ Journal, May 20, 1822. 290 Annals of the British Peasantry SOMERSETSHIRE.—27,472 families employed in agriculture ; 23,732 families in trade. Total charge, £174,582; £136,841 agriculture, £1,993 14s. trade. NORTHAMPTONSHIRE.—15,235 families employed in agriculture ; 12,100 families in trade. Total charge, £145,516 ; £132,002 agriculture, £580 trade. CorNWALL.—19, 302 families employed in agriculture ; 15,543 families in trade. Total charge, £112,537; £87,235 agriculture, £2,196 trade. DEVON.—37,037 families employed in agriculture ; 33,985 families in trade. Total charge, £272,424; £175,412 agriculture, 42,623 trade. No wonder, therefore, that the agricultural interest turned to that of commerce for the assistance it had come so much to need. As we shall see in a subsequent chapter, the trader had no pity for an industry which, in his opinion, was artificially enhancing the price of the people’s food, by the instrumentality of the corn laws. In their despair far- mers called on the Chancellor of the Exchequer to pay the Easter bills of their parishes out of the Sinking Fund. Verily, the combined pressure of many suffering industries brought to bear on our longsuffering statesmen at this period was sufficient to force them into measures quite as unwise as a compliance with this last suggestion would have been. 1 Annals of Agriculture, vol. vi. p. 4. CHAPTER XIX THE FINAL BLOW TO BRITISH BEGGARY HE Poor Law Amendment Act was added to the statute book and passed through the fiery furnace of adverse criticism as the dying Cobbett had predicted. The chief cause of its early unpopularity was that it placed poverty in a less enviable position than that to which it had, by dint of long indulgence, succeeded in attaining. By thus de- grading the pauper, the State expected to elevate the labourer. By setting its face against the system of outdoor relief, it encouraged the peasant to retain his independence. By reinstalling the workhouse test, it discountenanced pauper matrimony. A few years’ experience confirmed the wisdom of its action, and induced Government to promulgate the Outdoor Prohibitory Relief Order of 1839. The effect of this on the labourer is aptly described by Rogers “as wholesome surgery,” and “the sharpest trial he had to bear.” No mere local ad- ministration could have withstood the storm of opposition that such a measure was sure to raise. But overseers, though still allowed to collect the rates, and on an emergency give relief, were too closely watched by the guardians to extend or abuse their powers. The guardians themselves were powerless outside the workhouse board- room. It was, therefore, the triumvirate of Somerset House which had to bear the brunt of popular execration. They were designated concentrated icicles, tyrants, dictators, bashaws, unconstitutional officers of the new Star-chamber, etc. But hard names did not deter them, and only the good effects of their adminis- tration succeeded in eventually deposing them from office. The local authorities whom they had replaced did all that obstruction could effect to damage them. Men of influence pandered to vulgar prejudices by taking no pains to reassure the ignorant, when, for example, an absurd cry went up from Devonshire that the workhouse bake-ovens were poison traps for pauper vermin, or when it was reported that two paupers set to break bones had been reduced to such extremi- ‘ies of starvation by the workhouse rations that they had been ‘ound regaling themselves on putrid marrow. So valuable was a sentral control found to be, that in 1847 it was brought into closer 291 292, Annals of the British Peasantry touch with Parliament. A responsible minister of the Crown assumed the presidency of this newly constituted board, and several of its commissioners were specially appointed officers of State. As the duties of the poor law administrator became simplified, the necessity for a separate department ceased. In 1871, therefore, only one Cabinet Minister, the president, remained to conduct the affairs of the national poor, under what now came to be called the Local Govern- ment Board. The original assistant commissioners, who had been what Fowle calls ‘the eyes and ears of the Board,” were replaced in 1847 by inspectors. The magistrates still retained some of their early authority, as being ex-oficio meinbers of the new administrative centres, But they and other guardians, outside the council chamber of the union workhouse, were mere private persons. Though the system of outdoor relief was not entirely killed by the new poor law, though the principle of settlement could not entirely be dispensed with, though the necessities of sanitary reform and other subjects have of recent years called for a return to the old system of decentralisation, the Poor Law Act of 1834 fulfilled the objects of its enactment. The rates were largely diminished ; nomadic beggary, notwithstanding the necessity for the Casual Vagrant Act of 1882, rapidly decreased, and the percentage of paupers to population fell gradually. If imitation be flattery, the fact that both Ireland and Scotland almost immediately followed our lead is the best proof of the success of this Act. If anything could be worse than the system of industrious beggary, which, in spite of an excellent and economical system of ad- ministration, now prevailed in the northern kingdom, it was the idle beggary of the western kingdom. Notwithstanding the frugality of the Scot, and the hospitality of the Celt, thieves and mendicants had become a social scourge in both countries, “It is an important fact,” says an essayist, “that the feeling of hospitality is always strongest in those states of society in which it is most necessary.”® But the Scottish and Irish hospitality was of a kind which made it more irksome and miserable in its results than the most sternly enforced poor assessment. The beggary existing in both countries was but a polite term for steal- ing, and the charity for compounding a felony. “The English farmer,” says Parkinson, ‘‘can scarcely form an idea of the many sorts of thieving that are practised (in Ireland). There is nothing on the farm of any kind that they are not apt tosteal, if opportunity offers. : Generally speaking, the people who inhabit cabins are all thieves; but . 1 The Poor Law. F.W. Fowle, 1890. 2 Quarterly Review, vol. xxvi., 1821, No. 22. The Final Blow to British Beggary 293 as their crimes are trifling, such as stealing the stubble from the land, turnips, hay, and straw, they most get off with impunity.”1 “They pulled the wool off a living sheep’s back for their clothing, and stole its dung for scouring their thread. Their fuel was the laboriously collected manure of the cow pasture. To swear falsely in order to clear a comrade was a prevalent practice of those who, by being thus defrauded, became the Irish substitutes of English ratepayers. There was no law of settlement, and but little provision for sick folk.? If fever was prevalent (and when was it not?) the police formed a cordon round populous centres, and thus isolated the outbreak amidst the rural districts. Celtic hospitality was not proof against the fear of contagion. The sick member of the household was ousted from society, as are expelled the ailing members of herds of wild beasts. Those thus afflicted were either thrust into a wayside shed, or locked up in an empty outhouse. The few remedies and luxuries that could be obtained were pushed into the patient’s reach through a broken plank, but all other contact with him or her was carefully avoided. There the poor wretch lay on filthy straw, unnursed and unvisited, till death and life had fought out the mastery.” Inthe fever year of 1817 the Dublin authorities, for fear lest want might spread the malady, provided work for their able-bodied paupers. At the first mention of the word “ work,” a horde of idle beggars took up their wallets and fled, but 10,000 remained behind to court contagion, and afford, by their energy and appetites, a convincing proof of their ability to labour, it they chose.* Of course there were some Irish authorities who refused to join the agitation in favour of a poor law. These sought to prove that Ireland, however miserable, was better off than she had ever been before. Her wretchedness, unfortunately, is historical; and so to history they resorted, hoping thus to show that the evil, if left alone, would eventually right itself.6 The great cry in Ireland was want of capital, which implied that the supply of labour was in excess of the demand. Obviously, therefore, they argued, emigration was the true remedy. But then, who was to pay the cost of removal? Not 1 English Practice of Agriculture, pp. 146, 176, 457- Parkinson. 2 45 Geo. III. c. 111 refers to this want, and provides toa certain extent for a more efficient supply of infirmaries and hospitals. 8 First Report on the Condttion of the Poor tn Ireland, p. 73, 1819. Dr. Cheyne'’s Medical Report. * Observations on the Necessity of a Legal Provision for the Irish Poor. John Douglas, 1828. 5 Jreland, its Evils and their Remedies. Michael Thos. Sadler, London, 1828. The Real State of Ireland, 1827. 294 Annals of the British Peasantry England, surely? She had already granted funds for the erection of Ireland’s charitable institutions, and had indirectly supported her sur- plus poverty, which crossed the Channel in order to benefit by our compulsory relief system. The Select Committee on the Condition of the Labouring Poor, in 1823, had given ample proof that a large extent of highly productive waste land existed in Ireland, if only capital were forthcoming to reclaim it. Any visitor to the Irish capital could see with his own eyes in an afternoon’s walk a wilderness of thistles, which by their very luxuriance proved the fertility of the soil, if only properly tilled, and the idleness which declined that labour. As long as the Irish harvesters were seen picking out the oats by hand in order to separate them from their more prickly, neighbours, English capital, if employed at all, was best devoted to the reclamation of partial wastes nearer Home than those at the antipodes.! Here in England the landlords supported the poor virtually out of their rents, though their tenantry apparently did so out of their farm profits. Over in Ireland the home of every poor labouring farmer con- tributed on the average annually not less than one ton of potatoes to the satchel of the wandering beggar. Certainly no absentee landlord could be said to be doing as much. Why, it was asked, did not the Irish gentry remain at home and superintend the reclamation of their bogs? Nimmo had shown with what good results and at what a small outlay the task could be effected. Ireland’s landlords unfor- tunately spent their rents in more congenial climates, and left them to be collected by percentage-paid agents. The sufferings of the peasantry were out of sight, therefore out of mind. On the other hand, the burden to realty of a compulsory assessment could be realized just as well in a London club-room or a Paris salon as in an Trish estate office. Without an object-lesson in Irish misery, it was easy for these pleasure-seekers to suppress the qualms of conscience by re-echoing the parrot cries of economists. They occasionally read in their home letters of their tenantry’s sufferings, “Let them suffer,” they said airily ; “destitute pauperism is a crime for which nothing short of absolute starvation can be adequate punishment.” There was this excuse for such heartless conduct. Our poor system was just then being held up to the world as an infringement; upon the laws of God and nature. It was said to be perverting the principles of the rich, and demoralising those of the poor. If introduced into Ireland, it would dry up the sources of spontaneous benevolence. ‘The relief of the 1 Quarterly Review, vol. xxxviii. p. 53, 1828. 2 Letters from the Irish Highlands, 1825. 3 Select Committee on Emigration, Third Report, p. 328,'1836. The Final Blow to British Beggary 295 able-bodied was the indefinite multiplication of a servile population. It would promote fires, riots, and noonday robbery, finally leading to the dissolution of the bonds of civilized society.” 1 The poor law advocates, who were mostly Englishmen, retorted that the influx here of hordes of Irish bog-trotters must cease. Habits of plunder and disgraceful disturbances, engendered of recklessness and despair, already existed in Ireland to an extent which no Poor Law could increase, but might possibly diminish. The evidence of Nimmo, Wye Williams, Griffiths, Malthus, Wyse, Nicholls, etc., had placed these facts beyond the range of dispute. Instead of dissolving the bonds of society, systematic relief would reunite them by promoting a source of friendly intercourse between rich and poor. It might or might not be decided ultimately to extend compulsory relief to the able-bodied. But even if it were, it would at least lessen the useless annual expenditure of two millions sterling in subsidising the mendicant, and at the same time convert him into a more or less profitable member of society. There was too much good sense in the Irish gentry to admit of their prolonged opposition to the will of the nation. They received almost without a grumble that Act of 1838,? which was to burden afresh their already mortgaged patrimony. It was based on the lines of that in England. Outdoor relief was, however, altogether prohibited, and no doubt was left in the minds of the administrators of the Act as to the sources of assessment. They were strictly confined to realty, and necessarily so, for Irish manufactures were still struggling in the birth throes. That the workhouse test suppressed mendicancy is fully proved by the annual report for the year 1869 of the Commission for the Administration of Poor Relief in Ireland. Moreover, as the system of strict indoor relief was allowed later to relax, the muster roll of Irish vagrants increased. In 1863 the number was 9,900, and in 1867, 12,626. In the same period the average daily number of outdoor paupers had risen from 7,859 to 14,940. English and Scottish statistics fully corroborate this fact, viz. that the more outdoor relief is increased, the more is vagrancy. The only fear for Ireland was whether the . workhouse test would prove sufficiently severe to discountenance poverty. Would it, asked those who were familiar with Irish ethics, make that proper distinction between the pauper and the poor which draws off those “elements unfavourable to the moral wholesomeness of rural life”? Would the aboriginal idleness of the people defeat a 1 Letter to Lord Howick on u Legal Provision for the Irish Poor, etc., Nassau Senior, Professor of Political Economy, King’s College, 1831. 2 1 and 2 Vict. c. 56., 3 P. 17, 296 Annals of the British Peasantry purpose which sought to relieve Irish society from the shadow of the profligate and the pilferer?+ Satisfactory answers to these queries are quickly demonstrated by the fact that only once has the workhouse system been in danger of abolishment. That was when the potato famine of 1847 forced Lord John Russell to improvise a Relief Bill.” Then indeed the whole Irish poor law was subjected to stern criticism.® It had been eight years in existence, and during that period 130 spacious poor houses had been erected, each establishment capable of accommodating 800 persons. The cost of maintaining these had been estimated at 3 per cent. on the gross rental of Irish realty ; in other words, a tax of ro per cent. on the net income of its proprietors. So far this burden had been sustained with a cheerful spirit ; but if a more expensive system, such as outdoor relief, was contemplated, the question arose why personalty should not also come under contribution. So far this question had not arisen, because “ that fierce and terrible benevolence, which under the form of making provision for want in Ireland” had not, as had been anticipated, impoverished her landed interests. But now the alarmed landlords asked the English Ministry if in their endeavours to find extra funds for the victims of the potato famine they were inclined to alter the dictum, “If thou hast little land thou must contribute,” into “If thou hast much money thou must give accordingly.” Rather than raise this old problem afresh the Government adhered in the long run to the cheaper economy of the workhouse test.5 But, as we shall see, during the ensuing examination of the Scattish poor law, the idea of rating personalty was not finally laid aside. The canny Scot, though fully aware that his system of voluntary relief was failing him, refused to be hurried along the road of reform. He took up a position of observation, and for many years was but a silent listener to the controversy raging over the southern border. Too shrewd to impute what were the faults of their administration to the English poor laws themselves, he reserved his judgment until his neighbours had purged their system from the abuses for which the mandate of an Elizabethan Ministry had inadvertently afforded occasion. He waited to see how the amended system worked in England, and what influence it would exert after having been applied to Irish mendicancy. 1 Quarterly Review, 1846-47, vol. Ixxix. p. 463. 2 toand 11 Vict. c. 31. 3 The Winter of 1846-7 ti Antrim, with Remarks on Outdoor Relief, A. Shafto Adair, 1847. * Second Letter from an Irish Gentleman to an English Friend, 1847, pp. 5-8. 5 History of the Irish Poor Law, p. 336, note. Sir G. Nicholls, 1856. The Final Blow to British Beggary 297 He was, however, fully aware that the professional vagrant had driven the proverbial coach and four through his own poor system. He was told that the extreme humanity of parishioners enabled the strange poor to carry away in alms more in value than would support comfortably the whole native poverty scheduled in their rolls. He realized that the support of pilfering vagrants demoralised society, and robbed it of otherwise productive labour. He saw that his imperfect system of settlement glutted the manufacturing centres with rural pauperism. But he bore all this with laudable patience, and listened to both sides of the question with exemplary impartiality. Even in England opinions were long divided as to whether the poor “should be confidently committed to the care of God’s good providence” or be “compelled to exchange the soft attentions of kindred for the cold heartless charity of the parish house.”? It was not yet decided whether a compulsory form of relief would take from the mendicant his excuse for begging, and from the thief his apology for crime,” ® or lead to a surplus population and further improvident habits. Nassau Senior was a determined foe of the entire system of British pauper legislation. He was in unqualified accord with Chalmers, and cited his own evidence before the Irish committee on the poor laws as a strong incentive for leaving the misery of the lower classes to spontaneous charity. Moreover, the principle of settlement was still a vexed question. Some argued that the more narrowly its area was limited, the more it would prevent a fluidity of labour; others, that the less its area was limited, the less would be the vigilance and the economy of those who distributed the relief. Though the legislation dealing with the two classes of necessitous and criminal poor had not been kept separate in the statute book of Scotland as they had been in that of England, the clauses relating to the former class in the northern kingdom treat them gently and allude to them in such moving terms as “ puir, failed, cruicked, seik, impotent or weak folke” ; whereas those relating to the latter treat them more harshly and load them with more opprobrious epithets than do those of the statute book belonging to the southern kingdom. The inefficacy, however, of the measures against beggary in Scotland eventually defeated those in favour of impotency. Dr. Chalmers attributes the cause of the alarming increase in her mendicancy at the end of the seventeenth century to the religious persecutions, the 1 Minute of the Report of the Committee of the General Association gf the Church of Scotland, 1818, p. 14. 2 Quarterly Review, vol. xxxiii. pp. 444 et seg., 1825-26, 8 Jd., vol. Ixxv. pp. 125 ef seg., 1844-5. 298 Annals of the British Peasantry suspension of parochial education, and the want of an efficient ministry of the Gospel. Its subsequent sudden decrease he accounted for by a new and beneficial departure in these three directions. Scotus, on the other hand, regarded this decrease as merely temporary, and caused by the repressive measures of William III.! Possessing the advantage of being able to look back on the struggle when the heat of it had long cooled down, this last authority approaches the question in a dispassionate spirit. He sees in the compulsory assessment of 1845 the result of no sudden change of opinion, but of a century’s gradual growth of it. The voluntary assessment began to fail in effecting its object when the first secession from the Church Establishment took place in 1733. The withdrawal of dissenters’ contributions was felt ear- liest in the populous districts, latest in the remote landward parishes. The abolition of feudalism in 17487 broke up the peasant’s home, and dissolved the social bonds between landlord and tenant. The ranks of sturdy vagrancy were in medieval times solely composed of those freed by the chances of internal warfare from the rule of the superior. From 1748 and onwards they were augmented by recruits from a fresh labouring class which had gravitated towards the towns,’ As the parochial funds alarmingly decreased, the demand for them by Scottish poverty waxed greater. In many districts the machinery al- ready existing in the Scottish poor law, but hitherto disregarded by its administrators, was called into force. Such a mixture of voluntary and compulsory relief unequalised the distribution of funds in different parts of the kingdom and did not escape the notice of the authorities, It drew from Lord Kaimes an expression of dissatisfaction against Poor Laws in general, but against those based on a purely charitable foundation in particular. He, it may be said, was the originator of the later school whose principal exponents were Chalmers and Monypenny. I have said that the defects in the voluntary system were most felt in populous centres, nowhere more so, in fact, than in the great cities of Edinburgh and Glasgow. Yet it was in the latter district that the most strenuous opponent of reform appeared. With prodigious energy Dr. Chalmers sought to prove that in his parish of St. John’s voluntary relief was all-sufficient. The fact is, that his eloquence and influence made it so, and whenever they could be exerted they were powerful enough to effect their purpose. As soon, however, as Chalmers died, his late parishioners became as loud as any in their clamour for a com- pulsory assessment. Then there appeared in Edinburgh, the other great centre of population, a man equally benevolent and energetic, 1 Scottish Poor Laws. Scotus, 1870. 2 20 Geo. II. c. 50, 8 Scottish Poor Laws. Scotus, 1870. The Final Blow to British Beggary 299 who took up the cudgels in favour of a poor law. This was Dr. Alison, who, in order to free his country from the disgrace of starving the poor, promoted the foundation of the Association for Obtaining an Official Inquiry into the Pauperism of Scotland, which came into existence in 1840. Forthwith there poured into the office of the Secretary of State petitions in favour of inquiry from all the municipal courts of the burghs. The Association collated an immense mass of evidence from clergy, missionaries, lay visitors, and managers of charitable institutions. The results thus derived were wholly in favour of a change in the Scottish system. Extreme and extensive destitution was found to be existent in the large towns, voluntary relief was proved to be totally inadequate, and the influx of rural poverty shown to be ruining both the purses and the health of Scottish burgesses.1 The committee called upon the Government to establish at once a Scottish poor law commission, and, for the sake of securing perfect impartiality, begged that it should be composed mainly or wholly of Englishmen. Meanwhile the opponents of a poor law were not idle. Monypenny, by then Lord Pitmilly, took up the pen, which he had but lately laid aside, and wrote one last defence of the moribund economy. Nothing can be more able than this pamphlet.” All that had been favourable to his cause in the varied writings of Chalmers, in the laborious compila- tions of the national statistical account, in the collated evidence of the committee of the General Assembly, and in the eloquent speeches of English statesmen was brought under contribution. Even the literary attacks and verbal utterances of the hostile Alison school * were requisi- tioned and their weak points utilised. In this way the whole work is an array of hostile paragraphs, as it were, menacing rather than defend- ing a position. Much of his argument was but a’ repetition of that which had been worn threadbare over the English and Irish cases, I shall only trouble the reader with such of it as throws fresh light on the controversy. Lord Pitmilly began by attempting to prove that the idea: of a compulsory assessment was a rash, impulsive and sudden change in Scottish political opinion. The views that he published in 1834* had been re-echoed in the report of the English Poor Law Commission of the same year. The same views, when they reappeared later in an amended, but not altered, form, received the unqualified approbation of 1 Observations on the Epidemic Fever of 1843. Dr. Alison. 2 Proposed Alterations of the Scottish Poor Laws, etc. David Monypenny of Pitmilly, 1840. 8 Observations on the Management of the Poor in Scotland, Alison. 4 Remarks on the Poor Laws and on the Methods of providing for the Poor in Scotland. Pitmilly. 300 Annals of the British Peasantry the General Assembly. Impartial observers had never faltered in their preference for the Scottish eleemosynary system of poor relief. The Select Committee on the English Poor Laws of 1817 spoke longingly, almost enviously, of “the admirable practice of Scotland.” Brougham, when moving in 1834 the second reading of the Bill to amend the English pauper system, expressed a preference for bearing “the evil of bad laws, worse administered,” rather than for running the risk of their sudden repeal.2. Was Dr. Alison prepared to undergo a greater risk by exchanging a system which, both in its law and administration, had been pronounced by so great an authority good, for one that the same authority had in both these respects pronounced bad? In 1834 the English were loud in their expressions of admiration, and earnest in their endeavours to imitate the Scottish system. Was it compatible with common sense that in six short years the Scotch should be return- ing the compliment ? Pitmilly then proceeded to criticise the changes contemplated. Com- pulsory relief constituted a legal right of every pauper, whether deserv- ing or the reverse, not to a help, but to a maintenance. It was, he urged, just this which had been the grand mischief of the poor laws from the very outset. If the doctrine of a legal right were admitted, it should be strictly confined to the relief of the impotent poor. It was by attempting to extend it to the industrious poor as well that English statesmen had erred. If the Scottish statesmen were alive to the necessity of thus conferring legal right, then the fixed fund of a com- pulsory assessment became needless. The principle of the legal right calls into play those depraved propensities of the poorer classes which every wise social institution seeks to smother. The good behaviour of State-subsidised pauperism could not be ensured without the inhuman workhouse test. Moreover, an additional provision for the poor at that late period would, he maintained, operate as a heavy tax on native industry, and as a premium on the immigrant destitution of Ireland. He was not foolish enough to ignore the fact that the difficulty of pro- curing funds by voluntary means was the chief weapon in the armoury of the poor law reform school. But he attributed the evil to that innovation which the other side represented as a remedy. It was the increase in the compulsory rating system which was throwing the poor funds of many parishes into arrears, The writings of Chalmers and the new statistical account of Scotland furnished sufficient evidence to afford his view of this case a semblance of reality.3 “Cherish,” he adds, 1 MS. Letter from the Very Rev. Henry Duncan, Moderator, May 27, 1839. 2 Corrected Speech of the Lord Chancellor in the House of Lords, July 21, 1834, Pp. 34 3 Christian and Civic Economy of Large Cittes, etc., etc. The Final Blow to British Beggary 301 “the practice of private charity and church collections, instead of choking both by the chilling influence of an assessment.” But Lord Pitmilly failed in his object. His commentary on the original statements of Alison drew from the latter the rebutting evidence of another pamphlet. The committee of the Association, finding in this last an able contrast between the excessive burden of destitution existing under the old Scottish system and the beneficial results already derived by the new English system, promoted its circulation by all the means in their power. ‘They had also been greatly encouraged by the alacrity with which the periodical press had supported their calls for searching inquiry. ‘The chief medical journals of both countries had expressed strongly their acquiescence in Alison’s efforts to connect disease with destitution.1 They therefore reiterated their demands for a Government investigation. Pitmilly might have been able to delay the new poor law, but was powerless to burke inquiry. The latter, it was almost universally acknowledged, could do no harm and might do much good. Accordingly inquiry under State control took place, and its results drove him and his followers headlong from the field of con- troversy. Influenced by the reports from the northern capital, the Government appointed, in 1843, a commission of inquiry into the administration and practical operation of the poor laws in Scotland. Its constitution did not please the advocates for reform. Contrary to their wishes, the Scottish element was greatly in preponderance. Twistleton was the only Englishman appointed to act with five Scotchmen. Three of the latter, being heritors, represented the contributors’ interests, and the other two, being ministers, were representatives of the local administra- tive bodies. The result was a report unanimous as regards the Scottish commissioners, but totally at variance with the English experts’ views on the subject. The former admitted the inadequacy of the existent system, but refused to advise the legislature to do more than patch it up. The latter would have torn it in pieces and reconstructed it afresh. The former had eard of the defects in the English law, and the latter had seen both them and its advantages, The former were frightened by the harsh names freely bestowed by the English press of this period on the workhouse managers and the central board. ‘They professed them- selves shy of so-called Union Bastilles and Somerset House despots. The latter knew there was no other way of dealing with an able-bodied pauperism, which, if left alone, would prolong the beggars’ reign of terror. The mass of evidence contained in three bulky blue-books was 1 Report of the Committee of the Association for Obtaining an Official Inquiry into the Pauperism of Scotland. J. D. Handyside, Jan. 11, 1841. 302 Annals of the British Peasantry wholly in favour of the views of Twistleton. Perhaps his five comrades fondly hoped that no one would undertake the task of digesting their formidable contents. In this view, however, they were mistaken, for Dr. Alison in Scot- land, and Philip Pusey in England, soon boiled down their information into manageable proportions.1. The very same year in which the Commission published its report the pamphlets of these two writers were found on the study tables of Scotch and English politicians. The extreme inequality of the relief came to be as well known in London as in Montrose. The beggary existing in Thurso was discussed by lairds in the lowlands and squires in the midlands. Scottish and English methods of settlement were compared in the business offices of Birming- ham and Manchester as well as in the legal circles of Edinburgh and Glasgow. After all, the one-sidedness of the commission was nothing to be lamented. If Cobbett had been able to damage the evidence of the English report of 1834, by proving the bias of the commissioners towards the abolition of our poor laws, what capital could he not have drawn from the nature of the evidence in the Scottish report? Herein was contained a consensus of opinions favourable to the enactment of a law which the large majority of the commissioners deprecated. If Chadwick, Blomefield, Senior, and the rest could have been accused of tampering with their English witnesses so as to promote their own views, could it not have been urged that the Scottish witnesses had passed through the same ordeal uninfluenced? This fact must surely have been remembered and utilised by those contesting both the later evidence of Sir John McNeill in 1859,? and that of the Committee on Pauperism to the Established Church Assembly in 1868, both of which reports went far to corroborate the early views of Chalmers as to the possible pauperising effects of a Scottish poor law. It must, I reiterate, have been particularly valuable when the thigging of Scotland had been still found to be as widespread and disastrous as the thieving of Ireland, when Dr. Guthrie was cursing the new poor law, and Dr. Wood was clamouring for its substitution by a purely voluntary system. The contention had then resolved itself into the question, not whether Scotland was altogether rid of the begging nuisance, but whether it was in a fair way towards getting rid of it. Were parishes as much as ever inundated with droves of strange mendicants? Were their annual 1 Remarks on the Evidence taken before the Poor Law Inquiry Commission for Scotland. W.T. Alison, M D., 1844. Zhe Poor in Scotland, Compiled from the Evidence taken before the Scotch Poor Law Commission. Philip Pusey, M.D., 1844. : 2 14th Annual Report on Poor of Scotland, 1859. The Final Blow to British Beggary 303 visits to collect from each district in turn their dues of agricultural produce as frequent as ever? Was the corner of the farmhouse or cottage kitchen still their shakedown, still the nest of vermin it had been of old? Could as many as thirty pilferers be yet counted on a Saturday afternoon collected about one door? Was the solicitation of alms as much “use and wont,” as destructive of all feelings of independ- ence, as encouraging of indolence, as promotive of impositions, as it had been in districts like Thurso and elsewhere? Were the heritors still as inclined to abandon a poor assessment in disgust as they once were in Oban? If so, could they affirm that no such horrible results would follow the execution of their policy as occurred in that parish, when, within four months of the abolition of assessments, three-fourths of all the bedridden and destitute paupers died?! Did men still imagine that the assessment of the rogue money? was a reliable substitute for that of the poor rates? The only fitting answer to these queries is a negative one, which the fact that the poor law still exists in Scotland renders indisputable. Let us then examine briefly the reforms which occurred when, a year after, the report of the original commis- - sion, 8 and 9g Vict. c. 83, s. 91, was placed on the statute book. This Act created a centralised control in direct touch with the Government by means of the board of supervision; and it provided for a more popular system of local management. It made one final attempt to include personalty as well as realty as sources of assessment. In the machinery arranged for his income tax measure of 1842, Peel found a possibility of including the former kind of property. He therefore left each parochial board in Scotland at liberty to choose for itself, among three different modes of assessment, that which, in its opinion, was best suited to the circumstances of the parish. The first mode was to levy one half of the assessment on owners, and the other half on occupiers, according to the annual value of their lands and heritages. The second was to levy one half upon the owners of all lands and heritages according to their annual value, and the other half upon all the inhabit- ants according to their means and substance other than their lands and heritages, situated in Great Britain and Ireland. The third was to levy the whole assessment by an equal percentage upon the annual value of all lands and heritages, and upon the estimated annual in- come of the whole inhabitants from sources other than lands and heritages in Great Britain and Ireland. The parochial income tax necessitated by the two latter modes was tried for a short time, and 1 Report from Her Majesty's Commissioners into the Administration and Practical Operation of the Poor Law of Scotland, 1844. 2 First imposed by 11 Geo. I. u. 26; finally abolished by 32 Vict. c. 82. t 304 Annals of the British Peasantry being found too inquisitional, was generally abandoned, and finally abolished by Baxter’s Act of 1861.4 The old qualification for settlement was three years’ residence, which, when thus earned, remained good until another three years of residential settlement had been performed elsewhere. The new law compelled a continuous residence of five years, without a single in- stance of recourse to parochial aid. The settlement thus acquired could only be lost by any subsequent absence from the parish extend- ing over four years.2_ Further, it conferred on the sheriff the power to grant warrants of removal in the case of any English or Irish-born person who had become chargeable in Scotland. This power was, however, made unnecessarily expensive, and became of little benefit, because no warrant could be issued until the foreign pauper had been placed on his trial, and evidence afforded of his birth abroad, his actual chargeability and non-acquisition of settlement in Scotland.3 In most other respects the new Scotch law resembled the new English one. A distinction was, howeyer, made in the qualifications of the local executive in landward and in burghal parishes. It is a question whether the whole system of relief in all three kingdoms would not have been managed best if Howlett’s proposal for differenti- ating it in populous and rural districts had received more attention. Though poor-houses were to be built under the union system, prin- cipally to relieve the wants of the able-bodied, they did not meet with as much approval in Scotland as they deservedly had done in England and Ireland. It was, no doubt, the larger practice of outdoor relief in the northern kingdom which, in 1859, resulted in there being five Scottish paupers for every single Irish one, and twelve Highland paupers for every single pauper in Ulster and Connaught.é This melancholy fact, for the time being, horrified those who had strenuously promoted the new poor law. But the blue-book of 1860, containing in its 595 pages the results of the select committee appointed on the motion of Mr. Crawford, member for the Ayr burghs, somewhat reassured the Scottish public. It finally dissipated the hopes of those who still hankered after the pre-Victorian system of voluntary relief, though it still left the vexed problem of indoor versus outdoor relief unsolved. 1 24 and 25 Vict. c. 37. 2 Hay wv. Morrice, Feb. 7th, 1851. 3 The Scottish Poor Laws. Scotus, 1870. 4 Annals of Agriculture, vol. xi. p. 4. 5 14th Annual Report of Poor of Scotland. Sir J. McNeill’s evidence. CHAPTER XX THE PARISH AS A HOME OR some time past this narrative has dealt with but sorry specimens of the class in which we are most interested. It is high time for us to inquire how had fared the flower of the British peasantry throughout the period of history occupied by the poor law struggle. It must not for one moment be supposed that, even when honest industry had been reduced by the maladministration of magistrate and overseer to its lowest ebb, there were no labourers who retained their independence. It may be, indeed, fitly conceived that throughout Great Britain the well-to-do ploughman was less to be pitied than the small farmer. The frequent visits in England of the rate collector, in Scotland of the thigger, to this latter class, must have heavily oppressed if they did not temporarily overwhelm it. The period including the end of the last century and the beginning of this is of especial interest, because we have then, within the compass of the four seas, a glimpse of British labour in its transition stages. Far away in the remote islands of the northern kingdom, we see the feudal economy of protector and protected still complete. In the most southern of English counties we find the cold business relationship of modern servicé fully established. The rest of the kingdom, from the Highlands of Scotland to the Midlands of England, affords us an insight into the various stages through which the old practice had gradually passed into the new. I shall not trouble my reader with another description of the tribal system of labour as still practised in the extreme north. I want now to show him the advantages and drawbacks which increased independ- ence brought upon the peasant. We have seen how in the north the causes which promoted that change in his status lagged almost an entire century behind those which had already taken place in the south, A commercial spirit entered Scotland’s burghs at a considerably later period than it had entered England’s cities. Feudalism lingered on in the landward parishes of the north long after it had been expelled from the manors of the south, 305 x 306 Annals of the British Peasantry and a compulsory poor law was not enforced in Scotland until it had been thoroughly tried and finally reconstituted in England. But before all these changes in the domestic economy had been experienced, the farmers and labourers across the Cheviots had attained to a con- tentedness which has never yet been the general lot of those on this side of them. One reason for this was that independence came on the southern labourer before he had been properly prepared for its privileges. The blessings of freedom are apt to become curses to any one whose morals and intellect are not sufficiently advanced to use them rightly. Education acts in two ways on human nature. It either makes a man. so discontented with his lot that he tries to better it, or it makes him despair because he cannot better it. The early introduction of the parish school into Scotland! taught the peasantry to endure the hard- ships of their present existence until they could by their own efforts alter it for the better. The prolonged absence of the parochial school in England made the peasantry idle and despondent, because they ignorantly imagined that it was other people’s business to remedy their discomforts. The Scottish labourers were content to live on the bare necessaries of life, in order that they might some day be in a position to purchase some of its luxuries. ‘The English labourers were far more improvident, because they refused to look beyond the narrow horizon of the present moment. “An English labourer,” says a writer in 1836, “thinks himself starved if he does not daily eat butchers’ meat and white bread, and drink malt liquor; whereas in Scotland milk and oatmeal make a plentiful house, and our ablest ploughmen take nothing moore. Potatoes, which the children of our gentry prefer to bread, are regarded with considerable scorn by labourers in the south of England. What an English labourer spends on his bacon, beer, and white bread is, in the hilly parts of Scotland, spent by the Scottish labourer on the education of his children.”* Never were there truer words than these. The superiority of the northern peasantry over the southern was, and is, almost entirely owing to differences in their respective dietaries. It will be my first duty to describe what these differences were, and then to undertake the far more difficult task of ascertaining the causes which gave rise to them. It must not be imagined that the peculiar stamina of the English labourer required more support than that of the Scottish one. In England a peck of wheat, and in Scotland a peck of oatmeal, had long been considered as equivalent to the daily pay of either. Let us compare the respective kinds and costs of the labourer’s meals 1 By Will. III., 1696. * Quarterly Fournal of Agriculture, 1836, p. 19. The Parish as a fHome 307 in the farmers’ households of Hampshire and Perthshire. When his employer had the catering of his food, the English labourer’s prejudice against all cereal foods which were not wheaten was ignored. In the English county for breakfast he was supplied with pottage made of oatmeal, salt, and water; for dinner, broth, made of hot barley, vegetables, and meat; each man being allowed daily 36 ozs. of oatmeal, and either three pints of sweet milk, or double that quantity of buttermilk. The yearly cost of such food was estimated at 415 12s. 0d. The Perthshire labourer had much the same allowance, with the exception of meat and broth. But his costs for food, fuel, and clothing amounted to barely half those of his English brother.t Yet _all writers concur in ascribing superiority of health and labour to those supported by an entirely farinaceous dietary. The unfortunate prejudice which existed in England against the potato seems to have originated from the fact that it was the chief food of the despised Irish peasantry. Wakefield’s evidence before the Committee on the Agriculture of the United Kingdom in 1820 tended to prove that the cultivation of this crop was injurious to the country. Cobbett took up the subject with his usual vigour, and stigmatised the plant as the “lazy root.” He maintained that it engendered slovenly and beastly habits amongst the labouring classes: first, because it could be lifted straight out of the earth to their mouths without requiring any implement besides hands and teeth ; secondly, because it predisposed them, so he alleged, to dispense with everything requiring skill in the preparation of dishes; thirdly, because, being an innutritious diet, it took the place of more invigorating foods. He therefore begged his south-country peasants not to copy their Irish brethren in scratching out the potatoes with their paws, tossing them unwashed into a pot, turning them out when boiled on to a dirty board, and then peeling and eating one at a time. Cobbett was hard to please. He objected to the potato because it was too expeditious a process of feeding; he objected to the tea-kettle because it was just the reverse. ‘“ When,” he writes,? “was a labourer ever too late at his work, when did he ever meet with a frown, with a turning off and pauperism on that account, without being able to trace it to the tea-kettle? He was up time enongh, but the tea-kettle kept him lolling and lounging at home. He will make it up by working during his breakfast hour. Instead of sitting down to bread, bacon, 1 4 Review and Complete Abstract of the Reports of the Board of Agriculture from the Northern, Midland, Western, Eastern, Southern, and Peninsular Parts of England. 1808-1817. Wm. Marshall. 2 Cottage Economy. W. Cobbett, 1822. 308 Annals of the British Peasantry and beer, he has to force his limbs along under the sweat of feebleness, and at dinner time swallow his dry bread, or slake his‘ half-feverish thirst at the pump or brook. To the wretched tea-kettle he has to return at night, with legs hardly sufficient to maintain him.” Though extravagant in all his views, never more than so in his imaginary fears as to the deleterious effects on bodily vigour of what he called “ catlap,” Cobbett had here probably laid his finger on one of the causes which placed the prosperity of the English labourer below that of his Scottish brother. But the chief reason for the southern peasant’s inferiority of vigour was undoubtedly the liquor perquisite allowed in harvest. For every Scotch pint of milk allowed to the northern labourer, a gallon of cider or beer was allowed to the English one. The pages of Marshall’s works teem with animadversions on this practice. Alcock and Eden were one with Sir Wilfred Lawson in their desire to keep our southern peasantry from swilling beer. Cobbett, though he raved against the drink per- quisite, and would have said and done anything if only he could have weaned his chopsticks from the bad liquors of the village alehouse, des- paired of lessening the Anglo-Saxon’s thirst for beer. He sought rather to institute a custom of home-brewing, and enlarged on the advantages of “the good fat ale” which could be thus obtained. It was this ob- ject which induced him to be so severe against any attempt of the Government to impose a tax on hops or malt. Marshall tells us of incredible drinking bouts indulged in by west-country harvesters. A gallon of beer was considered a moderate daily allowance for one of our midland corn reapers. We read of “four well-seasoned yeomen of Gloucestershire who, having raised their courage with the juice of the apple, resolved to have a fresh hogshead tapped, and sitting foot to foot, emptied it at one sitting.” To drain a two-gallon bottle full of malt liquor, without taking it from the lips, was no uncommon feat of the times. On cool days dregs of the gallon bottle might find their way down the throats of the labourer’s family at the supper-table, but as a rule they were consumed by the father in the midst of the standing corn out of doors. The Scottish peasantry were influenced by no such prejudices, and indulged in no such pernicious practices as these. They adopted the potato as a useful adjunct to the dinner-table, and remained unscathed by the seductions of tea and beer. The labour of their female relatives was made to become not only a source of value to the farmers, but a large item in the profits of their own households. When the women were not providing themselves and their children with linen and woollen clothing, they were adding to the The Parish as a Home 309 contents of the family purse by their labours in the field. The light employment of the parochial school allowed the little ones to shoot up into vigorous manhood and womanhood. But, from the moment that they could handle hoe or weed-hook, they were never allowed to re- main idle a moment. Daylight found them in the schoolroom, plough- field, or barn; candlelight revealed them carding, spinning, dyeing, twining, baking, cooking, washing, mending, churning, or cheese- making. A not extravagant estimate of the annual profits from such labours is as follows :— 4» a. Wife’s harvest, 28 days atIod. ... i ie ie E33} 24 One child working at turnips, etc., at 8d. oo Gains of wife and children at barn work and liste Gs in- dustries throughout winter ... a8 ae see SE 1G 7 10 to! When this total came to be added to the legitimate bread-winner’s earnings, it made all the difference between comfort and want. Kalm the Swede, when, in 1748, he visited England, was struck with the fair complexions, the cleanliness, and the affability of the Essex peasant women. He attributed their pleasant manners and powers of conversation to the fact that the town manufacturers had lightened their evening’s work, and thus afforded them spare time to give vent to their thoughts.- But it is possible that, if they had been as busily engaged after sundown in the manufacture of clothing as their Scottish sisters were, their families would have been the happier. The southern labourer never seemed quite capable of making two ends meet. No doubt in the days of Davies? it was an absolute impossibility. But even after the considerable rise in wages which shortly afterwards oc- curred, there was always a tendency to increase expenditure unwisely, until recourse to the parish poor rates became imperative. It was what Cobbett derisively termed the “Scottish feelosopher’s antalluct” that prevented a similar tale being told of the northern peasantry. The East Lothian labourer, pigging with his fellows in a hideous barrack, or watching from a dirty stone cabin his bare-legged bairns at work, never contemplated the possibility of losing his life of indepen- dence. There were no poor rates to supplement his wages fund. If the latter proved insufficient for his purposes, his only resource was beggary. The right of the English peasant to poor relief established 1 Systent of Husbandry in Scotland. Sir. J. Sinclair. 2 England. Kalm, p. 327, 1748. 3 Case for the Labourer. On p. 18 he gives numerous statistics of the labourer’s income and expenditure throughout England. 310 Annals of the British Peasantry an intermediate stage less independent than the status of the plough- man, and less degrading than that of the thigger. The very depth of the fall from absolute self-reliance to utter want in a Scottish parish acted as a spur on farm work. Besides being a ploughman, the Scotch peasant was more or less of a tailor, and in the manufacture of his own clothing had been so often obliged “to cut his coat according to his cloth,” that he applied the threadbare adage with excellent results to every circumstance of his existence. He had the sense to start his children in life with an outfit far preferable to mere perishable goods. They could read their Bibles, repeat the Catechism, write legibly, and sometimes even cast accounts. Their father married late in life, for the good reason that his future helpmate was spending a lengthened maidenhood in acquiring a dowry that was more valuable than pounds, shillings, and pence, She was learning to be useful in her future call- ing by serving an apprenticeship in the farmer’s kitchen. Her swain, meanwhile, was deriving habits of prudence—though, alas! not neces- sarily of morality—from the cloister life of the bothy. Marriage took place between the pair, and in course of time came the little ones. As soon as their lads attained to the estate of manhood, they were packed off to the bothy or induced to enter the ranks of the militia. “ Antal- luct” revolted against overcrowding, not on the score of decency, but on that of economy. The early education which enabled, and the stern parental edict which forced the children to adopt a useful calling, was remembered in the days of their fathers’ infirmity. Weatherbeaten wanderers sent a remittance across the seas, which, with the other children’s home savings, spared the old folk a degrading appeal to the parochial poor administration. Unlike the case of their English com- rades, there had been no roundsman’s economy to lower gradually their sense of indignity when having recourse to relief. The village of their birth had always been regarded as their home, not as their prison. When the absent members of the family returned from foreign parts, they were not humiliated by witnessing their sisters and mothers, their nephews and nieces, crowded into the workhouse. They themselves could hold their heads up and look each old acquaintance in the face because they “owed not any man.” There was a proper pride, but no false shame in the northern peasant’s composition. He saw no objection to the field labour of his female relatives. On the contrary, he would not have brooked their existence in his household unless they contributed by their industry to its necessities. The humanitarian feelings of our English economists were more easily shocked. “It is painful,” writes Pringle, in his report from Westmore- land to the Board of Agriculture, “to one who has in his composition The Parish as a Home 4a the smallest spark of the knight-errant, to behold the beautiful servant girls of the country toiling in the severe labour of the field. They drive the harrows and the ploughs when they are drawn by three or four horses ; nay, it is not uncommon to see sweating at the dungcart a girl whose elegant features and delicate, nicely proportioned limbs seem- ingly but ill accord with such rough employment.” ‘‘ What,” sarcas- tically adds Marshall, “must have been Mr. Pringle’s feelings to have seen these elegant nymphs, loaded by unfeeling swains, carrying the dung on their own fair backs to the field?”! Cobbett’s admiration for the beauty of our female peasantry was just as strong as Pringle’s, but he preferred to see it usefully employed, if only properly nourished and clad. He saw as much beauty in a piece of graceful digging as ina fair face. When in his rural rides he passes a group of pretty farmhouse hoppers, he, it is true, bursts forth into angry murmurs, not, however, because the girls are performing an unfeminine task, but because they are “ragged as colts and pale as ashes.” Pringle’s school of thought isnot without its modern disciples. My readers will remember a recent crusade against the occupation of Lancashire pit-brow lasses. Those interested in the threatened industry went the right way to work in order to avert the danger. They sent up a deputation of the women to the Home Secretary, who saw with his own eyes their robust health, and heard with his own ears their expressions of modesty and good sense. . The undignified labours of the Westmoreland wenches were infi- nitely preferable to the dignified idleness of those in Lincolnshire. The latter, says Goulton, “do nothing but bring children and eat cake ; nay, the men milk their cows for them.”® Their male relatives, on the other hand, were exceptionally sober and industrious. It is pleasant to read that they were well repaid for being so. Ata period when wages were particularly low, it was a frequent occurrence for Lincolnshire labourers to earn the almost incredible sum of 135. a day, and in addition a liquor allowance, fixed by custom at the rate of a pint per shilling’s wage. The preparation for married life in England was not nearly so satis- factory as I have shown it to have been in Scotland. The unmarried adults of the English peasant class were similarly circumstanced as were those of the Scottish peasant class. But they were acquiring far less useful lessons. We gather from Marshall’s writings that in England the 1 West of England, Art. ‘‘ Winnowing.” 2 Report to the Board of Agriculture, Secretary's, Lincolnshire, The idleness of these women is noticed in the more modern reports of Royal Commissioners. 8 The letter of Sir J. Banks to the Aznals of Agriculture, vol. xix. p. 187, 1792. 312 Annals of the British Peasantry masters had begun to discover that servants boarded in their farm- houses consumed more animal food than they did themselves. A breakfast of bread, cheese, and fat pork, a dinner of coarse joints or meat pies, supplemented with vegetables and puddings, and a supper of cold pork, bread and cheese, washed down at each repast with small beer, and partaken of with a gluttony peculiar to the Anglo- Saxon idiosyncrasy, did not predispose a youth to the parsimonious habits of a contentful wedded life! The female domestic was of that fastidious nature which rejected a good situation if such indulgences as tea and snuff were not allowed. The advertisements for servant girls in the English newspapers of the period particularly stipulated that no snuff-takers need apply. “Many female servants,” writes Alcock, “ are now beginning to insist upon tea in their agreements, and when from servants they go to be poor men’s wives they carry the same expensive habits with them, which being propagated by example to the offspring, the evil becomes epidemical.? I have already, in an earlier chapter, cited Cobbett’s evidence in proof of the technical ignor- ance displayed by those who were one day destined to be the wives and mothers of England’s rural labourers. The English farmer’s household, therefore, instead of, as in Scotland, being a good preparation for the married life of the cottage, was teaching uneducated men to be gluttons and drunkards, and women to be just as self-indulgent, though in a direction more gratifying to vulgar feminine tastes. It is, therefore, not surprising to find that large appetites and rude manners had so outraged the feelings of our farmers’ wives that food at the kitchen table was being gradually supplemented by a system of board wages. Now this circumstance has an important bearing on the respective degrees of comfort enjoyed by the Scottish and English peasantry. The labourer’s life in the husbandman’s household was a half-way halt- ing house between absolute dependence and its exact opposite. One great cause for the superiority of the labour and contented- ness of Scotland’s peasantry is found in the retention by their masters of all that was good in the system of feudal employment. By carrying this over into the new economy; farmers ensured a maximum of freedom for their servants, and at the same time reduced its drawbacks to a minimum. In the North the practice of hiring men by the year was more general than in the South, where that period of service bestowed rights of settlement. In Scotland Whit Sunday was the usual time for 1 It had its advantages, however, as soon as the village schoolmaster had had sufficient time to prepare youthful minds for a proper appreciation of them. I shall show this in a later chapter. 2 Observations on the Defects of the Poor Laws. Thomas Alcock, 1752, The Parish as a Home 313 engaging servants, though their actual duties did not commence till the following Martinmas. Farmers entering on a holding for the first time were often thus prevented from making a careful selection of their men, but in other respects the system worked well. Servants thus formally bespoken regarded themselves as permanent fixtures on the farm, and were anxious to create a favourable impression from the very outset. For one thing, they were subject to very severe punishment if they misconducted themselves, and for another, they. could not obtain fresh service without a character, both from their late master and the minister of the parish. The hours of their work varied in different districts. Generally they were not less than ten daily. As a rule the plough was in motion during winter at daybreak, during the spring and autumn by 5 a.m., andin summer by 4 a.m. In each season it was necessary that the teamsman should be in the stable at least an hour earlier, in order that he might groom and feed his horses, as well as eat his break- fast at leisure. In busy seasons the mid-day interval was just long enough to clean and bait the horses. At other times it lasted from I1a.m, till 2 p.m. Double yoking was general; but the single one, a survival, like much else of the common field system, was adhered to in districts where the farm buildings were situated at a considerable distance from the field of operations. A careful examination into the English Reports to the Board of Agriculture justifies me in stating that there was no noticeable difference in the hours of labour performed by the southern peasantry. The most remarkable feature in the hours of labour observed by both nationalities is their apparently unlimited numbers. Services, both military and predial, which at the outset had been uncertain, in the course of centuries had become strictly defined. Times of labour, which at the outset had been strictly defined, in course of centuries had become uncertain. In fact, free competition had effected what no labour legislation had managed to do. It had wrung more work out of the peasantry. If, however, a survival of the earlier economy cannot be detected in the hours of Scottish labour, it can be markedly so in its remuneration. Well had it been if it had survived to the same extent in the southern shires of England. Wages in kind not only contributed to the sobriety and frugality of the peasantry, but prevented them from experiencing the bad effects of scarce years and high prices. Indeed, it would have been preferable if at such seasons the labourers had been a little less contented. For feeling nothing of the pressure of want, they were tempted, in times when others were in difficulties, to consume more 1 The English peasants, as I shall show in a later chapter, entertained opposite — sentiments. 314 Annals of the British Peasantry food than was prudent. It was here, undoubtedly, that the system of parochial education evinced its value. It had so worked on the Scotchman’s innate carefulness that it tempted him to sell in years of scarcity, at an enhanced market value, the surplus grain upon which the more ignorant rustics of Dorset or Wilts would probably have bat- tened. Another advantage of this practice was, that by exchanging the produce of the’ farm for the labour of it, the interests of the em- ployee were, to a certain extent, affected by market changes, and thus were, more or less, identified with those of the employer. The bad season which had shrivelled the grain was felt in the cottage household as well as in that of the farm. There were various methods of paying labour in kind; some good and some bad. The best method was where the farmers of the whole district carefully calculated a man’s annual food wants, and paid them in meal rather than in grain. This was generally found to be 72 Winchester bushels of oats, 18 of barley, and 8 of pease or beans. If commuted into money, the cost, at the beginning of this century, would have averaged about £22. Such a system kept the labourers out of the alehouses, and did not leave them a surplus of food materials for the keeping of poultry or for selling at market. Immediately an individual was found to be doing either of these two acts, without special leave, he became suspected of larceny, and was closely watched. Unfortu- nately, other usages were creeping in. In Berwickshire, for example, hinds constantly demanded money and meat instead of grain. When labour was rendered abnormally scarce by the demand of men for the militia, the farmers were left no choice save that of compliance. What with having to keep a constant watch on the operations of the thrashing mill in order to prevent pilfering, and what with being reduced to sell only the inferior produce of the farm, caused by the nicety of servants in selecting the best of it as their dues, farmers were not altogether sorry to commute thus their payments in kind. In Berwickshire, therefore, £18 in money came to be allowed annually, together with a weekly dole of two pecks or 1741bs. of meal! In Tyneside the old and the new systems were both in force, a circumstance which induced servants to hire themselves to masters who found corn when it was high in price, and to return to those who paid in money when it was low in price. In other parts the farmer was accustomed to supply the men with whatever grain they required at a rate per bushel considerably below its average market value, the difference being carefully discounted in the yearly payments of their money wages. Though found to ease the farmer’s labour disbursements, it tended to lessen his profits in 1 Systems of Husbandry in Scotland, Sir John Sinclair, 1812, The Parish as a Home | ALG another direction. The men sold their surplus supplies in the market, and were tempted to add to the profits thus derived by illicit visits to their masters’ granaries, Do what they would, the farmers were unable to prevent the intro- duction of money wages. Markets were no longer scarce, and the loss of the labourer’s common rights was most easily compensated by pay- ments in specie. It was simple enough to substitute an allowance of milk for the old cow pasturage, but more difficult to find an equivalent for the labourer’s woollen clothing. This problem was solved by the innovation of sheep-money, which in Roxburghshire varied from 30s. to 60s. Around this nucleus of a money wage the system of perqui- sites fastened itself. When men were driving lime or other manures, loading and unloading grain at distant markets all day, while their wives were employed nearer home in lighter services, it became impera- tive that some substitute for their meals, as well as increased remuner- ation for the extra hours expended in abnormally arduous labour, should be forthcoming. In addition to their regular wages, therefore, they began to receive about one penny per boll for driving the market grain, and other monies in proportion to the importance of the various duties thus performed. The permission to keep a cow, a pig, or a few fowls, was found to promote domesticated habits. Perhaps, too, like Cobbett, employers had also discovered that the attention required by tame animals would otherwise have been devoted to the wild game of the heritors, At any rate, in most parts of Scotland it was customary to include the keep of a cow in the labour remuneration of the married servant. In Rox- burghshire it was generally pastured for six months of the year on the farmer’s grass lands ; for the other six months it was fed on straw in his cow-byre, and about calving time a fixed allowance of coarse hay or turnips was added. ‘This animal at least supplied the milk and cheese required by its owner’s family : a good housewife would generally con- trive besides to sell one firkin of salted butter annually, which brought in a profit of 50s. to the general earnings. In Berwickshire and Rox- burghshire, however, the farmers objected to the allowance of turnips at calving time. In other parts the hind’s cow either went with the farmer’s cattle into the turnip-field, or received six cart-loads of the crop annually, On some farms the allowance was only two cart-loads of bog-hay, or one of good clover and rye-grass.1 Such diversity of customs caused ground for disputes, to avoid which some farmers gave the hind his cow and her keep, selling her when fat and replacing 1 General Report of the Agricultural State, etc., of Scotland. Sir J. Sinclair, 1814. 316 Annals of the British Peasantry the gift with another. Other farmers, especially in the case of un- married servants, substituted an allowance of one Scotch pint of milk daily. A few commuted the privilege by a money payment of £6 annually. The fear lest the permission to keep a pig should encourage servants to steal the farmer’s provender led to a money commutation in this case also. The same objection applied to poultry keeping. Sinclair was astonished to find that the right of each Roxburgh, Ber- wick, and Northumbrian ploughman to keep three or four hens had given a livelihood to a host of travelling’ pedlars, and had set up an egg trade with London amounting to several thousands of pounds an- nually. Considering the quantities of grain required for maintaining all these fowls, it was no wonder that the farmers trembled for the safety of their granaries, and eagerly commuted what was probably an old feudal right into money payments of 55. or ros. annually.t It was thus that labourers’ fixed salaries were built up, just as, in medizval times, English landlords had gradually commuted their copy- holders’ predial services into money rents. A journey southwards reveals the process of commutation in all its stages. Just over the English border we find it optional for the labourer to claim either the keep of two cows, or £6; 24 lbs. of cast wool, or 125.3 so many bushels of various grains, or £8 15s. A little further south the payments in kind had been so long replaced by those in money that the fixed yearly salary rises or falls like any other marketable commodity. Speaking roughly, in the counties north of the Trent, at the beginning: of the present century, the process was in course of completion. In the Midlands, wages in kind were almost wholly confined to the food supplied to servants in the farmer’s kitchen. Further south, even this form of remuneration in kind was, as I have shown earlier in this chapter, giving way to a system of board wages.2 It was piece-work and the gang system that accelerated the change. It was the con- venience and justice of the old system which enabled some of it to linger on in existence to this very day. Farmers parted with it grudg- ingly, and often afterwards expressed regret that they had done so. At a time when landlords were rapidly increasing their rents, clergymen ‘their tithes, farmers their profits, the labourers were unable to exist without frequent recourse to the poor rates. ‘‘The only way we know,” writes an authority, “of making the labourer’s wages proportionate to the rise and fall in the value of money and provisions is to pay him in kind.” That, he maintained, would insure him, at all hazards, a 1 General Report of the Agricultural State, etc., of Scotland. Sir John Sinclair, 1814, 2 Marshall’s Abstracts, passim. [sassim. 3 Report on the Agriculture of the West Riding of Yorkshire, p. 202. Payne’s remarks quoted. The Parish as a Home 217 comfortable subsistence, and prevent those weekly visitations of the markets which exposed the thoughtless and inattentive to so many temptations. But even this writer was not prepared to recommend a return to a practice which English farmers had formerly found ex- pedient to relinquish. That Scottish farmers had clung to the old system, he considered a proof that it was still reconcilable to their habits. “In some parts of England,” he adds (especially in its western extremity), “a melioration, it would seem, of that practice is now prevalent, not having yet been there done away, viz. that of allowing farm labourers bread corn, at a stated price, let its value at market be what it may.”1 Kent advocated the adoption of this principle, and Marshall strongly opposed it. With the latter authority went the pre- ponderance of public opinion. The obvious convenience of having the teamsman under the master’s eye has, however, prolonged the presence of a few labourers in the farm household up to this very day, and not even the Truck Acts of 1831 and 1887 have succeeded in abolishing the harvest beer allowance, though this last survival of the ancient system was the very first which should have been suffered to expire.? Besides domestic animals, there was very little else from which the Scottish or English peasant could derive a source of profit. Bee-keep- ing died out as the drill and cleaning crop gradually mastered weeds and wild flowers. In Scotland fuel was still obtained from the peat moss ; vegetables from the kale yard or cottage garden. But even in these directions the frugal mind of the Scottish husbandman was liable to a shock. The permission to cultivate a patch of ground for cab- bages, or, as a substitute, a few drills of potatoes, in the arable field, was understood to include the necessary manure. So sensible were these ardent husbandmen of the value of their muck-heaps, that they grudged their servants this right. They even went so far as to put a check on their practice of mixing cowdung with the peats destined for the cottage hearth. In this respect, however, they were not more stingy than their English brethren, who, if we are to credit Lawrence, not only denied the labourer his fuel of this description, but prevented him appropriating the pigstye refuse for the manufacture of his soap.® In Berwickshire, each hind had the privilege of sowing about a peck of lint seed. In East Lothian, one-tenth of a Scotch acre was set apart for this purpose. But, here again, in many districts the practice was discountenanced, partly because the manufacturing and spinning of the flax injured the women’s health, and rendered them less available 1 Jd. ibid., p. 207. 2 T shall refer to this subject in a later chapter. 8 The Duty and Office of a Land Steward, etc. E. Lawrence, London, 1743. 318 Annals of the British Peasantry for farm work, partly also because the custom was to store the flax too near the cottage roof, by which more than one farmer had suffered severe losses from fire. The latter objection had some reason in it; not so the former, since the flax was generally spun in winter, when open-air work was at a standstill. From all that has been now said, it is clear that the superior health and labour of the Scottish peasantry is attributable to the retention by their employers of all that was beneficial in the old feudal economy. It may, however, be still doubted whether this superiority of the northern over the -southern working men extends to the sanitary arrangements and comfortable surroundings of their homes. Cobbett, at any rate, did not think so, and he had paid a special visit to Scotland in order to discover what kept its peasantry so quiet at a period when those of England were breaking out into chronic rebellion. It would seem that most southern agriculturists of this period were strangely ignorant of the northern economy. They viewed the country itself through the spectacles of Dr. Johnson. It was, they had read, treeless, sterile, worthless. The contentment of its impover- ished inhabitants was that joyless kind acquired by the stoic. Dr. Black had been telling them that the peasantry of his country kept their passions in check by the restraining forces of superior education. This had roused Cobbett’s intolerant spirit, and he determined to compare personally the Scottish hinds’ “antalluct” with the inferior intelligence imputed by Black to his favourites, the Surrey ploughmen. In the subsequent account of his visit, Cobbett addresses the English peasantry on this subject. After paying a fitting tribute to the excel- lence of the northern husbandry, he sums up in the following sarcastic remarks : “ Oh! how you will wish to be here! You will say to your- selves, ‘What pretty villages there must be there ; what nice churches and churchyards; oh, and what preciously nice alehouses! Come, Jack, let us set off to Scotland! What nice gardens shall we have to our cottages there! What beautiful flowers our wives will have climb- ing up about the window, and on both sides of the path leading from the wicket up to the door! And what prancing and barking pigs we shall have running out upon the common! And what a flock of geese, grazing upon the green |’ “Stop ! stop! I have not come to listen to you, but to make you listen to me; let me tell you, then, that there is neither village, nor church, nor alehouse, nor garden, nor green !” The Scottish parish, as a home, was certainly not a delighful place of abode in the eyes of so prejudiced a visitor. ‘Is it, however, to 1 Cobbett’s Northern Tour, 1832, p. 105. The Parish as a Home 319 be doubted that a really intelligent English labourer would not have willingly exchanged the whole of the artificial beauties of his sunnier surroundings for the health-producing’breezes which, originating amidst the solitudes of the Scottish hills, swept down through the sombre pine woods, and drove the fever out of the inhabited glens? Cobbett spoke as though he had never even heard of a kirk or a manse, as though a village alehouse were the more fitting substitute of the paro- chial school, as though decency ceased to exist north of the Tweed. He forgot that the hideous bothy, with its absence of back doors, privies, and gardens, relieved the Scottish family circle of those unmated adults, whose presence in the cottage bedrooms of the south had well- nigh exterminated the spirit of decency. Probably Cobbett’s deluded chop-sticks would have jumped at any possibility of exchanging the cabbages and currant-bushes which grew in their gardens, for the potatoes and flax which flourished for the use of his employee amidst the Scotch farmer’s plough fields. The advantages of a barking pig and a few geese are large, but they become dwarfed when compared with those of a milch cow and a few sheep. Cobbett went off with the idea that the bothy system extended to married peasant life. Could he have had in his mind’s eye the old-fashioned system, when one wing of the farm offices was divided into compartments for the use of the married servants? But a long time before his visit to Scot- land, cottages had, in the majority of districts, become isolated dwell- ings, though, for the sake of convenience, the abode of the byreman continued to be under the same roof as that of the cows. Scottish cottages, even when isolated, were not the picturesque, two-storied erections of southern England, but they were as plentiful as the latter in proportion to the married population of rural districts. Though no longer the indifferent hovels they once had been, they were far less commodious than those of England’s peasantry. But then, as we shall see later, they were only intended for the married hind and his younger children. They were rain and wind proof, which the thatched cottages of our southern counties were not. They were substantially built of bricks, and covered with pantiles or slates ; they cost from £20 to £60, and consisted of one room, containing a fireplace, two beds, a recess for holding milk, etc., an inner door, and a passage, the end of which composed a pig-stye.1 It was pro- bably the exception rather than the rule that they belonged to the. laird. Often they were erected at the cost of the farmer, sometimes at that of the labourer. The heritor, no doubt, was expected to supply materials in the rough, and the rest of the agricultural community 1 System of Husbandry in Scotland, Six J. Sinclair, 1812. 320 Annals of the British Peasantry carried out the details of the undertaking. In some parts—as, for instance, in Dumfriesshire—a practice prevailed of allowing the labourers a day off, in order that they might, with the aid of the farmer’s carts and tools, erect or rebuild these habitations for newly married com- rades, The Cumbrians’ daubing day signified the same custom across the southern marches. Tenements like these could be furnished by their inmates at a cost of £20 or £30, and, though outraging all regulations of a modern local board in point of cleanliness and sanita- tion, they satisfied the scanty wants of the frugal Scotchman. In many respects, they were undoubtedly superior to those “horrible English lairs,” which so shocked civilised society when ex- posed by the report of the medical officer of health in 1864. That they were not altogether so, must be attributed to an indifference to cleanliness inbred with the Scotch labourer. As long as he was sufficiently nourished in mind as well as in body, he cared little for soap and lime-washing, nothing at all for drain-pipes and ash-pits. Sinclair, even in his early times, expostulates with him because of his propensity to accumulate rags and filth. He points out to the farmers that such rubbish afforded a source of danger as long as it was left within easy reach of children, whose fondness for playing at fire was proverbial. Furthermore, he suggests to the peasants that rags, when periodically sold to the paper-makers, are a source of profit.1 Looking back on the labourer’s existence at this period, one is apt to dwell unduly on its hardships and discomforts. Could the people of an earlier epoch have looked forward at it, they would probably have regarded it with envious feelings. The present nicety and decency of manners is the growth of centuries. The economy which suffered adults of both sexes to herd in one bedroom, and which did not include the commonest of modern sanitary appliances, had not begun to clash with the existent standards of either morality or health. Fifty years later public opinion had reached a pitch of refinement which revolted from the rude customs and uncouth manners of the earlier epoch. When I deal with the history of this happier period, I shall discuss the evils of the labourer’s home life in far more intolerant terms than I use now. What was good enough for the “quality” in 1400 was considered good enough for the peasantry in 1800. If six labouring men and women occasionally shared the same sleeping apart- ment at the beginning of this 19th century, four times that number of the baronage class had often done so up to the beginning of the r5th.? 1 System of Husbandry in Scotland, Sir J. Sinclair, 1812. 2 Sir John Sinclair instances the interior life of the Tower of Pitsligo i in proof of this assertion. Ammnals of Agriculture, vol. xxxviii. p. 352. The Parish as a Home 421 Throughout this chapter I have, on this account, minimised the dis- comforts and evils of village life a hundred years ago—I am well aware that they were bad enough, and that the labourer of that period was worthy of less humiliating surroundings. But even if we make his degradation and misery out to be as extreme as possible, his capability of bettering his lot by his exertions must be borne in mind. The hideous barracks which once contained, Scotland’s married labour pro- duced a Burns. From the sanitariless cottages of England emerged a Cobbett. John Clare was the son of a pauper, and the grandson of a bastard. William Huntingdon was the tenth child of a Kentish day labourer ; William Barnes the offspring of a bankrupt farmer in one of the most backward of England’s agricultural shires. We hear of a Scottish labourer, only taught to read after marriage, becoming content to scrape mud off the roads all the week if only on Sundays he were able to study astronomical works. The achievements wrought by unaided, labour amidst the most dis- couraging surroundings are illustrated best by a detailed examination of some individual case. Ina former chapter I attempted to describe the rural life of England during the 17th century. I shall now make a similar effort regarding that of Scotland two hundred years or more later. The circumstances of the one period will be not very dissimilar to those of the other, because, as I have more than once suggested, the economical history of Scotland is more or less a repetition of that of England, only at a later period. I shall take care to select as the subject of my theme a peasant, bred and nurtured under the most disadvantageous circumstances of a disad- vantageous age. He shall be brought on the scenes when times are hardest. He shall be the youngest of a numerous progeny. He shall be nurtured on misfortunes, and domesticated amidst the most repellent of surroundings. Allthat he shall be endowed with shall be health, energy, a good education, and a “feelosopher’s antalluct.” His father shall be a lusty farm labourer, his mother a blooming farm servant. These two shall commence their married life in a wretched hovel, whence they shall migrate from situation to situation, until their honesty and industry have procured a permanent abode and permanent employment on a farm situated on the north side of the Lammermuirs. Here, once, a hard-working barn thresher, long before the days of machinery, managed to support a quiver full of children on bread, made out of that mixture of barley and beans vulgarly termed hummelled corn! In the year of scarcity, 1811, when wheat sold at £5 55. per 1 The following narrative is taken from Zhe Autobiography of a Working-man, Alexander Somerville. G. Gilpin, 1848. Y. Bee Annals of the British Peasantry quarter, and barley, oats, and beans were dear in proportion, his eleventh child, our hero, was born. So hard were the times that the father was unable to pay the parish clerk the shilling fee for the registration of its birth. He took care, however, that it should be christened, and this new addition to the kirk became henceforth known as Alexander Somer- ville. Though many backs and feet in the family were bare, stomachs and brains were kept nourished by means, respectively, of farinaceous diet and school lesson-books. The roughest storm and the coldest rain never kept the father from week-day work or Sunday meeting-house. Though labour sometimes lasted from sunrise to sundown, every member of his household was up in the morning for family prayers. Though never allowed an interval of repose in his fight with the wolf at the door, the bread-winner was always the life of the company at the annual winter suppers and kirnes.1 His helpmate ably seconded his efforts, by working daily in the fields, nightly in the house, paying its rent by her harvest shearing, and contributing to its comforts by her labour in outfield and stack-yard. While she passed to and from the barn, in the act of conveying sheaves to the “feeder in” at the millstool, she took care to omit none of the duties of motherhood. Our hero was conveyed frequently to her by an elder brother to be suckled. When he was old enough to observe, he found himself in the centre habitation of a row of shabby, tiled sheds. Its walls were scarcely high enough to allow a full-grown man to stand upright inside. The ceiling of its one room was but the bare roof tiles, its floor but common clay. There was an entire absence of cupboards and recesses. The grate was a few iron bars, and, like the one window pane, the portable property of its occupant. The only partitions in an interior, which served as a common living and sleeping room, were those formed by the beds. It was for the use of the bare walls and roof only that the mother performed her heavy task of stack-carrying each winter. Here eight children and their two parents were huddled: together during the dark hours. Here the father and sons returned at night after a tiring day’s work, not to repose, but to strip off coats, get down the “‘elshen box,” and with awls, hemp, resin, scraps of leather, lasts, tackets, and hammers to repair the shoes of each child in turn. Mid- night often found them thus cobbling by the fitful glare of the expiring hearth fire. Opposite sat their wearied mother, mending the clothes of her sleeping bairns, spinning lint for their shirting, or carding wool for their stockings. Family prayers were performed in the small hours of the morning, and then three or four hours of sleep closed the toil of the long day. By a judicious application of co-operative labour, 1 Harvest home. The Parish as a Home a29 o the services of the youngest members of the family were rendered re- munerative. It was their task to clear out the farmer’s cow-byres and feed and herd his cattle. Their immature strength was not sufficient to perform properly the first of these labours, so four o’clock a.m. found some elder brother undertaking it. A little later in the day he was fully three miles distant at his own work, whilé the children were journeying afield to tend the cows on the waste. Years went by; our hero grew rapidly; the bad seasons of 1816 and 1817 were being struggled through ; but the head of the family was beginning to decline in vigour. He was still, however, trudging off to distant work before light, and returning to his family after dark. All he took with him, in order to keep body and soul together, was a piece of oatmeal bread and a bottle of milk. All he found to eat on his return was the sixth portion of a few potatoes and two salt herrings. The hunk of hummelled bread had by now become too hard for his decaying teeth, and there was no fitting substitute within the means of his slender purse. Two lusty lads, apprenticed to trades, had to be provided with clothes and tools, and the bairns, still lingering in the home nest, had to be fed out of the 8s. which constituted the weekly wages of an elderly Scotch labourer. An English family similarly circumstanced would, for a long time past, have been supported principally by their rate-paying neighbours. Not so that ofour hero. It had been the practice of the wife, when a liberal allow- ance of oats had supplemented the money wage, to hoard a year’s pro- vision of oatmeal. By means of the bolls of oats, which she was now compelled to purchase, she managed to prolong the old practice. The miller sent his carts and lodeman for her grain, as well as for that of the hinds. She, as well as they, got her notice of “drying day,” and, with their wives, visited the mill “to light in.” Punctually she appeared and helped to throw the furze, shellings of oats, and other fuel into the kiln. The next day found her assisting “the mill maiden” to sift “the seeds.”1 By night she reappeared, seated on the top of the cart which carried her sacks of “ melder.” She was hailed by her little ones with acclamations of joy, for the sight of her thus situated por- tended a supper treat of new meal brose, which only those who had lived for many months on the damp, bitter oatmeal of a year’s storage in “the providing kist ” 2 could thoroughly appreciate. The worst supper that was placed before this family was ‘‘ bare brose,” and that dish only appeared when the cow was dry and the purse empty. The treats of 1 ¢¢ Mill maiden,” a girl kept by every miller to sift the ‘‘seeds”’ or fragments of inner skin from the meal as it passed through the mill. When ground it was called melder. 2 The receptacle for the dowered linen goods of a bride. 324 Annals of the British Peasantry palate were weekly broth, and more occasionally pickled pork, dishes of curds and cream, and the various vegetables belonging to the summer season. Winter was the period when nourishing food was least avail- able for hungry stomachs. On the other hand, its long evenings afforded opportunities for feeding up the brain. Our hero’s father retained his mental vigour long after his bodily activity had begun to decline. That he found the retention of the one some compensation for the decline of the other may be inferred by his sending our hero to school before he had attained his eighth year. It was not a parochial institution, but its dominie managed, by an inordinate use of the tawse, to whip some learning into the lad. He came home at nights with a bruised and blistered body, but with brains astir and wits sharpened. Perhaps it was well for his character that his studies were rendered in- termittent by the necessities of summer herding. By the age of nine he had been promoted to the position of herd-in-chief, a lonely occupation, which compelled him to roam far and wide in search of the cool pas- tures of wooded glades. With few exceptions the whole of his charge were docile beasts, and gave him but little trouble in diverting their attention from the crops on the unfenced infield. At those periods when they were ruminating he was climbing trees, inspecting hawks’ nests, fraternising with gipsies, and acquiring thus a deep intimacy with nature in her wildest garb. The Scottish “antalluct” flashes out in the way his mother utilised the lad’s spare moments for the purposes of her own work. The processes of the bucking tub and knocking stone, required in the bleaching of linen, were too laborious to be performed single-handed. Her boy could not come to her, so she took her stock- in-trade tohim. While, by means of an occasional cry, he kept his herd within bounds, the bulk of his attention was devoted to the linen in- dustry. On churning days he put his cows on to a piece of especially delectable pasturage, which so chained their attention that he was able to linger an hour over the business of his mother’s dairy. When in the ensuing winter he once more revisited the schoolroom, he had forgotten the tawse, and welcomed the change of occupation. He, however, now became the innocent victim of political fury. The news of party warfare in London and Manchester had penetrated even his quiet neighbourhood. His playmates were full each morning of rumours of fresh atrocities perpetrated by “‘ragged Radicals.” Any lad whose clothes showed signs of a mother’s mending became suspected of sympathetic leanings towards the rebellious camp. Sides were taken, and a mimic party warfare initiated. In spite of his parents’ midnight toil, our hero’s garb was but the ill-fitting, cast-off habilaments of an elder brother. Their scars and seams earned for the new wearer an unenvi- The Parish as a Home 205 able notoriety in the ranks of disorder. The results of the first pitched battle sent him home in rags, and reduced his mother to tears. The damaged partisan was, however, sent early to bed, and by the following morning his mother’s darning needle had enabled him to take the field again in a repaired suit of armour. Unfortunately, the experiences of the previous day were repeated; but this time the sight of his poor mother’s threads hanging loosely about him and the memory of her last night’s tears aroused the budding manhood within him. He struck a blow for freedom in passionate earnestness, and though he brought home on his face the signs of a severe pummelling, and on his body those of the cruel flagellation subsequently bestowed by his master, his sorry plight eventually procured his release from further maltreatment. His parents furnished him with a new outfit, and removed him to the parish school of the district. Here he acquired an excellent education, which afterwards served him in good stead when he became later mixed up with party strife in all its real sternness. The mock warfare at his first school was but a rehearsal of what he experienced in the days of Chartism. He was then, for a second time, wrongly suspected of sym- pathising with anarchy. I pass over the next few uneventful years of his life. He proved himself to be strongly influenced by his early religious teaching and self-sacrifice in the performance of his farm duties. The horses in the stable frequently beheld him in the posture of prayer, and the man helping him to load the dung cart noticed how he often performed more than his own share of the task. The time came for him to leave the family roof-tree, and, like his brothers before him, he now ‘formed one of the home circle at rare intervals. Belyve the elder bairns come drapping in, At service out, among the farmers roun’ ; Some ca’ the pleugh, some herd, some tentie rin A canny errand to a neibor town. Their eldest hope, their Jenny, woman grown, In youthfu’ bloom, love sparkling in her ee, Comes hame, perhaps to show a braw new gown, Or deposit her sair-won penny-fee, To help her parents dear, if they in hardship be.* At one period he is in danger of running away from the kind old mother. Being suspected by his father of having purloined some of the harvest shearers’ whiskey, he receives a public flogging. A mingled sense of shame and injustice fires the old border blood within, and he decamps secretly the following morning. In a day or two, however, 1 The Cottar’s Saturday Night, Robt. Burns. 326 Annals of the British Peasantry reflection brings repentance, and he has the sense to return and remain in statu pupillari until the proper period for his release arrives. A growing propensity for book-learning becomes apparent in him. He had known all about Halloween, had pulled cabbage runts blindfold on the night of its anniversary, burned beans on the bars of the grate, and had religiously performed the mysterious rite of the three basins. He now reads Burns’ well-known poem on the subject, and thus is induced to study more of his works. Anson’s voyage round the world is eagerly devoured over a bottle of milk and a piece of hard bannock in the turnip field. The new parish library at Inmerwick is visited and ransacked at other odd moments. At fifteen he is promoted to the office of ploughman. He takes some drainage by piece-work and earns thus gs. a week; hires a piece of vacant garden ground and becomes a potato salesman on a miniature scale; joins a gang at a “‘hag,”! and later is engaged at the Skaterow limekilns. We next hear of him plying for service at the Martinmas hirings. Being unable to compete with men of full years for the wages of carters and ploughmen, he meets with ill success, takes the straw out of his mouth, and the cord out of his hat ribbon, and tramps off sixteen miles or so to other statute fairs. Still disappointed of a master, he finally gravitates towards the Scottish metropolis, though, prior to a final settlement there, he pays his home a flying visit in order to take part in the family feast of Handsel Monday. In Edinburgh, after experiencing much opposition, he becomes a sawyer, and so gradually weans himself from the life of a farm labourer. He borrows odd news- papers, and makes-himself familiar with political questions ; goes to hear Dr. Chalmers, and becomes initiated into the poor law problem ; makes a first literary effort by sending a contribution to a local paper on the reform question ; is rebuffed, and attempts a second venture on the poor law problem, with better results. His success does not, however, lead him to despise his old sources of livelihood. The grass harvest season finds him wandering through the neighbourhood with scythe in sned, ready to take a part in bog-hay cutting. Corn harvest reveals him either in the Merse of Berwickshire or in the Lothians, plying for employment as a bandster. His wanderings from farm to farm throw him on the hospitality of his fellows for sleeping-room ; as a rule he is not denied a shakedown in the straw barn, but once or twice he is reduced, by frequent refusals, to dire straits. The thigger has been there beforehand, and people will have nothing to . say to honest labour when it turns up in the guise of the tramp. At last he finds the farmer of Bogend, near Dunse, in want of 1 Oak felling and bark peeling. The Parish as a Home R27 harvest hands. He accepts service, and joins in the kemping. The slashing down of its ripe corn, the mad strife of its shearers, and the instigation of its master and grieve, he finds more severe here than on any part, even of the Merse of Berwickshire. One summer’s harvest makes him familiar with the varying customs of both Merse and Lothians. The comparison he is able to draw between the work and wages of both districts is extremely entertaining and interesting. In the Merse, three times as much corn was hacked down in a day (it could not be called shearing) as was allowed to be done in the Lothians. The daily payment was from 3s. to 3s. 6d., or nearly double that of the other county, and the food was better. The appetites of the Lothian ploughmen and their Irish comrades were large and gross. To send out to them a breakfast of thin porridge was to offend unpardonably their stomachs. But, in order to render it as thick as possible, it had to be either boiled insufficiently or burned. ‘Singit parritch” would have raised an uproar, so the other alternative was practised. The milk in which it was boiled had been previously stored up for harvest use and salted. Our hero called it abominable stuff, and did not think that any Merse harvester could have been got to partake of it. Instead of the sour or lapperd milk used in the Lothians, the Berwickshire housewives used the skimmed remains of the morning’s milking for the evening harvest meal, and that of the evening’s milking for the follow- ing morning’s breakfast. Though the choppin bottle of small beer at the mid-day dinner was similarly weak in both counties, the loaf of bread at the Merse meal was larger. In Lothian, the farmer contracted for the harvest loaf with a baker, specifying that it was to weigh 14 ozs., but in Berwickshire the law was enforced, which ordered that each shearer’s loaf should not be less than 16 ozs. For the sake of the superior wage and food in the latter district, the harvesters sub- mitted to the severer system of labour enforced by its farmers. The Merseman taunted him of the Lothians with being content to “sup sour milk to his parritch.” The latter retorted that the Merseman was content with being driven at his work like a brute-beast. The broad flood of the Tweed separates the Merse from Northumberland, and only a tiny rivulet divides it from East Lothian. Yet harvest customs were identical in these Scotch and English counties, and widely dissimilar in the Merse and Lothian. The mother of a Berwickshire hind, on hearing that he was courting a Lothian lass, was wont to ask with dismay how he expected to get his scones baked, his bowyes plotted, and his rheams rheamed.! If he answered these three questions satisfactorily, she was content, as there was no fear of a Lothian daughter-in-law without a 1 Plot=scald; bowyes=milk vessels ; rheam=cream. 328 Annals of the British Peasantry “good providin’.” If, on the other hand, the Lothian swain wanted a wife'who could fill muck at the midden, and drive a cart, he crossed over into the Merse and sought herthere. His own womankind were too slow at their work and too long in their speech to be able helpmates in the field. The only remark he could make in their favour was that, “(Tf the women o’ Loudan dinna cut their words so short as they do in the Merse, neither do they cut their claes so short ; gin the lasses 0’ the Merse would eik the Loudan tone to their short goons, their short goons would set them the better, and maybe the lads would like them naething the waur.” When the sexes met in the harvest field, “ the Loudan lout,” as he was called, might reckon on a kemp which would stretch his skin before he got to the land-end in advance of a Merse maid. It was better for the farmer’s interests if the Lothian lads were content to follow. Their fair rivals would not be denied the leading place at a kemp, and would slash down and trample over the corn without laying it properly for the bandsters to tie in sheaves, if their chances of reaching the land-end first were in jeopardy. It was not, however, pleasant for Lothian manhood to reach the goal after one of these rude Amazons. Such laggards were told to “‘sup another boul o’ meal afore they kemped again wi’ the lasses o’ the Merse, or cast up to them about their short goons.” It was amidst such rough surroundings that our hero took his final part in farm labour. By becoming bandster to six of the lustiest shearers in Scotland his stubborn nature underwent the severest test to which it had yet been put. As we might expect, he managed some- how to stick to their heels, but this feat punished him so sorely that he was not sorry to turn his back on these scenes. He did not feel tempted to choose a wife from the women of either district. Unfortunately, he selected one in quite another spot, who did not realise half the advan- tages to be derived from his suit. Crestfallen at his ill-success, he enlists in the Scots Greys, and, after an adventurous life as a soldier, becomes a successful journalist. The moral of his life’s experiences is. surely that, amidst the most unfavourable circumstances of an abnormally depressed period, the Scottish labourer was capable, by energy and good conduct, of keeping his head above water until he could better his lot. CHAPTER XXI THE ENFRANCHISEMENT OF LABOUR A’ the beginning of the present century the British peasantry had not attained to anything like that advanced stage of indepen- dence which they have reached since. Our laws ‘for the suppression of wickedness and vice savoured too much of class legislation, being either too severe on the poor or too lenient on the rich. Ina general sense, the statute book ceased to represent the labourer as realty, but local Acts regarded him so in some of our dependencies. Shop-lifting and sheep-stealing continued to be capital felonies even here in England. The theft of a common was not a criminal offence, but the appropriation of a beast depastured thereon was a lethal one. We refused to put under restraint a man who by drink was murdering himself and starving his family, but we hanged his shivering child if she clothed her bare back with linen stolen from the bleaching ground. By the initiative of Howard, Wilberforce, and Romilly, many of these blots in our legal system were removed at this period. Moreover, we improved the lot, not only of the criminal poor, but of the innocent poor. Though free as to their movements and habits, the latter were still hampered in their efforts to control the rates of their wages and the taxation of their food. Seigniorial oppression had become im- possible, but seigniorial protection still lingered. Economists of the democratic school refused to rest till they had abolished the latter also. Mill told the labourers that the law alone must be their father. Cobbett insisted that they were entitled to take part in framing it. Opinions grew with the century. The elevation of the employee was to be effected by the degradation of the employer. All superiority in the social status of the master, save that absolutely necessary to the peculiar business relationship of a labour contract, was to be swept away. Even this reserving clause seems likely to vanish. There is no place, shouts the anarchist, either in heaven or earth, for masters ; thus unconsciously dooming himself and his race to a worse slavery than ever. It goes without saying that such doctrines did not pass unchallenged. Never so much as during the first half of this century was there need of a master’s control. Only in countries where there is work and recom- 329 a 4 330 Annals of the British Peasantry pense for all can a democracy exist. Wherever want is prevalent, an aristocracy is essential. The dictum of Harrison, that “the rich lick the sweat from the poor man’s brow,” even if it were true in Elizabeth’s reign, was certainly not so in George the Third’s. On the other hand, there remained unanswered the solemn question of Sismondi. He had come to England expecting to meet with the labourers on the reclaimed commons, and had found them more frequently in the workhouses. “ You tell me,” he said, ‘‘ you have improved the land ; but what have you done with the labourers?” Our shocked lawgivers went to work with such vigour, in order to remove this slur on the national economy, that we may fancy a Sismondi of the future having to inquire, “ You tell me you have improved your labourers, but what have you done with their masters?” In 1813 and 18141 we abolished all semblance of magisterial control over the working man’s wages, and in 1824? we took the gag from his mouth which the law of 1799 against combinations % had placed there. He soon found his voice, and raised such a clamour from the throat thus freed that by 1846 * we were reduced to silencing it by cramming cheap bread down it. Influenced by Onslow, the legislature had adopted a policy of Jaissez faire. The working classes were emanci- pated from the last traces of patriarchal rule before they were in a position to prosper alone. The Feudal landlords had known how to control popular passions, but the new commercial masters had not yet learned the secret of government. It was useless, nay, dangerous, to leave labour, like a riderless horse, to gallop aimlessly over the wilder- ness. It should have been conducted at regular intervals to its stall and manger. Carlyle asserted this in so many words, and set his face sternly against the doctrines of /aissez faire. He did not, however, expect the peasant to revert to medieval usages, “‘and go forth naked to the meadows in order to eat grass with the horned oxen,” or mount the scaffold because it was his laird’s bidding. The history of our own country had afforded us an experience of the terrible disorder which might follow if, as in the 14th century, tutelary powers became enfeebled. France, at a more modern period, taught the world a pregnant lesson of what might happen to aristocracies that could not govern, and priest- hoods that did not teach. Dean Church has ascribed the Reform movement to a revolt against country gentlemen in orders, who rode to hounds and shot and danced and farmed. “You are the aristocracy of 1 53 Geo. III. c. 40; 54 Geo. III. c. 96 repeals 5 E'iz. c. 4 (exempting, however, London). 2 4 and 5 Geo. IV. c. 95 and 97. 2 39 Geo, III. c. 81; 40 Geo. III. c. 106. 4 g and 10 Vict. v. 22. 5 Chartism, Thos. Carlyle, p. 57, 1840. The Enfranchisement of Labour 331 England,” said Cobden across the House to the Tory squires; “ your fathers led our fathers. You may lead us if you go the right way. But although you have retained your influence with the country longer than any other aristocracy, it has not been by opposing popular opinion or by setting yourselves against the spirit of the age. . . . The English people look to the gentry and aristocracy of their country as their leaders.”1 It was not, however, by the Six Acts or the Suspension of the Habeas Corpus Law that the masses could now be controlled. All shades of independent thought concurred in recognising that our population was outstripping the increasing productiveness of our land. The commercial interests were thus justified in demanding that the consumer should be no longer constrained to purchase only from the native producer ; but, on the other hand, the agricultural interests were justified in expostulating with a proposal that would take the food from their mouths in order to supply the wants of others. While these two formidable interests fought out the question, a hungry roar went up from the outside circle, which possessed no authoritative voice in the matter. ‘Moderate minded men were urging the remedies of emigration and edu- cation. It was then too lateto take empty stomachs to fruitful lands, or to instruct empty heads in the niceties of the problem. Food had to be brought here instead, and at once. While the people were contentedly devouring it, the opportunity arose for adopting elaborate schemes of emigration and education. Had not Peel and his country squires tossed cheap loaves to the ravenous democracy, it would have torn in pieces and devoured them. The only cause for wonder is that the seigniorial representatives had the courage to hesitate as long as they did. That they were induced to do so must be attributed to their recognition of the fact that they were fighting for very existence. That they were enabled to do so was because the commercial classes were never quite sure of the support of the Jabour class. But the subject is one so full of interest and importance that it cannot be thus summarily dealt with. I propose for the remainder of this chapter, therefore, to examine it more in detail. At the end of the 18th century the prevalent distress necessi- tated that either wages should be raised or prices lowered. A parlia- ment of landed gentry was naturally inclined to adopt that measure which appeared to affect least the pockets of their tenantry. It was the simplest thing possible, whenever the market price of grain was too high, to lower import duties, and whenever it was too low, to offer export bounties. But the legislature had found that the results of such 1 Speech in the House of Commons on moving for a Select Committee to inquire into the agricultural distress. 332 Annals of the British Peasantry periodical adjustments of our fiscal tariff were never wholly satisfactory. The poor did not appear to be as much benefited by them as was ex- pected. The farmers were always discouraged and often exasperated by them. As we have seen, the ratepayers had been drained of their last farthing. Apparently the only other alternative, therefore, was to raise wages. The Scotch would have nothing to do with those antiquated statutes which empowered the magistrates to control the rates of labour remuneration. In England, however, a party existed in favour of reviving this practice. Opinions only differed as to whether the magisterial control should be rendered obligatory or discretionary, whether the Assize of Wages should be a permanent institution alterable at stated intervals, as the circumstances of the times required, or a temporary institution called into being at periods of emergency. Whitbread’s proposal in 1795, though unsuccessful, gave expression to the opinions of a large minority of the public. We read of the magistrates of Quarter Sessions (as, for example, those held at Bury, October r2th, 1795) in- structing their parliamentary representatives to introduce some measure which would make the price of labour fluctuate with that of bread corn. The preponderance of public opinion was ultimately in favour of leaving such matters free for the decision of the contracting parties. Other expedients were resorted to, such as the regulation of rates according to the price of wheat, the allowance system, and the Cotton Arbitration Acts. Only the distressed weavers of Lancashire expostulated when a repeal of the Elizabethan statute seemed imminent. Pitt considered any legislative interference with wages highly improper. Ricardo was of the same opinion, and though Rose, in 1808, introduced a bill adopting the opposite policy, he took care to record his disapproval of it. Parliament proceeded cautiously, and went through the empty formula of taking evidence on the subject by means of a Select Com- mittee in 1809. When, in 1813, Lord Sidmouth moved the repeal of the wages clauses in 5 Eliz. c. 4, he obtained the unanimous consent of his Peers to his proposal, and, as already mentioned, the long obsolete Assize of Wages was removed from the statute book. Magisterial control over the rates of labour remuneration lingered, however, in another form. Wages, as was shown in chapter xvii., were made to fluctuate more or less with the movements of the grain markets by being largely supplemented out of the poor rates. It may be said that a very considerable portion of the pecuniary benefits derived by the employers of rural labour from the corn duties found its way into | the pockets of the peasantry in the shape of poor relief. The Amend- 1 See “ Economists as Mischief-Makers,” Econ. Review, Jan., 1894. W. J. Cun- ningham. The Enfranchisement of Labour 333 ment Act of 1834, by abolishing the system of subsidised wages, drove another nail into the corn law coffin. In 1795, however, Parliament was willing neither to raise wages nor to lower import duties, Nevertheless, it still hoped to reduce in other ways the prices of the labourer’s staff of life. At this period it con- tained a preponderating clement of the landed interests. Not so very long before, even the mercantile economists imagined that the com- munity’s welfare depended upon that of the landlords. It may readily be believed that Pitt’s Tory following were loath to part with notions so favourable to their interests. When, therefore, the Commons went (as they did now) into committee of the whole House on economic ques- tions, such as the prevailing scarcity, they very much resembled a National l‘armers’ Club. In the course of debate it came out that, under the existing regulations of the Assize of Bread, bakers found it to their interest to discourage the sale of any but the finest bread. The Act of 5 and 6 Ed. VI. c. 14 against forestalling had been repealed, but the practice was still an offence at common law.! This notwithstand- ing, dealers traversed the cornfields in order to bespeak the standing crops. They enhanced the price of the grain by disposing of it at immoderate profits to middlemen, instead of direct to millers and bakers. Farmers disliked the extra trouble involved in dealing out their produce to small consumers, therefore sold it to the dealers, Starch manufac- turers lessened the available bread supply by the requirements of their trade. Distillers did the same by their industry. ‘hese combined circumstances were considered as tending to banish wheat entirely from the labourer’s dietary. It was a purely English question, for the Scottish poor could never be induced to regard wheat-flour as a, fitting substitute for oatmeal.* In the south of the island, however, the peasantry would almost have starved before they would have adopted other forms of cereal food. Indeed, the authorities, in their alarm lest they should starve, were prepared to listen to every nostrum which might be reasonably expected to alleviate the distress. Suggestions wholly inadequate to cope with the gravity of the crisis, but calculated to fetter rural industry, received a respectful hearing. Many feared lest the legislature should be hurried by panic into dangerous paths. Fox preached caution, sub- mitting to the House that though all acknowledged the presence of universal distress, few were agreed as to its cause. There were two sorts of scarcity, he said, the one arising from a defective produce, the other from an increased consumption. ‘The fact that not merely 1 Vide Lord Kenyon’s charge to the Grand Jury at the Salop Assizes, 1795. 2 Attempts were tried, Vide Jottings from the Kecords of a Farming Society in Forfar, 1803-1814. Rev. C, Dempster. aaa Annals of the Britesh Peasantry corn, but all forms of food were scarce, proved that the difficulty did not merely result from bad seasons, but from a variety of causes. The House, in fact, wanted more information, and willingly gave Pitt leave to appoint a Select Committee of Inquiry. Pending its report, the Chancellor of the Exchequer was allowed to introduce Bills for regu- lating the assize of bread, for preventing the manufacture of starch, for securing the freer circulation of the internal corn trade, and for prolonging the prohibition against the distillation of spirituous liquors. This important debate aroused a spirit of inquiry throughout the country. Whitbread’s suggestion for greater magisterial control over wages, the sanction by Parliament of a new departure in poor relief, and these legislative attempts to cheapen the labourer’s bread were recognised as all tending to one end—viz., the succour of the poor in extreme want. The Board of Agriculture busily set to work in inviting experts to re- commend fitting substitutes for wheaten food. The editor of the Annals of Agriculture sent round to his readers an encyclical letter of queries bearing on the whole complex problem. Capel Lofft con- tributed a detailed analysis of the labour laws. Farmers forwarded to Young statistics of local wages and crops. Doctors gave the results of their medical research into the nutritive value of different grains. Meal- men published their opinions on buying and selling wheat by weight. Parish vestries discussed the causes of the high prices and formulated remedies. The agreement of both Houses of the legislature to reduce the consumption of wheat in their own families was read out at several quarter sessions. Extracts, dealing with the food and habits of the masses, from the wnitings of Burn, Davies, Eden, Romford, and Howlett, were requisitioned by every quack who derived therefrom a corroboration of his own visionary views. Arthur Young utilized several pages of his Annals to advocate Governor Pownall’s proposal for bring- ing both miller and mealman under the discipline of the statute book, and renewed the old outcry for a General Enclosure Act with such success that the legislature introduced a Bill to that effect the following year. So far the agricultural interest had not been menaced with legis- lative spoliation; but directly the report of the Select Committee appeared, it was discovered to endanger the so-called monopoly of the corn pro- ducer, by suggesting the establishment of depéts of foreign grains at the public expense. Henceforth the attention of the consumer, in times of scarcity, became rivetted on the luxuriant corn crops of the Mediterranean sea-board and the American prairies. The farm- ing world soon took the alarm. A letter appeared in the Annals af Agriculture from Mackie to Colonel Dirom,! demanding as an impera- 1 Annals, p. 561, vol. xxviii. The Enfranchisement of Labour 335 tive necessity a legislative restraint on the importation of foreign corn, and combating the well-known opinions of Adam Smith to the con- trary... John, Lord Sheffield, wrote a pamphlet pointing out that the establishment of a depot for foreign corn in Great Britain, whence a supply could be poured out at a moment’s warning upon our farmers, wotild soon bring ruin on native agriculture. These were but the first instalments of a mass of literature dealing with the subject. The legis- lature eventually adopted highly protective measures in favour of the native producer. From the close of the French War in 1815, and for several decades afterwards, the farmers had nothing to complain of in the action of these laws. But the prohibition by the Act of 1815 of the importation of foreign corn until wheat had reached a famine price was regarded by the great bulk of the community as the selfish action of the landowners in parliament. The time had arrived when neither the manufacturer nor the farmer could supply the wants of the consumer entirely out of native products. The cessation of hostilities had been eagerly looked forward to as the opportune moment for economical reforms. According to Cobbett, peace had been represented by a vulgar, greasy-looking woman holding a huge loaf in one hand and a foaming pot of porter in the other. The commercial classes were, both as employers of labour and consumers of bread, entirely opposed to any restrictions in favour of native grain husbandry. A class warfare had arisen between the landed and manufacturing interests, which gave quite a different complexion to the debates in parliament on the subject of the corn laws. For a time the struggle was limited to the represen- tatives of these two capitalist classes. Agricultural distress had culmin- ated in a crisis during the early years of the third decade of the present century. To have repealed the corn laws immediately after the peace of 1814 would have left the agricultural interests without adequate means for meeting the heavy taxation imposed upon it under the exigencies of war. The cheap loaf was not to be obtained until the farmers could find themselves in a position to provide the raw material for its manufacture at a reduced cost. A great meeting of agriculturists had been held at Lewes on December 3rd, 1821, the results of which had shown that, under the existing taxation, both local and imperial, little or no rent was in some districts obtainable. It was then that Sir John Sinclair published a manifesto to the 1 Book IV. ch. v. p. 3113 7th edition. 2 Observation on the Corn Bill, etc., by John, Lord Sheffield, 1791. 8 Political Register, 1804. Price of Bread, p.§21. Cobbett’s Political Works, vol, i. 336 Annals of the British Peasantry owners and occupiers of land in Great Britain and Ireland.’ He asked them plainly, whether their interests, representing three-quarters of the whole community, were to be sacrificed to gratify the wild specu- lations of dealers in foreign corn, whose avowed object was to supplant the farmer in his own markets. No doubt could be enter- tained that the distresses of the arable farmer were caused by the want of adequate means of protecting his produce from the intrusion of foreign grain. It had been wrongly assumed that between the years 1792 and 1813 our ports had been virtually and practically closed, though nominally open. The fact, however, was that no less than 19,483,644 quarters of corn had been imported during that period. The end to be aimed at was that, as long as there was a sufficiency of corn growths at home, foreign competition should be altogether ex- cluded. The difficulty was to ascertain the limit in prices beyond which the generality of the people could not afford to purchase their corn foods. Importation, in fact, only became necessary to prevent scarcity, and even then should be controlled by means of adequate duties. The legislature had adopted a policy of protecting averages without duties, but the manner in which the averages were taken was defective. Oats were insufficiently rated, and, under the warehousing system in vogue, depdts had been established all over the country con- taining imported corn free of duty so long as it was kept in bond. But this could be easily smuggled into the markets by cunning speculators. Even if it were left thus warehoused, it was a means of tantalising the public by its low but unavailable prices, and of discouraging the farmer from producing its substitutes on his own holding. Eventually the public and the dealers would be sure to coalesce, in order to enforce its liberation, on the plea that it was lying there to spoil at the risk of the community’s purse. Though Sinclair professed himself glad to read that the committee on the agricultural depression of 1822 had laid down as a general principle that the country should not become too habitually or extensively dependent for its subsistence on a foreign supply, he was not altogether pleased with the remedies it suggested. There was a glut of corn all over Europe and a corresponding depres- sion of prices. The committee, without specifying any fixed sum, proposed to ease the markets by reducing our import duties. It had not, however, Sinclair maintained, taken into consideration the great influx of foreign grain which would flood our markets by even a slight reduction of the protective tariff, when accompanied by the recent 1 Statistical Account of Scotland, vol. xxiv., 1823. 2 My readers would like to know how he would have substantiated this statement ; but he gives no details. Lhe Enfranchisement of Labour G37 changes in our currency. During the existence of a paper circulation, the importer of foreign grain could have only drawn on this country at the rate of from 14 to 18 or perhaps 23 francs per pound sterling, ac- cording to the price of gold. At the then altered basis of exchange he could draw at the rate of 25 to 26 francs per pound. This difference was so favourable to the foreign importer as to set at defiance almost any duty. Poor though the European growers undoubtedly were, they were so free from fiscal charges that they could compete with our heavily taxed husbandmen under far less favourable circumstances than those of a moderate import duty. Their poverty, however, precluded any possibility of exchanging our manufactures for their corn. The owner of food is the master of him who wants, and will impose his own terms on the purchaser of our manufactures. It was therefore easy for him to place taxes on his corn exports and on our manufactured imports. Our farmers were told that their monopoly in grain produce must be broken up. It had, said Sinclair, never existed. The number of occupiers of land in August, 1814, paying taxes, included 474,595 actual farmers. Among such a multitude no combination was possible. If one withhold, another will send to market.1 Were we to risk the humiliating terms wrung by a foreign conqueror, who by some day cutting off our foreign food supply might reduce us to the alternatives of unconditional sur- render or starvation? That was the goal to which we were travelling ‘by means of this new departure in our fiscal policy. Were we to condemn to perpetual barrenness the remaining uncultivated soils of the kingdom, when we were just realising what protection had effected towards the reclamation of Moorhouse, Holkham, and Barnby and Scar- thing Moors? Who could assert that the cultivation of such waste soils by means of fiscal aid had been bought at too great a cost to the public purse? The Committee on the Agricultural Distress had sought to prove that the cost of growing corn in any country is regulated by the amount of capital necessary to produce it upon lands Jaying no rent, and that it is the price of the corn thus raised that determines that of all other corn? It was more accurate to say, as a writer in the Quarterly Review had pointed out, “that the regulating price is derived from that of the corn raised by an application of capital for the privilege of which application no rent is paid.”? Where, asked Sinclair, was there such land? Possibly the answer might be, Where it was let on an im- proving lease; but then the obligation to improve was a rent. Only land in the occupation of a landlord paid no rent, and therefore rent was not regulated by the price of corn. It seems here as though 1 Evidence of John Ellman, sen. Report of the Agri. Comm., p. 54, 1822. 2 Td, PP» 43, 44. 3 No.1,, p. 501. Z 338 Annals of the British Peasantry Sinclair feared to admit that rent depended upon the prices of agri- cultural produce, lest it should be assumed that prices depended upon rent. Since his times a proper understanding of the rent theory, de- rived from a true conception of the expression “margin of cultivation,” has enabled economists to affirm the first assertion and deny the second. Excepting, however, a misconception of the rent problem, Sinclair’s manifesto contains a complete representation of the farmer’s objections to Free Trade. It is for this purpose that I have reproduced it at length. The best defence of the protective policy was found in the fact that our expenses of government had been arranged at a period when the entire wealth of the community was derived from native sources. An dmpét unigue, such as advocated by Quesnai, had been attempted, which, very properly, affected the pockets of the landed classes only. When it came to be found that foreign soils supplied the bulk of our raw material, economists, like Ricardo and McCulloch, were induced to advocate the fiscal policy known as “ Equivalent Drawback.” The disciples of the Free Trade economy turned a deaf ear to any such suggestion, and the results of their action are now bearing fruit in the prolonged depression of all landed interests. I shall not examine further the academical phases of this contest, but pass on to relate the causes which tended to degrade it into one of mere brute force. It is possible that, if the innate stubbornness of our country squires and the selfish greed of our town traders had permitted it, some reunion of the two interests by the junction of the Board of Agriculture with one of Commerce and Arts (as suggested by Sinclair) might have been brought about. As it was, the struggle was fought out to the bitter end without a single thought of compromise on either side, and ended in the ignominious defeat of the farming class. For atime the entire working classes took but a languid interest in the fierce political contest that ensued. The rural peasantry were not disposed to treat their wants as a knife-and-fork question. Many of them were still paid their wages partly in kind, hence disposed to regard legislation in favour of their employers as ultimately beneficial to themselves. As long as they were fed in the farmer’s kitchen during their working existence, and supported by the farmer’s rate con- tributions in their periods of infirmity, they could not be relied upon to take up any determined attitude against our protective taxation. Their mouthpiece, Cobbett, refused to lead them in a struggle directed against the corn laws. He attributed the cause of their distress to the heavy taxation required by the recent wars. If taxes were not to be reduced, corn laws must continue in force. The State lawyers, not the landlords and farmers, were to blame. A county meeting had The Enfranchisement of Labour 339 been held in Kent, in 1815, for the purpose of petitioning for a Corn Bill. The people had put an end to this discussion by the violence of their attitude. Cobbett sought to set them right by showing that it was one of two alternatives—the continuance of a standing army, or cheap bread. “It is the taxes,” he urged, “that are to blame—the taxes, the taxes, the taxes!”1 The wealth of the country was melting away from the farmer, the artisan, and the merchant,—in short, from all who contributed to, but did not draw anything from, the taxes—and was becoming heaped up in masses in the hands of Jews, jobbers, and fund-gamblers. That state of affairs prognosticated popular commotion at an imminent date. It came, hurried on by Wellington’s measure for abolishing small notes in 1829.2 Riots, intimidation, machine break- ing, and the burning of farm buildings, proceeded to such an extent in various counties during 1831 that civil war was anticipated. Heavy taxation had caused the invention of machinery, so thrashing machines were smashed. Heavy taxation induced large bands of labourers to extort wages from the farmers one-third higher than their grandfathers had received. Arson was resorted to, because tithe-owners had to be intimidated into remitting this form of taxation. Pauper taxation, amounting to over one half the weekly wages of rural labour, had to be levied in order to keep an average family in gallon loaves. “Think, gentlemen,” said Cobbett, in a speech to the farmers at Salisbury, in October, 1822, “of the occupier of a farm compelled to pass the night with lights burning in his house, with arms ready loaded, with his friends and relations collected together as in a garrison, with the doors barricaded, with all the avenues rendered inaccessible, with a force dis- tributed in preparation for attack; and think of the feelings of the master of that house, while his stacks and his out-buildings are blazing, and he daring not to sally out to face the invaders of his own farm- yard.” Men remembered these warning words when, eight years later, fires were blazing in twenty-six out of the forty counties that England contains. The Government ascribed the commotion to Cobbett’s in- cendiary speeches, but he had never attempted to divert the popular fury from itself to the farmers. The rioters in rural districts professed no special political grievance for their discontent. An incendiary was ‘overheard by his gaoler telling his fellow-prisoners that the reason why he fired stacks was to make corn dear and consequently wages high. Cobden got hold of the story, and suggested that if we were going to transport this offender for having attempted to enhance the price of corn, our statesmen deserved a similar punishment in legislating for the “1 Political Register. Corn Bill, 1815. 2 7 Geo. IV. c. 6. 340 Annals of the British Peasantry same object. The peasantry had not as yet associated their economic sufferings with the corn laws. They rather imagined that without them the relative values of food and wages would be worse for them- selves than they were at present. . They therefore took no part, either in the Spa Fields revolt of 1816, or in the Peterloo tragedy of 1819. They held aloof from the march of the Blanketeers, and they saw no reason for closing ranks with the Chartists of a later period. The Reform Bill gave the commercial interests a predominant position in the political arena, and disappointment with its results caused Chartist violence. But neither of these circumstances availed in bringing about a union of interests between the Free Trade capitalists and their workpeople. The latter had expected such an extension of the franchise as Wilkes, the Duke of Richmond, Charles James Fox, Alderman Sawbridge, and other democrats of the late century had con- stantly urged. They recognised that, unless they possessed a direct control over the statute book, they were not in a position to shape it to their liking. They wanted to put an end to a system of class legisla- tion altogether, not merely to the corn laws in particular. The collision with the military at Birmingham, the proposed general strike, the huge petitions to Parliament, the Monmouthshire outbreak, the subsequent northern and midland riots, the final, giant gathering on Kennington Common, were all expressions of the masses’ wish to possess the means of bettering their lot by constitutional agencies. Our statesmen were too cautious to concede such dangerous privileges. They treated what was really a Communistic movement as though it were a food question. By doing so, time was afforded them for educating the ignorant. It was hoped, not without good reason, that with superior knowledge would come more moderate views. The parliamentary reforms, which were in 1867 and 1885 more or less prudent measures, would have been precarious ones in 1848. Every- thing was to be gained by temporising; all might be wrecked by too precipitate action. The Free Traders detected this policy, and re- cognised that they had hitherto placed too much reliance on parlia- mentary action. Without outside pressure, disunion would have lingered on, even in their own circles. Many thought it would be time enough to complain of their liability to famine when the famine came. Between Hunt’s trial at York in 1820, and the bank failures and factory burnings of 1826, there had been intervals of commercial prosperity, during which landlords’ rents were harder to collect than was the Saturday’s basket of the operative to fill. The Corn Law catechism of Col. Thompson and the Free Trade essays in the Westminster Review and Tuit’s Magazine did not always The Enfranchisement of Labour 341 arouse the spirit that was intended by such literature. Few agi- tators, save Thompson, ventured, for some time to come, to penetrate agricultural circles. The assertions of the organ of the Anti-Corn Law League were combated by manifestos emanating from the central Agricultural Society of Great Britain and Ireland. The League’s lecturers were intimidated by the violence of the rural peasantry. The Chartists placarded the walls of Manchester with denunciations of the Free Trade policy. The disciples of the Manchester school accordingly somewhat modified their tactics. They recognised that, in order to influence the masses, they must appeal to the stomach instead of to the brain, to the eye more than to the ear. They therefore caused a number of loaves to be carried on poles, exhibiting the relative proportions of the English, Polish, and American loaves. They dealt largely in devices and mottos, and when they addressed uneducated audiences, based the justice of their cause on such ocular proofs as surrounding objects afforded. Many of their principal orators, such as Cobden and Prentice, were farmers’ sons. These men were quick to derive capital out of a herd of cattle passing by on its way to Manchester, the ragged clothing of their audience, or the disgraceful condition of their dwellings. It was easy thus to identify the interests of town and rural populations. Did not the factory hands supply a market for the farmer’s beef, and were not the latter’s younger sons destined for the townsman’s counting-house? By these and other means the agitation spread, until it travelled up to , the big towns of Scotland and down to the scattered hamlets of southern England. The editor of a north country agricultural organ asserted that the farmers secretly sympathised with the movement. An East Lothian husbandman gave an unqualified support to it.. The attacks perpetrated in 1842 on corn millers, flour dealers, and bread bakers seemed to prove that, however influenced the Chartists might be by the doctrines of the Protectionists, the other sections of the working classes were favourable to those of the League. The following year found Cobden, Bright, and others addressing audiences in such agri- cultural centres as Norfolk, Suffolk, Somersetshire, and Huntingdonshire. The Protectionist champion, Dr. Sleigh, was worsted. at a political contest instituted at Aylesbury, and Cobden was greeted with loud cheers on appearing to speak at Maidstone. Resolutions in favour of the repeal of the corn laws were being carried by large majorities at meetings held on market day at various county towns. News of an approaching visit by the Free Traders to Canterbury got abroad, and strenuous efforts were made by the local agriculturists to defeat the resolution which was sure to be put to the crowd. Each farmer was 342 Annals of the British Peasantry expected to attend with a following of four or five labourers, The anti-corn law leaders anticipated a repetition of the old scenes, when their oratory was interrupted by the ringing of bells, firing of guns, pelting of eggs and mud. They went under a presentiment of being quelled by groans and hootings, and they found the labourers conspic- uous by their absence, the farmers cordial in their acclamations of approval. The former, who had at last been taught, by means of the Poor Law Amendment Act, that if they did not work neither should they eat, were beginning to ask themselves the question whether, if they did work, the corn duties would permit of their eating. The latter had been at length brought to doubt whether, after all, the corn laws were not a means “of raising rents, of paying off mortgages, of fulfilling marriage settlements, and of maintaining honourable baronets in their proper social station.”! Those who adopted these views made no secret of their opinions, finding it preferable to face the hostility of their landlords rather than to risk the violence of their labourers. The chief organs of the Protectionist press began to assume a despondent tone. Even in districts where the farmers were staunch to their tra- ditional policy, the labourers were kicking over the traces. A political meeting was arranged in Wiltshire, and the masters threatened with instant dismissal any employee who attended it. The labourers set them at defiance, and swarmed around the Free Trade platforms. The spring of 1845 came, and brought with it a spell of seasonable weather. After a dry seed-time ensued a refreshing rain. The crops flourished, and the spirits of their owners rose. But the downpour failed to show any signs of abatement. The landowning M.P.s looked from under their umbrellas in gloomy expectancy as they passed to and from the House. Rumours of the failure of the potato crop became prevalent. Prudent farmers and benevolent squires began to hoard the early yield, and were ridiculed for doing so by their less despondent neighbours. Then came the awful news from Ireland. Famine was no longer an event of the future; it was already established across St. George’s Channel, and its arrival here in England was a mere question of weeks. Nothing more hopeless and gloomy can be pictured than the situation of the Protectionist party in the House of Commons at this period. In front of them was arrayed theserried phalanx of the Anti-Corn Law League; behind them sat the half-hearted Whigs; outside pattered on the pavement the devastating rain-drops; within their pockets rested the despondent letters of their land agents; thoughts of recent agrarian riots disquieted their minds; fears of what further violence might be in store paralysed their brains. The prorogation of Parliament 1 History of the League. A. Prentice, 1853. The Enfranchisement of Labour 343 early in August enabled the wretched squires to get back home and see with their own eyes that little brown spot on the potato leaf, which was so soon to destroy their political prestige. The rumours of great economic changes kept everybody’s nerves on the stretch. There was that Strange mental sensation of electrical tension, which invariably accom- panies the flash of forked lightning. The oft-recurring thunder-claps which had so upset the economy of the vegetable world seemed, indeed, to have their counterpart in the prolonged storm murmurs pervading the political atmosphere. As the autumn progressed, there came sure signs of national bewilderment in the frequent meetings of the Cabinet. Assertions and contradictions concerning the imminent opening of the ports followed each other in rapid succession. While ministers hesi- tated, the letter of Lord John Russell, from Edinburgh, announcing his complete detachment from Protectionist principles, removed all further doubt. All that remained for ministers to do was to give the altered views of the Whig party expression in the statute book. The papers in which the letter first appeared must have been but sorry reading to the monopolists of our grain markets. Russell’s action was not merely the surrender of an important out-work, it was the betrayal of the citadel itself. The corn laws were the key of the seigniorial position. Their defence had been the special duty of every seigniorial magnate. There was no hope of retrieving the disaster after such a politician as Russell had publicly execrated these laws as “the blight of commerce, the bane of agriculture, the source of bitter divisions among classes, the cause of penury, fever mortality, and crime among the people.” A ministerial crisis, as was inevitable, took place. Peel asked her Majesty to relieve him from the cares of government. Happily for the dignity of the aristocracy, her Majesty demurred. It was better that the blow should be dealt by friendly hands. If seigniorial mono- polies, like the control of the corn market, had to be relinquished, it was fitting that they should be conceded, and not extorted. The interval that still elapsed before the meeting of Parliament in the following year was utilised by politicians in the construction ofa Repeal Ministry ; by philanthropists (of whom, be it said to their lasting credit, the squires were a large part) in improvising measures of relief for the distressed Irish peasantry. Henceforth, “the agricultural labourers might recruit their exhausted strength with abundant and untaxed food;”1 but the ancient seigniorial party had received its death-blow, and bitterly recognised the fact. 1 Peel’s speech on Feb. 9, 1846. CHAPTER XXII THE SOCIAL ELEVATION OF THE LABOURER VEN in the times when our legislators were shunning a patri- archal system of Statecraft, and “Captain Swing ”+ was at his nightly business, and farm labourers were adopting the habits of banditti, and the squirearchy was being harried by the fundlords, most country gentlemen clung to the charitable practices of their forefathers. They saw no occasion for resigning their protectorate over the villages, continued to demand the traditional obeisance from their inferiors, and the long-observed deference from their equals, but paid royally for such empty attentions in the usual coin which the privilege to patronise involves. It was indeed entirely owing to private beneficence that the first traces of elevation in the labourer appeared at the beginning of this century. Yet the squire, for his actions at this period, has been stig- matised with such opprobrious names as land-grabber and pauperiser. He is said to have robbed the peasant of his rights merely in order to return them to him in the form of doles; to have taken away his cow pasturage and firewood, and bestowed on him blankets and coal in- stead ; in fact, to have first reduced him to want, then relieved his want ; and finally traded on the gratitude which such depraved charity excited. These are the views of many who have wished to introduce prematurely democratic principles into the ancient birthplaces of feudalism. I cannot so read history ; for though the manorial system had been long moribund, seigniorial guardianship was bound to linger until the village society had grown in worldly wisdom. The teaching of Christianity, that the rich should relieve the poor, was cheerfully obeyed ; but the teaching of demagogues, that the poor must exact that form of relief, was calculated to dry up the sources of benevolence. Economists began to suggest that seigniorial generosity was misapplied. The poor should be helped in such a way as to induce them to help themselves. The sentiment of gratitude must be eliminated from labour contracts. Obedience in return for protection ought only to be the bargain between the individual and society, not between man and master. These doctrines were, however, practically impossible, until the schoolmaster 1 A name assumed by the incendiaries who attempted to imitate Luddite habits. 344 The Social Elevation of the Labourer 345 had established himself in the village. Feudal customs were bound to linger while the habits of uneducated minds were being eradicated. It was during this transition stage that our country squires incurred the charges of land-grabbing and pauperising. Now, regarding the first of these accusations, there is, Arima facie, a strong case against them. The privilege of the peasant to pasture his cattle and cut his firewood on the lord’s waste lingered on into Georgian times. The Enclosure Acts, in the last three decades of the 18th century and the first three of the roth, gradually extinguished it, If the peasantry received no equivalent for this deprivation, either in extra wages or otherwise, they suffered a loss which the plea of general utility could only in part justify. But the poorer classes of the community had not, it is clear, the means of utilising these great areas of unreclaimed land, and therefore left them for the greater part un- occupied. The welfare of society was enhanced by their conversion into wealth-producing districts. When what was once a wilderness has become, by cultivation, a paradise, it is absurd to demand that it should be handed back to its original owners. The case may be compared to the transactions of two parties, 4 and B J sees A killing a pig, and notices that he neglects to utilise its skin. & therefore picks it up, and pays 4 to convert it into a purse for B’s gold. A wakes up to the fact that what he has originally cast off as rubbish has become a useful article of every-day life, and therefore demands it back, together with its contents. 2, who has been at all the risk and cost of the metamorphosis, naturally refuses to comply. He is, however, careful in future to leave 4’s pigskins in the useless condition that he finds them. It is not as though the enclosure of wastes had been, as a rule, effected surreptitiously. The statute book took care to prevent this. If the Acts of Merton and II. Westminster had been more concerned with seigniorial interests than with popular, those of the Tudor period strongly upheld democratic usages on the ancient folcland. If those of the last century had damaged the rights of the peasantry, it was yecause the peasantry had failed to utilise the powers which Parliament ook care to give them. But, notwithstanding these facts, there remain the frequent evidences of history to prove that the peasantry were never willing parties to such egislation. Dykes and hedges were overthrown in 1285,! in 1381,* n 1549,® in 1607,“ in 1670,° in 1720,° as they are occasionally nowa- lays. How, then, did the British peasantry thus lose their hold over the 1 13 Ed. I.c. 46. 2 Peasants’ Rebellion. 3 Kett’s Rebellion. 4 Riots of Levellers. 5 22 and 23 Car. II. c. 7. 6 6 Geo. I. u. 16. 346 Annals of the British Peasantry soil, and who is to blame for so deplorable a result? In dealing his- torically with these questions, it behoves us to bear in mind that land tenure in miniature has to be considered from economic and political points of view as well as from social. Furthermore, we must remember that there are different kinds of land tenure possible to a labouring class. The inexpert politician is very apt to confuse allotments with cottage farms, and to imagine that the many thousand Enclosure Acts of the Georgian period dealt only with uncultivated commons. It is curious to note how differently the enclosure problem has been handled at various epochs. First it was a war question, then a wool one, next a timber one, a little later a corn one, and nowadays a moral one. In mediaeval times the labourer was also both a farmer and a warrior. To enclose the common arable field was to drive him away, and thus convert him into an effete townsman. In the peaceful period that followed the Wars of the Roses, a fleece became more valuable than a bowman, Therefore, to convert the common arable field into a sheep-walk was a public benefit. When, during the last century, a timber famine threatened to impair the efficiency of our navy, wastes were enclosed for the sake of arboriculture, and when the land under cultiva- tion became insufficient to supply the wants of our corn consumers, they were enclosed for the sake of our food supplies. The rural exodus that occurred six hundred years ago was regarded by the public with very different sentiments from that of three hundred years ago, and the latter again with very different sentiments from those respec- tively of a hundred years ago and of the present day. The four acres and a cottage of Elizabethan times was intended to be an act of restitution to the cotarii and bordarii, whom the commercial suc- cessors of the ecclesiastical landlords had disinherited. The ‘three acres and a cow” agitation of recent times, and the increase of the maximum allotment limit to four acres in the new Parish Councils Act, were intended to be deeds of restitution to the labourers, whose in- terests the Enclosure Commissioners had failed to protect. The draw- back to such measures is that they cannot be equally beneficial in their social, economic, and political results. The effect of the Elizabethan Small Holdings Act was to lessen the supply of cottages, and thus drive the peasantry under the alehouse roof. The effect of the Vic- torian Small Holdings Acts may possibly be to convert a flourishing labourer into an impoverished farmer. But, on the other hand, the Elizabethan measure stopped a rural exodus when labour was scarce, and the Victorian measure will, no doubt, be of economic benefit in substituting a native supply of vegetables and eggs for a foreign one. But all history proves that, if not on economical grounds, on social, The Soctal Elevation of the Labourer 347 and if not on social, on political, petite culture has been considered essential to the true interests of the community. For one or other of these reasons the small freeholder was encouraged by the Act of 1236,! and the small farmer by that of 1489,? and the small copyholder by that of 1550, and the peasant holder by that of 1589;4 a class of legislation which met with the full approval of politicians, philanthro- pists, and historians at all ages.5 I shall not, however, dwell long on the purely historical phase of the problem. In no single instance amidst the numerous so-called “private” Enclosure Acts of the Georgian period was injustice to the proprietary claims of the peasantry intended. If they did not come forward with other owners of common rights to claim their allotment of land, or money compensation, it was because they either were in- different to the proposed Enclosure Act, or not quite sure whether long enjoyed pasturage and fuel practices had been theirs by right or theirs by sufferance. Those even who could produce a prescriptive title to common rights were no doubt often deterred from pressing it by their ignorance of legal usages, or their fears of legal costs. The period when the necessity for enclosing began was some considerable time before the commencement of the American War in 1775. The peasant was then in exceptionally affluent circumstances. His food and cloth- ing were cheaper, his rent lower, his pay better, than they had been for some time past. There was a superabundance of waste lands to afford him his fuel and pasturage. He was lulled into apathy by an abnormal sense of ease. When he became aroused to arealisation of his loss, the enclosure system had become an established custom The period when the passion for enclosing was at its full height? was that when the increased cost of living deprived the peasant of the means for utilising the waste. He therefore could not well object to the reclama- tion of it, especially as this process enabled him to derive from his labour on it similar profitable results to those which his cow or goose had once afforded. The yeomen were sinking into the condition of labourers, the labourers into that of paupers. Fresh capitalists were entering into the possession of the soil. The introduction of green 1 20 Hen. III. c. 4. 2 4 Hen. VIL. c. 19. 3 3 and 4 Ed. VI. c. 3. 4 31 Eliz. c. 7. 5 For examples, Bacon, Holingshed, Davies, and Froude. 6 Magazine of the Labourers’ Friendly Soctety, p. 40, 1831. 7 Between the first Enclosure Act in 1710 and the last in 1760, 334,974 acres only had been thus appropriated. Between 1760 and 1867, 7,325,439 acres were enclosed. Compare Estimates of the Select Committee in 1827, Porter’s Progress of the Nation, sub voc. Agriculture, and Report of the Commission on the Employment of Young Persons, Women and Children in 1867, 19 November, 1867. 348 Annals of the British Peasantry crops was destroying common field husbandry ; and landlords, finding it more economical to let large farms than small ones, took both to enclosing and engrossing. When, therefore, an enclosure agitation arose in any district, the principal proprietors called a general meeting of all persons entitled to or interested in a right.of common. If a majority of two-thirds or of three-fourths in value was favourable to a division of the common, notices were affixed to the door of the parish church, signifying the intention of the parties to apply by petition to Parliament for an Act empowering and requiring commissioners and arbitrators to make the division. The preamble of the Bill set forth a list of all persons who, as proprietors of ancient messuages and dwell- ing-houses, or sites of ancient messuages and dwelling-houses, were entitled to various rights of commonage.! It is more than probable that few labourers’ names appeared thus. Philanthropists and statesmen alone watched the interests of the peasantry at this crisis. When it was a case of enclosing the common arable field, the subject of small holdings would crop up. When it was a case of enclosing the common pasturage, allotments would come under discussion. As early as 1764 a discussion on the Act of 4 Hen. VII. c. 19 took place in Parliament, and the question even then arose whether the State ought not to take some steps to protect small farmers? When Howlett and Arthur Young took up the cudgels in favour of engrossing, Price and Chal- mers began to urge the advantage of miniature farming. When the Board of Agriculture, in 1795, invited information on the beneficial effects of labourers’ field-gardens, strong advocates of a General En- closure Act, such as Kent, expressed themselves favourable to the sub- ject. Individual landlords were found to have been promoting this system. It was not only discovered that allotments existed in many districts, but that they produced the most gratifying results in their occupants.2 The correspondence of Lord Winchelsea and ‘Thomas Barker with the Board proved this,* and, no doubt, induced Wilberforce and Sir Thomas Bernard the following year (1796) to agitate in favour of renewing the labourer’s connection with the soil. A little later the Board of Agriculture offered a reward for any person who should devise a scheme for rendering allotments general throughout the kingdom. The Society for Bettering the Condition of the Poor held the same 1 See my History of the English Landed Interest, Part II. p, 220. 2 Statutes at Large, vol. i. p. 7. 8 Report of the Select Committee of the House Commons in 1795, p. 204. Note by Sir J. Sinclair. This is quoted by the Commissioners in their Report of 1867 on the Employment of Women and Children in Agriculture as alluding to the earliest instance of allotments, viz. in 1770. 4 Annals of Agriculture, vol. xxvi. p. 211. The Social Elevation of the Labourer 349 object prominently in view. Many of the benevolent practices set in motion by its members must be taken as substitutes for the labourers’ lost common rights. Edward Parry, lord of Little Downhan Manor in Norfolk, used his influence in getting a clause inserted in the En- closure Act for his parish, directing the commissioners to set out a parcel of land, to be called the Poor Estate. It was to be vested in the hands of the lord of the manor, rector, churchwardens, and over- seers for the time being; to be let by auction in twenty-one years’ leases, and the proceeds in rents and profits laid out in the purchase of fyrebote for the cottages of the poor. Coal, however, was now becoming the substitute of wood-fuel, and therefore other local authori- ties were devising methods of supplying it cheap to the poor. Some replaced the lost rights of cow pasturage with a supply of milk or flour at cost prices. Others provided means of teaching the labourers’ womenkind to utilise the time, formerly spent by them in tending their livestock on the commons, in spinning, knitting, and needlework.! Then the legislature again directed its attention to the subject. The Act of Parliament in 1801 was passed for the protection of commoners’ rights.2, The evidence of the Select Committee of the House of Commons on Emigration, in 1827, was in favour of some substitute for the four million acres which, since 1760, had been fenced off from the labourers’ livestock. The Acts of 1819, 1831, and 18325 empowered the parochial authorities to devote land for this purpose. The Select Committee of 1843 strongly recommended the garden allotment system as the chief means for bettering the condition of the labouring class. Though Cowper, in 1845, failed to carry his Bill for the letting of field- gardens, the General Enclosure Act of that year attempted to effect the same object by other means. But the powers of Enclosure Com- missioners and the trusteeship of Allotment Wardens were ineffectual. The Report of the Select Committee in 1867 revealed the fact that out of 184,893 acres enclosed during the intervening twenty-four years, only 2,119 acres had been set apart as equivalents for ancient pas- turage rights. The Annual Enclosure Bill of that year, which sought to confirm schemes for enclosing 8,g00 acres of common, was closely 1 Reports for Bettering the Condition of the Poor, § vols., passim, 1795. 2 ar Geo. III. c. 109, ss. 13, 14, and 15. 3 59 Geo. III. c. 19, ss. 12 and 1351 and 2 Will. IV. c. 42, and 2 Will. IV. c. 42. 4 In the Report of Messrs. Tremenheere and Tufnall it is stated as follows: ‘* The Earl of Lincoln, in moving for leave to bring in a General Enclosure Bill, said : ‘ This I know, that in nineteen cases out of twenty, committees of this House, sitting on private (Enclosure) Bills, neglected the rights of the poor. I do not say wilfully neglected those rights—far from it. But this I affirm, that they were neglected, because of the committee being permitted to remain in ignorance of the claims of 350 Annals of the British Peasantry scrutinised. It was found that only three acres were to be reserved as recreation grounds, and only six as allotment gardens. The late Mr. Fawcett fought the cause of the peasantry with such effect that the Bill was thrown out, and no more enclosures were confirmed until after the passing of the amending Act. It was the neglect of the labourers’ interests thus exposed which caused the stringent clauses against enclosing, introduced by Lord Beaconsfield into the Commons Act of 1876, which gave excuse for the agitations headed respectively by Mr. Joseph Arch and Mr. Jesse Collings, and which brought about the Allotment Extension Acts of 1882 and 1887, the Copyhold Act of 1887, the Glebe Lands Act of 1888, and the Small Agricultural Holdings Act of 1892.1 Looking back on this short history, we find the problem of peasant tenure gradually confining itself to small allotments. The position of the labourer as a farmer becomes no longer considered. The proper size of his field-garden drops from five or six acres to one acre. The report of the Select Committee on agricultural distress in 1836, that on inquiring into the employment of women and children in agricul- ture in 1867, and that of the Duke of Richmond’s Committee in 1881, endorse the views of Young and Howlett in favour of consolidated husbandry. Recently, however, peasant farming has once more become treated as a social question. Chamberlain’s Select Committee of 1889-90 directed renewed attention to this economy. The labourers had done so well with their half-acre strips, that it was expected they would do better with those of larger area. Small allotments had not stayed the rural exodus, but large ones might be reasonably expected todo so. Such considerations as these paved the way for the Small Holdings Act of 1892, and the increase of the maximum allotments area from one to four acres in the Parish Councils Bill of 1893. Economists refused to regard an exaggerated garden as the equivalent for lost common of estovers. The former requires cultivation, the latter did not require any. It is not improbable that wherever the labourer has ceded his rights of goose pasturage or fuel collecting, he has obtained a fair compensation in a rise of wages. Inquiry has established the fact that, in districts where there are no opportunities the poor man, because, by means of his poverty, he is unable to come up to London to fee counsel to produce witnesses,’ etc., etc.” 1 For further details I refer the reader to The Land and the Labourer, ch. ii., C. W. Stubbs, 1884; Zhe Agricultural Labourer, ch. vii., T. E. Kebbell, 1887; and Agrarian Tenures, ch. iii., G. Shaw Lefevre, 1893 ; and, above all, to Messrs. H. S. Tremenheere and E, C. Tufnall, historical sketch in the Report of the Royal Com- mission on the Employment of Women and Children in Agriculture, in 1867, British Museum, vol. xvii. The Social Elevation of the Labourer 351 of Petite culture, wages are higher than in districts where such exist. This circumstance points to a commutation of popular rights for money equivalents, such as occurred when predial services in medizval times, and tithes of produce in later days, were converted into rent charges. Be this as it may, our lawgivers, in order to remove any possible slur of injustice lingering out of the enclosure system, have provided such areas of Jand for the labourers as will enable them to resume, if they choose, their ancient pasturage rights. The amending Act of 1876 scotched, if it did not kill, the enclosure system. Since its enactment, not more than 30,000 acres have been enclosed, and at least one-fifth of this area has been appropriated for allotments or recreation grounds. The ancient practice, by which lords of manors could enclose portions of their wastes with the consent only of the Homage, has been made by the Copyhold Act of 1887 subservient to the approval of the Land Commissioners, and by the Commons Amendment Act of 1893 all enclosures and approvements under the Statute of Merton have been subjected to the same principle by having to obtain the previous con- sent of the Board of Agriculture.1 The beneficial results of all this legislation may be regarded as socially indisputable, as economically questionable. In the words of Charles Knight, “The possession of an acre of garden ground may, and often will, make to the labourer and his family the difference between want and sufficiency, between privation and comfort, between a contented mind and the cheerful fulfilment of the duties of his station, and a mind, soured, hardened, and dissatisfied, prepared to yield to vicious promptings, and to rush recklessly into breaches of the law.”? It was mainly on these grounds that men of such diverse views as Cobbett and Lord Salisbury have countenanced the allotment economy. ; But even the social side of the question has its drawbacks. Mill foresaw that compulsory legislation in favour of it might soon tend to alienate the sympathy and support of the educated classes, thus ultimately bringing mischief on that section of the community which he sought to benefit. Roebuck and others thought that it was calculated to change the position of the English labourer working for wages into that of the Irish cottier, barely subsisting on his modicum of land. Cobden and Bright,* though accused of a desire to hand over the great estates of the landlords to the labouring element, favoured the ,adoption of the voluntary system. Men like Lord Onslow deprecated any legislative attempt to expedite 1 Agrarian Tenures, p. 65. G. S. Lefevre. 2 The Farmer, 1844. 3 On the Condition of the Agricultural Labourer. G. Nicholls, 2nd Edition, 1847, 4 See Mr. Bright’s contribution to the Debate on Cowper’s Bill in 1845. 352 Annals of the British Peasantry a practice which was spreading quite as rapidly as the demand for allotments was increasing. Long before the interference of Govern- ment, landlords were voluntarily cutting up portions of their estates into strips for labourers’ allotments, and parochial authorities were doing the same with charity lands contiguous to villages A practice which was laudable enough when confined to rewards for well-behaved labourers might, on becoming universal, lose much of its excellent effects. Sir Baldwin Leighton was one person who foresaw this, and, in dealing with his estate in 1843, offered allotments to those only who could produce a savings bank pass book.? The field-garden has, no doubt, become a formidable rival of the public-house. It has been truly asserted that it replaced “the old predatory habits which existed on the common with the dignified sense of labour which the cultivation of even a potato patch awakens.” But has it not decreased the capacities of the labourer for effectually fulfilling his obligations to the farmer? Has it not opened out a source of temptation for him to appropriate from the farmers’ stores the seed required for its cultivation? Does it not tend to convert a good labourer into an impoverished husbandman? Should there not be some restrictions on the kinds of produce cultivated on it? Is it applicable to all parts of the kingdom, and is there a universal demand for it? All these are still open questions. I was once asked by the mayor of an important manufacturing town in the north, why I did not offer as allotments some property in the suburbs, of which I had the management. I attempted to do so, and found that there was no demand whatever for these holdings; cheap vegetables from the southern counties glutted the markets. The frontage portions of this land soon became streets, in the occupation of town operatives. The building-land tenants neglected to apply for extra ground for sub- dividing into allotments, because they realised that their householders had neither time nor taste for market-gardening. The same experiences are related from other parts of the country. I know instances where 1 For example, the Rev. Stephen Demainbray, Rector of Broad Somerford, Wilts, had, in 1806, been instrumental in introducing a clause in an Enclosure Act, assigning to every cottager, whether he had common rights or not, half an acre of allotment. Thereupon every neighbouring parish adopted the same practice. Blomfield, afterwards Bishop of London, Mr. W. Miles, Captain Scobell, Sir George Strickland, Mr. Sturt, Lords Peterborough, Chesterfield, Portman, and Rivers, the Duke of Newcastle, etc., are all names of persons mentioned in the Refort of the Commission of 1867 on the Employment of Young Persons, etc., as having anticipated the wishes of Government on this subject in 1843. 2 Report of the Special Assistant Commissioners to the Commission on the Em- Ployment of Women and Children in Agriculture, of 1843. The Social Elevation of the Labourer a5 allotments, even in the southern counties, have been attempted and abandoned in disgust. More evidence than that afforded by the bye- election of Spalding in 1887 is required before landlords can be assured that the demand of the labourers for these holdings is universal. It has been asserted that allotments were made the test question in the County Council elections for January, 1889. It is possible that they were made so in a few constituencies, but there is no evidence actually reliable that they were in the majority of cases. The Reports of the recent Royal Commission corroborate what I have just mentioned. The difficulty for the rural labourer in becoming a peasant proprietor has been found to be, not so much a want of opportunities, as a lack of favouring circumstances to enable him to use the land thus. There is such a phrase in existence as “the Demon of Property,” besides that of “the Magic of Property.” A section of the community seems determined to excite in the mind of the English labourer that longing for landed property, the gratification of which has so much damaged agricultural interests across the channel. Before we demand of the landlords a further sacrifice of their interests in this direction, we must educate would-be small cultivators to the advantages of co-operation ; we must reduce the rates for marketing their produce, so that they shall not be prohibitive of profits, and we must establish many more rural co-operative banks. For the furtherance of these ends, public-spirited men like Lord Onslow, Sir Arthur Cotton, Dr. Paton, Lord Carrington, Mr. Robert Yerburgh, Mr. Harold Reckitt, and many others, are now at work ; and excellent institutions, such as the English Land Coloni- sation Society and the Agricultural Banks Association, are already in existence. When, by their instrumentality, bands of co-operative yeomen are found ready to occupy some of the millions of acres now going, or still remaining, out of cultivation; when, by unity of market- ing, an increase in our native products of poultry, eggs, and vegetables is found to be reducing the bill of a million and a half in pounds ster- ling, now annually paid for imported foods, then it will be time to call upon the landlords for fresh efforts. Meanwhile, no patience can be felt for those who contrive, for the sake of political purposes, to make this economy as obnoxious to landlords as possible. Such as these strive to restrict the owners of the soil to certain rules of letting. Their rent must be such as is the fair agricultural value of similar land in the jistrict. It must not be demanded in advance. The security of tenure nust be of the best, and labourers who neglect to avail themselves of he legislation already in favour of allotments must be unduly pressed to ake the advantage offered to them. All this is but a one-sided view f the matter. No consideration is made for the insecurity of such AA 354 Annals of the British Peasantry precarious seigniorial profits, or for the extra expenses involved in the collection of such subdivided rent dues! By all means promote the establishment of allotment provident clubs and people’s banks. ‘By all means secure to the labourers the fruits of their capital and industry ; but do not forget that the landlords and farmers require equal encourage- ment, and security over their share of the bargain. As I have pointed out more than once in this work, circumstances belonging to England’s history find a place in that of Scotland, only at a considerably later date. We can learn better how very far from “merry” it was with poor Tudor “craftsmen, since gentlemen became graziers,” by reading the Georgian crofter’s experiences of the same episode. The period when a sheep was of more account than a man came in course of time upon the Scottish Highlands, as it had come two centuries earlier on the English shires. We may imagine the crofter of 1821 expressing in quainter Gaelic the following quaint passage from a Tudor writer of 1581: “Marie, these inclosures do undo us all, for they make us pay dearer for our land that we occupy, and causes that we have no land in manner for our money to put to tillage ; all is taken up for pastures, either for sheep or for grazing of cattle.” ? We cannot, however, apply the simile of the cast-away pigskin to the economy which deprived the clansmen of their common rights. They had not neglected to utilise the mountain pasturage, but they had failed to derive a livelihood by doing so. Before the break up of the kelp trade and the ravages of the potato “curl,” they had more or less existed without becoming beholden to their chieftains for charitable support. Their hereditary rights of tenure were recognised by the overlord so long as they paid their customary rents. As in the case of the medizval copyholders of England, their status was long disregarded by the statute book. Their freedom from arbitrary treatment depended entirely on the economic relationship between protector and protected. The varying fortunes of the chief were reflected. in those of the clan. Blood ties strongly attached the people both to their lord and to the soil. For this reason each man, without anticipation of any spoliation, sank all his earnings from seaweed and sea fish in his holding. When the arts of peace superseded those of war, the obligations of military service had been commuted into money rents. The landlord became } I quote Mr. J. Frome Wilkinson’s suggestions, but am far from imputing selfish or unworthy motives to this benevolent gentleman. At the same time, I cannot but regard them as one-sided. Vide Contemporary Review, ‘‘ Pages in the History o! Allotments,” Rev. J. Frome Wilkinson, April, 1894. 2 Discourse of the Common Weal of this Realm of England, 1581. The Social Elevation of the Labourer 355 | landowner, and his band of warriors tenant-crofters. A time arrived vhen a system of mutual support failed to maintain either party. In me year (1812), on Clanronald’s estate in Uist, the sum of £3,353 vas expended by its proprietor in the purchase of meal for his depend- ints. The failure of the soil to support its cultivators had plunged hese districts into sloth and famine. The apathy of despair pervaded the whole of the highlands and islands. Ruin threatened alike their andlords, crofters, pendiclers, and cottars. The only remedy possible was to replace an unprofitable human element by a more remunerative unimal one. Accordingly, thousands of these crofters were transplanted rom the interior to the coasts and the towns of Scotland, as well as icross the seas. Though the ‘Sutherland clearances” attracted the ittention of the whole community, hardly a political economist was ‘ound to condemn the harsh but wholesome measure.1_ Even philanthro- pists recognised that a well-fed sheep was preferable to a half-starved deasant, and only stipulated that those evicted should receive such 3enerous treatment as ruined landlords could bestow. Looking back on the results which this drastic remedy had effected, few were found :0 regret it. A writer in the Edinburgh Review of 1846% draws an zloquent contrast between the country as it had been and as it then was. The dormant energies of British agriculture had been awakened. Lands that in the days of Sir John Sinclair had been one rude moor, enanted here and there by half-savage herdsmen, who watched by day i few starveling cattle on the green bottoms of some sheltered glen, and ilept by night in rude, comfortless huts, were now the. centres of a orospérous corn husbandry. The widely scattered arable patches of jutherlandshire had been converted into sheep-walks. The fertile lats of eastern Ross had been brought to yield the superfluous turnips ‘equired by 50,000 first-year sheep on the Sutherland plains. New ‘oads, “the precursors of an agricultural revolution,” had admitted ime to the soils of the slate country, thus doubling their yield of grain. ?7ar up Strath Glass carts laden with bags of guano were to be met. Draining and trenching had converted the stony pavement of' the Zulloden plains, and the boulder-scattered slopes of the river Nairn, ato fruitful tracts. The wheat of the Beauly Firth had found its way ato the grain markets of both the northetn and the southern metro- iolis. Along the east side of Loch Ness, in Strath Errick, sheep had 1 Dr. Wallace, in his Land Natéonalisation, cites General Stewart of Garth, Hugh liller in his Zhe Witness, Professor Leoni Levi in his article for the Statistical ociety, vol. xxviii, and the Westminster Review of 1868, as the only authorities ostile to the Sutherland clearances. 2 Vol. lxxxiv., p. 416. 356 - Annals of the British Peasantry conquered men. On the coast line of the Cromarty Firth corn had vanquished heather. Waves of golden grain rolled along the ridges of Glen Urquhart, 800 feet above the sea level. Two hundred feet higher still, turnips tinted with green the eminences of Strathearn. Bare- footed boys were being familiarised with agricultural chemistry in the wayside schools of remote highland fastnesses. The condition of the Scotch crofters who had survived the wholesale evictions became, however, again desperate. In 1837 and 1841 emi- gration on a less extensive scale was resorted to as the chief remedy. By means of the new poor law the worst cases of destitution were relieved. Sir John McNeill had concluded his report by the expression of a hope that the season of 1851 would “pass away, not, certainly, without painful suffering, but without the loss of any life in consequence of the cessation of eleemosynary aid.” But he further foreboded that some fearful calamity would occur if the population of the Scottish highlands and islands were left entirely dependent on their own resources. Though his worst fears have been happily proved ground- less, the distress has recurred in later times. The reduction in the value of native produce caused by the repeal of the corn laws, a disastrous change in the practices of the fishing trade, the prevalence of potato disease, and the increase in local taxation, have upset time- honoured terms oftenure. An agitation on the island of Lewis, which, if disregarded, might have developed into a repetition of Kett’s rebellion, necessitated State intervention. Asin the English case, so in the Scottish one, the moral phase of the problem was at war with the political phase. The social disadvantages of surrendering fresh ground to the sheep and the deer more than swallowed up the economic gains which would have accrued by repeating the depopulating policy of former years. The consolidation of districts for the sole maintenance of herds and flocks had reduced the labouring population to a few crofters, cottars, and shepherds, and the cultured class to the’ minister, doctor, and schoolmaster. The farmer, that useful stepping-stone between rural rich and rural poor, was altogether absent. The Royal Com- missioners, therefore, strongly discountenanced sheep-farming, and shook their heads at deer-stalking. They would have preferred to evict the sportsman rather than the crofter. They only suffered the former to remain because he was of some use to the latter. They realised that the preservation of game tended to widen still further that gulf between the leaders and the dependants of social life which the economy of the flock-master had effected. Happily for the sporting tenant, though he was less concerned with local interests than the pasturage landlord, he spent a great deal more money in the distric! The Social Elevation of the Labourer ach han did the latter, and thus established a social claim to exist- nee? The position and circumstances of the Scottish crofter were in many espects similar to those of the English allotment holder. But the ormer had come into existence when feudalism was at its zenith; the atter is the creation of a democratic age. The tenure of the former iad been arranged when the conditions of British agriculture were avourable ; the terms of tenure of the allotment holder had provided or the drawbacks of foreign competition. What with opportunities of yarvest labour, of sea fishing, and of services as gillies during the sport- -ng season, the crofters managed to lay out on the improvement of their holdings even more capital derived from extraneous sources than have their southern brethren. For those reasons the Crofters Act of Scotland interfered to a much greater extent with freedom of contract than did the Allotment Acts of England. That farmers’ panacea, the three “ F's,” has been almost entirely applied to croft tenures. Arbitrary evictions, severe rack-renting, and loss of unexhausted improvements, have been rendered impossible. Though a free sale of interests is not allowed, the crofter may bequeath his life estate to any single member of his family. The landlord, it is true, may still exercise a right of veto to the bequest, but he has to substantiate such action on reasonable grounds before the sheriff’s court.? The prevalence of hilly lands in the northern kingdom has rendered the difficulty of the labourers’ connection with the soil more one of arable rights than of pasturage rights. On the fertile plains of the southern kingdom it is just the reverse. The cow gait and potato patch, allowed in most districts of Scotland to the married ploughmen, have hitherto prevented allotments from becoming a burning question. It is only in districts where ploughable land is extremely scarce that a competition for these over-divided arable tenancies occurs. The rigours of a Highland climate, however, are too much for the crofter. Petite culture fails most the farther north it exists. The Italian proverb that ‘“‘The plough has a silver share, but the spade a golden edge,” is more fitted for the sunny south than for our frigid tempera- ture. Northern Celts may occasionally wish that they had never utilised either implement, but left their banks and braes under the cultivation of Dame Nature. 1 Report of the Royal Commission on Crofters, 1884. 2 4g and 50 Vict. c. 29. CHAPTER XXIII THE SOCIAL ELEVATION OF THE LABOURER (CONTINUED) HUNDRED years ago the peasant was more easily influenced through the medium of his hands than through that of his brains. He was not sufficiently intelligent to realise from lesson- books the economic relationship between capital and labour. He required some occupation which would combine in his own person the two positions of master and man. He was disposed to regard riches as robbery, and the interests of capital as antagonistic to those of labour. He lacked some practical means which would substantiate the dictum of Roberts that wealth is accumulated labour.1_ He only found such to be the truth when he marketed the produce of his allotment, or deposited his earnings in a savings bank. That creation of the English industrial class, the Friendly Society, was another means of thus inducing him to elevate himself. Un- fortunately, it had from its earliest inception in the days of the medizval gilds been regarded by the legislature with the suspicion to which all corporate action emanating from commercial circles was liable. It had also been associated with the religious principles of the Continental Church. From these causes, therefore, this form of thrift sustained a damaging shock by the Act of 1547,? though the idea of promoting a system of mutual assurance under the club economy never quite died out. Defoe in 1696 revived public interest in the principle by advocating organisations through which “not a creature so miserable or so poor but should claim subsistence as their due, not ask it as a charity.”3 Towards the end of the following century the idea was again ventilated. Baron de Maseres in 1772 proposed a system of parochial annuities. Acland in 1786 entertained a scheme of superseding the poor rate by means of one universal benefit club. Townshend suggested the establishment everywhere of compulsory friendly societies The legislature appeared more favourable to the idea than it had been before. It declined to connect the subject with that of the poor law, as Gilbert wanted’ to do, but it gave 1 England's Crisis, 1832. 2 1 Ed. VI. c. 14. 3 Essays on Several Projects. 4 Dissertations on the Poor Laws. 358 Lhe Social Elevation of the Labourer 359 its frequent and hearty co-operation to provisions for sickness or old age.t The Act of 1789 only required patching before it should be- come the machinery for a widespread system of mutual assurance. By means of the Rose Act of 1793 the legislature virtually assumed the vole of protector and encourager of all such projects. The only danger to the movement was lest it should protect and encourage too much.” The entire community soon became familiar with the principles which enabled the poor to help themselves. Institutions for the secure andJprofitable deposit of the peasants’ earnings sprang into existence. Arthur Young was repeatedly called on to recommend in his Aznals such societies,’ and occasionally published a code of rules. The society established in 1799 for bettering the condition of the poor favoured this economy. Whitbread introduced a Bill into Parliament in 1805 which contained a clause for establishing a Poor Assurance office in every English parish. The Select Committee of the Poor Laws which sat in 1817 went so far towards adopting Acland’s views that it expected something in this direction to form a bridge by which the desired transition from the old perverted poor relief to one founded on better principles might be effected. Un- fortunately, whenever the authorities came to formulate their schemes, insufficient funds proved an insurmountable difficulty. The smallest deduction from either rates or wages for such a purpose was unpractic- able.* Meanwhile, however, the club system was fostered by private agencies to such an extent that rural society was surfeited with the economy. By 1802 there were in existence 10,000 associations for the promotion of thrift, half of which had obtained the protection of Parliament.6 Cobbett declared that while the legislature was engrossed with pernicious measures restrictive of free speech, a far more dangerous practice of popular agitation was being surreptitiously carried out by the club system. “We have,” he wrote, ‘Pitt clubs, Whig clubs, clubs to suppress vice, clubs to detect and punish thieves, Bible clubs, school clubs, benefit clubs, Methodist clubs, Hampden clubs, Spencean clubs, military clubs, naval clubs, gaming clubs, eating clubs, drinking clubs, masters’ clubs, journeymen’s clubs, and a thousand other sorts of 1 33 Geo. III. c. 543 38 Geo. III.c. 3; 43 Geo. III. c. 3; 49 Geo. III. c. 143 59 Geo. III. c. 128. Mr. J. Frome Wilkinson, in his Mutual Thrift (p. 19), mentions 31 Geo, II. c. 76 as the first instance of a State encouragement of thrift. This being confined to the coal-heaver does not concern my narrative. 2 Sir Frederick Eden asserted some such opinion. 3 Annals of Agriculture, vol. xix. p. 262. 4 This circumstance had been mainly instrumental in ruining Cowper’s allot- ment measure, in which the rates had been made the security for the landlords’ rents. 5 Mutual Thrift, p. 30. Rev. J. F. Wilkinson, 1891. 360 Annals of the British Peasantry clubs and associations. Be this as it may, however, you, my readers, well know that I have always not only not recommended any sort of clubs or societies, but that I have always most earnestly endeavoured to persuade the public that clubs of all sorts were of mischievous tendency in general, and in no possible case could be productive of good.” The authorities soon discovered that Cobbett was right. Benefit clubs had become the means of secretly fostering labour conspiracies, and were therefore brought under a system of closer State espionage than that already provided by the Corresponding Societies and Seditious Meetings Acts. Socially, as well as politically, the Ardendly Society had been discovered to be most unfriendly in its results. It generally resolved itself into cliques, and its chance majorities were often tempted to neglect the interests of old subscribers. Very little more was heard for a long time of Townshend’s suggestion for compulsory parochial societies. The poor law, with all its defects as yet un- remedied by legislation, was preferable to the State-imposed benefit club. The latter was, men said, an economy which involved a dangerous engagement and insurance against the events of futurity ; dangerous because it would have enabled existing occupiers of the soil to burden it without any controlling influence of either the State or posterity.2 A system of voluntary savings banks was tried as a substitute. Even a compulsory system was suggested. But savings banks, whether under voluntary or compulsory provisions, were of too individualistic a character to prove a desirable substitute for the mutual insurance system. Cooks and butlers found them useful enough, but ploughmen and shepherds would have nothing to do with them. Perhaps the latter class was the wiser of the two. In the words of the parliamentary committee of 1825, “ Whenever there is a contingency, the cheapest way of providing against it is by uniting with others, so that each man may subject himself to a small depri- vation in order that no man may be subjected to great losses.” This was no doubtarosy view of the benefits derivable from corporate action, but it was a widely accepted view, on which account the treasuries of benefit societies in preference to those of savings banks continued to be considered and utilised as a safe deposit for the spare cash of the peasantry. Government henceforth wisely confined its attention to the improvement of the voluntary system. Trades unionism, which a recent statute had legalised, no longer requiring covert means for its promotion, became dissevered from the club system. Thus 1 Political Register, Letter to all True-hearted Englishmen, 1817. 2 Quarterly Review, xviii., 1818. The Social Elevation of the Labourer 361 purged of its political offensiveness, all the latter now required for its complete success was to be freed from its many social and economical defects. By the initiatory efforts of Lord Portman and the Acts of 1829 and 1834,1 local registration was made to give place to central registration, and the financial. position of these institutions was secured on as sound a basis as the imperfect vital statistics of the times allowed. But, before the reduction of rates brought about by the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834, these systems of mutual assurance constantly failed for want of funds. Even those established on a large scale, as were some in Hants, Wilts, and Dorset, soon dropped out of existence. The Annuity Act was in danger of extinction from like causes. The deposits in voluntary savings banks continued to be confined to the spare earnings of domestic servants. The labourers, when expostulated with for their neglect of these sources of frugality, replied, “ Why should we sacrifice our money only to relieve the parish from the necessity of providing for us in sickness and old age?” The idea of some compulsory system of assurance was again ventilated. Some of its chief obstacles had, as I have shown, been now removed from its path. The most formidable, however, still stopped the way. It, in fact, still does so. Directly the compulsory element is introduced into the economy, it assumes the form of a tax upon wages. For this reason, if for no other, Townshend’s and Pew’s compulsory measures must have eventually failed. More recently Becher had prepared tables formulating some such scheme. It was thought by many that these could be adopted in such a way as to levy the impost upon the employers of labour. ‘To compel every individual to provide the means of his own support during periods of disablement was, after all, but to adopt that prudent measure which the framers of the Annuity Act had vainly expected to be done spontaneously. It was no new legis- lative departure ; for was not the Government itself, “with its vast machinery of taxation, one general benefit society of compulsory mutual assurance ‘against the evils of internal disorder and external violence?” ? This suggestion has not yet gained the consent of the statute book, though we have lived to see it, together with all its drawbacks and advantages, revived and discussed in modern times. Voluntary systems have, however, long since established themselves in the public favour. By the end of the century rights of poverty became as sacred a principle to the body politic as rights of man had become to the Spencean 1 10 Geo, IV. c. 56 and 4 and 5 Will. IV. c. 40. 2 Quarterly Review, vol. 1. p. 347, 1833- 362 Annats of the British Peasantry philanthropists, or rights of property to the Tory squires. Priestley’s formula, “The greatest happiness of the greatest number,” had been brought into public favour by the utilitarian pleadings of Bentham and the economic writings of Mill. The millionaire was being taught to regard himself as the trustee of a nation’s goods, Co-operative stores, clothing clubs, and penny savings banks} took root in our villages ; lying-in hospitals, homes for penitent prostitutes, foundling hospitals, associations for the improvement of labourers’ houses, societies for the protection of needlewomen and governesses, Jeagues for the provision of public baths, parks and promenades were organised in the towns. Charity began to give place to self-help, benevolent societies to benefit clubs, convivial gatherings to financial meetings. The Owenist doc- trine was no longer in disgrace. In 1845 Ansell and Neison attempted to establish friendly clubs on scientific ‘principles. In 1850 the secre- tary to the Manchester Unity of Oddfellows compiled the Ratcliffe Tables. Mr. J. Tidd Pratt, the then registrar, attempted, though very unsatisfactorily, to classify the various forms of association. Temporarily in 1850, and permanently in 1855,° affiliated societies were released from the fetters which George III. had welded about industrial com- binations.4 Then came the important measure of 1864; in 1874 the Royal Commission published its famous Report; and in 1876 the Government gave what was intended to be the last finishing touch to the benefit systems by amending the great enactment passed by it the preceding year.® But not even yet has the labourer become entirely indemnified against the possible loss of his savings. In a commercial system based on successful rivalry, associated enterprise must always be somewhat handi- capped in any competition with individual enterprise. Even the Manchester Unity, the chief of benefit clubs, had a long and arduous struggle for existence. Neison had to tell the House of Lords in 1848 that had that club to go into immediate liquidation, its Oddfellows would have to contribute an extra ten millions sterling before it could fulfil all its engagements. There were few of such societies at that period which were not insolvent. Money had been spent recklessly in empty show and unwise conviviality, Subscriptions had been limited below the amount actually required by the emoluments advertised. Members widely differing in age had been admitted on equal terms. Few clubs had been founded on the prudent principles laid down by Becher. Out of over one hundred such institutions belonging to the 1 For instances vide Nicholls on the Condition of the Labourer, 1847. 2 Contributions to Vital Statistics, 1845. 3 18 and 19 Vict. c. 63. + 37 Geo. III. c. 79; 57 Geo. IIT. c. 19. 5 38 and 39 Vict. c. 60. The Social Elevation of the Labourer 363 Midlands, only one had been discovered in a condition of solvency. The term “ benefit society” had become a complete misnomer. Its con- stitution and practices in frequent instances converted it into a death- trap for peasant morality. Usually the foundation of such an organisa- tion emanated from the landlord’s study, and its business was carried on in the alehouse taproom. The benevolence of the squire was pauper- ising and the profit-seeking of the publican was debauching its mem- bers. Such institutions prospered till the time of trial, then gave way, leaving their ruined contributors to regret bitterly their early habits of frugality. The editor of Zhe Labourers’ Friend announced to the astounded public that, out of 9,000 societies, 8,000 were reported to him as held in beer-shops. The pastor of Northampton Gaol told it that the majority of his prison flock had been taught to drink, and had become familiarised with crime, at the alehouse meetings of their finan- cially unsound clubs.t_ Tidd Pratt startled it still further by asserting that the connection of the benefit club was often sold as part of the good-will of a public-house. No wonder, therefore, that many of the industrial class, rather than watch their earnings intended for the support of old age thus squandered in the follies of youth, sought out securer means of investment. Benefit building societies frequently took the place of friendly clubs, with, as recent experiences sadly assure us, not altogether the happiest results. Freehold land societies proved themselves, however, more reliable sub- stitutes. While the allotment agitation was forcing the hands of statesmen and squires, the peasants were quietly dispensing with either legislative or seigniorial co-operation in their acquisition of land tenure. The West- minster, the Ross, the National, the St. Pancras, and the Conservative Society were all prepared to convey to the peasant his plot of soil with a cheapness which registration according to the provisions of the statute book insured. The land was proving the best bank for the labourer’s weekly shilling. It neither ran away, like a fraudulent busi- ness manager, nor melted into intoxicating liquors, like the funds of an alehouse benefit club. By the end of the first half of the present century there was in exist- ence a puzzling variety of benefit societies, which have been differently classified by experts. Mr. Frome Wilkinson has drawn one funda- mental distinction between all these; viz., those giving sick pay as well as sums at death, and those giving only sums at death. The former he subdivided into affiliated, centralised, particular trade, local or ordinary, deposit, dividing, female, and juvenile clubs; the latter into general 1 Scottish Review, vol. i. p. 360, 1853. 364 Annals of the British Peasantry collecting burial, with industrial assurance companies, and local collect- ing burial societies. These may be still further subdivided, but it is not necessary to trouble the reader with many of their minor distinc- tions, The general centralisation societies are confined to the metro- politan district ; local burial clubs to populous artisan circles ; affiliated societies to the mining and manufacturing populations of the English Midlands and northern districts of Wales. The. county societies and deposit system are patronised institutions, established /ory rather than éy the labouring classes, and have their chief centres of influence in the southern and eastern counties of England. The latter economy keeps each member's rate of contribution by itself, thereby introducing an element of individualism into a socialistic usage. The dividing society deals out its funds partly in annual bonuses, and partly during periods of sickness or death. The sharing-out clubs of the eastern and southern agricultural districts, the slate clubs of Birmingham, Notting- ham, and Sheffield, and the tontine of West Lancashire, belong to this system.1 The purely local society, whichever of these systems it favours, is the worst form of beneht club. Sir Stafford Northcote’s parliamentary commission of inquiry into the constitution of friendly societies in 1874, and the subsequent legislation of Government, did all that was considered possible at the time to neutralise its evils. The Commissioners had ably and exhaustively ex- posed its abuses. They had directed special attention to the relation- ship of all such societies with the poor law, and had accumulated a mass of crushing evidence against their existing methods of management. Unfortunately, as it had so far turned out, neither in the matter of fin- ance nor in that of executive would they admit that the time had arrived for compulsory State control over these societies. They, however, fully recognised the necessity for financial reform, and therefore insisted upon a quinquennial valuation of its assets and liabilities by each registered society. One registrar and three assistants, instead of three distinct registrars, were to be appointed for the three kingdoms. The deposit of rules by unregistered societies was no longer permitted, and yearly audits were compulsory. But though public auditors and valuers were provided, their employment was not rendered obligatory. Blackley’s proposal for a national system of insurance against destitu- tion by sickness or other causes was received by the Commissioners with coldness. ‘The arguments of the National Providence League failed to convince them. They feared lest too much State interference might hamper the club sick funds. They regarded the supervision of beneficiaries as the best safeguard against fraudulent management. 1 Mutual Thrift, ch. ii. p. 37. Rev. J. F. Wilkinson, 1891. The Social Elevation of the Labourer 365 They refused to advise Government to undertake the offices of a sick- nurse. Men like Mr. Stratton, the rector of Ditton, were bitterly disappointed with such sentiments as these. Frequenters of poor law conferences, Church dignitaries, members of Parliament, justices of the peace, and chairmen of boards of guardians had signed their names to memorials in favour of his self-supporting scheme of insurance offered to labourers by means of the post office. The Commissioners, however, remained obdurate, and refused to amend the Act of 27 and 28 Vict. c. 43.1 They declined to be parties to any State interference with that freedom of the subject which enables him to join or form any benefit club, how- ever badly constituted, whenever he likes. The affiliated societies which deprecated any State control over their affairs, and the capitalists who believed their interests to be endangered by it, warmly approved of this policy of /azssez faire. Emigration, either to the towns or colonies, was constantly draining the rural classes of their energetic and intelli- gent element. Out of that spiritless section of it which still lingered amidst the scenes of farm industry, no agitation was likely to arise in favour of a better economy. Neglect to utilise the aid of the actuary and to ignore the directions of the registrar failed, when detected, to excite the indignation which it merited. The county friendly society is recognised as possessing a strong claim to existence on all who have the best interests of the poor at heart. It secures to its members, as far as is possible without State protection, their superannuation allowances. Magistrates, clergymen, and mer- chants form its directorate. Its executive consists of influential men who undertake with impartiality the offices of president, vice-presidents, trustees, treasurer, auditors, and secretary. Its agents are not always quite the right persons for the important work of collection. More- over, they are not invariably required to furnish security equivalent to the monies which pass through their hands. They might with advan- tage occasionally prove themselves greater adepts in securing new members. But, on the whole, they are as good men as can be found for their onerous and badly remunerated office. The chief fault of these societies is that they are not sufficiently popular with the labourers. There is too great a savour of patronage about their constitution. They are too near, and yet too far from, the dominion of the poor law. This peculiar position leads the labourers to regard their superannuation funds and burial monies as substitutes for those derivable from the rates. A suspicion is thus raised that they constitute somehow or other a means whereby such poor relief is forfeited. 1 Journal R.A.S. of E., sub voc. ‘‘ Friendly Societies’ State Action and the Poor Laws,” 1882. 366 Annals of the British Peasantry Owing to some of these objections, many of the poor cling to that fools’ paradise, the village friendly society. The Rev. J. Y. Stratton, rector of Ditton, has graphically described one of these institutions.’ It is started under the auspices of the squire and parson, and is duly registered. For a time it retains a modicum of excellence. Its president has picked up on the bench sufficient legal lore to enable him to act as its adviser. The ecclesiastical training and local influence of its chaplain ensures an atten- tive congregation at each anniversary of the club sermon. But a time arrives when the squire wearies of his self-imposed duties as auditor, and when Church preferment removes the club preceptor elsewhere. The rank and file grow old, and a neighbouring flash sharing-out club seques- trates all the promising recruits belonging to the district’s manhood. The quinquennial returns required by the Government actuary begin to baffle the brains of dotard greybeards. Consequently they sell out their capital, and wind up their affairs by a jollification at the village tavern. Each succeeding year witnesses them dropping by twos and threes into the union, until a time arrives when their place knows them no more. Such clubs in their first stages are sound enough, but are seldom per- manently so. How is it that any of the peasantry can prefer them to the larger institutions? There are plenty of the latter. The County of Kent Friendly Society is cited by Lord Godolphin ‘Osborne in his Leeport of 1867 to the Commissioners on the Employment of Young Per- sons, etc., in Agriculture, as even then consisting of 950 members, and as only expending upon management 73 per cent. of its income. The fact that Mr. Stratton is still intimately connected with it speaks volumes in favour of its present excellence. Those of Dorset, Salop, and Rut- land were also commended, but the bulk of their contributors were servants rather than labourers. They are unpopular with the latter class, because they require a higher rate of subscription, and omit the ele- ments of beer, food, and feast in their periodical meetings. The greater favourite amongst our villagers is the club which, from the very outset, absorbs more than is actually required of its members’ weekly earnings, and yet is never in a condition to fulfil the terms of its contract with them. To make it popular under these unpromising conditions its pro- moters resort to dishonest means. They obtain the parson’s patronage to what is really a bogus concern by menacing him with the wholesale desertion of their followers from the divine service at his church to that of the dissenting chapel. With false humanity they instruct their col- lectors to be lenient in cases of subscriptions in arrears; but when the time comes to forfeit an insurance, their spirit of mercy vanishes. + « Friendly Societies, State Action, and the Poor Law,” Journal of the RR. ASE., Art. v., p. 1882. The Social Elevation of the Labourer ' 367 The young generation of club candidates hear of these cases, and resort to worse societies still, which pay out the bulk of their accumu- lated funds in yearly shares. Most popular of any form of local benefit club is this last. Its agents, encouraged by large commissions, prose- . lytise their fellows with the greatest energy. Owing to such unsatisfac- tory reasons as these, the village benefit societies and sharing-out clubs have lingered on in existence, and in many cases prospective insurance has become once more relegated to the poor rates. But the latest statistics encourage us to believe that at length these societies are dying out. Industrial insurance companies are taking up their disgraced functions! Of these the principal are the Royal Liver and the Prudential. The insurance of the lives of their children is finding more and more favour with the peasantry. “Ih almost every village,” writes Mr. Bear, in his summary of the recent Report of the Labour Commission,? “an agent of the Prudential Society is to be found. Unfortunately, collecting clubs and industrial life insurance companies have acted prejudicially on the interests of dona fide friendly societies. The former, whenever registered before the Act of 1876, were able to include among their contributors children of any age. The latter, whenever registered after that date, were obliged by law to ex- clude them up to the age of three years, and till September, 1887, to part with them at that of sixteen. For this reason Mr. Wilkinson and others have considered that it would be well if the recommendation of the Select.Committee on collecting friendly societies and industrial insurance companies in 1889 had been adopted, and such institutions legislated for separately, and not as at present under the Friendly Societies’ measure of 1875.4 By the recent Act of 1888, however, the legislature removed most causes for grumbling. There are other authorities who, frightened by Mr. Benjamin Wanugh’s evidence on the horrible results of juvenile insurance, would, if they could, dis- courage this practice among the labouring classes. But the majority, finding that it induces rather a temptation than a propensity to infanticide among them, and recognising in the regulations of the Prudential Company a system based on the: soundest economy, are re- luctant to limit its area of operations. In fact, there is a growing desire to leave all methods of mutual thrift entirely to the working classes themselves. “As civilisation advances,” writes Mr. Frome Wilkinson, 1 Reports of the Royal Commission on Labour, 1894. 2 Journal R.A.S.E., sub voc. “The Farm Labourers of England and Wales,” Dec., 1893. 8 Mutual Thrift, p. 301. Rev. J. F. Wilkinson, 1891. 4 /d., p. 284. 5 so and 51 Vict. c. 56. 368 Annals of the British Peasantry “as education spreads, the State can afford to throw off one claim after another to interfere with the free action of its members. The outward pressure of imposed law is the less needed the more the inward prin- ciple prompts and rules the conduct.”1 This sentiment has awakened in the breasts of the peasantry the dislike already mentioned to any patronised form of benefit society, as well as a resentment against every shape of interference with their freedom of action. Even the attempts of the labourers’ unions to promote thrift among their members was not appreciated, because in times of strikes it became necessary to choose between the loss of existing employment or the forfeiture of future benefit funds. But the peasant would be scarcely human if he did not make an ex- ception to this independent spirit in the case of the proposal for a State- aided insurance, and nobody need be surprised to learn from the Report of the late Royal Commission on Labour, that interest in this question is growing. ‘This inquiry has also brought to light the deplorable fact that wherever the great benefit societies have adopted the principle of old- age pensions, they have failed from want of funds to hold out a suffi- ciently tempting bait. All interested in this branch of the subject are awaiting with anxiety the publication of the views of the parliamentary Commissioners who have been for some time considering it? They have a difficult question to solve, none the less difficult because an extreme section of a great political party has thought fit to make it a speciality of their published programme.’ The Commissioners will have to base the necessity for any scheme of national insurance, not only on economical, but on social grounds. There is a growing desire for a development of outdoor relief in some form or other. Men are ready to prove that it is neither the great social nor the great economical evil it once was thought to be. In vain do Local Government Board inspectors, the Charity Organisation Society, and all historians attempt to argue to the contrary. “ The real problem,” writes Mr. W. A. Hunter, “for poor law reformers, is not the abolition of outdoor relief, but the abolition of the workhouse ;” and he adds, “ As the poor law is at present administered in England and Scotland, outdoor relief is distinctly superior to indoor relief, whether we have regard to humanity towards the poor or to economy in the interests of the ratepayer.” Then from statistics he attempts to prove that it costs as much to keep one pauper in the workhouse as would 1 Mutual Thrift, p. 316. 2 Royal Commission on the Aged Poor. 3 T allude to the National Old Age Pension League, which, though it disclaims any political bias, yet discusses at its periodical meetings the feasibility of appropri- ating the tithe funds for the furtherance of its ends. ‘The Social Elevation of the Labourer 369 suffice to keep two or three paupers out of it, and that in Scotland, where there is an excess of outdoor relief, the cost of pauperism per head of the population is 4s. 34¢., as against 6s, 1d. in England, where there is a minimum of this form of relief. Striving for the same ends, Mr. Charles Booth shocks the English public by attempting to prove that nine per cent. of the total population in the richest city of the world die in the workhouse.2 Other writers follow in the same strain,? and associations like the London Reform Union, etc., are becoming influenced by such views. But the historian, who has so often been deluded by arguments based entirely on statis- tics, and who has learnt how carefully our forefathers thrashed out the question of these two forms of relief, refuses to be thus convinced, preferring to await with patience the results of authoritative inquiry. It is probable that the Royal Commissioners will lay more stress on the social bearings of this great problem than on its economical bear- ings. The nation is prepared to pay dearly for the benefit of insuring to its poor their independence, but'at the same time it cannot regard enforced independence as real independence. If, however, it finally decides that an extended system of outdoor relief is necessary, the least objectionable form of it will probably be found to be Old Age Pensions. But at what age will the Commissioners decide that a poor person is entitled to his pension? _If they fix it at too early a period of life, its costliness will render the scheme abortive. If they fix it at too late a period, how will they evade the disfavour with which the similar proposal of Canon Blackley was met by the chief parties interested? Will their scheme be a voluntary or a compulsory one? If the former, then it will have to be State aided like that of Mr. Moore Ede, whose omission to explain how the money was to be collected has created strong doubts regarding its practicability. But even supposing that the means are available, there is the problem of the ways left unsolved. Will the State enter into a deed of partnership with the Friendly Societies, and supplemant their sick and old age funds with contributions out of the Revenues? But what will the economists 1 Contemporary Review, ‘‘ Out-door Relief: Is it so very bad?” W. A. Hunter, March, 1894. 2 Compare Pauperism and the Endowment of Old Age, London, 1892, The Con- dition of the Aged Poor, and Labour and Life of the People, 1891; all works by Charles Booth. 8 Mr. Chamberlain estimates that nearly one-half of the labouring population which reaches the age of 65, has had recourse to Parish relief. 4 Plain Words on Outdoor Relief, London, Anonymous; and The Statistics of Metropolitan Pauperism, C. S. Lock, 1894. 5 «©The Abuse of Statistics,” Quarterly Review, p. 463, October, 1894. BB 370 Annals of the British Peasantry say to this extension of the practice, initiated by the Savings Banks legislation, which allows a favoured class of investors more interest than is their commercial due? The attempt “to purchase the Friendly Society vote by offering preferential terms of pauperism to.members of | these associations”! may meet at first with complete success. But when such a proposal comes before Parliament in the form of a ‘Bill, the Societies may discover that State-aid is not to be obtained without the sacrifice of private freedom. The senior partner in the new firm will demand the fullest control of the business, and that is just what the Societies have objected to all along. Finally, if the scheme is to be a compulsory one, then, whether it be made obligatory on employers or on labourers, one or other of these two classes will clamour for a proportionate readjustment of wages. Directly the State interferes with the wages question it adopts a social- istic policy which may involve it, in course of time, in the entire regu- lation of the national labour supply. But whatever be the details of the forthcoming proposal, the funda- mental aim of its promoters should surely be to limit its benefits to well-deserving parties. For those who have spent an improvident or misconducted youth there should be no alternative, when their useful- ness is gone, but the workhouse. The burden of old age is increasing, and has to be borne somehow by the active members of society. It would be unjust to compel them to maintain in comparative luxury those who ought, if they had been prudent in their youth, to be still supporting themselves. Moreover, it will never do to compel or bribe thrift, for then it ceases to be thrift. The difficulty is to know when the encouragement of thrift ends and the bribery of it begins. Totake an instance: was Mr. Edward Strachey’s recent Bill in the House of Commons an encour- agement of, or a bribe to thrift? The circumstances were as follows : it had been recognised by all Guardians of the Poor, as obligatory that they should deduct from their contributions in outdoor relief either the whole or a part of what an applicant derived from his Benefit Society. It was feared that, were this practice to have become widely advertised among the labouring class, a deadly blow would have been struck at thrift. On the other hand, if Parliament had compeHed the Guardians to reverse their policy, thrift would have been bribed. Mr. Strachey’s Bill, by giving them a discretionary power in the matter, avoided both extremes.” The management of the new District Councils is yet to be tested, but if, as may be reasonably anticipated, it proves wise and 1 The Abuse of Statistics,” Quarterly Review, p. 467, October, 1894. 2 57 and 58 Vict. c. 25. , The Social Elevation of the Labourer 371 beneficial, then the more its powers are made discretionary, the better. For surely*the remedies for the defects in our present.scheme of relief, thug briefly laid bare in this chapter, will be most effectual which emanate ‘from the minds of the class for which they are intended. Before, therefore, we force a system of national and compulsory insurance on our peasantry, it will be well if we wait to see what the new departure in parish government will reveal. It may be that we shall have to exercise considerable patience yet. It may be that the illogical advice of catch-vote politicians will at first be greedily swallowed by an electorate of which all its members are not financially responsible. But the national love of truth and justice will in the end prevail. As soon as the schoolmaster has been long enough at work, the time will have arrived when increased knowledge and increased power will com- bine to enable the masses to solve for themselves, but not solely for the sake of themselves, this and many other problems now puzzling our statesmen. CHAPTER XXIV THE INTELLECTUAL ELEVATION OF THE LABOURER HE notion that by filling a working man’s brains with learning you were helping to fill his pockets with money has, perhaps, never. received the quite unanimous approval of society. His best position for studying the Book of Nature was considered by many people to be in the farmer’s fields, not in the schoolroom. To substitute a pen for a hoe in the hands of a labourer’s child, was to rob both pauper and ratepayer of a valuable means of subsistence. What has been vulgarly termed “the three R’s” was held to be a positive detriment to those who could only earn their livelihood by hard manual labour. Children destined from the cradle to a lifelong and tiresome toil would bear their arduous lot the more patiently and submissively if broken to the collar from their birth. The dirty work of the nation had, men said, to be done, and there were so many millions of illiterate people capable of performing it. Ifsome thousands of these were disqualified for the task through education, their labour must either be left undone or be performed by that portion of society which had been better bred. The latter alter- native cruelly devoted innocent individuals to the severe labour and coarse diet which we reserve for malefactors. In learning to read, write, and cipher, the children of the peasantry were but taught to regard the hard terms of existence, which had become second nature to their parents, as the unmerited cruelty of fate. **Unhappy men, whom schoolmasters for spite, Or cruel parents, taught to read and write, Why need you read? Why were you taught to spell? Why write your names? A mark would do as well.” ? While such opinions prevailed, the efforts of statesmen were confined to the promotion of manual means of education. Just as in medizval times the knight’s early training principally consisted in riding, shooting, hunting, and hawking, so now the countryman’s took the form of spade and plough husbandry.? For the child who learned. his tasks well, the village school was a juvenile workhouse; for one who was obstinate 1 Essay on Charity, ‘ Fable of the Bees,” p. 200, 1795. 2 Churchill. 3 By the Apprenticeship Acts. 372 The Intellectual Elevation of the Labourer 373 and stupid it became a house of correction. Grammar schools came into existence during the 16th century, and charity schools during the 18th century. By 1735 thirteen hundred of these latter institutions, educating no less than 23,421 children, had been founded in the Provinces, and one hundred and thirty, educating 5,123 children, existed in London alone! The economy of the grammar schools was more in accordance with that of a republic of letters. The economy of the charity school was based on feudal usages. A distinctive dress reminded its scholars of the humiliating fact that they were the objects of public benevolence. The occupant of the grammar school desk was taught, as it has been said, how he might best serve God in Church and State. The occupant of a charity school desk was taught how he or she could best contribute to the comfort of his or her betters.? In 1753 a legislative attempt was made to bring popular education under the purview of the poor laws.3 It was a principle founded on that of the Elizabethan statute, but impracticable at a period when rates were becoming insufficient for the necessities of the impotent poor, and therefore wholly inadequate to cope with those of the ignorant poor. “If,” wrote Eden,‘ at a later period, “a system of national maintenance of the infirm and impotent has failed or been perverted, we have surely some reason to hesitate in the adoption of a system of national education.” It was not as if the peasantry were incapacitated by existing circumstances ffom rising above the trammels of depend- ence. Mandeville assured his countrymen that, even in his days, instances of friendless and uneducated labourers passing by their own efforts out of mediocrity into eminence were not uncommon. ‘“ There is,” he argued, “‘a prodigious difference between debarring the children of the poor from ever rising higher in the world, and refusing to force education upon thousands of them promiscuously, when they should be usefully employed.” ® Economists asserted that the poor were already too dependent on the efforts of others for their well-being. Their education by charitable agencies would only still further deceive them. They required to be taught that the best relief for their necessities was that which came from themselves. Some, arguing that the vices of the uneducated were the main cause of the national poverty, imagined that they saw in school rates an ultimate substitute for poor rates. Whitbread was one of these, and he 1 Vide the Bishop of Lincoln’s Sermon in 1735, quoted by Thos. Alcock, in his Observations on the Defects of the Poor Laws, etc., 1752. 2 Chambers’ Encyclopaedia, sub voc, ** Education.” 3 A Bill for the better maintenance and employment of poor children. 4 State of the Poor, Sir F. Eden. 5 «Fable of the Bees,” 374 Annals of the British Peasantry therefore inserted a clause in his Bill of 1807 for introducing, under the wing of the legislature, facilities of parochial education. This drew from Cobbett an absurd defence of ignorance. He divided the com- munity into two sections ; viz., those who labour with their minds, and others who labour with their bodies. It was as futile to teach the latter brain-work as to instruct ministers of state and astronomers in the mysteries of reaping and mowing. A misconception, he declared, of the terms education and ignorance prevailed. A labourer, skilled in field pursuits, must not be regarded as ignorant because he lacked the capacity to derive knowledge from literary sources. Education might be a finished one, though it never came out of books. The accom- plishments of reading and writing might remove men from the fields into the cities, but did not thus necessarily elevate their habits or increase their comforts. Not morally, economically, or politically, would Cobbett allow advantages to education.! Advocates of the village school were fond of citing the Scottish system as an illustration of the benefits strewn in the path of the march of intellect. No difficulties of ways and means seem to have obstructed the processes of such education in the northern kingdom. One half of the village schoolmaster’s salary was defrayed by the tenantry, the other half out of the voluntary church collections of the Sunday services. The “brutish, prowling mendicant” of the ancient Scottish hamlet had, it was alleged, been converted by the parochial schoolmaster into a sober and loyal labourer. Would not a little reading and a few sums have the same effect on that offspring of lassitude, the English rounds- man? One, signing himself ‘‘ Scoto-Britannus,” had suggested that the newspaper, by the aid of the schoolmaster, had been made to replace the beer-mug in the hands of the Scottish labourer.. The School- masters Act had just been passed through Parliament. It commenced with the assertion: The parish schoolmasters in Scotland are a most useful body of men, and their labours have been of essential importance to the public welfare. Its object had been to augment their salaries up to that standard of sufficiency which the Act of Will. III. had in- tended, but which the then difference in the value of money, and the change in the circumstances of the country, had rendered inadequate.? Whitbread took care to-utilise these favourable evidences, in advocating the adoption of a similar system of education in our southern provinces, He urged that, unless our country bumpkins were placed in a position of acquiring habits of mental amusement, they would cling to those of animal amusement. Cobbett, however, would never brook any sugges- tions emanating from sources north of the Cheviots. He roughly 1 Political Register, August, 1807. 2 43 Geo. III. c. 54. The Intellectual Elevation of the Labourer 375 exposed the audacity which bade English labourers look for an example out of the gardenless, floorless, and chimneyless cabins of Scotland. Fellows who nestled at night in company with a pig or a cow might study, at their so-called homes, pimping books and primers of de- bauchery. He preferred that his Surrey countrymen should be left the option of gladdening their hearts with alehouse beer. He who in his other writings had so often condemned the adulterated poisons purveyed by rural publicans now inconsistently claims for the alehouse equal rights of existence with the bakehouse, and for its landlord a utility superior to that of the schoolmaster. Unfortunately for those who desired to introduce the Scottish system of parochial education into England, evidence was subsequently forth- coming that the excellence of its results was not as great as had been anticipated. The Commissioners appointed by the Crown in 1833 to examine into the state of the factories of England and Scotland reported as follows: ‘Speaking of education, few will be prepared to expect the statements that will be found under this head in regard to Scotland, where the education of the children is neglected to a far greater extent than is commonly believed; where only a very small number can write; where, though perhaps the majority can read, many cannot, and where, with some honourable exceptions, it seems certain that the care once bestowed on the instruction of the young has ceased to be exemplary.” Inability to write or sign deposi- tions, they added, was found to be more uniformly the case in Scot- land than in England. Schemes of popular education were not to be deterred either by the failure of the Scottish case or by the illogical vapourings of English demagogues. Cobbett himself was an excellent illustration of the formula, knowledge is power. Education was felt to form a bond of society. The welfare of the Christian Church, and the peace and happiness of the community at large, loudly called for it. Politicians, therefore, began eagerly to devour all the available literature on the subject : a sure sign this, that legislative action was imminent. But, while some were thus debating the knotty point, others had gone far towards unravelling it. By 1781, Robert Raikes had put in motion the Sunday school move- ment. By 1802 Joseph Lancaster had set up his ragged schools. By 1811 Andrew Bell had established the Church school movement. Amidst the long roll of this world’s benefactors but few names stand out more conspicuously than those of the three just mentioned. Out of the experiments of these simple but single-hearted men the present educational economy of the community grew up. It sprang from the anxiety of a humble provincial publisher for the spiritual welfare of 376 Annals of the British Peasantry a few swearing street arabs of Gloucester. It sprang from the desire of a Southwark stripling to become both a guardian angel and a peda- gogue to every infant who was ragged and ignorant. It sprang from the invention of the monitorial system by the son of a Saint Andrews barber. When we read the combined fruits of all this in the parlia- mentary returns from 1818 to 1894, we realise that these men’s labours contributed to the erection of this great Empire more than all the treasure of her merchants and all. the blood of her sailors and soldiers. In 1803 the Sunday School Union was established. In 1808 the Royal Lancastrian Society (better known under its later name of British and Foreign School Society) was founded, In 1811 the National Society for promoting the Education of the Poor in the Principles of the Established Church came into being. In 1836 the Ragged School movement was brought about by the institution of the Home and Colonial School Society. Up to 1833 Parliament watched in more or less idle astonishment the quick growth of a national education system, An Act, it is true, was passed in 1802 for the preservation of the health and morals of factory apprentices which contained an education clause,! and a select committee .on education sat in 1816, but it directed its entire attention to the Metropolitan area. Parlia- mentary returns appeared in 1818 and 1833. Brougham’s scheme of national education was rejected by the Lower House of Legislature in 1820, There was in our national councils much discussion, but if we except the education clauses in the Factory Act of 1833, very few prac- tical results.2. Throughout this period popular education, therefore, had to depend on private liberality and religious zeal for its advancement. The two great organisations, the British and Foreign School Association and the National School Society, vied with each other in facilitating op- portunities for the daily schooling of the poorer classes. Then in 1833 an annual grant of £20,000 was instituted by Government, which from 1839 onwards was rapidly increased. By its instrumentality the schisms which split asunder the ranks of the national education movement were exposed to public notice. ‘There were found to be advocates and opponents of popular instruction in the abstract, and advocates and opponents of any sectarian basis of education whatever. Under the flag of the British Society those who wanted to keep reli- gion out of the educational system ranged themselves. Under the flag of the National Society might be discovered all those who argued that State education should be controlled by the State Church. In the endeavour to compromise this disputed point, the Bible was in danger 1 42 Geo. III. c. 73, § 6. 2 3 and 4 Will. IV. c. 103, §§ 10, 20, 21, 22, 23. Lhe Intellectual Elevation of the Labourer an% of becoming a mere school book. No objection was made by the Opponents of sectarian instruction to it when read “without note or comment.” Juvenile scholars, therefore, directed their attention far more to the formation and sound of its words than to the ideas which they conveyed. Teachers considered their business accomplished when its sentences could be glibly pronounced at sight. Religious principles were no more advanced than if the Bible had been taught in an unknown tongue. The medizval mystery and morality pageants taught the uneducated more effectually than such a method as this. The formidable numerical position of seceders from the Established Church eventually induced the legislature to assume a neutral attitude in this great controversy. Twice did it attempt in vain to increase its influence over popular education, first in 1839 by a Bill for promoting normal schools, and secondly in 1843 by a Bill to provide for the education of factory children. Church opposition defeated its first effort, that of the Dissenters its second. Whereupon it rested content for a time with dividing its annual contributions between the great rival societies which contained among them the machinery of national education. After a time it took to apportioning its pecuniary assist- ance according to the amounts of funds supplied from voluntary sources. Between 1839 and 1850, £405,000 were thus granted to schools connected with the Established Church, £8,000 to those con- nected with Wesleyan tenets, £1,049 to those connected with Roman Catholic, £51,000 to those belonging to the British Society, and £37,000 to the workhouse schools.!_ Besides these monies, there were extra contributions for Scottish schools, bringing the total sum granted in these eleven years to upwards of a million sterling. The disposal of these funds thus, though deplorable, was unavoidable owing to religious jealousy. As long as the lords of the treasury only helped those who could help themselves, so long would help be withheld from those who needed it most. A poor district had come to imply an ignorant district, and this miserable condition of affairs was likely to abide so long as a majority of the nation’s parliamentary representa- tives stigmatised all attempts to remedy it as “‘a State recognition of heresy and popery.” No wonder that the Nonconformist party began to lose faith in State help, and were bringing into being the Con- gregational Board of Education and the Voluntary School Society. But Melbourne’s Ministry in 1839 had not altogether failed in its efforts for educational reform. It succeeded in establishing the Council on Education, and in placing the financial control of the department in 1 Education in England and Wales. Report and Tables presented to both Houses of Parliament, 1854. 378 Annals of the British Peasantry the hands of a committee of Privy Councillors, with instructions to apply the public funds in an unsectarian spirit.1 In 1846 were issued the well-known minutes on which were founded all future schemes of Government aid to education. By 1850 the national system of Ireland and the normal schools of England and Scotland had been established.* As yet, the employment of the children of the labouring classes had not been forbidden. There were in 1854 close on 5,000,000 children in England and Wales alone, who came within the limits of the school age. The demand for juvenile labour was allowed to lessen considerably the number of those who were actually undergoing an educational training. Many persons of the agricultural labouring class were permitted to obtain permanent employment at the ‘early age of nine. Experts. asserted that the business of a farm labourer could not be efficiently acquired if work were not commenced before eleven or twelve. Children were being employed in needle factories at a much earlier period of life. Only the girls and boys of the middle class were allowed to remain at school up to the age of fifteen. Yet even in these early days means, such as evening classes and Sunday tuition, were being contrived whereby village lads could be kept at their rook-scaring and team-driving, and yet be taught to read and write. Village school- masters were being deterred by adverse public opinion from devoting too much of their valuable services to the offices of deputy overseers and land surveyors. Lending libraries made their appearance in small rural hamlets. The elements of astronomy, botany, modelling, etc., were brought within the reach of children whose parents had never glanced inside a book. Endeavours were made to draw technical edu- cation within the contact of horn-book and slate. Infants were shown how to apply the tasks performed under the lime-washed ceiling of the schoolroom to those carried out under the blue vault of heaven. In- struction in the fundamental branches of agricultural labour was being afforded in the farming establishments at Woburn, Bedfordshire, in Herefordshire, and other parts of England ; and similar classes had been commenced in the well-arranged bothies then being erected in Scot- land.* ‘A humble catechism,” wrote an essayist in 1846,5 “in the hands of the schoolmaster overturns rude methods of cultivation, hus- bands old manners, recommends new ones, and, through the lips of the 1 4 History of Our Own Times, vol. i. ch. ix. pp. 184-5. Justin McCarthy. 7th Ed. 2 12 and 13 Vict. c. 49. 8 This in spite of section 7 of the Factory Acts, 3 and 4 Will. IV. c. 103. * The Association for Promoting Improvement in the Dwellings and Domestic Condition of Agricultural Labourers in Scotland. Preface to 4th Report, 1858. 5 Edinburgh Review, vol. lxxxiv. p. 417. The Intellectual Elevation of the Labourer 379 favourite son, conveys instruction to the otherwise unwilling father.” Social security came to be removed out of the hands of the policeman into those of the pedagogue. Juvenile delinquents were kept out of the gaols by means of the schools. Fear was regarded as the teacher’s ally only after all milder resources had failed. The spectacle of the dock in the occupation of a prisoner too diminutive to meet the eyes of his judge, save on tiptoe, became rare." Whips and bars were reserved for the correction of adult offenders.1_ Workhouse and prison schoolmasters were removed into the morally purer atmosphere of the preventive and reformatory institutions. Philanthropic farm schools arose in the neighbourhoods of Hackney Wick, Reigate, and Warwick. The Select Committee of the House of Commons in 1850, and that of the House of Lords a year or so later, exposed the evil effects of prison discipline on infantile morals. The benignant offices of Miss Carpenter, Sheriff Watson, and Lord Shaftesbury were devoted to the same cause. The efforts of the State to introduce a scheme of national education were still rendered futile by the disputes of the secular and religious schools of thought. The prejudices arising from sectarian rancour pro- longed the voluntary system. Statesmen waited to see if the people would consent to expunge the religious element from the village scholars’ lesson book. Happily for the people, the authorities thus far have refused to do anything of the kind. They have not forgotten the wide corruption of the peasants’ morals which followed the withdrawal of the ecclesiastical influence in the times of the abolition of the monasteries. They realise that education without the Bible would convert ignorant rogues into accomplished criminals. While statecraft thus fell into abeyance, vainly waiting for a modus vivendi, there appeared, as a manifesto, the famous address of Lord Ashburton to the elementary schoolmasters in 1853. He asked the reason why men who employed fire in a hundred ways for a hundred ends were not being taught the doctrine of heat; why those (princes and peasants alike) who pass the livelong day in the application of the mechanical powers, were never instructed in their principles. ‘In this progressive country,” he said, “we neglect that knowledge in which there is progress, to devote ourselves to those branches in which we are scarcely, if at all, superior to our ancestors. In this practical country, the knowledge which gives power over nature is left to be picked up by chance on a man’s way through life. In this religious country, the knowledge of God’s works forms no part of the education of the people, no part even of the accomplishments of a gentleman, But this judicial 1 See the eloquent article of a writer in the Scottish Review for 1853, sub voc. ‘¢ Educational Lectures,” vol. ii. 380 Annals of the British Peasantry | blindness cannot much longer exist. If we wish to hold our rank among the nations, if we intend to maintain that manufacturing ascen- dancy which is the chief source of our national strength, we must carry this study of common things, not only into the schools of the poor, but into our colleges and universities.” 1 This address, as its author no doubt full well anticipated, was read by thousands old enough to remember the period when popular education was regarded as a dangerous experiment ; when, like fire, it was deemed capable of proving a good servant, but a bad master; and, like poison, a remedy only when measured out by experts in minute doses. But a better feeling with regard to it had spread over the land. A few years before, a member of the Upper House of Legislature had thought fit to deprecate the severity of the tests to which our inspectors were submit- ting candidates for the post of schoolmaster. He had picked out of some examination paper the word “endosmose,” and asked whether any one of his peers was capable of explaining it. Public opinion soon showed him that he was sadly behind the spirit of the times. A Cam- bridge professor’s comment on the episode was: “ Heaven forbid that we should educate the people down to the level of the House of Lords.”* The era, it was pointed out, when the actors in human affairs should have things all their own way was passed, that when the thinkers should play their important part had begun. Lord Ashburton had shown that there was a position for the schoolmaster in the social economy, which would neither supersede parental teaching, nor hinder the business of human life. He had told his audience that, on the contrary, their mission was to assist and complete both these important elements of general education. As long as the smallest trace remained of the savagery which induced men to sell their wives in the cattle-market or public-house,’ or of the ignorance which accused priests of promoting cholera and physicians of poisoning wells, or of the superstition which invested sundry objects, animate and inanimate, with supernatural powers of evil, so long would the intelligence of the masses require the elevating influences of the schoolmaster. The only fear was lest, in the awakened feelings of the age, men should come to weary of the very name of education. Not only in the south, but in the centre, the west, and the north of Great Britain, gatherings of philanthropic men occurred at this period for the dis- 1 An address to the elementary schoolmasters assembled at Winchester, Dec. 10, 1853. 2 Scottish Review, vol. ii., sub voc, ‘* Educational Lectures,” p. 321. 5 For the continuance of this practice to a late date, see Bygone England, pp. 199-207. W. Andrews, 1892. The Intellectual Elevation of the Labourer 381 9 cussion of the educational problem. A great conference took place at Birmingham, another in Lancashire, and a third at Glasgow. The words of the Prince Consort, when presiding over the meeting of 1857 to con- sider the possibility of enforcing increased school attendance, are worth recording. ‘What measure,” he said, “can be brought to bear upon this evil is a most delicate question, and will require the nicest handling, for there you cut into the very quick of the working man’s condition. His children are not only his offspring, to be reared for a future inde- pendent position, but they constitute part of his productive power, and work with him for the staff of life. The daughters especially are the handmaidens of the house, the assistants of the mother, the nurses of the younger children, the aged, and the sick. To deprive the labouring family of their help would be almost to paralyse its domestic existence.” For these reasons he was averse to extending at that period to the agri- cultural population the educational clauses of the Print Works Act, which a general consensus of opinion had just acknowledged to have proved a failure. The National Public School Association increased and extended its vigorous influence. Nationalists and anti-nationalists redoubled their energies. Cobden and Bright headed the former party, and clamoured for a State system. Baines besought the voluntaries to show the nation what they could perform without it. Sir James Kay Shuttleworth seconded the efforts of both sides by advocating, not only the legalised rate, but the spontaneous subscription. The Lord Advocate introduced a bill for the establishment of a universal system of national schools in Scotland, Adderly tried to do the same for the Manchester and Salford district. The Useful Knowledge Society sowed a crop of cheap literature broadcast over the land. Museums, art galleries, and mechanics’ institutes were founded in most of our im- portant cities. An exalted conception of the beautiful evinced itself, even amidst the simple ornaments of the cottage mantelpiece. An in- creased thirst for knowledge filled the courts of the British Museum on popular holidays with throngs of pleasure-seekers. “ When education,” wrote Harriett Martineau, “is duly improved, the educator will be duly honoured.” There had been a time when a bigoted gentility denied to persons engaged in the work of instruction all access to the village book- club. In our more enlightened times a teacher would have to search long before he found the library shelves over which he could not easily claim first rights of user. The State had no further need for encouraging the spread of education. Its task was more that of guiding its ever- onward rush into proper channels. For this purpose it created the post of vice-president of the Council on Education in 1856.1 Between 1 19 and 20 Vict., v. 116. 382 Annals of the British Peasantry the new minutes in Council of 1846, and the Duke of Newcastle’s com- mission in 1858, the annual demand for Parliamentary grants had risen sixfold. A system of national education which politicians had failed to manufacture was growing spontaneously into vigorous life. State aid had so largely increased the efficiency of the voluntary system, that the fact of education having become gradually compulsory has been kept in the background. Then came Lowe’s revised code of 1862; then Forster’s education Acts of 1870 and 1872;'! then Lord Sandon’s in- directly compulsory measure of 1876;? next Mundella’s directly compulsory measure of 1880;3 next the Royal Commission of 1886; and finally the Free Education Act of Lord Salisbury’s late administra- tion. The Government grant, which in 1833 had been only £20,000, had reached £5,965,516 in 1892, The education question, unlike those of allotments and drink, has never become a party question. Though the membership of the committee of Council varies with the changes of Government, an able staff of permanent officials gives con- tinuity to this policy. The requirements of the different:standards are regulated by the code, which is settled by the Education Department, and they are laid upon the table in Parliament for one month in each successive year, previous to being finally issued. They are the same for each standard (except for very small schools) in town and country. The standard for exemption, which varies, is, however, left to the decision of the local educational authorities in each district. In some of the agri- cultural villages it is what is known as the third standard, but in the majority of cases it is the fourth. It is further complicated by the system of “half-timers,” which prevails most in the manufacturing parishes of the north.4 The curriculum of voluntary schools is the same, as far as the Education Department is concerned, as that of the board schools. Only the teaching of creeds and catechism in Church schools, and of their substitutes in Nonconformist schools, is omitted in board schools, where the Bible is expected to be read without “ note or comment.” The better supply of funds in the latter schools, however, enables them to provide a greater variety of subjects, and to reach a higher standard of educational perfection. 1 33 and 34 Vict.c. 75 ; 35 and 36 Vict. c. 62, 2 39 and 40 Vict. c. 79. 3 43 and 44 Vict. c. 23. 4 Mr. Culley asserted in his Report of 1870 that neither half-days nor alternate days would suit agricultural districts. A modification of the Print Works Act was being adopted, whereby the children continued to go to school in winter after they had taken to work in summer, and in some cases utilised their school holidays for harvest labour. Lmployment of Young Persons, Women, Children, ete, in Agri- culture, Appendix Pt. II. to 4th Report, 1870, p. 117. The Intellectual Elevation of the Labourer 383 I now confine the reader’ $ attention to the results of this great national movement in the rural economy. A quarter of a century prior to the Education Act of 1870, the country clergy exerted great efforts to enable their poorer parishioners to participate in the general intellectual advance of the towns. We are told by authorities competent to judge that by 1870 there was a small number only of districts in England where a good elementary school, under the care of a certificated master or mistress, did not exist. The clergy were, on the whole, satisfied with results. There were fewer and fewer candidates for confirmation who could not sign their names. The circulation of local organs of the daily press had grown wider and wider. Instances of gross and almost incredible ignorance were less frequently encountered. Yet, for all these favourable evidences, things were not as they should bé. Education was not anything like so much appreciated in the English counties as it was in the Scottish. There was more irregularity in the school attendance of our southern peasantry than in that of our northern. Book learning was left behind in the village schoolroom here in England ; whereas it was taken home and made the topic of intelligent discussion amidst the family circles of Scotland’s peasantry. Yet as late as 1866 the Assistant Commissioners to the Scottish Com- mittee had to report that, after having visited 133 selected parishes in seventeen counties of Scotland, above half of the children did not go to school. There were, however, strong reasons for this deplorable fact in the deficiency of school accommodation, and in the absence of a com- pulsory system, both of which were loudly demanded by a large majority of the population. Accommodation, however wretched, was made use of: we read of a but and ben hovel, in one portion of which the mistress lived and in the other instructed the neighbour’s children. Here, under a roof of heather and amidst walls of mud, sat daily at their lessons, on four or five wooden benches, children who had toiled three miles up the steep hill and along the bad road which divides Dufftown from Mortlach. Then came the results of the report of the Commissioners appointed by Parliament, in 1867, to inquire into all the habits and wants of our juvenile peasantry. Their first step, as a preliminary to universal and compulsory education, was to bring about a general establishment of schools. Their next step was to overcome the indifference and apathy of parents. - The feeling was not everywhere the same regarding the necessity of elementary education. “ In Northumberland,” said Henley, ‘public opinion would send any man earning wages to the position ofa \ Journal of the R.A.S.E. 384 Annals of the British Peasantry brute who did not send his child to school.” But then all the peasantry did not entertain such favourable feelings regarding this subject. “ My boy,” had said a Bridgend labourer to one of the Commissioners in 1843, “often goes to work in the fields, I know it is a good thing to have learning, but still sixpence is a great help!” Pembroke and Carmar- then were the districts of Wales in which education was most advanced. But the charge of 1d. a week, imposed by the schoolmasters, was suffi- cient to induce parents to offer any trivial excuse against sending their children to them. It was a supremely difficult task for the Commissioners to decide between the conflicting interests of employers, parents, and children. How far, for the sake of the last mentioned, were they justified in inter- fering with the field operations of the first, and the earnings of the second? On the whole, there can be no doubt that they acquitted themselves of this difficulty creditably. They reported that the maxi- mum school age had been lessening. Fraser asserted that many of the rural schools were filled with mere babies. [The majority of farming authorities expressed the opinion that work should be limited to those over the age of ten. Stanhope pointed out that legislation would be futile if not backed up by the verdict of public opinion. At that age, therefore, the limit below which child-labour should be prohibited was fixed. ]"A certificate by the Government inspector that a child above the age of ten had reached the fourth standard, prescribed by the code of 1876, freed him or her entirely from further school attendance. Moreover, children who could satisfy the local authorities that they were properly employed in labour, and who held certificates intimating that they had reached the third standard, had only to put in 150 annual attendances from the age of ten to that of thirteen. Reliable authorities have asserted that wherever these bye-laws are in force 99 per cent. of the boys can free themselves from school attendance at the age of eleven. ; The first effects of the revised code had not been altogether benefi- cial. It seems to have expelled all the higher subjects of education from inspected schools. The minute issued by the Council on Educa- tion on 27th February, 1867, partly remedied this evil by offering increased grants to any school which could show that one-fifth of the pupils had passed successfully an examination in any secular subject, such as geography, grammar, or history. In the next report, however, it was proved that only 28°8 per cent. of the schools had succeeded in obtaining this grant. * Report of Council on Education 1868, sec. 69, quoted by Tufnell in his con- cluding remarks in the Refort on the Employment of Women and Children in Agriculture, Aug. 11, 1869, vol. xxii. p. 37. The Intellectual Elevation of the Labourer 385 There can be no doubt that the results of the Education Act of 1870 were very beneficial to the children. They were able to pick up more than a smattering of writing, reading, and arithmetic by the age of ten, and they were prevented from forgetting what they had learned by the compulsory measures adopted for their education between the ages of ten and thirteen. The three important elements of authority, paternity, and charity were brought into co-operation by the contributions of school grants, school subscriptions, and school pence. Whether the Free Education Act, which relieved the parents of all pecuniary liabilities, was altogether wise, remains to be seen. It has been sug- gested that it was only popular with the peasantry under the miscon- ception that it was to liberate parents from the compulsory conditions of their children’s education. The intellectual results of our educational code are not as yet entirely satisfactory. Mr. Kebbel has told us that boys and girls who have at their fingers’ ends Magna Charta, the Bill of Rights, and the difference between the Gallican and Alexandrian liturgies, are still found occasionally to believe that three dragon-flies will sting a horse to death, or that a cow sickens if a mouse creeps over her.t That superstition is not yet sufficiently eradicated, I myself can testify. On an estate over which I had the management, one of my foremen was always unaccountably anxious to find employment for a certain ne’er-do-well. Eventually I found out his reason to be that the man’s wife was a reputed witch. On another occasion my employer and I had the ill-luck to remove unwittingly an ancient dame’s land- mark. The peculiar circumstances of the case prevented our immediately bestowing that generous compensation which we naturally wished to do. Subsequently we both fell ill, and were reported as being what is vulgarly termed “overlooked.” A faithful dependant went so far as to pay the old lady a special visit on our behalf, in the hopes of inducing her to withdraw this evil spell. The history, geo- graphy, English grammar, vocal music, drill, and drawing which now constitute the educational scheme of our board and national schools must, it would therefore seem, be supplemented by other subjects such as natural history and any topic calculated to elevate the standard of common sense. The practice of the Scottish schoolmasters in giving the children tasks to prepare at home should be more widely adopted in the southern kingdom. Mr. Murray told the Commissioners, in 1870,° that not only were the boys and girls of his Scottish hinds kept at school until they were twelve or thirteen years of age, but that occasionally, after a year’s interval, they were sent back again for a few months to 1 The Agricultural Labourer, p. 74. T. E. Kebbel, 1887. 2 Appendix, part ii., Fourth Report, 1870, pp. 112, 113. 386 Annals of the British Peasantry revive their stock of learning, In the evening schools of Scotland young people from fifteen to twenty years of age are constantly found readily availing themselves of this additional means of revisal.* When we realise the harsh results of these education laws on the British farmers, we see at once how essential it is that they should be exerting beneficial effects on rural society as a whole. The employers of agricultural labour have made a severe sacrifice of their interests, and can only look to the benefits which they have conferred on others as a recompense. They are not, Mr. Kebbel assures us, “hostile to education as such,”? but they make a point of showing how detrimental it has been to their industry. Thus a Lincolnshire farmer ‘told Mr. Druce that he had suffered nearly as much by the working of the Education Act as by all the bad seasons put together.” 3 So strong an advocate of education as Mr. Clare Sewell Read had to confess that “the days of neat farming are atan end. We don’t pick stones or weed corn as we did. The women must not work in the fields nowadays, and the children are at school.”* By having to use adult labour at double the cost of juvenile labour the farmers have suffered heavily in their pockets. They do not derive any ultimate benefit from this pecuniary loss. They see, as a chief result of education, the desertion from their farms of all the picked labour. They often hear repeated some such expression as Stanhope listened to. “If I could only get him to be a scholar,” said a woman to this Commissioner in 1867, “he should never be a farm labourer.” They have yet to learn the good results of education on the poor themselves. Many of them still think as Doyle did, in 1843, when he said, “The word education must, in most cases, be taken to mean really little more than a certain amount of physical deterioration, incurred by wasting time in crowded and unwhole- some rooms.”® They will only become reconciled to the new laws when they can feel that they have not incurred these hardships for inadequate reasons, * They consider juvenile labour so valuable that they would not cease to grumble even if it had been the education of their own children which the State has taken in hand. Indeed, those small farmers who rely mainly on the industry of their own boys and girls to perform the work of their holdings are very grudging of the time 1 Fournal of the R.A.S.E., 1871. Report on some features of Scottish Agri- culture. H. M. Jenkins, p. 145. 2 The Agricultural Labourer, p. 68. 5 Supplementary Report of the Royal Commission on the Employment of Women and Children and Young Persons in Agriculture, P- 55, 1867. * Quoted by Mr. Kebbel in Agrdcaudtural Labourer, p. 77. 5 Report of the Special Assistant Commissioners to the Commission on the Em ployment of Women and Children in Agriculture of 1843, vol. xii. The Intellectual Elevation of the Labourer 387 devoted to their schooling ; and, if they can manage, I am afraid, cur- tail it to improper dimensions. » They will only cease from doing this when they discover the beneficial effects which such an early training exerts on the social economy of their subordinates. At present the rural world of these islands is passing through a crisis, when a little knowledge is found to be a dangerous thing. The village teacher has been at work in Scotland since 1696. In the report of the Select Committee of 1818 on the poor laws, we read that the Scottish schoolmaster is obliged to teach gratis poor children recommended by the Session ; and from that of the General Assembly in 1839, we learn that a considerable number of children were already enjoying this privi- lege. It was to the results of the Act of 1696 that Sir George Nicholls ascribed the important position which Scotland, a comparatively poor country, had then come to occupy as a member of the British Empire.! The English village schoolmaster, however, still requires a few decades more before he can produce the finished results of the human under- standing which are now being dispersed over the civilised world from the schoolrooms of Scottish and transpontine hamlets. We have not here in Great Britain the spectacle of a nation in arms. Our boys can only learn from their lesson books the necessity for discipline and self- sacrifice which imperial interests demand of them. The British school- master has to supply the place of the Continental drill sergeant, and will no doubt in time educate our peasantry to a fitting sense of their electoral responsibilities. It is too late, however, to bring any direct influences to bear on the parents, who can only be got at through the lips of their children. The unsophisticated mind of matured manhood is influenced best by object lessons. We must encourage the young ones to repeat what they learn at the schoolhouse in the hearing of their elders at home. We must connect our scholastic institutions with clothing and boot clubs, and when ocular proofs of their benefits become available, we shall see such opportunities for the exercise of thrift and self-constraint seized and utilised by outside observers. Above all, we who are Christians must strive that the religious principles of the Founder of our Faith shall continue to be taught with all fulness and fidelity. It has been said that for each additional school a prison has been closed. The cause for this can only be the spread of Christianity through the agency of the national schoolmaster. We must not make the grave mistake of driving our Nonconforming co-re- ligionists into the secularist camp. The struggle must not be allowed to become one merely between Progressivists and Sacerdotalists. Under the compromise brought about by the conscience clauses in Forster’s 1 History of the Scottish Poor Laws, p. 99. Sir G. Nicholls, 1856. 388 Annals of the British Peasantry Acts we can, if we choose, win over the whole body of the Sectarians to the banner of a common Christianity. Both Churchmen and Dissenters would be sorry to believe that they are as narrow-minded towards the close of the century as they were in the middle of it. If only everybody will admit and secure the right of each individual parent to decide the form of faith which his children shall be taught, we are able to raise the irresistible war-cry of “ Religious freedom.” But, it may be asked, is it possible to teach the Bible with ‘all fulness and fidelity” without outraging the principles of one or other of the religious sects? It is difficult, I admit, but impossible, I deny. Mr. Gladstone has shown how. “I believe,” he writes, “the piety, prudence, and kindness of the teacher may do a great deal in conveying cardinal truths of our divine religion to the minds of pupils without stumbling, or causing them to stumble, on what are termed denominational difficulties”! What an enormous responsibility does not such a conception of his duties lay on the shoulders of the village schoolmaster! Magnificent body of men though the class to which he belongs is at present, I would fain see the best blood of our universities infused into it. Its usefulness, public importance, and high aims might well attract the co-operation of the noblest as well as the most educated spirits in the land. 1 Vide his letter in reference to the School Board Election of November, 1894, published in Zhe Standard, November 9. CHAPTER XXV THE MORAL ELEVATION OF THE LABOURER Wes our statesmen were improvising measures for filling the pockets, the stomachs, and the brains of the peasantry with good things, they did not forget the improvement of their habits and morals. This, indeed, was quite in accordance with the best traditions of English statecraft. Those unacquainted with the social history of this country imagine that the health and household cleanliness of our working classes only became of State importance during the last few decades of this present century. The adulteration of the people’s food and drink could, even in Norman times, be prevented only by the creation of a special class of local inspectors. In 1476 a butter wife (let all vendors of margarine at the present day be careful to note) was pilloried for selling a spurious imitation of what she professed to be selling. Scavenging was a prominent subject of discussion in the medizval seigniorial courts. A Royal Sanitary Commission on latrines and dust-heaps took place in 1343, a Sanitary Ordinance occurred in 1371, and the first of our Public Health Acts was passed in 1388.1 Overcrowding was considered conducive to the spread of epidemical maladies in Tudor times, quite as much as it is in Victorian times. The lodger (or ‘“‘ the undersitter,” as he was formerly called) was under the ban of the Government as early as the reign of Elizabeth. The Cottage Act known as 31 Eliz. c. 7 had its sanitary clauses as well as the Im- proved Dwellings Acts of the present reign. The constable of the court leet was the prototype of our modern nuisance inspector. Common nuisances and offences done against the general easement of the people were a considerable portion of the business which occupied the attention of the Yorkshire Grand Jury in 1648.? But by means of the modern application of steam to locomotive appliances enlightened science had been carried into the dark corners of the land. Thereupon it came to be discovered that in districts 1 Social England, vol. ii. p. 239. Cassell & Co., 1894. 2 Harl. Miscell., vol. ii. p. 1, 17743 also Report of the Commission on the a rome -or0 390 Annals of the British Peasantry swept by the purest breezes, and irrigated by the most limpid streamlets, people were being slowly poisoned by the air and water which they absorbed daily into their systems. Villages which in point of beautiful scenery were earthly paradises contained populations whose habits and customs were tending to pervert into communities of lost souls. The messuage, consisting of a dwelling-house together with three or four acres and a cow, was an excellent motto for the economist. But the cottage containing three or four rooms together with a drain system was a better one’ for the sanitarian. While some politicians had been attempting to elevate the dignity of labour by means of the allotment system, others had been endeavouring to do so by the abolition of demoralising forms of it. Sir Frederick Eden began to influence public opinion on the subject of labourers’ model dwellings by invoking the services of the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, etc., towards that endin 1797. The Board of Agriculture was the next authority to draw attention to improved cottage building by offering a prize for that object in 1800. In 1827 a little band of philanthropists, under the presidency of the Bishop of Bath and Wells had formed the Labourer’s Friendly Society. In the interests of the community Chadwick had united his wide knowledge of existing sanitary defects to Combe’s large experience of their disastrous consequences. The stagnant ditch and dunghill, the overcrowded bedroom and filthy alley, had come to be regarded as public enemies. Garbage that kept on accumulating, and sewerage that would not flow, were being removed under the directions of the public health officer and converted into riches under those of the agricultural chemist. Landlords were not only shown what their labourers’ dwellings ought not to be, but what they ought to be. Every squire who visited the metropolis in 1851 could see with his own eyes the model cottages erected in Hyde Park under the auspices of the Prince Consort. Every squire who lingered at home that year could, by perusing the organs of the daily press, apply the improvements suggested by the Associations to his own defective cottage tenements. There were many, however, who were induced by our improved health statistics to leave the welfare of the labouring classes to chance. The average longevity of the people had increased from twenty-five years in 1780 to forty-one years in 1850. Surely this was proof positive that the peasantry were notin need of artificial means for augmenting their prosperity? The evidence accumulated in the Reports of the Royal Commissions on the Sanitary Condition of the Labouring Popula- tion in 1842, and on the Employment of Women and Children in 1843, rudely aroused such thinkers from their listlessness. For some time past landlords had been freeing their estates from the The Moral Elevation of the Labourer 391 burden of an excessive poor rate, by the drastic means of cottage de- molishment. Labourers no longer lived close to their work, but were congregated together in distant villages. Besides the “confined” labourers, as those residing on farms were called, there were the “catch- work” men, whose employer was the gang-master. Farmers requiring extra hands for expeditious operations resorted’to this latter class, and thus gave employment to a man who regarded his field-workers in the light of machines. ‘No tyranny is so grinding,” says Denison, “as that of a poor man who oppresseth the poor.”! The terms of labour enforced by the gang-master were the most degrading of any. The theatre of Operations was sometimes ten miles off, and so the contractor collected his girls and lads overnight, and transported them to their destination in carts as soon as daylight appeared on the following morning. When the shades of evening gathered about the weary band, he left them to seek the shelter and sleep which some adjacent barn could ill afford. The hours that should have been devoted to healthful rest were spent in debauchery. ‘I should not like,” said a respectable labourer, “to take a wife out of a gang.” We need not inquire too closely into the sad reasons for such a remark, but we may learn all the pernicious effects of the gang system by examining a special case. Castleacre in Norfolk was what is called an open parish. In other words, the land was in the hands of many freeholders. These, in order to prevent birth settlement, and to keep down rates, suffered the erection of no new cot- tages, and speedily razed to the ground all old ones. The resident population migrated into the village, where their competition for dwelling accommodation raised all house rents. Castleacre was converted into a resort for all the depraved characters of the neighbourhood. The farmers became short-handed, and tilled their holdings under the gang system. The place soon earned an unenviable notoriety by being re- garded as the most immoral parish in the county ; even one of its gang- masters admitting that it was “‘the coop of all the scrapings” in that part of East Anglia. Though these facts were revealed to the public by the Commission on the Employment of Women and Childrenin Agriculture in 1843, noth- ing seems to have been done by Parliament for many years afterwards towards amending this miserable state of affairs. But instructions were given to the Commission on the Employment of Youthful Persons in Trades and Manufactures, which happened to be sitting some twenty years later, to extend its investigations to the gang system. The dis- closure with which its Report again furnished Parliament led to the Act 1 Report of the Commission on the Employment of Women, etc., 1843, vol. xii., Brit. Mus. 392 Annals of the British Peasantry of 1867, for the regulation of agricultural gangs. Moreover, it drew public attention to all forms of agricultural labour, ultimately bringing the peasant under the purview of the Factory Acts, and his boys and girls under the dominion of the schoolmaster. Organised agricultural gangs were not entirely prohibited by the legislature. They were only purged of their shameful elements, and ceased to incur the scathing appellation of being “a foul and revolting species of agricultural slave-driving.” ! On the whole, gang-masters were found to be more careless than cruel.- There is an instance given of a lame girl who had to walk six miles to and six miles from her work each day; and another of a gang-master, beastly drunk, having to be sup- ported home by two young women. It was not, however, so much the misbehaviour of the masters as that of the gangs which brought the system into disrepute. By the recommendations of the Commission, the gang-master in future had to be licensed ; boys under eight and girls under twelve were excluded from his control; distances to and from work were limited; the sexes were separated, and jobs injurious to female health were discountenanced.?, The gang, being a necessary adjunct of agricultural existence in numerous parts of the country, had never been wholly confined to the counties east of London. It had existed in districts where no poor law had tended to impose a tax upon cottage-building and a bounty upon pauper-breeding. Scottish farmers were just as dependent on extraneous labour for their piece-work as were Norfolk husbandmen. Emigration had thinned the rural popula- tion: of central and southern Scotland at a time when her improved agriculture was creating an increased demand for field-work. The services of the gang-master were therefore frequently requisitioned. Enterprising Irish navvies and restless natives of neighbouring towns ranged themselves under his leadership. Whenever stones had to be quarried, or roads macadamised, or drains dug out, or turnips thinned, or potatoes stored, or corn harvested, then was gang-labour in much request. These droves of raw lads and lasses were regarded by the farmers as necessary evils. They never hesitated to undertake the performance of all the hard and distasteful jobs, and required no supervision, no catering for, no house-room. They breakfasted and supped at their distant homes, and used the remnants of these meals (which they brought with them) as a mid-day repast. The high rate of their wages gave them command over the flesher’s best joints, and on 1 Edinburgh Review, vol. cxxviii., 1868, art. viii. ; 2 Sixth Report of the Commission on the Employment of Voung Persons, Women and Children, etc., in Agriculture, 1862.—Vol. xvi., ‘‘ Reports from Commissioners in 1867.” ' The Moral Elevation of the Labourer <6 the weekly day of rest they were wont to regale themselves with what- ever luxuries fancy dictated. The ability to be prodigal with their earnings tended to reduce them at slack periods of the working year to the utmost want. It was the chief charge against that, in many respects, excellent economy, the day contract, that it conduced to fill the unions. But the Royal Commissioners who sat during the forties had worse tales to tell when they came to discuss the home life of England’s married labourers. House-room was reported to be universally defi- cient throughout half a dozen of her southern shires. We read of twenty-nine human beings under one small roof; of the sleeping space of eleven adults confined to a bedroom ten feet square; of tattered shawls constituting the sole partition between the sexes; of women delivered of their children on the bare boards of a crowded bedroom ; of holes in imperfect roofs, and windows stuffed with rotten rags; of youths spending their spare hours in the alehouse merely to evade the conglomeration of household goods and loud-voiced humanity which made their home living-room a scene of unrivalled discomfort. In such crowded tenements, health and sickness fought out their differences at grimly close quarters. When health irretrievably lost the unequal con- test, life and death were brought into prolonged and unbearable contact. Amidst these sometimes awful surroundings immorality of the worst description was rife! Yet outwardly these dwellings appeared the very shrines of modesty and refinement. Chance visitors admired the ivy- covered walls and picturesque gables of the older specimens, or eulo- gised a builder’s taste and a landowner’s munificence when they came across the highly ornamental erections of more recent years. Few wasted a thought on the lifelong discomforts to which such outward show was often devoting their inmates. It is not fair to attribute, as some ignorant outsiders are in the habit of doing, all these miserable results to the parsimony or carelessness of landlords. At the end of the first half of this century, many a high- principled youth was inheriting an estate on which cottage accommoda- tion had become lessened and the demand for it abnormally increased. Until the Union Chargeability Act had relieved the parochial poor system from the necessities of settlement and removal, there was no encouragement for a landlord to build. Yet these squires have been renovating ever since the tenements pulled down by their predecessors under the pressure of a pernicious poor law. Not only this. Recogni- < Report of the Special Assistant Commissioners to the Commission on the Employ- ment of Women and Children in Agriculture, vol. xii., 1843, and that of the Royal Commission in 1867, especially Dr. Hunter’s Report. 394 Annals of the British Peasantry sing that the banishment of the labourer from the farmhouse living-room necessitated further accommodation, they have been erecting new cottages. Suppressing their natural liking for wasting building funds on ornamental chimneys, porches, and windows, they have fitted the new dwellings instead with every expensive device which humanitarians and sanitarians can suggest. That they have not been able to cope fully with the difficulty is not because they have not done their best. Dr. Hunter, who in 1864 reported to the Privy Council the fact that in 821 villages the labouring population had increased, while the cottage accom- modation had decreased, attributed it to causes over which the landlords had had no control. That they had not availed themselves as fully as they might otherwise have done of the borrowing powers afforded by the legislature was set down to the stringent building regulations imposed by the Enclosure Commissioners ;! to the repeal of the Corn Laws by Sir Robert Peel in 1846, and to the imposition of death duties ' on realty by Mr. Gladstone in 1856, by which their available building funds had been lessened. But the report of the Royal Commission in 1869 established the fact that bad cottage accommodation was now the exception where forty years earlier it had been the rule. Even Mr. Doyle, who believed that the rural exodus could be best averted by the improved building plans of cottage architects, was forced to admit this. All the Commissioners could find to suggest was that the Town Labourers’ Dwelling Act should be applied to the rural districts. The best cottages were found to be invariably situated on the largest estates, the worst on the freeholds of those who inhabited them. Model cottages were quite as frequently met with amidst the large farms as in the villages. These are circumstances tending to show that landlords have sunk their capital in erecting property which could be only con- sidered in the light of farm buildings, quite as much as in that by which _ the contributions of its occupants would swell more directly the items of the estate rental. By thus proving themselves above the sordid influences of selfish interests, the lie has been given to Dr. Hunter’s assertion that the great landlords were anxious to rid their game pre- serves of the propinquity of a labouring element. These facts may be commended to the consideration of the many who regard cottage building in the light of a commercial investment only, and who maintain that even when no increase of rent is demanded a decrease in wages inevitably follows, which affords ample interest on the original outlay. Those who build those dwellings tell us a different tale. They assert that one-third of such expenditure must be regarded 1 Commission of 1869, Henxley’s Report, p. 187. The Moral Elevation of the Labourer 395 as capital laid up for the sake of the rewards of a future existence. When so impartial an authority as the Rev. Charles Stubbs corroborates this statement, 1 those not possessed, like myself, of personal experience of its truth may yet find cause to lay aside their scepticism. Has such self-abnegation on the part of the landlord, however, met with any encouragement from the cottager himself? I fear not. Often enough I have bitterly experienced that the extra room provided, after much difficulty, is only regarded in the light of a potato store or of lodger accommodation. The family still pigs together in the remaining sleeping space, on the plea that numbers supply that warmth which the expense of a coal fire denies. If, however, immorality, as a result of overcrowding, still lingers on after ample sleeping accommodation has been afforded, cannot some means like the Scottish bothy system be introduced into England, in order to free the labourer’s family of its dangerous members? The evidence that I shall now place before the reader will prove that immoral habits followed the young adults of the Scottish peasant family into their new barrack homes, and grew apace in that congenial soil as only ill weeds can grow. In 1842 Cowie published an essay on the subject which the High- land Society thought worthy of a prize. In 1851 James Nicoll, farm servant, of Blackford, wrote his Voice from the Bothy. Then Thompson of Banchory drew public attention to the evils of the system, and Lord Kinnaird began to interest himself and others in its amendment. It was high time that public-spirited men like these should thus exert themselves. The bothy economy, originally confined to the six counties of Perth, Angus, Kincardine, Aberdeen, Banff, and Moray, had begun to cross the Firth and spread over the southern villages. Only in the Lothians was there sufficient cottage accommodation for every plough- man. Farmers professed no pecuniary interest in these matters. They were careful enough to adapt the improvements of modern science to the housing of their animal stock, but found no profit in applying them to the human element of their labour supply. There was. no feeing market for horses like that for men; and therefore a vacancy in the stable was a far more formidable disaster than one in the bothy. So long as a servant worked well and abstained from stealing or damaging his master’s property, so long was he secure of his wages in money, meat, milk, and salt. Whether he could read or write, meditate or pray, did not disturb his employer’s conscience. Indeed, the latter would have been quickly told to mind his own business had he interfered in such 1 Lord Salisbury’s Article in the Matzonal Review; sub voc. ‘‘The Housing of Labourers,” 1884. See also Zhe Land and the Labourers, p. 24. C, W. Stubbs, 1884. 396 Annals of the British Peasantry matters! He sternly interdicted the intrusion of these men on his privacy, and they in their turn forbade him to set foot over their thres- hold. For ten hours of each day the bothyman was the slave of his employer, for the remaining hours of the night he was that of his own evil habits. The system was not universally the same in every district. Sometimes the servant girls were expected to tidy up the bothy on a Sunday morning, sometimes only to replace the dirty bed-linen with clean every six weeks. Occasionally there was a permanent female element in the economy, but frequently there was an utter absence of it. When the bothy was completely cut off from the feminine influence, its inmates had to dress their own victuals, make their own beds, and clean their own apartments. Leaving their dwellings before it was light in the morning and returning thither after nightfall, fagged out with the day’s labour, they often found themselves under the revolting necessity of gulping down raw food amidst the filthiest surroundings. The complete isolation of the sexes resulted in something like free inter- course between them. The female servant of the employer became either the paramour or the spy of the bothyman. When, on the other hand, servant girls were permanently attached to the bothy, then was womanhood exhibited in its most revolting form. The bothy female was but a man in petticoats. She drank, she smoked, she sang, she worked, as deeply, as filthily, as coarsely, as roughly as any of her male associates. Under this demoralising economy half a dozen young strangers were brought into the closest social contact each succeeding Whitsunday and Martinmas. Some of these might be predisposed to cleanly, truthful, and industrious habits. | Others were naturally selfish, vicious, and filthy. The good principles of the former were soon over- ruled by the bad ones of the latter. The winter evenings were spent in lewd or ribald jesting. Wages were wholly devoted to gambling and drunkenness. Enter in imagination one of these disgusting dens on a Saturday evening. Observe the pot, the bench, the salt box, the lamp, the water pail, the stools, the meal chests, the wooden bowls and spoons, if you can distinguish such primitive articles of furniture under their cake of dirt. Listen, if you are not easily shocked, to the blasphemy, ‘the oaths, the foul songs, the lewd jests. Stay! there is a quarrel : one of this hateful crew has offended the unwritten law of bothy customs. Notice, the soles of his bare feet are to be beaten with the back of 1 For example, read the experience of the Rev. C. F. Stevenson, who relates that a farmer remonstrated with his ploughmen for not attending the Kirk services, where- upon, out of spite, they stood at the Kirk doors the following Sunday and played the congregation out of church by a course of music on the bagpipes.—Zmployment of Young Persons, etc., in Agriculture, Appendix Pt. II. to 4th Report, 1870. The Moral Elevation of the Labourer *O7 yonder axe. Observe how they raven about him like enraged tigers. Ah, that was the scream of human’ nature in agony. Come out quickly, lest you become the accessory in an act of murder. These disclosures occasioned at the time much discussion in northern social circles. Impulsive philanthropists wanted at once to sweep the entire economy away. It was, they declared, a combination of the worst elements of the slave life of America and of the monastic system of ‘the Middle Ages.1. They had said much the same of the workhouse test, overcrowded cottages, gang-masters, and bondagers. The calm, penetrating search-light of a Royal Commission has generally been instrumental in revealing more good than bad in practices execrated like these. The system itself is capable of becoming excellent enough, if only those whom it affects can be reformed in character. Mr. Robert Scott Burn has given us the results of his careful inquiry into this economy, from which the reader will gather that it was capable of being made extremely comfortable, or the absolute reverse. On the Home Farm, at Windsor, there was, and may be to this day, a model bothy ; and in Perthshire there were instances where similar construc- tions occurred. Sufficient comfort was insured for unmarried labourers, whenever the master allowed female attendance for the purposes of cleaning, making the beds, lighting the fires, and baking the bread. After the year 1857, a great change for the better seems to have taken place in the system. “Ina few years,” writes a Forfarshire correspon- dent of Mr. Burn, “it is trusted that all ploughmen will be comfortably lodged.” But, just to remind people what a pandemonium a bothy could become, there lingered in the least advanced districts of Scotland, such as Caithness, some of the old savagery which had rendered this economy an outrage on public morals. Thus the commonest arrange- ment was the old one—viz., for the female servants to sit, eat, and pass their evenings in the place where the lads slept, their own bedroom being in some off-closet entering from it, or in a separate but adjacent apartment. Abundance of peat was allowed, but neither lamp nor candle. All the blankets and sheets, the bowls, plates, and spoons, everything, in fact, except the pot and a few rough articles of furniture, had to be provided by the inmates themselves. A lad, a big boy, and a single woman subsisted thus under one roof. Fish and meat were rarely tasted, bedding seldom changed, and rooms neither white- washed nor cleaned for years at a stretch. There was no reading possible during the long winter evenings, and the absence of artificial means of light encouraged and facilitated deeds of darkness.* This 1 « Better Houses for the Working Classes,” Scottish Review, p. 149, vol. i., 1853. 2 Outlines of Modern Farming,” sub voc. Farming, and Farming Economy, 398 | Annals of the British Peasantry economy was naturally criticised severely by the Commissioners on the Employment of Young Persons, etc., in Agriculture, who sat during the last few years of the seventh decade of this present century. Their evidence was a surprise to many ; for in most districts, Hadding- tonshire for example, they discovered the bothy to be a most respectable abode, and, still more unexpectedly, they found in the bothy maid a respected and virtuous young woman. Lowland girls, as a rule, turned up their noses at the situation, and entered instead the domestic service of the farmers. But the large numbers of women who came south to replace the Lowland females as bothy servants consisted of superior- looking Highland lasses.! From these later evidences we may credit the impartial opinion of the late Mr. H. M. Jenkins. ‘ Whatever want of orthodoxy,” he wrote, “my opinion may possess, I cannot help thinking that the faults in the bothy system, which are held up to public reprobation, are to be seen as frequently in the cottages of East Lothian as in the bothies ot Aberdeenshire. Therefore it seems more just to lay these faults at. the door of the labourer himself than at that of the system under which he is housed and fed.”? The publicity brought to bear on the bothy system from 1853 to 1870 had led Scottish employers of rural labour to see if defects in it were capable of amendment. It soon came to be realised that wherever the cooking and eating department was under the same roof as the sleeping place, there the temptations to immorality were most strong. The con- tact between lads and lasses was too close, when neither sex had means of privacy for drying wet clothes, and of performing other such occasional and necessary offices. The result was that the kitchen often came to be separated from the barracks, the new arrangement being distinguished from the old so-called bothy system by the term “kitchen system.” It was this new scheme which all the authorities excepted from the cen- sorious remarks with which many of them continued to speak of the old one.? Soon bothies began to be erected especially for females. These came into great demand as early as the year 1846; they were kept much cleaner by their inmates than were the bothies of the males. Indeed, it was a pleasure to visit them, and notice the bright faces of the girls as they knitted, mended, or cooked during the winter evenings. On Mr. William Murray’s farm, at Tipperty, may be seen one of the 1 Commission on the Employment, etc., etc., 4th Report, Appendix pt. ii., 1870. 2 Report on some Features of Scottish Agriculture. Fournal R.A.S.E., vol. vii., and series, p. 198. 8 Evidence of R. H. Stuart, of Oathlaw. Commission on the Employment, etc., 4th Report, Appendix, pt. ii., 1870. The Moral Elevation of the Labourer 399 latest improvements of the bothy system. The men sleep in dormi- tories constructed over the byres and stables, where, on cold nights, they are assured of a warm, if not pure, atmosphere. The spare hours of the day are passed under a kind of club-economy in the kitchen. Here their culinary comforts are provided for, and at the same time their morals kept free from undue temptation by the harmless good offices of an ancient dame. It is to be hoped that the combined efforts of minister and schoolmaster have by now introduced better manners amongst those who occupy bothy beds and benches. Whether this be so is doubtful, for reliable authorities ‘still execrate the system.! It is by now evident that what the bothy system lacked was some form of parental control; and that what the cottage economy wanted was some mechanical contrivance which would form a barrier of decency between the sleeping sexes. If only the lads of the farm could have been brought under the roof of the married labourers, and yet isolated from their daughters’ bedrooms, the privacy and purity of the family life would have been secured, and the discomforts and temptations of single blessedness averted. It were strange if somewhere or other in the British Isles this had not been attempted before now. It has; for on certain Yorkshire farms it has been carried out with the most successful results. Each foreman labourer is expected to take under his roof the six or seven youths who constitute the unmarried labour of the holding. That roof covers the separate staircases, washhouses, pantries, and boilers of both a bothy and a cottage. There, though boarded and lodged in close juxtaposition to each other, the unmarried lodgers are cut off from social intercourse with the unmarried females. A partition wall enables the farmer to avail himself of all the advan- tages of the bothy system, without any interference with the com- fortable housing of his wedded hinds.? The only objection to the system is that the foreman labourer tries, by stinting his lodgers in food, to make a profit out of the allowance paid him by the farmer on this head. If we look back upon the state of cottage accommodation in the United Kingdom some twenty years ago, we are forced to regard it as on the whole unsatisfactory. The reports of the Commissioners in 1869 and 1870 are painful reading. But at least this may be said : wherever appreciation of the benefits of a better economy was likely to occur, there might be found landowners doing their best to afford it. “In speak- ing of the state of cottages,” writes Mr. John Dent Dent, in 1871, “I 1 Stephen's Book of the Farm, vol. ii. p. 596, Ed. 1876. 2 The Royal Commission on Labour, Reports of the Assistant Commissioners, TRa2. 400 Annals of the British Peasantry am exhibiting a dark picture; as if it was the fault of a class, many o/ whom are powerless to change it, and ‘few of whom are answerable for it. We are calling on the landowners of to-day to remedy the evil growth of many past generations, and nine-tenths of those who reside in the four counties which I have visited are already busy at the work, as far as their means will allow.”! But this remark applied only to the landowners of the southern kingdom, Attention seems to have first been drawn to the wretched condition of Scotland’s cottage homes about the middle of the pre- sent century. At the beginning of the year 1854, an “Association for Promoting Improvement in the Dwellings and Domestic Condition of Agricultural Labourers” was formed at Edinburgh, under the pre- sidency of the Duke of Buccleugh. Within four years its directors were able to congratulate its subscribers on the satisfactory results of their corporate efforts. Large numbers of new cottages had been erected. Large sales of its reports and plans had occurred, not only in Scotland, but in England. Favourable notice had been taken of its labours at public meetings and in organs of the press throughout the kingdom. Although the primary object of this Association was architectural, it had also aimed at raising the moral condition of the peasantry. With the former object in view, it published plans of model tenements and gave advice gratis to its members. With the latter purpose in view, it discouraged the bothy system, though it felt forced to term it a xecessary evil. Through its instrumentality, thatched roofs, wide-open chimneys, called lums, whose stone platforms were only suitable for burning turf, and windows too small for light and useless for ventilation ceased to be constructed. It preached a crusade against dampness in all its forms, showing how too shallow foundations, soft building materials, clay mortar, and roof coverings, half straw, half turf, propagate rheumatism on those who return home heated after a day’s hard work. It refused to regard the box-bed as a permanent, sufficient, or decent provision for the privacy of sleeping adults, and demanded that one room, at least, in every cottage should be ceiled above and boarded below. It regretted that it was not more common among Scottish architects to adopt the English system of a second floor; and, lastly, it insisted upon artificial drainage and spouting outside every erection intended for human habitation2 But, that its laudable efforts did not meet with the success that they 1 Journal of the R.A.S.E., 1871. Condition of the British Agricultural Labourer, J. D. Dent, M.P. 7 2 The Association for Promoting Improvement in the Dwellings and Domestic Con- dition of Agricultural Labourers in Scotland, 4¢h Report, 1858. The Moral Elevation of the Labourer 401 undoubtedly deserved is evident from the information derived from later sources. In out-of-the-way districts of Scotland, such as Shetland, we learn from Mr..Robert Scott Burn’s work, that as late as 1863 the miserable economy of the “but and ben” still survived. On their earthen floors, and beneath their thatched roofs, still lurked all the discomforts of medizval cottage-life. The seafaring habits of their inhabitants imported much of the miserable surroundings of a whaler’s cabin into their economy. A bed was but the wooden shelf of a berth. The sleeping arrangements of the kitchen were a series of bunks ranged one above the other. The principal article of furniture was a sea-chest. Walls were rough, windows small, roofs only kept from blowing away by straw ropes weighted with stones. Hens roosted on the edges of berth beds, pigs couched amidst the ashes of the hearth, the smoke curled about the nostrils of the somnolent inmates. The cottages on the mainland of the Highlands were not much superior. Indeed, in some respects they were worse. Even in Berwickshire and Dumfriesshire there were still to be seen two-roomed tenements, with damp earthen floors, divisionless sleeping accommodation, and de- fective roofs. There was, however, everywhere great promise of good things to come. “Every intelligent farmer,” quotes Mr. Burn from the letter of his Forfarshire correspondent, ‘and many proprietors are now alive to the necessity of providing -better cottage accommodation. Much has been done of late years, but little as to what is required.” 4 Coming down to a later date, we have the account of Mr. H. Little, who reproduced, in 1878, for the readers of the Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society, certain plans of model cottages which had been recently erected in various parts of the country, and then added : “Thousands of such cottages as these may be found scattered over every part of England, but it must be confessed that Scotland has not yet followed suit in this respect. From a dislike on the part of the labourer to live on more than one floor, most of the cottages are in that country built on that plan, and they are too often devoid, not only of structural beauty, but of decent accommodation. In many parts they present the appearance of long rows of barracks, and are entirely wanting in that neatness and trimness which is generally the accompaniment of English homes, however poor the inmates.”* In these two statements we have the whole case summed up in a nutshell. The southern visitor beholds everywhere in the northern kingdom the strange anomaly of advanced cultivation, fine farmhouses and miserable 1 «Outlines of Modern Farming,” sab voc. Farming, and Farming Economy, pp. 243, 244, Ed. iv., 1873. 2 Journal of the R.A.S.E., 1878, The Agricultural Labourer. Hi. J. Little. 402 Annals of the British Peasantry labour hovels. Even in the garden of Scotland, as East Lothian is called, there are long lines of cottages close to the road whose chief characteristic is a want of cleanliness both inside and out. The housing of the Ayrshire hind is not much superior to the mud cabins of Connemara. In more advanced districts an occasional exception is to be met with. At Genoch, in Wigtonshire, Mr. Jenkins noticed as early as 1871 a recently erected pair of model tenements. At East Barns, near Dunbar, Mr. Murray’s perfected family system of labour economy met with the approval of the Commissioners in 1870, and his group of cottages gained the Highland Society’s medal as early as 1848.* But as a universal rule the Scottish peasantry were not as yet worthy of better domiciles. Their strange dislike to mount a flight of stairs defeated the worthy aims of the most benevolent landlords. We read how one of the latter once built a pair of comfortable semi-detached two-floor cottages. It was his subsequent mortification to’ have to make doors in their party walls and let each floor separately on the flat system. Only thus could he induce his workpeople to take kindly to these tenements. If we come down to the evidences of this later day, we find the same proofs of progress in cottage accommodation, and the same necessity for further reforms on the part both of landlords and of labourers. Some of these dwellings visited by the Commissioners of 1892 are styled “little palaces,” others described as still only suitable for the inferior class of farm livestock. Overcrowding is being largely diminished by the efforts of the sanitary officer, but there is still necessity for his increased vigilance. Thus, for example, Mr. Edward Wilkinson, reporting on the cottage accommodation found by him in Derbyshire, Lincolnshire, and Yorkshire, states that he often met with instances where the labourers evinced no appreciation of the third bedroom, though he adds that this was rather the exception than the rule. Often those who were using this extra sleeping space as a lumber room or granary expressed a preference for ladders rather than stairs, as requiring less space. Ventilation was found.to be generally available but seldom valued. Drainage was being forced on a re- luctant peasantry. An impure or insufficient water supply is the evil which lingers longest in existence. The Sanitary Acts are good in themselves but bad in their ad- ministration. The defects which were pointed out in 1868 are still apparent in 1894. The inspectors and relieving officers appointed by 1 Journal of the R.A.S.E., 1871. Report on some Features of Scottish Agriculture. H. M. Jenkins, The Moral Elevation of the Labourer 403 9 boards of guardians understand that they are to wait till their atten- tion is called to a nuisance. They are either too much the creatures of their superiors, or too biassed by ties of friendship or relationship with those whom they have to supervise, to act impartially. To remedy this unsatisfactory condition of affairs, men like Mr. Chamberlain (whose wide familiarity with and pure affection for the working classes are the admiration of everybody) would make the labourers, of both town and village, owners, instead of merely occupiers, of their dwellings. From such a suggestion I am forced to express a vigorous dissent. The proposed House Purchase Bill would seriously obstruct the proper fluidity of labour, and reintroduce a more drastic system of settlement than has ever existed before. A man would buy a house with the intention of living and dying in it. All his available capital would be, in future, expended in improving it. As long as his opportunities for employing his labour in the neighbourhood lasted, all would be well. But supposing, either from loss of health or other causes, he had to go elsewhere, what would become of the property? What could he do with it but dispose of it under the disappointing conditions of a forced sale? At present he obtains his cottage at a low rent, and expects his landlord to keep it in repair. Well for him if he prefers to remain under such beneficial conditions. Speaking from my own personal experiences of the last twenty years, I would point out that the comforts of cottage life would be enor- mously increased at little extra cost if more attention were devoted to details. Landlords, agents, and clerks of the works all alike, are prone to think that everything is perfected as soon as a model cottage has been erected under the closely followed plans and specifications of its architect. The only way to find out the defects of this tenement is to live in it during a short spell of bad weather. If you have escaped a pulmonary attack, kept your digestion unimpaired, and your eyes from watering, all is as it should be. But if you have suffered from draughts, smoke, damp, and badly cooked viands, all is of as it should be. Give your cottagers a really effective kitchen range, proper chimney pots, pargetted flues, wind-tight roofs and windows, and some barrier between themselves and the gusts of wind which burst through the open door, and they will bless you.t_ Labourers in the South of Eng- land a hundred years ago, as indeed many do now, dressed their viands at the baker’s. This fact did not escape the observation of Eden. He attributed it partly to the scarcity of fuel, but in a great measure to 1 In chap. xi. of my work on Land Agency I have described each point in cottage architecture where scamping is likely to occur (Land Agency Estates Gazette Office, Tandan Rar) 404 Annals of the British Peasantry . defective culinary arrangements. It is my experience that. Count Rumford’s remarks would apply as forcibly in these days of cheap Brummagem wares as they did in his time. Speaking of the cottagers of this country, he says: “ Their fireplaces are in general constructed upon the most wretched principles, and the fuel they consume in them, instead of heating their rooms, not unfrequently renders them really colder and more uncomfortable by causing strong currents of cold air to flow from all the doors and windows to the chimney. By diminish- ing their fireplaces and the throats of their chimneys, just above the mantelpiece, at a trifling cost, all these defects are remediable.” He goes on to show how fuel may be economised by means of a me- chanical contrivance. “An earthen pot, broad at top for receiving a stew pan, a kettle narrow at bottom, with holes through its sides near the bottom for letting in air under a circular and iron grate, and other small holes near the top for letting out the smoke, may be invented. By making use of this portable furnace, equally adapted for wood and coals, one-eighth part of the fuel now used would suffice.”? It may be said that the inventions of modern times have obviated the necessity for such a contrivance. So, no doubt, they have, but it is the genius for looking into the smallest trifles rather than the letter of these essays which is worthy of imitation. There are con- structions of iron plates and bars sold as cottage kitchen ranges from which no human ingenuity could derive either warmth or cookery. There are constructions of iron plates and bars sold as bedroom grates which it would be foolish to pack with fuel and wantonly destructive to poke. Any contrivance, however obsolete and primitive, is better than these. I am not therefore surprised to learn from the Blue Books that many of the most northern of our labourers’ wives cling to the old swey for the means of hanging their kettles and the old girdle for the purpose of baking their cakes.? But let us suppose that everything has been made comfortable within doors. Do the landlord’s duties end there? By no means: the architect of the best model cottages in existence does not pretend either to decide on their sites or to set out their garden plots. The landlord has sometimes to choose between the conflicting opinions of labouring husband and managing housewife. The former likes to be near his work, the latter near her neighbours. As frequently it is impossible to content both parties, let the wants of the children 1 Rumford’s Essays, 174, quoted by Eden in his State of the Poor. 2 Culley’s Report to the Commission on the Employment of Young Persons, etc. Appendix, Part II., to Report IV., 1870. The Moral Elevation of the Labourer 405 decide this matter, and let landlords select that site which is nearest the parish school. Lastly, the garden. Why should not its produce be made to contri- bute something really substantial towards the payment of the rent? It can be managed very simply, very effectually, and with small outlay. Vegetables cannot do much of themselves, but, when interspersed with fruit trees, the combined produce brings back from market a fair sum annually. A gentleman (would that I could remember his honourable name!) planted in every one of his labourers’ gardens a walnut tree, from the yield of which each tenant often derived his whole year’s cottage rent. In climates unfavourable to the production of walnuts, the best variety of pear trees would be found fitting substitutes. Cobbett’s adverse opinions on the presence of fruit trees about the cottage not- withstanding, I refuse to term the patch of ground that is without them a garden. Those of my readers who have lived in the south of Great Britain all their lives can scarcely imagine a rural cottage without its fruit trees. But there are families of the agricultural labouring class which, save in the blackberrying season, seldom taste a fruit pudding whose chief ingredients have not been purchased from the greengrocer. LExperto crede. CHAPTER XXVI THE GOLDEN AGE OF LABOUR T is not intended to imply by the above heading that all is as it should be in our rural hamlets. I shall in this chapter attempt to convey to my readers that which should still be done for the labourer, and that which still might be done by himself. In the next and final chapter I shall confine myself to that which should not be done for or by him. The chief reason why working men, both in town and country, have reached a higher stage of prosperity than ever they did before, is be- cause they have been taken under the especial patronage of society. Society has inherited a large portion of the restless spirit of the age. It examines and criticises the private concerns of all its members. No- thing, however trivial, seems to escape its roving eye. The enormous area of blank paper, which our Press undertakes to cover daily with news, affords scope for the employment of any amount of such energy. The discovery of an abuse or of a grievance is valuable “copy” to the newspaper editors. The fortunate finder of it earns the reputation of being public-spirited ; consequently there are multitudes of would-be public-spirited people on the search for grievances. Their method is simplicity itself. They go about poking their noses into every dark corner of the land until a grievance or abuse is scented. The news- papers soon make it public property. If it is more or less trivial, an Association springs into existence and is capable of coping with it. If it is really formidable, a Royal Commission sits on it and thus crushes it out of existence. But far be it from me to ridicule this fashion of grievance-mongering. It has been instrumental in exposing many a lurking evil. Let me give an example of what I state. Nothing to the casual observer can be more picturesque, more suggestive of innocence, or more productive of health than the occupation of hop-picking. But there appears on the scene the grievance-hunter. Presently he discovers something that should not be, in other words “copy” for some editor- friend of his. A little later up starts “The Society for the Employment and Improved Lodging of Hop-pickers,” and takes ‘into its custody all those happy-looking people scattered about in artistic groups under the ANE The Golden Age of Labour 407 hop-poles. Now here is a case where great good came out of the general thirst for exposing grievances. The bin’s company of poor East- Enders would themselves never have detected the germs of evil associ- ated with their pleasant annual picnic. That their employer had housed them in sheds which were a disgraceful lodging accommodation for his beasts, that the provision of mere hurdles as the only partition between the sleeping adults of both sexes was an outrage on decency, were circumstances likely to, escape the notice of persons who utilised | the arrangement in order to sleep off the soporific effects of both the scent and the labour of hop-harvesting. The Royal Commissioners of 1867, however, were not thus lulled into contentment, and the better accommodation of the hop-picker has become an object of State solicitude. , It is by such means as these that the comforts and morals of even the lowest grades of the working class have been improved. It is thus that these last decades of the r9th century have come to be called the golden age of labour. There are over-anxious parents who subject their delicate little ones to the too frequent diagnosis of the family physician. The extreme thoughtfulness of the community for the welfare of its working men takes a similar form. The doctor of the national family is the Royal Commissioner. He it is who, so to speak, feels pulses and scrutinises tongues before sending in his report of the patients to the paternal authorities. / It is reasonable to ask whether this passion for inquiry into class habits and class abuses may not become extravagant. Societies and Royal Commissions cannot be set on foot without considerable calls on the purses of the charitable and the taxpayers. Those who have perused the Reports of the Royal Commission of 1891, or, at least, the eighteen Blue Books referring to the agricultural labourer, will have found them replete with stale news. There is hardly a single piece of evidence relating to the condition of the rural peasantry which cannot be read somewhere or other in the back numbers of Blue Books and magazines. Still I hold the opinion that employers of rustic labour cannot regard the time and costs of the Commissioners as wholly wasted. The outside world required the corroboration by an impartial tribunal of the reiterated assurances concerning the labourer’s welfare which emanated from farming circles. The unanimous verdict of the Commissioners is that, with the trifling exception of the year 1879, con- ’ fined to North Wales, the general condition of agricultural labourers’ is better than it ever was before. If this announcement will tend to incul- cate in the minds of the Land Reform party the policy of “‘ Hands off,” few of that great tax-paying body, the British landlords, will grudge the 408 Annals of the British Peasantry additional expenditure incurred in the compilation of those sixty-seven folio volumes by the Labour Commission of 1891. Let not, however, those more intimately connected with the British peasant relax their unselfish efforts for his welfare on this account. Much has been done for him, but much remains to be done. Man does not live by bread alone. Now that the labourer can be no longer termed a turnip-stodger or a chawbacon, there is no reason why his mental nourishment should not be the best available under present circumstances. Asa rule, the immorality of his class has, I believe, been exaggerated. The dangerous period for lapses in this direction is in the British male when he arrives at that hobbledehoy stage at which he is not quite either man or boy. Taking into consideration the lack of refinement and of education, by which he is placed at a considerable disadvantage when compared with better-nurtured lads of the same age, I do not think that his standard of morality is abnormally inferior to ' that of the latter. The purity of our men can be elevated best by the increased purity of our women. Fifty years ago the moralist was constantly being shocked by the frequent crimes of infant poisoning perpetrated by our peasant mothers. The clergyman and the schoolmaster have managed to put an end to this horrible propensity. But there is considerable room yet for the moral improvement of the labourers’ wives and daughters. If field labour, as Bishop Fraser has asserted, unsexes a woman in ‘dress, gait, and manners; if it makes bad housewives and mothers; if it tends to drive the husbands into the public-houses as a refuge from the improvidence and neglect of home life, then no mere economical advantages which may be derived by it must prevent its abolition. But some have asserted that the labouring female is not utterly depraved ; that though she may fall once, she never will again ; that eventually she becomes a good helpmate, predisposed by her early outdoor life to a vigorous motherhood. It is, after all, a subject for comparison. Do the women who work in the hay and corn harvests around Luton compare favourably in point of morality with those who labour in its plaitwork? Are the Lancashire pit-brow lasses or the Notts female field-workers a purer class than the Lancashire cotton girls or the Notts lace women? The bothy system furnishes us with an illustration of the evils which the opposite extreme of complete isolation between the sexes may effect. JI am not discussing now indoor female labour. That is often the most laborious of any. It was dairying that the Commissioners of 1843 most condemned, not indeed on account of its moral defects, but on account of its bodily defects. A work like this of a stooping nature, that is never finished, soon brings on unpleasant The Golden Age of Labour | 409 symptoms. ‘The pains in the back and limbs, the overpowering sense of fatigue, the want of appetite, and the chronic feverishness, are all absent from most open-air employments.! Improved husbandry ne- cessitates much light work which can be ably performed by feminine hands. The agricultural labour of the Scottish maiden fills the pro- viding chest with an important contribution towards the furnishing out- fit required in married life. The early open-air training of both sexes on the sunny slopes of the Cheviots stocks Northumberland with a peasantry of splendid physique. The bondagers of this county are a well-to-do class. Though Cobbett thought he saw, in this system of compelling each male labourer to supply a female help, an element of slavery, he was obliged to confess that it was more in name than in occupation. It was imagined by the particular Commissioner who in- quired into this economy in 1843 that the old saying, ‘“‘Never take a household servant from north of Bremish,” implied that the turnip-hoe and scythe did not train girls to be neat-handed indoors.? I am afraid, however, that the adage reflects deeper disgrace on the system than this. It was a practice, farther north than Northumberland, for farmers to force their unmarried ploughmen to keep during the year single women as their bondagers. For this reason Mr. Samuel Sheriff stigma- tised the custom, when speaking of it before the Commission of 1867, as “ the vilest form of all bondage labour.”? Be this as it may, the mere fact that outdoor labour made girls clumsy bed-makers may have lost one or two of them a good master, but would scarcely have lowered their worth in the matrimonial market. The beneficial effects of woman’s mascu- line employments tend to keep the peasantry outside the workhouse and hospital. They must not be lightly dispensed with, unless they are found to be relegating members of this class to the prison-house and reformatory instead.* It may be true, as Lord Godolphin Osborne asserted, “that female labour tends to make women mannishly coarse.” I, for my part, prefer to adopt the dictum of Mr. E, B. Portman regard- ing this knotty question. ‘“ Immorality,” he wrote, “is taken to the field, and not engendered there.” 5 1 Report of the Special Assistant Commissioner to the Commission on the Employ- ment of Women and Children in Agriculture, 1843, vol. xii. 2 Report of the Special Commissioner to the Commission on the Employment of Women and Children in Agriculture, 1843. 3 Report on the Employment of Young Persons, Women, Children, etc., in Agricul- ture, of 1867.“ Culley’s Evidence,” Appendix, pt. II. to 4th Report. 4 Vide Mr. John Dent’s views on this subject, Journal R.A.S.E. sub voc, “* The Present Condition of the English Agricultural Labourer,” p. 343, 1871. 5 Reports of the Commissioners on the Employment of Young Persons, Women, etc., -etc., 10 Dec., 1869, vol. xiii. 410 Annals of the British Peasantry It will be realised from the foregoing pages of this history that the idiosyncrasies and habits of our northern peasantry are widely different from those of our southern peasantry. Better results of labour are derived from the former than from the latter class, and therefore less labour is required in the former districts than in the latter. The Scottish peasantry are more prone to sexual depravity than the English peasantry, and the latter are more habituated to drunkenness than the former. The different systems of employment practised in the two districts are accountable for these variations in the morals of the two sections of the class. Ethnic peculiarities and long-established customs have much to do with the unequal results of their industry. For instance, let us make a comparison of the wages in drink once prevalent in the northern counties with those in the midlands. The cider cup as part of the harvest remuneration in Gloucestershire and Somerset could not hold its own either in its social, moral, or physical results with the milk bowl devoted to the same purpose in Northumber- land and the Lothians. A predisposition to drunkenness followed in the wake of the first practice, and a predisposition to healthiness in that of the second. If in any way the Truck Acts have exerted a beneficial influence on rural labour, it is surely in this. Whether they have is, ‘however, at least doubtful. The Act of 1887 rendered it illegal for farmers to give intoxicating liquors to their servants as a remuneration for services, But it is still open for them to do so by calling it a gift. The Attorney-General replied as follows to a question asked in the | House of Commons on the 8th of March, 1888: “It isin every case a question of fact whether the giving of intoxicating liquors by farmers and other employers of labour is expressly or by implication a part of the contract of service. No other and general answer can be given to the honourable and learned member’s question.” In one of the few directions, therefore, where this pernicious legislation could have been wholesome for peasant morality, it thus failed. Edible wages have been virtually abolished by it; drinkable wages are surreptitiously carried on by it. Much has been said of late years about the rural exodus, and rightly so, for within the last twenty years one out of five in England and Wales, one out of four in Scotland, and one out of two in Ireland of the agricultural labourers has deserted the soil. The causes of this deplor- able fact are many. Want of employment is probably the chief cause, and increased knowledge another. Education is doing its perfect work, but, unfortunately for the farmer, it is depriving him of the cream of his 1 Paper on the Royal Commission on Labour and Agricultural Labourers, read by Mr. Rew on November 5th, 1894, before the Farmers’ Club. The Golden Age of Labour All labour supply. The peasant’s “ divorce from the soil,” as the loss of his landed rights has been called, has had less to do with this circumstance than his divorce from the farmer’s kitchen and granary. But for the Truck Acts, we might re-introduce on a large scale, not only that system of meating the single man in the employer’s house (which, not being illegal, still lingers in parts of the country), but also the payments, in kind, of wedded labour. In a preceding chapter I have related all that can be found against this earlier economy; but now, when habits of thrift and foresight have been established by the schoolmaster and philanthropist, many of the original objections to it need not apply. Glance back to the reports of the first Board of Agriculture, and read there all that is advanced in favour of these disused practices. Note with what eulogisms the writer of the report from Herefordshire speaks of the system. The grain allowance, the cowgait, the potato or flax ground, the gift of fuel, the privileges of keeping pigs and poultry ensured for their beneficiaries a comfortable subsistence, even in the worst period of England’s rural labour. No wonder that those intimate with the habits and work of our peasantry have at all times regarded this system with favour. Mr. John Grey, of Dilston, Mr. Henry Stephens, Mr. John C. Morton, and many other eminent farmers have written in its favour. ‘ One very obvious benefit,” writes the first mentioned of these experts, “arising to the hind from this mode of paying in kind, besides that of having a store of wholesome food always at command, which has not been taxed with the profits of intermediate agents, is the absence of all temptation which the receipt of weekly wages, and the necessity of resorting to a village or town to buy provisions, held out of spending some part of the money in the alehouse which ought to provide for the wants of the family ; and to this circumstance, and to the domestic employment which their gardens afford in their leisure hours, we are probably much indebted for the remarkable sobriety and exemplary moral conduct of the peasantry of the north; it gives him a personal interest in the produce of his master’s farm, and a desire to secure it in good condition ; it produces a set of local attachments which often lead to a connection between master and servant of long continuance.” ! This same writer goes on to contrast the life of labourers outside the farmer’s household with that of those inside it. The former, “being paid board wages, club together to have their comfortless meal cooked in a neighbouring cottage, with no house to call their home, left to sleep in an outhouse or a hayloft, subject to the contamination of idle com- panions, with no parents’ eyes to watch their actions, and no parents’ voice to warn thein of their errors.” But in a north-country cottage, 1 Journal R.A.S.E., vol. ii. p. 186. 412 Annals of the British Peasantry the bulk of whose food supply comes off the farm, is beheld during a winter’s evening a family group, seated around a cheerful coal fire, the females knitting or spinning, the father mending shoes, a son reading for the amusement of the whole circle. Finally, compare with such evidences as these the report of a Herefordshire relieving officer in 1871. “Our labourers,” he says, ‘have neither pig nor cow nor poultry. When they are thrown out of work, they come immediately upon the rates; all they think about when they have money is drink. In harvest men can earn 24s. a week, and they seem no better during that season than any other; they drink the difference, and get ill on it.”! I have shown earlier in this work how the rural servant lost his position in the employer’s kitchen. Our farm wives grew more refined in their habits, more fastidious in their tastes. They became disgusted with the uncouth manners and rude appetites of their compulsory guests. Their husbands took to personal supervision of, instead of active co- operation in, the farm duties. The daughters were learning music and dancing, and the sons were participating in the pastimes of the gentry. Naturally the breach of social relationship tended to widen between the two orders until it caused that banishment from the kitchen which I so deplore. But now that education has exerted its benign influences on the peasantry, while bad times have lowered the pride of their employers, is no social reunion between the two classes possible? The farmers have become less particular in their tastes, the labourers more refined in theirs. Asa result of personal inquiry, I find that the animal appetites of the latter are, like their mental cravings, less gross than formerly. Something is wanted in the farming economy to divert the labourer from the pernicious attractions of bad company. His children are now quite as well as, if not better educated than, those of his master. The pleasures of social intercourse between the youth of these two classes might, if encouraged, become a counter-attraction to those derived from the company met with in public-houses. The sanitation and morality of our cottage homes would be greatly enhanced if the young adults of both sexes were removed once more to the farmhouse. They would derive there that generous diet which is so essential to growing manhood and womanhood. A subsequent more meagre sus- tenance during the years of married life would do them less harm when their physical growth is over. Must, then, the party wall of social dis- tinction always remain between these two grades of the community ? The lodging of lads in farmhouses was objected to by the Commission of 1867 because the situation was more remote from the night schools, 1 Sournal of the R.A.S.E., Condition of the Agricultural Labourer, 1871. John Dent Dent, M.P. The Golden Age of Labour 413 and there was no supervision, and miserable accommodation. But then all farmhouses are not remote from educational establishments, and even the loft over a stable may be a healthier sleeping-place than an over- crowded cottage bedroom. These were abuses of the system which the legislature might easily have redressed without abolishing the system. But it may be said, this economy may be beneficial for single men and women ; yet quite the reverse when extended to the married peasantry. Certainly it would never do to invite the father to a hearty meal in the farmhouse kitchen, while his wife and little ones fared badly in the home cottage. Malton animadverted on this practice in 1843, when he said, “ Poor things, they cannot live well. I defy them. A woman has only half her husband’s earnings, 1s. a day being deducted for his meat.”1 But no such hardship as this occurs when the wedded hind receives the bulk of his wages in farm produce. Now, however, arises a further objection to my proposal, even in the case of single servants in husbandry, viz., the hiring system. The mopp and the statty fair are, it is asserted, made the ban of both employer and employee. The Labourers’ Union has set its face against long terms of employment. The farmers assert that they leave them too much at the mercy of their men in strike times, and when the period of engagement is in March, and the term of service commences at Whit- suntide, the last interval of work is indifferently performed. The parsons complain that the system creates a kind of vagrant population amidst their flocks. The moralists object because the hirings are the occasion for obscene revelry. The economists allege that they interfere too greatly with the proper freedom of both parties to the contract. Then there are the exaggerated notions about the system entertained by the ignorant. Some imagine that the labourer is subjected to the handling and pummelling which prevails at a horse fair. The feminine proclivity for looking its best on public occasions gives rise to the rumour that girls carry on their backs to the fair a year’s savings. A demand has gone forth that, in the interests of propriety, the sexes should be separately hired on different days. Some farmers are regarding the Public Registry as a better means of obtaining a good servant. One of these was established at Forres in 1838, and is said to have worked well. No doubt improvements could be found for the system, such, for example, as a written agreement instead of the piece of “fastening money ;” but, unfortunately, before they could be put in force, the system itself bids fair to die out. It cannot, however, be otherwise 1 Report of the Special Assistant Commissioners to the Commission on the Employ- ment of Women and Children in Agriculture of 1843. 2 Agricultural Labourer, ch. x. J. Kebbell, 1887. 414 Annals of the British Peasantry abolished without an Act of Parliament, and as long as it exists in any part of the country, that is not feasible. A Committee of the Highland and Agricultural Society was appointed some thirty years ago to consider and report on the various methods in use for procuring the engagement of farm labourers, male and female, and whether it might be possible to dispense with hiring markets. It proved, what we are all inclined to lose sight of, that the yearly hiring | can.be kept quite distinct from the statute fair. Now that the old labour laws are abolished, there is no reason why it should not always be so. The practice of yearly hiring, without the statute fair, lingers on to this day, not only in parts of Scotland, but in Salop, Dorset, and the east of England.t| The Highland Society found that private hiring had increased in favour, that hiring by advertisement was being adopted with beneficial results, that hiring by registers was not widely resorted to, and that hiring markets were not extensively used. It even thus early in the century suggested the following improvements: the abolition of drinking booths, the separate and private hiring of women, the early closing of the market, and the engagement, as far as possible, of married men. It added, however, that any reforms in existing arrangements must be gradual—the results rather of a change in public opinion than of legislative enactments. It therefore invited local agricultural societies and farmers’ clubs to make experiments of the various systems, and advised the society to limit its sphere of activity in the matter to means of educating public opinion. A correspondent very sagely pointed out to Mr. Scott Burn, who-had discussed this subject in his work on farming and Farming Economy, that the abolition of the statute fair rested mainly in the hands of masters. “If they refrain,” he wrote, “to go to hire, the servants would cease to attend them.”? It does not, however, seem likely that the public will let slip yet a while the opportunity for rustic conviviality which these meetings occasion, even should all business transactions between employers and employees be eliminated from them. At least we may judge so, when, for example, we visit Stratford- on-Avon on this festival day, and count the numbers of oxen and swine roasted whole in its streets, or the incredible numbers of excursionists which are disgorged from its station doors from daybreak to sunset. Nor, on the whole, need we wish that matters were otherwise. The latest evidences on the subject prove undeniably that the system of yearly hiring promotes prudent habits and increases creature comforts. Mr. Wilkinson reports that the farm servants, as a rule, carry their 1 Report of the Commission on the Employment of Young Persons, ete., etc., 1867. 2 “Outlines of Modern Farming,” sab voc, Farming and Farming Economy, ed. iv. p- 268. 1873. The Golden Age of Labour 415 annual savings, not on their backs, but to the deposit bank, as soon as they receive them. Unfortunately, the men do not seem aware of the advantages thus derived. The sensation of constraint induced by the long term of service acts differently here in England from what it does in Scotland, in that it urges men to wander from master to master as often as the period of re-engagement comes round. Farmers find that just when they get familiarised with their men they lose them. The weekly contracts with their cottage labourers, strange to say, seem to promote more settled habits. These latter men, feeling that they can leave if they choose, elect to stay.1 But at least our cottage labourers might desire a return to a system . of wages partly paid in kind. Need the nonsense talked by modern socialists deter them from doing so? What matters it if I am advo- cating a revival of obsolete feudal customs? What matters it if the demagogue refuses to sanction this renewed foddering, as he terms it, of human cattle? “Hard words break no bones,” and contributions from the farmer’s granary might succeed in covering such bones more efficiently than they can be covered under existing arrangements. The other day there was an absurd outcry because some employer had stopped a portion of the weekly wages as a contribution to his work- people’s sick funds. What wiser provision, if mutually assented to, could have been devised for the benefit of both parties? Must the payment of wages in kind be obliterated because it is contrary to the spirit of our modern laws? What is this strange objection to the truck system? McCulloch says that “it is a name given to a practice that has prevailed, particularly in the mining and manufacturing dis- tricts, of paying the wages of workmen in goods, instead of money. The plan has been for the masters to establish warehouses or shops ; and the workmen in their employment have either got their wages accounted for to them by supplies of goods from such depéts, without receiving any money, or they have got the money with a tacit or express understanding that they were to resort to the warehouses or shops of their masters for such articles as they were furnished with.”* Apply this definition to the payment in kind of the wages of agricultural labourers, and it fails to be of force. The market, and not the farmer, fixes the money value of the grain thus dealt out. A money value cannot come into consideration in cases where the same amount of kind is perpetually received. Moreover, the labourer strikes this bar- gain before he enters on the situation, and is fully alive both to its advantages and disadvantages. The objection of operatives to this 1 The Agricultural Retort of the Royal Commission on Agricultural Labour in 189 3. 2 McCulloch’s Commercial Dictionary, ‘‘ Truck System.” 416 Annals of the British Peasantry form of labour remuneration was that their masters contrived to mak abnormal profits out of it by enhancing prices above their market value without any regard to the original conditions of the contract! After. careful study of many parliamentary reports, dating from the times c the first Board of Agriculture to those of the last, I have only found on instance where the Truck Acts have benefited the peasantry. Th practice of giving the labourers checks upon the local shopkeepers prevalent about Battle, had a most pernicious effect. These pett: dealers became thus the farmer’s bankers and the poor man’s pay masters. Such a system left the labourers no alternative but to taki the inferior goods of these people at their own prices or to starve? If therefore, this, and possibly the perquisite system of Dorset and Salop which was said to leave the labourers entirely at the mercy of thei: employers, could be guarded against, I would wish to see the anti truck legislation, so far as it applies to rural labour, erased from the statute book. I would, at any rate, suggest that there should be les: cash and more flour in the wages negotiations of each Saturday night. The peasant has derived from the village school-house a spirit o: enterprise which induces him to follow the farmer’s produce into the markets. Free trade has brought the fruits of other lands within his reach. A short spell of railway travelling carries him to the work and food which the sea-voyage of several months alone rendered available to his forefathers. In Birmingham or Manchester he will find ready tc hand and mouth the raw produce of the world’s husbandry. Only the dullards and weaklings of his class will now travel the agricultural road to wealth, which of all roads is the slowest. ‘ Hodge,” says Mr. Graham, “has put off his smock, and he will not put it on again, though he have to pinch or go into debt for more expensive clothes.’ If he has any gumption, he will go elsewhere for the sake of avoiding this unpleasant process. The farmers will no doubt miss him, and abuse him for not having preferred to resume his smock. In the end, they will divest themselves of their outer clothing, and perform the work which he has deserted. Their sense of injured dignity may, however, be consoled by the thought that in becoming labourers they will inherit the birthrights of that class, and may expect from the community that more generous treatment which, as mere farmers, they have been denied. The worst effects of this rural exodus are that, in districts which ? Stephen’s Book of the Farm, vol. ii. p. 600. 2 Vide the rector of Brede’s evidence to the Royal Commission on the Employment of Young People, Women, etc., in Agriculture of 1843, vol. xii. 8 The Rural Exodus, p. 187. T. A, Graham, 1892. The Golden Age of Labour 417 ought to be England’s Arcadia, there lags behind all the ignorance and brutality of a vast and enterprising community. Here now dwells a race which, as a writer describes, “less than any other has received as yet the impress of the stormy and eventful times in which it lives,” in which “ the isolation of rural occupations has prevented that collision of mind with mind, and that interchange of ideas which tends so much to quicken the ‘faculties of men whose lives are spent in populous towns.”! Toa great extent it is because of its own shortcomings that the medical officer of the Privy Council in 1864 was compelled to speak of its surroundings as a disgrace to the civilisation of England. The schoolmaster can greatly nullify these ill effects, but he must be given plenty of time. He it is who can bring this inert mass of humanity to glow with ambitious fires, and then hammer and weld it into shapes useful to its surroundings. The squires, parsons, and far- mers must not, however, stand idly by, watching the sparks from it flying aimlessly about. There are numerous ways in which they may fan into flame the fires smouldering within and about it. When finally it has become inspired with loftier aims, they must be ready to control and put it to its proper uses. The material which leaves the school- house anvil is, after all, but crude and immobile hardware. Its powers for good and evil have been brought into existence, but still require the discipline of government. The peasant is still like a child, and treats every fresh gift that he receives as though it were a toy. As soon as the inventor introduced into his cottage the penny box of lucifers, he tested its powers on his employer’s stacks. He acted similarly when he first acquired the privilege to combine. In 1834 we transported to Van Diemen’s* Land six Dorsetshire labourers for forming a Trades Union. In 1872 we suffered the Warwickshire labourers to do so without even a‘protest. The result was a spread of rural trades unionism all over the kingdom. The men tested their new-found powers to the last extreme. In attempting to derive by concerted pressure from their employers an extra weekly shilling or two in wages, they lost the worth of double that sum in customary kindnesses. They see these facts now, and are slowly re- turning to their former allegiance. ‘The Commissioners of 1892 report that “‘ Trades Unions among farm labourers are almost extinct. Relics of the National Agricultural Labourers’ Union are to be found in only a few counties.” The system lies ready to hand if ever wanted, but, like the cheap lucifer match, has long been kept only for its proper uses. The labourers are beginning to discern that the natural laws of supply and demand are not to be upset with impunity. If, as Canon Girdle- 1 Edinburgh Review, vol. cxxviii., 1868, p. 489. 418 Annals of the British Peasantry stone once asserted, the Devonshire peasant has become disgusted with his tea-kettle broth and sour cider, his proper course was to migrate to districts where better wages would have afforded him a more generous diet. The village school and cheap literature had placed within his reach the means of comparing his circumstances of life with those of labourers in other counties. The parish is no longer his cage, and its door has been long enough open for him to find his way into the out- side world. As yet he has but fluttered aimlessly around, but he is already taking that sure flight which will bring him to regions where his powers are most practicable. At first, however, his natural bent was to seek his livelihood in other agricultural districts. Mr. G. A. Grey, of Mitfield, did untold good when he put the labour of the south country- man to the drastic test of piecework. Wanting 2,000 drainers, he imported 200 workmen from the southern counties. While his fine native peasants easily earned 20s. to 25s. a week, the strangers, though accustomed to a lifelong use of the spade and pick, could hardly sustain themselves in bread. Piecework is the only practical test of labour efficiency. Fully matured men whose physique is inferior to that of a Cumberland boy’s cannot hope to compete for it with the gigantic wage-earners of the north. A Northumbrian farmer once told Mr. Frederick Clifford! that one of his big-boned women, who worked in the fields, was worth much more than any average southern labourer. Many English husbandmen have come to recognise this truth, and to replace their native labour with that imported from the north. The farmers of East Anglia, when forced by the lock-out of 1874 to drive their own ploughs, discovered to their surprise that they were better labourers than their own workpeople. The inferiority of the southern labourer is no doubt partly due to ethnic circumstances. Soil and climate affect human growth only a degree less than they affect vegetable growth. But it is also attributable to the pauperising effects of our earlier poor law system. The loss of self-reliance and self-respect which our peasantry then sustained has become hereditary. For several generations they were half starved by a combination of circumstances which made prices high and wages low. The competition of the commercial labour market did not extend to our southern counties. The laws of settlement and removal militated against processes by which any glut of it could be prevented. The means for properly developing both brains and muscle were absent. For a time, therefore, the southern portion of the British peasant race has become stunted intellectually, morally, and physically. Legislative reform, 1 Journal of the R.A.S.E., “The Labour Bill in Farming.” Fred. . Clifford, vol. xi., p. 67, 1875. ‘The Golden Age of Labour 419 means of emigration, and facilities for education, have now put an end to the increase, but not, as yet, to the existence of these evils. The southern labourer still needs from farmer or bailiff the minutest direc-. tions in his daily duties. The result is that neither’ his day’s labour nor its wages are equivalent to those of the northern labourer. At present, therefore, the only hope for a badly developed peasant is to make up by skill what he lacks in muscle. Having tested the capa- bilities of his body, and found them deficient, he must try what his brain can do, and seek skilled, instead of purely manual, employment. Any one who, like myself, has had long experience in the management of field labour, knows how unsatisfactory at first isthe work performed by a convalescent after lengthened illness) When compared with the labourers of the northern kingdom, our Dorset and Devon men are found to be in this condition. They have not yet recovered from the debilitating effects of pauperising customs. Some tonic is required to invigorate their muscles. They need a more generous diet before they are in a position to earn it by their labours. They must be con- sidered still on the sick list. Unfortunately, they will linger on it as long as their pay does not exceed that generally bestowed by sick clubs. An invalid takes but a languid interest in the routine duties of everyday life. He has to be petted and pampered before he can become once more a useful member of society. Unfortunately, all this means additions to the farmer’s labour bill, at a time. when he is grumbling already at its length. He has done already more than is prudent for him to do under existing circumstances, in an eleemosynary direction. His soft-heartedness induces him to prolong the services of men considerably beyond that period of life when they cease to be efficient. He pays many a day’s wage when seasons have caused agricultural labour to be at a standstill. He finds unnecessary employ- ment for juveniles just because they are members of a large family. He subscribes to boot and clothes clubs, distributes widely Christmas gifts of meat and money, dispenses medical comforts in times of sick- ness, and liberally rewards honesty and industry with various presents of his produce. He does all this in spite of the hostile attitude engen- dered in peasants’ breasts by labour unions, in spite of the fact that peasant children are, at his cost, better educated than his own, in spite of the fact that the peasant’s old age is solaced by comforts derived out of his compulsory contributions to the poor rate. How, then, can he do more? Extra wages, even if he could afford to pay them, would often be expended in the public-house. Extra garden ground, even if he could spare it from the holding, would but deteriorate the labour that is already badly scamped. Extra time for education 420 Annals of the British Peasantry would only lessen his at present inadequate supply of | available husbandry. What the sick man of the agricultural family requires is good wholesome food, better sanitation, and additional interest in his work. There are possibilities for the accomplishment of all these ends, even amidst the impoverished condition of modern agriculture. “ Look here!” once said a Cambridgeshire peasant to Mr. Frederick Clifford, ‘‘what encouragement have I to do my very best all day long, when some chaps alongside of me do not do much above half what I do, and yet earn just as much wages?” Was there or was there not justice in such a remark? Piecework would have alone answered this question. It is not, as Mr. Clifford takes care to point out, an inelastic system. It is capable of being applied to the varied round and common task of agricultural operations. On the Knettishall farm, near Thetford, all that can be is done by piecework. Even the extermination of vermin is paid there by results.1 Then for interesting the labourers in their work there are other incentives already existent, such as ploughing matches, prizes for all farm operations requiring skill, village flower shows, and cart-horse parades. But I would advocate a more drastic system of co-operation than such simple methods as these afford. I would enable the peasant to take an intelligent interest in the rise and fall of market prices, I would give him some of the fruits of the soil, even though I denied him his share in the soil itself. All who are connected with the agricultural interest deprecate any outside interference with its methods and profits. While we are angrily disputing ground with the land . reformer, the middleman steps in and pockets some of our gains. The labourer is the farmer’s natural middleman. His larder is the handiest agricultural market. There would be no bad debts in a trade which was confined solely to exchanges between work and produce. The co- operative system carried on by Mr. Lawson at Blennerhasset has been alluded to by experts in such disdainful terms as frolicsome and whim- sical farming.? So did they treat the amateur husbandry of Tusser, Tull, Young, and other celebrated pioneers of the art in former centuries. Yet out of their failures have been derived the splendid successes of later husbandmen. If Mr. Lawson has failed in this direction, there are other public-spirited men still persevering in it who may yet succeed. Let us set against Mr. Lawson’s want of success in the paths of co-operation the encouraging results obtained by unions of working people from the village stores of Berkhamsted and Childe Okeford. All we want is time for experiments of this kind. It seems a poor way out of the difficulty to 1 Journal of the R.A.S.E. Fred. Clifford, vol. xi., p. 99, 1875. 2 Id. thid., p. 8 | Ihe Golden Age of Labour 421 do as much as possible without the services of Hodge, merely because we find them disappointing in their results. If he leaves us of his own accord, we must make shift to dispense with his labours. But if he elects to abide longer amidst us, we must do the best we can with them. The surroundings of his village life are not a bad school for him. We have turned out some finished material from our rural workshops. Townsmen assure us that our young bumpkins become in time better artisans than those who have drawn in with their first breath the impure air of a city attic. At least we can afford our workpeople a healthier life than they would derive from a town existence. On the large landed estate there is still available a peasant’s playground. Men may study in our fields nature, not through the medium of a free library but, at first hand. The very purity of our village climate enhances our difficulties. By prolonging peasant life its area of influence becomes the great reservoir of old age. Longevity is almost the only privilege of our rural peasantry in which our town industrial classes cannot share. If our labour population is scarce, it is essential that we should utilise what we have as long as possible. The toil of a vigorous septuagenarian is the monopoly of rural employers. The turmoil and exhausted air of a great manufactur- ing centre relegates its inhabitants to an early grave. We must contrive that overwork does not do the same on the farm homestead. Some of our teamsmen never experience the luxuries of a leisure hour. It is true that much of their labour is light and varied. But for all that it is not recreation at any moment of the long day. Standing idly by while the horses are being meated does not sufficiently relax the mind from the duties of farm life. In these times, when the cry arises for an eight hours’ day, we might at least contrive to shorten the weekly period of toil. I was once allowed to introduce the Saturday’s halfholiday into the labour economy of a great estate, and it was attended with excellent results. But what can thus be rendered available for wood- men and masons is not so possible in the case of those who have the care of a farmer’s livestock. Inexpert advisers are apt to fall into such a ludicrous mistake as that related of a youthful curate by the Rev. Charles Gore. When first brought into social touch with a cure of agricultural souls, he was shocked with the amount of labour performed on each Sunday. He therefore naively begged his parishioners from the pulpit to be content with milking their cows once only on that day.! Where, however, ‘‘there’s a will there’s a way,” and farmers, by adopting the system of “turn about,” might far more frequently than they do at present afford a few hours of recreation to their cowmen and teamers. 1 The Social Doctrine of the Sermon on the Mount. Rev. Chas. Gore, 1893. 422 Annals of the British Peasantry They must not stop there even, but would do well to join their employees in the pastimes of the spare hour. This was the point insisted upon long ago when, in 1845, Zhe Claims of Labour first appeared in print. Mr. Samuel Greg attempted to effect it in his. management of his mill hands. Lord John Manners, afterwards Duke of Rutland, advocated the principle. The young squires and clergy of modern times carry it out when, each evening, they join the cricketers on the village green. If we want to diminish pauperism in old age, we must prolong, as far as we possibly can, the period of a peasant’s life when he can contribute by his labours to the funds of some old age provident society. We shall defeat this purpose if we insist on the bow of work being always bent. We must contrive to spare time out of the farmhouse when the labourer’s mind can be nourished and his body recreated. We must wean him ‘from his pro- pensity to regard outdoor relief in the light of an old age pension. We must induce him to transfer the insurances on his children’s lives to some fund which will provide him with a comfortable existence during: that period of his life which succeeds his threescore years and ten. It is only in these ways that we can hope to combat that growing desire for a development of outdoor relief to which I have alluded in a former chapter. Then there is the terrible drink question, Every leader of a politi- cal party has his own ideas on the subject, but the general consensus of opinion is that the traffic in intoxicating liquors ought to be restricted somehow, and that the numbers of village alehouses and city gin-palaces should be lessened. We must, however, remember that the road- side tavern is the peasant’s sole club-house. There only he finds that source of occasional excitement which the dull monotony of his routine life necessitates. There he not only drinks away both his senses and his hard-won earnings, but often gambles at one sitting (so I am credibly informed) a whole fortnight’s wages. He stakes his money just as recklessly now-a-days on the fortunes of the draught board or hand of cards, as he anciently did on those of closh, kailes, logating, quekborde, etc. Benevolent persons, knowing of this propensity, provide for him a skittle-alley or a bowling-green at their new coffee-houses. But these will never become the favoured substitutes for the beer-shop and its grosser pastimes. Would it not, therefore, be preferable to concen- trate our energies on elevating these latter establishments into places which would damage neither the squire’s dignity nor the parson’s repu- tation to enter? The morality of the national drama has been elevated by the introduction of a more respectable element into its audiences. That which has thus cleansed our theatres from their former vulgarity The Golden Age of Labour 423 might surely do the same for our rural drink houses. It is not so long ago that society took into favour the playwright and the actor. The good effects of her patronage on these two members of the community may well encourage her to extend it to the publican and the sinner. But I aspire to even greater heights than these regarding our public drinking establishments. Mr. Hall Caine, in his address to the Philo- sophical Institution of Edinburgh on November 7th, 1894, expressed a hope that we should not be deep in the 2oth century before religious subjects would be reverently treated on the stage. Why, then, should we despair of ultimately introducing the influences of Christianity into the gin-palace and alehouse? Dramatists will pardon my thus associating the two establishments if they bear in mind the objects for which I have done so. Lastly, I would sound a note of warning for the ears of those who would rest satisfied in the assurance of the recent Royal Commis- sion, that for a moment they may reserve their pity for the rural labourer. There has been too much laying of fields to fields by the rich, and too much following after strong drink by the poor, for this nation to have altogether escaped the woes prophesied by Isaiah. By the enclosing of common arable fields, the engrossing of farms, and the demolition of cottages, agricultural capital has long tended to become isolated from agricultural labour. The economic effects of this are the same eighteen hundred years after the birth of Christ as they were eight hundred years before it. ‘Of a truth many houses shall be desolate, even great and fair, without inhabitant.” Far-seeing men assure us! that the labouring class is only just beginning to experience the costs of the agricultural depression. Can we expect that it will escape the dis- tress when we so often read in our daily papers of its employers, the landlords, being compelled by reduced circumstances to leave their fair and great houses untenanted in order to live more economically abroad, and of its employers, the farmers, in all parts of the southern kingdom filing their petitions in bankruptcy ? 1 Note the last words of Mr. William Bear on the ‘‘ Farm Labourers of England and Wales,” Journal R.A.S.E., Dec. 1893. CHAPTER XXVII THE APOTHEOSIS OF LABOUR ICHARD JEFFERIES tells us that he had discovered two forms of cottage charter advocated. The first one contained four reasonable demands: (1) better wages, (2) more cottages, (3) good- sized gardens, and (4) “‘larning.” It came straight out of the hearts of the peasantry, and it was conceded by a sympathetic community. The new charter comprises: (1) the abolition of large estates, (2) the sub- division of land, (3) the prohibition of the customs of family settlement, (4) the State administration of the soil, (5) the confiscation of glebes, (6) the sequestration of tithes, (7) the extension of the franchise, (8) free education, and (9) high wages, irrespective of seasons, prosperity, or adversity.! Unlike the first charter, this one never emanated from the rustic heart, but was put into rustic brains by political agitators. Possibly our statesmen anticipated from this species of rural chartism some repetition of the violence perpetrated by its town prototype during the forties. At any rate, they wisely resorted to measures which would allow all differences of opinion between themselves and the peasantry to be academically and constitutionally contested. They therefore conceded those two points in the so-called cottage charter which refer to extended education and political representation. Unfortunately, the exigencies of the case forced them to put the cart before the horse. They gave the peasant the privileges of the political franchise, and then began to instruct him in its duties. This circumstance has enabled the quacks of every political persuasion to influence poor Hodge by plaus- ible arguments and transparent deceits. It is the golden age of social reformers. In far more intellectual circles than those of country ham- lets they are sure of an attentive hearing. The most sapient of mortals is not entirely secure from their beguilements. Recent changes in social opinion have indirectly contributed towards bringing even revo- lutionary sentiments under the respectful consideration of sober-minded citizens. The brain work expended in attempts to make mankind happier is the modern substitute for the old sordid desire to discover the philosopher’s stone. Unlike the latter occupation, it has attracted 1 Hodge and his Masters, vol. ii. p.'206, 1880. 424 The Apotheosis of Labour A425 Some of the noblest spirits of the age, who have brought themselves to regard with distrust our earlier notions of political justice. Social- ism, with its methods of co- -operation, is now discovered to be more in accordance with Christian doctrine than Individualism, with its methods of competition, Questions long since considered settled and done with are rising up again. An economic problem is taken more often than it was wont to be to the tribunal of the Sermon on the Mount. “ Christianity,” wrote Washington Gladden in 1886, “makes peace be- tween employers and servants; the yawning chasm between rich and poor can only be bridged by good-will.”1 Perish, selfishness! is the latest cry, even though national prosperity perish with it. Such ideal socialism as this necessarily brings the logic of mere mundane philo- sophy into disrepute. “ Political economy,” writes an essayist, “is, in the opinion of many, a hard stepmother of the poor, and a wet blanket to the benevolent affections.” | Moreover, its most enlightened students have been proved by the historian to have been but mischief-makers.* “The économat,” recently asserted a Socialist deputy in the French Chamber, “has been the cause of most strikes.” Out of the splendid principles of the new sociology, the greedy agitator makes capital. The most firmly established economic faith becomes shaken when its recog- nised exponents fall into disgrace. None know better than the ex- treme Radical how efficaciously a weak case may be assisted by a judicious. abuse of the plaintiff's attorney. Before he can win over public opinion to some scheme of class spoliation, he has to clear both the economist and the philanthropist out of his path. He therefore assures mankind that the parental instincts of the former are unneces- sarily harsh, and that those of the latter tend, by sparing the rod, to spoil the child. He admits no possibility for statecraft to steer an even course between these two extremes. If the mercy of landlords tends to spoil, and the justice of economists to spoliate the labourer, it is not much use tempering the one with the other. He goes on to point out the blunders and difficulties which the community has incurred by following the bad advice of these two teachers. He suggests that his own extravagant proposals, which it once considered injustice, are really restitution. He assures the public that in identifying the dangerous classes with professional thieves and abandoned socialists it has made a grievous error, that our princes, peers, squires, parsons, and publicans are 1“ The Strength and Weakness of pecan? Century Magazine, p. 737 et seq., 1886, 2 Kadinburgh Review, vol. cxxviii. art. vii. p. 489, 1868. 3 ‘* Economists as Mischief Makers.” W. J. Cunningham, Zconomic Review, Jan., 1894. 426 Annals of the British Peasantry really the dangerous classes, that century after century great burglaries have been committed on the property of the masses by class legislation. The result of these, he says, has been the creation of a so-called criminal element in our midst, which really represents the rightful action of indi- viduals claiming their stolen goods. Finally, in the words of Necker, he asks, “ What do your laws of property concern us? We own no- thing! Your laws of justice? We have nothing to defend! Your laws of liberty ? If we do not labour, to-morrow we shall die!” 1 The fact that a small minority of the community can appropriate with truth such circumstances as these to its own case, while another small minority has a superfluous share of the national welfare, is a formidable argument for the spoliation of our capitalists. ‘ Work for all, but over- work for none,” is a just demand with which the political economist is unable to comply, and the philanthropist powerless to cope. The con- trast of our huge wealth with our abject poverty has long puzzled the foreigner. The time has arrived, cries the socialist, for the extinction of this anomaly, It is private enterprise that has caused it, and that is a polity which, in the words of Gronlund,? ‘compels every producer to produce for himself, to sell for himself, to keep all his transactions secret, without any regard whatever for anybody else in the wide world.” All capital- ists are here menaced, for ours is no longer an aristocracy of landed gentry, but a plutocracy, made up of, and annually replenished from, the ranks of rich merchants, legal experts, and even salaried work- people. It is the age, not of scarcity, but of over-production ; yet some of Burke’s “ Thoughts on Scarcity ” are even more applicable now than they were when written. ‘It is,” he asserts, “one of the finest prob- lems in legislation, and which has often engaged my thoughts whilst I followed that profession, what the State ought to take upon itself to direct by the public wisdom, and what it ought to leave with as little interference as possible to individual discretion.” The doctrine of Zaissez faire is now only upheld by the disciples of Herbert Spencer. Gron- lund and the socialist schools would convert State government into one vast, despotic master. They chatter on about the freedom of a demo- cratic rule, and all the while are unconsciously attempting to enslave the people to a bureaucracy. I, for one, prefer King Log, of the éazssez faire school, to King Stork, of the socialist school, But what Burke probably intended to convey by the remark above quoted has been more definitely expressed by Mr. Gladden. “ Statecraft,” he suggests, “should aim at so influencing the two co-ordinate forces of interest and 1 Politics for the People. J. Morrison Davidson. 2 The Co-operative Commonwealth. 3 Man and the State. The Apotheosis of Labour 427 benevolence, that they should exactly balance each other. Then only will an ideal society exist,” 1 ‘Bringing now these matters into closer connection with the subject of this narrative, we shall see how the question affects the agricultural classes. Public attention has become concentrated on the supposed wrongs of property, but on those of landed property especially. Only an extreme section of the Revolutionary party, as yet, has adopted the views of Rousseau, and would nationalise, not only the soil, but its pro- ducts. Owners of realty and owners of personalty are both in danger, but the former far more than the latter. Which class of the community, it is asked, is not earning its bread by the sweat of the brow? The answer comes back that the recipients of thirty millions sterling, de- rived by means of private ownership of land, are the offending element. It follows that the soil is still an unexhausted reservoir of support to the human race. It was this contention which forced Parliament to extend representative government to aclass which, for ten or twenty -years to come, will be uneducated in its responsibilities. It drew from the Pope an encyclical letter defending private ownership. It gave birth to agricultural labour leagues, thus widening the breach between , farmer and ploughman. It renewed the outcry for the repeal of the land laws, thus estranging the benevolence of the rural capitalist. It occasioned a fresh demand for out-door poor relief. It originated schemes of State ownership, of municipal ownership, of co-operative ownership, of communal tenancy, and of profit-sharing in land. It promoted the formation of the Labourers’ Friendly Society, the Agricul- tural Labourers’ District Protection Society, the Small Farm and Labourers’ Land Company, the Home Colonisation Society, the Eng- lish Land Colonisation Society, the Promotion of Rural Industries Society, the Land Restoration League, the Agricultural Banks Associa- tion, the Social Service Union, the Rural Labourers’ League, the Free Trade in Land League, and the Leasehold Enfranchisement League. It called forth plans for beggar colonies, pauper settlements, industrial villages, co-operative tenancy, leasehold settlement, and farm labour corporations. It tinged with its influence the British Columbian Loan, the small holdings, and local government measures of Parliament. It was the foundation of the Salvation Army farming economy at Had- leigh, and the occasion for Lord Winchilsea’s ideas of an Agricultural Union. It filled magazines, journals, and books with a topic of un- ending discussion and interest. Ina few words, it focussed public 1 The Century Magazine, ‘The Strength and Weakness of Socialism,” p. 737. W. Gladden. 428 Annals of the British Peasantry attention on the condition of the agricultural labourer, and bids fair to make him the spoiled darling of the national family. The landless mat, who, in Anglo-Saxon times, was the outcast of society, is now regarded as its martyr. The villein, whom our fore- fathers emancipated from the fetters of predial services, is now to be freed from what Ricardo called ‘‘the iron law of wages.” Labour is considered, not as the property, but as the poverty of men willing to work, Industrialism is a slavery caused by private ownership. To emancipate its victims we must make the whole human race subservient to its yoke. Every one, if made to earn his livelihood by labour, will combine in his own person both the offices of master and slave, as well as the opposite interests of producer and consumer. The poor laws were the creation of a middle class, and must be revised under the directions of the lower class. The land laws were the creation of an. aristocracy, and must be abolished at the bidding of a democracy. The people of to-day are expected to resent paternalism in the central oligarchical government as much as that of yesterday did in a local seigniorial government. The socialists, who imagine that they cannot have too much State management, are reported to be already giving way to the anarchists, who think just the contrary. Between these two extreme views stand the protectionists and trades unionists, who, harm- lessly, because fruitlessly, promote reforms by organising mere class agitation. Differing widely from all these schools of political thought are the land nationalisers, who, while they pretend to uphold the rights of private ownership, really desire, by annulling their advantages, to bring them to nought. No school is above purloining from its oppo- nents ideas favourable to its own ends. It is this circumstance which makes the present attack on landed property as formidable as it is. The nationalisers of the land, having always concentrated their atten- tion on realty, are able to furnish the socialists and anarchists . with their best weapons for attacking this out of the many forms of pro- perty which they seek to annihilate. The individual who sets up a plough is to have the same freedom over the soil as the individual who sets up a windmill has over the air. He may claim identical powers of sale, gift, and transfer over the produce of the land as the fisherman can claim over that of the ocean. But he may no more appropriate the soil into which he drives his share than may the fisherman the salt water into which he plunges his net. As long as the supply of land or sea, or light or air, remained unlimited, such a contention might have had reason on its side. But we have arrived at an epoch in human history when proprietary rights are coming to be universally recognised in all these elements. The international fishery disputes of recent years, The Apotheosis of Labour 429 and the frequent litigation arising from contested claims to light and air, establish this fact. The land nationalisers profess the holiest and most wide-minded sentiments. ' They repudiate the imputation of seeking to benefit any particular class. They consider some claims of private property to be sacred. Unfortunately, they find themselves constrained to deprive a// claims of any practical meaning. They are not responsible for the fact that the landed classes are possessed of considerable wealth at a time when the labouring classes are undergoing considerable poverty. When they talk of the painful necessity which compels them to hand over to the latter the profits of the former, they trumpet abroad their sense of equity in leaving the husk to its original owners and only utilising its kernel. The landlord is to be sustained in full possession of his monopoly. He may have joint rights to the soil, but not equal rights. He may still console himself with his powers of primogeniture and family settlement. He may even derive a modicum of profit from his inheritance, if he be able and willing to utilise the lost powers of his muscles. But his rents are to be entirely absorbed in freeing labour from its obligations under our national fiscal system. Quesnai,' when he formulated his economy of an ¢mfdt unigue, surely never an- ticipated the gross uses to which it could thus be put! When the single-tax advocate is asked whether landlords are to receive any re- muneration for their capital, sunk century after century in land improve- ments, the reply is: ‘Compensation for what? For giving up what has been unjustly taken? We are willing that bygones should be by- gones, and leave dead wrongs to bury their dead. We merely propose that for the future, not for the past, landholders shall pay to the com- munity the rent that to the community is justly due.” When it is suggested that this is downright robbery, the reply is, “It is only up- right restitution.” When Christian men, like Pope Leo XIII, point out that acts of purchase and sale have long established a prescriptive right to private ownership in land, they receive the answer: “So they did in the case of private ownership in men, yet Christendom sanctioned and encouraged the robbery of the slave-owner.” Happily for the landlords, our legislators have derived a wholesome spirit of caution by studying the blunders of their predecessors in office. . They have recalled the difficulties into which statecraft plunged paro- chial authority by converting it into an employer of labour. They, therefore, hesitate to encumber the engine of State with responsibilities which properly belong to the individual. For this reason they declined the office of sick nurse, though entreated to undertake it by the pro- 1 The Condition of Labour, p. 81. H. George, 1891. 430 Annals of the British Peasantry ‘ moters of benefit clubs. For the same reason they now decline to become landowners at the bidding of the Nationalisation League. They will not force down the squire’s reluctant throat either the viru- lent poison of Mr. George or the drastic purge of Dr. Wallace. At the same time, they are weary of his lengthened ill-success in self-doctoring, and will not much longer await the slow results of his mild, but in- effectual remedies. Happily, however, for him, time can be afforded for waiting, if the State be agreeable to grant it. In this second crisis of his fortunes there is no sting like that of hunger to precipitate deeds of popular violence. The sacrifice of the corn laws dd bring the land- lord this reward, It allowed time for the education of the peasantry, for the discovery of their grievances, and for small remedial experiments of a mild nature. But the real danger to the landed interests lies in the fact that no class, much less the individual, can now-a-days derive a plea for Govern- ment protection by merely establishing the justice of its, his, or her cause. A man is no longer regarded by politicians as an individual, but asa member of society. A class is now the atom of the com- munity. The human race is growing so rapidly that all over-divided sections of it are in danger of suffocation. The individualist is crowded out of political existence; only the collectivist can obtain a hearing. When Mill first claimed for the State the unearned increment of the soil, when Bright and Fawcett demanded, in the name of the public welfare, the abolition of family settlements and entails, their views jarred against existing ideas of social morality. But any inter-class controversy of to-day is fought out under the utilitarian axioms of Bentham. It is the big battalions which Providence intends should conquer in the economic battle, as they generally have done in real warfare. ‘‘The greatest happiness of the greatest number” over-rules the title-deed and the charter. Any amount of Peters may be robbed, provided that a larger number of Pauls has proved that the proceeds of the burglary are necessary to its salvation. The numerical inferiority of the landlords cedes to the labourers the fruits of victory before the battle is fought. It is such circumstances as these which give to the academic con: tentions of Mr. George} with Mr. Spencer,? and of Mr. Lefevre ® witk Dr. Wallace,* a terrible significance in the eyes .of the threatenec squirearchy. Their spoliation has now become a mere topic of politica 1A Perplexed Philosopher. WH. George, 1893. 2 Social Statics, 1850, etc., etc. 3 Freedom of Land. G, Shaw Lefevre, 1886. 4 Land Nationalisation. A. R. Wallace, 1892. The Apotheosis of Labour 431 expediency. It is only a question whether their powers should be ended or amended. It is thus treated by the whole of the school of land reformers, whether advocates of free trade in land such as Mr. Joseph Kay,! or of occupying ownership like Mr. J. Boyd Kinnear,? or of peasant proprietorship like Mr. William Thornton.? The squire’s title of possession rests on the prevailing belief that labour cannot exist without capital, and that the individual is a better landlord than the State. If the revolutionists succeed in convincing public opinion to the contrary, that title is not worth the parchment on which it is engrossed. In their extremity, the owners of realty lend itching ears to the milder reforms suggested by the Rev. Herbert Mills,4 the Rev. Charles Stubbs,5 and others. They read with avidity all that Mr. Ernest Clarke® has to say about the farm settlement at Frederiksoord, or Lord Meath? about German farm labour colonies, or the Salvation Army & about their Hadleigh institution. They visit the Church Army Colony at Thelnetham, the Fruit Farm at Methwold, the Labour Colony at Starn- thwaite, and the Training Farm at Audley End, and look up all the now ancient history of Vandeleur’s Rahaline experiment. Some of them, such as Lords Wantage and Spencer, Messrs. W. Lawson, Albert Grey, Bolton King, George Holloway, Walter Hazell, etc., devote por- tions of their respective farms or estates to renewed experiments in agri- cultural profit-sharing. Others, like Lord Carrington, Mr. G. P. Fuller, Mr. Holden, Mr. Charles Hobhouse, etc., have pressed small holdings on their estate labourers.? Some, as, for example, the late Lords Tolle- mache and Crewe, and the present Duke of Portland, besides those mentioned in an earlier chapter, have long forestalled the action of the legislature in the same direction. Finally, a certain small section of them, seeing in all these efforts but the despairing clutch of drowning men at useless straws, are quietly ridding themselves of their menaced properties by disposing of them piecemeal to small purchasers. It is time to inquire whether there is any adequate reason for all this commotion concerning the affairs of quiet village life. Certainly the story told in this volume shows no cause for it. Were it to rescue 1 Free Trade in Land. J. Kay, 1885. 2 The Principles of Property in Land. J.B. Kinnear, 1880. 8 Plea for Peasant Proprietors. WW. Thornton, 1874. * Poverty and the State. H. V. Mills, 1889. 5 The Land and the Labourers. C. W. Stubbs, 1891. © Yurnal R.A.S.E., December, 1891, E. Clarke. 1 Nineteenth Century. Word Meath, January, 1891. 8 All the World, July, 1891. ® For details of most of these efforts, vide Back to the Land. Harold Moore, 1893. 432 Annals of the British Peasantry Lazarus sick unto death at the lodge gates of Dives, were it to emancipate a race of law-forsaken moujiks, could Boutmy have truth- fully used the present tense instead of the past when describing the landless Englishman as without the region of our legal system and far beneath the purview of our much-vaunted free Constitution,! then, indeed, the outcry of the land reformer would be intelligible. But those who have gone to the fountain-head for their information— men who have hobnobbed with the peasant at his house, sat cheek by jowl with him at his alehouse, slept side by side with him in his casual wards—tell a different tale? ‘It is a good time for labour,” said Adam Smith, “ when two masters are running after one workman ; it is the reverse when two workmen are competing for one master.” At the present day we witness the strange phenomenon of the rural labourer fleeing from his two competing masters into localities where he has a hard struggle to find one master. There must be a cause for this, and if it can be clearly shown that the squires and farmers are not mal- treating their dependants, we had best leave such masters alone. It seems by now almost universally conceded that the only charge against rural employers of labour is, that they have behaved to their sub- ordinates too well. The excessive kindness of the squiré and parson has injured the independent spirit of their workpeople. But, urges the new radical school, benevolence is the prerogative of the State; it must not be usurped by interfering private personages. Do, however, these agitators imagine that the labourers will agree to such a principle as this? Is it conceivable that they are deserting the fresh air and lovely scenery of their rustic life on account of it? ‘Tell them, as Richard Jefferies did, that there are to be in future no squires, no parsons, no farmers, no game, and they will answer, as the old peasant answered him, “Then who is to pay me my wages and sick funds?” Go on enlarging their cottages and their gardens, and they will go on storing in the spare rooms of the former the increased produce of the latter. Give them proprietary rights over their messuages, and they will only convert them into more miserable habitations than they are already. Such measures as these will not stay the rural exodus, because they have nothing to do with the reason for it. Before the Radicals attempt, in the words of a modern writer, “to pull down the house 1 “En mati¢re administrative et de police, comme en matiére économique,’ la classe qui ne possédait pas ‘la terre était en quelque sorte hors du régime légal; la liberté anglaise si vantée ne descendait pas jusqu’A ces profondeurs.”—La Constitution Anglaise. E. Boutmy, Paris, 1887. 2 T have spoken with those who, before feeling qualified for the cure of souls ina country parish, have thought it right to pass through these various scenes. The Apotheosis of Labour 433 because its fireplace wants mending,! they had better find out the reasons why it has not been mended.” An impoverished labourer sometimes summons up sufficient courage to ask his parson why he does not receive the same amount of eleemosynary assistance from his betters that his father was wont to. The answer he generally gets is, that while his own income is now proportionally greater, that of squire, of parson, and of farmer is enormously less than formerly. It is no use adding that the reason of these phenomena is the devastation caused to landed interests by free trade and death duties. Neither will he understand you if you tell him that charity is now in economic disgrace. He is, however, sufficiently intelligent to follow the example set him by the voles which scamper out of the rickyard as soon as their food supplies are threatened. As I have pointed out in the last chapter, this exodus of the flower of our British peasantry leaves behind it a vis inertia of ignorance and folly which we must not allow to remain thus unimpressionable. Consisting as it does of over one million male field-workers, it constitutes an important part of our electorate.? At all hazards, it must be educated to the duties of citizenship. The pity of it all is, that we keep on feeding it with fresh power before it has properly digested that which it has already received. Its best’ brains have gone elsewhere. There is too little intelligence left behind to leaven the whole lump. The last effort of the legislature is an attempt to convert the English village into the Greek wéAcs. According to Aristotle, there must exist two circumstances for its success :—(1) Its area must not be too large for the citizens to know each other, (2) and they must be familiar with the principles of selfgovernment before they are permitted to hold the reins of representative government. It seems to me that our statesmen have ignored the last condition entirely. The tendency of the age is to bestow rights of citizenship on those who omit to perform its duties. Before a man is fit to be trusted with the control of a pigstye, he is allowed a voice in the control of an empire. Before he is able to provide for the wants of his family, he is expected to be capable of advising about those of | society. It is. hoped from the recent Parish Government Bill that no longer will village Hampdens live and die neglected. It is more likely that many who imagine them- 1 The Rural Exodus, Conclusion, p. 201. P. A. Graham, 1892. 2 The exact numbers in 1891 were 798,912 in England and Wales, and 1,199,768 in the United Kingdom. /J%de Mr. Rew’s paper on The Royal Commession .on Labour and Agricultural Labourers read before the F armers’ Club on November Sth, 1894. 8 See Economic Review. Mr. H. Rashdall’s able review on Mr. Stephen’s Parochial Government in Rural Districts, January, 1894, p. 145. F F 434 Annals of the British Peasantry selves, or are imagined by their fellows, to be village Hampdens, wi receive through these means a rude awakening. All the better f them if they are thus placed in a position to acquire this wholesom lesson, But at what a cost to society may it not be learned! A ignorant fellow, at the impressionable period of his existence, can t taught to believe anything. Hodge and Giles care more at prese1 for one glass of cheap beer than for their country’s success in a international arbitration.! They cannot as yet be expected to take a unselfish interest in the land controversies which rage around then Incentives such as cheaper food and better wages will not predispos them to rely on self for the means of social improvement. Whitbreac at the beginning of this century, did the peasant incalculable mischi when he dangled before his eyes the glittering dogma of the “livir wage.” Canon Girdlestone did the same when, in 1868, he laid dow as a first law of political economy that, “though good wages a! required in proportion to the quality and quantity of work, every abl bodied labourer should be receiving whatever are sufficient to kee himself and family, together with a margin for insurance against old a; and sickness.” It was the promulgation of such a doctrine by Lou Blane in 1848 which produced the scenes of bloodshed in the Par streets. Mr. Jesse Collings aroused in our labouring circles the fit pangs of the present land hunger, when he held out the expectation “three acres and a cow.” If people keep on dinning into the laboure: ears that ‘‘landlords, farmers, and parsons are parasites, and that | alone has a right to live off the land,” he will in time come to belie this monstrous theory. Remember how greedily he devoured \, George’s arguments in favour of land nationalisation. It is the easie thing in the world to make him fancy himself the victim of seignior rapacity. “If you go forth,” once said the greatest of democra statesmen, “upon a mission to demoralise the people by teaching the to make the property of their neighbours the object of their covete desires, it does not require superhuman gifts to find a number followers and adherents for a doctrine such as that.” It seems excellent sentiment to assert, as Harriet Martineau did, “that m must have justice before they will forego justice.”* But then, t views of a class on this subject often differ widely from those of t community. What exactly the latter has understood by the we justice is fully explained in the statute book. Not so what the forn has. It is quite possible that appeals to the “immutable laws 1 T have put this question several times, and they have had the honesty to exp their preference for the liquor. 2 History of the Thirty Years Peace, 1850, vol. ii. p. 716, The Apotheosis of Labour 435 justice ” will occasionally be heard in the debates of the new Parish Councils. It must be borne in mind that there will be no audience there skilled in legal casuistry with whom Lord Ellenborough’s satirical request for the edition and page of such a code will have weight. Yet let it not be imagined that I am wholly in disfavour of what has been disrespectfully termed a Horse-Pond Parliament. It is the revival and development of a time-honoured economy. The parochial guilds of medizeval rural life had their church house in which they met to pray, to eat, and to consult. In the times prior to poor rates they administered there the parochial relief funds, and they provided the wedding and christening feasts of needy villagers.1 In fact, they sought in a crude fashion to establish one of those three principles which the Society for Promoting Working Men’s Associations adopted in 1850. They taught village communities to realise that they were “ brotherhoods, not col- lections of warring atoms.” The necessity for some sort of village council has always been recognised. The fifth Duke of Bedford provided the means of such by his annual sheep-shearing meetings. Thomas Coke, first Earl of Leicester, did the same by his periodical consultations with his tenantry. Mr. Lawson established a species of village parliament at Blennerhasset. The Rev. Charles Stubbs invited the neighbouring labourers to periodical debates on topics of local in- terest, and has stated that, though he is not aware that they learned very much from him, he can honestly say that he has learned very much from them.? It is very probable that our statesmen will come to say the same of Parish and District Councils. Those who expect them to be the means of bringing the civic life of the counties up to the same level as the municipal life of the towns will certainly be disappointed. It is only by having maintained a severe distinction between the citizen and the pauper that oppidan societies have arrived at their present elevated positions. When civic life fails, the poor law must come into operation. The Parish Council is to be elected by the Parish Meeting. The majority of the latter assembly will be composed of agricultural labourers. As their employers pay their rates and taxes, the control of the Lighting and Watching Act of 1833, of the Baths and Washhouses Acts of 1846 to 1882, of the Burials Acts of 1852 to 1885, of the Public Improvements Act of 1860, and of the Public Libraries Act of 1892, _ devolves on individuals who have no civic responsibilities. It will be urged that men who have become parliamentary and county electors must not be denied the lesser rights of the Parish Meeting. It is now 1 Cullum’s Hawsted, p. 20, and Annals of Agriculture, sub voc. Farcchial Guilds. Sir F. Eden, 1797, vol. 29, p. 105. OE Pa RDS ESR eee eae Daw CO W Ctuhhe 1rQQa 436 Annals of the British Peasantry no use opening out once more the long-settled dispute as to whethe: the political franchise should ever have been extended beyond the limits of a rate-paying population. Landlords will, however, do wisely if they desist in future, as far as existing laws will allow, from paying their cottagers’ rates, even though they have to lower the rents of this class to an equivalent extent. We have to deal with the following new phenomenon of the times. Fifty years ago there were but three grade: of social distinction here in Great Britain. Now, owing to the greai strides in economic and intellectual attainments made by the industrial denizens of our towns, the rural peasantry have come to constitute 4 fourth grade. No political distinction has yet been made in these twe sections of the labouring community. Consequently the farmers’ work- people have been allowed to share in all the fresh legislative privileges bestowed on the manufacturers’ work-people. It devolves on the tural authorities to elevate, as far as their inferior means of doing so will allow, the minds and bodies of this fourth class until it shall have become capable of appreciating the advantages to which it is now entitled. A career must be found for striving labourers. No shadow of an excuse must remain to justify the assertion of the late Professoi Rogers, that an artisan may rise to be a master, a mechanic to be an engineer, a factory operative to be a capitalist, but no English agricul tural labourer in his most sanguine dreams has the vista of occupying still less of possessing, land.+ We must not allow our enthusiasm for performing these often irk some duties to cool under the thought that they are seldom appreciatec and often afford the means of inflicting fresh injury on those who d&¢ them. The apogee of rural labour seems likely to be reached, ever though the interests of both land-owning and land-holding be split int atoms before its orbit can be completed. Were I permitted for ; moment to become the hierophant of these classes, I would assert tha we will go on educating our inferiors, even though we sharpen a weapo! in their armoury that may be eventually turned against ourselves Employment must be found, notwithstanding that the liabilities of modern labour contract have been rendered by the legislature formic able to an extreme. We farmers must not shirk our responsibilities b laying part of our holdings down to squitch. We landlords may nc turn our backs on duty by absconding to foreign pleasure resorts. | cottages are still deficient in sleeping accommodation, their owners mu: curtail the annual gaieties indulged in at the metropolis. If a churc school requires pecuniary aid, a few more saddle horses must be ser to Tattersall’s. If the new death duties leave no spare cash for tt } History of Agriculture and Prices, vol. i. p. 693. The Apotheosts of Labour | 437 promotion of our cottagers’ comforts, the deficit must be made up by the withdrawal of our subscriptions to the county hunt, or reductions in our expenditure for game preservation. Our aristocracy must submit itself to that irksome self-abasement which woddesse oblige, the tradi- tional motto of the order, renders imperative. The soporific effects of a village existence exercise their baneful influence on minds more able than those of our peasantry. There is, alas, stagnation in the studies of squire and parson, as well as in the parlours of farmer and labourer. The rust which gathers about an educated, but neglected, intellect is far more deleterious to the national husbandry than the corroding effects of damp on the farmer’s uncared-for ironware. By the instrumentality of literature, the mind may roam in search of nourishment over the whole world, while stern duty chains the jaded body to the mechanical duties of the home routine. Unfortunately, however, it is the tendency of the former to linger behind in company with the latter. Without frequent friction with the outside world, both the outward and the inward polish of an individual grows dull. We squires and parsons want arousing from a dangerous lethargy, which keeps.us lagging behind amidst the blinding dust which the march of progress leaves in its rear. The unflattering criticisms of outsiders, which we so greatly resent at the time, stir up our disused wits. But though they arouse thus within us the wholesome energy of resistance, they will never cause us to amend our ways. It is moral, not political pressure which alone can move us. What we will not sur- render at the behest of public opinion, we will readily do at the dictates of conscience. It was voluntarily that we gave up our monopoly of political power in 1831, and that of the bread market in 1846. It will be thus only that you land reformers can participate in our monopoly of the soil. Some of you tell us that much of what you call our bigotry is caused by a lack of the competitive element in our business of landowning and trade of farming. But modern sociology teaches that this principle, being but a relic of barbarism, must soon yield before the enlightened doctrines of co-operation. If so, our interest will be less antagonistic to the change than another which has first to purge itself of the spirit of rivalry. At present most of us regard all these novel theories as the veiled approaches of a fresh attack upon our cherished rights. We recognise a divine summons neither in the thunder of the dynamitard nor in the whirlwind raised by disputing industrial factions. We want the still small voice of some spiritual director to assure us that further sacrifices on our part are essential to the public welfare. We do not find the disinterested and enlightened guide which we require, either 438 Annals of the British Peasantry ina single statesman or in a political party. The great majority of us are members of the Anglican communion. Throughout our long history we have freely endowed it with our treasure, and defended it with our blood. It is to the Church, rather than to the Government, that such of us will now look for a counsel of perfection. Only those of us.who cannot bring themselves to believe in a rational religion will hesitate. But what is their alternative? An atheistical sociology, how- ever pure, will never content them. Which will they have, the p/zlosophie positive of Comte or the socialism of Christ? The evolutionary spirit of the age will not allow them to fall back on tenets less self-sacrificial than these. How long do they imagine that they will be permitted to halt thus between two such pregnant opinions ? **T€ we shall stand still, In fear our motion will be mock’d or carp’d at, We should take root here where we sit, or sit State statues only.” Are we too lazy to take our part in the present controversy between Collectivists and Individualists? Are we too old-fashioned to recognise that there are forms of Socialism which can no longer be regarded as mere robbery? Are we still positive that there are no instances where offices now performed by individuals could not be better performed by the State ? 5 To those of us who realise these exigencies of the age, the efforts of the new Christian Social Union to subordinate political action to re- ligious dogma must be of paramount interest. This is a movement ‘which does not emanate from schools of thought with which we are ethnically out of touch and traditionally unfamiliar. It wells up from springs which have their gathering ground in Anglo-Catholic circles, where religious action is most vigorous and economic views farthest advanced. Its exponents have been known to many of us from the cradle, trusted by us since our birds’-nesting days, and associated with our interests all their lives. Come, then, “ye righteous who take knowledge of the cause of the poor,” be to us as soothsayers. Write first in our hearts your lofty precepts, and then will we help Parliament to find for them expression in the statute book. Tell us all that_ your advanced Christianity demands of us. But bear in mind that, if you want us, like Mettus Curtius of old, to fling self into the abyss, we must be as certain as he was that we perish thus, not merely for a class, nor yet for a great industry, but for God and Fatherland. THE END. ’ INDEX OF AUTHORITIES Abstract of the Act passed in 22 Geo. IIT. for the better Relief and Employment of the Poor : 259. Account of Several Workhouses, 1725 : 236, 237. Apair, A, Shafto. The Winter of 1846-7 in Antrim, with Remarks on Outdoor Relief, 1847 : 296. ALcocK, Thomas. Odservations on the Defects of the Poor Laws, 1752: 132, 221, 223, 232, 312, 373. ALISON, W. T. Observations on the Epidemical Fever, 1843: 299; Observations on the Poor Laws, 1840: 299; Remarks on the Evidence taken before the Poor Law Inguiry Commission of Scotland, 1844: 302. All the World, 1891 : 431. ‘ ANDERSON, Adam. Origin of Commerce, 4 vols., 1801: 185. ANDREWS, C. M. The Old English Manor, 1892 : 37; 79- ANDREWS, W. Sygone England, 1892: 380. Annals of Agriculture, A. Young: 204, 287, 290, 304, 311, 320, 334, 348, 359, 435- Annual Register, The: 273, 274, 280. Antiquary, The, 1894: 62. ARGYLL, Duke of. Scotland as it was and as it zs, 2nd ed., 1887: 15, 17. ASHLEY, W. J. Economic History and Theory, 1888: 47, 79, 86, 94, 116, 117. Association for Obtaining an Official Enquiry into the Pauperism of ScpHlantt, 1841 : 301. Association for Promoting Improvements in the Dwellings and Domestic Condition of the Agricultural Labourers in Scotland, 1858 : 378, 400. Auld Laws of Scotland : 21. BAILEY, Will. yveatise on the Better Employment and more Comfortable Support of the Poor in Workhouses, 1758: 240. BELLERS, John. Proposals for Raising a College of Industry, 1695: 231, 232. Belman of London, 1608 : 214. ; Bible, The Holy: 2. BLACKSTONE. Commentaries, 1765-69: 2, 248. BLOMEFIELD, Rev. Francis. Aéstory of Norfolk, 1739-75 : Board of Agriculture, Reports to, 1790-1810: 311, 316, ae Booru, Charles. Paugerism and the Endowment of Old Age, 1892: 369; Zhe Con- dition of the Aged Poor, 1891: 369; Labour and Life of the People, 1891: 69. sie Em. La Constitution Anglaise, 1887 : 432. BraD ey, Rich. A Complete Body of Husbandry, 1727 : 208. BRAND, J. Observations on the Popular Antiquities of Great Britain, 1883 : 153, 1 te ook Canon G. T. O. History of Wigan, Cheetham Society, 1888 : 104. 439 440 Index of Authoritzes BRIGHT, John. Speech in the Debate on Cooper's Bill, 1845: 351 British Merchant: 195. Broucuam, Lord Chancellor. Corrected Speech on the House of Lords, 1834 + 300. Burn, Richard. Aistortcal Dissertation on the Laws and Practice with regard to the Poor, and on the Modes of Charity: 211, 279; Héstory of the Poor Laws, 1764: 86; Justice of the Peace, 1740: 248. Burns, Robert. oetzcal Works: 325. CAMPBELL, Lord Colin. Zhe Crofter in History, 4th ed.: 119, 158, 159, 160. CarREY, John. Zssay towards Regulating the Trade and Employing the Poor of this Kingdom, 1699 : 236. CARLYLE, Thomas. Chartism, 1840: 330. Century Magazine, 1886: 425, 427. CHALMERS, Geo. Caledonia, 1807-24: 25. CHAMBERLAYNE, John. The Present State of England, 1st ed. (by Edw. Chamber- layne) 1668; last ed. 1755: 237. Chambers’ Encyclopedia, ed. 1892: 373. CuHaucer, Geoff. The Nonne Preeste’s Tale: 78. CHILD, Sir Josiah. Mew Discourse of Trade, 1694: 178, 236, 243, 246, 251. Church of Scotland, Minutes of the Report of the Cannes of the General Assembly of the, 1818 : 297. CoBBETT, William. Zour 22 the Northern Counties, 1832: 283, 318; Cottage Economy, containing information, relative to the brewing of beer, etc.; 1822: 198, 202, 205, 307; Legacy to the Labourers, 1834: 284; Rural Rides, 1821: 205, 283 ; Political Register: 280, 281, 282, 283, 286, 335, 339, 361, 374- CoKE, Sir E. Lnstitutes of the Laws, 1671 : 215, 234. COLQUHOUN, Peter. Treatise on Indigence, 1806: 228. Columella Liber: 275. Contemporary Review + 354, 369. Cooper, S. Definetions and Axioms relative to Chavtey, Charitable Institutions, and the Poor Laws, 1763: 239. Cotton MSS. : 91. Court Journal, 1894: 192. CraBBE, George. Poetical Works: 276.' CREED, James. An Impartial Examination of the Proposals for the better Mainte- nance of the Poor, 1752: 241. CULLUM, Sir J. History of Hawstead and Hardwick, 1813: 80, 435. CUNNINGHAM, W. J. Growth of English Industry and Commerce, 1893: 60, 74, 134. DatrymMple, J. Lssay towards a General History of Feudal Property in Great Britain, 1758: 40,f41. DaveENanT, C. Works, Whitworth's, Sir Chas., 1771: 219. Davipson, J. Morrison. Politics for the People, and ed., 1893: 426. Davis, Rev. J. Case of the Labourer in Husbandry, 1795: 232, 265, 266, 309. DECKER, Sir Matthew. Cazses of the Decline in Foreign Trade, 1756: 178. DEFOE, Daniel. Géving Alms no Charity, 1704: 211, 233, 238, 247 5 Tour through Great Britain, 1769: 162, 171, 172; Essays on several Projects, 1697 : 358. Dempster, Rev. C. Jottings from the Records of a Farmers’ Society in Forfar, 1803 : 333. D’Ewe,. Journal of all the Parliaments during the Reign of Elisabeth, 1682: 246. Dialogus de Scaccario: 18. Dicsy, K. G. story of the Law of Real Property, 1878 : 44, 48. Lndex of Authorities 441 Digest of the Poor Laws in order to their being reduced to one Act, etc., 1768: 279. Discourse on the Common Weal of this Realm of England, W. S. [1581], ed. Eliz. Lamond, 1893: 100, IOI, 354. Douctas, John. Observations on the Necessity for a Legal Provision for the lrish Poor, 1828 : 293. DuDLEy, Rev. Bate. Observations on the Defects of the Poor Laws, 1802: oom Duncan, Rev. Henry. 47S. Letter from in 1839 : 300. DunrForpDand East. Zerm Reports, 1789: 241. DUNNING, Richard. Bread for the Poor, 1697 : 217. EaRLe, Rev. John. Handbook to the Land Charters, 1888: 7. Economic Review, 1894: 425, 433- Epen, Sir Frederick. State of the Poor, 2 vols., 1797: 28, 30, 55, 61, 117, 131, I9I, 197, 199, 216, 223, 231, 236, 359, 373, 404. Edinburgh Review : 282, 355, 378, 3925 417, 425. Education, Reports to Parliament on, 1854: 377, 384. Education, Scottish Act of, 1696: 306, 374. ELLIs, W. A Complete System of Experienced Improvements made on Sheep, 1749: 138. Encyclopedia Britannica, 1875: 225. Enquiry into the Connection between the Present Price of Provisions and the Size of Farms : 231. Essay upon feudal Holdings, 1747 : 39, 40. ETIENNE and LIEBAULT: L’ Agriculture et Matson Rita Surflet’s Translation, 1606: 209. Farmers’ Journal: 286, 287, 288, 289. = Farmers’ Magazine, 1800: 139. Fercuson. Farmer’s Ingle: 191. FIeLpinc, H. Proposal for Erecting a County Workhouse, 1753: 239. FirMIN, Thomas. Several Proposals for the Employment of the Poor, 1678: 237, 244. - FITZHERBERT, John. Husbandrie, 1523: 75, 138, 1413 Boke of Surveyinge, 1539 : 22, 23, 46, 48, 71, 72. FLETCHER, Andrew, of Saltoun. Poldtical Works [1722], 1749: 212. Foiey, R. Collection of Sessions Cases touching Settlements, etc., 1742: 255. FONNEREAU. Short View of the Frauds, Ase: and Impositions of Parish Officers, 1744: 245. FORTESCUE, Sir John. De laudibus Legum Anglicanorum, Rich. Mulcaster’s trans., ed. [1516] 1609: 77; Difference between an Absolute and Limited Monarchy as it more particularly regards the E. nglish Constetution [1714], - 19: 78. FREEMAN, E. A. story of the ian Conguest, 6 vols., 1867-79 : FROISSART, J. Chroniques, 1495: GarNIER, Russell M. Land Agency, 1891: 403; History of the English Landed Interest, 1893: 38, 79, 84, 104, 144, 205, 220, 348. Gascoicne, George. A Delicate Diet for dainte mouthde Droonkards wherein the fowle abuse of common carowsing and quaffing with heartie draughies is honestly admonished, 1576: 77. Gasquet, F. A. Henry VIII. and the English Monastertes : 95. GrorcE, Henry. 7%e Condition of Labour, 1891: 429; A Perplexed Philosopher, 1893 : 430. : Se, Rete GrraLpus. Cambrensis. Azbern. Expugnatio (Holinshed’s Chronicles), 1587: 1 442 Lndex of Authoreties GILBERT, Thos. : Considerations on the Bills for the better Relief and Employment of the Poor, etc., 1787: 261. GILPIN, G. Autobiography of a Working Man, 1848 : 321. GILPIN, William. Observations relative chiefly to the Picturesque Beauty made in the year 1776 in several parts of Great Britain, etc. : 94. GLapsTong, W. E. Zhe State in tts Relations with the Church, 4th ed., 1841: 54. Gopwin, William. Ax Jngudry concerning the Power of Increase in the Numbers of Mankind, being an Answer to Mr. Malthus? Essay on that Subject, 1821: 281. GooceE, Barnaby. Four Books of Husbandrie, 1577: 137. Gore, Rev. Chas. The Social Doctrine of the Sermon on the Mount, 1893: 421. GranaM, P. A. The Rural Exodus, 1892 : 416, 433- Grand Concerns of England explained in Several Proposals offered for the Considera- tion of Parliament : 218, 231. Gray, Chas. Considerations on Several Proposals lately made for the better Main- tenance of the Poor, 1751: 234. GREEN, J. L. Zhe Rural Industries of England, 1895: 192. GREEN, J. R. A Short History of the English People [1875], 1891: 12, 55, 58, 63, 73 87. GRONLUND, Laurence. Zhe Co-operative Commonwealth [1884], 1893: 426. Guizor, F. P. G. History of the English Revolution, 1851: 114. | GuRDON. Ox Courts Baron, quoted by Hallam in his State of Europe, etc.: 20. Haines, Ed. Aznals, sub. voc., On the Management of the Poor, 1689: 246. HALE, Sir Matthew. Déscourse touching the Provision for the Poor, 1695: 220, 231. Hau, Hubert. Society in the Elizabethan Age, 1888: 91. HALLAM, H. Constitutéonal History of England, 1827: 124; State of Europe during the Middle Ages, 1853: 10, 20, 21. Harletan Miscellany, 1774: 304. HARMAN, Thos. A Caveat or Warning for Common Cursetors, vulgarly called Vagabonds, 1566: 92. HARRISON, J. Description of England (Holinshed’s Chronicles), 1577 : 91, 195. Hay, W. emarks on the Laws relating to the Poor for their better Relief and Em- ployment, 1735: 241, 250, 253. Fay versus Morrice, 1851: 304. HERRICK, Robert. Hesperides, 1648: 155. Hoses, Thomas. Levzathan, 1657: 246. HOLINSHED, Raphael. Chronicles of England, 1577 : 76, 78, 91, 195, 208. HoucGurTon, John. A Collection of Letters for the Improvement of Husbandry and Trade, 1681 : 196, 202. Hunpson, Rev. W. Leet Jurisdiction in the City of Norwich (Selden Society, 1891): 41. Hume, David. Zssay on Civil Government, 1689: 246. Innes, Cosmo. Scotland in the Middle Ages, 1860: 21, 24, 26. freland, Evils of the State of : 216, JEFFERIES, Richard. Hodge and his Masters, 1880: 424. JoHNSON, Dr. Zour in the Western Islands, 1765: 71, 161, 166, 196. Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society of England : 365, 366, 367, 383, 386, 398, 400, 401, 402, 409, 411, 412, 418, 420, 423, 431. KF Kaimes, Henry Home, Lord. Gentleman Farmer [1776], 1802: 246; Scotch Husbandry: 1733 Sketches of the History of Man [1774], 1788 : 223. KaLm, Pehr. Vesit to Engand [in 1748], translated by Jos. Lucas, 1892 : 309. Bi ys ee Index of Authorities 443 Kay, J. Free Trade in Land, 1885: 431. KEBBELL, T. E. The Agricultural Labourer [1887], 1893: 350, 385, 386, 413. Kennet, Bp. White. Parochial Antiquities [1695], 1696: 21. Kenyon, Lord. Charge to the Grand Jury at Salop, 1795 + 333- KINGSLEY, (Rev.) Charles. Letters and Memoirs by his Widow, 1885: 54. Kingston, Alfred. Fragments of Two Centuries, 1893 : 130. Kinnear, J. Boyd. Principles of Property in Land, 1880: 431. KITCHEN. Court Leet, 1580: 38. Kwnicut, Charles. Zhe Farmer, 1844: 431. Kyycuton, Henry. Chronica in Turpden in Selden’s Ten English Historians : 60. Labourers’ Friendly Society, Magazine of, 1831: 347. LANGLAND, William. Vision of Piers Plowman, 1550: 73, 74, 100. Lawrence, E. The Duty and Office of a Land Steward, etc., 1743: 317+ LeapaM, J.S. Zhe Inquisition of 1517 (Trans. Royal Hist. Soc., 1892): 23, 98, 99. LEFEVRE, G. Shaw. Agrarian Tenures, 1893: 350, 351; Freedom of the Land, 1886 : 430. Letter to an English Member of Parliament from a Gentleman of Scotland concerning the Slavish Dependencies, etc., 1721: 41. Letters from the Irish Highlands, 1825: 294. LEVER, Thomas. TZhree Sermons preached before the King, 1573: 85. Linpsay, Patrick. The Jnterests of Scotland considered, etc., 1733 : 169, 185, 189. LinGarD, Dr. John. Aéstory and Antiquities of the Anglo-Saxon Church, 1845: 8. LITTLETON, Sir Thomas. Tenures, circa 1500: 21. Locu, C.S. The Statéstics of Metropolitan Pauperism, 1894: 369. Luccock, John. Zssay on Wool, 1809: 175. Macavtay, Lord. Critical Essays [1827]: 54. McCaRTHY, Justin. History of our own Times [1879-80], 1882-6: 378. McCuLtocn, J. R. Commercial Dictionary [1844], 1869 : 415; Treatise on Political Economy, 1845 : 264. MAITLAND, F. W. Select Pleas in Manorial Courts, Selden Society, 1888: 6, 39. Mattuus, T. R. Zssay on Population [1803], 1888: 281. MANDEVILLE, B. de. adle of the Bees [1723-8], 1795 : 173, 372, 373- MARKHAM, Gervoise. Farewell to Husbandry, 1653: 141. MARSHALL, William. Review and Complete Abstract of the Reports to the Board of Agriculture for the Eastern, Western, Midland, Northern, Southern, and Peninsular Departments of England, 1807-15 : 139, 307; 311, 316. MartTEN, M. Description of the Western Islands, 1763: 165, 166. Martin, Bon Louis Henri. Héstotre de France, 1833-36: 105. MarTINEAU, Harriet. History of the Thirty Years’ Peace, 1850: 434. Massig, James. Plea for the Establishment of Charity Houses, 17 58: 240., Mitt, J. S. Principles of Political Economy [1848], 1878 : 54. Mituer, Hugh. Legends and Scenes in the North of Scotland [1850], 1869: 161, 164. Mitts, H. V. Poverty and the State, 1889: 431. Moore, Harold. Back to the Land, 1893: 431. Moore, Thomas. Domestic Trade: 219. Mors, Sir Thomas. De optimo Reipublice Statu deque Novd Insulé Utopid, Lovan, 1548 : 94, 98. — Moryson, F. /tinerary, 1617: 199. 444 Lndex of Authorities National Review, 1884: 395. NEVYLLE. Furor, circa 1560: 101. NICHOLLS, Sir George. History of the English Poor Laws, 1856: 65, 215; History of the Lrish Foor Laws, 1856: 296; History of the Scottish Poor Laws, 1856: 128, 387 ; On the Condition of the Agricultural Labourer, 18471: 351, 362. Nineteenth Century Review : 115, 205, 431. Nowan, Michael. Speech in the House of Commons, July 10th, 1822: 277. Norfolk and Norwich Archeological Society, Original Papers : 87, 113, 233- OrrincE, B. Brogden, J//ustrations of Jack Cade’s Rebellion, 1869: 62. PARKINSON, Richard. Znglish Practice of Agriculture, 1806: 293. Patent Rolls: 62. ; Patrick, R. Cochran. Afedteval Scotland, 1892: 15, 119, 168. PaTTEN, W. Lxfedition into Scotland, 1548: 199. PEEL, Sir Robert. Speech on the Repeal of the Corn Laws in the House of Commons, 1846: 343. : PENNANT, Thomas. Zours in Scotland, 1771-4: 196. PITMILLY, Lord (David Monypenny). Proposed Alterations of the Scottish Poor Law, 1840 : 299. Plain Words on Outdoor Relief: 369. PorTeR, G. R. Progress of the Nation [1843], 1851 : 347. PRENTICE, A. story of the Anti-Corn-Law League, 1853: 342. Price, Dr. A. Reversionary Payments, 1769 : 266. PRIDEAUX, C. G. H. TZvthes, their origin in Publec Law, 1810: 71. : Pusey, Philip. Zhe Poor in Scotland, compiled from the Evidence taken before the Scotch Poor Law Commission, 1844 : 302. Quarterly Journal of Agriculture: 306. : Quarterly Review: 12, 193, 211, 219, 273, 276, 279, 280, 282, 292, 294, 296, 297, 337, 360, 361, 369, 370. Ray, John. Znglish Words, 1674 (Ed. by Jobn Skeat, 1874) : 199 ; Select Remains, 1660: 171. i keeports of the Society for Bettering the Condition of the Poor, 1811: 349. Rew. Paper on the Royal Conmission on Labour and Agricultural Labourers read on Nov. 9th, 1894: 410, 433. ROBERTS. Lnglana’s Crisis, 1832: 358. RoBertson, E. W. Scotland under her Early Kings, 1862: 7, 18, 24, 39, 124. RopertTson, Dr. G. Rural Recollections, 1829: 171. Rocers, J. E. Thorold. story of Agriculture and Prices, 1866-1887 : 73, 80, 436 ; Séx Centuries of Work and Wages [1885], 1893: 25, 38, 60, 65, 73, 134, 135. 4 Rose, Rev. H. G. Observations on the Poor Laws and their Management, 1805+ 265. : Rotul, Parl: 56, 63, 81, 83. ROYAL CoMMISSIONS :— Reports of the Commissioners appointed to enquire into the Practice of Enclosing, 1795 +348. heports of the Select Committee appointed to enquire into the Operation of the Poor Laws in 1817: 221, 227, 255, 264, 278. ; Reports of the Select Committee appointed to enquire into the State of Ireland as to Disease, etc, etc., and also into the Condition of the Labouring Poor, 1819 + 293. Indes of Authorities 445 Roya. Commisstons—continued. Reports of the Select Committee appointed to enguire into the Allegations, etc., ett., of the Distressed State of the Agriculture of the United Kingdom, 1822 : 357. Reports of the Select Committee appointed to enquire into the Practice that prevails am some parts of the country of paying the Wages of Labour out of the Poor Rates, etc., 1844 : 277, 294. Report of the Select Committee appointed to enquire into the Expediency of encour- aging Emigration from the United Kingdom, 1826: 294, 349. Reports of the Select Committee appointed to enguire into the Administration and Practical Operation of the Poor Laws, 1834 : 131, 244, 245, 263, 265, 269, 270. Reports of the Select Committee on the Sanitary Condition of the Labouring Classes, etc. 1843: 349, 352, 386, 391, 393, 409, 413, 416. Report of the Select Committee appointed to engutre into the Administration and Practical Operation of the Poor Laws in Scotland, 1844: 302, 303, 304. Leports of the Select Committee on the Employment of Youthful Persons in Trades, Manufactures, etc., 1863: 347, 350, 382, 384, 385, 386, 389, 392, 394, 396, 398, 404, 409, 414. Report of the Select Committee on the Scottish Crofters, 1884: 357. Report of the Select Committee appointed to enquire into the Working of the Ele- mentary Education Acts in England and Wales, 1886 : 382. Report of the Select Committee on Labour and Agricultural Labourers, 1893 : 410, 415, 433. RussELL, Rev. F. W. Kett’s Rebellion in Norfolk, 1859 : 101, 105. RymeEr, Thomas. Federa. Syllabus Hardy, 1869-73: 216. SaDLer, M. T. Lveland: tts Evils and their Remedies, 1828 : 281, 293. Scotland, Statistical Account of, 15 vols., 1845: 161, 163, 164, 189, 190, 336. Scort, Sir Walter. Zhe Pirate [1822]: 139. Scott, R. Burn. Outlines of Modern Farming, 1878 : 397, 401, 414. Scottish Review, 1853: 363, 379, 380, 397- “Scotus.” Scottesh Poor Law, 1870: 298. Second Letter from an Trish Gentleman to an English Friend, 1847: 296. SFEBOHM, Fredk. The English Village Community [1883], 1890: 15. Selden Society Publications: 36, 39, 41, 78. Seneschaucte. ‘Translations of Roy. Hist. Soc., 1890: 138, 140. SENIOR, Nassau W. Letter to Lord Howich on a Legal Provision for the Irish Poor, ete.y 1831 : 295. SHEFFIELD, John, Lord. Odservations on the Corn Bill, etc., 1791: 335. Sinciarr, Sir John. General Report of the Agricultural State, etc., of Scotland [1812], 1820: 315, 316; System of Husbandry in Scotland, 1812: 309, 314, 319, 320. Skene, W. F. Celtic Scotland [1876-80], 1886: 158. SmitH, Adam. Wealth of Nations [1806]: 247, 257. Smiru, Charles. Zhvee Tracts of the Corn Trade and Corn Laws, 1766: 195. SMITH, Sir Thos. Zhe Commonwealth of England, 1635 : 22, 25. Social England (ed. by H. D. Traill), 1893-4, in prog.: 10, 11, 193, 398. Some Reflections on the Poor Rates from Abstracts of the Returns made to the House of Commons in 1776: 219. SPARKE, Michael. Grievous Groans for the Poor, 1622: 205. SpEDDING. Letters. and Life of Lord Bacon, 1862-7: 134. ; SPENCER, Herbert. Man versus the State, 1884: 426; Social Statics, 1868.: 430. dard (Newspaper) : 388. sae, oy bh in Way how to Reform Wandering Thieves, Highway Robbers ; and Pickpockets, 1646: 216. . State Trials,(ed. by T. B. Howell), 1809-28 : 21. Statistical Society. Journal: 355. ; 446 Index of Authorities Statutes: English. Henry III.—g Hen. III. c. 4, p. 61. 9 Hen. III. c. 17, p. 42. 9 Hen. III. c. 25, p- 178. 20 Hen. IIL. c. 4, pp. 45, 347. 51 Hen. III. st. 1, & 1, pp. 66, 203. EpwarbD ae Ed. I. c. 4, pp. 47, 345. 18 Ed.J. st. 1, c. 1,p. 48 33 Ed. I. st. 2, p. 106. Hwan IlJ.—2 Ed. III. st. 1, v. 4, p. 178. 10 Ed. III. c. 4, p.69. 11 Ed. III. c. 1, p. 178. 23 Ed. Ill. c. 1, p. 57. 25 Ed. III. c. 1, pp. 58, 64, 66. 25 Ed. III. st. 4, c. 1, p. 178. 27 Ed. III. st. 1, c. 4, p. 178. 27 Ed. III. st. 2, c. I, pp. 27, 183. 27 Ed. III. st. 2,c. 7, p. 178. 34 Ed. III. c.-9, pp. 58, 66. 37 Ed. III. c. 8, pp. 69, 82. 38 Ed. III. st. 1, c. 6, pp. 178, 183. Ricuarp II.—3 Rich. II. c. 2, p. 178. 7 Rich. II. c. 9, p. 178. 12 Rich. II. c. 3, p. 64. 12 Rich. II. c. 4, pp. 64, 66. 12 Rich. II. c. 5, p. 81. 12 Rich. II. c. 6, pp. 67, 69. 12 Rich. II. c. 7, pp. 65, 248. . 13 Rich. II. c. 8, p. 66. 13 Rich. II. st. «, c. 13, p. 68. 15 Rich. Il. c. 6, p. 83. . Henry IV.—q Hen. IV. c. 12, p. 83. 7 Hen. IV. c. 17, pp. 66, 81. HENRY V.—4 Hen. V.:c. 4, p. 66. Henry VI.—2 Hen. VI. c. 14, p. 66. 6 Hen. VI. c. 3, p. 66. 8 Hen. VI. c. 14, p. 106. 8 Hen. VI. c. 22, p. 178 8 Hen. VI. c. 23, p.178. 8 Hen. VI. c. 24, p. 82. 11 Hen. VI. c. 9, p. 178. 15 Hen. VI. c. 2, p. 74. 23 Hen. VI. c. 3, p. 178. 23 Hen. VI. c. 13, pp. 65, 82. Epwarp IV.—3 Ed. IV. c. 1, p. 178 3 Ed. IV. c. 5, pp. 69, 82, 83. 4 Ed. IV. c. 1, p. 178. 8 Ed. IV. c. 2, p. 82. 12 Ed. IV.c. 4, p. 82, 17 Ed. IV. c. I, p. 82. 17 Ed. IV. c. 3, p. 69. 22 Ed. IV. c. 1, pp. 69, 82, 83. 22 Ed. 1V. c. 5, p. 176. RicHarp III.—1 Rich. III. c. 8, p. 178. Henry VII.—4 Hen. VII. c. 19, pp. 73, 98, 347, 348. 4 Hen. VII. st. 2, c. 16, p. 73. 4 Hen. VII. c. 23, p. 82. 11 Hen. VII. c. 2, p. 77. 1 Hen. VII. c. 22, p. 82. 12 Hen. VII. c. 3, p. 82. Henry VIII.—1 Hen. VIII. c. 1, p. 82. 3 Hen. VIII. c. 6, p. 178. 3 Hen. VIII. c. 10, p. 183. 5 Hen. VIII. c. 3, p. 178. 5 Hen. VIII. c. 7, p. 183. 6 Hen, VIII. c. 1, p. 82. 6 Hen. VIII. c. 3, p. 82. 6 Hen. VIII. c. 5, p. 73. 7 Hen. VIII. c. 1, pp. 73, 82,98. 7 Hen. VIII. c. 5, p. 82. 7 Hen. VIII. c. 6, p. 82. 21 Hen. VIII. c. 20, p. 106. 22 Hen. VIII. « 10, p. 89. 22 Hen. VIII. c. 12, pp. 89, 96, 123, 125. 23 Hen. VIII. c. 17, p. 178. 24 Hen. VIII. c. 1, p..94. 24 Hen. VIII. c. 2, p. 178. 24 Hen. VIII. c. 3, p. 94.24 Hen. VIII. c. 13, p. 82. 25 Hen. VIII. c. 1, pp. 94, 183. 25 Hen. VIII. c. 13, pp. 72, 98. 27 Hen. VIII.c.9, p. 94. 27 Hen. VIII c. 13,p. 178. 27 Hen. VIII. c. 14, p. 183. 27 Hen. VIII. c. 22, p. 98. 27 Hen. VIII. c. 25, pp. 88, 91, 93. 28 Hen. VIII. c. 4, p. 183. 33 Hen. VIII. c. 11, p. 95. 33 Hen. VIII. c. 19, p. 95. Epwarp VI.—1 Ed. VI. c. 3, pp. 71, 91, 95, 117, 124, 125. 1 Ed. Vi.c. 14, p- 358. 2&3 Ed. Vi.c. 15, p. 106. 3&4 Ed. VI. c.2,p.178 3&4 Ed. VI. c. 3, p. 347, 3 & 4 Ed. Vic. 5, p. 106. § & 6 Ed. VI. c. 2, pp. 124, 125. 5 & 6 Ed. VI. c. 3, p. 125. 5 & 6 Ed. VI. c. 6, p.178. 5 & 6 Ed. Vi.c. 7, p.176. 5 &6 Ed. VI. c. 14, p. 333. 5 & 6 Ed. VI. c. 22, p. 176. 5 & 6 Ed. VI. c. 25, p. 233. Puitip and Mary.—1 Mary, st. 3, c. 7, p. 177. 2 & 3 Phil. and Maryc. 5, p- 125. a & 3 Phil. and Mary c. 11, pp. 176,177. 2 & 3 Phil. and Mary c. 13, . 176. eer Eliz. c. 9, p. 183. 5 Eliz. v. 3, pp. 123, 125, 248. 5 Eliz. c 4, pp. 82, 134, 330. 5 Eliz. c. 5, p. 183. 13 Eliz. c. 19, p. 82. 14 Eliz. c. 5, Pp. 125, 220. 18 Eliz. c. 3, p. 131. 23 Eliz. c.9,p. 178. 27 Eliz. c. 18, p. 177. 31 Eliz. c. 7, p. 347. 35 Eliz. c. 4, p. 221. 39 Eliz. c. 3, Pp. 125. 39 Eliz. c. 4, p. 131. 39 Eliz. vc. 11, p. 178. 39 Eliz. c. 18, p. 82. 39 Eliz. c. 21, p. 221. 43 Eliz. c. 2, pp. 121, 123, 125, 220, 261. James I.—1 fac. Ic. 9, p. 233. 1 Jac. I. c. 22 § 7, p. 183. 2 Jac. I.c. 7, p. 216. 4 Jac. I. c. 4, p. 233. 7 Jac. Ic. 4, p. 215. 21 Jac. I) c. 28, p. 128. Cuartes I.—3 Car. I. c. 3, p. 233. 3 Car. Lc. 4, pp. 216, 221. 16 Car. I. Cc. 4, pp. 216, 221. CuarLes II.—12 Car. II. c. 24, p. 48. 12 Car. II. c. 32, p. 178. 13&14_ Car. II. c. 11, p. 178. 13 & 14 Car. II. c. 12, PP: 123, 126, 228, 236, 248, 253. 415 Car. IL. c. 15, pp. 184, 237,261. 18 Car. IL 4, p. 184. 22 ( - Index of Authorities 447 Statutes—continued. & 23 Car. II. c. 7, p. 345. 22 & 23Car. IL. c. 18, pp. 236, 273. 30 Car. II. . 3, p. 184. ‘ : James II.—1 Jac. II. c. 17, p. 249. Ses Anne, st. I, c. 18, pp. 250, 253, 254. 12 Anne, st. 2, c. 23, pp. 126, 216, WILLIAM III.—3 & 4 Wm. and Mary c. 11 § 6, pp. 244, 249, 253, 254. 7 & 8 Wnm. and Mary c. 12, p. 179. 8 & 9 Wm. and Mary c. 30, pp. 238, 249, 250, 254. 9 & 10 Wm. and Mary c. Il, p. 250. 10 &11 Wm. III. c. 10, p. 179. GrorcE I.—6 Geo. I. c. 16, pp. 273, 347. 9 Geo. I. u. 7, pp. 235, 237) 245, 249, 250, 253, 259, 265. 12 Geo. I. c. 30, p. 273. GrorGE II.—3 Geo. II. c. 29, pp. 203, 254. 29 Geo. II. c. 79, p. 239. Gerorce III.—3 Geo. III. c. 11, p. 204. | 4 Geo. III. p. 256. 13 Geo. III. c. 62, p. 204. 15 Geo. III. u. 32, p. 256. 16 Geo. III. c. 40, p. 258. 22 Geo. III. c. 83, pp. 254, 263, 265. 26 Geo. III. c. 56, p. 258. . 33 Geo. III. . © 35, p. 259. 33 Geo. III. c. 54, p. 359. 33 Geo. III. c. 55, p. 263. 35 Geo. III. c. 101, p. 250. 36 Geo. III. c. 23, pp. 263, 268. 37 Geo. III. c. 79, p. 362. 38 Geo. III. c. 3, p. 359. 39 Geo. III. c. 81, p. 330. 40Geo. III. c. 106, p. 330. 41 Geo. III. c. 9, p. 259. 41 Geo. III. c. 109, p. 349. 42 Geo. III. c. 73, p. 376. 42 Geo. III. c. 74, pp. 110, 259, 264. 43 Geo. III. c. 3, p. 359. 43 Geo. III. c. 110, p. 264. 43 Geo. ILI. c. 141, p. 264. 45 Geo. III. c. 50, p. 264. 49 Geo. III. u. 14, p. 359. 50 Geo. III. c. 49, pp. 264, 269. 50 Geo. III. c. 50, p.f264. 53 Geo. III. c. 40, pp. 135, 330. 54 Geo. III. c. 96, p. 330. 55 Geo. III. c. 131, p. 265. 57 Geo. III. c. 19, p. 362. 58 Geo. III. c. 62, p. 264. 59 Geo, III. c. 28, p. 359. 59 Geo. III. c. 12, pp. 248, 264, 271. 59 Geo. III. c. 19, p. 349. GEoRGE IV.—2 Geo. IV. c. 56, p. 259. 7 Geo. IV. c. 6, p. 339. 10 Geo. IV. c. 56, p. 361. WILLIAM IV.—1 & 2 Wm. IV. c. 42, p.. 349. 4&5 Wm. IV. « 40, p. 361. 4&5 Wm. IV. c. 76, p. 228. 5 & 6 Wm. IV. c. 63, p. 198 6&7 Wm. IV. c. 96, p..228. Victoria.—3 & 4 Vict. c. 8, p. 228. 9 & 10 Vict. c, 22, p. 330. 12 & 13 Vict. c. 49, p. 378. 18 & 19 Vict. c. 63, p. 362. 19 & 20 Vict. c. 63, p. 362. 19 & 20 Vict. c. 116, p. 387. 27 & 28 Vict. c. 43, p. 365. 33 & 34 Vict. c. 75, p- 382. 38 & 39 Vict. c. 60, p. 362. 39 & 4o Vict. c. 79, p. 382. 43 & 44 Vict. c. 23, p. 382. 50 & 51 Vict. c. 56, p. 367. 57 & 58 Vict. c. 56, p. 367. Statutes: L[rish. 45 Geo. III. c. 111, p. 293. 1 & 2 Vict.c. 31, p. 296. 10 & 11 Vict. c. 31, p. 296. Statutes: Scottish. Edition 1875. British Museum. GILD. —c. 15 (vol. i., p- 433), p- I17. i Frac CoLi.—c. 10 (vol. i., p. 738), pp. 118, 119. c II (vol. i., p. 738), pp: 119, 160. c. 12 (vol. i, p. 738), pp. 119, 160. c. 18 (vol. i. p. 744), p. 118. c. 29 (vol. i., p. 637), p. 118. ; Matcoim II.—c. 1 (vol. i., p. 345), p. 40. . ALEXANDER II.—1214, c. 1 (vol. i, p. 397), PP. 40, 119. 1230, c. 4 (vol.i., P- 399); P- 119. : , RosBeErT I.—c. 10 (vol. i., p. 109), p. 40. (vol. i, p. 117), p. 17. (vol. i, p. 481 ap.), p. 119. ? . : Davin II.—1323 (vol. i, p. 481 ap.), p. 119. 1358 (vol. i, p. 524 ap.), p. 119. 1366 (vol. i., p. 499 ap.), pp. 119, 160. . James I.—1424, c. 20 (vol. ii, p. 8), pp. 119, 160, 1424, c. 21 (vol. ii, p. 8), p. 117. 1425, c 8 (vol. ii, p. 9), p. 124. 1425, c. 20 (vol. ii, p- 11), p. 117. 1426, c. 6 (vol. ii, p. 13), Pp. 160. 1427, c. 2 (vol. ii, p- 15), p. 124. 1429, c. 8 (vol. ii., p. 18), p. 120. 7 : James II.—1449, c. 6 (vol. ii, p. 35), p. 160. 1449, v. 8 (vol. ii, p. 43), p- 117. 1449, c. 9 (vol. ii, p. 36), p. 117. 1449, ¢. 20 (vol. ii., p. 51), p- 117. 1450, c. 20 (vol. ii., p. 65), Pp. 119. 1455, ¢ 28 (vol. ii., p. 51) p- 160. 1457, c. 13 (vol. ii., p. 49), Pp. 120, 121. 1457, c. 32 (vol. ii., p- 51), p. 160. 7 7 James III.—1481, c. 4 (vol. iii, p. 217), p. 160. c 10 (vol. ii., p. I19), p. 117. al 448 Index of Authorities Statutes—continued. . James IV.—1503, c. 26 (vol. ii, p. 244), p. 124. 1503, c. 45 (vol. ii., p. 254), p. 160. 1503, c. 50-(vol. ii., p. 246), p. 160. a James V.—1524, c. 9 (vol. ii, p. 286), p. 121. 1535, c. 29 (vol. ii, p. 347); p. 125. Mary.—1563, c. 11 (vol. ii., p. 539), p. 120. ie i James VI.—1574 (vol. iii., pp. 86, 89), p. 127. 1574 (vol. iii, p. 88 ab.), p. 127. 1579, c. 11 (vol. tii, p. 139), p. 120. 1579, c. 12 (vol. iti, p. 140 b.), pp. 121, 123, 125, 128. 1581, c. 14 (vol. iii.,'p. 217), pp- 120, 160. 1581, c. 18 (vol. iii, p. 220), p. 120. 1585, c. 6 (vol. iii., p. 376), Pp. 120. 1587, c. 32 (vol. iii, p. 450), p. 120. 1592, & 69 (vol. lil, p. 576), p. 128. 1593 (vol. iv., p. 47b.), p. 121. 1597, c. 39 (vol. iv., p. 140), .p. 127. 1606, c. 7 (vol. iv., p. 286), p. 120. 1606, c. 10 (vol. iv., p. 287), p- 127. 1609, c. 10 (vol. iv., p. 287), p. 127. 1612, ¢. 5 (vol. iv., p. 471), p. 120. 1617, c. 9 (vol. iv., p. 541), p. 120. 1617, c. 8 (vol. iv., p. 537), P- 120. 1621, c. 21 (vol. iv., p. 623), p. 120. 1621, c. 25 (vol. iv., p. 626), p- 120. CHARLES I.—1639 (vol. v., p. 594), p. 120. 164t, c. 73 (vol. v., p. 390 b.), p- 121. 1644, c. 183 (vol. v., p. 194), p. 121. 1645, c. 75 (vol. vi., i, P 469), p. 160. 1646, c. 290 (vol. vi., i, p. 608), p. 127. 1648, c. 119 (vol. vi., ii, p. 68), p. 120. 1649, c. 161 (vol. vi., ii., p 220), p. 130. : COMMONWEALTH.—1655 (vol. vi, ii, p. 536 b.), p. 127. 1655 (vol. vi., ii., p: 835 b.), p. 128. 1656 (vol. vi., ii, p. 866 b.), p. 121. og CHar_es II.—1661, c. 338 (vol. vii., p. 308), pp. 120, 128. 1663, . 52 (vol. vii., p. 485), pp. 120,126. 1672, c. 42 (vol. viii, p. gi ab.), pp. 120, 128. 1685, c. 60 (vol. viii., p. 495 4.), p. I2I. JAMES Nile teers c. 16 (vol. viii., p. 472), p. 120. 1686, c. 28 (vol. viii., p. 591), p- 184. WILLIAM II1.—1693 (vol. ix., p. 447 b.), p. 121. 1698, c. 35 (vol. x., p. 175), p. 121. 1698, c. 40 (vol. x, p. 177), p. 129. 1700, c. 3 (vol. x., p. 218 b.), p. 121. GrorcE I.—1 Geo. I. c. 24, p. 172. 11 Geo. I. u. 26, p. 303. GrorGE II.—20 Geo. II. c. 50, p. 298. GrorGE III.—43 Geo. III. c. 54, p. 374. Vicroria.—8 & 9 Vict « 83 § 91, p. 303. 24 & 25 Vict. c. 82, p. 304. 32 Vict. c. 82, p. 303. 34 Vict. c. 29, p. 382. 49 & 50 Vict. c. 29, p. 357- STEFFEN, G. S. Six Hundred Years of English Poverty (Nineteenth Century Review), 1893: 115, 205. ; STEPHENS, H.C. Parochial Self-Government in Rural Districts, 1893: 241, 260," 264. STEPHENS, Henry. Book of the Farm [1842-4], 1876: 399, 400. StowE, John. Aznals of England, 1592: 62. Stusps, Rev. C. W. Zhe Land and the Labourers [1883], 1891: 350, 395; 431, 435. Stusss, Bishop William. Select Charters [1870], 1884: 35. Constitutional History _. of England [1874-8], 1883: 14, 35, 36, 37, 47, 85. Sundry Godly Prayers for Divers Persons, circa 1550: 90. SyLvius, Aineas. Opera Fit IJ. : 77. THORNTON, W. Pilea for Peasant Proprietors, 1874: 431. THORPE. ectitudines Singularum Personarum : 16, 26, 79, 80, 164. TOLAND, John. éstory of the Druids (ed, R. Huddleston), 1814: 166. TOWNSHEND. Daéssertations on the Poor Laws: 358. TRAILL, H. D. See Social’ England. Transactions of the Royal Historical Society : 23, 98, 99, 138, 140. Tucker. Causes of the Dearness of Provisions : 231. TULL, Jethro. Horse-hocing Husbandry, 1732: 100, 140. TusseR, Thos. Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry [1580], Ed. 1744: 100, 140, ‘ Index of Authorities 449° VAUGHAN, Roland. Most Approved and Long Experienced Water Works, containing the Manner of Draining Winter and Summer Pasture, etc., 1698 : 213. Vinocraborr, Paul, Villainage in England, 1892: 21, 46, 47. Vives, Lodovig J. De Subventione Pauperum, 1526: 116. WALKER, J. History of Penrith, 1857: 76. ; WALKER, Dr. Economical History of the Hebrides + 165, 167. Watuacg, A. R. Land Nationalisation [1883], 1892: 355, 430. WALTER of Henley. Husbandry, Royal Historical Society, 1890: 138, 140. WAYLAND, J. P. Short Enquiry into the Policy, Humanity, and Past Effects of the Poor Laws, 1807: 225. Westminster Review, 1868 : 355. WHITBREAD, S. Speech in the House of Commons, 1795: 280. WHITWORTH, Sir Chas. Davenant’s Works, 1771: 219. ' WILKINSON, Rev. J. Frome. Mutual Thrift, 1891 : 359, 364, 367, 368. Witus, Rev. James. Of the Poor Laws of England, and the Opinions of various Writers stated and considered, 1808 : 226, 255. YARRANTON, Andrew. Zngland’s Improvements by Sea and Land, 1677: 184. Year Books: 36. Younc, Arthur. Farmers’ Letters, 1768 : 223, 2453; Jnguiry into the Propriety of Applying Wastes to the Maintenance and Support of the Poor, 1801: 233, Vide also Annals of Agriculture. GG INDEX A. Abbey of St. Benet, 61. Accabatura, 33. Acland, 358. Acland’s proposals, 286. Adderley, 381. Addison, 230. Adscriptus glebz, 19. fEhte swain, 18. lfric, Colloquium of, 32. f£neas Sylvius, 77. Affiliated societies, 362. Aged Poor, Royal Commission on, 368, 369. Agisters, 53. Agrarian riots, 339. Agricultural Banks Association, 353. Agriculture, Pharaoh’s Minister of, 2. Alcock, Thomas, 132. Aldrich, Thomas, 103. Alehouses, 423. Alethorp, 113. Alexander I., 15. Alexander III., 16. Alfred’s local government, 234. Alison on Scotch poor, 299-301. Allabas cloth, 237. Allotment Act, 105. Allotment provident societies, 354. Allotment wardens, 349- Allotments Extension Act, 350. Allotments, promoters of, 353. American war, 347. Angelot cheese, 209. Animals domite natura, 52. Animals ferze nature, 51. Annual Enclosure Bill, 349. Annuity Act, 361. Ansell, 362. Anti-Corn Law League, 341. Anti-truck laws, 137. Approver, lord’s right of, 45. Arch, Joseph, 350. Argonauts, 173- Argyle, Duke of, 14, 17. Argyle, family of. 4t. Aristotle on civic life, 433- Arran, Isle of, 166. Articles of religion, 87. Artificial light, 74. Ashley, Professor, 89, 116. Aske, rising of, 97, 99- Assessment of rates, 221. Assize of arms, 12. Assize of bread, 66, 203. Assize of cloth, 178. |, Association for promoting improvement, etc., of agricultural labourers, 400. Attachtuatha, 15-17. : B. Bacon, 209. Bacon, Lord, 20, 122, 134. Bacon, Sir Francis, 279. Bacon, Sir Nathaniel, 113. Badgers, 146. Baille biotagh, 15. Baille tighern, 15. Baines, 381. Bakers, cooking by, 403. Ball, John, 59, 62. Bandster, 326. Banffshire, court of the Sheriif of, 26. Bannocks, 197- Barclay, 167. Bare brose, 323. Barker, Thomas, 348. Barking pigs, 319. Barley, 153 Barley, Sir Simon, sg. Barnes, William, 321. Baron de Maseres, 358. Bate, Dudley, 261. Battery and bloodwits, 39. Baxter's Act, 304. Bear, 367. Becher, 361, 362. Bedroom, the third, 402. Bee ceorl, 79. Bee-keeping, 317. Beer allowance, 308. Beggars, 65. Beggary, 95, 211. Begging hook, 149. Bellers on laws for shortening labour, 232. Beltane, 169. Benefit building clubs, 363. Benefit societies, 363. Benes and peis, 160. Benniddigion, 18. Bentham, 430. Bernard, Sir Thomas, 348. Best, Henry, 141, 143, 145-147+ Best on hay-making, 147, 148. Beverley market, 145. Bible, 87. Bible and education, 376, 382. Bignets, 200. Bill of petitions, 6a. Biotaghs, 15. Black Death, 19, 57, 73- Blackley, Canon, 369. Blackley’s proposal, 364. Blackstone, 122. Blackstone, dictum of, 2. Bland, 162. .Blanketeers, march of, 349. Blomfield, 273. Bloodwits, 39. Bond, 18. Bondagers, 409. Bonnachts, 17- Bonnet lairds, 16. Book of discipline, 118. Boot, giving the, 153. ~ Booth, Charles, 369. Bordars, 24. Bothy female, 396. Bothy system, 319, 395 451 452 Bothy, voice from the, 39s. Bouch, 159. Boulting mill, zor. Boutmy, 432. Bowyes, 327. Bracton, 20, Branding-iron, 95. Brazil wood, 178. Bread, 77. Bread, assize of, 333. Bread-making, 202. Bread money, 269. Bread, varieties of, 193. ier 15+ Q ridlington Quay, 144. Broke, Jaco, aan British and Foreign School Society, 376. Britton, 20. Brogue, 161. Brookfield and assessment, 228. Brougham’s scheme of education, 376, Buchanan, 166. Bucht, 187. Bucking tub, 32g. Building regulations, 394. Burke, 426. Burn, Dr., 86. Burn, R. Scott, 397. Burns, Robert, 321. Burrowes, 117. Buskin, 161. Butt and ben, 161, 4or. Butter-wife, 389. Buttered wheat, zor. Cabbage, 77, 78. Cade, oak 63. Cadgers, 146. Cesar, 3. Caiggean chaorich, 169. Calvinistic refugees, 133. Cambrics, 183. Campbell, Lord Colin, 158. Candles a luxury, 76. Capel Lofft, 334. Capes, 197. Capitales plegii, 36. Captain Caufstail, 147. Captain Swing, 31, 344. Carding wool, 18x. Carduus benedictus, 209. Carlyle on government, 330. Carpenter, Miss, 379. Carucate, 139. Castleacre, 391. ‘ Casual Vagrant Act of 1882, 292. Catch-work men, 391. Cato, 138. Cavils, 169. Cecil, 257, Celtic hospitality, 293. Ceorl, 20. ee 273, 302, 390. shalmers, 25, 273, 297-299, 302, 348. Chamberlain, Mr. Tok on old age, 369. Chamberlain on cottages, 403. Chamberlain’s select committee, 350. Change house, 168. Chapmen, 20. Charity Organisation Society, 368. Charity schools, 373. Charles I., 41. Charles V., 117. Chartists, 340. Chaucer, 78. Cheap loaves, 331. Cheese making, 209. Cheshire cheese, 209. Child labour, 386. Chivage, 19, 65. Cc. Index Choppin bottle, 162. Christian social union, 438. Church ales, 86, Church poor-box, 217. Church school movement, 375. Churchwardens, 130. elt Churchwardens, Firmin's opinion of, 244. Churl, 17. | Cider-drinking, 308. Clanronald's beneficence, 355. Clare, John, 321. Clarendon, assize of, 36, 37, 42+ Clerematyn, 193. Clew, 182. Clifford, Frederick, 418, 420. Clothes, prices of, 190. Clothing, 68. Clothing knights, 179. Clothing of peasantry, 190. Club-men, rising of, 114. Co-aration, 6. Coarse kerseys, 177. Cobbett, 30, 302. i Cobbett and corn laws, 338. (Cobbett and Malthus, 282. Cobbett and the farmers, 284. Cobbett, his speech at Salisbury, 339. Cobbett on bondagers, 409. Cobbett on clubs, 359. Cobbett on education, 374. Cobbett on potatoes, 307. peoae on the pence, 335+ ‘obden, 339, 341, 381. Cobden and the landlords, 33. Codde, 152. Coke, 20. College of industry, 238. Collings, Jesse, 350, 434- Colneis and Carlford, 239. Colonel Thompson, 340. Colonus, 20. Combe, 390. Commission, Duke of Newcastle’s, 382. Commissioners, board of, 26r. Common-appendant, 48. Common-appurtenant, 48. Commons Act, 350. Communal labour, 248. Communitas, 18. “‘ Complaint,” the, We ts Comte and Philosophie Positive, 438. Confession of faith, 118. ; Confined labourers, 39% . Congregational Board of Education, 377. Coniers, Rev. Mr., 103. Conquest, the, 10. Conservative Land Society, 363. Co-operative farming, 420. Co-operative stores, 362. Co-operative yeomen, 353. Copyhold Act, 351. Copyholder, 16. Corn dealers, 333. Corn depdts, 336. Corn, forestailing of, 333+ Corn harvest, 149. ‘Corn prices and rent, 337. Corn,” “‘ shearing, 151. Gotrespending societies, 360. Cost of national poverty, 218. Cotarius, Anglo-Saxon, 164. Cotrellus, 30, Cotselda, 17. Cotswold ewes, 179. Cottage Act of Elizabeth, 256. Cottage dairy, 208, Cottage Dwellings Act, 389. Cottage economy, 399. Cottage garden cultivation, 207, 405. Cottage grates, 404. Cottage industries, 191. Cottager s cow, 206. Cottager's pig, 210. Cottages in England, 393. Cottages in Scotland, 319. Cottages, sites of, 404. Cottars, 24. Cotton Arbitration Acts, 332. Cotton, Sir Arthur, 353. County council elections, 353. County of the gallon loaf, 207. Court baron, 37, 38. Court leet, 37, 38. Court of justiciary, 172. Court of Sessions, 130. Courts of Scotland, 41. Courts of woodmote, 52. Covin, 58. Cow-dung as fuel, 318. Cow gait, 357. Cow-keeping, 315. Cowper's Bill, 349. Crabbe, 275. Crawar, 118. Crawford, M.P. for Ayr, 304. Criminal jurisdiction, 39. Crofters, 354. Crofters’ Act, 357. Cromwell, O., 114. Cromwell, Thomas, 88, 98. Crown lands, 4o. Cucking stool, 178. Culage, 6s. Cunningham, Professor, 60, 74. Cupples, 170. Curfew, 55. Currock, 171. Custom-weaving, 76. D. Dacre, Lord, 99. Daerclan, 16. Dagger ale, 77. Dairymaids, 140. Damp cottages, 400. Danegeld, 35. Dangerous classes, 425. Danish heriot, 164. ‘ Daubing day, 320. Davenant, 174. Davies, 135, 265. Dead, clothing of, 184. Dean Church on the clergy, 330. Dean Swift, 233. , Decentralisation of poor relief, 234. Deer forests, 356. Defoe, 358. Demesne bread, 193. Demon of property, 353- Denison on labour, 391- Dent, John Dent, 399. Deodands, 76. Dickens and Poor Laws, 275. Dight roads, 171. | Dionysius, Alexandrinus, 174. Dipsacus fullonum, 175. Disbanded soldiers, 216. Distaff and spindle, 181. District councils, 370. 7 ‘Division of labour, Adam Smith on, 247. Divorce from farmer’s kitchen, 411. Divorce of labourer from land, 411. Dodd-read-Massledine, 145. Dog’s wayne, 76. Domesday Survey, 10, 22. Dorf, 4. Douglas, Sir James, 162. Doundrews, 152. Doyle on education, 386. Dr. Sleigh, 341. Drainage, 402. Dress, 83. Lndex 453 Drink and the truck system, 410. Drink question, 422. Drinking feats, 308. Driven wheat, 145. Druggets, 177. Drummond, 277. Drunk as a ian 155. Dryhouse cottars, 168. Drying day, 323. Duc d’Alva, 133. Duineuasal, 15, 17. Dussin’s dale, 112. Dye, a Norfolk squire, 113.’ E. Earse tongue, 163. East Anglian woollen trade, 177. East India Company, 237. East’s Act, 265. Parionets, 435. Bi len, Sir Frederick, 28, 30, 31, 89, 130, 390. Eden, Sir F., on bread, oe. Dee 8D Eden on cooking utensils, 403. Eden on education, 373. Education, 81. Education Act of 1870, 385. Education and Melbourne's Ministry, 377. Education and religion, 387. Education and State aid, 377. Education and the State, 377. Education, Council on, 381. Education Department, 382. Education, early views on, 372. Education, fourth standard of, 384. Education, Government grants to, 382. Education, Henley on, 383. Education in Wales, 368, Education, opinions of peasantry on, 386. ‘Education, Scottish system of, 374, 383. Edward the Confessor, 9, 22. Edward I., 37. Eel dykes, 49. Efter temsings, 195. Egyptians, 92. Elizabeth, 133. Ellis, William, 138. Elshen box, 322. Employers’ Liability Acts, 84. Enclosing, opinions on, 347. Enclosure Acts, 46. Enclosure agitation, 63. Enclosure Commissioners, 346. Enclosure Commissioners and cottages, 394. Enclosure, general Bill of, 172. Enclosure movement, 135. Enclosure rebellions, 113. Enclosure riots, 345. Enclosure system, 72, 345. 2 English Land Colonisation Society, 353. English schoolmaster, 387. Engrossing farms, 73. Epilepsy, cure of, 169. Equivalent drawback, 338. Erasmus, 87. Ethelred, laws of, 36. Ethelwulf, King, 85. Evelyn, 77. Evesham, battle of, 48. Exeter, 110. Extenta manerii, 48. Fi F's, the three, 357. Factory Acts, 392. Family lands, 6. Family men, 15. Famines of 1694 and 1740, 164. Farm schools, 379. Farmer's Magazine, 169. Farmer’s opinions on Poor Laws, 286-288. Farmers and rates, 283. 454 Farmers, benevolence of, 419. Farmers, number of, 337. Farming instruments, home manufacture of, 146. Farthing tokens, 231. Fastening money, 413. Fawcett, 350. Feacht, 17. Feals, 170. F eeder-in at the millstool, 322. ‘* Feelosopher’s antalluct,” 309. Feinzied fules, 117. Female labour, 75, 309, 408. Female servants and tea, 312. Ferrars, 16, 26. Feudal incidents, Ir. Fever year of 1817, 293. Field garden, 352. Fitch hack, 199. Fitzherbert, 46, 71, 137, 139, 141. Fladbrod, 199. Flanders, democratic triumphs in, 59. Flat system of tenement, 402. Flax cultivation, 185. Flax ground, 317. Flax retting, 183. Flemings, 133. Flemish immigration, 134. Flemish linen-workers, 186. Flemish prosperity, 133. Flesher, 171. Flowerdew, 102. Fluidity of capital, 19. Fluidity of labour, 19. Folcland, 8, 43 Folde barres, 146. Fond plough, 1 Food, adulteration of, 389. Forefurre and hinderfurre, 152. Fortescue, 77, 78. Fosterage, 166. Four pleas of the Crown, 39. Fourth grade of society, 436. Fox on the scarcity, 333- Frankland, Lewis and Co., 284. Frank-pledge, 21. Frank-pledge group, 3 Fe Frank-pledge, view of, 3 Fraser on education, ‘a. Free education, 385. Free labourer, 3. Freehold land societies, 363. Freeholders, 46. French aristocracy, 9. French breads, 196. French diet, 195. French feudal system, xo. French rustic, habits of, 78. Friendly societies, 360, 369." Friendly Societies Commission, 367. Frith geld, 58. Froughy, 147. Fruit puddings, 405. Fruit trees, 405. Frumety, £47, 201. Fulzie, 160. Furca and fossa, rights of, 40. Fustian goods, 183. Fyrebote, 53. G. Gafol swain, 18. Game law, 67. Game, ownership of, 52. Game preserves, 49. Games, 67. Gang labour, 392. Gang system, 391. Garden allotment system, 349 Gatherings with hobbyhorse, 86. Geastinge, 156. Gebur, 16. Lndex Geneat, 20. General Assembly, 299. General Enclosure Act, 287, 334. Gentility of blood, 10. George, H., 430. Gilbert, 258, 358. Gilbert’s centralisation scheme, 286. Gild Society of Berwick, 117. Gillies, 357. Girdle cakes, 1 Girdlestone, Canon, 417, 434. Girnals, 165. Girst, 187. Gladstone, Mr., 54, 98. Gladstone, W. E., on education, 388. Glanvil, 20. Glebe Lands Act, 350. Gluttony of English labourers, 312. God’s penny, 99. Golden Fleece, 173. Sn, Be 146. . ooge, Barnaby, 137. Governor Pownall, 334. Graddaning, 196. Grain allowances, 311. Grammar schools, 373. Grand jury, 47. Grassum, 164. Green, Mr., 62, 73, 87. Green of Wylby, zor. Gregg, Samuel, 422. Gressumes, 99. Grey, G. A., 418. Grievance-mongering, 406. Griffiths, 295. Grindecobbe, 60. Grist, 146. Gronlund, 426. Grossteste, Richard, 137. Guile-chan, 161. Guthrie, 302. H. Habeas Corpus Act, 331. Hag, 326. Hales, 60, 62. Hales, John, 100, 101. Half-holiday, 421. Half-timers, 382. Hall Caine, 423. Hallam, 22, 89. Halloween, 326. Halmote, 33. Hamilton, Abbot of Ferne, 118. Hampshire labourers, 307. Hand-hoven bread, 199. Handsel Monday, 326. Hange strawe, 156, Harden bagge, 152. Harpley, rector of, 75. Harrison, 76, 77, 94. Harrow, 167. Harvest gloves, 150. Hautboys, 53. Haute justice, ro, 34. Haver straw, 156. Hawsted, manor of, 75. Hawsted, village of, 79. Hay leath, 149. Hay-making, 147. Hay, tifting of, 148. Hay’s Bill, 240. Head, Sir Francis, 276. Hebrew land laws, 2. Hebrides, 165. Heck stowes, 146. Heckling, 187. foe 53: Helms, rs. Henley, Wolter of, 137-140. Henry II., 34, 36, ‘66 Henry VI, 6s. Herefordshire, beggary in, 212. Fetes 26, eritors, 39, 130. Hide, 139. gre Highland Agricultural Society, 4x4. Highland agriculture, improvement of, 355. Highland clothing, 192. Highland cottages, 4or. Highland dress, 161. Highland food, 161, Highland tenantry, 159. Highland town, 16. Hiring labour by the year, 312. Hiring system, 413. Hirings, 144. Hoast houses, 145. Holinshed, 54, 63. Home and Colonial School Society, 376. Hookers, 153. Hop harlot, 76. . Hop harvesting, 407. Horkey feast, 154, 155. Horrible English lairs, 320. Horse-pond Parliament, 435. Hours of labour, 421. Housebote, 53. House Purchase Bill, 403. Houses of correction, 215. Howlett, 348. Howlett’s proposal for poor, 304. Hubert Hall, Mr., go. Hucksters, 146. Hudde, 146. Hudson, Rev. W., 41, 61. Huffcap, 77. Hummelled corn, 321. Hunt's trial, 340. Hunter, W, A., 368. Hunter on cottages, 394. Huntingdon, William, 321. Husbandland, 16, 17. Huss, 1x8. Immorality of women workers, 409. Impét unique, 338, 429. Improved Dwellings Acts, 389. Ina, King, 53. Incendiarism, 273, 274. Individualism, 425. Indoor relief, costs of, 265. Infield, 169. Ingrossing Office, 219. Innes, Mr. Cosmo, 24. Inning goose, 155. Inquisition of 1517, 98. Irish landlords, 294. Irish mendicancy, 293- Irish realty, rating of, 296. Trish, relief of poor, 295. Isaiah’s prophecy, 423. Isle of Ely, 273. Isle of Wight, 73. Itinerant justices, 35. . a Jack Straw, 62. Jacquerie revolt, 59. James IV., 40. Jannock bread, 199. Jefferies, Richard, 424, 432. Jekyll, Sir Joseph, 240. Jenkins, Henry, 94. Jenkins on bothies, 398. Jenkins on cottages, 402. Jerkin, 83. Jessop, Dr., 75. John of Arragon, 179. ohn the Litster, 60. ohnny bread, 199. -Labour, Defoe on, at Lndex 455 Johnson, Dr., 28, 71, 160, Johnson, Dr., in Skye, udge Kenyon, 24r. ury of presentment, 42. ury of the homage, 46. ury system, 35. ustice, definition of, 434. ustice seat, 52. usticiary of Scotland Chief 41. Juvenile labour, 378. K, Kail, 160, 170. Kaimes, 273. Kaleyard, 317. Kebbell, 385, 386. Kellachy, 167. Kelt, 190. Kemping, 327. Kenninghall: 107. Kett, 59, 95.. Kett’s rebellion, 97. Kettering, 227. ‘ King Alfred, 174. King’s Bench, 241, 253. King’s Bench, Court of, 226, King’s brief, 85. Kingsley, Charles, 54. Kirk sessions, 129. Kirkburne, 143. Kirnes, 322. Kitchen ranges, 403. Kitcheness bread, 199. Knettishall Farm, 420. Knevit, Sir Edmund, 107. Knight, Charles, 351. Knitting, 183. Knox, 118. Knyghton, 68. L., Labour, bodily, 2. Labour, claims of, 422. Labour Commission, 367, 368, Labour farming establishments, 431. Labour, fluidity of, 246. Labour, hours of, 313. Labour laws, 58, 69, 134. Labour, remuneration of, 313, Labour, State policy and, 429. Labour, views on, 246. Labourer, life of, 141. Labourer, origin of the, 14. Labourers’ allotments, 16. Labourers’ checks, 416, Labourers’ discomforts historically regarded, 320. Labourers’ food, 307. Labourers’ friend, 363. Labourers’ Friendly Society, 390. Labourers’ livestock, 315. Labourers’ lodgings, 399. Labourers’ wages, 141. Laissez-faire policy, 330, 365, 426. Lambswool, 77. Lancashire pit-brow lasses, 311. Lancaster, Joseph, 375. Land court, 105. Land fever, 9o. Land grabbing, 344. Land hunger, 434. Land nationalisers, 428. Land philanthropists, 431. Land reformers, school of, 431. Land, rights of property in, 1. Land tenure, communal economy of, 3. Land tenure in Germany, 3. Landlords’ duties, 436. Langland, 74. Largess, custom of, 154. Lathe, 37. 456 Latrines, 389. Lavergne, 174, Law of settlement, 64, 125. Law-right men of the Orkneys, 166, Lawson, 420. Lawyers, ecclesiastical, 25. Lazzus, 20. Leather-making, 183. Leazing, 213. Leet, 36. Leet jurisdiction of Norwich, 41. Leighton, Sir Baldwin, 352. Lending libraries, 378. Lenten leet assembly, 42. Leprosy, 77. Lerwick, 168, Levellers, 114. Lewes, meeting at, 335. Lewis, island of, 356. Lincolnshire women, 311, Linen Acts, 185. Linen bleaching, 188. Linen trade, 183. Lingard, Dr., 8, 86, Lint, 186. Lispund, 163. Little, H., on cottage-building, gor. Little palaces, 402. Littleton, 20, Liveries, abolition of, 95. Living wage, the, 134, 434. Local government, Alfred’s scheme of, 241, Local Government Board inspectors, 368. Local jurisdiction, 35. Lock-out of ae 418. Leetic polity, 163. Logwood, 178. Lollards, 59, 118. London Reform Union, 369. London season and James I., 231. Long-lands and short-lands, 167. Longevity of peasantry, 421. Lord Ashburton, address of, 379. Lord Beaconsfield, 350. Lord Carrington, 353. Lord Hawkesbury, 268, Lord Kenyon, 226, Lord Kinnaird, 395. Lord Onslow, 351. Lord Parker, 253. Lord Pitmilly, agp Lord Portman, 361. Lord Radnor, 283. Lord John Russell, 296. Lord Salisbury, 351. Lord Shaftesbury, 379. Lord Sheffield, 335. Lord Sidmouth, 332. Lord Winchilsea, 348. Lord’s waste, 49. Lords of sessions, 41. Lothian harvest customs, 327. Lowe’s workhouse scheme, 285. Lowland agriculture, 169. Ludd, 59. Luddites, 273. Lums, 4oo. Luther, 116. M. Macalive cattle, 166. Macaulay, 54, 169. Macdonald of Keppoch, 12. Mackie’s letter to Dirom, 334. MacNeil, thirty-fifth lord ot Barra, 16s, Maerdref, 15. Magic of property, 353. Magistrate, chief, of the realm, 51 Magna Charta, 56, 104. Maidservants, 143. Mailers, 168. Index Maitland, Professor, 36, 39. Makking slaughter, 158. Malcolm ITI., 163. a tax, 283. Malthus, 273, 279, 295. Malthus, opposition to, 281, Malton, 144. Manchester school, is ; Manchester Unity of Oddfellows, 362. Manchet loaves, 77. ' Mandarins, 235. Mandeville, 173, 373- Maner dey, 78. Manners of labourers, 412. Manor, origin of, 8, Manors, grants of fresh, 50. Manorial courts, 39. Mantuan swan, 132, Maor, 15. Marketing of produce, 144. Marriage and Poor Laws, 280. Martin Luther, gz. Martin, M., 165. Martineau, Harriet, 381. Massledine, 144, 194. Mast, 226, Master of Stair, 184. Matthew Marriott, 236. McNeill, Sir J., 356. McNeill, Sir John, evidence of, 302. Mechanics’ institutes, 381. Melder, 323. Mendicancy, 116, Merchandise Marks Act, 179. Merk, 163, Merse harvest, 327. Methwold, William de, 64. Metlaw, 75. Mile End, 6r. Milk money, 316. Mill, John Stuart, 3, 29, 54. Mill-grinding, 197. Mill maiden, 323. Mills for lint-dressing, 187. Miller, Hugh, 164. Miracle plays, 87. Modbury, 227. Monarchies, origin of, 7. Money multures, 172. Money wages, introduction of, 315. Monypenny, 298-300, Moore, Ede, 369. Moore’s estimate of rates, 219. Mopp, 413. Moralities, 87. yee, 15. . ore, Sir Thomas, 94, 98. Mort cloths, 131. a” Mousehold Heath, 103. Mowter, 197. Murray, 385. Mutches, 162. Mutual insurance system, 360. Myleham, Sir Nicholas, 100,“ N. Nassau Senior, 273, 297. National Agriculuural Labourers’ Union, 417. National Land Society, 363. National Providence League, 364. National Public School Association, 381. National School Society, 376. National sick fund, 33. Nationalisation of property, 427. Native industries, 173. Nativi, 18, 30, 118. Neat combs, 180. Neckar, 426. New learning, the, 116. Nicholls, Sir George, 65, 295, Ludex 457 Nieson, 362. Night-schools, 378. Nimmo, 29s. Noblesse oblige, 437. Nolan's plan of poor relief, 289. Nominalist theologians, 116. Norfolk commons, 101. Norfolk drollery, 154. Norfolk hind, 138. Norman Constitution, 22, Norman invasion, 9. Northampton gaol, pastor of, 363. Northcote’s committee, 364. Northumberland, women of, 418. Norwegian jarl, 24. Norwich, 41, roz. Norwich, sack of, 60. Norwich woollen trade, 237. oO. Oak of Reformation, 103, 107, 109. Ogtierns, 15. Old age pensions, 369. Old age pensions and the State, 370. Old Age Pensions League, 368. Oligarchical spoliation, 49. Order of sessions, 241. Orridge, Mr. Brogden, 62. Osborne, Lord Godolphin, 409. Outdoor prohibitory relief order, 291. Outdoor relief, 368. Outdoor relief, costs of, 265, 369. Outligger, 152. Overcrowding, 389, 393, 402. Overlord, origin of, 5. Overseers, activity of, 260. Overseers, Burn on, 260. Owenists, 282, 362. Owling, 178. P. Pack-saddle, 144. Paley, Archdeacon, 122. Panis Dominicus, 193. Pannage, 53. Pannel, 144. Parish allowances, effects on farmers of, 270. Parish Councils Act, 346, 435. Parish government, 433. Parish officers, 259. Parish stocks, 287. . Parish watchmen, 287. Parishes, union of, 259. Parkinson on Irish thieving, 292. Parma cheese, 209. ‘ Parochial offices, candidates for, 245. Parochial schools, 169. Parr, William, Marquis of Northampton, 109. Parry, Edward, 349. Partlet, 83. Passage dues, 75. Pastimes, peasants’, 31. Pastoral husbandry, 73. Paton, Dr., 353. Patriarchal system, 54. Patrick, Mr. Cochran, 168. Paupers, truculence of, 270. _Pauvres honteux, 217. Peasant, enfranchisement of the, 24 Peasant women, 68. Peasants’ war in Germany. 107. Peasantry, morality of, 408. Peasantry, superstitions of, 380. Pease reapes, 153. Ped, 144. Pedlars, 146. Peel, Sir Robert, 343. Pendiclers, 355. Pennant, 165. Pennie grasse, 147. Penny-a-liner Chadwick, 284. Penny lands, 162, 163. Penny wedding, 172. Penrith, manor of, 75, 85. People’s banks, 354. Perquisite system, 416. Personalty. assessment of, 227. Perthshire labourers, 307. Peter of Blois, 193. Peterborough, St. John Baptist, parish of, 254. Peterloo tragedy, 340. Petite culture, 357. Pew, 361. Pew rents, 131. Philabeg, 161. Piccage, 75. Piece work, 418, 420. Piers Ploughman, 74. Pilgrimage of grace, 97. Pitch brands, 180. Pitt, 135. Pitt’s Act, 132, 268. Placita de quo warranto, 37. Plank bread, 199. Playfair, Dr., 171. Plot, 327. Plough, 139. Ploughgate, 139. Poaching, 67. Pocks mither, 165. Pomfret, 99. Poor, books on the, 214. Poor, contracting out the, 239, 259. Poor establishment at Aldersgate, 243. Poor family, cost of relieving an average, 235- Poor, fathers of, 243. Poor Law, 84, 89, 93, 115, 122. Poor Law Amendment Act, 291. Poor Law and the justices, 244. Poor Law, French opinions on, 275. Poor Law guardians and benefit clubs, 370. Poor Laws, multiplicity of, 279. Poor Laws, opinions on, 230, 272. Poor Laws, Scotch, 123. Poor rates, distribution of, 289. Poor rates, rise in, 225 Poor rates, total of, 223. Poor relief, centralisation of, 258. Poor relief, method of, at Ypres, 117. Poor relief, powers of the justices in, 263. Poor’s roll, 126. 7 Pope, the, and the land question, 427, 429. Pope Gregory, 85. Poppy on Free Trade, 288. Popular education, enlightened views on, 380. Population and poor laws, 280. Population, views on, 281. Portman, Mr. E. B., 409. Post Office and benefit societies, 365. Potato curl, 354. Potato famine, 343- Potato patch, 357: Potatoes, Wakefield on, 307. Poultry-keeping, 316. Poverty, causes of, 231. Poverty, Fox on, 267. Pragmatic Poor Law, 117. Prentice, 341. Presbytery, 129. Preses, 130. Price, Dr., 348. Primus inter pares, 't, 3, 5, 7) 9) 1%) 15. Prince Consort and cottage-building, 390. Prince Consort on education, 381. Princess Mary, 107. Pringle on female labour, 311. Print Works Act, 381, 382. Prize bread, 204. Progressivists, 387. Protectionists, 428. Providing kist, 323. 458 Prudential Assurance Company, 367- Public Health Acts. 389. Public-house Benefit Chub, 363. Purlieu, 53. Purpestre, 75. Purveyance, 12. Quartern loaf, 205. Quern, 196. Quesnai, 246, 338, 429. Quia Emptores, 48, 49. Quird, 170. R. R's, the three, 372. Rabbit, 49. Rags and fire, 320. Ragged school movement, 376. Rahaline experiment, 431. Raikes, Robert, 375. Ratcliffe tables, 362. Rates in and on the pound, 278. Rates, increase of, 277. Rath, rs. Read, Clare Sewell, 386 Reade Weekes, 149. Realty, rating of, for poor, 220. Reay, parish of, 163. Reckitt, Harold, 353. Rectitudines singularum, 80. Reform Bill, 340. Regality, Court of, 39. Regality, Lords of, 39- Regarders, 53 Religious freedom, 388. Rennet, 209. Rents and prices, 337- Repledging, 40, 4r. Resby, 118. Rheam, 327. Ricardo, David, 106, 273. Riddle cakes, 199. Riever, 117. Rigginge, 156. Rights of user, 49. Robert Bruce, 17. Roberts, dictum of, 358. Roebuck, 35t. Rogers, Professor, 38, 69, 73. 74, 90. Roman code, 20. Romilly, 329. ‘Rooms,” 162. Rose, 265. Rose’s Bill, 286, 332. Ross Land Society, 363. Roundsman process, 96, 269. Rousseau, 28. Rowlinge, r5z. Royal commissions, 406. Royal Commission on Labour, 1891, 407. Royal Liver Insurance Company, 367. Royal prerogative, 43. Rumford on grates, 404. Runrig system, 164, 169. Rural Claptiem, 424. ural exodus, 346, 410, 416, 432. Russell, Lord John, 343. s Russell, Sir John, r1o. Russet, 68. Ss. Sac, soc, toll, etc., 34. Sacerdotalists, 387. Saffron, roo. Saffron cakes, 77. Saint Simonites, 282. Saizes, 177. Sanitary Acts, 402. Sanitary commissions, 389. Index Sanitary measures, 390. Sanitary officials, 402. ~Saughs, 146, 148. Savings Bank, 360. Savings Bank legislation, 369, 370. Say casts, 180. : Scale pay, 268. Scallags, 166. Scarlett, 286. Scatt, 164. Schoolmaster, services of, 417. Scotch labourers’ frugality, 310. Scotland, Cobbett’s visit to, 318. Scoto-Britannus, 374. Scott, Sir Walter, 139. Scottish beggar law, 212. Scottish Church Assembly, 302. Scottish constitution, 15. Scottish cottages, 400, 402. Scottish crofters, 354. Scottish labourers’ life, 310. Scottish laws of settlement, 304. Scottish mendicancy, 303. Scottish paupers, statistics of, 304. Scottish peasantry, contentedness of, 382- Scottish poor, 297. i Scottish Poor Law Commission, 301. Scottish schoolmaster, 387. Scottish service, 17. Scottish thrall, 26. Scottish vagrancy, causes of, 298. Scriptura tax, 164. Scurvy, 77- Scurvy grass, 162. Scutage, 12. Seditious Meetings Acts, 360. Seigniorial charity, 432. Seigniorial jurisdiction, 34. Seigniorial oppression, 13. Seigniorial rights, origin of, 7. Selborne, Lord, 84. Select vestries, 264. Senachi, 163. Seneschal, 79. Serf, 22. Servants’ Registry Office, 413. Servus, 18, 20. Setene, 26. Settlement by tenancy, 230. Settlement, difficulties of, 252. Settlement, expenses of, 253. Settlement, feeling against, 257. Settlement, hardships of, 251. ~ Settlement, law of, 248. Settlement, qualifications for, 254. Settlement, rights of, 249. Settlement, Stanley on, 256. Shagreen, 183. Shalloons, 177. Shammy leather, 183. Sharing-out clubs, 364. Shearing, 149. Sheep-stealing, 329. Sheermen, 182. Sheffield, Lord, 110. Sheldraker, 75. Shepherds, 138. Sheriff, hereditary, 40. Sheriff Samuel on bondage labour, 409. Sheriff Watson, 379. Sheriff's tourn, 35, 42. Shielings, 160. Shire, antiquity of the, 37. Shiremoots, 34. Shoemaker in West Riding, 251. Shop clothes, 190. Shops and truck system, 416. Shuttleworth, Sir J. K., 381. Sinclair, Sir John, 355. Sinclair, Sir John, on Protection, 335- Singit parritch, 327. , Lndex Spear ndvorates 429. inking Fund, payment of relief out of, é Sir Edward Coke 195. oe Sismondi on our labour laws, 330. Six Acts, 33r. Skalk, 162. Skilling, 200, Skye, 16s, 166. Slaine, 145. Slate clubs, 364. Slavery, 71, 95. Se 1% | mai oldings Act, 79, 195, 1 ‘0. Small holdings, Bieahan, "er Gn 344: Small notes, abolition of, 339. Small-pox, 162. Smith, Adam, 106, 257. Smocke, apron, 143. Snuff-taking, 312. Soccage, 75. Social reformers, 424. Socialism, 438. Socialists, 428. Societies favourable to the peasantry, 427. ae for Bettering the Condition of the Poor, 348. Socmen, 46. 4 Somerset, Duke of, 97, 98. Somerset House triumvirate, 291. Somerville, Alexander, 321. Sornaires, ¢2. Sornare, 117. Southern labourer, 418. Sowens, 170, 200. Spa Fields revolt, 340. Spanish Inquisition, 133. Spanish wool, 180. Speaker of House of Commons, 219. Speenhamland, 132. Speenhamland meeting, 267. Spencer, Herbert, 426. Spinning machinery, 175, 176. Spinster, 174. Spouting, 400. Sprigge, Mr. Serjeant, 13x. Spring of 1845, 342. Squirearchy threatened, 430. Stack-firing, 339. Staff-strikers, 67. St. Albans, cloister of, 60. Stallage, 75. Stanhope, 386. Stanhope on education, 368. Starch manufacturers, 333- State ownership, 427. State patronage and labourers, 368. Statty fair, 413. Statute fairs, 58, 66, 142. Statute of Apprentices, 134. Statute of Charles II., 48. Statute of Labourers, 62. Statute of Merton, 45, 46, 98. Statute of Settlement, 65. Statute of Westminster, 47, 98, 105. St. Augustine, 85. Steelbo or stuht, 26. Steel-bow, 160, 170. Steffen, Mr. Gustav, 115. Steward, Augustine, 109. Storeys to a cottage, 400, St. Pancras Land Society, 363. Strachey, Mr. Edward, 370. Stratford, Archbishop, 85. Stratford-on-Avon hirings, 414. Stratton, rector of Ditton, 365. Straw-beds, 171. Strickle, 147, 197- Strikes, Bye Strikes, prohibition of, 58. Stroakings, 209. Stubbs, Bishop, 36, 47, 84, 85- 459 Stubbs, Rev. Charles, 395, 435. Sturges Bourne, 273, 277, 284. Sturges Bourne s Act, 264. Subarmigeri, 18. Subboys, 53. Subvavassours, 18. Successful peasants, 321. Sumptuary laws, 68. Sunday labour, 25, 421. Sunday-school movement, 375. Sunday tuition, 378. Superfine matching, 180. Superstition of peasantry, 385. ~ Suspensory Bill, 88. Sutherland clearances, 355. Swainmote, 52. f Swap-hook, 150. Swapping, 149. Swey, 404. Swineherd, 79. Swish-swash, 77. System of liveries, 63. o Ts Tacitus, 3. Tacksmen, 16, 164. Taigan, 15. Taithed, 170. ‘Tallow, 76. Tan vat, 74. Taxation, 283, Taylor, John, 68. Tea, objections to, 307. Tea-kettle broth, 418. Teending, 147, 149. Teinds, 164. Tempse bread, 198. Tenancy of essart, 45. Tenants by charter, 18. Tenants of the essart, 44. Tenement, 21. Terra nativa, 23. Terry, 122. Thatching, 155. Theaker, 157. ‘Thief in fang, 39. Thirlage, 172. Thorold Rogers on Poor Law, 291. Three acres and a cow, 434. Three F's, 105. Threes in a reed, 188. Thryll, 18. Tidd Pratt, 362, 363. Tiers Etat, 105. Tighern, 15, 158. Tipperty bothies, 398. ‘Tippling propensities of harvesters, 308 - Tippling shops, 233. Tithe, 85, 172. Tithing, 35. Toland, 166. Tolhouse, 41, 42. Tontine clubs, 364. Townshend, 358, 360. Trades Unionism, 417. Trail bastons, 58. Triage of wool, 180. Trials by battle, 35. Trials by compurgation, 35. ‘Tribal rights, prehistoric,,14. Tributum soli, 164. Trinity system of workhouse, 239. Trinoda Necessitas, 9. Truck Acts, 317, 410, 416. Truck system, 66, 415. Tudor craftesmen, 354. Tull, 137. Tumbling wheels, 167. Tunis, king of, 173. 460 Turbary, 75. Tusser, 140. Twistleton, jor. Tyndale, 87. U. Undersetter, 389. Unearned increment, 430. Union Bastilles, 301. Union Chargeability Act, 393. Union of parishes, 235. Useful Knowledge Society, 381. Usquebaugh, 162. Vv. Vagabond thieves, gt. Vagabonds, 117. Vagrant Act, gt. Vagrants, 92. Valor Ecclesiasticus, 89. Vavassours, 18. Vavassours, courts of, 39. Vellum, 183. Venison and vert, 50, 51. Verge, 23. Vestries, fall of the, 263. Vestries, magisterial control over the, 244. Vestry, 130. Village friendly society, 366. Village gilds, 435. Village stores, 420. Villages, thirteenth century, 29. Villein-in-gross, 18, 20. Villein regardant, 18, 20. Villein socman, 16. Vinogradoff, Mr., 46. Virgate, 16, 24. Visitor, magistrate-appointed, 263. Vives, 116. Voluntary School Society, 377: Ww. Wadmale, 162. Wages, 82. Wages and the markets, 316. Wages, Elizabethan Act on, 332, Wages in Lincolnshire, 311. Wages in kind, 313, 411 Wages in kind, commutation of, 316. Wages, minimum rate of, 116. Wages of Scotch labourers, 170. Wages, rate-aided, 266, Wages, Ricardo’s iron law of, 428. Wages tariff, 64. Walker, Dr., 165. Walker, John, rot. , Wallace, A. R., 430. Walsingham, 257. Wanty, 144. Ward’s proposal for poor, 287. Warfare, effects of, on communal land tenure, 4. Warrenne, Earl, 12. Warwick, Earl of, r1o. Washington Gladden, 425, 426. Waste, 44. Waste, attempt to penetrate the, 19. Waste, redemption of, 49. Wat the Tyler, 31, 59, 106. Water supply, 402. Watson, Robert, 103. Wattle, 164. Lndex Waugh, Benjamin, 367. Waynage, 21. Weapons, 67. Weaving, 182. Westminster, Council of, 25. Westminster Land Society, 363. Westminster, II., 48. Westmoreland, settlement case in, 255. Westmoreland ' women, 311. Wheat massledine, 145. Whet, 154. Whimsical farming, 420. Whitbread, Mr., 116, 135, 268, 279, 373, 434- Wikes, 149. - Wilberforce, 329. Wilfes, 146, Wilkinson, Mr. E., 402. Wilkinson, Rev. J. F., 363, 367. William of Malmesbury, 234. 7 William the Conqueror, 22. Wiltshire ploughman, 138. Windham, Sir Edmund, roz. Wishart, George, 118. Witenagemot, 8. Wolrichston Manor, 80. Wolsey, 88, 98. Wombridge, 227. Women's industry, 309. Women's labour, English prevadices against, 310. Wood, Dr., 302. Wool,” 173. Wool, distinctions of, 175. Wool-dyeing, 18x. Wool-gathering, 174. Wool, manufacture of, 176. Wool, qualities of, 180. Woolsack, 174. Wool-tumming, 182. Workhouse Acts of Incorporation, 265. Workhouse diet, 242. Workhouse schoolmasters, 379. Workhouse, synonyms for, 238. Workhouses, centralisation of, 261, 262. Workhouses, Cobbett on, 285. Workhouses, description of, 276. Workhouses, erection of, 259. Workhouses in disrepute, 266. Workhouses, provision of, 237. Wycliff, 59. 11 Wye Williams, 295. Wylors, 24. Wyse, 295. X. Xenodochium, 86. Y. Yarn, 186. Yarranton, 183. Year-book, 36. Yeomen, 16. Yerburgh, R., 353 Yorkshire lodging : system, 399. Youatt, 174. Young, Arthur, 334, 348, 359- + Ypres, 116. Yule-log, 146, Z. Zwingli, 116. Butler & Tanner, The Selwood Printing Works, Frome, and London. 4 a PELE SELL LEE CELE GEILE SILI ddd UML Mn Yi if fF yy Pepa (ey ee