1485-1603 made their own ox-bows, yokes, plough-gear, and other farming implements. In this way, a rough, but comfortable abundance was secured by the English yeomanry during the reign of Henry VII., even when their stock of money seldom exceeded a few shillings, and, when rent day arrived, the sale of a horse or cow had to make up any deficiency. Latimer has given us, in the account of his own home, a graphic picture of the yeoman of this date. His father paid £4. a year rental, for which he had as much land under tillage as kept 6 men, 30 cows, and 100 sheep. He kept a horse and man for the King's service, sent his son to school and college, and gave to each of his daughters a dower of £5. when they were married. Besides all which, he was hospitable to his neighbours, and gave alms to the poor. become 20. Changes in agricultural life under Henry VIII. and his successors. But after the accession of Henry VIII. farmers began to find themselves in new circumstances. The new occupant of Latimer's farm paid £16 yearly rental; and, as this increase of rents Rents rise. was general, many of the yeomanry were reduced to the condition of day-labourers. This rise in rents was owing to the commercial spirit, which was penetrating into the whole system of rural affairs; the land was everywhere changing owners, through the Traders ruin of the feudal aristocracy, and the alienation of the landowners church lands. What had taken place in the towns at an earlier period, was now taking place in the country districts. As the feudal tenants who had clustered round the baronial castle were now grown into independent burgesses, so the villeins having substituted rent for service, had grown into farmers and graziers, and again into landed proprietors. The men of the towns who had saved money as artificers and traders, seeing the advantage to be derived from the judicious occupation of land, bought it up as opportunity offered; for the fetters of entail had now been abolished, not only by the Statute of Fines, but by a decision of the judges, in the 12 Edward IV. The lords of the manors, also, gladly granted the vast unenclosed grounds, as copyhold, to the provident burgess who had been dealing in broad cloth, and now wanted to become richer by raising his own wool.* This inclosure of common and waste lands, which now became very common, was Inclosures. another change which affected the lower order of husbandmen; causing them enormous misery at first, because it deprived them of the pastures, on which they had hitherto depended, but ultimately, productive of great good. Marshes and heaths, in the neighbourhood of the towns. were made profitable, by being Knight's Pop. Hist., II., 465. * Conversion of tillage into CHAP. VII. converted into tillage and pasture; many new occupations, as the planting of hedges, ditching, &c., arose; and it was noticed that those counties, as Essex, Kent, and Northamptonshire, where there were most inclosures, were the most wealthy. A third change was the conversion of tillage into pasturage, in consequence of the increased traffic in wool, and the greater pasturage. profits that were made by rearing sheep, than by growing corn. The rise of wages, also, made tillage much more expensive than formerly; besides which, it was so unprofitable, that it afforded no return for the employment of capital. But sheep feeding was profitable; and it soon produced a greater demand for labour, as it furnished employment to the manufacturers, the retailers, and the merchants. But the suddenness and violence of these changes, "a revolution" which "never before occurred in England, and has never occurred since, "* produced an aggregate of misery which the writers of that period bitterly deplore; and the land was overspread with theft, beggary, and starvation. The legislature vainly endeavoured to suppress the evil. The growth of large farms was prohibited by an act in 1553; no man was allowed to keep more than 2,000 sheep, except on his own land; and no more than two farms were to be rented by the same tenant. On some sheep farms, the act stated, there were flocks of from ten to twenty thousand. the 21. The improvements which followed. Although the immediate effect of these changes was painful, their operation, on the whole, was highly beneficial to agriculture. The subdivision of farms, and the increase of rent, compelled the farmers to improve their cultivation; and this was followed with such success, that by the end of Elizabeth's reign, the produce of each cultivated acre was at least doubled. The houses of the yeomanry, formerly Houses of built of wood, were now superseded by cottages of brick yeomanry or stone; the rooms were more airy and capacious, and the outbuildings were farther removed from the dwelling; the furniture was such as had been formerly confined to the mansions of squires and franklins; wooden trenchers gave place to pewter platters, and in some places to silver plate; and instead of a straw mattress there was a feather bed. But the more ordinary dwellings of the farmers were still very imperfect, being defective in ventilation, because the windows were fixed, while the wind found its way freely through the crevices in the walls. Cottages seldom had more than one or two rooms, and were mostly built of clay, coated with lime, and thatched with reeds. In the towns, *Kuight's Pop. Hist., II., 466. 1485-1603 the upper stories projected over the lower, and a profusion of ornaments covered the fronts. The small farm-houses were similar in plan. Yet these common dwellings exhibited many improvements, when compared with those of preceding centuries. Chimneys were built; the destruction of the woods, accelerated by the progress of the manufactures, led to the general use of seacoal, chiefly brought from Newcastle, where large sums were expended in the works of the collieries. The dirt and sulphurous exhalations, however, of this coal, prejudiced many against its use, and it was forbidden to be burnt in London during the sitting of parliament, lest the health of the country members should suffer thereby. With regard to food, salted meat in winter, and salted fish, were indeed the staple articles of food; but to these there could be added, in greater plenty than before, the fresh Food. produce of the pasture, the farm, and the dairy. Tusser, the Essex poet, who lived about the middle of the sixteenth century, thus describes the good cheer of the English yeoman of his day: Good bread and good drink, a good fire in the hall; Brawn pudding, and sauce, and good mustard withal; Beef, mutton, and pork, shred pies of the best; Pig, veal, goose and capon, and turkey well drest; Cheese, apples, and nuts, jolly carols to hear, As then in the country is counted good cheer. Owing to the improved cultivation, and the attention paid to manuring, better crops were raised; and new articles were introduced, as clover, and the hop, both of which came from the Netherlands. The breeding of cattle was also carefully attended to. The improvements in gardening were still greater. Plums, currants, apricots, pippins, and other fruits, were intro- Gardening. duced from abroad, in the reign of Henry VIII., and soon became general; and, in the reign of Elizabeth, the pleasure garden was separated from the kitchen garden, and such flowers as the carnation, the musk and damask rose, and the gilly-flower, were introduced. An Elizabethan garden, however, was a very sombre and dull place, as compared with our modern ones. It was a square parterre, enclosed by high walls, scooped into fountains, and heaved into terraces; it contained alcoves and leafy labyrinths, the trees were heavy and dark, and the hedges were curiously clipped.* 22. Wages and Prices. The old system of fixing the price of labour by public proclamation and acts of parliament was still continued; the injurious, if not futile tendency of which, hardly needs demonstration. There were, in fact, much more powerful See "Shakspere's England," I., 91. Causes made them rise. ment of the CHAP. VII. causes at work, than legislative interference, to disturb which the balance of wages and prices. One of these was the debasement of the coin. The object of this abominable process was, the relief of the sovereign's necessities; and Henry VIII. carried it to a disgraceful excess. He introduced copper into his gold and silver coins, beyond the amount necessary for Debase- alloy; and he coined the pound of this mixed metal, first coin. into 540, and then into 576 pennies; instead of 450, which had been the proportion from the time of Edward IV. Edward VI.'s government increased the number of pennies to 864, by which they were able to pay off £80,000 of the King's debts. The consequence of all this was, that the coins were not worth their nominal value in the market; the shilling and groat were called down one fourth, and the English pound, which was formerly exchanged at Antwerp for thirty shillings, could only obtain fourteen. Forged and counterfeit money was also encouraged by this wretched policy, and the true value of goods could not be ascertained. The result upon wages was extremely pernicious, for the three pennies a day, which the Act for Wages in 1515 fixed as the labourers' remuneration, were so debased that, in 1545, they were worth only three halfpence, and in 1550, only three farthings. The sufferings of the people from the consequent rise of prices, were attributed to inclosures, the increase of pasture, and higher rents; but the debasement of the coin was the chief cause, and it continued to operate until the reign of Elizabeth, upon whose tomb was inscribed, as one of the glories of her reign, "moneta in justum valorem reducta."* Another cause which contributed to raise the price of commodities was, the increase of population. At the accession of Henry VII., the population was about four millions; the northern counties, especially Lancashire and Cumberland, being very ill peopled; and the population of London and Westminster not exceeding 70,000. But towards the close of Elizabeth's reign, the entire population had reached to five or six millions; and we find that proclamations which had formerly been issued against the destruction of cottages, and the desertion of the old corporate towns, were latterly issued against the increase of the former, and the extension of London and the large towns.† Increase of population. The great evil in the rise of prices was, that wages did not advance equally with them. Owing to the debasement of Proportion Knight's Pop. Hist., II., 474-475. + Knight's Pop. Hist., IV., 249; Pict. Hist., II., 902; Wade's Hist. of the Middle and Working Classes, chap, vi.; Eden's State of the Poor, 1485-1603 wages and the coin, their dependence upon the price of food and between other necessaries was destroyed. The influx of American prices. silver had not so immediate an effect in this way, as has generally been alleged; that effect not becoming manifest until a later period. In 1495, a labourer could purchase, with his wages, 199 pints of wheat; in 1593, only 82 pints; and in 1610, only 46 pints so that, in the reign of James I., he could obtain only a fourth part of the necessaries and conveniences which he obtained in the reign of Henry VII. The average price of wheat at the former date was 6s. 8d. the quarter; but it was subject to excessive fluctuations, the price often rising to £5. In the latter part of the sixteenth century, the average price was £1. Under Henry VIII., beef and pork were fixed by statute at d. per lb., and mutton at d. By the end of Elizabeth's reign these prices had doubled and trebled; and those who formerly kept house on 200 marks a year, could not do so then on £200. 23. Condition of the day labourer under the Tudors. The wages of artisans under the Tudors averaged 5d. a day; those of day labourers, 4d.; so that, assuming the penny in Henry VIII.'s reign to have been equal in terms of bread, beef, and beer, which was a penny a gallon, to the present shilling, the workman was in a very prosperous condition. This is Froude's estimate; but we must remember that, owing to the debasement of the coin, the penny of Henry VIII. was not equal to the present shilling. There were, however, advantages of another kind which the agricultural labourer enjoyed, of which he is now deprived. He was in little danger of being thrown out of employ, because he was engaged by contract for not less than a year, and could not be dismissed before his term had expired, unless some gross misconduct could be proved against him before two magistrates. He had, on the average, one holiday a week, on account of a saint's day, or other festival; the large ranges of common and unenclosed forest land furnished his fuel gratis, and fed his pigs, ducks, geese, and cow, if he could afford to keep one. That the labourer esteemed these advantages is shown by his resistance against enclosures, and by parliament insisting, that he should not be left without a piece of ground on which he could employ his own and his family's industry. The same writer attributes this prosperity of labour, not so much to there being a large demand for it, and only a limited supply, but to the care of the state, which did not regard labour as a commodity, and men as "hands," or machines, but endeavoured to portion out the various classes of society by the rule of equity, not that of economy. But U |