CHAPTER I

THE INDUSTRIAL

HISTORY OF ENGLAND

THE INDUSTRIAL

HISTORY OF ENGLAND

BY

H. DE B. GIBBINS, LITT.D., M.A.

SOMETIME SCHOLAR OF WADHAM COLLEGE, OXFORD

AND UNIVERSITY (COBDEN) PRIZEMAN

IN POLITICAL ECONOMY

WITH FIVE MAPS AND A PLAN

TWENTY-SEVENTH EDITION

METHUEN & CO. LTD.

36 ESSEX STREET W.C.

LONDON

_First Published_ _July 1890_

_Second Edition_ _1890_

_Third Edition_ _1892_

_Fourth Edition_ _1895_

_Fifth and Sixth Editions_ _1897_

_Seventh Edition_ _1900_

_Eighth Edition_ _1902_

_Ninth Edition_ _1903_

_Tenth Edition_ _1904_

_Eleventh and Twelfth Editions_ _1906_

_Thirteenth and Fourteenth Editions_ _1907_

_Fifteenth Edition_ _1908_

_Sixteenth Edition_ _1910_

_Seventeenth Edition_ _1911_

_Eighteenth Edition, Revised_ _1912_

_Nineteenth Edition_ _1913_

_Twentieth Edition_ _1914_

_Twenty-First Edition_ _1916_

_Twenty-Second Edition_ _1917_

_Twenty-Third, Twenty-Fourth and Twenty-Fifth

Editions_ _1918_

_Twenty-Sixth Edition_ _1919_

_Twenty-Seventh Edition_ _1920_

PREFACE

This little book is an attempt to relate in a short, concise, and

simple form the main outlines of England’s economic and industrial

history. It is meant to serve as an introduction to a fuller study

of the subject and as a preliminary sketch which the reader can

afterwards, if he wishes, fill in for himself from larger volumes

dealing with special periods. At the same time it is hoped that this

outline may succeed in giving not only to the student but to the

ordinary reader a general view of a side of history too frequently

neglected, but of the utmost importance to a proper understanding of

the story of the English nation. I have endeavoured, as far as possible

in the brief limits of a work like this, to connect economic and

industrial questions with social, political, and military movements,

believing as I do that only in some such mutual relation as this can

historical events obtain their full significance.

The paramount necessity of simplicity and conciseness in an outline

of this kind has compelled me to omit or mention very briefly many

points which those who are familiar with my subject might well expect

to be included. I have not, for instance, given elaborate statistical

figures or voluminous footnotes upon the actual condition of our trade

at various periods. Nor have I given more than an outline of the old

and new Poor Laws, of financial measures, or of Banking; and with much

reluctance I have omitted a discussion of Colonial Trade. But all

these points, except perhaps the last, may be reserved by a student

till he comes to much larger works; though a proper economic history

of our Colonies yet remains to be written. Such as it is, however, I

trust that this general view of the broad outlines of the growth of our

wealth and industry in their relation to the general history of England

may have its uses.

I have preferred not to weary my reader by constant references to

authorities in footnotes, but have acknowledged my obligations to the

various authorities consulted in an appendix, where suggestions for

further reading will be found.

PREFACE TO THE EIGHTEENTH EDITION

Since the original publication of this book in 1890, twenty-one years

have elapsed, and the author, whose untimely death all scholars

deplore, was able to embody various corrections which made this book

harmonize more completely with his larger work _Industry in England_.

On certain points he was led to modify his opinions—a course inevitable

in a book covering so large a ground.

In the Preface to the Fifth Edition he wrote: “It has been said that

I write with a prejudice against the owners of land: but this is not

the case. The landed gentry of England happen for some centuries to

have held the predominant power in the State and in society, and used

it, not unnaturally, in many cases to further their own interests.

It is the duty of an historian to point this out, but it need not

therefore be thought that he had any special bias against the class.

Any other class would certainly have done the same, as, for instance,

mill-owners did among their own _employées_ at the beginning of this

century, and as, in all probability, the working classes will do when

a further extension of democratic government shall have given them the

opportunity.

“It is a fault of human nature that it can rarely be trusted with

irresponsible power, and unless the influence of one class of society

is counterbalanced more or less by that of another, there will always

be a tendency to some injustice. I trust that my readers will

bear this in mind when reading the following pages, and will believe

that I intend no unfairness to the landed gentry of England, who have

done much to promote the glory and stability of their country.”

The present, or eighteenth edition, has been carefully revised by Miss

M. E. Hirst, M.A., and in addition to such revision she has written a

new chapter (Chapter VIII.) which treats of the New Age of Industrial

Expansion. _The Industrial History of England_ is thus continued from

the point at which the author left it and is carried up to the year

1911.

CONTENTS

PERIOD I

ENGLAND BEFORE THE NORMAN CONQUEST

CHAP. I. INTRODUCTORY—THE ROMANS AND THEIR

SUCCESSORS—TRADE 1

CHAP. II. THE LAND: ITS OWNERS AND CULTIVATORS 5

PERIOD II

FROM THE NORMAN CONQUEST TO THE REIGN OF

HENRY III. (1066–1216 A.D.)

CHAP. I. DOMESDAY BOOK AND THE MANORS 10

CHAP. II. THE TOWNS AND THE GILDS 22

CHAP. III. MANUFACTURES AND TRADE: ELEVENTH TO

THIRTEENTH CENTURIES 31

PERIOD III

FROM THE THIRTEENTH TO THE END OF THE FIFTEENTH

CENTURY, INCLUDING THE GREAT PLAGUE (1216–1500)

CHAP. I. AGRICULTURE IN MEDIÆVAL ENGLAND 40

CHAP. II. THE WOOLLEN TRADE AND MANUFACTURES 47

CHAP. III. THE TOWNS, INDUSTRIAL VILLAGES, AND FAIRS 57

CHAP. IV. THE GREAT PLAGUE AND ITS ECONOMIC EFFECTS 67

CHAP. V. THE PEASANTS’ REVOLT OF 1381, AND THE SUBSEQUENT

PROSPERITY OF THE WORKING CLASSES 75

PERIOD IV

FROM THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY TO THE EVE OF THE

INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION (1509–1760)

CHAP. I. THE MISDEEDS OF HENRY VIII., AND ECONOMIC

CHANGES IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY 83

CHAP. II. THE GROWTH OF FOREIGN TRADE 91

CHAP. III. ELIZABETHAN ENGLAND 100

CHAP. IV. PROGRESS OF AGRICULTURE IN THE SEVENTEENTH

AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES 109

CHAP. V. COMMERCE AND WAR IN THE SEVENTEENTH AND

EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES 121

CHAP. VI. MANUFACTURES AND MINING 132

PERIOD V

THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION AND MODERN ENGLAND

CHAP. I. THE EVE OF THE REVOLUTION 144

CHAP. II. THE EPOCH OF THE GREAT INVENTIONS 157

CHAP. III. WARS, POLITICS, AND INDUSTRY 167

CHAP. IV. THE FACTORY SYSTEM AND ITS RESULTS 176

CHAP. V. THE CONDITION OF THE WORKING CLASSES 187

CHAP. VI. THE RISE AND DEPRESSION OF MODERN AGRICULTURE 198

CHAP. VII. MODERN INDUSTRIAL ENGLAND 211

CHAP. VIII. THE NEW AGE, 1897–1911 223

NOTE ON AUTHORITIES FOR INDUSTRIAL HISTORY 241

NOTES 243

INDEX 253

LIST OF MAPS AND DIAGRAMS

DIAGRAM OF A MANOR _page_ 21

ENGLAND SHORTLY AFTER THE TIME OF

DOMESDAY, A.D. 1100–1200 _facing page_ 38

INDIA IN THE TIME OF CLIVE, SHOWING ENGLISH

FACTORIES AND DISTRICTS UNDER OUR INFLUENCE _facing page_ 128

INDUSTRIAL ENGLAND, 1700–1750 _facing page_ 134

ENGLAND, SHOWING COAL-FIELDS AND CORRESPONDING

MANUFACTURES _facing page_ 164

INDUSTRIAL ENGLAND, 1890 _facing page_ 210

{1}

THE INDUSTRIAL HISTORY OF ENGLAND

PERIOD I

ENGLAND BEFORE THE NORMAN CONQUEST

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTORY—THE ROMANS AND THEIR SUCCESSORS—TRADE

§ 1. Although the industrial history of England does not properly begin

until the settlement made by the Norman Conquest, it is nevertheless

impossible to omit some reference to the previous economic condition of

the country. As everybody knows, the Romans were the first to invade

Britain, although it had been known, probably for centuries previously,

to the Phenicians and Carthaginians who used to sail here for its tin

and lead. The Romans, however, first colonized the country and began

to develop its resources; and they succeeded in introducing various

industries and in opening up a considerable commerce.

Under Roman sway Britain reached a high level of prosperity, and there

is abundant evidence of this fact from Roman writers. They speak of the

rich natural productions of Britain, of its numerous flocks and herds,

of its minerals, of its various commercial facilities, and of the

revenues derived from these sources. {2}

We know that there were no less than fifty-nine cities in Britain in

the middle of the third century A.D., and the population was probably

fairly large, though we have no certain statistics upon this point.[1]

Large quantities of corn were exported from the land, as many as 800

vessels being sent on one occasion to procure corn for the Roman cities

in Germany. This shows a fairly advanced agriculture. Tin also was

another important export, as indeed it has always been; and British

slaves were constantly sent to the market at Rome. In the country

itself great material works, such as walled towns, paved roads,

aqueducts, and great public buildings were undertaken, and remained to

testify to the greatness of their builders long after their name had

become a distant memory. The military system of the Romans helped to

produce industrial results, for the Roman soldiers took a prominent

part in road-making, building dykes, working mines, and the great

engineering operations that marked the Roman rule. The chief towns very

largely owed their origin to their importance as military stations;

and most of them, such as York, London, Chester, Lincoln, Bath, and

Colchester, have continued ever since to be considerable centres of

population, though of course with occasional fluctuations. When,

however, the Romans finally left Britain (in A.D. 410), both trade

and agriculture began to sink; the towns decayed; and for centuries

England became the battle-ground of various predatory tribes from

the Continent, who gradually effected a settlement, first in many

kingdoms, but finally in one, and became known as “the English,” or the

Anglo-Saxon nationality (A.D. 827).

[1. See note 1, p. 243, on Population of Roman Britain.]

§ 2. TRADE IN THE ANGLO-SAXON PERIOD—But although Egbert became Lord of

the Saxons in 827, it was not till {3} the reign of Edgar (958–975)

that England became one united kingdom, and indeed throughout this

period internal war was almost constant, and naturally prevented any

great growth of home industry or foreign trade. The home industry, such

as it was, was almost entirely agricultural, under a system of which

I shall speak in the next chapter. The separate communities living in

the country villages or small towns were very much disinclined for

mutual intercourse, and endeavoured as far as possible to be each a

self-sufficing economic whole, getting their food and clothing, coarse

and rough as it generally was, from their own flocks and herds, or

from their own land in the mark or manor.[2] Hence only the simplest

domestic arts and manufactures were carried on.

[2. See next chapter.]

§ 3. INTERNAL TRADE. MONEY—But, however much a community may desire

to be self-sufficing, it cannot be so entirely. Differences of soil,

mineral wealth, and other advantages cause one community to require

what another has in abundance. Salt, for instance, was largely in

request for salting meat for the winter, and it cannot be universally

procured in England. Hence local markets arose, at first always on the

neutral boundary between two marks,[3] the place of the market being

marked by the boundary stone, the origin of the later “market cross.”

These markets at first took place only at stated times during the year.

Shrines and burial-places of noted men were the most frequented spots

for such annual fairs. Thus, _e.g._, the origin of Glasgow may be

traced from the burial-place of St Ninian (A.D. 570). There seems to

have been a well-defined, though small, trading class; but, at any rate

at first, most people of different occupations met {4} at well-known,

convenient places, and bartered without the assistance of any kind of

middlemen.

[3. See note 2, p. 243, on Markets on Boundaries.]

Mere barter, however, is tedious and cumbersome; and although, up to

the time of Alfred (A.D. 870), a large proportion, though not the

whole, of English internal trade was carried on in this fashion,

the use of metals for exchange begins to become common in the ninth

century; and in A.D. 900 regular money payments by tenants are found

recorded. And when we come to the levy of the Danegeld (A.D. 991)—the

tax raised by Ethelred as a bribe to the Danes—it is clear that money

coinage must have been widely diffused and in general circulation.

§ 4. FOREIGN TRADE—Trade of all kinds had suffered a severe blow

when the Romans quitted Britain, but during the Anglo-Saxon period

English merchants still did a certain amount of foreign trade. They

were encouraged too in this by a doom, of Danish origin,[4] which

provided that “if a merchant thrived so that he fared thrice over the

sea by his own means, then was he of thane-right worthy,” which gave

him a comparatively high rank. The settlement of German merchants in

London, pointing to some continental trade, also dates from the time

of Ethelred the Unready (about A.D. 1000). Much of this foreign trade

lay in the treasures of precious metals and embroideries, which were

imported for use in monasteries. It is interesting, by the way, to

note that St Dunstan (who died in 988) encouraged handicraft work in

metals, especially in ironwork. The exports from England were chiefly

wool—which we shall afterwards see becomes of great importance—some

agricultural produce, and also, as before, lead and tin. English

merchants we know went to Marseilles, and others frequented the great

French fairs of Rouen and St Denis in the ninth century; while, {5}

rather earlier, we have a most interesting document, our first treaty

of commerce in fact, dated A.D. 796, by which Karl the Great, or

Charlemagne, as some people call him, grants protection to certain

English traders from Mercia. And in King Alfred’s days one English

bishop even “penetrated prosperously” to India with the king’s gifts

to the shrine of St Thomas.

[4. See note 3, p. 243, on Danish Influence on Commerce.]

§ 5. GENERAL SUMMARY—Taking a general view of the period between

the Saxon Conquest and the Norman Conquest, we see that crafts and

manufactures were few and simple, being confined as far as possible

to separate and isolated communities. Fine arts, and works in metal

and embroideries were limited to the monasteries, which also imported

them. The immense mineral wealth of the island in iron and coal was

untouched. Trade was small, though undoubtedly developing. The mass of

the population was engaged in agriculture, and every man had, so to

speak, a stake in the land, belonging to a manor or parish. A landless

man was altogether outside the pale of social life. The owners of the

land, and the method of its cultivation, will occupy us in the next

chapter.

CHAPTER II

THE LAND: ITS OWNERS AND CULTIVATORS

§ 1. THE MARK—We have just said that the population of England as a

whole was almost entirely engaged in agriculture; and indeed for some

centuries onward this industry was by far the most important in the

country. Now, it is impossible to understand the conditions of this

industry without first glancing at the tenure of land as existing about

this time. It has been thought, but it is {6} not at all certain, that

in very early times before the tribes afterwards called English had

crossed over to England, or perhaps even before they had arrived in

Europe, all land was held in common by various communities of people,

perhaps at first with only a few families in each. The land occupied

by this community (whether it was a whole tribe or a few families) had

probably been cleared away from the original forests or wastes, and

was certainly separated from all other communities by a fixed boundary

or _mark_,[5] whence the whole land thus separated off was called a

mark. Within this mark was the primitive village or “township,” where

each member of the community had his house, and where each had a common

share in the land. This land was of three kinds—(1) The _forest_,

or _waste_ land, from which the mark had been originally cleared,

useful for rough natural pasture, but uncultivated. (2) The _pasture_

land, sometimes enclosed and sometimes open, in which each mark-man

looked after his own hay, and stacked it for the winter, and which was

divided into allotments for each member. (3) The _arable_ land, which

also was divided into allotments for each mark-man. To settle any

question relating to the division and use of the land, or to any other

business of common importance, the members of the mark, or mark-men,

met in a common council called the _mark-moot_, an institution of

which relics survived for many centuries. This council, and the mark

generally, formed the political, social, and economic unit of the

early English tribes. How far it actually existed when these tribes

occupied England it is difficult to say, and it is probable that it had

already undergone considerable transformation towards what is called

the _manorial_ {7} system. But this much is certain, that in England,

as in Germany, traces of communal life still remain. Our commons, still

numerous in spite of hundreds of enclosures, and the names of places

ending in _ing_, which termination frequently implies a primitive

family settlement, are evidences which remain among us to-day. And

it is only comparatively recently that the “common fields,” yearly

divided among the commoners of a parish, together with the “three-field

system,” which this allotment involved, have disappeared from our

English agriculture.

[5. For a criticism of the mark theory see _Industry in

England_, pp. 47–61.]

§ 2. THE MANOR—But when we come to the time when the Anglo-Saxons

had made a final settlement, and were ruled by one king, we find a

different system prevailing—_i.e._ the manorial system. The word

“manor” is a Norman name for the Saxon “township,” or community, and it

differs from the mark in this: the mark[6] was a group of households

organized and governed on a common, democratic basis, while in the

manor we find an autocratic organization and government, whereby a

group of _tenants_ acknowledge the superior position and authority

of a “lord of the manor.” But although “manor” is a Norman name, the

change from the old mark system had taken place long before the Norman

Conquest, and even if perhaps occasional independent communities still

existed, they were completely abolished under the Norman rule. The

great feature of the manor was, that it was subject to a “lord,” who

owned absolutely a certain portion of the land therein, and had rights

of rent (paid in services, or food, or money, or in all three) over the

rest of the land. It is probable that the lord of the manor had gained

his position under a promise of aiding and protecting his humbler

brethren; but, even in later {8} times, he had to acknowledge certain

rights belonging to them.

[6. _i.e._ supposing it ever existed.]

§ 3. COMBINED AGRICULTURE—In the manor, just as in the earlier stage,

all agriculture was carried on collectively by the tenants of the

manor. Men gathered together their oxen to form the usual team of eight

wherewith to drag the plough, pastured their cattle in common, and

employed a common swineherd or shepherd for their pigs and sheep.

The distinctive feature of this combined agriculture was the

three-field system. All the arable land near a village was divided into

three strips, and was sown in the following manner:—A field was sown

with wheat or rye in the autumn of one year; but owing to the slowness

of primitive farming this crop would not be reaped in time for autumn

sowing the next year, so the sowing took place in the following spring,

the next crop being oats or barley; after this crop the land lay fallow

for a year. Hence, of these three strips, every year one had wheat or

rye, another oats or barley, while the third was fallow. The land of

each individual was necessarily scattered between the various plots of

his neighbours, so that each might have a fair share in land of good

quality. This style of agriculture, of course, produced very meagre

results, but it seems to have been sufficient for the simple wants of

the occupiers of that epoch.

§ 4. THE FEUDAL SYSTEM—In the next period we shall see this manorial

system consolidated and organized under the Norman rule, and so may

defer a full description of a typical manor till then. Here we may say

that the manor is closely connected with the _feudal_ system, which,

it must be remembered, had begun a considerable time before the Norman

Conquest. For the manor afforded a convenient political and social unit

for the estimation of {9} feudal services, and the lord of the manor

became more and more a feudal chief. But it must be understood that the

manorial system was not the same as the feudal system, though it helped

to prepare the way for it; and eventually the lords of the manors

became nominally the protectors, but really the masters of the village

husbandmen dwelling around them. The lord professed to take them under

his protection if they surrendered their independence to him, and it

was probably owing to the frequent incursions of the Danes that the

system grew as it did. In Canute’s reign we find it in full force, for

at this time the kingdom was divided into great military districts, or

_earldoms_, the “earl” being responsible to the king and receiving the

profits of his district. When William the Norman conquered England he

did not, as is often supposed, impose a feudal system upon the people.

The system was there already, developed from the old manors, and all

William I. did was to reorganize it, and give the English people Norman

instead of Anglo-Saxon or Danish lords.

NOTE.—The theory of the mark (which is now regarded as very doubtful)

is dealt with more fully in ch. iv. of my _Industry in England_, where

also the evidences of communal village life are discussed; and I must

refer my readers to this for more recent views.

{10}

PERIOD II

FROM THE NORMAN CONQUEST TO THE REIGN OF HENRY III. (A.D. 1066–1216)

CHAPTER I

DOMESDAY BOOK AND THE MANORS

§ 1. DOMESDAY BOOK—It was very natural that, when William the Norman

conquered England, he should wish to ascertain the capabilities of his

kingdom both in regard to military defence and for taxation; and that

he should endeavour to gain a comprehensive idea of the results of his

conquest. So he ordered a grand survey of the kingdom to be made, and

sent commissioners into each district to make it. These officials were

bidden to inquire about all the estates in the realm—who held them,

what was the value of each, how many men occupied it and how many

cattle each supported. The results of this survey form our earliest

and most reliable statistics for English industrial history; and it is

to be regretted that no general table or analysis of this great work

has yet been made, or that historians do not use it more copiously for

gaining a knowledge of the social and economic conditions of the time.

For this latter purpose it is absolutely unrivalled.[7]

[7. For recent works on Domesday Book, see p. 242.]

§ 2. ECONOMIC CONDITION OF THE COUNTRY AS SHOWN IN DOMESDAY—From it we

may gather the following few facts {11} as to the economic condition

of England about the time of the Norman Conquest. The population

numbered about 2,000,000, three-fourths of whom lived by agricultural

labour, the remaining fourth being townsfolk, gentry, and churchmen.

The East and South, especially the county of Kent, were the best

tilled, richest, and most populous parts of the country. “The downs

and wolds gave fine pasturage for sheep, the copses and woods formed

fattening grounds for swine, and the hollows at the downs’ foot, the

river flats, and the low, gravel hills, were the best and easiest

land to plough and crop. Far the largest part of the country was

forest—_i.e._ uncleared and undrained moor, wood, or fen.”[8] The

chief towns were London, Canterbury, Chester, Lincoln, Oxford, York,

Hereford, and Winchester; but these were trading centres rather than

seats of manufacturing industry. A small foreign export trade was done

in wool and lead, the imports being chiefly articles of luxury. There

were 9250 villages or manors in the land; in these about three-fifths

of each is waste—_i.e._ untilled, common land—one-fifth pasture, and

one-fifth arable.

[8. V. _Industry in England_, p. 69.]

§ 3. THE MANORS AND THEIR OWNERS—Now each of these manors after the

Norman Conquest was held by a “lord,” who held it more or less remotely

from the king. For it is the distinguishing feature of the Conquest,

that William the Norman made himself the supreme landlord of the

country, so that all land was held under him. He himself of course held

a good many manors, which were farmed by his bailiffs, and for each of

these manors he was the lord. But the majority of the manors were held

by his followers, the Norman nobles, and nearly all of them had several

manors apiece. Now it was impossible for a noble to look after all his

manors himself, and they {12} found it was not always the best plan

to put their bailiffs in to work them; so they used to sublet some of

their manors to other tenants, often to Englishmen who had submitted to

the Norman Conquest. The nobles who held the land direct from the king

were called _tenants in chief_,[9] the tenants to whom they sublet it

were called _tenants in mesne_.[10] If a noble let a manor to a tenant

in mesne the tenant then took his place, and became the _lord_ of the

manor. Thus, then, we have some manors owned directly by the king,

others by the great nobles, and others again by tenants in mesne. For

instance, in the part of Domesday relating to Oxfordshire, we find

that one Milo Crispin, a tenant in chief, held several manors from the

king, but also let some of them to sub-tenants, that of Cuxham, _e.g._,

being let to one Alured, who was therefore its lord. So in Warwickshire

the manor of Estone (now Aston) was one of those belonging to William

Fitz-Ansculf, but he had let it to Godmund, an Englishman, who was then

“lord of the manor of Estone.”

[9. Or, _in capite_.]

[10. _i.e._ sub-tenants.]

§ 4. THE INHABITANTS OF THE MANORS—Besides the lord himself (whether

king, noble, or sub-tenant), with his personal retainers, and generally

a parish priest or some monks, there were three other classes of

inhabitants. (1) First came the _villeins_, who formed 38 per cent. of

the whole population recorded in Domesday, and who held their land in

virgates, a _virgate_ being some thirty acres of arable land, scattered

of course in plots (cf. p. 20) among the common fields of the manor,

together with a house and messuage in the village. These villeins were

often called _virgarii_ (or _yardlings_), from this term virgate. (2)

Below the villeins came the _cottars_, or _bordars_, a class distinct

from and below the former, who probably held {13} only some five or

ten acres of land and a cottage, and did not even possess a plough,

much less a team of oxen, apiece, but had to combine among themselves

for the purpose of ploughing. They form 32 per cent. of the Domesday

population. Finally came (3) _the slaves_, who were much smaller in

numbers than is commonly supposed, forming only 9 per cent. of the

Domesday population. Less than a century after the Conquest these

disappear and merge into the cottars.

§ 5. THE CONDITION OF THESE INHABITANTS—The chief feature of the

social condition of these classes of people was that they were subject

to a lord. They each depended upon a superior, and no man could be

either lordless or landless; for all persons in _villeinage_, which

included everyone below the lord of the manor, were subject to a

master, and bound to the land, except, of course, “free tenants” (p.

15). But even against their lord the villeins had certain rights which

had to be recognized. They had, moreover, many comforts and little

responsibility, except to pay their dues to their lord. Moreover, it

was possible for a villein to purchase a remission of his services, and

become a “free tenant.” Or he might become such by residing in a town

for a year and a day, and being a member of a town gild, as long as

during that period he was unclaimed by his lord. And in course of time

the villein’s position came to be this—he owed his lord the customary

services (see p. 14) whereby his lord’s land was cultivated; but his

lord could not refuse him his customary rights in return—“his house

and lands, and rights of wood and hay”—and in relation to everyone

but his lord he was a perfectly free citizen. His condition tended to

improve, and up to the time of the Great Plague (1348) a large number

of villeins had become actually free, having commuted their services

{14} for money payments. What these services were we shall now

explain. But finally, we wish to point out that the state of villeinage

and of serfage was practically the same thing in two aspects; the first

implying the fact that the villein was bound to the soil, the second

that he was subject to a master. A serf was not a slave; and, as we saw

above, _slaves_ became extinct soon after the Norman Conquest.

§ 6. SERVICES DUE TO THE LORD FROM HIS TENANTS IN VILLEINAGE—Under the

manorial system rent was paid in a very different manner from that

in which it is paid to-day, for it was a rent not so much of money,

though that was employed, as of services. The services thus rendered by

tenants in villeinage, whether villeins or cottars, may be divided into

_week-work_, and _boon-days_ or work on special days. The week-work

consisted of ploughing or reaping, or doing some other agricultural

work for the lord of the manor for two or three days in the week, or at

fixed times, such as at harvest; while _boon-day_ work was rendered at

times not fixed, but whenever the lord of the manor might require it,

though the number of boon-days in a year was limited. When, however,

the villein or cottar had performed these liabilities, he was quite

free to do work on his own land, or for that matter on any one else’s

land, as indeed the cottars frequently did, for they had not much land

of their own, and so often had time and labour to spare. It was from

this cottar class with time to spare that a distinct wage-earning

class, like our modern labourers, arose, who lived almost entirely by

wages. We shall hear more of them later on; but at the time of the

Conquest they hardly existed.

§ 7. MONEY PAYMENTS AND RENTS—It was also usual for a tenant, besides

rendering these servile services, to pay his lord a small rent either

in money or kind, generally {15} in both. Thus on Cuxham manor we find

a villein (or serf) paying his lord ½_d._ on November 12th every

year and 1_d._ whenever he brews. He also pays, in kind, 1 quarter of

seed-wheat at Michaelmas; 1 peck of wheat, 4 bushels of oats, and 3

hens on 12th November; also 1 cock and 2 hens, and 2_d._ worth of bread

every Christmas. His _services_ are—to plough and till ½ acre of

the lord’s land, to give 3 days’ labour at harvest, and other days when

required by the bailiff. This was the rent for about 12 or 15 acres of

land (half a virgate), and upon a calculation of the worth of labour

and provisions at that time (end of thirteenth century) comes to about

6_d._ an acre for his land, and 3_s._ a year for his house and the land

about it (_curtilage_).

§ 8. FREE TENANTS. SOKE-MEN—So far I have been speaking only about

tenants in villeinage. But in the Domesday Book we find another class

of tenants, called _free_, who had to pay a rent fixed in amount,

either in money or kind, and sometimes in labour. This rent was fixed

and unalterable in amount, and they were masters of their own actions

as soon as it was paid. They were not, like the villeins, bound to

the soil, but could transfer their holdings or even quit the manor if

they liked. They were, however, subject to their lord’s jurisdiction

in matters of law, and hence were called _soke-men_ (from _soke_ or

_soc_ = jurisdiction exercised by a lord). They also were bound to give

military service when called upon, which the villeinage tenants had

not to give. If they had any services to render, these were generally

commuted into money payments; and here we may observe, that there

was a constant tendency from the Conquest to the time of the Great

Plague (1348) towards this commutation. Villeins also could, and did

frequently, commute their labour rents for money rents. {16}

In Domesday, we find that the Eastern and East-central counties were

those in which “free” tenants or soke-men were most prevalent. There

they form from 27 to 45 per cent. of the inhabitants of those parts,

though, taking all England into view, they only form 4 per cent. of the

total population. The number of free tenants, however, was constantly

increasing, even among tenants in villeinage, for the lord often found

it more useful to have money, and was willing to allow commutation of

services; or again, he might prefer not to cultivate _all_ his own land

(his _demesne_), but to let it for a fixed money rent to a villein to

do what he could with it; and thus the villein became a free man, while

the lord was sure of a fixed sum from his land every year, whether the

harvest were good or bad.

§ 9. ILLUSTRATIONS OF OLD MANORS. (1) ESTONE—To make clear what I have

said in this chapter, it will perhaps be well to give two illustrations

drawn from the Domesday Book (eleventh century) and from bailiffs’

accounts of a later period (end of thirteenth century).

First we will take a manor in Warwickshire in the Domesday Survey

(1089)—Estone, now Aston, near Birmingham. It was one of a number

belonging to William, the son of Ansculf, who was tenant in chief, but

had let it to one Godmund, a sub-tenant in mesne. The Survey runs:

“William Fitz-Ansculf holds of the King Estone, and Godmund of him.

There are 8 hides.[11] The arable employs 20 ploughs; in the demesne

the arable employs 6 ploughs, but now there are no ploughs. There are

30 villeins with a priest, and 1 bondsman, and 12 bordars [_i.e._

cottars]. They have 18 ploughs. A mill pays 3 {17} shillings. The

woodland is 3 miles long and half a mile broad. It was worth £4; now

100 shillings.”

[11. A _hide_ varied in size, and was (after the Conquest)

equal to a _carucate_, which might be anything from 80 to 120 or 180

acres. Perhaps 120 is a fair average, though some say 80.]

Here we have a good example of a manor held by a sub-tenant,

and containing all the three classes mentioned in § 4 of this

chapter—villeins, cottars, and slaves (_i.e._ bondsmen). The whole

manor must have been about 5000 acres, of which 1000 were probably

arable land, which was of course parcelled out in strips among the

villeins, the lord, and the priest. As there were only 18 ploughs

among 30 villeins, it is evident some of them at least had to use a

plough and oxen in common. The demesne land does not seem to have been

well cultivated by Godmund the lord, for there were no ploughs on it,

though it was large enough to employ six. Perhaps Godmund, being an

Englishman, had been fighting the Normans in the days of Harold, and

had let it go out of cultivation, or perhaps the former owner had died

in the war, and Godmund had rented the land from the Norman noble to

whom William gave it.

§ 10. CUXHAM MANOR IN THE ELEVENTH AND THIRTEENTH CENTURIES—Our second

illustration can be described at two periods of its existence—at the

time of Domesday and 200 years later. It was only a small manor of

some 490 acres, and was held by a sub-tenant from a Norman tenant in

chief, Milo Crispin. It is found in the Oxfordshire Domesday, in the

list of lands belonging to Milo Crispin. The Survey says: “Alured [the

sub-tenant] now holds 5 hides for a manor in Cuxham. Land to 4 ploughs;

now in the demesne, 2 ploughs and 4 bondsmen. And 7 villeins with 4

bordars have 3 ploughs. There are 3 mills of 18 shillings; and 18 acres

of meadow. It was worth £3, now £6.” Here, again, our three classes of

villeins, cottars or bordars, and slaves are represented. The manor was

evidently a good one, for though smaller than Estone it {18} was worth

more, and has three mills and good meadow land as well. Now, by the

end of the thirteenth century this manor had passed into the hands of

Merton College, Oxford, which then represented the lord, but farmed it

by means of a bailiff. Professor Thorold Rogers gives us a description

of it,[12] drawn from the annual accounts of this bailiff, which he

has examined along with a number of others from other manors. We find

one or two changes have taken place, for the bondsmen have entirely

disappeared, as indeed they did in less than a century after the

Conquest all through the land. The number of villeins and bordars has

increased. There are now 13 villeins and 8 cottars, and 1 free tenant.

There is also a prior, who holds land (6 acres) in the manor but does

not live in it; also two other tenants, who do not live in the manor,

but hold “a quarter of a knight’s fee” (here some 40 or 50 acres)—a

knight’s fee comprising an area of land varying from 2 hides to 4 or

even 6 hides, but in any case worth some £20. As the Cuxham land was

good, the quantity necessary for the valuation of a fee would probably

be only the small hide or carucate of 80 acres, and the quarter of

it of course 20 acres or a little more. The 13 serfs hold 170 acres,

but the 8 cottars only 30 acres, including their tenements. The free

tenant holds 12⁠¾ acres, and Merton College as lord of the manor

some 240 acres of demesne. There are now two mills instead of three,

one belonging to the prior, and the other to another tenant. There were

altogether, counting the families of the villeins and cottars, but not

the two tenants of military fees, about 60 or 70 inhabitants, the most

important being the college bailiff and the miller.

[12. In his _Six Centuries of Work and Wages_.]

§ 11. DESCRIPTION OF A MANOR VILLAGE—Now in both these country manors,

as in all others, the central feature {19} would be the dwelling of

the lord, or manor-house. It was substantially built, and served as a

court-house for the annual sittings of the _court baron_ and _court

leet_.[13] If the lord did not live in it, his bailiff did so, and

then the lord would come once or twice a year to hold these courts.

Near the manor-house generally stood the church, often large for

the size of the village, because the nave was frequently used as a

town-hall for meetings or for markets. Then there would be the house

of the priest, possibly in the demesne; and after these two the most

important building was the mill, which, if there was a stream, would

be placed on its banks in order to use the water-power. The rest of

the tenants generally inhabited the principal street or road of the

village, near the stream, if one ran through the place. The houses of

these villages were poor and dirty, not always made of stone, and never

(till the fifteenth century) of brick, but built of posts wattled and

plastered with clay or mud, with an upper storey of poles reached by a

ladder. The articles of furniture would be very coarse and few, being

necessarily of home manufacture; a few rafters or poles overhead, a

bacon-rack, and agricultural tools being the most conspicuous objects.

Chimneys were unknown, except in the manor-houses, and so too were

windows, and the floor was of bare earth. Outside the door was the

“mixen,” a collection of every kind of manure and refuse, which must

have rendered the village street alike unsavoury, unsightly and

unwholesome. But though their life was rude and rough, it seems that

the villagers were fairly happy, and, considering all things, about as

well off as are their descendants now.

[13. See note 4. p. 243, on Manorial Courts.]

§ 12. THE KINDS OF LAND IN A MANOR—Before concluding this chapter, it

is necessary, in order to complete our {20} sketch of the manorial

system from the time of the Conquest onwards, to understand how the

land was divided up. We may say that there were seven kinds of land

altogether, (1) First came the lord’s land round about the manor-house,

the _demesne_ land, which was strictly his own, and generally

cultivated by himself or his bailiff. All other land held by tenants

was called _land in villeinage_. (2) Next came the arable land of

the village held by the tenants in _common fields_. Now these fields

were all divided up into many strips, and tenants held their strips

generally in quite different places, all mixed up anyhow (cf. diagram,

where the tenants are marked A, B. C, etc.). The lord and the parson

might also have a few strips in these fields. There were at least

three fields, in order to allow the rotation of crops mentioned before

(p. 8). Each tenant held his strip only till harvest, after which all

fences and divisions were taken away, and the cattle turned out to feed

on the stubble. (3) Thirdly came the _common pasture_, for all the

tenants. But each tenant was restricted or stinted in the number of

cattle that he might pasture, lest he should put on too many, and thus

not leave enough food for his neighbours’ cattle. Sometimes, however,

we find pasture without stint, as in Port Meadow at Oxford to this day.

(4) Then comes the _forest_ or _woodland_, as in Estone, which belonged

to the lord, who owned all the timber. But the tenants had rights, such

as the right of lopping and topping certain trees, collecting fallen

branches for fuel; and the right of “pannage”—_i.e._ of turning cattle,

especially swine, into the woods to pick up what food they could.

(5) There was also in most manors what is called the _waste_—_i.e._

uncultivated—land, affording rough pasture, and on which the tenants

had the right of cutting turf and bracken for fuel and fodder. Then

near the stream there would {21}

DIAGRAM OF A MANOR

THE KING (supreme landlord)

│

TENANT IN CHIEF, owning various manors.

│

A SUB-TENANT, or tenant in mesne, the lord of the

manor below.

│

[Illustration]

{22}

perhaps be some (6) _Meadow land_, as at Cuxham; but this always

belonged to the lord, and if he let it out, he always charged an extra

rent (say eightpence instead of sixpence an acre), for it was very

valuable as affording a good supply of hay for the winter. Lastly, if

the tenant could afford it, and wanted to have other land besides the

common fields, where he could let his cattle lie, or to cultivate the

ground more carefully, he could occupy (7) a _close_, or a portion of

land specially marked off and let separately. The lord always had a

close on his demesne, and the chief tenants would generally have one or

two as well. The close land was of course rented more highly than land

in the common fields.

The accompanying diagram shows a typical manor, held by a sub-tenant

from a tenant in chief, who holds it of the king. It contains all the

different kinds of land, though of course they did not always exist

all in one manor. It also shows the manor-house, church, mill and

village.[14]

[14. See note 5, p. 244, on Decay of Manorial System.]

CHAPTER II

THE TOWNS AND THE GILDS

§ 1. THE ORIGIN OF TOWNS—As in the case of the manor, which was the

Norman name for the Saxon “townships,” the town, in the modern sense

of the word, had its origin from the primitive settlement known as the

mark (p. 6). The only difference between a town and a manor originally

lay in the number of its population, and in the fact that the town was

a more defensible place than the {23} “township,” or rural manor,

probably having a mound or moat surrounding it, instead of the hedges

which ran round the villages. In itself it was merely a manor or group

of manors; as Professor Freeman puts it, “one part of the district

where men lived closer together than elsewhere.” The town had at first

a constitution like that of a primitive village in the mark, but its

inhabitants had gradually gained certain rights and functions of a

special nature. These rights and privileges had been received from the

lord of the manor on which the town had grown up; for towns, especially

provincial towns, were at first only dependent manors, which gained

safety and solidity under the protection of some great noble, prelate,

or the king himself, who finally would grant the town thus formed a

charter.

§ 2. RISE OF TOWNS IN ENGLAND—Towns first became important in England

towards the end of the Saxon period Saxon England had never been

a settlement of towns, but of villages and townships, or manors.

But gradually towns did grow up, though differing widely in the

circumstances and manner of their rise. Some grew up in the fortified

camps of the invaders themselves, as being in a secure position; some

arose from a later occupation of the once sacked and deserted Roman

towns. Many grew silently in the shadow of a great abbey or monastery.

Of this class was Oxford, which first came into being round the

monasteries of St Frideswide and Osney. Others clustered round the

country houses of some Saxon king or earl. Several important boroughs

owed their rise to the convenience of their site as a port or a trading

centre. This was the origin of the growth of Bristol, whose rise

resulted directly from trade; and London of course had always been

a port of high commercial rank. A few other towns, like Scarborough

and Grimsby, were at first {24} small havens for fishermen. But all

the English towns were far less flourishing before the arrival of the

Normans than they afterwards became.

§ 3. TOWNS IN DOMESDAY: LONDON—If, now, we once more go back to our

great authority, the survey made by William the Norman, we find that

the status of these towns or boroughs is clearly recognized, though

they are regarded as held by the lord of the manor “in demesne,” or

in default of a lord, as part of the king’s demesne. Thus Northampton

at that time was a town in the king’s demesne; Beverley was held in

demesne by the Archbishop of York. It was possible, too, that one

town might belong to several lords, because it spread over, or was an

aggregate of, several manors or townships. Thus Leicester seems to have

included four manors, which were thus held in demesne by four lords—one

by the king, another by the Bishop of Lincoln, another by a noble,

Simon de Senlis, and the fourth by Ivo of Grantmesnil, the sheriff. In

later times it was held under one lord, Count Robert of Meulan.

Now, in the Domesday Book there is mention made of forty-one provincial

cities or boroughs, most of them being the county towns of the present

day. There are also ten fortified towns of greater importance than

the others. They are Canterbury, York, Nottingham, Oxford, Hereford,

Leicester, Lincoln, Stafford, Chester, and Colchester. London was a

town apart, as it had always been, and was the only town which had a

civic constitution, being regulated by a port-reeve and a bishop, and

having a kind of charter, though afterwards the privileges of this

charter were much increased. London was of course a great port and

trading centre, and had many foreign merchants in it. It was then, as

well as in subsequent centuries, the centre of English national life,

and {25} the voice of its citizens counted for something in national

affairs. The other great ports of England at that time were Bristol,

Southampton, and Norwich, and as trade grew and prospered, many other

ports rose into prominence (see p. 64).

§ 4. SPECIAL PRIVILEGES OF TOWNS—Even at the time of the Conquest most

towns, though small, were of sufficient importance to have a certain

status of their own, with definite privileges. The most important of

these was the right of composition for taxation, _i.e._ the right of

paying a fixed sum, or rent, to the Crown, instead of the various

tallages, taxes, and imposts that might be required of other places.

This fixed sum, or composition, was called the _firma burgi_, and by

the time of the Conquest was nearly always paid in money. Previously

it had been paid both in money and kind, for we find Oxford paying to

Edward the Confessor six sectaries of honey as well as £20 in coin;

while to William the Norman it paid £60 as an inclusive lump sum. By

the end of the Norman period all the towns had secured the _firma

burgi_, and the right of assessing it themselves, instead of being

assessed by the sheriff; they had the right also of choosing a mayor

of their own, instead of the king’s bailiff or _reeve_. They had,

moreover, their own tribunals, a charter for their customs, and special

rules of local administration, and, generally speaking, gained entire

judicial and commercial freedom.

§ 5. HOW THE TOWNS OBTAINED THEIR CHARTERS—It is interesting to see

what circumstances helped forward this emancipation of the towns from

the rights possessed by the nobles and the abbeys, or by the king. The

chief cause of the readiness of the nobles and kings to grant charters

during this period (from the Conquest to Henry III.) was their lack

of ready money. Everyone knows {26} how fiercely the nobles fought

against each other in Stephen’s reign, and how enthusiastically they

rushed to the Crusades under Richard I. They could not indulge their

love of fighting, which in their eyes was their main duty, without

money to pay for their fatal extravagances in this direction, and to

get money they frequently parted with their manorial rights over the

towns that had grown up on their estates. Especially was this the case

when a noble, or king, was taken prisoner, and wanted the means of his

ransom. In this way Portsmouth and Norwich gained their charters by

paying part of Richard I.’s ransom (1194). Again, Rye and Winchelsea

gained theirs by supplying the same king (in 1191) with two ships for

one of his Eastern crusades. Many other instances might be quoted

from the cases of nobles who also gave charters when setting out upon

these extraordinary religious and sentimental expeditions. Indeed, the

Crusades had a very marked influence in this way upon the growth of

English towns. Someone had to pay for the wars in which the aristocracy

delighted, and it is well to remember the fact that the expenses of

all our wars—and they have been both numerous and costly—have been

defrayed by the industrial portion of the community. And the glories

and cruelties of that savage age of so-called knightly chivalry, which

has been idealized and gilded by romancers and history-mongers, with

its tournaments and torture-chambers, were paid for by that despised

industrial population of the towns and manors which contained the real

life and wealth of mediæval England.

§ 6. THE GILDS AND THE TOWNS. VARIOUS KINDS OF GILDS—But besides the

indirect effect of the Crusades, there was another powerful factor in

the growth and emancipation of the towns after the Conquest. I refer

to the _merchant_ {27} _gilds_, which were becoming more and more

prominent all through this period, though the height of their power was

reached in the fourteenth century. These merchant gilds were one out

of four other kinds of gilds, all of which seem to have been similar

in origin. The earliest gilds are found in Saxon times, and were very

much what we understand by clubs. At first they were associations of

men for more or less religious and charitable purposes, and formed

a sort of artificial family, whose members were bound by the bond

not of kinship, but of an oath; while the gild-feast, held once a

month in the common hall, replaced the family gatherings of kinsfolk.

These gilds were found both in towns and manors, but chiefly in the

former, where men were brought more closely together. Besides (1) the

_religious_ gilds, we find in Saxon times (2) the _frith_ gilds, formed

for mutual assistance in case of violence, wrong, or false accusation,

or in any legal affairs. But this class of gilds died out after the

Conquest. The most important were (3) the _merchant_ gilds mentioned

above, which existed certainly in Edward the Confessor’s time, being

called in Saxon _ceapemanne_ gilds, and they were recognized at the

time of the Conquest, for they are recorded in Domesday here and

there as possessing lands. The merchant members of these gilds had

various privileges, such as a monopoly of the local trade of a town,

and freedom from certain imposts. They had a higher rank than the

members of the (4) _craft_ gilds. These last were associations of

handicraftsmen, or artisans, and were separate from the merchant gilds,

though also of great importance. If a town was large enough, each craft

or manufacture had a gild of its own, though in smaller towns members

of various crafts would form only one gild. Such gilds were found, too,

not only in towns but in country villages, as is known, _e.g._, in the

case of some {28} Norfolk villages, and remains of their halls in

villages have been found. Their gild feasts are probably represented to

this day in the parish feasts, survivals of ancient custom.

§ 7. HOW THE MERCHANT GILDS HELPED THE GROWTH OF TOWNS—Now it was

only natural that the existence of these powerful associations in the

growing boroughs should secure an increasing extent of cohesion and

unity among the townsmen. Moreover, the craft and merchant gilds had

a very important privilege, which could make many men anxious to join

their ranks, namely, that membership in a gild for a year and a day

made a tenant in villeinage a free man, as were all the members of a

gild. Thus the gilds included all the free tenants in a town, and in

becoming a merchant gild the body of free citizens, who formed the only

influential portion of a town, began to enlarge their municipal powers.

It became their special endeavour to obtain from the king or from their

lord wider commercial privileges, grants of coinage, of holding fairs,

and of exemption from tolls. Then they asked for freedom of justice and

of self-government; and more especially did the gilds, as representing

practically the town, buy up the _firma burgi_, or fixed tax, and thus

became their own assessors, and finally bought a charter, as we have

seen, from a king or noble in need of ready money. And so gradually,

and by other steps which are not always clear, the emancipation of the

towns was won by the gilds; the boroughs became free from their lords’

restrictions and dues; till by the end of the twelfth century chartered

towns, which were very few at the time of the Conquest, became the

general rule.

§ 8. HOW THE CRAFT GILDS HELPED INDUSTRY—So far we have specially

noted the work of the merchant gilds, which, as it were, built up the

constitution and freedom of the towns. {29}

We must now look for a moment at the work of the artisans’ gilds, or

craft gilds, which afterwards became very important. These gilds are

found not only in London, but in provincial towns. The London weavers

are mentioned as a craft gild in the time of Henry I. (A.D. 1100),

and most of these gilds seemed to have existed already for a long

period. The Goldsmiths’ Gild claimed to have possessed land before

the Norman Conquest, and it was fairly powerful in the days of Henry

II. (A.D. 1154), for he found it convenient to try and suppress it.

But it did not receive the public recognition of a charter till the

fourteenth century. They arose, of course, first in the towns, and

originally seem to have consisted of a small body of the leading men of

a particular craft, to whom was confided the regulation of a particular

industry, probably as soon as that industry was thought of sufficient

importance to be regulated. The gild tried to secure good work on the

part of its members, and attempted to suppress the production of wares

by irresponsible persons who were not members of the craft. Their

fundamental principle was, that a member should work not only for his

own private advantage, but for the reputation and good of his trade;

hence bad work was punished, and it is curious to note that night-work

is prohibited as leading to poor work. The gild took care to secure a

supply of competent workmen for the future by training young people in

its particular industry, and hence arose the _apprentice system_, which

at first, at any rate, had considerable advantages.

The gild, moreover, exercised a moral control over its members, and

secured their good behaviour, thus forming an effective branch of the

social police. On the other hand, it had many of the characteristics

of a benefit {30} society, providing against sickness and death among

those belonging to it, as indeed all gilds did.

These institutions, however, did not only belong to the towns, but

were found in country districts also; thus we hear of the carpenters’

and masons’ rural gilds in the reign of Edward III. Even the peasant

labourers, according to Professor Thorold Rogers, possessed these

associations, which in all cases served many of the functions of the

modern trade unions. Later on (1381) we shall come to a very remarkable

instance of the power of these peasants’ unions in the matter of

Tyler’s rebellion.

§ 9. LIFE IN THE TOWNS OF THIS TIME—The inhabitants of the towns were

of all classes of society. There was the noble who held the castle,

or the abbot and monks in the monastery, with their retainers and

personal dependants; there were the busy merchants, active both in the

management of their trade and of civic affairs; and there were artisans

and master workmen in different crafts. There were free tenants, or

_tenants in socage_, including all the burgesses, or burgage-tenants,

as they were called; and there was the lower class of villeins, which,

however, always tended to rise into free men as they were admitted

into the gilds. “To and fro went our forefathers in the quiet, quaint,

narrow streets, or worked at some handicraft in their houses, or

exposed their goods round the market-cross. And in those old streets

and houses, in the town-mead and market-place, amid the murmur of the

mill beside the stream, and the notes of the bell that sounded its

summons to the crowded assembly of the town-mote, in merchant gild and

craft gild, was growing up that sturdy, industrial life, unheeded and

unnoticed by knight or baron, that silently and surely was building up

the slow structure of England’s wealth and freedom.”[15]

[15. V. _Industry in England_, p. 96; and Green, _History_,

I. 212.]

{31}

CHAPTER III

MANUFACTURES AND TRADE: ELEVENTH TO THIRTEENTH CENTURIES

§ 1. ECONOMIC EFFECTS OF THE FEUDAL SYSTEM—We shall find that for some

time after the Norman Conquest English industry does not develop very

rapidly, and that for obvious reasons. The feud that existed between

Norman and Saxon—although perhaps partially allayed by Henry I.’s

marriage to an English wife—and the social disorder that accompanied

this feeling, hardly tended to that quiet and security that are

necessary for a healthy industrial life. The frightful disorders that

occurred during the fierce struggle for the kingdom between Stephen

of Blois and the Empress Maud, and the equally frightful ravages

and extortions of their contending barons, must have been serious

drawbacks to any progress. As the old annalist remarks—“They fought

among themselves with deadly hatred; they spoiled the fairest lands

with fire and rapine; in what had been the most fertile of counties

they destroyed almost all the provision of bread.”[16] But this mighty

struggle fortunately ended in ruining many of the barons who took

part in it, and in the desirable destruction of most of their abodes

of plunder. And the accession of Henry II. (1154) marks a period of

amalgamation between Englishmen and Normans, not only in social life,

but in commercial traffic and intercourse.

[16. Quoted by Green; _History_, I. 155.]

But even when we come to look at the feudal system in a time of

peace, we see that it did not tend to any great growth of industry.

For it encouraged rather than diminished that spirit of isolation and

self-sufficiency {32} which was so marked a feature of the earlier

manors and townships, where, again, little scope was afforded to

individual enterprise, from the fact that the consent of the lord of

a manor or town was often necessary for the most ordinary purposes of

industrial life. It is true, as we have seen, that when the noble owner

was in pecuniary difficulties the towns profited thereby to obtain

their charters; and perhaps we may not find it altogether a matter

for regret that the barons, through their internecine struggles, thus

unwittingly helped on the industry of the land. It may be admitted

also, that though the isolation of communities consequent upon the

prevalent manorial system did not encourage trade and traffic between

separate communities, it yet tended to diffuse a knowledge of domestic

manufactures throughout the land generally, because each place had

largely to provide for itself.

The constant taxation, however, entailed by the feudal system in the

shape of tallages, aids, and fines, both to king and nobles, made it

difficult for the lower classes to accumulate capital, more especially

as in the civil wars they were constantly plundered of it openly. The

upper classes merely squandered it in fighting. Agriculture suffered

similarly; for the villeins, however well off, were bound to the land,

especially in the earlier period soon after the Conquest, and before

commutation of services for money rents became so common as it did

subsequently; nor could they leave their manor without incurring a

distinct loss, both of social status and—what is more important—of

the means of livelihood. The systems of constant services to the lord

of the manor, and of the collective methods of cultivation, were also

drawbacks to good agriculture. Again, in trade, prices were settled by

authority, competition was unduly checked, {33} and merchants had to

pay heavy fines for royal “protection.”

§ 2. FOREIGN TRADE. THE CRUSADES—But, on the other hand, the Norman

Conquest, which combined the Kingdom of England with the Duchy of

Normandy in close political relations, gave abundant opportunities

for commerce, both with France and the Continent, and foreign

trade certainly received a stimulus from this fact. It was further

developed by the Crusades. The most obvious effect of these remarkable

expeditions for a visionary success was the opening up of Trade Routes

throughout Europe to the shores of the Mediterranean Sea, and to the

East in general. They produced also a considerable redistribution of

wealth in England itself, for the knights and nobles that set out for

the Holy Land often mortgaged their lands and never redeemed them, or

they perished and their lands lapsed to the crown, or to some monastery

that took the place of a trustee for the absent owner. The growth of

towns also, as we saw, is directly attributable to the privileges and

freedom secured at this time by supplying money to a crusading lord.

As to foreign trade, our chief authority at this time is the old

chronicler, Henry of Huntingdon, whose history was published about

A.D. 1155. Like most historians, even of the present day, he says

very little about so insignificant a matter as trade; but the single

sentence which he devotes to it is probably of as great value as any

other part of his book. From it we gather that our trade with Germany

was extensive, and that we exported lead and tin among the metals; fish

and meat and fat cattle (which seems to point to some improvement in

our pastoral economy); and, most important of all, fine wool, though

at that time the English could not weave it properly for themselves.

Our imports, however, are very {34} limited, comprising none of the

necessities of life, and few of its luxuries beyond silver and foreign

furs. Other imports were fine woven cloths, used for the dresses of the

nobility; and, after the Crusades began, of rich Eastern stuffs and

spices, which were in great demand, and commanded a high price. So too

did iron, which was necessary for agricultural purposes, as Englishmen

had not yet discovered their rich stores of this metal, but had to get

it from the lands on the Baltic shore. Generally speaking, we may say

that our imports consisted of articles of greater intrinsic value and

scarcity than our exports, and thus were fewer in number, though of

course balancing in total value, as imports and exports always must.

§ 3. THE TRADING CLAUSES IN THE GREAT CHARTER—One great proof of the

existence of a fair amount of foreign trade is seen in the clauses

which were inserted in the Great Charter (1215), by the influence of

the trading class. One enactment secures to foreign merchants freedom

of journeying and of trade throughout the realm, and another orders

a uniformity of weights and measures to be enforced throughout the

whole kingdom. The growth of home industry in the towns is seen in the

enactment which secures to the towns the enjoyment of their municipal

privileges, their freedom from arbitrary taxation, and the regulation

of their own trade. The forfeiture of a freeman, even upon conviction

of felony, was never to include his wares, if he were a merchant. The

exactions of forced labour by the royal officers was also forbidden,

and this must have been a great boon to the agricultural population.

There is also a clause which endeavours to restrict usury exacted by

the Jews, a clause which points to the usual characteristics of the

Hebrew race, and which shows their growing importance {35} in economic

England. We will therefore briefly mention the facts concerning them at

this period.

§ 4. THE JEWS IN ENGLAND: THEIR ECONOMIC POSITION—The first appearance

of the Jews in England may practically be reckoned as occurring at the

time of the Norman Conquest, for immediately after 1066 they came in

large numbers from Rouen, Caen, and other Norman towns. They stood in

the peculiar position of being the personal property, or “chattels,”

of the king, and a special officer governed their settlements in

various towns. These settlements were called Jewries, of which those at

London, Lincoln, Bury St Edmund’s, and Oxford were at one time fairly

considerable. They were protected by the king, and of course paid him

for their protection. Their general financial skill was acknowledged

by all, and William II. employed them to farm the revenues of vacant

sees, while barons often employed them as stewards of their estates.

They were also the leading if not the only capitalists of that time,

and must have assisted merchants considerably in their enterprises,

of course upon the usual commission. After the death of Henry I. the

security which they had enjoyed was much weakened, in proportion as

the royal power declined in the civil wars, and in the twelfth and

thirteenth centuries they were in a precarious position. Stephen and

Matilda openly robbed them; Henry II. (in 1187) demanded one-fourth of

their chattels, and Richard I. obtained large sums from them for his

crusading extravagances. From 1144 to 1189, riots directed against them

became common, and the Jewries of many towns were pillaged. In 1194

Richard I. placed their commercial transactions more thoroughly under

local officers of the crown. John exploited them to great advantage,

and levied heavy tallages upon them, and Henry III. did very much the

same. They were {36} expelled from the kingdom in 1290, and before

this had greatly sunk from their previous position as the financiers

of the crown, to that of petty money-lenders to the poor at gross

usury. What concerns us more immediately to notice in this early period

of English history, is their temporary usefulness as capitalists in

trading transactions, at a time when capital was not easily accumulated

or kept in safety.[17]

[17. See note 6, p. 244, on their return.]

§ 5. MANUFACTURES IN THIS PERIOD: FLEMISH WEAVERS—We now turn from the

subject of trade and finance to that of manufacturing industry. On

doing so, we find that the chief industry is that of weaving coarse

woollen cloth. An industry so necessary as this, and one too that

can be carried on in a simple state of society with such ease, as a

domestic manufacture, would naturally always exist, even from the

most uncivilized times. This had been the case in England. But it

is noticeable that although Henry of Huntingdon mentions the export

of “fine wool” as one of the chief English exports, and although

England had always been in a specially favourable position for growing

wool, her manufacture of it had not developed to any great extent.

Nevertheless it was practised as a domestic industry in every rural

and urban community, and at this period already had its gilds—a sure

sign of growth. Indeed one of the oldest _craft_ gilds was that of

the London weavers, of which we find mention in the time of Henry I.

(A.D. 1100). And in this reign, too, we first hear of the arrival

of Flemish immigrants in this country, who helped largely both then

and subsequently in the development of the woollen manufacture. Some

Flemings had come over indeed in the days of William the Norman, having

been driven from Flanders by an incursion of the sea, and had settled

at Carlisle. But Henry I., as we read in {37} Higden’s Chronicle,

transferred them to Pembrokeshire in A.D. 1111: “Flandrenses, tempore

regis Henrici primi, ad occidentalem Walliæ partem, apud Haverford,

sunt translati.” Traces of them remained till a comparatively recent

period, and the names of the village of _Flemingston_, and of the road

called the _Via Flandrica_, running over the crest of the Precelly

mountains, afford striking evidence of their settlement there, as also

does the name _Tucking Mill_ (_i.e._ Cloth-making mill, from German

and Flemish _tuch_, “a cloth”). Norfolk also had from early times

been the seat of the woollen industry, and had had similar influxes

of Flemish weavers. They do not, however, become important till the

reign of Edward III., when we shall find that English cloth manufacture

begins to develop considerably. In this period, all we can say is that

England was more famed for the wool that it grew than for the cloth

which it manufactured therefrom, and it had yet to learn most of its

improvements from lessons taught by foreigners.

§ 6. ECONOMIC APPEARANCE OF ENGLAND IN THIS PERIOD. POPULATION—The

England of the Domesday Book was very different from anything which we

can now conceive, nor did its industrial condition change much during

the next century or two. The population was probably under 2,000,000 in

all; for in Domesday Book only 283,342 able-bodied men are enumerated.

These multiplied by five, to include women and children, give

1,400,000 of general population, and allowing for omissions we shall

find two millions rather over than under the mark. Nor indeed could

the agricultural and industrial state of the country have supported

more. This population was chiefly located in the Southern and Eastern

counties, for the North of England, and especially Yorkshire, had

been laid waste by the Conqueror, in {38} consequence of its revolt

in 1068. The whole country between York and the Tees was ravaged, and

the famine which ensued is said to have carried off 100,000 victims.

Indeed, for half-a-century the land “lay bare of cultivation and of

men” for sixty miles northward of York, and for centuries more never

fully recovered from this terrible visitation. The Domesday Book

records district after district, and manor after manor, in Yorkshire as

“waste.” In the East and North-west of England, now the most densely

populated parts of the country, all was fen, moorland, and forest,

peopled only by wild animals and lawless men. Till the seventeenth

century, in fact, Lancashire and the West Riding of Yorkshire were

the poorest counties in England. The fens of East Anglia were

reclaimed only in 1634. The main ports were London for general trade;

Southampton, for the French trade in wines; Norwich for the export wool

trade with Flanders, and for imports from the Baltic; and on the west

coast Bristol, which had always been the centre for the western trade

in Severn salmon and hides. At one time, too, it was the great port

for the trade of English slaves who were taken to Ireland, but William

the Norman checked that traffic, though it lingered till Henry II.

conquered Ireland. For internal trade _market towns_, or villages as we

should call them, were gradually springing up. They were nearly always

held in demesne by the lord of the manor, who claimed the tolls, though

in after years the town bought them of him. Some of these markets

had existed from Saxon times, as is seen by the prefix “Chipping”

(=_chepinge_, A.S. a market), as in Chipping Norton, Chippingham, and

Chepstowe; others date from a later period, and are known by the prefix

“Market,” as _e.g._ Market Bosworth. But these market towns were very

small, and indeed only some {39} half-dozen towns in the kingdom had

a population above 5000 inhabitants. These were London, York, Bristol,

Coventry, Norwich, and Lincoln.

[Illustration: ENGLAND SHORTLY AFTER TIME OF DOMESDAY, A.D. 1100–1200

DARK GREEN: Density of population greater. RED BROWN: Forest. YELLOW:

Marsh.

The chief colour is _Green_ to show that whole country was chiefly

agricultural. Part of Yorks _Pale_ to show it was waste.

The ten chief towns: 1—York.* 2—Bristol.* 3—Lincoln.* 4—Norwich.*

5—Coventry.* 6—Oxford. 7—Colchester. 8—Nottingham. 9—Winchester. And

10—London.

*Population over 5000.]

§ 7. GENERAL CONDITION OF THE PERIOD—Speaking generally for the whole

period after the Conquest, we may say that, though the economic

condition of England was by no means unprosperous, industrial

development was necessarily slow. The disputes between Stephen and

Maud, and the civil wars of their partisans, the enormous drain upon

the resources of the country caused by Richard I.’s expenses in

carrying on Crusades when he should have been ruling his kingdom, and

the equally enormous taxes and bribes paid by the worthless John to

the Papal See, could not fail seriously to check national industry. It

is no wonder that in John’s reign, at the beginning of the thirteenth

century, we hear of great discontent throughout all the land, of much

misery and poverty, especially in the towns, and of a general feeling

of revolt. That miserable monarch was only saved from deposition by his

opportune death.

Yet with all these evils the economic condition of England, although

depressed, was by no means absolutely unhealthy; and the following

reign (Henry III., 1216–1272), with its comparative peace and leisure,

afforded, as we shall see, sufficient opportunity to enable the people

to regain a position of general opulence and prosperity. This time of

quiet progress and industrial growth forms a fitting occasion for the

marking out of a new epoch.

{40}

PERIOD III

FROM THE THIRTEENTH TO THE END OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY, INCLUDING THE

GREAT PLAGUE (1216–1500)

CHAPTER I

AGRICULTURE IN MEDIÆVAL ENGLAND

§ 1. INTRODUCTORY. RISE OF A WAGE-EARNING CLASS—The long reign of Henry

III., although occasionally troubled by internal dissensions among

the barons, was upon the whole a prosperous and peaceful time for the

people in general, and more especially for those whom historians are

pleased to call the lower classes. For by this time a remarkable change

had begun to affect the condition of the serfs or villeins, a change

already alluded to before, by which the villeins became free tenants,

subject to a fixed rent for their holdings. This rent was rapidly

becoming a payment in money and not in labour, for, as we saw, the

lords of the manors were frequently in want of cash, and were ready to

sell many of their privileges. The change was at first gradual, but

by the time of the Great Plague (1348), money rents were becoming the

rule rather than the exception; and though labour rents were not quite

obsolete, it was an ill-advised attempt to extort them again that was

the prime cause of Wat Tyler’s insurrection (1381). Before the Plague,

in fact, villeinage in the old sense had become almost {41} extinct,

and the peasants, both great and small, had achieved practical freedom.

The richer villeins had developed into small farmers; while the poorer

villeins, and especially the cottars, had formed a separate class of

agricultural labourers, not indeed entirely without land, but depending

for their livelihood upon wages paid for helping to cultivate the land

of others. The rise of this class, that lived by wages and not by

tilling their own land, was due to the fact that cottars and others,

not having enough land of their own to occupy their whole time, were

free to hire themselves to those who had a larger quantity of land.

Especially would they become labourers at a fixed wage for the lord

of a manor when he had commuted his rights to the unpaid services of

all his tenants for a fixed money rent. Of course this change came

gradually, but its effect is seen subsequently in the difficulties as

to wages expressed in the Statute of Labourers, difficulties which

first became serious after the Great Plague.

§ 2. AGRICULTURE THE CHIEF OCCUPATION OF THE PEOPLE—Throughout

the whole of this period the vast majority of the population were

continuously engaged in agricultural pursuits, and this was rendered

necessary owing to the very low rate of production consequent upon

the primitive methods of agriculture. The production of corn was only

about four, or sometimes eight, bushels per acre, and this naturally

had the effect of keeping down the population, at this time still only

between 1,500,000 and 2,000,000. It is a remarkable fact that even

the inhabitants of the towns used at harvest-time to go out into the

country to get agricultural work, and people often migrated from one

district to another for the same purpose, just as Irish agricultural

labourers of to-day are accustomed to cross over to England for the

harvesting. {42} Some attention was being paid to sheep farming, and

a noticeable increase in this branch of industry took place in the

beginning of the fourteenth century. One order of monks in particular,

the Cistercians, used to grow large quantities of wool; and indeed

England had almost a monopoly in the wool trade with Flanders, for even

Spanish wool could not be utilized without an admixture of English.

But the great increase of sheep farming occurs rather later, at the

beginning of the sixteenth century.

§ 3. METHODS OF CULTIVATION. THE CAPITALIST LANDLORD AND HIS BAILIFF.

THE “STOCK AND LAND” LEASE—The agriculture of the early part of this

period is described to us by Walter de Henley, who wrote a book on

husbandry some time before 1250. It cannot be said that our agriculture

was at this time at a high level, for, as we have seen, the production

of wheat (_e.g._) was exceedingly low, not being more than four to

eight bushels per acre. If we look at a typical manor, we shall find

that the arable lands in it were divided pretty equally between the

landlord and the tenants of the manor; and before the Great Plague

the landlord was not merely a rent-receiving master, but a capitalist

land-owner, who cultivated his land by means of his bailiff, subject to

his personal supervision. These bailiffs kept very accurate accounts,

and we are thereby greatly helped in our investigations in this period.

The average rent paid by tenants from the thirteenth to the sixteenth

century was sixpence per acre. In many cases, especially on lands owned

by monasteries, the land was held on the “stock and land” lease system,

by which the landlord let a certain quantity of stock with the land,

for which the tenant, at the expiration of his lease, had to account

either in money or kind. A relic of this kind of lease {43} existed

even in the eighteenth century, for Arthur Young occasionally mentions

the practice of the landlord letting cows to dairy farmers. In mediæval

times the person to whom cows were leased for dairy purposes was the

_deye_—_i.e._ dairyman or dairymaid. The stock and land lease plan

was favourable to the tenant, for it supplied his preliminary want of

capital, and if he was fortunate allowed him often to make considerable

profits, and even eventually purchase an estate for himself.

§ 4. THE TENANT’S COMMUNAL LAND AND CLOSES—It must always

be remembered, however, that the arable land in a manor was

“communal”—_i.e._ each tenant held a certain number of furrows or

strips in a common field, the separate divisions being merely marked

by a piece of unploughed land, where the grass was allowed to grow.

The ownership of these several strips was limited to certain months of

the year, generally from Lady Day to Michaelmas, and for the remainder

of the year the land was common pasture. This simple and rudimentary

system was utterly unsuited to any advanced agriculture. The tenants,

however, also possessed “closes,” some for corn, others for pasture and

hay. The rent of a close was always higher than that of communal land,

being eightpence instead of sixpence per acre. Besides the communal

arable land, and his close, the husbandman also had access to two or

three kinds of common or pasture—(1) a common close for oxen, kine, or

other stock, pasture in which is stinted both for landlord and tenant;

(2) the open (“champaign” or “champion”) country, where the cattle go

daily before the herdsmen; (3) the lord’s out-woods, moors, and heaths,

where the tenants are stinted but the lord is not. Thus the tenant had

valuable pasture rights, besides the land he actually rented. But the

system of holding arable land in strips {44} was very cumbrous and

caused many disputes, since often a tenant would hold a short lease

on one strip and a longer lease on another; or confusion of ownership

would arise; while in many ways tenure was made insecure, and no

encouragement was given to advanced agriculture.

§ 5. PLOUGHING—As regards the cultivation of the land, it was generally

ploughed three times a year. Ordinary ploughing took place in the

autumn, the second ploughing in April, the third at midsummer. The

furrows were, according to Walter de Henley, a foot apart, and the

plough was not to go more than two fingers deep. The ploughing and much

other work was done by oxen, as being cheaper than horses. The hoeing

was undertaken by women, who also worked at harvest-time in the fields.

In _Peres the Plowman’s Crede_ (about A.D. 1394) we have a description

of a small farmer ploughing while his wife leads the oxen. “His wife

walked by him with a long goad, in a cutted cote cutted full high” (l.

433).

An average yield of six bushels per acre is what Walter de Henley

thinks necessary to secure profitable farming.

§ 6. STOCK, PIGS AND POULTRY—As to stock, the amount kept was generally

rather large, and the agriculturist of the thirteenth century was fully

alive to the importance of keeping it; for Walter de Henley advised

stocking land to the full extent it would bear. Oxen, as we saw, were

kept for the plough and draft; but not much stock was fatted for the

table, especially as it could not be kept in the winter. There was no

attempt to improve breeds of cattle, for the scarcity of winter food

(winter roots being unknown till much later), and the general want of

means for resisting the severities of the winter helped to keep all

breeds much upon the same level. On the other hand, {45} swine were

kept in large numbers, and every peasant had his pig in his sty, and,

indeed, probably lived on salt pork most of the winter. Care was taken

with the different breeds. The whole of the parish swine were generally

put in summer under the charge of one swineherd, who was paid both by

tenants and the lord of the manor. The keeping of poultry, too, was at

that time universal, so much so that they were very rarely bought by

anyone, and when sold were almost absurdly cheap. This habit of keeping

fowls, ducks, and geese must have materially helped the peasant in

ekeing out his wages, or in paying that portion of his rent which was

paid in kind; as _e.g._ in the case of the Cuxham tenant (p. 15) who

had to pay his lord six fowls in all during the year.

§ 7. SHEEP—This animal is so important in English agriculture that we

must devote a special paragraph to it alone. For the sheep was, in

the earlier periods of English industrial history, the mainstay of

the British farmer, chiefly, of course, owing to the quantity of wool

required for export. England had, up to a comparatively recent period,

almost a monopoly of the raw wool trade, her only rival being Spain.

There were, as mentioned before, a great number of breeds of sheep,

and much care was taken to improve them. The fleece however was light,

being only as an average 1 lb. 7⁠¾ oz., according to Professor

Rogers, and the animal was small. The reason of this was that the

attempts of the husbandman to improve his breeds were baffled by the

hardships of the mediæval winter, and by the prevalence of disease,

especially the rot and scab. It is probable that the average loss on

the flocks was 20 per cent. a year. They were generally kept under

cover from November to April, and fed on coarse hay, wheat, and oat

straw, {46} or pea and vetch haulm; but no winter roots were available.

§ 8. INCREASE OF SHEEP FARMING—A great increase of sheep farming took

place after the Great Plague (1348), and this from two causes. The

rapid increase of woollen manufactures promoted by Edward III. rendered

wool growing more profitable, while at the same time the scarcity

of labour, occasioned by the ravages of the Black Death, and the

consequently higher wages demanded, naturally attracted the farmer to

an industry which was at once very profitable, and required but little

paid labour. So, after the Plague, we find a tendency among large

agriculturists to turn ploughed fields into permanent pasture, or, at

any rate, to use the same land for pasture and for crops, instead of

turning portions of the “waste” into arable land. Consequently from

the beginning of the fifteenth century we notice that the agricultural

population decreases in proportion as sheep farming increases; and the

steady change may be traced in numerous preventive statutes till we

come (in 1536) to those of Henry VIII. about decayed towns, especially

in the Midlands and the Isle of Wight, culminating in the excitements

of 1549. Another cause that, in Henry VIII.’s time, had a distinct

influence in promoting sheep farming, was the lack of capital that made

itself felt, owing to the general impoverishment of England in his

wasteful reign, and which naturally turned farmers to an industry that

required little capital, but gave quick returns.

§ 9. CONSEQUENT INCREASE OF ENCLOSURES—One consequence of this more

extensive sheep farming was the great increase in enclosures made

by the landlords in the sixteenth century. So great were these

encroachments and enclosures in north-east Norfolk, that they led, in

1549, {47} to a rebellion against the enclosing system, headed by Ket;

but, though more marked, perhaps, in Henry VIII.’s reign, the practice

of sheep farming had been growing steadily in the previous century.

Fortescue, the Lord Chancellor of Henry VI. (in the middle of the

fifteenth century), refers to its growth and the prosperity it caused

in rural districts—a prosperity, however, that must have been confined

only to the great land-owners. We receive other confirmation of this

from various statutes designed to prevent the rural population from

flowing into the towns, as, for example, the Acts of 1 and 9 Richard

II. (1377 and 1385), of 17 Richard II. (1394), promoting the export

of corn in hopes of making arable land more valuable. Another Act was

passed in 1489 (4 Henry VII.) to keep the rural population from the

towns. But the growth of sheep farming is also connected with a great

economic and industrial development in England, the rise and progress

of cloth manufactures and of the weaving industry generally, and to

this we must now devote our next chapter.

CHAPTER II

THE WOOLLEN TRADE AND MANUFACTURES

§ 1. ENGLAND’S MONOPOLY OF WOOL—In the Middle Ages England was the only

wool-producing country in the North of Europe. Spain grew wool also,

but it could not be used alone for every kind of fabric, and besides

it was more difficult to transport wool from Spain to Flanders, the

seat of the manufacture of that article, than it was to send it across

the narrow German Ocean, where swarms of light craft plied constantly

between Flanders and the {48} eastern ports of England. Hence England

had a practical monopoly of the wool trade, which was due not only

to its favourable climate and soil, but also to the fact that even

at the worst periods of civil war—and they did not last for long—our

island was incomparably more peaceful than the countries of Western

Europe. From the thirteenth to the seventeenth century, the farmers of

Western Europe could not possibly have kept sheep, the most defenceless

and tender of domestic animals, amid the wars that were continually

devastating their homesteads; nor, as a matter of fact, did they do

so. But in England, especially after the twelfth century, nearly

everybody in the realm, from the king to the villein, was concerned

in agriculture, and was interested therefore in maintaining peace.

Even when the great landlords, after the Plague of 1348, gave up the

cultivation of their arable land, they went in, as we saw, for sheep

farming, and enclosed large tracts of land for that purpose. Hence the

export trade in wool became more and more important, and there was

always a continual demand for English wool to supply the busy looms of

the great manufacturing towns in Flanders.

§ 2. WOOL AND POLITICS—The most convincing proof of the importance of

the wool trade is seen in England’s diplomatic relations with Flanders,

which, by the way, afford an interesting example of the necessity

of taking economic factors into account in dealing with national

history. Flanders was the great manufacturing country of Europe at

that time. England supplied its raw material in vast quantities, and

nine-tenths of English wool went to the looms of Bruges and Ghent. A

stoppage of this export from England used to throw half the population

of the Flemish towns out of work. The immense transactions that even

then took place, are {49} seen from the fact that a single company

of Florentine merchants would contract with the Cistercian monks of

England for the whole year’s supply of the wool produced on their

vast sheep-ranges on the Yorkshire moorlands; for the Cistercian

order were among the foremost wool-growers in the country. Now, it

is a curious and significant fact that when Edward I., Edward III.,

and Henry V. premeditated an attack on France, they generally took

care to gain the friendship of Flanders first,[18] so as to use that

country as a base from which to enter France, or at least as a useful

ally; and secondly, they paid a large proportion of the expenses of

their French expeditions by means of a wool-tax in England. Thus,

when Edward III. opened his campaign against France in 1340, he did

so from Flanders, with special help afforded by a Flemish alliance.

This king also received annually £60,000 from the wool-tax alone, and

on special occasions even more. Again, it was a grant of 6_s._ 8_d._

on each sack of wool exported that enabled Edward I. in 1275 to fill

his treasury for his subsequent invasion of Wales. The same king in

1297 got the means for equipping an expedition against France, _via_

Flanders, in the same way. Similarly Henry V. took care to cultivate

the friendship of the Flemish and their rulers before setting out to

gain the French crown, and paid for his expedition by raising taxes on

wool and hides. The enormous revenues also which from the thirteenth

to the fifteenth century were exacted from England by the Papal Court,

and by the Italian ecclesiastics quartered on English benefices,

were transmitted in the shape of wool to Flanders, and sold by the

Lombard exchangers, who transmitted the money thus realized to Italy.

The extent of these revenues may be gathered from the fact that the

{50} Parliament of 1343, in a petition against Papal appointments to

English ecclesiastical vacancies, asserted that—“The Pope’s revenue

from England alone is larger than that of any Prince in Christendom.”

And at this very time the deaneries of Lichfield, Salisbury, and

York, and the archdeaconry of Canterbury, were all held by Italian

dignitaries, while the Pope’s collector sent from London 20,000 marks a

year to his master at Rome. Now, these impositions were paid out of the

proceeds of English wool. It is interesting, too, to find that taxes

for King Edward III. were calculated, not in money, but in sacks of

wool. In one year the Parliament granted him 20,000 sacks; in another

year 30,000 sacks. In 1339 the barons granted him “the tenth sheep,

fleece, and lamb.” Early in the fifteenth century £30,000 out of the

£40,000 revenue from customs and taxes came from wool alone. Once more,

as in the days of the Crusades, we are able to see how the Hundred

Years’ War with France, and the exactions of Rome, were paid for by the

industrial portion of the community, while underneath the glamour of

the victories of Edward III. and Henry V. lies the prosaic but powerful

wool-sack.[19]

[18. See note 7, p. 244, on Flanders and England.]

[19. See note 8, p. 243, on Other Sources of Income.]

§ 3. PRICES AND BRANDS OF ENGLISH WOOL—Having now seen the importance

of wool as a factor in English industry and political history, we

must proceed to study more closely the facts of the woollen trade,

and the manufacture of woollen cloth. The chief growers of wool

were the Cistercian monks, who owned huge flocks of sheep. The wool

grown near Leominster, in Herefordshire, was the finest of all, and,

generally speaking, that grown in Wiltshire, Essex, Sussex, Hampshire,

Oxfordshire, Cambridge and Warwickshire, was the best. The poorest

came from the North of England, and from {51} the Southern downs.

There were a number of different breeds of sheep, for care was taken to

improve the breed, and it would seem that forty-four different brands

of English wool, ranging in value from £13 to £2, 10_s._ the sack (of

364 lbs.), were recognized both in the home and foreign markets, as

mentioned in a Parliamentary petition of 1454. The average price of

wool from 1260–1400 was 2_s._ 1⁠¾_d._ per clove of 7 lbs.—_i.e._ a

little over threepence a pound, sometimes fourpence. In the middle of

this period (1350) the average annual export, according to Misselden,

in the _Circle of Commerce_, was about 11,648,000 lbs., representing a

value of some £180,683 yearly.

§ 4. ENGLISH MANUFACTURES—Now, although I have spoken of Flanders as

the manufacturing centre for Europe, it must not be supposed that

England could not manufacture any of the large quantity of wool which

it grew. Undoubtedly the people of the Netherlands were at that time

the great manufacturers of the world, and were acquainted with arts

and processes to which the English were strangers, while for a long

time the English could not weave fine cloths; but, nevertheless,

there was a considerable manufacturing industry, chiefly of coarse

cloths, an industry very widely spread, and carried on in people’s own

cottages under the domestic system. The chief kinds of cloth made were

hempen, linen, and woollen coverings, such as would be used for sacks,

dairy-cloths, woolpacks, sails of windmills, and similar purposes.

The great textile centres were Norfolk and Suffolk, where, indeed,

manufacturing industries had existed long before the earliest records.

An idea of their importance may be given from the fact that, in the

assessment for the wool-tax of 1341, Norfolk was counted by far the

wealthiest county in England after Middlesex (including London). {52}

There was also a cloth industry of importance in the West of England,

the chief centres being Westbury, Sherborne, and Salisbury. The linen

of Aylsham was also celebrated.

§ 5. FOREIGN MANUFACTURE OF FINE GOODS—But we find rich people used to

purchase fine cloths from abroad—_e.g._ linen from Liège and Flanders

generally, and velvet and silk goods from Genoa and Venice—although

there was certainly a silk industry in London, carried on chiefly by

women, and protected by an Act of 1454. In the England of which we are

now speaking, the textile industries were prevented from attaining a

full development from the fact that, though general, they were strictly

local; and, moreover, those who practised them did not look upon

their handicraft as their sole means of livelihood, but even till the

eighteenth century were generally engaged in agriculture as well. The

cause of this is connected with the isolation and self-sufficiency of

separate communities, previously noted. An evidence of the consequent

inferiority of English to Flemish cloth is given by the fact that an

Act of 1261 attempts to prohibit the import of spun stuff and the

export of wool. Needless to say it was useless. The prices of cloth

at this period are interesting, as showing the great difference

between the fine (_i.e._ foreign) and coarse (home) cloths. The

average price of linen is 4_d._ an ell, being as low as 2_d._ and as

high as 8⁠¼_d._ Inferior woollens sold at 1_s._ 7⁠½_d._ a

yard, “russet” at 1_s._ 4_d._, blanketing at 1_s._ On the other hand,

scarlet cloth (foreign) rises to the enormous price of 15_s._ a yard.

Cloth for liveries varied from 2_s._ 1_d._ to 1_s._ per yard. Speaking

generally for the period 1260–1400, we may give the average price of

the best quality at 3_s._ 3⁠½_d._ a yard from 1260–1350, and 3_s._

5⁠½_d._ from 1350–1400; while cloth of the second quality {53}

fetched 1_s._ 4⁠½_d._ in the first period, and 1_s._ 11⁠¼_d._

in the second.

§ 6. FLEMISH SETTLERS TEACH THE ENGLISH WEAVERS. NORWICH—It is to

Edward III., very largely, that the development of English textile

industry is due. It is true that, long before, Henry II. had

endeavoured to stimulate English manufacture by establishing a “cloth

fair” in the churchyard of St Bartholomew. But English industry had

developed slowly till the days of Edward, partly, no doubt, owing to

the continual disorder of the preceding reigns. Stimulated, probably,

by his wife Philippa’s connexion with Flanders, he encouraged Flemish

weavers to settle in England, chiefly in the Eastern counties, though

we hear of two Flemings from Brabant settling in York in 1331; and

about this time one John Kemp, also a Fleming, removed from Norwich,

and founded in Westmoreland the manufacture of the famous “Kendal

green.” The chief centre, however, of the foreign weavers was naturally

Norwich, the Manchester of those days, with a population of some 6000,

and the chief industry was that of worsted cloths, so named from the

place of manufacture, Worstead. When we speak of worsted cloths, we

mean those plain, unpretending fabrics that probably never went beyond

a plain weave or a four-shaft twill. The yarn was very largely spun on

the rock or distaff, by means of a primitive whorl or spindle, while

the loom was but a small improvement on that in which Penelope wove her

famous web. There was a great demand among religious orders for sayes

and the like, of good quality; plain worsteds were generally worn by

the public.

§ 7. THE WORSTED INDUSTRY—Whether the growth of the worsted cloth

industry was connected or not with this particular Flemish immigration

we cannot determine. {54} The manufacture was confirmed to the town of

Worstead by a patent of 1313, and in 1328, also, Edward III. issued a

letter patent on behalf of the cloth workers in worsted in the county

of Norfolk. The manufacture was already so extensive and important that

the next year a special “aulnager” (or cloth searcher) was appointed

to inspect the worsted stuffs of Norwich and district, and held his

office for twenty years. In 1348, however, on the petition of the

worsted weavers and merchants themselves, the patent was revoked, and

the aulnager removed. But in 1410, when Norwich gained a new charter,

the power of “aulnage” was once more given, at its own request, to its

mayor and sheriffs, or their deputies.

§ 8. GILDS IN THE CLOTH TRADE—In the previous period we referred to

the origin and growth of the craft gilds, and it is interesting to

note their importance in connexion with the woollen industry at this

time. As a separate craft, that of the weaver cannot be traced back

beyond the early part of the twelfth century; in the middle of the

twelfth century, however, gilds of weavers are found established in

several of the larger English towns. At first they were in voluntary

association, though acting independently of each other, but it became

the policy of the government in the fourteenth century to extend the

gild organization over the whole country, and thus to bring craftsmen

together in organized bodies. Elaborate regulations were drawn up for

their governance by Parliament, or by municipalities. Now, in London at

this date (1300), and probably at Norwich and other large towns, the

woollen industry was divided into four or five branches, the weavers

and burellers, the dyers and fullers, and the tailors (_cissores_).

The weavers and burellers were united in the same gild, the dyers and

fullers in another, while the tailors formed a third gild of {55}

their own. But they were all very conscious that they had interests in

common, and they were accustomed to act together in matters affecting

the industry as a whole, such as, _e.g._, ordering cloth made in the

city to be dyed and fulled in that city, and not sent out to some other

town.

§ 9. THE DYEING OF CLOTH—The dyeing and fulling industry, however,

could not have flourished much in England at this time, for English

cloths were mostly sent to be fulled and dyed in the Netherlands; and

indeed we cannot consider dyeing as a really English industry till the

days of James I., where it will be duly mentioned. At the same time

it was not unknown, for we have scarlet, russet, and black cloths of

English make in the fourteenth century. But the industry was chiefly

carried on in the Netherlands, owing to the progress there made in the

cultivation of madder, which forms the basis of so many different dyes.

This plant has never been at any time largely cultivated in England,

and, moreover, the Dutch for several centuries possessed the sole

secret of a process of pulverizing the root in order to prepare it for

use. Such being the case, there is no wonder that they far excelled the

English in the art of dyeing.

§ 10. THE GREAT TRANSITION IN ENGLISH INDUSTRY—From the time of this

first Flemish immigration in the fourteenth century, we perceive the

beginning of an important modification in our home industries. Hitherto

England had been almost exclusively a purely agricultural country,

growing large quantities of wool, exporting it as raw material, and

importing manufactured goods in exchange. But from this period the

export of wool gradually declines, while on the other hand our home

manufactures increase, until at length they in turn are exported. In

fact, manufactured cloth, and not raw wool, becomes the {56} basis of

our national wealth, and finally the export is forbidden altogether, so

that we may have the more for the looms at home.

A proof of the growing importance of manufacture in this period is the

noticeable lack of labourers and the high wages they get, as set forth

in the Act 7 Henry IV. (_i.e._ 1406), which points to an increase of

weavers in all parts of the kingdom, that takes labourers from other

employments.

§ 11. THE MANUFACTURING CLASS AND POLITICS—The growing importance of

the manufacturing class which was now rapidly springing up, can be

clearly traced in the politics of the Tudor period. In spite of two

great drawbacks the cloth manufacture was growing. It had naturally

been severely checked for a generation or so by the awful national

disaster of the Great Plague, which occurred so soon after Edward II.

had helped to found it in England, and which for the time utterly

paralysed English industry in all its branches. It had been checked

again by the long and useless wars which Edward III. and his successors

carried on against France, at enormous cost and with no practical

results, but which of course were paid for out of the proceeds of our

national industries. But after these two checks it developed steadily,

even during the Wars of the Roses; for these wars were carried on

almost exclusively by the barons and their retainers, in a series

of battles hardly any of which were of any magnitude, exaggerated

though they have been both by contemporary and later historians. These

wars had the ultimate effect of causing the feudal aristocracy to

destroy itself in a suicidal conflict, and thus helped to increase the

influence of the middle class—_i.e._ the merchants and manufacturers—as

a factor in political life. And thus it became the policy of the

Tudor sovereigns, who were gifted with a {57} certain amount of

native shrewdness, to hasten the decaying power of the feudal lords by

simultaneously supporting, and being supported by, the middle class,

and to the alliance thus made between the crown and the industrial

portion of the community we owe a rapid increase of the commercial

prosperity which laid the foundations of the greatness of the

Elizabethan age, and of the great mercantile enterprises that succeeded

it.

CHAPTER III

THE TOWNS, INDUSTRIAL VILLAGES, AND FAIRS

§ 1. THE CHIEF MANUFACTURING TOWNS—During the period between the

Norman Conquest and the middle of the thirteenth century, the towns,

as we saw, had been gradually growing in importance, gaining fresh

privileges, and becoming almost, in some cases quite, independent

of the lord or king, by the grant of a charter. Moreover they had

grown from the mere trading centres of ancient times into seats of

specialized industries, regulated and organized by the craft gilds.

This new feature of the industrial or manufacturing aspect of certain

towns is well shown in a compilation, dated about 1250, and quoted by

Professor Rogers in _Six Centuries of Work and Wages_, which gives

a list of English towns and their chief products. Hardly any of the

manufacturing towns mentioned are in the North of England, but mostly

in the East and South. {58}

The following table gives the name of the town, and its manufacture or

articles of sale.

TOWN PRODUCT

(1) _Textile Manufactures_

Lincoln Scarlet cloth.

Bligh Blanket.

Beverley Burnet cloth.

Colchester Russet cloth.

Shaftesbury Linen fabrics.

Lewes Linen fabrics.

Aylesbury Linen fabrics.

Warwick Cord.

Bridport Cord and Hempen fabrics.

(2) _Bakeries_

Wycombe Fine bread.

Hungerford Fine bread.

St Albans Fine bread.

(3) _Cutlery_

Maxtead Knives.

Wilton Needles.

Leicester Razors.

(4) _Breweries_

Banbury Brewing.

Hitchin Brewing.

Ely Brewing.

(5) _Markets_

Ripon Horses.

Nottingham Oxen.

Gloucester Iron.

Bristol Leather and Hides.

Coventry Soap.

Northampton Saddlery.

Doncaster Horse-girths.

Chester Skins and Furs.

Shrewsbury Skins and Furs.

Corfe Marble.

Cornwall towns Tin.

(6) _Fishing Towns_

Grimsby Cod.

Rye Whiting.

Yarmouth Herrings.

Berwick Salmon.

(7) _Ports_

Norwich

Southampton

——

Dunwich Mills.

This list is obviously incomplete, for it omits towns like Sheffield

and Winchester, both of which were important as manufacturing towns

from very early times, though the woollen manufactures of the latter

were soon outstripped by those of Hull, York, Beverley, Lincoln, and

especially Norwich. But such as it is the list is curious, chiefly

as showing how manufactures have long since deserted their original

abodes, and have been transferred to towns of quite recent origin.

§ 2. STAPLE TOWNS AND THE MERCHANTS—It will have been {59} observed

that by the time this list was compiled, most towns were either the

seat of a certain manufacture, or the market where such manufactures

were sold. Now, in the days of Edward I. and Edward II. (1272–1327),

several such towns were specially singled out and granted the privilege

of selling a particular product, the _staple_ of the district, and were

hence called _staple towns_. Besides a number of towns in England,

staples were fixed at certain foreign ports for the sale of English

goods. At first Antwerp was selected as the staple town for our

produce, and afterwards St Omer. A staple was also set up at Calais

when we took it (1347), but at the loss of that town in 1558 it was

transferred to Bruges. The staple system thus begun by the first two

Edwards, was established upon a firm legal basis by Edward III. The

statute 27 Edward III. c. 9 (1354), enumerates all the staple towns

of England, and sets forth the ancient customs payable upon staple

goods. It enacts that only merchants of a particular staple—_i.e._

those engaged in a particular trade like wool or hides—may export

these goods, and that each staple should be governed by its own mayor

and constables. Now, although regulations like these are opposed to

our modern ideas of free competition, they were to a certain extent

useful in the Middle Ages, because the existence of staple towns

facilitated the collection of custom duties, and also secured in some

degree the good quality of the goods made in, or exported from, a town.

For special officers were appointed to mark them if of the proper

quality and reject them if inferior. The system also had the important

_political_ result of bringing into prominence the merchants as a

class, and of increasing their influence. So much were they a special

class, that the sovereign always negotiated with them separately. Thus

in 1339, when Edward III. was as usual fighting {60} against France,

and, also as usual, in great want of money, he was liberally supplied

with loans by Sir William de la Pole, a rich merchant of Hull, who

acted on behalf of himself, and many other merchants. Sir Richard

Whittington performed similar services for Henry IV. and Henry V.

§ 3. MARKETS—Another class of towns were the country market towns,

many of which exist in agricultural districts to-day, in much the same

fashion as they did six centuries ago. The control and regulation of

the town market was at first in the hands of the lord of the manor,

but by this period it had been bought by the corporation or by the

merchant gild, or by both, and was now one of the most valued of

municipal privileges. The market-place was always some large open space

within the city walls, such as, for instance, exists very noticeably in

Nottingham to this day. London had several such spaces, of which the

names Cornhill, Cheapside, the Poultry, still remain. The capital was

indeed a perpetual market, though of course provincial towns only held

a market on one or two days of the week. It is curious to notice how

these days have persisted to modern times. The Wednesday and Saturday

market of Oxford has existed for at least six centuries, if not

more. The control of these markets was undertaken by the corporation

for various purposes. The first of these was to prevent frauds and

adulteration of goods, and for this purpose special officers were

appointed, as in the staple towns, or like the “aulnager” of Norwich

mentioned before (p. 54). This was possible in a time when industry was

limited, and the competitive idea was as yet unborn, and one cannot

help thinking that it must have been of great use to purchasers. The

second object of the regulators of the market was to keep prices at

a “natural {61} level,” and to regulate the cost of manufactured

articles. The price of provisions in especial was a subject of much

regulation, but our forefathers were not very successful in this point,

laudable though their object was.[20]

§ 4. THE GREAT FAIRS—Now, besides the weekly markets there were held

annually in various parts of the kingdom large fairs, which often

lasted many days, and which form a most important and interesting

economic feature of the time. They were necessary for two reasons: (1)

because the ordinary trader could not and did not exist in the small

villages, in which it must be remembered most of the population lived,

nor could he even find sufficient customers in a town of that time, for

very few contained over 5000 inhabitants; (2) because the inhabitants

of the villages and towns could find in the fairs a wider market for

their goods, and more variety for their purchases. The result was that

these fairs were frequented by all classes of the population, from

noble and prelate to the villein, and hardly a family in England did

not at one time of the year or another send a representative, or at

least give a commission to a friend, to get goods at some celebrated

fair. They afforded an opportunity for commercial intercourse between

inhabitants of all parts of England, and with traders from all parts

of Europe. They were, moreover, a necessity arising from the economic

conditions of a time when transit of goods was comparatively slow,

and when ordinary people disliked travelling frequently or far beyond

the limits of their own district. The spirit of isolation which is

so marked a feature of the mediæval town or village encouraged this

feeling, and except the trading class few people travelled about,

and those who did so were regarded with suspicion. Till the epoch of

modern railways, in fact, fairs were a {62} necessity, though now

the rapidity of locomotion and the facility with which goods can be

ordered and despatched, have annihilated their utility and rendered

their relics a nuisance. But even in the present day there are plenty

of people to be found in rural districts who have rarely, and sometimes

never, been a dozen miles from their native village.

[20. See note 9, p. 245, on Assize of Bread and Ale.]

§ 5. THE FAIRS OF WINCHESTER AND STOURBRIDGE—Fairs were held in every

part of the country at various parts of the year. Thus there was a

fair at Leeds, which for several centuries served as a centre where

the wool-growers of Yorkshire and Lancashire met English and foreign

merchants from Hull and other eastern ports, and sold them the raw

material that was to be worked up in the looms of Flanders. But

there were a few great fairs that eclipsed all others in magnitude

and importance, and of these two deserve special mention, those at

Winchester and Stourbridge. (1) That at _Winchester_ was founded in the

reign of William the Norman, who granted the Bishop of Winchester leave

to hold a fair on St Giles’ Hill, for one day in the year. Henry II.,

however, granted a charter for a fair of sixteen days. During this time

the great common was covered with booths and tents, and divided into

streets called after the name of the goods sold therein, as, _e.g._,

“The Drapery,” “The Pottery,” “The Spicery.” Tolls were levied on every

bridge and roadway to the fair, and brought in a large revenue. The

fair was of importance till the fourteenth century, for in the _Vision

of Peres the Plowman_, Covetousness tells how

“To Wye and to Winchester I went to the fair.”

But it declined from the time of Edward III., chiefly owing to the

fact that the woollen trade of Norwich and {63} other eastern towns

had become far more important, while on the other hand Southampton was

found to be a more convenient spot for the Venetian traders’ fleet (p.

93) to do business.

(2) _Stourbridge Fair_—But the greatest of all English fairs, and that

which kept its reputation and importance the longest, was the Fair of

Stourbridge, near Cambridge.[21] It was of European renown, and lasted

for a whole month, from the end of August to the end of September.

Its importance was due to the fact that it was within easy reach of

the ports of the east coast, which at that time were very accessible

and much frequented. Hither came the Venetian, and Genoese merchants,

with stores of Eastern produce—silks and velvets, cotton, and precious

stones. The Flemish merchants brought the fine linens and cloths of

Bruges, Liège, and Ghent, and other manufacturing towns. Frenchmen and

Spaniards were present with their wines; Norwegian sailors with tar

and pitch; and the mighty traders of the Hanse towns exposed to sale

furs and amber for the rich, iron and copper for the farmers, flax for

their wives; while homely fustian, buckram, wax, herrings, and canvas

mingled incongruously in their booths with strange, far-off Eastern

spices and ornaments. And in return the English farmers—or traders on

their behalf—carried to the fair hundreds of huge wool-sacks, wherewith

to clothe the nations of Europe; or barley for the Flemish breweries,

with corn and horses and cattle also. Lead was brought from the mines

of Derbyshire, and tin from Cornwall; even some iron from Sussex, but

this was accounted inferior to the imported metal. All these wares

were, as at Winchester, exposed in stalls and tents in long streets,

some named after the various nations that congregated {64} there, and

others after the kind of goods on sale. This vast fair lasted down

to the eighteenth century in unabated vigour, and was at that time

described by Daniel Defoe, in a work now easily accessible to all,[22]

which contains a most interesting description of all the proceedings

of this busy month. It is not much more than a hundred years since the

Lancashire merchants alone used to send their goods to Stourbridge,

upon a thousand pack-horses, but now the pack-horses and fairs have

gone, and the telegraph and railway have taken their place.

[21. See note 10, p. 246, on Stourbridge Fair.]

[22. _Tour through the Eastern Counties_ (Cassell’s National

Library, 3_d._).]

§ 6. ENGLISH MEDIÆVAL PORTS—In the last paragraph mention was made of

the east coast having ports of great prominence in this period. It will

be convenient here to notice what were the chief ports of England,

and to remark how few of them have retained their old importance. The

chief port was of course London, which has always held an exceptional

position, and the other principal ports were on the east and south

coast. Southampton was from early times the chief southern harbour, and

next to it Dartmouth, Plymouth, Sandwich, and Winchelsea, Weymouth,

Shoreham, Dover, and Margate. They were connected with the trade in

French and Spanish goods. On the western coast Bristol was almost

the only port much frequented, and was the centre and harbour for

the western fisheries, and also a place of export for hides and the

cloth manufactures of the western towns. In the fifteenth century

Bristol fishermen penetrated through the Hebrides to the Shetland and

Orkney Islands and the northern fisheries, where they found that the

Scarborough men had long preceded them. On the eastern coast, indeed,

Scarborough was one of the most enterprising ports. Boston, Hull, Lynn,

Harwich, {65} Yarmouth, and Colchester were also very flourishing, and

were concerned in the Flemish and Baltic trade. Farther north Newcastle

was the centre for the coasting trade in coal, and Berwick was a

fisherman’s harbour. But the southern and eastern ports were the most

frequented, as being suitable to the light and shallow craft that did a

coasting trade, or ran across to the Continent in smooth weather.

§ 7. THE TEMPORARY DECAY OF MANUFACTURING TOWNS—We have now noticed

the chief markets, fairs, ports, and manufacturing towns of mediæval

England, and it will be seen that commercial prosperity was certainly

developing. So too were home manufacturing industries, but their

growth brought about a curious effect in the decay of certain towns,

and the rise of industrial villages in rural districts. To the decay

of towns we find frequent reference in the Statutes of Henry VII. and

his successor—_i.e._ from 1490 or 1500 onwards. This decay was due to

two causes: (1) to the growth of sheep farming, mentioned above (p.

45), and (2) to the fact that the industrial disabilities imposed upon

dwellers in towns, in consequence of the corporate privileges of the

gilds, now far exceeded the advantages of residence there. The days

of usefulness for the gilds had gone past; their restrictions were

now only felt to cramp the rising manufacturing industries. Hence we

find the manufacturers of the Tudor period were leaving the towns and

seeking open villages instead, where they could develop their trade

free from the vexatious restrictions of old-fashioned corporations.

Of course laws were passed to check this tendency, and to confine

particular industries to particular towns. Thus, in Norfolk, no one was

to “dye, shear, or calendar cloth” anywhere but in the town of Norwich

(Act of 14 and 15 Henry VIII.); no one in the {66} northern counties

was to make “worsted coverlets” except in York (Act of 33 and 34 Henry

VIII.).

§ 8. GROWTH OF INDUSTRIAL VILLAGES. THE GERMS OF THE MODERN FACTORY

SYSTEM—Such protective enactments were, however, as protective

enactments must generally be, utterly in vain. Henry VII. tried to

remedy the supposed evil by limiting the privileges of interference of

the gilds, but even this step was useless. Manufactures were slowly

and surely transferred to various villages, and in several industries

a kind of modern factory system can be traced at this time. Master

manufacturers, weary of municipal and gild-made restrictions, organized

in country places little communities solely for industrial purposes,

and so arranged as to afford greater scope for the combination and

division of labour. The system of apprenticeship was a powerful element

in this scheme, and supplied ready labour for these small factories.

The goods were made not as formerly only for local use, but for the

purposes of trade and profit throughout the kingdom. The master was

bound to his workmen rather more closely than the mill-owner of the

present day to his “hands,” for the spirit of personal sympathy and

obligation still survived in these small labour communities. But

the germs of the modern system were there; for this new system was

not that of domestic or cottage industry, as had been the rule in

previous periods, but a system of congregated labour organized upon

a capitalistic basis by one man—the organizer, head, and owner of

the industrial village—the master clothier. Among the famous master

clothiers of the woollen industry, we read of Cuthbert of Kendal,

Hodgkins of Halifax, Brian of Manchester, each of whom “kept a great

number of servants at work—carders, spinners, weavers, dyers, shearers,

and others.” {67} Perhaps the greatest of them was John Winchcombe,

or “Jack of Newbury,” as he was called, of whom it is recorded that a

hundred looms always worked in his house, and he was rich enough to

send a hundred of his journeymen to Flodden Field, in 1513. His kerseys

were famous all over Europe. It was from communities such as these that

the villages of Manchester, Bolton, Leeds, Halifax, and Bury took their

rise, and afterwards developed into the great factory towns of to-day.

But these workshops, large though they seemed then, were utterly

insignificant compared with the huge factories of to-day, where the

workmen are numbered in thousands, and are, to the capitalist-employer

or joint-stock company that owns the mill, merely a mass of human

machines, more intelligent though not so durable as other machines, and

possessed of an unpleasant tendency to go out “on strike,” for reasons

that naturally appear to their employer insufficient and subversive

of the whole industrial system. However, the industrial system is not

subverted, though the workmen can hardly be said to be upon the same

pleasant footing with their employers as they used to be in the old

industrial village.

CHAPTER IV

THE GREAT PLAGUE AND ITS ECONOMIC EFFECTS

§ 1. MATERIAL PROGRESS OF THE COUNTRY—In the preceding chapters we have

attempted to give an idea of the state of industry and commerce in

England in the Middle Ages. We now come to a most important landmark

in the history of the social and industrial condition of the {68}

people—viz. the Great Plague of 1348 and subsequent years. Almost

two centuries had elapsed since the death of Stephen (1154), and the

cessation of those great civil conflicts which harried England in his

reign. These two centuries had witnessed on the whole a continuous

growth of material prosperity. The wealth of the country had increased;

the towns had developed and had aided the growth of a prosperous

mercantile and industrial middle class, who regulated their own

affairs in their gilds, and also had a voice in municipal management.

The country at large was mainly devoted to agricultural and pastoral

pursuits, and the mass of the people were engaged in tilling the ground

or feeding cattle. The mass of the people too were now better fed and

better clothed than those of a similar class on the Continent, and a

great proof of their general prosperity is to be found in the nature

of their food. It is a significant economic fact that wheaten bread

was then, and has generally since been, the staple food of the English

labourer. In most other lands, bread made from rye and other cereals

was generally good enough for the working classes. If rye failed they

had nothing to fall back upon, and thus famines were frequent. But the

English labourer always had some other cereal besides wheat in reserve.

§ 2. SOCIAL CHANGES. THE VILLEINS AND WAGE-PAID LABOURERS—Besides the

growth of material prosperity in these two centuries, we find that the

commutation of villeinage services into money payments to the lord of

the manor—a tendency frequently commented upon—had been growing apace.

This commutation had been going on for a long time, in fact ever since

the Conquest, if not before, and the villeins in general had freed

themselves not only from labour-dues, but from the vexatious customary

fines or “amercements” which they had to {69} pay to the lord of the

manor on certain social occasions—such as the marriage of a daughter,

or the education of a son for the Church. But of course this freedom

was not complete, though it is important to notice its growth, for we

shall see that it formed the occasion of a great class struggle some

years after the Great Plague.

There is another feature which is also of importance, and which had

come more and more into prominence during the past two centuries. I

refer to the increase in the numbers of those who lived upon the labour

of their hands, and were employed and paid wages like labourers of the

present day. It has been mentioned before that they arose from the

cottar class, who had not enough land to occupy their whole time, and

who were therefore ready to sell their labour to an employer. These

two features, the commutation of labour-dues for money payments, and

the rise of a wage-paid labouring class, are closely connected, for it

was natural that, when the lord of a manor had agreed to receive money

from his tenants in villeinage instead of labour, he should have to

obtain other labour from elsewhere and pay for it in the money thus

received by commutation. The tendency of these social changes was

greatly in favour of the villeins, whose social condition had steadily

improved, and whose tenancy in villeinage was more and more becoming

a “free” tenancy. Neither were the villeins, whether comparatively

well-to-do yeomen or agricultural labourers, so much bound to the

manor as formerly, for in proportion as their labour services were

no longer necessary, their lord would let them leave the manor and

seek employment, or take up some manufacturing industry, elsewhere.

It had always been possible for the villeins (or serfs) to do this

on payment of a small fine (_capitagium_), and it is certain that as

money payments {70} became increasingly the fashion, the lord would

not object to receiving this further payment, unless perchance he would

require a good deal of labour done upon his own land.

§ 3. THE FAMINE AND THE PLAGUE—The position of the labouring class had

been further improved by the effects of the famines which occurred

in A.D. 1315–16. Of course they suffered great hardships and their

numbers were considerably thinned, but at the same time this loss of

life and diminution in their numbers caused their services to become

more valuable in proportion to their scarcity, and they gained a rise

of some 20 per cent. in wages. From this date till the coming of

the Great Plague, some thirty years later, they and the rest of the

English people enjoyed a period of great prosperity. It was on the

whole a “merry England” on which the Great Plague suddenly broke. The

prosperity of the people was reflected in the splendour and brilliancy

of the court and aristocracy, and the national pride had been increased

by the recent victory of Crecy, and by the other successes in the

French war, which brought not only glory but occasionally wealth, in

the shape of heavy ransoms. But in 1348 the prosperity and pride of the

nation was overwhelmed with gloom. The Great Plague came with sudden

and mysterious steps from Asia to Italy, and thence to Western Europe

and England, carried some say by travelling merchants, or borne with

its infection on the wings of the wind. It arrived in England at the

two great ports of Bristol and Southampton in August 1348, and thence

spread all over the land. Its ravages were frightful. Whole districts

were depopulated, and about one-third of the people perished. Norwich

and London, being busy and crowded towns, suffered especially from

the pestilence, and though the {71} numbers of the dead have been

grossly exaggerated by the panic of contemporaries and the credulity of

modern historians,[23] there can be no doubt that the loss of life was

enormous.

§ 4. THE EFFECTS OF THE PLAGUE ON WAGES—The most immediate consequence

of the Plague was a marked scarcity in the number of labourers

available. For being of the poorest class they naturally succumbed

more readily to famine and sickness. This scarcity of labour naturally

resulted in higher wages. The land-owners began to fear that their

lands would not be cultivated properly, and were content to buy

labour at higher prices than would have been given at a time when

the necessity of the labourer to the capitalist was more obscured.

Hence the wages of labourers rose far above the customary rates. In

harvest-work, for example, the rise was nearly 60 per cent., and what

is more it remained so for a long period; the rise in agricultural

wages generally was 50 per cent. So it was also in the case of

artisans’ wages, in the case of carpenters, masons, and others. It

seems the upper classes and the capitalists of that day very strongly

objected to paying high wages, as they naturally do. The king himself

felt deeply upon the point. Without waiting for Parliament to meet,

Edward III. issued a proclamation ordering that no man should either

demand or pay the higher rates of wages, but should abide by the

old rate. He forbade labourers to leave the land to which they were

attached, and assigned heavy penalties to the runaways. Parliament

assembled in 1349 and eagerly ratified this proclamation, {72} in

the laws known as the _Statutes of Labourers_. But the demand for

labour was so great that such legislative endeavours to prevent its

proper payment were fortunately ineffective. Runaways not only found

shelter, but also good employment and high wages. Parliament fulminated

its threats in vain; and in vain increased its penalties, by a later

Statute of 1360 ordering those who asked more than the old wages to be

imprisoned, and, if they were fugitives, to be branded with hot irons.

For once the labourer was able to meet the capitalist on equal terms.

[23. It was asserted by the fourteenth-century chroniclers,

and has often been repeated since, that nearly 60,000 people died

in Norwich alone. As a matter of fact, the whole county of Norfolk,

including that city, hardly contained 30,000 people.]

§ 5. PRICES OF PROVISIONS—Now, although there was a great rise in the

price of labour, the price of the labourers’ food did not rise in

proportion. The price of provisions, indeed, was but little affected,

for food did not require much manual labour in its production, and

hence the rise of wages would not be much felt here. What _did_ rise

was the price of all articles that required much labour in their

production, or the cost of which depended entirely upon human labour.

The price of fish, for instance, is determined almost entirely by the

cost of the fisherman’s labour, and the cost of transit. Consequently

we should under these circumstances expect a great rise in the price

of fish, and such indeed was the case. So, too, there was an enormous

increase in the prices of tiles, wheels, canvas, lead, ironwork, and

all agricultural materials, these being articles whose value depends

chiefly upon the amount of labour spent over them, and upon the cost

of that labour. Hence, both peasant and artisan gained higher wages,

while the cost of living remained for them much the same; and those who

suffered most were the owners of large estates, who had to pay more for

the labour which worked these estates, and more too for the implements

used in working them.

{73}

§ 6. EFFECTS OF THE PLAGUE UPON THE LAND-OWNERS—The fact that the

larger land-owners found the cost of working their land doubled or

even trebled caused important economic changes. Before the Plague

the cost of harvesting upon an ordinary estate, quoted by Professor

Rogers, was £3, 13_s._ 9_d._: afterwards it rose to £12, 19_s._ 10_d._

Moreover, the landlord had to consent to receive lower rents, for many

tenants could not work their farms profitably with the old rents, and

the new prices for labour and implements. And, as rent is paid out of

the profits of agriculture, it was obvious even to the landlord that

smaller profits meant lower rents. Now, in this state of things, the

landlord had two courses open to him. He could turn off the tenant and

cultivate all his land himself; or he could try and exist upon the

smaller income gained from lower rents. It was obviously impossible

for him to cultivate all his land himself, for he would have to employ

a large number of bailiffs for his various manors, and trust to their

honesty to do their best for him. Moreover, he would have to pay his

bailiffs, while after all his tenants paid him something, though less

than formerly. So he decided to allow his tenants to pay him a smaller

rent. What is more, he decided under the circumstances to give up

farming altogether, and let even the lands which he had reserved for

his own cultivation. The landlords, in fact, had not apparently either

the ability or the inclination to superintend agriculture under these

changed conditions, and gave up trying to work their land themselves.

So that one great result of the Plague was that landlords to a large

extent gave up capitalist farming upon their own account, and let their

tenants cultivate the soil, and also pay them for continuing to do so.

§ 7. RISE OF THE TENANT FARMER OR YEOMAN CLASS—The {74} natural

effect of this change on the part of the land-owners was that the

small peasant farmers greatly increased in numbers. The circumstances

of the time favoured them, for the rise in the price of labour was

not so severely felt by them, since they could and did use the unpaid

labour of their families upon their holdings. Then, when they had tided

over the immediate results of the Plague, they took larger holdings

as they grew richer. They were helped in this by the stock and land

lease system already referred to (p. 42), which gave them the use of

a larger quantity of agricultural capital than they could otherwise

have commanded. But when the tenant farmer’s wealth increased he found

himself able, as a rule, to keep his own stock.

§ 8. THE EMANCIPATION OF THE VILLEINS—The gradual amelioration of

the conditions of villeinage or serfage received a forcible impetus

from the Great Plague. Those villeins who had not already become

free tenants, and especially those who lived on wages, shared in the

advantages now gained by all who had labour to sell. Their labour was

more valuable, and they were able with their higher wages to buy from

their lord a commutation of those exactions which interfered with their

personal freedom of action, with their right to sell their labour to

other employers, or with their endeavours to reach a better social

position. Serfage or villeinage gradually became practically extinct

after the Plague,[24] though the landowners, backed up by the lawyers,

interposed many obstacles in the path of emancipation, and a great

Revolt was necessary to enable the villeins to show their power. This

Revolt and its success must now engage our attention.

[24. See note 11, p. 246, on Survivals.]

{75}

CHAPTER V

THE PEASANTS’ REVOLT OF 1381, AND THE SUBSEQUENT PROSPERITY OF THE

WORKING CLASSES

§ 1. NEW SOCIAL DOCTRINES—By no means the least important among the

effects of the Great Plague was the spirit of independence which it

helped to raise in the breasts of the villeins and labourers, more

especially as they now gained some consciousness of the power of

labour, and of its value as a prime necessity in the economic life of

the nation. There was indeed a revolutionary spirit in the air in the

last quarter of the fourteenth century, and the villeins could not

help breathing it. The social teaching of the author of _Peres the

Plowman_, with his outspoken denunciation of those who are called the

upper classes; the bold religious teaching of Wiklif and the wandering

friars, and the marked political assertion of the rights of Parliament

by the “Good Parliament” of 1376, were all manifestations of this

spirit. It was natural, too, that, feeling their power as they did, the

villeins should become restive when they heard from the followers of

Wiklif that, as it was lawful to withdraw tithes from priests who lived

in sin, so “servants and tenants may withdraw their services and rents

from their lords that live openly a cursed life.”

§ 2. THE COMING OF THE FRIARS. WIKLIF—Such indeed was the teaching

that Wiklif promulgated, and it was carried throughout all England by

that great association of wandering friars which he founded under the

title of the “poor priests.” These men were like the {76} mendicant

friars who had come to England a century before[25] to work in the

poorer parts of the English towns; only Wiklif’s priests generally

wandered out into the isolated and remote country villages, and spread

abroad the independent doctrines and the revolutionary spirit of the

times. Spending their lives in moving about among the “upland folk,” as

the country people were called, clad in coarse, undyed brown woollen

garments, they won the confidence of the peasants, and what is more,

helped them to combine in very effectual trade unions. They acted as

treasurers for the common funds of these peasants’ unions, and served

as messengers between those in different parts of the country, having

passwords and a secret language of their own. Their preaching was

similar to that of the celebrated priest of Kent, John Ball, who for

twenty years before the great rising (1360–80) openly spoke words

like these: “Good people, things will never be well in England so

long as there be villeins and gentlemen. By what right are they whom

we call lords greater than we? On what grounds have they deserved it?

Why do they hold us in serfage? They have leisure and fine houses: we

have pain and labour, and the wind and rain in the fields. And yet

it is of us and our toil that these men hold their estate.” These

searching questions as to the rights of the lords, and the bold but

true statement that it was the villeins and labouring classes who

supported—and paid for—their high estate, came closely home to the

peasants. They were encouraged too by the independent religious views

of the Lollards, and it is said that half England held their views. And

this independence of social and religious tenets was hardly calculated

to make the villeins bear {77} with equanimity the exactions of their

lords after the Great Plague.

[25. The Black Friars of Dominic came in 1221, and the Grey

Friars of Francis in 1224.]

§ 3. THE RENEWED EXACTIONS OF THE LANDLORDS—For it must be remembered

that the Great Plague did not immediately emancipate the villeins,

or cause the land-owners to give up farming on their own account.

The process, of course, took a few years, and in these few years the

land-owners made desperate efforts to avoid paying higher wages than

formerly for labour. As it had now become costly, they insisted more

severely upon the performance by their tenants of such labour-dues

as were not yet commuted for money payments. They even tried to make

those tenants who had emerged from a condition of villeinage to a free

tenancy, return back to villeinage again, with all its old labour-dues

and casual services. If a man could not prove by legal documentary

evidence that he held his land in a free tenancy, the land-owner

might pretend he was a villein tenant, and subject to all a villein’s

services, although these services might long ago have been commuted

for a money rent without any legal formality. There is much reason

to believe, moreover, that they abused their power of inflicting

“amercements,” or fines, upon their tenants in the manor courts for

trivial breaches of duty. So at least Wiklif and the author of _Peres

the Plowman_ tell us. The villeins naturally resisted this attempt

to make a retrograde movement, which would force them back into the

old bondage from which they had redeemed themselves; the free tenants

supported them, for they knew their turn would come next if the serfs

failed; and the labouring classes eagerly joined the movement also, in

hopes of getting rid of the vexatious Statutes of Labourers.

{78}

§ 4. THE PEASANTS’ REVOLT[26]—The crisis came in 1381, and was

perhaps precipitated by the oppressive manner in which the poll-tax

was collected. But the poll-tax itself was not the real cause of the

revolt. The rising had long been foreseen, and arrangements had been

duly made among the peasants’ unions by the poor priests, their agents

and messengers, who formed the connecting links between all the labour

organizations of the land. A sudden rising took place, as unanimous as

it was unanticipated, throughout all England, from Scarborough to Kent

and Devon. Almost simultaneously the peasants showed their combined

strength, and a large body of them under Wat Tyler marched upon London.

It is well known how they met the young King Richard II. at Mile-end,

and demanded of him the petition which shows the real meaning of the

movement: “We will that you free us for ever, us and our lands,” they

asked; “and that we be never named or held as villeins.” “I grant

it,” said the king, with regal diplomacy, and the peasants believed

him. But they very soon learned how vain a thing it is to put one’s

trust in princes, for after the peasant armies in the various parts of

England had quieted down, and the Essex men, among others, claimed the

fulfilment of his royal promise, Richard openly broke faith. “Villeins

you were,” said the king, “and villeins you are. In bondage shall

you abide, and that not your old bondage, but a worse!” Fortunately

this never happened. Although suppressed, the rising was practically

successful, for it had shown the power of the combination of labour, in

the great strife between labour and capital. A few of the ringleaders

were imprisoned and executed, among them being several priests. The

{79} authorities of course blustered, and swore they would never

give in. Equally of course they did give in; no further attempts were

made to exact labour-dues or _corvées_; and within a generation or so

villeinage or serfage became practically extinct[27]; and the villeins

became known as copyholders or tenants by custom.

[26. For other views of this Revolt see my _Industry in

England_, ch. xii.]

[27. For survivals see note 11, p. 246.]

§ 5. THE CONDITION OF THE ENGLISH LABOURER—After this great

insurrection came what has been termed the golden age of the English

labourer, and it lasted all through the fifteenth century. Food was

cheap and abundant; wages were amply sufficient. True, the employers of

labour still tried, by various petitions and Acts (_e.g._ 7 Henry IV.,

4 Henry V., 23 Henry VI., 11 Henry VII.), to enforce the Statute of

Labourers, but they were practically unsuccessful, and prosperity was

progressive and continuous till the evil days of Henry VIII. The wages

of a good agricultural labourer, before the Plague, had been £2, 7_s._

10_d._ per year as an average, including the labour of his wife and

child; after the Plague his wages would be £3, 15_s._, and the cost of

his living certainly not more than £3, 4_s._ 9_d._ An artisan, working

300 days a year, would get, say, £3, 18_s._ 1⁠½_d._ before 1348,

and after that date £5, 15_s._ 7_d._, which was so far above the cost

of maintenance as to give him a very comfortable position. His working

day, too, was not excessive, while the fixed rents of the time were

very low. These low rents were also one great cause of the prosperity

of the new yeoman, or tenant farmer class (p. 73) that had arisen

after the collapse of the capitalist land-owners in consequence of the

Plague. This class remained for at least two centuries the backbone of

English agriculture.

§ 6. DRAWBACKS—There were, however, a few drawbacks in this “golden

age,” as various critics have told {80} us. The ordinary hardships

of human life were in many respects greater than they are now—disease

was more deadly, and the risks of life more numerous[28]; but from

this very fact the extremes of poverty and wealth were less widely

distinguished and less acutely felt; and, although it cannot be

asserted that people did not occasionally die of want in very bad

times, yet the grinding and hopeless poverty just above the verge of

actual starvation, so often prevalent in the present time, did not

belong to mediæval life. The chief hardships to be encountered were

in the winter, for, owing to the absence of winter roots, stock could

only be kept in limited quantities, and the only meat procurable

was that which had been previously salted. It is certain that much

of mediæval disease is traceable to the excessive use of salted

provisions. The houses, also, were rudely built of mud, clay, or even

wattled material, for brickmaking was a lost art, and stone was only

used for the manor-houses and the dwellings of the wealthy. But food

was abundant and cheap. The cost of living was not more than one-tenth

of what it is at the present day. Three pounds of beef could be bought

for a penny; a pig cost about fourpence; beer was only a halfpenny a

gallon. Employment was fairly constant and regular, and in addition to

their wages, labourers still possessed the valuable old manorial common

rights of common pasture and forest.

[28. The question is more fully treated in _Industry in

England_, ch. xii. (end).]

§ 7. THE CLOSE OF THE MIDDLE AGES—So things went on happily after the

Great Revolt, and in the days of the fourth and fifth Henries. The

brilliant, but useless, French victories of the latter monarch were

paid for partly by the prosperous middle and lower classes, and {81}

partly by the French themselves; and very costly they were. England

was still mainly agricultural, but manufactures were growing. Though

wool was still exported, much was being worked up in the towns and

villages. Artisans earned about 3_s._ a week, which would certainly

be worth more than 30_s._ a week at present. Industry, as will be

remembered, was organized in the craft gilds, and apparently the gild

system was a success till its restrictions in towns began to cramp the

growing manufactures. The fifteenth century was a period of prosperity

and content, in spite of both civil and foreign wars; and even the

wasteful reign of Henry VI., with its unsuccessful war with France, and

huge subsidies to Rome, though it made the Government unpopular and

caused widespread national discontent and occasional insurrections in

Kent and Wiltshire, did not materially injure the general prosperity.

The king himself, however, was nearly bankrupt. The Wars of the Roses

which followed (1455–86) did not affect the country at large, being

fought in a series of much exaggerated skirmishes by small bodies

of nobles and their followers. They ended in the very desirable

consummation of the ruin of the remnants of the feudal aristocracy,

and at the same time opened a further path for the influence of the

industrial classes, whose favour Henry VII. had the wisdom to court,

and in return was supported by them in his policy of weakening the

power of the great barons. He encouraged commerce,[29] and aided the

prosperity of his kingdom, thereby amassing for his own treasury

considerable wealth. In his reign the feudal system was dying out, the

nation prospered, and the Middle Ages came to a close in a wealthy and

industrious England (A.D. 1500). {82}

[29. Cf. note 7, p. 244.]

But before the next century was completed part of the nation was

impoverished, the labourers were degraded and despoiled, and a long

legacy of pauperism and misery was bequeathed to the country by the

wastefulness and extravagance of Henry VIII.

{83}

PERIOD IV

FROM THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY TO THE EVE OF THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

(1509–1760)

CHAPTER I

THE MISDEEDS OF HENRY VIII., AND ECONOMIC CHANGES IN THE SIXTEENTH

CENTURY

§ 1. HENRY VIII.’S WASTEFULNESS—Henry VIII. came to the throne in

1509. He succeeded to a full treasury left by his thrifty father, and

replenished by contributions from the general prosperity of the country

at the close of the fifteenth century. But he soon dissipated the whole

of these accumulations. He spent a great deal of money in subsidizing

the needy Emperor of Germany, Maximilian, and in interfering in foreign

affairs which were better left alone, in the hope of winning for

himself a military reputation. His Continental wars and alliances cost

him dear, or rather they cost the English people dear, for they gave

him liberal grants of money (as _e.g._ in 1513) before he set out on

his fruitless expeditions. But even in time of peace his expenditure

was equally extravagant. The cost of his household establishments, and

those of his children, was simply enormous; for the establishments

of Mary, Edward, and even Elizabeth were each more costly than the

whole annual charge of his father’s household. His extravagance was

monumental, though where his money went he could not himself discover.

Wolsey {84} said of him, “Rather than miss any part of his will,

he will endanger one-half of his kingdom.” As a matter of fact he

succeeded in impoverishing the whole of it.

§ 2. THE DISSOLUTION OF THE MONASTERIES—He soon wasted the carefully

accumulated treasures of his father, and sought for further supplies.

They were gained at first by increased taxation, but as this money was

spent in the French wars, Henry was soon in difficulties again. Then he

tried another expedient. The monasteries suggested themselves to him as

an easy prey, and he knew that an attack upon them would not displease

the growing Protestant party in the country. These institutions were in

many cases not fulfilling their ancient functions properly, and were

often far from being the homes of religious virtue. So excuses were

easily found, and in 1536 the smaller monasteries with an income below

£200 a year were suppressed, and in 1539 the larger ones were similarly

treated. About 1000 houses were suppressed, the _annual_ income of

which was £161,000, equivalent to more than two millions sterling of

our present money. Half-a-dozen bishoprics and a few grammar schools

were founded out of the proceeds of this spoliation, in order to blind

the eyes of the people at large. But with these paltry exceptions the

whole of that vast capital and revenue was granted to courtiers and

favourites, sold at nominal prices, or gambled away by the king and his

satellites.

§ 3. RESULTS OF THE SUPPRESSION—Although the mass of the people did

not protest very vigorously against this piece of royal robbery,

many of them witnessed with silent dismay the destruction of ancient

institutions that had formed so integral a part of the national life.

A few even expressed their discontent in open insurrection, and

risings took place in Lincolnshire and Yorkshire,[30] but these {85}

were put down. The economic disturbances which resulted were not so

clearly seen, but were far more severe. They were acute enough from the

mere fact of so much wealth having suddenly changed hands and being

spent with reckless prodigality. It is said that one-fifth, or even

one-third, of the land in the kingdom was held by the monasteries, and

it was now transferred from the holding of the Church into the hands

of a new set of nobles and landed gentry, created from the dependants

and time-servers of Henry’s court. These were enriched, but the former

tenants of the monasteries and the poorer class of labourers suffered

greatly. Hence serious results followed. Nearly all monastic lands

were held by tenants upon the “stock and land lease” system, spoken

of before; but, when these monastic lands were suddenly transferred

into the clutches of Henry’s new and needy nobility, the stock was

confiscated and sold off, while the money rent was raised. The new

owners did not care for the slow, though really lucrative, system of

providing the tenant with a certain amount of stock for his land,

but simply wished to get all the money they could without delay. The

result was that the poorer tenants were almost ruined, and it seems

probable that pauperism was greatly increased. What small amount of

pauperism had previously existed had been sufficiently relieved by the

monasteries, who, owing their wealth to charitable offerings, could not

well refuse charity to those that needed it; but on their dissolution

pauperism had no longer such relief, and very soon we shall see it

became necessary to provide that relief by law. With the dissolution

the history of English legal pauperism may be said to begin, although

of course other causes contributed to its growth. But among these

causes the spoliation of the monasteries had no unimportant place.

[30. _e.g._ “The Pilgrimage of Grace,” 1536.]

{86}

§ 4. THE ISSUING OF BASE COIN—Four years after the dissolution,

Henry was in difficulties again. He dared not ask his Parliament for

further supplies so soon after his last piece of plunder, so he betook

himself to a still more wicked kind of robbery. In 1543 he began to

debase the currency, and repeated this criminal action in 1545 and

1546. This debasement forms a landmark in English industrial history

as disastrous as the other landmark of the Great Plague. Its effect

was not felt immediately, but it was none the less real. The chief

point that concerned the labourer was that prices rapidly rose, but

that, as is always the case, the rise of wages did not coincide with

this inflation, and when they did rise they did not do so in a fair

proportion. The necessaries of life rose in proportion of one to two

and one-half; wages, when they finally rose, only in the proportion

of one to one and one-half. When too late it was recognized that the

issue of base money was the cause of dearth in the realm, and Latimer

lamented the fact in his sermons. Meanwhile, the mischief had been done.

§ 5. THE CONFISCATION OF THE GILD LANDS—What Henry did with his gains

thus obtained by underhand robbery cannot be accurately discovered. But

it soon went, for he again required a supply of money.

One other method of robbing the industrial classes still remained, and

though Henry died, his ministers were not slow to take advantage of

it. This step was the confiscation of the gild lands, planned by Henry

VIII. but finally carried out by his son’s guardian, Somerset. These

lands had been acquired by the craft gilds both in town and country,

partly by bequests from members, and partly by purchase from the funds

of the gilds. The revenues of these lands were used for lending,

without usury, to poorer members of the gilds, for apprenticing poor

children, for {87} widows’ pensions, and, above all, for the relief of

destitute members of the craft. Thus the labourer of that time had in

the funds of the gild a kind of insurance money, while the gild itself

fulfilled all the functions of a benefit society. Now, Henry VIII.

got an Act passed for the confiscation of this and other property,

but died before his scheme was carried out. It was then Somerset who

procured the Act for perpetrating this offence—on the plea that these

lands were associated with superstitious uses. Only the property of the

London gilds was left untouched. The gilds had relieved pauperism in

the Middle Ages, assisted in steadying the price of labour, and formed

a centre for associations that fulfilled a want now only partially

supplied by modern trade unions. Their abolition was a heavy blow to

the English labourer.

Why this abolition was not more generally resented is a point of some

interest. In the first place, the religious gilds and craft gilds

were suppressed together on the plea above mentioned, and thus the

difference between them was confused. Then again, the London gilds were

spared because of their power, and thus it was made their interest

not to interfere with the destruction of their provincial brethren.

The nobles were bought off with presents gained from the funds of the

gilds. Moreover, the _craft_ gilds in the country towns were becoming

close corporations, whose advantages were often monopolized by a few

powerful members. This led, as we saw, to the manufacture of cloth

being spread from the towns into industrial villages in the rural

districts, where perhaps the mass of the population, not perceiving

the full significance of the act, did not object to a measure which

struck a blow at the town “mysteries.” But, nevertheless, a great

deal of discontent was aroused. Somerset became very unpopular, and

insurrections broke out in many {88} parts of the country, the most

dangerous being in Cornwall, Devonshire, and in the West. They were

caused not only by this spoliation but by agrarian discontent as well,

but German and Italian mercenaries were introduced to put them down,

and the protests of the people were everywhere choked in their blood.

§ 6. THE AGRARIAN SITUATION—Such were the acts instigated or actually

performed by that miserable monarch, whom nevertheless not a few people

who write history seek to glorify. Possibly they do so in ignorance of

the facts. This much is certain, that Henry VIII.’s reign witnessed

growing pauperism in a country which had been a few years previously

in a state of considerable material comfort. But before the close of

his reign the labouring classes became impoverished, and tenant farmers

were ruined with high rents exacted by the new nobility. The landed

gentry and nobility, however, profited by this, and the merchants grew

rich by their accumulations in foreign trade. But those who depended

directly upon the cultivation of the land for their living suffered

severely. There had been for some years past a steady rise in the price

of wool for export, partly because the manufacturers of the Netherlands

were so flourishing, and partly owing to a general rise of prices on

the Continent since the great discoveries of silver in South America.

Land-owners saw that it was more immediately profitable to turn their

arable land into pasture, and go in for sheep farming on a large scale.

They therefore did three things. They evicted as many as possible of

their smaller tenants, and as Sir Thomas More tells us: “in this way it

comes to pass that these poor wretches, men, women, husbands, orphans,

parents with little children—all these emigrate from their native

fields without knowing where to go.” Then they raised the rents of

the larger tenants, the {89} yeomen and farmers, so that, as Latimer

mentions, land for which his father had paid £3 or £4 a year, was in

1549 let at £16, almost to the ruin of the tenant. Thirdly, the large

land-owners took from the poor their common lands by an unscrupulous

system of enclosures. Wolsey had in vain endeavoured to stop their

doing this, for he had sagacity enough to perceive how it would

pauperize the labourers and others who had valuable rights in such

land. But enclosures and evictions went on in spite of his enactments,

with the inevitable result of social disorders.

The most important of these risings took place in Norfolk, where

enclosures had been made upon a tremendous scale. Ket, a wealthy

tanner of Norwich, took the lead (in 1549) of a large body of some

16,000 tenants and labourers, who demanded the abolition of the late

enclosures and the reform of other local abuses. The Earl of Warwick

defeated the petitioners in a battle, put down the rising, and hanged

Ket at Norwich Castle. The farmers and peasantry were thus cowed into

submission.

§ 7. OTHER ECONOMIC CHANGES—From these facts it became evident that

the old mediæval industrial system was breaking up in England. The new

life created by the Renaissance caused a keener and more eager spirit

among all classes of men. Competition began to operate as a new force,

and men made haste to grow rich. The merchants were becoming bolder

and more enterprising in their ventures. The discoveries of America

by Columbus (1492) and by Cabot (1497), and of the sea-route to India

by Vasco da Gama (1498), had kindled a desire to share largely in the

wealth of these newly accessible countries. At home the lords of the

manors no longer remained in close personal relationships with their

tenants. The tenants were no longer villeins, but were nominally {90}

independent, and had certain rights. But the lords of the manors

had small respect for rights that were only guarded by custom; and

evicted or oppressed their tenants to such an extent that multitudes

of dispossessed and impoverished villagers flocked to the towns. In

fact Sir Thomas More tells us that the tenants “were got rid of by

fraud or force, or tired out by repeated wrongs into parting with their

property.”

Many labourers, too, could be found wandering from place to place,

begging or robbing. The old steady village life, with its isolation

and strong home ties, was undergoing a violent transition. Constant

work and regular wages were becoming things of the past. The labourer’s

wages would not purchase the former quantity of provisions under

the new high prices caused by the debasement of the currency, and

the discoveries of silver from 1540–1600; for wages, though they

ultimately follow prices, do so very slowly, and not always even then

proportionately.

§ 8. SUMMARY OF THE CHANGES OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY—Such were the

events which caused so great an economic transition in this period.

They resulted in the pauperization of a large portion of the working

classes, and the impoverishment of the small farmers. On the other

hand, the nobles and land-owners gained considerable wealth. The

merchants also were exceedingly flourishing, and foreign trade was

growing. In summing up, then, we may say that the suppression of the

monasteries, and the creation of a new nobility from the adventurers

of Henry VIII.’s court, who obtained most of the monastic wealth; the

debasement of the coinage and the exaltation in prices, aided largely

(1540–1600) by the discovery of new silver mines in South America;

the rise in the price of wool both for export and home manufacture,

coupled {91} with the consequent increase in sheep farming and the

practice of enclosure of land—all produced most important economic

changes in the history of English labour and industry. To these we must

add, towards the end of the sixteenth century, the great immigration

of Flemings, chiefly after 1567, owing to the continual persecutions

of Alva and other Spanish rulers. This gave a great impetus to

English manufactures, its effects, however, being chiefly felt in the

seventeenth century, when another immigration took place. Finally,

in the sixteenth century were laid the foundations of our present

commercial enterprise and maritime trade, by the voyages of Drake and

other great sea-captains of Elizabeth’s reign. Their expeditions, it is

true, were mainly buccaneering exploits, but they created a spirit of

maritime enterprise that bore good fruit in the following reigns. Nor

indeed was trade even in the previous centuries entirely insignificant,

but had considerably developed, as the following chapter will show.

CHAPTER II

THE GROWTH OF FOREIGN TRADE

§ 1. THE EXPANSION OF COMMERCE. THE NEW SPIRIT—Just as the beginning of

the sixteenth century marks what may be called an economic revolution

in the home industries of the country, so too it marks the beginning of

international commerce upon the modern scale. The economic revolution,

of which the new agricultural system and the practice of enclosures

was the most striking feature, was a change from the old dependent,

uncompetitive, and regulated industrial system, to one under {92}

which Capital and Labour grew up as separate forces in the form in

which we recognize them now. Labour had become nominally independent

after the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381, and at the same time it consciously

felt that it was in opposition to capitalist and land-owning interests.

In its desire for freedom it had also begun to shake off even its

self-imposed restrictions, and the power of the gilds had rapidly

waned. A new and eager spirit came with the Renaissance and the

Reformation, a spirit which on the economic side showed itself in the

development of competition, the shaking off of old restraints, and in

more daring and far-seeing enterprises. Especially was this the case

among the merchants, fired as they were by the great discoveries of the

latter end of the fifteenth century, and hence we notice, throughout

the sixteenth century and especially at its close, that our foreign

trade becomes more extensive than it had ever been before, and the

foundations of our present international commerce were securely laid.

§ 2. FOREIGN TRADE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY—At this point we must

look back for a moment at our foreign trade before this new epoch.

Although our enterprises were by no means large, there was yet a fairly

considerable trade done with the countries in the west of Europe—_i.e._

France, Spain, and the Baltic lands, and especially with the Low

Countries. As England was then almost entirely an agricultural country,

our chief export was wool for the Flemish looms to work up; but there

was also other agricultural produce exported; and likewise some mineral

products. In fact England supplied nearly all Western Europe with

two most important metals, tin and lead; the former coming chiefly

from Cornwall and the latter from Derbyshire, though in neither case

exclusively from those counties. Bodmin was, however, the staple town

{93} for the export of tin. Our huge mineral wealth in coal and iron

was hardly yet touched, even for home use, and none was exported. Our

imports were numerous and varied, their number being balanced, as they

must always be, by the greater bulk and value of our exports of wool

and lead.

A fair amount of trade was done with Portugal and Spain, which sent

us iron and war-horses; Gascony and other parts of France sent their

wines; rich velvets, linens, and fine cloths were imported from Ghent,

Liège, Bruges, and other Flemish manufacturing towns. The ships of the

Hanse merchants brought herrings, wax, timber, fur and amber from the

Baltic countries; and Genoese traders came with silks and velvets and

glass of Italy. And all met one another, as we saw before, in the great

fairs, as at Stourbridge, or in the great trading centre of the Western

world, London.

§ 3. THE VENETIAN FLEET—But our most important trade in the fourteenth

and fifteenth centuries centred round the annual visit of the Venetian

fleet to the southern shores of England. This was a great company of

trading vessels, which left Venice every year upon a visit to England

and Flanders.[31] Our English vessels did not at this time venture

into the Mediterranean, and so all the stores of the Southern European

countries, and more especially the treasures of the East, came to us

through the agency of Venice. Laden with silks, satins, fine damasks

and cottons, and other then costly garments, together with rare Eastern

spices and precious stones, camphor and saffron, this fleet sailed

slowly along the shores of the Mediterranean, trading at the ports of

Italy, South France and Spain, till it passed through the Straits of

Gibraltar, and at length came up the Channel, and {94} reached our

southern ports. When it had reached the Downs, the fleet broke up for

a time, some vessels putting in at Sandwich, Rye, and other towns, and

a large number stopping at Southampton. Others went on to Flanders.

Several days, sometimes weeks, were spent in exchanging their valuable

cargoes for English goods, chiefly wool, the balance being paid over in

gold, and then the various portions of the great fleet would reunite

again, and set sail for Venice, from which they were often absent for

nearly a twelvemonth. This annual visit was very convenient for English

traders, before our own merchants ventured far away from our coasts.

But it is a sign of the increased commercial enterprise of England in

the sixteenth century that this visit then became unprofitable, and the

last time the Venetian fleet came to our shores was in 1587.

[31. Hence the Venetians themselves called it the “Flanders

fleet.”]

§ 4. THE HANSEATIC LEAGUE’S STATION IN LONDON—While our commerce was,

however, not yet so greatly developed, there existed another important

institution carried on by foreign merchants, this time from Germany.

The Hanse, or Hanseatic League, was started in the twelfth century

by some of the leading trading towns of Germany, such as Hamburg

and Lübeck, and after a time these towns formed themselves into a

League for mutual protection among the constant Continental wars, and

became a sort of republic (1241). In another century (by 1360) it

had grown so large and powerful that ninety cities belonged to the

confederacy, and it had branches or depots in every important town of

Northern Europe. Of course there was also a branch at London, in the

“Steelyard,” on which spot the Cannon Street Station now stands. This

branch had existed from very early times, and a warehouse was there in

which the German merchants stored their goods. In Richard II.’s time

this building was {95} enlarged, and so it was again in the reign of

Edward IV. Round it dwelt the foreign merchants who formed quite a

little colony in the very heart of mediæval London. Here they held a

kind of chamber of commerce, presided over by an alderman, with two

co-assessors, and nine council-men, and meeting regularly on Wednesday

mornings in every week. The Steelyard colony existed for some hundreds

of years, and taught many valuable commercial lessons to our English

merchants. It provided for us a regular supply of the produce of

Russia, Germany, and Norway, especially timber and naval stores, and

also corn when our English harvest fell short. But as our own merchants

grew more prosperous and their commerce extended, they became jealous

of the German colony. Attacks were made upon it by London mobs, and

Edward VI. actually rescinded its charter. That was the beginning

of the end. Mary restored it for a time, but towards the close of

Elizabeth’s reign (1597) it was finally abolished. This, too, was

another sign of the growth of our own foreign trade.

§ 5. OUR TRADE WITH FLANDERS. ANTWERP IN THE FIFTEENTH AND SIXTEENTH

CENTURIES—We have mentioned before how the eastern ports and harbours

of England used to swarm with small, light craft that plied all the

summer through between our own country and Flanders. We have seen too

that this continuous trade was due to the fact that we supplied the

Flemish looms with wool. Up to the fifteenth century the great Flemish

emporium, to which our English ships plied, was Bruges, but in the

sixteenth century this town quite lost its former glory, and Antwerp

took its place. The change was due to the action of Maximilian, the

Emperor of Germany, to whom Henry VIII. was allied, and who, in revenge

for a rebellion in which Ghent and Bruges took part, caused the canal

{96} which connected Bruges with the sea to be blocked up at Sluys

(1482), and thus English and other ships were compelled to direct

their course to Antwerp, which then became a great and flourishing

port. Antwerp remained without a rival till near the close of the

sixteenth century, and every nation had its representatives there. Our

own consul, to use a modern term, was, at the close of the fifteenth

century, Sir Richard Gresham; and later, in the reign of Henry VIII.,

his celebrated son, the financier and economist, Sir Thomas Gresham.

The fact of our having these representatives there is again a proof

of the growth of trade in the sixteenth century. An Italian author,

Ludovico Guicciardini (who died in 1589), gives a very precise account

of our own commerce with Antwerp at this period, and it is interesting

to note how varied our commerce has by this time become. This is what

he says as to our _imports_: “To England Antwerp sends jewels, precious

stones, silver bullion, quicksilver, wrought silks, gold and silver

cloth and thread, camlets, grograms, spices, drugs, sugar, cotton,

cummin, linens fine and coarse, serges, tapestry, madder, hops in great

quantities, glass, salt, fish, metallic and other merceries of all

sorts; arms of all kinds, ammunition for war, and household furniture.”

As to our _exports_ he tells us: “From England Antwerp receives vast

quantities of coarse and fine draperies, fringes and all other things

of that kind to a great value; the finest wool; excellent saffron, but

in small quantities; much lead and tin; sheep and rabbit skins without

number, and various other sorts of the fine peltry (_i.e._ skins) and

leather; beer, cheese, and other provisions in great quantities; also

Malmsey wines, which the English import from Candia. It is marvellous

to think of the vast quantity of drapery sent by the English into the

Netherlands.” {97}

This list is sufficient to show an extensive trade, and we shall

comment upon one or two items of it in the next chapter. Here we need

only remark upon the great growth of English manufactures of cloth.

§ 6. THE DECAY OF ANTWERP AND RISE OF LONDON AS THE WESTERN

EMPORIUM—But the prosperity of Antwerp did not last quite a century.

Like all Flemish towns it suffered severely under the Spanish invasion,

and the persecutions of the notorious Alva. In 1567 it was ruinously

sacked, and its commerce was forced into new channels, and the disaster

was completed by the sacking of the town again in 1585. Antwerp’s ruin

was London’s gain. Even in 1567, at the time of the first sacking,

many Protestant Flemish merchants fled to England, where, as Sir

Thomas Gresham promised them, they found peace and welcome, and in

their turn gave a great impulse to English commercial prosperity.

Throughout Elizabeth’s reign, in fact, there was a continual influx of

Protestant refugees to our shores, and Elizabeth and her statesmen had

the sagacity to encourage these industrious and wealthy immigrants.

Besides aiding our manufactures, as we shall see later, they aided

our commerce. In 1588 there were 38 Flemish merchants established in

London, who subscribed £5000 towards the defence of England against the

Spanish Armada. The greatness of Antwerp was transferred to London, and

although Amsterdam also gained additional importance in Holland, London

now took the foremost position as the general mart of Europe, where

the new treasures of the two Americas were found side by side with the

products of Europe and the East.

§ 7. THE MERCHANTS AND SEA-CAPTAINS OF THE ELIZABETHAN AGE IN THE NEW

WORLD—It is thus of interest to note how the great Reformation conflict

between Roman Catholic and Protestant in Europe resulted in the

commercial {98} greatness of England. Interesting, also, is the story

of the expansion of commerce in the New World, owing to the attacks of

the great old sea-captains, Drake, Frobisher, and Raleigh, upon the

huge Catholic power of Spain. These attacks were perhaps not much more

than buccaneering exploits, but the leaders of them firmly believed

that they were doing a good service to the cause of Protestantism

and freedom by wounding Spain wherever they could. And possibly they

were right. Their wondrous voyages stimulated others, likewise, to

set out on far and venturesome expeditions. Men dreamt of a northern

passage to India, and although Willoughby’s expedition failed, one of

his ships under Richard Chancellor reached Archangel, and thus opened

up a direct trade with Russia; so that in 1554 a company was formed

specially for this trade. It was, too, in Elizabeth’s reign that the

merchants of Southampton entered upon the trade with the coast of

Guinea, and gained much wealth from its gold-dust and ivory. Sir John

Hawkins engaged in the slave-trade between Africa and the new fields

of labour in America. Bristol fishermen sailed across the dreaded

Atlantic to the cod-fisheries off Newfoundland, and at the close of

Elizabeth’s reign English ships began to rival the Portuguese in the

Polar whale-fisheries.

This reign witnessed also the rise of the great commercial Companies.

The company of Merchant Adventurers had indeed existed since Henry

VII.’s time, having been formed in imitation of the Hanseatic League.

The Russian Company of 1554 was formed upon the model of this earlier

company; and then came the foundation of the great East India Company.

It was due to the results of Drake’s far-famed voyage round the world,

which took three years, 1577–80. Shortly after {99} his return

it was proposed to found “a company for such as trade beyond the

equinoctial line,” but a long delay took place, and finally a company

was incorporated for the more definite object of trading with the East

Indies. The date of this famous incorporation was 1600, and in 1601

Captain Lancaster made the first regular trading voyage on its behalf.

To this modest beginning we owe our present Indian Empire.

§ 8. REMARKS ON THE SIGNS AND CAUSES OF THE EXPANSION OF TRADE—Now,

if we look at the broad features that mark the growth of sixteenth

century trade, we shall see that it was closely connected with

England’s decision to abide by the Protestant cause. It was that which

won her the friendship of the Flemish merchants; it was the religious

disturbances in Flanders that gained for London the commercial

supremacy of Europe; it was our quarrel with Roman Catholic Spain that

inspired the voyages of Drake and Hawkins, and thus caused others to

venture forth into new and perilous seas, over which in course of time

the English merchants sailed almost without a rival. And, as we have

shown, the signs of the expansion of England are seen in the fall of

the Hanse settlement in London, and the stoppage of the visits of the

Venetian fleet. On the other hand the rapid growth of the port of

Bristol in the west witnessed to fresh trade with the New World; and

the rise of Boston and Hull[32] on the east coast is significant as

showing the development of our Northern and Baltic trade, even to the

extent of rivalling the great Hanse towns. A great stimulus had arisen,

and England was now taking a leading position among the nations of the

world. It is now our business to survey it as it existed in the time of

Elizabeth.

[32. They had always been important (cf. p. 64).]

{100}

CHAPTER III

ELIZABETHAN ENGLAND

§ 1. PROSPERITY AND PAUPERISM—The reign of Elizabeth is generally

regarded as prosperous, and so upon the whole it was. But she had come

to the throne with a legacy of pauperism from her father, Henry VIII.,

and from her father’s counsellors, who guided her weak brother, Edward

VI. Nor had Mary helped to alleviate it. Social discontent was at

Elizabeth’s accession prevalent, and it is to her credit as a sovereign

that at her death danger from that source had passed away. This was

partly due to the growth of wealth and industry throughout the kingdom,

to the great gains of our foreign trade, and to the rapid expansion of

our manufactures. But pauperism was now a permanent evil, and legal

measures had to be taken for its relief. One abiding cause of it was

the persistent enclosures which still went on, together with the new

developments in agriculture. Nevertheless, before the close of her

reign the bulk of the people became contented and comfortable, owing to

the prolonged peace which prevailed. The merchants and landed gentry

were rich; the farmers and master-manufacturers were prosperous; even

the artisans and labourers were not hopelessly poor, though to call

them well-off would be a misstatement. We may now see how the wealth of

the first two classes was produced.

§ 2. THE GROWTH OF MANUFACTURES—The economic transition before alluded

to (p. 55), by which England developed from a wool-exporting into

a wool-manufacturing country, had in Elizabeth’s reign almost been

completed. {101} The woollen manufacture had become an important

element in the national wealth. England no longer sent her wool to be

manufactured in Flanders, although a good deal of it was dyed there.

It was now worked up at home, and the manufacturing population was

not confined to the towns only, but spread all over the country; and

both spinning and weaving afforded direct employment for an increasing

number of workmen, while even in agricultural villages it was a

frequent bye-industry. The worsted trade, of which Norwich was still

the centre, spread over all the Eastern counties. The broad-cloths

of the West of England took the highest place among English woollen

stuffs. Even the North, which had lagged so far behind the South in

industrial development, ever since the harrying it underwent at the

hands of William the Norman, began now to show signs of activity and

new life. It had, in this period, developed special manufactures of its

own, and Manchester friezes, York coverlets, and Halifax cloth now held

their own amongst the other manufactures of the country.

§ 3. MONOPOLIES OF MANUFACTURING TOWNS—One important sign of the growth

of manufactures is seen in the fruitless attempts made in the sixteenth

century to confine a particular manufacture to a particular town. This

is a sure sign that the manufacture of that article was increasing

in country districts, and that competition was operating in a new

and unexpected way upon the older industries. An example of this may

be seen in the monopoly granted by Parliament in Henry VIII.’s reign

(1530) to Bridport in Dorsetshire, “for the making of cables, hawsers,

ropes, and all other tackling.” This monopoly was granted upon the

complaint made by the citizens of Bridport, that their town “was like

to be utterly {102} decayed,” owing to the competition of “the people

of the adjacent parts,” who were therefore by this monopoly forbidden

to make any sort of rope. The only result of this measure, however,

was to transfer the rope-making industry from Dorset to Yorkshire, and

Bridport was in a worse plight than before.

In the same reign (1534), the inhabitants of Worcester, Evesham,

Droitwich, Kidderminster, and Bromsgrove, then the only towns in

Worcestershire, complained that “divers persons _dwelling in the

hamlets, thorps, and villages_ of the county made all manner of

cloths, and exercised shearing, fulling, and weaving within their own

houses, to the great depopulation of the city and towns.” A monopoly

was granted to the towns, the only result of which was that they

became worse off than before, a great portion of the local industry

being transferred to Leeds. A little later (1544) the citizens of

York complain of the competition of “sundry evil-disposed persons

and apprentices,” who had “withdrawn themselves out of the city

into the country,” and competed with York in the manufacture of

coverlets and blanketings. York got a monopoly, but her manufactures

gained nothing thereby. Again, in 1552 Edward VI. enacted that the

manufacture of hats, coverlets, and diapers should be confined to

Norwich and the market towns of Norfolk. Elizabeth granted numerous

_trading_ monopolies[33] for the sale of special articles, but the

monopoly system was opposed to the new competitive spirit of the

age. In 1601 a great many of the most obnoxious were withdrawn, and

by that time few remained imposed upon the manufacture of goods. The

above illustrations, however, are interesting as showing the growth of

manufactures in all parts of the kingdom, and in rural districts (cf.

p. 65). {103} They are useful also as glaring instances of the folly

of protective enactments.

[33. See note 11_a_, p. 246, on Monopolies.]

§ 4. OUR EXPORTS OF MANUFACTURES—Besides these monopolies we have ample

evidence of the growth of our cloth manufactures in the statements made

by Ludovico Guicciardini (1523–89), as to our exports to Antwerp. “It

is marvellous,” he says, “to think of the vast quantity of drapery sent

by the English into the Netherlands, being undoubtedly one year with

another above 200,000 pieces of all kinds, which, at the most moderate

rate of 25 crowns per piece, is 5,000,000 crowns, so that these and

other merchandise brought by the English to us, or carried from us

to them, may make the annual amount to more than 12,000,000 crowns,”

which is equivalent to some £2,400,000. One great cause of our progress

in manufactures was the immigration of persecuted Dutch and Flemish

Protestants, previously mentioned, which formed so important a feature

in the new growth of manufactures and agriculture in Elizabethan

England.

§ 5. THE FLEMISH IMMIGRATION IN THIS REIGN—This influx of foreign

manufacturers and workmen began to occur soon after Elizabeth’s

accession, when the death of Mary had relieved men from the fear of

Romish persecution. A numerous body of Flemings came over in 1561,

and starting from Deal, spread to Sandwich, Rye, and other parts of

Kent. Another body settled in Yarmouth, and over Norfolk generally.

In 1570 there were 4000 natives of the Netherlands in Norwich alone.

And after the sack of Antwerp in 1585, the immigration largely

increased. The new arrivals introduced or improved many manufactures,

such as those of cutlery, clock-making, hats, and pottery. But the

greatest improvements they made were in weaving and lace-making. They

greatly developed “every sort of workmanship in wool and flax.” {104}

The lace manufacture was introduced by refugees from Alençon and

Valenciennes into Cranfield (Beds), and from that town it extended

to Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire, and Northamptonshire; while other

immigrants founded the manufacture of the well-known Honiton lace in

Devon. It is interesting thus to notice how much we owed to foreign

teachers in earlier times, for the reigns of Edward III., Elizabeth,

and later of Charles II. were all signalized by large influxes of

people from the Low Countries, bringing with them increased skill, and

often considerable capital.

An interesting testimony to the influence of these refugees is afforded

by Harrison in his _Description of England_ (in the time of Elizabeth).

He says about our wool: “In time past the use of this commodity

consisted for the most part in cloth and woolsteds; but now, _by means

of strangers succoured here from domestic persecution_, the same hath

been employed unto sundry other uses; as mockados, bays, vellures,

grograines, &c., whereby the makers have reaped no small commodity.”

§ 6. AGRICULTURE—The growth of our manufactures helped of course to

promote sheep farming, not only on the part of great land-owners,

but even of ordinary moderate farmers. Upon this point also Harrison

mentions an important fact: “And there is never an husbandman (for

now I speak not of our great sheep-masters, of whom some one man hath

20,000) but hath more or less of this cattle (sheep) feeding on his

fallows and short grounds, which yield the finer fleece.” Besides sheep

farming, however, which had long since risen into importance, our

agriculture had improved in several respects. Here foreign influence

is again visible. Already a change in the mode of cultivation had been

brought about, not so great as that which took place in {105} the two

succeeding centuries, but still quite perceptible. A larger capital

was brought to bear upon the land, the breed of horses and cattle was

improved, and more intelligent use was made of manure and dressings.

It was said that one acre under the new system produced as much as two

did under the old. In addition to these improvements, the coming of

the Flemings and Dutch introduced several new vegetables. The refugees

cultivated in their gardens, carrots, celery, and cabbages, which were

previously either unknown or very scarce in this country. The most

important service to agriculture, however, was the introduction of the

hop, which is said to have been brought to England by some Flemish,

as early as 1524, and later in the century, in Elizabeth’s reign, the

hop-gardens of Kent had already become famous, and have remained so

ever since. The introduction of hops of course led the way to a better

method of brewing beer, and from this time forward beer became a

national beverage.[34]

[34. The malt liquor, of course, had been in general use at a

much earlier period.]

§ 7. SOCIAL COMFORTS—All this increase of the national wealth, in

commerce, manufactures, and agriculture, produced important changes

in the mode of living. The standard of comfort became higher. Food

became more wholesome. As agriculture improved, and animals could be

kept through the winter with greater ease, salt meat and salt fish

no longer formed the staple food of the lower classes for half the

year. Brickmaking had been rediscovered about 1450; and by the time

of Elizabeth the wooden, or wattled houses (p. 19) had generally been

replaced, at least among all but the poorest class, with dwellings of

brick and stone. The introduction of chimneys and the lavish use of

glass also helped to {106} improve the people’s dwellings; and indeed

the houses of the rich merchants, or the lords of the manors, were now

quite luxuriously furnished. Carpets had superseded the old filthy

flooring of rushes; pillows and cushions were found in all decent

houses; and the quantity of carved woodwork of this period shows that

men cared for something more than mere utility in their surroundings.

The lavishness of new wealth was seen, too, in a certain love of

display, of colour, of “purple and fine linen,” which characterizes

the dress of the Elizabethan age. The old sober life and thought of

mediæval England had been entirely revolutionized by the sudden opening

of the almost fabulous glories of the New World, and men revelled

joyously in the new prospects of the wealth of the wondrous West. But

yet there were the seeds of pauperism in the land, and all the wealth

of the merchants and the adventurers of Elizabethan England did not

prevent the sure and inevitable Nemesis that followed upon the crimes

and follies of Elizabeth’s father.

§ 8. THE CONDITION OF THE LABOURERS—For it is impossible, in glancing

at the condition of labour in the days of Elizabeth, to forget the

disastrous economic changes wrought by the criminal follies of Henry

VIII. and his followers since the earlier days of the fifteenth

century. Compared with the fifteenth century, the poverty of the

wage-earners in Elizabeth’s reign was great indeed, though even then

not so bad as it subsequently became. But the whole of the next two

centuries show a steady deterioration in the lot of the English

labourer and artisan. Of course the condition of labour will be best

seen by taking examples of the wages then given. In Elizabeth’s reign,

then, we may reckon the yearly wages of an agricultural labourer at

about £8, 4_s._, and the cost of living, which now included house rent,

formerly {107} unknown, at £8, thus leaving a very narrow margin for

contingencies. Daily wages were (in 1564)—for artisans, 8_d._ a day in

winter and 9_d._ in summer; for labourers, 6_d._ in winter and 7_d._ in

summer, and in harvest-time occasionally 8_d._ or even 10_d._ This is

not very much more than the wages paid at the close of the fifteenth

century (viz. artisans 3_s._ a week, and labourers 2_s._), but the

price of food had risen almost to three times the old average.

§ 9. ASSESSMENT OF WAGES BY JUSTICES. THE FIRST POOR LAW—Wages in

husbandry and in handicrafts were now fixed, under the statute 5

Elizabeth, cap. 4 (1563),[35] by the justices in quarter sessions, and

of course these employers of labour would hardly fix an unnecessarily

high rate of wages; and, what is more, wages did actually conform to

their assessments in spite of the continual rise in the price of the

necessaries of life. It is not surprising that under these conditions

the problem of pauperism in England speedily took a very pronounced

form. Even in 1541, under Henry VIII., it was found that some system

of relief was necessary; but a system of voluntary contributions was

for a time sufficient to meet the difficulty. But in Edward VI.’s reign

pauperism began to increase alarmingly, though now we see that it was

only natural; and finally Elizabeth found it necessary to institute

a regular system of poor-law relief. In 1601, therefore, by Act 43

Elizabeth, cap. 3, it was legally enacted that all property should be

duly assessed by regular assessors, in order that rates might be levied

for the relief of pauperism. After a few renewals this law was made

permanent in Charles I.’s reign (1641), and continued legally in force

till 1812; and its general principles lasted till 1835. The effect

of this poor law {108} was to keep the wages of labour at the very

lowest possible level, for now the employers (chiefly, at that time,

the land-owners) knew that if a labourer’s wages could not maintain

him, he would have to be relieved from the rates. In other words, part

of the labourers’ wages would be, and was, paid by the general public,

and thus expense would be saved to individual employers. This state of

things did not, perhaps, ensue immediately upon the passing of this

law, but became more common later. The results of the system were seen

more clearly in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, to which we

shall subsequently refer.[36]

[35. Commonly known as the _Act of Apprenticeship_ (cf. note

12, p. 247).]

[36. See note 12, p 247, on _Intention of Act_.]

§ 10. POPULATION—The marked improvement in agriculture and the increase

of wealth brought with them, at the close of the sixteenth century,

an equally marked increase of population. We saw that at the time

of Domesday the population of England was under two millions. When

the poll-tax of 1377 was levied, in the last year of Edward III.’s

reign, it had not much increased, being at most not more than two and

a quarter millions, according to careful calculations based upon the

returns of this tax. But by the end of Elizabeth’s reign it had rapidly

risen to some 5,000,000 souls, at which figure it remained for some

hundred and fifty years longer. The bulk of the population was still in

the southern half of the country, although the north was now becoming

more prosperous, owing to the extension of manufactures. It will be

seen that England was by no means overcrowded, and yet people were

found who complained of the increase of population. William Harrison in

his _Description of England_ (written between 1577–87) remarks: “Some

also do grudge at the great increase of people in these days, thinking

a necessary brood of cattle far better than {109} a superfluous

augmentation of mankind. But,” he adds severely, “I can liken such men

best unto the Pope or the Devil,” and adds that in case of invasion

they will find “that a wall of men is far better than stacks of corn

and bags of money.” Even without the fear of invasion before our eyes,

it is well for us to-day not to forget this latter sentence in the

modern international race for wealth.

CHAPTER IV

PROGRESS OF AGRICULTURE IN THE SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES

§ 1. RÉSUMÉ OF PROGRESS SINCE THIRTEENTH CENTURY—It will be remembered

that great agricultural changes had taken place since Henry III.’s

reign. For a century or so after his death (1272) the land-owner was

also a cultivator, living upon his land and owning a large amount of

capital in the form of stock, which he let out under the stock and

land lease system. But after the Great Plague (1348) this method of

cultivation by capitalist land-owners ceased, except in the one case of

sheep farming; the land-owner became generally a mere rent receiver;

and agriculture consequently suffered. Marling, for instance, fell into

disuse, and the breed of sheep, it is said, deteriorated somewhat. The

great feature of the change was the transformation of large tracts

of arable land into pasture for sheep, and the growth of enclosures

for the sake of the same animal. The landlords rapidly proceeded

to raise their rents, till, in the sixteenth century, extortionate

renting became so common that Bishop Latimer, and Fitzherbert, the

{110} author of a useful work on surveying, complained about it both

in sermons and other writings. Hence English agriculture did not

materially improve between the days of Henry III. and of Elizabeth.

But in this queen’s reign, as we saw, several improvements were made

under the influence of foreign refugees. For the inhabitants of the

Low Countries and Holland have been our pioneers not only in commerce

and finance, but in agriculture also. It was now these people who

introduced into England the cultivation of artificial grasses and

of winter roots, the want of which, it will be remembered, greatly

embarrassed the English farmer in the mediæval winter. The introduction

of hops also was of great importance.

§ 2. PROGRESS IN JAMES I.’S REIGN. INFLUENCE OF LANDLORDS—Of course the

greatest industrial progress of this period was made in the direction

of foreign trade, and in James’s reign progress in agriculture was slow

as compared with that in commerce, but it was substantial—substantial

enough, at any rate, for the landlords to exact an increased

competitive rent, as we know from Norden’s work, _The Surveyor’s

Dialogue_ (1607). It was even complained that the actions of the

landlords tended to discourage progress, for when a tenant wished to

renew a lease he was threatened with dispossession if he did not pay an

increased rent for the very improvements he had made himself. However,

from the facts given by Norden, and also by another writer—Markham,

the author of _The English Husbandman_ (1613)—it is evident that there

was considerable improvement, development, and variety now shown

in English agriculture. The special characteristic feature of the

seventeenth century is the utilization of the fallow for roots, though

these had been known in gardens in the previous century. Land was

still largely cultivated in common fields, and was, of course, {111}

much subdivided. The most fertile land was to be found in Huntingdon,

Bedford, and Cambridge shires, the next best being in Northampton,

Kent, Essex, Berkshire, and Hertfordshire.

§ 3. WRITERS ON AGRICULTURE. IMPROVEMENTS. GAME—Oxen were still

preferred to horses; but a noticeable improvement is the attention

now paid to the various kinds of manures, on which subject Markham

was the first to write specially. The fact that agriculture was now

made the topic of various treatises proves that important development

was taking place. Besides the works already mentioned, we have

the _Systema Agriculturæ_ by Worridge, a farmer of Hampshire, the

second edition of which appeared in 1675. He is a strong advocate

of enclosures, as against the old common field system, on the plea

that the former is more conducive to high farming; but he also is in

favour of small enclosed farms. Though at first local and somewhat

spasmodic, and hindered by the landlord’s power of appropriating the

results of increased skill on the part of the tenant, under the head

of “indestructible powers of the soil,” yet the progress made was

sufficient to double the population of England. A curious fact in the

agriculture of the seventeenth century may be here mentioned; I mean

the existence of a very large amount of waste land, and the use made

of it for purposes of breeding game. At that time it is evident that

killing game was not the exclusive right of the land-owners, but was a

common privilege. Large quantities of game were sold, and at a cheap

price, and “fowling” must evidently have been an important item in the

farmer’s means of livelihood.

§ 4. DRAINAGE OF THE FENS—A most important feature in the development

of agriculture in the Eastern counties was the drainage of the

fens—_i.e._ all that large district {112} which extends inward

from the Wash into the counties of Lincoln, Cambridge, Northampton,

Huntingdon, Norfolk and Suffolk. This district had been reclaimed by

the Romans, and had been then a fertile country. But in the time of the

Domesday Book it was once again a mere marsh, owing to incursions of

the sea, which the English at that time had not the ability to prevent.

Although even in 1436, and subsequently, partial attempts had been made

to reclaim this vast area, the first effectual effort was begun only

in 1634, by the Earl of Bedford, who got 95,000 acres of the reclaimed

land as a reward for his undertaking. The contract was fulfilled in

1649, and a corporation was formed to manage the “Bedford level,” as

it was now called, in 1688. The reclaiming of so much land naturally

increased the prosperity of the counties in which it stood, and their

agriculture flourished considerably in consequence, Bedfordshire for

instance being now the most exclusively agricultural county in the

kingdom.

§ 5. RISE OF PRICE OF CORN, AND OF RENT—The price of corn, meanwhile,

was now steadily rising. From 1401 to 1540—_i.e._ before the rise

in prices and the debasement of the coinages—the average price had

been six shillings per quarter; after prices had recovered from their

inflation and settled down to a general average once more, taking the

price from 1603 to 1702, corn was forty-one shillings per quarter. The

average produce had apparently declined since the fifteenth and before

the improvements of the seventeenth century. In the former period it

was about twelve bushels per acre, and in the fourteenth century eleven

bushels; but Gregory King, writing in the seventeenth century, only

gives ten bushels as the average of his time. His estimate, however, is

doubted. At the same time, rent had risen from the sixpence per acre of

the fifteenth century to four shillings, according {113} to Professor

Rogers, or even 5_s._ 6_d._ according to King, who says the gains of

the farmer of his time are very small, and that rents were more than

doubled between 1600 and 1699. We will reserve the topic of the rise

of rent, however, for a separate section, and keep to the agricultural

developments of the period.

§ 6. SPECIAL FEATURES OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. POPULARITY OF

AGRICULTURE—As the use of winter roots had been the special feature

of the seventeenth century, so the feature of the eighteenth was the

extension of artificial pasture and the increased use of clover,

sainfoin, and rye-grass; not, of course, that these had been hitherto

unknown, but now their seeds are regularly bought and used by any

farmer who knew his business. At first, like all other processes of

agriculture, the development was very slow and gradual, but it went

on steadily nevertheless. A great stimulus to progress was given

by the fact that the English gentlemen of the eighteenth century

developed quite a passion for agriculture as a hobby, and it became

a fashionable pursuit for all people of any means, citizens and

professional men joining in it as a kind of bye-industry, as well as

farmers and land-owners who made it their business. Arthur Young, the

great agricultural writer of this century, declares that “the farming

tribe is now made up of all classes, from a duke to an apprentice.”

But two important mistakes were made in the eighteenth century, and

they have not ceased to exist in the nineteenth, causing very largely

the distress under which English agriculture has for some time been

labouring. They are the mistakes of occupying too much land with

insufficient capital, and of not keeping regular and detailed accounts.

Still, between 1720 and 1760, progress was very rapid, and noble

land-owners made great efforts to improve their estates, in {114}

order thereby to raise their rents and increase their profits, in

the hope of outdoing the great merchant princes who had now appeared

upon the scene. They thus became in a way the pioneers of agricultural

progress, the principal result of their efforts being seen in the

increased number and quality of the stock now kept on farms.

§ 7. IMPROVEMENTS OF CATTLE, AND IN THE PRODUCTIVENESS OF LAND.

STATISTICS—The extended cultivation of winter roots, clover, and other

grasses, naturally made it far easier for the farmer to feed his

animals in the winter; and the improvement in stock followed closely

upon the improvement in fodder. The abundance of stock, too, had again

a beneficial result in the increased qualities of manure produced, and

the utilization of this fertilizer was scientifically developed. The

useful, though costly, process of marling was again revived, and was

advocated by Arthur Young; soils were also treated with clay, chalk, or

lime. So great was the improvement thus made, that the productiveness

of land in the eighteenth century rose to four times that of the

thirteenth century, when five bushels or eight bushels of corn per acre

was the average. Stock, also, was similarly improved; an eighteenth

century fatted ox often weighed 1200 lbs., while hitherto, from the

fourteenth to the end of the seventeenth century, the weight had not

been usually much above 400 lbs. The weight of the fleece of sheep had

also increased quite four times. Population being even then small, a

considerable quantity of corn was exported, the British farmer being

also protected from foreign competition by the corn laws (made in

Charles II.’s reign, 1661 and 1664), forbidding importation of corn,

except when it rose to famine prices. Young estimated the acreage of

the country at 32,000,000 acres (King put it {115} at 22,000,000 in

the seventeenth century); its value (at thirty-three and one-half

years’ purchase) was, says Young, £536,000,000. The value of stock he

places at nearly £110,000,000, and estimates the wheat and rye crop at

over 9,000,000 quarters per annum, barley at 11,500,000 quarters, and

oats at 10,250,000 quarters. The rent of land had risen to nearly ten

shillings an acre.

§ 8. WRONG DONE TO SMALL LAND-OWNERS BY THE STATUTE OF FRAUDS—The

development and success of English agriculture, from 1700 to 1765

or 1770, was thus remarkable and extensive; but it was not effected

without considerable economic changes and great and unnecessary

suffering among two important classes of the population—the yeomen

or small freeholders, and the agricultural labourers. The decay of

the yeomanry, indeed, forms a sad interlude in the growing prosperity

of the country. The position of many small land-owners had been

greatly and disastrously affected by the Statute of Frauds, passed

in the time of Charles II. By this extraordinary and high-handed Act

it was decreed that after July 24th, 1677, all interests in land

whatsoever, if created by any other process except by deed, should be

treated as tenancies at will only, any law or usage to the contrary

notwithstanding. The intention, apparently, of those who passed

this law—an intention which resulted successfully—was to extinguish

all those numerous small freeholders who had no written evidence to

prove that they held their lands, as they had done for centuries,

on condition of paying a small fixed and customary rent. This Act

certainly succeeded in dispossessing many of the class at which it

was aimed; but there were yet a certain number against whom it was

inoperative; hence, at the end of the seventeenth century, twenty

years or so {116} after this Act, Gregory King is able to estimate

that there were 180,000 freeholders in England, including, of course,

the larger owners. But by the time of Arthur Young these also had

disappeared, or at least were rapidly disappearing, and he sincerely

regrets “to see their lands now in the hands of monopolizing lords.”

§ 9. CAUSES OF THE DECAY OF THE YEOMANRY—The cause was partly political

and partly social. After the revolution of 1688, the landed gentry

became politically and socially supreme, and any successful merchant

prince—and these were not few—who wished to gain a footing sought, in

the first place, to imitate them by becoming a great land-owner; hence

it became quite a policy to buy out the smaller farmers, and they were

often practically compelled to sell their holdings. At the same time,

the custom of primogeniture and strict settlements prevented land

from being much subdivided, so that small or divided estates never

came into the market for the smaller freeholders to buy. It is also

certain that this result was accelerated by the fact that small farms

no longer paid under the old system of agriculture, and the new system

involved an outlay that the yeoman could not afford. Farming on a large

scale became more necessary, and this again assisted in extinguishing

the smaller men, for large enclosures were made by the landed gentry

in spite of feeble opposition from the yeomen, who, however, could

rarely afford to pay the law costs necessary to put a stop to the

encroachments of their greater neighbours. Thus the yeomen lost their

rights in the common lands, and at the same time the new agriculture

involved a breaking up of the old common field system, which could not

possibly hold its own against the modern improvements.

§ 10. GREAT INCREASE OF ENCLOSURES—The abolition of {117} the old

system was necessary, but the manner in which it was carried out was

disastrous. The enclosures of the landed gentry were often carried

on with little regard to the interests of the smaller tenants and

freeholders, who, in fact, suffered greatly; and in this present

age English agriculture is, in a large measure, still feeling the

subsequent effects of the change, while many people are advocating

a partial return to small holdings, cultivated, however, with the

improved experience given by modern agricultural progress. Apparently,

this was not the first occasion on which the land-owners had made

enclosures and encroached upon the common lands of their poorer

neighbours, and not merely upon the waste; but the rapidity and

boldness of the enclosing operations in the eighteenth century far

surpassed anything in previous times. Between 1710 and 1760, for

instance, 334,974 acres were enclosed; and between 1760 and 1843 the

number rose to 7,000,000.

§ 11. BENEFITS OF ENCLOSURES AS COMPARED WITH THE OLD COMMON FIELDS—The

benefits of the enclosure system were, however, unmistakable, for the

cultivation of common fields under the old system was, as Arthur Young

assures us, miserably poor. The arable land of each village under

this system was still divided into three great strips, subdivided by

“baulks” three yards wide. Every farmer would own one piece of land

in each strip—probably more—and all alike were bound to follow the

customary tillage; this was to leave one strip fallow every year,

while on one of the other two wheat was always grown, the third being

occupied by barley or oats, pease, or tares. The meadows, also, were

still held in common, every man having his own plot up to hay harvest,

after which the fences were thrown down, and all householders’ cattle

were allowed to graze on it freely, {118} while for the next crop the

plots were redistributed. Every farmer also had the right of pasture

on the waste. This system produced results miserably inferior to those

gained on enclosed lands, the crop of wheat in one instance being,

according to Young, only seventeen or eighteen bushels per acre, as

against twenty-six bushels on enclosures. Similarly, the fleece of

sheep pastured on common fields weighed only 3⁠½ lbs., as compared

with 9 lbs. on enclosures. It is noticeable, too, that Kent, where much

land had for a long time been enclosed and cultivated, was reckoned in

Young’s time the best cultivated and most fertile county in England.

Norfolk, also, was pre-eminent for good husbandry, in its excellent

rotation of crops and culture of clover, rye-grass, and winter roots,

due, said Young, in 1770, “to the division of the county chiefly into

large farms,” and, it must be added, to unscrupulous enclosure.

§ 12. THE RISE IN RENT—The farmer himself, however, was heavily taxed

for his land, and though the high prices he got for his corn up to the

repeal of the corn laws enabled him to pay it, his rent was certainly

at a very high figure. The rise had begun after the dissolution of the

monasteries in the sixteenth century, though in that period the rise

was slow. But Latimer asserts that his father only paid £3 or £4 for a

holding which in the next generation was rented at £16, the increased

figure being only partially accounted for by the general rise in

prices. In the seventeenth century, according to King, rents were more

than doubled, and the sixpence per acre of mediæval times must have

seemed almost mythical. The Belvoir estate, the property of the Dukes

of Rutland, who are spoken of as indulgent landlords, forms a good

example of the rise of rent in the two following centuries. In 1692

land is found rented at 3_s._ 9⁠¼_d._ an acre, and a little {119}

later at 4_s._ 1⁠½_d._ By the year 1799 the same land had risen to

19_s._ 3⁠¾_d._, with a further rise in 1812 to 25_s._ 8⁠¾_d._

In 1830 it was at 25_s._ 1⁠¾_d._, but in 1850 had risen to 38_s._

8_d._, that is about ten times the seventeenth century rent. This

enormous rise was not by any means due solely to increase of skill in

agricultural industry, but was largely derived from increased economy

in production, or, in other words, from the oppression and degradation

of the agricultural labourer.

§ 13. THE FALL IN WAGES—This degradation was brought about by the

system of assessment[37] of wages which we noticed in Elizabeth’s

reign, a system by which the labourer was forced by law to accept

the wages which the justices (generally the landed proprietors,

his employers) arranged to give him. It is not the business of an

historian to make charges against a class, but to put facts in their

due perspective. Therefore without comment upon the action of the

justices in this matter I shall merely refer to one or two of these

assessments and show their effect upon the condition of labour,

especially of agricultural labour, which occupied more than one-third

of the working classes. Speaking generally, we may quote Professor

Rogers’ remark, that “if we suppose the ordinary labourer to get 3_s._

6_d._ a week throughout the year, by adding his harvest allowance to

his winter wages, it would have taken him more than forty weeks to earn

the provisions which in 1495 he could have got with fifteen weeks’

labour, while the artisan would be obliged to have given thirty-two

weeks’ work for the same result.” To give details, we may first quote,

as an example, the Rutland magistrates’ assessment, in April 1610. The

wages of an ordinary agricultural labourer {120} are put at 7_d._ a

day from Easter to Michaelmas, and at 6_d._ from Michaelmas to Easter.

Artisans get 10_d._ or 9_d._ in summer, and 8_d._ in winter. Now, the

price of food was 75 per cent. dearer than in 1564, while the rate of

wages are about the same; and compared with (say) 1495, food was three,

or even four, times dearer. Another assessment, in Essex in 1661,

allows 1_s._ a day in winter, and 1_s._ 2_d._ in summer, for ordinary

labour. But, in 1661, the price of wheat (70_s._ 6_d._ a quarter) was

just double the price of 1610 (35_s._ 2⁠½_d._). The labourer was

worse off than ever. Another typical assessment is that of Warwick,

in 1684, when wages of labourers are fixed at 8_d._ a day in summer,

7_d._ in winter; of artisans at 1_s._ a day. At this period Professor

Rogers reckons the yearly earnings of an artisan at £15, 13_s._; of a

farm labourer at £10, 8_s._ 8_d._, exclusive of harvest work; while the

cost of a year’s stock of provisions was £14, 11_s._ 6_d._ It is true

that at this period the labourer still possessed certain advantages,

such as common rights, which, besides providing fuel, enabled them to

keep cows and pigs and poultry on the waste. Their cottages, too, were

often rent free, being built upon the waste, while each cottage, by

the Act of Elizabeth, was supposed to have a piece of land attached to

it, though this provision was frequently evaded. But yet it is evident

that, even allowing for these privileges, which, after all, were now

being rapidly curtailed, the ordinary agricultural labourer—that is,

the mass of the wage-earning population—must have found it hard work to

live decently. By the beginning of the eighteenth century his condition

had sunk to one of great poverty. The ordinary peasant, in 1725, for

instance, would not earn more than £13 or about £15 a year; artisans

could not gain more than £15, 13_s._; while the cost of the stock of

provisions was £16, 2_s._ 3_d._ Thus {121} the husbandman who, in

1495, could get a similar stock of food by fifteen weeks’ work, and the

artisan who could have earned it in ten weeks, could not feed himself

in 1725 with a whole year’s labour. His wages had to be supplemented

out of the rates; and there was but little alteration in these rates

till the middle of the eighteenth century. But about that time (1750)

he had begun to share in the general prosperity caused by the success

of the new agriculture and the growth of trade and manufactures.

The evil, however, had been done, and although a short period of

prosperity, chiefly due to the advance made by the new agriculture,

cheered the labourer for a time, his condition after the Industrial

Revolution again rapidly deteriorated, till we find him at the end of

the eighteenth century and for some time afterwards in a condition of

chronic misery.

[37. As to the alleged futility of these assessments see

_Industry in England_, p. 257.]

CHAPTER V

COMMERCE AND WAR IN THE SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES

§ 1. ENGLAND A COMMERCIAL POWER—In glancing over the progress of

foreign trade in the time of Elizabeth, we noticed that our war with

Spain was due to commercial as well as religious causes. The opening

up of the New World made a struggle for power in the West almost

inevitable among European nations; the new route to India _viâ_ the

Cape of Good Hope, discovered by Vasco da Gama, made another struggle

for commercial supremacy as inevitable in the far East. In the reign

of Henry VIII. we find, from one of his Statutes, that Malaga had

been {122} the farthest port to which at this time English seamen

yet ventured. For a century or more after the discoveries of Columbus

and da Gama, Spain and Portugal, and a little later on Holland, had

practically a monopoly both of the Eastern and Western trade. But now a

change had come. The Englishmen of the Elizabethan age cast off their

fear of Spain, entered into rivalry with Holland, and finally made

England the supreme commercial power of the modern world. The history

of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is a continuous record of

their struggles to attain this object.

§ 2. THE BEGINNINGS OF THE STRUGGLE WITH SPAIN—In the last quarter of

the sixteenth century Elizabeth had entered (1579) into an alliance,

offensive and defensive, with Holland against Spain. The motive of the

alliance was partly religious, but the shrewdness of the queen and

her statesmen no doubt foresaw more than spiritual advantages to be

gained thereby. After the alliance, Drake and the other great naval

captains of that day began a system of buccaneering annoyances to

Spanish commerce. The Spanish and Portuguese trade and factories in

the East were considered the lawful prizes of the English and their

allies the Dutch. The latter, as all know, were more successful at

first than we were, and soon established an Oriental Empire in the

Indian Archipelago. But at the very end of her reign England had

prospered sufficiently for Elizabeth to grant charters to the Levant

Company, and its far greater companion the East India Company. Then,

when a fresh war with Spain was imminent, England wisely began to plant

colonies in North America, at the suggestion of Sir Walter Raleigh; and

after one or two other abortive attempts, Virginia was successfully

founded by the London Company in 1609, and became a Crown colony in

1624. {123} After this, as every one knows, colonies grew rapidly on

the strip of coast between the Alleghany Mountains and the Atlantic.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the world the East India Company was

slowly gaining ground, and founding English agencies or “factories,”

that of Surat (in 1612) being the most important. As yet we had not

come into open conflict with Spain or Portugal; and indeed we owed the

possession of Bombay to the marriage of Charles II. with Katherine of

Braganza (1661). Then the company gained from Charles II. the important

privilege of making peace or war on their own account. It had a good

many foes to contend with, both among natives and European nations,

among whom the French were as powerful as the Portuguese.

§ 3. CROMWELL’S COMMERCIAL WARS—The monopoly of Spain was first really

attacked by Cromwell. James I. had been too timid to declare war,

and Charles I. was too much in danger himself to think of trusting

his subjects to support him if he did so. But Cromwell was supported

both by the religious views of the Puritans and the desires of the

merchants when he declared war against England’s great foe. He demanded

trade with the Spanish colonies, and religious freedom for English

settlers in such colonies. Of course his demands were refused, as

he well knew that they would be. Whereupon he seized Jamaica (1655)

and intended to secure Cuba; and at any rate succeeded in giving the

English a secure footing in the West Indies. He seized Dunkirk also

from Spain (then at war with France), with a view to securing England a

monopoly of the Channel to the exclusion of our old friends the Dutch.

Dunkirk, however, was a useless acquisition, and was sold again by

Charles II. Not content with victory in the West, Cromwell with the

full consent of mercantile England declared war against the Dutch,

who were now {124} more our rivals than our friends. It would have

been perfectly possible for the English and the Dutch to have remained

upon good terms; but the great idea of the statesmen and merchants of

the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was to gain a sole market

and a monopoly of trade, and so the Dutch had to be crushed. It was a

mistake, but mistakes have frequently been made, owing to a lack of

that indispensable concomitant of statesmanship, accurate economic

knowledge. Cromwell succeeded in his object. He defeated the Dutch and

broke their prestige in the two years’ war of 1652–54, and designed to

ruin their trade by the Navigation Acts of 1651 (p. 130). The contest

between the Dutch and English for the mastery of the seas was already

practically decided, and the capture of New Amsterdam (New York as we

called it afterwards) in 1664, and the subsequent wars of Charles II.’s

reign, completed the discomfiture of Holland.

§ 4. THE WARS OF WILLIAM III. AND OF ANNE—The continental wars in which

England was engaged after the deposition of James II. were rendered

necessary to some extent by the tremendous power of France under

Louis XIV. William III. saw it was inevitable for the interest of

England that Louis XIV. should be checked, and the war of the Spanish

Succession (1702–13) was carried on with the object of preventing that

king from joining the resources of Spain to those of his own kingdom.

For had he done so two disastrous results would have happened. The

Stuarts would by his help have been restored to the English throne,

and the struggle against absolute monarchy and religious tyranny would

unfortunately have been fought over again. Secondly, the growth of

English commerce would have been checked if not utterly annihilated.

As it was we were preserved from the {125} Stuarts; and when the war

was finally over in 1713, found ourselves in possession of Gibraltar,

now one of the keys of our Indian Empire, and of the Hudson’s Bay

Territory, Newfoundland and Nova Scotia (then called Acadia)—the

foundations of our present Canadian dominion. England was also allowed

by Spain to trade—in negroes—with Spanish colonies, and to send one

ship a year to the South Seas. The war, as far as we were concerned,

was a commercial success, though we had to pay rather heavily for it,

and were involved in further difficulties in America thereby.

§ 5. EXPANSION OF ENGLISH TRADE AFTER THESE WARS[38]—Even during the

above wars English trade had been spreading. English merchants now

did business in the Mediterranean with Turkey and Italy, in the North

with Holland, Germany, Russia and Norway, in the East with India,

Arabia and Africa, in the West with America and the Spanish colonies.

Many companies were started, too numerous to mention here, for those

who had hoarded their money during the war were now anxious to make

profitable use of it. Of these new companies the most famous was the

South Sea Company, formed in 1711 to trade with South America. The

directors anticipated enormous profits, and offered to advance the

Government £7,500,000 to pay off part of the National Debt. Everyone

knows the story of their collapse (1721), and the ruin it brought

upon thousands of worthy but credulous shareholders. It was a time

when all the accumulated capital of the country seemed to run riot in

hopes of gaining profits. Hundreds of smaller companies were started

every day, and an unhealthy excitement prevailed. One company, with a

capital of £3,000,000, was {126} started “for insuring to all masters

and mistresses the losses they may sustain by servants”; another “for

making salt-water fresh”; a third for “planting mulberry trees and

breeding silk-worms in Chelsea Park.” One in particular was designed

for importing “a number of large jackasses from Spain in order to

propagate a larger kind of mule in England,” as if, remarks a later

writer with some severity, there were not already jackasses enough in

London alone.

[38. See note 16, p. 249, on Union with Scotland, Darien

Scheme and Methuen Treaty.]

All this mania for investing capital, however, shows how prosperous

England had now become, and how great a quantity of wealth had been

accumulated, partly by trade, but also by the growth of manufactures

and improvements in agriculture. Englishmen now felt strong enough to

have another struggle for the monopoly of trade, with the result that

fresh wars were undertaken, and the country was heavily burdened with

debt. But the wars were on the whole a success, though the wish for a

monopoly was a mistake.

§ 6. FURTHER WARS WITH FRANCE AND SPAIN—All the wars in which England

now engaged had some commercial object in view. People had yet to learn

that the best way to extend a nation’s trade is to promote general

peace. In default of that, however, it seemed well to provoke a general

war. Mistaken as England’s policy was, it was no more so than that of

her neighbours, for all believed, as many do still, in the sole market

theory. Moreover, England was provoked into war by the secret “Family

Compact” between the related rulers of France and Spain, by which

Philip V. of Spain agreed to take away the South American trade from

England, and give it to his nephew, Louis XV. of France. The result

was a system of annoyance to English vessels trading in the South

Seas, culminating in the mutilation of an English {127} captain, one

Jenkins, and war was declared openly in 1739. This war merged into the

war of the Austrian Succession, which lasted for eight years (1740–48),

a matter with which England was in no way concerned, but which afforded

a good excuse to renew the struggle against the commercial growth of

France as well as Spain. We gained nothing by it except the final

annihilation of the hopes of the Stuarts, and a small increase of

British power upon the high seas.

After a few years, however, we entered upon another war, the Seven

Years’ War (1756–63), in which England and Prussia fought side by side

against the rest of Europe, and attacked France in particular in all

parts of the world. The war was largely caused by the quarrels of the

French and English colonists in America, and of rival traders in India.

We cannot here go into the details of it. It is sufficient to say that,

after a bad beginning, we won various victories by sea and land, and at

the close (1763) found ourselves in possession of Canada, Florida, and

all the French possessions east of the Mississippi except New Orleans,

and had gained the upper hand in India. We held almost undisputed sway

over the seas, and our trade grew by leaps and bounds. Unfortunately

we afterwards engaged in other wars of a less necessary character, and

wasted a great deal of our wealth before the end of the century. But

the short peace which ensued after 1763 gave us an opportunity which we

did not neglect of increasing our national industries, and practically

gave us the great start in manufactures to which we owe our present

wealth. In this war, too, we gained our Indian Empire and Canada, to

which we must devote a few short remarks.

§ 7. THE STRUGGLE FOR INDIA—Since the founding of Surat and the

acquisition of Bombay, the East India {128} Company had also founded

two forts or stations, which have since become most important cities,

namely, Fort St George in 1640 (now Madras), and Fort William in 1698

(now Calcutta). They had become powerful, and each of the three chief

stations had a governor and a small army. The French, however, had

also an East India Company, whose chief station was Pondicherry, south

of Madras; and the two companies were by no means on friendly terms.

When their respective nations were at war in 1746–48, they too had

some sharp fighting, but it was only when Dupleix, the French Governor

of Pondicherry, had gained almost absolute power over Southern India

after the death of the Great Mogul and the Nizam of the Dekkan in 1748,

that matters became serious. The English traders feared with justice

the loss both of their lives and commerce, and open war broke out.

The magnificent exertions of Clive and Lawrence defeated the French,

and finally Dupleix was recalled in 1754 and quiet was restored. But

two years afterwards the Seven Years’ War broke out, and India was

disturbed again. Suraj-ud-Daula, the ally of the French, took Calcutta

and committed the Black Hole atrocity (1757), and he and his allies did

their best to drive the English out of Bengal. This province, however,

was saved by Clive at the battle of Plassey; Coote defeated the French

at Wondiwash (1760); and Pondicherry was captured by the English in

1761. Finally in 1765 the East India Company became the collector of

the revenues for Bengal, Behar, and Orissa, and thus the English power

was acknowledged and consolidated. Our future struggles in India were

not with the French but with native princes.

§ 8. THE CONQUEST OF CANADA—There was, however, a great struggle

for commercial supremacy to be waged against the French in America.

It began in 1754. The {129} English had now thirteen flourishing

colonies between the Alleghany Mountains and the sea. Behind them,

above them, and below them, all was claimed by France as French

territory. It was inevitable that the growth of our colonies should

lead to war, and such was the case. The French began by driving out

English settlers from land west of the Alleghany Mountains; the

English retorted by driving French settlers out of Nova Scotia, and

tried to make a colony in the Ohio valley. In this latter object they

were foiled by Duquesne, the French Governor of Canada, who built

Fort Duquesne there in 1754. Shortly afterwards, the next Governor,

Montcalm, conceived the idea of linking together Forts Duquesne,

Niagara, and Ticonderoga by lesser forts, so as to keep the English in

their narrow strip of eastern coast-line. Then the English Government

at home took up the matter, and sent out General Braddock and 2000

men to help the colonists. Braddock was defeated and killed (1755),

but when the Seven Years’ War broke out in the next year, Pitt sent

ammunition, men, and money to help the colonists to attack Quebec

and Montreal. The war was renewed in Canada with fresh vigour; Fort

Duquesne was captured in 1758, Quebec in 1759, and Montreal in 1760;

and when peace was made in Europe in 1763, England had gained all the

French possessions in America, and her colonies were enabled to extend

as far as they desired. We foolishly lost them by a mistaken policy a

few years afterwards.

[Illustration: INDIA IN THE TIME OF CLIVE SHOWING ENGLISH FACTORIES

AND DISTRICTS UNDER OUR INFLUENCE.]

§ 9. SURVEY OF COMMERCIAL PROGRESS DURING THESE WARS—The reign of James

I. was noticeable for the rapid growth of the foreign trade which had

developed from the somewhat piratical excursions of the Elizabethan

sailors. Trading companies were formed in considerable numbers, and

among them the Levant Company may be noticed, {130} as having made

“great gains” in the East in 1605. The mercantile class was now growing

both numerous and powerful, and a proof of their advance in social

position and influence is furnished by the new title of nobility,

that of baronet, conferred by James I. upon such merchant princes as

were able and willing to pay the needy king a good round sum for the

honour.[39] It is interesting, by the way, to notice the figures of

trade in his reign. In 1613 the exports and imports both together were

about £4,628,586 in value, and a sign of a quickly developing Eastern

trade is also seen in the fact that James made attempts to check the

increasing export of silver from the kingdom. At this time English

merchants traded with most of the Mediterranean ports, with Portugal,

Spain, France, Hamburg, and the Baltic coasts. Ships from the north

and west of Europe used in return to visit the Newcastle collieries,

which were rapidly growing in value. The English ships were also very

active in the new cod fisheries of Newfoundland, and the Greenland

whale fisheries. Commerce was further aided by the Navigation Acts of

1651, which provided that no merchandise of Asia, Africa, or America

should be imported in any but English ships. Previously, the carrying

trade had been in the hands of the Dutch, but Holland had now entered

upon the period of its decline, and the short war with England which

followed these Acts contributed to hasten it. The development of

English trade is signalized in this century by the appearance of

numerous books and essays on commercial questions, of which the works

of Mun, Malynes, Misselden, Roberts, Sir Josiah Child, Worth, and

Davenant may be mentioned as among the most important. The increase

in the wealth of the country is shown by the rapid rebuilding of

London after the Great {131} Fire, when the loss was estimated at

£12,000,000; and Sir Josiah Child, writing in 1670, speaks of the great

development of the commerce and trade of England in the previous twenty

years. We know from Gregory King that rents had been doubled in this

period, and that is always a sure sign of prosperity. The East India

Company was so flourishing that in 1676 their stock was quoted at 245

per cent. Trade with America was equally prosperous. New Amsterdam, now

New York, was taken from the Dutch in 1664, and in 1670 the Hudson’s

Bay Company received their charter. But the main commercial fact of

the latter half of the seventeenth century, and of the eighteenth,

was the development of the Eastern trade, and, as a consequence, of

the home production of articles to be exchanged for Eastern goods.

The cloth trade especially was greatly increased, and imports of

cloth from Spain were quite superseded. This improvement in English

manufactures led to increased trade with our colonial possessions,

especially in the West Indies. It was partly, perhaps, this great

development of English trade[40] with both the Western and the Eastern

markets that stimulated the genius of the great inventors to supply our

manufacturers with machinery that would enable them to meet the huge

demands upon their powers of production, for, by 1760, the export trade

had grown to many times its value in the days of James I. Then, as we

saw, it was only £2,000,000 per annum; in 1703, nearly a hundred years

later, it was, according to a MS. of Davenant’s, £6,552,019; by 1760

it reached £14,500,000. The markets, too, had undergone a change. We

no longer exported so largely to Holland, Portugal, and France, as in

the seventeenth century, but instead one-third of our exports went to

our colonies. In 1770, {132} for example, America took three-fourths

of the manufactures of Manchester, and Jamaica alone took almost as

much of our manufactures as all our plantations together had done in

the beginning of the century. The prosperity and development of modern

English commerce, as we know it, had now begun. It was due, of course,

not to the great wars we had waged for the right of a sole market, but

to the fact that we were able to supply the markets of the world with

manufactured goods that no other country could then produce. How we

were able to do so will shortly be seen when we come to speak of the

Industrial Revolution of the last half of the eighteenth century.

[39. See note 13, p. 247, on Banking and the Stop of the

Exchequer.]

[40. See also my _Commerce in Europe_, pp. 137–147.]

CHAPTER VI

MANUFACTURES AND MINING

§ 1. CIRCUMSTANCES FAVOURABLE TO ENGLISH MANUFACTURES—I have frequently

remarked in previous chapters that Flanders was the great manufactory

of Europe throughout the Middle Ages, and up to the sixteenth

century. Her competition would in any case have been sufficient to

check much export of manufactured goods from England, though we had

by the sixteenth century got past the time when most of our imports

of clothing came from Flanders. Now, at the end of the sixteenth

century, Flemish competition was practically annihilated, owing to

the ravages made in the Low Countries by the Spanish persecutions and

occupation. But England did not merely benefit by the cessation of

Flemish competition: she received at the same time hundreds of Flemish

immigrants, who greatly improved our home manufactures, and thus our

{133} prosperity was doubly assisted. The result is seen in the fact

that our export of wool diminished, and our export of cloth increased.

§ 2. WOOL TRADE. HOME MANUFACTURES. DYEING—In the reign of James I.

the wool trade is even said to have declined, and certainly we know

that little wool can have been exported, for nearly all that produced

in England was used for home manufacture. On the other hand, however,

the same fact shows that the manufacturing industry was rising in

importance, for it required all the home-grown wool that could be got;

and, in 1660, the export of British wool was for this reason forbidden,

and remained so till 1825. The woollen trade was now very largely in

the hands of the Merchant Adventurers,[41] whose methods caused many

complaints; but the manufacturing industry flourished steadily, and a

considerable part of the population was now engaged in it. It seems

to have received some impetus, also, from the Acts 4 and 5 James I.

(1607 and 1608), carefully regulating and guarding the quality of

cloth exported, and by the end of the seventeenth century no less than

two-thirds of our exports were woollen fabrics. The usefulness of our

climate, too, for this particular manufacture had been discovered, and

was now recognized, while the manufacturing industry was likewise aided

by the impetus given to dyeing by the exertions of Sir Walter Raleigh.

Previously to James I.’s reign most English goods had to be sent to

the Netherlands to be dyed, as I explained above; but Raleigh, in his

_Essay on Commerce_, called attention to this fact, and proposed to

grant a monopoly for the art of dyeing and {134} dressing, and by his

advice the export of English white goods was prohibited (1608), but the

monopoly granted to Sir W. Cockayne caused such an outcry that it was

revoked.

[41. This Company, by charters from James I. in 1604 and 1617,

had the exclusive privilege of exporting the woollen cloths of England

to the Netherlands and Germany. It included some 4000 merchants.]

§ 3. OTHER INFLUENCES FAVOURABLE TO ENGLAND. THE HUGUENOT

IMMIGRATION—But other influences were at work in the seventeenth

century in favour of our home industries. It becomes more and more

apparent that our insular position was specially fitted for the

development of manufactures as soon as they made a fair start. Except

for the Parliamentary War, which did not disturb the industry of the

country very much—for there is no sign of undue exaltation of prices,

or anything else that points to commercial distress—England was free

from the terrible conflicts that desolated half Europe in the Thirty

Years’ War. Our own Civil War was conducted with hardly any of the

bloodshed, plunder, and rapine that make war so disastrous. But the

Thirty Years’ War (1619–1648) did not cease till the utter exhaustion

of the combatants made peace inevitable, and till every leader who had

taken part in the beginning of the war was in his grave. Germany was

effectually ruined, and with Germany and Flanders laid low, England

had little to fear from foreign competition. And just at this moment

the folly of our neighbour, the French King Louis XIV., induced him to

deprive his nation of most of its skilled workmen, by the Revocation

of the Edict of Nantes. His loss was our gain. The Edict in question,

passed nearly a century previously, had insured freedom of worship

to the French Huguenots, who comprised in their ranks the _élite_ of

the industrial population. Louis XIV. set to work to exterminate the

Protestant religion in France, and began by revoking this Edict (1685).

Once more England profited by her Protestantism, and, owing {135}

to the religious opinions of her people, received a fresh accession

of industrial strength. Some thousands of skilled Huguenot artisans

and manufacturers came over and settled in this land. They greatly

improved the silk, glass, and paper trades, and exercised considerable

influence in the development of domestic manufactures generally. It is

said that the immigrants numbered 50,000 souls, with a capital of some

£3,000,000.[42] Everyone knows how they introduced the silk industry

into this country, and how Spitalfields long remained a colony of

Huguenot silk weavers. Their descendants are to be found in every part

of England.

[42. Anderson’s _Chron. of Commerce_, ii. 569.]

[Illustration: 1700–50 INDUSTRIAL ENGLAND

Showing Population in first half of 18th Century, chief towns and

manufactures. The most populous counties are dark green.

The majority of the population was in the west and south central

counties (_dark green_); but Lancs. and the West Riding of Yorks.

were increasing. The chief manufacturing centres in (1) Eastern

counties, (2) Wilts, (3) Yorks, &c., are shown thus [symbol] but

it must be remembered that manufactures were very scattered and

carried on side by side with agriculture. Several other counties are

therefore marked with slanting lines.]

§ 4. DISTRIBUTION OF THE CLOTH TRADE—From this time forward the

cloth trade, in especial, took its place among the chief industries

of the country, largely owing to the fresh spirit infused into it,

first by Flemish, and afterwards by French weavers. It became more

and more widely distributed. The county of Kent, and the towns of

York and Reading made one kind of cloth of a heavy texture, the piece

being thirty or thirty-four yards long by six and one-half quarters

broad, and weighing 66 lbs. to the piece. Worcester, Hereford, and

Coventry made a lighter kind of fabric, while throughout the eastern

counties of Norfolk, Suffolk, and Essex were made cloths of various

kinds—plunkets, azures, blues, long cloth, bay, say, and serges;

Suffolk, in particular, made a “fine, short, white cloth.” Wiltshire

and Somerset made plunkets and handy warps; Yorkshire, short cloths.

Broad-listed whites and reds, and fine cloths, also came from

Wiltshire, Gloucestershire and Oxfordshire; and Somerset was famous in

the eastern part for narrow-listed whites and reds, and in the west

for “dunsters.” Devonshire made kerseys and grays, as also did {136}

Yorkshire and Lancashire. The Midlands furnished “Penistone” cloths

and “Forest whites”; while Westmoreland was the seat of the manufacture

of the famous “Kendal green” cloths, as also of “Carpmael” and

“Cogware” fabrics. It will be seen that the manufacture was exceedingly

extensive, and that special fabrics derived their names from the chief

centre where they were made. It may be mentioned here, too, that the

value of wool shorn in England at the end of the seventeenth century

was £2,000,000, from about 12,000,000 sheep (according to Youatt); and

the cloth manufactured from it was valued at £6,000,000 or £8,000,000.

Nearly half-a-century later (1741) the number of sheep was reckoned

at 17,000,000, the value of wool shorn at £3,000,000, and of wool

manufactured at £8,000,000, showing that progress in invention had not

done much to enhance the value of the manufactured article. But in

1774, when the Industrial Revolution may be said to have fairly begun,

the value of manufactured wool was £13,000,000, the value of raw wool

(£4,500,000) being smaller in proportion.

§ 5. COAL-MINES—Turning now from textile manufactures to mining and

working in metals, we find that in the seventeenth and eighteenth

centuries we were just upon the eve of the most important changes

in these industries—changes which, in many places, have entirely

transformed the face of the country. But it cannot be too clearly

understood that none of our mining and mineral industries attained any

proportions worth speaking of till what is known as the Industrial

Revolution. Englishmen seem to have had hardly any idea of the vast

wealth of coal and iron that has placed us in the forefront of Europe

as a manufacturing nation. Nevertheless we may just glance at the

imperfect methods which our forefathers used up {137} till the

eighteenth century. Coal-mining had been carried on fairly extensively

by the Romans, as for instance the discovery of huge cinder-heaps at

Aston and other places testifies. Then, like all our industries, it was

almost entirely given up, and it was due to the Norman Conquest that

coal-mining was revived. That it was practised to some extent in the

North is seen from an entry in the _Boldean Book_ (a kind of Domesday

of the county of Durham, composed in 1183), in which a smith is allowed

twelve acres of land for making the ironwork of the carts, and has

to provide his own coal. But collieries were not opened at Newcastle

till the thirteenth century, in the year 1238. In the next year we

find notice of the first public recognition of coal as an article of

commerce, and from a charter of Henry III. to the freemen of Newcastle,

we may date the foundation of the coal trade. In 1273 this had become

sufficiently extensive for the use of coal to be forbidden in London;

as there was a prejudice against it and in favour of wood as fuel. In

the fourteenth century, again, the monks of Tynemouth Priory engaged

in mining speculation, and (1380) leased a colliery for £5. In the

fifteenth century trade was sufficiently important to form a source of

revenue, for a tax of twopence per chaldron was placed upon sea-borne

coal, and in 1421 an Act had to be passed to enforce this tax. In fact

in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries coal-mining became general in

Great Britain.

§ 6. DEVELOPMENT OF COAL TRADE: SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES—By

the seventeenth century it had also become important—important enough

for the needy Stuart monarch Charles I. to see in it a chance of

revenue. This king gave to Sir Thomas Tempest and his partners the

monopoly of the sale of Newcastle coal for twenty-one years, beginning

in 1637; and next year he allowed a {138} syndicate to be incorporated

which was to buy up all the coal from Newcastle, Sunderland and

Berwick, and sell it in London for “not more than 17_s._ a ton in

summer, and 19_s._ in winter”—an extravagant price for those times. The

king got a shilling a ton out of this ingenious scheme. However, the

Long Parliament finally put a stop to this outrageous monopoly.

But although the coal trade was fairly extensive for that period,

it was utterly insignificant compared with its present dimensions,

and that for a very good reason. There was no means of pumping water

out of the mines, except by the old-fashioned air-pump, which was of

course utterly inadequate. Nor was a suitable invention discovered

till the very end of the seventeenth century, when Thomas Savery in

1698 invented a kind of pump, worked by the condensation of steam.

This rather clumsy invention, however, was soon superseded in 1705 by

Newcomen’s steam pump. But it was not till after the commencement of

the Industrial Revolution that steam power was scientifically applied

to coal-mines by the inventions of Watt and Boulton (1765 and 1774),

which we shall notice in their proper place. Up to that time, also,

it was difficult to transport coal into inland districts by road,

Newcastle coal being carried to London in ships, and then carried up

inland rivers in barges. But these barges could not go high up many

rivers at that time, and canals were not yet made. It was difficult

for instance to get coal to Oxford, for it had to come to London, and

then part way up the Thames, which was not then navigable so far. But

at Cambridge it was easily procurable, for barges could come right up

to the town from eastern ports. Hence it was much cheaper at Cambridge

than at Oxford.

§ 7. THE IRON TRADE—As it had been with coal, so with iron. Only very

small quantities of it were mined in the {139} Middle Ages; it was

smelted only by wood, as a rule, and was manufactured only in a very

rude way. We saw that at the great fairs foreign iron, chiefly from

the Biscay coast, was much in demand, as our own supply was utterly

insufficient. It was naturally not until we learnt to mine and use

our coal properly that we learnt also how to mine and manufacture our

iron. Before learning this, English workmen used wood as fuel, and it

is to this cause that we owe the destruction of most of the forests

which, at the time of Domesday, occupied so large an area. “The waste

and destruction of the woods in the counties of Warwick, Stafford,

Hereford, Monmouth, Gloucester, and Salop by these iron-works is not

to be imagined,” a speaker said in Parliament as late as the beginning

of the eighteenth century. And as wood was used as house-fuel also,

it will readily be understood what a vast destruction of timber took

place. In 1581 the erection of iron-works within certain distances

from London and the Thames was prohibited “for the preservation of the

woods.”

But early in the seventeenth century (1619) Dud Dudley, son of Lord

Dudley, began to make use of sea and pit coal for smelting iron, and

obtained a monopoly “of the mystery and art of smelting iron-ore, and

of making the same into cast works or bars, in furnaces, with bellows.”

Dudley sold this cast-iron at £12 a ton, and made a good profit out

of it. He actually produced seven tons a week, which was considered a

large supply, and shows the comparative insignificance of the industry

then. However, it was only comparatively insignificant, for before the

close of the century it was calculated that 180,000 tons of iron were

produced in England yearly; and in the eighteenth century (1719) iron

came third in the list of English manufactures, and the trade gave

employment to 200,000 people. There was, however, still great {140}

waste of wood, since a great many ironmasters did not use coal, and

therefore the export and even the manufacture of iron was discouraged

by legislation to such an extent that by 1740 the output had been

reduced to 17,350 tons per annum, barely a tenth of the previous amount

quoted. The waste of timber was most noticeable in the Sussex Wealden,

the forests of which owe their destruction almost entirely to the iron

and glass manufactures.

But about this time another inventor, Darby, discovered the secret of

the large blast furnace in which pit coal and charcoal were used. He

began his experiments as early as 1730, but did not do much for some

twenty years. In 1756, however, his works were “at the top pinnacle of

prosperity; twenty and twenty-two tons per week sold off as fast as

made, and profit enough.”

After Darby came Smeaton, and other inventors, and the Industrial

Revolution spread to the iron trade. We shall see it in operation in

our next period.

§ 8. POTTERY—As with all other manufactures, so too the development

of pottery was reserved for the Renaissance of industry in the

eighteenth century. Of course pottery of a kind had always been made

in England, especially where the useful soil of Staffordshire formed

a favourable ground for the exercise of this art. But the pottery

hitherto manufactured had been rude and coarse, and its manufacture

was a strictly domestic and not very widespread industry. We owe its

improvement, as in so many other cases, largely to the efforts of

the Dutch and Huguenot immigrants of the sixteenth and seventeenth

centuries. For the Dutch had been great among the potters of Europe, as

the renown of Delft-ware still testifies, and France had the honour of

being the land of Palissy. The factories at Burslem owed their origin

to {141} the industry of two Germans, called Elers, from whom an

Englishman, Astbury, learnt the secret of producing the red unglazed

Japanese ware, and the black Egyptian ware. Burslem, too, was the

birthplace of Josiah Wedgwood, born 1730, who first began business in

1752 as manager for a master-potter, but started in business on his

own account in 1759, the eve of the Industrial Revolution. His efforts

and experiments were magnificent and untiring, and they can be read at

leisure in various biographical works. It is sufficient here to say

that Wedgwood was the man who first made the art of pottery a science,

and before his death in 1795 he had brought this manufacture to such

a pitch of excellence, that few improvements have been left for his

successors to make, and it rose to be one of the chief industries of

the country.

§ 9. OTHER MINING INDUSTRIES--There remain one or two industries that

require a passing mention, but which were not in the eighteenth century

of much importance. As to the metals, the foreign trade in tin and

lead has been already mentioned. In the reign of John the tin-mines

of Cornwall were farmed by the Jews, and the tin and lead trade must

have attained considerable proportions in the fourteenth century,

for the Black Prince paid his own expenses in the French wars by the

produce of his mines of those metals in Devonshire. Copper, also, was

mined in the northern counties, and in a statute of 15 Edward III.

(1343) we find grants of mines given at Skeldane, in Northumberland; at

Alston Moor, in Cumberland; and at Richmond, in Yorkshire; a royalty

of one-eighth going to the king, and one-ninth to the lord of the

manor. Keswick was at that time a centre of this industry; but there

cannot have been any great output, for copper had to be imported from

Germany in the fifteenth century. The mines were also very primitive,

the approaches being {142} made not by shafts, but by adits in the

side of a convenient hill. Another mineral, which is very abundant

in England, especially in Worcestershire and Cheshire, was at this

period hardly utilized. Salt was a necessary of life to the English

householder, for he had to salt his meat for the winter; but he did not

know how to mine it himself, and either got it imported from south-west

France or contented himself with the inferior article evaporated on the

sea-coast, until the end of the seventeenth century.

In this place, too, we may mention that brickmaking was a lost art from

the fifth to the fifteenth century, and bricks were not even imported.

The first purchase of bricks to be recorded was at Cambridge, in 1449;

but before the end of the fifteenth century it became a common building

material in the eastern counties, and in the sixteenth century was

generally used in London and in the counties along the lower course of

the Thames.

§ 10. THE CLOSE OF THE PERIOD OF MANUAL INDUSTRIES--We have now reached

a turning-point in English industrial history, and are about to study a

period that is in every way a violent contrast to the centuries which

preceded it. We have come to the time when machinery begins to displace

unaided manual labour. Hitherto all our manufactures, our mining, and

of course our agriculture, had been performed by the literal labour of

men’s hands, only slightly helped by a few simple inventions. Industry,

too, was not organized upon a vast capitalistic basis, though of course

capitalists existed; but it would be more correct to say that hitherto

industry had been chiefly carried on by numbers of smaller capitalists

who were also manual workmen, even when they employed other workmen

under them. Only in agriculture had the capitalist class become very

far removed from the labourers. There was certainly no such violent

contrast {143} as now exists between a mill-owner and a mill-hand in

the realm of manufacturing industry, though of course this contrast

existed between the rich land-owner who received rents, and the poor

agricultural labourer whose labour helped to pay them. But, speaking of

industry generally, it may be said that the absence of machinery kept

employers and workmen more upon a common level, and as large factories

of course did not exist, industry was carried on chiefly in the

workmen’s homes, and the workman was not merely a unit among hundreds

of unknown “hands” in a mill, but a person not hopelessly removed in

social rank from his employer, who was well acquainted with him, and

like him worked with his own hands.

But now this old order of things passes away, and a new order appears,

ushered in by the whir and rattle of machinery and the mighty hiss of

steam. A complete transformation takes place, and the life of England

stirs anew in the great Industrial Revolution.

{144}

PERIOD V

THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION AND MODERN ENGLAND

CHAPTER I

THE EVE OF THE REVOLUTION

§ 1. INDUSTRY AND POLITICS. LAND-OWNERS AND MERCHANT PRINCES--We

are, of course, mainly concerned in this book with industrial facts;

but as these underlie all politics and national history, we must

pause for a moment to see how the growth of commerce had by this

time affected the relations of two great classes: the land-owners

and their new rivals, the great merchants and the commercial classes

generally. Up to the time of the deposition of James II., or the Whig

Revolution of 1688, as it is sometimes called, the land-owning class

had been practically supreme in social and political influence. But

from that time forward, although they still held this high position,

their influence was heavily counterbalanced by that of the mercantile

classes. The capitalist and the commercial magnates were all favoured

by the great movement which divided the nation into the two historic

parties of Whigs and Tories, for it was that movement which first

accentuated their importance in the political life of the nation.

That importance was still more accentuated by a series of significant

economic events which took place shortly after the Revolution; namely,

the foundation of the Bank of {145} England (1694),[43] the new

and extended Charter granted to the East India Company in 1693, the

beginning of the National Debt in the same year, and the Restoration

of the Currency in 1696. The commercial and industrial section of the

community was becoming more and more prominent, and the great Whig

families who occupied themselves with endeavouring to rule England in

the eighteenth century, relied for their support upon the middle and

commercial classes. The old reverence, however, for the position of

a land-owner had not yet died out, and the men who had gained their

wealth by commerce strove for a higher social position by buying land

in large quantities. The time had not yet come when a merchant was on

equal terms with a landlord.

[43. See notes 13 and 14, pp. 247, 248, for details.]

In fact there has always been an extraordinary sentimentalism as

regards land among all classes of the English people; and for some

reason that has never been fully explained a man who has merely

inherited a large amount of land (even if he has never attempted to

cultivate it) is regarded as being superior to one who has amassed a

fortune in the industrial or commercial world. And this feeling was

stronger in the eighteenth century than it is at the present time.

Hence commercial magnates bought land, and with it social prestige.

The James Lowther who was created Earl of Lonsdale in 1784 was the

descendant of a merchant engaged in the Levant trade; the first Earl of

Tilney was the son of that eminent man of business, Sir Josiah Child.

The daughters of merchant princes were even allowed to marry--and

maintain--the scions of a needy aristocracy. Defoe actually discovered

the amazing and revolutionary fact that a man engaged in commerce

might be a gentleman, though no doubt this {146} bold supposition of

his was at first looked upon with incredulity. He says: “Trade is so

far from being inconsistent with a gentleman that in England trade

makes a gentleman; for, _after a generation or two_, the tradesman’s

children come to be as good gentlemen, statesmen, parliament men,

judges, bishops, and noblemen as those of the highest birth and the

most ancient families.” Dean Swift remarked “that the power which used

to follow land had gone over to money.” Dr Johnson announced oracularly

that “an English merchant was a new species of gentleman.”

Now, the Industrial Revolution went still further to gain social

and political influence for the commercial classes. It succeeded in

destroying the foolish idea that the land-owners alone were to be

looked upon as the leaders of the nation. It gave the capitalists and

manufacturers a new accession of power by enormously increasing their

wealth. Moreover, it helped to undermine the landed interest by making

the manufactures of England at first equal, and afterwards superior,

to her agriculture, so that a rich mill-owner or ironmaster became as

important as a large land-owner. The monopoly of the landed interest

was broken by capital. Nowhere is the contrast between the old and new

classes in the last century seen more closely than in Scott’s _Rob

Roy_, where the old Tory squire who held fast to Church and king is

contrasted with the new commercial magnate who supported the House of

Hanover. One good we enjoyed from the rise of the commercial classes,

and that was the final overthrow of the Stuarts, with all the follies

which that unfortunate race represented.

§ 2. THE COMING OF THE CAPITALISTS--Now, although the commercial

capitalist was fast coming into prominence as the rival of the

land-owner, he was becoming still more {147} prominent as the master

of the workmen whom he employed. For before the Industrial Revolution

the capitalist had occupied a comparatively subordinate place. The

vast enterprises of modern industry, such as railways or mills, which

often require so large an expenditure of capital before they can begin

to be in any way remunerative, were practically unknown a century

ago. The industrial system was, moreover, far less complicated,

far less international, far less subdivided. Instead of the great

capitalist manufacturers of to-day, who can control the markets of a

nation, England possessed numbers of smaller capitalists, with far

less capital, both individually and in the aggregate, than what is

now required by a man who undertakes even a moderate business. The

large capitalists of the last century were chiefly the foreign trading

companies. For English home manufactures, although greatly developed,

were still largely conducted upon the domestic system, and the small

capitalist-artisan was a conspicuous feature of that time, just as the

large mill-owner or ironmaster is of our own day. Manufactures were

carried on by a number of small master-manufacturers, who gave out

work to be done in the homes of their employés; and who often combined

agricultural with manufacturing pursuits. But nevertheless there were

signs of the approach of modern capitalist methods, of production upon

a large scale. It was becoming increasingly the custom to employ a

large number of workpeople together under one roof, or at least under

the direction and supervision of one great manufacturer. Arthur Young,

for instance, mentions a silk mill at Sheffield with 152 hands--a large

number in the eighteenth century; a factory at Boynton with 150 hands;

and a master-manufacturer at Darlington who ran above fifty looms. Work

was also {148} given out by capitalist manufacturers or merchants to

workmen to do at home in the villages and towns. These workmen were,

like the employés of the present day, entirely dependent upon their

employer for work and wages. Thus, at Nottingham in 1750 we find fifty

master-manufacturers who “put out” work in this way for as many as 1200

looms in the hosiery trade.

§ 3. THE CLASS OF SMALL MANUFACTURERS--But although the coming of

the capitalists was now near at hand the old order of things was not

seriously disturbed till the application of steam power to machinery

some years later. There were still many small manufacturers who lived

on their own land and worked with their workpeople in their own houses.

Defoe in his _Tour through Great Britain_ (made in 1724–26) gives an

interesting account of this class at a time when they were in the

height of their prosperity, before machinery and steam had even begun

to cause their disappearance. Speaking of the land near Halifax, in

Yorkshire, he says: “The land was divided into small enclosures from

two acres to six or seven each, seldom more, every three or four pieces

of land having a house belonging to them; hardly a house standing

out of speaking distance from another. We could see at every house

a tenter, and on almost every tenter a piece of cloth or kersie or

shalloon. At every considerable house there was a manufactory. Every

clothier keeps one horse at least to carry his manufactures to the

market; and every one generally keeps a cow or two or more for his

family. By this means the small pieces of enclosed land about each

house are occupied, for they scarce sow corn enough to feed their

poultry. The houses are full of lusty fellows, some at the dye-vat,

some at the looms, others dressing the cloths; the women and children

carding or spinning; being all employed, from the {149} youngest to

the oldest.” And Defoe adds a remark which is certainly not applicable

either to Halifax or any other manufacturing town of the present day,

for he concludes his description with the words: “not a beggar to be

seen, or an idle person.”

§ 4. THE CONDITION OF THE MANUFACTURING POPULATION--For it is a

significant fact that under the old domestic system, simple and

cumbrous as it was, the manufacturing population was very much better

off than it was for some time after the Industrial Revolution. For

one thing, they still lived more or less in the country and were not

crowded together in stifling alleys and courts, or long rows of bare

smoke-begrimed streets, in houses like so many dirty rabbit-hutches.

Even if the artisan did live in a town at that time, the town was very

different from the abodes of smoke and dirt which now prevail in the

manufacturing districts. There were no tall chimneys, belching forth

clouds of evil smoke; no huge, hot factories with their hundreds of

windows blazing forth a lurid light in the darkness, and rattling with

the whir and din of ceaseless machinery by day and night. There were

no gigantic blast furnaces rising amid blackened heaps of cinders, or

chemical works poisoning the fields and trees for miles around. These

were yet to come. The factory and the furnace were almost unknown.

Work was carried on by the artisan in his little stone or brick house,

with the workshop inside, where the wool for the weft was carded and

spun by his wife and daughters, and the cloth was woven by himself

and his sons. He had also, in nearly all cases, his plot of land near

the house, which provided him both with food and recreation, for he

could relieve the monotony of weaving by cultivating his little patch

of ground, or feeding his pigs and poultry. Work too was more regular

than it {150} often is at present, for there were fewer commercial

fluctuations; fashions did not change so quickly, and the market for

home-spun fabrics was always steady and assured. The relations between

employers and employed were far closer; even the distribution of wealth

was comparatively more equal. Wages were of course less in money value

than at present, but then prices of food and rent were only about

half what they are now. Arthur Young gives 9_s._ 6_d._ as the average

weekly wages of an artisan in the North and Midland counties, while the

average rent for a cottage in the same counties he puts at 28_s._ 2_d._

a year, or only 6⁠½_d._ per week. And it must be remembered that

this included a piece of land round the cottage. Meat, also, was cheap,

being from 2⁠½_d._ to 3⁠¼_d._ per pound; and bread 1⁠¼_d._

a pound. In fact we may confidently say that artisans, especially

spinners and weavers, were well off about 1760. Adam Smith testifies to

this in the _Wealth of Nations_. “Not only has grain become somewhat

cheaper,” he says, “but many other things from which the industrious

poor derive an agreeable and wholesome variety of food have become a

great deal cheaper.” And the healthy condition of industry in general

is shown by the fact that at the close of the wars with France by the

Peace of 1763, when more than 100,000 men accustomed to war were thrown

upon the country and had to find work or else be supported somehow or

other, “not only no great convulsion, but no sensible disorder arose.”

§ 5. CONDITION OF THE AGRICULTURAL POPULATION--Nor was that

convenient plenty which was the lot of the manufacturing portion

of the people confined only to that section. The condition of the

agricultural labourer, who was generally the worst off of all classes

from being so much under the direct supervision of his master, had

{151} considerably improved, together with the general improvement

of agriculture spoken of in a previous chapter. The price of corn

had fallen, while wages had risen, though these were less than an

artisan’s, being, according to Arthur Young’s average estimate for the

North and Midland counties, about 7_s._ a week. But it was generally

8_s._ or 10_s._, while the board of a working man may be placed at

about 5_s._ or 6_s._ a week. Cottages were occasionally rent free, or

at any rate only paid a low rent, never more than 50_s._ or 60_s._

per year. There was an abundance of food, clothing, and furniture.

Wheat-bread had entirely superseded rye-bread. Every poor family now

drank tea, which had formerly been a costly luxury. The consumption

of meat was, says Arthur Young, “pretty considerable,” and that of

cheese “immense.” Indeed he states that the labourers “by their large

wages and the cheapness of all necessaries enjoyed better dwellings,

diet, and apparel in England than the husbandmen or farmers did in

other countries.” Certainly Arthur Young must have been struck with the

difference between the agricultural population of England and that of

France, which latter country he visited shortly before the Revolution,

when the misery of the labourers was at its lowest depth, thanks to the

extortions of the privileged noblesse.

§ 6. GROWTH OF POPULATION--But not only had the condition of the

industrial population improved in the period 1700–1750, but their

numbers had also considerably increased. And now too was beginning

that great shifting of the centres of population from the South to

the North of England, which is so important a feature in the new

industrial epoch. The most suggestive fact of this period is the growth

of the population of Lancashire and of the West Riding of Yorkshire,

which were rapidly becoming {152} the seats of the cotton and coarse

woollen manufactures. Similarly also Staffordshire and Warwickshire,

the pottery and hardware centres, were growing in numbers, and so,

too, were Durham and Northumberland, whose coal-fields were now far

more developed than before. On the other hand, the population of the

Western and Eastern counties, still large manufacturing centres, had

increased very little. But in the North and North-west the increase was

enormous. Between 1685 and 1760 the people of Liverpool had increased

tenfold, of Manchester fivefold, of Birmingham and Sheffield sevenfold.

The total population of England had increased from the five millions or

so of Elizabeth’s time, to not much less than eight millions in Arthur

Young’s time, and far more of these were in the northern portions of

the country than was the case even in Defoe’s time. Defoe said in

1725, “the country south of the Trent is by far the largest, as well

as the richest and most populous.” But forty or fifty years later the

shifting towards the North had already made itself felt. The cause of

the great increase of population between 1700 and 1760 is to be found

in the rapid increase of national wealth gained by foreign commerce,

in the progress of home manufactures and of agriculture. Increased

wealth means increased comfort in living, increased command of food,

and consequently better chances of survival among children born of poor

parents. And in this period the increase in national wealth was, in

spite of foreign wars, enormous; for if England had to pay heavily for

these wars other countries had to pay more heavily still, and were,

moreover, the battle-grounds of contending armies, while our own land

was at least free from invasion.

§ 7. ENGLAND STILL MAINLY AGRICULTURAL--Of the population of the

country at this time the majority were still {153} engaged in

agriculture, and the agricultural labourers alone formed one-third

of the working classes, and a large number even of the manufacturing

classes still worked in the fields for a portion of the year,

especially in harvest-time. In 1770 England was still mainly an

agricultural country, and Arthur Young estimates that the income of the

agricultural portion of the nation was larger than that of all the rest

of the community. But it must be remembered that by far the largest

portion of this income was in the hands of large land-owners and the

farmers, the share of the labourer being of course much smaller. Arthur

Young’s estimates must be taken with a certain amount of caution, but

they are probably approximately correct, and are certainly interesting

as giving us a very fair idea of the distribution of occupations and

national wealth just before the Industrial Revolution. Hence I append a

small table, giving in round numbers the figures of his estimates. It

will be noticed that the number of the population is rather too high,

but the proportion of one class to another is probably correct.

INCOMES OF VARIOUS CLASSES[44]

IN MILLION POUNDS

[Illustration]

Interest on capital 5

Paupers 1·5

Military and official 5

Professions 5

Commercial 10

Manufacturing 27

Agricultural 66

Total = £119,500,000.

[44. This table is drawn to scale.]

{154}

POPULATION

IN MILLIONS

[Illustration]

Paupers ·5

Military and official ·5

Professional ·2

Commercial ·7

Manufacturing 3

Agricultural 3·6

Total = 8,500,000.

It will be perceived that the agriculturists, though only about half

a million more in numbers than the manufacturing classes, had a far

larger proportionate income, in fact more than double. This was of

course partly due to the agricultural improvements of this period, and

to the fact that manufactures were still carried on almost solely by

hand, thus giving only a small production from a good many workmen. But

the Industrial Revolution rapidly changed all this, and now agriculture

is no longer the staple industry of the country. We may here refer

to what has been previously mentioned in regard to the agricultural

development on enclosed land, and to the superiority of the results

of enclosures over common fields. Those farmers and large owners who

understood the best ways of raising crops prospered, and more and more

land was enclosed every year to grow corn (which by the way was rapidly

rising in price), clover, turnips and other root-crops. No less than

700 Enclosure Acts were passed between 1760 and 1774. The old common

fields were beginning to disappear, and the working classes also lost

their rights of pasturing cattle on the wastes, for wastes now were

enclosed. It must be admitted that the old common-field system produced

very poor results (cf. p. 41), but the loss of his common rights was

very {155} disastrous to the labourer, for it drove him off the land

at the same time as the growth of manufactures attracted him off from

it, and thus the labourer became in a few years completely divorced

from the soil. At present attempts are being made to attract him back

to it by offering him small strips of inferior land at a high rent.

This is known as the allotment system. It need scarcely be said that,

as at present carried out, it is hardly likely to succeed.[45]

[45. For recent developments, _v._ p. 231.]

§ 8. THE DOMESTIC SYSTEM OF MANUFACTURE--But in the period we are

now speaking of, the period before the great inventions, neither

the agricultural labourer nor the manufacturing operative was quite

divorced from the land. The weavers, for instance, often lived in

the country, in a cottage with some land attached to it. There had

certainly been changes in the industrial system before 1760. At first

the weaver had furnished himself with warp and weft, worked it up, and

brought it to the market himself; but by degrees this system grew too

cumbersome, and the yarn was given out by merchants to the weaver, and

at last the merchant got together a certain number of looms in a town

or village, and worked them under his own supervision. But even yet

the domestic system, as it is commonly called, retained in many if not

in most cases the distinctive feature that the manufacturing industry

was not the only industry in which the artisan was engaged, but that

he generally combined with it a certain amount of agricultural work in

the cultivation of his own small plot of land. This fact explains to

some extent the comparative comfort of the operative in this cottage

industry, for that they were fairly well off is the testimony of Adam

Smith, in 1776. Commercial fluctuations were few; the home market was

steady; {156} employer and employed were more closely knit together

than at present; wealth was more equally distributed, and capital

existed in smaller amounts but in a larger number of hands. The poet’s

vision of “contentment spinning at the cottage door” was not altogether

imaginary, for women and children shared in the common task brought

home by the head of the family. Nor, after all, was trade so restricted

and hampered as some writers have seemed to suppose. On the contrary,

there was, in spite of bad roads, very frequent and considerable

internal communication for manufacturing purposes, and this was

facilitated by means of the local markets, the importance of which

in those days cannot be easily overrated. Manufacturers would ride a

long way to buy wool from the farmers or at the great fairs already

mentioned, such as that of Stourbridge (p. 63), which was sufficiently

considerable even a hundred years ago, or those of Lynn, Boston,

Gainsborough, and Beverley, all four of which were celebrated for their

wool-sales. This wool was then brought home and sorted; then sent out

to the hand-combers, and on being returned combed was again sent out,

often to long distances, to be spun. It was, for instance, sent from

remote parts of Yorkshire to Lancashire, or even farther; or again from

near London to Kendal and back. When spun, the tops, or fine wool, were

entrusted to some shopkeeper to “put out” among the neighbours. Then

the yarn was brought back and sorted by the manufacturer himself into

hanks, according to the counts and twist. The hand-weavers would next

come for their warp and weft, and in due time bring back the piece,

which often was sent elsewhere to be dyed. Finally, the finished cloth

was sent to be sold at the fairs, or at the local “piece halls” of such

central towns as Leeds or Halifax. {157}

Hence it will be seen that there was a considerable diffusion of work

under the old system, and it was not necessary for great numbers of

people to live close together, or work in factories upon a large scale.

Things were done with greater leisure, and more time was taken over

them. But with the Industrial Revolution came all the hurry and stress

of modern manufacturing life, and a complete change took place in the

manner and methods of manufacture. And now, having seen how things

stood immediately before this great change, we can proceed at once to

the means by which it was brought about.