have been used in tillage, whereby idleness, which is the ground and beginning of all mischiefs, daily doth increase. For where in some towns two hundred persons were occupied and lived by their lawful labours, now there are occupied two or three herdsmen, and the residue fall into idleness; the husbandry, which is one of the greatest commodities of this realm, is greatly decayed, churches destroyed, the service of God withdrawn, the bodies there buried not prayed for, the patrons and curates wronged, the defence of this land against our enemies out. ward enfeebled and impaired, to the great displeasure of God, to the subversion of the policy and good rule of this land, if remedy be not provided: Wherefore the king, our sovereign, &c. hath ordained, enacted, and established, that no person, of whatever estate, degree, or condition that he be, that hath any house or houses that at any time within three years passed, hath been, or that now is, or hereafter shall be let for farms, with twenty acres of land at least, or more, lying in tillage or husbandry, that the owner and owners of every such house or houses and land do keep, sustain, and maintain houses and buildings upon the said ground and land, convenient and necessary for maintaining and upholding of the said tillage and husbandry, &c.'

25 HEN. VIII. c. 13.

Concerning the number of sheep one should keep.

'Forasmuch as divers and sundry persons of the king's subjects of this realm, to whom God of his goodness hath disposed great plenty and abundance of moveable substance, now of late, within few years, have daily studied, practised, and invented ways and incans how they might accumulate and gather together into few hands as well great multitude of farms as great plenty of cattle, and in especial sheep, putting such lands as they can get to pasture and not to tillage, whereby they have not only pulled down churches and towns and enhanced the old rates of the possessions of this realm, or else brought it to such excessive fines that no poor man is able to meddle with it, but also have raised and enhanced the prices of all manner of corn, cattle, wool, pigs, geese, hens, chickens, eggs, and cach other, almost double above the prices which have been accustomed: by reason whereof a marvellous multitude and number of the people of this realm be not able to provide meat, drink, and clothes necessary for themselves, their wives and children, but be so discouraged with misery and poverty, that they fall daily to theft, robbery, and other inconveniences, or pitifully die for hunger and cold and as it is thought by the king's most humble and loving subjects that one of the greatest occasions that moveth and provoketh these greedy and covetous people so to accumulate and keep in their hands such parts of the grounds and lands of this realm from the occupying of the poor husbandmen, and so to use it in pasture and not in tillage, is only the great profit that cometh of sheep, which now become to a few persons hands of this realm in respect of the whole number of the king's subjects; that some have 24,000, some 20,000, some 10,000, some 6,000, some 5,000, and some more, and some less: which things thus used, be principally to the high displeasure of Almighty God, to the decay of the hospitality of this realm, to the diminishing of the king's

people,

people, and, in conclusion, if remedy be not found, it may turn to the utter destruction and desolation of this realm, which God defend. It is therefore enacted, that no person shall keep above 2,000 sheep, under pain of three shillings and fourpence.'

In the latter of these documents we have a very glowing and, we doubt not, a very correct representation of the evils and sufferings which the process of enlarging farms inflicted upon the ejected tenantry, before the progress of commerce and manufactures offered employment and subsistence to the occupiers whom their landlords discarded. Upon this subject Harrison, in his description of England, is nearly as eloquent as Henry VIII. and his parliament.

'But to leave,' says he, this lamentable discourse of so notable and grievous an inconvenience growing, as I said, by incroaching and joining of house to house, and laying land to land, whereby the inhabitants of many places in our country are devoured and eaten up, and their houses either altogether pulled down or suffered to decay little by little, although sometime a poor man peradventure doth dwell in one of them, who not being able to repair it, suffereth it to fall down, and therefore thinketh himself very friendly dealt withal if he may have an acre of ground assigned unto him wherein to keep a cow, or wherein to set cabbages, radishes, parsnips, carrots, melons, pompions, or such like stuff, by which he and his poor household liveth, as by their principal food sith they can do no better. And as for wheaten bread, they eat it when they can reach unto the price of it; contenting themselves in the mean time with bread made of oats or barley,-a poor state God wot! Howbeit, what care our great incroachers? But in divers places where evil men dwelled, sometimes in good tenements, there be now no houses at all, but hopgards or sheds for poles, or peradventure gardens, as we may see in Hedningham and divers other places.'-Description of England, p. 193.

It is to our soil being divided into champaine ground and woodland the houses of the first lie uniformly builded in every town, together with streets and lanes; whereas in the woodland countries (except here and there in great market towns) they stand scattered abroad, each one dwelling in the middle of his own occupying: and as in many and most great towns there are commonly 300 or 400 families or mansions, and 2000 communicants, or peradventure more: so in the other, whether they be woodland or champaine, we find not often above 40, 50, or 60 households, and 200 or 300 communicants, whereof the greater part, nevertheless, are very poor folks, oftentimes without all manner of occupying, sith the ground of the parish is gotten into a few men's hands, yea, sometimes into the tenure of one, two, or three, whereby the rest are compelled either to be hired servants unto the others, or else to beg their bread in misery from door to door.'

"There are some, says Leland, who are not so favourable when they have gotten such lands as to let the houses remain upon them to the use of the poor: but they will compound with the lord of the soil to

pull

pull them down altogether: saying, that if they would let them stand, they should but toll beggars to the town, thereby to surcharge the rest of the parish and lay more burden upon them.'

It is scarcely necessary for us to caution the reader not to confound the towns' mentioned in the acts and extracts above quoted with the towns of modern times, from which they were essentially different. These ancient towns were inhabited almost entirely by persons engaged in the tillage of the land by which they were surrounded: nor is it improbable that, in many instances, those who lived in them occupied, like the inhabitants of an Irish town, a considerable tract of land as tenants in common. Ranulph, the monk of Chester, states, that by surveys taken in the time of the Conqueror, this country was found to contain 52,000 towns. Whatever doubts may be entertained as to the exact correctness of this statement, it cannot, we think, be disputed that these 'villæ,' or aggregations of agricultural dwellings, were extremely numerous as late as the reign of Henry VH. It would seem that in those times each chief proprietor of the soil not only retained in his own occupation a considerable portion of land for the maintenance of his household, but had also in the immediate vicinity of his demesne a villa or town,' with a quantity of land attached to it, which was occupied by tenants in common, who were termed his villani,' and over whose services he had a more arbitrary controul than over those of his socmen or free tenants. In the Survey of Hawstead, already alluded to, we find the following entry:

xx

'Thomas filius Eustacii capitalis dominus ejusdem villæ tenet 1 Mess: cc & xl a terræ x a prati et x a bosci.' Idem Thomas tenet IX (180) a terræ quas villani sui de eo tenent cum suis mess.'

As we do not find that these villains paid any rent, it is clear that they gave some equivalent in the form of labour and other services performed for their lord. When we recollect that in those times the chief proprietors must almost universally have occupied a portion of their own estates, and that it is not unreasonable to suppose that each parish contained on the average at least five proprietors having towns' appendant to their demesnes, we do not conceive the statement of the monkish historian to be by any means incredible.

The husbandry act of Henry VII. being manifestly repugnant to the interests of the great body of landowners, it is not surprizing that it should have produced but little effect in retarding the enlargement of farms; it was not the intention of the legislature to

• In Scotland every farm-stead is to this day a town.'

prevent

prevent the demolition of houses on farms of less extent than twenty acres: and as the practice of subdividing land had before this time reduced the average size of holdings considerably under that statutable limit, it must be evident that, without infringing the provisions of this act, a wide scope was left for the efforts of the landlords, From all holdings under twenty acres houses of husbandry gradually disappeared: the land was added to some adjoining farm, and the occupiers were turned adrift to shift for themselves. Hence arose a constantly increasing multitude of houseless beggars, wandering throughout the country in idleness and want. To check the progress of this ever-growing evil came now to be an object which engaged the attention of parliament whenever it met. Various acts were passed against decaying towns, hamlets, or houses of husbandry; or converting tillage into pasture'; which were then considered as the primary causes of beggary and vagrancy: and at the same time numerous statutes were enacted, denouncing the severest punishments against the increasing host of rogues and vagabonds, which the change we have described in the management of land unavoidably produced. These laws were the expiring efforts made in an unenlightened age to retard the introduction of those internal arrangements which laid the basis both of the agricultural and commercial opulence which this country has subsequently reached. As long as they continued effectual in securing the object which their framers had in view, the whole population of this country was scattered over the surface of the land, from which it drew but a scanty subsistence. The labouring classes were wholly engaged in agriculture, farms were generally of very small extent, and their occupiers, as might have been expected, poor and unskilful: assisted by the different members of their household they performed all the work of their farms, and, except during the busy seasons of spring and harvest, had little or no employment. The females of the family fabricated at home the few articles of wearing apparel with which all its members were forced to rest contented. While this state of society prevailed no demand for manufactures could have arisen.

During the progress of Elizabeth's reign the eyes of the public became still more opened to the evils of the old system of subdividing land. The impediments and clogs which had been devised to restrain the operations of the landlords were now removed, and full liberty was given to the proprietors of land to consolidate their farms and diminish the number of their tenants. This enabled the owners to derive a larger surplus from their estates, under the name of rent; and the supply of wants, which increased with the means of gratifying them, gave birth to that commer

cial system which has since acquired so much magnitude and importance; and not only the owners, but also the occupiers, when their farms were thus enlarged, became numerous and valuable customers to those who were engaged in manufactures. As the land came to be in fewer hands-as the agricultural districts became depopulated-manufactures were found to flourish. Those peasants whom the enlargement of farms deprived of their ancient means of subsistence, removed into manufacturing towns and districts, where employment was offered them as artisans and mechanics. In this latter capacity they procured constant work, and earned a much better subsistence than they had done while prolonging a miserable existence upon a small quantity of land, which left half their time unoccupied.

That the gradual abolition of small farms in this country has, upon the whole, proved beneficial to the public, is not, we appre hend, now a mooted question. At what point the injury arising from this practice becomes greater than the advantages to be derived from it, we cannot venture to decide. It is not to be doubted that it has its limits, and may be carried too far. We are inclined to suspect that the coldest economist, who views a cottager and a cabbage merely as productions of the soil, would not willingly select one of the hundred-acre turnip-fields of the Lord of Holkham as the scene of his declamations against the crofts and patches of the ancient system.

This important alteration in the system of managing landed property has effected an entire revolution in the internal fabric of society in this country; to this change of system, as their primary cause, we ascribe the origin of our present poor laws; but although the dissolution of the monasteries was not, as it is sometimes supposed, the immediate occasion which gave birth to these laws, still it must be acknowledged that the event in question spread over a wider surface the evils which they were introduced to remedy. Before the suppression of monastic institutions a large portion of the landed property of this country was in religious hands. These ecclesiastical proprietors, naturally averse from all innovations on established usages, made no attempt to alter the system on which their property had been managed: on their estates therefore the division and subdivision of land went silently on without check or interruption long after the practice had begun to be discouraged on the estates of laymen. But when this property fell into other hands things speedily assumed a new aspect; the system which the laymen had already commenced on their patrimonial estates was now introduced in their new acquisitions. Towards the middle of Elizabeth's reign the leases under which the tenants of the monasteries held their land expired, and the

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