href="@public@vhost@g@gutenberg@html@files@16594@[email protected]#CHAPTER_XXI" tag="{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}a">CHAPTER XXI

1875-1908. Agricultural Distress again.—Foreign Competition.— Agricultural Holdings Act.—New Implements.—Agricultural Commissions.—The Situation in 1908

CHAPTER XXII

Imports and Exports.—Live Stock

CHAPTER XXIII

Modern Farm Live Stock

APPENDICES

I. Average Prices from 1259 to 1700

II. Exports and Imports of Wheat and Flour from and into England, unimportant years omitted

III. Average Prices per Imperial Quarter of British Corn in England and Wales, in each year from 1771 to 1907 inclusive

IV. Miscellaneous Information

INDEX

LANDMARKS IN ENGLISH AGRICULTURE

1086. Domesday inquest, most cultivated land in tillage. Annual value of land about 2d. an acre.

1216-72. Henry III. Assize of Bread and Ale.

1272-1307. Edward I. General progress. Walter of Henley.

1307. Edward II. Decline.

1315. Great famine.

1337. Export of wool prohibited.

1348-9. Black Death. Heavy blow to manorial system. Many demesne lands let, and much land laid down to grass.

1351. Statute of Labourers.

1360. Export of corn forbidden.

1381. Villeins' revolt.

1393. Richard II allows export of corn under certain conditions.

1463. Import of wheat under 6s. 8d. prohibited. End of fifteenth century. Increase of enclosure.

1523. Fitzherbert's Surveying and Husbandry.

1540. General rise in prices and rents begins.

1549. Kett's rebellion. The last attempt of the English peasant to obtain redress by force.

1586. Potatoes introduced.

1601. Poor Law Act of Elizabeth.

1645. Turnips and clover introduced as field crops.

1662. Statute of Parochial Settlement.

1664. Importation of cattle, sheep, and swine forbidden.

1688. Bounty of 5s. per quarter on export of wheat, and high duty on import.

1733. Tull publishes his Horse-hoeing Husbandry.

1739. Great sheep-rot.

1750. Exports of corn reached their maximum.

1760. Bakewell began experimenting.

1760 (about). Industrial and agrarian revolution, and great increase of enclosure.

1764. Elkington's new drainage system.

1773. Wheat allowed to be imported at a nominal duty of 6d. a quarter when over 48s.

1777. Bath and West of England Society established, the first in England.

1789. England definitely becomes a corn-importing country.

1793. Board of Agriculture established.

1795. Speenhamland Act. About same date swedes first grown.

1815. Duty on wheat reached its maximum.

1815-35. Agricultural distress.

1825. Export of wool allowed.

1835. Smith of Deanston, the father of modern drainage.

1838. Foundation of Royal Agricultural Society.

1846. Repeal of the Corn Laws.

1855-75. Great agricultural prosperity.

1875. English agriculture feels the full effect of unrestricted competition with disastrous results.

    "     First Agricultural Holdings Act.

1879-80. Excessive rainfall, sheep-rot, and general distress.

CHAPTER I

COMMUNISTIC FARMING.—GROWTH OF THE MANOR.—EARLY PRICES.—THE ORGANIZATION AND AGRICULTURE OF THE MANOR

When the early bands of English invaders came over to take Britain from its Celtic owners, it is almost certain that the soil was held by groups and not by individuals, and as this was the practice of the conquerors also they readily fell in with the system they found. [1] These English, unlike their descendants of to day, were a race of countrymen and farmers and detested the towns, preferring the lands of the Britons to the towns of the Romans. Co-operation in agriculture was necessary because to each household were allotted separate strips of land, nearly equal in size, in each field set apart for tillage, and a share in the meadow and waste land. The strips of arable were unfenced and ploughed by common teams, to which each family would contribute.

Apparently, as the land was cleared and broken up it was dealt out acre by acre to each cultivator; and supposing each group consisted of ten families, the typical holding of 120 acres was assigned to each family in acre strips, and these strips were not all contiguous but mixed up with those of other families. The reason for this mixture of strips is obvious to any one who knows how land even in the same field varies in quality; it was to give each family its share of both good and bad land, for the householders were all equal and the principle on which the original distribution of the land depended was that of equalizing the shares of the different members of the community.[2]

In attributing ownership of lands to communities we must be careful not to confound communities with corporations. Maitland thinks the early land-owning communities blended the character of corporations and of co-owners, and co-ownership is ownership by individuals.[3] The vills or villages founded on their arrival in Britain by our English forefathers resembled those they left at home, and even there the strips into which the arable fields were divided were owned in severalty by the householders of the village. There was co-operation in working the fields but no communistic division of the crops, and the individual's hold upon his strips developed rapidly into an inheritable and partible ownership. 'At the opening of Anglo-Saxon history absolute ownership of land in severalty was established and becoming the rule.'[4]

In the management of the meadow land communal features were much more clearly brought out; the arable was not reallotted,