AGRICULTURE AND PRICES IN ENGLAND DURING THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.*

A PERIOD of twenty-one years has gone by since the appear- ance of the first two volumes of this laborious undertaking, and an interval of five years has elapsed since Volumes III. and IV. were issued, and noticed in these columns. Professor Rogers has at length finished another pair of volumes, whose publication, he writes, " will leave me, if I have health and opportunities, within measurable distance of the completion of this work, which I undertook in ignorance of how great the task was, a quarter of a century ago." These two volumes show the same scheme of arrangement and method of exposition that have been followed hitherto. In one volume is contained the text, in the other the sermon, although the usual ordering of these distinctive portions of a discourse is in the present case reversed. The pages of Vol. VI., familiar in appearance to those who have handled and consulted earlier portions of the work, contain thousands of columns of prices of agricultural and other products, of merchandise of every description, of raw and manufactured goods, together with the wages paid for nearly all kinds of labour, and the cost of carriage. The date and the locality are given with nearly every example. Professor Rogers calls attention to the fact that what he has collected in these volumes, as in the foregoing ones, is not only authentic, but new. An incredible amount of arduous original research has been expended in bringing together these items in their marshalled order, each of which, we are reminded, - is in every case a contemporaneous record of business done." The evidence here set forth has been obtained mainly " from the domestic accounts of certain Oxford and Cambridge Colleges, from those of Eton College, and later on from those of Winchester." Household books and archives of a number of families, de- posited in the British Museum and elsewhere, and some private a^counts, together with Houghton's Price-Lists, afford addi- tional sources of valuable information. The chapters of Vol. V. are devoted not only to the consideration and elucidation of the matter contained in the twin-volume, but there will be found many others of an extremely interesting character on such far-reaching topics as the progress of agriculture, the distribution of wealth, trade and finance, the condition of the tenant-farmer, and the purchasing power of wages during the period immediately under consideration. This period extends from the year 1583 to the accession of Queen Anne, thus comprising the latter half of Elizabeth's reign and the whole of the seventeenth century, or, in other words, includes the most instructive and fascinating epoch, from a political and • A History of A!,,.ienitu re and P. Ices in England, from the Year after the Oxford Parliament (12A".1 to tile Commencement of the Continental War (1793). Compiled entirely from Original and Contemporaneous Records. By James E Thorold Rogers. Vols. V. and VI. Oxford : ClIrention Press.

social point of view, in "our rough island story." In every department., the men of the seventeenth century have a vigour and a vitality so extraordinary that they live for us far more distinctly and actually, and with a more vivid personality, than do those who stand nearer to our own day. The time abounded alike in great events and in great men, both good and bad. Professor Rogers says :—

" Within the period that lies before me, new principles of government, new rules of administration, new theories of social duty and social right were enunciated, affirmed, and endure to this day. The seventeenth century developed novelties in finance, which would have seemed impossible to a previous generation. It organised that wonderful system of banking and currency, the efficiency of which is so perfect, the analysis of which is so difficult, and yet so constantly examined by presumption and incompetence. The seventeenth century is as attractive to the historical economist as it is to the statesman and philosopher. It is a period of strange and continuous progress. In one particular only does it show signs of decay. The intellectual vigour of its youth is followed by the senile pruriency of its close. But the Court of the Restoration accounts for the fact that the age of Shakespeare and Milton is followed by that of Farquhar and Dryden."

More has been written, and deservedly so, on this remarkable century than on any other period in English history. Yet Professor Rogers says that his investigations have taught him that economical facts and features of the age were utterly neglected by the men who lived through it, and have been undiscovered by writers on its history. He says, in his preface to Vol. V. :—

" In the earlier ages of English history, social and economical events have been dwelt on with no little care. At a later period similar events have forced themselves on the attention of contem- poraries, and have been made the subject of more or less careful enquiry by men who have been constrained to deal with those formidable facts, which I trust I shall show to have been the in- evitable outcome of what occurred during the hundred and twenty years of my enquiry. But little or no notice is taken of the events which I have to dwell on. The times were too stirring. We do know that a great plague occurred in 1665, and a great fire in 1666 ; but the best information we have of the former is from an imaginary narrative written a generation and a half later by Defoe ; and though the latter could not escape comment, the fullest knowledge we get of it is from Dutch contemporaries. I am not aware, and I have searched pretty carefully, that any English writer makes any allusion to the great famine of 1661-2, or to the prolonged dearth which characterised the five years 1646-50. But even in the fifteenth century, dark as the annals of that century are, the famine of 1438 is duly commented on."

One great economic fact in the history of the seventeenth century is the enormous impetus given to maritime enterprise.

That Drake's voyages of a generation or two earlier, by showing what could be effected, had much to do with this advance, cannot be doubted. English merchants, who at the end of the sixteenth century traded chiefly with Antwerp, and after its capture by Parma in 1585, with Amsterdam, " the acknowledged centre of European commerce," soon acquired business connections with most of the Mediterranean ports, and with the Baltic, France, Spain, and Hamburgh. The

cod; fishery off Newfoundland, and the Greenland whale- fishery were actively followed. After some vicissitudes of fortune, the East India Company was firmly established.

Settlements were made in North America, islands in the West Indies were occupied, and the sugar-cane transported thither ; whilst in 1670 the Hudson's Bay Company received its charter. The increased foreign trade compensated to a considerable extent for the cost of the Civil War, estimated at seven millions yw.rly.

At home, manufactures, especially of woollen and linen goods, were greatly improved by the Flemish refugees, who brought with them capital and traditional skill. To the growth of these domestic industries Professor Rogers con- siders due nine-tenths of the rapid increase of population, which, in its turn, was an important factor in the great rise of rents for arable land. In his opinion, taking into account the vast wastes and undrained fens, " England must at this time have been peopled up to the full capacity of its agricultural produce, and one need not wonder at the high price of wheat during the last half of the seventeenth century."

By the end of the century, and in spite of the fear- ful ravages of the plague and small-pox, the population had doubled, numbering about five and a half millions. The filthy habits and poverty of the people made them very liable to epidemics, and in dear years—and the period was remarkable for its alternate plenty and dearth—there can be no doubt that many persons died of famine. London suffered worse from pestilence than other localities. Thus, in 1591 11,503 people died ; in the following year, 10,662 ; in 1603, 30,561; in 1625, over 35,000; in 1636, when the population would be about 140,000, 19,244 persons died ; and in the year of the Great Plague, 68,596. The disease was not got rid of for a generation later. Throughout the century the popula- tion of London was kept up and increased by immigration, the deaths exceeding the births ; and during the decade 1651-60, if records may be trusted, doubling them. Nor was this to be wondered at :-

" The filthiness of London was incredible. The approach to the City from the West was over a river of filth, the Fleet. There were two minor abominations in the Strand, crossed by bridges. There was no real drainage, and every square foot of London was polluted by the dead and the living. Even the water-supply obtained by the City from Paddington, and later on by the energy of Middleton from A mwell, was tainted by the medium through which it had to pass. The City, which, when it had only a tenth or a twentieth of its numbers, contained numerous open spaces, was beginning to be densely peopled, and the gardens of the citizens and the Companies to be occupied by buildings, the streets being narrow and hardly ventilated. Open markets were held in spaces still known, and in many others which have long ago been cleared of such business or such nuisances. The site of the Mansion House, and of the space between the Royal Exchange and what was afterwards to be the Bank, was one of these markets, chiefly for the commonest kind of provisions and coarse vegetables. The streets, unpaved and uneleansed, were at the best of times ankle-deep in pestiferous mud, or pestiferous dust. And within a short distance of all London wealth were the principal haunts of all London criminals, the numerous 'Liberties' of the City and its suburbs."

Oxford, Cambridge, and Winchester, with other towns, suffered also from the Plague, which Professor Rogers is disposed to think had its effect on wages. All kinds of labour obtained a rise in the seventeenth century. This was absolutely necessary if the labourer was to live. Everything was done, by design and through the agency of the law, to degrade him. The Quarter-Sessions assessments attempted to fix wages at starvation-point, or below it, whilst the great rise in prices, and a variety of other circumstances, put the labouring class at the mercy of the employer. During the first half of the century, all kinds of grain doubled in price, but wages rose only from unity to 1-49. The effect of the Civil War, with its misery and cruel waste, was to improve the condition of the labourer. Wages rise 50 per cent. or more, whilst the price of food does not increase in like proportion.

The condition of the labouring classes at this period has been fully treated by Professor Rogers in his Six Centuries of Work and Wages, in which book he has somewhat taken the

cream off this subj ect, and to whose pages all who are in- terested in the question should refer.

The most obvious feature in the rise of prices is the influx of precious metals from the New World, and this cause was operative until the middle of the century, when prices reached the level which, with minor fluctuations, they retained for a hundred and fifty years. Professor Rogers discusses the question of prices very thoroughly, and much interesting information is to be found in this part of his work. The price of grain he takes year by year. Three hundred years ago, in the Armada year, we find that corn was cheap, the harvest of 1587 having been abundant. The "fierce south-western gales, from whose premature appearance and violence England always has had to suffer dearth or loss, came opportunely in 1588 ; and having spared the English harvest, wrecked the Spanish fleet."

In agriculture, which had been stationary for three hundred years, a slow but solid improvement was effected, sufficient to provide food for the increased population, but no more than so to do, in ordinary years; whilst in bad years, famine, or something very like it, must have prevailed. Many books were written on husbandry, and met with a large sale, the chief

writers being Gervase Markham, Norden, Hartlib, who was a Dutchman and a friend of Milton, and Worlidge. These all complain that the progress of English husbandry was greatly hindered by the rapacity of the landlords. Competitive rents began to he seen. Tenants for terms of years were deterred from making remunerative improvements, through fear of the exactions of the landlords or lords of the manor, whenever a chance offered to raise rents or enforce excessive fines. Thus a feeling of distrust between landlord and tenant uprose, which, unhappily, has been continued to very recent times. The colleges and great corporations, and not a few private owners, let their lands on beneficial leases of twenty years, and these leases were eagerly sought after by the larger landowners, who, as middlemen, made a considerable profit in sub-letting to agriculturists. The condition of the tenant- farmer is discussed in a chapter of great interest. The rent he had to pay rose prodigiously, especially in the first forty years of the term before us, that of good arable land rising from ls. an acre to 5s. or 6s., whilst the rent of pasture was only doubled. This rise was rendered possible by the rise in the price of corn, most kinds of which in the same period more than doubled their value, whilst the price of other agricultural pro- ducts also rose greatly. The saleable corn produced, Professor Rogers estimates at about twelve bushels per acre, no greater a yield than in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The size of holdings was very varied, but the average was pro- bably about fifty acres. A numerous body of small freeholders existed who, like the smaller tenant-farmers, cultivated their lands with but scanty aid, if any, beyond that of their own family. The improved or Flemish system of husbandry was known in England, yet it was but little followed. In the latter half of the century, no mean advance was made in the cultivation of forage plants—great clover, sainfoin, lucerne, and trefoil, with some of the artificial grasses—but the growth of roots did not extend from the garden to the field, and turnips only were grown for cattle feed, and that in very restricted proportions. It was left to the next century to make the progress and improvements in root- cultivation which have so completely altered the character of husbandry since medieval times, and have assured a winter supply of meat and milk to the people. The land was still subdivided into common fields, a system unfavourable to much advance. Oxen were preferred for use on the land. one-third of which was laid in fallow. Hops were grown, and so was tobacco, the profit on this crop being very great, until it was made unlawful to grow it. There was a great extent of waste and fen land, which supported enormous quantities of winged game, the snaring and fowling of which seems to have been unrestricted. Wealthy persons bought large quantities, no doubt from regular fowlers. " What the peasant sold at the great house in his neighbourhood, he could procure for the maintenance of himself and his family ;" and it is likely that the food-supply of the country-folk was appreciably helped from this source. Pigeons, it may be noted, were kept in great flocks, every manor-house having its dovecot. " a franchise rigorously protected by law." In parts of England to this day, many farms have a field called "pigeon-close," or " culver-house close " ("culver "= " pigeon "), thus showing how common these columbaria were. Some are still in existence. The birds were a terrible nuisance to the farmer, plundering his crops incessantly.

English cookery at this period, we are told, was detestable. In fact, our forefathers were far behind other nations in all domestic comforts, conveniences, and amenities. Professor Rogers is disposed to think " that the solitary service which the Stuart exiles did to the country which they robbed and demoralised, was to teach them the better handling of their food." Great progress was made after the Restoration in the kitchen garden ; but earlier in the century garden produce was brought over from Flanders and Holland. There is reason to believe that up to 1582 even cabbages were imported; and in 1655, Hartlib complains that we still import a number of things that could be easily grown at home, onions being brought from Flanders, and even native plants which no one was at the pains to cultivate.

But it is impossible to say more, within the limits of this article, on this extremely entertaining and instructive, but, it must be stated, ill-arranged Vol. V. of this book. A great deal of its valuable information is so disjected, that it is almost impossible to make a speedy reference to it ; and the very in- complete index is too often only a source of irritation and despair. Apart from this fault, however, these volumes will be found rich in curious detail and interesting and important facts. They should be in the hands of all who, coming under the spell cast by the seventeenth century, desire to know something of the social and economical history of that period, and wish to obtain an idea of the condition of the common people, whose lives form the back- ground against which move the heroic figures of statesmen and warriors, philosophers and poets, of that remarkable age.