Page images
PDF
EPUB

When his people saw and thought of these dread sufferings - when they remembered what he who bore them had gone through-how nobly and courageously he had discharged the duties of his station according to his own imperfect view of them-how he had worked harder than some of his Ministers, and hoped more confidently than most of his people, and, in the tension of political strife, had demeaned himself towards his humbler subjects with all the simplicity of a frank and kindly man-is it wonderful that among all classes and all sects, a loyal prayer went up for the restoration of the aged monarch, and that from the meeting-house and the synagogue unstudied supplications arose, before the prelates of the Established Church had decided in what terms to invoke Heaven on behalf of the blind and afflicted King? It is not for us to heap undue eulogy on the memory of George III. We consider some of his political errors to have been most grave, and his theory of kingly government pernicious. But we cannot now, at the interval of nearly fifty years, blind ourselves to the solid virtues which won for him, at the close of his life, a more profound sympathy and more loyal love, than were ever earned by English King before, or by any English monarch, except Elizabeth alone.

ART. II.-A History of Agriculture and Prices in England, from the year of the Oxford Parliament (1259) to the commencement of the Continental War (1793). Compiled entirely from original and contemporaneous records. By JAMES E. THOROLD ROGERS, M.A., Professor of Political Economy in the University of Oxford, &c. Vols. I. and II. (1259-1400.)

THE

HE contents of Professor Rogers' title-page, as quoted at the head of our article, show the originality and comprehensiveness of his design. What progress he may be able to make in filling up so very extensive a scheme, we need not at present anticipate. We propose to deal with these two volumes as a complete work for the period which they cover: the summary of very minute investigations, presenting many statistical results fairly ascertained, but suggesting, in addition, some new and striking views respecting the economical progress, of the English nation, which appear to us, here and there, more striking than convincing; chiefly because the author is a politician as well as an antiquary, and has in his mind certain theories respecting what ought to be in the nineteenth century,

as well as a mass of knowledge concerning things as they were in the fourteenth.

He ascribes to himself, with perfect justice, the merit of having used for the compilation of his work original authorities only. If he employs second-hand materials at all, or even quotes former writers, it is almost entirely for purposes of illustration and comparison. The records from which he has drawn his information are catalogued in the preface to his second volume. It is chiefly derived from four collections. These are -the archives existing in the muniment-rooms of Merton, Queen's, and New College, in Oxford; and the ancient miscellanies in the Public Record Office. The evidence which has been derived from other than these four sources-namely, from private collections of accounts (which he particularises)— has been scanty, and, comparatively speaking, unimportant. The most valuable and complete of all the documents examined by the author are those of Merton College. The estates possessed by this ancient and distinguished corporation were situated in Warwick, Kent, Hants, Durham, Northumberland, Cambridgeshire, Leicestershire, Bucks, Surrey, Wilts, and Oxfordshire; and accounts of expenditure and receipts from all these estates are preserved in abundance among the College archives. But though his most complete, these are not his most abundant sources of information.

'By far the largest number of farm accounts which have been examined' (he proceeds, after specifying those of the other colleges) are preserved in the Public Record Office. It is not clear how these records came into the possession of the Crown. Some may have been transferred from the mesne lord on the occurrence of escheat or forfeiture, or may have been surrendered on the occasion of a regrant of lands; some perhaps represent the proceeds of estates administered in the Court of Wards' (and so forth). Accounts of monastic estates were probably transferred either on the suppression of alien priories, or at the general destruction of these establishments in the sixteenth century.'

The examination, comparison, and extracting of these numerous and minute records have cost the Professor five years of labour. Before proceeding to their contents, we will touch briefly on one collateral point of interest to antiquaries.

The accounts are generally written on parchment, very few on vellum. Up to the beginning of the fourteenth century, the use of these materials was universal, and, as far as I have seen, no paper is employed before this period. There is a book in the Public Record Office, written in the reign of Edward II. (1307-1327) con

...

taining an account of customs paid at Bordeaux, the material of which is a thick paper, apparently made of cotton. The earliest specimen of English paper made from linen rags which I have ever seen is a small piece containing an account of the spices contained in the Merton College larder in the year 1337. The fabric is very coarse and rude, a large fragment of the original linen being still visible in the substance of the paper, and the texture is very loose. Shortly after this date, however, excellent paper, wired and watermarked, may be found; but the ancient fragment alluded to above is, perhaps, the earliest existing specimen of an art which has been the means of such important benefits to mankind.'

Wired and watermarked paper seems to have come into use about 1350.

Out of these materials the Professor has constructed with great industry a series of tables, filling the whole of his second volume, giving with the utmost minuteness the prices of all common articles of consumption, and of labour of every kind, from 1259 to 1400. The first date (that of Simon de Montford's Parliament) is taken, he informs us, merely at random, owing to the circumstance that the continuity of the materials at his disposal only commenced with that year. The first volume is devoted to a summary of the results which appear tabulated in the second, together with the exposition of his own views on the slow and fluctuating progress of society during the era under review.

The first fixed point which it is essential to ascertain at the very outset of an inquiry of this kind, is the value of the currency in which prices are estimated. Unfortunately, it is not easy to form, with mathematical accuracy, any comparison between the pounds, shillings, and pence of the English accounts of the period, and those now in use. We have not space to go into so complicated a question; and the Professor's intimations on the subject are, we must say, not so distinct, or so clearly arranged, as so elementary a part of his work would seem to require. We collect, however, that he does not consider that the intrinsic value of the currency varied during the period to such a degree as to affect his calculations materially; and that he assumes the pound and the shilling to have contained almost three times as much pure silver, and to have represented a purchasing power in relation to commodities (measured generally in wheat, the steadiest of them) about eight times as great, as the pound and shilling of the present time.

In the period of 140 years, which these returns illustrate, there took place no internal change of importance in English political history, except such as are by their nature very gradual in operation. There was certainly no space of equal

length in our annals, prior to the reign of William III., so free from revolutionary commotion and civil war. It began, indeed, with the struggle between the Crown and the barons under Simon de Montfort: it ended with the peasant insurrections of Richard II.'s reign: but the interval between these was one of complete quiet. No vast confiscations, no invasion of corporate, or crown, or religious property, took place to interfere with the ordinary vicissitudes of landed estates, and the relation of landlord and tenant. There were long foreign wars with France, but felt only as foreign wars commonly are felt, distantly and at second-hand, by the mass of the population. In this absence of political causes of disturbance, the Professor has fixed on two events of a natural order, which interrupt in a remarkable manner the regular range of prices and remuneration of capital and industry. The first is the great famine of 1315-6. The second, and by far the more important, is the Black Death, or Plague of 1348; which, beginning at that date, devastated England, as well as the greater part of continental Europe, for some years longer. The Professor is so much struck with the evidences which his computations afford him of the extent and duration of the effects of this last mighty visitation, that he is disposed to make it a turning-point, as it were, in the history of England: to believe that it effectually and permanently disturbed the relations between capital and labour, and those between landlord and tenant, and, generally, shook the very basis of society throughout the kingdom, and initiated a new order of things. Great results, undoubtedly, from what appears so temporary a cause; nor are we by any means disposed to accept in the mass our author's view on the subject, as will be seen presently when we come to discuss them at leisure. In the meantime, let those who may be disposed too readily to reject beforehand conclusions which may be thought exaggerated, reflect on what has happened in our own times. Only twenty years ago, the economical condition of Ireland seemed as fixed an element, in the statesman's calculation, as any feature in human society well could be. Suddenly and unexpectedly there fell upon us, neither the hand of the invader, nor social revolution at home, nor any other of those political vicissitudes which form the staple of the historian's commentaries; but the hand of God-or an unexpected development of certain natural laws, if Professor Tyndall prefers so to word it. The food of the nation perished; an eighth of its population with it; those who remained emigrated year after year in increasing numbers; a whole race of small cotter tenants almost disappeared; a new

division of land was substituted for the old. With this example fresh before our eyes, we may, perhaps, believe what chroniclers bred in less eventful days have rejected as extravagant; namely, that a natural visitation of extreme violence may produce at once greater changes in the national existence than are wrought out in centuries of ordinary progress or decay.

Following the Professor, we will therefore take a rapid survey of the general state of our social economy in the fourteenth century-the age of Chaucer, the age in which English social life first dawns on us, that in which, we may almost say, England became England; and then devote a few words to the peculiar changes which he conceives the visitation of famine and plague, to which we have alluded, have effected in that

economy.

We should greatly deceive ourselves, according to the Professor, if, following the guidance of some superficial writers, we imagined the face of the country, in those days, to have presented the appearance of a comparative wilderness. England was already a country of old civilisation, and of which the more productive portions had been cultivated for many centuries. The forest and the moor, though of course somewhat more extensive than now, were by no means so much so as to form characteristic features in any district, south of the Humber, which is now cultivated. The northern counties were no doubt far less reclaimed than the southern.

There is a general impression, which must needs be vague, and is, I believe, founded solely on antecedent probabilities, that the area of arable land in England five hundred years ago was much less than at present. I cannot agree with such a notion for several reasons, though, as I have said above, I am willing to allow a deduction for the less settled parts of the country, as well as for those which were liable to plundering excursions. Let it be admitted that some land has been broken up which was never put under the plough till the last fifty years; and we must set against it that which has been turned into pasture, and occupied by the growth of towns. In medieval times, a park or pleasure ground in the neighbourhood of a mansion was unknown. Cultivation was carried on up to the very doors of the house, the more so, perhaps, as proximity to the master's abode was an element of security for the crop. If we walk in the grounds of a modern English park, now laid out in grass, we may often see the marks of ancient culture in ridge and furrow. Great part, for instance, of the land near Belvoir Castle is of this kind. The lords de Ros, who then possessed the castle, assuredly cultivated the whole of the southern valley. Thousands of acres have been laid down in meadow, which, centuries ago, bore crops of corn. Similarly, thousands of acres in the suburbs

« PreviousContinue »