VOLUME 32 I984 PART I The East Anglian Agrarian Riots of 1822 PAUL MUSKETT Medieval Sheep and Wool Types M L RYDER Patterns of Estate Management in East Yorkshire c 184o-c 188o BARBARA ENGLISH Distilling and Agriculture 187o--I939 R B WEIR An approach to the Agrarian History of Upland Country: Ecology and Habitat ADRIAN H COWELL Annual List and Brief Review of Articles on Agrarian History, 1982 RAINE MORGAN Work in Progress THE AGRICULTURAL HISTORY REVIEW VOLUME 32 PART I 1984 Contents The East Ang!ian Agrarian Riots of 1822 PAUL MUSKETT I Medieval Sheep and Wool Types M L RYDER 14 Patterns of Estate Management in East Yorkshire c I84o-c 188o BARBARA ENGLISH 29 Distilling and Agriculture 187o-1939 R B WEIR 49 An approach to the Agrarian History of Upland Country: Ecology and Habitat ADRIAN H COWELL 63 Annual List and Brief Review of Articles on Agrarian History, I982 RAINE MORGAN 75 Work in Progress 86 Book Reviews: Early Harness Systems; Experimental Studies, a contribution to the history of the horse, byJ Spruytte AXEL STEENSBERG 94 Early European Agricultv,re-- its foundations and development, edited by M Rjarman, G N Baileyand H NJarman M L RYDER 95 The Farming ~fPrehistoric Britain, by P J Fowler M L RYDER 95 Lords and Peasants in a changing Society: the estates of the bishopric of Worcester, 68o--154o, by ChristopherDyer JOHN HATCHER 96 Tithe and Agrariart History from the Fourteenth to Nineteenth centuries, an essay in comparative history, by Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie and Joseph Goy R J P KAIN 97 Large Estates and Small Holdings in Europe in the Middle Ages and Modern Times. National Reports, edited by P6ter Gunst and Tomfis Hoffmann D J DAVIS 98 Peasant Classes: The Bureaucratization of Property under Early Habsburg Absolutism, 1511-1636, by Hermann Rebel D J DAVIS 99 Dalla Citta al Borgo. Avvio di una metamorfosi economica e sociale nella Lombardia spagnola, by A1do de Maddalena PETER LAVEN 99 'Now Turned into Fair Garden Plots' (Stow), byJ G L Burnby and A E Robinson JOAN THIRSK IOI (continued on page iii of cover) / / The East Anglian Agrarian Riots of 822 By PAUL MUSKETT ~'~ TEARS like 1816, 183o--32, I835-36 in 1843-45 when 250 fires were reported in Vwere exceptional only in the Norfolk and Suffolk, had some of the JL amount of violence that took place. features of a concerted campaign of intimida- No year in the first half of the nineteenth tion, but an examination of those brought century was a quiet year in the east. Every before the Suffolk assizes shows that perso- year was violent, and the amount of violence nal revenge, exhibitionism and juvenile that took place was very great indeed." A J vandalism lay behind the fire raising as much Peacock provides a necessary corrective to as any desire for social justice. It should be the sentimental picture of the agricultural noted that culprits in these categories were labourer stoically enduring his lot until more likely to be caught, and that the fires driven to the point of desperate revolt, but in provided a pretext for bringing in the village emphasizing the general level of violence ne'er-do-wells. Convictions were often there is a danger that the particular features of obtained on circumstantial evidence, and agrarian riots, as opposed to other forms of great exertions in extinguishing a blaze was rural protest, are obscured. Distinctions looked on as highly suspicious. 3 The up- have to be made between the various forms surge of incendiarism in the years of the of violence and care taken when attempting major riots cannot be discounted, but the to correlate them. reservations over the motives of the arsonists Food riots, machine breaking and the have to be kept in mind. Poaching also protests over tithes, wages and the Poor presents problems as 'an index of growing Laws were all public activities; the partici- poverty and social tension'. 4 The Game pants believed they were acting in a just Laws were resented, and their maintenance cause, and sometimes deliberately intro- by the squires and parsons on the magisterial duced an element of spectacle. One group of bench must have furthered a sense of machine breakers in 1822 was accompanied injustice, but the Laws also created the by a small band, and when they found a poachers' market, by prohibiting the sale of machine near Attleborough removed it to birds shot with proper authorization. the town centre before breaking it up. In a Poaching was not simply a matter of finding !atcr incident a machine was loaded on to its meat for the pot, it was a business interprise carriage and then dragged triumphantly carried out by large armed gangs, ready to from Winfarthing to Shelfanger where it was maim and murder to avoid capture and sunk in I4 feet of water. 2 protect their catches. Other types of social protest, such as There was a correlation between poacher arson, poaching, sheep stealing and cattle and arsonist in I843-45, but a connection maiming, need to be looked at with circum- between open protest and clandestine prac- spection. The great outburst of incendiarism tices cannot be presumed, except in so far as 'AJ Peacock, 'Village Radicalism m East Anglia', inJ p Dunbabin (ed), Rural Discontent in Nit,eteenth Century Britain, x975, p 39. 3D Jones, Crime, Protest, Community and Police in Nhteteenth Century ~Norwid, Mercury (NM), 9 March z8:~2; Bury Gazette (BG), 25 Britait,, x982, p 46. September x822. 4E J Hobsbawm and G Rud6, Captain Swing, 197o, pp 359-60. THE AGRICULTURAL HISTORY REVIEW they are responses to poverty, unemploy- conform to a pattern of deprivation and ment and exploitation. The I822 disturb- seems to have owed more to established ances differed from those o f 1816 and 183 o in precedents. Norwich, Ipswich, Bury and being more concentrated geographically, Colchester had a long history of food riots, and less diffuse in their objectives. and close examination of the coincident The 1816 risings had assumed three main troubles in the surrounding villages shows forms; traditional food riots at Brandon, that the agricultural labourers were taking Downham Market, Littleport and Ely; independent action. 7 machine breaking in Suffolk and Essex; and The most distinctive characteristic of the incendiarism to the south and east of Bury. riots in Suffolk and Essex was the destruction There were also wages riots at Swaft'ham of machinery, and threshing machines were Bulbeck and Wattisham, attacks on over- the targets of incendiary attacks at Cockfield seers at Ramsay and Warboys and a number and Clare. Threshing machines had been in of riotous assemblies in the Norfolk Fens. At use since 1786 , and as early as 18oo the Bury the machine breakers' target was a Norwich Mercury was recommending their spinning jenny and in Ipswich the trials of adoption as a means of preventing waste, rioters were the catalyst for violent protests reducing labour and checking fraud. over the Corn Laws.5 Machines did not come into general use in East Anglia until after I8O5, when a trans- II portable model, worked by one or two The Board of Agriculture's report on horses, was developed and the smaller conditions in I816 presented a sombre farmers could either invest in one or hire it. picture of the situation in East Anglia. There were entrepreneurs who leased Tenants were quitting their holdings in the machines on a fairly large scale, and men who face of high rents, mortgages and loans would spend a lifetime's savings on a single which could not be met as grain prices machine which they would rely on as a dropped. 6 Diversification and the intensive source of income when they were past being application of new techniques were even- able to perform heavier work. s tually to enable producers to take advantage The machines could be operated by of urban expansion and industrial growth, women and children, and so saved on wages, but in the immediate post-war years only but they were first brought into use to those with adequate capital could afford to compensate for a labour shortage, and the take the long-term view. Most farmers direct financial advantage over hand thought in terms of rate and tax reductions, a threshing was slight. A letter to the Norwich moratorium on rents, increased protection Mercury questioned the continued use of the against imports, and cutting of labour costs. machines at a time of high unemployment, Moves towards retrenchment coincided and claimed that 'corn may be thrashed as With the return of men from the war and the cheap by hand as by machine'. James Buck rise in the labour force resulting from thought that 'the threshing machine ought population increase. Witnesses to the Board not to be found in populous places amidst a drew attention to the plight of the labourers numerous poor'. 9 on parish relief and anticipated the troubles, VOutwell, Cambridge Chronicle (CC), 31 August 1793; Home Office (HO), 42135 25 July 1795; Halstead, Cambridge Intell(~,encer(CI), 15 but the actual locations of the riots did not August t795; Ramsay, HO 42/35 25 July; Wisbech, HO 42/35 3 August; Stowmarket, Bury Post (BP), 25 July 1795; Melton, SRO 5A J Peacock, Bread or Blood, t965, pp 09-82. Norfolk Chronicle HA 365/2 5 December 1792; Clare, London Gazette, t5 November (NC), I8, 25 May 18t6; NM 2oJanuary, 3 August 18t6; Su.~lk x8oo; Great Bardfield, London Gazette, 8 July t8oo, HO 42/50, Chronicle (SC), 27 April 18t6; NM 4 March 1815.