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And Nineteenth-Century England: Some Regional Considerations Byj V BECKETT

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And Nineteenth-Century England: Some Regional Considerations Byj V BECKETT The Decline of the Small Landowner in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century England: Some Regional Considerations ByJ V BECKETT OWARDS the end of the nineteenth conditions of the century or so to 1760. century considerable concern was Attempts have been made to synthesize T expressed about the future of agricul- these views and to decide between their ture and the structure of English land- relative merits, but only recently have ownership. It was widely believed that the historians begun to recognize that the greater magnates had been steadily accumu- timing of decline might have varied re- lating property at the expense of the small gionally according to local agricultural owner, and evidence derived from the 186I characteristics. 3 In this paper evidence census appeared to confirm a trend towards drawn from Cumbria will be tested against concentration of land holdings. The survey existing theories of small owner displace- of landowners carried out in I873, com- ment. By looking at a region well away monly known as the 'new domesday', was from the Midland counties, where the partly inspired by the desire of several most detailed research has been concen- territorial aristocrats to explode what they trated, it is hoped to develop this theme of considered to be the myth of monopoly regional variation, and to draw some gen- control. They hoped thereby to deflate the eral conclusions relevant to the overall land reform movement, which had been debate about decline. 4 quick to exploit the propaganda value of the I86I figures. In fact, the census actually I served to strengthen the radicals' case since it One of the earliest hypotheses concerning was shown that 8o per cent of the land was in small owner decline was put forward by the hands of fewer than 7ooo proprietors." John Rae in the I88O'S. Using the Board of Clearly small owners had been displaced in Agriculture reports prepared in the 179o's large numbers, and, perhaps not surpris- he reached the conclusion that 'up till the ingly, historians began to ask when this had close of the eighteenth century no really happened. Equally unsurprisingly common serious breach had as yet been made in the agreement was not to be found; indeed, since ranks of the yeomanry, if indeed their the 188o's different schools of thought have ranks had not positively risen'. In his placed the blame for decline on the post-I 815 opinion the blame for decline could be agricultural depression, the parliamentary placed on the agricultural depression which enclosure movement, and the economic ~See especially the work of Joan Thirsk, 'Seventeenth Century Agriculture and Social Cbange', in Land, Church and People, supplement to the Ag Hist Rev, XVIII, I97o, pp 148-77. Dr Thirsk 'An earlier version of this paper was read to the staff'research has developed the theme in an unpublished paper, 'The Disappear- seminar of the Nottingham University History Department. I ance of the English Peasantry', which was read.to the University of should like to express my gratitude to members of that seminar for London Centre of International and Area Studies Peasant Seminar, helpful criticisms. For reading and commenting upon the paper at March 1974. various stages of preparation I should like to thank Dr Joan Thirsk, 4By 'small owner' is meant a copy or freeholder with a small Dr Michael Turner and Mr Alan Cameron. holding worked in the main as a family farm. In this paper I do not ~J Bateman, The Great Landowners of Great Britain and Ireland, new intend to look at the question of definition, and shall therefore edn, Leicester, t971, pp 8-13. avoid debatable terms such as 'peasant'. 97 9 8 THE AGRICULTURAL HISTORY REVIEW followed the N~.poleonic wars: 'when the he could meet these he seldom survived the war ceased the whole fabric they had built loss of fallow and stubble pasture. The for themselves fell in... they may be said cottagers' position was equally bad if not to have fallen at Waterloo'. Some survived, worse: 'before enclosure the cottager was a and Rae cites the example of the Isle of labourer with land, after enclosure he was a Axholme in Lincolnshire; but, in general, labourer without land'.8 Lord Ernle shared economic conditions in the wake of the this view: 'hundreds of cottagers, deprived war acted against the small owner. Any of the commons, experienced that lack of doubts about this could be dispelled by rural employment which drove them into looking at the reports produced during the the towns in search of work'. 9 Such opin- I83O'S by the Agricultural Distress com- ions assumed that enclosure was a massive mittees, s Although Rae's argument has swindle which permanently undermined been largely ignored in the twentieth cen- the small man in favour of the capitalist tury it is by no means an unreasonable one. landowner, and judging from the literature Quite recently Thompson has restated it many contemporaries also thought in this along the lines that a stability thesis for the way. It would be short-sighted to argue eighteenth-century small owner is just as that no one left the land as a result of plausible as one of decline, given the enclosure, but recent research has played similarity of Gregory King's and Patrick down the importance of the movement for Colquhoun's figures, for 1688 and 18o3 depopulation. Chambers suggested that respectively. 6 the enclosure acts had the effect of further reducing, In the early years of the twentieth cent- but not of destroying, the remainingEnglish peasan- ury a number of writers argued that parlia- try.., since the rural population was unmistakably mentary enclosure was the chief cause of on the increase during this time, the contribution which the dispossessed made to the labour force small owner decline. An agricultural revo- came, in the majority of cases from the unabsorbed lution combined with enclosure seemed to surplus, not from the main body.'° them to provide reasons for positing a Some correlation cannot be denied. Hunt's corresponding increase in farm sizes and a study of Leicestershire has shown a steady diminution of occupiers (small owners and transfer of land into larger units during the tenant farmers). According to Gonner, period I78O-I83 I; Turner's work on Buck- 'there is little room for wonder at the inghamshire has led him to question the steady and widespread disappearance of the universality of Chambers' argument; Hos- small farmer, and especially of the small kins regarded the enclosure award of I766 ( Owner cultivating his own little farm', v as being ultimately responsible for the end Such a view was particularly attractive to of the old peasant community in Wigston radical historians anxious to picture aggres- Magna; and Martin has shown that in parts sive capitalist landowners trampling over of Warwickshire considerable disruption the rights of small owners in order to followed enclosure." Econometric models establish large tenant farms. For the Ham- monds, enclosure was fatal to the small sj L Hammond and Barbara Hammond, Tire Village Labourer, new edn, 1978, pp 58,--9. owner, the cottager and the squatter. In ~Lord Ernle, English Farmin~ Past and Present, 6th edn 1961, p 3ol. their opinion the costs involved severely Other books taki,~g a similar line were Gilbert Slater, The English Peasantry and the Enclosure of Common Fields, I9o7, W Hasbach, undermined the small owner, and even if History q(the English Agrieuhural Labourer, 19o8, and H Levy, Large and Small Holdings, Cambridge, 191 I. ~John P,ae, 'Why Have the Yeomanry Perished', Contemporar), ,oj D Chambers, 'Enclosure and Labour Supply in the Industrial Review, XL1V, 1883, pp 55z-3. Revolution', Econ Hist Rev, 2nd ser, V, 1952-53, p 335. 6F M L Thompson, 'Landownership and Economic Growth in " H G Hunt, 'Landownership and Enclosure, 175o-I83o', Eeon Hist England i,1 the Eighteenth Century', in E L Jones and S. J Woolf Rev, 2nd ser, XI, 1958-59, pp 497-505; M E Turner, 'Parliament- (eds), Agrarian Change and Economic Development, 1969, pp 42.q). ary Enclosure and Laqdownership Change in Buckinghamshire', VE C K Gonner, Common Land and Inclosure, 1912, p 369. Eeon Hist Rev, 2nd ser, XXVIII, 1975, pp 565-81; W G Hoskiqs, ,¢ THE DECLINE OF THE SMALL LANDOWNER 99 have added weight to this argument. teenth and during the first half of the Crafts, for example, has suggested that 'at eighteenth century'. 's Nor were H L a county level there was a small but Gray's findings about Oxfordshire, pub- perceptible positive association between lished in I9Io, taken seriously, even Parliamentary enclosure of common fields though they supported Johnson's findings, and outmigration'. '~ Finally, several wri- again using land tax returns. This data ters have suggested that whatever the suggested that during the war years small position of the cottager, small owner- owners enjoyed something of a renais- occupiers were not in general severely sance, because agricultural prices were high affected by enclosure. There may even have enough to make small holdings profitable. been an increase in both numbers and acreage Yet such arguments had little impact, and during the 178o-1832 period." the interpretation remained out of favour Decline as a phenomenon pre-dating the even after Davies published similar find- parliamentary enclosure movement has ings in I927 for a group of Midland been supported by a line of commentators counties. Substantive backing eventually stretching back to Marx. It was his opinion came from Habakkuk's work on landown- that ership. He argued that falling agricultural As late as the last decade of the seventeenth century prices through the seventeenth and early the yeomanry, as an independent peasantry, formed eighteenth centuries, coupled with heavy a more numerous class than did the farmers...
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