The impact of economic and demographic change on the Cornish moorland community of West Draynes between 1793 and 1851 Dissertation submitted for the degree of Master of Science in Local History Gary Crossley, Kellogg College, University of Oxford September 2011 i The impact of economic and demographic change on the Cornish moorland community of West Draynes between 1793 and 1851 Dissertation submitted for the degree of Master of Science in Local History Gary Crossley, Kellogg College, University of Oxford September 2011 ABSTRACT The remote Manor of West Draynes on Bodmin Moor in Cornwall experienced fundamental change between 1793 and 1851 and provides a good case study of how Cornish rural society responded to the challenges it faced during this period. The population of the manor more than doubled and the structure of society changed from one dominated by small farmers and cottagers to one where landless labourers were in the majority. In a move that was mirrored across Cornwall, the absentee landowner fundamentally changed tenancy arrangements, removing virtually all of the traditional three‐life leases that had provided substantial security of tenure to generations of tenants. These were replaced by 14‐year rack‐rental arrangements which, combined with poor farming economics after 1814, led to a greater turnover of tenants. Mining speculation and moorland enclosure added to the instability. Migration ‐ both inwards and outwards ‐ increasingly affected the manor and by 1851 there were miners from west Cornwall living in West Draynes while former inhabitants of the district could be found in Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the United States. Instability reached a peak in the ‘hungry forties’ when poverty and crop failure led to famine conditions. However, two interdependent factors gave the community a resilience and solidity in the face of this change. First, extraordinary levels of kinship links provided strong internal support networks and second, from the 1820s Bible Christianity began to dominate religious life in the district. ii The denomination also provided a political focus for the community, and its leaders ‐ mainly drawn from the small yeomen farmers and craftsmen ‐ increasingly clashed with the Established Church and larger landowning interests. They opposed the formation of a workhouse at Liskeard and supported labourers in their demands for better pay in the 1830s. The hinterland of the Bible Christian chapel at Trenant came to define a community where the loss of economic strength was mirrored by a growth in spiritual and political independence which drove an agenda for change in the second half of the nineteenth century. These themes are explored though a range of evidence including manorial and parish records, nonconformist registers, personal correspondence, contemporary newspaper reports and census material. Record linkage and family reconstitution are key methods used to analyse change. iii CONTENTS Chapter 1. Introduction 1 Chapter 2. West Draynes and surrounding area in 1793 8 2.1 The landowners 8 2.2 The tenants 11 2.3 Life in West Draynes in 1793 17 Chapter 3. Sowing the seeds of change – the ending of three‐life leases and farm rationalisation 21 3.1 Changes to tenancies during French Wars 21 3.2 Post‐war decline 26 3.3 Moorland tenancy agreements 27 3.4 Occupation patterns in 1844 compared with 1793 28 Chapter 4. Demographic pressures and occupational changes 30 4.1 The factors behind population growth 30 4.2 The influence of moorland enclosure on population growth and structure 34 4.3 The impact of mining on occupational and household structure in the 1840s 37 Chapter 5. The significance of kinship and religious change 40 5.1 The importance of kinship 40 5.2 The growth of Bible Christianity 44 Chapter 6. The impact of economic and demographic pressures on the community 50 6.1 Unrest in the 1820s and 1830s 50 6.2 The Hungry Forties 56 Chapter 7. Conclusions 64 Bibliography 66 iv List of abbreviations used AD ‐ Daniel family papers, Trekieve and Redgate, St Cleer AP ‐ Archdeaconry of Cornwall, Probate Court BK ‐ Records of Bond, Peace, Eliot and Knape solicitors BL ‐ British Library BW ‐ Records of Bewes and Anstis families of Duloe and St Neot CRO ‐ Cornwall Record Office CSHER ‐ Cornwall & Scilly Historic Environment Record CY ‐ Records of Coryton family of Pentillie, Pillaton CN ‐ Records of Carlyon family of Tregrehan, St Blazey NA ‐ National Archives QS ‐ Quarter Sessions order books v Chapter 1. Introduction When tenant farmer John Doney appeared before Trecan Gate magistrates in September 1847 he was in a desperate situation. A series of disastrous harvests across Cornwall had culminated in the failure of the potato crop, resulting in famine conditions in many districts including Bodmin Moor parishes.1 During the previous 12 months scarcity of corn had seen prices double, with wheat reaching 13s 6d per bushel at Liskeard market in May 1847. The consequences led to widespread rioting across Cornwall.2 However, the rocketing cereal prices were of little use to small farmers whose crop yields were too low to provide a big enough surplus to pay the rent. Doney had been struggling to pay the £18 a year rent on his 15‐acre farm for three years and was £12 19s behind with his payments in the summer of 1847.3 Facing the prospect of losing his farm if he could not pay the rent due at Michaelmas, he stole 27 sheaves and 16 gallons of oats on 27 August 1847 from his neighbour William Henwood.4 In court his defence was that it was the habit of neighbouring farmers to borrow from and lend to each other, but this did not convince the jury and he was found guilty. Doney was sentenced to one year’s hard labour despite receiving a character reference from Peter Gerry, a jury member and prominent St Neot nonconformist.5 Doney was the only tenant of the manor to be convicted of theft during the period of food shortages, although there were similar isolated cases across the district. At the many disturbances across Cornwall it was more common for a classic moral economy to prevail with grain confiscated from sellers and sold to those in need at what was considered to be a fair price. Money realised was 1 B. Deacon, ‘Proto‐industrialization and potatoes: a revised narrative for nineteenth century Cornwall’, in P. Payton (ed.) Cornish Studies, Vol. 5 (1997) pp. 60‐84 2 J. Rowe, Cornwall in the age of the Industrial Revolution (1993 edn.) [hereafter, Rowe, Cornwall] p.163 3 CRO MS. CY/3879: Rentals, 1827‐1849 4 CRO MS. QS/1/14/314: Sessions held at Bodmin, 19 Oct 1847 5 Royal Cornwall Gazette, 3 September 1847 1 then usually paid to the owner. Philip Payton has argued that this disastrous period in Cornish history has received too little attention, remaining ‘historiographically invisible’ compared with the coverage given to the famines in Ireland and Scotland.6 This dissertation will explore the factors which led up to the troubles of the 1840s and how the small moorland community of West Draynes and its absentee landlord dealt with the issues. Figure 1. The Manor of West Draynes on a modern map of Bodmin Moor (approximate boundary of the main part of the manor, which covered 95% of its 1,200 acres, is marked in red). The beginning of the period heralded a few years of prosperity for many in the district because of rising prices caused by the French Wars. However, the prosperity was short‐lived as a combination of demographic change, falling farmgate prices and the scrapping of most customary tenancy arrangements resulted in sharply falling standards of living for most inhabitants of the manor. It also led to a period of increasingly bitter conflict with authority. The willingness and ability of the people of West Draynes and surrounding area to stand up to authority was influenced by a number of 6 P. Payton, Cornwall, A History (2004) p.214 2 factors: most of the principal landowners were absentee, leaving small occupiers to dominate the local political economy; they were linked by extraordinarily strong kinship networks which reinforced the sense of an independent community; and they drew comfort and a renewed sense of independence from the Bible Christian Connexion, which became the dominant religious denomination in the district from the 1820s. The parishes of St Neot and St Cleer in which the manor sat are large moorland communities, covering 14,000 and almost 10,000 acres respectively. Most of the generally small farms had grazing rights on the moors or commons, which made up around two‐thirds of the land area. In West Draynes the farmers and cottagers had turbary and grazing rights on the 250 acres of moorland on Draynes Common. Both parishes had small settlements, or churchtowns, centred round their respective parish churches. However, in common with most of Cornwall the majority of the population lived in hamlets and isolated farms spread across the southern third of the parishes which had mostly been enclosed during the medieval period. The moors were largely uninhabited, although tinning was undertaken in some of the deposits close to the surface. The boundary between the moor and enclosed land was no accident as it closely followed the geological division between the granite, with its thin and acidic soils known as growan, and loams over slate and shale on the killas to the south. As if to emphasise its marginal nature, West Draynes was one of only three manors on Bodmin Moor which had their centres on the granite.7 Most of the small population of West Draynes lived in two hamlet settlements: the hamlet of Draynes had six properties in 1793 and Trenant had four.