DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.22140#0361
PEASANT AGRICULTURE AND MANUFACTURE. 345
said of the Belgian holdings, in which industry is traditional,
agriculture on the whole excellent, and the peasantry fairly secured
against extortion. My own observations of continental agriculture,
especially in Southern Germany, confirm most of these conclusions.
But, on the other hand, Lady Verney has lately drawn a deplor-
able picture of the peasant holdings in Auvergne, and of the sordid
struggle for existence in that region. But France, especially rural
France, is not the country in which to trust to first impressions
about the peasantry. I drew hasty, and, as I found afterwards,
erroneous conclusions about the Breton peasantry, conclusions
which further experience disabused me of. But there is no part
of the economic question in which it is more necessary to have
recourse to agricultural history than it is on agricultural tenancies,
and I must, in order to substantiate the conclusions which I shall
have to draw further on in this lecture, give you a sketch of agri-
cultural tenancies from remote to recent times.
The earliest evidence which we have of a conclusive and general
character as to the division of land and its occupancy dates from
the middle of Henry III.'s reign, or a little later, i.e., from about
1240. At this time it became the custom, the practice being
uniform from Northumberland to Cornwall, for rentals to be
drawn up, in which the number of holdings on each manor, with
the extent of each, was carefully defined in carucates, virgates, and
sometimes in acres, the subdivisions in the northern counties
being generally bovates. The plots of an acre or more are, I am
pretty sure, pieces held in severalty, the ordinary holding being
so many strips in a common-field. The system of common-fields
was universal, and no doubt ancient. It may have been an out-
come of Roman civilization or peasant life, and possibly the.
common-fields, which I remember seeing in my youth, in Warwick-
shire, may have been the form in which Sulla's veterans were
planted on the soil dangerously for the fortunes of the Roman
Republic in the days of Catiline's rebellion, and even to those of
Virgil, when the Corycian old man, rescued from piracy to all
appearance, was quartered, an involuntary guest, on the rural
holdings of the Mantuan peasants. It is not at all improbable
that the serfs of the English manor were in the first place the
.subject British, and that their numbers were recruited from those
said of the Belgian holdings, in which industry is traditional,
agriculture on the whole excellent, and the peasantry fairly secured
against extortion. My own observations of continental agriculture,
especially in Southern Germany, confirm most of these conclusions.
But, on the other hand, Lady Verney has lately drawn a deplor-
able picture of the peasant holdings in Auvergne, and of the sordid
struggle for existence in that region. But France, especially rural
France, is not the country in which to trust to first impressions
about the peasantry. I drew hasty, and, as I found afterwards,
erroneous conclusions about the Breton peasantry, conclusions
which further experience disabused me of. But there is no part
of the economic question in which it is more necessary to have
recourse to agricultural history than it is on agricultural tenancies,
and I must, in order to substantiate the conclusions which I shall
have to draw further on in this lecture, give you a sketch of agri-
cultural tenancies from remote to recent times.
The earliest evidence which we have of a conclusive and general
character as to the division of land and its occupancy dates from
the middle of Henry III.'s reign, or a little later, i.e., from about
1240. At this time it became the custom, the practice being
uniform from Northumberland to Cornwall, for rentals to be
drawn up, in which the number of holdings on each manor, with
the extent of each, was carefully defined in carucates, virgates, and
sometimes in acres, the subdivisions in the northern counties
being generally bovates. The plots of an acre or more are, I am
pretty sure, pieces held in severalty, the ordinary holding being
so many strips in a common-field. The system of common-fields
was universal, and no doubt ancient. It may have been an out-
come of Roman civilization or peasant life, and possibly the.
common-fields, which I remember seeing in my youth, in Warwick-
shire, may have been the form in which Sulla's veterans were
planted on the soil dangerously for the fortunes of the Roman
Republic in the days of Catiline's rebellion, and even to those of
Virgil, when the Corycian old man, rescued from piracy to all
appearance, was quartered, an involuntary guest, on the rural
holdings of the Mantuan peasants. It is not at all improbable
that the serfs of the English manor were in the first place the
.subject British, and that their numbers were recruited from those