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Committee presented was read a first time on May 22', a second time, and went into Committee, on May 25': when it was resolved that "The sum of £100,000 to be settled on the King's Majesty his heirs and successors in lieu of taking away (sic) the Court of Wards and Liveries and Tenures in Capite and by Knight Service, be generally charged on all lands." The bill was then further referred to a Committee. There was a debate on the reported amendments on July 283. On August 4, it was referred to a Committee "to apportion a rate upon the several Counties as equally as they can for the raising of £100,000 per Annum to be settled on his Majesty, in Compensation for Wardships, and Liveries, and the Court of Wards"". On November 8, the apportionment of the £100,000 on the respective counties was brought in and the debate adjourned. On November 19 the debate was resumed and adjourned. On November 21, the debate was resumed, when it was moved"?"-"That the moiety of the excise of ale' &c. shall be settled on the King's Majesty his heirs and successors in full recompense and satisfaction of all Tenures in Capite, and by Knight Service, and of the Courts of Wards and Liveries and in full satisfaction of all Purveyance, [and that the other Moiety of the Revenue of the Excise of Ale &c. be settled upon the King's Majesty during his natural life in further part of the £1,200,000 per annum revenue resolved to be settled on his majesty]." An amendment was moved to leave out the word "moiety"," and was negatived. A second amendment was then moved to leave out the words in brackets, and this was carried by a majority of two. The resolution was therefore passed without the second clause, the object of the amendment being apparently not to prejudge the important

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question of how the £1,200,000 should be raised, by dealing with it piecemeal.

From this it is clear: (1) that Hallam1, and Taswell-Langmead following him, are wrong in attributing the majority of two to a division which changed the compensation from a landtax to an excise. This change was affected without a division, the majority of two being on a question relating to the settlement of the ordinary revenue. (2) That any assertions that either the excise, or the abolition of feudal tenures, were new acts of a reactionary Parliament are incorrect; both had a past history; the novelty was their conjunction. Mr HumphreysOwen's appendix to Mr Brodrick's book' seems to me rather to fight the wind. The facts show that a Parliament of Landowners at first agreed that the compensation to the king for his revenues derived only from lands held in chivalry should be "generally charged on ALL lands;" a proceeding in itself unfair because the lands of all were made to bear the burdens of the few: that, on seeing the amount assessed on each county, this Parliament changed the compensation from a tax on all lands to a tax on ale and spirits, consumed by all people. The land owners in chivalry clearly thus escaped from their own burden, while persons who paid excise found part of it appropriated to defray the debts of others, instead of being used to lessen the taxation necessary for the king's ordinary revenue. Mr Humphreys-Owen in denying that the excise was substituted for the profits of the feudal tenures can hardly have had thèse facts in his mind.

1 Hallam, Const. Hist. 11. 424. T.Langmead, 2nd ed. p. 617.

2 English Land and English Landlords.

CHAPTER VII.

ECONOMICAL CHANGES IN THE LAND-SYSTEM.

BETWEEN the middle of the 14th century and the middle of the 16th, the English system of land cultivation entirely changed; and as the tendency of the changes was undoubtedly to cause larger quantities of land to come into the market, and to make alienations more common, the formed habits of the people naturally led to the repeal or evasion of laws which hindered the free transfer of land.

In the first half of the 14th century the method of cultivation of the land was, on the domain land of the manor by labourers employed by the lord or his bailiff, and paid out of the money commutations which had taken the place of the personal services due from the copyhold tenants; on the copyhold lands of the manor, by copyhold tenants whose holdings were so small that, aided by a common-field system, and common ploughing, they were their own labourers. The land had thus to sustain two classes, a landlord and labourers. The copyhold tenants had their homestead and stock from their lord, and were bound in return to perform personal service in tilling his domain land, a service which by this time had usually been commuted into fixed money payments with which he had hired labourers to cultivate his domain. Alienations of land would usually take place by the hands of the lord, and involving as they frequently did the transfer of a whole manor, would be serious and unusual undertakings. More land probably changed hands through forfeitures and escheats than through direct alienations inter vivos.

This system was completely broken up by the effects of the Plague or "Black Death," which devastated England in 1348— 49, and again in 1361, and in which nearly half the population perished'. The immediate result of this great mortality was a remarkable rise of wages. The Bishop of Chester misunderstands Prof. Thorold Rogers in making him state that it "doubled the rate of wages"," as that particular statement only refers to the threshing of corn, and to the years immediately following the plague, while the wages for that labour dropped again in the following years when harvests were plentiful. Prof. Rogers actually states the increases of wages due to the plague thus:-Reaping Harvest: general rise of nearly 60 per cent.; Mowing Grass: of 34 per cent.; Thatching: of 48 per cent.; Threshing Wheat: Eastern counties, 32 per cent.; Midland, 40 per cent.; Southern, 33 per cent.; Western, 26 per cent.; Northern, 32 per cent., &c.3.

He estimates the general effect of the visitation of the Plague, at an average of 50 per cent. rise in wages in all employments*.

There was great scarcity of labour, and the few labourers who survived demanded high wages. It thus became unprofitable and even impossible for the great lords, who rarely lived on their manors, to hold their lands and cultivate them by bailiffs. They attempted however to continue the old system of tillage by two devices. The famous Statute of Labourers endeavoured to fix the rate of wages which the labourers should receive, at the rate at which they had worked before the plague, and to punish them if they would not work for those wages. It recites and confirms an ordinance made, "against the malice of servants, which were idle and not willing to serve after the Pestilence without taking excessive wages," and enacts that they should be bound under pain of imprisonment to serve at the wages of four years before. That this Statute was at any rate not strictly observed is shown by the repeated petitions of the

1 Thorold Rogers, Hist of Prices, 1. 60.

2 Stubbs, II. 400, note. Rogers, 1. 260.

3 Rogers, 1. 266, 274.

4 Ibid. 1. 292.

5 Ibid. 1. 24.

6 25 Edw. III. c. I.

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Commons that it may be enforced. Prof. Rogers thinks however that in farm labour as distinguished from that of artisans some effect was produced, as he finds records of the reduction of the rate of wages in farm accounts of the period'. But as a whole the Statute was inoperative.

The second method resorted to by the landowners was that of attempting to enforce the personal services of their copyhold tenants, instead of their payment of the previous pecuniary commutation. If this succeeded the labour, being of higher value, was obtained as practically an increased rent from the villeins. To the discontent caused by this attempt on the part of the Lords much of the Peasant Revolt of 1381 is undoubtedly due.

Its failure as an universal expedient led to changes of cultivation. For fifty years or so many of the ecclesiastical and lay corporations let their lands on lease on a system somewhat similar to the metayer system of the South of France, the landlord finding all or a great part of the stock on the farm, the tenant paying a rent either in money or in kind, and being bound to return the stock or its value on the expiration of his lease. But even this extent of participation by the landlord in the cultivation of the lands passed away and, sooner or later according to the intelligence and adaptability of the lords, the land was let out on lease to other cultivators, usually for short terms, and at first in small lots of 5 or 10 acres3. This is so on corporation lands, which could not be alienated; the lands of Merton College, Oxford, were all under leases of this description by the beginning of the 15th century, while New College, which had retained the system of cultivation under a bailiff till about 1425, did not arrive at a complete system of leases till somewhere about 1450. But the lay lords probably alienated much of their lands in small plots, and the small freeholder, the forty shillings freeholder of the Act of 1430, became an important factor in England. The increased number of proprietors. meant an increased amount of transfer and alienation of lands, and called attention to the restraints on such alienations.

After the Wars of the Roses the commercial element entered

1 Rogers, 1. 300.

2 Ibid. 1. 24, 25.

3 Brodrick, English Land, p. 18. 4 Rogers, 1. 25.