“In the open field village the entirely landless labourer was scarcely to be found. The division of holdings into numerous scattered pieces, many of which were of minute size, made it easy for a labourer to obtain what were in effect allotments in the common fields”. [1]
So said Gilbert Slater in 1907 but was he right? If he was then since right of common attached to land there would, even in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, have been large numbers of commoners. This is certainly the impression given by numerous writers such as the Hammonds but rarely is there any attempt to quantify their numbers. There is a good reason for this – the records have, by and large, been lost even if they had been kept in the first place. There was, surprisingly, no requirement for the inclosure commissioners to keep minutes of their meetings or retain them once the job had been completed. Even when they do survive they are usually unhelpful. The minute book of the Rampisham inclosure makes no mention of claimants whilst that of the 1811 inclosure at Newbold Verdon in Leicestershire recorded the names of those who claimed rights, together with those who objected to those claims, but fails to mention how many were eventually accepted.
The general impression conveyed by the Hammonds, Neeson, Slater and others is that commoners were plentiful particularly in the midland counties where inclosures have mostly been studied. Within a manor we can identify groups or individuals who are most likely to have been commoners.
Well at the top of the pile was the lord of the manor. Being the owner of the waste he could not be a commoner in his own manor. Many lords owned land in other manors however and here he could acquire rights of common. Examination of the tithe commutation of almost any parish and you will find the odd parcel of land, sometimes more substantial holdings, in the lands of a neighbouring manor.
Below the lord of the manor in the social order came the clergy. In 1832 there were 12,237 clergy of the Church of England of whom 92% were the rectors of parishes. Most manors had only one rector but they were highly influential when it came to inclosure. Without their approval, or at least that of their bishop, it was unlikely that the inclosure would proceed. As we will see they did very nicely out of enclosure. They were usually substantial landowners. At Rampisham, for example, this amounted to some sixty two acres, whilst, surprisingly perhaps, at Evershot it was just over twenty two acres.
In most parishes the land on which the church stood had been granted by the lord of the manor, who also ‘gave’ an area of glebe land for the incumbent support. This land would almost certainly have included ancient arable lands and the COPA that were incidental to them. It is inconceivable that the rector had no rights of common although unusually the common of pasture enjoyed by the rector sometimes came with strings attached: in many parishes it was the responsibility of the rector to provide a bull that would roam the waste and service the commoners cows.
Next in rank came the freeholders, or as the Hammonds called them, the Yeoman. This group amounted to nearly a million people in 1688 [2], when they formed just under 20% of the population, but as a group this number grew larger in the 18th century. Their ranks were swelled by members of the the nouveau riche, the mercantile and professional classes wishing to become ‘gentlemen’ [3] by acquiring landed estates. They tended to buy large and substantial estates and typical of these was John Scott, 1st Lord Eldon who acquired the Encombe estate which John Martin surveyed in 1821. It would be unthinkable for a wealth freeholder in this category not to be a commoner – unless of course he bought the whole manor.
The majority of freeholders though were poorer than these and as the Hammonds pointed out “No distinct line, in fact, can be drawn between the small farmer, whether freeholder, copyholder or tenant, and the cottager”. Taken together these groups constituted over a half of the population of the country and it is from them that the majority of commoners came.
It is difficult to generalise too far but in Dorset there is some evidence that the late 18th century saw a change in the pattern of tenures with the number of copyholders and leaseholders for lives declining in favour of freehold tenures. There is also some evidence that the number of commoners fell as a consequence.
We are lucky in that two accounts of farming in Dorset were written by agents of the Board of Agriculture [4] in reasonably quick succession.
The first, written by John Claridge in 1793, noted that “copyholds are numerous and some of them large”. The land was “intermixed and confused by copyhold and freehold tenures” but was even then in decline, being “less practised now than formerly”. He noted that many landowners were against the change, as he himself was, believing that it would lead to ever larger farms.
Claridge was typical of his time and believed that allotments of land should be given to the commoners in lieu of their rights, although he does not go so far as to call for blanket inclosure of the land.
By 1812 however another surveyor William Stevenson re-reviewed the County by which time he noted that “The copyhold tenures in this county are now become very few, owing, it is presumed, in a great measure to the frauds practised on the respective lords of manors, by the customary tenants marrying in the last stage of decrepit old age very young girls by which, according to the custom of copyhold tenures in this county, the widow is entitled to her free bench on the husband’s copyhold. The few copyholds now existing, consist chief of a mere cottage and garden, without any other lands being attached to them.”
In the space of just nineteen years a substantial change had taken place in the county in regard to copyholds and this can be seen in the parish of Child Okeford which was unusual in having two manors. We are lucky in that the tithe commutation [1840] preceded the final inclosure of the common [1845] and these records, together with an incomplete set of court rolls allows us to see the overall pattern. The oldest surviving records come from the the manor of Child Okeford Inferior and date from 1653 when they recorded no new fewer than eighteen copyholders with rights of common. A survey from 1726, when the manor was sold, is so frail it is difficult to say how many commoners there were but those fragments that survive show at least three but by the time of the next, and last survey, the inclosure award of 1845, there was just one commoner of this manor.
The manor of Child Okeford Superior did slightly better. The first records date from 1826 when a manorial survey showed there were twenty three tenants with common rights but the inclosure award [1845] recognised only twelve.
In 1790 a parish wide survey of those with grazing rights over the ‘home’ common revealed there were thirty four commoners. These were both freeholders and customary tenants of both manors but a half century later at the time of inclosure there were just thirteen people whose rights of common were recognised; far fewer than would be expected had all the owners of rights of common survived the intervening fifty or so years.
The loss of commoners did not necessarily mean the end to small holder farming however. At the time of tithe commutation, 1840, we find that there were some thirty eight ‘landowners [5]’ in Child Okeford. Just under a half of these had rights that were subsequently recognised by John Martin but the presumption must be that between 1790 and 1840 there were those who had had rights but whose rights which were abolished during the same period. We should not infer too much from the example of one parish, or even one county but it would seem reasonable to suppose that other manors in other counties experienced a similar decline. Dorset had few open field parishes at this time and many of the inclosures around this time were of the remaining common land rather than open fields. In those counties where there were open fields the situation might have been different and as stated at the beginning the impression is that inclosure brought numerous claimants….
The reduction in commoners was most likely by a process of attrition, a gradual loss occasioned by changes in the personal circumstances of tenants and lords alike. The impact of such loss was thus felt less keenly and with less social disruption. Inclosure was not like that. It presented ‘commoners’ with a sudden and unavoidable issue. Some no doubt welcomed the change whilst others saw it as a direct threat to their livelihoods There was for all of them an immediate question : how could you prove you were a commoner?
[1] LANDLESS LABOURERS: ‘The English Peasant and the Enclosure of the Common Fields’, Gilbert Slater 1907
[2] 1688: An estimate of the size and make up of the English population was made by Gregory King in his ‘Naturall [sic] & Political Observations Upon the State and Condition of England 1688’. The book itself was published some 8 years later but using his figures we can estimate that the smaller freeholders, copyholder’s, leaseholders and cottagers formed well over half the population of the country which was then some 5.5 million people.
[3] GENTLEMEN: Sir Thomas Smith defined gentlemen as those, “to be shorte, who can live idly and without manuall labour”.
[4] BOARD OF AGRICULTURE: Despite its official sounding name this was not a part of government but an independent body supported and funded by those interested in ‘agricultural improvement’. Its first president was Sir John Sinclair but its most famous secretary was Arthur Young.
[5] LANDOWNERS: Freeholders and Copy and Lifeholders were considered to be ‘landowners’ for the purposes of the Tithe Commutation Act.
Categories: In Depth
John Martin of Evershot 