804 THE CONDITION OF 



the progress of agriculture, especially during the first half of 

 the century. At the beginning of the century, Norden (supra,* 

 p. 42) gives a grudging testimony to the fact. It is sufficient 

 to refer to what I have quoted in the second chapter of this 

 volume from Plattes and Blyth. 



Now there is good reason to believe that after the reform 

 of the currency and the general stint ensued which Stafford's 

 pamphlet so clearly describes, there was not for some time 

 any opportunity for the compulsory enhancement of rents 

 during the sixteenth century. But it is also clear from the 

 statements of Norden that the process was begun, and that it 

 was exciting indignation and alarm among the tenant-farmers 

 at the beginning of the seventeenth century. Still it is far from 

 easy to get at the facts, and to follow the process by which 

 good arable land, let at less than a shilling an acre in the last 

 quarter of the sixteenth century, was let at 5^. to 6s. at the 

 end of the first quarter of the seventeenth, while the rent of 

 pasture was not more than doubled. 



The great corporations of Oxford and Cambridge, Win- 

 chester and Eton, let their lands habitually on a twenty years' 

 lease. In these lettings there is always a reserved rent in 

 money, and another in wheat and malt. This reserved rent, 

 with the money equivalent of the corn rent, is the amount 

 which was paid before the change in money values occurred, 

 or rather at the time when Elizabeth's statute came into 

 operation. That these corporations tried to raise their rents 

 is certain, that they were not able to do so to the extent that 

 private owners could is clear, and thereupon they had re- 

 course to beneficial leases and the levy of a fine on renewals. 



I have before me two manuscripts containing the record of 

 fines levied by two Colleges. One, from Ravvlinson's collection 

 in the Bodleian Library (C. 954), is an abstract of the fines 

 paid on renewals for the estates of King's College, Cambridge, 

 from about the beginning of the seventeenth century, occasion- 

 ally a little earlier, to near the latter end of Charles the Second's 

 reign. The volume was probably written for the Provost ; its 



