THE TENANT-FARMER, 1583-1702. 8ll 



than they are in any part of Ireland. But it is difficult to 

 connect these progressive rents with the Ricardian theory on 

 which economists lay such stress, unless a new meaning is to 

 be given to * the indestructible powers of the soil.' 



I am persuaded that, generally, the rise in the tenant-farmer's 

 rent was effected at different dates during the first forty years 

 of the period before me. There was a small rise in the first 

 decade, a much greater one in the second, and, as the state- 

 ments of Norden admit, a far greater one in the third (the 

 Surveyor assigning it to the competition of tenants, a com- 

 petition which need not deprive it of the character of a famine- 

 rent, as I have attempted to describe such a rent), and a 

 further rise in the fourth. 



Now by the great kindness of Lord Leicester, I have had 

 lent to me from the Holkham archives what appears to be a 

 complete register or rent-roll of all the estates possessed by 

 the Coke family in Norfolk between 1629 and 1706. The 

 acreage of each estate is given, and the rent at which it is let : 

 first in 1629, in the time of Chief Justice Coke; then in 1651, 

 in the time of Robert Coke ; then in 1656, in the time of John 

 Coke, senior, his son ; next in 1667, in the time of John Coke, 

 junior, his grandson ; next in 1677, in the time of Robert Coke, 

 also his grandson ; and, lastly, in the year 1707, in the time of 

 Edward Coke, his great-grandson and father of Thomas Coke, 

 first Lord Lovell and afterwards Earl of Leicester. The docu- 

 ment was I conclude drawn up in the last year, for in an eighth 

 column, unpaid rents, under the name ' defalks,' are registered. 

 From this volume it is easy to extract illustrative valuations of 

 farmers' rents, though it does not appear that all the Coke 

 tenants were of this class, as among the tenants are personages 

 like the Walpoles and members of other old Norfolk families. 



In making my extracts, I have been careful to deduct copy- 

 hold and fee-farm rents, so as to obtain farmers' rents only. 

 Now on examining the list of twenty-two estates, I was struck 

 with the generally unaltered character of the rents during the 

 seventy-seven years with which the register deals. The first 



