296 THE RURAL POPULATION, 1780-1813 



the dales of the moorlands is in the possession of yeomanry, rarely 

 amounting to £150 per annum." ^ The Reporter asks " the common 

 question, whether the number of the yeomanry increases or 

 diminishes. . . . In a country Mke this, which is merely agricultural, 

 I should suspect them to increase, in consequence of large properties 

 having in late years been sold in parcels, and there being but few 

 instances of gentlemen already possessed of considerable estates, 

 making large purchases." 



The Reports to the Board of Agriculture show that small owners 

 were still numerous in many counties, and were increasing in Norfolk, 

 Essex, in Hampshire, and Kent, in North Wilts, Somerset, Gloucester- 

 shire, Shropshire, and the North Riding of Yorkshire. They were 

 dwindUng in Lancashire, which was rapidly developing as a manu- 

 facturing centre, and in Westmoreland, where the hard penurious 

 Uves of the older race of statesmen were not congenial to their 

 descendants. In Hertfordshire farmers were not buying land, urJike 

 their brethren in the eastern counties ; ^ but possibly the competi- 

 tion of city merchants gave land in the neighbourhood of London a 

 residential value. In Warwickshire (1794) it is definitely stated that 

 consolidation of farms was driving occupiers off the land. The 

 Reporter is speaking of open fields " in the southern and eastern 

 parts of this county," which had been enclosed, and mostly conver- 

 ted into pasture. " These lands, bemg now grazed, want much fewer 

 hands to manage them than they did in their former open state. 

 Upon all enclosures of open-fields, the farms have generally been 

 made much larger ; from these causes, the hardy yeomanry of 

 country villages have been driven for employment into Birmingham, 

 Coventry, and other manufacturing towns, whose flourishing trade 

 has sometimes found them profitable employment." ^ But though 

 in this passage the word " yeomanry " * is used, it by no means 



1 Tuke's NoHh Riding (1800), pp. 23, 28. ^ Young's Hertfordshire (1804), p. 18. 



^ Wedge's Warwickshire (1794), p. 20. 



* The word " yeoman," which certainly included leaseholders for lives, and 

 copyholders, was not confined to owners of land which they cultivated with 

 their own hands, without being entitled to a crest. Bacon [Works, vol. vi. 

 p. 95) defines the English yeomanry as " the middle people between gentlemen 

 and peasants," many of them hving on " tenancies for years, lives and at 

 will." Latimer's " father was a yeoman, but had no land of his own." He 

 rented his occupation at £4 a year, and was a tenant-farmer. Blackstone 

 uses the word as equivalent to quahfied rural voters (Commentaries, bk. i. ch. 

 12). The definite restriction of the word to farmer- owners is a comparatively 

 modern usage belonging to the nineteenth century. See Dictionary of Political 

 Economy, s.v. Yeoman. 



