58 FARMING FOR PROFIT 



into the language of to-day, the old landlords had been satisfied 

 to draw from their estates certain advantages and a low percentage 

 of profit ; the new men required at the least a four per cent, return 

 in money on their investments. Feudal barons had partly valued 

 their land for the number of men-at-arms it furnished to their 

 banners ; Tudor landowners appraised its worth by the amount of 

 rent it paid into their coffers. Mediaeval husbandmen had been 

 content to extract from the soil the food which they needed for 

 themselves and their families. Tudor farmers despised self- 

 sufficing agriculture ; they aspired to be sellers and not consumers 

 only, to raise from their land profits as well as food. As trade 

 expanded, and towns grew, and English wool made its way into 

 continental cities, or was woven into cloth by English weavers, 

 new markets were created f,or agricultural produce. Fresh in- 

 centives stimulated individual enterprise, and both landlords and 

 tenants learned to look on the land they respectively owned or 

 cultivated as a commercial asset. 



Among the results of this conquest of agriculture by the new 

 spirit of commercial competition three may be noticed firstly, 

 the clearer recognition of the advantages of farms held in individual 

 occupation, large enough to make the employment of capital 

 remunerative ; secondly, the substitution of pasture for tillage, 

 of sheep for corn, of wool for meat ; thirdly, the attack upon the 

 old agrarian partnerships in which lords of the manor, parsons, 

 freeholders, leaseholding farmers, copyholders, and cottagers had 

 hitherto associated to supply the wants of each village. Legisla- 

 tion failed to prevent a movement which harmonised and syn- 

 chronised with the progressive development of the nation on 

 commercial lines. But in its earlier stages, the consequences to 

 the rural population were serious. Many tenants lost their hold- 

 ings, many wage-earning labourers their employment, when land- 

 lords " turned graziers," and farmers cut down their labour-bills 

 by converting tillage into pasture. It is impossible to doubt the 

 reality of the distress. From 1487 onwards, literature, pamphlets, 

 doggerel ballads, sermons, liturgies, petitions, preambles to statutes, 

 Commissions of Enquiry, Acts of Parliament, bear witness to a 

 considerable depopulation of country districts. In the numerous 

 insurrections, which marked the sixteenth century and the early 

 years of the reign of James I., rural distress undoubtedly con- 

 tributed its share. But zealous advocates of Roman Catholicism 



