140 LATER STEWARTS AND THE REVOLUTION 



not forthcoming from that or from any other class, and this want 

 of leadership to a great extent explains the reluctance of farmers 

 to put in practice many of the improvements which not only book- 

 farmers but practical agriculturists were recommending. The state 

 of society was still too unsettled, the title to land too insecure, to 

 tempt expenditure. The number of men who could afford the 

 necessary outlay was relatively few. Landed property in 1660 was 

 distributed in smaller quantities among more numerous owners 

 than it was a century later. The events of the Commonwealth 

 period had further increased this wide distribution of ownership. 

 Large quantities of land, confiscated by the Parliament, had been 

 thrown on the market. Many estates had also been forfeited to 

 the Government and sold, often in small parcels, because the 

 royalist owners either refused or neglected to compound for their 

 " delinquencies." Portions of other properties had been sold by 

 their owners to pay the composition or the Decimation Tax. In 

 all these cases, numbers of the purchasers were small men. At the 

 Restoration, the estates of the Crown and of the Church, and the 

 confiscated lands of eminent royalists were restored to their original 

 owners, without compensation to purchasers who had bought under 

 the authority of the Commonwealth Government. But no attempt 

 was made to cancel the purchase of lands which had been sold 

 under forfeitures to the Parliament, or under the pressure of the 

 taxation imposed by the victorious Puritans on the vanquished 

 royalists. All claims of this nature were barred by an Act, which 

 disappointed Cavaliers condemned as an act of indemnity to the 

 King's enemies and of oblivion to his friends. But whether the 

 Republicans were deprived of their purchases, or confirmed in their 

 possession, the example was not lost on their contemporaries. The 

 nature of the compromise effected at the Restoration necessarily 

 impaired the sense of security. When titles were precarious, 

 outlay of capital seemed too speculative a risk. Moreover, many 

 of the royalists who were fortunate enough to retain or regain 

 possession of their estates, found themselves too impoverished to 

 spend money on their improvement, or too formed in their habits 

 to endure the tediousness of directing them. The generations 

 which knew the Civil War, the Commonwealth, the Restoration, 

 the rebellion of Momnouth, and the Revolution had passed away, 

 before landowners, in widely different circumstances, assumed the 

 lead in agricultural progress. 



