122 HISTORY OF AGRICULTURE 



He and his successors could then refuse to renew at the 

 termination of lives or years except on payment of a practi- 

 cally prohibitory fine. In short, though there was not much 

 violation of legal right there was much injustice, and enclosure, 

 though its effects were exaggerated at this period, certainly 

 tended to displace the small landholder. It does not appear, 

 however, that the moderate-sized proprietors were seriously 

 affected. Many of the larger freeholders and copyholders on 

 manors enclosed on their own account, and perhaps increased 

 at the expense of the very large and the very small. Indeed, 

 the decrease of small landowners was chiefly due to political 

 and social causes. The old self-sufficing, agricultural economy 

 of England, which we have seen beginning to break up 

 in the fourteenth century, was becoming thoroughly disinte- 

 grated. The capitalist class was increasing ; the successful 

 merchant and lawyer were acquiring land and becoming 

 squires; there was an intense land hunger. Simon Degge, 

 writing of Staffordshire in 1669, says that in the previous 

 sixty years half the lands had changed owners, not so much 

 as of old they were wont to do, by marriage, but by pur- 

 chase ; and he notices how many lawyers and tradesmen have 

 supplanted the gentry. 1 



In fact, there was a much freer disposal of lands from the 

 end of the fifteenth century, when the famous Taltarum's 

 case enabled entailed estates to be barred, until the Restora- 

 tion, than there has been before or since. For these two 

 hundred years the courts of law and parliament resisted every 

 effort to re-establish the system of entails ; the owners of land 

 constantly multiplied, and this tendency must have counter- 

 acted the displacement of the small holder by enclosure.! 

 Sir Thomas Smith, writing towards the end of the sixteenth 

 century, says that it was the yeomen who bought the lands 

 of ' unthrifty gentlemen ; ' and Moryson tells us that ' the 

 buyers (excepting lawyers) are for the most part citizens 

 1 Harwood, Erdeswick, p. 55. 



