THE PASSING OF THE MIDDLE AGES 55 



CHAPTER III. 



FARMING FOR PROFIT: PASTURE AND SHEEP- 

 GRAZING. 1485-1558. 



Tho passing of the Middle Ages : enclosures in the sixteenth and eighteenth 

 centuries compared ; the commercial impulse and its results ; conversion 

 of tillage to pasture : enclosures and depopulation : legislation against 

 enclosures ; literary attack on enclosures ; the practical defence of en- 

 closures : larger farms in separate occupation : loss of employment ; 

 enclosures equitably arranged, or enforced by tyranny ; legal powers of 

 landowners ; open-field farmers not the chief sufferers by enclosures ; 

 scarcity of employment and rise in prices ; the new problem of poverty : 

 the ranks of vagrants ; the Elizabethan fraternity of vagabonds. 



I OUT of wars at home and abroad, and pestilences destructive both 

 to man and beast, emerged one great agricultural change which 

 by 1485 was practically completed. Feudal landowners, instead of 

 pursuing the patriarchal system of farming their own demesnes 

 by the labour services of their dependents, had become receivers of 

 rent. Home-farms and " assart " or reclaimed lands were culti- 

 vated, not by lords of the manor through bailiffs and labour-rents, 

 but by freeholders, leaseholders, copyholders, and hired labourers. 

 Further changes were close at hand. With the dawn of the Tudor 

 period began the general movement which gradually transformed 

 England into a mercantile country. The amount of money in 

 actual use was increasing ; men possessed more capital, could borrow 

 it more easily, and lay it out to greater advantage. Commerce 

 permeated national life. Feudalism was dead or dying, and trade 

 was climbing to its throne. The Middle Ages were passing into 

 modern times. 



On the agricultural side, the spirit of trading competition gave 

 fresh impulse to an old movement which, in spite of a storm of 

 protest, continued in activity throughout the Tudor period, and, 

 after a century and a half of silent progress, became once more the 

 centre of literary controversy before it triumphed at the close of 



