AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS 



nearly all been " ancient freeholders " ; but the number of 

 such farmers had been "regularly lessening for ten years," 

 during which time they had been reduced about a seventh. 

 From Mr. W. Simpson we learn that the landowning farmers 

 were " nearly all gone " near Doncaster, Yorkshire. In Not- 

 tinghamshire there were " comparatively very few remaining." 

 In Leicestershire, Northumberland, and the Midland Counties, 

 generally, small proprietors farming their own land were numer- 

 ous, but " a great many of them " had been ruined. In Shrop- 

 shire and in Cheshire the number of " small landed proprietors " 

 had " greatly diminished, . . . since the year 1800." In Here- 

 fordshire there were still a great many yeomen but fewer than 

 twenty years earlier. In Worcestershire a good many free- 

 holders, who farmed their own lands, had sold out. In Kent, 

 near Rochester, no great number had gone to the wall, but they 

 were poor, many of them living little better than workingmen. 

 Such farmers were yet numerous in Hampshire and West 

 Sussex, but many had been compelled to sell their estates and 

 those who remained were " much reduced in point of circum- 

 stances." In Wiltshire the number of landowning farmers had 

 diminished " most materially " within the past fifteen years. 

 In Somersetshire land had been changing hands a great deal since 

 the war, and the number of farmers who bought land was not so 

 great as the number of those who had sold. It was the custom 

 there for the landlords to " run out " the life leases and not 

 make any new ones. Thus all the evidence points to the con- 

 clusion that an unusually rapid decline of the yeomanry had 

 taken place during the period of the agricultural depression 

 which followed the close of the Napoleonic wars. We shall now 

 investigate somewhat in detail the causes of this unusually 

 rapid decline. 



Extravagance, living beyond one's income, often leads to 

 bankruptcy in all lines of business, and it would be strange, 

 1. if this were not, occasionally, the cause which compels 

 farmers to sell their estates. From John Norden we learn 

 that in 1607 this was sometimes the cause of failure on the 

 part of landowning farmers in England. In 1833 a great many 



