COMING TO HIS OWN? 3 



and knowledge of a successful farmer. Virgil dis- 

 coursed on the joys of country life. Cincinnatus left 

 his plow for war on behalf of his country. Agricul- 

 ture for centuries was the bed-rock of Rome's strength, 

 and farmers were not kept out of the councils of the 

 wise. 



Again we find an exception to the dreary monotony 

 of rural dependency in the English " yeoman." Of a 

 population of perhaps two and one-half millions in 

 England in the seventeenth century, it is estimated that 

 not less than eleven-twelfths were engaged in agricul- 

 ture. According to statistics for the year 1688, there 

 were 180,000 families of yeomen, known as freehold- 

 ers, and 150,000 families of farmers. These figures 

 are significant in connection with a total of 1,360,000 

 families in England at the time. The freeholders were 

 actual farm owners, living on the soil, and the farmers 

 were those tenants who paid an annual rent for their 

 holdings about equal to the annual value of the farm. 

 The middle of the seventeenth century was the time 

 when the English yeomen enjoyed the greatest freedom 

 and prosperity. They owned their own land or rented 

 it on favorable terms and for desirable periods; they 

 were sturdy and independent, often daring to oppose, 

 " in voting and in fighting," the neighboring squire. 

 One writer of the period said, " The yeomanry is an 

 estate of people almost peculiar to England; [he] 

 wears russet clothes, but makes golden payments, hav- 

 ing tin in his buttons but silver in his pockets. He 

 seldom goes abroad, and his credit goes farther than 

 his travel." Economically the farmers [tenants] were 

 about equal to the freeholders, differing considerably, 

 however, in social standing. 



