A HISTORY OF LANCASHIRE 



The pestilence is supposed to have carried off a third, and in some cases 

 one half, of the population."^ Upon this estimate of a third, the population 

 of Amounderness according to the numbers of the document would have been 

 close upon 40,000 persons in the middle of the fourteenth century. Professor 

 T. Rogers discounts this estimate as the exaggeration of panic,'** and the 

 severe ' taxing ' of the archdeacon's charges indicates the jurors' scepticism as 

 to the numbers. There is, unfortunately, no clear evidence for an estimate 

 of the population of the county at this period. In the seventeenth (1323—4) 

 and again in the nineteenth year of Edvi^ard II (1325-6) we get a rough 

 outline of the rents due on the manors of Preston and Lancaster,'** affording 

 an estimate for a few townships."" 



Economically and socially regarded, the Black Death divides the 

 mediaeval period from the modern. A system of bondage that had been 

 tolerated hitherto in name only now practically came to an end.'" It is also 

 very generally supposed that the so-called Agrarian Revolution of the four- 

 teenth century dates from this occurrence."* But the struggle by the 

 landlords to resume lands lavishly granted to peasant or other small tenants 

 when land was of no marketable value lay further back, and had been 

 feebly stirring in the last few decades of the thirteenth century, from the 

 period of the great increase in the wool trade of the reign of Edward I. 

 At first the tendency was precisely the reverse of what it afterwards 

 became, for undoubtedly the first seizures were made on pasture lands 

 which were relet to tenants for purposes of tillage. This was obviously 

 the result of a growth in population, and of an increased and profitable 

 demand for corn. 



As this demand for plots of land increased the landlord cast about for an 

 additional supply. Not satisfied with his own demesne he cast envious eyes 

 towards the common lands. Occasions for seizing these were presented most 

 conveniently when the lord's estates were in ward. The owner of the ward- 

 ship for the time being was a more or less irresponsible person whose sole 

 object was to make a profit out of his temporary possession.'" An instance 

 of this deliberate seizure of common lands occurred on the manor of Man- 



'" See Gasquet, The Great Pestilence ; also T Rogen, ^gric. and Prices, i, 60 et seq. 



'" T. Rogers, Agric. and Prices, i, 60. 



"•See L.T.R. Misc. Enr. Accts. 14, m. 65 (first skin). Also ibid. Accounts of John de Lancaster, 

 15 July, 17 Edw. II, to Michaelmas, for castle and town of Lancaster, &c. 



'"There were 22 bondmen and 13 cottars at Skerton, and Overton was somewhat larger. On the 

 average of five to a family there were at the lowest computation 175 persons in Skerton, and probably fifty 

 persons who were tenants at will or free tenants may be added without overstraining the estimate. This 

 would make a total of 225 for Skerton, and as Overton was larger its population may be reckoned at 300 upon 

 a very modest estimate. Taking Slyne and Hest upon a similar basis of calculation we should get a total 

 population of at least 1,000 for the four townships. Slyne had the largest rent of bondsmen, and therefore 

 probably more than the others ; while Hest paid practically the same bondage rent as Skerton. In 1422 the 

 church of Ashton-under-Lyne was required to accommodate 107 women, with their maids, thirty free tenants 

 1 1 7 tenants at wdll and their men servants. Allowing two maids for every dame, and 5 men servants for every 

 free tenant, and adding at least 100 children, we arrive at a modest estimate of 718, which might easily be 

 extended to 800 as the possible population ; Rental of Ashton-under-Lyne, 1422, in Three Lanes. Documents 

 (Chet. Soc), 1 1 2 et seq. 



'" In the rental of 1473 socage tenants have replaced the villeins of Gorton ; ibid. 501. 



'" The Contrarient Roll {Lane. In,;. [Rec. Soc. liv]), tells over and over again of bondmen and tenants at 

 will entering their fathers' lands for very small fines. 



'" Cf. T. Rogers, Agric. and Prices, i, 64. ' The feudal lord was liable ... in the person of his infant 

 heir, to contingencies more oppressive and ruinous than those which befel the inferior . . . tenant . the 



profits of his [the heir's] estates were appropriated and waste . . . was freely practised.' 



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