Page:The English Peasant.djvu/76

 and as the importance of every lord depended upon the number of retainers he could bring into the field, it was his interest to divide his estate into as many farms as he could find tenants to cultivate them, and to grant rights of common to each one over the remaining portions.

Thorold Rogers, in his "History of Agriculture and Prices in England," says:—"In the 14th century the land was greatly subdivided, and most of the inhabitants of villages or manors held plots of land which were sufficient in many cases for maintenance, and, in nearly all cases, for independence in treating with their employers. Most of the regular farm servants—the carter, the ploughman, the shepherd, the cowherd, and the hog-keeper—were owners of land, and there is a high degree of probability that the occasional labourer was also among the occupiers of the manor. The mediæval peasant had his cottage and curtilage at a very low rent and in secure possession, even when, unlike the general mass of his fellows, he was not possessed of land in his own right held at a labour or a money rent, and he had rights of pasturage over the common lands of the manor for the sheep, pigs, or perhaps cow, which he owned."

This prosperity continued to the close of the 15th century, when the Wars of the Roses broke out, ending in the destruction of the feudal system. Manufactures rose on its ruin, the woollen trade increased greatly, and large tracts of land were required for sheep-walks. This caused at the time a wholesale destruction of villages, so that, in a petition presented to Parliament in 1450, it is stated that sixty-five towns (villages) and hamlets within twelve miles of Warwick had been destroyed.

Many efforts were made to restore the former widely-spread prosperity of the English peasantry. An Act passed in 1487 forbade any one to take more than one farm, and the value of that farm was not to exceed ten marks yearly. Five or six times in the 16th century Acts were passed imposing penalties for not keeping up "houses of husbandry," and for not laying convenient land for their maintenance. An Act of 1549 secured to small cottiers land for gardens or orchards. Another, passed in the year 1589, is peculiarly noteworthy as forbidding the erection of cottages unless four acres were attached; the object being, as