It was during these thirty years that the process of concentration in that county first assumed formidable proportions.In Pickering,on the other hand,where the law of equal division still held its own,small landowners al so,as we have seen,survived after their extinction in most parts of England.
A third result of landlord supremacy was the manner in which the common-field system was broken up.Allusion has already been made to enclosures,and enclosures meant a break-up of the old system of agriculture and a redistribution of the land.This is a problem which involves delicate questions of justice.In Prussia,the change was effected by impartial legislation;in England,the work was done by the strong at the expense of the weak.The change from common to individual ownership,which was economically advantageous,was carried out in an iniquitous manner,and thereby became socially harmful.Great injury was thus done to the poor and ignorant freeholders who lost their rights in the common lands.In Pickering,in one instance,the lessee of the tithes applied for an enclosure of the waste.The small freeholders did their best to oppose him,but,having little money to carry on the suit,they were overruled,and the lessee,who had bought the support of the landless 'house-owners' of the parish,took the land from the freeholders and shared the spoil with the cottagers.It was always easy for the steward to harass the small owners till he forced them to sell,like Addison's Touchy,whose income had been reduced by lawsuits from *80 to *30,though in this case it is true he had only himself to blame.The enclosure of waste land,too,did great damage to the small freeholders,who,without the right of grazing,naturally found it so much the more difficult to pay their way.
Though the economical causes of the disappearance of the yeomen were comparatively unimportant,they served to accelerate the change.Small arable farms would not pay,and must,in any case,have been thrown together.The little farmers,according to Arthur Young,worked harder and were to all intents and purposes as low in the comforts of life as the day-labourers.But their wretchedness was entirely owing to their occupying arable instead of grass lands.And apart from this,undoubtedly,the new class of large farmers were superior,in some respects,to the too unprogressive yeomen,-'quite a different sort of men...In point of knowledge and ideas,'with whose improved methods of agriculture the yeomen found it difficult to compete.A further economic cause which tended to depress many of the yeomen was the gradual destruction of domestic industries,which injured them as it injures the German peasant at the present day,in Cumberland the yeomen began to disappear when the spinning-wheel was silenced.The decay of the home manufacture of cloth seems to have considerably affected the Grey-coats of Kent.And finally,as the small towns and villages decayed,owing to the consolidation of farms and of industry,the small freeholders lost their market,for the badness of the roads made it difficult for them to send their produce far.Hence the small freeholders survived longest where they owned dairy-farms,as in Cumberland and the West Riding,and where domestic industry flourished,and they had a market for their products in their own neighbourhood.
When once the ranks of the yeomanry had been appreciably thinned,the process of extinction went on with ever-growing rapidity.The survivors became isolated.They would have no one of their own station to whom they could marry their daughters,and would become more and more willing to sell their lands,however strong the passion of possession might be in some places.
The more enterprising,too,would move off to the towns to make their fortunes there,just as at the present day the French peasants are attracted to the more interesting and exciting life of the town.Thus Sir Robert Peel's grandfather was originally a yeoman farming his own estate,but being of an inventive turn of mind he took to cotton manufacturing and printing.This was particularly the case with the small squires,who grew comparatively poorer and poorer,and found it increasingly difficult to keep pace with the rise in the standard of comfort.
Already,at the end of the seventeenth century,the complaint had been raised that the landowners were beginning to live in the county towns.Afterwards,the more wealthy came up to London;Sir Roger de Coverley had a house in Soho Square.The small country gentleman felt the contrast between him and his richer neighbours more and more;and as he had none of the political power attaching to land-for the great landowners had the whole administration in their hands-there was every inducement for him to sell and invest his money in a more profitable manner.
To summarise the movement:it is probable that the yeomen would in any case have partly disappeared,owing to the inevitable working of economic causes.But these alone would not have led to their disappearance on so large a scale.It was the political conditions of the age,the overwhelming importance of land,which made it impossible for the yeoman to keep his grip upon the soil.
