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signature feature of a mature natural state – organizations independent of the state – began to emerge in the form of trusts, merchant firms, business corporations, political associations, and religious groups.
Yet England faced new challenges. The growing security of land rights meant that one traditional method of adjusting the dominant coalition – redistributing land – was no longer available. The rise of a new source of wealth from commerce and trade caused a series of political problems, including new sources of economic and political power. No longer did the gentry rise up from wealth based solely on land. Indeed, the rise of new interests changed the coalitions based on land and other forms of wealth. As the dominant coalition attempted to adjust along new margins other than land, coalition members sought – in the same manner we emphasized earlier for land – more secure rights that would reduce the king’s ability to adjust the coalition. The struggles of the seventeenth century can therefore be read in both constitutional terms and as a struggle within the dominant coalition of a natural state facing the rise of a powerful set of groups that, by virtue of being relatively new, find their interests are under-institutionalized.
APPENDIX
A Glossary of Technical Terms involving Land Use
Assize: a court, a trial session, a jury trial, or a judgment.
Attainment, attainder: the legal consequences of a conviction for treason or felony, involving the loss of all civil rights.
Copyhold: land tenure acquired at some point in the past from an unfree tenant and registered (by a copy of the agreement) at the local court.
Freehold: land tenure of free individuals. Courts: Chancery, common law, equity, Royal. Disseisin: loss of seisin.
Entail: see fee tail.
Fee: what the tenant held.
Fee simple: a tenure in which the fee transferred in the entirety to the tenant.
Fee tail: a tenure in which only part of the fee was transferred, often subject to contingencies.
Seisen/seised: In its most literal sense, “the person seised of land was simply the person in obvious occupation, the person ‘sitting’ on the land.” (Simpson, 1986, p. 40). Seisin evolved over the centuries. Over
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time, the person seised in title was in possession of the property, even if the property was not physical occupation of the land, for example, the right to an income stream from property. Eventually, seisin in intangible property was recognized.
Socage; free and common socage: A more limited version of fee simple in which a complete and unconditional transfer of tenure occurred and the new tenant owed only “fixed and certain incidents” and had no other obligations to the land lord.
Subinfeudation: an existing tenant or lord could create their new tenants by devising new feudal arrangements.
Termor: a tenant for a term of years.
Uses: a method of transferring land to one person for the use of another. Villeinage: an unfree tenure.
Writs: a form of legal action, issued by the king or a court, directed that certain actions be taken following established legal forms (Maitland, 1968[1909], p. 4).
Writ of right: a writ directing that claims regarding seisin be resolved (Maitland 1968[1909], pp. 18–90).
Estimating Landownership Concentration in Medieval England
An early estimate of land use was drawn from the Hundred Rolls of 1279 by Kosminsky (1931). The Hundred Rolls covered a small sample, roughly 6 percent of England, and was probably not representative (Campbell, 2000, p. 57). Kosminsky found that out of the half million acres of land, 31.8 percent was in demense, 40.5 in villeinage, and 27.7 percent in free land.31 That gives a rough idea of how land was distributed within manors. Lords would derive income directly from roughly 70 percent of the land. Manor estimates, however, tell us nothing about the overall distribution of land because major lords held more than one manor, which complicates the calculation of their total landholdings.
Appendix Table 3.1 is taken from Cooper (1983) and draws on the work of Gray (1934). Gray used the income tax returns for 1436 to construct estimates of income by type of landowner. Cooper converted Gray’s income estimates into acreage estimates by dividing total income by estimates of average annual income derived from an acre of land of different types. The table also reports the number of landowners in each category from Gray.
31 Campbell (2000), pp. 57–8.
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Table 3.1. Income from and landholdings in 1436 |
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Landed |
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Millions |
Percentage |
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income, £ |
Persons |
of acres |
of acres |
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Greater landowners |
78,000 |
234 |
3–4 |
20 |
|
Landowners £5–100 |
113,000 |
7,000 |
4.5–5.5 |
25 |
|
Landowners under £5 |
100,000 |
|
3–4 |
20 |
|
Church |
75–100,000 |
– |
4–5 |
20–25 |
|
Crown |
20,000 |
– |
1–1.5 |
5 |
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Source: Cooper (1983), Table 1, p. 19. The number of “persons” is taken from Gray (1934). Cooper’s numbers draw on Gray (1934) and Thompson (1966).
Table 3.2. Barons summoned to parliament, extinctions, and new summonses
Date |
Total called |
New peers |
Extinctions |
Percent extinct |
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1300; 1300–24 |
136 |
60 |
51 |
26.02 |
1325 |
145 |
47 |
45 |
23.44 |
1350 |
147 |
29 |
50 |
28.41 |
1375 |
126 |
17 |
41 |
28.67 |
1400 |
102 |
11 |
40 |
35.4 |
1425 |
73 |
25 |
25 |
25.51 |
1450 |
73 |
22 |
24 |
25.26 |
1475 |
71 |
10 |
20 |
24.69 |
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Source: Based on McFarlane (1973), pp. 175–6. The numbers are based on the Complete Peerage and were based on McFarlane’s notes as reconstructed by the editors. A peerage became “extinct” when the peer died without a male heir (so the peerage itself might have continued in name, but through collateral rather than direct descent).
Table 3.3. Gregory King’s distribution of families by status
Families |
|
Type |
|
|
|
200 |
|
Lords Spiritual and Temporal |
1,500 |
|
Knights and Baronets |
3,000 |
(or 3,800) |
Esquires |
15,000 |
|
Gentlemen |
80,000 |
|
Freeholders at 50l per annum |
200,000 |
|
Freeholders at 10l per annum |
400,000 |
|
Farmers |
100,000 |
|
Cottagers, day labourers, and paupers |
300,000 |
|
Tradesmen and Professionals |
1,100,000 |
|
Total |
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Source: Cooper (1983), p. 39.
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Appendix |
109 |
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Table 3.4. Chamberlayne’s estimates of income by class |
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Number |
Average income, £ |
Total income, £ |
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Peers |
159 |
8,000 |
1,272,000 |
Baronets |
749 |
1,200 |
898,000 |
Knights |
1,400 |
800 |
1,120,000 |
Esquires and Gentlemen |
6,000 |
400 |
2,400,000 |
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Source: Cooper (1983), p. 32.
The largest landowners in 1436 numbered only 234. Of these, 51 great barons had landed income in total of £40,000 (an average of £768 a baron). The 183 greater knights with incomes over £100 had a total income of £38,000 (an average of £208 per knight). In aggregate, these landowners controlled roughly 45 percent of the acreage in England and 40 percent of the income from land in estates subject to the income tax. A greater baron might hold an estate of 8,000 to 9,000 acres or larger.32 Gray (1934, p. 630) reports, “All together 7,000 men in England, non-noble in status, enjoyed income from lands, rents, and annuities ranging from £5 to £400, most of these being from £5 to £100.” These 7,000 men controlled more than 70 percent of the land. The numbers are consistent with other estimates.
Hicks noted that only forty-eight barons had hereditary rights to be called to parliament in 1388. McFarlane reports that 102 barons were summoned to parliament in 1300 and another 34 had been summoned in or after 1295. Appendix Table 3.2 gives the numbers of individuals called to parliament by twenty-five-year intervals from 1300 to 1475. The greatest number was 147 and the lowest number 71, which is a rough estimate of the number of magnates, great landowners, and nobles over the two centuries.
Cooper also provides a distillation and interpretation of Gregory King’s estimates of the distribution of families by type in the later seventeenth century, shown in Appendix Table 3.3. Chamberlayne’s estimates of the number of Peers, Baronets, Knights, and Esquires and Gentlemen in 1692 are provided in Appendix Table 3.4.
32 This paragraph is based on Cooper (1983), pp. 17–19.