CHAPTER III: CONTINUITY AND CHANGE—HISTORICAL INSTITUTIONAL
3.3 A NALYSIS
3.3.2 Identifying Factors of Change
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Agrarian technology lagging behind with lower crop yield
Agrarian market economy is more restricted
Moving up the social strata is harder
higher population and even becoming a major cereal exporting region
Becoming of professional farm managers
More percentage of the population turned to non-agrarian economic activities
Rise of wage labor and cottage industry
Bigger and livelier agrarian market
Better possibility of rising through the social strata
3.3.2 Identifying Factors of Change
After crisscrossing between the two models, I hope I have pointed out enough important and significant on-going institutional differences (in the feedback mechanisms) that make the whole picture comprehendible enough to draw a conclusion to my research questions: What are the reasons causing these differences? What factors contributed to the differences of institutional continuity and change?
We can see clearly that although both regions inherited traditions from the Germanic tribes, both started the new reign of landlords start from William the Conqueror since 1066, there still are many differences among them. In East Anglia, multiple presentations of manorial lords to a village weaken the relative power of the lord vis-à-vis a serf; a significant number of freeholders in the initial stages of the society which further infused possibilities of the individualist spirit and better property protection; denser population levels, leading to better agricultural technology; miniature landholdings leading to rise of skilled labor and cottage industry…etc. Multiple presentations of lords in a given locale may have been a very important initial conditional difference that posed a critical rationale for later trajectory differences. Below, I explain in depth the importance of such initial conditions, in light of later critical events, which brought on the historical path dependency we see.
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The first critical juncture, the signing of Magna Carta by King John in 1215 under pressure of a political crisis from rebel barons initiated a series of legal protection to not just barons and other nobles, but also other social strata to some extent.250 While the Magna Carta was an outcome of a political crisis between King John and rebel barons, which originated from the failure of King John’s war campaign in 1214 to reclaim the loss of Normandy to the French in 1204, it served as an important legal basis of liberties and rights of all “free men” in the realm.251 The Magna Carta and series of documents in the following years reaffirmed its many articles led to a new legal structure made for the protection of “free men” (or freeholders). The King’s law is now being extended to all free tenants. The legal effects were: once being “free” the person need not pay unto the lords’ rent and is under the protection of the Crown’s justice and royal courts.252
For the laws to come into effect, the status of being “free” had to be defined. Royal courts use certain criteria to judge whether the person was free or not. For example, if the tenant owed heavy labor services, or paid marriage fines, or were bond to serve as a reeve, then they and their families were deemed as “not free”.253 Hence, this status of “free” was based on already existing social structures. East Anglia, with an already larger bargaining power of the peasantry, became a region now with more legally free men than most other regions. While in the Midlands, where the manorial lords’ power was stronger, villeins, customary tenants, and neifs were the majority.254
When a second critical juncture hit—the Civil Wars and the Glorious Revolution of 1688—most of those living in East Anglia had a like-minded capitalist mindset as the land grabbing Parliament members of the landed aristocrats and gentry. Not only were they much
250 Austin Lane Poole, 1955. From Domesday book to Magna Carta, 1087-1216, 2nd Ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press), p. 474.
251 Holt, 1965, pp.4, 20.
252 Dyre, 2002, p. 140.
253 Dyre, 2002, p. 140.
254 See footnote 83 on this.
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more ready for the transition (or already undergoing), having being ahead of their age for some time already and many lived independent of land, they were much more acquainted with the capitalist notion of capitalist and worker, wage and labor. East Anglia was doing prosperous and kept its development advantage into the early modern era as they took the lead onto new agricultural methods and became the forefront of agrarian change and played an important part in the English agriculture revolution. This in turn provided the industrial revolution an essential foundation.255 It should have not been a surprise that East Anglians met the enclosure movement with lesser dissents for they had much more possibilities open for them with a better array of skills and a unique mindset specific to the Eastern regions.
In the Midlands, we find a much stronger manorial power at work; lesser percentage of freeholders and more customary tenants without copyhold; much stable land inheritance pattern; strong communal bonds of produce and life in the village. This is associated with more services owed to the lord, more customary fees and fines, lesser protection of property and lesser space for innovation of new technology or transfer of land.
The influence of the first critical juncture—the signing of Magna Carta in 1215— meant a clear cut of administrative boundaries for the Crown and manorial lords. “Free men” were being defined under the existing relations to the lord, namely kinds of services they owned, types of rents they are obliged to, and what families they are born into. Manorial customs differed from estate to estate and regions to regions. The result was an obvious difference of the number of “free men” in certain regions, namely like Norfolk of East Anglia and other regions, like Dorset in the southeast. Additionally, due to the wish to limit the King’s abuse of taxation and profit from high grain and wool prices, the second critical juncture—the Civil War and the Glorious Revolution—proved much more critical than the first. Landed nobilities sided with the newly rising landed gentry, merchants, and traders against the crown. Having won the War, the King’s powers were diminished. This further rendered protections of the
255 Hopcroft, 1999, pp.80-83.
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common law issued by the King useless. No one or law could save the land-grounded tenants, who were disadvantaged institutionally, economically, technically, and ideologically. It is no wonder that their agony echoed loudly through history.
Moreover, these impacts of these critical junctures posed on the original path dependent trajectories caused two severe contradictory logics on the Midland commonfield system. First, as also identified by Campbell and Hopcroft, stronger lordship/more communal system was associated with the regular commonfield system, lower technical innovation, and moderate population; weaker lordship/ less communal system was associated with the irregular commonfield systems, higher technical innovations, and populations to the two extremes.
Hence, it could be asserted that strong lordships and strong communalism works against the logic of individualism, hence the needed transition towards agrarian revolution and pre-industrial preparations.
Second, more subtly grounded in the minds of serfs and villains, was a core idea of feudalism, lord and serfdom—life-bounded service and obligations in turn for protection and livelihood. While this was the fundamental fabric of the peasantry, as discussed afore, it was not anymore within the beliefs of the landed. As the chase of accumulation of capital and land increased over the years, landlords came in conflict with the crown, and no longer saw the King as absolute power and the feudalism arrangements critical to attain. When they forcefully gained from enclosures, nowhere would they be taking heed to the feudal reciprocal relationship of lord and serfdom: protection and livelihood of the serf.