Stability and change 1300–1700: The socio‐economic context of the self‐perpetuating family farm in England

Abstract

The article examines the not inconsiderable role played by alteration in the pattern of inheritance custom in bringing about the transformation of the medieval peasantry into a self‐respecting group of small‐holders. Where child‐portions in the form of cash or education were accepted as legitimate equivalents to land and stock, sixteenth‐century holdings remained large, 30–100 acres. Where the principle was not accepted, the medieval pattern of overcrowded twelve‐acre holdings either persisted or reappeared.

The very considerable differences, in cultural and economic terms, between the small‐holder of the thirteenth‐century in England and the small‐holder of the eighteenth century has been largely obscured and overlooked by the use of the term ’peasant’ to designate both groups. Thus the medievalists discuss the disappearance of the peasantry in the fifteenth century and modern historians and sociologists probe the causes of the disappearance of the peasantry in the eighteenth. Both have in mind the self‐perpetuating family farm but they are discussing two very different types of rural economy. Such confusion is surely an indicator of the need for a closer definition of terms among those concerned with rural studies.

Notes

University of Leicester.