Abstract
One has only to look at a sample of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century wills and inventories to realize the important part which sheep farming played in the life of Tudor and Stuart England. In agricultural areas, even in those regions where tillage predominated, large numbers of farmers owned some sheep. Nor was sheep farming practised only by men who gained their sole means of livelihood from agriculture. Quite often sheep were owned by men whose main interests and vocations lay in other fields — in industry or in trade, in politics or in law.
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Notes
W. G. Hoskins, The Midland Peasant. The Economic and Social History of a Leicestershire Village (1957), p. 158.
See also Joan Thirsk, English Peasant Farming. The Agrarian History of Lincolnshire from Tudor to Recent Times (1957), p. 118, where mention is made of three wealthy villagers of Bolingbroke (co. Lincs.) having 2,700 sheep between them and the rest of the villagers having another 7,000 — apparently in the early seventeenth century.
K.J. Allison, ‘Flock Management in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries’, Economic History Review, 2nd series, xi (1958), 100.
W. G. Hoskins, Essays in Leicestershire History (1950), pp. 174–5;
K. J. Allison, The Wool Supply and the Worsted Cloth Industry in Norfolk in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Leeds University Ph.D. thesis, 1955), pp. 113–22. See also J. Thirsk, op. cit., pp. 128–9, 152–4, 173–5, 187–9.
M. E. Finch, The Wealth of Five Northamptonshire Families, 1540–1640 (Northants Rec. Soc. XIX, Oxford, 1956), p. 44.
R. Trow-Smith, A History of British Livestock Husbandry to 1700 (1957), p. 170.
Kent Archives Office, U.269/A.423. Locks were often sold in small quantities to villagers, but if tarry and inferior were sometimes given away. See K.A.O. U.269/A.418/1; U.269/A.418/5, fol. 7; Rural Economy in Yorkshire in 1641, being the Farming and Account Books of Henry Best of Elmswell, in the East Riding of the County of York (Surtees Soc. XXXIII, Durham, 1857), ed. G. B. Robinson, pp. 21–2.
Infra, p. 27; B.M. Lansd. MS. 152, fol. 229; P. J. Bowden, ‘Movements in Wool Prices, 1490–1610’, Yorkshire Bulletin of Economic and Social Research, iv (1952), 109–24.
This system was the basis of the Norfolk sheep-corn husbandry. Each flock was confined to a foldcourse, this being a strictly defined area providing various kinds of pasture — open-field arable land, when unsown, heathland, and sometimes arable and pasture closes. See K. J. Allison, ‘The Sheep-Corn Husbandry of Norfolk in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries’, Agric. Hist. Rev. V (1957), 12–30.
A. Simpson, ‘The East Anglian Foldcourse: Some Queries’, Agriec. Hist. Rev. VI (1958), 92.
E. F. Gay, ‘The Temples of Stowe and their Debts’, Huntington Library Quarterly, ii (1938–9), 430.
K. J. Allison, Econ. Hist. Rev, 2nd ser. xi (1958), 110–12.
Allison, Econ. Hist. Rev. 2nd ser. xi (1958), 109.
J. H. Plumb, ‘Sir Robert Walpole and Norfolk Husbandry’, Econ. Hist. Rev. 2nd ser. v (1952), 86–9.
F. J. Fisher, ‘The Development of the London Food Market, 1540–1640’, Econ. Hist. Rev. v (1935), 46.
A. J. and R. H. Tawney, ‘An Occupational Census of the Seventeenth Century’, Econ. Hist. Rev. v (1934), 27, n. 2.
R. E. Prothero (Lord Ernie), English Farming Past and Present (1912), p. 139. In the 1660’s and 70’s the Petre family of Ingatestone, in Essex, was buying and selling ‘Welch ewes and contry sheep’ (Essex Record Office, D/DP. A.47).
D. Defoe, Tour Through Great Britain (edn. 1927), i. 9.
Robert Loder’s Farm Accounts, 1610–1620 (Camden Soc. 3rd ser., liii, 1936), ed. G. E. Fussell, pp. 40–1.
P.R.O. C.1/803/6; C.1/879/38; C.1/1243/56; C1/1472/58; C.3/10/88; C.3/18/92; M. Campbell, The English Yeoman under Elizabeth and the Early Stuarts (Yale, 1942), p. 199.
E. G. K. Gonner, Common Land and Inclosure (1912), pp. 337–8. For further examples of the stinting of common rights and the position of common rights in the sixteenth century, see the Report of the Royal Commission on Common Land, 1955–1958, Cmd. 462 (1958), pp. 155–7.
E. Lipson, The Economic History of England (edn. 1947), ii, 373–4. But as early as 1677 it was claimed that there had been a great increase of sheep in England due to the improvement of lands by cinquefoil and other seed and through the draining of the fens (Cal. S.P. Dom. 1677–8, p. 37).
Thirsk, Tudor Enclosures, pp. 17–18; G. E. Fussell, ‘Farming Methods in the early Stuart Period’, Journal of Modern History, vii (1935), 129–32.
W. Youatt, Sheep, Their Breeds, Management and Diseases (edn. 1890), p. 536.
Allison, Econ. Hist. Rev. 2nd ser. xi (1958), 110.
Allison, Econ. Hist. Rev. 2nd ser. xi (1958), 110.
Allison, Econ. Hist. Rev. xi (1958), 103–4; Allison, thesis, pp. 320–1; L.A.O. HEN.3/2.
P.R.O.G.1/1067/27;G.1/1170/59; C.1/1222/73–5; C.1/1315/36; G.1/1368/14–7; C.3/397/6; Req. 2/32/73; St. Ch. 8/190/21; E.134/2 James I. East. 12; Rural Economy in Yorkshire in 1641, pp. 24, 26; Allison, Econ. Hist. Rev. 2nd ser. xi (1958), 106.
H. Haigh and B. A. Newton, The Wools of Britain (1952), pp. 5, 42–3.
Youatt, op. cit., pp. 68–70; An Enquiry into the Nature and Qualities of English Wools, By a Gentleman Farmer (1788), p. 18. In 1480–1, when 2,000 of Sir Roger Townshend’s sheep died and a bad winter reduced the increase of lambs, his accountant declared that it was ‘an evell yere for wull’ and the normal average rate of 10 fleeces per stone was increased to 14 (Allison, Econ. Hist. Rev. 2nd ser. xi (1958), 105).
The findings of Dr. M. L. Ryder, who has examined the follicle remains in some British parchments, support historical records which mention the extreme fineness of medieval wool and provide additional evidence of an increase in the supply of long-staple wool in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. See M. L. Ryder, ‘Follicle Remains in Some British Parchments’, Nature, vol. 187, no. 4732 (1960), 130–2.
Tudor Economic Documents, ed. R. H. Tawney and E. Power (1924), iii, 102.
P. J. Bowden, ‘Wool Supply and the Woollen Industry’, Econ. Hist. Rev. 2nd ser. ix (1956), 44–51.
Tudor Economic Documents, iii, 180; P. Deane, ‘The Output of the British Woolen Industry in the Eighteenth Century’, Journal of Economic History, xvii (1957), 211, n. 11.
Commons Debates, 1621, ed. W. Notestein, F. H. Relf and H. Simpson (New Haven, 1935), vii, 499.
V.C.H. Gloucester, ii, 163; P.J. Bowden, Econ. Hist. Rev. 2nd ser. ix (1956), 50.
L.A.O. MM. VI/5/2, 4, 5, 17, 18, 27, 28; V.C.H. Lincoln, ii, 335; P.J. Bowden, Econ. Hist. Rev. 2nd ser. ix (1956), 48–51.
Rotuli Parliamentorum, v. 275. (Printed in J. E. T. Rogers, A History of Agriculture and Prices in England (Oxford, 1886), iii, 704).
E. Power, ‘The Wool Trade in the Fifteenth Century’, Studies in English Trade in the Fifteenth Century, ed. E. Power and M. M. Postan (1933), p. 49.
See W. G. Hoskins, Industry, Trade and People in Exeter, 1688–1800 (1935), p. 35; Stephens, op. cit., p. 4; B.M. Harl. MS. 5827, fol. 10.
Allison, Econ. Hist. Rev. 2nd ser. xi (1958), 104–5.
These figures have been calculated from the table of export statistics of wool, cloth and worsted given in L. Stone, ‘State Control in Sixteenth Century England’, Econ. Hist. Rev. xvii (1947), 119.
Two Tracts by Gregory King, ed. G. E. Barnett (Baltimore; John Hopkins, 1936), p. 38.
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Bowden, P.J. (1962). Sheep Farming and Wool Production. In: The Wool Trade in Tudor and Stuart England. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-81676-7_1
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