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that brief interregnum between the collapse of Norman feudalism and
the rise of mercantile/industrial capitalism in England, during,
that is, the Tudor and early Stuart periods, there emerged a novel
social class, essentially an agrarian bourgeois. This new "class",
the "Yeomen" of whom we hear so much in Elizabethan times, and
praised later after they were in fact largely gone as the stalwart
foundation of "the Empire", became for a time the mainstay of the
rural economy, supplanting the Manor both in production and social
significance as the foundation of rural life. They provided, as an
aside, the agrarian model for the then new colonies in the Americas,
where they persisted as "the family farmer" far past their demise in
England, and well into the 20th century.
"Enclosure and the Yeoman, The Agricultural
Development of the South Midlands 1450-1850", Robert C. Allen,
Clarendon Press Oxford 1992, is 375 pages of *serious* economic
analysis (an example: on p 207, in the chapter "Yeomen and
Capitalist Farmers", sub heading "The History of Corn Yields" . . .
"The regression analysis of the Oxfordshire probate inventories
undermines the theory that the amalgamation of farms was responsible
for the rise in yields since the data show no correlation between
yield and farm size" ... with all the accompanying tables of figures
that you might want). It is (sadly, I would suggest) more about the
decline of the Yeoman and the creation in his place of the vast
"rural poor" of the 18th and 19th centuries than about the life and
times of the Yeoman in his heyday, but the numbers for the 16th are
there too in most of the tables and charts, as well as the
discussion... numbers that show productivity, prosperity, and
success on an oft times surprising scale. No pictures, but 16 maps
and figures, 91 tables and a 31 page bibliography.
Where this all matters to the historic
reconstructionist is in the picture the numbers paint of the
relationship between town and country in Tudor England. We are all
aware of the substantial difference between life in the typical
village and life in London. It does not follow, though, as many seem
to assume, that there was little "awareness" shared between the one
and the other, that rural England was necessarily rustic and crude
(as exemplified by the saw (probably not true, if you discount the
death of children) that the "average Englishman" lived and died
within twenty miles of his place of birth). The 200,000 plus
inhabitants of London in 1600 were fed, and their industry supplied,
by the product of the fields, pastures and mines of a large
surrounding area, and the farmers, husbandrymen and miners got their
share of London's production in return, as well as trade goods from
around the world. Political and religious ideas, fads,
entertainments and social "styles" flowed freely with the commerce,
the Yeoman "class" was a ready audience for anything new, and there
was certainly no loss of connection between the remaining Manors and
their more aristocratic brethren in London. As hard as it may be for
some to believe today, people and ideas, got around quite readily
even before the automobile and the internet. A "renaissance faire"
then may reasonably include a wide range of activity, presentation
and behavior which would not be found in the normal day to day of
village life but which would neither have been completely foreign,
or without interest, to the general village audience. In a time of
as dramatic change and social reorganization as Elizabeth's England
a "faire" event would surely have pushed the limits of novelty and
social acceptability, an thus presents a broad palette indeed for
the reconstructionist.
Deward Hastings
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