1 Tawney, R. H., The agrarian problem of the sixteenth century (London, 1912)Google Scholar; Dobb, M., Studies in the development of capitalism (London, 1946)Google Scholar; Hilton, R. H., ed., The transition from feudalism to capitalism (London, 1975)Google Scholar; Brenner, R., ‘Agrarian class structure and economic development in pre-industrial Europe’ Past & Present 67 (1976) 30–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar; the replies to this article and Brenner's rejoinder appeared in Past & Present between 1978 and 1982 and are reprinted in Aston, T. H. and Philpin, C. E., eds., The Brenner Debate (Cambridge, 1985)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Tribe, K., Genealogies of capitalism (London, 1981)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Holton, R. J., The transition from feudalism to capitalism (Basingstoke, 1985)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; the debate has again been taken up in Science and Soċiety, with contributions in volumes 48–50 (1985–1986) from R. Gottleib, D. Laibman, H. Heller, P. Sweezy and G. McClennan; the most recent empirical contribution is Searle, C. E., ‘Custom, class conflict and agrarian capitalism: the Cumbrian customary economy in the eighteenth century’, Past & Present 110 (1986), 106–133.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 Two recent collections bring together much of the most important work of the last quarter century: Harvey, P., ed., The peasant land market in medieval England (Oxford, 1984)Google Scholar, and Smith, R. M., ed., Land, kinship and life-cycle (Cambridge, 1984).Google Scholar See also Harvey, B., Westminster Abbey and its estates in the Middle Ages (Oxford, 1977), chapter 11Google Scholar; de Windt, A., ‘A peasant land market and its participants: King's Ripton 1280–1400’, Midland History 4 (1978) 142–59CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Dyer, C., Lords and peasants in a changing society (Cambridge, 1980), chapter 14.Google Scholar

3 Baker, A. R. H. and Butlin, R. A., eds., Studies of field systems in the British Isles (Cambridge, 1973).Google Scholar

4 Raftis, J. A., Tenure and mobility: studies in the social history of the medieval English village (Toronto, 1964)Google Scholar; Windt, E. de, Land and people in Holywell-cum-Needingworth (Toronto, 1972)Google Scholar; Razi, Z., ‘The Toronto school's reconstitution of medieval society: a critical view’ Past & Present 85 (1979), 141–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Razi, Z., ‘Family, land and the village community in medieval England’ Past & Present 93 (1981), 3–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 Razi, Z., ‘The erosion of the family-land bond in the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries: a methodological note’Google Scholar, and Dyer, C., ‘Changes in the link between families and land in the West Midlands in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries’, both, in Smith, , ed., Land, kinship and life-cycle, 295–304, 305–11.Google Scholar

6 I use the term ‘structural change’ to denote changes in either social relations or prevailing attitudinal systems as causes of the pattern of behavioural outcomes. I use the term ‘conjuncture! change’, as synonymous with ‘contextual change’, to mean changes in the wider setting of society and behaviour (for example, natural environmental or biological influences on morbidity and mortality, or geopolitical changes exogenous to a particular region or nation which intrude on existing social practices) in which a change in the pattern of behavioural outcomes occurs without there having been a change in social relations or attitudes.

7 Smith, R. M., ‘Some thoughts on “hereditary” and “proprietary” rights in land under customary law in thirteenth and fourteenth century England’, Law and History Review 1 (1983) 95–128.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8 Blanchard, I., ‘Industrial employment and the rural land market 1380–1520’ in Smith, , ed., Land, kinship and life-cycle, 227–75.Google Scholar

9 Blanchard, I., ‘Review of periodical literature: medieval period’, Economic History Review, 2nd series, 37 (1984), 117.Google Scholar

10 Wrightson, K., ‘Aspects of social differentiation in rural England’, Journal of Peasant Studies 5 (1977) 33–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

11 Brenner ‘Agrarian class structure’, passim.

12 Wallerstein, I., The modern world system I: capitalist agriculture and the origins of the European world economy in the sixteenth century (London, 1974)Google Scholar; The modern world system 2: mercantilism and the consolidation of the European world economy (London, 1980).Google Scholar

13 Major sources are listed in notes 15 and 16.

14 Moss, D., ‘The economic development of a Middlesex village’ Agricultural History Review 28 (1980), 104–14Google Scholar; for similar developments elsewhere in the London area see McIntosh, M. K., Autonomy and community: the royal manor of Havering 1200–1500 (Cambridge, 1986) especially chapters 4 and 6.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

15 Cecil's purchases generated record compilation by both his agents and those from whom he bought land; additionally he had compiled numerous documents in which material from earlier surveys, rentals and court rolls was recorded and collated. Two documents merit more detailed description. The first is a detailed field book of the entire parish compiled in 1562, possibly in connection with Cecil's interest in acquiring land in the area. This provides very full descriptions of the size, use, position and history of each parcel of land, including individual open-field strips. Indices of current tenants, former landholders, property names and abuttments provide a firm framework within which to identify individual parcels of land transferred or described in earlier sources or isolated references. This survey is CPL 1562S. The second is a book, now in several pieces, recording copies of all land transfers, admissions to demesne leases, and other manorial business of an agricultural character (including some bye-laws) between 1521 and 1557. There are a few gaps in the mid 1520s. The completeness of the book is attested by the agreement between the total of the individual entry fines recorded alongside each transfer, and the fines element in the perquisites of court itemised in the ministers' accounts for the manor (see note 20). The 1562 field book enables the record to be extended up to 1562 since it records the dates on which each holding was last transferred in the manorial court. The book is HCRO B56.

16 Compiled from sources relating to 9 manors: Cheshunt, Theobalds, Crossbrooks, Cullyns, La Mote, Andrews, Beaumondhall, Wormley, Hoddesdon. Sources: HCRO B56, HCRO 6985, HCRO 70477, HCRO 70894, HCRO D/ELnE1-D/ELnE5, HCRO D/ELnM1-D/ELnM10, HCRO D/ELnM20 parts 1–3, HCRO D/ELnM19. CPL 1562S, CPL Cheshunt manor court rolls of 1480s (uncatalogued in boxfile in basement), CFEP Accounts 2/9, 3/4, 4/28, 113/27, CFEP General 66/8, CFEP court rolls 9/24, 13/3, 13/6, 13/10, PRO Court rolls general bundle 17/28, PRO E317 Herts 24 ff3–88, PRO LR 2/216, 16–31Google Scholar. Lysons, D., The environs of London (1794) 2, 770n2.Google ScholarTregelles, J., The history of Hoddesdon (1908).Google Scholar

17 HCRO B56, CPL 1562S, CFEP court rolls 13/3,6,10.

18 The overall size of the leasehold sector remained small. There were just over 200 acres of leasehold arable held from the main manor of Cheshunt, which covered more than 5,000 acres. Similarly, total areas of leasehold meadow and pasture remained small. This makes interpretation of the leasehold rent series in terms of how they were perceived by lord and tenants problematic, since only a small and variable proportion of different land uses lay within it. Thus supply of leasehold land was tightly limited, while demand needs to be assessed in the context of the land a farmer held at more advantageous tenures. While the rents for new lettings increased faster than prices, especially for meadow and pasture, they do not represent trends in the total rent expenses of tenants, which increased more slowly, at least until late in the century.

19 HCRO D/ELnM 10. This is a rental of Andrew's manor in western Cheshunt, recording the existing rents on which new higher rents are annotated. Dating the rent increases depends on identifying the tenants whose names are crossed out and replaced by new names in the annotations. Most of the tenants whose names were deleted apparently died during 1545/46, possibly of plague, which was present locally. Their wills had been proved by late 1546: ECRO wills, British Record Society, Index of Wills Proved in the Archdeaconry Court of London; British Record Society, Index of Wills Proved in the Consistory Court of the Diocese of London. Other deaths can be approximately dated from obituary notices in the Cheshunt court book HCRO B56 and Andrews manor court rolls HCRO D/ELnM5-D/ELnM8, again to c. 1545.

20 Ministers Accounts, PRO SC6/Hen8/1588–1590 and 6757–6781.

21 Bowden, P. J., ‘Agricultural prices, farm profits and rents’, in Thirsk, J., ed., The agrarian history of England and Wales, vol. 4, 1500–1640, 814–63.Google Scholar

22 HCRO D/ELnM20, third section; Cheshunt Public Library 1562S (uncatalogued boxfile in basement). Descriptions of the descent of some holdings show the process at work, as in the case of the Bedell-Clark-Clark holding (see below n. 32) CFEP, vol. 285, fos. 4–6 (microfilm copy at British Library).

23 The exact size of the non-agricultural sector is difficult to calculate directly. On the basis of linking all occupational designations from several sources to an index of all known Cheshunt inhabitants (largely based on the parish register), the craft-trade sector accounted for some 20–25% of the adult male population until the end of the sixteenth century. This compares with a figure of about 35% for the period 1660–1680.

24 Calculation based on indices compiled from documents referred to in notes 15 and 16, and other sources.

25 HCRO B49 contains records from five courts, 1314–1315, the only surviving pre-Black-Death court roll for Cheshunt. As in the more abundant court rolls of other Lea valley manors such as Broxbourne (HCRO Bl-2), transactions are of small areas, averaging under 2 acres. There are some intra-family transactions involving a living vendor, and several transfers of an ad opus form.

26 PRO E179/120/154–165.

27 In the former case, successful tenants would appear towards the top right of the diagram, less successful tenants on the left hand side. In the latter case tenants would move from a central position towards the top right of the diagram, only to move again towards the bottom left as they passed the middle age life-cycle household income peak.

28 As in several other studies, biographies can only be compiled from a limited range of sources for this period, principally court books and rolls, surveys and rentals, taxation documents and wills. The surviving Cheshunt parish registers do not commence until 1558. The limitations of ‘biographies’ based on such a partial range of sources must immediately be acknowledged especially in respect of the exact age of tenants, and the structure of their families and households.

29 Some of these families are described in more detail in Glennie, P., A commercialising agrarian region: late medieval and early modern Hertfordshire (unpublished Cambridge University PhD thesis, 1983), 319–22.Google Scholar

30 Faith, R., ‘Berkshire: fourteenth and fifteenth centuries’, in Harvey, , ed., Peasant land market, 177.Google Scholar

31 Somerville, R., A history of the Duchy of Lancaster (London, 1953)Google Scholar; the presence in Cheshunt of four Duchy of Lancaster administrators (Dixon, Lothington, Fray, Walsh) has been noted independently by Griffiths, R. A., ‘Public and private bureaucracies in England and Wales in the fifteenth century’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th series, 30 (1980), 127–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

32 HCRO D/ELnM20, fos. 4–6.Google Scholar

33 HCRO 70477. The rental has been transcribed in Rooke, P. E., ‘Medieval Cheshunt’, Transactions of the East Hertfordshire Archaeological Society, 13, 172–203.Google Scholar

34 When land passed from Londoners to local farmers, it was usually on the death of the former. The dispersal of Hugh Eglesfield's holding, illustrated in Figure 7 a below, is unusual.

35 For a more detailed picture see Glennie, A commercialising agrarian region, 327–34.Google Scholar

36 HCRO D/ELnE4a, CFEP CP, vol. 285, fo. 4, HCRO D/ELnM20.Google Scholar

37 See, for example, several of the essays in Harvey, ed., Peasant land market.

38 As by members of the Chare and Lowen families. Here, intra-family land transfers often contributed to specialisation in land-use. By 1562, Henry Chare, leatherseller, held 22.5 acres and William Chare, leatherseller, held 121, but they held only three acres of arable land between them. At the same time, Richard Chare senior and Robert Chare senior held between them 76 acres, of which all but 12 were arable land. Similarly, William Lowen, yeoman, and Thomas Lowen, yeoman, held 102 acres of which 77 were arable, whereas John Lowen, yeoman, had only 6 acres of arable in his holding of 67.5 acres. Such specialisation among tenants is not apparent in late fifteenth-or early sixteenth-century Cheshunt.

39 For the distinction between capitalist forms of landholding and of production see Martin, J. E., Feudalism to capitalism: peasant and landlord in English agrarian development (London, 1983), 99–103.Google Scholar

40 Hilton, R. H., ‘Reasons for inequality among medieval peasants’ Journal of Peasant Studies 5 (1978) 271–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

41 For large numbers of such cases at Tottenham see Moss, ‘Economic development of a Middlesex village’.

42 PRO E121/151 and E121/160-E121/173; PRO E179/248/25 fos. 1–4, E179/375, E179/248.

43 Smith, R. M., ‘“Modernisation” and the corporate medieval village community in England: some sceptical reflections’ in Baker, A. R. H. and Gregory, D. J., eds., Explorations in historical geography: interpretative essays (Cambridge, 1984) 140–79.Google Scholar

44 Giddens has pursued and extended this theme in many works, including Central problems in social theory: action, structure and contradiction in social analysis (London, 1979)Google Scholar, and The constitution of society (Cambridge, 1984).Google Scholar For a brief review of structuration theory in social history see Lloyd, C., Explanation in social history (Oxford, 1986), chapter 14.Google Scholar

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