ABSTRACT
At the opening of the twentieth century England may be compared to a garden, a ground cut up for purposes of cultivation by hedgerows and lines of trees. The change from the common cultivation of open strips of field to individual responsibility for pieces of enclosed ground, brought to the front two figures characteristic of English agricultural history – the tenant-farmer and the yeoman. These two classes existed under the old system, but wherever the new order was established they gained a new importance. But besides their work in the fields, country women were largely employed in industry. The cloth manufacture was organized by the ‘clothiers’ of the towns; but much labour was carried on in distant cottages, each of which was visited by the clothier on his periodic rounds. The debt of English commerce to the Interlopers of the seventeenth century is scarcely less than its debt to the great companies which they defied.
