ABSTRACT
THE two largest classes in the agricultural England of the end of the seventeenth century were ‘cottagers and paupers’ and ‘labouring people and outservants’. The former, who outnumbered the latter, 1 picked up their livelihood from the common land, the others were wage earners. Almost all families at this time had small rights in land, from which they could obtain their wood for fuel, graze their geese for profit and their cow or pig for dairy produce or bacon. In this way the village labourer had a status and independence which came from his ability to produce his family's food as well as to work for it. All this changed with the enclosures of the eighteenth century agricultural revolution by which alone the productivity of the soil could be made to keep pace with the growing urban population.
