The myth of the peasantry; family and economy in a northern parish

ALAN MACFARLANE

[From Richard M.Smith (ed.), Land, Kinship and Life-cycle (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1984)

p.333

Historians and sociologists agree that England between the thirteenth

and eighteenth centuries was a 'peasant' nation.(1) By this they often

mean no more than that it fitted within the definition proposed by

Firth when he wrote that by a peasant community 'one means a

system of small-scale producers, with a simple technology and

equipment, often relying primarily for their subsistence on what they

themselves produce. The primary means of livelihood of the peasant

is cultivation of the soil.' (2) England would also appear to have been a

peasant nation in the more precise sense that it was, to follow

Kroeber and Redfield, a society where those living in the countryside

constituted a 'part-culture' dependent on towns, markets and a

state.(3) One consequence of this interpretation is that the basic

contrast is held to be between industrial nations on the one hand and

'peasant' nations on the other. Thus England is lumped with con-

tinental Europe, Ireland and Scotland up to the nineteenth century,

with pre-revolutionary Russia and China and with contemporary,

(1) There is a more detailed discussion of the stereotype and of the definitional problem

in a paper, which complements this essay, entitled 'The Peasantry in England before

the Industrial Revolution. A mythical model?', in D. Green, C. Haselgrove and M.

Spriggs, editors, Social Organization and settlement (oxford, 1978), pp. 325-41, cited

hereafter as Macfarlane, 'Peasantry'. Two examples of similar studies are R. H.

Hilton, The English Peasantry in the Later Middle Ages (Oxford, 1975), and J. Thirsk,

English Peasant Farming (London ' 1957). The research on the parish of Kirkby

Lonsdale upon which this article is based has been funded by the Social Science

Research Council and King's College Research Centre, Cambridge, to whom I am

most grateful. Much of the work has been carried out by Sarah Harrison. I should

also like to thank Cherry Bryant, Charles Jardine, Iris Macfarlane and Jessica styles

for their help. I also acknowledge the help of the County Archives offices at Kendal,

Carlisle and Preston.

(2) Quoted in G. Dalton, 'Peasantries in Anthropology and History', Current Anthropology 13: 3-4 (1972), p.386.

(3) R. Redfield, Peasant Society and Culture (Chicago, Ill., 1960), p. 40.

334

India and Mexico. It is assumed that useful lessons can be learnt by

comparing basically similar social and economic structures. There has

been a growing interest recently in refining such a crude dichotomy

in order to make it possible to distinguish between different agrarian

systems. Following the lead of Chayanov it has been suggested that

one extra feature is needed in order to make the label 'peasant'

appropriate for an agricultural 'part-society. This final criterion is

described by Thorner as follows. (4)

Our fifth and final criterion, the most fundamental, is that of the unit of

production. In our concept of peasant economy the typical and most

representative units of production are the peasant family households. We

define a peasant family household as a socio-economic unit which grows

crops primarily by the physical efforts of the members of the family ... In a

peasant economy half or more of all crops grown will be produced by such

peasant households, relying mainly on their own family labour ...

As Shanin states, the basic feature is that 'the family farm is the basic

unit of peasant ownership, production, consumption and social life.

The individual, the family and the farm, appear as an indivisible

whole . . .' (5) Among the consequences of this situation is the fact that

the head of the family appears as 'the manager rather than proprietor

of family land', that the fertility of children is encouraged in order to

increase the labour force of the productive unit, that peasant villages

or communities are usually more or less self-sufficient.' As Chayanov

had stated much earlier, 'The first fundamental characteristic of the

farm economy of the peasant is that it is a family economy. Its whole

organization is determined by the size and composition of the

peasant family and by the co-ordination of its consumptive demands

with the number of its working hands." Thus, when we speak of

peasantry we are trying to describe not merely a particular tech-

nology, but also the basic organization of ownership, production and

consumption.

In the article cited above I have argued at some length that certain

central features of English society in the sixteenth and seventeenth

centuries lead us to suspect that the situation was very far removed

from that of an ideal-type peasant society. For example, the property

rights of women and children were totally contrary to those in other

peasant societies. Furthermore, a detailed analysis of the Essex parish

of Earls Colne in the period 1500-1750 showed that in every respect it

4 In T. Shanin, editor, Peasants and Peasant Societies Harmondsworth, 1971), p. 205.

5 Shanin, Peasants, p. 241.

6 Shanin, Peasants, pp. 242-4.

7 Quoted in E. Wolf, Peasants (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1966), p. 14.

335

was 'non-peasant'. (8) A brief survey of some other villages studied by

Hoskins and Spufford confirmed that Essex was not exceptional in

this respect. Yet all these studies are based on the lowland area of

England where the market was well developed. It is well known that

there was great regional variation in England during the sixteenth to

eighteenth centuries. If we are attempting to establish an English

pattern, it is necessary to produce evidence from an upland area.

Furthermore, if we are to find a pre-industrial peasantry anywhere in

the country it seems likely that it will be in the higher, supposedly

more remote and backward, upland region. It is generally agreed by

those familiar with such regions that kinship and the family were

more important in the upland region. There, if anywhere we will be

dealing with a domestic economy, based on extended kinship and

family labour. Groups of kin are the basic unit of production in a

peasant society. In association , with low geographical mobility this

will lead us to expect a high degree of kin co-residence in an area with

'peasants'. It is therefore relevant that a number of local historians

have spoken of the 'kindreds' and 'clans' of these upland areas, in

contrast to the dispersed kin of the lowlands. Describing Troutbeck in

Cumbria, Scott noted the frequent occurrence of identical surnames

and wrote: 'These families - we might rather call them clans -

inter-married so frequently that their descendants are inevitably

related many times over . . .(9) Cowper, describing Hawkshead in

north Lancashire, wrote: 'what we venture to term, in default of a

better word, the clan system - the cohabitation of hamlets and areas

by many folks owning the same surname and a common origin'. (10)

More recently James has suggested that 'upland' areas in the Durham

region were more familistic, (11) and Thirsk has noted that while the

'clan' was only strong in Northumbria, in many upland areas 'the

family often exerted a stronger authority than the manorial lord'.(12)

8. The nature of the sources and methods used in the study of Earls Colne, a project

funded by the Social Science Research Council, is described in A. Macfarlane,

Reconstructing Historical Communities (Cambridge, 1977).

9. S. H. Scott, A Westmorland Village (London, 1904), p. 261.

10. H. S. Cowper, Hawkshead (London, 1899), p. 199. See also, on 'kindreds' in the area,

C. M. L. Bouch and G. P. Jones, A Short Economic and Social History of the Lake Counties

1500-1830 (Manchester, 1961), p. 90. Cowper's observation is confirmed in one

respect by the recent discovery that in the Hawkshead parish register for 1560-1800,

twelve out of 506 name sets account for 36% of the total baptisms. I owe this fact to

Dr Richard Smith and the SSRC Cambridge Group for the History of Population and

Social Structure.

11. M. E. James, Family, Lineage and Civil Society: A Study of Society, Politics and Mentality in the Durham Region, 1500-1640 (oxford, 1974), p. 24.

12. J. Thirsk, editor, The Agrarian History of England and Wales, Vol, IV (Cambridge, 1967), pp. 9, 23.

336

Speaking of the northern fells, and in particular the areas of partible

inheritance, Thirsk writes that 'the family was and is the working

unit, all joining in the running of the farm, all accepting without

question the fact that the family holding would provide for them

all ....' (13) Of all the upland areas of England, the area most likely to

be, inhabited by peasants was southern Cumbria, that is parts of the

Lake District, west Yorkshire and north Lancashire. It is known that a

special form of social structure, based on small family estates',

existed there. A peculiar form of land tenure had given rise to the

,statesman' in an area of weak manorial control and difficult com-

munications. As Scott wrote of Troutbeck, 'Under this system of

customary tenure there has grown up a race of men singularly sturdy,

independent, and tenacious of their rights ... Instead of the land

being occupied by two or three squires, and a subservient tenantry,

this single township has contained some fifty statesmen families,

which have held the same land from generation to generation with

the pride of a territorial aristocracy."' The security, the immobility,

the equality, all seem to indicate a peasant society.

In this region lies the parish of Kirkby Lonsdale, where the stone

walls and substantial farmhouses remain very much as they were in

the seventeenth century. The parish produced grain, wool and cattle

in an area stretching from rich riverside meadows in the south up to

high fells of nearly two thousand feet on the east. The approximately

2,500 inhabitants in the late seventeenth century were distributed in

nine townships. The tenurial situation varied from township to

township, and consequently each had a different social structure.

According to Machell, who travelled through the parish in 1692 and

whose findings are corroborated and expanded by Nicholson

and Burn, (15) the tenurial situation in the various townships at the

end of the seventeenth century was as follows:

Kirkby Lonsdale: some tenants free (about one third), some customary, some

customary at fine arbitrary, some arbitrary (copyhold), some heriotable.

Casterton: tenants about half free and half customary, paying a fine certain

for three years rent.

Barbon: six or seven freeholds; all tenants are finable and arbitrary (i.e.

copyhold), they were sold to freehold in 1716.

13. 'Industries in the Countryside', in F. J. Fisher, editor, Essays in the Economic and Social

History of Tudor and Stuart England (Cambridge, 1961), p. 83.

14. Scott, Westmorland Village, pp. 20-1.

15. J. M. Ewbank, editor, Antiquary on Horseback (Kendal, 1963), pp. 18, 26, 29, 36, 39-1

J. Nicholson and R. Burn, The History and Antiquities of the Counties of Westmorland and

Cumberland (London, 1777), Vol. ii, pp. 243-65.

337

Middleton: the tenants purchased their estates to freehold ill the time of

Elizabeth and James 1.

Firbank: all freeholders, having purchased their customary tenures in 1586.

Killington: all freeholders, having purchased their customary tenures in 1585.

Lupton: only about two freehold tenements, all the rest customary.

Hutton Roof: some divided customary estates, but generally bought them-

selves free.(16)

This illustrates the variability even within a parish, supporting

Gilpin's contemporary observation that 'Customs especially in the

Northern Parts of this Nation are so varied and differing in them-

selves as that a man might almost say that there are as many, severall

Customes as mannors . . . yea and almost as many as there are

Townshipps or Hamletts in a mannor. (17) We may examine in more

detail two townships which were adjacent, but which contrast strik-

ingly in their tenurial situation, namely Lupton and Killington. In

Lupton there was an absentee lord ,)f the minor, but he owned very

little of the township land directly, there was no 'demesne'. Almost

all the land was held by customary tenants with holdings of between

fifteen and forty acres apiece and some rights in the common grazing.

In Killington the form of tenure had originally been the same as that

in Lupton, but in 1585 the customary holdings had been converted to

freehold. One consequence was that there were two persons styled

I gentlemen' living in Killington according to the listing of inhabitants

of 1695,(18) whereas there were none in Lupton. But even these were

minor gentry. The largest land holder's holding in Killington before

the Civil War consisted of a capital messuage, Killington Hall, forty

acres of arable, twenty acres of meadow, one hundred acres of

pasture and one hundred acres of moss and furze called 'Killington

Demesne', another messuage with sixteen acres of land and a water

mill." This was roughly five times the size of the average holding in

Killington, but, since there were about forty estates in the township,

it only constituted about one-eighth of the total land area.

It is clear that English 'freehold' tenure, which gave an individual

complete and total rights over his land, is diametrically opposed to

the form of land holding that is characteristic of peasant societies,

16. W. Farrer and J. F. Curwen, Records Relating to the Barony of Kendale (Kendal, 1924),

Vol. it, p. 416.

17. A. Bagot, 'Mr Gilpin and Manorial Customs', Transactions of the Cumberland and

Westmorland Antiquarian and Archaeological Society new series 62 (1961), p. 228.

18. The listing, which covers the whole of Kirkby Lonsdale parish, is in the Record Office

at Kendal among the Fleming papers (WD/RY).

19. An inquisition of 1639, reprinted in Farrer and Curwen, Records of Kendale, Vol it,

p. 437.

338

where there is a form of joint family ownership.(20) It thus seems very

likely that, whatever may superficially appear to be the case, Killing-

ton after 1585, Firbank after 1586, Barbon after 1716, Middleton

since the early seventeenth century and parts of Kirkby Lonsdale and

Hutton Roof had a form of land tenure system incompatible with

peasantry. Yet in the areas with 'customary' tenure, particularly

Lupton, where nearly all was held in this way, some form of family

estate might have existed, surviving longer there than in the other

townships. We therefore need to examine this northern customary

tenure, known as 'border tenure' or 'tenant right' in more detail.

The parish of Kirkby Lonsdale lay within the barony of Kendal, and

consequently all the manors, except the rectory manor, were held of

that barony." 'Customary' tenure was thus part of that general

border tenure which has been particularly well documented since it

was a peculiarity of the area and the subject of considerable litigation

in the seventeenth century. An excellent contemporary description is

given by Gilpin, (22) and there have been a number of more recent (23)

descriptions. Supposedly in exchange for armed service on the

border, the tenant held by a form of tenure which lay somewhere

between ordinary copyhold as known in the south of England and

freehold. As with copyhold, the tenant paid certain fines and rents to

the lord, though these were usually fixed and small, and performed

certain services or 'boons. But unlike copyhold, the holding of land

was not 'at the will of the lord' but by the custom of the manor. The

land holdings were known as 'customary estates of inheritance' and

could be transferred from one 'owner' to the next without the

permission of the lord, only being registered, and a fine being paid, in

the manorial court. The estates were 'descendible from ancestor to

heir under certain yearly rents. Furthermore, 'the copyholder had

no property in the timber on the land; the customary tenant owns

everything, as if it were freehold, except the minerals beneath the

Soil. (21) Customary tenants could devise their land by will, and it

descended automatically to their children or other legal heirs if no will

was made. This situation has been described as 'tantamount to

20 For a more detailed discussion of this opposition, see Macfarlane, 'Peasantry'.

21 Farrer and Curwen, Records of Kendale, Vol ii, p. 305.

22 Bagot, 'Mr Gilpin and Manorial Customs'.

23 Bouch and Jones, Economic ... History of the Lake Counties, pp. 65ff; J. R. Ford, 'The

Customary Tenant-Right of the Manors of Yealand', Transactions of the Cumberland ;

and Westmorland Antiquarian and Archaeological Society new series (1909), pp. 147ff; W. Butler, 'The Customs and Tenant Right Tenures of the Northern Counties . . .',

Transactions of the Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and Archaeological Society ' new series 26 (1926), pp. 318-36.

24 Scott, Westmorland Village, p. It'.

339

freehold', (25) and in regard to security of tenure this was the case,

though the fines, rents and services made it akin to copyhold in other

respects. The estates could be bought and sold by ordinary deeds of

bargain and sale, though they would also be registered as admit-

tances in the court roll.(26) This was a form of transfer exactly similar to

freehold. (27) The major restriction on the tenant was that the inherited

estate should not be subdivided. In order that the land holding

should be large enough to provide a warrior for the border defences,

the customs stated that all of the holding should go to one person, the

widow, then to a son, and in default of a son to only one daughter. As

we shall see, this was a very strict form of impartibility.

One supposed result of such a system was that wealth was evenly

distributed between equal 'family farms'. This equality was noted by

those who had witnessed the collapse of the old tenurial system in

the second half of the eighteenth century. Looking back to the first

half of that century, a writer in 1812 described how 'excepting the

estates of a few noblemen and baronets, the land was divided into

small freeholds and customary tenements, in the occupation of

owners . . ..' (28) Another supposed result was that a certain family

would be identified with an estate, and that it would pass for many

generations down the same family.

Yet, if we look a little more closely at the precise nature of

ownership, the pattern is not so simple. We have noted that farm and

family are merged in peasant societies; it is the family or household as

a group that owns the farm holding, the head of the family merely

being the de facto manager. Individual ownership is alien. This is

absolutely the opposite of the case in both Lupton and Killington,

where it would be difficult to envisage a more individualistic form of

land holding, either by freehold or by customary tenure. There is no

evidence in any of the multitudinous court records or customs of the

area that the property was jointly owned by the family. In fact, all the

indications are in the opposite direction. First, it is clear that in both

townships the landed property was transferred to one person, who

was not merely the nominal title holder but the owner in an exclusive

sense. This owner might as easily be a woman as a man. If anything,

the individualism of ownership was even more extreme than in most

copyhold tenures in the south for whereas in Essex, for example, all

25 Butler, 'Tenant Right Tenures', p. 320.

26 Ibid., p. 319.

27 Ford, 'Customary Tenant-Right', p. 157.

28 J. Gough, Manners and Customs of Westmorland ... (Kendal, 1847; first printed in

1812), p. 25.

340

daughters received shares in the estate as co-parceners if there was no

male heir, in Lupton the principle of individual property prevented

this division. By the custom of that manor, and generally under

tenant-right tenure, in the event of no sons surviving the holding

went to only one daughter. As Machell put it, quoting from a

Chancery decree of the