contemporaries in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as to the depopulation caused by enclosures.  Chamberlayne, in his State of Great Britain, published at about the same time as Gregory King’s figures, says there were more freeholders in England than in any country of like extent in Europe:  ’L40 or L50 a year is very ordinary, L100 or L200 in some counties is not rare, sometimes in Kent and in the Weald of Sussex L500 or L600 per annum, and L3,000 or L4,000 of stock.’  In the first quarter of the eighteenth century he was a prominent figure.  Defoe[579] describes the number and prosperity of the Greycoats of Kent (as they were called from their homespun garments), ’whose interest is so considerable that whoever they vote for is always sure to carry it.’

Why has this sturdy class so dwindled in numbers, and left England infinitely the weaker for their decrease?  The causes are several; social, economic, and political.  The chief, perhaps, is the peculiar form of Government which came in with the Revolution.  The landed gentry by that event became supreme, the national and local administration was entirely in their hands, and land being the foundation of social and political influence was eagerly sought by them where it was not already in their hands.[580] At the same time the successful business men, whose numbers now increased rapidly from the development of trade, bought land to ‘make themselves gentlemen’.  Both these classes bought out the yeomen, who do not seem to have been very loath to part with their land.  The recently devised system of strict family settlements enabled the old and the new gentlemen to keep this land in their families.  The complicated title to land made its transfer difficult and costly, so that there was little breaking up of estates to correspond with the constant buying up of small owners.  To the smaller freeholder, as has been noticed, the enclosure of waste land did much harm, for it was necessary to his holding.  Again, smaller arable farms did not pay as well as large ones, so they tended to disappear.  The decay of home industries was also a heavy blow to the smaller yeoman and the peasant proprietor.

Under this combination of circumstances many of the yeomen left the land.  Yet though Young, less than a century after King and Davenant, said that the small freeholder had practically disappeared, there were at the end of the eighteenth century many left all over England, who however largely disappeared during the war and in the bad times after the war.[581] But a contrary tendency was at work which helped to replenish the class.  The desire of the Englishman for land is not confined to the wealthy classes.  At the end of the eighteenth century men who had made small fortunes in trade were buying small properties and taking the place of the yeomen.[582] In the great French War of 1793-1815, many yeomen, attracted by the high prices of land, sold their properties, but at the same time many farmers, attracted by the high prices of produce, which had often enriched them, bought land.[583] During the ‘good times’ of 1853-75 many small holders, like those of Axholme, noticed in the Report of the Agricultural Commission of 1893, bought land.