With the prices of produce rents rose enormously.  Very early in the century[262] rents of arable land had increased ninefold, since the fifteenth century, and by 1688 Davenant and King estimated the average rent of arable land in England at 5s. 6d. per acre and of permanent grass at 8s. 8d.  Perhaps this is too high an estimate, as on the Belvoir estate of 17,837 acres in 1692 the rental all round was 3s. 9-1/4d. an acre for land above the average in quality, though it must be remembered that the Earls and Dukes of Rutland were indulgent landlords.

The History of Hawsted affords a valuable index of the increase of rents at this period.[263] In 1500 the average rent was 1s. 4d. an acre; in 1572, 39 acres of arable, meadow, and pasture were let for 2s. 3d. an acre, the landlord, it is interesting to notice, reserving the right of hawking, netting rabbits, hunting, and fowling; and about the same date other lands on the estate were let at 1s. 3d. and 1s. 6d. an acre, so that there had not generally been much advance since 1500, which is what we should expect, as the great rise took place at the end of the sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth centuries.  In 1589, therefore, it is not surprising to find that 40 acres of meadow and pasture let at 5s. an acre, and in 1611 some buildings and 155 acres of park at 11s. an acre.  In 1616, 366 acres of arable and pasture and 39 acres of meadow were valued at 12s. an acre for letting, and the Hall Farm of 175 acres (8-1/2 acres meadow) at 10s.; and Great Pipers Farm of 138 acres (8 meadow) at 7s., while meadow and pasture near the mansion was valued at 21s. an acre.

In 1658 the rent of the Hall Farm had advanced from 10s. an acre to about 13s., though in 1682 it went down to 11s. 6d.[264] According to the survey of the Manor of Manydown in Hampshire in 1650, meadow land was worth 20s. an acre, pasture 8s. to 10s., arable from 2s. to 10s., the latter showing a great variation in quality.[265] In 1723 Bryers Wood Farm at Hawsted, which had been let in 1620 for L15, was let at L29 5s.  These rents are considerably higher than the estimate of Davenant and King; but it must be remembered that they were for land in the parts of England, where farming was at its best, and they, in accounting for the whole country, had to take into consideration a vast amount of land in the north and west which was worth very little.  In the Rawlinson Collection[266] in the Bodleian Library is a rental of Lord Kingston’s estate in north Nottinghamshire in 1689, the rents averaging 10s. an acre; but this was an exceptionally good estate, much of the property being meadow and pasture.  The farmhouses also were above the average, while in two of the parishes the tenants had rights of common, and in two others the tenancies were tithe free.  There was very little arable land on the estate, three small holdings letting for 6s. 8d. an acre; and some of the pasture land was let at 14s., 15s. 6d., and even 18s. an acre.  The largest farm,