Introduction

One of the most important characteristics of English rural society at the end of the Middle Ages was that the great majority of peasant cultivators did not own the land they occupied, but held it as tenants of a landlord. Their economic experience has now been fully discussed, and the present chapter will be devoted to that of the owners of the soil. If we begin by considering the social distribution of landed property at the beginning of the period, the first point to make is that a large part of it, at least a quarter and possibly approaching one third, was in institutional ownership in the hands of the Church and the crown. The estates of the latter had been greatly increased by Henry VII's seizure of the properties of many of his political opponents, but even so those of the Church, that is of numerous monasteries, bishoprics, cathedrals and collegiate churches, as well as minor institutions like hospitals and chantries, were very much the larger of the two. Small owners below the standing of gentry probably owned no more than one fifth, whilst the remainder, some 40-45 per cent, was seemingly in the hands of the gentry and aristocracy (Table v).

The composition of the last of these three groups was continuously changing, as it always had been, mainly because in an age of relatively high death rates and low expectation of life, families were constantly dying out in the male line so that their property passed by means of marriage and inheritance to others.