Differing Responses to an Industrialising Economy - eTheses ...

Tables 5.2 and 5.6 show the agricultural sector’s dominance but relative decline
over the two centuries. 28
Despite the vale’s reputation for corn-growing, probate
inventories indicate that mixed farming was the norm. 29
The mean value of both
yeomen’s and husbandmen’s inventories are by far the highest in the study area from
1660-79, but fall well below the other sub-districts in the period 1680-99. 30 When corn
prices fell, farmers further north (nearer the Birmingham market) could perhaps maintain
higher prices and were better placed to cater for the demand for meat and hides. 31
In the
1720s and 1730s at a time when Alcester’s tradesmen were feeling the pinch, the yeomen
of the Champion Country enjoyed high inventory values. 32
Around this time beef cattle
were probably more in evidence here than formerly. Grazier-gentlemen like the Phillips,
Edden and Zouch families grew fat along with their cattle on the lush Avonside pastures.
Of the farmers who left probate in Period A 73 were described as yeomen and 37
as husbandmen, with 5 labourers. Around 1700 Weston parish register distinguishes its
farming folk with terms such as ‘renter’ or ‘six-hundred pound man’. 33
Not as many
labourers left probate documents hereabouts as further north. Perhaps this zone allowed
28 The pattern shown by the smaller data sample for marriage licences (Table 5.4) is less clear
29 J. Yelling, ‘Livestock numbers and agricultural development’, in Slater, Field and Forest, p. 287, shows
that there was less difference in numbers of livestock between the champion and woodland areas after 1660
than in the sixteenth century. In the Worcestershire parishes of this zone he shows a slight increase in the
numbers of cattle, a more dramatic increase in sheep, while horse numbers remain fairly steady and pig
numbers decline slightly. Inventories in my Zone B (to 1760) mention sheep, cattle, horses, pigs, geese and
poultry as well as wheat, barley, oats, peas and clover.
30 1660-79, average (mean) value for yeomen £174 and for husbandmen £86. 1680-99, yeomen, £104 and
husbandmen £60.
31 J. Thirsk, ed., The Agrarian History of England and Wales, 1640-1750, vol. V, (Cambridge, CUP, 1985),
p. xix, discusses low grain prices in the period 1664-91.
32 Yeomen’s inventory values range from WoRO, probate of Silvanus Bushell, Bidford, yeoman, £14-1-6,
to WoRO, probate of Nathaniel Edden, Weston, (Milcote), yeoman, £721-3-4, but the average (mean) was
£253. This compares with £171 in 1700-19 and the low of £104 in 1680-99.
33 WaRO, Weston parish register. Yeomen’s inventories range from Glos RO, probate of Thomas
Churchley alias Chesley, Welford, yeoman, 1684, £3-18-2, to WoRO, probate of Thomas Harris,
Harvington, yeoman, 1661, £441-16-1. Husbandmen’s probate inventories range from WoRO, probate of
James Stephens, Pitchill, Salford Priors, husbandman, 1695, £15-5-11 to that of John Bushell, Bidford,
husbandman, 1676, £198-17-6. N. B. Thomas Roberts of Welford was described as both labourer and
husbandman, value £1-17-6.
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