> CB: How did the prosperous farmers accumulate their wealth ? In what form ?
>
It is interesting Tawney's observation "that where tenants
themselves had from *an early date* substituted enclosed for open
field husbandry, as apparently they had in Kent, Essex, Cornwall,
and parts of Devonshire they had least to fear from that kind of
enclosure which was accompanied by encroachments on the part
of manorial authorities..." (154) and that "we know that by the
middle of the 16th in certain counties, notably Kent, Essex, and
Devonshire, the common field system of cultivation was already the
exception and not the rule. We know, too, that though in parts of
these counties its absence may have been due to differences in
the *original forms of settlement and clearance*, it had elsewhere
disappeared within historical times" (167) - because according to
Hopcroft's recent studies these counties (and others) were indeed,
from early on in the middle ages, less regulated by customary
relations, enjoyed more private property in land, and *weaker*
manorial lordship.
