The Day the Universe Changed - James Burke [78]
This cycle repeated itself endlessly, with occasional outbreaks of plague worsening the situation. Dependence on the land was virtually total: the entire economy was geared to agriculture. In 1720, in England, of the estimated five and a half million population, fully four and a quarter million lived in country villages. Land was the ultimate source of all wealth, and it was jealously guarded. That year came the hottest summer in living memory. It was to be the forerunner of three decades of fine weather, with hot summers and mild winters. What historians call the ‘mini ice age’ had ended, after two centuries.
Moreover, at almost exactly the same time, the black rat, the bringer of plague, was supplanted in England by the brown rat. The major difference between the types was that whereas the black rat carried fleas which wandered, those of the brown rat nested. The carriers of plague remained with their hosts and the plague virtually disappeared.
Outside England the new weather conditions had little effect on the cyclical nature of social conditions. In England they were to bring massive change that would alter the nature of Western society through the unique English social structure.
It was above all a remarkably stable society. Sixty years before, the only home-grown revolution the country ever experienced had ended, and although with the crowning of Charles II the monarchy was restored to power after twenty years of republican government under Cromwell, the old ways were gone for good. The new England was no longer feudal. The Crown was subject to the sovereignty of Parliament. The King might appoint ministers, but their actions had to have Parliament’s approval.
Common law was supreme. Taxes were decided by the people. The government of the country was centralised. The castles of the semi-autonomous magnates and the walls of fiercely partisan cities had been razed during the Civil War. With the end of feudalism, landowners had begun to take their dues in money rather than service.
Unlike his opposite number on the Continent the English farm-worker was no landless peasant. Nearly two million agricultural workers were wage-paying tenant farmers, living on the estates of the aristocracy. These farmers in turn employed over two and a half million farm labourers who were accustomed to fluctuating employment, as the seasonal nature of farm work made for periods of high intensity followed by stretches of inactivity.
This was the England of the so-called Golden Age, with small country villages peaceful and happy under the fair skies, as depicted in Constable paintings, with a close-knit community cared for by the parson and ruled by the benevolent hand of the squire, with games of cricket played on the village green and apple-cheeked children running laughing in the fields, while their fathers rested over the scythe with a pot of ale and a loaf of freshly baked bread.
Reality was a good deal less pleasant. The Acts of Settlement of the mid-seventeenth century had made the village a virtual prison. No man could move to another place without a certificate of movement issued by the Justice of the Peace, who was, as often as not, the squire. These certificates were used to restrict the movement of out of work or politically active labourers. The Poor Laws already provided for the less fortunate in the parish and no village wanted to have to support vagrants out of the public purse.
The JPs closed the deer parks to the public, disarmed the poor and the tenant farmers, and ruled without reference to central government. They had the power to eject from the village any man not born there and to return him to his last legally established place of residence. They could also transport criminals to the colonies, and did so with increasing regularity.
The aim of legislation was to serve the best interests of the land and to immobilise and divide the working population so as to keep it out of London. The certificates