The Fifteenth Century: Peasant Landholding and Struggles

Abstract

Brenner suggests that the crucial difference between English and French agrarian development after the feudal crisis lay in the fact that, whereas in England peasant landholding was eroded away and land released for capitalist development, in France there was consolidation of peasant proprietorship.¹ In the latter, the state confirmed the heritability of peasant tenure (so that landlords could not appropriate vacant peasant land into their demesnes), and began to organise peasant communities as a tax base. In England, landlords were able to appropriate vacant holdings and thereby transfer much land from the customary to the expanding leasehold sector, preventing the dorninance of peasant freehold in the agrarian economy. The increasingly commercially oriented landed class was also often able to transform customary land into leasehold by raising rents and entry fines. Meanwhile peasant landtenure in the form of copyhold became increasingly insecure, so that overall the peasant sector was of decreasing significance.