2 - Incidence and understanding

Summary

Service in husbandry was a major form of hired labour in early modern agriculture and the typical experience of rural youths. By the mid nineteenth century, however, this was not true of the south and east of England. This second statement is far simpler to demonstrate, thanks to the wealth of detail provided by the 1851 census. Our best early modern estimates, by contrast, are drawn from samples resulting from historical accident.

Local censuses of parish populations were compiled for reasons as varied as tax assessment, the mustering of militias, and inquisitiveness. Relatively few survive. Fewer still are detailed enough to identify servants in husbandary, day-labourers, and farmers. Of the several hundred listings collected by the Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure, only fifty-five, dating from 1599 to 1831, contain both occupational designations of the heads of households and the identification of the status of those within each household (Table 2.1). The simplest conclusion to be drawn from the listings is the large number of farm servants, especially in relation to the age group (15 to 24) in which most servants were concentrated. At most, approximately 19 per cent of the population was of this age. The listings, moreover, reflect only the momentary status of individuals and households, and thus underestimate the proportion of youths who were at some stage servants in husbandry. The servants were diffused throughout each parish's households.