Education in England in the Middle Ages: Thesis Approved for the Degree of Doctor of Science in the University of LondonParry, Albert William
History
Education in England in the Middle Ages: Thesis Approved for the Degree of Doctor of Science in the University of London
Parry, Albert William
Education -- England -- History; Education, Medieval
The development of manufactures naturally brought about changes in the
organisation of industry. Owing to the operation of the principle of
division of labour, new crafts came into existence, and these, in their
turn, were also sub-divided into other new crafts. Gradually, all the
various classes of the industrial world--the artisan, the manufacturer,
the middleman, and the merchant--began to emerge. As a result, the "rude
beginnings of a factory system" manifested themselves,[382] and there are
even traces of a movement which resembles a modern strike.[383]
These changes in the industrial system necessarily exerted a powerful
influence upon the agricultural industry, which previously had been the
principal occupation of the people. The Black Death had been responsible
for a great diminution in the number of agricultural labourers, and as a
result, it was scarcely possible to find sufficient labour for the
cultivation of the soil. This scarcity of labour was intensified by the
fact that employment in the manufacturing industries proved to many a more
attractive form of occupation than service on the land. The Central
Government took steps with the object of compelling people to work on the
land, and an attempt was even made, as we shall see in a subsequent
chapter, to prevent agricultural labourers from sending their children to
school. Thus in the reign of Richard II., it was enacted that any person
who was engaged on agricultural labour up to twelve years of age, was to
be compelled to remain at that occupation during the remainder of his
life.[384] Other Acts of Parliament, with a similar object, were passed in
1406 and 1444.[385] This repressive legislation failed to secure its
purpose, as the steady flow of labour from agriculture to manufacture
continued.
The increasing scarcity of labour led naturally to the gradual
substitution of sheep farming for the cultivation of wheat, a development
to which the growth of the cloth industry necessarily contributed. The
demand for wool by the English manufacturers of cloth increased to so
great an extent that sheep-farming gradually became more profitable than
the cultivation of the soil and, as a result, the enclosure movement,
which began to set in during the closing years of the fourteenth century,
made such progress that, during the fifteenth century, there occurred
"the greatest of those agricultural changes which have in successive ages
swept over this country--the transition from arable to pasture
farming."[386]
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