§ 8. WRONG DONE TO SMALL LAND-OWNERS BY THE STATUTE OF FRAUDS—The development and success of English agriculture, from 1700 to 1765 or 1770, was thus remarkable and extensive; but it was not effected without considerable economic changes and great and unnecessary suffering among two important classes of the population—the yeomen or small freeholders, and the agricultural labourers. The decay of the yeomanry, indeed, forms a sad interlude in the growing prosperity of the country. The position of many small land-owners had been greatly and disastrously affected by the Statute of Frauds, passed in the time of Charles II. By this extraordinary and high-handed Act it was decreed that after July 24th, 1677, all interests in land whatsoever, if created by any other process except by deed, should be treated as tenancies at will only, any law or usage to the contrary notwithstanding. The intention, apparently, of those who passed this law—an intention which resulted successfully—was to extinguish all those numerous small freeholders who had no written evidence to prove that they held their lands, as they had done for centuries, on condition of paying a small fixed and customary rent. This Act certainly succeeded in dispossessing many of the class at which it was aimed; but there were yet a certain number against whom it was inoperative; hence, at the end of the seventeenth century, twenty years or so {116} after this Act, Gregory King is able to estimate that there were 180,000 freeholders in England, including, of course, the larger owners. But by the time of Arthur Young these also had disappeared, or at least were rapidly disappearing, and he sincerely regrets “to see their lands now in the hands of monopolizing lords.”