英國 「요오맨」에 關한 一硏究 (其 1)

A Study on the English Yeoman (Part I)

In this paper, it is intended to trace the process of coming into existence of the English yeoman which was a unique existence in the English rural community in the sixteenth century, and to inquire into its form of existence in the period of agrarian change of the century. The yeoman was the middle class in the English rural community which had come into existence in the process of rural differentiation. The causes of the rural differentiation were, in the spread of money economy, the commutation of labour services, and in the leases of demesne-the breaking of manorial system. Furthermore, as E.A. Kosminsky said, the causes existed already in the pre-feudal distribution of land and the manorial system itself: As a result of the rural differentiation, lands not only of freeholders but also of customary tenants who had held lands on the principle of uniformity in the middle ages were differentiated, and the inequality of their wealth was expanded. Such rural differentiation went on widely in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and with some local exceptions, the standard size of holdings was almost not to be seen in those days. In such process, the peasants who could improve their economic situations had enlarged their holdings by leasing demesnes from landlords, purchasing lands from the poorer peasants, and reclaiming waste lands. Thus the substantial peasant class which lied between the gentleman and the husbandman had been come into being. This is, indeed, the yeoman which had marked the English rural community in the sixteenth century as "a pillar of the state" or as "an estate of people almost peculiar to England". The meaning of the word "yeoman" was originally ambiguous and its contents also underwent a change in the passing of the clay. In the strict legal sense, the yeoman meant a freeholder "who may dispend of his own free lande in yerely revenue to the summe of 40 s. sterling". But this strict legal definition was ceased to be used and the wider economic definition was used in the sixteenth century. In the economic sense, the yeoman was "a substantial rural middle class whose chief concern was with land and agricultural interests", and was "any well-to-do farmer beneath the rank of gentleman, even though he was not a freeholder". So the yeoman was composed of freeholders who had paid the fixed money rents for a long time and rised steadily with favorable opportunities, of copyholders who had improved their situations in the process of the break-up of manor, and of a part of leaseholders. Indeed, "the cultivation of the soil passed out of the hands of its owners, and the break-up of the demesne paved the way for the formation of numerous and widely-spread class of small peasant proprietors and tenant farmers-the yeoman of England", and in such process, the yeoman had come into existence. From the viewpoint of the forms of land tenure, there were five sorts of tenure: knight service, socage, copyhold, frankalmoin, and sergeantry. But tenures with which we concern in connection with the yeoman are first three. In the sixteenth century, in general, burdens of freeholders who held free lands (knight service and socage) and of whom the upper class of yeoman was composed were very slight, and they became practically a modern type of owners. Freeholders were exempted from feudal burdens from the early days, enjoyed a secure tenure, and could improve their economic situations on their own initiative. Getting wealthier under the protection of common law, even in the midst of the agrarian change, they became a source from which the gentleman was recruited in the next generation. Comprising many varieties of degree in themselves, copyholders of whom a great part of the yeoman was composed were, in general, under the favourable terms of tenure and, as we shall see later, even though some of them were declining in the period of agrarian change, had the foundation on which they could rise to more substantial peasa