Agricultural History Review, Volume 59 Part 1 (2011), p. 135

p&p. (available from Mrs. Gwynneth Grimwood, Honorary Treasurer HRS, 50 Sollershott Hall, Sollershott East, Letchworth, Herts., SG6 3PW).

Tithe accounts have long been recognised as important documents for agrarian historians because they can provide information on prices and farming practices for small and medium-sized estates, rather than the institutional accounts and large estate records that tend to dominate our view of the subject. However, it might be worth adding a rubric applicable to most other primary sources, that they are only valuable when properly understood. As Jane Walker’s very detailed introduction to this set of eighteenth-century Hertfordshire accounts makes plain, the complexity of tithing arrangements makes this necessity particularly pressing. The great tithes on all products of the soil might be collected in kind, compounded for wholly or in part in cash, or (until 1549) fall upon the labours of people, in the output of a mill or a fishery. In addition, particularly after the Dissolution, the great tithes might be owned or farmed by a layman, but much ‘privatised’ monastic land remained exempt from tithes. Not only this, but tithing customs varied from parish to parish, and had to accommodate new crops, such as turnips or potatoes, and others that were difficult to levy in kind, such as milk.

The Datchworth accounts were maintained by Rev. William Hawtayne (1680–1747), chaplain to the Earl of Essex, by whom he was presented to the living in 1709. Hawtayne moved in court circles, and became chaplain to Caroline of Ansbach, Princess of Wales after 1714. In the first few years of his incumbency Hawtayne also kept accounts of his direct farming activities on the 20–24 acres of glebe lands in Datchworth (approximately half of it composed of strips in the village’s remaining open fields). Although Hawtayne’s income shifted over time largely to (more convenient) composition payments, the accounts reveal that between 1711 and 1717 his total income from Datchworth amounted to between £120 and £140 per annum. Thereafter, wheat prices declined, and it appears that some of the village’s farmers were either in some financial difficulties, or less willing to compound in cash, possibly because age was causing them to wind down their farming operations. Either way, Hawtayne rarely managed to extract more than £100 from Datchworth thereafter. Only accounts for 1726 and 1739 are not recorded.

As is often the case with an account book kept by one person over a long period, the Datchworth Accounts are actually something of a miscellany. They include details of composition agreements with a few tenants, various partial surveys of the parish, a tantalisingly brief description of the pattern of farming and the rotation on John Whitfield’s farm in 1715, and even the values of grain sold in Northumberland and Cumberland in the winter of 1739, reported by ‘Mr Cook a very serious elderly man and at that time a serjeant in Major Farrer’s Troop in Earl Cadogans Regiment of Dragoons Quarterd in my parish of Leighton Bossard … in the year 1741’. Very helpfully, the editor has also included a range of other sources in this volume, including the 1607 Glebe Terrier, 1721 Land Tax returns and poor relief payments, and some biographical information on some of the tithe payers.

This information adds up to a very useful volume for agrarian historians interested in prices, fluctuations and farming practices in lowland England in this period. The editor’s introduction is very thoroughly researched, providing a very detailed background discussion to the law and history of tithes in England, and a very effective analysis of prices and income from the Datchworth tithes. This meticulous introduction, and the transcription and preparation of the accounts themselves, displays the editor’s considerable expertise. As ever, agrarian historians should remain profoundly grateful to the continuing efforts of county record societies to organise, sponsor and produce valuable editions of this kind; upon their continuing efforts so much else depends.