THE ORIGIN OF RENT.

Globe, Volume XXIII, Issue 2235, 1 June 1881, Page 4

THE ORIGIN OF RENT.

It may be interesting to many of our readers to know the origin of the payment of rent for land, and the time at which it commenced. In 1350, agrioulturo as carried on under the feudal system of villeinage or servile tenure by which laborers were bound to the soil and transferable with it from one owner to another, reoeived a severe oheck owing to the pestilence known as the " black death," which had carried off well-nigh half the population of England in the preceding year. Labour being scarce, the villeins, or labourers, hoped to improve their position by obtaining daily wages for their daily work, but the rate of wages was fixed by Parliament at too low a scale to admit of any amelioration of their wretched condition, and things went on the old way until 1381, when the imposition of a poll tax in addition to the other grievances provoked the insurrection under Jack Code and Watt Tyler. When this was quelled the abolition of villeinage was again brought before Parliament, which refused to sanction it by direct legislation. A few landowners, however, began at this period to take money payments from those who held land under them, instead of personal suit and servioe, and thus arose the system of tenant farming which is still in vogue, and which may be considered to have bean in operation in England for exactly hundred years.—" Land."