Agricultural historians have collected and published a remarkable amount of material in recent years, partly as a result of the ongoing series 'The Agrarian History of England and Wales'. Missing from the Agrarian History volumes covering 1640-1850 has been any sustained analysis of agricultural rent, a perhaps surprising omission in view of the enormous sums of money which passed between landlords and tenants annually, and given the importance of the subject in terms of our understanding of the general course of change in agriculture and the economy more generally. In recent years the availability of estate accounts in public archive repositories has made available a range of data for the period c.1690 to the First World War, after which the material is voluminous and well known. In this book, based on research in archives across the country, the authors have produced a new rent index which will become the basis on which all future researchers in the field will rely.

Agricultural historians have collected and published a remarkable amount of material in recent years, partly as a result of the ongoing series 'The Agrarian History of England and Wales'. Missing from the Agrarian History volumes covering 1640-1850 has been any sustained analysis of agricultural rent, a perhaps surprising omission in view of the enormous sums of money which passed between landlords and tenants annually, and given the importance of the subject in terms of our understanding of the general course of change in agriculture and the economy more generally. In recent years the availability of estate accounts in public archive repositories has made available a range of data for the period c.1690 to the First World War, after which the material is voluminous and well known. In this book, based on research in archives across the country, the authors have produced a new rent index which will become the basis on which all future researchers in the field will rely.

This is a study of agricultural rent in England from c. 1690 to the First World War. It concentrates on the mechanisms by which rent was paid by tenants to their landlords and builds up a rent index that provides a definitive picture of the pattern of rent over the period. The book adds a critical dimension to our understanding of English agricultural history through the period of the so-called agricultural revolution, and as such will help us understand more fully the economic history of the period.