And this is the beginning of my family one.
John Bullivant (1786) from Lincoln married Martha Brown by Special licence in 1808. Martha was born on the 19th Sep 1791 in Torksey so she was just 16 at the time. No parents appeared as witnesses , only a brother of Martha’s . John was a butcher and Martha’s family were cattle dealers. They had a long marriage together and had 15 children, 5 died in childhood.
When John was born the writing was already on the wall for small farmers and the agricultural labourer. In the 1760s the population had expanded greatly and farming was becoming more profitable for land owners. Landowners and farmers were encouraged to seek more land. This increased pressure on Parliament to enclose more land. In England and Wales half of all land was open farmland, common land and waste land. 2 and a half thousand acts of parliament enclosed more than four million acres of Open Land. Another 1800 act enclosed two million acres of Common Land and Waste Land. Many tenant farmers were being evicted. The agricultural revolution was meeting the challenge of feeding the expanding population which expanded from 6 million to 9 million by 1801. But this was at a cost as more efficient farming meant that fewer agricultural workers were needed. New threshing machines, and harvesters needed bigger fields and bigger farms. Smaller farms were no longer economically viable.
Before field enclosure almost every family had at least the use of a small piece of common land or waste land , running a goat, a few chickens or a pig. Provided they could produce most of their own food, repair the roof and work the required number of days designated by the land owner the agricultural labourer had been virtually self sufficient. Food prices continued to rise as the population rose. Farmers now needed fewer workers to work the land. New root crops were being planted such as turnips and swedes for animal feed , to winter more stock. Depending on the area the major part of these changes did not take part till after the defeat of Napoleon in 1815.
The Napoleonic Wars came to a dramatic end in 1815 costing One Billion Pounds . Demobilisation from Wellington’s army and the British Navy had made half a million servicemen, joining the thousands of Irish Immigrants and the now dispossessed agricultural workers all seeking employment in the now overpopulated small towns such as Gainsborough, near Torksey. During the war Napoleon blockaded European corn from reaching Britain. Thus increasing the price of bread. This was great for the grain farmers but now the war was over prices were expected to fall. Farmers thought they would go out of business if they did. So they chivvied their landowning Members of Parliament to bring in New Corn Laws . These allowed imports of European Corn –only if the home price rose over eighty shillings a quarter . Needless to say prices did rise above eighty shillings but by then European grain prices had also risen, causing bread prices to escalate still further. John and Martha lost 3 children in the winter of 23/24. To make matters worse the grain harvests were poor and in 1826 and 1829 they were a disaster.
