Bound to the soil (part II): the political economy of compulsory apprenticeship schemes in eighteenth-century rural England

Abstract This is the second of two articles examining a distinctive but overlooked system for organizing child and youth labour in rural England. It reveals how parishes used their powers under the 1601 Poor Law to allocate children as unpaid indentured farm servants (for up to 17 years) to local landholders occupying properties of a certain value. As both apprentice and master could be compelled by law, parish authorities were able to implement centralized rotation schemes. This article (Part II) examines the political and economic aspects of these compulsory apprenticeship schemes in the South-West. First, it reviews their scale and the policies for regulating the distribution of children to landholders, including calculations for the optimum apprentice-to-acreage ratio. Second, it presents a case study of Awliscombe in Devon, which bound one-quarter of local children, offering a new model of governance whereby the leading farmers were able to control both poor relief and the labour supply through their multiple roles as policymakers, administrators and masters themselves. It concludes by reflecting on the distinctiveness of farm apprenticeship schemes as a system of labour that combined elements of life-cycle service with a serfdom-like bond between land and labour.