A Short History of English Agriculture Part 2

[22] Vinogradoff, _op. cit._ p. 433.

[23] In Domesday they number 108,500. Maitland, _Domesday Book_.

[24] Maitland, _op. cit._.

[25] Vinogradoff, _English Society in the Eleventh Century_, p. 300.

[26] _Domesday of S. Paul_, p. lxviii.

[27] Maitland, _Domesday Book_, p. 56.

[28] Cunningham, _Growth of English Industry and Commerce_, i. 166. In some manors free tenants could sell their lands without the lord's licence, in others not.

[29] Vinogradoff, _Villeinage in England_, p. 279.

[30] Vinogradoff, _Villeinage in England_, p. 285.

[31] Ibid. p. 246; and _English Society in the Eleventh Century_, p.

448. At the end of the eighteenth century, in default of sons, lands in some manors in Shrops.h.i.+re descended to the youngest daughter.--Bishton, _General View of the Agriculture of Shrops.h.i.+re_, p. 178.

[32] Vinogradoff, _English Society in the Eleventh Century_, p. 456.

[33] Maitland, Domesday Book, p. 40.

[34] Ibid.

[35] Maitland, _Domesday Book_, p. 35.

[36] _Fleta_, c. 73.

[37] _Domesday of S. Paul_, x.x.xv. _Fleta_, 'an anonymous work drawn up in the thirteenth century to a.s.sist landowners in managing their estates' says, the reeve 'shall rise early, and have the ploughs yoked, and then walk in the fields to see that all is right and note if the men be idle, or if they knock off work before the day's task is fully done.'

[38] Vinogradoff, _Villeinage in England_, p. 321.

[39] Ibid. p. 324.

[40] _Manor of Manydown_, Hamps.h.i.+re Record Society, p. 17. Breaking the a.s.size of beer meant selling it without a licence, or of bad quality. The village pound was the consequence of the perpetual straying of animals, and later on the vicar sometimes kept it. See ibid. p. 104.

[41] Cunningham, _Growth of English Industry and Commerce_, i. 106.

[42] Vinogradoff, _Villeinage in England_, p. 264.

[43] Andrews, _Old English Manor_, p. 111.

[44] _Domesday of S. Paul_, p. x.x.xvii.

[45] Thorold Rogers, _Agriculture and Prices_, i. 17: Cunningham, _Industry and Commerce_, i. 55: Neckham, _De Natura Rerum_, Rolls Series, ch. clxvi. Rogers says there were no plums, but Neckham mentions them. See also Denton, _England in the Fifteenth Century_, p.

64. Matthew Paris says the severe winter in 1257 destroyed cherries, plums and figs. _Chron. Maj._, Rolls Series, v. 660.

[46] Woods were used as much for pasture as for cutting timber and underwood. Not only did the pigs feed there on the mast of oak, beech, and chestnut, but goats and horned cattle grazed on the gra.s.sy portions.

[47] The ill.u.s.trations of contemporary MSS. usually show teams in the plough of 2 or 4 oxen, and 4 was probably the team generally used, according to Vinogradoff, _op. cit._ p. 253. It must, of course, have varied according to the soil. Birch, in his _Domesday_, p. 219, says he has never found a team of 8 in contemporary ill.u.s.trations. To-day oxen can be still seen ploughing in teams of two only. However, about a hundred years ago, when oxen were in common use, we find teams of 8, as in Shrops.h.i.+re, for a single-furrow plough, 'so as to work them easily.' Six hours a day was the usual day's work, and when more was required one team was worked in the morning, another in the afternoon.--_Victoria County History: Shrops.h.i.+re, Agriculture_. Walter of Henley says the team stopped work at three.

[48] Cunningham, _Growth of English Industry and Commerce_, i. 570.

[49] See the excellent reproductions of the Calendar of the Cott. MSS.

in Green's _Short History of the English People_, ill.u.s.trated edition, i. 155.

[50] _De Natura Rerum_, Rolls Series, p, 280.

[51] Vinogradoff, _English Society in the Eleventh Century_, p. 307.

[52] Ibid. p. 312. Perhaps one of the most interesting features of the smaller manors is that they were constantly being swallowed up by the larger.

[53] As some of the common pasture was held in severalty, this may perhaps have been mown in scarce years. Walter of Henley mentions mowing the waste, see below, p. 34.

[54] Maitland, _Domesday Book_, 436; _Board of Agriculture Returns_, 1907.

[55] Vinogradoff, _English Society in the Eleventh Century_, p. 310; Birch, _Domesday_, p. 183.

[56] Maitland, _Domesday Book_. 44; Cunningham, _Growth of Industry and Commerce_, i. 171; _Domesday of S. Paul_, pp. xliii. and xci.

[57] Cullum, _History of Hawsted_, p. 181.

[58] Rolls Series, ii. 220. According to this, the price of a bushel of wheat reckoned in modern money was 3 in that year

[59] Ibid. iii. 220.

[60] Holinshed, who is supported by William of Malmesbury in the a.s.sertion that in time of scarcity England imported corn. Matthew Paris, _Chron. Maj._, v. 673.

[61] Jusserand, _English Wayfaring Life_, p. 79.

[62] Jusserand, _English Wayfaring Life_, p. 89.

[63] Gilbert Slater, _The English Peasantry and the Enclosure of Common Fields_, p. 8.

CHAPTER II

THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY.--THE MANOR AT ITS ZENITH, WITH SEEDS OF DECAY ALREADY VISIBLE.--WALTER OF HENLEY

In the thirteenth century the manorial system may be said to have been in its zenith; the description therefore of Cuxham Manor in Oxfords.h.i.+re at that date is of special interest. According to Professor Thorold Rogers[64] there were two princ.i.p.al tenants, each holding the fourth part of a military fee. The prior of Holy Trinity, Wallingford, held a messuage, a mill, and 6 acres of land in free alms; i.e. under no obligation or liability other than offering prayers on behalf of the donor. A free tenant had a messuage and 3-3/4 acres, the rent of which was 3s. a year. He also had another messuage and nine acres, for which he paid the annual rent of 1 lb. of pepper, worth about 1s. 3d. The rector of the parish had part of a furrow, i.e. one of the divisions of the common arable field, and paid 2d. a year for it. Another tenant held a cottage in the demesne under the obligation of keeping two lamps lighted in the church. Another person was tenant-at-will of the parish mill, at a rent of 40s. a year. The rest of the tenants were villeins or cottagers, thirteen of the former and eight of the latter. Each of the villeins had a messuage and half a virgate, 12 to 15 acres of arable land at least, for which his rent was chiefly corn and labour, though there were two money payments, a halfpenny on November 12 and a penny whenever he brewed. He had to pay a quarter of seed wheat at Michaelmas, a peck of wheat, 4 bushels of oats, and 3 hens on November 12, and at Christmas a c.o.c.k, two hens, and two pennyworth of bread. His labour services were to plough, sow, and till half an acre of the lord's land, and give his work as directed by the bailiff except on Sundays and feast days. In harvest time he was to reap three days with one man at his own cost.

Some of these tenants held, besides their half virgates, other plots of land for which each had to make hay for one day for the lord, with a comrade, and received a halfpenny; also to mow, with another, three days in harvest time, at their own charges, and another three days when the lord fed them. After harvest six pennyworth of beer was divided among them, each received a loaf of bread, and every evening when work was over each reaper might carry away the largest sheaf of corn he could lift on his sickle.