Read Ebook: A Short History of English Agriculture by Curtler W H R William Henry Ricketts

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'In May, June, and July one may harrow, carry out manure, set up sheep hurdles, shear sheep, do repairs, hedge, cut wood, weed, and make folds. In harvest one may reap; in August, September, and in October one may mow, set woad with a dibble, gather home many crops, thatch them and cover them over, cleanse the folds, prepare cattle sheds and shelters ere too severe a winter come to the farm, and also diligently prepare the soil. In winter one should plough and in severe frosts cleave timber, make an orchard, and do many affairs indoors, thresh, cleave wood, put the cattle in stalls and the swine in pigstyes, and provide a hen roost. In spring one should plough and graft, sow beans, set a vineyard, make ditches, hew wood for a wild deer fence; and soon after that, if the weather permit, set madder, sow flax seed and woad seed, plant a garden and do many things which I cannot fully enumerate that a good steward ought to provide.'

Here is a list of tools and implements for the homestead: an axe, adze, bill, awl, plane, saw, spokeshave, tie hook, auger, mattock, lever, share, coulter, goad-iron, scythe, sickle, weed-hook, spade, shovel, woad dibble, barrow, besom, beetle, rake, fork, ladder, horse comb, shears, fire tongs, weighing scales, and a long list of spinning implements necessary when farmers made their own clothes. The author wisely remarks that one ought to have coverings for wains, plough gear, harrowing tackle, &c.; and adds another list of instruments and utensils: a caldron, kettle, ladle, pan, crock, firedog, dishes, bowls with handles, tubs, buckets, a churn, cheese vat, baskets, crates, bushels, sieves, seed basket, wire sieve, hair sieve, winnowing fans, troughs, ashwood pails, hives, honey bins, beer barrels, bathing tub, dishes, cups, strainers, candlesticks, salt cellar, spoon case, pepper horn, footstools, chairs, basins, lamp, lantern, leathern bottles, comb, iron bin, fodder rack, meal ark or box, oil flask, oven rake, dung shovel; altogether a very complete list, the compiler of which ends by saying that the reeve ought to neglect nothing that should prove useful, not even a mousetrap, nor even, what is less, a peg for a hasp.

Manors in 1086 were of all sizes, from one virgate to enormous organizations like Taunton or Leominster, containing villages by the score and hundreds of dependent holdings. The ordinary size, however, of the Domesday manor was from four to ten hides of 120 acres each, or say from 500 to 1,200 acres, and the Manor of Segenehou in Bedfordshire may be regarded as typical. Held by Walter brother of Seiher it had as much land as ten ploughs could work, four plough lands belonging to the demesne and six to the villeins, of whom there were twenty-four, with four bordarii and three serfs; thus the villeins had 30 acres each, the normal holding. The manorial system was in fact a combination of large farming by the lords, and small farming by the tenants. Nor must we compare it to an ordinary estate; for it was a dominion within which the lord had authority over subjects of various ranks; he was not only a proprietor but a prince with courts of his own, the arbiter of his tenants' rights as well as owner of the land.

One of the most striking features of the Domesday survey is the large quantity of arable land and the small quantity of meadow, which usually was the only land whence they obtained their hay, for the common pasture cannot often have been mown. Indeed, it is difficult to understand how they fed their stock in hard winters.

According to the returns, in many counties more acres were ploughed in 1086 than to-day; in some twice as much. In Somerset in 1086 there were 577,000 acres of arable; in 1907, 178,967. In Gloucestershire, in 1086, 589,000 acres; in 1907, 238,456. These are extreme instances; but the preponderance of arable is startling, even if we allow for the recent conversion of arable to pasture on account of the low price of corn. Between the eleventh century and the sixteenth, the laying down of land to grass must have proceeded on a gigantic scale, for Harrison tells us that in his day England was mainly a grazing country. No wonder Harrison's contemporaries complained of the decay of tillage.

Mediaeval prices and statistics are, it is well known, to be taken with great caution; but we may assume that the normal annual value of land under cultivation in 1086 was about 2d. an acre. Land indeed, apart from the stock upon it, was worth very little: in the tenth and eleventh centuries it appears that the hide, normally of 120 acres, was only worth ?5 to buy, apparently with the stock upon it. In the time of Athelstan a horse was worth 120d., an ox 30d., a cow 20d., a sheep 5d., a hog 8d., a slave ?1--so that a slave was worth 8 oxen; and these prices do not seem to have advanced by the Domesday period.

According to the Pipe Roll of 1156, wheat was 1s. 6d. a quarter; but prices then depended entirely on seasons, and we do not know whether that was good or bad. However, many years later, in 1243 it was only 2s. a quarter at Hawsted. In dear years, nearly always the result of wet seasons, it went up enormously; in 1024 the English Chronicle tells us the acre seed of wheat, that is about 2 bushels, sold for 4s., 3 bushels of barley for 6s. and 4 bushels of oats for 4s. In 1190 Holinshed says that, owing to a great dearth, the quarter of wheat was 18s. 8d. The average price, however, in the twelfth century was probably about 4s. a quarter.

In 1194 Roger of Hoveden says an ox, a cow, and a plough horse were the same price, 4s.; a sheep with fine wool 10d., with coarse wool 6d.; a sow 12d., a boar 12d.

Sometimes prices were kept down by imports; 1258 was a bad and dear year, 'most part of the corn rotted on the ground,' and was not all got in till after November 1, so excessive was the wet and rain. And upon the dearth a sore death and mortality followed for want of necessary food to sustain the pining bodies of the poor people, who died so thick that there were great pits made in churchyards to lay the dead bodies in. And corn had been dearer if great store had not come out of Almaine, but there came fifty great ships with wheat and barley, meal and bread out of Dutchland, which greatly relieved the poor.

A few of the old open fields still exist, and the best surviving example of an open-field parish is that of Laxton in Nottinghamshire. Nearly half the area of the parish remains in the form of two great arable fields, and two smaller ones which are treated as two parts of the third field. The different holdings, freehold and leasehold, consist in part of strips of land scattered all over these fields. The three-course system is rigidly adhered to, first year wheat, second year spring corn, third year fallow.

In a corner of the parish is Laxton Heath, a common covered with coarse grass where the sheep are grazed according to a 'stint' recently determined upon, for when it was unstinted the common was overstocked. The commonable meadows which the parish once had were enclosed at a date beyond anyone's recollection, though the neighbouring parish of Eakring still has some. There are other enclosures in the remote parts of the parish which apparently represent the old woodland. The inconvenience of the common-field system was extreme. South Luffenham in Rutland, not enclosed till 1879, consisted of 1,074 acres divided among twenty-two owners into 1,238 pieces. In some places furrows served to divide the lands instead of turf balks, which were of course always being altered. Another difficulty arose from there being no check to high winds, which would sometimes sweep the whole of the crops belonging to different farmers in an inextricable heap against the nearest obstruction.

FOOTNOTES:

See below.

Maitland, Domesday Book, p. 40.

Ibid.

Ibid. p. 324.

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 grassy portions.

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.

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.

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

Ibid. iii. 220.

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 Oxfordshire at that date is of special interest. According to Professor Thorold Rogers there were two principal 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 cock, 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.

The cottagers paid from 1s. 2d. to 2s. a year for their holdings, and were obliged to work a day or two in the hay-making, receiving therefor a halfpenny. They also had to do from one to four days' harvest work, during which they were fed at the lord's table. For the rest of the year they were free labourers, tending cattle or sheep on the common for wages or working at the various crafts usual in the village. This manor was a small one, and contained in all twenty-four households, numbering from sixty to seventy inhabitants.

On most manors, as in Forncett, which contained about 2,700 acres, from the preponderance of arable, the chief source of income to the lord was from the grain crops; other sources may be seen from the following table of the lord's receipts and expenses in 1272-3:

EXPENSES. ? s. d.

The manor was almost entirely self-sufficing; of necessity, for towns were few and distant, and the roads to them bad. Each would have its smith, millwright, thatcher, &c., paid generally in kind for their services. There was little trade with the outside world, except for salt--an invaluable article when meat had to be salted down every autumn for winter use, since there were no roots to keep the cattle on--and iron for some of the implements. Nearly everything was made in the village.

The mediaeval system of tillage was compulsory; even the freeholders could not manage their plots as they wished, because all the soil of the township formed one whole and was managed by the entire village. Even the lord had to conform to the customs of the community. Any other system than this, which must have been galling to the more enterprising, was impossible, for as the various holdings lay in unfenced strips all over the great common fields, individual initiative was out of the question. As may be imagined, the great number of strips all mixed together often led to great confusion, sometimes 2 or 3 acres could not be found at all, and disputes owing to careless measurement were frequent.

It is not surprising that the services by which the villeins paid rent for their holdings to the lord very early began to be commuted for money; it was much more convenient to both parties; and with this change from a 'natural economy' to a 'money economy' the destruction of the manorial system commenced, though it was to take centuries to effect it.

The first money payments apparently date from as early as 900, but must then have been very few, and services were the rule in the thirteenth and earlier centuries, though at the beginning of the twelfth we find a great number of rent-paying tenants. In the fourteenth century money began to be more generally available, and the process of commutation grew steadily; a process greatly accelerated by the destruction of large numbers of tenants who paid rent in services by the Black Death of 1348-9, which forced lords of manors to let their lands for money or work them themselves with hired labour. Before that visitation, however, it appears that commutation of labour services for fixed annual payments had made very little progress.

When these services were commuted for money in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries they were put at 1d. a day in winter, and 2d. a day in summer, and rather more in harvest; and we may put the ordinary agricultural labourers' wages from 1250-1350 all the year round at 2d. a day, and from 1350-1400 at 3d., but few were paid in this way. Many were paid by the year, with allowances of food besides and sometimes clothes, and many were in harvest at all events paid by the piece. At Crondal in Hampshire in 1248 a carter by the year received 4s., a herdsman 2s. 3d., a day a or dairymaid, 2s. The change to money payments was beneficial to both parties; it stopped many of the dishonest practices of the lord's bailiff, apart from the fact that farming by officials was an expensive method. It meant, too, that religious festivals and bad weather would no longer diminish the lord's profits; on the other hand, the tenant could devote himself entirely to his holding free from annoying labour services.

The Hundred Rolls of Edward I, which embody the results of the labours of a commission appointed by that monarch to inquire into encroachments on royal lands and royal jurisdiction, show clearly that there had been since the Domesday Survey a very great growth in the rural population, a sure sign that agriculture was flourishing; and on some estates the number of free tenants had increased largely, but the burdens of the villeins were not less onerous than they had been.

It was in the thirteenth century that the practice of keeping strict and minute accounts became general, and the accounts of the bailiff of those days would be a revelation to the bailiff of these.

At the same time we must not forget that the earliest improvements in English agriculture were largely due to the monks, who from their constant journeys abroad were able to bring back new plants and seeds; while it is well known that many of the religious houses, the Cistercians especially, who always settled in the remote country, were most energetic farmers, their energy being materially assisted by their wealth. It is said that the great Becket when he visited a monastery did not disdain to labour in the field.

Acres.

Arable. Meadow. Wood.

These were the larger tenants; among the smaller several had no meadow at all.

We must not forget that the grazing of the tillage fields after the crops were off was of great assistance to those who kept stock; for there was plenty to eat on the stubbles. The wheat was cut high, the straw often apparently left standing 18 inches or 2 feet high; weeds of all kinds abounded, for the land was badly cleaned; and often only the upper part of the high ridges, into which the land was thrown for purposes of drainage, was cultivated, the lower parts being left to natural grass.

The greatest authority for the farming of the thirteenth century is Walter of Henley, who wrote, about the middle of it, a work which held the field as an agricultural textbook until Fitzherbert wrote in the sixteenth century, and much of his advice is valuable to-day. There was from his time until the days of William Marshall, who wrote five centuries afterwards, a controversy as to the respective merits of horses and oxen as draught animals, and it is a curious fact that the later writer agreed with the earlier as to the superiority of oxen. 'A plough of oxen', says Walter, 'will go as far in the year as a plough of horses, because the malice of the ploughman will not allow the plough of horses to go beyond their pace, no more than the plough of oxen. Further, in very hard ground where the plough of horses will stop, the plough of oxen will pass. And the horse costs more than the ox, for he is obliged to have the sixth part of a bushel of oats every night, worth a halfpenny at least, and twelve pennyworth of grass in the summer. Besides, each week he costs more or less a penny a week in shoeing, if he must be shod on all four feet;' which was not the universal custom.

'But the ox has only to have 3-1/2 sheaves of oats per week , worth a penny, and the same amount of grass as the horse. And when the horse is old and worn out there is nothing but his skin, but when the ox is old with ten pennyworth of grass he shall be fit for the larder.'

The labourer of the Middle Ages could not complain of lack of holidays; Walter of Henley tells us that, besides Sundays, eight weeks were lost in the year from holidays and other hindrances.

He advises the sowing of spring seed on clay or on stony land early, because if it is dry in March the ground will harden too much and the stony ground become dry and open; therefore fore sow early that corn may be nourished by winter moisture. Chalky and sandy ground need not be sown early. At sowing, moreover, do not plough large furrows, but little and well laid together, that the seed may fall evenly. Let your land be cleaned and weeded after S. John's Day, June 24, for before that is not a good time; and if thistles are cut before S. John's Day 'for every one will come two or three.' Do not sell your straw; if you take away the least you lose much; words which many a landlord to-day doubtless wishes were fixed in the minds of his tenants.

Manure should be mixed with earth, for it lasts only two or three years by itself, but with earth it will last twice as long; for when the manure and the earth are harrowed together the earth shall keep the manure so that it cannot waste by descending in the soil, which it is apt to do.

'Feed your working oxen before some one, and with chaff. Why? I will tell you. Because it often happens that the oxherd steals the provender.'

The oxen were also to be bathed, and curried when dry with a wisp of straw, which would cause them to lick themselves.

'Change your seed every year at Michaelmas; for seed grown on other ground will bring more profit than that which is grown on your own.'

Apparently the only drainage then practised was that of furrow and open ditch; and we find him saying that to free your lands from too much water, let the marshy ground be well ridged, and the water made to run, and so the ground may be freed from water.

Here is his estimate of the cost of wheat growing:

'You know surely that an acre sown with wheat takes three ploughings, except lands which are sown yearly; and that each ploughing is worth 6d. and the harrowing 1d., and on the acre it is necessary to sow at least two bushels. Now two bushels at Michaelmas are worth at least 12d., and weeding 1/2d., and reaping 5d., and carrying in August 1d., and the straw will pay for the threshing.'

The return was wretched: 'at three times your sowing you ought to have 6 bushels, worth 3s.' The total cost is thus 3s. 1-1/2d.; and without debiting anything for rent and manure, the loss would be 1-1/2d. an acre.

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