A Short History of English Agriculture. W. H. R. Curtler
Читать онлайн книгу.
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.[79]
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 31/2 sheaves of oats per week (ten sheaves yielding a bushel of oats), worth a penny, and the same amount of grass as the horse.[80] 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.'[81]
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.[82]
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[83]:
'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.'[83]
The return was wretched: 'at three times your sowing you ought to have 6 bushels, worth 3s.' The total cost is thus 3s. 11/2d.; and without debiting anything for rent and manure, the loss would be 11/2d. an acre.
The anonymous Treatise on Husbandry of about the same date says, however, that 'wheat ought to yield to the fifth grain, oats to the fourth, barley to the eighth, beans and peas to the sixth.'[84] In the years 1243–8 the average yield of wheat at Combe, Oxfordshire, was 5 bushels per acre, of barley a little over 5, oats 7. In the Manor of Forncett, in various years from 1290 to 1306, wheat yielded about 10 bushels, oats from 12 to 16, barley 16, and peas from 4 to 12 bushels per acre.[85]
As for the dairy, 2 cows, says Walter, should yield a wey, (2 cwt) of cheese annually, and half a gallon of butter a week, 'if sorted out and fed in pasture of salt marsh;' but 'in pasture of wood or in meadows after mowing, or in stubble, it should take 3 cows for the same.' Twenty ewes, which it was then the custom to milk, fed in pasture of salt marsh, ought to yield the same as the 2 cows. A gallon of butter was worth 6d., and weighed 7 lb. And the anonymous treatise says each cow ought to yield from the day after Michaelmas until the first kalends of May, twenty-eight weeks, 10d. more or less; and from the first kalends of May till Michaelmas, twenty-four weeks, the milk of a cow should be worth 3s. 6d.; and she should give also 6 stones (14 lb. per stone) of cheese, and 'as much butter as shall make as much cheese.'[86] It was a common practice all through the Middle Ages, and survives in localities to-day, to let out the cows by the year, at from 3s. to 6s. 8d. a head, often to the daya or dairymaid, the owner supplying the food, and the lessee agreeing to restore them in equal number and condition at the end of the term.[87] The anonymous treatise tells us that 'if you wish to farm out your stock you can take 4s. 6d. clear for each cow and the tithe, and for a sheep 6d. and the tithe, and a sow should bring you 6s. 6d. a year and acquit the tithe, and each hen 9d. and the tithe; and Walter says, 'When I was bailiff