A Short History of English Agriculture. W. H. R. Curtler
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target="_blank" rel="nofollow" href="#ulink_029ffdc1-4f91-5de7-b1fb-b8fe6a9a8a45">[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 grassy portions.
[47] The illustrations 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 illustrations. 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 Shropshire, 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: Shropshire, 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, illustrated 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 assertion 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 Oxfordshire at that date is of special interest. According to Professor Thorold Rogers[64] 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 33/4 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.[65]
On most manors, as in Forncett,[66] which contained about 2,700 acres,