Under the manorial system, the rise of which preceded the Norman Conquest, communal methods of husbandry remained, but the position of the cultivator was radically altered. "Villeins," instead of free-holders, formed the most numerous class of the population. They were bound to the soil and occupied holdings of scattered strips (amounting usually to a virgate or 30 acres) in return for a payment partly in labour and partly in kind. A portion of the manor, generally about a third, constituted the lord's demesne, which, though sometimes separate, usually consisted of strips intermingled with those of his villeins. It thus formed part of the common farm and was cultivated by the villeins and their oxen under the superintendence of a bailiff. Below the villeins in the social scale came the cottiers possessing smaller holdings, sometimes only a garden, and no oxen. Free tenants and, after the Norman Conquest, slaves formed small proportions of the population. During the middle ages cattle and sheep were the chief farm animals, but the intermixture of stock consequent on the common-field system was a barrier to improvement in the breed and conduced to the propagation of disease. Oxen, usually yoked in teams of eight, were used for ploughing. Sheep were small and their fleeces light, nevertheless, owing to the meagreness of the yields of cereals and the demand for wool for export, sheep-farming was looked to, as early as the 12th century, as the chief source of profit. Pigs and poultry were universally kept. The treatise on husbandry of Walter of Henley, dating from the early 13th century, is very valuable as describing the management of the demesne under the two- or three-field system. The following are typical passages:--
- "April is a good season for fallowing, if the earth breaks up behind the plough: for second fallowing after St John's Day when the dust rises behind the plough; for seed-ploughing when the earth is well settled and not too cracked; however, the busy man cannot be always waiting on the seasons."
"At sowing do not plough large furrows, but little and well laid together, that the seed may fall evenly."
"Know that an acre sown with wheat takes three ploughings, except lands that are sown each year, and that each ploughing costs 6d. more or less and the harrowing 1d. It is well to sow at least two bushels to the acre."
"Change your seed every year at Michaelmas, for the seed grown on other land will bring you more than that grown on your own."
"Neither sell your stubble nor move it from the ground unless you need it for thatching. Have manure put up in heaps and mixed with earth."
"Ridge marshy ground so as to let the water run off."
Continued on page two.
