A Fair Field Once Full of Folk: Agrarian

A Fair Field once Full of Folk: Agrarian Change in an Era of Population Decline, I348-I5OO* By BRUCE M S CAMPBELL 'T WAS William Langland, reared during the oured hard and wrought well and to such telling crowded and hungry years before the Black effect that they have rescued from obscurity one I .Death, who employed the image of a 'fair field of the most formative but least researched periods full of folk' to evoke the medieval rural world in English agrarian history. Not only is a frame- peopled 'of all manner of men, the meaner and work thereby established for a period whose ag- the richer, working and wandering, as the world rarian history formerly lacked one, but along the asks of them'.' Yet at the time that he was writing way a great store of fresh data and learning is The Vision of Piers Plowman, in the aftermath of provided on a wide range of topics for which suctessive outbreaks of plague, that world was historians will be grateful for many years to come. rapidly changing as excess mortality transformed Scholarly books on this scale come expensive, but population surfeit into population deficit, shaking at a little less than nine pence a page this is better the traditional fabric of rural society to the core. value than many: those prepared to invest in its It is this age - from the outbreak of plague in £85 will acquire an indispensable work of I348 to the close of the fifteenth century - and reference. this changing social world which are the subjects Justification for treating 1348-150o as a separate of Volume III of the Agrarian History of England and self-contained period derives from the fact and Wales. A further 2} inches and IOOO pages of that it corresponds to 'the longest period of declin- rich and varied scholarship are thereby added to a. ing and stagnant population in recorded English series now running to approximately 65o0 pages, history') Whether national demographic decline occupying almost two feet of shelf-space, and began with, or some time before, the Black Death wanting only Volume VII to provide a continuous of 1348-9 is a moot point. For Edward Miller, in agrarian history of England and Wales from prehis- his lucid but cautious introductory chapter on toric times to I939." Perhaps the time has now 'People and land', 'the balance between success come for Joan Thirsk, the Agrarian History's indefa- and failure during the early fourteenth century in tiguable General Editor, to commission a ninth meeting the challenge of multiplying people has and final volume to complete the story down to still to be exactly determined'. 4 This issue has the present. recently been explored in some detail by Richard Publication of a new volume in the Agrarian Smith, whose careful review of such demographic History is always an event, and this volume, so evidence as is currently available suggests that the long awaited, is no exception. It is warmly to be balance is more likely to have been tipped in welcomed. Of course, no major collaborative favour of failure than of success) Nevertheless, volume conceived in the I95os, planned in the there is no doubting the massive mortality of the I96os, researched and written in the I97os and 'Great Pestilence' itself. J F D Shrewsbury was I98os, and published in the I99os, could be flawless, sceptical of estimates which placed plague mor- and there are the inevitable regrets, disappoint- tality above twenty per cent, but such scepticism ments, and reservations. But Professor Miller and appears entirely unwarranted in the light of the his fourteen distinguished contributors have lab-

* A review article of Edward Miller, ed, The Agrarian History of ~j Hatcher, Plague, Popl,lation and the Et(¢lisll Economy, 1348-~5oo, England and Wales, Ill, 1348-15oo, CUP, 199z. xxv + 982, illus, J977, p i I. £85 (hereafterAHIII). 4 A Hill, p 2. ' Visionsfrom PiersPlowman taken from the Poem of William Langland, -~R M Smith, "Demographic Developments in Rural England, trans N Coghill, 1949, p 15. Hoo-48: a Survey', pp 25-78 in B M S Campbell, ed, Before the ~H P R Finberg, 'An Agrarian Historyof England', Ag Hist Rev, Black Death: Studies hi the 'Crisis' of the Early Fourteenth Century, IV, z956, pp 2-3. Manchester, 1991. Ag Hist Rely, 4I, 5, pp 60-70 6o i m

A FAIR FIELD ONCE FULL OF FOLK 6I evidence assembled in this volume. 6 Subsequent erto attracted the greater attention. '6 Volume III plague outbreaks, together with a continuing high thus ought to interest theorist and empiricist alike, background mortality, reduced the population still early modernists as much as late medievalists, and further, so that between I347 and H77 - when all those concerned with long-term processes of the Poll Tax indicates a national population of agrarian change. 2.2-3.o million - the total may have been reduced Above all, the years I348-I5OO occupied a by at least half.7 Thereafter the pace of decline was pivotal position in the transition from feudalism slow but the trend remained ineluctably down- to capitalism. '7 The decline of serfdom, which wards, so that by the third quarter of the fifteenth formed one important aspect of this transition, is century the population may have shrunk to barely rightly a major theme of the volume. In addition two millions,s Only in the final decades of the to a series of regional essays on tenant farmers century are there indications that decline had been which chart the demise of customary tenures, E B halted and from the I48os and I49os signs of and Natalie Fryde contribute an account of the modest recovery become apparent in such widely role of peasant rebellions and peasant discontent separate locations as Yorkshire and Lancashire, the in this process (Chapter 8). The latter, if in part West Midlands, Kent and Sussex, and Devon and already superseded by the flurry of publications Cornwall? Recent work points to an improvement on this subject which celebrated the six-hundredth in aristocratic replacement rates at about the same anniversary of the Revolt, may be recommended time. '° Nevertheless, in Miller's view 'recovery ... to students as a lucid review of the main issues had not gone far by the I52os'." involved. 's Beyond this, more explicit discussion Such long waves of demographic depression of the decay of feudal socio-property relations is were a recurrent feature of pre-industrial popu- lacking and there is little to suggest the uniqueness lations.'-" The late Romano-British and early of the English path of development or the intense Anglo-Saxon period dealt with in Volume I part ideological debate which has been generated by ii certainly experienced a major demographic attempts to provide an explanation of it. '~ hiatus. '3 The years I64o-w5o, spanned by Volume Unfortunately, the decay of feudal institutions V, also stand out as a demographic lull between is a major reason for the documentary disconti- two sustained surges of growth. '4 More recently nuity that renders investigation of this period's still, Ireland between 1845 and I96o suffered a agrarian history so peculiarly difficult. Much more reduction in population which in its scale and can be said of the second half of the fourteenth duration closely paralleled English experience century, when most demesnes were still in hand I348-I5oo. ~.s In each case changes were effected in and before the jurisdiction and authority of man- agrarian institutions which were to exercise an orial courts had become seriously eroded, than can enduring influence long after the circumstances be said of the second half of the fifteenth, which, which brought them into bei~g had passed. Herein notwithstanding the efforts of all concerned, lies the wider significance of these periods of remains one of the murkiest eras in English agrarian demographic depression. Yet it is the agrarian history. Discussion of farming practice and tech- consequence of population growth that have hith- niques in Chapter 3 is thus disproportionately biased towards the first half of the period, and the account of tenant farming and farmers in Chapter 7 fares only marginally better. This deterioration in ~'j F 13 Shrewsbury, A History i~ Bubonic Phlgue in the British Isles, Cambridge, 197o, pp 122-3, and the review by C Morris in Hist manorial documentation poses particular problems Jnl, XIV, 1971, pp 2o9-1o; AHIII, PP 4-5, 36-7, 7o-I. 119, 139, for D L Farmer's painstaking reconstruction of 609, 611, 625-6, 636, 722. continuous agricultural price and wage series, an 7 AHIII, p 6. s Loc tit. %'IHIII, Pp45, 636, 119, 731. 'r'E Boserup, The Conditions of Agricultural Growth: the Economics of '°S J Payling, 'Social Mobility, Demographic Change, and Landed Agrarian Change under Population Pressure, 1965; D B Grigg, Society in Late Medieval England', Econ Hist Rev, 2nd ser, XLV, Population Growth and Agrarian Chat,ge: an Historical Perspective, 1992, pp 34-6. Cambridge, 198o. "AHIII, p 6. ,7 M Dobb, Studies in the Developmel,t of Capitalism, 1946; J E ':J D Chambers, Population, Economy and Society in Pre-hldustrial Martin, Feudalism to Capitalism: Peasant and Lat,dlord in English England, Oxford, 1972; R D Lee, 'Population Homeostasis and Agrarimt Development, Atlantic Highlands, NJ, 1983; T H Aston English Demographic History', pp 75-1oo in R 1 Rotberg and T and C H E Philpin, eds, The Brenner Debate: Agrarian Class K Rabb, eds, Population and Economy: Population History from the Structure and Economic Development in Pre-hldustrial Europe, Cam- Traditional to the Modern World, Cambridge, 1986. bridge, 1985. '~ H P R Hnberg, ed, The Agrarian History of England and Wales, I, 's For example, R H Hilton and T H Aston, eds, The English Risit,g ii, A.D. 43-1o42, Cambridge, 1972. of 1381, Cambridge, 1984; R Hilton, Class Conflict and the Crisis ,4j Thirsk, ed, The Agrarian History of England and Wales, V, of Feudalism: Essays in Medieval Social History, 2nd edn, 199o. 164o-17.5o, 2 vols, Cambridge, 1984-5. '~Aston and Philpin, op cit; Martin, op cit; M Dunford and D ,s R E Kennedy, The Irish: Emigration, Marriage, and Fertility, 1973. Perrons, The Arena of Capital, 1983, pp 9o-123. 62 THE AGRICULTURAL HISTORY REVIEW historical resource of the first order surprisingly between regions, and absolutely no attempt to neglected by other contributors to the volume. As draw the separate regional threads together and he observes, 'for the fourteenth century, evidence provide an overview. '4 Nor is there any explo- is available from most parts of England south of a ration of the links to related themes - on farming line between the Severn and the Wash; by the systems, marketing, prices and wages, and rural I44os, however, almost all the manorial sources buildings - dealt with elsewhere in the volume. are from Hampshire and Sussex alone'. `-° In most That important spatial changes occurred during cases he is able to make good the deficiency by this period, as populations became more mobile recourse to alternative classes of record, although and rural industry offered expanding employment completion of certain specific wage series to the opportunities, is not in doubt. "-s But how these close of the fifteenth century defeats even his mapped themselves out into changing patterns of patience and ingenuity.-" Where statistical pre- land-use and agricultural activity remains an only cision is less imperative there is an obvious temp- partially answered question. Individual regional tation to extrapolate back to the late fifteenth farming systems are successively described - by century from sixteenth-century evidence, but most J A Tuck on the Northern Borders, Miller on contributors wisely resist this temptation. Docu- Yorkshire and Lancashire, R H Britnell on Eastern mentary inadequacies therefore blur the chron- England, Edmund King on the East Midlands, ology of these years and render some of the Dyer on the West Midlands, D Huw Owen on consequences of demographic depression elusive Wales and the Marches, P D A Harvey on the of direct investigation. Home Counties, Mavis Mate on the Southern Among the most immediate and conspicuous of Counties, and Fox on Devon and Cornwall - each adjustments were a major shift in land-use from drawing upon an impressive range of primary and arable to grass (as the demand for bread-grain secondary sources; but the broader picture remains contracted and, at least initially, that for livestock stubbornly out of focus. In part this derives from products expanded), together with a general con- a greater reliance upon description than upon traction in the size and number of rural settlements, measurement, even when the variables concerned as the rural population shrank. It is to the docu- are eminently quantifiable (as in the case of the mentation and description of these related develop- crops and livestock recorded in manorial accounts). ments that Chapter 2, 'The occupation of the Statistics are tabulated for individual demesnes and land', is largely devoted. This is the first of three some groups of demesnes, but the number of chapters to be organized regionally. The plethora demesnes involved is small and the level of aggre- of examples produced from all parts of the country gation low, thus thwarting attempts at regional bears witness to the universality of the trends in aggregation and inter-regional comparison. Nor is question, but more attempt could have been made there any attempt at mapping. But the problem to quantify the scale of settlement shrinkage and goes deeper than this and is inherent within the desertion, and only Miller for Yorkshire and Lan- actual regional scheme adopted. cashire, C C Dyer fol the West Midlands, and Volume III, like Volumes II and IV, carves up H S A Fox for Devon and Cornwall exploit the the country into ten basic 'regions'. In Volume IV potential of Inquisitions Post Mortern and Feet of the individual regional descriptions and the broader Fines to measure the extent of the swing from overview which sets them in context are the arable to grass.'-'- What is at issue here are differen- product of a single author, Joan Thirsk. "-6 This tial rates of regional change and the degree to makes for considerable consistency of treatment which, as Fox rightly ponders, the removal of and facilitated construction of her celebrated map demographic pressures 'strengthened regional contrasts as farmers adjusted land use according to the best capabilities of the land and the survival or otherwise of local markets'. -'3 Yet this issue is left implicit rather than explicit since the individual regional analyses, although finely crafted, are far -'4The lack of cross-referencing is a consistent weakness of the book. There is, for instance, no cross-referetlcing between the too self-contained. There is virtually no cross- separate discussions of the Statutes of Labourers legislation on referencing between them, no direct comparison pp 483-90 and pp 753-6o. "~AHIII, pp. 17-t8, 27-9, 599-600, 612, 621, 678- 9, 703, 7o3, 74o-3, 785; R S Sehofield, 'The Geographical Distribution of :°AHIII, p 431. Wealth in England, 1334-1649', Eeon Hist Ret,, 2nd set, XVIII, ~' AHIII, pp 316--20. 1965, pp 483--51o; H C Darby, R E Glasscoek, J Sheail, and G R ~'AHIII, pp 5o, 78-8o, 152-3. See, L R Poos, A Rural Society after Verscy, 'The Changing Geographical Distribution of Wealth in the Black Death: Essex 135o-~525, Cambridge, 1991, pp 47-8, for England, IO86-1334-1525',Jnl Hist Geog, 5, 1979, pp 247-62. comparable figures for Essex. :~J Thirsk, ed, The Agrarian History of England and Wales, IV, =3AHIII, p 163. 15oo-164o, Catnbridge, 1967, pp 1-112.

11, A FAIR FIELD ONCE FULL OF FOLK 63 of the farming regions of England I5oo-164o. :7 In Nevertheless, enough is already known for it to Volumes II and III the individual regions are be clear that significant changes were afoot as assigned to separate authors and in Volume III individual localities and regions adapted in often there is neither any discussion of the rationale quite different ways to the changing opportunities upon which this regional scheme is based nor any of the age. As land became cheaper and labour evaluation of the overall picture thereby revealed. -'s dearer there was a crying down in the intensity of In this instance, there is no attempt to reconstruct the most intensive systems, a development clearly a map of farming regions. Nor is a picture pieced documented by Brimell in East Anglia and Mate together from regions apparently so arbitrarily in Kent and Sussex) ° Elsewhere, in the East Mid- defined likely to provide an accurate definition of lands in particular but also in parts of the West reality. On what grounds, for instance, is Lin- Midlands, King and Dyer describe how brewing colnshire lumped with East Anglia rather than the grains expanded at the expense of bread grains, East Midlands, or the counties west of the Pennines and more land was given over to leguminous with those to the east? It is not as if the boundaries fodder crops as the pastoral component of com- of these regions correspond with those employed mon-field mixed-farming systems expanded in in Volumes II and IV, for they do not. importance)' The varying fortunes of legumes, in Tracing the evolving agricultural geography of fact, bear witness to the often quite divergent England from Io42-I348, to 1348-15oo, to stratcgies adopted by farmers according to their I5OO-164o thus becomes an umaecessarily subjec- circumstances: legumes tended to lose rather than tive exercise. Apart from the fact that certain gain ground in the intensive husbandry regimes counties have got missed out along the way of Norfolk, Kent, and Sussex, where formerly (Surrey from both Volumes III and IV, and Hun- they had been most important; made striking gains tingdonshire, Cambridgeshire, and Middlesex in the common-field country of parts of the east from Volume IV), others are classified vcry differ- and west midlands and north-east where perma- ently within the three volumes, and whether this nent pasture had always been in short supply; but is justified by the changing configuration of agr- remained of relatively minor importarice in sou- arian activity is not easily established. Oxfordshirc, thern England and particularly so in the south- for instance, is groupcd with thc West Midlands west where husbandry had always been more in Volume II, with the Home Counties in Volume extensive than intensive and a natural abundance III, and with the Southern Counties in Volume of pasture rendered the cultivation of fodder crops IV. Excellent as arc the individual regional accounts unnecessary.3-" contained within Volume III, each will conse- Whether by dint of increased fodder cropping, quently be read more profitably by those interested the conversion of arable to grass, or the develop- in the particular localities and regions concerned mcnt of convertible husbandry, pastoral farming than by those curious about the similarities and almost everywhere was on the increase) 3 One contrasts betwcen regions. Collectively they do method of measuring this is in terms of a weighted not provide a systematic overall picture and their total of livestock per IOO cropped acres as recorded coherence as regional casc-studics has bccn brokcn by manorial accounts. 34 Fox calculates this for by splitting their three component sections Devon and Cornwall and thereby reveals little between Chaptcrs 2, 3, and 7. These chapters are increase in demesne stocking densities during the therefore no substitute for a systematic classifi- fourteenth century but a virtual doubling during cation and analysis of farming systcms across thc thc fiftccnth) s It is a pity that similar measures are country as a whole, for which the data ccrtainly not availablc for other parts of the country for it exist and thc mcthodology is now available to is doubtful whether all regions participated in this hand.-")

-'v lbid, p 4. This map is, however, essentially qualitative in deri- ~°AHIII, pp 57, 2o9, 268-71. vation: for a critique see M Overton 'Agricultural Regions in :' AHIII, pp 214-15, 230. Early Modern England: an Exa,nple from East Anglia', University 3"-AHIII, pp6o, 63, z21, t78, 187, 213-t4, "15, 229-30, 260, 269, of Newcastle upon Tyne, Department of Geography seminar paper, 27 l, 289, 304; B M S Campbell, 'The Diffusion of Vetches in XLII, 1983. Medieval England', Ecotl l-list Rev, 2nd ser, XLI, 1988, .-s Cf H E Hallam, ed, The Agrarian History if Etlghlnd and Wales, pp 193-208. II, 1o4z-135o, Ca,nbridge, 1988, pp 137-8. ~JAHIII, pp to, 233-4, 264, 314. ")J L Langdon, Horses, Oxen and Technological hmova:ion: the Use 34 B M S Campbell, 'Land, Labour, Livestock, and Productivity of Drat~¢ht Animals in English Farmingfrom 1o66-t5oo, Ca,nbridge, Trends in English Seignorial Agriculture, 12o8-145o', pp 144-82 1986; B M S Campbell andJ P Power, 'Mapping the Agricultural in idem and M Overton, eds, Land, Labour and Livestock: Historical Geography of Medieval England', j Hist Geog, NV, 1989, Studies in European Agricultural Productivity, Manchester, 1991, pp 24-39; J P Power and B M S Campbell, 'Cluster Analysis pp 156-7. and the Classification of Medieval Demesne-Farming :~,ystems', J~ AHIII, p 314. For corresponding trends within the country as a Trans btst Brit Geog, new ser, t7, 2992, pp 227-45. whole 125o-145o see, Campbell, op cit, 1991, pp 153-9. 64 THE AGRICULTURAL HISTORY REVIEW process to the same extent) 6 A priori, it seems ever, no panacea to the problems of the age and plausible to conjecture that livestock made their the enthusiasm with which it was conducted greatest gains where arable resources were most depended a great deal upon wool quality, wool readily given over to the cultivation of fodder prices, and changing regional demand for meat crops or converted outright to grass, as in certain and wool. 44 The fifteenth century was certainly of the central and southern counties) 7 Regions no unqualified golden age for pastoral producers, with a stronger comparative advantage in grain for, as T H Lloyd long ago pointed out and and whose pastoral regimes tended to be more Farmer's price series makes clear, it was lower exclusively arable based are likely to have met production costs rather than higher product prices with less success) s Likewise, regions with a well- that underpinned the shift from crops to live- developed pastoral sector will have possessed only stock. 4~ Given the continued decline in population, a limited capacity for developing it further. Thus, the low marginal elasticity of demand for food, as Tuck and Miller show, permanent grassland and industry's finite capacity to absorb raw mate- had always been a conspicuous feature of land use rials, the point was eventually reached in the mid- in much of northern England and specialist live- fifteenth century when the supply of pastoral as stock farms had long been well established) '~ In well as arable products was considerably in excess fact, livestock rearing in these areas tended to of demand. 4~ The ensuing agricultural depression suffer from some drying up of demand during the probably forced many producers - by this date later Middle Ages as lowland regions to the south mostly tenants rather than lords - back upon self- and east became more self-sufficient in livestock.4° sufficiency except where access to urban and indus- Near the Scottish border and in those parts of the trial markets provided a relatively sustained Welsh Marches exposed to the Glyn Dwr rebellion, demand for their produce. 47 If the dimensions of attacks by the Scots and the Welsh acted as a this depression are now more clearly defined, there further discouragement to the build up of flocks is much about its impact that warrants closer and herds. *' There were therefore many local and examination, especially in terms of the interaction regional variations upon the prevailing national between prices, production costs, production mix, trend which more systematic measurement might profits, and rents. help to map out in more detail. Since similar These changes in both the composition and measures can be generated for later centuries from techniques of production were accompanied by information contained in probate inventories there equally important changes in the units of pro- is potential, too, for some instructive comparisons duction. Direct demesne management ended across time. 4~ In this context, evidence already to almost everywhere and demesnes were either hand suggests that the pastoral sector may have leased whole or broken up. 4s Labour services were been the most dynamic sector within English commuted and customary tenures converted into agriculture in the period from the fifteenth to the leaseholds held for terms of lives or years and eighteenth centuries.43 copyholds held at the will of the lord. As the rural Between I348 and 15oo it was the more extens- population shrank there was a natural tendency ive forms ofpasto:alism that tended to gain most: for tenant land to become concentrated into fewer rearing and fattening rather than dairying, and hands. Mean holding size rose and some tenants sheep rather then cattle. Sheep farming was, how- built up very substantial holdings. The mechanisms involved were quite complex and varied considerably from manor to manor and locality to locality 3~B M S Campbell, 'People and Land in the Middle Ages, IO66-x5oo', pp69-121 in R A Dodgshon and R A Butlin, eds, according to the nature of prevailing inheritance An Historical Geography of Englatld and Wales, 2nd edn, 199o, practices, the ease with which land could be pp Io6-7. transferred inter vivos, and the strength of manorial 37CfA Kussmaul, 'Agrarian Change in Seventcenth-Cetltury Eng- jurisdiction. Recent years have produced a number land: the Economic Historian as Paleontologist', Jnl Econ Hist, XLV, ~985, pp t-3o. of instructive case-studies of individual villages JSFor a case study of Norfolk see, B M S Campbell and M which point to the loosening of strong ties between Overton, 'A New Perspective on Medieval and Early Modern families and their land and the rapid build-up and Agriculture: Six Centuries of Norfolk Farming c.125o-c. 185o', Past & Pres, forthcoming. ~AHIII, pp41, 5o, 179-82, 189-9o. ~°AHIII, p 381. 4~AHIII, pp 281-2, 4oo-1,462-3,574-6;J H Munro, 'Wool-Price ~' AHIII, pp 37-8, 99-Ioo, 181-2. Schedules and the Qualities of English Wools in the Later Middle 4~M Overton and B M S Campbell, 'Norfolk Livestock Farming Ages, c.127o-1499', Textile History, IX, 1978, pp 118-69. 125o-174o: a Comparative Study of Manorial Accounts and 4s T lq Lloyd, 'The Movement of Wool Prices in Medieval England', Probate Inventories', Jnl Hist Geog, 18, '992, pp 377-96. Econ Hist Rev, Supplement, VI, 2973, pp 24-30. 43 G Clark, 'Labour Productivity in English Agriculture, ~r'AHIII, pp 13,462-3,464. 13oo-186o', pp 2~ 1-35 in Campbell and Overton, op cit, 1991, 47AHIII, pP ~4, zo3,265, 677, 7o5, 74o-3. pp 2~4-t9; Campbell and Overton, op cit, forthcoming. 4SAHIII, pp 573-6, 58o-2, 587-9, 614, 64L 662-3, 7o4-5,728. J A FAIR FIELD ONCE FULL OF FOLK 65 break-up of holdings: But the number of such Some communities found it difficult to sustain studies is not yet so great nor so representative traditional communal arrangements, and piece- that firm generalizations can be made with confi- meal and wholesale enclosure began to transform dence. Why some villagcs and locations proved the landscape in many parts of the country, both consistently more attractive than others, and what in the core areas of common-field husbandry and led some tenants to acquire land and others to more particularly around their periphery." dispose of it, are as yet far from clear. Such far-reaching changes in so many aspects Concomitant changes occurred in the physical of both the forces and the relations of production layout of fields, as parcel was laid on parcel and raise obvious questions about their consequences selion on selion, and there was much rationalization for agricultural productivity. The volume of total and reorganization of field systems to accommo- agricultural output cannot of course be measured, date modifications to rotations. The creation and but by implication it fell as land was withdrawn development of common-field systems have often from agricultural use, that which remained in use been equated with a process of population was exploited less intensively, and arable products growth, s° Indeed, the belief that the twelfth and accounted for a smaller share of total production. thirteenth centuries witnessed a widespread con- But within that context did the ratio of outputs version of two-field to three-field systems in to inputs improve, as production concentrated response to the pressure to raise output used to be upon the most profitable products, on the better a truism of medieval agricultural history until land, in the most advantageous locations? If, as recently subjected to systematic scrutiny by Fox)' some have suggested, a deficiency of livestock Yet if there are few documented cases of the depressed yields in the late thirteenth and early replanning of field systems during the era of fourteenth centuries, did improved stocking densi- demographic expansion before I3oo, the same ties and larger sowings of legumes in the fourteenth cannot be said of the situation thereafter. Those and fifteenth centuries provide the precondition who would equate changes in field systems with for a more effective cycling of soil nitrogen and periods of reduced or declining population will thus higher crop yields? 5(' Or were the gains find much supporting evidence in this volume)-" obtained in this way offset by the general reduction Here are documented cases of the evolution of in labour inputs, as manuring, marling, ploughing, two-field into three-field systems, of two-field into weeding, and harvesting were all undertaken less four-field systems, of three-field into four-field thoroughly?57 Moreover, crop yields are only one systems, and other more complex arrangements) 3 measure of physical productivity: what of carcass In many regular field systems furlongs rather than weights, fleece weights, milk yields, and fer- fields increasingly became the units of cropping, tility/mortality rates? 5s And how were these affec- and it was at this time, as Mark Bailey has shown, ted by changing management strategies and ratios that the shift system of cropping became more of livestock to labour? fully elaborated in East Anglia as the foldcourse There has been a tendency among continental system entered a new phase of development. .s4 historians to see a direct correlation between the level of physical productivity and the supply of labour, with the result that yields and other meas- "'~For example, P, M Smith, cd, Lmtd, Kinship aml Life-Cycle, ures of physical productivity are believed to have Cambridge, 1984; P D A Harvey, ed, The Peasant Laml Market declined with population from a medieval peak in in England, Oxford, I984. ~°Most notably, J Thirsk, 'The Origin of the Common Fields', Past & Pres, 29, 1964, pp 3-25; and more recently, S Fenoaltea, 'Transaction Costs, Whig History, and the Common Fields', Politics and Society, 16, 1988, pp 171-24o. S'H S A Fox, 'The Alleged Transformation from Two-Field to Three-Field Systems in Medieval England', Econ Hist Rev, 2nd sS/IHlll, pp 177, I85-6, 223,225-7, 257-8, 613-14, 732. set, XXXIX, t986, pp 326-48. s"J Z Titow, Winchester Yields: a Study in Medieval Agricultural ~:B M S Campbell, 'Commonficld Origins - The Regional Productivity, Cambridge, 1972; D L Farmer, 'Grain Yields on the Dimensioll', pp 112-29 in T Rowley, ed, The Or(qins tf Open- Winchester Manors in the Later Middle Ages', Econ Hist Rev, Field Agriculture, 1981; idem and R A Godoy, 'Commonfield and ser, XXX, 1977, pp 555-66; idem, 'Grain Yields on Westmins- Agricuhure: the Andes and Medieval England Compared', ter Abbey Manors, 1271-14Io', Can Jnl Hist, XVllI, 1983, pp 323-58 in Proceedings ~f the Coltference on Common Property pp 331-49; R S Sbiel, 'hnproving SoiI Fertility iu the Pre- Resource Management, Washington, DC, 1986; R A Godoy, 'The Fertiliser Era', pp 51-77 in Campbell and Overton, op cit, 1991. Evolution of Common-Field Agricuhure in the Andes" a Hypoth- "C Thornton, 'The Determinants of Land Productivity on the esis', Comparative Studies in Society and History, 33, 1991, Bishop of Winchester's Demesne of Rimpton, 12o8 to 34o3', pp 395-414. pp 183-210 in Campbell and Overton, op cit, 1991. "AHIII, pp 254- 5, 223- 4, 198. ~SFor a discussion of tbe different components and methods of "~AHIII, pp 200-3; M Bailey, 'Sand into Gold: the Evoiution of measuring land productivity see, M Overton and B M S the Foldcourse System in West Suffolk, 120o-160o', Ag l'tist Rev, Campbell, 'Productivity Change in European Agricultural Devel- 38, 199o, pp 40-57. opment', pp 1-50 in Campbell and Overton, op cit, 1991, pp 7-28. 66 THE AGRICULTURAL HISTORY REVIEW the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, s9 labour productivity in cereal husbandry. 6~ More- Did a similar relationship hold in England? And over, he has developed a method of estimating even if on balance land productivity was falling, fertility and mortality rates for the principal categ- which it is by no means clear that it was, could ories of demesne livestock from the detailed infor- labour productivity not have been rising? There is mation contained in stock accounts.66 This certainly a strong implication that it was, to judge complements Martin Stephenson's work on fleece from the marked improvement in agricultural weights and Annie Grant's use of animal bones to wage rates and the increased proportion of the infer trends in carcass weights.~7 population engaging in non-agricultural activi- These are all approaches which are capable of ties.~° If so, what was the source of that pro- much wider application. Most are, of course, ductivity rise? Did it derive from a better fed, less contingent upon the availability of manorial servile, and more motivated labour force, from accounts and they leave unanswered questions lower levels of rural under-employment, a shift to about the relative productivities of the demesne more labour-productive types of enterprise, or and peasant sectors and trends within the latter. changes in technology?~' The productivity of peasant agriculture is always Readers who seek answers to these and other likely to remain a serious lacuna due to the absence questions concerning productivity levels and trends of suitable sources. Britnell, King, and Fox con- during this intriguing period will be disappointed. dude that patterns of cropping on peasant holdings Discussion of productivity is largely confined to a are unlikely to have been significantly different consideration of crop yields, mostly measured as from those on seigneurial demesnes in the same yield ratios rather than yields per acre and dispersed locality.6s Nevertheless, different factor endow- through the separate regional sections. 6~ Nor are merits of labour and capital may well have resulted such yield statistics as are cited presented in a way in very different levels of land and labour pro- which facilitates comparison. Some measures of ductivity. 6~ One possible way forward has recently livestock productivity are given - principally milk been pioneered by P T Hoffman with reference yields and fleece weights - but, again, not in to the Paris Basin between t45o and I789 .7° He sufficient quantity to cast significant light upon has combined evidence from leases wkh price trends. 63 Yet manorial accounts, which survive in. series to infer trends in total factor productivity. quantity for the second half of the fourteenth In principle, such an approach ought to be directly century and continue to provide information for applicable to late fourteenth- and fifteenth-century a dwindling number of demesnes down to the England. Gregory Clark has also made ingenious middle of the following century, provide all the use of piece-rate payments to agricultural workers information necessary for the calculation of several to infer trends in crop yields between I25o and useful productivity measures. In this way trends I86o2' These are new approaches for a new in the yields of individual crops and in the pro- generation of historians and their application will ductivity of the cereal sector in general have been be greatly facilitated by more mechanized methods calculated for individual demesnes, particular of data collection and analysis. 7" estates, and entire counties,a* Where detailed works Medieval historians, like their medieval fore- accounts are available, as in the Winchester Pipe bears, have traditionally worked with hand tools Rolls, Christopher Thornton has recently demon- and this has rendered tiae build up of data bases to strated that it is also possible to infer levels of the scale at which valid generalizations are possible

~SThornton, op cit, 199l, pp aol-7. S~H Van der Wee and E Van Cauwenberghe, eds, Productivity of '~ C Thornton, 'Efficiency in Thirteenth-Century Livestock Farm- Land and Agricultural hmapation iu the Low Countries (12J0--1800), ing: the Fertility and Mortality of Herds and Flocks at Rimpton, Leuven, 1978; E Le Roy Ladurie and J Goy, Tithe and Agrarian Somerset, 12o8-H49', in P R Coss and S D Lloyd, eds, Thirteenth- History from the Fourteenth to the Niuetcenth Ce,ruries: an Essay hi Centur), England, IV, Woodbridge, forthcoming. Comparative History, Cambridge, t982; Campbell, 'Land, Labour, ~7 M J Stephenson, 'Wool Yields in the Medieval Economy', Eton Livestock, and Productivity Trends', pp ~44-9. Hist Rev, 2nd ser, XLI, 1988, pp368-9J; A Grant, 'Animal a°Clark, op tit, 199J; G Persson, Pre-htdustrial Economic Growth, Resources', pp 149-87 in G Astill and A Grant, eds, The Country- Social Organization and Tedmologital Progress ht Europe, Oxford, side of Medieval England, Oxford, I988, pp 176-8. 1988. ~SAHIII, pp 64-5, 217-18, 306. But see also pp 228-9. ~G Clark, 'Productivity Growth without Technical Change in °)AHIlI, p 262, European Agriculture before 185o', Jnl F.ton Hist, XLVII, 1987, 7op T Hoffman, 'Land Rents and Agricultural Productivity: the pp 419~32; Overton and Campbell, op tit, 1991, pp 36-7; Clark, Paris Basin, t4so-1789',jnl Eco, t-list, LI, 199~, pp 771-8o5. op tit, 199x, pp 231-5. 7'G Clark, 'Yidds per Acre in English Agriculture, 125o-186o: ~AHIII, pp I79, ~16-17, z3o-t. 261-2, 277~8o, 287-9, 308, 3~5- Evidence from Labour Inputs', Econ Hist Rev, and ser, XLIV, ~1AHI11, pp 192, zo7, 22o, 235, 300, 321 (milk yields); pp t92, 2o9, ~991, pp 445-60. 22o, 235, z8t, 296-7, 320 (fleece weights). V:M Overton, "Computer Analysis of Probate Inventories: From 6~For example: Thornton, op tit, ~991; Titow, op tit, 1972; Portable Micro to Mainframe' pp 96-IO4 in D Hopkin and P Campbell, 'Land, Labour, Livestock, and Productivity Trends'. Denley, eds, History and Computing, Manchester, I987. A FAIR FIELD ONCE FULL OF FOLK 67 across a range of manors and estates a slow and among the uppermost echelons of tenant society. ~s arduous task. 73 Farmer's feat in drawing upon data Investigating the market involvement of the rest from several different estates to reconstruct market- of the peasantry requires other sources and meth- ing patterns within the country as a whole for a odologies, and here progress will inevitably be comprehensive range of agricultural products slower, although, as M K McIntosh has demon- across a 3oo-year period is therefore all the more strated, there is much that detailed case-studies of remarkable. His consecutive and complementary well-documented manors can reveal? ~ chapters, 'Marketing the produce of the country- An earlier generation of historians identified side, I2OO-I5OO' and 'Prices and wages, self-sufficiency as the paramount objective of most I35O-I5OO', lie at the very core of this volume, medieval rural producers, and of the peasantry in the former in its chronological range partially particular, s° Yet such a view is hardly reconcilable compensating for the absence of a corresponding with the abundant evidence of marketing chapter in Volume II.TM Together they will provide assembled here. By the end of the thirteenth the essential starting point for all future work on century England was covered by a close network this subject. Much of this work will be concerned of trading institutions - markets, fairs, and bor- with testing and amplifying the findings so cau- oughs - and market prices were established for tiously advanced by Farmer and sharpening their almost every conceivable type of agricultural com- chronological focus, for, as he freely acknowl- modity. As Farmer documents, agricultural prod- edges, his is but a provisional view qualified by ucts were traded locally, regionally, nationally, the time and sources at his disposal. 7s Since the and internationally, the quantities and distance latter are predominantly demesne accounts drawn traded depending upon the type of good, the in the main from major ecclesiastical estates - the nature of demand, and the costs of transport. Bishopric of Winchester, Glastonbury Abbey and Wool, for instance, the most commercialized of Westminster Abbey, plus Merton College Oxford agricultural commodities, produced by lord and - there is an immediate need to broaden the peasant alike, non-perishable and high in value perspective so as to incorporate evidence from relative to its bulk, was traded in large quantities other types of estate and categories of landlord. 76 over long distances. Such a large and well- In particular, more needs to be known about the established trade would not have been possible market involvement of manors belonging to minor without the necessary commercial infrastructure, s' lay landlords for, although less well served by Likewise, the provisioning of London, by 1300 a surviving records, numerically they were of far major city of perhaps 80-I00,000 inhabitants, greater importance than their great ecclesiastical impinged upon rural producers over a wide area counterparts. 7v In those rare instances where of south-eastern England and involved increasingly accounts are extant for the very smallest of lay complex trading relationships, s~ Much of the trade manors we are also brought closest to the kinds of in grain was handled by specialist bladers based in marketing strategy likely to have been encountered the capital, many of whom combined dealing in corn with dealing in fish, wine, and other food-

79The Feedingtile City Projects I and II at the Centre for Metropolitan History, Institute of Historical Research, London, have employed ~s For example, B M S Campbell, 'The Complexity of Manorial computerized methods to collect, analyse, and map data from Structure in Medieval Norfolk: a Case Study', Norf Arch, manorial accountsand hlquisitiones Post Mortem: see,J A Galloway XXXlX, 1986, pp 225-61. and M Murphy, 'Feeding the City: Medieval London and its w K Biddick, 'Medieval English Peasants and Market Involvement', Agrarian Hinterland', London Jnl, 16, 1991, pp 4-5. A parallel jnl Econ Hist, XLV, 1983, pp 823-31; E Clark, 'Debt Litigation project at The Queen's University of Belfast, The Geography of in a Late Medieval English Vill', pp 247-79 in J A Raftis, ed, Seignorial Land Ownership and Use, 127o-~349, is using portable Pathways to Medieval Peasants, Toronto, 1981; M K Mclntosh, laptop computers to collect information in the archives from Autonomy and Community: tile Royal Manor of Havering, 12oo-15oo, inqnisitionespost mortem which will then be analysed using standard Cambridge, 1986. software packages. :;°M M Postan, 'Note', Econ Hist Rev, 2nd set, XII, 1959, p 79; R 74B M S Campbell, 'Laying Foundations: the Agrarian History of H Hilton, 'Medieval Agrarian History', pp 145-98 in W G England and Wales, zo42-1348',Ag Hist Rev, 37, 1989, p 191. Hoskins and R A McKinley, eds, Victoria County History of ~s AHIII, p 324, n I. Leicestershire, II, 1954, p 145 (for a revision to this view see, idem, 7~'R H Brimell, 'Minor Landlords in England and Medieval Agr- 'Towns in Societies - Medieval England', Urban Hist Yearbook arian Capitalism', Past & Pres, 89, 198o, pp3-.z2; B M S 1982, P 7). Campbell, J A Galloway,and M Murphy, 'How Commercialised s, E E Power, Tile Wool Trade in English Medieval History, Oxford, was the Demesne Sector of English Agriculture c.~3oo? Some 194l; T H Lloyd, Tile English Wool Trade in tile Middle Ages, Evidence from the Hinterland of London', in R H Britnell and Cambridge, 1977. B M S Campbell, eds, A Commercialising Economy: England s~B M S Campbell, J A Galloway, D J Keene and M Murphy, A m86-13oo, Manchester, forthcoming. Medieval Capital and its Grain Supply: Agrarian Prodnction and 77E A Kosminsky, Studies in the Agrarian History of England in the Distribution in the London Region, c.fjoo, Historical Geography Thirteenth Century, Oxford, 1956, pp 95-142, Research Series, forthcoming. 68 THE AGRICULTURAL HISTORY REVIEW stuffs, s3 Henley was the most prominent of several and the latter distance from the market). 9° Fuller towns which served as collecting centres for grain exploration of the links between Farmer's analysis destined for London and the Thames was the vital of markets and prices and the separate regional artery down which much of that grain was sent. s4 accounts of land-use and farming systems might For its meat London seems to have drawn upon therefore have been particularly fruitful. Certainly, an even wider area, for as Farmer demonstrates it is hard, given the evidence now to hand, not to 'urban dealers seeking meat travelled longer dis- attribute considerable influence to the role of tances than those seeking grain'. 85 Together, the market-determined economic rent in the articu- grain and meat trades provided employment for lation of regional farming systems. 9' Nevertheless, carters, hauliers, boatmen, drovers and a host of R A Dodgshon has doubted whether at this date other intermediaries. Nevertheless, London's the commercial impulse was powerful enough to importance and that of other major centres of have 'taken space to market'2 ~ demand should not be overstressed; the bulk of In this context, the question of whether English England's population and therefore the bulk of agriculture became more or less commercialized demand remained rural rather than urban and during the long years of demographic decline hence local markets remained the most important which followed the Black Death becomes particu- outlets for agricultural produce. 86 larly intriguing2 3 Did producers become more or How commercialized, therefore, was English less reliant upon the market for their inputs: iron, agriculture at the beginning of the fourteenth salt, seed, replacement animals, and labour? Did century? Were producers merely using the market, the proportion of total agricultural production on the one hand, to dispose of surpluses after their destined for the market increase or decrease? Did own consumption needs had been met and, on the market demand thereby exert a greater or lesser other, to compensate for inadequacies in the range influence upon patterns of production as manifest and quantity of the goods they themselves pro- in the nature and intensity of farm enterprise? And duced? 87 Or had they moved beyond petty com- did farmers become more or less commercial in modity production: were producers specializing their attitudes to the land and its management? and gearing their production to the market? In certain respects the period was clearly retro- Kathleen Biddick has shown how clear answers to gressive. Aggregate demand shrank. Transaction these kinds of question can be obtained for the costs, especially in international trade, almost cer- demesne sector from manorial accounts, since these tainly rose. ')4 A combination of disease and crown detail the quantities of grain, animals, and animal interference disrupted the wool trade. 9s London products produced, the quantities sold, and the declined in population, if not in relative impor- quantities purchased. 8~ Such information now tance, and the radius of its provisioning zone needs to be collected and analysed for a wide contracted. 96 From the second quarter of the fif- range of different estates, controlling as far as teenth century urban demand in general tended to possible for soil and environment; in this way it wither2 7 An increasing proportion of production should be possible to form a clearer idea of thc emanated from thc small and middling-sized farms degree of commercial involvement of different of tenants rather than the substantial demesnes of categories of landlord, s') In theory, farm enterprise reflected the interaction of Ricardian and von vo M Chisholm, Rural Settletnent and Land-Use: an Essay on L,,cation, Thtinen economic rent (the former embracing 1962, pp 20-32; D Grigg, The Dyllanlics qf Agricultural Change, such factors as climate, soils, and population density 1982, pp 5o-9; B M S Camphell,J A Galloway, and M Murphy, 'Rural Land-Use in tile Metropolitan Hinterland, 127o-1339: tile Evidence of hlquisitiones Post Mortem', Ag Hist Rev, 4o, 1992, ~3 AHIII, pp 334, 37o-1; Campbell, Galloway, Keene, and Murphy, pp 2-3. op tit, forthcoming. 9, For example, B M S Campbell, 'Ecology versus Economics in S4AHIII, pp. 371-2; Galloway and Murphy, op eit, 1991, pp 6-7. Late Thirteenth- and Early Fourtecnth-Ccntury English Agricul- aSAHI1l, p 335; Campbell and Power, op cit, 1989, pp 30-7. ture', in D Swceney, ed, Reality and hnage in Medieval Agricldture, Se'AHIII, p 329; G Grantham, 'Agricultural Productivity and Urban State College, Pa, forthcoming. Provisioning Zones before the Iodustrial Revohltion', '~-'R A Dodgshon, The Ettropean Past: Social Evohltion and Spatial forthcoming. Order, 1987, pp 287-351. S7R H Hilton, 'A Crisis of Feudalism', pp 119-37 in Aston and '~J R H Britnell, The Colnnlercialisation if English Society IOOO-15oo, Philpin, op tit, 1985, p I'9. Cambridge, 1992. SSK Biddick, The Other Econonly: Pastoral Husbandry on a Medieval 943 H Munro, 'Industrial Tranfformations in the North-West Estate, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1989. European Textile Trades, e.129o-c. 134o: Economic Progress or SgThe research project Feedhlg the City I has analysed the relative Econolnic Crisis?', pp I1O-48 in Campbell, Be~,re the Black importance of grain sales on a range of estates in a ten-county Death, 1991. area around London. This has revealed significant differences in '~ AHIII, pp 4oo-~. the degree of commercial involvement between, first, episcopal 'a~D J Keene, 'Medieval London and its Region', London Jnl, 14, demesnes (the most commercialized), second, royal demesnes, 1989, pp 99-111; AHIII, pp 372-3,375-6. demesnes in tile king's hands, and lay demesnes, and third, ,~7 A Dyer, Decline and Crotvth in English Towns 14oo-164o, Basings- monastic demesnes (the least commercialized). toke, ~991, pp 2o-36. J t A FAIR FIELD ONCE FULL OF FOLK 69 lords. More farmers commanded the resources At work here were the abandonment of sheep necessary to ensure self-sufficiency, especially in farming by many landlords as wool prices col- livestock. Finally, rising wage rates encouraged lapsed, especially between I44o and I46o, a general greater use of family labour and living-in-servants decline in rents and farms, and a formidable rather than waged labour28 On the other hand, increase in arrears. The Paston letters bear witness per capita incomes rose, encouraging the exchange to the difficulties experienced at this time by a of agricultural produce for non-agricultural goods gentry family in one of the foremost arable- and services. In town and country more of the farming districts of England, and it is surprising more commercialized products - ale, meat, and that Bean does not draw upon this correspondence dairy produce - were consumed. 9'~ The leather and to enliven his account? °6 There was scope here textile industries grew apace, providing a domestic also for cross-referencing to corresponding dis- market for hides and wool and stimulating the cussion of seigneurial sheep-farming, wool prices, demand of the non-agricultural sector for food- and rent movements elsewhere in the volume. ~°v stuffs. '°° Great lords and ecclesiastical households In regretting that 'no direct evidence exists to relied less on their estates and more on the market throw light on the condition of peasant farming' for their provisions. '°' Customary labour declined Bean appears to be unaware that the bulk of as a source of agricultural labour. Many of the Chapter 7 is devoted to that subject, l°s institutional constraints to changes in land use and This failure to weld the separate contributions rotations were loosened. And as farm size rose to the volume into an integrated whole is most more farmers found themselves with a disposable conspicuous in the case of the final chapter, an surplus.'°-" account by H E J Le Patourel and L A S Butler These conflicting traits take us to the core of of 'Rural building in England and Wales'. Such this period's enigmatic character. At one level it chapters are a feature of all the Agrarian History was a time of decay and contraction: at another, volumes and are intended, presumably, to explore of transition to a more innovative, market- the material context of agrarian life. Housing sensitive, and productive agriculture. Among pro- people, animals, crops, and implements required ducers there were inevitably losers but there were considerable resources and the buildings thereby also gainers. Pastoral farmers tended to fare better erected bore directly upon the quality and organiz- than arable, and there was a shift in the economic ation of material life. The end result can thus and political balance of power from landlords to reveal much about rural living standards and the tenants. It is usually taken as axiomatic that the physical infrastructure of agriculture, as well as losses to lords were absolute as well as relative, casting interesting light on the social and economic since, according to Robert Brenner, 'lords could trends of a period. It was, after all, in terms of the extract only much lower, now basically economic, purchasing power of a building-worker's wages contractual rents'. '°3 This is one of the issues that H Phelps Brown and S V Hopkins measured considered by J M W Bean in his chapter on living standards in England) °'~ In the case of the 'landlords', in many respects the most technical years I348-I5OO the heritage of surviving rural and difficult in the entire book. '°4 He postulates a buildings is surprisingly substantial - within the four-part chronology to the development of Rape of Hastings, for instance, no fewer than IIo landed revenues - 135o-I38o, 138o-I42o, small medieval houses are still in occupation - so i42o-i47 o, and I47O-I5oo - and argues that it there is much here for Butler and especially Le was only the third of these that witnessed 'a Patourel to discuss. '1° But their preoccupation is marked fall in landed revenues on many estates'.'°s with the buildings per se and there is little attempt to relate the various categories of building '~ Poos, op eit, 199 l, pp 18 I-2O6; A Kussmaul, Servants in Husbandry described to their socio-economic context. Some in Earl}, Modern England, Cambridge, 198 i. '~ C Dyer, Standards tf Liviag in the Later Middle Ages: Social Cha.ge interesting trends do emerge, such as improved in England c.~aoo-152o, Cambridge, 1989, pp 158-6o, I97-2o2. construction methods for peasant houses, a desire ,oo M Kowaleski, 'Town and Country in Late Medieval England: for greater comfort and privacy among lords and the Hide and Leather Trade', pp 57-73 in P J Corfield and D their followers, and the tendency of lords to build Keene, eds, Work in Towns 85o-185o, Leicester, 199o; A R Bridbury, Medieval English Clothmaking: at~ Economic Surve},, ~982, pp 47-1o 5. '°~'R H Britnell, 'The Pastons and their Norfolk', Ag Hist Rev, 36, '°' Dyer, op tit, 1989, pp 67-9. 1988, pp ]32-44 . 'O:AHIII, p 617, '°VAHIII, pp 234-5, 243-4, 264-5, 281-2, 292-7, 461-4, 512-,6, ,O~R Brenner, 'The Agrarian Roots of Europern Capitalism', 72o-1. pp 213-327 in Aston and Philpin, op cit, 1985, p 272. '°SAHIII, p 583. ,ogA more readable discussion of many of the same issues is '°'~H Phelps Brown and S V Hopkins, 'Seven Centuries of the provided by Dyer, op cit, 1989, pp 27-1o8, See also Payling, op Prices of Consumables Compared with Builders' Wage-Rates', cit, 199~. Eeottomica, XXIII, 1956, pp 296-3t4. ,os AHIII, p 579. "°AHIII, p 854, it 70 THE AGRICULTURAL HISTORY REVIEW smaller barns, but these are left to speak for those buildings, all of which will require much themselves.'" fuller use of available documentary evidence than There is a good case to be made for incorporat- is made here. ''~ ing material culture within any consideration of Volume III of the Agrarian History, therefore, agrarian history but that case is not made here."-" more than most other volumes in the same series, Moreover, why stop at buildings? If the concern represents a beginning and not an end. Reviewers is to research and reconstruct the physical worlds alone will read the volume from cover to cover, of work and home why exclude discussion of spotting the cracks and blemishes which this inevi- tools, implements, utensils, and furnishingsY u tably reveals. Others - local and regional historians, Some of the greatest recent advances in our under- undergraduates, postgraduates and professional his- standing of medieval agrarian life have come from torians - will use it more selectively. All will systematic study of its material technology: appreciate the richness and variety of the infor- ploughs, carts, and mills. "4 Le Patourel and But- mation it contains and may trust the soundness of ler's survey of building materials, building its scholarship. During its long gestation, advances methods, manor houses, peasant and other small in the technology and methodology of historical houses, farm buildings, and industrial buildings is research have helped transform ways of investiga- therefore no more than a starting point. Future ting the period. Joan Thirsk's hope is that publi- research needs to equip, furnish, cost, and occupy cation of this volume will further stimulate this process of enquiry, and she is unlikely to be ,u AHIII, pp 821,825, 867. disappointed. ''° It may not provide a definitive '~:For example, C Platt, Medieval England: a Social History and view of Langland's field, once so full of folk, but Archaeology from the Conquest to 16oo AD, 1978. ,u CfL Weatherill, Consumer Behavior a,d Material Culture in Britain it does open up many inviting new vistas and help 166o-176o, 1988. point the way forward. "~ Langdon, op c/t, 1986; idem, 'Agricultural Equipment', pp 86-m 7 in AstiI!.and Grant, op cit, 1988; idem, 'Water-Mills and Windmills "~ For example, 13 Yaxley, The Prior's Ma,or Houses: lm,emories ~f in the West Midlands, 1086--1500', ~COtl Hist Rev, 2nd ser, XLIV, Eleven of rl~e Mam~r-Ho~Jses of the Prior of Norwich made in the x991 pp424-44; R Holt, The Mills if Medieval England, Year 135z aD, Dcrcham, 1988; Poos, op tit, 199t, pp 73-88. Oxford, 1988. ":'AHIll, p xix.

Notes and Comments (continued from page 41)

add a sentence to the end of the paragraph 'The David Jones, Dr E J T Collins; and Dr Charles retiring ordinary members shall not be eligible Withers. A booking form and full details of the after eight successive years of office for immediate programme are included in this issue of the journal. re-election'. (6) Paragraph 9: replace 'the consent of the nominee' with 'the signed consent of the AUTUMN CONFERENCE I993 nominee'; replace 'seven days' with 'ten days'; add The I993 Autumn Conference will be held in to the end of the paragraph 'Those nominating York and will, like the previous two autumn candidates for the Executive Committee should conferences, be centred upon the region where it provide a statement of about twenty words about is held. These Conferences are intended to intro- each candidate at the Annual General Meeting duce a range of local themes and speakers to where the election takes place'. It was agreed that audiences that want to find out more about their the level of subscription for the category of mem- local area. If you are a member of the BAHS who bers covered in (3) above be set at £5 per annum lives in and wants to learn more about the agricul- for I993/94. tural history of northern England, or if you know of any non-members who may be interested in SPRING CONFERENCE t993 this, then this conference should not be missed. The I993 Spring Conference will be at Gregynog Previous conferences have been held on the third Hall, near Welshpool, from Monday 5 to Wednes- Saturday in September, and full details of this one day 7 April, Speakers will be include: Professor are available from Dr Richard Hoyle, 13 Parker Michael Thompson; Professor P K O'Brien; Dr Street, Oxford OX4 ITD.