CHAPTER III. 



FOURTEENTH AND FIFTEENTH CENTURIES. 



" And in the gardin at the sonne uprist 

 She walketh up and down wher as hire Hst 

 She gathereth floures, party whyte and reede 

 To make a sotil gerland for hire heede." 



Chaucer, Knight's Tale. 



(~^ REAT changes were taking place in England during the 

 ^-^ latter half of the fourteenth, and beginning of the following, 

 century. Trades and industries increased, and in like manner 

 horticulture revived. During the years which had passed since 

 the Norman Conquest, the conquerors and conquered had 

 become welded into one nation, and this had not been effected 

 peacefully. But we now come to a period when the battles 

 were being fought on foreign soil, while the nation was enjoying 

 comparative peace at home. In the country itself, the poorer 

 sections of the community were gradually asserting their rights 

 against the lords of the soil. There was a class growing up, 

 of farmers who farmed lands, merely paying some yearly tribute 

 in service, or in kind, to their overlord. Round these small 

 farms and manors, gardens and orchards were planted, and 

 thus it can be seen how such movements would affect the 

 progress of gardening. 



From incidental references in writings of the time it appears 

 that the poorer classes lived chiefly on vegetables, as the following 

 quotations from Langland serve to show : 



" Alle the pore peple pesecoddes fetten * 

 Benes and baken apples thei brou^te in her lappes 

 Chibolles and cheruelles and ripe chiries manye." f 



Again, he says, the poor folk 



" With grene poret and pesen to poysonn hunger thei thought." % 



* Fetch. -f Piers PhitgJniiaii. ij: /6/(/. 



