14 Notes and Sketches. 



There are examples as early as the 1 3th century * of 

 a land tenure, and regulations of the kind just indicated. 

 It has been truly enough said that the Church in those 

 early times was the great cultivator of the land as well 

 as the great improver of the arts. While the rude 

 unlettered barons devoted much of their energies to 

 breaking each other's skulls and despoiling each other's 

 possessions, the monks, so long as they continued to be 

 men of moral lives and simple tastes, promoted husbandry 

 to very good purpose, both as actual cultivators and as 

 good and merciful landlords. The complete agri- 

 cultural economy under and in connection with the 

 monastery would consist, first, of the grange or farm- 

 stead, where were gathered the cattle, implements, stores, 

 and so on, required in the cultivation of the land ; as 

 well as the serfs, or carles, who did the actual work, 

 and their families. The whole would be overlooked by 

 a lay brother, who rendered his accounts to the cellarer 

 of the monastery. Outside the grange there dwelt the 

 " cottars," each with a little bit of land, for which he 

 paid some money rent, with certain services in seedtime 

 and harvest. Beyond these again lived the " husband- 

 men," of whom we have heard, who paid each half a- 

 merk in money rent, with a variety of personal services, 

 including four days' reaping in harvest of the man, his 

 wife, and all their children ; carrying home a certain 

 quantity of peats yearly at the fitting season, and so 

 forth. 



The agriculture of the fourteenth and fifteenth 

 centuries was prosecuted with more success and intelli- 

 gence, all things considered, than we are apt to imagine. 

 Various enactments of the Scottish Parliament in the 

 fifteenth century indicate an enlightened and earnest 

 regard for the interests of the cultivator. Leases in 

 some sort date from the fourteenth century ; and we 

 find an Act of James II. (1449) conferring a. tenant 



* Rental of Monastery of Kelso, 1200. Legal Antiq. 



