TNTKODUCTION xix 



II. 



THE EELATION OF THESE TEEATISES. 



The four treatises which are included in this volume 

 have many interesting points of connexion ; they contain 

 practical hints set forth by practical men to assist others in 

 the management of their affairs ; they deal simply with 

 matters of ordinary experience. Nor do the authors 

 attempt to follow and apply the principles of any classical 

 authority ; it is a genuine effort to put on record the un- 

 written wisdom of the time. Hence they represent a fresh 

 and genuine literary effort of certain Englishmen who wrote 

 about agriculture in a thoroughly English spirit. Frag- 

 ments of English speech crop up here and there, and give a 

 sufficient flavour of our soil, but the whole dialect is the 

 Anglicised Norman French, of which few prose specimens 

 survive outside the Statute Book. Offensive as it is to 

 the eye of a French scholar, the language clearly indicates 

 the insular origin of the treatises which employ it. 



While these treatises are thus similar, and while they 

 to some extent overlap, they also serve to supplement one 

 another, as the precise object is different in each case. The 

 treatise of Walter of Henley is a survey of each of the de- 

 partments of rural economy in turn ; ploughing and harrow- 

 ing and other operations come within his view ; he gives 

 suggestions to enable the lord to avoid the leakage which 

 occurs so easily when there is no careful supervision, and 

 his treatise supposes that the lord would look into every- 

 thing himself. It is rightly entitled Husbandry, not 

 because it has to do with tillage, but because it shows 

 how he may husband his resources and manage thriftily. 



The anonymous Husbandry is primarily concerned 

 with the estate accounts ; it advises the traditional policy 

 of rendering the estate as self- sufficient as possible, but it 

 describes how the accounts should be kept and passed, 

 while it gives rough estimates which may enable the lord to 

 check the rates at which the bailiff calls on him to pay. 



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