MEDIEVAL AGRICULTURE. 21 



to ^17. There must also be reckoned the money-wages of 

 labour, the allowances to servants, the cost of wear and tear, 

 especially in tools and agricultural implements, and the 

 charges of the harvest, besides a variable sum for insurance 

 or loss, no inconsiderable item, as the reader will observe by 

 glancing at the annual deaths by murrain, the generic name 

 for all fatal diseases and accidents to live stock. 



On the other hand, there are items, cheese, butter and 

 eggs, wool, fuel and fagots, and the increase of stock by 

 breeding, which swell the receipts. The profit on growing 

 corn must, owing to the exceedingly meagre return to the 

 seed, have been very small, and the advantages obtained by 

 the medieval agriculturist can only have been derived from 

 the returns of his farm stock. As we proceed, we shall find 

 reason to believe, that while the cost of corn, owing to the 

 low rate of production, was high, and the price necessarily 

 considerable, the market value of all other farm produce, wool 

 and hides excepted, was singularly low, and obtainable in 

 plenty by the general community. In these times, I con- 

 clude, the culture of the soil for corn crops was a necessity 

 and not an advantage; and the general distribution of land 

 drove the greater proprietors to such kinds of cultivation as 

 would not have been before them except under such circum- 

 stances, and which were abandoned when the practical inde- 

 pendence of all landowners led them in the sixteenth century 

 to extensive sheep farming b . 



The value of timber, and especially fuel, was comparatively 

 high. Periodical sales were made of the larger trees, and 

 a portion of the underwood, fit for hurdles or fagots, was 

 regularly cut every year, as, for instance, at Letherhead and 



b It might be possible to give an estimate of the percentage of profit on agri- 

 culture during the period before us. It is certain that it fell far below the ordinary 

 rate of interest on money. But, as in a state of society like that which existed in 

 the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and indeed for a long time after, rates of 

 profit and interest were not and could not be relative, a calculation as to the amount 

 of the former would only lead to false impressions, and it is better to state the facts 

 of the case only. 



