$4 MEDIEVAL AGRICULTURE. 



freeholder; and Lincoln College was being founded in order 

 to supply a perpetual succession of enemies to the doctrines 

 of Wiklif, (for Fleming had been once a follower of the great 

 reformer, and hated him and his memory and his associates 

 at about the time when he became Bishop of Lincoln, and 

 hated him most heartily when he intrigued to become Arch- 

 bishop of York) : in such a time, the acknowledgment that 

 Wiklif had been one of the fellows of Merton was just that 

 kind of confession which deserves credit. At any rate, the 

 fellows of Merton were popularly called Lollards up to the 

 early part of the eighteenth century. 



Before the great plague the college had leased some of its 

 lands. They let their estate at Ibstone for thirty-five years 

 in 1300, and that of Gamlingay for fourteen years from the 

 same date. Basingstoke was let for twenty-one years from 

 1310; and Wolford had probably been farmed in the same 

 manner, as the earliest bailiff's roll of this estate is in the 

 year 1322, and contains no statement of arrears, one of the 

 most characteristic signs of the commencement of a new 

 system of occupation. The northern estates were let as early 

 as 1280, and the college never farmed on its own account 

 its lands in Leicestershire. 



After the plague most of the lands were let. The wages 

 of labour, despite the restrictions put on them by the statute 

 of 1350, rose so considerably that it was no longer profitable 

 to hold and cultivate by bailiff'. Corn, it is true, was dear, 

 for between the years 1349 and 1376 the average price of 

 wheat was only three times below $s. 6^., whereas in the next 

 twenty-five years it was sixteen times below that amount. 

 But even the high prices of wheat were insufficient to com- 

 pensate the enhanced cost of labour, and the college let its 

 lands on lease, at the best possible terms. 



These leases were peculiar. The stock was let with the 

 land, either in whole or part, the rents being in money or 

 corn. The tenant on the expiry of his lease was bound to 

 return the same amount of seed corn and of live and dead 



