34 MEDIEVAL AGRICULTURE. 



farm the rent was heavy. Malting was carried on in the 

 mill, or in its neighbourhood ; and occasionally it appears 

 that a fine was exacted on such tenants as malted their own 

 barley privately. 



In conclusion, the art of medieval husbandry differs from 

 that of later times by its deficiencies. The land was im- 

 perfectly drained ; the working of the soil was shallow ; the 

 manures employed were limited to stable dung, to lime or 

 marl, and to sheep-dressing. Scanty as the crop was, it seems 

 to have been very exhausting, for half the land, in ordinary 

 cases, lay in fallow. Roots and artificial grasses were un- 

 known. Such crops as were obtained, scanty as they were 

 in amount, were not procured except at large relative ex- 

 pense, and any notable addition to the wages of labour or 

 the cost of production so greatly diminished the value of 

 land as to cause a revolution in its tenure. The rent of 

 land, since it rises and falls as the cost of production dimin- 

 ishes or increases, was very low, and could not be increased 

 except by such improvements in the cost of agriculture as 

 were very distant from the experience of that time. 



It is probable that in such parts of England as were, for 

 the resources of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, fully 

 peopled, not much less land was regularly under the plough 

 than at present. It is true that the system of fallows was ne- 

 cessarily practised ; and it seems that when old pasture land 

 of indifferent quality was broken up, it was exhausted for 

 some time by a single crop, and was forthwith returned to 

 pasture. But there is even now abundant evidence of an- 

 cient culture in lands which have time out of mind been 

 used as pasture. Wherever ridge and furrow are seen in 

 pasture, there the land has been, at some time or the other, 

 under the plough ; and, as is well known, the marks of such 

 culture are exceedingly permanent, indeed can be effaced 

 only at great cost. So, much land on the Southdowns, which 

 has not borne grain crops in the memory of man, retains 

 unmistakeable traces of ancient cultivation. The exigencies 



