SOCIAL AND DOMESTIC ECONOMY. 121 



minute. It will be remembered also, that the evidence which 

 I am able to give of prices and agriculture does not reach 

 the smaller tenants. We know how the bailiff of Ibstone or 

 Cuxharri cultivated the soil, and can recall, by no great effort 

 of imagination or association, the clumsy horses, the ill-shaped 

 cattle, and the rude plough with which he scratched the ground. 

 But we know nothing of the spade husbandry of the time. 

 This instrument is never mentioned in the accounts. There 

 is nothing by which we can guess whether the small freeholder 

 secured a larger return for his labour than the bailiff could 

 shew to his lord. The former was probably greater, for in 

 the contest of the two systems the one succumbed, the other 

 prospered, shortly after the change which ensued upon the 

 visitation of the Black Death. But it is not likely, even if 

 the small system of holding was more productive than the large 

 farming, that the difference was considerable. 



Among the documents printed at the end of the second 

 volume will be found a record of the charges incurred at the 

 Determination Feast of Richard , the son of Thomas Holand, 

 Earl of Kent. It would seem that at this time, at least, it 

 was a practice to send the sons of the chief nobility to the 

 Universities for their education, and that such persons were 

 understood to pass the exercises necessary for graduation. 

 There is a tradition that Henry of Monmouth, afterwards 

 Henry V, was an inmate of Queen's College. 



The Determination Feast, that is, the festival following the 

 assumption of the Bachelor's degree, generally took place on 

 Shrove Tuesday, when the parties who claimed admission to 

 the lowest academical rank were presented to the University 

 authorities. The custom existed in its integrity till the 

 beginning of the present century, and some of the forms 

 connected with the older ceremony are even now retained. 



On the present occasion the great social position of the 

 candidate for degree led to a feast of exceptional magnitude 



I can find no record of this son of the Earl of Kent elsewhere. 



