688 ON THE PURCHASING POWER OF WAGES. 



evidence to the fact all the materials were ready for the 

 development of a prosperous yeomanry. 



How rapid that development was is to be seen in the dis- 

 appearance of the stock and land lease within fifty years. 

 Bailiff farming, with a capital of nearly a pound of silver by 

 the acre, was universal before the Plague ; cases of large farm- 

 ing by tenants being very rare and quite exceptional. After 

 this great economical epoch, the wisest landowners adopted 

 the system to which I have so often alluded. By the close of 

 the fourteenth century the tenants had accumulated capital to 

 such an extent, that they were able in most cases to supply 

 stock from their own resources, in many others to purchase land, 

 according to the custom of the time, under fee farm rents. 

 Now it is clear that arable land was not worth more than 

 fifteen years' purchase, and that its rent was worth little more 

 than 6d. an acre. The two carucates possessed by Merton 

 College in the manor of Cuxham are at a maximum rent of ^8, 

 that is, the arable land and the right of pasture. We cannot 

 set the latter at a less annual value than ^2, and it is certain 

 that the two Cuxham carucates contained considerably more 

 than 200 acres. 



Good arable land, then, could be purchased at about 7*. 6d. 

 an acre, and was cultivated at about jg'i an acre. In fifty 

 years, then, the tenant-farmers were able to accumulate, in 

 order to supersede the land and stock lease, not much less than 

 treble the value of the land which they occupied, and this even 

 in despite of somewhat unfavourable times, for agricultural 

 produce was low in the last ten or twenty years of the four- 

 teenth century. Is it wonderful therefore, in the face of these 

 facts, that men who in the early part of that century have no 

 place in the political history of the time, assert their rights 

 with so much vigour in the later part, embrace Lollardism, 

 delight in "Piers Plowman," adopt his style b , inveigh bitterly 

 against the friars and great ecclesiastics, and crowd tumultu- 

 ously' to county elections ? 



b See the Appendix to " Piers Plowman " in Mr. Wright's edition. 



