2 INTRODUCTORY'. 



the plan immediately on the occurrence of their difficulties 

 in the middle of the fourteenth century. Others struggled on 

 till the end of the first quarter of the fifteenth century. But 

 in the end, all the great landowners conformed to the inevit- 

 able change, and let their land on short leases, and as a rule 

 at low and almost fixed rents, to capitalist farmers. 



There was only one exception to this custom. Some of the 

 corporations, especially the greater monasteries, appear to have 

 kept in their own hands, and to have cultivated with their own 

 capital, one or two of those estates which they possessed in the 

 immediate neighbourhood of their convents. Thus the abbey 

 of Battle retained Apuldrum and Lullington as home farms, 

 the produce of which is regularly sold to the corporation, the 

 price being credited to the bailiff. Fortunately the series of 

 these accounts is nearly unbroken during the time that the 

 practice lasted, i.e. till about the middle of Edward the Fourth's 

 reign. In the same way the monastery of Sion retained as a 

 home farm its estate at Isleworth, though unluckily only a very 

 few of the Isleworth accounts have been preserved. But with 

 these exceptions, (and I am persuaded that the exceptions were 

 rare,) the landowner invariably let his estates to tenant 

 farmers, and generally to very numerous tenants. The bailiff's 

 account ceases to be a register of produce and of the sale of 

 produce, and becomes a mere rent-roll. Hence the greater 

 part of the evidence which I have collected in these volumes, 

 unlike the facts of the first which were published, is of purchase, 

 not of sale. 



The effects were still more marked in the case of the land- 

 owner. In the first place, he ceased to have that stake in the 

 country which his ancestors had, a stake which made him above 

 all anxious to maintain the King's peace. He became a mere 

 landlord, subsisting on his rents, and not interested in the pro- 

 duce of the soil, except as a consumer. There arc indeed 

 instances to be found, in which the great landowner was also 

 an extensive trader, and apparently sometimes a grower on 

 a very large scale of some particular produce. This kind of 



