CHAPTER II. 



AGRICULTURE IN THE FIFTEENTH AND SIXTEENTH 

 CENTURIES. 



THE information as to produce and prices which was sup- 

 plied in the first and second volumes of my History was mainly 

 obtained from the records of actual production, and was illus- 

 trated by Walter de Henley's work on the subject. This work, 

 written in the thirteenth century, was undoubtedly a text-book 

 for many generations, and was probably a common manuscript, 

 for the second copy of the book, which the Bodleian Library 

 possesses, is in the handwriting of the fifteenth century, and 

 was evidently intended as a cheap manual for practical use. It 

 it obvious that popular manuals are always worn out, and 

 therefore survive by accident. 



The information contained in the present volumes, unlike 

 that in the first and second, is mainly obtained from purchases. 

 In the early years farm accounts have been found in tolerable 

 plenty, and some few among the greater monasteries kept cer- 

 tain home farms in their hands, for the purpose of domestic 

 supply. But during the last quarter of the fifteenth century 

 and onwards, this source of information completely ceases, with 

 the exception of a little information derived from Isle worth, 

 almost all the facts being taken from purchases by corpora- 

 tions, such as the monasteries and the Colleges of Oxford and 

 Cambridge. There is therefore no evidence of a direct cha- 

 racter as to the process of agriculture and the progress of the 



