THE DEGRADING OF THE PEOPLE 29 



(5) 25,000 slaves, almost all of whom were to be 

 found south of a line running from the mouth of the 

 Wash to the north of Hereford, the area in which, 800 

 years later, the worst paid and worst housed labourers 

 were to be found. 



Domesday Book could hardly have covered the 

 ground completely, and it will not be an excessive 

 estimate to suggest that there were 300,000 heads of 

 families living in the area under consideration. These 

 heads of families must have represented as many as 

 900,000 individuals working on the land, for wives and 

 children would certainly have taken their share in the 

 labour. This, it is interesting to know, does not greatly 

 differ from the number of persons engaged in agriculture 

 in the same area at the present day. 



The amount of land under cultivation is not clearly 

 given and cannot be stated with any certainty ; but 

 some authorities think that there were 9 million acres 

 of land under the plough, of which less than two-thirds 

 would bear crops in any one year. At the present 

 time there are about 10 million acres of arable in 

 the same counties. There was, in addition, meadow 

 land, perhaps a million acres in all, and a large area 

 of pasture commons and of woods and wastes. In 

 the same counties there are found to-day, some 

 12 million acres of pasture and meadow land. 



It is easy, with the help of Domesday Book, to 

 picture the Normans busily engaged in the reconstruc- 

 tion of English country life, throwing estates together, 

 adjusting boundaries, and thus forming, wherever 

 possible, convenient units, and then collecting into 

 the hands of the owners of those units the control of 

 justice, of markets, and of other similar rights. 



