8 THE MANORIAL SYSTEM 



the labourers, such as the reeve, the hayw^ard, the head-reaper, 

 and the granger. But with the thirteenth century begins the 

 practice of keeping estate accounts, in which the amount and cash 

 values of the labour services are entered. Thus the uncertainty 

 of villein-tenure was modified, and the means were prepared for 

 commuting obhgations to work into their money equivalents. 

 Already the causes were operating which hastened the process, and 

 changed agriculture from a self-sufficing industry into a commercial 

 system of farming for profit. Population was increasing ; trade 

 was growing ; urban classes, divorced from rural pursuits, were 

 forming ; means of communication were improving ; money taxes 

 took the place of personal services ; the standard of hving rose ; 

 ^ coin was needed, not only to meet the demands of the government, 

 y but to buy the luxuries of more civihsed life. 



The obhgations of the peasantry to cultivate the demesne varied, 

 not only with local customs, but with the seasons. Their most 

 important services were the autumnal, Lenten, and summer plough- 

 ings on the three fields, into which the arable land of the demesne 

 was generally divided. The crops grown were, as winter seeds, 

 wheat and rye, and, as spring seeds, oats, barley, beans, peas, or 

 vetches. In smaller quantities, flax, hemp, and saffron were locally 

 raised in separate plots. Roots, clover and artificial grasses were 

 still unknown. Rotations of crops, as they are now understood, were 

 therefore impossible. The soil was rested by fallowing the one- 

 half, or the one-third, of the arable land required by the two or 

 the three course system. Red rivet, or a lost white variety, was 

 then recommended for wheat-sowing on light land, red or white 

 pollard for heavy soils, " gray " wheat for clays. But on the 

 tenants' land , rye was the chief grain crop. It is the hardiest, 

 grows on the poorest soils, makes the toughest straw. Rye was then 

 the bread-stuff of the English peasantry, as it still is in Northern 

 Europe. The flour of wheat and rye were often mixed together, 

 and bread made in this form was called " maslin." ^ It retained 

 its moisture longer than pure wheaten bread, and, as Fjnes Moryson 



^ Lat. mixtilio ; " mestilon," anon, author of Hosebonderie (thirteenth 

 century) ; " miscellin," Harrison (sixteenth centurj'-) ; " massledine," Henry 

 Best (1641); " mashelson," Yorkshire (1797). In The Compleat Farmer 

 (1760) it is called " niaislen " ; but the writer says that it is " ill husbandry 

 to grow wheat and rye together." Fitzherbert (1523) recommends rye and 

 wheat to be sown together as the surest crop to grow and good for the husband- 

 man's household. But he does not believe in the slowness of rye in ripening. 



