32 THE BREAK-UP OF THE MANOR 



arrable lands." ^ These mediaeval prototypes of " Farmer George," 

 of " Turnip " Townshend, or of Coke of Norfolk were rare. Few 

 of the baronial aristocracy verified the truth of the maxim that 

 "the master's foot fats the soil." The strenuous idleness or the 

 military ardour of youthful lords was generally absorbed in field 

 sports and martial exercises — in tilting at the ring, in hawking, 

 hunting the buck, or lying out for nights together to net the fox. 

 Grown to man's estate, they congregated for a month at a time at 

 " tylts, tumaments, or other hastiludes," or exchanged the mimicry 

 of war for its reahties in France, or on the borders of Scotland and 

 Wales. Most of the lay barons rebelled against the minute and 

 continuous labour of farming, and this contempt for bucolic life 

 may be illustrated from heraldry. Its emblems are drawn from 

 sport, war, mythology, or rehgion. Products and implements of 

 husbandry are despised, unless, hke the " garb " or sheaf of the 

 Washboumes, the scythe of the Sneyds, or the hay-wains of the 

 Hays, they had been ennobled by martial use. 



Few landowners, except the wealthiest, had as yet built per- 

 manent residences on their distant estates. Content with temporary 

 accommodation, they travelled with their households and retinues 

 from manor to manor, and from farmhouse to farmhouse, in order 

 to consume on the spot the produce of their fields and hve-stock. 

 It was the practice of the first Lord Berkeley to go " in progress 

 from one of his Manor and farmehouses to an other scarce two miles 

 a sunder, making his stay at each of them . . . and soe backe to 

 his standinge houses where his wife and family remayned . . . 

 sometymes at Berkeley Castle, at Wotton, at Bradley, at Awre, 

 at Portbury, And usually in Lent at Wike by Arhngham, for his 

 better and neerer provision of Fish." His example was followed 

 by his successors. But in the frequent absences of manorial lords 

 on military service at home or abroad, their wives played important 

 parts in rural life. Joan, wife of the first Lord Berkeley, "at no 

 tyme of her 42 yeares mariage ever travelled ten miles from the 

 mansion houses of her husband in the Countyes of Gloucester and 

 Somersett, much lesse humered herselfe with the vaine deHghts of 

 London and other Cities." She spent much of her time in super- 

 vising her " dairy affairs," passing from farmhouse to farmhouse, 

 taking account of the smallest details. The family tradition 



^ The Lives of the Berkeleys, by John Smyth of Nibley, ed. Maclean (1883), 

 vol. i. p. 300. 



