]7 



CHAPTER II. 



FARMING FOR PROFIT. 



The end of the wars of the Roses synchronised with 

 social and commercial changes which produced the first 

 great agricultural crisis. Up to the Tudor period the mass 

 of English land was tilled upon the plan already described, 

 which foreign legislators of the nineteenth century found 

 to be still prevalent on the Continent. Without discuss- 

 ing further the origin of manorial rights, it may be 

 repeated that at the Norman Conquest the feudal manors 

 were superimposed upon agrarian communities. Hence- 

 forward the land was divided into the private demesne of 

 the lord of the manor, the lord's wastes, and the tene- 

 mental land of the association. Rights of common were 

 exercised not only over the commons, the soil of which 

 was now vested in the feudal lord, but by each party re- 

 spectively over the land of the other. If the lord of the 

 manor farmed the demesne himself, his land was subject to 

 the rights of common exercised over it by the manorial 

 tenantry. If he farmed his demesne as a modern landlord, 

 he multiplied retainers by letting it out in small portions 

 to farmers who were often holders at the same time of 

 tenemental land. If he threw the demesne into the com- 

 mon stock, he made himself a partner in the joint venture 

 of the agrarian association. Demesne and commonable 

 land was intermixed and cultivated in minute strips. So 



c 



