CONTENTS 



CHAPTER I. 

 THE MANORIAL SYSTEM OF FARMING. 



Virgin soils : traces of sites of early villages : " wild field-grass " husbandry ; 

 the permanent division of pasture from tillage ; manors and trade-guilds ; 

 origin of manors ; the thirteenth century manor and village ; divisions 

 of land according to differences of tenure ; villages isolated and self- 

 sufficing ; importance of labour-rents in the economy of a manor ; the 

 cultivation of the demesne ; the crops grown ; the live-stock ; miscel- 

 laneous produce ; the manorial courts : the social grades among the 

 villagers ; the system of open-field farming ; the arable land ; the meadows ; 

 the hams ; the pasture commons ; the prevalence and permanence of 

 the open-field system ; the domestic industries of the village. Pp. 1-30 



CHAPTER II. 

 THE BREAK-UP OF THE MANOR. 1300-1485. 



Great landlords as farmers : horrors of winter scarcity : gradual decay of 

 the manorial system and the increased struggle for life : aspects of the 

 change : common rights over cultivated and uncultivated land : tendency 

 towards separate occupation : substitution of labour-rents for money- 

 rents ; the Black Death ; Labour legislation, and its effect ; Manor of 

 Castle Combe and Berkeley Estates ; new relations of landlords and 

 tenants substituted for old relations of feudal lords and dependents ; 

 tenant-farmers and free labourers ; leases and larger farms ; increase of 

 separate occupations : William Paston and Hugh Latimer ; wage-earning 

 labourers ; voluntary surrender of holdings ; freedom of movement and 

 of contract. Pp. 31-54 



CHAPTER III. 



FARMING FOR PROFIT: PASTURE AND SHEEP- 

 GRAZING. 1485-1558. 



The passing of the Middle Ages : enclosures in the sixteenth and eighteenth 

 centuries compared ; the commercial impulse and its results ; conversion 



