197] ^^^ PRICE OF WOOL 41 



the fourteenth century pastures were being plowed up. At 

 Holway, 1 376-1 377, three plots of land which had been 

 pasture were converted to arable/ In this period much 

 land was withdrawn from cultivation. The explanation 

 usually advanced by historians for the conversion of arable 

 to pasture at this time is that the scarcity of labor since the 

 Black Death (a quarter of a century before) made it im- 

 possible to cultivate the land as extensively as when wages 

 were low, or when serf labor was available. If this is the 

 whole case, it is difficult to account for the conversion to 

 arable of land already pasture. Other factors than the sup- 

 posed scarcity of labor were involved; land in good condi- 

 tion, such as the plots of pasture at Holway, repaid cultiva- 

 tion, but the yield was too low on land exhausted by cen- 

 turies of cultivation to make tillage profitable. 



In the sixteenth century, also, the restoration of cultiva- 

 tion on land which had formerly been converted from arable 

 to pasture was going on. Fitzherbert devotes several chap- 

 ters of his treatise on surveying to a discussion of the 

 methods of amending " ley grounde, the whiche hath ben 

 errable lande of late," (ch. 2y) and " bushy ground and 

 mossy that hath ben errable lande of olde time " (ch. 28). 

 This land should be plowed and sown, and it will produce 

 much grain, " with littell dongynge, and sow it no lengar 

 tha it will beare plentye of corne, withoute donge ", and 

 then lay it down to grass again. Tusser also describes this 

 use of land alternately as pasture and arable.' A farmer 

 on one of the manors of William, First Earl of Pembroke, 

 had an enclosed field in 1567, which afforded pasture for 

 900 sheep as well as an unspecified number of cattle, " qui 



1 Levett and Ballard, The Black Death, p. 129. 



2 C/. infra, p. 82. 



