56 THE ENCLOSURES IN ENGLAND [212 



the beginning and the end of the thirteenth century. A 

 similar reduction in the area planted with all of the other 

 crops, mancorn, rye, barley and oats, took place. A process 

 of selection was going on which eliminated the less fertile 

 land from cultivation. If six bushels an acre was necessary 

 to pay the costs of tillage, land which returned less than six 

 bushels could not be kept under the plow. The six bushel 

 crop which seems to be normal in the fourteenth century is 

 not the average yield of all of that land which had been un- 

 der cultivation at an earlier time, but only of the better 

 grades of land. Plots which had formerly yielded their five 

 or six bushels an acre had become too barren to produce the 

 bare minimum which made tillage profitable, and their pro- 

 duce no longer appeared in the average. Even with the 

 elimination of the worst grades of land the average yield 

 fell, because the better land, too, was becoming less fertile. 

 At Witney (Table V) the area planted with wheat fell from 

 about 180 acres in 1277 to less than 140 acres in 1340; but^ 

 in spite of this reduction in the amount of land cultivated, 

 the average annual yield after 1340 was less than 6j4 

 bushels, while it had been about 8J/2 bushels per acre in the 

 period 1277- 1285. This withdrawal of land from cultiva- 

 tion took place without the occurrence of any such calamity 

 as the Black Death, which is ordinarily mentioned as the 

 cause of the reduction of arable land to pasture in so far 

 as this took place before 1400. It affords an indirect proof 

 of the fact that much land was becoming barren. 



^hese statistical indications of declining productivity of 

 the soil are supported by the overwhelming evidence of the 

 poverty of the fourteenth century peasantry — ^poverty which 

 can be explained only by the barrenness of their land^ Many 

 of the features of the agrarian changes of this period are 

 familiar — ^the substitution of money payments for villain 

 services, the frequency of desertion, the amalgamation and 



