The Dissolution of the Monasteries. 273 



Even on soils that did not belong to the clergy, ecclesiastical 

 influence must have been at work. The agriculture of the 

 neighbouring Church lands would be closely watched and imi- 

 tated by the lay farmers. Advice would be solicited from and 

 often projSfered by the monastic husbandmen ; and even a right 

 to interfere could be claimed by those whose tithe charge gave 

 them a stake in the layman's industrial efficiency. But if 

 further evidence of Church influence be needed, it is afforded 

 by the general use of saints' days to denote the dates of all 

 agricultural operations. The year began on Lady Day ; it was 

 Hoketide when fallows should be broken up ; Martinmas was 

 the day for slaughtering the winter's meat ; from the feast of 

 St. Luke to Holy Cross day were the inclusive dates for shelter- 

 ing in stalls the most valuable livestock. The most important 

 commercial transaction of the year, the fair, was fixed on the 

 anniversary of the local saint's day, Eogationtide (a custom 

 originating in France during the fifth century) was the period 

 of the " gauging " or beating the parish rounds, which im- 

 pressed the public mind with the sacredness of proprietary 

 rights, the principles of Grod's fee,^ and the necessity for invok- 

 ing God's blessing on man's labour ; finally, harvest was con- 

 sidered incomplete without the solemn assembly round the 

 village cross for purposes of prayer and praise. Even to this 

 day there is an echo of these old and pious observances. Thus 

 the chief rent days are more recognised as Lady-day and 

 Michaelmas than the particular dates in March and September 

 when these events occur. 



There is little doubt that almost every one of the thirteenth- 

 century manuscripts, to which in an earlier part of this work 

 we had occasion to refer, was the result of ecclesiastical pens, 

 and the Latin law book Fleta, said to have been written by a 

 judge imprisoned in the Fleet about 1290, contains so much 

 valuable advice on the management of land, the cultivation 

 of crops, the use of manures, and the sowing of seeds, that 

 it is more natural to attribute it to a monkish source. Then, 

 too, there is the translation of Palladius, an anonymous manu- 



^ The cyriesceat and tithe were due at Eogationtide. Brand, Popular 

 Antiquities. 



