58 HISTORY OF AGRICULTURE 



of the lease. 1 There is a lease 2 of a subsequent date (the 

 twentieth year of Henry VIII), but one which well illustrates 

 the custom now so prevalent, granted by the Prior of the 

 Monastery of Lathe in Somerset to William Pole of Combe, 

 Edith his wife, and Thomas his son, for their lives. With the 

 land went 360 wethers. For the land they paid 16 quarters 

 of best wheat, 'purelye thressyd and wynowed,' 22 quarters 

 of best barley, and were to carry 4 loads of wood and fatten 

 one ox for the prior yearly ; the ox to be fattened in stall 

 with the best hay, the only way then known of fattening 

 oxen. For the flock of wethers they paid 6 yearly. The 

 tenants were bound to keep hedges, ditches, and gates in 

 repair. Also they were bound by a ' writing obligatory ' in 

 the sum of 100 to deliver up the wether flock whole and 

 sound, 'not rotten, banyd, 3 nor otherwise diseased.' The 

 consequence of the spread of leases was that the portion 

 of the demesne lands which the lords farmed themselves 

 dwindled greatly, or it was turned from arable into grass. 

 Stock and land leases survived in some parts till the begin- 

 ning of the eighteenth century, when it was still the custom 

 for the landlord to stock the land and receive half the crop for 

 rent. 4 According to the Domesday of S.Paul, in the thirteenth 

 century, a survey of eighteen manors containing 24,000 acres 

 showed three-eighths of the land in demesne, the rest in the 

 hands of the tenants. In 1359 the lord of the principal manor 

 at Hawsted held in his own hand 572 acres of arable land, 

 worth 4d. to 6d. an acre rent, and 50 acres of meadow, worth 

 2J. an acre. 5 He had also pasture for 24 cows, which was 



1 Cullum, Hawsted, p. 195. 



2 Cunningham, Industry and Commerce, i. 586. 



3 Banyd, afflicted with sheep rot. 



4 Eden, State of the Poor, i. 55. 



5 Cullum, Hawsted, p. 182. Another instance of the difference in value 

 between arable and tillage. At the inquisition of the Manor of Great Tey 

 in Essex, 1326, the jury found that 500 acres of arable land was worth 6a. 

 an acre rent, 20 acres of meadow 3^. an acre, and 10 acres of pasture is. 

 an acre. Archaeologia, xii. 30. 



