x<, 



HISTORY OF AGRICULTURE. 



Part I. 



U'.iliii <c, passim.) Prom these laws ire learn, among many other particulars which need 

 not be mentioned, dial ill the cattle ofa village, though belonging to different owners, were 

 pastured together in one herd, under the direction of one person 'with proper assistants) ; 

 vrbose oath, in all disputes about the cattle under his care, was decisive. 



198. By one of these laics, they were prohibited from ploughing with horses, mares, or cows, 

 and restricted to oven. | Leges WuUicce, p. 288.) Their ploughs seem to have been very 

 ■light and inartificial : for it was enacted that no man should undertake to guide a plough, 

 who could not make one ; and that the driver should make the ropes with which it was 

 drawn of twisted willows. [Ibid., p. 283.) 1 knee the names still in use of ridge-withy, 

 wanly or womb-t\e, whipping-trees, tail-withes. &C But slight as these ploughs were, 

 it was usual for six <.r eight persons to form themselves into a society for fitting out one of 

 them, and providing it with oxen, and every thing necessary for ploughing; and many 

 minute and curious Ian 9 w ere made for the regulation of such societies. This is B sufficient 

 proof both of the poverty of the husbandmen, and of the imperfect state of agriculture 

 among the ancient Britons in this period. 



199. Certain privileges were allowed to any person who laid dung on a field, cut down a 

 wood, or folded his cattle on another's land for a year. . Such was the state of agriculture 

 during this period in Wales ; it was probably in a still more imperfect state among the 

 Scots and l'icts, but this we have no means of ascertaining. 



•JOO. Our Anglo-Saxon ancestors derived their origin and manners from the ancient 

 Germans, who were not much addicted to agriculture, but depended chiefly on their 

 Hocks and herds for their subsistence. (Slrabo, 1. vii. ; Ccesar de Belt. Gall., 1. vi.) These 

 restless and haughty warriors esteemed the cultivation of their lands too ignoble and 

 laborious an employment for themselves, and therefore committed it wholly to their 

 women and slaves. {'Tacit, de Morib. German., c. 15.) They were even at pains to con- 

 trive laws to prevent their contracting a taste for agriculture, lest it should render them 

 less fond of arms and warlike expeditions. (Id.,C. 26.) 



•_'U1. The division of landed estates into what are called inlands and outla?ids, originated 

 with the Saxon princes and great men, who, in the division of the conquered lands, ob- 

 tained the largest shares, and are said to have subdivided their territory into two parts, 

 which were so named. The inlands were those which lay most contiguous to the mansion- 

 house of their owner, which he kept in his own immediate possession, and cultivated by 

 his slaves, under the direction of a bailiff, for the purpose of raising provisions for his 

 family. The outlands were those which lay at a greater distance from the mansion- 

 house, and were let to the ceorls or fanners of those times at a certain rent, which was 

 very moderate, and generally paid in kind. (Iie/iqttitv Spehnanniance, p. 12.) 



202. The rent of lands in these times was established by law, and not by the owners of 

 the land. By the laws of Ina, king of the West Saxons, who flourished in the end of 

 the seventh and beginning of the eighth century, a farm consisting of ten hides, or plough 

 lands, was to pay the following rent, viz. ten casks of honey, three hundred loaves of 

 bread, twelve casks of strong ale, thirty casks of small ale, two oxen, ten wethers, ten 

 geese, twenty hens, ten cheeses, one cask of butter, five salmon, twenty pounds of forage, 

 and one hundred eels. (Il'i/kins, Leges Scuon., p. 25.) The greatest part of the crown 

 lands in every county was fanned in this manner by ceorls or farmers, who in general 

 appear to have been freemen and soldiers. 



203. Fiery little is known of the implements 

 or operations of husbandry during this period. 

 1 n one of Strutt's plates of ancient dresses, 

 entitled, Saxon Rarities of the Eighth Cen- 

 tury, may be seen a picture of a plough and 

 ploughman. {Jig. 22.) This is sufficiently 

 rude, though it has evidently undergone some 

 improvement from the art of the delineator. 

 The labourers were no doubt slaves, and the 

 animals of draught, oxen. The lands be- 



Z J *^* : Ji^r 4^U» 



longing to the monasteries were by much the 

 best cultivated ; because the secular canons 

 who po ss essed them spent some part of their 

 time in cultivating their own lands. The venerable Bede, in his life of Easterwin, 

 Abbot of Weremouth, tells us that " This abbot, being a strong man, and of an humble 

 disposition, used to assist his monks in their rural lahours, sometimes guiding the plough 

 by its stilt or handle, sometimes winnowing corn, and sometimes forging instruments 

 of husbandry with a hammer upon an anvil." {Bed<n Hist. Abbat. Weremath., p. 296.) 

 1'or in those times the husbandmen were under a necessity of making many implements 

 of husbandry with their own hands. 



