RELATIONS BETWEEN LANDLORDS AND TENANTS 329 



In the Norfolk leases the greater number of the covenants 

 which restrict the farmer in his operations pertain to the last 

 three years of the tenancy. This was true to a greater or less 

 extent in the other counties where long-term leases were in use. 

 This method of laying down restrictions seems to have been 

 based on the belief that the interest of the tenant would lead 

 him to farm in accordance with the rules of good husbandry until 

 the last few years of the tenancy, at which time he could increase 

 his own profits by exhausting the soil and leaving the farm in 

 bad condition for the incoming tenant. 



We wish to call especial attention to a covenant given by 

 Marshall as found in the Norfolk leases, which forbids the taking 

 of more than two grain crops without a whole year's fallow, a 

 crop of turnips, or " a two years' lay." Writing nine years 

 later than Marshall (1804), Arthur Young gives the following 

 clause among " new covenants " in use in the county of Norfolk. 

 The tenant " shall not sow any of the lands with two successive 

 crops of corn, grain, pulse, rape or turnips for seed," * without 

 the consent of the landlord. The rule that two grain crops 

 should not be grown in succession on the same piece of land 

 became an established custom in most of the grain-growing 

 districts of England. This rule was in harmony with the 

 Norfolk four-course system of crop rotation. In this four- 

 course system, a fallow crop, that is a cultivated crop, usually 

 a root crop, is followed by a crop of spring grain with which 

 clover or grass seeds are sown. After harvesting the hay the 

 next season, the field is plowed and put into condition for fall 

 grain which is the fourth crop in the course. For more than a 

 century this system has been the most highly approved of all 

 systems of crop rotation in use in England. This same system 

 was introduced into Germany by Albrecht Thaer. 



A study of the leases in use in the various counties of England 

 at the close of the eighteenth century does not give so favorable 

 an impression as do the descriptions of the Norfolk system. 

 The limitations and restrictions as to the crops which could be 

 grown, and as to the system of crop rotation, were often of 



1 "Agriculture of Norfolk," p. 50. 



