424 AGRICULTURE. 



beginning of the eighth century, a farm consisting of ten hides, 

 or plow-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. The greatest part of 

 the crown-lands, in every country, was farmed in this manner, 

 by farmers who, in general, appear to have been freemen and 

 soldiers. 



Very little is known of the implements or operations of hus- 

 bandry, during this period. In one of Strutt's plates of ancient 

 dresses, entitled "Saxon Rarities of the Eighth Century," may 

 be seen a picture of a plow and a plowman. The plow is suffi- 

 ciently rude, although it has evidently undergone some improve- 

 ment from the hand of the delineator. The laborers were no 

 doubt slaves, and the animals of draught, oxen. The lands 

 belonging to the monasteries were by far the best cultivated, 

 because the secular canons who possessed them spent much of 

 their time in cultivating their own lands. The venerable Bede, 

 in his life of Esterwin, Abbot of Weremouth, tells us that " this 

 abbot, being a strong man and of humble disposition, used to 

 assist his monks in their rural labors, sometimes guiding the 

 plow by its stilt or handle, sometimes .winnowing grain, and 

 sometimes forging instruments of husbandry with a hammer, 

 upon an anvil ; for in those times the husbandmen were under 

 a necessity of making many implements of husbandry with their 

 own hands." 



Agriculture in Britain after the Norman Conquest, or from 

 the Eleventh to the Thirteenth Centuries. -- That the con- 

 quest of England by the Normans contributed to the improve- 

 ment of agriculture, is undeniable ; for, by that event, many 

 thousands of husbandmen from the fertile and well-cultivated 

 plains of Flanders, France, and Normandy, settled in this island, 

 obtained estates or farms, and employed the same methods in 

 the cultivation of them that they had used in their native coun- 

 tries. Some of the Norman barons were great improvers of their 

 lands, and are celebrated in history for their skill in agriculture. 

 " Richard de Rulos, Lord of Brienne and Deepiny," says Ingul- 

 phus, "was much addicted to agriculture, and delighted in 



