428 AGRICULTURE. 



ant, and the apple trees, it is said, lined the roads in some parts 

 of the country, as they still do in Normandy, whence, in all 

 probability, the plants, or at least the grafts, were imported. 



Agriculture in Britain from the Thirteenth Century to 

 the Time of Henry VIII. Agriculture in the thirteenth and 

 fourteenth centuries, it appears, was still carried on with vigor. 

 Sir John Fortescue, in a work in praise of the English laws, 

 mentions the progress that had been made in planting hedges 

 and hedge-row trees, before the end of the fourteenth century. 

 Judge Fortescue wrote his "De Laudibus Legum Anglke " in 

 the fifteenth century, but it was not published till the reign of 

 Henry VIII. In the law book called " Fleta," supposed to have 

 been written by some lawyers, prisoners in the Fleet, in 1340, 

 very particular directions are given as to the most proper times 

 and best manner of plowing and dressing fallows. The farmer is 

 there directed to plow no deeper in summer than is necessary 

 for destroying the weeds, nor to lay on his manure till a little 

 before the last plowing, which is to be with a deep and narrow 

 furrow. Rules are also given for the changing and choosing of 

 seed ; for proportioning the quantity of different kinds of seed 

 to be sown on an acre, according to the nature of the soil and 

 the degree of richness ; for collecting and compounding manures, 

 and accommodating them to the grounds on which they are to 

 be laid ; for the best seasons for sowing seeds of different kinds 

 on all the varieties of soil ; and, in a word, for performing 

 every operation in husbandry, at the best time and in the best 

 manner. In the same work, the duties of the steward, bailiff, 

 and overseer of a manor, and all other persons concerned in the 

 cultivation of it, are explained at full length, and with so much 

 good sense that, if they were well performed, the manor could 

 not be ill cultivated. This work, as well as others of the kind, 

 is written in Latin, and even the farming accounts in those 

 days were kept in that language, as they are still in the greater 

 part of Hungary. 



During the greater part of the fifteenth century, England 

 was engaged in civil wars, and agriculture, as well as other -arts, 

 declined. The laborers, called from the plow by royal procla- 

 mation or the mandates of their lords, perished in battle, or by 

 accident and fatigue, in immense numbers. Labor rose in price, 



