52 AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS 



households.* Markets where men might be confident of obtaining 

 money for their wares, or of obtaining wares for their money, were 

 scarcely known. 1 



E. The Agrarian Revolution 



ii. THE DECLINE OF FEUDALISM AND THE IMPROVEMENT 

 OF AGRICULTURE 2 



BY ROWLAND E. PROTHERO 



Under the condition which prevailed in the fourteenth and fif- 

 teenth centuries, little advance in farming practices could be expected. 

 Few of the baronial aristocracy verified the truth of the maxim that 

 "the master's foot fats the soil." The strenuous idleness or the mili- 

 tary ardours of youthful lords were generally absorbed in field sports 

 and martial exercises: most of the lay barons rebelled against the 

 minute and continuous labour of farming. . 



There was little to mitigate either for men or beasts the horrors 

 of winter scarcity. On land which was inadequately manured, and 

 on which neither field-turnips nor clovers were known till centuries 

 later, there could be no middle course between the exhaustion of 

 continuous cropping and the rest-cure of barrenness. As with the 

 land, so with its products. Famine trod hard upon the heels of feast- 

 ing. Both for men and beasts the absolute scarcity of winter always 

 succeeded the relative plenty of autumn. 



But with the decay of feudalism land came to be regarded as a 

 source of income, not of military power. As landowning became a 

 business and farming a trade, agricultural progress demanded less 

 personal dependence, a freer hand, a larger scope of individual enter- 

 prise. 



With the dawn of the Tudor period began the general movement 

 which gradually transformed England into a mercantile country. On 



1 A recent writer (Gras, Evolution of the English Corn Market} has taken a 

 somewhat different view of the economic position of the manor. He is interested 

 in tracing even the most remote beginnings of market relations, and finds that 

 such contacts were established at an earlier period in the history of the manor 

 than has been generally supposed. But even if we concede that the isolation of 

 the manor has been overemphasized in some degree by Prothero and Ashley, it 

 still remains true that its activities were but slightly commercialized as 

 measured by modern standards. EDITOR. 



2 Adapted from English Farming, Past and Present, pp. 32-35, 55-57. (Cop)'- 

 right by Longmans, Green, & Co., London. Used by permission of the publisher.) 



