CHAPTER III 



FOURTEENTH AND FIFTEENTH CENTURIES 



" And in the gardin at the sonne uprist 

 She walketh up and down wher as hire list 

 She gatliereth floures, party whyte and reede 

 To make a sotil garland for hire heede." 



Chaucer: Knight's Tale. 



GREAT changes were taking place in England during the 

 latter half of the fourteenth and beginning of the following 

 century. Trades and industries increased, and in hke manner 

 horticulture revived. During the years which had passed 

 since the Norman Conquest, the conquerors and conquered had 

 become welded into one nation, and this had not been effected 

 peacefully. Now a period opens when the battles were being 

 fought on foreign soil, while the nation was enjoying compara- 

 tive peace at home. In the country itself, the poorer sections 

 of the community were gradually asserting their rights against 

 the lords of the soil. There was a class growing up, of farmers 

 who farmed lands, merely paying some yearly tribute in service 

 or in kind to their overlord. Round these small farms and 

 manors, gardens and orchards were planted, and thus it can be 

 seen how such movements would affect the progress of gardening. 

 From incidental references in writings of the time it appears 

 that the poorer classes lived chiefly on vegetables, as the fol- 

 lowing quotations from Langland serve to show : 



" Alle the pore peple pesecoddes fetten^ 

 Benes and baken apples thei brou5te in her lappes 

 ChiboUes and cheruelles and ripe chiries manye."- 



Again, he says the poor folk 



" With grene poret and pesen to poysonn hunger thei thought."^ 



^ Fetch. - Piers Plowman. ^ Ibid. 



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