EARLY PRICES 19 



compare it to an ordinary estate ; for it was a dominion within 

 which the lord had authority over subjects of various ranks ; he 

 was not only a proprietor but a prince with courts of his own, 

 the arbiter of his tenants' rights as well as owner of the land. 



One of the most striking features of the Domesday survey is 

 the large quantity of arable land and the small quantity of 

 meadow, which usually was the only land whence they obtained 

 their hay, for the common pasture cannot often have been 

 mown.^ Indeed, it is difficult to understand how they fed their 

 stock in hard winters. 



According to the returns, in many counties more acres 

 were ploughed in 1086 than to-day; in some twice as much. 

 In Somerset in 1086 there were 577,000 acres of arable j 

 in 1907, 178,967. In Gloucestershire, in 1086, 589,000 acres ; 

 in 1907, 338,456.^ These are extreme instances; but the 

 preponderance of arable is startling, even if we allow for the 

 recent conversion of arable to pasture on account of the low 

 price of corn. Between the eleventh century and the sixteenth, 

 the laying down of land to grass must have proceeded on a 

 gigantic scale, for Harrison tells us that in his day England 

 was mainly a grazing country. No wonder Harrison's contem- 

 poraries complained of the decay of tillage. 



Mediaeval prices and statistics are, it is well known, to be 

 taken with great caution ; but we may assume that the 

 normal annual value of land under cultivation in 1086 was about 

 id. an acre.^ Land indeed, apart from the stock upon it, was 

 worth very little : in the tenth and eleventh centuries it 

 appears that the hide, normally of 1 ao acres, was only worth 

 £^ to buy, apparently with the stock upon it. In the time of 

 Athelstan a horse was worth \iod., an ox 30^?., a cow ao^a?., a 



* As some of the common pasture was held in severalty, this may 

 perhaps have been mown in scarce years. Walter of Henley mentions 

 mowing the waste, see below, p. 34. 



* yizxCL?iXidi, Dojnesday Book,i,i(i\ Board of Agriculture Returns, 1907. 

 ' VinogradoflF, English Society in the Eleventh Centitry,^. 310 ; Birch, 



Domesday, p. 183. 



C 3 



