5G HISTORY OF AGRICULTURE 



The accounts also stated what days' works were due from 

 each tenant according to the season of the year, and at the 

 , end of each year there was a careful valuation of live and 

 dead stock.^ 



The difference between the smaller gentry and the more 

 important yeomen ^ who farmed their own land must have 

 been very slight. No doubt both of them were very rough 

 and ignorant men, who knew a great deal about the cultiva- 

 tion of their land and very little about anything else. We 

 may be sure that the ordinary house of both was generally of 

 wood, as there is no stone in many parts of England, and 

 bricks were not reintroduced till the fourteenth century and 

 spread slowly. Even in Elizabeth's reign, Harrison ^ tells us 

 that ' the ancient houses of our gentry are yet for the most 

 part of strong timber ', and he even thinks that houses made 

 of oak were luxurious, for in times past men had been con- 

 tented with houses of willow, plum, and elm, but now nothing 

 but oak was good enough ; and he quaintly says that the 

 men who lived in the willow houses were as tough as oak, and 

 those who lived in the oak as soft as willow. There are very 

 few mansions left of the time before Edward III, for being of 

 timber they naturally decayed. 



In a lease, dated 115a, of a manor house belonging to 

 S. Paul's Cathedral,* is a description of a manor house which 

 contained a hall ^^ feet long, 30 feet broad, and 22 feet high ; 

 that is, II feet to the tie beam and 11 feet from that to the 

 ridge board ; showing that the roof was open and that there 

 were no upper rooms. There was a chamber between the 

 hall and the thalamus or inner room which was 12 feet long, 



^ Lives of the Berkeley s, i. 156. 



''■ The yeoman is said to have made his appearance in the fifteenth 

 century, but the small freeholders of the manor before that date were to 

 all intents and purposes yeomen. No doubt, as trade grew in the four- 

 teenth and fifteenth centuries successful tradesmen bought small freeholds 

 in the country and swelled the numbers of yeomen. 



' Harrison, Description of Britain, F. J. Furnivall edn., p. 337. 



* Domesday of S. Paul, Camden Society, p. 129. 



