CHAPTER VIII 



FITZHERBERT. — THE REGULATION OF HOURS 

 AND WAGES 



The farming of this period is portrayed for us by Fitz- 

 herbert, the first agricultural writer of any merit since Walter 

 of Henley in the thirteenth century. He was one of the 

 Justices of Common Pleas, and had been a farmer for forty 

 years before he wrote his books on husbandry, and on survey- 

 ing in 1523, so that he knew what he was writing about ; 

 * there is nothing touching husbandry contained in this book 

 but I have had experience thereof and proved the same.' In 

 spite of the increase of grazing in his time he says the ' plough 

 is the most necessarie instrument that an husbandman can 

 occupy ', and describes those used in various counties ; in Kent, 

 for instance, * they have some go with wheeles as they do in 

 many other places ' ; but the plough of his time is apparently 

 the same as that of Walter of Henley, and altered little till the 

 seventeenth century. The rudeness of it may be judged from 

 the fact that in some places it only cost lod. or is. though in 

 other parts they were as much as 6s. or even 8j. He says^ it 

 was too costly for a farmer to buy all his implements, where- 

 fore it is necessary for him to learn to make them, as he had 

 done in the Middle Ages before the era of ready-made imple- 

 ments, when he always bought the materials and put them 

 together at home. On the vexed question of whether to use 

 horses or oxen for ploughing, he says it depends on the 

 locality ; for instance, oxen will plough in tough clay and upon 

 hilly ground, whereas horses will stand still ; but horses go 



* Booke 0/ Husbandry (ed. 1568), fol. 5. The surveyor of Fitzherbert's 

 day combined some of the duties of the modern bailiff and land agent : he 

 bought and sold for his employer, valued his property, and supervised 

 the rents. 



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