Ti8 HISTORY OF AGRICULTURE 



The next statute, 39 EHz., c. a, sets forth once more the 

 advantages of tillage, viz. the increase and multiplying of 

 people for service in the wars, and in time of peace the 

 employment of a greater number of people, the keeping of 

 people from poverty, the dispersal of the wealth of the king- 

 dom in many hands, and ' the standing of this realm upon 

 itself without depending upon foreign countries ^ ; ' and there- 

 fore enacts that lands converted from tillage to pasture shall 

 be restored to tillage within three years, and lands then in 

 tillage should be so continued ; but this was only to extend 

 to twenty-three counties, and omitted most of those in the 

 south-west. At the beginning of the seventeenth century 

 a reaction set in ; the price of corn had risen immensely and 

 continued to do so, the price of wool remained stationary, 

 and tillage was as profitable as grass. In 1620 Coke speaks 

 of the man who only kept a shepherd and a dog as one who 

 never prospered. In 1624 several of the tillage laws were 

 repealed.^ 



As an example of the unenclosed fields, at the end of the six- 

 teenth century, we may take the common fields at Daventry, 

 which were three in number, containing respectively 368, 

 383, and 534 acres, divided into furlongs, a term which had 

 now a very wide signification, each of which was subdivided 

 into lands nearly always half an acre in extent, several of 

 these lands when adjoining being often held now by the same 

 owner. One furlong may be taken as an example. It was 

 37 acres i rood in extent, and contained ninety-six lands, 

 owned by seventeen people. The meadows were divided still 

 more minutely, some of the smaller portions being only 

 a quarter of an acre each. The largest meadow contained 

 50 acres, divided among fifty-three people. In the manor, 

 besides the arable and meadow, there were 300 acres of 



^ With what horror would those legislators have contemplated Eng- 

 land's position to-day, when a temporary loss of the command of the sea 

 would probably ruin the country. ^ 21 Jac. T, c. 28. 



