206 THE DOMESDAY INQUEST 



October : Plough the first field. 



November : Sow the first field with wheat. 



February : Plough the second field. 



March : Sow the second field with barley or oats. 



April : Plough the third field for the first time. 



May: Fence the meadows against cattle. Plough the 

 third field for the second time. 



July : Mow the hay in the meadows. 



August : Throw open the meadows for cattle. 



August and September : Cut the corn on the first and 

 second fields. 



In the next year the third field would be sown with wheat, 

 the first with barley, and the second would lie fallow. 



Such is the ideal set before the progressive farmer by 

 Walter of Henley. But in the same way as to-day few 

 farmers live up to the ideals of the twentieth-century text- 

 books, so it is probable that our author's ideals were rarely 

 carried out in practice, especially when he says that the 

 fallow ought to be ploughed three times before the wheat was 

 sown. If this were done, there would be some villages with 

 scarcely any pasture for the cattle. Mr. Seebohm's map of 

 Hitchin, and the bye-laws for that manor, show that, except 

 for a few acres of green common, the only pasture for the 

 cattle and sheep was to be found on the arable fields " from 

 the time when the corn is cut and carried till the same be 

 sown again with corn, and during the whole of the fallow 

 season." x So that if the fallow was ploughed before the 

 crops on the other fields had been cut and carried, the poor 

 sheep would have had to pick up what sustenance they could 

 find on the bare soil. It is not difficult to find in Domesday 

 Book vills with no recorded meadow or pasture. I can count 

 eight of such vills in Oxfordshire, and in these eight vills the 

 only pasture for the stock must have been found on the 

 arable fields between harvest and seed-time. 

 1 . V. c. t 450. 



