6 Rents, Wages, and Profits in Agriculture 



they were subject to all sorts of police 

 regulations enforced by the manorial courts. 

 They were attached to the land, and under 

 the power of the lord, except so far as that 

 power was mitigated by custom, and so 

 far as it clashed with the law of the land 

 as enforced in the courts of the king. 



It is clear that under these conditions 

 there was no contract for rent in our sense 

 of the term. But, in fact, very heavy rents 

 were exacted, though the nature of the 

 rent was also quite different. In reality, 

 the rent that the tenant paid was partly 

 in labour and partly in produce. And if 

 we were to put a value on the labour and 

 on the produce, we should find that, to 

 begin with, the amount that was exacted 

 was as much as the land could bear, 

 consistently with leaving enough in the 

 way of bare subsistence to keep up the 

 stock of labour. 



