LandmOrr1(S in British Farming, 
13 
into a free labourer. Woodwards, cowherds, swineherds, 
ploughmen, shepherds, dairymen, became for the most part 
hired servants working for wages. 
Thus the characteristic of the period under review is the 
growth of these agricultural classes. The first consequence of 
freedom is the creation of gaps between the different ranks of 
society. In the actual mode of cultivation the social change 
made little or no disturbance. Freeholders, tenant-farmers, 
copyholders, were still co-partners in the village farm, all 
equally bound by the co-operative system. Wherever open- 
field farms prevailed, the same method of cultivation was 
pursued. But some distinct advance in farming skill had been 
achieved. Originally, tillers of the soil scratched up new 
* land, tilled it for successive crops, and, when exhausted, 
left it for other plots. The two-field system, by which the 
primitive practice was supplanted, interposed a fallow between 
each crop. In Lincolnshire in 1760, in the island of Port- 
land in 1795, and in Gloucestershire in 1808, this dual system 
prevailed. 
But from the reign of Henry III. onwards, the more ordinary 
practice was the three-field arrangement. Under this system 
the fallow field was twice ploughed, once in the summer between 
HoJcetide (second Tuesday after Easter) and Lammas-day or 
Vincula Petri (August 15), and again in the autumn for the 
wheat- sowing. A third spring ploughing was introduced in the 
thirteenth century for wheat or rye. About Epiphany the 
wheat-stubble was ploughed for oats, barley, beans, or pease, 
and the crops were sown and harrowed in March or April. The 
barley, or oats, stubble lay fallow for a year, when the rotation 
began again with wheat or rye. No other crops were cultivated 
except a little flax or hemp. Roots or artificial grasses were 
entirely unknown. The only manure which the land received 
was from the sheep and cattle that were folded upon it between 
harvest and ploughing ; but marling was extensively practised. 
All seed was sown broadcast, and the seeding was necessarily 
thicker then than now, since the land was often wet and 
generally foul. The average quantity of wheat sown was 
between two and three bushels to the acre. The return was 
from six to nine bushels. On the Berkeley estates great care 
was taken with the seed ; it was changed each second or third 
year, and vale corn was transferred to upland soils and vice versa. 
If the farmer received four times his seeding he was pleased, if 
three times, satisfied. It is not, however, probable that he 
expressed contentment. All the world over farmers are the 
same. In Spanish “ parva ” (little) means a heap of com, so 
