CHAPTER III 
FOURTEENTH AND FIFTEENTH CENTURIES 
1 And in the gardin at the sonne uprist 
She walketh up and down wher as hire list 
She gathereth floures, party whyte and reede 
To make a sotil gerland for hire heede.” 
Chaucer: Knight's Tale. 
REAT changes were taking place in England during the 
V_X latter half of the fourteenth and beginning of the following 
century. Trades and industries increased, and in like manner 
horticulture revived. During the years which had passed 
since the Norman Conquest, the conquerors and conquered had 
become welded into one nation, and this had not been effected 
peacefully. Now a period opens when the battles were being 
fought on foreign soil, while the nation was enjoying compara¬ 
tive peace at home. In the country itself, the poorer sections 
of the community were gradually asserting their rights against 
the lords of the soil. There was a class growing up, of farmers 
who farmed lands, merely paying some yearly tribute in service 
or in kind to their overlord. Round these small farms and 
manors, gardens and orchards were planted, and thus it can be 
seen how such movements would affect the progress of gardening. 
From incidental references in writings of the time it appears 
that the poorer classes lived chiefly on vegetables, as the fol¬ 
lowing quotations from Langland serve to show : 
“ Alle the pore peple pesecoddes fetten 1 
Benes and baken apples thei brougte in her lappes 
Chibolles and cheruelles and ripe chiries manye .” 2 
Again, he says the poor folk 
“ With grene poret and pesen to poysonn hunger thei thought .” 3 
Fetch. 
2 Piers Plowman. 
3 Ibid. 
